Dragonwitch (31 page)

The other two looked.

Then Eanrin screamed.

Such a sound cannot be made in the throat of a man or even of a cat, but only by a strange blend of the two. Fear and rage and animal instinct combined.

“Back! Back, back!” he cried, taking his man's form and grabbing both Alistair and the Chronicler by their shoulders. “Back down, into the Wood!”

The darkness swept across the sky. “Mouse!” Alistair cried, shaking free of Eanrin's grasp even as the cat-man dragged them toward the edge of the gorge. “She's too far ahead; she can't hear you!”

“It doesn't matter! Get back, hurry!”

But Alistair paid no heed. He darted out across the plain, hurrying after Mouse, shouting her name. “Dragon-eaten fool,” Eanrin snarled.

“What is it?” The Chronicler, his face white, struggled to turn, to see.

“It's the Midnight,” said Eanrin. “The Midnight of the Black Dogs. She sent them for us!”

I
AM
A
F
AERIE
QUEEN
;
it matters not that I gave up that title and that name. Though I reject it, queenship does not reject me. So I am gifted with three lives.

I woke in a dark place, deep in my new Father's realm. The Netherworld, the kingdom of Death-in-Life, my true Father. He sat upon a skeletal throne and watched as I struggled to breathe and felt the flame of my inner furnace course into my limbs once more.

“Well done, daughter,” he said. “You nearly killed that little knight. But not quite. Your rending claws succeeded in filling him with poison, but not enough to end his life. See if you can't do a better job of it this time. I need both him and his brother dead.”

“So will they be, Father!” I replied, and I returned to the Near World.

It looked like an oncoming storm rolling in from the sea. But there was no wind, Alistair noticed as he hurtled after Mouse, who was a good
distance ahead of him. The air was thick and sluggish, without movement. He heard Eanrin's shouting behind him, but he didn't turn.

“Mouse!” he cried. Though he was certain she heard him, she did not turn, but her pace slowed and then stopped. She stood stock-still, her head tilted to the sky as the darkness rushed down upon them. Alistair put on a burst of speed and drew alongside her. “Mouse, we've got to take shelter!” he said, though he knew she wouldn't understand him.

In the quickly fading light, he saw her face. It had gone chalky, and her lips moved in that familiar prayer of hers.

“Fire burn!”

He whirled about, gazing up into the darkness; there were no clouds to be seen in all the vast stretch. It was the darkness of night that slapped down hard upon this world, nearly knocking him from his feet with its suddenness.

Howling filled the air. Mouse screamed, but the sound was lost in dissonance, in the haunting cry of the hunt. Alistair, thrown so swiftly from daylight into darkness, was blinded.

But in his blindness, he saw.

The Dogs.

The darkness.

Where was the child?

No! Don't look for the child! This was no dream! Where was Mouse?

He lashed out, both striking at the dark and searching for her. He screamed her name, but nothing could be heard above that demonic din of voices born of wind and fire and emptiness. He thought he felt Mouse's fingers brush his.

Then red eyes blazed through the dark. Four red eyes, and two great red mouths that howled darkness and flame, creatures bigger than horses, bearing down upon the two helpless mortals on the plain. There was only Death and Midnight and the hollow, empty longing of the Black Dogs baying across the worlds.

———

Then they were gone.

Alistair lay prostrate in the dirt, his mouth full of grit, his face pouring sweat. At first he was afraid to open his eyes, to discover that he was dead.
But when at last he did, blinking against the swirl of dust that threatened to blind him all over again, he lay upon the plain, and it was empty, and daylight had returned.

He sat up, coughing. Dimly he became aware of shouting behind him, someone calling his name; the cat, most likely. He looked around.

“Dragons blast and eat and blast again!” Eanrin swore as he skidded to a halt beside Alistair, grabbed him by the shoulder, and dragged him to his feet.

Alistair, bewildered, could only ask feebly, “Where's Mouse?”

“Where's
Mouse
?” the cat-man cried. He released his hold, allowing Alistair to drop, weak-kneed, to the dirt once more. “At a time like this, all you can ask is where the pretty little wench got off to? Egg-headed, dragon-blasted
mortal
!”

Alistair shook his head, trying to clear it of the ringing din of howls that remained. He realized suddenly that his cousin was missing. “The Chronicler,” he said, turning to look back to the edge of the gorge.

“That's what I'm trying to tell you!” growled Eanrin. “They took him! They took the girl too!
She
sent them after us, and they took both the heir and our guide.” He cursed again and kicked in futile frustration at the dirt. “The Black Dogs always catch what they are sent for. Dragons eat them!”

Alistair's mind whirled. He knew tales of the Black Dogs, of course. Death's hounds, spawn of monsters that dragged the souls of the dead into the Netherworld. “Are they dead?” he asked, almost afraid to voice the question. “Did the Black Dogs kill them?”

Eanrin, like a spooked cat trying to settle his upraised fur, took off his red cap and smoothed down his shock of bright hair. He shook his head, and his voice was a little calmer when he spoke. “I don't think so. I don't believe the Dogs were sent by Death this time.”

“Who, then? Who else can command the Black Dogs?” Alistair asked.

“Their mother,” said Eanrin, and his lips curled into a grimace. He stared across the plain, seeing, as the dust settled, the distant light gleaming once more from the Spire tip. A suspicion was growing in his mind. An ugly suspicion, but one he should have considered.

“Who is their mother?” Alistair asked. “Where are Mouse and the Chronicler? What . . . what are we supposed to do?”

“I don't know,” Eanrin whispered. His hands clenched into fists. “Something. But I don't know.”

“You could try waiting.”

