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

His companion glanced around at the mist-shrouded mountains. “If we fly into these in this mist, we’ll end up in splinters.”


Alt Mer caught his eye and held it. “We don’t have any choice. Give me the wheel. Go forward and signal back whenever you think I need it. Hand signals only. Voices might give us away. Do your best to keep us off the rocks.”

Having repaired the broken draws and swept aside the bits of wreckage, the crew was standing by on the lines. Spanner Frew called out to them as he passed, sending them to their stations, warning of what was happening. No one replied. They were schooled in the Rover tradition of keeping faith in those who had the luck. No one had more of it than Redden Alt Mer. They would ride a burning ship into a firestorm if he told them to do so.

He took a deep breath, glanced once more at the shapes ahead and behind. Too many to evade or to fight. He swung the wheel hard to port toward the bank of mist. He let the airship maintain speed until they were into the soup, then cut back to dead slow, watching the vapor gather and fade, wispy sheets of white wrapping the darker edges of the mountains. If they struck a peak at this height, in this haze, with a third of their power already gone, they were finished.

But the Shrikes couldn’t track them, and their pursuers were faced with the same problem they were.

It was oddly silent in the mist, in the cradle of the peaks, empty of all sound as the Jerle Shannara glided like a bird. All about them the mountains seemed afloat, dark masses appearing and fading like mirages. Alt Mer read the compass, then put it away. He would have to navigate by dead reckoning and gut instinct, then hope he could get back on course when the mist cleared. If it cleared. It might stay like this even further inland, beyond the mountain peaks. If it did, they were as lost as if they had never had a course to begin with.

He could just make out Spanner Frew standing at the bow. The big Rover was hunched forward, his concentration riveted on the shifting layers of white. Now and then he would signal by hand—go left, go right, go slow—and Redden Alt Mer would work the controls accordingly. The wind whistled past in sudden gusts, then died, baffled by a cliff face or air current. Mist swirled through the peaks, empty and aimless. Only the Jerle Shannara disturbed its ethereal fabric.

The rain returned, a gathering of dark clouds that turned quickly into a torrent. It engulfed the airship and its crew, soaking them through, shrouding them in dampness and gloom, claiming them as the sea might a sinking ship. Alt Mer, who had weathered worse, tried not to think of the way in which rain distorted shapes and spaces, creating the appearance of obstacles where there were none, giving hints of passage where walls of rock stood waiting. He relied on his instincts rather than his senses. He had been a sailor all his life; he knew something of the tricks that wind and water could play.

Behind him, the mist and darkness closed about. There was no sign of their pursuers—no sign of anything but the sky and the mountains and the shifting rain and mist between.

Spanner Frew came back to stand with him in the pilot box. There was no reason to remain in the bow. The world about them had disappeared into space.

The shipwright glanced over and gave Redden Alt Mer a fierce smile. The Rover Captain smiled back. There was nothing for either to say.

The Jerle Shannara sailed on into the gloom.





Four


Heat and light gave way to cool darkness, the odd tingling sensation to numbness, and the present to the past as the Ilse Witch was swept away by the power of the Sword of Shannara. One moment, she was deep underground in the catacombs of Castledown, alone with her enemy, with the Druid Walker, surrounded by the wreckage of another age. In the next, she was gone so far inside herself that she had no sense of where she was. In the blink of an eye, she was transformed from a creature of flesh and blood to nothing more substantial than the thoughts that bore her away.

She had only a moment to wonder what was happening to her, and then it was done.

She went alone into the darkness, and yet she was aware of Walker being there with her, not in recognizable form, not even wholly formed, more a shadow, a shade that trailed after her like the flow of her long, dark hair. She could feel the pulse of him in the talisman she gripped like a lifeline. He was only a presence in the ether, but he was with her and he was watching.