Ilse Witch

“I wonder if any of them are still alive.” Bek’s voice broke, and he swallowed hard against what he was feeling.

The tracker stood up slowly. “There’s only one way to find out. It’s getting dark. I1 can move about more easily once the light’s gone. But you’ll have to stay here with her, if I do.” She nodded toward Ryer Ord Star. “Are you up to it?”

He nodded. “But I’d rather go with you.”

Tamis shrugged. “After seeing what you did to those creepers, I’d rather that, too. But I don’t think we can leave her alone like this.”

“No,” he agreed.

“I’ll be back as quick as I can.” She straightened and pointed left. “I’ll skirt through the trees and come at the ruins from another direction. You wait here. If anyone got out, they’ll likely come back this way and you should see them. But be careful you know who it is before you give yourself away.”

She studied him a moment, then leaned close. “Don’t be afraid to use that newfound magic if you’re in danger, all right?”

“I won’t.”

She gave him a quick smile and melted into the trees.

It grew dark in a hurry after that, the last of the daylight fading into shadow until the woods were enveloped by the night. Clouds and mist masked the sky, and it began to rain again. Bek moved Ryer Ord Star back under the canopy of an old shagbark hickory, out of the weather. She let herself be led and resettled without any form of acknowledgment, gone so far away from him that he might as well not have been there for all the difference it made. Yet it did make a difference, he told himself. Without him, she was at the mercy of whatever found her. She could not defend herself or even flee. She was completely helpless.

He wondered why she had rendered herself so vulnerable, what had happened to make her decide it was necessary. It was a conscious act, he believed. It had something to do with Walker, because everything she did had something to do with the Druid. Was she linked to him now, just as Bek had been linked to him those few moments on Shatterstone? But this was continuing for so much longer. She hadn’t spoken or reacted to anything in several hours.

He studied her for a time, then lost interest. He watched the trail instead, hoping to see someone from the company emerge from the gloom. They couldn’t all be dead, he told himself. Not all of them. Not Quentin. Not with the Sword of Leah to protect him. Bitterness flooded through him, and he exhaled sharply. Who was he kidding? He had seen enough of the fire threads and the creepers to know that it would take an army of Elven Hunters to get free of those ruins. Even a Druid’s magic might not be enough.

He leaned back against the hickory and felt the flat surface of the Sword of Shannara push against his back. He had forgotten it was even there. In the scramble to escape the fire threads and the creepers, he hadn’t even thought to use it as a weapon—though what sort of weapon would it have made? Its magic didn’t seem like it would have been of much use. Truth? What good was truth against fire and iron? As a fighting weapon, it might have served a purpose, but not against something like what they’d found back there in the ruins. He shook his head. The most powerful magic in the world, Walker had told him, and he had no use for it. The magic of his voice was the better weapon by far. If he could just figure out the things it could do and then bring it under a little better control …

He left the thought unfinished, aware of doubts and misgivings he could not put a name to. There was danger in the use of his voice, something nebulous, but unmistakable. The magic was too powerful, too uncertain. He didn’t trust it. It was 1enticingly seductive, and he sensed something deceitful in its lure. Anything that created such euphoria and felt so addictive would have consequences. He was not yet certain he understood what those consequences were.

It was growing cold, and he wished he still had his cloak, but he had lost it in the flight here. He looked at Ryer Ord Star, then moved over to tuck her robes closer about her. She was shivering, though clearly unaware of it, and he put his arms around her and held her against him for warmth. What would they do if Tamis found no one else alive? What if the tracker herself failed to return? Bek closed his eyes against his doubts and fears. It did no good to dwell on them. There was nothing he could do to change things. All he could do was to make the best of the situation, bleak as it was.

He must have dozed for a while, exhausted from the day’s events, because the next thing he remembered was waking to the sounds of someone’s approach. Yet it wasn’t so much the sounds of approach that alerted him as it was his sense of the other’s nearness. He lifted his head from the crook of Ryer Ord Star’s shoulder and blinked at the darkness. Nothing moved, but something was there, still too far away to see, but coming directly toward them.