Chapter Fifteen An Island in the Flood #2
But he had. Out of the darkness of time, in all this urgency, a memory came: and there it was.
All those years ago: the baby Lyra in the canoe asleep in Alice’s arms, Pan as a dormouse curled up between the paws of Alice’s dog daemon Ben, the battered Belle Sauvage tied up and rocking softly, Malcolm exhausted but awake on the little island under the moon with the great flood sweeping blackly onwards all around them; and standing only a few feet away, the slender haughty figure of the woman from the far north, the delicate coronet of flowers around her hair, the branch of cloud-pine on the rocks at her feet: Tilda Vasara, queen of the witches in the—what region was it?
“Tilda Vasara? Is it you? Have I got your name right?”
She was drenched with rain, her hair was disordered, her black garments clung to her body; and she looked not a day older than the young woman whose beauty had dazed the little boy who’d come through the flood, even to the little coronet of yellow flowers around her head.
He struggled up and gave her his hand, and then they both looked at the window, at which the gryphons were still flying and screaming and beating their wings.
He helped her up, and then went to lean out and close the shutters, ignoring the great creatures still scrabbling on the wet stone of the parapet. Pan took hold of one heavy curtain in his teeth and pulled it across, and Malcolm closed the other, so the sounds outside faded a little.
“I didn’t expect you to forget,” said the witch.
“No, I wouldn’t forget. Nor shall I forget this. Why have you come here?”
“To speak with the Queen. Once I knew that you were here, I thought my mission had a chance of success.”
“How did you know we were here?”
“My daemon saw you on the back of the gryphon prince.”
Another memory: the Arctic tern he’d seen high in the sky above as dawn broke over Mount Damāvand—linked to a different memory: the white bird daemon whispering to Alice’s Ben as he guarded the baby Lyra in the canoe.
“Where is he now?”
“Above the storm.”
Malcolm pushed back his hair, which was trailing over his forehead and dripping into his eyes. He took a deep breath.
“Will you sit down?” he said. “We can offer you a chair, or those furs. Are you cold?”
“Never cold, but thank you. The furs will do.”
She sat down, as she seemed to do everything, gracefully.
Malcolm the man had a more complicated response to her than Malcolm the boy; even in this time of astonishment and his continuing sense of great danger, he couldn’t be unaware of her pale smooth skin, the supple muscles of her arms and shoulders, the way the wet silk clung to her flanks and her thighs.
Put it out of your mind, he thought, permanently.
“Why do you want to talk to the Queen?” said Pantalaimon.
“I want her help for my people, and I want her to accept our help in return. I want to know if they are aware of the danger that faces all the people of the air.”
“They didn’t seem very keen to welcome you,” said Malcolm.
“Something is happening to make them fearful. In normal times we take no notice of them, and they of us. Our realms hardly touch. We have different concerns and different interests.”
Malcolm thought that he’d written almost exactly those words to Glenys Godwin only a day or so before. “But what’s happened to change that?” he said.
“The winds are failing. The air is bad. This will affect us all, and we need to talk about it.”
“The air is bad?” said Pan. “But it seems…And the wind outside is as strong as ever, surely?”
“Other winds. This will take some time to explain, and by the time—”
A loud knocking thundered at the door, almost drowning the storm outside.
“Let me speak,” said Malcolm to the witch. “Don’t say a word till we’re in the presence of the Queen.”
He opened the door wide and stood on the threshold. The vizier and three guards made as if to enter, but before they could move more than a step, Malcolm said firmly, “Why are you treating Queen Tilda Vasara, my guest, with such discourtesy?”
“She has shot and killed two of my guards!”
“And do you blame her? She came here in peace, to seek an audience with your Queen on a matter of profound importance to all the people of the air, and you send out a squadron of warriors to attack and kill her! Of course she defended herself. Now take us to Queen Shahrnavāz at once, and behave with the proper courtesy.”
The vizier was speechless. He didn’t move.
Malcolm turned back to the witch and offered his hand to help her up; she got to her feet with that incomparable grace and took the cloud-pine branch that Pan held out for her as if it were a scepter.
She was as much a queen as Shahrnavāz, and the vizier could see it.
He stood aside for them to walk ahead of him, and all three proceeded without any haste into the corridor and towards the great chamber: the witch in the center, with Malcolm and Pan on either side of her.
