Witchlanders

by Lena Coakley

  They hurried past as quickly as they could. Mercifully, the passage soon opened up again, and after a while they came to a crossroads. The air was a little sweeter here, though Ryder still had a horrible feeling at the back of his throat, like he might start to retch at any moment.

  “You were right, Ryder, you were absolutely right.” Skyla was red faced and livid, as if seeing the nest of baby mice had been the last drop of water before a dam broke. “Why do we give the witches our tithes? Why is it hardly anyone can throw the bones anymore? Did you see how many empty huts there were before the monsters came? The coven is smaller than it was. Less than it was, somehow. But no one will tell me why.”

  Ryder was staring at his arm, trying to figure out if the mark he’d made was a straight line, which would mean taking the middle passage, or a cross, which would mean they should take the right-hand path.

  “You know I never understood why you wanted to join the coven,” he said, somewhat impatiently. “What did you think it would be like?”

  He decided that they should go straight on, and he turned back to tell her so, but when he lifted the lamp he saw that she was holding her breath, trying not to cry.

  “You’ll think it’s so stupid,” she said.

  Ryder cursed inwardly, but he set down the lamp on a flat part of the floor and put his arms around her. He should have sent her with Lilla to be with the rest of the coven, but it was too late to think of that now.

  Skyla buried her face in the shoulder of his reds and let out a sob. “I thought the people here would be like Fa. He knew. He knew there was some kind of magic running through the world’s veins. He could feel it.” She stood back and wiped her eyes. “He made me feel it too. He taught me that the whole world was a holy place. That’s why he loved our old farm, loved the dirt under his feet. Everything was magic to him.”

  “We have to hurry, Sky,” he said gently, not knowing what else to say. He picked up the lamp. It felt lighter than when they’d started out, and it sputtered a little—there was only about a thumb of oil left in the bottom. Skyla took a deep breath and nodded.

  As they descended, there were more bodies, more hollows. Many of the dead had bowls at their feet. Usually they contained nothing or perhaps a few prophecy bones, but occasionally Ryder noticed one like his grandfather’s, containing a humming stone. Notions that had been forming in his mind in the chamber of Aata and Aayse began to take shape. Without slowing down, he touched some of the carvings that swirled over the stone arch of one of the hollows.

  “It’s so unfair,” Skyla muttered. “Of all people to be touched by magic, I can’t believe it was you.”

  Ryder held out his hand to help her over a pit in the sloping stone floor. “Is that what I am?”

  “If Lilla Red Bird said it, it must be true. Besides, all magic is one magic—that’s what the teachings of Aata tell us. If you can sing, you can learn to throw the bones too. But by the Goddess, Ryder, if you become a great boneshaker, I am just going to have to hang myself from a high tree! How can you hear the whisperings of the Goddess—you!”

  Ryder didn’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed. “Listen,” he said, “I’m going to tell you a secret.” He stopped in front of a particularly beautiful hollow, so big it was almost a small room. The man inside lay on what looked like a stone bed, with four short pillars twisting up from each corner.

  “That feeling you describe, the feeling that the world is somehow a holy place—of course I feel it. I’m not saying that I believe it’s the Goddess whispering at me or the great God Kar singing me a lullaby, but yes, I feel it and I always have.” He wiped his sister’s tearstained face with the corner of his sleeve. “I think you like to see me as some sort of big, bossy oaf with all the sensitivity of a boulder in the middle of the road, but of course, of course, the world is crackling with miracles. Do you think I’m blind? I just don’t like to talk about it as much as you do.”

  “Oh,” she said sheepishly.

  He laughed at how surprised she looked. “I’m not offended. I’ve been doing a very good imitation of a boulder in the middle of the road. I don’t know why. To please her, I guess.” He knew he didn’t have to say which “her” he meant.

