Help me, he heard himself asking.
The images began at once, no longer of the Squirm and its crushing pillars, no longer of the world in which he lived, but of the world he had left behind, of the past. A succession of memories began to recall themselves, taking him back in time, reminding him of what had once been and now was gone. He grew younger, smaller. The memories became a rush of sudden, frightening images, rife with fury and terror, with distant cries and the labored breathing of someone who held him close before tucking him into a black, cold place. The smell and taste of smoke and soot filled his throat and nostrils, and he could feel a panic within that refused to be stilled.
Grianne! he heard himself call out.
Blackness cloaked and hooded him once more, and a new series of images began. He saw himself as a child in the care of Coran and Liria. He saw himself at play with Quentin and his friends, with his younger brothers and sisters, at his home in Leah and beyond. The scenes were dark and accusatory, memories of his growing up that he had suppressed, memories of the times in which he had lied and cheated and deceived, in which his selfishness and disregard had caused hurt and pain. Some of these scenes were familiar; some he had forgotten. The weaknesses of his life were revealed in steady procession, laid bare for him to witness. They were not terrible things taken separately, but their number increased their weight, and after a time he was crying openly and desperate for them to end.
A wind of dark haziness swept them all away and left him with a view of the Four Lands in which all that was bad and terrible about the human condition was displayed. He watched in horror as starvation, sickness, murder, and pillage decimated lives and homes and futures in a canvas so broad it seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. Men, women and children fell victim to the weaknesses of spirit and morality that plagued mankind. All of the races were susceptible, and all participated in the savagery. There was no end to it, no lessening of it, no sense that it had ever been other than this. Bek watched it unfold in horror and profound sadness and felt it to be a part of himself. Even in his misery he could sense that this was the history of his people, that this was who he was.
Yet when it was over, he felt cleansed. With recognition came acceptance. With acceptance came forgiveness. He felt cleansed, not just of what he had contributed to the morass, but of what others had contributed as well—as if he had taken it all on his shoulders, just for a little while, and had been given back a sense of peace. He rose up within the darkness, strengthened in ways he could not define, reborn into himself with a boy’s eyes, but a man’s understanding.
The darkness drew back, and he stood again on the deck of the Jerle Shannara, arms lifted, sword outstretched. He was still masked back and sides by Walker’s magic, but the way forward was clear. 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 hull before falling back into the sea.
Sword raised to the light, magic entwined with the air and the ice and the rock, Bek shouted his instructions. Relying on instinct rather than sight, on sensation rather than thought, he responded to impulses that flashed and were gone in seconds, trusting to their ebb and flow as he guided the airship ahead. He could not explain to himself then or later what he was doing. He was reacting, and the impetus for what he did came from something both within and without that lacked definition or source, that was like the air he breathed and the cold and damp that infused it—pervasive and all-consuming. Again and again, huge shadows fell over him as the pillars of the Squirm swept by, barely missing them, rising and falling in the misty light, advancing randomly, soldiers at march through the gloom. Over and over, the monoliths collided, splintered, exploded, and turned to jagged shards. Lost within himself, wrapped within his magic, Bek felt it all and saw none of it.