The nights were turning seriously chilly, and Belgarth was even showing early suggestions of a winter coat, when we followed a swift, restless little river into a town called, not Mulleary, but Muldeary, rather larger than any we had come across in some while. I asked if a woman named Dragine lived there, and was told that she was visiting in a distant village, but would return in two days’ time. Belgarth and I spent those days doing little else but eating and sleeping. I had been running for nearly two months on nothing but vague memories of rest, real meals and a proper bed; and for all that happened in Muldeary, I will remember it as the town in which I slept. And took baths.
Dragine arrived at dawn of the second day, walking briskly out of a dust storm that drifted away when she told it to. She was a tiny creature with a face like a spiderweb and hair so black you could hardly see it, if you understand me. I caught up with her crossing Beggars’ Square, where the homeless of Muldeary are fed every morning, and began to introduce myself, but she kept striding on without even looking at me until I said, “I am Willalou’s daughter. Willalou of Kalagira.”
Dragine stopped in her tracks then, and I saw her eyes for the first time. I had expected them to be as black as her hair, but they were a tawny brownish yellow, or yellowish brown. She peered at me—I suppose I should say ‘up at me,’ small as she was, but somehow it felt as though our eyes were on a level—and she said, “I know your mother.” Her voice sounded like sand blowing against the sides of an empty house.
“Yes,” I said. “She told me not to leave Muldeary until I had seen you.” She started to turn away, and I grabbed at flattery to hold her attention, adding “She speaks well of you.”
Dragine said, “You are a liar,” but she said it indifferently, as though she were already tired of me. “I never could abide your mother, and she never had anything but contempt for me. Why are you still bothering me?”
“Because my mother told me you had knowledge to fit my need.” Dragine did not reply, but she did not walk away, either, or turn her strange eyes from mine. We stood there together in Beggars’ Square, and I told her about Lathro Baraquil.
Her expression never changed, nor did her tone. She looked me up and down for a time, then shrugged very slightly and said, “Come to my house tonight. Ten minutes to midnight, no sooner.” She never mentioned where her house could be found, nor did I think then to ask her for directions. Whatever she actually might be—witch, sorceress like my mother, or even a true enchantress—in her presence I had trouble thinking at all.
I took Belgarth out for a fast trot, bordering on a canter, and spent the rest of the day searching for someone willing to tell me where Dragine lived. It was an interesting experience: none of them recoiled in obvious terror at the idea of revealing her location, and yet somehow I came away from none of them with an exact address. In the end I had to employ a finding spell, which is so childishly simple that it always gives me a headache. But I was there precisely at the appointed time, and I came on foot, to show respect, though it meant a long walk.
It was an ordinary house she lived in, neither a mansion nor a hovel: it might well have been the home of an honest and energetic farmwife, one who spent great amounts of time scrubbing and polishing worn kitchen flagstones that would never come quite clean. I remember that it smelled of old fires, and that the river ran near enough that I could see its banks from the front yard, and hear its rambling chatter as I stood on the threshold.
Lathro Baraquil opened the door to me.
Do your folk have hearts? Do they serve another purpose, as ours do, besides hurrying the impatient blood along through your veins, if you even have veins? Mine stopped—just for an instant, but completely—and then it surged to the size of Belgarth, so that my chest could not nearly contain it, and with a cry the Queen must have heard in Fors na’ Shachim I threw myself into Lathro’s arms. I think we mortals must each be allowed one moment like that in our lives. I don’t believe we are constructed to withstand two.
For the sake of accuracy, however, I must admit that I threw myself against Lathro’s arms, not into them. He made no effort to embrace me, but only stood still, looking not into my eyes but over my shoulder, his own eyes empty as eggshells of feeling. He did not know me at all; and what stood in his place, in his clothes—I had made him that shirt; made it, not conjured it—I could never possibly know.
He did not recoil, nor thrust me away. He stood still, staring over my shoulder at the night, with every treasured bump and bone and angle of him turned foreign, after years of being as much my own as his. I babbled his name, but it had no more effect than the sound of the stream. Nothing in him knew me.
