Willow Read online

  The whip wavered, fell; but instead of landing across Madmartigan’s face it struck Rak’s haunch. The stallion surged forward, carrying Sorsha beyond earshot, cantering to the head of the column.

  The sergeant laughed hoarsely, yanking Madmartigan’s rope so tight that he could say nothing more. “You’ll pay for that. At Nockmaar you’ll pay and pay. Ah, you’ll give us all good sport, you and this little Peck.”

  “Locktwarr,” Willow murmured, his eyes shut tight again. “Tanna . . .”

  “Looth,” Raziel whispered. “Tanna looth . . .”

  Up they went, and up, winding ever higher into the mountains. Squalls and flurries swept down the slopes. As they went they were joined by other Nockmaar squads and search parties, summoned out of the valleys by the triumphant bellowing of the ram’s horn, sounded by Sorsha’s bugler. Many had Death Dogs. These froze Willow with terror as they trotted beside the mule, eying him. Their thick shoulders bunched and rippled. Their snouts wrinkled to show long fangs. Their hairless tails twitched.

  Most of the other groups stayed with Sorsha’s party only long enough to congratulate her on the capture of the child, and then they trotted ahead to the main Nockmaar encampment in the mountains, weary from their long search and anxious to rest.

  At evening on the third day, Sorsha’s men brought their prisoners to the encampment. It lay in a high valley near a fork in the road. To the left, an old and disused track had once taken travelers to Tir Asleen; to the right, the broader road led straight to Nockmaar. A camp of a hundred or so tents had been set up by this fork, growing steadily as the Nockmaar soldiers marshaled and prepared to return to the castle. It was a heavy place, all gray and black in the trampled snow. No music played there. No banners flew. Men drank in hunkering groups beside sullen fires. Most of their shelters were small; some, mere skin tarpaulins propped on sticks. Some were more spacious, with enclosed sides, and a few—the officers’ quarters—looked almost comfortable.

  General Kael rode out to meet them with two of his brigadiers. “Hail!” he greeted Sorsha as he approached, raising his mailed fist. “Your mother will be pleased!” He tried to smile but managed only to show his teeth. Seared, scarred, broken, his thick face could no longer express any real emotion. All its lineaments were set fast in that awful grimace. He looked like that when he gazed on a beautiful scene or a lovely creature. He looked like that when he watched the torturing of a child. He would look like that as he watched his own death come.

  “Kael!” Madmartigan whispered, crouching down and hiding his face as well as he could against the jerking of the rope. “All I need!”

  “You know him?”

  “We’ve met. Years ago. A small misunderstanding, but enough for him to remember me.”

  Kael gave the prisoners only a cursory glance before wheeling his horse in beside Sorsha and the lieutenant and roughly pulling back Elora’s blanket. The child howled as he twisted her small arm to see the Sign. “That’s it,” he grunted. “That’s the one. Send word to the queen.”

  One of the brigadiers spurred back to the camp, and by the time Sorsha and her prisoners arrived, a messenger on a fast horse was cantering off on the frozen road to Nockmaar.

  That night was the most awful of Willow’s life. Guards clamped an ankle manacle on him and tethered him to the wheel of a barred cart like those used to haul pregnant women to Nockmaar. They threw Madmartigan inside and hung Fin Raziel’s cage on the corner, where passing troopers could jeer and poke at her in the torchlight. All three of them got only scanty gruel to eat, and no shelter at all from the wintry winds of the plateau. Worst of all, Elora was taken away to Sorsha’s tent somewhere on the other side of that dark camp, and Willow could no longer see her or even hear her.

  It began to snow.

  Wet, cold, despairing, thoroughly miserable, Willow crept under the wagon and huddled there, whispering the names of his wife and children, and touching the braid of Kiaya’s hair like a magic amulet.

  “Have faith, little friend,” Madmartigan said softly from above. “All will be well. This isn’t the first cage Madmartigan’s been in, and I promise you it won’t be the last.”

  “Practice!” Fin Raziel hissed. “Work the charm! Work the earth!”

  “All right,” Willow said. “I’ll try.” Creeping to the edge of the wagon, he gathered some mud into his food bowl and stirred it into a soupy mess with wet snow. He held the bowl up in both hands and looked toward heaven, but there was no moon, there were no stars. The only light came from the flickering torches and dim fires of the camp.

