Bone Witch (16 page)

A
laysha had one thought: to psych the fluid from whatever
was stealing her breath. It wasn't a matter of fear or bravery; it was one of
pure self-preservation. The power tingled beneath her skin even as she saw Cai
drop to her knees. They'd been back-to-back when the battle began, but now as
Alaysha spun, searching for breath to pull into her lungs, she'd fallen away
from Cai. She knew she had mere heartbeats to stop the psyching, that within
ten, all of the Enyalia, the boys even the one she'd come to recognize, Yenic
Gael and Theron would be nothing but dried flesh.

If she could just focus it, she could at
least save someone. But where? How?

Her lungs were starving for air and her
legs lost their strength, unable to find the fuel they needed as the air was
robbed from her lungs. Blackness was overtaking her vision; she could smell the
stink from the sweat of the fighters, taste the water from beneath their pores.
If she didn't do something immediately it would be too late. It wouldn't matter
who took the lives: lack of air or lack of water had the same result, but if
she did nothing they would all be dead.

A flicker of movement, there in the trees,
past a collapsed Uta and Thera, several Enyalia on their knees struggling not
to pass out. A heartbeat more and it would be over.

The easy water had already gathered to a
mist, was gathering still. The quick supply from buckets and gourds and water
skins, it was all there ready to be used. It would have to be enough. Like she
would strike with her sword at an enemy, Alaysha imagined the water as part of
her arm. She swung, gathering it into a wide streak and at its apex, she sent
it jabbing forward, toward the movement she saw in the trees. It gathered as it
hurtled forward, picking up condensation from the psyched breath of each woman
and child, and it turned to a sheet of water with enough force that it slammed
into a tree, cracking it in two as it crashed into the woods.

Alaysha fell forward onto her chest, her
hands splayed in front of her, trying to hold herself up. She couldn't breathe;
she had spent everything she had in the attack. She lay there, trying to focus.
The Enyalia who had reclaimed enough air to stand were doing their best to
sprint into the woods, swords drawn. Alive then. Most of them. But staggering
as though drunk.

She felt herself being lifted into warm
arms. Strange. She hadn't realized she was cold until just then.

"We have to get out of here."
Yenic's voice. "You have to get out of here if you want to live."
Shouting at someone, everyone, it seemed. Fires had started somewhere near, she
could hear the lightening striking wood and splitting trees. She could smell
the stink of char and burning skin. A blur of flame from the edge of the woods
where the tinder sword blazed.

Alaysha's vision blurred, but she could see
waves of red flashes then of green. Moving. The feeling of awkward loping.
"Come, man," she heard her Saviour say. "I know a place."

"It best be far away." Yenic
said. He was breathless too, as though he was running and labouring at breath
at the same time. But it didn't feel like they were running. It was too
awkward, too slow.

A grumble of thought, then darkness.
Alaysha couldn't stop shivering. She thought the shadows wanted her to sleep.
They crept in from her side vision, threatening to steal even the unfocused
power that she kept tightened and in check. But there was something she had to
tell these saviours of hers. Something important.

"Gael," she croaked out and her
throat burned at the effort. She tried to lift her head because that wasn't
what she wanted to say. It had something to do with the movement she'd seen as
she felt her power let go, and she needed to concentrate, to get it back.

"Gael," was what came again.

"Her man," came Cai's voice.

"I'll see to it." Yenic again.
Sullen but agreeable.

"Use Bodicca and the beast to get him.
Meet me at nightfall. She'll know where I'm going."

"Bodicca," Alaysha mumbled, and
even that wasn't what she wanted to say, but it was closer. Gael. Bodicca.
Theron. Aedus.

Edulph.

Yes. She could picture it now. Remember.
Three attacks. A bloom of arrow. A swat to the neck. The loss of air. A
complete triangle of attack and at its third point a small child—a girl no
more than two seasons old.

The wind witch, surely. And with her two
people Alaysha knew on sight. Aedus, her hair and body slicked in mud, holding
a blower to her lips. Edulph with a bow. The only people standing, unaffected,
by the child's power.

And that could only mean one thing.

They had her blood.

