by Lucas, Naomi
“Hag,” he said, his voice rougher than usual as he finally looked at Prayer’s witch. “Calavia. I seek information...” His words died on his lips as he finally got a good look at her. “It’s you.” The female from the cave. The human who called for his help. The same one with the potently erotic scent.
Her slight hands left his back and moved to his shoulders, cleaning and tending to his new wounds. “While others still call me things that I do not go by, you may call me what you deem fit.”
His hands tensed at his sides. “You visited me in the cave,” he rasped, still trying to make sense of it. The smell, the subtle undertone of humanity that he couldn’t quite place, was still in his nose to serve as memory. “You…” His jaw ticked. Her fingers brushed against his horns and his eyes shot to hers. The touch sent chills down his skin despite the nearby fire. His anger rose. “Hag.”
It had been a trick. He had hoped the female who visited him had been human...even if it were a fantasy in his own mind.
Astegur moved to strike as his vision cleared further. Her features presented themselves in the bright light; they were no longer distorted by shadows or shrouded in darkness, giving him his first direct look at her face. He stopped before he took her life.
Her face was young and clean—so very different from his. His muscles strained beneath his skin as the heat in the pit of his belly spiked. At first glance, the hag looked like a human female from Savadon. A prize of the light. With blood that would make his clan strong. There was nothing haggish about her. In fact, he did not know who had given her that name, much less why.
Astegur studied her silently as her hands came up and wrapped around his horns, polishing away the dried centaur blood.
The last time someone had touched his horns in such as way had been many years ago, when he had taken a female minotaur from his old tribe to the stables to rut.
Astegur stiffened and tore his eyes away from her face to look at her pale skin, which was devoid of scars, scratches, and even the sunspots that all humans had, even thralls.
An illusion? A trick of the eye? He had never encountered such a thing as her in the labyrinth. But he could not convince himself that she was entirely real. She reeked of magic. His gaze dipped to her long, black hair which fell in messy, tangled waves around her shoulders and down to her waist. Some of that lay upon his arm. It felt like spider silk and soft grass.
The hag nodded and shifted to crouch in front of him, pulling her hair away from where it had fallen on his arm. Astegur knew he could not forget that she was dangerous, despite her intriguing presence.
She reached out to touch his horns again, and he brushed her away.
“You will do,” she said with resolve, sitting back.
“Do what?”
She shifted closer to him. “Protect me. Protect the haven of Prayer in the days to come. Fight for this place as long as it stands. You killed the centaurs scouting my lands. I no longer sense their presence. You are exactly what I am looking for. So, you will do.”
His tail slapped across the stony ground. “You dare command me?” He was not a servant, nor a slave. He was a warrior, a battlemaster, a tactician. He glared at the pretty witch. “You are crazed, hag. You do not know who you are speaking to. I am not a beast of burden. You dance closer to your death with every word you speak.”
“You were payment. You are payment.”
“Payment? No one has dominion over me.”
The female’s long black hair fell into her face as she cocked her head at him. “Your brother’s human gave me the seed of a bull—the life of a bull. So, I chose yours as payment for my help in their need for a cure and a safe escape from the centaurs tracking them. They gave me that power, as small as it was at the time. My help is not free—not ever. The few creatures who I have allowed to enter here over my endless years knew that. They could not get through my barriers otherwise.”
His nostrils flared. “My brother’s what?” His hands flexed at his sides, his knuckles bulged to hold his weapon. He had smelled human blood at the centaur camp. Had Vedikus won a prized human from Savadon? Could it be true? His tribe had not had access to a fount of human blood since his mother.
“He passed through here not long ago with a human female he had captured at the labyrinth wall.”
“Vedikus. He procured a human?”
The hag nodded. “Yes, that was his name. Vedikus and Aldora.”
“Why would he need one such as you for help?” If his brother had obtained a human, a female at that, Vedikus wouldn’t trust any being in the world with her—not even his tribe, not even his brothers—especially if he planned to breed her. Minotaurs were sexually aggressive and exceedingly possessive of their current sexual partner or mate.
“They sought sanctuary and a cure for the mist curse. Time was not on their side, and I could offer them what they needed,” the hag said.
Steam poured out of his mouth. “And now I’m here.”
“And now you’re here.” The hag’s hair swept across her skin at that moment, winding its way over her shoulders and blowing across his chest. A soft touch. The female remained motionless, looking up at him, waiting, unafraid of how close to death she was.
But then she jerked away, scrambling on lithe limbs out of his reach as if she could sense the danger. His jaw ticked as he watched her. She moved to the fire and added more blisterbark, building up the flames when she suddenly bent over with a moan and clutched her stomach. She dropped to her knees.
He waited for the moment to pass so they could continue their conversation, but her face blanketed and tears gathered on her lashes.
“What swamp-spawned disease ails you?” he demanded.
She flinched, and he barely stopped himself from grabbing her hair and forcing an answer from her throat.
