Jerle Shannara - Antrax Part 6

"This is ridiculous," Ahren muttered, almost to himself. "It's a machine!"

"A sentient machine," Ryer Ord Star corrected him. "Sophisticated and capable of feeling. Ahren, it wants what we all want. It wants to be free."

The Elven youth sat down slowly on the pile of rubble and put his chin in his hands. "I still don't feel good about this," he said, his eyes watching the sweeper. "If we do what it wants and go underground, we'll be cut off from everything. If this is a trap, we won't have any chance of escaping. I don't know. I still think we ought to find the others first."

She knelt in front of him and put her hands over his, the tips of her fingers brushing his face. "Elven Prince, listen to me. Why would this be a trap? If whatever wards Castledown wanted us, couldn't it have had us by this time? If this sweeper meant to betray us, wouldn't we already be surrounded by creepers? What difference does it make to anything if it manages to get us belowground? Why would it go to so much trouble to accomplish so little?"

He had to admit he didn't know. She was right, it didn't make much sense. But neither did a lot of other things that had happened on this voyage, and he wasn't about to discount the way his instincts kept tugging at him in warning. Something was bothering him. Maybe it was just his fear of ending up like Joad Rish and the others. Maybe it was his indelible memory of the carnage and screams and dying. It was all too fresh to allow him to think objectively yet.

"There's no time to look for anyone else," she insisted. "There may not be anyone out there to find!"

It was his greatest fear, of course. That there was no one else alive, that they were all that was left.

She was pressing her hands over his, cupping them. He lifted his chin from their cradle, but she would not release him. "Ahren," she whispered. "Come with me. Please."

She was afraid, too. He could feel it in her touch and hear it in her voice. She was no less vulnerable than he. She could see the future, and perhaps she had seen things that she shouldn't, things that frightened her more than what was past. But she was going because she felt so strongly about Walker that she could not abandon him no matter what. He envied her such strength. It eclipsed his own and left him newly ashamed. She would go whether he went or not. And what would he do then? Go back to the bay, hide from the Mwellrets, and wait for the Jerle Shannara to return? Fly home again and live for the rest of his life with what he had done?

He might as well be dead if he did that.

"All right," he said quietly, taking her hands in his, holding them like tiny birds. He bent to her rea.s.suringly, his voice steady. "We'll give it a try."

NINE.

Quentin Leah crouched in the shadowed concealment of a partially collapsed building just below the maze into which the Mwellrets had ventured all too boldly a little earlier and from which they were now fleeing in a somewhat less orderly fashion. Panax and Tamis flanked him, motionless as they peered out through cracks in the walls. The Elven Hunters Kian and Wye knelt a little to the side. The Mwellrets raced past them unheeding and uncaring. Quick glances were cast over their shoulders, to see what might be following, and nowhere else. Some of the rets were bloodied, their cloaks torn and stained, their movements halting and ragged. They had not had a good time of it back there, certainly no better than Quentin and his companions, and they were anxious to be well away.

"How many do you count?" Tamis whispered to him.

He shook his head. "Maybe fifteen."

"That means five or six didn't make it out." She said it matter-of-factly, eyes straight ahead, watching the Mwellrets slide through the ruins. "It doesn't look like they managed to catch up to the seer."

Unless she was dead, of course. Quentin kept that thought to himself. Tamis wasn't saying anything about Bek, but that may have been because she still wasn't sure which way he had gone. She'd picked up Ryer Ord Star's trail easily enough, even with the herd of Mwellrets tromping all over everything, but there had been no sign of his cousin. Quentin felt frustrated and increasingly desperate. Time was getting away from them, and they weren't making any progress. He'd had reasonable hopes that they would encounter Bek or Ryer Ord Star by following the rets. Now it looked as if they wouldn't be encountering anyone.

The last of the Mwellrets trailed past, hurrying away through the bright midday light, disappearing back the way they had come. Tamis didn't move, so neither did Quentin or the others. They stayed where they were, frozen in place, watching and listening. After what seemed a very long time, Tamis turned to face them, her small, blocky form squared away and her gray eyes calm.

"I'm going to slip out for a quick look, try to find out what's happened. Wait here for me."

