Witchlanders (17 page)

It was definitely the wrong answer. The stranger's face flushed with anger, and the chain tightened against Falpian's neck.

“I'm very sorry,” Falpian croaked, “but I don't know what you're talking about.”

To his surprise, the Witchlander didn't kill him, but sat back on Falpian's waist, something that might have been grief contorting his features. Falpian brought his hands to his throat. For a brief moment it looked as if the stranger would start to sob, but it was only a moment, and Falpian could have been wrong.

“I know you don't,” the stranger said grimly. “I don't know how I know it, but I do.”

Abruptly the stranger stood up, and Falpian was left to stare at the snowflakes swirling down from a bruise-colored sky. He took a deep, racking breath. His feet were soaking wet, and there was snow all the way up the back of his shirt. When he sat up, he felt the pull of a strained muscle in his shoulder.

“You'd better have a key for this collar,” the stranger told him, heading for the door.

When they went inside, Bodread the Slayer was waiting for them. He sat rigid in the middle of the floor, growling,
black lips curled. The stranger gave a shout and backed up against the door frame.

“Bo,” Falpian cried. “What's wrong?”

The dog glared at him, saber teeth gleaming, and in that moment Falpian saw a real dreadhound in front of him: brutal and deadly. The saber teeth were impressive, but Falpian knew the other teeth could do as much damage: rows of sharp white incisors, big molars at the back for crushing bone.

Bo gave Falpian and the stranger two angry barks—one each—then turned and went to the fireplace, where he promptly flopped himself down and stretched out in front of the grate.

Falpian couldn't be sure, but it felt for all the world like he'd been scolded.

“Bodread really is quite harmless,” he said nervously, only half believing it himself. He couldn't help but notice the deep claw marks that raked the wood all around the door latch.

“Key!” the Witchlander demanded, holding out the chain that was still hanging from the collar at his neck.

Falpian didn't think he could refuse. He retrieved the key and, with shaking hands, fit it into the lock at the stranger's throat. When the collar was finally off, the Witchlander hurled the entire thing—chain, padlock, and all—out into the snow.

Falpian wasn't sure what to do next. Was he the prisoner now? he wondered. But the stranger made no move to restrain him, only stood awkwardly at one side of the room, rubbing his neck where the collar had been.

After a moment, he turned to Falpian. “Why are you here?” he asked sharply.

“Why are
you
?” Falpian countered. “You're the one on the wrong side of the border.”

He didn't expect an answer, but after a long silence the Witchlander shot him a stricken look. “There's a Baen in my head.” His voice shook, and his strange eyes were red rimmed. “It's you . . . isn't it?”

Oh,
Falpian thought.
Of course.
All that talk about trees coming up out of the ground. The stranger was a madman.

“Sit down,” he said gently. “You must be hungry.”

But the Witchlander had spied the barrel of snowmelt Falpian kept by the fire. He quickly crossed the room and sank down in front of it, drinking deeply. Falpian felt a twinge of guilt. All the things he'd done to this man—and he was just a poor lunatic.

“I'm sorry,” he murmured.

After a pause, the stranger turned and looked at him, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “For what?”

“For . . . tying you up, for not giving you any water.”

“Seems logical to me. I did come to kill you.”

Falpian's guts turned to ice. The Witchlander stood up,
but still he made no move against Falpian. Instead he went to one of the windows by the kitchen table and squinted out, as if the trees themselves might be watching.

“There are no other Baen in the area? Just you?” His voice grew suddenly harsh. “I'll know if you're lying.”

Falpian kept his voice light. “No Baen but me.”

The Witchlander frowned and sat down in front of the fire, taking care to leave plenty of room between himself and Bo. He seemed too big for the chair—all knees and hands and elbows. Falpian wondered again how old he was and decided that in spite of their difference in size, they were probably the same age. Poor fellow must have wandered away from his keepers. Or perhaps Witchlanders didn't care for their sick—just sent them out into the snow to die.

Falpian went to stir the cauldron on the hob and was surprised to see that the fish stew he'd set to warm before the interrogation was only a little burned. It seemed like an age ago. He ladled white glops of it into two wooden bowls and handed one to his guest.

“My name's Falpian.”

The stranger took the bowl eagerly with shaking hands. “Is it?”

Falpian sat down with his own portion. Bo turned onto his back and lazily pawed the air as if he had never been that other dog, that menacing dreadhound with the
flashing teeth. Falpian rubbed his belly with his foot. The stranger eyed them both warily, and Falpian could see he was trying to hide his fear, trying to act as if sitting by the fire with a dreadhound was nothing to him. Something about this bravado made Falpian almost like him.

“What is this?” the Witchlander asked, turning the stew over with his spoon.

“A Baen dish. Salted fish cooked in fish eggs.” The stranger grimaced, but he took a bite. “It's not usually so coagulated.”

The Witchlander seemed to shudder as he swallowed, but he managed to eat the whole bowl and even helped himself to more. After that, they sat in silence, taking turns feeding logs to the fire. Darkness fell, and the wind howled around the house.
What am I going to do with him?
Falpian wondered. Being mad didn't make the Witchlander less dangerous. In fact, it probably made him more so. Falpian was well aware that the stranger's mood could turn at any moment—and then Falpian would be at his mercy. What if he wanted to stay all winter?

“Are you sure you don't want to tell me your name?” he asked. “Or anything about yourself?”

The Witchlander turned those piercing eyes on him again. “There's an assassin in these mountains,” he said. “I have to stop him.”

Falpian nodded and looked to the floor. It seemed
prudent to agree with everything he said. “Did the Baen in your head tell you that?”

