The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“Yes,” he said.

“Then I want you to take me with you when we get to where we are going. I want you to take me now.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Now? But I thought—”

“It’s time, Pen. My father will understand. I will make him understand. I have served him long enough. I don’t want to be his navigator anymore. I want a different life. I have been looking for that life for a long time. I think I have found it. I want to be with you.”

She reached out and touched his face, tracing its ridges and planes. “You said you love me. I love you, too.”

She hugged him then, long and hard. He closed his eyes, feeling her warmth seep through him. He loved her desperately, and he did not think for a moment that his age or his inexperience had blinded him to what that meant. He had no idea how he could protect her when he could barely manage to protect himself, but he would find a way.

“It will be all right,” he whispered to her.

But he knew that he spoke the words mostly to reassure himself.





TWENTY-FOUR


At daybreak, Pen and his companions got a better look at the Slags, and it wasn’t encouraging. The wetlands had the look of a monstrous jungle, an impenetrable tangle of trees, vines, reeds, and swamp grasses, all rising out of a mix of algae-skinned waterways that stretched away as far as the eye could see. The eye couldn’t see all that far, of course, since the mist of the previous night did not dissipate with the sun’s rising, but continued to layer the Slags in a heavy, gray blanket. Swirling in and out of the undergrowth like a living thing, snaking its way through the twisted, dark limbs of the trees and across the spiky carpet of grasses, it formed a wall that promised that any form of travel that didn’t involve flying would be slow and dangerous.

Ahren Elessedil took one good look at the morass surrounding the Skatelow, glanced up at a ceiling of clouds and mist hung so low that it scraped the airship’s mast tip, and shook his head. No one would find them in this, he was thinking. But they might never find their way out again, either.

“Here’s how we go,” Gar Hatch said, seeing the look on his face. It was warmer in the Slags, and the Rover was bare-chested and shiny with the mist’s dampness. His muscles rippled as he climbed out of the pilot box and stood facing the Elf. “It isn’t as bad as it looks, first off. Bad enough, though, that it warrants caution if we stay on the water, and that’s what we’ll mostly do. We’ll drop the mast, lighten our load as best we can, and work our way east through the channels, except where flying is the only way through. It’s slow, but it’s sure. That big warship won’t ever find us down here.”

Pen wasn’t so sure, but Gar Hatch was Captain and no one was going to second-guess him. So they all pitched in to help take down the mainmast, laying it out along the decking, folding up the sails and spars and tucking them away, and tossing overboard the extra supplies they could afford to let go. It took most of the morning to accomplish this, and they worked as silently as they could manage; sounds carry long distances in places like the Slags.

But they saw no sign of the Galaphile, and by midday they were sailing along the connecting waterways and across the flooded lowlands, easing through tight channels bracketed by gnarled trunks and beneath bowers of limbs and vines intertwined so thickly that they formed dark tunnels. Three times they were forced to take to the air, lifting off gently, opening the parse tubes just enough to skate the treetops to the next open space, then landing and continuing on. It was slow going, as Hatch had promised, but they made steady time, and the journey progressed without incident.

It might have been otherwise, had the Rover Captain not been familiar with the waters. Twice he brought the airship to a standstill in waters that ran deeper than most, and in the distance Pen watched massive shapes slide just beneath the surface, stirring ripples that spread outward in great concentric circles. Once, something huge surfaced just behind a screen of trees and brush, thrashing with such force that several of the trees toppled and the waters churned and rocked with the force of its movement. Yet nothing came close to the airship, for Hatch seemed to know when to stop and wait and when to go on.