A
laysha woke to warmth, but when she opened her eyes she saw
nothing. So the shadows had taken her after all and she was dreaming. She
listened to the fire crackling nearby. Behind her perhaps? She tried to move
only to discover she was trussed up into some sort of torturous blanket too
heavy to lift. She heard Yuri's voice commanding her to be calm, to stay
resolute, stupid girl, and she worked to quell the instinctive panic.

She inhaled slowly as he would have bid
her, and forced herself to imagine the air moving to her toes and fingers.
There. Much better.

The darkness was merely night, not the
gloom of Corrin's dungeon. The trussing material, a warm fur tucked tightly
around her, covered her head. It let her face peek through and now that she
understood what was happening, she knew that the fire was indeed crackling
behind her. She'd rolled over in her sleep, evidently, and now faced the
forest. She shook her head free of the fur and worked to unwind her arms from
wherever they'd come to rest—crossing her chest, hands jammed into her
armpits. Now that she was free, she could make out conversation, hear distinct
words.

"She wakes," Cai's voice from
somewhere near. Alaysha tried to roll over.

"Careful, little maga. Here. Let me
help you."

Meaty hands burrowed beneath Alaysha and
twisted, freeing her enough that she could manoeuvre into a semi-sitting
position. Cai grew impatient with the floundering to get set right and pick her
up, fur and all, then plopped her back down facing the fire.

"What happened?"

They were all there, sitting around the
flame: Yenic, Theron, Gael, Bodicca. They all looked sullen. Full recall struck
Alaysha like cold water.

"The girl," she said. "What
happened to her?" She had a quick image of a toddler knocked backwards,
her body broken against a tree, her hair hanging down, wet, against her tiny
body. "She's dead," she heard herself say.

Yenic poked at the flames, the light
dancing on his brow. "We can't say that for sure."

"She will be dead," Cai said and
Yenic looked at her.

"I know the Enyalia are fierce, but
you saw what happened. You can't say for sure the girl is dead."

"My sisters would have killed her if
the little maga didn't."

He chuckled humourlessly. "Your
sisters could barely move."

It took a moment, but Cai did agree.
"True," she said. "We were much—drained—but a child? Well, she
wouldn't have taken much energy to kill in her broken state."

Alaysha thought of the girl again with
dread and imagined the limp body. In her mind's eye she saw someone reaching
for the girl and lifting her, even before the Enyalia managed to gain her feet.

"Edulph," she said and Theron's
beady black eyes rested on her. "It was Edulph. He took her."

"That madman, he's dead. Surely the
Enyalia killed him in the burnt lands." The shaman said, and Alaysha gave
him quiet study as she listened to his words. There were too measured. Too
careful. Too altogether clear.

"Both he and Aedus saved her. I saw
them."

"Alaysha," Yenic said. "You
couldn't have. If they were there, they would have been in the same condition
as the rest of us. As it was, even the Enyalia struggled to gain their
strength. The loss of air, and fluid." He shrugged. "None of us could
manage more than an hour's walk even with the beasts. Cai could barely carry
you."

"I tell you, they were
unaffected."

His brow furrowed and Alaysha turned to
Gael. He would understand. The warrior was mostly quiet.

"She shot Uta with a quill. You know
how she does it. Uta collapsed. That was it. Edulph left an arrow in Saxon's
bed when he stole the boy for Aislin. An Enyalian was shot in the neck with the
same." She waited for Gael to support her but it was Cai who replied with
a disgusted snort.

"A traitor's weapon, that. No honour
in it."

No response from Gael and he wouldn't even
meet her eye.

"Gael?"

It was Theron who spoke, and he seemed to
be taking great care in putting his words together. "A madman such as that
one would use the witch for ill."

"A madman such as that one had no
reason to fear the witch, Theron. Why would that be?"

"The blood. Like your nohma. Like
Yuri."

"Yes. The blood. He's related, and so
must be Aedus."

"Closely too," said Yenic
thoughtfully.

"Very close. Yuri and my nohma where
the only ones safe from me. My father and my aunt."

