Antrax

11

The hand that clamped on his shoulder and shook Bek from his slumber was rough and urgent. “Wake up!” Truls Rohk hissed in his ear. “She’s found us!”

Bek didn’t need to ask whom the shape-shifter was talking about. The Ilse Witch. His sister. His enemy. He lurched to his feet, still half-asleep. He blinked to get his bearings, to clear his head. He was only partially successful. He felt the other’s hand steady him, less compelling, almost gentle. “How close is she?” he managed.

“Close enough to hear you sneeze,” the other whispered, gesturing behind him into the dark.

It was still night, the sky a tapestry of stars against which thin strips of broken clouds floated like linen. The quarter-moon was a tipped crescent on the northern horizon. The woods about them were an impenetrable black. She was tracking them in the dark, Bek realized. How could she do that? Could she read the traces of their body heat and energy even at night? He supposed she could. There wasn’t much she couldn’t do with the magic of the wishsong to aid her. He had fallen asleep at sunset, certain they had lost her in the meadow, that they had left her far enough behind to ensure at least one good night’s sleep. So much for being certain.

“How could she find us so fast?” he whispered. He took a few deep breaths, shivering as a sudden gust of chill wind blew down off the mountains.

Truls Rohk’s face was unreadable within the shadows of his cowl. “Luck, I would guess. She shouldn’t have had any left after what we did to throw her off, but she’s resourceful enough that she makes her own. Start walking.”

Snatching up their few supplies, they departed their camp, heading inland once more, moving parallel to the base of the mountains. They made no effort to hide their passage out. If the Ilse Witch had tracked them that far, she would have no trouble discovering where they had spent the night. Bek was wondering if he had been saved by Truls Rohk’s instincts or by his foresight. Whichever it was, it gave Bek a renewed sense of dependence on him. Bek had slept, after all. If he had tried to flee alone from his sister, she would have had him already.

He shook his head. What would that mean for him, to be in her hands? When it finally happened, when she finally caught up to them, as he felt certain she must, what would transpire?

They slid down a steep hillside to a rocky flat and hurried across to a river. They waded in, moving upstream, crossing to the far side to make their way below the bank. The water was icy cold and swift, and Bek had to concentrate hard on keeping his feet planted solidly beneath him.

“Either she stumbled on our real trail and is relying still on her magic to track us or she’s found an ally who can read sign.” The shape-shifter’s voice was low and menacing, a whisper of dark anger above the soft gurgle of the water. His cloaked form seemed to glide through the shallows, his movements steady and deliberate against the current. “We’ll have to find out which.”

They continued upstream for a mile or so, then climbed out on a rocky flat on the far shore and worked their way inland for a time. East, the sky was beginning to brighten with a silver glow as sunrise neared. Bek found himself thinking of sunrise in the Highlands of Leah, of hunts with Quentin in the early dawn, of how much alike it felt and yet how different, too. Awake now, his mind picked its way nimbly through the debris of his life. He wasn’t afraid anymore, not in the way he had been afraid in the ruins of Castledown when the fire threads and creepers had attacked them. But he was feeling lost; he was feeling disconnected. Everything he knew from his past life had been stripped away from him—his home, his family, and his land. There was nothing left of any of it, and the farther he walked, the more unlikely it seemed that he would ever have any of it back.

It was as if he were walking out of himself, as if he were shedding his skin.

He hitched up the Sword of Shannara across his back and tried to find comfort in its solid, dependable presence, but could not.

Truls Rohk took him back down to the river and into the cold waters once more. The sun was up, the silver light brightened to gold, the first tinges of blue sky visible. The sound of the rushing water enveloped him, and he turned his attention to keeping upright and moving ahead. They crossed the channel a second time, back to where they were close to the other bank, then began wading upriver. The cold water numbed Bek’s legs, and after a time he could barely feel the feet in his boots. He kept on, forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other and think of better times, because there was nothing else he could do.

