Ilse Witch (56 page)

Even in this, she had an advantage the Druid did not. She knew what the thing was. Or more to the point, what it wasn’t. She had gone inside Kael Elessedil’s ruined mind to discover why he had been lost for thirty years. By doing so, she had seen through his eyes what it was that had captured him. She had witnessed the tearing out of his tongue and the gouging out of his eyes. She had witnessed the uses to which he had been put. Walker knew none of this. If he wasn’t careful, he might come to the same end. That would achieve her goal of destroying him, but cheat her of the personal satisfaction she would derive by seeing him die at her hands.

Yes, Walker would have to be very careful. The thing that had lured them here was patient and its reach was long. It was dangerous in ways she had not encountered before. So she would have to be careful, too. But she was always careful, always on guard against the unexpected. She had trained herself to be so.

Cree Bega sidled up to her. “The little peopless are all ssafely locked away,” he hissed.

“Leave five of your rets to make sure they stay that way,” she ordered. “Commander Kett will assign two of his crew to watch over the ship. The rest of us will take the
Black Moclips
after those already ashore.”

I’m coming for you, Druid
, she thought triumphantly.
Can you feel me getting close?

She climbed down from the pilot box, wrapped in grim fury and fierce determination, and walked back through the mist and gloom.

When the attack came, Walker was a little more than halfway between the others of the company and the obelisk, deep inside the maze of half walls and partitions. He heard a sharp click, like a lock opening or a trigger released, and he threw
himself down just as a slender thread of brilliant red fire lanced overhead. Without even thinking, he turned the Druid fire on its source and fused the tiny aperture through which the thread had appeared.

Instantly, a dozen more threads crisscrossed the area in which he lay, some of them burning paths across the metal carpet, seeking him out. He rolled quickly into the shelter of a wall and burned shut one opening after another, snuffing out the threads, exploding apertures and entire sections of wall, filling the hazy air with smoke and the acrid stench of scorched metal.

Then he was on his feet and moving swiftly toward the obelisk, sensing that whatever controlled the fire could be found there. His robes hindered his progress, prevented him from running, and kept him to a quick shuffle.
Ribbons of fire
. He repeated the words as he angled his way through the maze, ducking behind walls and through openings as the slender threads sought him out, Ryer Ord Star’s vision come to life.

He had gotten maybe twenty yards deeper into the maze when the walls began to move. Without warning, they started to raise and lower, a shifting mass of metal that cut off some approaches and opened others, whole sections materializing out of the smooth, polished floor while others disappeared. It was so disorienting and unexpected that he slowed momentarily, and the ribbons of fire began to close on him once more, new ones stabbing out from sections of wall closer to where he hesitated, old ones shifting to target him. In desperation, he threw a wide band of his own fire back at them, knocking some askew, destroying others. He heard shouts behind him, rising from behind a screen of smoke and mist, from out of a well of emptiness and darkness.

“Don’t come in here!” he shouted in warning, hearing the echoes cried of his voice come back at him.

Fire lances burned in faint glimmerings through the haze, penetrating the darkness with killing quickness. Screams
rose, and he felt his heart sink at the realization that at least some of those he led had not heard him. He started back for them, but the walls shifted anew, the fire threads barred his path, and he was forced to back away.

Get to the obelisk!
he screamed at himself in the silence of his mind.

Heat radiated through his body as he turned and hurried ahead once more, sweat mingling with beads of mist on his taut face. Something moved to one side, and he caught the sound of skittering, of metal scraping metal. Fire exploded next to him, barely missing his head, and he ducked and moved faster, twisting and turning through the shifting walls, the changing maze, losing track of everything but the need to reach the obelisk. He felt a stickiness on his hand, and glanced down to find his fingers red with his blood. A fire lance had opened a gash in his arm just above his wrist.

Ignoring the wound, he glanced up to find the obelisk directly in front of him. Impulsively, he darted out from behind the wall that had sheltered him right into the path of a creeper.

