Ilse Witch

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.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Truls 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.

  When he woke, the storm had passed and night had fallen. He was surprised to find that he could move again. He lay in a clearing, away from the slide and the limb, his body aching and his face bloodied, but alive. When he propped himself up on one elbow, he was aware of someone looking at him. The watcher’s eyes glimmered in the darkness, well back in the shadows, bright and feral. A wolf, he thought. He did not reach for his weapons. He did not panic. He stared back at the watcher, waiting to see what it would do. When it did nothing, he sat up, thinking it would slink away with his movement. It did not.

  The Borderman understood. The watcher had been the one who pulled him free of the limb, of the rocks and earth, of his tomb. The watcher had saved his life.

  The staring contest continued for a long time with neither watcher nor Borderman advancing or retreating. Finally the Borderman spoke, calling to the watcher, thanking it for helping him. The watcher stayed where it was.
The Borderman spoke for a long time, keeping his voice low and calm in the way he had learned was effective, growing more and more convinced that the watcher was not human. It was, he believed, a spirit creature. It was a child of the Wolfsktaag.

  It was nearing dawn when the watcher finally came close enough to be seen clearly. It was a woman, but it was not human. She slid from the shadows as if formed of colored water, changing her look as she came, a beast one moment, a human the next, a cross of each soon after. She seemed to be trying to take form, uncertain of what to be. In all of her variations, she was beautiful and compelling. She knelt by the Borderman and stroked his forehead and face with soft, strange fingers. She whispered words that the Borderman could not identify, but in a tone of voice that was unmistakable—sweet, silky, and thick with lust.

  She was a shape-shifter, he realized, a creature of the Old World, a thing of magic and strange powers. Something of who and what he was, or perhaps something of her own nature, had drawn her to him. She stared at him with such unbridled passion that he was caught up in her fire. She wanted him in a primal, urgent way, and he found his response to her need equally compelling.

  They mated there in the clearing, quick and hard, a coupling more terrible for its frenzy than for its forbidden character. A human and a spirit creature—no good can come of that, the old ones would say.

  She carried him to her lair, and for three days they mated without stopping, resting only when it was required, submerged in their passion when it was not. The Borderman forgot his wounds and his misgivings and any sense of reason. He put aside everything for this wondrous creature and what she was giving him. He lost himself in his uncontrollable need.

  When it was finished, she was gone. He woke on the fourth day to silence and emptiness. He lay alone, abandoned. He rose, weak and unsteady, but alive in ways he had never thought to be. Her smell and taste lingered in the air around him, on his skin, in his throat. Her presence, the feel of her, was burned into his memory. He wept uncontrollably. He would never be the same without her. She had marked him forever.

  For months afterwards, he hunted for her. He combed the Wolfsktaag from end to end, forsaking everything else. He ate, drank, slept, and hunted. He did so ceaselessly. The weather and the seasons changed, then changed back again. A year passed. Two. He never saw her. He never found a trace of where she had gone.

  Then one day, a little more than two years later, when he was reduced to searching because he did not know what else to do, when he no longer held out any hope, she came to him again. It was late in the year, and the leaves were changed and beginning to fall in careless pools of bright red and orange and yellow on the forest floor. He was walking toward a spring from which he could drink before continuing on. He did not know where he was or where he was going. He was moving because moving was all that was left to him.

  And all at once she was there, standing in front of him, at the pool’s edge.

  She was not alone. A boy stood beside her, part human, part beast, instantly recognizable from his features. He was the child of the Borderman. Already grown to become nearly as large as his mother, he was too big for a normal boy of two. Sharp-eyed and quick, he stared at his father cautiously. There was recognition and understanding in his eyes. There was acceptance. His mother had told him the truth about his father.

  The Borderman came forward and stood awkwardly before them, not knowing what to do. The woman spoke to him in low, compelling tones. Her words, the Borderman found, were clear. She had mated with him when the urge was irresistible and her attraction to him inexplicably strong. They were mismatched and unsuited. But he should know they had a son. He should know and then forget them both.

  It was a pivotal moment. The Borderman had searched for her while she had all but forgotten him. She neither needed nor wanted him. She had her own life, a spirit’s life, and he could never be part of it. She did not understand that she had destroyed him and he could never forget her, could never go back to being what he had been. He was hers as surely as the boy was his. It did not matter what world he had come from or what life he had led. He was hers, and he would not be sent away.

  He begged her to stay. He got down on his knees, this strong and driven man, this man who had endured and survived so much, and he pleaded with her. He wept uncontrollably. It was useless. Worse, it was pointless. She did not understand his behavior. She had no frame of reference for doing so. Spirits did not weep or beg. They acted instinctively and out of need. For her, the choice was clear. She was a creature of the forests and the spirit world. He was not. She could not stay with him.

