Thalgor's Witch

by Nancy Holland

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as she offered a cup of tea.

  “Thalgor sent me away the day you left. Neither he nor my father want me in his tent without you there. Thalgor only has me come to his tent a short time each day to keep things clean. He eats at the warriors’ mess.”

  The girl stopped and gave a forlorn sniffle. Despite the searing pain at the sound of Thalgor’s name, Erwyn patted her arm.

  “It is hard to return to my mother’s tent,” Tya went on. “When Rygar came to see me, there are children everywhere. When we tried to walk alone together, they follow us. And now Thalgor has sent him off with a scouting party for who knows how long?”

  Again sorrow burned through Erwyn, but she put her arms around Tya, who wept helplessly beside her.

  “Would your father let you live here with us?” she suggested when the torrents stopped.

  Tya looked up and brushed damp hair out of her face. “With you?”

  Erwyn nodded. “You could still do what…” She stopped and took a deep breath. “What Thalgor needs from you. I am often called away to help with births or illness. It is awkward to take Felyn, and I do not want to leave her alone at night.”

  “You truly need my help?”

  “Yes. Felyn could use a more cheerful playmate than I can easily be, too. She’s stopped talking again.”

  “Poor child.” Tya looked over to when Felyn idly shifted through the stones from the game Thalgor have given her. “I’ll ask my mother. But I’m sure she’ll agree. She was complaining again this morning about how many of us she had underfoot and cursing her weakness for my father’s smile.”

  Tya giggled. Erwyn made an appropriate sound, but her heart bled at the memory of Thalgor’s rare but seductive smiles.

  Tya gave a contented sigh. “And when Rygar returns we can talk alone together again.”

  Erwyn quickly discovered she needed Tya’s help for more reasons than she’d thought.

  The girl’s cheerful presence not only eased Felyn’s sorrow but gave Erwyn herself minutes at a time when she was able to forget her pain.

  She was busy with births, too. She hurried to and fro in the camp, mostly at night, but managed not to cross paths with Thalgor as she went.

  But it was impossible to avoid him completely. At least they met in broad daylight, and Gurdek was with him. She almost ran headlong into the two of them as she rushed from one birth to another, her face damp with tears for a baby she had not been able to save.

  Thalgor stepped in front of her. With no way around him, she stood and waited, breathing an almost unbearable effort.

  He looked as if he had not slept. And the glare of his eyes told her he blamed her. His face was gaunt. He looked awful.

  “You look awful,” he greeted her. “Are you ill?”

  “Do you care?”

  “I care if Tya becomes ill, since she still does the work of my tent.”

  Erwyn tried to slow the pounding of her heart, but without any luck. She was forced to push her words around it.

  “I am well. There is a birth…”

  “There is always a birth, as I remember. How is the child?”

  “She mourns.”

  “Me?”

  Erwyn shook her head in disbelief. Arrogant man!

  “Her home. Rygar, since you sent him away.”

  “Oh. Good company for Tya, since they both miss him.”

  He stepped aside.

  She hurried on her way on legs so weak they scarcely held her.

  Rygar returned the next day. He brought Gee’s loom with him and set it up outside the tent. Then he played the stone game with Felyn before he took Tya off on a long walk alone.

  Erwyn set the child to carding wool and settled at the loom, pleased at her friend’s return. Still, she wondered at the reason for it, as she had wondered at the reason he was sent away.

  As she wove her seemingly endless sorrow into the warp and woof of her work, Gurdek came and sat on the stool by the tent door.

  “How are you?” he asked solemnly.

  “Why is everyone suddenly so concerned with my health?” she snapped.

  He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “It was a greeting.”

  She nodded an apology and waited, still focused on her work.

  “Thalgor mourns,” her taciturn visitor finally said.

  She gasped at the tear in her heart at her lover’s name. “For Batte?”

  “For all he has lost.” Gurdek shifted his thick body uncomfortably on the stool made for Gee. “He calls no council.”

  “Hmmm.” She stared more fiercely at the loom.

  “He means to name Sett his lieutenant in Batte’s place.”

  “A wise choice. Did he send you for my approval?”

  “Sett did.”

  She allowed this new pain to flow through her.

  “Because he sensed Thalgor would be uncertain without it,” Gurdek quickly added.

  The new pain shattered into another, less familiar hurt.

  “Well, you can tell them both that, if a council were called and if I were told of it, I would support Thalgor’s choice.”

  “Those are welcomed words.” Gurdek pulled himself to his feet. “For all of us.”

  He laid a hand on her shoulder. She looked past the grizzled beard and saw the fondness in his eyes.

  “My woman, the midwife, worries.”

  “She need not.” Erwyn managed a smile.

  With a sigh, Gurdek dropped his hand and walked away.

  The days melted into one another. Erwyn wept only at night, when she dreamed of Thalgor. Finally she decided to go into the woods to perform the ritual of loss.

  She would need to make herself invisible because the panther that killed Dara still lurked about to prey on their sheep. And because, if she were seen going into the woods at night, word would get back to Thalgor, and he might think she left to meet a lover.

