WITCHGRAVE

by Rachel Caine

  He was silent for a time, his eyes gone dark and lifeless. The remains of the food he had attacked with such relish grew cold between them. Abruptly, he said, "The midwife who drew me from the witchgrave died shrieking from the touch of my skin. My master, thus warned, never touched me himself. Others who did either went gloved and hooded, if he wished them to live, or came to me without warnings if he wished to test the limits of my -- venom. As he did regularly, to assure himself it was something that would not pass with the years, or grow less lethal."

  "Your touch kills."

  "A single fingertip on bare skin," he said.

  She turned to Silence. "For you, it must be either breath or voice."

  Silence's fingers flashed. "Voice," Silk translated. "He can't speak even so much as a whisper without destroying all who hear it."

  Two children, grown to manhood, who had been created by the witch for his own purposes. Assassins, yes, most definitely. Cold and flint-hard, for all their smiles and beauty, and yet wounded, too. Tatya thought of her own childhood, rough and lonely, but with at least one person's love and warmth to ease it. How cold might she now be if she had been born poisoned, and so robbed of any such kindnesses?

  "Why not kill him yourselves, then?" she asked. "Seems a waste of gold to hire me, if you're so good at the art of death."

  "Spells. Our father -- " Silk spat the word. " -- is many things, but a fool he is not. He has protected himself all his life from us, knowing how bitter our hatred is for him. We have many times tried to bring about his downfall, but he is well guarded against our particular ... talents. And one of us was always hostage for the other. We are all we have, lady. One acts, the other was punished, and the witch was ever more brutal in his torments. Even now, we cannot be sure we're beyond his reach. We can no longer risk direct opposition, but we know he must be stopped."

  "Why now?" she asked, and sopped up the last of the gravy with a crust of bread. The trembling exaltation left by the fight was well and truly gone, leaving her burned ash-gray within. She'd need to sleep soon. "Why not just leave him behind?"

  Silk and Silence regarded her for a long moment -- two pairs of eyes, different in color, alike in their flat, strange appraisal. Silence's fingers moved, but Silk did not glance toward them. "Would you do that?" he asked. "Walk away and leave him like a knife pointed at your back?"

  She knew full well that she wouldn't, but she let her shoulders raise and lower indifferently just the same. Her reasons were unimportant. Theirs could get her killed. "I might," she lied. "But in any case, you have another reason."

  The two young men regarded each other in the unspoken way of siblings. Silence's eyebrows rose. Silk sighed. "Very well," he said. "Our father -- the witch -- having lost his two prized weapons, is determined to create himself a still greater one. A true heir to his legacy. I told you that one child like us will be born in the witchgrave for every fifty women buried there." Tatya nodded impatiently. "There is a legend -- no one knows whether or not it is true -- that a greater ritual using the witchgrave could bring about a child with power over life, not death. A child who could create life, could even grant it to that which never lived. How would you fight a statue, my dear warrior lady? Or a living sword? Or an army of the dead raised against you? All this, such a child might do."

  And a child the witch could raise as his own, teach his spells and conjures, twist into any shape. "You said it was a legend."

  "It is said to have been done, once. Our master aims to do it again. His -- legacy. And we think he is close. Very close. More than a hundred women and girls have vanished from this district in the past year."

  "You said one child was born in fifty."

  "For our ritual," he said. "For this, it could be hundreds. Or thousands. No one knows. He is simply willing to continue to kill until he succeeds."

  Tatya felt a slow, fierce fire building in her guts. The two boys sitting across from her, with their cold beauty and colder eyes. They were masters of killing, and yet they feared the birth of this child. Of course. With such an heir at his disposal, the witch might no longer need these two alive.

  Silence rapped the table again, drawing their attention. His gesture and expression needed no translation from his brother. Well?

  "I shall think on it," she said, and shoved her bench back to stand. "For now, I need sleep."