She was starting away when Quentin said, "I'm coming with you."

She turned back at once. "No offense, Highlander, but I'll do better alone. Leave this to me."

She slipped out through a gap in the wall and was gone. They looked for her in the ruins, but she had disappeared. Quentin glanced at Panax, then at the Elves, his disgruntlement plainly visible.

Kian shrugged. "Don't take it personally, Highlander. She's like that with everyone. No exceptions."

Quentin was thinking she had taken over leadership of their little group, a position he had occupied until she appeared. He wasn't the sort who was troubled by ego problems, but he couldn't help feeling a little irritated by her abrupt manner. He was competent at tracking, after all. He wasn't a novice who would place her at risk by going along.

Wye stretched his legs. A former member of the Home Guard, he had served in Allardon Elessedil's household before coming on this voyage. "She wanted to serve in the Home Guard, but Ard Patrinell thought she would be wasted there. He wanted her as a Tracker. She had a gift for it, was better than almost anyone."

"She resented his interference, though," Kian added with a yawn, dark face haggard and tired. "It took her a while to forgive him."

Wye nodded. "Places in the Home Guard are highly coveted; compet.i.tion is intense. Women have never been fully accepted as equals; men are preferred as the King's protectors. And the Queen's. That was true even of Wren Elessedil. History and common practice more than prejudice and favoritism dictate what happens. Women don't serve in the Home Guard. On the other hand, women have come to dominate the tracking units of the Elven Hunters."

Wye nodded. "Their instincts are better than ours. No point in denying it. They seem better able to sort things out and make the choices you have to make when you're tracking. Maybe they've learned to better hone their instincts to compensate for lack of physical strength."

Quentin didn't know and didn't care. He admired Tamis for her straightforward approach to things, and he couldn't find any reason for her not to be accepted as a Home Guard. But he would have preferred her to show a little more confidence in him. Her demeanor didn't suggest she thought for a minute that she would ever have need of him or anyone else to come to her rescue. Those steady gray eyes and quiet voice were rimmed in iron. Tamis would save herself if there was any saving to be done.

Panax seated himself cross-legged in a corner of the room, a block of wood in one hand, his whittling knife in the other. He worked slowly, carefully in the silence, wood shavings curling and falling to the stone, s.h.a.ggy head bent to his task.

"Sorry you came on this journey, Highlander?" he asked without looking up.

Leaving the Elven Hunters to keep watch, Quentin sat down next to him. "No." He considered momentarily. "I wish I hadn't been so eager to have Bek come along, though. I won't forgive myself if anything happens to him."

Panax grunted. "I wouldn't worry about Bek if I were you. You heard Tamis. I'd guess he's better off than we are. There's something about that boy. It's more than the magic Tamis saw him use. Walker's marked him for something special. It's why he sent you both to Tails Rohk-why Truls was persuaded to come with us. He saw it, too. He recognized it. He won't have forgotten it either. You might want to bear that in mind. The shape-shifter's out there somewhere, Highlander-mark my words. I won't tell you I can sense it. That would be silly. But I know him, and he's there. Maybe with Bek."

Quentin considered the possibility. The fact that no one had seen Truls Rohk-at least, no one he knew of-didn't mean he wasn't there. It was possible he was shadowing Bek. That made perfect sense if Walker had brought him along to keep Bek safe. He thought again about his cousin's mysterious past and his new-found use of magic that he'd never known he had. Maybe Bek really was better off than the rest of them.

"What about you, Panax?" he asked the Dwarf.

The whittling knife continued to move in smooth, effortless strokes. "What about me?"

"Are you sorry you came?"

The Dwarf laughed. "If I were, I'd have to be sorry about the larger part of my life!" He shook his head in amus.e.m.e.nt. "I've been living like this, Highlander, drifting from one mishap to the next, one expedition to another, for as long as I can remember. For all that I'm up in those mountains living alone much of the time, I've been more places and risked my life more often than I care to think about." He shrugged. "Well, there you are. If you live your life in the Wolfsktaag, you pretty much live on the edge all the time anyway."

"So Walker knew what he was doing when he sent us to find you? He knew you'd be coming, too."

