Ilse Witch

Bek found himself thinking of his own life, a past wrapped in vague possibility and shrouded in concealments. Who was he, that a Druid had brought him to Coran Leah’s doorstep all those years ago? Not just the orphaned scion of a relative with a family no one had ever heard anything about. Not just a homeless child. Who was he, that the King of the Silver River would appear so unexpectedly to give him a phoenix stone and a warning of dark and hidden meanings?

He found himself remembering all the times he had asked about his parents and had his questions deflected by Coran or Liria. Their actions had never seemed all that important before. It was bothersome sometimes not to be given the answers he sought, to be put off in his inquiries. But his life had been good with Quentin’s family, and his curiosity had never been compelling enough to persuade him to insist on a better response. Now he wondered if he had been too accepting.

Or was he making something out of nothing, his parentage no more than what it had always seemed—an accident of birth of no consequence at all, incidental to his upbringing at the capable hands of his stepparents? Was he looking for secrets that didn’t exist, simply because Walker had appeared in Leah so unexpectedly?

The night deepened and swelled with cold and silence, and their efforts to climb higher slowed. Then a gap opened in a cliff face, and they were passing through a deep defile into a valley beyond. There the forest was thick and sheltering, and what lived within could only be imagined. Panax continued on, his thoughts his own. The defile opened into a draw that angled down onto the valley floor. Beyond, the peaks of the Wolfsktaag rose in stark relief against the moonlit sky, sentries standing watch, each a little more misted and a little less clear than the one before.

Within the valley’s center, Panax called an unexpected halt in a small clearing hemmed in by towering elm. “We will need to wait here.”

Bek glanced around at the encroaching shadows. “How long?”

“Until Truls notices we’ve come.” He laid down his ax and moved toward the shadows. “Help me build a fire.”

They gathered deadwood and used tinder and flint to strike a spark and coax a flame to life. The fire built swiftly and threw light across the open space of the clearing, but could not penetrate the wall of shadows beyond. If anything, it seemed to emphasize how isolated the travelers were. The burning wood crackled and popped as it was consumed, but the surrounding night remained silent and enigmatic. The Dwarf and the Highland cousins sat in silence on the ground, backed up against each other so that they could share the warmth and watch the shadows. Now and again, one of them wo1uld add fuel to the blaze from the small pile of wood collected earlier, keeping the clearing lit and the signal steady.

“He might not be in the valley tonight,” Panax said at one point, shifting against Bek so that the youth was bent forward under the weight of his stocky frame. “He might not return until morning.”

“Does he live here?” Quentin asked.

“As much as he lives anywhere. He doesn’t have a cabin or a camp. He doesn’t keep possessions or even stash his food for when he might have need of it.” The Dwarf paused, reflecting. “He isn’t anything at all like you and me.”

He let the matter drop, and neither Quentin nor Bek chose to pursue it. Whatever the cousins were going to learn would have to await the other’s appearance. Bek, for one, was growing less and less certain that this was an event he should anticipate. Perhaps they would all be better off if the night passed, morning arrived, and nothing happened. Perhaps they would be better off if they let the matter drop here and now.

“I was just twenty when I met him,” Panax said suddenly, his gruff voice quiet and low. “Hard to remember what that was like now, but I was young and full of myself and just learning that I wanted to be a guide and spend my time away from the settlements. I’d been alone for a while. I’d left home young and stayed gone, not missing it much, not thinking I should have reconsidered. I was always apart from everyone else, even my brothers, and it was probably a relief to everyone when I wasn’t there anymore.”