Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  I wish I was there with you now to guide you. But I know, from the failing in my own body, that I shall not live to meet you face-to-face. My last request to my lord is for him to see to it that you are brought up with letters. One day you will read these words of mine, and I pray they will guide you.

  All this, hidden away in the Chronicler’s alcove.

  “You knew,” Leta said aloud this time as she let the second scroll snap back into its comfortable roll. “You are the Smallman King! Why have you denied it? Are you really so afraid?”

  Then she shook her head, her forehead wrinkling. “He’s dead. The goblins killed him. How can he ever be king?”

  Though the little chamber above the library was cold as ice, Leta felt sweat forming on her upper lip. Wiping her face, she reached for a third scroll. On this was inscribed only:

  Ceaneus told me. Look to Ceaneus.

  This was the most enigmatic by far of all Lady Pero’s writings. Leta stared at it, whispering the name to herself. “Ceaneus. The blue star.”

  Taking the third scroll, she went back downstairs, set aside her candle, and approached one of the narrow windows to gaze upon the cold world below, at the broken walls and piles of rubble, the ruins that Gaheris was swiftly becoming under Corgar’s direction.

  The sky was overcast. But Leta thought she saw faint light, like moonlight, gleaming through the heavy clouds overhead.

  Then, rather suddenly, there was a break. Rather than the moon Leta saw a single star, the blue star. Ceaneus, as the North People called it. It was bigger by far than she remembered it being, shining down upon the mortal world with an intensity like magic.

  “Ceaneus told me,” Leta muttered, clutching Lady Pero’s scroll. Then, feeling more than half a fool, she called out in a meek voice, “Will you tell me too?”

  There was no answer. Not that she expected one as such. Nevertheless Leta waited, her ears straining.

  You’re going mad, her practical side said. Lady Pero went mad before she died. That’s why she wrote these things. She went mad, and now you are too.

  “Be still!” Leta growled, and her practical side was shocked into silence. A silence that lingered under starlight, wrapped in the coldness of winter.

  The courtyard was in ruins. The walls of the guest house extending from the keep looked as though some monstrous insects had been eating away at the stone. Even the mausoleum was broken, its fine marble scored with deep gouges, the door to the crypt hanging on its hinges.

  But one structure, Leta noticed with mild curiosity, had not yet been touched by the goblins and their mortal slaves.

  One lone, humble building.

  Leta gasped.

  She stumbled back from the window, dropping Lady Pero’s scroll, and stood in near darkness. Suddenly she whirled about, hurling herself at the pile of books on the long table, books she had scoured again and again, and dug through them until she came to a volume near the bottom. A familiar volume. The first she had seen when she stepped into the library all those months ago.

  It fell open to the familiar page: the nursery song of the Smallman, with its bold illumination of the House of Lights. The vellum was torn by Corgar’s claws, but in the glow of her candle, the colored ink on that page still shimmered like liquid gold pouring from those carefully sketched windows.

  Leta stared, hardly believing what she was seeing.

  “I’ve found the House of Lights,” she said.

  The grating squeal of door hinges startled Leta into dropping the book. She whirled about as Corgar entered the library.

  12

  BUT EVENTUALLY MY MIND RETURNED. Amarok could not deceive me forever. I began to recall myself, my flame, my voice. I began to recall the power I’d been reborn to, the power of dragons. Though I could not again take my dragon form, I found my fire and blazed brightly. I could not kill Amarok in his self-made demesne, but I escaped him with our children.

  And later, when opportunity arose, I saw to it that he was slain.

  Two guards stood at the outer gate of the Citadel of the Living Fire. The younger kept glancing up at the sky. The elder fixed his eyes upon some distant point on the horizon that never came any closer, unwilling to see what the younger saw: the churning smoke, dark even against the night sky, blotting out stars. And the occasional flash of red flame.

  The goddess was angry. Or glad. It scarcely mattered which.

