The Witchwood Crown

  “It’s true that is all I need,” said Unver. For the first time in a while, Fremur saw the anger that Unver hid underneath his silences. The cords of his arms bunched as he rammed another spoke into the next open slot, but he was scowling as though it did not fit at all. “I have the horses already. One day soon I will travel as a man should travel.” Something in his eyes changed; for a moment, something long hidden looked out instead. “One day I will go where I want. Do as I please. And no one . . .” He trailed off.

  “So why did you come back to help me?”

  “Because it needed doing. Because . . .” Unver gave the spoke a couple of more heavy blows, then abruptly dropped the maul. “I am tired of answering your questions. Your head must still be broken, to make you ask so many. You should go and lie down.”

  Fremur knew when he was being dismissed, and he also knew that it would be no wiser to anger Unver than it was to anger Odrig. Unver would not beat him as his brother would, but he would stay angry for days or even weeks, and Fremur didn’t want that. “Enough, then,” he said. “Thank you for not leaving me behind.”

  “It is better to be alive than dead,” said Unver, which was probably the closest he would ever come to replying in kind.

  As Fremur walked away he thought he could feel Unver’s fury beating out from where he stood like the heat of a bonfire, but somehow Fremur didn’t think that it was him or even Unver’s poisonous stepfather that made the tall man so angry.

  He burns, Fremur realized. Sometimes the embers are low, but they never go out. And some day he will burst into flame. Fremur thought again of how he had seen Unver the night before, stretched against the billowing flames and dark sky, and he trembled, just as he had when his mother had told him stories of the vengeful spirits of air and grass that surrounded them.

  A terrible flame.

  25

  Example of a Dead Hedgehog

  Something was wrong. The air was heavyhot, the sky thick with mist. Even the clear waters of Sumiyu Shisa had turned dark, and bubbled like boiling soup. Tanahaya stumbled along the banks of this counterfeit place that should have been her home, her heart, the vale of Shisae’ron she knew so well. She headed toward Willow Hall and the place of her birth, but found it difficult to walk. The ground was muddy, almost boiling, and the steamy air choked her. Again and again she found herself slipping backward, as though she were trying to climb a long, steep slope.

  At last she reached the riverside glen where her family home stood, but this too had changed beyond recognition.

  Fallow. Unharvested. The waste—!

  Even the front stairway, a graceful construction of carefully arranged white stones, had become a thing of mud and rubbish. The hall, roofed only by the great willow trees themselves, was now a fleshpicked rib cage of leaning posts slowly declining into the ooze.

  “Mother?” she called, but only silence was at home.

  Fearful now, Tanahaya tried to find her way into her childhood refuge, but as if her own memory rejected her, the drooping willow branches were slimy and the leaves came loose in her hands like hair from the head of a corpse. The deeper she went into the house the less she recognized, and the harder it was to fight through the choking heat and sinking floor. Every way she turned some fallen trunk blocked her way, or a jumbled nonsense that should have been a patterned stone floor mocked her. All that kept her moving was the fixed idea that she had some reason to be here, that she had returned for something important, although she could no longer remember what that might be.

  A section of ground dissolved beneath her feet and she almost tumbled down into a tangle of muddy roots that waited for her like some sea creature. Pitched forward onto her hands and knees, she kept crawling toward the center of the house, the place where her mother had tended the fire and sang her sweetling soothe-songs, but the roots of the willows squirmed beneath her, coiling and writhing like snakes, and it was all she could do to inch forward, her hands and arms now slick with black mud, her eyes full of hot, stinging mist.

  “Mother?” At last she could see the hearth, and to her joy she saw that it was whole, the only part of the house not chewed by decay and collapse. All was as her mother had made it and wished it, the fire pit of orderly white stones, the ritual objects set on their low table of carved wood, jars and bowls and bundles of grassy calmcares and other simples Tanahaya had seen all through her childhood, objects so familiar that even to view their shapes again was to feel a fierce longing for days that were gone. But in the center of the table, as though her mother had only put it down an instant before, sat something Tanahaya had never seen before—an egg made of gleaming, polished witchwood, its pearly gray marbled with a dozen other colors amost too subtle to make out. Just to see that beautiful ovoid made her want to take it up and protect it. Why had her mother left it behind? What was Tanahaya supposed to do? Everything she knew was changed—changed and ruined—and yet this puzzle remained.

