The Witch (3 page)

She just could not recall where. Loren’s neck crimped from looking straight up but she didn’t care. That map was important, and she needed to memorize it.

Her mother broke her out of her trance when she pulled her cell phone free and started snapping pictures of the ceiling.

Loren looked at her mother.

“What? The way you were staring I figured this might be something you want to remember.”

Duh. “Thanks Mom. Let’s keep looking. Take lots of pictures. I think we’ll need them.”

“Ok. Well, at least this temple is pretty straightforward. One room. Thrones over there. And…wow…look at that.” Her mother’s awe made sense. The relief she was pointing toward was one of the most magnificent Loren had ever seen in person.

She’d majored in history, so she’d seen quite a few photos, and she’d taken a trip her sophomore year to Europe. She and Jade had had a grand adventure—watched over by Jade’s cousin Marsh—throughout the ancient places of Rome and Greece and Portugal. There had been some seriously beautiful artwork and architecture on that trip.

But this…this was glorious.

It was a domestic scene, as far as she could tell. And the people captured in stone by one of the most talented artists Loren had ever seen were at least thirty feet tall. She counted people quickly. There were ten. Two or three were children, one girl looked like she was either a young woman or an older girl so it was hard to tell. Another woman carried a child of about three and clutched the older girl—younger woman?’s--hand.

They were fleeing something.

Loren’s heart stuttered. Had she seen the image before? Was that why she felt so drawn to the piece? She stepped closer, needing to see better.

Her mother slipped her hand in Loren’s. The quiet and unfailing support her mother offered her touched Loren. Reminded her that her mother would always be there if Loren truly needed her.

But Loren did not look at her. She couldn’t peel her eyes away from the woman carrying the little girl.

She’d known her before, hadn’t she?

And she’d known the others. The older girl was sixteen. And she was the girl Nelanora. The girl Loren had been.

Someone had carved her last moments just as they were seared into Loren’s soul.

How? Who? Hadn’t everyone who’d been there that day perished in the flames?

She moved past the woman and two children, to those that watched over them from afar.

Three or four of them she did not know. And they were dressed far differently than any Dardaptoan or Nellanic Druid she had ever known. And they had their hands out, clasped by one another. Their eyes were all-knowing.

It took her a moment to realize they were the Four Fates.

Three warriors of old followed the woman and girls, their swords drawn. Loren did not know if they were protecting or pursuing. It was hard to tell from the angle the males were. She took a few steps back.  Until she could see more of their faces.

And that’s when she realized they were three of the woman’s sons. She’d known their names, once. But it took her a moment to put the names with the faces. The woman’s sons had all favored one another strongly, with only hair coloring and height separating some of them. The lavender stone they were carved out of did not hint in anyway what coloring the males possessed.

She stepped back again, wanting to see everything of the image she could.

There were clouds of smoke over the top of the image. And a lightning bolt dissected the sky, coming to rest on the flames that erupted around the bottom of the image. They even extended out to the floor about three feet in front of the relief.

Beautiful, very intricate work.

Terrifying, even.

In the smoke were two faces, identical to each other.

Her soul froze when she recognized the image of the Dark Sorcerer.

Except that he was in the relief twice.

What had the artist been thinking?

She deliberately looked away. She wasn’t ready to think about the monster who had killed young Nelanora—and the woman and child in the relief.

He was a horrible and monstrous being.

And he was the one who haunted her nightmares, in every lifetime she’d ever had.

That an unknown sculptor had seen enough to be able to capture what had happened that day in such intricate detail thousands of years later rocked her to her very soul.

She turned toward the part of the relief that hurt the least. The three males in the bottom left corner—Estacles was the first, the second was definitely Dekimos, and she thought the big one was Jushua. It was hard to tell. Jushua had favored so many of his brothers and she—Nelanora—hadn’t known the others much at all. It could be Kilan, but he’d had a scar on one cheek. This man did not. So…Jushua or one of the other brothers that had looked like him.

How? Why had the artist chosen these things to put together in one piece?

“Loren? Something doesn’t feel right here. I think someone, something may be watching us.”

Loren agreed. She pulled the weapons she’d carried since the day she’d realized who she was from the special pockets in her coat where she kept them hidden.

“What are those?”

“They’re called shillelagh. The Irish used to use them.”

“Can you use them?” Her mother frowned. “I’m not sure I like the idea of you having a weapon.”

“Would you rather I not protect myself? I’m hanging out with werewolves and vampires, remember? And it’s not like I use a gun. Guns don’t really work all that well on Lupoiux and Dardaptoans, anyway.”

“Yeah, how could I forget?” Her mother turned back toward the door. “I’m ready to get out of here. It’s starting to turn a little bit creepy in here.”

“I think this is what we were meant to see. But there’s still something I’m supposed to find in this city. I just don’t know where I am supposed to look.”

“Perhaps I can help you find what you seek?”

An accented male voice from the relief had her mother screaming.

Loren went straight into defensive mode.

Especially when a large male stepped from the flames.

A male with the traditional garb of an Evalanedean Dardaptoan and a sword.

A Dardaptoan she knew was long, long dead.

Was he ghost or demon?

She wasn’t waiting to find out.

Not with her mother right there within his reach. He was bigger than her by at least a foot and a half, and he outweighed her by probably one hundred to one fifty pounds.

