Dragonwitch (5 page)

“Don't be overconfident,” Lady Mintha said sharply, emphasizing her words by grabbing her son's shoulder. He started under her touch, but she did not let go. “If something goes awry . . . if that little chit sends word to her father that she's unhappy at Gaheris . . . what's to prevent him from coming to fetch his daughter?”

“If that should happen, so be it.” Alistair felt his mother's anger build right through her fingertips. Just then, however, he was too tired to care.

Mintha growled. She let go of her son and backed away, moving to the window and gazing down into the courtyard below. Alistair could hear her heavy breathing as she collected herself. When she spoke again, her voice was calm but edged with an ice that was more dreadful than the fire of her wrath.

“This is not the attitude I expect from you. This marriage must take place. You
must
secure the alliance with Aiven to have any hope for the future crown.”

There it was again. In the last ten years of his life, Alistair could not remember a single conversation with his mother that didn't revert to kingship. The Crown was the darling wish of her heart. He had been brought up with his gaze always turned to the future unity of the North Country. His uncle also talked of it with an air of grave certainty that made one almost believe it possible. For Lady Mintha, it was nothing short of a consuming passion.

But neither of them knew of his nightmares.

Alistair shuddered. Then he said heavily, “Let it be, Mother. If the earls were going to unite under a king, they would have stuck a crown on Uncle Ferox's head long ago.”

Mintha turned from the window, narrowing her eyes at her son. The light from the day outside fell upon her, making her very pale beneath her dark veils. But her eyes were bright.

“The earls had reason enough for not crowning Ferox,” she said, her voice low as though she feared being overheard. “There was talk of it for many years.”

“Which came to nothing.”

“Who would crown a sonless king?” Lady Mintha asked, her voice dismissive. Then it hardened into the sharp resolve it always held when she spoke on this subject. “You are their new hope. The hope of Gaheris. The hope of the North Country. And if you prove yourself a worthy successor to Ferox, you will see the earls kneeling at your feet soon enough. But you must secure alliances now. Earl Clios is behind you, and Ianthon and Sondmanus. Aiven is the key. You make certain this marriage takes place; you make certain you have Earl Aiven at your right hand, and kingship is only a matter of time.”

Alistair glared at the illustration of Akilun but did not dare to glare at his mother. “It will be a matter of
some
time,” he said. “Uncle Ferox isn't going to hand over Gaheris next week. We have years yet, and I'm not going to concern myself with a future too far away to consider.”

“Your uncle will not live to the year's end.”

A stone dropped.

Both Mintha and Alistair turned at the sound and watched the Chronicler's pumice roll across the floor to the edge of Mintha's long gown. The Chronicler, silent upon his stool, stared at it as though it were his own life rolling away from him. Ink from an overturned inkwell dribbled to the edge of the desk and began to drip into his lap.

“What are you doing here?” Lady Mintha's voice washed the room in frost.

The Chronicler, brought back to himself, put out a hand to catch the dripping ink, then fumbled for a blotting cloth, hastening to wipe up the mess. Busy with this task, he replied in his dry, quiet voice, “Allow me to remind you, my lady, that this is my library.”

“
Your
library?” Mintha picked up the pumice stone, hefting it in her palm. “Is that what you think, Chronicler? Is that what you've been led to believe all these years? That anything within Castle Gaheris is yours?”

“Mother,” said Alistair, rising and taking the stone from her, half afraid of what she might do with it. “The Chronicler was here already, as he always is. You intruded upon his privacy, not he on yours. Have a little courtesy.”

“Courtesy? To a scribbler?” Lady Mintha gave the Chronicler a final look, a look he met with equal coolness. In that moment they were surprisingly alike, this tall, proud lady of the castle and the humble, misshapen servant. Alistair could easily believe that anyone who stepped between them would either turn into a pillar of ice or burst into flame.

