Sacrifice

by Heather McCollum

  Hamish talked with several of the young men and pointed toward the east tower. Anna lifted her hood and led the mare through with a woman pushing a small cart. When Anna got to the border of town where the trees grew along the edge of the moor, she used a decaying stump to mount Mazy.

  The wind gusted from over the yellow gorse dotting the heath as gray clouds scuttled in from the west. Could they be Drustan’s demons? Her stomach tightened as she searched the sky for unnatural twisters, but the clouds looked normal enough, the breeze sweet and fresh smelling.

  “Best be on our way, Mazy, before that storm hits,” she said and clicked, sending the mare into a trot and then canter. She skirted the moor along the forest’s edge until she found the one road leading away from Kylkern. The wind blew hard, sending a chill through her woolen cloak. Anna pulled it tighter, her face grim, and her determination firm.

  As she rounded the loch, Anna noticed ice already stretching like thin crystal from the edges toward the middle of the wide expanse of water. She shivered just looking at it and remembered Sarah’s wish to skate. Highland winters apparently fell fast. With another blast of wind, white flakes swirled down from the endless gray sky.

  For a moment, Anna stared at the snow in disbelief. She twisted in her seat to see if anyone followed. Could Drustan be trying to stop her with a blizzard? Because that is what the wind and snow were fast becoming. But no broad shoulders stood within the churning weather, no tall man who claimed she was his queen. All Anna saw was swirling white covering the landscape and shrinking the world to the small space around her and Mazy. She patted the mare, thankful she’d taken the time to drape the animal with a warming blanket under her saddle and gear. She hugged the mare’s neck. “Let’s keep moving.”

  Face into the icy wind, they trotted along the trail winding through the woods. Autumn leaves rained down with the snow, mixing in a tumultuous swirl of seasons. The chill penetrated her woolen cloak and layers of skirts. Her toes ached in her leather boots. She’d dressed for autumn, not a raging blizzard.

  She steered Mazy toward a rocky slope, jutting upward like the side of a small mountain. It would provide some shelter. She leaned down over the horse’s neck, hugging her for comfort and warmth. They would have to go back. Yes, she was a go-forward type of woman, but there was determination and then there was plain foolishness. Going forward in this instance would be suicide.

  Anna lifted her face from Mazy’s neck and looked back out at the snow-washed forest. Where was the road? A twinge of unease flickered in her stomach. She breathed deeply to dispel the panic, but the effort just sucked cold down her throat, making her shiver more. Think, Anna. Where is the road?

  The path would be between wide-set trees, but it was difficult to see the trees through the curtain of white swirling down. All the trees she could see appeared equidistant from one another. “Blast,” she whispered, but she couldn’t even hear her own voice over the shrieking wind. Anna twisted further to see over Mazy’s rump, nearly sitting on the horse backward. Eddies of white flashed and receded around the gray shadows of trees, but there was no road. If she tried to venture without reference into the white, she could lose track of the only shelter available and be totally lost. Anna tugged Mazy’s reins toward the sloped wall of rock so the wind couldn’t hit them directly. The poor horse had her head down as if she wished she could crawl under the blanket on her back. How could the weather have turned so abruptly?

  Anna slid off Mazy and hugged her. She sandwiched herself between the rock wall and the horse. Could they wait out the storm here? Would they survive the night? Anna shivered as a blast of wind pinpricked through her cloak, scoring her skin. Panic pressed tears behind her eyes, but they wouldn’t help. She must find shelter or hunker down right where they were and pray for survival.

  The flickering of a large snowflake blew before Anna’s face. Mazy shifted into Anna, almost knocking her down. “Whoa, girl,” Anna yelled above the wind and blinked at the fluttering images surrounding them. At first they looked like small fairies but soon coalesced into the same set of blue-tipped wings that had startled her in the stables earlier in the day. Dragonflies? They should be spinning out of control in the raging gale winds. Was she hallucinating?

  Follow me. Anna stiffened as a woman’s voice penetrated her mind. She’d heard it before. Anna peeked out from Mazy’s side, trying to find the source only to spy more ethereal dragonflies. Do not hesitate. You will freeze to death.

