Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Sparrow finished securing her blindfold, then put out a hand. A eunuch, his eyes unshielded, stepped to her side and offered his arm, leading her to the gaping doorway through which the other priestesses and acolytes were flowing. Hating to follow but hating still more to be left behind, Mouse also blindfolded her eyes and felt a eunuch slip to her own side and tuck her hand under his arm. So she was guided into the swallowing darkness of the Diggings.

  It was like the Midnight she had witnessed earlier, only deeper. With the blindfold on her face, she might have been drowning in the depths of a black ocean. Her only guide was the arm of the eunuch, to which she clung as a babe clings to its mother. The tramp of many feet ahead comforted her, but the silence, deeper than all other silences, flooded the world behind her, as if a thousand people cried out for help only to find their voices rendered mute.

  So these were the Diggings into which those who rebelled against the Flame were sent to find the chamber of Fireword.

  “Why does she want it?” Mouse whispered. The silence offered her no answer.

  Onward they plunged, deeper and deeper. Sometimes Mouse thought she heard from a distance the ringing of hammers and picks, slaves hard at work. Their search for the chamber must have extended far into this subterranean world. How cold it was! Mouse was thankful for the woolen robes that had always seemed such a bother before. She should never doubt the will of the goddess.

  It was difficult to say how far they progressed into those depths. Time meant little in that blind world. But sooner than Mouse expected, the procession halted and she heard the voice of the prophetess speaking clearly up ahead.

  “Here. This is the place.”

  “Impossible” came the high priestess’s reply. “We searched this entire quarter ages ago. There is nothing here. We must proceed.”

  “No,” said the Silent Lady. “This is the place. Etanun’s mark is on the wall.”

  Mouse released hold of the eunuch and, with trembling fingers, reached up and pulled the blindfold down. To her surprise, there was light all around her, the light of torches carried by the eunuchs, and the white light glowing from the starflower tucked in the prophetess’s hair. The procession had halted at a crossroad where the main tunnel branched in two, a larger passage continuing to the right, a smaller to the left. It was an old part of the Diggings, carved out before the Speaker was even born.

  None of the other acolytes had dared remove their blindfolds, but the high priestess, standing beside Stoneye at the head of the procession, looked upon the Silent Lady, and her eyes were bright even in that darkness.

  “We would have seen it,” the Speaker said, “long ere now.”

  “You could not,” said the prophetess. “No matter how you searched. Etanun said his sword must sleep undisturbed. He did not wish it found until this time.”

  She took a step forward, but Stoneye clutched her arm. Mouse saw the pain shoot across her face. How could Stoneye treat her so? Did he not realize who she was? Or did he really believe she would try to escape in this awful labyrinth?

  The high priestess spoke a soft command, and Stoneye unwillingly released his hold. The Silent Lady stood as though uncertain. Then, setting her jaw, she strode toward the ragged stone wall between the split passages. And suddenly everyone saw what had been hidden from mortal eyes for generations of enslaved Diggers, hidden until that moment.

  In the place where the passages diverged was an arched doorway.

  Only shadows had concealed it for all the lonely years of the Diggers’ efforts. Only shadows more solid than any wall. When torchlight fell upon that spot, the shadows threw the light back and revealed none of their secrets. But when the starflower in the prisoner’s hair gleamed, it shone upon a richly carved doorpost.

  “Fire burn,” the Speaker said. Then she leapt forward, ready to pass through the arch. But Stoneye put out his arm, preventing her. “Out of my way, man!” She spoke without malice, a dreamy haziness to her voice. “I must see it.” And she breathed the name like a prayer: “Fireword.”

  Stoneye would not release her. He could not speak, but he indicated that she must let him go first. After all, who knew what lay beyond that doorway?

  The high priestess stared up at him. For a moment, Mouse thought she would argue. But instead, she closed her eyes tightly, as though forcing her body to act against her own will. “Very well.” She snatched a torch from one of the other slaves and pressed it into his hands. “Take this. And hurry!”

