Witchlanders

by Lena Coakley

  Ryder rolled his eyes and couldn’t help but smile. Dassen had some wild stories about black magicians, in spite of the fact that he’d never actually seen one. As he was dipping a ladle into the tea, the tavern keeper sidled up to him.

  “Mabis do that often?” he asked softly.

  “What?”

  Dassen looked over his shoulder. Pima was trying to work the piece of humming stone. She held it in both hands and was blowing on it furiously, her pale eyebrows knitted.

  “I saw the maiden’s woe.”

  Ryder tensed. He didn’t want Dassen telling his tavern patrons about that. They wouldn’t understand. “She’s careful,” he insisted. “It helps with the prophecy.”

  “So I’ve heard, but she had so many flowers. More than a quarter of one can be deadly. You’ve never seen her take more than that, have you?”

  Ryder felt his stomach flip. “No, of course not.”

  “What are you two talking about over there?” Skyla asked.

  “Terrible thing,” Dassen said, turning around with a grin. “This boy’s beard’s gone missing!”

  Ryder frowned, touching his bare face. He tried to laugh along with the joke, but Dassen’s words rang in his ears. A quarter of a flower—that must be wrong. Ryder had seen Mabis take five flowers in a night and still be fine the next day.

  “It’s working!” Pima yelled. “Listen!”

  They all turned their attention to the stone. Sure enough, a muffled whine seemed to be vibrating from its core, making the breakfast plates rattle faintly on the table.

  “By the twins,” Dassen said.

  Pima got up and started dancing around the room. “I’m a wicked blackhair!” she sang, delighted. “I’m a wicked blackhair! I’ll stop your heart with a curse.”

  Dassen, Skyla, and Ryder all leaned in toward the stone, their mouths open in surprise. After a few moments the whine of the stone got softer and softer, like the buzz of a dying insect, until finally they could hear it no longer.

  Pima frowned. “Is that all it does?”

  Before Dassen could answer, the door to the cottage swung open. Mabis stood in front of them, holding her bone bowl in both arms. There was an obvious black ring around the inside of her lips, and the look on her face was crazed and triumphant.

  “I’ve seen it all,” she said. She was trying to get through the door, but the bowl was too big to fit. Finally she thought of tilting it, and she made it into the room, but not without spilling her set of bones and sending them skittering over the floor.

  “No matter,” she said, laughing. She carefully set down the bowl, then lurched up again. “We’re to go back to the tents at sunset.” Mabis was suddenly solemn. “Oh, it was so clear.” She stood swaying back and forth, holding herself as if she were cold.

  “I didn’t need the anchor bone at all,” she murmured, almost to herself. “I should have remembered what my father used to say: The magic is in the witch, not in her bones.”

  Dassen stood up, clearly shocked by what he saw. “Mabis, what have you done?”

  She seemed not to hear. “Every once in a while it’s as if my mind turns a corner, and then I can see forever. I love that feeling. Even though I’m seeing terrible things, I could stay in that feeling forever.” She tottered backward, grabbing onto the wall for support. “I’ll rest now,” she said. “Wake me up at sunset. We’re all to go at sunset.” And with that, Mabis staggered toward the sleeping chamber.

  Ryder drew a deep breath. Mabis said she had done a casting without the anchor bone—but if she didn’t think she needed it anymore, what would keep her from taking the flower now?

  * * *

  Falpian had never liked singing. He’d always felt, wherever he was, that his father’s ear was cocked toward him, judging him, expecting magic that wasn’t there. It had made his stomach twist, made his tongue clumsy in his mouth.

  Now he stared down into the deep gorge. He had left the safety of the path and was standing on a small, slanted ledge about a third of the way down from Stonehouse. Below him, the tops of trees tossed. He kicked a pebble off the ledge and watched it bounce off the jagged rocks—down, down, until it finally hit the ground. Was a person really supposed to sing here? He took a breath and tried a note, but his reedy voice was quickly torn away by the gusting wind. Other ways of making himself useful sprang into his mind, safer ways.

