Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Mintha trembled like a rabbit that has discovered its own burrow to be a trap. But she was no coward.

  “I’ll be dragon-kissed before I let the earls know of this,” she said, and her voice was like the old earl’s come to life once more. Leta startled at the tone. “The funeral is in a few hours. As soon as the sun touches the weathervane, Ferox will be interred with his forefathers. We can invent some excuse to put off the ceremony of succession. My son is grieving the loss of his uncle, after all. Does not wish to be disturbed, the dignity due the dead, some such nonsense.”

  “What are you talking about?” Leta said. “Surely you don’t think you can keep Alistair’s condition a secret?”

  “And why not?” Lady Mintha demanded, striding forward until she stood nose to nose with Leta. She was a good head taller than the girl, and her height was worthy of the House of Gaheris. “Don’t tell me what I can do. Foolish little mincing ninny! Do you think the earls will stand idly by if they hear my son lies stricken upon his bed? They witnessed Ferox himself declare a freak his heir! They’re already licking their chops. If they know Alistair is broken like this, they’ll fall upon us like crows on a gibbet.” She bared her teeth and growled. “My family has held this mastery for two hundred years. I will not see the House of Gaheris fall!”

  Her hand bit cruelly into Leta’s arm, and she dragged her away from the bed and toward the door. “Go! Get yourself ready for the funeral. Leave your page to serve my son; it will be enough for now. You must attend my brother’s interment as though nothing were amiss. And if Earl Aiven hears a word of this, I will know whom to blame.”

  “Lady Mintha,” Leta protested, trying to pull from the lady’s grasp, “I can’t leave Alistair now.”

  “Don’t play games with me,” Mintha snapped. “No one believes you love him. Now do as I say.”

  With those words, Mintha drove Leta from the chamber. Then she turned to Mouse, addressing him as though he could understand her. “Stay by your master. I’ll return when I can.”

  The next moment, she was gone, slamming the door like that of a dungeon. Mouse sat in the near darkness beside the stricken lord. Beyond the window, the world turned from black to gray. Mouse huddled down into the space between the bed and the wall, near Alistair’s prone form but hiding his head so as not to see it.

  “This has nothing to do with me!” he whispered.

  Ferox had never been more gloriously clad in the rich robes of Gaheris. Not that either gold or fur could bring him comfort in the darkness of his coffin as it was borne from the castle into the courtyard.

  The Chronicler stood unseen in the shed, gazing through a crack in the door upon the gathered crowd. Ten earls of the North Country, ten of the strongest, stood with their entourages about them. Earl Lebuin of Aiven, majestic in his mourning garb, loomed over his daughter, who stood with hands folded and head bowed so that the Chronicler could not see her face.

  Alistair was not among the company. Words were exchanged among the various earls, curious glances stolen. Someone whispered questions to Lady Mintha, but her stoic face gave the Chronicler no answers. And soon all of them were lost to his sight in the crowded courtyard.

  Another solitary watcher observed the courtyard from a higher, more distant prospect. Mouse stood at the window of Alistair’s chamber, gazing down at the gathered mourners like so many black crows in the yard. He shivered and turned to the fevered lord upon his bed. The wound in his shoulder was turning black around the edges.

  Down below, the funeral service began. Mouse could not understand the words. Even those who spoke the language understood little of what was said. A cleric of uncertain order recited in rhythmic cadences old words he did not believe. But Leta, standing beside her father, picked out pieces here and there that were familiar to her:

  “Beyond the Final Water falling,

  The Songs of Spheres recalling . . .”

  She searched the downcast faces of those around her. Did any of them recognize those words? Did any of them know the song from which it was taken? The Chronicler would know. Even if he did not believe, at least he would know.

  But his face was not among the mourners. She was alone in the crowd beside the statue-like frame of her father.

  The cleric, somber in sable robes, stood before the door of the Gaheris family crypt, the coffin of the earl before him. He sprinkled water that was supposed holy; he scattered spices that were deemed virtuous. He spoke prayers that were not prayers but empty words.