When they were several miles farther upstream, at a bend in the river where the limbs of towering cedars and hickory overhung the water, Truls Rohk stopped. He reached within his cloak and produced a length of thin rope and an odd grappling hook on which the arms were collapsed against the base, but which unfolded and locked in place when he released the wire that held them down. Doubling the rope through an eye at the base of the hook, he coiled it carefully about his left forearm. Motioning for Bek to stay put, he crossed the river, stepped ashore momentarily, took several steps into the trees, then carefully backed up, retracing his own footprints, reentered the water, and moved ahead fifty yards onto a rise barely concealed by the swift waters. Checking to make certain that the boy was where he had left him, he began to swing the grappling hook overhead, playing out the rope gradually to widen the arc. Then he released the hook with a heave and sent it soaring high into the tree limbs overhead. The grappling hook caught and held. He tugged at it experimentally, then motioned for Bek to join him.

“Climb onto my back, put your arms about my neck, and hold on.”

Bek did so, feeling the ridged muscles beneath him, the ropes of sinew and gristle that crisscrossed the other’s shoulders and gave him the feel of an animal. The boy tried not to think of that. Clasping his right hand about his left wrist, he took firm hold.

Truls Rohk lunged up the rope and began climbing hand over hand as they swung out across the river. Skimming over the chill waters, they drew up their legs as they bottomed out at the nadir of their arc before rising again to the near shore where the river hooked left. Just above the bank, deep within the woods, Truls Rohk loosened his grip just enough to slide back to the ground. Still holding on to the ends of the rope, he waited for Bek to climb off his back, then ran the rope out through the eye until it dropped free of the hook, coiled it up once more, and tucked it away beneath his robes.

“That should give her something to puzzle out,” the shape-shifter growled softly. “If we’re lucky, she’ll think we went ashore on the far bank and track us that way.”

They moved inland again, away from the river and back toward the mountains, angling over rocky ground and dry creek beds, avoiding soft earth that would leave footprints, keeping clear of scrub where broken twigs would signal their passing. The sun was fully up, and it warmed their chilled bodies and dried their clothes. Truls Rohk slouched ahead like a great beast, all size and bulk, enigmatic and unknowable within his robes and hood. Bek, trailing after, found himself wondering if the shape-shifter ever exposed himself to the light. In the time they’d been together since meeting in the Wolfsktaag, he hadn’t done so once. That didn’t trouble Bek as it had at first, but he thought about what it would be like always to be wrapped up in cloth and never to be comfortable with showing anyone what you looked like. He wondered anew about the connection between them, a link strong enough to make the shape-shifter willing to accept his role as Bek’s protector, to come on the journey when he could just as well have refused.

They walked all day, moving out of the lowlands and into the mountains, climbing the lower slopes to a forested promontory where Bek could see the whole of the land stretching back to the river from which they had come. Truls Rohk stopped there, took a quick moment to look around, then guided Bek into the trees.

“It’s all well and good to choose a place where you can see anyone following,” he pointed out. “But if you can see them, they can probably see you, as well. Best not to chance it. There’s better ways. Once it’s dark, I’ll try one of them.”

They found a dry grassy space within a grouping of cedar and spruce and sat themselves down to eat and drink. They had water for several days more, and in the mountains replacing what they consumed would not be hard. But their food was almost gone. Tomorrow, they would have to forage. And the day after that. And so on, which made Bek wonder anew how much farther in they were going.

“We might find help in these mountains,” his companion ventured after a while, almost as if reading the boy’s mind. Bek looked at him. “Shape-shifters live in these hills. I sense their presence. They don’t know me or of my history. They might think differently about halflings than those in the Wolfsktaag. They might be willing to give us help.”

The words were soft and contemplative, almost a prayer. It surprised Bek. “How will you make contact with them?”

The other shrugged. “I won’t have to. They’ll come to us, if we continue on. We’re in their country now. They’ll know what I am and come to find out what I want.” He shook his head. “The trouble is, as a rule, shape-shifters won’t interfere in the lives of others, even their own kind, unless they have a reason to do so. We have to give them one if we want their help.”

