Dragonwitch

  The goblins dragged back the ruins of the door, opening the black mouth of the descending stairway. And they flooded back through even as the Smallman set upon them with the sword; and though some few turned to fight, those who did never saw the Wood Between or their homeland again. Corgar himself plunged first into the darkness and, for the time, his shame was lost in pain and wrath and vows of unreal vengeance.

  In his hatred, he lost all memory of what beauty might have been.

  Alistair and Leta approached the remains of the outer gate, and Alistair swore violently when he looked in and saw for the first time the destruction the goblins had wreaked upon his home. Leta saw only the Chronicler, strong in the midst of mighty terrors.

  She whispered: “Not in vain the hope once borne.”

  The goblins were still screaming, still running, when the Chronicler turned to the chained mortals and cut through the stone links, freeing them. Men and women both shouted and grasped what weapons they could, and though these were useless on goblin hides, they chased their enslavers and beat their backs and shoulders, however ineffectually, as they ran. Then mothers turned to find their children, men to find their wives. Friend sought out friend, and by the time the last of the goblins had fled into the dark, Gaheris, which had been silent, save for the noise of whips and ringing rock, was filled with the sound of tears and laughter and hundreds of upraised voices.

  The Chronicler was lost to Leta’s vision. Alistair took her arm and plunged with her into the throng. They tripped on piles of rubble and broken chains, pressing their way through the haggard, laughing crowd. Alistair ran into a woman, and when she turned, he found himself face-to-face with Mintha.

  “Mother!” he cried, letting go of Leta, who pressed on into the crowd. “Mother, you’re safe!” Alistair reached out to take her in his arms as he might comfort a child.

  But Mintha’s gaze flickered across his features, and her eyes were glassy, as though she did not quite see what was right before her. She shook her head and ducked away, and soon she too was lost in the press. Alistair cried out and tried to follow her. His large frame could barely find a path through the crush of bodies. Suddenly he was quite alone in the crowd.

  Leta, however, made her way quickly. She knew where she wished to go, and no one tried to stop her. At last she reached a clear place in the crowd where the gates of the inner courtyard had once stood. Ahead she saw the Chronicler.

  He approached the dilapidated shack, the scrubber’s shed, unthought of, unseen, unworthy. The Chronicler stood at its door, which hung loosely upon ill-made hinges.

  “Fling wide the doors of light, Smallman!” Leta cried.

  The Chronicler, the sword of Etanun still high in his grasp, reached out and opened the door.

  The mountains trembled.

  The river churning below the stone roared. Its voice was the voice of all the rivers, of the Final Water, rushing across the worlds, across the arch of the heavens. The people of Gaheris turned as one and saw the House of Lights standing where it had always stood, though they had never before seen it. It towered above them, above the greatest heights that remained of the castle, and its doors, east and west, were wide open. Within shone a lantern suspended from massive red beams.

  The sun broke through the clouds. The moon turned her gaze from night and looked upon the mortal realm. And they, the monarchs of the sky, shone their lights from east and west, joining within that mighty House.

  Once more the Songs of the Spheres were heard in that realm. Lumé and Hymlumé sang, and the voices of the stars above rained down upon mortal ears. It was a bigger sound than the whole of that world, and the people fell to their knees.

  “Do you hear?” cried the Smallman. He stood upon the doorstep of that mighty House, small and weak, and the power of the weapon he bore was all the greater for his weakness. “Do you hear, my people? Do you hear the Songs of the Song Giver?”

  The people fell upon their faces and then rose up again, for the Songs of the Spheres filled them with a greatness. They saw the heavens opened. They looked up and saw worlds beyond their world, life beyond their lives, and they wept with joy.

  For the first time in centuries of mortal years, men, women, children, young and old, opened their mouths and joined their voices with those of the sun and the moon. Songs poured from their throats, from their hearts, from their upraised hands. Songs of hope, songs of joy, songs of truth victorious. And the Smallman stood in that doorway and looked out upon the ragged throng. He saw that as they sang, they were clothed in riches far beyond the rags of their slavery.

