Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

“Not at all,” she murmured, and Alistair beat a hasty retreat, leaving her standing at the library door.

  She remained awhile, unable to move, her ears ringing with words she desperately wished she could un-hear. But she could not stay here forever, undecided and afraid. So at last, her head bowed, she slid into the dimness of the library.

  The Chronicler sat as he always did, at his desk, wiping his stained fingers with a still-more-stained blotting rag. He did not seem to notice her entrance but stared at the page he had been copying before Alistair’s lesson began, perhaps reading it, perhaps simply gazing at nothing.

  Leta coughed. She wasn’t good at this sort of cough. It was too obvious a ploy for attention, and attention was never Leta’s realm of comfort. But she coughed anyway, and when the first one did not work, she tried a second, louder.

  The Chronicler turned. For just a moment, she thought she saw his face light up with a glow brighter than the candle on his desk, brighter even than the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window.

  But all warmth vanished the next moment, replaced by the Wall.

  Leta had become all too familiar with the Wall over the last four months. It was not present at every lesson. No indeed! Many days when she came to the library, eager and embarrassed by her own eagerness, and took her place at this table, she could see equal enthusiasm in the Chronicler’s face. She could hear the excitement in his voice when he told her the list of letters and words she was to learn that day. She would sit and copy these until the Chronicler told her she’d done enough, and then he would draw up his stool beside her and listen to her stumbling attempts to sound out the words.

  On the days when the Wall was down, the Chronicler would exclaim, “Listen to you, m’lady! You read like a chronicler yourself!”

  But such days were invariably followed by the Wall. The Chronicler would sit on his stool, surrounded in a silence as strong as all Gaheris’s fortifications, retreated so deeply into himself that Leta wondered if he even knew who besieged him anymore.

  He would speak, but only as necessary. A curt “Good” or a curter “Wrong.” And scarcely a word of explanation in between.

  On such days, Leta rarely read well, and she always left wondering if she had offended him somehow.

  She saw the Wall go up now, blocking out that glimpse of warmth and, she dared believe, pleasure.

  Pleasure? Her practical side scoffed. Did you not hear them, you ninny? Insipid little creature, that’s what you are!

  The Chronicler doesn’t think so, her rebellious side replied stubbornly.

  The Chronicler doesn’t think anything of you, said her practical side. You’re nothing but a diversion, and not a very welcome one at that.

  Leta ground her teeth against that thought and forced a timid smile. “I’m here for my reading lesson, Chronicler,” she said.

  “So you are,” said he. “Come and sit, m’lady.”

  He slid off his stool and cleared Alistair’s place at the table. He muttered something unpleasant that Leta could not hear as he tested the strength of the spine on the volume from which Alistair had been reading. Satisfied that it wasn’t permanently ruined, but no less irked, he replaced it on the shelf and searched for another book for his new pupil.

  Leta took a seat in Alistair’s chair and waited quietly with her hands folded until he placed the selected volume before her.

  “Please turn to page ten,” he said, returning to his stool.

  “Um.” Leta licked her lips nervously as she flipped to the appropriate passage. “Are you not having me copy?”

  The Chronicler shook his head. “We are going to practice another side of the chronicler’s art today.”

  He seemed to expect a reply. Leta nodded but kept her mouth shut.

  “Can you not guess what that is?” the Chronicler asked, his voice a little sharp.

  She shook her head.

  “Thinking.” He punctuated the word with a pound of his fist upon his desk. “I want you to think today. You will read that piece before you and then, rather than copy it out, you will tell me its meaning.”

  They looked at each other across the dimness of the chamber. Warm afternoon light poured through the windows, falling on the Chronicler’s hair and turning it gold, falling on Leta’s face and turning it white beneath her barbet and veils.

  The Chronicler said, “Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Chronicler.”

