Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  The Chronicler tipped his head to one side. “Are we speaking of a dream you have experienced, Lord Alistair?”

  Alistair nodded.

  “In this dream, did you see an ax, a sword, or any form of iron weaponry suspended above your head?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see the face of one long dead calling out to you from behind a shadowy veil?”

  “No.”

  “Did your last-night’s supper confront you in an antagonistic manner?”

  “What?” Alistair looked up.

  “Did it?”

  “Why would I dream something like that?”

  The Chronicler leaned back on his stool, reaching to a near bookshelf from which he selected a volume. The vellum pages were neatly copied in a flowing, if shaky script, and all was beautifully bound up in red-stained leather. The Chronicler flipped to a certain page illuminated with images more fantastic than accurate. He read:

  “Ande it dide com aboot that Sir Balsius, moste Noble Earle of Gaheris, saw withyn the Eiye of hyse Mynde a sertayn Mutton upon which he hade Et the night prevyus. And thyse Mutton did taxe Hym moste cruelly for having Gnawed upone its Joints. And it spake unto Hym thus, sayinge: ‘And surely You, most jowl-som Lorde, will die upon the Morrow, and the Wolfs will Gnaw upon Thyy Joints.’ So it dide Transpyre that Sir Balsius betook Hymselfe to the Hunt, and—”

  “Wait, wait!” said young Alistair, his brow puckering. “You’re telling me that this Earl Balsius—”

  “Your great-great-grandfather, if I recall the chronology correctly,” said the Chronicler.

  “—dreamt about an antagonistic mutton and died the next day?”

  “According to my predecessor, yes.” The Chronicler shut the book and smiled a grim, mirthless sort of smile at the young lord. “But I give little credence to these so-called histories. Dreams are merely dreams, and stories are merely stories. They are subjects of curious interest but nothing upon which to base your life.”

  He shoved the volume back into its place with perhaps a little more vehemence than was called for. Alistair, however, did not notice. He was trying to recall what he’d eaten the night before.

  “What about,” he said, embarrassed but eager to know, “what about a pale-faced child?”

  “Come again?” said the Chronicler.

  “A pale-faced child. Paler than any child I ever saw. Like a ghost or a phantom. Running along the edge of a bottomless chasm, and . . .” Alistair stopped, his mouth suddenly dry, and stared into the flickering candle flame, unable to continue.

  “Is this your recurring dream, my lord?”

  “Perhaps. Some of it.”

  “Well, no doubt about it, then,” said the Chronicler. “You’re going to die.”

  “What?” Alistair nearly knocked the candle over as he spun to face the Chronicler. “Do you mean it?”

  “You saw the pale-faced child beside the bottomless chasm?” The Chronicler selected another volume, slid down from his stool, and approached Alistair at the table. “Then there can be no doubt about it. You’re going to die. A slow, lingering death brought on by study and academic application.” He plunked the book down in front of Alistair. “As long as you’re here, you might as well start reading. Open to the tenth page, please.”

  Scowling, Alistair watched the Chronicler climb back onto his stool, wishing he were clever enough this early in the morning to think of something nasty to say. But too many sleepless nights in a row, waking at dawn to frozen feet and nose, had sapped him of any cleverness with which he’d been born.

  He should have known better than to confide in the Chronicler.

  He opened the volume to the required page and stared at the words scribbled there. He pulled the candle closer, then reached for another. The added light did nothing to help.

  “I can’t read this,” he said.

  “Yes, you can,” said the Chronicler.

  “I don’t know this piece.”

  “You know all the letters, and you know the sounds they make.” The Chronicler, bowed over his work, did not bother to look around. His quill scritched away at a flimsy parchment as he made a copy, using the pumice stone to hold the page in place rather than risk greasing the delicate fibers with his fingertips. “Sound it out.”

  Alistair’s scowl deepened. He did not recognize the hand in which this unknown text had been written. Everything put down on paper within the walls of Gaheris was either in the Chronicler’s hand or that of his predecessor. But this hand, this wavering, watery script in faded ink, was not one he had seen before.

