Blood Witch (12 page)

Alaysha was two
seasons older now, and this time, this first battle since the four
men would be different. She didn't care how many she drank from,
she would collect all the seeds and she would remember them all as
they'd lived, fully fleshed, fully hydrated: and remembering them
would give her the control until Nohma could finish the inkings and
she was a full witch.

A full witch in
control of her power: seasons upon seasons after that, Alaysha woke
with the phrase in her mind and a tear on her cheek. She'd worked
so hard to bury all those memories and now they were returning. She
well knew the difference between dreaming and early morning
memories. The memories scoped into her pores and settled into her
muscles so that she could feel again what it was like to poke
through those eight seeds. She'd kept them secret for years until
her father had seen her collecting them. That was when he realized
her habit could be useful and ordered her to show them to him so he
could count the kill.

And she had done
so after every battle, each time, all but the one time she killed
her nohma. Those eyes were the only ones she'd not shown for the
count. Those seeds were still hidden, separate from the others.

She sat up to see
Saxa already stirring something over the fire. The flames lent the
only light to the room. Not quite dawn then. She had plenty of time
to ride out to her cave in the woods just beyond the walls and
collect her seeds before Gael came.

She eased out of
bed, throwing back the soft linen Saxa had given her for the warm
nights. Mindful not to make extra work for the young wife, she
smoothed it over the mattress and barley pillow. The smell of
lavender crept to her nose.

"Where are you off
to?"

It had been three
days since Gael had caught her on the staircase, and he'd kept her
working from sunrise to sunset ever since. She hadn't even seen
Yenic or Aedus, and she suspected that was on purpose too. She kept
expecting a break so she could steal way, but even the meals got
brought to them in the tiltyard--not even a leagua outside the city
walls where the terrain had not been touched by one of Alaysha's
early 'battles.'

"I'm off to get
some time alone," she told Saxa who frowned with a moue both
beautiful and dissatisfied.

"Gael will be here
soon."

"I know."

"Then you don't
want to disappoint him."

"I doubt he'll be
disappointed."

Saxa pressed a
pottle of warm milk into her hands. "Here. At least drink
something."

Alaysha upended it
and gulped. Even still, she realized at the last that this was
nothing more than a diversion from Saxa to buy time. The door
opened and in came the mountainous man himself and she knew she'd
not get to her seeds today but would be subjected to more torturous
exercises. She sighed audibly and followed him through the
courtyard, ignoring the hissing she heard that came from those
brave or stupid enough to do so in Gael's presence. Once, he turned
on a man carrying a pig beneath his arm and cuffed him against the
ear. The man quietly clamped his mouth shut and scuttled away.

At first the sessions were mostly rehabilitation
type activities: torso twists, squats, the type of things that
would make her muscles scream before they would listen again to her
brain. Simple enough as any combat warrior knew, but towards the
end of the second day, Gael began to incorporate the use of water.
They'd gone outside the city walls, to the section of forest that
she'd first fought in and that had come back in the years to a nice
lushness. The river that swelled alongside the city was in full
bloat here, and it fed the terrain around it. A well sat close to a
rock wall, that she knew travelers drew from and the occasional
country maid watered her sheep from if she'd shepherded them too
far from their fields.

It was this well that Alaysha had come to hate
by day two. She had to draw from it, carry the liquid a distance,
and eventually drink it till she was bloated and nearly sick to her
stomach from it. Almost at the end of day three, when she'd lifted
until her arms were sore and her stomach muscles were taut in
agony, and when she'd drunk enough she was just about to vomit, she
refused to do it anymore.

"You will do it, Witch." Was all he said.
Throughout the whole of the rehabilitation sessions, he barely
spoke, only barking directions when necessary, never giving praise,
never encouragement. No casual conversation even came from his lips
and she was tiring of his stoic manner and surly disposition that
seemed about something that warred within him more than Alaysha's
presence. Still. She couldn't be too sure with Gael.

