before.
«Do we know where her brother can be found?» Iridia nodded. «A way station called Patch Run.» Shadea took her arm and smiled. «Let's send someone to tell him ourselves.»
SEVEN
Penderrin Ohmsford came out of his crouch in the forward compartment of the cat–28's starboard pontoon, rocked back on his heels, and surveyed his handiwork. He had just finished resplicing both sets of radian draws off the single mast to stacked sets of parse tubes mounted fore and aft on both pontoons, giving the small sailing vessel almost double the power of anything flying in her class. The stacked tubes were his own design, conceived late one night as he lay thinking about what he might do to make her faster. He was always thinking about ways to improve her, his passion for airships and flying easily a match for that of the other members of his family, and when your uncle was Redden Alt Mer, that was saying something.
«He had built the cat two years earlier at the beginning of his apprenticeship with his father. It was the first major project he had undertaken on his own. It was a rite–of–passage experience that demonstrated he should no longer be considered a boy, although he was still only in his teens. The vessel he chose to construct was a twenty–eight–foot catamaran—thus the cat–28 designation.
It was a racing vessel, not a fighting ship, its decking mostly sloped and its gunwales low, its pontoons only slightly curved and lacking rams, and its sleeping compartment set into the decking right below the pilot box and barely large enough to lie down in. Its single mast was rigged with a mainsail and a jib, and all of its spares and gear were stored in holds in the pontoons.
It was a fast ship to begin with, but Penderrin was not the sort to take something as it was and leave it alone. Even with his parents' larger airships, the ones outfitted for long–term expeditions and rough weather, he was always experimenting with ways to make them better. He had been living around airships all his life, and working on them had become second nature. He wished his parents would let him fly more, would give him a chance at the larger ships, especially Swift Sure, their favorite, the one they were on now, somewhere out in the Wolfsktaag Mountains. But like all parents, they seemed convinced that it was better to bring him along slowly and to make certain he was old enough before he was allowed to do the things he had learned to do years earlier.
His full name was Penderrin, but everyone called him Pen except for his mother, who insisted on calling him Penderrin because it was the name she had chosen and she liked the sound of it. And his uncle, who called him Little Red, for reasons that had something to do with his mother and their early years together. Pen's long hair was a dusky auburn, a mix between his mother's flaming red tresses and his father's dark ones, so he supposed Little Red was an apt nickname, even if it irritated him to be called something his mother was once called. But he liked his uncle, who his mother had told him to call Big Red, so he was willing to put up with a few things he wouldn't have tolerated otherwise. At least his uncle let him do some of the things his parents wouldn't, including piloting the big airships that flew the Blue Divide. His blue eyes brightened. In another couple of months, he would get a chance to visit Big Red in the coastal town of March Brume and fly with him again. It was something he was looking forward to.
He stood up and surveyed the cat–28 one more time, making sure everything was as it should be. For now, he would have to satisfy himself with flying his single–mast, small to be sure, but quick and sturdy, and best of all, his. He would test her out in the morning to make certain the splicings were done properly and the controls for feeding the ambient light down through the radian draws operating as they should. It was tricky business, splitting off draws to channel energy to more than one parse tube, but he had mastered the art sufficiently that he felt confident this latest effort would work.
He glanced at the late afternoon sky, noting that the heavy mist lying over the Rainbow Lake had thickened with the approach of storm clouds out of the north. The sun had disappeared entirely, not even visible as the hazy ball it had been earlier. Nightfall was approaching and the light was failing fast. There would be no sunset that day. If the storm didn't blow through that night, visibility would be down to nothing by morning and he would have to find something to do besides test out his splicing. «Rat droppings,' he muttered. He didn't like waiting for anything. He finished putting his tools back into their box and jumped down off the cat–28. It was in dry dock, tethered close to the ground and out of the water until he was ready to take her out for her test run. If a storm was coming, he had to make ready for it, although the cat was secure enough and Steady Right, the other big expedition airship, was anchored in a sheltered part of the cove. With his parents gone east, he was responsible for taking care of the airships and equipment until they returned, which wasn't likely to happen for at least another two months. It was all familiar territory to him, though. He had looked after things since he was twelve, and he knew what was needed in almost any situation. What he missed when his parents were away was being out there with them. It reminded him that they still thought of him as a boy.
He carried the toolbox into the work shed and shut and barred the double doors. He was average in size and appearance, neither big nor small, his most striking feature his long auburn hair, which he kept tied back with brightly colored scarves in the Rover fashion. But the commonness of his physical makeup hid an extraordinary determination and an insatiable curiosity. Pen Ohmsford made it a point to find out about things that others simply accepted or ignored and then to learn everything he could and not forget it. Knowledge was power in any world, whether you were fifteen or fifty. The more he knew, the more he could accomplish, and Pen was heavily committed to accomplishing something important.
In his family, you almost had to be—especially if you didn't have the wishsong to fall back on.
He regretted its absence sometimes, but his regret was always momentary. After all, his mother didn't have any magic either; she was beautiful and talented enough that it probably didn't matter. His father rarely used his magic, though he had been born with it and been forced to rely on it extensively before Pen was born.
But his aunt? Well, his aunt, of course, was the Ard Rhys, Grianne Ohmsford, whose use of magic was legendary and who had used it almost every day of her life since the time she had become the Ilse Witch. She was so closely defined by her magic that the two were virtually inseparable.
He knew the stories. All of them. His parents weren't the sort to try to hide secrets about themselves or anyone else in the family, so they talked to him freely about his aunt. He knew what she had been and why. He understood the anger and antipathy her name invoked in many quarters. His uncle Redden would barely give her the time of day, although he had grudgingly admitted once to Pen that if not for her, the remnants of the crew of the Jerle Shannara, including himself and Pen's parents, would never have returned alive. His parents were more charitable, if cautious. His father, in particular, clearly loved his sister and thought her misunderstood. But they had chosen different paths in life, and he rarely saw her.
Pen had seen her only twice, most recently when she had come on his birthday to visit the family. Cool and aloof, she had nevertheless taken time to fly with him aboard her airship and talk about his life at Patch Run. She had made a point of asking if he sensed any growth of the wishsong's magic inside his body, but had not seemed disappointed when he told her he didn't. Her own magic was never in evidence. Other people talked about it, but not her. She seemed to regard it as a condition that was best left undiscussed. Pen had respected her wishes, and even now he did not think it was a subject he would talk to her about, ever, unless she brought it up first.
Still, magic's presence marked the history of the Ohmsford family, all the way back to the time of Wil Ohmsford, so it was hard to ignore, whether you had the use of it or not. Pen knew that it tended to skip whole generations of Ohmsfords, so it was not as if he was the first not to possess it. His father said it was entirely possible that it was thinning out in the bloodline with the passage of the years and the increase in the number of generations of Ohmsfords who had inherited it. It might be that it was fading away altogether. His mother said it didn't matter, that there were more important attributes to possess than the use of magic. Pen, she insisted, was the better for not having to deal with its demands and was exactly who he was meant to be.
Lots of talk and reasoning had been given over to the subject, and all of it was meant to make Pen feel better, which mostly he did. He wasn't the sort to worry about what he didn't have.
Except that he didn't have his parents' blessing to go with them on their expeditions yet, and he was getting impatient at being left home in the manner of the family dog.
He walked down to the cove and did a quick check of Steady Right, tightening the anchor ropes and cinch
