The Blacktongue Thief

14 Witchling

I awoke on a torn and burned stretch of sheet, probably an old horse-blanket from the days of horses, with a pile of straw packed under it—my circumstances were not yet so poor that I would have called it a bed. A bit of flame provided the only light, but it was moving around so, at first I thought of a child circling me, moving a candle up and down, but as my head cleared, I saw that it was one of the smudge-wasps like those that lit the stairwell. Such a clever bit of magic! The Low School had lamps enchanted to burn brighter but weirdly cool (this to spare danger to the precious books we read), but that was little more than a cantrip, and you had to fill them with whale oil like any other lamp. But a wasp? I wondered, did they come when called? Within fifty heartbeats, I had figured out they responded to Galtish, ignored Holtish, and had burned myself a good one telling it to come before I figured out how to make it go.

Now it stopped responding to me and started butting up against the door, smoke curling from wee black spots where it touched. It wanted out. I let it out, and it flew into the hallway but waited for me. I was being summoned.

It led me through ever narrower earthen tunnels until we went down a ladder, at the bottom of which lay a trapdoor. The wasp butted against it until I lifted the door and let it through. Weak light flooded up, and the creature went down. The door seemed to open to a long drop up into dark gray sky shot with holes of distant, lighter gray. I risked a leg, then two, hanging straight-armed now from the ladder’s bottom rung, at eye level with a ceiling of inverted grass, where an upside-down squirrel chittered at me, then ran down a tree. I heard laughter and smelled food.

“Let go, you feeble babe. Do you fear to fall into the sun? For Norholt hasn’t any.”

I let go, and as the world flipped, I was ready for it this time, and landed on my feet. I heard Galva laughing and looked to see her sitting astride a sort of bucking horse made from wicker and twisted wood, its head a carved horse’s head that looked to have been a ship’s prow from the seas, its overlarge eyes painted white and wide as if in killing wrath.

The witch stood near, holding the automaton-horse’s reins, tall in long skirts hiding the borrowed corpse’s legs that would carry her for a few days until the smell made her quit them. I guessed she hadn’t yet sorted out how to stop them rotting. She was grinning a broad, froggy grin to see the Spanth so happy. Not that it was only happiness, I guess. To feel that counterfeit horse so near to what the real thing felt like beneath her must have thrilled her and grieved her both, as it thrilled and grieved me to see the half-forgotten shape we once took for granted, woman on horse. By the ears of Fothannon, the thing moved like a real horse, too. I wanted to touch it but also didn’t, because the feeling of dry reeds instead of the moist bite of sweaty hide would break my heart.

The witch let drop the reins, and off they galloped, Galva now standing in the stirrups over a small jump, now hugging its neck to duck low branches, all the birds in the trees chattering their displeasure with the commotion. All at once, I wanted to be on the back of the thing, to go fast like that. That’s what the goblins took from us, our speed. Our beautiful, noble, deadly speed.

Now the only way to go so fast as a horse would carry you was to sail on the sea or fall from a height, and both would end in tears. I hated goblins even then, though I had never yet seen a live one. I hated what they had done to us, and all the things we’d done to them didn’t seem enough to pay for this great four-legged hole in us. Only when a cloud of gnats flew into my mouth did I realize I’d been standing with it open in a child’s simple grin. I wiped my tongue off on my sleeve and spat, and when I looked up, here came Galva and scooped me up around the hip, swinging me into place behind her.

We tore around the clearing in great circles, both of us laughing, until Deadlegs said, “That’s enough. You’ve only an hour on it, and we’ve drained a twelfth of that. Maybe more, since that mail shirt you wear is doubtless sapping it.” At that, the Spanth reined the clockwork beast and brought it to a trot and then a stop. We slid off, and no sooner had we than it shuddered and folded into itself until it became a walking-staff of ash, with a small horse’s head for a top-knob and a grip of roan horsehide under that.

“You’ve a Spanth’s touch for riding, and no mistake,” Deadlegs said. “I think you’ve all got a drop of horse blood in you.”

“All my blood misses them. And this…,” Galva said, looking at the staff in awe. “A general could do much with a hundred knights riding these. She could turn a battle.”

