Dragonwitch (24 page)

The Silent Lady said, “Etanun has told me where to find Halisa's chamber. I will take you to it, if such is your will.”

The high priestess recoiled as though struck. Stoneye hastily stepped forward, his hand outstretched. She bade him back away, but she swayed where she stood as though years of labor had come suddenly to an apex, yet even now she dared not hope for reprieve. Mouse could see the throb of a pulse in her throat.

“You will take me there,” the Speaker said. “At once.”

I
LAUGHED
.
I
T
WAS
THE
FIRST
TIME
I had laughed in many ages, and the sound startled me and, I could tell, frightened him. When the laughter eased, I said, “So I was not enough for you. Immortal Faerie that I am, glorious queen, beautiful beyond the description of poets and rhymes. I was not enough to keep you close, but you will love this woman of dust? You will love this decaying mortal?”

He did not meet my eyes. But he said, “I love her.”

“Why?” I demanded. “Why her? Why not me?”

“Because,” he said in the gentlest, most tender voice I had ever heard, “when I look at her, I see the light of my home shining clear and bright in her eyes.”

If I could have killed him then, I would have.

“What is her name?” I asked.

“Klara,” he replied.

No sooner did the Speaker command than Stoneye stepped forward and took the Silent Lady roughly by the arm. There was no reverence or even gentleness in his action, and Mouse cried out in protest.

A protest unheard or unheeded by all those gathered. Stoneye led the way, marching the prophetess like a prisoner before him as the high priestess silently followed, the rest falling into step behind her. Mouse was caught up in the flowing tide of her sisters in red and black and the marching eunuchs around them.

Out of the open hall and around to a stair cut into the red foundation rock they filed down, following Stoneye and the strange woman to the ground below. For the first time, Mouse walked the low path where she had years ago seen the first throng of slaves driven, and many more since then. But she had never yet seen the door through which they were sent, the door into the Diggings.

It was little more than a crack in the red stone, jagged like a wolf's jaws. Darkness spilled from it and coldness as well. Mouse felt it even before they drew near, and she trembled with dread.

“Here,” said a priestess beside her. Mouse turned and, to her surprise, recognized Sparrow, clad in red, adorned in a fine wig. “Take this.”

Mouse felt something pressed into her hands, and looked down at a black cloth. Sparrow, still walking toward the crack in the stone, was tying a similar cloth about her face, shielding her eyes. “You must not see the darkness of the Diggings,” she said, her voice calm. “If you do, you will be lost.”

Sparrow finished securing her blindfold, then put out a hand. A eunuch, his eyes unshielded, stepped to her side and offered his arm, leading her to the gaping doorway through which the other priestesses and acolytes were flowing. Hating to follow but hating still more to be left behind, Mouse also blindfolded her eyes and felt a eunuch slip to her own side and tuck her hand under his arm. So she was guided into the swallowing darkness of the Diggings.

It was like the Midnight she had witnessed earlier, only deeper. With the blindfold on her face, she might have been drowning in the depths of a black ocean. Her only guide was the arm of the eunuch, to which she clung as a babe clings to its mother. The tramp of many feet ahead
comforted her, but the silence, deeper than all other silences, flooded the world behind her, as if a thousand people cried out for help only to find their voices rendered mute.

So these were the Diggings into which those who rebelled against the Flame were sent to find the chamber of Fireword.

“Why does she want it?” Mouse whispered. The silence offered her no answer.

Onward they plunged, deeper and deeper. Sometimes Mouse thought she heard from a distance the ringing of hammers and picks, slaves hard at work. Their search for the chamber must have extended far into this subterranean world. How cold it was! Mouse was thankful for the woolen robes that had always seemed such a bother before. She should never doubt the will of the goddess.

It was difficult to say how far they progressed into those depths. Time meant little in that blind world. But sooner than Mouse expected, the procession halted and she heard the voice of the prophetess speaking clearly up ahead.

“Here. This is the place.”

“Impossible” came the high priestess's reply. “We searched this entire quarter ages ago. There is nothing here. We must proceed.”

“No,” said the Silent Lady. “This is the place. Etanun's mark is on the wall.”

Mouse released hold of the eunuch and, with trembling fingers, reached up and pulled the blindfold down. To her surprise, there was light all around her, the light of torches carried by the eunuchs, and the white light glowing from the starflower tucked in the prophetess's hair. The procession had halted at a crossroad where the main tunnel branched in two, a larger passage continuing to the right, a smaller to the left. It was an old part of the Diggings, carved out before the Speaker was even born.

None of the other acolytes had dared remove their blindfolds, but the high priestess, standing beside Stoneye at the head of the procession, looked upon the Silent Lady, and her eyes were bright even in that darkness.

“We would have seen it,” the Speaker said, “long ere now.”

“You could not,” said the prophetess. “No matter how you searched. Etanun said his sword must sleep undisturbed. He did not wish it found until this time.”

She took a step forward, but Stoneye clutched her arm. Mouse saw the pain shoot across her face. How could Stoneye treat her so? Did he not realize who she was? Or did he really believe she would try to escape in this awful labyrinth?

The high priestess spoke a soft command, and Stoneye unwillingly released his hold. The Silent Lady stood as though uncertain. Then, setting her jaw, she strode toward the ragged stone wall between the split passages. And suddenly everyone saw what had been hidden from mortal eyes for generations of enslaved Diggers, hidden until that moment.

In the place where the passages diverged was an arched doorway.

Only shadows had concealed it for all the lonely years of the Diggers' efforts. Only shadows more solid than any wall. When torchlight fell upon that spot, the shadows threw the light back and revealed none of their secrets. But when the starflower in the prisoner's hair gleamed, it shone upon a richly carved doorpost.

