Dragonwitch (32 page)

The Speaker placed a hand upon her head. “We will clean you and make you presentable,” she said. “Then you will have what many long for and never achieve. You will look upon the face of your goddess.”

I will look upon the face of holiness,
Mouse thought.
And then I will be cleansed of my sin.

Down the long stair, and the descent did not stop. Another long stair opened itself like a mouth below the Chronicler, and he was dragged down farther still, out of the light, out of the heat, into the close, stifling dark of the Citadel's dungeons. They flung him unchained into a cell, and he heard the slam of iron on stone. Footsteps retreated. He was alone in the dark.

He lay for he couldn't guess how long, unable to move, uncertain of his own limbs. Above him was a stone grate. He reached up, just able to grasp it and, with a grunt, hauled himself up. He could see nothing. All was pitch-black. So he let go and stood in silence, unable to think. It was too dark to think. It was too dark to feel.

And then there was light.

It was faint, reflecting on the ceiling above. The Chronicler looked up at it like a lost sailor looking to the pole star. A gentle voice spoke in a language he understood, though it was not his.

“Who are you?”

He ground his teeth, then shrugged. “I am the castle chronicler of Gaheris.”

A quiet moment, not quite silent. Then: “I am Dame Imraldera, Knight of the Farthest Shore. Are you Etanun's heir?”

“Supposedly,” he replied. “According to some.”

“You don't believe you are?”

“It's hard to believe much of anything in this place, isn't it?”

The light—perhaps from the starflower Mouse had mentioned in her tale—faded a little. Then Imraldera said, “It's as well that what you believe cannot affect the truth.”

The Chronicler cursed and closed his eyes to avoid seeing that light. “If I survive this,” he said, more to himself than to the prisoner, “I swear I will find Leta and retract everything I ever said about truth and belief!”

“Who is Leta?” asked Dame Imraldera.

He could not answer. He told himself that he was not weeping, for no one could weep in this place. It was far too dreadful an end to merit tears.

After a silence that lasted forever, the prisoner across the way whispered, “Perhaps I should not have trusted Etanun after all.”

I
SET
UPON
THE
H
OUSES
OF
L
IGHTS
AGAIN
, picking them out as they shone at night and pouring flame down on them from above. So the gleam of Asha was extinguished across that world, and the voices of Lumé and Hymlumé were stilled.

Once more Etanun found me. Upon the Green of Corrilond we fought, and our battle extended for miles, decimating the land. I tore him with my claws, burned him with my fire, but Halisa protected him from death, and he dealt me many blows.

At last the sword found its way home and once more plunged into my breast. “Die, cursed devil!” Etanun cried. “And this time, stay dead!”

“But don't you know?” I replied with my last breaths. “I am a queen. I will return.”

And with that, I took my original form. I was once more the woman he had known, suspended on the end of his weapon. I saw his eyes widen, his mouth open. I thought his lips formed the words, “Dear queen!”

But I was probably mistaken in that.

Darkness clouded out my fire. Once more I died.

“Lights Above us!” Alistair stared at the old man. “Aren't you the kitchen man? The pot scourer?”

The scrubber touched his thin forelock respectfully. “My lord,” he said.

A snarl sliced the air. “You're behind this, aren't you? Traitor!
Murderer!
”

Alistair ducked his head as, much to his surprise, Eanrin flew over him, leaping like a cat, though still wearing his man's form, at the scrubber's throat. For an instant, Alistair believed Eanrin would break the old man in two.

But the scrubber, his scrawny limbs moving so quickly that Alistair almost missed the action, turned, caught Eanrin by the arm and the back of the neck, and twisted him so that he was down on his knees and unable to move, though he spat and snarled and kicked. He even tried to take cat form, but the old man kept his grip on his scruff and pressed all his weight into Eanrin's body.

“Steady now, kitty cat,” said the scrubber. “No use hissing at me like that.”

Eanrin, a man once more, knelt panting in the dirt, his red clothes dusted over and his immortal face smeared and dirty. But he calmed his struggles and only spat again, “Murderer!”

