The Witch of Glenaster

by Jonathan Mills

“Well I don’t know what you’re doing here,” he said. “Calm’s the best place for you – from the Anvil Valley, you say? – I wouldn’t go any further north, not with things the way they are now.” And he lit his cigar.

  “We are very grateful to you for your help, sir. I have very little, but if I can…”

  He waved this idea away, as if offended at the very notion of recompense, and we stared at him for a while, as he smoked. He didn’t look, or sound, like a bandit; nor indeed like a tinker, or a minstrel, or any other of the kind who might be found travelling the wild places alone. I thought he might be a guardsman, but he wore no uniform, though he obviously knew how to use a sword. He finished his smoke, and stamped it out with his boot.

  “God, that was good,” he breathed. “Deadly, but good.” And he gave a small laugh. “You’ll want a guide, if you’re heading to the Capital, Esther Lanark. I am happy to offer my services, for I am also heading that way, and would be glad of the company. But I won’t press the matter, as I am a stranger, and you have no reason to trust me. Still, I have some… military training, and as you’ve already discovered, the roads are not so safe these days.” He looked at us, and gave a small shrug, as if it didn’t matter to him either way. And so we stared at each other for a while, until he said: “Well, I’ll be on my way. Don’t stay here long, will you? There may be others.” And with that he took up his pack, wheeled about, and was off striding up the hill. I looked at Magnus, and saw by his face, shocked as he was, that he wanted to trust this man who had saved our lives, and I wanted to trust him also, except… We watched until he was almost out of sight, and then I called after him:

  “Wait!” And then we scurried up the hill to join him.

  “Perhaps we might travel with you a little way…” I said.

  “You don’t have to, of course, but I can assure you I’m no thief. What reason did you say you were heading north for…? Oh, you didn’t give one. Well there are plenty of people about on the roads these days, for all sorts of reasons, since the Witch awoke, and all of them with their own sorrow. So I won’t ask you your business, and – I don’t mean to be rude – but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ask me mine.”

  And he whistled loudly to himself, and walked along, for all the world like a man out for a stroll. Magnus and I exchanged a look, and followed after.

  We were relieved to crest the steepest part of the track, and to feel the ground start to level out beneath our feet, and the way become less stony and less hazardous. After about half a mile, I saw Thomas stop and appear to sniff the air, before calling back to us:

  “This is the beginning of the Fearless Plateau. It’s all easy walking from here to the Moonland. I hope you are not too weary. I have plenty of water in my canteen. Soon we will be enjoying the hospitality of the emperor, in the great city of Ampar, where the lights burn all night long, and the air is alive with singing everywhere you go. And the women are more lovely than the sunset…” And his voice trailed off, and he was silent for a moment. Then he turned back to us. “Come on! Time waits for no man, and no child, either, they say.” And soon the Plateau was before us, and indeed it seemed endless: a wide, flat country studded with trees and copses, shallow and broad to the horizon. Thomas pointed ahead, and smiled.

  “That way,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “So how far is it to Ampar from here?” I asked, as Thomas slowed his pace a little to let us catch up. We were a good mile into the Plateau, and my initial enthusiasm on seeing it for the first time had started to abate. The vast, flat land had a curious effect on the mind, and I imagined that to walk across it alone would drive a person mad. Thomas seemed quite unperturbed, stopping only to get his bearings now and again – an impossible task, it seemed to me, in such a stark and featureless landscape – or to check on my brother, as he followed us, always a good ten paces or so behind. He even offered to carry him, but Magnus would have none of it, insisting on his own two feet for support.

  “About sixty leagues or so,” said Thomas, in answer to my question, twirling a small pendant on a necklace about his finger. “Give or take. A good ten days’ walking, I’d say; though I make allowance for my slower companions…” And he doffed his hat to us, and smiled his crooked smile. And then he pointed towards a brush of woodland, over to our left. “There,” he said. “That would be a good spot for lunch.”

