Dragonwitch (2 page)

H
AVE
YOU
EVER
WATCHED
AN
IMMORTAL
DIE
?

You who have slain countless fey folk, tell me if you dare: Did you ever stand by and watch an immortal death? Did you see the blush of life fade to gray, the light of the spirit slowly wane? You have taken life, but have you seen it stolen from before your eyes?

I have.

Dawn in the North Country was beautiful, if chilly that spring, filled with birdsong and dew-shimmering flowers on the banks of River Hanna. The rising sun stretched out its rays to crown the high keep of Castle Gaheris. Tenant farmers, their tools over their bowed shoulders as they made their way to the fields, straightened momentarily, lifting their gazes to the sight. Their hearts swelled to see those austere stones glowing with morning glory, as though the sun itself bestowed a golden promise upon all who lived there.

The castle was home to Earl Ferox, who some said should be king.

The farmers smiled at this, their weathered faces cracking against the dawn chill, their breath wisping before their mouths. Honor though it was to be tenants of the most powerful earl in the North Country, how much greater would the honor be should they become tenants of the king himself?

So the sun rose and the farmers trudged on to their fields, and the servants inside Gaheris stoked fires in cold hearths and prepared for an important day, the day the envoy from Aiven should arrive. A day some might even call fateful.

And Alistair sat upright in his bed, screaming.

He realized what he was doing quickly enough, stuffed his fleece into his mouth, and bit down hard. He knew the servants had heard him, though. He could hear them in the chamber beyond . . . or rather couldn't hear them, for they had frozen in place, afraid to move. He heard instead their silence.

He coughed out the fleece and, though his heart trembled and his limbs shook, forced himself to utter a great, noisy yawn. It would fool no one. But the servants took it as a signal, and he heard them resume their tasks, setting his fire and filling his basin with fresh well water.

They knew better than to enter his private bedroom. He bolted it against them in any case.

Alistair waited until he heard them leave. Only then did he slip out of bed, wrapping the fleece around his shoulders as he made his way to the window. He looked out upon his uncle's lands: the fields, the hamlets, the groves, all of which he would inherit one day.

But he couldn't see them, nor the growing sunlight that bathed them.

He saw only a pale silver glow shining upon a child's face.

“Dragons blast it!” Alistair cursed and shook his head.

No more than an hour later, Alistair stumbled into Gaheris's library, startling the castle chronicler, who was at his desk, copying out some ledger or history. The Chronicler looked up in some surprise at the young man's entrance.

“You are early, my lord.”

Alistair shrugged. The library boasted only three windows, mere slits in the stone, all west and south facing and admitting none of the morning light. Thus the room was full of candles sitting in wooden, wax-filled bowls. Their glow cast Alistair's face into ghoulish shadows, emphasizing the dark circles beneath his eyes.

The Chronicler frowned with measured concern as Alistair took a seat at the long table in the center of the room. “Another restless night?”

Alistair buried his face in his hands. Then he rubbed at the skin under his eyes, stretching his face into unnatural shapes, and ended by pulling at the roots of his hair. “You're an intelligent, learned man, are you not, Chronicler?”

“So some would say,” the Chronicler acceded.

“Have you,” Alistair continued, still pulling at his hair and studying the grain of the wooden table before him with unprecedented concentration, “in all your readings, picked up a word or two concerning dreams?”

The Chronicler set aside his quill and pumice stone, then folded his arms as he turned on his stool to more fully look upon the young lord. “What manner of dreams?”

“Recurring,” said Alistair darkly. He stared at the table as though he should like to burn it with his gaze. The candlelight shone into the depths of his eyes, turning the pale blue irises to orange.

The Chronicler tipped his head to one side. “Are we speaking of a dream you have experienced, Lord Alistair?”

Alistair nodded.

“In this dream, did you see an ax, a sword, or any form of iron weaponry suspended above your head?”

“No.”

“Did you see the face of one long dead calling out to you from behind a shadowy veil?”

“No.”

“Did your last-night's supper confront you in an antagonistic manner?”

“What?” Alistair looked up.

“Did it?”

“Why would I dream something like that?”

The Chronicler leaned back on his stool, reaching to a near bookshelf from which he selected a volume. The vellum pages were neatly copied in a flowing, if shaky script, and all was beautifully bound up in red-stained leather. The Chronicler flipped to a certain page illuminated with images more fantastic than accurate. He read:

“Ande it dide com aboot that Sir Balsius, moste Noble Earle of Gaheris, saw withyn the Eiye of hyse Mynde a sertayn Mutton upon which he hade Et the night prevyus. And thyse Mutton did taxe Hym moste cruelly for having Gnawed upone its Joints. And it spake unto Hym thus, sayinge: ‘And surely You, most jowl-som Lorde, will die upon the Morrow, and the Wolfs will Gnaw upon Thyy Joints.' So it dide Transpyre that Sir Balsius betook Hymselfe to the Hunt, and—”

“Wait, wait!” said young Alistair, his brow puckering. “You're telling me that this Earl Balsius—”

“Your great-great-grandfather, if I recall the chronology correctly,” said the Chronicler.

