Witchlanders

by Lena Coakley

  Skyla gave Ryder a questioning glance. “I don’t understand,” she said. “All right, the woman buried here is Baen, or has Baen blood, but we’ve seen others like her in the catacombs. Why is this one so important?”

  “Tell her, Visser,” Ryder said firmly.

  She shook her head. “No! No one must ever find out! There are secrets in these caves that should stay hidden forever!”

  Ryder didn’t agree, and for him it wasn’t a secret anymore.

  “Think, Sky,” he said. “We’ve heard Fa tell this story a hundred times. ‘When she died, the women hung her tomb with flowers.’” Ryder reached up to touch the crumbling flower garlands that hung between the pillars. “‘Aata stayed by her sister’s side, neither eating nor sleeping, for nine days and nine nights. And then the Goddess came.’”

  “Aayse?” said Skyla with awe in her voice. “The tomb of Aayse?” She hurried to the sarcophagus and held the lamp over the ruined face. Hesitantly she ran her fingers over the damaged lips. Ryder wasn’t sure how his sister would react, but then a smile lit up her face, and she looked at him across the carved body with shining eyes.

  “This is incredible!” She lifted the lamp to the mosaic friezes along the wall, gazing around the chamber again as if seeing it for the first time. “Was Aata a Baen as well?” She addressed her question to Visser, but it was Ryder who answered, excited to have someone with whom to share the thoughts that had been circling in his mind.

  “I don’t think so. Remember the mural in the chamber at the top of the mountain? One woman blond with blue eyes, the other part destroyed?”

  “But Aata and Aayse were twins.”

  “Twins in spirit,” he said, thinking of Falpian’s description. He hesitated for a moment. “Aata and Aayse were talat-sa.”

  Skyla’s face showed her confusion: She didn’t know the word. Ryder struggled to explain. “They were a singer pair like . . . like Falpian and me.”

  “The prophets were nothing like you and that Baen!” Visser snapped.

  But Ryder hardly heard. He was remembering a conversation he’d had with Falpian on the mountain. “The Baen don’t allow women to use magic,” he went on, words tumbling out excitedly. “And Falpian told me they used to have cruel punishments for women who tried to sing. What if one of those punishments was cutting the vocal cords?” He ran his fingers gently over the figure’s throat and was amazed to find exactly what he was looking for: a raised slash carved over the voice box. A thrill rippled through him.

  Aata and the witches who came after her took a vow to be silent, but silence had been forced on this woman.

  “It makes perfect sense!” he said. “Aata was like us, and Aayse was Baen. But Aayse was mute, so they couldn’t sing together. They had to invent a whole new kind of magic. Witch magic. A silent magic.”

  He stopped speaking as the enormity of what he was suggesting began to dawn on him. How brave Aata and Aayse must have been. As brave as Mabis. For the first time he felt proud to be descended from their followers.

  “Imagine if that were all true,” said Skyla, the lamplight illuminating her bright eyes. “The story is probably written on these walls. A person could spend her life studying this place, translating these writings.”

  “No, no, no!” cried Visser. “No one is going to translate this heresy. We have to destroy it before anyone else finds out about it. Don’t you see? The other witches can’t see Baen writing in a sacred tomb. They can’t see—whoever this is.” She gestured to the sarcophagus. “It would destroy the coven!”

  “It’s Aayse,” Ryder insisted.

  Visser’s eyes were wild. “I’ll never believe that.”

  “I think you do already. And besides, what you believe isn’t important. Not after what you’ve done.”

  “I swear by the prophets, I’ve done nothing!”

  Ryder hissed at the hypocrisy of Visser swearing by Aata and Aayse. “Lilla Red Bird told us you made the creatures; she saw it in a bone casting.”

  Visser gasped, speechless.

  “Actually,” Skyla began hesitantly, “Lilla didn’t exactly say that Visser made the creatures.”

  “What?” Ryder gave his sister a look. “Of course she did.”

  “Think,” Skyla said. “She told us that Visser planned ‘a great desecration.’ Lilla could have been talking about destroying this tomb.”

