Then Bek saw the beginnings of movement. The movement did not come from a shifting of limbs or head, but from within the dark mass of his body, as if the flesh itself was alive and crawling. The movement had a liquid appearance and Truls Rohk the look of glass filled with water. It was so unexpected that Bek thought his eyes were deceiving him. He thought so, as well, when parts of the shape-shifter faded then reappeared in ghostly fashion.
But when the moon slid from behind the clouds and flooded the clearing with milky brightness, Bek understood. Truls Rohk looked like something cobbled together from stray parts of human debris, some of it half-formed, some of it half-rotted, all of it shifting like a mirage that might not be there at all. The watery look came from the way in which pieces of him constantly changed from flesh and bone to mist and air. There was nothing permanent about Truls Rohk. He was only a half-completed thing, some of him recognizable as human, but not enough to call him a man.
It was easily the most terrifying sight Bek had ever witnessed—not simply for what it was, but for what it suggested, as well. It whispered of the grave, of death and decay, of what waited to claim the body when it began to decompose. It screamed of what it would feel like to have your body disintegrate about you. It suggested unimaginable pain and suffering. It reminded of nightmares and the creatures that came out of them to drive you from your sleep. It was surreal and ugly. It was anathema to any human concept of life.
He said nothing, but Truls Rohk saw the look in his eyes. “This is what happens when a shape-shifter mates with a human,” he whispered in barely contained fury. “This is what comes from breaking taboos. I told you my father tried to kill me after killing my mother. He did so when she showed him what he had made with her. He did so when he saw what I was. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t abide me. Who could? I am trapped in a half-formed body. I am bits and pieces of flesh and bone on the one hand and nature’s elements on the other, but not fully formed of either. I shift back and forth between them, trapped.”
Bek could not speak. He stared wordlessly, trying to imagine what it must be like to be Truls Rohk, unable to do so.
The shape-shifter laughed dully. “Not so eager to look on me now, are you? Too bad. This is what I am, boy. I have strength and power at my command. I have a presence. But I lack a true shape-shifter’s ability to change forms smoothly. I cannot hide the truth of myself. It’s why I live apart, why I have always lived apart. No one can stand to look on me.”
He came forward a step, and Bek shrank back in spite of himself as the bits and pieces of the other’s body rippled and shifted, exposing ends of bones and runnels of blood and strips of torn flesh amid the shifts of air and water, of light and dark. An eye protruded and disappeared. Teeth gleamed out of a half-stripped skull. Hands showed the ends of finger bones and bare tendons. Hair and skin grew in patches, split and torn. Nothing seemed designed to hold together, yet hold it did, though everywhere with the look of something about to collapse into itself.
“Huh!” Truls Rohk spat out the sound with such venom that it caused the boy to flinch. The ravaged face turned away. “You were right, boy. I am a monster. Are you satisfied now?”
He started to turn away, but Bek leapt forward and grabbed his arm, holding on tight through the wasteland of crumbling bones and shifting flesh.
“You said it yourself,” he said. “Your face is not who you are. You might appear a monster, but you’re not. You’re my friend. You saved my life. But you wouldn’t trust me with the truth about yourself. You hid that truth because you deceived yourself into thinking that it was something else. I would rather know you this way, terrible though it is, than have the truth hidden.”
“Pretty words,” the other growled, but did not pull away.
“The truth, Truls Rohk. I know you hate yourself for how you are. I know you hate how you look and how you know others will look at you if you reveal yourself. But sometimes, with people who matter, you have to reveal even the worst of what you believe yourself to be. You have to have faith that it won’t make a difference. I would never judge you for how you look. Who you are is what matters, and who you are is always buried deep inside. The shape-shifters in the mountains knew this. They asked me how I felt about you because they wanted to see if I thought you mattered. Could there be a friendship between us? How deep would that friendship go? Did I think there was a place for you in the world? Would I give up my own place so that you could have yours? Would I give up my life for you? I gave them answers that had nothing to do with how you look and everything to do with who you are.”
