by Ther Renard
The woman nodded silently, tending to a wound on Kira's leg with a gentle touch. "Those brigands turned you into a colander," she said with a soft touch to Kira's wounded torso. "There is barely an inch of skin unharmed."
"But they did not slay me." Kira was quite proud of that fact. "Ten of them and they could not slay me. I stood against them alone and cut them down one by one." She omitted the part where her friends had been mercilessly slaughtered, pushing it far from her conscious mind.
"Hm," Ayla said softly. "You are safe here."
"Safe? I laugh at safety! Hahaha!"
Kira went deep into her reserves of bravado, for the images of the battle were suddenly coming back fast and hard, refusing her attempts to push them away. She saw blood, entrails, the faces of the fallen. Squeezing her eyes shut she tried to hide from them but they followed behind her eyelids, forcing her to relive every horrific moment again and again. She saw Lysa's head hitting the ground over and over again in slow motion high detail. Her mind remembered all sorts of little details that had not registered properly the first time, the white of the severed spinal column against the red of fresh cut flesh, the blood tricking from the corner of the slack mouth that had once laughed and chatted and made jokes.
"STOP!"
Kira shouted in anguish, raising her hand to hit herself in the head. Better to experience pain than memory.
Ayla reached up and grasped her by the wrist. "Stop. Where does it hurt?"
"Inside," Kira spoke through gritted teeth, fighting the urge to scream. "It hurts inside."
"That is one pain I cannot heal with bandages and salve," Ayla said gently, her brow furrowed with deep sympathy. "Some cuts only heal with time - and there are others that will forever weep."
She placed her hands on either side of Kira's bruised head, pressed a soft kiss to her blood matted hair then looked down at the young soldier. "This hurt you feel, it can destroy everything. It can make the world an ugly place and twist you like a poisoned vine - or it can become the seed from which your greatness will grow. It will be up to you to determine which fate is yours."
Kira stared at the woman. Somehow simply listening to Ayla made the pain abate. She spoke words of hope and beyond the words themselves her voice carried notes of a love that transcended any Kira had experienced before. The woman simply shone with compassion and care. Kira was awed simply being in her presence.
"I will be great," she declared as Ayla returned to the task of bandaging her many wounds. "I will not be poisoned."
The woman stopped for a moment and cast a knowing look at her. "I believe you."
With Ayla's belief on her side, Kira drew in her breath with a great sob and tried to be brave. Soldiers saw death, that was what they did. She'd known what she was signing up for when the recruiter offered her two loaves of bread and a silver coin, the first money she'd ever had to her name. That coin had shone with the promise of a thousand more like it and glories too many to count. She'd followed it like a guiding star, right into boot camp and now it had lead her to the presence of a woman who made her skin tingle and her breath come short.
"So this witch you were hunting, what do you know of her?" The question came casually.
Puffing up with importance even in a prone position, Kira was all too happy to share the details of her important mission. "Nothing other than that she is a witch. A practitioner of the dark arts, unnatural and foul."
"I see," Ayla said. " And how were you to recognize this witch?"
"By her warts," Kira said confidently. "And by her wicked ways."
"And perhaps she would fly on a broomstick?" Ayla made the suggestion indulgently.
"Yes. Very likely." Kira nodded seriously, her slight double chin creasing into three.
For the next half hour, Kira regaled Ayla with her complete knowledge of witches, fancying herself to be impressing Ayla a great deal. Certainly the beautiful woman smiled often as Kira informed her of one detail or another.
"How do you think this witch would take to being burned? It is one of the most painful ways to die after all. I scalded myself on a cooking pot and it hurt for days."
"Witches do not feel pain like normal people," Kira explained slowly and patiently, thinking the woman so very elegant and wise but not at all knowledgeable. It was fortunate that she was there to educate Ayla.
"Oh I see," Ayla nodded. "How very interesting."
Kira agreed that it was. Then a question came to her. "How come... how come none of this really hurts? I thought being wounded would be more painful than this."
