Winter Witch (17 page)

Ellasif sighed. Her fleeting hope now felt ridiculous. It was Erik’s sword, not hers, after all. Perhaps the magic came from the man, not the blade. Even though he was her kinsman, there was no reason to believe the weapon would serve her the way it had its former master. Even if she could summon it to her hand, she could not use it to cut herself free from her tight bonds.

She wrestled against those bonds, but they only tightened their grip around her wrists and ankles as she squirmed. A shudder passed through her body as she considered whether the surrounding pine trunks were alive and aware of her. If so, then she was already inside a monster, and that was a bad omen for escaping the warlock’s cooking pot.

The magic door opened wide, and Szigo stepped through, wiping his running nose on the back of his hand. His balding pate glistened with sweat, and Ellasif could smell his sour stink from across the room. Under his arm was an enormous, wart-covered toad, which he tossed casually to the floor, allowing it to make its own way to a nest of bone and hair on the warm stones near the fire pit. When the warlock saw Ellasif was awake, he grinned, showing off his pointed yellow teeth.

He hummed a childish tune as he went to the butcher’s table, making a show of taking inventory of the ghastly objects there. He casually tossed the severed foot over his shoulder and pretended to study a wet lump of brown flesh in a clay bowl. Ellasif struggled to keep her face impassive, but she caught him peeking over his shoulder for a horrified reaction. He frowned, disappointed. He lifted a curved butcher’s knife from the table and honed it with a rasp.

Despite his foolish theatrics and her memory of beating him to the ground a year earlier, Szigo’s refusal to speak first began to unnerve Ellasif. Before fear could put a cold grip on her spine, she ventured, “Mareshka must be impatient for my arrival.”

Szigo swiveled his head toward her, eyes bulging like a lizard’s. He said, “She cared more for what you were sent to fetch for her.”

“Then she will be angry with you for delaying my return.”

“The one she sent you to recover was traveling to Whitethrone with or without you,” said Szigo. “Once he arrives, Mareshka will have no further need of you.”

“So you were driven off before you could capture Declan for yourself,” she said.

Szigo smiled, and Ellasif realized she had said something he had hoped to hear. Perhaps he was more dangerous than she had credited him. Szigo had not known Declan’s name until she said it.

And yet Szigo was privy to her agreement with Mareshka. The only reason she could imagine the jadwiga would share her scheme was if she had given Szigo some task to help further it. Probably he was watching for her arrival, or perhaps one or both of them had been observing her progress all the while. Ellasif had heard more than one tale of witches spying on their enemies through mirrors or pools of water. Yet if Szigo could do such a thing, no doubt Mareshka could do it for herself. Ellasif wondered what task the powerful jadwiga would give to a henchman she so clearly scorned. Furthermore, why would she not have told Szigo something as simple as Declan’s name?

Ellasif realized the answer: Mareshka had not instructed the warlock to attack. Perhaps she had told him nothing of her bargain with Ellasif, but he had somehow gleaned the knowledge for himself through spying or his own witchcraft. Szigo was acting on his own, probably to avenge his rough treatment at Ellasif’s hands during their first encounter. Yet he had not yet taken his revenge, which meant he was still uncertain whether he could do so with impunity.

“Mareshka did not send you to attack us,” said Ellasif. “Probably she did not even order you to spy on us. Oh, imagine her displeasure.”

The warlock’s smile melted away. He stabbed the table with the butcher knife. He tried to tug it out again, but hadn’t the strength.

“You haven’t worked up the courage to report to her, have you?” she said. “What will you say when she learns I am no longer with the caravan?”

“You weren’t there,” he said, with the timidity of a child learning to frame a deception. “Perhaps you had already perished on the journey. Caravan guards often do not arrive at their destinations.”

“Very clever,” said Ellasif. “How did you know where we were? Probably some spell you learned from your mistress.”

Szigo smiled as if she were praising his resourcefulness, but then her other meaning sank in. His mouth became a tiny O in the weak triangle of his jaw.

“That’s right,” said Ellasif. “If you were able to watch the progress of our caravan from this hut, would it not be child’s play for her to watch yours from the comfort of Whitethrone?”

