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."

CHAPTER Eighteen

The second attack on Arishaig by the demon hordes was launched just before midnight on the same day as the first. It came against the south and west walls once again, but with fresh ferocity. The creatures swarmed out of the darkness bearing grappling hooks and scaling ladders and threw themselves against the stone and iron of the fortress with such determination that, for a few terrible moments, Keeton thought his soldiers would be overwhelmed. Setting fire to fresh oil in the ditches, forming tall walls of flame, failed to deter them. Even the presence of the warships attacking from overhead did little to slow their assault. They came at the walls in wave after wave, shrugging off arrows and spears and missiles fired from slings and launchers. They fell dying and their fellows simply climbed atop them, lifted a little closer to their goal atop the piles of bodies.

But Keeton had brought flash rips to the walls and mounted them at regular intervals. They were illegal everywhere, but there wasn't an army that didn't possess them. And since the Federation had pioneered their manufacture, they had them stockpiled in secret caches throughout the city. Conventional weapons, however powerful, had not proven strong enough during the previous attack, and Keeton was not about to let legalities and Druid prohibitions stand in the way of saving his city and its people.

His decision was quickly vindicated by the results. When the flash rips fired on the attackers, dozens of the creatures simply vanished in ash and smoke and flame, disintegrating under the concentrated power of multiple diapson crystals. Strikes into the thickest clusters broke the momentum of the attack and sent it reeling away in spite of its vast numbers. Keeton thought maybe this would be enough to put an end to the attack for the night.

But the demons had other plans. After the oil fires burned themselves out and enough time had passed to persuade the defenders that the attack had been broken, the creatures returned. And this time they came from the air, borne in baskets carried by winged creatures that resembled giant bats and dropped onto the walls close by the flash rips and their crews. Hurtling themselves on both, the demonkind tore the men to shreds and disabled the weapons by smashing both the barrels and the swivel stands that were used to support and direct them. In a matter of minutes, all the weapons and mounts were destroyed and the creatures still alive had gone back over the walls and disappeared into the night.

Then the dragon reappeared, as black as its rider, little more than a shadow against the night, sweeping above the battlements, breathing flames on the defenders, and leaving everything dead in its wake. It happened so swiftly there was no time to use the few rail slings and fire launchers that remained intact or to bring to bear the weapons mounted on the warships that warded the corners of the fortress.

This time after the demonkind retreated, howling and screaming as they went, they did not come again right away, leaving the defenders sitting in the darkness and carnage to wonder, through the remainder of the night, when they would reappear next.

Keeton was angry and frustrated when Wint found him. "Tell me how many we lost?"