Straken

by Terry Brooks

  “We will seek those answers with you,” Trefen Morys assured her quickly. “We will do whatever is necessary to find my mistress. If your son can lead us to her, then we will find him and help him as best we can. But first, it appears, we need to find his companions. Three were named. The Dwarf would be Tagwen. The Rock Troll would be Kermadec. Once, he was Captain of her Guard, and he remains her close friend. Taupo Rough is his home.” He paused. “But who is the Elven girl?”

  Bek shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

  He wished he knew as well why the King of the Silver River had made no mention of Ahren Elessedil. The Druids had said Tagwen had gone to him for help first before going to Penderrin. Shouldn’t there also have been some reference to him?

  But he said nothing of his worry to the others.

  He stood at the railing and watched the ground sweep away as Swift Sure sped onward along the line of the mountains. Rue took several compass readings and directed Trefen Morys, whom she had allowed to keep the helm. She must have been working with him, Bek thought. The young Druid had no flying skills, no experience with weapons, and he had learned both in a very short time under less-than-ideal circumstances. But he was doing better than many would have.

  The sky continued to brighten slowly, the darkness giving way to a silvery wash that gradually turned golden. Ahead, the buildings of a fortified settlement came into view, a village built back against a cliff wall. But there were no fires in the village and no signs of movement. Dark smears dotted the plains fronting the village walls, and the village itself had a ragged, neglected look. As they drew nearer, he saw that sections of the walls had been breached and the greater number of buildings were collapsed and blackened by fire.

  “Are we in the right place?” he asked Rue.

  She nodded, her face dark with concern. “This is Taupo Rough. Not what we expected, is it? Someone has been here before us.”

  Bek did not care to speculate on who that someone might have been. It was possible that the Druids had gotten to the village ahead of them, but the destruction did not look recent. There were no fires burning, no lingering curtains of smoke, no battle smells, nothing to suggest that anything had happened here for days.

  They landed the airship at the edge of the walls, and while he stayed at the helm, the other three went down the rope ladder to have a look around. He hated being left behind, but as Rue sensibly pointed out, he was too weak to be making long treks. So he contented himself with watching their progress and trying to fit together in his own mind the story of what had happened here.

  By the time the sun was fully up, white-hot in a cloudless sky, they were back, grim-faced and empty-handed.

  “A battle was fought here perhaps two weeks ago,” Rue reported. “At least one Druid warship was brought down in the fighting and burned. The remains lie out on the flats. So the battle was probably between the Rock Trolls of the village and the Druids. There are Gnome weapons and pieces of armor, so Gnomes probably fought in the service of the Druids. Hard to tell for certain what happened, but in the end the Trolls fled into the cliffs. There are caves in those cliffs, and I would imagine tunnels that connect to the far side of the mountains.”

  “This must have all happened because of Pen,” Bek said. “This is Kermadec’s home. Pen and the others would have come to him for help. The Druids tracked them here while we were imprisoned at Paranor and tried to take Pen prisoner. Kermadec refused to give him up. So the village was sacked.”

  Rue nodded, brushing back loose strands of her auburn hair. “But where did Pen and his protectors go from here? What route did they take?”

  “They went in search of the darkwand,” Bellizen answered her.

  “Somewhere in these mountains,” Trefen Morys added.

  “Or somewhere beyond.” Bellizen looked at Bek. “Can you track your son’s passage from here as you did at Paranor?”

  Bek shook his head doubtfully. The battle had happened days ago, and Pen had been gone from there a long time. He wasn’t in the mountains anymore; he wasn’t even on the same world. In any case, Bek’s connection was with his son, not with those who had accompanied him. His magic might not allow him to track them as he had Pen.

  But he knew he had to try.

  “There’s nothing here for us,” he said. “Not unless we try tracking them through the tunnels. Why don’t we fly to the other side of the cliffs and see if we can pick up a trail?”

