Ilse Witch - Terry Brooks [80]
“That’s different,” Bek insisted.
“No, it isn’t.” Quentin laughed and rocked back onto his elbows, stretching out his long legs. “It’s all the same thing. You can live your life worrying about what you don’t know, or you can accept your limitations and make the best of it. Secrets don’t harm you, Bek. It’s fussing about them that does you in.”
Bek gave him a disbelieving look. ‘That’s entirely wrong. Secrets can do a great deal of harm.“
“All right, let me approach it another way.” Quentin drained off his ale and sat forward again. “How much can you accomplish worrying about secrets that may not exist? Especially when you have no idea what they are?”
“I know. I know.” Bek sighed. “But at least I’m prepared for the fact that some nasty surprises might lie ahead. At least I’m ready for what I think is going to happen down the road. And by keeping an eye on Walker, I won’t be caught off guard by his shadings of the truth and purposeful omissions.”
“Great. You’re prepared and you won’t be fooled. Me, too, believe it or not—even if I don’t worry about it as much as you.” Quentin looked off into the darkness, where a shooting star streaked across the firmament and disappeared. “But you can’t prepare against everything, Bek, and you can’t save yourself from being fooled now and then. The fact is, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, sometimes your efforts fall short.”
Bek looked at him and said nothing. True enough, he was thinking, but he didn’t care for the implications.
He slept undisturbed by rain and cold that night, the skies clear and the air warm, and he did not dream or toss. Even so, he woke in the deep sleep hours of early morning, bathed in starlight and infused by a feeling of uneasiness. The fire had burned itself out and lay cold and gray. Beside him, Quentin was snoring, wrapped in his blankets. Bek did not know how long he had been asleep, but the moon was down and the forest about him was silent and black.
He rose without thinking, looking around cautiously as he did so, trying to pinpoint the source of his discomfort. There seemed to be no reason for it. He pulled on his great cloak, wrapping himself tightly against a sudden chill, and walked down to the banks of the Silver River. The river was swollen with spring rains and snowmelt off the Runne Mountains, but its progress this night was sluggish and steady and its surface clear of debris. As he stood there, a night bird swooped down and glided into the trees, a silent, purposeful shadow. He started at the unexpected movement, then quieted once more. Carefully, he studied the glittering surface of the waters, searching for what troubled him, then shifted his attention to the far bank and the shadowed trees. Still nothing. He took a deep breath and exhaled. Perhaps he had been mistaken.
He was turning back toward Quentin when he saw the light. It was just a glimmer of brightness at first, as if a spark had been struck somewhere back in the trees across the river. He stared at it in surprise as it appeared, faded, reappeared, faded anew, then steadied and came on. It bobbed slightly with its approach to the river, then glided out of the trees, suspended on air and floating free as it crossed the water and came to a halt just yards away from him.
It flashed sharply in his eyes, and he blinked in response. When his vision cleared, a young girl stood before him, the light balanced in her hand. She was somehow familiar to him, although he could not say why. She was beautiful, with long dark hair and startling blue eyes, and there was an innocence to her face that made his heart ache. The light she held emanated from one end of a polished metal cylinder and cast a long, narrow beam on the ground between them.
“Well met,