Willow (18 page)

“I
am
Raziel, you idiot! Willow, tell him! And stop this lout from poking at me!” She swatted away Rool’s hand with a tiny paw.

“Talking possum,” Franjean grunted. “All we need.”

Willow choked and coughed. He struggled to sit up. “It’s true,” he said. “She is Raziel.”

“What! Why is she so fuzzy?”

“Why so small?” Rool asked.

“Bewitched, that’s why,” Willow said. “By Queen Bavmorda.”

“Satisfied, you two? Now then, Willow, you must undo the spell. You must transform me back again. Thank goodness you’ve come! Go ahead, speak the charm.”

“What?”

“Use the wand. Speak the charm.”

“What charm?”

“What charm!
You mean you don’t
know
? You’re not a sorcerer?”

“Well, not really. Not yet. I’m a farmer. I know a few tricks. If you tell me what to do . . .”

“Farmer! Tricks!” Squealing, the small animal scampered in tight circles.

“Hysterical possum,” Franjean said. “Ouch!”

Raziel nipped his ankle. “Idiot! Cherlindrea sent you, Ufgood, and you’re not even a sorcerer! What was she thinking of? What madness . . .”

“Just tell me what to do,” Willow said. “I’m willing to learn. Honest. It can’t be
that
hard.”

“Of course it’s hard! Why, if you misspoke a charm . . .” Raziel shuddered. Her tail twitched.

“Well then,” Willow said,
“teach me properly
!” He punched the dirt floor of the hut and rose shakily to his feet. “Abuse! That’s all I’ve had since I started this trip! I’ve been laughed at by fairies, mocked by brownies, persecuted by Daikini louts, and half killed in seven different ways. Now I get a scolding from an irrational squirrel!”

“I’m
not
a squirrel!”

“I don’t care! If what you say is true, Raziel, and if you want to be human again, settle down and teach me to be a sorcerer!”

The brownies sat abruptly, blinking.

Fin Raziel stopped running in circles and stared. Again the only sound in the hut was the soft laughter and light applause of Elora Danan.

“All right,” Fin Raziel said. “I’ll teach you.”

“You will?”

“Of course. You’re right. It’s our only hope. Come outside and bring the wand.”

Willow staggered after her out of the hut, groping for the wand in the long pocket of his cloak. Fortunately for all of them, he had not drawn it out before he emerged.

Sorsha was waiting on the beach. Behind her stood three Nockmaar troopers, arms at the ready. A dozen more held their horses at the edge of the village.

On his knees in front of them, his face bloody and his arms bound tight at his back, was Madmartigan.

I X
SORSHA

“H
ullo, Peck. Would you please cut these ropes? I’d like to strangle this hag, this . . .”

“Quiet!” Spurring up, a Nockmaar sergeant thumped the heel of his boot between Madmartigan’s shoulderblades and sent him sprawling into the wet sand.

“Don’t kill him yet,” Sorsha said.

Raziel shrieked and scurried along the beach, but a trooper easily overtook her and snatched her up by the tail. At arm’s length he carried her back, dangling and struggling. “A little rat for the dogs.” He laughed.

Willow ran into the hut and snatched Elora out of her basket. But there was no escape. Sorsha strode in behind him, drawn by the child’s screams. “I’ll take her.”

“No! You won’t! Help, Franjean!” But the two brownies were nowhere to be seen. Sorsha easily overpowered Willow, holding him with one hand while she yanked the papoose-basket away from him with the other. Dispassionately, she opened Elora’s clothing and exposed her left arm. She smiled when she saw the Sign. It was an expression of relief and of triumph. But it was a sad smile too, the kind of haunted smile that sometimes came to Sorsha’s face at the end of a long, hard hunt, when it was time for the kill. “Get out, Peck!” She booted Willow off his feet and sent him sprawling through the door. “Tie him up,” she said to her sergeant. “Put him on a pack mule.”

“Your Highness,” the man asked, “is that the child?”

“It is.”

“Then why should we be bothered with this Peck and this Daikini scum? Why not slay them now?”

Sorsha considered. She stared at Willow. She looked at Madmartigan and her chin lifted slightly. “No. My mother may want them for the Ritual. Who knows what powers the child may have given them.”

