by D. P. Prior
THE WITCH OF THE VALKS
When he came for Tey, it was just her and him: Slyndon Grun and the Witch Woman. Everything else retreated into the background. In that moment, the cellar was a tomb, the others chained to its walls shackled skeletons, ghostly spectators. They may as well have not been there, they were so quiet, afraid to be noticed, so passive they made for perfect prey.
Tey met the sorcerer’s eyes, bored right into them, reading his hunger, and the Witch Woman smiled.
Slyndon Grun mistook the look on her face for insolence, raised his hand to strike, but then he seemed to get it, recognize what she was offering. He cocked his head to one side, considering the unwavering invitation in her eyes, the consent of her lips.
The sorcerer’s breathing quickened. He pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket, fumbled one into the lock of a manacle, got it open; immediately set about the other.
Tey rubbed her wrists, eyes never leaving the sorcerer as he put the keys away.
“Are you soiled?” he asked, sniffing at her dress. “Of course you are. Hirsiga!”
The woman who’d opened the front door to them came down the steps, carrying a heavy pail in each hand. She wore a frayed and dirt-stained tunic now, and knee-length boots crusted with muck. There was a simple dress of beige linen slung over one shoulder. She moved with an air of efficiency and preparedness. Clearly it wasn’t the first time Hirsiga had been down to the cellar.
“Don’t keep me waiting.” Slyndon Grun went back up top.
Hirsiga guided Tey to the bottom step, above the sludge of the cellar floor, and set down both her pails. Without a word, she helped Tey out of her dress and small clothes. She hesitated at sight of the scars, reached out with a finger to touch one. Her eyes met Tey’s, glassy, vacant. With a start, as if she’d suddenly remembered her duty, she lifted a pail and upended it over Tey’s head. The water was freezing; it made Tey gasp and shiver. Hirsiga produced a coarse cloth from her tunic and proceeded to scrub her from head to foot, leaving her skin raw and bleeding in places. She rinsed her off with the second pail, then helped her to put on the beige dress, still wet. Finally she gathered up the cloth and buckets, Tey’s soiled clothes, then nodded for her to go on ahead up the steps.
They emerged into the room with the rug and the tools hanging on the wall. Slyndon Grun was waiting, hands clasped over his belly. With narrowed eyes, he gave Hirsiga a sharp nod, and she hurried from the room.
The sorcerer dropped the trapdoor back in place with a reverberating thud.
The trestle table Tey had seen on the way to the cellar had been unfolded and decked out with saws and pincers, hammers and chisels, a fruit knife, wads of cloth, and bottles of colored glass filled with liquid. The wooden throne had been moved out from its corner. Slyndon Grun shoved her toward it.
“Sit.”
Tey’s grip on the Witch Woman persona faltered. She was a girl once more, frightened, begging, pleading. It was a split-second lapse; the words never reached her lips.
“Don’t make me tell you again.”
Tey sat stiffly in the chair, rigid and upright, like some queen on her throne. Like the Queen of Oblivion from her vision. Before Slyndon Grun could fasten her in, she swung her good leg over one of the chair’s arms, hoisted her dead leg in place beside it. She reclined against the other arm, arching her back so her wet hair draped toward the floor.
The sorcerer grunted and stood back to appraise her. “So thin,” he said. “Cachexic. You’d be highly thought of where I come from.” He ran a finger from her exposed neck to her belly, drew in a sharp breath, leaned in to stroke her breasts through the fabric of the beige dress. Tey moaned and pulled up the dress to expose her thighs. The sorcerer released one breast so he could feel the puckered flesh of her maimed leg.
“Theurig said it was a bear,” he said. “How?” He traced the crease of her thigh.
“I wanted it to hurt me,” Tey breathed.
“You like pain?”
“It is necessary.”
“I like pain, too,” he said. “Though not my own.” His other hand left her breast, found the scar on her neck. “And this?”
“I did it.”
He closed his fingers around her throat, started to squeeze.
“Tighter,” Tey gasped. “Make it tighter.”
