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 Ilse Witch (Book Excerpt)
by Terry Brooks
Buy from Amazon.comPage 3 of 4
Speak to me. Live again through me. Give me everything you hide, and I
will give you peace.
He did so, and the images were brightly colored and stunning. There was an
ocean, vast and blue and uncharted. There were islands, one after the other,
some green and lush, some barren and rocky, each of a different feel, each
hiding something monstrous. There were frantic, desperate battles in which
weapons clashed and men died. There were feelings of such intensity, such raw
power, that they eclipsed the events that triggered them and revealed the scars
they had left on their bearer.
Finally, there were pillars of ice that reached to the misted, cool skies,
their massive forms shifting and grinding like giant's teeth as a thin beam of
blue fire born of Elfstone magic shone through to something that lay beyond.
There was a city, all in ruins, ancient and alive with monstrous protectors.
And there was a keep, buried in the earth, warded by smooth metal and bright
red eyes, containing magic...
The Ilse Witch gasped in spite of herself as the last image registered, an
image of the magic the castaway had found within the buried keep. It was a
magic of spells invoked by words--but so many! The number seemed endless,
stretching away into shadows from soft pools of light, their power poised to
rise into the air in a canopy so vast it might cover the whole of the earth!
The castaway was writhing beneath her, and the hold she kept on him slipped
away momentarily as she lost focus. She brought her song to bear again,
layering it over him, embedding herself more deeply within his mind to keep him
under control.
Who are you? Speak your name!
His body lurched and the sounds he made were terrifying.
Tell me!
He answered her, and when he did, she understood at once the importance of the
bracelet.
What else were you carrying? What else, that speaks to this?
He fought her, not realizing what it was he was fighting, only knowing that he
must. She sensed it was not entirely his idea to fight her, that either
someone had implanted within his mind the need to do so or something had
happened to persuade him it was necessary. But she was strong and certain in
her magic, and he lacked the defenses necessary to resist her.
A map, she saw. Drawn on an old skin, inked in his own hand. A map, she
surmised at once, that was no longer his but was on its way to Arborlon and the
Elven King.
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 where 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, and 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, 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
already 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.
Copyright © 2000 by Terry Brooks, all rights reserved. This information came directly from the official website of Terry Brooks at http://www.terrybrooks.net and is printed with their permission.
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