She slowly lifted her face and looked back at him. “It was painful to bring you here,” she whispered with a gasp. “I have not used so much of my willpower at once, not since I can remember.”
“You did not bring me here. I came.”
The hag shook her head. “I summoned you. I gave you no choice.”
Astegur grabbed her arm and narrowed his gaze. “What nonsense is this?”
Her eyes met his, undaunted by his rough handling. “Do you still itch, does it still feel like your blood is acid? That your thoughts are mired, that with each step, you were further enslaving yourself to the pain?”
The question threw him off before he realized what she meant. The itch under his skin. The one that had started when she came to him in the cave. The one he had been downing vials of human and orc blood to counteract. It all made sense.
“You did that to me?” he asked, his voice low with anger.
“Compulsion,” she said as she continued to clutch her stomach. “It has a way of making you do what you never intended to do. Why else would you be here? Do you still ache or has it worn off now that you are here?”
Astegur threw the hag’s arm back at her and surged to his hooves. How dare she force his hand. “Mistfucking witches. I should have known.” He grasped his weapon and towered over her slight frame. “Do you really think you can control one such as me?” The flames in his belly roared, eclipsing reason. “A commander of bulls and barrier hunter? I have stood against centaurs, orcs, and hordes of hobgoblins and have come away the victor. I am heir to the Bathyr and have left piles of corpses rivaling the height of our mountains in my wake!”
The female’s lips parted slightly and her eyes widened to orbs beneath his poised axe. “You cannot hurt me,” she whispered, her face growing white with fear, her eyes watering with pain.
Astegur drew his axe back to strike. “Even magic has limits, witch. You will learn what I can and cannot do.”
She remained on her knees before him. She did not flee from him or seek safety. He wanted her to run or to fight back, but she remained still. He tensed his fingers and raised his weapon for a swift killing blow. She lowered her head. The los
s of her eyes upon him halted his strike.
Did she want to die?
Astegur lowered his axe, confused. He wanted more from her than her death.
He could kill her and dispel the magic she obviously held over him. The female would have been perfect if she had been human, if she’d had pure blood. Maybe that was why he could not kill her.
There was always a possibility that I would kill her. She sent for me anyway.
“I will spare your life because you helped my brother, but the next time you try to command or compel me or one of my kind, be sure that your head will be taken and staked at the borders of our lands.” He towered over her, swallowing her in his shadow. “The debt is paid.”
When she lifted her head, he turned away, grabbed his belongings, and strode out of the crumbling stone building. He did not want to be in her presence any longer.
“Wait,” she called from somewhere behind him.
I am not supposed to be here. He was wasting valuable time. It didn’t matter if Prayer’s hag enticed his curiosity. He was not a being to be used—by anyone. The idea flooded him with fresh anger, even contempt. But he did not hesitate as he stormed away from her, and did not turn back when her voice continued to trail after him.
Leaving her alive was the first mercy he had ever shown.
Outside the temple, he came across a rickety, rotting path that led straight through the settlement. It was parallel to the mountains he could barely see lining the gray sky to his left. He followed the path toward the green orbs in the distance where they pierced the mist.
Her scent followed him out into the open air and beckoned him to return. It played at his curiosity and his ingrained need to know his surroundings, his enemies, even if those enemies were sly and intriguing. He ignored his musings as lies and magic.
Midway down the path old buildings, broken and falling apart, arose on either side of him and between them were thralls. He had never seen so many gathered in one place before. And the more he took in his surroundings, more thralls appeared.
Thralls were once human who had not died before the mist curse stole their senses. They were shadows of their former selves, weak and nearly mindless. Sometimes, they appeared to remember things from their former lives but only for a moment, and only when someone with magic and willpower demanded it of them.
They were little better than the undead that blighted the labyrinth. The only differences between the two were that undead were ravenously hungry, and could not be commanded unless they belonged to a powerful magic-wielder. A creature had to die to become undead. A human had to be cursed by the mist to become a thrall.
The great liches of the labyrinth often had thralls employed as servants, and undead mesmerized to fill their armies.
But there was no lich in these lands that he knew of, only a mist-witch.
He spat. What a waste of blood.
Astegur left them behind without a backwards glance. He walked through the rest of the settlement without incident, approaching the first green orb that would lead him away. Each step he took, the hag’s scent grew stronger, enticing him to go back. To sniff her flesh. To investigate her body and find its source.
For all he knew, the smell was nothing more than part of his own weak delusion. He wanted the female from the cave; he did not want a mist witch.
The fog thickened as he passed by the first orb. Astegur squinted his eyes and cut through it with his body, but when he did, his horns rammed into a large stone wall.
He drew back with a growl and looked upon the sudden, unexpected barrier in his path. His face slackened as his eyes trailed upward. He took a step back.
It was the same stone building he had just left.
It couldn’t be.
He spun back the way he came and the same rotting pathway lay before him—broken houses and all—with thralls on either side, standing there, watching him. The green orbs in the distance. He was back at the center of Prayer.
