Ilse Witch (43 page)

Her brow furrowed. She must assume so. She could not afford to assume otherwise. But it would be interesting to know. Her spy could tell her, perhaps. But the risk of compromise was too great to attempt any contact.

She walked forward to the ship’s bow and stood looking off into the dark for a time, then produced a small milky glass sphere from within her robes and held it up to the light. Softly, she sang to the sphere, and the milkiness faded and turned clear and captured within it an image of the
Jerle Shannara
, anchored above the grasslands running west from the ruined castle. She studied it carefully, searching for the Druid, but he was nowhere to be found. Elven Hunters kept watch fore and aft, and a burly Rover lounged at the helm. At the center of the ship, the strange case the Druid had brought aboard remained covered and warded by magic-enhanced chains.

What was hidden in it and behind those chains? What, that he must guard it so carefully?

“Elvess do not ssusspect our pressensse, Misstress,” a voice hissed at her elbow. “Killss them all while they ssleepss, perhapss?”

White-hot rage surged through her at the interruption. “If you come into my presence again without permission, Cree Bega, I will forget who sent you and why you are here and separate you from your skin.”

The Mwellret bowed in obsequious acknowledgment of his trespass. “Apologiess, Misstress. But we wasste our time and opportunitiess. Let uss kill them and be done with it!”

She hated Cree Bega. The Mwellret leader knew she would not harm him; the Morgawr had given him a personal guarantee of protection against her. She had been forced to swear to it in his presence. The memory made her want to retch. He
was not afraid of her in any case. Although not completely immune, Mwellrets were resistant to the controlling powers of her magic, and Cree Bega more so than most. The combination of all this added to his insufferable arrogance toward and open disdain for her and made their alliance all but intolerable.

But she was the Ilse Witch, and she showed him nothing of her irritation. No one could penetrate her defenses unless she allowed it.

“They do our work for us, ret. We will let them continue until they are finished. Then you can kill as many as you like. Save one.”

“Knowss your claim upon the Druid, misstress,” he purred. “Givess the resst to me and mine. We will be ssatissfied. Little peopless, Elvess, belongss to uss.”

She passed her hand across the sphere. The image of the
Jerle Shannara
disappeared and the sphere went white again. She tucked it back inside her robes, all without glancing once at the creature hovering next to her. “Nothing belongs to you that I do not choose to give you. Remember that. Now get out of my sight.”

“Yess, Misstress,” he replied tonelessly, without a scintilla of respect or fear, and slid away into the shadows like oil over black metal.

She did not look to see that he had gone. She did not trouble herself. She was thinking that it did not matter what she had promised the Morgawr. When this matter was finished, so were these treacherous toads. All of them, her promise to the Morgawr notwithstanding. And Cree Bega would be the first.

The night was silent and windless, and she cradled the
Jerle Shannara
like a slumbering child rocked gently in her arms. Bek Rowe sat up suddenly, staring into the darkness of his sleeping room, listening to the snores and breathing of Quentin and Panax and the others. Someone had called his
name, whispered it in his mind, in a voice he did not recognize, in words that were lost instantly on waking. Had he imagined it?

He rose, pulled on his boots and cloak, and climbed topside to the decking. He stood without moving at the top of the stairs and looked about as if he might find the answer in the darkness. He had heard his name clearly. Someone had spoken it. He brushed back his curly hair and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. The moon and stars were brilliant white beacons in a velvet black sky. The lines and features of the airship and the island were distinct and clear. Everything was still, as if frozen in ice.

He walked to the forward mast, just ahead of the mysterious object Walker kept so carefully warded. He stared about once more, searching now as much inside himself as without for what had drawn him here.

“Looking for something, boy?” a familiar voice hissed softly at his elbow.

Truls Rohk. He jumped in spite of himself. The shape-shifter crouched somewhere in the shadows of the casing, so close Bek imagined he could reach out and touch him. “Was it you who called me?” he breathed.

“It is a good night for discovering truths,” the other whispered in that rough, not-quite-human voice. “Care to try?”

“What are you talking about?” Bek struggled to keep his voice steady and calm.

