“They seem a bit sickly.”
“Oh my pretty, there’s very little food here! What’s more, that son of whore is being punished. He’ll eat next week.”
“Squeeze tight,” Silla says softly into Ahsto’s ear. She takes the knife from the flames and, after letting it cool for a few seconds, buries it next to the arrow’s shaft, eliciting a muffled scream from her patient. The sickeningly-sweet smell of burning flesh assaults her nostrils.
“And how did he get in trouble?” asks Silla, while she digs to find the arrowhead.
The old woman laughs. “One night I was bored to pieces so I ordered him to give me a bit of joy. His hands did their duty. Well perhaps a little stiff, but it got the job done. Then I asked him to give this poor body of mine a good once over and that bastard just lay there, limp as a deerskin.”
A smile escapes Silla while she tries to keep Ahsto’s arm still as it shudders with involuntary tremors.
“Certain impulses are difficult to command,” she remarks.
“Yes, what a shame. But then, out of curiosity, I made him screw that other one and damn! You could see the magic. He seemed very happy, as he did it.”
Silla manages to wedge the knife’s point under the tip of the arrow. With infinite care, she begins applying leverage to extract it. The point is at its limit and could snap at any moment.
“Let me guess,” Silla says, her forehead beaded with sweat. “I bet that each day, after that, you had them copulate and he didn’t miss a beat.”
“I’m not that depraved, Sister. It was a moment of weakness.”
“There we are.” With a final push Silla uproots the entire barb from Ahsto’s shoulder. The man, out of pain, has dug his fingernails into his palm until it bled and he stares at her with his eye bulging out of their sockets.
“Now,” Silla continues, “will you help me track down my lost sister?”
“It’s a very exhausting spell.” The old woman scratches her muzzle. “I’d happily do it, but… you know it isn’t like Gothland here where the fucking Council provides for the elderly, sending young sorceresses like you to look after them and even to wipe their asses, if necessary. I’m all alone.”
Silla twists her mouth, but doesn’t answer back. Maybe compared to that old crone she really is a young witch. But if she were to look her straight in the eye, even this human fossil would see how many cold winters she’s had to endure and how many friends she’s buried.
“I have a gift for you.” Silla takes off a silver ring with a dark aquamarine stone set at its center. She places it on the table half way better the two of them.
“It’s a family heirloom,” she says. “My clan’s motto is engraved on the inside. It’s very ancient, over three hundred years old—and it’s magic, obviously.”
“What are its powers?”
“It’s a jewel of hope. When everything around you seems lost and your strength leaves you, if you squeeze this ring, a hint of comfort will lighten your heart and you’ll start to see new solutions and ways out, even in the most desperate situations.”
“A very useful gift.” The harpy reaches with a chubby hand, black grit along the edge of her nails, and passes it over the ring, without touching it. “But not here. I need traps for animals, the wall of fear to keep away the peasants and hybrids, a mattress and wine for the demon! It’s going on a year that I haven’t had a drop of wine.”
“So it’s never happened,” Silla asks, with a honeyed voice, “that you’ve felt despair between these four walls?” She twists her head to the right and left and brings a hand up to her mouth. “Oh, how fortunate, my sister! Then you really do have no use for it.”
“Nevertheless,” Paulka stretches out her hand, preempting Silla who was drawing closer to the ring, “it could end up being useful. Is it really as powerful as you say?”
“I am a Blue Mountain. And even a sister at the edge of the earth like you must have heard the name of my family. I’m true to my word, on my honor, witch to witch.”
“Ho, ho, ho, what arrogance. But I want to believe. To search for your sister, we must join in a circle and you must show me her demon. Do you have her magic imprint?”
“Of course, I’ve connected with Alina dozens of times. But who will be our third to close the circle?”
The old hen shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. This is my gift, and I could almost sustain the spell by myself. Her,” she points to the catatonic woman on the floor, “she’ll be our third.”
The idea of joining herself with that madwoman and the creature without sentience makes the hair on the back of Silla’s neck rise, but it’s too late now to pull back.
