The other two witches backed away from Draeis. He gazed over at Faeswyn with a slight shake of his head. Faeswyn only smiled at him and nodded. “I’ll be fine. Hurry,” she said to him.
Draeis, or the man that stood in front of the witches at that moment, was filled with the bloody, oozing, pus-filled sores of a man afflicted with talius disease. He nodded in understanding, getting back into the car as he pulled out from the side of the road, headed hell-bent for the farm and help, flat tires and all. People that worked the talius fields could develop sores. It was an outward sign of impending death. A very contagious, painful, and pus-filled death. It was the only way she thought the witches would leave him alone. She had her gift. All she had to do was keep the witches from taking her to their hut. That, and pray to the goddesses that Draeis and Naihr could find her before the witches made a Faeswyn sandwich.
The one called Maelanthia changed her form again to the comforting old grandmother, and walked over to stand close to Faeswyn. She smiled sweetly, and Faeswyn knew what was about to happen. She held her breath, hoping to not get a full dose of the witch’s rancid and noxious breath. But her world tilted on its axis and became cloudy. Her last thought before passing out was for her men to hurry.
Chapter Eleven
Naihr walked back out to the porch, looking out into darkness and willing the car to come. There was only the blank stillness of night, and the deep trepidation in his gut that something was wrong. He walked back into the house, just as Trikyia walked through the back door.
“I love shooting targets at night,” she said to him as Glaeonawyn followed behind her. “I wish you had more room out at your place, Nana, so I could shoot out there.”
Glaeonawyn sighed heavily, staring at Naihr’s worried expression. “You know we can’t let onto your father about what I’m letting you do. He’d never let you come to visit me if he did. Naihr? What’s wrong?”
He stopped in the middle of the dining room with his hands on his hips like a father admonishing a child. “They should have been back by now. Something’s wrong, Glaeonawyn. I feel it. They haven’t contacted me. Nothing.”
“Tell me what you need me to do?” Glaeonawyn said with urgency in her voice.
“I’m going to look for them. Something feels wrong, and—”
A loud horn was heard from the front of the house. They all ran out the front door to see Draeis running toward them. “They took her!” Draeis yelled. “Wind witches!”
Naihr only took the time to run into the house and retrieve his tracer and holster, shrugging into it as he half ran out the door. He was stopped short in his tracks as Trikyia began to follow him.
“No, Trikyia. This isn’t a game or practice!”
“I can help!”
“Who is this?” Draeis asked, looking at Trikyia warily.
“She’s my granddaughter and she’s right,” Glaeonawyn said to him. “Let her go with you, Naihr. She can handle a tracer better than any man, including you two.”
“And I can track,” Trikyia said. “You don’t know where the witches have taken Faeswyn. I can find them. Tell them, Nana.”
“It’s true. She’s an excellent tracker, along with being excellent at shooting, and at fighting. Her mother wanted to prepare her for anything in life.” Glaeonawyn stared at the two men in turn.
Naihr’s mouth was set in a tense line. “We don’t know what’s out there, Glaeonawyn. We can’t be responsible for any harm that might come to Trikyia. Or worse.”
Glaeonawyn glanced at Trikyia, and then back to Draeis and Naihr, as if she held a secret. “It won’t happen.”
“Naihr, we have to go. Now!” Draeis pleaded. He walked over to an older car parked to the side of the house. “The witches spiked the tires. Does this one have octal?” Naihr nodded as they started to leave without Trikyia.
“She can heal!” Glaeonawyn yelled suddenly.
Both Naihr and Draeis turned to stare at Glaeonawyn. “Like you?” asked Naihr. “She can heal people like you can?”
Glaeonawyn stared at Trikyia, and then shook her head. “Not like me. I use my aura to help the body to heal in time. Trikyia can heal instantly. Her mother was half-Calthafaean. The Calthafae women have special gifts like vaedra, only…different. Take her. She can help.”
“If we’re taking her, we have to go now, Naihr!” Draeis pleaded.
“I don’t care how good you are, you do as I say, when I say it. Understood?” Naihr said to Trikyia sternly. She nodded.
