High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [159]
In the midst of her silent diatribe, she realized that someone was looking at her.
Or something.
Huge, lantern eyes peered at her from out of the blackness. It was the moor cat.
“Get out of here!” she snapped in fury, not stopping to think about what she was doing.
The eyes stayed where they were. She glared at them, hating that the cat was watching her, that it had seen her break down and cry, that it had caught her at her worst. For no reason that made any sense at all, she was embarrassed by it. Even if it was only an animal that had witnessed it, her behavior made her feel foolish. She took several deep breaths to steady herself and sat back. The cat wasn’t going to move until it felt like it, so there wasn’t much point in railing at it. She found herself wondering once again what it was doing there. Curiosity, Pen had thought. Could be. She kissed at it, whispered a few words of greeting, and gave it a wave. The cat stared without blinking or moving.
Then all at once, it was gone again. Like smoke caught in the wind, it simply disappeared. She waited a moment to be sure, then rose and walked back to where Pen and Tagwen were already asleep. The first watch was hers, it seemed. Just as well since she wasn’t at all tired. She sat down next to them and wrapped her arms about her knees. It was chilly so high up, much more so than in the Slags. She wished she had a blanket. Maybe they could find supplies in the morning. There had to be a settlement somewhere close by.
With her legs drawn up to her chest and her chin resting on her knees, she listened to the sounds of Pen and Tagwen breathing and stared out into the night.
Intending to wake one of her companions to share the watch, but failing to do so, she dozed off sometime after midnight. When she came awake again, it was with the sudden and frightening realization that things were not as they should be. It wasn’t the silence or the darkness or even the sound of the wind rustling the leaves like old parchment. What caught her attention as her eyes snapped open and her head jerked up was the dark movement that crept like a stain across the forest earth in front of her. For a moment, she thought it was alive, and leapt to her feet, backing away instinctively. But then she recognized its flat, fragmented shape and realized it was a shadow cast from something passing overhead.
She looked up and saw the Skatelow.
She couldn’t believe it at first, thinking that she must be mistaken, that her eyes were playing tricks on her. It wasn’t possible that the Skatelow could be there, flying those skies, so many miles east of where it should be. But the shape was so distinctive that Khyber quickly accepted that it was her, come after them for a reason that was not immediately apparent. For come after them she had, the Elven girl reasoned, or she would not be here at all.
Particularly since she was flying straight toward them.
But there was something not quite right about her, a look to her that was foreign and vaguely frightening. She carried only her mainsail, its canvas billowed out in the rush of the wind, yet there were yards of rigging stretched bare and stark from decking to spars like spider webbing.
Khyber stared, transfixed, not yet fully awake and not yet come to terms with what she was seeing.
The Skatelow passed overhead and when she had gone a short distance beyond where the Elven girl stood watching, somewhere above the bluff east, she wheeled back and slid across the star-scattered firmament a second time, more