“I thought it was you. But then . . . I heard your thoughts when you were singing.”

“Heard my thoughts?” Falpian repeated. Maybe it was a mistake to ask the stranger so many questions. He stood up and started to collect the dirty bowls. “That's . . . interesting.” He was reaching for a spoon when the Witchlander grabbed him by the wrist.

“Don't believe me?” he hissed.

The pulled muscle in Falpian's shoulder twinged, and the grip on his wrist was painful, but he made himself look into the Witchlander's eyes. He'd been avoiding them, he realized, they were so bright and strange, but now he looked deep. He saw no madness there. Only sorrow and pain.

“I heard your thoughts,” the stranger said again. “And you don't have an assassin's heart.”

The truth of the statement hit Falpian like a slap. He could almost imagine his father nodding in agreement.

“Well.” He yanked his hand away. “How lucky for you.” The stranger stood up abruptly and Falpian flinched, almost dropping the bowls.

“I'll stay the night and leave at dawn,” the Witchlander said. He stepped over Bo to get to the bedroom door.

“All right,” Falpian answered. He was in no position to argue.

“And my name's Ryder.”

“Nice to—” The door slammed.

Falpian let out a hiss of annoyance. “By all means, take my bed,” he muttered.

CHAPTER 13
DREADHOUNDS

Outside Falpian's cottage, Ryder stood in the dawn light, his arms reaching up to the sky.
I greet the sun, I am the sun,
he thought—the first words of Aata's prayer, words that were never spoken aloud.

The last time Ryder had seen his mother, she was praying. She was standing in the clearing, her feet bare, her arms outstretched, when Ryder came out of the barn with his mended fishing nets. He couldn't get the picture out of his mind; she hadn't prayed since he was a little boy.

Ryder tried to set thoughts of his mother aside and concentrate. The chilling clouds were low and dark, threatening more snow, and the great white mountain seemed to hunch under their weight. It was the same mountain Ryder had known all his life, but it looked so foreign and strange now, with its crooked spire reversed.

He bent backward, holding the position for as long
as he could. He didn't know much about praying, but he knew you were supposed to be silent inside and out, empty of thought, a vessel for the Goddess. He came up slowly, put his palms up to the sky, and lifted one bent leg behind him, keeping his eyes fixed on the mountain for balance.
I greet the air, I am the air.

You should be resting.

On such a beautiful morning?
Mabis had said.
Aata performed her prayers until the last day of her life.
His mother's hair had been a tangled mass, her skin yellowish and pale, but she'd smiled, and her eyes seemed clear and bright again. She was happy.
Go get my fish, Ryder—a big one.

Ryder came out of the sun position and shook out his arms, then kneeled down with his hands in the snow, pressing his forehead to the ground.
I greet the earth, I am the earth.

He had stopped on the river path to watch his mother pray. She was still as flexible as she had always been, bending backward in the sun position until her golden hair nearly brushed the ground. He'd marveled at the joy prayer seemed to bring her, at how beautiful she still was.

An old legend from his childhood had come back to him at that moment—a legend about Aata. It was said that at the end of her life, the great witch had disappeared during her morning prayers. While greeting the sun, she had made the gestures so perfectly, so silently, that she became
sunlight itself and was never seen again. As a child, Ryder had been frightened of that story. Once, in the days before Pima, before Skyla, before he could reach the latch on the door to the cottage, he had believed in such things. He hated to watch his mother pray because of that legend, always afraid that she might vanish like that herself one day, always afraid that her edges would turn bright before his eyes and she would disappear in a flash of gold.

Ryder shivered on his hands and knees, tears melting pockmarks into the snow.
I should have stayed there watching her forever,
he thought.
I should have known somehow that I'd never see her again.
He wiped fiercely at his eyes. He had thought that praying might tell him what to do, but it only seemed to strip him bare, leave him shaking like a sapling in the winter wind.

A great, smelly wetness slimed across his face, and Ryder recoiled in disgust. The dog. The beast of a dog was licking him with that obscene tongue. Ryder backed away on his knees, rubbing his face with the sleeve of his coat. The creature sat in the snow in front of him, its head cocked to one side.

If Ryder had been asked to design the ugliest thing he could imagine, he could not have come up with anything better than the face of Bodread the Slayer. It was both terrifying and silly, like a child's picture of a monster—black lips, huge girlish eyes mostly covered by scraggly gray
hair, and those teeth, those enormous unlikely teeth that curved down from his upper jaw. If the Goddess did exist, what could she have been thinking when she created such a thing?

The dog came toward him again with its enormous tongue, a long strand of drool leaking from the corner of his mouth.

“Oh no, no, no. Thank you, I'm feeling much better.” Ryder laughed and quickly stood up. He reached out a hand to pat the dog's head, but then he drew it back, remembering the snarling creature he'd seen the day before. This was a dreadhound, after all. When the Baen magicians attacked Barbiza and Tandrass in their black ships, the dreadhounds were the first to come ashore, tearing out the throats of everyone in their path. For all Ryder knew, a dreadhound might have killed his own grandfather. He started to turn away, but then remembered Dassen's advice—never turn your back on a dreadhound—and walked backward toward the Baen's cottage.

The Witchlander slammed the door and glared at Falpian. “I want some answers.”

Those eyes again. Ryder's gaze made Falpian want to shield his face; it was too early to be stared at by eyes so bright. “Answers to what?”

“You had a dream last night. Don't try to deny it.”
Ryder sat down across from Falpian at the table.

Was this more madness? Why would Falpian deny his dreams? He hadn't slept well on the study couch, but he had slept. And there
had
been dreams: confused, meaningless dreams. “How did you know? Did I call out in my sleep?”