Thalgor's Witch

by Nancy Holland

“Why?” Erwyn asked, as casually as she could.

  “You are his woman.”

  “Were you not there when he asked me to leave his tent? Dara may have him, if she wishes. It is no concern of mine.”

  Tya looked as if she believed the brave words as little as Erwyn did, but she said nothing.

  They finished the meal in silence. When it was gone, Tya stood with a heavy sigh. “Nothing to do for it but go back.”

  “It will get better.”

  Tya reddened. “I suppose it was wrong of me to complain to you when you…”

  “I will get better, too.” Again she hoped the words sounded more certain to Tya than they did to her.

  Erwyn pulled herself awkwardly to her feet with her staff.

  “It’s Rygar,” Tya exclaimed when she saw the face Erwyn had carved in the wood.

  “Is it?” She had meant to carve the Witch King.

  Tya looked closer, and even Felyn came to peer up at the face in the wood.

  “No,” Tya said slowly. “You’re right. It’s not. But if he had a brother…”

  Erwyn almost told her he did have a brother, but that was Rygar’s story to share with the woman he loved, not hers.

  They both jumped when Felyn said solemnly, “Thalgor.”

  Tya looked closely at the carving again.

  “She’s right. It could be Thalgor, too. But I don’t think it is. Did you carve it yourself?”

  “It keeps my hands busy when I rest. It’s not finished.”

  “Strange how it could be Thalgor or Rygar, but isn’t.”

  Erwyn merely nodded. It was a familiar puzzle to her.

  Tya returned to the camp, Erwyn and Felyn to the fallen tree, where they ate a warm dinner and sat by the fire until Felyn fell asleep with her head in Erwyn’s lap.

  Perhaps it was a mistake to give the lost child our mother’s name, Erwyn thought as the moon sank behind the trees. This new grief may not end until I know the truth behind her death. And that I may never know.

  To think this pain might never end was unbearable, yet she could not wish the child unnamed.

  She vowed to try the ritual again and, if that failed to ease her grief, to take an ox from Thalgor’s camp and return to the Wise Witches to beg them again for their help. Even if they refused a second time to give her the answers she needed, she could leave Felyn in their care.

  Then she would be free to finish the deadly dance with the sea Thalgor had once interrupted. With the possibility of that end to her sorrow her only comfort, she finally slept.

  They ate a cold meal at dawn, then went to the circle to repeat the ritual.

  Felyn dragged her feet, her small face an endless, silent complaint. When she refused to enter the circle, Erwyn sighed and told her to play nearby until the ritual was done.

  A wise child. Without Felyn to distract her, Erwyn was able to concentrate more fully on her loss and its place in the cycles of the world. The ritual was slower as she took in the full meaning of every word, every gesture, until she felt as if she had finally done what she must do for the lost child.

  But the aching sorrow remained.

  She walked the whole perimeter of the circle, but saw no sign of Felyn. Weary from the ritual, she used her staff to half drag herself along the path to their small camp.

  The girl was not there, but someone, or something, had eaten most of their food and left their things strewn on the cold ground like leaves after a storm.

  Too tired for the alarm that tried to skitter along her nerves, Erwyn numbly packed what could be salvaged in the one basket that remained whole. Then she lowered herself to the ground and leaned back against the fallen tree to wait for Felyn.

  She woke to the feel of a man’s hand on her breast.

  Caught in dreams of Thalgor, she pulled away with a murmur of protest.

  Then the stench hit her. Her eyes flew open.

  Within inches of her nose was a face that seemed vaguely familiar but was so caked with dirt she couldn’t be certain. The stench that woke her came not only from the man’s unwashed body, but also from the blackened teeth that filled his grim smile.

  “It is you,” he hissed. “I could not be certain until I saw those blue witch’s eyes.”

  Erwyn tried to pull away, but he sat astride her.

  A sound drew her attention to where Felyn lay beside them, arms tied behind her, a filthy rag stuffed in her mouth.

