THE VOYAGE OF THE JERLE SHANNARA : Morgawr (BOOK THREE)

“Hang on!” Bek pleaded. “Please, Quentin!”


His cousin pulled him to his feet, then led him away. Somewhere close by, the Graak was in its death throes. Somewhere not quite so close, its mate was coming. He couldn’t see any of this, but he could be sure it was happening. He stumbled on through a curtain of bright red anguish and hazy consciousness. Any moment now, he would collapse. He fought against that with frantic determination. If he went down, Bek would not be able to get him away. If he went down, he was finished.

Oh well, he thought with a sort of fuzzy disinterest, he was finished anyway.

“Sorry, Bek,” he said, or maybe he only tried to say it; he couldn’t be sure. “Sorry.”

Then a wave of darkness engulfed him, and everything disappeared.





Twenty-three

It was dark when Bek finally emerged from belowdecks on the Jerle Shannara, walked to the bow, and looked up at the night sky. The moon was a tiny crescent directly over the mountain they were backed against, newly formed and barely a presence in the immensity of the sky’s vast sweep. Stars sprinkled the indigo firmament like grains of brilliant white sand scattered on black velvet. He had been told once that men had traveled to those stars in the Old World, that they had built and ridden in ships that could navigate the sky as he had the waters of the Blue Divide. It seemed impossible. But then most wonderful things did until someone accomplished them.

He hadn’t been on deck for more than a few moments when Rue Meridian appeared beside him, coming up so silently that he didn’t hear her approach and realized she was there only when she placed a hand over his own.

“Have you slept?” she asked.

He shook his head. Sleep was out of the question.

“How is he?”

He thought about it a moment, staring skyward. “Holding on by his fingernails and slipping.”

They had managed to get Quentin Leah out of the Crake alive, but only barely. With Bek’s help, he had stumbled to within a hundred yards of the trail before collapsing. By then he had lost so much blood that when they had carried him out they could barely get a grip on his clothing. Rue Meridian knew something of treating wounds from her time on the Prekkendorran, so after tying off the severed arteries with tourniquets, she had stitched and bandaged him as best she could. The patching of the surface wounds was not difficult, nor the setting of the broken bones. But there were internal injuries with which she did not have the skill to deal, so that much of the care Quentin needed could not be provided. Healing would have to come from within, and everyone knew that any chance of that happening here was small.

Their best bet was to either get him to a healing center in the Four Lands or to find a local Healer. The former was out of the question. There simply wasn’t time. As for the latter, the Rindge offered the only possibility of help. Panax had gone to see what they could do, but had returned empty-handed. When a Rindge was in Quentin’s condition, his people could do no more for him than the company of the Jerle Shannara could for Quentin.

“Is he alone?” Rue asked Bek.

He shook his head. “Panax is watching him.”

“Why don’t you try to sleep for a few hours? There isn’t anything more you can do.”

“I can be with him. I can be there for him. I’ll go back down in just a moment.”

“Panax will look after him.”

“Panax isn’t the one he counts on.”

She didn’t reply to that. She just stood there beside him, keeping him company, staring up at the stars. The Crake was a sea of impenetrable black within the cup of the mountains, silent and stripped of definition. Bek took a moment to look down at it, chilled by doing so, the memories of the afternoon still raw and terrible, endlessly repeating in his mind. He couldn’t get past them, not even now when he was safely away from their cause.

“You’re exhausted,” she said finally.

He nodded in agreement.

“You have to sleep, Bek.”

“I left his sword down there.” He pointed toward the valley.

“What?”

“His sword. I was so busy trying to get him out that I forgot about it entirely. I just left it behind.”

She nodded. “It won’t go anywhere. We can get it back tomorrow, when it’s light.”

“I’ll get it back,” he insisted. “I’m the one who left it. It’s my responsibility.”

He pictured it lying in the earth by the dead Graak, its smooth surface covered with blood and dirt. Had it been broken by the weight of the monster rolling over it, broken as Quentin was? He hadn’t noticed, hadn’t even glanced at it. A talisman of such power, and he hadn’t even thought about it. He’d just thought about Quentin, and he’d done that too late for it to matter.

“Why don’t you stop being so hard on yourself?” she asked quietly. “Why don’t you ease up a bit?”

“Because he’s dying,” he said fiercely, angrily. “Quentin’s dying, and it’s my fault.”