Blood Witch

by Thea Atkinson

  Add to that the problem with Aedus, the fact that Edulph was still out there somewhere plotting his way in to Sarum and into a wind witch's young heart, she began to believe she'd have been better off just doing her father's bidding without question. Things might not have been easier, but she'd care less about them. A lot less. Once again, she realized what a liability caring for others could be.

  The sun struck her face as she exited the Keep; by her reckoning, it was just past the late meal, and she'd been inside since just after mid day repast. Saxa would undoubtedly be in full panic. She hoped Gael and Yenic had at least found a trail to track if they'd not actually found Saxon.

  She watched people closely as she strode through the courtyard, keenly aware that any of the passers-by might know or have seen what happened to the young heir. She hoped if someone had seen they wouldn't be afraid to step up to her and let her know, even if she was Yuri's witch.

  Most avoided her eye, and the more she thought about that and what Aislin had said about it, the more she felt a queer exhilaration in the deepest pit of her belly. The more she acknowledged the exhilaration, the less inclined she was to return to Saxa only to deliver bad news.

  Her pace slowed without her meaning to do so, and she caught herself wondering if she could control herself now that she really knew it was possible. Somehow she thought perhaps she had never been entirely sure control of the power was possible.

  She thought of Aislin and the sickening smell of burned fat, of the quiet crumbling of a man to ash. It revolted her, yes, to see the flash of panic in his face, but so too did it excite her.

  She couldn't stop thinking about it. She had been a child when she tried to drain Corrin. She'd been ignorant. Yenic had been right; she was young. Now, having seen what a woman could do with her power, how she could focus it, concentrate it, contain it, she felt bold enough to try.

  Without thinking, her feet led her in the direction of the caverns, and past that, the bathhouse.

  She couldn't face Saxa, but she felt more than ready to face Corrin.

  The air inside the tunnel felt hot and humid. She could smell the darkness, the spores of fungus that grew in the thickest crevices. The faint stink of bat guano met her senses and she had to block out the gag reflex that wanted to take her throat. She told herself this was the day. This was the day she learned what she'd always needed to. What her father always wanted. What she had to learn if she was to keep anyone she loved safe, if she would avoid being manipulated into doing what she didn't want to.

  Today was the day she gained control.

  She wasn't surprised to find him alone or to find the table beside the rack had been filled with food and then emptied. The remains of a cauldron of broth sat in the middle. A chunk of soggy bread half eaten by Corrin was being worried by a fat rodent who scurried away when she got close enough to cause it threat.

  While his body looked weary, drawn, and limp, Corrin's eyes glared brightly at her with a malice she hadn't known possible.

  "I see someone has been sent to feed you."

  He spat. "Two of Yuri's strongmen."

  "One to hold you while you were unshackled, no doubt."

  "The other to stuff wet bread in my mouth."

  Alaysha reached out to feel the cauldron. It was still warm. "I remember," she said.

  He sounded indignant. "You were never held by a soldier and force-fed inferior fair."

  No. She hadn't been. She'd been untied three times a day for periods long enough to eat, relieve herself, and sleep. Her dreams then had been no worse than the waking life she lived.

  "For months I hung here, not days."

  He showed his teeth in a sarcastic smile. "So you've decided then, that I won't have months. Does Yuri know?"

  "He'll find out soon enough."

  "Go on, then, Witch."

  He was remarkably calm for a man who was about to die.

  "You've made whatever piece you can for a beast of carrion?"

  He closed his eyes, tranquil, unaffected; he made no response.

  "You must have asked for some atonement from at least one god."

  Still no response. She wanted a panicked face to meet her, a sly smile, a word of begging. Something. She stepped closer. "No one will save you, you know. Yuri has given me this decision. Your pot is still warm; the men will not be returning until morning to offer you a bit of hot, bland kasha. Maybe a pottle of piss warm ale."