“More than Bavmorda has, Sorsha!” Fin Raziel shrieked, still dangling from the trooper’s fist. “You’ll see! More powers than exist in all of evil Nockmaar!”

Sorsha drew her sword and tipped up Fin Raziel’s head with the point of it, gazing into her small, smoldering eyes. “Look at you. Fin Raziel. What a pathetic creature! How can you talk of power? You will have a special place in Bavmorda’s Ritual, I think.”

Around her, the Nockmaar troopers chuckled. Sorsha thrust a foot into her stirrup and swung up onto Rak. “Throw her into a cage. Put her on the mule with the Nelwyn. As for him,” she nodded to Madmartigan. who had struggled to his feet, “let him walk.”

Madmartigan grinned up at her. squinting into the sun and spitting sand. “Good idea! Why don’t you come down and walk with me, Princess? You and I, we’ll take a little walk back into those woods . . .”

Sorsha spurred Rak and the great horse lunged forward, smashing Madmartigan back onto the beach. “Come!” she said, beckoning to the troopers. “We have a long journey.” Rak trotted along the water’s edge, hooves splashing, and Sorsha gazed on the dilapidated huts and sheds as she passed them. At the far end she wheeled and casually flung her arm in the same gesture of destruction that she had seen Bavmorda make many times. “Burn this place!”

When the last troopers had flung their torches into the village and galloped northward. Franjean and Rool emerged from their hiding place in the woods. Pyres blazed and ashes smoldered where the fishing village had been, and smoke hung in a heavy pall over the windless lake and the island of Fin Raziel.

“We ran,” Rool said.

“Certainly we ran. We’re not idiots, Rool! Do you know what sport those Nockmaar thugs would have had with two brownies?”

“But we promised.”

“To protect the child. You’re right.”

“And they’ve got her.”

“And the Daikini. And the Peck.”

“And Fin Raziel. Franjean, we should help.”

“Don’t be honorable, Rool! It’s not what brownies
do.
Say rather, ‘We should continue this adventure, Franjean!’ ”

“We should continue this adventure, Franjean.”

“You’re right, Rool. Let’s get started. You heard what the princess said: it’s a long walk.”

“Maybe we could find an eagle.”

“Maybe a hawk.”

“Maybe a seagull?”

They looked hopefully up and down the beach, out across the lake through the drifting smoke. But as far as they could see, there was no life at all.

“Again!” Fin Raziel hissed. “Try the chant again!” She pressed her face against the bars of a crude cage, gaze fixed desperately on Willow.

“Hear her?” he asked. “It’s Elora. She’s crying. She’s cold and hungry.” He struggled against his bonds to see over the head of the plodding mule, past the thick bodies of Nockmaar troopers. “Sorsha’s not looking after her up there. She doesn’t
know
about babies.”

Raziel bounced and quivered. “Don’t worry about her
now.
The
charm,
Willow! It’s the only hope for the child or for any of us! Get it right!”

“Cut these ropes and give me a good sword and I’ll show you another hope,” Madmartigan muttered. He was plodding beside the mule, a rope around his neck tied to the pommel of the Nockmaar sergeant. The sergeant was occupied, busy sharing some joke with two of his men.

“She’s cold. She’s . . .”

“The charm!”

“Oh, all right. Let’s see.
Tanna . . . looth
. . . I can’t remember the middle part.”

“Locktwarr!”
Fin Raziel hissed. “That’s the word that pleads for change.”

“Locktwarr, locktwarr . . .”
Willow murmured, eyes shut tight.

“Look out! Quiet!”

Willow opened his eyes to see Sorsha approaching, riding beside the file of soldiers. Beyond her, only a few miles ahead, rose the snow-capped peaks of the mountains. She rode calmly, confidently, her red hair free, surrounded by her own frozen breath and the horse’s.

“Witch!” Madmartigan said.

“Quiet!” The sergeant jerked the rope, suddenly efficient in Sorsha’s presence.

“Young woman,” Fin Raziel squeaked as Rak came alongside the mule, “you reminded me of your father just then. He, too, was a . . .”

