Winter Witch (11 page)

“I can’t imagine how Varisians developed this unfair reputation as thieves,” she said.

Vira startled and froze. Ellasif saw in her eyes that an excuse was already taking shape in her mind. She opened her mouth to voice it, but Ellasif silenced her with a disapproving cluck of her tongue.

“You were merely making yourself ready to surprise him as he came to bed,” Ellasif suggested. “Or you were going to wash his clothes as a favor. Maybe you left him a flower as a symbol of your esteem.”

Vira smiled ruefully. She said, “One of those, yes.” She closed the flap on a familiar leather traveling satchel and patted it wistfully.

“Balev took the Korvosan’s coin,” said Ellasif. “Yet I saw their color glow in your eyes.”

“Do not tell Balev,” said Vira. “I beg you.”

That was reassuring. If Vira feared the captain’s reaction, Ellasif could count on some semblance of discipline within the caravan. The question now was whether it was better to rely upon Balev’s authority or to place her confidence in this clumsy little conniver. It was really no choice at all, since Ellasif carried so little weight with the captain.

Ellasif sighed. “If Avari finds anything missing—”

“He won’t,” promised Vira.

Ellasif shot a hard finger into Vira’s belly. Vira gasped, but not in pain. Ellasif’s finger struck the rigid, flat surface of a book hidden beneath the Varisian’s shift. Ellasif put out a hand, and Vira sighed again before removing the stolen book and surrendering it.

“Don’t let me catch you sniffing around things that aren’t yours,” said Ellasif. Remembering how she’d stung Gisanto, she added, “You little squirrel.”

Vira smiled as though Ellasif had called her by an affectionate nickname. She darted away.

Ellasif opened the book and found that it still contained only a single illustrated page, as it had when she’d left it for Declan at Basha’s shop. She returned to her own pack, looked around to be sure she was not observed, and removed the other book. The distant firelight was barely enough to make out the images. The subject matter was different—one depicted a lonely milkmaid, the other an adventurous noblewoman—but both were notable for their lascivious subject matter and their magical animation. This was one unusual wizard she had been sent after.

She casually wandered over to Avari’s spot and slipped the book back into his pack. Satisfied she had done so unseen, she returned her own copy to her pack and moved her bedroll to gain a clearer view of the spot Declan had chosen for himself. If Ellasif understood Vira as well as she hoped, the little squirrel would soon chatter all to her sisters. If they had half the good sense Vira had demonstrated, they would realize Avari’s purse was off limits for the duration of the trip. Just in case, Ellasif would keep an eye on the young wizard.

On the next day the meadows gave way to rolling foothills. The morning dawned warm and clear, but strong winds stirred around the hills. Hawks wheeled overhead while ravens called their fellows to join in a feast of carrion. The tall grass was full of grouse. From time to time one of them danced away from the caravans, dragging a wing to appear easy prey. Foolish birds, Ellasif noted, to nest so near the road.

As the thought formed, a grouse burst out of a cluster of grass ahead.

Ellasif strung her short bow.

“Do you plan to hunt?” Balev asked.

“Something scared up the grouse.”

“A merchant caravan, perhaps?” Balev’s suggestion held a hint of sarcasm.

“And the bird flew toward us, not away.”

The captain considered her point. “Perhaps a few of the guards should ride ahead.”

“Just two,” Ellasif said. “This could be a ruse to lure the fighters away from the caravan.”

Balev nodded his approval. “Choose one fighter to accompany you. Anyone but Gisanto.”

Ellasif beckoned to Camillor. The young Varisian looked to his captain. Balev shrugged. “Do as she says.”

They rode forward. When they reached the spot where the grouse had emerged, the caravan lay yards behind them. A gentle cooing came from the grass, a sound as sleepy as a lullaby. Camillor grew drowsy, dull-eyed.

Ellasif leaned over and swatted him on the cheek. Camillor barely registered her touch, so she slapped him smartly. He blinked and shook his head, but not in time.

A tiny black creature shot up out of the grass. Ellasif snapped her bow up and got off the shot.