  They did so, Rue taking the helm, not trusting anyone else to navigate in a place where the winds could prove unpredictable and a moment’s inattention could send an airship into the rocks. Keeping Bek beside her in the pilot box, she sent the young Druids to the starboard and port forward draws to work the lines by hand in case of heavy turbulence. But they were lucky that day. The winds were mild and the way into the mountains clear. Swift Sure sailed through gaps in the jagged peaks unhindered and unchallenged, and by midday they had reached a valley that lay between the peaks of the Klu.

  While the airship hovered midway across the valley, Bek used the wishsong to seek out some sign of Pen or his companions. He had learned the trick from his sister years earlier. As the Ilse Witch, she had used the wishsong to track him. Later, on the long voyage home, she had showed him how. He would see if it could be made to work the same way for him.

  It was something of a gamble to do so. Any use of his magic would alert Shadea and her Druids to their presence and remove any doubt about where they were. On the other hand, she would know already where they were going and what they were trying to do, so he really wasn’t giving all that much away. And if she had discovered that Pen was inside the Forbidding, she might have lost all interest in pursuing them anyway. Whatever the case, without the use of the wishsong they had no way of knowing where to go.

  Eyes closed for better concentration, he sang the magic, slow and smooth, like a carpet being spread across the valley floor, searching for traces of passage. He found several, all of them more than a week old and none distinct enough to identify. Frustrated, he spread his net a little wider, reaching deeper into the peaks ahead, into the mountains of the Klu that fronted the huge forests of the Inkrim.

  There, far beyond anywhere he could see, he found traces of his son, tiny beacons in the ether. But the traces were unlike anything he had ever come across before, and for a moment he didn’t trust what the wishsong was telling him. Still, his certainty that it was Penderrin and not someone else was so strong that he could not ignore it.

  He broke off his efforts, the wishsong dying into silence. His breathing quieted and his eyes opened once more.

  “I found him,” he said. “Traces of him, anyway. Deeper into the mountains ahead, east.” He paused, looking now at Rue. “But something’s wrong. What I found wasn’t familiar to me; it wasn’t what I know of Pen. What I found of his passing was tinged with magic.”

  She stared at him. “Magic? Whose magic?”

  “His own.”

  She shook her head. “That isn’t possible. He doesn’t have any magic. He’s never had any magic. We both know that.

  “ He held her gaze. “Nevertheless.”

  “You must be mistaken. You have to be.”

  He could tell from the way she said it that she needed him to be wrong, that she was frightened at the prospect that the Ohmsford heritage might have been passed on to her son after all. He could discern her thinking. She had believed Pen safely removed from the wishsong’s influence, the bloodline dying out with Bek. What if she had been mistaken? What if the magic had simply lain dormant? It had done so with Bek. Was it so strange that it should do so with his son, as well?

  “I don’t think we can decide about this until we talk to Pen,” he said carefully. “What matters is that I feel certain I’ve found his route of passage. We can track him now.”

  “What if what you’ve found is his passage coming out, rather than going in?” Trefen Morys asked suddenly.

  It was an uncomfortable thought. There was no
way to determine the answer from where they stood. There might not be a way to determine the answer once they reached the source. It might be a long, dangerous journey to their destination, and the journey might well yield nothing.

  But it was all they had to work with. It was the only lead they had been given.

  “I think we have to try following it for a time, at least,” Bek offered, looking to Rue for support.

  His wife studied him, her fine, clear features masking what she was feeling, keeping hidden the wash of doubts and fears he knew she must be experiencing. She stayed silent for a long time, considering. Then she nodded. “Bek is right. We have to try.”

  They turned Swift Sure’s bow toward the Klu and flew east for the remainder of the day into peaks wrapped in storm clouds and layers of mist, buffeted by heavy winds. Swift Sure was battered and tossed and her occupants thrown from side to side. Bek was sent below to help protect his wounds, and the other three strapped on safety harnesses while on deck. By the end of the day, all three were drenched and freezing, their bodies aching and their minds numb from the effort of holding course and staying aloft. Snow was flying all about them in thick gusts, threatening whiteouts at every turn, cloaking cliff walls and passages alike so that the way forward remained an ever-changing mystery.