  Something was brewing, the young guard thought. True, the Flame was temperamental, and he’d seen firestorms before, some worse than this. But this evening the air held a tension he could not begin to describe—tension flowing from the top of the Spire down into the temple grounds and on even here, to the edge of the holy ground. He wondered if his comrade felt it and might have liked to ask. But he had long since forgotten how to speak. Perhaps he had been cursed or poisoned. Perhaps he had merely been forbidden to let a word cross his lips. Either way, he was as mute as if they’d cut out his tongue.

  Men of the Citadel were less than animals. They were also loyal unto death.

  Still, he could not help wondering what life might have been had he not been taken for his village’s temple tax all those years ago, dragged from his mother’s arms, presented before cold-faced priestesses, shamed and degraded. . . .

  “What-ho, young fellow, got any Time?”

  The guard turned to see his comrade drop like a stone under some unseen blow. His mouth fell open, and he raised his spear, but someone tapped his shoulder from behind. He whirled about to face a pair of bright eyes gleaming in the gloom.

  Then he too fell senseless as Eanrin’s blow struck his forehead.

  Eanrin stood over the two fallen guards, his eyes narrowed. “Come out and help me, girl,” he said. “We can’t leave them lying here.”

  Mouse emerged from the shadows along the wall, hastened to Eanrin’s side, and helped him drag the guards away from the gate into a hollow where they would be less visible from the inside. “They’ll change watch eventually, but no need to draw attention before then,” Eanrin said.

  Mouse, shaking too hard to answer, eyed the same churning smoke and fire that had bothered the guard, and felt her stomach heave. Walking the Faerie Path in Eanrin’s wake had so completely thrown off her sense of time and space that she thought her head might explode. Mortals weren’t intended to walk such Paths, of this she was certain. Was it only a few hours since she had stood on the slopes of the mountain beside Granna? Since Alistair had vanished into the darkness?

  Or had weeks gone by and the Dragonwitch already achieved her goal?

  “What are you staring at, girl?” Eanrin growled. “Nightfall won’t await our convenience, and we need to be well inside before we lose the last of this twilight. With any luck, they won’t have noticed you’re gone yet.”

  Mouse shuddered but followed Eanrin through the gate without a word. He wore his cat form, a better disguise in this land of black hair and eyes. He stopped in the middle of the road, his tail upraised, his pink nose sniffing uncertainly. She knew he hated to admit any deficiency of knowledge, so she took the lead, still without speaking.

  Then it was the long trek through the city temple, which had become more familiar to her than the mountain of her childhood, but which was, she saw now, far more treacherous. Every shadow was a threat where dragons or ghosts or Black Dogs might lurk, and she felt the presence of the Netherworld beneath her feet.

  “Dragon’s teeth!” Eanrin swore quietly as they climbed the road toward the Citadel. “I know that building. It looks just like the towers of Etalpalli!” His tail lashed uneasily. “That settles it for sure.”

  Mouse did not understand what he meant by this, so she made no answer. She didn’t like leading Eanrin through the broad front entrance of the lower temple, but she knew it would be the safest way, especially this time of night. The big entrance doors stood open, as always. Mouse clung to the shadows along the wall as she and the cat slipped inside.

  To her surprise the cat scampered a
head, tail high, nose twitching. It was too dark to see anything of him save the faint gleam of his white paws and chest. He came to a stop, one paw upraised, then looped around back to her.

  “I smell her,” he said in a low voice. “I smell Imraldera. She came this way, did she not?”

  Mouse nodded, afraid to speak. The cat’s voice seemed to echo around the pillars, but that might have been her imagination.

  “Which way to the dungeons?” Eanrin demanded.

  Mouse shook her head vigorously. “Not yet. If you draw attention now, I’ll never reach my chambers.”

  The cat’s ears flattened, and his eyes glinted with their own light. “You do what you must, little girl,” he said. “Infiltrate their ranks as you infiltrated ours. Follow Etanun to the Netherworld and see if you can push back the tide of prophetic events. I, however, will find my comrade, with or without your help.”

