Witchlanders

by Lena Coakley

  The sleet was slower now, and Falpian’s hair and clothes were stiff with ice. There was hardly any blood. Bron’s legs didn’t seem broken. Still Falpian knew, though he couldn’t have said how, that the kennel master was near death.

  “Bron,” he said, voice breaking as he knelt in the crusted snow.

  Pain twisted the man’s scarred face. He struggled to lift his head, but after a moment it fell back again. “Strange. I thought I heard your father’s voice.”

  “Shh. Don’t try to talk.”

  “Assassin’s magic. He was always best at winter keys.”

  “It was . . . It was only me.” Bron didn’t seem to hear, and Falpian didn’t repeat himself. It felt like lying; the person on the ledge seemed like someone else.

  Bron tried to lift himself again, wincing terribly with the effort. “The dogs. Where are my girls?”

  “They’re fine,” Falpian lied, his voice shaking. “They’re right here.” He laid his hand over Bron’s. “Don’t try to move. I need to find a way to get you to the cottage.”

  “No. It’s too late,” Bron said. To Falpian’s surprise, he seemed to smile at this, and his black eyes were full of warmth. “I’m glad I failed. I thank Kar I failed. It wasn’t right.”

  “Failed?”

  “I swear, I didn’t know.” He took a great, rattling breath. “I didn’t know when I left you what I’d be asked to do.”

  Falpian sat back on his knees, clutching his coat around him. Nearby, the trees in the gorge swayed stiffly, their frozen branches clicking together in the wind.

  “You tried to kill me,” Falpian murmured. “You sent the dreadhounds to attack. You sent them to . . .” He shook his head. But why? Was it because Ryder was in the house? Did Bron think he was a traitor, conspiring with the enemy?

  “Bron,” Falpian said. “You’re my friend. How could you think . . . ?”

  Bron murmured something too soft to hear, and Falpian leaned forward. “The war is close, Falpian.” He drew another ragged breath. “Men are being trained; black ships are being built in secret—you should know this now.” Falpian glanced around, afraid Ryder might be near, but the Witchlander had stayed up on the plateau. Bron raised his voice, clutching at Falpian’s coat. “It’s time for the Baen people to take back what they have lost!” A fit of coughing interrupted his words. Falpian imagined he could see his friend’s life draining into the snow.

  “Please!” he begged. “Don’t talk.” Blood was seeping from the corner of Bron’s mouth—Falpian had to get him to shelter. “I’ll be right back. That man at the cottage—he’ll help me get you up there.”

  “Don’t go!” Bron clutched at him again. “I need to explain. I want you to understand.” He lay back. “So many are afraid. The Witchlanders nearly killed us all in the last war. Too many of the lords want to cower in the Bitterlands, making do with what we have. We need to attack, Falpian, like we did at Barbiza and Tandrass. And we need every Baen man behind us. Your father knows that.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Falpian said. “What does this have to do with anything? What does it have to do with—with me?”

  “A boy of high birth, a young man praying for his dead brother, someone innocent, with his whole life ahead . . . It was thought that if the witches attacked such a man in cold blood, the Baen people would throw support behind the war.” Bron paused and lay panting for a moment. Then he looked Falpian full in the face. “I was sent to kill you. And make it seem as if the witches had done it.”

  “Oh,” Falpian said. He knew he should feel something, but no emotion came. He heard the words, but they were wrong somehow. It’s all a mistake, he thought. My father would never allow it.

  “I begged your father to send someone else . . . but I was the only one he trusted.”

  “My father? He sent you?”

  Bron must have seen the stunned look on Falpian’s face. “Caraxus loves you. Do not doubt that if I had succeeded, he would have mourned his sacrifice for the rest of his life.”

  “His sacrifice,” Falpian repeated. He thought back to how distant his father had been with him, how cold. Falpian had taken this for disappointment. Had it been guilt as well? How long had his father been planning this? How long had he felt that Falpian was worth more to him dead than alive?

  “How—how could he do this to my mother?” Falpian asked softly. “Even if he didn’t care for me. She’s already lost one son.” But Bron wasn’t listening.

  “I hear them. My girls.” Bron hoisted himself up on his elbow with a groan.

  “Don’t get up.”

