The Witchwood Crown

  “I’ve pulled out the end of my rope,” Goh Gam Gar said, his voice a soft growl that Jarnulf could still feel in his feet as he lit on one of the trees pinioning the giant’s chest. The giant’s face was bloodied with dozens of scratches, which did not make him any handsomer. “Tie it to yours and send it up. Tell them to wrap it around something strong.”

  Jarnulf considered this, but he did not want to be without a support of his own when the giant was breaking free of the rockslide. Instead he took the massive cord, wide as his forearm, and draped a single, astonishingly heavy loop of it over his shoulders, then worked his way a few yards back up the slope to where he could perch on solid mountain stone again. “Throw down another rope!” he shouted to the Talons.

  It took a few moments, but another of the slender spidersilk ropes spun down from above, which Jarnulf tied around the end of the giant’s rope. “Now pull it up and tie it to something that will support his weight,” he called. Jarnulf wanted to be well out of the way before Goh Gam Gar began to break himself loose, so he swung a bit farther to the side of the rockfall. He missed his footing trying to land, and for a moment swung free over dizzying depths like a spider in a windstorm. By the time he had his footing again, the giant’s rope had been drawn up out of sight.

  A short while later Makho shouted something from the path, and although Jarnulf couldn’t make out the words, the giant could: the rope tightened and creaked as the great creature put his weight on it.

  A loud crash startled Jarnulf into grabbing for a handhold on the mountain’s face, but it was not another slide. The giant had dislodged one of the trees supporting him and sent it spinning down into the white void. Stones and broken trees showered down too, but even as the giant struggled free, most of the slide remained in place, tons of stone, snow, and shattered timbers wedged in a huge crevice shaped like the bow of a ship, its bottom end some ten or twenty cubits beneath Goh Gam Gar. Out of the top of this pile the beast emerged like some bizarre birth, shoulder and back muscles bulging beneath his pale fur as he slowly climbed the rope, pausing only to dislodge the larger trunks and whole trees that still clung to him.

  As the giant made his way upward Jarnulf had only one task, which was to watch for anything sliding from above and stay out of its way. When Goh Gam Gar had climbed past, Jarnulf braced to swing himself back into a more direct line with the anchor of his own rope, but something in the rubble down near the bottom of the slide caught his attention, a smear of yellow and rusty brown quite unlike the rest of the debris. He knew the Norns would not hesitate to leave him if he delayed them long, but his curiosity was aroused, so he swung over to where the giant had been trapped. He looked up to be sure the great beast was not going to lose his grip and come plummeting down on top of him, but Goh Gam Gar was now on secure footing and appeared to have nearly reached the top. Jarnulf let himself down a little way, then braced his feet on a bit of solid stone to rest his aching arms and see what he had found.

  It was such a strange, disarticulated thing that at first he thought it was only the remains of trees and stones curiously crushed together into one mass, melded by age and elements into a single shape, but then he saw a pale, puckered blister in the largest piece and realized he was looking at the dried and frozen remains of an eye the size of his own head. A huge skeleton dressed in rags of dried flesh hung in the tangle of stone and broken trees—the bones of a massive, long-dead creature. However it had previously rested on the mountainside, the slide had dislodged it in almost one piece. The limbs and spine and long tail had been twisted into an unnatural shape by the elements, but the long, reptilian skull gave it away.

  “The giant is safe!” Nezeru shouted from somewhere above, beyond his sight. “Come up!”

  “And I have found a dragon!” Jarnulf shouted back. “Come down and see!”

  As he waited, he reached out to touch the nearest part of the carcass, the curled bones of a mighty foot with curved talons as long as daggers. One of the claws came off in his hand. As he marveled at its size, his finger began to sting fiercely. A clot of crumbling black material at its base was burning his skin as painfully as if he had sliced the skin in a half-dozen places. Cursing, Jarnulf dropped the long claw to frantically scrape the painful substance from his fingers onto a nearby stone as the claw bounced against the pile of scree, then caromed off into emptiness. Black as a night without stars, the sticky stuff had eaten through the tip of his glove like fire.