The arrow tore through the imp’s wing and sent it spinning to the ground. The pony snorted an equine battle cry and stamped at the imp.

Ellasif recognized its wicked little head. It was Jamang’s familiar, the fiend he’d called Vexer.

The tiny devil snatched one of the pony’s legs and climbed, talons digging into the thick blue hide. The pony screamed and reared back. Ellasif dropped her bow and gripped the pony’s mane to hold on.

Vexer leaped up at Ellasif, raking at her with teeth and talons, hot spittle spraying from its savage little jaws.

They fell from the saddle and rolled into the grass. Ellasif pinned the creature and drew a knife from her belt. She drove it down hard, but the blade plunged only into the grassy soil.

The imp had vanished.

Ellasif heard a cackling taunt from above. She looked up to see the black imp hovering with some difficulty due to its injured wing. It jabbered in some tongue Ellasif could only presume was spoken in the depths of Hell, and jerked its fingers, arms, legs, and tail in the most spectacular show of vulgar gestures she had ever witnessed.

If she did not wish so badly to rip the little monster in half, she might have grinned at the sight.

As it was, it was all she could do not to gape when she glimpsed a flash of blue swooping toward her foe. The interloper was almost the same color as the blue sky, and when it struck the imp it knocked the devil tumbling to the ground only seven or eight feet from Ellasif. She rushed forward, sword high to dispatch the foe, but then she saw she was too late. Its scrawny body lay limp and headless.

Camillor ran up beside her, sword in hand. As Ellasif withdrew from the stench emanating from the imp’s mortal wound, Gisanto and Timoteo arrived, along with Declan Avari. The mapmaker turned his face away as a sky-blue house drake flapped frantically upon his arm like a startled falcon returning to its master. The little drake spat out a glistening black lump. As it hit the ground and bloodied the surrounding grass, Ellasif recognized the imp’s head.

“I was wondering whether you’d show up,” said Avari. The dragon’s response was a constant thrusting of his blackened tongue while he gagged and spat. Avari tried and failed to swallow his laughter, and the indignant drake flew away to perch on one of the Varisian wagons.

Gisanto shot Avari a curious look, then shook his head and turned to Camillor and a matter he understood. “You were slow to attack.”

“It’s not his fault,” Ellasif said. “The imp’s magic slowed him.”

“It had no effect on you.”

“I’m obstinate,” she said with a shrug. “And I’ve dealt with such imps before. It may be that I’ve built up immunity, as one does when one lives near snakes.”

“Or swamp nettles,” Timoteo observed. Behind him, the rest of the caravan approached.

There was a general laugh at Gisanto’s expense. The big warrior gave the singer a good-natured punch in the arm and climbed back into the saddle. He gestured for the others to follow him back to the caravan, leaving only Camillor and Avari with Ellasif.

“It was kind of you to excuse my failings,” Camillor said.

“What failings? Once I had the imp engaged in battle, its power over you faded. If I’d needed help, you would have given it.”

“Most gladly,” he said. He offered her a gallant little bow and a smile that trod dangerously close to a leer.

“But she did not need your help,” Avari said. He sounded irritated, and Ellasif could not imagine why.

A shadow passed over Camillor’s face. “Viland Balev hires only competent fighters. Obviously, this shield maiden is no exception.”

“No, she isn’t.” The emphasis on “she” was just subtle enough to leave some doubt as to whether or not Camillor had been insulted.

“I have no need to prove myself to you,” Camillor said.

Avari stepped closer to Ellasif and sent Camillor a level stare. “That matter we discussed the first evening? I believe I’ve changed my mind. Thanks for your offer to respect my claim. It makes things simpler.”

The young Varisian’s face darkened, but he gave a curt nod and vaulted into his saddle. Ellasif watched him ride away.

“What was all that about?” Ellasif concealed her disgust at Avari’s presumptuous claim. She knew perfectly well what they were talking about, but she was wise enough not to let on that she’d been eavesdropping.

“I just wanted a private word with you.”

