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

“I’m trying to find out where she is. I’m trying to figure out how to reach her.”


He stared at her, not quite believing what he was hearing. She was leaning forward as she sat in front of the witch, her face only inches away. There was no fear in her green eyes, no suggestion that she felt at risk. She held Grianne’s hands loosely in her own, and she was moving her fingers over their smooth, pale backs in small circles.

“Bek said she was hiding from the truth about herself, that when the magic of the Sword of Shannara showed her that truth, it was too much for her, so she fled from it. Walker told him that she would come back when she found a way to forgive herself for the worst of her sins. A tall order, even to sort them all out, I’d think.” She paused. “I’m trying to see if a woman can reach her when a man can’t.”

He nodded. “I guess it’s possible it might happen that way.”

“But you don’t know why I have to be the one to find out.”

“I guess I don’t.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time, sitting silent and unmoving before Grianne Ohmsford, staring into her strange blue eyes. The Ilse Witch was little more than a child, Alt Mer realized. She was so young that any attempt to define her in terms of the acts she was said to have committed was impossible. In her comatose state, blank-faced and unseeing, she bore a look of complete innocence, as if incapable of evil or wrongdoing or any form of madness. Somehow, they had got it all wrong, and it needed only for her to come awake again to put it right.

It was a dangerous way to feel, he thought.

She looked over at him. ‘I’m doing it for Bek,” she said, as if to explain, then quickly turned her attention back to Grianne. “Maybe because of Bek.”

Alt Mer moved to where she could no longer see him, doubt clouding his sunburned features. “Bek doesn’t expect this of you. His sister isn’t your responsibility. Why are you making her so?”

“You don’t understand,” she said.

He waited for her to say something more, but she didn’t. He cleared his throat. “What don’t I understand, Rue?”

She let him wait a long time before she answered, and he realized afterwards that she was trying to decide whether to tell him the truth, that the choice was more difficult for her than she had anticipated. “I’m in love with him,” she said finally.

He wasn’t expecting that, hadn’t considered the possibility for a moment, although on hearing it, it made perfect sense. He remembered her reaction to his decision to take Bek with him into the Crake while leaving her behind. He remembered how she had cared for the boy when Hunter Predd had flown him in from the mountain wilderness, as if she alone could make him well.

Except that Bek wasn’t a boy, as he had already noted days earlier. He was a man, grown up on this journey, changed so completely that he might be someone else altogether.

Even so, he could not quite believe what he was hearing. “When did this happen?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re sure?”

She didn’t bother to answer, but he saw her shoulders lift slightly as if to shrug the question away.

“You don’t seem suited to each other,” he continued, and knew at once that he had made a mistake. Her gaze shifted instantly, her eyes boring into him with unmistakable antagonism. “Don’t get mad at me,” he said quickly. “I’m just telling you what I see.”

“You don’t know who’s suited to me, big brother,” she said quietly, her gaze shifting back to the witch. “You never have.”

He nodded, accepting the rebuke. He sat down now, needing to talk about this, thinking it might take a while, and having no idea what he was going to say. Or should. “I thought what Hawk thought—that you were never going to settle on anyone, that you couldn’t stand it.”

“Well, you were wrong.”

“It just seems that your lives are so different. If you hadn’t been thrown together on this voyage, your paths would never have crossed. Have you thought about what’s going to happen when you get home?”

“If I get home.”

“You will. Then Bek will go back to the Highlands and you’ll go back to being a Rover.”

She exhaled sharply, let go of Grianne Ohmsford’s hands, and turned to face him. “We’d better get past this right now. I told you how I feel about Bek. This is new to me, so I’m still finding out what it means. I’m trying not to think too far ahead. But here is what I do know. I’m sick of my life. I’ve been sick of it for a long time. I didn’t like it on the Prekkendorran, and I haven’t cared much for it since. I thought that coming on this voyage, getting far away from everything I knew, would change things. It hasn’t. I feel like I’ve been wandering around all these years and not getting anywhere. I want something different. I’m willing to take a look at Bek to see if he can give it to me.”