“He looks like a whipped puppy,” Big Red mused.
She nodded.
“At least we can go home now,” he continued. “We’re finished here.”
She watched Bek approach for a moment longer, then left her brother’s side, climbed down the rope ladder, and walked out onto the flats. She didn’t think Bek even saw her until she moved to block his way and he looked up to find her standing right in his path.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “About your home, the one you were born in. It wasn’t too far from here, was it?”
He stared at her.
“Do you think we could find where it was, if we went looking?”
His puzzlement was clear. “I don’t know.”
“Want to try?”
“It’s only ruins.”
“It’s your past. You need to see it.”
He glanced toward the airship doubtfully.
“No,” she said. “Not them. They don’t have time for such things. It would be just you and me. On foot.” She let him consider for a moment. “Think of it as an adventure, a small one, but one for just the two of us. After we find it, we can keep going, walk south through the Borderlands along the Rainbow Lake down to the Silver River, then home to the Highlands. Big Red can fly Quentin to Leah on the Jerle Shannara, then take Ahren on to Arborlon.”
She stepped closer, put her arms around him and her face next to his. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of airships for a while. I want to walk.”
He looked stunned, as if he had been handed a gift he hadn’t expected and didn’t deserve. “You’re coming with me? To the Highlands?”
She smiled and kissed him softly on the mouth. “Bek,” she whispered, “I was never going anywhere else.”
Grianne Ohmsford spent the larger part of the night climbing into the foothills below the Dragon’s Teeth, seeking to reach the Valley of Shale before dawn. She might have had Alt Mer fly her in on the airship, but she wanted time alone before summoning the shade of Walker. Besides, it was easier to say her good-byes now rather than later, particularly to Bek. She knew it would be hard to tell him she wasn’t going with him, and it had been. His expectations for her had always been his own and never hers, and it was difficult for him to give them up. He would come to understand, but only in time.
She found the darkness familiar and comforting, still an old friend after all these years. Wrapped in its protective concealment, given peace by its unbroken solitude, she could think about what she was doing and where she was going; she could reflect on the events that had led her to this place and time. The destruction of the Morgawr had not given her the satisfaction she had hoped for. She would need more than revenge to heal. Her Druid life might provide her with that healing, though she knew it would not do so in the traditional way. It would not soothe and comfort her. It would not erase the past or allow her to forget she had been the Ilse Witch. She was not even assured of the nurturing rest of a good night’s sleep. Instead, she would be given an opportunity to balance the scales. She would be given a chance at redemption for an otherwise unbearable past. She would be given a reason for living out the rest of her life.
She did not know if that would be enough to salvage her damaged psyche, her wounded soul, but it was worth a try.
By midnight, she was approaching her destination. She had never been here before and did not know the way, but her instincts told her where she needed to go. Or perhaps it was Walker who guided her, reaching out from the dead. Either way, she proceeded without slowing, and found in the simple act of moving forward a kind of peace. She should have been frightened of what waited, she knew one day the fear she could not seem to put a name to would catch up to her, would make itself known. But her feelings now were all of resolution and commitment, of finding a new place in the world and making a new beginning.