by D. P. Prior
“Tey? She’s just shy, not crazy.” People said she was, though, till Snaith shut their mouths for them.
“Did I tell you she refused me?” Theurig said. “Only a select few do I ink myself, and she turned me down, said she’d mark herself. Can you imagine?”
“And now I refuse you,” Snaith said. It was too late as far as the tattoo was concerned, but he could still deny Theurig what he really wanted. “In seven days it is the Proving. I will put down every opponent that stands in front of me, bounce their heads from the ground. I will win the circle fights, Theurig. I will be a warrior, the best of the best. And then I will claim my bride.”
“Still you will not turn from this path?”
“My father’s a warrior. My mother, too. My grandfather—”
“A great chief, in his time,” Theurig said. “A great man. But a different man. I’ve tried leading you gently, but I would be negligent were I not to make it absolutely clear: the Weyd has chosen you, Snaith Harrow. Only a fool would pretend not to hear.”
“We’ll see,” Snaith said. “What will you do when I triumph at the Proving? No one succeeds at anything unless the Weyd wills it. Isn’t that what you used to say?”
“I did say that, but there is so much more I did not say.”
“Such as?”
“Too much. It would take too long. A lifetime.”
“Then you will let me compete?”
Theurig stepped in close, locked eyes with Snaith. “How could I prevent it? I am but the messenger. It is not my place to compel. The Weyd imbues us with freedom to choose.”
Snaith brushed past the sorcerer and snatched up his shirt and knapsack. He dressed quickly, desperate to cover the insult upon his chest.
“Try not to be rash,” Theurig said, dismissing the old women with a waggle of his fingers.
“Rest assured, Theurig, I am never rash.”
And that was the truth of it. If anything, Snaith thought things through too much, each and every permutation rattling round and round his mind until he reached a decision, or more often than not, an impasse. It was one of the things that made him so angry: what Theurig had done wasn’t just a desecration of all that he stood for, all that he aspired to be; it would stoke his seething thoughts for days. Lock him up in a futile and torturous battle within his own skull to straighten it all out, untangle the knots, find a solution, even though there could never be one. How could there be when the inking was permanent, when the decision had already been made?
Snaith shouldered his knapsack and strode for the gate.
“I will pray for you,” Theurig said.
May the malecs in the Nethers shit on your moldering corpse, Snaith thought as he latched the gate behind him.
He should have been terrified at having just cursed a sorcerer. Theurig never tired of telling the clan that was the worst possible affront to the Weyd. But he was too angry for fear, too far gone to give a damn. The sorcerer had shamed him with the Wyvern of Necras, stolen his dreams of greatness. The one thing left to him was defiance.
No one had done it before—opposed a sorcerer and lived. But no one had what Snaith had: his drive, his conviction, his singleminded focus.
See a thing clearly enough, Theurig had once taught at the schoolhouse, see it in your mind, and not all the clans of Branikdür will be able to stop you achieving it. Not even the Empire of Hélum. Perhaps not even the Weyd itself.
THE SHEDIM
Tey Moonshine knew she was dreaming. She could read it in the patterns of scars that covered her goose-pimpled flesh. Her nakedness was a dead giveaway; moments ago she’d been fully clothed as she crumpled to the hearth-room floor, the last dregs of vitality siphoned from her. He needed it more than she did, her father always said. Her essence was his by right.
It was a sorcerer’s trinket he used to drain her, and a rare one at that. A rusty spearhead etched with patterns of lines, which had allegedly been left behind when the Hélum Empire abandoned Branikdür centuries ago. Exchanged for a starving widow, a keg of beer, a catch of fish—the story changed each time her father told it. But Khunt Moonshine was consistent about one thing: that the sorcerer who’d traded the spearhead warned him of the consequences of being found with such an artifact. Forgotten knowledge, he said it was. Forbidden.
Tey could almost see her father now, still sitting in the armchair beside the fire, touching his sorcerous spearhead to her unconscious body, feasting on the energy that gave her life—and for what? A few seconds of euphoria before it bled away into the Nethers. Khunt Moonshine didn’t see it that way; he thought it made him younger, though the evidence was against him.