  It was the same voice from the stair alcove before the wedding. Drakkina. Evil or good? At the moment it didn’t matter, not if the witch meant to lead her to shelter. Anna worked her way to Mazy’s halter and tugged the animal to follow. Mazy’s soft, brown eyes opened, frantic and wild, as the dragonflies zipped in front of her, hovering as if waiting for them to follow. The contrast of summer’s delicate creatures in winter’s deadly grasp was bizarre.

  Mazy thrashed her head up and down, and the reins slipped from Anna’s numb fingers. “Mazy,” Anna cried as the horse dodged out into the storm to race away. “Mazy, come back!”

  She will find her stable, Drakkina said in Anna’s mind.

  “You’re certain?” Anna asked.

  “Yes,” Drakkina spoke aloud, although Anna couldn’t see her, only her little creatures in the wind. “Follow my dragonflies.”

  Anna wrapped her arms around herself, under her wool cloak, and trudged through the growing depth of snow. She leaned into the wind. The powdery white reached past her ankles already, and bits of ice pellets had found their way into her boots.

  Forward. She must keep going forward. She focused on the dragonflies zig-zagging before her, following them along the bare, pocked side of rock that rose like a small mountain to her right and shielded some of the tempest. She tripped, and they waited, hovering until she managed to rise. Snow colored her blue cloak white, its heavy layers stiffening with growing ice. If this was how quickly winter came to the Highlands, Patricia would freeze.

  No, Drakkina’s voice penetrated her mind again. There is magic in this wind.

  “Stop reading my mind,” Anna tried to yell, but her words were whipped away. Was this Drustan’s way of punishing her for leaving? Was this his magic?

  “Come along, woman.” Drakkina’s voice called just as loud as the wind. “Keep moving or you will freeze.” The witch spoke in a rush with force prodding Anna forward.

  Lord, how the obvious annoyed Anna. But she didn’t waste precious energy to snap at the woman, witch, spirit, whatever she was. At the moment, Drakkina was her savior. Anna gritted her teeth, curling her numb lips inward to seek the warmth of the inside of her mouth. If she was a fur-lined turtle, she’d just pull herself in and hunker down under the snow. Maybe that’s what she should do. Drop and hunker down until the snow covered her. Wasn’t snow insulating? Each step seemed harder as if the blood in her veins were turning to lead. Icy wind penetrated the wool cloak, and numbness worked its way up her limbs.

  “Up ahead,” came Drakkina’s voice, and Anna saw the haphazard swarm of dragonflies zip into a crevice.

  It seemed so far away yet so close. The snow swam before Anna’s eyes, sticking to her eyelashes, making her eyelids heavy, too. Maybe she should just—

  Go! Now! Move!

  There was no arguing with the witch’s voice overriding her thoughts, and Anna forced her feet to plod toward the crevice. She raised her hand to grasp the edge though she couldn’t feel it with her numb fingers. She entered and nearly fell forward without the buffeting wind holding her up.

  It was a shallow cave, maybe three strides back and two across. But it was dry and blocked the blowing snow. Anna walked stiffly inside and sat down, closing her eyes.

  Don’t you dare fall asleep, Anna Pemberlin! Drakkina yelled in her head.

  “I’m a doctor. I know that,” she said and forced her eyes open.

  The witch hovered just two feet before her, peering closely, studying her with tight lips. Her little dragonflies zipped arou
nd her head, in a panicked motion.

  “You don’t happen to have a way to make a fire or have a dry blanket?” Anna asked with teeth chattering. She tried to tent her wet cloak up over her head and managed to get the opening above her lips and nose so her exhalations would blow some heat underneath.

  “No, but Drustan can help,” Drakkina said. “He is searching for you.”

  Anna blinked, her gaze sliding past Drakkina to take in the blizzard outside. Maybe he wasn’t responsible. Drakkina would know, wouldn’t she? “He’ll die in this,” she murmured.

  Drakkina waved off her concern. “He’s a hot-blooded man with the sense to dress for the weather.”

  “The weather wasn’t like this when I left Kylkern,” Anna defended.

  Drakkina’s see-through body turned in on itself, blending together and reappearing so that suddenly she was looking outside, her back to Anna. “Someone with magic stirred this up.” She turned inside out back to Anna the same strange way.

