Dragonwitch (45 page)

E
VERYTHING
SHE
HAD
BEEN
TOLD
as a child was true, though the tellers themselves had long since ceased to believe.

Leta pushed through the door of hanging greenery and branches and stepped into a hall that was both a corridor of tall trees and a solid structure of wood and stone. She saw windows that were leaf-draped boughs; she saw carpet that was moss and ferns. And it was all true. She knew it with more certainty than she had known anything before now. It was more real than her life at Aiven, even than her life at Gaheris. It was full and rich, and every sensation in her body experienced that fullness and richness to a degree she had never thought possible.

Leta had now spoken to a star. She had stood up to goblins and passed from the Near World into the Between. Now she could almost see the Brothers Ashiun as they labored to build this Haven in the dangerous Wood, could almost hear the lingering whispers of their voices. In this place, past and present were not so greatly divided, for Time was not master here. She felt herself caught up in the greatness of a story far too
big for her mortal understanding, caught up and carried in a rolling current. But she was unafraid. For the first time, she believed she was truly alive.

She recognized Dame Imraldera's library from nursery tales. And she found the poem on the good dame's desk and read for the first time the strange Faerie letters.

Fling wide the doors of light, Smallman,

Though furied falls the Flame at Night.

“Come home,” she whispered as the words took shape in her mind. “Come home and accomplish your purpose, Smallman.”

At first there was no answer but the golden stillness of the great library. She breathed in that stillness and felt it, warm and calming in her heart.

Then she heard a voice she did not know speaking from the hall beyond: “There's someone here, I tell you, and we're not going back to your world until I know who it is.”

“Very well, Eanrin. But I wish you would hurry.”

Leta whirled about. That second voice she knew well indeed.

The next moment she flew from the library, calling, “Chronicler!”

“M'lady?”

They met in the passage, between two rows of towering pines, and light fell through the needles and cast them both into green shadows. And they stared at each other as though they were strangers. For Leta saw the Chronicler standing with a sword in hand that should have been too large for him, but which he wielded now with unnatural grace. All traces of his protective silence had fallen, and for the first time, she thought she looked on the man he was born to be.

And the Chronicler saw Leta, tattered and worn, exhausted and yet . . . strong. He saw a woman not a girl. A woman who had faced monsters and not crumbled. A woman who would never again be told what she ought to be.

They stood across from each other, and pine shadows fell between them. “I thought you were dead,” Leta said.

“So I thought you,” he replied.

Alistair and Eanrin looked on from the end of the hall. Eanrin folded his arms and rolled his eyes ceilingward. “Of course. Prophetic destinies can't be played out without the proper sense of poetry. Even the girl must be here at the end! Though, Lights Above, I don't know how she managed it. I don't think I could have fixed it that way even in verse!”

Alistair made no reply. He hung back, hiding his face, and watched yet another vestige of his intended life disintegrate before his eyes. His dream had indeed come true, he thought, and one hand touched the ravages marking his face. And yet somehow, he wasn't as sorry as he supposed he should be. After all, he had never thought that destiny was meant for him.

“Your mother knew,” said Leta to the Chronicler. “I found her letters to you. I read them.”

The Chronicler nodded, and though he flushed, he did not look away.

“You saw what she wrote,” Leta persisted. “Why did you not believe?”

“I was afraid,” he said.

“But not anymore?”

“No. Not anymore.”

“And you will be king?”

“I will drive out the goblin.”

“And you will open the House of Lights,” Leta said, and her eyes shone bright as stars. “I found it, Chronicler. I know where the last House stands. Shall I tell you?”

“Please,” he said.

So she whispered the secret in his ear, and though Alistair and Eanrin strained to hear what she said, even the cat-man's sharp ears could not quite make it out. But the Chronicler's eyes widened, and he stepped back, surprised but undoubting. “Lumé's crown!” he exclaimed.

Leta laughed. “It was there in front of us all along.”

The two goblin guards snapped to attention outside the library door when they heard their master's footsteps. They exchanged glances as they did so. This was the day, they thought. This was the day when, finally,
Corgar did away with the mortal inside. They'd heard his threats and they'd heard her responses. No goblin would stand for such disrespect from a human! Today, then, must be the day when he broke her scrawny neck.

They stood with weapons upraised when Corgar approached, his head down like a hunting animal's, his eyes fixed on the door. It was as well for them that they backed away, for he would have barreled through them unseeing, so intent was his stride. He flung open the library door, ducked, and entered.

Instantly, he felt the emptiness. But he did not believe it at first.

“Where are you?” he growled. The floor stones shook beneath his heavy footfall as he crossed the room. With a heave, he tossed over the big table, scattering books and pages without a care. Then he turned to the desk, and his claws tore into its surface, digging trenches. “Where are you?”

The tapestry covering the secret door was next, lying in shreds within moments of Corgar's touching it. But the door beyond was shut, its lock secure. She could not have escaped this way.

