Winter Witch (16 page)

“Who are you to speak to us this way?” demanded Uwe.

“Me?” said Declan. He retrieved his sword and said, “I’m the one who isn’t going to leave his friend to be eaten by trolls.”

He turned on his heel and marched away, pausing only to scoop up his packs and sling them over his shoulders. He realized a moment later that he probably should have tethered the horse and pony to a tree, but he didn’t want to spoil his dramatic exit. If he lost his nerve before he reached the forest’s edge, he only hoped the Ulfen would be gone.

Behind him, the Ulfen returned to their own language, mostly in dismissive and mocking tones. Uwe yelled after him, “You will be in Szigo’s cauldron before we reach home!”

“I’ll say hello to your balls,” Declan shouted back. Despite his bravado, his shoulders slumped under the weight of his realization that he was on his own.

Skywing?
he thought. When he received no reply, he despaired that his last friend had abandoned him. Or perhaps the drake was still asleep. Maybe that was for the best. There was little or nothing the drake could do to protect him in a fight with trolls. If he were to have any hope of success, Declan would have to be cunning, like Ellasif. But despite his book-knowledge, he had to admit that he just wasn’t that clever. He was being a fool.

Jamang’s satchel rose off of his shoulder. He turned to see Olenka hefting it onto her own shoulder. She looked down at him and said, “You are a fool.”

Before Declan could respond to her apparent reading of his thoughts, he felt the weight of his own pack rise off the other side. There was Jadrek. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It means she likes you.”

The cheer of camaraderie was fleeting. The other Ulfen had chosen to return home, leaving them with only three against at least four trolls. The arithmetic of the situation gnawed at Delcan’s belly as they crept through the dark woods. When Jadrek put a heavy hand on his shoulder, they crouched and peered ahead. There was the dull light of a campfire in a clearing. Three trolls huddled around a cauldron upon the fire. The flames cast their enormous shadows upon the towering walls of a queer house formed of pine trunks.

“Let us hope Ellasif is in the house,” said Olenka, “and not in the pot.”

Jadrek turned toward her. Even though Declan could not discern his expression in the gloom, he could practically feel the admonishment radiating off his face.

“One for each of us,” said Jadrek. He thumbed the grip of his sword and murmured the name of Gorum, the Lord in Iron. As Olenka did the same, Declan sketched the wings of Desna over his heart, expecting his survival would depend more on the whims of Lady Luck than on his meager fighting ability. He supposed he should have prayed to Nethys, but the two-faced god of magic just didn’t give a damn.

The Ulfen warriors began to creep forward, but Declan hissed, “Wait. What’s the plan?”

Olenka said, “We break their skulls, you burn them.”

“That’s not a plan,” said Declan. “Your scout said there were four trolls, but I see only three. That means we need to lure the fourth one back to the others, so we aren’t surprised.”

“Good,” said Jadrek. “What else?”

“Well...” Declan hesitated. He hoped Jadrek already suspected he was a wizard, and more than that he hoped both of them understood there was a difference between a wizard and a witch. If they wanted an explanation of the difference, he realized he didn’t know where to begin. “While I am definitely not a jadwiga, I can cast a few spells.”

The others were silent, but Declan sensed that Jadrek was nodding, his suspicion confirmed.

“After our last fight, I prepared more fire, but not enough for four trolls,” he said. “Unless you two can gather them up for me.”

“Very well,” said Jadrek. “What’s the plan?”

Declan told them, and they considered the many ways it could all go wrong.

“You’ll need to run fast to get out of range,” said Declan.

“I know,” Jadrek said. “But as long as we get Ellasif out of there, I don’t care if you burn the forest down.”

Olenka sighed. Declan sympathized. She and Jadrek were taking most of the risk.

“Good plan,” Jadrek decided. He clapped Declan on the shoulder. It was a heavy blow, but not, Declan thought, outside the bounds of Ulfen affection. “We go now.”

Declan felt a moment of panic, and he almost called out for them to wait. But there was no point. He was as ready as he could be.

