At last the heavy chains clinked. “Is that you, little daughter?” Her voice was weary. After a while she stood and shuffled forward. Even in the faint light, she had a terrible, dying look. My hand stole to the purse that hung around my neck. I touched my golden Tree as I said a silent prayer, then felt the curve of that other thing, which I had carried with me since the night of my mother’s death. In a moment that seemed to have its own light, quite separate from the flickering glow of the torch, I pulled out the dragon’s claw and extended it to her through the bars.
The witch raised an eyebrow as she took it from me. She carefully turned it over in her palm, then smiled sadly. “A poisoned owl’s claw. Very appropriate. Is this for me to use on my captors? Or on myself?”
I shrugged helplessly. “You want to be free” was all I could say.
“Not with this, little daughter,” she said. “At least, not this time. As it happens, I have already surrendered—or, rather, I have bargained. I have agreed to give your stepfather what he thinks he wants in exchange for my freedom. I must see and feel the sky again.” Gently, she handed me back the claw.
I stared at her, almost sick with the need to know things. “Why won’t you tell me your name?”
Another sad smile. “Because my true name I give to no one. Because any other name would be a lie.”
“Tell me a lie, then.”
“A strange household, indeed! Very well. The people of the north call me Valada.”
I tried it on my tongue. “Valada. He will set you free now?”
“Soon, if the bargain is honored on both sides.”
“What is it, this bargain?”
“A bad one for everyone.” She saw my look. “You do not want to know, truly. Someone will die because of this madness—I see it as clearly as I see your face peering through the door.”
My heart was a piece of cold stone in my breast. “Someone will die? Who?”
Her expression became weary, and I could see that standing with the weight of her shackles was an effort for her. “I do not know. And in my weariness, I have already told you too much, little daughter. These are not matters for you.”
I was dismissed, even more miserable and confused. The witch would be free, but someone else would die. I could not doubt her word—no one could, who had seen her fierce, sad eyes as she spoke. As I walked back to my bedchamber, the halls of the Inner Bailey seemed a place entirely new, a strange and unfamiliar world.
M
y feelings for Tellarin were still astonishingly strong, but in the days after the witch’s foretelling I was so beset with unhappiness that our love was more like a fire that made a cold room habitable than a sun which warmed everything, as it had been. If my soldier had not had worries of his own, he would certainly have noticed.
The cold inside me became a chill like deepest winter when I overheard Tellarin and Avalles speaking about a secret task Lord Sulis had for them, something to do with the witch. It was hard to tell what was intended—my beloved and his friend did not themselves know all that Sulis planned, and they were speaking only to each other, and not for the benefit of their secret listener. I gathered that my stepfather’s books had shown him that the time for some important thing had drawn close. They would build or find some kind of fire. It would take them on a short journey by night, but they did not say—or perhaps did not yet know—on what night. Both my beloved and Avalles were clearly disturbed by the prospect.
If I had feared before, when I thought the greatest risk was to my poor, addled stepfather, now I was almost ill with terror. I could barely stumble through the remaining hours of the day, so consumed was I with the thought that something might happen to Tellarin. I dropped my beadwork so many times that Ulca took it away from me at last.
When dark came, I could not get to sleep for hours, and when I did I woke up panting and shuddering from a dream in which Tellarin had fallen into flames and was burning just beyond my reach.
I lay tossing in my bed all the night. How could I protect my beloved? Warning him would do no good. He was stubborn, and also saved his deepest beliefs for those things he could grasp and touch, so I knew he would put little stock in the witch’s words. In any case, even if he believed me, what could he do? Refuse an order from Lord Sulis because of a warning from me, his secret lover? No, it would be hopeless to try to persuade Tellarin not to go—he spoke of his loyalty to his master almost as often as he did of his feelings for me.
I was in an agony of fearful curiosity. What did my stepfather plan? What had he read in those books, that he now would risk not just his own life, but that of my beloved as well?
Not one of them would tell me anything, I knew. Even the witch had said that the matter was not for me. Whatever I discovered would be by my own hand.
I resolved to look at my stepfather’s books, those that he kept hidden from me and everyone else. Once it would have been all but impossible, but now—because he sat reading and writing and whispering to himself all the night’s dark hours—I could trust that when Sulis did sleep, he would sleep like the dead.
I
stole into my stepfather’s chambers early the next morning. He had sent his servants away weeks before, and the castle-folk no longer dared rap on his doors unless summoned. The rooms were empty but for my stepfather and me.
He lay sprawled across his bed, his head hanging back over the edge of the pallet. Had I not known how moderate most of his habits were, I would have thought from his deep, rough breathing and the way he had disordered the blankets that he had drunk himself stuporous, but Sulis seldom took even a single cup of wine.
The key to the locked boxes was on a cord around his neck. As I tugged it out of his shirt with as much care as I could, I could not help but see how much happier he appeared with the blankness of sleep on him. The furrows on his brow had loosened, and his jaw was no longer clenched in the grimace of distraction that had become his constant
expression. In that moment, although I hated what he had done to the witch Valada, I pitied him. Whatever madness had overtaken him of late, he had been a kind man in his way, in his time.
He stirred and made an indistinct sound. Heart beating swiftly, I hurried to draw the cord and key over his head.
When I had found the wooden chests and unlocked them, I began to pull out and examine my stepfather’s forbidden books, leafing quickly and quietly through each in turn, with one ear cocked for changes in his breathing. Most of the plainbound volumes were written in tongues I did not know, two or three in characters I could not even recognize. Those of which I could understand a little seemed to contain either tales of the fairy-folk or stories about the High Keep during the time of the Northmen.
