Dragonwitch Read online

  “Run.”

  The Chronicler got to his feet. The earl lay immobile upon his bed, his chest rising and falling with the labor of his final moments. All tears or traces of sorrow were gone from the face of his son so long denied, at last acknowledged. Every eye in the room fixed upon him, and none there could discern the workings of his mind.

  He backed away: one step, then two. He turned and, passing Leta without a look, continued on to the door, through to the hall.

  Leta, holding her breath, heard the sound of running footsteps fading down the passage.

  No one moved. No one breathed but Earl Ferox. He drew a breath, and another. And then, with a final dry gasp, he was still.

  Lady Mintha stepped forward. She put a finger to his pulse, rested her ear near his cold lips. Then she stood.

  “The earl is dead. Long life to Alistair, Master of Gaheris!”

  “Long life” came the murmured echo, cold as a broken oath, dark as a death sentence. Leta stared around at the faces of the earls, Ferox’s onetime friends. She saw horror; she saw betrayal; she saw murder in every face. In her father’s face. In Mintha’s.

  She turned and started for the door. But Lady Mintha leapt forward with the quickness of a cat and caught her by the arm. Without a word to Leta, she barked to those servants standing nearest, “Bring the dwarf to me.”

  “No!” Leta cried and tried to break free.

  “Shut your mouth,” Lady Mintha said. “Look carefully to your loyalties now.”

  Leta stared up at the strong woman holding her and saw the viciousness of a vixen. She turned to her father, but the Earl of Aiven was giving his own orders to his men. Desperate, she looked around for Alistair.

  Her husband-to-be was gone.

  Gaheris rang with the crashing footsteps of those who sought Earl Ferox’s son.

  Outside of Time there rests beneath a mountain a merry realm where yellow-headed little people dance and sing, and dance and sing some more. Their shadows, cast by brilliant torches, ring the stony hall of Ruaine-ann-Rudiobus, cavorting in the joy of song.

  In their midst, singing loudest, dancing wildest, was scarlet-clad Eanrin. His bright voice rang above the throng, echoing in the highest vaults of the stone cavern hall of King Iubdan.

  “Fair Gleamdrené, in splendor’s vault thou art

  Shining lone and sweet among the flow’rs of night!”

  The poet sang with a hand on his heart to a lady seated on a humble stool before the great Queen Bebo. The lady refused to look his way or even to smile at the devotion painted across the poet’s handsome face. But Bebo saw it and saw more besides, and she thought many thoughts that she kept to herself.

  A star approached from the shadows.

  Bebo turned, surprised at its coming. It wrapped itself in disguises so as not to frighten the Merry People dancing in that fey hall. But the queen saw this celestial being come to earth, shining and beautiful, its flanks tinged with blue light.

  “Cé,” she whispered in quiet greeting, not wishing to draw the attention of her subjects.

  It bowed before her.

  Fair Bebo, it said, I come with word for you.

  “Tell me, shining one,” said the queen.

  Its voice was deep and far and full of multitudes singing when it replied. The gates are unwatched. The Flame is building. And the Murderer has found his heir.

  “Ah,” said Bebo, nodding. “So the time has come. Good. Very good indeed.”

  She turned and looked across the wild dance floor, watching the scarlet poet sing.

  6

  I LEFT ETALPALLI, THE REALM OF MY BIRTH, flying with my back to the Sun and Moon Towers, my head turned away from the ugly, devouring Mound of Cren Cru. I do not know who saw me go. I wondered if the Twelve would try to stop me, but I wasn’t a firstborn; perhaps they had no interest in my fate.

  However it was, I crossed through Cozamaloti Gate, the shimmering cascades of falling water that formed the boundary between our world and the Between. And behind me, Tlanextu placed a lock, a work of magic, some would say. Its substance was this: No one should pass through Cozamaloti again except for the sake of another. With this lock, he hoped to prevent any other evil from slipping into Etalpalli while the city was weakened by Cren Cru and his slaves.

  Only I and the Brothers Ashiun, if they agreed to accompany me, should be able to enter.

