Ilse Witch (39 page)

As the ship’s company assembled, Walker saw edginess in the eyes of the veterans and uncertainty in the eyes of the rest. Ryer Ord Star seemed particularly distressed, her thin face white with fear. Perhaps all were remembering the eels of Flay Creech, the devouring mouths and rending teeth, though none would say so. There, the Druid had retrieved the hidden key and everyone had escaped harm. Perhaps they were wondering if their good fortune would carry over here.

With safety lines secured, Redden Alt Mer sailed the
Jerle Shannara
slowly from the bluff down the cliff wall and into the haze of the valley. Dawn’s light faded behind them as the airship slid silently between the massive peaks and disappeared into the gloom. Visibility diminished to less than two dozen yards. Alt Mer occupied the helm, taking his vessel ahead cautiously, his speed reduced to dead slow. Rue Meridian stood at the curve of the forward rams, peering ahead into the fog, calling out sightings and navigational corrections to her brother. Everyone else crouched at the railings in silence, watching and listening. The mist clung to them in a fine damp sheen, gathering in droplets on their skin and clothing, causing them to blink and lick their lips. Except for the mist, which moved like an ancient behemoth, lumbering and slow, everything about them was still.

As the minutes passed and the gloom persisted, Walker began to worry about visibility on the valley floor. If they could see no more than this from the air, how could they find their way once they were off the ship? His Druidic instincts would give them some help, but no amount of magic could replace the loss of sight. They would be virtually blind.

He caught himself. There it was again, that word. Blind. He was reminded of Ryer Ord Star’s vision and the thing that waited on one of these islands, a thing that was blind but could find you anyway. He pricked his senses for what Truls
Rohk had felt the night before, coming here alone. But from the air, he could sense nothing.

Ahead, the mist cleared slightly, and the cliff walls reappeared, closing in on them sharply. Redden Alt Mer brought the airship to a complete stop, waiting for Little Red to call back to him. She hung from the bow on her safety line, peering into the gloom, then motioned him ahead cautiously. Tree branches reached out of the haze, spectral fingers that seemed to clutch for the airship. Vines hung from the trees and the cliff face in a ropy tangle.

Then the mist disappeared altogether, and the
Jerle Shannara
eased into a canyon that was unexpectedly open and clear. The sky reappeared overhead, blue and welcoming, and the valley floor opened in a sea of green dappled with striations of damp color. Redden Alt Mer took the airship lower, down to within a few feet of the treetops, then slid her cautiously ahead once more. Walker searched the far end of the pocket, finding the cliff walls narrowed down so completely that the tree limbs almost touched. They had come as far as they could by air. From here, they must walk.

When they arrived at the canyon’s far end, Redden Alt Mer brought the
Jerle Shannara
right down to where the treetops scraped the hull. Walker and the four Elven Hunters released their safety lines and climbed into the winch basket. A dozen hands swung them out over the ship’s railing, and they were lowered slowly into the trees.

Once grounded and out of the basket, Walker signaled back to Rue Meridian, who was still hanging off the bow, that they were safely down. Then he stood motionless in the silence to get his bearings and search for hidden danger. Nothing. Though he probed their surroundings carefully, he could find no threatening presence.

Yet something was clearly out of place.

Then he realized what it was. The jungle was a thick, impenetrable wall of emptiness and silence. No birds, Walker thought. No animals. Nothing. Not even the smallest chirp of
an insect. Except for what was rooted in the earth, nothing lived here.

Walker could see a gap in the cliffs ahead, and he nodded to Ard Patrinell to proceed. The Elven leader did not reply, but turned to his Hunters and used hand signals to communicate his orders. A burly Elf named Kian was given the lead. Walker followed just behind, then Patrinell with lean Brae and tall Dace trailing. They moved from the canyon into the narrow gap, casting about warily as they proceeded, mindful of the danger they could expect to find waiting. Walker continued to probe the jungle gloom with tendrils of magic that brushed softly like feathers and then withdrew. The gap tightened about them, narrowing to a corridor less than fifty feet wide where trees and vines clogged everything. There was passage to be found, but it was circuitous and required them to push their way through the vegetation that grew everywhere. All about, the jungle was silent.