Szigo’s parchment-colored flesh paled. “She would never spy on me,” he said hopefully. He giggled, trying to laugh away the suggestion. Ellasif laughed with him, smothering his voice with her own. It was then she felt a tickle in the back of her throat and a warm tingling upon her palm. She heard a distant scrape of steel on leather, and she felt her eyes drawn toward the far wall.

There, the pommel of the sword shone far brighter than possible in mere candlelight. It had not heard her earlier call because she had not spoken the language of its former wielder.

Laughing Erik.

Ellasif threw back her head and roared her mockery into the warlock’s face. Szigo paused, confused and increasingly angry. Behind him, Laughing Erik’s sword shifted in its scabbard. Three inches of untarnished steel flickered and glowed in the candlelight. The blade was laughing, too.

Come to me
, Ellasif thought as fiercely as she could. As if in response, the trolls outside began to hoot and howl. She shouted her feigned mirth, and her hand felt hot and cold.

On my way
, said an unfamiliar voice in her mind. Oddly, it felt as though it came from above, not from the direction of the sword. Ellasif redoubled her laughter, both to distract Szigo from the commotion outside and to call to the sword.

Szigo grasped the handle of the butcher knife in both hands and lifted his feet off the floor, using his full weight to pry the blade from the block. No longer laughing, he turned and leered at Ellasif, raising his weapon. He lurched toward her.

A deafening explosion rocked the house of pines. A light brighter than dawn briefly illuminating the chimney hole above, dazzling Ellasif’s eyes. She blinked up at the opening and momentarily thought she spied a winged shape descending from the sky.

Too many things were happening at once. In a second, Ellasif’s feigned laughter became real. She laughed at the danger. She laughed at the insanity of her situation.

Erik’s sword flew across the room. It struck the blade from Szigo’s hand and sank into the wall by Ellasif’s right hand, severing the bond that held her fast. She reached for the sword’s grip, but after so long a confinement, her arm was weak and numb. She slapped it against the wall in a frantic effort to beat the sense back into her half-dead limb.

Szigo let out a little shriek and whirled around to face the interloper he imagined had thrown the sword. He jabbered a spell and stroked the air before him, his fingers leaving trails of purple flame in their wake. He hesitated, seeing no foe where he believed one must stand.

Tiny claws scrabbled over Ellasif’s left wrist. There was Skywing, tearing away her other manacle.

Hurry
, came the voice in her mind. She realized it was the little drake that spoke.
Declan is coming.

The news brought a thrill to her heart. She was not alone, and Declan had not been slain. The instant Skywing freed her other hand, she reached forward and grasped Erik’s sword. As her tingling hand closed around the grip, she felt the mad lust of battle fill her heart, and then the sword sang through her.

Two quick strokes freed her legs, and she stepped toward the warlock. Another explosion thundered in the grove outside, and Ellasif stumbled over her own sleeping legs to the dirt floor.

At the sound of the blast, the warlock cocked his head once more like a startled bird. “What’s happening?” he shrieked.

“You brought this on yourself, you miserable worm,” said a familiar voice.

Szigo and Ellasif both spun around. Behind them, Mareshka stood tall, her staff crackling with ice. The warlock threw himself prostrate in fear for his life.

“Mistress ...” he uttered, but there was nothing else he could say. His guilt was plain.

“My plans do not include having the boy discover me here, like this,” the white witch shouted at her cringing lackey, raising her horned staff above her head. “If I did not have more pressing matters to attend—” Her threat dissolved into a tumble of arcane words. Szigo screeched and clutched himself, shivering in agony. Mareshka cackled at the sight of her minion’s writhing.

A tiny part of Ellasif was proud that Mareshka’s timely appearance had proven her speculation so literally accurate. More of her was angry that the witch might deprive her of her vengeance.

“No, you don’t,” said Ellasif. She clambered to her feet, her limbs still wobbly from the constriction of her bonds. “He’s mine.”

With a crazed laugh, Ellasif stabbed Szigo. It was an awkward blow, piercing his back just above the buttocks. The warlock screamed, rolling onto his back. From its nest by the fireplace, Szigo’s toad opened its mouth and gave vent to a matching, eerily human shriek. Ellasif turned and gave the creature a ferocious kick, sending it flying into the wall, where it hit the wood with a sick thump and lay still.

“Open up!” shouted Declan from outside the house. “Let us in, or we’ll burn the place down.”

“No,” breathed Mareshka. “He must not see me like this.”

