Ilse Witch (10 page)

“Oh, you like him, but not me?”

The guard flushed. “You know what I mean. Here, hand over your weapons, let me check your food package, and then you can go in and see him.”

She handed over her belt with the knives and rapier, then unhooked the sling. She kept the dirk in her boot. Compliance got you only so far in this world. She smiled cheerfully and passed through the gates.

She found her brother sitting under the overhang against the back wall, right where the guards had told her she would. He watched her approach without moving, weighted down in irons that were clamped to his wrists, ankles, and waist and chained to iron rings bolted tightly to the walls. Guards patrolled the catwalks and stood idly in the roofed shade of watchtowers at the stockade’s corners. No one seemed much interested in expending any energy.

She squatted in front of her brother and cocked a critical eyebrow. “You don’t look so good, big brother.”

Redden Alt Mer cocked an eyebrow back at her. “I thought you were sick in bed.”

“I was sick at heart,” she advised. “But I’m feeling much better now that we’re about to experience a change of scenery. I think we’ve given the Federation army just about all of our time it deserves.”

He brushed at a fly buzzing past his face, and the chains clanked furiously. “You won’t get an argument out of me. My future as a mercenary doesn’t look promising.”

She glanced around. The stockade was filled with the sounds of men grumbling and cursing, of chains clanking, and of booted feet passing on the catwalk overhead. The air was dry and hot and still, and the smell of unwashed bodies, sweat, and excrement permeated everything.

She adjusted her stance to sit cross-legged before him, setting the food package on the ground between them. “How about something to eat?”

She unwrapped the food, and her brother began to devour it hungrily. “This is good,” he told her. “But what are we doing, exactly? I thought you might have thought of a way to get me out of here.”

She brushed back her thick red hair and smirked. “You mean you haven’t figured that out for yourself? You got yourself in, didn’t you?”

“No, I had help with that.” He chewed thoughtfully on a piece of bread. “Do you have anything to drink?”

She reached inside her robes and produced a flask. He took it from her and drank deeply. “Ale,” he announced approvingly. “What’s going on? Is this my last meal?”

She picked at a cut of roast pheasant. “Let’s hope not.”

“So?”

“So we’re killing time until Hawk gets things ready for our departure.” She took the flask back from him and drank.
“Besides, we may not have time to eat again once we set out. I don’t expect we’ll be stopping until after dark.”

He nodded. “I suppose not. So you do have a plan.”

She grinned. “What do you think?”

They finished the meal, drank the rest of the ale, and sat quietly until Rue Meridian was satisfied that enough time had passed for Furl Hawken to be ready and waiting. Then she rose, brushed herself off, gathered up the remains of their feast, and walked toward the shack that served as the stockade commander’s office. On the way, she dropped their leftovers in the stockade compost heap. You did what you could to care for Mother Earth, even here.

She walked into the commander’s office without knocking, closing the door behind her. The commander was leaning back in his chair against the wall behind his desk, dozing. He was a red-faced, corpulent man, his face and hands scarred and worn. Without slowing, she walked around the desk, the dirk in her hand, and hit him as hard as she could behind the ear. He slumped to the floor without a sound.

Racks of keys lined the wall. She selected the set with her brother’s name tagged to the peg and walked back to the door. When she caught sight of a guard passing across the compound, she called him over. “The commander wants to see my brother. Bring him over, please.”

The guard, used to obeying orders from almost everyone, didn’t question her. He took the keys and set off. A few minutes later he was back, herding Big Red at a slow shuffle, the wrist and ankle irons still attached. She stood aside to let them enter, closed the door, and flattened the guard with a blow to the neck.

Her brother glanced at her. “Very efficient. Do you plan to dispatch the entire garrison this way?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” She worked the keys into the wrist and ankle locks, and the chains dropped away. He rubbed his wrists appreciatively and looked around for a weapon. “Never mind that,” she said, gesturing impatiently.

She took a sheet of paper from the commander’s desk, one embossed with the Federation insignia, and wrote a brief note on it with a quill pen and ink. When she was finished, she eyed it critically, then nodded. “Good enough. You’re a free man. Let’s go.”

