Ilse Witch

13

Provisioned and readied, Bek Rowe and Quentin Leah departed at daybreak and rode east through the Highlands. The day was cool and clear, with the smell of new grass and flowers heavy on the scented air and the sun warm on their faces. Clouds were massing west, however, and there was a clear possibility of rain by nightfall. Under the best of conditions it would take them several days just to navigate as far as the Eastland and the beginning of their search for the mysterious Truls Rohk. In the old days, before invasion and occupation by the Federation army, they could never have gone this way. Directly in their path lay the Lowlands of Clete, a vast, dismal bog choked with deadwood and scrub, shrouded in mist and devoid of life. Beyond that were the Black Oaks, an immense forest that had claimed more victims than either of the young men cared to count, most to mishap and starvation, but some, in earlier times, to the huge wolves that were once its fiercest denizens. All this was daunting enough, but even after navigating bog and woods, a traveler wasn’t safe. Just east of the Black Oaks was the Mist Marsh, a treacherous swamp in which, it was rumored, creatures of enormous power and formidable magic prowled. Below the marsh, and running south for a hundred miles, were the Battlemound Lowlands, another rugged, difficult stretch of country populated by Sirens, deadly plants that could lure and hypnotize by mimicking voices and shapes, seize with tentacle-like roots, paralyze with flesh-numbing needles, and devour their victims at leisure.

None of this was anything the cousins wanted to encounter, but all were difficult to avoid in making passage below the Rainbow Lake. Any route that would take them above the Rainbow Lake would cost them an additional three days at least and involved dangers of their own. Traveling farther south required a detour of better than a hundred miles and would put them almost to the Prekkendorran, a place no one in his right mind wanted to be.

But the Federation had realized this, as well, during the time of its occupation of Leah and so had built roads through Clete and the Black Oaks to facilitate the movement of men and supplies. Many of these roads had fallen into disrepair and could no longer be used by wagons, but all were passable by men on horseback. Quentin, because he was the older of the two, had explored more thoroughly the lands they intended to pass through, and was confident they could find their way to the Anar without difficulty.

True to his prediction, they made good progress that first day. By midday, they had ridden out of the Highlands and into the dismal morass of Clete. Sun and sky disappeared and the cousins were buried beneath a dismal gray shroud of mist and gloom. But the road remained visible, and they pressed on. Their pace slowed as the terrain grew more treacherous, scrub and tree limbs closing in so that they were forced to duck and weave as they went, guiding their horses around encroaching pools of quicksand and bramble patches, picking their way resolutely through the haze. Shadows moved all about them, some cast by movements of light, others by things that had somehow managed to survive in this blasted land. They heard sounds, but the sounds were not identifiable. Their conversation died away and time slowed. Their concentration narrowed to keeping safely on the road.

But by the approach of nightfall, they had navigated the lowlands without incident and moved into the forbidding darkness of the Black Oaks. The road here was less uneven and better traveled, the way open and clear as they rode into a steadily lengthening maze of shadows. With twilight’s fall, they stopped within a clearing and made camp for the night. A fire was built, a meal prepared and eaten, and bedding laid out. The cousins joked and laughed and told stories for a time, then rolled into their blankets and fell asleep.

Sleep lasted until just after midnight, when it began to rain so hard that the clearing was flooded in a matter of minutes. Bek and Quentin snatched up their gear and retreated to the shelter of a large conifer, covering themselves with their travel cloaks as they sat beneath a canopy of feathery branches and watched the rain sweep through unabated.

By morning they were stiff and sore and not very well rested, but they resumed their travels without complaint. In other circumstances, they would have come better equipped, but neither had wanted the burden of pack animals and supplies, and so they were traveling light. A few nights of damp and cold were tolerable in the course of a week’s passage if it meant shaving a few days off their traveling time. They ate a cold breakfast, then rode all morning through the Black Oaks, and by afternoon the rain had abated and they had reached the Battlemound. Here they turned south, unwilling to chance crossing through any part of the Mist Marsh, content to detour below the swamp and come out to the east, where they would turn north again and ride until they reached the Silver River.

