Terry Brooks - Ilse Witch

He stood blinded by the blackness for a moment and waited for his vision to return. He saw the lights first, some steady and unchanging, some blinking on and off, some green, some red, some yellow. There were hundreds of them, ahead somewhere, tiny beacons glowing in the dark. When he could make out the surfaces of floor and walls and ceiling sufficiently to find his way, he started toward them. The controls to the fire threads and the creepers would be there. This was a kingdom of machines, and the machines in this tower would control the machines in the maze. Shut down the one, and you shut down the others.

It was his last thought before the floor opened beneath him, and he tumbled away into space.

Rue Meridian woke when her head banged against the wall of the storeroom in the forward hold. She tried to roll away and found herself pinned to the floor by a heavy weight. The weight turned out to be Furl Hawken, who was still unconscious, his bulk sprawled across her torso. She could hear the wind howling like a scorched cat and feel the pitch and roll of the ship. A storm was in progress, and a bad one at that. With every fresh gust and new jolt she was thrown headfirst back toward the offending wall.

Squirming and wriggling, she worked herself free of Hawk and pushed herself into a sitting position, her back to the bulkhead. For a moment she couldn’t remember what had happened, then couldn’t figure out how. What was she doing down here, belowdecks? She had been working with another Rover on setting a fresh radian draw, tightening it down, when that wind had come up, soft and lulling, singing to her like her mother once had.

And put her to sleep, she thought ruefully, beginning to see exactly what had happened.

She climbed to her feet and staggered across the room through the lurching of the ship to the door. She tried the handle. Locked. No surprise there. She grimaced and exhaled sharply. The Rovers were all prisoners or dead, overpowered in all likelihood by the Ilse Witch. Somehow she had gotten to them when they weren’t expecting it, put them to sleep, and locked them below. Or worse, it wasn’t the Ilse Witch at all, but the thing that Walker had gone inland to find. Or was it worse, the one rather than the other? She rubbed her head where it had banged against the wall, wondering how many jolts it had taken to wake her. Too many, she decided, feeling an ache work its way through her skull and down into her neck.

She glanced around the room. It was empty except for Hawk and herself. The others were somewhere else. There were crates of supplies stacked against the walls, but they contained light sheaths, radian draws, parse tubes, ropes, and the like. No heavy clubs or axes. No sharp objects or keen blades to rely on. No weapons of any kind.

She looked down hopefully for her sword and throwing knives, even though she knew her weapons belt was gone. She reached into her boot. The dagger she hid there was gone, as well. Whoever put her here was smart enough to search her before locking her in. Hawk’s weapons would have been taken, too. Escaping confinement was not going to be easy.

But it would, of course, be possible.

Little Red never once stopped to think otherwise. It wasn’t in her nature to do so. She did not panic and she did not despair. She was a Rover, and she had been taught from a very early age that Rovers had to look out for themselves, that no one else was going to do it for them. She was locked in the hold of her own ship, and it was up to her to get free. She already knew she was going to do that. Someone had made a big mistake in assuming she wasn’t. Someone was going to pay for putting her here.

A sudden violent pitch of the airship sent her staggering to one side, and she was barely able to keep her feet while righting herself. Something bad was happening topside, and she had to get up there quickly to find out what it was. It didn’t feel as if the people who had locked her in had any idea what they were doing with the ship. If there was a storm in progress, it would take accomplished sailors to see the Jerle Shannara safely through. She thought briefly of the Squirm’s grinding pillars, of the sheer cliffs surrounding them, and of their proximity to both, and she felt a tug of concern deep in her stomach.

She worked her way over to Furl Hawken and began to shake him. “Wake up, Hawk!” She kept her voice low enough that anyone standing outside the door wouldn’t hear. Not that there was much chance with the storm howling all about them. “Hawk!” She slapped his face. “Wake up!”

His eyes fluttered and he grunted like a bull. Slowly he rolled onto his side, clasping his head, muttering to himself. Then he sat up, running his big hands through his tangled blond hair and beard. “What hit me? I can feel it all the way down to my teeth!”

The airship did a quick pitch and roll, causing him to brace himself hurriedly with his hands. “Shades!”

“Get up,” she ordered, pulling at him. “We’ve been drugged and locked up, and the ship’s in the hands of incompetents. Let’s do something about it.”

He lumbered to his feet, steadying himself by leaning on her shoulder as the ship shook with the force of the wind. “Where’s Big Red?”

“Can’t say for sure. He’s not here, anyway.” She hadn’t allowed herself to think what might have happened to her brother. Locked in another storeroom, probably aft of this one, she told herself. They’d probably been separated to render them more manageable. Alive, though. She wouldn’t consider the alternative.

She moved back over to the door and stood with her ear pressed against the wood, listening. All she could hear was the howl of the wind, the singing of the draws, and the rattle of something not properly tied down. She sat with her back to the wall and pulled off her boot. Inside the heel, tucked into the leather, was a metal hook.

“I see they didn’t get quite everything,” Hawk chuckled, coming over to stand next to her.

She pulled on her boot and stood up. “Did they miss anything you were carrying?” she asked.

He reached under his left arm, found a small opening in the seam of his stiff leather vest, and removed a long, slender blade. “Could be.” He grinned. “Enough to get us close to some real weapons, if we’re lucky.”

“We’re Rovers, Hawk,” she said, bending to the lock in the door. “We make our own luck.”

Kneeling with one leg braced against the door, she inserted the pick into the lock and began to work it around. The lock was new and its workings easily tapped. It gave in less than a minute, the latch snapping open as she pulled down on the handle, the door giving way. She cracked it and looked out into the passageway. Shadows cast by oil lamps and ropes hung from pegs in the walls flickered and danced with the rolling of the ship. At the passageway’s forward end, a bulky form braced against the shipwalls and stared up the ladder at the hatchway.

Rue Meridian ducked back inside the storeroom and eased the door closed again. “One guard, a big guy. I can’t tell who or what he is. We have to get past him, though. Do you want to handle him or shall I?”

Furl Hawken tightened his grip on the knife. “I’ll deal with him, Little Red. You get to the others.”

They stared at each other in the dim light, breathing quickly, faces flushed and anxious. “Be careful, Hawk,” she told him.

They went out the door on cat’s paws, sliding silently into the shadowed hallway. Furl Hawken glanced back at her, then started toward the guard. The Jerle Shannara continued to shake and sway in the grip of the storm, the wind howling so fiercely that the guard seemed unable to think of anything else. A crash jarred the decking, something falling from a height, a loosened spar probably. The guard stared upward, frozen in place. Rue Meridian glanced at the doors of the storerooms closest, two only. The smaller held their water and ale in large casks. There was no extra room for prisoners in there. The other contained foodstuffs. That was a possibility, but the larger holds lay farther aft.