Antrax

by Terry Brooks

  She stood slowly, her mind made up. Answers to questions like those would have to wait. It didn’t make any difference where they went or why if she couldn’t find them, and she intended to find them right now. If her magic couldn’t serve her one way, it would have to serve her another.

  Standing at the edge of the meadow, she cupped her hands to her mouth and gave a long, low cry, eerie and chilling as it wafted into the distance and died away. She gave the cry three times, stood waiting awhile, then gave it three more.

  Time slipped away, the meadow and the surrounding forest silent save for birdsong and the rustle of leaves in the wind. The Ilse Witch stood where she was, listening and watching everywhere at once.

  Then something moved out of the trees and into the grasses on the far side of the meadow, causing the flowers to ripple and part. The Ilse Witch waited patiently as the submerged creature made its way toward her, invisible beneath the bobbing coverlet of wildflowers, crouched low to the earth.

  When it was a dozen yards away, too late for it to escape, it lifted its narrow muzzle slightly from the sea of brightness, testing the wind, searching for the source of the call that had summoned it. The wolf was not of a recognizable breed, bigger than the ones with which she was familiar, but it would do. It was an outcast, a renegade—she could sense that about it—not part of any pack, solitary by choice and nature, its face a mask of grizzled black hair and sharp features, its scarred gray body sinewy and muscular. A ferocious predator, the wolf possessed unmatchable tracking skills and instincts, which would serve her needs well, once the necessary adjustments had been made.

  The wolf must have realized it was trapped, unable to break free of her magic, of her compelling voice, of the chains she had already wound about it as she hummed and sang softly. But it was not so stunned by what was happening that it did not try to escape. It bristled and snarled, thrashing against her attempts to exercise control, its hatred for her revealed in its baleful eyes and curled muzzle. She let it have its moment of rage, and then she bore down on it relentlessly. Bit by bit she overcame its resistance, harnessing its will, claiming its heart and mind, making its body and thoughts her own.

  Then she began to reshape it. It was a dangerous brute, but she decided it needed to be more dangerous still; the shape-shifter would be more than a match for an ordinary wolf, no matter how ferocious, and she wanted the odds reversed. She wanted a caull, a beast of reshaped flesh and bone, a creature of magic molded by her hand and obedient only to her. Using the magic of the wishsong, she caused it to evolve in very specific ways, focusing her attention on its predatory instincts, tracking skills, and resiliency. To enhance its intelligence was too difficult a task, too complex even for her. But its form could be changed to suit her needs, and she did not shrink from what was required, even when the beast screamed as if it were a human child.

  Afterwards, it lay panting and feverish on the sun-dappled earth, the wildflowers ripped to shreds for fifteen or twenty feet in all directions, the ground torn and furrowed, the grasses coated with sprays of blood. She held the caull in check, then gave it sleep to calm and heal its re-formed body. Its yellow eyes closed, and its breathing slowed and deepened in response to the change in her song. In seconds, it slept.

  The effort had exhausted her, and she sat down to rest. The day lengthened from morning to afternoon. She dozed in the sunlight, wrapped within her hood and robes, a small dark shape at the edge of the savaged patch of earth and sleeping beast. Time drifted, and she dreamed of a tiny baby boy with a shock of dark hair and startling blue eyes, staring back at her from an enfolding darkness as she closed a hidden door on it forever.

  She awoke before the caull, alerted by the rustle of its legs as it stirred from its own sleep. Her wishsong already coming into play, she rose and waited for its eyes to open. When its head lifted, she ordered it to rise. It did so, lurching to its feet, big and menacing in the fading light. It was twice the size it had been, with a thickened neck and huge shoulders, its body re-formed for fighting and running. Its head was a broad, flat shelf of bone, wedge-shaped from pointed ears to snout. Its muzzle split as it panted, revealing a double row of razor-sharp teeth made for rending and tearing. Its legs had shortened to give it a splay-footed stance, and the digits of its paws had lengthened and spread like fingers to end in hooked claws. Sleek gray hair layered its body, less fur than skin, a tough coarse hide that even brambles could not scratch. It wheeled this way and that, as if anxious to test its newfound strength, and in its maddened eyes glittered an unmistakable bloodlust.

