The Witch of Glenaster

by Jonathan Mills

  I finally managed to haul myself on to the wide sill, battering back the curtains, my fingers stammering at the latch… and then falling, falling, out and over on to the ground, a stinging at my brow and the crying of my brother in my ear.

  I do not know how long I was out for; I think it was only a few moments, though it seemed endless. But there was my brother above me, shaking me, and I thinking, what’s he shaking me so roughly for, I’m trying to sleep; and all the time the roaring of the flames, and the wailing of the dead and the dying.

  I sat up, my brother still tugging urgently at the sleeve of my nightdress. I gazed stupidly at him, and we looked at each other for a while thus, struck dumb. Though it came in pieces to my shattered mind, I knew what had happened: the drakes had finally come, they had come as we always knew they would; they had come and they had destroyed our village.

  There was just then a keening sound, off to the east, and I stood up, a little woozily, and spun in that direction. And I saw them, reflecting the early morning sunlight as they swept away, glinting like sparks in the grey dawn, the fire-drakes of the Witch of Glenaster; and I knew then that my brother and I had had a lucky escape, for if we had left the house any earlier, we would most probably have been spotted, and burned or eaten alive where we stood. And I reached out a hand to him, and he took it; and I held him to me as he wept, and swore then that no one would touch him, no thing living or dead, unless it murder me first.

  It was only then that I thought of my parents.

  For some reason I had simply assumed they were only missing: gone to fetch help, or run to the aid of our neighbours. But now I started to panic, and fear took hold of me, my gut tightening around it like a snake; the fear that they might be dead, and if so, that I would have to tell my brother, that I would have to fend for him somehow, for him and for me, and that we would be destitute, without anything to call our own; no house, no land, no coin. Such people did not last long where we came from.

  I turned slowly back towards the house. It was burning steadily now, the roof-timbers collapsing, not in any particular hurry, the building surrendering to the flames without a fight. For a moment I was almost transfixed by it, as if it were the most normal sight in the world, to see the house you had grown up in, the only home you had ever known, burn to the ground; but I soon restored myself, and, hearing my brother crying for his mother, resolved to see if any way in to the house could be obtained without risk of death or injury.

  There was none.

  The kitchen door was full of flame, and too hot to come near; and the back door appeared to have been blown right off its hinges by the force of the fire, bellowing within. The windows, too, were either too high or too dangerous to enter; and the smoke and the heat pushed out against me, so that I constantly staggered back away from the house to recover my strength. Only the old porch had escaped, though its brickwork was blackened and scorched; but there were some clothes piled in one corner, and shoes also, so that I was able to wrap my brother and myself up half-decently at least, for we were both in our nightclothes, and I laced an odd pair of small boots onto his feet, and they seemed to fit him well enough; there were none that would fit me. I knew then what I had to do. We could not stay here. I could only hope that our parents had escaped somehow, had fled; and I picked up my brother and ran barefoot down the hill, to the Head Man’s house.

  The Head Man was in his sixties, broadminded but not so quick in his wits; still, my father had always supported him, and I knew he had a good regard for our family. I did not know what I hoped to find. The path to his house ran through dark pines, and the ground was steep, and there was smoke drifting through the trees and masking the way, so that more than once I became lost, and stumbled on stones and broken tree-roots. My knees were stained green, and my feet pricked by thorns, when finally we arrived at the house, and my shoulder was wet with my brother’s tears.

  I set him down outside the front door, for I could hold him no longer; he was nearly eight then.

  “Some weight you are, little one,” I said, and tried to sound cheerful, though I fear my words had little effect: he was even less convinced by them than I was. I knocked twice, hard, on the door. It gave a creaking sigh, and fell inwards.

  The house, that had looked so solid from the front, was a smouldered ruin behind, its insides disintegrated as surely as if they had hardly stood at all. Magnus was distracted for a moment from his crying, and I stood there mute as a stone, only the birds making any comment. I put my hand out to stop him following, then gingerly walked through the door into what was left of the house.

  It was hardly recognisable; but of those things preserved, an old kettle sat high and unscorched on a pile of bricks that might once have been a shelf of some kind. And upon it perched a carrion crow, who squawked his indifference at me, and made me shiver. I followed his gaze.

  There, near the centre of the place, under a good two feet of fallen brickwork and roof tiles, lay a woman, big and black and quite dead, on the floor of her own house. Her face and trunk were scored, as if she had been sliced by a butcher too drunk to think, and I realized after a moment that her body had been cleaved sheer in two by the wall on top of her. On looking closer, I saw that the marks that were set into her flesh were those of large, blade-like teeth. It was Alice Pepper, the Head Man’s wife. When I was younger she had sat up with me sometimes when my parents were away, playing with me on the floor, or singing stories about the olden times, and the Kings of Areon. When I was sad she would chuck me under the chin, and whisper, “There, there, little one...” I stared for a while longer before running back the way I had come, dragging my protesting brother, who I was no longer strong enough to carry, back up the hill towards the village. I had seen enough.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The rest of the village was silent, its houses smashed and broken, flames from still-burning fires warping the air with their heat. I ran round it three times, while my brother watched me, a desperate look in his eyes. I could find no one. If anyone else had survived, it seemed they had fled. Perhaps they had run and drowned themselves in the river, like the outsiders. Whatever had become of them, I knew I wished that I, too, was dead, and not fated to remain alive when all that I loved was destroyed. I think that if it had not been for my brother, I would have done away with myself then; I did not think I could face another day. And I looked up to see him standing outside our house, his back to me, his small shoulders set, as if pleading with time to stop, and go into reverse, and bring him back everything he knew. And I flung my arms around him, and we wept, together, we wept for all that we had lost; and it seemed to us that the world itself was gone, and nothing was left now to give us hope or comfort.

