The Ragwitch

by Garth Nix

  His words seemed to unfreeze the fisherfolk, and a wave of sound and action leapt out of the stillness. Deamus was the first to react, his long arms flapping as he leapt onto a keg, and cried, “You’ve heard Sir Rellen. Gwarulch can be killed! And we are warriors—at least on King’s Days! Go—fetch your weapons and armor, and we’ll show these monsters how the fisherfolk of Donbreye fight!”

  Everyone paused for a second at his words, as if the whole thing couldn’t really be happening, and then ran towards their houses. Some bellowed as they ran, as though somehow the sound could inflate their courage. But most were grimly quiet. Sir Rellen walked, and whistled a melancholy little tune. Paul watched him for a second, and thought of Aleyne—the two knights were very alike, at least in their attitude to danger. Paul tried to whistle himself, but his lips were dry, and he soon gave up.

  Deamus also watched Sir Rellen, and then turned to his wife. “You’d better get ready, Oel,” he said. “Take the better helmet, and please bring my armor and sword. Sevaun can help you, but be quick. I want to talk to Paul for a moment.”

  Oel nodded, and turned away without a word. As they walked, Sevaun slipped her hand into her mother’s, her shorter legs striding farther to match Oel’s quickening stride. Paul felt a pang of something like jealousy, as once again he thought of Julia, and wished she were there to hold his hand.

  “Do you think you can beat the Gwarulch?” he said to Deamus, looking back up to the fisherman. “I’ve only seen one, but it was very strong…”

  “I don’t know,” replied Deamus. “But we can probably hold them off long enough for you to escape.”

  “Me?” asked Paul, surprised. He hadn’t really thought of escaping. At least, not without everybody else. There seemed to be safety in numbers—or he hoped there was. “You’re going to fight so I can get away?”

  “Yes,” replied Deamus. “You and Quigin. From what he told me, the Wise think you can somehow harm the Ragwitch…so we must get you away.”

  “Why doesn’t everyone run…” Paul began to say, when the Gwarulch howled again, drowning out his voice. They were closer now, near the hut on the ridge. And there were answering howls from both north and south, along the rocky shore.

  The howls subsided a little, as if the Gwarulch were drawing breath, and the silence was filled with the clatter of armor and the thud of heavy boots—the sound of the fisherfolk returning to the harborside.

  They made an odd company. Some wore buff coats overlaid with back and breastplates, others just the coat, or a buff jerkin and perhaps an armored gauntlet. Most had open-faced steel helmets, shining with fish oil which had been applied to ward off the rust. Only Sir Rellen wore a full suit of armor; blue enamelled back and breastplates, with flexible plates covering his thighs, and gauntlets of layered steel and ringmail. He wore a helmet with a three-barred visor and a back shaped like a lobster’s tail that hung over his neck.

  The fisherfolk’s weapons were almost as varied as their armor. Some had long pikes, others halberds, or even tridents. Most had a sword or a long knife as well. Again, Sir Rellen was different. He carried a poleaxe, that hung from his wrist by a worn leather strap.

  The Gwarulch had stopped howling altogether, and Paul imagined them slinking down the hill, running from hut to hut like cats on the scent of mice.

  “It’s me they’re after,” he said suddenly, touching the feather of the Breath in the pouch at his side. “The Ragwitch knows I’m going to get Julia back.”

  Deamus looked at the boy’s face, and saw the fear that lay just under the appearance of determination. “Yes,” he said, putting his hand on Paul’s shoulder. “That’s why they’re slow in coming. They’re surrounding the village, so none may escape—at least over land.”

  “The boats, then,” said Quigin. “I’ve got a fair idea how to sail. At least, a sailor once told me how it was done.”

  Deamus shook his head, and pointed at the sky. “You wouldn’t get far on the sea either. Look up.”

  Both Paul and Quigin looked up at once. At first Paul couldn’t see anything, then Quigin pointed out a patch of sky. There, circling with a lazy watchfulness were nine or ten large, black shapes. Too big even for the largest eagles…

  “What are they?” asked Paul, thinking back to Tanboule telling him about “things worse than Gwarulch.” The thought of things worse than Gwarulch was not a pleasant one, and Paul felt his pulse begin to beat faster, throbbing behind his ears.

