Терри Брукс - Jarka Ruus

The mist thickened the farther away from land they flew, swirling like witch's brew around the airship, alive with strange shadows and unexpected movement. There was no wind, and yet the haze roiled as if there were. Pen felt uneasy at the phenomenon, not understanding how it could occur. He glanced again at Ahren Elessedil, but the Druid was staring straight ahead, his concentration focused on something else.

He was listening.

Pen listened, as well, but he couldn't hear a thing beyond the creaking of the ship's rigging. He looked to Khyber, but she shook her head to indicate that she didn't hear anything, either.

Then Pen froze. There was something after all. At first, he wasn't sure what it was. It sounded a little like breathing, deep and low, like a sleeping man exhaling, only not that, either. He furrowed his brow in concentration, trying to place it. It must be the wind, he thought. The wind, sweeping over the hull or through the rigging or along the decks. But he knew it wasn't.

The sound grew louder, crept closer, as if a sleeping giant had woken and was coming over for a look. Pen glanced quickly at Ahren, but the Druid's gaze was intense and fixed, directed outward into the mist, searching.

«Uncle?» Khyber whispered, and there was an unmistakable hint of fear in her voice.

He nodded without looking at her. «It is the lake," he said. «It is alive.»

Pen had no idea what that meant, but he didn't like the sound of it. Lakes weren't alive in the sense that they could breathe, so why did it sound as if this one was? He tried to pick up a rhythm to the sound, but it was unsteady and sporadic, harsh and labored. The ship sailed into the teeth of it, sliding smoothly through the fog, down the giant's throat and into its belly. Pen could see it in his mind. He tried to change the picture to something less threatening, but could not.

Then abruptly, ethereal forms appeared, incomplete and hazy, riding the windless mist. They brought the sound with them, carried it in their shadowy, insubstantial bodies, bits and pieces echoing all about them as they moved. Pen shrank back as several approached, sliding over the railing and across the airship's rain–slick deck. Cinnaminson gasped and her father swore angrily, swatting ineffectually at the wraith forms.

«The dead come to visit us," Ahren Elessedil said quietly. «This is the Lazareen, the prison of the dead who have not found their way to the netherworld and still wander the Four Lands.»

«What do they want?» Khyber whispered.

Ahren shook his head. «I don't know.»

The shades were all around the Skatelow, sweeping through her rigging like birds. The breathing grew louder, filling their ears, a windstorm of trouble building to something terrible. Slowly, steadily, vibrations began to shake the airship, causing the rigging to hum and the spars to rattle. Pen felt them all the way down to his bones. Seconds later, its pitch shifted to a frightening howl, a wail that engulfed them in an avalanche of sound. Pen went to his knees, racked with pain. The wail tightened like a vise around his head, crushing his ineffectual defenses. In the pilot box, in a futile effort to keep the sound at bay, Cinnaminson doubled over, her hands clapped over her ears. Gar Hatch was howling in fury, fighting to remain in control of the airship but losing the battle.

«Do something!» Khyber screamed at everyone and no one in particular, her eyes squeezed shut, her face twisted.

Like the legendary Sirens, the shades were driving the humans aboard the Skatelow mad. Their voices would paralyze the sailors, strip them of their sanity, and leave them catatonic. Already, Pen could feel himself losing control, his efforts at protecting his hearing and his mind failing. If he had the wishsong, he thought, he might have a way to fight back. But he had no defense against this, no magic to combat it. Nor did any of them, except perhaps …

He glanced quickly at Ahren Elessedil. The Druid was standing rigid and white–faced against the onslaught, hands weaving, lips moving, calling on his magic to save them. It was a terrible choice he was making, Pen knew. Using magic would give them away to the Galaphile in an instant. It would lead Terek Molt and his Gnome Hunters right to them. But what other choice did they have? The boy dropped to his knees, fighting to keep from screaming, the wailing so frenzied and wild that the deck planking was vibrating.

Then abruptly, everything went perfectly still, and they were enfolded in a silence so deep and vast that it felt as if they were packed in cotton wadding and buried in the ground. Around them, the mist continued to swirl and the shades to fly, but the wailing was no longer heard.

Pen got to his feet hesitantly, watching as the others did the same.

«We're safe, but we've given ourselves away," Ahren said quietly. He looked drained of strength, his face drawn and worn.

«Maybe they didn't come after us," Khyber offered.

Her uncle did not respond. Instead, he moved away from them, crossing the deck to the pilot box. After a moment's hesitation, Pen and Khyber followed. Gar Hatch turned at their approach, his hard face twisting with anger. «This is your doing, Druid!» he snapped. «Get below and stay there!»

«Cinnaminson," Ahren Elessedil said to the girl, ignoring her father. She swung toward the sound of his voice, her pale face damp with mist, her blind eyes wide. «We have to hide. Can you find a place for us to do so?»

«Don't answer him!» Gar Hatch roared. He swung down out of the pilot box and advanced on the Druid. «Let her be! She's blind, in case you hadn't noticed! How do you expect her to help?»