  * * *

  The boys thought she was a fool, she supposed, but that was all to the best; Tatya knew at least that they had not lied to her in any particular that mattered. Still, she was not overconfident of her odds of living through the day; not one witch in this, but three at least. For all the boys protestations, they were witches, clearly, and the most dangerous sort: witches she had no choice but to trust. For now.

  She was waiting downstairs in the early darkness, lit only by the low-burning fire in the hearth, when her two young employers slipped down to join her.

  "Gods!" cried Silk, on almost falling over her. "Your pardon, I did not see you." He had gripped her by the shoulders, and she glanced down at his hands, which were gloved in fine kid leather. He quickly stepped away. "You rise early, lady."

  "It seemed a matter of urgency," she said, and shouldered her pack. She had already seen to the horses. "Dead of night or full glaring day, it makes no difference to me."

  He bowed to her, half a mockery, and she stood back to let the two precede her from the tavern. They were mounted and leaving the inn’s courtyard in moments.

  Morning was barely dawning, weak and veiled in grave-cold mist. The town was nothing but shadows in the fog. The clopping sounds of hooves were softened by the thick mud -- fetlock-deep in places -- and there were few figures moving about yet. The ones who did were dark shapes only, faceless and hidden. Tatya kept her senses alert, searching for any hint of danger, but if there was deception planned, it did not present itself so clearly.

  They did not ride up the mountain, as she expected. Instead, they continued on, past the borders of the town, until they met with the cold-meat stink of a graveyard. The unrelenting rain had turned the ground to soup, and Tatya knew that if she looked closely she'd find bones -- or bodies -- swimming out of the dark soil toward the gray light of day. It was the perfect spot for a wraith or a mournful spirit. Any twist of mist from the ground could form into a face, eyes, a mouth hungry for human souls and flesh. She'd seen it happen.

  "Here," said Silk. He seemed half-wraith himself, wrapped in a cloud-gray cloak. Next to him, Silence looked like Death, all in black, his pale skin and hair hidden from view. "This is the place."

  "Why here? Why not up there, where he lairs?" Tatya nodded up at the black bulk of the mountain, brooding and bare as a carrion crow. "What sense does it make to place his prize so far out of reach?"

  "Consecrated earth," said Silk. "It must be done in consecrated earth, and his very presence has fouled the mountain so that nothing can be called sacred there. He steals here in the dark to bury his victims, and returns to check the graves them the next night. If we are lucky, we might find one still living."

  Her flesh constricted all over her body, and she felt the hair rise on her head. She feared little, and the dead held only disgust for her, but there was something eldritch about this, truly inhuman. "There must be hundreds of dead under the ground, and the mud tells no tales. How -- ?"

  Silence gestured for quiet, and pointed to his ears. Listen.

  The mist muted all natural sounds. Silence slid from the back of his horse, sinking ankle-deep into the thick, fetid mud, and forced his way deeper into the mist. Silk sighed and kicked free of his stirrups to follow. "Well?" he demanded of Tatya.

  She dismounted without comment, and checked to be sure her sword was loose and ready in its scabbard. She kept her hand on the pommel as she followed the two witches deeper into the graveyard. It was old, this place, old and foul. It stank of plague and murder.

  A dark shape loomed in an eddy of fog -- a twisted, lightning-blasted tree, its black branches clawing
the air like a bony hand. And beneath its bare branches stood Silence, hood tossed back, white-blond hair glistening with droplets of water. As Tatya watched, he sank down to a crouch in the mud, heedless of the filth, and reached out to caress the wet ground. Then he came bolt upright, whirled, and clapped his hands sharply three times. His face was pale and strained, and as Silk joined him Silence's fingers flashed in that complex, fluid speech she could not quite understand.

  Silk turned to her, and his wild grin flashed. "Here," he said. "We dig."

  The thought of it tightened her throat. She was not womanish about such things, and blood and entrails were common currency to her, but this had a filthy chill to it. The two witches had brought digging tools, and soon all three were knees-deep in the glue-thick mud. The time went by without marking; the mist did not lighten, the sun did not show. It seemed to her that she had been trapped in this gray and sinister neverworld forever when Silk suddenly let out a wild yell.

