Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  What would Granna say if she knew?

  Granna had always encouraged her great-granddaughter to look away from the Citadel light. Back home on the mountain, high on the rocky goat paths that Mouse and her ancient great-grandmother had climbed every day, they had commanded a sweeping view of the land crossed by mighty rivers flowing from some unknown source.

  The low country held such allure for Mouse, who disliked mountain life, with its cold winds blowing straight through her ragged gowns and its stink of goats. From her view above, the low country looked warm and the rivers so clean.

  And from the low country rose the Citadel, with its ever-burning light at the topmost spire. As twilight fell on the mountains, that light became more vivid, beckoning to Mouse across the leagues. A speck no bigger than a star, but red and low to the earth.

  “Stop looking at it,” Granna would say sharply every time she saw Mouse’s gaze wander that way.

  “Why?” Mouse would demand. “It is beautiful and warm.”

  “It’ll take you away from me and our mountain,” Granna always replied. “It took your mother, and your fool father followed after her, besotted swain that he was. I don’t want it to take you too.”

  “Maybe Mother was right?” Mouse would say quietly to herself later, sitting upon a rocky outcrop that afforded the best view of the low country and that far-off light. “Maybe it is better to look to distant things and seek a better life? Surely it is wrong for me to stay on this mountain among goats all my days.”

  But Granna always caught her and pinched her ear. “Silly girl,” she would scold. “Don’t waste your time looking that way. Look up there instead.”

  Mouse always shivered at this, turning to where Granna’s old hand indicated. Farther up the mountain, in a place inaccessible but plain to see, was a cave. A hideous cave that, when one looked at it cross-eyed, resembled the shape of a wolf’s head. Mouse could have believed it was the gate to Death’s own realm, it was so awful.

  “One day,” Granna would say then, her eyes fearful but determined, “the Silent Lady will return to us. She will step out of that cave, and she will see that we are delivered from evil again. Even as she did a hundred years ago. Even as she saved us from the Wolf Lord.”

  “The Silent Lady,” Mouse repeated, but still she turned away from the cave mouth to gaze across to the distant light. “She must be dead long ago. While the Fire lives and burns.”

  “It burns all right,” Granna would mutter. “And I suppose you could say that it lives.”

  Then she would pat Mouse’s head, clucking to herself, and her faded old eyes would fill with tears. “Don’t follow the path of your mother. If you go down to the temple, child, no one will ever know your true name, and you yourself will forget it.”

  Mouse sat now before her fire, clad in the stinking clothes of a slave boy, her stomach churning with disgust and dread. The brazier burned sweet incense, but it couldn’t clear Mouse’s nostrils of the stench of slavery.

  Her next task was more heinous still, but she dared not shirk it. Taking up a knife, she grasped the long waves of her hair, pulled tight, and cut.

  She nearly dropped the knife. She had not expected it to tear and hurt as it did! And across her hand lay a hank of black softness, her one great pride. Her glorious hair.

  “Fire burn,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “Fire purify.”

  After all, pride was a sin. All pride must be purged from the body, through pain if necessary.

  She adjusted her grip on the knife and resumed the task.

  Her hair had been her great treasure from the time she was twelve years old. It had been difficult, of course, to keep neat, free of burs and bugs. But she hoped it might be beautiful, so she’d washed it carefully in a mountain stream and combed her fingers through it every night, freeing it of tangles and leaving it soft and shining.

  “Your hair is like hers,” Granna would say, watching across their humble fire.

  “Like whose?” Mouse would ask.

  Granna never responded. Mouse believed she must mean her mother; the mother who ran away, luring her father after. She liked to think she shared this one small link to that woman she had never known. And she would continue combing her hair.

  Her hair that caught the eye of the temple women.

  The summer of her twelfth year, women from the Citadel journeyed to Mouse’s village to collect the temple tax. It was a hard journey, one not made every year. Four years had lapsed since the last time three red-clad women, tall, strong, and elegant, had climbed the mountain, flanked by silent bodyguards. Great woven wigs set with gold and uncut gems crowned their heads. Mouse, peering from the door of Granna’s hut, thought them a wondrous sight.