  Erwyn started to scream but the man held up a knife.

  “Don’t try it.” He laughed at her terror. “Where is your magic now, witch? Or that giant man of yours? Both gone or I would already be dead. Gone the way my band and my wife and my children are gone. Because you bewitched them away from me.”

  Through the blind panic that swept around her like a whirlwind Erwyn recognized the marauder whose woman had been the midwife who now cooked for Gurdek.

  The renegade squeezed her breast so hard she gasped, then touched its point with the knife.

  “So many choices. Do I rape you, or make you watch me rape the girl? Untouched she might bring me the worth of an ox when I sell her as a slave in the South. You I will kill, of course, for fear your magic might return. But I will not kill you quickly, not quickly at all.”

  The knife pricked through her cloak and gown to cut the tender skin, but she knew better than to give any sign of pain.

  “Brave or petrified with fear?” The man laughed again as a small spot of blood flowered on the fabric over the wound.

  The pain cleared Erwyn’s head. Thalgor’s dagger throbbed against her wrist. Slowly, so the renegade could not see, she felt for the dagger’s handle and edged it out of its pocket.

  Thalgor had given it to her for just such a moment, but he could not have remembered what it would cost her to use it.

  If she killed, she would lose her magic. No longer Thalgor’s woman, what would she be if she was not a witch?

  While she shifted the dagger in her hand, unsure what to do, Felyn wriggled around enough to give the man a solid kick in the leg.

  He cursed wildly, dropped the knife, and wrapped his blackened fingers around the girl’s throat. “If you were not worth so much…”

  He had turned his body, so Erwyn might not be able to kill him with a single blow. If he moved closer again, she could thrust the knife up under his ribs, straight into his heart.

  Could, but would she? Not to kill was so much a part of what she had learned from her mother that even to think of thrusting the dagger home felt like a betrayal of her mother’s love. But to let Felyn be taken felt like a betrayal of herself.

  The child ceased to struggle and went limp in the man’s hands.

  The renegade threw her unconscious form to one side and stood up. He bent to try to pull Erwyn up by the shoulders.

  Thoughts tumbled through her mind. Kill this man and lose her power, or abandon Felyn to her fate? Both were unthinkable.

  A calmer inner voice told her she had less chance to find his heart if they stood.

  She wriggled free of his grasp and fell to the ground. Somehow she managed to kick his knife away in the process.

  “Get up!” His foot found her ribs with a vicious blow.

  “I am ill,” she wheezed. “You must help me get up.”

  Time stretched as the man cursed viciously again and bent toward her, closer, closer.

  She tensed the arm that held the dagger and braced her body against the ground so she could thrust with greater force. Closer he came, almost within reach.

  She heard Felyn gasp for air. In that moment she knew the renegade was a dead man.

  But before she could act, a noise came from behind them. The man cried out, straightened, then froze.

  Thrrr. Thonk! Erwyn heard the sounds clearly this time.

  The man opened his mouth in a silent scream before he fell forward across her body, dead. His weight pushed all the air out of her. Two arrows still quivered in his back.

  “Rygar!” she called.

&nbs
p; But it was Thalgor’s face that floated in front of her as the terror swallowed her.

  Thalgor. She let the blackness take her.

  *

  When her mind cleared, the renegade’s body was gone. Someone was gently washing her face with warm water, but she was too weak to turn her head to see who it was.

  “How?” she managed.

  A man’s hands offered her a cup of broth, but she ignored it.

  “How?” she asked again.

  “I dreamed of the Witch King.”

  Her breath caught. An answer only Thalgor could give. She closed her eyes against the flood of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her again.

  “The Witch King sent me to you.” His voice was as gentle as his hands. “And who do you think taught Rygar how to shoot an arrow?”

  She smiled. When he touched the cup of broth to her lips this time she opened her eyes and drank.