  The moment I passed into the Wood Between, I knew it was a terrible place. The trees grew so thick, so twined together, that there could be no flight for one of my size, though I was scarcely grown then to my full wingspan. I flew up from the mists of Cozamaloti and landed on the banks of a wide river I did not know.

  From there, I was obliged to walk.

  How can I express to you the pain of a winged creature forced to hobble along the dirt? My feet were tender; they bled as rocks and roots tore into them, and they soon throbbed as though with each step I trod upon hot coals. My wings I folded against my back, but branches reached out and snatched at them, tearing.

  And there was no sight of the sky. The fate of Cren Cru’s gaping void seemed preferable to me!

  Dark halls, distant shouts, and the cold of biting winter.

  The Chronicler fled, his senses ringing with bursting life made all too real in the pain of loss and the fear of pursuit. He ran, stumbling in the gloom, his hand pressed to the stone wall of a staircase to keep his balance, expecting men-at-arms to leap from the shadows any moment.

  “You are not my father?” a tiny, malformed child had asked old Raguel, the former chronicler.

  “No, thank the Lights Above,” Raguel had responded with his habitual acidity. “You have no father.”

  It was true and untrue all at once. Impossible and all too possible. As an older child beginning to feel the bindings of his limited height, he soon guessed, though he never dared speak aloud his conclusions. He guessed that the man who visited the library every so often and asked after his progress was more than just the Earl of Gaheris. He guessed from glances; he guessed from curt words. Later, after Raguel died and his apprentice took over as castle chronicler, he guessed the truth when summoned to the earl’s chambers to write out dictated letters. He guessed from tone of voice and turn of head. He guessed it all, and he understood, though his heart broke with hatred and love.

  “You have no father,” he whispered to himself as he fled. And now it was true indeed: His father was dead.

  Loss that the Chronicler should not have allowed himself to feel swept over him, and he was almost glad for the fear to drive it out.

  “I have done you no service,” Earl Ferox had said. And this was the most painful truth of all. As castle chronicler, the diminutive, forsaken son might have spent a long life in solitude and quiet work. As declared heir, what life remained to him would be spent on the run.

  For who would serve a dwarf lord?

  In escape lay his only hope. Any moment now, Earl Ferox would breathe his last, and when that happened Alistair would send for him, he knew. Alistair, who had the support of the earls and who would not so easily give up mastery of Gaheris to his former teacher. So he must escape, steal a horse (was it stealing, after all, if Ferox had named him heir?), and ride into the wild lands. To the east and into the mountains? No, he would never pass over them. To the west, then, seaward? But what to do when he faced the wall of the sea? North, into colder climes? And freeze the blood in his veins! It must be south, then—

  Foolishness, all foolishness. What good did any future plan accomplish if he could not so much as escape Gaheris’s binding walls? The castle that stood in fierce defense against all comers was also a mighty prison.

  It was all madness. All hopelessness. But he would not be taken like a lamb for slaughtering.

  He could already hear the tramp of feet, whether real or imagined he could not guess. The pursuit would begin any moment, he was certain. But he passed no one as he fled through the keep and out the door into the inner courtyard. Round him were the high w
alls of Gaheris, and watchmen stood at their interval posts. Torches flickered in their iron holders, but their light was as nothing to the cold moon watching from above.

  The Chronicler hastened across the stones, as yet unhailed by any searcher. But there were guards posted at the gates to the outer courtyard, and who could say if they would let him pass? His flight might end before it was well begun. But what else could he do? There was nowhere he might safely hide—

  With a sharp curse, louder than he intended, the Chronicler crashed into someone in the dark and fell back hard upon the ground. A figure he could not discern stood above him, blending so perfectly into the darkness that he almost could not see it even now. Then it bent, and the light of the moon fell upon its face. A wrinkled, ugly, utterly old visage.

  “Evening, Your Majesty,” said the scrubber.

  Snarling another curse, the Chronicler scrambled to his feet and tried to push past. But the scrubber put out his mop handle and impeded him. “Let me by, old fool!” the Chronicler said, grabbing the handle in both hands.

