Bone Witch (23 page)

"It wasn't me," she sobbed.
"Not me," she spied Aedus, her mouth agape, her arms full of herbs
and plants she'd been gathering. She dropped them as Alaysha reached her, and
thank the deities, without speaking, the girl knew what was happening.

Alaysha found her hand in the girl's and
let herself be pulled along, the satisfied sense of early morning long gone.
Now it was replaced by a queer kind of panic.

"The child," she said, gasping
for air she ran. "Where is she?" Several hard globes stung her back.

"Theron has her," Aedus got out,
and yanked Alaysha toward the tree Edulph had disappeared into with the girl
the moment they'd arrived. "He's mixed up his ghost pipe roots and she
sleeps far more soundly."

Panting, feeling as though everything in
her skull would erupt, Alaysha craned her neck up the tree trunk. The stairs
that wound their way up into the brush of the branches and joined several trees
together by a wooden lodge looked far too high for her to climb. It was why she
chose in the mud hut instead. Not only did her head pound, but she suddenly
grew dizzy.

"I don't think I can," she said.

"It's okay," Aedus always
understood. "I'll fetch them. And Edulph too. He might be able to calm
them down." She sprinted up the steps as though there was no height to
worry about.

Alaysha whirled to face an accusing crowd.

"I did nothing," she said.
"It wasn't me."

A woman stepped out from the throng.
"Then name the power that could dry standing flesh to leather."

"But they were burned. They –"

"They caught fire with no lightening
to hand, no torch near. They simply dried out as they stood until there was
nothing left but flame."

"But there
was
flame."
Alaysha wasn't afraid; she was ashamed. So ashamed and she couldn't explain herself
let alone the simple folk that the power that could do such a thing wasn't from
her even if it came through her. Her tongue felt tied to its palette. She could
hear footfalls on the stairs again and realized that Aedus hadn't gone all the
way up. Instead, she came back around the tree and stood with her hands on
hips, daring the crowd.

"Worry for yourself, then," she
commanded. "If you think this woman capable of lighting the flame, imagine
your own deaths from such fire and
back off
."

They went quiet but they remained. Alaysha
took a bracing breath.

"Your young one can drain
air, you know it's true. I can draw water, but there is another. One who sparks
fire in a man's own flesh. It's why we're here. We want to help you."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Yenic
rushing toward her, his face a mask of concern. He drew close, his arms opened
in question.

"How Alaysha?" His eyes, so like
roasting honey when he looked at her, were clouded with something she couldn't
name.

She shrugged. "I don't know. The fire,
I guess. I was staring into it –"

It took him a moment, but realization
flashed across his face. "Sweet deities. She channelled you."

"No," Alaysha protested.
"Not like that. I saw her. She was pacing, angry, upset, something. I
caught her unaware."

He grabbed at the spot beneath his arm as
though it stung. "My mark. It still tingles." He looked at her and
past her at the same time.

"What does it mean?" she asked.

Yenic shifted his weight side to side.
"You touched her, Alaysha. She knows your spirit. She knows it without
having to search now."

"The bond," she guessed and he
waggled his head up and down, stepping now more lively, his hands swatting his
ribs.

"She can sense you through me."

Another shriek went up from somewhere near;
the crowd parted, pulling back like the ball of fire would reach out to them
each with light, leaping fingers. The stink of animal fat and burning hair
raced through the air.

"No," Yenic said, stumbling.
Alaysha caught at him, leaned down to keep him from falling. He swept her hand
away. "No," he said again. "I have to break it," he mumbled
to himself and Alaysha thought his face had shifted into something akin to
Edulph's when he'd gone mad.

"Yenic," she reached again, but
he took a faltering step away.

"Your Arms," he said, his eyes
glazed and wide now. "Is it done, Alaysha? Tell me it's done."

"Yes. Yes, it's done." It was
true was it? She saw the ink pot, the black and bone. She'd marked them both.
They'd finished the drink, she drank the brew. They'd –

Oh dear deities. She'd done more than mark
them. She felt her face flush and forced herself to stay calm. She could
explain it to him later. "Yes," she said avoiding his eyes. "Yes
it's done."

His chest was heaving even as another
scream rent the air. "Good, good." He staggered. "She knows
we're together," he choked out. "She won't stop. I have to break it,
Alaysha." His amber eyes were liquid again for one heartbeat, and he
leaned in and kissed her, gripping her face, letting his thumb travel her tattau.

"Get the child away from here while
you can. All of you." He looked at Aedus who was still standing on the
stairs. "Trust only so far, little girl." He told her.

"What are you doing?"

"Whatever I can." He stepped
away. "Go, Alaysha. I can gain them some time." He paused, seeming to
want to say something more, but in the end, he turned and darted off toward the
tree line where the brood lodge stood.