  His rough shovel had found wood.

  The box was shallowly buried, swimming like the rest of the dead to the surface. Tatya crouched next to Silence in the black, stinking mud as he got his knife under the lid of the box and pried it away.

  The lid fell back, and Tatya knew she would carry the sight with her to her death. The woman's skin was bloated and white, and her eyes were the vivid color of cornflowers -- wide, insanely wide. Her lips were drawn back in a rictus.

  Silence lunged forward and reached in to draw her up. Tatya knew it was useless; she had more than enough acquaintance with death to recognize it. Perhaps the girl had been buried living, but she had died soon after, died hard and shrieking. Bled out, by the look of the thick red soup that dripped from her shift as he hauled her up and into his arms.

  As he did, something small and still rolled from between her knees. An infant. Small, weak, blue with cold and soaking wet. Still smeared with fresh blood, and like its mother, robbed of life.

  Silence's elation turned horror and Tatya knew, in that instant, that things were not as she'd thought after all. Silk had not lied so much as failed to convey the truth of it.

  His mouth opened.

  "No!" Silk screamed, and lunged to clap both his hands over his brother's lips. "No, you fool! She's gone! There's no use to killing the rest of us! Don't! Don't scream!"

  Had Silence truly been bent on uttering a cry, even a muffled one, she doubted that the improvised gag would have stopped him, but surely his childhood had been ruled by ruthless control. There was no need for words or cries to tell her the story of it, however. His suffering was more than enough.

  "Well?" Tatya asked, as Silk folded his brother in a fierce embrace. She slid the dead girl back into her wet, cold grave and straightened her arms and legs to give her some semblance of dignity. The child she rested on the mother's breast, which was all the cold comfort the day offered. "What now?"

  Silk sighed. "She was his," he said. "You understand? Silence's woman."

  Obvious indeed. "His child, too?"

  "No! It is as I told you. She should have come to him days ago, but when we went to fetch her, she was gone. Vanished. And we knew ... as I said, our master understands punishment." A blankness flashed across Silk's normally clever, good-humored face, and she recognized it well as unspeakable fury. "We had hoped to save her."

  "One of you did, any road," Tatya said. "How long has your master been dead, Silk?"

  He blinked at her, and if she had not had such a deeply held belief, she would have thought herself mistaken, and him innocent. The demon's own dissembler, this one, with a fair angel's face. Silk had said it himself: they had been twisted by their master. Tainted. Poisoned.

  Broken and remade.

  "When does the victim become the villain?" she asked. "When you finally destroyed your tormenter, did you realize his power was now yours? Was it only that, or something more?"

  Silk's look of bewildered injury did not change, but he slowly pulled away from Silence's trembling form, and stood. Tatya matched him, hand on the pommel of her sword.

  "You don't understand," he said. "I can create something good. Something that redeems us from all the horror we have lived and caused. Is that such a terrible sin?"

  "It is arrogance," she said. "This was done not for any higher cause. You chose to kill her to bind your brother closer."

  He was no longer listening. He pulled at the wet leather of his gloves and bared his strong, white hands, staring at her with eyes that looked into a darkness deeper than any she had known. Witch, indeed. More than a witch -- half a demon, perhaps.

  "I employed you, Witchkiller, only to placate my brother," he said. "I had long ago buried my master by moonlight as Silence slept, and so I did not need your help. I'd planned to put you in a witchgrave; it would have been a fitting punishment for your crimes. But now I think I will only -- "

  Silence parted his lips. There was something terrible on his face, a betrayal Tatya could neither comprehend nor comfortably look upon, and he drew breath to shout down doom upon all of them.

  Silk, without so much as a look in his brother's direction, said a Word of Power that rocked through Tatya and drove her back three steps, stumbling in the mud.

  And then ... darkness. It could not have lasted long, but long enough that when she found herself down, and her sword and daggers were gone.

  Silk stood a few feet away, and her weapons were in the mud behind him behind him. Silence lay crumpled beside the grave -- breathing, but asleep.