She slipped the dirk back in her boot, and they walked out of the command shack and across the yard toward the gates. Her brother’s eyes shifted about nervously. Prisoners and guards alike were watching them. “Are you sure about this?”

She laughed and shoved him playfully. “Just watch.”

When they reached the gates, the two guards she had given her weapons to on entering were waiting. She waved the insignia-embossed paper at them. “What did I tell you?” she asked brightly, handing the paper to the first guard.

“Let me have a look at that,” he replied suspiciously, squinting hard at the paper.

“You can see for yourself,” she declared, pointing at the writing. “He’s released to my custody until all this gets straightened out. I told you it wouldn’t be that hard.”

The second guard moved closer to the first, peering over his shoulder. Neither seemed entirely certain what to do.

“Don’t you understand?” she pressed, crowding them now, jamming her finger at the paper. “The army can’t afford to keep its best airship pilot locked up in the stockade with a war going on. Not because of one Federation officer who thinks it’s a good idea. Come on! Give me back my weapons! You’ve looked at the order long enough! What’s the matter, can’t you read?”

She glared at them now. Neither guard said a word.

“Do you want me to wake up the commander again? He was mad enough the first time.”

“Okay, okay,” the first guard said hastily, shoving the piece of paper at her.

He handed back her knives, rapier, and sling and shooed them out the gates and back into the encampment. They
walked in silence for several dozen paces before Redden Alt Mer said, “I don’t believe it.”

She shrugged. “They can’t read. Even if they could, it wouldn’t matter. No one could make out what I wrote. When they’re asked about it, they’ll claim I had a release order signed by the commander. Who’s to say I didn’t? This is the army, big brother. Soldiers don’t admit to anything that might get them in trouble. They’ll fuss for a day or two and then decide they’re well rid of us.”

Her brother rubbed his arms to restore the circulation and glanced at the cloudless sky. “Three years in this forsaken place. Money or no, that’s a long time.” He sighed wearily and slapped his thighs. “I hate leaving
Black Moclips
, though. I hate that.”

She nodded. “I know. I thought about taking her. But stealing her would be hard, Big Red. Too many people keeping watch.”

“We’ll get another ship,” he declared, brushing the matter aside, a bit of the old spring returning to his step. “Somewhere.”

They walked through the camp’s south fringe to where the passes led downward out of the heights toward the city of Dechtera and the grasslands west. Once across the Rappahalladran and the plains beyond, they were home.

Ahead, Furl Hawken stood waiting in a draw with a dozen more Rovers and the horses and supplies.

“Hawk!” Redden Alt Mer called, and gave him a wave. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the fading outline of the camp. “Well, it was fun for a time. Not as much fun as we’ll have where we’re going, of course, wherever that turns out to be, but it had its moments.”

Rue Meridian smirked. “My brother, the eternal optimist.” She brushed stray strands of her long hair from her face. “Let’s hope this time you’re right.”

Ten minutes later, they had left the Federation army behind and were riding west for the coast of the Blue Divide.

A
t first light, the Druid known as Walker slipped from the sleeping room he had been given in the summer house on his arrival the night before. Arborlon was still sleeping, the Elven city at rest, and only the night watch and those whose work required an early rising were awake. A tall, spare, shadowy figure in his black robes, hair, and beard, he glided soundlessly from the palace grounds and through the streets and byways of the city to the broad sweep of the Carolan. He was aware of the Home Guard who trailed him, an Elven Hunter assigned to him by the King. Allardon Elessedil was not a man who took chances, so the presence of a watchdog was not unexpected, and Walker let the matter be.

On the heights, where the Carolan fronted the sprawl of the Westland forests, visible all the way to the ragged jut of the Rock Spur south and the Kensrowe north, he paused. The first glimmer of sunlight had crested the trees behind him, but night still enfolded the land west, purple and gray shadows clinging to treetops and mountain peaks like veils. In the earthen bowl of the Sarandanon, small lakes and rivers reflected the early light in silvery flashes amid the patchwork quilt of farms and fields. Farther out, the waters of the Innis-bore shimmered in a rough, metallic sheen, their surface coated with broken layers of mist. Somewhere beyond that lay the vast expanse of the Blue Divide, and it was there that he must eventually go.