Glaeonawyn hugged her granddaughter tightly to her. Trikyia got into the back of the car, and Draeis sped quickly away from the house. Naihr glanced at him. “She’ll be all right. I feel it. Faeswyn is strong, and wind witches are stupid.”
“I’m counting on that, brother,” Draeis said with a nod. “We have to count on that.”
* * * *
Balaedras was beyond angry. He had summoned her. He knew to never summon her to his presence as if she were nothing more than a pawn in his court. She was the fucking queen! But as she walked along the corridor leading to the throne room, she took a deep breath. Composure was everything. Especially in front of Gaeldos. His time was coming. The people of Teveoch were tiring of his antics and his rages. They were tired of fighting unending wars without a clear purpose.
In the beginning, each of the previous kings had engaged in war for the sole purpose of uniting kingdoms and strengthening their power, their hold on the throne. More territory meant more money, which meant more control and power. But Gaeldos was always more concerned with perception. He could care less about surrounding himself with loyal chess pieces. And that’s all they were, Balaedras thought. They were all pieces in a game. But Gaeldos never knew how to play it strategically. He paid more attention to getting his cock wet than acquiring the right type of ally.
King Dothmeadon of Jroan. A man so weak he was willing to halve his kingdom on the promise he would be seated on the right of Gaeldos. A man that had married his own sister thinking it would keep the lineage pure, who never questioned the tragic instances of defects in the gene pool, resulting in several still born babies and three children he was reluctant to show in public. Children that not even advanced medicine could do anything for. Dothmeadon was so weak, that he believed everything she told him about Gaeldos as she sucked his poor, pathetic cock, gazing at him with the placid eyes of a supposed woman in love. If a meaningless blow could topple a king’s hold on his territory, then he didn’t deserve to be king.
Or like Queen Mordrialahr of Tulor. A woman so vain and contemptuous she spent more than half of her kingdom’s money to build a twenty-foot golden statue of her image, instead of seeing to the needs of her people. She then had to create an ally with Gaeldos, a man she despised, to save her kingdom from bankruptcy. Balaedras found it comical. Mordrialahr aligned herself with Gaeldos to save her kingdom, yet Gaeldos was on the verge of losing his own. Neither of them knew the importance of the people. Hate them if you will, which she did, but without them there was no kingdom. They had to be placated and deceived into believing the lies of those on the throne. Gaeldos and Mordrialahr were too conceited to understand the intricate workings of the realm. But she wasn’t.
She’d made sure that she’d positioned her chess pieces strategically. From the moment she’d learned of Gaeldos’ true identity, she knew his reign would have to come to an end. She’d been patient. Patience was something a ruler had to have. They didn’t send their troops to fight wars out of spite and injured vanity. A true ruler knew the value of calculation. She’d calculated Gaeldos’ weakness. His frailty. His flaws. And when the moment was right, she would strike.
She entered the throne room to see Gaeldos storming around the room, berating and screaming at his guards, who only stood silently at attention throughout his rant. He stopped when he saw her walking toward him. Balaedras had seen Gaeldos angry. At most times, he hurled words at no one in particular and stomped his feet like a spoiled child. But one look in his eyes told her this
was no ordinary rant.
“Where the hell have you been?” Gaeldos screamed, with spittle flying from his mouth. “Leave us! Now!” The guards quickly left them alone.
Balaedras glanced at their retreating backs, and then back to Gaeldos. “You look as though someone stole one of your prized whores, Gaeldos.”
He stood, breathing heavily in front of her. “They’re alive! All of them! They’re in fuckin’ Yaelvoch!”
So it had happened, she thought. She always felt that they were alive. Not the woman, of course. She’d thought she’d actually been eaten by some creature. An easy disposal. But Draedon and Theoch had always been the unseen threat to the throne. She knew what it all meant, but she doubted Gaeldos did.
“You have no one but yourself to blame for this, Gaeldos,” she said, slowly walking toward the dais to take her seat. She sat staring at him. His chest was rising and falling rapidly as if it were hard for him to catch his breath. She could only hope.