  "I watched how my father controlled him," Silk said. "Useful. I use it more and more often. He scarcely remembers."

  She spat the taste of rancid mud from her mouth and stood. "For now. Soon, you will kill him. You'll have to."

  "Never. I love him."

  "You have no love in your soul, boy, nor ever had."

  He laughed, and it was a pleasing laugh, merry and infectious. "You would lecture me, you scruffy bitch? Who ever loved a creature as unnatural as you? Who will ever mourn you?"

  He lunged for her, hands outstretched, and fastened his cold, cold hands on the exposed wet skin of her face. She felt it race through her, his curse ... death, strong and icy. It found her heart and squeezed it in a vice, and darkness fell over her ...

  ... and then lifted.

  She closed her eyes, opened them, and looked square into his face. His look of triumph turned to horror.

  "You proclaimed it yourself," she said. "The ritual had already succeeded once. Your master was only seeking to replicate it."

  He cried out, angry and terrified, and jerked a knife from his robes. She did not move. The knife jabbed, went deep in her side, and withdrew. Momentary agony. He did it again, and again, and then backed away wild-eyed and panting.

  "My mother escaped the witchgrave," she said. "I was raised in love, and death does not touch me. You may think on that, boy, because it is as much a curse as what you bear. Nothing touches me. Nothing kills me. Not even you."

  Tatya shoved him away with one hand flat against his chest, and he tripped, screamed, and turned to bolt for freedom.

  "I would not," she said. "There are dark things in this mist today. And in any case, it will not matter. You cannot kill me, and you cannot escape me. I came here for you, Silk."

  He ran.

  * * *

  Silence woke long moments later. He was confused, of course. She explained it as baldly as she could -- all the cold betrayal, all the prices he had paid. Tatya watched him as he wept.

  "You can speak to me, boy. I trust you know how. You won't harm me."

  His voice, when he managed to produce one, was a raw croak. His words were clumsy with disuse and barely recognized. "Thank you."

  She felt the unmistakable shock of his curse ripple through her. Silk had not lied about it: Silence carried a powerful taint. "You shouldn't thank me," she said. "I may still kill you. If you follow the ways of your brother, I will."

  He nodded. Tears glittered in his deep, lovely eyes. "He was -- a
ll I had."

  "He would have killed you, sooner or later. Once you ceased to worship him, it would have been as simple as fingertips on your forehead as you slept." Tatya finished cleaning the muck from her weapons and slid them back into their sheaths. "Bring the woman and the child."

  Silence blinked. "What?"

  "Bring them."

  She walked away, through the mist, and heard his raw, hoarse breathing as he struggled with his anguish, then obeyed her. She led the way back to the horses -- Silk's was gone, of course, no doubt heading up-mountain. Silence followed, the girl in his arms, with her child still tucked lifeless between them.

  "Put them down," Tatya said, and he did, arranging the girl with care, as if she could still feel pain. "Cut the cord."

  He hesitated, frowning at her, and she sighed impatiently, pulled her own dagger, and sliced through the tough gray flesh connecting mother to child without a qualm.

  Then she reached down and spilled life into the woman with a brush of fingertips across her lips. After her, the child.

  Flesh slowly turned from the color of ash to pale snow, and then to pink. The girl breathed a deep and whispering breath, like someone dreaming, and smiled.

  The child cried, weak and angry, and her eyes opened in surprise. "I dreamed -- " she said. "I dreamed -- "

  Silence was weeping. Tatya slammed her dagger back in its sheath with an impatient motion. "Enough," she said. "She'll freeze if you don't make her warm, and the child as well. They're your responsibility now, boy. Don't be your brother or I'll find you."

  He swallowed convulsively, nodding. The girl, weak as she was, rolled toward him, into his arms, with the baby cradled in her own. A small, ridiculously damaged family, but one where love might, against all odds, find a foothold.

  Tatya stood. She was weary, and unreasonably angry and cold.

  Alone, as always.

  Silence reached out to her when she turned to go, and his fingers flew gracefully.