Night-sweat plastered hair to Tey’s forehead in clotting strands. Her scars itched. A vise gripped her skull. In her guts, an icy clump. And that smell—beer and weedsticks, pervading her dream, so present and real.
She rubbed at her forearms, tracing the ridges of badly knit lesions. Felt old self-inflicted wounds around her belly, breasts, and thighs. The jagged necklace of the white line across her throat, from where she’d come the closest. At the probing of her fingertips, the scars shimmered, a spider web of mutilation. Her secret codex, scored into living flesh. She’d carefully scribed it, an intricate trap for the draining of life. And she’d intuited a way to store the stolen essence—a well, she called it, in the region of her womb. Whatever Khunt Moonshine her did to her, she could do back to him a hundredfold. Probably. If it worked. Just one more scar, she told herself each time he drained her. One more scar to strengthen the web. There was no sense rushing these things. What if she failed? What would he do to her then? The same as he did to her mother?
Shadows flitted across a gloamy haze, predatory in their circling. Pockets of darkness promised her safety, but they lied. It was the safety of the grave. She desired it, yet she didn’t. It was a constant back and forth, her flirting with oblivion.
Rustling whispers called her name. Her head buzzed with their resonance. They claimed to know her, know what she was. Usually, it was her own thoughts rattling around her skull, but this time the rasping imprecations came through her ears, though their derogations were the same:
Filth! Broken! Blood, shit, and ashes.
Tey sputtered a laugh, maniacal, shrill. The voices could say what they liked, but it wouldn’t end well for them. Whoever it was, one touch, one word, one slanted look, and she’d have them, hook, line, and sinker, same as she had her so-called father.
Oh, he thought he was the one in control, but if only he knew. She could see it in his eyes—his helplessness to resist, his compulsion to leech her life force again and again. Idiot. He was as ignorant of sorcery as he was of letters. Not that Tey was a sorcerer, but she knew enough.
It made her giggle to think he had no idea she could stop him any time. A knife in the eye or a hatchet in the back, like they say Crav Bellosh did to Chief Sol Harrow. Powder of death cap in his beer. A favor to one of the clansfolk training to be warriors, and the village wardens would find him at the first gasp of dawn, a gory, twisted accident. She’d come close to asking Snaith Harrow on more than one occasion, but that would have meant revealing too much, sullying the image he had of her.
Poor Snaith, lovestruck since they were children. If it weren’t for him, Tey would have worn her scars brazenly, so everyone could see her power. But for Snaith’s sake she covered up, even in the stifling mugginess of summer.
He was still sweet on her. She could tell from the looks he flicked her way, even when he was sparring in the fight circles. In another life, she’d have been sweet on him, too. Even now, there was something that tugged at her from his gangly, dagger-edged beauty. Perhaps one day she’d awaken him, expose her mutilated witch-flesh. Straddle him with the candles doused. Guide his fingers across her puckered skin. Maybe he’d like it. Snaith had the black flame in him, after all. She knew it when she saw it, even when folk couldn’t see it for themselves.
But she’d gone too far in her thoughts. Even entertaining such fa
ntasies was an affront to the Weyd. It was the only reason her father hadn’t done worse to her: he was afraid of the consequences. And while she had her own theories on the so-called retribution of the Weyd, she was wary of putting them to the test. Even if it was all a sham, she had no way of proving it, no way of knowing for sure. In any case, if those responsible for the lies that cowed the clan ever learned of such transgressions taking place… well, she’d seen what Theurig was capable of.
Raggedy dark tatters fluttered across her vision. She craned her neck to follow the scud of shadows, gasped as they coalesced into something loping and coated with scales.
A Shedim.
Tey’s heart galloped. Fear was no respecter of dreams.
No one had ever seen one, but everyone knew what the demons looked like from the tales Theurig told when the clansfolk grew restive. Stories that gave them second thoughts about leaving the village and the protection the sorcerer offered.
