Ilse Witch (3 page)

When he left Arborlon to travel to the coast, where the ships his mother had commissioned were waiting, Kael Elessedil was wearing the bracelet his brother now held. It was the last time Allardon saw him. The expedition had never returned. The ships, their crews, his brother, everything and everyone, had simply vanished. Search parties had been dispatched, one after the other, but not a trace of the missing Elves had ever been found.

Allardon exhaled softly. Until now. He stared at the bracelet in his hand. Until this.

Kael’s disappearance had changed everything in the lives of his family. His mother had never recovered from her eldest
son’s disappearance, and the last years of her life were spent in a slow wasting away of health and hope as one rescue effort after another failed and all were finally abandoned. When she died, Allardon became the King his brother was meant to be and he had never expected to become.

He thought of the ruined man lying wasted, voiceless, and blind in the Healer’s rooms in Bracken Clell and wondered if his brother had come home at last.

The ale arrived, and Allardon sat with Hunter Predd on a bench in the gardens and questioned the Wing Rider again and again, covering the same ground several times over, approaching the matter from different points of view, making certain he had learned everything there was to know. Perhaps understanding in part at least, the trauma he had visited upon the Elven King by his coming, Hunter was cooperative. He did not presume to ask questions of his own, for which Allardon was grateful, but simply responded to the questions he was asked, keeping company with the King for as long as it was required.

When the interview was ended, Allardon asked the Wing Rider to stay the night so that the King could have time to consider what further need he might have of him. He did not make it a command, but a request. Food and lodging would be provided for rider and mount, and his staying would be a favor. Hunter Predd agreed.

Alone again, in his study now, where he did most of his thinking on matters that required a balancing of possibilities and choices, Allardon Elessedil considered what he must do. After thirty years and considerable damage, he might not be able to recognize his brother, even if it was Kael whom the Bracken Clell Healer attended. He had to assume that it was, for the bracelet was genuine. It was the map that was troubling. What was he to do with it? He could guess at its worth, but he could not read enough of it to measure the extent of its information. If he were to mount a new expedition, an event he was already seriously considering, he could not afford to
do so without making every possible effort to discover what he was up against.

He needed someone to translate the phrases on the map. He needed someone who could tell him what they said.

There was only one person who could do that, he suspected. Certainly, only one of whom he knew.

It was dark outside by now, the night settled comfortably down about the Westland forests, the walls and roofs of the city’s buildings faded away and replaced by clusters of lights that marked their continued presence. In the Elessedil family home, it was quiet. His wife was busy with their daughters, working on a quilt for his birthday that he was not supposed to know about. His eldest son, Kylen, commanded a regiment on the Prekkendorran front. His youngest, Ahren, hunted the forests north with Ard Patrinell, Captain of the Home Guard. Considering the size of his family and the scope of his authority as King, he felt surprisingly alone and helpless in the face of what he knew he must do.

But how to do it? How, so that it would achieve what was needed?

The dinner hour had come and gone, and he remained where he was, thinking the matter through. It was difficult even to consider doing what was needed, because the man he must deal with was in many ways anathema to him. But deal with him he must, putting aside his own reservations and their shared history of antagonism and spite. He could do that because that was part of what being a King required, and he had made similar concessions before in other situations. It was finding a way to persuade the other to do likewise that was difficult. It was conceiving of an approach that would not meet with instant rejection that was tricky.

In the end, he found what he needed right under his nose. He would send Hunter Predd, the Wing Rider, as his emissary. The Wing Rider would go because he understood the importance and implications of his discovery and because Allardon would grant the Wing Hove a concession they coveted
as a further enticement. The man whose services he required would respond favorably because he had no quarrel with the Wing Riders as he did with the Land Elves, and because Hunter Predd’s direct, no-nonsense approach would appeal to him.