  And behind his words, Leta heard another sound.

  A scritch-scratch upon heavy wood.

  Then a voice like a demon’s whisper flowed from a dark place of echoes.

  Open the gate.

  She ceased to breathe. The world stopped—all sounds, all movements, everything swallowed up in that voice.

  Open the gate!

  She felt the tension in her father’s body. Dragging herself back into the cold present, she looked up at Earl Aiven and saw that his face was ashen, saw a straining vein in his neck and tightness under his eyes. Did he hear it too?

  The cleric paused in his ritual. He stared out at the assembled crowd, and words failed him.

  Open the gate.

  Then it was gone, disappearing like spider webs caught upon a wind and borne far away. The cleric continued the ceremony, and the mourners breathed again.

  But Leta thought, There is something in that crypt.

  She opened her mouth to speak. Even as pallbearers lifted Ferox’s coffin onto their shoulders; even as Lady Mintha, with great ceremony, nodded permission to Earl Clios; even as Clios’s hands were on the latch, turning, pulling, Leta meant to scream, to warn them all: “Don’t let them out!”

  The latch turned.

  And the ancient door exploded.

  Earl Clios flew back through the air, knocking flat one of the pallbearers and landing in a broken pile atop his own son. The coffin, unbalanced, slipped from the other bearers’ grasps and crashed to the stones amid the pieces of the door. Men and women alike screamed, and Leta realized her voice was among them. She heard the scrape of swords being drawn, heard the shouts of earls to their retainers. She saw Lady Mintha fall to her knees beside her brother’s shattered coffin.

  She saw the monster emerge from the darkness of the crypt.

  “Where is the king of the mortals?” it cried.

  8

  ETANUN AND AKILUN, HIS BROTHER, took me into their Haven. At first they did not ply me with questions, only fed me and tended my tattered wings and torn feet. They gave me sweet, clear water to drink, and I had not realized until I tasted it how parched I was. Only then, with my spirits beginning to rise, did I dare begin to tell them of my journey and why I had come.

  “Cren Cru,” said Etanun, pounding fist to palm. “We have seen his work before.”

  “Seen it,” Akilun agreed. “But never fought it. Never come to a demesne of his taking in time.”

  “Will you go to Etalpalli, then?” I asked. “Will you go to the service of my brother, King Tlanextu?”

  “We will go to your service, dear lady,” said Etanun, and though his voice was kind, his face was grim. “We will rid you of this evil.”

  And he went to retrieve his sword. A fine sword, wrought of sunlight and moonlight and shining equally as bright. Halisa it was called, and even I, sequestered away in Etalpalli as I had always been, had heard tell of its might, the deeds it had performed both in the Far World and the Near.

  Halisa. Fireword.

  Nearly seven feet tall, with skin like rock and a face some mixture of boar and man, the monster wore armor like stone slabs chiseled into a breastplate, pauldrons, and greaves, and the weapon he carried was stone as well.

  He strode out of the crypt and stood in the new light of morning, so real and so terrible that everyone around him looked like mere breathless phantoms. He planted great feet above the wreckage of the door and the coffin, and gripped his stone sword in both hands. Lady Mintha lay nearest
him, unable to move, while the pallbearers fell back among their brethren, shrieking and clutching at each other.

  The monster, his gaze downcast upon the remains of the dead earl, spoke: “Where is the king of the mortals?”

  His words swallowed the screams of the people, leaving silence in its wake. No one spoke. The monster’s booming voice reverberated through their heads and about the stone courtyard, then died away. His lip curled, and he scraped his sword through the wooden fragments, lifting the edge of Earl Ferox’s fine robe and inspecting it thoughtfully. Then he let it drop and strode across the wreckage, caring not whether he trod upon the earl’s body. Now Lady Mintha was behind him, trying to raise herself up, frantic to get away from the gaping doorway of the crypt.

  “Where is the mortal king?” the monster demanded again, still not looking at the crowd. No one answered. No one breathed.

