Winter Witch

by Elaine Cunningham

  “You should buy a sword.” Ellasif’s voice surprised him, for he hadn’t realized she had followed him from the Varisian camp.

  “You’ve been following me,” he said, sounding more offended than he’d intended. Since Skywing’s arrival at the caravan, the little drake had refused to communicate with him. Declan wanted to think the dragon was sulking simply because of the lingering taste of imp head, but he had noticed Skywing casting baleful stares at Ellasif. What was it about the Ulfen woman that the drake disliked? There was no way of knowing unless Skywing decided to speak with him, but it made Declan wary of her.

  “It’s my job to protect you,” said Ellasif. “Besides, I rarely have the opportunity to go shopping.”

  “You don’t strike me as the sort of woman who—”

  “What?” She cut him off with a wry smile. “The sort of woman who buys things?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, but he gave up on making further excuses. He had the feeling he’d said something stupid but wasn’t sure how to correct it. Ellasif let him off the hook by gazing past his shoulder. He followed her gaze through the shop window toward a seamstress’s shop across the street.

  “I’ll be right over there,” she said. “Don’t try to lose me. Balev won’t thank me if you get yourself beaten up by some of those shady-looking halflings.”

  Declan nodded dumbly, unsure whether she was mocking him or flirting with him. When she was gone, he paid for his purchase and followed her across the street.

  Ellasif stood admiring a shallow shelf of bright silken thread, skeins of each color in their own compartment. Declan had never seen so much variety before, not that he made a habit of browsing seamstress’s shops. It surprised him to find such selection in what was essentially a frontier mining town, but he supposed the minerals brought the small community relatively great wealth, and where there was gold, there would be merchants of every luxury.

  Declan noticed that Ellasif’s tunic, while dusty, was decorated at the hem with an elaborate design of fine embroidery. Entwined within the northern knotwork were exquisite little animals: stags, timber wolves, hawks, foxes, geese, and others he could not see without spinning Ellasif around. He had a sudden impulse to take her by the elbows and do just that, but he weighed the chance that she’d welcome the gesture against the probability that she’d punch him in the mouth and chose to restrain the urge.

  He realized she had turned to see him looking at the embroidery, which to her must have appeared as though he were staring at her hips. She arched an eyebrow.

  He cleared his throat and pointed at her hem. “That’s pretty work. Is it yours?”

  She laughed, and he could not tell whether she believed he had been admiring the clothes. “I’m definitely not the sort of woman who does such needlework. I can mend a tear or fix a button, but no more.” Her humor faded, and she added, “My sister made this for me.”

  “She has a talent. You should bring her some of this thread.”

  A wistful expression flittered across Ellasif’s face. “Some other time.”

  “Families are complicated,” suggested Declan, sorry he’d touched a bruise. “I have a niece. Sort of.”

  Ellasif tilted her head with interest. When he did not immediately speak, she led him out of the shop by the elbow, bought a pair of sweet lemon ales from a chubby halfling, and sat him down on a sagging bench beneath a canvas awning. There the story spilled out of him: Asmonde summoning a devil, a powerful being far beyond his skill, and losing control of it. He implied without explicitly explaining the price Isadora had paid for his ambition and arrogance.

  “That’s why I’m no wizard. That was not the first fiend my brother summoned. With each summoning, he changed.”

  Ellasif frowned, and Declan added, “The imp you fought. It reminds me of the necromancer who may have summoned it. Dealing with wicked creatures, summoning spirits—after a time people become just as wicked.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Ellasif. Abruptly she stood and stalked off, the wolf tail wagging from her hip.

  Once again, Declan was dumbfounded. Perhaps he had shared too much, but the way she had reacted made him think he’d hit a nerve. He hoped he had not ruined what might have been his first friendship outside of Korvosa. On an impulse, he returned to the seamstress’ shop and bought several small skeins of thread and put the wrapped package in his bag. Before returning to the caravan, he obeyed Ellasif’s advice and perused the blades offered by the local smiths. He finally chose one engraved with the image of a dragon in flight. It made him think of Skywing.

  In the weeks that followed, Declan recorded the caravan’s journey with the basic skills he had learned from Master Nores. He could not restrain the impulse to add an artful flourish here and there, adding a sketch of Melfesh and its enormous drawbridge where the odd little village straddled the Yondabakari River on piers the size of castle turrets. Near the spot indicating Ilsurian, he drew a tiny fisherman lifting a trout from the Skull River, and he illustrated the page on which he detailed the Sanos Forest with capering gnomes, although he spied none on their passage. Perhaps that was because of the Varisians’ precaution of leaving pails of goat milk and bundles of spiced bread at the four corners of their camp each night they spent beneath the canopy of that enchanted wood.

  Every day, Ellasif found Declan and badgered him into another practice bout. They exhausted him, especially when she caught him in the mornings, and he tried to beg off with the argument that he was a paying customer of the caravan, not her apprentice. Ellasif would hear none of that. After the first week, he stopped trying to avoid her, knowing it was pointless to escape. She was relentless in her insistence that he must be able to defend himself should some savage bugbear make it past her to crush his skull. Declan doubted that would happen, in part because the caravan’s journey had seen nothing more alarming than a drunken insult around the campfire, which Gisanto settled with two swift clouts across the offender’s cheeks.

