Blood Witch (25 page)

The clump in her
throat would not go down no matter how much she swallowed and she
had to work around it to speak, even if the words came out as
nothing more than a whisper.

"Let's not waste
the time he gives us," she said to no one, then grabbed the end of
the tunic rope Aedus had begun stringing. She missed the end at
first because she couldn't see through for the tears.

Chapter 26

The journey from the crystal cavern and to the tunnel
seemed the longest of her life. It was a sober, silent track
punctuated only periodically by Edulph's mad outbursts. Alaysha
began to wonder if he had enough mind left to lead them to the wind
witch when the time came.

Her heart ached.
Her belly ached. Her eyes stung from unshed tears. She wondered as
they rushed through the semi dark, whether loving anyone was worth
all the pain she felt. Gael. Her father. Nohma. Her mother and a
sister she never knew. She felt for Aedus's hand in the gloom and
when it fastened on the small fingers, everything seemed more
pronounced. What was the point even of living when everything could
end so quickly?

Time passed
painfully slow. Each time Edulph babbled about war coming on with
blind speed, Alaysha had to stifle a shiver; Aedus squeezed her
hand. Theron kept his counsel until they approached the exit.

"We need a few
things, oh yes." He didn't bother to listen for sounds on the other
side, merely pushed the door open with a groan. Alaysha was
relieved to see the dank inside still being pure dank and not a
light filled room with a dozen guards waiting.

"We need to get to
Saxa," she said, realizing other people she loved were still in the
city. She felt the weight of her father's head in her hand, the
softness of Aedus's palm in the other. She told herself her father
deserved his death. Still. The strange chirping her chest made told
her she had always hoped for something different. She squashed the
feeling and felt her heart drop when Theron shook his head.

"We can't get to
her now. It's too late."

Too late now, and
here she was with three powerless lives in her hands at the expense
of one great, powerful life. She wanted to choke.

Theron pushed the
shelves closed again to create a tight seal. To look at it, no one
would know it was even there.

Without a single
word, he bustled about the room, lifting vials and jars and
dropping them into a leather pouch. He waved them toward a
staircase that led to a further, darker, and danker tunnel.

"We do know
another way." He stepped in, expecting them to follow. They filed
behind him, unsure where they would end up. Alaysha pressed the
others forward, taking the flank, squinting ahead in readiness.

Again, they
traveled without speaking. Alaysha's relief for the silence was
nearly palatable past the taste of must and mould and old soil.

Even so, she felt
the despair building and had to focus on her breathing. The tunnel
had started to feel too close and confined with the others' hot
breath pushing out any fresh air. She grew uncomfortably
constricted, like someone had sat on her chest.

They were a somber
group that found the end. Alaysha dropped to her haunches in the
evening light. They had been roaming the tunnels for hours and her
tongue was nothing but a parched bit of dried out leather. Her legs
on the other hand felt like water. She could smell her father's
death.

"Do we have
anything to drink?"

Theron sent a
furtive glance to his sandals and the veiny toes that protruded
beneath his cassock.

"Nothing, then."
Alaysha let her eyelids ease closed. No water. No food. Three
renegades with precious little skill, and Barruch abandoned to the
Emir's stables. She tried to quell the unease that flirted with her
stomach. To quiet the commotion in her mind, she took stock of what
she knew, as she'd been taught those years ago during her warrior's
training. Her father was dead. So too a sister she'd not known
existed until Aislin had sent her to a pile of ash. Aislin and Yuri
had been at some sort of subtle warfare, both for different
reasons. She didn't want to look at her father's now ripening head,
but she found she couldn't stop herself from peeking her eyes open
and looking at it. It lay with its mouth open, eyes staring blindly
forward.

What might this
shaman want with this head anyway?

"Theron, tell me
about your people."

He looked at her
with curiosity at first, as though he discovered he'd been caught
at something very much like telling an untruth.

"We are nearly the
last of our people, oh yes."