  From somewhere in the gorge, a fearsome howl echoed, and a flock of green birds rose up chattering from the trees. Bo was hunting again. Well, at least one of them could find their voice.

  Falpian checked his feet, but he already knew they were in the right spot. The stone ledge was clearly marked with two footprints inlaid in green and gold mosaic. The mountains were full of these ancient platforms—or so he was told—places where the echo was just right, where a trained magician could harmonize with the voice that came back to him, and sometimes form a low kind of magic. But Falpian didn’t need magic to test the site. He just had to sing, in any key, and listen, checking that time and erosion hadn’t diminished the echo. It was a simple task, but, he realized, a critical one. If there really was another war coming, an echo site along the border would take on strategic importance. A lone magician singing here could stop the hearts of many Witchlander soldiers marching through the gorge—if he was good enough, and if the echo was true.

  Falpian tried the simple keys first—the key of velvet antlers, the key of cloud shadows—but his voice couldn’t seem to make the tones. He took another breath and started again in the key that had been running through his mind since he got up—the key of rocking waves. He started soft and slow, making up the song as he went, but soon his voice grew louder and more confident. Song filled the gorge, melody twisting on melody. The music he was creating surprised him, as if it wasn’t completely his own. The hairs rose on his arms and on the back of his neck, and his vision seemed clearer: the mountain a deeper red, the gorge a more fertile green.

  The echo that reverberated through the air reminded him of Farien’s voice, and as he sang, Falpian felt a sting of grief for his brother. He imagined him sitting up at Kar’s great feast, listening for his prayers, wondering why his death wasn’t being properly mourned. It must be wrong, Falpian decided, to use his brother’s mourning season to conceal some unknown mission. Guilt made his throat close.

  As the echoes died away, Falpian began to notice the cold again, the wind that gusted through his clothes. He should go back to Stonehouse, get a better coat. Clearly the echo site was fine and his task was done. But Falpian didn’t want to leave.

  Yes, this is what it should have been like, he thought as he began to sing again. He and Farien had never been able to make their voices mesh the way they were supposed to, the way everyone—everyone!—expected them to. But these harmonies were rich and complex, charged with strange energy.

  Falpian gasped, and the song stopped abruptly. For a moment he’d felt that someone else was singing with him—not an echo, but an actual person. It made no sense, he told himself, and yet, at the back of his mind, he was aware of someone, someone just out of sight and earshot. A presence.

  “Hello?” he said aloud. “Is someone there?” He felt foolish, but the words were familiar somehow, as if he’d been saying them in a dream. Of course no one answered. Falpian shook himself and sang again.

  The world swelled with color, blinding and bright. This must be magic, he realized with a shiver, or something like it. Below him, the birds in the trees grew restless, agitated by his song. They rose up in front of him in a great spiral, a dazzle of motion. He could see everything so clearly now, as if a veil that had been in front of his eyes all his life had finally been lifted. He shifted his song slightly, and one of the birds stopped in midair. Had he done that? The bird hovered right before his eyes, flapping uselessly, making no headway, as if flying against a strong wind. He was doing it! Falpian marveled at its green iridescence, and he laughed, making his laughter part of his song. No wonder he had frustrated hi
s tutors; this was so easy! For the first time he understood what he had always been taught: The world was made of music. All the things that seemed solid—the trees, the birds, his own body—were really just vibrations in the great God Kar’s endless song.

  Now all the birds had stopped, even their wings motionless. Falpian’s voice held them up. He could hear their little hearts whirring inside them, and he knew he could stop them, too. He could stop all those little hearts and make the birds rain down like stones into the gorge.

  He let them go. The birds, frightened, darted away, back to the trees. The world dimmed. Falpian steadied himself on the rocks, breathing heavily, listening to the memory of voices still humming in the gorge. A feather landed on the platform, and Falpian edged forward to pick it up, careful of the sheer drop. It was drab and grayish now, though moments before it had glittered like an emerald.