“Yes, she could. She could also half kill a hundred witches of my strength making them, but there’s the problem. There aren’t ten in the world who can do this, and for a moon’s worth of work, you get an hour. Just one hour. Use it well.”

Galva nodded and turned to walk off, but Deadlegs wasn’t done with her.

“And use my great-niece well, or I’ll hear of it, and you’ve been such a friend to us, we’ll both rue that day.”

Before we left the Snowless Wood and the Downward Tower, we sat at outdoor tables in a grove, the tables covered with white linen and wildflowers, and we were feasted with berries, bread, and game. Several folks I didn’t know, folks who had the look of farmers, ate at the witch’s table, too, wishing her health and praising her kitchen, which was nowhere to be seen. I had no idea how Deadlegs prepared the lot, but I would have been surprised if it involved stoves and pans. This witch spent so much magic on animating servants and preserving her upside-down tower, it would be a wonder if she had any left to do battle. And yet a wonder she was, and I had no doubt of it.

What gave me pause was the thought of what she might be capable of if she let all this go and simply went to war. Pity the king or legion on the wrong side of that. Deadlegs was one of the great magickers who had spurned the Magickers Guild, in the same category as that infamous mixer of ravens and beasts, Knockburr, Fulvir, and maybe six or seven others of their caliber. Deadlegs made the Arcane Masters at the Low School, and their more pretentious cousins in the Magickers Guild, look like dockside swindlers. At least the ones I had met.

The food was the best I’d had since I don’t know when. The witch’s girl, whose name I learned was Norrigal, said the trees had snared the game for us—mostly rabbits, squirrels, and pigeons, but one young roebuck, too.

“The roebuck never would have been taken, but it stopped and barked at one of the trees, and the tree didn’t like that, so it ran a branch through him. It was too heavy for the trees to pass us by branch, so the squash-man had to fetch him, after he finished his rest. But here he is at table, peppered and salted and with a good crust of garlic. It angers Haros to waste deer flesh.”

“That it does,” I said, feeling it sounded lecherous even though that wasn’t how I meant it. The thought of Haros with his stag’s horns and his permanently hard deer-cock pointing up was putting notions in my head. Norrigal blinked slow, and I didn’t know what that meant, but it gave me time to see she had tattoos on her eyelids, faint reddy brown like mine. Tattoos of eyes. This girl would have magicked sight of some kind, whether for distance or darkness or catching lies. Another reason to feel nervous around her, as if I needed one. Nothing I said to Norrigal sounded the way I wanted it to. If my token for her was her white arm perfect against a dark door, her thought for me will have been a dog pissing fast against a tree, or so I felt when I spoke to her. Well, if I sounded leering, she was the one who brought Haros into it.

“Anyway, roebucks have an ugly bark. Like old men yelling,” I said, trying to get Haros out from between us.

After the feast, Deadlegs strode over on those legs borrowed from the hanged man. I could smell them already—at this rate, they wouldn’t last her more than another day or so before they became too foul to use, no matter what she rubbed on to preserve them. It was an impractical matter, grafting corpse’s legs beneath her, but the act inspired awe, as it was meant to. These Norholt peasants she’d fed looked at her like half a god, and I can’t swear she wasn’t.

She fixed my eyes with hers and presented me a sharp, curved knife with a bone handle and golden runes etched into the copper blade, runes promising to send whatever blood fell on them straight to the gods. Deadlegs saw me looking at them, said, “Do you believe that?”

The runes were in an old Galtish tongue I shouldn’t have known. I bit back my answer.

“You think I don’t know what you are?” she said. “That you have the gift for reading? Now tell me, do you believe in sacrifice?”

“I do.”

Norrigal walked up and joined us.

“You’ll offer something to Solgrannon, then,” said Deadlegs, meaning Solgrannon the wolf, the blood-muzzled Galtish god of war and manhood. I looked about and noticed a number of Galtish gods represented by statues in the grove, even Fothannon the Fox. No sooner had I seen the altar-stone with the wooden wolf near it than she took my shoulder in her strong, old hand and steered me there.

“You’ve something to learn I can’t teach you with words.” At that, she made a gesture with her thumb, and a young rabbit leapt through the grass and into her hand. She took it by its hind legs and held it over the stone, looking at me.

