The Witchwood Crown

  He dismissed it with a shake of his head. “The hills were full of mortals that night. They were all around us before we broke for freedom. Surely I am not responsible for every arrow that was not feathered with black goose.”

  “No. But few of our mortal enemies would have been shooting from behind us, so I still have trouble understanding how so many arrows in the line of our downhill charge would have missed their target—unless the trees were the target.”

  The mortal’s face was a mask, as blank at that of any Hikeda’ya at his or her duty. “Do you have a point, Sacrifice?”

  “Call me Nezeru, please. I think we have passed that stage of formality, don’t you? After all, we have fought together, killed mortals together, and now we ride together. And I will call you ‘Jarnulf’. Or is that not your true name?”

  “As true as any.” He looked at her with what she gauged to be a little more respect than previously. “But you still have not answered my question. Who gave you your mortal blood?”

  She considered for a moment. “My mother. She is of Rimmersgard, like you.”

  “A slave also, like me and the rest of my family?”

  “Not exactly.” And that was true—there really was no precedent for the relationship between Nezeru’s noble father and her outlander mother. “But I think she would recognize much of your life.”

  “I hope not, Lady Nezeru. Because I would not wish my life on anyone.” Suddenly, surprisingly, he spurred his horse ahead and did not slow until he had reached a position halfway between Nezeru and leaders of the company.

  Yes, she thought, not without pleasure. It will be a long, slow game with this one.

  His earliest memories were of the cold, of huddling in the slave barracks with the other children. The winds that descended from the Nornfells and swirled around great Stormspike seemed always to be in motion, always searching for a way into the crude buildings, and their whistling song haunted his childhood. Even crushed in with other shivering children, thin bodies pressed together like mouslings in a nest of rags, Jarnulf was never warm.

  He remembered the cold, and of course the hunger. The Hikeda’ya did not consider children fit for any but the lightest of labors until they had reached a certain size, usually at about ten years of age, so they did not concern themselves overmuch with feeding the slaves’ offspring. Those who showed themselves strong enough to survive would be worth keeping, but those that did not were a waste of good grain, so children were given just enough thin gruel to keep them alive. If some of the larger took food from the smaller, it only proved the stronger were more worthy of life and would bring their owners more value. The sickly were left to die. For centuries, that had been the way among the Hikeda’ya with their own children—why should the spawn of mortal slaves be treated any differently?

  Jarnulf had known his mother Ragna for only a few years of his young life, and although he felt certain he still remembered her face, he could never be quite sure. What he did remember was her voice, one of the few gentle things of his childhood, lovely, soft, and sweet as birdsong. Her quiet words, as they huddled together at night trying not to wake the others, were his only memories of comfort. She told him stories of her family and of his people, and even taught him the rudiments of reading and writing in the old runes their ancestors had brought across the ocean to Osten Ard. But when he was only eight years old—his brother Jarngrimnur a year younger, and his sister Gret barely four years of age—another female slave died, and their mother was moved into the castle to replace her. Jarnulf and his brother and sister never saw her again.

  For the younger ones, Jarnulf did his best to take her place, especially for little Gret, wrapping the child in his arms as the long nights crept past and the wind tugged and probed at the cracks in the cold stone buildings the Hikeda’ya called the “slave barns.” Some nights Gret shivered for hours, even in her sleep. His brother suffered too, and in the first winter after their mother left, Jarngrimnur died of the sweating sickness and his body was carted away to the Field of the Nameless to be burned.

  The slave barns and the slaves themselves belonged to White Snail Castle, one of the last great estates still remaining in Nakkiga-That-Was, the city outside the mountain, which had once spread far beyond the base of great Stormspike. The old city had been a miracle of fluted stone and wide causeways, of great stone houses and walls, but now it was largely fallen into ruin. Still, a few of the older families had refused to withdraw inside the mountain; they kept to the old ways, living in the ancient gyrfalcon castles perched on the mountainside, supervising their own slaves and Bound farmers instead of leaving the work to overseers who were slaves themselves. The masters of White Snail Castle and the other outside estates raised sheep and cattle and horses on the terraced hillsides of Stormspike’s eastern foothills, living the way their ancestors had when they first came to this land of exile they called Do’sae né-Sogeyu—the Shadow Garden.

