Blood Witch (14 page)

"It seems you had an accident on your way home
one evening. Several men took it upon themselves to molest the
temptress of the life blood and rid her of the horrible tattau that
marred her beauty. I'm told the men were put to an agonizing
death." Aislin let a cold smile spread across her face, but the
look she gave Alaysha was a hot, angry one.

"I had no idea." She felt as though she needed
to defend herself.

"Of course you didn't."

It was all thoroughly confusing, so much so,
that Alaysha lost the will to keep prepared and eased her sword
back into its sheath. The weight of it on her shoulders grounded
her.

"Nothing is making sense," she had to admit.

"Your father thought to use this girl to trick
me into believing I was training his witch. It seems he doesn't
trust me."

Alaysha shrugged. "He trusts no one."

"The mark of a great leader."

"You would've known she wasn't me if she was
clear of the tattau."

"Yenic did tell me you were fully inked."

"And this girl was not."

It was Aislin's turn to shrug. "They made a poor
attempt, but it's not so easy. It takes great skill, and a willing
victim. And so the marring of her beautiful skin."

"You would have known eventually."

"Perhaps. After Yuri could be sure I wasn't
going to steal you away." Aislin exhaled a soft chuckle that sent a
tickle up Alaysha's neck.

"But you knew?"

The chuckle grew to a laugh that sounded almost
like a fire crackling merrily. "A witch's eyes don't react as
others. Has no one ever mentioned that you?"

Alaysha shook her head. She didn't want to admit
how little she knew about her own people. "No one looks at me that
closely."

"Or who can keep your gaze, you mean. They fear
you."

Alaysha didn't want to answer that and Aislin
pointed to the girl, who had stopped whimpering and was doing her
best to stay calm. Her eyes held Alaysha's as though they couldn't
look away, as though they were trying to speak to her.

"They all fear you, like this one."

Alaysha wanted to say that she didn't see mere
fear in the girl's eyes, but something more like terror.

Aislin went on. "One witch to another we know
each other. You knew me by my eyes, yes?"

Alaysha thought of the mud hut village and the
crones she had psyched dry. She thought of the eyes she collected,
all different than the regulars. Smaller, perhaps, but not fully
dried out. That wasn't the only way she knew them.

"The tattaus –"

Aislin held up her hand. "The tattaus made you
certain, but the eyes held the recognition. You can't deny
that."

Yes. The eyes. So expressive. So much the energy
of the person who housed them. The center. Like this girl in the
bed. Something so pitiful about who she must be, what she must be
suffering. Alaysha wanted to help her. It would be nice to help
someone for once. Instead of taking from them. Instead of hurting
them. She thought about the mud hut village and the people within
it that she'd annihilated when Yenic had escaped. She got a quick
image of the crones inside sitting around an old fire of herbs and
sulfur. Those eyes had all looked different desiccated than the
other seeds she'd collected. The first of a different set in the
dozens of years she'd been saving and killing. She hadn't given it
much thought then, but she realized now that those elders of power
showed their uniqueness even past death.

Remembering the crones and the deaths of the
others that she'd caused just at the turn of the moon earlier sent
a shiver through her solar plexus. Just as she'd killed Yenic's
sister, she'd also killed this woman's daughter – the temptress of
flame in her own right when the time was to come. So Yenic told
her. She'd believed him then; she'd believed everything he told
her. So did this woman know? Had Yenic told her as well, as part of
his duty to her?

Alaysha found she couldn't meet the eyes that
tried to hold hers. She took an instinctual step backwards towards
the door and nodded at the girl on the bed who had inched closer
toward her, nearly hanging off the edge, a slim hand reaching for
her.

"If Yuri plans to swap her for me, he wouldn't
be pleased to see me here."

Aislin advanced just slightly enough that
Alaysha knew she'd moved, but so subtly it was a conscious effort
not appear threatening.

And that was how she knew that Aislin did know.
Worse, she knew Alaysha understood the breadth of the
circumstances.

