Ilse Witch

by Terry Brooks

  And, if the Druid’s suspicions were correct, whoever had recruited the Elven assassins had probably determined to make the voyage, as well.

  Steady and unflagging, Obsidian flew his master and Walker south for the remainder of the afternoon over the dense tangle of Drey Wood and the watery mire of the Matted Brakes. As sunset neared, they passed the Pykon’s solitary spires and crossed the silver thread of the Rill Song into the deep woods that fronted the Rock Spur. The light was beginning to fail badly as Hunter Predd guided his mount to a good-size clearing. There, he sent the Roc back into the trees to roost, while he and the Druid made camp. They lit a fire in a shallow pit, laid out their bedrolls on a carpet of soft needles beneath an ancient pine, and cooked their meal. Druid and Wing Rider, they sat as if a part of the forest shadows, dark figures in the deepening gloom, eating in silence and listening to the sounds of the night.

  “Strange day,” the Elf remarked, sipping at the ale he shared with his traveling companion. “Makes you wonder about the way life works. Makes you wonder why anyone would want to be King.”

  Walker nodded, straight-backed within his black robes, eyes distant. “The Wing Hove must have thought the same thing a long time ago.”

  “It’s true. It’s one reason we have a council to make our laws and decisions for us, not just one man.” The Wing Rider shook his head. “Killed by his own people. He wasn’t a bad man, Walker. Why would they do it?”

  Walker’s gaze fixed on him. “They didn’t. I saw their eyes. Whatever their motives in acting against the King, they were not the men they had been even a few days ago. They had been mind-altered in some permanent way. They were meant to attack the King, to kill him however they could manage it, and then to die.”

  Hunter Predd frowned. “How could a man be made to do that?”

  “Magic.”

  “Elven?”

  Walker shook his head. “I’m not sure yet. If they had lived, I might have been able to tell. Dead, they could give me nothing.”

  “Who were they? Not gardeners, surely?”

  “No one could identify them. Elves, but not of Arborlon. Hard men, who had led hard lives, from the look of their hands and faces. They would have killed other men before this.”

  “Still.”

  “Still, they would have needed some incentive to kill an Elven King. Whoever recruited them provided that incentive using magic.” Walker held the other’s gaze. “I’m sorry to drag you out again so suddenly, but there wasn’t time to wait. I think our castaway is in danger. And it won’t stop there. I’m going to need you to fly me a few more places in the next week or two, Hunter Predd. I’m going to need your help.”

  The Wing Rider drained the rest of the ale from his cup and poured himself another serving from the skin pouch beside him. “Tell you the truth, I was ready to leave anyway. Not just because of the King’s dying, but because cities and me don’t much agree. A few days are more than enough. I’m better off flying, whatever the risk.”

  The Druid gave him a wry smile. “Nevertheless, it appears you are knee-deep in something more than you bargained for when you decided to carry that map and bracelet to Arborlon.”

  The Elf nodded. “That’s fine. I want to see where all this is going.” He grinned suddenly. “Wouldn’t it be a shame if I didn’t give myself the chance?”

  They slept undisturbed and by sunrise were winging their way south once more. The weather had changed during the night, with heavy clouds rolling inland off the coast and blanketing the skies from horizon to horizon. The air was warm and still, smelling of new rain, and in the distance, farther west, the sound of thunder echoed ominously. Shadows draped the land they passed over, a cloaking of movement and light that whispered in their thoughts of secrets and concealments not meant to be revealed.

  Walker was already beginning to suspect the identity of the enemy who was trying to undermine his efforts. There were few in the Four Lands who could command magic strong enough to alter minds—fewer still with a sufficient number of well-placed eyes to know what was happening from Bracken Clell to Arborlon. He was afraid that he had acted too slowly in this matter, though he accepted at the same time that he could not have acted any faster. He was only one man, and his adversary, if his suspicions were correct, commanded a small army.

