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

“You dream big dreams.” Truls Rohk did not sound convinced. “If this fails, we won’t get a second chance. Either one of us.”


Something heavy crashed to the floor of the passageway ahead, adding to the mounds of debris already collected. Steam hissed out of broken pipes, and strange smells gathered in niches and slid through cracks in the walls. Within the catacombs, every passageway looked exactly the same. It was a maze, and if they hadn’t had Grianne’s distinctive aura to track, they would have long since become lost.

Bek kept his voice even. “Walker would want us to do this,” he ventured. He glanced over at the shape-shifter’s dark form. “You know that to be true.”

“What the Druid wants is anyone’s guess. Nor is it necessarily the right thing. It hasn’t gotten us much of anywhere so far.”

“Which is why you chose to come with him on this quest,” Bek offered quietly. “Which is why you have gone with him so many times before. Is that right?”

Truls Rohk said nothing, disappearing back inside himself so that all that remained was his cloaked shadow passing along in the near darkness, more presence than substance, so faint it seemed he might disappear in the blink of an eye.

Ahead, the tunnel widened. The damage here was more severe than anything they had encountered so far. Whole chunks of ceiling and wall had fallen away. Shattered glass and twisted metal lay in heaps. Though flameless lamps lit the passageway with pale luminescence, their light barely penetrated the heavy shadows.

A vast and cavernous chamber at the end of the corridor opened onto a pair of massive cylinders whose metal skin was split like overripe fruit. Steam hissed through the wounds like blood leaking from a body. The ends of severed wires flashed and snapped in small explosions. Struts and girders wrenched free of their fastenings with long, slow groans.

“There,” Bek said softly, reaching out to touch the other’s cloak. “She’s there.”

No movement or sound reached out to them, no indication that anyone living waited at the end of the passage amid the massive destruction. Truls Rohk froze momentarily, listening. Then he started ahead, this time leading the way, no longer trusting Bek, taking charge of what might become a deadly situation. The boy followed wordlessly, knowing he was no longer in control, that the best he could hope for was a chance to make things work out the way he thought they should.

A sudden hissing shattered the stillness, the sibilance punctuated by popping and cracking. The sounds reminded Bek of animals feeding on the bones of a carcass.

As they reached the opening, Truls Rohk moved swiftly into the shadows of one wall, motioning for Bek to stay back. Unwilling to lose contact, Bek retreated perhaps a pace, no more. Flattening himself against the smooth wall, he strained to hear something above the mechanical noises.

Then the shape-shifter faded into a patch of shadow and simply disappeared. Bek knew at once that he was trying to get to Grianne first. Bek charged after him, frightened that he had lost all chance of saving his sister. He breached the rubble at the entrance to the chamber in a rush and stopped.

The chamber was in ruins, a scrap heap of metal and glass, of shattered creepers and broken machines. Grianne knelt at its center beside a fallen Walker, her head lifting out of the shadow of her dark hair, her pale face caught in a slow flicker of light from a tangle of ruptured wires that sparked and fizzed. Her eyes were open as she stared toward the ceiling, but they did not see. Her hands were fastened securely about the handle of the Sword of Shannara, which rested blade downward against the smooth metal of the floor.

There was blood on those hands and on that handle and blade. There was blood all over her clothing and on Walker’s, as well. There was blood on the floor, pooled in a crimson lake that trickled off into thin rivulets winding their way through the wreckage.

Bek stared at the scene in horror. He could not help what he was thinking. Walker was dead and Grianne had killed him.

To one side, a blade’s sharp edge flashed momentarily in the shadows, and from the gathered gloom a deeper darkness eased silently forward.

Truls Rohk had reached the same conclusion.





Five