They moved ahead steadily, still without encountering any sign of life. Their narrow corridor broadened into another canyon, and the sky reappeared in a blue slash overhead. Sunlight dappled the trees and illuminated the dampness. They crossed to yet another defile and passed down its narrow corridor into a third canyon, this one larger still.

Suddenly, Walker was rocked by something that seized him as a giant hand would a tiny bug. It came out of the earth in a rush, sweeping over him so fast that he did not have time to react and was left momentarily stunned. Perhaps it had been there all along and had masked its presence; perhaps it had only just now found him. Pervasive and powerful, it had no identifiable form, no substantive being. It was everywhere at once, all around him, and though invisible to his eye, it was unmistakably real. He went limp in its grasp, offering no resistance, letting it think him helpless. The Elven Hunters stared at him in confusion, not realizing what was happening. He did not acknowledge them, gave no indication that he even knew they were there. He disappeared inside himself,
down where nothing could touch him. There, closed away, he waited.

A few moments later, the presence withdrew, sliding back into the earth, satisfied perhaps that it was not threatened.

Walker shook off the lingering effects of its touch and took a deep, steadying breath. The attack had shaken him badly. Whatever lived in this valley possessed power that dwarfed his own. It was old, he could tell, perhaps as old as the Faerie world. He signaled to the Elves that he was all right, then glanced around quickly. He did not want to stay where he was. A rise of barren, empty rock formed a smooth hump at the center of the canyon, a sun-drenched haven within the jungle gloom. Perhaps from there he could see better where to go next.

Beckoning to the Elven Hunters, he moved out of the undergrowth and gloom and climbed onto the stone rise. The last traces of the hateful presence faded as he did. Odd, he thought, and moved to the center of the rise. From this new elevation, he surveyed the canyon. There was not much to see. At its far end, the canyon broadened and rose in a long, winding slope that disappeared into mist and shadow. The Druid could not determine what lay beyond. He glanced around at the portion of the canyon in which he stood and saw nothing helpful.

Yet something tugged at him. Something close. He closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and began to probe gently outward with his senses. He found what he was looking for almost at once, and his eyes snapped open to confirm his vision.

He could just make out a darkening through the green of the jungle wall in a cliffside a hundred yards or so away. It was the cavern Truls Rohk had found the night before.

He stood looking at the darkness and did not move. The second key was in there, waiting. But the thing that guarded it was waiting, as well. He considered for a moment how best to approach the cavern. No solution presented itself. He turned to the Elven Hunters and gestured for them to remain
where they were. Then he walked down off the jumble of rock toward the cave.

He felt the presence return almost instantly, but he had already turned his thoughts inward. He was nothing, an object without purpose, random and devoid of thought. He walled himself away before the sentry that guarded the key could read his intentions or discover his purpose and walked straight into the cavern.

Within, he stopped to collect his thoughts. He could no longer feel the presence shadowing him. It had left him at the entrance of the cave as it had left him at the foot of the rise. Rock did not offer it passage, he decided. Only the soil from which it drew its power. Could he use that to protect himself in some way?

He put the thought aside, and looked around carefully. The cavern opened into a series of chambers, which were dimly lit by splits in the rock that admitted small streamers of light from above the jungle canopy. Walker began to hunt for the key and found it almost immediately. It was sitting out in the open on a small rock shelf, unguarded and unwatched. Walker studied it for a moment before picking it up, then studied it some more. Its configuration was similar to the one he already had, with a flat power source and a blinking red light, but the ridged metal lines on this one formed different patterns.

Walker glanced about the cavern warily, searching for the key’s sentry, for some hint of an alarm, for anything dangerous or threatening, and found nothing.

He walked to the cave entrance once more and stood looking out at the clearing. Ard Patrinell and his Elven Hunters were clustered on the rocky mound, looking back at him. In the surrounding jungle, nothing moved. Walker stayed where he was. Something would try to stop him. Something had to. Whatever warded the key would not simply let him walk away. It was waiting for him, he sensed. Out there, in the trees. There, in the soil from which it drew its strength.

