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

She looked back at Hunter Predd. The Wing Rider was waiting. She pointed aft and down, then at herself. He nodded and swung away from the ship.

She snatched up the steering bands and lashed the wheels and levers in place, then hurried down the steps and across the slippery surface of the decking to the main hatchway. She went down in a rush, before she had time to think better of it. She was curiously at peace. The anger she had felt moments earlier was gone. Black Moclips was a fine airship, but it was only that and nothing more.

She reached the storeroom door where Aden Kett and his Federation crew were locked away and banged on the door. “Aden, can you hear me?”

“I hear you, Little Red,” the Commander replied.

“I’m letting you out and giving you back your ship. She’s struggling in this storm and needs a full crew to keep her flying. I can’t manage it alone. I own her, but I won’t let her die needlessly. So that’s that. You do what you can for her. All right?”

“All right.” She could tell from the sound of his voice that he was pressed up against the door on the other side.

“You’ll understand if I don’t stay around to see how this turns out.” She wiped at the moisture beading her forehead and dripping into her eyes. “You might have trouble doing the right thing by me afterwards. I’d hate to see you make a fool of yourself. So after I open this door, I’ll be leaving. Do you think you and the others can refrain from giving in to your worst impulses and coming after me?”

She heard him laugh. “Come after you? We’ve had enough of you, Little Red. We’ll all feel better knowing you’re off the ship. Just let us out of here.”

She paused then, leaning into the door, her face close to the cracks in the boards that formed it. “Listen to me, Aden. Don’t stay around afterwards. Don’t try to do the right thing. Forget about your orders and your sense of duty and your Federation training. Take Black Moclips and sail her home as quickly as you can manage it. Take your chances back there.”

She heard his boots shift on the flooring. “Who’s out there? We saw the other ships.”

“I don’t know. No one does, but it isn’t anyone you want anything to do with. More than a dozen airships, Aden, but no flags, no insignia, nothing human aboard. Just rets and men who look like they’re dead. I don’t know who sent them. I don’t care. You remember what I said. Fly out of here. Leave all this. It’s good advice. Are you listening?”

“I’m listening,” he answered quietly.

She didn’t know what else to say. “Tell Donell that I’m sorry I hit him so hard.”

“He knows.”

She pushed away from the door and stood facing it again. “See you down the road, Aden.”

“Down the road, Little Red.”

She reached for the latch and threw it clear, then turned and bolted up the stairs without looking back. In seconds she was topside again, surprised to find sleet had turned the world white. She ducked her head against the bitter sting of the wind and slush and moved to the aft railing. The rope Hunter Predd had used earlier to climb down to Obsidian was still tied in place and coiled on the deck. She threw the loose end overboard and watched it tumble away into the haze. She could just barely make out the dark contours of the Roc’s wings as it lifted into place below.

She looked back once at Black Moclips. “You’re a good girl,” she told her. “Stay safe.”

Then she was gone into the gloom.





Minutes later, Redden Alt Mer stood at the port railing of the Jerle Shannara and watched his sister pause in her climb up the rope ladder. She had gotten off the Roc all right, taken firm hold of the ladder and started up. But now she hung there with her head lowered and her long red hair falling all around her face, swaying in the wind.

He thought he might have to go down the ladder and get her.

Thinking that, he was reminded suddenly of a time when they were children, and he had gone high up into the top branches of an old tree. Rue, only five years old, had tried to follow, working her way up the trunk, using the limbs of the tree as rungs. But she wasn’t strong yet, and she tired quickly. Halfway up, she lost her momentum completely and stopped moving, hanging from the branches of that tree the way she was hanging from the rope ladder now. She was something of a nuisance back then, always tagging along after him, trying to do everything he was doing. He was four years older than she was and irritated by her most of the time. He could have left her where she was on the tree—had thought he might, actually. Instead, he had turned back and yelled down to her. “Come on, Rue! Keep going! Don’t quit! You can do it!”