Dragonwitch (17 page)

Corgar got to his feet. The Chronicler cringed away, expecting a strike, a deathblow even, but the goblin only shouted at his monstrous servants waiting at the other end of the great hall. “Bring in the slaves!”

A string of captive humans entered the room, staggering under the weight of their bindings. The Chronicler's heart nearly broke at the sight of their desperate faces. Among them were several earls, men who would have seen him murdered or used him as a puppet for their own ends. Even as the Chronicler looked no more than a child when compared to them, so they appeared like children under the heavy watch of the goblins.

Corgar, however, was given as much to cunning as to ferocity. Ignoring the slaves, he studied the diminutive king on the table before him, watching his face as each of the mortals came through the door.

Until he saw what he was looking for.

“Stop!” he growled to his servants. He strode out from behind the table, gazing at those slaves displayed before him. “Take these away,” he said. “Except for that one.”

And he reached out and snatched Leta by the arm.

“Unbind her,” he commanded and a goblin hastened to obey. Corgar's grip was more than enough chain for any human maid. She could not bring herself to look upon that dreadful face again but gazed across the room.

“Chronicler!” she cried and reached out to him.

The goblin hauled her across the room with all the gentleness he might show a side of pork, flung her on the ground before the table, and caught her by the hair on top of her head, dragging her upright to expose her throat. He drew a stone dagger.

“This one,” he said, addressing himself to the Chronicler. “This one means something to you. Something more than the others.”

“No!” the Chronicler protested. “She means nothing.”

“Shall I kill her, then?”

“No!”
The Chronicler nearly fell from the table as he lunged. The chains dragged him down, but there was fierceness in his voice. “Don't touch her!”

Leta, unable to speak for terror, grabbed at the great hand wrenching her hair, then felt the chill of the stone blade against her throat.

“Where is the House of Lights?” Corgar demanded. “I know it is near. For many long ages I have watched the gates between the Far World and the Near. I have tested and I have tried. And when I found this one opening, I did everything I could to pry it, even under the very noses of the Knights of the Farthest Shore. Not until now, however, have I found it unwatched and unlocked to me. The moment is ripe. I will have the House of Lights, if I must decimate this entire land!”

“You have to believe me,” the Chronicler said, his voice choked with urgency. “You
must
believe me. The House of Lights does not exist. Not in this world or anywhere else I know. It's . . . it's a story. Nothing but a story.”

“And what about me?” Corgar demanded. “Am
I
a story?”

The Chronicler gazed at Leta, helpless in the goblin's grasp. Her eyes rolled like a crazed horse's, but at last she looked at him. How often in this past year had he repeated to her, “These things are merely the fancies of men trying to make sense of the world's emptiness. They are not real.”

He had never, until now, wished so desperately to be wrong.

It's all right.
Her eyes, though bloodshot with fear, nevertheless seemed to reassure him:
It's not your fault
.

But it was.

He struggled against his chains to stand upright. How heavy were the collar and the great stone links! Bracing himself, he stood like a man tensed for battle, though his short limbs were helplessly bound.

“I cannot tell you what you want,” he said. “I cannot give vapors substance. But I offer you my life. Kill me. Leave the girl alone. She knows nothing, and her death will accomplish nothing.”

“Neither will yours, little majesty,” Corgar said. Even as the dwarf screamed at him to stop, he hauled the girl onto her feet and spun her about to face him, for he would look into her eyes as he sent her to the Netherworld.

And he saw that he held the girl from the courtyard.

He had scarcely noticed her then. She had merely been one of the many beasts fleeing like insects before his stomping feet. Yes, she had assaulted him, but why should he care for her ineffectual sting? Yet something stirred in his memory. He gazed into her ashen face and recognized a quality most would have missed.

Corgar had been a warrior for centuries as the mortals count them. He had marched to battle against kings and princes, against battalions of monsters far more terrible than he. He had lived; he had thrived. In his veins flowed the blood of war, the pulse of battle. His eyes were sharp, never missing a trick or chance.

Corgar knew a warrior when he saw one. Granted, so frail a creature could not lift the weapons he bore. Granted, she could not hope to prevail in a contest of strength. Yet he saw that she would stand before his onslaught and die with courage.

