Bone Witch (21 page)

Fourteen Sun cycles would very nearly send
Alaysha to the edge of her tolerance and at times, she understood how madness
might have crept upon Edulph if he had journeyed this way at all.

By day thirteen, they came upon a body of
water that Edulph said would be impossible to cross.

Alaysha stepped next to him at the water's edge.
"You crossed it, did you not?"

He stared at the water in the line of
horizon that went past site. "I had a boat."

"How often, Edulph?"

"How often what?"

"How many times have you
crossed?" She was already tired of the verbal game.

A sly line of a smile slithered across his
face. "Enough."

"How many?" She heard the
annoyance in her voice.

"Once running from Drahl."

Yuri's lead scout who had tried to kill
Alaysha and who, according to Aedus, did terrible things to a young Edulph.
"And?"

"Once returning for my people."

"And?"

"And that's it. I've seen the
Highlands." He sounded nostalgic. "I was happy there."

She snorted and he glowered at her.
"Think what you like, witch." He walked the edge, thinking aloud.
"They should have left a boat." He scanned the waterline in both
directions. "I don't understand why they wouldn't leave a boat."

"Maybe they don't want you back in the
village," Cai said, coming alongside Alaysha and crossing her arms.
"I wouldn't."

He spit into the water. "You know
nothing."

"Then explain," Alaysha said.
"Tell us."

"Tell the witch who enslaved my
people?"

"That was my father."

"But for you, he'd have lost that
battle."

Bodicca stepped closer, her hands on her
hips. "Don't be so certain, man," she said.

"Oh yes," Edulph ground out.
"He had you, didn't he, and all those others. I remember. I might've been
young, but I remember."

"Then you'll remember Alaysha was but
a pre-woman, then."

He ignored her in favor of throwing a
pebble into the water. Alaysha waded in behind it, testing the depths.

"I suppose it doesn't matter now,
Edulph. It only matters that we get across this so we can help your
daughter."

He nodded, still sullen. "I didn't
kill her mother," he said.

She looked at him. "Someone did,"
she answered.

"Yes," he agreed, and the way he
said it, the way his tone held a note of accusation, Alaysha knew what he'd
been holding back from her. Why he hated her so.

"It was me," she guessed.
"But how?"

He shrugged. "How do you always
kill?"

"No. How would you know this when I
didn't?" Alaysha recalled the mud village, the three crones hunched over a
dead fire. Fire, earth, air. All of them dead, but with their power safe in
their daughters' spirits. Safe, presumably, elsewhere, far away from Alaysha's
power. Sacrificing themselves, so Theron said, to save the line or to thwart
the brother god of his legends. She wasn't sure which.

Edulph seemed to tire of the burden of his
secrecy and stepped close enough that when he spoke in a whisper, she could
still hear.

"Aislin. She knew." His mouth worked
in thought. "She told me you dried her out like an apple in the sun for
your father."

"I might have," Alaysha admitted.
"I can't deny it's possible. But it couldn't have been in the mud
village." She looked at the child pointedly. "Because she would be
with her mother. Somewhere safe."

He laughed but without humour. "You
witches, playing at your own war while people die around you as though we were
nothing but beasts."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it?" He nodded at his
daughter. "Even she knows it. I couldn't keep her from you when she knew,
and now look at her. Payment for her compassion." He turned away.

"What you mean,
when she knew
?"
She grabbed his shoulder and twisted him back around. "Tell me what you
mean."

"How did you know about
her
?"

Alaysha thought it over.
"Yuri," she said. "And Yenic."

He quirked both brows knowingly and Alaysha
caught her breath as she realized. "You
were
trying to rescue
us," she said.

"I told you so."

"But she can't control her power
either."

He shrugged. "She wanted to try. She
thought she could."

Alaysha wanted to reach out to him, but
found she couldn't. Too much had happened; she knew neither one of them would
ever trust the other. But she did know one thing. They needed to cross the
water if the girl was to a chance of saving.

"We'll get her home," she told
him. "I swear it."

She scoped the breadth of the water,
scanning sideways, running her fingers across the surface. She considered the
amount of power it would take to psych it dry and wondered if she could unleash
as much as that, and if she could, would she be able to pull it back before it
worked on the latent water resting inside the bodies and breath of her
companions.