  “Beautiful sound, don’t you think? Dreadhounds baying for their kennel master.” His scarred face broke into a smile.

  Falpian frowned and looked about, ears alert for any sound, but there was nothing, only the crack of ice in the branches. When he turned again, Bron was dead.

  Falpian threw open the door of the cottage. Bo, wet and bedraggled, thumped his tail against the floor as his master passed, but Falpian didn’t stop. He went straight to the desk in the study and pulled out the bronze container. For a moment, he held it tightly in his hands.

  “Please,” he prayed. “Tell me it was all a lie. I know I have a mission here. I know I’m supposed to do something important.”

  The words engraved over the scroll holder seemed to move and twist as they caught the light. Duty, honor, sacrifice. Falpian pulled the scroll out and broke the wax seal. Slowly he unrolled the parchment.

  It was blank.

  He turned it over, stared at it back and front. His father had written nothing. Falpian had no mission here. None at all. He felt his body shake as rage coursed through him.

  “Why?” he demanded coldly, as if his father could somehow answer. “Why give me a scroll at all?”

  The pretense of a mission seemed so cruel—Bron could have killed him just as easily without it. Was it just to keep him on the mountain? Did his father think that without a mission, Falpian might come home early with his tail between his legs, ruining the plan? Did he think Falpian such a craven wretch that he might shirk the duties of his mourning season?

  “You know nothing about me!” Falpian shouted, hating the tears that were stinging his eyes. He picked up the metal scroll holder and hurled it across the room. It hit the window with a bang, leaving a star-shaped crack in the glass.

  “Is he dead?”

  Falpian wheeled around, breathing heavily.

  “The assassin, is he dead?” Ryder stood in the doorway wearing Falpian’s nightshirt and a pair of his leggings.

  “Assassin?” Did Ryder think Bron was the one the witches told him about? Briefly Falpian wondered if there might be some truth in that. But no, Bron couldn’t have anything to do with Ryder’s confused notions of evil men and creatures made of mud. “Yes . . . he’s dead,” Falpian said carefully.

  “Well, stop talking to yourself and help me. I have to hurry.” Ryder turned abruptly.

  “Who told you you could wear my clothes?” Falpian demanded, following Ryder into the kitchen.

  “No time to dry my own.”

  Ryder disappeared into the pantry and came out again almost immediately, carrying armfuls of white packets tied with string. It was lump—survival food made of dried meat and berries held together with lard. He stuffed the packets into his pack.

  “You’re certainly in a hurry all of a sudden,” Falpian observed. Ryder turned and gave him such a look of anger and pain that Falpian took a step back. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Ryder’s eyes were wild, and there was a desperation in his voice that Falpian hadn’t heard before. Falpian’s own anger and pain were so fresh, it was disconcerting to see them on someone else’s face. “Are you blind?” Ryder gestured to the window.

  Falpian went to the door and pulled it open, staring out at the frozen plateau. In front of him, the bodies of the dreadhounds lay like mounds of dirty snow. Beyond them was the crooked mountain, and beyond that, rising
up like a pillar, was a line of smoke. Bloodred smoke.

  Black for war, green to gather, red when the coven is under attack, Falpian thought.

  “But it can’t be an attack,” he said. “It’s too soon.”

  Ryder grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. “What do you mean ‘too soon’?”

  Falpian stammered as the Witchlander’s blue eyes bored into him. “I don’t mean anything. I—”

  He’d forgotten how much hatred could be communicated by that stare. Falpian’s eyes fell to the velvet pouch on the windowsill, but Ryder was too quick. He grabbed the humming stone and stuffed it into the pack with the other supplies. Then he took the rope from the table and came toward Falpian again.

  “Don’t,” Falpian said, shrinking back. “What are you going to do?”

  Ryder grabbed him by the collar. “Change your clothes,” he said, pushing him toward the bedroom. “Change anything wet, and do it quick. You’re coming with me.”

  CHAPTER 15

  THE BEST JOKES

  A glaze of ice covered the trees, making them sparkle in the weak winter light. The sleet had stopped, and all was white and silent in the gorge. Falpian trudged through the crusted snow, his hands tied in front of him. Whenever he tried to stop and catch his breath, Ryder pushed him roughly from behind or whacked him with the flat end of his sword.

