Blood Witch (27 page)

Alaysha's stomach
churned on itself at mention of her aunt. "What of my nohma?"

"Her blood witch
helped us find the other, didn't she? The one in hiding from us
all."

Alaysha guessed
the her he spoke of was herself. His speech was confusing enough to
make her force him give her a clear answer for once. "Whose Arm are
you?"

"She can't guess,
can she?"

It was Gael who
said it first, in a burst of understanding. "The earth witch."

Theron shrugged.
"It is as he says."

Alaysha couldn't
form the words that she needed to question him. Too many filled her
mouth at the same time. Aedus was the one who asked the question
they most wanted to hear. Practical Aedus.

"So where is
she?"

Theron met her
gaze and held it, unaffected. "An Arm is the reach of the witch. We
protect her with our lives."

"So you won't tell
us."

He didn't bother
to shake his head, but she heard it in his voice when he spoke.
"Legends speak of an old war. Our witch has the telling of it, not
us, as her memory is long and her mother had the telling, and her
mother before her. And her mother before. We lost our witch to the
wilds in the raid when the Conqueror came, and then we lost her
again finally when she was found and killed by one of her own
kind."

Alaysha wanted to
defend herself; she knew the conqueror he spoke of was Yuri. It
didn't take a big leap of reasoning to realize she was the killer.
The shaman put up his hand to stop her from interrupting.

"It was as it was
supposed to be; The Emir needed to believe the line was gone. We
needed to keep the new temptress safe. And we did, yes. Yes, we
did." He sounded very smug and took a moment to sigh in contentment
before he addressed her with authority.

"This witch must
not grieve what was not in her control."

"You set me on
this path?"

"Who is this you,
you accuse us of? Is it us you speak of? We let the carrion beast
discover this secret, yes. We did, didn't we? So many years ago, it
took seasons upon seasons to bear fruit. Painful, painful
fruit."

A flooding of
memory through Alaysha's mind. "It was you. You who buried them all
beneath the cairns."

He gave her a
quizzical look, seeming lost in his own memories and thoroughly
confused by her question. "Buried who?"

"In the mud
village. All those people we killed. Someone buried the bodies
beneath piles of rocks."

He grinned as
though he'd just discovered a delightful surprise. "An old man. Oh
yes I am. Even as us, we could never manage to move that much
earth."

"Dear deities,"
she said. "It was your witch."

He lifted a
scrawny shoulder. "Our witch is long lost, but she does have the
ability to move rock and stone."

"So it was her
daughter, then. Your new witch. She saved me," she said, realizing
the full impact of what had happened in the village.

He studied her
face, seeming to be searching for something more. "She is long lost
to us," he said carefully.

"I know where she
is."

He gave a slight
incline of his head that could mean anything. She had to press him,
past Aedus hearing, past Gael sitting rapt at the exchange, so
rapt, even the warrior expression of blankness had been forgotten.
Past hearing things she feared, she would know, and so finally
understand that thing she'd wanted to know since she'd met Yenic at
the oasis.

"Who am I to
you?"

Instead of
answering, he sought to hold her gaze. She could feel his eyes on
her in the firelight, holding her so intimately, he might have had
his arms around her. "Shall I sing to you of Etlantium, Little
One?"

The phrase was so
familiar, so resonant, that Alaysha could feel it deep in her
chest, welling within her like a river swelling. Images of her
nohma fleeted through her mind so quickly she didn't have time to
concentrate on any one, but the emotions that carried them filled
her, emptied her, and filled her again until she could easily run
back through each one of the times she had heard those words
spoken. In just that way. With just same cadence. She could hear
the squall of her own cries coming back to her from a room that
smelled of cinnamon and lavender and wild onion. She could taste
goat's milk, and honey and the sweetness of clover, feel the
roughness of homespun flax on her tongue.

"
Tell
me of Etlantium
," she heard herself saying almost as
though her words were coming from such a deep place within her that
she could barely form the words.

She heard him
chuckle and looked at him in surprise.

"What?" he asked
with a tease. "What is there to say that you don't remember, Little
One, for your memory is long and the tale is so very simple?"

Four temptresses,
One large garden of children planted in refuge until twin gods
could decide who had the right to rule. Etlantium in balance, so
the songs say, its temptresses set to flesh the dead over and over
until the war was won, and the children could once again return to
their maker, their mother, the rightful ruler of Greater
Etlantium.

"A hymn, not so
much a song," she said and Theron nodded.

"All true, so our
legends say, so says our witch. Or so our witch is taught by her
mother and hers and hers and hers. And yet there is more, oh yes,
there is. And our witch knows the telling of it, doesn't she? Of
how to reflesh the dead, how to use the power to control the
balance. These witches, these foul temptresses have all bastardized
the power, abused it, forgotten what it is for, but we remember
because our witch remembers.

"And in the
tunnels, somewhere in the mountain, lost for generations of
seasons, lies the full secret. Who is the goddess and who is the
god." He looked off into the star clad sky. "And one day we will
find Etlantium again if the brother Hel does not find Liliah
first."

Alaysha couldn't
bear to break his sacred silence, but she so terribly wanted to
know. She so badly wanted to hear him say it so she could be sure
she'd heard it.

"And where is
Liliah?"

He levelled her
with a blank stare. "We believe she is one of the temptresses."

"And Hel?"

"He is also a
witch."

"Aislin," Alaysha
murmured, realizing it suddenly.

"My apologies,
Witch," Theron murmured, "at first we feared it was the witch
before us, yes, we did. But we know now that she is not. But Hel
also knows who he is. The gift of long memory gives him power to
remember his waiting life. And so he waited and searched with each
fleshing he had to endure, knowing some day they would be here
together.

And his sister god
has come; he just didn't know the disguise."

