Daughter of Lies and Ruin

by Jo Spurrier

  The lion must be in bad shape. I’d seen Toro trample him — hells, I was pretty sure he’d rolled over the beast when he’d come charging in, and being crushed by half a ton of horse was no joke, even to a lion. I’d known the beast was injured, but it only now occurred to me that he might be dying.

  If I’d been in my own skin, I would have gnawed on a thumbnail as I sat and thought, watching bluebottles buzz around the drying smears. Aleida had said this might be the end of it, but we’d also reasoned that this witch had transformed her captives for some purpose. If the lion died before that purpose was fulfilled, would she still be willing to let us walk away?

  I should probably return and tell Aleida, I thought. I nearly did it, too. But then I thought a little more. Aleida would still be resting, and it was probably worth knowing if the lion made it back to the witch’s lair. He’d left a clear trail behind him, it would be simple to follow the tracks and see what was going on.

  I studied the sky again. No black speck. I’d do it, I decided.

  CHAPTER 7

  I set out with renewed caution, fluttering from tree to tree. The lion had headed almost due north, leaving lots of blood behind him. If I was back home at Burswood Farm and sent to find a beast bleeding as much as this I’d expect to find it dead under a bush somewhere.

  In the end I was nearly right.

  I perched on a twig hiding under the leaves, holding very still as the lion lay in the dust. The only movement was the rise and fall of his ribs as he panted with shallow breaths.

  About a hundred yards away stood the remains of a crumbling stone building. Perhaps it was an old hunting lodge, or a guards’ post — there wasn’t enough left of it for me to tell. A wooden wall had been built around it, but I use the words ‘wall’ and ‘built’ loosely. Some of the wood had been shaped into planks, but most of it was just sticks and branches, woven and knotted together with vines. At a glance it seemed like something built for privacy more than protection, but after spending the summer learning about Aleida’s gardens and orchard I wouldn’t like to test the idea. Smoke rose from somewhere behind the wall, and even from this distance, even with the sparrow’s nose, I could tell that it didn’t smell too good.

  Up ahead the bear waited by the gate, swaying from foot to foot and making a low, guttural cry. He kept looking back at the fallen lion, but never came back to check on his companion. He just stood there, swaying and making a deep moan.

  I flitted closer, moving from tree to tree, but when the gate began to move I dived into cover.

  A woman heaved the gate open. It had no hinges, only more vines, but she moved it as though it weighed nothing at all. She said nothing, made no expression as she looked the bear over, but when her gaze fell on the lion her face twisted into a countenance of displeasure, and she stalked along the path towards him.

  She didn’t look old. That surprised me for some reason. I’d only briefly glimpsed Gyssha, Aleida’s old teacher, and she’d been old and wizened, with skin like crumpled paper and limbs like sticks. This woman seemed to be of middle years, with sun-browned skin and muscular arms. She wore a leather jerkin that left her arms and shoulders bare, and a battered and filthy piece of cloth wrapped around her hips for a skirt, beneath which her feet and legs were naked. Her reddish hair was a mass of knots and tangles, and her arms were covered with little black marks; tattoos, but nothing like the ones worn by the marked men. These were a complex pattern of dots, triangles and lines, arranged in an odd geometry.

  She walked up to the lion and prodded him with her foot. He stirred, raising his head in a snarl, but then let it fall again to lie still in the dust. Hands on hips, the witch paced back and forth, muttering in a voice too low for me to make out. She gestured to the beast to stand, and with a growl of pain it tried, only to fall back to the dirt. After a few mumbled curses, the witch stalked back to the walled yard. At her signal, the bear fell into step behind her.

  While she was out of sight, I took the opportunity to move closer, darting from tree to tree before taking shelter on a branch hanging over the wall. I was on dangerous ground now, coming so close, but I wanted to know what had become of the rest of Toro’s troupe.