  She heard a noise behind her then—not a footfall, but a long, sucking, slither of a sound. Before she could see what was there, the ground beneath her gave way again and dropped her into hot, sticky darkness. All else—the house of her childhood, the gleaming witchwood egg, even the thing that was Tanahaya-I-myself—vanished back into smothering oblivion.

  • • •

  She was fighting a war, a terrible struggle against a powerful enemy, and so far she had lost every skirmish. But Tanahaya could not retreat because the battle was taking place inside her own body.

  In her moments of clear thought she knew that it was some kind of poison that was destroying her, not the wounds. Like all of her people, Tanahaya had deep reserves of strength for fighting illness and injury, but each day she was growing weaker. She could feel the filth inside her trying to make its way through her blood to her heart, like savage raiders rowing their warships upriver to attack a great city. She knew that before much longer the corruption would overwhelm her.

  But this poison that smeared those arrows and crawls now through my veins must be the creation of mortals. If it had been crafted by our cousins the Hikeda’ya, I would have lost the battle long ago.

  It still made scant sense: what mortals would go out of their way to destroy her? If it had been ordinary arrows that had struck her down she could believe it had been merely the fearful response of a human poacher seeing something strange—the mortals, the Sunset Children, tended to attack that which they did not understand, as all the Zida’ya knew. But the venom coursing through her was something no poacher would use, since it would poison any game it struck down. What sense for a hungry man to risk death or imprisonment to shoot something that couldn’t be eaten?

  No, the venom on the arrows had been meant to kill, and only a child of her sturdy, ancient race would have survived this long. Tanahaya could imagine an enemy who might not want her to reach this place and its king and queen, a mortal who hated Tanahaya’s people and meant to keep her away at all costs, but how could such a person have known she was coming? It reminded her of Sijandi and his still unknown fate. Surely in such dangerous times Lord Jiriki and Lady Aditu would never have told anyone about her mission but those they trusted most. But even if one of Tanahaya’s own kind wanted her dead for some incomprehensible reason, why would they give that task to mortals?

  During her moments of respite from the arrow-fever, thoughts like these swam through her head like startled fish; but those interludes of sense were growing less frequent. Tanahaya knew if something did not change soon, she would lose this fight.

  • • •

  When she thrashed her way up from the darkness the next time, it was to find a face hanging over her, a young mortal woman, features pinched tight with fear and her hands pulled tight against her breast for fear she might accidentally touch the sick creature lying in the bed.

  “Get . . . healer . . .” was all Tanahaya could say. “Need . . . healer . . .”


  The woman stared at her in horrified fascination for a moment. Tanahaya realized she had spoken in her own tongue, not in the common speech of mortals. She tried again. “Bring . . . the healer.”

  That was all the strength she had. The dark, the heat, and the rot reached out and dragged her back down into boiling black depths.

  “Why do you put water on plants, Aunt Tia-Lia? Why don’t they drown? I saw a mouse drown in the moat once. I couldn’t reach him, and Grandfather Osric wouldn’t help me get him out. He swam for a long time, but then he died.”

  “You drink water, little Lillia, and yet you don’t drown. A little water is good for living things—in fact, it is necessary. Too much, though, is bad. Now hold that candle a little closer, please.”

  The princess thought about this. “How much is too much?”

  Aunt Tia-Lia was still looking at the plants, not at Lillia. “There is no single answer to that question.”

  Lillia loved Tia-Lia, but she didn’t always like the answers she gave. “Can a plant drown?”

  “If you give them too much water, yes. Now, please, my darling, let me finish this, then you can help me draw pictures of those flowers I told you about.”

