Winter Witch (21 page)

Someone tugged at her arm and kept tugging, and at last Ellasif turned to face the interruption.

“Sif!” said Liv admiringly as she looked up at Ellasif. Then she stole a glance toward Jadrek and exclaimed reproachfully, “Ellasif!”

The room exploded with voices.

“I never should have pulled him from the lake—”

“How could you come all this way only to kiss that—”

“Mistress, how should I—?”

“I told you we should have gone straight back home after the warlock—”

“I’m her sister, you must be Declan—”

“Silence!” The command came from Silvana, but it was no longer the voice of the young girl. Everyone turned to watch as her youthful guise melted away to reveal Mareshka Zarumina, clutching her tall staff in a white-knuckled grip. Her hand shook, and as the staff trembled, thick bony horns grew up out of her scalp to form the rugged peaks of a crown through her silver hair. “I will not be mocked!”

“Who are you?” said Declan. “Are you Silvana? Or are you someone pretending to be Silvana?”

“Yes,” said Liv, shaking her head at Mareshka. “It’s her favorite guise for when we tease the young men at the Spring Garden.”

“You two-tongued cheat,” said Ellasif to Mareshka. “You went to Korvosa after sending me to fetch him. You never intended to honor the trade.”

“Trade?” Declan asked, puzzled. Then his face reddened with sudden understanding. “A trade! You were going to trade me for your sister! I should have realized! It was all too good to be true.”

“Why are you here?” Liv asked Jadrek, ignoring Declan. “Did you come to help Ellasif?”

“Yes,” said Jadrek. Olenka struck him with her elbow. “Well, no,” he said. “Not exactly. I came to explain—”

The guards prodded them forward with the tips of their swords, herding everyone but their mistress onto the same side of the room. Flanking their captain, they formed a line between Mareshka and her guests, willing and otherwise.

“Jadrek was the one who lured me away from protecting you,” spat Ellasif, stepping in front of Liv as if to protect her from him as he approached.

Liv stared at Jadrek in disbelief. “I can’t believe Jadrek would ever do anything to harm—”

“Liv is right,” said Olenka. “Only three people were unaware of what would happen that day: you, Liv, and Jadrek.”

“That’s impossible,” said Ellasif. But even as she said it, she knew it had been completely possible. All that was required was that she be so angry that she didn't care to go back and demand an explanation. All that was required was that she be a fool.

“It was my fault,” said Olenka. “I’m the one who told Red Ochme about the tiren’kii. She asked me to tell her when you and Jadrek would be away.”

“Why?” said Ellasif. “Because you wanted Jadrek for yourself?”

“No,” said Olenka. “Well, yes, I did. But that’s not why I told her.”

“None of these trifling personal dramas interest me in the least,” said Mareshka. She straightened her back and seemed to grow three inches taller. “What is important is that Declan left his home and traveled all this way to be with me.”

“To rescue Silvana,” said Declan. He shot Ellasif a sideways glance and clipped his words, as if afraid more might spill out unbidden. “And Majeed, of course. But there is no Silvana, is there?”

“Of course there is,” said Mareshka. “And I am she. Such is the power of my magic that I can appear in any form I choose.” Her voice lowered, became sultry. “Or that
you
choose.”

“But this is your real form, isn’t it?” said Ellasif, waving vaguely at Mareshka’s head. She wanted to stand up for Declan somehow, to win back the trust she had lost. But to be honest with herself, she had to admit she also wanted to spite the witch who had kidnapped her sister. “With the ...ah, the horns.”

Mareshka started. She reached up to feel the horns that had emerged from her head. She squinted in concentration, and the horns subsided into her hair. Her voice seethed with disdain as she said, “That is merely an effect of this staff.” She looked directly at Declan. “Your mother’s staff.”

“What?” Declan’s face blanched. “You can’t mean that you’re my ...my ...”

“No!” shrieked Mareshka. “Imbecile! Your mother was my teacher. She bestowed her staff on me when she chose to leave Irrisen. I never saw her again, until your father returned with her bones.”

