Dragonwitch (4 page)

There was silence for a long moment. Then the same voice spoke. “Ferox boasts the greatest library in all the North Country, as befits the greatest earl.”

Leta, turning to the voice once more, looked up and realized that there was more to this library than she had first seen. The ceiling opened above her into a loft, a whole second level to this marvelous chamber. She could see no light up there, and the speaker stood beyond her range of vision.

Somehow, unable to see to whom she spoke, Leta felt emboldened. “You seem to take much pride in Earl Ferox's possessions,” she said, tilting her head.

“Naturally,” the speaker above her replied. “I copied many of them myself. Though they belong to the earl, they are a piece of me, and I alone can read them.”

“And who are you, please?” she asked, moving around the table and straining for a glimpse.

“I am the castle chronicler.”

The voice was deep but also rather . . . dry, Leta decided. It was the voice of one who spent most of his time in shadows and dust. “Have you no name?” she asked. She heard his footsteps above and thought he moved to avoid her line of vision. He gave no answer, and after a few waiting moments, Leta no longer expected one. She turned back to the table and
the book with the illumination. Candlelight caught the colorful ink and made it shine.

Once more she traced the letters written beneath. She spoke softly:

“The dark won't hide the Path

When you near the House of Light . . .”

More footsteps creaked above, and the dry voice spoke again, this time with surprise. “Lights Above! Don't tell me you can read.”

Leta withdrew from the table and folded her arms beneath her long cloak. “No,” she said quickly. “Not I.” She felt as though the rest of her was folding up as well. Folding up into the tiny lump of insignificance she had always been.

The thought made her angry, and the anger pushed her to speak again. “I am right though, aren't I? This is about the House of Lights?”

“It is.”

“A funny thing,” Leta continued, looking at the page but keeping her hands to herself, “writing down nursery rhymes. Are there not more important things to which you might turn your hand?”

“Always,” said the Chronicler. “But sometimes even a chronicler needs to indulge in the unessential.”

Leta's gaze ran over the lines and marks that flickered along with the candlelight. She had never been permitted into Aiven's library unescorted, and the old chronicler who'd holed himself away in there chased women out as a terrier might chase rats. Leta could not recall the last time she had been so near a book.

“And these marks and scratches,” she said, speaking softly, “come together to make what I said. To make the rhyme.” She shook her head, smiling in wonder. “That is magic, you know. And you are a wizard!”

Silence above, then shifting feet.

“My father's chronicler could not do this work,” she continued, looking from one page to the next to see the wealth of text held there. “Father says he can scarcely put three words to a page, but he's the only man I'd ever met until now who could read or write.” She looked up into the shadows of the loft again. “Did you teach yourself?”

“No,” said the Chronicler. “I was apprenticed when quite young to Raguel, the former chronicler. When he died, I took over.”

“Do you have a special gift? A magic that enables you to learn?”

“Anyone can learn to read or write.” The voice was drier than ever. “Few bother to try. At Earl Ferox's request, I am attempting to teach Lord Alistair. But he can't be bothered to apply himself.”

Leta felt cold suddenly, colder even than when she had stood in the great outer courtyard. “You don't think much of my lord Alistair, then?”

Once more that wall of silence was her answer. She wondered if the Chronicler had not heard her soft voice and opened her mouth to repeat her question when she heard from above:

“He will make a fine Earl of Gaheris one day. He is just the man old Ferox would wish to inherit, and he will earn the respect of all the North Country.”

Leta waited, but the Chronicler said no more. She stood shivering in the candle's glow, studying the illumination of the House of Lights and wondering if the Chronicler found her tiresome. Perhaps it was time to return to her rooms, to her lady's scolding, to supper with Lady Mintha and a groom who did not want her.

Instead, she said, “Could you teach me?”

“What?”

The answer came quick and sharp, and Leta almost lacked the courage to continue. “Could you teach me?” she said, forcing herself to speak. “To read?”

“You?”

In rushed Leta's practical side, raging vehemently.
Don't be a goose! You are a woman. Don't forget your place. You can't learn to read and write! You are intended to marry and bear children.

Leta cringed and almost bowed out then and there.

But her rebellious side replied,
Pttttthp!
with such clear articulation that her practical side was shocked into silence.

“Why not?” she demanded, a little breathless, as though she'd just run a mile in the cold.

Another long silence. Then the Chronicler said, “I've never known a woman to read or write.”

“Does that mean it can't be done?” Leta asked, half fearing his answer.

At first, nothing. Then the stamp of feet across the loft. Leta turned and realized that there was a narrow, spiral staircase in one corner leading down to the floor on which she stood. She saw a shadow moving and knew the Chronicler was descending. He stepped into the candlelight.

