Witch Wraith

Seventeen

With Grianne Ohmsford now aboard, the Quickening and her passengers were riding the back of a huge storm down out of the Klu Mountains and along the north–south corridor formed by the Charnals and the Lazareen. The storm had overtaken them shortly after they had lifted off from Stridegate and begun the long, slow journey back through the Northlands toward Callahorn. No more than gusting winds and distant clouds at first, the storm had quickly formed into a black wall of driving rains with intermittent hail. The temperature had dropped sharply, and the air grew so cold that it penetrated the heavy weather cloaks of the members of the airship’s crew and began to form ice on the decks.

Mirai Leah was in the pilot box working the controls with Austrum standing at her shoulder, one spelling the other when weariness and cold threatened to affect performance. Neither had spoken a word since they had set out. They had barely glanced at each other. Farther back, the Rover crew was clustered along the aft railing with Skint, staring off into the darkness.

Railing Ohmsford was hunkered down against the front wall of the pilot box next to Challa Nand, tightly wrapped in his weather cloak and trying to find what little shelter he could by using the other’s huge frame as a shield against the heavy winds and rain. He was thoroughly miserable, but his misery had more to do with the misfortune he had brought upon his friends and companions than with the storm. No matter how you looked at things, everything was his fault. His pigheadedness, his pride, his overconfidence, and his unwillingness to listen to anyone but himself—they had all contributed to his failure to realize that he was making a mistake.

Woostra, who had long since given up trying not to be sick or going below to hide his misery and suffer in private, was sitting with them. They were all looking forward to where a gray-robed specter crouched near the bow of the aircraft as motionless as stone.

Challa Nand bent close to the boy. “Stop thinking about it. It’s over and done with. She’s here now, and we have to live with it.”

Railing shook his head. “What was I thinking? Why didn’t I listen to the King of the Silver River? He warned me that she couldn’t come back to what she had been. He warned me that things wouldn’t work out as I wanted. But I just went ahead anyway. I wouldn’t listen.”

He shifted so he could look the Troll in the eye. “Worse, the Grimpond taunted me with what it knew was going to happen. It didn’t spell it out, but very definitely hinted at it. It dared me to keep going. It mocked me. But I just ignored that, too. I thought I knew better than a shade. I knew I could do what I had set out to do, and nothing could stop me.”

“It would have helped if you had confided in us a bit earlier,” Woostra observed with more than a hint of sarcasm in his gruff voice. “Perhaps then we could have done something to help you.”

The boy had just finished telling them everything moments earlier, all the little bits and pieces he had been keeping to himself, including his plans to save his brother by using Grianne Ohmsford reborn. He’d needed to tell someone besides Mirai, sick of dissembling, of keeping secrets. What point was there in secrecy now? It wasn’t as if any of them were going to do anything she didn’t want them to do. She’d made that plain enough even before they’d taken the airship aloft and begun their search.

Railing had been afraid she was going to kill one of them. She’d made it plain enough she wasn’t above doing so.

“Who’s to say you won’t get what you want in the end?” The Troll was still watching him. “You’ve done what you intended. You’ve brought her back, and she’s every bit as dangerous as she needs to be for what’s required of her. What use would she be in helping your brother if she were kind and sweet and loving? You need her like this. Maybe the tree knew, and that’s why it gave her back to you this way.”

Maybe, Railing agreed silently. This thing, this wraith he had brought out of the past—how else to describe what had happened?—was not Grianne Ohmsford as she was when captured by the Straken Lord and nearly destroyed. This was Grianne Ohmsford as she had been while still under the influence of the Morgawr, controlled and manipulated by a being every bit as evil as Tael Riverine. The Ilse Witch—this was what she had been and how so many still remembered her.

This was who he was bearing back aboard Quickening to try to save his brother.

“If I thought destroying the Straken Lord would save Redden, I would feel a little better about all this,” he said to Challa Nand. He exhaled sharply. “But there’s no reason to believe for a moment that, even if she succeeds in killing Tael Riverine, she will help my brother. She would just as soon kill him, too. She doesn’t care. It doesn’t care. Not a monster like that!”

