Running was all he could think to do.
At first, he thought the creature would not follow, too busy with its kill to bother. But within seconds he heard it coming, limbs and brush snapping, leaves and twigs tearing free, the earth shaking with the weight and force of its massive body. It exploded through the jungle like an engine of war set loose. Big Red picked up his pace, even though he had thought he was already running flat out. He darted and dodged through the heavier foliage until he was back where the trees opened up, and then he put on a new burst of speed. He cast aside his cumbersome weapons, useless in any case against such a behemoth. He lightened himself so that he could fly, and still he felt as if he were weighted in chains.
Alt Mer glanced back only once. Rucker Bont was running just as hard, only steps behind, features drained of blood and filled with terror, a mirror of his own. The lizard, thundering after them in a blur of mottled green and brown, jaws open, was right behind.
“Captain!” Bont cried out frantically.
Alt Mer heard him scream. The lizard was tearing at him, and the sounds of his friend’s dying followed the Rover Captain as he fled.
Shades! Shades!
He never looked back. He couldn’t bear to. He could only run and keep running, closing off everything inside but the fear. The fear drove him. The fear ruled him.
He gained the cliff wall and went up it in a scrambling rush, barely feeling the sharpness of the rock and roughness of the rope as he climbed. Forgotten were the crystals and Jahnon’s body. Forgotten were his hopes for a quick exit from this valley. His companions lay dead in the valley below. His weapons lay discarded. He gave them no thought. He had no faculty for thinking. He had nothing left inside but a frantic, desperate need to escape—not so much what pursued him as what he was feeling. His fear. His terror. If he did not escape it, he knew, if he did not run fast enough, it would consume him.
He gained the heights after endless minutes of climbing through the fading afternoon light and the deepening haze of an approaching nightfall. He never stopped to see if he was being pursued, and it was only as Spanner Frew’s big hands reached down to pull him over the lip of the precipice that he realized how quiet it was.
He looked back in wonder. Nothing was behind him, no sign of the lizard, no indication that anything had ever happened. There was no movement, no sound, nothing. The jungle had swallowed it all and gone as still and calm as the surface of the sea after a storm.
Spanner Frew saw his face, and the light in his own eyes darkened. “What happened? Where are the others?”
Redden Alt Mer stared at him, unable to answer. “Dead,” he said finally.
He looked down at his hands and saw that they were shaking.
Later that night, when the others were asleep and he was alone again, he resolved to wake his sister and tell her what he had done. He would tell her not just that he had failed to retrieve the crystals or Jahnon Pakabbon and that the men who had gone into the valley with him were dead, but that he had panicked and run. It would be his first step toward recovery, toward finding a way back from the dark place into which he had fallen. He knew he could not live with himself if he did not find a way to face what had happened. It began with telling Rue, from whom he had no secrets, to whom he confided everything. He would not stint in his telling now, casting himself in the most unfavorable light he could imagine. What he had done was unthinkable. He must confess himself to her and seek absolution.
But when he rose and went to her and stood looking down, he imagined what that confession would feel like. He could see her face as she listened to his words, changing little by little, reflecting her loss of pride and trust in him, revealing her distaste for his actions. He could see the way her eyes would darken and veil, hiding feelings she had never before experienced, changing everything between them. Rue, the little sister who had always looked up to him.
He couldn’t bear it. He stood there in the shadows without moving, studying her face, letting the moment pass, and then he left.
Back on deck, well away from where the watch stood at the airship’s bow looking out toward the dark bowl of the valley, he leaned against the masthead and stared up at the hazy night sky. Glimpses of a half-moon and clusters of stars were visible through breaks in the clouds. He watched the way they came and went, thinking of his feckless courage and uncertain resolve.