  As darkness approached, Rue Meridian began to despair. If they did not get clear of the mountains quickly, she would have to set down, and there was nowhere for her to do that. Flying blind at night could have only one result. She called Bek back up on deck and had him use the wishsong again, searching for a way to go. But the magic failed Bek this time, refusing to give up anything at all that would help, leaving them adrift and at risk.

  Finally, when it seemed that no help was to be had from any quarter and the outcome of their efforts unavoidable, the storms subsided and the peaks ahead opened into the Valley of the Inkrim. Rue took Swift Sure through as the last of the day’s light gave way to a scattering of stars and no visible moon, just a faint brightening that allowed her enough illumination to set down at the edge of the trees at the rim of the valley.

  They slept then, exhausted from their efforts. All but Bek. Awake and awash in fresh doubts, he sat alone in the pilot box, wrapped in a blanket, thinking about what they were doing. He understood the need for it; he understood as well the reasons. What bothered him was the number of uncertainties. Trefen Morys had been right about tracking Pen’s passage. It was probably impossible to determine which way the boy was going, absent some physical evidence. He told himself that if they could locate just one of his companions, they would have a way of finding his son.

  But he was bothered most by something he had kept from Rue. The traces of Pen he had found had been infused with wishsong magic. Not just any magic, but wishsong magic. He hadn’t thought Rue needed to know that just yet. She was distressed enough about the presence of any magic where their son was concerned and would have been beside herself to learn that the magic had its origins in the Ohmsford bloodline. But there was no mistaking its nature. He should have felt a measure of relief; if Pen had the use of the wishsong, he was in a better position to protect himself. But in fact Bek was as upset about the prospect as his wife. He didn’t want Pen to have the burden of the wishsong any more than she did. Too many generations of Ohmsfords had struggled with it. Too many had seen their lives altered irrevocably as a result—and not always for the better. It had been so with him. He had hoped that his son might have an easier road.

  He thought about it for a long time. He tried to picture Pen within the Forbidding and failed. How could anyone imagine what that must be like? He knew what sort of creatures the Forbidding contained, but no one knew what it would feel like to be a human trapped there. That Penderrin should have been sent to find and retrieve Grianne was still something he could not fathom. The King of the Silver River had given him no reason for the choice of his son as rescuer. There would be a reason, he knew. And the reason might have something to do with Pen’s use of the wishsong. Yet if that was so, why hadn’t the Faerie creature come to Bek, who had more experience and better command of the magic? Why had Pen been chosen?

  It had to be something else—something about Pen that wasn’t true of Bek.

  He fell asleep at some point and woke to the sound of the others coming up on deck. He was stiff from sleeping upright, but overall he felt better than he had the day before. He felt stronger, more ready. He was mending; he was coming back to himself.

  The day was clear and bright ahead of them, the storms of the Klu left behind. After they had eaten from their steadily dwindling stores, Bek used the wishsong to seek anew the traces of Pen he had found the other day. He found them with little trouble. They were stronger, and he was better able to read them. The magic that had infused them a day earlier was more diverse than he had believed, a mix of couplings that involved his son and someone or something else. The source of the traces lay ahead, deep within the Inkrim.

  After checking the radian draws and light sheaths for breaks and tears and finding everything intact, Rue took Swift Sure off the ground, pointed her east across the sweep of the forested valley, and sailed in search of Bek’s findings.

  It was nearing midday when Trefen Morys, who had been keeping watch at the bow for the better part of an hour, called back, “There are ruins down there!”

  Rue dropped Swift Sure into a slow descent toward the canopy of the trees, following the young Druid’s shouted directions. Within minutes, the ruins were visible to them all. Remnants of buildings sprawled for miles, a jumble of broken walls, columns, and battlements. What little remained had been overgrown by trees and scrub, enveloped by the foliage of the jungle. In places, wildflowers formed bright patches amid the blanketing shadows.

