Blood Witch (18 page)

She felt a tug on her arm and remembered the
girl's question. "Gael can be trusted without doubt," she said and
knew it was true even as she spoke the words.

"But what would Yenic and his mother want with
your brother, Aedus? That one is a mystery to me."

The girl shrugged. "I don't know. I just know
they don't want your father aware that we found him. Maybe they
killed him and they don't want Yuri to know."

"That makes no sense."

"If Yuri knows Edulph has been captured, then
there's no reason to let you train with the fire witch." Aedus's
face brightened at the prospect that she had solved the problem
that was bothering her and could go back to liking Yenic again.

Alaysha thought about it. She'd learned in the
caverns that Aislin owned more control, but far far less power than
Alaysha, and so it was possible that Aislin also owned some fear of
the existence of a witch who couldn't control herself. It was
possible that to teach her control would also take away the very
real danger of Yuri using his witch's power to annihilate anyone,
including the fire witch and her family, completely. That might be
the witch's motivation. And Yuri's? That might also be why her
father had set a decoy in her place, thinking Aislin would be
teaching a girl she thought was the right one, and thus keep his
witch still under his own control.

Whether or not it was the answer, it was enough
to see Aedus content.

"You could be right, little one." She grabbed
Aedus's hand and made for the stable door, intent on Saxa's cottage
and a good night's sleep.

It was as good a rationale as any, and she would
believe it if there wasn't one thing left to the equation that all
three, on thing that made her decide against the assassination of
Yuri until she learned more. A thing Yuri, Edulph, and Aislin
wanted. No. Not a thing. Not a territory, army, or city.

A person. An infant.

The witch of the wind.

Chapter 16

Both Saxa and Yenic were pacing the cottage when
Alaysha and Aedus entered, and while Yenic halted midstep and
grinned broadly to see both of them unharmed and together, Saxa was
the one to rush forward, grabbing a length of homespun flax from a
peg and throwing it over Aedus's shoulders.

"You must be tired
and hungry, child," she cooed. "Let's get you some stew."

Aedus peered up at
her, all wide-eyed innocence and Alaysha had to swallow down a
nasty comment.

"I am hungry,"
Aedus said.

"Then come, let's
get you fed." Saxa turned to Alaysha. "Gael?"

"Gone to search
for Saxon."

Saxa made a
humming sound that could have been approval or worry. Alaysha
wasn't sure which. "He won't be back until he finds him, I'm
afraid," Saxa looked pensive but managed to bustle about, setting a
trencher of bread on the table and spooning a ladle of steaming
lamb into it for Aedus, who began gobbling before she even sat
down.

"And you?" Saxa
asked.

Alaysha looked at
Yenic as she spoke, unable to meet Saxa's gaze, knowing what lay
deep within her spirit that she didn't want the woman to see.

"I'm going with
Barruch tomorrow to the mud village. It has nothing to do with
Saxon. I'm sorry."

Saxa turned to
Yenic, and Alaysha knew she suspected something had passed between
them as she spoke, but was too polite to ask about it.

"I'll fix you some
fare for the travel, then," she said. "For the two of you?"

Alaysha shook her
head. "Just me." She caught his protesting posture out of the
corner of her eye and held up her hand. She hoped he could
understand what she was doing and agree to stay behind. She had
unfinished business at the village, and although Saxon was still
missing, Yuri would assume she was off to help with the search.
Ever his tool, she was. He would have no reason to believe she had
changed.

She thought of the
campaign of her first seed collection and remembered he never had
given her the promised honeycomb from his own hand. It had all been
a ruse to get her to do his bidding.

She had forgotten
it, sure; along with all the other memories she couldn't bear to
think about and had buried so deep she thought them unexhumable.
But she had recalled it after all, the same as she recalled his
hands in her mother's hair as he held her head aloft, and dangled
it in front of her nohma, cut away from her body, bloody, the
tattaus trembling with the speech her mother could no longer form.
And that memory had grieved her enough she couldn't protect Nohma
when the power came.

