For three more days, Walker searched. He took the same members of the ship’s company with him each time, splitting them up into different groups, hoping that some new combination would see what the others had missed. From dawn until dusk, they crisscrossed the ruins. Again and again, they found themselves traveling in circles. Over and over, they found themselves starting their search inside and ending up outside. Nothing new was uncovered. No one caught even a glimpse of the key.
On the fifth night, weary and discouraged, he was forced to admit to himself, if to no one else, that he was getting nowhere. He had reached a point where he felt failure’s grip tightening on his hopes. His patience was exhausted and his confidence was beginning to erode. Something about this business was wearing at him in a very unpleasant and subtle way.
While the other members of the company drifted off to sleep, he stood at the bow of the ship for a long time trying to decide what he should do. He was missing something. The key was there; he could feel it. Why was it so difficult for him to pinpoint its location? Why was it so hard to discover how it had been concealed? If no magic was protecting it and no guardian was evident, how could it continue to elude him?
Another approach was needed. Something new must be tried. Perhaps someone should go into the castle at night. Perhaps the darkness would change the way things looked.
It was time to call on Truls Rohk.
Far astern of the Jerle Shannara, south and east of the island and well out of sight below the horizon, Black Moclips hung silently above the water, anchored in place for the night. Mwellret sentries prowled across her sleek, armored decking, their spidery forms hooded and cloaked as they drifted through the shadows. The Federation crew was belowdecks in the sleeping quarters, all save for the helmsman, a whip-thin veteran corded with muscle and wrapped in his disdain and repulsion for the lizardlike creatures his ship was forced to carry.
The Ilse Witch shared his feelings. The Mwellrets were loathsome and dangerous, but there was nothing she could do about them. The presence of the Morgawr’s minions was the price she had been forced to pay in order to pursue her search for the map’s promised magic. Had she been free to do so, she would have turned them all to chum and fed them to the big fish.
Not that she was much better regarded than they were by Commander Aden Kett and his crew. The Federation soldiers disliked her almost as much; she was a shadowy presence who stayed aloof from them, who gave them no reasons for what she did, and who had on the very first day made a small example of one of their number who had disobeyed her. That she was apparently human was her only saving grace. That she commanded power beyond their understanding and had little regard for them beyond what they could do for her made her someone they went out of their way to avoid.
Which was as it should be, of course. Which was as it had always been.
Wrapped in her gray robes, she stood before the foremast and looked off into the night. She had been shadowing the Jerle Shannara and her company ever since the departure from Arborlon. Black Moclips was a formidable and efficient craft, and her Federation crew was as well trained and experienced as Sen Dunsidan had promised. Both had done what was needed to track the Elven airship. Not that there was ever any real danger they might lose contact with her. The Ilse Witch had seen to that.
But what was happening here? What was keeping the other ship at anchor for so long? For six days and nights she had waited for the Druid to secure the final key. Why had he failed to do so? Apparently the puzzle offered by this island was proving more difficult to solve than that of the previous two. Was this where Walker would fail? Was this as far as he would get without her help?
She sniffed in disdain at the thought. No, not him. Even crippled, he would not be so easily defeated. She might hate and despise him, but she knew him to be formidable and clever. He would solve the puzzle and continue on to the safehold they both journeyed to find. It would be settled between them there, and a lifetime of anger and hatred would be put to rest at last. It would happen as she had foreseen. He would not disappoint her.
Yet her uncertainty persisted, nagging and insidious. Perhaps she gave him too much credit. Did he realize yet the ways in which he was being manipulated in his quest? Had he reasoned out, as she had, the hidden purpose of the castaway and the map?
Her brow furrowed. She must assume so. She could not afford to assume otherwise. But it would be interesting to know. Her spy could tell her, perhaps. But the risk of compromise was too great to attempt any contact.
She walked forward to the ship’s bow and stood looking off into the dark for a time, then produced a small milky glass sphere from within her robes and held it up to the light. Softly, she sang to the sphere, and the milkiness faded and turned clear and captured within it an image of the Jerle Shannara, anchored above the grasslands running west from the ruined castle. She studied it carefully, searching for the Druid, but he was nowhere to be found. Elven Hunters kept watch fore and aft, and a burly Rover lounged at the helm. At the center of the ship, the strange case the Druid had brought aboard remained covered and warded by magic-enhanced chains.
What was hidden in it and behind those chains? What, that he must guard it so carefully?
“Elvess do not ssusspect our pressensse, Misstress,” a voice hissed at her elbow. “Killss them all while they ssleepss, perhapss?”
White-hot rage surged through her at the interruption. “If you come into my presence again without permission, Cree Bega, I will forget who sent you and why you are here and separate you from your skin.”
The Mwellret bowed in obsequious acknowledgment of his trespass. “Apologiess, Misstress. But we wasste our time and opportunitiess. Let uss kill them and be done with it!”
She hated Cree Bega. The Mwellret leader knew she would not harm him; the Morgawr had given him a personal guarantee of protection against her. She had been forced to swear to it in his presence. The memory made her want to retch. He was not afraid of her in any case. Although not completely immune, Mwellrets were resistant to the controlling powers of her magic, and Cree Bega more so than most. The combination of all this added to his insufferable arrogance toward and open disdain for her and made their alliance all but intolerable.
But she was the Ilse Witch, and she showed him nothing of her irritation. No one could penetrate her defenses unless she allowed it.
“They do our work for us, ret. We will let them continue until they are finished. Then you can kill as many as you like. Save one.”
“Knowss your claim upon the Druid, misstress,” he purred. “Givess the resst to me and mine. We will be ssatissfied. Little peopless, Elvess, belongss to uss.”
She passed her hand across the sphere. The image of the Jerle Shannara disappeared and the sphere went white again. She tucked it back inside her robes, all without glancing once at the creature hovering next to her. “Nothing belongs to you that I do not choose to give you. Remember that. Now get out of my sight.”
“Yess, Misstress,” he replied tonelessly, without a scintilla of respect or fear, and slid away into the shadows like oil over black metal.
She did not look to see that he had gone. She did not trouble herself. She was thinking that it did not matter what she had promised the Morgawr. When this matter was finished, so were these treacherous toads. All of them, her promise to the Morgawr notwithstanding. And Cree Bega would be the first.