Antrax

2

Her memories of the past, already faded and tattered, fell away in an instant’s time as she stood in a woodland clearing a thousand miles from her lost home and confronted the boy who claimed he was her brother.

“Grianne, it’s Bek,” he insisted. “Don’t you remember?”

She remembered everything, of course, although no longer as clearly and sharply, no longer as painfully. She remembered, but she refused to believe that her memories could be brought to life with such painful clarity after so many years. She hadn’t heard her name spoken in all that time, hadn’t spoken it herself, had barely even thought of it. She was the Ilse Witch, and that name defined who and what she was, and not the other. The other was for when she had achieved her revenge over the Druid, for when she had gained sufficient recognition and power that when it was spoken next, it would never again be forgotten by anyone.

But here was this slip of a boy speaking it now, daring to suggest that he had a right to do so. She stared at him in disbelief and smoldering anger. Could he really be her brother? Could he be Bek, alive in spite of what she had believed for so long? Was it possible? She tried to make sense of the idea, to find a way to address it, to form words to speak in response. But everything she thought to say or do was jumbled and incoherent, refusing to be organized in a useful way. Everything froze as if chained and locked, leaving her so frustrated with her inability to act that she could barely keep herself from screaming.

“No!” she shouted finally. A single word, spoken like an oath offered up against demon spawn, it escaped her lips when nothing else dared.

“Grianne,” he said, more softly now.

She saw the mop of dark brown hair and the startling blue eyes, so like her own, so familiar to her. He had her build and looks. He had something else, as well, something she had yet to define, but was unmistakably there. He could be Bek.

But how? How could he be Bek?

“Bek is dead,” she hissed at him, her slender body rigid within the dark robes.

On the ground to one side, a small bundle of clothing and shadows, Ryer Ord Star knelt, head lowered in the veil of her long silver hair, hands clasped in her lap. She had not moved since the Ilse Witch had appeared out of the night, had not lifted her head an inch or spoken a single word. In the silence and darkness, she might have been a statue carved of stone and set in place by her maker to ward a traveler’s place of rest.

The Ilse Witch’s eyes passed over her in a heartbeat and fell upon the boy. “Say something!” she hissed anew. “Tell me why I should believe you!”

“I was saved by a shape-shifter called Truls Rohk,” he answered finally, his gaze on her steady. “I was taken to the Druid Walker, who in turn took me to the people who raised me as their son. But I am Bek.”

“You could not know any of this! You were only two when I hid you in that cellar!” She caught herself. “When I hid my brother. But my brother is dead, and you are a liar!”

“I was told most of it,” he admitted. “I don’t remember anything of how I was saved. But look at me, Grianne. Look at us! You can’t mistake the resemblance, how much alike we are. We have the same eyes and coloring. We’re brother and sister! Don’t you feel it?”

She advanced a step. “Why would a shape-shifter save you when it was shape-shifters who killed my parents and took me prisoner? Why would the Druid save you when he sought to imprison me?”

The boy was already shaking his head slowly, deliberately, his blue eyes intense, his young face determined. “No, Grianne, it wasn’t the shape-shifters or the Druid who killed our parents and took you away. They were never your enemies. Don’t you realize the truth yet? Think about it, Grianne.”

“I saw his face!” she screamed in fury. “I saw it through a window, a glimpse, passing in the dawn light, just before the attack, before I …”

She trailed off, wondering suddenly, unexpectedly, if she could have been mistaken. Had she seen the Druid as the Morgawr had insisted, when he told her to think back, so certain she would? How could he have known what she would see? The implication of what it would mean if she had deceived herself was staggering. She brushed it away violently, but it coiled up in a corner of her memory, a snake still easily within reach.

“We are Ohmsfords, Grianne,” the boy continued softly. “But so is Walker. We share the same heritage. He comes from the same bloodline as we do. He is one of us. He has no reason to do us harm.”

“None that you could fathom, it appears!” She laughed derisively. “What would you know of dark intentions, little boy? What has life shown you that would give you the right to suppose your insight into such things is better than mine?”

“Nothing.” He seemed momentarily at a loss for words, but his face spoke of his need to find them. “I haven’t lived your life, I know. But I’m not naive about what it must have been like.”

Her patience slipped a notch. “I think you believe what you are telling me,” she told him coldly. “I think you have been carefully schooled to believe it. But you are a dupe and a tool of clever men. Druids and shape-shifters make their way in the world by deceiving others. They must have looked long and hard to find you, a boy who looks so much like Bek would look at your age. They must have congratulated themselves on their good fortune.”

