Ilse Witch (2 page)

“Maybe with time—”

“Time isn’t the problem,” the Healer interrupted, drawing his gaze and holding it. “He cannot speak or write. It isn’t just the damage to his tongue or his lack of strength. It is his mind. His mind is gone. Whatever he has been through has damaged him irreparably. I don’t think he knows where he is or even who he is.”

Hunter Predd looked off into the night. “Not even his name?”

“Not even that. I don’t think he remembers anything of what’s happened to him.”

The Wing Rider was silent a moment, thinking. “Will you keep him here for a while longer, care for him, watch over him? I want to look into this more closely.”

The Healer nodded. “Where will you start?”

“Arborlon, perhaps.”

A soft scrape of a boot brought him about sharply. An attendant appeared with hot tea and food for the Healer. He nodded to them without speaking and disappeared again. Hunter Predd stood, walked to the door to be certain they were alone, then reseated himself beside the Healer.

“Watch this damaged man closely, Dorne. No visitors. Nothing until you hear back from me.”

The Healer sipped at his tea. “You know something about him that you’re not telling me, don’t you?”

“I suspect something. There’s a difference. But I need time to make certain. Can you give me that time?”

The Healer shrugged. “I can try. The man inside will have something to say about whether he will still be here when you return. He is very weak. You should move swiftly.”

Hunter Predd nodded. “As swift as Obsidian’s wings can fly,” he replied softly.

Behind him, in the near darkness of the open doorway, a shadow detached itself from behind a wall and moved silently away.

The attendant who had served dinner to the Wing Rider and the Healer waited until after midnight, when the people of Bracken Clell were mostly asleep, to slip from his rooms in the village into the surrounding forest. He moved quickly and without the benefit of light, knowing his path well from having traveled it many times before. He was a small, wizened man who had spent the whole of his life in the village and was seldom given a second glance. He lived alone and had few friends. He had served in the Healer’s household for better than thirteen years, a quiet, uncomplaining sort who lacked imagination but could be depended on. His qualities suited him well in his work as a Healer’s attendant, but even better as a spy.

He reached the cages he kept concealed in a darkened pen behind the old cabin in which he had been born. When his father and mother had died, possession had passed to him as the eldest male. It was a poor inheritance, and he had never accepted that it was all to which he was entitled. When the opportunity had been offered to him, he snatched at it eagerly. A few words overheard here and there, a face or a name recognized from tales told in taverns and ale houses, bits and pieces of information tossed his way by those rescued from the ocean and brought to the center to heal—they were all worth something to the right people.

And to one person in particular, make no mistake about it.

The attendant understood what was expected of him. She had made it clear from the beginning. She was to be his Mistress, to whom he must answer most strongly should he step from between the lines of obedience she had charted for him. Whoever passed through the Healer’s doors and whatever
they said, if they or it mattered at all, she was to know. She told him the decision to summon her was his, always his. He must be prepared to answer for his summons, of course. But it would be better to act boldly than belatedly. A chance missed was much less acceptable to her than time wasted.

He had guessed wrongly a few times, but she had not been angry or critical. A few mistakes were to be expected. Mostly, he knew what was worth something and what was not. Patience and perseverance were necessary.

He’d developed both, and they had served him well. This time, he knew, he had something of real value.

He unfastened the cage door and took out one of the strange birds she had given him. They were wicked-looking things with sharp eyes and beaks, swept-back wings, and narrow bodies. They watched him whenever he came in sight, or took them out of the cages, or fastened a message to their legs, as he was doing now. They watched him as if marking his efficiency for a report they would make later. He didn’t like the way they looked at him, and he seldom looked back.

When the message was in place, he tossed the bird into the air, and it rose into the darkness and disappeared. They flew only at night, these birds. Sometimes, they returned with messages from her. Sometimes, they simply reappeared, waiting to be placed back in their cages. He never questioned their origins. It was better, he sensed, simply to accept their usefulness.

