Dragonwitch

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  “Come,” said the Speaker, beckoning, and Mouse had no choice but to approach. The high priestess put a hand on her shoulder and directed her toward the doorway. “Beyond lies the near abode of the goddess. Enter on your knees, and may your righteous heart guard you.”

  As instructed, Mouse went down on her hands and knees, her eyes fixed upon the flat stone rooftop. She crawled, pushing through the heavy curtain, and her heart hammered like death tolls in her throat.

  She entered a dark, small chamber that smelled heavily of incense, an incense that failed to disguise another scent Mouse could not at first recognize. Scattered about with no apparent order, little braziers gave off the dull red glow of dying embers. Otherwise, the room was empty, save for another red curtain, partially blackened by smoke and burned along the edges, which hung at its far end.

  Beyond it, Mouse sensed a presence. A powerful, burning presence. The presence of Fire deified.

  Sweat poured down her face, dampening her robes, dripping through the ratty ends of her hair. “Fire burn,” she whispered, then realized she had not spoken loud enough. Still on her hands and knees, knocking her forehead to the stone, she said in a loud, trembling voice, “Fire burn! Fire purify! Make us worthy in your eyes and let us see your face!”

  She wasn’t certain if it was the right prayer for this occasion. No one had prepared her for what to say when she approached the goddess.

  A voice emerged from the darkness beyond the braziers.

  “Who is there? What do you want?”

  It was like the hiss and spit of dying flame. It sounded as though it pained the throat and mouth of the one who spoke. Agony dripped from the words.

  “I am . . . I am your humble servant,” Mouse said, afraid even to speak her name. “I have gone into the world beyond the mountains, and I have sought for he who might deliver Fireword into your hands.”

  “Fireword?”

  A low, hushed, horrible sound. The word itself was poison in the ear.

  Mouse swallowed. She rose upright, her knees still on the stone, and made the signs of reverence due the goddess, the same signs she had made every time she lit the evening torches, again hoping this was right. “I have brought him to the Citadel,” she said, “as you commanded. And now I beg that you would spare the life of the Silent Lady, your great prophetess.”

  She saw a hand. It crept out from behind the curtain and took hold. A large hand, gray even in the red light of the braziers. It fumbled, then gripped the curtain tightly and drew it back.

  Mouse looked upon the face of her goddess.

  Her goddess who was blind.

  Her skin was gray ash, flaking from her body in a continuous cloud of dust. Her fingers were like bits of black charcoal, and she dug them into her own face, leaving black streaks. Her hair, as colorless as the rest of her, sizzled on the ends, red embers burning, and broke and fell away, but there was always more. Her form was like a woman’s but also not, for there was no femininity left in her.

  But her eyes were the worst of all. They were like two small lumps of burning coal, red and crackling with heat. They saw nothing yet revealed her soul. They revealed her inner fire.

  She opened her mouth, and glowing red and smoke billowed up from inside.

  “The heir?” the Flame at Night said. “They have got the heir?”

  “Yes,” Mouse gasped. “He’s in the dungeons even now. So please, please, spare the life of the Silent Lady!”

  The Flame laughed. It was a hot, roiling sound that swept over Mouse and knocked her to the ground, her forehead pressed against the stone that was suddenly hot and painful to the touch. She saw sparks land and break upon the ground, and still the goddess laughed. Then there were words in the sound, and they were dreadful as well.

  “At last! Send him, send him at once!” The voice rose to a manic frenzy. “Send him to the Diggings and bring me Etanun’s sword! I have waited too long for this. Bring me Halisa!”

  Afraid she would be incinerated in the Flame’s eager joy, Mouse backed out, catching and stumbling over the long red robe as she went, trying to cover her face with her arms, forgetting all her prayers and all her signs in her haste. She felt the curtain behind her, turned, and fell through it, landing headlong upon the rooftop, which felt cool compared to the lair from which she had emerged.

  There was no time for thought. The Speaker was kneeling beside her, lifting her to her feet. “Did you see the goddess?” she asked.

  Mouse, coughing and hacking, could only nod.

  “And she desires that we bring her the sword?”

  Again a nod.

  The Speaker released Mouse’s shoulders, letting the girl fall back to her knees. She strode around the altar, calling orders. “Prepare for the descent!” she cried. “We journey into the dark once more! The goddess has commanded.”

  But Mouse, bent double, her stomach heaving, closed her eyes and forced back the scream, the sob that wanted desperately to escape. For she knew now. She knew the truth.

  There was no goddess.

  There was only the Dragonwitch.

  As he lay in the dark, every sound was amplified to the Chronicler’s straining ears. He heard his fellow prisoner’s breathing, however light it was. Once or twice, he thought he heard her whisper, and even caught hints of words.

  “Beyond the Final Water falling . . .”

  He could not tell the passing of time in this place any more than he had in the Wood Between. All was darkness. A darkness cold and distant, even as the cell walls were close and pressing. He had to be careful not to let himself think. As soon as he did, his imagination would take over. It told him that the walls, already so close, were closer still. That they slowly compressed on all sides, ready to squeeze the life out of him.

  He realized that his fist was clenched so tightly that it hurt. Slowly he unclenched it, and something gleamed in the dark.

  Wondering, the Chronicler peered into a handful of sparkling water. Water that should long since have dripped away and evaporated, but which lay in his palm, a tiny pool of light.

  Then, for an instant, the Chronicler thought he held rushing rivers in his hand.

  The pound of approaching steps overhead. The Chronicler closed his fist, blocking out the light and the vision, and sat in darkness, straining his ears. He heard the thud of a procession making its way down the stairs. In another minute, there was the glimmer of a torch, and he turned to it as a moth to the flame, realizing that it might mean his death but desiring the warmth, the glow.

  “Chronicler of Gaheris” came Imraldera’s voice, nearly lost in the approaching pound of feet, “if the sword is yours, you cannot give it to the Dragonwitch. Do you understand?”

  He didn’t. Not the way she wished him to.

  Slaves washed in torchlight flung open the grate above him, and he was dragged out by his arms, once more suspended between them. They carried him from the darkness of the dungeons, far from Imraldera’s voice, which called after him desperately, “Do you understand? Chronicler!”

  Up the stairs they went and on out of the temple, outside into the blistering light of day that stung the Chronicler’s eyes like a thousand wasps. They carried him down the red stair cut in the foundation stone. By the time they neared the bottom, he could see, though blearily, the host gathered below. The high priestess, glorious in her wig and wreaths, stood at the head of the procession, her face shielded in a thick blindfold.

  Beyond her was the crack in the red stone. From it poured the stench of Death.

  “No,” the Chronicler said. Then he screamed and pulled and struggled, but there was no escape from the strong arms holding him. Another slave stepped forward and bound his hands with a thick cord that bit into his wrists. Still he would not have relented, save that a big man picked him up by the back of his shirt, lifting him like a helpless kitten dangling in its mother’s jaws. The humiliation overwhelmed him, and though he kicked feebly, he had no heart to continue the struggle.

  The
high priestess stepped before him, her mouth hard beneath the black blindfold. She spoke and he understood nothing she said. But he thought—and the thought surprised him, especially in this shameful moment suspended before the door of Death—that there was heartbreak in her voice.

  He heard the name, “Halisa,” and knew what they were about to make him do.

  The next moment he was plunged, without the protection of a blindfold, into the darkness of the Diggings.

  The slave carried him for the first several paces, then put him down and let him walk, led like a lamb to the knife and the fire. He had listened incredulously when Mouse told her bizarre tale. Unicorns and temples and underground passages . . . none of it fit within the range of belief he had always known. He scarcely believed it now as he set one foot down before the other, following the slave and the high priestess, lost in the midst of the procession.

  He was thankful in that moment to be so small and so surrounded by his enemies. Their shadows and their long robes provided a shield against the darkness beyond them. The Diggings were vast, and the footsteps of the priestesses and slaves echoed forever. The passage they followed was broad and descended quickly into a great cavern, a cavern that could not be seen for its vastness no matter how many torches were held aloft. Other passages branched off from this, twining away like snakes.

  If the Chronicler allowed himself to hear anything beyond the tramp of feet and the breath of his captors, he could have heard the voices of the lost crying out from the depths.

  His stomach jolted with the pain of realization. This place, where slave miners had spent the short span of their lives in search of a legend, rested in the Between. Just as the Wood itself stood between worlds, so this realm stood between the world of life and that of death.

  He could deny belief in magic swords. He could rebel against the very idea of chosen destinies, of kingship, of stars come to earth or doors opened.

  But this much was true beyond doubt: There was life, and there was death, and no one could survive between.

  Suddenly there was a loud crash and clatter. A horrible sound in that darkness, a sound that must draw all the phantoms of the lost teeming to this place where the living dared walk. The Chronicler startled, for it was the slave beside him who had fallen suddenly, his torch clattering from his hands.

  It was like the burst of a storm. The acolytes screamed, and the priestesses cursed them ineffectually to silence. Eunuchs rushed to the fallen one, and weapons were drawn, and frightened faces, many of them blindfolded, swam before the Chronicler’s vision.

  Then he was faced by a pair of black eyes that he knew.

  Mouse drew a knife from the sleeve of her dark robe and cut the cord binding his wrists.

  “Run,” she said, and in this darkened realm, he understood her. The next moment, she was gone, vanished into the crowd of screams and curses.

  Life and death swam before the Chronicler’s eyes. He felt the pull of the Netherworld, the lure that must have driven a hundred or more miners to madness. For the space of a breath, he resisted.

  Then he was running. Ducking under arms, dashing between pressing bodies, and he knew that even if they were aware, they would not catch him. The pull of the Netherworld was too strong. He would enter it.

  And he would be lost.

  7

  WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, I was filled with fire, brighter than life, brighter than death, brighter than the sun or the moon. I stood there in the darkness of my Dark Father’s realm and turned to face him on his throne.

  “Look at me!” I cried, raising my wings. “Look at my fire! Look at my power! Am I not glorious beyond description?”

  “You’re bright enough,” Death-in-life replied through flame-wreathed teeth. “But don’t forget your place. You are my child and you will do as I say. You will kill the Brothers Ashiun.”

  The heady marvel of the strength I felt was more than anything I had ever known. Greater than when I had stood before my brother’s dead body and felt the sudden surge of queenship inside me. Greater than when I first took the Dragon’s kiss and destroyed that mortal maid. I was a force like the wind, like hurricanes, like earthquakes.

  “I am Hri Sora!” I proclaimed. “I am the Flame at Night! All the worlds will tremble before me, for never has there been such a fire as mine!”

  “Whom do you serve?” the Dragon asked me.

  “None but myself!” I cried.

  The goblins flung open the library door and tossed Leta in. She stumbled across the room, tripping over the tatters of her skirt, and fell against the Chronicler’s desk. Her hand overturned an inkwell and knocked a stack of parchments to the floor. Red-brown ink pooled like blood across the stone.

  The door slammed and she was alone.

  She stood clutching the desk with one hand, her other clenched tightly around the key. How long this solitude would last, she could not guess, and she must use it, must think. Why had Mintha given her this key? What secret might it unlock that Mintha could not access herself?

  Footsteps outside pounded in Leta’s ear. She hastily dropped the key down the front of her dress, shivering as its coldness slid against her skin.

  The door opened. Corgar ducked his head inside.

  Leta turned about, her back pressed into the Chronicler’s desk, and stared up at her captor. She thought she’d never find breath to breathe again.

  “I need to know the location of the House of Lights,” Corgar said.

  Leta’s mouth hung open. She could hear the Chronicler saying, “A symbol of enlightenment, of understanding. The House of Lights is no literal house.”

  And her reply: “I think you’re wrong.”

  She tried to form words now, her lips moving without sound until finally she managed to gasp, “I don’t know where it is.”

  “I didn’t think you would,” said the goblin. He crossed the room in two great strides, and she shrank from his towering presence. He reached out and took a book from a shelf, his claws gouging the fine leather binding. He shoved it at her, and Leta grabbed it close to her chest as though to somehow protect it. “I need you to search these documents,” said Corgar. “Read them all, every line, and tell me what you find. Perhaps hidden in this room is the secret to what I seek.”

  Leta turned staring eyes from him to the shelves of books and scrolls and loose pages, many of them still indecipherable to her unpracticed eye.

  “Do you understand me, mortal?” the goblin demanded.

  Her throat was too dry to swallow, and her voice croaked from her mouth. “Where is the Chronicler?” she asked.

  Corgar’s white eyes narrowed as he looked down upon her. “Do you mean the little king?” His voice was harsh and almost bitter. “Why should you care? Your task is before you. Open that book.”

  Her fingers trembling so that she feared she would drop it, Leta spun the book around and laid its spine across her arm, supporting its weight as she spread the cover. The pages, full of the Chronicler’s familiar writing, blurred before her tear-filled eyes. She forced herself to study the passage she’d opened to. It was one she knew quite well, which was good, because otherwise Corgar’s heavy breathing would have frightened her too much to make it out.

  “Speak up,” Corgar demanded. “What does it say?”

  Trying once more to swallow, Leta read:

  “The king will find his way

  To the sword beneath the floor.

  The night will flame again

  When the Smallman finds the door.

  “The dark won’t hide the Path

  When you near the House of Lights—”

  “That’s it!” Corgar cried, and one long finger came down hard upon the open page. “That’s it! The House of Lights! That’s what I need! Tell me, where is it?”

  But Leta shook her head. “I . . . I’m sorry. That’s all it says. Just the rhyme. The House itself was lost long ago. If it ever existed.”

  “If it ever existed?”

  Corgar’s arm came
down hard, tearing the book from Leta’s hand, shredding the open pages and scattering them at his feet. She retreated behind the desk, pressing her back to the wall, and watched as the great goblin turned and swept a shelf free of scrolls and loose paper that flew like large snowflakes in the air. Leta wanted to cower, to flee.

  Instead, she yelled.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Corgar, startled at the ferocity in her voice, turned and saw her eyes flash fire. And she, watching all the long labor of the Chronicler swirling in destruction, strode through it, her hands clenched into fists.

  “If you want me to search these documents, you’ll oblige me by not destroying them first! What if you just shredded your precious secret? Do you expect me to pick up all those little bits and piece them back together? Do you?”

  The next moment his hand was on her throat, and her back was against the wall behind, her feet kicking the air. She gagged, unable to draw a breath, and tore at his arm. His eyes were close to hers, his gaze coldly intense. For a strangled moment she believed for the hundredth time in the last few days that her end had come.

  Then, slowly, Corgar loosened his hold, and Leta slid down until her feet touched the floor. Her back remained against the wall, and he loomed over her, his ugly face leering down.

  “You’re not afraid of me,” he growled.

  “You’re mistaken,” she said and wondered how much longer her knees would support her. “I’m terrified of you.”

  “Do you mock me?”

  She shook her head hastily, her eyes wide.

  His lips closed over his jagged teeth, and for an instant his face looked almost human. “Hmm,” he grunted, then stepped back, apparently no longer angry. He gestured at the desk, took a heavy volume from a nearby table, and tossed it her way. Leta caught it against her stomach, nearly dropping it but managing to keep hold.

  “Start reading,” Corgar said and took a place in the dark corner by the door.

  Leta spent the whole of the next three days poring over books and scrolls, sleeping only when she dropped from exhaustion. Corgar had quickly realized that she wasn’t a particularly skilled reader, and she half wondered if he would kill her when he found out. But he didn’t. In fact, when she confessed her lack of experience, he said nothing, only shrugged and indicated she should continue.