  “I have time,” the Chronicler said. “I can wait all day if necessary.”

  Alistair swallowed, trying to wet his dry throat, then took a hesitant stab at the first word. “Ta-hee.”

  “What sound does a ‘th’ make?”

  Blood rushed to Alistair’s cheeks, turning their chalky pallor bright and blotchy. “The!” he read, as though he could kill the word with a single stroke.

  “Go on,” said the Chronicler calmly.

  Setting his shoulders and rolling his stiff neck, Alistair drew a deep breath. “The kin-gee . . . No, king. The king will find his . . . his way to the—”

  He stopped suddenly. Within that short phrase he recognized what he was reading. His embarrassment tripled, and he clenched his fists, glaring round at the Chronicler again. “I’m not reading this,” he said.

  The Chronicler continued writing without a pause.

  “This is a nursery rhyme,” Alistair said. “I’m not a babe in my nursemaid’s arms!”

  “Shall I bear word to your uncle that once again you have given up intellectual pursuits for a pack of sorry dogs and a still sorrier fox?”

  “Intellectual pursuits? This?” Alistair threw up his hands, leaning back in his chair. “Anyway, Uncle Ferox doesn’t read. Neither does any other earl in the North Country. That’s why we keep men like you.”

  The Chronicler said nothing. But he said it with such finality that Alistair sighed, knowing he’d lost the fight, and turned back to the book. He might as well ram his head against a brick wall as challenge the Chronicler.

  Between them remained the unspoken truth: Earls may not read, but earls were not kings.

  Well, neither was Alistair, but this argument would gain him no ground. Not with an entire nation’s expectations resting on his young shoulders. So he bent over the old book again and strained his eyes in the candlelight to make out the scribbling scrawl.

  “The king will find his way,” he read slowly, like a blind man feeling out an unfamiliar path, “to the sw—swar—sword? ”

  “Yes,” said the Chronicler.

  “The sword beneath the floor. The nig-hit. The night. The night will flame again.”

  “Good,” said the Chronicler, though Alistair knew the effort hardly merited praise. Even the simplest words gave him difficulty. He’d started learning too late, he thought. It came easy for someone like the Chronicler, who’d been apprenticed to old Raguel from the time he could speak. Alistair had always had more important matters to occupy his mind, and only the daft whim of his uncle could have driven him to letters so late in his education.

  “Continue,” the Chronicler said.

  Alistair ground his teeth. Then he began:

  “The night will flame again

  When the Smallman finds the door.

  The dark won’t hide the Path

  When you near the House of—”

  “Do you really think I am so easily fooled?”

  Alistair stopped. He did not raise his head, but his eyes flashed to the back of the Chronicler’s head. “I’m reading the rhyme,” he said.

  “No,” said the Chronicler, still without looking around. “You are reciting the rhyme. You know it by heart. You’re not reading at all.”

  With a curse, Alistair slammed the book shut and stood, nearly knocking the nearest candle over into its pooling wax. “If I already know the dragon-eaten thing, I see no reason why I
should read it.”

  “Neither do I,” the Chronicler replied, “so long as you are determined to be less of a man than you could be.” He shook his head and assumed a patronizing tone, one that Alistair knew all too well and hated for the familiarity. “Do you not realize, my lord, that you only limit yourself by this stubbornness? Can you understand the wealth of worlds and lives available to you through the written word, waiting to be discovered?”

  “Unreal lives,” Alistair said. “Unreal, untrue, unlived. I have no interest in holing myself away in dark rooms, poring over pages of these fool letters. I have a life of my own to live.”

  “Unless, of course, this pale-faced child of your dreams has its way,” said the Chronicler.

  Alistair’s cheeks drained of color. He looked sickly in the candlelight. “Don’t mock me, Chronicler. Remember your place.”

  But the Chronicler was one of those people unable to be intimidated by rank. He turned and fixed Alistair with a stare, and Alistair immediately wished he could take back his words.

