Терри Брукс - Jarka Ruus

• Название: Jarka Ruus
• Автор: Терри Брукс
• Жанр: Фэнтези

High Druid of Shannara. More than a quarter of a century after The Sword of Shannara carved out its place in the pantheon of great epic fantasy, the magic of Terry Brooks's New York Times bestselling saga burns as brightly as ever. Three complete series have chronicled the ever–unfolding history of Shannara. But more stories are still to be told–and new adventures have yet to be undertaken. Book One of High Druid of Shannara invites both the faithful longtime reader and the curious newcomer to take the first step on the next extraordinary quest. Twenty years have passed since Grianne Ohmsford denounced her former life as the dreaded Ilse Witch–saved by the love of her brother, the magic of the Sword of Shannara, and the destruction of her evil mentor, the Morgawr. Now, fulfilling the destiny predicted for her, she has established the Third Druid Council, and dedicated herself to its goals of peace, harmony among the races, and defense of the Four Lands. But the political intrigue, secret treachery, and sinister deeds that have haunted Druid history for generations continue to thrive.

---

In the midst of her silent diatribe, she realized that someone was looking at her.

Or something.

Huge, lantern eyes peered at her from out of the blackness. It was the moor cat.

«Get out of here!» she snapped in fury, not stopping to think about what she was doing.

The eyes stayed where they were. She glared at them, hating that the cat was watching her, that it had seen her break down and cry, that it had caught her at her worst. For no reason that made any sense at all, she was embarrassed by it. Even if it was only an animal that had witnessed it, her behavior made her feel foolish. She took several deep breaths to steady herself and sat back. The cat wasn't going to move until it felt like it, so there wasn't much point in railing at it. She found herself wondering once again what it was doing there. Curiosity, Pen had thought. Could be. She kissed at it, whispered a few words of greeting, and gave it a wave. The cat stared without blinking or moving.

Then all at once, it was gone again. Like smoke caught in the wind, it simply disappeared. She waited a moment to be sure, then rose and walked back to where Pen and Tagwen were already asleep. The first watch was hers, it seemed. Just as well since she wasn't at all tired. She sat down next to them and wrapped her arms about her knees. It was chilly so high up, much more so than in the Slags. She wished she had a blanket. Maybe they could find supplies in the morning. There had to be a settlement somewhere close by.

With her legs drawn up to her chest and her chin resting on her knees, she listened to the sounds of Pen and Tagwen breathing and stared out into the night.

* * *

Intending to wake one of her companions to share the watch, but failing to do so, she dozed off sometime after midnight. When she came awake again, it was with the sudden and frightening realization that things were not as they should be. It wasn't the silence or the darkness or even the sound of the wind rustling the leaves like old parchment. What caught her attention as her eyes snapped open and her head jerked up was the dark movement that crept like a stain across the forest earth in front of her. For a moment, she thought it was alive, and leapt to her feet, backing away instinctively. But then she recognized its flat, fragmented shape and realized it was a shadow cast from something passing overhead.

She looked up and saw the Skatelow.

She couldn't believe it at first, thinking that she must be mistaken, that her eyes were playing tricks on her. It wasn't possible that the Skatelow could be there, flying those skies, so many miles east of where it should be. But the shape was so distinctive that Khyber quickly accepted that it was her, come after them for a reason that was not immediately apparent. For come after them she had, the Elven girl reasoned, or she would not be here at all.

Particularly since she was flying straight toward them.

But there was something not quite right about her, a look to her that was foreign and vaguely frightening. She carried only her mainsail, its canvas billowed out in the rush of the wind, yet there were yards of rigging stretched bare and stark from decking to spars like spider webbing.

Khyber stared, transfixed, not yet fully awake and not yet come to terms with what she was seeing.

The Skatelow passed overhead and when she had gone a short distance beyond where the Elven girl stood watching, somewhere above the bluff east, she wheeled back and slid across the star–scattered firmament a second time, more slowly, as if searching.

Then, abruptly, she started to come down, making a slow and cautious descent toward the grasslands that lay just beyond the woods in which Khyber and her companions slept. As she did so, Khyber saw what she had missed before. Three ropes dangled in a ragged line from the yardarm, pulled taut by the weight of the bodies attached.

«Pen!» Khyber hissed, reaching down quickly to shake the boy awake, galvanized by sudden shock and a rush of fear.

Penderrin Ohmsford jerked upright at once, eyes darting in all directions at once. «What is it?»

Wordlessly, she hauled him to his feet and pointed, leaving Tagwen still stretched out and asleep at her feet. Together, they watched the Skatelow settle toward the grasslands, a ghost ship dark and ragged against the moonlit sky, the bodies at the ends of the ropes swaying like gourds from vines. The light caught those bodies clearly by then, illuminating them sufficiently for Khyber to identify Gar Hatch and his crewmen, faces empty, mouths hanging open, eyes wide and staring. There was a wizened, drawn cast to their features, as if the juices had been drained from them, leaving only skin and bones.

