Ilse Witch (11 page)

Walker turned to find Allardon Elessedil standing beside him. It had been many years since he had seen him last, yet he recognized him at once. Allardon Elessedil was older and grayer, more weathered and careworn, and the robes he wore were pale and nondescript. But he carried himself in the same regal manner and exuded the same rocklike presence. Allardon Elessedil was not one of the great Elven Kings; he had been denied that legacy by a history that had not given him reason or need to be so and by a temperament that was neither restless nor inquisitive. He was a caretaker King, a ruler who felt his principal duty was to keep things as they were. Risk-taking was for other men and other races, and the Elves in his time had not been at the forefront of civilization’s evolution in the Four Lands.

The Elven King did not offer his hand in greeting or speak any words of welcome. It remained to be seen, Walker judged, how their meeting would conclude.

Walker looked back at the Ellcrys. “We cannot hope to know what she expects of us, Elven King. It would be presumptuous even to try.”

If the other man was offended, he did not show it. “Are you rested?” he asked.

“I am. I slept undisturbed. But at first light, I felt the need to walk here. Is this a problem?”

Allardon Elessedil brushed the question off with a wave of his hand. “Hardly. You are free to walk where you choose.”

Yes, but not to do as I please, Walker thought. How bitter he had been on leaving all those years ago. How despairing. But time’s passing had blunted the edges of those once sharp feelings, and now they were mostly memory. It was a new age, and the Elven King was growing old now and in need of him. Walker could achieve the result that had been denied him for so long if he proceeded carefully. It was a strange, exhilarating feeling, and he had to be cautious to keep it from showing in his voice and eyes.

“Your family is well?” he asked, making an effort at being cordial.

The other shrugged. “The children grow and take roads of their own choosing. They listen to me less and less. I have their respect, but not their obedience. I am more a father and less a King to them, and they feel free to ignore me.”

“What is it you would have them do?”

“Oh, what fathers would usually have children do.” The Elven King chuckled. “Stay closer to home, take fewer chances, be content with the known world. Kylen fights with the Free-born in a struggle I do not support. Ahren wanders the north in search of a future. My sons think I will live forever, and they leave me to be ruler alone.” He shrugged. “I suppose they are no different than the sons of other fathers.”

Walker said nothing. His views would not have been welcomed. If Allardon Elessedil’s sons grew up to be different men than their father, so much the better.

“I am pleased you decided to come,” the King ventured after a moment.

Walker sighed. “You knew I would. The castaway elf—is he Kael?”

“I assume as much. He wore the bracelet. Another elf would have carried it. Anyway, we’ll know tomorrow. I hoped the map would intrigue you sufficiently that you would be persuaded. Have you studied it?”

Walker nodded. “All night before flying here yesterday.”

“Is it genuine?” Allardon Elessedil asked.

“That’s difficult to say. It depends on what you mean. If you are asking me whether it might tell us what happened to your brother, the answer is yes. It might be a map of the voyage on which he disappeared. His name appears nowhere in the writings, but the condition and nature of the hide and ink suggest it was drawn within the last thirty years, so that it might have been his work. Is the handwriting his?”

The Elven King shook his head. “I can’t tell.”

“The language is archaic, a language not used since the Great Wars changed the Old World forever. Would your brother have learned that language?”

The other man considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. How much of what it says were you able to decipher?”

Walker shifted within his dark robes, looking out again toward the Carolan. “Can we walk a bit? I am cramped and sore from yesterday’s journey, and I think it would help to stretch my legs.”

He began moving slowly down the pathway, and the Elf King fell into step beside him wordlessly. They walked in silence through the gardens for a time, the Druid content to let matters stay as they were until he was ready to speak to them. Let Allardon Elessedil wait as he had waited. He turned his attention to other things, observing the way in which the gardens’ plantings flowed into one another with intricate symmetry, listening to the soft warble of the resident birds, and gazing up at the clouds that drifted like silk throws across the clear blue of the spring sky. Life in balance. Everything as it should be.

