Winter Witch

by Elaine Cunningham

  Ellasif listened as her visitor descended the stairs. When she judged that Olenka was well away, she opened the latch on the bedchamber window and slipped out into the night.

  After the first day spent stalking her quarry through Korvosa, Ellasif had learned that the quickest way across the city could be found on its rooftops. More than a series of paths over connected buildings, the Shingles were a district unto themselves. Many Korvosans, not just the indigents who slept in ever-moving shantytowns, took to the rooftops. Business of all sorts could be conducted there, high above the patrolled streets. It was not the safest path through the city, but Ellasif had earned a certain reputation in her short stay, and no one bothered her as she headed back toward the Heights of Korvosa.

  She had to act quickly. A wizard was what she needed, and she had a good idea where to find one that might suit her purpose.

  The moon rode high in the sky by the time Ellasif stood in the street behind the astronomer’s manor. She hugged the garden wall, watching from the shadows as a dark-haired young man not much taller than she busied himself with chalk and candles and small fetish objects that appeared to have been harvested from a butcher’s garbage bin. He started to walk around the circle he’d drawn on the ground, chanting sharp-edged words with each step. When the chalk markings took on a faint red glow, he backed away and began a second, softer chant.

  Rats came to the wizard’s call, slinking out of the shadows by the score. He snatched up four of them by their tails, two in each hand, and threw them into the glowing circle.

  Something flashed, something without sound or color or even light. Until this moment, Ellasif would never have imagined that fire could be so dark, but “black fire” was the best phrase she could conjure to describe the ethereal tongues that consumed the rats.

  The fire disappeared as suddenly as it had flared. In its place stood a single monstrous rat, the size of the four rats the wizard had sacrificed combined. Its eyes were unnaturally large and bulbous, and they glowed with evil red cunning.

  “Declan Avari,” the wizard said. “Remember that, Vexer, for it is the name of your quarry. Take his soul if you can get it. Eat his liver if you can’t.”

  The rat-thing smiled.

  A shudder rippled down Ellasif’s spine. There was no mistaking the nature and origin of the spirit housed in the enormous vermin. Everything she’d seen since arriving in Korvosa deepened her opinion that this city stood on the gateway to Hell. The fey-haunted forests of her homeland had not prepared her for a place where swarms of imps were as common as ravens, and where anyone who hoped to become a wizard must learn to summon devils.

  In such a city, it seemed certain that everyone who could afford a bit of magic would ward their houses against infernal creatures. And that, Ellasif decided, explained why the necromancer had clothed his evil servant in the flesh of the most mundane of creatures. As a rat, perhaps the little devil could slip past the manor’s magical defenses and do as the wizard bade.

  Ellasif reached for the special weapon hidden in a small pouch Liv had sewn into the hem of her tunic. She watched as the wizard toed a gap in the chalk circle. The fiend slipped through the opening. This seemed to break the wizard’s second spell, as well, for the swarm of rats scattered and slunk off into the night.

  As soon as the wizard turned away, Ellasif climbed the wall that separated the back street from the astronomer’s garden.

  The giant rat was quicker. It scrambled up one side and down the other and sped toward the manor, silent as shadows.

  Ellasif raised the tiny silver whistle to her lips and blew.

  No sound emerged that her ears could hear, but the rat-fiend convulsed and came to a sudden, twitching stop.

  Ellasif leaped to the ground and continued blowing the whistle, reaching over her shoulder for her sword as she ran.

  As long as she blew, the giant rodent writhed in pain, but the moment she stopped to draw breath, the creature whirled toward her and reared up on its hind legs. Malevolent red witch light gathered between its paws, which looked more like clawed human hands.

  Ellasif’s sword slashed down and lopped them off.

  The rat-fiend dropped to the ground and attempted a hobbling escape. Ichor flowed from the severed limbs and left a steaming trail on the mossy path. Ellasif followed, raising her sword high. She overtook the creature in a few quick strides and chopped down hard. The heavy blade split the abomination’s black hide and bit deeply into meat and bone.

