Ilse Witch

Yet something tugged at him. Something close. He closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and began to probe gently outward with his senses. He found what he was looking for almost at once, and his eyes snapped open to confirm his vision.

He could just make out a darkening through the green of the jungle wall in a cliffside a hundred yards or so away. It was the cavern Truls Rohk had found the night before.

He stood looking at the darkness and did not move. The second key was in there, waiting. But the thing that guarded it was waiting, as well. He considered for a moment how best to approach the cavern. No solution presented itself. He turned to the Elven Hunters and gestured for them to remain where they were. Then he walked down off the jumble of rock toward the cave.

He felt the presence return almost instantly, but he had already turned his thoughts inward. He was nothing, an object without purpose, random and devoid of thought. He walled himself away before the sentry that guarded the key could read his intentions or discover his purpose and walked straight into the cavern.

Within, he stopped to collect his thoughts. He could no longer feel the presence shadowing him. It had left him at the entrance of the cave as it had left him at the foot of the rise. Rock did not offer it passage, he decided. Only the soil from which it drew its power. Could he use that to protect himself in some way?

He put the thought aside, and looked around carefully. The cavern opened into a series of chambers, which were dimly lit by splits in the rock that admitted small streamers of light from above the jungle canopy. Walker began to hunt for the key and found it almost immediately. It was sitting out in the open on a small rock shelf, unguarded and unwatched. Walker studied it for a moment before picking it up, then studied it some more. Its configuration was similar to the one he already had, with a flat power source and a blinking red light, but the ridged metal lines on this one formed different patterns.

Walker glanced about the cavern warily, searching for the key’s sentry, for some hint of an alarm, for anything dangerous or threatening, and found nothing.

He walked to the cave entrance once more and stood looking out at the clearing. Ard Patrinell and his Elven Hunters were clustered on the rocky mound, looking back at him. In the surrounding jungle, nothing moved. Walker stayed where he was. Something would try to stop him. Something had to. Whatever warded the key would not simply let him walk away. It was waiting for him, he sensed. Out there, in the trees. There, in the soil from which it drew its strength.

He was still debating what to do next when the earth before him erupted in an explosion of green.

Aboard the Jerle Shannara, which hovered in a cloud of mist two clearings away, Bek Rowe was watching Rue Meridian tie off a fresh radian draw close by the horns of the bow when Walker’s voice cried out sharply in the silence of his mind.

Bek! We’re under attack! Two canyons farther in! Have Alt Mer bring the airship! Drop the basket and pull us out! Quick, now!

Startled by the unexpected assault, the boy jumped at the sound of the Druid’s voice. Then he was racing for the pilot box. It never occurred to him to question whether he was being misled. It never occurred to him that the voice might not be real. The urgency it conveyed catapulted him across the decking in a rush, crying out to Big Red as if stung.

In moments, the airship was sailing skyward through the rugged peaks, lifting over the defiles it could not navigate to reach the beleaguered men.

Walker stared from the cavern entrance at the Elven Hunters marooned on the rocky rise. The entire floor of the canyon had risen up in a tangle of writhing vines and limbs, all of them grasping for anything that came within reach. They had gotten the Elven Hunter Brae before he could even defend himself, dragged him from the rise, and pulled him apart as he screamed for help. The other three had backed to the center of their island, swords drawn, and were striking frantically at the tentacles that snatched for them.