Beyond him Dragine waited, her face as unreadable as ever, but her eyes glowing like the eyes of a hunting shukri. She said, “He has been here for some while, waiting for the Being to be called. I myself, however, have been waiting for you.”
I pushed past Lathro to confront her, demanding, “What have you done to him? Tell me now, or I will kill you where you stand!” Eighteen and gently bred up, can you imagine me saying such a thing to anyone? I have not even said it to you, although the moon is on its way to setting.
In her voice of blowing sand, Dragine answered me, “That would be wrong and foolish of you, since it was not I who set this spell upon him.”
I could not respond. I simply stared. Dragine said, “It happens with humans. They often desire something so greatly, for so long, that with the proper push they cannot remember why they craved it in the first place. So it is with your man—he was in this state when he found his way here. Only if he came from where you did, I suspect there was little finding on his path. He has been here quite some time.” She paused, watching me take that in, and then went on, “In the end, it is your doing, even more than his.”
“My doing?” The absurdity of the claim outraged me, but it frightened me as well. “How can it have been my doing?”
Dragine pointed at Lathro, standing completely motionless, not even blinking. “When you told him that you two could never marry, because of his being an Outsider, what did you think he would do? You say you have known him since childhood—what did you think?”
I could hear my mother’s “Where is your head?” under my own whispered reply. “I never told him that. I would never have….”
“No? Well, someone did.” Dragine’s yellow teeth bared their tips in a smile of mean delight. “And that same someone directed him straight here, to me. What do you think of that, Breya Drom, daughter of Willalou?”
There was a taste of copper in my mouth, and a distant braying in my ears. I said, “My mother set Lathro searching for you? I don’t believe it.” But I did, I did, even before Dragine answered me.
“I would never dream of lying to you—I am enjoying the truth far too much, little witch-girl.” She was beginning to laugh, like a sandstorm gathering strength.
Strangely, the contempt in the word witch-girl cleared my head, leaving me more coldly, stubbornly rational than I had been since I left home. I said, as haughtily as I was able, “I am no witch, but an enchantress, as you well know, and the daughter of one who could crumble you and a dozen like you into her soup.” The laughter grew until I could actually feel the sand against my skin, like tiny blades. Beside me, Lathro showed no reaction at all, his entire attention focused on nothing I could see or imagine. His eyes had not met mine squarely since he had opened Dragine’s door to me. I said again, “Tell me why you hate my mother so. Because she doesn’t know, I’m sure.”
“You think not?” Dragine’s laughter did not return; rather, she looked at me with something almost like pity. “She told you nothing she did not have to tell you, did she then? Nothing?”
I had no answer for her. With no further word, she turned and led me—and silent, obedient Lathro too—through the house to a curious place I’d not noticed from outside: neither a room nor a yard nor a veranda, but a plain high-walled space open in part to the sky. The walls were white and bare. There w
ere no chairs, or even cushions, to sit on; the only distinguishing feature of the area was a small pool, ringed round with large stones, carefully arranged. There was no moon that night, but the stars were reflected thickly in the pool, darting like bright fish, as the current from some hidden inlet stirred the surface. I could see my shadow in it, but not my face.
Dragine squatted on her heels, and gestured to me to do the same. She did not look at Lathro, who stood by, hands folded in front of him, staring away at nothing. She said, “I was born in Kalagira. I grew up with your mother. Did she tell you that, at least?” I shook my head. “Well, so it was. And as you and this one here—” she jerked a gaunt finger at Lathro—“have been to each other, so was I with your father. Dunreath the potter.” When she spoke his name she closed her eyes, barely for longer than a blink, but I saw.
“Were you promised?” I could not imagine her young with Dunreath—the bitter spider-lines gone, the tawny eyes innocently yearning—but my folk take handfasting seriously, and I had to know.
