The Witchwood Crown

  “There is no fate,” she said. “There are no tricks. I do what the queen bids me to do. That is the only path, and if I stay on the path, there is no confusion—no tricks, as you would call it.”

  “I speak of one thing, you speak of another,” he said, then looked to make sure they were still well behind the others before he continued. “I speak of unlikeliness, you call it confusion, as if the world conspired against you. I will try a different path. How likely is it that you should be given such an honor, Sacrifice Nezeru, to serve as a Queen’s Talon, when hundreds upon hundreds of other Sacrifices, older and more experienced, were passed over?”

  “You asked this before. I answered you. I earned my place.”

  “But if you are so valuable, so rare, why is it that your chieftain has punished you so savagely?”

  She darted him a look that was little short of hateful. “You know nothing of me, mortal. Of any of us.”

  “I have seen your back, the scars you bear. They are not all completely healed. Do not fear I was spying on you—the sight came by accident. You are very modest for one of your race. Most of your folk treat nakedness as nothing, perhaps because unlike we poor mortals, you feel little cold. But you are different, Sacrifice Nezeru, careful—or perhaps only shy of displaying your wounds. Still, I saw them.”

  Her face had gone quite pale. He thought she looked as lifeless as carved marble. “I earned that punishment. I failed my duty.”

  “Still. Still. You spoke once of your father as we rode a few days ago. He is always very busy now that the queen is awake, you said. I guess that he is an important noble in high office. Am I right?”

  She looked now as though she wished to get away from him. She truly was young, he thought: for all her bland exterior, for all the Hikeda’ya reserve, she had not entirely learned to hide her feelings. Jarnulf had long been a hunter, and Norns had long been his quarry—his prey. He could see her thoughts moving uncomfortably behind her rigid expression.

  “Who are you to ask me questions?” she said. “Why do you not go and ask Makho about his father?”

  “Because then I would have to fight him, and one of us would die. Either way, it would diminish our chances in the dangerous lands ahead. But you are different than Hand Chieftain Makho. He knows nothing but what he has been taught, and he is content with that. You are not, although such confusion—that was your word, wasn’t it? Confusion?—such confusion frightens you. That is plain. But why?”

  “Your questions are pointless and unwanted, mortal. In fact, I think more than ever that you mean some harm to this hand and its mission.”

  “Nothing could be further from the truth. I want this mission to succeed.” And Jarnulf did not have to worry about hiding his actual feelings this time, because he was not lying.

  Despite the similarity of their faces and shapes to those of mortals, or even to that of the Hikeda’ya themselves, Viyeki could never quite make himself believe that the Pengi, the Tinukeda’ya changelings, were much more than animals. The oldest Builders in his order claimed to recall a time when even the lowest of them could talk, but it was hard to believe that now. And when he looked into the empty, cowlike eyes of the Carry-men currently standing beside the great capstan as they waited for a command from their overseer, Viyeki found the whole idea even more incomprehensible.

  “Step into the cart, please, High Magister,” said a voice behind him. “We have a long journey still to go.”

  Viyeki turned to the tall soldier in the silvery dragon mask. “Tell me your name again, officer, so that I may know who to blame if this adventure goes wrong.”

  The guard inclined his head. “I am Hamakha First Armiger S’yessu. I am commissioned by the queen herself for special service.”

  Viyeki looked at the soldier’s surcoat, at the simple maze he wore as an insignia. “But you wear only the Hamakha helm, not the Hamakha crest.”

  “That is why I am called an armiger, High Magister.”

  “Then who do you serve? Not Queen Utuk’ku.”

  “We all serve the queen, High Magister.”

  “Just tell me who has sent for me, rousing me from my home in my hour of rest. If it is the palace, why we are not going there?”

  The guard’s voice did not change. “I am forbidden to tell more than I have, High Magister. But you will learn all soon enough if you will simply step into the cart.”

