by D. P. Prior
ONE FOOT IN THE NETHERS
This time, Tey knew she wasn’t dreaming. Delirium was different: it had teeth and nails. Her nerves screamed. Flames erupted from her leg, scalding, white, incandescent. Even her eyes burned, melting craters into the dripping wax of her face. Her hands were rigor-locked claws, her scars fresh and weeping. And her belly… her belly was icy slush. But through her agony, satisfaction was a tang she drew upon and savored.
She’d drained him—at the very moment he’d sated himself on her essence. She’d reversed his sorcery, felt her stolen energy flow back into her, and along with it a tidal wave of Khunt’s own. And then she’d swung for his head with her cleaver, but he’d blocked it with his forearm. Last she saw, with the bear’s dying growls washing over her, the cock-who-sired-her was dragged away by the High King’s men. Theurig took the spearhead from him, said something about Khunt using forbidden knowledge, called him a parasite. It was finally over. The clans wouldn’t tolerate Khunt Moonshine’s kind.
But what would they do with her, if the prick accused her of cutting him?
[Nothing,] the Shedim said in some hidden recess that shifted when she tried to locate it—not just in her mind. Beneath her skin. In her marrow.
Revulsion flooded her, but it coiled and twisted, wriggled deep within her till it turned sweet and lissome and smelled of honeysuckle.
[His acts mitigate your own. It is how humans think. You will see.]
It settled her, the whispered voice, the gentle fragrance. But it was a short reprieve. Lightning arced through her veins, stiffened her head to foot, plunged her back into a vat of torment.
Then she must have drowsed, and drowsed for a long time, for next she knew, the tide of pain had receded, until only waves of caustic froth lapped at the edge of her awareness.
It was soft beneath her back, but it wasn’t her bed. She guessed it was animal pelts not straw she lay upon, and beneath them something more forgiving than her cot—perhaps a mattress stuffed with feathers.
Smoke tickled her nostrils, irritated the back of her throat. Sandalwood. A hint of dried oak leaf. She coughed, and instantly a damp rag was pressed to her forehead. Its touch comforted her. Someone pulled a sheet over her, and sleep’s sinewy arms dragged her once more into oblivion.
The Shedim was there waiting in its cavern of coal. It spoke, but Tey was deaf. When it touched her mangled leg, fire turned to ice in an instant. Barbs ripped free of her flesh, and flaky white scales grew up amid the seep of blood. Tey gasped, and the Shedim shook with what must have been laughter. Dark tendrils webbed the surface of her leg. Wove bridges between the scales. Covered them until they hardened and grew black, forming a chitinous armor over her skin. Tey’s guts rebelled. Bile hit her throat, and she groaned as it gushed from her mouth.
Something cool and wet dabbed at her neck, moved down to her chest. She risked a peek, and a rheumy-eyed woman forced a smile at her. She recognized the crinkled face—one of the crones who gave their old age purpose by serving Theurig’s needs: cooking, cleaning, running errands. Maybe more.
“Awake, are you?” the woman crowed. “Like as not, that’s good.” She drew the cloth across Tey’s breasts with hard, abrasive rubs. “Quite the scars you got.” Her tone implied the tally of retribution she no doubt thought the Weyd was keeping.
Her scars! The woman must have pulled back the sheet to wash her. Tey rolled to her side, vainly trying to shield her secrets with her arms.
“Oh, I seen worse.” The woman cackled. “Not so many, perhaps, but good ones. Festerers.”
“My leg!” Tey cried, remembering the Shedim. Remembering the scales. She pushed herself upright to look, heart clamoring in her ears.
“It’s bad,” the woman said, “but again, I seen worse. I seen gangrene, I has. Least you get to keep it.”
They were still there.
Black scales glistened from knee to toes. Pus oozed between them. Tey retched, clutched her stomach, felt herself choking.
“Theurig says the blood still flows,” the woman said, “but you won’t never walk right.”
“Scales,” Tey breathed. She loathed the whimper that followed. It made her weak, leached her power. She flashed a look of helpless terror at the woman. “Scales!”
The ancient face crinkled further, into a frown, eyes doing a quick check then rolling. “Just bruising, love. Must be you’re still not in your right mind. You should’ve heard yourself jabbering and hollering. Drove old Theurig half crazy, you did. Couldn’t do no work, so he went out. Check on the Harrow lad, he said.”