“You see, Liv,” said Ellasif. “There’s at least one witch who was wise enough to leave this forsaken place.”

“I don’t care,” said Liv, crossing her arms.

“Why have you gone to so much trouble to bring me here?” Declan asked Mareshka. He seemed only then to notice how close he was still standing to Ellasif. He spared her only half a glance as he stepped away, as if avoiding an unpleasant smell. Even in the heat of all the accusations and recrimination, Ellasif felt her heart sink at his reaction. It was all the worse because she knew that she deserved his scorn as much as Jadrek deserved hers.

Or perhaps Jadrek deserved better, if Olenka had told the truth.

“Your mother had a rare knack for both art and magic,” Mareshka replied to Declan. “You appear not only to have inherited her talent, but to have gained something else, some ability that’s like no magic I’ve seen. Ever since my spell captured your master instead of you back in Korvosa, I have watched your progress through my scrying pool, and seen you do things not even your mother could match. Under my tutelage, your abilities could transform the face of Irrisen—and maybe more. Imagine redrawing a raging battlefield so that only one army remained.”

“Could you really do that?” asked Liv. Her voice was tinged with resentment. Ellasif hoped that meant she was jealous of Mareshka’s attentions to Declan. If so, that feeling could drive a wedge between Liv and this witch.

“I’m a map—” Declan began, but then he thought better of it. “I’m wizard, not a witch. Thanks all the same, madam.”

“Madam!” cried Mareshka. “How old do you think I am?” Liv began to answer, but Mareshka shouted, “Quiet!” Her lips quivered with fury. She raised her staff, its eyes glowing frost white.

Liv blurted out a warning.

Ellasif took one look at vain, humiliated Mareshka and laughed in the witch’s face.

Erik’s sword leaped from the captain’s hip, scabbard and all, and flew into Ellasif’s hand. She charged forward, drawing the blade. She made it almost to the line of guards before a wall of ice hissed and crackled into existence before her, sealing the room from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. Ellasif put out a hand to keep herself from crashing face-first into the barrier.

“I can endure no more of this, Captain,” said Mareshka. Her words were muffled through the wall of ice. “Have your men secure the doors behind them.”

“It is done. But madam, the sword—”

“The next person who refers to me by that honorific will spend the duration of Queen Elvanna’s reign frozen in a block of ice in the Floes. Do I make myself understood?”

“Yes, mistress!” the men said in unison.

“What about them?” asked the captain.

“They can cool off here while I consider how best to dispense with these ungrateful ...foolish ...
reeking
barbarians.” She stalked out of the room, trailing guards. The captain paused for one last resentful look at Ellasif and then slammed the double doors shut.

Ellasif stared after them until the frost from her panting breath obscured the image on the ice. She turned to face the others.

“This will make it more difficult to rescue Liv,” she said.

“I don’t want to be rescued,” Liv protested.

“We came here to rescue you,” Jadrek said to Ellasif.

“Well you can take that thought and ...” Ellasif let the insult drift off. Could she really have hated Jadrek all this time because of a mistaken assumption? “I can take care of myself. I certainly don’t need you to rescue me.”

Olenka shook the icy chains that bound her hand and foot. “Is there no one here who wants to be rescued?” she demanded.

Declan raised a tentative hand. “I do.”

Chapter Eighteen

The Wolf Gate

Declan concentrated on controlling his breathing while the others dealt with removing the ice bonds from Olenka and Jadrek. They fussed over who would wield Ellasif’s enchanted sword, which, even in his distracted state, Declan recognized was not the same blade he’d seen her with earlier.

When at last Jadrek gave up his demand that Ellasif let him use the sword, he knelt beside one of the divans and laid the chain over the seat. Ellasif severed it with one sharp blow, but the squeal of steel on the magical ice was worse than the sound of chalk squeaking on a slate board. Declan moved away from them, holding his head as he tried to focus his thoughts. The past hour had brought so many revelations that he felt like an overstuffed rag doll, his head swollen near to bursting. He was angry, exhilarated, confused, and most of all frightened.