  “Bah!” Madmartigan said. “That stinks!”

  Willow shrugged. “Earth, water, sky,” he said to Fin Raziel. “What’s next?”

  “Fire.”

  “I can’t do it, Raziel. I can’t get fire. It’s all too far away. They’ve got me chained here!”

  “Don’t give up, Willow! A way will come, I promise. Repeat the incantations.”

  “Hither walha, bairn deru, bordak bellanockt . . .”

  “No sword,” Madmartigan grumbled. “Just gibberish and a stinkpot!”

  “It’s not gibberish!” Fin Raziel hissed, shaking her small fist. “It’s the charm for the life-spark. All we need now is the fire.”

  Boots sloshed toward them through the icy mud. “Look out!” Willow whispered. “Kael!”

  Madmartigan faded into the shadows of the wagon, but not quickly enough. “You!” Kael growled. “I know you!” He strode up and grabbed the bars. “Come out here where I can see you!”

  “Know me? No, sir. I’d remember you. Oh yes, I’d . . .”

  “Madmartigan!”

  “What? No! My name’s Runge. Elbert Runge. But I knew Madmartigan. Oh yes, sir, I knew that scoundrel! And I’m glad to tell you he’s dead.”

  “Good! He stole one of my women!”

  “One of mine, too! That’s why I killed him. What a fight that was! Took half an afternoon before I skewered him. He was a good swordsman, I’ll give him that. But I’m better. I’m a master, General Kael. Let me out of here, and I’ll win this war for you.”

  Kael’s fist jabbed through the bars and seized Madmartigan by the throat, jerking his face against the bars. “This war’s already won! Bavmorda’ll decide what to do with you, you scum!” He flung Madmartigan onto the floor of the wagon and slogged away toward his tent.

  “Willow?” Fin Raziel said when he had gone, and when Madmartigan had stopped cursing. “Are you all right? Are you practicing?”

  “I can’t, Raziel. I’m shaking too much. And I’m too worried about Elora.”

  “You must practice! Worrying won’t help her. Only action will. Only the charm. You must make the wand your own and transform me now. Tonight!”

  “Tonight! But I’m not ready!”

  “You have to be, Willow. You have to be! Watch out, now!”

  Sorsha’s lieutenant came trudging up through the mud. He gave Raziel’s cage a shove that sent it swinging wildly, slamming against the wagon and toppling the little creature inside. He laughed at her confusion, and bent to unlock Willow’s manacle. “Come on, Peck! You’re wanted!” He seized Willow by the collar and hauled him off.

  “The bowl,” Raziel moaned, still swinging. “Take the booowl.”

  Somehow Willow managed to do that, concealing inside his coat the mixture of earth, water, and sky that needed only fire to be a magic potion.

  The lieutenant had a firm grip on his collar, and he dragged him unceremoniously through the mud of the camp. Crouched around their fires, drunken troopers shouted as they passed. “A Peck! Just what we need! Let’s have him, lieutenant. We’ll gut him and spit him!”

  Horses stomped in the darkness. From somewhere amid the tents came the sounds of a brawl. Willow bit his lip in terror, but he clung to the bowl.

  Sorsha’s was the only round tent in the camp. It stood apart from the others, on higher ground. Its roof sloped from a central pole down to other poles supporting a wall twice as high as
Willow. The shields of Sorsha’s personal guard ringed its periphery. Her pennant surmounted its peak, drifting in the smoke from inside.

  Willow heard Elora crying as they approached, and the sound struck fear into his belly. It was no ordinary crying. It was the desperate, choking wail of a very sick child. He knew it too well; Ranon had made that sound after he fell through the river ice and hovered five days between life and death. And Mims also had made that sound when she was an infant with such spasms of coughing that for awful moments she had stopped breathing entirely.

  “Your Highness, I’ve brought the Peck.”

  “Send him in.”

  The lieutenant let him go, and Willow straightened his coat and pushed aside the flap. The tent was dry and warm, lighted by several large candles and a fire in a brazier in its center. Freed of her armor and in looser garb, Sorsha sat cross-legged on a thick sleeping-carpet, with Elora beside her. She looked tense and worried. She glanced at Willow and then back at the screaming and coughing child on the floor.

