Will Shetterly - Witch Blood (3 page)

She carried no healer’s kit that I could see. I said, “You’re a witch?”

“Yes. Toss your sword over there.” She indicated a spot near the bear’s corpse where I had dropped my other weapons.

I think I can say that even when I was a child and heard the tales of the old Empire, I never hated the witchfolk. Some people are tall, some have light skin, some are witchborn. Yet I knew very well that iron and steel were the only things that repelled magic, and I have never liked being at another’s mercy.

The woman smiled. Her eyes were the green of the sea on a stormy day, and her lips were as lush as appleberries in summer. She said, “If I wanted you to die, I’d only have to leave you here. True?”

“True,” I said. “But why would you help me after I killed your guard?”

“Perhaps because you killed him. My brother and I need fighters.” Eyeing my patched clothing, she added, “You seem to need a rich master.”

“I need a physician.” I threw my short sword beside my axe and dagger, then slumped back on the log.

“Lean forward,” she said. With a grimace of distaste, she tugged off my helmet to toss it beside my weapons. Peeling the fragments of cloth from my torn chest, she said, “There’s no other iron on you?”

“My belt.”

“Ah.” Her fingers were gentle at my waist as she uncinched the buckle and pulled the belt from me. It joined my helmet. “That’s all?”

“My boots.”

“Your boots?”

“Steel studs.”

“Oh.” She tugged each from my feet and said nothing about the holes in my socks. “Anything more?”

“You will heal me?”

I heard a trace of annoyance in her answer. “I’ve said so.”

“There’s a stiletto strapped to the inside of my thigh.”

She grinned as she pulled off my pants. “You aren’t very trusting, are you?”

Naked then, I said, “I also keep a long pin hidden in my hair.”

She found the throwing needle behind my fisherman’s topknot, and her eyes went wide. “Are you a soldier or an assassin?”

“I’m cautious. And I may be dying, Lady.” My limbs were so weak that I might not have been able to lift them. The evening’s cool air was lulling me toward something deeper than sleep.

“That’s all of your supplies?”

I nodded my head, which helped to wake me. “All, Lady.”

She stood before me. “Will you serve me loyally, until my word or my death releases you?”

I looked up into her face. I knew that I would not be able to leave this place alone and that I would not survive the night if she left me. “This is your price for healing?”

“It is,” she said with obvious satisfaction.

I had no idea who she was or what she wanted from me, yet I whispered, “Then I will serve you loyally.”

“Good. Who are you, my boundman?” she asked.

“I’m Rifkin. Rifkin Wayfarer.” I could not see her face to tell if that name meant anything to her.

“I am Naiji Gromandiel, Rifkin. I promise food, shelter, and clothing for you and your kin, so long as you serve me well.”

Perhaps I should have been happy then. Since I served her, she would heal me and care for me, and perhaps her home would become the home that I had lost when I fled Istviar. But I shivered as I heard her words. Her tone told me that she knew she did not need to speak the second part of the vow:
I promise death for you and all you love, if ever you betray me.

I said, “Fine. Heal me, Lady.”

She laughed. “You won’t be the most submissive boundman who’s sworn himself to me.” She reached out to lift my chin, saying, “Look into my eyes, my Rifkin.”

I looked up again. Her eyes caught light from the setting sun. Her irises seemed cold, turquoise plates. She held my gaze for a long moment, then nodded. “I do not join with you to heal you, Rifkin,” she said. “I join with you to help you heal yourself. Do you understand that?”

I nodded.

“Do you trust me, then?”

What choice did I have? I nodded.

“Good. Follow my lead, and you’ll be well. Do you believe me?”

And I had to believe her. I nodded again.

“Good.” She let her fingers slide from my temples to my bearded cheek. “Then do not think, Rifkin. You know something of meditation?”

“A little.”

“Good. Then let your mind accept your body’s suggestions.” She began to massage my face. As her fingers danced, my pain subsided. When her hands descended to my neck, it was as though lightning touched me. I gasped, thinking I could not bear the pleasure of her fingertips and knowing I did not want her to move her hands away. The sensation was much like the first time a lover had touched me intimately, and my skin had tingled with something more intense than tickling.

She saw my reaction and her caress changed, stroking more firmly where she had previously teased. She traced a path along my torso that followed my ribs and hips, ignoring the bear’s gouges. My breath deepened. She moved her hands along my hips, and I sighed.

“You like that?” she whispered.

“Very much.”

“Concentrate on the sensation.”

“I doubt I could concentrate on anything else.”

When she smiled, I noted her slightly protruding front teeth and thought them surprisingly attractive. She saw something in my expression and said, “You feel stronger?”

“Yes,” I replied, though what I felt was closer to lazy comfort than strength. My muscles, answering her ministrations, relaxed. I forgot my wounds in the pleasure of the moment. I was not reminded of pain until she touched the lowest gouge in my chest, and I gasped.

“Think of warmth,” Naiji said. “Think of strength.”

“I’m thinking of razors,” I said, “and sea water poured on open sores.”

“Think of warmth,” she repeated. Her hand moved down to circle my navel. One finger left a trail of sticky, drying blood.

“Warmth.” I sighed and closed my eyes. My hands lay limp on her shoulders. Then something cold and slushy slapped against my stomach. Shocked, I jerked forward.

She was washing me with snow. “Warmth,” she said, admonishing and amused.