He stared into the night sky. He had done what he could. There was nothing to do now, but wait. She would tell him what was needed next. She always did.

Closing the doors to the pen so that the cages were hidden once more, he crept silently back the way he had come.

Two days later, Allardon Elessedil had just emerged from a long session with the Elven High Council centered on the renewal of trade agreements with the cities of Callahorn and on the seemingly endless war they fought as allies with the
Dwarves against the Federation, when he was advised that a Wing Rider was waiting to speak to him. It was late in the day, and he was tired, but the Wing Rider had flown all the way to Arborlon from the southern seaport of Bracken Clell, a two-day journey, and was refusing to deliver his message to anyone but the King. The aide who advised Allardon of the Wing Rider’s presence conveyed quite clearly the other’s determination not to be swayed on this issue.

The Elf King nodded and followed his aide to where the Wing Rider waited. His arrangement with the Wing Hove demanded that he accede to any request for privacy in the conveyance of messages. Pursuant to a contract drawn up in the early years of Wren Elessedil’s rule, the Wing Riders had been serving the Land Elves as scouts and messengers along the coast of the Blue Divide for more than 130 years. They were provided with goods and coin in exchange for their services, and it was an arrangement that the Elven Kings and Queens had found useful on more than one occasion. If the Wing Rider who waited had asked to speak with Allardon personally, then there was good reason for the request, and he was not about to ignore it.

With Home Guards Perin and Wye flanking him protectively, he trailed after his aide as they departed the High Council and walked back through the gardens to the Elessedil palace home. Allardon Elessedil had been King for more than twenty years, since the death of his mother, the Queen Aine. He was of medium height and build, still fit and trim in spite of his years, his mind sharp and his body strong. Only his graying hair and the lines on his face gave evidence of his advanced years. He was a direct descendant of the great Queen Wren Elessedil, who had brought the Elves and their city out of the island wilderness of Morrowindl into which the Federation and the hated Shadowen had driven them. He was her great-great-grandson, and he had lived the whole of his life as if measuring it against hers.

It was difficult to do so in these times. The war with the
Federation had been raging for ten years and showed no signs of ending anytime soon. The Southland coalition of Bordermen, Dwarves, and Elves had halted the Federation advance below the Duln two years earlier on the Prekkendorran Heights. Now the armies were stalemated in a front that had failed to shift one way or the other in all that time and continued to consume lives and waste energy at an alarming rate. There was no question that the war was necessary. The Federation’s attempt at reclaiming the Borderlands it had lost in the time of Wren Elessedil was invasive and predatory and could not be tolerated. But the King couldn’t help thinking that his ancestor would have found a way to put an end to it by now, where he had failed to do so.

None of which had anything to do with the matter at hand, he chided himself. The war with the Federation was centered at the crossroads of the Four Lands and had not yet spilled over onto the coast. For now, at least, it was contained.

He walked into the reception room where the Wing Rider was waiting and immediately dismissed those who accompanied him. A member of the Home Guard would already be concealed within striking distance, although Allardon had never personally heard of a Wing Rider turned assassin.

As the door closed behind his small entourage, he extended his hand to the Rider. “I’m sorry you had to wait. I was sitting with the High Council, and my aide didn’t want to disturb me.” He shook the other’s corded hand and scanned the weathered face. “I know you, don’t I? You’ve brought me a message once or maybe twice before.”

“Once, only,” the other advised. “It was a long time ago. You wouldn’t have reason to remember me. My name is Hunter Predd.”

The Elven King nodded, failing to recognize the other’s name, but smiling anyway. Wing Riders cared nothing for formalities, and he didn’t bother relying on them here. “What do you have for me, Hunter?”

The Wing Rider reached inside his tunic and produced a
short, slender length of metal chain and a scrap of hide. He held on to both as he spoke. “Three days ago, I was patrolling the waters north off the island of Mesca Rho, a Wing Hove outpost. I found a man floating on a ship spar. He was barely alive, suffering from exposure and dehydration. I don’t know how long he was out there, but it must have been some time. His eyes and his tongue had been cut out before he had been cast adrift. He was wearing this.”