  She thought she detected a smirk, and realized she was managing to get under his skin after all. It had never been hard to raise his ire. She'd done it more times than a six seasons old girl should have been able to. He so loved to lose his temper. So loved to have a reason to hurt her.

  "Yuri doesn't care about you. He has a dozen men ready to train his warriors. A dozen dozen. You mean nothing to him."

  He peeped opened one eye. "And you do?"

  "I'm his daughter."

  "His witch. His tool. You are a soldier. Nothing more."

  "Perhaps, but blood is blood." She thought of Yenic as he'd said those words to her, and knew it was true even as she repeated it. Yuri was her father. When all was said and done, she loved him, wanted to feel pride, not possession in her.

  "Do you have blood, carrion? Do you have anyone who will miss you?"

  "I've never fooled myself into believing so. Not like you."

  She laughed outright. "I've not once fooled myself into believing anyone cared about me."

  "No? You've somehow come to believe your esteemed father has chained me here because he realized I trained you too harshly. When he knew all along my methods."

  He couldn't have known it. He couldn't have. No man, not even the master of the tool would knowingly allow the things this beast had done to her.

  "You lie." She felt her temper rise, the old desire to see him suffer, and with it came the ghost of a memory she worked hard to send down multiple dark tunnels of memory so deep they couldn't be found. But the power had its own magic to unearth journeys even deliberately detoured. She found herself struggling to block off the exit before she could peer inside.

  She must have backed away from him because when his voice came, it was further away than before. "Why would I lie when the truth hurts more?" he asked. "Think of it, witch. Remember. All those things. All of them and more not done he sanctioned."

  "Enough," she said. She tasted the mold and the wet leavings of bat dung. She wanted to retch as she let the power loose, and very nearly did as the memories washed over her like rain, soaking her psyche and making her tremble.

  From outside of herself she could hear the faint sound of laughter and focused on the place it emanated from. Be done with it, she thought. She tried to send her power into his tear ducts, to his mouth as it guffawed, into his pores, but all she could taste was the sulfur from the baths and she very nearly doubled over in sickness.

  "You're shaking, witch." It was a mocking statement, but it was true and she knew it. The sheer effort was enough to make her quake, but the memories that rode the tide of her power were the true reason for it. Seven seasons old. 10 seasons. 12. Each time she showed emotion this man bled it from her. Mocked her. Beat her.

  Touched her.

  "You can no more control your power than you could control yourself when I had my hands on you."

  Beast, she wanted to shout. She didn't want to unearth those images, those feelings of shame and despair, the sense of impotence at the hands of another.

  "You tremble now as you did then."

  "I trembled from pain and fear then."

  "You were too young to know why you trembled, dear little witch." His eyes were on the mist that grew to a bloated cloud that stank of brimstone and stagnant water.

  "I'm old enough now, Carrion, to know it as revulsion."

  She clamped down the old images as though they were an iron door. She would kill him, she would psych the very liquid from his eyes, but she would not ever again let that memory surface. There was no need of it; it serv
ed no purpose.

  She was a witch with enough power now to suck this cavern dry, and him with it. It felt grand to choose for a change. She would will it and it would happen. Of all the killing she had done at someone else's bidding, this was the first justified one. Corrin did not deserve to live.

  She thought she heard a sound behind her: a shuffling, a short chuckle, even a half knowing, half speculative murmur. It pulled her back to the cavern and out of her power. She felt again the wet floor beneath her feet, watched the bloated and heavy mist let go the first of its contents.

  Corrin still hung, untouched, as fat in the flesh with water as a leather water bag.

  The sound behind her shifted to a voice. A woman's. The language was foreign, but Alaysha knew they were words.

  She turned and saw Aislin standing there with her left eye blazing such a bright orange, flames could have been residing behind her brow. She crackled with energy, and Alaysha felt the air around her reach out in dry waves, mopping up the liquid on Alaysha's face and moving past her to where Corrin stood.

  She saw the heat waves engulf him and move him ever so slightly like a soft breeze sent on the energy of a hot wind.