  “What are you looking at?” Granna had demanded and creaked up behind Mouse to see. Swearing, “Beasts and devils!” she gripped Mouse’s shoulders with both hands. “You must go at once!” she said. “Take the goats up the mountain, and don’t return until nightfall. Do you hear me?”

  But though she pulled with all her strength, Granna was an old woman. Mouse twisted free with hardly a thought and, ignoring her grandmother’s cries, darted into the village square to better see the beautiful women.

  One of them spotted her. Dark kohl-rimmed eyes fixed upon Mouse with the intensity of a wildcat’s. She pointed, speaking to her two equally beautiful sisters. “There,” she said. “Look at that one with the fine hair.”

  “She is lovely indeed,” one of the sisters agreed. “The Speaker said to look for a child of her likeness.”

  “She could not be better pleased with another,” the third sister said.

  They swooped down, surrounding Mouse in all their red-robed glory. “Would you like to journey to the Citadel of the Living Fire as your village’s tax?” the first of the sisters asked her.

  Mouse nodded, struck dumb with wonder.

  “No!”

  Granna burst from the little hut, and all the village stared in surprise and whispered together. No one denied the temple women what they required. Their guards placed themselves between the old woman and their mistresses, but Granna grabbed their spears in her withered hands and strained against them. “You cannot take her!” she cried. “She does not belong to you!”

  “You have no say, old one,” said the first temple sister, but her voice was not unkind. “If the Fire demands this child, the Fire will have its due.”

  She said no more. Mouse was given no chance to say good-bye, and in the heat of that moment she didn’t care. She was free! Free of the village, free of goats! She was free of the mountains, bound for the lowlands and the great Citadel with its distant light!

  The three red-robed sisters placed their hands upon her shoulders and head. “Fire burn. Fire purify,” they chanted together, and Mouse thrilled at their words.

  She stood now, her scalp sore and bereft of its black glory, her slender limbs hung with rags. Her smelly goat-girl’s clothes had been finer than these. They at least had borne with them no shame.

  A boy. She was dressed as a boy! What greater disgrace for a woman of the Citadel, an acolyte of the Living Fire? And yet, what choice did she have? It was either her own humiliation or . . .

  But she could not think on that. She gazed out the tall window of her chamber, out upon a sky as dark as the fallen clippings of her hair.

  There, high above, gleamed a blue star.

  2

  I HAD NOT VENTURED BEYOND THE BORDERS of Etalpalli for some time. But I left it now, under the storming protests of my counselors and ladies. I passed through Cozamaloti and found myself once more flightless in the Wood. I do not know how long I wandered there, for no true Path opened beneath my feet. I never saw the Haven or heard the voice of guidance calling in my head. I was too hot inside to hear anything.

  Eventually, I stumbled from the Between into the Near World. I smelled the stench of mortality, and it brought back the memory of my wasted brother, my decayed father and mother. I was sick, and my legs t
rembled, for I still could not take to the air, not in that dreadful world.

  I sought long and hard. I saw many Houses of Lights and heard how the sun and the moon sang through them. But their voices were cacophony in my ears, and I hated the sight of the mortals who danced and sang at the doors of those Houses. I thought how I would like to rend them to pieces!

  Instead, I searched. On and on.

  Until I found Etanun.

  The journey down from the mountains had been a long one, longer still the trek across the lowlands. Always the light of the Citadel guided them, like a red star on the horizon. Other priestesses and their guards, other girls taken from poor villages as a tax to the Flame joined Mouse and her escorts as they crossed the wasteland surrounding the Citadel.

  At last the Citadel itself came into view—the great red-stone Spire rising to pierce the heavens themselves, built atop a bedrock of equal redness. Around it spread the temple grounds, like a small city devoted to the Flame’s service.

  They passed through an arched red-stone gate and marched through the grounds to the central buildings surrounding the Spire. These buildings were pillared and open to the elements, for it was hot in the cloudless lowlands, and any breeze that might blow through to cool the inner sanctums was welcome.

