Winter Witch

by Elaine Cunningham

  Declan could not see the Ulfen. “Jadrek!” he shouted. “Olenka! Where are you?”

  “Again!” shouted Jadrek. Declan saw him stumbling away from the blast, one arm under Olenka’s shoulder. Flames guttered in their hair and died in a nimbus along their arms and shoulders.

  Declan threw another of the fireballs, enveloping the three panicked trolls and the surrounding trees. When the flash subsided, one of them was gone save for a pile of oily cinders. The other two monsters staggered out of the blast, flesh shriveled by the flames. They staggered toward the clearing, tall black skeletons, and fell burning to the ground.

  Jadrek and Olenka stood beside him, both still patting out flames on their clothes or hair. Both had angry red burns on their arms and faces. Olenka favored one leg, but she stood without help. They looked past Declan at the surviving troll, his skin blistered and oozing from the fire. The monster beat upon the pine house and begged to be let inside.

  Declan raised his hands to cast another spell, but Jadrek put a hand on his arm. “Save it for the warlock,” he said. He and Olenka charged the monster, their weapons raised high. The beast turned to face them, but its death was swift and bloody.

  Jadrek dragged the carcass to the cooking fire and fueled the flames from a nearby stack of firewood. Olenka stripped off the rest of her armor to expose two long, deep claw marks running from just inside her left breast to the middle of her belly. Declan winced as he saw the extent of her wounds, but when he moved forward to offer his help, she waved him away.

  The door, sent Skywing. Declan felt that the drake was somewhere above him, but looking up revealed only the pine boughs encircling the weird tree house.

  “Where?” he said aloud.

  Right in front of you, sent Skywing anxiously. Hurry, getting away.

  Declan had seen no opening on the pine house, only a long leather cord that might have been a bell pull. He tugged it and heard a clatter of bones or wood inside.

  “Open up,” he shouted. “Let us in, or we’ll burn the place down.”

  “Hurry,” called Ellasif from inside. Declan heard cackling laughter followed by a shriek of surprise and a few choice curses. Moments later, he felt a strange sensation as of a powerful spell being cast nearby.

  He beat upon the walls, and then Jadrek was beside him.

  “Stand back,” said the big warrior. He raised his warhammer, but stopped when they saw the trunks pull apart like the mouth of a drowning fish. The warlock Szigo crawled over the threshold, hugging himself with one arm as he dragged his body toward them.

  Declan drew his sword and simultaneously began to trace a spell in the air, but he saw that the man was no longer a threat. He had painted the floor behind him with a wide swath of blood, and his guts spilled out over the arm he held to his belly.

  Behind Szigo, the cluttered interior of the house appeared completely uninhabited.

  “Where is she?” asked Declan. He punctuated his question by pointing the tip of his sword at the warlock’s eye.

  Szigo giggled, a foam of blood oozing out from between his teeth as he grimaced in pain. “Gone,” he rasped. “Gone to Whitethrone. Gone to Baba Yaga’s kin, to be flayed and ground to powder in the Bone Mill.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Spring Palace

  On that day long past—before Korvosa, before Declan Avari, before anything except a desperate need to rescue her sister—Ellasif had gasped for breath as the ice vanished from her face. White light dazzled her eyes, glinting at her from all directions. The air was so humid that she could barely breathe, and a powerful sense of vertigo shook her brain in all directions. In an instant she realized she was not suffocating but falling. She dropped into surprisingly warm water.

  Her startled gasp took a mouthful of sulfuric water into her lungs. She sank fast, her woolen clothes sodden and heavy. She thrashed in panic and reached for a hold that was not there. Then her buttocks struck the flat bottom of the pool. She put her feet beneath her and stood up, choking and coughing up water.

  She stood in a steaming oval pool. Once she had spit up enough water to breathe freely, she smelled flowers, their perfume strong enough to overcome even the stench of the mineral bath. To either side were thick green walls of foliage, at the base of which flowered strange blossoms. Their thick petals were lush as the flesh of a freshly scaled salmon, golden and pink and pale white with stamens of bright reds and yellows. Above them floated odd insects, similar to the butterflies that lived for a few brief days in late spring, but with too many wings. High above, the ceiling and walls were all of glistening glass.