He looked all about the land, a slow, careful perusal, a drinking in of colors and shapes. He thought about the history of the city. Of the stand it had made in the time of Eventine Elessedil against the assault of the demons freed from the Forbidding by the failure of the Ellcrys. Of its journey out of the Westland in the Ruhk staff and the magic-riven Loden to the island of Morrowindl—buildings, people, and history disappeared as if they had never been. Of its journey back again, returned to the Four Lands by Wren Elessedil, where it would withstand the onslaught of the Shadowen. Always, the Elves and the Druids had been allies, bound by a common desire to see the lands and their peoples kept free.

What, he asked himself in dark contemplation, had become of that bond?

Below the heights, swollen with snowmelt off the mountains and spring’s rainfall, the Rill Song churned noisily within its banks. He listened to the soothing, distant sound of the water’s heavy flow as it echoed out of the trees. He stood motionless in the enfolding silence, not wanting to disturb it. It felt strange to be back here, but right, as well. He had not come to Arborlon in more than twenty years. He had not thought he would come again while Allardon Elessedil lived. His last visit had opened a rift between them he did not think anything could close. Yet here he was, and the rift that had seemed so insurmountable now seemed all but inconsequential.

His thoughts drifted as he turned away. He had come to Arborlon and the Elven King out of desperation. All of his efforts at brokering an agreement with the races to bring representatives to Paranor to study in the Druid way had failed. Since then, he had lived alone at Paranor, reverting to the work of recording the history of the Four Lands. There was little else he could do. His bitterness was acute. He was trapped in a life he had never wanted. He was a reluctant Druid, recruited by the shade of Allanon in a time when there were no Druids and the presence of at least one was vital to
the survival of the races. He had accepted the blood trust bestowed by the dying Allanon hundreds of years earlier on his ancestor Brin Ohmsford, not because he coveted it in any way, but because fate and circumstance conspired to place him in a position where only he could fulfill its mandate. He had done so out of a sense of responsibility. He had done so hoping that he might change the image and work of the Druids, that he might find a way for the order to oversee civilization’s advancement through cooperative study and democratic participation by all of the peoples of the Four Lands.

He shook his head. How foolish he had been, how naive his thinking. The disparities between nations and races were too great for any single body to overcome, let alone any single man. His predecessors had realized that and acted on it accordingly. First bring strength to bear, then reason. Power commanded respect, and respect provided a platform from which to enjoin reason. He had neither. He was an outcast, solitary and anachronistic in the eyes of almost everyone. The Druids had been gone from the Four Lands since the time of Allanon. Too long for anyone to remember them as they once were. Too long to command respect. Too long to serve as a catalyst for change in a world in which change most often came slowly, grudgingly, and in tiny increments.

He exhaled sharply, as if to expel the bitter memory. All that was in the past. Perhaps now it could be buried there. Perhaps now, unwittingly, he had been given the key to accomplishing what had been denied him for so long.

The Gardens of Life rose ahead of him, sun-streaked and vibrant with springtime color. Members of the Black Watch stood at their entrances, rigid and aloof, and he passed them by without a glance. Within the gardens grew the Ellcrys, the most sacred of the Elven talismans, the tree that kept in place the Forbidding, the wall conjured in ancient times to close away the demons and monsters that had once threatened to overrun the world. He walked to where she rooted on a small rise, set apart from the rest of the plantings, strikingly
beautiful with her silver limbs and crimson leaves, wrapped in serenity and legend. She had been human once. When her life cycle was complete and she passed away, her successor would come from among the Chosen who tended her. It was a strange and miraculous transition, and it required sacrifice and commitment of a sort with which he was intimately familiar.

A voice spoke at his elbow. “I always wonder if she is watching me, if by virtue of having been given responsibility over all of her people I require her constant vigilance. I always wonder if I am living up to her expectations.”