Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  And the high priestess stopped.

  She stared into the space beyond the acolyte’s head, perhaps into the darkness of the chamber beyond. What she saw, no one watching could discern. Was it the sword, standing cold in its black stone? Did something else unseen amid those shadows stay her killing hand?

  However it was, the high priestess withdrew, her mouth open and her eyes wide. Then she shook herself and spoke in a voice as crackled as an old woman’s.

  “What’s this, little Mouse? Will you betray me for a stranger?”

  The words cut Mouse to the heart. She bowed her head, ashamed, horrified. But she did not move.

  The high priestess turned away. Slowly, unsteady on her feet, she passed through the throng, drawing her blindfold down over her face as she went. Tears dampened the dark fabric, but no one could see them.

  The Silent Lady touched Mouse’s shoulder. Catching her breath, the girl turned to look into those solemn eyes that were so dreadfully familiar. The stranger gave her a look of gratitude and also some sort of mysterious understanding.

  The high priestess’s voice came through the shadows. “I must consult the goddess,” she said. “I must bring her word of what has transpired and learn her will. Let a guard be set over this doorway, and see that the prisoner is locked away.”

  She put out a hand then, searching for a strong arm on which to lean, a strong form to guide her through the Diggings. But Stoneye was not there.

  Another eunuch hastened to her side, offering himself. She refused to acknowledge him. Instead, she removed the blindfold from her face and, open to the darkness around her, made her way up the long passage. Over her shoulder she called, “Bring the bodies of the slain!”

  She spared not another backward glance. She was Speaker for the Flame; she would not mourn.

  The world was swiftly falling into twilight when the procession emerged through the crack in the stone and climbed back up to the temple itself. The Silent Lady was dragged beyond Mouse’s sight, away to the dungeons. Mouse wanted to follow, but her mistress spoke a sharp command, and she dared not disobey. She tailed behind the high priestess up to her chambers and there helped her prepare to stand before the goddess.

  “I must tell her what has happened,” the Speaker said, talking to herself, unaware, it seemed, of Mouse’s presence. “She will know what to do. And then we can kill that wretch.”

  Mouse’s blood ran cold. Kill the Silent Lady? She stared at the Speaker’s face, and she saw murder there. Murder and vengeance.

  The Speaker turned to Mouse suddenly, eyes flashing. “What?” she demanded. “Are you going to defend her again? Will you demonstrate your disloyalty even now?”

  Mouse couldn’t breathe. But the high priestess said no more. Mouse finished the usual preparations, and the Speaker, gorgeous in her ritual garb, left the room, making for the Spire and the presence of the Flame.

  For several long heartbeats, Mouse stood alone in her mistress’s chambers.

  And the Silent Lady was imprisoned below.

  No one noticed Mouse as she hastened down from the Speaker’s chambers, along the quiet halls. She was a mouse; she was a shadow. She was as insignificant as a passing fancy. So she made her way down the steps of the tower, down and down farther still until she reached the dungeons themselves. Even here the guards paid her no heed, and she entered that stifling gloom unimpeded. Mouse snatched a torch from its holder and plunged down the passage dug beneath the lower temple grounds. After the darkness of the Diggings, the dungeons held no horrors for her. She ran lightly, her sandaled feet slapping on the cold stone.

  “Who’s there?” came a voice from a not-too-distant cell. “Who’s there with that light?”

  “It’s . . . it’s me.” Mouse hurried toward that voice, then knelt down, looking through a stone grate.

  In a tiny crawl space where she could neither stand nor sit upright, huddled the prophetess. She peered up through the grate, and Mouse saw her eyes glitter in the torchlight. One hand reached out and grabbed the stone barrier. “I hoped you would come,” she said.

  Now that she was here, Mouse hardly knew what to say or do. It was all too strange and terrible! “You are the Silent Lady,” she whispered. “Please, tell me you are.”

  But the prisoner shook her head. “I cannot tell you what I do not know. Who is this Silent Lady?”

  “The harbinger of our freedom,” Mouse answered as she had been taught. “The forerunner of the Flame.”