Bek thought about it a moment. “Can I ask you something?”

The shadowed cowl shifted slightly to face him, the opening dark and empty-looking. “What would you ask of me, Bek Ohmsford, that you haven’t asked already?”

It was said almost in challenge. Bek adjusted the Sword of Shannara where it lay at his side on the grass, then pushed back his unruly mop of dark hair. “You said shape-shifters don’t interfere in the lives of others without a reason. If that’s so, why did you choose to become involved in mine?”

There was a long silence as the other studied him from out of the blackness of the cowl. Bek shifted uncomfortably. “I know you said you felt there was a link between us, through our magic—”

“You and I, we’re alike, boy,” Truls Rohk interrupted, ignoring the rest of what Bek was trying to say. “I see myself in you as a boy, struggling to come to terms with who I was, with finding out I was different from others.”

“But that’s not it, is it? That’s not the reason.”

Truls Rohk seemed to shimmer, his blackness turning liquid, as if he might simply fade away without answering anything, as if he might disappear and never come back. But the movement steadied, and the big man went still.

“I saved your life,” he said. “When you save another’s life, you become responsible for it. I learned that a long time ago. I believe it to be so.”

He made a quick, dismissive gesture. “But it’s much more complicated. Games-playing, of another sort. I have no one in my own life—no home, no people, no place that belongs to me. I have no real purpose. My future is a blank. It is a need for direction that draws me to the Druid. For a time, he gives me one. Each message he sends is an invitation to be a part of something. Each message gives me a chance to discover something about myself. I don’t do much of that in the Wolfsktaag. There’s not really much left of me to discover there.

“You, boy—you interest me because you offer answers to the questions I’ve asked myself. I learn from you. But I can teach you, as well—how to live as an outsider, how to survive who and what you are, how to endure the magic that will always be part of you. I’m curious to see how well you learn. Curiosity is all I have, and I try to satisfy it whenever I can.”

“You’ve taught me more than I could ever hope to teach you,” Bek ventured. “I don’t see that I can do much for you.”

For just an instant, the shape-shifter went absolutely still. Then he made a low growling sound. “Don’t be so sure of that. It’s early yet. If you live long enough, you might surprise yourself.”

Bek let that pass. Truls Rohk was giving him just enough to keep him happy, but not everything. There was something more that he wasn’t revealing, some important piece of information he was keeping to himself. It was probably true that he felt a connection to Bek, that he felt it in part because of the magic and in part because he had saved the boy’s life. It was also probably true that he had come on the voyage because it gave him purpose and insight and satisfied his need to be involved with something. Living alone in the Wolfsktaag might well be too confining, too restrictive. But that was still only part of what had brought him along, and the greater part, the larger truth, lay somewhere else in his bag of secrets.

“Why don’t you ever take off your cloak?” Bek asked suddenly, impulsively.

He did it without thinking, but knowing even so that it would generate a strong response. It did. He could feel a change in the other, instantly, a chilling withdrawal that whispered of anger and frustration and sadness, as well, but he did not back off.

“Why don’t you ever show me your face?” he pressed.

Truls Rohk was silent for a moment. Bek could hear him breathing, rough and agitated within his enveloping blackness. “You don’t want to see me the way I really am, boy. You don’t want to see me without this cloak.”

Bek shook his head. “Maybe I do. What’s wrong with seeing who you really are? If we’re connected as you say, linked by our sharing of magic, then you shouldn’t need to hide how you look.”

“Hssst! What would you know of my needs? We’ve barely met, you and I. You think you’re ready for what’s hidden under these robes and within this cowl, but you aren’t. You know nothing of what I am. There isn’t another like me out there, a halfling—a shape-shifter and a human both. There’s no mold for what I am. Maybe I don’t even know what that is. Have you thought of that? We change at will, shape-shifters do, becoming what we need to be. What does that mean, when half of you is human? What happens when part of you is unchangeable and part as thin as air? Think on that before you ask me again to show you how I look!”