“Don’t you dare!” he said, rushing over to her. “You know what this means, Balaedras. They’ll tell everything they know to that imp of a king, Lavaerion. Once they do, the other kingdoms will question my reign.” His eyes darted wildly around the room.
“Yes, they will,” said Balaedras. “I told you to scour the kingdom to look for them. I told you they weren’t dead.”
“W-w-what of your alliance with the fairies, then? Did they know of this? Maybe all isn’t what it seems with your relationship, is it, Balaedras?”
Balaedras fingered the cold, golden arm of her throne chair. “No, no, Gaeldos. My alliances are intact. In fact, the witches have only recently informed me that they’ve seen your escaped convicts near Drisa. They were to set a trap to capture them, but more than likely their stupidity got in the way. I haven’t heard from them in some time.”
“I don’t care about those fuckin’ guards! My power is threatened! Which means yours is also, Balaedras. If I go down, so do you.”
She wanted to laugh in his face. She was making sure he went down. Every movement she’d made over the past thirty years had been to end him in one way or the other. With King Lavaerion privy to Gaeldos’ true identity, she’d positioned her chess pieces to only benefit her throne. The only thing she didn’t like was that it all would take so much time. The truth would seep out to the other kingdoms. Then there would be an inquiry. After that, the people of Teveoch would call for a royal investigation, and on and on. It could take a year or more to oust Gaeldos. Even then, she might suffer through guilt by association.
“I have a plan, Gaeldos,” she said to him, looking up from her interest in the arm of the chair. “If you’re willing.”
Gaeldos stopped pacing in front of her. His look showed renewed interest. “Tell me.”
Balaedras glanced around the throne room. “Not here, Gaeldos. You and I both know there are ears in the palace. Ears that don’t need to hear certain things. Come to my apartment in an hour. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear what I propose.”
He nodded. “Yes. Yes, later. I will not give up my throne, Balaedras. And I’m sure you don’t want that either.”
Balaedras stood, walking past Gaeldos and placing a placating hand on his shoulder. Maybe that motion was too much, but it seemed like a supportive gesture. She heard Gaeldos speaking reassuredly to himself as she left the throne room with a small smile on her face.
Chapter Twelve
Faeswyn heard the arguing from somewhere around her. She slowly opened her eyes, blinking them rapidly to try and clear the blurriness in front of her. She felt as though her head had been held underground as if she were a carrot. But the other thing she realized was that there were different voices arguing somewhere outside.
She looked around at where she was as she picked dead leaves and sticks out of her hair. There was a small lump on the back of her skull, as if she’d banged it against something. It was then that she realized that the witches must have dragged her along behind them, like a used sack of rubbish, gathering leaves and twigs into her hair from the ground.
The floor where she sat was of dirt and smelled of moss. She knew at once she was in the witches hut. She looked around in the dim light that trickled in from the only opening—the makeshift door. It was moonlight, so she knew she hadn’t been unconscious long. It was still night. She only hoped it was the same night that they had taken her. There were roots along the walls of the hut, vines intertwined with heavy green moss, and dark, rich earth. Thankfully, they didn’t live underground like fairies. They dug their huts into the sides of hills. Her father used to tell her that a witch could dig a hollow into a hill faster than a mole or any creature around. It was almost scary to hear that, because he also told her that if a witch wanted, she could dig out that hole, and take whoever they’d caught into it, covering it back as if nothing had existed before.
It was then that her heart jumped into her throat. The other voices that she was hearing. Although she’d never heard or seen them in person, her parents had told her and her sisters about the glaon fairies. They’d told their daughters about all of the creatures in Ai, and those in other countries other than Ai. The glaon fairies. The wind witches. The respect that should be shown to the yaorg, if you wanted to live. How to never try and outrun a thrihn cat, because they loved the chase and would eventually outrun and kill you when they tired of their game. How to injure or kill the alpha vaem wolf, to scatter the others and have half a chance of survival. The rarity of baenthahndorse, the mythical half-man creatures that were used as warriors because of their strength and appearance. And they were also told what to listen for. A thrihn cat’s growl was like a baby crying. Vaem wolves were almost eerily silent with a low-pitched growl, like the sound of a coming storm. They preferred to stare directly at their prey, while the alpha separated into the rest of the pack. A fangdrol’s shriek was ear-splitting and able to draw blood from ones ears, rendering their prey in pain, and writhing on the ground before the knowledge hit them that they were about to be eaten.
