She never once doubted that she was capable of all that or that she could carry out her plans in the manner she intended.
But, like it or not, she was beginning to question her reasoning for doing so.
Miles to the east and south, well clear of the inlet opening into the Squirm and its ice fields and beyond the cliffs that warded the eastern approach from the Blue Divide, the Jerle Shannara lay at anchor. She was berthed in a forested cove nestled among a dozen others in lowlands miles from where she had deposited Walker and those others who had gone ashore in search of Castle-down. The Jerle Shannara was sheltered from the wintry weather that swept the coast, concealed from prying eyes while she underwent repairs.
Seated on a bench at the ship’s stern and facing out toward the cove’s narrow opening, Rue Meridian could only just glimpse the distant waters of the Blue Divide. She wore loose-fitting trousers and tunic, red-orange scarves wrapped about her throat and forehead, and soft, worn ankle boots. A blanket warded her against the chill. Restless and bored, she scuffed one boot across the decking and pondered her dissatisfaction for the hundredth time. It was almost a week since Big Red had brought the airship overland after its near catastrophic encounter with the Squirm, charting a course back to the coast that avoided glaciers and mountains and obscuring mist. A longer, more circuitous route than the one that led through the Squirm and up the river channel, it was by far the safer. Regaining the coast, the Rovers cruised in search of the Wing Riders, whom they quickly found and who in turn led to the sheltering bay. Since then, Rovers and Wing Riders had been engaged in repairing the damaged vessel while Rue had lain belowdecks, healing from her wounds and sleeping undisturbed.
Endless processes both, she fumed to herself in silence. She glanced down at her leg, where she had incurred the deepest and most serious injury in her battle with the Mwellrets. Stitches and poultices had begun to heal it nicely, but the wound wasn’t closed entirely and she still couldn’t walk without pain. The knife wound to her arm had healed more quickly, and the claw marks on her back and sides were little more than the beginnings of scars she would never lose. She guessed that meant she was two for three, but the leg wound kept her from doing much and the inactivity was beginning to grate on her.
It would have helped if the repairs to the ship had gone more quickly and they were sailing back the way they had come in search of their abandoned friends and shipmates. But the damage to the Jerle Shannara had been more extensive than anyone had realized at first glance. It was not just the shattered spars and shredded light sheaths and cracked mainmast that had crippled the ship. Two of the parse tubes together with their diapson crystals had been torn free and lost overboard. A dozen radian draws were frayed beyond repair. The nature of the damage precluded simple replacement; it required reworking the entire system that allowed the ship to fly. Spanner Frew was equal to the task, but it was taking too much time.
She watched the burly shipwright bent over the left fore hooding, directing the set of the existing tube and crystal, realigning the left midship draw that now ran to that emplacement, as well. It was the second of three that were involved in the realignment. No one knew how well the new configuration would work, so that meant testing it out before they ventured inland and risked a further encounter with Black Moclips and the Ilse Witch.
Every time she thought of the witch, she was consumed by a white-hot anger. It wasn’t the damage to the ship or the imprisonment of the Rovers that fueled it. It wasn’t even the unavoidable loss of contact with Walker’s company. It was the death of Furl Hawken for which she most blamed the witch, because if not for the witch’s seizure of the Jerle Shannara and her imprisonment of the Rover crew, it would never have happened.