More shrieks now. Too many. The Highlanders
had begun to scatter, each to their trees, some away from them, rushing with
children in their arms, for the woods.

And it was a good thing they were leaving
in a rush, because not only were many of them succumbing to Aislin's flame, but
a herd of Enyalia beasts split the tree line at the end of the village with
Enud at their head.

I
t explained why, with all the yelling going on, neither
Gael nor Cai had come searching for the source of the trouble. It also
explained the obvious state of injury on a few of the warriors as they'd
entered the village.

"Aedus, get up to the lodge, get
Theron, get the girl, get Barruch and get out of here."

Thankfully, the girl didn't argue. She
scrambled up the tree, her grubby legs agile and adept as if they'd been born
to climb. Alaysha swallowed hard. She had only to buy time, that was all. Just
enough for Theron and Aedus and the girl to find and gallop away on Barruch. If
Gael and Cai lived, they'd surely be protected somewhat by their marks. Yenic
was gone, hopefully far enough that he'd be safe. The spontaneous lighting of
the Highlanders had slowed down, so she thought he must have found a way to
stop his mother.

So all she needed was time.

Enud climbed down from her beast and strode
toward Alaysha. She limped painfully, and Alaysha could see a large gash in her
side. Even as she came forward, she was pulling her sword from her back. The
Enyalia behind her look ragged and weary. Scouting the escapees had taken its
toll; Alaysha counted half a dozen beasts. Not so many then.

A scrabbling noise came from behind the
tree, and Alaysha knew Aedus had made it back down. She moved away from the
Redwood, closer to Enud, whose circlets rattled louder with each step. The tree
was thick enough that the inhabitants could slip off into the woods and not be
seen.

"I shall wear your teeth first,"
the Enyalian said. "And then my sword sisters will clear this village as
it should have been done seasons ago."

"You'll string no new teeth today,
Enud," Alaysha told her and the woman laughed.

The time, if it was ever going to be right,
was now. Alaysha wouldn't see one more of these people murdered today. She
thought of her father, imagined his icy eyes as he told her to bury the
emotion, to see her foes as targets of shield and bone. To think of them as
water. Water she needed, wanted, and could use if only she could sniff it,
touch it, draw from each pore the way a bucket emptied from a well.

But not from everywhere. From one target.
That one right there who was even now swinging her blade, thinking to stop the
beating of her heart and take her teeth, to decorate her thighs with a string
of white bone.

The power awoke. It unfurled like a leaf to
the spring sun. Alaysha imagined the pathways that she knew from past
experience were there. She saw them all in her mind's eye, and her tongue
tasted the fluid that kept the Enyalian's eyes clear, her lungs moist, her
breath in sweat. She heard Enud's short sigh and the hollow thud of steel
against ground, and she knew she'd done it.

She'd sent the power in one finger to touch
the one target she needed and she nearly wept in relief because it worked.

She stood, heaving with exertion, staring
down at the leathered bit of skin at her feet and she heard her own choked
laughter ripple across the air because there were no seeds for her to collect.
She looked up, searching for someone to tell this to, and she remembered they
were all gone and she was left with six furious Enyalia. And she realized she
was fatigued but not beaten by the power. And then she realized the power was
still unfurling.

And then the rain came.

T
he warriors in front of her seemed ignorant of her power or
unconcerned at their imminent deaths. Alaysha almost pitied them. Two came
forward, circlets chattering in the onslaught of water like beads beneath a
stream, rubbing against each other and growing smooth. Both women toed the
dried skeleton of flesh that once was there demi-leader, and even still, seeing
the state Enud was in, that Alaysha had caused her to be in, they took lazy
steps forward. Unafraid, as always.

Alaysha's fingers tingled as though charged
with lightning. She could barely inhale for the smothering weight of power that
still moved within her. It was building. Far more than she'd ever felt. More
than the power that sent a village to ruin, more than the power to drain the
ground beneath her feet dry, for the birds to fall from the air above her.
She'd coalesced the magic somehow and funnelled it to aim it at one woman, but
it was a greedy thing, this power. It wanted unleashed in total and any attempt
to hold back made the ready, standing water gather. In moments, heartbeats,
even, it would all the rest into one great cloud that desired nothing more than
to bloat itself on living water.

But they didn't know that.

The two paused a mere leg span from her,
seeming to decide which would take the teeth of the woman who had dared oppose
them, who had freed one of their brood men, who'd escaped with a band of the
hated Highlanders into the woods. No one left Enyalia and lived.

Alaysha knew she had no choice, she didn't
want to hurt anyone unnecessarily, but she knew she had no choice. The power
was coming.

"Run," she croaked out and then
she lost her mind to the power that was already blackening her vision, letting
go a shriek as it took her.

––––––––

A
sort of soft sigh moved across her
earlobe. Voices, perhaps. Maybe even birdsong. Neither of these could be true.
Either she was dead or everything else was.