  Stoneye approached the doorway. The shadows within thirstily drank up the light from his torch. The big slave hesitated on the threshold. He lifted the torch to study carved images of a story he did not know, perhaps of two brothers, one with a lantern, one with a sword. And he saw the one with the sword kill the first. It was a terrible tale, even in that momentary glimpse. A tale of murder.

  The Silent Lady placed a hand upon his arm. He startled as though bitten and turned to her with a snarl. But her face was gentle, her eyes strangely calm.

  “I will enter first,” she said, taking the flower from her hair and cupping it in her hands. “Let me, please?”

  The big man looked like a hungry dog ready to devour her. Then his face, cast harshly into relief by the glow of his torch, softened. He stepped back.

  So the prisoner carried her little star into the chamber. It was a large chamber indeed, an enormous circular room with a domed ceiling. Unlike the tunnels and passages of the Diggings, it was well crafted, its smooth walls overlaid with fine encaustic tiles. The white light of the starflower revealed many colors of clay worked into delicate patterns in every tile, each one telling a different story. They were too many and too intricate for comprehension. The mind ached to see them, yet it was an ache of beauty not pain.

  Centered in the room was a stone so ugly that it might have been chipped from the essence of darkness. More carefully carved was the likeness of a sword, hilt up, protruding from its top. A sword that was part of the stone itself.

  “It’s there!” Without a thought the high priestess plunged into the chamber, her hands outstretched, striving against the shadows, her eyes wide and hungry, even desperate.

  “Wait!” cried the Silent Lady.

  Heedless, the priestess pushed past the glow of the starflower, her robes flowing behind her, reaching for the stone, reaching for the sword.

  There was a clatter as Stoneye’s torch dropped and extinguished. The big slave caught the high priestess, lifted her off her feet, and dragged her back screaming and thrashing. It was the most horrible sight! Mouse wanted to cover her eyes, to avoid seeing her beautiful mistress so humiliated. Stoneye—a man who should not dare to breathe upon her—wrapped his strong arms around her rail-thin frame, holding her almost fiercely, his face full of fear.

  The Silent Lady stepped forward, struggling to make herself heard above the inarticulate screams of the priestess. “Please!” she cried. “You mustn’t touch it!”

  “It belongs to the goddess,” the high priestess shouted. “It is here beneath her temple, beneath the land she has made her own, and it is hers by right of conquest. I will, I must bring it to her.”

  “No,” said the prophetess. “I have shown you the secret. I have led you to this place. Please trust me now when I say that you must not touch Etanun’s sword. You must not touch Halisa.”

  The priestess became cold. Stoneye felt the resistance flow from her, and he set her down but kept hold of her shoulder. “Why not?” the Speaker demanded, her voice as black as that ugly stone.

  “Only Etanun’s heir may bear the sword from this chamber,” the prisoner said. “See?” She hastened to the stone and knelt, holding her gleaming flower up to it. Mouse shouldered her way past priestesses and eunuchs to peer through the doorway. She saw what the flower revealed. She saw that the sword was indeed part of the stone itself. She could see where chisel and mallet had chipped its contours into the shape it now bore. And around the place where the stone blade seemingly entered the boulder w
ere deeply carved letters. These were more elegantly depicted, if unreadable to those looking on.

  Then, as Mouse watched, the characters suddenly shifted and moved, not on the stone itself, but inside her mind. She found herself not reading but seeing images that to her were unmistakable. They said as clearly as words:

  Fling wide the doors of light, Smallman,

  Though furied falls the Flame at Night.

  The heir to truth, blest blade of fire,

  He finds in shielded shadow light.

  The high priestess saw it too. But she growled, shaking her head. “That is foolishness,” she said. “Nothing will stand between the goddess and her prize, neither this Smallman nor any heir.”

  She tried to approach the boulder again, but Stoneye restrained her. She whirled on him, eyes flashing, and snarled, “Very well, if you are so set on protecting me! You pick it up. You carry it from this room and show everyone the power of the goddess over these old superstitions. The Fire will burn all else away, including shivering cowardice!”