Olenka and Jadrek ran around either side of the clearing. They moved quickly, making just enough noise to be sure the trolls could hear them, but not so much that it was obvious they wanted to be heard. Declan kept his eyes on the clearing, where one of the trolls rose from its squat beside the cauldron and snuffled at the air. An anticipatory grin creased the creature’s bestial face. It nudged one of its fellows with its knuckles and grunted out a few words in their monstrous tongue. All three rose and turned to face the woods in three directions. Declan guessed the brutes had been hoping for a rescue attempt.

The fourth troll bellowed to the west of camp, the direction where Olenka had gone. The three trolls by the camp turned as one in that direction. In the same instant, Jadrek streaked across the clearing. He swung his hammer down to smash the thigh of the nearest troll. The beast wailed louder than a pack of wolves. Jadrek ran past, turning his body to sweep his warhammer in a horizontal arc. He struck the second troll with an audible crack to the spine. The beast opened its massive maw toward the sky, but no sound emerged. It clutched at the small of its back.

The third troll reached for Jadrek just as Olenka burst out of the forest. Behind her, the pines bent to either side as her massive pursuer shouldered them out of its way. Shadows flickered over the troll’s gray-green skin, giving it the appearance of a foul pond into which someone had cast a load of garbage. The troll’s claws, each big enough to grasp Declan around the waist, clutched for Olenka. For a second, Declan feared the troll would grasp the warrior’s long red braid and reel her in like a fish.

“Run,” Declan whispered. “Hurry up and run!”

Jadrek and Olenka ran into each other, shoulder to shoulder. They turned together, his hammer and her sword striking low. Jadrek smashed a foot, sending his troll into a spasm of barking and hopping. The point of Olenka’s blade swept up, trailing a crimson plume, but the troll’s claws slashed down across her jerkin, taking with it a thick swath of leather and a spray of blood. She cried out, a sound more angry than fearful, and spun away to flee beside Jadrek.

They ran five or six steps together, then Olenka stumbled. She stood to run almost instantly, but she was a few steps behind Jadrek and only a few steps ahead of the nearest two trolls.

Startled and confused, the other two trolls hesitated. Declan worried that Jadrek had injured them too badly for the ploy to work. The big warrior must have shared his fear. He taunted them with shouted insults and vulgar gestures. They came after him, but Declan feared they were still spread too far apart. His timing had to be perfect.

He cast the spell when Jadrek was about ten yards away. He estimated it would just miss Olenka, but as the spell slipped from his mind and took form in reality, one troll lunged forward and grasped the shield maiden by the ankle.

A chaotic network of silvery gossamer formed between the trees nearest the trolls. It glimmered for an instant, barely real, before clotting to form a dense, sticky barrier. The weight of the trolls stretched the webs and bowed the trees. Their roars blew like storms through the conjured barrier, but the webs held fast.

So did the grip of the troll holding Olenka’s leg.

Declan uttered a curse so vile he surprised even himself.

“Do it now!” Olenka shouted, kicking with her free foot. It was no use—the troll’s grip was far too strong to break. It dragged her into the webs, and she sat up to hack at its wrist.

“I can’t,” said Declan. He knew she would be caught in the blast.

“Do it,” demanded Jadrek, skidding to a stop beside him. He ran back toward Olenka, placing himself in the same deadly spot. “Hurry!”

“This is a bad idea,” muttered Declan, but the next words he uttered were those that evoked the most powerful spell he knew. He squeezed his hand tight and felt the prick of heat upon his palm. It was no use waiting—it had to be now. Declan cocked his arm and hurled a fiery orb no larger than a pebble toward the webbed trolls. As it flew toward them, it blossomed, expanding to engulf the entire mass of webs.

The explosion blew Declan’s hair back from his face. He felt the heat on his skin as he closed his eyes against the blinding flash. The plan had been to follow the first spell immediately with another, but he dared not hurl another fireball until he could see Jadrek and Olenka. He blinked and peered into the brief inferno.