Slyndon Grun’s face reddened with effort. For all his bulk, he was not a strong man. He lacked a laborer’s grip. Sweat beaded his forehead. With a fierce growl of passion and rage, he released her and staggered back.
Tey maneuvered her bad leg off the chair arm, swung round to face him, once more regal upon her throne. She eyed him coolly, expectantly. Left the trace of an enigmatic smile on her lips. He lunged at her, ripped open the front of her dress, gasped at the scars riddling her skin.
“What’s this?” Slyndon Grun said. He grabbed a fistful of her hair. “Stolen knowledge?”
“Mine.” She felt suddenly vulnerable, exposed, a victim once more. Her chin trembled as she tried to hold back tears of guilt and shame and self-loathing. “They are mine.”
He slapped her so hard, her vision doubled. The Grave Girl screamed before Tey realized she was back. He hit her again, a punch that split her lip. She tasted blood, slumped back in the chair as he released her so he could roll up the sleeve of his robe.
“Look!” He raised his forearm, showed her a warrior’s vambrace of bronze. It was etched with patterns of lines, all of them familiar, but ever-so-slightly different to her scars. “What have you seen? What have you stolen?”
“Nothing,” Tey whimpered, covering her face with her hands. “Not me. Not me.”
Slyndon Grun held her wrists, pried her arms away from her face. He manufactured a smile for her, eyes full of pity and concern.
“You must tell me, Tey. You must. Was it Theurig? Did you glean the knowledge from him?”
She shook her head.
[Do not tell him,] the Shedim said.
“Theurig was right about you,” Slyndon Grun said in a kindly voice. He let go her wrists and gently stroked her hair. “You are unusual. Exotic. Fit to purpose. Work with me, and things will go well for you.”
Tey could not speak. She needed the Witch Woman, but the Grave Girl was paralyzed, staring wide-eyed at the sorcerer. She switched her gaze to his vambrace, tried losing herself in its patterns of lines. There was an answering itch in her scars. Something caught her attention: three lines on the vambrace that formed a triangle. The rest of the pattern seemed to emanate from its apex. Unconsciously, she put her hand over her sternum, where the Shedim had marked her with the same design. What did it mean? Was there a connection?
“I’ll share a secret with you,” Slyndon Grun said. “Then maybe you’ll do the same for me. This vambrace I stole, along with one or two other things. I took it from the Archmage. Knowledge, after all, is power. They are relics from Hélum, copies of the lore of the Shedim who once ruled this isle.”
[Crude copies,] the Shedim said. [Blunt instruments in the hands of the blind. Nothing compared to the lunula I showed you. Even less compared to the Hand of Vilchus.]
“And then there’s this,” Slyndon Grun said. He reached into the pocket of his robe and produced a spearhead. When he held it up for Tey to see, she stared at the etchings on its surface: lines, old and familiar. “Theurig took it from your father after the bear attack.”
“You… You can use it?” Tey asked in a trembling voice. It was no longer genuine trembling; she was working out the implications of what the sorcerer had revealed, what the Shedim had told her. Already the Witch Woman was gathering herself, sensing a shift in the momentum.
“Probably,” Slyndon Grun said. “But if it’s anything like the vambrace, its full potential is closed to me. For now. There are clues, you see. In the Archmage’s predilections. In what little I have seen of Hélum society. In the teasers scattered throughout the histories. Tell me, did your father know how to use it?”
[Say nothing,] the Shedim warned her.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Do you know how he acquired it? From a sorcerer, no doubt. Did he steal it?”
“Bartered,” Tey said. “He bartered for it.”
“Did he now? Well, that narrows the field. There are few sorcerers who would trade a relic from the Hélum occupation. Theurig, you might be surprised to learn, let me have it in exchange for a book. I suspect he had no idea how to use it and couldn’t be bothered to work it out for himself. These things take years, and Theurig is a man in a hurry. Always has been. I, however, have taken the time to research and experiment with similar relics, and while I still have some way to go, I have made significant progress.” He pressed the tip of the spearhead to Tey’s throat. “Pain is the key. Suffering. And lust.”