  His legs folded underneath him, and he sat down on the cold stones, trying to make sense of what had happened. Was that what it was like to have magic? The idea filled him with more guilt. After all he and Farien had suffered, after all those years of trying and trying, it couldn’t be this easy. It was too natural, like breathing, like something anyone could do.

  Farien had been like a ghost the year before he died, thin and sad, hardly speaking to anyone. Full of shame. Had it been for nothing? Were they just late bloomers as their mother had tried to tell them? Or . . . could this magic have come from Farien somehow, a parting gift from a dead twin? Could Farien be the presence he had felt?

  The wind pulled at his clothes, but Falpian didn’t fear the height anymore. Wherever this magic came from, it made him fearless, unassailable, and he liked the feeling. He ran the feather over his cheek, thinking back to the fragile hearts of the birds, how easy they would have been to stop. A human heart was no different. He had been worried about the part he would be asked to play in the coming war, but now he knew: If the message in the scroll asked him to kill, he could do it easily.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE RIGHT HAND OF AATA

  A pair of blue wings hummed across the path, and Ryder caught his breath. It was just a jewelfly, but for a moment the insect seemed to glitter like its name, leaving a trail of iridescent light.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Mabis.

  “Nothing,” said Ryder. “Nothing.” But all day this had been happening. He’d always sung in the fields, but today the song had seemed to have a life of its own—and a few times he’d actually thought there was someone singing with him. He would lift his head from his work, straining to hear a voice that was just out of earshot—and when he turned back to the hicca, the berries would seem to glow on their stalks, and the bickerbirds and redrumps would be so bright in the sky that they almost hurt his eyes. He couldn’t explain it.

  Mabis slipped her arm through his. She had slept all afternoon, and the maiden’s woe had almost entirely worn off. Only someone who knew her as well as Ryder did could see that there were still some residual effects: the twisting of the hands, the brightness in her eyes. It was time for their audience with the witches, but Ryder found himself walking slowly, dreading what they would say.

  Behind them, Pima squealed with laughter, riding Dassen like a horse. The tavern keeper bucked and pawed, weaving in and out between the trees.

  “Why is he still here?” Ryder muttered. He could understand Dassen staying for breakfast, but why wait all day for the meeting with the witches? Surely there were things to do in the tavern.

  “Because I asked him,” said Mabis. “I need him.”

  That explained it then, but Ryder didn’t know what use he could be. As far as Ryder was concerned, Dassen had already seen too much. He would be sure to spread the news that Mabis was eating maiden’s woe to every one of their neighbors. Tell something to Dassen and everyone knew; the tavern was the hub of village gossip.

  Ryder and his mother left the stand of trees, the light of the setting sun at their backs. In front of them was the prayer hill with the red mountain rising up behind it. The color seemed to burn his eyes. Ryder blinked and took a step back. Suddenly he was sure he could see every blade of grass on the hill, every zanthia tree on the mountain.

  “Are you sure you’re all right? You have the strangest look on your face.”

  “You must hear that,” he said.

  “Hear what?”

  “Someone is singing. Someone is singing up in the mountains.”

  When Ryder looked back to his mother, her brown face pierced his heart. She was so beautiful. He could read the worry lines around her eyes the way a witch could read a casting. Everything she’d done, he realized—the fire-call, the bones, the maiden’s woe—she’d done for love. Goddess, how brave she was. She’d die for him without a moment’s hesitation. Mabis grabbed his arm, and the colors of the world dimmed, like a cloud going over the sun. The moment was gone.

  “Shh,” she said, looking behind her at Dassen and Pima. “Don’t let the witches see.”

  “See what?”

  “Are you having dreams?” Her voice was low.

  Of course, his dream. The song he’d just heard was the one from his dream, the song of the sea that had lifted him up, then let him fall like a betrayal. Ryder nodded, taken aback.

  “About what? Quickly now!”

  “Girls. Two little girls who look exactly alike.”

  “Twins,” Mabis said. The worry lines on her forehead relaxed. “That’s all right, then. A dream about Aata and Aayse can’t be bad.” Ryder didn’t mention that these twins had black hair and black eyes—definitely not the prophets.