It had vaporized the webs and blasted the bark from the trees. Flames danced up the pines to hiss in the oily fir needles. Pinecones popped and spun down from their bows, spreading the fire to the neighboring trees. Below them, silhouettes of the trolls capered in pain and terror. Two ran into each other, falling in a tangle of long limbs in their desperation to escape the flames. Another turned, blinded and amazed, just before emerging from the flames. The fourth ran howling toward the house of pines, jabbering for help from within.

Declan could not see the Ulfen. “Jadrek!” he shouted. “Olenka! Where are you?”

“Again!” shouted Jadrek. Declan saw him stumbling away from the blast, one arm under Olenka’s shoulder. Flames guttered in their hair and died in a nimbus along their arms and shoulders.

Declan threw another of the fireballs, enveloping the three panicked trolls and the surrounding trees. When the flash subsided, one of them was gone save for a pile of oily cinders. The other two monsters staggered out of the blast, flesh shriveled by the flames. They staggered toward the clearing, tall black skeletons, and fell burning to the ground.

Jadrek and Olenka stood beside him, both still patting out flames on their clothes or hair. Both had angry red burns on their arms and faces. Olenka favored one leg, but she stood without help. They looked past Declan at the surviving troll, his skin blistered and oozing from the fire. The monster beat upon the pine house and begged to be let inside.

Declan raised his hands to cast another spell, but Jadrek put a hand on his arm. “Save it for the warlock,” he said. He and Olenka charged the monster, their weapons raised high. The beast turned to face them, but its death was swift and bloody.

Jadrek dragged the carcass to the cooking fire and fueled the flames from a nearby stack of firewood. Olenka stripped off the rest of her armor to expose two long, deep claw marks running from just inside her left breast to the middle of her belly. Declan winced as he saw the extent of her wounds, but when he moved forward to offer his help, she waved him away.

The door
, sent Skywing. Declan felt that the drake was somewhere above him, but looking up revealed only the pine boughs encircling the weird tree house.

“Where?” he said aloud.

Right in front of you
, sent Skywing anxiously.
Hurry, getting away.

Declan had seen no opening on the pine house, only a long leather cord that might have been a bell pull. He tugged it and heard a clatter of bones or wood inside.

“Open up,” he shouted. “Let us in, or we’ll burn the place down.”

“Hurry,” called Ellasif from inside. Declan heard cackling laughter followed by a shriek of surprise and a few choice curses. Moments later, he felt a strange sensation as of a powerful spell being cast nearby.

He beat upon the walls, and then Jadrek was beside him.

“Stand back,” said the big warrior. He raised his warhammer, but stopped when they saw the trunks pull apart like the mouth of a drowning fish. The warlock Szigo crawled over the threshold, hugging himself with one arm as he dragged his body toward them.

Declan drew his sword and simultaneously began to trace a spell in the air, but he saw that the man was no longer a threat. He had painted the floor behind him with a wide swath of blood, and his guts spilled out over the arm he held to his belly.

Behind Szigo, the cluttered interior of the house appeared completely uninhabited.

“Where is she?” asked Declan. He punctuated his question by pointing the tip of his sword at the warlock’s eye.

Szigo giggled, a foam of blood oozing out from between his teeth as he grimaced in pain. “Gone,” he rasped. “Gone to Whitethrone. Gone to Baba Yaga’s kin, to be flayed and ground to powder in the Bone Mill.”

Chapter Thirteen

The Spring Palace

On that day long past—before Korvosa, before Declan Avari, before anything except a desperate need to rescue her sister—Ellasif had gasped for breath as the ice vanished from her face. White light dazzled her eyes, glinting at her from all directions. The air was so humid that she could barely breathe, and a powerful sense of vertigo shook her brain in all directions. In an instant she realized she was not suffocating but falling. She dropped into surprisingly warm water.