“Hurry!” cried Ellasif. She swept Erik’s blade down across Szigo’s belly, then back the other way. His screams pierced her ears.

“Come,” said Mareshka, grasping Ellasif by the shoulder. At the same moment, the white witch screamed, her hair suddenly filled with the wings and claws of a thrashing dragon. She slammed her staff on the ground.

Ellasif felt the familiar icy sheath surround her, but this time she also saw it cover both Mareshka and the tiny drake that vexed her. She felt the drowning sensation, the vertigo, and then the fall.

Chapter Fourteen

The Impossible Door

Szigo released his death rattle and lay motionless on the threshold. Outside in the Charnel Grove, embers dropped from the trees as fire climbed the oily boughs. The flames leaped from tree to tree, and soon a brilliant orange halo ringed the crown of the warlock’s house.

Jadrek leaned into the candlelit interior for a look. An instant later he leaped out as a fiery branch crashed at his feet. “There’s no one else in here,” he said.

Skywing
, thought Declan.
What do you see?

There was no answer. Declan prayed that didn’t mean the little drake had died after flying down through the chimney gap. He thought he would have heard some psychic cry if Skywing had been harmed, but instead the drake had simply vanished, perhaps to the same place where Ellasif had gone. With Jadrek’s bulk blocking the entrance, he couldn’t see for himself.

Perhaps that was best, he thought. A ridiculous scheme formed in his imagination.

“Jadrek,” said Declan. “What else do you see in there?”

Flinching away from another falling ember, Jadrek squinted into the house. “There are a lot of candles, a fire pit. There’s a table with—Great Gorum!” He kicked Szigo’s motionless body. “What a monster!”

“Never mind that now,” said Declan. “What else?”

“Look for yourself,” offered Jadrek, stepping aside.

“No,” said Declan. “It won’t work if I see it first.”

Jadrek opened his mouth but shut it again. He might lack Ellasif’s cunning, but he was quick enough on the uptake.

“Bone fetishes, skulls hanging from ropes, armor and weapons along the walls,” he said. “There’s a trail of blood, and behind it ...It looks like water on the floor.”

“That’s it,” said Declan. He remembered the ice that had covered Majeed Nores in his steam bath, and the fragile shell that so resembled Silvana on the manor roof. “They’ve been transported to Whitethrone.”

“How can you know that,” said Olenka, “unless you are yourself a winter witch?” She had finished wrapping her wound and now held her sundered armor as if debating whether to replace or discard it.

“A wizard is
not
the same thing as a witch,” Declan said. He ran to fetch his packs and brought them back to the grove. There was no surfeit of light there, but a growing firestorm swirled through the trees.

“We cannot stay here,” said Jadrek.

“I know.” Declan pulled out sheaves of parchment and dug through the pack until he came up with a stick of charcoal. “Now, fast as you can, describe the inside of that house again.”

“But—” was all the protest Jadrek offered before giving in. “It is perhaps thirty paces long, the walls about three feet thick in most places. It is the same shape inside as out.”

“Good, good,” said Declan. “Faster. Tell me everything inside.”

Jadrek repeated his earlier description, adding more detail like the round shield he had seen on the wall just inside the door, the skeleton grown half into the unruly roots of a pine on the far wall. Declan added each detail in a quick economy of strokes, adding a shadow here and there by smudging the pigment with his thumb. Olenka moved to watch over his shoulder. She leaned so close he could feel her hair upon his shoulder. He smelled the pungent odor he had begun to associate with the Ulfen warriors, but on her it was slightly different, less offensive—even oddly alluring. It reminded him of Ellasif.

He tried not to think about it.

“That is everything,” Jadrek said at last.

Declan nodded, finishing the last touches of a drawing of the interior of a house into which he had never looked. If he had a moment more to admire his work, he would have been pleased with the result. Despite the appalling details of the chamber, it was a striking illustration.

“What is that?” asked Jadrek. He pointed at the icy portal Declan had drawn just beyond the fire pit. “I told you, there was only water on the floor.”

“I know,” said Declan. “This is the door through which they left.”

“But there is no such door,” said Jadrek. “Besides, look!”

Declan looked where Jadrek pointed. The top of Szigo’s house blazed like the head of a torch. From inside, crashing boughs exploded on the floor, shattering glass and scattering the macabre contents of the room.

