Terry Brooks - Witch Wraith

If nothing else, her words impressed on him anew that a large part of what he was struggling so hard to accomplish was not only to get Redden back from the Straken Lord but also to find a way to keep them all safe. He was the one who wielded the wishsong’s magic. He was the one who carried the ring bestowed by the King of the Silver River. He was the one on whose shoulders rested the responsibility for keeping them alive.

And as Mirai had pointed out, he was the only one the Ilse Witch might heed.

The Witch had come with him, after all. Though she hated and despised what he had done to her, she had come nevertheless. She was a creature of pure malice, and she was eager to seek out and destroy any enemy, but particularly the Straken Lord if for no better reason than to eradicate the last traces of what he had done to her. Find the Straken Lord. Engage him in battle. Destroy him and reap both relief and satisfaction.

There was no consideration for Redden’s fate, no interest in it at all. Saving him would be nothing more than a by-product of her efforts to get at Tael Riverine. Railing had tried several times to explain why she should feel otherwise, but the Ilse Witch cared nothing for the brothers and their suffering. The Ilse Witch spared not a single thought for the lives of mortal creatures, no matter their claims of family history shared with her. All of that was dead and gone to her. All of that belonged to someone else.

He climbed to his feet and, without pausing to think further on it, walked forward toward the bow where the Witch sat huddled in her gray robes in the pouring rain. She did not look up as he approached or glance back when he slowed, hesitant to come any closer without acknowledgment.

But then her hand lifted, and she beckoned to him, sensing his presence.

Unable to do anything else without appearing as frightened as he felt, he moved forward and sat down beside her.

“Don’t get too close to me,” she said out of the shadow of her cowl. “You don’t want to breathe the air I exhale.”

He looked down at his hands, rain dripping off them. “Are you alive now? Are you a living creature?”

Her laugh was harsh and bitter. “A fair question. I have asked it of myself. Am I? I breathe air. I move about. Is that enough?”

“You have thoughts and the ability to reason? You can see the truth of things when others speak to you?”

She turned her head slightly, part of her ruined face peering at him from out of the shadows. “My thoughts and my reasoning and my truths would burn the skin from your body should you study them too closely, Valeboy. They would burn you like acid.”

He was silent for a long time. “I am sorry I had to bring you back,” he said finally. “I did not know it would be this way.”

“Yet here I am.”

“My brother, your great-nephew, your own flesh and blood, is in the hands of the Straken Lord and will die if I do not free him. I did what I had to.”

Her hands, gray and gnarled, clenched before her like great claws. “Even though, by freeing him, you doom me?”

“I didn’t know that would happen.”

“But you suspected. Do not deny it. You were warned. The King of the Silver River. The Grimpond. I heard them speak. Their words were carried to me by the wind, and their warnings were clear enough. I would not come back as I was, they said. You ignored those warnings. Self-indulgent, heedless, prideful boy, you ignored what you were told would happen.”

Railing felt shame and anger burning in his chest. “I would do anything to save my brother. Even give up my own life.”

The clenched hands disappeared back inside the sleeves of the gray cloak. “You may get your chance to test that boast, for I care nothing for you or your brother. That is the stark truth of things. You brought me back to serve your own purposes, but I have no interest in them. I have my own purpose to serve. I have my own path to follow. Do you know what it is?”

He shook his head, words failing him.

“I am the Ilse Witch reborn. I must sate my rage and satisfy my bloodlust. I must rid myself of the memories of what I was as Mother Tanequil’s child, an aeriad, a spirit of the air. All that is lost to me. I was at peace and free, and you took that from me. I had a life of tranquility and purpose, and you stole it. You took what I was and you gave me back what I now am. I can feel myself continue to change, to adapt. Do you know what that means?”

“That you can never go back? That you are fated to remain as you are?”

She was silent then for a long time without answering. Then he heard her sigh. “I found my way to what would comfort me when I became Mother Tanequil’s creature. I left behind my human self with all its history of madness and violence and hatred. I shed my body and earthly connection and became a creature of the air, a spirit with no past and only a present. I found friendship and love and contentment in my sisters and in my freedom.” She glared out at him from within her cowl’s shadows. “And, no, I can never go back. And yes, I must remain as I am.”

He stared out into the rain, feeling empty and despairing. “When this is over, I will go with you to speak to the tanequil and ask that she reconsider your dismissal. I will help you become again what you were before. I will admit what’s happened is entirely my fault, and I was foolish to disrupt things. I will offer myself in your place, if it will help.”

She emitted a long peal of ragged laughter that ripped through the winds and rain. “Oh, you foolish boy! She knows all this, and she has made her choice, and there can never be a reckoning that would give me back what I lost.”

One clawed hand reached out and seized his arm in a grip of iron. “Do you not yet see? I am beyond all that! I do not seek to go back to what I was no matter what happens. I feel that slip away with every passing second, and soon it will be gone entirely. I want something else, something much more satisfying.”

“But maybe I can …”

“You don’t understand,” she snapped, yanking him closer. “You don’t begin to understand. What has been done cannot be undone. You’ve brought me back as something other than I was because that was what Mother Taneqil saw that you needed. But there was no provision made for me. There was no consideration given to how I would endure and adapt to this thing I now am.”

She turned full on him, and he saw the red fire in her eyes and felt the burning hate of her glare. “Now I am evolving still, and there is only one direction I can go—into such madness that there is no way back. Into an insanity that will make me much worse than the thing you have brought me to destroy. Oh, I will do what you wish, Valeboy. I will find the Straken Lord and do battle with him. I will see him vanquished. But what will happen then, do you think? What end will you have achieved?”

“My brother will …”

Her hiss cut him short and left him cringing from her. “Your brother? Your brother is nothing to me. Look beyond his worthless life and your own, as well. Look to the wider world and the future and then ask yourself again. What will you have achieved?”

Railing started to speak and then found he could not. The words were so terrible he could not speak them.

The Ilse Witch grinned, her teeth sharp and her face taut. “You know now, don’t you? You see it clearly.”

He couldn’t help himself. He did see it.

“Ponder it, then. Consider it. Mull your choices and prepare yourself for what waits. In this new world of yours, young Ohmsford-who-would-save-them-all, what fate will you embrace?”

Ah, shades! He howled it in the silence of his mind. “There must be another way!”

“There might have been once, but you did not choose it. You chose this way, and now you must follow its thread to wherever it leads.” She turned away from him, disappearing back into the shadows of her cowl. “Now get away from me and stay away.”