  With those words, he slinked away, vanishing into the heavy shadows of the pillared hall.

  Never before had Mouse felt quite so alone.

  “There’s no one to tell you what to do now,” she whispered to herself, forcing her feet to move. “You’re on your own. Time to start making decisions for yourself!”

  So she crept like a thief through the temple that was her home and succeeded in gaining the privacy of her room without being seen. Or so she fervently hoped.

  Mouse entered the Speaker’s chambers as she had always done, before the last of the sun’s glow had quite vanished beyond the horizon, and prepared the braziers for evening incense. As she knelt to her task, her hands shaking with fear and exhaustion, she didn’t hear the rustle of the high priestess’s robes and remained unaware of the Speaker’s presence until she felt the clasp of a hand on her shoulder from behind.

  “There you are, child,” said the Speaker, her voice cold but not ungentle. “I was beginning to worry.”

  With an effort Mouse kept a hold on her brand. She turned and made the sign of blessing and reverence but did not trust herself to speak. She had slipped into her acolyte robes, discarded her disguise, and hastened about her daily tasks as though everything was as usual.

  But one look in the Speaker’s eyes told her that everything, in fact, was not as usual, and no one was deceived otherwise.

  She’s going to kill me, Mouse thought and dropped her gaze again.

  “I sent for you this morning,” the Speaker said, the pressure of her hand still firm on Mouse’s shoulder. “I thought you might need comforting after the experiences you underwent yesterday. The near presence of the Flame can be distressing even to the holiest among us.”

  Mouse couldn’t speak. Her mouth was as dry as the land beyond the temple grounds.

  “Though they searched, no one could find you to bring you to me.” How stonelike was the Speaker’s voice. Like those of the goblins who had taken Gaheris, Mouse thought. Only the goblins’ voices were of volcanic rock, ready at any moment to burst into heat and danger. The Speaker’s, by contrast, was a voice of marble.

  The tall woman released her hold on Mouse and stepped back, her arms folded, the sleeves of her robe draping down her front. She wore her evening wig, woven ornately with gold, lacking its usual crown of starflowers. Her robe was the finest, softest, most vibrant in her collection. Bangles decorated her arms but could not hide the burns. Some of these were fresh burns, Mouse realized, and wondered what agonies the high priestess had suffered under the Dragonwitch’s passionate flames last night.

  Yet the Speaker served, and if she questioned the rightness of her service, she never did so out loud. She was, Mouse realized, a woman who could never be wrong. No matter the evidence to the contrary, she would cling to the rightness she had first decided to grasp. It was this more than anything that bound her in chains.

  “Poor child,” the Speaker said. “You went into hiding, didn’t you?”

  Despite herself, Mouse’s gaze flickered up to meet that of her mistress.

  “Didn’t you?” the Speaker repeated, and her eyes searched Mouse’s face, revealing nothing in turn.

  “I—” Mouse faltered, then stopped.

  “You did,” said the Speaker, as though deciding the shape of the universe once and for all; let no god or goddess try to contradict her. “You hid. But you are here now. And you are my loyal little Mouse, and you will serve me now, at the end.”

  Then the Speaker turned from Mouse and gave a sharp word of command. Slaves came forward and scurrying acolytes, none of whom looked Mouse’s way. “Come, child,” said the high priestess without looking around. “Take up my train. The time of Fireword’s waking has come at last. I want you beside me.”

  So Mouse took up her mistress’s train as commanded and progressed from the high priestess’s rooms out to the pillared hall where all the priestesses and their slaves had gathered with unlit torches, gaudy in their finery. Even the eunuchs, their weapons polished, wore finer clothing than Mouse had ever seen them in.

  Then she saw the scrubber.

  He stood in the center of it all, humble and slouching, ugly in his servant’s garb amid the splendor of the Citadel worshippers. He kept his face lowered, and at first Mouse wondered if he had the grace to be ashamed. Then she saw—though she wondered later if she had seen it right—that his head was bent because, of all things, he was trying to disguise a smile.