  The girls stood in a courtyard beneath the Spire, flanked on all sides by the temple guards—eunuchs all, Mouse was to learn later, and silent as statues. Priestesses filed from every part of the temple grounds, solemn and beautiful in red robes, their black wigs sparkling with gold. Behind them, lingering on the edges, were black-clad acolytes, hooded so that their faces were unseen, figures of mystery but not of majesty like their elder sisters.

  And then the high priestess approached.

  In Mouse’s dreams of the goddess, of the Flame herself, she had envisioned something like this exquisite being: tall and strong with features almost too severe to be beautiful, full of power. She was clad in white doeskin stained brilliant hues of saffron, scarlet, and blue, the colors of fire. Her wig was more beautifully decorated than all the others, not in gold or gems, but in a crown of red starflowers, like the Silent Lady herself.

  In her wake marched Stoneye. He was a powerful form indeed, bigger and handsomer and sadder than all the other eunuchs serving in the temple. Unlike many of them, he had offered himself freely into the temple’s service, knowing full well the fate of any man who lived in the presence of the Flame. Now, mute and sorrowful, he was ever in the high priestess’s company, her most devoted slave and bodyguard.

  The priestess descended the temple steps, Stoneye close in her shadow. Her dark eyes studied the girls presented before her. Mouse had never felt more ragged and foolish than she did then, painfully aware of her humble clothes. She shivered though the day was meltingly hot. But her hair was lovely, and it flowed to her waist.

  The high priestess’s gaze fell upon her and stopped. Mouse felt her heartbeat in her throat.

  “This girl,” the high priestess said, her voice strangely cold in that blistering heat. “This girl will do. Send the others to the acolytes’ house to be fitted out. I’ll take this one into my personal service.”

  Unbelieving, scarcely breathing, Mouse was shuffled away between two eunuchs into the temple and her new life devoted to the Flame.

  Now, she fled it.

  Through the temple corridors she ran, a small, ragged phantom. This place that over the last four years had become familiar, if never truly comfortable, now seemed a world of dread. Her bare feet made no sound on the polished stone, and she avoided the torches and braziers burning at intervals.

  Like a thief, she slipped from shadow to shadow, past the lower priestesses’ living quarters, the acolytes’ house, and the barren barracks, where the eunuch slaves slept at night. She met no one. At last she approached the arched gate. There two guards stood watch, and she knew they saw her coming.

  Mouse hastened on without pausing. She saw one of them step forward. He opened the gate, pushing the heavy door aside, then slid into the shadows along the wall and turned his face away.

  Neither guard acknowledged her. She passed through the gate and out to the open grounds beyond, hearing only her own panting breath and the thud of her running feet for several moments.

  Then the clang of the gate shutting behind her.

  The blue star glimmered high above. The blue star, and the fire blazing at the top of the Citadel Spire.

  The fire was never permitted to go out. Throughout even the darkest, most storm-tossed nights it burned. And before dawn the high priestess would rise, prepare herself with ceremonial washings, and climb the long stairs to tend that blaze in the presence of the goddess.

  It became Mouse’s duty to help her in these morning preparations. She was unskilled at first, her goat-girl’s fingers clumsy and unused to fine fastenings and delicate sashes. Often she wondered that the high priestess did not replace her with a more adept acolyte.

  But the high priestess never spoke a word of either praise or complaint. She merely sat, her face quiet, and watched the fumbling girl clad in black robes as she fetched gems and sashes and always the circlet of woven starflowers. Stoneye, arms folded, stood by the wall with his gaze downcast. Their silence unnerved Mouse, but she hastened about her duties and learned as quickly as she could.

  A month into Mouse’s life at the temple, the high priestess finally addressed her as she worked. As though Mouse had passed some sort of test and now deserved acknowledgment.

  “I once had hair such as yours,” the high priestess said.

  Mouse paused while lifting the great black wig to her mistress’s head. Beneath the wig the priestess was nearly bald, her scalp covered in burns. The high priestess reached up and touched that ragged baldness now, her face a little sad.

