Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  With the exception of Taryn, we were all sitting in our places, cross-legged, each of us on a blanket, and each witch had an object, a focal for her power, at her knees: feathers, stones, a small live plant, a stick of wood, a bowl of water from the nearby creek—whatever element signified their power and would hold a measure of that power to steer into the working. I had two things in front of me: a tiny empty silver bowl and a fire burning in an iron brazier.

  Carrying a wooden tray, Taryn walked to Soul, placed it on the ground, and, with long-practiced dexterity, opened an alcohol packet and a sterile lancet. She removed the lavender top from a small plastic blood collection tube. “The anticoagulant will keep the blood from clotting. It will do nothing to keep the antibody-antigen reaction from taking place, so we still have to work quickly, but we’ll have a few minutes to work before the collected blood goes bad,” Taryn said.

  Soul lifted her eyebrows, the evening sunlight catching in her silver hair. She was smaller than Taryn, a diminutive figure, but she seemed bigger than life, her flesh glowing in the reddish sunset. She hadn’t told them what she was, but she wasn’t hiding her power from the witches, which seemed odd and maybe a little scary. “Science and magic? Together?”

  “Power evolves as the people who use it evolve.”

  Soul gave her an abbreviated nod and cleaned her left thumb with the alcohol pad. Pricked her thumb with the lancet. The arcenciel allowed three drops to fall into the tube. She dropped her paper waste into a grocery bag and the lancet into a small metal sharps container. Taryn reapplied the lavender top and mixed the blood with the clear stuff inside the tube, three complete movements of the tube: upside down, right-side up, upside down, right-side up, upside down, right-side up, in what looked like a ritual.

  As she rotated the tube, she said, “This is our oath. That we will not hint or suggest, speak, write, or sing of the Old Ones. That we will not hint or suggest, speak, write, or sing of the working that breaks Infinitio and Unendlich from its attack on the Old One. That we will not hint or suggest, speak, write, or sing of Nell’s part in the ritual, despite the untruth of the lack of full disclosure. Do you so swear?”

  “I so swear,” Soul said, her flesh brightening.

  Taryn gathered up her equipment and the garbage, and carried the tray to T. Laine, who repeated the procedure. Then Taryn carried the equipment to her place in the circle, but still outside the mixed-element ring. She turned to her left and took three steps, clockwise, to the witch sitting there, where she repeated the process. And then to the next. And the next. As she moved, the breeze came up and the wood burning in the brazier smoked and blazed, getting into my eyes. I had to blink against the smoke and lean back and forth to keep it out of my face, but I succeeded in seeing every part of the ceremony. Each part of the collection process was done in threes, deliberately but not slowly. It took about twenty minutes, which I thought was fast, for every person in the clearing to donate three drops of blood to the small tube and swear the oath, including Taryn herself.

  Lastly Taryn came to me and sat before me. Moving awkwardly, I cleaned my left thumb and squeezed the thumb pad with the fingers of my left hand. I stuck it with a sterile lancet. The pain shocked through me, unexpected, despite my knowing it was coming. Clumsily I added three drops to the tube. Taryn topped it and inverted the tube three times. Then she poured the contents of the tube into the small silver bowl. As she had promised, the blood hadn’t clotted, but there were minuscule clumps in it. Three drops from every person present.

  Sitting with the brazier between us, Taryn said, “This is our oath. That we will not hint or suggest, speak, write, or sing of the Old Ones. That we will not hint or suggest, speak, write, or sing of the working that breaks Infinitio and Unendlich from its attack on the Old One. That we will not hint or suggest, speak, write, or sing of Nell’s part in the ritual, despite the untruth of the lack of full disclosure. Do you accept this oath and agree that you will never speak of your part in it?”

  This meant that I couldn’t write or file a final report for PsyLED. That T. Laine couldn’t. That Soul couldn’t. The after-reports from this case would be interesting. “I so swear,” I said.

  “You do understand that you will be given credit for the idea of the working only? And you accept the consequences, should there be such, from the lack of full disclosure to the authorities?”