There were no guarantees, of course. His gambit might fail, and he might be forced to try again—perhaps even to go there himself. He would have to, he knew, if all else failed. But he was counting on his adversary’s inquisitive mind and curious nature to win him over; he would not be able to resist the challenge of the map’s puzzle. He would not be able to ignore the lure of its secrets. His life did not allow for that. Whatever else he might be, and he was many things, he was a scholar first.

The Elf King brought out the scrap of map the Wing Rider had carried to him and placed it on his writing desk. He would have it copied, so that he might protect against its unforeseen loss. But copied accurately, with all symbols and words included, for any hint of treachery would sink the whole venture in a second. A scribe could accomplish what was needed without being told of the map’s origins or worth. Discretion was possible.

Nevertheless, he would stay with the scribe until the job was completed. His decision made, he dispatched an aide to summon the one who was needed and sat back to await his arrival. Dinner would have to keep a little while longer.

O
n the same night Allardon Elessedil awaited the arrival of his scribe to make a copy of the map delivered by Hunter Predd, the spy in the household of the Bracken Clell Healer received a response to the message he had dispatched to his Mistress two days earlier. It was not the kind of response he had anticipated.

She was waiting for him when he came to his rooms at nightfall, his day’s work finished, his mind on other things. Perhaps he was thinking of slipping out later to his cages to see if one of her winged couriers had arrived with a message. Perhaps he was thinking only of a hot meal and a warm bed. Whatever the case, he was not expecting to find her. Surprised and frightened by her appearance, he flinched and cried out when she detached herself from the shadows. She soothed him with a soft word, quieted him, and waited patiently for him to recover himself enough to acknowledge her properly.

“Mistress,” he whispered, dropping to one knee and bowing deeply. She was pleased to discover he had not forgotten his manners. Although she had not come to him in many years, he remembered his place.

She left him bowed and on his knee a moment longer, standing before him, her whisper of reassurance and subtle pressure soft and light upon the air. Gray robes cloaked her from head to foot, and a hood concealed her face. Her spy had never seen her in the light or caught even the barest glimpse
of her features. She was an enigma, a shadow exuding presence rather than identity. She kept herself at one with the darkness, a creature to be felt rather than viewed, keeping watch even when not seen.

“Mistress, I have important information,” her spy murmured without looking up, waiting to be told he might rise.

The Ilse Witch left him where he was, considering. She knew more than he imagined, more than he could guess, for she possessed power that was beyond his understanding. From the message he had sent—his words, his handwriting, his scent upon the paper—she could measure the urgency he was feeling. From the way he presented himself now—his demeanor, his tone of voice, his carriage—she could decipher his need. It was her gift always to know more than those with whom she came in contact wished her to know. Her magic laid them bare and left them as transparent as still waters.

The Ilse Witch stretched out her robed arm. “Rise,” she commanded.

The spy did so, keeping his head lowered, his eyes cast down. “I did not think you would come …”

“For you, for information of such importance, I could do no less.” She shifted her stance and bent forward slightly. “Speak, now, of what you know.”

The spy shivered, excitement coursing through him, anxious to be of service. Within the shadows of her hood, she smiled.

“A Wing Rider rescued an Elf from the sea and brought him to the Healer who serves this community,” the spy advised, daring now to lift his eyes as far as the hem of her robes. “The man’s eyes and tongue were removed, and the Healer says he is half-mad. I don’t doubt it, from the look of him. The Healer cannot determine his identity, and the Wing Rider claims not to know it either, but he suspects something. And the Wing Rider took something from the man before
bringing him here. I caught a glimpse of it—a bracelet that bears the crest of the Elessedils.”

The spy’s gaze lifted now to seek out her own. “The Wing Rider left for Arborlon two days ago. I heard him tell the Healer where he was going. He took the bracelet with him.”

She regarded him in silence for a moment, her cloaked form as still as the shadows it mirrored. A bracelet bearing the crest of the Elessedils, she mused. The Wing Rider would have taken it to Allardon Elessedil to identify. Whose bracelet was it? What did it mean that it was found on this castaway Elf who was blind and voiceless and believed mad?

