She screamed again, only this time there were no words, only sound that rent the air like razors. The wishsong's magic seared his throat, twisting and tightening until he was gasping for air. He threw up his hands in a belated effort to protect himself as he stumbled backwards and fell. The unexpected force and suddenness of her attack left him dazed and crumpled on the ground, his eyes tearing, his breath coming in deep, rasping gulps.

She loomed over him, robes drawn close, her pale face twisted with disgust. Then her hand reached down to touch his neck and everything went black.

When he was asleep and breathing normally again, she straightened his arms and legs and covered him with his tattered cloak. Such a fool. She had warned him not to say anything more, but he had continued to press her. She had reacted almost without thinking, losing control of herself and lashing out in anger. She felt vaguely ashamed for doing so. It didn't matter what the provocation was; she should have been able to keep the magic in check. She should have been able to avoid attacking him that way. She easily might have killed him. It wouldn't have taken all that much to do so. The power of the wishsong was immense. Should she choose it, she could use her magic to wither one of the huge old oaks that sheltered their camp, to shred it to pulp and bark and sap, to reduce it to the earth from which it had grown. How much less difficult it would be to do the same with this boy.

"I warned you," she hissed at his sleeping form, still inwardly seething at herself.

She straightened and walked away, stopping at the edge of the clearing and peering off into the dark. She brushed back the long dark hair from her face and folded her arms into her robes. Perhaps it was just as well that she had reacted as she did. What she had done now was what she had intended to do anyway once they reached the bay where Black Moclips lay at anchor-to take away his voice and render him harmless. She could not afford to leave him with the Mwellrets otherwise. She would take his sword, as well, the blade he claimed was the Sword of Shannara. He would be locked in the hold and kept there until she finished her business with the Druid.

She glanced over her shoulder to where he lay sleeping, then quickly away again. She had meant to tell him what she was going to do before she did it, to rea.s.sure him that it was temporary, a few days and no more. She had meant to tell him she would restore his voice when she saw him again, that she would negate the magic that held it bound. She would still tell him tomorrow when he woke, but the effect would be different from what she had planned.

It irritated her that she felt the need to justify herself to him. It wasn't as if she owed him anything, as if he mattered to her in even the slightest way. But try as she might, she could not dismiss him as nothing more than a boy the Druid had somehow subverted to use against her. She knew that such an explanation was too simplistic. He was more than that; his magic was real. He was perhaps as strong-minded as she was, and there was at least some truth to what he was saying. She wouldn't admit it to him, but she could sense it. Her problem was in deciding how much. Where did the lies end and the truth begin? What was the Druid trying to accomplish by sending him to her? For he had sent the boy, however they might have found each other. He had sent the boy as surely as she had sent Ryer Ord Star to spy on him.

Was it possible he really was Bek?

She stopped breathing momentarily, the thought suspended before her like an exotic creature. Was it possible after all? He could still be Bek and be lying about their parents. He could still be an unwitting dupe. He could be mistaken without realizing it.

But how had the Druid found him, when she had thought him dead? How had the Druid known who he was? Had the Druid gone back into the rubble and searched him out? Had the Druid decided to make use of Bek in his schemes because he had lost the use of her?

Her lips tightened. Everyone was used in this life. She thought about the Morgawr, her mentor all these years, her teacher in the fine art of magic's use. She knew enough of him, of what he was, to know that he could not be trusted, to accept that he was every bit as devious as the Druid. She knew he had used her. She knew he kept things from her that he believed enabled him to maintain his hold over her. It was just the way of things. She manipulated and deceived, too. The boy was right about that. She was not so different from the Morgawr, and the Morgawr was very like the Druid.

But would the Morgawr have lied to her about her parents? How could she have such strong memories of the Druid and his dark-cloaked servants descending on her home that final dawn if he had? That didn't feel right to her. It didn't seem possible. The Druid had wanted her to come with him to Paranor. She remembered his visits to her father, his conversations and dark warnings. No, he had orphaned her and stolen her away as she believed.

Yet the boy who thought himself her brother was right. She had ended up a Druid anyway, in another place, in another form. She could not say she was any different from Walker, any better or worse. She could not point to where their lives were that much different. In escaping him, she had allowed the Morgawr to turn her into a mirror image of her enemy. Her use of magic and her efforts at acc.u.mulating power were very much the same as his. If he had done bad things in their pursuit, so had she.

