Free Tanequil by Terry Brooks Page B

he depended on her to be there for him, too. He might be only a boy and she even younger than Khyber, but that didn’t change the truth of things.
    They would need to be strong for each other if they were to keep each other safe.
    He closed the door softly behind him as he went out.

  F IVE  
    The day’s heat still clung to the foothills below the Ravenshorn, sultry and thick in the waning of the afternoon light, when Rue Meridian said in a surprised voice, “That looks like an airship coming toward us.”
    Bek Ohmsford turned and caught sight of the black dot out on the western horizon, backlit by the deep glow of the setting sun. Even though he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, he took her at her word. Her eyes had always been better than his.
    He glanced at her admiringly. He couldn’t help himself. He still loved her as much now as he had when he had met her some twenty years earlier. He had been just an impressionable boy back then, and she, older by several years and a good deal of life experience, a woman. Circumstances and events had contrived to make falling in love the inevitable result of their meeting, and all these years later that surprised him still.
    She remained strong and beautiful, undiminished in any way by time’s passing, a rare and impossibly wondrous treasure. Blessed with dark red hair and bright green eyes, a tall rangy body, and a personality that was famously mercurial, she constantly surprised him with her contradictions. Born a Rover girl, she had flown airships with her brother, fought on the Prekkendorran, journeyed to the then unknown continent of Parkasia, and returned to marry and stay with a man whose world was so different from hers that he could not begin to measure the gap between them. She might have chosen another way, something closer to the life she had abandoned for him, but she had not done so, nor voiced a moment’s regret. As wild and free as her life had been, it seemed impossible to him that she had given it up, but she had done so in a heartbeat.
    Together, they had settled in Patch Run and started their airship exploration business. They had wanted a son, and one had been born to them within the first year. Penderrin to her, Pen to him, Little Red to his footloose Rover uncle, Redden Alt Mer, he was everything they had hoped for. Having Pen in her life changed Rue noticeably, and all for the good. She became more grounded and settled. She found greater pleasure in her home and its comforts. Always ready to sail away, she nevertheless wanted time with her baby, her son, to prepare him to face the larger world. She taught him, played with him, and loved him better than anyone or anything but Bek. As a consequence, Bek loved her better, as well.
    She caught him looking at her and smiled. “I love you, too,” she said.
    Bound to each other initially by the experiences they had shared during their journey aboard the
Jerle Shannara,
they discovered that they also shared an important similarity in their otherwise disparate backgrounds: Both had lost their parents young. Bek had been raised by Coran and Liria Leah, Quentin’s parents, and Rue by her brother. It was their mutual decision that Pen would know his parents better than they had known theirs. From the beginning it was their intention that he should share in all aspects of their life together, including their business. He became a part of it early, learning to fly airships, to maintain and repair them, to understand their components and the functions they served. Pen was a quick study, and it was no stretch for him to master the intricacies of navigation and aerodynamics. By the time he was twelve, he was already designing airships as a hobby. By the time he was fourteen, he had built his first vessel.
    He wanted to fly with them on their trips, of course, but he was not yet ready for that. It was a source of great disappointment to him. But he was young, and