“It must be important, to risk angering the one person in this company who likes me.”

Avari wrinkled his nose as if he’d smelled something rank. “The imp you chased off. It’s likely it was following me.”

Ellasif had already come to that conclusion, but she wanted to know how he’d learned of the necromancer’s death.

“Why would an imp be following you?”

“I failed to obey the wishes of a certain necromancer. He was a vengeful sort.”

“Was?”

“I have reason to believe he is dead,” Declan said. “But before his death, he sent an imp to attack me.”

“That must have been frightening,” ventured Ellasif.

“Not really,” he said with a shrug. “Someone chased off the imp. I heard about it only later.”

Ellasif considered this news. If someone had witnessed her fight with the imp and told Declan about it, he might also know of her involvement. But if he did not, pressing the matter might make him suspicious.

“Since you have enemies, you should be prepared to fight them. When we stop, let’s see what you can do with that sword.”

He eyed her dubiously. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

The rest of the caravan caught up with them. Gisanto clapped Declan on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, brother. There is no shame in fighting a woman. This one can handle herself.”

“That’s what concerns me,” Declan said, drawing a chuckle from the nearby Varisians.

By the time they stopped for their midday break, Avari pretended to have forgotten her suggestion, so Ellasif fetched him and nearly dragged him to a clear spot. She’d hoped they could work in private, but it was no use. Before they had even drawn their swords, Gisanto and half a dozen others arrived to form an audience. Ellasif noticed that the big Varisian warrior had cut the rest of his hair short since the loss of one of his braids. She thought of telling him the new cut looked good, but that was as likely to spark new anger as to soothe his hurt feelings.

After a few initial exchanges, Ellasif was pleased to see that Avari’s parries were strong, if a little slow, but he did not counterattack as often as he should to disrupt his foe’s advantage. She showed him a few simplified alternatives to his existing repertoire. To become good with them, he would need only practice.

“Go ahead, Mouse,” said Gisanto. Ellasif sighed, hoping that name would not stick to her. “Show him some of your cunning.”

The other Varisians shouted agreement, and Avari lifted an inquiring eyebrow. “Your cunning?”

“You would call them dirty tricks.”

Avari nodded. “I’m game,” he said, but then a thought darkened his eyes, and he stepped close. “On the other hand, since you got off on the wrong foot with some of these men, perhaps you’d rather keep them a surprise.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I have plenty of tricks.”

“All the same,” he said, but before he could continue, Balev bellowed the order to resume travel. Gisanto and his friends groaned in disappointment, but they moved quickly when the captain called. Avari and Ellasif did the same, and she made sure to ride beside him.

“I see you can use a sword. What else can you do to help the caravan?”

He shrugged. “Out here in the wild? I can do this and that. I can read the stars a little. I know how to catch a fish and sail a small ship. I know which mushrooms can be eaten and which should be avoided.”

He said not a word about the spells she knew he could cast or the strange moving art he’d created. She knew she had the person the winter witch had demanded, but Ellasif could not understand why Avari, or anyone for that matter, would pretend not to wield such powers.

“These are useful talents,” said Ellasif. “I did not expect a wizard to have learned such mundane skills.”

“I’m not a wizard.”

“That little dragon,” said Ellasif. “I assumed he was your familiar.”

“Ha!” said Declan. “He assumes that, too. But no, he’s just a neighbor. More like a friend of the family, really.”

“But you do know magic, don’t you?”

Avari sighed. “I studied for a few years, but I’m done with that.” Before Ellasif could ask why, he anticipated her question. “Let’s just say I’ve learned enough about magic not to put my faith in it.”

Ellasif grunted approval at Avari’s philosophy. No matter how dearly she loved Liv, she had no love for the magic and the fear of it that had made her sister a pariah among their own people. The irony that she required a wizard, then, to rescue her witch sister was not lost on her. Ellasif supposed she could understand why Avari might prefer to be known as a mapmaker. “If that is how you feel,” she said, “then you are smarter than you look.”