  “Bo!” Falpian shouted. “Attack! Kill him! I know there’s a real dreadhound in you somewhere!”

  It was no use. Bo just stared at Falpian and cocked his head, then bounded off down the path, leaving wide stretches of untouched snow between his footprints. Up ahead, he turned a corner and disappeared.

  “Stupid dog!” Falpian yelled. “I should have let them drown you!”

  He walked on in brooding silence, listening to the snow crunch under his feet. Around him, the glittering silence of the trees was too beautiful. It seemed to sap his anger, and Falpian needed his anger. Without it, his heart felt brittle and cold, heavy with ice like the branches. He wished he could keep his mind from drifting back to Bron’s dying words; he wished he could erase what he knew from his mind; but the thought of his father’s betrayal raked over him again and again.

  “Where are you taking me?” he asked dully.

  “Coven. Witches will find out what you know.”

  Witches. Falpian lifted his eyes to the mountain. Lilla the Blood-Smeared. They cut off the hands of their victims and used them for prophecy bones. He knew what would happen to him up there.

  “If the coven’s been attacked, maybe all the witches are dead,” he said hopefully.

  A sudden blow to the head jolted him, and Falpian stumbled to one knee; Ryder had cuffed him from behind. “If there are no witches left, who’s tending the fire? Who made the smoke? Answer me that, Baen.”

  Falpian turned and glared. Obviously he’d hit a nerve with his captor. “Fine, fine. Clearly there are enough witches left to boil me for dinner.” He stood up, brushing snow from his knees with tied hands.

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Ryder said, pushing him on again. “If it’s true—as you’ve been insisting—that you don’t know anything about the attack, then you have nothing to fear. I’ve never been one to defend witches, but they wouldn’t kill someone without cause.”

  Falpian turned around. “They killed people without cause all the time during the war!”

  “I told you to keep moving!”

  Falpian turned and tramped on, scowling. Up ahead, a high branch cracked under its own weight, and he watched it fall, raining diamonds.

  “It was different during the war,” Ryder added gruffly. “You attacked us. Barbiza. Tandrass. The black ships. We were defending ourselves.”

  Falpian snorted. “What about all of Kar’s priests you executed without trial? What danger did they pose? And what about all the Baen farmers and merchants who lived in the Witchlands before the war? You sent them all over the border to the Bitterlands, and those who wouldn’t go you killed.”

  “That never happened.”

  Falpian was shocked by Ryder’s arrogant sureness. “What? My mother was a Witchlander back then—her people were innocent farmers! Half of them died during the war, or lost their homes at the very least.”

  “If they looked like you, they weren’t Witchlanders. They were Baen. They belonged in the Bitterlands, and those farms weren’t their homes.”

  The statement struck Falpian somewhere deep. He turned again, his voice shaking with quiet anger. “If a family has lived in the same house for generations, worked the land, paid their tithes, how is it not their home?”

  Ryder shook his head. “I know there were Baen living in the Witchlands before the war, but they were all in league with the black magicians from the Bitterlands. When the fighting started, what were we supposed to do? Just let them stay on our land, plotting behind our backs?”

  “My mother’s family had nothing to do with the black magicians!” Falpian’s voice echoed through the trees. “Some of my aunts and uncles even worshipped the Goddess.” He could see that Ryder was surprised by that, and pressed his advantage. “You people used the war to steal every piece of land you could. What do you think you’re walking on? Twenty years ago this path was covered with innocent Baen men and women leaving the Witchlands with everything they had on their backs. And did you people ever stop to wonder if the land could feed them all? Kar’s sake, why do you think it’s called the Bitterlands?”

  Ryder looked him up and down with a smirk. “You seem well fed to me.”

  “I’m one of the lucky ones. There are always beggars at our gates.”

  “Oh, what a tragedy, you have to look at poor people,” said Ryder. “Besides, the attacks on Barbiza and Tandrass justified everything else.”

  Falpian felt the blood rush to his cheeks. A picture of his mother came back to him: a woman in blue looking out at the ocean, fingering her remembrance beads. Such a long string—one bead for every relative Falpian would never meet. Even as a child, he had always known somehow that his mother’s heart was somewhere else. It was in the land of stories, the homeland that he had never seen: the Witchlands.