  By the time they reached the pass between the Iron Peaks and the northern range of the Malgorian Mountains, virtually every member of the caravan had made some excuse to lean over Declan’s shoulder while he was sketching. At first he was oblivious to the ulterior motive behind their compliments—“What a fine likeness of the town,” one might say, or “That gnome is the spitting image of my great uncle Vledosk”—but eventually he caught the hint, and by the time the caravan passed north of Ravenmoor, the approximate halfway point of their journey across Varisia, Declan had sketched half the members of the caravan.

  But not Ellasif. The shield maiden had been conspicuously absent from the occasional circles of appreciation that had gathered around his sketchbook in the waning hours of daylight. While Viland Balev and a few of the other older members of the caravan had declined to let Declan draw their portraits, he suspected for superstitious reasons, only Ellasif had actively avoided him during those sessions. She had to know what he was doing. He often spied her watching from a distance as he drew. Within a week he had sketched everyone who asked for a portrait, but the demand did not end there. Now he was working from the Varisians’ description of a favorite pet dog that had run away, or their recollected description of a revered late grandmother.

  At first the praise for these latter sketches flattered Declan, but soon he began to suspect that the Varisians were far more sentimental than he had imagined. The tears streaming down the face of a Varisian widow at the sight of her late husband’s face made Declan distinctly uncomfortable. When she clutched his sleeve and blessed him for his “magic,” he struggled not to tear himself away and flee. It was impossible that he had captured more than a general resemblance of the man he knew only from the widow’s few sentences of description. To believe her, however, he had drawn him in perfect resemblance, down to the mole at the corner of his eye.

  Was it possible? Declan wondered. Much as h
e hated to think on the matter, there was no denying that he had a mysterious talent for magical illustration. First the animated caricatures, then the business with the maps he sold Basha, and now this inexplicable phenomenon. He knew it had to be related to his magical studies in some way, but he was a wizard, not a sorcerer. When he cast a spell, it was because he had studied its arcane ingredients, its secret gestures, and the obscure syllables that were powerless on the tongue of those who did not comprehend the relationship between these components and the intangible arithmetic of the spell’s invisible shape, its incalculable form. Declan sometimes thought of this elusive quality as the spell’s soul, for lack of a better term.

  Sometimes Declan wondered whether all the wizards of history had overlooked the simple if preposterous notion that spells were living beings, their lives briefer than those of butterflies. Conjurations, for example, were said to bring forth creatures from other places, but Declan could not help but suspect that the imp produced by a conjuration had not been plucked from Hell but was the incarnation of the spell itself.

  Speculation like that had contributed to Declan’s flunking out of the Theumanexus.

  Finally the requests tapered off, and one night Declan found himself free of promises to draw the house in which someone was born, or a first love, or the pony that a father had raised from a foal for his firstborn. At last he could return to what was ostensibly his job: mapping the Varisians’ path from Korvosa to Irrisen. He had finished his calculations soon after the caravan halted for the night. All that was left was to illustrate the trail between camp and the Lampblack River.

  On a whim, Declan decorated the otherwise barren plains with what he fancied to be a Shoanti totem atop a short obelisk that vaguely resembled ruins he’d seen illustrated in volumes of ancient history. Pleased with the result, he returned his art supplies to his pack and strolled just outside the camp. He found a comfortable spot on which to recline and gaze toward the impending sunset. For a while he watched as Skywing floated on the summer breeze like a hunting kite, at last to plummet without warning upon a hapless field mouse.

  After recovering from the noxious taste of the imp’s head, the dragon had presented Declan with a double talonful of stolen jewelry. To Declan’s skeptical inquiry, Skywing asserted with a tone of wounded pride that none of it had been taken from guests at the Frisky Unicorn. Grateful, if dubious that a handful of jewels would be enough to pay the astronomer’s ransom, Declan secreted the small treasure in his jacket pocket. There was no sense tempting the Varisians further than he had already.

  Since delivering the ransom, Skywing had become uncharacteristically solitary, spending most of his time on the hunt or perched upon a caravan wagon. From time to time Declan noticed the little drake gazing watchfully at him, especially while he was practicing swordplay with Ellasif. He sensed Skywing was jealous of his new protector.

  Smiling, Declan let his eyes close to slits, and—for the first time in days, he realized with a start—an image of Silvana came to his mind.

  Rescuing Silvana was the reason he had left home and embarked upon this journey. He felt like a traitor to realize she had entirely escaped his mind. And Majeed Nores still needed ransoming. Yet here was Declan, lying on a bed of soft grass with no greater care than that the Varisians with whom he traveled had finally given him an evening’s rest from drawing sketches.

  Some hero he had turned out to be.

  It should have been Silvana’s image he drew night after night. He had not even replaced the one he had given her back at Majeed’s home, and she was the woman he—what? The woman he loved? Now that it had been so long since he had last seen her, the word seemed intimidating, too big to express his actual feelings. He liked her, fancied her obviously. He wanted her to fancy him. Was that enough to send him halfway across the world to save her from where he guessed she had been taken? Frustrated by such absurd doubts, he cursed aloud.