Her startled gasp took a mouthful of sulfuric water into her lungs. She sank fast, her woolen clothes sodden and heavy. She thrashed in panic and reached for a hold that was not there. Then her buttocks struck the flat bottom of the pool. She put her feet beneath her and stood up, choking and coughing up water.

She stood in a steaming oval pool. Once she had spit up enough water to breathe freely, she smelled flowers, their perfume strong enough to overcome even the stench of the mineral bath. To either side were thick green walls of foliage, at the base of which flowered strange blossoms. Their thick petals were lush as the flesh of a freshly scaled salmon, golden and pink and pale white with stamens of bright reds and yellows. Above them floated odd insects, similar to the butterflies that lived for a few brief days in late spring, but with too many wings. High above, the ceiling and walls were all of glistening glass.

No, she realized—not glass but ice. The sunlight warmed the panes enough to wet them, and Ellasif saw steady rivulets trickling from the highest reaches. Even as she followed their paths, one dropped upon her brow, cool as the spring thaw.

“Welcome to Whitethone,” said a voice that flowed like liquid silver.

Ellasif turned to see Mareshka reclining upon a chair carved of mammoth hide and ivory. The tusk of one such great beast curved up behind her to lend the seat the air of a throne, and the way the witch held her horned staff across her lap seemed to Ellasif the very image of a monarch. She guessed that was no coincidence.

From somewhere above them, a strange creature fluttered down and took up a perch between the horns of Mareshka’s staff. It looked like an emaciated version of the Korvosan necromancer’s imp, but rather than fire-blackened flesh, its skin was the translucent blue of deep river ice. The thing slowly waved the bony framework on its back, like a newly emerged butterfly drying its wings in the sun, and the webbing between the finger-like wing struts cracked and fell away with a tinkle, allowing it to fold them down against its body. Ellasif couldn’t stop herself from staring.

“My familiar,” said Mareshka. “I called it out of the rime beyond the world. It’s not a proper elemental, but it suits me better than a toad.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” Ellasif said, with as much acid as she could muster with her wet hair plastered to her neck. “Who are you, anyway? The queen of Irrisen?”

Mareshka’s mouth opened in a half-smile, but her eyes darted left and right at the servants who stood to either side of her chair. A man fanned Mareshka while a woman stood beside a sweating ice pitcher containing a beverage the color of ripe strawberries. Both servants wore simple garments of white and pastel blue. When Mareshka was assured that neither of them had blinked at Ellasif’s remark, she replied, “I take that as a compliment, but do not repeat such a thing, even in jest. Elvanna is our glorious queen, and I am but her loyal servant.”

“So it is for Queen Elvanna that you kidnapped my sister?”

“Kidnapped?” Mareshka sounded genuinely insulted. “You should thank me, both for her sake and for your own. My minion pulled her from the river and breathed life back into her frozen body. For that he deserves your thanks. He would have taken his reward himself had I not intervened. It has been many months since he last tasted the flesh of a warrior of White Rook.”

“Had you not interfered, I would have put an end to his ghoulish ways myself.”

“Do not underestimate Szigo,” said Mareshka. “He will not even lift a hand to defend himself in my presence, except by my command, but his powers are more than sufficient to prepare a little barbarian like you for the oven.”

“Where is my sister?”

Mareshka sighed. “Before we continue this conversation, would you mind climbing out of the spring and donning some dry clothing?” She waggled a finger at the male servant. He set aside his fan and fetched a stack of thick cotton towels and a robe from a table with legs formed of three human thigh-bones bound in copper wire.

Scowling and feeling more ridiculous than intimidated, Ellasif clambered out of the pool. She let the servant stand there while she stripped away her sodden clothes. She was secretly pleased to see a tic develop under his eye as she got down to her bare skin and plucked a towel from his arms. A bead of sweat dribbled down his cheek by the time she snatched the robe away and wrapped it around her body.

“That is much better,” said Mareshka. She nodded toward a chair the other servant had brought close to her own. “Now let us sit and enjoy a civilized discussion.”