  The prisoner’s face was earnest but not frightened in the torchlight. “Tell me what she did,” she said. “Why do you revere her so?”

  “She killed the Wolf Lord,” said Mouse.

  The calm faded from the prisoner’s face. She looked as though she had seen a ghost. Her hand dropped away from the stone bar and pressed into the too-close wall. But she said only, “Go on.”

  “The Flame at Night sent her to rescue us from the wolf,” said Mouse. “Though she was unable to speak because of his evil curse, she was empowered by the Flame. And when she had killed him, her voice was freed, and she spread the word throughout the Land that we were delivered.”

  “No,” the prisoner whispered. “Oh no.”

  “She is the prophetess,” Mouse persisted. “She liberated us from slavery and prepared us to receive the goddess. She is the great servant of the Flame. And . . . and you are she, aren’t you?” She was down on her hands and knees now, her face close to the stone barricade. “Aren’t you?” she repeated.

  “No,” said the prisoner. “No, it isn’t true.”

  Mouse thought she would burst with frustration. “Don’t lie to me!” she cried. “I know you are! I don’t know how I know, but I know !”

  The prisoner’s body tensed as though she wished to draw back, but there was nowhere for her to go. The close confines of the cell held her, and the most she could do was sit with her knees up to her chest, her head pressed into them; the stone grating above nearly touched her ear. But she still held the starflower gently in one hand, and it gleamed.

  The prisoner said, “I saw to it that the Wolf Lord was slain.”

  “I knew it.” Mouse breathed the words, overwhelmed by the sudden relief that flooded her. “The Flame sent you.”

  “No!” The prisoner’s hands balled into fists. But there was deep sorrow etched on her face, and almost immediately she contradicted herself. “Yes. I came at the behest of the Flame at Night. I came because she wished vengeance upon her former lover. But it wasn’t vengeance I meted out on Amarok! I did not come to do the Dragonwitch’s dirty work.”

  Mouse sat up, pulling her face away from the cold stone. A weight dropped in her stomach, and her mind whirled. “The goddess would not take a lover,” she said at last. “She is Flame. She is Fire. Fire cannot love.”

  “You are right,” said the prisoner. “Fire cannot love.”

  “Fire is too holy to love!” Mouse insisted.

  “There you are mistaken.”

  Mouse could not see the prisoner’s face. But she saw the white light of the starflower shifting, casting the shadows of the stone bars in several directions. Then, turning her gaze up to the grate once more, the prisoner looked at Mouse.

  “Only holiness,” she said, “can truly love.”

  Blasphemy. Mouse had never heard it spoken before. Not out loud. Sometimes she had suspected her old grandmother of harboring thoughts unworthy of those who served the Flame. But Granna had never dared speak those thoughts.

  Yet there lay the prisoner—the prophetess, the Silent Lady—speaking words that earned her nothing less than flaming death. Mouse could not speak. She sat staring down into eyes that were too familiar.

  “Mouse is not your name. Is it?” said the prisoner after a long silence.

  Mouse shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so,” said the prisoner. “Your name is bigger than that. Your name is full of hope. Your name is—”

  “No one knows my name!” Mouse snapped, though her
voice was still scarcely more than a whisper. “The names of the Flame’s servants are secret.”

  “I am sorry for you,” said the prisoner. “The greatest tragedy is to never be known.”

  Tears welled up in Mouse’s eyes. Unbidden, a picture of Granna flashed across her mind’s eye. And with it came Granna’s warning: “If you go down to the temple, child, no one will ever know your true name, and you yourself will forget it.”

  Had she forgotten it already? Was she becoming nothing more than Mouse? Would she someday be like the Speaker, her whole being caught up in her temple role?

  Mouse bowed her head. At last she said in a low tone, hoping the dark echoes of the passage would not catch and carry her words:

  “They’re going to kill you, Silent Lady.”

  “I know.”

  “But you are the prophetess.”

  “I am not whom you have believed me to be. Nor are the worlds what you have been told they are.”

