Dragonwitch

  The Path beneath his feet was no longer mossy or leaf strewn. The Chronicler realized this slowly, then stopped and looked around, surprised. He stood on white rock, but rock harder than chalk. Above him, the trees had retreated and the half-light had given way to the full light of day. He was obliged to shield his eyes. Where were the others? He couldn’t see them for the light, and he wondered if he should call out to them.

  He took a step. And he found that he stood on the edge of a precipice.

  The Chronicler’s head whirled with a sudden dizzying sensation of height that was so much more than height, he could scarcely take it in. He saw clouds drifting below his feet, far away, like tufts of sheep’s wool tossing on a breeze.

  Beneath the clouds, he saw the North Country.

  How he knew this, he could not say. It was not like the maps in the Gaheris library, which were flat, indistinct, and often inaccurate. Every detail, color, shadow, valley, and crest presented itself with a precision the Chronicler’s eyes should not have been able to perceive, which dazzled and frightened him all at once. He could see Gaheris, every stone of the castle, though the distance between him and it was beyond his ability to reckon. He could see Hanna winding, every ripple and wavelet. He saw Aiven, which he had never before seen in person but which he recognized with a lurch of familiarity, like a father seeing his child’s face after a long absence, unfamiliar and yet dearly familiar at once. Every earldom, every fief, every hamlet and village and port . . . they presented themselves beneath the Chronicler’s vision, and he knew that he loved them. He loved the North Country with a love that was painful and vital and true.

  And Gaheris he loved most of all.

  But Gaheris was overrun. Even at this distance the Chronicler saw the cloud of smoke and dust, clear signs of the goblins’ desolating work.

  “Fear not, small man,” said a voice behind him. “You will see your people free.”

  The Chronicler whirled in place. A tall man stood behind him, but his height was all he could discern, for he could not see him clearly. The light in this place was much too bright.

  “Who are you?” the Chronicler demanded.

  “I am the one who chose you.”

  “Etanun?” the Chronicler said. “The Murderer?”

  But he knew even as he said it that this was wrong. The voice was not that of a murderer.

  “No,” said the stranger. “Etanun did not choose you. He merely found you. Much is given and revealed to my servant, but it is not for him to choose his course or that of another. He has not the clarity of vision.”

  “And you have? You have the right to choose destinies, to direct lives?”

  There was a smile in the voice that replied. “I, who have named the stars and given them the patterns of their dance across the sky, also named you and gave you the pattern of the dance that is your life. I have the right. I am the right.”

  The Chronicler wanted to back away, but there was only the precipice behind him and the great expanse of the North Country beneath his feet. He whispered a name he had seen only once or twice in the oldest, most-forgotten documents, but which was in his heart, ready to be spoken.

  “Lumil Eliasul.”

  “And you,” said the stranger, “are Florien Ferox-son. Smallman, sword bearer, dragon slayer. Future king.”

  The Chronicler could not breathe. He felt as though the depths behind him threatened to drag him down, and he was afraid.

  “Why did you choose me?” He could scarcely speak. “I am nothing. Unacknowledged by my own father. I am the last person anyone would choose! I am the least.”

  “And in you my might will be made visible to all people,” the stranger replied in a voice more golden than sunlight, more silver than moonlight, more varied than all the starry host. “When the people of the Near World see your triumph over the dragon and the goblin, they will know it was through my doing. And they will hear the Sphere Songs once again.”

  But the Chronicler shook his head. “Alistair. He’s your hero. He was chosen ahead of me, and the earls will choose him still.”

  “I did not choose Alistair to walk your path,” said the stranger. “His life and his death are not your business. Your business is to do the task for which you have been called, to become the man you were born to be.”

  “I was born an accident,” the Chronicler said.

  “You were born for a purpose,” the stranger replied, “and in the best form to fulfill that purpose.”

  Suddenly the Chronicler felt hands upon his shoulders, and his gaze was fixed by a pair of eyes—eyes of no color and all colors, deeper than the drop behind him. He thought he could fall into those eyes and lose himself and be better for the loss.