Woostra seized his arm. “You need to remember something. You took her away from the life she had chosen for herself. You are responsible for her being returned to us the way she is. So what are you going to do about it? Stand around feeling sorry for yourself or find a way to get her to do what’s needed? Remember her history. She was a child deceived into believing the lies that drove her into becoming the Ilse Witch. She was feared and hated all her life by many, and nothing she did was ever enough to change that.” The narrow face pushed close. “Don’t call her a monster. If you think of her in those terms, you surrender yourself to your own worst fears. Remember her for what she was as the Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order. Remember why you came to find her in the first place. Don’t give up on hoping she can still help us.”

Railing stared at him in surprise, impressed by both his words and his passion. It was an intense, fervent plea.

But he was not convinced. “I don’t think she can do anything to help us. I don’t think she can do anything but lead us to ruin.”

In the pilot box directly behind them, Mirai caught snippets of this last exchange. She turned to Austrum, signaling her readiness to be relieved. As soon as his hands were on the controls, she left her station and went down on the deck to where Railing was sitting with Woostra and Challa Nand. She nodded in greeting to both, then reached down for Railing’s hand and pulled him to his feet.

“Come over here.”

She pulled him across the deck through a fresh onslaught of hail and wind and plopped him down in the lee of the mainmast. Then, heedless of those watching, she put her arms around him and kissed him.

“Just so you know who loves you,” she said.

“I know who loves me,” he replied.

“Good. Now don’t say anything more. Just sit with me.”

He did as she asked, although his unhappiness with himself remained undiminished, radiating off him like heat off coals. She let that be, waiting him out. She knew him well enough to appreciate that patience was important, that with Railing you had to allow his emotions to settle before you tried to use reason. He was hotheaded and impetuous, an impulsive risk taker, but strong in ways that others weren’t, the kind of friend that would give his life for you. She had known both brothers all her life, but her feelings for them had taken markedly different directions. Even though they might be mirror images of each other, they were very different people, and what she felt for Redden was different from what she felt for Railing. For the former, the fire was sweet and comfortable. For the latter, it was hot and compelling. She could admit it to herself now, if not before. Before, such an admission would have risked disrupting the relationship the three of them shared; choosing one over the other would have caused a schism that they might not have been able to bridge.

But she had known from the first that it must happen one day. She had always thought she would choose Railing when the time came. It was not until Redden was lost to them both and Railing was in danger of becoming lost, as well—albeit in a different way—that she decided to act. Revealing how she felt in such a dramatic, explosive way was impulsive and perhaps even foolish; she had not thought it through beforehand, and could not at all be certain of the consequences. But it didn’t matter. She needed him to be the way he had always been, not the way he had become since losing his brother. All of them did. He was the one—possibly the only one—who could save them.

So she had mocked him. She had lied to him about his brother and herself. She had spurred him to do something she had hoped he wanted to do even without realizing it. She had brought him back to himself by bringing him first to her.

But she could tell the worst wasn’t over. He had stopped at the edge of the cliff and stepped back, but now he was in danger of stepping forward again, of giving way to the despair he felt because of what Grianne Ohmsford had become.

She couldn’t permit that, couldn’t accept it, and refused to stand for it.

“Listen to me,” she said when sufficient time had passed. “You can’t blame yourself for what’s happened. There’s no reason for it. We all agreed that seeking Grianne Ohmsford so she could come back and stand against the Straken Lord was the right thing to do. All of us agreed, Railing. You didn’t force us. Yes, you kept things from us you shouldn’t have, but we all suspected this. You realize that, don’t you? We knew. We even talked about it. But that didn’t prevent us from sticking by you. Because you were the one who could make a difference. Even without knowing how, we sensed it.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes locked on hers. “But it might be a difference that will get us all killed. She’s capable of that, you know. She’s so deeply caught up in what’s been done to her—what I’ve done to her—that she could turn on us in a second.”

“I know that. The others know it, too. But we accepted that risk from the first. No one knew what she would be like if she came back. Not after a hundred years of being wedded to that tree—as an aeriad, as whatever she was or is. We took the risk that she could do what was needed. And she can, Railing. She can! She can destroy the Straken Lord.”

“We think she can, but we don’t know. We don’t even know if she will try. It doesn’t matter what she tells us. Look at her. She’s not even human anymore.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him so close that his face was almost touching hers. She could see the rain running down his forehead and cheeks. She could see the blush from the cold reddening his skin.

“Whatever she is, you have to find a way to make her do what is needed. No one else can do it but you. No one else can even get close to her. She may hate you, but she talks to you and she watches you. Have you seen how she looks at you? There’s something there, Railing.”

He stared at her, voiceless, lost.