  “I saw to Felyn first,” he explained as she sipped the welcome liquid. “She was hurt, but not badly. You seemed only to have fainted. The cut is minor, but I cleaned it for you.”

  She reddened at the thought that he touched her bare breast.

  He gave a small laugh. “I have seen it before.”

  The broth gone, Erwyn sat up and shook her head to clear it. What had just happened came back to her in an icy rush. A chill filled her body.

  She would have killed! All her mother taught her meant nothing. She’d let her babies die, one knowingly, and now she would have murdered.

  She turned the dagger in her hand, but Thalgor saw the movement and took it from her.

  “One blow clean up through here.” She struck her chest just below the left ribs.

  Thalgor slid the dagger into its holder on his belt. “In his heart, or yours?”

  “Witch blood!” she hissed. “Stay out of my mind.”

  “It is not a pleasant place to be just now. Nor is mine.”

  “So go back to your camp and worry about your own thoughts.”

  She struggled to her feet, but the earth swayed under her. She stumbled a few steps, then fell to her knees and emptied her stomach.

  Thalgor held her shoulders as the tremors ran through her. When they stopped, he lifted her face to wipe it clean again.

  “You are ill.”

  She stood slowly and squared her shoulders. “No, I grieve.”

  “For our lost child?”

  She shook her head. The gesture made her so dizzy she sat down hard on the ground at his feet.

  “Because I asked you to leave my tent?”

  He picked her up, carried her back to the fallen tree, and laid her down gently.

  “I grieve for myself.”

  With those words what she had almost done hit full force, a soul pain so deep she felt it in her body, so unbearable she could only be grateful when the blackness took her again.

  Chapter Twelve

  When Erwyn fought her way back into this world, half against her will, Thalgor’s rich baritone mixed with Felyn’s piping laughter somewhere nearby.

  The weight of her grief was still so great she could scarcely stay conscious long enough to drink the broth Thalgor brought her when he saw she was awake. Then she slept.

  “Enough.” Her mother’s face hovered over her in a dream. Tears of unbearable longing flowed down Erwyn’s face.

  “Enough,” the vision said again, as her mother had long ago when Erwyn had grieved too long after her so-beloved father had first been captured. “Leave it go. Live, child! It is all we have, this life.”

  “No!” Erwyn struggled awake.

  She looked up at cloth and thought for a moment she was in Thalgor’s tent. That the whole ordeal had been only a dreadful nightmare.

  Then she heard raindrops and felt a cold breeze. Thalgor had built a lean-to to protect her from the icy rain.

  It was full night. Felyn slept curled up beside her for warmth, but Thalgor sat by the fire and stared into the flames.

  A strange sweetness filled her. She wanted this life. This man. Grief and pain remained, but she no longer wished to die.

  Carefully she sat up. Her head remained clear. She licked cracked lips.

  “Thalgor,” she whispered.

  He looked over from where he sat and said softly, “So you’ve decided to live.”

  She shrugged. “I’m hungry.”

  “Too wet to cook or hunt. Of course you are hungry now,” he grumbled, but she saw the relief in his eyes.

  He rummaged about in one of the baskets and handed her a piece of bread. She ate it eagerly, then drank the rainwater he caught for her in a cup.

  “Thank you for staying here to care for us.”

  It was his turn to shrug. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “Go back to your camp and send Tya?”

  “And have Rygar at my throat because I deprive him of her company? No, thank you.”

  “Send him as well.”

  “And have Tya’s father at my throat? Think, woman!”

  She laughed, a strange, rusty sound.

  “How is Felyn?”

  He came and sat beside her, but didn’t touch her.

  “Thoroughly tired of this place. As am I.”

  “No harm from…from the renegade?”

  Erwyn shuddered at the memory of what the man did. And what she had almost done.

  “A nightmare. She hasn’t said much, but that is how the child is.”

  Yet Erwyn had heard the child laugh with him.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “I told you, the Witch King sent me after you.”

  “I meant, why are you still here?”

  “I told you that, too.”

