“Whatever it was, it happened some time ago,” she said. “That way.”
The direction Marta pointed to was toward the south wall of the valley, maybe two bowshots from where they stood. Sela led the way. The trees here were a mixture of pine and scraggly oaks, their footfalls crunched through the tree litter despite Sela’s best efforts.
“We sound like a pair of oxen,” she muttered softly.
Marta was inclined to agree. She was also inclined to believe that it didn’t really matter. Or at least, not in the way that Sela believed. Whatever made its home in the valley, Marta was certain that it already knew they were there.
Just before the ridgeline rose abruptly from the forest floor, the trees thinned abruptly gave way to a small, grassy meadow. There they found the wreckage of the wagon. Then they found the bodies.
“Blessed….” Sela began, but whoever she meant to pray to, the thought was left unfinished. She just stared down at the remains.
Marta’s stomach churned, but she did not look away. The bones were stacked together as if whatever had killed them had meticulously stripped the flesh from each and then tossed the leavings into a common pile. Going by the skull count, there were only two bodies—a horse and a man, but it was a little difficult, aside from the skulls, to tell which was which. Both skulls had been broken open near the base but otherwise left intact, but all the other bones of any size had been snapped and then snapped again, as if to get every last trace of marrow. Marta’s was frankly amazed that there had been enough flesh left to rot, but scraps of hide and sinew were still visible here and there. The wagon had been broken open and ransacked, but judging from the bolts of shredded fabric and the glint of gold from a broken strongbox, nothing had been taken.
“What was it looking for?” Sela wondered aloud.
“More food,” Marta said.
“The fact that nothing was taken worries me as much as the way these two were killed. I don’t think a human, even an insane one, would do this, but no animal would, either.”
That much was certain. The bones told Marta the same story they were telling Sela, but in Marta’s case they told her a bit more. There was only one creature she knew of who embodied that kind of hunger. A creature, in fact, who was all hunger. Marta recalled a vision she once had, of a cave filled with them, and herself one of the pack. She also remembered the time she had actually met one such and almost wound up as the thing’s dinner. Maybe this time she would not be so lucky.
“You’re right,” Marta said calmly.
Sela stood upright but kept her sword on guard. “We’d better leave. It might still be around,” she said, but Marta shook her head.
“Not yet. The cloth is ruined but we’ll take the gold. Assuming we survive, we may need it.”
Sela winced. “Should we do that? I mean, aren’t we robbing the dead?”
Marta looked toward the valley wall on the far side. “It’s impossible to rob the dead, because the dead do not own anything. That’s part of what “dead” means. The only time it becomes a problem is when things that are dead fail to recognize that simple fact. Besides,” she said, “I really hate waste.”
“Fine, but I hope we’re not trading a few coins for our lives.”
“Whether we live or die, the coins won’t make a bit of difference. The creature has our scent now. We might make it back to camp, but neither Longfeather nor Bonetapper can help us and we’d just be placing them in danger too.”
Sela frowned as she gathered the coins. It only took a moment, as there weren’t very many. “You mean you know what did this?”
“I think so. I hope I am wrong,” Marta said, but that was a lie. She wasn’t wrong, and she didn’t bother to hope. She did prefer to face the creature on her own terms, and at the time of her choosing. Which, Marta told herself grimly, had to be now. “It’ll be in the river.”
Marta left the clearing and headed directly across to where the river skirted the high ridges that formed the opposite side of the valley. The river was wider than Marta expected, probably a good twenty yards from one side to the other. Marta could see steam rising from cracks in the rock wall across the river, and the hot water pooled in a natural basin about ten feet above the river’s far bank, just as Bonetapper had said. It spilled down into a steaming waterfall that spread out across the rocks before it flowed down into the river.
Sela studied the river. “It’s wide, but not very deep. One could wade across except…there, and there.” She pointed to two places where the rocky bottom was not visible, though the water was mostly clear of sediment, turning dark only in those places where the depth suddenly changed.
Marta nodded. “I don’t see any sign of a cave, so one or both of those drop-offs is likely where it hides.”
“I don’t understand. If it’s some sort of water-breathing monster, how could it have attacked that merchant so far from the river?”
“I said it hides in the river. I never said it had to breathe.”
“Oh.” Sela took a tighter grip on her sword. “How do we fight it?”
“We don’t. You go back to camp.” Sela started to protest, but Marta stopped her with a smile. “I know you want to help. Thank you for that, but the fact is you can’t. If I can’t kill it on my own you’ll just be one more meal for the thing, and your father’s sword won’t save you.”
“What…what is this thing?”
Marta took a deep breath. “It’s called a craja.”
For a moment Sela just stared at her. “The Hunger That Never Dies? You’re serious? I thought they were legend.”
“They are. They also happen to be real. I’ve met them before. Now then, there is something you can do for me. I want you to go back to camp and wait. Tell Bonetapper and Longfeather that I’ve ordered them to stay close to the wagon. They’ll obey you in this. Watch them. If I die, they’ll know, and so will you.”