By sunset, they had succeeded in accomplishing their goal, avoiding Sirens and other pitfalls, keeping to the roadway until it meandered off south, then sticking to the open ground of the lowlands as the terrain changed back to forests and low hills and they could see the glittering ribbon of the river ahead. Finding shelter in a grove of cottonwood and beech, they made camp on its banks, the ground sufficiently dry that they could lay out their bedding and build a fire. They watered and fed the horses and rubbed them down. Then they made dinner for themselves and, after eating it, sat facing out toward the river and the night, sipping cups of ale as they talked.

“I wish we knew more about Truls Rohk,” Bek ventured after the conversation had been going on for a time. “Why do you think Walker told us so little about him?”

Quentin contemplated the star-filled sky thoughtfully. “Well, he told us where to go to find him. He said all we had to do was ask and he would be there. Seems like enough to me.”

“It might be enough for you, but not for me. It doesn’t tell us anything about why we’re looking for him. How come he’s so important?” Bek was not about to be appeased. “If we’re to persuade him to come with us to Arborlon, shouldn’t we know why he’s needed? What if he doesn’t want to come? What are we supposed to do then?”

Quentin grinned cheerfully. “Pack up and go on. It isn’t our problem if he chooses to stay behind.” He grimaced. “See, there you go again, Bek, worrying when there isn’t any reason for it.”

“So you’re fond of telling me. So I’ll tell you something else that’s worrying me. I don’t trust Walker.”

They stared at each other in the darkness without speaking, the fire beginning to burn down, the sounds of the night lifting out of the sudden silence. “What do you mean?” Quentin asked slowly. “You think he’s lying to us?”

“No.” Bek shook his head emphatically. “If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here. No, I don’t think he’s that sort. But I do think he knows something he’s not telling us. Maybe a lot of somethings. Think about it, Quentin. How did he know about you and the Sword of Leah? He knew you had it before he even talked to us. How did he find out? Has he been keeping an eye on you all these years, waiting for a chance to summon you on a quest? How did he manage to convince your father to let us go with him, when your father wouldn’t even consider your request to fight for the Free-born?”

He stopped abruptly. He wanted to tell Quentin what Coran had said about his parentage. He wanted to ask Quentin why he thought Coran hadn’t said a word about it until the Druid appeared. He wanted to ask his cousin if he had any idea how the Druid had ended up ferrying him to the Leah doorstep in the first place, not a task a Druid would normally undertake.

But he was not prepared to talk about any of this just yet; he was still mulling it over, trying to decide how he felt about it before sharing what he knew.

“I think you’re right,” Quentin said suddenly, surprising him. “I think the Druid’s keeping secrets from us, not the least of which is where we’re going and why. But I’ve listened to you expound on Druids and their history often enough to know that this is normal behavior for them. They know things we don’t, and they keep the information mostly to themselves. Why should that trouble you? Why not just let things unfold in the way they’re intended rather than worry about it? Look at me. I’m carrying a sword that’s supposed to be magic. I’m supposed to trust blindly in a weapon that’s never shown a moment’s inclination to be more than what it seems.”

“That’s different,” Bek insisted.

“No, it isn’t.” Quentin laughed and rocked back onto his elbows, stretching out his long legs. “It’s all the same thing. You can live your life worrying about what you don’t know, or you can accept your limitations and make the best of it. Secrets don’t harm you, Bek. It’s fussing about them that does you in.”

Bek gave him a disbelieving look. “That’s entirely wrong. Secrets can do a great deal of harm.”

“All right, let me approach it another way.” Quentin drained off his ale and sat forward again. “How much can you accomplish worrying about secrets that may not exist? Especially when you have no idea what they are?”

“I know. I know.” Bek sighed. “But at least I’m prepared for the fact that some nasty surprises might lie ahead. At least I’m ready for what I think is going to happen down the road.

And by keeping an eye on Walker, I won’t be caught off guard by his shadings of the truth and purposeful omissions.”

