Part 6 (1/2)

”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 brus.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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-s.h.i.+fter'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.