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 answers. 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.
3
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.