"I assume so. You
are one of Saxa's tribe, oh yes?" She tried to catch his eye even
as she mocked him. "Gael told me as much."

"We were a boy
when the conqueror came. How are we supposed to remember?"

She looked at him
suspiciously. "But you do. Don't you old man?" Alaysha moved to
stand, an unconscious move that would threaten him in to speech.
"What is the truth?"

He said nothing at
first, but reached for Yuri's head with a covert movement, twisted
something from it and then rolled the remains into the cavern.

"We've seen you
collect the eyes of the unfortunate. Yes. Yes we have. We have
watched and we have studied." He held out his palms to show two
round globes that he pressed toward her. "The Emir believed you
were doing his bidding, finding the count of the dead."

"I was," she said,
inching away from the offering. They looked like they would talk to
her if she kept looking, they looked like the expressionless within
would shift into something that could tell of the shock of their
death, the finality of it. She didn't want to hear that, see that,
or think about that.

He shook his head.
"You lie." He pressed her. "Where are the others?"

She squirmed,
knowing where they were, almost all of them, lying buried in her
secret place just behind her in her home. "They are hidden."

"These are part of
Etlantium."

Etlantium. She
knew the word. She had told it to Aislin in the village before the
fire, without knowing the source of meaning. He seemed to find
something useful in her expression and smiled.

"The witch has
heard it. Knows it."

She shrugged.
"Neither of those things is true."

"It is true," he
said and his expression fell from one of suspicious query to one of
near reverence. He stood and bowed so low, Alaysha's confusion
swept over her like a breeze.

"Save your bows
for the rightful heir of Sarum when he's rescued."

She heard Edulph
chuckling behind his gag and wanted to deliver a solid kick to his
ribs. Aedus had taken to creeping closer along the ground so that
she rested very near to the shaman. She tugged on his sleeve.

"With Saxon gone,
and Yuri dead, does that make Alaysha Emiri of Sarum?"

Theron looked to
be considering the question. "Tell me of Etlantium."

What Etlantium had
to do with being the ruler of Sarum, Alaysha didn't understand. "I
know nothing of Etlantium."

"Nothing. The
witch's nohma didn't speak of it?"

"If my nohma spoke
of it, I buried the memory along with countless others." She
couldn't help the coldness in her tone, or the sense of dread in
her voice.

"But the witch
knows the word, yes. Yes she does."

"It's in my
memory." She didn't want to say how she had pulled it out. "What
does it mean? And what do my father's eyes have to do it?"

Theron dodged the
question by standing as well. He inclined his head toward Edulph
and Aedus. "There are always better times."

Alaysha turned her
back to him. "You're right. We need to get out of here." She knew
the old shaman was reluctant to speak in front of two, but it
didn't mean she didn't want to hear the rest. She sighed, looking
toward the mountain, knowing Barruch was still in the stables being
tended to by someone else's hand. She hated having to leave him
behind.

"One question
before we go," she said to Theron. "Who do you think I am?"

"The shaman
grinned, showing his copper covered tooth. "You're either our
savior or the death of us all."

Chapter 27

The death of us all. That rang in Alaysha's ears as
they trudged through the forest. Ever mindful, she stayed at the
flank end, letting the others find their way ahead of her. She knew
they wouldn't get far on foot, but she was relieved to be relieved
of Yuri's head. His eyes now rested in the shaman's pouch that hung
from his belt. The larger bag, filled with bottles and vials, he
carried in his fist. She knew the baggage was heavy for the old
man, but neither could she take it from him. She needed to be ready
if they were set upon from the rear.

Besides, she was
happy to be away from Edulph's constant babbling. That too, made no
sense. She remembered a robust, if not evil mind, hearty and hale.
No sign of madness save that lust for power.

She watched her
threesome bend beneath branches and step over fallen trees, the
shaman showing a seeming affinity for the wilderness that surprised
her for a man who spent so much time in the dankness of an
apothecary and within the gates of a city. Both of the siblings
seemed to show nothing but the smallest of focus. They were so
natural in their movements that Alaysha marvelled at how easily
they melted into the foliage every now and then.

