Терри Брукс - Tanequil

He glanced at her admiringly. He couldn't help himself. He still loved her as much now as he had when he had met her some twenty years earlier. He had been just an impressionable boy back then, and she, older by several years and a good deal of life experience, a woman. Circumstances and events had contrived to make falling in love the inevitable result of their meeting, and all these years later that surprised him still.

She remained strong and beautiful, undiminished in any way by time's passing, a rare and impossibly wondrous treasure. Blessed with dark red hair and bright green eyes, a tall rangy body, and a personality that was famously mercurial, she constantly surprised him with her contradictions. Born a Rover girl, she had flown airships with her brother, fought on the Prekkendorran, journeyed to the then unknown continent of Parkasia, and returned to marry and stay with a man whose world was so different from hers that he could not begin to measure the gap between them. She might have chosen another way, something closer to the life she had abandoned for him, but she had not done so, nor voiced a moment's regret. As wild and free as her life had been, it seemed impossible to him that she had given it up, but she had done so in a heartbeat.

Together, they had settled in Patch Run and started their airship exploration business. They had wanted a son, and one had been born to them within the first year. Penderrin to her, Pen to him, Little Red to his footloose Rover uncle, Redden Alt Mer, he was everything they had hoped for. Having Pen in her life changed Rue noticeably, and all for the good. She became more grounded and settled. She found greater pleasure in her home and its comforts. Always ready to sail away, she nevertheless wanted time with her baby, her son, to prepare him to face the larger world. She taught him, played with him, and loved him better than anyone or anything but Bek. As a consequence, Bek loved her better, as well.

She caught him looking at her and smiled. «I love you, too," she said.

Bound to each other initially by the experiences they had shared during their journey aboard theJerk Shannara, they discovered that they also shared an important similarity in their otherwise disparate backgrounds: Both had lost their parents young. Bek had been raised by Goran and Liria Leah, Quentin's parents, and Rue by her brother. It was their mutual decision that Pen would know his parents better than they had known theirs. From the beginning it was their intention that he should share in all aspects of their life together, including their business. He became a part of it early, learning to fly airships, to maintain and repair them, to understand their components and the functions they served. Pen was a quick study, and it was no stretch for him to master the intricacies of navigation and aerodynamics. By the time he was twelve, he was already designing airships as a hobby. By the time he was fourteen, he had built his first vessel.

He wanted to fly with them on their trips, of course, but he was not yet ready for that. It was a source of great disappointment to him. But he was young, and disappointments didn't last.

Bek shaded his eyes with his hand to cut the glare of the setting sun. He was of medium height, not as tall as she was, but broader through the shoulders, his hair and eyes dark and his skin browned by the sun. Always quick and agile, he was nevertheless beginning to feel the inevitable effects of sliding into his middle years. His less–than–perfect eyesight, he thought, was the first indication of what lay ahead.

«I think that's a Druid ship," Rue said quietly.

He peered at what was now definitely identifiable as an airship, but he still couldn't tell what sort it was. «What would a Druid airship be doing out here?»

She glanced at him, and he could tell that whatever she was thinking, it wasn't good. They were miles into the Central Anar, in wilderness that few ventured into who weren't in the trapping, trading, or exploration business. The Ravenshorn Mountains were mostly unsettled and infrequently traveled other than by the Gnome tribes that called them home. A Druid airship so far out would be coming for a very definite purpose and on business that couldn't wait.

Bek looked at their passengers, who were sitting around a map, talking about where they wanted to go next. Two from the Borderlands, three from the deep Southland, and a Dwarf—all had signed on to see country that they had only heard about. They were five weeks out of Patch Run, where Bek and Rue had begun a series of stops to pick up their customers and take on supplies. They had three weeks left in the Eastland before they started back.

«Your sister?» Rue suggested, nodding toward the airship. He shook his head. «I don't know. Maybe.» He didn't want to voice what worried him most. One of the reasons a Druid airship would come for them was that something had happened to Pen. Word would reach Grianne, and she would come to tell him herself. But he wouldn't let himself think like that, not just yet. This probably had something to do with the Ard Rhys or the state of the Four Lands.

They kept watch as the airship sailed toward them through the fading afternoon sunlight, moving unerringly toward their campsite. How it had located them was a mystery, since few knew of their intended destination. A Druid could find them with help, but only Bek's sister possessed sufficient magic to track them with no help at all. He could see now that it was indeed a Druid airship that approached, so he began to suspect that she was aboard.

The other members of the expedition had seen the ship and come over to stand with their guides. A few asked what she was doing there, but Bek just shrugged and said he had no idea. Then he asked them to move back into the campsite and closer to whereSwift Sure was anchored, a precaution he would have taken in any event.

«Are you expecting trouble?» Rue asked him, cocking one eyebrow.

«No. I just want to be ready.» «We're always ready," she said. «You are, at least.»

She smiled. «That's why you were attracted to me. Don't you remember?»

The big airship eased out of the sky to the grassy shelf that fronted the encampment and overlooked the woodland country west. Anchor lines were dropped fore and aft, and a rope ladder was thrown over the side. Bek recognized theAthabasca, one of four ships–of–the–line in the Druid fleet, capable of great speed and power. He was impressed by her look. But not even a Druid ship could match the speed of Swift Sure.

A Druid began to climb down the ladder, dark–robed and hooded, swaying unsteadily as he carefully placed one foot below the other. A big man, Bek saw, powerfully built and strong, but unfamiliar with airships and flying. He stepped off the ladder, pulled back his hood to reveal his face, and started toward them. Bek had never seen him before, but then most of the Druids at Paranor were unfamiliar to him. Except for his sister and Ahren Elessedil, who was no longer at Paranor, he had met only one or two others over the years, and those he barely remembered. The Druid life was his sister's life, not his, and he had kept himself deliberately apart from it. Sometimes he felt badly that he was not doing more to help her in her work, but it was not work he had ever cared to involve himself in and so he thought it better not to pretend he did.

The man who approached was younger than they were, though not by much, and his careworn face suggested he might be aging in other ways. Their lives filled with secrets, their work clandestine and often unknowable, Druids always troubled Bek. It was a role that fit his sister well, the clothes of her life as the Use Witch, where she had perfected the art of subterfuge and dissembling. Such skills were necessary in the world of the Druids, even though intended for good and not for evil. Druids were not well liked in the Four Lands. It was not a prejudice he shared, understanding them as he did, but it was a fact of life. Power fostered fear, and fear mistrust. The Druid order was for many the genesis of all three.