  Dragon’s blood, he realized. Mother of God, even years old and almost dry, it still burns!

  Two of the others were now slithering down from the top on ropes of their own—Makho and Saomeji the Singer, as best as Jarnulf could tell from his angle. As he waited, Jarnulf had an idea. He pulled his salt jar from his pocket and emptied out the last few grains. He used the sleeve of his jerkin to protect him as he worked another huge claw loose from the desiccated corpse, then wiped the thick, black residue from it on the inside of the witchwood jar. When the jar did not melt or burst into flame, he scooped the rest of the blood-paste off the claw, a sticky ball of the stuff about the size of a raven’s egg, then scraped that into his jar and stoppered it. The claw was too big to hide easily from Makho and the rest, but if nothing else, he would take a keepsake of dragon’s blood with him from this mad expedition. He might even be able to sell it to some Tungoldyr thaumaturge for a tidy sum.

  He wiped the rest of the black smear from his sleeve, which was already beginning to turn black where the blood had touched it. Then, his face as calm as he could make it, Jarnulf waited for the other climbers.

  “It had fur or quills along its spine—I saw them,” said Saomeji as he clambered onto the edge of the broken path. Nezeru stepped well back out of his way, in large part because she simply did not much like being near him.

  Kemme was still pulling up Makho, while the giant Goh Gam Gar, despite the many wounds he had taken in the slide, had insisted on being the one to pull Jarnulf back up to the path. “It must be the carcass of great Lekkija,” the Singer continued, “Igjarjuk, as mortals named her—the daughter of great Hidohebhi.”

  “How long has the worm been dead?” Nezeru asked.

  “It does not matter,” said Makho as he appeared from below, scowling fiercely. “A dead, bloodless dragon is no use to us.”

  Despite being the last to begin the ascent, Jarnulf, reeled in by Goh Gam Gar’s huge hands on the rope, came over the edge and onto the path only a moment after Makho. “And a dead giant is no use to you, either, or I think you would not have been in such a hurry to send me down after him,” Jarnulf told the chieftain with a cold look, then coiled Nezeru’s rope and tossed it back to her. “My thanks, Sacrifice.”

  Nezeru could not look him in the eye. She had seen the glance that passed between Makho and Kemme when the Rimmersman had first called, before he had spoken of finding the dead dragon. It was clear that they had been considering simply cutting his rope and letting him fall. But why? Either the mortal was useful or he was not. Why let him come so far only to murder him? It was strange beyond understanding that her loyalties were beginning to shift from her rightful chieftain—the queen’s choice!—to a mortal and the monster Goh Gam Gar, but she could not deny her mistrust of Makho was growing deeper each day that passed. Jarnulf, whether he meant to or not, had cursed her with his questions about why she had been chosen and what the hand’s true mission might be.

  “You said you wanted a dragon,” said Jarnulf, rubbing the muscles of his arms. “That was a dragon. You told us we must find dragon’s blood. If you did not notice, despite my pointing it out, the carcass still had a great deal of blood on it, even if it was dry.”

  “Be silent, mortal” said Makho. “You know nothing. We need a living dragon. Nothing else will do.”

  “Hand Chieftain Makho speaks the truth,” Saomeji said. “Finding the dragon’s carcass is a rare thing, and I will write the tale of what we found for the Onyx
Library, but it does not fulfill Lord Akhenabi’s needs.”

  “The queen’s needs, I think you mean,” said Makho.

  “Of course. As you say.” Saomeji quickly made the sign for Peaceful Withdrawal from Conflict, but his face told Nezeru a more complicated story. Was the Singer losing his patience with Makho as well? “In any case,” said Saomeji, “it is getting dark, and I do not like the look of the sky. We should find a place to shelter for the night.”

  “A good idea,” said Jarnulf. “I have almost no strength left in my limbs.”