The cat-man whirled about, his cap flying from his head, and Alistair, still collapsed upon the ground, turned. The swirling dust parted like a curtain, revealing a lone figure—a small, hunched, tottering figure with a withered face like a cracked walnut.

“If there's one thing I've learned in the centuries of my existence,” he said in a voice as dry as the dusty air, “it's that answers often come to him who will wait long enough to see them.”

Eanrin's lips drew back in a teeth-baring snarl.
“Etanun!”

The Chronicler came to himself with a start and realized that he wasn't dead.

His head rang with the echoes of the Black Dogs' snarls. He lay stunned, unseeing and unfeeling for the moment, aware only of the pounding of his head and the certainty that he did still breathe. Then he opened his eyes.

He lay upon his back on hard, hot stone, staring up at an arched ceiling, also of stone, blistered red but polished bright as gemstones and carved in reliefs of feathers and wings. He glimpsed pillars of the same red stone supporting the roof. Save for the dreadful heat, he would have thought it beautiful.

Then two pairs of hands grabbed him, hauling him upright and off his feet. There he dangled, his feet kicking in midair, his arms aching where powerful fingers dug into his skin. He heard harsh but human voices speaking—women's voices, not men's, although two big men held him. He did not understand the language.

Twisting in the grasp of his captors, he tried to catch a glimpse of those speaking. He saw two women, one tall, one short, both clad in red garments that looked like cured and dyed animal hides. Their arms were bare and brown, and their hair was long, black as night, adorned with uncut gems. Neither was beautiful; their faces were much too hard.

There was no sign of the Black Dogs.

“Take him,” one of the women commanded, and though the Chronicler did not understand her words, he guessed her meaning by her gesture. The great men bore him easily down the pillared hall. They were naked to the waist, belted and armed, and their faces were stern and nearly inhuman. These were men who had never been shown mercy and would show no mercy themselves.

Doors at the end of the hall were opened, and the Chronicler was carried through into a great tower and the foot of a staircase. Straining his neck, he saw that there were no floors to break up the dreadful height of this tower, merely landings, almost like perches in a falconry mews.

They carried him up, higher and higher, his legs swinging, and the Chronicler thought he might shame himself and faint. He tried closing his eyes, but that was worse, so he forced them to remain open, refusing to look down. One of the priestesses went before, the short one. Behind there were others; how many he could not guess, but he heard the tramp of their feet.

They did not climb to the crest of the tower. Instead, they stopped at one of the final broad landings. There still was no barrier between a false step and the long fall to the floor below, but it was large enough to fit a crowd of fifty or more comfortably. In the center was a high-backed wooden chair covered with animal hides stained the same red as the robes of the priestesses. It took a moment before the Chronicler realized someone sat upon it: a tall, solemn woman whose face might have been handsome had it not been heavily scarred with sorrow and cruelty.

The high priestess, he guessed. The Speaker.

The Chronicler's head whirled with vertigo when the slaves threw him facedown before that red throne. He saw the priestess withdraw her feet in apparent disgust. Then she spoke sharply. He could guess what she said.

“Is
this
the one? Is
this
the heir to Fireword?”

One of the priestesses answered in a deep voice what seemed to be a tentative confirmation.

“It is what was brought, Speaker. They never fail in their hunt.”

The Chronicler raised his head and met the eyes of the high priestess. She blinked once, then shook her head and looked away with something between repugnance and . . . could it be embarrassment?

He grimaced and pushed himself upright. They hadn't bothered to bind
him. What was the need? He looked around and saw that a large crowd had gathered, most of them women, but slave men stood on the edges, their faces implacable as stone.

The high priestess spoke again, and though there was doubt in her tone, the Chronicler thought she was agreeing.

“If
they
brought him, he must be the one.” Then, after a pause, “Where is the girl?”

The crowd parted. The Chronicler looked around and saw Mouse, more ragged than ever amid the sober grandeur of the priestesses. Another priestess, the short one the Chronicler had glimpsed earlier, walked behind her, a hand upon her shoulder. And yet, he thought, Mouse did not look like a prisoner somehow. Not quite.

“Come to me, Mouse,” said the Speaker, holding out a hand.

Mouse went, passing the Chronicler without a glance. She fell upon her knees and face before the high priestess, her hands pressed to her chest in a manner of complete subservience. The Speaker leaned down and cupped her by the chin, lifting her gently upright. Even then Mouse could not raise her eyes to meet those of her mistress.

The Speaker said: “Well done, child. You have served the Flame with utmost courage and devotion. You shall have your reward.”

The Chronicler stared. The words passed without meaning through his ears, but the tone was unmistakable.

“You betrayed us,” he said. His voice was cold as ice in that hot realm.

Mouse started and spun around to face him. Her face was stricken, for she too understood his tone.

“You betrayed us,” he said, struggling to his feet. “You led us here to hand us over to them. And what became of the cat-man, eh? What became of Alistair?” She winced at his cousin's name, which she recognized. But he did not hold back, only raised his voice in an angry shout. “Are they dead, then? Are they killed?”

“Take him away,” said the Speaker quietly. The two slave guards stepped forward, and though the Chronicler struck out in his fury, he could do nothing against them. They once more lifted him from his feet, and he burned with humiliation and wrath. Writhing in their grasp even as they passed through the crowd, he shouted over his shoulder:

“You're not a mouse, do you hear me? You're not a mouse; you're a rat! A dirty, gnawing rat!”

Mouse, still kneeling, her mouth open, watched him disappear into the throng and heard him shouting in his barbarous tongue as they bore him back down the winding stair. She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone as dry as the world beyond the tower.