  Stoneye gazed upon her. And for the first time Mouse saw his rock-hard mask slip. She saw in his cold eyes a sudden warmth, a heat that shot pain through his whole body but surged inside him with power as well.

  She realized with horror: He loves her.

  Not the high priestess. No, for no one could truly love that tall, detached being. But her. The woman she was beneath the trappings of her office. Beneath the robes, the wigs, the woven crowns. Beneath the burns. When he looked at her, he saw the person not the priestess, and he knew her name, which all others had forgotten.

  Mouse’s heart broke. In that moment she might have wept for dreadful Stoneye, the eunuch who had sacrificed all to serve this hard shell of what had once been a woman.

  “Do as I say!” the high priestess cried, her voice ringing shrill in the stillness of that otherworldly chamber.

  Stoneye stepped around her, his head high, his shoulders back. Mouse saw the Silent Lady cast herself before him, heard her small voice protesting, “Don’t! Please! As you value your life, leave it be!”

  Stoneye pushed her aside, and she landed in a crumpled heap on the tile-paved floor. Her starflower flew from her hand, spun wildly through the air, and floated gently down to rest on the black stone. The Silent Lady pushed upright, her long hair tossed back, and cried again, “Don’t!”

  Stoneye’s hand reached out. The starflower illuminated each finger as it closed upon the carved hilt.

  There was a rush, a deep-throated groan.

  Then a thud as the slave’s huge body fell upon the stone.

  How cold, how silent was this place beneath the world! In that moment, as Mouse watched death sweep through that fallen body, she felt as though it grabbed her as well, catching her heart, dragging her down. She was abandoned, alone, forsaken in this black universe of nothing.

  The voice of the high priestess spoke like darkness itself:

  “Stoneye, get up. I command you.”

  5

  I LEFT ETANUN THEN. For the first time since coming to that world, I took to the air and soared higher and higher. Perhaps I thought to fly into the hot embrace of Lumé himself and let him burn me away into nothing. But his brilliance was soon too great for me, and I was driven back to earth. I crashed upon a high mountain and lay with broken wings upon the stone. I hoped I was dead. My dreams were shattered, and life held no charm for me.

  “Greetings, child,” someone spoke.

  I did not have the strength to raise my head. It astonished me to hear someone in so high and remote a place. But the voice spoke into the churning fire in my gut.

  “What a beauty you are,” the someone said. I felt his approach, felt him kneel beside me, and when I opened my eyes, I looked upon the face of Death-in-Life.

  The face of the Dragon.

  She strode across the chamber, the soft, shushing noise of her robes the only sound in that stillness besides the crackling torches and the breathing of the stricken throng.

  Stern, the high priestess stood over Stoneye. “Get up,” she said.

  Mouse, leaning heavily against the doorway, saw how the white flower shone on her mistress’s face like starlight on ice.

  “At once. Slave.”

  The woman did not seem to breathe. Her eyes were shadow-strewn pools of dark water. She nudged the fallen eunuch with her foot like one might prod a lazy dog. “Up. Up. Up.” Each word was a small gasp.

  Then her mouth opened in a black slash across her face. Without a sound, she fell to her knees, clutching at the dead man’s head, clawing at his face, pulling at the sleeve of his tunic. Her voice returned in a sudden wail, an animal sound without words. It broke off in another eternal silence. Then she breathed again, and this time Mouse heard her crying, “Get up! Get up!”

  Her voice was that of a child. She was, Mouse realized, weeping. Tears glistened like drops of fire on her face. Broken, she crumpled over the form of her dead slave.

  And Mouse heard her moan, “Why did you do it? Why did you follow me?”

  The Silent Lady moved. She picked the starflower up off the stone, casting the shadow of the carved sword across the floor. Mouse saw her face highlighted by the white light. Tears shimmered in her eyes as she knelt and touched the Speaker’s arm.

  The priestess hissed between clenched teeth. “Get up. . . .”

