Ilse Witch

On the same night Allardon Elessedil awaited the arrival of his scribe to make a copy of the map delivered by Hunter Predd, the spy in the household of the Bracken Clell Healer received a response to the message he had dispatched to his Mistress two days earlier. It was not the kind of response he had anticipated.

She was waiting for him when he came to his rooms at nightfall, his day’s work finished, his mind on other things. Perhaps he was thinking of slipping out later to his cages to see if one of her winged couriers had arrived with a message. Perhaps he was thinking only of a hot meal and a warm bed. Whatever the case, he was not expecting to find her. Surprised and frightened by her appearance, he flinched and cried out when she detached herself from the shadows. She soothed him with a soft word, quieted him, and waited patiently for him to recover himself enough to acknowledge her properly.

“Mistress,” he whispered, dropping to one knee and bowing deeply. She was pleased to discover he had not forgotten his manners. Although she had not come to him in many years, he remembered his place.

She left him bowed and on his knee a moment longer, standing before him, her whisper of reassurance and subtle pressure soft and light upon the air. Gray robes cloaked her from head to foot, and a hood concealed her face. Her spy had never seen her in the light or caught even the barest glimpse of her features. She was an enigma, a shadow exuding presence rather than identity. She kept herself at one with the darkness, a creature to be felt rather than viewed, keeping watch even when not seen.

“Mistress, I have important information,” her spy murmured without looking up, waiting to be told he might rise.

The Ilse Witch left him where he was, considering. She knew more than he imagined, more than he could guess, for she possessed power that was beyond his understanding. From the message he had sent—his words, his handwriting, his scent upon the paper—she could measure the urgency he was feeling. From the way he presented himself now—his demeanor, his tone 1of voice, his carriage—she could decipher his need. It was her gift always to know more than those with whom she came in contact wished her to know. Her magic laid them bare and left them as transparent as still waters.

The Ilse Witch stretched out her robed arm. “Rise,” she commanded.

The spy did so, keeping his head lowered, his eyes cast down. “I did not think you would come …”

“For you, for information of such importance, I could do no less.” She shifted her stance and bent forward slightly. “Speak, now, of what you know.”

The spy shivered, excitement coursing through him, anxious to be of service. Within the shadows of her hood, she smiled.

“A Wing Rider rescued an Elf from the sea and brought him to the Healer who serves this community,” the spy advised, daring now to lift his eyes as far as the hem of her robes. “The man’s eyes and tongue were removed, and the Healer says he is half-mad. I don’t doubt it, from the look of him. The Healer cannot determine his identity, and the Wing Rider claims not to know it either, but he suspects something. And the Wing Rider took something from the man before bringing him here. I caught a glimpse of it—a bracelet that bears the crest of the Elessedils.”

The spy’s gaze lifted now to seek out her own. “The Wing Rider left for Arborlon two days ago. I heard him tell the Healer where he was going. He took the bracelet with him.”

She regarded him in silence for a moment, her cloaked form as still as the shadows it mirrored. A bracelet bearing the crest of the Elessedils, she mused. The Wing Rider would have taken it to Allardon Elessedil to identify. Whose bracelet was it? What did it mean that it was found on this castaway Elf who was blind and voiceless and believed mad?

The answers to her questions were locked inside the castaway’s head. He must be made to give them up.

“Where is the man now?” she asked.

The spy hunched forward eagerly, the fingers of his hands knotted together beneath his chin as if in prayer. “He lies in the Healer’s infirmary, cared for but kept isolated until the Wing Rider’s return. No one is allowed to speak with him.” He snorted softly. “As if anyone could. He has no tongue with which to answer, has he?”