  Princess Lillia’s next question was forestalled by the noisy arrival of a young serving maid at the door of the forcing shed. The maid seemed to have run a long way, because her face was red and she was gasping. “Oh, Lady Thelía, are you in there?” she cried, leaning on the gate. “Merciful Rhiap, I didn’t know what to do. Brother Etan is gone down to the city, and she’s in a terrible way and I just don’t know! She says to bring a healer, but I don’t know anything about that!”

  “Calm down, girl, I can’t understand you. Who needs a healer?”

  “The strange woman. The one upstairs in the Residence that Brother Etan helps you tend! She was moaning and carrying on, and I went to see what was wrong, and then her eyes opened up—just like that! Scared me witless! And she kept saying she wanted a healer, a healer. But Brother is gone down to the city.”

  Thelía looked up to the heavens. “Not even one day to tend my garden?” she asked, then set down her watering can. “Calm yourself, girl. I will come. Let me just wash my hands.”

  • • •

  Lillia didn’t really understand why Uncle Timo and Aunt Tia-Lia were married, because they were so different. For one thing, Aunt Tia-Lia was much taller than her husband, which struck Lillia as very strange. Also, Uncle Timo’s skin was brown, but his wife’s skin was pale, except on her hands and the back of her neck where the sun had darkened her. Uncle Timo was quiet and shy and had a limp, but Aunt Tia-Lia wasn’t ever shy about anything, and she walked so fast that Lillia could barely keep up with her—like now, as they made their way swiftly across the Inner Bailey.

  She had once asked her mother why people married each other. “Because God sends you someone, then you have children together,” had been her mother’s answer, but that didn’t explain Uncle Timo and his bride either, because they didn’t have any children of their own. Lillia’s own father was dead, but he and Mother had still had children, Lillia and her big brother Morgan. “Are there other reasons people marry each other?” she had asked, but Mother had only told her, “I can’t imagine any,” and Lillia had recognized from the tone of her mother’s words that it also meant, “I’m tired of talking.”

  Now, as she hurried to keep up with Aunt Tia-Lia, she was wondering about it again. “Why do people get married?” she asked.

  “Lots of reasons, I suppose.” She turned to look past Lillia to the maid. “Hurry yourself, girl. I understand why you had to leave her alone, but that doesn’t mean we should dawdle.”

  “I am hurrying, Lady Thelía,” said the maid. “It just doesn’t look like it, because my legs aren’t so long as yours. I wouldn’t have left her alone, but Brother Etan said that Martha wasn’t to watch over her anymore, so there’s just me . . .”

  Aunt Tia-Lia made a face. “Enough explaining, dear, just keep a good pace, will you? As to your question, Princess Lillia, sometimes people marry because their parents want them to. Other times they marry because they want companionship—don’t frown, that’s a very unbecoming face. ‘Companionship’ means having a friend to keep you company. Do you understand?”

  Lillia nodded. “And what about lovers, like in the stories? Do they get married?”

  “Oh, yes. And sometimes they stay in love, but sometimes they don’t. I would say it’s one of the more untrustworthy reasons for marriage.”

  “Why . . . ?” Lillia was feeling out of breath. “Why did you marry Uncle Timo?”

  Aunt Tia-Lia looked a little surprised by the question. “Why? I suppose . . . well, companionship, certainly. But mostly because I had never met a kind man—a good man—who also asked so many questions, who was more interested in simply finding things out than in telling other people how things were or how they should be.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Her aunt (who was not really her aunt, just as Uncle Timo was not really her uncle—Lillia called them that because that’s how they felt to her) shook her head, but with a little smile to soften it. “I really think we will have to talk about this another time, dear. We’re almost there and you are all red in the face. Now save your breath for climbing.”

  Lillia could hear the groans of the maid as she struggled up the stairs behind them, but she did her best to stay right behind Aunt Tia-Lia. “I saw the lady before,” she said as they reached the landing. “The one who’s ill. I think she’s a witch.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She doesn’t look right. She’s scary.”

