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 answer
s. 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.
Arms of iron clutched Bek Ohmsford close to a body that smelled vaguely fetid and loamy, of earth and chemicals mixed. The body moved with the swiftness of thought, sliding through trees and brush, shedding layers of itself like skin, shadows that hung dark and empty on the air and then faded away completely. Some exploded into bits of night as the magic of the Ilse Witch caught up to them, but always Bek and his rescuer were one skin ahead.
Then they were beyond the clearing and into the concealing trees, still running hard, but cloaked in shadows and screens of brush and limbs. Bek began to struggle then, frightened suddenly of the unknown, of anything powerful and mysterious enough to challenge the Ilse Witch’s magic.
“Be still, boy!” Truls Rohk hissed, giving him a sharp squeeze of warning with those powerful arms, never once slowing his pace.
They ran for a long time, Bek crumpled nearly into a ball in the other’s grip, until the clearing and the witch were far behind them. Then they stopped, and the shape-shifter dropped to one knee and released the boy with a nudge of hands and shoulders, letting him roll to the earth in a crumpled heap, there to uncoil and straighten himself again. Bek heard Truls Rohk breathing hard, winded and spent, bent over within his concealing cloak while he waited for his strength to return. Bek climbed to his hands and knees, nerve endings tingling with new life as fresh blood finally reached his cramped limbs. They were in a place grown so thick with trees and brush that the light of moon and stars did not penetrate, where everything was cloaked in deepest silence.
“Keeping you alive is turning into a full-time job,” the shape-shifter muttered irritably.
Bek thought of his lost opportunity to persuade the Ilse Witch of who he was. “No one asked you to interfere! I was that close to convincing her! I was just about—”
“You were just about to get yourself killed,” the other said with a quick, harsh laugh. “You weren’t paying close enough attention to the effect you were having on her, you were so caught up in the righteousness and certainty of your argument. Hah! Convincing her? Couldn’t you feel what was happening? She was getting ready to use her magic on you!”
“That’s not true!” Bek was suddenly furious. He leapt to his feet in challenge. “You don’t know that!”
Now the shape-shifter was really laughing, a low and steady howl that he worked hard to suppress. “Can’t afford to laugh as loud as I’d like, boy. Not here. Not this close still.” He stood up, confronting the boy. “You listen to me. Your arguments were good. They were sound and they were true. But she wasn’t ready for them. She wanted to believe some of it, I think. She might have believed all of it in other circumstances, maybe will after time spent thinking it over. But she wasn’t ready for it then and there. Especially not at the end, when you let your own magic get away from you again. Not your fault, I know, that you’re still learning. But you have to be aware of your limitations.”
Bek stared. “I was using the wishsong?”
“Not consciously, but it was slipping out of you even while you tried to tell her about it.” Truls Rohk paused. “When she sensed its presence, she felt threatened. She thought you were about to attack her. Or she just decided it was all too much to deal with and she should put an end to you.”
He turned and walked away a few steps, looking back the way they had come. “All quiet for now. But I don’t know that it’s finished yet.” He turned back. “You surprised her, boy, and that’s dangerous with someone so powerful. You gave her too much all at once, too much she didn’t want to hear, that would impact her in ways she couldn’t manage so quickly.” He grunted. “It couldn’t be helped, I imagine. She appeared and found you. What were you supposed to do?”
Bek stood silently before him, thinking it through. Truls Rohk was right. He had been so caught up in persuading Grianne he was her brother that he had paid almost no attention to what she was doing. It was possible she had not believed him, could not have for that matter, given the suddenness and surprise of it. Just because he believed didn’t mean she would. She’d had much longer to live with the lie than he’d had to live with the truth. She was less likely to be swayed as easily.
“Sit down, boy,” Truls Rohk said, and moved over to join him. “Time for a few more revelations. You were wrong about how well you were doing convincing your sister of who you were. You’re wrong about no one asking me to interfere in your life, as well.”
Bek looked at him. “Walker?”
“What I told you before, on Mephitic, was true. I pulled you from the ashes of your parents’ home. Aware that your family was in danger, I was keeping watch at the Druid’s request. The Morgawr’s Mwellrets, shape-shifters of a sort, were prowling about your home in Jentsen Close. You lived not far from the Wolfsktaag, there at a corner of the Rainbow Lake, amid a community of isolated homes occupied mostly by farmers. You were vulnerable, and Walker was looking for a way to keep you safe.”
He shook his head within its cowl, his face layered in shadow. “I warned him to act quickly, but he was too slow. Or perhaps he tried, and your father would not listen to him. They talked infrequently and were not close friends. Your father was a scholar and did not believe in violence. In his mind, the Druids represent
ed violence. But violence doesn’t care anything about whether or not you believe in it. It comes looking for you regardless. It came for your family just before dawn on a day when I was absent. Mwellrets, there on the orders of the Morgawr. They killed your parents and burned your home to the ground, making it appear as if it were the work of Gnome raiders. They thought you had perished in the blaze, not realizing your sister had hidden you in the cold cellar. They were in a hurry, having taken her, whom the Morgawr coveted most, and so did not search as carefully as I did when I came later. I found you in the cellar, tucked carefully away, crying, hungry, chilled, and frightened. I took you from the ashes and gave you to Walker.”
Bek looked away from him, thinking it through. “Why didn’t he tell me any of this before he sent me to you with Quentin?”
The other laughed. “Why doesn’t he ever tell any of us anything? He told me a boy and his cousin were coming, that I should look for them, that I should test them to see if they had merit and heart.” He shook his head. “He left it to me to realize that it was you, the boy I had saved all those years ago. He left it to me to determine what I was meant to do. Do you see?”
Bek shook his head, not entirely certain he did.
“You were told to ask me to come with you on this voyage. You were given a message to deliver, one that I was to interpret in whatever way I chose. I realized what he hadn’t told you, what he was asking of me. It was clear enough. He wanted me to be your protector, your defender when danger threatened. But I was to monitor the progress of your magic’s development, as well. He knew it would begin to surface, and when it did you would have to be told the truth about who you really were. He did not want to rush things, though; he wanted to keep you in the dark as long as possible so that you would not be overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. But I knew that the sooner you discovered you had the use of magic, the sooner you could find a way to come to terms with it. We differ in our approach to things, the Druid and I, and I imagine he was not happy at all with what I did to you on Mephitic.”