  Jarnulf had gained more from his mother and his long-lost father than merely his slender, strong build, his height, and his knowledge of the old runes. His mother had also taught him to watch and to think, had showed him that the way to defeat strength was not always simply to be stronger.

  “Do not mistake me,” she had told him more than once. “We are strong too, even though we are slaves. Remember, we come of the Jarn clan—the Iron clan—and the fairies have always hated iron and feared its power.” Again and again Ragna had insisted he learn to keep his temper, reminded him that there were other ways to fight, even to win. “Cleverness can save you where strength or size cannot,” she had told him, illustrating it with the story of how the fire god Loken once tricked the king of the ogres. “Patience can do it, too, because Time can do what men cannot.”

  Jarnulf had liked that story in particular because he knew about giants. He often saw the massive creatures at work—the Hikeda’ya called them Raoni—moving heavy rocks and beams for their masters, because the giants were slaves just like Jarnulf. Seeing them, he had realized that there were some enemies he would never be strong enough to fight, and it was a lesson he would not forget. Thus, when their mother was taken away to be a house slave, instead of attacking the Hikeda’ya overseers who came for her, young Jarnulf had held in his anger until he felt scorched inside, but had said and done nothing.

  Cleverness can do it, he had told himself over and over, though his blood seemed to boil inside him. Patience can also do it, he had thought, clutching the favorite saying of Ragna’s even as she was led away, not even allowed to look back, because Time can do what men cannot. But it had been a bitter day and the wound had never healed.

  As he had grown older he had begun to be chosen for the sort of jobs that the Hikeda’ya gave to young slaves, cutting black barley on the steep hillsides until his skin itched all over, and carrying water to the harvesters, rubbish to the midden, and nightsoil to the fields. In this way he began to come into contact with the children of his Hikeda’ya masters. The estate that surrounded White Snail Castle was like a little city, and housed many kinds of people. The giants and the changeling creatures called Pengi seemed little more than animals, and were considered lower even than Jarnulf and his mortal kind, but several castes of Hikeda’ya lived in the castle as well—the Bound, the Pledged, and the Recognized. The Bound were the farmers, who had only a little more freedom than the slaves, but were still Hikeda’ya: even the meanest and lowest of them had life or death power over any mortal. The Pledged were the master’s soldiers and other important servants and functionaries. And of course the master and his family were of the Recognized, the caste of those who had been confirmed in the ranks of nobility by the queen herself.

  Jarnulf hardly ever saw the children of the Recognized, who were raised and educated in the castle’s great keep, but the young sons and daughters of the Pledged came every day to a fallow field near the slave barns, a place put aside for the purpose of training them in the arts of w
ar, since all Hikeda’ya except the Bound were taught to fight.

  At first Jarnulf only watched them when he could snatch a moment of freedom. He was especially fascinated by the old, sharp-faced Hikeda’ya who supervised them. It was hard to guess the years of Jarnulf’s masters, who did not age as mortals did, but this teacher moved with a certain lack of hurry that suggested experience, and he did not leave his hair white as most of the other men did, but colored it a shade of witchwood gray that had fallen from fashion long before Jarnulf or even his grandparents had been born.

  He learned that the old man was a famous swordsman and one-time Sacrifice commander named Denabi sey-Xoka. None of the other slaves knew much more than that about him, but everyone on the estate could hear his piercing voice as he shouted at, directed, and mocked his students, Hikeda’ya youth only a little older and bigger than Jarnulf himself. The young slave was grateful for that voice, which he could hear even at a distance, and which allowed him to memorize most of what the old warrior was telling his charges.