She released him and stood up. “I have to steer the ship so it won’t crash and burn. Maybe you should do what you have to do, too.”

Then she turned and walked away and did not look back.

Railing sat where he was for a while, thinking through what Mirai had said to him, his mood alternating between acceptance and rejection. He could see what she was attempting to do, how she was reminding him none too subtly that he was the one who had to find a way to make sure Grianne Ohmsford did what they all knew was needed. It didn’t matter how he felt about her now that he had brought her back. It didn’t even matter if he felt guilty about it. The Ilse Witch was here and she wasn’t going away. What he couldn’t do—what she was telling him she wouldn’t let him do—was to throw up his hands and retreat into the mire of his despair over what he had wrought.

If nothing else, her words impressed on him anew that a large part of what he was struggling so hard to accomplish was not only to get Redden back from the Straken Lord but also to find a way to keep them all safe. He was the one who wielded the wishsong’s magic. He was the one who carried the ring bestowed by the King of the Silver River. He was the one on whose shoulders rested the responsibility for keeping them alive.

And as Mirai had pointed out, he was the only one the Ilse Witch might heed.

The Witch had come with him, after all. Though she hated and despised what he had done to her, she had come nevertheless. She was a creature of pure malice, and she was eager to seek out and destroy any enemy, but particularly the Straken Lord if for no better reason than to eradicate the last traces of what he had done to her. Find the Straken Lord. Engage him in battle. Destroy him and reap both relief and satisfaction.

There was no consideration for Redden’s fate, no interest in it at all. Saving him would be nothing more than a by-product of her efforts to get at Tael Riverine. Railing had tried several times to explain why she should feel otherwise, but the Ilse Witch cared nothing for the brothers and their suffering. The Ilse Witch spared not a single thought for the lives of mortal creatures, no matter their claims of family history shared with her. All of that was dead and gone to her. All of that belonged to someone else.

He climbed to his feet and, without pausing to think further on it, walked forward toward the bow where the Witch sat huddled in her gray robes in the pouring rain. She did not look up as he approached or glance back when he slowed, hesitant to come any closer without acknowledgment.

But then her hand lifted, and she beckoned to him, sensing his presence.

Unable to do anything else without appearing as frightened as he felt, he moved forward and sat down beside her.

“Don’t get too close to me,” she said out of the shadow of her cowl. “You don’t want to breathe the air I exhale.”

He looked down at his hands, rain dripping off them. “Are you alive now? Are you a living creature?”

Her laugh was harsh and bitter. “A fair question. I have asked it of myself. Am I? I breathe air. I move about. Is that enough?”

“You have thoughts and the ability to reason? You can see the truth of things when others speak to you?”

She turned her head slightly, part of her ruined face peering at him from out of the shadows. “My thoughts and my reasoning and my truths would burn the skin from your body should you study them too closely, Valeboy. They would burn you like acid.”

He was silent for a long time. “I am sorry I had to bring you back,” he said finally. “I did not know it would be this way.”

“Yet here I am.”

“My brother, your great-nephew, your own flesh and blood, is in the hands of the Straken Lord and will die if I do not free him. I did what I had to.”

Her hands, gray and gnarled, clenched before her like great claws. “Even though, by freeing him, you doom me?”

“I didn’t know that would happen.”

“But you suspected. Do not deny it. You were warned. The King of the Silver River. The Grimpond. I heard them speak. Their words were carried to me by the wind, and their warnings were clear enough. I would not come back as I was, they said. You ignored those warnings. Self-indulgent, heedless, prideful boy, you ignored what you were told would happen.”

Railing felt shame and anger burning in his chest. “I would do anything to save my brother. Even give up my own life.”

The clenched hands disappeared back inside the sleeves of the gray cloak. “You may get your chance to test that boast, for I care nothing for you or your brother. That is the stark truth of things. You brought me back to serve your own purposes, but I have no interest in them. I have my own purpose to serve. I have my own path to follow. Do you know what it is?”

He shook his head, words failing him.

“I am the Ilse Witch reborn. I must sate my rage and satisfy my bloodlust. I must rid myself of the memories of what I was as Mother Tanequil’s child, an aeriad, a spirit of the air. All that is lost to me. I was at peace and free, and you took that from me. I had a life of tranquility and purpose, and you stole it. You took what I was and you gave me back what I now am. I can feel myself continue to change, to adapt. Do you know what that means?”

“That you can never go back? That you are fated to remain as you are?”