  Obsidian flew them through the jagged defiles and down the deep canyons of the Rock Spur Mountains, angling to keep low enough for cover, high enough to clear the ridges. They passed over the dark bowl of the Wilderun, home to castoffs and outcasts who had come from everywhere to that final refuge. At its center, the Hollows was a pool of shadows, dark and forbidding, a quagmire that might swallow them up should they fly too low. Beyond, at the south end of the wilderness, they passed through the deeper maze of the Irrybis Mountains and came in sight of the Blue Divide.

  Rain had begun to fall in a slow drizzle, soon soaking their clothing through, and it was approaching nightfall when they arrived at the seaport of Bracken Clell. In darkness unbroken by the light of moon or stars, they proceeded slowly along muddied, rain-slicked pathways, hooded and cloaked, wraiths in the night.

  “Not much farther,” the Wing Rider advised from the darkness of his cowl, when the lights of the seaport came in view.

  They came to the healing center where Hunter had left the castaway less than a week earlier. They mounted the steps of the covered porch, shaking the rain from their cloaks, and knocked on the door. Waiting, they could hear a low murmur of voices from inside and see shadows move across the lighted, curtained windows.

  The door opened on a lean, graying Elf with kind, tired eyes and a questioning look. He smiled on seeing Hunter Predd and extended his hand to invite them in.

  “My friend, Dorne,” the Wing Rider said to Walker. “This man,” he advised the Healer in turn, gesturing in a deliberately offhanded way toward the Druid, “is an emissary sent by Allardon Elessedil to have a look at our castaway.”

  He offered no further explanation and said nothing of the King’s death. The healer seemed to accept this. He shook Walker’s hand solemnly. “I have some bad news for you. I did my best, but it wasn’t enough. The man Hunter left in my care is dead. He died in his sleep several days ago.”

  Walker took the news calmly. He was not surprised. It merely confirmed his suspicions. Whoever had sent the assassins to kill Allardon Elessedil had disposed of the castaway, as well. “Have you buried him?”

  “No.” The Healer shook his head quickly. “I’ve put him in the cold house, waiting to see what news Hunter brought from Arborlon.”

  “And his room? The room in which he died? Is it occupied?”

  “Vacant. We’ve cleaned it, but it services no new patient yet.” The Healer glanced from face to face. “Come in by the fire and dry off. I’ll have some hot soup brought. It’s turning nasty out there.”

  He placed them in chairs before the fire burning in the great room, took their cloaks, and gave them blankets with which to dry. Assistants to the Healer came and went in pursuit of their tasks, glancing over at the travelers, but saying nothing. Walker paid them no attention, his thoughts on the dead man. All chance was lost to learn anything from him in life. Could he find a way to learn something from him in death?

  The Healer returned with bowls of soup and cups of ale, gave them a moment to begin eating, then pulled up a chair beside them. He seemed tired and nervous, but both were to be expected. Walker sensed no dissembling or bad intention in him; he was not an evil man.

  The Healer asked after their journey, and they exchanged small talk with him as they ate. Outside, the rain was falling harder, the sound of the drops on the roof and windowpanes a constant, dull thrum. Lights burning in the windows of the surrounding houses turned watery and blurred through the gloom.

  “The man you cared for, Dorne—did he ever communicate with anyone?” Walker asked finally.

  The Healer shook his head. “No one.”

  “Did anyone ever come to see him, even for a few
moments?”

  “No, never.”

  “Did his condition change in any way before he died?”

  “No.”

  “Was there anything different about him after he died?”

  The Healer thought about it for a moment. “Well, I may be reading more into this than I should, but he seemed somehow at peace.” He shrugged. “But death is a form of release from suffering, and this man was suffering greatly.”

  Walker considered the matter silently for a moment. In the hearth, the burning wood snapped and popped in the flames. “Has anyone else died in the village in the past two days, unexpectedly perhaps?”