  “I think they are Her creatures, though I do not know a name for them,” said Deamus. “They have been in the sky overhead for three nights. Yesterday, they circled over your balloon—and today, the Gwarulch have come.”

  “And so has your armor,” said Oel, stepping between two pikemen. Paul stared at her for a second. The thin fisherwoman was gone—and in her place was a new Oel, bulky in a buff coat, with a steel helmet framing her face, and a basket-hilted sword at her side. She carried Deamus’ buff coat, a metal gauntlet, and a rather tarnished helmet, with bronze-rimmed cheek pieces that clattered as she passed it over.

  Sevaun was different too. She was still her thin, dark self, but now wore a green cloak shot with silver lines, and carried a wand of ivory which was inlaid with shells. She had a very serious expression for a girl who couldn’t be more than ten years old.

  “As I was saying,” said Deamus, as Oel helped him put on his heavy buff coat, “you wouldn’t get far on top of the sea. But you should have no trouble underneath it.”

  “I don’t think I can hold my breath very long,” said Paul, thinking about those terrible few minutes when he’d almost drowned escaping from the balloon. “I’d rather not try…”

  “You won’t have to hold your breath,” interrupted Deamus. “Sevaun is a Waterwitch, and her Magic is very strong on this Day of the Sea. She should be able to cast a spell that lets you all breathe water like air—and you can walk out onto the sea floor!”

  “Can you really do that?” asked Paul, rather doubtfully. “I mean, breathe water and everything?”

  “Yes,” said Sevaun solemnly. “But only today, because it’s the sea’s special day.”

  “From here, you should walk south, staying underwater as long as possible. We will meet you ten leagues or so south of here.”

  “You won’t try to defend the village?” asked Quigin, who’d just sent a most unenthusiastic Leasel to spy on the Gwarulch.

  “No,” replied Deamus heavily. “We are too far north to last any real trouble. We’ll fight our way south, and join the King. One day we will return here again.”

  He almost said something else, but stopped and adjusted his sword belt instead. Paul thought he knew what he had almost said—that not everyone would return. Maybe not anybody. The people around him were preparing their weapons, or just talking quietly, and, looking at them, Paul felt homesick for his own, uneventful life at home. Despite the warmth of the sun, he shivered, and wondered why he wasn’t brave like the people in films—and the battle hadn’t even started…

  Then, even as Paul shivered, Rellen pointed with his poleaxe towards the hill, the sunlight flashing on his gauntlet. “They are moving again. Deamus, we must prepare to break out.”

  “Yes,” sighed Deamus. “Would you shape us as you see fit, Rellen, and lead us when the time comes?”

  “I hoped not to fight again,” said Rellen somberly. “But it seems I must.”

  Deamus turned back to Paul, and behind him, Rellen started moving the people of Donbreye into a diamond-shaped “hedgehog” of pikes and swords, with the unarmed people in the middle. Paul and Quigin watched silently for a moment, taking comfort in the sudden bustle of movement, and Rellen’s sure, confident voice.

  The hedgehog had just begun to really look the part, all bristling with pikes, when Leasel returned, her long ears laid flat in fear of the Gwarulch. Quigin touched noses with her briefly, and relayed her message—true to their nature, the Gwarulch were sneaking closer rather than charging down for an all-out attack
.

  “Paul, Quigin—you must go,” said Deamus. “And Sevaun, you must go with them.”

  The girl wrinkled her forehead, and said, “Oh, do I have to?”

  Deamus looked at her sternly, much more sternly than his father ever could, thought Paul, and Sevaun nodded reluctantly, without speaking.

  “Come on then,” she said to Paul and Quigin. “Go down to the harbor steps while I say goodbye to Mother.”

  “Goodbye, Paul,” said Deamus. “Goodbye, Quigin—and Leasel.”

  Paul started to answer, when a shout filled the air, and a fisherman reeled out of a nearby house, clutching his neck. A loud, hissing shriek followed his scream, and Gwarulch poured out of the doorway—huge, vicious shapes that towered over the fisherfolk, who fell back before their sweeping talons and snapping fangs. Then Rellen was charging at them, shouting, “To me Donbreye!”