  “I talked about going to sea, but it wasn’t really the sea I wanted. I wanted that vast, important thing that I guess we both felt was out there. It’s just . . . now that I’ve caught a glimpse of it . . .” He thought back to how it felt to sing with Falpian and winced at the idea of ever singing again. “Aata’s breath, if the Goddess really has given me a gift, do you think I can ask her to take it back?” He laughed at himself. “There, you know my deep, dark secrets. Do you want to know one more?”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Of course.”

  “I suppose it’s not so much a secret as a question, one you might ask old Sodan when you see him next.” He gestured to the alcove in front of them. “Why is there Baen writing all over these catacombs?”

  Skyla looked around blankly, then back at him. “Where?”

  “Right here. Everywhere.” He pointed to the curling script that snaked around the pillars in the hollow and wove in and out between the decorations on its arch. “Haven’t you noticed? It’s on almost every other alcove now.”

  Skyla looked closer. “That’s not writing. It’s just some kind of . . . decoration.” She traced her finger along the curls and dots carved over the arch. “It is intricate. Are you saying . . . ?”

  “Baen,” he said. “It’s the same as on the humming stones.”

  “Why would a witch have Baen writing on his tomb?”

  “Maybe this isn’t a witch,” he said. “Or maybe this is a different kind of witch.”

  “But they’re just squiggles. What is it a picture of?”

  “Their writing isn’t a picture of a thing. It’s a picture of the sounds you make when you say the name of the thing.” He frowned. He knew what he’d just said was correct—it was one of those strange flecks of information that kept floating through his mind, little gifts from Falpian—but it didn’t make any sense at all. How could you make a picture of a sound?

  “I know what Mabis would have said about that,” said Skyla. “Even their writing is wrong.”

  Ryder looked more closely at the bandaged body in the hollow, but the paint that had depicted its face was blackened and worn, too much so to discern the race of the dead person. Was he a Baen? Skyla was looking too, probably wondering the same thing.

  “Do you remember when we were children,” she said, “and we used to put on that Baen helmet that Fa brought from the war? I was terrified by that thing. It was like . . . all the nightmares of childhood.”

  Ryder nodded as he peered into the dead face. “I expect the Baen have nightmares of us.”

  Ryder?

  “We’d better go,” Skyla said.

  Ryder held up his hand. “Shh. Do you hear that?” For a moment he could have sworn he’d heard Falpian’s voice calling out to him.

  “Yes,” Skyla said. “I hear it.”

  But she was referring to something else. From up ahead there came the faint banging sound of stone on stone. The voice Ryder thought he’d heard was driven out of his mind.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE TOMB

  Ryder, Falpian said to himself. Ryder, come back!

  For a moment it had worked—he was almost sure of it. Falpian stood shaking in the frigid water, afraid to move, trying to remember what his father had said about linking minds with his talat-sa.

  He couldn’t see a thing, and his boots were soaked through. Around him in the blackness there were scuttlings. Rustlings. Some Falpian attributed to spiders dragging away shards of glim—but there were other noises. And smells, too, foul smells, like the droppings of an unknown animal. Something made a sound right by his ear—the beating of small wings. He heard a little splash at his feet and stifled a cry. He was going to die here in the dark if couldn’t find Ryder’s mind.

  Once, back home, his f
ather had grown impatient with the tutors and singing masters and had tried to teach Falpian and Farien himself. Falpian remembered sitting in a chair with his eyes blindfolded. Somewhere in the house his brother was hiding.

  “Stretch your mind,” said his father. “Call to him.”

  Scents from the kitchen wafted up the stairs. Cook was making fish stuffed with apples for dinner, Farien’s favorite. Was he down there? Falpian tried to do as his father told him and stretch his mind through the rooms of their old stronghold by the sea. His mother would be upstairs with her ladies; his sisters were playing in the garden.

  “He’s in the servant’s closet on the second floor,” Falpian said, pulling off the blindfold. Farien always used to hide there when they were boys.

  His brother cursed. Farien had been in front of him all along, but Falpian hadn’t been able to feel it. Their father turned away, red faced.

  “You try,” Falpian said to his brother. “I’ll hide now.”

  “It’s no use.”