  Trembling so that she could scarcely get the words out, Mouse said, “Is there no one who can save you?”

  Suddenly the prisoner’s hand darted out between the slats and grabbed hold of Mouse’s. “My life or death matters little now,” said the prisoner. “What matters is that my mission here is not without purpose. I came to relay Etanun’s message, and this I have done. It is up to him to see the rest of my Lord’s purpose accomplished. But Etanun must know! He must know that I have told Hri Sora where Halisa rests. And he must name his heir.”

  “The heir,” Mouse repeated. “The heir who can carry the sword from that chamber and not die?”

  “Yes,” said the prisoner. “The time is coming, the end of Halisa’s sleep. The heir will take up the sword. And he will put an end to these chains that bind you. The heir will set free the captive names of my people!”

  Mouse tried to draw her hand back, but those gentle fingers were stronger than they looked. “The goddess requires Fireword,” Mouse said. “The goddess will use it for her great purpose.”

  “She will use it for no purpose other than vengeance,” said the prisoner. “And when she is done, she will destroy it.”

  “It is an evil weapon,” said Mouse. “I saw it kill Stoneye.”

  “The sword did not bring about his death,” said the prisoner. “His misplaced loyalty was his undoing. His misplaced love.”

  “Love is a terrible thing,” Mouse whispered.

  “Only love gone astray,” said the prisoner. “Only imperfect love.”

  Mouse tried once more, feebly, to shake off the prisoner’s grip. “You frighten me.”

  “Oh, child!” said the prisoner. “The time has come you should be frightened. If fear will awaken you, be afraid! And then be courageous in your fear and act!”

  “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “You aren’t the mouse they have made you be. You were meant for so much more!”

  “The goddess has made us more,” said Mouse. “She liberated us from the Wolf Lord, and she gave us back our voices. Now we are stronger even than the men, and we rule this land.”

  But the prisoner shook her head, and she squeezed Mouse’s fingers. “You do not rule,” she said. “You are more enslaved now than you ever were. And you know it.”

  Mouse bowed her head and did not say what she thought. But she whispered at last: “How can I help you, lady?”

  There was a long silence. Then the prisoner said, “Bend down here so that I may see your face.”

  Mouse did not like to, but she could think of no excuse to refuse. She leaned down, her face once more close to the stone bars. The gleaming starflower shone in her eyes, but its light was mild. It reflected in the dark depths of the prisoner’s eyes, which studied her and read things Mouse suspected she did not wish to show. She could not meet that gaze. She felt as though it could look down into the hidden places of her soul, and she feared what it would see there.

  “Poor lost one,” said the prisoner. “But my Master has always used the most unlikely to accomplish his ends. Perhaps, little mouse, you are bound for a greater destiny than this future of ashes before you.”

  Then the prisoner pressed her face as close to the stone as she could and spoke her next words in a hushed, hurried tone. “Listen now; listen carefully. I am going to ask you to do something quite dreadful. I know they have required things of you as well. I know they are driving you, like the Black Dogs themselves at your heels. But I am asking you to do this for my sake, not for theirs.”

  Mouse went cold as stone inside.

  “Follow the blue star,” said the prisoner. “You will see it in the north sky tonight. Follow the blue star, without turning to the right or left, walking straight and true after its course. It will lead you to Etanun, Halisa’s former master. When you find him, tell him that I have done as he asked. And tell him that the rest is up to him.”

  Mouse’s voice shook so that she could scarcely speak. “Will he know where to find the heir?”

  “Ask him,” said the prisoner. One hand reached up between the stone bars and touched Mouse’s cheek. “Ask him,” she said again, “but don’t think you’ll deceive him.”

  “Deceive him?” Mouse said. “What do you mean?”

  “You will know what I mean soon enough.”

  Then she drew back into her cell, and the light of the starflower was hidden so that Mouse could no longer see her. “If you meet my comrade, Sir Eanrin the cat, he will help you. He is good and noble, though he may not at first seem so to you. Tell him of my fate, and he will help.”