"If Yuri plans to swap this girl for you, best
we keep him thinking he has succeeded."

Alaysha found herself nodding obligingly. The
eyes that held hers had shifted strangely into a deep orange, even
the milky one swirled within like flame on the rise.

"I can keep the secret."

"Perhaps then, we can see what we can do with
you when Yuri is busy elsewhere."

"You mean –"

"I mean you do lack control, yes?"

It seemed as though there was more behind the
woman's question than mere words. While her speech sounded
forthright and the tone was carefully comforting, the eyes, the
expression, didn't move so. Almost as if the witch was seeking to
see beneath Alaysha's skin, drilling down through her eyes, trying
to read her as though she were a parchment.

The woman's daughter. Her mother. Her unborn
granddaughter. Must be. The witch was trying to read what Alaysha
knew about them and their powers and, she thought, she was trying
to decide if Alaysha deserved to live.

And yet. Still something coiled in her scrutiny
that didn't account for grief. It seemed the woman didn't mourn
what she knew she'd lost, what Alaysha had taken from her. And to
offer teaching in return for such cruelty as Alaysha had delivered,
seemed ludicrous.

Still. Alaysha so wanted it. Yenic had forgiven
her the deaths; perhaps this woman had too.

It was a helpless shameful nod Alaysha offered
next, and she felt as though a warm blanket had been thrown over
her when Aislin responded with an indulgent smile. It seemed as
though the witch would reach out for her and engulf her a motherly
embrace. Alaysha braced herself for it, both afraid and hopeful at
the same time. She would've accepted the touch, but just when she
believed it was inevitable, she felt a cold draft of air from
behind her.

The young page who had accompanied Theron on his
last foray into the parapet to treat the girl, the boy who had met
her on the stairs, fumbled into the chamber with a bowl of herb
scented water and a bleached linen. He met Alaysha's eyes, his own
wide and afraid when he realized he'd walked into a discussion
between the fire witch and the water witch she was not supposed to
meet.

Alaysha opened her mouth to beg for his silence
when she heard a snapping crackle coming from somewhere behind his
eyes. In less than two heartbeats the bowl fell with a wet thud to
the stone floor, and the flesh that had been a standing youth leapt
into a flame so hot Alaysha had no choice but to stumble back into
the room to avoid the heat.

No sound, no cry, no scream of pain came from
him, he simply erupted into a length of flame that contained itself
perfectly to his clothes and flesh.

"If it's to be a
secret, it must be a secret," Aislin said.

Alaysha found
herself nodding dumbly. She stole a glance at the girl on the bed
who had squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that she had to rock back
and forth to keep them closed.

Beneath the shock,
Alaysha was numbly aware of the sense of something else besides the
outrage of taking the innocent youth's life: wonder. Such power.
Such control to contain the power to the one area, to throw it out
exactly where she wanted. She felt the sure development of greed
take root her chest. She wanted that much control. She wanted that
much command over her power.

"A secret it shall
remain," she heard herself saying. "So long as the girl can keep
quiet as well."

Aislin raised her
voice, ensuring the girl heard her. "Of course you will, won't you,
Alaysha?"

The girl who would
be Alaysha bobbed her head up and down, never once opening her eyes
as if to say she'd been witness to nothing, knew nothing.

Aislin mumbled her
satisfaction and bent to scrabble beneath her skirt to something on
the floor within the ashes.

Alaysha didn't
need to see what Aislin was reaching for. She knew it was the
youth's eyes.

Chapter 11

Alaysha left with conflicted feelings. She had set
out imagining she would find either Saxon or Yuri, or both in the
parapet. She assumed she'd find the shaman there, performing some
sort of twisted sacrment to keep Yuri alive that much longer. She
felt sick that she believed her father capable of allowing his own
son to be presumed missing, and even sicker thinking that he and
Theron would use the boy for ill. Such was her mistrust of her
father by now, and sitting just below that nauseous realization was
the relief that she was wrong. Although what she had discovered
would end up to her advantage, she was sick over the poor
doppelgänger who Yuri had placed in her stead, for whatever reasons
she couldn't know.

