Witchlanders (6 page)

“Kar's eyes,” he cursed softly. At least his dreams and his dog had distracted him for a while.

Written hastily in black ink above the scroll's seal was the message:
Not to be opened for fifty days. Until then, sing your brother's prayers and make yourself useful
.

Fifty days. Was his father serious? It was enough to give anyone bad dreams, enough to drive anyone mad. To have some great purpose, some important mission, and then to be forbidden to know what it was? It was nonsense, it was unfair, it was some cruel form of torture!

For the hundredth time, Falpian picked up the scroll and ran his finger over the red seal, willing the wax to crack. Whatever was written on that parchment was the thing he had to do to make his father look him in the eye again. It was the thing he had to do to make things between them go back to the way they'd been before—he just knew it!

“‘Make yourself useful,'” Falpian muttered. “What does that even mean?”

When he was a boy, Falpian had assumed his father's
love was something permanent, something he didn't have to earn. He and his twin brother Farien were special. They would be a singer pair someday; their harmonies would make a magic unheard of since the old times.

As years went by, his mother's jewels disappeared one by one, sold to pay the tutors and the singing masters. Falpian's little sisters learned to mend the holes in their silks so that stitches didn't show. But every sacrifice would be rewarded a hundredfold when the great Falpian and Farien came into their magic. That was the thing, though: They never did.

Falpian stared at the scroll, half wishing it would burst into flames so he wouldn't have to think about it anymore. He imagined long lines of Caraxus family ancestors, all sitting up at Kar's great feast, lips curling as they looked down on him, the food of the God turning bitter in their mouths. His father had worn that same look when he spoke to Falpian last, as if he tasted something foul. His manner toward his sons had changed abruptly about a year before Farien's death. The tutors and the singing masters were dismissed, and everything about Falpian and his brother was suddenly wrong—their taste in books, their lack of skill with weapons, the way Falpian spoiled his dog. Magicians-to-be were allowed such caprices. Ordinary young men were not.

Without thinking, Falpian squeezed the scroll and
watched as the wax seal began to separate from the parchment, revealing a pink stain underneath. If he squeezed a little harder . . .

No. Quickly he stuffed the scroll back into its bronze container. He stood up and strode into his small, book-lined study, opening the bottom drawer of an ornate desk with dragon legs. For a moment he hesitated, but the words on the cylinder—
duty, honor, sacrifice
—were like a chastisement. He shoved the container into the drawer and slammed it shut. His father was a man to be obeyed, even if he was all the way on the other side of the Bitterlands.

Later that morning Falpian stood at the edge of the plateau, clutching his coat around him. In the mud, the dog's footprints, big as dinner plates, led down to the wild green gorge. The Witchlands were so close, just over that mountain with the crooked spire. All his life Falpian had been told that someday the Baen people would take back what the Witchlanders had stolen during the war. Now that time was almost here, and he just wanted his father to believe he could be a part of it.

It was a sign of his father's arrogance that he assumed both his sons would be able to sing. Magic was a rare gift, carefully kept alive in the bloodlines of a few families. But then, the Caraxus family had magicians going back a thousand years—Falpian
should
be able to sing. He had studied so hard—the names of the keys and what magic
they produced, how to awaken a humming stone in the heat of battle. . . . And what a lot of useless information that was, he thought bitterly, for someone who would never use it.

But at least I have a mission,
he told himself.
At least I have the scroll.
He knew he should be more thankful. The fact that he had a part to play at all was a great gift. Surely he could wait fifty days for it. And until then, he'd find other things to keep him busy.

According to Bron, there was an echo site not far off the gorge path. It should be tested. It wouldn't take long, but when he was done he'd find another task, and another—for fifty days or a hundred days or a thousand days if that's what his father wanted.

As Falpian started down the steep path, shreds of his dreams came back to him—a Witchlander woman with wild eyes and a mouth stained black, an old horse with a yellow mane, the sound of bones clattering on a dirt floor. He was sure he had seen his own dear sisters too, but they were strange and far away, talking to strangers, walking on water like the witches were supposed to have done during the war.

