Jerle Shannara - Antrax Part 22

What she saw was a certainty that brooked no doubt and concealed no subterfuge. He was challenging her to look at the truth as he believed it to be, asking her to risk what that might mean. She did not think she should do so, but she also believed that access to his mind was worth any risk. Once inside, she would know all his secrets. She would know the truth about the missing books of magic. She would know the truth about herself and the boy. It was a chance she could not afford to pa.s.s up. His nonsense about Druid knowledge and power was a ploy to distract her, but she could play such games much better than he could.

"All right." Her words were rimmed in iron. "But you will place your hand on the sword first, under mine, so that I can hold you fast. That way, should this prove to be a trick of some kind, you will not escape me."

She thought she had turned the tables on him neatly. She expected him to refuse, frightened of being linked to her in a way that stripped him of a chance to break free. But again he surprised her. He nodded in agreement. He would do as she asked. She stared at him. When she thought she saw a flicker of satisfaction cross his face, she was flooded with anger and clenched her fist at him.

"Do not think you can deceive me, Druid!" she snapped. "I will crush you faster than you can blink if you try!"

He did not respond, his eyes still locked on hers. For an instant she thought to abandon the whole effort, to back away from him. Let him die, and she would sort it all out later. But she could not make herself give up the opportunity he was offering her, even if it was only for a moment. He kept so many secrets. She wanted them all. She wanted the truth about the boy. She wanted the truth about the magic of that safehold. She might never have another chance to discover either, if she did not act quickly.

She took a steadying breath. Whatever else he intended, whatever surprise he planned, she was more than a match for him, wasn't she?

She reached over her shoulder and slowly unsheathed the sword, bringing it around in front of her, setting it between them, blade down, handle up. In the smoky gloom, the ancient weapon looked dull and lifeless. Her doubts returned. Was it really the legendary Sword of Shannara or was it something else, something other than what she believed it to be? There was no other magic concealed within it; she would have detected any by now. Nor was there anything about it that would lend strength to the dying Druid. Nothing could save him from the wounds he had incurred. She wondered again at what had savaged him so and would have asked if she had thought there was enough time left to do so.

She inched closer to him, repositioning the blade so that he could reach the handle. She kept her eyes on his, watching for signs of deceit. It seemed impossible that he could manage anything. His eyes were lidded, his breathing rough and shallow, his torn body leaking blood into his robes in such copious amounts she did not know how there could be any left inside him. For just an instant, fresh doubt a.s.sailed her, warning her away from what she was about to do. She trusted her instincts, but she hated to acknowledge fear in the face of her sworn enemy, a man against whom she had measured herself for so many years.

She brushed the doubt away. "Place your hand on the sword!"

He raised his bloodied hand from his chest and wrapped his fingers around the handle. As he did so, he seemed to lose focus for a moment, and his hand extended past the talisman to brush lightly against her forehead. She was concentrating so hard on his eyes that she did not think to watch his hand. She flinched at his touch, aware of the damp smear his fingers had left against her skin. She heard him say something, words spoken so softly she could not make them out.

The feel of his blood on her forehead disturbed her, but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her troubled enough to wipe it away. Instead, she placed her hand over his and tightened her grip to hold him fast.

"Now we shall see, Druid."

"Now we shall," he agreed.

Eyes locked, they waited in the smoking ruins of the extraction chamber, so alone that there might have been no one else alive in the world. Everything had gone still. Even the severed cables and wires that had sparked and buzzed only moments before and the shattered machines that had struggled so hard to continue functioning had gone still. It was so quiet that the Ilse Witch could hear the sound of the Druid's breathing slow to almost nothing.

She was wasting her time, she thought abruptly, angry all over again. This wasn't the Sword of Shannara. This wasn't anything more than an ordinary blade.

In response, her fingers dug into Walker's hand and the worn handle beneath it. Tell me something! Show me your truth, if you have any truth to show!

