Terry Brooks - Antrax

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 space 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 assurances 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.

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 grasses. 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 light-headed 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.