Terry Brooks - Ilse Witch

He straightened himself, placing his hands carefully on his knees. “It wasn’t your father who brought you here all those years ago. It was Walker. He told me your father had died in an accident, leaving you alone, and he asked me to take you in. The fact is, I wasn’t close to Holm Rowe. I hadn’t seen him in more than ten years before you came to live with us. I didn’t know he had children. I didn’t even know he had a wife. I thought it very strange that your father would choose to send you to me, to live with my family, but Walker insisted that this was what he wanted. He convinced me that it was the right thing to do.”

He shook his head anew. “He can be very persuasive when he chooses. I asked him how your father had come to know him well enough to put you in his care. He said it wasn’t a matter of choice, that he was there when no one else was, and your father had to trust him.”

Bek put down the shirt he was holding. “Well, I know how persuasive he can be. I’ve seen it for myself. How did he talk you into agreeing with him on this present business?”

Coran Leah smiled. “He told me the same thing I assume he told you—that he needed you both, that people’s lives depended on it, that the future of the Four Lands required it. He said you were old enough to make the decision for yourselves, but that I must give you the freedom to do so. I didn’t like hearing that, but I recognized the truth in what he was saying. You are old enough, almost grown. Quentin is grown. I’ve kept you with me as long as I can.” He shrugged. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe people’s lives do depend on it. I guess I owe it to you both to let you find out.”

Bek nodded. “We’ll be careful,” he reassured him. “We’ll look after each other.”

“I know you will. I feel better with both of you going rather than only one. Liria doesn’t think you should go at all, either of you, but that’s because she’s a mother, and that’s how mothers think.”

“Do you think Quentin’s sword really does have magic? Do you think it can do what Walker says?”

Coran sighed. “I don’t know. Our family history says so. Walker seems certain of it.”

Bek sat down across from him on the edge of his bed. “I’m not sure we’re doing the right thing by going, and I realize we don’t know everything yet, maybe not even enough to appreciate the risk we’re taking. But I promise we won’t do anything foolish.”

Coran nodded. “Be careful of those kinds of promises, Bek. Sometimes they’re hard to keep.” He paused. “There’s one thing more I have to say. It has occurred to me before, but I’ve kept it to myself. I thought about it again yesterday, when Walker reappeared on my doorstep. Here it is. I have only the Druid’s word that Holm Rowe really was your father and that he sent you here to live with me. I tried to check on this later, but no one could tell me where or when Holm had died. No one could tell me anything about him.”

Bek stared at him in surprise. “Someone else might be my real father?”

Coran Leah fixed him with his steady gaze. “You are like one of my own sons, Bek. I love you as much as I love them. I have done the very best I could to raise you in the right way. Both Liria and I have. Now that you are about to leave, I want no secrets between us.”

He stood up. “I’ll let you get back to your packing.”

He started for the door, then changed his mind and came back across the room. He put his strong arms around Bek and hugged him tightly. “Be careful, son,” he whispered.

Then he was gone again, leaving Bek to conclude that there was as much uncertainty about his past as there was about his future.

It was raining again by the time Hunter Predd and Walker arrived aboard Obsidian at the seaport of March Brume, some distance north of Bracken Clell on the coast of the Blue Divide. They had flown into the rain just before sunset after traveling west all day from the Highlands of Leah, and it felt as if the dark and damp had descended as one. March Brume occupied a stretch of rocky beach along a cove warded by huge cliffs to the north and a broad salt marsh to the south. A stand of deep woods backed away from the village into a shallow valley behind, and it was just to the south of that valley, on a narrow plateau, that the Roc deposited her passengers so that they might take refuge for the night in an old trapper’s shack.

March Brume was a predominately Southland community, although a smattering of Elves and Dwarves had settled there, as well. For centuries, the seaport had been famous for the construction of her sailing ships, everything from one-man skiffs to single-masted sloops to three-masted frigates. Craftsmen from all over the Four Lands came to the little village to ply their trades and offer their services. There was never a shortage of need for designers or builders, and there was always a good living to be made. Virtually everyone who lived in the seaport was engaged in the same occupation.

Then, twenty-four years ago, a man named Ezael Sterret, a Rover of notorious reputation, a sometime pirate and brigand with a streak of inventive genius, had designed and built the first airship. It had been unwieldy, ungainly, and unreliable, but it had flown. Other efforts by other builders had followed, each increasingly more successful, and within two decades, travel had been revolutionized and the nature of shipbuilding in March Brume had been changed forever. Sailing ships were still built in the shipyards of the old seaport, but not in the same numbers as before. The majority of ships constructed now were for air travel, and the customers whose pockets were deepest and whose needs were greatest came from the Federation and Free-born army commands.

None of which had anything to do with Walker’s primary reason for choosing to come here rather than to one of a dozen other shipbuilding ports along the coast. What brought him to March Brume was the nature of the shipbuilders and designers who occupied the seaport—Rovers, a people universally disliked and distrusted, wanderers for the whole of their history, who even as mostly permanent residents still came and went from the seaport whenever the urge struck. Not only were they the most skilled and reliable of those engaged in shipbuilding and flying, but they accepted work from all quarters and they understood the importance of keeping a bargain and a confidence once engaged.

Walker was about to test the truth of this generally held belief. His instincts and his long association with Rovers persuaded him that it was his best option. His cousin, the Elven Queen Wren Elessedil, had been raised by Rovers as a child and taught the survival skills that had kept her alive when she had journeyed to the doomed island of Morrowindl to recover the lost Elven people. Rovers had aided various members of Walker’s family over the years, and he had found them tough, dependable, and resourceful. Like him, they were wanderers. Like him, they were outcasts and loners. Even living in settled communities, as many of them were doing now, they remained mostly isolated from other peoples.

This was fine with Walker. The less open and more secretive his dealings in this matter, the better. He did not think for a moment that he could keep secret for long either his presence or his purpose. The Ilse Witch would be seeking to discover both. Sooner or later, she would succeed.

Hunter Predd managed a fire in the crumbling hearth of the old trapper’s cabin, and they slept the night in mostly dry surroundings. At dawn, Walker gave the Wing Rider orders to replace their dwindling provisions and to wait for his return from the village. He might be gone for several days, he cautioned, so the Wing Rider shouldn’t be concerned if he did not reappear right away.