Witchlanders by Lena Coakley

sheepishly, as if part of her knew that she wasn’t the kind of person who suddenly burst into tears. A feeling of helplessness welled up inside Ryder, and he struggled to push it back down. He should be on a ship right now, he thought, exploring distant countries, not watching his mother fall apart, not watching her get thinner and thinner with nothing to be done. Ryder had gained nothing by staying home and giving up his dreams, nothing at all.
    â€œMabis, why did you leave the coven?” he asked. He put the cup of tea back into her hand as if it held some cure for her sorrow.
    â€œI lost my faith. I’ve told you that.”
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œOh . . .” Mabis twisted the wooden cup, sloshing tea onto her nightdress. “I saw something. Something I wasn’t supposed to see. Something . . . I was going to say horrible, but it wasn’t really. Something I couldn’t understand. There are secrets in the coven, Ryder. Secrets valley people could never guess. Secrets even many of the witches don’t know.” She sighed. “I wish I could talk to my sister. When I made the firecall, I was sure that Lilla would come.”
    Ryder put his hand over hers to stop the tea from spilling. “Mabis, you know that Lilla Red Bird is dead.”
    His mother nodded. “Dead and buried.” He was relieved by the finality of her words. It was one thing to want to see her husband again, another to forget that someone had been dead for twenty years. “Still, I hoped she would come. I so wanted to talk to her. There are things I need to ask.”
    Ryder looked away. He was so tired. How much more of Mabis’s ravings could he put up with? “I’ll make the honeycakes now.”
    â€œNo. Not honeycakes. Too sweet.”
    â€œBread, then.”
    â€œNo,” said Mabis firmly. “Fish.”
    â€œYou don’t even like fish. And my nets aren’t mended. You’d eat some bread—I know you would.” He rose to go.
    As he was pushing aside the red curtain, Mabis called him back. “What is it like to have a Baen in your head?”
    Ryder stopped short. “What?” It was such a strange thing for her to say, and yet . . . for some reason he couldn’t brush the words aside as more of his mother’s ramblings.
    â€œYou hear him in your dreams, don’t you?” she asked, as if the idea both fascinated and repelled her. “Is he telling you to murder people? Is he telling you to worship his disgusting gods?”
    â€œWho?” Ryder’s mind spun.
    â€œYour friend,” said Mabis. “The stranger in the mountains.The Baen in the mountains.” A Baen in the mountains. In Ryder’s mind something slipped into place, something fit together like a key turning in a lock. Hello? Is someone there? “Those people killed your grandfather, you know. At Barbiza. Just because he wore red.” She said it like an accusation, as if he could somehow be responsible for something that had happened before he was born.
    â€œI thought it was monsters you believed in now,” Ryder said carefully. “You haven’t talked about assassins in the mountains since before the witches came.”
    Mabis drew herself up haughtily. “One prophecy doesn’t cancel out another. I foresee many things: assassins, dreadhounds . . .” Her voice grew graver as she spoke. “Monsters. Bonfires burning black.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “But I don’t need any gift of prophecy to see that Baen. He’s burrowed into your head like a needleworm.”
    A great shiver coursed through him. The possibility that a Baen might be in his head, giving him nightmares, made him feel like he needed to bathe in the river.
    â€œI don’t think the blackhairs can help doing it,” she went on. “It used to happen every once in a while when the two races lived together—someone would start having dreams,