Witchlanders

by Lena Coakley

  “Hicca,” he said with a laugh. “Ryder gets the knowledge of the finest tutors and librarians and I get hicca.”

  “I asked you not to speak,” the witch warned.

  “But I’m a friend of Ryder’s!”

  “Do I have to find a gag?” There was more fear in his tone than anger, but still it alarmed Falpian, made him suddenly notice the damp cold. “You are to stay here and be silent until the witches are ready to interrogate you.”

  Falpian swallowed. Hopefully, wherever Ryder was, he was pleading for Falpian’s life—but then, Ryder must know now that Falpian was a spy, must have learned it when they sang. And Ryder would know other things too—his father, the coming war. He’d know everything. Ryder wouldn’t be pleading for Falpian’s life; he’d be arguing for his execution.

  Falpian drew his knees to his chest, wishing Bo were there to keep him warm. The leather straps that bound his hands were uncomfortably tight, and his fingers were numb. The knowledge that he had found his talat-sa kept colliding with the fact that they were enemies, that soon their people would be at war with each other. The great God Kar might play the best jokes, but this was a cruel one, very cruel. He sank back against the cave wall, and the sense of joy that finding his talat-sa had given him drained away like water.

  “Ryder told you my name?” Kef asked. It wasn’t exactly true, but Falpian nodded. “If you really are his friend and mean this coven no harm, the witches will learn it in their bones. They will learn all. You will have nothing to fear.” Falpian didn’t find the thought consoling.

  For a while he sat with his captor in silence, examining the chamber where he had been taken. It was long and narrow, with entrances on either end. Oil lamps sputtered in nooks, giving off the smell of roasted goat. Mosaic friezes in reds, turquoises, and gold decorated the walls. To Falpian’s right were two large heads, the tiled portraits of two blond women. One face was perfect—red lips and cheeks and glittering eyes formed from a hundred different shades of blue tile—but the other was cruelly damaged. Dug-out hollows in the rock formed the eyes, and the yellow hair was crudely painted on.

  “Aata and Aayse,” Falpian said, then remembered he wasn’t supposed to speak. “Sorry.”

  “You know of our prophets?” the witch asked sharply.

  Falpian hesitated, but Kef seemed to want him to answer. “Yes. The silent sisters. The founders of witchcraft.”

  The man nodded and then, like Falpian, leaned back against the wall of the cave, looking up at the two heads. “There must have been a flood once, to cause such damage. Or spiders. No one can repair it now—the technique is lost.” There were craftsmen in the Bitterlands who could do such work, but Falpian knew better than to mention it.

  They fell silent again. Falpian wiggled his fingers, trying to get the blood moving in his hands, but it only made them hurt. The smell of the lamps reminded him how hungry he was. There was still some lump in his pockets, but with tied hands he couldn’t reach it, and he thought it unwise to ask for help. Kef kept looking toward the nearer entrance, the one that led back to the main cavern, and Falpian could see he must be waiting for someone. He wondered who. His interrogator?

  “I don’t know why she had me bring you here,” Kef muttered, more to himself than to Falpian. He glanced again at the heads of Aata and Aayse. “This is a holy place.”

  Again his fingers went to a small bead at his neck, and Falpian squinted at it in surprise. This was the last place in the world he would expect to see Baen writing, and yet there it was, scratched deep into the bead—a word in ancient Baen.

  “Yarma!” Falpian said, smiling with relief. The word meant “friend.”

  “Shh!” Kef hissed, as if Aata and Aayse were listening. He seemed to understand the writing on the bead, but Falpian wondered if he was aware of its deeper meaning.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “I wear it to remember my parents,” the witch said curtly. “It belonged to my mother.”

  During the war there were Witchlanders who were friendly to the Baen, who would give them food as they were trying to make their way to the Bitterlands or even hide them if their lives were in danger. These friends of the Baen would wear the word on their clothes or paint it on their houses in plain sight. The Baen alphabet was so different from pictographs that most Witchlanders would mistake it for decoration or random scratchings.