  She watched it carefully, pleased with her handiwork, certain that with this creature to aid her, she would be more than a match for the wiles of the shape-shifter and his young accomplice. She had learned to fashion caulls while practicing her magic with the Morgawr. But she had discovered the shape of this one on her own. Hundreds of years ago, there had been another, a monster out of Faerie called a Jachyra that had stalked and killed a Druid. She didn’t need the real thing. A close approximation would be sufficient to serve her needs.

  “Relentless,” she hissed at the caull. It swung its flat, heavy head toward her watchfully. “That is what you will be for me in your search for those I hunt. Unstoppable.”

  The jaws split in what might have been a smile if the beast had been capable of understanding what a smile was. It was enough to satisfy the Ilse Witch. If it accomplished what she wished, she would do the smiling for them both.

  Bek trailed Truls Rohk as they entered a meadow filled with blue and yellow wildflowers. He was already beginning to tire from the pace the shape-shifter was setting, sweat coating his face and drenching his tunic. The sun was high in the midday sky and the air warm. Truls Rohk loped to the center of the meadow and stopped, looking back.

  “Far enough,” he said, his ravaged face a shadow within his cowl, barely seen even in the bright midday sun. He looked back in the direction from which they had come. “We can’t outrun her forever. Sooner or later, she’ll wear us down. Something else is needed.”

  Bek blew out his breath wearily and took a fresh gulp, swallowing against the dryness in his throat. “Maybe she’ll give up if we keep going.”

  “Not likely. Think about it. She put aside her hunt for the Druid, her mortal enemy, to come in search of you. She put everything aside, the whole of her purpose in coming on this voyage, because of you. You think you didn’t reach her with your words and arguments, but I think maybe you did. Enough at least to make her wonder.”

  Bek shook his head. “It didn’t feel like it at the time.” Truls Rohk didn’t even seem to be breathing hard, his body still and composed within his cloak, not a ripple of movement, not a stir.

  “She’s tracking us with her magic, reading our passing with it. I saw the way she walked, head up, eyes forward. She wasn’t studying signs or searching for prints.” He cast about for a moment, looking off into the distance in all directions, taking in the lay of the land. “We have to throw her off, boy. Now, before this gets any tighter, before she’s so close nothing will slow her.”

  He faced the boy squarely, broad-shouldered and threatening. “Time to take some responsibility for yourself. Your magic against hers—that might be the answer. It lacks power and subtlety both, but it has its uses even so. Listen to me. She’s probably reading our body heat, our movement from place to place. See if you can do the same. Watch me closely. When I disappear, track me. Use your voice, like you did on Mephitic.”

  In an instant, he disappeared, right from in front of Bek, vanishing as if into vapor. The boy called up his magic and cast it about wildly, searching. Nothing happened.

  The shape-shifter reappeared, right where he had been an instant before. Bek gasped at the suddenness, then shook his head angrily. “It didn’t work!” Frustration colored his words. “I can’t make it do anything!”

  Truls Rohk bent close, big and menacing. “Too bad for us if you can’t, isn’t it? Try again. Cast about as if you’re throwing a net!
Pretend you’re draping images with cloth. It isn’t me you’re looking for—it’s my shade. Do it!”

  Again he was gone, and again Bek summoned the magic and cast it out. This time he was more successful. He caught pieces of Truls Rohk moving left to right and back again, ghostly presences that hung on the midday air.

  “Better.” The shape-shifter was back in front of him again. “Once more, but hold tight to a corner of the magic you’re releasing. Then draw it in, fisherboy.”

  On this try, he caught all of Truls Rohk’s movements, a series of passages clearly defined, moving all around him and back again. Like shades released from the dead, they hung suspended on the air, one after the other, each moving slowly to catch up to the next, as if runners slowed by quicksand and weariness.

