Tanequil by Terry Brooks Read Free Book Online Page B

you should be the one who throws the tar, don’t you?”
    â€œTagwen has a point,” Khyber agreed quickly. “Your plan won’t work.”
    Pen glowered at her. “Why not? What’s wrong with it?”
    The Elven girl held his angry gaze. “In the first place, we have already established that you are the one individual who is indispensable to the success of the search for the Ard Rhys. So you can’t be put at risk. In the second place, you are the only one who can fly the airship. So you have to get aboard if we’re to fly out of here. In the third place, we still don’t know what this thing is. We don’t know if it’s human or not. We don’t know if it has the use of magic. That’s too many variables for you to deal with. I’m the one who has the Elfstones. I also have a modicum of magic I can call upon if I need to. I’m faster than you are on foot. I’m expendable. I have to be the one who confronts it.”
    â€œIf you miss,” Tagwen said darkly, “you had better be fast indeed.”
    â€œAll the more reason why you and Pen have to be moving toward the
Skatelow
the moment it enters the rocks. You have to be airborne before it can recover and decide it has been tricked, whatever the result of my efforts. If it gets back through that maze and out into the meadow before you board and cut the lines, we’re dead.”
    There was a long silence as they considered the chances of this happening. Pen shook his head. “What if it brings Cinnaminson into the rocks with it?”
    Khyber stared at him without answering. She didn’t need to tell him what he already knew.
    â€œI don’t like it,” Tagwen growled. “I don’t like any of it.”
    But the matter was decided.

  F OUR  
    Night descended across the rugged slopes of the Charnals like a silky black curtain pricked by a thousand silver needles. The clarity of the sky was stunning, a brilliant wash of light that gave visibility for miles from where Khyber Elessedil sat staring northward in the company of Penderrin and Tagwen. The purity of the mountain air was in sharp contrast to the murkiness of Anatcherae on the Lazareen or even to Syioned’s storm-washed isolation on the Innisbore. There was a hushed quality to the darkness, the sounds of the world left far below on the hilltops and grasslands, unable to rise so high or penetrate so deeply. Here, she felt soothed and comforted. Here, rebirth of the sort that the world always needed was possible.
    They had done what they could to prepare for the
Skatelow
’s appearance. They had built their fire, a bright flicker of orange just below where they sat hiding, feeding it sufficient wood so that it would burn for hours before it needed replenishing. They had placed the tar ball close enough to protect it from the cold so that it would stay sticky inside its leafy wrapping. They had built their straw men, scarecrows made of debris and covered with their cloaks. They had spent time working on the look of them, on the setting of positions, placing them just far enough away so as not to be immediately recognizable for what they really were, but close enough to suggest the possibility of sleeping travelers. They had done this before the sun had disappeared into the hills west, before twilight faded and darkness arrived. They had studied all the possible routes of approach and escape, marked well the path from where they hid to where the fire burned and from where they hid to where the tree line would lead them back to the meadow.
    They were as ready, she supposed, as they were ever going to be. She wished they could do more, but they had done all they could think to do and would have to be content with that.
    The plan was unchanged save for one aspect. Instead of hiding down in the rocks ahead of time, she was waiting with Pen and Tagwen until the
Skatelow
made her approach. That way she would know better