He was still debating what to do next when the earth before him erupted in an explosion of green.

Aboard the
Jerle Shannara
, which hovered in a cloud of mist two clearings away, Bek Rowe was watching Rue Meridian tie off a fresh radian draw close by the horns of the bow when Walker’s voice cried out sharply in the silence of his mind.

Bek! We’re under attack! Two canyons farther in! Have Alt Mer bring the airship! Drop the basket and pull us out! Quick, now!

Startled by the unexpected assault, the boy jumped at the sound of the Druid’s voice. Then he was racing for the pilot box. It never occurred to him to question whether he was being misled. It never occurred to him that the voice might not be real. The urgency it conveyed catapulted him across the decking in a rush, crying out to Big Red as if stung.

In moments, the airship was sailing skyward through the rugged peaks, lifting over the defiles it could not navigate to reach the beleaguered men.

Walker stared from the cavern entrance at the Elven Hunters marooned on the rocky rise. The entire floor of the canyon had risen up in a tangle of writhing vines and limbs, all of them grasping for anything that came within reach. They had gotten the Elven Hunter Brae before he could even defend himself, dragged him from the rise, and pulled him apart as he screamed for help. The other three had backed to the center of their island, swords drawn, and were striking frantically at the tentacles that snatched for them.

The Druid shoved the second key deep inside his robes and called up the Druid fire against the wall that had formed before him. Blue flames lanced into the tangle and burned everything they touched, momentarily clearing a path. Walker continued his assault, burning through the twisting mass of foliage toward the rise, seeking to reach his companions. But
the jungle refused to give way, thrusting back at him from both sides, driving him back. An enormous, implacable weight settled on him, driving him to his knees. He backed from the entrance, recoiling from the assault, and the weight lessened. The key’s guardian could not reach him while he remained protected by the cave’s stone. But it would keep him there forever.

He realized then what had happened, both here and at Flay Creech. The guardians of the keys had been set at watch against any foreign presence and all threatened thefts of the keys. They were not thinking entities and did not rely on reason; they acted out of pure instinct. Eels and jungle both had been conditioned to serve a single purpose. How that had been managed and by whom, Walker had no idea. But their power was enormous, and while probably confined to a small area, it was more than sufficient to subdue anyone who came within reach.

The jungle reached for him through the cavern entrance, and he responded with the Druid fire, charring vines and limbs, filling the air with clouds of smoke and ash. If Redden Alt Mer didn’t reach them soon, they were finished. The Elves could not hope to withstand a prolonged assault on the rise. And even a Druid’s magic had its limits.

A hint of desperation driving at him, he thrust his way forward, determined anew to break free. He beat back the jungle wall in an effort to reach the light beyond. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the
Jerle Shannara
passing overhead and heard the shouts of her company. The Elves trapped on the rise glanced skyward, as well, momentarily distracted, and tall Dace paid the price. Knocked sprawling by a whiplash assault of grasses, his legs became tangled in their implacable weave. Kicking wildly, he fought in vain to break free. Patrinell and Kian reached for him instantly, but he had already been pulled from the rise to his death.

Then a torrent of liquid fire rained down about the rocky isle, encircling the trapped Elven Hunters. Poured from barrels
stored aboard ship, it showered onto the vines and grasses and exploded into flame. Down came the winch basket in the fire’s wake, jerking up short just above Ard Patrinell and Kian. Breaking off their struggle with the jungle, they scrambled over the basket’s side and were pulled to safety.

The jungle turned now on Walker, vines and tall grasses, supple limbs and trunks, twisting and writhing in fury. Walker stood in the cavern opening and burned them with the Druid fire to prevent them from dragging him down. A few moments more and he would be free.

But the guardian of the key was determined to have him. A bramble limb snaked out of the shadows to one side, lashing at the Druid’s face. Two-inch needles bit into his flesh, raking his arm and side. Walker felt their poison enter him instantly, a cold fire. He ripped the bramble away, threw it on the ground, and turned it to ash.