“How?”
“When a witch dies, her bondservants are released from the forms they took while in the late witch’s service. Bonetapper and Longfeather will become men again. Keep your sword handy because neither one is to be trusted, and Longfeather especially. Their clothes are under the seat of my wagon. Give them their clothes and one piece of gold each. If they try to take anything else, do not hesitate--kill them.”
Sela frowned. “I’d carve up Longfeather gladly, but I thought you were fond of Bonetapper.”
Marta smiled again. “Very fond, but he is what he is. That’s how he wound up a raven in the first place. You have to understand—they may assume their original forms, but their service is not ended because their debt to me, I owe to the Power called Amaet, and so will be due to her since I have no heir, and Amaet will take that payment in whatever manner she sees fit. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to be either one of them. A quick death from you might be a mercy.”
“I’ll just hope it doesn’t come to that, either way. Where shall I take the wagon?”
“Wherever you like, though I’d suggest far away from here and as soon as you can. Everything that I have not specified I give to you—wagon, horse, and whatever gold is left. It won’t make you rich, but it will give you a start to wherever the next part of your life might take you.”
Sela looked stricken. “I can’t just—“
“You asked what you could do—this is it.”
Sela finally nodded and set out back toward the road, though not without several wistful glances back. Marta waited until she was well out of sight, and after that she waited as long as she dared to give Sela more time. Marta knew that, if she failed badly enough, the thing would have time to track down Sela before she made it back to camp at all. When Marta dared wait no more she walked very slowly and deliberately down to the water’s edge. It was all she could do to keep her knees from shaking.
“I am Marta, Black Kath’s daughter. Come talk to me, craja,” she said.
There were two little dots of red in the nearest deep pool. They quickly resolved into a pair of glowin
g red eyes, but for a while they came no closer. Marta wondered if the fact that the craja had feasted heavily not so long ago had dulled its hunger, but she knew that was nonsense. Craja were almost nothing except hunger. Not something of proper flesh and blood, not even alive as most people understood the term. So if the creature was as hungry as it always would be, what made it hesitate? Marta knew better than to think the creature was afraid. What she sensed was something more like recognition, a sensation that apparently confused both of them.
Marta invoked the first law. The words weren’t necessary to say aloud, though she did so. The words were not the law—Marta’s understanding of what they meant and how they could be applied, that was the First Law of Power.
“What Power Holds, Weakness Frees.”
Marta extended her senses, looking for the thing that could be broken, that needed to be broken. In the two instances where she had faced craja before, Marta found that what kept the creatures clinging to their shadow existence was some physical object, a representation and focus of the hunger that defined them. In one case it had been a statue of the Power called Astonei. In another, a talisman to the Power that Marta herself served, Amaet. If Marta could find and destroy what served the same function for the creature in the river, the matter would be settled. If not…well, Marta tried not to think about that.
Marta took a deep breath and forced her search to touch the craja itself.
There was nothing.
The eyes moved just a little bit closer, but only a bit. Marta did not get the sense that the creature was preparing to attack. It seemed to be waiting. Marta had no intention of doing the same.
“What Can’t be Taken, Can be Given.”
Marta invoked the Second Law.
The craja didn’t give much, but now Marta could see the thing. Its shape was no more or less than what Marta had expected—a once-human body, but showing the decay of death in exposed ribs, grey, shrunken face. The arms and hands were unnaturally long, with blackened talons at the tips of its boney fingers. It reached out almost too fast for the eye to follow and snagged a fish, which it proceeded to eat in several large gulps. Gobbits of fish floated out through its ribs and drifted downriver on the current. Whoever it had been, the craja had been dead for a long time. It still wanted to eat, even though the food was of no use to it.
There was one more thing—the creature was wearing something around its neck, something hanging on a golden chain that its time in the water had not touched. Curious, Marta tried to get a closer look at it under the auspices of the Second Law, but the craja closed its taloned fingers over the object on the chain.
Mine.
The thought was in Marta’s head as if it had been her own, but she knew better.
What are you hiding, craja?
Nothing. The creature had closed in on itself, giving nothing, and Marta might as well have been attempting to touch the mind of a stone wall. She hesitated long and hard before taking the next step. She considered an application of the Third Law, but dismissed it. The Third Law concerned the illusion of power, and if there was ever a creature immune either from illusions or the threat of power, it was a craja. A craja didn’t care what it was, or what it looked like. A craja cared only about what it wanted at any given moment, and right then Marta knew that the creature mostly just wanted to eat her, and whatever it had been waiting for, it had apparently decided to do without. It was moving closer now, slowly but very purposefully, like a cat stalking a field mouse in high grass. Marta would have run, if she had thought for an instant that there was any point in it. She took a deep breath, forced herself to stay where she was, and invoked the Fourth Law, the Law she had only recently learned.
The Law she had not possessed when she had met craja before.
“Changing appearance Does Not Mean Changing Nature.”