Aedus stopped once at a mucky pit
of rotten moss and stroked streams of mud through her hair then
smeared it over her arms and legs. She looked even more like she
belonged to the wild. Seeing her, even in his madness, Edulph did
the same. It occurred to Alaysha that the smartest thing would be
to copy them and bid Theron to do similar. Best if they could all
melt into the foliage.

She imagined they
all stank of stagnant water, but it was better to camouflage
themselves then end up facing Yuri's defected soldiers with
bare-faced vulnerability.

When night came on
them, Alaysha found a spot close to a stand of trees thick with
leafy boughs to insulate against the dark shelf of hill. Theron
rooted about for edible plants and Aedus went in search of food and
water.

Alaysha was left
alone with Edulph, who sat on his haunches staring at her.

"The witch of
flame could build a fire to keep us warm," he said. It was the most
intelligent series of words he'd strung together since she'd seen
him in the pit.

"I will drink you
dry if you try anything," she said and waited to see if his
expression changed. She wondered, not for the first time, why the
dreamer's worm Aedus had painted on him those fortnights ago would
still have him in the throes of madness. She knew the result was a
temporary one.

"Do I need to bind
you?" she asked.

There was a subtle
shift in his expression, so she decided on a new line of
attack.

"The witch sent me
to kill you, you know. To kill all of these fools."

He watched her
balefully.

"When we have the
earth witch, we will kill you all."

She didn't expect
the shrieks of terror she heard when he let loose. It so surprised
her to see him thrash about, she immediately went to calm him.
Before she realized it, he had his hands on her throat with his
body stretched atop her, her back pinned against the ground. His
hot, stinking breath raked across her face. She tried to squirm
loose.

She gulped for air
and brought in nothing. She wriggled a hand loose from – was it
beneath her thigh? – and once free, she aimed for where she thought
his eyes were. The left one went squishy beneath her thumb and
still he didn't relinquish his hold. She heard him, close to her
ear, whispering.

"The war will not
take me. The war will not take me."

She pressed
harder, the panic taking over her muscles, and the survival
instinct commanding her thumb.

He shrieked again
and let go. She drove at him with her head, aiming for his stomach,
but contacting the hard bone of his chest. Both of them grunted in
pain. He fell backwards as did she, but she retained the instinct
to jump to her feet even as she hit the ground.

She leapt for him,
but grabbed nothing. The bushes rustled ahead of her and he
disappeared behind the waving foliage. With a curse, she sprinted
into the bush after him, running hard, squinting into the
darkness.

The scent of water
struck her. At first, she thought the panic of losing her breath
had unleashed the power without her realizing it, but then she
heard the unmistakable sound of rushing stream and she knew they
had turned instinctively towards the water to the west of Sarum.
She halted and scanned the area, hoping for a moving branch to
indicate his direction. When she heard a familiar snort and whinny,
she had to blink twice to believe the shadow she saw at the bank of
the river.

Barruch, standing,
saddled, alone.

Dear deities,
someone had thought to use him to find her. Despite every muscle
wanting to rush forward, she commanded them to melt into the trees.
To watch. To wait.

Heartbeats later,
she relinquished that command and ran forward so fast she thought
she could and to the air.

Striding forward,
mountain-sized and stolidly plodding, came Gael.

And gripped in one
hand by the collar of his tunic, came Edulph.

Chapter 28

Alaysha had no sense of propriety left in her; she
didn't care what the end result would be, she wanted nothing more
than to feel her mount's rump beneath her palm, and the stink of
horse flesh crinkling her nose.

Gael seemed to
understand that. He stood apace away while she murmured to Barruch,
who was at first wont to tuck his nose away from her, all the while
stepping close enough to rub at her with his shoulders. She knew he
was pleased to see her, but that he also needed to punish her for
the recent neglect.