Corgar had been a warrior long enough to know that it was a warrior he held with a dagger beneath her ear.

The small king on the table was pleading, his voice rising and falling and desperate. There was a thump as he rolled to the ground and a clanking as he struggled to his feet, pulling himself up by the chain attached to Corgar's belt. But Corgar, caught up in the wide eyes of the mortal maiden, could not hear what the king said.

He realized that he was not going to kill her. And he hated himself for it.

“Let her go! I told you, I cannot give you what you ask!” the little king was shouting. A dull blow brought Corgar's attention down, and he saw that the creature was kicking him and pounding his leg with his chained hands.

With a roar, Corgar flung the girl to the ground. She crumpled, gasping but otherwise unmoving, as though she did not yet believe that she still lived. Her hands clutched her throat. Why was no blood flowing? Why did she still breathe? The Chronicler collapsed by her side, his heavy chains smacking the floor, and tried to touch her.

But Corgar caught up the length of chain, dragged him back, and forced the small man to face him.

“Listen to me, mortal king,” the monster snarled. “Sooner or later, every warrior meets the blade's end. Her life is forfeit, and I will claim it
when I am ready. Tell me where I may find the House of Lights if you wish to spare her.”

The Chronicler wrung his hands, his face colorless. “I . . . I can't tell you what you ask. I do not know where it is.”

Corgar roared, and goblins came running at his voice. “Take this wretch!” he cried, indicating Leta. “Bind her with the other slaves, and set them all to work. I will tear this castle apart brick by brick, stone by stone if I must. I
will
have Queen Vartera's prize!”

The goblin soldiers laid rough hands upon the girl, dragging her from the room. The Chronicler watched until she was beyond his sight. Then he bowed his head and cursed the day of his birth.

H
OW
CAN
I
EXPLAIN
WHAT
CAME
OVER ME
in that moment? I had never known, never dreamed anything of the kind! My parents were Citlalu and Mahuizoa, ageless, immortal, never intended for death.

I felt the pulse of my demesne. I felt the beat of its heart, the draw of its breath. I could sense the flutter of every pair of wings. Oh, my people! My kingdom. My world. I was more powerful then than I had ever believed possible. More powerful . . . and more bereft.

When the Brothers Ashiun reached the rooftop, they found me standing with my back to my dead brother, gazing out across the city to where the Mound had taken root.

“There,” I told them. I did not try to explain the death of my brother, the sudden oncoming of dominion that filled me with physical potency. I merely pointed. “There he lies, and there he sucks at the blood of my demesne. Root him out!”

The child in the darkness.

Alistair saw it standing on the brink of the chasm, bathed as always in white light. Next, the monster from the darkness that bayed in the voice of a wolf would leap upon him and devour him.

And then he would wake. As he always did.

But this dream was deeper than ever before. He ran toward the child and the light, never drawing any nearer. There was a stench too that had never been there before: a rank, poisonous, rotten stench, like the breath of some dead thing come to life. His shoulder hurt like fire, but he ran anyway, pursuing the child and the death that must come.

For years now, he had experienced this same dream, sometimes for many nights running, sometimes not for months at a stretch. But it was the same dream, and he knew the pace of it and the violent end. He must reach that end before he could wake.

But he was running and not catching up. He would never reach the child. He would never reach the light. He would run in darkness forever, without death, without end.

“No!” he cried. “Come and kill me, monster! Kill me as you must!”

The baying of the dogs was too far away. The light was too distant.

“Help me!” he cried.

A golden voice sang. He turned to it as to a light, and the song became a Path at his feet. A new Path, one he had never before trod in this darkness of his subconscious. This wasn't how the dream was supposed to go, but he was desperate now. The voice sang, and he pursued it, changing course and running.

———

Suddenly his eyes opened and he looked upon uncut stone in a dimly lit tunnel, and the sound of flowing water filled his ears. And a voice. Not the golden voice he'd pursued. No, a chattering, swift, high voice, speaking unintelligibly.

This was not what Alistair last remembered of waking life.

He closed his eyes, and his throat constricted but was too dry to make a sound. Where was he supposed to be? What should he remember? He tried to lift his hand, and pain shot through his shoulder. He grimaced and was still. Why was he in this damp tunnel? Why was he so cold?