Then he stood up. “Enough of this. I’ve been thinking about our situation. The witch still tracks us, your sister. Even if she was thrown off the scent at the river, she will find us again. I want to know if she’s done so yet and what help she’s found. If she’s close, I need to find a way to slow her down. I’ll backtrack down the mountain to see if she’s picked up our trail.”

He paused. “You sleep while I’m gone, boy. Look for me in your dreams. Or in your nightmares, better yet. Maybe you’ll see who I really am there.”

He turned and was gone, fading into the night. Bek stared after him. He did not move again for a long time.

The Ilse Witch finished chewing on the vegetable root she had harvested for her dinner and stared out into the growing darkness. She would set out again soon, tracking the boy and the shape-shifter once more, following them into the mountains. They were clever and resourceful—or at least the shape-shifter was—and she could not afford to let them get too far ahead of her. She must press hard to keep them within reach. She might even catch up to them that night if they stopped to rest. They would have to, wouldn’t they? The boy did not possess the stamina to go without rest, even if the shape-shifter did. He would have to sleep sometime. If she was quick enough, she would catch them unprepared.

She finished what she wanted of the root and threw the rest away. She would have them by now if they hadn’t been working so hard to throw her off. That was clever, back by the river, setting up a false trail on one bank and swinging back across to the other. It had confused the caull, had sent it running up and down the wrong bank without purpose, had caused it to go half-mad with rage. The caull was skilled and possessed exceptional instincts, but it lacked insight. She was the one who spied the hook still caught in the upper branches of that hickory and sent the caull back across the river to search out the trail anew. By that time she had given back to her quarry the time they had lost to her during the night. Tonight she must make it up all over again. Easy enough though, if the boy slept.

The bushes parted, and the caull reappeared. She had sent it out to find something to eat, and from the smear of blood on its muzzle, it had been successful. It moved to within a dozen yards of her and then sat back on its haunches, watching. It was a dangerous beast. She could not afford to turn her back on it; it hated her for what she had done to it and would kill her if it got the chance. It was obedient because it had no choice; her magic kept it in line. But if she loosed its leash, even a little …

She studied it a moment, then looked away, dismissing it. It was important to show she was not afraid of or even particularly interested in it beyond its intended usefulness. She had created it for a purpose, and it was there to serve that purpose and nothing more. What it thought she would do with it when the boy was found, she had no idea. Probably it could not think that far ahead, which was just as well.

She found herself wondering, instead, what she would do with the boy. It was easy enough to decide what would become of the caull and the shape-shifter, but the boy was another matter. She hadn’t followed him all that way just to put an end to him; he was an important link to understanding the Druid, a potential window into his mind. Before the Druid died, she would know everything there was to know about him. The boy was a device to unsettle and confuse her, but he might prove to be a resource, as well. There were things about him that needed understanding—how he could have magic so like her own, how he could know so much about her that felt true, how he could seem so real. She knew there were explanations for all of it, but the explanations were not enough as they stood. She would have the whole truth before she was finished with him. She would strip him bare before she tossed him away.

She pictured his face, recalled his voice. She could still hear him telling her he was her brother, he was Bek, survived somehow from the burning of her home and the killing of her family. She couldn’t accept that, of course. The Druid had wanted only her, and when she had told the Morgawr how she had hidden her brother, he had been certain that no one else was left alive in the ashes of her home.

Dark shadows gathered at the back of her thoughts, then crowded to the fore in warning. Unless he was lying. Unless the Morgawr had concealed the truth about Bek. But there could be no reason for that, when Bek might have proved useful to him in the same way she had. No, the Druid and his minions had deceived her parents and then murdered them, all because of her, because of who and what she was. He alone was responsible and must answer for that, and the boy was just another pawn employed in their war to destroy each other. He was clever, the boy, but an artifice, a Druid stratagem; in the end he was still just a boy who looked the way Bek might have looked had he lived to grow up, just a boy who had been deceived into thinking he was someone he was not.