  We ate in near silence, my brother sulking and refusing to talk, I watching the swordsman, as he munched the biggest apple I had ever seen, and gazed out across the Plateau. I realized he was the first fighting man I had encountered since the day seven years earlier, when the young guardsman had appeared at our door, fleeing for his life from the Witch of Glenaster.

  This man was quite different: older to start with, and more battered, but also more determined. I wondered if he had seen any wars, and reckoned there was a good chance that he had. He seemed cheerful withal, and good company, and I felt no need to mistrust him. Yet I couldn’t help but feel there was something about him that didn’t quite fit, as if there was a part of him that was missing. And always he was fingering the necklace, the one with the pendant on it. I longed to know what it was, but never managed to come close enough to see, and thought it rude to ask.

  After lunch, we made a good few miles more across the Plateau, before the humid air, and our own weariness, overcame us. That night we slept in a small hollow, hidden behind some scrubland, and I heard my brother during the night, but let him cry his fill, for I hardly had the energy to comfort myself, and thought it best not to make things worse by fussing over him. Thomas had a spare blanket in his pack, and we were glad of it, for the night was chill.

  “Some tragedy befell you,” he said, after Magnus had gone to sleep. He was working away at his sword with a whetstone, drawing it carefully along the blade, the soft scrape as it sharpened the metal somehow reassuring in that quiet place, as if the sword itself was breathing. He spoke quietly, and simply, so that it moved me, for I knew from the way he spoke that he had experienced tragedy also. “Don’t worry, I won’t pry. But it makes my heart heavy to see two such as yourselves wandering the roads unaccompanied.” And he was quiet for a moment, then resumed sharpening his sword, and I noticed the pendant hanging loosely from his neck.

  “What is it?” I asked, drawing a little closer, and he gave me a look that seemed dark for a moment. But his face soon relaxed, and he turned back to his work.

  “I lost someone too,” he said softly, and then fell quiet. And I asked him no more about it.

  I was about to return to my sleep, when I heard something like a calling, or a howl, far off in the distance of the Plateau. I thought nothing of it, reckoning it only an animal of some kind, but I noticed Thomas grow alert and uneasy, and back silently into the hollow, crouching low next to me. He smelt of damp tobacco and old leaves.

  “Is it an animal?” I asked, and he signalled me to remain quiet. Some moments passed, and the night was still. Then he spoke.

  “It could have been an animal – one of the dogs or wild cats that stalk the Plateau at night – but my heart tells me it was not. There are – things that wander the Plateau after dark. Things you would not want to meet…”

  “Do any of them work for the Witch?” I asked, and again he did not answer for a while. But when he did, he seemed to relax, as if the greatest danger was passed.

  “These days, Esther Lanark,” he said, lying down to sleep, “all evil things work for the Witch…” And within minutes he was snoring, loudly and cheerfully.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The next day broke crisp and dew-heavy, a thick mist low over the flat, punctured only rarely by the odd tree. The grass was springy and wet underfoot, and we were glad when the sun slid through the clouds about mid-morning, and the sky started to clear. After this we made good headway, though I fell over once, and my brother at least twice more. Slowly we got to know our companion. His manner was reserved, but friendly in its way, and he could be s
trange, and even severe, but his mood would also lighten suddenly, and he would crack a joke, or point out a bird or a tree that had caught his eye. And so for the first two days, up there on the Plateau, we learnt to trust one another, and by the second day I suppose we were halfway to being friends. The effort and grief of recent days, and of all our travelling, had taken their toll, and we were sore in need of such friendship. But, for all our troubles, I was determined to press on, at least until we reached Ampar; then we could rest properly, and I could think, and plan, and decide how I was going to kill the Witch.