“—dreamt about an antagonistic mutton and died the next day?”

“According to my predecessor, yes.” The Chronicler shut the book and smiled a grim, mirthless sort of smile at the young lord. “But I give little credence to these so-called histories. Dreams are merely dreams, and stories are merely stories. They are subjects of curious interest but nothing upon which to base your life.”

He shoved the volume back into its place with perhaps a little more vehemence than was called for. Alistair, however, did not notice. He was trying to recall what he'd eaten the night before.

“What about,” he said, embarrassed but eager to know, “what about a pale-faced child?”

“Come again?” said the Chronicler.

“A pale-faced child. Paler than any child I ever saw. Like a ghost or a phantom. Running along the edge of a bottomless chasm, and . . .” Alistair stopped, his mouth suddenly dry, and stared into the flickering candle flame, unable to continue.

“Is this your recurring dream, my lord?”

“Perhaps. Some of it.”

“Well, no doubt about it, then,” said the Chronicler. “You're going to die.”

“What?” Alistair nearly knocked the candle over as he spun to face the Chronicler. “Do you mean it?”

“You saw the pale-faced child beside the bottomless chasm?” The Chronicler selected another volume, slid down from his stool, and approached Alistair at the table. “Then there can be no doubt about it. You're going to die. A slow, lingering death brought on by study and academic application.” He plunked the book down in front of Alistair. “As long as you're here, you might as well start reading. Open to the tenth page, please.”

Scowling, Alistair watched the Chronicler climb back onto his stool, wishing he were clever enough this early in the morning to think of something nasty to say. But too many sleepless nights in a row, waking at dawn to frozen feet and nose, had sapped him of any cleverness with which he'd been born.

He should have known better than to confide in the Chronicler.

He opened the volume to the required page and stared at the words scribbled there. He pulled the candle closer, then reached for another. The added light did nothing to help.

“I can't read this,” he said.

“Yes, you can,” said the Chronicler.

“I don't know this piece.”

“You know all the letters, and you know the sounds they make.” The Chronicler, bowed over his work, did not bother to look around. His quill scritched away at a flimsy parchment as he made a copy, using the pumice stone to hold the page in place rather than risk greasing the delicate fibers with his fingertips. “Sound it out.”

Alistair's scowl deepened. He did not recognize the hand in which this unknown text had been written. Everything put down on paper within the walls of Gaheris was either in the Chronicler's hand or that of his predecessor. But this hand, this wavering, watery script in faded ink, was not one he had seen before.

“I have time,” the Chronicler said. “I can wait all day if necessary.”

Alistair swallowed, trying to wet his dry throat, then took a hesitant stab at the first word. “Ta-hee.”

“What sound does a
‘th'
make?”

Blood rushed to Alistair's cheeks, turning their chalky pallor bright and blotchy.
“The!”
he read, as though he could kill the word with a single stroke.

“Go on,” said the Chronicler calmly.

Setting his shoulders and rolling his stiff neck, Alistair drew a deep breath.
“The kin-gee
 . . . No,
king.
The king will find his . . . his way to the—”

He stopped suddenly. Within that short phrase he recognized what he was reading. His embarrassment tripled, and he clenched his fists, glaring round at the Chronicler again. “I'm not reading this,” he said.

The Chronicler continued writing without a pause.

“This is a nursery rhyme,” Alistair said. “I'm not a babe in my nursemaid's arms!”

“Shall I bear word to your uncle that once again you have given up intellectual pursuits for a pack of sorry dogs and a still sorrier fox?”

“Intellectual pursuits? This?” Alistair threw up his hands, leaning back in his chair. “Anyway, Uncle Ferox doesn't read. Neither does any other earl in the North Country. That's why we keep men like you.”

The Chronicler said nothing. But he said it with such finality that Alistair sighed, knowing he'd lost the fight, and turned back to the book. He might as well ram his head against a brick wall as challenge the Chronicler.

Between them remained the unspoken truth: Earls may not read, but earls were not kings.

Well, neither was Alistair, but this argument would gain him no ground. Not with an entire nation's expectations resting on his young shoulders. So he bent over the old book again and strained his eyes in the candlelight to make out the scribbling scrawl.

“The king will find his way,”
he read slowly, like a blind man feeling out an unfamiliar path,
“to the sw—swar—sword?
”

“Yes,” said the Chronicler.

“The sword beneath the floor. The nig-hit.
The night. The night will flame again.”

“Good,” said the Chronicler, though Alistair knew the effort hardly merited praise. Even the simplest words gave him difficulty. He'd started learning too late, he thought. It came easy for someone like the Chronicler, who'd been apprenticed to old Raguel from the time he could speak.
Alistair had always had more important matters to occupy his mind, and only the daft whim of his uncle could have driven him to letters so late in his education.

“Continue,” the Chronicler said.

Alistair ground his teeth. Then he began:

“The night will flame again

When the Smallman finds the door.

The dark won't hide the Path

When you near the House of—”

“Do you really think I am so easily fooled?”

Alistair stopped. He did not raise his head, but his eyes flashed to the back of the Chronicler's head. “I'm reading the rhyme,” he said.