by D. P. Prior
Until the coming of the Wakeful.
“I had another triumph,” Pheklus told his sister, perching on the edge of the bed and holding her heavily bound hand. Something cracked and he withdrew his touch. “Sorry, my sweet. I’ll try to be more gentle.”
He waited—hoped—for her chastisement. She seldom spoke, and then only in his thoughts. But when she did, he listened. Fervently.
“Another insect,” he told Lettia. “A cockroach I brought back to life. I know it’s not much, but I’m making progress.”
After all these years. All these decades. A risen cockroach. The sum of all his efforts. At this rate he’d be dead before he held the secret of life. And then he’d have failed Lettia a second time.
“You need to do better than that.” —Lettia, speaking in his head. She was seven again, precocious yet disturbed.
“I will, Letty, I promise.”
“Much, much better.” Her voice was rasping this time, dust-choked and wheezy. The utterance of a larynx desiccated with age.
Pheklus stared at the mummy, then shook his head to clear it. It was the fatigue of the journey, he was certain, but even so, he stood abruptly and headed for the stairs.
Back to work.
There wasn’t a moment to lose.
A WITCH ALONE
How it should have been. A little girl once more, only this time safe. A sliver of Tey’s awareness stood aloof and scoffed. Comfort was a trap, a false security. Happiness a lie. The love of a mother and father too obvious to be convincing.
But the bed was soft and plump with pillows. She was snuggled down inside the sheets, drifting, dozing, enjoying her moment of peace. And she really was a child, the Tey she’d been on her seventh birthday. The day her mother had died. The day Khunt Moonshine had first drained her.
Not here, she chastised herself. Not now. She didn’t want to spoil the illusion.
Her little-girl fingers explored the hollow contours of her face, the bony ridges of her body. Her thinness shocked her. She slung the covers off and sat up so she could see. Free from scars, but her skin was translucent, tinted blue by her veins. And she could see her ribs. Sticks for arms, chicken legs—no sign of blacks scales and talons. Wasting away. The Grave Girl was dying.
A sound from beneath the bed, coaxing, calling. That voice: soft, as if afraid to speak. Kindly, encouraging, loving.
“Momma?” the Grave Girl said, daring to hope.
She slid down onto the floor and knelt to look underneath the bed.
Cold hands gripped either side of her head. Strong hands. Pulling her under. A cruel face pressed up close to hers. Feral eyes. Curled lips. Rotting teeth. Her own face! Only older. A hag. A cynical squint to the eyes. A predatory grimace.
The Witch Woman’s hands around her throat, immovable, squeezing. There was no point fighting back. The Grave Girl could never break a grip like that. And she was tired. So very tired.
Her chest heaved, vainly trying to fill her lungs. She gasped then choked. The Witch Woman’s face was a blur of malice. Walls of night pressed in from both sides, compressing the light into a gully, a groove, a crack.
The warmth of a solitary tear on the Grave Girl’s face. Not for herself. For Tey. How would she cope alone?
Not alone, she realized, as even the last hair’s-breadth of light was flooded with black. The Witch Woman would have her to herself now.
Doubt rose up, followed her into the void. Was that who Tey Moonshine had been all along? The Witch Woman? Had the Grave Girl been nothing but an imperfection, a delusion that she was just like other girls? That she might once have been normal?
***
Tey woke languidly, not with the start she was expecting. Slowly, gradually, fingernails clawing the bedsheets to acclimate to the real world. Emptiness gnawed at the pit of her stomach. Nothing so familiar as hunger. The emptiness of loss, of grief for something she couldn’t quite remember from her dream. A fleeting moment of terror, of losing something that could never be reclaimed. And then it was gone. She smiled. Confidence covered her like a cloak. Purposes coalesced around her.
She sat up, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and stood. The hole in her stomach yawned wider, begging to be filled. Demanding. Not food, though. She could already differentiate between the old demon hunger and this new sensation, which was more akin to corrosion.
She spotted her satchel on the chair beside the bed—Slyndon Grun’s bed. Clean sheets, fresh pillows, but she could still smell him. Smell his victims. Like a half-starved dog, she threw herself at the satchel, scaled leg propelling her with one powerful lunge.
Shit! She’d already used her last potion. Shit, shit, shit!
“Maela!” she shrieked, then louder still, “Vrom!”
Footsteps coming down the corridor. Muted voices.
“Hurry!” she snarled.
Vrom made it first, of course. He threw open the door, stood there with worry gouged into his forehead.
“Tey?”
“Potion. Now.”
Maela came up behind him, peered over his shoulder. “Potion? What potion?”
“I’ve run out.”
