Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  They were dying. Every day, more life fled from their shining faces. Cren Cru clung to the ground of Etalpalli, and I could almost see the fingerlike roots clutching into the soil, draining the demesne of life. Draining my father, my mother.

  Faerie lords and ladies are gifted with three lives. Twice they may be killed, and only a third death will send them down to the Final Water, never to return. But as I watched my parents deny Cren Cru, I saw all of their lives at once slowly drawn from their bodies.

  The blue star shone above Gaheris Castle.

  Mouse, the kitchen drudge, moved as quietly as his namesake across the inner courtyard, escaping the confines of the castle kitchens. The air was cold, and the cobblestones bruised his feet. The only shoes he had acquired were thin soled, and he might as well have been barefoot.

  But he wasn’t used to the cramped, closed-in spaces where he had worked this last frozen month. He was used to open vistas and warm, dry breezes. So he sought the courtyard and, under cover of evening shadows, climbed a narrow stairway to the top of the wall. He passed a sentry, but the man took little notice of a lowly scrubber boy, not even bothering to jostle him, though Mouse prepared for as much.

  In recent weeks he had experienced more jostling and shoving and rough use than in all his prior life combined. The kitchen was an isolated world with its own masters and rules shouted in a language Mouse couldn’t hope to understand. The quiet loneliness of the castle walls was by far preferable to a pallet by the kitchen hearth, however warm, surrounded by pale faces and foreign babble.

  Mouse shivered uncontrollably, teeth chattering in his skull. But he sought the solitude of the wall in this hour before dawn, eager for what little privacy he could steal.

  A scuffling sound drew Mouse’s attention, and he looked down to the yard below. He saw his master, the scrubber, making for the old shed that stood on the opposite wall. The sight of him was enough to make Mouse’s jaw clench. That old man could take the most menial tasks in the castle and find a way to make them more demeaning still. And these were the tasks he foisted off on Mouse. It was bad enough to empty chamber pots . . . but worse by far to be forced to scrub them out with nothing but a rag!

  Mouse’s stomach heaved at the memory he wished he could pass off as a mere nightmare. He turned away, moving to the other side of the wall overlooking the sheer drop down to Hanna River. The river was a black liquid snake twining about the base of rock on which Castle Gaheris stood.

  “Hanna,” Mouse whispered. The word was strange on his tongue. It had taken him some while to begin to pick out the names of things, for no one cared to teach him, and he scarcely cared to take the time to learn. But he did learn despite himself. Hanna. Gaheris. Ferox. Alistair.

  “Etanun,” Mouse growled, and his eyes flashed in the night. He tilted his head back, looking up from the river to the vaults of the sky above. To the blue star that seemed to gaze back down upon him.

  “If I follow it any farther,” he whispered to himself in his own tongue, “where will I end? The sea? This river must run to the sea eventually. And what then? Take a ship, journey out into that wild bigness?” His stomach heaved once more, this time with terror mingled with sorrow. “How long?” he muttered, shaking his head. “How long and how far? I will never find the heir in time!”

  Footsteps coming along the wall startled Mouse, and he turned, pressing his back against the stone. A tall figure approached, and the moonlight and the starlight revealed little of his face and form. But then a voice spoke, and though Mouse could not understand the words, he recognized at once who it must be.

  “If it isn’t the Mouse,” said Alistair, surprised but not displeased. He smiled, though the urchin could not see it. He drew closer, though not so close as to startle the boy, and also leaned against the stone wall, looking out upon the river and the cold winter world beyond. “You are, I must say, the last person I expected to meet here. What are you doing away from the kitchen fire? Aside from freezing, that is.”

  Mouse could hear a question asked but had no idea what it was or how to answer. He couldn’t decide whether to scamper away or stay. It seemed to him, from the young lord’s stance, that Alistair wished for company. So for the moment at least, he lingered, though his body was tensed to run.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Alistair said. “Never can much, you know. Sometimes it’s better not to try, so I wander about. I’m sure the guardsmen think I’m quite daft! That, or they assume all earls and earls’ heirs are a bit touched in the head. I try not to disturb them anyway.”

