It was a dangerous gamble. But it was all they had to work with.
So now they waited in the deepening night, listening to the adversary’s approach, to a sharp crackling of brush and limbs, steady and inexorable. They had considered lighting fires to give them a clear battlefield, but decided that darkness favored them more. The moon and stars appeared and faded behind a screen of clouds, providing snatches of light with which to operate. They had positioned themselves squarely behind the false pit, leaving the best and most logical path to reach them to their right, over the real pit. They stood together now, but would change position when the wronk appeared. They had worked their plan out carefully. All that remained was to test it.
It would work, Quentin told himself silently. It had to.
He heard the wronk clearly, heavy footfalls drawing closer. His skin crawled with the sound. Tamis stood right beside him, and he could hear the soft rasp of her breathing. They held their swords in front of them, blades glinting in the moonlight as the clouds broke overhead momentarily. Quentin’s head throbbed and his blood tingled with fiery sparks of magic that broke away from the Sword of Leah as it responded to his sense of danger. He felt the change in his body as he prepared to give himself over to its power. An equal mix of satisfaction and fear roiled within him. He would be transformed, and he knew now what that meant. When the magic entered him, he infused himself with its terrible fury and risked his soul.
Without it, of course, he risked his life. It was not much of a choice.
With an almost delicate grace, the wronk stepped into the clearing. Though its features were hazy and spectral in the faint light, its shape and size were unmistakable. Quentin watched it with a mix of raw fear and revulsion. It registered his presence instantly, freezing in place, casting about as if testing the wind. A glint of metal speared the darkness as a piece of the monster reflected momentarily in the starlight. The moon had disappeared back behind the clouds, and the night was thick and oppressive. Within the black wall of the trees, there was unbroken silence.
The Highlander felt Tamis tense, waiting for him to take the lead. They had agreed that he must do so, that he was the one the wronk was seeking and so could best draw it in the direction they wished it to go. Their plan was simple enough. Pretend to decoy it one way, knowing it would choose to go another. It was Ard Patrinell’s brain at work inside the wronk, so it would be Patrinell’s thinking that would direct it. It would sense a feint, a deception, and so act to avoid it. If they could take advantage of that thinking, if they could anticipate its reasoning, they could lure it into the pit. It was a poor plan at best, but it was the only plan they could come up with.
The wronk shifted again, drawing fresh shards of starlight to its metal skin, pinpricks of brightness that flashed and faded like fireflies. They heard its heavy body as it took a step forward and paused anew. Nothing of Ard Patrinell’s tortured face was visible to them, and so they could try to pretend the wronk was nothing more than a machine. But in his mind Quentin saw the Elf’s eyes anew, looking out from their prison—frantic, pleading, desperate for release. He would have banished the image if he had known how to do so, but it was so strong and pervasive that he could not manage it. It was a window not only into Patrinell’s terrible fate, but also into his own. Tamis would free her lover from his living death. Quentin would simply avoid sharing his fate.
Sweating freely, the heat forming a sheen of perspiration on his face and arms, he wondered absently how matters had come to that end. He had embarked on the journey with such hopes for something wonderful and fulfilling and life-transforming. He had wanted an adventure. What he’d gotten was a nightmare.
“Ready?” he whispered.
Tamis nodded, grim-faced. “Don’t let it take me alive,” she said suddenly. “Promise me.”
“Promise me, as well.” His heart was hammering within his chest.
“I loved him,” she whispered so quietly he barely heard her speak the words.
Quentin Leah took a deep breath and brought up his sword.
25
Bek Ohmsford followed Truls Rohk from the shoreline without resistance. He ran with the shape-shifter deep into the forest for a long time and did not complain. But finally his efforts at keeping up failed. His strength gave out, and he collapsed at the base of a broad-limbed maple, sitting with his head between his legs, sucking in huge gulps of air.
The shape-shifter, a cloaked shadow in the deep night, wheeled back soundlessly and knelt beside him. “You went longer than most would. You’re tough, for a boy.”
They stared at each other in the darkness. Bek tried to speak and couldn’t. Whatever Grianne had done to him, escaping Black Moclips hadn’t helped. His voice was still gone. He made a series of weak, futile gestures, but the other mistook his silence for exhaustion.
“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” Truls Rohk laughed softly. “That’s a mistake that’s been made before.” He shifted within the cloak and settled into a crouch. “I was close to dying, though. The witch set a trap I wasn’t looking for—a caull. She guessed at my purpose in circling back to wait for her and got the caull behind me. I was too anxious to get back to you to be looking out for it properly. It caught me reaching down for your knife with my back turned. I didn’t even know it was there.”
He paused. “But you saved me. All without knowing. Think of that.”
Bek shook his head in confusion.
“After I left, you had a visit from the shape-shifters who inhabit that region.”
Bek nodded. He could still remember the smell and feel of them in the night, all size and bristling hair and raspy voices, like feral beasts.
“Whatever you said to them caught their interest. They decided to wait for me, as well. When a true shape-shifter hides, no one can find it. The caull, lying in wait for me, couldn’t. Couldn’t even tell they were there. When it attacked me, they snatched it right out of the air, bound it in cords so tough it could not break free, and carried it away. Before they left, they told me that my place in this world and my life belonged to you. What do you suppose they meant?”
Bek thought back, remembering how the shape-shifters had queried him about his relationship to Truls Rohk, probing his reasoning, testing his loyalty. Would you give up your life for him? Yes, because I think he would do the same for me. His answer, it seemed, had meant something after all.
Truls Rohk grunted. “Anyway, I fell asleep when they left me. Not what I had planned, but I couldn’t help myself. It was something in their voices. When I woke, I came looking for you. But the witch took care to disguise her passage in ways I couldn’t immediately unravel. It didn’t matter. I knew she would bring you back here. I tried the airship first thing, seeing it moored in the bay. Black Moclips, the witch’s own vessel. Your smell led me right to you, locked down in that hold. I got to you just in time, didn’t I?”
He waited a heartbeat, then reached out suddenly and snatched Bek by his tunic front. “What’s wrong with you, boy? Why don’t you say something?”
Bek wrenched himself free and pointed angrily at his neck. Then he clapped his hand over his mouth for emphasis.
“You’re injured?” the other demanded. “Something’s damaged your throat?”
Impatiently, Bek scratched the words in the dirt with a stick. The cowled head bent for a look. “You can’t speak?” Bek wrote some more. “The witch stole your voice? With magic?”
Truls Rohk rocked back on his haunches and stood up. He made a dismissive gesture. “She doesn’t have that kind of power over you. Never has. What do you think the Druid has been trying to tell you? You’re her equal, though untrained yet. You have the gift, too. I knew that from the moment we met in the Wolfsktaag, months ago.”