“This is going to hurt,” Silla murmurs, turning to the man. She takes the second knife from the fire, red with heat, and before Ahsto can answer her, she places the flat side of the blade against his wound, cauterizing its edges. The rogue shouts wildly until he collapses to the ground, short of breath, trembling with uncontrollable spasms. She examines her work, pleased, and throws the knives back in the murky bucket.
“Okay,” Silla concludes, rising to her feet. “Let’s begin.”
Paulka pushes off her canes until she manages to lift herself with difficulty. “You! Shit!”
The woman on the ground spins her head around like a doll.
“I rechristened her thus, after… eh, you understand,” the harpy mumbles, accompanied by a toothless smile. “Come here! On your feet, you horrid thing.”
Stiff, as if a spiteful giant were moving her one limb at a time, the woman rises and places herself beside her mistress.
“Spread out your arms, like this. Good, Shit. Almost as good at that as spreading your thighs.”
Silla tries to keep focused, but she can’t help but sneak a quick look at her. She has red hair caked with mud. A rag covers one of her shoulders and breasts leaving half her chest naked. A type of canvas skirt, open at the side, completes her wardrobe; she’s wearing nothing underneath. She has a split lip and the signs of mouse bites on her legs, but the most disturbing thing about that poor thing is her sky blue gaze. Every part of her body seems indifferent to her miserable condition, but her eyes betray that. Behind that hideous mask, there’s still a faint will, begging for help.
Silla grasps the stranger’s dry hand and the flabby one of the aged witch. Holding back her own consciousness as much as possible to avoid contact with those alien minds, she begins to breathe.
She channels the terrestrial energy through her feet, making it run up her calves to her knees. The magnetic intensity of the earth comes powerfully out of the mud on which the hut lies. Paulka built her hovel here because it’s a place steeped with ancient powers.
The witch directs the fury into her sex, reawakening the generative energy that nature bestowed on her. She concentrates the heat in her sheath and lets loose a whimper of pleasure. Her thoughts run to the imminent Sabbath and to all the others she’s already experienced, where insatiable lovers thrusted into her body to the drums’ rhythm until it makes her spine arch with desire. Now she feels like she’s breathing flames and with each inhale her lungs fill with lava, warming up her heart. The destroyer of worlds comet punctures the darkness of her soul, flying at dizzying speed in deep space. An icy, azure light, ready to ignite as soon as it encounters the atmosphere of a defenseless planet.
Silla lets her force flow through her arms and hands, joining, carefully, with that of the others. On her right she feels the sorceress’s heat. A slime-covered salamander, with cold black eyes, without a hint of human compassion. The being thrashes in a sea of blazing coals, moaning violently when its footpads touch a brick that isn’t as red-hot as the others.
With caution, Silla drives her consciousness to the tip of her left hand, to find… nothing!
A milky sensation wraps around her as she delves into the deepest of fogs. She tries to maintain visual contact with the comet close to her heart, inside that lost consciousness she too needs to struggle not to lose herself.
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br /> While she shrewdly pulls back her vision, it seems to catch a glimpse of some shadow through the mists and she pauses a moment, curious. The evil salamander calls to her, but in the distance she hears children’s laughter, the warmth of a hearth, the hug of a loved one. Almost invisible, buried under an ocean of gray suffering.
Dried out by that mute pain, Silla drags her mind back.
Ready? Paulka whispers in her head.
Silla projects upward, as if an invisible balloon lifted her several hundred yards over the house. The world appears to her sketched out with minimal details; if she turns her head downward she can make out Paulka’s shack, while in the distance are the moored airships of Warsaw. Only the colors of that world are wrong: the sky is dark green and the forest below her is stone gray.
The brush moves on the east side of the house and Silla sees a half dozen men, lying in wait along the main path.
Friends of yours? asks Paulka.
Right. We’ll have to exit along the side of the cliff to avoid them. Can you keep them at bay?