[Dolt!] the Shedim said. [He mistakes means for ends. It is the well that is important, the bubbling vat of raw essence you beasts hold at your core. Pain and passion are but the most efficient ways of filling it. And its capacity stretches, Tey. The more you fill it, the more it can be filled.]
“But something is missing.” The sorcerer withdrew the spearhead from Tey’s throat, glanced at his vambrace. “Sickness accompanies each use of these relics. Unnatural fatigue. The power is there, in the moment, but how swiftly it is gone.” A hardness came into his eyes. “My solution thus far has been more suffering. More lust and pain. Hence the people in the cellar. But the markings on this spearhead, your scars: their alignment is different somehow. Inverted. Do you know what they are for?”
“I’ll show you,” the Witch Woman said. Tey pushed herself to her feet using the arms of the chair, then ripped away the remnants of her dress till she stood naked before him.
He studied her, entranced, drinking in her scars, glancing nervously at her face, which she held cold and impassive. An itch ran through her scars, as if they responded to the sorcerer’s proximity—or to his obvious arousal.
The Shedim’s cackle reverberated through her bones. [His lust only makes it worse for him and infinitely better for you. Reversing the effects of the spearhead is one thing, but to snare an animal like this in the full throes of passion… with the pattern of your scars… The essence will be extreme! Do not resist. Your suffering will not be in vain.]
“Remove your robe,” Tey said.
Slyndon Grun flinched. “I do not usually—”
“Do it,” Tey said, smiling with encouragement, tracing the scars on her chest with a fingertip. A part of her knew she should have been scared. She was about to break a taboo that had been drummed into her since childhood—by Theurig, she reminded herself. Hardly the most trustworthy guide. If the Weyd was so certain to punish those who coupled outside of marriage, why did Branny Belgars not have the rot? Or Grisel Vret, or any of the other clansfolk who had strayed? And hadn’t Tey herself already strayed, in the way she had touched Snaith, in the thoughts she had harbored for the longest time?
Slyndon Grun stood mesmerized for a moment, then lifted his robe over his head and dropped it on the floor. His torso was smothered with an angry rash. In places, lesions oozed clear fluid. In others, the skin was dead and flakey.
Tey took a step back and collapsed into the chair.
“It is not contagious,” Slyndon Grun said, raising his hands, one of which was still holding the spearhead. “Though my clan, the Krosh—before I came here as an apprentice—thought it was. A curse of the Weyd, they said. You know how it is. They said the same when I started to gain weight. The Krosh have an aversion to fleshiness.”
Tey kept the revulsion from her face as he came toward her, tried not to think about the rot, tried not to imagine what they were about to do. If she were to endure this, she needed the Witch Woman squarely in control. There was no room for anything else. Deep down she knew that if the Grave Girl were to surface, there would be much more to fear. A man who kept young men and women chained up in the cellar would likely respond to crying and begging with unbridled cruelty.
Slyndon Grun stooped to set down the spearhead and Tey began to tremble. No longer the Witch Woman, the Grave Girl, or even herself, if there was such a thing, her thoughts scattered in pursuit of some way—any way—to avoid this. And then she had it:
Reversing the effects of the spearhead is one thing…
“Not yet,” she said, “The spearhead first. It has to start with the spearhead.”
Slyndon Grun straightened up, clutching the relic to his grey-haired chest. “But the excitation… the lust. I thought—”
“After… After a link has been established… You must drain me first.”
A frown creased the sorcerer’s face, and his gaze withdrew inward, as if he were considering, calculating.
[Do not stall,] the Shedim said. [Give in to him then strike back. The spearhead is irrelevant, a toy; it provides a momentary boost of essence that swiftly evaporates, leaving a craving for more. How insignificant that will seem after you drain a man at the height of his passion.]
Slyndon Grun nodded abruptly. “Very well. Show me what to do—what your father did.”
There was the thing: she didn’t know exactly. All she could do was try to recreate what she’d witnessed.