  “I’ve tried everything. She won’t eat, won’t drink, won’t stop this howling. What’s wrong with her?”

  Willow took off his coat and laid it beside the brazier, keeping the bowl with the mud potion upright in its pocket.

  “Well, all this time you’ve been hounding us she’s been wet, and cold, and hungry. For another thing, these clothes are too tight. She’s half strangled. There, Elora. Is that better?” The baby stopped thrashing and sobbing, but she was coughing still. “And for another thing, Princess, babies like to be held.”

  “I’m not a mother. I don’t want . . .”

  “Here. Against your shoulder. Like this.” Willow placed Elora in her arms. The child’s fretting subsided a little. Her hand brushed Sorsha’s cheek.

  The princess almost smiled, but then her brow clouded again. “This child must be kept alive . . .”

  “Oh yes!”

  “. . . for a time. My mother needs her for the Ritual.”

  “She won’t die. I promise you. Not if I can help it. Please, rock her while I warm some milk.” Willow turned and busied himself at the brazier with the bowl of milk that Sorsha had laid out before his arrival. Behind, after a bit more coughing, Elora laughed, and when he looked around, the princess was smiling.

  “That man, Peck. Your companion.”

  “Madmartigan.”

  “Madmartigan, yes. Who is he?”

  “Just a warrior, Your Highness. A renegade.”

  “A wanderer.”

  “Yes. Please, give me Elora now.” Cradling the child, Willow dipped his finger into the warming milk and fed her. She hiccupped, waving her tiny fists for more. He smoothed her wisps of hair; she was coughing still, very hot and flushed.

  Sorsha yawned.

  “I’ll look after her, Your Highness, if you want to sleep.”

  “Ha! Steal her, you mean!”

  She went to the door and summoned her lieutenant. “Check often,” she told him, “and when this child sleeps, take the Peck back with the other prisoners.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  Sorsha loosened her belt, turning back toward her bed. She hesitated as she passed Willow and the restless child. “You’ve fallen into deep waters, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, Princess.”

  “Far from the place safe for Nelwyns. Tell me, is it true that in your valley the Freen flows pure and clean, and that great fishes might still be caught in it?”

  “Oh yes, Your Highness. At our village we fish every day.”

  “And is it true that in the woods there, wild boars still roam?”

  “Wild boars! It certainly is true! Why, one morning on the bank of the river, right beside Ufgood Reach . . .”

  Sorsha smiled, yawning again. She waved her hand. “No more.” She lay down on the rug, drew her furs over her, and was soon fast asleep.

  When he had fed Elora until she would take no more, Willow cautiously slipped the bowl containing the muddy mixture out from inside his coat. Into it, he dropped a small coal from the brazier. Instantly the potion flashed so brilliantly that Sorsha tossed and murmured in her sleep. When the glow had subsided, only a strange dust lay in the bowl, gleaming like dull silver. Particles clung to his fingertip when he touched it; they tingled, now hot, now cold. Willow’s arm felt suddenly very strong—as big and strong as any Nockmaar warrior’s. On impulse, he touched the fingertip to Elora’s forehead.

  Instantly, the last of the child’s fretting ceased. Her fever vanished. She grew cool. She slept.

  Willow stared in awe. “I-I’ve done it,” he murmured to the child, to the shimmering coals, to the magic ash. “I am a sorcerer!”

  “She asleep?” The lieutenant stuck his head around the flap.

  Willow nodded.

  “Put her down then. There.”

  Willow barely had time to pull his coat back on and hide the bowl of dust inside it before the lieutenant seized him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him back through the camp.

  It had grown colder, and winds had piled snowdrifts against the side of the cart. The lieutenant clamped the leg-iron on Willow and hurried back to his fire.

  Fin Raziel lay curled in a tight ball in her cage.

  Madmartigan huddled shivering in a corner of the wagon. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Elora was sick, but she’s going to be all right now.”

  Raziel stirred. “Did you fire the potion?”

  “Yes! And what’s more . . .”

  “Good! We’re ready, then. You must transform me. Quick, get me down!”

  “How can I? I’m chained to this wagon!”

  “That stick! Madmartigan, you can reach it. Knock this cage down!”