  Beyond the wall was . . . filth. Filth and rot and decay. I don’t know how else to describe it. Animal waste lay in piles, and strewn among the heaps of dung were mouldering bones, some still clinging to scraps of skin and hair. Just inside the gate was a stout wooden post sunk into the ground, attached to which were a few feet of stout chain and a heavy collar, lying empty, with the ground around it cleared of rubbish in a circle a few feet wide. There were other such posts around the yard but they all seemed to be abandoned, save another with an empty collar like the first.

  There was one other exception to the trash and filth that littered the yard — the far corner away from the gate held a simple pen where two snowy white horses stood, watching with interest as their mistress returned. Two beautiful horses, I remembered Toro saying about their first encounter with the witch. Their coats were immaculate, and their pen looked like the cleanest spot in the whole place, including what I could see of the ruined building through the missing door.

  I watched, hunkering motionless on my perch while the witch ducked through the doorway and returned with a coil of rope. She slung it over her shoulder and, with an imperious gesture, beckoned the bear to follow her.

  A shadow overhead made me duck instinctively, and the eagle I’d been watching out for glided down towards her. With a quick glance upwards, the witch held out her arm and the eagle settled onto her bare skin, flapping vast wings to keep its balance. I winced at the thought of those huge talons, and the weight of that enormous bird, but the witch seemed not to notice either. When they reached the lion, the eagle flapped down to perch on the beast’s hip, and the witch crouched down, uncoiling the rope. The lion snarled again, but the witch paid it absolutely no mind as she worked the rope under its front legs, wrapping it around the beast’s chest. She was making a crude harness, I realised, to haul him the rest of the way home.

  I glanced back to the ruined building. She’d be occupied there for a good few minutes. Long enough for me to scout inside and see what else I could learn. I took one last look at the peculiar group on the road to make sure no one was looking my way, and then I hopped off the perch and fluttered into the crumbling ruin.

  Inside, the first thing I noted was a perch for the eagle — a stout branch wedged into a corner between cracks in the stone, with a veritable heap of droppings underneath. Nearby, also crammed under the remaining section of roof, was a pile of rags and old furs. It took me a moment to realise that it was the witch’s bed, though it looked more like a nest, and didn’t smell much better than the rest of the place.

  A little deeper into the building, past a sagging, half-fallen roof beam was a set of stairs, leading downwards into a basement.

  Wings fluttering, I hopped closer. There was a light burning down there — yellow lamplight gleamed over the old stones, slick with moss. I could feel something down there.

  It was strange the way senses worked when borrowing. My own body was miles away, somewhere far underground, taking deep, slow breaths as I lay in a trance. I didn’t entirely understand how I could sense magic and power even with my own flesh and blood, let alone with the tiny borrowed body of this little sparrow; yet I could sense the power welling up from below. I could feel it as clearly as you can feel heat from a hearthstone, or the sun on your face. The witch had a working afoot down there underground.

  This was a bad idea, I knew it — but I was here now and I’d likely never get another chance to spy on her workings. Aleida would already be mad that I’d come this close — was I really going to go back and admit to what I’d done without learning anything about what the witch was doing here? There was no time to check what progress the witch had made out on the road and figure out how long I might have before she returned. It was now or never.

  With the sparrow’s tiny heart beating
hard, I hopped down into the dank, musty darkness.

  The staircase curved down in a tight spiral, and the witch’s feet had torn the delicate moss away from the stone.

  At the foot of the steps I fluttered down to a flagstone floor. There was a scattering of candles burning around the chamber, casting a flickering yellow light over the . . . piles, on the floor. There were eight of them, and at first sight they reminded me of the wooden blocks my little siblings played with, stacked up to make houses or towers or whatever they took it into their heads to create. Only these towers were made of bones, carefully stacked like the beams of a log cabin. At the very top of each tower was a skull, staring towards the centre of the room with vacant eyes. The tower nearest to me had a skull as long as my arm, a grotesque thing of pitted, bubbling bone, a long snout and dozens of conical teeth. Crocodile, I thought to myself, remembering the greenish, knobbly creature in the bestiary. Another looked like the head of a bull, only the horns were not like any bull I’d ever seen. A few others were familiar creatures, but others came from beasts I’d never seen, some so strange that I couldn’t begin to imagine what they must have looked like in life. As I moved past I noticed a glimmer from within the tower of stacked bone, and peering closer I found a large crystal inside the grisly structure, black as obsidian, gleaming darkly inside the shadows.