A good part of an hour had passed when I discovered a loosely bound book titled
Writings of Vargellis Sulis, Seventh Lord of Honsa Sulis, Now Master of the Sulean House in Exile
. My stepfather’s careful hand filled the first pages densely, then grew larger and more imperfect as it continued, until the final pages seemed almost to have been scribed by a child still learning letters.
A noise from the bed startled me, but my stepfather had only grunted and turned on his side. I continued through the book as swiftly as I could. It seemed to be only the most recent of a lifetime’s worth of writings—the earliest dates in the volume were from the first year we had lived in the High Keep. The bulk of the pages listed tasks to be performed in the High Keep’s rebuilding, and records of important judgments Sulis had made as lord of the keep and its tenant lands. There were other notations of a more personal nature, but they were brief and unelaborated. For that terrible day almost three years earlier, he had written only
“Cynethrith Dead of Chest Fever. She shall be Buried on the Headland.”
The sole mention of me was a single sentence from several months before—
“Breda happy Today.”
It was oddly painful to me that my somber stepfather should have noticed that and made a record of it.
The later pages held almost no mention of the affairs of either home or governance, as in daily life Sulis had also lost interest in both. Instead, there were more and more notes that seemed to be about things he had read in other books—one said
“Plesinnen claims that Mortality is consumed in God as a Flame consumes Branch or Bough. How
then
…” with the rest smudged—one word might have been “
nails,
” and further on I could make out “
Holy Tree.
” Another of his notes listed several “
Doorways
” that had been located by someone named Nisses, with explanations next to each that explained nothing at all—
“Shifted,”
read my stepfather’s shaky hand beside one, or
“from a Time of No Occupation,”
or even
“Met a Dark Thing.
”
It was only on the last two pages that I found references to the woman in the cell below the throne room.
“Have at Last rec’d Word of the woman called Valada,”
the scrawl stated.
“No one else Living North of Perdruin has Knowledge of the Black Fire. She must be Made to Speak what she knows.”
Below that, in another day’s even less disciplined hand, was written,
“The Witch balks me, but I cannot have another Failure as on the Eve of Elysiamansa. Stoning Night will be next Time of Strong Voices beneath the Keep. Walls will be Thin. She will show me the Way of Black Fire or there is no other Hope. Either she will answer, or Death.”
I sat back, trying to make sense of it all. Whatever my stepfather planned, it would happen soon—Stoning Night was the last night of Avrel, only a few days away. I could not tell from his writings if the witch was still in danger—did he mean to kill her if she failed, or only if she tried to cheat his bargain with her?—but I had no doubt that this search for the thing called Black Fire would bring danger to everyone else, most importantly and most frighteningly my soldier, Tellarin. Again my stepfather murmured in his sleep, an unhappy sound. I locked his books away and stole out again.
All that day I felt distracted and feverish, but this time it was not love that fevered me. I was terrified for my lover and fearful for my stepfather and the witch Valada, but what I knew and how I had discovered it I could not tell to anyone. For the first time since my soldier had kissed me, I felt alone. I was full up with secrets, and unlike Sulis, had not even a book to which they could be confided.
I would follow them, I decided at last. I would follow them into the place my stepfather spoke of, the place beneath the keep where the walls were thin and the voices strong. While they searched for the Black Fire, I would watch for danger. I would protect them all. I would be their angel.
Stoning Night came around at last.
Even had I not read my stepfather’s writings, I think I would have known that the hour had come in which they meant to search for Black Fire, because Tellarin was so distracted and full of shadows. Although he admitted nothing to me as we lay together in my bedchamber, I could feel that he was anxious about what would happen that night. But he was bound to my stepfather by honor and blood, and had no choice.
He snapped at me when I kissed his ear and curled my fingers in his hair. “Give a man some peace, girl.”
“Why are you a man and I am a girl?” I teased him, pretending a lightness I did not truly feel. “Is there such a difference in our ages? Have I not given to you already that which makes me a woman?”
My soldier was short-tempered and did not hear the love in what I said. “Anybody who will not leave off when she is asked proves herself still a child. And I am a man because I wear a soldier’s badge, and because if my master asks, I must give my life.”
Tellarin was five years my elder, and in those long-ago days I was almost as impressed by the difference as he was, but I think now that all men are younger than their women, especially when their honor has been touched.
As he stared at the ceiling his face turned from angry to solemn, and I knew he was thinking of what he must do that night. I was frightened too, so I kissed him again, softly this time, and apologized.
When he had gone, full of excuses meant to hide his actual task, I prepared for my own journey. I had hidden my thickest cloak and six fat candles where Ulca and the other serving-women would not find them. When I was dressed and ready, I touched my mother’s golden Tree where it lay against my heart, and said a prayer for the safety of all who would go with me into darkness.
S
toning Night—the last night of Avrel, on the eve of Maia-month, the black hours when tales say spirits walk until driven back to their graves by dawn and the crowing cock. The High Keep lay silent around me as I followed my beloved and the others through the dark. It did not feel so much that the castle slept as that the great keep held its breath and waited.
There is a stairwell beneath the Angel Tower, and that was where
they were bound. I learned of it for the first time on that night, as I stood wrapped in my dark cloak, listening from the shadows of the wall opposite the tower. Those I followed were four—my stepfather, Tellarin and his friend Avalles, and the woman Valada. Despite the bargain she had made, the witch’s arms were still chained. It saddened me to see her restrained like an animal.