Wine of the Gods 08: Dark Lady (21 page)

They looked skeptical.

In the morning the scouts returned, spooked by the corridors, but certain of their utility. The large army was splitting up and returning to their usual locations. The officers and priests had been recalled and were heading back to Paree. "The troops rioted. They even attacked one of their own towns, raped, looted and burned it, as if they were the enemy. The officers may be lucky to not be executed. It was a pretty damn sullen camp, what little I saw of it." The scout cheered up as he recounted what he'd seen, and ignored how he'd traveled.

General Omally looked pleased. "Tempted though I am to take advantage of their weakness, there simply isn't any way to hold territory down there. No point in throwing away lives, then having to retreat behind the lakes, anyway."

The king nodded. "And if we attacked, their Emperor might have to retain his generals. If we sit back, they'll purge their officers, probably do more damage to their army than we could inflict." He looked around the still-disordered parlor of
the baron's mansion. "Let's stay a week, then let these people get back to their lives.

"I need to speak to Baron Randal about his sons . . . I don't recall their ages, we may need to appoint a regent."

One of the other men stirred. "Perhaps appoint a temporary governor until the council approves of Randal's son inheriting? And if the boy's too young, continuing as a regent?"

Kurt slipped out, leaving the King to his counselors, and hunted down Liz.

She was in the small house her mother was renting for her school. Liz was living there, for now, along with her mother and the two youngest siblings.

She and Lonnie were behind the house.

". . . good legs, but she pretty old." Lonnie was looking at Moxie.

"She's a sweetie. And she's bred to a spectacular stallion." Liz beamed at Kurt. "Tell him."

"She's bred to a spectacular stallion, and I'm entirely jealous, not having had time
to get any of my own mares out here."

Lonnie raised a skeptical eyebrow. Shrugged. "If you say so. But of course I'll take care of her while you're gone. You've got the shed loaded up with hay. I'll grain her every day, and once the grass is up, I'll find a farmer with a good pasture. Huh. You, with money to burn!" He eyed Kurt speculatively. "You think it'll take a
year
just to get married?"

"Probably at least a year and a half, with travel time. And the Church is going to have to put their oar in, especially if they want to suppress rumors about the odder thing that happened here."

Lonnie grinned. "I'd have to be a moron to believe half the tall tales already going around."

Kurt snickered. "You ought to join the scouts keeping an eye on the Arbolians. Very . . . enlightening."

Liz coughed, turned and pet Moxie, as the mare trimmed the long grass growing in the tiny unkempt yard.

"Father says they'll leave in a week."

Liz gulped. Straightened her shoulders. "I'll be ready."
To leave the only home I've ever known.

Spring, 1376 PE

Ash, Comet Fall

December
looked up the faint wagon track. The trees and brush had been cut back neatly, yet it was clearly rarely used by anything with wheels. Phantom pulled a bit at the reins, and she loosened her grip. "This is home, isn't it?" The horse nodded.
I've been back almost three weeks, it's time to face the worst.
She tried to remember the basic charms, the building blocks of a basic mental shield spell
"Bouncy . . . drat, bouncy something bounce away . . . " She winced at the first probe, but it was barely a touch and not repeated. Phantom carried her steadily uphill to a rocky flat with a rambling sprawl of a house to the left and tidy little barn to the right. Phantom delivered her to the front porch as a blonde girl trotted out the open door.

"Rustle!" She was leaking excitement from behind hard held shields.

Rustle told herself it wasn't too painful, and tried to remember the lists of witches she'd looked over. "Calm down. Can you take Quicksilver? I still haven't quite mastered dismounting with a baby."

The girl, she must be eleven came up and reached for the baby. "I'm Topaz. Do you remember me?"

"I think so, but you're awfully tall." Rustle swung down, and looked past her sister to her mother, hovering worriedly in the doorway. "Hi, Mom. I'm home. Haven't run away screaming yet."

"Rustle, I'm so sorry, I just had no idea I . . . leaked like that."

