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

“They’re talking about the choice she has made,” he answered quietly. “The choice Bek can’t accept.”


They had flown in from the coast yesterday, the Wing Riders Hunter Predd and Po Kelles leaving them there to return home to the Wing Hove, their mission complete, their pledge to provide scouting and foraging for the expedition fulfilled. How invaluable their help had been. It was hard to watch them make that final departure, hard to know they wouldn’t still be warding the ship. Some things he got so used to he couldn’t imagine life without them. It was like that for Alt Mer with the Wing Riders.

Still, he would see them again. Out along the coast, over the Blue Divide, on calmer days and under better circumstances.

They would have returned Ahren Elessedil and the Blue Elfstones to Arborlon and the Elves, then flown the Elven Prince home to face his brother, but for the insistence of Grianne Ohmsford that they come first to the Dragon’s Teeth, to the Valley of Shale and the Hadeshorn. She would hear no arguments against it. She owed something to Walker, she told them. She must come to where the dead could be summoned and spoken with, to where the shade of the Druid could tell her the rest of what she must know.

When she had told them why, they were stunned into silence. Not even Bek could believe it. Not then and clearly not now.

“She might be mistaken about this,” Rue continued obstinately. “She might be taking on more than was ever intended of her.”

Alt Mer nodded. “She might. But none of us thinks so, not even Bek. She was saved for this, made whole by the Sword of Shannara and her brother’s love.” He grimaced. “I sound almost poetic.”

She smiled. “Almost.”

They watched in silence again. Bek was gesturing furiously, but Grianne was only standing there, weathering the storm of his anger, calm resolution reflected in her stance and lack of movement. She had made up her mind, Alt Mer knew, and she was not someone who could be persuaded to change it easily. It was more than stubbornness, of course. It was her certainty of her destiny, of what was needed of her, of what was expected. It was her understanding of what it would take for her to gain redemption for the damage she had done to so many lives in so many places for all those years that she had been the Ilse Witch.

When this is done, he thought, nothing will be the same again for any of us; our lives will be changed forever. Perhaps the lives of everyone in the Four Lands will be changed, as well. What waited in the days ahead was that compelling—a new order, a fresh beginning, a reaching into the past to find hope for the future. All these would come about because of what happened here, on this night, in the mountains of the Dragon’s Teeth, in the Valley of Shale, at the edge of the Hadeshorn, when Grianne Ohmsford summoned the shade of Walker.

So she had promised them.

He found it hard to argue with someone who believed she was meant to be Walker Boh’s successor and the next Druid to serve the Four Lands.





Bek was having none of it. He had gone through too much in bringing his sister safely home again to let her wander off now, to place herself at risk once more—at greater risk perhaps than ever.

“You assume that you are meant to achieve something that even Walker could not!” he snapped, willing her to flinch in the face of his wrath. “He could not return for this, could not save himself to make the Druid order come alive. Why do you think it will be any different for you? At least he was not universally despised!”

He threw out the last few words in desperation and regretted them as soon as they were spoken. But Grianne did not seem bothered, and she reached out to touch his face gently.

“Don’t be so angry, Bek. Your life does not lie with me in any case. It lies with her.”

She glanced toward the Jerle Shannara and Rue Meridian. Stubbornly denying what he knew was true, Bek refused to look. “My life is not the subject of this discussion,” he insisted. “Yours is the one that’s likely to be thrown away if you go through with this. Why can’t you just come home with me, find a little peace and comfort for a change, not go out and try to do something impossible!”