  The Healer’s eyes widened. “Yes, as a matter of fact. A man who worked for me as an attendant—not in healing, but in caretaking—was found dead in the woods not far from his cottage. It was lucky he was found at all, really. A remote spot, not often visited. A snake bit him, a very poisonous variety—unusual for around here, really. Something you might better expect to find in the Wilderun.”

  Walker put aside his bowl and cup and stood up. “Could you show me the room in which the man died?” he asked the Healer. “Hunter, finish your dinner. I can do this alone.”

  He followed Dorne down a hallway to a room at the rear of the healing center. Then he sent Dorne back out to keep Hunter company, saying he would be along shortly. The Healer tried to give him a light for the wall candles, but Walker said the darkness was better suited for what he intended.

  When he was alone, he stood in the middle of the room, cloaked in its gloom, listening to the sound of the rain and watching the movement of the shadows. He closed his eyes after a time, tasting the air, smelling it, making himself a part of his surroundings. He let his thoughts settle within him and his body relax. Down the hall, he could hear the soft murmur of voices. Carefully, he shut them out.

  Time slipped away. Slowly, he began to find fragments of what he was looking for, the leavings and discards of a powerful magic employed not long ago. They came to him in different ways, some as small sounds, some as flickers of movement that reached him even behind his closed eyelids, and some as scents of the magic’s wielder. There was not enough to form an entire image, but enough to determine small truths that could allow him to make educated guesses.

  He opened his eyes finally, satisfied. Magic’s use could never be disguised entirely from those who knew how to look for it. A residue always remained to testify.

  He went back out into the main room, where Hunter Predd and Dorne were visiting. Both looked up quickly at his appearance. “Can you take me to the cold house?” he asked the Healer. “I need to see the castaway’s body.”

  The Healer said he could, although he informed the Druid that the cold house was some distance away from the healing center. “It’s not much of a night to be out in the weather,” he said.

  “I’ll go alone,” Walker advised. “Just show me the way.”

  The Druid wrapped himself in his damp cloak and went out the front door. Following the Healer’s instructions, he worked his way around the house, first along the porch and under the veranda, then under the eaves along one side, and slipped through the shadows in the rain. The forest began twenty yards from the back of the center, and the cold house was a hundred more beyond. Cowled head dipped against the rainfall and low-hanging branches, Walker made his way down a footpath widened from usage by the Healer and his attendants. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and whistling fiercely, a wind off the ocean blew steadily through the sodden limbs.

  At the end of the footpath, the cold-house door opened into an embankment buttressed by huge boulders and covered thickly with sod and plants. Runoff cascaded down a sluice to one side and disappeared into a stream. The handle on the door was slippery and cold beneath the Druid’s fingers, and it took him a moment to release the catch.

  Inside, the sounds of the storm faded into silence. There were torches set in brackets on the wall, and tinder with which to light them. Walker lit one in its bracket, then lit a second to carry. He looked around. The room was large and square and laid floor to ceiling with slabs of rock. Niches in the wall contained wooden sleds for the bodies, and runnels chiseled in the stone floor carried away excess moisture and body fluids. A metal-sheathed wood table sat in the center of the room, empty now, but used by the Healer for his examination of the dead. In the deep shadows, glinting like predators’ eyes, sharp instruments hung from pegs on the wall.

  The room smelled of blood and death, and the Druid moved quickly to do what was needed and get out of there. The castaway was in the lower niche to the far left of the entry, and Walker slid the body free of its casing and turned down the covering sheet. The man’s face was bloodless and white in the torchlight, his body rigid and his skin waxy. Walker looked upon him without recognition. If he had been Kael Elessedil, he no longer looked so.

  “Who were you?” Walker whispered to the dead man.

  He jammed the torch he was carrying into the nearest wall bracket. Carefully, he placed his fingertips on the man’s chest, moving them slowly down his torso and then up again to his shoulders. He felt along the man’s throat and skull, probing gently, carefully. All around the man’s face he worked his fingers, searching.

  “Tell me something,” he whispered.