  “By the Voiceless Ones, does every one of you think you have the right to give orders here?” The dead dragon seemed to have put Makho in a foul mood, although his face, as always, was nearly empty of expression. “I will say when we go and when we stop. I will say what tasks we perform and for whom. Does anyone doubt this?”

  Nezeru knew better than to provoke the hand chieftain when such a mood was on him. As she turned away, the slanting light, filtered through thick mountain mists, made a strange shadow on the snow above the path.

  “Perhaps the mortal would like to take a faster way down the mountain,” suggested Kemme. “Plenty of time to regain his strength before he hits bottom.”

  “Perhaps you will take that trip with me.” Jarnulf dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword. “I can think of worse ways to go to my rest.”

  “What is that there?” Nezeru asked. Nobody replied, and when she turned to see why, the others were ignoring her, staring at each other like suspicious dogs. “Stop strutting and come here,” she said. “All of you. Chieftain, I think you should see this.”

  Makho’s tone was more disgusted than angry. “What? What now?”

  “You cannot see it from there. I only noticed it because I am close. Look.” She pointed to the marks scraped in the snow. “That is the print of something’s foot. Something large.”

  Kemme shook his head in dismissal. “We have seen many prints on this mountain. It is likely only the slot of a goat, broadened as the snow melted—”

  “No goat made this,” she said, “unless goats have claws and are big as wagons.”

  Makho’s attention was finally caught. He came to stand beside her on the path, staring up the slope where she pointed. There, by itself in the middle of an undisturbed patch of snow, was the track of some large creature, longer and wider than even Goh Gam Gar’s, with four clawed toes.

  “By my masters,” said Saomeji, joining them. “She is right!”

  “Could it be something like that rat-thing we killed?” she asked Jarnulf. “A larger one?”

  He shook his head. “I have seen claws like that just moments ago—although these are smaller, thank—.” He hesitated for a mere instant; Nezeru thought only she noticed it. “Thank the Mother of All,” he finished. “But if that is not a dragon’s track, what else could it be?”

  “So the creature left tracks before it fell to its death,” said Kemme. “What could that matter?”

  “Did you not see the dragon’s carcass, Sacrifice Kemme?” said Saomeji. “It had been lying among the rocks of the mountainside for many, many years. Not just frozen, but dried like a salt fish from the Hidden Sea. And this dragon, from its prints, is far smaller.”

  “A quarter the size at most,” agreed Jarnulf.

  “It is not the difference of size that tells the most important tale,” Nezeru said, surprised by her own annoyance at their pointless disputes. “Do you not understand? This print is on new snow.”

  Makho stared at the print, then at Nezeru, clearly interested, but irritated that it had been her to point it out. “Its maker may be close by,” he said at last, conceding her point without acknowledging her. “And a living dragon is what we need, so we will search until the last of the sun is gone and only seek shelter afterward. That is what our queen would want, so that is what we will do.”

  • • •

  Makho kept them hunting far into evening, until the mountain had become a death trap of wind, mist, flying ice, and nearly invisible precipices. They found a few more tracks before blowing whiteness covered them, all made by what seemed to be the same creature, the edges of the prints sharp enough to suggest they had been made in the last day or two. At last the Talons made camp in a sheltered spot a few hundred steps above the path where they had found the second track.

  Nezeru wrapped herself in her cloak, choosing a spot near Jarnulf, not because of any softness in her heart toward him, but because she did not want to be near Makho and Kemme. Quite separate from the dishonor of it, she was disgusted that they had considered killing the mortal while he might still be useful to achieve the queen’s will.

  “We could search this mountainside for days and not find anything, even if the dragon is here,” said Jarnulf. “We should set a trap.”

  “Why must I hear your voice, mortal?” Makho demanded. “This task was given to me by the queen herself. You are nothing.”

  Jarnulf’s mouth set in a tight line but he said no more.

