Blood Witch (15 page)

"You've made
whatever piece you can for a beast of carrion?"

He closed his
eyes, tranquil, unaffected; he made no response.

"You must have
asked for some atonement from at least one god."

Still no response.
She wanted a panicked face to meet her, a sly smile, a word of
begging. Something. She stepped closer. "No one will save you, you
know. Yuri has given me this decision. Your pot is still warm; the
men will not be returning until morning to offer you a bit of hot,
bland kasha. Maybe a pottle of piss warm ale."

She thought she
detected a smirk, and realized she was managing to get under his
skin after all. It had never been hard to raise his ire. She'd done
it more times than a six seasons old girl should have been able to.
He so loved to lose his temper. So loved to have a reason to hurt
her.

"Yuri doesn't care
about you. He has a dozen men ready to train his warriors. A dozen
dozen. You mean nothing to him."

He peeped opened
one eye. "And you do?"

"I'm his
daughter."

"His witch. His
tool. You are a soldier. Nothing more."

"Perhaps, but
blood is blood." She thought of Yenic as he'd said those words to
her, and knew it was true even as she repeated it. Yuri was her
father. When all was said and done, she loved him, wanted to feel
pride, not possession in her.

"Do you have
blood, carrion? Do you have anyone who will miss you?"

"I've never fooled
myself into believing so. Not like you."

She laughed
outright. "I've not once fooled myself into believing anyone cared
about me."

"No? You've
somehow come to believe your esteemed father has chained me here
because he realized I trained you too harshly. When he knew all
along my methods."

He couldn't have
known it. He couldn't have. No man, not even the master of the tool
would knowingly allow the things this beast had done to her.

"You lie." She
felt her temper rise, the old desire to see him suffer, and with it
came the ghost of a memory she worked hard to send down multiple
dark tunnels of memory so deep they couldn't be found. But the
power had its own magic to unearth journeys even deliberately
detoured. She found herself struggling to block off the exit before
she could peer inside.

She must have
backed away from him because when his voice came, it was further
away than before. "Why would I lie when the truth hurts more?" he
asked. "Think of it, witch. Remember. All those things. All of them
and more not done he sanctioned."

"Enough," she
said. She tasted the mold and the wet leavings of bat dung. She
wanted to retch as she let the power loose, and very nearly did as
the memories washed over her like rain, soaking her psyche and
making her tremble.

From outside of
herself she could hear the faint sound of laughter and focused on
the place it emanated from. Be done with it, she thought. She tried
to send her power into his tear ducts, to his mouth as it guffawed,
into his pores, but all she could taste was the sulfur from the
baths and she very nearly doubled over in sickness.

"You're shaking,
witch." It was a mocking statement, but it was true and she knew
it. The sheer effort was enough to make her quake, but the memories
that rode the tide of her power were the true reason for it. Seven
seasons old. 10 seasons. 12. Each time she showed emotion this man
bled it from her. Mocked her. Beat her.

Touched her.

"You can no more
control your power than you could control yourself when I had my
hands on you."

Beast, she wanted
to shout. She didn't want to unearth those images, those feelings
of shame and despair, the sense of impotence at the hands of
another.

"You tremble now
as you did then."

"I trembled from
pain and fear then."

"You were too
young to know why you trembled, dear little witch." His eyes were
on the mist that grew to a bloated cloud that stank of brimstone
and stagnant water.

"I'm old enough
now, Carrion, to know it as revulsion."

She clamped down
the old images as though they were an iron door. She would kill
him, she would psych the very liquid from his eyes, but she would
not ever again let that memory surface. There was no need of it; it
served no purpose.

She was a witch
with enough power now to suck this cavern dry, and him with it. It
felt grand to choose for a change. She would will it and it would
happen. Of all the killing she had done at someone else's bidding,
this was the first justified one. Corrin did not deserve to
live.