  He swung his sword, and the assembly drew back. Then shouts of command, and housecarls pressed through the crowd, falling upon the monster with battle cries. Leta hid her face but could not stop her ears to the screams and the sound of blows falling upon unprotected bodies.

  “Is your king afraid to face me?” the monster bellowed, the stone sword now dripping red. “Is he afraid to stand up to Corgar of Arpiar?”

  “The North Country needs no king!” shouted Earl Sondmanus. Taking a lance from one of his housecarls, he strode forward. The monster turned to him, leering down at the gray-bearded man who scarcely came up to his shoulder yet who spoke boldly. “A North Country man is king enough! We rule in our own right, and we drive out our own monsters!”

  The monster growled. “Liar.”

  His sword swung. Earl Sondmanus’s lance fell in two pieces, and the earl himself collapsed in a heap. With a roar of mingled pleasure and fury, the goblin swung around and fended off the blows of Sondmanus’s enraged sons, killing with each stroke. The remaining warriors withdrew, their fine mourning garments dirtied with blood, and the goblin roared.

  “Whom do you think you’re protecting, people of dust? The Murderer told me all! He said if once we dared cross the borders into the Near World, the mortal king would drive us out. So answer me, maggots, where is this king? I shall spit him over my fire before I let him drive me back into Arpiar!”

  He strode into the thick of the crowd; women fainted and men screamed. Blood spattered his face and armor. He was a nightmare made flesh and stone. “Shall I hack you all to the ground until I find him out?”

  Leta, pressed into a throng of strangers so tightly that she could scarcely move, caught sight of her father. She saw the look in his eyes and knew what he was about to do. Earl Aiven, his sword drawn, stepped forward. His shoulders were thrown back, and his eyes flashed beneath his sandy brows.

  “I am King of the North Country!” he cried. “I am whom you seek!”

  The goblin turned on him like a predator preparing to spring. His jutting jaw slavered hungrily. “Are you?” he said.

  The earl’s sword lashed out. The goblin caught the blade and wrenched it from Aiven’s grasp, hurling it away into the throng, which scattered to avoid being struck. Then the goblin’s hand, large enough to crush a wolf’s skull, took Aiven by the throat and wrenched him from his feet.

  “Do you think,” he said, “I cannot tell a king from a clod? Do you think I do not know the ties of blood that bind a man to his own demesne, the daily sacrifice of his heart and soul upon the altar of his kingdom? Do you think”—his voice rose to a shattering roar—“I am a fool?”

  The earl’s feet kicked the air. He could not speak, could not draw breath. With another roar, the goblin brought him crashing to the stones, and Leta saw Earl Aiven’s body break. This man who was her father and whom she had never thought she loved. She saw him break, yet light, defiant, still shone in his eyes. He struggled to raise himself up. The goblin’s booted foot came down upon his chest, pressing him flat.

  This man who was her father.

  Leta fell to her hands and knees and crawled between the legs of those around her, forcing her way to that empty space in the center of the courtyard where the goblin stood. Even as the monster raised his weapon, her hands found the broken head of Sondmanus’s lance. Tripping over her own long skirts, she scrambled to her feet and flung herself at the goblin from behind, driving the lance into the unprotected place behind his knee.

  The lance point broke.

  The goblin, diverted from his killing stroke, spun around and fixed Leta with the full force of his wide, white eyes. She felt blood and spittle fall upon her skin as he reached for her. She raised the broken lance in defense, but he paid it no heed even when she thrust it into his hand. It shattered, and his long fingers closed about her neck. The next moment, her head exploding with fear and pain, she was swung off her feet and dangling at the length of his arm.

  “Where is the mortal king, little one?” the goblin demanded. “You know whom I mean, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes. You know the king. Tell me where he is.”

  For the first time in her life Leta wished she was the fainting sort so she might escape this moment. But there was no escape. The moment must be faced. She must look into those dreadful eyes, into that face both animal and human.

  “Wait! Wait, please!”

  It wasn’t a powerful voice of command that could inspire obedience or respect. It was small and desperate.

  But it was the only voice that spoke up.