Yenic kicked at the fire. "Doesn't
make sense. He used you to free his people from Sarum because there were no
others left. He wanted them back. He hated the servitude. That's why he forced
us there. Remember?"

Cai rose to dig at the fire, and Alaysha
realized there was a spit over it, some sort of rodent roasted there. "The
highlanders have never been warlike. Only subservient. In my time. In Alkaia's.
I would expect it from those in the frozen lands, but they are long gone.
Enyalian justice before I was born."

Alaysha tried to pull her gaze from the
long tail hanging down from the spit. "Scattered, you'd said. Slowly
rebuilding themselves."

"Perhaps to relocate in the highlands
as we suspected." Cai said thoughtfully.

Yenic shifted as he sat. "Gathering
strength."

"To make war on Enyalia."

"Not Sarum," Alaysha said.
"Edulph wanted his people so he could build an army. Even Aedus said so
when I first met her."

"To drive Enyalia to oblivion,"
Cai said. She sighed. "So at least that war is over. We needn't worry
about that."

"Why not?"

Cai shrugged. "My sisters would not
have let them live."

Gael sniffed haughtily and tried to stand.
It took a few long staggering moments for him to catch his balance, but when he
did he wrapped his cloak tighter around his chin, staring into the fire, and
then he strode off into the trees. Alaysha watched him go with a curious
foreboding sitting in her chest. It seemed the drugs had worn off and he was
able to move about, but he certainly was unsteady on his feet, nor swift. Each
of his movement seemed full of effort. She got up to go after him, only to
discover her legs wouldn't hold her.

Cai caught her before she fell.

"None of us have much in the way of
strength, but you even less, little maga."

"What you did was amazing," Yenic
said. Alaysha never heard that tone in his voice before and it made her feel
warm and tingling. "Such control, Alaysha."

"I seem to be paying for it,
however."

He nodded, mutely. "It's still a
victory. You should enjoy it."

She looked around, as much to change the
subject as anything else. "What is this place?"

"This is the pine woods. It's the last
piece of land before the journey to the highlander territory." Cai
stretched her legs forward and Alaysha noticed her circlets were gone. There
was no corresponding rattle.

"That fire," Cai nodded at the
flame. "Is burning in the same place my sword sisters say Alkaia lit one
her first night in exile."

Bodicca made a sound on the other side and
Cai nodded at her "I knew when you found us here that it was true. You met
her here, didn’t you?"

"We did, yes. She was weak. We had no
idea how badly she was bleeding." Her voice seemed far off and Alaysha
thought she must be remembering, maybe even watching it again. "She'd
already killed four wolves by the time we found her. And the babe."

"Ellison," Theron murmured.
"How did you keep him alive until you reached us?"

"Easy," Bodicca said with a grin
in her voice. "We let him drink his fill from her after—after she died.
Then we stole back into the village."

"So you were the ones," Cai said.

"Yes." Bodicca said. "Corrin
and Yuri hid away a host of pre-men too young at the time of the quarter
solstice to go to slaughter. Dozens of them." She chuckled. "Together
with the stock women and wet nurses, it seemed like a thousand. The boy had
plenty to drink then. Many of us lived on mother's milk for the first sun
cycle."

"Fierce leader of a thousand,"
Alaysha mumbled, thinking of Yuri's title.

"It's easy to re-enslave those already
enslaved if you offer things seeming like freedom," Bodicca said.
"That was Yuri's enticement. Freedom to live and fight at their will in a
city of their own. They slipped away as they did their chores and we lit on our
way through the burnt lands before four sun rises."

It was a history of her father she'd never
heard, and it held Alaysha rapt. "Why didn't the boys just leave before if
it was so easy?"

Cai cleared her throat. "Until then,
Enyalia would have noticed. They would hunt and kill anyone who left the
village. But then-"

"Then the village was under
strain," Bodicca said.

"Strain. A good description," Cai
said. "Uta only ever called it difficult. A young warrior choosing to save
a pre-man. Our leader gone into self imposed exile, taking an infant male with
her and leaving the daughter."

"Self imposed? I thought she'd be
banished." Alaysha was surprised to hear this.