  They worked at it steadily, and then the shape-shifter changed his look to match the boy’s, and suddenly Bek was casting for his own images, seeing himself replicated over and over across the meadow. Back and forth, this way and that, from one end to the other and into the trees, Truls Rohk cast his own image and the boy’s until the meadow was filled with their shadows and the trail was hopelessly tangled.

  “Let her try to sort that out,” Truls Rohk grunted as he led the boy through the drifting images in a zigzag fashion, making for a set of mountains east. “We’ll do it again a little farther on, somewhere close to water.”

  They ran on, not so quickly and furiously as before, the shape-shifter setting a more reasonable pace, one the boy was able to keep up with more easily. They did not speak, but concentrated on their effort, on putting as much distance between themselves and their pursuer as possible, on conserving their strength. Twice more they stopped to produce a confusing set of images, a tangled trail, crossing a deep stream once, doubling back twice at right angles, choosing difficult, rocky terrain for their passage.

  It was nearing nightfall when they stopped finally to rest and eat, the light fading rapidly west, the forestland already cloaked in lengthening shadows. Night birds lifted out of the growing twilight, dark winged shapes against the sky. Bek watched them fly away and wished he had their wings. He carried no food or water, but Truls Rohk had come bearing both, stolen from Black Moclips on leaving, the shape-shifter prepared as always.

  “Though I did not think it would come to this,” he admitted grimly, handing over his water skin for the boy to drink.

  Bek was exhausted. He had not faltered, but his muscles were drained and his body aching. He was used to hard treks and long hikes, but not to running for so long. Life aboard the Jerle Shannara had helped prepare him, but even so his endurance had its limits and did not begin to approach that of Truls Rohk.

  “Will she give up now?” he asked hopefully, passing back the water skin and gnawing hungrily on the dried beef the other passed him in return. “Will she lose interest and go back for Walker?”

  The shape-shifter laughed softly, wrapped in his robes and hood, his expression and thoughts hidden away. “I don’t think so. She isn’t like that. She doesn’t give up. She’ll find another way to track us. She’ll keep coming.”

  Bek sighed in resignation. “I’ll have to face her again sooner or later. There isn’t any help for it.” The Sword of Shannara lay at his side, and he glanced down at it. His expectations for its use against his sister seemed foolish and desperate.

  “Maybe. But we have other problems to solve first. We can’t just keep running for no better purpose than to escape the witch. Even if we lose her or she gives up, where does that leave us? Somewhere in the middle of a strange country without an airship or friends, without adequate supplies or weapons, and without a decent plan, that’s where. Not so good.”

  “We have to go back for Quentin and the others,” Bek answered at once, convinced that was the right choice. “We have to help them if we can. We have to try to find Walker.”

  It sounded so obvious and so logical that the words were out of his mouth before he realized that he was ignoring obstacles that rendered his response only a few steps shy of ridiculous. Even given their respective magics and the shape-shifter’s skill and experience, they were only two men—one man and a boy, he amended ruefully. They had no idea where their friends were. They had no means of searching for them other than to go afoot, a mode of transportation hardly conducive to the sort of search required. Their enemies outnumbered them perhaps fifty to one and that wasn’t counting whatever it was that lived belowground in Castledown.

  Truls Rohk didn’t say anything. He simply sat there, looking out at the boy from within the shadows of his hood.

  Bek cleared his throat. “All right. We can’t do it alone. We need help.”

  The shape-shifter nodded. “You’re learning, boy. What sort of help?”

  “Someone to even the odds when we go back to face the Ilse Witch and the Mwellrets and whatever else is waiting.”

  “That, but also someone who knows a way past the things that guard those ruins and protect the treasure Walker’s come to find.” Truls Rohk laughed bitterly. “Don’t think for a moment that the Druid, assuming he still lives, will give up on the treasure.”

