Once, he rose and walked out to where Truls Rohk lay and tried to rouse him. The shape-shifter was awake and breathing, but he did not appear lucid. A terrible heat radiated from his body, as if he was burning with fever. Bek sat with him for a while, trying to think of something he could do. But Truls Rohk’s physiology was so different that Bek didn’t even know where to begin. In the end, he just spoke quietly to the other, trying to reassure him, to give him some small comfort.
Then Bek returned to Grianne and the waiting.
He must have dozed off finally, because the next thing he knew he awoke to find the fire burning brightly in front of him and the night air grown warm and comforting. He glanced at Grianne, who sat next to him, awake and staring, unresponsive when he spoke her name. He looked around and saw nothing, stood and looked some more, and still saw nothing.
He started to walk out toward the edge of the flat to where Truls lay and stopped. A dozen dark shapes blocked his way, massive forms rising before him like great rocks. As he started to back away, more closed about from both sides, huge and menacing, features hidden by the darkness and a sudden mist.
Bek stopped where he was and stood his ground. He knew what they were,—he had been waiting for them. What he didn’t know was why they had waited so long to appear.
Why did you come back?
The voice was thin and hollow, almost a wail, and it came from all around and not from any single source.
“My friend is sick.”
Your friend is dying.
The words were unexpected, spoken without a trace of emotion or interest. For a moment, Bek could not make himself reply. No, he said to himself. No, that’s wrong. That can’t be.
“He’s hurt,” he said. “Can you help him?”
The shadows faded and reappeared in the deep mist like creatures conjured out of imagination. There was that ethereal quality to the shape-shifters, that otherworldliness that defied explanation. They seemed so impermanent that nothing about them was quite real. But Bek remembered how quickly they could change to something hard and deadly.
The caull has poisoned him. Teeth and claws excreted poison and it seeped into his human half, infecting it. The poison leeches away his strength. When his human half dies, his shape-shifter half will die, as well.
“Is there an antidote?” Bek demanded, still trapped in a web of disbelief and shock. “Do you know of one?”
There is no cure.
Bek looked around in despair. “There must be something I can do,” he said finally. “I’m not going to just let him die!”
As soon as he spoke the words, he knew they were what the shape-shifters had been waiting to hear. He could see them move in response, hear their expectant whispers as they did so. He could feel a change in the air. He thought at once to take back the words, but did not know how to do so and could not have made himself, anyway.
You were told that halflings have no place in the world. You said that you would make a place for this one. Would you do so now?
Bek took a deep breath. “What are you asking?”
Would you make a place for your friend? Would you give him a chance to live?
The voice was coldly insistent, uninterested in argument or reason, in anything but a direct answer to its question. The shape-shifters had gone still again, clustered about like stones. Bek could no longer see or feel the fire. He could no longer remember in which direction it lay. He was shrouded in darkness and enclosed by the spirit creatures, and all he could see of the world was the glitter of the stars overhead.
“I want to save him,” he said finally.
He sensed a murmur of approval and, once again, of expectation. It was the answer they were hoping for, yet one that promised results he did not fully comprehend.
He must shed his human skin. He must cast it aside forever. He must become like us, all of one thing and none of the other. If he does this, the poison cannot hurt him. He will live.