  Black fire flared from the carcass. Ellasif reeled back, one hand clapped to her nose to ward off the searing stench of sulfur.

  The black flames took the shape of a tiny devil with bat wings and a hideous face crowned by long, curling horns. The imp circled Ellasif as if trying to decide which part of her might be the tastiest.

  Something fast and pale swooped from the sky like a diving hawk. Ellasif spun away, sword sweeping up in a protective arc.

  But the attacker—a pale blue dragon about the size of a young rabbit—did not concern itself with her. It slammed into the imp, sending the devil spinning through the air to crash face-first into a garden statue.

  The imp slid down the sculpture and tumbled onto the gravel path. It came up in a crouch and hissed like a deranged cat before leaping into flight.

  Imp and dragon met in midair, jaws snapping as they scrabbled at each other with their sharp talons. Their barbed tails lashed and stabbed, dueling like a pair of limber swords in a contest seemingly independent of the battle of tooth and claw. The creatures broke apart, dropped to the ground, and rose again to fight on the wing like territorial birds.

  Another time, Ellasif might have been charmed by the tiny, sky-blue dragon, and certainly she would have been fascinated by the living poetry of morning and midnight battling for possession of the sky, but she was in a hurry. Again she blew the whistle.

  Imp and dragon jolted away as if equally pained by the sound that Ellasif could not hear. They hovered for a moment, wings beating as they glared down at her.

  A sizzling sound drew Ellasif’s attention to the rosebush beneath the imp, which wilted and drooped from the ichor dripping from the creature’s wounds. The dragon, on the other hand, appeared unscathed.

  She was not surprised when the imp gave up the battle and darted off into the night sky. The little dragon followed in close pursuit.

  Ellasif nodded, satisfied that she’d found the right wizard for her purposes.

  Tracking him was not difficult. Remnants of the chalk from the summoning circle lingered on the sole of his boot long enough for him to reach a nearby tavern. Ellasif followed him into the smoky room and sat down uninvited at his table.

  The wizard’s gaze swept over her, taking crass and obvious inventory. “Are you for hire?”

  “Are you?”

  Surprise reddened his face, but it was swiftly replaced by amusement. “No one has ever asked me that question before. It’s quite an interesting notion,” he said with a leer.

  Ellasif rolled her eyes. “Please. That silver medal tells me you’re a death wizard, and I need to be dead for a while.”

  “Ah.” He leaned back in his seat, his expression contracting to a supercilious little smirk. “I am a necromancer, yes, but even for someone of my considerable skill, ‘dead for a while’ is a tall order.”

  Ellasif ignored the mockery in his voice. “I need to appear to be dead. Can you make a corpse look like me?”

  “Did you have a particular corpse in mind?”

  “I’m not particular, as long the corpse is close to my size and there’s plausible reason for it to be a corpse.”

  Curiosity nudged the scorn from his face. “Close to your size,” he repeated. “Any particular reason for this?”

  “There are stories of amulets, items that can be enchanted to make a corpse look like another person. A transformation,” she emphasized,
“not just an illusion. I require a death wizard to put something of mine inside such a locket and cast the spell.”

  The necromancer lifted one eyebrow. “You are well informed, for a barbarian. But had you actually studied the art of magic rather than relying upon traveler’s tales, you would know that such items are quite expensive. Even ignoring the spell for the moment, a necklace of sufficient quality to be worthwhile as the focus is probably worth more than—”

  He cut off as Ellasif raised a shining locket to dangle in front of his face. It was a tiny silver cage rendered in layers of elaborate filigree.

  The necromancer feigned casualness, but she could see he was suddenly taking their exchange more seriously. “A pretty bauble,” he said. “How did you acquire it?”

  “I enjoy shopping,” she said. “Can you cast the spell or not?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” He licked his lips, a gesture that was both nervous and greedy.

