The Crone has magic… She has magic? Father forbids magic, all the clans do… Oh fuck, she has magic!
‘Walk,’ the Crone repeated.
‘I… can’t…’ Lidan ground out through clenched teeth, the pain in her hand extinguished by the agony of the power crackling across the surface of her skin.
The Crone has magic! Her inner voice screamed with no one to hear it. Not simply a wise woman from Sellan’s homeland, the old bitch was a spell-weaver! People like her were the stuff of fireside tales warning children not to wander off! But here she was, hunched in the starlight at the edge of this miserable storage pit.
‘Then crawl,’ the Crone said flatly and flexed her gnarled fingers as if to suggest another crack of lightning wasn’t out of the question. Grey eyes glared down at her from a wrinkled face, half in shadow, half illuminated by the wane light of the moon.
Unwilling and unable to endure another burning jolt of energy, Lidan pulled herself out of the hole and began to drag herself towards the hut with her elbows, her legs trailing behind like tattered ropes. Rocks on the path cut her clothes with the cruelty of knives, paring away cloth and stitching to expose her soft belly and thighs. She didn’t look back to see if she left a trail of blood on the stones. She knew she did. The Crone followed with small, purposeful steps, the light taps of a walking stick beating the time of the torturous march.
The door seemed miles away, paved with painful inches between here and there. Lidan put her head down and glared at the ground. If she focussed on the distance and how far she had left to crawl, she would give in and lie sobbing until she died. She wondered if she would be forced to crawl up to reach the door latch as well, but the Crone slid through the opening, her shadowy figure enveloped by the darkness within. Some sensation returned to Lidan’s legs, burning pain licking up her thighs from a hundred cuts. She dragged herself through the door, her last ounce of strength dedicated to flinging the thing shut to keep the seeping cold at bay.
A click of bony fingers echoed in the dark and Lidan jerked back against a crude cabinet, heat stinging her face and eyes. A fire roared to life in the hearth, the single room of the dank hut suddenly awash with warmth and light. She brought her hand up instinctively and immediately regretted it, the barely healed skin tearing. Blood dribbled down her wrist to soak her sleeve afresh and the fine bones of her hand throbbed to the beat of her heart. Despite the torn skin and aching muscles, Lidan stared at the Crone while the old woman gazed into the fire as though its appearance was nothing out of the ordinary.
The Crone’s magic stunned her. No one in the clan had magic. No one even dared speak of it. Her father said it was a force of evil, responsible for nothing but death and madness and hunted from the bloodlines of the South Land Clans generations ago. It could only be found north of the mountains and, some said, along the Rinay Coast.
What would her father do if he knew the Crone was more than a wizened old potion brewer and a companion to the dana? Lidan’s instincts told her to be revolted and afraid, but an unhealthy curiosity midwifed questions she didn’t want to ask, nor hear the answers to.
‘You’ll need a dressing on that,’ the Crone nodded at Lidan’s gaping hand wound while absently poking the fire.
Don’t you fucking touch me, Lidan snarled to herself. But instead of screaming at her captor, the only thing she could manage was a single tear and a quivering chin. She wasn’t sad—she was broken, furious, afraid and sickened by what she saw in the glow of the fire.
The Crone was a bent old thing with lice riddled fur and weaves piled across her shoulders, draping to cover her feet. Only her hands and head were exposed, all filthy and unkempt. Long nails curled from the tips of her stiff, swollen fingers, stained yellow and caked with muck. Her hair was either a wig fashioned from a bouncer pelt, or it hid under some sort of rude, ill-sewn hat. And from her smell, the Crone was every bit as ancient as people gossiped she was beyond the dana’s hearing.
Clear grey eyes fixed on Lidan and she shivered under their unwavering scrutiny. The entirety of her body was rotting away, yet the Crone’s eyes still held the sole remaining piece of who she once was. They belonged to someone much younger, fierce and unmarred by age and time. There was no doubting the power behind them, a force contained through sheer will alone.