  Whatever his summoners planned, it was clearly not meant to be secret. Nearly everyone in his household, his wife Khimabu, his secretary, and many of his servants, had seen the soldier and his labyrinth token waiting at the front door, the token that usually symbolized a summons to the Omei’yo Palace. But the messenger had stated in front of all of them that they were bound for somewhere other than the Maze, and that none of High Magister Viyeki’s retinue could attend him. Khimabu had balked at this, of course, insisting her husband wait until more comprehensible orders were sent, but Viyeki had weathered the deadly court politics of Nakkiga for a long time; he was even a bit intrigued by such an unusual summons.

  Still, he did not like the wide, steaming vent that now confronted him here, below the city, or the ancient cart and capstan waiting to lower him even farther into the deeps of the great mountain.

  “I cannot believe that the queen would wish to meet me in such a place,” he said.

  “The queen is not here, High Magister,” the guard said. “That at least I can tell you.”

  “His lordship Akhenabi? High Celebrant Zuniyabe?”

  The guard shook his head. “Please, High Magister. The cart awaits us.”

  After a long moment’s consideration, Viyeki stepped into the mine cart. The dragon-helmed guard entered behind him and closed the barred door, then gave a signal to the overseer of the Carry-men. The huge creatures, only slightly smaller than wild giants, began to crank the capstan.

  The massive ropes creaked as the cart shuddered down into the depths, past level after level, each a dark doorway into the roots of the mountain, where Carry-men and other slaves dug for sulfur and gold. As the cart bumped and shook, Viyeki felt the air grow warmer and ever closer, until it pressed at his ears. There was something else pushing at him too, a discomfort he could queasily detect just at the edge of his senses, but could not identify.

  At last the cart groaned to a halt, and the guard in the serpent mask pushed the door open. “Go forward, High Magister.”

  The queasy feeling had grown stronger. For the first time, he felt real reluctance. “What about you?”

  “I have a passenger to carry back, then I will return for you.” The guard sounded impatient at Viyeki’s hesitation. “You must not fear, High Magister.”

  Viyeki got out and walked down the low passage. His trained eye told him it had been cut through the mountain long, long ago, or at least with stone tools, not metal or witchwood as used in more recent eras. The strange discomfort inside him grew stronger, as though he stood in the bow of a pitching ship; the heat of the place brought out sweat on his skin. He slowed, but that did not stem the sensation, so he silently said the Prayer for the Queen’s Strength and continued forward.

  The corridor turned and bent, then suddenly opened out into a great cavern, this one untouched by tools of any kind, or so it looked to his practiced eye. Shifting red and yellow light turned the entire cavern the color of fire, and in its center a large crevasse belched steam and smoke, as though he were in some smaller version of the Chamber of the Well. From time to time flames darted upward from the cleft in the stone like the tongue of a hungry dragon. Other than that movement, the rocky chamber seemed empty, though the sensations of heat and oppression had grown even more powerful. He no longer felt only a sickness in his guts, but something stronger, a kind of growing terror that clutched at his chest and dried his mouth and throat.

  What place is this? A cavern so far below the excavation levels? No Builder had
a hand in this, not in my lifetime.

  Viyeki stared for long moments into the shifting light and clouds at the center of the chamber before he realized that a mote of darkness drifting high in the clouds of steam above the crevasse was something more. In fact, it had arms and legs and wore a billowing cloak. The tightening of his chest increased. His heart sped.

  Have they hung someone there? he thought in sudden shock. Is this a place of execution? May the Garden defend me, was my family right to fear? Is that why I’ve been brought to this hidden place? He stopped, unwilling to go closer to the pit and the slowly moving shadow that dangled high above it.

  “I wonder how long he would fall if I pushed him in,” someone said just beside his ear. “Would he cook on the way down?”

  Even Viyeki, veteran of centuries in the conspiratorial darkness of Nakkiga, nearly cried out in horrified surprise. He whirled, his hand dropping to the knife on his belt.

  Jijibo the Dreamer stood behind him, Utuk’ku’s strange, many-times-great-grandnephew, his narrow face bobbing up and down.