  Ellasif tucked the amulet into her tunic. “Say the words.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “The spell. Say the first three words.”

  “Am I to understand,” he intoned ominously, “that you want me to audition?”

  Ellasif placed both palms on the table and leaned forward as if she were about to rise. “I don’t have time to waste. If you can’t do the spell, I need to find someone who can. And just so you know, I’ve heard it cast before. I’m no wizard, so I can’t speak those words, but I remember the sound of them.”

  The necromancer stared at her as his pride battled his greed. Finally he threw up his hands and muttered a sibilant phrase.

  Ellasif nodded and leaned back in her chair. “You’ll do.”

  “You’re too kind,” he said bitterly. He cleared his throat. “There remains the small matter of my fee—”

  “I plan to use the amulet tomorrow morning. Afterward, you can keep it.”

  “Agreed,” he said. From the speed of his acquiescence, she gathered that necromancy didn’t pay as well as she’d thought. At least not for this one.

  She rose. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

  He leaped from his chair and fell into step beside her, clearly buoyed by the good fortune that had fallen into his lap. When they reached the street they argued briefly about where they should go to cast the spell and the mode of transport needed to get there, but Ellasif knew she had him hooked.

  The necromancer was surprisingly agile when it came to climbing a drain pipe to reach the Shingles. They hurried across the city’s rooftops without speaking and ducked into the window of her attic room with several hours to spare before sunrise.

  The necromancer looked around the tiny chamber. “I’ll take that personal item now. A lock of hair will do.”

  Ellasif drew a knife from her belt and sliced off a strand of her hair. She coiled it around her small finger and put the honey-colored circlet in the little silver cage.

  His gaze lingered on the coin bag tied to Ellasif’s belt. “This is not an inexpensive spell. The casting of it requires certain things of considerable value.”

  “We had a deal,” she reminded him.

  “And I will honor it,” he said smoothly. “We agreed upon my fee for casting the spell. The cost of the necessary materials is another matter. The brimstone, for instance ...”

  The last time Ellasif had seen the spell cast, the wizard involved had used nothing more than a lump of wax. This one was either trying to rook her or else was significantly less skilled. Either way, it didn’t matter. She placed a peridot on the bedside table, a gem the color of early spring leaves and the size of her thumbnail.

  “That should cover you,” she said. “And you already have all the brimstone you need. I smelled it when you cast the summoning spell behind the astronomer’s manor, and the stink’s still on you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “You weren’t intended to.”

  “Neither did my infernal servant.”

  “Oh, it saw me,” Ellasif said. When the wizard raised an eyebrow, she added, “It probably didn’t consider me much of a threat.”

  “Yes, that’s probably it. Now, about the cost of the other components ...”

  Ellasif curled the fingers of her right hand around the hilt of her dagger. “Two choices: You can cast the spell as agreed, or I’ll send you to a place where you’ll find brimstone in surplus.”

  The little necromancer shrugged as if to indicate that he expected this outcome but felt compelled to bargain as a matter of custom. He flipped back one side of his crimson cloak and unbuckled the satchel strapped over his shoulder. He sat down on the edge of the bed. After a moment of rummaging, he put the satchel on the floor and rose with a half-burned candle and a lump of acrid yellow coal in one palm.

  Ellasif dropped the amulet into his extended hand and watched impatiently as he cast the spell. It was not, as she understood such matters, an exceptionally difficult feat of magic, but the necromancer performed the spell as theatrically as if he envisioned himself surrounded by leaping flames and a choir of grim-faced men chanting in a forgotten tongue.

  “And here you have it,” he said at last, handing her the amulet with a flourish. “When you find a suitable corpse, put this around its neck.”

  Ellasif took the filigreed locket, gave the chain a twirl around one finger, and let fly. It opened into a circle as it spun toward the necromancer and settled around his neck before he could move away.

