The Witchwood Crown
“Are you well, Magister?” It was Luk’kaya, leader of the Harvesters and one of Viyeki’s few allies among the ordinal elite.
“I thank you, High Gatherer, but it is nothing,” he said, although secretly he was grateful for her presence. “A misstep, that is all.”
Despite the many nobles and guards descending together, the narrow stairwell was nearly silent but for the feather-soft rustle of their footfalls. The smothering air seemed to grow even thicker and closer, but Viyeki found as he descended that with self-control he could breathe normally, if more shallowly than usual.
Viyeki had never entered the sacred Chamber of the Well in all his long life, and as he emerged from the last stairwell into the cavern he could not help staring around in fearful fascination. Arched galleries ringed the chamber both at the bottom and higher up, but what drew his eye was the hole in the center of the cavern floor, a ragged gouge surrounded by a circular lip of carved, inlaid stones—the mouth of the Well. The radiance that oozed from it seemed like something heavier than mere light, lying close along the stony floor while leaving the reaches above the upper galleries lost in shadow. By its dull ocher gleam, Viyeki thought he could see faces gazing down from the dark openings in the walls above him—or at least things that looked like faces.
The Well itself blazed like the maw of one of the mountain’s flaming crevices, but its thick light seemed to come from a source even older than the mountain’s internal fires—a bleak, yellowish glow that might have lit the world before even the stars first began to burn, and which made everything in the great chamber seem to lean and loom. A shape hung in the column of wavering light above it, something real as blown glass yet insubstantial as smoke, an object Viyeki could not entirely understand or even completely see. This was the Breathing Harp, a sacred object brought to Nakkiga from lost Kementari when the immortals had fled the sudden ruination of that great city. From some angles the harp seemed near enough for Viyeki to touch, but even a slight tilt of his head reduced it to vanishingly faint scratches on the air, lines that were barely there at all, but with spaces between them that seemed to open onto limitless vistas and made his eyes ache. When Viyeki finally pulled his gaze away, the Harp seemed to linger before him like a shadow wherever he turned.
But even the Well and the Harp could not hold his attention for long, because like any of his people, when Viyeki saw the slender, silver-masked figure sitting still and pale as a statue on her great chair of black stone, he found it nearly impossible to look at anything else.
Mother of All, give strength to your servant. The sight of the queen brought old words of worship to his mind. My life is yours. My body is yours. My spirit is yours.
If this is an execution, Viyeki thought then, even a wholesale destruction of the noble caste, then at least my death will be at her command. It was a strangely reassuring idea. Dying, he would at least know that order prevailed—that the Mother of the People, not Akhenabi, still ruled in Nakkiga.
The Lord of Song was present, of course, standing to one side of the queen’s throne, facing the Well. Its weird pulsing light, which painted Utuk’ku’s white mourning garb with earthy yellows and strange blues, fell onto the darkness of Akhenabi’s hooded robes and vanished, so that the powerful Singer seemed to stand in his own shadow, only his mask of dried flesh and painted runes clearly visible.
More surprising to Viyeki, though, was the figure on the other side of the throne—Jijibo the Dreamer, a descendant of the queen so rarely seen outside of the palace as to be almost a legend in the rest of Nakkiga. Utuk’ku and Akhenabi were motionless as they watched the crowd assembling, but scrawny Jijibo was in perpetual, twitching motion, his fingers convulsively flexing and his wide mouth working as he muttered unendingly to himself.
Viyeki knew from experience that the Dreamer’s words seemed to leap from his thoughts to his tongue without even the faintest consideration for propriety or courtesy or even ordinary sense. Most of Nakkiga’s nobles considered Jijibo helplessly mad—a rare but not unknown affliction among the People—because he wore mismatched garments and talked to himself aloud, though often incomprehensibly. But the Dreamer had a talent for devices and plans that pleased his ancestor the queen, so he was suffered to go where he wished and to do largely as he pleased. Viyeki’s Order of Builders, in particular, often had to deal with his sudden demands for this or that space or materials they had planned to use themselves, but as a relative and favorite of the Mother of All, Jijibo was outshone perhaps only by mighty Lord Akhenabi himself, so Viyeki’s order seldom had any recourse but to let the Dreamer have his way.