  With a wave of his hand, he indicated for her to proceed. Leta picked up the parchment, frowning as she studied the words. Slowly, some of them came to her, like a camouflaged deer in a thicket becoming more visible as she stared. She recognized words here and there, then whole phrases. The rest she could fill in from memory, for she had known this simple rhyme from the time she was in her cradle.

  She both read and recited:

  “The king will find his way

  To the sword beneath the floor.

  The night will flame again

  When the Smallman finds the door.

  “The dark won’t hide the Path

  When you near the House of Light.

  Sometimes you have to run away

  To win the final fight.”

  Another silence. Leta glanced up at the Chronicler, wondering if he would scold her for reciting much of the piece rather than reading it. She knew he could tell the difference; he always spotted any faking or guesswork on her part. But he sat with his arms crossed, watching her, saying nothing, allowing the silence to dominate everything until Leta thought she might suffocate in it.

  “Well?” he said at last.

  “Well?” she replied quietly.

  “What does it mean?”

  Leta looked at the page again. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a nursery rhyme. For children.”

  “Why should that make it meaningless?”

  She felt stupid. Insipid little thing, her inner voice whispered, and no rebellious counter offered itself. “It’s just a story,” she said. “About the Smallman, who they say will find the lost House of Lights and . . . and battle a great evil.”

  “And who is the Smallman?” asked the Chronicler.

  “I don’t know. Probably the child for whom this rhyme was originally written. Or someone from another tale I don’t recall.”

  Another silence. Leta felt her limbs shaking with pent-up frustration, shame, anger she dared not express. She wanted to tear the page in two, to fling it from her, to run from the library and never return. She had never felt more foolish or useless. Daughter of an earl, intended for marriage to a man who scorned her, for childbirth, for death, for dullness worse than death. Tears stung her eyes, and her heart beat a furious pulse. She opened her mouth to say something she hadn’t yet thought out, something cutting.

  But the Chronicler’s voice broke the silence. “What have they been telling you?”

  Leta started and looked up at him, saw the expression on his face, and quickly looked away again. Her own anger melted in sudden trembling. “I beg your pardon?” she whispered.

  “What have they been telling you?” he repeated.

  “About what, Chronicler?”

  “About yourself.” His voice was like a wasp’s sting, swift but leaving behind a lingering pain. “What have they convinced you that you are?”

  Leta opened her mouth, but no words came. Her whole body felt colder than the river’s icy flow.

  “Let me guess,” the Chronicler persisted. “They’ve told you that you have no mind. That you are less than a man because your body is not shaped like his.”

  A roaring blush spread up Leta’s neck and flooded her face—a flush of embarrassment that he should dare mention a woman’s body and of shame at the truth he spoke.

  The Chronicler slid from his stool and slowly crossed the room. “They’ve told you that the outer shape of you determines the inner shape of your spirit. And you, foolish, foolish girl, have believed them! You make yourself less than you could be and hide instead.
”

  He stood before her now, his head tilted to meet her gaze. She wanted to look away but dared not. How angry he was, with an anger that frightened her for she could not quite understand it. His frame shook with the potency of his feeling, and his hands were fists.

  “You’ve believed them,” he said, his voice an accusation. “You’ve let yourself be made into something you were never meant to be. Tell me—tell me, Leta!—have you not longed all your life to prove them wrong?”

  “Our woman’s lot,” said the voice of her mother in her head.

  “Insipid thing,” Lady Mintha repeated.

  But the Chronicler took her by the hand. Though his fingers were cold and ink stained, his grip was surprisingly strong. Leta tried to pull away, but he would not release her.

  “Where is the maid who came to me,” he said, “and dared me to believe she could learn anything a man could learn? Where is she?”

  The Wall was gone. Leta saw suddenly the whole of the Chronicler’s heart and life exposed in dangerous vulnerability. And she knew that he sought an answer not only for her but also for himself. Her spirit lurched with a pain she could not name, reaching out to what she saw in his eyes. Somehow she thought she could give him the answer he needed. But she did not know what that answer might be.