The answers to her questions were locked inside the castaway’s head. He must be made to give them up.

“Where is the man now?” she asked.

The spy hunched forward eagerly, the fingers of his hands knotted together beneath his chin as if in prayer. “He lies in the Healer’s infirmary, cared for but kept isolated until the Wing Rider’s return. No one is allowed to speak with him.” He snorted softly. “As if anyone could. He has no tongue with which to answer, has he?”

She gestured him away and to the side, and he moved as if a puppet in response. “Wait here for me,” she said. “Wait, until I return.”

She went out the door into the night, a spectral figure sliding effortlessly and soundlessly through the shadows. The Ilse Witch liked the darkness, found comfort in it she could never find in daylight. The darkness soothed and shaded, softening edges and points, reducing clarity. Vision lost importance because the eyes could be deceived. A shift of movement here changed the look of something there. What was certain in the light became suspect in the dark. It mirrored her life, a collage of images and voices, of memories that had shaped her growing, not all fitting tightly in sequence, not all linked together in ways that made sense. Like the shadows with which she so closely identified, her life was a patchwork of frayed ends and loose threads that invited
refitting and mending. Her past was not carved of stone, but drawn on water. Reinvent yourself, she had been told by the Morgawr a long time ago. Reinvent yourself, and you will become more inscrutable to those who might try to unravel who you really are.

In the night, in darkness and shadows, she could do so more easily. She could keep what she looked like to herself and conceal who she really was. She could let them imagine her, and by doing so keep them forever deceived.

She moved through the village without challenge, encountering almost no one, those few she did unaware of her presence as they passed. It was late, the village mostly asleep, the ones who preferred the night busy in the ale houses and pleasure dens, caught up in their own wants and needs, uncaring of what transpired without. She could forgive them their weaknesses, these men and women, but she could never accept them as equals. Long since, she had abandoned any pretense that she believed their common origins linked them in any meaningful way. She was a creature of fire and iron. She was born to magic and power. It was her destiny to shape and alter the lives of others and never to be altered by them. It was her passion to rise above the fate that others had cast for her as a child and to visit revenge on them for daring to do so. She would be so much more than they, and they would be forever less.

When she let them speak her name again, when she chose to speak it herself, it would be remembered. It would not be buried in the ashes of her childhood, as it had once been. It would not be cast aside, a fragment of her lost past. It would soar with a hawk’s smooth glide and shine with the milky brightness of the moon. It would linger on the minds of the people of her world forever.

The Healer’s house lay ahead, close by the trees of the surrounding forest. She had flown in from the Wilderun late that afternoon, come out of her safehold in response to the spy’s
message, sensing its importance, wanting to discover for herself what secrets it held. She had left her War Shrike in the old growth below the bluffs, its fierce head hooded and its taloned feet hobbled. It would bolt otherwise, so wild that even her magic could not hold it when she was absent. But as a fighting bird, it was without equal. Even the giant Rocs were wary of it, for the Shrike fought to the death with little thought to protecting itself. No one would see it, for she had cast a spell of forbidding about it to keep the unwanted away. By sunrise, she would have returned. By sunrise, she would be gone again, even given the dictates of what she must do now.

She slipped through the door of the Healer’s home on cat’s paws, moving through the central rooms to the sick bays, humming softly as she passed the attendants on duty, turning their minds inward and eyes elsewhere as she passed so they would not see her. The ones who kept watch outside the castaway’s curtained entry, she put to sleep. They sank into their chairs and leaned against walls and tables, eyes going closed, breathing slowing and deepening. It was quiet and peaceful in the Healer’s home, and her song fit snugly into place. She layered the air with her music, a tender blanket tucking in around the cautions and uneasiness that might otherwise have been triggered. Soon, she was all alone and free to work.