"I'd say so." The Dwarf's dark eyes lifted a moment, then refocused on his work. "He wanted Truls and me both. Same as you and Bek. He likes companions, friends, and people who've known each other a long time and trust each other's judgment. He knows what sorts of risks you take on a voyage like the one we've made. Strangers bond, but not fast and hard enough as a rule. Friends and family are a better match in the long run. Besides, if he can get two magic wielders for the price of one, why not do so?"

Quentin refitted the headband around his long hair. "Always thinking ahead, the way Druids do."

The Dwarf grunted. "Farther ahead than you and I and most others could manage. That's why I think he's still alive." He stopped whittling and looked up. "That's why I think that sooner or later we'll find him."

Quentin wasn't so sure, but he kept that to himself, as well. His att.i.tude about things in general was less positive than when he had started the journey. Bek would be surprised at the change in him.

Not ten minutes later, Tamis reappeared. They didn't see her until she was almost on top of them and she was not trying to hide her coming. She loped up through the rubble and into their shelter, her face damp with sweat, her short dark hair tousled, and her clothing disheveled. Quentin saw by the look on her face that all was not well.

"I followed the Mwellrets almost all the way back through the ruins." She spoke quickly, wiping at her face with her tunic sleeve as she crouched before them. She was breathing hard. "I caught up with one of them. He was injured and lagging behind the rest so I took a chance. I knocked him down, put a knife to his throat, and asked him what had happened. It was pretty much what you would guess, the same thing that happened to us. He told me they were tracking the seer, but they never found her."

"What about Bek?" Quentin asked at once.

She shook her head. "They don't know anything about him. When they reached that clearing, only the seer and the Ilse Witch were there. The witch told them to hunt us down and make us prisoners and then went off to hunt someone or something by herself." She paused. "It could have been Bek."

The Highlander frowned. "Why would she waste time hunting Bek? That doesn't make any sense."

"It does if she knows about his magic," Panax pointed out.

Quentin shook his head stubbornly. "She's after the treasure in Castledown. Maybe the Mwellret was lying to you."

"I don't think so," Tamis replied. "Bek was there when I left to find you and gone when the Mwellrets showed up. Something happened to him between times, and it probably involved the Ilse Witch. If we could find the seer, we might find out the truth. She must have seen something."

Panax tucked his whittling wood and knife away. "She could have died in the maze, along with the rets."

Tamis waved the suggestion off. "Why would she go back into the maze knowing what she does about its dangers? Besides, the ret I questioned said they didn't find her, dead or alive." She stood up. "That's enough for now. We have to get out of here. They'll be coming for us."

"You didn't kill the ret?" Kian asked her sharply.

Tamis wheeled on him angrily. "He was unarmed and helpless," she snapped. "I need better reasons than that to kill a man. I knocked him senseless and left. When he wakes, we'll be far away. Now let's go!"

"Go where?" Quentin demanded, standing up, brushing dirt and debris off his pants legs. "Do what?"

She shrugged. "We'll figure that out later. For now, we'll get far enough away that we won't be looking over our shoulders all the time. But we'll stay here in the ruins. They're big enough that we can hide and not be easy to track. We can keep looking for Patrinell and the others."

She started away, and they followed without further argument, knowing she was right, that they had to find a new hiding place, farther from the maze, deeper into the city. The Mwellrets would certainly hunt them, and they were excellent trackers, relying on their highly developed senses, on their shape-shifting abilities, and on their reptilian ancestry. In any case, it was foolish to a.s.sume that staying put would help. Following along behind Tamis, the Highlander, the Dwarf, and the Elven Hunters took care to disguise their tracks, to walk on the hard slabs of metal and stone where footprints wouldn't show. Several times, Tamis dropped back to muddy further any sign of their pa.s.sing, using her special skills to conceal their trail.

Overhead, the sun had pa.s.sed the midday point, easing into the afternoon, sliding through the cloudless blue toward nightfall. Within the ruins, the heat cast in the wake of its pa.s.sing rose off the stone and metal in shimmering waves. Quentin loosened the b.u.t.tons of his tunic and pushed up his sleeves. The Sword of Leah, strapped across his back, felt heavy and c.u.mbersome. The magic with which it had infused him had faded, gone back into whatever dark pocket it had come from, leaving him bereft, but free, as well. He wondered if he would manage it better next time it was needed. There would be a next time, after all. He could hardly expect otherwise.