She thought she
heard a sound behind her: a shuffling, a short chuckle, even a half
knowing, half speculative murmur. It pulled her back to the cavern
and out of her power. She felt again the wet floor beneath her
feet, watched the bloated and heavy mist let go the first of its
contents.

Corrin still hung,
untouched, as fat in the flesh with water as a leather water
bag.

The sound behind
her shifted to a voice. A woman's. The language was foreign, but
Alaysha knew they were words.

She turned and saw
Aislin standing there with her left eye blazing such a bright
orange, flames could have been residing behind her brow. She
crackled with energy, and Alaysha felt the air around her reach out
in dry waves, mopping up the liquid on Alaysha's face and moving
past her to where Corrin stood.

She saw the heat
waves engulf him and move him ever so slightly like a soft breeze
sent on the energy of a hot wind.

Corrin cocked his
head, studying them both and resting finally on Aislin.

"You can't bring
the flame can you?" He laughed in a sudden fit that surprised
Alaysha. "It's too wet in here." He met Alaysha's eyes with scorn.
"And it's too wet even for the witch to psyche it dry."

In an instant,
Alaysha felt the brush of linen against her arm. She smelled smoke
and tasted the perfume of a woman's sweat. Confused, she lifted her
gaze from Corrin to the blonde blur moving at lightning speed
toward him.

His face twisted
from mockery to pain and in seconds he let out a breath of a sigh
even as his blood spilled from his open throat onto his tunic. Only
then did Alaysha register the knife in Aislin's hand and the smile
of satisfaction on her face.

She noticed the
woman didn't bother to collect Corrin's eyes.

Chapter 12

Three things kept
Alaysha from speaking to Aislin on the way out of the cavern. The
first was the grief of memory lodged in her throat, of all the
things she'd suffered at the hands of the carrion. The second was
the humiliation of giving in to her emotions in front of anyone,
let alone the temptress of flame.

The third was
fear.

They left the
carrion where he hung; when she gained the open air, she made a
flurry of excuses in the face of Aislin's careful scrutiny, then
scurried away from the woman and hastened toward Saxa's cottage.
Luckily, the shadows of dusk had crept upon the city and no one was
interested in what went on behind the black curtain of night.

She wasn't sure
what her father would suspect when his men told him of Corrin's
death. More than likely he would assume she'd made her decision and
leave it at that. She wasn't sure how she felt, knowing a man's
death could be created so and easily forgotten so quickly, but she
didn't know she had meant to kill him herself. Did it matter the
manner or hand that had done it?

More curious still
was why Aislin had followed her in the first place and why she
wanted the man dead. She might not understand those things, but
this one thing was immediately clear: while the witch of flame
could control her power, hers was the lesser one to Alaysha's
own.

She dreaded
returning to Saxa's, and she knew Barruch was out with Yenic and
Gael searching for Saxon. Where Yuri was, Alaysha had no idea, but
there was one place none of those would be, and she made a steady
trek towards the outer walls and slipped past the gatehouse into
the surrounding forest.

Her own hovel was
at least a hundred mount strides inching along the city walls, in a
natural cleft of stone that offered both disguise from the outside
by thick brush, and light within by a natural sunroof that let in
moonlight enough to see her hands at night.

She wasn't heading
there. She'd wanted her first four sets of seeds earlier; now, all
she could think of were different ones. She set a path beyond her
home, further to the east where she knew the remains of a wooden
shack still stood.

The years she
spent in nohma's cottage, a squat, rough-hewn wooden structure with
a fire pit instead of a fireplace, an earthen larder, and a wild
garden were the happiest she'd known. Despite the weeks and
sometimes months long campaigns Yuri had demanded her to travel
with him and his ever-growing army, and despite brief actual stays
at the cottage, Alaysha felt more connected to life there than
anywhere else.