Thinking about all of that, accepting the truth of it, made her even angrier with herself. But there was no place for anger in her efforts to accomplish the tasks that she had undertaken. She must find the magic concealed in Castledown, gain possession of it, and return to her ship. She must decide what to do with the boy and his unsettling accusations. She must settle matters once and for all with both the Druid and the Morgawr.

She never once doubted that she was capable of all that or that she could carry out her plans in the manner she intended.

But, like it or not, she was beginning to question her reasoning for doing so.

Miles to the east and south, well clear of the inlet opening into the Squirm and its ice fields and beyond the cliffs that warded the eastern approach from the Blue Divide, the Jerle Shannara lay at anchor. She was berthed in a forested cove nestled among a dozen others in lowlands miles from where she had deposited Walker and those others who had gone ash.o.r.e in search of Castle-down. The Jerle Shannara was sheltered from the wintry weather that swept the coast, concealed from prying eyes while she underwent repairs.

Seated on a bench at the ship's stern and facing out toward the cove's narrow opening, Rue Meridian could only just glimpse the distant waters of the Blue Divide. She wore loose-fitting trousers and tunic, red-orange scarves wrapped about her throat and forehead, and soft, worn ankle boots. A blanket warded her against the chill. Restless and bored, she scuffed one boot across the decking and pondered her dissatisfaction for the hundredth time. It was almost a week since Big Red had brought the airship overland after its near catastrophic encounter with the Squirm, charting a course back to the coast that avoided glaciers and mountains and obscuring mist. A longer, more circuitous route than the one that led through the Squirm and up the river channel, it was by far the safer. Regaining the coast, the Rovers cruised in search of the Wing Riders, whom they quickly found and who in turn led to the sheltering bay. Since then, Rovers and Wing Riders had been engaged in repairing the damaged vessel while Rue had lain belowdecks, healing from her wounds and sleeping undisturbed.

Endless processes both, she fumed to herself in silence. She glanced down at her leg, where she had incurred the deepest and most serious injury in her battle with the Mwellrets. St.i.tches and poultices had begun to heal it nicely, but the wound wasn't closed entirely and she still couldn't walk without pain. The knife wound to her arm had healed more quickly, and the claw marks on her back and sides were little more than the beginnings of scars she would never lose. She guessed that meant she was two for three, but the leg wound kept her from doing much and the inactivity was beginning to grate on her.

It would have helped if the repairs to the ship had gone more quickly and they were sailing back the way they had come in search of their abandoned friends and shipmates. But the damage to the Jerle Shannara had been more extensive than anyone had realized at first glance. It was not just the shattered spars and shredded light sheaths and cracked mainmast that had crippled the ship. Two of the pa.r.s.e tubes together with their diapson crystals had been torn free and lost overboard. A dozen radian draws were frayed beyond repair. The nature of the damage precluded simple replacement; it required reworking the entire system that allowed the ship to fly. Spanner Frew was equal to the task, but it was taking too much time.

She watched the burly shipwright bent over the left fore hooding, directing the set of the existing tube and crystal, realigning the left midship draw that now ran to that emplacement, as well. It was the second of three that were involved in the realignment. No one knew how well the new configuration would work, so that meant testing it out before they ventured inland and risked a further encounter with Black Moclips and the Ilse Witch.

Every time she thought of the witch, she was consumed by a white-hot anger. It wasn't the damage to the ship or the imprisonment of the Rovers that fueled it. It wasn't even the unavoidable loss of contact with Walker's company. It was the death of Furl Hawken for which she most blamed the witch, because if not for the witch's seizure of the Jerle Shannara and her imprisonment of the Rover crew, it would never have happened.

Somehow, someway, she had promised herself, the Ilse Witch would be made to pay for Hawk's death. It was something she had vowed while she lay belowdecks, still too weak even to sit up, unable to stop thinking about what she had witnessed. There would be a reckoning for Hawk, and Little Red wanted to be the one to bring it about.

The day was dragging on toward midafternoon, the sky a ma.s.s of thick gray clouds, the sun screened away, the air raw with cold. At least they were sufficiently sheltered by the landfall to be protected from the bitter wind and sleet blowing with such ferocity along the coast. She marveled at the oddness of the weather there, so different on the coast than inland, so unexplainably in contrast. Only Shrikes and gulls and the like could make homes in the cliffs of the coastal waters. Humans could never live here in any comfort. She wondered if humans lived inland. She wondered if there were humans anywhere at all.