Rustle snorted. "I suspect all your shielding is to keep other people's thoughts and emotions out. You don't hide your own. And I'm afraid that was pretty much exactly where I was most vulnerable."

"Dydit
changed his shielding almost immediately. I've been practicing for days." Never stepped up and hugged her. "You don't remember us?"

"Sorry.
I hope it'll go away as I heal. I'm sleeping an awful lot. Wolf says that's good, and I should stop pushing myself, but I just keep getting restless."

Never looked distressed. "Your room here . . . " She broke off at Rustle's wince. "I guess I never quite adjusted to your growing up. I mean, you and the Auld Wulf have two children, you're twenty-three years old. You'd think I could deal with it."

Rustle decided that her mother was probably not the right person to ask about her history with Wolf. She turned to her sister instead. "You're . . . eleven, right? And Obsidian is fifteen?"

"Right. She's a Crescent Moon, and I'm doing the New Moon exercises, since you two grasped power so early." Topaz bounced on her toes.

Rustle sighed. "I may have to start over, memorizing them. I couldn't even remember the charms for a basic mental shield."

Topaz was happy to supply them, and drilled her on them while her mother took Quicksilver and walked her around showing her things. Leaking love and delighted happiness all over. Rustle braced herself under the weight of the emotions, but said nothing.
This is how I was raised, with love pouring in from all sides.
When Topaz volunteered to show her their very own geyser, she leapt for it, and put a bit more room between herself and her mother. Phantom trailed after them, stopping at a corral to greet a pair of horses that reminded her of Junk, despite their pinto coloring.

"These are the Terrible Twins. Dad says he hopes they've been bred to Phantom."

"Are they by Sun Gold?"

Topaz giggled. "He's their grandsire. Not many get that color. Nil says he's got a fondness for pintos. He kept one of Blackberry and Sun Gold's colts for a stallion for awhile, but the pintos don't sell very well so he gelded him and used him for a harness horse and he got lost over on the Old World. But he got some of that wine before they turned him loose, so I figure he's still siring pinto foals all over the place."

Rustle didn't quite know how to parse that, but Topaz rattled right along. "And their dams are two really nice mares, warhorses, that Dad got when the Ba'alists attacked him and Mom. Nil says Dad's got the makings of a great horse thief."

"Really?" She was beginning to wonder if her family was insane.

"Oh yeah. He's got other horses that he captured from bandits. Most of them are down at the Wizard's Tower. We just keep a few up here for riding, but Dad bred so many last year he ran out of riding horses. That's one of the reasons he said he'd be happy to keep Phantom for you. The other is that they can breed mares to him. After all of this year's foals are born."

Rustle chuckled. "Wolf said something about them not ever paying stud fees." She grinned at the little steaming hole, with its built up minerals around it.

"It used to look like a teapot, but it sort of outgrew that. I want a pool, but Mom says there's not enough water flow."

The discolored little trickle of water that ran across the stone and disappeared into the underbrush was definitely thin. Rustle thought vaguely that there was another reason for the lack of a pond, but as usual, the memory refused to surface.

She heard Quicksilver cry, back at the house and trotted back. "Sorry, didn't mean to miss dinner time. Oh, my, all clean and dry already? How nice."

She settled down with the baby and Never hustled up some tea.

"I don't suppose there's a primer on witchcraft I could read, to jog my memory, is there?"

No, but her mother was more than willing to talk, and Rustle relaxed and rocked Quicksilver to sleep as she listened to the familiar but somehow distant sketch of a witch's life and talents.

But even with them trying so hard, the leakage crept up and she finally took a fairly graceful exit that didn't look too much like fleeing.

Spring, 1376 PE

Ash, Comet Fall

The next morning, she hit the kitchen early, raiding the magic cold cabinet for a snack, and then decided to explore northward.

A number of young women were walking up a path into the woods.
Had it been ten days since she'd encountered Answer?

They spotted her. One of them waved, and
she cut across the hill to meet them.

"Are you coming today, Rustle?" The girl who'd waved eyed her uncertainly. "Answer said you didn't remember much . . . I'm Xanthic, this is Ultra, and Swish. You really don't remember us, do you?" Her searching glance was mentally open, and Rustle shakily raised her shields. Using the rhyme, it didn't hurt nearly as much. Really.
And they only leaked a little.