As they went, they could hear voices raised in the chamber and beyond, and the sound of running feet, and the ringing of a deep gong some way off. The storm was still raging outside: even inside the mountain they could hear the howling of the wind and the crash of thunder.
“Where is your realm?” Malcolm said to the witch very quietly, and she replied, “Lake Onega.”
He nodded. The gryphon voices were raised in argument or command, as if they were debating something furiously. Malcolm hadn’t heard them speaking among themselves, and was curious about their language, but there was no time to think about that, for they had nearly arrived in the great chamber.
One good sign, he thought: the carpet had been laid. This was an occasion of state. They were not likely to be put to death just yet.
There were two wooden stools, ornately carved, set a few feet apart and facing the space where the Queen had stood to receive them before.
The vizier took it all in at once, like the practiced courtier he was, and led Malcolm and the witch-queen forward, indicating that Malcolm should take the right-hand stool and Tilda Vasara the left.
There was a bustle in the corridor beyond, murmurs and whispers in gryphon voices, and then all the sounds fell silent as the Queen came in.
The gryphons’ eagle features didn’t make for a rich range of expression: ferocity was about all they could project. But something in the Queen’s bearing, perhaps the slow cold way she looked from Malcolm to Tilda Vasara and back again, told him that she was on the verge of great anger.
Malcolm bowed calmly. The witch inclined her head. Shahrnavāz settled couchant on the floor, and indicated that they should sit. Tilda Vasara did so with the lightness of a feather; Malcolm, whose hip was troubling him greatly, was much clumsier and almost fell as he felt for the stool.
Don’t be embarrassed, he thought. Just speak with all the dignity you can find.
“Your Majesty,” he said firmly, “may I present Queen Tilda Vasara, the ruler of the witch-clans in the region of Lake Onega.”
“And where is that?” the gryphon queen demanded.
“In the far northwest,” said Tilda Vasara calmly, “just south of where the ice begins.”
“And why go to my artificer before you spoke to me?”
“He is an artificer?” said the witch, in apparent surprise. “To my people he is a man of great importance.”
And Pan said, “In the realms of gold, an artificer is a man of great importance.”
Both queens turned to him, and Malcolm marveled at his impudence.
Shahrnavāz slowly nodded.
Malcolm went on: “Queen Tilda Vasara sought shelter with me because she was being attacked by five of your warriors. No doubt they were under orders, but those odds were shameful. She has a message of great importance for all the people of the air, from the most powerful to the least. It needs to be heard. Queen Shahrnavāz, you have been hospitable to me; I ask you to extend that generosity to this gallant queen of the witches, and hear what she has to say.”
“Speak, then,” said the queen of the gryphons.
“Thank you, Queen Shahrnavāz,” Tilda Vasara began.
“For some time, witches of every region of the north have been aware of changes in the sky. Winds are wilder than they used to be, or else they fail altogether. The air is tainted and stale. Freshness has left the atmosphere, by small degrees at first, so small as to be hardly noticeable, but it is getting worse. Sunsets are lurid with colors never seen before; birds migrate at strange seasons, or die in their thousands from diseases unknown to our healers. Tell me, great queen, have your people not noticed the same changes?”
Silence throughout the great hall. The storm continued to shriek and howl and batter the mountain, but not a creature moved. All stood, or like the Queen, remained couchant, and watched Tilda Vasara as she spoke with such seriousness.
Shahrnavāz said, “Tilda Vasara, you speak the truth. The matters you mention have disturbed us too. Now tell me this: Do you speak for your clan alone, or are you here to represent all the witches of the north?”
“When the moon was last new, all the clan-queens of the north held a great meeting by the river Lena. We agreed that these changes I describe, and others we have noticed, are beyond the power of witches alone to deal with. They must be affecting all the people of the air. Only a great alliance, more comprehensive than any we have entered before, would have the power to face it and deal with it. Other queens were sent east and west and further north; I was chosen to come south to the great kingdom of the gryphons. It was a lucky chance that here in your palace was residing this man, to whom I had spoken some years ago, when he was young. I know him to be a courageous and truthful representative of his people, and I thought he would be able to do what he has now done, and speak for me to Your Majesty.”
“How did you know he was here?”