“No!” the other spat angrily. “Try harder! Give it teeth, boy!”
Bek tried again, jaw clenched, angry now himself at being
chided. His humming buzzed and vibrated up from his throat and through his mouth and nose with fresh purpose. The force of his effort caused the air before his eyes to shimmer as if turned to liquid.
“Yes,” Truls Rohk murmured in response, satisfaction reflected in his voice. “I thought so.”
Bek went silent again, staring into the shadows, into the night. “You thought so? What did you think?” The humming had revealed nothing to him. What had it revealed to Truls Rohk?
A part of the blackness surrounding the casing detached itself and took shape, rising up against the light of moon and stars. An only vaguely human form, big and terrifying. Not to step away from it took everything Bek had.
“I know you, boy,” the other whispered.
Bek stared. “How could you?”
The other laughed softly. “I know you better than you know yourself. The truth of you is a secret. It is not for me to reveal it to you. The Druid must be the one to do that. But I can show you something of what it looks like. Are you interested?”
For an instant, Bek considered turning around and walking away. There was something dark in the other’s meaning, something that would change the boy once it was revealed. He understood that instinctively.
“We are alike, you and I,” the shapeshifter said. “We are nothing of what we seem or others think they know. We are joined in ways that would surprise and astonish. Perhaps our fates are linked in some way. What becomes of one depends on what becomes of the other.
Bek could not imagine it. He could barely follow what the shape shifter was saying, let alone fathom what it meant. He made no reply.
“Lies conceal us as masks do thieves, boy. I, because I choose it to be so—you, because you are deceived. We are wraiths living in the shadows, and the truths of identities are carefully guarded secrets. But yours is the darker by far. Yours is the one that has its source in a Druid’s gamesplaying and a magic’s dark promise. Mine is simply the result of a twist of fate and a parent’s foolish choice.” He paused. “Come with me, and I’ll tell you of it.”
Bek shook his head. “I can’t leave—“
“Can’t you?” the other shot, cutting him short. “Down to the island and into the castle? Come with me, and we’ll bring the third key back to the Druid before he wakes. It’s lying there, waiting for us. You and I, we can do what the Druid cannot. We can find it and bring it back.”
Bek took a deep breath. “You know where the key is?”
The other shifted slightly, a flowing of darkness against the moonlight. “What matters is that I know how to find it. The Druid asked me earlier this night to seek it out, and so I did. But now I have decided to go back on my own and get it. Want to come along with me?”
The boy was speechless. What was going on here?
“This should be easy for you. I know your heart. You’ve been al lowed to do nothing. You’ve been kept aboard for no reason you can determine. You’ve been lied to and put off as if you didn’t count. Aren’t you weary of it?”
Just two days earlier, Bek had mustered the courage to ask Walker about his use of the mindsummons on Shatterstone. The Druid had told him it was only a coincidence that he had settled his thoughts on Bek, that he had been thinking of the boy just before the attack and had flashed on him instinctively. It was such an obvious lie that Bek had simply walked away in disgust. Truls Rohk seemed to be speaking directly to this incident.
“This is your chance,” the shapeshifter pressed. “Come with me. We can do what Walker cannot. Are you afraid?”
Bek nodded. “Yes.”
Truls Rohk laughed, deep and low. “You shouldn’t be. Not of anything. But I’ll protect you. Come with me. Take back something of who you are from the Druid. Give him pause. Make him reconsider how he thinks of you. Find out something about yourself, about who you are. Don’t you want that?”