“Fire burn,” the Speaker said. Then she leapt forward, ready to pass through the arch. But Stoneye put out his arm, preventing her. “Out of my way, man!” She spoke without malice, a dreamy haziness to her voice. “I must see it.” And she breathed the name like a prayer: “Fireword.”

Stoneye would not release her. He could not speak, but he indicated that she must let him go first. After all, who knew what lay beyond that doorway?

The high priestess stared up at him. For a moment, Mouse thought she would argue. But instead, she closed her eyes tightly, as though forcing her body to act against her own will. “Very well.” She snatched a torch from one of the other slaves and pressed it into his hands. “Take this. And hurry!”

Stoneye approached the doorway. The shadows within thirstily drank up the light from his torch. The big slave hesitated on the threshold. He lifted the torch to study carved images of a story he did not know, perhaps of two brothers, one with a lantern, one with a sword. And he saw the one with the sword kill the first. It was a terrible tale, even in that momentary glimpse. A tale of murder.

The Silent Lady placed a hand upon his arm. He startled as though bitten and turned to her with a snarl. But her face was gentle, her eyes strangely calm.

“I will enter first,” she said, taking the flower from her hair and cupping it in her hands. “Let me, please?”

The big man looked like a hungry dog ready to devour her. Then his face, cast harshly into relief by the glow of his torch, softened. He stepped back.

So the prisoner carried her little star into the chamber. It was a large chamber indeed, an enormous circular room with a domed ceiling. Unlike the tunnels and passages of the Diggings, it was well crafted, its smooth walls overlaid with fine encaustic tiles. The white light of the starflower revealed many colors of clay worked into delicate patterns in every tile, each one telling a different story. They were too many and too intricate for comprehension. The mind ached to see them, yet it was an ache of beauty not pain.

Centered in the room was a stone so ugly that it might have been chipped from the essence of darkness. More carefully carved was the likeness of a sword, hilt up, protruding from its top. A sword that was part of the stone itself.

“It's there!” Without a thought the high priestess plunged into the chamber, her hands outstretched, striving against the shadows, her eyes wide and hungry, even desperate.

“Wait!” cried the Silent Lady.

Heedless, the priestess pushed past the glow of the starflower, her robes flowing behind her, reaching for the stone, reaching for the sword.

There was a clatter as Stoneye's torch dropped and extinguished. The big slave caught the high priestess, lifted her off her feet, and dragged her back screaming and thrashing. It was the most horrible sight! Mouse wanted to cover her eyes, to avoid seeing her beautiful mistress so humiliated. Stoneye—a man who should not dare to breathe upon her—wrapped his strong arms around her rail-thin frame, holding her almost fiercely, his face full of fear.

The Silent Lady stepped forward, struggling to make herself heard above the inarticulate screams of the priestess. “Please!” she cried. “You mustn't touch it!”

“It belongs to the goddess,” the high priestess shouted. “It is here beneath her temple, beneath the land she has made her own, and it is hers by right of conquest. I will, I
must
bring it to her.”

“No,” said the prophetess. “I have shown you the secret. I have led you to this place. Please trust me now when I say that you must not touch Etanun's sword. You must not touch Halisa.”

The priestess became cold. Stoneye felt the resistance flow from her, and he set her down but kept hold of her shoulder. “Why not?” the Speaker demanded, her voice as black as that ugly stone.

“Only Etanun's heir may bear the sword from this chamber,” the prisoner said. “See?” She hastened to the stone and knelt, holding her gleaming flower up to it. Mouse shouldered her way past priestesses and eunuchs to peer through the doorway. She saw what the flower revealed. She saw that the sword was indeed part of the stone itself. She could see where chisel and mallet had chipped its contours into the shape it now bore. And around the place where the stone blade seemingly entered the boulder were deeply carved letters. These were more elegantly depicted, if unreadable to those looking on.

Then, as Mouse watched, the characters suddenly shifted and moved, not on the stone itself, but inside her mind. She found herself not reading but seeing images that to her were unmistakable. They said as clearly as words:

Fling wide the doors of light, Smallman,

Though furied falls the Flame at Night.

The heir to truth, blest blade of fire,

He finds in shielded shadow light.

The high priestess saw it too. But she growled, shaking her head. “That is foolishness,” she said. “Nothing will stand between the goddess and her prize, neither this Smallman nor any heir.”

She tried to approach the boulder again, but Stoneye restrained her. She whirled on him, eyes flashing, and snarled, “Very well, if you are so set on protecting me! You pick it up. You carry it from this room and show everyone the power of the goddess over these old superstitions. The Fire will burn all else away, including shivering cowardice!”

Stoneye gazed upon her. And for the first time Mouse saw his rock-hard mask slip. She saw in his cold eyes a sudden warmth, a heat that shot pain through his whole body but surged inside him with power as well.

She realized with horror:
He loves her.

Not the high priestess. No, for no one could truly love that tall, detached being. But
her
. The woman she was beneath the trappings of her office. Beneath the robes, the wigs, the woven crowns. Beneath the burns. When he looked at her, he saw the person not the priestess, and he knew her name, which all others had forgotten.

Mouse's heart broke. In that moment she might have wept for dreadful Stoneye, the eunuch who had sacrificed all to serve this hard shell of what had once been a woman.

“Do as I say!” the high priestess cried, her voice ringing shrill in the stillness of that otherworldly chamber.

Stoneye stepped around her, his head high, his shoulders back. Mouse saw the Silent Lady cast herself before him, heard her small voice protesting, “Don't! Please! As you value your life, leave it be!”

Stoneye pushed her aside, and she landed in a crumpled heap on the tile-paved floor. Her starflower flew from her hand, spun wildly through the air, and floated gently down to rest on the black stone. The Silent Lady pushed upright, her long hair tossed back, and cried again, “Don't!”