  He gazed down at his prize with a satisfied smirk. The soft hiss of a weapon sliding free of its sheath drew his gaze up to Ellasif. Terrified understanding dawned in his eyes.

  Ellasif hurled the knife at the necromancer. It spun once and buried itself deep in his gut. She stepped close, yanked the knife out, and plunged it in again, under the ribs and angled up to pierce the heart.

  The necromancer was dead before he hit the cot. Ellasif knew this for a certainty when his face gradually transformed into the likeness of her own.

  For a moment she stood over the bed and regarded her double. To her relief, she’d judged the weight correctly. She was small, but solid with muscle. The wizard was slightly taller but almost certainly weighed a little less than she did. That was important. She’d heard that if the corpse were significantly larger than the person it was intended to mimic, the spell took what was needed for the transformation and left the extra flesh behind. A pile of surplus meat, she reflected, was precisely the sort of detail that prompted people to stop and think more than was convenient for her present purposes.

  A glance at the open window revealed a night sky fading toward the deep sapphire of early dawn. Time was running short. She went to work setting the scene, first cutting away the wizard’s rich clothing and stuffing it into his satchel. She uncorked a bottle of cheap wine she’d bought from a Shingles vendor and splashed some around. An empty coin purse, embroidered in the Ulfen style with a circle of entwined wolves, she dropped on the floor. She followed it with two small copper coins, one of which she toed under the bed to make it appear that it had dropped and rolled when someone hastily emptied the purse. On the bedside table she left a scrap of paper that guaranteed passage for two on a northbound ship due to set sail from Korvosa around midday.

  She left the knife in the necromancer’s heart.

  To be stabbed by a robber while sleeping off city wine was no way for an Ulfen warrior to die. Ellasif wasn’t sure whether Olenka would find this end tragic or appropriate.

  She picked up the wizard’s satchel and slipped out the attic window. After pulling herself up onto the roof, she crouched in the shadows of the chimney and scanned the roofs, the streets, and the skies for anyone or anything that might have followed the wizard. Apart from the imps and dragons that occasionally whizzed past, intent on their skirmishes, the only sign of life was a trio of students staggering down the street,
arms draped over each other’s shoulders as they sang a drunken hymn to brotherhood. They sang with gusto, despite the fact that only one of them seemed to know the words.

  Across the street, a second-floor window banged open and a scowling, white-bearded man leaned out to heave a chamber pot at the singers. The pot shattered against the street cobbles, splattering the students’ robes with urine.

  A shouted exchange of insults ensued, giving Ellasif all the cover she needed to scramble down the back side of the building to the second floor and then drop onto the roof of a large dovecote, a rounded tower with many tiny arched doorways on each nesting level. From there her climb was easy, and the only sound that marked her passage was the murmuring whirr and coo of the birds inside. It was, in her opinion, considerate of Korvosans to provide housing for the city’s doves, not to mention convenient handholds for those who wished to come and go unobserved.

  Ellasif circled around to the Jittery Quill, a public house that stayed open throughout the night. The few patrons who’d lasted to this hour wore the strain of their efforts. Men with faces dulled by too much ale and too few proud memories slumped back in their chairs. Students and scribes drooped over their books and parchments and steaming cups of bitter-smelling brew, their fingers stained with ink and the shadows under their eyes as dark and hard-won as bruises. All were too deeply steeped in their chosen libations to take much note of her. She chose a seat that put her back to the wall and gave her a clear view of the lodging house.

  Olenka entered the house at sunrise, as agreed. After a few moments, she returned to the street, “Ellasif’s” body rolled discretely into the bedchamber’s carpet and slung over one shoulder.

  Ellasif smiled. When the transformation spell wore off, the ship would be well on its way. The elders of White Rook would not be fooled, but she would be rid of Olenka for the foreseeable future.

  Now all that remained was arranging secure passage to the northlands for herself and the other wizard for whom she had plans, one Declan Avari.