  “I do. I so swear.”

  The breeze seemed to strengthen as I spoke the final words, and the smoke from the brazier whipped around me. More important, I felt Soulwood awaken, not so very far away, sleepy but aware. The wood reached to me, through the ground, through the earth, a long underground stream of power. It filled me. Restful and heated, deep and full. Like water filling a vase, higher and higher. It was getting hard to breathe. Or perhaps unnecessary to breathe. I struggled to force breath after breath, holding on to whatever it was in me that was still human, that still needed air. And still the power filled me, making my palms itch and ache. I felt as if my skin would stretch and burst, and I gasped, mentally pushing the flow of Soulwood away. Back to its place.

  The flow tapered off. Stopped. And Soulwood withdrew. Surprise flashed through me. I swallowed. My breath came more easily. That was an interesting reaction to blood vows. And important. Because Break might damage my wood. I had been afraid—

  “Nell?” Taryn said.

  I nodded that I was okay. Opened my eyes. Blinked against the smoke until I focused. Into the fire that burned at my knee, I poured out the blood from the silver bowl. Then, following the ritual as it had been explained to me, I upended the silver bowl and placed it into the center of the fire so the flames could lick and cook the last remnants clean. Taryn overturned the container of lancets into the flames. Then she opened a small bottle and I smelled alcohol, the drinking kind, not the sterilization kind, and she poured it into the plastic tube, swirled it to get all the blood free, and emptied it into the small tub that had held the lancets. She dumped the mixture into the fire. Flames leaped high and we both leaned away from the blaze. She dropped the tub and tube into the trash with the alcohol pads and trash paper.

  “This is our oath,” she said again. “That we will not hint or suggest, speak, write, or sing of the Old Ones. That we will not hint or suggest, speak, write, or sing of the working that breaks Infinitio and Unendlich from its attack on the Old Ones. That we will not hint or suggest, speak, write, or sing of Nell’s part in the ritual, despite the untruth of the lack of full disclosure to those in authority over her. We so swear.”

  I felt something heated, icy, arid as a desert, moving like a stream, coil through my body and into the ground. If I’d ever had doubts that witch magic would work on me, they were gone with that nearly electric sensation.

  The witches and Soul and I all said the same words, “We do so swear.”

  Taryn got up, gathering the trash, flipping the silver bowl over with a stick, and into the cooler coals at the side. The bowl had begun to glow a dull gray color, and the stink of burning silver was acrid on the air. Leaving the brazier burning, she took her place at cardinal north, tapped the circle, and said, “Aperire finis.”

  Together, the eleven other witches said, “Aperire finis.”

  I felt the circle close, and I closed my eyes again, feeling the power around me, but not reacting to it.

  Taryn said, “Aperta pro fractura.” The witches repeated her words. The power grew.

  From below us, in the river valley, came the echoes of explosions as transformers blew. The night grew darker, then brighter, as the entire electric grid guttered several times, and went down. Several heartbeats later, the part of the city that had backup on the secondary grid flickered on, the city of Knoxville like a patchwork quilt of light and dark. Sirens began to sound.

  I had one job to do. Only one. I closed out the sound of the witches. And I put my palms onto the ground, flat to the earth. And I began to
scan.

  The Infinitio was circling, spinning, so fast that if I’d seen it only now, I would think it a ball of color and light, not the infinity symbol whirling like a dervish. It felt important, that I know what it was as it spun around the circle of the huge working. From the center of the working at LuseCo, the light blazed like a sun, a warm glow that seemed to have its own gravity. A power stolen from the ley lines just below it. From all around the circumference of the circle, lines dropped down upon the Old One, the consciousness buried in the earth. The lines of power spread across the sleeper tapped and drilled and bounced on the consciousness. Which . . . shivered in its sleep.

  A slight waveform rolled across the surface of the Old One, the membrane created from the magic stolen from the ley lines. I remembered the Richter scale readings, too slight to register as earthquakes but too great to be missed by seismologists. This had to be the cause of the mini earthquakes that JoJo had been talking about, the microquakes of zero-point-two and -three. The Old One was being annoyed awake. As a child, I had seen my father annoyed awake. I had seen my husband, John, annoyed awake by a dog wanting to go outside. Neither awakening had ended well, and I had a feeling that this awakening would end no better. In fact, far worse.

