Terry Brooks: Ilse Witch

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?”

She gestured him away and to the side, and he moved as if a puppet in response. “Wait here for me,” she said. “Wait, until I return.”

She went out the door into the night, a spectral figure sliding effortlessly and soundlessly through the shadows. The Ilse Witch liked the darkness, found comfort in it she could never find in daylight. The darkness soothed and shaded, softening edges and points, reducing clarity. Vision lost importance because the eyes could be deceived. A shift of movement here changed the look of something there. What was certain in the light became suspect in the dark. It mirrored her life, a collage of images and voices, of memories that had shaped her growing, not all fitting tightly in sequence, not all linked together in ways that made sense. Like the shadows with which she so closely identified, her life was a patchwork of frayed ends and loose threads that invited refitting and mending. Her past was not carved of stone, but drawn on water. Reinvent yourself, she had been told by the Morgawr a long time ago. Reinvent yourself, and you will become more inscrutable to those who might try to unravel who you really are.

In the night, in darkness and shadows, she could do so more easily. She could keep what she looked like to herself and conceal who she really was. She could let them imagine her, and by doing so keep them forever deceived.

She moved through the village without challenge, encountering almost no one, those few she did unaware of her presence as they passed. It was late, the village mostly asleep, the ones who preferred the night busy in the ale houses and pleasure dens, caught up in their own wants and needs, uncaring of what transpired without. She could forgive them their weaknesses, these men and women, but she could never accept them as equals. Long since, she had abandoned any pretense that she believed their common origins linked them in any meaningful way. She was a creature of fire and iron. She was born to magic and power. It was her destiny to shape and alter the lives of others and never to be altered by them. It was her passion to rise above the fate that others had cast for her as a child and to visit revenge on them for daring to do so. She would be so much more than they, and they would be forever less.

When she let them speak her name again, when she chose to speak it herself, it would be remembered. It would not be buried in the ashes of her childhood, as it had once been. It would not be cast aside, a fragment of her lost past. It would soar with a hawk’s smooth glide and shine with the milky brightness of the moon. It would linger on the minds of the people of her world forever.

The Healer’s house lay ahead, close by the trees of the surrounding forest. She had flown in from the Wilderun late that afternoon, come out of her safehold in response to the spy’s message, sensing its importance, wanting to discover for herself what secrets it held. She had left her War Shrike in the old growth below the bluffs, its fierce head hooded and its taloned feet hobbled. It would bolt otherwise, so wild that even her magic could not hold it when she was absent. But as a fighting bird, it was without equal. Even the giant Rocs were wary of it, for the Shrike fought to the death with little thought to protecting itself. No one would see it, for she had cast a spell of forbidding about it to keep the unwanted away. By sunrise, she would have returned. By sunrise, she would be gone again, even given the dictates of what she must do now.

She slipped through the door of the Healer’s home on cat’s paws, moving through the central rooms to the sick bays, humming softly as she passed the attendants on duty, turning their minds inward and eyes elsewhere as she passed so they would not see her. The ones who kept watch outside the castaway’s curtained entry, she put to sleep. They sank into their chairs and leaned against walls and tables, eyes going closed, breathing slowing and deepening. It was quiet and peaceful in the Healer’s home, and her song fit snugly into place. She layered the air with her music, a tender blanket tucking in around the cautions and uneasiness that might otherwise have been triggered. Soon, she was all alone and free to work.

In his bay, with a light covering over his feverish body and the window curtains drawn close to keep out the light, the castaway lay dozing on the pallet that had been provided for him. His skin was blistered and raw, and the mending salve the Healer had applied glistened in a damp sheen. His body was wasted from lack of nourishment, his heart beat weakly in his chest, and his bruised and ravaged face was skeletal, the eyelids sunken in where the eyes themselves had been gouged out, the mouth a scarred red wound behind cracked lips.

The Ilse Witch studied him carefully for a time, letting her eyes tell her as much as they could, noting the man’s distinctly Elven features, the graying hair that marked him as no longer young, and the rigid crook of fingers and neck that screamed silently of tortures endured. She did not like the feel of the man; he had been made to suffer purposely and used for things she did not care to guess at. She did not like the scent he gave off or the small sounds he made. He was living in another place and time, unable to forget what he had suffered, and it was not pleasant.

When she touched him, ever so softly on his chest with her slim, cool fingers, he convulsed as if struck. Quickly, she employed her magic, singing softly to calm him, lending peace and reassurance. The arched back relaxed slowly, and the clawed fingers released their death grip on the bed covering. A sigh escaped the cracked lips. Relief in any form was welcome to this one, she thought, continuing to sing, to work her way past his defenses and into his mind.

When he was at rest again, given over to her ministrations and become her dependent, she placed her hands upon his fevered body so that she might draw from him his thoughts and feelings. She must unlock what lay hidden in his mind—his experiences, his travails, his secrets. She must do so through his senses, but primarily through his voice. He could no longer speak as ordinary men, but he could still communicate. It required only that she find a way to make him want to do so.

In the end, it was not all that hard. She bound him to her through her singing, probing gently as she did so, and he began to make what small and unintelligible sounds he could. She drew him out one grunt, one murmur, one gasp at a time. From each sound, she gained an image of what he knew, stored it away, and made it her own. The sounds were inhuman and rife with pain, but she absorbed them without flinching, bathing him in a wash of compassion, of reassurance and pity, of gentleness and the promise of healing.

Speak to me. Live again through me. Give me everything you hide, and I will give you peace .

He did so, and the images were brightly colored and stunning. There was an ocean, vast and blue and uncharted. There were islands, one after the other, some green and lush, some barren and rocky, each of a different feel, each hiding something monstrous. There were frantic, desperate battles in which weapons clashed and men died. There were feelings of such intensity, such raw power, that they eclipsed the events that triggered them and revealed the scars they had left on their bearer.