Ellasif sat, ignoring the cold sorbet the servant proffered. “Where is Liv?”

“She is nearby,” said Mareshka. “I do not think she is quite ready to face the sister who allowed her own people to cast her into the river.”

“I didn’t allow it!”

“Yet you failed to prevent it,” Mareshka continued. “Whereas I, within moments of her arrival in Szigo’s grove, appeared to convey her out of that filthy den. Once she realized her new circumstances, Liv was overjoyed to find herself among people who appreciate her talents.”

“Her curse,” said Ellasif.

“Mm,” said Mareshka. “That is how primitive people interpret those gifts they do not understand. What they do not understand, they fear. And what they fear, as you know, they seek to destroy.”

“My people only defend ourselves against the monsters your people send to attack us.”

“Come now,” Mareshka said, “if your tribe would only submit to the rightful rule of Queen Elvanna, you could join us in civilized society.”

Ellasif was no sage, but she knew Mareshka was twisting history to her own ends. A thousand years ago, maybe two thousand, the lands now known as Irrisen belonged to the Linnorm Kings. Then the ancient crone Baba Yaga appeared as if from nowhere. Some claimed she flew down from the moon in an enormous mortar, while others said she was from another world entirely, like the elves. Wherever she came from, she brought an army with her, a vast horde of fey creatures led by norns and cold riders commanding snow goblins and ice trolls. Within a month, the territories of the Linnorm Kings—the mightiest warriors of Avistan—were cut in half. Baba Yaga installed one of her daughters as the queen of her new nation and departed the world. Once every century since then, the undying witch returned from whence she had come to claim the monarch and take her away, installing a new queen in her place.

Ever since the witch’s conquest, the lands of Irrisen had been locked in a perpetual winter. With no great harvests to feed its citizens, the nation’s population had withered, clustering around its few cities, including the capital of Whitethrone. Somehow the country survived, its human population forever augmented by monsters. They had some trade to the south, and the queens of Irrisen had come to an uneasy truce with the Mammoth Lords to the east.

They had never made peace with the Linnorm Kings. Irrisen constantly sent raiding parties to harry the nearest communities of the west. Those warriors they captured became slaves to the ones called jadwiga, the nobles of Irrisen, all descended of witches. The children they stole met a darker fate, although no two elders agreed exactly what that was. Some believed the witches raised them as their own, teaching them the arcane arts. Others feared the newborn souls were captured to give life to the dreadful dancing huts that stood vigil along the Linnorm Kingdoms’ border. For countless generations, White Rook had been one of many villages that repelled the attacks from Irrisen. Since Liv’s birth, however, Ellasif knew they had been attacked far more than any other border village.

“What you call civilization—” began Ellasif.

“Yes, yes,” said Mareshka. She tossed her drink carelessly toward the servant. The woman caught the glass, but the sorbet splashed upon her tunic, staining it red. Ignoring the mess she had made, Mareshka stood and beckoned to Ellasif. “Come with me. It is time you saw what civilization looks like.”

Ellasif stood. The witch clutched her arm, and Ellasif stiffened at her touch. Mareshka lifted her staff in her other hand and raised it above her head, sending the weird ice creature the witch had called her familiar scrambling to a new perch on the back of the throne. The two women began to rise off the floor.

Ten feet above the pool, Ellasif saw that the level on which she had arrived was one of many beneath a vast dome of ice. Including a central pool exuding a constant cloud of steam, there were six tiers of pools and streams, many filled with nobles and attended by servants. From these pools, the water flowed out through walls of clear ice into what appeared to be fields in an enormous, all-encompassing greenhouse, nourishing wide plots of grain and vegetables, as well as flowering fruit trees and berry bushes.

“You are fortunate to see the inside of the Spring Palace,” Mareshka noted. “Few but the nobility of Irrisen ever step into the Hidden Gardens, let alone the baths that form their steaming heart.” Ellasif didn’t bother dignifying this triviality with a reply.

