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

He could yell those same words down to her now, to the little sister who was still trying to do everything he did. But even as he considered it, she lifted her head, saw him looking at her, and began to climb again at once. He smiled to himself. She came on now without slowing, and he reached out to take her arm, helping her climb over the railing and onto the ship.

Impulsively, he gave her a hug and was surprised when she hugged him back.

He shook his head at her. “Sometimes you scare me.” He looked into her wet face, reading the exhaustion in her eyes. “Actually, most of the time.”

She grinned. “That’s real praise, coming from you.”

“Flying Black Moclips all by yourself in a bad piece of weather like you did would scare anyone. It should have scared you, but I suppose it didn’t.”

“Not much.” She grinned some more, like the little kid she was inside. “I took her away from the witch, big brother. Crew and all. It was hard to give her up again. I didn’t want to lose her, though.”

“Better her than you. We don’t need her anyway. It’s enough if the witch doesn’t have her.” He gave his sister a small shove. “Go below and put on some dry clothes.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “I don’t need to change clothes just yet.”

“Rue,” he said, a hint of irritation creeping into his voice. “Don’t argue with me about this. You argue with me about everything. Just do it. You’re soaked through; you need dry clothes. Go change.”

She hesitated a moment, and he was afraid she was going to press the matter. But then she turned around and went down through the main hatch to the lower cabins, water dripping from her across the decking.

He watched her disappear from sight, thinking as she did that no matter how old they grew or what happened to them down the road, they would never feel any differently about each other. He would still be her big brother; she would still be his little sister. Mostly, they would still be best friends.

He couldn’t ask for anything better.





When she reemerged, the wind was blowing so hard it knocked her sideways. The rain and sleet had stopped, but the air was cold enough to freeze the tiny hairs in her nostrils. She wrapped her great cloak more tightly about her, warm again in dry clothes and boots, and pushed across the deck unsteadily to where her brother and Spanner Frew stood in the pilot box. Ahead, the mountains loomed huge and craggy against the skyline, a massing of jagged peaks and rugged cliffs piled one on top of the other until they faded away into the brume-shrouded distance.

She climbed into the pilot box, and her brother said at once, “Put on your safety harness.”

She did so, noting that all of the Rover crew on the decks below were strapped in as well, hunched down against the weather, stationed at the parse tubes and connecting draws.

When she glanced over her shoulder, she found the world behind had disappeared in a thick, dark haze, taking with it any sign of the pursuing airships.

Big Red glanced over. “They disappeared sometime back. I don’t know if they broke it off because of the weather or to go after Black Moclips. Doesn’t matter. They’re gone, and that’s enough. We’ve got bigger problems to deal with.”

Spanner Frew yelled something down to one of the Rovers amidships, and the crewman waved back, moving to tighten a radian draw. Big Red had stripped back all the sails, and the Jerle Shannara was riding bare-masted in the teeth of winds that sideswiped her as badly as they had Black Moclips. Rue saw that the radian draws had been reconfigured, strung away from two of the six parse tubes to feed power to the remaining four. Even those were singing with the vibration of the wind, straining to break free of their fastenings.

“I left a ship in better shape than this one,” she declared, half to herself.

“She’d be in better shape if we hadn’t had to leave quite so suddenly to find you!” Big Red grunted.

That wasn’t true, of course. They would have had to leave in any case to flee the enemy airships, no matter whether or not they were searching for her. Repairs of the sort needed by the Jerle Shannara required that the airship be stationary, and that wasn’t going to happen until they could set down somewhere.

“Any place we can land?” she asked hopefully.

Spanner Frew laughed. “You mean in an upright position? Or will a severe slant do?” His hands worked the steering levers with quick, anxious movements. “First things first. See those mountains ahead of us, Little Red? The ones that look like a big wall? The ones we’re in danger of smashing into?”

She saw them. They lay dead ahead, rising across the skyline, barring their way. She glanced sideways and down and saw for the first time how high up they were. Several thousand feet at least—probably more like five thousand. Even so, they weren’t nearly high enough to clear these peaks.

“Heading ten degrees starboard, Black Beard,” she heard her brother order. “That’s it. There, toward that cut.”