Dragine looked at me for a long, cold time before she replied. “Breathe easy, witch-girl, your father never deceived me. We were close to promising—he even spoke of it, a time or two—but I was shy still. I was shy….” Her voice had grown soft when she spoke of Dunreath, almost wistful; but it turned to blowing sand again with her next words. “Then came your mother.”
Oh, perhaps you can see it; perhaps you can take my word for my young father’s first sight of a maiden Willalou. Dragine must have seen the vision in my face, for she said, “Aye, there was never a day when I could match her for beauty. Nor for power, either…. not then.”
The last two words were uttered in a near-animal growl, and I could hardly catch them, but I did. I said, “And now?”
Dragine smiled fully for the first time, granting me, as though by a flash of lightning, an instant’s glimpse of the girl who had had every reason to believe that Dunreath belonged to her, with her. She said, “I was not born a maj, or to a gifted line. There has never been so much as the feeblest barnyard witch in my family, search as far back as you will. How should my potter not have been drawn to such a face, such a gift, as Willalou’s? No, I blame him not at all, your father.”
“But my mother must take the blame for everything,” I said, “every misfortune that has befallen you since you lost Dunreath to her. Even before then, am I wrong?”
“I blame her for being exactly what she is, no more: for knowing that what is not hers is hers to take. Do you feel that unjust, witch-girl? Too bad. I also honor her for making me what I am.” The smile thinned, curling into the newest of new moons. “The Being your foolish man seeks draws no line between one sex and another. It responds simply to desire. To need.”
“Such as yours,” I said, and she nodded. I said, “But it could not bring my father back to you. He loved my mother on sight, loves her still. Nothing could have changed that.”
“The Being gave me a greater gift.” Dragine’s voice was surprisingly gentle, almost dreamy. “Shall I show you?”
She raised both arms, crossed them at the wrists, pointed at me with both pairs of middle and index fingers, and spoke a rhyme that Willalou had drummed into my head so hard, so often, that I knew to drop flat on my belly as two gouts of fire, shaped like dragon heads, leaped from Dragine’s fingertips and shot past me, hissing like full-sized wyrms. Ordinarily such sendings burst within seconds, harmless as Thieves’ Day crackers; but these doubled on their sizzling trails and came racing for me again. There were eyes in those tiny fire-faces, and they saw me.
But I know a rhyme worth two of that, and I sang it, rising to a crouch—sang it back at Dragine, not at the dragon-heads, and they promptly popped like milkweed seedpods, and were gone.
I stood up slowly, glancing sideways at Lathro as I did so. He had not moved, nor did he appear to have noticed what had taken place. I said loudly to Dragine, “That was what your Being taught you? That was worth a slice of your soul? You ought to ask for your payment back.”
Dragine was breathing hard: deep animal inhalations—such as you breathe now, in the darkness, waiting for the moon to be gone. She said, “The Being has no interest in souls. What it took in payment for my new power was my ability to love, for which I had no more use in any case, nor ever would. I have no complaints. See now!”
And with those last words—and a few others—she Shifted, and on the instant it was a great sheknath who stood in her place: hindquarters higher than the mighty bowed forelegs, jaws and chest and shoulders still muddy from digging out its most recent meal. It rose on its hind legs and roared at me, but I sang my mother’s favorite old lullaby, and it dropped down and promptly went to sleep. Dragine was some little while regaining her true shape, and she was not pleased when she finally managed it.
“I will not fight with you,” she declared. “I did not summon you for that, but to watch you lose your man to a fantasy, as I lost mine. It lasts longer than destruction, grief does. As you will learn.”
Whereupon she made a sign before Lathro’s face. The eager life came back into his brown eyes to break my heart, but he never looked at me, only asking Dragine, “Is it time? Has the Being come at last?”