"I'm not afraid of you." She didn't have a
weapon to hand because the work was never to be about combat, but
she had tired of his bullying and more than that, of his
silence.

He sent her a long and icy stare. "I don't fear
you either," he said.

It was very nearly a challenge and she very
nearly wanted to throttle the surliness out of him. If only she had
her sword or her knife: anything to put a different expression on
that face besides complacency or boredom, she'd give it a go.

"You should fear me," she told him.

He scoffed and spit on the ground at his feet.
"Or you'll psyche the forest dry and me with it?"

"Maybe just you."

He regarded her thoughtfully. "Do it."

She blinked in surprise and ogled the bucket
she'd just filled and he had ordered her to drink from, then let
her gaze move sidelong to the left where a rush of flooded river
bloated the mossy bank. She was soaked through with perspiration
and Saxa's homespun flax tunic was filthy with wet earth where
she'd tripped once or twice. Her belly sloshed with each movement,
it was so full of water. She was exhausted. Tired of being the good
soldier. Her fatigue spoke to her the way visuals and logic
couldn't.

"You want me to try." The realization was so
stark, her throat tightened on the words.

He merely shrugged
and the stunning but rare smile made a quick entrance and beat just
as hasty a retreat. It was answer enough.

"I won't," she
said.

"Because you
can't."

She knew he was
goading her; she didn't care. "Do you have any notion how horrible
this power can be?"

Again, a lifted,
bored shoulder in response.

"You would be dead
before you took a fourth breath."

His mocking grin
drew slowly across his face. "'I'm thinking I have about ten
breath's grace, and I could kill you in two." He reached into the
leathers across his chest and pulled out a small, but sharp
dirk.

So. This was how
it was to be. Manipulation, goading, and ultimately, betrayal. This
time, the manipulation was for his own death, not someone else's.
Would that she could psyche the entire world dry and be done with
it all. She wasn't sure why this time, with a man who obviously
hated her and would use her to end his own pain, that she would
feel the hurt all over again, but hurt it did. She had to swallow
down the tears that wanted to travel up her throat and steal her
eyes, but they clung stubbornly in a lump just under her jaw.

She saw him step
forward and thought: this is the moment. He will kill me. There was
no fear in her, only resignation and sadness because she knew it
was entirely possible in a moment of primal instinct, the power
would unfurl. She hoped her combat training would take over her
body and the muscle memory of a thousand lessons would help her
defend herself as best she could before that happened. Even as she
thought it, she knew the instinct had already assessed the danger
and had coiled just behind the training, waiting for the second she
would have no last choice but to thirst.

He stooped in
front of her, rather than lunging, and before she could jump out of
the way, he had the bucket in his fist and the water flew at her in
an icy curtain.

It was frigid,
drawn from the deepest part of the well, and the shock of it nearly
akin to a very primitive sense of fear. She gaped at him, then
tasted sweat and tears, and the sweetness of new water. Now he
would suffer. Once she'd pulled the easiest of the liquid, she'd
pull from him. She'd snake into his tear ducts and down into his
veins, his lungs, his heart…

She watched him
collapse to his knees even as the mist began to gather in a bloated
cloud above the trees. She could taste the wetness on his tongue,
so intimate it could have been a kiss, so sweet, so moist.

She burbled over
the mist of his lungs, bobbing on it as though on a jaunty river,
his tears swelling in a happy gurgle. It might only have been two
breaths, but the water was collecting.

Then she realized
with a jolt he was laughing. Holding his stomach, bent over,
laughing.

And that there was
no mockery anywhere within it.

The surprise of it
was enough to bring a sense of pure shame for her quick temper, her
willing rise to kill just for the sake of her ego. So quickly did
the taste of him leave her mouth, that she broke into a run and
lunged for him, sick with worry that it was too late. The tense
shoulders heaved beneath her palms when she touched him.

"You fool," she
said as he peered up at her. "You could have died. I could have
killed you."