"Afternoon," a voice growled, snapping her out of her reverie. She turned to find Hunter Predd standing a few feet away, his wiry frame wrapped in a heavy cloak, his weathered features ruddy and bemused. She smiled ruefully. "Sorry. I was somewhere else. Good afternoon to you."

He moved a step closer, looking out toward the ocean. "There's a big storm coming on, a bad one. Saw it building out there while flying in with the last of the hemp and reed. It might lock us down for a few days."

"We're locked down anyway until the ship can fly again. What's it looking like now, two or three more days at least before we can get under way again?" "At least."

"Are you foraging for materials still?"

He shook his head and ran one gnarled hand through his windblown hair. "No, we're done. It's up to Black Beard and the others to make it all work now."

She gestured him over. "Sit down. Talk with me. I'm sick of talking with myself."

She made room for him on the bench, swinging her legs off and placing her feet carefully on the decking. She winced in spite of herself at the pain the effort brought on.

The sharp eyes darted toward her. "Still a little tender, I guess." "Do all Wing Riders possess such acute powers of observation?" He chuckled softly. "Feelings seem a little tender, too." She didn't say anything for a moment, looking down at her legs, her boots, the decking. Time pa.s.sed. She felt a great void in her heart, a place opening up where opportunity slipped away while she sat doing nothing.

She lifted her eyes to meet his. "How long has it been since we left them? More than a week anyway, isn't it? Too long, Wing Rider. Way too long."

He nodded, his brow furrowing. He started to say something, then stopped, as if deciding that anything he had to say was unnecessary. He clasped his hands about one knee and rocked back slightly in his cloak, grizzled head shaking.

"You can't favor this delay any more than I do," she said. "You must want to do something about it, too."

He nodded. "I've been considering it."

"If we could just find out if they are all right, if they would be safe enough until the ship could reach them . . ."

She didn't finish, waiting on him to do so for her. He looked off into the distance instead, as if trying to spy them through the mist and cold. Then he nodded once more. "I could take a look for them. I could leave now, in fact. Should leave now, because once the storm comes in, it won't be so easy to fly out."

She leaned forward eagerly, red hair fanning out about her shoulders. "I have the coordinates Big Red mapped out from our journey in. We won't have any trouble following them back."

He looked at her in surprise. "We?"

"I'm going with you."

He shook his head. "Your brother won't let you go and you know it. He'll put a stop to it before you finish telling him what you intend."

She gave it a moment, then reached up with one finger and touched her temple. "Think about what you just said, Hunter Predd," she advised softly. "When was the last time my brother told me what to do, would you guess?"

He smiled in rueful understanding. "Well, he won't like it, anyway."

She smiled back. "It won't be the first time he's had to deal with this sort of disappointment. Nor the last, I'd wager."

"You and me?" he asked, arching one eyebrow.

"You and me."

"I won't ask if you're up to it."

"Best not."

"I won't ask what you intend once we get there either, even though I'd be willing to bet it goes beyond a quick flyover."

She nodded without answering.

He sighed deeply. "It will feel good to be back in the air, good to be doing what we were trained to do, Obsidian and me." He rubbed his callused hands together. "We'll leave Po Kelles and Niciannon to run whatever errands your brother and the others need until they catch up to us. Maybe our leaving will inspire them to work faster on the repairs."

"Maybe. My brother hates to miss out on anything. Going inland for a look around was his idea in the first place."

"And now you've stolen it." He shook his head, smiled ruefully. "How soon can you be ready?"

She rose gingerly and unwrapped herself from the blanket. Underneath, throwing knives were strapped in place about her waist.

She c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at him. "How soon can you saddle your bird?"

EIGHTEEN.

They flew west off the coast and inland aboard Obsidian, settled comfortably upon the riding harness strapped to the Roc's feathered back, Hunter Predd at the reins and Rue Meridian seated just behind him. The Rover wore her flying leathers, black like her brother's and molded to her body from constant use. Beneath, her wounds were carefully bound and padded, and the leathers served as light armor to protect them from the rougher abuses she might suffer on her journey. For weapons, she bore a brace of throwing knives about her waist, another tucked into her boot, a long knife strapped to her good thigh, and bow and arrows slung across her back. A great cloak and hood wrapped her against the cold and wind, but even so she found herself ducking her chin and hunching her shoulders to stay warm.

