The Ragwitch (12 page)

“Paul, Quigin—you must go,” said Deamus. “And Sevaun, you must go with them.”

The girl wrinkled her forehead, and said, “Oh, do I have to?”

Deamus looked at her sternly, much more sternly than his father ever could, thought Paul, and Sevaun nodded reluctantly, without speaking.

“Come on then,” she said to Paul and Quigin. “Go down to the harbor steps while I say goodbye to Mother.”

“Goodbye, Paul,” said Deamus. “Goodbye, Quigin—and Leasel.”

Paul started to answer, when a shout filled the air, and a fisherman reeled out of a nearby house, clutching his neck. A loud, hissing shriek followed his scream, and Gwarulch poured out of the doorway—huge, vicious shapes that towered over the fisherfolk, who fell back before their sweeping talons and snapping fangs. Then Rellen was charging at them, shouting, “To me Donbreye!”

At once, or so it seemed to Paul, there were charging people everywhere, and the village resounded with roaring war cries, Gwarulch howls and the sharp screech of talons meeting steel.

“Go! Go!” shouted Deamus, before he was swallowed up in the fighting, his lanky form taller than all but the Gwarulch, and his sword out and stabbing fiercely.

Paul took one last look, and then ran for the
harbor steps, heart pounding at the thought of a Gwarulch leaping on his back. Running behind him, Quigin almost fell over Leasel, and his hat tumbled off, only to be snatched up by the faithful hare. Sevaun ran some way behind, and kept pausing to look back.

“Hold hands and close your eyes,” she shouted at them over the noise of the battle, “and hold your hare, you!”

The boys did as they were told, though both were afraid to shut their eyes. Sevaun watched them for a second, and then began to dance, her wooden clogs clattering on the steps in a rhythmic pattern. As she danced, the sounds of fighting seemed to fade, until the boys could only hear her footsteps, and a sort of gurgling, watery chant Sevaun sang in a very high voice. Then Paul felt her wand touch his nose and mouth—and all at once he was choking, and coughing, just like when he had drowned before.

“Quickly, jump in the water!” shouted Sevaun, and as Paul opened his eyes and goggled at her stupidly, trying desperately to breathe, she raised one small heavily clogged foot and knocked him sideways off the steps and into the water.

Quigin looked at her, threw a protesting Leasel in, and jumped straight after. Sevaun took one last look behind her before touching the wand to her own face and dropping into the water below.

In that brief instant, she saw Rellen vainly trying
to stem the tide of Gwarulch, as more and more of the vile creatures pushed against the fisherfolk and their wall of pikes. They had already broken their way through in several places, and the hedgehog was disintegrating into one vast, swirling mass of hand-to-hand fighting.

As the waters closed over her head, she heard Rellen’s voice, dim and far away: “Break south! Anyone who can, break south!”

E
VERY LIVING THING
must have left this area or died, thought Julia, as she walked past the piles of bones and long-dead bushes that lined the dried-up stream—but she still stopped every now and then to look ahead, particularly when the husks of trees clustered together, making a perfect place for something to hide.

The yellowed hills were long behind her now, and she felt that it was time for a drink, if there was a clean-looking water hole somewhere. The stream had cut a deep gully into the dried earth, so Julia had to climb down the crumbling banks, to the squelchy mud that lined the bottom of the stream. A very thin trickle of water ran murkily through the mud. Julia eyed it distastefully, and decided to keep walking.

After another hour, Julia was having second
thoughts about drinking from the dirty trickle. There’d been a few pools of water along the stream, but all of them were full of yellowish mud and small insects. They also smelled like compost.

Julia looked at the latest dirty pool and its swimming insects, and then up at the sky, hoping to see signs of a memory change. If everything went back to green fields and clear streams she thought, life would be much easier.

She was starting to laugh at the idea that anything could be easy while you were trapped inside an evil Witch’s mind, when there was a faint splash somewhere behind her—as if something had disturbed one of the pools farther back along the winding gully. Quickly, Julia held out her wand, ready to touch whatever was approaching.

For a few seconds, everything was completely still. Julia held her breath and listened more intently—and caught the slight sound of metal clinking and the sucking noise of footsteps in the mud.

Gripping the wand so hard her knuckles shone white, Julia took a few hesitant steps towards the last corner of the gully, her mind flashing through pictures of all the terrible creatures she’d seen through the Ragwitch’s eyes—or that She had shown Julia from Her memory. And now, Julia was in that memory…

But the thing that rounded the corner was like nothing she’d seen before, a shambling man-sized monster, caked in mud and dried blood, with black
and silver rags hanging from its twisted shape in a fall of tatters. Rusted iron rings clinked under the cloth as it shambled along like a broken mechanical monkey, all hunched over, its arms trailing along in front. The beast stopped in front of Julia and slowly, almost as if it had forgotten how, it straightened its back—and looked at Julia through clear blue eyes set in a face curled back in a bestial grimace.

With a shock, Julia realized that it was a man—somehow twisted and altered, but definitely human. It looked at her for a second, and she felt the tiredness and the horror in it, even as its mouth opened to snarl, and the bandied legs bent for the killing spring.

