Witchlanders (24 page)

At the edge of his consciousness, Ryder began to hear another voice, a voice he knew almost as well as his own. He was drawn toward it, seemed to float. Falpian. Falpian was coming up from the coven path.

Now this was magic. Ryder could feel that their two voices together dwarfed the magic of the humming stone. Falpian was the same person Ryder remembered, but he was someone else, too, someone stronger and darker, someone Ryder knew from a thousand dreams.

Bo howled ecstatically, bounding around the two young men in great circles. The black branches of the trees shivered, and snow-covered stones lifted off the ground to hover in the air. All Falpian's thoughts, all his secrets were coming toward Ryder in a rush—too many to understand at once. He tried to hold them back. Again he tried to stop singing, but couldn't.

With a loud crack the humming stone broke in two, sending a spasm of pain through his arm. It made no difference to the song, but Falpian's jaw dropped, and he stared at Ryder with a look of joyful recognition on his face.

“No, no,” Ryder tried to say. “I know what you're thinking, but I'm not your tally-whatever.” The words came out like music.

Falpian grabbed his arm. The gormy man—no, now two gormy men—were coming fast. Falpian's song changed, and the two creatures froze in their tracks. He
was controlling them, or trying to. In fact, he was doing some incredibly complicated things with his voice, and somehow Ryder could predict every one of them, meeting Falpian's tenor with a deeper harmony of his own.

They were simple things, these creatures—Ryder saw that now. They drew on whatever matter was at hand to give themselves form—before it had been mud, now snow. At their core, though, they were just a dark, hateful spell. But whose hate was it? Whose spell? The things in front of him thought nothing, wanted nothing, except to destroy.

Falpian was trying to kill them, trying to squeeze their hearts, but it wouldn't work; the creatures had no hearts, only snow and hate. Ryder closed his eyes, focusing only on the song. Somehow he could still perceive the world around him, even without his eyes. He saw the seeds sleeping under the earth. He saw the cells of his own body humming with life. He saw the gormy men in front of him, frozen, and yet writhing with dark energy.

Stir a wind, Falpian,
he thought.

Ryder, is it you? Are you really my talat-sa?

Stir a wind. They have no hearts. We have to blow them apart.

Falpian seemed to understand.
Wind. I'll use a winter key.

Ryder opened his eyes. He had no idea what a winter key was, but all at once their song shifted as if it had a life of its own. The tips of the trees bent toward them, and a wind began to grow. It swirled around and around the
horrid things, pulling at their snow limbs, blowing away their twisted branches.

The creatures resisted, tried to pull the snow back to themselves, but Falpian's voice was strong now, full of buried rage, rage as hard as needles. The key of slivered glass. Now Falpian held nothing back. Emotions, too many to understand at once, swept through Ryder's mind: Falpian's father, the pain of betrayal that was like a wound that wouldn't heal. Ryder and Falpian unwound the creatures like scarves, smaller and smaller, until they were nothing but that frigid core of hate. Still they sang.

Falpian had found a well of new strength, but it was dark and full of anger. It frightened Ryder. It reminded him of the hate he sensed inside the gormy men. For the first time Ryder understood just how powerful Falpian could be, how dangerous. But Falpian's anger made their voices strong, and Ryder had no choice but to try to sing with him as best he could. Their voices blasted what was left of the creatures into shards, spreading them thinner and thinner on the wind until the spell inside them flew apart—and the gormy men were gone.

Ryder dropped to the ground and put his hands to his ears. He didn't want to hear anymore, he didn't want to know anymore, but he couldn't stop singing—and Falpian couldn't stop either, couldn't stop until Ryder did.

Falpian pulled him toward the mouth of the cave, and
Ryder caught a glimpse of Kef standing near the entrance, staring at him in amazement. Aata's Right Hand was screaming something, but Ryder couldn't hear her over the sound of his own voice. It hurt, it hurt his brains, this music.
I'm just a farmer,
he wanted to yell. He'd been a fool to want something more, something bigger than his own small life. This was too big.

All at once, Ryder became aware of a rumbling, a deep quivering in the air, as if the mountain itself wanted to join their song. Falpian grabbed him by the arm and pointed up toward the mountain's crooked spire. He and Aata's Right Hand tried to pull him into the cave, but Ryder resisted. Bo didn't think they should go in there either. He was pulling frantically at Ryder's coat with his teeth.
He must be afraid of the mountain,
Ryder thought.
The mountain is going to sing.
There was a word for this, he knew, but he couldn't think what it was. There were other witches at the entrance now, some beckoning, some pointing up and screaming silently, their voices overwhelmed by the song. It was a trio now—Ryder, Falpian, and a rumbling bass note that seemed to shake the world. One witch grabbed Aata's Right Hand and pulled her deeper into the cave.

At the same time, Falpian bent down and gathered up a great wad of snow. He grabbed hold of Ryder's hair and shoved the snowball into his mouth. Abruptly, their singing stopped. Ryder fell back, choking. Thank Aata. He
could hear himself cough, could hear the screams of the witches, but mostly what he heard was the roar of a . . . He looked up and saw that a great wall of snow was careening down from the top of the mountain. Snowslide. That was the word he'd been looking for.

“Run!” Falpian yelled.

CHAPTER 18
IN THE CHAMBER OF AATA AND AAYSE

Falpian lay with his cheek pressed against a cool stone floor. His hands and feet were tied.
I found my talat-sa.
A feeling of joy swelled inside him, despite the pain of his bonds. Ryder was the presence he'd been feeling all this time; Ryder was the reason his magic had finally crystallized. Ryder was his twin in spirit.

Falpian didn't even mind that his talat-sa was an unbeliever. The great God Kar plays the best jokes; he understood that now. Even deep inside these witches' caves, he could hear the echoes of the God's laughter.