Surprise would be the only advantage she had.

Loren attacked.

Jushua took a hard knock across his neck from the girl’s little club. It almost felled him. Almost.

The girl—woman, he hadn’t gotten a good look at her yet—was a damned skilled fighter. But he was older and stronger. She’d had the element of surprise, but no longer.

“You wish to play like that? One should not enter a battle, unless one is determined to see it through to the end.” Oh, what fun. He could smell her, could tell she wasn’t of full human blood. Intriguing.

“I do not fear battle. Nor do I fear death.” She looked at him with eyes that reminded him of someone.

They were blue. Blue with just a hint…of purple. And the shape was Druidic.

A little plantling or witchie, then. You could always tell by the eyes. Not always in color, but most definitely in shape.

Most of the Druids of old had been victim to the Dark Sorcerer. A few stray lines had reborn, thanks mostly to those mixed bloods who had hidden amongst other surviving Kinds. He had encountered maybe two hundred of them in the last five thousand years. Once they had numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Most female. Most tall and slim. Most were timid and passive. And most with bluish eyes shaped just like the original daughter of the Kind. Nevva. She had been a good woman, and friend to his mother.

Before she’d had fallen with three of her daughters beside her. Two of her sons had fallen with his brother Kilan.

Her daughter Nelanora had fallen beside his youngest sister Pin, her sword still gripped in her hand.

Nelanora’s blood had soaked into the ground of his family home.

Had stained his soul, nearly as much as his youngest sister’s.

Jushua should have been there earlier than he had. If he had not been playing, celebrating his upcoming wedding, he would have been there in time to protect his mother. And to save the two young girls who had died beside her.

But that was a long time ago.             

The threat—if he could call a plantling or witchie that—was in the here and now. It intrigued him to see a Druid with a weapon, non-violent little creatures that they normally were. Had he
ever
seen one with a weapon, even a male? He did not think so.

Kilan’s wife had been a druid daughter. As was Nalik’s Rajni now. Cassandra, once a human, possessed the reborn soul of one of Nevva’s daughters.

And there was always his former betrothed.

He had not known Nelciana lived, along with his sister Kennera, until recently. But Nelci had. She was widely considered to be the mother of all Nellanic Druids.

But in truth, it was her mother responsible for the Druidic gifts.

The Druid girl before him clubbed him upside the head with the short shillelagh in her left hand, and held her right at the ready. “Mom! Run!”

After the stars cleared from his head he understood the desperation of her actions. Why else would a woman barely past six stone in weight stand and fight a warrior such as himself?

To protect a loved one.

He held up a hand and blocked her next attack. She was very skilled with those tiny clubs of hers, attesting to some serious training for one so young.

And she was young. That was evident when he got his first real look at her face. “I mean neither you nor your mother harm.”

“You should be dead. Long time ago.” She attacked again.

Dammit, he was getting seriously irritated by those little sticks.

It wasn’t admirable of him, but sometimes when there was a battle one did not wish to fight, expediency had to be the way. He waved one of his hands between them and encircled the plantling-or-witchie in a swirl of his own power. He did not possess much of the magical arts, but he had some. She stopped moving completely.

The fear on her face doubled.

He stepped closer.

**

Loren could see and hear, but there was nothing she could do, no way she could move. Not until he let her. Was it him? Or was it just a Warrior who looked so much like the Dardaptos sons of old?

How had he survived? There had been twenty-two Dardaptos children of Eaudne. All had perished at the hand of the Dark Sorcerer.

Was he just one who greatly resembled the old line?

The Dardaptoan peoples who had populated Gaia over the last five thousand years had been loose descendants of that line. She had never understood how they had arrived in the Gaian world, but had assumed that they were lines of Dardaptoans who had left Evalanedea before the Great Fires had struck. But she had learned differently recently.

One Dardaptos had somehow survived. Kennera, the original Dardaptoan of Gaia, had recreated an entire Kind of Dardaptoans after her fleeing Evalanedea so long ago.

Was it possible that another had as well?

The Warrior in front of her wasn’t a Gaian Dardaptoan, at all. There were subtle differences between the Dardaptoans she knew now and this one.

Evalanedean Dardaptoans were very different. Or at least, they had been before the entire family line had been erased by the Dark Sorcerer.

Modern Gaian Dardaptoans were blood drinkers, for one thing. Evalanedean had fed from a diet much like Gaians—fruits, vegetables, fish and birds, not blood. And Gaians were thinner, leaner, than Evalanedean had been. The eyes were the same.

The Evalanedean family had always had yellow eyes. That was repeated in the Gaian.

But the major difference between the two were that the Evalanedean were strong, powerful beings. Who were all dead.

Or mostly.

Her mother was crying behind her. Loren wanted nothing more than to hide her mother from this thing.

The Warrior held out a hand; her mother’s crying abruptly stopped. He grabbed Loren’s chin and turned her head so that he could study her.

He definitely looked like an Evalanedean Dardaptos of old.

But perhaps he was Gaian?

It made sense, especially considering where they were, after all.

But why had he attacked?

**

She was a beautiful creature, with caramel hair that would hang probably to her waist if it wasn’t in two braids. He took her shillelagh from her left hand and tossed it across the room, then did the same with the stick in her right. She did not need such weapons to fight him.