Now it was not a question of what the creature would or would not give. Marta reached out and took.
Who are you?
Marta looked past the talons and the perpetually rotting flesh, the sunken eyes like two black pebbles, and saw a woman, perhaps fifty years old with a kind, care-worn face. Marta took what she saw and made the craja see it, too.
The creature looked at its hands and saw what Marta saw, felt its own face and felt what Marta knew it should feel. The craja stepped forward into the shallows and emerged, partially, from the water, remembering what it had been like to need to breathe again. It looked confused.
“What is your name?” Marta asked.
For a moment the confusion cleared away. “Alaeda,” it said.
That’s when Marta got her first good look at the chain and pendant around Alaeda’s neck, the object it had guarded from her sight before.
Arrow Path…Aleada is—
The revelation cost Marta her concentration for one instant, and that’s all it took. Then there was no Alaeda, only the craja, and it was if the creature finished the thought for her.
“Witch!”
The creature sprang forward, catching Marta completely off-guard. There was no time to defend herself as the craja’s long talons reached out. One hand clutched Marta’s left shoulder, drawing blood. The other grabbed her right wrist, and the stench of rotting flesh almost made Marta gag.
“Witch!” it screamed. The sound was almost joyous as the creature held her fast. Marta was amazed by the fact that she had time to wonder why she wasn’t already dead. Yes, the craja wanted to devour Marta, down to the bone as it had done to the merchant and his cart horse, and snapped the bones besides. Marta knew that for an unalterable fact. But she was still alive because the thing wanted something else much, much more.
“Fifth Law!”
“I don’t know—“ Marta started to say, but then realized what the creature’s demand really meant. “You never found the Fifth Law, did you?”
“Fifth Law!” the craja shrieked out the words. Marta heard the hunger there, and the desperation. “Mine!”
Marta felt weak, as if the craja was draining every ounce of strength she possessed in an attempt to know what Marta knew. To gain the Fifth Law, which Marta did not possess. Marta felt her vision closing in as if she were peering down a tunnel. There was a roaring in her ears as if she stood on the edge of a cataract, and she knew she was a hair’s breadth away from losing consciousness, and her life in the bargain.
It took almost all of her remaining strength, but Marta freed her wrist. The thing was reluctant to let her go, but it finally relented. “Fifth Law?”
It would have been so very easy to lie to the thing, but Marta could not do so. Not about this. The Arrow Path bound her in ways that were not always convenient. Marta imagined that the craja well knew the truth of that.
“I’m sorry,” Marta said. “All I can offer you is the First Law—What Power Holds, Weakness Frees.”
“—frees.”
The craja that had once been an Arrow Path witch named Alaeda recited the words along with her. Marta wondered for a moment if the thing still meant to use Arrow Path magic against her, but there was no focus or understanding in the words. They were a memory to the craja, nothing more. But a memory so powerful that the thing would delay or even pass up a meal to find them.
The thing just stared at Marta, puzzled, for a moment. Just as Marta felt a sharp pain in her shoulder as the thing suddenly tightened its gripped, her free hand darted out and closed on the Arrow Path pendant.
“Mi—“ the craja began, but got no further as Marta snapped the pendant in two.
“Oh.”
For a moment, the craja was Alaeda again. Just before the centuries caught up with her and reduced her rotting flesh to a few dessicated scraps. Her bones lost their connections and the skeleton collapsed into the swift water. Marta saw the bones and a few scraps of cloth being carried downstream.
The Fifth Law. The craja had never achieved the Fifth Law. And so it had become…what it had become. Always wanting. Forever. Or would have, if Marta had not happened along. Marta remem
bered the crajas from the caves. She remembered their focus, what held them in their undead state, and finally, at long last, realized what it meant.
“Oh,” Marta said, too, before the tunnel of her vision closed in. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell back against the bank of the river.
§
When Marta came to herself again she was wrapped in a blanket near a campfire. Which seemed very strange to her, since she could still hear the rush of the river and the dull roar of the hot spring spilling over the rocks. The sun was setting but there was still light. She looked around and realized that she was no more than twenty yards away from where she had destroyed the craja. Sela was kneeling beside her. That seemed wrong to Marta, but she couldn’t quite piece together why for several more moments.
“You’re here. I told you to leave,” Marta said.
“And I did. But when Bonetapper remained a raven and Longfeather remained a goshawk, it occurred to me that perhaps, just perhaps, you were not dead after all. I had Bonetapper fly ahead just in case. He found you. What happened?”
Marta sat up, though the effort made her dizzy. “Not dead, though perhaps I’d be better off.” Marta told Sela what had happened. She didn’t even hold back the parts that she later thought, perhaps, would have been best unsaid.
“You really think you’re going to turn into such a creature?”
“I really think,” Marta said, “that I might.
She also thought that maybe she had found the reason that Amaet had manifested so close by. Did she mean for her to find the craja? Or was that just a coincidence? Marta didn’t know, but she had learned long ago not to put her faith in either Amaet or coincidence.
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