Bek charged in front of him and blocked his way. Stop it! I'm coming with you!

"Then you tell me so to my face!" Truls Rohk's voice dropped to a dangerous hiss. "Tell me right now, boy!" He shoved Bek again, harder than ever. "Tell me, or get out of my-"

Something gave way inside Bek, a visceral rending of self that had the feel of tearing flesh. It gave way before a mix of rage and humiliation and frustration that engulfed him like a swollen river slamming up against a dam built for calmer waters. His voice exploded out of him in a primal scream of such impact that it lifted Truls Rohk off his feet and sent him flying backwards. It bent the branches of trees, flattened tall gra.s.ses, shredded bark, and tore up clots of earth for a dozen yards. It began with the shriek of a hurricane's winds as it sapped the forest silence, then layered it anew in a darker and more suffocating blanket.

Bek dropped to his knees in shock and disbelief, coughing out the final shards of noise, the sound of his voice dropping to a startled whisper.

Truls Rohk picked himself up and brushed himself off. "Shades!" he muttered. He reached out his hand to Bek and pulled him to his feet. "Was that really necessary?"

Bek laughed in spite of himself. It felt good to hear the sound again. "You were right. I could speak all along."

"But not until I got you mad enough to make you do so." The shape-shifter's impatience showed in his voice. "Don't let yourself get fooled like that again."

"Don't worry, I won't."

"You are her match, boy."

"I'll find out soon enough, won't I?"

The big shoulders shrugged within the concealing cloak. "Maybe you should leave her to me."

A chill of recognition rippled down Bek's neck. He reached out impulsively and gripped the other's shoulder, feeling corded muscle and sinew tighten in response, feeling knots of gristle shift. "What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean?"

Bek's stomach clenched. "Don't do it, Truls. Don't kill her. I don't want that. No matter what. Promise me."

The other's laughter was harsh and empty. "Why should I promise you that? She was quick enough to try to kill me!"

"She's as confused about things as I was. She's been lied to and deceived. What she believes about herself and about me isn't even close to the truth. Doesn't she deserve a chance to find this out? The same chance you gave me, just now?"

He kept his grip on the other's shoulder, holding on to him as if to wring the concession he sought. But Truls Rohk didn't try to move away. Instead, he took a step closer.

"If another were to lay hands on me the way you have, I would kill him without a thought."

Bek did not back away even then, did not dare to move, though an inner voice was screaming at him to do so. He felt impossibly small and vulnerable. "Don't kill her. That's all I'm asking."

"Huh! Shall we invite her to join us, forget her evil life, forgive the past, pretend she has no alliance with the rets? Is that your plan-to talk her into being our friend? Didn't you try that already?"

The cowled head bent close, and Bek could hear the unpleasant rasp of the other's breathing. "Grow up all the way, boy. This isn't a game you can start over if you lose. If you don't kill her, she will kill you. She's well beyond any place where reason or truth can reach her. She's lived a lifetime of lies and half-truths, of delusions and deceptions. Think what brought her to us. Her single, all-consuming ambition is to kill Walker. If she hasn't succeeded in doing so already, she will try her luck soon. Even though the Druid irritates me and has brought much of this misfortune on himself, I won't give him up to her."

Both hands shot out suddenly and s.n.a.t.c.hed hold of Bek once again. "She isn't your sister anymore! She is the Morgawr's tool! She is her own dark creation, as deadly as the creatures she is so fond of using, the things she makes out of nightmares! She is a monster!"

Bek went still, facing into the black void of the other's cowl. There was no question about what would happen if Truls Rohk found Grianne. The shape-shifter would not waste a moment's time considering the alternatives. If Bek didn't find a way to change his mind right now, the shape-shifter would kill her-or die himself in the attempt.

Before he could think better of it, before the consequences could register fully enough to make him reconsider, he said, "Some would say the same about you. Some would say that you are a monster, as well. Would they be right? Are you any different from her?"

The hands tightened on his arms. "Watch your mouth, boy. There is all the difference in the world between us, and you know it."

