Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2) (27 page)

I had said no, not ever.

Yet the cries of my people rang loud in my ears, the smell of their blood filling my nostrils, their pain battering against my mind as if to split my head. The thought that they would all be lost before the sun fully came up was unbearable.

Spirits, give me strength!

But instead of the spirits, something else answered.

I felt a dark stirring, something airless. Then a faintly familiar smell reached me, and I felt dizzy all of a sudden. The dawn stopped lightening. Indeed, the sky seemed to darken again.

I could barely see the people around me.

“Have you come for power, Sorceress?” a deep voice hissed into my ear.

I recognized then the voice and the smell of it.
Kratos.
The god who had been worshipped long ago in Karamur’s mountain temple had once been worshipped here.

“Let us go in peace,” I begged.

“Have you brought a sacrifice?” He gave a dark chuckle, for he knew the answer. “Or will you pay the price?” he asked next.

I had not yet even paid the price for the mountain, I thought, but then the truth sliced through me with so much pain that I fell.
Batumar.
I could not breathe. Batumar had been the price I had paid.

I had bargained Batumar’s life away to a fetid old god.

Everything inside me screamed.

But over that, I heard the voice of my people screaming louder as the enemy breached our defenses.

“I will pay the price,” I said hoarsely to the god.

Kratos had taken Batumar, and with him my heart. What else could the merciless god take from me?

“Give yourself to me, and I shall give you great power.” A talon scraped down my chin.

And I thought, was this how my great-grandmother had received her powers?

“All I want is safe passage,” I begged weakly.

He laughed, the sound like a pack of otherworldly hyenas. “Passage, then. But I take what I take.”

Then the god was gone, and I could see again, Orz bent over me, his hands gripping my shoulders as a hoarse sound escaped his ruined throat. On his knees next to me, he lifted me and held me to his chest. I leaned against his strength, which, in a strange reversal, was greater than my own.

The sounds of fighting filled my ears. I felt the departing spirits of the dead, then the spirits of the animals watching this great massacre from the forest.

Suddenly, a wind began in the middle of the temple and blew outward.

And then a slow hum began in the woods, but soon the noise grew, the sound of a thousand animals. The ground shook. Midfight, the men stilled.

A dark wave broke out of the surrounding woods: birds, squirrels, deer, wild boars, wolves, as if running from some great hunt. But instead, they were the hunters. That dark wave rolled over the Kerghi, up and around the walls of the temple, then into the forest on the other side just as suddenly.

The din settled, silence filling the ruin, save for some of the injured moaning and crying out for help.

Orz released me but followed as I staggered to a window to look out.

The enemy were either trampled or torn apart or ran. Only those of us inside the temple had remained unharmed.

I stared out at the carnage, stunned. I had only seen such losses at Karamur’s siege. Behind me, the villagers cheered. But I was so cold, I thought I would never be warm again. I heaved, my stomach twisting with pain as hard as my heart was twisting with fear.

What have I done?

I wanted all men to live in peace. That was the way of my people. I was willing to give up even my own life to save others. But here, in this ancient place, I had taken lives instead.

Blood flowed outside the temple walls, dead covering the ground. It gave me no pleasure that they were Kerghi. Sick to my soul, I turned away. Orz took my elbow, touching me of his own volition, but I could barely feel him. My entire body was numb.

The Seb villagers lined my path, all on their knees, some reaching out to kiss the bottom of the blanket I wore as a cloak, calling my name as I passed. They looked at me with gratitude, at least most of them. Some of the children had drawn back, hiding behind their mothers in fear.

I sank onto a block of stone, dazed, watching as people moved around me. I could see their lips form words as they called to each other, but I could not hear their voices over the blood rushing in my ears.

Bile rose in my throat. I was going to be sick.

So
this
was power. This was what men had killed and died for since the beginning of time. My limbs turned cold as if filled with ice water.
All I asked for was safe passage.

