Dragonwitch (43 page)

E
ANRIN
FELT
THE
SURROUNDING
PRESENCE
of the Netherworld's phantoms. He heard their voices faintly crying; though they sounded miles distant, they may have been near enough to touch. He tried to ignore them, straining his ears after the footsteps of the high priestess ahead of him.

“Fool, fool, fool!” he muttered. “Slow down now. You'll not catch her, and you're lost enough as it is. Slow down and find your footing.”

It was then he saw a light ahead, a light he recognized.

“Asha!” he gasped and ran for it, seeking the brilliance of white hope that might yet be found in the deep places. He could not help the phantoms nor even the priestess, so long as they fled from him.

But he could help bring about the end of the Dragonwitch's reign! He could serve the Smallman King.

The light was drawing closer. Was it Alistair, he wondered, searching in the darkness for his kinsman? Had he found the grave of Akilun and taken the lantern to guide his way?

But soon Eanrin recognized a face and form highlighted in Asha's brilliance. “Imraldera!” he cried, his voice angry. “Dragons blast your mortal stupidity!”

“Eanrin!” The lady knight and Mouse stopped and waited for the cat-man to catch up. The white glow of Asha revealed his pale face smeared with dirt and with the darker stains of Netherworld shadows and fears. His eyes were bright and flashing, however, and they saw that he was whole.

For an instant, Imraldera's face openly displayed all her relief and worry rolled into one. “I thought . . . when I saw the chamber open and you nowhere near, I feared . . .” Then she shook her head and hid behind a frown. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you!” Eanrin replied, glaring furiously from her to Mouse and back again. “Did I not tell you to take Halisa to the surface? Where is the sword? Where is the dragon-eaten Smallman? Why can't you
ever
listen to an order?”

“You're not my superior,” Imraldera growled, but she put out a hand and touched his arm, glad to feel him solid and warm in this world of cold wraiths. Then she and Mouse explained, stumbling over their words.

“The Chronicler told us to run,” Mouse said, her voice shaking.

“Why?”

“I don't know. I don't know what he intends. But he seemed to know. And he has Fireword.”

Eanrin rubbed his face with both hands, suddenly as tired as a mortal at dusk. Imraldera squeezed his arm again. “He is the Smallman,” she said, “chosen by our Master for this purpose. We should trust him.”

“Trust him and what?”

“Trust him and do as he says.” Her grip tightened on his sleeve. “Run.”

Asha illuminated a Path, and they followed it, uncertain where it would lead. The roar of the Dragonwitch above pursued them like the Black Dogs themselves, but the phantoms made no effort to impede their progress. And then the Path led uphill and became difficult. Eanrin took Mouse's hand to help her, and Imraldera struggled behind. But the light shone steadily even as the lantern swung wildly in Mouse's grasp.

Then they saw another light ahead of them: the light of day. They
made for it, their strength renewed, and the Dragonwitch's bellows faded behind them into nothing.

Eanrin felt blinded as he fell through the opening of the cave mouth, landing on his knees upon hard rock, high on a mountain face where the wind blew sharply. Mouse emerged behind him, realizing then that she no longer held Asha, though she had no memory of setting it down. She caught her balance and looked around, recognizing the scene to which they had come. There was the trail leading down to a weather-beaten hut. There were the goats straggling about with little interest in anyone or anything but themselves.

There was Granna, standing with her arms wrapped about her middle, her cloudy eyes suddenly bright. “Granna?” Mouse called, but the old woman did not turn to her.

Imraldera stepped from the darkness. She stood, blinking and blind like the others, her hands shading her eyes. Granna stepped forward slowly, every limb protesting as though the exhaustion of her age had caught up with her. Her voice crackled as she spoke.

“Starflower. You've come home at last.”

Imraldera's hands dropped away from her face, and her mouth and eyes opened wide.

“Fairbird!”

The next moment, the two of them were in each other's arms. Eanrin turned his face away, unable to watch for fear of the tears that threatened. But Mouse stood and stared and could not believe her ears when she heard Dame Imraldera saying:

“Darling! Little sister!”

The problem with dreams come true is the question they leave behind.

What next?

Alistair sat in the darkness and frowned. His dream had only ever brought him up to the point of death, that moment of unbearable pain. Nothing beyond.

He lifted his hands and tried to feel his face. But he was no longer
certain he had hands, much less a face. If he recalled correctly—and this was questionable, considering—he was fairly certain the Black Dog had torn it off.