  “I had fine hair,” she said, “thick and shining.” Her throat constricted as she swallowed, but her face was otherwise stoic. “Loss of beauty is but one price we pay for the sake of purification.”

  “You are beautiful, Speaker,” Mouse said. Speaker was the official name by which all the sisters of the temple addressed their high priestess, for she alone spoke to and for the Flame.

  The high priestess smiled gently. “I was beautiful,” she said. “Now I am strong. Do you believe I am strong, Mouse?”

  “I do,” said Mouse. Though it was hard to say with sincerity after a month in the high priestess’s service. Yes, the Speaker was strong in command, could order the lives and the deaths of all within the Citadel grounds or the sprawling lowlands beyond. But physically, she shuddered in a breath of wind, and her hands, arms, and neck were covered in burns. Another part of the rituals, of serving the Flame. But her face was like granite, unflinching in the service to which she had devoted herself. “You are strong, Speaker.”

  The high priestess again touched her burned scalp, then motioned for Mouse to adorn her with her wig. “We are all of us like clay,” she said as Mouse worked. “Clay that must be put through the fire to achieve true strength. And even then, when dropped, we shatter.”

  She took the starflower wreath for herself and placed it atop her head. “Even as the Silent Lady underwent torments to fulfill the will of the goddess and save us from the Wolf Lord, so must we endure any pain to which the Flame calls us. For the good of our sisters. For the good of ourselves. Do you understand, Mouse?”

  Mouse nodded.

  “Now go about your duties, child,” the Speaker said, patting Mouse gently on the head. “Go about your duties even as I go about mine.”

  With these words, the high priestess moved from her airy chamber, the train of her robes dragging behind her. Stoneye stepped from the shadows and followed, never sparing a glance Mouse’s way.

  So Mouse did as she was bidden and fetched the tools of her second daily task, lighting all the braziers in the lower south hall so that incense flooded that section of the higher temple before sunrise. She hastened there now, a lighting stick in one hand, a bucket of coals in the other
, and a bag of powdered incense tucked under one arm.

  The passage was open to all elements, and Mouse, warm inside her black robe, welcomed the cool breath of morning as she worked. One at a time she lowered a brazier by its chain, lit the coals, and poured in a handful of incense, letting off a strong, sweet smell that disguised all the pleasant scents of coming dawn. “Fire burn,” Mouse whispered as she had been taught. “Fire purify.”

  The crack of a whip startled her so that she nearly dropped her lighting stick. Mouse strode to the edge of the open hall and looked down. Below her all was rock, the foundation on which the Citadel and the Spire were built. On all other sides, the temple city covered this rock, but here it was exposed and looked red and hot even by predawn light.

  Another crack . . . and a cry. Mouse shivered at the sound of a man’s voice. She had not heard a man speak since coming to the temple, and it seemed strange and terrible, especially laced with such pain. She saw torches now, approaching in a long line across the open countryside. Torches and shadows and the figures of men bound in chains being driven toward the Citadel. Their drivers, tall eunuchs in temple garb, urged them with whips, prodded them with spears.

  So the procession made its way to the red rock beneath Mouse’s feet. Shivering, she watched them approach, unable to tear away her gaze. To her surprise, rather than circling the side of the temple to enter by the gates, the eunuch guards drove the bound men straight to the wall.

  They disappeared inside.

  Craning her neck, Mouse could not see from this angle any opening or door where they had gone. Afraid of falling from that unprotected height, she set aside her tools, got to her hands and knees, and strained her neck further, trying to see.

  “They’ve gone to the Diggings.”

  Mouse looked up, embarrassed to be caught in so undignified a pose. A tall girl, another acolyte, stood before Mouse. She was called Sparrow; Mouse did not know her true name. Each girl was given a new name upon entering service at the temple. Her true name was then forgotten, for only then could it be safe. So Mouse became Mouse, and this girl was Sparrow. She was older than Mouse and had been in temple service for three years.