Bek took a deep, steadying breath. "No, I don't know anything of the sort. To me, you are the same. You both hide who you are. She hides behind lies and deceptions. You hide behind your cloak and hood. How much does anyone know about either of you?

How much is concealed that no one ever sees? Why does she deserve to die and you to live?"

Truls Rohk lifted him off his feet as effortlessly as he would a child, his anger a palpable thing in the silence. For an instant Bek was certain the shape-shifter would dash him to the ground.

"Show me your face, if you want me to believe in you," he said.

"I warned you about this," the other hissed. "I told you to let it be. Now I'm telling you for the last time. Leave it alone." He held Bek like a rag doll. "Enough. Time for us to be going. Your recovery of your voice could be heard two miles away."

"Show me your face. We're not leaving until you do."

The shape-shifter shook him so hard Bek could hear his joints crack. "You can't stand to look on me!"

Bek swallowed and stiffened. "If you aren't a monster, if you're not hiding the truth, show me your face."

Truls Rohk gave an angry growl. "My face is not who I am!"

He lifted Bek higher then, almost over his head, as if he might fling him away. There was such power in the shape-shifter, such strength! The boy closed his eyes and hung in a black void, listening to his heartbeat.

Then he felt himself lowered back to the ground. The hands released him. He opened his eyes and found Truls Rohk towering over him, black and impenetrable. All around, the forest had turned oppressively still, as if become an unwilling, frightened witness to what was taking place.

"If you see me, if you really see me, it will change everything between us," Truls Rohk said.

He seemed almost desperate to prevent this from happening, to change the boy's mind. It was more than wanting to preserve their relationship as protector and ward. It was a fear that their friendship, whatever stage it had reached, would shatter like gla.s.s. Bek could understand, and yet he knew he could not back away, not if he wanted to save Grianne.

"Don't ask again," Truls Rohk warned.

Bek shook his head. "Show me your face."

"All right, boy! You want to see what I look like, what I keep hidden from everyone? Then, look! See what my parents made of me! See what I am!" the other said with such venom that Bek flinched.

In a single, frenzied movement, he ripped away the cloak and stood revealed.

At first Bek saw him only as a vague shape outlined against the dark; the moon and stars were screened away by clouds, leaving the forest little more than a gathering of shadows. Truls Rohk's cloak lay in a dark puddle on the ground, and the shape-shifter had dropped into a crouch, looking feral and dangerous. Poised neither to flee nor to strike, he seemed instead caught in a spiderweb of tree limbs that formed a backdrop behind him, pinned against the distant sky.

Then Bek saw the beginnings of movement. The movement did not come from a shifting of limbs or head, but from within the dark ma.s.s of his body, as if the flesh itself was alive and crawling. The movement had a liquid appearance and Truls Rohk the look of gla.s.s filled with water. It was so unexpected that Bek thought his eyes were deceiving him. He thought so, as well, when parts of the shape-shifter faded then reappeared in ghostly fashion.

But when the moon slid from behind the clouds and flooded the clearing with milky brightness, Bek understood. Truls Rohk looked like something cobbled together from stray parts of human debris, some of it half-formed, some of it half-rotted, all of it shifting like a mirage that might not be there at all. The watery look came from the way in which pieces of him constantly changed from flesh and bone to mist and air. There was nothing permanent about Truls Rohk. He was only a half-completed thing, some of him recognizable as human, but not enough to call him a man.

It was easily the most terrifying sight Bek had ever witnessed- not simply for what it was, but for what it suggested, as well. It whispered of the grave, of death and decay, of what waited to claim the body when it began to decompose. It screamed of what it would feel like to have your body disintegrate about you. It suggested unimaginable pain and suffering. It reminded of nightmares and the creatures that came out of them to drive you from your sleep. It was surreal and ugly. It was anathema to any human concept of life.