“Dreams mean nothing,” he said aloud, trying to convince himself, trying to say what his father would. “Just . . . sing your brother's prayers and make yourself useful!”

*  *  *

“Tell us about the dreadhounds, Dassen,” Skyla said. “And their long saber teeth.”

“Ah, dreadhounds. Never turn your back on one. They like to attack from behind.” The tavern keeper made two long teeth with his fingers.

“No,” said Pima, covering her eyes. “That's too scary.”

Skyla gave a sigh. “All right. Tell us about how you were in Barbiza and saw the Baen ships.”

Skyla had laid out a feast for breakfast: honeycakes cooked over the fire and drizzled with fresh cream, bread with both butter and cheese, and a pot of the preserved sourberries, slippery in syrup. It wasn't often they had guests.

The tavern keeper smiled, and his eyes gleamed as he spoke, but every once in a while he would look to Ryder and a shadow would pass his face; Ryder could see he had something to talk to him about, something he wouldn't say in front of the girls. Ryder wished they could have a moment alone.

Pima and Skyla didn't seem to notice. They leaned forward over their wooden plates, enthralled by Dassen's stories of the war. Why they were so interested in things that happened twenty years ago, Ryder couldn't imagine. Not now. Not when at that very moment Mabis was up on the prayer hill doing who-knew-what in those black tents.

“I was just a boy, really,” Dassen said. “Younger than
Ryder here. I was working at my uncle's tavern in Barbiza when the Baen ships pulled into the harbor. Oh, they were uncanny, those ships. Their hulls were covered with strange writing, and they seemed to sail with no wind. Their masts were so tall they left scuff marks on the sky.”

“Ohhh,” Pima said, her eyes round.

“We didn't know then that they were part of an attack, that there were other ships pulling into Tandrass at the same time. We trusted the Baen, you see. We traded with the Bitterlands back then, and some of the blackhairs even lived among us.” He shook his finger at the girls, as if to bring home a lesson. “We let down our guard.”

“Did you see the black magicians?” Skyla asked. “The singers?”

He shook his head. “Not many of those, thank Aata. Heard them twice, though, during the war: once in Barbiza, once at the Battle of the Dunes.” He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Hope never to hear them again. They call it singing, but it sounds like . . . metal scraping stone.”

Pima crammed a whole honeycake into her mouth and licked her fingers.

“What did the witches say, Dassen?” Ryder interrupted, unable to refrain any longer. He'd finished his breakfast and was standing at the open door, looking up at the prayer hill. “Were the witches annoyed by my mother's firecall?”

The girls both turned to frown at Ryder.

“Didn't ask,” Dassen said. “I was at the coven to deliver my tithe and traveled back down with them is all. Witch business is above my head, I'm happy to say. I'll leave that to your mother.”

Ryder nodded.

“Now let me tell you about the time I saved your father's life,” Dassen said as the two girls clapped their hands.

Ryder had known Dassen for as long as he could remember. He and Fa had fought side by side during the war, had saved each other's lives a dozen times if their accounts were to be believed. When Ryder was small, he'd often begged to visit Dassen at the tavern. His father would lift him up to see the Baenkiller, the sword the tavern keeper displayed over the bar. Ryder had loved to count the notches carved along the hilt—one for every blackhair killed.

Ryder turned away from the door and helped Skyla clear the plates. When they were done, Dassen took his humming stone—a trophy from the war—out of his pocket and let Pima and Skyla pass it back and forth between them. Ryder had seen it a hundred times; it was just a broken piece of rock, but the girls oohed and aahed at the strange Baen designs etched over the surface.

“Brew us some of that sweet tea, Ryder, like your father used to make.” Dassen settled himself into his chair and brushed the crumbs out of his bushy blond beard, but he gave Ryder a knowing glance. Ryder complied, breaking
off some of the dried herbs that hung in bunches from the ceiling and tossing them into the kettle on the hob.

“Friend of mine got this off the body of a real black magician,” Dassen told the girls. “Why, if this stone were whole and the singer working it had the gift, he could use it to move an object with his voice, stop your heart with a curse . . . anything.”