He took his mother's arm and pulled her gently away. “We'll speak of this later,” he said. “I am in the middle of my reading lesson, in accordance with Uncle Ferox's wishes.” He led her to the library door and opened it.

And found Leta standing there.

Mintha and her son stared down at her, and she stared down at their feet. A long, silent moment hung between them, full of too many questions. How much had she heard? How long had she stood there?

Then Mintha exclaimed, “Gracious, child!” putting a hand to her heart. She masked her scowl behind a quick smile and stepped quickly out into the hall, drawing her son behind her. “You did give us quite a turn! What are you doing in this lonely quarter?”

Leta, still without looking, opened her mouth but said nothing. So Mintha continued to fill the silence. “Are you here to meet this handsome son of mine, perhaps?” She pinched Alistair's cheek winsomely and laughed. “Has he quite charmed you yet?”

“Oh no!” Lady Leta protested quickly. She glanced up at Alistair and turned a remarkable shade of red. “I wouldn't . . . I mean, Lord Alistair and I . . . I mean, I would never dream of—”

“Tut, don't rattle on so,” said Mintha, her voice less bright than a moment before. “I'll leave the two of you to your little tryst, and no harm done.” She began to move on, leaving a terrified Leta trembling before Alistair, who stood with his arms crossed, trying not to look at her.

Mintha paused before she had gone many paces and looked around.
“Leta, my dear, it just came to me: Are you come here to have the Chronicler write a letter to your father?”

Leta blinked. Then, as though ashamed that she had not had the idea herself, shook her head.

“Well, if you do,” Mintha continued, her eyes shrewdly fixed upon the girl, “try not to mention my dear brother's health, will you, my pet? I think it best if your lordly father heard the news from Gaheris House first. All in due time, you understand.”

“Earl Ferox is ill?” Leta asked.

Her voice was so full of innocent concern, one could almost believe she could be so ignorant. Mintha smiled grimly. “All in due time. There's a sweetness. You keep your letters full of wedding details. Tell your dear mother all about your new gown, yes?”

With that, Mintha chucked Leta under the chin, wrinkled her nose as though to a baby, and moved on down the hall, her heavy skirts dragging on the stones behind her.

Leta stood very still, her jaw clenched. If Alistair had not known better, he would have thought she was barely suppressing a boiling anger. But Leta lacked the passion for real anger, he felt certain. It was probably nothing more than timidity and nerves.

When at last she glanced up at him, she could not hold his gaze. “I'm sorry, my lord Alistair,” she said in her small voice. “Am I interrupting your lesson?”

Alistair shook his head. “I believe I am through with reading for the day.” He sighed then and asked with resignation, “Were you looking for me?”

“No!” she said, perhaps too hastily. Her small hands squeezed into fists at her sides, and he thought for a moment that she would say more. But in the end, she was silent.

He sighed again. “In that case, would you mind very much if I excused myself?”

“Not at all,” she murmured, and Alistair beat a hasty retreat, leaving her standing at the library door.

She remained awhile, unable to move, her ears ringing with words she desperately wished she could un-hear. But she could not stay here forever,
undecided and afraid. So at last, her head bowed, she slid into the dimness of the library.

The Chronicler sat as he always did, at his desk, wiping his stained fingers with a still-more-stained blotting rag. He did not seem to notice her entrance but stared at the page he had been copying before Alistair's lesson began, perhaps reading it, perhaps simply gazing at nothing.

Leta coughed. She wasn't good at this sort of cough. It was too obvious a ploy for attention, and attention was never Leta's realm of comfort. But she coughed anyway, and when the first one did not work, she tried a second, louder.

The Chronicler turned. For just a moment, she thought she saw his face light up with a glow brighter than the candle on his desk, brighter even than the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window.

But all warmth vanished the next moment, replaced by the Wall.