Oh yes. She
recalled it. A witch has a long memory, all the better to bring to
mind the pathways of the life fluid, how to ease in, ease out
again, coax the fluid along, back out of the channels and into the
very air, the pathways to her own pores, quenching a thirst so
primal she could never understand where it came from. She
remembered it, and she needed more than anything now, to find a way
to control her gift, manage the power that he manipulated her with,
all so she could end him and walk away her own woman.

The next morning
she left Aedus with instructions to watch Yenic, so the girl would
assume all was going according to what they had discussed. It would
be a long ride to the village; it had taken at least seven turns of
the sun to get there the first time and Alaysha knew she could use
the solitude to mull things over. At least, alone with Barruch, she
could find the quietness of thought she so badly needed. There was
too much noise in her spirit to find the fulcrum of logic in it
all.

The one thing she
did know was that the village had started it and she had the
feeling if there were answers to be found, that village and its
collapsed mud hut would be the best place to start looking.

It ended up taking
her six turns to reach it. She gave Barruch a few hours rest in
between rides to refresh himself, eat, sleep, and regain his
strength for another run. During the respites, she dozed and
watered herself from the skin she'd brought, and ate from the
packed basket Saxa had insisted on filling. It sent a wave of guilt
over Alaysha as she munched on the herbed bread, knowing she
planned to kill the man she loved, and she ate hurriedly before she
could think too much. Then she lured Barruch forward with promise
of sweet peaches from the oasis.

She knew she was
close when the terrain lost its lushness and began to show signs of
drought. In one spot, the trees were fragrant and green, begging to
be stripped of overripe fruit and nuts; the next, the fruit lay on
parched soil, dried to shrivelled remains.

"We're here, Old
Man," she told him and he veered instinctively toward the west,
where he would remember the oasis and the peach and honey scented
air.

"Not yet. Not
until you take me to the village. "She jerked on the reins to point
him toward the mound of mud she saw in the distance. He whinnied in
protest, and she thought how much she was dreading the return even
if it was deliberate.

It would be the
first time she'd ever returned to a scene of battle. Something
lodged in her throat that she would've named trepidation if it had
a name at all.

"I know, old man,"
she whispered. "I don't like it either."

She let him slow
to a walk, savoring the feel of a newly risen sun on her face. It
might well be the last moment of pure ignorance that she could
enjoy and she would enjoy it. There was no telling what she would
find waiting for her, but she knew the magics there had been strong
enough to keep Yenic safe. She'd seen the movement in the swirling
spiral of smoke. What she wanted to know was if the magics were
still there, coiled and waiting for her.

All three of the
witches that remained: fire, earth, air, all elders of the tribe,
all doing what they could to hold the balance against the fourth
witch. Against her.

She hadn't known
it then, that that's what was happening, but she knew it now. She
knew it in the moment she remembered her father taking her mother's
life. That memory ignited this understanding. That when he took the
head of the water witch to be, he gave that power to her daughter –
his daughter. She was only one of four women destined with a gift
all set to maintain balance. When she took their lives, others had
to replace them. Daughters, or daughters of daughters.

She realized the
fire witch had lost a granddaughter that day and would have lost
the line if it weren't for Aislin's absence. So the question was,
where had Aislin been?

The witch of air
delivered her power at death to an infant somewhere unknown. But
what of the witch of the earth? Yenic had said only two of the
three remained. He left out the third. Alaysha wondered if within
the remains she had taken the life of a daughter without knowing.
Perhaps somewhere outside the village. The crones had seen fit to
protect the lines by making sure one of them was elsewhere, letting
the brunt of Alaysha's power take the eldest, the ones with waning
powers, while the coiled and waiting energies sat ready to be
claimed by a girl, a woman, an infant, somewhere else.

"Yuri must not
know all this," she told Barruch. "He must know some of the tale
but not all."