“Silence!” Sorsha’s riding crop cracked across the bars of the cage. “You insult me! My father was a weakling! A fool! An enemy of Nockmaar!”

Raziel cringed but continued. “So your mother says, but it was not true, Sorsha. Enemy of Nockmaar perhaps, but fool and weakling? Never!”

“Princess Sorsha,” Willow pleaded, “please, let me help you with Elora. She needs food. She needs warmer clothes in this cold.”

Sorsha hesitated. She glanced at the head of the column, where the child was wailing pitifully in the embrace of the lieutenant. For a moment she seemed about to relent, but instead she shook her head. “We’ll feed her soon enough, when we bivouac. As for warmth, she’ll have all she needs in my mother’s Ritual.”

Gritting his teeth, Madmartigan twisted around against the pressure of the rope. “Do you know what you are, Princess? You’re a nasty, mean-spirited little . . .”

The sergeant cursed and yanked the rope, and Madmartigan staggered, strangling. “And if you’re not careful,” he croaked, “you’ll grow up just like your damned mother!”

Sorsha flushed scarlet. She spurred Rak around the plodding mule and raised her riding crop.

“Go ahead!” Madmartigan wheezed. “You and your boys do your worst!” He twisted again, running sideways against the pressure of the rope so he could look up into her eyes. His jaws were clenched, but he was grinning. “And I promise you, when my turn comes I’ll do my best!”

The whip wavered, fell; but instead of landing across Madmartigan’s face it struck Rak’s haunch. The stallion surged forward, carrying Sorsha beyond earshot, cantering to the head of the column.

The sergeant laughed hoarsely, yanking Madmartigan’s rope so tight that he could say nothing more. “You’ll pay for that. At Nockmaar you’ll pay and pay. Ah, you’ll give us all good sport, you and this little Peck.”

“Locktwarr,”
Willow murmured, his eyes shut tight again.
“Tanna
. . .”

“Looth,”
Raziel whispered.
“Tanna looth
. . .”

Up they went, and up, winding ever higher into the mountains. Squalls and flurries swept down the slopes. As they went they were joined by other Nockmaar squads and search parties, summoned out of the valleys by the triumphant bellowing of the ram’s horn, sounded by Sorsha’s bugler. Many had Death Dogs. These froze Willow with terror as they trotted beside the mule, eying him. Their thick shoulders bunched and rippled. Their snouts wrinkled to show long fangs. Their hairless tails twitched.

Most of the other groups stayed with Sorsha’s party only long enough to congratulate her on the capture of the child, and then they trotted ahead to the main Nockmaar encampment in the mountains, weary from their long search and anxious to rest.

At evening on the third day, Sorsha’s men brought their prisoners to the encampment. It lay in a high valley near a fork in the road. To the left, an old and disused track had once taken travelers to Tir Asleen; to the right, the broader road led straight to Nockmaar. A camp of a hundred or so tents had been set up by this fork, growing steadily as the Nockmaar soldiers marshaled and prepared to return to the castle. It was a heavy place, all gray and black in the trampled snow. No music played there. No banners flew. Men drank in hunkering groups beside sullen fires. Most of their shelters were small; some, mere skin tarpaulins propped on sticks. Some were more spacious, with enclosed sides, and a few—the officers’ quarters—looked almost comfortable.

General Kael rode out to meet them with two of his brigadiers. “Hail!” he greeted Sorsha as he approached, raising his mailed fist. “Your mother will be pleased!” He tried to smile but managed only to show his teeth. Seared, scarred, broken, his thick face could no longer express any real emotion. All its lineaments were set fast in that awful grimace. He looked like that when he gazed on a beautiful scene or a lovely creature. He looked like that when he watched the torturing of a child. He would look like that as he watched his own death come.

“Kael!” Madmartigan whispered, crouching down and hiding his face as well as he could against the jerking of the rope. “All I need!”

“You
know
him?”

“We’ve met. Years ago. A small misunderstanding, but enough for him to remember me.”

Kael gave the prisoners only a cursory glance before wheeling his horse in beside Sorsha and the lieutenant and roughly pulling back Elora’s blanket. The child howled as he twisted her small arm to see the Sign. “That’s it,” he grunted. “That’s the one. Send word to the queen.”