For a second he was so stunned he just stopped where he was and stared, his mind a jumble of confusion. What was a creeper doing here? Wait, it wasn’t a creeper at all, it just looked like one. It was spidery like a creeper, had a creeper’s legs and body, but it was all metal with no fusing of flesh, no melding of animate and inanimate, of matter and material …

There was no more time for speculation. It reached for him, pincers extending at the end of flexible limbs, and he thrust out his arm in a warding motion and sent the Druid fire flying into it. The creeper was rocked backwards on its spindly legs and then toppled. It lay writhing, no longer able to rise, thrashing as it melted and burned. Walker raced past. It was constructed entirely of metal, just as he’d thought. He caught a glimpse of another, then two more, three, four; they were all around, coming toward him.

Metal dogs!

All of the components of Ryer Ord Star’s vision had come
together—the maze, the ribbons of fire, and the metal dogs—pieces of a nightmare that would consume them if he couldn’t find a way to stop it. He sidestepped another fire lance, dashed across an opening between several shifting walls, and leapt onto the threshold of the doorway to the obelisk.

Behind him, there was chaos. He could hear shouts and screams, the rasp of metal on metal, the steady hiss of fire threads, and the boom of explosions. He could see the distinctive flash of Quentin Leah’s blade. He could smell the magic and taste the smoke. The entire company was under attack, and he was doing nothing to help them.

Quickly! Get into the tower!

He spied the slots for the keys in a raised metal surface to one side of the door. Swiftly he produced the keys from his robes and inserted them into the thin, flat openings. The keys slid into place easily, a bank of lights flashed in the black metal surface of the wall, and the door eased aside to give him entry. He stepped through quickly, the sounds of the pursuing creepers spurring him on, and the door closed behind him.

He stood blinded by the blackness for a moment and waited for his vision to return. He saw the lights first, some steady and unchanging, some blinking on and off, some green, some red, some yellow. There were hundreds of them, ahead somewhere, tiny beacons glowing in the dark. When he could make out the surfaces of floor and walls and ceiling sufficiently to find his way, he started toward them. The controls to the fire threads and the creepers would be there. This was a kingdom of machines, and the machines in this tower would control the machines in the maze. Shut down the one, and you shut down the others.

It was his last thought before the floor opened beneath him, and he tumbled away into space.

R
ue Meridian woke when her head banged against the wall of the storeroom in the forward hold. She tried to roll away and found herself pinned to the floor by a heavy weight. The weight turned out to be Furl Hawken, who was still unconscious, his bulk sprawled across her torso. She could hear the wind howling like a scorched cat and feel the pitch and roll of the ship. A storm was in progress, and a bad one at that. With every fresh gust and new jolt she was thrown headfirst back toward the offending wall.

Squirming and wriggling, she worked herself free of Hawk and pushed herself into a sitting position, her back to the bulkhead. For a moment she couldn’t remember what had happened, then couldn’t figure out how. What was she doing down here, belowdecks? She had been working with another Rover on setting a fresh radian draw, tightening it down, when that wind had come up, soft and lulling, singing to her like her mother once had.

And put her to sleep, she thought ruefully, beginning to see exactly what had happened.

She climbed to her feet and staggered across the room through the lurching of the ship to the door. She tried the handle. Locked. No surprise there. She grimaced and exhaled sharply. The Rovers were all prisoners or dead, overpowered in all likelihood by the Ilse Witch. Somehow she had gotten to them when they weren’t expecting it, put them to sleep, and locked them below. Or worse, it wasn’t the Ilse Witch at
all, but the thing that Walker had gone inland to find. Or was it worse, the one rather than the other? She rubbed her head where it had banged against the wall, wondering how many jolts it had taken to wake her. Too many, she decided, feeling an ache work its way through her skull and down into her neck.

She glanced around the room. It was empty except for Hawk and herself. The others were somewhere else. There were crates of supplies stacked against the walls, but they contained light sheaths, radian draws, parse tubes, ropes, and the like. No heavy clubs or axes. No sharp objects or keen blades to rely on. No weapons of any kind.

She looked down hopefully for her sword and throwing knives, even though she knew her weapons belt was gone. She reached into her boot. The dagger she hid there was gone, as well. Whoever put her here was smart enough to search her before locking her in. Hawk’s weapons would have been taken, too. Escaping confinement was not going to be easy.

But it would, of course, be possible.

