The Witch of Glenaster (4 page)

The rest of the village was
silent, its houses smashed and broken, flames from still-burning fires warping
the air with their heat. I ran round it three times, while my brother watched
me, a desperate look in his eyes. I could find no one. If anyone else had
survived, it seemed they had fled. Perhaps they had run and drowned themselves
in the river, like the outsiders. Whatever had become of them, I knew I wished
that I, too, was dead, and not fated to remain alive when all that I loved was
destroyed. I think that if it had not been for my brother, I would have done
away with myself then; I did not think I could face another day. And I looked
up to see him standing outside our house, his back to me, his small shoulders set,
as if pleading with time to stop, and go into reverse, and bring him back
everything he knew. And I flung my arms around him, and we wept, together, we
wept for all that we had lost; and it seemed to us that the world itself was
gone, and nothing was left now to give us hope or comfort.

We stayed like that I think
most of the morning. And I suppose we might have remained so, and would have
died of neglect or starvation, were it not for the insistent urging in my head
that told me we had to move, now, before scavengers appeared, or the drakes
returned. I tried to ignore it for a while, but in the end I could no longer
see the wisdom in simply giving up. If we had been spared, perhaps it was for a
reason, though none of any consequence presented itself. Still, I felt my feet
pull me away, and, when I had made one last inspection to reassure myself there
really were no other survivors, I pulled my brother up off the ground, where he
sat, listless and dumb, and refused to heed his wailings and complaints as I gathered
what provisions I could find, and headed upstream, towards Hale.

I need not tell you that those
early hours were probably the worst of our journey. Though we experienced much
hardship and difficulty in the weeks to come, our first steps were marked by
the weight of our grief, and we walked reluctantly, like the damned.

It was especially hard for my
brother, who by nature had a glad heart, and a quick smile. He glanced back
often to the smoke rising from the village, and argued miserably with me that
we should stay and await our parents’ return.

But I told him that if they had
gone to fetch help, then they would not expect us to stay and die waiting for
them, and anyway I had left a message, under the stone outside our kitchen door,
and scrawled on paper I had found in the pocket of my coat, that told them we
were going to Hale, to seek help from Drew Peters.

This was true, and I liked to
think it gave my brother some hope, though it was chiefly for his sake that I
did it, for I knew in my heart that I would never see my parents again. I tried
not to think of them, for my brother was already sick with tears, and if I
succumbed to my loss as well we would both perish.

So we passed the first afternoon
playing “I Spy”, when we had the heart to speak, and holding each other’s
hands; and by five o’clock we had crossed the Stave, and were halfway to Hale.

I feared what we might find
there.

Half the trees, and many of the
fields, in Dulcet and
Catchmarsh
were gone, scorched
from the earth, whose wounds were black and still smouldering. As we rounded a
bend in the woods, the waters of the river murmuring softly to our right, we
saw something that made us stop, and pull back into the trees to hide. For
coming up the path towards us was a long line of people, dressed for the road,
many of them weeping, and laden with bags and young children.

We watched them for a while,
until I decided they were no threat, but merely refugees, like us; and, coming
out of our hiding place, and somewhat surprised at my boldness – though, in
truth, little surprised me anymore – I asked one woman what had happened; but
she tore her sleeve away, and only cried, and it was a younger man who told us
the truth.

“The drakes have laid waste to
all the land from the Anvil Valley to Cain, and the villages east of Hale. The
town itself is burning like a brazier – you see that orange glow there?” And he
pointed over to the east. “That is what remains of the Trading House. It is a
great funnel of flame. I saw it for myself.”

And he spoke no more, but
walked on with his family; and I was struck dumb for a moment, before gathering
enough wits to ask:

“Does anyone here know Drew
Peters? Our parents are Joseph and Elizabeth Lanark. We are from
Southtemper
, in the Anvil Valley. Does anyone here know
Drew Peters? Of Seven Hills?” I did not expect an answer. But a woman whose
hair was tucked up in a shawl, with soot-blackened creases threading her face,
and a small boy leaning exhausted against her legs, answered:

“Oh, child. Drew Peters’ farm
was one of the first to go. I heard he was outside, defiant to the end, staring
the drakes down. But they took him – their fire swallowed him – and his young
daughters were taken also. It is a terrible thing, a miserable thing…” And she
touched my head, as if in benediction, and smiled at Magnus, and then was gone.