It straightened from a crouch, taller than a man, spindly limbs, glistening talons. The head was elongated, high-crowned. No features she could see, just a shifting face of mist, black like the rest of it, darkly lit from within.
“You hide away here while your essence is taken from you,” the Shedim said. “Why don’t you retaliate? Because he beats you if you do not comply? You could milk his life-force instead, make it your own. Be no man’s victim.”
“I am no man’s victim,” Tey said.
But she was, and something about the tilt of the Shedim’s head told her it knew so, too.
“Of course not. You are Tey Moonshine, beloved of the Weyd, destined to be a sorcerer and to rise from the filth that defines you. How could it be any other way? What else are you good for?”
The Weyd did not love her. It was an essence, not a thing, and certainly not a person, the way Theurig spoke of it. But it was still the only alternative to her compulsion for oblivion. She’d refused to join the others training for the highest status the clan had to offer. She was no warrior. She craved death, not glory. There was no need suffering injury to make her useless to the clan; she was already useless. Even Theurig knew her mind was as scarred as her body, a hazard of fissures with nothing to hold it together. The blind, the lame, the amputees—all were given one last chance before they were dragged out to Coldman’s Copse as fodder for the Shedim. They were tested to see if they were pleasing to the Weyd, fit to be sorcerers. But she’d never pass any test, no matter how often Theurig claimed she had the gift.
What else are you good for?
“Good for nothing,” Tey said. That simple admission crushed the head of the old self-doubt bubbling to the surface.
She opened her arms in abandonment, exposed her neck, her breasts, the thatch of hair between her legs.
A taloned hand was at her throat without her seeing it move—not touching, but hesitant, poised to grasp her, poised to throttle.
Tey arched her back, shuddered with anticipation. Between panted breaths, she gasped, goaded, pleaded. But not for her life.
A tremor passed through the talons.
“Do it,” Tey breathed.
The Shedim groaned.
“Do it, do it, do it!”
Pain flared between her breasts. She jolted upright, shot a look down. The Shedim had pierced her with one dirt-encrusted talon. Not deep—just enough to break the skin. A trickle of blood worked its way between the ridges of her scars.
The Shedim let out a rasp of air that could have been a chuckle, could have been repugnance. It raked its talon across her sternum. Made three equal lines. A triangle. Crimson rushed into the furrows it scored in her flesh. No sting. No pain. Just the chill of its touch.
“You believe in magic, little girl?”
Tey spasmed as ice entered her, spread like poison through her veins.
“You believe in the Weyd?”
“You think I’m a fool?” she hissed through the gap in her teeth. It was an evasion of the truth, but she couldn’t risk letting on about her power. And she was no girl, either. Not any longer.
“No, I do not.” There was tightness in its voice. At first Tey mistook it for lust, but it was more strained, more tortured.
The Shedim snatched its talon away as if it had plunged it into a maggot-riddled carcass.
Tey slumped to her knees.
“The Weyd…” she said, “… is for old men. Tricksters.”
She’d watched Theurig enough to know the only spell he wove was a spell of lies, even if everyone else swallowed his pretense. And he knew that she knew, she was sure of it.
“Is that all it is?” The Shedim circled her once more, losing substance with each loping stride. “Make believe? Lies? Legerdemain?”
Was that a challenge? Was there an answer she was supposed to give? Did it know what she could do? It clearly knew about her father and the power of his spearhead. She raked her fingers through lank hair, cocked her head, and instantly all care left her. The skin of her face tightened around a thin gash of a smile.
“Theurig’s Weyd…”
“Go on,” the Shedim said.
Now she was guessing. “… is not the true Weyd?” Because there was something, she was sure of it. Some power beyond the earth and sky that fed the well within her, that gave her essence and life.
Each second she awaited the Shedim’s response was an agony of anticipation. She half-expected to be struck down or afflicted with the rot for saying such a thing. But what would the Shedim do? She yearned for it to strike her, kill her. She lusted for the embrace of the dark, to be snuffed out like a sand-smothered fire pit. Another moment, and it would all be over. She’d be…
And like it always did when she set foot upon the brink, her resolve shattered.
