Page 100 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

He wiped his eyes and opened the parcels. In the slanting light through the barn door, he wheeled out the hoops of face. Now that he knew what they were, they seemed less grotesque—no less terrible than a drawing or a dream of someone. A flat disc not unlike a mirror. They’d had lives, these people, as puzzling as his. No one would ever know what those lives were like, though.

“Well,” said Iskinaary, who’d followed him in, “as I live and breathe. Is this what they mean by a human shield?”

“They’re the faces of the dead.”

“You’re in here studying them, when you have a dying woman out there in a tent, waiting for your attention?” Iskinaary was incensed.

Liir looked at them, shaking his head. From the distance he heard the first few notes of a melody. Candle had taken down the domingon again. Whom was she calling with it? The baby within her? Come out, come out? Or Liir himself, stuck in his indecision, his confusion?

“I’m quite an expert at music, as I have perfect pitch. Unusual in a Goose,” said Iskinaary. “She’s got a way with that instrument. She could play the eggs right out of a mama Goose.”

“I heard her encourage the yard animals to sing,” said Liir. “I mean really sing, not just bray and cackle.”

“Singing lightens the load,” said Iskinaary, who looked about ready to deliver an aria himself. He cleared his throat. But Liir suddenly snatched up the hoops from the ground and turned on his heel.

“If she can be persuaded,” he said, “maybe she can help the load lighten. She’s so weighed down herself—but she’s a kind person. What a good idea!”

“Thank you,” said Iskinaary, his feathers ruffled. Denied an audience, he hummed to himself in a desultory fashion, but shortly thereafter he followed Liir to find out what his good idea had been.

LIIR INTRODUCED HIMSELF to the man called Lord Ottokos.

“We’ve met before,” said Shem Ottokos, “though since then, you’ve grown up and I’ve grown old.”

Liir explained what he hoped Candle might do. If she would.

Shem Ottokos seemed to find nothing peculiar in the proposal. “Your wife is very kind, even in her heavy condition, and your husband seemed equally kind.”

“She is not my wife, and I have no husband,” said Liir. “Indeed, I have no talent except the idea for this. And I do not know if it will work.”

“I will tell the Princess Nastoya that you have arrived,” said Ottokos. “She is in grave distress, and it is hard for her to talk anymore. But I believe she is still able to hear and understand. I must believe this: it is my job.”

Liir took the scraped and treated faces of the dragons’ victims into the orchard, faintly budding already, though the ground was still wet with old snow. He hooked the thirteen hoops upon notches of apple tree branch, as near to body height as he could guess each one had required when attached to a living body. The damp sheets and toweling fluttered like liquidy limbs beneath.

4

SHE PUT ASIDE her domingon when he approached and asked her for her help. “Don’t do it for me,” said Liir. “Do it for her.”

“I’m already doing laundry for her,” said Candle. “I have no more strength.”

“You know people and you know kindness. Your music sang me back to life. You have that skill. It’s called knowing the present. You could make the barnyard sing. I only ask that you k

now the present of Princess Nastoya, and play her constituent parts to their own places.”

“You think like a witch. I am not a witch, Liir.”

“I am not a witch and I am not thinking like one. I am trying to learn from history. I am trying to figure out what happened in the past, and work to use that knowledge again. You played in my past, and brought me my life. Perhaps you can play her death to her.”

“I don’t feel well.” She rubbed her eyes with her forefingers. “Frankly, I haven’t been sleeping. I don’t know that this pregnancy is going as it should, but there’s no one to ask.”

“You don’t feel as badly as Princess Nastoya does.”

“Liir!”

He caught her at the elbow. “Tell me what happened!” he said roughly. “Tell me what happened with Trism!”

“Leave me be, Liir,” she said, crying, but when he gripped her arm harder, she said, “He told me to come away with him. He said whoever had followed the two of you so far would not give up that easily. He said the mauntery would be burned, and its members tortured until they disclosed the whereabouts of this satellite operation. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Of course the maunts know about this place! Why else would Mother Yackle have sent us here? Or the donkey know the way? Think, Liir!”

“He told you to leave with him?”

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