He looked at her and a slow smile formed on his face. "She didn't know, did she, and we surprised her, yes?" he chuckled softly. "We certainly did. But then, very few know. Those are dead now. Her blood witch, her father."
Alaysha's stomach churned on itself at mention of her aunt. "What of my nohma?"
"Her blood witch helped us find the other, didn't she? The one in hiding from us all."
Alaysha guessed the her he spoke of was herself. His speech was confusing enough to make her force him give her a clear answer for once. "Whose Arm are you?"
"She can't guess, can she?"
It was Gael who said it first, in a burst of understanding. "The earth witch."
Theron shrugged. "It is as he says."
Alaysha couldn't form the words that she needed to question him. Too many filled her mouth at the same time. Aedus was the one who asked the question they most wanted to hear. Practical Aedus.
"So where is she?"
Theron met her gaze and held it, unaffected. "An Arm is the reach of the witch. We protect her with our lives."
"So you won't tell us."
He didn't bother to shake his head, but she heard it in his voice when he spoke. "Legends speak of an old war. Our witch has the telling of it, not us, as her memory is long and her mother had the telling, and her mother before her. And her mother before. We lost our witch to the wilds in the raid when the Conqueror came, and then we lost her again finally when she was found and killed by one of her own kind."
Alaysha wanted to defend herself; she knew the conqueror he spoke of was Yuri. It didn't take a big leap of reasoning to realize she was the killer. The shaman put up his hand to stop her from interrupting.
"It was as it was supposed to be; The Emir needed to believe the line was gone. We needed to keep the new temptress safe. And we did, yes. Yes, we did." He sounded very smug and took a moment to sigh in contentment before he addressed her with authority.
"This witch must not grieve what was not in her control."
"You set me on this path?"
"Who is this you, you accuse us of? Is it us you speak of? We let the carrion beast discover this secret, yes. We did, didn't we? So many years ago, it took seasons upon seasons to bear fruit. Painful, painful fruit."
A flooding of memory through Alaysha's mind. "It was you. You who buried them all beneath the cairns."
He gave her a quizzical look, seeming lost in his own memories and thoroughly confused by her question. "Buried who?"
"In the mud village. All those people we killed. Someone buried the bodies beneath piles of rocks."
He grinned as though he'd just discovered a delightful surprise. "An old man. Oh yes I am. Even as us, we could never manage to move that much earth."
"Dear deities," she said. "It was your witch."
He lifted a scrawny shoulder. "Our witch is long lost, but she does have the ability to move rock and stone."
"So it was her daughter, then. Your new witch. She saved me," she said, realizing the full impact of what had happened in the village.
He studied her face, seeming to be searching for something more. "She is long lost to us," he said carefully.
"I know where she is."
He gave a slight incline of his head that could mean anything. She had to press him, past Aedus hearing, past Gael sitting rapt at the exchange, so rapt, even the warrior expression of blankness had been forgotten. Past hearing things she feared, she would know, and so finally understand that thing she'd wanted to know since she'd met Yenic at the oasis.
"Who am I to you?"
Instead of answering, he sought to hold her gaze. She could feel his eyes on her in the firelight, holding her so intimately, he might have had his arms around her. "Shall I sing to you of Etlantium, Little One?"
The phrase was so familiar, so resonant, that Alaysha could feel it deep in her chest, welling within her like a river swelling. Images of her nohma fleeted through her mind so quickly she didn't have time to concentrate on any one, but the emotions that carried them filled her, emptied her, and filled her again until she could easily run back through each one of the times she had heard those words spoken. In just that way. With just same cadence. She could hear the squall of her own cries coming back to her from a room that smelled of cinnamon and lavender and wild onion. She could taste goat's milk, and honey and the sweetness of clover, feel the roughness of homespun flax on her tongue.
"Tell me of Etlantium," she heard herself saying almost as though her words were coming from such a deep place within her that she could barely form the words.
She heard him chuckle and looked at him in surprise.
"What?" he asked with a tease. "What is there to say that you don't remember, Little One, for your memory is long and the tale is so very simple?"
Four temptresses, One large garden of children planted in refuge until twin gods could decide who had the right to rule. Etlantium in balance, so the songs say, its temptresses set to flesh the dead over and over until the war was won, and the children could once again return to their maker, their mother, the rightful ruler of Greater Etlantium.
"A hymn, not so much a song," she said and Theron nodded.
"All true, so our legends say, so says our witch. Or so our witch is taught by her mother and hers and hers and hers. And yet there is more, oh yes, there is. And our witch knows the telling of it, doesn't she? Of how to reflesh the dead, how to use the power to control the balance. These witches, these foul temptresses have all bastardized the power, abused it, forgotten what it is for, but we remember because our witch remembers.
"And in the tunnels, somewhere in the mountain, lost for generations of seasons, lies the full secret. Who is the goddess and who is the god." He looked off into the star clad sky. "And one day we will find Etlantium again if the brother Hel does not find Liliah first."
Alaysha couldn't bear to break his sacred silence, but she so terribly wanted to know. She so badly wanted to hear him say it so she could be sure she'd heard it.
"And where is Liliah?"
He levelled her with a blank stare. "We believe she is one of the temptresses."
"And Hel?"
"He is also a witch."
"Aislin," Alaysha murmured, realizing it suddenly.
"My apologies, Witch," Theron murmured, "at first we feared it was the witch before us, yes, we did. But we know now that she is not. But Hel also knows who he is. The gift of long memory gives him power to remember his waiting life. And so he waited and searched with each fleshing he had to endure, knowing some day they would be here together.
And his sister god has come; he just didn't know the disguise."