  “You mock yourself,” said the Chronicler, “wasting your energies worrying about dreams when there is work to be done. Or do you think the kingship will land upon you without merit? You, Earl Ferox’s illiterate nephew?”

  Alistair wanted to rage. But rage didn’t come naturally to his nature. Besides, he was terribly, terribly tired. So he wilted beneath the Chronicler’s stare and managed only a muttered, “I don’t see how reading and writing will make me a better king. Will it strengthen my ability to lead earls, bind alliances, or battle Corrilond?”

  “The Kings of Corrilond read,” said the Chronicler.

  “Well, then I won’t be a King of Corrilond, will I?”

  The Chronicler’s mouth opened, and Alistair braced himself as for the whip. The Chronicler may not have possessed anyone’s idea of manly prowess, but he did possess a tongue quicker and sharper than any cat-o’-nine-tails and a wit to match. Some of the tongue-lashings Alistair had received during library altercations left scars, and he did not relish taking another.

  He was spared by a knock at the door and the entrance of his mother’s page. Alistair turned to the boy with relief. “What is it?”

  “Her ladyship wishes to inform you of the arrival of the envoy from Aiven.” The page bowed quickly, his eyes darting from Alistair’s furious face to the Chronicler’s and back again. “Your bride, my lord.”

  “Oh.” The heat drained from Alistair’s body, leaving him suddenly cold and a little clammy. “Of course. Thank you, and tell Mother that I will be down directly.”

  The page left and Alistair, without a word to the Chronicler, went to one of the south-facing library windows and looked out. He heard the thump of his teacher sliding off his high stool, but he did not turn around. His gaze swept across the courtyards of Gaheris and down the path leading up from River Hanna. He saw the flag of Aiven, white with the crest of a griffin in red, and the retinue, some on foot, some on horseback. In the midst was a horse-borne litter in which he was certain rode Lord Aiven’s eldest daughter, Lady Leta.

  The entourage entered the outer courtyard, and Alistair could see the curtains of the litter drawn back. The Chronicler climbed up on a low step beside him and also looked out the narrow window.

  “Well,” said Alistair as the girl emerged. “There she is. My bride.” He frowned a little. “What do you think of her?”

  The Chronicler’s eyebrows lifted, and his voice was as dry as it had ever been when he replied, “She looks a proper milk-faced lass. Just what you’d expect in an earl’s wife.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Alistair, and while he felt he should be angry with the Chronicler, he couldn’t work up the strength for it.

  “You’d better go down and meet her,” the Chronicler said. “Your lesson this morning is through.”

  “Maybe one more verse?” It was only almost a joke.

  “Face it like a man,” the Chronicler said, and though they had just been at odds, he clapped the young lord on the back. “You can’t escape her now she’s here.”

  “No. I suppose not.”

  Lady Mintha, sister of Earl Ferox, wrapped her fur-edged robe tightly about herself as she waited to receive the Aiven envoy. The cold morning tipped her features a raw red but could do nothing to emphasize the chill in the gaze she turned upon her son.

  “Alistair!” she cried, her smile freezing his blood as Alistair, still buckling his cloak, hastened to join her in the inner courtyard. “You’ve kept us waiting in the cold, my darling. I was beginning to think your uncle would be obliged to escort Lady Leta inside himself.”

  “Forgive me, Mother,” Alistair said, dropping a kiss on his mother’s cheek . . . or rather, on the air just above. He feared his lips might ice over if he actually touched her. Then he offered a hasty bow to his uncle.

  Earl Ferox, though he had been a magnificent man in his prime, trembled like a gutted old tree, still standing but only just clinging to life. His eyes, once bright with warrior’s fire, were filmed over with dullness. A few years younger than his sister, he was not an old man. But the wasting disease struck even the mightiest, and neither leech nor herbalist could prolong the span of his days.

  He kept living, however. Long after many had thought he would succumb, he continued his labored existence, day after dogged day. He had not yet seen the earls of the North Country offer the crown to Gaheris. He could not die. Not yet.

