Stranger Rituals

by Kali Rose Schmidt

  The woman glanced at her hand but shrugged. “If she wants to take her own life, let her save us the trouble.”

  The Marazan woman held her blade aloft, angled it so one quick plunge would sink it into Scarko’s heart. Scarko flashed a smile, squeezed the blade in her own hand, let the sharp sting of the wound steady her.

  When the woman, confusion flashing over her face, lunged for her with her blade, Scarko stepped back, lifted her bleeding palm. She felt her strange magic swirl through her veins like fire and watched as the blood pooled together, forming into a crimson sword before her eyes, hovering between her and the woman, who was transfixed, her mouth hanging open. The man on the horse whimpered, and the other woman, still atop her horse, turned away.

  “Go!” she shouted, and without waiting for her companions, she tore through the desert sands. Scarko let her go. Two bodies were more than enough to quench her thirst. The woman before her made to run, but Scarko was faster, fast enough to make the man, still on his horse, pause.

  With a wave of her fingers, letting the bloodied blade fall to the sand, she drove the blood-sword to the man atop the horse first, and before he could kick his heels against the black mare’s flank, the sword drove itself through his neck. With a strangled, wet sound, he fell into the sands.

  His horse neighed, rearing backwards, and then turned to follow the fleeing woman.

  Scarko turned her gaze to the Marazan standing in front of her, and noticed with satisfaction the rebel had wet herself, a damp spot in her bright red, billowing cloak. She was trembling, rooted to the spot in fear. Scarko closed the distance between them easily and wrapped her bloodied palm around the woman’s neck. The woman shrieked, sinking to her knees. One hand still around the Marazan’s throat, Scarko commanded the blood-sword, the blüdsvard, over the woman’s head. She released her grip on the woman, her flesh melted and sticky on her fingers.

  She splayed them wide, and the blüdsvard disintegrated into droplets of dark red atop the woman’s hair. The woman screamed louder, reaching for her head, for the burns forming in her skull. It took minutes for her to die, and Scarko watched, eyeing the blood with appetite that rendered the cold desert sand a muddled brown.

  Finally, the woman took a last gasp, her face in the sand, and she was gone.

  Scarko pocketed her blade after she licked the blood off, careful not to cut her tongue.

  “Well, Kadezska, you might not save the world, but at least you’ve got lunch.”

  4

  A Wicked Wolf Dies…and Comes Back to Life

  As the sun sank down in the sky, the cold sand beneath her feet at last changed to dead grass and crunchy leaves. Then she was inside the Skov forest. Inside darkness. Here, at least, the winds were muffled, a relief to her cheeks, chapped from the frigid wind in the open desert.

  “Good gods, these trees are so dead,” she muttered to herself, doing a complete turn in the forest, taking in her surroundings. At the base of a great grey tree, she saw white mushrooms, at odds with the darkness of the forest, nearly glowing in the night. They were coupled together like a family in varying rows. She knew they were used to make syn.

  Absentmindedly, she fingered the bird skull around her neck. A nervous habit, and a reminder of where she had come from, what the Warskians believed of her. Her parents had treated her strangeness as a speciality, unique like a freckle or a birthmark. But she had quickly learned that she was not special, not unique.

  She was cursed.

  Listening to the hum of animals alive within the Skov forest, she pushed the thought aside. Instead, she focused on a howl from deep within the woods. A smile pulled on her lips. Soon, she would be able to give her feet a rest.

  Several hours passed before she spotted more syn mushrooms. She remembered the time she had been through the forest before, with the Djavul, on a trip to partake in syn. Vojtech had been hopeful the mushroom elixir would help her speak to the gods, too.

  Prior to that trip, he had taken her hand in his, sliced her gently with her own knife, and drank of her blood, his warm tongue lapping it up from her palm. He had then tried to impart his visions to her, through a strange magic he called cariad. To his eternal disappointment, nothing had happened.

  They had gone for syn next.

  It had only given her nightmares about the Praeminister that manifested as she was still awake. Vojtech had had to tie her hands to keep her from clawing her own face.