  When finally she turned to leave, her recognition of him already beginning to fade, his desperation turned to rage. Without thinking, his life ruined, his torment too much to bear, he leapt upon her and drove his hunting knife through her back and into her heart. She was dead before he bore her to the earth.

  He sprang up instantly then and ripped his knife free to kill the boy as well, but the boy was gone.

  The Borderman ran after him, his mind collapsed and turned inward so that nothing else existed. In one hand he carried the hunting knife, wet with the shape-shifter’s blood, waving it at the shadows about him, at the fate that had undone him. In the shadowy concealment of the trees, in the silence of the forest, he sought the boy. His madness was thorough and complete. Bloodlust ruled his life.

  He ran until he collapsed in exhaustion, and then he slept.

  But before he could wake to resume his search, the boy found him, pried the knife from his sleeping hand, and with a sure and practiced touch, cut his throat.

  Truls Rohk’s low, guttural voice went silent. Crouched and hidden from view, he continued to slide through the tall grass ahead of Bek. Bek waited for him to continue his tale, but he did not. Sweat coated the boy’s sun-browned face, a damp sheen prompted as much by his horror as by his exertion. To have watched your father kill your mother and then to have killed your father was an experience too horrifying to contemplate. What must it have felt like to have witnessed and endured such madness at two years of age? Even if you were a spirit creature, a shape-shifter, and not entirely human, what must it have been like? Worse than he could imagine, Bek decided, because Truls Rohk was half human and cloaked in human sensibilities.

  “Stay low,” the shape-shifter growled in warning.

  He stopped and turned back to Bek. His face was hidden in the folds of his hood and his body concealed by his cloak, but Bek could feel the heat of him emanate from beneath his coverings.

  “I buried them where they will never be found. I felt nothing at first, not until later, when I had time to think on it.” Truls Rohk’s voice seemed distant and reflective. “It was not so terrible until I realized I had lost the only two people who were like me—not because we were the same physically, but because we were bonded by blood. These were my parents. No one else would ever care for me as they could. Even my father might have loved me, given time and sanity. If he had not gone mad, perhaps. Now I was alone, not all of one species or the other, human or spirit. I was some of each, and that meant I belonged with neither.”

  He laughed softly, bitterly. “I never tried living with humans. I knew what their response to me would be. They spied me in the mountains a couple of times and sought to hunt me as they would an animal. I tried living with shape-shifters, for there are bands of them concealed deep in the Wolfsktaag, and I could find their hiding places. But they smelled the part of me that was human, and they knew what I was. My mother had crossed a forbidden line, they said. She had committed an unpardonable act. She had died for her foolishness. It would be best if I died, too. I could never be one of them. I must live out my life alone.”

  He looked at Bek. “Do you understand yet why we are alike?”

  Bek shook his head. He had no idea at all. He was not sure he cared to speculate.

  “You will,” the other whispered.

  He turned away and began moving ahead again through the tall grass, closin
g swiftly now on the castle entry, another of night’s shadows. Bek followed, not knowing what else to do, still waiting to hear why they were alike, still wondering what was going to happen to him. He had come this far on faith and because of his need to be more than a spectator on this voyage. Had he made a mistake?

  The castle rose before them, a maze of crumbling stone walls and black holes where doors and windows had fallen away. The moon had dropped toward the horizon, and the shadows cast by towers and battlements fell across the earth like long, black garments. No sound came from within the ruins. Nothing moved in the dark.

  Truls Rohk stopped and faced him once more. “The Druid looked for the key’s guardian within the castle walls. He did not think to consider the guardian might be the castle itself—his first mistake. He looked for the key’s guardian to defend the key by attacking and destroying those who invaded. He did not think to consider the guardian might rely instead on deception—his second mistake. He sought his answers with reason and magic, with a certainty that one or the other must give him the answers he needed. He did not think to consider that his adversary relied on neither—his last mistake.”

  Smoothly, he retreated through the grasses to hover close. Bek flinched at the other’s approach, uncomfortable with looking at the black hole of Truls Rohk’s hood and the eyes that haunted there. “The guardian of the third key is a spirit, and it dwells within these castle walls. It has no presence but for the castle itself and wards its treasures equally. The key is but one of its possessions; it has no special value to the spirit. Whoever put it there knew that. The castle wards everything equally, hiding all, revealing nothing, an immutable sentry. It deceives, boy. Like me. Like you.”

  “How do we penetrate that deception?” Bek asked, glancing up sharply now, eager to know.

  The strange eyes glimmered. “We try seeing with different eyes.”

  They moved forward to the very edge of the grasses, no more than a few yards from the drawbridge and the castle entry. They had stayed low during their approach, hidden by the grasses, concealed by tall stalks, not because the guardian could see them if they stood, for it had no eyes, but because it could sense their presence once they were exposed.