By the fourth day, only a brightening or darkening of the light measured the difference between day and night, and visibility was reduced to less than a dozen yards. Big Red had tried sailing out of this soup without success, and the Wing Riders had been forced to descend to the makeshift rafts to wait out the front’s passing. The Jerle Shannara was enveloped in swirling mist and impenetrable gloom.
Finally, Redden Alt Mer ordered the sails taken in completely and shut down the airship’s power. Unable to see anything, he was afraid that they might sail right into a cliff wall without realizing it was there. Better to wait this weather out, he declared, than to court disaster. Everyone accepted the news stoically and went about their business. There was no help for it, after all. It was unnerving, being unable to see anything—no sky, no sea, no colors of any sort. Not even the cries of seabirds or the splash of fish penetrated the blanket of gloom that enfolded them. It was as if they had been consigned to inlimbo existence. It was as if they were alone in the world. Men gathered at the railing and stared out at the gloom in silent groups, searching for something recognizable. Even the Rovers seemed disconcerted by the immensity of the fog. Off the coast of the Blue Divide and the Wing Hove, fog lasted only a day or two before the winds moved it along. Here, it seemed as if it might last forever.
The fourth day dragged into the fifth and sixth with no change. It had been almost a week since they had seen anything but the airship and each other. The silence was becoming unnerving. Efforts at livening things up with music and song seemed only to exacerbate the problem. As soon as the playing and singing stopped, the silence returned, thick and immutable. The Rover crew had nothing to do while the ship was at rest. Even the training sessions for the Elven Hunters had been shortened as everyone began to spend more and more time staring off into the void.
It was on the sixth night, while Bek and Quentin stood at the aft railing talking about the mist that periodically enveloped the Highlands of Leah, that the boy heard something unfamiliar break the silence. He stopped talking at once, motioning Quentin to be quiet. Together, they listened. The sound came again, a kind of creaking that reminded Bek of the ship’s rigging working against spars and cleats. But it did not come from the Jerle Shannara. It came from somewhere behind her, off in the mist. Baffled, the cousins stared at each other, then off into the gloom once more. Again they heard the noise, and now Bek turned to see if anyone else was aware of it. Spanner Frew was in the pilot box, his dark, burly form clearly visible as he stood looking over his shoulder at them. Redden Alt Mer had come on deck, as well, and was standing just below the shipwright, confusion mirrored on his strong face. A handful of others stood clustered about the railings on either side.
A long silence descended as everyone waited for some further sound to reach their ears.
Bek bent close to Quentin. “What do you think—?”
He gasped sharply and choked on the rest of what he was going to say. A huge black shape hove into view out of the mist, a massive shadow that materialized all at once and filled the whole of the horizon. It was right on top of them, so close that there was barely time to react. Bek stumbled back, dragging at Quentin’s arm as the black shape towered out of the gloom. Shouts of warning went up, and the shrill of a Roc rose above them. The cousins went backwards off the low rise of the aft deck and landed in a jarring heap below as the black shape struck the Jerle Shannara in a crash of metal and splintering of wood. The airship lurched and shuddered in response, and the air was filled with cries and curses.
Everything spiraled into instant chaos. Bek rolled to his feet to find the phantom shape locked against the Jerle Shannara’s aft battering rams and realized to his shock that he was looking at another airship. The impact of the collision had sent both ships spiraling in a slow, clockwise motion that made it difficult for Bek to keep his feet. One of the Rocs soared past him, lifting out of the gloom, a silent phantom that appeared and was gone again almost immediately.