Willow (2 page)

No one reached the gate.

Bavmorda smiled. When the spectacle was over she swept away, striding around the balcony on the morning inspection of her domain. All the mountains to the west were hers, far beyond the valley of Tir Asleen. To the north, the billowing volcano of Nockmaar lay under her command. To the east, she controlled even the sun itself, for had she not moments ago uttered an invocation in the conjuring room, and was not the sun rising obediently? Only the south lay beyond her control.

Only the south.

Bavmorda scowled, thrusting her arms into her sleeves. There it lay, that soft land, stretching a hundred leagues under its mocking coverlet of mist. And there at that moment came a bitter reminder of what Bavmorda feared most. A score of carts, guarded by Death Dogs and mounted troops, wound out of the southern hills and approached the walls of Nockmaar. The monthly Gathering was coming in.

Bavmorda nodded in sour satisfaction. Kael was punctual, as always. On the first night of the waning moon the Gathering began. Kael’s troops and Kael’s Death Dogs fanned out from Nockmaar Castle to seize all women pregnant beyond the sixth month. From all the southern fiefdoms they brought them—from the seafolk to the east; from the fen people where the vast marshes drained through labyrinthine creeks into the tributaries of the River Troon. From the mountains south of Tir Asleen they brought them, and from the farmlands of Galladoorn, and sometimes even from the wild reaches across the River Freen. Occasionally Kael’s troops brought even little Nelwyn women to the birthing rooms to vent their small groans and bear their small offspring. Not often, however; Nelwyn women usually perished on the journey.

“Baugh!” Bavmorda flung her arm in sudden disgust at the little column. Five bolts of lightning stabbed low above the wagons, leaving five smoking craters in the slate hills. Terrified horses bolted, spilling the pathetic human contents of the carts. Death Dogs snarled and circled. Women screamed. Troopers cursed and lashed out to cover their sudden fear.

Bavmorda whirled away, pulling her gown close around her. How sick and tired she was of birth, birth, birth! Death was so much cleaner, so much more predictable,
controllable
! How she hated these heavy women with their dumb animal
love
—love of husbands, of infants, of life itself! They were like a sea, an endless breathing body rising from the south and threatening to engulf her. And somewhere, somewhere in that body was the seed of the child whose birth caused a needle of dread to pierce Bavmorda’s heart.

How she hated that child!

Gown sweeping, she stalked back into her conjuring chamber. She glanced at the night herons, hunched ready to do her bidding. She glowered at the trolls and serving minions, who bowed away and busied themselves with pointless tasks. She scowled at the three druid priests, who tugged their gray beards, and bobbed their gray heads, and rubbed their gnarled hands, murmuring placations. She stared in all directions through the slits of the tower, out over the bleak crags of Nockmaar.

“Why?”
she demanded, flinging out her hands. Ten fireballs slammed against the walls. The druids ducked. One bolt streaked through a window slit straight at the full moon in the west, as if to strike it from the sky. One grazed the leg of a cowering server, and the others hastily dragged him down the stairs, so the queen would not be troubled by his shrieks. Cleaner-trolls scrubbed up behind them, grunting. Two other bolts spawned mutant horrors—an albino toad, eyeless and legless, wriggling through shredding skin; a sac of eyes rolling in milky fluid.

“Why?”
Bavmorda turned on the three pale druids in their priestly robes.

They knew well what she was asking. She was asking why she, Bavmorda, Sovereign of Nockmaar, Sorceress Magnific, Primal Priestess of Cults and Covens, should be subject to such a niggling, uncertain, human thing as fear. In particular, why should she be humiliated by the
fear of a child
?

The priests knew many answers. They could have reminded the queen that she was mortal and therefore the victim of uncertainties. They could have said that not even Bavmorda’s sorcery was more powerful than the laughter of a child. Or they could have observed that her will had long ago been bent by cruelty and greed into an evil thing.

All of these were true.

But they could not speak the truth or any part of it. To have done so when Bavmorda was bristling with rage would have condemned them as they had seen other truth-tellers condemned. Truth-tellers got torn apart on the spot, even while they were speaking. Death Dogs ate their livers. Muttering trolls mopped up their remains.

These priests were not truth-tellers; they were survivors. The first spread soothing arms and smiled. “Your Majesty, it is only because the world is jealous of your power. Soon our rites will wipe away that jealousy, and Your Majesty shall have peace thereafter.”

