Ilse Witch

She tried to determine what was on the map, and for a moment she was able to reconstruct a vague image from his grunts and moans. She caught a glimpse of names written and symbols drawn here and there, saw a dotted line connecting islands off the coast of the Westland and out into the Blue Divide. She traced the line to the pillars of ice and to the land in which the safehold lay. But the writings and drawings were lost to her when he convulsed a final time and lay back, his voice spent, his mind emptied, and his body limp and unmoving beneath her touch.

She stilled her song and stepped away from him. She had all she was going to get, but what she had was enough to tell her what was needed. She listened to the silence for a moment, making sure her presence had not yet been detected. The castaway Elf lay motionless on his raised pallet, gone so deeply inside himself he would never come out again. He would live perhaps, but he would never recover.

She shook her head. It was pointless to leave him so.

Kael Elessedil, son of Queen Aine, once destined to be King of the Elves. It was before her time, but she knew the story. Lost for thirty years, and this was his sorry fate.

The Ilse Witch stepped close and drew back her hood to reveal the face that few ever saw. Within her concealing garments, she was nothing of what she seemed. She was very young, barely a grown woman, her hair long and dark, her eyes a startling blue, and her features smooth and lovely. As a child, when she had the name she no longer spoke, she would look at herself in the mirror of the waters of a little cove that pooled off the stream that ran not far from her home and try to imagine how she would look when grown. She had not thought herself pretty then, when it mattered to her. She did not think herself pretty now, when it did not.

There was warmth and tenderness in her face and eyes as she bent to kiss the ruined man on his lips. She held the kiss long enough to draw the breath from his lungs, and then he died.

“Be at peace, Kael Elessedil,” she whispered in his ear.

She went from the Healer’s home as she had come, hooded once more, a shadowy presence that drew no notice by its passing. The attendants would come awake after she was gone, unaware that anything had transpired, not sensing they had slept or that time had passed.

The Ilse Witch was already sifting through the images she had culled, weighing her options. The magic Kael Elessedil had discovered was priceless. Even without knowing exactly what it was, she could sense that much. It must be hers, of course. She must do what he had failed to do—find it, claim it, and retrieve it. It was protected in some way, as such magic necessarily would be, but there were no defenses she could not overcome. Her course of action was already1 decided, and only a settling of the particulars remained.

What she coveted, even if she did not require it in order to succeed, was the map.

Sliding through the darkness of Bracken Clell, she gave consideration to how she might gain possession of it. The Wing Rider had taken it to Allardon Elessedil in Arborlon, along with Kael Elessedil’s bracelet. The Elven King would recognize the importance of both, but he would not be able to translate the writings on the map. Nor would he have the benefit of his now dead brother’s thoughts, as she did. He would seek help from another in deciphering the mysterious symbols to determine what his brother had found.

Who would he turn to?

She knew the answer to her question almost before she had finished asking it. There was only one he could ask. One, who would be sure to know. Her enemy, one-armed and dark-browed, crippled of body and soul. Her nemesis, but her equal in the nuanced wielding of magic’s raw power.

Her thinking changed instantly with recognition of what this meant. Now there would be competition in her quest, and time would become precious. She would not have the luxuries of long deliberation and careful planning to sustain her effort. She would be faced with a challenge that would test her as nothing else could.

Even the Morgawr might choose to involve himself in a struggle of this magnitude.

She had slowed perceptibly, but now she picked up her pace once more. She was getting ahead of herself. Before she could return to the Wilderun with her news, she must conclude matters here. She must tie up loose ends. Her spy was still waiting to learn the value of his information. He would expect to be complimented on his diligence and well paid for his efforts. She must see to both.

Still, as she moved silently through the village and nearer to her spy’s rooms, her thoughts kept returning to the confrontation that lay ahead, in a time too distant yet to fix upon, in a place perhaps far removed from the lands she traveled now—a confrontation of wills, of magics, and of destinies. She and her adversary, locked in a final struggle for supremacy, just as she had dreamed they would one day be—the image burned in her thoughts like a hot coal and fired her imagination.

Her spy was waiting for her when she entered his rooms. “Mistress,” he acknowledged, dropping obediently to one knee.

“Rise,” she told him.

He did so, keeping his gaze lowered, his head bent.

“You have done well. What you told me has opened doors that I had only dreamed about.”