“Let’s go,” said Declan. He stuffed the map back into his pack and clutched it to his chest. He lowered his head and charged through the door.

Inside, he could barely see. The heat prickled his face, and smoke filled his lungs at his first breath. An enormous branch fell beside him, cinders flying in all directions. Hot pine needles stuck to his face, searing their outlines into his skin. He ran deeper into the room, ignoring the protests of the Ulfen warriors who followed him. In a moment he reached the fire pit.

A few steps beyond stood a gleaming oval of ice. It was already melting in the inferno. Declan saw an image of himself, Jadrek, and Olenka reflected in its surface. The surrounding flames cast him in silhouette, making him look like a lost soul trapped in the furnace of hell.

Sparing one last glance at his companions, he cried, “Follow me!”

Then he plunged into the icy portal.

The shock of glacial cold struck his heart a hammer blow. He shouted, but that only filled his mouth with water. He kicked and thrashed until his head breached the surface of a lake. All the golden light of the fiery grove had been replaced with a dim blue-white radiance. Most of it came from above, reflected off the glittering faces of a palace resting two hundred feet above on a white pillar of ice. Behind him, a sprawling, bone-white city glimmered in the moonlight.

Jadrek and Olenka emerged beside him, sputtering and cursing in their native tongue. “Hurry,” said Olenka, kicking toward an icy shore some thirty yards away.

Declan tried to respond, but the cold sent tremors throughout his body. He felt the weight of his soaked packs pulling him down. He kicked, but he could no longer feel his legs. Just before he surrendered to the inevitable, Jadrek’s massive arm reached around his neck and gripped him under the shoulder. The big warrior swam him to shore and lifted him onto the frozen bank.

Once on dry land—or frosty stone, Declan noted bitterly—Jadrek cursed while trying to throw a spark into the damp tinder from his pack, while Olenka held Declan close, shivering beside him as they shared their meager body warmth. She was not, after all, so much bigger than he, but her muscles were so thick and hard that he felt like a child cradled in her arms. It was not an altogether unpleasant feeling, but it made him uncomfortable. He felt as if he were breaking some sort of rule, betraying a promise he had never uttered. He could not say to whom he felt unfaithful, but he also could not escape the feeling. After a few moments he was warm enough to cast a spell.

Declan uttered one cantrip to dry the two volumes of his animated caricatures and then, with only the faintest regret, cast another to set them alight. The three companions crowded the tiny fire so close they touched shoulders as they knelt and leaned over the meager heat. As the flames died, they got to their feet and climbed a sharp, winding trail to the top of the cliff face that formed a natural barrier beside the river.

Declan looked back at the lake. The harbor was filled with islets joined by bridges and a white road leading across a tongue-like peninsula and then up a long, rising bridge to the palace atop the ice column. The lake’s black surface rippled in the chill breeze for only a few thousand feet along the shore in an area surrounding the massive pillar. Declan looked away from that dazzling structure and let his eyes adjust to the night sky. Far above the white city he spied the Stair of Stars and followed the invisible lines of the constellation to Cynosure, the pole star. Doing so reminded him of his original purpose in traveling to Whitethrone: to find the astronomer Majeed Nores.

How often he had forgotten his master’s plight in favor of vain dreams of rescuing Silvana and enjoying a hero’s reward from the grateful kitchen maid! Yet until he fixed his bearings by gazing up at the night sky, his only thought had been to follow Ellasif through whatever magical portal the warlock had cast her.

And now that he saw Whitethrone with his own eyes, he wondered why Szigo had sent Ellasif there. Had she gone voluntarily, to find her sister? He doubted it, especially considering the state in which Ellasif had left the warlock. No matter what the reasons, somehow Declan felt that Whitethrone was calling to him and Ellasif both.

The rescue business was much more complicated than he had ever imagined.

Now that he had his bearings, Declan surveyed the city from where he now stood in the southwestern corner. It was all contained in a roughly hexagonal wall, broken only by a distant gate to the north, some rough gap in the west, and the open southern harbor on the lake. From the water’s edge, the city sloped gradually upward to the north, flat except for a pair of hills in the northwest. Near the peak of the farther hill, Declan noted the distinctive dome of an observatory.

He pointed it out to the Ulfen. “That is where we must go.”

“You think Ellasif is there?” said Jadrek.