  When the moon was full, and both Tya and Felyn slept, Erwyn stirred the air around her and slipped from the tent. She crept through the silent camp unseen by the guards and out one of the four openings in the rapidly rising wall of cold, gray stone. As she neared the woods, a lone figure appeared in the moonlight, walking along the path that circled outside the wall.

  Thalgor.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Erwyn knew it was Thalgor by his size, by his walk, by the way her heart leapt with need at the sight of him.

  As he came closer she took advantage of the moonlight and her invisibility to fill her eyes with him.

  He had lost so much weight his tunic hung loose over muscle and bone. His face was thinner, his eyes sunken. Deep lines bracketed his mouth, their grimness echoed on his brow.

  He looked so alone she almost called to him, yearning to take him into her arms and make him whole again.

  She stopped herself in time, grateful he could not see her.

  Great tears rolled down her face as he walked away. When he disappeared around the bend in the wall, she went on into the woods, no longer certain why she was there.

  She ended the invisibility spell, impatient with the drain of energy from the thoughts that buzzed through her mind like swarming hornets. No two led in the same direction, so all tumbled about in one agonized confusion.

  As she walked toward the sacred circle she began to wonder if she was right to leave Thalgor’s tent. Clearly the disruption in their lives had upset Felyn, who only now began again to whisper a few words to Tya or Rygar. But Erwyn never meant for the child to leave with her. That was Thalgor’s choice.

  Her own pain Erwyn considered the price, if a high one, of living as she needed to live. But Thalgor’s pain…

  Perhaps he mourned Batte, grieved that his friend died at his hand. Even so, his solitude would make the pain worse.

  And he probably missed Felyn, as the child missed him.

  Enough grief to keep him from calling council, to slow his naming Sett to replace Batte, to make him walk the perimeter al
one at night.

  But not to eat, not to sleep was something else. Even after she lost their child, even after Gee’s death, he ate and slept, if badly at first. Could Batte have meant so much more to him?

  She reached the calm of the witch’s circle and sat to one side of it, her back against the rough bark of a tree. The moonlight turned the air silver. The rustling sounds of the woods at night faded away. She sensed others here, all the witches who had come to this place over the ages. Yet she felt as alone here as she did in the bustle of the camp at midday.

  What if Thalgor mourned her?

  Then he can come and ask me to return to his tent, a voice inside her huffed indignantly.

  Could he? Even without Batte and Dara to spread lies about her, many in the camp still feared her and her power.

  They would have to make it appear he bent her will to his, and the need for that pretense would make a man as honest and proud as Thalgor twice as reluctant to ask her to return.

  Could she return to him unasked? At what price?

  Would he allow her to?

  The thoughts began to buzz again until her head ached.

  She’d never before questioned her choices. She’d always relied on her witch’s sense of what was right. Not that she’d never made mistakes, but as soon as she’d seen them for what they were, she’d undone them the best she could without hesitation.

  Now she was all hesitation. Had she made a mistake? If so, how could she undo it? If she could not see her way clear, could not heal her own pain, how could she heal Thalgor’s?

  Her magic was no help. These were a woman’s problems, not a witch’s.

  As the gold of dawn sliced under the darkness in the east, she started back to the camp, more distraught than when she left.

  Distraught and exhausted, so she did not sense the panther’s presence until it stood right in front of her.

  She didn’t scream and run, as Dara would have. Instead she froze. Even her heart stilled. She knew enough to keep her eyes fixed on the great cat’s hindquarters so she could see the telltale flick of its tail and tension in its muscles if it decided to pounce.

  The panther sniffed the air.

  Did it smell that she was a witch? Or did it smell the fear that coursed through her?

  Perhaps this was not the panther that had killed Dara. Or perhaps it had already eaten for this night. In any case, it seemed to ponder for a while, then swung its tail wide and melted into the grayness of the pre-dawn woods.

  Erwyn let out a long breath and rushed back to the camp. In the relief of her escape, she forgot to make herself invisible. With no choice but to brazen it out, she nodded a greeting to the guards as she passed the gate. She managed to slip into the tent without waking the others and was soon asleep. She dreamed of a talking panther who seemed to be her friend.

  When she emerged from the tent at mid-morning, Sett sat on the stool outside the door. He stood when he saw her, his scarred face grim.

  “You are well?”

  She bit back the hard answer she’d given Gurdek.

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “My men were on guard duty last night. They said you returned from the woods at dawn, alone. I worried that someone took you there. Someone who might have hurt you.”

  She shook her head, puzzled at the force of his reaction.

  “I went to the witch’s circle.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone. The panther that killed Dara still stalks the camp. And once one learns humans are easy prey…”

  For a moment she wanted to tell him what happened, wanted to cry out her fear on that broad, strong chest.

  But the only chest where she could find true comfort was Thalgor’s, and he offered none.

  “You forget, I am a witch.”

  “But flesh and bone. If something happened to you…”

  Would Thalgor blame Sett if she were killed because his men failed to stop her from leaving camp?