After they had gone some distance, he moved up beside Tamis. "Why are we going this way and not back toward the bay where we landed? What about Bek?"

She glanced over at him, her lips compressing in a tight line. "Two things. We have to find where Bek went before we can go after him, and we don't want the Mwellrets knowing what we intend."

He nodded. "We need them to believe we are doing something entirely different, running away perhaps, fleeing inland." He paused. "But won't they expect us to try to get back to the Jerle Shannara?"

"I expect they're hoping we do exactly that."

It was the way she said it that caught his attention. "What do you mean?"

Tamis rounded on him, bringing him up short. Her face was hard and set. The others closed about. "The Mwellret told me something else," she said, "something I didn't tell you before. I thought it could wait, since there was nothing we could do about it anyway. But maybe it can't. We've lost the ship. The Ilse Witch found a way through the pillars of ice and surprised it in the channel. She used her magic to put the Rovers to sleep and made them all prisoners. She's left Federation soldiers and Mwellrets to fly her." She shook her head. "We're on our own."

They stared at her, stunned. They were all thinking the same thing. They were marooned in a strange land, and any hope of being rescued by Redden Alt Mer and his Rovers or of getting back to the Jerle Shannara was gone.

Quentin started to say something, but she cut him short. "No, Highlander, the ret wasn't lying. I made sure. He was very definite. The Jerle Shannara is under the control of the Ilse Witch. She's not coming back for us."

"We have to get her back!" he replied at once, blurting it out before he could stop himself.

"Shouldn't be too hard," Panax observed, arching one eyebrow. "All we need are wings to fly up to her. Or maybe she'll do us the favor of coming down where we can reach her."

"For now, what we need to do is walk," Tamis said, dismissing the subject as she wheeled away. "Let's go."

They continued on for the better part of the afternoon, watching the sun descend into the west until it was little more than a bright glimmer along the horizon. By then they had crossed to the other side of the city and could see the trees of the forest ahead through gaps in the fallen buildings. Their shadows trailed behind them in long dark stains, sliding over the rubble like oil. The heat had dissipated and the air cooled. There had been no sign of the Mwellrets all afternoon. Nor had there been any sign of other survivors from their own company. The city seemed empty of life, save for themselves. Ahead, the trees formed a dark wall over which the fading sun cast its silver halo.

Tamis called a halt, glancing around as she did so, taking her time. "I don't think we should attempt to circle back through the city at night," she said. "There's bound to be other traps. There might be sentries, as well. Better to wait until morning when we can see something."

Quentin, like the others, had adjusted to the idea that they were alone and cut off from rescue or escape, that whatever they chose to do, they had better do so with that in mind. Mistakes would prove costly now, perhaps fatal. If the Mwellrets wanted to try tracking them in the dark, let them do so. With any luck, the city and its horrors would swallow them.

"We'll make camp in the forest?" Panax asked.

Tamis nodded. "As best we can. No fire, cold food, and one of us on watch all night. We've seen what's in the city, but not what's in these woods."

A comforting thought, Quentin mused, trailing after her into the trees until she found a suitable clearing. The sun was down by then, and the first stars were appearing. The same stars would already be out at home, so far away he could barely imagine it anymore. His parents would be in bed and perhaps asleep under them. He wondered if Coran and Liria were thinking of him now, as he was thinking of them. He wondered if he would ever see them again.

They had a little food and water, but no bedding. Almost everything had been lost in the flight out of the maze or left behind at the edge of the ruins. They ate what they had, drank from an aleskin Panax was carrying, and slept in their clothes using whatever they could find for pillows. Tamis took the first watch. Quentin was asleep so fast he had barely cradled his head in the crook of his arm before he was gone.

He dreamed, but his dreams were jumbled and disjointed fragments. They left him shaken and at times frantic, but they lacked meaning and were forgotten almost immediately. Each time, after jerking awake, he slipped quickly back to sleep again. Black and still, the night enveloped and carried him away.

It was Kian who woke him, gripping his shoulder firmly, steadying him when he started from his sleep. "You've been dreaming all night, Highlander," the Elven Hunter whispered. "You might as well take the watch and let those of us who can rest do so."

