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

He stared at her. “No.”


“I didn’t think so. I only just figured it out for myself. Maybe with enough time, you will, too. You’re pretty good at figuring things out, even for a boy.” She gave him an ironic, mocking smile, but it wasn’t meant to hurt and it didn’t. “I hear you can do magic. I hear you’re not who you thought you were. Life is full of surprises.”

“Do you want me to explain?”

“If you want to.”

“I do. But first I want you to tell me how you got all beat up. I want to hear what happened.”

“This,” she said sardonically, and she gestured at the airship. “This and a lot of other catastrophes.”

He lifted himself on one elbow and looked around. The Jerle Shannara’s decks stretched away in a jumble of makeshift patches and unfinished repairs. A new mast had been cut and shaped and set in place; he could tell from the new wood and fresh metal banding. Railings had been spliced in and damaged planks in the hull and decks replaced. Radian draws hung limply from cross beams and sails lay half mended. No one was in sight.

“They’ve deserted us,” she advised, as if reading his thoughts.

He could hear voices nearby, faint and indistinguishable. “How long have you been here?”

“Almost a week.”

He blinked in disbelief. “You can’t fly?”

“Can’t get off the ground at all.”

“So we’re trapped. How many of us are left?”

She shrugged. “A handful. Big Red, Black Beard, the Highlander, you, and me. Three of the crew. The two Wing Riders. Panax and an Elven Hunter. The Wing Riders found them yesterday, not too far from here, with a tribe of natives called Rindge. They’re camped at the top of the bluff.”

“Ahren?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nor the seer. Nor anyone else who went ashore. They’re all dead or lost.” She looked away. “The Wing Riders are still searching, but so are those airships with their rets and walking dead. It’s dangerous to fly anywhere in these mountains now. Not that we could, even if we wanted to.”

He looked at the airship, then back at her. “Where’s Grianne? Is she all right?”

The smile faded from Rue Meridian’s face. “Grianne? Oh, yes, your missing sister. She’s down below, in Big Red’s cabin, staring at nothing. She’s good at that.”

He held her gaze. “I know that—”

“You don’t know anything,” she interrupted, her voice oddly breezy. “Not one thing.” She pushed back loose strands of her long red hair, and he could see the dangerous look in her green eyes. “I never thought I would find myself in a position where I would have to keep that creature alive, let alone look after her. I would have put a knife to her throat and been done with it, but you were raving so loudly about keeping her safe that I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“I appreciate what you’ve done.”

Her lips tightened. “Just tell me you have a good reason for all this. Just tell me that.”

“I have a reason,” he said. “I don’t know yet how good it is.”

Bek told her everything then, all that had happened since he had left the Jerle Shannara weeks earlier and gone inland with Walker and the shore party. Some she already knew, because Quentin had told her. Some she had suspected. She had guessed at his imprisonment aboard Black Moclips and subsequent escape, but she had not realized the true reason for either. She was skeptical and angry with him, refusing at first to listen to his reasons for saving his sister, shouting at him that it didn’t matter, that saving her was wrong, that she was responsible for all the deaths suffered by the company, especially Hawk’s.