Wit'ch Fire: Book One of The Banned and the Banished

by James Clemens

  Elena had mirrored his smile shyly, but now out in the crisp air, she smiled more fully. He would live.

  Snow crunched under her boots as she climbed the ice-crusted trail that led from the sheltered caves to the windswept Pass of Spirits. Across the Teeth, the thin spires of smoke from the hearths of other clans of the mountain folk rose to greet the morning. Twelve in all, she counted as she wound up toward the pass.

  It was these people who had offered them shelter and a place to hide. Winter had closed the pass with a mighty blizzard just as the party limped into the safety of the Teeth. They planned to weather out the bite of winter among Kral’s clans: to let their trail grow cold to the dogs of the Gul’gotha, to let their wounds heal, to let time dull sharp memories that sapped spirit and muscle, to forget for a while and rest.

  A long journey lay ahead, but none of them spoke of it. That was for another time—for when that bloody night finally lost its hold on their hearts and tongues. Now, they simply existed, basking in firelight and warm company. Few words were spoken.

  Only one decision had been made. When winter thawed, they would all go with Elena and Er’ril on the journey to A’loa Glen.

  Each voiced a different reason: Meric to guard his king’s bloodline, Nee’lahn to honor the words of a dying prophet, Kral to seek his vengeance, Mogweed and Fardale to break a curse, and Tol’chuk to answer the demands of a glowing stone.

  Yet one unspoken reason lay in each heart—ties of blood now bound them all.

  Elena let the sun melt this knowledge from her as she continued toward the Pass of Spirits. Though the cold burned her chest, she knew she must make this journey for all who had died in her name, to show them who she had become.

  She would make it for her mother and father, for her aunt and uncle, and for a brother who had vanished off the streets of Winterfell.

  She wiped a tear from her eye before it froze and continued up the steep path, wondering what had become of her brother Joach.

  “COME HERE, BOY,” Greshym growled over his shoulder as he threw open the wardrobe and unhooked the white robe inside.

  The wit’ch’s brother shambled over to him. Joach’s eyes did not blink, and saliva foamed at the corner of his mouth. He stared at Greshym, awaiting his order, but no awareness glowed from his pupils. The spell of influence still held the boy in its thrall. Greshym stared sourly at the boy’s sunken face and wasted figure. He kept forgetting to tell the boy to eat. He frowned. It would not do to let him die. The boy might yet prove useful.

  Greshym slipped the white robe over his head and pulled its cowl lower over his face. He threw a blue sash across his shoulders to indicate he was under a vow of silence, not wishing to be disturbed as he crossed the passages to the Praetor’s chamber. With a final tug on his robe, he checked the fall of his garments in a mirror, then frowned and lowered his head farther to keep his face deeper in shadows.

  Satisfied, he turned to the door of his dormitory cell. “Follow,” he ordered the boy as he swung the door open.

  Joach shuffled two steps behind him as he entered the passage. The hall was empty, but Greshym was careful to keep his face hooded. Too many eyes prowled these halls. The boy’s naked face would raise no inquiring looks. He appeared as any other servant, maybe slightly more slack jawed. A dullard, they would suppose, and politely refrain from mentioning the boy.

  Greshym followed a path well-known to him. He had no need to raise his head to check directions. He climbed the stairs near the kitchen and followed a dusty passage to the other wing. Twisting and turning through the various halls, he entered the oldest section of the Edifice. Now the dust of crumbling stone and cracked mortar marked their steps’ progress in puffs of ancient decay. Reaching the stairs to the western tower, named the Praetor’s Spear after its lone occupant, Greshym stopped to clear dust from his nose, smearing the cuff of his white robe.

  The boy bumped to a stop at his heel. Mucus dripped from his nose.

  “Stay,” Greshym ordered the boy. Once satisfied that he was obeyed, Greshym hauled himself alone up the countless flights of stairs as they curved along the inside of the tower.

  He passed two guards along the way. They had been alerted of his arrival by their master. Greshym did not even wave a hand of acknowledgment as he huffed past them. He spied the deadness behind their eyes. Both were under a spell of control similar to the boy’s, though of a delicacy and fine webbing beyond Greshym’s skills. So subtle was the working that the guards themselves and the brothers of the Order were unaware of the master’s touch among their own.