He was not frightened for himself alone. He had a feeling that he and Liv were in less danger from Mareshka’s wrath, but the others were in serious trouble. The witch seemed particularly displeased with Ellasif, especially after that impulsive kiss. Mareshka had no right to be jealous. Discovering she was a much older woman—well, that was awkward, but the revelation that she’d known his mother made it that much more uncomfortable. It felt like some long-lost aunt had been trying to seduce him. What continued to puzzle him was that she seemed powerful enough in magic that she could have simply transported him to Whitethrone from the start. If that were the case, he didn’t understand why she had instead allowed him to travel all that way on horse and foot. Was it some sick need for validation, for proof of his devotion to her—or rather to her illusory persona of Silvana? Whatever her reasons, from the moment Silvana appeared to him as an ordinary girl, flirting with him, she had misled and manipulated him. How could she possibly expect he would want to remain with her in Whitethrone after that?

Much worse was the realization that Ellasif had manipulated him in much the same way. He had long wondered why she had cleared his path to Irrisen, arranging for Basha to offer him a job that would take him exactly where he wanted to go—or rather, where both Mareshka and Ellasif had made him think he wanted to go. On the other hand, if what he believed about Jamang and his wretched little imp was true, Ellasif had probably also saved his life from the very start. Still, Declan understood that he was no use to her dead, since she needed to trade him for her sister’s freedom, so that was also in her self-interest.

Declan breathed on the wall of ice and drew a rough outline of the lands he had traveled since leaving Korvosa. Then he marked his starting point and traced the route of his journey west, then north, and finally east into Irrisen. His initial suspicions about Ellasif had faded gradually as they traversed Varisia, and he had to wonder now whether that was because he was just that stupid. Like Silvana—he could not think of the lithe young blonde as Mareshka—hadn’t Ellasif also seduced him in her way? The shield maiden wasn’t even pretty, not in the way that so drew his eyes to girls like Silvana. Even Liv was prettier than her sister, if a little young for him.

When he considered the question, Declan realized that he did not regret kissing Ellasif, despite the trouble it had caused with Mareshka and the revelation of Ellasif’s own duplicity that followed. He glanced back at her, thinking of the taste of her mouth and the warmth of her cheek. He looked away as soon as she looked back and caught him staring.

Declan felt that Jadrek was boring a hole through him with his own stare. The big man wasn’t glowering, exactly, but he looked much less friendly than he had before. Declan had overheard enough of his reaction to Declan’s kissing Ellasif during the earlier confusion that he realized Jadrek had—or thought he had—some prior claim on Ellasif’s affections. In the short time they’d known each other, Declan had begun to like Jadrek. The big man had also saved his life, and Declan had no reason to believe he’d been deceiving him. If anything, Jadrek seemed more stunned by the recent revelations than Declan himself. If they had been friends in Korvosa who spotted the same lass in a tavern, Declan would gladly have stepped aside.

“Hello,” said Liv. She appeared as if by magic at his elbow, but Declan realized he’d been lost in his own little world. A bear could have walked up without his knowing.

Declan greeted her with a weak smile.

“I can see why Mareshka was so taken with you,” she said.

“What?”

“These past months, she’s been mooning over her scrying pool, but whenever I asked her who she was watching, she dispelled the image. She said only that whoever it was was coming to rescue her as proof of his love, and that she had a surprise for him when he arrived.”

“It was definitely a surprise.” He swallowed uncomfortably, and might have said more, had not an excruciating squeal drawn everyone’s attention to the ice wall.

Ellasif chipped at the barrier with her magic sword, and each blow caused another awful screech. Everyone shouted at her to stop, lest she disintegrate their teeth. Jadrek and Olenka had already thrown their considerable bulk against the doors, but they were locked tight, and the threatening manner of the guards earlier reminded them that they would only face a fight on the other side.