He was young. She noticed this with a start, for she had assumed from his voice that he was older than her father. But indeed, he was as young as Alistair, younger even.

He was also a dwarf.

Though his face and features were fine, his body was disproportionate, his arms and legs too short, his chest like a barrel. He looked up at her, his eyes pale and bright in the candlelight, and they glittered with an expression she could not quite read. As though he was always angry and barely suppressing that anger even now.

Leta realized she was staring. She blushed and looked away.

The Chronicler's voice was dry as stone. “I'm sorry, Lady Leta of Aiven,” he said. “I didn't quite catch that last bit.”

“I said,” she replied and forced herself to meet his gaze, “does that mean it can't be done?”

The Chronicler studied her, his eyes shrewd and missing few details. She felt unprotected somehow and wanted to hide. Instead, she held herself straight and hoped her face betrayed none of her many fears.

“No,” said the Chronicler at last. “No, I don't think it means that at all.”

S
OME
CALL
HIM
THE
C
ROOKED
O
NE
;
others, simply the Mound. He appears without warning, without premonition, a cancerous growth latching hold of the land. He is black earth covered in dead branches that rise like antlers to claw the air. No one knows how he comes uninvited into the protected realms of Faerie lords and ladies. When he appears, there can be no hope.

I was scarcely more than a fledgling then, new on my wings, bright and full of the life I believed was to come. I had never heard of the Parasite, never heard the cursed breath of his name. But my mother whispered it even then.

“Cren Cru! Cren Cru has come among us!”

Standing with her on the rooftop of the Moon Tower, I looked out to the mound that had taken root in the center of Etalpalli. I thought it a strange, ugly lump, like a boil amid the green of our beautiful demesne. But I did not fear it then. I did not know. I was too young.

But I quickly learned.

The old scrubber was not permitted in the family wing of Gaheris Castle, but none was awake in the dead of night to shoo him away. So, on withered hands and bony knees, he scrubbed and shined each paving stone with the care a jeweler might take over a diamond. He had no candle but worked entirely by the light of the blue star shining through a narrow window.

An icy breath wafted beneath a certain door. The scrubber felt it and sat up slowly on his heels, every joint and bone creaking. He moistened his shriveled lips, which froze immediately after. Then he crawled closer to the door and put his ear against it. Closing his eyes, he listened.

He said, “Ah! There it is again.”

In the chamber beyond the door, he heard the beat of horses' hooves.

Alistair rides in glorious hunt.

Out here, flying over the grounds of Gaheris beside the shining, twisting rush of River Hanna, the full wildness of spring bursting on every side, he is free. Here, the sun chases away all darkness, and he himself chases his prey. His dogs—sight hounds, scent hounds, and massive curs—streak before him, their voices raised in bloodthirsty chorus, singing out death warnings to the wolf.

This is what it means to be Master of Gaheris. To protect his people and their flocks. Danger sets upon the village, and who would ride out and subdue it? None other than the lord of the castle.

Flanked by his uncle's huntsmen, Alistair urges his horse onward, pursuing the trail of the lone wolf deeper into the wilds of Gaheris's estates, beyond the tilled fields and hamlets. His heart beats with a certainty that he never feels within the confines of the castle itself. He will be lord of this house; he will be protector.

And when the earls of the North Country offer Gaheris the crown, as surely they must, he will be king. He will hunt down the North Country's oppressors and put them to the blade even as he hunts down this wolf!

The sun goes black.

It does not vanish behind a cloud, nor even sink beneath the horizon. It simply blackens as completely as a blown candle.

Alistair stands in darkness. He feels it crawling up his skin, beneath his clothing, sliding down over his ramming heart. Where is his horse? Where are his dogs? Where are his uncle's huntsmen?

All gone. All devoured in the black.

He tries to take a step but cannot see whether or not he has succeeded. He tries another, then another.

A white light flickers in the distance. And he sees the shadowy silhouette of the child.

He screams.

The scrubber drew back from the door, putting a finger in his ear as though he could rub out the ringing sound of Alistair's scream. With a shiver, he turned around and went back to his work. Bending to the stone, he blew away invisible dirt. Then, dipping his soiled cloth in a bucket of soiled water, he wetted down the floor.

He muttered to no apparent listener, “His night terrors are getting worse.”

Through the window above, the blue star winked twice.

“The time is near; that's what it means,” the scrubber said in answer to a question no one heard spoken. Then he whispered, softly:

“Starlight, star bright, guide her footsteps through the night . . .”

The simple children's rhyme rolled from his tongue and danced its way down the dark, sleep-filled corridors of Gaheris Castle.

For possibly the hundredth time that hour, Alistair rubbed his eyes and watched again as the words on the page before him swam slowly back into focus. He could hear the Chronicler's voice droning in lecture. He knew he should be paying at least cursory attention to whatever was being said.