  “Your parents were good people,” Falpian said. He couldn’t believe his luck. Maybe this witch would help him escape. Maybe crossing the border hadn’t been so foolish after all. But Kef’s face had soured.

  “My parents helped the enemy during wartime. They defied witch law. I wear this to remember that they are not who I want to be.”

  “Oh,” Falpian said, the hope of a moment before guttering out like a candle. “But it’s not wartime now. I’m not your enemy now.”

  “If the witches tell me you are an enemy, you are an enemy. If they tell me you are a friend, then you are a friend.”

  Falpian sat back against the wall with a small sigh, and Aata and Aayse stared serenely down at him, as if his fate had been decided long ago. It wasn’t like Kef to be so obedient, Falpian thought, then remembered that they had never met. More and more of Ryder’s thoughts and memories were unpacking in his mind, jostling with his own thoughts, making room, changing him. He had memories of Kef as a sly, sweet, mischievous person, completely different from the pinched and nervous man he saw in front of him. Laughter. A high place. The taste of honeyplums.

  “You’re right,” Kef said, relenting from his harsh tone. “We’re not enemies now.”

  Falpian’s words thrown back at him made him wince with guilt. In point of fact, he was an enemy. He was a spy. He was helping to start a war. These strange feelings that told him Kef was a friend were a lie.

  “I saw you,” Kef continued. “I was standing by the entrance to the caves, and I saw you and Ryder destroy those creatures. You were singing, and the snow was coming off their bodies in long strands. It was incredible!”

  Falpian’s memory of singing with Ryder was hazy and distorted, like the memory of a dream. They had destroyed the creatures, hadn’t they? He had used a winter key.

  “You saved every witch who was in those caves. I saw it with my own eyes. I’ve known Ryder a long time, and he’s not one to trust the Baen—neither am I, for that matter—but if you’re here to help us destroy those things, I’ll make an exception.”

  Kef meant to be reassuring, but Falpian only felt more guilt, pricking like needles. The witch smiled now for the first time, showing crooked teeth, but Falpian couldn’t bring himself to smile back.

  The sound of footsteps made them both start. At first Falpian thought the time had come for his interrogation, but the person who entered came from the far end of the chamber, opposite the entrance Kef had been glancing toward. In the dim light, Falpian could see it was a woman, a small ageless witch with short cropped hair. She ignored the two young men and stood with her arms outstretched in front of a small shrine. Falpian could just make out the color of her tunic: Her witch’s costume was not red, but black.

  “Who is that?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Hush! A holy woman come to pray. She will pay us no heed.”

  It seemed to Falpian that her small, birdlike eyes gave him a darting glance, but it was hard to tell. A moment later she was leaning backward into what he knew was the witches’ sun position. She was so flexible. Falpian couldn’t imagine how she held the position for so long, how she stayed so still.

  “We call her Aata’s Left Hand,” Kef whispered softly. “She is the keeper of the catacombs. She comes out of the tunnels at dawn and dusk to pray for the dead.”

  Falpian guessed it was dusk, but there was no way to be sure. He wondered how the witch knew when it was time to pray. “It’s true then, that you keep the bodies of your dead in caves?”

  The man nodded. “All the witches who have ever lived on this mountain since the time of Aata
and Aayse.”

  “And that poor woman lives down there? With the corpses?”

  He nodded again. “The catacombs are forbidden to everyone but her.” As Falpian watched, Aata’s Left Hand shifted her position again. “Sometimes, when there is a death, helpers will bring in the body, but they must wear blindfolds. The black witch is a very holy person. She has given up her life, her family, even her name to watch over the dead. She has given up worldly concerns.”

  Falpian looked at the praying woman again, seeing her differently now. Again she seemed to be glancing toward them, but if she wondered who Falpian was, she didn’t let it interrupt her prayers. Falpian had always thought of witches as soldiers and murderers, but they were worshippers, too. Or loyal young men like Kef, who liked the taste of honeyplums.