I’ve done it for almost thirty years. Now, let me feel your sister’s demon.
Silla allows the old woman to weave her long fingers into her subconscious mind until they caress her memories of Alina and of the many magical connections they’ve shared. Alina’s face, with brown hair in front of her big slate-colored eyes and her radiant smile pass before Silla, clamping her heart with a painful grip. Beneath that angelic visage snarls the cunning rain dragon, the magic brand of the Santuinis.
I’ve got it, Paulka exclaims.
In that strange green and gray plane, Silla sees a bird materialize with a hooked beak and reddish plumage. Next to it hovers a dun sparrow with its eyes closed. She looks at her hands to see the end of two wings black as night.
She darts off to follow the other two fantastic birds, swiftly gaining incredible speed. Paulka, in her buzzard form, guides her, over the valleys, rivers, and lakes until a weak golden thread can be seen on the horizon.
There she is, the ancient woman broadcasts. She’s passed by here, but the trail is faint, it must have been last week.
Silla climbs higher trying to identify mountains, rivers and cities, until she pinpoints an illuminated peak.
What city is that? she asks.
It’s Lviv. They travelled to the south without stopping. She was on an airship?
Yes.
Look, Paulka descends in a nosedive, following the golden ribbon of the trail the young woman left behind, which stops over a dense forest. The magic imprint expands until it assumes the appearance of a fat funnel aimed downward.
You see? the old woman says. She used her demon here.
What devil could have forced Alina to awaken the dragon there, right in the middle of nowhere? The trail turns around, thus they follow it until they’re over the wreckage of an airship that fell from the sky.
“Silent Fathom,” it reads on the torn frame. An airship of the English navy. “By sea, by earth, by the Queen,” Silla whispers, like a silent prayer for the soldiers perished in that disaster. The gold thread continues its course toward the east and they resume their tracking. After a short time though their speed lessens and Silla feels the sting of exhaustion holding back the wings of her imaginary crow.
We need to go back, Paulka says. We’re too far away, I have no more power here.
Silla glimpses the coast of the Black Sea, stirred up by its deadly clouds, a few miles further ahead.
The buzzard veers north, followed by the gray sparrow. Silla would like to push herself further east but, no matter how much she beats her wings, she can’t advance more than a few feet. So she joins the other two, immediately matching their wild velocity. They complete a wide arc flying north until they’re lapping the Baltic coast, and then drop back down, touching the low range of the Beskidy Mountains in the south of Poland, but they don’t find any more signs. After almost an hour of rapid progress, they find themselves back above the hut. Silla lets her consciousness slide downward, regaining awareness of her physical body. In her heart, the comet has continued its orbit and now it's wrapped in a whirlwind of fire and destruction. She controls her breathing, trying to calm it down again.
Just as she’s about to let go of their hands, she hears one last desperate scream on her left, distant, as if it came from under a thick dusty blanket.
Disturbed, Silla breaks contact with the other two. Her temples boil and her heart is in a tumult. Her jaw clenches nervously; she needs to quiet her demon or she could lose her self-control.
The other witch watches her with eyes black like the ocean bottom.
“I had you complete a wide tour. But I’m certain she hasn’t come back. Your friend was led pretty far east, yes?”
“Yes.” Silla feels the coach pressing on her back, as he shoves Silla into the mud, frustrating her attempts to get back up. Get up and attack! Get off your ass and attack, Silla. It feels like she still has the taste of dirt in her mouth. She must manage to keep control. A hoarse, unintelligible sound escapes her mouth.
“What is it?” the other witch asks. “My magic is pretty strong, eh?” she says mocking her.
“You must… you must free these two, Paulka.” Silla did not want to speak the sentence but, like a mouthful too large to swallow, she needed to spit those words out, unable to hold them back. The comet sails along its dark trajectory unperturbed, by now unstoppable.
“Why in the world? Do you want me to starve to death?”
“At least the woman! She has three children waiting for her at home, I saw it!”
“Nah. Then Mirek would be bored to death.” The woman gives another sneer and spits into the fireplace.