When her nohma had
succumbed to the power, Alaysha had never returned. The mountain
and its bathhouse had been her home for years after, and only when
she'd sufficiently learned Corrin's lessons and stopped grieving,
stopped allowing herself to feel any kind of emotion, did she set
out to find her own residence just outside the city gates.

In order to put a
wax seal over those emotions, Alaysha had found it necessary to
bury any memory that caused her pain. Funny, how the most painful
had been the most pleasurable in its time.

She listened to
the owls hoot in the gathering dusk and to the frogs calling out to
their mates as she walked, mindful of the tree roots that wanted
always to catch her bare toes. She wondered whether anything was
left of the inside, and if she should brace herself for an
unexpected piece of cloth or herb still hanging from a rafter, no
doubt dried to a cob web by now. She chuckled to herself. Surely
nothing inside had remained in any sort of pure state of
recognition that could cause her worry.

A twig snapped
behind her, some animal curious about the strange, solemn presence.
She thought she might call out to it but decided to let the night
have its own sounds and keep its own counsel.

She would have
walked straight past the garden if she hadn't noticed the well,
hastily dug and circled with round stones. The cover was long gone,
decayed and rotted and gone back to the earth as all old wood
does.

She halted and
turned to face her home, and had to hold her breath for the abrupt
pain that squeezed at her stomach. Home. So many seasons it was the
only place that afforded any sense of childhood. The door was gone,
leaving a gaping hole that had collected mud and grass. She stepped
through, thinking even as she did that she could live here again if
she chose to. Forget Yuri and Yenic and Edulph and all the others
who believed she was necessary to satisfy their wants, their needs.
Like spirits at the darkest hour, those desires clung to the
shadows and threatened to enter the light, never once taking the
step forward.

Another owl hooted
from behind her, shrieking in some protest only it understood. She
stole a look over her shoulder and thought she could make out a set
of familiar eyes in the darkness, just next to a copse of brambles
so thick they could be strings of muddied hair. Then she blinked
and the moment was gone.

Yet the hair stood
on her arms as though danger coiled like a serpent intent on
striking.

She'd get what she
came for, yes, but she'd not remain. Something in the night wasn't
right.

It took a few
breaths before her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and it took a few
heartbeats before she could stand without swaying. If she closed
her eyes, she could see it all again as it was.

If she closed her
eyes…

Nohma's hands
twisted in her hair, braiding, wrapping one string into the other.
She was humming and the sweet fragrance of cinnamon furled into the
air and curled around Nohma's neck.

"You have your
mother's hair, Alaysha. Thick. Black as soot."

It seemed
important, this information. It was something Nohma told her over
and over again when she wanted to speak of her mother. Alaysha knew
a story was coming, but there wasn't time to hear all of it. Her
father would be here soon to take her to war. She hated war, but
she loved being with her father. He was strong and tall and all his
men were like mere pups around him.

"I have your hair,
too," she said, reaching out to feel the softness of the black
tresses between her fingers.

"Your mother's was
darker, child. Black as your tattau."

Alaysha fingered
her chin. "It still hurts," she said and her nohma's brow
furrowed.

"Only for a short
while. It will get better. Doesn't it always?"

"Do you think my
father will like it?" It worried her, that Yuri might think her
ugly now that the ribbon of symbols was all colored in. She felt
Nohma's thumb run across her cheek, even as a tear crept down her
own.

"Why are you
crying, Nohma?"

"Because your
father will remember your mother, child, when he sees it is
done."

"But that can't be
a bad thing."

"Your memory is
long, Alaysha, but seldom do we remember our birth. I had hoped you
would remember yours by now."

Alaysha let her
memory sprint through all the things it knew. It found days of
killing. Days of eating and sleeping. It listened again to stories
of an old war that spoke of souls living again to find vengeance.
It even found a young boy with bright yellow eyes upending a vial
into an open mouth, but it saw no earlier.

"Your mother,"
Nohma was saying. "Remember."

The girl had no
choice but to shake her head. "You are my only mother,
grandmother."