Dragonwitch (41 page)

But even as Mouse nodded, Eanrin scowled. “What are you talking about? We must find the Smallman so he can gather all his impish might and slay our foe, remember?”

“If these people are buried alive, we have to free them,” Imraldera said firmly. Eanrin opened his mouth to protest but stopped at the light from the sword glinting in her eyes. “Don't think you can dissuade me.”

“Dragon's fire!” he cursed, and Mouse flinched and looked down at her feet. Then he turned to the girl, and his eyes were catlike in the half-light. “Tell me where they are,” he said. “I'll dig them out.”

“By yourself? It's not safe—” Imraldera began, but he held up a hand.

“I can manage unearthing a dozen crazed warrior eunuchs on my own, old girl. You take Mouse and get to the surface. I know we need to find the Smallman!” he hastened to add before she could interrupt. “But there's no point in any of us wandering around in the half-light. If anyone will find him, it'll be his blood kin, and we'll have to wait to see if that works.
Meanwhile, you two need to get the sword as far away from Hri Sora as you can. Lumé knows what she plans to do with it!”

“What of you, Eanrin?” Imraldera asked.

“I'll follow quick as thought. Find the miners' path and stick to it. Don't listen to ghosts, hear me?”

Imraldera nodded, swallowing hard.

“The cave-in was not far behind me,” Mouse said, pointing. Her tear-stained face was hopeful now. “Please,” she said, “find the Speaker. She . . . she doesn't know better than she's done.”

“There's a new excuse,” Eanrin sneered.

Imraldera gave him a look. Without a word, she took Mouse's hand and led her through the half-light, back the way she and Eanrin had come.

Eanrin stood alone. He watched until the light of Halisa was a dim pinprick in the shadows. Then he turned and darted in cat-form down the path, seeking the broken chamber. “Dragons blast that Imraldera,” he muttered.

“Dragons blast that cat,” Imraldera muttered as she led Mouse back up the path. Mouse, confused and exhausted, blinked in surprise. She would never have expected such language from an ancient prophetess. But then, nothing ever was quite what Mouse had expected.

They entered a cavern. The sword's glow could not reveal the vastness of its proportions. They felt tremendous emptiness surrounding them, an emptiness full of wraiths and woes. Imraldera faltered and Mouse's stomach dropped with terror. Were they lost already? Standing there in silence, with only their own breath in their ears, it was easy to imagine the echoes of lost ones resounding in the depths. Lost miners. Lost slaves. Lost worshippers. Voices echoing . . .

And suddenly Mouse realized that it wasn't the echoes of lost ones she heard. No, this was a present, ever nearer howling.

“The Black Dogs!” Her grip on the sword tightened.

“No,” said Imraldera. “Just one Black Dog. It is alone.”

“They were sent to find the Smallman,” Mouse said. “The Dragonwitch sent them after I freed him.”

Imraldera licked her lips and glanced over her shoulder as though even now Eanrin watched her every move. Then she said, “In that case, it must be on his trail. If we find it, we'll find him.”

“What? You mean follow the
Black Dogs
?”

“It won't be the first time I've done so,” said Imraldera, taking a firm grip on Mouse's upper arm.

“They'll kill us!”

“I doubt it.”

“The cat-man told us to go to the surface!”

“Eanrin doesn't always get what he wants, does he?”

Then they were off in a new direction, plunging away from all traces of the Near World Diggings, down and down into the Netherworld. Immediately Mouse became aware of the phantom presences on the fringes of her conscious mind. But fear of Halisa kept them at a curious distance, where they could watch but not interfere.

The baying grew louder until it rattled every sense in Mouse's body. She wondered how she'd make one foot fall ahead of the other.

Suddenly she felt something like a pulse through Fireword's blade, down to the hilt she gripped in both hands. It startled her, and she stopped, yanking back Imraldera, who still held on to her. “What's wrong?” Imraldera demanded, her voice sharp.

“The sword,” Mouse said. “It said something.”

