“Maybe. But we have other problems to solve first. We can’t just keep running for no better purpose than to escape the witch. Even if we lose her or she gives up, where does that leave us? Somewhere in the middle of a strange country without an airship or friends, without adequate supplies or weapons, and without a decent plan, that’s where. Not so good.”
“We have to go back for Quentin and the others,” Bek answered at once, convinced that was the right choice. “We have to help them if we can. We have to try to find Walker.”
It sounded so obvious and so logical that the words were out of his mouth before he realized that he was ignoring obstacles that rendered his response only a few steps shy of ridiculous. Even given their respective magics and the shape-shifter’s skill and experience, they were only two men-one man and a boy, he amended ruefully. They had no idea where their friends were. They had no means of searching for them other than to go afoot, a mode of transportation hardly conducive to the sort of search required. Their enemies outnumbered them perhaps fifty to one and that wasn’t counting whatever it was that lived belowground in Castledown.
Truls Rohk didn’t say anything. He simply sat there, looking out at the boy from within the shadows of his hood.
Bek cleared his throat. “All right. We can’t do it alone. We need help.”
The shape-shifter nodded. “You’re learning, boy. What sort of help?”
“Someone to even the odds when we go back to face the Ilse Witch and the Mwellrets and whatever else is waiting.”
“That, but also someone who knows a way past the things that guard those ruins and protect the treasure Walker’s come to find.” Truls Rohk laughed bitterly. “Don’t think for a moment that the Druid, assuming he still lives, will give up on the treasure.”
Bek thought of all that the company of the Jerle Shannara had endured to come so far, of what had been promised and what given up. He thought of how much Walker was risking to make the journey, both of life and reputation. Truls Rohk was right. The Druid would rather die than fail, given what was at stake. Even from the little he knew of Walker, it was certain that failure to gain the support of the Elves for a Druid Council at Paranor would be the end of him. It was everything he had worked for, all that mattered to him now. He had spent his life as a Druid seeking that support. Bek knew it from their conversations. He knew it from what he had heard from Ahren Elessedil. Walker had tied his fate to this voyage, to the recovery of the Elfstones and the finding of the treasure on the castaway’s map.
And weren’t they all tied in turn to the Druid in coming with him, Bek as well as the others? Weren’t their fates all inextricably linked?
“Sleep for an hour; then we’ll set out again.” Truls Rohk sat with his hands locked together in front of him, animal hair on their backs gleaming faintly, like silver threads. “I’ll keep watch.”
Bek nodded wordlessly. An hour was better than nothing. He took a moment to look back the way they had come, to where the Ilse Witch was, to where his friends and companions were, somewhere in the dark.
Be strong, he prayed for all of them. He prayed it even for Grianne.
FIVE
Dozens of miles away, deep within the glacier-draped mountains that warded the coast of the peninsula, bracketed by the thousand-foot walls of the gorge that channeled the ice melt out into the Blue Divide, the Jerle Shannara drifted in solitary grandeur. Rudderless, unmanned, sails in shreds, she rode the twists and turns of the winds that howled down the canyon, moving as if drawn toward the pillars of ice that blocked the way out. Clouds roiled overhead, mingling with mist off the ice and the spray off the crash of waves against the rocks below, white sheets of gauze layered against dim shards of sunlight. Shrikes circled and dived past the rigging, bright anticipation in their gimlet eyes, each pass bringing them closer to the dead men who lay sprawled across the airship’s decks. Echoes from their cries and from the pounding surf mingled and reverberated off the cliffs in eerie counterpoint.