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

“What are those?” Quentin breathed.

The search parties fanned out through the ruins, dozens of Mwellrets in each, armed and armored, a decidedly hostile invader. Secured on lengths of chain and ordered to track, the odd hunched creatures were being used like dogs. Noses to the ground, they began making their way through the rubble in different directions, the Mwellrets trailing. Within the ruins, there was no response from Antrax. No creepers appeared and no fire threads lanced forth. It appeared the Rindge were right about what had happened. But it only made Quentin wonder all the more about Bek.

Burly, dark-skinned Kian appeared suddenly out the trees, moving over to join them. He nodded a greeting to Quentin as he came up, but didn’t speak.

“We’ve got a problem, Highlander,” Panax said without looking at him.

Quentin nodded. “They’re searching for us. Eventually, they’ll find us.”

“All too quickly, I expect.” The Dwarf straightened. “We can’t stay. We have to get away.”

Quentin Leah stared down at the searchers as they trickled into the city, tiny figures still, like toys. Quentin understood what Panax was saying, but he didn’t want to speak the words aloud. Panax was saying that they had to give up the search for Bek. They had to put as much distance as possible between themselves and whoever was down there hunting them.

He felt something shrivel up and die inside at the prospect of abandoning Bek yet again, but he knew that if he stayed, he would be found. That would accomplish nothing useful and might result in his death. He tried to think it through. Maybe Bek stood a better chance than Quentin thought. Bek had the use of magic; Tamis had told them so. She had seen him use it, a power that could shred creepers. His cousin wasn’t entirely helpless. In truth, he might be better off than they were. Maybe he had even found Walker, so that the two of them were together. They might have already fled the ruins and gone into the mountains themselves.

He stopped himself angrily. He was rationalizing. He was trying to make himself feel better about abandoning Bek, about breaking his promise once more. But he didn’t really believe what he was telling himself. His heart wouldn’t let him.

“What do we do?” he asked finally, resigned to doing the one thing he had sworn he wouldn’t.

Panax rubbed his bearded chin. “We go into the Aleuthra Ark—those mountains behind us—with Obat and his people. We go deeper into Parkasia. The airships were flying that way. Maybe we can catch up to one of them. Maybe we can signal it.” He shrugged wearily. “Maybe we can manage to stay alive.”

To his credit, he didn’t say anything about coming back for Bek and the others, or resuming the search somewhere further down the line. He understood that such a thing might not happen, that they might never return to the ruins. He was not about to make a promise he knew he could not keep.

None of this helped Quentin with his feelings of betrayal, but it was better to be honest about the possibilities than to cling to false hopes.

I’m sorry, Bek, he said to himself.

“They’re coming this way,” Kian said suddenly.

One of the search parties had emerged at the edge of the ruins below and found the bodies of the Rindge that the Patrinell wronk had killed two days earlier. Already, the hunched creatures were sniffing the ground for tracks. A wolfish head lifted and looked toward where they crouched in the trees, as if aware of them, as if able to spy them out.

Without another word, the Dwarf, the Elf, and the Highlander melted into the trees and were gone.





It took them the better part of an hour to reach the clearing where Obat and his Rindge were assembled. They were high up on the slopes of the hills fronting the Aleuthra Ark, which ran down the interior of Parkasia from northwest to southeast like a jagged spine. The Rindge were a ragged and dispirited-looking group, although not disorganized or unprepared. Sentries had been posted and met the three outlanders long before they reached the main body of Rindge. Weapons had been recovered, so that all the men were armed. But the larger portion of survivors was made up of women and children, some of the latter only babies. There were at least a hundred Rindge and probably closer to two hundred. They had their belongings piled about them, tied up in bundles or stuffed into cloth sacks. Most sat quietly in the shadows, talking among themselves, waiting. In the dappled forest light, they looked like hollow-eyed and uncertain ghosts.