  Frightened, Leta closed her eyes, her final shield against those things she could not fathom.

  For a moment, the Chronicler held on, studying the bowed face of the girl before him. Then he let go her hands and stepped back a pace or two, folding his arms. “Tell me what the rhyme means, m’lady,” he said.

  She heard the return of the Wall. For the first time, its presence relieved her; she felt it cosseted her own spirit as much as his. But she also knew that it made for a restrictive fortress, more a prison cell than a protection.

  She found her voice in little more than a breath. “I think it means that we will have a king. When Etanun’s sword is found. When the House of Lights is opened once more.”

  “Good enough.” The Chronicler’s voice was as hard as his pumice stone, but it bore an edge of determination. “So who is the Smallman?”

  Leta shook her head. It was heavy with unshed tears, but she knew now that she would not shed them. “Um. The Smallman is . . . is the future king. The one who will find the door to the House of Lights.”

  “And the House of Lights? What is that?”

  “The House that Akilun and Etanun built,” she said. “The last one, the one not burned by the Flame at Night.”

  Here the Chronicler shook his head and returned to his own desk. He climbed up onto the stool, faced about, and folded his arms again. “Have you ever heard the word metaphor, m’lady?”

  Leta shook her head.

  “Metaphor,” said he, “is the use of a symbol to represent an idea. Do you follow?”

  Though she hated to, Leta shook her head again.

  “No.” He grunted and shrugged his shoulders up to his ears, looking ceilingward. “Let me explain. The House of Lights doesn’t exist. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Leta frowned but made no answer, so the Chronicler continued. “It is a symbol passed down through ages of oral tradition, via minstrels and songsters of generations past. A symbol of enlightenment, of understanding. The House of Lights is no literal house but a representation of the understanding humanity desires to attain in a dark and confusing universe.

  “The Smallman, or Smallman King, as you have named him, is also a symbol. He is not a real person or, at least, not any one person. He represents mankind. Small-minded. Ignorant. Struggling to make sense of life. He is a figure created by bards long ago, searching always for this House of Lights, for enlightenment, and standing up to all foes who oppose him in this quest. When he succeeds at last, ‘the night will flame again.’ The darkness of ignorance will be driven out by the light of understanding.”

  His voice was confident as he spoke. Here, in this realm of books and academic speculation, he held uncontested sway. Here he was stronger than any man of twice his height and double his breadth. Though the protective Wall remained firmly in place, a glimmer of light shone from beyond it, revealing the life that dwelled within.

  “Do you see?” the Chronicler asked. “Even a child’s nursery rhyme—so simple, so small—has much to offer those who will take the time to consider. Those willing to think.” He leaned forward on his stool now, and his face was eager, his eyes interested. “Now tell me, m’lady,” he said, “beyond the simple Faerie tale, beyond the stories you’ve been taught, what do you think it means?”

  Leta stared at the book, seeing words she could read where only months before she would have seen nothing more than scratches in dark ink. Those words, those doorways to other worlds, to other times, beckoned to her, and she felt her heart begin to race. How she longed to use her mind as she had never before used it! How she longed to run into places she had never believed possible for one such as herself!

  “Are you afraid to answer?” the Chronicler asked.

  Leta drew a deep breath. Then she nodded.

  “Why?”

  Even that was a dangerous question. Clutching the book in both hands, scarcely daring to raise her gaze from it, she said, “Because I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  He snorted. “What does that matter? Think something; think something on your own. Not what they tell you to think or what I tell you to think. You are Leta of Aiven. I want to hear your thoughts, for they are neither mine nor anyone else’s. Only yours. This makes them interesting.”

  His words pierced the numbness she had felt since meeting Lady Mintha, since coming to Gaheris, since the moment her father had told her she would wed and did not consult her wishes on the matter. They pierced down to a warm, living part of her spirit that she had scarcely been aware existed.