  “The time is near,” said the voice, which rang in the air around him, the wholeness of all voices joined into one. As though created by that voice, an image formed within the Chronicler’s mind. An image of a black stone, beneath which roared the waters of many conjoined rivers.

  Protruding from that stone, a carved sword.

  Halisa.

  As familiar to the Chronicler as his own two hands and as rightly a part of himself. He longed to reach out and take it, to latch hold of the completeness his life had lacked, though he had scarcely admitted it to himself.

  But it was only a vision. And, a bitter part of his mind tried to insist, that was all it ever would be.

  Then the voice of the stranger crashed through his brain, and all else was forgotten:

  “The flame of the Dragonwitch draws to its end. Twice she has been killed in fire, in hatred, in the heat of furious passion. The third death she will die in water, in the sweeping of true life, which the death-in-life she knows cannot resist.

  “Call up the rivers, Smallman King. Call them up from the deep places and overwhelm the fire with living water.”

  As that voice spoke, the words turned to water themselves, and they swept down upon the Chronicler, catching him up and bearing him over the precipice. He screamed and felt the thrill of a fall that never came. For the water carried him up, higher and higher, into the light that sang a song he had always known but never before heard.

  Then he was standing on a small boulder, surrounded by trees and the stunned silence of the watching Wood Between.

  The Chronicler gasped and teetered for a moment before he fell from the stone and landed in the tall green ferns below. He picked himself up, his limbs shaking, brushing bracken from his sleeves. Water dripped down his face. He wiped it away, then stood a moment, staring at the drops that gathered in the palm of his hand. They gleamed as though touched by sunlight, but there was no sunlight this deep in the Wood.

  “Ah! There you are, fool mortal!”

  The Chronicler clenched his fist, hiding the water, and turned to face the wrath of Sir Eanrin. The knight wore his man’s form, but his face was that of a snarling moggy.

  “Have you any idea how dangerous it is to walk the Wood without a Path? Do you have the slightest notion how quickly you could be sucked away like a duckling into rapids, never to be seen or heard from again?”

  The Chronicler offered no explanation but stood staring at the cat-man, whose quick eyes suddenly picked up details his ire had nearly missed. Eanrin frowned. “You’re all . . . wet. Did you fall in a stream or find yourself a thundershower?”

  The Chronicler shook his head. Drops of water fell from the ends of his hair, spattering the ferns beneath his feet.

  Eanrin regarded him uneasily. Then he put out a swift hand and grasped him by the shoulder, propelling him back the way he had come. “Stay on the Path,” he said, “and don’t wander off on your own. I might not be able to find you next time.”

  Trotting to keep up, the Chronicler stole a glance into his hand, uncurling his fingers. The sparkling water still rested there, like a quiet pool. As he looked at it, he thought he heard a voice in the depths of his heart saying:

  “Call up the rivers, Smallman King.”

  3

  I
SET UPON THE REST OF THE NEAR WORLD with a fury it had never before seen. Fire from the sky rained upon mortal heads. Across the nations I flew, and wherever I saw the glow of Asha shining through the open doors of a House of Lights, I flamed. My fire burned and consumed those lofty Houses, leaving smoldering rubble in my wake. Nothing could stop me. No one would dare.

  Until Etanun found me.

  Gaheris rang with the sound of stone on stone, and the air was thick with dust and destruction. Slaves linked together in long lines broke their fingers and bruised their arms as noble and serf alike tore apart the walls of the castle and carted them, stone by stone, through the gates and across the meadowlands. There they tossed them in unsightly heaps down to the riverbank below.

  Leta, her mourning gown tattered, her hair straggling down to her waist, worked with the others. Her body had long since stopped shrinking at the crack of goblin whips, so often did she hear them, followed by the cries of men and women. Keeping her head down, she gathered into a rough-woven sack the broken stones men tossed down from the walls and hauled it over her shoulder to the river drop.

  Two days ago she had wondered: Why? Why would they do this? Why would they tear apart Gaheris?