  No, she realized—not glass but ice. The sunlight warmed the panes enough to wet them, and Ellasif saw steady rivulets trickling from the highest reaches. Even as she followed their paths, one dropped upon her brow, cool as the spring thaw.

  “Welcome to Whitethone,” said a voice that flowed like liquid silver.

  Ellasif turned to see Mareshka reclining upon a chair carved of mammoth hide and ivory. The tusk of one such great beast curved up behind her to lend the seat the air of a throne, and the way the witch held her horned staff across her lap seemed to Ellasif the very image of a monarch. She guessed that was no coincidence.

  From somewhere above them, a strange creature fluttered down and took up a perch between the horns of Mareshka’s staff. It looked like an emaciated version of the Korvosan necromancer’s imp, but rather than fire-blackened flesh, its skin was the translucent blue of deep river ice. The thing slowly waved the bony framework on its back, like a newly emerged butterfly drying its wings in the sun, and the webbing between the finger-like wing struts cracked and fell away with a tinkle, allowing it to fold them down against its body. Ellasif couldn’t stop herself from staring.

  “My familiar,” said Mareshka. “I called it out of the rime beyond the world. It’s not a proper elemental, but it suits me better than a toad.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” Ellasif said, with as much acid as she could muster with her wet hair plastered to her neck. “Who are you, anyway? The queen of Irrisen?”

  Mareshka’s mouth opened in a half-smile, but her eyes darted left and right at the servants who stood to either side of her chair. A man fanned Mareshka while a woman stood beside a sweating ice pitcher containing a beverage the color of ripe strawberries. Both servants wore simple garments of white and pastel blue. When Mareshka was assured that neither of them had blinked at Ellasif’s remark, she replied, “I take that as a compliment, but do not repeat such a thing, even in jest. Elvanna is our glorious queen, and I am but her loyal servant.”

  “So it is for Queen Elvanna that you kidnapped my sister?”

  “Kidnapped?” Mareshka sounded genuinely insulted. “You should thank me, both for her sake and for your own. My minion pulled her from the river and breathed life back into her frozen body. For that he deserves your thanks. He would have taken his reward himself had I not intervened. It has been many months since he last tasted the flesh of a warrior of White Rook.”

  “Had you not interfered, I would have put an end to his ghoulish ways myself.”

  “Do not underestimate Szigo,” said Mareshka. “He will not even lift a hand to defend himself in my presence, except by my command, but his powers are more than sufficient to prepare a little barbarian like you for the oven.”

  “Where is my sister?”

  Mareshka sighed. “Before we continue this conversation, would you mind climbing out of the spring and donning some dry clothing?” She waggled a finger at the male servant. He set aside his fan and fetched a stack of thick cotton towels and a robe from a table with legs formed of three human thigh-bones bound in copper wire.

  Scowling and feeling more ridiculous than intimidated, Ellasif clambered out of the pool. She let the servant stand there while she stripped away her sodden clothes. She was secretly pleased to see a tic develop under h
is eye as she got down to her bare skin and plucked a towel from his arms. A bead of sweat dribbled down his cheek by the time she snatched the robe away and wrapped it around her body.

  “That is much better,” said Mareshka. She nodded toward a chair the other servant had brought close to her own. “Now let us sit and enjoy a civilized discussion.”

  Ellasif sat, ignoring the cold sorbet the servant proffered. “Where is Liv?”

  “She is nearby,” said Mareshka. “I do not think she is quite ready to face the sister who allowed her own people to cast her into the river.”

  “I didn’t allow it!”

  “Yet you failed to prevent it,” Mareshka continued. “Whereas I, within moments of her arrival in Szigo’s grove, appeared to convey her out of that filthy den. Once she realized her new circumstances, Liv was overjoyed to find herself among people who appreciate her talents.”

  “Her curse,” said Ellasif.