  “Our magic will come. Mother says—”

  “We’re useless. We’re worse than useless.” The look in Farien’s eyes was wretched.

  “Father, tell him that’s not true.”

  But their father said nothing. Falpian saw his brother flinch when their father slammed the door, leaving them alone.

  “It wasn’t our fault,” Falpian called to the dark.

  “Our fault,” the chamber echoed back to him.

  “You should have loved us just the same.”

  “Same. Same . . .”

  “I hate you!”

  “Hate you! Hate you . . .”

  Falpian brought a hand to his lips. He was shocked by his own words, but letting them out gave him a strange feeling of relief.

  Farien had grown so thin and sad near the end, like a shadow. He spent more and more time in his sailboat, going farther and farther out to sea. How Falpian wished he could speak to him one more time. And now his father would make him lose another brother, his talat-sa, before he even had a chance to know him.

  Why? Why did Falpian tie himself in a knot for a father who couldn’t love him?

  “I’m not Farien!” he shouted. “I’m not going to waste away, pining for a kind word!” The echoes of his voice swirled around him.

  The echoes. Of course!

  The echoes weren’t good enough for this to be an echo site, but perhaps they were good enough to let him see a little, with the sight that singing gave him. In the darkness, a glimmer of hope sparked.

  Falpian tried a note, tried to harmonize with the sounds that came back to him, but the echo lasted only a moment—not long enough. He took a tentative step to his right and tried to sing again.

  He had never done anything like this before, but it wasn’t unheard of. An echo site like the one at Stonehouse wasn’t made, after all; it was found. Magicians of old had painstakingly sung into gullies and mountain passes, listening to echoes and planting flags at promising places. He just had to be patient and do what they did, he told himself, and he took another step.

  This time when he sang, he caught a glimpse of something, the ghost of an image in his mind. Fruit. The ceiling of the cave was hung with quivering fruit. Falpian was so surprised that he stopped singing, and his vision was snuffed out. He sang again.

  No, not fruit. Stormbats. They hung upside down from the ceiling like bunches of grapes, keeping warm by pressing close. Gracefully they swooped down all around him, catching thief spiders or picking the dead ones out of the water. This was the splashing he had heard. Stormbats were a good sign. Stormbats needed openings to the outside.

  Falpian’s voice grew louder, bolder. He had a stitch in his side, and every time he took a breath, however small, his vision dimmed. But he was grinning as he sang. Could he do this? Could his father find an unmarked echo site?

  I don’t need your approval, he thought. I’m a black magician in my own right now.

  Opposite the tunnel he had entered, he could see three passages. Two led down to twisting paths. The other . . . Falpian struggled to visualize it, though his lungs hurt like fire. The right-hand tunnel led down . . . There! A storm-bat swooped through—a straggler, flying home to the colony. That must be the way.

  Falpian’s knees buckled, and he struggled for air. He stumbled out of the pool, slipping and sliding on the wet floor of the cave. He fell, but he quickly got up again, waving his hands in front of him until he reached the rock wall.

  He felt along the wall for the right-hand tunnel and staggered down it, hoping what he had seen was more than some trick of his mind. The path dipped down and made a turn.

  Ahead, something made his eyes sting, something bright. It was—Kar’s eyes, he hadn’t imagined it—it was daylight! Falpian rushed forward. There was light ahead, and it wasn’t a lamp, or a torch. It was morning.

  Falpian emerged into a large chamber. He breathed deeply. Air. Clean, cold air filled his lungs. Shafts of natural light fell from the ceiling. He blinked again and again, dazzled. Light filtered in from a little round hole in a lower corner of the chamber—an exit! Falpian lurched toward it.

  After a few steps he stopped short. Ryder. His talat-sa. “I feel you now,” he said aloud, laughing to himself with relief. “I must have been trying too hard before.”

  The passage he had just come from was on the far right, but there were many other openings and stairways leading off into dark tunnels. Ryder was somewhere close. Falpian took a tentative step forward. One arch was bigger and more ornate than the others. Falpian closed his eyes and immediately felt drawn to it. There. Like a needle to a lodestone. His talat-sa.