“How did I come to have his name, then?” the boy snapped in reply. “If I’m not your brother, how do I have his name? It is the name I was given, the name I have always had!”

“Or at least, that is what you believe. A Druid can make you embrace lies with little more than a thought, even lies about yourself.” She shook her head reprovingly. “You are sadly deceived, to believe as you do, to think yourself a dead boy. I should destroy you on the spot, but perhaps that is what the Druid is hoping I will do, what he wants me to do. Perhaps he thinks it will somehow damage me if I kill a boy who looks so like my brother. Tell me where the Druid waits, and I will spare you.”

The boy stared at her in horror. “You are the one who is deceived, Grianne. So much so that you will tell yourself anything to keep the truth at bay.”

“Where is the Druid?” she snapped, her face contorting angrily. “Tell me now!”

He took a deep breath, straightening. “I’ve come a long way for this meeting. Too far to be intimidated into giving up what I know is true and right. I am your brother. I am Bek. Grianne—”

“Don’t call me that!” she screamed. Her gray robes billowed from her body and she threw up her arms in fury, almost as if to smother his words, to bury them along with her past. She felt her temper slipping, her grip on herself sliding away like metal on oiled metal, and the raw power of her voice took on an edge that could easily cut to ribbons anything or anyone against which it was directed. “Don’t speak my name again!”

He stood his ground. “What name should I speak? Ilse Witch? Should I call you what your enemies call you? Should I treat you as they do, as a creature of dark magic and evil intent, as someone I can never be close to or care about or want to see become my sister again?”

He seemed to gain strength with every new word, and suddenly she saw him as more dangerous than she had believed. “Be careful, boy.”

“You are the one who needs to be careful!” he snapped. “Of who and what you believe! Of everything you have embraced since the moment you were taken from our home. Of the lies in which you have cloaked yourself!”

He pointed at her suddenly. “We are alike in more ways than you think. Not everything that links us is visible to the eye. Grianne Ohmsford has her magic, her birthright, now the tool of the Ilse Witch. But I have that magic, too! Do you hear it in my voice? You do, don’t you? I’m not as practiced as you, and I only just discovered it was there, but it is another link in our lives, Grianne, another part of the heritage we share—”

She felt his voice taking on an edge similar to her own, a biting touch that caused her to flinch in spite of herself and to bring her defenses up instantly.

“—just as we share the same parents, the same fate, the same journey of discovery, brought about by a search for the treasure hidden in the ruins that lie inland from here …”

She brought her voice up in a low, vibrant hum, a soft blending with the night sounds, faint and sibilant, leaves rustling in the breeze, insects chirping and buzzing, birds winging past as swift shadows, the breath of living things. Her decision was made in an instant, quick and hard; he was too dangerous for her to let live, whoever or whatever he was. Too dangerous for her to ignore as she had thought to do. He had something of magic about him after all, magic not unlike her own. It was what she had sensed about him earlier and been unable to define, hidden before but present now in the sound of his voice, a whisper of possibility.

Put an end to him, she warned herself. Put an end to him at once!

Then something shimmered to one side, drawing her attention from the boy. She struck at it without thinking, the magic escaping from her in a rush of iron shards and razored bits that cut through the air and savaged her intended target without pause or effort. But the shimmer had moved another way. Again, the Ilse Witch struck at it, her voice a weapon of such power that it shattered the silence, whipped the leaves of the surrounding trees as if they were caught in a violent wind, and left voiceless and wide-eyed in shock the boy who had been speaking.

An instant later, he disappeared. It happened so quickly and unexpectedly that it was done before the Ilse Witch could act to stop it. She blinked at the empty space in which he had stood, seeing the brightness take on shape and form anew, becoming a series of barely recognizable movements that crossed through the night like shadows vaguely human in form chasing one another. She lashed out at them in surprise, but she was too slow and her attack too misdirected to catch more than empty air.

She wheeled this way and that, searching for what had deceived her so completely. Whatever it was, it was gone and it had taken the boy with it. Her first impulse was to give pursuit. But first impulses were seldom wise, and she did not give in to this one. She scanned the empty clearing, then the surrounding forest, searching with her senses for traces of the boy’s rescuer. It took her only a moment to discover its identity. A shape-shifter. She had sensed its presence before, she realized—on Black Moclips, after the nighttime collision with the Jerle Shannara. It was the same creature and no mistake. It must have come aboard during the confusion to spy on her, then remained hidden for the remainder of the voyage. That could not have been easy, given the intensity of her control over ship’s quarters and crew. This particular shape-shifter was skilled and experienced, a veteran of such efforts, and not in the least awed by her.

