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

She pushed her long dark hair out of her pale face, revealing the pain in her eyes. “There wasn’t any hope for me unless I discovered the truth about myself. About you and our parents. About everything that happened to us all those years ago. About the Morgawr, especially. I couldn’t be anyone other than who the Morgawr had made me to be—and who I had made myself to be—until that happened. I hate knowing it, but it’s freeing, too. I don’t have to hide anymore.”


“There are some things you don’t know yet,” he said. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to decide where to start. “The people we’re traveling with, the survivors of Walker’s company, all have reason to hate you. They don’t, not all of them anyway, but they have suffered losses because of you. I guess you need to know about those losses, about the harm you’ve caused. I don’t think there’s any way to avoid it.”

She nodded, her expression one of regret mixed with determination. “Tell me then, Bek. Tell me all of it.”

He did so, leaving nothing out. It took him some time to do so, and while he was speaking, he became aware of someone else entering the room, easing over next to him, and sitting close. He knew without looking who it was, and he watched Grianne’s eyes shift to find those of the newcomer. He kept talking nevertheless, afraid that if he looked away, he would not be able to continue. He related his story of the journey to Parkasia, of finding the ruins and Antrax, confronting her, escaping into the mountains and being captured, breaking free of Black Moclips and the rets, coming down into the bowels of Castledown to find that Walker had already tricked her into invoking the cleansing magic of the Sword of Shannara, taking her back into the mountains, and finding their way at last to what remained of the company of the Jerle Shannara.

When he had finished, he looked over his shoulder to find Rue. She was staring at Grianne. The look on her face was indecipherable. But the tone of her voice when she spoke to his sister was unmistakable.

“The Morgawr has come searching for you,” she said. “His ships are anchored offshore. In the morning, he will search these ruins. If he finds us, he will try to kill us. What are you going to do about it?”

“Rue Meridian.” His sister spoke the other’s name as if to make its owner real. “Are you one of those who have not forgiven me?”

Little Red’s eyes were fierce as they held Grianne’s. One hand came up to rest possessively on Bek’s shoulder. “I have forgiven you.”

But Bek did not miss the bitterness in her voice or the challenge that lay behind it. Forgiveness is earned, not granted, it said. I forgive you, but what does it matter? You still must demonstrate that my forgiveness is warranted.

He glanced at his sister and saw sadness and regret mirrored on her smooth, pale face. Her eyes shifted to where Rue’s hand rested on his shoulder, and the last physical vestiges of the girl of six that she had been for all those days and nights of her catatonia vanished. Her face went hard and expressionless, the mask she had perfected to keep the demons of her life at bay when she was the Ilse Witch.

She looked back at her brother for just a moment. “I told you,” she said to him, “that the consequences of my waking would not all be good ones.” She smiled with cold certainty. “Some will be very bad.”

There was a long pause as the two women attempted to stare each other down, each laying claim to something that the other wanted and could never have. A part of a past gone by. A part of a future yet to be. Time and events would determine how much of either they could share, but there was a need for compromise and neither had ever been very good at that.

“Maybe you should meet the others of the company, as well,” Bek said quietly.

Beginnings in this situation, he thought, might prove tougher than endings.





At dawn, they stood together in the shelter of a tower’s crumbling turret, Bek and Grianne and Rue, perched on its highest floor so that they could look out across the ruins to where the Morgawr’s airships were beginning to stir. By now, Grianne had met all of the ship’s company and been received with a degree of acceptance that Bek had not expected. If he was honest about it, Rue had proven to be the most hostile of the company. The two women were locked in some sort of contest that had something to do with him, but about which he understood little. Unable to deflect their mutual disdain, he had settled for keeping them civil.

Across the broad green sweep of the grasslands, the airships of the Morgawr were visible in the clear pale light of a sunrise that heralded an impossibly beautiful day. Bek saw the sticklike figures of the walking dead, standing at their stations, awaiting the commands that would set them in motion. He saw the first of the Mwellrets, cloaked and hooded against the light, emerging from belowdecks, climbing through the hatchways. Most important of all, he saw the Morgawr, standing at the forward railing of Black Moclips, his gaze, searching, directed toward the ruins where they hid.