He gripped her
knees with his arms and pulled her against him. "I'd have died
happy," he said. "Your face. Oh Deities, your face. You'd have
killed me a happy man."

Her hands went to
his hair, twisting within it in her confusion.

"What are you
doing?" she asked him, and stepped away before she could enjoy the
softness of his hair between her fingers.

He slapped his
knees and heaved a sigh, reaching for and missing the trailing
movement of her fingers as they left his scalp. "Enjoying the first
real laugh I've had in so many seasons I'd forgotten I could do
it."

"No." She backed
away, stumbling when her bare foot contacted a sharp stone. "I
mean, what is all this?" She spread her arms wide.

He managed to
clamp down a stoic face before any other emotion had a chance to
lay on it for too long, but still, she caught it, and she knew.

"Gael, this isn't
about my rehabilitation at all."

He stood and bent
to retrieve the bucket, more to avoid her eye, she thought, than
anything else. She waited for him to decide whether he would admit
it or not. He lifted his head to the cloud that still hovered in
the trees, growing darker and threatening to let go its weight.

"How long before
it lets go?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I
don't decide."

He seemed content
with the answer, but moved toward the overhang of branches as
though he didn't believe her. Within moments, the water came down
in a hard sluice.

Alaysha stepped
toward the trees, the water collecting in her lashes and marring
her vision. "Gael?"

He upended the
bucket in his hand and plopped it on the brown turf that had
seconds earlier been lush grass.

"Tell me," she
said.

"I could tell you
I'm helping you to find a way to dry out that old Carrion."

She swiped at her
eyes. "How did you know about him?"

She had reached
the overhang and the rain eased off so she could just hear the
pitter patting of droplets from the leaves hitting the ground.

He blew his lips
at her question as thought it mattered no more than the answer. She
supposed it was accurate.

"You could tell me
that was your intent, but it wouldn't be true," she said to him,
trying to prod him on.

He plucked at a
brown leaf, then another, and another until they littered the
ground. "What if I told you I was just tired?"

"Tired?"

He stuck his hands
out sideways so they both protruded outside of the tree overhang.
"Of all this."

"You mean living?"
Alaysha wasn't sure she understood.

"Living. Fighting.
Feeling nothing…Feeling things that will come to nothing."

She examined his
face, trying to grasp the full measure of his words. "You were
trained as I was, weren't you?" She didn't need an answer, she knew
it was accurate, but she waited anyway, hoping he'd say more, help
her understand him.

"Very close to
it," he said.

She wasn't sure
how many seasons Gael had; she could guess thirty, but she couldn't
be sure--his size had a way of inflating everything about him, and
she supposed his age was just one of those things. She imagined a
cocky Corrin trying to break this gargantuan column of man who
would have been just as large as a boy, and found she couldn't. She
wanted to ask him more, but he'd already stood and the moment of
vulnerability had gone.

She followed him
from the grove. The rain had stopped and the cloud she'd called was
a mere memory. She scanned the area behind her as she walked. The
damage hadn't been too bad; perhaps because of the gorging of water
all around her, perhaps because she was full on liquid, perhaps
because she hadn't let loose out of fear but of fury.

Or perhaps she'd
just caught it in time and had managed for once to decide to stop
it.

She couldn't help
feeling a small twinge of hope that she was able to control the
power and call it back, but she didn't have time to give it much
thought.

Just ahead, at
full tilt, her skirts held high as she came, ran Saxa. A look of
pure panic filled her face. She was yelling, taking in deep breaths
and yelling again.

And it sounded to
Alaysha like she was saying Saxon had been abducted.

Chapter 10

Barruch had already been saddled when Alaysha gained
the stables, Saxa close on her heels. Gael had sprinted off upon
hearing that Saxon was gone and that his sister had already scoured
the nursery. He'd shot off toward the stables with legs that moved
faster than Alaysha had believed possible. His own mount fidgeted
next to Barruch, Gael himself atop, fidgeting just as restlessly to
be going.