  Corgar, his attention drawn from the dangling maid in his grasp, turned and looked over his shoulder. And when he did so, he swung Leta about, and she could see what he saw.

  She saw a broken-down shed, great gaps in its boards, its door sagging on its hinges. Through that door stepped the Chronicler, his hands upraised in protest.

  “Please!” he cried. “Put her down. I’m the one you seek. I . . . I am the Earl of Gaheris, future King of the North Country.”

  The goblin’s eyes narrowed, disappearing beneath the deep furrow of his brow. He dropped Leta in a cloud of black skirts and strode across the courtyard. Fallen warriors scrambled out of his way, and he trod upon those that did not move in time. The Chronicler stood. His fists clenched, his mouth hung open, and his eyes were wide as sudden death, but he did not move even as the towering monster loomed above him, staring down into his face.

  “King of the mortals?” said Corgar, his voice near a whisper. “You?”

  The Chronicler nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  Corgar stared.

  Then he said, “I believe you.”

  The next moment, his dreadful laughter filled the morning, shattering sunlight and driving darkness into every crevice of the old castle. His great claws closed upon the Chronicler’s tunic front, and he lifted him from the ground, shaking him like a rag doll in front of all those assembled.

  “Your king!” His laughter was like thunder. “Your king!” cried Corgar. “Foolish, pitiful mortals! Is this the best you can find? Is this the great leader who will drive me from your lands and save your sorry hides?”

  The Chronicler, his small hands grasping at the great trunk of an arm that held him, shouted, “Your business is with me! Leave the rest in peace, and we’ll discuss whatever you want. Or you can kill me now if you prefer. Only let them go.”

  “Let them go?” Corgar laughed still more. “I hardly think so.”

  Then he barked in a strange language none of them knew, a harsh language like a boar’s roar or lion’s snarl. Lady Mintha, lying near the crypt door, turned to the darkness. The tramp of many feet echoed up the stairway, and the howl of answering voices.

  Goblins poured into the courtyard of Gaheris. Like ghosts rising from the Netherworld, they issued from the shadows, enormous creatures of stone and teeth and claws. They fell upon the people of Gaheris, pursuing them into the keep itself, grabbing women by the hair, killing those who stood to fight. Leta curled into a ball atop her fallen father as though to protect him. An enormous hand took hold of her, yanking the barbet and veil
from her head so that her hair fell free down her back. She expected any moment to feel the sharp bite of a sword. Instead, she was dragged away from her father and did not know if he lived.

  The Chronicler, writhing in Corgar’s grasp, watched Leta vanish into the mob, watched the carnage and the madness filling the courtyard. A few housecarls put up a resistance, but he heard death screams that were distinctly human.

  Corgar smiled and pulled the Chronicler close to his face. Breath like rotted meat filled the Chronicler’s senses. “Well, little king,” he said, “it looks as though it is I who will do the driving.”

  The golden cat streaked across the shadow-strewn floor of the Wood Between. The Chief Poet of Rudiobus chased his Path through the trees, through the darkness, with the desperation of a hunted beast, though it was he who hunted. Those lurking in the dark fled out of his way and watched him go with frightened eyes.

  His pace never slowed, not though he ran a hundred miles. And when he neared the Haven of his Master, he redoubled his efforts. Smells pricked his nose, smells as deep as the shadows themselves.

  “No, no, no!” he growled, unwilling to believe what he already knew was true. For Bebo had spoken, and Bebo was never wrong. He flew to the Haven, determined to reach it, determined that he could not be too late.

  Another smell caught his nose, and he stopped, horror-stricken.

  He stood with his ears pricked, and his great eyes turned in a direction slightly off his regular Path.

  “Dragons eat you, Imraldera,” he whispered in sudden terror.

  Moving more carefully now, his body low, his tail catching leaves and twigs in its long fur, he crept down this new, narrow Path, one which he had only ever walked once before. Then he stopped and breathed another curse.

  The Faerie Circle had grown. Stones taller than a man and silvery white gleamed before his eyes. And into that ring of stones, marching, marching, passed an army of goblins.