She pictured his face, recalled his voice. She could still hear him telling her he was her brother, he was Bek, survived somehow from the burning of her home and the killing of her family. She couldn’t accept that, of course. The Druid had wanted only her, and when she had told the Morgawr how she had hidden her brother, he had been certain that no one else was left alive in the ashes of her home.
Dark shadows gathered at the back of her thoughts, then crowded to the fore in warning. Unless he was lying. Unless the Morgawr had concealed the truth about Bek. But there could be no reason for that, when Bek might have proved useful to him in the same way she had. No, the Druid and his minions had deceived her parents and then murdered them, all because of her, because of who and what she was. He alone was responsible and must answer for that, and the boy was just another pawn employed in their war to destroy each other. He was clever, the boy, but an artifice, a Druid stratagem; in the end he was still just a boy who looked the way Bek might have looked had he lived to grow up, just a boy who had been deceived into thinking he was someone he was not.
She rose to her feet, and the caull rose with her, eyes bright and anticipatory. It was ready to hunt, and she was ready to let it do so. She sent it ahead with a gesture, letting it sniff out the trail, yet keeping it close enough that it could not act without her knowing. She did not want it catching the boy and tearing him apart before she had a chance to plumb his mind. The shape-shifter was another matter, but she doubted that the caull would catch that one unawares. In all likelihood, they must deal with it before they could expect to find the boy. She wondered again why a shape-shifter would take such an interest in their business. Perhaps it was in thrall to the Druid, although that would be unusual for a shape-shifter. Perhaps it was in some way connected to the killing of her parents and the destruction of her home, and its own life was at risk because of that. The Druid had used shape-shifters to carry out his purpose. This might be one of them.
She mulled the possibilities over as she trailed after the caull, keeping her senses alert to what lay around her. The forest dark concealed many things, and one of them might be her enemy. She moved silently in her tied-up gray robes, sliding through the brush and trees like a shadow. The night sky was clear, and the light of moon and stars flooded down through the canopy of the limbs overhead. There was too much light to make her comfortable. She caught glimpses of the caull ahead of her, bits and pieces of movement in the patches of silver. It padded forward, then circled back again, over and over, keeping to the trail its prey had left, reading the signs, sorting them out to be certain it was not being misled. It was good at that; all its wolf instincts were intact and working within its new form, all its skills at play.
It was nearing midnight when she reached an open stretch of ground that fronted the foothills leading up into the mountains, a rocky flat empty of everything but scrub and deadwood. Standing hidden within the trees, she watched the caull move out into the open ground, sniffing, circling, then continuing on. She stayed where she was, letting it go. The terrain ahead was too exposed. She didn’t feel right about moving through it, even though the trail clearly went that way.
She tightened her invisible leash on the caull and summoned it back to her. Her instincts told her that something was amiss and she must determine what it was before continuing on.
Staring out across the flat, the caull crouched at her side, she began to reason it out.
Bek did not sleep after Truls Rohk left him, but sat thinking on what all their running and hiding were leading to. True, he was fleeing to save his life, to escape the Ilse Witch who, sister or no, wanted him dead. But flight alone was not the solution to his problem, and the more he ran and the farther he went, the less it seemed like he was achieving anything. To solve the problem of Grianne Ohmsford, he must convince her of who he was. He could see that probably wouldn’t happen through words alone. It would take something more, perhaps the magic of the Sword of Shannara, perhaps another magic entirely. But a confrontation and a strategy for dealing with that confrontation were inescapable.