  Soon Jarnulf had begun hurrying through whatever work he was given so that he could steal a few moments near the edge of the training field, watching the young Hikeda’ya learn to wield sword and spear and shoot a bow. After a while, frustrated by having no weapon of his own, Jarnulf sat up nights after his sister had fallen asleep and made himself a wooden sword from scraps, tying stones to it with stolen twine to give it enough weight for proper practice. He kept it hidden in a stand of birch trees near the training ground, and would lurk in their shade, blocked (as he thought) from the view of the young warriors at work, and imitate what they were being taught.

  When the keen-eyed Hikeda’ya students finally noticed him, as had been more or less inevitable, retribution was swift and painful. A half dozen of them broke away from the main group and ran toward him. Before Jarnulf could get away, they vaulted the fence and surrounded him. For a few moments he held them at bay, whirling his wooden blade and dodging their first attacks, but before long they moved in close and overwhelmed him with numbers. They beat him with the flats of their swords until he fell to the ground, then beat him some more, and ended by kicking his limp form until he thought he would die from pain and lack of breath. At last they lost interest. After breaking his wooden sword and scattering the pieces over him like funeral flowers, the children of his masters wandered back to their practice.

  Jarnulf lay for a long time with his belly against the ground and his face in the cold, wet dirt, wanting to get up, or at least to crawl off and hide his shame, but his ribs were aching so badly he could not push himself upright. He felt the sun move across the sky, and knew that if he could not climb to his feet he would lie out all night, and that would mean death. But every movement seemed to grind something broken inside of him against something else equally damaged. He wept silently as the wind began to increase.

  “By the Garden, what is lying here?” The voice was cheerful but mocking. “Is it a little mouse that the cat has played with? Poor mouse. Happy cat.”

  Jarnulf tried to roll over to see who was talking, but the pain was too great.

  “Or is it a fish that has climbed out of Lake Rumiya and tried to walk like an animal? How strange, to find a fish so far from water.”

  It was maddening. Jarnulf pulled his knees underneath himself, letting out a gasp of agony as he felt all the bruised places, the cracked places. He choked down a cry—it came out as a gurgle from behind his clenched teeth—and at last managed to push himself up to where he could see who was talking. It was Xoka himself, the old warrior who trained the Pledged, staring down at him with an amused look. Older Hikeda’ya had much the same appearance as younger, but the effect of centuries of sun and wind showed up at last even on their near-ageless faces. Xoka was less fine-featured than younger male Hikeda’ya, as though his face had been carved with blunt, crude tools.

  Jarnulf crouched on his hands and knees. It was hard to hold his head up.

  “Do you have a name, little mouse, little fish?” the weapons master asked. “Or are you a dog? You look like a dog, down on all fours that way.”

  Why should this important fellow go out of his way to mock a dying slave? Jarnulf kept his mouth closed.

  “But your tail is not wagging,” said Xoka. “I will call you San’nakuno—Sad Little Dog.” He walked closer. The swordsman wore the loose black garb of a soldier, but with no signs of rank, and his white feet were bare. One of his slender, callused hands probed along Jarnulf’s side, feeling the damage where the students had kicked him over and over again. “I like dogs,” Xoka said, “especially dogs with spirit. I will offer you a bargain. If you can get yourself back to the slave quarters tonight, and come to me tomorrow after your work is finished, I will teach you how to bite the way a dog should. Would you like that?”

  Jarnulf did not understand him—bite? He kept silent.

  “Or you may stay here. Nobody else will help you, as you should know—here strays are left to die.” And so saying, the old Hikeda’ya turned and walked back toward the practice field.

  The sun was long gone behind the great mountain by the time Jarnulf finally managed to get onto his feet and began staggering back to the slave barracks. He shivered through the night, the cold so fierce that when he finally slept he dreamed that he had died, that he lay beside his brother Jarngrimnur on a burning funeral boat like their ancient ancestors. But the next day he dragged himself up from bed when the summoning bell rang and limped out to his work.