Chapter Eight

The Tangled Skein

A few days after leaving Korvosa, the caravan passed the village of Harse by the Falcon River. The settlement was small and of no particular interest to Declan, but he was relieved to have the break. He was unaccustomed to riding more than a couple of hours at a time, so three days of travel had left him stiff and sore. He was glad he had decided to travel light, and he was sure his horse felt the same way. His pack contained only two sets of spare clothing, a pair of thick woolen blankets, and a tin cup and plate. In addition, Declan had brought along Jamang’s satchel, which he had recovered from Basha. It now contained the caricature book, a sheaf of fresh parchments for sketches, a small parcel of charcoal sticks, a sketchbook, and the small spellbook he had retrieved from the Unicorn.

Ferrying the caravan across the river, two carts at a time, took the better part of the afternoon. The Varisians used the time to good effect trading for Korvosan goods. By the way they stood so close to the locals and shared a smoke afterward, Declan guessed they were selling flayleaf and perhaps thileu bark. He did not know whether such drugs were legal in Harse, but he decided to stay well away from the traders just in case. The last thing he needed was an excuse for some greedy constable to confiscate his purse as a fine.

He recalled from some otherwise forgotten university course that Harse was founded by a mapmaker, and his legacy remained in one of the finest map and folio shops Declan had ever seen. He selected equipment he would need for his own work: a small astrolabe and sextant, ink, quills, parchment, and a waterproof bag to hold them. It was about time he began doing more than rough sketches from time to time. Even the Varisians, whom he suspected kept their own maps on the parchment of their memory, would suspect his ruse given enough time.

The Varisian caravan continued until after dusk, when they made camp just outside the city. Declan was beginning to realize there would be few opportunities to spend the night in a soft bed, for the Varisians preferred their independence—and freedom from taxes, tolls, and levies—to the comforts of a city. Despite the fatigue that had burrowed down into his bones, he remained awake long enough to make a few rough calculations from the position of the stars. Without the proper equipment, he was able to make only the crudest of approximations, and he resolved to correct that problem as soon as he could.

Two days later they reached Baslwief, a mining town beneath a fortress on the Sarwin River in the foothills of the Fenwall Mountains. Declan was greatly relieved to hear they would spend a few hours in the village. Among the Varisian and Chelish humans, Declan noted a higher proportion of halflings than he had ever seen. Unlike those few who lived in Korvosa, these halflings walked with a proud demeanor suggesting that here, if not in other human settlements, they were equal partners in the community. Declan liked that notion. Such a town promised safety and a line of shops willing to barter.

“You should buy a sword.” Ellasif’s voice surprised him, for he hadn’t realized she had followed him from the Varisian camp.

“You’ve been following me,” he said, sounding more offended than he’d intended. Since Skywing’s arrival at the caravan, the little drake had refused to communicate with him. Declan wanted to think the dragon was sulking simply because of the lingering taste of imp head, but he had noticed Skywing casting baleful stares at Ellasif. What was it about the Ulfen woman that the drake disliked? There was no way of knowing unless Skywing decided to speak with him, but it made Declan wary of her.

“It’s my job to protect you,” said Ellasif. “Besides, I rarely have the opportunity to go shopping.”

“You don’t strike me as the sort of woman who—”

“What?” She cut him off with a wry smile. “The sort of woman who buys things?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, but he gave up on making further excuses. He had the feeling he’d said something stupid but wasn’t sure how to correct it. Ellasif let him off the hook by gazing past his shoulder. He followed her gaze through the shop window toward a seamstress’s shop across the street.

“I’ll be right over there,” she said. “Don’t try to lose me. Balev won’t thank me if you get yourself beaten up by some of those shady-looking halflings.”

Declan nodded dumbly, unsure whether she was mocking him or flirting with him. When she was gone, he paid for his purchase and followed her across the street.

Ellasif stood admiring a shallow shelf of bright silken thread, skeins of each color in their own compartment. Declan had never seen so much variety before, not that he made a habit of browsing seamstress’s shops. It surprised him to find such selection in what was essentially a frontier mining town, but he supposed the minerals brought the small community relatively great wealth, and where there was gold, there would be merchants of every luxury.