  She shook the memory aside. While they had gone in the spring, it had been muggy, full of biting bugs. Now, it was cool, not a single flying thing to be found save for bats overhead, among the canopy.

  She adjusted her black leather bag on her tired shoulders, knowing sleep would not come even if she wanted it to, even if it pulled at her mind like a lover tempting her into bed. She had not slept well since her time in the Palace, praying to the Vrakan gods that the Praeminister wouldn’t come for her during the night. The gods, however, had other plans for her most nights. None of the gods of the Order, of the Vraka, were known for their kindness. Instead, they were known for their power, the powerful magic they had bestowed on her and those like her, scattered throughout the continent. The power that had done her no good within the Palace.

  But now, she was beyond the reaches of mindeta. She was able to feel strong again.

  As she picked her way through heavy bramble, thorns snagging on her outer cloak, she heard a noise unlike the others within the forest. A predatory rhythm that pricked her senses—heavy footsteps, the grunt of a large animal. She quietly pressed her body up against a tree and set her pack down on the forest floor. She could see her breath before her, the chill of the night leaving frost on the ground that glimmered in the light of the moon. She strained her ears, listening, as she grabbed onto the nearest cold branch of the tree, pulling herself up without effort, ignoring the pain from her palm from when she had sliced her hand to kill the Marazan rebels.

  She sat atop the limb of the tree.

  The Djavul thought it would take her a week to reach Kezda on foot.

  But she never planned to stay on foot.

  A grey wolf came into view, its yellow eyes glowing eerily in the night. She felt the hilt of her knife pressed against her tunic, underneath her cloak.

  The wolf snapped its large head up toward her, eyes searching her own. She sighed contentedly; this is what she had counted on to carry her closer to Kezda, to shave days off her travel. She wondered if the Djavul had seen that in his vision from the gods, seen her defy them. The thought made her laugh, ever-so-softly. The wolf’s ears shifted.

  She took out her knife, held out her wounded palm, and with a deep cut, reopened the wound. The sharp sting made her wince. Hundreds of times she had cut herself open, and it hurt the same each time. Sometimes she could scarcely use her left hand for anything more than a pool of magic, the flesh mangled and scarred.

  As the beautiful animal stalked beneath her perch, she grinned, and then dropped down onto its back, the rough fur beneath her palm, the wolf’s spine curving inward from her drop.

  It snarled a loud, reverberating sound as its great head gnashed around toward her, twisting and growling as she pressed her palm tighter into its body. The fur was singed, the smell of it nearly made her gag. Feeling the magic coursing through her, her own blood alive in her veins, she conjured the blüdsvard once more, jumping from the wolf’s back as it turned, hair bristling, stalking toward her. Its teeth exposed a snarl, its yellow eyes glued to her hazel ones, taking in every inch of her.

  But the blood-sword found its mark, crimson glimmering in the darkness of the forest. It plunged into the wolf’s chest, right through the heart like a steel blade, dark blood seeping from the animal who now howled in pain. Its eyes rolled back as it dropped to its haunches, bringing to mind Vojtech on his knees in the dungeon.

  The bird skull against her chest warmed, sensing the bones soon to come.

  The sword dissolved into drops of crimson on the wolf, disappearing as i
t did so.

  The beast was silent.

  She glanced up and saw a bat gliding through the night. A rush of belonging shot through her as she watched the black winged creature, said to be the favorite of the goddess Blüd. At least she had that in common with the goddess; she had always had a fondness for things that flew.

  She waited for a moment, letting the death of the beautiful creature settle.

  Gingerly, she approached, the throbbing in her palm palpable. But despite the pain, it would heal without infection, as all of her Vrakan wounds did. A little thank you, she supposed, from whichever god had cursed her so.

  She sank to her knees in the blood pooling around the wolf, dipped her head to the red puddle, and drank. She had never known the taste of real food; it all turned to ash in her mouth. But consuming blood, a life force, particularly when it was fresh, was a rapturous experience.

  When she was done, she stood, slowly, the bird skull hot against her chest.

