The Gypsy Morph by Terry Brooks

pondered the world’s destiny along with his own, and after a time drifted into memories of Erisha. He found himself wishing he could see her once more, to tell her how much knowing her had meant to him and how sorry he was that he couldn’t have done more to protect her. He thought about how they had played together growing up, in a time when everything happening now would have seemed impossible. It still seemed impossible. Erisha dead. Simralin and himself fugitives. Culph a demon that had betrayed them all.
    He was particularly bitter about the old man. He could see his face, smiling and reassuring. He could hear his voice, could feel it make him want to shake his head in blind agreement. He hated that he had thought Culph was his friend, but he hated even more that he had liked him. Nothing would ever change the sense of outrage he felt at knowing how badly he had been deceived. He would live with that memory until he died. It might even go with him to wherever he went afterward.
    The recognition burned like fire, and he tamped it down and shoved it away. In the aftermath of its fading, he found himself staring off into middle space, seeing nothing but the past, and then seeing nothing at all. His thoughts wandered like children lost, seeking peace and comfort in the presence of the familiar.
    His thoughts strayed, and without thinking about it or even wanting it he followed after.

     
    W HO TOLD YOU THAT?
    The voice whispered through the darkness, sharp and accusatory. He looked around and found himself in the stone gardens of the Ashenell. Massive sepulchres and blocky vaults cast their shadows over a forest of smaller markers. The night was quiet, a shroud over the graves of the dead. Yet a voice had spoken to him.
    He saw Erisha then, standing less than ten feet away, her clothing torn and bloodied, her slender white throat sliced open to the bone. She stood solitary and ethereal in death, cast out into the Void by the loss of her life. She looked at him and tried to speak, but no words came.
    Erisha, he said. I’m sorry.
    She tried again to speak, and again she failed.
    Who told you that?
    The voice again. Not her voice, but another’s. He searched for the speaker and found him standing close to the girl. Old Culph, his grizzled face and gnarled body unchanged from life. Yet he was a ghost, too. The boy could see it in the translucence that radiated from him, in the way the starlight shone through him.
    He could see it in the silhouette of his bones through his skin.
    The old man was grinning, his lips curled in disdain, his sharp old eyes fixed and staring.
    Who told you that?
    Kirisin did not understand. Told him what? What was the old man talking about? The demon, he corrected. What was the demon saying?
    He looked again at Erisha, who did not seem to see the demon. She was speaking once more, but still no words would come. Her mouth opened and closed, and there were tears in her eyes.
    Then a third figure appeared, cloaked and hooded, dark and forbidding, hovering back in the deep shadows at the edge of his vision. A wraith, perhaps. But no, not this one. This one was alive, was of flesh and blood. It stared at him from out of the folds of the hood, and while he could not make out its features, he could feel its gaze.
    Kirisin started toward it, and the ground seemed to give way beneath his feet. Suddenly he was falling, pitching forward into blackness, leaving Erisha and Culph and the Ashenell behind.
    Only the dark figure stayed with him, one hand reaching. Its voice hissed in warning.
    Who told you that?

     
    K IRISIN’S EYES SNAPPED OPEN , and his slumped body jerked upright. He had been dreaming. Daydreaming perhaps, but maybe something more, something deeper. A vision? He couldn’t be sure. He wet his lips and stared out into the sun-drenched day. How much time had passed? Only moments, it seemed. But then he looked at the sky and saw that the sun had moved far to the west. He had been sleeping or