Declan noticed that Ellasif’s tunic, while dusty, was decorated at the hem with an elaborate design of fine embroidery. Entwined within the northern knotwork were exquisite little animals: stags, timber wolves, hawks, foxes, geese, and others he could not see without spinning Ellasif around. He had a sudden impulse to take her by the elbows and do just that, but he weighed the chance that she’d welcome the gesture against the probability that she’d punch him in the mouth and chose to restrain the urge.

He realized she had turned to see him looking at the embroidery, which to her must have appeared as though he were staring at her hips. She arched an eyebrow.

He cleared his throat and pointed at her hem. “That’s pretty work. Is it yours?”

She laughed, and he could not tell whether she believed he had been admiring the clothes. “I’m definitely not the sort of woman who does such needlework. I can mend a tear or fix a button, but no more.” Her humor faded, and she added, “My sister made this for me.”

“She has a talent. You should bring her some of this thread.”

A wistful expression flittered across Ellasif’s face. “Some other time.”

“Families are complicated,” suggested Declan, sorry he’d touched a bruise. “I have a niece. Sort of.”

Ellasif tilted her head with interest. When he did not immediately speak, she led him out of the shop by the elbow, bought a pair of sweet lemon ales from a chubby halfling, and sat him down on a sagging bench beneath a canvas awning. There the story spilled out of him: Asmonde summoning a devil, a powerful being far beyond his skill, and losing control of it. He implied without explicitly explaining the price Isadora had paid for his ambition and arrogance.

“That’s why I’m no wizard. That was not the first fiend my brother summoned. With each summoning, he changed.”

Ellasif frowned, and Declan added, “The imp you fought. It reminds me of the necromancer who may have summoned it. Dealing with wicked creatures, summoning spirits—after a time people become just as wicked.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Ellasif. Abruptly she stood and stalked off, the wolf tail wagging from her hip.

Once again, Declan was dumbfounded. Perhaps he had shared too much, but the way she had reacted made him think he’d hit a nerve. He hoped he had not ruined what might have been his first friendship outside of Korvosa. On an impulse, he returned to the seamstress’ shop and bought several small skeins of thread and put the wrapped package in his bag. Before returning to the caravan, he obeyed Ellasif’s advice and perused the blades offered by the local smiths. He finally chose one engraved with the image of a dragon in flight. It made him think of Skywing.

In the weeks that followed, Declan recorded the caravan’s journey with the basic skills he had learned from Master Nores. He could not restrain the impulse to add an artful flourish here and there, adding a sketch of Melfesh and its enormous drawbridge where the odd little village straddled the Yondabakari River on piers the size of castle turrets. Near the spot indicating Ilsurian, he drew a tiny fisherman lifting a trout from the Skull River, and he illustrated the page on which he detailed the Sanos Forest with capering gnomes, although he spied none on their passage. Perhaps that was because of the Varisians’ precaution of leaving pails of goat milk and bundles of spiced bread at the four corners of their camp each night they spent beneath the canopy of that enchanted wood.

Every day, Ellasif found Declan and badgered him into another practice bout. They exhausted him, especially when she caught him in the mornings, and he tried to beg off with the argument that he was a paying customer of the caravan, not her apprentice. Ellasif would hear none of that. After the first week, he stopped trying to avoid her, knowing it was pointless to escape. She was relentless in her insistence that he must be able to defend himself should some savage bugbear make it past her to crush his skull. Declan doubted that would happen, in part because the caravan’s journey had seen nothing more alarming than a drunken insult around the campfire, which Gisanto settled with two swift clouts across the offender’s cheeks.

By the time they reached the pass between the Iron Peaks and the northern range of the Malgorian Mountains, virtually every member of the caravan had made some excuse to lean over Declan’s shoulder while he was sketching. At first he was oblivious to the ulterior motive behind their compliments—“What a fine likeness of the town,” one might say, or “That gnome is the spitting image of my great uncle Vledosk”—but eventually he caught the hint, and by the time the caravan passed north of Ravenmoor, the approximate halfway point of their journey across Varisia, Declan had sketched half the members of the caravan.