  The rest of the wolf would not go to waste. A good thing, she thought wryly, considering waste was forbidden in the Holy Writ. She rolled her eyes.

  The wolf was large enough to ride. It wouldn’t be as smooth as sitting atop a live horse, but it would work. If she were lucky, she’d be in Kezda before nightfall the next day.

  She glided her wounded hand along the back of the creature and took a step back, reaching under her cloak for the bird skull, bloody hand clenched around it; a habit. The wolf jerked to its feet, his wide eyes lifeless, his body obedient. She let go of the skull, and the wolf still stood. She did not just command blood. She commanded bones, too. The dead wolf, drained of most of its blood, approached her with blank eyes, and she carefully sat astride it, willed it to run through the forest, even as it became stiff beneath her in death.

  Run it did, with an unusual but wicked fast gait, and the entire forest seemed silent in the strangeness of the resurrection.

  *

  As the sun slowly began to rise to the east, faint trickles of light made their way through the shadowy forest. As the wolf carcass moved steadily along, Scarko’s legs pulled in to the cold beast, and she glimpsed an opening ahead, a bare swath of land.

  The Penza.

  And where she couldn’t see further down the road, there was laughter, rumbling voices, and the trot of horses. Quickly, she dismounted the wolf, leaving it hidden in the forest behind her. She crouched down, ensuring she wasn’t visible from the road, bramble and brush shielding her.

  She watched the Warskian procession in the early morning light, dozens of soldiers likely on their way to Visla in the east: emerald green tunics and coats, carriages of green and silver, and the Warskian Royal flag with the green serpent, forked tongue splayed wide. The wolf, still upright, cursed by her smeared blood, was behind her, and for just a moment, she thought of pulling that blood curse taunt and sending it into the Warskian soldiers’ path. Let it attack, let it terrify them.

  She shook her head, clenched her fists.

  Not now, Kadezska.

  But as she continued watching the soldiers in glittering green and black fur hats pass by on horseback, some commanders in carriages, she could barely keep the rage from causing her hands to shake with the strength of it. And yet some of them, she reminded her pounding heart, could very well be Vraka. She searched for the drab brown the Vrakan Royal Army wore to separate themselves from the others and wondered if she could, somehow, free them.

  There were none here.

  Suddenly, there was a movement to her left, distracting her from tracking the soldiers, and she felt her blood run cold as she turned.

  A few feet from her, beyond the dead grass and leaves that edged against the flat cold earth of the Penza, was a man crouching beyond his own bush, knife in a tattooed hand.

  But he wasn’t staring at the passing Warskian procession. His gaze was wholly on her.

  She took in the crouch, lethal and steady, the darkness of his clothing, the lack of a jacket over the fine black shirt pulled taunt against his muscular arms. Her eyes travelled up, to the tan skin visible above his shirt, to the deep blue eyes on her, the blue-black curls of his hair, the delicate points of his ears, and finally, the midnight blue horns atop his head, short and spiraled back from his face.

  He was the most handsome creature she had ever seen. And the grin he flashed her made her heart nearly stop with fear.

  Before she could react, before she could reach for her own knife, he was beside her, even as she hadn’t seen him move a muscle. In the blink of an eye, he had travelled the span of four feet. He was close enough to touch her, crouched right next to her.

  He put a finger to his lips, his deep blue eyes bright. And Scarko realized there was silver within them, too, like stars. Then he turned back to the Warskian soldiers, who were laughing and bickering atop their horses as they made their way down the Penza.

  The man’s nearness was warm, not at all like Vojtech, and he smelled of citrus and a warm summer’s night. But he did not look to her again until the last of the procession had passed. Her heart pounded quickly as she was forced to keep quiet lest she give herself away. She wasn’t sure who was the bigger threat.

  But when the Warskians had passed and the man looked toward her, she already had her knife held to her palm. They both stood, backed away from one another, a faint smile still tugging on his lips.

  His eyes didn’t leave her face as he marveled, “So you are a bloodletter.”

  She scowled, couldn’t keep her eyes from glancing again at his horns.