  His eyes filled with tears and his heart broke with love.

  “Do you hear?” he whispered, and though none near could discern his words in the thunder of the swelling music, the one to whom he spoke did. “My people know the Songs once more. They see the rivers roaring; they hear the anthem of the skies. They hear the stars, and they proclaim with them the glory of the One Who Names Them.”

  The people declared before the worlds: “We are frail; we are dust; we are bound in dirt. But we hear the Sphere Songs rising!”

  The goblins, fleeing through the darkness below, stopped up their ears and screamed, falling over each other to escape that for which they had vainly sought.

  3

  THERE WAS NO CROWN, for the North Country had never before had a king.

  But they took the seat of Earl Ferox and placed it at the eastern door of the House of Lights. Upon it they set the Smallman and placed the shield of Gaheris in his hand. One by one, the gathered earls—as broken as slaves, though their liberated spirits shone anew behind their eyes—took up their own shields and placed them at the feet of the man who was now their sovereign. And they swore oaths of allegiance, pledging their swords in service and protection; their new king, in turn, pledged his life for theirs.

  Before the hugeness of that ancient House, the dwarf son of Ferox looked smaller still. Yet, Alistair thought, it was his weakness that brought the earls to their knees before him. They knew that he was king not by right of might nor even by their will. He was established by a Power far greater, a Power they must now acknowledge as the Songs of the Spheres still echoed in their hearts and the remnant light of Asha glowed from the lantern high in the rafters of the House.

  The Smallman sat with Halisa across his knees and Ferox’s shield leaning against him. It was Earl Aiven who stood before those gathered and, holding out his arms, declared for all to hear: “Long live Florien Ferox-son, King of the North Country!”

  “Long live King Florien!” the people cried, and the earls raised what weapons they had recovered from the goblins, and the women, servant and lady alike, waved rags like banners.

  Alistair bore no weapon. He stood at the back of the throng near the ruinous outer walls of Gaheris. The House of Lights, its disguise dropped away, rose in majestic glory above the river, and Alistair wondered why he had been unable to see it before.

  “You’d have to open your eyes,” he whispered with a wry smile.

  He saw all now with a clarity beyond understanding. He saw the whispered councils of the earls at last brought to light, united in a kingdom none had ever fully expected. And under such a king!

  “You have a look about you,” said Eanrin, appearing suddenly at Alistair’s elbow, “like you’re trying to think. A strained, exhausted sort of look. After such an effort, I do hope you intend to share.”

  Alistair grinned at the cat-man, feeling the strangeness of his scarred face as muscles with which he was no longer familiar moved. “I was thinking,” he said, “how unreal this is. How like the Faerie tales the Chronicler—that is, King Florien—once made me read.”

  “Unreal, you say? Well . . .” Eanrin shrugged, his cloaked shoulders rising beneath his ears. “There’s no excuse for you now, my boy. You’ve heard the Sphere Songs. You know that Faerie tales are far more real than the reality to which you once clung with such vigor.”

  At this, Alistair nodded. Then the smile fell f
rom his face, replaced by a pensive expression. He saw Lady Mintha standing not far off. Like him, she remained separate from the gathering. She had somehow, between the moment her chains fell away and now, found some of her old finery and bedecked herself in brocade and veils. But, even after only seven days of slavery, there was something altogether broken about her. Something that said she would never be the lady she had once been. She stared up at the House of Lights, but it wasn’t the House she saw. Instead, her gaze filled with the sight of the king upon the makeshift throne.

  Leaving Eanrin where he stood, Alistair made his way to her side. He was obliged to touch her elbow to make her aware of his presence, and even then she refused to turn to him. “Mother,” he said and saw a spasm cross her face.

  “Do you see that?” she said, her voice trembling. “That king over there?”

  “Mother, please, look at me.”

  “That was supposed to be my son. I had planned it. I had seen it all.”

