He called her his little Ilse Witch, and she took the name for her own. She buried her given name with her past, and she never used it again.
2
Her memories of the past, already faded and tattered, fell away in an instant’s time as she stood in a woodland clearing a thousand miles from her lost home and confronted the boy who claimed he was her brother.
“Grianne, it’s Bek,” he insisted. “Don’t you remember?”
She remembered everything, of course, although no longer as clearly and sharply, no longer as painfully. She remembered, but she refused to believe that her memories could be brought to life with such painful clarity after so many years. She hadn’t heard her name spoken in all that time, hadn’t spoken it herself, had barely even thought of it. She was the Ilse Witch, and that name defined who and what she was, and not the other. The other was for when she had achieved her revenge over the Druid, for when she had gained sufficient recognition and power that when it was spoken next, it would never again be forgotten by anyone.
But here was this slip of a boy speaking it now, daring to suggest that he had a right to do so. She stared at him in disbelief and smoldering anger. Could he really be her brother? Could he be Bek, alive in spite of what she had believed for so long? Was it possible? She tried to make sense of the idea, to find a way to address it, to form words to speak in response. But everything she thought to say or do was jumbled and incoherent, refusing to be organized in a useful way. Everything froze as if chained and locked, leaving her so frustrated with her inability to act that she could barely keep herself from screaming.
“No!” she shouted finally. A single word, spoken like an oath offered up against demon spawn, it escaped her lips when nothing else dared.
“Grianne,” he said, more softly now.
She saw the mop of dark brown hair and the startling blue eyes, so like her own, so familiar to her. He had her build and looks. He had something else, as well, something she had yet to define, but was unmistakably there. He could be Bek.
But how? How could he be Bek?
“Bek is dead,” she hissed at him, her slender body rigid within the dark robes.
On the ground to one side, a small bundle of clothing and shadows, Ryer Ord Star knelt, head lowered in the veil of her long silver hair, hands clasped in her lap. She had not moved since the Ilse Witch had appeared out of the night, had not lifted her head an inch or spoken a single word. In the silence and darkness, she might have been a statue carved of stone and set in place by her maker to ward a traveler’s place of rest.
The Ilse Witch’s eyes passed over her in a heartbeat and fell upon the boy. “Say something!” she hissed anew. “Tell me why I should believe you!”
“I was saved by a shape-shifter called Truls Rohk,” he answered finally, his gaze on her steady. “I was taken to the Druid Walker, who in turn took me to the people who raised me as their son. But I am Bek.”
“You could not know any of this! You were only two when I hid you in that cellar!” She caught herself. “When I hid my brother. But my brother is dead, and you are a liar!”
“I was told most of it,” he admitted. “I don’t remember anything of how I was saved. But look at me, Grianne. Look at us! You can’t mistake the resemblance, how much alike we are. We have the same eyes and coloring. We’re brother and sister! Don’t you feel it?”
She advanced a step. “Why would a shape-shifter save you when it was shape-shifters who killed my parents and took me prisoner? Why would the Druid save you when he sought to imprison me?”
The boy was already shaking his head slowly, deliberately, his blue eyes intense, his young face determined. “No, Grianne, it wasn’t the shape-shifters or the Druid who killed our parents and took you away. They were never your enemies. Don’t you realize the truth yet? Think about it, Grianne.”
“I saw his face!” she screamed in fury. “I saw it through a window, a glimpse, passing in the dawn light, just before the attack, before I …”
She trailed off, wondering suddenly, unexpectedly, if she could have been mistaken. Had she seen the Druid as the Morgawr had insisted, when he told her to think back, so certain she would? How could he have known what she would see? The implication of what it would mean if she had deceived herself was staggering. She brushed it away violently, but it coiled up in a corner of her memory, a snake still easily within reach.
“We are Ohmsfords, Grianne,” the boy continued softly. “But so is Walker. We share the same heritage. He comes from the same bloodline as we do. He is one of us. He has no reason to do us harm.”
“None that you could fathom, it appears!” She laughed derisively. “What would you know of dark intentions, little boy? What has life shown you that would give you the right to suppose your insight into such things is better than mine?”
“Nothing.” He seemed momentarily at a loss for words, but his face spoke of his need to find them. “I haven’t lived your life, I know. But I’m not naive about what it must have been like.”
Her patience slipped a notch. “I think you believe what you are telling me,” she told him coldly. “I think you have been carefully schooled to believe it. But you are a dupe and a tool of clever men. Druids and shape-shifters make their way in the world by deceiving others. They must have looked long and hard to find you, a boy who looks so much like Bek would look at your age. They must have congratulated themselves on their good fortune.”
“How did I come to have his name, then?” the boy snapped in reply. “If I’m not your brother, how do I have his name? It is the name I was given, the name I have always had!”
“Or at least, that is what you believe. A Druid can make you embrace lies with little more than a thought, even lies about yourself.” She shook her head reprovingly. “You are sadly deceived, to believe as you do, to think yourself a dead boy. I should destroy you on the spot, but perhaps that is what the Druid is hoping I will do, what he wants me to do. Perhaps he thinks it will somehow damage me if I kill a boy who looks so like my brother. Tell me where the Druid waits, and I will spare you.”
The boy stared at her in horror. “You are the one who is deceived, Grianne. So much so that you will tell yourself anything to keep the truth at bay.”
“Where is the Druid?” she snapped, her face contorting angrily. “Tell me now!”
He took a deep breath, straightening. “I’ve come a long way for this meeting. Too far to be intimidated into giving up what I know is true and right. I am your brother. I am Bek. Grianne—”
“Don’t call me that!” she screamed. Her gray robes billowed from her body and she threw up her arms in fury, almost as if to smother his words, to bury them along with her past. She felt her temper slipping, her grip on herself sliding away like metal on oiled metal, and the raw power of her voice took on an edge that could easily cut to ribbons anything or anyone against which it was directed. “Don’t speak my name again!”
He stood his ground. “What name should I speak? Ilse Witch? Should I call you what your enemies call you? Should I treat you as they do, as a creature of dark magic and evil intent, as someone I can never be close to or care about or want to see become my sister again?”
He seemed to gain strength with every new word, and suddenly she saw him as more dangerous than she had believed. “Be careful, boy.”
“You are the one who needs to be careful!” he snapped. “Of who and what you believe! Of everything you have embraced since the moment you were taken from our home. Of the lies in which you have cloaked yourself!”