  “Sorry,” said Ellasif from behind him. “If you want to be alone—”

  “No, no,” said Declan, spinning around to sit facing her. “I was just thinking ...well, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  Ellasif considered that and sat down. “Perhaps you need a distraction from all that thinking. That is, if you have any pages left after drawing the entire company and all their dead relatives.”

  “You want me to draw your portrait,” he said with a nod. She had just been waiting her turn.

  “No,” said Ellasif. “Not mine. My sister’s.”

  “Ah,” said Declan. He hoped it was a noncommittal sound, but the truth was he had been wondering when the shield maiden would tell him something more about her past. He had to admit that he had been avoiding her as much for shame that he had told her too much about his own as to escape daily sword practice.

  He went to his saddlebag to fetch paper and charcoal. As he removed them, the book of animated caricatures he’d retrieved from Basha dropped to the ground. It opened as it fell. He picked it up and glanced at it before he tucked it away.

  His gaze flew back to the page, and his brow furrowed in puzzlement. This was not the volume he’d received from Basha. This was the third book, which he had not seen since his university days.

  Before his death, Jamang had implied that he had all three of the books. One had been left with Declan at the astronomer’s manor. The second had ended up in Basha’s shop, and Declan had claimed it along with a job offer for which he was not qualified—one that coincidentally led him in exactly the direction he wanted to go. Declan recalled how nervous Basha had been, particularly how his hand went to his throat when they discussed the merchant caravan.

  Ellasif seemed the type to do most of her negotiating at sword point. Who else could have placed the book in his pack, and why would she have made such a clumsy exchange? Was there a reason other than jealousy that made Skywing shun her?

  Declan looked to make sure he remained in sight of the Varisians. He wanted answers, and if Ellasif didn’t feel like giving them, he didn’t know how she would respond. For the first time in what seemed like ages, he wished he had prepared a potent spell to defend himself should she attack him. He returned to her and showed her the book from his pack.

  “There are three books like this one,” he said. “But this one is not the one I left in my pack.”

  He watched for a reaction, but her face betrayed no sign of guilt.

  “Until now,” he continued, “the third had not been accounted for. Did you kill Jamang Kira?”

  “Could be,” said Ellasif.

  “What?” said Declan. “Don’t you record your kills?”

  He was half-joking, but she shrugged again.

  “My foes don’t always introduce themselves.”

  “Short fellow, skinny, likes to wear a red cape,” said Declan. “Wanted to kill me. Conjured that imp.”

  “Very well,” said Ellasif. “Yes.”

  “Yes, you killed him?” Declan asked. “Why?”

  “You said it yourself. He wanted to kill you.”

  “But you didn’t even know me—” He remembered what Skywing had told him before they left Korvosa and stopped short. “You’re Skywing’s bad person.”

  It took Ellasif a moment to realize the drake had identified her as the necromancer’s killer. “That’s one way of looking at it,” she said. “Surely the man I killed found me bad. But from his intended victim, I would have expected something more like gratitude.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I didn’t want to frighten you off of your quest,” she said. “You still want to rescue your fair maiden, don’t you?”

  “Of course I— How did you— That’s beside the point! You put Basha up to sending me to Irrisen, didn’t you? You’ve been spying on me and manipulating me this whole time. I want to know why.”

  “I haven’t made you do anything you didn’t alr
eady want to do,” said Ellasif. “I only made it possible.”

  “I still want to know why.”

  “It’s ...” Ellasif trailed off. She glanced toward the setting sun, now only a sliver of molten gold above the dark blue line of the western horizon. Skywing shot past them both, wheeling once around the Varisian camp before fluttering down onto the perch he’d claimed atop a wagon. “It’s complicated.”

  Something about that phrase rang a bell, but Declan couldn’t remember why. He was too angry and confused.

  “I don’t like it,” he said. “Who are you to decide what I do?”

  “I didn’t decide,” she said. “I simply helped.”

  “I didn’t ask for your help!”

  “You certainly needed it,” she said.

  “I know nothing about you,” he said. “You seem to know everything about me, but I don’t know why you’re doing this or even whether I can trust you.”

  “That is wise,” she said. “Sometimes you find that even people you have known all your life cannot be trusted.”

  Something about her tone diverted Declan’s anger toward curiosity, and he remembered why it’s complicated sounded so familiar.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “Something about your life. Anything.”

  For the first time that day, Ellasif’s expression lost its granite composure. A flicker of emotion crossed her face and then vanished with the last of the day’s light. “Let us return to the camp,” she suggested. “I will tell you about my sister.”

  An hour later their bellies were full of roast rabbit and buttered turnips, as well as the herbed Varisian bread served at every meal. Declan wondered how he would ever be content with the white loaves of over-milled grain he had once enjoyed in Korvosa. These Varisians found a way to enliven every aspect of their lives, particularly their food.

  Ellasif examined the portrait of her sister for what must have been the seventh or eight time. She shook her head in astonishment. “It’s her,” she muttered. “It’s Liv.”