Why didn't that unseen person stop babbling?

The second time he tried to groan, he managed to make something close to a noise. More like a grating in his throat. He decided to risk opening his eyes again and still found himself looking at the stone and shadows.

His uncle was dead.

That memory crashed through his consciousness, dragging with it everything else. His uncle . . . his cousin . . . his lost future. He ground his teeth, and the groan this time was a little stronger. But there was something else he needed to remember, something on the edge but not quite within reach.

Why was his shoulder on fire?

A voice he felt he should recognize cried out in a burst of anger, interrupting the foreign babbler. “
What?
Etanun is
here
?”

The first speaker replied, sounding anxious. Alistair, after a battle of wills against his own body, turned his head. He saw Mouse, the scrubber urchin, dressed in rags and ill-fitting shoes, kneeling beside a large orange cat. The cat was listening and watching as though he understood.

Then the cat opened his mouth and the golden voice from Alistair's dream fell from his lips. “And he stood by and watched goblins march into the Near World? Let them break through the gate and come right in? Well,
that
goes to show—”

Alistair screamed.

The cat screamed and arched his back, spitting feline curses.

Mouse screamed and fell off the ledge into the running water below.

Perhaps, Alistair decided, he'd been a bit premature. Yes, he'd had a shock, and one couldn't expect a fellow to lie down and
take
a world that inflicted talking cats upon him. But then again, this could only be a continuation of his dream.

Suddenly relearning to move, he sat up straight and his hands clutched at the cold ground. A dripping Mouse climbed back onto the ledge, glaring daggers his way. The cat, tail slowly smoothing back to a respectable size, mirrored that expression. Then he sat, licked his chest and paws a few times to prove how unafraid he was, and said in the coolest tone:

“So you're awake. What have you to say for yourself in all this, eh?”

Alistair's shoulder throbbed, and he put his hand to it, feeling the distinct pucker of a scar. “A dream,” he whispered. “It's all a dream.”

“How metaphysical of you,” said the cat. “But we're neither of us impressed.”

Alistair looked up and down the tunnel and realized where he was, though he had never before been in his uncle's famous passage. He saw how it wound away into rock, how the water flowed through a gray-lit opening. The smell of smoke and death lingered from his dream.

“What is happening?” he asked.

“Oh, a great deal,” replied the cat, making his silky way to Alistair's side and sitting down. “Gaheris has been attacked from the inside by goblins let through the death-house gate from their world into yours . . . possibly by a traitorous knight of my order, but I wouldn't like to be casting slurs on the Murderer just yet, you understand. My comrade-in-arms has been taken prisoner and, according to
this
person”—with a glance at Mouse—“it appears that everything comes down to our needing to rescue the Chronicler before it's too late. Isn't that right?” The cat addressed this last to Mouse, who nodded. The cat turned to Alistair again. “Caught up now, are we?”

Alistair stared. “Why does my shoulder hurt?”

“You were stabbed by Corgar, warlord of Vartera's horde. You're lucky you didn't lose your head.”

“What's a Corgar?”

“A goblin.”

“As in slavering jaws, gaping eyes, stone hides?”

“The same.”

“They don't exist.”

“Neither do talking cats.”

Mouse, wet hair plastered and dripping, leaned forward, chattering again in that language Alistair could not understand. But the cat understood and responded, “Why do you think that matters?”

“Why does what matter?” Alistair demanded.

Cat twitched an ear at him. “I wasn't speaking to you.”

“You were speaking to . . . him?”

“Yes.”

“And, er,
he
understands you?”

“Yes.”

“But so do I!” Alistair shook his head. “How can we both understand you? We don't speak the same language!”

“Proving yet again the superiority of immortal tongues,” said the cat, smugly sinking his chin into the downy ruff of fur about his neck. “You'll understand anything I want you to, and nothing I don't. It's the way of it with Faerie.”

Mouse looked from the cat to Alistair, then said, “Please, what are you telling him?”

“Nothing,” the cat said, tucking his tail closer to his paws. “What did you think I was telling him?”

“You won't . . .” She glanced at the young lord again. “You won't tell him my secret, will you?”

“What secret?”

“That I'm . . . that I'm not what I seem.”