  She no longer wondered. Her mind was too dulled with dust, with lack of food or water. Her muscles screamed; her bones strained. It was the third day, and all her questions had vanished. There was nothing but stone, dirt, grit, and the aches of slavery hitherto unknown.

  Sometimes she heard the goblins talking among themselves.

  “The Murderer misled our captain. He misled our queen.”

  “If that’s true, we’re not the ones to tell them. Drive the mortals and keep your mouth shut!”

  “They’ll never find the House of Lights in this place. Maybe it never existed?”

  “Do you want Corgar to send your head rolling?”

  Corgar.

  The name was enough to make Leta’s blood run cold. Sometimes she saw him, the dreadful goblin leader, standing on the walls above and looking down. She remembered all too clearly the close proximity of his ugly face, the cold of his blade against her neck. She hoped those searching eyes of his did not fall upon her. If once they did, he might remember his vow to the Chronicler, his vow to take her life when he was ready.

  And she wondered: Does the Chronicler live?

  Winter’s iron-gray sky loomed above Gaheris, and chill winds blew in from the distant sea. The goblins with their thick hides did not seem to notice it. But Leta trembled, and her fingers were so numb she could scarcely feel the bite of the sharp stones as she gathered them into her sack. She looked about sometimes for her father in the crowd. Once or twice she glimpsed him and was pleased, though she could hardly say why, to know that he was not dead.

  Lady Mintha, mute and bedraggled as any scullery drudge, worked in chains not four feet from Leta herself.

  Sometimes that great lady wept and cursed as she worked; her back was scored by several lashes of goblin whips. Leta tried to be sorry for her. But she remembered the look on Mintha’s face when, standing over Ferox’s deathbed, she had given the command, “Bring the dwarf to me.”

  When she thought of that, all sympathy fled Leta’s heart.

  But now, on the third day, she hadn’t the strength left for resentment or pity. Indeed, Leta began to wonder if she would ever feel anything again.

  “Where is it?”

  The voice rumbled above her head. Leta looked up. On top of the wall under which she worked, mortal men cowered, their tools of destruction clutched close as Corgar strode through their midst, his face a dreadful sight to behold.

  “Where is it?” he growled, his voice louder this time. Others around Leta stopped their work, staring up at that towering form. He paced like a caged animal, his knife in his hand.

  He turned suddenly to the nearest goblin, snatching the brute by the throat and dragging him up to his own face. “Where is it?” he bellowed.

  “We’re driving the beasts as fast as we can!” the goblin cried. “We’ll find it, captain, I swear, if it can be found!”

  “It must be found!” With a snarl, Corgar threw the goblin from him. The poor creature scrambled on the edge of the wall and nearly plummeted down to Hanna, flowing far below. Even that fall might not have hurt his stone hide, but he clutched the balustrade, his eyes so wide they might have dropped from his head as he turned to his ranting master.

  “It must be found!” Corgar repeated, slashing the air with his knife. “Do you realize what will happen if it is not? If Queen Vartera does not receive her prize? Do you think I am going to take the fall for this failure? Eh?”

  The luckless goblin had no answer. Corgar tore a piece of the wall out with his bare hands and hurled it into the inner courtyard. It smashed on the rock below, and shards struck the nearest slaves. Their pathetic wails seemed to calm him a little. He was, after all, still master here.

  “There must be another way.” His voice was almost despairing. Leta stood with her back to the wall beneath the scaffolding on which he stood, her heart racing, hoping he would not somehow sense her presence. “They must know something more that they aren’t telling us,” he persisted. “They’re useless maggots, but they can’t have forgotten their own heritage so quickly!”

  The poor goblin still clinging to the balustrade spoke hesitantly. “They have a library.”

  “What?” Corgar said. “What did you say?”

  “They have a library,” said the unfortunate goblin, wishing to heaven he was down below with the other slave drivers. Dragon’s flame, he’d be happy to be hauling rubble with the slaves rather than endure a moment more of Corgar’s stare! “Where they keep records of deaths and births and the like. We found it two days back, and it’s more writing than we’ve ever seen.”