  Madmartigan did as she told him. Two blows of the stick and the furry little sorceress crashed to the ground. The bars splintered open and she scampered out, tearing in small circles. “Free! Free!”

  “Great!” Madmartigan muttered. “Can’t get out myself, but I can set loose this muskrat!”

  “Muskrat! Do you realize how close you are to freedom, Daikini oaf! Minutes! Seconds! When I change into my former self! When I use Cherlindrea’s wand . . . Willow, quick!”

  “Ouch! Why’d you bite my finger? Look, blood!”

  “That’s why! Put three drops into the potion. You have to make it your own.”

  “You could have warned me!”

  “Now, mix it up and rub it on the wand.”

  “Yes. And now?”

  “Now, Willow Ufgood, you must tell me: What is a sorcerer’s greatest power?”

  “His will.”

  “Good. Use it now. Hold on to it. There will be pain, and only your will shall hold the charm. You must not lose your concentration. Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say the charm I taught you!”

  Willow raised the wand over Fin Raziel, who crouched trembling. He closed his eyes. “Hither greenan, bairn claideb, lunanockt . . .”

  “Hello there, everybody!”

  “Brownies!” Madmartigan groaned.

  “Made it!” Franjean and Rool staggered up through the muck. “You’re saved!”

  The wand wavered. Willow opened one eye.

  “Quiet, fools!” Raziel hissed. “Start again, Willow. The Words for Overcoming!”

  “Avaggdu . . . suporium . . . luatha . . .”

  Madmartigan gazed skeptically out of his cage at the conjuring Nelwyn and the furry creature on the ground. “Raziel, what’ll you look like if this works?”

  “Quiet! Quiet!” Raziel scampered in furious circles. “Don’t interrupt!”

  “. . . luatha danalora . . .”

  “Young,” Franjean whispered to Madmartigan.

  “Very beautiful!” Rool added.

  “Really?”

  The brownies nodded. “More beautiful than you can imagine.”

  Madmartigan grinned. “Concentrate, Willow!”

  “Danalora avalorium, greenan luatha, danu, danu, danalora lu
atha danu . . .”

  “No, Willow! Forget the pain! You’re drifting! You’re losing me! You’re . . . Awk! Grawk!”

  “Oh-oh!” The brownies ducked underneath the wagon.

  The wand flashed, knocking Willow head over heels. Raziel’s body contorted, soft fur becoming black feathers, and with a squawk she changed into a hulking raven.

  Madmartigan grimaced. “Wrong charm, Peck. Nice try, though. You all right?”

  Willow nodded. Sitting in the mud, he nursed his bruised arm and stared at the bird, who glowered back at him. “Now how’ll we escape?”

  “Escape?” Franjean asked. “That all you want? Easy. We pick the lock.” He climbed up the bars and went to work with his tiny spear.

  “Sorry, Raziel,” Willow said.

  “My fault,” Fin Raziel croaked, dolefully examining her new body. “Too much rush. You weren’t ready. Farmers! Cherlindrea sends me farmers! Never mind, Willow. Put the wand away for now. We’ll try again later.”

  “Back!” Franjean exclaimed, swatting at Madmartigan, who had leaned close to watch what he was doing. “Stupid Daikini! Out of my light! Back, I say!”

  At that moment the lock clicked and the door swung open. Madmartigan tumbled out into the mud, and Franjean fell on top of him. His tiny spear and knapsack went flying. The fairy dust, the Dust of Broken Heart, spilled out of the little pouch on his belt and right into Madmartigan’s face.

  “Me, too!” Willow cried, thrusting out the foot with the shackle, and Franjean grabbed his spear and scrambled over to free him also. “Come on, Madmartigan! Let’s get Elora! Let’s get out of here!”

  Croaking excitedly, Raziel rose on her new wings and flew toward Sorsha’s tent.

  With brownies close behind him, Willow dashed through the wakening Nockmaar camp. He had run a considerable distance before he missed Madmartigan and spun around to see him lagging far behind. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Dust of Broken Heart,” Franjean said. “That’s what’s wrong.”

  “Oh no!”

  Grinning stupidly, in love with everything, Madmartigan was ambling through the camp with his arms spread wide, as if it were a flowery meadow. “Beautiful!” he called to Willow, pointing at the sunrise.