Lidan noticed the slight shake to the Crone, hardly discernible and easily mistaken for the trembling the elderly often suffer as they lose their wits. But she realised this was not the shivering of a mind losing control of its body, but the strain of a body struggling to control the immense power of its mind.
‘Not wise talking back to your Mam like that, is it girlie?’ the Crone barked and snapped Lidan from her thoughts. There weren’t any words she could muster in response, so she nodded. It certainly was unwise.
‘Did you leave your tongue in the pit, girlie? You’ve nothing to say now, no words or lies to spit at me? No pearls of childish wisdom to justify what you did?’
Lidan shook her head.
The Crone smiled with her grey teeth and allowed silence to fill the hut. ‘You know I came here with your mother before she matched to Erlon. She had to fight hard to keep me so she’s not likely to turn me out. She’s from another place; a place so far from these borders your tiny little mind would pop just trying to comprehend the distance. She had a hard past, your mother. Not fit for speaking, so I’ll get to the point…’
Lidan turned away. I don’t want to hear this… I don’t care… I just want to go home…
‘I’m not going to leave you in the pit for as long as she wants me to.’
Lidan glanced at the Crone from the corner of her eye. She hadn’t expected that.
The Crone went on in her harsh, throaty voice, ‘She’s being unreasonable and I’ll bear her rage if she fires up about it. I’ve done it before, but not that you’d know. This time I’ll decide what to do with you. But by the stars, girlie, step from the line again and you’ll wear whatever punishment she sees fit. I won’t stop her, even if it kills you.’ The Crone stood and set a pot on the low flames at the edge of the fire. ‘So, you’re staying here for a while.’
‘Why?’ murmured Lidan, her voice hoarse from hours of sobbing. Tears pooled anew in her eyes.
The Crone shrugged her hunched shoulders and settled back to poking the fire she sparked with her own fingers. ‘Need someone to chop wood and plug the holes in the roof before the cold truly sets its teeth in. You think that might be punishment enough, after a night in the pit?’
‘I meant, why does my mother do this to me?’ It was something she never understood—not truly. She was a wilful, stubborn child, as were a number of her sisters, but their mothers never beat them. Not as far as she knew. She’d been convinced for the longest time the fault lay in her, but perhaps there was something deeper, something she had yet to uncover about her mother that fuelled her rage.
‘Pain is the only language your mother understands, girlie. I said she had a hard past. What she does to you in’t but a sliver of what she’s endured in her own skin. She sees this,’ she gestured to Lidan’s cut and bloodied body, ‘as the only way you’ll learn the lessons she has to teach. You get a chance, just one, to save yourself from the wrath she’ll bring down if you keep this behaviour up. You act up again and I promise you, not a word of a lie, her past will become your future. You hear me?’
‘People will come looking for me…’ Lidan insisted, feeling the tiny flare of defiance in her chest flare for a moment.
The Crone shook her head. ‘No, they won’t. Your mother has a story woven just for those who might ask, and they won’t dare to ask more than once. And at this moment, they have more pressing concerns than where you are.’
The lump of fear lodged in Lidan’s throat choked her response. She was a fool to underestimate Sellan, a fool to think she could confront the woman and not suffer her wrath. In all the days she had left, she would never, ever do so again.
Chapter Ten
Hummel, Tolak Range, The
South Lands
The bird soared past and Lidan loosed the arrow from her aching hand. It sailed straight up and struck, the bird plummeting into some bushes perched on a cliff edge above the Crone’s walled yard. She slid down from the rocks she used as a blind and scrambled amongst the shrubs and trees, disturbing a cluster of small beaded rock dragons as she searched for her kill. It would be their supper and the base of the stew she and the Crone would eat for a few days. A bird that size would keep her belly full even if her heart was empty.
She’d been hollow and listless since her mother dumped her in the Crone’s hut. She hadn’t returned once to check to see if she was still alive, or to demand more punishment for that matter. Lidan had no idea what was going on in Hummel or how her father and his injured rangers fared, and she’d pushed such thoughts away, recoiling from the pain of the memories. She couldn’t tell, from her short excursions onto the Caine, if more rangers had returned or left in search of who had attacked her father’s party. She wasn’t allowed to show her face in the front yard at all, so she saw nothing of the stables or the back of the forge, nor of her wild-born horse or her friend, Behn. Had Behn asked after her? Had anyone noticed her missing?