But not Ellasif. The shield maiden had been conspicuously absent from the occasional circles of appreciation that had gathered around his sketchbook in the waning hours of daylight. While Viland Balev and a few of the other older members of the caravan had declined to let Declan draw their portraits, he suspected for superstitious reasons, only Ellasif had actively avoided him during those sessions. She had to know what he was doing. He often spied her watching from a distance as he drew. Within a week he had sketched everyone who asked for a portrait, but the demand did not end there. Now he was working from the Varisians’ description of a favorite pet dog that had run away, or their recollected description of a revered late grandmother.

At first the praise for these latter sketches flattered Declan, but soon he began to suspect that the Varisians were far more sentimental than he had imagined. The tears streaming down the face of a Varisian widow at the sight of her late husband’s face made Declan distinctly uncomfortable. When she clutched his sleeve and blessed him for his “magic,” he struggled not to tear himself away and flee. It was impossible that he had captured more than a general resemblance of the man he knew only from the widow’s few sentences of description. To believe her, however, he had drawn him in perfect resemblance, down to the mole at the corner of his eye.

Was it possible? Declan wondered. Much as he hated to think on the matter, there was no denying that he had a mysterious talent for magical illustration. First the animated caricatures, then the business with the maps he sold Basha, and now this inexplicable phenomenon. He knew it had to be related to his magical studies in some way, but he was a wizard, not a sorcerer. When he cast a spell, it was because he had studied its arcane ingredients, its secret gestures, and the obscure syllables that were powerless on the tongue of those who did not comprehend the relationship between these components and the intangible arithmetic of the spell’s invisible shape, its incalculable form. Declan sometimes thought of this elusive quality as the spell’s soul, for lack of a better term.

Sometimes Declan wondered whether all the wizards of history had overlooked the simple if preposterous notion that spells were living beings, their lives briefer than those of butterflies. Conjurations, for example, were said to bring forth creatures from other places, but Declan could not help but suspect that the imp produced by a conjuration had not been plucked from Hell but was the incarnation of the spell itself.

Speculation like that had contributed to Declan’s flunking out of the Theumanexus.

Finally the requests tapered off, and one night Declan found himself free of promises to draw the house in which someone was born, or a first love, or the pony that a father had raised from a foal for his firstborn. At last he could return to what was ostensibly his job: mapping the Varisians’ path from Korvosa to Irrisen. He had finished his calculations soon after the caravan halted for the night. All that was left was to illustrate the trail between camp and the Lampblack River.

On a whim, Declan decorated the otherwise barren plains with what he fancied to be a Shoanti totem atop a short obelisk that vaguely resembled ruins he’d seen illustrated in volumes of ancient history. Pleased with the result, he returned his art supplies to his pack and strolled just outside the camp. He found a comfortable spot on which to recline and gaze toward the impending sunset. For a while he watched as Skywing floated on the summer breeze like a hunting kite, at last to plummet without warning upon a hapless field mouse.

After recovering from the noxious taste of the imp’s head, the dragon had presented Declan with a double talonful of stolen jewelry. To Declan’s skeptical inquiry, Skywing asserted with a tone of wounded pride that none of it had been taken from guests at the Frisky Unicorn. Grateful, if dubious that a handful of jewels would be enough to pay the astronomer’s ransom, Declan secreted the small treasure in his jacket pocket. There was no sense tempting the Varisians further than he had already.

Since delivering the ransom, Skywing had become uncharacteristically solitary, spending most of his time on the hunt or perched upon a caravan wagon. From time to time Declan noticed the little drake gazing watchfully at him, especially while he was practicing swordplay with Ellasif. He sensed Skywing was jealous of his new protector.

Smiling, Declan let his eyes close to slits, and—for the first time in days, he realized with a start—an image of Silvana came to his mind.