He said nothing, but Truls Rohk saw the look in his eyes. "This is what happens when a shape-shifter mates with a human," he whispered in barely contained fury. "This is what comes from breaking taboos. I told you my father tried to kill me after killing my mother. He did so when she showed him what he had made with her. He did so when he saw what I was. He couldn't stand it. He couldn't abide me. Who could? I am trapped in a half-formed body. I am bits and pieces of flesh and bone on the one hand and nature's elements on the other, but not fully formed of either. I shift back and forth between them, trapped."

Bek could not speak. He stared wordlessly, trying to imagine what it must be like to be Truls Rohk, unable to do so.

The shape-shifter laughed dully. "Not so eager to look on me now, are you? Too bad. This is what I am, boy. I have strength and power at my command. I have a presence. But I lack a true shape-shifter's ability to change forms smoothly. I cannot hide the truth of myself. It's why I live apart, why I have always lived apart. No one can stand to look on me."

He came forward a step, and Bek shrank back in spite of himself as the bits and pieces of the other's body rippled and shifted, exposing ends of bones and runnels of blood and strips of torn flesh amid the shifts of air and water, of light and dark. An eye protruded and disappeared. Teeth gleamed out of a half-stripped skull. Hands showed the ends of finger bones and bare tendons.

Hair and skin grew in patches, split and torn. Nothing seemed designed to hold together, yet hold it did, though everywhere with the look of something about to collapse into itself.

"Huh!" Truls Rohk spat out the sound with such venom that it caused the boy to flinch. The ravaged face turned away. "You were right, boy. I am a monster. Are you satisfied now?"

He started to turn away, but Bek leapt forward and grabbed his arm, holding on tight through the wasteland of crumbling bones and shifting flesh.

"You said it yourself," he said. "Your face is not who you are. You might appear a monster, but you're not. You're my friend. You saved my life. But you wouldn't trust me with the truth about yourself. You hid that truth because you deceived yourself into thinking that it was something else. I would rather know you this way, terrible though it is, than have the truth hidden."

"Pretty words," the other growled, but did not pull away.

"The truth, Truls Rohk. I know you hate yourself for how you are. I know you hate how you look and how you know others will look at you if you reveal yourself. But sometimes, with people who matter, you have to reveal even the worst of what you believe yourself to be. You have to have faith that it won't make a difference. I would never judge you for how you look. Who you are is what matters, and who you are is always buried deep inside. The shape-shifters in the mountains knew this. They asked me how I felt about you because they wanted to see if I thought you mattered. Could there be a friendship between us? How deep would that friendship go? Did I think there was a place for you in the world? Would I give up my own place so that you could have yours? Would I give up my life for you? I gave them answers that had nothing to do with how you look and everything to do with who you are."

"So what have you accomplished by making me show you how I am? What purpose has it served?" Bitterness and suspicion laced the other's words. "The truth helps no one here."

Bek tightened his grip on the other's arm and plunged ahead. "Don't you see? The truth helps everyone. The chance at life that the shape-shifters gave you when you were attacked by the caull is the same chance you must give Grianne. Everyone thinks she's a monster, too. But the truth is something else entirely. She just needs someone to help her see it. She needs someone to help her strip away her deceptions and lies. She needs someone to believe in her, to believe there's something more to her than what everyone sees. She needs someone to speak for her."

Bek leaned close. "There isn't anyone else but you and me. We're her last hope."

There was a long silence when he finished, a freezing of time and s.p.a.ce as the boy and the shape-shifter faced each other in the darkness, one human, one something else. All the air had gone out of the world, leaving it empty and suffocating. Bek did not know what else to do or say. He refused to let go of Truls Rohk, keeping hold of his arm, as if by doing so he might keep him bound to his cause.

"You and me," the other said at last, his rough voice strangely soft. "But mostly you."

He freed himself so quickly that Bek did not have time to stop him, reached down for his cloak and pulled it on again, becoming once more a dark, faceless apparition in the night. All of the pieces of him, all of the ruined, shifting parts, forever fading and appearing like half-formed visions, disappeared.

"The Druid was right to choose you," he said.

Bek saw his chance. "I have a plan."