  “I think not. Many apologies, Your Majesty,” said the scrubber. With a flick of his skinny wrist and mop, he turned the Chronicler in the direction he wished him to go and, pushing between his shoulders with the soggy end of his tool, started him walking. “You need a place to hide. Word has already spread through the guards, and you’ll not get past the gates. Best to keep your head down until further notice, don’t you think?”

  Though he wanted to fight, to lash out, the Chronicler found himself moving as directed. Strangely enough, he felt relieved. It was good to have all desperate choices taken from his hand. The scrubber propelled him across the courtyard opposite the old Gaheris crypt toward an old shed, a humble building the Chronicler had never noticed before. The scrubber unlatched and opened the door with many creakings.

  “There we go,” he said, pushing the Chronicler through. “No one will think to look for you here. But don’t come out until you know it’s time. Understand, Your Majesty?”

  The Chronicler stumbled into the dankness of the shed. He whirled around to face the scrubber, saying, “Why do you call me that?”

  “Call you what?”

  “Majesty!”

  “Why?” The scrubber scratched the back of his head, his cloudy eyes as wide and unblinking as an owl’s. “Because you’re the King of the North Country. Or you will be. Time is such a funny thing; it’s all the same in the end.”

  “Daft fool,” the Chronicler growled. “I’m not an earl, much less a king. By all the Dragon’s brood, I’d be glad even to be counted quite a man!”

  “Tut, so much fussing,” the scrubber said, shaking his head and making a sour face. Then he leaned in, his crusty eyes close to the Chronicler’s. “Look around you, Your Majesty. Tell me what you see.”

  Taking a step back—for the scrubber’s breath was putrid—the Chronicler glanced from side to side. “An old, drafty shed,” he growled, shivering.

  “Pity,” said the scrubber and shrugged. “Lie low. They’ll not find you here. You’ll know when it’s time to emerge.”

  “But . . . wait!” the Chronicler began. The shed door slammed in his face. He stood in frozen darkness, hiding like a rat in a hole. He bowed his head, drawing a heavy breath. Never before had he felt so stripped of all manhood. In that moment, his desperation and sorrow too keen to bear, he almost wished they would find him.

  Find him, and kill him quickly.

  Alistair staggered in the darkness.

  He felt as uneasy on his feet and in his mind as though he were inebriated, though he hadn’t tasted drink all day. One does not drink when one’s uncle is dying. One does not drink on the verge of being declared master of all one surveys. One does not drink on the day when the expectations of a lifetime are about to be fulfilled, when age passes away and youth steps into rightful forefront.

  But one might possibly drink if one’s future, title, prospects—entire life, when it came right down to it—were stripped away in the sudden blink of an eye.

  A son! A legitimate son!

  And yet, of all sons . . .

  No wonder Ferox had kept it secret. No wonder he’d allowed everyone to assume the child died at birth. Alistair cursed as he staggered down a side passage, choosing byways of Gaheris Castle that were less traversed, hoping not to meet any of the North Country earls as he fled to . . . fled where? Where could he go?

  Embarrassed, disinherited, bewildered, he wandered like a ghost in the nighttime corridors.

  He should have seen the resemblance long ago. When the Chronicler knelt at the dying man’s side, it was impossible not to see how he, for all his abnormal proportions, favored Earl Ferox. How could Alistair, through all those laborious hours of alphabets and finding words in scribbled ink, have missed the resemblance? But the Chronicler had such a way of hiding himself away. After all, one doesn’t like to stare at those less fortunate; Alistair had made it a point not to look too closely at the little fellow who was his own age but the size of a child.

  The little fellow who was now, by all legal rights, Earl of Gaheris. The little fellow who, in the course of a single moment, had taken everything Alistair possessed.

  He didn’t know where he would go. Somewhere he wouldn’t have to face his mother. He knew how she would be. Even now, he could picture her taking aside various earls, planting words in their ears, plotting against Ferox’s dying wishes before the man’s body had quite gone cold. Of course there would be an uprising. And Alistair did not doubt that sufficient support would muster behind him to establish him in his uncle’s seat. Even as he strode the dark passages, fury disorienting his brain, he knew that all was far from lost. He would still be Earl of Gaheris.