That her brother was angry at her decision to make this journey was the understatement of the year. He was so furious, so stunned by what he considered her obvious stupidity and immeasurably poor judgment, that he ended up shouting at her loud enough to bring work on the airship to a halt until he was finished. No one else said a word, not even Spanner Frew. No one else wanted any part of the argument. Big Red was speaking for them all-loudly enough for all of their voices combined, come to that- and there was nothing further to be said or done. She listened patiently for a few minutes, then began shouting back at him, and eventually threw up her hands and limped away, screaming back one final time to suggest that if he was so worried about her, maybe he'd better hurry along his repair efforts and follow.

It wasn't fair to chide him so, but she was beyond caring about what was fair and reasonable. What she cared about-the only thing she cared about by then-was that sixteen men and women were trapped inland in strange and dangerous territory with no realistic hope of finding their way out and a madwoman and her reptilian servants hunting for them. She had no idea what might have happened to them, but she didn't like to think about the possibilities. She wanted rea.s.surance that her worst fears had not been realized. She wanted evidence of their safety. Time was an enemy, swift and elusive. There was risk in what she was doing, but it was a risk worth taking when measured against the consequences of further inaction. Hunter Predd said nothing during the argument or afterwards, but she knew he agreed with her decision. Wing Riders were made cautious by training and from experience, but they knew when it was time to act.

It was late afternoon when they departed, and they flew until the night enveloped them. The blue-gray line of the ocean and clouds was left behind, along with the freezing cold of the coastal air. The inland darkness was warm and soft, a welcome change. The land stretched away before them, an unbroken rippling of green treetops and dark ridgelines dotted with lakes and laced with rivers, hemmed away behind the coastal cliffs and mountain peaks. Far distant, caught in a patch of fading sunlight, an ice field's glimmer was hard and bright against the enfolding dark.

Hunter Predd turned Obsidian downward to find a campsite. After several minutes of searching, they landed in a clearing atop a broad wooded rise that gave Obsidian several choices of perch and routes of escape and his riders a good view of the surrounding countryside. It wasn't that they expected trouble, just that they knew enough to be ready for it. It was a country about which they knew virtually nothing. There could be things there that would kill, things that they had never encountered before. Even if they avoided whatever it was that warded Castledown, there would be other dangers.

While Hunter Predd unsaddled Obsidian, groomed his feathers, and watered and fed him, Rue Meridian set about preparing their meal. They had agreed to forgo a fire, to avoid attracting unwanted attention, so she settled for cold cheese, bread, and dried fruit from the stores she had brought from the ship. When Hunter Predd joined her, she brought out an aleskin and shared it with him between bites. They ate their meal in silence, watching the darkness deepen and the stars appear. Light from the full moon rising in the north was brilliant and cleansing, and the land took on a fresh white cast amid the shadows. Atop the rise, the woods were silent. Within the trees, nothing moved.

"How long will it take us to get to where we're going?" the Wing Rider asked when they were finished eating. He sipped from the aleskin and handed it over to her. "Your best guess will do. I just need some idea of how to pace my bird."

She drank, as well, and put the container down. "I think we can get there by late tomorrow if we leave at sunrise and push through the day. It took longer coming out, but we were feeling our way and nursing our wounds, so it went more slowly. We'd lost half our power and much of our steering. Your Roc will fly faster than we did."

"Then we take a look around and see who's there?"

She shrugged. "When I was a girl and we played hide-and-seek, I learned that the best way to find someone was not to look too hard. I learned that instincts are necessary, that you have to trust them. We can have a look at the bay where the Jerle Shannara put Walker and the others ash.o.r.e. We can fly inland until we sight Castledown. But I don't think we can be certain that what we're looking for is at either place." "Or even aboveground." She gave him a sharp look.

"What I mean is that the Druid told us the safehold was belowground. That's all."

She nodded. "We'll have to look sharp, in any case, to find them. They won't just be standing around waiting."