  At once, or so it seemed to Paul, there were charging people everywhere, and the village resounded with roaring war cries, Gwarulch howls and the sharp screech of talons meeting steel.

  “Go! Go!” shouted Deamus, before he was swallowed up in the fighting, his lanky form taller than all but the Gwarulch, and his sword out and stabbing fiercely.

  Paul took one last look, and then ran for the harbor steps, heart pounding at the thought of a Gwarulch leaping on his back. Running behind him, Quigin almost fell over Leasel, and his hat tumbled off, only to be snatched up by the faithful hare. Sevaun ran some way behind, and kept pausing to look back.

  “Hold hands and close your eyes,” she shouted at them over the noise of the battle, “and hold your hare, you!”

  The boys did as they were told, though both were afraid to shut their eyes. Sevaun watched them for a second, and then began to dance, her wooden clogs clattering on the steps in a rhythmic pattern. As she danced, the sounds of fighting seemed to fade, until the boys could only hear her footsteps, and a sort of gurgling, watery chant Sevaun sang in a very high voice. Then Paul felt her wand touch his nose and mouth—and all at once he was choking, and coughing, just like when he had drowned before.

  “Quickly, jump in the water!” shouted Sevaun, and as Paul opened his eyes and goggled at her stupidly, trying desperately to breathe, she raised one small heavily clogged foot and knocked him sideways off the steps and into the water.

  Quigin looked at her, threw a protesting Leasel in, and jumped straight after. Sevaun took one last look behind her before touching the wand to her own face and dropping into the water below.

  In that brief instant, she saw Rellen vainly trying to stem the tide of Gwarulch, as more and more of the vile creatures pushed against the fisherfolk and their wall of pikes. They had already broken their way through in several places, and the hedgehog was disintegrating into one vast, swirling mass of hand-to-hand fighting.

  As the waters closed over her head, she heard Rellen’s voice, dim and far away: “Break south! Anyone who can, break south!”

  12

  The Beast/To the Water Lord

  EVERY LIVING THING must have left this area or died, thought Julia, as she walked past the piles of bones and long-dead bushes that lined the dried-up stream—but she still stopped every now and then to look ahead, particularly when the husks of trees clustered together, making a perfect place for something to hide.

  The yellowed hills were long behind her now, and she felt that it was time for a drink, if there was a clean-looking water hole somewhere. The stream had cut a deep gully into the dried earth, so Julia had to climb down the crumbling banks, to the squelchy mud that lined the bottom of the stream. A very thin trickle of water ran murkily through the mud. Julia eyed it distastefully, and decided to keep walking.

  After another hour, Julia was having second thoughts about drinking from the dirty trickle. There’d been a few pools of water along the stream, but all of them were full of yellowish mud and small insects. They also smelled like compost.

  Julia looked at the latest dirty pool and its swimming insects, and then up at the sky, hoping to see signs of a memory change. If everything went back to green fields and clear streams she thought, life would be much easier.

  She was starting to laugh at the idea that anything could be easy while you were trapped inside an evil Witch’s mind, when there was a faint splash somewhere behind her—as if something had disturbed one of the pools farther back along the winding gully. Quickly, Julia held out her wand, ready to touch whatever was approaching.

  For a few seconds, everything was completely still. Julia held her breath and listened more intently—and caught the slight sound of metal clinking and the sucking noise of footsteps in the mud.

  Gripping the wand so hard her knuckles shone white, Julia took a few hesitant steps towards the last corner of the gully, her mind flashing through pictures of all the terrible creatures she’d seen through the Ragwitch’s eyes—or that She had shown Julia from Her memory. And now, Julia was in that memory…

  But the thing that rounded the corner was like nothing she’d seen before, a shambling man-sized monster, caked in mud and dried blood, with black and silver rags hanging from its twisted shape in a fall of tatters. Rusted iron rings clinked under the cloth as it shambled along like a broken mechanical monkey, all hunched over, its arms trailing along in front. The beast stopped in front of Julia and slowly, almost as if it had forgotten how, it straightened its back—and looked at Julia through clear blue eyes set in a face curled back in a bestial grimace.

