Eastward, the sky was beginning to brighten faintly with the dawn’s approach. Night was already sliding westward, liquid ink withdrawing silently through the trees. A new day would bring fresh revelations. About the boy, perhaps. About why he thought as he did. About how his magic had found its way to him and why it was so like her own. A smile of expectation brightened her pale face. She looked forward to discovering the answers. She felt a rush of anticipation.
Hesitation and doubts were for others, she thought dismissively, for those who would never find their own way in the world and never make anything of their lives that mattered.
Picking up faint traces of the shape-shifter that still lingered on the fading night air, she began the hunt.
–
Gleaming eyes filled with malice, Cree Bega watched wordlessly until she was well out of sight. Hunched within his cloak and surrounded by those he commanded, he imagined how sweet it would feel when he was permitted at last to put an end to the insufferable girl child. That he hated her as he hated no one else went without saying; he had never felt anything but hate for her. He despised her as she despised him, and nothing shared through their service to the Morgawr would ever change that.
But the Morgawr, though claiming to be the girl’s mentor and friend, was more Mwellret than human. His connection to Cree Bega’s people was ancient and blooded. He had bonded to the girl because she was a novelty and he saw a use for her in the larger scheme of things. But his heart and soul were those of a Mwellret.
The girl, of course, believed them equals, outcasts bound together in their struggle for recognition and power over their oppressors. The Morgawr let her believe as much because it suited his purposes to do so. But they were not equals in any way that mattered, and the little Ilse Witch was far less skilled in her use of magic than she believed. She was a strutting, posturing annoyance, a foolish, ludicrously inept practitioner of an art that had been mastered by the Mwellrets and their kind centuries ago, before the Druids had even thought to take up the Elven magic as their sword and shield. Mwellrets would never be subjugated by humans, never become their inferiors, and this girl child was just another self-deceived morsel waiting to be plucked from their food chain.
He felt the eyes of his fellows upon him, awaiting his orders, their own thoughts as dark and vengeful as his. They, too, waited for their chance at the Ilse Witch. Cree Bega would give her the satisfaction of believing him subdued and obedient for now. He had pledged as much to the Morgawr. He would heed her commands and carry out her wishes because there was no reason for him to do otherwise.
But a shift in the wind was coming, and when it did, it would mark the end of her.
He wheeled on the others, finding them grouped tightly about him, dark visages expectant and eager within shadowed cowls. They awaited his orders, anxious for something to do. He would accommodate them. Members of the company of the Jerle Shannara were loose somewhere ahead within these trees, waiting to be harvested, to be killed or taken prisoner. It was time to accommodate them.
Growling softly, he told his men to start with Ryer Ord Star, then move on.
But when they turned to take charge of the seer, she was nowhere to be found.
THREE
Arms of iron clutched Bek Ohmsford close to a body that smelled vaguely fetid and loamy, of earth and chemicals mixed. The body moved with the swiftness of thought, sliding through trees and brush, shedding layers of itself like skin, shadows that hung dark and empty on the air and then faded away completely. Some exploded into bits of night as the magic of the Ilse Witch caught up to them, but always Bek and his rescuer were one skin ahead.
Then they were beyond the clearing and into the concealing trees, still running hard, but cloaked in shadows and screens of brush and limbs. Bek began to struggle then, frightened suddenly of the unknown, of anything powerful and mysterious enough to challenge the Ilse Witch’s magic.