  “And?” Corgar demanded. “Do they have records of the House of Lights?”

  “Perhaps,” said the goblin. “There were pictures that looked likely. But—”

  “But what?”

  “None of us can read the mortal writing.”

  Leta believed Corgar would take his stone knife and hack the goblin’s face in two. The monster turned, however, and looked out into the inner courtyard once more, his teeth grinding like mortar and pestle. He gazed upon the little people crawling below him, and he hated the sight of them, hated the smell of them.

  “Who among you can read?” he cried. His voice overwhelmed the shouts of the slave drivers, the thick thudding of stone chains, and the growl of breaking rock. All eyes turned to where he stood above.

  “I need a mortal who can discern the scratchings of your language,” he said. “Stand forth, any of you who can read for me!”

  Pale faces exchanged glances. Leta, her heart beating a furious pace in her breast, crouched down into a ball.

  Some daring soul whispered, “The Chronicler?” But the whisper swiftly hushed. Throats and lungs thick with dust, none dared speak out.

  “So he must be dead,” Leta whispered, her lips forming the words, though she made no sound. “He must be dead, or they would have him read.”

  Her heart sank like a dead weight.

  Corgar surveyed the blank dullness below him. Suddenly he leapt from the wall, falling like a bolt from the sky and landing with a crash upon the stone below, which broke beneath the impact. He crouched, recovering himself, then strode forward and grabbed the nearest mortal to him. Leta, her eyes flying wide, saw who it was he grabbed, and her heart bounded into a frightful pace.

  Corgar lifted his knife and, swinging Lady Mintha off her feet, held her suspended before all those gathered. “I’ll gut you all,” he cried, “one by one, beginning with this one. That, or you can tell me who among you reads!”

  Keep your mouth shut, her practical side begged. Keep it shut, fool girl!

  But her other side responded, And watch him kill Alistair’s mother before your eyes?

  Leta fell forward, dragging her chains behind. She could make only a few paces, but it w
as enough movement to catch Corgar’s eye. He turned to her, and she saw the recognition on his face.

  “I can read,” she said. “Please, let the lady go.”

  Corgar stared at her. “Of course,” he said. He dropped Mintha, who fell at his feet, shuddering and scrabbling uselessly at broken stones. “Of course. It must be you.”

  Goblins stepped forward on either side of Leta. One of them grabbed her arm while another began fumbling with her heavy chains. She stood frozen beneath Corgar’s gaze, wishing to break free but unable to do so. It wasn’t until the goblin holding her arm dragged her away that she felt herself liberated of those stone-hard eyes.

  Someone grabbed her other hand.

  She turned. For an instant she saw Lady Mintha. For an instant she saw urgency in that once-beautiful face. A coldness was pressed into her hand, and her fingers closed about it instinctively.

  Then the instant passed, and Leta was dragged from the cold inner courtyard into the frozen keep. Up the stairs they led her and down a passage she knew well but which had grown unfamiliar and now stank of goblins. She hadn’t the time even to look at what Mintha had given her. But she knew. She felt its contours in her hand.

  It was a key.

  4

  HE STRODE INTO MY VISION ONE NIGHT even as I reveled in the destruction of yet another House, high on a cold mountain. I sat amid the debris, fountaining my flame to the sky, when I heard that voice I knew so well calling to me.

  “Dragon!”

  I turned. I saw Etanun standing there with his sword upraised.

  “Dragon,” he bellowed, and there was a fury of passion in his voice. “You will die for the death you have dealt!”

  “And who will see to that?” I asked.

  “I!” he replied. “I shall kill you now!”

  “Kill me, then,” I replied, letting my fire spill forth.

  We fought there on the scene of that destruction. And though my flame had never been hotter, it could not prevail against the brilliance of Halisa. I was foolish and I was angry, and I gave him an opening. Driven by rage, by vengeance, he drove that sword into my heart.