Because his vision had been blocked by so many others, it was not until Viyeki reached a position in the crowd directly facing the queen’s throne that he saw a group of figures already kneeling at the queen’s feet as though to receive honors from their monarch—but their slumped postures and bound wrists told Viyeki more than he wanted to know about the nature of the reward they expected.
As the last of the Nakkiga nobles crowded into place behind Viyeki, the Lightless Ones began to sing in the unknown deeps below the Chamber of the Well, soft, strange cries as alien as bitterns booming in a marsh but also as complex as speech. Some said the Lightless Ones had lived in the depths even before the Hikeda’ya came to the mountain, some that their ancestors had traveled from the distant Garden on the Eight Ships with Queen Utuk’ku and the Keida’ya, but in truth nobody could say for certain whether they were many creatures or one thing with many voices. If the queen knew the Lightless’ full tale, she never spoke of it.
As they all waited in near-silence, Viyeki could feel fear and tension growing in his fellow nobles, as though they were a single flock of birds that might suddenly startle and take wing. Clearly most of them were as confused as he was, frightened by the unexpected summons, by the Hamakha guards who had led them here and the squadron’s worth of battle-armored Queen’s Teeth guards who stood behind Utuk’ku’s throne.
If we are not all to be executed, Viyeki thought, then there must be grave news indeed if the queen brings us all to the Well to hear it. Are we under attack? Have the mortals come again to besiege us?
Akhenabi spread his arms, his long sleeves hanging like the wings of a bat. “Silence for the Queen,” he said. “Hear the Mother of All.”
No one had been speaking above a whisper, but at the Lord of Song’s words the room grew silent in an instant. Utuk’ku leaned forward, her eyes glittering in the slots of her mask.
I need you, my children.
Her words were not spoken aloud, but flew straight into the minds of all those present like a sudden thunderclap, a crash of overwhelming fury that for a long moment turned Viyeki’s own thoughts into shards, splinters, powder.
I am weak, the queen told them, although the force of her thoughts brought tears of pain to Viyeki’s eyes. My strength has been spent in the defense of our race. The sacred sleep from which I just awakened will be my last—there is no further help for me there.
Many of the nobles around Viyeki began to moan, whether in pain like his at the force of the queen’s words, or in fear at what they signified, but Utuk’ku did not pause. Only with the aid of all your hearts and hands can I survive the present danger, she told them—can we all survive.
Several of the gathered nobles, overwhelmed by the force and terror of this message, now dropped to all fours and pressed their faces against the cavern floor like sacrificial beasts awaiting slaughter. Jijibo the Dreamer laughed and did a gleeful little loose-jointed dance beside the queen’s black stone chair, as though he had never seen finer entertainment.
Akhenabi raised his arms and spread his gloved hands and the observers quieted. “Our beloved queen has fought so long and hard for us,” the Lord of Song declared, “both here and in the lands beyond life, that she is weary—terribly weary. So she asks me to speak for her.” He raised one arm higher and curled his fingers into a fist. “He
ed your queen! We are in peril! But before we can protect ourselves from the new dangers that threaten, we must put our house in order. There are those among us who took advantage of the queen’s keta-yi’indra—traitors who tried to use her long sleep for their own advantage.” He paused, and his masked face looked out blankly over the crowd of nobles and soldiers. “Libertines. Thieves. Traitors. And now they will face justice.”
A pair of tall Queen’s Teeth stepped forward and grabbed the first kneeling figure, dragged him to his feet, and then turned him around to face the crowd of nobles. His features, though battered and bruised, were all too familiar. It was Yemon, Viyeki’s secretary.