  Bek thought of all that the company of the Jerle Shannara had endured to come so far, of what had been promised and what given up. He thought of how much Walker was risking to make the journey, both of life and reputation. Truls Rohk was right. The Druid would rather die than fail, given what was at stake. Even from the little he knew of Walker, it was certain that failure to gain the support of the Elves for a Druid Council at Paranor would be the end of him. It was everything he had worked for, all that mattered to him now. He had spent his life as a Druid seeking that support. Bek knew it from their conversations. He knew it from what he had heard from Ahren Elessedil. Walker had tied his fate to this voyage, to the recovery of the Elfstones and the finding of the treasure on the castaway’s map.

  And weren’t they all tied in turn to the Druid in coming with him, Bek as well as the others? Weren’t their fates all inextricably linked?

  “Sleep for an hour; then we’ll set out again.” Truls Rohk sat with his hands locked together in front of him, animal hair on their backs gleaming faintly, like silver threads. “I’ll keep watch.”

  Bek nodded wordlessly. An hour was better than nothing. He took a moment to look back the way they had come, to where the Ilse Witch was, to where his friends and companions were, somewhere in the dark.

  Be strong, he prayed for all of them. He prayed it even for Grianne.

  FIVE

  Dozens of miles away, deep within the glacier-draped mountains that warded the coast of the peninsula, bracketed by the thousand-foot walls of the gorge that channeled the ice melt out into the Blue Divide, the Jerle Shannara drifted in solitary grandeur. Rudderless, unmanned, sails in shreds, she rode the twists and turns of the winds that howled down the canyon, moving as if drawn toward the pillars of ice that blocked the way out. Clouds roiled overhead, mingling with mist off the ice and the spray off the crash of waves against the rocks below, white sheets of gauze layered against dim shards of sunlight. Shrikes circled and dived past the rigging, bright anticipation in their gimlet eyes, each pass bringing them closer to the dead men who lay sprawled across the airship’s decks. Echoes from their cries and from the pounding surf mingled and reverberated off the cliffs in eerie counterpoint.

  Ahead, growing closer with each twist and turn of the airship, the pillars waited. Giant’s teeth ground together and withdrew, opening and closing over the gap through which the ship must pass, hungry-sounding, ravenous, as if anxious to catch hold of what had escaped before, as if needing to feel the wood and metal of the Jerle Shannara reduced to shards of debris and its crew reduced to bones and pulp.

  Battered and dazed, barely conscious, Rue Meridian dangled from a rope nearly fifty feet below the stern of the ship. She hung from the rope with the last of her fading strength, too weary to do anything else. Blood coated her left arm and ran in rivulets down her side, and she could no longer feel her righ
t leg. The wind howled in her ears and froze her skin. Ice had formed in her hair, and her clothes were stiff. Everything leading up to this moment was a haze of fragmented memories and jumbled emotions. She remembered her struggle with the Mwellret, both of them wounded, their tumbling to the deck of the airship, then sliding inexorably toward the wooden railing, picking up speed and unable to stop. She remembered them striking the railing, already splintered and broken by a falling spar, the Mwellret first, taking the brunt of the impact. The railing had given way like kindling, and they had gone through in a tangle.

  It should have been the end of her. They were a thousand feet up, maybe more, with nothing between them and the rocks and rapids below but air. She had kicked free of the Mwellret instinctively, then grasped for something to hold on to. By sheer chance, she had caught this length of trailing rope, this lifeline to safety. Slowing her rapid descent had nearly dislocated her arms and had torn the skin of her hands as she ripped down its length to a knot that brought her up short. Twisting and turning in the wind, she clung to the rope in stunned relief, watching the dark shape of her antagonist tumble away into the ether.

  But then shock and cold had set in, and she found she could not move from where she hung, pinned against the skyline like an insect on paper, frozen to her lifeline as she fought to stay conscious. She kept thinking that eventually she would find the strength to move again, to make some effort at climbing back aboard, or that someone aboard would haul her to safety. Her mind drifted in and out of various scenarios and near unconsciousness, always unable to do more than tease her with possibilities.