Her face darkened. “Keep still.”
“Let me go with you to find Walker. Let him help you. What can it hurt to talk with him? Just listen to what he has to say. If you would take five minutes to think—”
“Enough!” she screamed.
He leapt to his feet. “Enough of what? The truth? I’m your brother, Grianne! I’m Bek! Stop trying to deny it! Stop twisting everything around!”
She was on her feet, as well, rigid with fury. He knew he should stop, but he couldn’t. “Do you want me to tell you what really happened to our parents? Do you want me to tell you what’s been done to you? Do you want me to speak the words out loud, so that you can hear how they sound? You’re so blind you can’t—”
She screamed again, only this time there were no words, only sound that rent the air like razors. The wishsong’s magic seared his throat, twisting and tightening until he was gasping for air. He threw up his hands in a belated effort to protect himself as he stumbled backwards and fell. The unexpected force and suddenness of her attack left him dazed and crumpled on the ground, his eyes tearing, his breath coming in deep, rasping gulps.
She loomed over him, robes drawn close, her pale face twisted with disgust. Then her hand reached down to touch his neck and everything went black.
When he was asleep and breathing normally again, she straightened his arms and legs and covered him with his tattered cloak. Such a fool. She had warned him not to say anything more, but he had continued to press her. She had reacted almost without thinking, losing control of herself and lashing out in anger. She felt vaguely ashamed for doing so. It didn’t matter what the provocation was; she should have been able to keep the magic in check. She should have been able to avoid attacking him that way. She easily might have killed him. It wouldn’t have taken all that much to do so. The power of the wishsong was immense. Should she choose it, she could use her magic to wither one of the huge old oaks that sheltered their camp, to shred it to pulp and bark and sap, to reduce it to the earth from which it had grown. How much less difficult it would be to do the same with this boy.
“I warned you,” she hissed at his sleeping form, still inwardly seething at herself.
She straightened and walked away, stopping at the edge of the clearing and peering off into the dark. She brushed back the long dark hair from her face and folded her arms into her robes. Perhaps it was just as well that she had reacted as she did. What she had done now was what she had intended to do anyway once they reached the bay where Black Moclips lay at anchor—to take away his voice and render him harmless. She could not afford to leave him with the Mwellrets otherwise. She would take his sword, as well, the blade he claimed was the Sword of Shannara. He would be locked in the hold and kept there until she finished her business with the Druid.
She glanced over her shoulder to where he lay sleeping, then quickly away again. She had meant to tell him what she was going to do before she did it, to reassure him that it was temporary, a few days and no more. She had meant to tell him she would restore his voice when she saw him again, that she would negate the magic that held it bound. She would still tell him tomorrow when he woke, but the effect would be different from what she had planned.
It irritated her that she felt the need to justify herself to him. It wasn’t as if she owed him anything, as if he mattered to her in even the slightest way. But try as she might, she could not dismiss him as nothing more than a boy the Druid had somehow subverted to use against her. She knew that such an explanation was too simplistic. He was more than that; his magic was real. He was perhaps as strong-minded as she was, and there was at least some truth to what he was saying. She wouldn’t admit it to him, but she could sense it. Her problem was in deciding how much. Where did the lies end and the truth begin? What was the Druid trying to accomplish by sending him to her? For he had sent the boy, however they might have found each other. He had sent the boy as surely as she had sent Ryer Ord Star to spy on him.
Was it possible he really was Bek?
She stopped breathing momentarily, the thought suspended before her like an exotic creature. Was it possible after all? He could still be Bek and be lying about their parents. He could still be an unwitting dupe. He could be mistaken without realizing it.
But how had the Druid found him, when she had thought him dead? How had the Druid known who he was? Had the Druid gone back into the rubble and searched him out? Had the Druid decided to make use of Bek in his schemes because he had lost the use of her?
Her lips tightened. Everyone was used in this life. She thought about the Morgawr, her mentor all these years, her teacher in the fine art of magic’s use. She knew enough of him, of what he was, to know that he could not be trusted, to accept that he was every bit as devious as the Druid. She knew he had used her. She knew he kept things from her that he believed enabled him to maintain his hold over her. It was just the way of things. She manipulated and deceived, too. The boy was right about that. She was not so different from the Morgawr, and the Morgawr was very like the Druid.
But would the Morgawr have lied to her about her parents? How could she have such strong memories of the Druid and his dark-cloaked servants descending on her home that final dawn if he had? That didn’t feel right to her. It didn’t seem possible. The Druid had wanted her to come with him to Paranor. She remembered his visits to her father, his conversations and dark warnings. No, he had orphaned her and stolen her away as she believed.
Yet the boy who thought himself her brother was right. She had ended up a Druid anyway, in another place, in another form. She could not say she was any different from Walker, any better or worse. She could not point to where their lives were that much different. In escaping him, she had allowed the Morgawr to turn her into a mirror image of her enemy. Her use of magic and her efforts at accumulating power were very much the same as his. If he had done bad things in their pursuit, so had she.
Thinking about all of that, accepting the truth of it, made her even angrier with herself. But there was no place for anger in her efforts to accomplish the tasks that she had undertaken. She must find the magic concealed in Castledown, gain possession of it, and return to her ship. She must decide what to do with the boy and his unsettling accusations. She must settle matters once and for all with both the Druid and the Morgawr.
She never once doubted that she was capable of all that or that she could carry out her plans in the manner she intended.
But, like it or not, she was beginning to question her reasoning for doing so.
Miles to the east and south, well clear of the inlet opening into the Squirm and its ice fields and beyond the cliffs that warded the eastern approach from the Blue Divide, the Jerle Shannara lay at anchor. She was berthed in a forested cove nestled among a dozen others in lowlands miles from where she had deposited Walker and those others who had gone ashore in search of Castledown. The Jerle Shannara was sheltered from the wintry weather that swept the coast, concealed from prying eyes while she underwent repairs.
Seated on a bench at the ship’s stern and facing out toward the cove’s narrow opening, Rue Meridian could only just glimpse the distant waters of the Blue Divide. She wore loose-fitting trousers and tunic, red-orange scarves wrapped about her throat and forehead, and soft, worn ankle boots. A blanket warded her against the chill. Restless and bored, she scuffed one boot across the decking and pondered her dissatisfaction for the hundredth time. It was almost a week since Big Red had brought the airship overland after its near catastrophic encounter with the Squirm, charting a course back to the coast that avoided glaciers and mountains and obscuring mist. A longer, more circuitous route than the one that led through the Squirm and up the river channel, it was by far the safer. Regaining the coast, the Rovers cruised in search of the Wing Riders, whom they quickly found and who in turn led to the sheltering bay. Since then, Rovers and Wing Riders had been engaged in repairing the damaged vessel while Rue had lain belowdecks, healing from her wounds and sleeping undisturbed.