  He leaned his elbows on the stone, looking down at the river, then looking up, much as Mouse had done, to the crowded heavens. Mouse saw his teeth in a brief flash of a smile.

  “We have a name for that star,” Alistair said and pointed at the sky. He indicated the blue star, Mouse was certain of it. Although many bright lights gleamed in that inky sky, the blue star stood out like a torch.

  “Ceaneus,” Alistair said in the tone that meant he wanted Mouse to repeat it. Mouse sighed. He didn’t like being treated like a trained parrot. “Ceaneus,” Alistair said again, still pointing.

  Mouse folded his skinny arms across his chest. “Cé,” he replied. “Cé Imral.”

  Alistair dropped his pointing arm and rested it once more on the stone wall. “Cé . . . Imral,” he said, though his accent was off. Still, it was an effort, and Mouse had to grin appreciation. The tall young lord ruined it, however, by rattling on in his own language immediately after.

  “Is that your name for our star? I wonder what language that is. Perhaps you’re from Corrilond. They’re a dark-skinned folk but not so dark as you, I think, and their eyes are different. Hard to say for certain, but I don’t think you quite fit the Corrilondian description. Probably just as well. Corrilonders killed my father, and while I don’t bear a grudge for that—I mean, war is what war is—it’s a bit awkward, you must agree.”

  Mouse stared at him. Concentrate though he might, he couldn’t pick a single word from this stream of talk. It ran together in a rush of sounds, leaving Mouse’s head spinning. When the young lord stopped for breath, Mouse could do nothing but offer a relieved smile. Alistair’s return grin vanished after scarcely a moment of life.

  He spoke again in an altogether different tone: “My uncle is sick. Earl Ferox.”

  Ferox. That name Mouse recognized. He nodded noncommittally, uncertain whether or not he wanted to encourage more babble from this pale stranger. But Alistair needed no encouragement. Scarcely aware of Mouse’s existence, he talked to himself or to the stars or to no one. “He’s dying, actually. Won’t last the winter. And then I’ll be Earl of Gaheris.”

  Gaheris. Another word Mouse knew. He nodded again, his brow puckered.

  “They say the next Earl of Gaheris will be made king of all the North Country,” Alistair said, and his voice was as cold as the night air. “But if I am that earl, how can this be? I know I will never be king.”

  He laughed, a bitter sound. “My mother is convinced I will be. As are my uncle and Earl Lebuin of Aiven and all the most powerful men of our land. They believe when they look at me that they see their future ruler. They’re wrong. All of them.”

  He bowed his head into his hands, running white fingers through his red hair, which was dark under moonlight. Mouse pulled back, at a loss for what to do. What could possibly have upset this young man so badly? “Are you unwell?” he asked without hope of being understood.

  “I’ll never be king,” Alistair whispered, “because I’m going to die. I know it. I’ve seen my death every night for the last three years. Can you imagine what that means, Mouse?”

  Suddenly, pale eyes turned upon Mouse, who drew back, frightened by the power of that gaze. “Every night,” said Alistair, “three years running, I see the same vision. I see the child lost and wandering in a dark place on the brink of a great chasm. I call out to him, telling him to save Gaheris, but I don’t know what from! And then I am torn apart by a shadow with a red
mouth.”

  The young lord’s voice had dropped to a tremulous whisper. The sound of it was enough to freeze Mouse’s heart even without understanding. But it also, strangely enough, made him want to reach out, to touch Alistair’s bowed head, to speak some word of comfort, to offer some kindness in the face of such distress.

  The moment passed. Alistair straightened and the fading moonlight illuminated his mouth, twisting it into an unnatural shape. “It’s grin or perish, Mouse,” he said. “It’s smile or go mad. So I’ll smile. Even when my uncle breathes his last breath, I’ll smile, and they’ll set the shield of Gaheris in my hand and talk of a crown and a throne. And I’ll smile, because I know they’re all fools.”

  Mouse shook his head, his eyes round and frightened. “I don’t understand a word you are saying, sir,” he said at last, his voice a little breathless. “I wish I could help you. But I can’t even help myself, and I don’t know what you are saying.”