I scrambled outside, unable to bear people’s gazes upon me, unable to bear their gratitude. I craved fresh air, although certainly, the air outside was no fresher than in, not with half the temple roof missing.

I had to step over the dead. I blanched.

Orz bent and hooked a hand under my knees. And then he carried me forward.

I choked on a bitter laugh. What a pair we made, him without a spirit and me without a heart.

Behind me, I heard Tomron say to someone, “Not now. The Lady Tera must rest.”

There were more injured, I thought, dazed, and wished I could help them. But my own spirit was sick. I let Orz carry me away from the smell of blood and the sight of the massacre.

He carried me in the opposite direction from where the Kerghi had come, toward a creek we had passed early the previous evening. The creek ran through the city, through dead ruins. Water pooled in a place where an earthquake thousands of years ago had broken the marble floor of a now ruined palace.

He put me down there.

“Thank you.” I reached in and washed from my hands the blood of those I had healed. Then I washed my face. But I had blood in my hair too, and my clothes were covered with it. I heaved, a sharp cramp cutting through my middle.

“I want to bathe.”

Orz’s shoulders had that stiff angle they had when he thought I was doing something reckless.

“It is not too cold,” I promised. “I shall be quick. I need to be clean,” I added, then gasped as another cramp doubled me over.

Orz bent to me with concern.

The cramp passed. I shrugged off the blanket I wore as a cloak.

With a heaved sigh, Orz turned his back to me.

I quickly stripped and slipped into the crystal-clear pool and dirtied it up in an instant. But the cold felt good. It felt soothing. Until the next cramp came, as sharp as if invisible talons were tearing me in half.

The water grew bloodier and bloodier.

Was I bleeding? I checked around wildly. I had not been injured.

The following wave of pain was more than I could handle. I must have cried out, for suddenly Orz was next to me in the water.

He carried me out, laid me on the blanket, and wrapped me in it tightly, but not before I saw that the blood was gushing from between my legs.

“
I take what I will take
,” a fetid voice whispered in my ear as shivers racked my body.

Orz knelt next to me and gathered me tightly against him. I bled all over him, but he did not seem to notice.

I screamed, but no sound came forth from my throat, at least none that I could hear.

No! Not this! Anything but this!

For at last I understood, once again too late, what the god was taking from me.

Batumar’s child, the child I did not even know I carried.

Orz rocked me as if I was a babe myself.

* * *

Drowning in the sea of grief, I lost time.

I did not notice when the fire was started. Or when a ring of sentries surrounded us at a respectful distance. Or when water was boiled, or when my sacks of herbs arrived, or when clean, dry clothes were produced, I do not know from where.

Orz dressed me, padding dried shirl moss between my legs. I could not even be embarrassed.

When he finished and brought me hot water in a bowl, I added the necessary herbs and drank.

I lay down. Marga came, covered in wounds. None fatal, thank the spirits, for I felt too weak to help her. She lay next to me on one side, Orz lay next to me on the other. A fire burned at my feet. I was surrounded on every side by warmth, but I could feel none of it.

Sorceress
, Kratos had called me. I had
not
asked him for powers.

“I do not want this,” I said through chattering teeth.

I did not want to be like my great-grandmother, about whom I knew little, beyond that she grew great in power and used that power for a dark purpose.

A quick wind brought the sound of people from the direction of the temple.

“Your people live,” Tomron said.

I had not realized he had come.

He crouched by my head.

Your people.
How had they become mine? I wanted to protest, but I did not. I knew most of them by name. Even if I was a Shahala and they were not, my mother had always told me that in spirit, all people were one.

“Some of the enemy escaped,” Tomron informed me. “They will bring a larger force against us. We should move on as soon as you are able, my lady.”

He sounded hesitant. I thought likely that he did not know the source of my sudden illness but wrote it down as the price of great magic. Which it was, in a way.