“Try the windows,” suggested Declan.

“That won’t work,” said Liv.

Ignoring her sister, Ellasif struck one of the clear panes. It shattered just like ordinary ice, despite its uncanny clarity. She shot out a hip and said in a tone of triumph, “See?”

Liv crossed her arms across her chest and nodded at the window. As they all looked, a film of water ran down from the top edge, freezing immediately in place. “Just be glad you didn’t try to crawl out first,” she said. “Tatyana had all the windows in the house permanently enchanted after a hailstorm six years ago.”

“You weren’t even here six years ago,” growled Ellasif.

“I’ve been catching up on the family stories.”

“They aren’t your family!”

Families are complicated
. Declan heard an echo of his own words in his memory. The squabble continued, but he tried his best to ignore it, both because he had no desire to step between the combative sisters and because an idea of how to escape was beginning to tickle his imagination. The problem was that he’d seen the entire room, and so far as he understood his burgeoning talent for drawing magical maps, his tricks were capable of altering only places he had not yet seen. The instant he looked up at the ceiling, he realized his mistake.

“Damn it,” he grumbled. He had not shouted, but Liv and Ellasif ceased their argument and looked at him for an explanation. So did Olenka and Jadrek. Declan shrank under the impatient demands of their collective gaze.

“If only there were a closet in here, or a door we didn’t know had guards standing on the other side of it, then maybe I could draw us a way out of here.”

“Like the bridge at Brinewall,” said Ellasif.

He nodded. “The trouble is that I’ve seen everything in this room. There’s no ‘unexplored territory’ for me to alter.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Liv. “Is this some special kind of witchcraft?”

“No,” Declan said firmly. Then he realized he didn’t know what it was. “At least, I don’t think so. It might have something to do with my mother’s talent for art. I’d be happy to tell you all about it in a tavern in Korvosa, or at least an alehouse in Jol. The important thing is that we get out of here.”

“It is like what you did at the warlock’s house?” asked Olenka.

“That’s it exactly, only this time I wouldn’t be trying to connect with another caster’s spell. It should be much simpler just to make a path out of this room.”

The red-haired warrior stepped forward and took him by the shoulders. She pulled him toward the window and sat him on one of the divans facing the wall. “I think maybe there is a trap door beneath the rug behind you.”

Resisting the impulse to turn to look at the floor, Declan instead smiled his thanks up into Olenka’s face. He pulled the drawing materials from his satchel and set to work. A few minutes later he had sketched out the room from memory, adding a few details like the finer grain of the wooden doors and a few strokes to suggest the subjects of the papercraft landscapes, which he had immediately recognized as his mother’s work. He even included the ice wall that Mareshka had conjured, as well as the bearskin rugs he had barely glimpsed upon entering. When he was satisfied that he had captured the room as he had seen it, he traced the outlines of a trap door.

“Ready?” Jadrek asked from behind him. Declan imagined him bending down to pull the rug up from the floor.

“No,” Declan said emphatically. “We need to get out of this house, not just out of this room.” He continued drawing, this time drawing light lines down from the floor to represent the staircase he wanted to exist directly beneath his imagined trap door. He drew the faint borders of rooms beneath theirs, adding floors beneath them until he was sure the stairs reached the ground floor. Then, trying to remember the approximate size of the outer walls of the Crooked House, he drew a narrow corridor, like a servant’s passage in a Korvosan manor home, leading out to a side entrance.

Liv leaned over his shoulder to appraise his work. She clicked her tongue, unimpressed. “There is no such—” she began, but Olenka clamped her hand over her mouth.

“Let go of her,” growled Ellasif.

“Please, Ellasif,” Jadrek said. He reached toward her, but she slapped his hand away.

“It’s all right,” said Declan, blowing the last of the charcoal dust from the page. “I’m finished.”

Jadrek was still sulking from Ellasif’s latest rebuke, but he looked to Declan for a nod before he swept away the heavy carpet.

