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

Ard Patrinell appeared next, sliding out of the haze as a metal-shrouded wronk, transformed from human into something only partly so. He stared at Quentin, his trapped, doomed eyes begging for release even as he raised weapons to skewer the Highlander. Even knowing the image wasn’t real, Quentin flinched from it. Words passed the lips of the Captain of the Home Guard, but they were inaudible behind his glassy face shield, empty of sound and meaning, as insubstantial as his spectre.

The image shimmered and lost focus, and Quentin dropped into a guarded crouch, closing his eyes to clear his vision, his head, and his mind. When he looked again, Ard Patrinell was gone.

Both dead, he reminded himself, Tamis and her lover, ghosts lost in the passage of time, never to return in any other form, memories only. He felt himself drawn to them, less a part of his surroundings than before, more ethereal. He was losing himself in the heat, fading away into his imaginings, in need of rest and food and something hard and fast to hold on to. A chance. A promise.

Neither appeared, and his stumbling hunt across the avalanche-strewn landscape yielded nothing of the missing talisman. The afternoon lengthened, and his exhaustion increased. He was not going to find the sword, he knew. He was wasting his time. He should leave this place and go on. But go on to what and to where? Did he have another purpose, now that he was alone and so lost? Was there something further he was meant to do?

His mind drifted into the past, to the Highlands, where he had spent his youth so carelessly, to the times he had spent hunting and fishing and exploring with Bek. He could see his cousin’s face in the air before him, disembodied, but Bek all the same. Where was he now? What had become of him since the ambush in the ruins of Castledown? He had been alive when Tamis had seen him last, but had disappeared since. Bek was as much a ghost as the Tracker and Patrinell.

But alive, Quentin Leah swore softly. Even missing, even disappeared, Bek was alive!

Quentin found himself kneeling in the rocks, crying, his face buried in his hands, his shoulders heaving. When had he stopped to cry? How long had he been hunched down like this in the rubble?

He wiped at his eyes, angry and ashamed. Enough of this. No more.

When he put his right hand down to push himself back to his feet, his fingers closed about the handle of his sword.

For a second he was so stunned that he thought he was imagining it. But it was as real as the stone on which he knelt. He forced himself to look down, to see the blade lying next to him, coated with dirt and grime, its pommel nicked and scored, but its incomparable blade as smooth and unmarked as the day it was formed. His fingers tightened their grip, and he brought the weapon around so that he could see it more clearly, so that he could be certain. There was no mistake. It was his sword, his talisman, and his hope reborn.

It was impossible, of course, that he should have found it. It was a one-in-a-million chance that he would find it at all. He was not a strong believer in providence, in fate’s hand reaching out, but there was no other explanation for this miracle.

“Shades,” he whispered, the word a rustle of sound in the deep silence of the afternoon heat.

He took the offered gift as a sign and came back to his feet, infused with new purpose. A wayward spirit not yet ready to cross over to the land of the dead, he began to walk.





Daylight faded quickly to twilight, the sun sliding behind the western rim of the Aleuthra Ark, turning the horizon a brilliant purple and crimson, cloaking the valley in long, deep shadows. The heat faded, and the air turned crisp and raw. The unexpected shift in temperature marked the coming of another storm. Quentin hunched his shoulders and lowered his head as he pushed on through the valley and began to climb where the mountains met and formed a high pass. Clouds that had been invisible before slid into view in thick knots and gathered across the sky. The wind picked up, slow and unremarkable at first before changing to gusts that were both icy and sharp edged.

Ahead, where the pass narrowed and twisted out of view, the darkness deepened.

Quentin pressed on. There was no place to stop and no point in doing so. He was too exposed on the slopes to chance resting; what shelter he might find lay on the other side of the pass. He needed food and water, but he was unlikely to find either before morning. Darkness layered the earth; roiling storm clouds canopied the sky. Sleet spit at him, icy particles stinging his face as he ducked his head protectively. The wind howled down out of the mountains, rolling off empty slopes, gathering force as it whipped across the valley from the passes and defiles. Trying not to think about how far he still had to go to reach safety, Quentin bent and wavered before the wind’s tremendous force.