“Where are you all going?” I
cried, and my brother also, who could not understand why no one would stop to
help us.

“South!” cried a man with a grey
thatch of beard, and a belly that spilled heavily over the tops of his
trousers. “Though many others are heading north. But they say the Great Road is
no longer safe, north of the Anvil: there are bandits, and worse things
besides; and the drakes are always watching. Best to head south. That’s where
I’d go, if I were you. There are hot meals, and jobs, in Trent, and Hammock
City. Go south. There is nothing for anyone here anymore…” And his words were
lost amongst the crowd, and I saw him no more, though I stood looking for a
good while, we both did, until the crowd of people had passed, Magnus begging
them to stop, and look after us; but none did.

The path was very quiet then,
in the evening light.

The glow from the east, as Hale
burned, was clear and bright as the darkness crept up the sky, and the birds
sung heedless in the trees. We walked on a little, down the path, Magnus
tugging at my hand, trying to pull me the other way. But I had a strange
compulsion to see for myself the devastation wrought by the fire-drakes, and I
needed time to think; and so we headed on, until we could feel the heat of the
burning town. I clambered up a bank, through shattered and scorched trees,
helping Magnus along as we clutched at roots and branches to pull ourselves up;
and when we reached the top, we both had to catch our breath.

Hale was alight, from one end
to the other, buildings ruined and crumbling, and many having already succumbed
to the flames. The Trading House was wreathed in smoke, pluming upward and
blackening the sky, and the roar rippled on our ears like death. The fire spat
fat sparks into the darkness, and now and again I could hear what sounded like
screams on the wind. We gazed on the scene for a while, dwarfed by its horror,
both of us too shocked to speak.

Then something stirred in the
ruins.

A vast shape, almost as high as
the Trading House, and nearly twice as long, uncoiled itself along the ground,
as if disturbed from sleep. In the twilight it was difficult to make it out at first,
but as I looked I saw what it was, and then there was no doubt – I did not even
try to run – just a terrible sense of cold fear, of the proximity of death. My
brother felt it too, and grasped my hand so tight his nails dug into my palm.

It was a fire-drake.

It seemed so large and ungainly
that I found I was surprised when first it unfolded its wings, forgetting for a
moment that dragons were swift and powerful fliers. The wings themselves seemed
delicate, almost translucent, though when it flapped them it did so with a real
grace, and I was almost moved by the beauty of it, for all my fear. It reared
up on its hind legs, its wings slicing through the air, and washing our faces
in hot blasts of soot and fume, so that we coughed and nearly choked. But the
dragon was not interested in us: all its focus was on the half-burnt house
beside which it had slept, and for a moment it hovered above it, its narrow-
pupil’d
eye, sharp-green and set deep into its long head,
examining it coolly, before finally it blinked, snorted once, and then let
forth a stream of flame that poured over the house and destroyed it utterly.

The sound was so great it
pummelled our ears, so that we had to try and block them; and I think we must
have screamed, though the noise was lost beneath the dragon’s roar. It climbed
higher into the sky, and I thought then that it would surely see us, and all
would be lost. But it only turned its back, and swooped away towards the north,
and was gone.

We were so weary we slept where
we were, sheltering beneath the roots of an old oak, my body protecting my
brother’s as I held him, the heat from the dying town below keeping us warm.

In the morning we were both
stiff and groggy, and Magnus’s nose was running; and at first he seemed disorientated,
and unsure of where he was; and as the truth came back to him he started to
wail, and I hugged him, and wiped and kissed his face.

The remains of the town were
still smouldering in the morning air, but a fresh wind seemed to have blown the
soot and ash away off to the east, and I was grateful, for otherwise I suppose
we may have suffocated in our sleep. I felt cold and lost, and too young to be
burdened with this grief, these adult choices I now had to make. But as the
morning haze cleared, and we breakfasted on stale bread, my heart hardened in
my breast, and my mind grew dark within me.

South, the man had said. That
was surely the sensible thing to do. Head south, or lie down here and die. But
the Witch lay north. And now there was nothing: nothing but her, and us, and
all that she had taken from us. To this day I do not know why, for it was an
act of pure madness, the kind of impulsive folly my parents had always warned
me against, and I was surely risking my own and my brother’s safety by doing
so. But after composing myself as much as I could, and checking the path was
clear, I took my brother’s hand - as he blinked at me, tired and broken - and
turned north.

