Antrax

18

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 reassurance 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 ashore. 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 stitches 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 passed 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 mass. Foothills cradled deep lakes formed by streams and runoff from the higher elevations. Clouds began to mass along the peaks. The sky north turned gray and murky with rainsqualls. South, where the cliffs and ice fields lay clustered, 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 shore 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 mass 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 shoreline, 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 passage. 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 shoreline, well back within the trees, the Rover and the Wing Rider stared out across the bay at the anchored 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 bypass 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.

Besides, even if he had somehow avoided them, what could he do? Books of magic or not, he was trapped. She had control of both airships. She had the boy and the Sword of Shannara. The Druid was alone, or nearly so. To have any chance at all of escaping, he would have to come to her. She was prepared for that to happen.

She shrugged. Whatever the case, she would know what to do about the Druid when she found the books of magic. Her senses would tell her quickly enough if he had been there before her.

She moved through the darkening twilight like a shade, wrapped in her gray robes, a silent presence. She sent her magic ahead of her, sweeping the darkness, searching for what she could not see, for what might lie in wait. She found nothing. It was as if the world were deserted save for her. She liked the feeling. She always preferred the night, but preferred it best when she was alone. She did not feel anxious or concerned about what lay ahead. She knew what to expect from what she had been told by Cree Bega and, more important, from what she had discovered in her mind probe of the dying Kael Elessedil. She knew of the fire threads and creepers and did not feel them to be a threat. She knew about the books of magic and the thing that warded them. Antrax. That was the name it had been given many centuries ago. She knew what it was and how it could be overcome. She knew more about it than it knew about her. It had misjudged the extent of the information contained in Kael Elessedil’s brain. She thought she even knew how to destroy it, should it become necessary to do so.

But the destruction of Antrax was not her concern. The books of magic were what she wanted, and while she did not know how many there were or where they were hidden, she was confident she could uncover and seize them, which was all she wanted of the machine. She would take the ones she needed, the ones that would give her the most power, and leave the rest for another time. She would use her magic to disrupt Castledown’s security, concealing her presence, masking her theft, and hiding her retreat. If everything went as she wished, she would be there and gone again with Antrax none the wiser.

Then she would deal with that boy.

That boy who claimed he was Bek.

Even thinking about him angered her. His words skipped and jumped through her mind like small unruly animals. Even while trying to focus her thinking on what lay ahead, she could not dismiss them. Or him. That boy! His image was constant and tenacious, lingering in a way that came close to causing her panic. It was ridiculous that he should affect her so strongly. She had overcome him easily enough, outsmarted him time and again, stolen away his voice and his talisman, made him her prisoner, and crushed his hopes for convincing her of who he thought he was.

And yet …

And yet she could not rid herself of his voice, his face, his presence! Working on her like iron tools on hard earth, digging and hoeing and shoveling, breaking up her resistance with their sharp edges, with their implacable certainty. How had he managed that, when no one else could? Others had sought to breach her defenses, to convince her of their rightness, to twist her thinking to suit their own. No one had come close to succeeding, not since she was very little, when the Morgawr …

She did not finish the thought, not wanting to travel that road again just now. The boy was no Morgawr, but he might prove to be just as dangerous. His talent for magic was raw and unskilled, but that could change quickly enough. When it did, he would be a formidable adversary. She did not need another of those.

She stopped suddenly, startled by a realization that had escaped her earlier. His magic, rough and undisciplined as it was, had affected her already. Infected her. That was why she could not rid herself of his voice, why she could not banish it. She exhaled sharply, angry all over again. How could she have been so stupid! She used her own voice in the same way, as if speaking in ordinary conversation, but all the while working on the listener’s thinking. She had let him talk to her because she had foolishly believed it made no difference what he said. She had missed the point. What he said didn’t matter; how he said it, did! She had given him an opportunity he could not possibly have missed and he had used it!

She was shaking with rage. She looked back the way she had come. She was tempted to go back and deal with him. He was too much like her for comfort. Too similar. It was disquieting. It was cause for more concern than she had been willing to give it until now.

For a long time she stood, undecided. Then she shook off her hesitation. What lay ahead was what mattered most. The boy was helpless. He was not going to cause problems before she got back. He was not going to do anything but sit and wait.

Hitching up the Sword of Shannara once more, smoothing the angry wrinkles from her pale face, she adjusted the concealing cloak and cowl and continued on into the night.