Do you know what we are?
He couldn’t speak. He could barely move. He shook his head slowly, the best he could manage.
We are whatever we wish to be. We are the living and the dead. We are flesh and blood and wind and water. We are shape-shifters. This is our land, and humans do not belong here. You trespass and must leave. Go back down off the mountain and do not return.
Bek nodded quickly in agreement. He would take any chance they offered to get away. He could hear their heavy, raw breathing and smell their animal bodies. He could feel the weight of their shadows falling over him, layer upon layer. He understood in that instant what it felt like to be hunted and cornered. He understood what it felt like to be prey.
The voice whispered to him in a low, threatening hiss, and he was aware of a change in tone.
When your sister comes for you, go with her. When she asks for the truth, tell it to her. When she seeks a way to understand, help her find it. Do not run away again. Trust in yourself.
His sister was coming? How close was she? He panicked, tried to rise, and found he could not. His strength failed him completely. He sat dazed and helpless on the ground, the shape-shifters all around him, a wall of animal stink and fetid breath, dark shadows and glittering eyes. Where was Truls Rohk? Where was anyone who could help him? He hated his fear, his desperation, but he could not dispel it. All he wanted was to be out of there, to be someplace else, to have a chance to stay alive, even for just another day.
He gasped in shock as the cold struck him anew, and he squeezed his eyes shut against its bite. He could hear the rustle of the shape-shifters, the movement of their bodies, but he could not bring himself to look at them. It took all of his concentration just to breathe, to keep himself from screaming, to stay in control. He felt his resolve crumble around the edges. Then he felt something else. Inside, deep down where the core of him burned with raw emotion, he felt the magic come alive. It sparked and flared, coming to his defense, rising up within him. He could feel it building, layers of it bubbling up like lava out of a volcano’s mouth, ready to explode. He tightened his resolve anew, desperate to keep it in check. He could not afford to let it surface. He did not want to test himself against the shape-shifters. He knew it would be a mistake.
Then the cold that surrounded him faded all at once and the animal smell was gone. Fresh air, warmer and gentler now, filled his nostrils; the heavy, raw presence of the shape-shifters had disappeared.
When he opened his eyes again, he was alone.
Truls Rohk hung suspended within the concealing canopy of a massive old maple, pressed against its limbs perhaps twenty feet off the ground. He had waited there for over an hour, keeping watch through the foliage. From there, he had a clear view of the rocky flats that separated the two stretches of forest at the base of the mountains through which he and the boy had passed earlier. If the Ilse Witch was tracking them, if she had found their trail anew, she would come that way.
When the caull appeared, he was not surprised. He knew she was using something to track them besides her magic. Her magic alone, though formidable, was not sufficient to enable her to stay with them. The caull was some sort of mutated wolf or dog and was tracking them by their scent. It was an ugly, dangerous-looking beast, nothing like any creature he had encountered before, not even in the Wolfsktaag. It was a creature out of the old world of Faerie, he guessed, something she had studied in a book of dark magic or conjured from a nightmare. It was there to track and then to dispatch them. Or himself, at least. He was just an unnecessary distraction. The boy was who she was really after, and she would keep him alive for a time.