Ilse Witch Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
    Finally, there were pillars of ice that reached to the misted, cool skies, their massive forms shifting and grinding like giant’s teeth as a thin beam of blue fire born of Elfstone magic shone through to something that lay beyond. There was a city, all in ruins, ancient and alive with monstrous protectors. And there was a keep, buried in the earth, warded by smooth metal and bright red eyes, containing magic …
    The Ilse Witch gasped in spite of herself as the last image registered, an image of the magic the castaway had found within the buried keep. It was a magic of spells invoked by words—but so many! The number seemed endless, stretching away into shadows from soft pools of light, their power poised to rise into the air in a canopy so vast it might cover the whole of the earth!
    The castaway was writhing beneath her, and the hold she kept on him slipped away momentarily as she lost focus. She brought her song to bear again, layering it over him, embedding herself more deeply within his mind to keep him under control.
    Who are you? Speak your name!
    His body lurched and the sounds he made were terrifying.
    Tell me!
    He answered her, and when he did, she understood at once the importance of the bracelet.
    What else were you carrying? What else, that speaks to this?
    He fought her, not realizing what it was he was fighting,only knowing that he must. She sensed it was not entirely his idea to fight her, that either someone had implanted within his mind the need to do so or something had happened to persuade him it was necessary. But she was strong and certain in her magic, and he lacked the defenses necessary to resist her.
    A map, she saw. Drawn on an old skin, inked in his own hand. A map, she surmised at once, that was no longer his, but was on its way to Arborlon and the Elven King.
    She tried to determine what was on the map, and for a moment she was able to reconstruct a vague image from his grunts and moans. She caught a glimpse of names written and symbols drawn here and there, saw a dotted line connecting islands off the coast of the Westland and out into the Blue Divide. She traced the line to the pillars of ice and to the land in which the safehold lay. But the writings and drawings were lost to her when he convulsed a final time and lay back, his voice spent, his mind emptied, and his body limp and unmoving beneath her touch.
    She stilled her song and stepped away from him. She had all she was going to get, but what she had was enough to tell her what was needed. She listened to the silence for a moment, making sure her presence had not yet been detected. The castaway Elf lay motionless on his raised pallet, gone so deeply inside himself he would never come out again. He would live perhaps, but he would never recover.
    She shook her head. It was pointless to leave him so.
    Kael Elessedil, son of Queen Aine, once destined to be King of the Elves. It was before her time, but she knew the story. Lost for thirty years, and this was his sorry fate.
    The Ilse Witch stepped close and drew back her hood to reveal the face that few ever saw. Within her concealing garments, she was nothing of what she seemed. She was very young, barely a grown woman, her hair long and dark, her eyes a startling blue, and her features smooth and lovely. As a child, when she had the name she no longer spoke, she would look at herself in the mirror of the