Jerle Shannara - Antrax Part 8

"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 pa.s.s. 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 p.a.w.n 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 antic.i.p.atory. 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.

TWELVE.

Bek fought down the rush of fear that threatened to overwhelm him as he felt himself stripped bare and laid open by the faces that floated before him. Their features were flat and empty of life, drained of all expression, sketched on air with chalk so that they did not seem fully formed, but in need of completion, a child's rendering. They were shades, he believed, the dead come back to haunt, compelled to seek out the living by urges and needs only they could know. Their wide, empty eyes fastened on him without seeing, but he could feel them looking anyway, inside, where he hid everything he wanted to keep secret. Who are you?

The voice was thin and whispery. He couldn't tell which of the shades was speaking. He couldn't see movement of mouth or lips. The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, resonating inside his head.

"I'm Bek Ohmsford," he replied, frozen in his sitting position, struggling not to scream. Where have you come from?

His voice shook. "From the Highlands of Leah, across the sea, in another land."

Far away?

"Yes."

Have you come alone?

He hesitated. "No. I came with others."

Where are they?

He shook his head, eyes shifting from one dead face to the next, from one set of blank features to another. "I don't know."

Would you dare to lie to us?

He exhaled sharply. "I don't think so."

The heads shifted slightly, moving in a clockwise motion, as if stirred by a pa.s.sing wind. Eyes and mouths gaped open, the eyes and mouths of corpses. They did not seem to threaten in any way, but they were all around him, and Bek could not escape the feeling that there was more to them than what he was seeing. He kept himself as calm and still as he could manage, the last traces of his restless sleep gone now, his mind and body tingling and taut with his terror.

The shades went still again.

Why have you come here?

How should he answer that one? His mind raced. "I was running away from someone who wants to hurt me."

Where are you running to?

"I don't know. I'm just running."

Where is your companion?

So they knew about Truls Rohk, as well. What did they want with him? "He went back to see if our pursuer is still following us."

Who is your pursuer? Do not lie to us.

He wouldn't dream of lying at this point. Seeing no reason not to do so, he told the shades about Grianne and their history. He did not dissemble or try to hide anything. It might have been that he thought it pointless or perhaps was too weary to pick and choose between what to tell and what to keep secret. There were no interruptions as he spoke. The heads of the dead hung suspended before him, and the night about was empty and still.

When he was finished, there was no immediate response. He thought that perhaps they had decided he was lying after all or trying to trick them in some way. But he had no way of knowing what else he could do or say to convince them. He had used up all his words.

Will you use your magic against your sister when she finds you?

The question was unexpected, and he hesitated. "I don't know," he said finally.

Will she use hers against you?

"I don't know that either. I don't know what will happen when we meet again."

Do you wish her harm?

For a moment, Bek was left speechless. "No!" he blurted out. "I just want to make her understand."

There was a stirring in the air, a sort of rustling sound, like the wind pa.s.sing through trees or tall gra.s.ses. Buried in its sound were words and phrases, as if the dead were communicating with each other in their own language. Bek heard it at the edges of his mind, barely audible, faintly recognizable for what it was. It came and went quickly, and the silence returned.

Tell us of your companion. Do not lie to us.

Again, Bek did as he was ordered, certain now that lying was a mistake he should not make. His fear had lessened, and he was speaking with more confidence, almost as if the shades were companions about a fire and he a storyteller. He did not think they meant him harm. He thought that he must have trespa.s.sed somehow, and they had come to determine his reasons. If he just explained, he would be all right.

So he related what he knew of Truls Rohk and the events that had brought them to Castledown. It took him a while to tell everything, but he felt it was important to do so. He said that the shape-shifter had watched over him on his journey and twice saved his life. He wasn't sure why he made a point of this. Perhaps it was because he thought the shades should know Truls was a friend. Perhaps he thought that knowing this would help keep them both from harm.

When he had finished, the heads shifted and settled anew.

Breeding between shape-shifters and humans is forbidden.

It was said without rancor or condemnation. Nevertheless, it was a strong comment for them to make. And an odd one. What did it matter to the dead what the living did?