  Corrin cocked his head, studying them both and resting finally on Aislin.

  "You can't bring the flame can you?" He laughed in a sudden fit that surprised Alaysha. "It's too wet in here." He met Alaysha's eyes with scorn. "And it's too wet even for the witch to psyche it dry."

  In an instant, Alaysha felt the brush of linen against her arm. She smelled smoke and tasted the perfume of a woman's sweat. Confused, she lifted her gaze from Corrin to the blonde blur moving at lightning speed toward him.

  His face twisted from mockery to pain and in seconds he let out a breath of a sigh even as his blood spilled from his open throat onto his tunic. Only then did Alaysha register the knife in Aislin's hand and the smile of satisfaction on her face.

  She noticed the woman didn't bother to collect Corrin's eyes.

  Chapter 12

  Three things kept Alaysha from speaking to Aislin on the way out of the cavern. The first was the grief of memory lodged in her throat, of all the things she'd suffered at the hands of the carrion. The second was the humiliation of giving in to her emotions in front of anyone, let alone the temptress of flame.

  The third was fear.

  They left the carrion where he hung; when she gained the open air, she made a flurry of excuses in the face of Aislin's careful scrutiny, then scurried away from the woman and hastened toward Saxa's cottage. Luckily, the shadows of dusk had crept upon the city and no one was interested in what went on behind the black curtain of night.

  She wasn't sure what her father would suspect when his men told him of Corrin's death. More than likely he would assume she'd made her decision and leave it at that. She wasn't sure how she felt, knowing a man's death could be created so and easily forgotten so quickly, but she didn't know she had meant to kill him herself. Did it matter the manner or hand that had done it?

  More curious still was why Aislin had followed her in the first place and why she wanted the man dead. She might not understand those things, but this one thing was immediately clear: while the witch of flame could control her power, hers was the lesser one to Alaysha's own.

  She dreaded returning to Saxa's, and she knew Barruch was out with Yenic and Gael searching for Saxon. Where Yuri was, Alaysha had no idea, but there was one place none of those would be, and she made a steady trek towards the outer walls and slipped past the gatehouse into the surrounding forest.

  Her own hovel was at least a hundred mount strides inching along the city walls, in a natural cleft of stone that offered both disguise from the outside by thick brush, and light within by a natural sunroof that let in moonlight enough to see her hands at night.

  She wasn't heading there. She'd wanted her first four sets of seeds earlier; now, all she could think of were different ones. She set a path beyond her home, further to the east where she knew the remains of a wooden shack still stood.

  The years she spent in nohma's cottage, a squat, rough-hewn wooden structure with a fire pit instead of a fireplace, an earthen larder, and a wild garden were the happiest she'd known. Despite the weeks and sometimes months long campaigns Yuri had demanded her to travel with him and his ever-growing army, and despite brief actual stays at the cottage, Alaysha felt more connected to life there than anywhere else.

  When her nohma had succumbed to the power, Alaysha had never returned. The mountain and its bathhouse had been her home for years after, and only when she'd sufficiently learned Corrin's lessons and stopped grieving, stopped allowing herself to feel any kind of emotion, did she set out to find her own residence just outside the city gates.

  In order to put a wax seal over those emotions, Alaysha had found it necessary to bury any memory that caused her pain. Funny, how the most painful had been the most pleasurable in its time.

  She listened to the owls hoot in the gathering dusk and to the frogs calling out to their mates as she walked, mindful of the tree roots that wanted always to catch her bare toes. She wondered whether anything was left of the inside, and if she should brace herself for an unexpected piece of cloth or herb still hanging from a rafter, no doubt dried to a cob web by now. She chuckled to herself. Surely nothing inside had remained in any sort of pure state of recognition that could cause her worry.

  A twig snapped behind her, some animal curious about the strange, solemn presence. She thought she might call out to it but decided to let the night have its own sounds and keep its own counsel.