The whole experience left her feeling isolated and alone. She watched the clan go about their business, the little she could discern from the crevices of the Caine while remaining unseen. She saw them feeding stock and repairing houses, watched scouts traversing the valley. No one left to hunt or gather in the bush at the foot of the tablelands, and it appeared the majority of folk remained inside Hummel’s walls. No one ever looked towards the hut. Not once did a head turn her way, or eyes linger on the Crone’s shack. It was as if the place didn’t exist at all.
Lidan yanked the dead bird from a leafy bush by its wing and fancied the feathers. They’d be nice to keep back to fletch arrows, if the Crone let her, and she tucked her prize under her arm. She might be young but Lidan wasn’t stupid—she didn’t dare try to escape and the Crone knew it, so the old woman happily allowed her out to hunt for their supper. Where would she go? Without a trained horse and the help of a ranger, escaping across the range on her own was a death sentence in the frigid cold of the dry season, even without the threat of what was lingering out in the bush.
She emerged from the stand of trees and made ready to climb down the Caine’s western face when she spied Sellan striding up the track to the Crone’s hut, her unblemished apron reflecting the blinding sunlight, her auburn hair caught in the cold wind. Lidan crouched low behind a twisted bush growing between two massive boulders, but Sellan didn’t glance at the Caine, her eyes trained on the uneven ground at her feet. Lidan scurried down the rocky slope and as Sellan crested the rise in the track and came around a collection of huge red boulders at the entry to the Crone’s yard, Lidan dumped her bow, arrows and the bird behind a timber box by the rear door and slipped inside.
The Crone’s ice-grey eyes caught her instantly and blinked once.
Lidan didn’t speak. She slid her left wrist through a leather cuff and strap bound to the hut’s back wall and slumped to lie still on a mangy pallet of hay and sacks. Two sharp knocks hit the door and it swung open, the Crone unmoved from her seat by the fire.
‘Are you done with her?’ Sellan asked, not bothering to utter a word of greeting.
‘Afternoon to you, too,’ the Crone muttered and spat a wad of phlegm in the fire. It hissed and bubbled and though she did it daily, Lidan couldn’t help gagging in disgust.
‘I said, are you done with her?’
‘Almost,’ the Crone replied with a subtle air of disobedience. She was either incredibly brave or monstrously stupid. If Sellan was willing to beat her daughter for speaking out of turn, she doubted the dana would stay her hand with the Crone. Lidan bit her lip and braced for the inevitable scathing retort.
‘How much longer, then? They all think she’s up here because she took ill with shock after Erlon came back. You best not have killed or crippled her. You’ll be explaining it to her father if you have!’ Sellan’s voice rose with furious panic and relief flooded Lidan’s chest. Was her father asking for her? Were her half-mothers or sisters demanding to see her?
‘Don’t be stupid, Sellan. I’m old, not an idiot. She will be well enough to return in two days. You don’t want them seeing any wounds, do you?’
‘Good,’ Sellan began to pace the small room, her boots softly scuffing the floor. ‘Good…’
‘Why the rush?’ the Crone probed.
‘Never you mind—’ Sellan dismissed the question out of hand.
‘While it’s my life under threat from that husband of yours, I’ll mind all I like!’
Lidan stiffened in the dark corner of the hut, suddenly terrified. She didn’t want to be here if they were going to have it out with each other! The Crone had magic, but what about her mother? Did Sellan know about the magic? Was she party to the secret?
‘What are you going on about, you mad old bat? Your life!’ Sellan snorted, half laughing. ‘What threat is there to your life?’
‘You heard what she said, what her father ordered you to do. Has he woken and demanded to search my hut, demanded to see if I’m gone? And when he does, where will I go? I can’t stay here—he’ll have me pegged out as craw bait sooner than look at me!’ The end of the Crone’s weathered walking stick struck the floor with a sharp crack, emphasising her point.