Wind witches were soft spoken, sweet old ladies, until they revealed their true selves. Their voices were low and crackled with the age of their years. They could shriek in a high timbre, resembling fangdrols, and many believed the two were related in some way. Wind witches are the only ones able to eat the poisoned meat of dead fangdrol without dying themselves. But glaon fairies spoke in whispers. Harsh, raspy whispers when in true fairy form. Seductive, erotic whispers in their veiled forms, and when they were trying to lure and seduce men. It was told that if a man even listened to a fairy’s whisper, he could be lulled into her trance. It was the crackling, gravelly voices of the witches, along with the harsh, raspy whispers of glaon fairies, that she heard arguing somewhere outside of the hut.
“Where is the man?” said the voice of a fairy. “You were told to bring the man!”
“You don’t tell us what to do,” a witch was saying. “Tell her, Maelanthia.”
“You don’t tell us what to do, Shahlmach. We are wind witches. We can end you all.”
There was laughter from the fairies, which sounded like the scraping of rocks on glass in one instant, and then jingling bells in the next. It made Faeswyn put her hands over her ears until they finally stopped. Her hands and feet weren’t bound. But then, why would they be? she thought to herself. There were fairies and witches just feet away. She was no match for them.
“You were to bring the man here, Maelanthia! I see no man. I see nothing.”
“We couldn’t bring him. He was diseased.”
“Yes, he was.”
“I saw his disease, too. It was oozing. We couldn’t bring him.”
“I don’t believe you. I believe you’re trying to deceive us.”
“And we believe you are here to harm us!”
“If we wanted to harm you—”
“You would be dead already,” another fairy said as she began to shriek with fairy laughter. “Dead, dead, dead!”
“If you try to harm
us, we will make sure to kill all of you!”
“Yes, we will kill all of you with…with… What will we kill them with, Maelanthia?”
“We…We will kill them with rocks. Yes! Yes, rocks will kill them.”
“Where can we find the rocks to kill them, Drothahnia?”
“Rocks are made from stones! If we find stones, we can make the rocks to kill them, Zahnduthia.”
Fairy laughter echoed around Faeswyn as she felt her way around the darkened room to find some form of escape. She hoped that she could slip out some way and run into the forest while the fairies and the witches continued to argue over how they were going to kill each other.
“I thought it was only a story about how dumb witches were,” said a fairy whisper. “But it’s not a story. It truly isn’t.” She laughed.
“You won’t think we’re dumb when we find stones to make rocks to kill you all with.”
“I’m tired of them, Shahlmach. We should kill them and be done with it. Balaedras will probably reward us for killing the witches.”
Faeswyn stopped looking for a way out of the hut, and trained her ears on the conversation at the mention of Queen Balaedras. Why would fairies be involved with the queen of Teveoch? she wondered, sitting back down on the dirt floor.
“You may think you can kill the eight of us, Maelanthia. But I assure you, there may only be the eight of us here, but our sisters number in the thousands all over the land. Kill us, and our sisters will hunt you down and—”
“Eat you!” several fairies said together.
The witches and the fairies began to argue once again, and Faeswyn saw her chance to escape. As she felt behind her, she discovered that the soil and earth at the bottom of the hut had some give to it. She began to dig out the dirt with her hand, feeling more confident of her plan as the dim light of the moon shown through the hole she’d made. The arguing continued outside until she’d made the hole big enough to squeeze through. Bright red and green pog beetles, two inches long, scurried around the floor in the dirt, but they were the least of her worries. Having a few pog beetle bites was something she’d welcome if she could escape any chance of being eaten by witches, or torn apart by fairies.
Faeswyn [The Maidens of Mocmoran 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 11
