Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  “You will be a great queen,” said the Chronicler.

  “Is that why you’ve taught me?” Leta said. She looked at the Chronicler then, full in the face, seeing every detail etched out in the glow of those three candles. “For the good of the North Country?”

  Even in the candlelight, his cheeks drained of color. He was sinking back into that silent fortress he had built for himself from the time he was young, from the time he was first made to realize that he was different from other children, from other young men. The muscles in his cheek tightened, though otherwise he was still as stone.

  At last he said, “I have work to do, m’lady. You should return to the hall and Alistair’s side.”

  Leta’s hand darted out. Her practical self didn’t have time for a word, for she moved before thought. She dashed the books and papers from his desk, knocking them in a shower to the floor along with one candle, which snuffed out the moment it struck stone.

  And she cried, “Why are you such a coward? You tell me that I make myself less than I could be, that I hide inside what people tell me I am! But how are you any different?”

  Then, catching up with herself, she realized what she had done. She stared down at the mess on the floor beneath the Chronicler’s high stool. He sat there quietly, looking at her with wide eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  The next moment she had fled the library, leaving the door standing wide behind her. She ran down the cold corridor, her slippered feet soundless on the stone. Tears froze on her burning face.

  4

  ONE FINAL DAY, THE TWELVE CAME to Omeztli. Citlalu and Mahuizoa were scarcely recognizable by then. Their feathered wings molted but did not replenish, and their limbs were gray and wasted. These were not the immortal rulers of a Faerie demesne! They were no better than mortals, unable even to fly. Broken creatures. I could not bear to look at them.

  But when the Twelve called up the tower, “Cren Cru commands. Send us your firstborn,” my father and mother replied as if in one voice: “Not while we’ve yet life coursing through our veins!”

  With those final words, they fell from the rooftop of Omeztli Tower. They fell and crashed upon the stones below, winged beings made flightless. Dead.

  And Tlanextu became King of Etalpalli.

  Other earls arrived, some by river, some by road, all wrapped in heavy furs with dustings of snow on their great shoulders. They came with large retinues, and Gaheris was filled to bursting. Soon even the fields beyond the castle walls were crowded with fine tents, and nighttime was full of campfires in the snow, like so many stars fallen to earth. Alistair stood wrapped in furs upon the walls of his uncle’s keep and thought how like a siege it looked, all those tents, all those fires.

  “They’ve come to honor you,” his mother reminded him.

  “They’ve come to bid farewell to my uncle,” he snarled in response. But that wasn’t the whole of it, and he felt the weight of coming mastery hanging above his head like a suspended sword, ready to drop.

  The castle was full of feasting and the booming talk of men. Mouse ran his legs off on errands for both Cook and the scrubber, and he shied away from the gazes of those earls, wishing he could find a hole to crawl into and never emerge again. Alistair, always in the thick of it all, laughed and joked and spoke of North Country policies with those who were his uncle’s allies. Leta, when obliged, sat at his side, testimony to the Earl of Aiven’s link to Gaheris.

  And the Chronicler sat in the silence of his library. In that silence, he could almost hear Earl Ferox struggling to breathe.

  “You are wanted in the earl’s room, my lady,” said Lady Mintha’s page, bowing in the doorway of Leta’s chamber. Leta sat by the fire, wrapped in a fur cloak, her face red with cold. Even here in seclusion, she could hear the rumble of crowded life in the castle’s great hall below. She wondered if Earl Ferox heard it in his sickroom and what he thought, if anything.

  “Ferox must be near his end,” said Leta’s head lady, and she fetched a mourning veil from among Leta’s things and fixed it to Leta’s head, covering her hair and partially hiding her face. “Go now,” she said, her voice stern.

  Silent as a phantom, Leta followed the page from her chambers and down the darkened hall, which was not as cold as it might be, crowded as it was with the servants and retainers of all the various earls. They waited, their backs against the walls, their arms crossed over their chests, their faces sullen because they were not with their fellows in the feasting hall down below. They were made to wait outside Ferox’s room, to wait and bring word to their lords the moment there was word to bring.