“So what have you accomplished by making me show you how I am? What purpose has it served?” Bitterness and suspicion laced the other’s words. “The truth helps no one here.”
Bek tightened his grip on the other’s arm and plunged ahead. “Don’t you see? The truth helps everyone. The chance at life that the shape-shifters gave you when you were attacked by the caull is the same chance you must give Grianne. Everyone thinks she’s a monster, too. But the truth is something else entirely. She just needs someone to help her see it. She needs someone to help her strip away her deceptions and lies. She needs someone to believe in her, to believe there’s something more to her than what everyone sees. She needs someone to speak for her.”
Bek leaned close. “There isn’t anyone else but you and me. We’re her last hope.”
There was a long silence when he finished, a freezing of time and space as the boy and the shape-shifter faced each other in the darkness, one human, one something else. All the air had gone out of the world, leaving it empty and suffocating. Bek did not know what else to do or say. He refused to let go of Truls Rohk, keeping hold of his arm, as if by doing so he might keep him bound to his cause.
“You and me,” the other said at last, his rough voice strangely soft. “But mostly you.”
He freed himself so quickly that Bek did not have time to stop him, reached down for his cloak and pulled it on again, becoming once more a dark, faceless apparition in the night. All of the pieces of him, all of the ruined, shifting parts, forever fading and appearing like half-formed visions, disappeared.
“The Druid was right to choose you,” he said.
Bek saw his chance. “I have a plan.”
Truls Rohk grunted. “When didn’t you? You are a match for your sister in more ways than one. Come. I make you no promises, no assurances of what I will or won’t do about her. Talk to me some more and we’ll see. But let’s not delay. The rets will be coming, and the ruins wait. Walker needs us.”
“But listen to what I have to tell you—”
“I’ll listen later.” The shape-shifter dismissed him swiftly. Then his voice hardened. “Now you listen to me. Don’t you ever mention what’s happened here. Not to me or to anyone else. Not ever. It’s finished.”
He turned and stalked away, Bek struggling to keep up.
TWENTY-SIX
Now,” Quentin Leah said quietly to Tamis.
She moved away from him, not hurriedly or with any outward sign of the turmoil she must be feeling, but as if the encounter were just one of many and in no way significant beyond that. She eased farther right and ahead of him, walking deliberately, choosing her steps and then her place to stand. They had waited until they were certain the wronk could see what she was doing. It was difficult to spy out, but she had stopped just behind a bare patch of ground that was strewn with a scattering of deadwood and scrub grasses. A trained eye would suspect a wronk pit, a well-concealed trap. But the trap lay elsewhere.
Quentin held his ground as the wronk turned toward Tamis. It studied her without moving, then abruptly started toward her. She brought up her short sword defensively and dropped into a protective crouch. Quentin waited a moment, then stepped forward, as well, the Sword of Leah lifting into the faint light. He felt the stirrings of its magic run down through the metal blade and into his arm. He felt its fiery rush enter his body, bitter and at the same time sweet. It infused him with a sens
e of power. It made him light-headed and alive in a way nothing else did. He wanted to use that power. Even knowing how foolish that desire was, he wanted it.
The wronk lumbered out of the night, closing on Tamis with inexorable determination, neither fast nor slow, but certain. The Tracker held her ground, refusing to give way, saying something now, taunting words that Quentin could not make out. It wasn’t what they had planned. She was supposed to give way to the wronk, to stay clear of it should the decoy fail, as it seemed now it might. Quentin came forward another few steps, stopping just at the edge of where he could stand and still know his place in the darkened landscape that hid their trap. As he did so, he felt a new surge of magic fly into him, and he was consumed by a need to release it in battle.
Abruptly, without warning, the wronk turned toward him.