  I knew that in Ampar there was a great library – the Imperial Compendium – which contained all of the world’s knowledge, and was so large it was like a small city unto itself. It was guarded by the Magi-Librarians, who, it was said, were numberless and fearsome; they patrolled the corridors by night and by day, their faces hidden by low hoods, and their hands set always around the hilts of their daggers. And at the centre of the Compendium, where no man had ever been, was the most secret of all its accumulated knowledge – books they said were so dangerous they shouldn’t even be opened, books that could kill… And it was in to that place that I wanted to go, for the most dangerous of all these books – the one men called the Veil – was rumoured to rest deep within it, held fast by thick straps of leather, and bound by spells in languages long forgotten. It had been written during the reign of Michael the Just, when many still worshipped the old gods, and was almost as old as the Witch herself; and it was said to contain all the lore and wisdom needed to defeat her, if only one were brave or stupid enough to try and find it.

  It was on the third day after we left Calm that I became truly frightened.

  We had spent a second night on the Plateau, bedding down in a small copse, which gave some shelter from the bitter wind coming in from the east. I had slept quite soundly, though not long after midnight I woke to find Thomas stood a little way from the fire, his head to one side, listening, and had thought I heard a cry, like the one the night before, only somewhat nearer, but could not be sure if it wasn’t just a dream. “Go back to sleep,” Thomas had said, and I was grateful to do so. But the next morning, he seemed keen to get off the Plateau as fast as possible: we were running out of food, he said, and there was little to be had up here. I wondered, though, if this was the only reason.

  He thought that at a good pace we could be down into the valleys of the Moonland by the following evening; but I was mindful of my brother, and of his tired legs not being as fast as my own, let alone Thomas’s.

  I was trying to cheer myself with pleasanter thoughts when, later in the day, the mist returned, and, as the sky started to grow dark, I saw the swordsman suddenly stop, a good few strides ahead, his back to us, completely still. I waited for a moment before asking what it was. He turned around, very slowly, and looked, it seemed, through me rather than at me.

  “We are being followed,” he said, his voice hoarse; and the words floated off into the mist. My brother, on hearing them, ran to catch us up, and gripped my hand. Thomas swayed a little, as if unsure what to do next, but then he spied a clump of birch about fifty yards off, and motioned towards it. We followed him, gingerly placing our feet, as if something might leap out of the gathering dusk and surprise us at any moment.

  It was a good spot in which to stop for a while. The trees were raised off the ground by a large hillock, and on one side we were shielded almost completely by them; on the other, we had a wide view back the way we had come, and even in the mist and greying light we could see the Plateau below us, spread out like an empty sheet. The effect made us feel like we were above the clouds, so dense was the white fog beneath; and I remembered reading Magnus the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, a lifetime ago, and tears swept uninvited into my eyes.

  Thomas crouched down low, and urged us to follow him as high up the hill as we could go; and we sat expectantly, with our backs to the trees, watching and waiting. When he spoke, it was in the same hoarse voice he had used earlier, that was soft but seemed to carry:

  “Something’s been following us since we climbed to the Plateau,” he said. “Something – or some things. I don’t know what it is – it doesn’t move fast – but it knows the ways of the wild, and how to stalk its prey. I thought I heard something last night, when you awoke, but I couldn’t be sure then. Now I am - I heard its call. It was faint and far off, but it wasn’t an animal. I know nothing was following me when I was still in the valley. It may be it has been hunting you…”

  At this my brother started to cry, and I scolded Thomas with my eyes for frightening him, and he looked down in apology. Then I told him:

  “There has been something following us. For several days now, since soon after we entered Calm. At first I tried to ignore it, but I think Magnus felt it, too, and when we heard that – sound – in the night, I wondered if it had come back. Now I know it has, I fear I may have made a mistake in coming this way…”

  “Coming which way? There’s no safer way to Ampar. And besides, it might have been me who was stalking you, did you think of that…?” And he grinned slightly, showing his thin teeth.

  “If I’d thought it was you, we would never have accompanied you here like this…” I said, proudly.