The girl was sleeping less and less each
time Aedus quilled her; how much longer and how many more times they could
continue to do so was unclear. Theron wasn't even sure a fortnight was enough
restorative sleep for the child to heal sufficiently. It was very possible
she'd not recover at all unless he could get access to more than he had in his
pack, to a good shelter, to food and support.

They could go around the broad river, or
they could go through it.

"Theron, take Aedus and the child. Get
on the road and travel east on the waterline. Go about a leagua." She
hoped a leagua was enough. It seemed her power extended about that far when
she'd taken the mud village.

"The witch plans to drain the
sea?" Theron sounded anxious

"We can't lose the girl, and I won't
risk Aedus. The rest of you have your choice."

All of them, even Edulph stood silent in
acquiescence as Alaysha watched Barruch plod away. She pulled in a bracing
breath, held it, then very purposefully sent her power sniffing.

The ready water, plenty of it, the
seemingly endless supply delighted the power. She felt the latent excitement
dancing in her chest. Oh what it could do with all the fluid. Her chest
tightened like the bottom of a riverbed dried out by the sun; she could feel it
pull away from her flesh, gathering into one small spot somewhere behind her
spine. Her flesh tingled, her mouth went dry. She could sense that certain
coiling of it as it began to reach out. It pulled the water like a dying man
thirsted for his last breath.

So potent was the thirst that she thought
she'd inhaled enough fluid to send her floating on the sea somewhere above her.
She couldn't feel her feet or hands. She only felt the filling of her entire
being with the bloat of water, as though some part of her was made of it just
past her physical body. She swore she could see a second version of herself
outlining her skin and marvelled at how big it grew.

She heard excited laughter coming from
beside her but didn't dare turn to face it. She needed to keep the focus, stare
at the sea, will it to release its water until the bottom showed through. Fish
of all sorts flapped on the sea bed, gasping for water. Trout, pickerel,
salmon. The men ran forward, collecting them, throwing them into the front of
their leathers. The women drug their bedrolls out to the seabed and collected
weeds and frogs. Laughing. All laughing. Barruch plodded onto the seabed even
as it crackled dry, the Enyalian beast following him.

She'd done it. She drained the sea and they
could cross. She should have been ecstatic.

All she felt was the bloat of water
swimming across her vision, filling her lungs, driving out her air.

She gasped, flailing about in mockery of
those poor fish. She couldn't breathe. There wasn't room for one more breath or
one more inhale.

S
he awoke to a cacophony of birdsong and discovered she lay
on a soft bed, the scent of roasted meat filling the air.

She called out for Yenic, but it was Theron
who hovered over her.

"The witch awakes," he said
smiling and she eased herself onto her elbows to look around.

"So much excitement and to have missed
it all. Such a shame. Yes?"

She didn't need an explanation to
understand what was going on. To be inside a lodge, the smell of food cooking,
to feel the heat of a fire. They'd made it to the Highlands. So she'd been
unconscious for at least two days, maybe more.

"How is the child?"

"The little one rests more suitably,
now she's here. Yes oh yes."

"Yenic?"

"Brooding."

"Gael?"

"Also brooding."

Alaysha chewed her lip thoughtfully.
"And Cai?"

A small grin tugged at the corner of his
mouth. "Brooding."

"Is there anyone happy that we made
it?"

He shook his head soberly, then brightened.
"Edulph."

"So they're all mad at me."

"Worried."

"It had to be done."

"Indeed, little witch. Indeed. Oh yes.
But this shaman isn't sure she'll make it through another."

She sighed, feeling the weariness in every
muscle. It even hurt to breathe. "Don't even suggest it," she told
him, touching her stomach as it growled hungrily. He fetched a copper bowl and
set it close by while he gathered up a spoon and a trencher of bread.

"Broth first," he told her.

She opened her mouth obligingly to the
offered broth and swallowed. The taste was pungent of meat and spices.

"Bodicca," she guessed.

"She fills her time re-teaching the
women to cook."

Alaysha waited for another spoonful that
didn't come.