  “There you are,” he breathed.

  “There who is?” said a voice from a shadowed corner.

  Falpian’s eyes snapped open. He wasn’t alone.

  “Stop what you’re doing,” said Ryder. “Stop right now.”

  Visser stood caught in the middle of a high chamber, holding a large rock over her head. She lowered her arms, staring at Ryder and Skyla with a mixture of shock and guilt. A stone sarcophagus dominated the room, and Visser had been about to smash something carved on top of it, something Ryder couldn’t make out.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she spat. Her gray braid had come undone, and her face glistened with sweat in spite of the chill.

  Ryder stepped into the room and immediately felt the awe it was meant to inspire. A low stone lamp illuminated walls covered with intricate carvings and half-faded murals. Writing, both Baen and Witchlander, spread over everything like black vines, including the floor and ceiling. The sarcophagus stood at the center of the room, surrounded by four mosaic pillars studded with green and blue glass. Between the pillars, garlands of long-dead flowers gathered dust. It seemed to Ryder to be a reverent place. A sacred place. Whatever Visser was doing, it was wrong.

  Ryder handed Skyla his lamp and pulled Lilla’s knife from the sash of his reds. “We know you made the monsters,” he said. “Come with us. We’re taking you up to the elders.”

  Visser snorted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Innocent people have died!” Ryder’s voice shook as he said the words, in spite of himself. “In Aata’s name, why did you do it? To show your power?”

  “No!”

  “Why, then?”

  “Don’t be a fool!” she cried. “It was that blackhair—it must have been. He’s tricked you.” Visser dropped the stone she was holding to the floor. She walked right up to Ryder’s blade. “You wave that knife around, young man, but do you even know how to use it?”

  Ryder held his ground, brandishing the weapon, but she was right to call his bluff. Angry as he was, he still wasn’t sure he could do what Lilla had asked and put the knife between her ribs.

  “Don’t let her scare you, Ryder,” Skyla said urgently. “Remember what she’s done.”

  Skyla swung the lamp awkwardly on its chain, threatening Visser with it as if it were a weapon. Ryder moved forward too,
steeled by his sister’s words. Visser held up her hands and backed away, but Ryder and Skyla pressed forward until they had her trapped in one corner of the room.

  “You should understand,” Visser said to Skyla. There was a note of pleading in her voice. “The witches are your people now. They’re trapped by the snowslide. I need to lead them through the forbidden tunnels and down to the lower exit. If they dig their way out, more of those things might be waiting for them.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” Skyla said sharply.

  “Yes,” said Ryder. “What does leading the witches through the tunnels have to do with destroying this place? Just what is that?” He nodded to the sarcophagus. Visser pressed her lips tight.

  He kept his eyes locked on the witch and edged over to the sarcophagus, dead blossoms turning to dust under his feet. On top, the life-size figure of a woman had been carved from different pieces of colored stone: white for her bare forearms, red for her witch’s costume. Visser had done cruel damage—the face was almost gone—but it was obvious what she was trying to hide. She hadn’t yet destroyed the eyes. They were open, staring up at the ceiling, irises as black as Falpian’s. And the hair was another clue. Black stone curls cascaded down the side of the sarcophagus.

  “She’s Baen,” Ryder said. “You did this because she’s Baen.”

  He touched the rough place where the nose had been, and anger coursed through him. The sculpture must have been so beautiful. There were fine veins on the hands, and the fingers seemed about to twitch with life.

  Disparate images and thoughts that had been floating around inside his head now slid into place like the pieces of a puzzle. “Oh Goddess,” he breathed. It wasn’t just wrong, what Visser was doing, it was . . . blasphemy. “Visser, how could you do it?”

  “It was necessary!” Visser said, desperation in her voice now. “It’s still necessary. Leading my people through the tunnels might be the only way to save them. But by the red, they can’t see this.”