«What's happened?» Pen breathed.

Then his fingers tightened sharply about her arm, and he pointed. She saw it at once. Cinnaminson stood in the pilot box, a thin, frail figure against the skyline, her head lifted into the wind, her clothing whipping against her body, her arms hanging limply at her sides. One end of a chain was attached to a collar about her neck; the other was wound about the pilot box railing.

Khyber scanned the decks of the sloop from end to end, but no one else was visible. No one was sailing the airship, no one acting as Captain and crew, no one visible aboard save the three dead men and the chained girl.

Then Khyber saw something move across the billowing mainsail, high up in the rigging, a dark shadow caught in a swath of moonlight. The shadow skittered down the lines like a spider over its webbing, limbs outstretched and crooked as it swung from strand to strand. Nothing more of it was visible; its head and body were cloaked and hooded, its features hidden. It was there for just an instant, then gone, disappeared behind the sail and back into the shadows.

Khyber took a deep breath. It was the thing that had chased them through the streets of Anatcherae—the thing that had tried to kill Pen.

A shiver ran down Khyber's back when Cinnaminson turned her head slightly in their direction, as if seeing them as clearly as they saw her. In that instant, her features were clearly revealed, and such anguish and horror were mirrored there that Khyber went cold all the way to her bones. Then the Rover girl looked away again and pointed north. The thing that hung from the mainmast moved quickly in response, leaping through the rigging, changing the set of the sail, the tautness of the radian draws, and thereby the direction of the airship. The Skatelow began to lift away again, turning north in the direction Cinnaminson had pointed. The crooked–legged thing darted back across the moonlight, then fastened itself in place against the mast, hunching down like a huge lizard on a pole.

Seconds later, the airship disappeared behind the rise of the bluff, and the sky was empty again.

* * *

In the dark aftermath, Khyber exhaled sharply and exchanged a hurried look with Pen. Then she jumped in fright as Tagwen stood up suddenly next to her, rubbing at his bleary eyes. «What's wrong?» he asked.

«Don't do that again!» she snapped furiously, her hands shaking.

They told him what they had seen, pointing north at the empty sky. A look of disbelief crossed his rough features, and he shook his head, blinking away the last of his sleep. «Are you certain of this? You didn't dream it? It wasn't just the clouds?»

«It's tracking us," Pen answered, his voice dismal and lost–sounding. «It's killed Gar Hatch and his Rover cousins, and now it's using Cinnaminson to hunt us.»

«But how did it get aboard the Skatelow?»

No one could answer him. Khyber stared at the empty sky, trying to reason it through. Was there a connection between the creature and the Druids? Could it have gotten aboard the Skatelow while the Galaphile had the Rover airship in tow? That would mean Terek Molt had deliberately lied to them about sending the Skatelow safely on her way. But why do that? For that matter, why bother to put the creature aboard the Skatelow at all if the Druid intended to hunt Penderrin on his own anyway? Whatever the answer, someone was going to an awful lot of trouble to prevent the boy from attempting to rescue his aunt. So someone must think he had a very good chance of succeeding, even if the boy himself thought he had very little. It was an intriguing conclusion, and it gave her unexpected reason for hope. Pen was staring at her. «Do you think the Elfstones could be used against whatever's got Cinnaminson?»

She gave him a doubtful look. «We don't even know what it is, Pen. It might be human, and the Elfstones would be useless.» «It doesn't look it.» «Whatever it is, we're not going to fight it if we don't have to.» She motioned toward the bluff.

«Let's get out of here. We can stop and eat when it gets light. I don't want to chance it coming back again.» Pen stood his ground, his mouth a tight line. «Did you see the way she looked at us?»

Khyber hesitated. «What are you getting at?» «She saw us. She knew we were here. Yet she turned the ship the other way.» His voice was shaking. «She's being made to track us, Khyber. Maybe her life depends on whether or not that thing finds us. Yet she steered it away. She saved us.»

Tagwen shook his bearded head. «You don't know that, young Pen. You might be mistaken.» The boy looked quickly at Khyber for support. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realized what he was about to ask. She had to stop him, even if it meant lying to him about what she had seen. But she could not bring herself to do that. That was the coward's way out. Ahren would not have lied in that situation. He would have told Pen the truth. «We can't do this," she said. «We have to!» he snapped. His face had an angry, almost furious look. «She saved us, Khyber!

Now we have to save her!» «What are you talking about?» Tagwen demanded. «Save who?» «She's not our concern," Khyber pressed. «Our concern is with your aunt, the Ard Rhys.» «Our concern is with whoever needs our help! What's wrong with you?» They faced each other in stony silence. Even Tagwen had gone quiet, looking quickly from one face to the other.

