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

By the time he gained the head of the high pass, the sleet had changed to snow, and a carpet twelve inches deep covered the ground he trod. He had strapped the Sword of Leah across his back using a length of cord he found in one pocket, a makeshift that allowed his hands to stay free. He was walking mostly uphill over uneven ground, the wind tearing at him from all sides and shifting rapidly. Light played tricks in the curtain of falling snow, and it was all Quentin could do to maintain his balance. He was still dizzy and feverish, hallucinating from dehydration and lack of food, but he could do nothing about that.

The ghosts of his past came and went, whispering words that made no sense, gesturing in ways he could not understand. They seemed to want something from him, but he could not tell what it was. Perhaps they simply wanted his company. Perhaps they waited from him to cross over from the world of the living. The idea seemed altogether too possible. If things did not change, they would not have long to wait.

He had lost his cloak, and so he had nothing to protect himself from the cold. He was shivering badly and afraid he would lose all his body heat before he reached shelter. He had been made strong and tough from his years in the Highlands, but his endurance was not limitless. He hugged himself as he slogged ahead through snow and sleet and cold, trying to hold together in body and spirit both, knowing he had to keep going.

At the head of the pass, he found something else waiting.

At first, he wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was even real. It was big and menacing, rising out of the rocks beyond, vague and indistinct in the whirl of the storm. It was man-shaped, but something else, as well, the limbs and body not quite right for a human, not quite in proportion. It appeared to him all at once as he crested the pass and walked into a wind howling with such fury that it threatened to tear the clothes from his body. He watched it slide through veils of white snow, then fade away entirely. He moved toward it, drawn to it instinctively, afraid and intrigued both. He had the sword, he told himself. He was not unprepared.

The shape appeared anew, further in, waited a moment for his approach, then disappeared once more.

This game of hide-and-seek continued through the pass and down the other side, where the walls of the mountain were thickly grown with conifers and the force of the storm was lessened by their windbreak. He had left the mountain off which he had fallen and was now beginning to ascend the one adjoining it. The trail was narrow and difficult to follow, but the appearance of the ghost ahead kept him focused. He was convinced by now that he was being led, but there seemed no reason for concern. The ghost had not threatened him; it did not seem to mean him harm.

He climbed for a long time, winding his way westward around the mountainside, his path twisting and turning through sprawling stands of huge old trees, deep glades of pine needles dusted with snow, and rocky hillocks slick with dampened moss. The storm’s fury had diminished. The snow still fell, but the wind no longer blew the flakes into his face like needles, and the cold seemed less pervasive. Ahead, the shape took on clearer definition, becoming almost recognizable. Quentin had seen that shape before somewhere, moving in the same way, a wraith of the woods in another time and place. But his mind was singing with fatigue, and he could not place it.

Not much farther, he told himself. Not much longer.

Placing one foot in front of the other, eyes shifting between the ground below and the swirling white ahead, between his own movements and the ghost’s, he pushed on.

“Help me,” he called out at one point, but there was no response.

Not much farther, he told himself again and again. Just keep going.

But his strength was failing.

He went down several times, his legs simply giving way beneath him. Each time, he struggled back to his feet without pausing to rest, knowing that if he stopped, he was finished. Daylight would bring light and warmth and a better chance to survive a sleep. But he could not chance it here.

In a clearing leading into a deep stand of cedar, he slowed and stopped. He could feel himself leaving his body, rising into the night like a shade. He was finished. Done.

Then the dark shape ahead seemed to transform into something else, not one but two shapes, smaller and less threatening. They came out of the night together, walking hand in hand, angling toward him from his left—how had they gotten all the way over there? He stared at the new figures in disbelief, again uncertain that what he was seeing was real, that it wasn’t some new form of phantasm.

The figures hesitated as well, as they caught sight of him. He moved toward them, peering through the curtain of snow, through space and time and hallucinations, through fatigue and a growing sense of recognition, until he was close enough to be certain whom he was seeing.

His voice was parched and ragged as he called out to the one who stood closest and who stared back at him wide-eyed in disbelief.

“Bek!”





Nineteen