"We'll have Obsidian to help with that." The Wing Rider gestured to where the bird roosted in the dark on a broad outcropping of rocks. "That's what he's been trained to do, to look for things we can't see, to hunt for what's lost and needs finding. He's good at it. Better than you and me."

She eased her injured leg into a new position. It ached from being locked about the Roc during their flight, even for only the two hours they had traveled. How much worse would it be by tomorrow night? She sighed wearily as she rubbed it back to life, careful to avoid the knife wound. It was no worse, she supposed, than she had imagined it would be. She'd already checked the bandage, and there was no evidence of bleeding. The st.i.tches were holding her together so far.

"We'll rest pretty regularly tomorrow," Hunter Predd declared, watching her. Her eyes lifted in sharp reproof. "Not just for you," he added. "For the bird, too. Obsidian travels better with frequent stops."

"As long as you're not doing me any special favors." His laugh was dry and mirthless. "We wouldn't want that, would we?"

She pa.s.sed him the aleskin and leaned back on her elbows. "You can laugh all you want. You didn't grow up a girl among men the way I did. If you asked for special favors from my brother or my cousins, they laughed at you. Worse, they made things so difficult you wished you'd never opened your mouth. Rover women have a tradition of endurance and toughness born out of constant travel, responsibility for family, and a mostly hard life. In the old days, we had no cities, no place in the world outside of our wagons and our camps. We were nomads, adrift much of the time, at sea or in flight the rest. No one helped us just because they wanted to. We taught them to depend on us, on our skills and our goods, so they had no choice. We have always been a self-sufficient people, even now, as sailors and shipbuilders and mercenaries, and whatever else we can do better than others-"

"Hold on!" he interrupted in protest. "I'm not laughing at you. Do you think I don't know about your kind of life? We're not so different, you and me. Wing Riders and Rovers, they've always lived apart, always been self-sufficient, always depended on no one. That's been true since as far back as anyone can remember."

He leaned forward. "But that doesn't mean we can't extend a helping hand when it's needed. Friendship doesn't have anything to do with shoring up weakness. It has to do with respect and consideration for those you care about. It has to do with wanting to give something back to those you admire. You might keep that in mind."

She smiled in spite of herself, charmed by his bluntness. "I've been living with soldiers too long on the Prekkendorran," she offered. "I've forgotten how to be grateful."

He shook his head. "You haven't forgotten much, I expect. You just get a little too close to your feelings sometimes, Little Red. Better that than getting too far away."

They slept undisturbed, taking shifts at watch, and woke refreshed and ready to go on. They set out at sunrise, its pale golden light cresting the horizon like a fanfare to give chase to the night.

The features of the land below gradually emerged from the shadows, a slow etching out of detail and color. The air warmed as the sun lifted, and the sky was bright and cloudless. Rue Meridian lifted her face to the light, thinking that perhaps the world could be kinder, after all, than she had supposed.

They flew on through the entire day, stopping to rest and water Obsidian and to eat their lunch and stretch cramped limbs. Other than small birds and an occasional forest animal, they saw no sign of life. After midday, the terrain began to change, turning more rugged and less open. Ahead, bald-topped mountains reared against the skyline, a ragged spine down the length of the land, bisecting its ma.s.s. Foothills cradled deep lakes formed by streams and runoff from the higher elevations. Clouds began to ma.s.s along the peaks. The sky north turned gray and murky with rainsqualls. South, where the cliffs and ice fields lay cl.u.s.tered, the horizon was black with thunderstorms and streaked with bolts of lightning that flashed like explosions of white fire.

It was twilight when they came in sight of the bay where the Jerle Shannara had left the sh.o.r.e party more than ten days ago. They circled around to fly out of the descending gloom so they would not be seen, keeping low above the treetops, hidden against the dark ma.s.s of the mountains. They could just identify the faint outline of Black Moclips where she hung tethered at anchor above the waterline. No lights burned from her masts or through her windows, and no movement could be seen on her decks. Hunter Predd took Obsidian down to an open stretch of rock fronting a barren ridge. They dismounted and walked to a place where they could look down on the airship and the bay.

West, the sun had dropped below the horizon and the last of the day's fading light was disappearing into shadow.

"Now what?" Hunter Predd asked quietly.

Rue Meridian shook her head, staring fixedly at Black Moclips. "Maybe we ought to take a closer look."