Snaith? Snaith had tried to save her. Had saved her, even if he’d been too late to save all of her. But then, he’d always been too late for that.
“He’s hurt?” Tey’s eyes were locked to her leg, searching out the scales she knew had been there a moment ago. But they’d gone. It had to be a trick. The Shedim must have rendered them invisible. She could still feel their infection thickening her blood to slurry. If she could have, she’d have picked at them like scabs, but the Shedim was too clever for that; all her hands would meet was her own twisted flesh.
The realization she could do nothing put her on familiar ground. Despair settled her. It had been the same with her father: The first time he’d worked his ham-fisted sorcery to drain her, the pain had been excruciating; the second only slightly less so. But after the third, she grew numb to the pain, even started to sleep through it. And that was another source of her strength. She could grow numb to anything, over time, if it happened enough.
“Oh, aye, he’s hurt,” the woman said, “but he’ll live, same as you. He’ll never fire a bow, though.” Her tone implied everything Snaith could expect instead. Grew ominous with it. “Nor hitch a plow.”
Same for you, she might just as well have said. Same for you and that wicked leg.
The woman straightened up, wrung out her cloth over a bowl of pinkish water. “Lie you flat now.” She wrinkled her nose. “A quick freshen up, then I’ll get to scrubbing what the sun don’t see.”
Only then did Tey grow aware of the stench. She flopped back on the bed, dewy eyes locked onto the black-beamed ceiling. Shame wrapped her in its lice-infested blanket, wadded her mouth against speaking.
***
Tey measured time by the bed baths and the spoonfuls of salty broth she was forced to slurp. Theurig’s instructions, the old women said—for there was more than one; they tended her in shifts. A part of her wanted to believe it was because someone cared—Theurig, presumably, or maybe even the Weyd that watched over all and wept for even the tiniest insect crushed underfoot. She scoffed to herself. She was wiser than that. She’d seen the face of the world in all its red-toothed hunger. Anyone else would have been dragged out to Coldman’s Copse, left atop a burial mound as fodder for the Shedim. She was alive only because Theurig had a use for her. She’d seen it in his eyes since she was a girl: dispassionate scrutiny, calculating appraisal. That, and the fact that the Shedim had a use for her, too, one that was at least forthright, whereas Theurig’s was unspoken. But forthright only concealed a deeper-buried secret.
Her awareness wavered between absence and patches of near-lucidity. More often than not, the women were snatches of shadow, patterns in the clouds of grey that misted around her.
Theurig’s raging voice startled her alert once, spitting and shrill:
“Think they can thwart me? I’ll show them. I’ll bloody show them!”
She was too tired to cling to it, follow the course of its weave. But the sorcerer came again at some later point, crouched over her till she could smell the mint and dandelion on his breath from the tisanes he drank for his joints. He stroked her hair, spoke to her, but his words were garbled, spoken through muddy clods and sods.
It was the scrape, chink, scrape that finally drew her back, but she was quick enough not to let on she was awake.
Theurig was bent over a ceramic mortar, grinding herbs with a pestle. He pinched the powdery residue between thumb and for
efinger, sniffed, coughed, and grunted; a process he went through several times until he was done. Then he funneled the grey powder into a vial, slipped it into his robe, and left in a hurry.
It took Tey’s torpid mind an eternity to work out where she’d seen this before, but then Vrom Mowry’s livid face, cracked and scored with a thousand lesions, materialized behind her eyelids. She’d spied on Theurig from time to time, gleaning what she could. Once she’d seen him prepare something similar, then give it to an old woman with instructions on how to administer it, and to whom. Poor Vrom, the only one who’d understood what she’d endured. Her spirit-mate in suffering.
“Poison,” she muttered to herself. The real cause of the rot everyone feared.
[You don’t miss much, Tey Moonshine.] The Shedim’s words were insinuated rather than spoken. [I was right to investigate the commotion caused by your bleakness. I was right to bond with you.]
The thought that this creature she could not see, could not hear, had invaded her caused Tey to squirm atop the bed. She flung the sheet off so she could check her leg.