“Learn?” I said. “I’ve killed a rabbit before.”

“Stop your mouth. Think of a wolf now and give this rabbit doe to Solgrannon against the troubles to come. I know you’ll want to serve the lord of foxes by farting on the butter or the like, but I think he’s fond enough of you already. You’ll need the blood-muzzled wolf for iron and bite.”

I’m not squeamish, and if I’m a little sentimental, it’s not so much I can’t kill an animal for food or magic. Still, I stayed my hand, just looking at the rabbit. It looked smarter than it should. It turned, upside down as it was, and looked at me, its nose a-quiver. To my great surprise it now batted a forepaw at my knife-hand. I opened my mouth a little, and it did it again. It wanted me to kill it.

“Kinch Na Shannack,” she said, “turn your thoughts to Solgrannon and cut the sweet doe’s throat before ill befalls us.”

I did it.

I grabbed the little thing’s ears and stretched it taut while the witch held its feet, and then I cut its throat. We laid it on the altar as it twitched and bled, and that’s when it happened. It twitched harder and harder and became a wolf, the big gray wolf from the hearth.

It shook its coat like a wet dog and now licked my forehead, and I swear its big, hot tongue almost knocked me over.

“The blessings of Solgrannon go with you,” she said. “For I’ve more than half an idea you’ll need him.” Now she dabbed blood on my forehead, and her own, and on Norrigal for good measure.

Galva joined us after the sacrifice. The four of us walked together and spoke, and I was glad to be included. Norrigal was coming with us all the way west, I learned. Whatever Galva was heading to do in the giantlands, these witches were in full support of it. Then the great witch turned to me, wobbling as the hanged man’s knee beneath her buckled.

“I’ve had a look through that head of yours,” Deadlegs said to me, “and it’s clear to me the Guild hasn’t entrusted you with what business they’ll want you to do in Oustrim.”

“That’s right.”

Now a rabbit jumped across our path. I was pretty sure it was the same doe whose throat I just cut, which told me something important about that spell.

“I also saw that you’re loyal to my Ispanthian friend, in your way. You’ll do your best to keep Galva safe so long as she does the same for you.”

I nodded, feeling uneasy. What else had she seen? Did she have any inkling how infatuated I was with Norrigal?

“More than an inkling,” she said, though I’d not spoken to her, and she winked. “That’s her business.”

“Hey,” I said. “That’s not neighborly, poking about in my thoughts.”

“It’s necessary.”

“Well, you found what you wanted, so get out of it.”

“Make me.”

“Fair point.”

“Just know this, Kinch Na Shannack—though I haven’t the legs to go with you, my arm is long to reach you. Your Guild is worse than you know. It’s the water drives the wheel. It’s why we who tap magic’s deep drafts live on the margins, that we wouldn’t bow to them and won’t. Your Guild magickers are shyte, all smokepuffs and powdered faces and weak fire, all informers against the ones who mix bones, and swivel, and make stone men move. Their Guild, like your own for purse-nips and killers, is half a racket to bend lads and lasses into debt. Oh, they’ve got some few strong magickers, but only passing strong. I could use the best of them for a soup spoon.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again. I had suspected the Magickers Guild was run by the Takers Guild, but I’d never heard it said by one so like to know. And if my thief-masters at the Takers had the Magickers Guild by the hair, were there others? Were the yellow-garbed adolescents of the Runners Guild, or the dark-handed women at the Dyers’ vats also beholden to my beloved/hated Guild? If so, the scope of their true power would be dizzying.

“And what of you?” this true witch said, looking at me with such intent, her gaze burned cold. “They’re still taking your measure, I’d say. They’ve not got you so firm as they think. There’s more to you than they know, much more, and I’ve some hope you’ll turn away from them, and a thorn to them you’ll surely be if you do. But make no error—if a time comes when the Guild’s business turns you against these two, I’ll deal with you as though I’d never met you.”

“If our paths diverge,” I said, “I’ll go my way in peace and friendship.”

“I believe in that event you’ll do so … if you’re able to. So you’ll keep your pretty skin today, and take my blessing on your way.”

I had the feeling that last was from an old Braycish bard’s poem, but I couldn’t remember which one or if it ended happily.

Most of them didn’t.