The hand that cupped snow cleaned my chest. No blood flowed where her fingers passed. She said, “You’re stronger than you think, Rifkin. Use that strength,” Her hands followed the paths the bear had carved. My wounds felt like a track for fire gods.

The magic almost fled when I realized that someone watched us. I knew this suddenly, without knowing how I knew. I scanned the bony shadows of the trees. No one was there. I thought of a witch watching with mindsight, and I thought I concealed my fear.

Naiji said, “Something?”

The notion was ridiculous. The bare elms hid no one. My exile had made me too suspicious. The distraction brought back hints of pain and cold, and I prayed the interruption would not end my healing. “No.”

“Find the warmth, then,” Naiji said. “Don’t forget. The warmth!”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly breathless. I felt heat across the wounds in my chest, heat about my entire body as though I had been transported to the beach at Loh in a summer afternoon. As Naiji massaged me, the places of heat grew closer to each other. I wondered what would happen when my entire body seemed consumed by fires of magic.

“Now!” Naiji said.

“Now!” I cried aloud, echoing her as, for a long moment, we shared something more intimate than any pleasure-making between friends.

Sometime later she laughed, then stood and gathered my clothes to throw them at me. “I’ve chosen well.”

“I’m glad you think so...I think. For what?”

“You’ll learn soon enough.”

“I’d like some answers.”

“You’ll have them soon enough, my Rifkin. Dress yourself.”

It was not until I began to fasten my shirt that I noticed that all signs of my fight with the bear had left my body. Only the scars of older encounters remained to say that I had ever been wounded in battle.

I dressed quickly, and was trying to rub the bloodstains from my clothes with a handful of snow when Naiji said, “Follow.” Without a backward glance at me or the bear’s corpse, she strode off on a deer trail that appeared to climb the nearest hill.

“Where do we go?” I said, hurrying after her. Night was upon us, and only a faint band of pink remained in the western sky to salute the coining evening.

‘To Castle Gromandiel.“

“The road doesn’t pass it?”

“Not close. This is faster.”

I tried to accept the oddities of the north, but I was suspicious of any castle so insignificant as to be bypassed by a merchant’s route. I looked back at the bear’s pale form and thought of other things that might stalk the woods at night. “The road would be safer.”

Naiji halted and laughed. “No place in this valley is safer than with me, though that may not be safe enough for either of us.” She turned on her heel and set off into the trees.

We walked in silence for half an hour or more. Her night sight was better than mine, or else she had memorized the path’s features. She never faltered or stumbled. I tripped in holes and over branches more times than I would care to count, but I had learned to catch myself quickly when I was a novice in the ways of the Art. As we hiked through the barren trees, the moon rose, missing only a tiny sliver of his full self. A wolf barked four times from far away, and Naiji turned so quickly to glance for it that she almost fell. I reached to steady her, but she pushed me away and said, “You’ll treat me as your master, except when I say otherwise. Understand, Rifkin Boundman?”

“No. I swore to serve you, Naiji Gromandiel. I never swore to obey your whims.”

“What?” She glared at me, then grinned. “I’m bringing my brother a lawyer, not a fighter, I see.”

“You’ve brought your brother no one, Lady. I swore to serve you, not him.”

“Among the Kond, Rifkin, the vow means—”

“Along the Ladizhar, a vow means what it says. And no more.”

She tapped my chest with her index finger. “You’ve traveled far from that sea, Rifkin.”

I met her gaze. “You may release me from your service, if you prefer.”

“There’s only one release from my service.”

“My death?”

“Yes.”

“No,” I noted. “There are at least two paths to my freedom, my lady. The second is through
your
death.”

She stared at me for a long moment. “Do you threaten—”

“Never. I swore to serve you. But if ever I’m unable to save you from danger, Lady, I’ll be free again.”

She smiled, almost fondly. “Ah, Rifkin. You aren’t comfortable in the inferior’s role, are you?”

“I might not be, if I’d accepted an inferior’s role. Your word binds you to me as closely as mine binds me to you.”

“You speak rather insolently, my Rifkin, for a foreigner and a boundman.”

“I do so in your interest, Lady, as best as I can evaluate your interest.”

“And I suppose you won’t accept another’s estimate of my best interest?”

“No.”

“Not even my own?”

“Especially not your own, Lady.”

She reached out to squeeze my hand. “Try not to make this difficult for either of us, hmm?”

“And you, the same.”

“Yes,” she said. “Definitely a lawyer. Come on, lawyer. We’ve rested long enough.”

I followed her for another twenty minutes or so. We left the path and climbed through brush and scree up a hill so steep that we had to use our hands to steady ourselves. Naiji paused midway to what seemed a sheer rock face, pointed upward, and said, “Your new home, Rifkin.”

Far above us a castle jutted up from the high cliff like a shark’s tooth. The mountain towered over it, shading the castle from the moonlight, so all I could see was the silhouette against the starry sky. My impression was that Naiji’s keep was huge and old and possibly carved from the rock rather than built upon it. Perhaps Castle Gromandiel had been grown magically from the stone.

She seemed to expect me to comment. “It appears, ah, very defensible,” I said.

“No one’s ever conquered it.” There was enough pride in her voice that I did not ask why anyone would want to take a castle, however formidable, that stood on a forgotten cliff in the midst of wild woods and bleak hills. After all, whatever I might think of it, she was right. It was my new home.