Alaysha was so lost in the words, she wasn't aware Theron had stopped speaking until she heard the low timbre of Gael's voice. "Didn't know?" He stressed the past tense.
"Indeed; didn't," Theron said. "Now he does. He knows she is a witch, but doesn't know which." He smiled at his awkward pun.
"What will he do when he finds her, this Liliah god?" Gael asked.
Theron made a small moue. "He would know these things if his father was not such a bully. The youngest of our witch's fourteen children, he should know, should have taught him. Yes, he should have."
"He didn't," Gael said shortly unable to defend himself over the negligence of a violent father years after his death. "So what will this Hel god do? I asked you. What will he do when he finds her?" He watched Alaysha's face as he asked the question of Theron, and she had the feeling he'd heard the shaman's words as they'd stood in the river.
"He will take from her the fleshing she has disguised herself in, and take us, all of us, her children, so they can no longer be fleshed, and he will seize Etlantium and she and her children will be no more. They will be as nothing, in nothing, of nothing. And the goddess will be no more ever."
Alaysha shivered at the timbre and soberness of his words despite the heat coming from the fire. Would it be so bad, this loss of flesh? Would it be so terrible to go back
to nothing and be as though existence had never been suffered?
"Doesn't sound so bad to me," she said.
"No?" Theron asked, then chuckled mirthlessly. "Perhaps for the savages, it wouldn't be. Oh no. They would go on about their lives on this dirt and die their one death and go into the ground and never know another bliss.
"But us. We of Etlantium we know better; yes, we do. We know what it is like to live in paradise with our goddess and drink of her wine and enjoy pleasures the like these savage men can never know."
"Do you remember those times, Theron?" She couldn't help the scorn in her tone.
This time he reached to take her hand and he squeezed it so hard she winced. "The real question is does this witch?"
It took her by surprise, that he expected her to remember such a thing and she felt herself gulping for an answer.
He let go her hand. "Never mind. We know these things, even if we don't remember. It is the witches' chore to bring us back to those places we have forgotten. And if the savage world will tear itself to pieces over the power our Liliah has bestowed upon a few women, then let them tear it; we will be as nothing anyway and so the suffering for us will be small."
Alaysha might not be fully ready to accept herself as a goddess come to the savage world as Theron put it, and she might not be ready to accept the foolish legends of a paradise past her eyes and touch, but the world she lived in right here and now was filled with people she loved--who would be embroiled in a war no matter what the reason for fighting it.
So if war was to come, let it. She would put her own body in defence of those she loved until she was no more.
She looked around the motley crew, from the still muddy girl to the old shaman. Gael was both pale and handsome even in the firelight and his expression said more to her than words ever could. She knew he would do all he could to protect her, down to putting his body in harm's way for her. Aedus too, would put her considerable cunningness to use in her defence. Theron's knowledge was enough to arm them against the coming tide of fear.
And Yenic. Wherever it was Bodiccia had taken him; indeed, if both of them still lived, where he would stand in the war against his own mother, Alaysha didn't dare imagine. Her eyes burned just thinking about him. She so wanted to trust him, so wanted to be able to rest secure in his love for her. It seemed Aedus was right; nothing was as it seemed. Her poor heart ached from it all. Best she not dwell on it. She would gain nothing but pain and distraction. And she couldn't afford to be distracted.
As for her own power, though as yet uncontrolled, she knew it was greater than Aislin's and that she was well on her way to understanding how to harness it. She recalled her time in the flood, and how she'd at least managed to bring the rain. She thought of Saxa and how she'd been able to stop the psyching before it fully did its work.
Yes. She was closer. And that could make all the difference to accepting herself the way she was.
If she and this crew could get to the other witches before the Aislin did, they might be able to defeat her. Bring the world to rest. Bring her world to rest. Let her come to some peace without worry of being used and manipulated any more. That was all she wanted, really. To live without being tired of living. Let the gods hash out what they would when they would; it was of no real concern to her.
Even still, her heart felt as though it was racing in her chest, and the tendrils of a primal fear wanted to snake through her throat. She told herself to marvel at the sense of companionship she felt, a companionship she'd before cursed as a burden and dreaded because it brought her suffering, because now she realized those things were the greatest blessing she could have.
She thought of her nohma and felt no pain for the first time since her death; she let the woman's image come as it was always meant to, the blood as a protection, as comfort, as a means to help her shoulder the burden of grief and pain to difficult to bear and knew that love could do all those things if it was allowed.
Only then did she begin to feel the sure creeping of the bare feet of hope.
The End
Look for Book 3 in January 2013
A final note from Thea:
I just want to say thank you for taking a chance on me as a writer. I appreciate each comment, each buy, and each email from readers who have told me they have purchased me and read me. It's exciting to be part of this new world of electronic reading; booklovers like you, continue to propel the success of independent writers and allow us to achieve our dreams. I am incredibly grateful. If you liked this book, please do tell someone. If you found errors, please tell me.
Also, I enjoy reading, and these last two years I have read more indie fiction in various genres than traditional novels. If it's not too presumptive, I'd love to recommend a couple of authors that I truly enjoyed.
Jason McIntyre writes delicious speculative fiction. I'm not sure what he would label his genres; there's a touch of horror and some literary, but it's always a bit on the off-the-beaten-track side. Maybe that's why I love his style. I especially loved the Night Walk Men and Kro.
Walter Shuler writes fantasy and each novel or short I've read has delighted me. Do pick up At the Edge of the World if you get a chance. It's a longish short story with some mythological stuff thrown in. Loved it.
Gordon Bonnet is always a delightful read. Speculative and intriguing to me all the way. Loved loved Periphery.
For a more literary read, you might want to check out Vivienne Tuffnell. Her novel Strangers and Pilgrims was an inspirational summer read for me.
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