Screaming, Julia thrust the wand out, striking the beast’s chest as it sprang. It knocked her down into the stream where, half-blinded with mud, she scrabbled fearfully for the wand, expecting to feel ripping teeth and claws within seconds. Then she felt the familiar golden warmth of the wand under her hand, and having hold of it once again, she sat up, wiping cold mud from her face. Eyes clear, she looked around—but there was no sign of the creature.

Still trembling with shock, Julia got to her feet, the wand held ready against attack. The creature was lying on its back in the mud, a few meters upstream. Golden sparks trailed up and down its body, and a yellow light flickered all around. Very
faintly, Julia could hear Lyssa singing, and the distant hum of harp strings lightly struck.

She watched entranced as the sparks stripped away the bestial features and straightened out the body of the creature, though they didn’t remove the mud and dried blood. As Lyssa had said, the wand was revealing the creature’s true form. No longer a twisted monster, it was a man of thirty or so, with long red-brown hair and a worried face, lined with cares and trouble.

Despite this welcome change of appearance, Julia kept the wand ready. Lyssa had told her that it would reveal something’s true nature…and it had, but the man might still be a servant of the Ragwitch. Or rather, the memory of one. Julia looked at the sky again, hoping for a memory change that would remove this person before he woke up. But the sky remained blue and calm, with the sun beating down on the arid fields and the dried-out stream—and the man was waking up, and muttering. Curious, Julia edged a little closer to see what he was saying.

“Torches…more torches,” he mumbled, eyelids flickering. “The barricades…will they stop the Stone Knights? Bring more to the…”

“Stone Knights…” whispered Julia to herself. “He must have been fighting the Angarling…”

She hesitantly reached out and shook him, careful to keep the wand ready in her left hand.

“Were you at Bevallan…or the Namyr Gorge?”
asked Julia. She could think of no other place where he would have fought Angarling. But if he was just a memory, surely he should be in a place that was the memory of Bevallan?

I wish Lyssa were here to explain it all, thought Julia, as she struggled with the idea of being in the Ragwitch’s memory, and how this man-beast could belong to Her recollection of parched hills and dried-out streams.

She shook the man again, slightly harder, and he stopped mumbling to himself and his eyes began to open. Julia moved back a couple of steps as he raised himself up on one elbow and looked blearily around.

He frowned when he saw Julia, but not in anger. More as if he were puzzled, and couldn’t understand what was going on. Julia noticed that his hand automatically crept to his side, as if seeking a sword.

The man looked around the stream-bed again, and then back at Julia. He made no move to get up, but Julia stepped back, for there was still something dangerous in his look.

“Where are we, girl?” asked the man. “How far are we from Yendre?”

Julia stepped back, and didn’t answer. How could they be close to or far from anything, trapped inside the Ragwitch’s mind?

“Speak…I mean you no harm—unless you are one of Her servants.”

Julia looked back at him for a moment, and saw that behind all the mud, dried blood and danger, there was something human and kind in the man, something Her creatures never had.

“No,” said Julia. “I am an enemy of the Ragwitch.”

“The Ragwitch?” said the man, clumsily getting up onto his knees. “I know nothing of a rag…witch. I am speaking of the North-Queen, as She now calls Herself.”

“The North-Queen…” said Julia, thinking back to what Lyssa had told her. “But the Ragwitch is the North-Queen…She has come back in a different form.” Then she remembered that she was effectively in the past. Here, in Her memory, it still was the time of the North-Queen. But how was she going to explain that?

The man was silent for a moment, his breath wheezing as he stood up and steadied himself against the side of the gully. “You speak in riddles, girl. But I admit my mind lies heavy in my head, and I misremember…we were retreating to Yendre, and the Gwarulch were close behind, and She not far behind them…”

He paused to wipe his eyes, his hands shaking with the effort. Without thinking, she got out her handkerchief, and wiped the mud from his eyes. He looked at her as she cleaned off the mud, but his eyes were far away.

“My thanks,” he said. “My body seems weaker than my mind. For now that I remember, it was the
Citadel at Yendre I last saw, with the great gate borne down by the Stone Knights, and the red flicker of Gwarulch eyes in the moonlight. My guards…my friends…fell about my feet as we were driven down into the very cellars of the keep. My sword shattered on an Angarling back, and then She was standing above me…with Gwarulch pinning me to the floor. I begged Her to slay me, but there was nothing human left in that beautiful shell…She just looked, and said nothing. Then there was a strange room, of air like water, and a globe of white light…a prison cell, where She spoke to me and showed the wasteland that was once my Kingdom. And then…the cold and darkness, and vague unformed memories—for a long, long time. And now at last, I have woken, though it be in some desert wasteland.”

“The white globe…” whispered Julia. “Then you’re not a memory either…”

“A memory?” asked the man, trying to smile. “What do you mean?”

“This isn’t a desert,” began Julia slowly. “It’s worse than that…”

“Worse?” asked the man, managing a brief smile. “It could be no worse than the prison of the white globe.”