“Well,” he said, relieved to find that he still had a voice, “this is a bit unpleasant.”

Something moved in the darkness. Alistair hadn't the wherewithal to be frightened anymore. Now that his dream had come true, he doubted he would ever be frightened again. Or happy. Or sad or hungry or anything. So he sat quite still, and someone else sat down next to him. They remained like so for what felt a long time.

Then Alistair said, “Hullo?”

“Hullo” came the response.

It was a friendly voice. Encouraged, Alistair said, “I'm Alistair Calix-son. Former heir to Gaheris.”

“I am the Lumil Eliasul, Prince of the Farthest Shore.”

If he had a throat, Alistair was fairly sure it was too dry for swallowing. Sitting there, he considered many things. Then he said, “So you're real too, eh?”

“Very real. Yes.”

Once more Alistair considered. Then he snorted. “Funny how a fellow has to die before he starts to understand what's important.”

“You're not dead.”

“It's awfully dark. I figured I must be.”

“You're in the Netherworld. It's always dark here for those without a light. But you're not dead.”

This was a heartening thought. One that definitely bore mulling over.

“I wish I had a light,” Alistair said at length.

“You'd have to open your eyes,” said the Prince of the Farthest Shore.

T
HE
D
RAGONWITCH
FLAMED
LIKE
THE
END
OF
THE
WORLD
.

In days of old this fire would have torn apart her woman's body, revealing the powerful dragon beneath. But now, her dragon form stripped away, she stood in the frail, wingless body into which she was bound, and the fire was too much for her. It destroyed her from the inside out, and yet she could not die. Her hair fell away in tongues of flame, and her fingers were torches, her eyes blazing coals.

She set the temple ablaze. Her tongue spilled forth lava, which engulfed the Spire, scorching it into a vast torch visible throughout the Land, even to the mountains, where two knights and their mortal companions watched with horror. Fire fell like rain upon the temple city, rooftops caught and blazed, and the air filled with black smoke. Slaves and priestesses alike fled the destruction. The time of the goddess's final wrath was upon them. It was flee or perish.

On the altar, untouched by the inferno, stood Etanun, immortal Faerie, in his true form.

“Hri Sora!” he cried.

But she stood with her back to him, her torched arms upraised and blackened, her mouth open as she let the furnace inside her billow out. She could not hear him; her agony was far too great. She gave herself over to it and to the desolation of this world she had created.

Fire fell even to the deep places, illuminating the blackness of the Diggings. Stone melted and roiled bloodred, then flowed like rivers of fire into all the crevices of the Netherworld. The phantom ghosts fled screaming, the shadows chased from hiding by flames.

The Chronicler stood in the broken chamber of Halisa, the sword in his hands. The subterranean air heated until his skin felt as though it melted with sweat, and his palms were so slippery he feared he would drop the sword. But he struggled to the center of the chamber where the black stone stood, and even above the cacophony of the Dragonwitch's suffering, he heard the roar of water below.

Clutching the sword in both hands, he placed his shoulder against the rock and pushed. It was like trying to move the world. He was too small! He was too weak!

He ground his teeth. “No man,” he growled, “no matter his size, could move this stone.”

In that moment of extreme humiliation, this thought encouraged him. His stunted growth and graceless limbs did not matter, not now. Not even the greatest hero could accomplish this impossible task in his own strength. No muscle or might would move this rock.

“Let me be weak, then,” the Chronicler whispered, resting against the stone. The ceiling above him boiled with heat, but he did not look. “Let me be weak so that you may be strong.”

Even as the screams of the Dragonwitch shattered his eardrums, the Chronicler braced himself and pushed again, crying out as he did so:
“Lumil Eliasul!”

A voice he knew responded:

“I am the one who chose you.”

The Chronicler, his forehead pressed against the stone, one hand clutching the heavy sword, the other a fist resting beside his head, closed his eyes as the words washed over him.

Then he opened his eyes and uncurled his clenched fingers. He saw
still lying in his palm the little pool of water, unspilled, unevaporated. For an instant, it flashed through his mind that he held whole rivers.

He lifted his hand to his mouth and drank the water down.

He felt it rushing through him: the power of rivers, the power of eternities and the great, pounding Songs of the Spheres. It was enough to bring him to his knees. And yet, as it swelled in his breast, pouring tumultuously into every vein, he felt the rising strength of living water.

“I am the one who chose you.”