“Call me more names, why don't you?” the scrubber said mildly. “Call me all the names you like. But shall we have done with the physical violence, at least for the moment? It unbalances the humors.”

Eanrin's voice dropped into indecipherable mutters, and Alistair took the opportunity to scramble to his feet. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Did you follow us? How did you escape Gaheris? Have you word from the castle?”

The scrubber looked up at Alistair, his face so wrinkled that its expression was impossible to determine. “Stop asking questions for the moment, my boy,” he said. “Wait. Wait a little.”

He loosened his hold on Eanrin, and the cat-man was up in a trice, backed away and braced for battle. Though he was taller by far than the ancient scrubber, and his limbs were well-formed and strong compared to the other's aged frailty, there was fear in his eyes. “What did you do to Imraldera?” he growled. “How did you force her to obey you?”

The old man chuckled. “When have you ever known Dame Imraldera to be compelled beyond her will? Remember, we speak of the same maid who fought Amarok and won.”

“The Wolf Lord possessed nowhere near your cunning, Etanun Ashiun,” Eanrin said. “Your manipulations are shrewd indeed, but do you really think you can convince the worlds to believe you anymore? Imraldera doesn't know. She wasn't there when you killed your brother and broke faith with the Lumil Eliasul.”

“Neither,” said the old man, “were you.”

“I saw what happened! I saw the Near World tumble back into darkness, cut off from the Sphere Songs. I saw the Flame at Night ravage nations unchecked; I saw Etalpalli burned to ruins. I saw the results of your evil.”

“So did our Lord,” Etanun replied.

He said no more, made no defense or argument. And yet, to Alistair's surprise, Eanrin opened his mouth to speak, then swallowed back his words and turned away with a bitter curse. He refused to look at the old man again.

So it was to Alistair that the scrubber addressed himself next. “Mouse will be along shortly,” he said. “When she arrives, you must do as she says. She knows more than she thinks she knows, and she will help you. All is coming together as it must, so try to be forgiving”—he glanced at Eanrin—“if you can.”

With those words he began walking, bowed over and tottering, his face set toward the distant tower and the red light. “Wait!” Alistair cried, taking a step after him.

“That's right,” the old man said over his shoulder. “Wait. Wait a little. You will see in time.”

“But where are you going?” Alistair glanced at Eanrin, but the cat-man's head was bowed, his eyes closed, his face grimacing as though with pain. There would be no help from that quarter. “What do you intend to do?”

But the old man gave no answer. He continued on his slow, painful way, as though every step sent searing pain through his joints, along his veins. Then, as suddenly as the blink of an eye, he vanished. There was nowhere for him to hide, not on this wide, blank desolation. He was simply and utterly gone, like an interrupted dream, leaving only the faintest and most confused memories in his wake.

Alistair stared at the empty space. “Where did he go?” he cried, whirling upon Eanrin.

The poet straightened slowly, adjusting his clothes and wiping his face. He looked at the dirt that came off on his fingers and shuddered. Then he fixed Alistair with the intensity of his golden-eyed glare. “This land is crossed over with Faerie Paths,” he said. “Secret ways, most of them unsafe, by which immortal kind may travel. He has taken one of those.” Again he shuddered, and his throat constricted as though he was trying to keep from being sick. “Not one I would take.”

“And what are we to do?” Alistair cried. “He said Mouse would return, but you told me the Black Dogs took her!”

Eanrin bit out his words as though they tasted foul. “I have no answers for you, mortal. For once, I find myself as ignorant as you.” He drew a long breath and spoke with reluctance. “We will have to . . . wait.”

Alistair stared across the wide and lonely plain to where the tower slashed at the horizon. A red light flickered faintly.

Nothing could be done about her shaggy, cropped hair. After multiple washings and peelings away of the grime and dirt in which Mouse had lived for the last many weeks, the Speaker finally declared that it was the best that could be expected. She ordered the other acolytes to dress Mouse in a red robe like those of a priestess, but they covered her head with the black hood of an acolyte to disguise the damage the shears had done.

“Are you ready?” the Speaker asked when Mouse, shivering and clean, was presented before her. “To look upon the face of the goddess is an honor even priestesses are rarely given. You have served the Flame with a willing heart, proving your devotion even to the point of risking your own life. The Flame is pleased.”

