The Witch of Glenaster (2 page)

My father was sick for a while after
that, and, though he recovered, I think he was never quite the same again. My
mother would lock the door earlier in the evenings, and if we were late home
from playing on the hillside she would rush us indoors with short words. Folk
in the village seemed to grow more wary, and when strangers came along the road
would turn them away, and make the sign to ward off evil. My father and the
other men would often gather at the Head Man’s house, or at the lookout post,
and talk of things children like us were not meant to understand. And all the
time a shadow was spreading over the valley, and birds ceased to sing and
laughter was heard only rarely, and then with a bitter ring.

About a year after the
guardsman died, the livestock started to disappear. Only a few at first, but
soon more and more, until some gave up their farms altogether and headed for
the town, or went mad up on the hills. Some claimed it was the work of beasts
and birds of prey, and men had nothing to fear from such creatures; many others
said there was a curse on the village, and we should turn from our wickedness
and embrace the holy things. And the watch was kept by day and by night up at
the lookout post, and there were more guards on the roads with each passing
season.

The happy place I had known
became stiff with fear, and I resented it. The sunny days seemed to grow fewer,
and the cloudy ones greater, and the paths we ran along became too stony, and
the woods we played in too dark. The winters were the worst, when the nights
grew so long the day hardly appeared at all; and then the great River
Anvil, that washed through the valley,
would swell to a
torrent, and flood the villages farther downstream. But in the summer it would
wither to a crawl, and become hardly more than a brook, even if the sun had not
shone for days.

And so my brother and I grew
older, and hardier, as is the way with our folk, for our lives have never been
easy; and I felt my limbs become stronger, and less soft; and my skin was
roughened by the wind and the rain, and my hair was wild. And the boys in the
village called me “the little fox” – but my mother still called me Esther.

I was approaching my tenth
birthday when I learned more of the Witch.

Though others in the village
had mentioned her often enough for me to be familiar with her name, and know it
to be a bad one, they never said more while I was in earshot, and no word had
ever been breathed of her in our house. Then, one evening, I found myself alone
with my father, my mother and brother having gone to bed, when Robert Parsons,
one of the men from the village, came to visit. He was old - though no one was
quite sure how old – and his hair was as fine and white as snow, often sticking
up at strange angles from his head; and when he smiled he showed a mouth almost
entirely free of teeth. But my father had great regard for him, and ushered him
into the kitchen with warm words. He tipped his hat to me as he entered, and
settled himself into a chair by the window.

“It’s a brisk night, Joseph; I
just thought I’d look in on you on my back from Pepper’s. There’s a storm
coming up the hill.”

“I heard it,” said my father,
putting the kettle on to boil. “It’s cold for the time of year.”

Robert nodded, and narrowed his
eyes a little.

“Too cold, I’d say.” He
stretched out his long legs, and yawned slightly. “You’ll forgive me. Been a
long day.”

My father laughed; and as he
brewed up some coffee, and hummed quietly to himself by the stove, Robert
started to doze in his chair; and I felt my own eyelids grow heavy, and was
about to drop off to sleep myself. Then, as my father brought the old man his
coffee, he said suddenly, without opening his eyes:

“Jack Webber’s boy was in town
Wednesday morning. Saw him on my way up the hill. He says all the talk there is
of the Witch of
Glenaster
.”

My father stopped dead, and
cast a worried glance at me, though my eyes were already half-closed, and it
must have looked in the darkness of the parlour as if I was asleep.

“Never mind the girl, Joseph,”
said Robert, taking the coffee. “She’s old enough to hear these things; and
she’ll need to learn them soon enough, anyway.”

My father retreated to his
chair by the kitchen table, and sat in silence. Robert looked around at me,
then continued:

“Word is all the land is in
fear of the Witch now, from the Broad Shore down to Sophia. Drew Peters has
doubled the strength of the militia in Hale, and even in Beauchamp Sam
Woolrich
has ordered the watchtower be rebuilt. There’s
little word from the emperor, except for what comes through Lord
Fyra
, and some say he’s powerful enough already.” He kicked
a stone loose from his shoe, and the scrape sounded harshly in the quiet of the
room. “God knows, Joseph, I’m not a man to scare easily; but I’ve found myself
afraid sometimes, these past months, when I think of what may be coming…”

Thunder rumbled away in the
distance, and I shivered slightly. My father smiled at me, reassuring. I smiled
back. But I could not help noticing that his knuckles, as he clutched his mug
of coffee, were white as bone.

Robert looked at him, and then
at me, and then stared for a while at the fire, and was silent. But when my
brother cried out in his sleep, and my father went to look in on him, I asked
the old man about the Witch.

“So your parents haven’t told
you?” he said, then sighed. “Oh well, I suppose I’m old enough now to be
forgiven if my talk scares you at all.” And he looked me full in the eye. “She
is
drooj
- a magus of the ancient world. No
one has seen her - no living man anyhow - and it is said that she cannot leave
her home, which is far away to the north, beyond even the Lessening Lands. But
she has many agents throughout the world - birds and beasts and men without
souls - who walk abroad and are her spies. She never ages, they say, yet she is
over a thousand years old; and many have died trying to destroy her. Long ago,
when she first appeared, she wrought havoc across the land, and darkness
covered the earth; men lived in fear, and children were sacrificed to her, and
Ironford
and
Tengates
and other
great cities of the empire were razed to the ground, so that people thought
that the end had come, and many killed themselves in their despair. But then,
one day, she just disappeared – like that! -
and
everyone assumed she was dead, or had been claimed by her own. That was many
centuries ago. But now, with all the sorrow that has come upon us, they fear
she is awake once more, and set on finishing what she began.”