After a time, he slid down to a sitting position, his back against the roughened timber, and lay his head back. As still as the mast itself, he lost himself in the fury of his bitter self-condemnation, and morning still hours away and redemption still further off, he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Thirteen
Imprisoned in the bowels of the Morgawr’s flagship, Ahren Elessedil rode out the storm that had brought down the Jerle Shannara. He was not chained to the wall as Bek had been when held prisoner on Black Moclips a day earlier, but left free to wander about the locked room. The storm had caught up to them as they flew north into the interior of the peninsula, snatching at the airship like a giant’s hand, tossing it about, and finally tiring of the game, casting it away. With the room’s solitary window battened down and the door secured, he could see nothing beyond the walls of his prison, but Ahren could feel the storm’s wrath. He could feel how it attacked and played with the airship, how it threatened to reduce her to a shattered heap of wooden splinters and iron fragments. If it did, his troubles would be over.
In his darker moments, he thought that perhaps this would be best.
An unwilling accomplice in the warlock’s search for the Ilse Witch, he had been brought aboard by the Morgawr and his Mwellrets after leaving Castledown’s ruins and taken directly to his present confinement. A guard had been posted outside, but had disappeared shortly after the storm had begun and not returned. Just before that, they had brought him some food and water, a small measure of both and only enough to keep him from losing strength entirely. No effort was made to communicate with him. From the way the Morgawr had left things, it was clear that he would be brought out only when it was felt he could be useful in some way.
Or when it was finally time to dispose of him. He held no illusions about that. Sooner or later, promises notwithstanding, that time would come.
Ryer Ord Star had disappeared with the warlock, and the Elven Prince still had no clear idea why she had turned against him. He had not stopped pondering the matter, not even during the storm, while he sat braced in a corner of the storeroom, pressed up against a wall between two heavy trusses to keep from being knocked around. She had been the willing tool of the Ilse Witch, and it did not require a great leap of faith to accept that she would take that same path with the Morgawr if she thought it meant the difference between living and dying. Walker was gone, and Walker had provided her with both strength and direction. Without him, she seemed frailer, smaller, more vulnerable—a wisp of life that a strong wind could blow away.
Even so, Ahren had thought she was his friend, that she had come to terms with what she had done and closed that door behind her. To have her betray him now, to reveal his identity and suggest a use for him to his enemy, was too much to bear. Like it or not, he was left with the unpleasant possibility that she had been lying to him all along.
Yet she had clearly mouthed the words trust me to him after they had been made prisoners. Why would she do that if she was not trying to let him know she was still his friend?
What sort of deception was she working?
He thought some more about the Elfstones, as well. He simply could not understand what had happened to them. They had most certainly been in his possession in Castledown. He remembered quite clearly tucking them away in his tunic. He did not think he had lost them since, did not see how that was possible, so someone must have taken them after he had been rendered unconscious. But who? Ryer Ord Star was the logical suspect, but Cree Bega had searched her. Besides, how could she have taken them after the Mwellrets took them prisoner? That left Cree Bega or a
nother of the Mwellrets as suspects, but it would take an act of either supreme courage or foolishness to try to conceal the stones from the Morgawr. Ahren did not think that the Mwellrets would chance it.
He was still wrestling with his confusion when the storm abated and the ship settled back into a smooth and easy glide through the clearing skies. He could tell the sun had reappeared from the sudden brightening that shone through the chinks in his window shutters, and he could smell the sharp, clean air that always followed a heavy storm. He was standing with his face pushed up against the rough battens, trying to see something besides the brightness, when the lock on his door released with a snap. He turned. A Mwellret entered, mute and expressionless, carrying a tray of food and water. The Mwellret glanced about to make certain that nothing was amiss, then placed the tray on the floor by the entry, backed out, closed the door, and locked it anew.