“Great. You’re prepared and you won’t be fooled. Me, too, believe it or not—even if I don’t worry about it as much as you.” Quentin looked off into the darkness, where a shooting star streaked across the firmament and disappeared. “But you can’t prepare against everything, Bek, and you can’t save yourself from being fooled now and then. The fact is, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, sometimes your efforts fall short.”

Bek looked at him and said nothing. True enough, he was thinking, but he didn’t care for the implications.

He slept undisturbed by rain and cold that night, the skies clear and the air warm, and he did not dream or toss. Even so, he woke in the deep sleep hours of early morning, bathed in starlight and infused by a feeling of uneasiness. The fire had burned itself out and lay cold and gray. Beside him, Quentin was snoring, wrapped in his blankets. Bek did not know how long he had been asleep, but the moon was down and the forest about him was silent and black.

He rose without thinking, looking around cautiously as he did so, trying to pinpoint the source of his discomfort. There seemed to be no reason for it. He pulled on his great cloak, wrapping himself tightly against a sudden chill, and walked down to the banks of the Silver River. The river was swollen with spring rains and snowmelt off the Runne Mountains, but its progress this night was sluggish and steady and its surface clear of debris. As he stood there, a night bird swooped down and glided into the trees, a silent, purposeful shadow. He started at the unexpected movement, then quieted once more. Carefully, he studied the glittering surface of the waters, searching for what troubled him, then shifted his attention to the far bank and the shadowed trees. Still nothing. He took a deep breath and exhaled. Perhaps he had been mistaken.

He was turning back toward Quentin when he saw the light. It was just a glimmer of brightness at first, as if a spark had been struck somewhere back in the trees across the river. He stared at it in surprise as it appeared, faded, reappeared, faded anew, then steadied and came on. It bobbed slightly with its approach to the river, then glided out of the trees, suspended on air and floating free as it crossed the water and came to a halt just yards away from him.

It flashed sharply in his eyes, and he blinked in response. When his vision cleared, a young girl stood before him, the light balanced in her hand. She was somehow familiar to him, although he could not say why. She was beautiful, with long dark hair and startling blue eyes, and there was an innocence to her face that made his heart ache. The light she held emanated from one end of a polished metal cylinder and cast a long, narrow beam on the ground between them.

“Well met, Bek Rowe,” she said softly. “Do you know me?”

He stared, unable to answer. She had appeared out of nowhere, perhaps come from across the river on the air itself, and he believed her to be a creature of magic.

“You have chosen to undertake a long and difficult journey, Bek,” she whispered in her childlike voice. “You go to a place where few others have gone and from which only one has returned. But the greater journey will not carry you over land and sea, but inside your heart. The unknown you fear and the secrets you suspect will reveal themselves. All will be as it must. Accept this, for that is the nature of things.”

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“This and that. What you see before you and many things you do not. I am a chameleon of time and age, my true form so old I have forgotten it. For you, I am two things. The child you see and think you might perhaps know, and this.”

Abruptly, the child before him transformed into something so hideous he would have screamed if his voice had not frozen in his throat. The thing was huge and twisted and ugly, all wrapped in scarred and ravaged skin, hair burnt to a black stubble about its head and face, eyes maddened and red, mouth twisted in a leer that suggested horrors too terrible to contemplate. It loomed over him, tall even when bent, its clawed and crooked hands gesturing hypnotically.

“Thiss am I, too, Bek. Thiss creature of the pitss. Would you ssee me thiss way or the other? Hsss. Which do you prefer?”

“Change back,” Bek managed to whisper, his voice harsh, his throat gone dry and raw and tight with fear.

“Sso, foundling of ill fortune. What are you willing to do to make it happen? Hsss. How much of yoursself are you prepared to ssacrifisse to make it sso?”

The thing almost touched him, claws brushing against the front of his tunic. He would have run if he could, would have called out to Quentin, sleeping not fifty feet away. But he could do nothing, only stand in place and stare fixedly at the apparition before him.