"The witch needs to mark
another," Theron said.

"You don't waste much time."

"There's no time to waste, oh
no."

She sighed heavily. "Cai," she
said and his brow lifted like a bird taking flight.

"Cai," she repeated.
"Tomorrow." She rolled over and away from him, suddenly even more
weary than before.

She slept the day and by early evening felt
sure-footed enough to step outside. If anyone visited, she didn't know, but all
sat now outside the lodge around a huge communal fire where children roasted
bread over tree limbs and a boar gutted and split, roasted on a spit, sending
the delicious aroma through the air. Alaysha's stomach gurgled. She thought of
the time she'd made Saxa feed her meat too soon when she was recovering from a
wound, and how she'd vomited it all up on Gael.

He'd thought her a burden then, and seemed
to feel so again. Best she spare him the mark that would connect them for the
rest of their lives.

She saw him now, sitting alone, staring
broodily into the flames and drinking from a copper goblet. He must have felt
her eyes on him because he looked up directly at her and met her gaze. His face
changed; it grew stormy and dark. He leapt to his feet and charged for her;
Cai, seeing him, was by her side before he could reach her.

"I won't let her," he barked at
Alaysha.

"Won't what, Gael?"

"Won't let her take your mark."

"It's too late. I've decided."

"Undecide it."

She shook her head as Cai stepped in front
of her. "She nearly died; have you forgotten that, man? Leave her to her
decision."

He pushed at Cai but the woman didn't move.
"I won't let you leave your life to this woman," he told Alaysha.
"I won't let you leave it to someone you can't trust."

"I trust her." She touched his
arm and he met her gaze without a change of expression, but his eyes fell to
her mouth.

"Mark me," he said, but it wasn't
a plea.

"You don't know what it means,"
she told him.

"I do," he said. "The shaman
told us."

Of course he would, the busy bee.
"Gael, I don't even know if Cai agrees." She felt weary over it. She
didn't want to argue.

"I do," the woman pressed closer,
pushing Gael aside. "The shaman explained it, and I do."

Alaysha took her in. She'd given Theron a
name just so he would leave her alone. She shook her head, thinking to decline
is all when the Enyalian touched her chin at the centre where her mark was.

"You will die, little maga, if your
power takes you again. I would rather share you with this man than see that
happen." She looked at Gael who gave a grudging nod. "See?" She
said happily. "We both would."

From the corner of her eye, Alaysha saw
Yenic watching, both anxious and intrigued. She looked past him to the backdrop
of tree trunks so broad they sported stairs and sets of stairs that wound
around each other and connected to lodges set in the very trees themselves, up dizzying
heights that made Alaysha feel faint.

Highlands. It made sense now. They lived
high in the trees, all the better to see danger coming.

"Alaysha?"

Yenic's voice. His hand grasping for hers.
He'd got up in the time she was thinking, and she wondered how long she'd been
lost in her thoughts.

"You need an Arm, Alaysha.
Please."

She chewed her lip. It was folly, what they
planned to do, out and out folly. The best candidates and yet all hated each
other. All connected only because she loved them.

She nodded, finally, mutely.

They were safe for now, all of them. The
wind witch. Yenic. Aedus. What better time to marshal all the strength they
could.

"Have Theron verse us all," she
said numbly, realizing the decision had sapped what energy she had left.
"Tomorrow. It'll be done tomorrow."

She stumbled back to the lodge at the edge
of the village, out past the trees into a small clearing that smelled of
redwood and ferns.

She collapsed on the bedroll and closed her
eyes, feeling as though she'd sentenced the two warriors to death. She thought
of Thera and her lodge, of the sight of Gael lying naked in the heat,
unconscious. How she ached for him to be well, watching the slow rise and fall
of his chest, the thigh muscles quivering in drugged sleep. She smelled again
the myrrh, the brimstone, imagined Thera piling the furs onto her cot as the
smoke rose.

Brimstone. Something about brimstone
niggled at her thoughts, but she couldn't grasp at it with the image of Gael
lying helpless in her memory or the sight of those furs piled onto that cot
moving in a similar way to Gael's chest, almost imperceptible.

Almost as though someone was beneath the
pile.