“I asked the Addershag to let me go to her. She refused. There was nothing we could do, nothing we hadn’t already done. I went anyway. I used my empathic powers and healed the little girl. I did it so that it appeared she recovered on her own, that I was only a vessel to show her the way back. But the Addershag knew better. She told me that my empathic gift would kill me one day, that an empath tracking fate in an effort to change its course would only end up throwing away her own life in the process. She said I was wasting my precious gift and her time, and I would do better on my own. She disowned me. She cast me out.”
She pulled her knees to her chest and gave Ahren a wry, sad smile. “She was right. I did well enough. I was known and liked. Some mistrusted and challenged my talent, but not so many. I was visited often enough and kept busy. I was careful with use of my empathic abilities. Once or twice, I tried visiting the Addershag, but she would have nothing to do with me. Her interest lay in deciphering the future; she cared nothing for the past and hence nothing for me. I grew bitter toward her, angry that she would treat me with such disdain. But I was afraid of her, too. She was very old and her enemies all lay dead and buried. I did not care to become one of them. So I stayed out of her way.
“Then the Ilse Witch came to me, and everything changed.”
She looked away from him for a moment, out into the emptiness of the passageway, into the dimly lit shadows beyond their magic-induced sanctuary, but beyond even that, he sensed, into the past.
Her eyes shifted back to his. “She showed herself to me, something it was said she never did. She was young, like me. She was an orphan, like me. She was so like me that I saw myself in her from the moment we met. She was a powerful sorceress, and I wanted her friendship and patronage. So when she proposed the bargain, I accepted. I would be her eyes and ears in Grimpen Ward and give her news of things that she should know. She, in turn, would make certain that when the Addershag died, I would ascend to her position as principal seer in Grimpen Ward.”
Her pale, ethereal features tightened. “I insisted I did not want the Addershag to come to any harm. I was assured she would not. She was old, after all, and would die soon enough. Did I question this? Did I want to see her fate? The Ilse Witch handed me a scarf. She told me to use my vision by channeling it through that piece of cloth she had stolen from the old woman. I did so, and saw her dead upon her cottage floor, eyes open and staring. The Ilse Witch took back the scarf. Now I had seen for myself. All that was required, once she died, was that I step into her shoes. Why not? I was her former apprentice, the most skilled of all seers next to her. Wasn’t I her logical successor?
“I believed I was, of course, and I was still hurt from her rejection of me. So I agreed to the bargain and let events take their course. The Ilse Witch became my new mentor and friend. I began reporting by carrier bird everything I saw in the village and surrounding countryside. And I waited for the Addershag to die. It took a year, but die she did. She was bitten by a small, deadly snake that nestled in a bag of gold given to her by a patron. It was never clear who that patron was. Her lady servant was gone for a day and a night and found her dead when she returned. She buried her out back and kept the house for herself.”
She sighed. “And I, I became what I had wanted to be, the new Addershag, her successor. Her followers, her patrons, all came now to me, and no one challenged me. I convinced myself that her death had nothing to do with me, that it was simply the result of a vision fulfilling itself, and that I, by not interfering, was behaving just as she had taught me. She would not have listened to me anyway, I thought. There was nothing I could have done to change things.”