  Tell him what you think! her rebellious side cried. Tell him!

  He’ll believe you such a fool, her practical side rejoined.

  Tell him anyway! Tell him!

  So she said, “I think you’re wrong.”

  Then she blushed and pressed a hand to her mouth. Never in her life had she dared to cross the will or opinions of anyone! The glory of freedom surged in her heart. Before she could stifle the words, she repeated, “I think you’re wrong!”

  The Chronicler laughed a genuine laugh, and the great stones of the Wall crumbled away in that sound. “Do you, now?” he said, his eyes sparkling with mirth and, wonderfully, interest. “Why is that?”

  “I think . . .” Blood pounded so hard in Leta’s head, she could scarcely get the words out. “I think the House of Lights is real. I think it stands somewhere in our own country, hidden until the time is ripe. I think the Smallman is a real person, and he will find Etanun’s sword, and he will find the hidden door. He will open up the House of Lights so that we will hear the Sphere Songs again!”

  “Silly superstition?” the Chronicler said, but it was less a rebuke than a suggestion for her to consider.

  “Maybe,” she replied. “Maybe not. But I believe it.”

  “What you believe cannot affect the truth of the matter.”

  “Cannot the same be said for unbelief?”

  Their eyes met. She saw appreciation written across his face. More than that, she saw what she thought might be pride. Gazing upon her, the Chronicler saw only something that pleased, that inspired.

  “A good point, m’lady, and a fair one,” said he. “I will think on it.”

  Her heart beat faster still, and Leta thought she might explode with the sudden power she felt tingling through her body. Let Lady Mintha say what she will! Let Alistair ignore her existence! Let her father force her into a marriage and treat her like bargaining baggage! She knew now what none of them knew.

  She was Leta. And she had a mind all her own.

  “I disagree with you, you know,” said the Chronicler, still smiling.

  “And I disagree with you,” Leta replied, full of the joy of contradiction.
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br />   4

  THE TWELVE ARRIVED SOON AFTER. They are Cren Cru’s servants, his slaves, perhaps his worshippers. They passed through our gates uninvited, breaking barriers that should have been impassable. But once the Mound appears, who can stop him or his work? His Twelve marched into our land, the tramping feet echoing on our unwalked streets, and the Sky People flew into their towers and hid from those blood-cold gazes. Each warrior carried with him—or her, for I saw females in their number—a sharp, bronze stone. They arranged these in a circle around the Mound. The stones glittered in the daylight until the sun himself must have shuddered at the sight.

  Cren Cru was come indeed. And when he made his demands, Etalpalli trembled.

  Through the Wood Between walked a Faerie who wore the form of a cat and who didn’t give a whisker’s twitch whether anyone believed in his existence or not.

  This was the prevailing attitude among fey folk, truth be known. Amid all their philosophical contemplations, many mortals overlooked the fact that Faeries, on the whole, were just as happy to be disbelieved in as believed in.

  An attitude of disbelief was easy enough to encourage in this age, when men of letters were few and libraries sparse. Faeries were by and large dismissed as imaginative fancies brought on by deeply instilled superstition and possibly a bit of distilled spirits. And the cat was just as happy to encourage this sort of dismissal. On the whole, a healthy disbelief in Faerie and all the folk who lived there made his life easier.

  He padded confidently, tail high and ears perked, down a certain Path in the Wood Between, which grew in the strange, predominantly timeless stretch of existence separating the Far World from the Near. Indeed, the more the cat trod the various byways beneath the trees’ long shadows, the more he suspected the Wood was not really a wood at all, but itself a living consciousness, or possibly many consciousnesses all bundled into one. Some of those were pleasant enough sorts. More were cheeky devils, and the rest downright wicked.

  The Wood would turn a person round and flip him inside out if given half a chance. This the cat knew for certain.

  But as long as one walked a Path—a known, safe Path belonging to a known, safe master—there was little the Wood could do to interfere.