She rose to her feet, and the caull rose with her, eyes bright and anticipatory. It was ready to hunt, and she was ready to let it do so. She sent it ahead with a gesture, letting it sniff out the trail, yet keeping it close enough that it could not act without her knowing. She did not want it catching the boy and tearing him apart before she had a chance to plumb his mind. The shape-shifter was another matter, but she doubted that the caull would catch that one unawares. In all likelihood, they must deal with it before they could expect to find the boy. She wondered again why a shape-shifter would take such an interest in their business. Perhaps it was in thrall to the Druid, although that would be unusual for a shape-shifter. Perhaps it was in some way connected to the killing of her parents and the destruction of her home, and its own life was at risk because of that. The Druid had used shape-shifters to carry out his purpose. This might be one of them.

She mulled the possibilities over as she trailed after the caull, keeping her senses alert to what lay around her. The forest dark concealed many things, and one of them might be her enemy. She moved silently in her tied-up gray robes, sliding through the brush and trees like a shadow. The night sky was clear, and the light of moon and stars flooded down through the canopy of the limbs overhead. There was too much light to make her comfortable. She caught glimpses of the caull ahead of her, bits and pieces of movement in the patches of silver. It padded forward, then circled back again, over and over, keeping to the trail its prey had left, reading the signs, sorting them out to be certain it was not being misled. It was good at that; all its wolf instincts were intact and working within its new form, all its skills at play.

It was nearing midnight when she reached an open stretch of ground that fronted the foothills leading up into the mountains, a rocky flat empty of everything but scrub and deadwood. Standing hidden within the trees, she watched the caull move out into the open ground, sniffing, circling, then continuing on. She stayed where she was, letting it go. The terrain ahead was too exposed. She didn’t feel right about moving through it, even though the trail clearly went that way.

She tightened her invisible leash on the caull and summoned it back to her. Her instincts told her that something was amiss and she must determine what it was before continuing on.

Staring out across the flat, the caull crouched at her side, she began to reason it out.

Bek did not sleep after Truls Rohk left him, but sat thinking on what all their running and hiding were leading to. True, he was fleeing to save his life, to escape the Ilse Witch who, sister or no, wanted him dead. But flight alone was not the solution to his problem, and the more he ran and the farther he went, the less it seemed like he was achieving anything. To solve the problem of Grianne Ohmsford, he must convince her of who he was. He could see that probably wouldn’t happen through words alone. It would take something more, perhaps the magic of the Sword of Shannara, perhaps another magic entirely. But a confrontation and a strategy for dealing with that confrontation were inescapable.

How could he bring about the necessary epiphany without losing his life? How could he make her believe?

The answer did not come to him, and he grew tired thinking on it. He lay down to sleep. He drifted off quickly, but he did not dream. He slept and woke in fits and starts, troubled in a way he could not identify, unable to rest for more than a few minutes at a time. He thought it was because he was waiting for Truls Rohk to return, but maybe it was just that he couldn’t stop thinking about his part in the journey to Castledown. He wished he knew everything that Walker did, all the secrets he was still keeping to himself about Bek, about his purpose on the voyage, about the reasons for his presence. It did not stop with his usage of the Sword of Shannara at the Squirm. It did not end with his heritage of magic or his relationship to Grianne. It went beyond all that. But how far did it go?

When he woke the last time that night, he was still caught up in stray thoughts of his sister and their tangled relationship, discomforted enough that he felt as if he had not slept at all. Hearing a soft murmur of voices, he sat up with a start and stared into the surrounding darkness.

There were faces all around him. None of them belonged to Truls Rohk. None of them was attached to a body.

Like the faces of wraiths risen from the netherworld, they floated in the air, and in their empty eyes, Bek Ohmsford saw the reflection of his soul.