Leta had become all too familiar with the Wall over the last four months. It was not present at every lesson. No indeed! Many days when she came to the library, eager and embarrassed by her own eagerness, and took her place at this table, she could see equal enthusiasm in the Chronicler's face. She could hear the excitement in his voice when he told her the list of letters and words she was to learn that day. She would sit and copy these until the Chronicler told her she'd done enough, and then he would draw up his stool beside her and listen to her stumbling attempts to sound out the words.

On the days when the Wall was down, the Chronicler would exclaim, “Listen to you, m'lady! You read like a chronicler yourself!”

But such days were invariably followed by the Wall. The Chronicler would sit on his stool, surrounded in a silence as strong as all Gaheris's fortifications, retreated so deeply into himself that Leta wondered if he even knew who besieged him anymore.

He would speak, but only as necessary. A curt “Good” or a curter “Wrong.” And scarcely a word of explanation in between.

On such days, Leta rarely read well, and she always left wondering if she had offended him somehow.

She saw the Wall go up now, blocking out that glimpse of warmth and, she dared believe, pleasure.

Pleasure?
Her practical side scoffed.
Did you not hear them, you ninny? Insipid little creature, that's what you are!

The Chronicler doesn't think so,
her rebellious side replied stubbornly.

The Chronicler doesn't think anything of you,
said her practical side.
You're nothing but a diversion, and not a very welcome one at that.

Leta ground her teeth against that thought and forced a timid smile. “I'm here for my reading lesson, Chronicler,” she said.

“So you are,” said he. “Come and sit, m'lady.”

He slid off his stool and cleared Alistair's place at the table. He muttered something unpleasant that Leta could not hear as he tested the strength of the spine on the volume from which Alistair had been reading. Satisfied that it wasn't permanently ruined, but no less irked, he replaced it on the shelf and searched for another book for his new pupil.

Leta took a seat in Alistair's chair and waited quietly with her hands folded until he placed the selected volume before her.

“Please turn to page ten,” he said, returning to his stool.

“Um.” Leta licked her lips nervously as she flipped to the appropriate passage. “Are you not having me copy?”

The Chronicler shook his head. “We are going to practice another side of the chronicler's art today.”

He seemed to expect a reply. Leta nodded but kept her mouth shut.

“Can you not guess what that is?” the Chronicler asked, his voice a little sharp.

She shook her head.

“Thinking.”
He punctuated the word with a pound of his fist upon his desk. “I want you to
think
today. You will read that piece before you and then, rather than copy it out, you will tell me its meaning.”

They looked at each other across the dimness of the chamber. Warm afternoon light poured through the windows, falling on the Chronicler's hair and turning it gold, falling on Leta's face and turning it white beneath her barbet and veils.

The Chronicler said, “Do you understand?”

“I understand, Chronicler.”

With a wave of his hand, he indicated for her to proceed. Leta picked up the parchment, frowning as she studied the words. Slowly, some of them
came to her, like a camouflaged deer in a thicket becoming more visible as she stared. She recognized words here and there, then whole phrases. The rest she could fill in from memory, for she had known this simple rhyme from the time she was in her cradle.

She both read and recited:

“The king will find his way

To the sword beneath the floor.

The night will flame again

When the Smallman finds the door.

“The dark won't hide the Path

When you near the House of Light.

Sometimes you have to run away

To win the final fight.”

Another silence. Leta glanced up at the Chronicler, wondering if he would scold her for reciting much of the piece rather than reading it. She knew he could tell the difference; he always spotted any faking or guesswork on her part. But he sat with his arms crossed, watching her, saying nothing, allowing the silence to dominate everything until Leta thought she might suffocate in it.

“Well?” he said at last.

“Well?” she replied quietly.

“What does it mean?”

Leta looked at the page again. “It doesn't mean anything. It's a nursery rhyme. For children.”

“Why should that make it meaningless?”

She felt stupid.
Insipid little thing,
her inner voice whispered, and no rebellious counter offered itself. “It's just a story,” she said. “About the Smallman, who they say will find the lost House of Lights and . . . and battle a great evil.”

“And who is the Smallman?” asked the Chronicler.