High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [161]
Whatever the answer, someone was going to an awful lot of trouble to prevent the boy from attempting to rescue his aunt. So someone must think he had a very good chance of succeeding, even if the boy himself thought he had very little. It was an intriguing conclusion, and it gave her unexpected reason for hope.
Pen was staring at her. “Do you think the Elfstones could be used against whatever’s got Cinnaminson?”
She gave him a doubtful look. “We don’t even know what it is, Pen. It might be human, and the Elfstones would be useless.”
“It doesn’t look it.”
“Whatever it is, we’re not going to fight it if we don’t have to.” She motioned toward the bluff. “Let’s get out of here. We can stop and eat when it gets light. I don’t want to chance it coming back again.”
Pen stood his ground, his mouth a tight line. “Did you see the way she looked at us?”
Khyber hesitated. “What are you getting at?”
“She saw us. She knew we were here. Yet she turned the ship the other way.” His voice was shaking. “She’s being made to track us, Khyber. Maybe her life depends on whether or not that thing finds us. Yet she steered it away. She saved us.”
Tagwen shook his bearded head. “You don’t know that, young Pen. You might be mistaken.”
The boy looked quickly at Khyber for support. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realized what he was about to ask. She had to stop him, even if it meant lying to him about what she had seen. But she could not bring herself to do that. That was the coward’s way out. Ahren would not have lied in that situation. He would have told Pen the truth.
“We can’t do this,” she said.
“We have to!” he snapped. His face had an angry, almost furious look. “She saved us, Khyber! Now we have to save her!”
“What are you talking about?” Tagwen demanded. “Save who?”
“She’s not our concern,” Khyber pressed. “Our concern is with your aunt, the Ard Rhys.”
“Our concern is with whoever needs our help! What’s wrong with you?”
They faced each other in stony silence. Even Tagwen had gone quiet, looking quickly from one face to the other.
“We don’t have any way of saving her,” Khyber said finally. “We don’t know anything about that creature, nothing about what it will take to overcome it. If we guess wrong, we’ll all be dead.”
Pen straightened and looked off to the north. “I’m going, whether you go with me or not. I’m not leaving her. I have to live with myself when this is over. I can’t do that if something happens to her that I might have prevented.” He glanced back at her, the angry look become suddenly pleading. “She isn’t the enemy, Khyber.”
“I know that.”
“Then help me.”
She stared at him without answering.
“Khyber, I’m begging you.”
He wasn’t asking Tagwen, he was asking her. With Ahren Elessedil dead, she’d become the unofficial leader. She was the one with the Elfstones and the magic. She was the one with the lore. She thought about the choices she had made on the journey and how badly many of them had turned out. If she made the wrong choice, it might cost all of them their lives. Pen’s heart ruled his thinking; she had to remember to use her head.
She found herself wondering what Ahren would do in that situation but was unable to decide. The answer would have come quickly and easily for him. It would not do so for her.
She looked off into the trees and the night, into the shadows and darkness, searching for it in vain.
Chapter THIRTY
When Grianne Ohmsford reached the rim of the Forbidding’s version of the Valley of Shale, Weka Dart was gone. Fled out of fear, she decided, too terrified to remain once the Warlock Lord appeared. Even so, she took a moment to look for