  A shiver shook Anna. She was cold through to her bones, and her eyes felt thick and heavy. She recognized the signs of hypothermia. Numbness, fatigue. It was a good sign she was still shivering. Her body was trying to raise her core temperature. “I…I don’t thwink I will make it thwough the nighth out ’ere,” Anna said, the slur barely registering in her sluggish mind. Not good.

  “He will be here soon. He found your animal.”

  Anna’s heart pounded faster, and she forced her eyes open. “Mazy? If he touches her she’ll die.”

  “The horse knows where you are.”

  “Has he killed her?”

  “If he must to find you, it is for the best,” Drakkina insisted. “If you die, the only love Drustan remembers feeling will die in him. And love is the only thing that can save this world.”

  “He does not love me,” Anna whispered. He might feel desire or a need to possess her, make her his queen, but he had never loved and didn’t feel the emotion.

  “Cac,” the crone spat. It sounded like a curse. “All humans can feel that emotion,” she said, apparently still reading Anna’s mind. “Even if they don’t label it. It is what makes us human.”

  “What do you know about love?” Anna asked and shifted slightly against the pinpricks along her skin. The feeling was a good sign that her breath was warming her somewhat under the snow-encrusted cloak. Thank God for good Highland wool.

  Drakkina looked like she wasn’t going to answer, and Anna felt her eyes beginning to close. The witch must have noticed because she began to talk.

  I loved once.

  “Get out of my head,” Anna mumbled.

  “Then stay awake.”

  “Give me something to stay awake for,” Anna threw back.

  The woman sighed. “It was long ago, when I was young in body and spirit. I had two friends, both boys my age, both full of laughter and potential. We three spent our days learning the ways of magic together, worshipping the Earth Mother, dreaming of helping the world.”

  Anna clasped her arms around her bent knees, blowing a continued warm exhale, and listened. Drakkina’s mature image smoothed and thinned before her to one full of youth, soft lips, luxuriously long blonde hair. She stood proud and beautiful, yet her eyes held sadness.

  “As we grew, I foolishly thought I was in love with them both, and they thought they were in love with me. It brought them pain, this love tearing the two friends apart. My torment to them affected them differently. One left to make his own journey for a year, a soul-search guided by the Earth Mother. The other stayed, searching ancient texts for more power.”

  Drakkina’s words came distant, sad, defeated.

  “I stayed away from him, trying to sort through my own feelings about the two. Stupid in my youth.” She shook her head. “When the one who stayed came to me, speaking words of love, I believed him.” Anna could almost taste the bitterness of Drakkina’s words.

  “He showed me things, rituals he was performing in an effort to increase his power, power beyond that of the Earth Mother. At first, it was fascinating. He was genius when it came to working through intricacies, teasing out answers to the mysteries inherent in life.” She shook her head, making her dragonflies zip in a circle around her head like a living halo.

  “But too much power corrupts. It always has. Humans aren’t made to withstand as much power as the Earth Mother. Trying to harness it changes people, changes light to dark, love to evil. By the time I realized how he was changing, it was too late. He was too sure of himself. Too full of lust for greatness.”

  “What of the other?” Anna asked. “The other boy.”

  A softness transformed Drakkina’s face. “He called me Kina. He was gentle yet the strongest man I’ve ever met.”

  “Did he return?”

  She nodded. “He came back, ready to fight for me. And when he spoke of love I could see it in his blue eyes. For a time, we kept our feelings hidden, meeting in secret, falling even more in love.”

  “What was his name?” Anna asked.

  “Eògan.” Drakkina’s ethereal body lowered to hover as if sitting across from Anna on the ground. “He called me his dragonfly girl.” She cleared her throat some. “Delicate in body, but strong in spirit.” She held out one hand, fingers slender and delicate with the look of youth, and a dragonfly landed on the smooth palm. “It became our symbol, and we made plans to stay together after our fragile bodies left this earth, binding our strong spirits together. When we wed, he wore a beautiful blue tunic with dragonflies bordering it to match my dress.”

  “And the other man?” Anna asked, her voice soft on a labored exhale.