The suddenness of it took his breath away. It drained him of the fire of his magic. In a single moment, everything changed. The wronk came for him swiftly, closing the distance between them almost before Quentin could recover himself to act. It thundered across the clearing, much quicker than the Highlander had remembered from their previous encounter. The sword in its human hand lifted. The blade in its metal one flashed.
Tamis screamed, too far away to help. Do something!
At the last moment, he remembered what it was he had intended and threw himself out of the monster’s way. The wronk’s blades sliced through the air next to him, one so close to his face he could feel the rush of wind it generated in passing. He darted left the six paces he had counted earlier, giving himself enough leeway to make up for the steps he had taken earlier, wheeled back and braced himself. The wronk was already coming for him again. From the helmet that protected its human head, Ard Patrinell’s features were suddenly, shockingly recognizable.
Don’t look, Quentin told himself. Don’t feel anything.
Tamis was rushing toward him, foolishly responding to his danger, impulsively acting to help. He shifted swiftly to his right as the wronk bore down on him, the sound of its machine parts a sharp whine against the hammer of its footfalls. It closed with an almost palpable expectation of crushing him—its momentum carrying it right over the pit they had intended for it. The screen gave way beneath its weight, collapsing in a shower of earth, a snapping of deadwood, and a rending of cloth. An instant later the wronk was gone, vanished into the hole as if it had never been. They could hear the sound of its impact as it struck bottom, then silence.
Tamis charged up, breathing hard. Her eyes were bright with surprise and excitement as she stared at the hole. “That wasn’t so hard,” she said as if she couldn’t quite believe it.
No, Quentin was thinking, it wasn’t. He moved over to the edge of the pit, still wary, and peered down. It was so dark that he couldn’t make out anything. “We need a torch,” he said.
She darted away, gathered up a likely stick of deadwood, wrapped it in a scrap of cloth from the edge of the pit, and, using tinder from her pouch, sparked a flame. As she did so, Quentin heard the first stirrings of movement from within the pit.
“Hurry,” he whispered, trying to stay calm.
They might have trapped it, but they had most certainly not killed it. The fall alone had not been enough. More would be needed, even to disable it sufficiently to render it immobile. He waited impatiently for her to join him, reaching over the side with the makeshift torch to see what was happening.
The firelight illuminated the sheer, smooth sides of the pit, all the way down to where the wronk was trapped more than fifteen feet below. They could just make out its dusty shell. It was battered and scraped, but still functioning. Neither the fall nor the sharp rocks embedded by the Rindge in the floor of the pit had been enough to stop it.
It heaved itself upward, grasping at stray roots, digging into the earth in search of handholds, intent on climbing out.
Quentin Leah and Tamis fought to keep it from doing so with a frenzy and determination that bordered on madness. They threw everything at it that they could lay their hands on—rocks, limbs, part of an old stump, clots of earth, and a fair-sized boulder that they managed to roll close enough to topple in. Several times they struck it hard enough to knock it loose, but each time it picked itself up and began the climb out once more, a relentless and inexorable force.
They used fire next, throwing mounds of deadwood into the pit, then lighting it with the torch. The deadwood blazed up, burning so quickly and fiercely that the wronk did not have time to stamp it out. For a few moments, it was trapped in an inferno, metal skin reflecting the flames of the burning wood so that it seemed as if it, too, were ablaze. In the fiery light, they watched as it tried to protect its human arm, the flesh of which soon blistered and blackened from the heat. Ard Patrinell’s terrified, anguished face peered out from behind its clear protective shield, and in his eyes they read things they did not want to know. Quentin hastened to feed more wood into the pit, but quit looking down at what was trapped there. Tamis was in tears.
But in the end, that effort failed, too. The fire burned fiercely for a time, then began to die out. The wronk climbed clear of the flames once more, blackened with ash and heat-seared, but still mobile.
Quentin stepped back in dismay. The Rindge would have been better prepared for this than they were. They would have had a backup plan for dealing with the trapped wronk. They would have been able to rely on strength of numbers. But the Rindge weren’t there to help. No one was.