An old woman glanced up from the brittle yellow pages of the book she was reading—skin-bound, one of Theurig’s from the many on the shelves, judging by the look of it.
“Lie you down, love,” the crone said, setting the book aside on a low table. She hacked up phlegm as she rose on creaking joints and shuffled over to the bed.
It was a twisted lump, Tey’s leg, but it was dead skin that coated it, not scales. She sighed and settled back against the feather-stuffed pillows. The old woman made a cursory job of fixing the sheet then got back to her rocker and her reading.
***
On the third day, Tey was woken by a weight plonking down on the bed. She stiffened, squeezed her eyes shut, but as sleep let go its smoky clutch, she shooed the frightened little girl to her grave with a well-practiced flipflop. It grew easier every time, till now it was merely a reflex that buried her weakness beneath a mountain of loamy earth. The witch-woman she became instead was her own creation, coquettishly doe-eyed, just enough of a painted smile to get people’s guard down, to give them the signal they had nothing to fear.
But when she opened her eyes, it wasn’t Theurig, like she’d expected. The shock spun the girl back out of her grave.
Snaith Harrow lay prone on the bed beside her.
“Company,” a different old woman said from the rocking chair. Only then did Tey become aware of the click-click-click of her knitting needles.
Was Snaith breathing? He was the color of milk, staring at the ceiling with sightless eyes, pupils yawning pits of blackness.
Two more crones backed away from the bed, then left through the front door.
Tey swallowed. Tried to gain her senses. Her lips were dry and cracked, her stomach an empty hollow. Unconsciously, her hands strayed to it, rested atop the ridges of her scars. The sheet… it had ridden down… What if Snaith should see? What if he’d already seen, when the bear attacked? Worse, what if she’d soiled herself again?
“Don’t fret,” the old woman said. “They slept him with a tonic. No idea you’re there, and I already washed you afore they fetched him. Meldred and Graef would have my guts if they cleaned him up only to have him tainted by your mess.” She smacked her lips and raised an eyebrow in Snaith’s direction, took in the dark tattoo covering his torso. “Right horrible inking, if you ask me.”
A black flame, is what it conveyed to Tey. The one she knew lay buried within Snaith. Made manifest as some kind of dragon: shredded wings, snaking body, ram’s horns. It was evil. Deathly. Arousing.
Then it registered: Snaith was as naked as she was. On instinct, she pulled the sheet up to cover them both. Looking didn’t seem right with him unconscious, even though she’d often watched from the trees while he bathed after training. That had been different: Snaith had known, and he’d permitted it. She’d wanted to join him and the others, even more so when it was just him alone. Wanted to so badly, if not to belong, then at least for the coolness of the water. It would have soothed her scars. But it was her scars that stopped her going in. They could never be seen. Not by Snaith. Not if he was to keep seeing her right. The thing that scared her the most, even more than the contemplation of her eventual nothingness, was that he already had. That he’d glimpsed the lie she hid beneath her dress, and that she’d been diminished in his eyes.
Three days of recovery hadn’t lessened the cuts and lines of Snaith’s ropey muscles, and if he’d lost weight, it was difficult to tell. He’d always been gangly and lean. What the other young warriors had in brawn, he more than made up for with height and reach and conditioning. All that marred his perfection was the stoop of his upper back from years of protecting himself fighting, and the hook of his nose—half-inherited from his father, half worsened by being broken in the circle on more than one occasion.
Now, though… now there was something else. She’d only noticed it peripherally, so quickly had she covered him: his right arm, as twisted and bruise-blackened as her leg. A glimpse of hooked fingers, rigid like a corpse’s.
Yes, he was breathing. She could see that now from the rippling of the sheet where it touched his chest.
Tey craned her neck, intending to ask the old woman why they’d brought him here, but Snaith coughed then shuddered. His eyes drew into focus on the ceiling, narrowed. He turned his head. Gasped as he saw Tey. Tried to push himself upright. But it was his bad arm he used, and it gave way beneath him.
Snaith’s surprise at seeing Tey was replaced by horror as he switched his gaze to his injury. His bottom lip trembled like it used to when he was a boy. A whimper escaped him, followed by a groan. He raised his ruined arm as if it were some grisly revenant that had been grafted onto his shoulder. The tremor from his lip spread aggressively, like the rot. Tey reached out but dared not make contact. She had no right. She was not worthy.