"I suppose she knew she'd upset the
balance. That to choose an outsider, she was no better than Bodicca. She would
expect the same treatment."

"Uta expected us to track Alkaia and
kill the boy."

Alaysha sensed something in the warrior's
tone. "And you, Cai? Now that you've saved outsiders instead of your
sisters?" Alaysha reached out to touch where the woman previously sported
her circlets, and the thigh muscle trembled beneath her fingers.

"I can never return," she said.

"It's a hard choice," Bodicca
whispered and got up, finally, staggering as Gael had done before she managed a
good balance. She looked incredibly old in the firelight and Alaysha realized
for the first time that she was old. She'd been such a solid, brusque constant
in her life that Alaysha had always assumed she didn't age. But she was as old
as her father had been.

Her father. So much she didn't know. He'd
saved his half brother from certain death, rescued dozens of comrades from
Enyalia, survived the burnt lands.

And had done everything in that power to
ensure all but the one witch he could control was dead.

She watched Theron in the light, wondering
what he knew, and found herself feeling betrayed by him. He'd known all along
that she'd killed his witch—his wife she knew now—and he'd not told her the
connection. How much more was he keeping quiet? She was even beginning to
wonder if he was half mad at all, but used his speech patterns as a means to
stay below the vision line. He'd made her take Yuri's eyes, saying they were
part of Etlantium, and she'd carried them with her in her pack.

All that was left of her father after
Aislin scorched him to ashes. All she had of a sister she didn't know was a
memory. She thought of the warrior Alkaia and how she'd saved her son, the part
Yuri played in that and felt strangely proud.

"Do you have children, Cai?"

"I have celebrated two quarter
solstices; I did not relish the task, and did not think to repeat it. I am
grateful I never quickened."

Alaysha shifted uncomfortably as drums
sounded in the distance, the beat growing more incessant, and she realized Cai
was watching her. "Makes me nervous," she said.

"It’s meant to. They get into your
chest, do they not?"

Theron grumbled from his spot next to the
fire and Alaysha peered at him, trying to make out his expression. "Do
they bother you too, Shaman?"

He had taken to rocking. "The hair.
Stinks of burning."

"Not yet, old man. Not yet," Cai
said and his eyes snapped to her, suddenly aware, as though the turn itself had
struck a chord.

"And yet this old man smells it.
Spectres of men once known, they follow us. They do. And they are not kind.
Such is the price of escape."

"What does he mean?" Alaysha
asked.

Cai sighed. "My sword has bathed in
solstice blood but twice, but even I remember the stink of hair and fat."

She looked to want to avoid the topic, but
Alaysha pressed her. "The drums will peak and die even though no men will
be sacrificed. The pre-men will have no need to tether the men to the burning
sword. Many of them will be forced to walk into the flame. Some, those who are
lucky enough, will be killed before, to shed their blood for us. All will
die."

Alaysha thought of Yuri, of his knowing
what lay ahead of him if he stayed in the village of the Enyalia and realized
at once that he'd saved dozens from their fate. She stole a look at Bodicca,
who stared into the flame as though reliving her own casting ceremony so many
years ago. Her mouth was twisted into a line of revulsion that echoed how
Alaysha felt.

"That's savage. You don't kill for a
god, or to prevent disease. You kill because they are men."

Cai pursed her lips, considering. "You
speak as though there was something wrong with that."

"There is something wrong with that.
You use them to procreate –"

"Not just any male, little maga. Only
the halest of them."

"So you use the best specimens, force
them to lie with you –"

"Not all are forced." Cai held up
her hand. "Quite a few enjoy the activity."

"Only because they have no idea what
their end will be. So the ones who don't enjoy it? What do you do to them? You
torture them to submit?"

"Little maga, a man is simple, and his
manhood even more so. There is no need for torture—unless he wants it."

"And then you murder them."

"They are men. They have no further
use."

"I thought the Enyalia felt no fear
for any man."

"And what do you think affords us such
courage?"

"Surely you can't believe all men are
vermin. These here," Alaysha pointed to Yenic and then to Gael who sat by
himself hunched fire away from the fire. "These men were useful enough
that you brought them here."