A new rage built in her. It must have followed her from the ship to the clearing, revealing itself when it believed the boy in danger. Did it know the boy? Or the Druid? Did it serve either or both? She believed it must. Otherwise, why would it involve itself in this business at all? A protector for the boy then? Perhaps. If so, it would confirm what she had believed from the beginning, from the moment the boy had tried to trick her into thinking he might be Bek. The Druid had concocted an elaborate scheme to undermine her confidence in her mission and her trust in the Morgawr, to sabotage their relationship, and to render her vulnerable so that he might find a way to destroy her before she could destroy him.

She clenched her hands before her, fingers knotting until the knuckles turned white. She should have killed the boy at once, the moment he spoke her name! She should have used the wishsong to burn him alive, waiting for him to beg her to save him, to admit to his lies! She should never have listened to anything he said!

Yet now that she had, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she shouldn’t dismiss him too quickly.

She turned the matter over in her mind carefully, examining it anew. The resemblance between them could be explained away, of course. A boy who looked like her could be found easily enough. Nor would it be all that hard for Walker to make the boy think he was Bek, even to think he had always been called Bek. Duping him into believing he was her brother and somehow her rescuer was certainly within the Druid’s capabilities. It was reasonable to believe that he had been brought along on the voyage solely for the purpose of somehow, somewhere encountering her and acting out his part.

But …

Her pale, luminous face lifted and her blue eyes stared off into the night. There, at the end, when he had lost his patience with her, when he had challenged her as no one else would dare to do, not even the Morgawr, something about him had reminded her of herself. A conviction, a certainty that registered in his words and his posture, in the directness and intensity of his gaze. But more than this, she had sensed something unexpected and familiar in his tone of voice, something that could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was. He had told her, but in the heat of the moment she had not believed him, thinking only that he was threatening her, that he could do damage to her in an unexpected way, and so she must protect herself. But it had been there nevertheless.

He had the magic of the wishsong, her magic, her power duplicated.

Who but her brother or another Ohmsford would possess power like that?

The contradiction of what seemed to be true and what seemed to be a lie frustrated and confused her. She wanted to explain the boy away with no further consideration, but she could not do so. There was in him enough of real magic to cause her to wonder at his true identity, even if she did not believe him to be Bek. The Druid could do many things in creating a tool with which to deceive her, but he could not instill another with magic, and particularly not with magic of this sort.

So who was the boy and what was the truth of him?

She knew what she should do; it was what she had come all this way to do. Find the treasure that was hidden in Castledown and make it her own. Find the Druid and destroy him. Regain the safety of Black Moclips and sail home again as swiftly as possible and be shed of this voyage and its dangers.

But the boy intrigued and disturbed her, so much so that almost without understanding why, she was rethinking her plans entirely. Despite what she knew of his duplicity, whether willing or not, she was loath to give up on solving the mystery of him when so much of what she discovered might impact her. Not in any life-altering manner, of course; she had already made her mind up to that. But in some smaller, yet still important way.

How hard would it be to discover the truth about him, once she set her mind to it? How much time would it take?

The Morgawr would not approve, but he approved of little she did these days. Her relationship with her mentor had been deteriorating for some time. They no longer shared the student/teacher connection they once had. She was as much the master now as he was, and she chafed at the restrictions he constantly sought to place upon her. She had not forgotten what she owed him, was not ungrateful for all he had taught her over the years. But she disliked his insistence on keeping her in her place, always his subordinate, his underling, a charge who must do as he dictated. He was old, and perhaps because he was old he could no longer change as easily as could the young. Self-preservation was what mattered to him. But she did not aspire to live a thousand years. She did not consider near immortality a benefit to be sought. Hence the need to get on with things, rather than sit and plot and wait and scheme, as he was so used to doing.

No, he would not approve, and in this case she would be wrong in failing to consider that. Seeking out the boy to solve his mystery and satisfy her curiosity was mere self-indulgence. She hesitated a moment, then brushed her hesitation aside. It was her decision to make, her choice if she wasted time that, in any case, belonged to her. The boy had something she needed, whether the Morgawr would agree with her or not. In any event, he was not here to advise her. Cree Bega would presume to speak for him, but the Mwellret’s opinion meant next to nothing to her.

She would have to act quickly, however. The ret was not too far behind her, coming along with two dozen others. His approach was delayed only because, wishing to go ahead by herself, to have the first look at what waited, she had ordered him to wait. Perhaps, she added, to make certain he did not interfere with anything she decided she must do with what she found. Perhaps just to keep him in line, where he belonged.