They were still rising. Now the walls of the surrounding greenhouse structure were falling away, and they were left with nothing but an incredible dome of ice arcing up overhead. Through the transparent dome, Ellasif saw the blurred outlines of Whitethrone. She had never seen the capital of Irrisen before, but there was no other place it could be. Within a vast hexagonal enclosure stood hundreds, perhaps thousands, of buildings. There were buildings in all directions, their intricate designs lost in the refraction of the thick dome. Some were larger than fortresses, others barely larger than a house in White Rook, and between them the streets teemed with motion.

Most of the city was bone white, but here and there were spots of brilliant color, especially where the crowds moved. Ellasif saw domes and towers such as she had only heard described in bards’ songs, and she could not even begin to imagine what sorts of people had built them, much less what they did in such a fabulous place.

“Look,” said Mareshka, pointing to the south.

From a frozen harbor rose a colossal spire of ice. At the very top, hundreds of feet above, a glittering palace sparkled in the spring sunlight. Far below, the waters of the lake flowed, if only for a few hundred yards before the permanent winter froze them solid once more.

“This is civilization,” said Mareshka. “Taming a savage land to serve its people rather than allowing a harsh climate to reduce them to frightened, dangerous animals.”

Ellasif felt Mareshka was wrong, but the spectacle of Whitethrone had stolen her voice.

“This is home for those who would shape the world,” said Mareshka. “I can teach Liv to use the spirit within her to work great spells. She will be my apprentice. This is where she belongs.”

“No,” said Ellasif. “She belongs with me.”

Mareshka sighed and looked down. They floated sixty feet or more above the stone floor. Ellasif knew the witch could kill her simply by letting her fall. The faint smile upon the witch’s face told her Mareshka knew what she was thinking.

“Kill me, and Liv will know,” said Ellasif. “She will never forgive you for that.”

Mareshka’s smile widened. “I was right to deny Szigo his supper,” she said. “You are bold and resourceful, and I admire you very much. It is a pity you do not share your sister’s gift. Still, you could be of service to me.”

“I will never be your slave,” said Ellasif.

“That is not in question,” said Mareshka. “But perhaps we could make a bargain. There are others with gifts even more promising than your sister’s. Bring me one of them, and I shall let your sister go with you.”

“Where could I find such a person?”

Mareshka nodded as if they had struck a bargain.

“I will show you.”

It had seemed a simple bargain at the time—travel to Korvosa, locate a certain young wizard-turned-mapmaker who had recently come to Mareshka’s attention, and then bring him back to Whitethrone to take Liv’s place as Mareshka’s new apprentice. But it appeared now that all Ellasif’s efforts had only led her back into the clutches of the cannibal Szigo. When she heard the guttural voices of his trolls from outside the pine house, she knew she had little more time to live. Soon they would butcher her body and throw it piece by piece into their stewpot.

Or would they? She wondered why they had kept her captive so long. The way her stomach felt, she knew it had been at least a day since Szigo captured her during the attack on the caravan. If there were survivors ...

She hated to think that way. She was not like Declan’s fair maiden, waiting helplessly for someone else to come to her rescue. As for Jadrek and Olenka, she would almost rather end up in Szigo’s belly than be indebted to either of them for help. She could expect no help, and in truth she wanted none. She would find a way out of this charnel house, even if she were entirely alone.

But she wasn’t alone.

Less than ten feet away, Laughing Erik’s sword winked at her, or so it seemed as the candlelight flickered across the gold dragon on its crosspiece. While there was no denying the man himself had earned his legend, Erik’s sword was almost as much a hero as he. They said it sang to him in his sleep, and that he whispered his dreams of glory into the blade, that together they would turn them into reality upon a mound of enemy corpses. They said he could hurl the sword across a battlefield, and after it had cut the throats of his enemies it would fly back to his hand.

Come to me
, thought Ellasif.

The sword remained in the firm grip of the wooden fingers that grew out of the pine trunks.

“Come to me,” she said aloud. Still the blade did not move.