  It was more than he could stand. The shivering boy turned heel and ran, unable to remain in the presence of that strange, tall lord. He ran along the wall, past the sentry once more, down the stairs.

  Alistair watched Mouse’s slight form as it flitted across the inner courtyard and on to the kitchen doors. He remained awhile on the wall and waited for the coming dawn.

  Forty couriers rode out in all, twenty to the earls themselves, twenty more to the smaller baronies and lowland keeps of the North Country.

  From her chamber windows, Leta watched them ride. The swiftness of their going made her own imprisonment more painful by far, but she kept her tears at bay and her face firmly turned from the questioning stares of her servants and waiting women.

  “Your father will be here soon,” her head lady said. “He’ll come to pay last respects and to honor your future husband when they place the shield of Gaheris in his hand.”

  Leta made no reply.

  For some days now, she had avoided the library. She was afraid somehow, knowing what she knew, or at least what she guessed. Her practical side whispered to her, Stay out of it. It’s not your business. Only trouble will come if you meddle.

  It was a strong argument, and her heart was not brave at the moment. “Our woman’s lot,” she whispered to herself.

  But the memory of the Chronicler’s face and what she had seen there haunted her. Even when she sat at table, listening to Lady Mintha’s voice going over her head, watching her husband-to-be as he sat hollow eyed and unspeaking, she thought of the Chronicler. Lady Mintha’s talk was all of preparations to receive the earls of the North Country within Gaheris. Alistair, when he spoke at all, remarked on the unusual coldness of that autumn.

  And Leta wondered: Do they know?

  Snow fell upon Gaheris Castle, and the river, reduced to a channel with ice lining its edges and swirling in frozen chunks along the dark eddies. Nevertheless, the ferry from Aiven made its slow way to the banks below Gaheris. Leta, wrapped up in furs and fleeces, went down to the shore along with Lady Mintha and Alistair to greet Earl Aiven.

  Her father, whom she had not seen in nearly a year, scarcely looked her way. He bowed over Mintha’s hand and addressed himself to Alistair, saying, “I came as soon as I could.”

  “You are welcome to my uncle’s home during these sad times,” said Alistair. His face was paler than usual, and his blue eyes were dark with lack of sleep. But he spoke with the cool confidence of a lord, and Leta could see that her father was favorably impressed by him.

  Lord Aiven glanced her way at last. “You’re looking well, girl,” he said, and that was all. He offered his arm to Lady Mintha, and they made their way up from the river to Gaheris, Alistair leading the way, and Leta trailing far behind.

  She wondered as she tramped through the crunching snow: Does my father know?

  She sat unspeaking at dinner between her betrothed and her father. They spoke of lands and alliances, of wars long past and grudges all too present. They never spoke of the crown, but plenty of latent meaning lurked in the not speaking.

  Leta could not eat. She picked at the bones of a small roasted fowl, feeding much of it to the dog under the table. Her gaze kept shifting to the great, heavy chair, its wood as delicately scrolled as any illuminated manuscript, filled with Earl Ferox’s absence.

  Suddenly Leta stood. Her father and Lord Alistair gave her swift glances but scarcely heard the excuses she murmured as she left the table and hastened from the room. She felt Lady Mintha’s gaze like daggers between her shoulder blades, and it drove her swiftly out to the darkened, frozen passages beyond the warm light of the dining hall. She picked up her pace, all but running now, lifting her heavy skirts as she climbed the stairs.

  The Chronicler sat at his desk, bowed over his work by the light of three tall candles. He turned when he heard the door open and sat up straight. “M’lady.” He said nothing more, but Leta saw how quickly he covered his page with his blotting cloth. And she could feel the Wall surrounding him as though it were built of stone and mortar.

  She closed the door and stood a moment, her face hidden in shadows. Her heart beat a dangerous rhythm in her breast, and she could feel the wellsprings of sorrow trying to rise up inside, to drown her. She forced them back.

  “Chronicler.” Her voice froze on her tongue, unable to say what she had come to say. So she wrapped her arms around herself, her hands buried in her fur-lined sleeves, and moved across the room to his desk. By rights, he should have climbed down from the stool and bowed to the future wife of his future earl.