  Leta passed beneath their gazes and on to the sickroom. Though a large chamber, it too was crowded. Ferox’s closest allies stood along the walls, the light of the great fire flickering on them. A host of candles burned near the head of Ferox’s bed but could cast no warmth upon his gray, strained face. Leta briefly wondered if he was already dead. Then she saw the rise and fall of his wasted chest and heard the labored scraping of his breath. He lived. Only just.

  Alistair stood on the other side of the bed, his face white in the candlelight. He did not look at Leta as she entered, scarcely seemed aware of her. But Lady Mintha at his side beckoned her near. “He’s not long for this world now,” she whispered in Leta’s ear. “You must be present at the end. Here, take my place beside my son, and offer what prayers you know for Ferox’s passing.”

  Leta dared steal a glance at Mintha as she spoke. She saw no sorrow there, though Earl Ferox had always been a kind and true brother to her, giving her a place of precedence in his house and at his table. No, there was no sorrow in Mintha’s gaze as she watched her younger brother struggle upon his deathbed.

  Shuddering, Leta did as she was commanded and drew close to Alistair. In his expression, at least, she saw real pain. The pain of coming loss and . . . something else, she thought. Something that was akin to fear if not fear itself. She wondered if she was expected to do something to comfort him but could not think what. She hardly knew him, and she did not think a word or gesture from her would make any difference.

  So she turned to Earl Ferox, his face worn so thin, his nightshirt folded back to reveal the hollows of his neck and collarbone. He sweated and shivered at once. There could be no comfort for him now save death.

  What prayers did she know? She thought of all the little phrases she had been taught as a child, songs of olden days that according to the Chronicler were nothing but fanciful stories. Her heart plummeted at that thought. At a time like this, a man needed fancy to be truth. And if he could not believe it himself, he needed others to believe it for him.

  She whispered softly the first of all the prayerful songs that entered her head:

  “Beyond the Final Water falling,

  The Songs of Spheres recalling.

  When you hear my voice beyond the darkling veil,

  Won’t you return to me?”

  She did not realize how loud her voice was until Lady Mintha reached out and pinched her arm. Instantly, Leta clamped her mouth shut, her face burning with embarrassment and the threat of oncoming tears.

  But Earl Ferox opened his eyes.

  They were clouded over with pain, shimmering with regret, and blind, Leta thought, to all those gathered near. She heard a collective gasp from those around her, and Alistair started forward, kneeling down by the dying man’s side. “Uncle Ferox.” His voice was rough yet gentle. “Can you hear me?”

  The earl’s throat constricted, and the muscles of his face tensed with pain. He croaked hoarsely, “Bring me . . .” His eyes closed. Was that a tear sliding down the grayness of his temple and vanishing into his thin white hair?

  “Bring you what?” Alistair said. “What do you need, Uncle?”

  Ferox’s lips trembled, but his eyelids fluttered open again. “Bring me,” he said, his voice a little stronger this time, “the dwarf.”

  Even the distant noise of the earls down in the great hall seemed
to still. Leta stood, scarcely breathing, staring at the earl’s tense expression, and she felt cold from the inside out. Alistair’s mouth hung open, his brow wrinkled and puzzled. “Uncle?”

  Mintha stepped forward and grabbed his shoulder. “He’s raving,” she said. “His mind is fled. Pay no attention to anything he says, my son. He’s already as good as dead.”

  Alistair stood uncertainly, but the dying man repeated, “The dwarf. Bring me . . .”

  Lady Mintha whirled upon the castle leech. “Have you a draught to give him, to make him sleep?”

  “My lady,” said the leech, bowing and scraping, “he ordered me to give him nothing at the end. He ordered me—”

  “He can give no more orders,” Mintha said. “My son is giving the orders now. Listen to him!”