  Z’ue Xoka was waiting for him as he’d said he would be. The old master said nothing, only threw Jarnulf a practice sword and commanded, “Show me the twelve starting positions, San’nakuno.”

  From that hour forward Jarnulf had a teacher. The lessons were only when the old swordsman was in the mood, and did not happen every day, at least at first, but often enough that Jarnulf always had something new to practice at night when the other slaves were asleep. He again took to sneaking from the barracks so he could practice his movements with the wooden sword he hid in the trees near the slave barn. Even the coldest weather would find him out of doors working through the silent dance of attack and defense, his feet and hands turning blue from the chill. Some nights he barely made it back into his bed before the bell rang, summoning him out to work once more.

  Xoka never said so, but he seemed impressed by the boy’s capacity to learn and the diligence with which he worked. Still, he treated Jarnulf at least as roughly as he did the children of the masters: he hardly ever spoke, and made most of his corrections with the flat of his own blade, swift, painful blows to Jarnulf’s exposed wrist or undefended skull, but he gave fewer and fewer of these as time passed.

  As he grew out of childhood and toward manhood, Jarnulf felt himself to be living two lives, the dream life of his working hours and his true life, those hours spent defending himself against Xoka with Shadow Form and Water Form, then countering with one of the intricacies of attack. When he did well enough that the master would retreat from him with a slight smile, Jarnulf felt that he had found his true purpose in the world.

  What he only understood later was that Denabi sey-Xoka had not taken an interest in him as a person, but as an object to be trained. The old Hikeda’ya found great satisfaction in knowing that he could train even a mongrel pup—a mortal!—to fight as well as the highborn children of his race. In a way, Jarnulf eventually came to realize, he was no more real to the weapons-master than a chunk of soapstone that a bored man whose great days had passed might carve into a fetish of a god or a likeness of a beloved hound. Jarnulf was not a person to Xoka, he was a pastime.

  But Jarnulf did not know it for a long while, and several years passed before he understood it—years that were the best of his young life.

  Then one day the soldiers of the Hamakha came and took his sister Gret away.

  • • •

  “You have been silent a long time,” Nezeru said. br />
  Jarnulf blinked his eyes. He had been staring at the way ahead without really seeing it, the great broad track the giant had made, the snow lifted on either side like a frozen ocean wave. “I was . . . remembering something.”

  “That, I guessed.”

  She truly was a strange one, this Sacrifice. She had all but told him that she knew he had not tried to kill the Erkynlander soldiers during their escape. He suspected that she had doubts about the arrow he had shot from the hillside as well. But at the same time, she seemed more curious about him than mistrustful. Hikeda’ya as young as she was hardly ever reached the frontier beyond Nakkiga’s inner borders, but the few that he had met were usually full of unshakeable belief, not only in the Queen and the Holy Garden, but in the disgusting, animal lowliness of mortals. What made this one different?

  She was part mortal herself, of course, but he had lived with halfbloods in the slave barracks, and if anything they had been more hateful to the other mortals than the pureblood overseers had been. The Hikeda’ya had bred with humans all Jarnulf’s life. It was not as common among the highest noble clans, and was virtually unheard of among the few oldest, Landborn families, but it was not unusual. What was rare was that a halfblood like Nezeru should reach such a position of trust at such a young age. Even mortal youths in mortal lands were seldom so honored.

  No, there was a mystery there, but without knowing more about her father and his place in the ranks of the queen’s servitors, Jarnulf could only speculate. And speculation, he had learned, was often the enemy of action.

  All that is important is how she may best be used. Because I am sworn to a holy duty, and I will not fail You, my God.

  “Do you not sometimes wonder at the tricks fate plays?” he said aloud.

  Her face at first seemed to hold only contempt, but he thought there might be a glimmer of something else there as well. Unease?