“Said something?”

“Like . . . a name.”

“What name?”

“Asha,” Mouse whispered.

The Midnight fell upon them. Like the overwhelming sweep of a tidal wave, it crashed over their heads. The two women drew together, and Mouse lifted the sword, her only defense against oblivion. Yet where the light of Halisa fell, the Midnight tore away, and Imraldera and Mouse stood in a small, untouched haven in the darkness.

But the baying of the monster increased.

There were two eyes. Two red eyes like pulsing suns, and a wide, gaping
mouth full of dark teeth and blood. Mouse faced it, pointing the sword like a warrior preparing for a last stand. And she saw something she did not expect.

The Chronicler, the Smallman, running before the pursuing beast with a silver lantern swinging from his hand. And the light of that lantern reached out to the sword like brother calling to brother. Though she heard nothing, Mouse knew that the sword answered and that its answer was joyful.

Halisa.

Asha.

“Chronicler!” Mouse shouted.

He saw them. His face was desperate, and the Black Dog was hot at his heels. But he saw them and ran toward them, his short legs unable to make the strides he needed, at any moment expecting to be overcome, to be devoured, dragged down to the Dark Water and beyond.

Imraldera strode forward to that place between the points of light that were the sword and the lantern. She looked at neither but fixed her gaze upon the torrent of fury that was the Dog. As it approached, its great neck straining, its jaws slavering for the kill, Imraldera raised her arms and spoke in a voice of command.

“Be still!”

The Dog came to a halt.

The Chronicler ran on past Imraldera until he reached the pool of light where Mouse stood. There he stopped, panting, his face full of the expectation of doom, and whirled about to see what Mouse, her eyes round and staring, watched.

Imraldera stepped forward, her black hair glinting red in the light of the Dog's eyes. It was a vast monster, towering over her like a bear. But it whined, a piteous sound in its thick throat.

“Down,” said Imraldera.

The Black Dog collapsed to its belly.

The Chronicler and Mouse exchanged glances. For the moment, her betrayal was forgotten by both in their extreme surprise. They looked at each other, then back at the small woman commanding the great dark monster.

“Stay,” she said.

The Black Dog growled. But it did not move.
Imraldera hurried back to the waiting pair. “You did not need to run,” she said, addressing the Chronicler. “As long as you hold Akilun's lantern, the Black Dogs cannot hurt you. Now tell me, where is the other one?”

“It—I saw it—”

“Where is Alistair?” Mouse demanded, releasing her hold on Halisa with one hand to grab the Chronicler's shoulder. “Where is your cousin?”

He turned to her. Here in the Netherworld he could understand her words once more. More important, he understood their tremulous meaning. He found he had no answer.

“Where is he?” Mouse insisted.

Imraldera looked from one face to the other. Then she stepped between them, separating them. “We have the sword,” she said, “and we have the heir. Come, let us find our way to the surface. The Dragonwitch's time is come. Walk before us, Smallman,” she said. “We'll follow Asha's lead.”

So the Chronicler, every limb atremble, stepped forward, and the three of them walked as the lantern directed. Imraldera cast a last glance back at the cowering Black Dog, and it snarled at her. She turned away again, her heart heavy. For she had known that Dog long ago, and she had offered it love, which it rejected. But even now it would obey her. She knew it would not try to follow them.

Mouse, her stomach roiling, wondered at the Chronicler's silence. Her mind nearly burst with a storm of reasons why Alistair was not there. Good, healthy reasons, none of which involved rending or blood or any of the horrible, nightmarish visions that scratched at the edge of her imagination. No, he was fine. He must be!

And the Chronicler wondered why no one had offered him the sword.

The Flame at Night sat upon the altar of her fire. Smoke drifted from her mouth and nostrils, and heat glowed in her eyes. But she sat in dead embers, her fingers digging into the cold ashes. A weak sun gleamed in the sky above. She could not see its light. Her fire burned her from the inside out, driving away all senses save those of flame, of power. So she sat, seeing nothing but her own pain, seeking nothing but control.