He held out the length of metal chain first, which turned out to be a bracelet. Allardon accepted it, studied it, and went pale. The bracelet bore the Elessedil crest, the spreading boughs of the sacred Ellcrys surrounded by a ring of Blood-fire. It had been more than thirty years since he had seen the bracelet, but he recognized it immediately.

His gaze shifted from the bracelet to the Wing Rider. “The man you found wore this?” he asked quietly.

“It was on his wrist.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“I recognized the bracelet’s crest, not the man.”

“There was no other identification?”

“Only this. I searched him carefully.”

He handed the piece of softened hide to Allardon. It was frayed about the edges, water stained and worn. The Elf King opened it carefully. It was a map, its symbols and writing etched in faded ink and in places smudged. He studied it carefully, making sure of what he had. He recognized the Westland coast along the Blue Divide. A dotted line ran from island to island, traveling west and north and ending at a peculiar collection of blocky spikes. There were names beneath each of the islands and the cluster of spikes, but he did not recognize them. The writing in the margins of the map was indecipherable. The symbols that decorated and perhaps identified certain places on the map were of strange and frightening creatures he had never seen.

“Do you recognize any of these markings?” he asked Hunter Predd.

The Wing Rider shook his head. “Most of what the map shows is outside the territory we patrol. The islands are beyond the reach of our Rocs, and the names are not familiar.”

Allardon walked to the tall, curtained windows that opened onto the garden, and stood looking out at the flower beds. “Where is the man you found, Hunter? Is he still alive?”

“I left him with the Healer who serves Bracken Clell. He was alive when I left.”

“Have you told anyone else of this bracelet and map?”

“No one knows but you. Not even the Healer. He is a friend, but I know enough to keep silent when silence is called for.”

Allardon nodded his approval. “You do, indeed.”

He called for cold glasses of ale and a full pitcher from which to refill them. His mind raced as he waited with the Wing Rider for the beverage and containers to be brought. He was stunned by the salvaged articles and by what he had been told, and he wasn’t certain, even knowing what he did, what course of action to take. He recognized the bracelet and, thereby, he must assume, the identity of the man from whom it had been taken. He had not seen either in thirty years nor had he expected to see them ever again. He had never seen the map, but even without being able to decipher its language or read its symbols, he could guess at what it was meant to show.

He thought suddenly of his mother, Aine, dead for twenty-five years, and the memory of her anguish during the last years of her life brought tears to his eyes.

He fingered the bracelet absently, remembering.

Thirty years earlier, his mother, as Queen, had authorized an Elven sailing expedition to undertake a search for a treasure of great value purported to have survived the Great Wars that had destroyed the Old World. The impetus for the expedition had been a dream visited on his mother’s seer, an Elven mystic of great power and widespread acclaim. The dream had foretold of a land of ice, of a ruined city within the land, and of a safehold in which a treasure of immeasurable worth
lay protected and concealed. This treasure, if recovered, had the power to change the course of history and the lives of all who came in contact with it.

The seer had been wary of the dream, for she understood the power of dreams to deceive. The nature of the treasure sought was unclear, and its source was vague and uncharted. The land in which the treasure could be found lay somewhere across the Blue Divide in territory that no one had ever seen. There were no directions for reaching it, no instructions for locating it, and little more than a series of images to describe it. Perhaps, the seer advised, it was a dream best left alone.

But Allardon’s elder brother, Kael Elessedil, had been intrigued by the possibilities the dream suggested and by the challenge of searching for an unexplored land. He had embraced the dream as his destiny, and he had begged his mother to let him go. In the end, she had relented. Kael Elessedil had been granted his expedition, and with three sailing ships and their crews under his command, he had departed.

Just before leaving, his mother had given him the famous blue Elfstones that had once belonged to Queen Wren. The Elfstones would guide them to their destination and protect them from harm. Their magic would bring the Elves safely back home again.