Terry Brooks - Antrax

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 snatched 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 glass. 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 mass of his body, as if the flesh itself was alive and crawling. The movement had a liquid appearance and Truls Rohk the look of glass 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.