  He nodded to his nephew and bade him rise. “This is a great day for Gaheris,” he said, his voice quavering but determined. “Long have I wished to see the Houses of Aiven and Gaheris united in purpose. Today marks the beginning!”

  Even as he spoke, he stepped aside. The hunched mass of his body moved to reveal the form of the maiden standing beyond. And Alistair had his first up-close look at his future bride.

  Light of Lumé, she was much younger than he’d thought!

  Or perhaps, he decided on second glance, she was merely small for her age. And the way she stood, head bowed and eyes downcast, gave her the look of a young girl rather than the woman he had expected. She wore a white barbet and veil that covered all her hair, decorated by a simple gold thread.

  And the eyes she raised to meet his, though gray, reminded him of a fawn’s timid gaze. The poor girl was at least as unhappy about this arrangement as Alistair, which was some consolation at least. Alistair offered her what he hoped was a friendly smile.

  “Welcome to Gaheris,” he said.

  She opened her mouth. For a moment she said nothing, and he could see by the look in her eyes that she was trying to think of something clever, something charming. He braced himself. In the end, however, she managed only a weak, “I . . . I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Lord Alistair.”

  He felt his grin sliding away, so he stepped forward swiftly and offered his arm. “You must be cold,” he said. “Allow me.”

  She slid her hand up onto his wrist and walked beside him, her head scarcely coming to his shoulder, and said not a word the rest of the day unless spoken to. There was no doubt in Alistair’s mind.

  He would never love Lady Leta of Aiven.

  In the gloom of night, a shed door creaked.

  By the light of the moon above, a wizened, dirty figure emerged, toting a broom, a mop, and a leaking bucket. He shut the door and latched it firmly, then turned with a sigh to survey the inner courtyard and what the moonlight might reveal. River muck tracked everywhere! And who to clean it up? Certainly not the great lords and their great guests.

  This was the work of a scrubber.

  So the scrubber swept and mopped and scraped mud and horse droppings from the stone. As he worked, he turned his eye up to the castle keep. He saw a light on in the library, of course. Lifting his gaze one story higher, he saw another flickering candle in a window. Lord Alistair’s room, he knew, and the candle his one feeble defense against the terrors of the dark and his dreams.

  The scrubber looked for a light in the guest q
uarters. But Lady Leta must have been sent to bed, obedient little creature that she was.

  The scrubber scrubbed on. More muck would be driven into the crevices come morning, and he would be out here at this same chore yet again. But that did not mean a man shouldn’t try. So on he worked at his lonely task.

  But he wasn’t alone. Oh no! He had the moon above and all the starry host watching him. One star in particular, bright blue and low to the horizon, winked with curious interest. The scrubber looked up at it and smiled.

  “Starlight, star bright,” he whispered.

  Let us out!

  Across the way stood a heavy door, the entrance to the Gaheris family crypt. As the scrubber drew near, driving mud before him, whispers reached out to him from beyond the door, whispers no one else heard, perhaps because, in reality, there was nothing to hear.

  Let us out!

  “Keep your helmets on,” the scrubber said, his bare feet squelching in the mud trailing behind his mop. “It’s not time yet.”

  2

  THE PARASITE LATCHED HOLD OF ETALPALLI, and I, for the first time, saw death in the eyes of my father, my mother. Immortal, they had ruled the City of Wings since before Time dared visit our demesne. They had seen the rise of the red spires and guided the growth of green things. They ruled from Itonatiu and Omeztli Towers and were, in my eyes, like the sun and the moon themselves.

  But the day the Parasite came, my parents looked from their two high towers and saw, for the first time, their doom.

  When Leta’s father came to her earlier that spring and said, “You are going to marry the Earl of Gaheris’s nephew,” her first instinct was to rebel.

  “I am a person!” she wanted to shout. “I have my own desires, my own passions! I’m not a tool for the manipulation of alliances!”

  But as always, it was practical Leta who responded instead.

  “Very well, Father. This will be a great thing for Aiven House, will it not?”