He leaned back against the hickory and felt the flat surface of the Sword of Shannara push against his back. He had forgotten it was even there. In the scramble to escape the fire threads and the creepers, he hadn’t even thought to use it as a weapon-though what sort of weapon would it have made? Its magic didn’t seem like it would have been of much use. Truth? What good was truth against fire and iron? As a fighting weapon, it might have served a purpose, hut not against something like what they’d found hack there in the ruins. He shook his head. The most powerful magic in the world, Walker had told him, and he had no use for it. The magic of his voice was the better weapon by far. If he could just figure out the things it could do and then bring it under a little better control.
He left the thought unfinished, aware of doubts and misgivings he could not put a name to. There was danger in the use of his voice, something nebulous, but unmistakable. The magic was too powerful, too uncertain He didn’t trust it. It was enticingly seductive, and he sensed something deceitful in its lure. Anything that created such euphoria and felt so addictive would have consequences. He was not yet certain he understood what those consequences were.
It was growing cold, and he wished he still had his cloak, but he had lost it in the flight here. He looked at Ryer Ord Star, then moved over to tuck her robes closer about her. She was shivering, though clearly unaware of it, and he put his arms around her and held her against him for warmth. What would they do if Tamis found no one else alive? What if the tracker herself failed to return? Bek closed his eyes against his doubts and fears. It did no good to dwell on them. There was nothing he could do to change things. All he could do was to make the best of the situation, bleak as it was.
He must have dozed for a while, exhausted from the day’s events, because the next thing he remembered was waking to the sounds of someone’s approach. Yet it wasn’t so much the sounds of approach that alerted him as it was his sense of the other’s nearness. He lifted his head from the crook of Ryer Ord Star’s shoulder and blinked at the darkness. Nothing moved, but something was there, still too far away to see, but coming directly toward them.
And not from the direction of the ruins, but from the direction of the airship.
Bek straightened, eased himself away from the seer, and came to his feet, listening. The night was silent save for the soft patter of a slow rain on the forest canopy. Bek reached back for the Sword of Shannara, then took his hand away Instead, he moved to one side, deeper into the shadows. He could feel the other’s presence as if it were an aura of heat or light. He could feel it as he could the skin of his own body.
A cloaked figure materialized in front of him, appearing all at once, wraithlike. The figure was small and slight and not physically imposing, and the boy could not identify it from its look. It approached without slowing, robed and hooded, a mystery waiting to be uncovered. Bek watched in fascination, unable to decide what to do.
An arm lifted within the robes and stretched out toward Ryer
Ord Star. “Tell me what has happened,” a woman said, her voice soft but commanding. “Why are you here? You were instructed“
Then she saw Bek. It must have startled her, because she stiffened and her arm dropped away abruptly. Something in her carriage changed, and it seemed to him that she was unsettled by his unexpected presence.
“Who are you?” she asked.
There was no friendliness in her voice, no hint of the softness that had been there only seconds before. She had changed in the blink of an eye, and he did not think he was the better off for it. But he heard something familiar in her voice, too, something that connected them so strongly he could not miss it. He stared at her, sudden recognition flooding through him.