His was the last watch, and already he could sense the shift in time. The stars had circled about and the darkness was losing its hold. Quentin sat looking out across the clearing to where the sunrise would begin, waiting for the light to change. His companions slept all about him, their dark shapes unmoving, the sounds of their breathing slow and ragged in the stillness.

Once, something flew through the branches of the trees overhead, a quick and hurried movement that disappeared almost as fast as it had come. A bird of some sort, he decided, and let his heart settle back into his chest. A little later, feeling uneasy, he rose and peered out into the ruins of the city, searching the darkness. He saw nothing and heard nothing. Maybe there was nothing to see or hear. Just themselves. Maybe in a world of creepers and fire threads, of Mwellrets and the Ilse Witch, they were all of humankind that was left.

But as the dawn brightened in a thin silver thread along the eastern horizon, chasing back the forest shadows just enough to give ident.i.ty to shapes and forms, he saw that he was wrong. A man stood opposite him on the far side of the clearing, vaguely defined by the light, immobile against the gloom. At first Quentin thought he was seeing something that wasn't really there, that the light was playing tricks on his eyes. Why would someone be standing there in the dark? But as the light sharpened the image and gave clarity to its features, he found he wasn't mistaken after all. The man was tall and thin, wearing a sleeveless tunic, pants that ended at the knees, sandals that laced up his ankles, and leather wrist guards. He carried what seemed to be a spear yet wasn't, a slender piece of wood six feet in length with a second, much shorter length fastened to its center.

Quentin waited until he was absolutely certain of what he was seeing, then reached over to Tamis, who was sleeping right beside him, and touched her arm.

She was awake instantly, rising to a sitting position and staring at him. He pointed at the figure. A second later, she was standing beside him, fully alert.

"How long has he been there?" she whispered.

"I don't know. He was already there before it was light enough to see him."

"Has he done anything?"

Quentin shook his head. "Just stand there and watch us."

Tamis went silent. She sat with Quentin, studying the man, waiting to see what would happen. In the new light, her small face took on a different cast; she looked young and pretty and faintly exotic with her Elven features. Quentin found himself studying her as much as the stranger. He liked the calm, easy way she dealt with things, the way she was never fl.u.s.tered, the fact that she never overreacted. In another time and place, in other circ.u.mstances, he would have responded to that attraction; he did not think he could allow that there.

The sun crested the horizon and sent splinters of brilliant light chasing after the fading night. In the wake of their pa.s.sing, the stranger's features were fully revealed. His skin had a reddish cast to it, almost copper. It gleamed faintly, as if it was oiled. His hair, redder still, if a shade lighter, was thick and tightly curled against his skull, cut short and left free. Even his eyes, now visible in the dawn, were vaguely cinnamon.

He continued to regard them, a statue carved of stone. For the first time, Quentin saw what might be a short javelin tucked into his leather belt behind his back, one end protruding.

"What is he carrying in his hand?" he whispered to Tamis.

She shook her head. "I think it's a blowgun, but I've never seen one that size. See the piece strapped to its middle? That would be a holder for the darts." She went silent again, then said, "We can't wait on this any longer. We have to see what he wants. Stay here while I wake the others."

She rose and moved from Panax to the Elven Hunters, waking each with a touch, bending close to caution them, to tell them not to react. One by one they sat up and looked over to where the stranger stood watching.

Tamis came back to Quentin and bent close. "This might be tricky. He won't be alone. There will be others in the trees. He wouldn't expose himself so completely if there wasn't someone protecting his back. He's offering himself as a decoy to see what we do. Let's not give him reason to think we mean him harm."

She stood up and walked slowly over to where he stood. She kept her hands at her sides and her weapons sheathed. Quentin heard her greet him in the Elven tongue and then, when he failed to respond, in several variants. None worked. She tried several Southland languages. Still nothing. She spoke bits of half a dozen Troll dialects, all without result.

Then all at once the stranger said something. When he spoke, his mouth opened to reveal that even his teeth were burnished copper instead of white. His speech was rough and guttural, and Quentin could not understand any of it. Tamis seemed perplexed, as well.