  “Became furious when he found out. Felt Eògan had stolen me from him. But the truth was that Semiazaz was more interested in power than in me. I was just something else that he wished to possess.”

  Did that describe Drustan?

  “Semiazaz? I’ve heard that name,” Anna said. The picture of a long white beard snaking down below black, bulbous eyes touched Anna’s numb mind.

  Drakkina nodded. “He leads the pack of demons who raised Drustan.”

  “The dark warlock.” Anna blinked. And she had thought her own youth was dysfunctional. What a bloody mess.

  Drakkina nodded again. “He killed Eògan. And when he realized that we were still linked, he sought to break it. The more I hated Semiazaz, the darker he grew until despite the Earth Mother’s guidance…well, I bound him to the demons he’d called forth from Hell. But eventually, he found a way to break the bond between Eògan and me.”

  “How?”

  “He killed Eògan’s spirit.”

  Anna exhaled long. No wonder the woman grieved.

  “Patricia says that William and his family have your symbol on their skin.”

  Drakkina slid up her long, wide sleeve to show a brown birthmark in the shape of a dragonfly. “They do. They hail from Gilla and Druce, my first and only disciples after my body withered and died. I taught them to hone their magic, intensify it to help me fight against Semiazaz’s growing strength.”

  Anna’s sight thinned and darkened until she only peered from a slit. Between the storm and the setting day, the cave had grown dark to the point where she couldn’t tell for certain that her eyes were open.

  Stay with me. Drakkina’s voice came as an order in her mind, like Anna’s mother’s voice had once been while helping her study through the night before a crucial medical school exam. Oh how she missed her mother. Could Drustan’s plan to control time really give her a chance to see her mother alive once more?

  “No!” Drakkina’s voice thundered through Anna’s mind and ears. “Semiazaz’s plan to control time means ruthless pain and destruction to billions of souls who have already moved across the divide. They will be yanked from peace and made to survive at his pleasure or die again. It will be Hell here on this earth. And you, Anna, can stop it.”

  The force behind Drakkina’s words jostled Anna. She rubbed her shins briskly under the coat and blinked rapidly. “I c
an stop it,” she repeated.

  “Yes.”

  Anna watched the zipping chaos of dragonflies around Drakkina. “How?” Anna asked.

  Drakkina stared back. “Sleep with him.”

  “What?” If she’d been a normal temperature she might have mustered a blush or a caustic, are-you-insane glare.

  Drakkina waved her hands in the air. “Make love, have sex, carnal relations, however you wish to say it.”

  “We aren’t wed.”

  “You are soul mates. In the Earth Mother’s eyes you are wed.”

  “I don’t know the Earth Mother.”

  “She’s the same as the God you worship.”

  Did she worship God? Not since the night her mother exhaled her final breath. Anna swallowed. “If I sleep with Drustan, I will save the world from becoming Hell? That’s all I have to do?” As if she would consider prostituting herself to…to save the world.

  “You are a doctor,” Drakkina said. “Human misery is your enemy. You have the power to stop billions of people from suffering. Call yourself a prostitute if you wish. I would call you a savior.”

  The witch presented a good argument, and Anna’s brain was sluggish with cold.

  “You are attracted to him,” Drakkina continued. “He is tall, strong, and darkly handsome.”

  “Stay out of my mind,” Anna mumbled, hardly able to form the words.

  “Where is he?” Drakkina yelled, making Anna flinch as her voice reverberated through the small cave. “If Semiazaz hadn’t ordered him to burn my mark from his body, I’d know exactly where he was.”

  “It is your mark that holds magic?” Anna asked softly, trying to make her mind focus on the question. She breathed shallow, her mouth still under the wool cloak around her.

  “Some, but obviously Drustan has magic without my mark. But it keeps me linked to my family or Gilla’s family,” she added, floating to the mouth of the cave. “Where is he?” Her ethereal essence whipped out into the storm.

  Anna’s blinks lengthened without the annoying woman speaking into her mind and ears. She let her eyes close. It was so much easier than torturing herself to stay awake. Fool! Stay awake. Anna, you know this. No sleeping when you’re freezing. Her internal berating shrunk into the tiniest of voices, much like the buzz of a gnat, easily ignored.