“Greetings, Hri Sora.”

The Dragonwitch stood up, scattering ashes in a cloud from the altar top. The ends of her hair momentarily blazed and burned away. She could not see him, but she felt him, every last piece of him.

Etanun walked in several worlds at once.

He walked in the realm of legends, ever a legend himself, more than human and larger than life. In that world, he was beautiful, well muscled from his broad shoulders to his lithe and limber calves. In that world, he was the hero, the dragon slayer, the rescuer and defender of the weak.

In the world of memory, he walked in shame, and darkness hooded his brow. There he was equally strong as his legendary self, but his hands were stained with fresh red blood. And falling like burning oil onto his skin, scalding away those stains, were his own wretched tears.

In the decaying world of mortal dust, he wore the form of a dust-made mortal. Bowed and burdened in this body, he tottered up the long stairs of the Spire, taking each step with gasps and surges of his old, old heart.

Yet in each world equally true and vital, Etanun walked. And the Dragonwitch, standing blind upon her altar, perceived him clearly in her mind through all disguises and assumptions.

Immortal. Faerie. Knight of the Farthest Shore.

“Murderer,” she hissed.

Etanun crossed the flat rooftop. She snarled at his approach but did not otherwise move. Her fists clenched so hard that her talon nails drove into the flesh of her palms.

“You have not brought me your sword,” she said, spitting sparks between her teeth.

“No,” said he. “Did you really think I would?”

She hadn't. But it did not matter.

“I will kill you,” she said.

“I know,” he replied.

He put his hands on the altar and pulled himself up to sit with his legs dangling over the edge. She joined him. Side by side they sat, like two old friends who had not spoken in years. Neither was willing to break the silence of time, time which they, though immortal, felt stretching between them. But the moment of slaying must come.

At last Etanun said, “Tell me, dear queen, why do you burn?”

She turned to him, and for a breath, the smoldering coals of her eyes dissolved, and the real eyes that had once been, dark and liquid and beautiful, were visible. For a breath, she could see him through a film of tears.

But with the second breath she spoke in a smoldering voice:

“Have you ever watched an immortal die?”

Y
OU
ASKED
ME
WHY
I
BURN
.
Do you recall it now? Do you recall the story of a queen who loved but was not loved in return? Do you recall how you hunted her down, she who had been your friend?

Do you remember the answer to your question?

“Do you?”

The Dragonwitch sat beside the Murderer on the altar, and her body quivered with every stray wind, threatening to break into ashes. Etanun listened silently. Even after she finished her tale, he kept his peace, hearing the rasp of uneasy breath in her lungs, watching her eyes smolder blindly, unable to see even the dark truths she had brought into this mortal realm. The stink of her death was upon her. Yet her body lived on in a death of a life that had driven her to the brink of madness and beyond.

“I am strong,” she said, her voice quavering with vulnerability. “I am
neither wholly woman nor wholly dragon, but stronger than either. My fire is hotter even than when I destroyed that mortal woman you chose, hotter than when I burned the Houses of Lights and sent the smoke spiraling to the heavens.”

Etanun looked upon her and saw everything again as though it were all new. The beautiful, frightened creature who came to him and his brother at the Haven. The pain of rejected love in her eyes that he had ignored, even scorned.

He saw the dead body of Klara, the girl he had loved. The dead body of Akilun.

“I am a goddess,” the Dragonwitch said, and her voice was hoarse and shattered. “I am so strong!”

“I am a murderer,” Etanun replied. “I am so weak.”

“See then how the Spheres have sung the cadence of our lives,” said she, and there was cruel laughter in her voice: laughter . . . or tears. “You have paid for your deeds, and I have been rewarded.”

“Is this your reward?” asked Etanun. He indicated the desolation surrounding the temple and slowly spreading across the mountain-encircled land. Not even the rivers, powerful guards on the Near World against the forces of Faerie, could hold it back.