But his gaze kept sliding to the illumination on the opposite page of the day's selected reading. An unskilled artist's portrayal of Sir Akilun standing with the Asha lantern in his outstretched arm.

On the brink of a bottomless chasm.

“And you have heard not a single word I have said for the last quarter of an hour.” The Chronicler snapped shut the book he had been reading. He inspected the young lord slouched over the table. There was nothing lordly in Alistair's bearing or demeanor that morning. His hair stood up in wild tufts as though he'd made no attempt to tame it, and his clothes, though finely made and trimmed in fur, were mismatched and buckled in odd places.

Worst of all was his face. It was so full of dumb dullness, it made the Chronicler want to slap him.

The Chronicler crossed the room and stood at Alistair's elbow. And still Alistair stared at the page before him, his eyes glazed over without a notion of what he was meant to be reading. “My lord?” said the Chronicler, and again more loudly, “My lord?”

Then he slapped his hand down on the page beneath Alistair's nose, startling his pupil upright. “Oh! Chronicler!” Alistair gasped, frowning and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I do apologize. My mind's simply not in the books today.”

“As though it ever is,” said the Chronicler, backing up and crossing his short arms. “What excuse do you have for me this time? Another pale-faced child? Or perhaps it was a whole crowd of them, eh?”

Used as he was to the Chronicler's sharp tongue, Alistair did not reward this remark with so much as a sour look. He leaned back in his chair and, assuming a dismissive expression, yawned. “I'm simply not interested,” he said, which was both a truth and a falsehood. “I have . . . things on my mind.”

The Chronicler opened his mouth but shut it again suddenly. He backed up, returned to his desk, and climbed up onto the high stool. This stool had been commissioned and built specifically for him so that he could sit at Raguel's tall desk. From this height, he was the equal of any man. He looked down his nose at Alistair.

“I'm sure contemplation of the forthcoming delights your impending marriage will bring is indeed a great strain on your intellectual capabilities,” he said. “But if you could see fit to set these pleasant daydreams aside and concentrate on the lesson before you, I'm certain even Lady Leta herself would understand.”

Alistair snorted. Beyond that, he could think of nothing to say, however, so he bowed his head, his fingers pressed to his throbbing temples, and tried yet again to make some sense of the lines scratched in umber ink across the vellum.

“
The elder brother, Asha in his hand, stepped into Death's—
”

The library door swung open.

“Just
what
do you think you are doing?” rang the voice of Lady Mintha.

Not once in all the years of Alistair's life had he compared his mother, even in his thoughts, to anything heavenly or ethereal. Yet he turned to her now with a smile one might very well bestow upon a rescuing angel, glad for any opportunity to escape the labor before him.

“Well met, Mother,” he said with false cheer and stood to greet her with a kiss as she swept into the room. Mintha put up a hand and pushed his face away, rounding on him in a flurry of thick gowns, her veils settling over her like the heavy darkness of thunderclouds.

“Four months, Alistair!” she said. “Four months, and have I seen even the
slightest
effort on your part?”

Alistair shrugged and settled back into his chair. He leaned an elbow on the book's open pages and rested his head in his hand . . . an attitude that made the Chronicler, sitting on his stool in the shadow of Lady Mintha, writhe with scarcely suppressed fury as he considered the damage to the volume's spine.

“You know I always make an effort,” Alistair said, grinning behind the hollows under his eyes. “Simply put a task before me and I'll jump to it
.
”

“Don't be flippant with me,” said Lady Mintha. “You know how important this is, and yet I find you here, hiding away behind these Lumé-forsaken books of yours.”

“Well, they're not mine. They're Uncle's really, for all the pleasure he gets from them. Besides, Mother, I don't quite follow what's brought you here in such high dudgeon.”

“Why must you pretend ignorance?” Mintha wrapped her arms so tightly about her body that she became a quivering pillar of indignation. “You've made no effort whatsoever with the girl, and don't think I haven't noticed.”

“Oh.” Alistair heaved a sigh. “Leta.”

“Yes, Leta. Your bride-to-be. Granted,” Lady Mintha continued in a
slightly gentler tone, “she's an insipid little thing. I myself can scarcely get two words from her. But that in no way reduces the importance of your role, Alistair.”

Her son shrugged and, mercifully, took his elbow off the book again. “Leta's a nice girl. Sweet.”

“Is that all you can say?” Mintha cried. “She's been here four full months, and have you made any attempt to woo or win her?”

“Why bother?” Alistair replied, staring down at the illustrated lantern on the page. “The betrothal is set. The papers are signed. We wed next spring, come what may. She's a fine match, and I'll make her a good husband if I can.” His finger traced the line of the chasm opening just behind the ugly figure of Akilun. “We simply have nothing to say to each other.”