Ahren stopped, one hand coming up in a warding gesture. «Don't come any closer, Captain," he said. Gar Hatch stopped, shaking with rage. «Let's not pretend we don't both know what she can and can't do. She's your eyes in this muck. She can see better than either of us. If she can't, then send her below and steer this ship yourself! Because a Druid warship tracks us, and if you don't find a way off this lake, and find it quickly, it will be on top of us!»

Gar Hatch came forward another step, his fists knotted. «I should never have brought you aboard! I should never have agreed to help you! I do, and look what it costs me! You take my daughter, you take my ship, and you will probably cost me my life!»

Ahren stood his ground. «Don't be stupid. I take nothing from you but your services, and I paid for those. Among them, like it or not, is your daughter's talent. Now give her your permission to find a place for us to hide before it is too late!»

Hatch started to say something, then his eyes widened in shock as the huge, ironclad rams of the Galaphile surged out of the fog bank.

«Cinnaminson!» he shouted, leaping into the pilot box and seizing the controls.

He dropped the nose of the Skatelow so hard and so fast that Pen and his companions slid forward into the side of the pilot box, grabbing onto railings and ropes and anything else that would catch them. The airship plummeted, then leveled out and shot forward into the haze, all in seconds. As quick as that, they were alone again, the Galaphile vanished back into the fog.

«Which way?» Gar Hatch demanded of his daughter.

Her voice steady, Cinnaminson centered herself on the console, both hands gripping the railing, and began to give her father instructions, calling out headings. Pen, Khyber, and Ahren Elessedil righted themselves and snapped their safety harnesses in place, keeping close to the pilot box to watch what was happening. Gar Hatch ignored them, speaking only to his daughter, listening to her replies and making the necessary adjustments in the setting of the Skatelow's course.

Pen looked over his shoulder, then skyward, searching the mist for the Galaphile. She was nowhere to be seen. But she was close at hand. He sensed her, massive and deadly, an implacable hunter in search of her prey. He felt her bulk pressing down through the haze, looking to crush him over the Lazareen the way she would have crushed him over the Rainbow Lake almost three weeks ago.

He was aware suddenly that the shades had vanished, gone back into the shroud of mist and gloom they had swum through moments earlier, sunk down into the waters of the Lazareen.

«Why didn't the dead go after Terek Molt?» he asked Ahren suddenly. «Why didn't they attack the Galaphile, too?»

The Druid glanced over. «Because Molt protects his vessel with Druid magic, something he can afford to do and we cannot.» He paused, hands knuckle–white about the pilot box railing, droplets of water beaded on his narrow Elven features. «Besides, Penderrin, he may have summoned the dead in the first place. He has that power.»

«Shades," the boy whispered, and the word was like a prayer.

They sailed ahead in silence, an island once more in the mist and fog, a rabbit in flight from a fox. All eyes searched the gloom for the Galaphile, while Cinnaminson called out course headings and Gar Hatch made the airship respond. The wind picked up again, set loose as they reached the Lazareen's center, and the haze began to dissipate. Below, the lake waters were choppy and dark, the sound of their waves clear in the fog's silence.

Ahren Elessedil leaned over the pilot box railing. «Where do we sail?» he asked Gar Hatch.

«The Slags," the big man answered dully. «There's plenty of places to hide in there, places we will never be found. We just need to clear the lake.»

Pen touched the Druid's arm and looked at him questioningly.

«Wetlands," the Druid said. «Miles and miles of them, stretching all along the northeastern shoreline. Swamp and flood plain, cypress and cedar. A tangle of old growth and grasses blanketed with mist and filled with quicksand that can swallow whole ships. Dangerous, even if you know what you're doing.» He nodded toward Hatch. «He's made the right choice.»

She has, Pen corrected silently. For it was Cinnaminson who set their course, through whose mind's eye they sought their way and in whose hands they placed their trust.

The mist continued to thin, the sky above opening to a canopy of stars, the lake below silver–tipped and shimmering. Their cover would be gone in a few minutes, and Pen saw no sign of the shore. The mist still hung in thick curtains in the distance, so he assumed the shore was there. But it was a long way off, and the wind was in their face, slowing their passage.

Rain began to fall, sweeping across the decking in a cold, black wash, and quickly they were soaked through. It poured for a time, thunder booming in the distance, and then just as suddenly it stopped again. At the same moment, the wind died to nothing.

«Twenty degrees starboard," Cinnaminson told her father. «We'll find better speed on that heading. Oh," she gasped suddenly, «behind us, Papa!»

They all swung about in response and found the Galaphile emerging from the remnants of the fog bank, dark and menacing in the moonlight, sails furled and lashed, the warship flying on the power of her diapson crystals. She was moving fast, surging through the night, bearing down on them like a tidal wave.

Gar Hatch threw the thruster levers all the way forward and yelled to his Rover crewmen to drop the mainsail. Pen saw the reason for it at once; the mainsail was a drag on the ship in that windless air and would be of less help if the wind resumed from the east. The Skatelow was better off flying on stored power, as well, though she could not begin to match the speed of the Galaphile. Still, she was the smaller, lighter craft and, if she was lucky, might be able to outmaneuver her pursuer.