Orz growled at him, sounding much like Marga.

I nodded, wanting to stand, but couldn’t yet. My knees were made of water.

The sentries drew closer, perhaps to offer help.

I filled my lungs to strengthen my voice at least. “Those who are hale, see to burying the dead,” I called out. “The enemy too. And if anyone knows the words to the Last Blessing, I would have it said over the graves.”

Nobody objected. As Tomron had said, as I ordered, they obeyed.

“I shall rest a moment here.”

* * *

In the end, I rested more than a moment. I slept for two days, trapped in nightmares where I was back in the dark, narrow passageways of the mountain, alone, and the dark god shredded me with his talons, over and over again.

When I woke, Marga was gone, but Orz was sitting with his legs crossed by the fire, the sentries in their places. My body was healed. My heart that had been empty since Batumar’s death was now ground into dust.

I asked for my herbs. I had paid a heavy price for all of us to escape the Kerghi. I would not have anyone die now of an infected cut, not if I could help it.

Marga limped in and padded over to me. When I touched my forehead to hers, she licked my face with her raspy tongue. I began my healing work with her, then I saw to the men and women. I could not send my spirit into any. My spirit was too broken, and I was not certain it could fully recover again.

Once all battle injuries were treated, we moved off, eating the first meal of the day on the path, handing around bits of cold meat. I chewed food I did not taste, unable to think beyond my regret over my ill-advised bargain with the god. I grieved bitterly the price I had paid.

I walked at the front of the line, the tiger on one side, Orz on the other, both a little closer than before, nearly touching, as if sensing the turmoil inside me. But I walked tall, walked with strength, and made sure that was all the people would see who walked behind me.

The tent pole must stand.

We had lost seven men and two women, but the rest were in good cheer. They had seen, for the first time, their enemy defeated, which filled them with the kind of hope that spurred the women to singing.

But that hope did not make our journey easier. Indeed the next few days turned more and more difficult each, for now the enemy knew that we existed, and they came hunting for us with a much greater force than we had before seen.

Chapter Twenty-One

(Brooker’s Caves)

Each day, my body grew stronger. My grief I kept locked away. I had many children depending on me, other than the babe I had lost, so I could not curl up by the side of the road and cry myself into the grave.

The tent pole must stand.

We tried to move faster through the winter forest once we left the ancient city. The hills grew, the mountain that had loomed in the distance for as long as we had been marching was getting closer and closer, appearing nearly within reach.

All of us knew to be as silent as possible. Here we had no temple walls to protect us. Our strategy became to run and hide whenever our scouts reported that enemy soldiers were closing in. On one occasion, our entire procession climbed the trees, the old and the young tied to the backs of the able. We hid in the tall pines, among the needles—hands, faces, hair, and clothes sticky with pitch.

Enemy soldiers spread out below us. If one of the three babes cried, we would have been discovered, but their mothers put them on the breast even as they hung on to the branches. We waited, holding our breath as the enemy passed.

The next village we found had been completely demolished. A village of miners who dug for copper in the hills, one of the Seb told me. The dead lay in the streets unburied, their bodies putrefied. No survivors.

“The dead are not to be touched,” I instructed Tomron, thinking to spare the people of disease, and his men spread the word.

We used the wood planks of the huts to cover the fallen, then gave them to fire.

A young woman’s body floated in the village well. We left her there, the only one left unburied, and for that, I begged the spirits forgiveness as I recited the Last Blessing for the dead villagers.

We moved on in silence and with near empty flasks, since we could take no water from the well.

Snow fell.

One of the orphan girls, Cila, ran a fever. I made her tea, then, because her fever ran too hot, packed her in snow until she cooled off enough. She had to be carried and wanted Orz to carry her.

Her request made an odd kind of sense. Orz was the most intimidating of our group. She probably hadn’t felt safe since her village had been attacked and her family had been killed. She knew that in Orz’s arms, nobody would attack her.