The cat's ears went back. He turned to Alistair. This time when he spoke, Alistair understood him but the girl did not. “You do realize, don't you, that she's a girl?” he said.

“Of course I do.” Alistair glared. “Do I look stupid?”

“Would you like me to answer that?”

“What did he say?” Mouse demanded. “What did you tell him?”

The cat shrugged and allowed her to understand his words. “I made certain your secret is as safe as it ever was.”

She breathed a great sigh, relieved. “Now,” she said, “will he help me rescue the dwarf?”

“Ah yes. The Chronicler,” the cat said musingly. “He's not a dwarf, you know. He's a small man. There is a difference. I've met dwarves. They're ugly little brutes, nothing like him.”

“What does it matter?” Mouse cried, ready to explode with anxiety. “Dwarf, man, he's Etanun's heir! I must bring him back to the Citadel, don't you see? I must bring him back, or the Silent Lady's life is forfeit!”

All traces of smugness vanished from the cat's face. His purr turned to a growl.

Alistair stood, a little shakily, putting a hand back to support himself against the stone wall. Some memories were beginning to leak back through, memories he had thought part of the nightmare. He recalled
his uncle's empty chamber and Mouse struggling to pull a hunting knife down from the wall. He recalled the shouts of goblins, a rock-hard hand coming through the doorway.

“What did she say?” he asked. “Does she know something about all this?”

“About the goblins? No. Not directly, that is.”

Alistair did not like to ask the next question but knew that he must. After all, the world was a twisted, upside-down place this morning, and anything was possible. “Did she bring them here?” His eyes strayed briefly to her, then away.

“What, her?” The cat shook his head. “I hardly think so. This is much more likely to be the Murderer's doing. But with the gates unwatched, Corgar could have pushed through without anyone's help.”

“What gates?”

The cat did not answer. Although seated between them, he somehow seemed untouchably distant. Alistair could almost believe the creature had slid into another world entirely and that he and Mouse looked in from the outside, unable to join.

“Please,” Mouse said. “Please, help me rescue the heir. It is the only hope.” Her voice was so distressed, Alistair almost reached out to her, though he did not know what she said.

But the cat replied, “I have a better idea,” and paced toward her. His posture was that of a tiger, though his size had not altered. Mouse scrambled away from him, but he kept coming until he had her backed up to the edge of the rocky ledge. “Why don't you take me to your little temple?”

“Without the heir?” Mouse gasped.

“Now.”

She shook her head. “I cannot return without him! The Silent Lady would be slain!”

“Not if I've rescued her first,” said the cat. “Which will happen much more quickly if I'm not sidetracked by goblins and misproportioned mortals.”

“No.” Mouse's face set into hard lines unfamiliar to her young face. “I will not go without him.”

“What's going on? What does she say?” Alistair demanded.

The cat's fur bristled, and his claws dug into the rock. “You will take me now, girl,” he said.

She whispered, “I won't.”

Suddenly the cat unfolded himself into a tall man in red with flashing eyes and a head full of fiery hair. He grabbed Mouse by the fabric on her shoulder and lifted her to her toes. His face was that of a wildcat, and his voice was a snarl.

“I haven't time to waste on fool's errands,” he said. “Imraldera's life is at risk. I do not know where to find your pagan temple, but you
will
take me there and show me where my lady is being held, or so help me—”

His voice broke in a caterwaul as Alistair's hands descended on his shoulders and dragged him backward. He dropped his hold on the girl, who nearly unbalanced into the water again, and was himself tossed into a heap. But he was up again in a swirl of his red cape, his gaze fixed on Alistair, who was as tall as he and perhaps a little broader, and whose face was white as a sheet with terror. A grin flicked across the cat-man's face before he sprang and knocked the mortal man from his feet, pinning him to the ground.

“Don't interfere, mortal!” he growled. “I'm not a man to be—”

Again he broke off, this time spitting a curse as Mouse struck his face with her fist. His hand darted out, snatching her wrist and wrenching it until she fell to her knees. She winced but shouted, “She told me you were good! She told me you were her fellow knight! She said you would help us!”

The cat-man paused, his teeth bared, his breath caught. Mouse's black eyes fixed upon him in storm-like fury. “She never told me you were a monster!”