Ilse Witch - Terry Brooks [178]
The Squirm had opened anew, its pillars swaying seductively, beckoning him to proceed, to come within their reach. He could feel the cold that permeated them. He could feel their crushing weight. Even the air that surrounded them was infused with their power and their unpredictability. But there was something else here as well, — he felt it at once. Something man-made, something not of nature but of machines and science.
A hand reached out to him, not made of flesh and blood, but of spirit, of ether, of magic so vast and pervasive that it lay everywhere about. He shrank from it, warded himself against it by bringing the sword’s light to bear, and abruptly it was gone.
Walker? he called out in confusion, but there was only silence.
Ahead, the pillars of the Squirm rocked in the ice-melt sea, and the gulls flew round and round. Bek tested the air and the temperature. He joined himself to the ice of the spikes and the rock of the cliffs. He immersed himself in their feel, in their movements, in the vibrations of sound they emitted, in the shifting of their parts. He became one with his immediate world, extending into it from where he stood, so that he could read its intention and anticipate its behavior.
“Go forward,” he instructed, gesturing with the sword. The words seemed to come from someone else. “Ahead, slow.”
Walker must have heard him. The Jerle Shannara eased cautiously toward the pillars. Like a fragile bird, it sailed within their monstrous jaws, through the misted gaps of their teeth. “Left fifteen degrees,” he said, and heard Walker repeat his orders. “Ahead slow,” he called. “Faster now, more speed,” he instructed. The airship slid through the forest of ice, a moth into the flame, tiny and insignificant and unable to protect itself from the fire.
Then the pillars shifted anew and began to close on them. Bek was aware of it from somewhere deep inside, not just through his eyes, but through his body’s connection with the sword’s magic and the sword’s magic with the land and air and water. Cries rose from members of the ship’s company, frantic with fear. The boy heard them as he heard the crashing of waves against the cliff walls and the whisper of gull wings on the morning air. He heard them and did not respond. “Go right twenty degrees. Take shelter in that pillar’s crevice.” His voice was so soft it seemed a wonder to him that anyone could hear.
But, hearing the words repeated by Walker, Redden Alt Mer did as Bek instructed. He rode the Jerle Shannara swiftly into a split that warded her while all about the ice pillars clashed and hammered at each other, and the air turned damp with spray and the sea white with foam. The sound and the fury of it deafened and shocked, and it felt as if an avalanche were sweeping over them. In the midst of the madness, Bek ordered the airship out of its protection through a momentary gap in two of the surging towers. The ship responded as if wired to his thinking, and an instant later, a wedge of ice broke off from the pinnacle of their momentary shelter and crashed down to lodge in the crevice they had just departed.
Forward they sailed, down through the haze, through errant and sudden collisions, through the closing of icy jaws and the grinding of sharpened teeth. A tiny bit of flotsam, they weaved and dodged, barely avoiding a crushing end time after time, riding spray and wind and cold. What must have gone through the minds of his shipmates, Bek could only imagine. Later, Quentin would tell him that after the first few moments, he had been unable to see much and had not wanted to look anyway. Bek would reply that it had been like that for him as well.
“Up! Quickly! Go up!” he cried a sharp and frantic warning, and the airship rose with a sudden lurch that threw everyone to the deck. Kneeling with the sword outstretched and his legs spread for balance, Bek heard the explosion of an ice floe beneath them, and a massive piece, propelled from the water’s surface like a projectile, just missed the underside of their