Silla tightens her fist. “You know,” she snarls, her upper lip curling in disgust, “there are other advantages to staying under the Rule besides taking care of decrepit witches.”
She freezes but inside herself she senses the furious vibrations of the celestial object, anxious to launch itself at a solid body.
“Oh yes?” the old woman cackles. “And what would those be?”
“You can take the potion every year. That keeps you young,” Silla points at her face, “beautiful and… agile!” With a sudden kick she knocks down the stick on which the woman is leaning heavily, making her crash to the ground. She grabs the crutch and brandishes it over the old crone, raising it over her head.
Kill! Kill! You’re a machine, Silla, kill!
She shakes her head and tries to clear her thoughts.
“Bastard! Whore!” the other woman yells.
“Stop it or I’ll smash your head open like a ripe melon. It’s your fault, damned woman, because of witches like you that hundreds of our sisters burn at the stake every year! Why did you kidnap these two poor carrot-eaters? The Rule doesn’t allow us to subjugate non-magical beings against their volition.”
“Fuck the Rule! You’re a fool!”
“Don’t you understand? The Rule isn’t to protect these idiots, but to protect us! A witch who uses her power to steal the will of another human being loses her own soul. And her wits! Not to mention the blind hatred she lets loose against our whole community, when she’s found out. Ahsto?”
“Uhn,” a groan coming from behind her. “I’m with you.”
“Go outside and fetch my weapons.”
With difficulty, the man gets up and crosses to the door where he gathers Silla’s revolver and their two knives.
“What do you intend to do?” A shadow of terror plays across Paulka’s face.
“Such haste. You’ll find out shortly.”
Silla grabs the pistol and points it toward the other witch without even taking it out of the holster. She throws the crutch to the ground and nears the woman with the red hair. She places a hand on her head and, with a light pressure from her fingers, shatters the chains of submission. The woman collapses to the ground with a scream.
“Mirek,” Paulka shrieks, “run into the woods, quickly! Hide!”
The man, with his bizarre disjointed movements, hurries toward the exit. Silla follows his back with the barrel of her pistol unsure whether to shoot and put an end to his suffering or leave the wretch to his gloomy fate. This hesitation lets her target escape out of the hut.
“Ha, ha,” the crone laughs. “That Don Juan is too useful to me.”
“You’re insane,” Silla concludes. “Let’s go, Ahsto. Take the woman.”
“I can just about prop myself up on my own.”
“Take her or I’ll leave you here,” Silla storms. “Your choice.”
The rogue, wheezing like a kettle on the stove, puts an arm around the poor woman’s neck, on the side of his good shoulder. “Up, up,” he mumbles, trying to rouse her with slaps on the cheek.
“One day I’ll have your pretty hide, you whore,” Paulka hisses once again.
Silla starts to walk backward, covering the retreat of the other two who hobble out of the shack.
Kill her. Don’t leave an enemy at your back. But the war is over after all, and the coach falls back into obscurity.
She lowers the shaft of the weapon a few degrees. “Get in line then, there’s already plenty of people clamoring for me. Every one of them that’s tried it up until now is looking at the sky from beneath six feet of dirt; so just know it’s a dangerous game. I’ll leave you the ring, because I keep my word. My name is carved into the inside for whenever you might find the courage to come looking for me.”
“To hell with you!”
Silla fastens the holster around her and, crossing the threshold, she flanks the red-haired woman, supporting her on the other side. The unlucky soul raises her gaze, searching her out with her eyes, two depths of anguish and blind terror.
“You…you…saved my life,” she stammers.
“It’s all over.”
“I will never forget this. I owe you everything, my lady. You’ve given me the gift of a new life.”
“Normally my gifts run in the other direction,” Silla gives a hint of a smile, “but sometimes even an assassin’s heart skips a beat. Let’s move it now. The house is surrounded to the North by Igor’s band; we need to cut across the cliff.”
The Codex of the Witch: Fantasy Novel Page 23