Their best bet was to either get him to a healing center in the Four Lands or to find a local Healer. The former was out of the question. There simply wasn’t time. As for the latter, the Rindge offered the only possibility of help. Panax had gone to see what they could do, but had returned empty-handed. When a Rindge was in Quentin’s condition, his people could do no more for him than the company of the Jerle Shannara could for Quentin.
“Is he alone?” Rue asked Bek.
He shook his head. “Panax is watching him.”
“Why don’t you try to sleep for a few hours? There isn’t anything more you can do.”
“I can be with him. I can be there for him. I’ll go back down in just a moment.”
“Panax will look after him.”
“Panax isn’t the one he counts on.”
She didn’t reply to that. She just stood there beside him, keeping him company, staring up at the stars. The Crake was a sea of impenetrable black within the cup of the mountains, silent and stripped of definition. Bek took a moment to look down at it, chilled by doing so, the memories of the afternoon still raw and terrible, endlessly repeating in his mind. He couldn’t get past them, not even now when he was safely away from their cause.
“You’re exhausted,” she said finally.
He nodded in agreement.
“You have to sleep, Bek.”
“I left his sword down there.” He pointed toward the valley.
“What?”
“His sword. I was so busy trying to get him out that I forgot about it entirely. I just left it behind.”
She nodded. “It won’t go anywhere. We can get it back tomorrow, when it’s light.”
“I’ll get it back,” he insisted. “I’m the one who left it. It’s my responsibility.”
He pictured it lying in the earth by the dead Graak, its smooth surface covered with blood and dirt. Had it been broken by the weight of the monster rolling over it, broken as Quentin was? He hadn’t noticed, hadn’t even glanced at it. A talisman of such power, and he hadn’t even thought about it. He’d just thought about Quentin, and he’d done that too late for it to matter.
“Why don’t you stop being so hard on yourself?” she asked quietly. “Why don’t you ease up a bit?”
“Because he’s dying,” he said fiercely, angrily. “Quentin’s dying, and it’s my fault.”
She looked at him. “Your fault?”
“If I hadn’t insisted on going down there with him, if I hadn’t been so stubborn about this whole business, then maybe—”
“Bek, stop it!” she snapped at him. He looked over at her, surprised by the rebuke. Her hand tightened on his. “It doesn’t help anything for you to talk like that. It happened, and no one’s to blame for it. Everyone did the best they could in a dangerous situation. That’s all anyone can ask. That’s all anyone can expect. Let it alone.”
The words stung, but no more so than the look he saw in her eyes. She held his gaze, refusing to let him turn away. “Losing people we love, friends and even family, is a consequence of going on journeys like this one. Don’t you understand that? Didn’t you understand it when you agreed to come? Is this suddenly a surprise? Did you think that nothing could happen to Quentin? Or to you?”
He shook his head in confusion, cowed. “I don’t know. I guess maybe not.”
She exhaled sharply and her tone of voice softened. “It wasn’t your fault. Not any more so than it was my brother’s or Panax’s or Walker’s or whoever’s. It was just something that happened, a price exacted in consequence of a risk taken.”
The consequence of a risk. As simple as that. You took a risk, and the person you were closest to paid the price. He began to cry, all the pent-up frustration and guilt and sadness releasing at once. He couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want to break down in front of her—didn’t want her to see that—but it happened before he could find a way to stop it.
She pulled him against her, enfolding him like an injured child. Her arms came about him and she rocked him gently, cooing soft words, stroking his back with her hand. The hard wooden rods of the splint on her left forearm were digging into his back.
“Oh, Bek. It’s all right. You can cry with me. No one will see. Let me hold you until.” She pressed him into the softness of her body. “Poor Bek. So much responsibility all at once. So much hurt. It isn’t fair, is it?”
He heard some of what she said, but comfort came not from the words themselves but from the sound of her voice and the feel of her arms wrapped about him. Everything released, and she was there to absorb it, to take it into herself and away from him.
“Just hold on to me, Bek. Just let me take care of you. Everything will be all right.”
She had said he owed it to her to share the losses she had suffered. Losses as great as his own. Furl Hawken. Her Rover companions. He was reminded of it suddenly and wanted to give back something of the comfort she was giving to him.
He recovered his composure, and his arms went around her. “Rue, I’m sorry . . .”
“No,” she said, putting her fingers over his mouth, stopping him from saying anything more. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want you to talk.”
She replaced her fingers with her mouth and kissed him. She didn’t kiss him softly or gently, but with urgency and passion. He couldn’t mistake what was happening or what it meant, and he didn’t want to. It took him only a moment, and then he was returning her kiss. When he did, he forgot everything but the heat she aroused in him. Kissing her was wild and impossible. It made him worry that something was wrong, but he couldn’t decide what it was because everything felt right. She ran her hands all over him, pushing him up against the ship’s railing until he was pinned there, fastening her mouth on his with such hunger that he could scarcely breathe.
When she broke away finally, he wasn’t sure who was the most surprised. From the look on her face she was, but he knew what he was feeling inside. They stared at each other in a kind of awed silence, and then she laughed—a low, sudden growl that brought such radiance to her face that he was surprised all over again.
“That was unexpected,” she said.
He couldn’t speak.
“I want to do it some more. I want to do it a lot.”
He grinned in spite of himself, in spite of everything. “Me, too.”
“Soon, Bek.”
“All right.”
“I think I love you,” she said. She laughed again. “There, I said it. What do you think of that?”
She reached out with her good arm and touched his lips with her fingers, then turned and walked away.
When he went inside the ship to the Captain’s quarters to see about Quentin, he was still in shock from his encounter with Rue. Panax must have seen something in his face when Bek entered the room, because he immediately asked, “Are you all right?”
Bek nodded. He was not all right, but he had no intention of talking about it just yet. It was too new to share, still so strange in his own mind that he needed time to get used to it. He needed time just to accept that it was true. Rue Meridian was in love with him. That’s what she had said. I think I love you. He tried the words out in his mind, and they sounded so ridiculous that he almost laughed aloud.
On the other hand, the way she had kissed him was real enough, and he wasn’t going to forget how that felt anytime soon.