Beneath the bear skin lay the trap door that Declan’s art had created. Jadrek lifted it without prompting, revealing a wooden spiral staircase below.

“Let’s go,” Declan said.

He led the way down the stairs, glancing back only to see Jadrek and Ellasif vying for second place. The heat in their mutual scowls was unmistakable. It was not hatred, and it was not just rivalry. Declan turned away, a queasy jealousy congealing in his stomach. He could at least dispel the gloom of the stairway, so he drew his sword and cast a cantrip along its blade. Green-white light filled the passage. The spell would not make his sword as fantastic as Ellasif’s new weapon appeared to be, but at least it would light the way, and perhaps it would make a guard hesitate, thinking it was a powerful enchantment. Declan hoped the rest of the spells he had set in his mind that morning would prove as useful.

They crept down three floors to emerge in a narrow corridor, just as Jadrek’s map had depicted. If all of the magically rearranged passages worked as he intended, the nearest door led outside, on the western side of the Crooked House, as far from the front entrance as possible.

Declan moved toward the door, but before he could put his hand on the latch, he heard a shout of alarm from above. He could barely make out the words, but it was clear that the guards had entered the gallery and found the conjured door in the floor.

“Outside,” he said, pulling the latch and stepping through the back door. The bright afternoon sun dazzled his eyes, and a cold wind blew his cloak up around his shoulders. He sheathed his sword and held the door open as the others ran out, blinking and shading their eyes.

“I’ll hold the door shut,” said Jadrek. “The rest of you get as far away as you can.”

“We stay together,” said Declan and Ellasif simultaneously.

The look she shot him told him she was in charge, but he shrugged it off. They could all hear the running steps of the guards descending the stairs. He said, “Shut the door, and stand back.”

Ellasif frowned, but then she nodded, noticing the drawing he still held in his hand. She pulled her sister along by the arm. Liv did not struggle so much as she resisted, dragging her feet and jerking her shoulders at every step to show her displeasure. Once they were all outside, Declan smudged his thumb along the stairway he had drawn.

Inside, the men screamed. Their voices pierced the intervening walls and rose above the howling wind. Declan hesitated, shocked by the effect of his action. He had meant only to prevent pursuit. There was no time to weigh the cruel effects of his spell. He had to escape and ensure that all the others made it safely with him. Even if these men did not seek to kill them, their capture would surely lead to death for some. Wincing at the tormented wails of the men trapped inside the walls of the Crooked House, Declan rubbed out the outer door on his drawing, and the real portal wavered and vanished, leaving only the smooth outer wall.

Jadrek pointed west and slid down a snowy hill to the street below. Liv balked until Ellasif gave her a shove, whereupon the girl leaped straight away from her sister and into the open air.

Ellasif cried out her name and reached for her, but Liv only laughed. She uttered a few arcane syllables that Declan recognized, then floated gently down to the street below. Ellasif plunged down the snowy hill after her, as did Declan. He felt a faint pang of jealousy at Liv’s effortless display of magic, but he nodded and said, “Nice.”

He would have liked to have followed Liv’s lead if he’d had the foresight to prepare the same spell, but the last time he’d needed one, Skywing had been there to cast it for him. He wondered where the little drake had gone and called out for him mentally.

Skywing
, he thought, and repeated the psychic call as they continued their descent down the hill. There was no reply.

Jadrek had assumed the lead, slowing his pace as they reached the streets west of the Twohill neighborhood. Declan hurried to catch up to him but then paused to look back at the higher of the two hills and the observatory that perched atop it. Majeed had made it plain the night before that he had no interest in returning to his “inferior” facility in Korvosa. The astronomer’s reaction had come more as a relief than as a surprise. Declan had come to accept that he’d traveled so far not for his master but for Silvana, yet even before the disturbing revelation that the fetching kitchen maid was only the guise of a scheming winter witch, his romantic notion of rescuing the maiden fair had evaporated. And yet he knew he had not come all this way, endured such perils, for nothing. He believed there was a purpose to his journey.