  She looked up into Sett’s eyes. What she saw there made her dizzy, as if she’d stumbled and hadn’t quite righted herself yet.

  “Why were you worried?” She already knew the answer.

  Sett raised both hands and held them near her shoulders, but well away, as if afraid to touch her.

  “My woman…” He swallowed. “My woman was crushed by a tree in a great storm a few years ago. I thought never to take another. But if there comes a time when you…”

  He must have seen the truth on her face because he stopped.

  “I am Thalgor’s woman. I shall never be with any other man.”

  His hands fell and he stepped away. “Of course. But the thought of you injured…”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded and walked away.

  His words left Erwyn stunned. She had never thought of any man but Thalgor and assumed no other man thought of her. Who, as her uncle had so often said, would want a witch?

  Thalgor’s lust for her body had led him to want one, but it was not lust she saw in Sett’s eyes. His desire was mixed with an admiration she’d never expected, admiration not only for her as a woman but also for all she was, witch as well as woman.

  Seductive, though she had no inclination to be seduced by it. She had seen such admiration in Thalgor’s eyes only once, when she’d saved Rygar. The one he loved most.

  The buzz in her head continued all day. By evening she longed for the Witch King to appear in her dreams. He would know what she should do. But he stayed stubbornly away.

  *

  Thalgor looked at the man and woman before him, unable to decide between their competing claims for judgment. Both widowed, they had come together, each with children and possessions. Now, as they separated several years later, accusations flew, and Thalgor knew no way to sort out true from false.

  “He cannot take what was mine to start a new life with that …that child he shares a tent with now,” the woman declared.

  “I have a right to what was always mine,” the man countered.

  Thalgor’s head hurt. He glanced over to where the man’s new woman sat. Pretty enough, but young. Dara’s sister, he realized with a start.

  Would she want a man that age, and his children, without the goods he claimed? Thalgor thought not, but he couldn’t separate what his witch blood told him from the taint of her sister’s memory the young woman might not deserve.

  Rygar noticed how Thalgor rubbed his forehead and gave him a look that clearly said “Erwyn” but Thalgor shook it off.

  He let the separated couple wrangle a while longer, then asked a few questions.

  “Can your children verify this was yours before?” He pointed to a well-made table.

  The man grimaced. “I made it after we were together.”

  “Why?” Thalgor rubbed his forehead again.

  “Because neither of us had a table large enough for all the children.”

  “So, because you were one family?”

  The man nodded. His former woman was on the verge of tears.

  “Which of you has the most children?”

  “She does. But only one more, so with my new woman, the number will be the same. If she and I have more children…”

  The older woman wiped tears from her face with the sleeve of her gown. A weeping woman always made Thalgor’s heart ache with memories of his mother. Sadness mixed with an anger he’d never understood filled him, but he could base no decision on that.

  “What if she takes another man and they have children?” asked Erwyn as she entered the circle where he sat in judgment.

  Sett moved into the edge of the crowd, avoiding his eyes.

  The man stiffened at the witch’s words. “She is too old.”

  “Too old to have children, perhaps, but not too old to take another man,” Thalgor said thoughtfully.

  The woman looked up. She was still handsome.

  “Do you want her?” the man growled at Thalgor.

  “If I were older I might.”

  Erwyn spared him
a lightening glance.

  The look was a sword to his heart. Could the witch think he wanted, could ever want, another woman in his tent? At least the pain stopped the searing need in his body that had sprung to life when he saw her. Against his will he sniffed the air, lonely for the scent of her, even if it brought back that need redoubled.

  “And if she takes a new man, and he has children,” Erwyn said, “they will need a large table.”

  “Not a table I made with my own hands,” the man protested.

  “Did she not weave and sew the clothes you wear with her own hands? Would you go to your new woman naked?”

  The man flushed. “Does the witch speak for you, Thalgor?”

  “The witch asks useful questions. What is it all worth, the clothes she made for you, the meals she cooked for you, all the work she did to keep you and your children?”

  “But I worked, too. I fought. I hunted. I herded sheep.”

  “You worked for the band, but she and her children would be cared for in any case,” Erwyn said. “She worked only for you.”

  “The witch speaks true,” Gurdek’s woman, the midwife, added from the other side of the circle.

  The rest of the women in the crowd nodded their agreement.

  Thalgor did not like where this was headed. If women and men began to count up who did what when they shared a tent, squabbles as painful as this could break out all over the camp.

  “The woman keeps what she can use, all except your clothes and your children’s.” Everyone turned to stare at him. “You and your new woman can replace what you need. She cannot do that alone.”

  “But the witch says she will take a new man,” the younger woman protested in a whiny voice.

  Erwyn hid a smile. “I only said she might.”

  The man turned to Dara’s sister with a new look on his face.

  “This matters to you, whether we need to make new things for the tent we share?”

  “Of course. I do not wish to work all the time. I suppose your children can do most of it.”

  “My children do my woman’s work?” the man asked in a tone Thalgor knew should have warned her.

  “What else are they good for?”

  Rather than have this very private conversation continue in his makeshift council, Thalgor declared, “I have made my judgment,” and walked away.