“I am sorry,” said a saddened voice at his back. “But I cannot let you leave.”
Chapter Five
She sat on the edge of her steps again and dangled her feet into the water below, watching the minotaur from afar and listening to his roars of fury. His presence was something that she couldn’t ignore. He had been trying to find a way through Prayer’s barriers for the past day. That, and avoiding her by any means necessary.
She needed a moment to get used to his presence. That she could not outright bend him to her will stressed her to no end.
He’d killed the remaining centaurs roaming the barriers, but how much longer would it be before more arrived? She looked down at herself and shivered, tightening her hands around the old ceramic cup she held.
She raised it to her lips, allowing the boiled water, bitter blimwort, her wax, and cove enter her mouth, and drank deeply. The pain she’d endured from summoning him still tore through her body. Her ability was as great as her body, and her body was that of a weak human woman.
She looked up and scanned the vicinity for her mother, but she was nowhere to be seen. I haven’t seen her since he arrived.
All through the night, the minotaur had tried making his way through the mist around her settlement to escape, having used all manner of trinkets and minor concoctions from his satchels in an attempt to tear down the wards that protected her. Nothing worked.
The only way in or out was through her—literally. She had swallowed the lifeforce of the bull and used her will to bring him here. If he wanted to leave, he had to kill her.
He couldn’t. Not as long as the spell was in effect.
He was trapped here as much as she was.
Having him here was only one part of the plan. She needed him to fight for her and this place if she wanted to keep Prayer from falling to the centaurs.
She had never had trouble with the centaur warbands from the south until now. Previously, their warrior studs and scouts had avoided her land, and the swamps in general, but that was before she helped the minotaur. Now, she and hers were in their path, and that path led to the mountains and the vengeance they sought.
Calavia raised her feet from the water and made her way quietly to her altar, hoping the minotaur wasn’t watching her as much as she’d been watching him. She could not see the direction of his gaze so far off in the brume.
In the sanctuary of her temple, with its heavy stone walls all around her in her altar room, she broke off a chunk of wax at her feet and placed it in a nearby bowl. She lit a candle to burn her wax over and waited for the mixture to loosen. The milky grey wax soon melted, and she cut the tip of her finger to give it blood.
Images appeared in the wax soon after, showing her the centaurs to the south.
A group of them, adorned in trophies and fetishes, argued around a giant bonfire on the Greymis coast. Human men and women served them, and many of the women had large, pregnant bellies. Their spears indicated the north.
They had been at it for weeks, reveling around their campfires and weaving tales of their glorious conquest of Burlox she could not fully hear, long before the band of centaurs appeared outside her home, chasing down the human they sought and the minotaur who stole her. She did not know why the centaurs gathered and prepared their weapons, but the more she spied on them, the more afraid she’d become.
She worried that helping a human woman, one who looked so much like herself—still alive and trying to survive—might have been a mistake.
If the centaurs chose to march north and take over her lands, there was little she could do about it. Not unless she wanted to give up everything she held dear and submit to them. She’d seen the way centaurs mated, and the image alone terrified her into action. When she saw Aldora fleeing straight for her sanctuary—away from the centaurs no less—she could not let the other human female suffer such a fate, not when Calavia could stop it.
Once out of the wetlands, where the ground hardened toward the coast, it was an easy run for a centaur. It was why the beaches
of Greymis were ruled by them and her swamp was not. The fact that they had moved so far north did not bode well.
Nothing wanted these lands—not even the undead. Nothing but her…
Until now.
A deep growl and the heavy pounding of hooves filled her ears and pulled her attention away from her wax. The vision within the bowl disappeared. Calavia startled and straightened, seeing the minotaur striding straight for her, ripping vines from the walls as he stormed through her central passageway where she could just glimpse the entrance far down the broken hall.
He stepped into her sanctuary, eyes alight with fury. “Release me!”
A trickle of intimidation coursed through her but she managed to meet his gaze. “No.”
He roared, making her wince as it echoed throughout the temple. She studied his bulging physique with alarmed curiosity as his body grew bigger with the sound. Minotaurs grow when they’re angered? She had never encountered such a trait in the labyrinth.
“I will call the Bathyr to this place and we will raze it to the ground, witch. Do not tempt me!”
“I can’t let you go. I need you.”
“I care nothing for your needs!” He strode into her private space and grew even larger as he approached her.
She kept her feet rooted to the floor despite his wrath. The minotaur stopped right before his skin touched hers, releasing a thick cloud of belly smoke right over her face.
Her nose filled with the bitter smell of burnt wood and sweat, making her eyes water. It tickled her nose and throat and she sneezed loudly, accidentally touching him in the process. A hand landed on her shoulder and pushed her back. He did not remove his hold on her.
She blinked out the water in her eyes and rubbed her nose when she looked back up at him. “You have fought centaurs before, and killed them efficiently.”
“I have killed much more than centaurs,” he said, his voice grave.