  “Mm,” said Mareshka. “That is how primitive people interpret those gifts they do not understand. What they do not understand, they fear. And what they fear, as you know, they seek to destroy.”

  “My people only defend ourselves against the monsters your people send to attack us.”

  “Come now,” Mareshka said, “if your tribe would only submit to the rightful rule of Queen Elvanna, you could join us in civilized society.”

  Ellasif was no sage, but she knew Mareshka was twisting history to her own ends. A thousand years ago, maybe two thousand, the lands now known as Irrisen belonged to the Linnorm Kings. Then the ancient crone Baba Yaga appeared as if from nowhere. Some claimed she flew down from the moon in an enormous mortar, while others said she was from another world entirely, like the elves. Wherever she came from, she brought an army with her, a vast horde of fey creatures led by norns and cold riders commanding snow goblins and ice trolls. Within a month, the territories of the Linnorm Kings—the mightiest warriors of Avistan—were cut in half. Baba Yaga installed one of her daughters as the queen of her new nation and departed the world. Once every century since then, the undying witch returned from whence she had come to claim the monarch and take her away, installing a new queen in her place.

  Ever since the witch’s conquest, the lands of Irrisen had been locked in a perpetual winter. With no great harvests to feed its citizens, the nation’s population had withered, clustering around its few cities, including the capital of Whitethrone. Somehow the country survived, its human population forever augmented by monsters. They had some trade to the south, and the queens of Irrisen had come to an uneasy truce with the Mammoth Lords to the east.

  They had never made peace with the Linnorm Kings. Irrisen constantly sent raiding parties to harry the nearest communities of the west. Those warriors they captured became slaves to the ones called jadwiga, the nobles of Irrisen, all descended of witches. The children they stole met a darker fate, although no two elders agreed exactly what that was. Some believed the witches raised them as their own, teaching them the arcane arts. Others feared the newborn souls were captured to give life to the dreadful dancing huts that stood vigil along the Linnorm Kingdoms’ border. For countless generations, White Rook had been one of many villages that repelled the attacks from Irrisen. Since Liv’s birth, however, Ellasif knew they had been attacked far more than any other border village.

  “What you call civilization—” began Ellasif.

  “Yes, yes,” said Mareshka. She tossed her drink carelessly toward the servant. The woman caught the glass, but the sorbet splashed upon her tunic, staining it red. Ignoring the mess she had made, Mareshka stood and beckoned to Ellasif. “Come with me. It is time you saw what civilization looks like.”

  Ellasif stood. The witch clutched her arm, and Ellasif stiffened at her touch. Mareshka lifted her staff in her other hand and raised it above her head, sending the weird ice creature the witch had called her familiar scrambling to a new perch on the back of the throne. The two women began to rise off the floor.

  Ten feet above the pool, Ellasif saw that the level on which she had arrived was one of many beneath a vast dome of ice. Including a central pool exuding a constant cloud of steam, there were six tiers of pools and streams, many filled with nobles and attended by servants. From these pools, the water flowed out through walls of clear ice into what appeared to be fields in an enormous, all-encompassing greenhouse, nourishing wide plots of grain and vegetables, as well as flowering fruit trees and berry bushes.

  “You are fortunate to see the inside of the Spring Palace,” Mareshka noted. “Few but the nobility of Irrisen ever step into the Hidden Gardens, let alone the baths that form their steaming heart.” Ellasif didn’t bother dignifying this triviality with a reply.

  They were still rising. Now the walls of the surrounding greenhouse structure were falling away, and they were left with nothing but an incredible dome of ice arcing up overhead. Through the transparent dome, Ellasif saw the blurred outlines of Whitethrone. She had never seen the capital of Irrisen before, but there was no other place it could be. Within a vast hexagonal enclosure stood hundreds, perhaps thousands, of buildings. There were buildings in all directions, their intricate designs lost in the refraction of the thick dome. Some were larger than fortresses, others barely larger than a house in White Rook, and between them the streets teemed with motion.