‘Don’t be foolish—’ Sellan waved the claims away, but the Crone lashed out and whacked the stick on the table where they took their meals. Plates and cups rattled and Sellan fell silent.
‘If I go,’ the Crone continued, ‘and there is every chance I will, what happens to you?’
The question hung in the air like smoke. Lidan held her breath, too afraid to let it out in case she missed her mother’s response, scrambling to unravel the meaning of the words.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ answered Sellan.
‘Perhaps not today, but the question stands—what happens if I’m gone? You can’t survive here on your own. There’s no way they’ll let you up here again and that’s if they don’t tear this place down. Where will you go to finish what we started?’
For a long while there was no reply. The pacing stopped and the air in the hut grew unnaturally still and warm for such a cool afternoon. Lidan’s brow furrowed.
Finish what they started?
‘Thanie, they won’t do that; I swear, I won’t let them…’ Sellan suddenly sounded like a beaten child, like Lidan, swearing to her elder that she wouldn’t break the rules again. It sent a cold shiver through Lidan and she put every ounce of energy into remaining perfectly still. They could never know she heard the secrets in their conversation.
But the Crone knows I’m awake…
The cold shiver froze hard on her skin and she clenched her jaw to stop it trembling. The Crone knew Lidan wasn’t asleep or unconscious on the floor. The ruse was for the dana alone, so what was the old woman playing at? Lidan wished she could crawl away and block her ears with mud. This was worse than the fight between her father and mother—she didn’t want to be privy to their secrets or party to their conspiracies and plots!
After a long, heavy silence, the Crone cleared her throat. ‘Sellan, the girl will be ready when I say so and not before. You knew as much when you brought her here and she will return sorry for her mistakes. In the meantime, you best keep yourself in check. What’s happened to bring you up here in such a flap?’
‘Farah is with child.’
Lidan’s heart swelled with joy—her half-mother was pregnant again! She smiled to herself and wondered what her new sister would be called, then felt her smile fade. What if the child wasn’t a sister, but a brother—the long-awaited son—the reason her parents had bickered so furiously the day the hunt departed? It was all her father wanted; a son to inherit the clan lands and lead their people. As far as she knew, the daaris of the other clans all had at least one son to their name, and the Law clearly stated that a
son would always inherit over a daughter, no matter when the boy was born. Lidan shivered, a chill creeping through her bones. What if the child was a boy?
The Crone cursed in a language Lidan didn’t understand. She didn’t need to know the meaning of the words to hear the hatred in them.
‘Did she fall on this last moon?’ the Crone pressed.
‘No, at least three cycles have passed since she conceived,’ Sellan muttered and the Crone cursed again and spat in the fire. ‘It was before he left on the hunt.’
‘Get back down there and keep them occupied for another two days, then you can have her back.’
‘What about Farah?’ The dana’s low, careful words rolled across the room, full of promise and intent.
‘Do nothing… for now. Go,’ ordered the Crone.
Lidan’s stomach flipped and her eyes grew wide as she waited in the silence for her mother to answer, but there was no reply.
Do nothing? What could they do? Farah was pregnant. There was nothing that could be done. Unless…
The door creaked and slammed in the wind and the dana was gone. Lidan rolled over slowly to stare at the Crone and found a cold pair of eyes watching her.
‘What do you think of all that?’
‘I… You…’ Lidan crawled to her feet and yanked the cuff from her arm. ‘I don’t understand… What are you going to do to Farah?’
‘I’ve not decided yet,’ the Crone settled back in her chair and raised her unkempt brows at Lidan. ‘Not good news for you, though…’
‘Me?’ she faltered, her concern for her half-mother forgotten.
‘If that child is a boy, you best watch your back, girlie.’ The Crone nodded sagely. ‘You’re your father’s heir, for now. According to your mother, unless he has a son, you’ll be matched in your eighteenth year and the man you bring home will be the next daari of the clan. You’ll be the dana of your own people, the first woman to ever inherit her father’s range.’
The old woman came to her feet and limped to stand over Lidan in the golden light.
Blood of Heirs Page 9