She took some
comfort in the realization that her father, with all his seeming
understanding, had missed a few pieces. And she felt rejuvenated in
knowing she had picked them up.

She pulled in a
deep breath as the hut grew larger, the closer she got. The thatch
of the top had dried and been picked at by roaming beasts and
birds. She noticed some animals had returned: a hare sat chewing a
tall sprig of weed, always the first grass return to a desiccated
area, able to find a crevice and take root under the deluge of
flash rains that came after the power let go.

The hut itself
looked dry and dusty and she felt just as parched. She'd not
stopped in the last legs of the journey to water herself properly,
she was so anxious. The leathered legs of the crone she'd left had
been chewed and given up by a roving animal.

To her relief,
there was no smell of decay only that of hot earth and dried fruit.
She dropped down from Barruch's back and let him find a place where
he wasn't bothered by flies. She expected him to finnick himself to
a place away from the dead and it was then that she realized there
were far fewer dead then she left nearly a moon ago.

Barefoot, she
stepped around the mound of earth and turned, hoping to find
something more akin to what she left, and thinking it was very
likely that the deluge of a flash flood had washed the bodies
away.

There wasn't a
single cadaver remaining on the battleground, and she might have
believed animals or rain had carted them off, except there in over
a dozen piles, waited cairns of stones, all in a circle, as though
someone had done it purposely.

Someone had been
here after her. Someone who had enough connection to the place that
he cared about the bodies that used to be people.

Someone like
Yenic.

She felt a flood
of shame hot enough to compare to the heat of the sun that had
started to bake her bare head. That she'd given these people no
more thought than to collect the eyes they'd discarded, shrivelled
and disconnected under power. How many people had she left so, to
the elements, to nature over the seasons of her warring. Too many.
This one act must have taken him many turns of the sun to
accomplish.

She couldn't very
well unburied his people to justify a few answers.

"It seems as
though we are thwarted, Barruch." She muttered.

Barruch dug into
the earth with a front hoof, seeming to show how little he cared
about the predicament in light of the more critical lack of
peaches. A whorl of dust came from the ground and Alaysha watched
it thoughtfully.

"You're right, old
man." She glanced off in the direction of the oasis. "There's
nothing for us but those things that come from the earth."

The elders still
lay beneath the mud, awaiting exhumation. It would be an arduous
task to dig them out, taking more energy than Alaysha thought she
had, but she would do it if she could.

She had the
thought that if she could tie something to the pommel, then tied
that other end to the crone's leg, Barruch could move her from
beneath the grave. Precious little energy from Alaysha would be
spent and wasted.

"You're one wise
beast, old man," she patted his neck and he eyed her with an
anxious gaze. He knew she was up to something – something he would
most certainly not like in the least.

"It's nothing. A
little tug. Maybe just a little walk. That's all." She wasn't sure
he was mollified.

He slapped at her
with his tail.

"I don't care what
you think. You have to do this."

He twisted his
neck away from her to indicate his refusal, but it was too late.
She'd already decided.

She rummaged
through her saddlebags, knowing that Saxa had packed her a spare
tunic and a linen sheet to stretch across herself at night to keep
the bugs crawling and biting her. If she tied them together, she
could make a strong enough rope. The leather thongs keeping her
food basket closed would do to wrap the rope onto the pommel.

"No sense wasting
time," she mumbled aloud, more to set herself to the task than
anything else. She found herself thinking about the peaches too.
She was famished and the fruit and cheese Saxa had packed was long
gone.

It took more
effort than she thought to get the material into some sort of rope,
with a tear stressing the tunic. She ended up lying on Barruch's
back, facing his tail holding onto the edge of the sheet.

"Go for the
peaches, old man," she shouted and in a heartbeat, he began to plod
forward, leaning toward the oasis, sniffing the air. When he
discovered he wasn't moving as easily as normal, he halted,
frustrated.