The second nodded agreement. “With respect, Your Majesty, no great work was ever quickly accomplished.”

“Quite so, Your Majesty.” The third bowed deeply. “Also, so long as some wildness remains, there,” he gestured to the south, “beyond Your Majesty’s enlightened reign, some minor, temporary irregularities are inevitable. Soon, General Kael will certainly give you control of Galladoorn and all that land.” He straightened up, radiating confidence from his outstretched arms.

Bavmorda gazed balefully at the three of them. The moment of greatest danger had passed. They would not be ripped apart by fireballs. They would not be shredded by bodiless teeth. Their bones would not be mashed by invisible jaws. They had survived again. For now.

“Also,” the third priest said unctuously, “we share the certainty that Your Majesty has the mother even now within her power, and that her labor will deliver this child into Your Majesty’s hands.”

Bavmorda laughed. “Yes! I feel it
here
!” She clutched her belly. Her laughter was a terrible thing, like a frenzied bird. Loosed, it filled the chamber, shrieking and tearing at the walls. The night herons hunkered on their perches and gazed at the flagstones, longing to be far away, where ghostly fishes moved through the cool fens of the Troon.

Pale as ash, the three druids showed their teeth. “We are certain, Your Majesty. Our tests confirm that the woman in the birthing room . . .”

“Again the vision! Conjure it!”

They bobbed obediently. Counterclockwise around a great stone crucible in the room’s center they began a shuffling dance, kicking aside bones and fleshy refuse. Bavmorda watched with her cloak folded tightly about her, like a cocoon. In unison they uttered their Chant for the Unfolding, adding those codicils for the vision the queen required. Their voices quavered. All other conjurings predicted Bavmorda triumphant, omnipotent, immortal. Only this, which they had chanced upon by accident, through a flawed chant, foresaw her doom. In it Fin Raziel appeared—Fin Raziel, Bavmorda’s old enemy, who had thwarted so many of the queen’s early schemes. She appeared as if alive in this vision, as if Bavmorda had not long since vanquished her.

The vision formed. The druids fell back. Bavmorda approached the crucible. It had filled with milky fluid, and in it shone the face of Fin Raziel as she had been those many years ago, still beautiful, still radiant. Out of the bowl came the ghostly echo of Fin Raziel’s voice: “You may defeat me but you will not defeat the child, Bavmorda. The mystery of the child is larger than you, and in that mystery your reign will end. Here is the sign, Bavmorda . . .”

Fin Raziel’s face faded, and the milky fluid formed into a shimmering circle that Bavmorda knew too well.

Eyes blazing, the queen leaned close to that hateful mark. Her cloak parted. Her bony arms emerged.

Priests, night herons, and trolls all scrambled for cover. They fled onto the balcony, down the spiral stairs, behind the pillars of the chamber. Lightning and fireballs crackled off Bavmorda’s fingers and slammed into the bowl, ricocheting in all directions. The opaque fluid swirled into foul steam. When the bowl had been seared clean, the mistress of Nockmaar raised her arms and uttered a sound even more terrible than her laughter—a long wail of hollow triumph. She knew, and all who heard her knew, that no matter how often she might blast that vision it could always be conjured again, for its essence lay beyond her power.

A wet snuffling came from the top of the stairs. “Your Majesty . . .”

Bavmorda whirled, pointing long nails. “You dare intrude!”

“Mercy, Your Majesty! Don’t burn! Don’t kill! The Princess Sorsha commands me!” A dungeon-troll groveled there, half on the floor, half on the top steps. Rank hair covered his scalp to the eyebrows. He was noseless. He slobbered through swollen orange lips. Long toes and fingers slapped wetly on the flagstones. His eyes flickered, shifted malignantly. He bore with him the stench of the dungeons and of death.

“Speak!”

“Sorsha, Your Majesty.” He pointed down the steps. “She bids you come.”

“Out of the way!” Her lips curled in disgust, the hem of her gown raised high, Bavmorda swept past him and descended.

Behind her, two tower-trolls seized the interloper by the ankles and dragged him downstairs. Two others wiped up the puddle of slime he had deposited.

The priests held a whispered conference.

“If it
is
the child,” the first said, his eyes sharp with fear, “you know what powers protect it!”