"I use a special salve," Ayla said. "It numbs the skin and soothes wounds."
"Oh yes," Kira said, as if that all made sense to her, though she had never heard of a salve that could soothe deep sword cuts before. "And... where are we exactly?"
It was difficult to get a real sense of location, it seemed to be some sort of glade, for they were in the open air and she could see fine grass stretching to a dense tree line. Long branches stretched out overhead, interlacing like fingers in a grasp that sheltered those under their canopy.
"Just a little private spot I happen to know of." Ayla looked up at Kira with a secret smile. "The word is filled with hidden treasures for those who have eyes to see them."
Kira pretended to understand, though she had the distinct sense that Ayla was telling her something she couldn't quite grasp no matter how she tried to wrap her mind about it. It was the same feeling she'd had when smart cousin Godric had come back from the Imperial University and tried to explain the new mathematics. It made her feel hot, confused and a little angry.
"Here," Ayla said, reaching for a small cup. "I want you to drink this. It will help you sleep and speed the healing of your wounds."
Kira sniffed at the brew. It smelled sweet, like berries. She drank it down in one long gulp and almost immediately began sinking into the warm embrace of sleep. Ayla was there, a presence just at the edge of consciousness whispering to her.
"Sleep well, Kira. I am glad to have met you."
~~~
When Kira awoke, she was alone. She sat up slowly, surprised to discover that she could move at all. Her wounds were much healed and she felt a fresh strength in her body. An envelope sat by her side. She reached out and opened it, discovering a ring and a note.
"This will aid your unseen journey. Be well, brave warrior."
"Ayla?" She called the woman's name, but there was no response. She could feel that she was alone, the glade had that peculiar quiet that only comes with perfect solitude.
Frowning, Kira, slipped the ring onto her finger and promptly let out a scream when her body disappeared from under her. In a panic she pulled the ring off and was relieved to discover that she returned instantly. Was it? Could it be? She looked at the ring in amazement. Was this a magical artifact?
Wait... that meant... the woman... was..
"WITCH!" Kira howled the word to the sky. She pushed up to her feet and turned around and around. "WITCH COME BACK HERE SO I CAN ARREST YOU!"
There was no sign of Ayla. The woman, the witch, had abandoned her to her fate. Kira felt a strange pain in her chest. She pulled her tunic aside to see if it was a wound, but the skin was unblemished and unharmed. The pain was coming from inside again, a fresh pain of abandonment and hurt. She had only known Ayla a very short time, but the care she'd been shown in that time had touched her deep inside. Nobody had ever rescued her before. Nobody had ever made it all better in the way Ayla had.
"WITCH!" Kira screamed again. "WITCH COME BACK HERE... I... I need you." She crumpled to her knees and wiped at tears that had sprung unbidden to her eyes. "I don't know where I am," she sniffed to herself.
Crossing her legs beneath her body, Kira determined to wait for Ayla to come back. Surely the witch would not leave her there all alone in the middle of the woods. With a determined look on her chubby features, Kira sat and waited for hours and hours on end. The sun went down and she waited through the night, listening to every lit
tle crackle in the trees beyond, thinking it might be Ayla returning to her. The sun rose again and still the witch had not returned to be arrested.
Caught in a pain she did not understand, propelled by an anger that rose from deep inside to consume her mind, Kira reached for the tinderbox at her belt. It was still there. She nodded with satisfaction then set about gathering dry sticks and leaves from the forest floor outside the glade. She stacked them around the outside of the magic circle and set them alight.
The fire caught quickly, speeding around the enchanted place through the kindling, then leaping up to the lower branches. In the course of a few minutes the glade was ablaze, smoke thick and dark pluming into the air.
"I will find you, witch," Kira swore as the fire light danced in the very center of her pupils. "On my blood I swear I will find you."
Chapter Thirteen
Five years after the fire in the glade...
"Mothers, I barely escaped with my life."
