Terry Brooks - Witch Wraith

Railing had been afraid she was going to kill one of them. She’d made it plain enough she wasn’t above doing so.

“Who’s to say you won’t get what you want in the end?” The Troll was still watching him. “You’ve done what you intended. You’ve brought her back, and she’s every bit as dangerous as she needs to be for what’s required of her. What use would she be in helping your brother if she were kind and sweet and loving? You need her like this. Maybe the tree knew, and that’s why it gave her back to you this way.”

Maybe, Railing agreed silently. This thing, this wraith he had brought out of the past—how else to describe what had happened?—was not Grianne Ohmsford as she was when captured by the Straken Lord and nearly destroyed. This was Grianne Ohmsford as she had been while still under the influence of the Morgawr, controlled and manipulated by a being every bit as evil as Tael Riverine. The Ilse Witch—this was what she had been and how so many still remembered her.

This was who he was bearing back aboard Quickening to try to save his brother.

“If I thought destroying the Straken Lord would save Redden, I would feel a little better about all this,” he said to Challa Nand. He exhaled sharply. “But there’s no reason to believe for a moment that, even if she succeeds in killing Tael Riverine, she will help my brother. She would just as soon kill him, too. She doesn’t care. It doesn’t care. Not a monster like that!”

Woostra seized his arm. “You need to remember something. You took her away from the life she had chosen for herself. You are responsible for her being returned to us the way she is. So what are you going to do about it? Stand around feeling sorry for yourself or find a way to get her to do what’s needed? Remember her history. She was a child deceived into believing the lies that drove her into becoming the Ilse Witch. She was feared and hated all her life by many, and nothing she did was ever enough to change that.” The narrow face pushed close. “Don’t call her a monster. If you think of her in those terms, you surrender yourself to your own worst fears. Remember her for what she was as the Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order. Remember why you came to find her in the first place. Don’t give up on hoping she can still help us.”

Railing stared at him in surprise, impressed by both his words and his passion. It was an intense, fervent plea.

But he was not convinced. “I don’t think she can do anything to help us. I don’t think she can do anything but lead us to ruin.”

In the pilot box directly behind them, Mirai caught snippets of this last exchange. She turned to Austrum, signaling her readiness to be relieved. As soon as his hands were on the controls, she left her station and went down on the deck to where Railing was sitting with Woostra and Challa Nand. She nodded in greeting to both, then reached down for Railing’s hand and pulled him to his feet.

“Come over here.”

She pulled him across the deck through a fresh onslaught of hail and wind and plopped him down in the lee of the mainmast. Then, heedless of those watching, she put her arms around him and kissed him.

“Just so you know who loves you,” she said.

“I know who loves me,” he replied.

“Good. Now don’t say anything more. Just sit with me.”

He did as she asked, although his unhappiness with himself remained undiminished, radiating off him like heat off coals. She let that be, waiting him out. She knew him well enough to appreciate that patience was important, that with Railing you had to allow his emotions to settle before you tried to use reason. He was hotheaded and impetuous, an impulsive risk taker, but strong in ways that others weren’t, the kind of friend that would give his life for you. She had known both brothers all her life, but her feelings for them had taken markedly different directions. Even though they might be mirror images of each other, they were very different people, and what she felt for Redden was different from what she felt for Railing. For the former, the fire was sweet and comfortable. For the latter, it was hot and compelling. She could admit it to herself now, if not before. Before, such an admission would have risked disrupting the relationship the three of them shared; choosing one over the other would have caused a schism that they might not have been able to bridge.

But she had known from the first that it must happen one day. She had always thought she would choose Railing when the time came. It was not until Redden was lost to them both and Railing was in danger of becoming lost, as well—albeit in a different way—that she decided to act. Revealing how she felt in such a dramatic, explosive way was impulsive and perhaps even foolish; she had not thought it through beforehand, and could not at all be certain of the consequences. But it didn’t matter. She needed him to be the way he had always been, not the way he had become since losing his brother. All of them did. He was the one—possibly the only one—who could save them.

So she had mocked him. She had lied to him about his brother and herself. She had spurred him to do something she had hoped he wanted to do even without realizing it. She had brought him back to himself by bringing him first to her.

But she could tell the worst wasn’t over. He had stopped at the edge of the cliff and stepped back, but now he was in danger of stepping forward again, of giving way to the despair he felt because of what Grianne Ohmsford had become.

She couldn’t permit that, couldn’t accept it, and refused to stand for it.

“Listen to me,” she said when sufficient time had passed. “You can’t blame yourself for what’s happened. There’s no reason for it. We all agreed that seeking Grianne Ohmsford so she could come back and stand against the Straken Lord was the right thing to do. All of us agreed, Railing. You didn’t force us. Yes, you kept things from us you shouldn’t have, but we all suspected this. You realize that, don’t you? We knew. We even talked about it. But that didn’t prevent us from sticking by you. Because you were the one who could make a difference. Even without knowing how, we sensed it.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes locked on hers. “But it might be a difference that will get us all killed. She’s capable of that, you know. She’s so deeply caught up in what’s been done to her—what I’ve done to her—that she could turn on us in a second.”

“I know that. The others know it, too. But we accepted that risk from the first. No one knew what she would be like if she came back. Not after a hundred years of being wedded to that tree—as an aeriad, as whatever she was or is. We took the risk that she could do what was needed. And she can, Railing. She can! She can destroy the Straken Lord.”

“We think she can, but we don’t know. We don’t even know if she will try. It doesn’t matter what she tells us. Look at her. She’s not even human anymore.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him so close that his face was almost touching hers. She could see the rain running down his forehead and cheeks. She could see the blush from the cold reddening his skin.

“Whatever she is, you have to find a way to make her do what is needed. No one else can do it but you. No one else can even get close to her. She may hate you, but she talks to you and she watches you. Have you seen how she looks at you? There’s something there, Railing.”

He stared at her, voiceless, lost.

She released him and stood up. “I have to steer the ship so it won’t crash and burn. Maybe you should do what you have to do, too.”

Then she turned and walked away and did not look back.

Railing sat where he was for a while, thinking through what Mirai had said to him, his mood alternating between acceptance and rejection. He could see what she was attempting to do, how she was reminding him none too subtly that he was the one who had to find a way to make sure Grianne Ohmsford did what they all knew was needed. It didn’t matter how he felt about her now that he had brought her back. It didn’t even matter if he felt guilty about it. The Ilse Witch was here and she wasn’t going away. What he couldn’t do—what she was telling him she wouldn’t let him do—was to throw up his hands and retreat into the mire of his despair over what he had wrought.