Ilse Witch - Terry Brooks [152]
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.
He had always been lucky, had never made a serious mistake or taken an unnecessary risk. He had shaped and honed his luck into a mantle of confidence that helped to keep him safe. He learned to think defensively, but positively, as well. He never thought anything would hurt him if he made the right choices. He suffered injuries and sickness, but they were never severe enough to prevent a full and complete recovery.
On the day he met Truls Rohk’s mother, however, his luck ran out. He was caught in a storm and seeking shelter when a tree on a slope above him was struck by lightning. It shattered with a huge explosion and tumbled down, along with half the hillside. The Borderman who had escaped so often was a step slow this time. A massive limb pinned his legs. Boulders and debris pummeled him senseless. In seconds, he was completely buried under a mound of rocks and earth, unconscious before he understood fully what had happened.
When he woke, the storm had passed and night had fallen. He was surprised to find that he could move again. He lay in a clearing, away from the slide and the limb, his body aching and his face bloodied, but alive. When he propped himself up on one elbow, he was aware of someone looking at him. The watcher’s eyes glimmered in the darkness, well back in the shadows, bright and feral. A wolf, he thought. He did not reach for his weapons. He did not panic. He stared back at the watcher, waiting to see what it would do. When it did nothing, he sat up, thinking it would slink away with his movement. It did not.
The Borderman understood. The watcher had been the one who pulled him free of the limb, of the rocks and earth, of his tomb. The watcher had saved his life.
The staring contest continued for a long time with neither watcher nor Borderman advancing or retreating. Finally the Borderman spoke, calling to the watcher, thanking it for helping him. The watcher stayed where it was. The Borderman spoke for a long time, keeping his voice low and calm in the way he had learned was effective, growing more and more convinced that the watcher was not human. It was, he believed, a spirit creature. It was a child of the Wolfsktaag.
It was nearing dawn when the watcher finally came close enough to be seen clearly. It was a woman, but it was not human. She slid from the shadows as if formed of colored water, changing her look as she came, a beast one moment, a human the next, a cross of each soon after. She seemed to be trying to take form, uncertain of what to be. In all of her variations, she was beautiful and compelling. She knelt by the Borderman and stroked his forehead and face with soft, strange fingers. She whispered words that the Borderman could not identify, but in a tone of voice that was unmistakable—sweet, silky, and thick with lust.
She was a shape-shifter, he realized, a creature of the Old World, a thing of magic and strange powers. Something of who and what he was, or perhaps something of her own nature, had drawn her to him. She stared at him with such unbridled passion that he was caught up in her fire. She wanted him in a primal, urgent way, and he found his response to her need equally compelling.
They mated there in the clearing, quick and hard, a coupling more terrible for its frenzy than for its forbidden character. A human and a spirit creature—no good can