The magister’s terror returned like a blast of icy wind. Every sense, every nerve, urged him to flee, but his limbs would not respond; he could only stand and wait and watch. So it is to be death for me after all, he thought. Akhenabi has found someone to inform against me. Farewell, my family. I hope the disgrace is not too great to be endured. Farewell, Nezeru, my daughter and heir. But in that moment, instead of his lawful wife, it was the face of his mortal lover Tzoja that came to him. He hoped she and their daughter would not be punished for his mistakes.
One by one the other prisoners kneeling before the queen were dragged to their feet, named, and then forced around to face the watching crowd. To Viyeki’s increasing confusion, almost none of them held any higher rank than Yemon—a few clerics, another magister’s secretary, a Sacrifice commander who had only recently been named a general. The most important of them was Nijika, a Host Singer Viyeki remembered from the days of the Northmen’s siege of the mountain. Like Yemon, she had new wounds on her face and head, and had obviously suffered since being seized, but she stood expressionlessly in the grip of the Queen’s Teeth while the watchers murmured and stared and the Lightless Ones throbbed in the deep. After she had been named and displayed to the watching crowd, Nijika and all the other prisoners were forced back onto their knees again at the foot of the queen’s great stone chair.
“In these terrible times, we face dangers both from within and without,” Akhenabi warned. “While the People’s beloved Mother slept, these wretched creatures you see before you conspired to flout her will. They instigated laws and directives that went against our oldest traditions, weakening their own people and making a mockery of the very memory of our Garden.”
Viyeki was stunned by the Lord of Song’s words. Surely no one gathered here could believe that this small coterie of minor officials had instigated the idea of giving half-mortal bastards the right to join important Hikeda’ya orders like Sacrifice and Song. It had taken the combined power of Marshal Muyare and Viyeki’s master Yaarike, as well as Akhenabi himself and several more of the most powerful nobles, to create such sweeping changes. Had the great Singer somehow managed to convince the queen of such an obvious untruth? Or was something else going on?
The first prisoner, Yemon, was now dragged on his knees right to the queen’s feet. He whimpered, but when he would have turned away in shame and terror from the queen’s shiny, masked face, strong hands grabbed his head and held it so he could not move. Viyeki expected Akhenabi to read a list of charges against the prisoner, but instead the Mother of the People reached down and touched Yemon’s forehead with her white-gloved hand. The hapless secretary began to quiver harder and harder, until it seemed some huge, invisible predator shook him in his jaws. The guards abruptly let go, as though they had found themselves holding something hot. Yemon began screeching, broken, wordless cries, even as the chant of the Lightless grew louder and the air in the cavern grew warmer and thicker.
Now a strange shadow slipped across the prisoner from the place where Utuk’ku’s hand touched him, rippling slowly outward, spreading down his head and over his body like ink spilled on a blotter. Yemon’s shrieks subsided into little more than whistles of escaping air, then he abruptly dissolved into a cascade of ash or black dust; Viyeki barely restrained a cry of disgust and horror.
While the crowd watched in rapt, uneasy silence, the next bound figure was dragged forward to the queen and the scene was acted out once more, and then again with each of the accused traitors. By the time the last prisoner, Host Singer Nijika, was dragged to Utuk’ku’s throne, she had to kneel in the drifting remains of her predecessors.
Nijika did not wait for death in silence, or whimper as Yemon had done. Instead, she proclaimed in a loud, clear voice that all the gathered nobles could hear, “Hikada’yei! I do not know precisely what I have done, but if my queen and my master say I am guilty, then I am guilty beyond question. Know only this, as my last and truthful words. I love my queen more than my own life, more than the honor of my family, clan, or order. I swore when I became one of her Singers that I would gladly surrender my life for her, and the manner of that surrender is of no import now. I die without regret, because it is my Mother’s wish.”