This time, when he put his shoulder to the stone and pushed, it gave. First the shift, then the crack of rock on rock. Groaning with the effort, the Chronicler pushed again, the mighty rush of torrents pounding his temples. The stone shifted, unbalanced, and then rolled. The Chronicler staggered and would have fallen had not his grip on the heavy sword held him anchored. Well for him that it did, for as the stone crashed away and broke into pieces, it revealed a hole in the floor.

Flowing below was the black current of many joined rivers.

The Final Water.

The Chronicler stared, and he felt the heat of Halisa, different from the heat of the reddening stones around him or the heat of the Dragonwitch's shrieks above. The sword pulsed with might, with the truth of purpose, and the Chronicler felt that pulse flow up his arm and into his spirit.

“Call up the rivers, Smallman King!”

The Chronicler heaved the sword, and suddenly he was able to lift it, to stand with the blade upraised before the churning rivers below.

“Wait!”

The Chronicler braced himself and looked around. Someone stood in the chamber doorway. “Wait,” she said and stumbled in, fell to her knees, rose, and fell again. She raised her hands in desperate supplication. Burns covered her bald scalp, extending down her neck and arms, showing between the shredded remnants of her once-fine robes.

The Chronicler recognized her. “High priestess,” he said.

“Please,” said she, crawling across the chamber. Her eyes were wide with the shattering terror of her deity's tortured voice. Her blistered, raw skin looked red in the light of the heated stones. “Please, don't do this thing. Don't kill my goddess.”

The Chronicler swallowed. Sweat poured down his face into his eyes, and he blinked it away as best he could. The weight of Halisa was tremendous in his small hands. “I must,” he said.

“Please,” said the Speaker, no longer the powerful figure she had been, drawing her feet back from the deformed prisoner cast at her feet. She was a picture of self mutilation, of womanhood denied, of humanity broken. “Everything I've worked for all my life. You would bring it to an end?”

“Everything about you is a lie,” the Chronicler said.

Her eyes swam with tears. “But the lie is all I have,” said she.

The Chronicler saw then the final depths to which this creature had fallen. And his heart broke as he gazed upon her.

“I am sorry for you,” he said.

Then he turned to the Final Water and plunged in Halisa, up to the hilt.

———

The rivers ran.

From the mountains above the lowlands, Eanrin, Imraldera, Mouse, and her grandmother saw the rivers of the gorges surge away. From the Near World they coursed down to the Netherworld, pouring into the source of all rivers. Water, pure and powerful, filled the caverns, flooding the Diggings, where mortals had dared root their way into Death's own realm. And the rocks, heated almost to the melting point by the Dragonwitch's flame, hissed with the sudden cleansing coolness.

The power of rushing, surging water tore into the stone, accomplishing the erosion of centuries in mere moments. The temple's foundations cracked, and buildings began to fall as the earth opened up beneath them. The Spire wavered in the wind.

Caught off balance, the Dragonwitch staggered and fell to her knees. Her flaming stopped as she felt the sway of her world giving way. She looked over the roof's edge and saw her temple falling, saw the rise of water, a relentless, churning white foam that drowned her flames.

“Ytotia.”

At the sound of that name—that name that had once belonged to a lovely Faerie queen—the Dragonwitch turned stricken eyes and saw Etanun approaching. Even as the Spire swayed and stones fell from its walls, he
crossed the rooftop to her side. He reached down and took her under the arms, lifting her to her feet.

She was small again, like the delicate creature she had been long ago, watching the life of her father, her mother, her brother drain away before her eyes. Only now she was without her wings, and the immortal glow of Faerie was long gone from her face.

Yet Etanun looked down at her and saw what he had seen when first he met her.

“Ytotia,” he whispered, “in my anger I slew you twice. I saw you only as the dragon, and I forgot what you were meant to be. Can you forgive me?”

Her face, burned and scarred by Death, upturned to his.

Then she snarled, and there was a dragon in her eyes.

The foundations shattered. The Spire fell, crumbling as it collapsed into the Final Water. The rivers fountained to the heavens, a white curtain of foam between the mortal realm and the Netherworld shimmering in the sunlight. A million crystal droplets glimmered in Lumé's light.

There was a rush, a final roar.

And the Dragonwitch, held in the arms of her foe, died with him her third, her final death.

My true name has been forgotten, the name given me by Citlalu and Mahuizoa. It is lost in the fires of Hri Sora. I am the Flame at Night! You could not love me, Etanun. Neither could you kill me. But I did love you and I will kill you.

And if I must perish in my own flame, so be it.