Leaving Obsidian to roost, they walked down from the heights to the sh.o.r.eline, taking their time, moving cautiously through the deepening darkness so as to make as little noise as possible. In the silence of the cove, noise would travel a great distance. Little Red's eyes were sharp, but Hunter Predd's were sharper still, so he led the way, choosing the path that offered them the quietest pa.s.sage. It took them almost an hour to make the descent, and by then darkness had fallen completely and the sky was bright with the light of stars and moon.

Standing on the sh.o.r.eline, well back within the trees, the Rover and the Wing Rider stared out across the bay at the anch.o.r.ed airship. They could see movement on her decks now, guards at watch, crewmen at work. They could hear voices, kept deliberately low, but audible. They could just catch glimpses of lantern light masked by shadows and curtains within the cabins below the decking.

After standing there for a time, Hunter Predd turned to her. "What are you thinking?"

She kept silent. What she was thinking was wild and dangerous. What she was thinking was that perhaps fate had presented them with a unique opportunity. She had come looking for the missing members of the Jerle Shannara's company, but instead found their enemy's transport.

The Ilse Witch couldn't know yet that they had liberated the Jerle Shannara from the Mwellrets and Federation sailors left to keep watch over her. She couldn't know that she now commanded only Black Moclips. She would believe both vessels still safely under her control.

Rue Meridian pursed her lips. There was a chance for real irony here, a bit of poetic justice, if she could just figure out how to orchestrate it.

Wouldn't it be fitting, she was thinking, if she could somehow put the witch in the same position that the witch had put her?

Frowning in discontent, the Ilse Witch glanced over her shoulder at the darkening silhouette of Black Moclips as she disappeared into the trees. Twilight cloaked the bay in shadows that stretched in the wake of the sunset to seize and entwine the airship like ghost fingers. She had given strict instructions to Cree Bega and his rets. The boy had been placed in their care, to be watched and warded until her return. They were not to try to speak with him, to interact with him, or to have anything at all to do with him. He was to be kept locked up. He was to be given food and drink, but nothing else. He was not to be allowed out. No one was to visit him. No one was to disturb him.

Whether or not her instructions would be followed was another matter entirely.

Cree Bega was suspicious, but she had deflected the worst of it by offering up a small lie. The boy had information that would prove useful to them, but she must be the one to extract it from him since he could not speak. The Mwellret had no way of knowing that the reason the boy couldn't speak was because of the magic she had used against him, so he might do as he was told and wait for her return. It was a risk she had to take. She could not take the boy with her; it was too dangerous to go looking for the Druid with him in tow. She could not chance leaving him anywhere else besides the ship; someone from his company might find and free him. She had taken the Sword of Shannara with her, to be certain he found no use for it. She wore it slung across one shoulder, sheathed in the worn scabbard she had found to hold it. Without the use of his talisman or his voice, the boy would have no magic to call upon. It was best to leave him where he was and hope that her absence would be brief.

She had reason to think it would. She had amended her earlier plans, which were entirely too ambitious. As much as she wanted to settle things with the Druid, he was never the primary reason she had undertaken the expedition. Retrieving the powerful magic that lay in the bowels of Castledown was her most important goal. Besides, she needed more time to decide what to do about both the Druid and the boy, especially in light of what the latter was claiming about his lineage. What she intended to do was to walk into the ruins, to bypa.s.s the fire threads and creepers that had so easily bested the Mwellrets but would be less effective against her, to gain entry into Castledown, to locate and siphon off the magic of the books that were concealed there, and to escape. She would leave Walker for later, when she was safely back in the Wilderun. She would have her chance at him then because she would have the magic he coveted, and he would be forced to come to her to retrieve it.

Unless he had it already, of course. The possibility that the boy had been sent to draw her away from Castledown crossed her mind briefly, but she dismissed it. Still, the Druid might have gotten possession of the books while she was searching for the boy. If he had, she would have to deal with him immediately. But she didn't think that was the case. The fact that his company had been decimated by the fire threads and creepers and that there had been no sign of him since suggested that he had accomplished nothing, that instead he was in trouble, perhaps injured or dead. If he was not, he would have emerged already. He would have come for the boy or for her. The boy and the shape-shifter would not have continued their flight. There would have been some sign of activity. Her Mwellrets had patrolled the fringes of the ruins since their arrival and seen no one.