Ahren ate and drank, hungrier and thirstier than he had imagined, and listened to renewed activity on the decks above, the sudden movement of booted feet amid a flurry of shouts and gruff exclamations. The airship tacked several times, swinging about, maneuvering in a series of fits and starts. The ones who sailed her were inexperienced or stiff-handed. Other than to note that they were Southlanders—Federation conscripts and sailors like the ones who fought on the Prekkendorran—he had paid no attention to the sailors on being brought aboard earlier. Mostly he had spent his time studying the layout of the decks and corridors he was moved along, thinking that at some point he might have a chance to escape and would need to know his way.
He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. That hope seemed impossibly naive just now.
A sudden jolt threw him backwards and knocked the tray aside, spilling its contents. A slow grinding of wooden timbers and a screech of metal suggested that they were rubbing up against something big. He sprawled on the floor, as the ship lurched to a stop. He heard more activity overhead. For a moment he thought they were engaged in combat, but then the sounds died away. Yet the movement of the ship had changed, the earlier smooth, easy glide gone, replaced by a stiffer sway, as if the ship was resting against something solid.
Then the door to his prison opened again, and Cree Bega stepped through, followed by two more Mwellrets. The latter crossed to where he sat, hauled him roughly to his feet, and propelled him toward the open door.
“Comess with uss, little Elvess,” Cree Bega ordered.
They took him back up on deck. The sunlight was so bright that at first he was blinded by it. He stood in the grip of the Mwellrets, squinting through the glare at a cluster of figures gathered forward. Most were Mwellrets, but there were Federation sailors, as well. The sailors were slack-jawed, their faces empty of expression. They stood as if in a daze, staring at nothing. Ahren realized that they were still airborne, riding several hundred feet above a canopy of brilliant green forest with the peaks of a mountain range visible off their bow, a rippling stone spine that disappeared into a hazy distance.
Then he saw that they were lashed to a second airship, one he recognized immediately. It was Black Moclips.
“Besst now to pay closse attention,” Cree Bega whispered in his ear.
Ahren saw Ryer Ord Star then. She was standing beside the Morgawr, almost at the bow, her small figure lost in his shadow. The Morgawr warded her protectively, and she seemed to welcome the attention, glancing up at him regularly, leaning into him as if his presence somehow gave her strength. There was anticipation on her face, though the pale features still bore that ghostly pallor, that look of otherworldliness that suggested she was someplace else altogether. Ahren stared at her, waiting for her to notice him. She never even glanced his way.
Aboard Black Moclips, Federation sailors crowded the rail, making secure the fastenings that bound the two ships together. Their uneasy glances were unmistakable. Now and then, those glances would stray to their counterparts aboard the Morgawr’s ship, then move quickly away. They saw what Ahren saw in the faces of those who crewed the Mwellret ship—emptiness and disinterest.
A pair of men had descended from Black Moclips’ pilothouse and come forward. The Commander, recognizable by the insignia on his tunic, was a tall, well-built man with short-cropped dark hair. The other, his Mate perhaps, was tall as well, but thin as a rail, and had the seamed, browned face of a man who had spent his life as a sailor. The crew of the Black Moclips looked to them at once for guidance, closing about them in a show of support as they came to the railing. The Morgawr came forward and stood talking to them for a moment, the words too soft for Ahren to make out. Then the broad-shouldered Commander climbed onto the railing and stepped across to the Morgawr’s ship.
“Comess closser, little Elvess,” Cree Bega ordered. “Sseess what happenss.”
The Mwellrets holding Ahren hauled him forward to where he could hear clearly. He glanced again at Ryer Ord Star, who had dropped back and was standing apart from everyone in the bow, her eyes closed and her face lifted, as if gone into a trance. She was dreaming, he realized. She was having a vision, but no one had noticed.
“She took you prisoner, commandeered your ship, and escaped—all of this with no one to help her but a Wing Rider?” the Morgawr was saying. His rough voice was calm, but there was an unmistakable edge to his words.
“She is a formidable woman,” the Federation officer replied, tight-lipped and angry.
“No more so than your mistress, Commander Aden Kett, and you were quick enough to abandon her. I would have thought twice about doing so in your shoes.”
