Ilse Witch

It flashed sharply in his eyes, and he blinked in response. When his vision cleared, a young girl stood before him, the light balanced in her hand. She was somehow familiar to him, although he could not say why. She was beautiful, with long dark hair and startling blue eyes, and there was an innocence to her face that made his heart ache. The light she held emanated from one end of a polished metal cylinder and cast a long, narrow beam on the ground between them.

“Well met, Bek Rowe,” she said softly. “Do you know me?”

He stared, unable to answer. She had appeared out of nowhere, perhaps come from across the river on the air itself, and he believed her to be a creature of magic.

“You have chosen to undertake a long and difficult journey, Bek,” she whispered in her childlike voice. “You go to a place where few others have gone and from which only one has returned. But the greater journey will not carry you over land and sea, but inside your heart. The unknown you fear and the secrets you suspect will reveal themselves. All will be as it must. Accept this, for that is the nature of things.”

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“This and that. What you see before you and many things you do not. I am a chameleon of time and age, my true form so old I have forgotten it. For you, I am two things. The child you see and think you might perhaps know, and this.”

Abruptly, the child before him transformed into something so hideous he would have screamed if his voice had not frozen in his throat. The thing was huge and twisted and ugly, all wrapped in scarred and ravaged skin, hair burnt to a black stubble about its head and face, eyes maddened and red, mouth twisted in a leer that suggested horrors too terrible to contemplate. It loomed over him, tall even when bent, its clawed and crooked hands gesturing hypnotically.

“Thiss am I, too, Bek. Thiss creature of the pitss. Would you ssee me thiss way or the other? Hsss. Which do you pref1er?”

“Change back,” Bek managed to whisper, his voice harsh, his throat gone dry and raw and tight with fear.

“Sso, foundling of ill fortune. What are you willing to do to make it happen? Hsss. How much of yoursself are you prepared to ssacrifisse to make it sso?”

The thing almost touched him, claws brushing against the front of his tunic. He would have run if he could, would have called out to Quentin, sleeping not fifty feet away. But he could do nothing, only stand in place and stare fixedly at the apparition before him.

“Yourss iss the power to change me from one to the other,” the creature hissed. “Do not forget thiss. Do not forget. Hsss.”

Once more the creature transformed in the blink of an eye, and Bek found himself looking into the kind, pale eyes of an old, weathered man.

“Do not be afraid, Bek Rowe,” the old man said softly, his voice warm and reassuring. “Nothing comes to harm you this night. I am here to protect you. Do you know me now?”

Surprisingly, he did. “You are the King of the Silver River.”

The old man nodded approvingly. A legend in the Four Lands, a myth whose reality only a few had ever encountered, the King of the Silver River was a spirit creature, a magical being who had survived from times long before even the Great Wars had destroyed the world. He was as old as the Word, it was said, a creature who had been born into and survived the passing of Faerie. He lived within and gave protection to the Silver River country. Now and then, a traveler would encounter him, and sometimes when it was needed, he would give them aid.

“Heed me, Bek,” the old man said softly. “What I have shown you is the past and the present. What remains to be determined is the future. That future belongs to you. You are both more and less than you believe, an enigma whose secret will affect the lives of many. Do not shy from discovering what you must, what you feel compelled to know. Do not be deterred in your search. Go where your heart tells you. Trust in what it reveals.”

Bek nodded, not certain he understood, but unwilling to admit as much.

“Past, present, and future, the symbiosis of our lives,” the old man continued quietly, gently. “Our birth, our life, our death, all tied into a single package that we spend our time on this earth unwrapping. Sometimes we see clearly what it is we are looking at. Sometimes we do not. Sometimes things happen to distract or deceive us, and we must look more carefully at what it is we hold.”

He reached into his robes then and produced a chain from which hung a strange, silver-colored stone. He held up the stone for Bek to see. “This is a phoenix stone. When you are most lost, it will help you find your way. Not just from what you cannot see with your eyes, but from what you cannot find with your heart, as well. It will show you the way back from dark places into which you have strayed and the way forward through dark places into which you must go. When you have need of it, remove it from the chain and cast it to the ground, breaking it apart. Remember. In your body, heart, and mind—all will be revealed with this.”