  The prisoner’s voice was low and strong despite the darkness into which she was now plunged. “Follow the blue star, child. Do what you must.”

  6

  I WAS TOO WEAK TO FLEE. The Dragon took my face in his hands and they burned me, yet somehow the burn felt right.

  “You are my kin,” said he, the Dark Father. “You don’t belong in this world or any world where Lumé and Hymlumé sing. They sing in praise of the One whom Etanun serves. Can you bear that?”

  I shook my head even as he held it.

  “No,” he agreed. “You cannot. So let us make these worlds after our own fashion. Let us see what songs they will sing when fire rains from the sky.”

  I whispered, “Fire from the sky.”

  “Let me kiss you,” he said.

  “Kiss me, then,” said I.

  Mouse, dressed as a boy, slipped unseen from the Citadel of the Living Fire into the night. She scarcely believed it. It must all be a dream, a nightmare even. She was not one to run away, unless it was to hide. She was not one to step beyond the rules of life, to risk the anger of the Flame.

  But here she was, clad in the rags of a slave boy, disgraceful attire for one of the Citadel’s own. She dared not venture beyond the temple grounds as herself, however. She must be secret; she must be unseen; she must attract no watching eye.

  So she passed between the guards at the gate and fled across the plain, and above her shone the blue star. She followed it as she had been told. The way was straight across the empty plain. She ran without turning until she reached a place where a deep gorge cut the dry plain.

  Mouse stood upon the brink of that sharp drop, looking down at the rushing river below, and at the forest into which that river flowed and disappeared.

  There could be no going around. The gorge stretched for miles in both directions, and the star led right over it.

  To do as the Silent Lady asked, Mouse would have to climb down that rocky way, and she would have to cross not only the river, but also the forest.

  Dawn was approaching. The blue star, having run its course across the sky all night, was fading away. In the half-lit gloom that was neither night nor day, Mouse scurried down the gorge. The river churned dark and swift, and she thought at first it was hungry for her, the white crests of rapids like a salivating mouth. But as she drew near, she thought instead that it was merely wary of her approach.

  When she reached the bottom of the gorge, she found
her feet on slick stone dampened by the river, which, this close, seemed more than ever to be a living entity, watching her as it flowed. Though she wanted to wash her gritty hands in the running water, she did not dare. Instead, she picked her way along the bank, keeping close to the gorge wall. The sun was rising. When she looked up, she could scarcely see the blue star.

  The forest loomed large. The trees grew right down to the edge of the river, some plunging great, twisting roots into its rapids and clinging defiantly. Mouse trembled as she drew near. She did not like the looks of this forest, so different from the mountain jungles in which she had herded goats as a child. There, she’d had only to worry about wolves and panthers stalking in the shadows.

  Here, she felt she must fear the shadows themselves.

  “Follow the blue star,” the Silent Lady had said, “without turning to the right or left.”

  Mouse looked up at the gorge wall and thought there was no way she would ever climb out again in any case. The river could not be crossed. There was no option left to her. She must do as she was told. She must deliver her message to Etanun, or she must perish in the attempt.

  “Fire burn,” she whispered. “Fire purify.”

  She stepped into the shadows of the trees.

  Immediately she knew, without knowing how she knew, that she had stepped outside of her world. The river still ran close by, but she sensed that if she turned, she would not see the open gorge behind her. She felt the forest surrounding her, extending forever, unimpeded by gorge walls, overshadowing the river, wherever it flowed.

  She was beyond her own world. And in this place of thick-woven tree branches, she could not see the blue star.

  Mouse stood like a statue, not daring even to breathe. If she breathed, she would scream; and if she screamed, she would panic; and if she panicked, she would run and run and run and never stop.

  She peered up, trying to see between the branches and leaves, and she couldn’t help wondering if there even was a sky beyond them, much less any stars.

  Should she go? Should she start walking, following the flow of the river, hoping the star, wherever it was, still led this way? “Without turning to the right or left,” the Silent Lady had said. But what about when the star was no longer visible? What hope or help was there for her then? Was she to sit here in the world beyond her own and . . . wait?