  “Mother,” Alistair said, “I don’t like to go against my uncle’s wishes—”

  Leta heard no more. She was already out of the room, slipping away like a thief on a wicked errand. She passed into the crowded passage, where retainers tried to grab her arm and whispers assailed her, asking, “Is there word? Is he dead?” She shook her head and pressed on through their midst to places where no torches were lit and shadows surrounded her like icy specters. She fled down the stairs, her black veil trailing behind her, on through ways she knew better than all the rest of Gaheris.

  She came to the library door and burst through. “Chronicler!”

  A single light burned at the desk. And there the Chronicler sat, pale and tense. She saw his eyes gleaming in the darkness. “M’lady,” he said quietly.

  She was across the room. Without thinking, she took hold of both his hands. She could scarcely draw breath enough to speak, for she had run all that way. “Earl Ferox is asking for you!”

  Shadows cast by the candlelight played strangely across his features. She saw his eyes widen, his jaw clench. Then, without a word, he slid down off the stool. How like a child he seemed in the darkness, his head no higher than her heart. As fast as he could, he hastened from the library, and she followed him back through the cold passages, up the stairs, and on to the earl’s death chamber. The retainers without muttered and pointed, but he ignored them all and passed into the room under the eyes of Gaheris’s allies.

  “What is he doing here?” Lady Mintha snarled and started to come around the bed. “Get him out!”

  “Peace, Mother,” Alistair said, grabbing her arm and holding her in place. “Or I will send you from the room.”

  So it was that the castle Chronicler approached his dying master unimpeded. He leaned over the bed, gazing on that wasted face, once so strong, so lordly, so commanding. There were tears in his voice when he spoke:

  “I am come, my lord.”

  Earl Ferox’s eyes slowly opened, and he turned to look upon the dwarf. Something like a smile pulled at his sagging mouth. “So you are, my son.”

  The scrubber stood in deep shadows, his back against the wall, feeling every contour of the cold stones pressed into his withered shoulders. He kept out of sight of the earls’ retainers. His eyes, runny and clouded though they were, kept sharp lookout. He had seen the quiet maiden hastening behind the little man, and he nodded, grunting.

  Turning about and hobbling down a quiet passage, he made his way to a window. Through the stone slit the blue star peered, watching eagerly. The scrubber, using his mop for support, hauled himself up to the window and put his head out into the night cold.

  “Go tell Queen Bebo the time is come,” he said. “She must send me aid.”

  The star twinkled brightly.

  Then it vanished.

  Down below, in the cold courtyard, the door of the crypt strained. Behind it, voices whispered: Now! Now!

  5

  THERE WAS NO CORONATION. None dared leave their high towers for fear of the Twelve and Cren Cru. But my brother took my hand and flew with me to Itonatiu, the Sun Tower, where the king’s throne waited at the summit. He sat, his wings spreading on either side, his hands grasping the arms of the throne. His head bowed. He was so young, still a child by our people’s standards. But when he sat on that throne, he became king indeed.

  I stood silently before him, weeping, for the image of our parents’ fall was scored across my mind.

  Suddenly Tlanextu looked up. I drew back, shuddering. “No!” I said. But I could not deny what I saw. For there was now death in his eyes as well. Our parents’ sacrifice had been in vain. Cren Cru would drain him even as it had drained them.

  “We must save Etalpalli,” he said to me then. “At all cost!”

  “What will you do?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  “There is little I can do,” he said. “But I can hold him off, even as our parents did. And you, my sister, must leave.”

  “Please, brother,” I cried, “don’t make me abandon the City of Wings!”

  “You must go,” he said, “so that Etalpalli may be saved. Seek out the Brothers Ashiun, the Knights of the Farthest Shore. They may be persuaded to help us.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” Tlanextu replied. “It is said the brothers possess gifts, strange weapons forged in the fires of Lumé and filled with the light of Hymlumé. Perhaps these same weapons may be enough to drive Cren Cru from our demesne. You must go to them and plead our cause.”