  “You are taking me to my death,” Falpian said coldly. “If you know anything about witches, you know it’s true. At least have the courage to admit it.” At that Falpian turned on his heel and hurried on, depriving Ryder of the satisfaction of pushing him.

  That was better. Anger was better than the dull feeling of loss that threatened to swallow him. He was so angry that he almost turned again in his tracks, resolved to fight Ryder for the humming stone in his pack—but common sense got the better of him. How could he fight with his hands tied? He’d never win. Besides, Ryder was bigger, stronger, meaner . . .

  . . . but was he faster?

  Up ahead the path curved to skirt a ditch filled with snow-covered brambles. Falpian glanced back. Ryder had sheathed the Witchlander sword, and Falpian could do a lot in the few moments it would take to pull it out again. Maybe, if he was fast enough, he could get back to the echo site with enough breath in his lungs to sing. But he and Ryder were more than halfway through the gorge now, and every step was taking them farther and farther away from the only place where Falpian had a chance. He had to act now.

  As they passed the curve, Falpian turned and butted Ryder as hard as he could toward the ditch. Ryder lost his footing and staggered back. Without waiting to see him fall, Falpian bolted.

  At full tilt he raced back toward the echo site, but almost immediately he could hear Ryder behind him. He left the path and took off through the trees, leaping over low bushes turned to crystal by the storm. Ryder followed, so close that Falpian could hear his labored breath. They skidded down a small gully and out onto a frozen creek. Falpian slipped and tottered, unable to keep his balance. Ryder caught up with him now, his sword unsheathed. Falpian fell to his knees. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling Ryder grab him by the hair.

  “My sisters are in the coven, and the coven has been att
acked,” said Ryder, his voice hoarse in Falpian’s ear. “Can you understand that? I need to get home.” Falpian gasped as Ryder pressed the cold blade to his throat. “I swear, Falpian, if you slow me down I will leave your blood in this gorge. Do you doubt me?”

  “No,” Falpian said through clenched teeth. “I don’t doubt you.” Ryder pulled him to his feet.

  Ryder’s sisters. Witches! Falpian hadn’t known that. As they made their way back to the path, Falpian thought of children playing with bones, learning blasphemies for nursery rhymes, and he thanked the God his own sisters were far away.

  At the base of the mountain, they took a short rest. Falpian sat on a log, eyes tracing the path that twined dramatically upward through the trees. Maybe he’d drop dead of exhaustion before he even got to the coven.

  “Your mother’s people,” Ryder began. He handed Falpian a bit of the lump.

  Falpian brought it greedily to his mouth. “What about them?” he mumbled.

  “I was thinking. You said your mother’s people came from the Witchlands.” Ryder chewed a chunk of lump. “But you must have learned to sing from somewhere.”

  Falpian kept eating, his voice nonchalant. “My father lied about his age and crewed one of the black ships that attacked Tandrass when he was sixteen.” He knew he shouldn’t antagonize Ryder, but after feeling a blade at his throat, he couldn’t resist. He looked up at him and smirked. “Kill anyone you know?”

  Bo caught them a rabbit—a big one, white and fluffy in its chilling coat. From the blood on the dog’s jaw, it was obvious he’d kept another for himself. Falpian had always made a mess of skinning rabbits, but Ryder laid it on a rock and paunched it with cold expertise, then made a few decisive cuts and peeled its skin off like a jacket. It was still warm, and the purple flesh steamed in the cold air. Falpian gaped, both revolted and impressed.

  They were a little less than halfway up the mountain, and the view of the gorge was dizzying and gray. Falpian was bone tired. His lips were chapped, and his face was burned by the wind. They’d stopped their climb in the middle of the afternoon, and Falpian had thought it was because Ryder could see how tired he was. Now he understood it was because everything took so much time: building the shelter, gathering wood and kindling, melting the snowpack so they had a good place to build a fire. All through the afternoon, Ryder kept frowning up at the mountaintop, and Falpian could see that it nearly killed him to stop, could see that what he really wanted to do was carry on all through the night toward his sisters—even if he died trying.