  Around me, above me, as deep into the soil as the four-inch-deep circle, the power of the witch circle was growing.

  * * *

  The night was cold and I hadn’t brought a winter coat into the circle with me. Just prior to full-on night, I pulled the blanket out from under me, unfolded it, wrapped part of it around my shoulders and body, and pushed a portion back under my backside. I wasn’t warm, but I wasn’t quite as miserable. I looked over at T. Laine and Soul, who were on a flat-topped boulder, sitting on blankets or towels or foam pads of their own. Watching. I felt safer knowing that they were here, PsyLED guards. Rick had once said that no PsyLED agent ever went into anything alone. Had I doubted, this proved his truth.

  The energies of the working whirled over us, behind us, around the witches, blue, green, lavender, yellow, red. It was like being stuck inside a spinning multicolored ball—a little nauseating. But the witches had completed aperire finis and were close to the final part of aperta pro fractura. Which was a Latin wyrd working for a Break spell. That was the part where I came in. I had been waiting. And waiting. And just when I started shivering again, as badly as the Old One beneath me, Taryn whispered, “Nell. Now.”

  I set my palms back onto the cold surface of the ground and reached. Sent my energies down and down and stopping, just above the surface of the Old One. The vibrations on its thin skin, the almost-not-there overlay of ley line energies, had grown bigger, higher, more profound. The sensation reverberated through the ground and up into me. My shivers altered, shifted, and slid into the rhythm, matching the vibration that attacked the ancient presence. My magics matched the tempo and cadence. Blended into it without making it stronger.

  My body was shaking so madly I had to clench my jaw to keep from biting my tongue. Holding the beat of power, I reached back up to the circle, where I sat and . . . tapped the energy of the witch circle’s underside. A different kind of power reached out to me. Witch power. And it let me take it in my hands. The energies were hot and cold, the movement of falling water, the massive strength of tides, the pull of the moon, airless and merciless. The might of stone. The cold of glaciers. The green, green, intense green of living things. The heartbeat of all life. Keeping my place in the rhythm of Infinitio, I pulled the magic that had been gathered in the circle down and down and over. And out. Like a net. A trap. A cage.

  When I had the witch’s circle centered, I opened my mouth to tell them I was ready.

  Something grabbed me. Yanked me down.

  Into the dark. Cold. Breathless, deathless, nothingness.

  On the surface of the earth, something followed my own energies up and broke through the ground. Slid and slipped, wrapping around my wrists, pinning my palms flat to the earth. Slithered around my ankles and knees, gluey, sliming, adhering to me. And twisting into my skin. Tighter. Pulling. Wrenching me down. My skin split. Blood hit the ground, just above the witch circle. And slime mold sprouted from the earth. Slid over me. Over my head and eyes. Down over my nose and mouth. As if it was trying to drown me.

  A heartbeat later, the ground beneath each witch in the circle erupted. Dark stems of slime pushed up and through. And over them. Entangling them. Holding them still. Pinned. Trapped. All but one.

  The slime slithered down my cheeks. I couldn’t get my eyes open to see who was still safe from attack. And therefore who was most likely involved with the culprits we already had in custody.

  I took what might be my last breath.

  And heard the overlapping words, as if from a distance, “Now, now, now, now!” T. Laine. Panicked. Afraid. Though she and Soul were on a rock, safe.

  In the yawning, profound lightless below me, I felt the vibration on the ley line–based thin skin of the Old One increase, a bass drum of might and command. Infinitio and Unendlich. Waking the Old One.

  The two workings were no longer separate. Whatever the multiple sabotages had begun as, they were one, a blended magic so seamless I hadn’t perceived it until now. Deep in the earth, the blended working of the Infinitio/Unendlich had become a curse, and the curse sensed me. Faster than lightning, it blasted out and caught me, twisting my own magic. Seizing my magic for itself.

