High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [128]
Then a fresh rainsquall washed over them, and Ahren Elessedil, seeing his chance, stepped away from the railing, arms raised skyward, and called on his magic to change the squall’s direction, sending it whipping toward the Druid warship. It caught the Galaphile head-on, but by then it had changed into sleet so thick and heavy that it enveloped the bigger ship and swallowed it whole. Clinging to the Galaphile in a white swirling mass, it coated the decking and masts with ice, turning the airship to a bone-bleached corpse.
Now the Skatelow began to pull away. Burdened by the weight of the ice that had formed, the Galaphile was foundering. Pen saw flashes of red fire sweeping her masts and spars, Druid magic attempting to burn away the frigid coating. The fire had an eerie look to it, flaring from within the storm cloud like dragon eyes, like embers in a forge.
Ahead, the fog bank drew nearer.
Ahren collapsed next to Pen and Khyber, his lean face drawn and pale, his eyes haunted. He was close to exhaustion. “Find us a place to hide, Cinnaminson,” he breathed softly.
“Find it quickly.”
Pressed against the pilot box wall, rain-soaked and cold, Pen peered in at the girl. She stood rigid and unmoving at the forward railing, her face lifted. She was speaking so low that Pen could not make out the words, but Gar Hatch was listening intently, bent close to her, his burly form hunched down within his cloak. He had dropped the Skatelow so close to the Lazareen that she was almost skimming the surface. Pen heard the chop of the lake waters, steady and rough. The wind was back, whipping about them from first one direction and then the other, sweeping down out of the Charnals, cold and bleak.
Then they were sliding into the mist again, its gray shroud wrapping about and closing them away. Everything disappeared, vanished in an instant.
“Starboard five degrees, Papa,” Cinnaminson called out sharply. “Altitude, quickly!”
Blinded by the murky haze, Pen could only hear tree branches scrape the underside of the hull as the Skatelow nosed upward again — a shrieking, a rending of wood, then silence once more. The airship leveled off. Pen was gripping the pilot box railing so hard his hands hurt. Khyber was crouched right beside him, her eyes tightly closed, her breathing quick and hurried.
“There, Papa!” Cinnaminson cried out suddenly. “Ahead of us, an inlet! Bring her down quickly!”
The Skatelow dipped abruptly, and Pen experienced a momentary sensation of falling, then the airship steadied and settled. Again there was contact, but softer, a rustling of damp grasses and reeds rather than a scraping of tree limbs. He smelled the fetid wetland waters and the stink of swamp gas rising to meet them; he heard a quick scattering of wings.
Then the Skatelow settled with a small splash and a lurch, sliding through water and mist and darkness, and everything went still.
“I was so frightened,” she whispered to him, her blind gaze settling on his face, her head held just so, as if she were seeing him with her milky eyes instead of her mind.
“You didn’t look frightened,” he whispered back. He squeezed her hands. “You looked calmer than any of us.”
“I don’t know how I looked. I only know how I felt. I kept thinking that all it would take was one mistake for us to be caught. Especially when that warship appeared and was chasing us.”
Pen glanced skyward, finding only mist and gloom, no sign of the Galaphile or anything else. Around them, the waters of the wetlands lapped softly against the hull of the Skatelow. Even though he couldn’t see them, he heard the rustle of the limbs from the big trees that Cinnaminson told him were all about them. For anyone to find the Skatelow there, they would have to land right on top