“No,” the Dragonwitch said. “My reward is you. Your life at last in my hands. For you are weak and I am strong, and I shall kill you now as you have killed me thrice already: first, when you broke my heart; twice more when you plunged that cursed sword through my armor and into the furnace of my breast.”

Etanun nodded. “Well,” he said, “I expected as much. Being killed by you at the last, that is. It's poetic. The stuff of ballads to come.”

“Ballads you will never hear,” the Dragonwitch said.

“Thank the Lights Above,” he replied. “I've ever been a man of action, not so much for the finer arts. But one thing, Hri Sora, before you kill me. One thing I want you to know.”

Her lips twisted back from her teeth. Ash poured like saliva over her chin, ash that glimmered with building heat. “What is it, Etanun?” she asked. “What excuses do you make for yourself?”

“No excuses,” he said.

She could not see him. But her ears, sharply attuned to his voice, heard the change in it. The loss of age, the melting away of disguises so long assumed as to have nearly become reality. She heard the voice of the Etanun she had once known. The Etanun she had loved. The Etanun who had killed her.

She trembled at the flood of memories that rose inside, choking her, drowning her. He sat there, a being of immortal power and beauty, his skin bronzed, his eyes like star sapphires, every bone, every muscle exquisitely crafted as by the hand of a master sculptor. She recalled it all, and she felt it now, the overwhelming pain of loving this creature, this hero, this slayer.

“I have no excuses anymore, dear queen,” he said. The liquid gold of his voice washed over her, and she shuddered at the dangerous sweetness of it, at the longing it stirred even now in the trembling core of her ashen frame. “Only this.” Etanun took her ravaged face between his hands.

“I love you.”

A perfect silence hung upon the air.

Then the Dragonwitch exploded in a roar of flame.

The sound of fire filled the world above and echoed down to the world below, where the Chronicler hastened along strange Paths as the lantern light revealed them. His two companions followed, Mouse bearing the sword, which still no one had thought to offer him. When the roar of the Dragonwitch boomed above them, the three crouched in the dark, huddling as near Akilun's lantern as possible. Its light gleamed off Halisa's blade.

The roar of the dragon above was deeper than the Midnight of the Black Dogs. They waited, expecting the sound to pass. But it did not. It went on and on with such destructive insistence, the Chronicler began to wonder if he would ever again find the strength to rise.

Suddenly he felt his hand clasped, and he looked up into Dame Imraldera's drawn face. “Take it!” she said. Her other hand grabbed Mouse's arm and drew her and the sword to the Chronicler. “Take it! You
must
defeat the Dragonwitch! Take it and slay her!”

Mouse and the Chronicler's eyes met. The moment, then, was finally
come. The moment of truth or lies; he could not guess which. The moment when he discovered whether or not his life had a purpose. He set Asha down upon the stone floor.

“Take it,” Mouse whispered, her voice an echo of Imraldera's. And she pressed Halisa's hilt into the Chronicler's trembling grasp.

The sword fell.

The Chronicler believed his heart had stopped. Even the roar of the Dragonwitch above vanished in the ringing cry of Halisa as it crashed to the stone, too heavy for his arms to lift, too big for his hands to hold.

The two women said nothing. They did not look at him.

“I knew it,” the Chronicler whispered. “I knew it all along. I'm not the one. I cannot bear this sword.”

Without a word, Imraldera picked up the weapon. It did not shine in her grasp, did not even seem to reflect the light of the lantern anymore. Indeed, it had lost all its silver glow and returned to a form of chipped black stone, a dull, lifeless weapon without power or trace of glory.

“Come,” said she. “We'll follow the light.”

The Chronicler did not reach for the lantern again, so Mouse took it up and set the pace, and Imraldera fell in step behind her, letting the Chronicler follow last of all. No one spoke. But Asha shone, and they pursued it.