  Ryder looked from Skyla to Visser and back again. He didn’t know what to think now. “Oh, for Aata’s sake,” he finally said. “We’ll just have to take her back up to Sodan and the elders. They’ll decide.” He raised his knife again and glared at Visser. “And I won’t allow you to make another mark on this chamber.”

  “Why should you care?” Visser said haughtily. “You’re no witch. This place has nothing to do with you.”

  To his surprise it was Skyla who defended him. “How can you be so arrogant as to think this place is only for witches?” she demanded. “The most devout man I ever knew was my father. He may not have had a drop of magic in him, but he prayed to the Goddess every day. And there are fifty more like him in the village. This place is theirs! It belongs to them and to my brother as much as it does to you. Do you think that because we wear red we have some right to destroy it?”

  “Do you think your father wanted to know this?” Visser’s sharp voice echoed in the high ceiling of the chamber. “That everything he ever believed in was a lie? I’m doing it for him. And for the witches, too. You have seen how small our coven has grown. The young leave us to go to the cities. No one can throw the bones anymore. No one has faith. This tomb would only cause confusion and doubt.”

  Skyla trembled with restrained fury. “Maybe we witches can’t throw the bones anymore because we’ve forgotten where we come from. You don’t give your own people enough credit, Visser.”

  “It’s not just me,” Visser insisted. “Keeping our secrets, keeping the catacombs forbidden—it is a decision that Sodan and the elders have made. We didn’t make it on a whim.”

  “Do the elders know what you’re doing now? Do they know you are destroying this place? Did Sodan make this decision?”

  Visser frowned, and Ryder could see that she had acted on her own, but there was no guilt on her face. “I know!” she shouted, pointing to Skyla with a jabbing finger. “I know what knowledge of this place would do among the youth of our coven.”

  “I am the youth of our coven!” Skyla shouted back. “It is unbelievable that you can’t imagine that we might be inspired by this knowledge. You are robbing us. You are turning our history to rubble.”

  “Foolish girl. Why do you think your mother lost her faith? Learning the truth didn’t inspire her.”

  Skyla was struck silent. Their mother, thought Ryder. Of course. She must have seen this place, or found out about it somehow. After fighting in the war, how could anyone accept that one of the prophets was a Baen? Skyla faltered, seemed confused. Dust motes floated in the air, lit golden by the lamps.

  “Promise me,” Visser said to Skyla, her voice gentler now. “Promise me you’ll forget this place and never speak of it again.”

  Skyla squared her shoulders, and in her eyes Ryder could clearly see the vein of iron that ran through his family, the stubbornness that had probably been exasperating other witches since the time of Aayse herself. “You’ll have to cut my throat to keep me quiet, Visser.”

  CHAPTER 25

  THE MANY EYES OF KAR

  “Hello,” Falpian said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” The black witch emerged from the shadows. “Is Kef all right?”

  “Kef?” The woman’s black costume seemed to pull the shade along with her as she stepped into the center of the chamber.

  Falpian stood where he was, still dazed and blinking in the morning light that filtered through the ceiling of the cave. “Yes. The man. With the beard. You hit him on the head with a rock.”

  The witch frowned and cocked her head in that quizzical way that Falpian had seen before. “Strang
e that you would ask after the health of someone who tried to kill you.”

  That was true enough, and Falpian shrugged, not knowing how to answer. Something about the way the witch looked at him was making him nervous. Her eyes—he remembered now that he didn’t like them. There was something wrong in their depths.

  “I thought you had come too soon, but perhaps it is time,” the witch said, a little coldly. “The present catches up to the future with alarming speed—I had forgotten that. Still, I expected you would be halfway up the mountain by now.”

  “Spiders,” Falpian whispered, not knowing exactly why his mouth went dry.

  “Ah. It is the glass they want, not the light. Did you cover your glim with a cloth?”

  He shook his head, and she gave him a smile an indulgent parent would give a child. He looked away uneasily.