She stood and gestured for Slyndon Grun to take her place on the chair. Khunt Moonshine had always been seated during the ordeal.
“Lay the spearhead in your lap,” she said. “Now, my father used to chant…”
“Chant what?”
“I don’t know. Odd words. The same two or three over and over.”
“Ah,” Slyndon Grun said, “Probably in the Egrigorean tongue. An aid to concentration. A technique of induction. The actual words probably don’t matter.”
Tey shrugged. “Try it. Close your eyes and try it.”
Slyndon Grun did so, uttering a simple chant. After a minute or so, he opened his eyes.
“Well? What next? With the vambrace, I create mental pictures of what I want people to do, then verbally I command them.”
Tey nodded, though she had no idea if that’s what Khunt Moonshine had done. “Yes, pictures. A connection. You need a connection with me.”
Slyndon Grun stared at her for a moment then leered. He closed his eyes and immediately he gasped. Tey felt it then: the familiar hook in her guts, the insubstantial thread that passed from the sorcerer to her, like a ghostly umbilicus.
Slyndon Grun’s fingers began to open an close around the spearhead. A low moan escaped him, and he shifted in the chair. Essence began to leave Tey in spurts, pulsing along the unseen cord in tempo with the sorcerer’s breaths. He moaned again, then started to pant, and the flow of essence quickened.
“Yes, this is good,” he said. “This is very good. How long? How long does it take?”
“Soon,” Tey said. “Almost there.”
She started to swoon as the essence left her in torrents. She lowered herself to her knees, in case she should fall.
Slyndon Grun’s breaths came in ragged gasps, faster and faster. And Tey was growing empty. So very empty. A second or two and she’d black out, perhaps awaken in the cavern of coal, if the Shedim was still talking to her. She traced the ridges of her scars, willing them to respond. Already they itched all over, but there was more she needed to do, something more.
[Attune yourself,] The Shedim said. It sounded irritated, angry with her. [At the point of euphoria, you must feel what he feels. It is not hard: you are linked. If you had let him take you, it would have been easier, and so much more potent. Don’t forget: seal it with blood, else what life you steal will flow back to him.]
She dropped her hand to her injured leg, found the hard end of the crone’s knitting needle sheathed in her flesh.
A long groan built in Slyndon Grun’s chest, worked its way to his throat. His breaths started to slow, grew longer and deeper, until he seemed no longer lustful but calm, serene.
Tey matched her breathing to his, stared into his blissful face, let her consciousness flow along the umbilicus that connected them. And she saw: saw the things he had do
ne to the prisoners in the cellar, saw what he wanted to do to her. She recoiled from the horror, the sickness, the cruelty, then before the link was broken she embraced it all, wrapped herself around it, and sprung her trap.
Fire coursed through her scars, streamed along the umbilicus, and sent blazing tendrils deep inside Slyndon Grun. The sorcerer screamed, at first in ecstasy, but it swiftly twisted into terror. Tey lunged to her feet as her stolen essence flooded back into her, borne on the crest of the sorcerer’s own ruptured life force. The needle came free of her thigh. She stabbed it through his eye, shoved it in all the way till she hit the back of his skull.
Slyndon Grun’s scream turned into a gurgling rasp. He shuddered and twitched. His eye was a bloody pool. Drool trickled from the corner of his mouth. And then he was still.
Tey’s scars lost their substance as they exploded in a network of scorching pain. Heat suffused her flesh, radiated outward, and engulfed her in a brilliant burst of argent. She screamed in exultation, then slumped to the floor. Her skin tightened as her scars lost their heat and once more took on the solidity of matter, closing in like a net around the essence of Slyndon Grun and making it her own.
Within her, the Shedim said, [Good. It is a start. You have him now, added to your well, waiting for you to draw upon.]
There was a wrench in Tey’s guts, a mangling of something intangible at her core. She felt choked, constricted, cut off from something essential, lost in the cold dark of space.
She lay on the floor, forcing back tears and trembling with a satisfied smile. She could feel the bloom of burning essence in her belly, coalescing into a tightly knotted fist of power.