The stairway to the loft was too frail to hold his bulk, and it broke before he had taken three steps. But he could see that she was not there. And even had he not seen it, he could smell it, he could taste it, he could sense it with all his being. The girl was lost to him.

He stood in the center of the library, his chest heaving, his wild eyes staring at nothing, and no thoughts could fit in the tumult of his brain. The guards looked inside, saw what was happening.

Then they turned and ran for their lives.

One was slower than the other, and Corgar caught the luckless lagger by the back of the neck, flinging him to the ground. “You let her go!” he growled, drawing a stone knife as he towered above the screaming guard. “You let her escape!”

“No, captain, I swear!” the goblin cried, and these would have been his last words had not Corgar's attention been caught by a shout going up outside in the courtyard.

“It's him! It's him! The mortal king!”

Corgar gnashed his teeth, and his aim with the dagger went wide, cutting the guard across the face rather than plunging into his heart. With
a roar, the goblin captain left his wounded prey lying on the stones and hastened down the stairs and out to the courtyard. Human slaves shrank back with the clank of many stone chains at his passing; it was not they who had set up the cry but their goblin drivers.

The walls of the inner yard were almost completely demolished, but the outer wall was still high and strong. Corgar climbed to the battlements of the outer gates, demanding, “What is this noise I hear? What is this rabble saying?”

No one dared answer him, so he tossed aside any goblins in his way and looked for himself to the winterbound land beyond Gaheris's walls.

Four figures stood on the road below. One was a redheaded youth with a shattered face, another a golden immortal clad in a cat's body. Eanrin of Rudiobus, curse him and all his kind! One Corgar recognized with a lurch in his gut as Leta, standing with a borrowed red cloak about her shoulders, shivering but defiant even at that distance.

And stepping from among the other three was the half-sized mortal who was their king.

“Corgar of Arpiar!” the Chronicler cried. His voice was bold but small in the coldness of hastening morning. Nevertheless, he took the forefront position and stood with his shoulders back. “The time of your tyranny is ended. You will leave Gaheris, you and all your goblin kin.”

Corgar drew a hissing breath. “I will send my warriors out to slaughter you!” he called, then hated himself, for his voice was that not of a captain but of a petulant child. “They'll stick your heads on their lances!”

Alistair and Eanrin exchanged glances, and the cat's ears went back. But Leta did not shift her gaze from Corgar's face above. And the Chronicler, calm as a cloudless sky, replied, “Send them out, then. Send them out if you are afraid to face me yourself.”

“Me? Afraid?” The stone of the battlements crumbled to powder beneath Corgar's tightening fingers. “These braggart insults become you little, mortal. Especially when you are incapable of backing them with your own strength. Do you intend to pit me against your Rudioban comrade? Did you bring an immortal to do your work for you?”

The small man shook his head and took a step forward. Corgar drew back like a threatened dog, crouching a little behind the ramparts. He
snarled at this, aware of the gazes of the other goblins upon him, and drew himself to his full height again. He wanted to hurl broken stones at the head of that mortal but dared not forget himself so blindly.

“I need no friends to do the work that has been purposed for me,” said the Chronicler, and his voice was clear and deep. “Step down from those high walls, Corgar, and face me. Fight me in single combat, and he who carries the day will be Master of Gaheris.”

He should laugh. Corgar, feeling his servants watching him, knew he should laugh in the face of such a foolish proposition. He should laugh and accept the challenge, then pound this mortal nothing into dust. He should break him and enchain him as he had done with all the powerful warriors of Gaheris, and when the little man's shame was absolute, he should tear off his head.

They were waiting. All his warriors who looked to him as they might look to their king. They waited for that mocking laugh they knew must come.

Somehow Corgar could not find the breath for it. Instead, he growled, “So be it, mortal. If you are so eager to venture into Death's realm.”

“Oh no,” said the Chronicler softly so that the goblin could not hear. “I've seen Death's realm, and I have no intention of returning.”

Corgar disappeared from the wall above. In the moments before the gate opened, Leta moved forward and placed a hand on the Chronicler's shoulder. He felt it there but did not turn to her. His face set into such lines that anyone who looked upon him would have seen the lineage of earls from which he was sprung—earls and fighting men and masters of great lands. Yet his body was still that of a dwarf, and he looked no more than a child when he stepped toward the gates to meet the monster emerging from within. Corgar's hand could have crushed his whole head without apparent strain.

Yet it was the goblin who trembled as he took the field beyond Gaheris's walls. In one hand he bore his knife, still stained with the blood of the goblin guard he'd slashed. In his other, he carried a club fixed with spikes after the fashion of goblin-kind. He wore no armor, for what was the need? His hide could break the blade of any mortal weapon set against him. Indeed, most immortal weapons as well.

“All right, small man,” he snarled as he approached. His gaze flickered
momentarily to Leta standing beyond, but he did not allow it to linger there. Time enough for such dealings when the pest was duly squashed. “I hereby lay claim to the mastery of this land once and for all.”

The Chronicler drew his sword.

Corgar saw it and knew it, and he breathed out a curse. “Halisa!”