Walker glanced over. “The guard you assigned to watch me appears to have lost interest in the job.”

The Elven King smiled reassuringly. “He wasn’t there to watch you. He was there to let me know when you awoke so that we could have this talk.”

“Ah. You sought privacy in our dealings. Because your own guards are absent, as well. We are all alone.” He paused. “Do you feel safe with me, then?”

The other’s smile was uneasy. “No one would dare to attack me while I was with you.”

“You have more faith in me than I deserve.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, if you consider that I wasn’t referring to an attack that might come from a third party.”

The conversation was clearly making the King uncomfortable. Good, Walker thought. I want you to remember how you left things between us. I want you to wonder if I might be a greater threat to you than the enemies you more readily fear.

They emerged from the gardens onto the Carolan, the sunlight illuminating the green expanse of the heights in bright trailers that spilled over into the forests below. Walker led the way to a bench placed under an aging maple whose boughs canopied out in a vast umbrella. They sat together, Druid and King, looking out over the heights to the purple and gold mix of shadow and light that colored the horizon west.

“I have no reason to want to help you, Allardon Elessedil,” Walker said after a moment.

The Elven King nodded. “Perhaps you have better reason than you think. I am not the man I was when last we spoke. I regret deeply how that meeting ended.”

“Your regret can be no greater than my own,” Walker replied darkly, keeping his gaze averted, staring off into the distance.

“We can dwell on the regret and the loss or turn our attention to what we might accomplish if we relegate both to the past.” The Elven King’s voice was tight and worried, but there was a hint of determination behind it, as well. “I would like to make a new beginning.”

Now Walker looked at him. “What do you propose?”

“A chance for you to build the Druid Council you desire, to
begin the work you have sought to do for so long, with my support and blessing.”

“Money and men would count for more than your support and blessing,” the Druid remarked dryly.

The Elven King’s face went taut. “You shall have both. You shall have whatever you need if you are able to give me what I need in return. Now tell me of the map. Were you able to decipher its writings?”

Walker took a long moment to consider his answer before he spoke. “Enough so that I can tell you that they purport to show the way to the treasure of which your mother’s seer dreamed thirty years ago. As I said, the writing is archaic and obscure. Some symbols suggest more than one thing. But there are names and courses and descriptions of sufficient clarity to reveal the nature of the map. Travel west off the coast of the Blue Divide to three islands, each a bit farther than the one before. Each hides a key that, when all are used together, will unlock a door. The door leads to an underground keep that lies beneath the ruins of a city called Castledown. The ruins can be found on a mountainous spit of land far west and north of here called Ice Henge. Within the ruins lies a treasure of life-altering power. It is a magic of words, a magic that has survived the destruction of the Old World and the Great Wars by being kept hidden in its safehold. The magic’s origins are obscure, but the map’s writings say it surpasses all others.”

He paused. “Because it was found on the blind and voiceless Elven castaway together with your brother’s bracelet, I would be inclined to believe that if followed, it would reveal your brother’s fate and perhaps the nature of the magic it conceals.”

He waited, letting the King collect his thoughts. On the heights, the Elves were beginning to appear in clusters for the start of the workday. Guards were exchanging shifts. Tradesmen and trappers were arriving from the west, crossing the Rill Song on ferries and rafts bearing wagons and carts
laden with goods, then climbing the ramps of the Elfitch. Gardeners were at work in the Gardens of Life, weeding and pruning, planting and fertilizing. Here and there, a white-robed Chosen wandered into view. Children played as teachers led them to their study areas for lessons on becoming Healers in the Four Lands.

“So you support a quest of the sort my brother undertook all those years ago?” the King asked finally.

Walker smiled faintly. “As do you, or you would not have asked me to come here.”

Allardon Elessedil nodded slowly. “If we are to learn the truth, we must follow the route the map chronicles and see where it leads. I will never know what happened to Kael otherwise. I will never know what became of the Elfstones he carried. Their loss is perhaps the more significant of the two. This is not easy to admit, but I can’t pretend otherwise. The stones are an Elven heritage, passed down from Queen Wren, and the last of their kind. We are a lesser people without them, and I want them back.”