Kett stiffened. He was staring into the black hole of the other’s cowl, clearly intimidated by the dark, invisible presence within, by the other’s size and mystery. He was confronted by a creature he now knew to have some sort of relationship to the Ilse Witch, which made him very dangerous.
“I thought more than twice about it, I assure you,” he said.
“Yet you let her escape, and you did not give chase?”
“The storm was upon us. I was concerned more for the safety of my ship and crew than for a Rover girl.”
Rue Meridian, Ahren thought at once. Somehow, after the Ilse Witch had gone ashore, Rue had boarded and gotten control of Black Moclips. But where was she now? Where were the rest of the Rovers, for that matter? Everyone had disappeared, it seemed, gone into the ether like Walker.
“So you have your ship back, but the Rover girl is gone?” The Morgawr seemed to shrug the matter aside. “But where is our little Ilse Witch, Commander?”
Aden Kett seemed baffled. “I’ve told you already. She went ashore. She never returned.”
“This boy who escaped, the one she seemed so interested in when she brought him back to the ship—what do you think happened to him?”
“I don’t know anything about that boy. I don’t know what happened to either of them. What I do know is that I’ve had enough of being questioned. My ship and crew are under the command of the Federation. We answer to no one else, especially now.”
A brave declaration, Ahren thought. A foolish declaration, given what he suspected about the Morgawr. If the Ilse Witch was dangerous, this creature, her mentor, was doubly so. He had come a long way to find her. He had gained control over an entire Federation fleet to manage the task. Mwellrets who were clearly in his thrall surrounded him. Aden Kett was being reckless.
“Would you go home again, Commander?” the Morgawr asked him quietly. “Home to fight on the Prekkendorran?”
This time Aden Kett hesitated before speaking, perhaps already sensing that he had crossed a forbidden line. The Mwellrets, Ahren noticed, had gone very still. Ahren could see anticipation on their flat, reptilian faces.
“I would go home to do whatever the Federation asks of me,” Kett answered. “I am a soldier.”
“A soldier obeys his commanding officer in the field, and you are in the field, Commander,” the Morgawr said softly. “If I ask you to help me find the Ilse Witch, it is your duty to do so.”
There was a lo
ng silence, and then Aden Kett said, “You are not my commanding officer. You have no authority over me. Or over my ship and crew. I have no idea who you are or how you got here using Federation ships and men. But you have no written orders, and so I am not obligated to follow your dictates. I have come aboard to speak with you as a courtesy. That courtesy has been exercised, and I am absolved of further responsibility to you. Good luck to you, sir.”
He turned away, intent on reboarding Black Moclips. Instantly, the Morgawr stepped forward, his huge clawed hand lunging out of his black robes to seize the luckless Federation officer by the back of his neck. Powerful fingers closed about Aden Kett’s throat, cutting off his futile cry. The Morgawr’s other hand appeared more slowly, emerging in a ball of green light as his victim thrashed helplessly. Then, as Ahren Elessedil watched in horror, the Morgawr extended the glowing hand to the back of his prisoner’s head and eased it through skin and hair and bone, twisting and turning inside like a spoon. Kett threw back his head and screamed in spite of the grip on his throat, then shuddered once and went still.
The Morgawr withdrew his hand slowly, carefully. The back of Aden Kett’s skull sealed as he did so, closing as if there had been no intrusion at all. The Morgawr’s hand was no longer glowing. It was wet and dripping with brain matter and fluids.
It was finished in seconds. Aboard Black Moclips, the stunned Federation crew rushed to the railing, but the Mwellrets blocked their way with pikes and axes. Pushing back the horrified Southlanders, the rets swarmed aboard, closing about and rendering them all prisoners. The sole exception was the rail-thin Mate, who hesitated only long enough to see the terrible, blasted look on his Commander’s empty face, devoid of life and emotion, stripped of humanity, before going straight to the closest opening on the rail and throwing himself over the side.