Terry Brooks - Ilse Witch

Walker nodded. “All night before flying here yesterday.”

“Is it genuine?” Allardon Elessedil asked.

“That’s difficult to say. It depends on what you mean. If you are asking me whether it might tell us what happened to your brother, the answer is yes. It might be a map of the voyage on which he disappeared. His name appears nowhere in the writings, but the condition and nature of the hide and ink suggest it was drawn within the last thirty years, so that it might have been his work. Is the handwriting his?”

The Elven King shook his head. “I can’t tell.”

“The language is archaic, a language not used since the Great Wars changed the Old World forever. Would your brother have learned that language?”

The other man considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. How much of what it says were you able to decipher?”

Walker shifted within his dark robes, looking out again toward the Carolan. “Can we walk a bit? I am cramped and sore from yesterday’s journey, and I think it would help to stretch my legs.”

He began moving slowly down the pathway, and the Elf King fell into step beside him wordlessly. They walked in silence through the gardens for a time, the Druid content to let matters stay as they were until he was ready to speak to them. Let Allardon Elessedil wait as he had waited. He turned his attention to other things, observing the way in which the gardens’ plantings flowed into one another with intricate symmetry, listening to the soft warble of the resident birds, and gazing up at the clouds that drifted like silk throws across the clear blue of the spring sky. Life in balance. Everything as it should be.

Walker glanced over. “The guard you assigned to watch me appears to have lost interest in the job.”

The Elven King smiled reassuringly. “He wasn’t there to watch you. He was there to let me know when you awoke so that we could have this talk.”

“Ah. You sought privacy in our dealings. Because your own guards are absent, as well. We are all alone.” He paused. “Do you feel safe with me, then?”

The other’s smile was uneasy. “No one would dare to attack me while I was with you.”

“You have more faith in me than I deserve.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, if you consider that I wasn’t referring to an attack that might come from a third party.”

The conversation was clearly making the King uncomfortable. Good, Walker thought. I want you to remember how you left things between us. I want you to wonder if I might be a greater threat to you than the enemies you more readily fear.

They emerged from the gardens onto the Carolan, the sunlight illuminating the green expanse of the heights in bright trailers that spilled over into the forests below. Walker led the way to a bench placed under an aging maple whose boughs canopied out in a vast umbrella. They sat together, Druid and King, looking out over the heights to the purple and gold mix of shadow and light that colored the horizon west.

“I have no reason to want to help you, Allardon Elessedil,” Walker said after a moment.

The Elven King nodded. “Perhaps you have better reason than you think. I am not the man I was when last we spoke. I regret deeply how that meeting ended.”

“Your regret can be no greater than my own,” Walker replied darkly, keeping his gaze averted, staring off into the distance.

“We can dwell on the regret and the loss or turn our attention to what we might accomplish if we relegate both to the past.” The Elven King’s voice was tight and worried, but there was a hint of determination behind it, as well. “I would like to make a new beginning.”

Now Walker looked at him. “What do you propose?”

“A chance for you to build the Druid Council you desire, to begin the work you have sought to do for so long, with my support and blessing.”

“Money and men would count for more than your support and blessing,” the Druid remarked dryly.

The Elven King’s face went taut. “You shall have both. You shall have whatever you need if you are able to give me what I need in return. Now tell me of the map. Were you able to decipher its writings?”

Walker took a long moment to consider his answer before he spoke. “Enough so that I can tell you that they purport to show the way to the treasure of which your mother’s seer dreamed thirty years ago. As I said, the writing is archaic and obscure. Some symbols suggest more than one thing. But there are names and courses and descriptions of sufficient clarity to reveal the nature of the map. Travel west off the coast of the Blue Divide to three islands, each a bit farther than the one before. Each hides a key that, when all are used together, will unlock a door. The door leads to an underground keep that lies beneath the ruins of a city called Castledown. The ruins can be found on a mountainous spit of land far west and north of here called Ice Henge. Within the ruins lies a treasure of life-altering power. It is a magic of words, a magic that has survived the destruction of the Old World and the Great Wars by being kept hidden in its safehold. The magic’s origins are obscure, but the map’s writings say it surpasses all others.”

He paused. “Because it was found on the blind and voiceless Elven castaway together with your brother’s bracelet, I would be inclined to believe that if followed, it would reveal your brother’s fate and perhaps the nature of the magic it conceals.”

He waited, letting the King collect his thoughts. On the heights, the Elves were beginning to appear in clusters for the start of the workday. Guards were exchanging shifts. Tradesmen and trappers were arriving from the west, crossing the Rill Song on ferries and rafts bearing wagons and carts laden with goods, then climbing the ramps of the Elfitch. Gardeners were at work in the Gardens of Life, weeding and pruning, planting and fertilizing. Here and there, a white-robed Chosen wandered into view. Children played as teachers led them to their study areas for lessons on becoming Healers in the Four Lands.

“So you support a quest of the sort my brother undertook all those years ago?” the King asked finally.

Walker smiled faintly. “As do you, or you would not have asked me to come here.”

Allardon Elessedil nodded slowly. “If we are to learn the truth, we must follow the route the map chronicles and see where it leads. I will never know what happened to Kael otherwise. I will never know what became of the Elfstones he carried. Their loss is perhaps the more significant of the two. This is not easy to admit, but I can’t pretend otherwise. The stones are an Elven heritage, passed down from Queen Wren, and the last of their kind. We are a lesser people without them, and I want them back.”

Walker’s dark face was inscrutable. “Who will lead this expedition, Allardon?”

There was no hesitation in his answer. “You will. If you agree to. I am too old. I can admit it to you if to no one else. My children are too young and inexperienced. Even Kylen. He is strong and fierce, but he is not seasoned enough to lead an expedition of this sort. My brother carried the Elfstones, and even that was not enough to save him. Perhaps a Druid’s powers will prove more formidable.”

“And if I agree to do this, you give me your word that the Elves will support an independent Druid Council, free to study, explore, and develop all forms of magic?”

“I do.”

“A Druid Council that will answer to no one nation or people or ruler, but only to its own conscience and the dictates of the order?”

“Yes.”

“A Druid Council that will share its findings equally with all people, when and if those findings can be implemented peacefully and for the betterment of all races?”