  Outside, a burst of thunder shook the earth, but the Druid did not look up from his work. He placed his fingers against the dead man’s ruined eyes, the unsupported lids giving beneath his touch, then probed slowly down to his nose and cheeks.

  When he reached the man’s bloodless lips, he jerked away as if stung. Here, he mused silently, this was where the man’s life had been taken from him! The magic lingered still, and even two days later it was potent enough to burn. He brushed the lips quickly, testing. No force had been used. Death had come gently, but with a swift and certain rendering.

  Walker stepped away. He knew the man’s identity now, knew it with certainty. What fragments remained of the magic used against him confirmed that he was Kael Elessedil.

  Questions flooded Walker’s mind. Had the dead man’s killer probed his memory before giving him over to his death? He had to believe so. The killer would have looked there for what Walker had found in the map. A dark certainty began to grow in the turmoil of the Druid’s thinking. Only one person had the ability to do that. His enemy was one to whom he felt no hostility himself, but for whom he was anathema. He had feared for a long time that one day there must be a resolution of their antagonism, but he would have preferred that it wait awhile longer.

  She, of course, would be most pleased and eager to have it happen now.

  His eyes lifted to the darkness of the room, and for the first time he felt the cold. He must change his plans. Any other enemy but this one would not require the adjustments he was now forced to make. But a confrontation with her—a confrontation that must surely come—would be resolved only if he could blunt her rage by revealing a truth that had been hidden for many years. It pained him anew to think that he had not been present to prevent that truth from being concealed when it might have had a more immediate impact. But there was no help for it now; the events of the past were irreversible. What was given to him to do was to alter the future, and even that might be possible only at great cost.

  He placed Kael Elessedil’s body back in its niche, extinguished the torches, and went out into the night once more. Darkness and rain closed about him as he threaded his way through the forest trees towards the center. He must act quickly. He had thought to go next in search of a ship and crew, but that would have to wait. There was a more pressing need, and he must see to it at once.

  By midnight tomorrow, he must speak with the dead.

  EIGHT

  By sunrise of the following day, Walker had left Bracken Clell behind. Back aboard Obsidian and seated just behind Hunter Predd, he watched through a curtain of rain as the eastern sky slowly brightened to the color of hammered tin. The rains had lessened from the night before, but not abated altogether. The ski
es remained clouded and dark, pressing down upon a sodden earth with a mix of shadows and mist. Hunched within his travel cloak, cold and damp already, he retreated deep inside himself to help pass the time. There, he worked his way carefully through the details of the tasks he faced. He knew what was needed, but he found himself wishing again and again that there could be others with whom to share his responsibilities. That he felt so alone was disheartening. It lessened to almost nothing the margin of error he was permitted. He thought of how he had disdained the work of the Druids in his youth, of Allanon in particular, and he chided himself anew for his foolishness.

  They flew through the morning with only a single stop to rest Obsidian and to give themselves a chance to eat and drink. By midday, they had crossed the Tirfing and left the Westland behind. The Duln Forests passed beneath, then the slender ribbon of the Rappahalladran. The rains began to lessen, the storm clouds to move south, and snatches of blue sky to appear on the horizon. They were flying east and slightly north now, the Wing Rider taking them along the southern edge of the Borderlands below Tyrsis and across the Rainbow Lake. Lunch was consumed on the lake’s western shores, the day clear and bright by then, their clothing beginning to warm in the sun, their interest in their mission beginning to sharpen once more.

  “The castaway, Walker—was he Kael Elessedil?” Hunter Predd asked as they finished the last of the cold grouse Dorne had provided them on leaving that morning.

  Walker nodded. “He was. I couldn’t tell at first. I haven’t seen him since he was not much more than a boy and don’t remember him all that well in any case. Even if I had remembered how he looked then, it would have been difficult to recognize him after what he had been through. But there were other signs, scattered traces, that revealed his identity.”

  “He didn’t die in his sleep, did he? Not of natural causes. Someone helped end his life.”