Ilse Witch - Terry Brooks [193]
His thoughts drifted, and he found himself remembering his childhood in March Brume, days he had spent on land, wandering the forests, playing with other children. Those days had been few and passed swiftly, but their memory lingered. Perhaps it was because he had spent so much of his life on the sea and in the air. Perhaps it was because he could never have them back again.
Something moved in the mist, but staring blankly at its darkening form, he could not seem to put a name to it.
To one side, a Rover slid to the decking and lay there, silent and unmoving, asleep. Redden Alt Mer stared in disbelief, then pushed away from the railing to go to him. But his legs wouldn’t work, and his eyes were so heavy he could barely keep them open. All he could seem to focus on was the sound of the wind, risen to a new pitch, wrapping him about, closing him away.
Too late, he realized what was happening.
He staggered a few steps and fell to his knees. On the decks of the airship, the Rovers lay in heaps. Only Furl Hawken was still upright in the pilot box, if barely so, hanging on to the handgrips, draped over the controls.
A huge, dark shape had come alongside the Jerle Shannara. Redden Alt Mer heard the sound of grappling hooks locking in place and caught a glimpse of a cloaked form approaching through the mist. A face lifted out of the shadows of a hood, a young woman who looked at him with blue eyes that were as cold as glacier ice. Helpless, he stared back at her with undisguised fury.
Then everything went black.
Bek glanced over at the strained, frightened face of Ryer Ord Star and smiled reassuringly as they moved with the others of the company through the deepening gloom. The rain had turned to a fine mist. The seer blinked against the droplets that gathered on her eyelids, and brushed at her face with her sleeve. She moved closer to Bek.
The boy peered left and right to where the groups led by Quentin and Ard Patrinell navigated the misted ruins. He caught a glimpse of his cousin and the Captain of the Home Guard, but found no sign of Ahren Elessedil. The buildings were growing larger now and took longer to get around. At times the searchers were separated by walls fifty feet high and would catch only momentary glimpses of one another through sagging doors and burned-out entries. The buildings were all the same, either empty or full of rusted machinery. In some, banks of casings sat in long rows, studded with dials and tiny windows that resembled the blank, staring eyes of dead animals. In some, machines so large they dwarfed the searchers hunkered down like great beasts fallen into endless slumber. Shadows filled the open spaces, layering machines and debris alike, stretching from one building to the next, a dark spiderweb tangled through the city.
He looked again for Ahren, but everyone in the Elven Hunter group looked pretty much the same, hooded and cloaked against the damp. A sudden wave of fear and doubt washed over him. He forced his gaze back to Walker, who was striding just ahead. He was being stupid. It was probably the look on Ryer Ord Star’s face that infused him with such uneasiness. It was probably the day, so dark and misted. It was probably this place, this city.
In the silence and gloom, you could imagine anything.
He thought about the books that Walker had come to find and was troubled anew. What would the people of the Old World be doing with books of spells? No real magic had been practiced in that time. Magic had died out with the Faerie world, and even the Elves, who had survived when so many other species had perished, had lost or forgotten virtually all of theirs. It was only with the emergence of the new Races and the convening of the Druids at Paranor that the process of recovering the magic had begun. Why would Walker believe that books of magic from before the Great Wars even existed?
The more he worried over the matter, the more obsessed with it he became. Soon he found