  Greshym reached the last landing and approached the iron-bound oaken door. Two guards stood with sheathed swords. Their eyes did not move as he approached. Greshym raised his hand to rap on the wood, but before his knuckles could touch oak, the door swung inward on its own.

  “Come,” a voice from within ordered. Greshym cringed from the sound of the Praetor’s voice—not in fear, but in simple recognition that the tone was the same as his own when he ordered the boy Joach. He thinks me nothing more than a servant.

  Greshym stepped into the chamber of the Brotherhood’s esteemed leader and saw the Praetor standing by the western window. Through the glass, the black finger of the tower’s shadow pointed toward the distant coast. The Praetor stared beyond the sunken remains of the once proud city of A’loa Glen and out to the sea, past the islands of the Archipelago that dotted the water like the backs of huge sea creatures. Greshym knew where he stared.

  Greshym waited. The door closed behind him and latched shut. Now away from the prying eyes of his other brothers, Greshym pushed back the hood of his robe.

  There were no secrets here.

  Greshym stayed silent. The Praetor would speak when ready, so Greshym simply studied his stiff back. Only a few individuals knew the identity of the Praetor. As leader of the city and the Brotherhood, he had given up his name to don this cloak of responsibility. That had been a long time ago. None but Greshym still lived to remember that day.

  The Praetor finally swung away from the window. His eyes were the same gray as his brother Er’ril’s. “I feel her gaze,” Shorkan said. “The wit’ch stares toward the Book.”

  “She will come here,” Greshym said. “The Book calls her.”

  As Praetor Shorkan turned back to his vigil, wraiths of black energies caressed his skin and mocked the white robes of his station. “We must be ready for her. The Black Heart must have his wit’ch.”

  ELENA ROUNDED THE last of the twisting path, her heart lighter as the pass spread wide before her. She stepped to the Pass of Spirits with a prayer of thanks on her lips. An errant gust tried to tug the hood from her face, but it quickly tired of its play and died away. The wind was calm this morning, but she knew that by evening it would howl through the Teeth as if pining the loss of the sun.

  She studied the pass. Snow had fallen this last night, and not a single print marred the spread of virgin white. Elena regretted having to ruin such a sight with her plodding boot prints, but her goal this morning still beckoned. With a sigh that plumed into the air, she crossed into the pass and began the short march to its crest. A thin scree of ice caked the surface of snow, cracking in protest with each step. The scrunch filled her ears.

  By the time she neared the highest point of the pass, she was forging through snow up to her knees. A sweat had built under her inner linens, and she knew that when she stopped it would rapidly chill her. Still she pushed on until she crested the tallest point of the pass.

  She stopped and stared east. Short of breath, damp, and sure to grow cold, she did not regret the climb. The mountains opened up before her, and the full face of the sun bathed her in its radiance. The morning was so bright and clear that Elena swore the glint at the curve of the world was the Great Ocean itself. The lands spread below her in sweeping vistas. She could see winter had reached its snowy grip far into the foothills and valleys. Yet, beyond that, among the distant plains, a hint of green glowed in the dawn, like a p
romise of spring.

  Elena pulled off her rabbit-fur mittens and lifted her hands to the sunlight. They glowed in the dawn—one white as the snow, the other whorled with the reds of sunset.

  It had taken her a long time after that foul night to finally renew. Though not injured like the others, Elena had sustained a deeper wound in that dark glade. She had needed this time of rest and contemplation to heal.

  Because ever since that dark night when she had knelt in the mud in Er’ril’s arms, a question had consumed her spirit: Who was she?

  Elena stared at both hands now and raised them to the world.

  Was she the red of the wit’ch or the white of the woman?

  She now knew, and in the Pass of Spirits, she showed the world.

  She touched her palms together, intertwining her fingers. This is who I am.

  And as Elena looks toward the distant sea beyond the horizon with her legion at her back, I must end this story.

  My inkwells have run dry, my wrist aches, and I must find a vendor who is not too steep on his price of ink and scroll. So please let me end my story here. Let me rest. What I write next—the journey to the lost city—even I dread remembering.

  So here I end the story.

  The legion is formed, and the path is drawn.

  The dark journey begins tomorrow.

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  A Del Rey® Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1998 by Jim Czajkowski

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Del Ray and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com/delrey/

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-96595

  eISBN: 978-0-345-45614-4

  v3.0