Ultra was aghast. "What did you do to your brain?"

Swish smirked a bit. "Guess you won't be showing off today."

"Girls . . . " A slightly older group of witches was coming up behind them, and made shooing motions with her hands. Rustle joined the younger witches as they walked into the woods. The sulfur smell strengthened, and they walked out into a rock floored clearing. Three steaming pools along the base of a ten foot cliff. A small waterfall tinkled into the northernmost pool. Other witches were already there.

Rustle's first try at witch exercises gave her a pounding headache. She sat quietly and meditated beside the hot springs, pretending she didn't see the worried looks everyone was giving her. Even with everyone well shielded, quite a few emotions were seeping through. More worried and caring than gleefully spiteful, but there was a bit of that as well. Chilly disapproval from the "eldest sister" of the pyramid. She failed to remember why she had a bad relationship with the leader of the Pyramid but jumped up another notch toward a blinding headache.

A couple of pinprick jolts, as someone, or several someones, tested her shaky shield.
I am vulnerable. Bare to an attack from any of these people, and I don't remember who among them might bear me ill will. Nor why.

There were twelve Half Moons, and
they would have made even triads, if she had been up to the work. As it was, Elegant, who was running the exercises today suggested that she simply listen and hopefully remember. She pulled Swish and Ultra out of the groups and set them each up with solo exercises, and resorted the rest into three triads.

Rustle was relieved to see that the triad from Rip Crossi
ng, which was apparently her demesne, was well up to the work. When Ask was swapped out for Ultra, she came and sat beside Rustle. Her shield was solid, and her hug worried.

"
Xen's been drilling us on keeping quiet. And everyone else is mostly through the gate. So if you need privacy, you can come to the Rip."

Rustle frowned.
"Can I travel that far? I'm not sure I can travel at all, right now."

Ask snorted. "We have a c
orridor now. Very handy. Some days I feel like I've never left Ash."

Rustle nodded slowly. Corridors. Of course.

The witches took a well timed break, as all twelve of them had infants, and all twelve decided it was time to eat. Iron's little girl was the oldest of the bunch, fast approaching her first birthday, and apparently determined to meet it on her feet.

After another resorting of Triads, and repeat exercises,
they were dismissed.

"Rustle, wait a moment, please." Answer was looking disturbed.

"Eldest Sister?" Rustle used the title the others her age and below had used.

"Rustle, your were precocious, and too independent, living with Never and that man outside our influence. Your brilliance was not tempered by our keeping you from straying across lines that should never be crossed without considerable thought and animal experimentation. Your arrogance was untempered by caution, when you were in Karista, pretending to be a princess, and inciting violence. You have caused me more trouble than any ten other witches.

"But now you are injured. And you are still my great granddaughter. We will help you regain what you have lost, teach you all over what cannot be recalled. You may rely on us. And I truly wish that you would come and live with us, not with some man. God though he calls himself."

Rustle blinked back tears, nodded. "I cannot live in the village yet, my shields are too weak, my mind too raw. When I can, I will consider your offer." She tried to smile. "And if I recall too much, you may well wish me gone, or glad of what I can no longer do."

Answer looked away. "I should hope to never be so petty as to be glad of anyone's loss of power. Heal, then decide. I think you should sit in on our usual lessons for the Crescent Moons. Tuesdays. After school. Here. Otherwise, let your brain rest."

"Yes, Eldest Sister."

The old woman waved her off, and turned back to the other old witches, who had remained as if they had business to discuss, apart from the younger women.

She followed the path back toward the village. Quail stirred, woke suddenly and demanded lunch in no uncertain terms. Rustle hustled the last steps out of the forest, then stepped off the path to sit in the grass.

So. I was the Bad Girl of the Pyramid. And the head witch—my great grandmother!—won't even say what I did. No doubt hoping I won't remember doing it, or at least that I won't be able to do it again.

But she offered me a home.