  The beauty all around him seemed incongruous with the irrational fear that seemed to have taken hold of his body. The murals on the chamber walls were so bright—almost too bright. As his eyes adjusted, Falpian saw that these were the most impressive he had seen yet. Ancient kings held court; battles raged; great masted ships sailed on blue-tiled seas. A whole history must have been depicted on these walls.

  “Beautiful,” he said, gesturing vaguely.

  “All for you.” She turned a circle where she stood, her arms open wide. “It’s all for you.”

  Falpian’s logical mind was saying, This is just a kindly woman—a little odd, perhaps, but she has been good to you. At the same time, a deeper, more animal part of him was whispering, Run, run, run.

  “For me? What do you mean?” he asked, his voice too high.

  “Let me show you something.”

  She gripped his arm and pulled him over to a wall near the large stone arch. The tiled pictures there were smaller and less impressive than some of the others, but still, Falpian cried out in amazement. Gormy men. About a dozen of the creatures, depicted in muddy brown stone, stood stiffly on top of a glittering green hill. Below them, in the foreground, an army retreated in horror. Horses galloped away riderless, rolling their eyes. Men and women trampled one another, desperate to get away, looks of dread frozen on their tiny faces.

  “Can you read it?” she asked.

  At first Falpian didn’t know what she meant, but then he saw the Baen writing. It coiled over and around the picture, but with letters so stylized he could hardly recognize them. He looked again at the other murals. There was Baen writing there, too, but it seemed to be hopelessly mixed up with the images and with Witchlander pictographs.

  “Music,” he said finally. “They are the notes of a spell.”

  She nodded, running her fingers lovingly over the tiles. “All for one voice.”

  He looked again, surprised that a witch had the knowledge to discern this. She was right. The writing seemed to be the score for an echo site. Falpian wondered where it was; the magic would probably only work in that one place.

  “You read Baen?”

  “My father was very interested in your culture. Before the war, he would seek out Baen scholars, have long debates and discussions. He taught me to read. And even to sing a little.”

  The next question seemed obvious, but Falpian had trouble forcing it out of his mouth. When he did, it sounded ridiculously casual. “You . . . made the creatures, then?”

  “I made them for you.”

  “Stop saying that!” Falpian said. “You don’t know me. I didn’t ask you to kill anyone.”

  “This place is a gift! It will save Baen lives when the war comes.”

  Her words made Falpian pause. The war? How did she know?

  “I saw the future,” she answered, though he hadn’t voiced the question aloud. “A stupid little witch asked me for a prophecy, and I threw the bones for the first time in twenty years.”

  Falpian was curious now, in spite of the voice that told him to flee. “What exactly did the bones show you?”

  She smiled, showing bad teeth. “Men in armor. Firecalls along the border, all burning black. You.”

  “Me?”

  She nodded. “I am old. I don’t need to make a casting to know my death looms. My bones told me that someone strong was coming, someone with both the skill to sing and the rage to kill. Someone who would finish my work for me if I couldn’t finish it myself.”

  Her work? “It’s not—I’m not—” Words stuck in his throat. Did she really think he was going to sing up the gormy men for her? “I’m not going to help you!”

  The witch’s face contorted with sudden anger. “Have you no family in the Bitterlands? No one you love? When the war comes, do you think the Witchlanders will let them live?” Falpian shrank back, but he remembered the words on the border stone. Baen will be no more. “Another war will give Witchlanders an excuse to drive you into the sea. You must win now or die.”

  “Maybe this war should never start, then!”

  She threw up her hands in frustration. “Foolish boy! The war never really ended. If a man dies of starvation in the Bitterlands, isn’t it the Witchlanders’ fault? Isn’t he a casualty of war?”

  “But you’re a Witchlander. You’re a witch!”

  “I have my reasons for choosing the Baen side.”

  Falpian shook his head. “I need a better answer than that.”

  For a moment her hard blue eyes seemed to plead with him. “To atone,” she finally said. “I did terrible things to your people during the war, terrible things, but this chamber . . .” She lifted her hands to the mosaics on the walls. “I can give your people this gift to make up for what I’ve done. Don’t you see? This place must be in Baen hands now that war is coming. It’s too precious!”