He shook his head. "It's not his fault; his parents made that choice."

Halflings have no place in the world.

"Not if we don't make one for them."

Would you make a place for him?

"Yes, if he needed one."

Would you give up your own place in the world so that he might have his?

The conversation was getting oddly metaphysical, and Bek had no idea where it was going, but he stayed with it. "Yes."

Would you give up your life for him?

Bek paused. What was he supposed to say to that? Would he give up his life for Truls Rohk? "Yes," he said finally. "Because I think he would do the same for me."

This time the pause was much longer. Again, the heads rotated and the rustling sounds returned, rife with words and phrases, with conversations the boy could not understand. He listened carefully, but while bits and pieces were audible, he could comprehend none of it. He wondered suddenly if he had misjudged things, if the shades meant him harm after all.

Then the voice spoke again.

Look at us.

He did so. A sudden chill in the air made him shiver, as if a cold wind had found its way down off the mountains, a wind with the brittle snap of deep winter. He shrank from it-and from the abrupt flurry of movement about him. The faces had begun to change. Gone were the empty, expressionless features. Gone were the disembodied heads. Huge, dark forms appeared in their place, bristling with tufts of grizzled hair. Ma.s.sive bodies rose out of the shadows. Like beasts that walked upright, these new creatures closed about, gimlet eyes fixing on him. Bek felt his heart stop and his blood turn to ice. The fear he had dispelled earlier returned in a rush, become outright terror. There was nothing he could do to save himself. There was nowhere to run and no chance to do so. He was trapped.

Do you know what we are?

He couldn't speak. He could barely move. He shook his head slowly, the best he could manage.

We are whatever we wish to be. We are the living and the dead. We are flesh and blood and wind and water. We are shape-shifters. This is our land, and humans do not belong here. You trespa.s.s and must leave. Go back down off the mountain and do not return.

Bek nodded quickly in agreement. He would take any chance they offered to get away. He could hear their heavy, raw breathing and smell their animal bodies. He could feel the weight of their shadows falling over him, layer upon layer. He understood in that instant what it felt like to be hunted and cornered. He understood what it felt like to be prey.

The voice whispered to him in a low, threatening hiss, and he was aware of a change in tone.

When your sister comes for you, go with her. When she asks for the truth, tell it to her. When she seeks a way to understand, help her find it. Do not run away again. Trust in yourself.

His sister was coming? How close was she? He panicked, tried to rise, and found he could not. His strength failed him completely. He sat dazed and helpless on the ground, the shape-shifters all around him, a wall of animal stink and fetid breath, dark shadows and glittering eyes. Where was Truls Rohk? Where was anyone who could help him? He hated his fear, his desperation, but he could not dispel it. All he wanted was to be out of there, to be someplace else, to have a chance to stay alive, even for just another day.

He gasped in shock as the cold struck him anew, and he squeezed his eyes shut against its bite. He could hear the rustle of the shape-shifters, the movement of their bodies, but he could not bring himself to look at them. It took all of his concentration just to breathe, to keep himself from screaming, to stay in control. He felt his resolve crumble around the edges. Then he felt something else. Inside, deep down where the core of him burned with raw emotion, he felt the magic come alive. It sparked and flared, coming to his defense, rising up within him. He could feel it building, layers of it bubbling up like lava out of a volcano's mouth, ready to explode. He tightened his resolve anew, desperate to keep it in check. He could not afford to let it surface. He did not want to test himself against the shape-shifters. He knew it would be a mistake.

Then the cold that surrounded him faded all at once and the animal smell was gone. Fresh air, warmer and gentler now, filled his nostrils; the heavy, raw presence of the shape-shifters had disappeared.

When he opened his eyes again, he was alone.

Truls Rohk hung suspended within the concealing canopy of a ma.s.sive old maple, pressed against its limbs perhaps twenty feet off the ground. He had waited there for over an hour, keeping watch through the foliage. From there, he had a clear view of the rocky flats that separated the two stretches of forest at the base of the mountains through which he and the boy had pa.s.sed earlier. If the Ilse Witch was tracking them, if she had found their trail anew, she would come that way.