  The piles were arranged in a careful pattern, laid out in curving lines that spiralled into the centre of the room. I hopped closer, trying to keep close to the piles of bones for cover; and trying to ignore the panic of the sparrow at being down here in the dark, away from the sky, and surrounded by the stench of blood and death.

  As I rounded the pile of crocodile bones I saw something else — a symbol inscribed in the rock of the floor, glowing a deep and smoky red, a complex shape of lines and circles and dots.

  There was one beside each pile of bones, each of them different, each of them glowing — except at the centre of the chamber, where the grotesque pattern had not been completed. There, I found four more symbols drawn onto the floor, but where the others gave off a sullen glow, these were drawn with a thick white paste. There was one in the centre too, larger and even more complex than the others. Her working was still underway, I realised. Whatever she was doing, she hadn’t finished it yet.

  All right, I decided. I’d seen enough. I took flight, but as I flapped up towards the rafters I heard a woman’s voice drifting down from above and a low, rumbling growl from one of the beasts under her spell.

  Time to go. Definitely time to go.

  As I glided under the heavy roof beams an odd lump on one of them caught my eye. It was a mounded shape, like someone had coiled a rope and hung it across a rafter just so. Then, I saw the gleam of lamplight on a small black eye, and a flicker of movement from a darting tongue.

  I folded my wings and dropped like a stone as the snake struck, mouth gaping wide and fangs glistening with wetness. The first strike missed by a hair’s breadth — I felt the movement of the air over my back, and the spray of its venom settling over my feathers. Then, flapping hard, I shot up the stairwell and banked at the top, turning to dart through the doorway and out into the open air.

  But the moment I saw the doorway I realised there was something wrong — a net of light was strung across the opening, like a spiderweb glowing in red and orange. There was no time to slow or change direction, I was moving too fast, and in any case staying inside was a death-trap with that snake behind me. I shot through the web.

  I expected it to catch me and hold me fast, but I flew through the net without resistance — it shattered at my touch, though I could feel motes of power clinging to me. For a moment I was utterly disoriented — if it wasn’t there to catch me, what purpose did it serve? I caught a brief glimpse of the witch, looking up at me with a satisfied smile. But then I was flying on, as fast as my little wings would take me.

  Then, a shadow passed overhead, and I felt as though my heart would stop. The eagle. My sparrow knew what that meant as well as I did, and I felt his wordless desperation, his primal fear. I had to get to the safety of the trees, then we might stand a chance.

  Or . . .

  Or I could abandon ship.

  My gut twisted at the thought. No, I’d brought the little creature into this mess, I couldn’t just abandon it. I couldn’t.

  I couldn’t.

  I tried to lighten my hold on the sparrow, shift my senses back to my own body, safe in the cave miles away from here, but I couldn’t shift away, I was bound to this tiny body, the labouring heart and heaving lungs. That was what that spell had done, I realised, not a web to catch this tiny bird but a web to bind me to the beast I’d borrowed.

  If I could have, I would have screamed, but all I could manage was a tiny, terrified peep.

  Then the shadow passed over me again and something struck me from above with crushing force.

  There was blood in my mouth, blood in my throat, choking me. An awful pain in my chest, crushing, tearing. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t breathe. I felt like my ribs had been turned to spears, all of them piercing through me.

  There was something above me, someone — I could feel their warmth, their mass. ‘Breathe,’ said a voice. ‘Breathe, Dee.’

  I knew that voice. My teacher. I tried to draw a breath, but my chest wouldn’t work. My lungs felt like a punctured bellows. I was drowning in blood.

  Aleida’s hands were cupping my face, fingertips digging into my cheeks, and I could feel her breath on my skin. ‘Breathe, Dee! You listen to me, girl! Mind over matter, that’s all magic is; your mind imposing its will on the universe. She’s tricked you, you understand? She bound you to the bird and killed the bird, but it’s the sparrow dying, not you!’