The Flame should be pleased, Mouse thought with little reverence. After all, she had done as she was told.

“Follow the blue star, child,”
the Silent Lady had said.
“Do what you must.”

All those months ago, Mouse had withdrawn from the dungeons and
made her way back up the long stairs to the temple above. Waiting at the top of that stair had been the high priestess.

“Well done, little Mouse,” the Speaker had said. “Tell me, what did you learn from our prisoner?”

Mouse had told her. What else could she have done? She'd told her everything, including her promise to find Etanun and his heir.

“The Flame is pleased,” the high priestess had said even then. “You will go. You will do as you have promised. And when you have discovered Etanun's heir, you will bring him back to us. Do you understand?”

“If I do,” Mouse had whispered, surprised at her own daring, “will the Silent Lady be spared?”

The Speaker had smiled in reply a smile that did not reach her eyes. “If you succeed, small one, you will look upon the face of the goddess and plead for her life yourself.”

So Mouse had gone. She had followed the blue star. She had risked her life in a cold nation where she did not understand the language. She had been nearly gutted by goblins.

And she had betrayed those who were her friends.

The Speaker's eyes now bored into the shadows beneath Mouse's hood. Mouse wondered, could she read her mind? She ducked her head, ashamed of her own thoughts. She hoped her attitude appeared merely humble.

The Speaker stepped back and made a final sign of blessing over the girl. Then she said, “Take care you do not undo all your good work. Take care you do not displease your goddess.”

Mouse trembled so much that she feared at every step she might fall as, led by the Speaker and flanked by other priestesses of high rank, she climbed the long stair of the Spire. She had never before stepped beyond the door at the top of the stair. She knew only that the altar burned above and that the goddess lived behind the altar.

The goddess whose face she was about to see. The dreadful holiness so near.

“Fire burn,” she whispered as she climbed. “Fire purify.”

At last they reached the end of their climb, and the Speaker opened the final doorway. A blast of wind, full of heat even at this height, struck Mouse in the face as she hastened after her mistress out upon a flat rooftop, the
tower's crest. No balustrade or barrier guarded against a fall to the dry plain below. The rooftop was bare except for the altar, which was red stone like the rest of the temple. On it burned the everlasting flame that must never die. And beyond the heat and smoke of that fire, the thin Spire itself, like a knife, pierced the sky.

In it was a curtained doorway.

The Speaker stepped forward and tossed a handful of black leaves into the fire. A billow of smoke rose up, and with it a strange smell. Mouse wanted to recoil but felt the presence of the priestesses behind her and did not dare.

“Come,” said the Speaker, beckoning, and Mouse had no choice but to approach. The high priestess put a hand on her shoulder and directed her toward the doorway. “Beyond lies the near abode of the goddess. Enter on your knees, and may your righteous heart guard you.”

As instructed, Mouse went down on her hands and knees, her eyes fixed upon the flat stone rooftop. She crawled, pushing through the heavy curtain, and her heart hammered like death tolls in her throat.

She entered a dark, small chamber that smelled heavily of incense, an incense that failed to disguise another scent Mouse could not at first recognize. Scattered about with no apparent order, little braziers gave off the dull red glow of dying embers. Otherwise, the room was empty, save for another red curtain, partially blackened by smoke and burned along the edges, which hung at its far end.

Beyond it, Mouse sensed a presence. A powerful, burning presence. The presence of Fire deified.

Sweat poured down her face, dampening her robes, dripping through the ratty ends of her hair. “Fire burn,” she whispered, then realized she had not spoken loud enough. Still on her hands and knees, knocking her forehead to the stone, she said in a loud, trembling voice, “Fire burn! Fire purify! Make us worthy in your eyes and let us see your face!”

She wasn't certain if it was the right prayer for this occasion. No one had prepared her for what to say when she approached the goddess.

A voice emerged from the darkness beyond the braziers.

“Who is there? What do you want?”

It was like the hiss and spit of dying flame. It sounded as though it
pained the throat and mouth of the one who spoke. Agony dripped from the words.