Truls Rohk grunted. "When didn't you? You are a match for your sister in more ways than one. Come. I make you no promises, no a.s.surances of what I will or won't do about her. Talk to me some more and we'll see. But let's not delay. The rets will be coming, and the ruins wait. Walker needs us."

"But listen to what I have to tell you-"

"I'll listen later." The shape-shifter dismissed him swiftly. Then his voice hardened. "Now you listen to me. Don't you ever mention what's happened here. Not to me or to anyone else. Not ever. It's finished."

He turned and stalked away, Bek struggling to keep up.

TWENTY-SIX.

"Now," Quentin Leah said quietly to Tamis. She moved away from him, not hurriedly or with any outward sign of the turmoil she must be feeling, but as if the encounter were just one of many and in no way significant beyond that. She eased farther right and ahead of him, walking deliberately, choosing her steps and then her place to stand. They had waited until they were certain the wronk could see what she was doing. It was difficult to spy out, but she had stopped just behind a bare patch of ground that was strewn with a scattering of deadwood and scrub gra.s.ses. A trained eye would suspect a wronk pit, a well-concealed trap. But the trap lay elsewhere.

Quentin held his ground as the wronk turned toward Tamis. It studied her without moving, then abruptly started toward her. She brought up her short sword defensively and dropped into a protective crouch. Quentin waited a moment, then stepped forward, as well, the Sword of Leah lifting into the faint light. He felt the stirrings of its magic run down through the metal blade and into his arm. He felt its fiery rush enter his body, bitter and at the same time sweet. It infused him with a sense of power. It made him lightheaded and alive in a way nothing else did. He wanted to use that power. Even knowing how foolish that desire was, he wanted it.

The wronk lumbered out of the night, closing on Tamis with inexorable determination, neither fast nor slow, but certain. The Tracker held her ground, refusing to give way, saying something now, taunting words that Quentin could not make out. It wasn't what they had planned. She was supposed to give way to the wronk, to stay clear of it should the decoy fail, as it seemed now it might. Quentin came forward another few steps, stopping just at the edge of where he could stand and still know his place in the darkened landscape that hid their trap. As he did so, he felt a new surge of magic fly into him, and he was consumed by a need to release it in battle.

Abruptly, without warning, the wronk turned toward him.

The suddenness of it took his breath away. It drained him of the fire of his magic. In a single moment, everything changed. The wronk came for him swiftly, closing the distance between them almost before Quentin could recover himself to act. It thundered across the clearing, much quicker than the Highlander had remembered from their previous encounter. The sword in its human hand lifted. The blade in its metal one flashed.

Tamis screamed, too far away to help. Do something!

At the last moment, he remembered what it was he had intended and threw himself out of the monster's way. The wronk's blades sliced through the air next to him, one so close to his face he could feel the rush of wind it generated in pa.s.sing. He darted left the six paces he had counted earlier, giving himself enough leeway to make up for the steps he had taken earlier, wheeled back and braced himself. The wronk was already coming for him again. From the helmet that protected its human head, Ard Patrinell's features were suddenly, shockingly recognizable.

Don't look, Quentin told himself. Don't feel anything.

Tamis was rushing toward him, foolishly responding to his danger, impulsively acting to help. He shifted swiftly to his right as the wronk bore down on him, the sound of its machine parts a sharp whine against the hammer of its footfalls. It closed with an almost palpable expectation of crushing him-its momentum carrying it right over the pit they had intended for it. The screen gave way beneath its weight, collapsing in a shower of earth, a snapping of deadwood, and a rending of cloth. An instant later the wronk was gone, vanished into the hole as if it had never been. They could hear the sound of its impact as it struck bottom, then silence.

Tamis charged up, breathing hard. Her eyes were bright with surprise and excitement as she stared at the hole. "That wasn't so hard," she said as if she couldn't quite believe it.

No, Quentin was thinking, it wasn't. He moved over to the edge of the pit, still wary, and peered down. It was so dark that he couldn't make out anything. "We need a torch," he said.