A young woman just barely dressed in a shredded dress choked with emotion as she related her desperate tale to a circle of women gathered beneath bare boughed trees. Snow lay in great white drifts outside the boundaries of the circle and the winter wind blew bitterly cold, but none of those assembled seemed to feel it, clad as they were in heavy long cloaks and equally uniform solemn expressions.
When the woman turned it became apparent that the back of the garment had been heavily assaulted with a horse whip. The skin beneath the tattered remnants of cloth was red raw and bleeding. More than once members of the circle had come forward to give her aid, but she had denied it, preferring to make her testimony as she was so that all might see what had been done to her.
"They found me in my father's house and dragged me from my bed before sunrise. In the village square they lashed me to a pole and demanded I confess to witchcraft. I made no such confession but she knew." The young witch drew a deep, shuddering breath. "She knew."
"Three times she bade me confess," she continued with a sob. "And three times I denied it. Then the beating started." She tried to say more, but her words were lost to overwhelming emotion. Her face contorted with the pain of the memory, her thin limbs trembled and shivered in the cold.
"You see? We are being hunted. We are being tortured."
A voice as dry as the desert crackled with rage. Yellow gold eyes burned out of a face heavily tattooed with angular dark slashes covering the lower brow and upper cheeks so that the woman appeared to stare from the depths of a void beyond life. It was Ariadne, the marked one, mother to all witches, sister to the dancing gods and chosen envoy from the great beyond. She stepped forward, her handsome features contorted with affronted rage as her voice rasped on. "The Imperial threat is no longer theoretical when they send their bitch hound to hunt us."
The circle swayed uneasily. This was but the latest tale of a new Imperial witch hunter, a soldier with an instinct for ferreting witches out like no other. She found them in their homes, in the streets, in great cities and in enchanted glades. There was no disguise deep enough, no place remote enough to hide from the Imperial hound. Only hair's breadth escapes kept her victims from the pyres. After decades without a burning it seemed it was only a matter of time before one of their number went to the flames.
"She must be stopped," Ariadne declared, earning a murmur of agreement in response. "She must be killed."
"They say she is young." A lone voice of dissent rose against the crowd. "Perhaps she can be reasoned with."
Ariadne did not so much as deign to look at the speaker. She replied to the winds, to the circle as a whole. "Those who harm us must be punished. There can be no mercy for such an affront."
The voice came again, warm and wise through the icy gale. "If we kill her, we become as the Imperials. Worse than Imperials. Lawless brigands. Murderers."
Golden eyes flashed with deep annoyance and Ariadne made no verbal reply to the challenge, but the markings on her face began to slowly melt, changing shape to form vertical stripes slashing across high cheekbones and stopping just short of full, sensual lips. Her eyes burned brighter as the day fell into dusk. When her lips parted again, she spoke in an ancient language, lost words that were not made of sound but formed glowing words in the air, hanging for a moment before being swept away in the breeze.
Nobody spoke. All looked on with reverent awe as the mother worked her magic, a magic so powerful that only she could contain it. The winds whipped around the circle in an ever increasing frenzy, lashing at the trees so that they bent near double. In the center of rising elements, Ariadne Earthbinder stood tall. Though she was not a large woman, she seemed almost ten foot high so great was the force of her presence. Black robes whipped about her taut frame, her cloak flying back to reveal arms heavily marked with the same dark stripes and angles as those on her face. They too moved, shifting slashes of dark pigment that swam under the surface of her skin in long sinuous lines.
When the wind howled to a painful pitch and the earth itself began to tremble with the force of her passion, she reached out to the wounded witch still cowering in the center and swiped a finger across a bleeding welt. She held her red smeared finger aloft and spoke in the common tongue once more.
"By this blood I swear revenge,
By this blood we shall be protected,
By this blood the evil doer will be punished."