«We don't have any way of saving her," Khyber said finally. «We don't know anything about that creature, nothing about what it will take to overcome it. If we guess wrong, we'll all be dead.» Pen straightened and looked off to the north. «I'm going, whether you go with me or not. I'm not leaving her. I have to live with myself when this is over. I can't do that if something happens to her that I might have prevented.» He glanced back at her, the angry look become suddenly pleading. «She isn't the enemy, Khyber.»

«I know that.»

«Then help me.» She stared at him without answering.

«Khyber, I'm begging you.»

He wasn't asking Tagwen, he was asking her. With Ahren Elessedil dead, she'd become the unofficial leader. She was the one with the Elfstones and the magic. She was the one with the lore. She thought about the choices she had made on the journey and how badly many of them had turned out. If she made the wrong choice, it might cost all of them their lives. Pen's heart ruled his thinking; she had to remember to use her head.

She found herself wondering what Ahren would do in that situation but was unable to decide. The answer would have come quickly and easily for him. It would not do so for her.

She looked off into the trees and the night, into the shadows and darkness, searching for it in vain.

THIRTY

When Grianne Ohmsford reached the rim of the Forbidding's version of the Valley of Shale, Weka Dart was gone. Fled out of fear, she decided, too terrified to remain once the Warlock Lord appeared. Even so, she took a moment to look for him, thinking he might be hiding in the rocks, his sharp–featured face buried in his hands. But there was no sign of him.

He would be back, she told herself. No matter what happened, he would be back.

She wondered at her certainty about this, and decided rather reluctantly that it was fostered in part, at least, by the comfort she found in his presence. In a better world, such as the one from which she had come, she might not have tolerated him at all. Here, she had to take what friendship she could find.

She started back down the mountainside. Silence enveloped her, a hush that felt strange in the wake of the disappearance of the shades that had tormented her on the way in. They had all vanished, drawn back down into the netherworld with the Warlock Lord. Yet the memory of them haunted her, voices whispering at the back of her thoughts, damp fingers trailing lightly across her unprotected skin, an insidious presence.

The sun was rising, turning the eastern horizon the color of ashes, gray and damp against the departing night. Another day of low clouds and threatening skies. Another day of colorless gloom. She felt her already battered spirits sink at the prospect. She wanted out of this miserable place, out of this world of savagery and despair. She pondered on the words of Brona's shade. A boy is coming. The pronouncement confounded her, no matter how often she repeated the words in her mind. What boy? Why a boy in the first place? It made no sense to her, and she kept thinking that it must be a puzzle of some sort, the secret to which she must find a way to unlock. Shades were famous for speaking in riddles, for teasing with half–truths.

Perhaps that was what had happened here.

She stopped for a moment and closed her eyes, feeling dizzy and weak. Her encounter with the Warlock Lord's shade had left her battered of mind and body, light–headed and unsteady. She could feel an aching not only in her muscles and joints, but also in her heart. Just standing in the presence of the shade had left her sickened. Its poison had permeated the air she breathed and the ground she walked. It had infused the entire valley, though she had not been aware of it until now.

Evil—in its rawest, most lethal form—had infected her. Though she had resisted the Warlock Lord's offer to embrace it, it had claimed her anyway. She wouldn't die from it, she thought, but she would be a long time ridding herself of its feel.

The dizziness passed, and she walked on. A boy, she kept thinking. And she must wait for him. She could do nothing from this end, nothing that would set her free. She did not believe it; there was always something you could do to help yourself in any situation. There was always more than one way in or out of any place, even this one. She need only find what it was. But even as she told herself it was so, she found reason to doubt the words. No one—until now—had ever found a way out of the Forbidding, not after thousands of years. No one had ever found a way in, once the wall of magic was set in place. It was a prison that did not allow for escape.

It was light by the time she reached the base of the mountains: the same sooty gray light that seemed to mark every day, the clouds slung low against the earth, fused with mist and darkened by the threat of rain. Weka Dart was sitting on a rock at the trailhead, chin in his hands, looking south across the flats, but he leapt to his feet on hearing her approach and was waiting eagerly as she came up to him.

«I thought you weren't coming back, Straken," he announced, not bothering to hide the relief in his voice. «That shade, so terrible, so threatening! It didn't want you?»

She shook her head. «Nor you, so you needn't have run away.»

He bristled with indignation. «I didn't run! I chose to wait for you here!» His cunning features tightened as he prepared to lie. «I realized that you could not afford to be disturbed during your summoning and decided to come back down here to keep watch against … whatever might intrude.» He spit. «It worked, didn't it? Were you bothered in any way? Hah! I thought as much!»