  “You had little idea of who or what I was, Esther Lanark,” he said, and now it was he who was scolding me, for my naivety, and willingness to put my trust in him. But how could I not? He was an adult, and I still a child; and with my own mother and father gone, and my brother to look after, I needed someone to follow, to trust. I could see that he understood this, for he put a friendly hand on my shoulder, and his arm around my brother.

  “Your instinct told you to trust me, and you chose well. I am no killer, nor a cutpurse or assassin. If I pledge to protect people, then that is what I do, to the best of my ability. But I tell you that we are in danger here, and the sooner we get off the Plateau and into the Moonland, where we can find shelter, the better. I do not think this mist is entirely natural; I think there is spellcraft at work, and, though I am a good enough swordsman in my own way, I fear that will not be enough to defeat what may be out there…” - and here he lifted his head towards the land we had crossed – “…and I would rather not have to face it, until I am ready.” And he rested his chin on his hand, and was quiet for a long time.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  In the end we resolved to spend the night there amongst the trees, though Thomas feared it would cost us more journeying time the next day, and insisted we rise early the following morning. This we did, after a few hours of sleep that passed with little incident, except for my brother’s snoring. Thomas hardly slept at all, and kept the watch most of the night.

  We had a spare breakfast of stale biscuits, and water from the canteen, and strode off northward, Magnus riding on Thomas’s back when he grew tired. And the Plateau began steadily to narrow, so that we could start to see its edges, and the villages and combes beyond them. And we walked eagerly and without fear, though our legs ached and our minds were always on the sun, galloping across the heavens, and on what might happen when it left us to the darkness, and the nameless things that hunted us.

  Still we pressed on, so that we had enough time to take a good rest in the early afternoon, and Thomas was pleased with our progress, laughing and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “I wish we had some lemonade,” he said, as we shared what water we had left. “When we reach Ampar I will buy you some – a glass each, no, three glasses! – the tallest they have, filled to the brim with the finest lemonade, and great fistfuls of ice, enough to slake the thirst of a charging bull!” And he laughed again, but his eyes were sad.

  And so, by the day’s end, we were less than three miles from the end of the Plateau, and the ground was already sloping down at a steep angle.

  It was then that we saw it.

  I remembered the description that the guardsman who had come to our house all those years ago had given of the Watchers, those evil men w
ho serve the Witch, and the Third Eye that is tattooed upon their foreheads. How his face had seemed to shrink and pale in the firelight, and his eyes grow dark as he recalled the sight. Now, as the trees closed in, and the ground slid away beneath our feet, a great wall of rain came on suddenly from the south, and we had to run for cover. Clutched beneath a wide-leaved beech tree, we sheltered for a while as the sun bled its last, and the night took hold. And behind us, high on the Plateau, in a spot where we had been not two hours before, stood three figures, and the lightning that fell with the rain lit them up like the day, and even though they were a good distance away, I could see their faces; and they were fearful, and grim to look upon. I turned to Thomas, who simply nodded.

  “I saw them too. It is the Watchers, the Men Who Have No Souls.” He held us both, me and my brother, close to him, and I think he was just as afraid as us in that moment. “I thought as much. They have been tracking you, Esther Lanark, it seems these past few days. And now they track me as well.”

  My brother held fast to Thomas’s coat, and asked:

  “But why do they not attack us? Why do they hold back like that?” And Thomas patted the boy on the back, and smiled despite our peril.

  “They do not attack us because they cannot see us. It is something not all know about the Watchers, for it suits them to be as feared as possible; but they have no eyes…”

  I blinked water from my own, and stammered:

  “But – how can they see? What about the Third Eye…?”

  “The Third Eye is the one the Witch sees through,” said Thomas. “It is laid on their foreheads with spike and ink, and spells to hold it fast, and can never be removed. But their real eyes, their human eyes, they lost the use of those many years ago – the Witch removed them, lest they grew too powerful and were tempted to resist her. That is why they move so slowly, but it is not that alone: they are unsure what it is they seek, as is the Witch. I presume they think you some threat, you and your brother, or else they would not have followed you so long. But why, or how, I do not know.”