Ryder rolled his eyes and couldn't help but smile. Dassen had some wild stories about black magicians, in spite of the fact that he'd never actually seen one. As he was dipping a ladle into the tea, the tavern keeper sidled up to him.

“Mabis do that often?” he asked softly.

“What?”

Dassen looked over his shoulder. Pima was trying to work the piece of humming stone. She held it in both hands and was blowing on it furiously, her pale eyebrows knitted.

“I saw the maiden's woe.”

Ryder tensed. He didn't want Dassen telling his tavern patrons about
that
. They wouldn't understand. “She's careful,” he insisted. “It helps with the prophecy.”

“So I've heard, but she had so many flowers. More than a quarter of one can be deadly. You've never seen her take more than that, have you?”

Ryder felt his stomach flip. “No, of course not.”

“What are you two talking about over there?” Skyla asked.

“Terrible thing,” Dassen said, turning around with a grin. “This boy's beard's gone missing!”

Ryder frowned, touching his bare face. He tried to laugh along with the joke, but Dassen's words rang in his ears. A quarter of a flower—that must be wrong. Ryder had seen Mabis take five flowers in a night and still be fine the next day.

“It's working!” Pima yelled. “Listen!”

They all turned their attention to the stone. Sure enough, a muffled whine seemed to be vibrating from its core, making the breakfast plates rattle faintly on the table.

“By the twins,” Dassen said.

Pima got up and started dancing around the room. “I'm a wicked blackhair!” she sang, delighted. “I'm a wicked blackhair! I'll stop your heart with a curse.”

Dassen, Skyla, and Ryder all leaned in toward the stone, their mouths open in surprise. After a few moments the whine of the stone got softer and softer, like the buzz of a dying insect, until finally they could hear it no longer.

Pima frowned. “Is that all it does?”

Before Dassen could answer, the door to the cottage swung open. Mabis stood in front of them, holding her bone bowl in both arms. There was an obvious black ring around the inside of her lips, and the look on her face was crazed and triumphant.

“I've seen it all,” she said. She was trying to get through
the door, but the bowl was too big to fit. Finally she thought of tilting it, and she made it into the room, but not without spilling her set of bones and sending them skittering over the floor.

“No matter,” she said, laughing. She carefully set down the bowl, then lurched up again. “We're to go back to the tents at sunset.” Mabis was suddenly solemn. “Oh, it was so clear.” She stood swaying back and forth, holding herself as if she were cold.

“I didn't need the anchor bone at all,” she murmured, almost to herself. “I should have remembered what my father used to say: The magic is in the witch, not in her bones.”

Dassen stood up, clearly shocked by what he saw. “Mabis, what have you done?”

She seemed not to hear. “Every once in a while it's as if my mind turns a corner, and then I can see forever. I love that feeling. Even though I'm seeing terrible things, I could stay in that feeling forever.” She tottered backward, grabbing onto the wall for support. “I'll rest now,” she said. “Wake me up at sunset. We're all to go at sunset.” And with that, Mabis staggered toward the sleeping chamber.

Ryder drew a deep breath. Mabis said she had done a casting without the anchor bone—but if she didn't think she needed it anymore, what would keep her from taking the flower now?

*  *  *

Falpian had never liked singing. He'd always felt, wherever he was, that his father's ear was cocked toward him, judging him, expecting magic that wasn't there. It had made his stomach twist, made his tongue clumsy in his mouth.

Now he stared down into the deep gorge. He had left the safety of the path and was standing on a small, slanted ledge about a third of the way down from Stonehouse. Below him, the tops of trees tossed. He kicked a pebble off the ledge and watched it bounce off the jagged rocks—down, down, until it finally hit the ground. Was a person really supposed to sing here? He took a breath and tried a note, but his reedy voice was quickly torn away by the gusting wind. Other ways of making himself useful sprang into his mind, safer ways.

From somewhere in the gorge, a fearsome howl echoed, and a flock of green birds rose up chattering from the trees. Bo was hunting again. Well, at least one of them could find their voice.