Walker’s dark face was inscrutable. “Who will lead this expedition, Allardon?”

There was no hesitation in his answer. “You will. If you agree to. I am too old. I can admit it to you if to no one else. My children are too young and inexperienced. Even Kylen. He is strong and fierce, but he is not seasoned enough to lead an expedition of this sort. My brother carried the Elfstones, and even that was not enough to save him. Perhaps a Druid’s powers will prove more formidable.”

“And if I agree to do this, you give me your word that the Elves will support an independent Druid Council, free to study, explore, and develop all forms of magic?”

“I do.”

“A Druid Council that will answer to no one nation or people or ruler, but only to its own conscience and the dictates of the order?”

“Yes.”

“A Druid Council that will share its findings equally with all people, when and if those findings can be implemented peacefully and for the betterment of all races?”

“Yes, yes!” The King made an impatient, dismissive gesture. “All that you sought before and I denied. All. Understand, though,” he added hurriedly, “I cannot speak for other nations and rulers, only for the Elves.”

Walker nodded. “Where the Elves lead, others follow.”

“And if you disappear as my brother did, then the matter ends there. I will not be bound to an agreement with a dead man—not an agreement of this sort.”

Walker’s gaze wandered across the Carolan to the Gardens of Life and settled on the men and women working there, bent to their tasks. It spoke to him of his own work, of the need to care for the lives of the people of the races the Druids had sworn long ago to protect and advance. Why had their goals been so difficult to achieve when their cause was so obviously right? If plants were sentient in the way of humans, would they prove as difficult and obstructive to the efforts of their tenders?

“We understand each other, Allardon,” he said softly. His eyes found the King’s face. He waited for the lines of irritation to soften. “One more thing. Any treasure I discover on this journey, be it magic or otherwise, belongs to the Druids.”

The Elven King was already shaking his head in disagreement. “You know I will not agree to that. Of money or precious metals, I care nothing. But what you find of magic, whatever its form, belongs to the Elves. I am the one who has sanctioned and commissioned this quest. I am the one whose cause requires it. I am entitled to the ownership of whatever you recover.”

“On behalf of your people,” Walker amended casually.

“Of course!”

“Suggesting that the cause and ownership rights of the Elven people are greater than those of the other races, even if the magic recovered might benefit them, as well?”

The King flushed anew, stiffening within his robes. He leaned forward combatively. “Do not try to make me feel guilt or remorse for the protections I seek to give to my own people, Walker! It is my duty to do so! Let others do so, as well, and perhaps a balance will be struck!”

“I have trouble understanding why, on the one hand, you support a Druid Council giving equal rights to all nations and peoples while, on the other, you seek to withhold what might benefit them most. Should I undertake a quest only for you, when what I would most covet at its end is forbidden me?” He paused, reflecting. “Magic belongs to everyone, Elven King, especially when it impacts all. A sharing of magic must begin somewhere. Let it begin here.”

Allardon Elessedil stared hard at him, but the Druid held his gaze and kept his expression neutral. The seconds dragged past with neither man speaking further, eyes locked.

“I cannot agree,” the Elven King repeated firmly.

Walker’s brow creased thoughtfully. “I will make a bargain with you,” he said. “A compromise of our positions. You will share fully in what I find, magic or no. But we shall make an agreement as to the nature of that sharing. That which you can use without my help, I will give to you freely. That which only I can use belongs to me.”

The King studied him. “The advantage is yours in this bargain. You are better able to command the use of magic than I or my people.”

“Magic that is Elven in nature will be readily understood by Elves and should belong to them. The Elfstones, for example, if found, belong to you. But magic that has another source, whatever its nature, cannot be claimed by Elves alone, especially if they cannot wield it.”

“There is no magic in the world except that which was handed down by the Elves out of the world of Faerie! You know that!”