  If my father attacks this coven, he thought, this reverent witch will die. Kef will die. Ryder . . .

  He tried to tell himself that the woman’s prayer was an abomination. She was praying to a Goddess, after all, and how could anyone believe in a female God? And yet her prayer was strangely moving. She was as graceful as the black herons that fed by the seashore back home.

  “I never knew Aata’s prayer was so beautiful,” Falpian whispered. At the other end of the chamber, the black witch made a final bow to her shrine and slipped out.

  “I’ve always thought so,” Kef agreed. He smiled again, that crooked smile that Falpian somehow found so familiar. This time Falpian smiled back.

  “Kef! You were told not to let him speak. Their voice is their weapon.”

  Another witch had slipped in unnoticed from the nearer entrance, an older woman in reds with a severe face and a thick gray braid. Her voice was low, but there was no mistaking the venom in her words.

  “Visser, forgive me,” Kef said. “Is it time? Shall I take him to be interrogated?”

  Instead of answering, the witch jerked her head. Kef jumped up and hurried to her, and for a while they whispered under the spitting lamps. As Falpian watched, the young witch’s eyes widened in horror. A sinking feeling crept over Falpian. The older witch handed Kef a long dagger.

  “No!” Falpian cried.

  He tried to get away, using his feet to propel himself backward across the cave floor. Kef caught up with him in a moment and cut the leather cords around his ankles.

  “Get up,” he said.

  “Please!” Falpian said. “Don’t kill me! I’m Ryder’s friend, remember?” He tried to get to his feet, but his legs had gone to sleep, and he fell back to his knees. Kef grabbed him roughly by the coat, but Falpian saw the doubt in his eyes. “You saw us destroy those creatures!”

  With his hand still on Falpian’s collar, Kef looked to the older witch, his face a dull gray. “Does he have to . . . ? Do I have to . . . ?”

  “The witches have spoken,” Visser said firmly. “He made the creatures that attacked our coven.”

  “They are sure? Before they said it was Mabis.”

  “Aata’s Right Hand made a casting. It is certain.”

  “She’s lying!” Falpian shouted, trying to twist from Kef’s grasp. “Aata’s Right Hand can’t read the bones! No one can. The covens are blind.” He stopped struggling and blinked in the dim light of the cavern as the weight of his own words fell over him. Blind?

  Visser ran toward him, her face a mask of rage. She slapped him hard across the face. “You see why we do not let them speak,” she said. “Their words are poison.”

  “Yes,” Kef said, the doubt gone from his voice. “I see.” He hauled Falpian up by the collar and yanked him so roughly toward the other end of the chamber that a silver button flew off Falpian’s coat.

  “Wait!” Falpian said over his shoulder. “Where are we going? Didn’t you just tell me the catacombs were forbidden?”

  “Just do as you are told,” said Visser, looking behind her as if to be sure no one was following.

  Falpian turned and clutched at Kef’s reds with his bound hands. “Please! Yarma!”

  “Do not use that word!” Kef hissed as he pushed Falpian into the dark tunnel. “I am no friend to you.”

  CHAPTER 19

  YARMA

  “Hello! Is anyone there?”

  Ryder felt his way in darkness across a rough stone floor. His wrists and ankles were bound tight. He didn’t know where he was, but he sensed a high ceiling above him, and the air smelled rich with roasted hicca and dried fruits. It made his stomach growl, but this was no time to think of food.

  On the other side of the chamber was a thin yellow bar of light, like the light under a door, and Ryder was inching towards it. It was a door, he discovered—wooden and very heavy. He pulled himself to stand and ran his fingers over it, but he felt no handle or knob, only rusted metal hinges.

  “Hello!” he called again. His fists made a dull thump against the wood. “Let me out!”

  There was no answer. Ryder leaned back against the door and slumped to the ground. His head ached. Falpian’s entire life had stampeded over him while they were singing, and now Ryder’s brains were crammed full of unwanted thoughts, frightening thoughts. He turned and, still sitting on the stone floor, banged the door hard with his tied feet. “Let! Me! Out!”