“Soon, boy,” she answered him soothingly. “Very soon now.” Her eyes were full of triumph as she looked back at me, saying, “You see how it is? He has no care for you, nor for anything but his desire. The memory of Willalou’s daughter has vanished, making you a ghost to him, and any dream of your future together just that, a dream, long slipped away with the morning. Nor will being made a maj—oh, yes, the Being will certainly grant his wish—bring him home to you, no more than I will ever have your father back. So here we both are, abandoned forever by our loves—” and this time the smile was as joyously murderous as a rock-targ’s skull-baring grin, just before it strikes for the throat or the contents of your stomach—“and all of it, all, due to the devices of the clever, wicked woman from whose wickedness you spring. Do you understand me at last, witch-girl?”
“No,” I said. “I will not. I will not understand you.” Rather than listen further to her, or to myself, I turned desperately to Lathro, saying, “Love, love, here I am, your Moon-Fox, your Breya. Can’t you see me, don’t you know me at all?” I even shook him a little, grasping his shoulders, to no avail.
His eyes were warm and alive, as I have said, but I was not in them. Whoever he saw standing before him, shrilling like a locust, it was not I. He spoke for the first time, saying, with some wonder in his voice, “You are so pretty. I never imagined the Being would be pretty.”
I choked on my own sudden tears, and Dragine laughed in purest delight, sounding almost like a happy child. “Nay, she’s no Being, boy, she can give you nothing you need, my word on it. Come, we’ll call now, you and I.”
She moved to the edge of the pool, spread her hands over the star-fish shimmering in its depths, and spoke to them too rapidly for me to catch more than a few of the words. They were in a tongue I had heard my mother speak: it is very old, and there are some bad stories about its origins. Lathro joined in the calling, briefly and stumblingly, as Dragine’s voice rose to a kind of shrill croon, not loud, but high, high enough that it disappeared at the end, like a lark or a falcon climbing out of sight. I wanted to cover my ears, but I didn’t. A moment later I very nearly covered my eyes, because the surface of the pool gradually began to swirl counterclockwise, right to left, gaining speed until the sound of its spinning echoed Dragine’s uncanny wail. It no longer looked like water: first it was black stone—then starlit spiraling diamond—and finally it was jeweled smoke, sparkling pale-blue smoke, whirling slowly into shape, like clay on my father’s wheel. A figure began to rise out of the little pool.
It was man-shaped, but not a man. I never did determine what it was, or even what it chose to resemble, so sinuously and playfully did it sport from form to smoky near-form. At one moment it might have been a sort of hornless goat, dancing on its hind legs; but step closer to
the pool, or consider it from another angle—or simply wait—and it seemed an enormous head, with black wriggly-wet things like eels where its teeth should have been, and that head was dancing too. Or let a small pewter cloud hide a star or two, and behold then a dead tree, its skeletal boughs aswarm with glittering, watchful stone eyes; or again you might suddenly be staring at a great almost-butterfly, burning as it whirled, yet never consumed, though its blaze dazzled even Dragine’s eyes. She turned from it to stare at me, and though she said nothing, yet I heard her in my mind, her silent laughter echoing within me.
“She arranged it all, witch-girl. She set your man all afire to get rid of him…. then set you to find him, after training you up to face the Being who comes when I call, as she well knows. A Being who has more power than she ever dreamed of having, for all her hopes, all her craving….”
When the Being spoke out of its flaming, shifting whirlwind, it addressed itself directly to me. Through all its constant transformations its voice remained the same: a deep, deep buzzing that I heard along my spine and in my cheekbones more than in my ears. “There will be no confrontation between us, Breya Drom, because there is no reason for such a thing. You have already lost any battle there could be.”
“Have I, then?” Compared to that voice, I sounded to myself like a little girl refusing to go to bed. But I was profoundly weary, and deeply frightened, and more stubbornly angry than either. I said, “Whatever battles my mother had in mind, she will have to find someone else to fight them. All I came for was Lathro Baraquil.”
“And all he came for, he has already found.” The Being extended what was momentarily a hand toward Lathro, and he hungered toward it—that is the best word I can find—reaching out with his whole self, but I pushed his hand away before they could meet.
Sleight of Hand Page 11
