“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 assume 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 passing, using her special skills to conceal their trail.
Overhead, the sun had passed 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 passing rose off the stone and metal in shimmering waves. Quentin loosened the buttons of his tunic and pushed up his sleeves. The Sword of Leah, strapped across his back, felt heavy and cumbersome. 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.”