“We should flee,” the second hissed. “We should escape!”

“Fools!” the third said. “Where will you hide? Do as you’ve been told! Begin the Ritual!”

Moments earlier, a child had been born in one of Nockmaar’s birthing rooms. These were grim dungeons—dark, cold, and wet. Dim light filtered through shafts from the courtyard far above, and with it the sounds of raucous soldiery and Death Dogs at their work. A few small candles guttered in wall sconces. Two trolls squatted in a corner, pulling at shredding skin.

Nothing announced the birth of this child. She had no time to be named, no time to be properly bathed and swaddled. No physicians attended the mother, only an exhausted midwife.

“Ethna!” the mother whispered, gripping the midwife’s wrist. “You mustn’t let her die.”

The woman smiled wanly, fearfully. She glanced at the trolls. “Go,” she said, and one of them scampered out.

The mother’s grip tightened. “You know, don’t you, Ethna?
You know!”

Ethna looked away from that desperate gaze, clouded with the pain of giving birth. She attended to her work. She nodded.

The troll she had dispatched hurried on his errand down a corridor, past cages filled with pregnant women. He climbed a spiraling flight of stairs, scampered down another drier corridor, and then up a second staircase to the western tower, and the door of the princess’s chamber. He slapped with slack fingers. “Sorsha, Your Highness, pardon. A birth . . .”

Inside the room, a young woman awoke and was on her feet in an instant, her dagger in her hand. She shook her head when she saw where she was, and drew a deep breath. “Very well,” she called through the door. “Go back. I’ll be down at once.” She pulled on a woolen tunic and trousers, found her boots, and belted her dagger around her waist. A moment later she was following the troll downstairs, wishing she were elsewhere.

Sorsha had been dreaming of a boar hunt.

It was a happy dream. In it she rode Rak, a stallion so black he glistened. They skirted the edge of a woods along the bank of a broad river. The boar charged from a thicket without warning, giving Sorsha no time to draw an arrow. Dust spurted from his hooves. Red eyes fixed her. Gleaming tusks hurtled at Rak’s belly. They had no room to maneuver. Rak leaped clean over the beast, galloped a few lengths down the riverbank, then wheeled and charged, ears flat and teeth bared in fury. The boar was slower in turning, and they were on him while his shoulder was still exposed. Sorsha’s lance went clean through him, pinning him to the ground. He squealed, thrashing helplessly while his life gushed away. His stout legs pumped to the last. His eyes blazed hatred until their light went out.

That was the kind of hunt Sorsha loved, the kind of dream she loved . . .

And then something struck her door, and the death shrieks of the boar became the craven whining of the troll: “Your Highness, a birth . . .”

Sorsha loathed this duty to which her mother had assigned her, this routine watching of hapless women giving birth. She hated the inspection of the newborn, searching for the Sign. She had grown numb to birth, silently vowing never to become a mother.

She preferred the hunt and the battle. She preferred storming some far-off stronghold with a band of Kael’s raiders. She preferred the windswept company of soldiers to these lurking trolls, these harassed midwives, these imprisoned mothers who sullenly turned their faces from the sight of her. She longed to be in the field, away from Nockmaar. Out there, under the tutelage of guardians handpicked by Bavmorda and General Kael, she had spent the last five years, flourishing happily, challanging all, learning well the arts of defense, the tactics of assault. She had grown strong, and quick, and wily.

She was eighteen now, handsome with the aloof and watchful confidence of women who live out-of-doors. Her arms and face, and the V at her throat where the tunic opened, were slightly tanned. She did not freckle in the sun, despite her pale skin and her inheritance of her father’s red hair.

That hair had been the curse of her childhood. For as long as she could remember her mother had cast spells to turn it black, blonde, brown, anything but red. Bavmorda hated it. She hated all memories of her husband. Sorsha’s hair maddened her, especially since none of her spells to change its shade worked permanently. Always it had grown back—red.

When Sorsha had returned from the field three months before, and Bavmorda had seen her abundant red tresses, the queen’s fingers twitched toward it. A spell began to form on her lips. But Sorsha was no longer a child. “No!” she had said simply. “It is not my father’s hair. It is mine. Please leave it alone.”

Sorsha supposed she hated her father, but she wasn’t sure. When she thought of him he was just . . . distant. He was just another man, no better and no worse than the rest.