She was silent then for a long time without answering. Then he heard her sigh. “I found my way to what would comfort me when I became Mother Tanequil’s creature. I left behind my human self with all its history of madness and violence and hatred. I shed my body and earthly connection and became a creature of the air, a spirit with no past and only a present. I found friendship and love and contentment in my sisters and in my freedom.” She glared out at him from within her cowl’s shadows. “And, no, I can never go back. And yes, I must remain as I am.”

He stared out into the rain, feeling empty and despairing. “When this is over, I will go with you to speak to the tanequil and ask that she reconsider your dismissal. I will help you become again what you were before. I will admit what’s happened is entirely my fault, and I was foolish to disrupt things. I will offer myself in your place, if it will help.”

She emitted a long peal of ragged laughter that ripped through the winds and rain. “Oh, you foolish boy! She knows all this, and she has made her choice, and there can never be a reckoning that would give me back what I lost.”

One clawed hand reached out and seized his arm in a grip of iron. “Do you not yet see? I am beyond all that! I do not seek to go back to what I was no matter what happens. I feel that slip away with every passing second, and soon it will be gone entirely. I want something else, something much more satisfying.”

“But maybe I can …”

“You don’t understand,” she snapped, yanking him closer. “You don’t begin to understand. What has been done cannot be undone. You’ve brought me back as something other than I was because that was what Mother Taneqil saw that you needed. But there was no provision made for me. There was no consideration given to how I would endure and adapt to this thing I now am.”

She turned full on him, and he saw the red fire in her eyes and felt the burning hate of her glare. “Now I am evolving still, and there is only one direction I can go—into such madness that there is no way back. Into an insanity that will make me much worse than the thing you have brought me to destroy. Oh, I will do what you wish, Valeboy. I will find the Straken Lord and do battle with him. I will see him vanquished. But what will happen then, do you think? What end will you have achieved?”

“My brother will …”

Her hiss cut him short and left him cringing from her. “Your brother? Your brother is nothing to me. Look beyond his worthless life and your own, as well. Look to the wider world and the future and then ask yourself again. What will you have achieved?”

Railing started to speak and then found he could not. The words were so terrible he could not speak them.

The Ilse Witch grinned, her teeth sharp and her face taut. “You know now, don’t you? You see it clearly.”

He couldn’t help himself. He did see it.

“Ponder it, then. Consider it. Mull your choices and prepare yourself for what waits. In this new world of yours, young Ohmsford-who-would-save-them-all, what fate will you embrace?”

Ah, shades! He howled it in the silence of his mind. “There must be another way!”

“There might have been once, but you did not choose it. You chose this way, and now you must follow its thread to wherever it leads.” She turned away from him, disappearing back into the shadows of her cowl. “Now get away from me and stay away.”

What have I done?

He sat for a moment longer before rising and moving away, no longer able to stay in her presence. Of all the outcomes he had imagined, this one had never occurred to him. He had believed she would do what was needed to help the Four Lands because that was what she had done in life as the Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order. He had been so sure she would set everything else aside so that she could save the world into which she had been born. She might not be happy about what he had done or eager to embrace his insistence on bringing her back from the life she had chosen for herself, but she would still do the right thing because that was what she had been trying to do ever since she had ceased to be the Ilse Witch.

He had never imagined she could come back as the very thing she had sought to escape. He had never imagined Mother Tanequil would return her as such.

Or that she would embrace this new identity and willingly become the very thing she hated. Or that she might have plans of her own that would be more terrible than the plans of Tael Riverine.

But she did, and they were.

He caught Mirai’s eye where she stood behind Austrum in the pilot box and signaled for her to join him. She came down quickly, moving through the steady rain across the windswept deck to where he waited at the port rail.

“What is it?” she said on seeing his face. “What did she say?”

He leaned close. “It wasn’t what she said, it was what she intimated. She is enraged at what has been done to her, but she is caught up in the persona she has been given and feels her former self being stolen away. She has become the Ilse Witch reborn, and she hasn’t the strength or the means or even the will to change.”

“But she will stand with us and fight the Straken Lord? Or does she refuse us completely?”

He closed his eyes, wiped the rain from his face, and looked at her anew. “She does not refuse us, but she does not ally with us, either. She cares nothing if we live or die. She will stand against Tael Riverine, and she says she will destroy him. But even that will not be enough for her.”

“Then what?”

He gripped her shoulders. “She intends to take his place.”