Little Red never once stopped to think otherwise. It wasn’t in her nature to do so. She did not panic and she did not despair. She was a Rover, and she had been taught from a very early age that Rovers had to look out for themselves, that no one else was going to do it for them. She was locked in the hold of her own ship, and it was up to her to get free. She already knew she was going to do that. Someone had made a big mistake in assuming she wasn’t. Someone was going to pay for putting her here.

A sudden violent pitch of the airship sent her staggering to one side, and she was barely able to keep her feet while righting herself. Something bad was happening topside, and she had to get up there quickly to find out what it was. It didn’t feel as if the people who had locked her in had any idea what they were doing with the ship. If there was a storm in progress, it would take accomplished sailors to see the
Jerle Shannara
safely through. She thought briefly of the Squirm’s
grinding pillars, of the sheer cliffs surrounding them, and of their proximity to both, and she felt a tug of concern deep in her stomach.

She worked her way over to Furl Hawken and began to shake him. “Wake up, Hawk!” She kept her voice low enough that anyone standing outside the door wouldn’t hear. Not that there was much chance with the storm howling all about them. “Hawk!” She slapped his face. “Wake up!”

His eyes fluttered and he grunted like a bull. Slowly he rolled onto his side, clasping his head, muttering to himself. Then he sat up, running his big hands through his tangled blond hair and beard. “What hit me? I can feel it all the way down to my teeth!”

The airship did a quick pitch and roll, causing him to brace himself hurriedly with his hands. “Shades!”

“Get up,” she ordered, pulling at him. “We’ve been drugged and locked up, and the ship’s in the hands of incompetents. Let’s do something about it.”

He lumbered to his feet, steadying himself by leaning on her shoulder as the ship shook with the force of the wind. “Where’s Big Red?”

“Can’t say for sure. He’s not here, anyway.” She hadn’t allowed herself to think what might have happened to her brother. Locked in another storeroom, probably aft of this one, she told herself. They’d probably been separated to render them more manageable. Alive, though. She wouldn’t consider the alternative.

She moved back over to the door and stood with her ear pressed against the wood, listening. All she could hear was the howl of the wind, the singing of the draws, and the rattle of something not properly tied down. She sat with her back to the wall and pulled off her boot. Inside the heel, tucked into the leather, was a metal hook.

“I see they didn’t get quite everything,” Hawk chuckled, coming over to stand next to her.

She pulled on her boot and stood up. “Did they miss anything you were carrying?” she asked.

He reached under his left arm, found a small opening in the seam of his stiff leather vest, and removed a long, slender blade. “Could be.” He grinned. “Enough to get us close to some real weapons, if we’re lucky.”

“We’re Rovers, Hawk,” she said, bending to the lock in the door. “We make our own luck.”

Kneeling with one leg braced against the door, she inserted the pick into the lock and began to work it around. The lock was new and its workings easily tapped. It gave in less than a minute, the latch snapping open as she pulled down on the handle, the door giving way. She cracked it and looked out into the passageway. Shadows cast by oil lamps and ropes hung from pegs in the walls flickered and danced with the rolling of the ship. At the passageway’s forward end, a bulky form braced against the shipwalls and stared up the ladder at the hatchway.

Rue Meridian ducked back inside the storeroom and eased the door closed again. “One guard, a big guy. I can’t tell who or what he is. We have to get past him, though. Do you want to handle him or shall I?”

Furl Hawken tightened his grip on the knife. “I’ll deal with him, Little Red. You get to the others.”

They stared at each other in the dim light, breathing quickly, faces flushed and anxious. “Be careful, Hawk,” she told him.

They went out the door on cat’s paws, sliding silently into the shadowed hallway. Furl Hawken glanced back at her, then started toward the guard. The
Jerle Shannara
continued to shake and sway in the grip of the storm, the wind howling so fiercely that the guard seemed unable to think of anything else. A crash jarred the decking, something falling from a height, a loosened spar probably. The guard stared upward, frozen in place. Rue Meridian glanced at the doors of the storerooms closest, two only. The smaller held their water
and ale in large casks. There was no extra room for prisoners in there. The other contained foodstuffs. That was a possibility, but the larger holds lay farther aft.