“No,” said Declan. “But I am fairly sure we did not arrive where she did. The portal I created was only a crude imitation of the arcane channel created by the spell that sent Ellasif here. Due to the melted ice you found at the warlock’s home, I can only suppose she arrived somewhere in Whitethrone. I’ve seen this sort of ice-based teleportation twice in recent months, and when I consulted a colleague at the—”

Olenka cupped his mouth with her strong hand.

“Imagine that we are not witches,” she said, “and that we do not understand such things.”

Jadrek grunted his agreement. “Just lead us to Ellasif.”

Declan nodded, and Olenka removed her hand. “I am not a witch, by the way,” he said, holding up a reproachful finger. How much things had changed this summer, that he was now so eager to assert himself a wizard. “We go to that observatory,” he said. “It’s the most likely place to find my master, who was abducted from his home in Korvosa.”

“Tell us more as we move,” said Jadrek. “Something tells me we do not wish to linger on these streets at night.”

Declan had to agree with that opinion. They were no longer dripping, but their wet clothing made them both susceptible to chill and more than a little suspicious. Even on the streets of Korvosa, their appearance would have provoked some hard questions from the local guards, as Declan knew all too well.

Declan began to explain the events that had instigated his long trek from Korvosa through the wilds of Varisia, and then north through the Lands of the Linnorm Kings. He had barely described his master and the fetching kitchen maid when they walked into the western quarter, where the many shops competed with each other in extravagant displays of layered woodwork. By the eldritch light of the street lamps, Declan saw more shades of white than he knew existed, and between them hues so subtle that they seemed the ghosts of once-living colors.

Soon they were no longer alone upon the streets. Streams of people flowed from an enormous stone edifice to the north, spreading out into the streets in all directions. Dozens of Whitethrone natives approached, most of them laughing or talking in voices that echoed down the streets. Most appeared quite human, although their hair and skin were fairer than Declan was used to seeing, often so blond or pale as to seem white at a distance. Some were as tall as Ulfen, though many of those who appeared to descend directly from that hearty northern stock behaved as servants and bodyguards, gazing at the ground or glowering into the shadows to dissuade any hopeful cutthroats.

The strange folks wore garments of thick linen and wool with capes of rabbit or seal pelts. A few fantastic collars rose high behind the heads of men and women with such delicate features and elegant jewelry that Declan assumed they were nobles. Their clothes were almost uniformly white, with a black muff, hat, or stole as a striking accessory.

The exception to the rule of fashion were a few groups of young men and women who laughed somewhat too loudly, walked with affected swaggers, or encouraged their fellows in choruses of the same songs again and again. They wore clothes of many colors, often garish or downright theatrical. Declan had seen more somber apparel on fools capering in holiday parades. He recognized several southern fashions: Varisian, Chelish, Taldan, and even some from distant Osirion and Katapesh. One young rake kept retrieving the enormous purple turban that fell from his head whenever he laughed at a joke.

“Jadwiga,” Jadrek murmured.

“You can’t mean everyone here is a witch,” said Declan.

“Not all of them cast spells,” said Olenka. “But all of them are witches, daughters and sons of Baba Yaga.”

She spat after uttering the name, and Jadrek admonished her with a scowl. Declan was relieved to see that none of the jadwiga seemed to notice her gesture.

Declan kept to the side of the street, hoping to avoid awkward entanglements. Jadrek and Olenka followed in grim-faced imitation of the Ulfen bodyguards they had seen. Definitely quick-witted, Declan thought. He finally appreciated the southern penchant for Ulfen bodyguards. These northern warriors were far more than just physically formidable.

They passed the celebrants without incident, for which Declan was thankful. By the time the newcomers reached the huge theater from which the revelers had emerged, the crowd had already dissipated into the surrounding residential neighborhoods. As they traveled farther north, toward the twin hills, a different nocturnal congregation began to appear.

In twos and threes, sometimes accompanied by one of the strange pale humans the Ulfen called jadwiga—surely they could not all be witches, Declan thought, so the term must have more than one meaning—enormous wolves prowled the streets. Their eyes were blue flame, and Declan overheard two of them conversing in human voices as they padded across the street ahead of them.

“Winter wolves,” said Jadrek.

“Dangerous, I presume,” said Declan.

Jadrek and Olenka exchanged a glance that let Declan know he had no idea.