“Hum for me. Just a little, soft as a kitten’s purr. Hum as if you were trying to move me back with just your voice. Do you understand?”

Bek nodded, wondering what in the world Truls Rohk was trying to prove. Hum? Move him back with his voice?

“Do it then. Don’t question me. Think about what you want to do and then do it. Concentrate.”

Bek did as he was asked. He imagined the shape-shifter standing beside him, visualized him there in the darkness, and hummed as if the sound, the vibration alone, might move
him away. The sound was barely audible, unremarkable, and so far as Bek could determine, pointless.

“No!” the other spat angrily. “Try harder! Give it teeth, boy!”

Bek tried again, jaw clenched, angry now himself at being chided. His humming buzzed and vibrated up from his throat and through his mouth and nose with fresh purpose. The force of his effort caused the air before his eyes to shimmer as if turned to liquid.

“Yes,” Truls Rohk murmured in response, satisfaction reflected in his voice. “I thought so.”

Bek went silent again, staring into the shadows, into the night. “You thought so? What did you think?” The humming had revealed nothing to him. What had it revealed to Truls Rohk?

A part of the blackness surrounding the casing detached itself and took shape, rising up against the light of moon and stars. An only vaguely human form, big and terrifying. Not to step away from it took everything Bek had.

“I know you, boy,” the other whispered.

Bek stared. “How could you?”

The other laughed softly. “I know you better than you know yourself. The truth of you is a secret. It is not for me to reveal it to you. The Druid must be the one to do that. But I can show you something of what it looks like. Are you interested?”

For an instant, Bek considered turning around and walking away. There was something dark in the other’s meaning, something that would change the boy once it was revealed. He understood that instinctively.

“We are alike, you and I,” the shape-shifter said. “We are nothing of what we seem or others think they know. We are joined in ways that would surprise and astonish. Perhaps our fates are linked in some way. What becomes of one depends on what becomes of the other.”

Bek could not imagine it. He could barely follow what the
shape shifter was saying, let alone fathom what it meant. He made no reply.

“Lies conceal us as masks do thieves, boy. I, because I choose it to be so—you, because you are deceived. We are wraiths living in the shadows, and the truths of identities are carefully guarded secrets. But yours is the darker by far. Yours is the one that has its source in a Druid’s games-playing and a magic’s dark promise. Mine is simply the result of a twist of fate and a parent’s foolish choice.” He paused. “Come with me, and I’ll tell you of it.”

Bek shook his head. “I can’t leave—”

“Can’t you?” the other shot, cutting him short. “Down to the island and into the castle? Come with me, and we’ll bring the third key back to the Druid before he wakes. It’s lying there, waiting for us. You and I, we can do what the Druid cannot. We can find it and bring it back.”

Bek took a deep breath. “You know where the key is?”

The other shifted slightly, a flowing of darkness against the moonlight. “What matters is that I know how to find it. The Druid asked me earlier this night to seek it out, and so I did. But now I have decided to go back on my own and get it. Want to come along with me?”

The boy was speechless. What was going on here?

“This should be easy for you. I know your heart. You’ve been allowed to do nothing. You’ve been kept aboard for no reason you can determine. You’ve been lied to and put off as if you didn’t count. Aren’t you weary of it?”

Just two days earlier, Bek had mustered the courage to ask Walker about his use of the mind-summons on Shatterstone. The Druid had told him it was only a coincidence that he had settled his thoughts on Bek, that he had been thinking of the boy just before the attack and had flashed on him instinctively. It was such an obvious lie that Bek had simply walked away in disgust. Truls Rohk seemed to be speaking directly to this incident.

“This is your chance,” the shape-shifter pressed. “Come with me. We can do what Walker cannot. Are you afraid?”

Bek nodded. “Yes.”

Truls Rohk laughed, deep and low. “You shouldn’t be. Not of anything. But I’ll protect you. Come with me. Take back something of who you are from the Druid. Give him pause. Make him reconsider how he thinks of you. Find out something about yourself, about who you are. Don’t you want that?”