Snaith glanced at her. Back at his ruined arm. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
“That’s enough of that,” the crone said, rocking forward out of her chair, still absorbed in her knitting as she crossed to the bed.
Tey came within a hair’s breadth of Snaith’s face. He snapped his jaws at her. There was madness in his eyes. Spit sprayed as he said, “Father… Mother…” He gasped between words, each wheezing breath catching in his throat; eyes so wide and frenzied, the sclerae looked more red than white. And then he screamed, “The Weyd did it! The Weyd!”
“Enough, I says,” the old woman rasped. She hawked and spat, then tried again. “Enough!”
Snaith lunged across the bed. The old woman wailed and spun away, but he’d not been aiming for her; he’d been after a knitting needle. It glinted in his good hand, and then, with a ghastly ululating cry, he stabbed it into his injured arm.
Pus and blood spattered Tey’s face. Her instincts were locked in an impasse between screaming and giggling. Like she always did, she slipped between them with numbness.
Snaith drew back for another stab, but this time Tey grabbed his wrist with both hands. He tried to twist away, but she had better leverage and rolled on top of him.
The crone leaned in, snatched away her knitting needle. Tey immediately let go Snaith’s wrist. As if it were cast from wax, his arm hung in the air, while he stared at the fist that had held the needle. Then he brought it down again and again, stabbing at his mangled limb with nothing but air.
Tey smothered him with her body, pushed her face into his neck. Her injured leg was a dead weight atop his thigh. He couldn’t strike himself now. All he could hit was her. But he didn’t. He shook with unvented rage for a moment, and then began to sob.
Tey was aware of the old woman bustling around, setting things down, picking things up, muttering under her breath, and none of it good.
She felt a twinge of expectation between her legs. Her skin pressed to Snaith’s grew slick and hot. She vacillated between the brazen witch and her little girl self, not knowing how to act.
S
naith’s frame was racked with sobs beneath her. If only her mother were still alive to tell her what to do.
She rolled down beside Snaith, placed her hand on his head, guided it to the hollow of her shoulder. She stroked the crest of his hair, staring blankly at the ceiling.
The old woman gave her a curt nod. “Get him to drink this.” She proffered a cup, and Tey sat up to take it, held it to Snaith’s lips, supporting his head. The liquid within bubbled as he sobbed into it. With encouragement, he sipped and swallowed convulsively. When he’d finished the cup, Tey lay down his head on a pillow, and he was soon asleep.
The old woman produced a rag and wiped the blood and pus from Tey’s face. “They didn’t give him enough, the stupid old birds. Just wait till Theurig hears about this. You did good, girl. Obliged to you.”
Tey shot her a questioning look. No one had said that to her before, not since her mother had died. Good? Was it good what she’d done? It didn’t feel good; it just felt… confusing. She manufactured a smile. The old woman snatched back the cup, returned to her rocker, and flopped into it with a sigh.
Already Snaith was snoring—a tortured, wheezing sound. He only slept because his body was overwhelmed with whatever had been in the cup, and whatever the other old women had given him before bringing him here. Poor dear—that was what Tey was supposed to think, wasn’t it? It’s what her mother used to say when she fell and grazed a knee. His poor, ruined arm. Had he seen scales, too? Deep down, she hoped so. It would be something they could share.
[You see scales because we are one,] the Shedim said. [All he sees is wrack and ruin.]
Tey’s blood rippled with revulsion, but she knew better than to let on she was panicked. She held her breath to keep from retching, then let it out in a long, drawn-out trickle.
I have you trapped, she thought with careful articulation, trusting the Shedim was listening. You are right where I want you.
She buried the Grave Girl’s protests beneath six feet of earth; ceded control to the Witch Woman.
The Shedim was silent.
The creature was right, though. To Snaith’s mind, his injury was a curse that meant he could never be a warrior. But there was more to it than that: he’d cried out for his mother and father. By caring for him, they had denied the Weyd, and now they had paid the price. Tey glanced around the room, eyes lingering on the mortar and pestle. Theurig’s price. Then, as often happened when she thought of someone, reality caught up, and the sorcerer stepped through the door.