We did not take the Great Road.

Most likely, if we had, we
would not have lasted a day, if what we had been told about its dangers was
true. Instead, we picked our way through the woods, following what paths we
could, towards the Bridge of
Abanon
. This was one of
the old crossings, built before even the Histories were first written, that
straddle the Anvil at diverse points along its course, and here provided a link
between our own lands and the shallow, wooded valleys of Nave and Calm, beyond
the river. North of them lay the Fearless Plateau, and further on still, the
rocky hills of
Moonland
, that meet the Low Country of
Stanton and West Cross at the Three Fords. And finally the Imperial Capital
itself, with its great towers, and the Bridge of
Socus
,
so high, it was said, that it grazed the feet of heaven. And beyond it, the Far
Northern lands of
Fernshire
and
Fairburn,
that
stretch for many leagues between
Ampar
and the Green Cities, with their forest-houses hidden amongst the trees. And
then, beyond even those, the dark valleys of the Lessening Lands, and the
Witch’s realm…
Glenaster
.

This was the route I had
decided upon, though I had never been more than three leagues from my home
before, and was familiar with these places only through tales in books. But I
knew that they were well away from the Great Road, which lay several miles to
the east, and were therefore likely to be a safer path for us to take.

Magnus complained bitterly, and
clearly thought I was deranged if not wicked to drag him this way: if south was
where the other people were headed, then surely that was where we should also
go. But I was driven on by something more than loyalty, or desire, or grief: my
mistress was revenge, and it was my first and last thought.

I tried to placate him with
soothing words, and promises of shelter; but he only eyed me suspiciously, and
put lead in his feet. And so I told him then that we were going north to seek
the help of our Cousin Beatrice, and that while we were there we could entreat
the emperor’s protection, and that he would help us find our parents, and who
was responsible for their disappearance. And I would leave a note, in every
place we stayed, I promised him, in case they came looking for us. But my
brother received these words coldly.

My mother’s father’s family had
come south from
Lampra
, east of the Capital, following
the Anvil until they had reached our village, where my great-grandmother had
given birth to my grandfather, and there they had decided to stay. My mother
had always said there was a cousin of ours living in
Ampar
– Cousin Beatrice - and sometimes she spoke wistfully of going north to visit
her, though she never did. I had no idea if Cousin Beatrice was alive or dead;
but I thought of her now, as we headed into the unknown lands.

The mountains reared up like
waves to our left, and after nearly a day’s walking we were upon the broad
Bridge of
Abanon
, crossing high over the Anvil. We
gazed downstream, back towards the village that was our home, and the
westering
valleys that lay beyond it, as the river churned
grimly beneath us, and the dark came on.

We spent the night in a barn
just north of the Bridge, in the quiet fields of Nave, untouched by the drakes,
and it was not comfortable but the night at least was warm. In the morning we
ate our fill of blackberries from the hedgerows, so that our fingers grew
purple from the juice, and for a while we were almost cheerful in the autumn
sunshine, in that way that one can forget for a moment even the most terrible
grief; until it returns, and you feel guilty at having allowed yourself a
respite from it. As the mountains of the Fallen Range fell away to the west,
the rougher ground became fresh and soft under our feet, and the birdsong
more bold
. This was Calm, and it was aptly named, for
nothing angry or
unstilled
seemed to rage here. The
tree-clustered
combes
sank into the wide floor of the
valley, and for the first time since leaving our own home we saw houses, and
people, and smoke from friendlier fires; lazing out of chimneys, or sweeping
from bonfires in well-leafed back gardens.

Folk at first waved cheerily,
and said hello; but soon we saw the worried looks on their faces, the sense
that something was not quite right: two children travelling alone, fear in
their eyes and no adult near; this could only mean trouble, and some closed
their doors on our approach. No doubt they had heard of the devastation further
south, and did not want to invite such destruction upon themselves. But when we
reached one of the larger hamlets, some few miles on, a large woman with a blue
headscarf and a silly, plump face came up to us, some fresh linen in her hand.

“You’ll be wanting to rest,
won’t you?” she asked.

We both nodded.

“Then come inside. Heavens,
look at you two! I don’t know how you came here, and so pale and dirty the pair
of you, but you can tell me about it over cake. Do you like cake?”

My brother nodded eagerly, and
then burst into tears.