“This isn’t working!” Tamis screamed at him.
Without waiting for his answer, she darted into the trees. For an instant, he thought she had abandoned him, that she was fleeing. He stared back down into the pit, where the last of the burning wood was turning to ash and the wronk was slowly digging out hand- and footholds on its torturous, but implacable ascent.
Then Tamis was back, dragging a huge limb by one end, deadwood, well over eight feet in length, most of its smaller branches reduced to broken stubs.
“We’ll use this to knock him back down each time he tries to climb out!” she shouted. “Help me!”
He leapt forward to do so, and together they hauled the branch to the side of the pit and tipped it downward, seizing the slender end and using the limb like a battering ram to hammer at the wronk. Grunting and huffing, they slammed their makeshift weapon into its metal body and sent it tumbling back down again. Again and again, they stopped its ascent, trying unsuccessfully to smash its mechanisms, to break up its working parts. Each time it just picked itself up and began the climb out anew. So the struggle continued, with no progress being made on either side. It was a battle that Tamis and he must lose, Quentin realized, because they would wear out sooner than the wronk. They had to find a way to disable it if they were to win. But he could not think of how to do that without getting close, and getting close was unthinkable.
Then they made a mistake. They let the end of the branch get too close to the wronk while preparing to use it, and the wronk dropped its weapons and seized it in both hands. Its weight was enormous, and they were forced to let go of the branch. The wronk dropped back into the pit. But it had a ladder with which to climb out, and picking up its weapons, it began to do so.
Quentin and Tamis watched helplessly. “We have to get out of here,” he whispered.
“No!” she screamed at him. Her dusty, sweat-streaked face was contorted with rage and frustration. “You promised!”
“We can’t stop it alone!”
“We have to! I’ll do it myself!”
She began snatching up clots of dirt and throwing them at the wronk, shrieking at it. Then abruptly, she dashed away, searching for another ram to knock it loose again. Quentin stayed where he was, waiting. The wronk was more than halfway out. When it reached him, he would try to knock it back down again. His hands tightened on the Sword of Leah. He could feel its power coursing through him, singing in his blood, making him light-headed and oddly detached. He watched the magic racing up and down the blade, tiny flickers of brilli
ant light.
He glanced down into the pit. The wronk could see the magic, too. The knowledge of what it meant reflected in Ard Patrinell’s desperate, haunted eyes.
Then Tamis was back, hauling another dead branch, one shorter and less stout than the first. Her face was so intense and her eyes so wild that he rushed to help her, and once again they tried to knock the wronk loose from its perch.
But the wronk was ready for them. It snatched the ram out of their hands before they could bring it to bear and, one-handed, swept the deadwood into them, knocking them backwards with a single, powerful blow. Quentin lost his grip on the Sword of Leah, and it flew out into the darkness. He went down in a heap, his ribs and chest throbbing with pain, the breath knocked from his body.
He was back up again in an instant, searching frantically for his weapon, their only hope. He found it quickly, but by the time he had it in hand, the wronk was out of the pit and reaching for Tamis, who stood defiantly in its path.
“Tamis, run!” Quentin shouted.
Instead, she charged, launching herself into the wronk with such fury that she knocked it backwards, slamming her short sword into its fire-blackened human arm, grappling with its metal one, wrapping her arms about the long knife and shield.
Quentin never hesitated. He went after them as if possessed, yelling out the Highland battle cry, “Leah! Leah!” in fear and desperation, slamming into them both, trying to knock Tamis away, trying to topple the wronk. He succeeded in neither. Rebuffed, he stepped back and swung the Sword of Leah with such fury that he took off the wronk’s human arm. It fell away with Tamis’ short sword still buried in it, blood spraying everything in a red mist. A look of shock and disbelief crossed Ard Patrinell’s face, his mouth yawning in a soundless scream. Quentin realized in horror that the Elf could still feel pain.