  We stayed like that I think most of the morning. And I suppose we might have remained so, and would have died of neglect or starvation, were it not for the insistent urging in my head that told me we had to move, now, before scavengers appeared, or the drakes returned. I tried to ignore it for a while, but in the end I could no longer see the wisdom in simply giving up. If we had been spared, perhaps it was for a reason, though none of any consequence presented itself. Still, I felt my feet pull me away, and, when I had made one last inspection to reassure myself there really were no other survivors, I pulled my brother up off the ground, where he sat, listless and dumb, and refused to heed his wailings and complaints as I gathered what provisions I could find, and headed upstream, towards Hale.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I need not tell you that those early hours were probably the worst of our journey. Though we experienced much hardship and difficulty in the weeks to come, our first steps were marked by the weight of our grief, and we walked reluctantly, like the damned.

  It was especially hard for my brother, who by nature had a glad heart, and a quick smile. He glanced back often to the smoke rising from the village, and argued miserably with me that we should stay and await our parents’ return.

  But I told him that if they had gone to fetch help,
then they would not expect us to stay and die waiting for them, and anyway I had left a message, under the stone outside our kitchen door, and scrawled on paper I had found in the pocket of my coat, that told them we were going to Hale, to seek help from Drew Peters.

  This was true, and I liked to think it gave my brother some hope, though it was chiefly for his sake that I did it, for I knew in my heart that I would never see my parents again. I tried not to think of them, for my brother was already sick with tears, and if I succumbed to my loss as well we would both perish.

  So we passed the first afternoon playing “I Spy”, when we had the heart to speak, and holding each other’s hands; and by five o’clock we had crossed the Stave, and were halfway to Hale.

  I feared what we might find there.

  Half the trees, and many of the fields, in Dulcet and Catchmarsh were gone, scorched from the earth, whose wounds were black and still smouldering. As we rounded a bend in the woods, the waters of the river murmuring softly to our right, we saw something that made us stop, and pull back into the trees to hide. For coming up the path towards us was a long line of people, dressed for the road, many of them weeping, and laden with bags and young children.

  We watched them for a while, until I decided they were no threat, but merely refugees, like us; and, coming out of our hiding place, and somewhat surprised at my boldness – though, in truth, little surprised me anymore – I asked one woman what had happened; but she tore her sleeve away, and only cried, and it was a younger man who told us the truth.

  “The drakes have laid waste to all the land from the Anvil Valley to Cain, and the villages east of Hale. The town itself is burning like a brazier – you see that orange glow there?” And he pointed over to the east. “That is what remains of the Trading House. It is a great funnel of flame. I saw it for myself.”

  And he spoke no more, but walked on with his family; and I was struck dumb for a moment, before gathering enough wits to ask:

  “Does anyone here know Drew Peters? Our parents are Joseph and Elizabeth Lanark. We are from Southtemper, in the Anvil Valley. Does anyone here know Drew Peters? Of Seven Hills?” I did not expect an answer. But a woman whose hair was tucked up in a shawl, with soot-blackened creases threading her face, and a small boy leaning exhausted against her legs, answered:

  “Oh, child. Drew Peters’ farm was one of the first to go. I heard he was outside, defiant to the end, staring the drakes down. But they took him – their fire swallowed him – and his young daughters were taken also. It is a terrible thing, a miserable thing…” And she touched my head, as if in benediction, and smiled at Magnus, and then was gone.

  “Where are you all going?” I cried, and my brother also, who could not understand why no one would stop to help us.

  “South!” cried a man with a grey thatch of beard, and a belly that spilled heavily over the tops of his trousers. “Though many others are heading north. But they say the Great Road is no longer safe, north of the Anvil: there are bandits, and worse things besides; and the drakes are always watching. Best to head south. That’s where I’d go, if I were you. There are hot meals, and jobs, in Trent, and Hammock City. Go south. There is nothing for anyone here anymore…” And his words were lost amongst the crowd, and I saw him no more, though I stood looking for a good while, we both did, until the crowd of people had passed, Magnus begging them to stop, and look after us; but none did.

  The path was very quiet then, in the evening light.

  The glow from the east, as Hale burned, was clear and bright as the darkness crept up the sky, and the birds sung heedless in the trees. We walked on a little, down the path, Magnus tugging at my hand, trying to pull me the other way. But I had a strange compulsion to see for myself the devastation wrought by the fire-drakes, and I needed time to think; and so we headed on, until we could feel the heat of the burning town. I clambered up a bank, through shattered and scorched trees, helping Magnus along as we clutched at roots and branches to pull ourselves up; and when we reached the top, we both had to catch our breath.

