Dragonwitch (12 page)

T
HERE
WAS
NO
CORONATION
.
None dared leave their high towers for fear of the Twelve and Cren Cru. But my brother took my hand and flew with me to Itonatiu, the Sun Tower, where the king's throne waited at the summit. He sat, his wings spreading on either side, his hands grasping the arms of the throne. His head bowed. He was so young, still a child by our people's standards. But when he sat on that throne, he became king indeed.

I stood silently before him, weeping, for the image of our parents' fall was scored across my mind.

Suddenly Tlanextu looked up. I drew back, shuddering. “No!” I said. But I could not deny what I saw. For there was now death in his eyes as well. Our parents' sacrifice had been in vain. Cren Cru would drain him even as it had drained them.

“We must save Etalpalli,” he said to me then. “At all cost!”

“What will you do?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“There is little I can do,” he said. “But I can hold him off, even as our parents did. And you, my sister, must leave.”

“Please, brother,” I cried, “don't make me abandon the City of Wings!”

“You must go,” he said, “so that Etalpalli may be saved. Seek out the Brothers Ashiun, the Knights of the Farthest Shore. They may be persuaded to help us.”

“How?” I asked.

“I do not know,” Tlanextu replied. “It is said the brothers possess gifts, strange weapons forged in the fires of Lumé and filled with the light of Hymlumé. Perhaps these same weapons may be enough to drive Cren Cru from our demesne. You must go to them and plead our cause.”

The idea filled me with dread. I had never before ventured beyond the Faerie Realm, never flown across the boundaries of Etalpalli, my beautiful home. I knew of the worlds that lay beyond our borders, the vast Wood Between, and the strange Near World, where people lived and died by the cruel hand of Time. The idea of journeying anywhere near that place was enough to make my blood run cold.

But Tlanextu asked me with death staring from his eyes. How could I refuse?

The Chronicler had a way of deflecting attention from himself, a skill honed to perfection over the course of his hidden life.

Nevertheless, standing now in the candlelit room, watching her teacher bend over the sickened earl, it was impossible, Leta thought, to miss the resemblance between them. Though Ferox was weakened to skeletal frailty, though the Chronicler was deformed in body, their faces were as like as ever were father and son. Save the Chronicler's features were softer with youth and, perhaps, with his mother's influence.

Leta saw it all. She did not know who else might. Mintha knew, but did Alistair, standing on the far side of the bed, looking on with eyes full of surprise and perhaps horror? Did her own father, lurking in the near shadows, know this great secret of his fellow earl?

“I have been no father to you,” Ferox said, his voice so thin and quavering that Leta strained to discern the words. The Chronicler leaned closer, and his mouth worked as though struggling to form a reply.

“I've been no son to you,” he said at last, scarcely above a whisper.

“I gave you a place,” the earl continued. In desperation he tried to raise
his head, but the effort was too great. His shaking hand slid across the heavy rugs of his bed, seeking the Chronicler. “I gave you a profession. I gave you a chance for power beyond that of other men, the power of words and pen.”

The Chronicler drew his hand away from the earl's. But he said, “You . . . you have been good to me, my lord.”

“No.” The muscles in the earl's neck quivered as he shook his head. “I have not been good. I have been a coward.”

“Enough of this,” Lady Mintha said. “My dear brother must not be bothered at this time. Away with—”

“Be still,” Alistair growled, and his mother lapsed into silence, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Leta felt the tension in the earls surrounding her, heard the sharp breaths of her own father. But she did not turn her gaze from the scene playing out before her. Every sense in her body focused upon that isolated space of candlelight and death.

“You are like your mother,” Ferox said. His eyes, clouded with memories, wandered across the room, seeking something he could not find. But he still spoke to the Chronicler. “Very like. She too was . . . clever. She wrote and she read. And she was small. Too small. Not so small as you, but too small. And she died. You lived. I thought I hated you.”

Leta saw the tears on the Chronicler's cheeks. They were in a world apart, that father and son, a world that fit only the two of them, and she dared not draw near even had she wished to.

“A sonless earl can never be a king.” Ferox's wandering eyes at last fell upon the face of his son. Slowly, as though lifting a mighty mace and chain, he raised his hand. The fingers trembled like dried leaves with the strain. “A cowardly earl can never be a man.”

The Chronicler reached out. He took that trembling hand in his. For a moment his eyes were as fierce as ever the earl's had been. “You are strong,” he said, and there was pride in his wounded voice. “You are the earl of Gaheris, the greatest man in the North Country.”

“I will never be a great man,” Ferox replied. “But before they inter me in the dark, I will be a
true
man.”

With a gasp of pain, he lifted his arm up high so that all in the room could see how their hands were clasped. He raised his voice so that it was almost as loud as it had been in the fullness of his life. He said:

“This is Florien Ferox-son, my firstborn, my heir. Let him take up the shield of Gaheris and mastery of all his father's lands. I bid you honor him as once you honored me.”

The silence was that of a crypt, and the earls and servants were specters in the dark. Lady Mintha's face filled with horror, and Alistair's was hidden in shadows. Leta felt her heart stop and then begin to race as a collision of thoughts battered her brain so hard that even the silence seemed cacophonous.

The earl's hand lowered once more. He drew his son closer, and with a painful rasp he spoke his last. “I have done you no service. They will try to kill you.” He closed his eyes as though a knife were even now being driven into his skull. His final word came out in a struggling breath.

“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.

I
LEFT
E
TALPALLI
,
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 walls 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.