  “Lord Jijibo, you startled me.” Viyeki’s eyes turned helplessly back to the figure hanging so high above them in the wavering haze and orange light. “Who is that? Why was I brought here?”

  “Does he truly not know?” the queen’s kinsman said. “I did not think him such a fool. Does he not remember that I told him his family had been noticed?” And then, a moment later, without change of tone: “Yes, I would like to have a dried salmon for my meal today.” Now Jijibo pointed a bony finger toward the dark shape floating high in the plume of steam: “Only look, Magister Viyeki. The answer to both your questions waits there.”

  Viyeki stared at the figure. “You mean, that’s not a prisoner?”

  “Oh, a prisoner, yes, most definitely,” said the Dreamer. “But not of the sort you mean. Hmmm, hmmm, yes, I do wonder what it would be like to flay all your skin from your body.”

  In his previous encounters with Jijibo, Viyeki had learned that it was best to pretend most of the things the mad one said had not been spoken aloud, no matter how dire or shocking. “I still do not understand you, Lord Dreamer. Who has summoned me?”

  “I cannot stay to talk, noble Lord Viyeki,” Jijibo said with a touch of impatience. “One day when we are dead, we will all smell like this, did you know? The snake in the apple cart is waiting to take me back to my chambers, you see.” He grinned. The Dreamer looked like something poorly made, his skin pulled a little too tight over his bones, his eyes a little too wide. Even his teeth were crooked. “Look at him frown!” he said. “And he has not even met the whisperer yet. How I would love to have that halfblood daughter of his! I would not take her skin off, no, no. Too crude. How would I learn anything?”

  Finished with words, Jijibo then made a huge, exaggerated bow and strode off in the direction from which Viyeki had come, presumably to the waiting mine cart. Viyeki watched him go, confused and disturbed by what Jijibo had said about his daughter. Only a moment later did he hear the other thing that the Dreamer had said.

  Whisperer, he thought. Does he truly mean—?

  Our time is short, a voice said, and the shock of it made his skin crawl. This time the words were not spoken into his ear but seemed to form directly in his thoughts. It was not the queen’s voice in his head this time, but something more strained and distant, as though it drifted to him down a long, long tunnel. Ignore the holy fool, the voice continued on, and the words felt harsh and dry as bits of drifting ash. He is not part of what you must do.

  Viyeki spun, heart racing even faster, but whoever had spoken was not behind him, nor anywhere in sight. Then a movement at the edge of his vision tugged his gaze upward once more. The dark figure in the billowing cloak was being lowered from the heights, spinning down slowly through the steam and flickering firelight of the great vent.

  No, not lowered, Viyeki saw a moment later. There were no wires, no ropes, no noose. He had never seen anything like it, not from the great sorcerer Akhenabi, not from Queen Utuk’ku herself.

  “What do you want of me?” he cried, and was shamed by the frightened quaver in his own voice.

  As the robed figure drifted down to float just above the crevice, he saw that the face peering from the hood was featureless, covered in bandages, not even eyes or mouth left uncovered. Viyeki shuddered. He knew now who had summoned him, but the knowledge did not slow his pounding heart. The shape stopped, drifting slightly in the hot air rising from the fiery crevice. A terrible aura of death washed over the magister—not a scent, but something deeper, something beyond his physical senses, a terror that made his mind quail in disgust and fear.

  I am one of the queen’s high nobles, he told himself, although he could scarcely think. He measured his breaths until he could summon the strength to speak. “Lady Ommu, the Whisperer,” he said, and even the name in his mouth was fearsome. “Great mistress, was it you who summoned this humble servant of the queen?”

  For a long moment the faceless thing did not reply, and he was certain it must be listening to the terrified thundering of his blood. Even the queen herself had never filled him with such dread.

  Magister Viyeki, I have watched you. The thoughts came in whispering fragments, as if carried on an inconstant wind, and scratched at his thoughts like the claws of rats. From the wasteland of death, I have seen things even the queen could not see as she drifted in the yi’indra through the land of dreams and endings. I have seen your bloodline, like a shining road, leading to this moment and to all that will come after.

