To be honest, Bek wasn’t sure. All of a sudden he wasn’t sure of anything. The shapeshifter frightened him for more reasons than he cared to consider, but chief among them was his dark intimation that Bek was nothing of who and what he assumed himself to be. Revelations of that sort usually damaged as much as they healed.
Bek wasn’t sure he wanted them revealed by this man, in this way.
“I’ll keep my promise to you, boy,” Tails Rohk whispered. “I’ll tell you my truth. Not what you’ve heard from Panax. Not what you’ve imagined. The truth, as it really is.”
“Panax said you were burned in a fire—“
“Panax doesn’t know. No one does, save the Druid, who knows it all.”
Bek stared. “Why would you choose to tell me?”
“Because we are alike, as I’ve said already. We are alike, and per haps by knowing me you will come to know yourself, as well. Perhaps. I see myself in you, a long time ago. I see how I was, and I ache with that memory. By telling you my story, I can dispel a little of that ache.”
And give it to me, Bek thought. But he was curious about the shapeshifter. Curious and intrigued. He glanced off into the night, toward the castle bathed in moonlight. Tails Rohk was right about the key, as well. Bek wanted to do something more than serve as a cabin boy. He resented being kept aboard ship all the time. He wanted to feel a part of the expedition, to do something other than study airships and flying. He wanted to contribute something important. Finding the third key would accomplish that.
But he remembered the eels of Flay Creech and the jungle of Shatterstone, and he wondered how he could even think of going down to Mephitic and whatever waited there. Tails Rohk seemed confident, but the shapeshifter’s reasons for taking him were questionable. Still, others had gone and returned safely. Was he to hide aboard this ship from everything they encountered? He had known when he agreed to come that there would be risks. He could not avoid them all.
But should he embrace them so willingly?
“Come with me, boy,” Truls Rohk urged again. “The night passes swiftly, and we must act while it is still dark. The key waits.
I’ll keep you safe. You’ll do the same for me. We’ll reveal hidden truths about ourselves on the way. Comet”
For an instant longer, Bek hesitated. Then he exhaled sharply.
“All right,” he agreed.
Truls Rohk’s laugh was wicked and low. Seconds later they slipped over the side of the airship and disappeared into the night.
TWENTYFOUR
Truls Rohk was born out of fierce passion, misguided choice, and a chance encounter that should never have happened.
His father was a Borderman, a child of frontier parents and grandparents, woodsmen and scouts who lived the whole of their lives in the wilderness of the Runne Mountains. By the time the Borderman was fifteen, he was already gone from his family and living on his own. He was a legend by the time he was twenty, a scout who had traveled the length and breadth of the Wolfsktaag, guiding caravans of immigrants across the mountains, leading hunting parties in and out again, and exploring regions that only a few had ventured into. He was a big man, strong of mind and body, powerfully built and agile, skilled and experienced in a way few others were. He knew of the things that lived within the Wolfsktaag. He was not afraid of them, but he was mindful of what they
would do
He met Truls Rohk’s mother in his thirty-third year. He had been guiding and scouting and exploring for half his life, and he was more at home in the wilderness than he was in the camps of civilization. More and more, he had distanced himself from the settlements and their people. Increasingly, he had sought peace and solace in isolation. The world he favored was not always safe, but it was familiar and comforting. Dangers were plentiful and often unforgiving, but he understood and accepted them. He thought them fair trade for the beauty and purity of the country.