  “You told me some story. I want the real answer.”

  He shifted so their legs touched. She did not move away.

  “A man thinks many things when he isn’t sure he will arrive in time to save his woman’s life. Isn’t even sure she wants it to be saved.”

  “Am I your woman still?” she asked, almost against her will.

  “Would I care so for a stranger?”

  A tiny crack broke through the pain and grief that was still frozen around her heart like ice on late-ripening fruit.

  “Tya said Dara visited you.” Another unbidden question.

  He gave a puff of laughter. “She tried to tell me you had killed our child on purpose, as you had helped her rid herself of Batte’s. I knew it was a lie as soon as the words left her mouth. And I knew then that, in my grief, I had wronged you.”

  “You grieved, too,” she acknowledged. “But even then you did not come to find me.”

  “No. I thought the words could wait until you came back. Then the Witch King warned me you might never return.”

  She nodded again and laid her head on his shoulder.

  “I am tired. Will you keep me warm while I sleep?”

  He pulled his cloak around them and gathered her to his chest as she pulled Felyn to hers.

  She woke at midday, or what would have been midday if the rain hadn’t turned the dark-time sun into the gloom of evening.

  Thalgor had made a small fire beyond the edge of the lean-to and sat by it, shivering as he heated battle gruel.

  When he saw Erwyn was awake, he brought her some broth and tea. She drank both apprehensively, but like the bread the night before they warmed her and settled comfortably in her belly.

  After they ate, Thalgor cleared away the small meal, then came to sit beside her. Felyn huddled on her other side.

  The three of them sat in silence for a long time as they watched the fire burn in the shadowy afternoon.

  Words would be nicer, Erwyn knew, but words were also more dangerous. Better just to sit with the feel of Thalgor’s body near hers once again.

  “Is there enough food?” she finally stirred herself to ask.

  “I will kill another rabbit when it stops raining, and Felyn has gotten quite good at finding nuts. I think this was an orchard once.”

/>   Erwyn looked around and noticed for the first time the trees around them were all fruit- or nut-bearing kinds. “Our ancestors must have planted them.”

  “Which means there might be ruins nearby. I plan to look for them while I hunt, now that I can search farther away.”

  “How long will we stay here?”

  A memory of their journey back from the sea flittered unbidden through her mind and she smiled.

  “We will stay until you are well enough to walk all the way back to camp.”

  “Are you not needed there?”

  “To stay away might be better now. Batte blames Sett for the failure of our raid and our losses in the battle that followed. He wanted him and those who came with him forced from the band. Gurdek saw more clearly the fault that lay with the enemy leader, who took a risk no leader should, even if they were almost victorious. So he took Sett as his second.” He shook his head. “Councils have become nothing but a battleground between the two of them, with Sett and Batte’s new second, a solid man named Tynor, trying to stay out of the way and Rygar trying to make peace until he loses his temper with them all.”

  “So Tya told me.”

  “We cannot even reach a decision about which way to move south.” He sighed. “While I am gone, no one will expect a decision, and perhaps Batte and Gurdek will learn how to work together again. At least I don’t have to listen to them argue.”

  “What if Batte decides to take his men and leave the band?”

  “He might have, if they argued so before the last battle. But we lost so many men there are no longer enough warriors to defend two camps, and Batte has no desire to live as a marauder. He wants to lead a great band.”

  “He will not try to take your place while you are gone?”

  “Not with Rygar and Gurdek there. And Sett.”

  *

  The next day dawned clear and cold.

  Thalgor hunted while Erwyn and Felyn stayed close to the fire. When he returned with a rabbit, Erwyn made a thick stew. She was weary when she finished, but it felt good to be able to carry out even that simple task.

  “I found the ruins,” Thalgor announced while they ate. “They’re at the southern edge of this grove. Nothing is left but huge cut stones thrown about, as if by some angry giant.”

  Angry witches, more likely. But Erwyn dared not say so.