And going to
Saxa's with no further knowledge of Saxon's whereabouts made
matters worse, made whatever elation Alaysha felt over her
opportunities to train with Aislin dampen in comparison.

And there was
still the matter of Corrin. The man deserved to suffer for the
things he'd done to her, and countless others. She had no doubt
that Corrin had trained Gael. She wondered how old he must have
been and how badly Corrin had treated him to turn a naturally
skilled youth into a stoic soldier for Yuri.

Add to that the
problem with Aedus, the fact that Edulph was still out there
somewhere plotting his way in to Sarum and into a wind witch's
young heart, she began to believe she'd have been better off just
doing her father's bidding without question. Things might not have
been easier, but she'd care less about them. A lot less. Once
again, she realized what a liability caring for others could
be.

The sun struck her
face as she exited the Keep; by her reckoning, it was just past the
late meal, and she'd been inside since just after mid day repast.
Saxa would undoubtedly be in full panic. She hoped Gael and Yenic
had at least found a trail to track if they'd not actually found
Saxon.

She watched people
closely as she strode through the courtyard, keenly aware that any
of the passers-by might know or have seen what happened to the
young heir. She hoped if someone had seen they wouldn't be afraid
to step up to her and let her know, even if she was Yuri's
witch.

Most avoided her
eye, and the more she thought about that and what Aislin had said
about it, the more she felt a queer exhilaration in the deepest pit
of her belly. The more she acknowledged the exhilaration, the less
inclined she was to return to Saxa only to deliver bad news.

Her pace slowed
without her meaning to do so, and she caught herself wondering if
she could control herself now that she really knew it was possible.
Somehow she thought perhaps she had never been entirely sure
control of the power was possible.

She thought of
Aislin and the sickening smell of burned fat, of the quiet
crumbling of a man to ash. It revolted her, yes, to see the flash
of panic in his face, but so too did it excite her.

She couldn't stop
thinking about it. She had been a child when she tried to drain
Corrin. She'd been ignorant. Yenic had been right; she was young.
Now, having seen what a woman could do with her power, how she
could focus it, concentrate it, contain it, she felt bold enough to
try.

Without thinking,
her feet led her in the direction of the caverns, and past that,
the bathhouse.

She couldn't face
Saxa, but she felt more than ready to face Corrin.

The air inside the
tunnel felt hot and humid. She could smell the darkness, the spores
of fungus that grew in the thickest crevices. The faint stink of
bat guano met her senses and she had to block out the gag reflex
that wanted to take her throat. She told herself this was the day.
This was the day she learned what she'd always needed to. What her
father always wanted. What she had to learn if she was to keep
anyone she loved safe, if she would avoid being manipulated into
doing what she didn't want to.

Today was the day
she gained control.

She wasn't
surprised to find him alone or to find the table beside the rack
had been filled with food and then emptied. The remains of a
cauldron of broth sat in the middle. A chunk of soggy bread half
eaten by Corrin was being worried by a fat rodent who scurried away
when she got close enough to cause it threat.

While his body
looked weary, drawn, and limp, Corrin's eyes glared brightly at her
with a malice she hadn't known possible.

"I see someone has
been sent to feed you."

He spat. "Two of
Yuri's strongmen."

"One to hold you
while you were unshackled, no doubt."

"The other to
stuff wet bread in my mouth."

Alaysha reached
out to feel the cauldron. It was still warm. "I remember," she
said.

He sounded
indignant. "You were never held by a soldier and force-fed inferior
fair."

No. She hadn't
been. She'd been untied three times a day for periods long enough
to eat, relieve herself, and sleep. Her dreams then had been no
worse than the waking life she lived.

"For months I hung
here, not days."

He showed his
teeth in a sarcastic smile. "So you've decided then, that I won't
have months. Does Yuri know?"

"He'll find out
soon enough."

"Go on, then,
Witch."

He was remarkably
calm for a man who was about to die.