She darted away, gathered up a likely stick of deadwood, wrapped it in a sc.r.a.p of cloth from the edge of the pit, and, using tinder from her pouch, sparked a flame. As she did so, Quentin heard the first stirrings of movement from within the pit.

"Hurry," he whispered, trying to stay calm.

They might have trapped it, but they had most certainly not killed it. The fall alone had not been enough. More would be needed, even to disable it sufficiently to render it immobile. He waited impatiently for her to join him, reaching over the side with the makeshift torch to see what was happening.

The firelight illuminated the sheer, smooth sides of the pit, all the way down to where the wronk was trapped more than fifteen feet below. They could just make out its dusty sh.e.l.l. It was battered and sc.r.a.ped, but still functioning. Neither the fall nor the sharp rocks embedded by the Rindge in the floor of the pit had been enough to stop it.

It heaved itself upward, grasping at stray roots, digging into the earth in search of handholds, intent on climbing out.

Quentin Leah and Tamis fought to keep it from doing so with a frenzy and determination that bordered on madness. They threw everything at it that they could lay their hands on-rocks, limbs, part of an old stump, clots of earth, and a fair-sized boulder that they managed to roll close enough to topple in. Several times they struck it hard enough to knock it loose, but each time it picked itself up and began the climb out once more, a relentless and inexorable force.

They used fire next, throwing mounds of deadwood into the pit, then lighting it with the torch. The deadwood blazed up, burning so quickly and fiercely that the wronk did not have time to stamp it out. For a few moments, it was trapped in an inferno, metal skin reflecting the flames of the burning wood so that it seemed as if it, too, were ablaze. In the fiery light, they watched as it tried to protect its human arm, the flesh of which soon blistered and blackened from the heat. Ard Patrinell's terrified, anguished face peered out from behind its clear protective shield, and in his eyes they read things they did not want to know. Quentin hastened to feed more wood into the pit, but quit looking down at what was trapped there. Tamis was in tears.

But in the end, that effort failed, too. The fire burned fiercely for a time, then began to die out. The wronk climbed clear of the flames once more, blackened with ash and heat-seared, but still mobile.

Quentin stepped back in dismay. The Rindge would have been better prepared for this than they were. They would have had a backup plan for dealing with the trapped wronk. They would have been able to rely on strength of numbers. But the Rindge weren't there to help. No one was.

"This isn't working!" Tamis screamed at him.

Without waiting for his answer, she darted into the trees. For an instant, he thought she had abandoned him, that she was fleeing. He stared back down into the pit, where the last of the burning wood was turning to ash and the wronk was slowly digging out hand- and footholds on its torturous, but implacable ascent.

Then Tamis was back, dragging a huge limb by one end, dead-wood, well over eight feet in length, most of its smaller branches reduced to broken stubs.

"We'll use this to knock him back down each time he tries to climb out!" she shouted. "Help me!"

He leapt forward to do so, and together they hauled the branch to the side of the pit and tipped it downward, seizing the slender end and using the limb like a battering ram to hammer at the wronk. Grunting and huffing, they slammed their makeshift weapon into its metal body and sent it tumbling back down again. Again and again, they stopped its ascent, trying unsuccessfully to smash its mechanisms, to break up its working parts. Each time it just picked itself up and began the climb out anew. So the struggle continued, with no progress being made on either side. It was a battle that Tamis and he must lose, Quentin realized, because they would wear out sooner than the wronk. They had to find a way to disable it if they were to win. But he could not think of how to do that without getting close, and getting close was unthinkable.

Then they made a mistake. They let the end of the branch get too close to the wronk while preparing to use it, and the wronk dropped its weapons and seized it in both hands. Its weight was enormous, and they were forced to let go of the branch. The wronk dropped back into the pit. But it had a ladder with which to climb out, and picking up its weapons, it began to do so.

Quentin and Tamis watched helplessly. "We have to get out of here," he whispered.

"No!" she screamed at him. Her dusty, sweat-streaked face was contorted with rage and frustration. "You promised!"