Again he fell silent, and the
firelight barely illumined his face; his eyes were like hollow pits, full of
shadow.

“But if all this is true, why
doesn’t the emperor stop her…?” I asked, indignant; and he gave a start, as if
woken from a dream, and said quietly:

“Perhaps he cannot. And perhaps
he will not… There are many powerful people at court, and not all of them love
the emperor as they should. And so few venture to the far north these days, and
those that do never return…” He looked up for a moment at the ceiling, as the
storm growled away down the hill. “Once, long ago, there were great heroes in
this land – men who would not shrink from death; great warriors who fought with
the warlocks of the Dying Sea, and wrestled the fire-drakes of the Broken
Islands. And there were wise magi, who could conjure the winds and make the sun
do their bidding. Such men would have been capable of defeating even a creature
as powerful as the Witch of
Glenaster
. But they are
long gone, and their spells are all but forgotten; now no one dares stand
against the Witch, and those who dwell with her, in the dark. I fear she will
not stop until she has forced the emperor to kneel and worship her, and all the
known world to live beneath her shadow; I fear this land will never have peace
until she is slain, or death take her. And I would gladly kill her myself, were
I not grown old already, and weary with my life…”

I watched him for a long
moment, as he gazed steadily into the fire, and then some instinct made me
turn; and I saw my father standing there, by the door to my brother’s bedroom,
and I realized he must have been there for a good while, and had heard much of
what had been said. And when I looked at him I saw that his eyes were wet with
tears; and he said nothing to me, but only nodded, slowly and sadly, like a
little boy. And I went up to him, and kissed his face, and wiped his tears, and
told him not to be afraid for me; that my brother and I would be all right,
that we had each other, and that no one would destroy us. I said all these
things, and I think they reassured him a little; but secretly I resolved to
destroy the Witch, when I was old enough to travel the many leagues to her home
in
Glenaster
, in the far north, and strong enough to
put my sword through her black heart.

It was a bright morning in April,
and I was up on the hill collecting wood for the fire, when I saw them.

The high moorland which rises
above the village was smart against the sky, a reddish brown below the open
blue, and at first I thought the heather was waving violently in the breeze.
But then I realized it seemed to be moving, pouring over the hill in a wave,
and I saw that it was not heather, but people; and a great mass of people, it
seemed, though a child’s eyes often exaggerate. And they were running down,
down into the valley like frightened ponies, and when I heard their screams I
ran to fetch my father.

Within minutes, the village had
been roused, and the bell was tolling from the lookout post, and the Head Man
and the militia stood facing the hills, fearful and wary. Some muttered that
this was the end; but my father and others hushed them, and commanded that the
villagers be prepared, but were not to fight unless a blow was thrown by the
outsiders first.

The people on the hill came on,
and as they gained the ground immediately to the west of the village, my father
and the other men became restless, but not violent. The goats and sheep had
been pastured further up the valley, and those indoors were all accounted for;
but the men still kept a keen eye on their fields, and a steady grip on their
axes.

And then they were upon us.

And the wailing and screams we
had heard, growing louder on their approach, was now a din, sailing about our
homes as the runners half-staggered, half-leapt through the village.

But they did not stop.

To our surprise, and relief,
they carried on, down towards the river; and as they charged towards it, and
plunged headlong into, along, and around it, we saw why: for in our haste to
protect our houses and our farms, and with the sun so bright in the sky, we had
failed to notice that every one of these poor souls was
on fire
, their
hands and hair and clothes filled with a strange-looking flame, that did not
seem to grow, but rather leapt about their bodies like liquid gold, cool and
angry in the morning sunlight.

We watched for many moments,
silent, aghast, stamping out the smouldering earth that marked their passage,
until their screaming stopped, or could no longer be heard. The stench of
roasting flesh filled the air like a curse. And then some of the men went down
to the river, to see if any had survived; but none had, being all drowned or
broken at the neck from falling, if they were not burned. And the men returned
much later with sorrow on their faces, and none spoke of what they had seen for
many days afterwards.

When they did, they used a word
I had heard before only in legend: they spoke of the drakes.

“I’d say they were travellers,
from the look of them; they weren’t local. They must have been caught out in
the open; easy prey…”

“Prey for what…?”

“Did you see the flames that
burned them? The bright colour of it? It wasn’t like natural fire…”

“This is the Witch’s doing.
She’s woken the drakes, and now we will all suffer for it…”

“The drakes? Surely they are a
myth…!”

“They’re no myth. They’re as
real as you and I.”

“But if drakes killed those
people, why haven’t we seen them…?”

“Probably a youngster, trying
out the reach of his fire… We’ll see them soon enough. When they’re full
grown…”

“They say the emperor is beside
himself with grief, and simply stays in his room and weeps…”

“He’d be better off helping his
subjects! Where are our armies…?”

“I’ve heard he’s offered his
throne to any man who can kill the Witch…”

“Only a fool would take up that
challenge…”

“The court is already rife with
her spies, I’m told. She’s biding her time, testing our defences, waiting for
the right moment to strike…”

“She will have her way. No one
can stand against her now. Anyone who does will face the fury of the drakes…”

And they said much else beside,
in a similar vein; but my father said nothing, and only smoked his pipe and was
silent.