Ilse Witch

Walker nodded. “I can ask no more.” He looked at the cousins. “And you?”


Quentin and Bek exchanged a hurried glance. “What do you say, Bek?” Quentin asked. “Let’s do it. Let’s go.”

Bek shook his head. “I don’t know. Your father might not want us to—”

“I’ve spoken to him already,” Walker interrupted smoothly. “You have his permission to come if you wish to do so. Both of you. But the choice is yours, and yours alone.”

In that instant, Bek Rowe could see the future he had been searching for as clearly as if he had already lived it. It wasn’t so much the specific events he would experience or the challenges he would face or the creatures and places he would encounter. These could be imagined, but not yet firmly grasped. It was the changes he would undergo on such a voyage that were discernible and thereby both intimidating and frightening. Many of them would be profound and lasting, affecting his life irrevocably. Bek could feel these changes as if they were layers of skin peeled back one at a time to demonstrate his growth. So much would happen on a journey like this one, and no one who returned—for he was honest enough with himself to accept that some would not—would ever be the same.

“Bek?” Quentin pressed softly.

He had come from nowhere to be where he was, an outsider accepted into a Highland home, a traveler simply by having come from another place and family. Life was a journey of sorts, and he could travel it by staying put or by going out. For Quentin, the choice had always been easy. For Bek, it was less so, but perhaps just as inevitable.

He looked at the Druid called Walker and nodded. “All right. I’ll go.”

TEN





On the way home the next day, Bek Rowe agonized over his decision. Even though it was made and he was committed, he could not stop second-guessing himself. On the face of things, he had made the right choice. There were lives at stake and responsibilities to be assumed in questing for the mysteriou1s magic, and if the result of his going was to secure for the people of all nations a magic that would further their development and fulfill their needsa” result that Walker had taken great pains to assure him was possiblea”t was the right thing to do.

But in the back of his mind a whisper of warning nagged at him. The Druid, he felt, had told the truth. But the Druid was also reticent about giving out information, a tradition among the members of his order, and Bek was quite certain he was keeping something to himself. More than one something, in all likelihood. Bek could sense it in his voice and in the way he presented his cause to them. So careful with his words. So deliberate with his phrasing. Walker knew more than he was saying, and Bek worried that some of his misgivings about how a journey of this sort would influence his and Quentina? lives had their source in the Druida? secrets.

But there was a secondary problem with not going. Quentin had made up his mind even before Bek had agreed and would likely have gone without him. His cousin had been looking for an excuse to leave Leah and go elsewhere for a long time. That his father had apparently agreed to his going on this particular journeya” decision that Bek found remarkablea”emoved the last obstacle that stood in Quentina? path. Quentin was like a brother. Much of the time, Bek felt protective toward him, even though Quentin was the older of the two and looked at the matter the other way around. Whatever the case, Bek loved and admired his cousin and could not imagine staying behind if Quentin went.

All of which was fine except that it did nothing to alleviate his misgivings. But there was no help for that, so he was forced to put the matter aside as they journeyed home. They walked steadily all day, crossing through the Highlands, navigating the deep woods, scrub wilderness, flowering meadows, streams and small rivers, misty valleys and green hills. They left much more quickly than they had gone in, Quentin setting the pace, anxious to return home so that they could prepare to set out again.

Which was another sticking point with Bek. Walker had asked them to come with him on a journey and then promptly departed for regions unknown. He hadna? waited for them to join him or offered to take them with him. He hadna? even told them when they would see him again.

a? want you to return to Leah on the morrow,a?he had advised just before they had rolled into their blankets and drifted off to an uneasy sleep. a?peak with your father. Satisfy yourselves that he has given you his permission to leave. Then pack your geara”ot forgetting the sword, Quentina”addle two strong horses, and ride east.a?/p>