Eanrin found the place where the chamber door had fallen in, recognizing it at once though he had never seen it. Springing to the nearest of the broken stones, he listened, and sure enough, heard the sounds of those within scratching away at the rubble. They were close. It would not be long before several large and angry eunuchs with spears freed themselves, and then what? Eanrin shuddered, but he had promised, so he took his man shape again and began picking up loose stones and tossing them to one side. He called out as he worked: “Fear not, my fine mortal fools! I'll get you out in a trice; then you can have a go at skinning my furry hide.”

The work on the other side paused, and Eanrin heard a murmured conference before the prisoners set to work once more. Eanrin grimaced
as he labored to free those who would gladly slit his throat. He called to them again, hoping they'd take some comfort in his cheerful voice. “Not long now!” he said. “Soon you'll be able to push your way free.”

No answer. He tossed aside the last few stones, rolled one of the greater boulders away. There were pieces of intricate carving and tile broken into bits here, but Eanrin threw them away without a care. Only a thin barrier remained now. If he placed his shoulder so and gave a shove, he would be through. But he hated to risk a tumble into that dark chamber full of armed men.

He stood back, brushing dust from his hands and debris from his fine clothing. “All right!” he called. “It's your turn now. Feel out the weak place and give us a push.”

Nothing. Eanrin, rubbing the back of his head, wondered if perhaps he'd lost track of time. It was possible, even probable here in the Netherworld.

“I should go,” Eanrin muttered. “I should retrace my steps and find Imraldera and see to it that all is made right—”

He had scarcely spoken when the roar of the Dragonwitch struck his ears. Even down here in the deep place, the sound was as present as a living thing, and Eanrin dropped to his knees, horrified by the pain of it. How that fire must be tearing the poor, sad creature apart!

Then, near at hand, he heard a voice cry, “The Flame!”

It was a woman's voice, full of devotion.

Eanrin grimaced and braced himself. Harshly barked commands rang beyond the broken wall, and finally warriors with lances broke through the remaining rubble and climbed over. Others came behind, and the last of all turned and assisted the high priestess as she climbed up and out of Halisa's chamber.

They stared at one another in the half-light of the Netherworld. Now that their torches were gone, they were surprised at how improved was their ability to see. The voice of the Dragonwitch continued to echo down through the thickness of dirt and stone above, from Near to Netherworld, and the mortals cringed away from it.

But the high priestess said again, “The Flame! We must go to the goddess!”

She started climbing down the rubble pile, nearly falling in her hurry.
Her slaves reached out to help, but she refused their offered hands. She stumbled and landed on her knees.

When she rose, she was eye to eye with Eanrin.

She dove at his face with a scream, her fingers tearing for his eyes, and he leapt back, grabbing her wrists. “Calm yourself, woman!” he bellowed. “I dug you out. Can you show a little courtesy?”

The eunuchs rushed upon him, lances at the ready, long knives drawn. He twisted the Speaker's arms so that she lost her balance and fell again, liberating him to loosen his own knife from its sheath and face the oncoming mortals. He saw death in their eyes, but he hated to hurt them. They were so utterly lost.

“See, now,” he said, “I'll lead you to the surface. You can't find it yourselves. Let me help you.”

They set upon him, bearing down like wolves upon prey. But their weapons found nothing but empty air. Eanrin, in cat form, darted between their legs, made for the high priestess, and took man shape when he stood before her once again.

He saw, even in that half-light, how like Mouse she was. And consequently, how like Imraldera.

“Please,” he said, “let me help you.”

“Kill him,” she said. And her slaves closed in.

“Fool!” Eanrin again ducked into his animal form and eluded the lance blades. One, quicker than the others, caught a tuft from his tail. Then he darted into the shadows behind the rubble, and as they scrabbled over to pursue, he slipped around behind them to watch as they allowed themselves to separate from one another. One by one, they were swallowed by the beckoning Netherworld.

He turned to the high priestess, who stood watching as well, unaware of his near presence, aware only of her lost slaves. He saw her lips move in what might have been a prayer. He felt no qualm about interrupting.