  Hale was alight, from one end to the other, buildings ruined and crumbling, and many having already succumbed to the flames. The Trading House was wreathed in smoke, pluming upward and blackening the sky, and the roar rippled on our ears like death. The fire spat fat sparks into the darkness, and now and again I could hear what sounded like screams on the wind. We gazed on the scene for a while, dwarfed by its horror, both of us too shocked to speak.

  Then something stirred in the ruins.

  A vast shape, almost as high as the Trading House, and nearly twice as long, uncoiled itself along the ground, as if disturbed from sleep. In the twilight it was difficult to make it out at first, but as I looked I saw what it was, and then there was no doubt – I did not even try to run – just a terrible sense of cold fear, of the proximity of death. My brother felt it too, and grasped my hand so tight his nails dug into my palm.

  It was a fire-drake.

  It seemed so large and ungainly that I found I was surprised when first it unfolded its wings, forgetting for a moment that dragons were swift and powerful fliers. The wings themselves seemed delicate, almost translucent, though when it flapped them it did so with a real grace, and I was almost moved by the beauty of it, for all my fear. It reared up on its hind legs, its wings slicing through the air, and washing our faces in hot blasts of soot and fume, so that we coughed and nearly choked. But the dragon was not interested in us: all its focus was on the half-burnt house beside which it had slept, and for a moment it hovered above it, its narrow-pupil’d eye, sharp-green and set deep into its long head, examining it coolly, before finally it blinked, snorted once, and then let forth a stream of flame that poured over the house and destroyed it utterly.

  The sound was so great it pummelled our ears, so that we had to try and block them; and I think we must have screamed, though the noise was lost beneath the dragon’s roar. It climbed higher into the sky, and I thought then that it would surely see us, and all would be lost. But it only turned its back, and swooped away towards the north, and was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We were so weary we slept where we were, sheltering beneath the roots of an old oak, my body protecting my brother’s as I held him, the heat from the dying town below keeping us warm.

  In the morning we were both stiff and groggy, and Magnus’s nose was running; and at first he seemed disorientated, and unsure of where he was; and as the truth came back to him he started to wail, and I hugged him, and wiped and kissed his face.

  The remains of the town were still smouldering in the morning air, but a fresh wind seemed to have blown the soot and ash away off to the east, and I was grateful, for otherwise I suppose we may have suffocated in our sleep. I felt cold and lost, and too young to be burdened with this grief, these adult choices I now had to make. But as the morning haze cleared, and we breakfasted on stale bread, my heart hardened in my breast, and my mind grew dark within me.

  South, the man had said. That was surely the sensible thing to do. Head south, or lie down here and die. But the Witch lay north. And now there was nothing: nothing but her, and us, and all that she had taken from us. To this day I do not know why, for it was an act of pure madness, the kind of impulsive folly my parents had always warned me against, and I was surely risking my own and my brother’s safety by doing so. But after composing myself as much as I could, and checking the path was clear, I took my brother’s hand - as he blinked at me, tired and broken - and turned north.

  CHAPTER NINE

  We did not take the Great Road.

  Most likely, if we had, we would not have lasted a day, if what we had been told about its dangers was true. Instead, we picked our way through the woods, following what paths we could, towards the Bridge of Abanon. This was one of the old crossings, built before even the Histories were first written, that straddle the Anvil at diverse points along its course, and here provided a link between our own lands and the shallow, wooded valleys of Nave and C
alm, beyond the river. North of them lay the Fearless Plateau, and further on still, the rocky hills of Moonland, that meet the Low Country of Stanton and West Cross at the Three Fords. And finally the Imperial Capital itself, with its great towers, and the Bridge of Socus, so high, it was said, that it grazed the feet of heaven. And beyond it, the Far Northern lands of Fernshire and Fairburn, that stretch for many leagues between Ampar and the Green Cities, with their forest-houses hidden amongst the trees. And then, beyond even those, the dark valleys of the Lessening Lands, and the Witch’s realm… Glenaster.

  This was the route I had decided upon, though I had never been more than three leagues from my home before, and was familiar with these places only through tales in books. But I knew that they were well away from the Great Road, which lay several miles to the east, and were therefore likely to be a safer path for us to take.

  Magnus complained bitterly, and clearly thought I was deranged if not wicked to drag him this way: if south was where the other people were headed, then surely that was where we should also go. But I was driven on by something more than loyalty, or desire, or grief: my mistress was revenge, and it was my first and last thought.

  I tried to placate him with soothing words, and promises of shelter; but he only eyed me suspiciously, and put lead in his feet. And so I told him then that we were going north to seek the help of our Cousin Beatrice, and that while we were there we could entreat the emperor’s protection, and that he would help us find our parents, and who was responsible for their disappearance. And I would leave a note, in every place we stayed, I promised him, in case they came looking for us. But my brother received these words coldly.