  Mabis licked her fingers and smoothed down her hair, tilting her head toward the black tents. “Just keep quiet about voices and singing,” she said. “The witches don’t need to know all our business.”

  A man in reds stood at the entrance flap to one of the tents, his hand shielding his face from the slanting light of sunset. When he saw them, he waved. As the party drew closer, Ryder could see that his beard was twisted into four spiky braids that stuck out like fingers from his chin.

  “Kef!” Ryder called. He left his mother’s side and hurried forward. Not many years before, Kef had lived in the village, the son of the dyer and his wife.

  Ryder bowed low and awkwardly made the hand gestures of the traditional witches’ greeting. Kef snorted. His teeth were badly crooked, but that didn’t change the sincerity of the smile.

  “Ryder,” he said. “If you prayed more often, you’d be more graceful.” He clasped Ryder by the forearm. “No need to bow to friends.”

  Ryder was glad that Kef still thought of him as a friend. He’d never felt the two years’ difference in their age before, but now . . . This witch in reds with his impressive beard was so different from the boy he had once known. More than once, when Ryder’s family had come to town to trade, he and Kef had climbed up onto Dassen’s roof with armfuls of honeyplums stolen from the orchard, and spent the day laughing and throwing pits at unsuspecting passersby. It was something Ryder never would have done on his own, but Kef always had a knack for finding hidden mischief in a person and drawing it out. It had been a shock to everyone when he joined the coven after his parents’ deaths.

  Kef held the tent flap open for them, nodding politely to all, but as Ryder ducked through, he caught a look of concern or maybe even pity on his friend’s face. It made him think that Kef would have had more to say had they been alone.

  Inside, it was hot and dim. The tent was made of thick black felt and decorated around the seams with curling red embroidery. In one corner an oil lamp sputtered, giving off a smell of burning goat’s fat. An older woman stood near the lamp with her arms crossed. Mabis acknowledged the witch with the barest incline of her head, while Dassen mumbled a few words of greeting. Pima turned shy and hid behind Ryder, wrapping her arms around his waist. Soon after, Skyla hurried in.

  “Where have you been?” Ryder hissed. She had disappeared that afternoon, leaving a half-filled sack of hicca in the field
s.

  Skyla looked at him with frown marks between her eyes. There it was again—that same look of pity and concern that had been on Kef’s face a moment earlier. Before Ryder could ask her what it meant, Skyla nodded toward the tent flap, and, in a flutter of white sleeves, the girl from the fire pit entered.

  Seeing her in the light of day, it was clear to Ryder that she must have a touch of Baen blood. It wasn’t unusual, especially in the towns along the border, but it must have been embarrassing for a witch to have a blackhair among her ancestors, and maybe more than one, by the look of her. Her face was not as light as milk—like the girls in his dream—but there was a paleness to her brown complexion. Ryder had known few people in his life who did not have blond hair and coppery skin, the color of weak tea in a white cup. He had seen brown eyes before, but none like ripe hicca berries, so rich and dark. Her hair was dark too, a honey blond, almost brown, and it was so long that her braid brushed the backs of her knees. He’d always heard that the Baen were ugly, but she was beautiful in spite of her Baen blood. Or maybe even because of it.

  “That’s the mark of Aayse,” Mabis whispered without turning her head. Ryder looked at his mother blankly. “On her neck. It means she is one of Aata’s Hands—that she has taken a vow of silence.”

  Ryder had noticed the mark but had taken it for a birthmark; now he saw that it was a circle of red paint. A vow of silence. That was why she hadn’t spoken. He felt a flush of embarrassment. He had thought her too haughty to speak to a villager.

  The witch in white gave no clue that she recognized him. Gracefully she lifted her arms and bowed low with two twists of her pale hands. The meeting had begun. In unison, the people in the room returned this silent greeting. Ryder was even clumsier now than he’d been when bowing to Kef. He caught the girl’s eye as he stood up, but she quickly looked away, putting her hand automatically to a pouch at her waist. It came to Ryder in a flash that his mother’s bone must be there.