  But the Chronicler only drew a long breath and let it out in cloudy vapors. “What have you come about, m’lady?”

  “I . . . I was wondering,”—her voice dropped almost to a whisper—“what it is you are copying.”

  His look was sharp. Slowly he removed the blotting cloth and allowed Leta to look at the vellum page. She saw there, in his firm hand, the nursery rhyme she had seen days ago in the hand of Lady Pero. Lady Pero’s own fragile parchment lay to one side of the book, held in place by a stone weight.

  “Foolishness,” said the Chronicler. “More nursery rhymes. More tales of Faerie brothers and mystical houses full of lights and songs and truth. More deaths and prophecies of coming kings. Foolishness.”

  Practical Leta nearly cowed her into submission. He doesn’t want to see you now. Leave him be. Go back where you belong.

  But when Leta opened her mouth, though she could scarcely get the words out, she heard herself say, “Would you read it to me?”

  He did not meet her gaze but sat staring at delicate lines of red ink, still drying, a little smeared from his attempt to hide them. The Wall around him was almost palpable. But there was a frailty to it. At the right provocation, it would crumble, leaving him unprotected.

  He read:

  “Fling wide the doors of light, Smallman,

  Though furied falls the Flame at Night.

  The heir to truth, blest blade of fire,

  He finds in shielded shadow light.

  “Not in vain the hope once borne

  When flees the king to farther fight—

  Dark and deepness hold no sway.

  The brother dies, the lantern lights.”

  It was like the nursery rhyme of Leta’s childhood, but quite different as well. A distant inspiration that had perhaps become twisted over time into the simple lines so familiar to her. This one was closer to the truth, she thought even as the last words died upon the frosty air.

  “What does it mean?” Leta asked.

  “What do you think it means?” he replied as she knew he would. Never willing to give an opinion for her, he forced her to form her own.

  “I think it means,” she replied quietly, “that though he flees, though he hides, the king will come to us one day. I think it means the true heir will be revealed in the end.”

  She felt his gaze upon her face. She felt him reading her thoughts. Drawing a sudden breath, she lifted her eyes and met his, and she thought with all the fury she dared
not speak: You want the Smallman to be true, to be truly true. Not a symbol. Not a metaphor. You want him to be real. But you’re afraid.

  She could not know how bright her eyes flashed, how her face resembled that of her father, a strong and determined lord of men. But unlike Lord Aiven’s, her eyes held kindness as well, and this made her face the stronger by far. In that brief span of time, she looked the woman she was born to be, not the creature she had been molded into.

  How much the Chronicler understood in her eyes, no one could guess. But at last he whispered, “It is all Faerie stories. Men of old trying to make sense of a senseless world. Nothing more.”

  Leta swallowed and dropped her gaze. But the flash of rebellion had not quite gone from her spirit. She moved a little away from the book that now seemed dangerous, the written words full of power and desire.

  She whispered, “My father has come to take final leave of Earl Ferox.”

  “I know.”

  “And then Alistair will be made Earl of Gaheris.”

  “I know.”

  She could not look at him. But she said, “What about you, Chronicler?”

  “I am nothing,” the Chronicler replied. “I do not matter in these great events.”

  “What about . . . what about me?”

  The Wall redoubled with such tremendous force, Leta almost felt it slap her face. She took a step back, her arms tightening about her small frame, her gaze fixed upon the legs of the Chronicler’s stool.

  The Chronicler said, “You will marry Lord Alistair as you should. You will bind Aiven to Gaheris. And one day, m’lady, you will be queen. A great queen, able to read and to write. You will be stronger than these men can begin to guess, and you will serve the North Country as you rule by Alistair’s side.”

  She could not believe it. He spoke of some other girl. Not Lord Aiven’s useless daughter, fit only to sit quietly in her chambers. Fit only to bear children and pass them off to nursemaids while she stitched at tapestries and thought of nothing.

  But that wasn’t her anymore. Leta knew it deep down, even if she did not yet believe it. Worlds were open to her that no other could see, for she could read and she could think. She could travel to distant lands and glean the wisdom of ancient times and histories.