“I don't know what you have to smile at.”

Falpian sat up abruptly, feeling dazed. Next to him was a witch, a male witch in reds. Falpian had a vague memory of more witches, frightened witches—a hundred frigid blue eyes piercing through him—the fear that they would tear him limb from limb right there. Someone had taken
him to this quiet chamber, pushed him through winding tunnels, tied him up with rough hands. Falpian had the strangest feeling that he knew the witch who had spoken, but of course that was impossible. An impressive braided beard stuck out like fingers from the man's chin, but he probably wasn't many years older than Falpian himself.

“The snowslide,” Falpian said. “Was anyone hurt?” The witch scowled but didn't answer. Falpian had seen Ryder inside the caves, he was sure of that, but . . . “My dog! Do you know if my dog is all right?”

He tried to recall what had happened to Bo, but his memory was fuzzy and blurred. He and Ryder had run one way into the caves, and Bo had gone the other—but whether the dog had made it out, or been crushed under that wall of rock and snow, Falpian couldn't say, and the bearded witch didn't seem to want to tell him. Bo must have made it, Falpian decided. He was a smart dog.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asked. The witch was nervously fingering a blue bead at his neck, a gesture that seemed familiar. Falpian found a name that was on the tip of his tongue. “I know you. You're Kef!”

The witch gaped. “I was told not to let you speak.”

Falpian barely heard him. He was distracted by the thought that he'd actually known this man's name. He knew it because when he sang with Ryder, they'd shared things. Faces, knowledge, secrets. In fact, he realized,
they'd been sharing thoughts for a long time, mostly in their dreams. How could it have taken him so long to figure it out? Even Ryder had known. Even his dog had known. Amazed, he tried to search his mind for other useful bits of information, but it was all a tangled mass of images. He did seem to know some farming techniques he hadn't before.

“Hicca,” he said with a laugh. “Ryder gets the knowledge of the finest tutors and librarians and I get hicca.”

“I asked you not to speak,” the witch warned.

“But I'm a friend of Ryder's!”

“Do I have to find a gag?” There was more fear in his tone than anger, but still it alarmed Falpian, made him suddenly notice the damp cold. “You are to stay here and be silent until the witches are ready to interrogate you.”

Falpian swallowed. Hopefully, wherever Ryder was, he was pleading for Falpian's life—but then, Ryder must know now that Falpian was a spy, must have learned it when they sang. And Ryder would know other things too—his father, the coming war. He'd know everything. Ryder wouldn't be pleading for Falpian's life; he'd be arguing for his execution.

Falpian drew his knees to his chest, wishing Bo were there to keep him warm. The leather straps that bound his hands were uncomfortably tight, and his fingers were numb. The knowledge that he had found his talat-sa kept colliding with the fact that they were enemies, that soon
their people would be at war with each other. The great God Kar might play the best jokes, but this was a cruel one, very cruel. He sank back against the cave wall, and the sense of joy that finding his talat-sa had given him drained away like water.

“Ryder told you my name?” Kef asked. It wasn't exactly true, but Falpian nodded. “If you really are his friend and mean this coven no harm, the witches will learn it in their bones. They will learn all. You will have nothing to fear.” Falpian didn't find the thought consoling.

For a while he sat with his captor in silence, examining the chamber where he had been taken. It was long and narrow, with entrances on either end. Oil lamps sputtered in nooks, giving off the smell of roasted goat. Mosaic friezes in reds, turquoises, and gold decorated the walls. To Falpian's right were two large heads, the tiled portraits of two blond women. One face was perfect—red lips and cheeks and glittering eyes formed from a hundred different shades of blue tile—but the other was cruelly damaged. Dug-out hollows in the rock formed the eyes, and the yellow hair was crudely painted on.

“Aata and Aayse,” Falpian said, then remembered he wasn't supposed to speak. “Sorry.”

“You know of our prophets?” the witch asked sharply.

Falpian hesitated, but Kef seemed to want him to answer. “Yes. The silent sisters. The founders of witchcraft.”

The man nodded and then, like Falpian, leaned back against the wall of the cave, looking up at the two heads. “There must have been a flood once, to cause such damage. Or spiders. No one can repair it now—the technique is lost.” There were craftsmen in the Bitterlands who could do such work, but Falpian knew better than to mention it.

They fell silent again. Falpian wiggled his fingers, trying to get the blood moving in his hands, but it only made them hurt. The smell of the lamps reminded him how hungry he was. There was still some lump in his pockets, but with tied hands he couldn't reach it, and he thought it unwise to ask for help. Kef kept looking toward the nearer entrance, the one that led back to the main cavern, and Falpian could see he must be waiting for someone. He wondered who. His interrogator?

“I don't know why she had me bring you here,” Kef muttered, more to himself than to Falpian. He glanced again at the heads of Aata and Aayse. “This is a holy place.”

Again his fingers went to a small bead at his neck, and Falpian squinted at it in surprise. This was the last place in the world he would expect to see Baen writing, and yet there it was, scratched deep into the bead—a word in ancient Baen.

“Yarma!”
Falpian said, smiling with relief. The word meant “friend.”

“Shh!” Kef hissed, as if Aata and Aayse were listening.
He seemed to understand the writing on the bead, but Falpian wondered if he was aware of its deeper meaning.

“Where did you get that?”

“I wear it to remember my parents,” the witch said curtly. “It belonged to my mother.”

During the war there were Witchlanders who were friendly to the Baen, who would give them food as they were trying to make their way to the Bitterlands or even hide them if their lives were in danger. These friends of the Baen would wear the word on their clothes or paint it on their houses in plain sight. The Baen alphabet was so different from pictographs that most Witchlanders would mistake it for decoration or random scratchings.