  “Sometimes dreams must die so we can live,” Alistair said, feeling again the deadly dream that had torn apart his face. “You must let it go, Mother. Let it go so that we can find our place in this new world.”

  He grasped her shoulders, turning her to him. She fixed her eyes upon the ground, and he flushed with frustration. “I know,” he said, “I have not become what you always hoped. But I have become what I am supposed to be, which is better. I have a purpose of my own to discover, and it’s not his purpose.” He tossed his head to indicate the Smallman on the throne. “He must live this life and rule Gaheris and all the North Country. I must move on.”

  Still she would not look up. He felt her quivering in his hands and realized how frail she had become since Ferox’s funeral. It seemed much longer ago now. From her expression, it might have been twenty years. “Mother, look at me. Accept who I am. And let me accept you.”

  For an instant her gaze moved to his face, perhaps for too brief a span even to see the changes wrought there. Alistair glimpsed the Sphere Songs in the depths of her gaze and knew that she had heard them. Then her eyes rolled in her head, looking again up to the throne and the House. She had heard the Sphere Songs, yet already she had forgotten. Fixed as she was upon that one dream of her heart, she could not let it go, not even for something far grander.

  “Why do you call me mother?” she asked, and her voice was that of an old woman. “I’m no one’s mother.”

  “You’re my mother,” said Alistair.

  “I had a son once,” she said. “The goblins killed him. He would have been king, but the goblins killed him, so they made the dwarf king instead. Isn’t that sad?”

  Tears clogged Alistair’s throat. Mintha stepped back, and he let her go, his hands falling to his sides. He watched her vaguely wander away, her eyes fixed upon the throne. She passed like a lost soul into the throng, and people parted ways for the grandly clad Lady Mintha, the king’s aunt. Soon Alistair could see her no more.

  Eanrin’s hand fell upon his shoulder, and Alistair was surprised to find it comforting. “It is the hardest thing in the world to let go of a dead dream,” Eanrin said, his voice more serious than Alistair had ever before heard it. “Many people cling to their dreams and watch them die again and again rather than release them entirely. Don’t think too harshly of your mother after you’ve gone.”

  “Gone?” Alistair gave the cat a quizzical glance. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean?” the cat-man replied, some of the natural sarcasm returning. “Don’t tell me you intend to sit around here watching another man live the life that was to be yours? That would equal any nightmare your mother makes for herself.”

  “The king might need me,” Alistair said.

  “The king will get on well enough. I’ll be keeping an eye on him, making sure those goblins don’t return. Though I doubt any man of Arpiar will have a taste for the mortal world for many generations to come, not after seeing Halisa borne in a mortal’s hands. Ha!” The cat-man laughed and shook his head, but his eyes were wide and wondering. “It’s not a sight I’ll soon forget myself! The will of my Lord is strange indeed, and he does seem to place high value on your lot.”

  He shrugged again and passed a hand over his face as though suddenly tired. “It’s strange,” he said, “but I think I’m beginning to . . . I don’t know. Understand a little, perhaps. I never much cared for mortals, what with all your living and dying and so forth. But you have pluck, don’t you? Not a Faerie alive would’ve marched into the Netherworld more boldly!”

  Alistair sighed. “Not a Faerie alive is so foolish.”

  “That I’ll grant you.” Eanrin clapped the lad’s shoulder again. His eyes looked to the House of Lights, and his ears filled with the Sphere Songs. The mortals gathered had already grown accustomed to the sound, and some, like Lady Mintha, began to forget. But Eanrin heard them as though with new ears, and they filled his soul with an inspiration not unlike when he had first knelt before the Lumil Eliasul and taken up knighthood.

  And he could see, even from that distance, that the Smallman King heard them as well. “He won’t soon forget,” Eanrin muttered.

  “What was that?” asked Alistair.