  “In truth, what the mortal says makes some sense, Chieftain Makho,” said Saomeji. “Our time here is limited by our supplies and—”

  Makho whirled and lashed out so quickly that for a moment Nezeru thought he had slit Saomeji’s throat, but he had only grasped the Singer’s neck, his long white fingers pressing deeply into flesh. “One more word from you and it will be the last you ever speak, spellwright,” Makho hissed. “I do not care that you are Akhenabi’s favorite. Did you not hear me? I was chosen by the queen herself. And nobody else will suffer as I will suffer if we fail.” He turned on Nezeru, who had not spoken or moved. “Do you doubt me, halfblood? Before we left Nakkiga to retrieve Hakatri’s bones from their resting place, I was shown what my fate would be if I came back without them, or if I failed the Great Mother in any way.”

  Jarnulf took a sudden breath behind her. Nezeru guessed it was the first time the mortal had heard about what they had done on the Island of the Bones before they met him.

  “I was taken down into the Cold, Slow Halls,” Makho continued. “Yes, Singer, I see you have heard of that place, although I doubt much you have seen it. But I did. And that is where I will be taken again if we fail, whether the fault is mine or not, and where I will be made to suffer as you cannot imagine. Every cut, every burn, every blow there feels as though it lasts a thousand years.” Makho roughly pushed Saomeji away from him, so that he almost fell over. Outside their shelter the world had gone white with flying snow, and the wind sounded like the voice of something hungry. “No more argument from any of you. I will decide what we do and how we do it. And I will kill without hesitation anyone who threatens our task.”

  Nobody spoke again for a long time. Nezeru listened to the wind groaning and shrieking around the great, rock-studded mass of Jinyaha-yu’a and wished she had been less ambitious. For the first time, it had become clear that even this deadly quest might be less dangerous than her companions, and especially her leader.

  • • •

  An hour had passed in silence.

  “Father once told me that to hunt something you must know it, but to catch something you must become it,” said Jarnulf. He did not say it loudly, but everyone heard him. Makho snapped a glance at him, then looked away, but Saomeji straightened up as if he had heard his name called.

  “But it is not possible to know dragons,” the Singer pronounced. “It is no common beast, like a cow or sheep, or even a rare but fearsome one, like a lion.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Nezeru.

  “Dragons did not grow in these lands of their own accord, as the other beasts of the field. They came here with our ancestors, from the Garden.”

  “I have never heard such a thing,” she said.

  “The failure of your education does not make what I say any less true,” Saomeji chided her. “In fact, like the changeling Tinukeda’ya, dragons were . . .
” He stopped suddenly, as if someone had signaled him to be quiet, though no one had: Makho was talking with Kemme and, despite his earlier anger, did not appear to be listening. “I have a tongue that is sometimes hard to govern,” Saomeji said to no one in particular. “Forgive my foolishness.”

  Nezeru felt certain he had been about to say something important, but she could not guess what it might have been. She looked at Jarnulf, who only shook his head, but so subtly that she doubted anyone else saw.

  As Jarnulf knew well, once the Norns set their minds to a thing, they were extremely thorough and as patient as water eroding stone. Day after day, they continued to hunt the mountain for the dragon’s slot until they had found enough tracks to discern what seemed to be a regular path.

  “The greatest worms are all female,” Makho said as they considered their next step. “The drakes are smaller, and come to the females only to mate. By its small track, this must be such a wandering drake. Perhaps something in the scent of the dead queen dragon called to him, or perhaps he was born here on this mountain and lives here still. Perhaps the dead queen was his mother. In any case, we must find a spot he often passes over and there make our trap.”

  “So now you agree we need a trap?” Jarnulf asked, sourly amused.

  As he expected, the chieftain ignored him, but Saomeji was not so reserved. “We must take this dragon alive, mortal. It is the blood of a living dragon our queen desires.”

  “Alive? But even if its track tells that this is a smaller beast than the dead one, it is still far larger than any of us, even the giant!” Jarnulf said. “Have any of you hunted a dragon?”