Light from the Well played across Utuk’ku’s silver mask as the queen paused, and for a moment Viyeki thought she had been touched by the Singer’s words and might pardon her. Then the queen reached forward, but instead of touching Nijika’s face, she placed her fingers on the Host Singer’s breast, as if in blessing, and the Singer threw her head back in some unknowable pain or ecstasy. The queen leaned farther forward. Her hand seemed to pass into Nijika’s body. The prisoner cried out, a moan of uttermost extremity like nothing Viyeki had ever heard, then the blackness swept over Nijika like wildfire and she crumbled into a mound of dark motes indistinguishable from those who had died before her. But as this ashy powder settled to the cavern floor and the wisps of smoke dissipated, Viyeki saw that the queen held something in her hand. It was Nijika’s heart, still wet, but blackened in places as though it had been pulled from a fire.
Here, Song-Lord. Utuk’ku’s thoughts, though directed at Lord Akhenabi, pierced Viyeki like darts of ice. Keep this with honor in your order-house. Her circumstances may have made her traitor, but the host singer’s heart remained true.
The Lord of Song accepted the burned thing from the queen, nodded in apparent gratitude, and then stepped back. “So ends the conspiracy,” he announced. “So must it always come to those who betray our queen and people.”
Many of the audience in the Chamber of the Well now cheered and called out their thanks, praising the queen and Akhenabi for preserving them from the traitors, but Viyeki could not help noticing that Muyare, marshal of all Sacrifices, leader of the queen’s armies, was not one of those caught up in the moment. The great warrior stood with eyes downcast, his arms at his side, and Viyeki realized that whatever was happening here, it was not yet over.
“Hear me now, as I speak for the queen!” intoned Akhenabi. “Hear now why you are all needed, why your strength and loyalty are our only defenses against destruction!” He raised his arms again, waiting for the shocked murmurs of the onlookers to fade to stillness. “Yes, destruction! You all know of Ineluki Storm King, who fought the mortals until they destroyed him, then returned from death to fight them once more, before being destroyed forever in the War of Return—the same war that forced our queen into the healing sleep from which she has only now awakened.”
As Akhenabi spoke the queen looked upward, past the Well and the Breathing Harp, her masked face staring into the farthest heights of the chamber, where cold from above met the damp warmth from the mountain’s depths and flakes of snow had begun to swirl.
“When Ineluki of the Zida’ya was still a living king,” Akhenabi continued, “defending the great fortress of Asu’a from the ravaging Northmen, he turned to our queen for help in his struggle against the mortals. She sent him the finest hearts of the Order of Song, five of our eldest, wisest, most skilled Singers. These five lords of Song—Karkkaraji, Sutekhi, Ommu, Enah-gé, and Uloruzu, may they all be remembered as long as the Garden itself!—were afterward called the Red Hand. Adding their strength and knowledge to Ineluki’s, they bent the walls of time and space and sung up ancient powers and dreadfu
l spirits, but not even the Red Hand were powerful enough to defeat the swarming Northmen and their iron weapons. In desperation, Ineluki sought for a weapon so devastating that it would scour the plague of mortals from the face of our land forever . . . but his summoning failed and he was destroyed. The five Red Hand perished and died beside Ineluki. Asu’a fell to the mortal invaders.”
A cry of grief and loss went up from the crowd, as if the old and familiar story were being told for the first time. Even the Lightless Ones seemed to hear it with dismay, and their alien voices thrummed in counterpoint from the depths.
“Thus passed the last kingdom of our kind from these lands,” said Akhenabi, “—the last, that is, but for our home, this mountain of Nakkiga. Ineluki’s Zida’ya kinsmen scattered to the woods and other hiding-holes. We Hikeda’ya sealed ourselves behind our great gates as the tide of mortal men swept across all we had known and loved. But Ineluki, though his earthly shell had died, was not truly gone. His anger was so strong that he lingered in the Places Between as a spirit of helpless rage—until our queen found him again.” He bowed and made an elaborate gesture of gratitude toward silent Utuk’ku. Most in the crowd imitated him. “Yes,” he went on, louder now, “our queen risked her own precious life to search for him in those dark regions where life itself is the enemy. And when she found what remained of him—a small, deathless flame of rage—she brought him to sanctuary in the endless corridors of the Breathing Harp. Together, our queen and Ineluki Storm King summoned back the spirits of the Red Hand as well.”