  I gaped at her, trying to swallow, trying to gasp, but nothing worked. I could feel my mouth gulping like a landed fish, drowning in air. Hot blood soaked my chemise under my leather stays, and welled in my throat in a choking tide. I could feel the talons between my ribs, feel the broken bones. My vision was going dark, lungs starved for air, filling with blood.

  ‘No!’ Aleida yelled into my face. ‘No! Don’t let that bitch kill you, Dee! It’s not real! Push it away, take a damn breath. You can do it. You have to trust me, you have to listen! Mind over matter, that’s all this is. She’s using your mind against you. You’re just feeling an echo from the sparrow’s body, don’t fall for it! You can control it, push it away. Take a damn breath!’

  But . . . but . . . I could feel the talons. I could feel the broken ribs, crushed to splinters. I could feel the mind starved of air and losing blood, starting to shut down. But I saw my teacher’s face looming over mine, brows knotted in worry, eyes narrowed in rage.

  I pushed the pain away, tried to focus. I could feel my hands slack on the rocks beneath me. Nestled in one palm were two small, rough stones. Faintly I remembered plucking them out of the pebbles at the water’s edge. I clenched my fist, feeling them dig into my palm, and forced my chest to rise. It hurt, it hurt like a handful of broken glass. No, I said to myself. It’s not real. Don’t believe it. There were no talons between my ribs, no splintered bones. I clenched the stones tight in my palm, hard enough to bruise. That was the real pain, not this echo in my head. Mind over matter, I said to myself. It’s not real. I took another breath, and began to cough and splutter over the blood in my throat.

  Aleida had been straddling me, holding my face in her hands, but now she swiftly moved away and helped me turn over as I coughed and retched. She pounded me on the back as I vomited blood onto the stones.

  When at last it was finished, she caught me by the shoulders and shoved me back against the wall. ‘You absolute idiot! What in the hells were you thinking?’

  ‘I — I just—’

  ‘She almost killed you! Have you got wool for brains? Lord and Lady, what possessed you to do something so stupid?’

  I squeezed my eyes shut, the taste of blood and bile still thick in my mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’

  �
��Sorry? Sorry? You’d bloody better be sorry, you little wretch! Why would you do something so bone-headed?’

  All I could do was look at her with tears pouring down my face. My belly hurt from the force of retching up swallowed blood. My ribs stung and ached from the memory of the eagle’s talons, and my shift beneath my stays was soaked and sticky. For a moment I tried to convince myself it was only sweat, but I knew better. It wasn’t sweat, it was blood. I was soaked in it, surrounded by the iron stink of it, sticky and foul as it clotted against my skin.

  ‘Well?’ Aleida snarled, looming over me.

  ‘I — I — I thought I could get in and out before she saw me,’ I said with a gulp. ‘She was outside, dealing with the lion, he was hurt too bad to make it back by himself. I, I knew it was a bad idea, I knew . . . I’m sorry, miss.’

  She sat back on her heels with a glare that made me wither. ‘And yet you did it anyway! Damn it, Dee, she almost killed you! If I’d done something so stupid with Gyssha she’d have sat back and let me die! If you knew it was a bad idea, why in the hells did you do it? Listen to your godsdamn instincts, I’ve told you that a thousand times!’

  I found myself nodding. ‘I, I know, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’ she demanded.

  I looked away. Why had I done it? I knew it was foolish, but I’d done it anyway. Maybe I was stupid. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this life after all. ‘I don’t know,’ I said in a bare whisper.

  ‘Don’t give me that horseshit,’ she growled, raking her hair back with bloody hands, leaving red streaks along her temples. She glanced around and I remembered the rest of the bandits then, and stole a look across the cavern. They’d fallen very quiet, and were watching us while trying to make it look like they weren’t. ‘You’d bloody well better learn from this, kid. Your mind has power, don’t ever forget that. You let yourself get bound up with the bird, and when she killed it your mind imposed those wounds on your real body. She damn near tricked you into letting your own mind kill you, and next time I might not be able to talk you down.’