Indeed the blackness alone indicated a
certain state of unlife. She couldn't open her eyes, move her arms, or even
gasp for breath. It was settled then. The power had won.

She was ready to resign herself to being
dead except for the incessant hum that bothered her ears. Yes. Low, but most
definitely the sound of a bee's wing or the whir of a heat beetle. And now she
thought it, she felt air moving across her skin. Or maybe she felt as though
she was moving.

Understanding jolted through her. Not dead
after all, but whirling about on her own power, traveling through her own
veins, watching the lightning rise from inside her mind and fire into another chain,
collapsing into liquid and beating again through her heart, her lungs, throat,
her breath.

She gasped herself awake to find she had
collapsed onto the forest floor. The rain pelted down still, making a deep
puddle that was already leaking into her ears.

She made her way on her knees to the fallen
warriors in front of her. Leathered husks, yes, but like Enud: no seeds. She
swept the hair from her eyes that let rivers run down her face as they
collected the rain. She scanned for the other four, their beasts. It seemed
they'd tried to do as she'd ordered and all but one were facing the other
direction.

This last one, though, she clung to the
railing of a step all the way across the compound. With a shock, Alaysha
realized the Enyalian looked scared.

In truth, that wasn't the only shock.
Alaysha noticed the foliage was still lush and wet, drooping from the strength
of the rain but not dried to dust. The trees hadn't crackled to petrified wood.
The moss beneath her feet was still spongy.

She heard her own sob of relief and the
sound gave voice to the rest of the weeping; it rose like a wave within her and
she could no more stop it than she could stop the rain.

Where the water had come from, she didn't
know nor did she care. She regretted the lives she'd been forced to take, but
for once the torture of it didn't overwhelm her into hardening her heart. She
let herself feel the regret, she let herself feel forgiveness in knowing the
choice of it had been left in their own hands.

She touched her chin absently and in doing
so remembered.

"Where are the warriors who met
you?" She shouted at the Enyalian.

The woman had regained her composure and
her feet. She was picking her way across the bridge she was on and down the
ladder.

"You mean Komandiri Cai and her
man?"

Alaysha chuckled at she thought of Cai's
reaction to that statement. "Yes," she said. "Do they
live?"

The woman shrugged. "They were living
when last we saw them."

"Where?"

"We left them fighting back to back
together against my sword sisters."

"How many?"

The woman paused, seeming to be considering
something. "Too many," she finally said.

Alaysha broke into a gasping, forced run.
The Enyalian saw how difficult it was for her and caught her as she was
sprinting by. Meaty hands picked her up and threw her onto a nearby beast and
they begin loping into the woods.

They made about a hundred horse strides
when they saw them. Both warriors were bruised and bloody, and both were
smiling broadly even as they sprinted forward. Gael saw them first and his face
clouded over. In a heartbeat he broke into a sprint, aiming his whole body at
Isolde as she dropped from the beast, sword drawn, stance squared.

Their broadswords struck each other and the
sound rang out with Gael's bellow of fury. He parried, shifted, swung again.
Isolde met him and danced away.

"Careful, man," she taunted.
"I may be with child."

'To the god of death go your child."
He swung again, catching the woman's leathers with the briefest of the sword's
edge. He grinned and made to swing again when Cai shouted at him. He swung on
her.

"Would you take us both, man? And
after such a wondrous night." The Enyalian's lip curled in a half-smile.
She tuned to Isolde as well. "Isolde." There was the undisputed sound
of command and Cai's tone in the stance of defence in her posture. "If you
think to take this witch back to Enyalia, you will die."

"I have no such intention,
Komandiri."

Alaysha found her feet as Isolde walked
hers together in submission. With relief, Alaysha faced the three of them.
"Gael," she breathed. "You're alive."

"As am I," Cai said, almost as
though hurt Alaysha hadn't noticed it. "Although I had to take two of my
sword sisters to his one." She gave Gael a disapproving look.

Alaysha could see no bodies littering the
forest floor. "What happened?"

Cai shrugged and clasped Isolde's shoulder.
"What of the battle?" It was apparent by the way Isolde's eyes
watered that Cai was squeezing the woman into further submission.

"The battle is won, Komandiri."

Cai's expression went carefully blank but
Alaysha could see her thinking.

"Enud is dead," Alaysha told her.

Gael glowered at Isolde, still not willing
to give in, but he spoke to Alaysha. "How did she die?"

She met his gaze and quirked the corner of
her mouth into a knowing line. "You see the rain."

"I do," he said. "And we
felt the draining. Those we'd not killed already merely –"

"Dried out," she finished.

"The others who didn't,
scattered." Gael looked thoughtful. "I wouldn't have expected it of
Enyalia."

Cai looked at Isolde. "Our other
sword sisters?"

Isolde's face held no emotion. "All
gone but for me."