“Yourss iss the power to change me from one to the other,” the creature hissed. “Do not forget thiss. Do not forget. Hsss.”

Once more the creature transformed in the blink of an eye, and Bek found himself looking into the kind, pale eyes of an old, weathered man.

“Do not be afraid, Bek Rowe,” the old man said softly, his voice warm and reassuring. “Nothing comes to harm you this night. I am here to protect you. Do you know me now?”

Surprisingly, he did. “You are the King of the Silver River.”

The old man nodded approvingly. A legend in the Four Lands, a myth whose reality only a few had ever encountered, the King of the Silver River was a spirit creature, a magical being who had survived from times long before even the Great Wars had destroyed the world. He was as old as the Word, it was said, a creature who had been born into and survived the passing of Faerie. He lived within and gave protection to the Silver River country. Now and then, a traveler would encounter him, and sometimes when it was needed, he would give them aid.

“Heed me, Bek,” the old man said softly. “What I have shown you is the past and the present. What remains to be determined is the future. That future belongs to you. You are both more and less than you believe, an enigma whose secret will affect the lives of many. Do not shy from discovering what you must, what you feel compelled to know. Do not be deterred in your search. Go where your heart tells you. Trust in what it reveals.”

Bek nodded, not certain he understood, but unwilling to admit as much.

“Past, present, and future, the symbiosis of our lives,” the old man continued quietly, gently. “Our birth, our life, our death, all tied into a single package that we spend our time on this earth unwrapping. Sometimes we see clearly what it is we are looking at. Sometimes we do not. Sometimes things happen to distract or deceive us, and we must look more carefully at what it is we hold.”

He reached into his robes then and produced a chain from which hung a strange, silver-colored stone. He held up the stone for Bek to see. “This is a phoenix stone. When you are most lost, it will help you find your way. Not just from what you cannot see with your eyes, but from what you cannot find with your heart, as well. It will show you the way back from dark places into which you have strayed and the way forward through dark places into which you must go. When you have need of it, remove it from the chain and cast it to the ground, breaking it apart. Remember. In your body, heart, and mind—all will be revealed with this.”

He passed the stone and its chain to Bek, who took it carefully. The depths of the phoenix stone seemed liquid, swirling as if a dark pool into which he might fall. He touched the surface gingerly, testing it. The movement stopped and the surface turned opaque.

“You may use it only once,” the old man advised. “Keep it concealed from others. It is an indiscriminate magic. It will serve the bearer, even if stolen. Keep it safe.”

Bek slipped the chain about his neck and tucked the stone into his clothing. “I will,” he promised.

His mind was racing, trying to find words for the dozens of questions that suddenly filled it. But he could not seem to think straight, his concentration riveted on the old man and the light. The King of the Silver River watched him with his kind, appraising eyes, but did not offer to help.

“Who am I?” Bek blurted out in desperation.

He spoke without thinking, the words surfacing in a rush of need and urgency. It was this question that troubled him most, he realized at once, this question that demanded an answer above all others, because it had become for him in the last few days the great mystery of his life.

The old man gestured vaguely with one frail hand. “You are who you have always been, Bek. But your past is lost to you, and you must recover it. On this journey, that will happen. Seek it, and it will find you. Embrace it, and it will set you free.”

Bek was not certain he had heard the old man right. What had he just said? Seek it, and it will find you—not, you will find it? What did that mean?

But the King of the Silver River was speaking again, cutting short Bek’s thoughts. “Sleep, now. Take what I have given you and rest. No more can be accomplished this night, and you will need your strength for what lies ahead.”

He gestured again, and Bek felt a great weariness descend. “Remember my words when you wake,” the old man cautioned as he began to move away, the light wavering, back and forth, back and forth. “Remember.”

The night was suddenly as warm and comforting in its darkness and silence as his bedroom at home. There was so much more that Bek wanted to ask, so much he would have known. But he was lying on the ground, his eyes heavy and his thinking clouded. “Wait,” he managed to whisper.

But the King of the Silver River was fading away into the night, and Bek Rowe drifted off to sleep.