  Most of the city was bone white, but here and there were spots of brilliant color, especially where the crowds moved. Ellasif saw domes and towers such as she had only heard described in bards’ songs, and she could not even begin to imagine what sorts of people had built them, much less what they did in such a fabulous place.

  “Look,” said Mareshka, pointing to the south.

  From a frozen harbor rose a colossal spire of ice. At the very top, hundreds of feet above, a glittering palace sparkled in the spring sunlight. Far below, the waters of the lake flowed, if only for a few hundred yards before the permanent winter froze them solid once more.

  “This is civilization,” said Mareshka. “Taming a savage land to serve its people rather than allowing a harsh climate to reduce them to frightened, dangerous animals.”

  Ellasif felt Mareshka was wrong, but the spectacle of Whitethrone had stolen her voice.

  “This is home for those who would shape the world,” said Mareshka. “I can teach Liv to use the spirit within her to work great spells. She will be my apprentice. This is where she belongs.”

  “No,” said Ellasif. “She belongs with me.”

  Mareshka sighed and looked down. They floated sixty feet or more above the stone floor. Ellasif knew the witch could kill her simply by letting her fall. The faint smile upon the witch’s face told her Mareshka knew what she was thinking.

  “Kill me, and Liv will know,” said Ellasif. “She will never forgive you for that.”

  Mareshka’s smile widened. “I was right to deny Szigo his supper,” she said. “You are bold and resourceful, and I admire you very much. It is a pity you do not share your sister’s gift. Still, you could be of service to me.”

  “I will never be your slave,” said Ellasif.

  “That is not in question,” said Mareshka. “But perhaps we could make a bargain. There are others with gifts even more promising than your sister’s. Bring me one of them, and I shall let your sister go with you.”

  “Where could I find such a person?”

  Mareshka nodded as if they had struck a bargain.

  “I will show you.”

  It had seemed a simple bargain at the time—travel to Korvosa, locate a certain young wizard-turned-mapmaker who had recently come to Mareshka’s attention, and then bring him back to Whitethrone to take Liv’s place as Mareshka’s new apprentice. But it appeared now that all Ellasif’s efforts had only led her back into the clutches of the cannibal Szigo. When she heard the guttural voices of his trolls from outside the pine house, she knew she had little more time to live. So
on they would butcher her body and throw it piece by piece into their stewpot.

  Or would they? She wondered why they had kept her captive so long. The way her stomach felt, she knew it had been at least a day since Szigo captured her during the attack on the caravan. If there were survivors ...

  She hated to think that way. She was not like Declan’s fair maiden, waiting helplessly for someone else to come to her rescue. As for Jadrek and Olenka, she would almost rather end up in Szigo’s belly than be indebted to either of them for help. She could expect no help, and in truth she wanted none. She would find a way out of this charnel house, even if she were entirely alone.

  But she wasn’t alone.

  Less than ten feet away, Laughing Erik’s sword winked at her, or so it seemed as the candlelight flickered across the gold dragon on its crosspiece. While there was no denying the man himself had earned his legend, Erik’s sword was almost as much a hero as he. They said it sang to him in his sleep, and that he whispered his dreams of glory into the blade, that together they would turn them into reality upon a mound of enemy corpses. They said he could hurl the sword across a battlefield, and after it had cut the throats of his enemies it would fly back to his hand.

  Come to me, thought Ellasif.

  The sword remained in the firm grip of the wooden fingers that grew out of the pine trunks.

  “Come to me,” she said aloud. Still the blade did not move.

  Ellasif sighed. Her fleeting hope now felt ridiculous. It was Erik’s sword, not hers, after all. Perhaps the magic came from the man, not the blade. Even though he was her kinsman, there was no reason to believe the weapon would serve her the way it had its former master. Even if she could summon it to her hand, she could not use it to cut herself free from her tight bonds.

  She wrestled against those bonds, but they only tightened their grip around her wrists and ankles as she squirmed. A shudder passed through her body as she considered whether the surrounding pine trunks were alive and aware of her. If so, then she was already inside a monster, and that was a bad omen for escaping the warlock’s cooking pot.