She walked over to Ryer Ord Star and bent down, trying to determine if the seer was coming out of her trance. But the girl never moved, sitting silently, motionlessly in the night, head lowered in shadow, eyes closed. She was breathing steadily, calmly, so it was apparent her health was not in danger. What was she doing, though? Where inside herself had she gone?

The Ilse Witch knelt in front of the girl. She had no time to wait for the seer to conclude her meditations. She needed her answers. She placed her fingers on the other’s temples, just as she had done with the castaway whose revelations had begun this whole matter, and she began to probe. The effort required was small. Ryer Ord Star’s mind opened to her like a flower before the rising sun, her memories tumbling out like falling petals. Without a glance at most of them, the Ilse Witch went directly for those most recent, the ones that would reveal the fate of the Druid.

Revelations surfaced like the ocean’s dead, stark and bare. She saw a battle within Old World ruins, a battle in which the Druid and his company were assaulted on all sides by lines of red fire that burned and seared. Walls shifted, raising from and lowering into smooth metal floors. Creepers appeared from nowhere, metal monsters on skittering legs with claws that rent and tore. Men fought and died in a swirl of thick smoke and spurts of fire. Seen through Ryer Ord Star’s eyes, filtered through her emotions, everything was chaotic and awash in fear and desperation.

Amid the madness, the Druid advanced past lines of attack and changes in terrain, his steady, deliberate progress aided by his magic and buttressed by his courage and determination. Say what you would, the Druid had never been a coward. He fought his way into the heart of the ruins, shouting in vain for the others of his company to fall back, to flee, trying to keep them alive. At last he gained the doorway to a black tower, forced an entry, and disappeared inside.

Ryer Ord Star screamed and started after him, then was struck by the fire and sent pinwheeling into a wall. Her thoughts of the Druid faded, then went black.

The Ilse Witch took her fingers from the seer’s temples and sat back on her heels, perplexed. Interesting. The communication had come without words of any sort and with no resistance at all. Was this the nature of empaths, that they could neither dissemble nor conceal? She found herself wondering at the girl’s pursuit of the Druid, galvanized by the latter’s disappearance into the tower. Why would she risk herself so? The girl had been instructed to stay close to the Druid at all times, to make herself indispensable to him, to gain his confidence and his ear. Clearly she had done so. But was there something more between them, something that went beyond the charge she had been given as the Ilse Witch’s spy?

There was no way to know. Not without damaging the girl, and she wasn’t prepared to go to that length just yet. She had what she wanted for now—a clear picture of what had befallen those from the company of the Jerle Shannara who had gone inland with the Druid. She could not be certain of the Druid’s fate, however. Perhaps he was dead. Perhaps he was trapped beneath the ruins. Whatever the case, he did not present any danger to her. Without an airship to carry him off and with most of his company dead or imprisoned, he could do little harm.

She had time for the boy, then. Enough, that she did not need to consider the matter further.

No more than a handful of minutes passed before Cree Bega and his company of Mwellrets appeared out of the gloom, heavy bodies trudging warily through the forest dark, slitted eyes glittering as they caught sight of her. Repulsive creatures! she thought, but she kept her face expressionless. She rose to meet them and stood waiting on their approach.

“Misstress,” their leader, her designated protector, hissed, bowing obsequiously. “Have you found the little peopless?”

“I have decided to leave that to you, Cree Bega. To you and your companions. There has been a battle in the ruins ahead, and those of the Druid’s company who are not dead are scattered. Find them and make them your prisoners. That includes the Druid, should you come upon him and find him helpless enough to subdue.”

“Misstress, I thinkss—”

“Be careful otherwise, because he is more than a match for all of you put together.” She ignored his attempt to speak. “Leave him to me if you find he is able to defend himself. Do not go into the ruins; they are well protected. Do not expose yourself or your men to the danger they pose. Keep a close watch over both airships and do not land them under any circumstances.”

He was watching her closely now, realizing that she had already removed herself from everything she was instructing him to do.

“Something has come up that I must investigate.” She held his reptilian eyes with her steady, calm gaze. “I will be gone for a time, and while I am gone, you will be in charge. Do not fail me.”

For a moment there was no response and she thought he had not understood. “Am I clear on this?”

“Where iss it my misstress goess?” he asked softly. “Our mission iss here—”

“Our mission is where I say it is, Cree Bega.”

