Antrax by Terry Brooks Page A

Bek. He’d take her with him. Which might explain why the Mwellrets could track him. Without her, I’m not sure they could. Bek is good at concealing his trail.”
    Tamis nodded, her gaze steady and considering. “I say we go after them. What do you say, Highlander?”
    “We go after them,” he said at once.
    She looked at Panax. The Dwarf shrugged. “Doesn’t make any sense to go the other way. The
Jerle Shannara’
s gone off to the coast. Whoever’s left that matters is back in those ruins. I don’t want to leave them to the rets and the witch.”
    Quentin had forgotten about the Ilse Witch. If there wereMwellrets ashore,
Black Moclips
had found its way through the pillars of ice and into the bay. That meant the Ilse Witch was somewhere close at hand. He realized all at once how dangerous going back toward the ruins would be. They were tired and worn, and they had been fighting and running for hours. It wouldn’t take much for them to make a mistake, and it wouldn’t take much of a mistake to finish them.
    But he was not going to leave Bek. He had already made up his mind about that.
    Kian and Wye were speaking with Tamis. They wanted to go back into the ruins. They wanted a chance to find Ard Patrinell and the others. They knew that would be dangerous, but they agreed with her. If anyone was still alive back there, they wanted to lend what help they could.
    While the Elves conferred, Panax moved over to stand next to Quentin. “I hope you’re up to saving all of us again,” he said. “Because you might have to.”
    He smiled tightly as he said it, but there was no humor in his voice.

S EVEN
    A hren Elessedil crouched in the darkest corner of an abandoned warehouse well beyond the perimeter of the deadly trap from which he had escaped, and tried to think what he should do. The warehouse was a cavernous shelter with holes in three of its four walls. It had a roof that was mostly intact, ceiling-high doors on two sides that had slid back on rollers and rusted in place, and barely more space than debris. He had been there for a very long time, pressed so tightly against the walls that he’d begun to feel as if he were a part of them. He had been there long enough to memorize every feature, to plan for every contingency, and to rethink every painful detail of what had brought him to that spot. Outside, the sun had risen to cast its light across the ravaged city in a broad sweep that chased the night’s shadows back into the surrounding woods. The sounds of death and dying had long since vanished, the battle cries, the clash of weapons against armor, and the desperate gasps and moans of human life leaking away. He watched and listened for the faintest hint of any of them, but there was only silence.
    It was time for him to get out of there, to stand up and walkaway—or run if he must—while the chance was there. He had to do something besides cower in his corner and relive in his mind the horrific memories of what he had been through.
    But he could not make himself move. He could not make himself do anything but try to disappear into the metal and stone.
    To say that he was frightened would be a gross understatement. He was frightened in a way he had never thought possible. He was frightened into near catatonia. He was so frightened that he had shamed himself beyond recognition of whom and what he had always believed himself to be, and probably beyond all redemption.
    He closed his eyes against what he was feeling and thought back once more to what had happened, searching for a clue that would help him to better understand. He saw his friends and companions spread out across the maze of walls and partitions of that seemingly empty square—his group on the right, Quentin Leah’s on the left, and Bek’s in the center. Elven Hunters warded them all, and there seemed no reason to think they could not manage against whatever might confront them. Ahead, Walker crept deeper into the maze. The lowering sun cast