To be honest, Bek wasn’t sure. All of a sudden he wasn’t sure of anything. The shape-shifter frightened him for more reasons than he cared to consider, but chief among them was his dark intimation that Bek was nothing of who and what he assumed himself to be. Revelations of that sort usually damaged as much as they healed. Bek wasn’t sure he wanted them revealed by this man, in this way.

“I’ll keep my promise to you, boy,” Truls Rohk whispered. “I’ll tell you my truth. Not what you’ve heard from Panax. Not what you’ve imagined. The truth, as it really is.”

“Panax said you were burned in a fire—”

“Panax doesn’t know. No one does, save the Druid, who knows it all.”

Bek stared. “Why would you choose to tell me?”

“Because we are alike, as I’ve said already. We are alike, and perhaps by knowing me you will come to know yourself, as well. Perhaps. I see myself in you, a long time ago. I see how I was, and I ache with that memory. By telling you my story, I can dispel a little of that ache.”

And give it to me, Bek thought. But he was curious about the shape-shifter. Curious and intrigued. He glanced off into the night, toward the castle bathed in moonlight. Truls Rohk was right about the key, as well. Bek wanted to do something more than serve as a cabin boy. He resented being kept aboard ship all the time. He wanted to feel a part of the expedition, to do something other than study airships and flying.
He wanted to contribute something important. Finding the third key would accomplish that.

But he remembered the eels of Flay Creech and the jungle of Shatterstone, and he wondered how he could even think of going down to Mephitic and whatever waited there. Truls Rohk seemed confident, but the shape-shifter’s reasons for taking him were questionable. Still, others had gone and returned safely. Was he to hide aboard this ship from everything they encountered? He had known when he agreed to come that there would be risks. He could not avoid them all.

But should he embrace them so willingly?

“Come with me, boy,” Truls Rohk urged again. “The night passes swiftly, and we must act while it is still dark. The key waits. I’ll keep you safe. You’ll do the same for me. We’ll reveal hidden truths about ourselves on the way. Come!”

For an instant longer, Bek hesitated. Then he exhaled sharply. “All right,” he agreed.

Truls Rohk’s laugh was wicked and low. Seconds later they slipped over the side of the airship and disappeared into the night.

T
ruls Rohk was born out of fierce passion, misguided choice, and a chance encounter that should never have happened.

His father was a Borderman, a child of frontier parents and grandparents, woodsmen and scouts who lived the whole of their lives in the wilderness of the Runne Mountains. By the time the Borderman was fifteen, he was already gone from his family and living on his own. He was a legend by the time he was twenty, a scout who had traveled the length and breadth of the Wolfsktaag, guiding caravans of immigrants across the mountains, leading hunting parties in and out again, and exploring regions that only a few had ventured into. He was a big man, strong of mind and body, powerfully built and agile, skilled and experienced in a way few others were. He knew of the things that lived within the Wolfsktaag. He was not afraid of them, but he was mindful of what they could do.

He met Truls Rohk’s mother in his thirty-third year. He had been guiding and scouting and exploring for half his life, and he was more at home in the wilderness than he was in the camps of civilization. More and more, he had distanced himself from the settlements and their people. Increasingly, he had sought peace and solace in isolation. The world he favored was not always safe, but it was familiar and comforting. Dangers were plentiful and often unforgiving, but he
understood and accepted them. He thought them fair trade for the beauty and purity of the country.

He had always been lucky, had never made a serious mistake or taken an unnecessary risk. He had shaped and honed his luck into a mantle of confidence that helped to keep him safe. He learned to think defensively, but positively, as well. He never thought anything would hurt him if he made the right choices. He suffered injuries and sickness, but they were never severe enough to prevent a full and complete recovery.

On the day he met Truls Rohk’s mother, however, his luck ran out. He was caught in a storm and seeking shelter when a tree on a slope above him was struck by lightning. It shattered with a huge explosion and tumbled down, along with half the hillside. The Borderman who had escaped so often was a step slow this time. A massive limb pinned his legs. Boulders and debris pummeled him senseless. In seconds, he was completely buried under a mound of rocks and earth, unconscious before he understood fully what had happened.