  The Speaker approached, towing Mouse in her wake.

  “The time has come,” she said. Of the two, the Speaker and Etanun, it was she who appeared immortal. She was so tall and so beautiful, and one had to look closely to see the scars of burns on her dark skin. The scrubber, by contrast, was as dirtbound as a man could be.

  He looked up at the Speaker, and his eyes twinkled. “So it would seem,” he said.

  To Mouse’s surprise, he spoke her language. Not the Faerie language she was growing accustomed to hearing translate in her head. No, he spoke the language of her people as naturally as though he had been born and raised in this country.

  It was the first time in she could not guess how long that she had heard her own speech pass the lips of a man.

  The Speaker recoiled, offense etching her face. “It is now two hundred years, Murderer, since you earned yourself that title.”

  The scrubber shrugged. “So glad I got here at last. Wouldn’t want to miss an event such as this!”

  Mouse thought the Speaker would slap the old man. Her face revealed a struggle. Instead, she turned, the gold-edged braids of her wig swinging about her shoulders. “The will of the goddess!” she cried to the assembly. “The will of the Fire. We go into the Dark to retrieve the Light.”

  “The will of the Fire!” replied her loyal cohorts as one voice, and the silent eunuchs raised their spears.

  Mouse felt a chill down her spine, as though something dreadful reached out to her from behind, drawing her attention. Holding up the end of her mistress’s train, she looked back over her shoulder at the scrubber, her former master, and his foolish old face.

  Their eyes locked.

  And suddenly, without a word passing between them, Mouse knew what she must do.

  The moment Alistair crossed the cave’s threshold, shadows pressed in around him, thick and palpable. This was a different darkness than even the dank air of the secret passage. This was much more like the family crypt of Gaheris castle.

  Alistair descended, taking firm strides to disguise to himself how his heart quaked with dread. He would not think of Mouse. He would not think of the sword, or kingship, or even of the Chronicler. He must concentrate entirely on making himself take each step.

  Blood calls to blood, so the legends say, especially on the Path to Death, where the ties of kinship are all that yet link the dead to the living.

  “Well,” Alistair whispered, his voice catching in his throat, “let’s hope the legends know what they’re talking about.”

  The first few minutes seemed more horrible to him than blindness or death. But this was the world where the dead and living mee
t, and a confused half-light filled Alistair’s eyes. Somehow, this was worse than utter darkness. He could almost see but not quite, and that bewildered him. Sometimes he felt his feet descending a steep, slippery slope, and he heard the skittering of loose pebbles as he kicked them free.

  But sometimes he thought his feet trod a firm stairway, each step carefully formed to match its brothers. His going was easier then.

  Blood calls to blood.

  The thought went round in his head. How? he wondered. It would be one thing if, like the Brothers Ashiun, he felt some real sense of kinship with the man who was his cousin. But he didn’t. The Chronicler was his teacher, his antagonist, a dry and disapproving entity whom Alistair had always ignored when he could. He scarcely knew him, when it came down to it.

  And Alistair had more reason than any other living person to resent him.

  Yet here he was, wandering in the half-light, realizing with every step he took that the gloom around him was far bigger, far broader than a subterranean cavern. It was a whole world.

  A world peopled with its own inhabitants.

  He could neither see nor hear them. But he felt them: lost souls, near and far at once, wandering all around him. Did they seek an escape back to the world above? Did they search for the Final Water and freedom from this tormented roving? He did not know. He could not understand them.

  But he felt his heart breaking for them.

  Alistair stopped suddenly when he realized that the Path he followed had leveled out under his feet. No more descent then. He had arrived in the very pit of the Netherworld.

  “Blood calls to blood,” he whispered, and his voice sounded foreign in his own ears. He drew a long breath and felt the invisible wraiths around him drawing theirs as well. The air was cold down here. Then, shaking his head and telling himself he was fearless, he shouted: