Witchlanders

by Lena Coakley

  He wanted to go back to Pima, swing her up into his arms, but she was already reassured. She gave him a wide grin, then popped back behind the curtain. A moment later, Ryder heard Skyla’s voice:

  “Pima! Get off me!”

  Outside, the moon was still up. Ryder’s breath came out in clouds. He trotted around the side of the cottage to the outhouse, crossing his arms in front of him to ward off the cold. It won’t be long, he thought, and he glanced at the sky for any sign of the strange, low clouds that signaled the coming of the chilling day. Nothing yet. There had been years when the hicca froze in the fields, but so far, his luck was holding.

  It wasn’t until he came out of the outhouse and was starting toward the river path that he noticed he wasn’t alone. A person, silvery in the moonlight, was stirring the dying embers of the firecall with a long stick. At first he thought it was Mabis. Then he stopped.

  It was a witch.

  A mountain witch—it had to be!

  Ryder had seen witches before. A few times a year they came down to the village shrine to lead prayers, and for the past two harvests he’d gone with Fa to take the tithe up to the coven. The witches did no farming themselves but relied on villagers to give them one-quarter of all the hicca farmed. As far as Ryder was concerned, they did little for it. He didn’t intend to act impressed, or give this girl any more respect than she deserved.

  She was about his age, fully as tall, and slender as a hicca stalk. When her eyes met his she froze, then smiled and continued to poke through the mounds of white ash and dimly glowing coals. She reminded him of a snowcat—a beautiful, dangerous thing from a cold, high place. But was she a witch after all? He noticed that she was wearing white—a quilted tunic and loose-fitting pants. It certainly looked like the traditional costume of witches, but he thought they always wore red.

  “Are you from the coven?” Ryder asked. The girl looked surprised to be spoken to. She made a movement over her mouth, a gesture for quiet. “Well, are you?”

  The girl frowned and ignored him. Yes, it must be a witch. Only one of them could be so arrogant. Briefly he considered just asking her to go away. He didn’t like to think what Mabis would do when she found out her call had been answered. He knew he should probably make the traditional greeting, the witch’s bow, but the idea of bowing to someone on his own land galled him.

  The girl moved around the edge of the dying fire, intent on something she saw in the ashes. Suddenly she made a flicking motion with her stick, and a small, knoblike object leapt out of the pit in a spray of sparks. It couldn’t be the bone, Ryder thought.

  He bent to pick it up, but the witch touched him on the shoulder and shook her head. She unwrapped a white sash from around her waist and bound her hand to protect it from the heat. Ryder’s eyes widened. The thing she picked up was Mabis’s bone.

  “That’s my mother’s,” he told her. She wrinkled her forehead. “You should give—”

  The witch wouldn’t let him finish. Her other hand darted forward, and with the tips of her fingers she gently squeezed his upper and lower lips together. For a moment Ryder was too surprised to move, and he could only stand there staring into the girl’s face, feeling her touch on his lips. He couldn’t quite tell in the dim light, but she seemed to be smiling at him.

  Slowly she withdrew her fingers.

  “I don’t understand,” he snapped. “Am I not good enough to speak to you?”

  The smile, if it had ever been there, left her face. She gave a little huffing sound and turned away.

  “Wait!” said Ryder. “That’s not your bone!” But the girl was moving quickly toward the stand of trees that separated the cottage from the rest of the farm. “It doesn’t belong to you!”

  At that moment, Ryder caught a glimpse of the prayer hill, just visible over the tops of the trees.

  “Oh, Aata’s blood,” he cursed under his breath.

  Dawn was breaking. Silhouetted against the pink sky were three black shapes. Tents. Witch tents—without a doubt. The girl in white wasn’t the only one to have come in answer to his mother’s call.

  Ryder went back to the cottage and found Mabis standing in the middle of the room, wearing her reds. Her crimson sleeves were pushed up to the elbows, and the ankles of her pants were wet. In one hand, stalks of uprooted maiden’s woe dripped water onto the dirt floor.

  “I can’t believe you made me throw my bone into the fire,” she cried.

  “What? Made you?”

  “Did you see the tents? I should have known they’d come.”

  A thick perfume entered Ryder’s nose. The black trumpets smelled spicy and pleasant, but underneath that first fresh scent there was another, more subtle aroma—the hint of something too sweet, like rotting fruit.

  “The witches will want me to cast for them, I’m sure of it,” Mabis continued, her voice strained and nervous. “But how can I throw the bones without my anchor?”

  “Where did you get that maiden’s woe?” Ryder demanded. There were at least four open flowers in his mother’s hand and one or two buds. “They can’t have grown so quickly. I’ve been pulling them up!”

  “I told you, Ryder,” she said. “It was my own will that kept me away.” The black trumpets scattered water as she gestured at him. “You don’t think there would be something left in the ashes, do you? Something of my bone? You could get it for me.”

  “Oh . . .” Ryder’s mind raced. He should tell his mother about the white witch. But . . . they’d all be better off without that bone, wouldn’t they? Without her continuing to believe the unbelievable? “I’ve just come from the fire. Your bone is gone.”

  Mabis narrowed her eyes at him. He’d always found it difficult to keep secrets from his mother, but this time he met her gaze. After all, it was the truth.

  “What’s that on your mouth?”

  Ryder wiped his lips with his fingers. It was ash from where the girl had touched him. “Uh . . .”

  Just then there was a loud knock at the cottage door, and both of them jumped. The door opened, but it was not a witch.

  “Dassen!” said Mabis. The village tavern keeper filled the doorway. He was all huge shoulders and red face and red hands rough from work. His eyes were shrewd, though. To Ryder, they seemed to take in everything, in spite of the dim morning light, including the bunch of maiden’s woe in Mabis’s hand.

  “They want you to come,” he said to her. “And only you.”

  CHAPTER 4

  BARBIZA

  Falpian wasn’t alone. Strange girls were sleeping in his bed. On either side of him were bodies, sleeping bodies, their outlines distinct underneath the down quilts. He froze, eyes wide in the dark.

  “Hello,” he whispered. “Is someone there?”

  A narrow thread of light was visible between the curtains. He sat up silently, letting his eyes adjust. It wasn’t a dream. He could smell these girls, he could hear them breathing. With his heart thumping in his ears, Falpian slowly reached out a hand and grabbed the end of a soft white coverlet. He yanked it back. . . .

  Nothing. There was nothing there. The lump beside him was just a lump—and the others, too. Falpian patted down the covers with his hands, even put his head under the bed. What had made him think they were female? he wondered. But they had been. He could almost see their faces—an older one and a younger one. Their odd names. Sweetlamb.

  Something huge and pale materialized from a shadowy corner, and Falpian yelped. A monstrous animal gave a leap, knocking him back onto the bed. It pinned him down, shaggy face looming over him. Falpian tried to move, but the thing was at least twice his weight. Long, oversize canines curved saberlike from its upper jaw. It barked, releasing a string of drool into Falpian’s face.

  “Yes, yes,” Falpian grunted. “I love you, too.”

  Moments later he was stumbling into the kitchen and opening the heavy door to the outside. His dog, Bodread the Slayer, bounded out, tail wagging. Bo was happy at Stonehouse, Falpian thought—going wild, hunt
ing for his own breakfast. He’d been the runt of the litter once, and he was still small for a dreadhound, though that was a bit hard to believe sometimes. When Falpian was a little boy, he’d begged Bron and his father not to drown the scrawny puppy, which was how he’d gotten a dreadhound in the first place. They were supposed to be magician’s dogs—but by the time anyone realized that Falpian would never be a magician, he and Bo were inseparable.

  The great gray beast looked back at him, then out toward the red mountains, as if he wanted Falpian to join him, as if there was something out there he wanted his master to be happy about too.

  “You go on, Bo. Catch me a rabbit.”

  He shut the door again and sat down, rubbing his eyes. In front of him on the table, the bronze scroll container lay open at one end, but the rolled parchment that had been inside was still unread. It sat next to the holder, its red wax seal unbroken.

  “Kar’s eyes,” he cursed softly. At least his dreams and his dog had distracted him for a while.

  Written hastily in black ink above the scroll’s seal was the message: Not to be opened for fifty days. Until then, sing your brother’s prayers and make yourself useful.

  Fifty days. Was his father serious? It was enough to give anyone bad dreams, enough to drive anyone mad. To have some great purpose, some important mission, and then to be forbidden to know what it was? It was nonsense, it was unfair, it was some cruel form of torture!

  For the hundredth time, Falpian picked up the scroll and ran his finger over the red seal, willing the wax to crack. Whatever was written on that parchment was the thing he had to do to make his father look him in the eye again. It was the thing he had to do to make things between them go back to the way they’d been before—he just knew it!

  “‘Make yourself useful,’” Falpian muttered. “What does that even mean?”

  When he was a boy, Falpian had assumed his father’s love was something permanent, something he didn’t have to earn. He and his twin brother Farien were special. They would be a singer pair someday; their harmonies would make a magic unheard of since the old times.

  As years went by, his mother’s jewels disappeared one by one, sold to pay the tutors and the singing masters. Falpian’s little sisters learned to mend the holes in their silks so that stitches didn’t show. But every sacrifice would be rewarded a hundredfold when the great Falpian and Farien came into their magic. That was the thing, though: They never did.

  Falpian stared at the scroll, half wishing it would burst into flames so he wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. He imagined long lines of Caraxus family ancestors, all sitting up at Kar’s great feast, lips curling as they looked down on him, the food of the God turning bitter in their mouths. His father had worn that same look when he spoke to Falpian last, as if he tasted something foul. His manner toward his sons had changed abruptly about a year before Farien’s death. The tutors and the singing masters were dismissed, and everything about Falpian and his brother was suddenly wrong—their taste in books, their lack of skill with weapons, the way Falpian spoiled his dog. Magicians-to-be were allowed such caprices. Ordinary young men were not.

  Without thinking, Falpian squeezed the scroll and watched as the wax seal began to separate from the parchment, revealing a pink stain underneath. If he squeezed a little harder . . .

  No. Quickly he stuffed the scroll back into its bronze container. He stood up and strode into his small, book-lined study, opening the bottom drawer of an ornate desk with dragon legs. For a moment he hesitated, but the words on the cylinder—duty, honor, sacrifice—were like a chastisement. He shoved the container into the drawer and slammed it shut. His father was a man to be obeyed, even if he was all the way on the other side of the Bitterlands.

  Later that morning Falpian stood at the edge of the plateau, clutching his coat around him. In the mud, the dog’s footprints, big as dinner plates, led down to the wild green gorge. The Witchlands were so close, just over that mountain with the crooked spire. All his life Falpian had been told that someday the Baen people would take back what the Witchlanders had stolen during the war. Now that time was almost here, and he just wanted his father to believe he could be a part of it.

  It was a sign of his father’s arrogance that he assumed both his sons would be able to sing. Magic was a rare gift, carefully kept alive in the bloodlines of a few families. But then, the Caraxus family had magicians going back a thousand years—Falpian should be able to sing. He had studied so hard—the names of the keys and what magic they produced, how to awaken a humming stone in the heat of battle. . . . And what a lot of useless information that was, he thought bitterly, for someone who would never use it.

  But at least I have a mission, he told himself. At least I have the scroll. He knew he should be more thankful. The fact that he had a part to play at all was a great gift. Surely he could wait fifty days for it. And until then, he’d find other things to keep him busy.

  According to Bron, there was an echo site not far off the gorge path. It should be tested. It wouldn’t take long, but when he was done he’d find another task, and another—for fifty days or a hundred days or a thousand days if that’s what his father wanted.

  As Falpian started down the steep path, shreds of his dreams came back to him—a Witchlander woman with wild eyes and a mouth stained black, an old horse with a yellow mane, the sound of bones clattering on a dirt floor. He was sure he had seen his own dear sisters too, but they were strange and far away, talking to strangers, walking on water like the witches were supposed to have done during the war.

  “Dreams mean nothing,” he said aloud, trying to convince himself, trying to say what his father would. “Just . . . sing your brother’s prayers and make yourself useful!”

  * * *

  “Tell us about the dreadhounds, Dassen,” Skyla said. “And their long saber teeth.”

  “Ah, dreadhounds. Never turn your back on one. They like to attack from behind.” The tavern keeper made two long teeth with his fingers.

  “No,” said Pima, covering her eyes. “That’s too scary.”

  Skyla gave a sigh. “All right. Tell us about how you were in Barbiza and saw the Baen ships.”

  Skyla had laid out a feast for breakfast: honeycakes cooked over the fire and drizzled with fresh cream, bread with both butter and cheese, and a pot of the preserved sourberries, slippery in syrup. It wasn’t often they had guests.

  The tavern keeper smiled, and his eyes gleamed as he spoke, but every once in a while he would look to Ryder and a shadow would pass his face; Ryder could see he had something to talk to him about, something he wouldn’t say in front of the girls. Ryder wished they could have a moment alone.

  Pima and Skyla didn’t seem to notice. They leaned forward over their wooden plates, enthralled by Dassen’s stories of the war. Why they were so interested in things that happened twenty years ago, Ryder couldn’t imagine. Not now. Not when at that very moment Mabis was up on the prayer hill doing who-knew-what in those black tents.

  “I was just a boy, really,” Dassen said. “Younger than Ryder here. I was working at my uncle’s tavern in Barbiza when the Baen ships pulled into the harbor. Oh, they were uncanny, those ships. Their hulls were covered with strange writing, and they seemed to sail with no wind. Their masts were so tall they left scuff marks on the sky.”

  “Ohhh,” Pima said, her eyes round.

  “We didn’t know then that they were part of an attack, that there were other ships pulling into Tandrass at the same time. We trusted the Baen, you see. We traded with the Bitterlands back then, and some of the blackhairs even lived among us.” He shook his finger at the girls, as if to bring home a lesson. “We let down our guard.”

  “Did you see the black magicians?” Skyla asked. “The singers?”

  He shook his head. “Not many of those, thank Aata. Heard them twice, though, during the war: once in Barbiza, once at the Battle of the Dunes.” He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Hope never to hear them again. They call it
singing, but it sounds like . . . metal scraping stone.”

  Pima crammed a whole honeycake into her mouth and licked her fingers.

  “What did the witches say, Dassen?” Ryder interrupted, unable to refrain any longer. He’d finished his breakfast and was standing at the open door, looking up at the prayer hill. “Were the witches annoyed by my mother’s firecall?”

  The girls both turned to frown at Ryder.

  “Didn’t ask,” Dassen said. “I was at the coven to deliver my tithe and traveled back down with them is all. Witch business is above my head, I’m happy to say. I’ll leave that to your mother.”

  Ryder nodded.

  “Now let me tell you about the time I saved your father’s life,” Dassen said as the two girls clapped their hands.

  Ryder had known Dassen for as long as he could remember. He and Fa had fought side by side during the war, had saved each other’s lives a dozen times if their accounts were to be believed. When Ryder was small, he’d often begged to visit Dassen at the tavern. His father would lift him up to see the Baenkiller, the sword the tavern keeper displayed over the bar. Ryder had loved to count the notches carved along the hilt—one for every blackhair killed.

  Ryder turned away from the door and helped Skyla clear the plates. When they were done, Dassen took his humming stone—a trophy from the war—out of his pocket and let Pima and Skyla pass it back and forth between them. Ryder had seen it a hundred times; it was just a broken piece of rock, but the girls oohed and aahed at the strange Baen designs etched over the surface.

  “Brew us some of that sweet tea, Ryder, like your father used to make.” Dassen settled himself into his chair and brushed the crumbs out of his bushy blond beard, but he gave Ryder a knowing glance. Ryder complied, breaking off some of the dried herbs that hung in bunches from the ceiling and tossing them into the kettle on the hob.

  “Friend of mine got this off the body of a real black magician,” Dassen told the girls. “Why, if this stone were whole and the singer working it had the gift, he could use it to move an object with his voice, stop your heart with a curse . . . anything.”