Something in the Mwellret’s cold gaze turned suddenly dangerous. “Your masster would not approve of thiss diverssion …”

Two quick steps placed her right in front of him. “My master?” There was an uncomfortable silence as she waited on his reply. He stared at her in silence. “I have no master, ret,” she whispered. “You have a master, not I, and he is not here in any case. I am the one you must answer to. I am your mistress. Is there anything else that I need to explain?”

The Mwellret said nothing, but she did not care for what she found in his eyes. She gave him a moment more, then repeated softly, “Is there?”

He shook his head. “Ass you wissh, misstress. Little peopless will be our prissonerss on your return, I promiss. But what of the treassure?”

“We’ll have it soon enough.” She looked away, off in the direction of Castledown. Was that so? Would it be so easy? She thought that her knowledge of the situation gave her an advantage over the Druid, but she could not afford to underestimate the enemy that warded Castledown. If it could defeat the Druid so easily, it was much stronger than she had expected. “Leave the matter of retrieving the treasure to me.”

She dismissed him with barely a glance, then remembered Ryer Ord Star, still kneeling in a huddle to one side, still lost in some other place and time. “Do not harm the girl,” she told Cree Bega, giving him a quick, hard look of warning. “She has been my eyes and ears aboard the Druid’s airship on this voyage. There is much she knows that she has not yet told me. I want her kept safe for my return so that I may discover what she hides.”

The Mwellret nodded, giving the seer a doubtful look. “Thiss one sseemss already dead.”

“She sleeps. She is in a trance of some sort. I haven’t had time to discover what is wrong with her.” She brushed the ret aside. “Just do what I told you. I won’t be long.”

She departed the clearing without a glance back. Cree Bega and the others would do what she had ordered. They would be afraid to do anything else. But she was reminded again that it was growing more difficult to control them. She would be better off without them once she had the treasure in hand. Sometime soon, she would rid herself of them for good.

Eastward, the sky was beginning to brighten faintly with the dawn’s approach. Night was already sliding westward, liquid ink withdrawing silently through the trees. A new day would bring fresh revelations. About the boy, perhaps. About why he thought as he did. About how his magic had found its way to him and why it was so like her own. A smile of expectation brightened her pale face. She looked forward to discovering the answers. She felt a rush of anticipation.

Hesitation and doubts were for others, she thought dismissively, for those who would never find their own way in the world and never make anything of their lives that mattered.

Picking up faint traces of the shape-shifter that still lingered on the fading night air, she began the hunt.

Gleaming eyes filled with malice, Cree Bega watched wordlessly until she was well out of sight. Hunched within his cloak and surrounded by those he commanded, he imagined how sweet it would feel when he was permitted at last to put an end to the insufferable girl child. That he hated her as he hated no one else went without saying; he had never felt anything but hate for her. He despised her as she despised him, and nothing shared through their service to the Morgawr would ever change that.

But the Morgawr, though claiming to be the girl’s mentor and friend, was more Mwellret than human. His connection to Cree Bega’s people was ancient and blooded. He had bonded to the girl because she was a novelty and he saw a use for her in the larger scheme of things. But his heart and soul were those of a Mwellret.

The girl, of course, believed them equals, outcasts bound together in their struggle for recognition and power over their oppressors. The Morgawr let her believe as much because it suited his purposes to do so. But they were not equals in any way that mattered, and the little Ilse Witch was far less skilled in her use of magic than she believed. She was a strutting, posturing annoyance, a foolish, ludicrously inept practitioner of an art that had been mastered by the Mwellrets and their kind centuries ago, before the Druids had even thought to take up the Elven magic as their sword and shield. Mwellrets would never be subjugated by humans, never become their inferiors, and this girl child was just another self-deceived morsel waiting to be plucked from their food chain.

He felt the eyes of his fellows upon him, awaiting his orders, their own thoughts as dark and vengeful as his. They, too, waited for their chance at the Ilse Witch. Cree Bega would give her the satisfaction of believing him subdued and obedient for now. He had pledged as much to the Morgawr. He would heed her commands and carry out her wishes because there was no reason for him to do otherwise.

But a shift in the wind was coming, and when it did, it would mark the end of her.

He wheeled on the others, finding them grouped tightly about him, dark visages expectant and eager within shadowed cowls. They awaited his orders, anxious for something to do. He would accommodate them. Members of the company of the Jerle Shannara were loose somewhere ahead within these trees, waiting to be harvested, to be killed or taken prisoner. It was time to accommodate them.

Growling softly, he told his men to start with Ryer Ord Star, then move on.

But when they turned to take charge of the seer, she was nowhere to be found.