  A sound. A thud. On the other side of the door, a bolt was drawn. Light filled the chamber, and Ryder winced.

  “Get back!” said a man’s voice, one he didn’t recognize. Ryder shielded his eyes with his fists. “I said get back! Back away from the door.” The man, whoever it was, was afraid of him; Ryder could hear it in his voice.

  Ryder crawled toward the center of the room, then turned again to see who was speaking. Two figures stood in an arch of light, a man and a woman, both with glims.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” the man said. “Their voices drive you mad, they say. Even one of them can be dangerous.”

  “Aata’s blood,” the smaller figure said. “He’s my brother. If he hasn’t driven me mad yet, I suppose he never will.”

  “Skyla?” Ryder said, squinting into the light.

  “It’s up to you, I suppose,” the man said. “Though I don’t know why the elders would allow it. If I hear you scream, I’ll do what I can.” The man shut the door again, fearful and quick, as if he were throwing her to a pack of dreadhounds. The girl raised her glim.

  “It is you,” Ryder said, smiling. “Oh, thank the Goddess!” He held out his hands to her. “Here. Undo these ropes and let me look at you.”

  “Stay where you are,” she said, edging away. “I want to be sure you are really my brother.”

  “Who else would I be?” He laughed. “Now quick, and do as you’re told.”

  “You sound like him.”

  “Why in Aata’s name did they tie me up? Where’s Falpian?”

  “Is that his name?”

  Ryder paused. He heard the fear darkening his sister’s voice, remembered the looks of horror on the witches’ faces when he and Falpian sang. He tried to imagine what they must think of the Baen, and as his mind swung around to their point of view, he was struck by the gravity of Falpian’s situation.

  “They’re going to kill him, aren’t they?”

  “He’s as good as dead now. They say he’s the one who made the creatures.”

  “What!” Ryder cried. “Skyla, that’s not true! He didn’t!”

  His sister knelt down on the floor and sat her little glim between them, its light flickering deep inside the glass. Ryder thought she looked older somehow, but maybe it was just the way the glim lit up her face. Tentatively she reached out and put her cool fingers over his hands.

  “How do you know?” she asked. “Sodan and the elders say that this has happened before. In the old days, when our people used to live together, sometimes a blackhair would try to infect a man with strange dreams, addle his mind. They say the Baen has done this to you.” Her large, pensive eyes peered into his. “Maybe you only think he’s innocent because that’s what he’s made you believe.”

  Ryder pulled his ha
nds away and shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. It’s . . .” He struggled to find words, but what could he tell her? He sighed and looked around, as if an explanation might be in the air, and for the first time, he noticed his surroundings.

  “Aata’s vow!” he couldn’t help saying.

  The chamber must have been used for winter stores. Rows and rows of shelves rose up around him, disappearing into the darkness of a high ceiling. Each shelf was filled with wooden crates or large rounds of cheese or seemingly endless jars of preserved fruits. Opposite the door, bulging sacks were piled on flats, one on top of the other against the wall—hicca, he guessed, or hicca flour.

  “One of our storage chambers,” Skyla said. He noticed the word “our,” noticed the casual gesture of her hand as she waved it over the shelves.

  “Maybe you are clever to be a witch.” Ryder thought of all the tithes his family had paid over the years—probably enough to fill this room—and of all the witches getting fat as ticks on his labor. A sliver of anger pulled through him as he remembered how the witches couldn’t throw the bones anymore, remembered how it was all for nothing. “Goddess take me if I ever pay another tithe.” When he turned back to Skyla, he found that she was laughing. “What?”

  “It really is you, isn’t it?” she said, and she threw her arms around his neck, almost knocking over the glim in her exuberance.

  “Of course it is.” He couldn’t hug her back with tied hands, but he leaned toward her, drinking in the scent of her hair. “Foolish girl.”

  A moment later Skyla pulled back, and he saw her wipe her eyes with the sleeve of her reds. “Your stink is making my eyes water.”