Antrax (2 page)

A sudden movement to one side drew her attention. When she turned to look, a hand wrapped in a foul-smelling cloth closed over her face and sent her spiraling downward into blackness.

W
hen she awoke, she was bound, gagged, and blindfolded, and she could not tell where she was or who held her captive or even if it was day or night. She was carried over a thick shoulder like a sack of wheat, but her captors did not speak. There were more than one; she could hear their footsteps, heavy and certain. She could hear their breathing. She thought about her home and parents. She thought about her brother. The tears came anew, and she began to sob. She had failed them all.

She was carried for a long time, then laid upon the ground and left alone. She squirmed in an effort to free herself, but the bonds were too tightly knotted. She was hungry and thirsty, and a
cold desperation was creeping through her. There could be only one reason she had been taken captive, one reason she was needed when her parents and brother were not. Her wishsong. She was alive and they were dead because of her legacy. She was the one with the magic. She was the one who was special. Special enough that her family was killed so that she could be stolen away. Special enough to cause everything she loved and cared for to be taken from her.

There was a commotion not long after that, sudden and unexpected, filled with new sounds of battle and angry cries. They seemed to be coming from all around her. Then she was snatched from the ground and carried off, leaving the sounds behind. The one who carried her now cradled her while running, holding her close, as if to soothe her fear and desperation. She curled into her rescuer’s arms, burrowed as if stricken, for such was the depth of her need.

When they were alone in a silent place, the bonds and gag and blindfold were removed. She sat up and found herself facing a big man wrapped in black robes, a man who was not entirely human, his face scaly and mottled like a snake’s, his fingers ending in claws, and his eyes lidless slits. She caught her breath and shrank from him, but he did not move away in response.

“You are safe now, little one,” he whispered. “Safe from those who would harm you, from the Dark Uncle and his kind.”

She did not know whom he was talking about. She looked around guardedly. They were crouched in a forest, the trees stark sentinels on all sides, their branches confining amid a sea of sunshine that dappled the woodland earth like gold dust. There was no one else around, and nothing of what she saw looked familiar.

“There is no reason to be afraid of me,” the other said. “Are you frightened by how I look?”

She nodded warily, swallowing against the dryness in her throat.

He handed her a water skin, and she drank gratefully. “Do not be afraid. I am of mixed breed, both Man and Mwellret, little one. I look scary, but I am your friend. I was the one who saved you from those others. From the Dark Uncle and his shape-shifters.”

That was twice he had mentioned the Dark Uncle. “Who is he?” she asked. “Is he the one who hurt us?”

“He is a Druid. Walker is his name. He is the one who attacked your home and killed your parents and your brother.” The reptilian eyes fixed on her. “Think back. You will remember seeing his face.”

To her surprise, she did. She saw it clearly, a glimpse of it as it passed a window in the thin dawn light, dusky skin and black beard, eyes so piercing they stripped you bare, dark brow creased with frown lines. She saw him, knew him for her enemy, and felt a rage of such intensity she thought she might burn from the inside out.

Then she was crying, thinking of her parents and her brother, of her home and her lost world. The man across from her drew her gently into his arms and held her close.

“You cannot go back,” he told her. “They will be searching for you. They will never give up while they think you are alive.”

She nodded into his shoulder. “I hate them,” she said in a thin, sharp wail.

“Yes, I know,” he whispered. “You are right to hate them.” His rough, guttural voice tightened. “But listen to me, little one. I am the Morgawr. I am your father and mother now. I am your family. I will help you to find a way to gain revenge for what has been taken from you. I will teach you to ward yourself against everything that might hurt you. I will teach you to be strong.”

He whisked her away, lifting her as if she weighed nothing, and carried her deeper into the woods to where a giant bird waited. He called the bird a Shrike, and she flew on its back with him to another part of the Four Lands, one dark and solitary and
empty of sound and life. He cared for her as he said he would, trained her in mind and body, and kept her safe. He told her more of the Druid Walker, of his scheming and his hunger for power, of his long-sought goal of dominance over all the Races in all the lands. He showed her images of the Druid and his black-cloaked servants, and he kept her anger fired and alive within her child’s breast.

“Never forget what he has stolen from you,” he would repeat. “Never forget what you are owed for his betrayal.”

After a time he began to teach her to use the wishsong as a weapon against which no one could stand—not once she had mastered it and brought it under her control, not once she had made it so much a part of her that its use seemed second nature. He taught her that even a slight change in pitch or tone could alter health to sickness and life to death. A Druid had such power, he told her. The Druid Walker in particular. She must learn to be a match for him. She must learn to use her magic to overcome his.

After a while she thought no longer of her parents and her brother, whom she knew to be dead and lost to her forever; they were no more than bones buried in the earth, a part of a past forever lost, of a childhood erased in a single day. She gave herself over to her new life and to her mentor, her teacher, and her friend. The Morgawr was all those while she grew through adolescence, all those and much more. He was the shaper of her thinking and the navigator of her life. He was the inspiration for her magic’s purpose and the keeper of her dreams of righting the wrongs she had suffered.

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.

H
er 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!”

He pointed at her suddenly. “We are alike in more ways than you think. Not everything that links us is visible to the eye. Grianne Ohmsford has her magic, her birthright, now the tool of the Ilse Witch. But I have that magic, too! Do you hear it in my voice? You do, don’t you? I’m not as practiced as you, and I only just discovered it was there, but it is another link in our lives, Grianne, another part of the heritage we share—”