  Falpian stood back, looking again at the high-ceilinged walls. An alarming thought occurred to him. Did she mean that every piece of writing in this chamber was a spell? All that coiling black lettering that wove under and over the richly colored scenes, was it all music? Making the gormy men might be the least of the magic depicted here. She was right. His people would gain a great advantage if they possessed this chamber.

  “This is a treasure trove,” he murmured.

  “No. It is an armory. And I can take it for the Baen people with your help.”

  No, Falpian thought. No, no. “Please. You have the wrong person.” There was desperation in his voice now. “I don’t want to hurt people. I’m not like you. I—I don’t have an assassin’s heart.”

  The witch’s face softened into something like pity. “Do you think anyone is born a killer? Do you think I was? Trust me, I know what I’m asking. An assassin’s first murder is himself. He kills the man he was.” Falpian gave a little start, thinking of his father. Had he killed the man he was?

  “I’m saving lives,” she went on. “Baen lives. Another war is inevitable. But if it’s decisive, if it’s brutal and quick, then every Baen in the Bitterlands will still be alive at the end of it. Don’t you want that?”

  Falpian swallowed, thinking of his mother and sisters. “Yes,” he said. “I want that.”

  The black witch smiled at him again, but Falpian felt heavy and sick. Why had he ever wanted to sing at all? Why hadn’t anyone explained to him that when Kar gives you a gift, he will inevitably expect you to use it? His father must have known that when he ran away to war. He must have been just like Falpian once. For the first time in his life, Falpian felt pity for his father. But this wasn’t about him. This was about who Falpian was. And he was a Baen. A black magician. There was no changing what side Falpian was on. There never had been.

  “You killed Kef, didn’t you?” he asked. “You went back and finished him after I left.”

  “Yes. He would have done you harm.”

  Falpian nodded, seeing the cold logic of it. “And now you’re going to sing again, attack the coven one more time.”

  “By the time the chilling ends, there will be no one here but ghosts.”

  “Oh,” Falpian breathed, thinking of Skyla and Pima, thinking of his talat-sa.
/>
  I could stop her now, he said to himself. I could overpower her, hit her with a rock like she did to poor Kef. But he didn’t move. Falpian dropped his eyes to the floor and again felt Ryder’s presence somewhere in the tunnels, somewhere close. Now he wished he couldn’t feel him so clearly, wished he didn’t see his side of things so well. Ryder was his brother, just as much as Farien had been—his people believed that about talat-sa, and he believed it too. But when his options were to either fail his brother or to fail his people, the choice seemed clear.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, knowing that wherever he was, Ryder could hear him.

  Ryder heard the singing from the tomb of Aayse and took off at a run. He followed the sound, the horrible sound—like pure anger turned to music. Skyla and Visser followed close at his heels. He didn’t stop at the high mosaic-filled chamber, though he caught a glimpse of brilliant reds and greens as he rushed toward the small opening in the rock from which the unnerving song seemed to flow.

  Even before Ryder had fully squeezed through to the outside, he knew what he would find: the lake, the lake that Aata’s Right Hand had seen in her vision. He’d heard someone sing there before, the day the gormy men made their first attack. It was the same singing he heard now.

  For a moment, everything went white as he blinked and squinted in the brightness of the late-morning sun. He shaded his eyes with his hand, the cold air freezing the hairs on the inside of his nose. A few steps to his left, the cascade of the waterfall was still and frozen. Ahead, standing on the small rock island in the middle of the frozen lake, was a figure dressed in black. Lilla. Lilla Red Bird.

  It was hard to believe that the low, scraping rumble echoing off the stone cliffs was actually coming out of her mouth. It was a horrific sound—like madness and anger and sorrow—but Ryder could almost understand it.

  A winter key.

  An assassin’s key!

  “Falpian!” he cried.

  The Baen was staring across the ice at Lilla, black hair stark against the snow. He turned and gave Ryder a tortured look. Ryder started out toward the witch, but Falpian caught him by the arm.