  “I’m so sorry,” the Silent Lady whispered. “I see how you loved him, though you yourself did not realize until now. Let that love guide you, dear woman, and leave the sword to sleep. The time of its return is not now, and your goddess will drive you only to death.”

  The high priestess drew a ragged breath and let it out in a sob. Then she gathered herself and rose with her arms wrapped tightly about her robe, the woven strands of her wig falling in her face.

  Turning, she pointed to the nearest eunuch. “You,” she said, in a voice as sharp and sure as a spear. “Bring me that sword.”

  The eunuch’s face became that of a phantom in the torchlight. His eyes, lost in hollows of shadows, widened until the whites gleamed, and Mouse saw a spasm run through his body. Otherwise, he could not move.

  The high priestess’s hand lashed out and struck him across the face, sending him sprawling backward among his fellows. “Do as I say,” she growled.

  The other eunuchs pushed him, and he stumbled into the chamber. “No, stop!” the Silent Lady cried.

  “Restrain her,” said the high priestess, and two other slaves leapt forward and grabbed her, one by her hair, the other by the back of her robe, dragging her from the chamber. The luckless eunuch, compelled by his mistress, approached the stone as Stoneye had. Mouse heard him whimper, and she saw the sweat streaming down his face. She wished she could move, could run and spare herself the sight to come. But to run among the Diggings meant certain death, so she remained frozen, unable to tear her gaze away.

  The eunuch reached out. With a moan, he gripped the hilt. Then he gasped and fell across Stoneye’s prone body.

  The sword remained unmoved.

  “Enough!” the Silent Lady cried. “Enough of this! Don’t you see you’re murdering them?”

  “You,” said the Speaker, and collared another eunuch. “Bring me that sword. Bring it now!”

  He recoiled from her grasp. With a wail, he turned and ran down one of the split passages, dropping his torch with a crash behind him. Its flame sputtered, then extinguished, but the sound of its rolling nearly drowned the sound of his footsteps as he lost himself in the deep black.

  “Speaker!” cried one of the priestesses in protest.

  But the high priestess whirled upon her. “Yes?” she demanded. “Have you something to say? Do you wish to volunteer, to serve your goddess to the last?”

  The priestess shrank back, and the Speaker turned to yet another eunuch. “Bring me that sword!” she said.

  The Silent Lady screamed and wrenched against the clutches of those holding her. “Stop this! Stop, I beg you!” she cried. “You�
��ll kill them all, and you’ll still not gain that sword! It’s senseless; it’s cruel!”

  “They are my slaves,” said the high priestess, turning upon the small woman. “They’ll do as I say.”

  “You can drain this whole world dry, and Halisa will remain in its resting place until its time has come,” the prophetess said, her face fierce.

  “Why did you come here, then?” The Speaker took the Silent Lady by the front of her robe, hauling her up with surprising strength until she stood upon the tips of her toes. “Did you intend to kill my slaves? Is that it?”

  “I came at the request of Halisa’s former bearer to tell the Flame at Night where the sword might be found. That is all.”

  “That can’t be all!” the high priestess cried, shaking the Silent Lady and slamming her against the stone doorway. Mouse, standing so near she might reach out and touch them both, shrank into herself, desperate not to be seen.

  The Silent Lady, helpless in the priestess’s powerful grip, shook her head, and her face was sad but defiant. “Only Etanun or his heir can safely bear the sword from its burial chamber.”

  “Where is this heir?” the Speaker demanded.

  “I do not know.”

  Shrieking like a bird of prey, the high priestess flung the Silent Lady to the ground. She drew a long sacrificial knife from her belt and advanced as though to spill the young woman’s blood as she would a goat’s upon the altar.

  Mouse screamed and jumped forward, flinging herself between the two.

  After the fact, she wondered at herself. It was a rash, heat-rushing moment. She did not think; she merely acted. It didn’t matter that the lady in question neither knew nor acknowledged the goddess. She was the Silent Lady; Mouse knew it with a completeness more real than rationality. So she stepped between the prophetess and the knife.