  His cold smile widened. “Let me guess. You thought,” he dipped the midnight blue horns, “your lover was the only one?”

  Lover.

  She ignored the word and sliced the knife across her palm, forcing herself not to wince as she reopened the wound she had used on the wolf.

  The wolf.

  He was slumped in the cold ground. He should have been upright, as she hadn’t given the internal command to let him falter.

  That was no matter.

  She raised her hand to conjure the blüdsvard.

  And just as she saw the horned man’s eyes darken, she heard an arrogant drawl behind her that made her spine crawl, “Well, well, well.”

  She whirled around, and saw three Warskian soldiers smirking at her, all of their hands on their swords. The middle one, the one who had spoken, his inner tunic more decorated than the rest, his eyes flashed as he glanced at her bleeding hand.

  He knew.

  “The Vrakan girl, with blood magic,” he breathed the words, and his comrades’ mouths fell open.

  The one who spoke recovered quickly. Behind her, she could hear nothing of the horned man and the Warskians didn’t seem to have spotted him. It was as if he had disappeared.

  Damn him.

  “The Praeminister will be so glad to have his whore back.”

  And before she could get a grip on her rage and force the blood-sword to slit the soldier’s throat, his head was yanked back by an invisible force, and a knife, a knife of flashing steel, seemingly held by an invisible hand, was dragged across his throat as his comrades screamed. Screamed, like children.

  She watched in awe as blood pulsed from his neck, his hand coming up uselessly as if to stop the flow of blood. He fell to the ground, his eyes wide on hers.

  His comrades had their swords out, tripping over themselves as they looked to her, as if she had somehow killed the soldier with a phantom, hovering knife.

  A knife that had disappeared.

  She pushed aside her shock, let the glittering crimson of her blood form into that deadly sword, directed it to the smallest of the soldiers, his breathing coming in panicked gasps as he watched the sword shoot straight for his heaving chest. He crumpled to his knees, blonde hair to the forest floor. The next soldier started to run as he shrieked, and she sent the sword into his back. He fell with a gut-wrenching scream. The blood-sword dissolved. There were only the choked sounds of the dying in the air.

  She gl
anced down the Penza, but the processional hadn’t stopped. The men must have snuck away, or else been walking along the woods as sentries. She turned around quickly, in a crouch, looking for the horned man, the one who must have slit the throat of the middle Warskian. He had been…invisible.

  A crunch of leaves sounded behind her.

  She turned, her palm held high.

  There he was, a smile on his calm face as he crossed his arms over his chest, the knife hidden from view.

  “You’re welcome, princess.” The words were arrogant, smooth, and refined. His accent was unlike anything she had ever heard, nearly musical.

  “Who are you?” She took a step back from him, but did not lower her bleeding hand, nor did she sheathe the knife in her other.

  He took a step toward her, closing the space between them, and she made to command the blood on her hand. But white-hot pain, excruciating, nauseating, shot through her left hand and she curled it into a fist, biting back a gasp.

  The pain traveled down her arm, into her legs, and she sunk to her knees onto the cold ground.

  The man was frowning at her, but he otherwise hadn’t moved. Yet, she knew that pain was from him.

  The knife fell from her shaky hands into the grass beside her.

  “I should hand you off to those green idiots,” he jerked his head back, indicating the Warskian soldiers out of earshot along the Penza. The dead ones were silent around them.

  The pain had subsided, but both of her hands throbbed.

  She set her lips in a snarl. “Do it,” she growled. “I dare you.”

  He smiled, flashed his teeth. He had pointed canines, like Vojtech. “But after saving your life,” he toed the dead soldier that had been killed by the phantom blade, “it seems a waste.”

  Was this her punishment from the gods for circumventing Vojtech’s vision by resurrecting the wolf?

  A pain flashed in her temple. She resisted the urge to clutch her head, her hands shaking with the effort. He smiled that predatory smile again.

  “I haven’t seen blood magic in hundreds of years.” That elegant voice could have been discussing spotting a deer in the woods. “Why would such a scrawny thing as you possess it?”