  Fighting the witch magic all around me. Knotting witch circle power against them. Infinitio adding it to the working that had become its own purpose.

  On the surface, the slime was trying to cover me, to pull me into the ground. Me, and the witches as well. All of us. Or were trying to cut us to slivers so they could have my blood and the witches’ power. And my power to feed the earth. Oh . . . yes. That is what Infinitio wants. What it was designed to do. To take and use and store power. More power than anything ever in the history of humans or witches. And Unendlich had melded in, the two becoming one. Not two workings with a Breakable joining, but one seamless spell.

  I heard the words, “Son of a witch on a switch. We’re going to have to do this the hard way.” Taryn, realizing what had happened with the melding of the workings.

  The sabotage had given the working focus, a single-mindedness that was almost alive. It would take all power, all life, for itself. Around me I felt the grass wither and die and crumble into ash. The trees at the edge of the field died and fell apart. My magic to feed the land was under the control of another force. The fields on the other side of the ridge died. Below on the downhill slope. They died.

  The tremor beating on the Old One grew harder. Faster. My power was being directed down, adding to the vigorous pounding, fierce and brutal, onto the Old One. I wrenched my body, trying to free myself. Twisted. Pulled. Pain beat at me, distanced by the muffling of the earth. My blood spread through the ground, life-giving. Potent. A sacrifice taken by the conjoined working.

  Infinitio/Unendlich knew my blood, knew it from the pond and the piney trees, and . . . it wanted my blood. Wanted me. Because my magic could make it more than it was now. My magic could give it true life.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  A new vibration reached me, bright and blue and shining, yellow as the sun, silver like the moon, the tones of the rainbow against a storm-tossed sky. “Aperta.” The words sang into my bones and blood. So much blood pooling into the ground.

  Break. This was the Break spell.

  The vibration grew and grew. Dozens of slimes spilled over me. Mutated. Dug into my belly, tearing my skin. My blood splattered. My abdomen ruptured, the roots from within me erupting out. Fighting the power of Infinitio. Fighting being pulled into the earth. Battling against the slime from the ground. But slime was genetically different from other plants, much more mutagenic. Easily melding with and being altered by other life-forms. Like me . . .

  The Infinitio/Unendlich were using
the slime molds to explore the world above. To find the form they would take on the surface.

  Flows, flows, flows. Pools, pools, pools. The power pushed into me.

  I could sense the original working circle created by the witches at LuseCo. The triangle of power below the ground, across the city. The infinity loop that sang the words of the working created by the witches, dancing, singing of its purpose. Flows, flows, flows. Pools, pools, pools. To create its own life. To be.

  “. . . Fractura.” Break slammed down, down, down. Disrupting. Tearing. Shattering. Ending.

  I screamed.

  The circle of Infinitio/Unendlich lost cohesiveness. Shadows appeared. The mutating working . . . tilted. The three bright triangle points on its surface shook and slid to the side. They slammed together. As if released by a slingshot, the triangle of power whirled into the distance. Far, far, and far away, deep in the earth, I felt/saw their combined energies skip across a frothing pool of liquid stone, magma, heat inconceivable. Skip. Skip. Like a stone on a volcanic lake. The last skip spun them up, directly into the empty ley line. They hit. Slid inside. Ricocheted through the empty pathways. A blast of energies detonated, erupting. The ley lines sparked and snapped like a whip. Power roiled through them. The magnetic-electro-magical energies of the Earth cracked like lightning, stretched, and settled.

  My pain quivered through the earth and back at me. “Aperta pro fractura.” The vibrations of the words beat against me.

  The absorption of the power trembled through me, through the slimes. Aperta pro fractura sliced through the earth. Breaking. Ending. Infinitio screamed in . . . horror. Shock. Fear. Fractura smashed through the nascent life below us, the roots and veins and trunks of life that had been damaged by our working. Through the bodies of the molds and fungi and slimes and their odd, malleable, genetic structures.

  Ending everything that was not meant to be.