  She would have walked straight past the garden if she hadn't noticed the well, hastily dug and circled with round stones. The cover was long gone, decayed and rotted and gone back to the earth as all old wood does.

  She halted and turned to face her home, and had to hold her breath for the abrupt pain that squeezed at her stomach. Home. So many seasons it was the only place that afforded any sense of childhood. The door was gone, leaving a gaping hole that had collected mud and grass. She stepped through, thinking even as she did that she could live here again if she chose to. Forget Yuri and Yenic and Edulph and all the others who believed she was necessary to satisfy their wants, their needs. Like spirits at the darkest hour, those desires clung to the shadows and threatened to enter the light, never once taking the step forward.

  Another owl hooted from behind her, shrieking in some protest only it understood. She stole a look over her shoulder and thought she could make out a set of familiar eyes in the darkness, just next to a copse of brambles so thick they could be strings of muddied hair. Then she blinked and the moment was gone.

  Yet the hair stood on her arms as though danger coiled like a serpent intent on striking.

  She'd get what she came for, yes, but she'd not remain. Something in the night wasn't right.

  It took a few breaths before her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and it took a few heartbeats before she could stand without swaying. If she closed her eyes, she could see it all again as it was.

  If she closed her eyes…

  Nohma's hands twisted in her hair, braiding, wrapping one string into the other. She was humming and the sweet fragrance of cinnamon furled into the air and curled around Nohma's neck.

  "You have your mother's hair, Alaysha. Thick. Black as soot."

  It seemed important, this information. It was something Nohma told her over and over again when she wanted to speak of her mother. Alaysha knew a story was coming, but there wasn't time to hear all of it. Her father would be here soon to take her to war. She hated war, but she loved being with her father. He was strong and tall and all his men were like mere pups around him.

  "I have your hair, too," she said, reaching out to feel the softness of the black tresses between her fingers.

  "Your mother's was darker, child. Black as your tattau."

  Alaysha fingered her chin. "It still hurts," she said and her nohma's brow furrowed.

  "Only for a short while. It will
get better. Doesn't it always?"

  "Do you think my father will like it?" It worried her, that Yuri might think her ugly now that the ribbon of symbols was all colored in. She felt Nohma's thumb run across her cheek, even as a tear crept down her own.

  "Why are you crying, Nohma?"

  "Because your father will remember your mother, child, when he sees it is done."

  "But that can't be a bad thing."

  "Your memory is long, Alaysha, but seldom do we remember our birth. I had hoped you would remember yours by now."

  Alaysha let her memory sprint through all the things it knew. It found days of killing. Days of eating and sleeping. It listened again to stories of an old war that spoke of souls living again to find vengeance. It even found a young boy with bright yellow eyes upending a vial into an open mouth, but it saw no earlier.

  "Your mother," Nohma was saying. "Remember."

  The girl had no choice but to shake her head. "You are my only mother, grandmother."

  Alaysha stepped further into the shack and settled on the same wooden stool she'd sat on all those seasons ago. It threatened to collapse under her weight, but she didn't care. The memory had returned and with it the tears.

  That was the last battle her nohma had been with her. The last battle Alaysha stood next to her aunt and knew the happiness of being loved, or believing she was loved.

  She looked around through a curtain of water that turned every shadow into a dangerous shape. She wanted to retreat from the memory as she had those years ago. She supposed she could thank Corrin for it now; it had spared her in the end.

  It also explained why she'd been banished to the cavern and its bathhouses and the unending butchery of the carrion.

  She was weak from the remembrance, but she felt no anger. Only determination. A sense of justice left undone.

  She forced herself to stand and move to the fire pit where she dug, hunting with her hands, peeling back a nail until she sat back with a sigh.

  The leather pouch was ratty and rotted, but it was still there. Some seeds had fallen into the womb of earth and she fingered through them until she found what she was looking for: two seeds that if she let her memory, let her power, touch them, she'd suffer again the image of their owner's death. And that death was too painful to relive again.