  “There are people down there!” Trefen Morys shouted suddenly.

  Bek went forward at once, picking his way gingerly across the decking to where the Druid stood. They were only a hundred feet above the canopy by then and able to see the whole of the valley clearly. As Bek came up beside him, Trefen Morys pointed. Gnarled, string-thin forms darted about the rubble at the edges of the ruins, creatures similar to Gnomes but clearly something else.

  “Urdas,” Bek said aloud.

  He recognized them from earlier expeditions he had made into the Charnals. He saw them look up as Swift Sure hove into view, repositioning themselves to meet the newly perceived threat, brandishing slings and bows and arrows.

  “Keep us flying, Rue!” he shouted over his shoulder.

  “What are they doing?” Trefen Morys asked him.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Keep your eyes open.”

  He went back to the pilot box and climbed up beside Rue and Bellizen, telling them what he had seen. “They’ve ringed the ruins. I think they’re looking for something. Maybe the same thing we’re looking for.”

  He decided to use the wishsong again, to seek anew the traces of Pen’s passing he had sensed that morning. He found them immediately, strong and clear and just ahead in the ruins. The magic was diffuse and fading, days old and no longer clearly defined. But its use had been powerful and reflected both determination and clear intent. Pen had experienced an epiphany or confrontation of major proportions. If he had survived that, Bek thought, then there was some reason to believe he could survive the Forbidding.

  “Ahead, five degrees east southeast,” he told Rue, pointing for emphasis.

  Swift Sure altered course slightly and flew on, Rue holding the airship’s speed down so that they could scan the ruins below for other signs of life. They were flying along the southern perimeter, and there were Urdas scattered all along it. They seemed reluctant to go farther in. Bek remembered that the Urdas were superstitious about places they considered sacred; the ruins might well be one such place. But the Urdas were clearly there for a reason. If they could not enter, then they were waiting for something that had.

  “Smoke,” Rue said suddenly, pointing off to the right.

  From
just beyond the main body of the ruins, separated by a series of deep, wooded, rifts, a column of black smoke rose from a crumbling blockhouse and tower. The Urdas were all about it, three and four deep within the cover of trees and rocks, showering the fortifications with darts and arrows and spears.

  “I’d say we’ve found something,” Rue offered, giving Bek a quick glance.

  But it was not something that tracked to the traces of Pen’s passing that Bek had detected. It was something entirely apart. He hesitated, wondering how advisable it was to become distracted by something that might have nothing at all to do with what they were looking for.

  “All right,” he said finally, “let’s have a look.”

  FOURTEEN

  It was like flying into a hornet’s nest.

  Swift Sure descended in a long, slow spiral, drawing the attention of the band of Urdas below. Bek had hoped that their appearance alone would prove startling enough to these superstitious people to make them withdraw. But instead of bolting back into the trees and seeking cover, the Urdas immediately turned their weapons on the airship. Trefen Morys barely had time to shout a warning from the bow when a hail of spears and darts struck the underside of the vessel and a wash of arrows arced over the railing in a deadly sweep.

  Everyone ducked behind the protective railings as Bek took Swift Sure back up again, out of reach of the attack. As he did so, Trefen Morys came running back.

  “There are Rock Trolls down there in that tower!” he shouted up to Pen. “They were waving to us for help!”

  Bek turned to Rue. “Load both the port and starboard rail slings. Maybe we can drive the Urdas far enough back into the trees to gain space to get a ladder down.”

  The starboard rail sling was still in place from their flight out of Paranor, and with help from Trefen Morys it took Rue only minutes to set up the port weapon and arm them both. Placing the young Druid on the former and herself on the latter, she sent Bellizen amidships to stand ready to lower the rope ladder, then signaled for Bek to take Swift Sure down again.