~~~
At Ariadne's orders the decree went forth. The witches of Lesbia were on the offensive. No longer would they cower and hide in the shadows, hoping to be passed over by those who wished them harm. There was a blood bounty on the witch hunter's head and it would almost certainly be paid. Dozens of dark witches had gone forth to claim the prize, but not all those who sought the troublesome imperial wished her harm.
Ayla had her suspicions as to the identity of her quarry - an advantage over those who had only exaggerated rumor to navigate by. But knowledge only went so far. It was imperative that she got to the soldier before any of the others did, or worse still, before Ariadne herself tracked the poor wretch down.
Fortunately for the witch hunter, Ayla's gifts were well suited to the task. Before the first day of the hunt was out, the witch stood in front of a loud and raucous forest tavern where the hunter was said to be carousing.
The moment Ayla entered the tavern it was obvious who the illustrious witch hunter was. Not a soul moved in the place without reference to a tall, muscular young woman. She had long dark hair braided and wrapped about her head, and her bare arms were covered in scars that spoke to hard living and training both. By a stroke of fortune, she was not in uniform. Instead she wore a plain black leather vest and pants. They seemed to be of good quality and well made, the trappings of a successful soldier.
Surrounded by adoring young women and men, the witch hunter regaled her little audience with tales of her adventures. Ayla could not hear the words being spoken, but she could see from the rapturous and admiring expressions on the faces of those around that they were much impressed.
Ayla was not interested in what was being said, she was too busy examining the face of the witch hunter. Yes, those were the same dark determined eyes, the same neat lips, snub nose and hard chin - though they were no longer padded with quite so thick a layer of subcutaneous fat. There was her little warrior, all grown up. It was impressive what time did to those who were human. Ayla's last memory of that soldier was as a rotund leaping ball of fury dancing about flames as her glade burned. In that wild creature's place was something much more refined, something honed by rigorous military training, carved and pressed into a perfect mold.
As Ayla watched, Kira finished her tale and grabbed a serving girl. The maid did not seem to object to being pressed up against the wall as Kira began kissing her thoroughly. The soldier really had grown up, and, judging by the way she slid her hand betwixt the maid's thighs and made motions that had the woman's head falling back, her mouth open in ecstasy, she'd learned quite a few tricks in the interim.
; The tavern was full enough that Ayla did not fear capture. In among all the carousing and drinking, she amused herself for quite a few minutes watching Kira fuck her partner into drooling submission. The expression on the maid's face was quite exquisite. She had one hand wrapped around the back of Kira's neck, holding on for dear life as Kira's leather clad thigh kept her legs spread. The soldier lacked a certain grace, but she made up for it with rough passion of the kind that made a girl weak-kneed. The witch rather enjoyed watching the soldier at play, but she felt a pang of sorrow when she saw the distant expression in Kira's eyes.
She could have watched a good while longer, for it seemed that Kira had no shortage of willing waiting partners, but time was somewhat of the essence. Walking boldly through the crowded tavern in plain view of all those who drank to sorrow and joy, Ayla approached the young captain. As she walked past, she reached out and took hold of Kira's ear in a move both bold and brazen. There was no time to wait until Kira was alone, and there was no way subtlety was going to work in a room full of drunkards.
There was a great roar of laughter as Ayla used Kira's lobe as a very effective leverage point, dragging the confused and squirming woman out of the back door to the relative privacy of the forest beyond. Once outside, she let Kira go. She stood calmly as the soldier huffed and swore and straightened her clothing, then finally looked her in the face. Dark eyes went wide with slow recognition and surprise.
"You!"
Kira stalked forward with the grace of a young panther. Ayla stood unmoving, looking down at her. Kira had grown taller in the intervening years, but not quite tall enough to go nose to nose with Ayla.
"I have been hunting you for a long time witch. Turn around and present your wrists. You are under arrest."
"You would arrest me?" Ayla spoke mildly. "After I saved your life?"
Kira set her jaw stubbornly. Yes she was grown, but there was still so much of that young soldier in the woman standing before the witch. "I will do my duty."