  Everything in him urged him to turn, to run, but Viyeki forced himself to stand instead and answer that terrible whisper with the steadiest voice he could manage.

  “I cannot believe I am anything to you, great mistress. Not to one of the Red Hand. Not to one who has twice returned from the other side of death.”

  You are much to me . . . because of the web of circumstance. Beyond death . . . I could see many things. Each word seemed to echo slowly through Viyeki’s head. You are part of the great perhaps. Soon the queen will give you a task, but your blood tells me that you have an even greater task to come . . . that of saving the Hikeda’ya race. Do you understand, little magister? Vast things . . . are now in motion.

  He bowed his head, not in piety, but because it was impossible to look for long at the unnatural light seeping from between Ommu’s bandages where a face should be. “Two tasks, but only one of them from the Mother of All? I do not understand you, Mistress.”

  No, you do not, said the Whisperer, her voice like a wind from the loneliest place that ever existed. You cannot. Remember this only. I have come from beyond death itself—from the shores of Unbeing. I can tell only truth. And I say that to complete that greater task, a moment will come when you will have to choose.

  “What . . . what do you mean, Mistress?”

  To save what you love, you will be forced to kill that which you love even more. If you fail, all will fall to pieces. Your people—and they are my people, too—will die and vanish from the world.

  Viyeki felt suddenly helpless, sickened. “But why me, Mistress? My blood is as nothing compared to the greatest of our people!”

  The voice came at last, as thin as if it had blown to him from beyond the moon and stars. You might as well ask why up is not down . . . or dark is not light. It is ordered so. And I cannot tell anything but truth. Now leave me. I wish to bathe in the blood of the earth. I am cold here in your world, you see . . . so cold!

  Ommu abruptly turned her back on him, the hooded robe swirling more slowly than seemed right. She drifted upward once more until she was only a spot of darkness high in the wafting flames, like a spider waiting inconspicuously at the edge of its web.

  Viyeki did not bow, but stumbled out of the cavern as fast as he could, hurrying toward the mine cart and the long shaft that would carry him back to a place that made better sense. His skin w
as cold as ice, his heart a loose stone rattling in his chest. The chief Builder, who had spent countless years in the deep places of the earth, had never in his life wanted so badly to smell fresh air, and maybe even see a glimpse of light from the true sky.

  31

  A High, Dark Place

  “There will be wine,” Astrian promised. “Good wine. Captain Kenrick has promised to roll out several casks of Perdruin claret. That’s worth an earful of boring soldier’s talk, isn’t it?”

  Because Morgan had not yet been able to pay Hatcher the publican, they were ensconced in The Jackdaw this evening instead of The Quarely Maid, their usual port of call.

  “Nothing is worth that sort of boredom,” said Olveris, ending his most recent silence. “That’s why I’m starting to get drunk now. So I can stand it until the Perdruin is opened.”

  “You make light of it, but Sir Zakiel deserves this honor,” said Porto, frowning at them. “The Order of the Red Drake is not one of your cheapjack trinkets, given to anyone who can bow deep enough to impress the court. It is a warrior’s honor!”

  “Will you truly not come, Highness?” Astrian asked Morgan. “It should be an amusing time.”

  The prince shook his head. “My grandfather will be there. Hell’s hammers, both my grandfathers will be there. They will drink too much and spend the night telling old war stories. And they will both glare at me because I haven’t been in any wars.”

  “That is nothing to be ashamed of,” said Porto seriously. “Rather, it is something to inspire gratitude.”

  “Easy for you to say, man. You’ve been to war. You’ve all been to war. That’s the first thing anyone thinks when they see any one of you—‘Oh, there’s a soldier.’ What’s the first thing they think of when they see me? ‘Ah, the prince. He’s quite spoiled, you know. Just drinks all day and dices.’”

  “Yes, but you drink and dice with us, the brave soldiers,” Astrian said, smiling. “That has to count for something.”