An instant later, she felt a surge of warmth rise out of the blade, enter her hand, and spread through her arm. She saw the Druid flinch, then heard him gasp. An instant after that, white light flared all about them, and they disappeared into its molten core.

On the coast of the Blue Divide, dawn was breaking offsh.o.r.e through a fog bank that stretched across the whole of the horizon like a ma.s.sive wall. From the deck of the Jerle Shannara, Redden Alt Mer watched the fog materialize in the wake of the retreating night, a rolling gray behemoth closing on the sh.o.r.eline with the inevitability of a tidal wave. He had seen fog before, but never like that. The bank was thick and unbroken, connecting water to sky, north to south, light to dark. Dawn fought to break through cracks in its surface, a series of angry red streaks that had the look of heated steel, as if a giant furnace had been lit somewhere out on the water.

March Brume experienced heavy fog at times, as did all the seaports along the Westland coast. Mix heat and cold where land met water, stir in a healthy wash of condensation, and you could muster fog thick enough to spread on your toast-that was the old salt's claim. The fog Redden Alt Mer was watching was like that, but it had something else to it, as well, a kind of energy, dark and purposeful, that suggested the approach of a storm. Except the weather didn't feel right for it. His taste and smell of the air revealed nothing of rain, and there had been no sounds of thunder or flashes of lightning. There wasn't a breath of wind. Even the pressure readings gave no hint of trouble.

The Rover Captain paced to the aft decking and peered harder into the haze. Had something moved out there?

"Pea soup," Spanner Frew grumbled, coming up to stand beside him. He frowned out of his dark beard like a thunderhead. "Glad we're not going that way anytime soon."

Alt Mer nodded, still looking out into the haze. "Better hope it stays offsh.o.r.e. I'll be skinned and cooked before I'll let us be stuck here another week."

One more day, and the repair on the airs.h.i.+p would be finished. It was so close now that he could barely contain his impatience. Little Red had been gone for three days already, and he hadn't felt right about it once. He had faith in her good judgment, and in Hunter Predd's, as well, but he felt compromised enough as it was by what had befallen the members of the s.h.i.+p's company in that treacherous land. They were scattered all over the place, most of them lost or dead, and he had no idea how they were ever going to bring everyone together, even without the added problem of wondering what might have happened to his sister.

"Have you solved the problem of that forward port crystal?" he asked, watching the s.h.i.+fting fog bank, still thinking he had seen something.

The burly s.h.i.+pwright shrugged. "Can't solve it without a new crystal, and we don't have one. Lost the spares overboard in the channel during the storm. We'll have to make do."

"Well, we've been down that road before." He leaned forward, his hands on the railing, his eyes intent on the fog bank. "Take a look out there, Black Beard. Do you see something? There, maybe fifteen degrees off. . ."

He never finished. Before he could complete the sentence, a cl.u.s.ter of dark shapes materialized out of the gloom. Airborne, they flew out of the roiling gray like a flock of Shrikes or Rocs, silhouetted against the crimson-streaked wall. How many were there? Five, six? No, Alt Mer corrected himself almost at once. A dozen, maybe more. He counted quickly, his throat tightening. Two dozen at least. And they were big, too big even for Rocs. Nor did they have wings to propel them ahead, to provide them with vertical lift.

He caught his breath. They were airs.h.i.+ps. A whole fleet of them, come out of nowhere. He watched them take shape, masts and sails, rakish dark hulls, and the glint of metal stays and cleats. Wars.h.i.+ps. He brought up his spygla.s.s and peered closely at them. No insignia emblazoned on flags or pennants, no markings on the gunwales or hulls. He watched them clear the fog and wheel fifteen degrees left, all on a line across the horizon, black as netherworld shades as they drifted into formation and began to advance.

Redden Alt Mer put down the spygla.s.s and took a deep, steadying breath.

They were sailing right for the Jerle Shannara.

Here ends Book Two of The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara. Book Three, Morgawr, will conclude the series as the Ilse Witch is forced to confront the truth about herself and the survivors of Castle-down begin the long journey home.