  Aunt Tia-Lia didn’t say anything, but pushed open the door. The lady on the bed wasn’t tied down as she had been the last time Lillia had seen her. She looked much sicker than before, the golden color of her skin beginning to turn a bluish-gray, her face covered in drops of sweat. “Is she going to die?” Lillia asked in what she thought was an appropriately quiet voice. “Brother Etan said she was a Zither.”

  “A what?” Her sort-of aunt stood beside the bed, staring down at the woman. “No, she is a Sitha. The people some call fairies.” She carefully seated herself on the bed and began to touch the woman in different places, on her face, her neck. She even leaned forward to put her head against the woman’s chest, which made Lillia a little anxious. She still didn’t know what either a Zither (or a Sither) was, so she was by no means sure you couldn’t be one of those and a witch, too. The woman’s eyes opened just enough that Lillia could see the whites, then closed again. Then the fairy opened her mouth and let out a long, shuddering breath but nothing more.

  “She is burning up with fever!” Aunt Tia-Lia said. “Tabata, you should be bathing her face and forehead with cool water—wrists, too. I see no water here at all.”

  “There was some, yesterday . . .”

  “Oh, for the love . . . ! Go and get some more, quickly. A bucket from the well, and a clean cloth. Now!”

  The maid scurried out. She did not seem sad to have been given an errand, which seemed odd, because Lillia would have been furious to be sent away.

  Aunt Tia-Lia found a bowl that still had a bit of water in it and used her own sleeve to dab it on the woman’s brow. The eyes came the rest of the way open, and for a moment the strange golden stare locked with Aunt Tia-Lia’s lovely, ordinary brown one. Then the woman licked her lips and said, in a whispery voice, “P-p-poison—” Her slender fingers closed on Aunt Tia-Lia’s hand and she spoke again, in a voice so tiny that even Lillia, for all her worry about this strange person, leaned closer to hear. “Need . . . !”

  “What do you need, dear?” Tia-Lia leaned forward too. “Tell me . . .”

  But the woman only shook her head—slowly, as if it were a great weight to move. Then she lifted her hand and held it trembling in the air.

  “She wants the bowl of wa
ter,” said Lillia.

  “I think you’re right.” The bowl was moved closer, and the Sither-woman lowered her hand into it, then lifted it out, the whole operation so achingly slow that it was all Lillia could do not to help her. Then the long fingers reached out toward the stool beside the bed. Slowly she traced a shape on the seat, the water gleaming in the late-afternoon sunlight. As Lillia and Aunt Tia-Lia stared at it, the door opened.

  “Do you have the water?” her auntie asked without looking.

  “I beg your pardon, Lady Thelía—I did not know water was wanted.”

  Tia-Lia looked up in surprise. “Brother Etan! I was told you were gone down to the city.”

  “I was, Lady Thelía. I was searching for a few herbs that might prove useful. Last time I came here, she told me she was poisoned—that was very clear. I have brought back Harchan dittany and some refined oil of rue.”

  “I do not think either of those will help, I’m sorry to say. Look, she has drawn something with her finger, the poor creature,” said Aunt Tia-Lia. “It was all she could manage.” The Sither woman’s eyes had fallen closed again, and her hand had drooped, her arm now hanging off the edge of the bed, even that very small effort an exhausting one. “I looked in on her last night and she seemed to be sleeping peacefully.”

  Etan moved around the bed so he could examine the seat of the wooden stool. “What she’s drawn—is it a heart?”

  “I don’t know what else it could be. Perhaps she wishes us to find a herb with heart-shaped leaves?” Thelía pursed her lips. “I must think. Perhaps there is something in one of my husband’s books—”

  The maid Tabata now reappeared, weighed down by a sloshing bucket that she had to carry with both hands, which had clearly made it awkward to climb the stairs, because she was all a-sweat. “I think I might be about to have a fit,” she announced in a mournful voice. “I banged my leg terribly on the way up.”

  Tia-Lia nodded in an offhand way. “Bless you, how sad. Leave that bucket here—yes, and the cloth—and you may go sit and nurse your wounds. If you have a fit, be sure to let me know.”