“But it’s the same!” cried Julia. “We’re in Her memory—this is just a memory of a place, and the place with the white globe is just another part of Her horrible mind!”

As soon as she’d said it, Julia wished she’d told him in a nicer way. He seemed even weaker, leaning against the side of the gully, his breath coming in long, wheezing gasps—but he seemed to understand. When he finally spoke, he talked into the side of the gully, and didn’t look at Julia.

“You called Her the Ragwitch…and said She was the same North-Queen, that She had come back. Where did She come back from? How was She made to go? And what has happened to the Kingdom?”

“I’m not really sure,” said Julia. “I’m not from your Kingdom…but I know that when She was the North-Queen she beat everyone, and ruled the Kingdom, destroying it with Her creatures and Magic—these dried-up lands must be a memory from that time. But then the Magi and the Wild Magic attacked Her, and everyone thought that was the end of the North-Queen. But She wasn’t dead—just trapped in a different world—and She had to make herself a new body, so she became the Ragwitch. And for hundreds of years the Kingdom was all right, till…till She managed to get back. And now She wants to destroy everything!”

Julia trembled a bit on the last few words, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t look at her, for his eyes were full of tears, and he whispered, “I am King Mirran, and it was I who let a young Witch cast the spells that took her to the
Nameless Realm, and the lure of evil. And it was I who could have stopped her in the early days of her power, when the Angarling made their slow way up from the sea. And still, there is no end…no end.”

He paused and took a ragged breath before turning to Julia.

“Now, tell me—what is your part in this?”

Julia trembled at the idea of telling this King that she was the one who’d helped the Ragwitch return, and for a second she almost ran away. But he looked so grim and terrible and sad that she slowly knelt down in the mud, and he sat beside her and listened: about how she found the Ragwitch, and what had followed after, at the Spire, and Bevallan and the Namyr Gorge.

“You have been led to help a great force of evil,” said Mirran, when she had finished. “But unwittingly so. I have done far greater wrong, with greater knowledge. You should not be ashamed.”

Julia bit her lip a little, and nodded, afraid that she would burst into tears if she said anything. She still felt awful for freeing the Ragwitch, but it wasn’t as if she’d done it on purpose, and it didn’t compare with King Mirran, who had suffered for so long. She briefly wondered why he hadn’t stopped the Witch all those years ago. She thought he was probably wondering too, sitting in the mud and brooding.

“Come on,” said Julia. “There is still hope. We
can fight Her by doing what Lyssa said—go to Her memory of the sea.”

“And what then?”

“Then,” she answered, “we find Anhyvar.”

“Anhyvar!” exclaimed Mirran, staggering to his feet. “Anhyvar! Don’t you know who she is?”

“No,” said Julia, surprised at his reaction. “Lyssa said she is a memory of the Ragwitch we have to find. A woman with long red hair, who wears a silver star…”

“Anhyvar,” interrupted Mirran bleakly, “is the Witch who became the North-Queen. Lyssa has sent you to find the Ragwitch’s memory of Her former human self.”

It was quiet under the water after the noise and tumult of the battle at Donbreye. Only the swish of bubbles as they moved disturbed the tranquility of the water. High above, a yellow-green glow marked the surface, quite different from the dim green light where Paul, Quigin, Sevaun and Leasel walked on the bottom of the sea.

Almost as soon as they’d all arrived on the seabed (Paul upside down and struggling), Sevaun had led them south at a brisk pace. At first she had been in danger of leaving them behind, as the boys and the hare floundered along, trying to walk normally. But they soon learned to half-swim, just using their feet to push off from the bottom every few meters—except Leasel, who gave up and was
now being carried in the front of Quigin’s shirt.

Paul was still the slowest, because he couldn’t really believe he was under the sea and still breathing. It was like a dream, but far more solid—in fact,
too
real, and after the first few minutes of worrying about drowning, Paul forgot about the strangeness in his efforts to keep up with the others.

Their half-swimming, half-walking progress was a lot of fun in the beginning, but after an hour or so, Paul was very tired. And the underwater world wasn’t half as interesting as the films he’d seen of tropical reefs and brightly colored fish. It was all green and weedy instead, and he’d only seen a couple of very drab fish—probably Trazel.

“Can we stop for a while?” he asked Sevaun. Surprisingly, the words were quite clear, and no bubbles came out of his mouth. All part of the spell, thought Paul, whose opinion of Sevaun was rather higher than his regard for most girls, partly because he was a bit frightened of anyone who could do real Magic…

Sevaun looked back as he spoke, and said, “I suppose so. But we should try and get a long way south, like…like Father said.”

Paul nodded, thinking back to Deamus and the fisherfolk…and the Gwarulch. He hoped they would all get away, but deep down, he knew that maybe none of them would escape, and even if they did, Donbreye would never again be the same
quiet fishing village. Sevaun was obviously thinking about them too; seeing her red eyes, Paul thought that she was probably crying, though the tears just mixed with water, and were washed away by the sea.

“They’ll be all right,” he said clumsily, wishing Julia were there to look after Sevaun as well as him. “We’ll meet up…”