“No, wait!” She loathed herself, loathed the lingering stench of beer and weedstick smoke that had pursued her into this dream.
The Shedim came to a stop in front of her. Twin pinpricks of violet cut through the mist shrouding its face, swelling to the size of pebbles. They rippled with ancient knowledge, studying her, drinking her in.
“I…” The words clogged in Tey’s throat. She coughed to clear it. Tasted bile.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to die.” Filth! Broken!
The Shedim lowered its chin to its scaly chest and shook with suppressed mirth.
“That is a good place to start.”
Blood, shit, and ashes.
She shouldn’t have said it. Shouldn’t have lifted the lid on the truth. The Shedim knew what she feared now, and that knowledge would nullify the ward of her scars.
“Whatever you endure,” the Shedim said in a kindly voice, “I shall be with you, closer than you are to yourself.”
“Why?” Tey dropped to her rear and scooted back. The ground, coarse and hard, abraded her skin.
The Shedim gave a dismissive wave. “Because you have plucked power from darkness, Tey Moonshine. Your sufferings have drawn attention, and you have not been found wanting.”
“No,” Tey mouthed soundlessly. “I am wanting. I am!”
“But it remains to be seen,” the Shedim continued, “whether you are capable of the next step. These gashes in your flesh, these… patterns are a good start, yet their true potency remains latent. I can teach you to do what you have intuited, to draw upon the vitriol that lies at the heart of all your kind, to turn the tables on those who would do the same to you.”
Tey panted for breath, on the cusp of understanding, heart skittering as her thoughts clashed with deep-seated taboos.
“You know what must be done. You have always known. Yet fear of what your clan will do to you in return has weakened your resolve.”
Kill him? Kill my father?
“When he next comes to drain you, when he utters chants and sates himself on your essence, when he feels the rush of euphoria, that is what you must harness. His essence and yours, magnified a thousandfold by his moment of ecstasy, drawn into your well through the conduit of your scars. And then
you must seal the deed with blood. I think you understand my meaning.”
They said the Weyd sought retribution for mere disobedience to a parent. But lifting a finger to one, or taking a knife to her father…
“Fear not what can be done to your body, Tey Moonshine. This you already know. It is your essence you must learn to protect.”
“But a parent—”
“You think it is any less of a taboo what he does to his daughter, by means of forbidden knowledge? You think the Weyd will be any less severe? You would be saving the elders the trouble, and in the process, filling yourself with this animal’s power.”
I don’t need his power, Tey wanted to say, but the thought lacked the conviction to enter her throat. She wrestled it into her mouth, wrapped her tongue around it, but before the words left her lips, the Shedim dissolved into shredded rags that fluttered violently for a moment then disappeared.
Tey was left grasping the bars of her crib and screaming for Mama, then wincing at the blows she got for making such a din. But that was a memory, not a dream, and memories bled you dry, till you were no more than desiccated meat.
She wrenched her awareness back to reality. The reality of the dream. The haze melted away, till she saw she was in a rough-hewn cavern, black light suffusing the rock.
She could hear snoring—labored, wheezing rasps. When she turned to locate the source, the cave vanished and she found herself flat on her back on a cold stone floor.
First, the even stronger stench of ale, weedsticks, and sweat. Next, the crackle and flicker of flames, heat on her face.
And then she came fully awake.
Filth. Broken. Blood, shit, and ashes.
She opened her eyes onto the cracked and damp-stained ceiling of the hearth room. She was wearing the homespun black dress she’d worn to Mama’s funeral and every day since. They said it was blood-rot that killed Mama, sucked the life out of her over the years, but Tey knew better, knew she’d end up the same if she didn’t fight back. Mama’s dress… it had once swamped Tey’s seven-year-old frame so much she’d had to roll the sleeves up and lift the hem so she didn’t trip over it. Bittersweet memories, more bitter than sweet, given Mama hadn’t always been perfect. It helped to think of them as belonging to someone else.