  The idea filled me with dread. I had never before ventured beyond the Faerie Realm, never flown across the boundaries of Etalpalli, my beautiful home. I knew of the worlds that lay beyond our borders, the vast Wood Between, and the strange Near World, where people lived and died by the cruel hand of Time. The idea of journeying anywhere near that place was enough to make my blood run cold.

  But Tlanextu asked me with death staring from his eyes. How could I refuse?

  The Chronicler had a way of deflecting attention from himself, a skill honed to perfection over the course of his hidden life.

  Nevertheless, standing now in the candlelit room, watching her teacher bend over the sickened earl, it was impossible, Leta thought, to miss the resemblance between them. Though Ferox was weakened to skeletal frailty, though the Chronicler was deformed in body, their faces were as like as ever were father and son. Save the Chronicler’s features were softer with youth and, perhaps, with his mother’s influence.

  Leta saw it all. She did not know who else might. Mintha knew, but did Alistair, standing on the far side of the bed, looking on with eyes full of surprise and perhaps horror? Did her own father, lurking in the near shadows, know this great secret of his fellow earl?

  “I have been no father to you,” Ferox said, his voice so thin and quavering that Leta strained to discern the words. The Chronicler leaned closer, and his mouth worked as though struggling to form a reply.

  “I’ve been no son to you,” he said at last, scarcely above a whisper.

  “I gave you a place,” the earl continued. In desperation he tried to raise his head, but the effort was too great. His shaking hand slid across the heavy rugs of his bed, seeking the Chronicler. “I gave you a profession. I gave you a chance for power beyond that of other men, the power of words and pen.”

  The Chronicler drew his hand away from the earl’s. But he said, “You . . . you have been good to me, my lord.”

  “No.” The muscles in the earl’s neck quivered as he shook his head. “I have not been good. I have been a coward.”

  “Enough of this,” Lady Mintha said. “My dear brother must not be bothered at this time. Away with—”

  “Be still,” Alistair growled, and his mother lapsed into silence, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Leta felt the tension in the earls surrounding her, heard the sharp breaths of her own father. But she did not turn her gaze from the scene playing out before her. Every sense in her body focused upon that isolated space of candlelight and death.

  “You are like your mother,” Ferox said. His eyes, clouded with memories, wandered across the room, seeking something he could not find. But he still spoke to the Chronicler
. “Very like. She too was . . . clever. She wrote and she read. And she was small. Too small. Not so small as you, but too small. And she died. You lived. I thought I hated you.”

  Leta saw the tears on the Chronicler’s cheeks. They were in a world apart, that father and son, a world that fit only the two of them, and she dared not draw near even had she wished to.

  “A sonless earl can never be a king.” Ferox’s wandering eyes at last fell upon the face of his son. Slowly, as though lifting a mighty mace and chain, he raised his hand. The fingers trembled like dried leaves with the strain. “A cowardly earl can never be a man.”

  The Chronicler reached out. He took that trembling hand in his. For a moment his eyes were as fierce as ever the earl’s had been. “You are strong,” he said, and there was pride in his wounded voice. “You are the earl of Gaheris, the greatest man in the North Country.”

  “I will never be a great man,” Ferox replied. “But before they inter me in the dark, I will be a true man.”

  With a gasp of pain, he lifted his arm up high so that all in the room could see how their hands were clasped. He raised his voice so that it was almost as loud as it had been in the fullness of his life. He said:

  “This is Florien Ferox-son, my firstborn, my heir. Let him take up the shield of Gaheris and mastery of all his father’s lands. I bid you honor him as once you honored me.”

  The silence was that of a crypt, and the earls and servants were specters in the dark. Lady Mintha’s face filled with horror, and Alistair’s was hidden in shadows. Leta felt her heart stop and then begin to race as a collision of thoughts battered her brain so hard that even the silence seemed cacophonous.

  The earl’s hand lowered once more. He drew his son closer, and with a painful rasp he spoke his last. “I have done you no service. They will try to kill you.” He closed his eyes as though a knife were even now being driven into his skull. His final word came out in a struggling breath.