  But to do so, he would have to go against his uncle’s wishes. He would have to kill his cousin.

  His cousin!

  Unnerved, Alistair allowed himself to descend into a dark and dangerous brooding. And this brooding drove him outside, as was his wont on dark evenings. Out into the courtyard, making for the high wall overlooking Hanna and the northern sweep of Gaheris. If he saw two shadows scurry across the stones ahead of him, he did not notice. His head pounded with thoughts he could not quite think. Mastery and murder. Dreams and nightmares.

  He hastened toward the narrow stairs leading up the wall, passing as he did so the marble doors of the family crypt. Moonlight shone upon the white doorposts of stone, carved with heavy embellishments and set with wrought-iron fastenings. Lady Mintha, he knew, had already arranged for the funeral. Even before her brother had taken to his bed, she had begun preparing for the interment. How eagerly she had awaited his death, the time of her son’s ascension!

  Now everything was in place. Ferox would be sent to his final rest in the morning, soon after sunrise. And according to Mintha’s arrangements, the earls would then perform the ceremony to instate Alistair as one of their number, placing the shield of mastery in his hand and repeating the vows of brotherhood they had made to his uncle.

  Alistair’s mouth was dry as he stopped before that grim door. Tomorrow, his uncle would pass through. How many more decades until Alistair too would be laid to rest there? Beside his uncle, beside his father. A counterfeit earl, a murderer. A fraud.

  “Lights Above,” he whispered, “what are my life and death to be?”

  Something scratched on the far side of the door.

  Alistair stood and stared, telling himself he was imagining things. Things that sounded like claws or talons dragging from the top of the door to the bottom in a slow, deliberate stroke.

  Then silence. Then . . .

  Scratch!

  Someone was picking at the wood with a fingernail, with a dagger point.

  “Servants,” Alistair whispered. “Mother’s servants. Inside. Preparing for the funeral. Preparing his vault. That is all.”

  Then came a voice that was not a voice so much as a thought in his head:

  Let us out.

  Alistair’s hand was at
the door. There was no lock. Why lock away the dead? The dead do not rise.

  Open the gate.

  Alistair’s fingers trembled. He forced himself to grip the door latch. He would open it and look. He would see that there were no ghosts waiting to judge him. Then he would shut the door and return to his rooms and let the future deal with itself as it must.

  “I will die in the dark,” he whispered, and his voice caught in his throat. “I will never be king.”

  The door was heavy. It did not want to answer to his touch.

  Let us out.

  He took hold with both hands and pulled. The door resisted, screaming on its hinges.

  Open . . .

  A crack in the darkness.

  Suddenly an enormous hand gripping a dagger shot out from the opening. The blade flashed in light that was not moonlight. Alistair screamed as he felt the cold bite and then the fiery burn sink deep into his shoulder, a snake’s bite full of poison. He fell back from the door upon the stone cobbles, and the knife pulled out with searing pain. His hand pressed to the wound. Blood seeped through his fingers, thick and warm.

  The door pushed open. Alistair stared. He saw the looming figure standing there. He saw the dagger and the sword and the eyes like white moons.

  “Oh no you don’t. Not yet.”

  A withered hand, frail with mortality, reached out and shut the crypt door as gently as it might close the door to a nursery. A scream erupted from the far side, and a scraping and scratching like a thousand rats tearing at the heavy wood.

  “Not yet,” whispered the old scrubber again as he leaned heavily upon the handle of his mop. He looked down upon the tall young man fainted on the stones and shook his head. “Soon enough. Then we’ll see what heroes rise to face the monsters.”

  “Eanrin! Bard Eanrin!”

  The scarlet poet stopped midsong and whirled about upon the dance floor to face the upraised throne of his queen. He saw her hand beckoning him, and with a flashing smile and a great bound, he presented himself before her, bowing with a sweep of his cloak.