Alaysha was so
lost in the words, she wasn't aware Theron had stopped speaking
until she heard the low timbre of Gael's voice. "Didn't know?" He
stressed the past tense.

"Indeed; didn't,"
Theron said. "Now he does. He knows she is a witch, but doesn't
know which." He smiled at his awkward pun.

"What will he do
when he finds her, this Liliah god?" Gael asked.

Theron made a
small moue. "He would know these things if his father was not such
a bully. The youngest of our witch's fourteen children, he should
know, should have taught him. Yes, he should have."

"He didn't," Gael
said shortly unable to defend himself over the negligence of a
violent father years after his death. "So what will this Hel god
do? I asked you. What will he do when he finds her?" He watched
Alaysha's face as he asked the question of Theron, and she had the
feeling he'd heard the shaman's words as they'd stood in the
river.

"He will take from
her the fleshing she has disguised herself in, and take us, all of
us, her children, so they can no longer be fleshed, and he will
seize Etlantium and she and her children will be no more. They will
be as nothing, in nothing, of nothing. And the goddess will be no
more ever."

Alaysha shivered
at the timbre and soberness of his words despite the heat coming
from the fire. Would it be so bad, this loss of flesh? Would it be
so terrible to go back to nothing and be as though existence had
never been suffered?

"Doesn't sound so
bad to me," she said.

"No?" Theron
asked, then chuckled mirthlessly. "Perhaps for the savages, it
wouldn't be. Oh no. They would go on about their lives on this dirt
and die their one death and go into the ground and never know
another bliss.

"But us. We of
Etlantium we know better; yes, we do. We know what it is like to
live in paradise with our goddess and drink of her wine and enjoy
pleasures the like these savage men can never know."

"Do you remember
those times, Theron?" She couldn't help the scorn in her tone.

This time he
reached to take her hand and he squeezed it so hard she winced.
"The real question is does this witch?"

It took her by
surprise, that he expected her to remember such a thing and she
felt herself gulping for an answer.

He let go her
hand. "Never mind. We know these things, even if we don't remember.
It is the witches' chore to bring us back to those places we have
forgotten. And if the savage world will tear itself to pieces over
the power our Liliah has bestowed upon a few women, then let them
tear it; we will be as nothing anyway and so the suffering for us
will be small."

Alaysha might not
be fully ready to accept herself as a goddess come to the savage
world as Theron put it, and she might not be ready to accept the
foolish legends of a paradise past her eyes and touch, but the
world she lived in right here and now was filled with people she
loved--who would be embroiled in a war no matter what the reason
for fighting it.

So if war was to
come, let it. She would put her own body in defence of those she
loved until she was no more.

She looked around
the motley crew, from the still muddy girl to the old shaman. Gael
was both pale and handsome even in the firelight and his expression
said more to her than words ever could. She knew he would do all he
could to protect her, down to putting his body in harm's way for
her. Aedus too, would put her considerable cunningness to use in
her defence. Theron's knowledge was enough to arm them against the
coming tide of fear.

And Yenic.
Wherever it was Bodiccia had taken him; indeed, if both of them
still lived, where he would stand in the war against his own
mother, Alaysha didn't dare imagine. Her eyes burned just thinking
about him. She so wanted to trust him, so wanted to be able to rest
secure in his love for her. It seemed Aedus was right; nothing was
as it seemed. Her poor heart ached from it all. Best she not dwell
on it. She would gain nothing but pain and distraction. And she
couldn't afford to be distracted.

As for her own
power, though as yet uncontrolled, she knew it was greater than
Aislin's and that she was well on her way to understanding how to
harness it. She recalled her time in the flood, and how she'd at
least managed to bring the rain. She thought of Saxa and how she'd
been able to stop the psyching before it fully did its work.

Yes. She was
closer. And that could make all the difference to accepting herself
the way she was.

If she and this
crew could get to the other witches before the Aislin did, they
might be able to defeat her. Bring the world to rest. Bring her
world to rest. Let her come to some peace without worry of being
used and manipulated any more. That was all she wanted, really. To
live without being tired of living. Let the gods hash out what they
would when they would; it was of no real concern to her.

Even still, her
heart felt as though it was racing in her chest, and the tendrils
of a primal fear wanted to snake through her throat. She told
herself to marvel at the sense of companionship she felt, a
companionship she'd before cursed as a burden and dreaded because
it brought her suffering, because now she realized those things
were the greatest blessing she could have.

She thought of her
nohma and felt no pain for the first time since her death; she let
the woman's image come as it was always meant to, the blood as a
protection, as comfort, as a means to help her shoulder the burden
of grief and pain to difficult to bear and knew that love could do
all those things if it was allowed.

Only then did she
begin to feel the sure creeping of the bare feet of hope.

The End

A final note
from Thea:

I just want to
say thank you for taking a chance on me as a writer. I appreciate
each comment, each buy, and each email from readers who have told
me they have purchased me and read me. It's exciting to be part of
this new world of electronic reading; booklovers like you, continue
to propel the success of independent writers and allow us to
achieve our dreams. I am incredibly grateful. If you liked this
book, please do tell someone. If you found errors, please tell
me
.

Also, I enjoy
reading, and these last two years I have read more indie fiction in
various genres than traditional novels. If it's not too
presumptive, I'd love to recommend a couple of authors that I truly
enjoyed.

Jason McIntyre
writes delicious speculative fiction. I'm not sure what he would
label his genres; there's a touch of horror and some literary, but
it's always a bit on the off-the-beaten-track side. Maybe that's
why I love his style. I especially loved the
Night Walk Men
and
Kro
.

Walter Shuler
writes fantasy and each novel or short I've read has delighted me.
Do pick up
At the Edge of the World
if you get a chance.
It's a longish short story with some mythological stuff thrown in.
Loved it.