  With a shock, Julia realized that it was a man—somehow twisted and altered, but definitely human. It looked at her for a second, and she felt the tiredness and the horror in it, even as its mouth opened to snarl, and the bandied legs bent for the killing spring.

  Screaming, Julia thrust the wand out, striking the beast’s chest as it sprang. It knocked her down into the stream where, half-blinded with mud, she scrabbled fearfully for the wand, expecting to feel ripping teeth and claws within seconds. Then she felt the familiar golden warmth of the wand under her hand, and having hold of it once again, she sat up, wiping cold mud from her face. Eyes clear, she looked around—but there was no sign of the creature.

  Still trembling with shock, Julia got to her feet, the wand held ready against attack. The creature was lying on its back in the mud, a few meters upstream. Golden sparks trailed up and down its body, and a yellow light flickered all around. Very faintly, Julia could hear Lyssa singing, and the distant hum of harp strings lightly struck.

  She watched entranced as the sparks stripped away the bestial features and straightened out the body of the creature, though they didn’t remove the mud and dried blood. As Lyssa had said, the wand was revealing the creature’s true form. No longer a twisted monster, it was a man of thirty or so, with long red-brown hair and a worried face, lined with cares and trouble.

  Despite this welcome change of appearance, Julia kept the wand ready. Lyssa had told her that it would reveal something’s true nature…and it had, but the man might still be a servant of the Ragwitch. Or rather, the memory of one. Julia looked at the sky again, hoping for a memory change that would remove this person before he woke up. But the sky remained blue and calm, with the sun beating down on the arid fields and the dried-out stream—and the man was waking up, and muttering. Curious, Julia edged a little closer to see what he was saying.

  “Torches…more torches,” he mumbled, eyelids flickering. “The barricades…will they stop the Stone Knights? Bring more to the…”

  “Stone Knights…” whispered Julia to herself. “He must have been fighting the Angarling…”

  She hesitantly reached out and shook him, careful to keep the wand ready in her left hand.

  “Were you at Bevallan…or the Namyr Gorge?” asked Julia. She could think of no other place where he would have fought Angarling. But if he was just a memory, surely he should be in a place that was the memory of Bevallan?

  I wish Lyssa were here to explain it all, thought Julia, as she struggled with the idea of being in the Ra
gwitch’s memory, and how this man-beast could belong to Her recollection of parched hills and dried-out streams.

  She shook the man again, slightly harder, and he stopped mumbling to himself and his eyes began to open. Julia moved back a couple of steps as he raised himself up on one elbow and looked blearily around.

  He frowned when he saw Julia, but not in anger. More as if he were puzzled, and couldn’t understand what was going on. Julia noticed that his hand automatically crept to his side, as if seeking a sword.

  The man looked around the stream-bed again, and then back at Julia. He made no move to get up, but Julia stepped back, for there was still something dangerous in his look.

  “Where are we, girl?” asked the man. “How far are we from Yendre?”

  Julia stepped back, and didn’t answer. How could they be close to or far from anything, trapped inside the Ragwitch’s mind?

  “Speak…I mean you no harm—unless you are one of Her servants.”

  Julia looked back at him for a moment, and saw that behind all the mud, dried blood and danger, there was something human and kind in the man, something Her creatures never had.

  “No,” said Julia. “I am an enemy of the Ragwitch.”

  “The Ragwitch?” said the man, clumsily getting up onto his knees. “I know nothing of a rag…witch. I am speaking of the North-Queen, as She now calls Herself.”

  “The North-Queen…” said Julia, thinking back to what Lyssa had told her. “But the Ragwitch is the North-Queen…She has come back in a different form.” Then she remembered that she was effectively in the past. Here, in Her memory, it still was the time of the North-Queen. But how was she going to explain that?

  The man was silent for a moment, his breath wheezing as he stood up and steadied himself against the side of the gully. “You speak in riddles, girl. But I admit my mind lies heavy in my head, and I misremember…we were retreating to Yendre, and the Gwarulch were close behind, and She not far behind them…”