  “Nothing. Well, my friend, I must off!” Eanrin fixed a final smile on Alistair. “I can’t say it’s all been grand, but I can say that I’m glad I stopped the goblin poison from killing you and . . . yes, on the whole, I’m pleased we’ve met. We might meet again. I’m finding myself far more interested in mortal affairs than I once was. Maybe I’ll keep track of your flow of Time and have a look in on you now and then. Remember what I said: Get your feet moving and find out what you were meant for. Cheery-bye!”

  With that he became a cat once more, and before Alistair could say a word, he had slipped away, vanishing between skirts and boots across the ruined courtyard of Gaheris.

  If he was going to take the Faerie cat’s advice, he needed to do so at once before he talked himself out of it. So the following day Alistair made his way to Gaheris library, where the king had holed himself away for some privacy. Men stood guard and earls and retainers lined the halls, for much needed doing in this land that was now a kingdom. But, respecting their sovereign’s need for some quiet, they stood patiently without, waiting for him to emerge.

  Alistair did not wait. Though the guards protested and refused to let him knock, he called out in a loud voice that carried through the heavy door, “Your Majesty! Will you see me?”

  The door opened. The king looked out and said, “Let him in . . . please.” Though his voice already bore a tone of command, years of deference had ingrained certain habits. He winced at his own “please,” but the guards obeyed and Alistair stepped into the quiet of the library.

  It was strange to see it in such a state of destruction, tables overturned, papers strewn, book covers torn into shreds of leather. The king looked far more the chronicler as he moved about the chamber, gathering pieces of his and his predecessor’s work, sighing over them as over friends now dead. But he paused to ask, “What may I do for you, my lord?”

  Alistair shook his head. “I’m not your lord,” he said. “Remember, you are king now.”

  “Yes.” The king frowned and took a seat on his stool, his short legs dangling. “It is difficult to grasp. They don’t talk about after the crowning in Faerie tales, do they?”

  “Not that I recall,” Alistair said. “You might write it down yourself. For future chosen ones and prophetic kings to reference one day, eh? They would appreciate it.”

  “I might just do that,” said the king, his voice serious. He looked again about the room at all the work to be done. Work that he himself would not have opportunity to perform. His heart was heavy at the sight. After all, he’d never asked to be king. Sighing, he turned to Alistair once more. “What may I do for you, cousin?”

  This was perhaps strangest of all, this familiarity, this kindred they now shared, linked less by blood than by experience. For the one had died th
at the other might sacrifice his life to the needs of a kingdom. They were cousins indeed, Alistair realized. They were brothers.

  Even amid this realization, his resolve was firm.

  “I have come to take my leave,” he said.

  The king nodded as though he had expected this. “You’ll return to the South Land, then? Behind the mountains?”

  “I’ll try,” Alistair said. “It’s a much longer journey overland than through the Between, but . . . well, I don’t feel quite up to Faerie forests just now! I think a long trek might do me good.”

  “A long trek?” The king frowned. “Long indeed. You may never reach your destination. And from what I know, there is no path to the South Land through those mountains.”

  “I shall have to see when I get there,” Alistair said.

  “You are determined?”

  “Quite.”

  “Will you take horses? Men? Provisions?”

  “I’ll take a sack on my back and a stout pair of boots. And I’ll follow the blue star. That seemed to work well enough for Mouse. It’ll suit me fine.”

  The king looked at him a long moment, unspeaking. His eyes said things he dared not speak aloud: You should be in my place. You should be king.

  But Alistair, his scarred face beginning to relearn what it had once known, smiled. “Long life to you, King Florien,” he said. “May you rule with mercy and justice, and your heirs after you.”

  The king opened his mouth to speak, but nothing that seemed right to him would come. So instead, he said only, “Farewell, cousin.”

  The library was quiet in the wake of Alistair’s departure. The chronicler who was king sat awhile upon his high stool, staring around at the stone walls, trying not to think, for any thought might be too overwhelming.

  “I am weak,” he whispered. “Too weak for this.”

  And in you, my might will be made visible to all people.

  “Give me the strength, then,” said the Smallman. “Give me the strength and the wisdom I need.”