"Why take to Enud's raid at all?"

The woman shrugged. "Battle is battle,
Komandiri."

Cai studied her comrade's face. "You'd
forswear your sword sisters, Isolde?"

"I forswear Enud, Komandiri. The death
of Yoliri drained the Enyalian from her."

Cai looked at her thoughtfully. "Uta
will see you wear the boar grease if you speak of our meeting."

"There is nothing to speak of to
Uta."

The two women said nothing more, but a look
passed between them that Alaysha didn't understand. Moments later, Isolde
strode to her beast and climbed atop. She loped into the woods and disappeared.
Gael watched her, saying nothing but scowling a good deal.

"You're right, man, if I understand
your scowl," Cai told him. " Isolde will see the old witch decides it
is her time finally to die."

"It matters nothing to me," he
answered turning his back on her and striding toward the Highland Village.
"What of the rest, Alaysha. Aedus?  The girl?"

"I sent them away." She walked
with him, thinking out loud. "I had no choice, Gael. Aislin found a way to
channel her magic through me. People were dying everywhere." She choked on
the memory but continued. "And then
they
came."

"How many?" Cai asked.

She gave the Enyalian a shrug. "You
say how many; you saw the most of them. At least they didn't all get into the
village."

"Agreed," Cai said. "How
many deaths in the village?"

Alaysha sighed. "Too many." She
thought of Uta's coming fate and didn't feel sorry for her. "What of
Thera, Cai?"

"She will emerge finally from behind
Uta's shadow."

"It was a dark one, I admit."

Cai kicked at a pebble. "Even more so
of late. Dark enough to change Thera."

"How so?"

The woman shrugged. "Secretive. Always
in her garden, always in her lodge, that infernal fire breathing its heat into
her lungs. It made her fidgety." She jerked her chin toward the highland
village. "Like yon shaman. Peculiar and quiet."

"The brimstone." Gael shuddered.
"It woke me each time she fed it to the flames. I don't know how the woman
could stand all those furs."

Cai halted and peered at him sideways.
"Thera never slept with furs...always naked like the rest of us, ready to
spring to combat."

"Not Thera," he said. "The
other one."

Alaysha's spine tingled. "The other
one?"

"Yes," he said. "The one in
the other bed."

"The one in the other bed," she
said, recalling the mound on the cot, the stink of brimstone on the flame, the
quaking of the earth for days as they travelled. "Brimstone binds
magic," she murmured. "Dear deities."

"What?" Gael asked.

"Thera," Alaysha said, realizing
it all at once. "The clay witch
is
in the Enyalia village. She has
been all along."

"Not Thera," Gael said
doubtfully.

"No," Alaysha answered. "Not
Thera. The woman beneath the furs. She's hurt, I bet. Thera is healing her and
she's binding her magic to keep the quakes down. That's why she was interested
in my tattaus—not because of her own marks, but because of the witch's."

"The clay witch," Gael said and
Alaysha smiled at him.

"Yes. Finally," she said.
"Thera is harbouring the clay witch."

––––––––

T
he village was quiet when they returned,
and Alaysha sighed in relief. They made their way through the piles of ash,
Alaysha bending every now and then to retrieve the seeds she knew were there.
Cai said nothing when they passed the drawn and leathered bodies of her
comrades, but Gael took the time to kick at each one until Cai gave him a dirty
look.

"I want to make sure the she-demons
will not rise," he said in explanation.

"Don't worry, man. The only danger
they are to you now is in your night visions." She put her hand out to
Alaysha as she started past. "Wait, little maga."

Alaysha halted midstep, scanning the trees
for danger. "What is it?"

Gael, too, halted, but he nodded just ahead
of them where a thicket of brush moved. "Aedus." He chuckled.
"Quite a danger."

Cai didn't seem as amused. "Not just
the girl." She pushed Alaysha behind Gael and strode forward on her own to
meet whatever would come out. "Watch her, man," she said, pulling her
sword from her back and widening her stance in readiness. Alaysha couldn't see
much past Gael's back and shoulders. She eased her way around him and felt his
hand grip her waist. He inclined his head toward the Enyalian and let go a low,
throaty chuckle. "High alert, that one, for nothing but Aedus and a few
stragglers."

Alaysha smiled with him as Aedus emerged
from the thicket, Theron at her back. About a dozen Highlanders emerged as
well, seeming to think the worst over. Cai relaxed visibly and sheathed her
sword.

"Nothing but weak men and
children," she said. She waved them in and Alaysha scanned the crowds as
they came, searching for the rest of her crew. Edulph carried his daughter,
Theron and Aedus ahead of him, and beyond them, far back past several
Highlanders checking for their own loved ones, came Bodicca. Her head and
shoulders rose over those of the returning men and women, and it was only as
the crowds parted that Alaysha realized she was carrying Yenic.