Ilse Witch

He opened his eyes finally, satisfied. Magic’s use could never be disguised entirely from those who knew how to look for it. A residue always remained to testify.

He went back out into the main room, where Hunter Predd and Dorne were visiting. Both looked up quickly at his appearance. “Can you take me to the cold house?” he asked the Healer. “I need to see the castaway’s body.”

The Healer said he could, although he informed the Druid that the cold house was some distance away from the healing center. “It’s not much of a night to be out in the weather,” he said.

“I’ll go alone,” Walker advised. “Just show me the way.”

The Druid wrapped himself in his damp cloak and went out the front door. Following the Healer’s instructions, he worked his way around the house, first along the porch and under the veranda, then under the eaves along one side, and slipped through the shadows in the rain. The forest began twenty yards from the back of the center, and the cold house was a hundred more beyond. Cowled head dipped against the rainfall and low-hanging branches, Walker made his way down a footpath widened from usage by the Healer and his attendants. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and whistling fiercely, a wind off the ocean blew steadily thr1ough the sodden limbs.

At the end of the footpath, the cold-house door opened into an embankment buttressed by huge boulders and covered thickly with sod and plants. Runoff cascaded down a sluice to one side and disappeared into a stream. The handle on the door was slippery and cold beneath the Druida? fingers, and it took him a moment to release the catch.

Inside, the sounds of the storm faded into silence. There were torches set in brackets on the wall, and tinder with which to light them. Walker lit one in its bracket, then lit a second to carry. He looked around. The room was large and square and laid floor to ceiling with slabs of rock. Niches in the wall contained wooden sleds for the bodies, and runnels chiseled in the stone floor carried away excess moisture and body fluids. A metal-sheathed wood table sat in the center of the room, empty now, but used by the Healer for his examination of the dead. In the deep shadows, glinting like predatorsa?eyes, sharp instruments hung from pegs on the wall.

The room smelled of blood and death, and the Druid moved quickly to do what was needed and get out of there. The castaway was in the lower niche to the far left of the entry, and Walker slid the body free of its casing and turned down the covering sheet. The mana? face was bloodless and white in the torchlight, his body rigid and his skin waxy. Walker looked upon him without recognition. If he had been Kael Elessedil, he no longer looked so.

a?ho were you?a?Walker whispered to the dead man.

He jammed the torch he was carrying into the nearest wall bracket. Carefully, he placed his fingertips on the mana? chest, moving them slowly down his torso and then up again to his shoulders. He felt along the mana? throat and skull, probing gently, carefully. All around the mana? face he worked his fingers, searching.

a?ell me something,a?he whispered.

Outside, a burst of thunder shook the earth, but the Druid did not look up from his work. He placed his fingers against the dead mana? ruined eyes, the unsupported lids giving beneath his touch, then probed slowly down to his nose and cheeks.

When he reached the mana? bloodless lips, he jerked away as if stung. Here, he mused silently, this was where the mana? life had been taken from him! The magic lingered still, and even two days later it was potent enough to burn. He brushed the lips quickly, testing. No force had been used. Death had come gently, but with a swift and certain rendering.

Walker stepped away. He knew the mana? identity now, knew it with certainty. What fragments remained of the magic used against him confirmed that he was Kael Elessedil.

Questions flooded Walkera? mind. Had the dead mana? killer probed his memory before giving him over to his death? He had to believe so. The killer would have looked there for what Walker had found in the map. A dark certainty began to grow in the turmoil of the Druida? thinking. Only one person had the ability to do that. His enemy was one to whom he felt no hostility himself, but for whom he was anathema. He had feared for a long time that one day there must be a resolution of their antagonism, but he would have preferred that it wait awhile longer.