“Tell me what to do,” Vrom said, “and I’ll make you one.”
Tey’s hands curled into claws. Sweat dripped into her eyes. “Useless! What’s the point, Vrom? What’s the point of you breathing?”
[Don’t fight the hunger with potions,] the Shedim said. [Your well needs to be filled. Its appetite swells.]
“Kill them?” Tey said, before she could stop herself.
Vrom paled and glanced at Maela.
Tey waved a hand to stop them distracting her. “I’m thinking,” she said. “Talking out loud.”
She could kill them, couldn’t she? One at a time, later, when she could get them alone. The passage of her thoughts was grating, unfamiliar. Lacking regulation. But it felt wrong. Not just the killing, but the pouring of stolen essence into her well. The feeding of an addiction, no better than the potions. And the swelling the Shedim spoke of: to her it felt more like a constriction. The clogging of a pipe that would eventually burst apart.
[We all kill to survive,] the Shedim said, as if it sensed her hesitation. [Everything that lives is a parasite. Think not of the person, only of the end we are working towards. Nobody else could do this. You are special. Unique. No one else can turn the sufferings of others into such triumphant good. Focus on your patterns. Drain them both first, where they stand. Then finish them off when they have no strength to resist. Seal in their essence.]
Tey concentrated on the itch of her scars. “But if they don’t drain me first… If I don’t lie with them…” she muttered. How could she rob them of their essence? “Do I need to draw upon my own essence to power my scars?”
Vrom took a step back, right into Maela. The way they exchanged looks, they thought she was mad. They wanted to help her, but they had no idea what to do.
[Touch,] the Shedim said. [Like the Clincherman did with his dog. Let them power their own dissolution.]
Tey reached out with trembling fingers for Vrom. He licked his lips and held out his hand, clasped hers.
And Tey smiled her thanks.
“Help me to Slyndon Grun’s workroom. You can watch me mix the solution. Thank you, Maela. I’ll be all right with Vrom. Please, prepare some food… for the others.”
“They’ve already eaten,” Maela said. “They’re back working in the gard…” She caught Tey’s eye. Must have seen the desperation there. The pleading. That she fought tooth and nail to contain a driving need. That if she failed, it would not go well for Maela and Vrom. “Food, you say. Certainly. I’ll rustle something up.”
Maela hurried down the corridor to the kitchen.
Vrom took Tey’s arm and led her in the direction of the workroom.
[You will kill again,] the Shedim said. [You must. And if you do not, who will respect you enough to leave you untouched? Have you noticed the way Vrom looks at you?]
Tey watched Vro
m out of the corner of her eye. He nodded reassurance, smiled, but his frown betrayed that he was still worried. Or was it shame?
[You should kill two at once,] the Shedim went on. [Then three. Then four. In time, you will be able to sup on the essence of an entire village. And still your well will grow. Not outwards. Inwards. In terms of density. Vrom, Maela, the ones tending the garden. Start at home, then cast the net of your scars wide.]
“Get out!” Tey screamed.
Vrom flinched and turned to take her by the shoulders.
“Get out of me!”
[Where would I go?] the Shedim said. [You drew me hence. Housed me in your flesh. But I have no way of returning to the limbo I came from. And I lack the desire.]
“Tey,” Vrom said, touching a hand to her brow. “Tey, you’re burning up.”
“Devil,” Tey spat. “Back to the Nethers that spawned you.”
The Shedim chuckled. [That is what you have been told—that we are devils, but the truth is quite the opposite. It was a devil that sent us there: the Wyvern of Necras.]
“Tey!” Vrom said with more urgency. “Let me help you.”
[I have no one but you in the whole of Nemus,] the Shedim said. Its inner voice was lilting, almost melodic. [No body but yours.]
Rage bubbled up from Tey’s gut. Violent spasms racked her frame. She squeezed Vrom’s hand so tight he winced. She glared at him, and he pulled back. Her fingernails went to her chest, raked down the front of her dress to her belly, seeking the Shedim out, trying to feel any difference in heat or cold or substance that would reveal where it lay, coiled within her. She would gouge open her own flesh and drag it out kicking and screaming.
But the Shedim had no substance. No body but yours. Nothing to grab hold of. And there was no one place within her she could find it. It was in all of her. Every fiber.
Her frustration and rage revealed her weakness, her impotence against it. She needed to regain control. Had to resume a front of cold indifference. No, not indifference: cooperation. Give it the impression she was going to help it. Give it what it wanted.
The Witch Woman’s frigid aura settled over her.
“Has it passed?” Vrom said.
Tey gave him a long, lingering look then nodded. “It’s passed.”
Without another word spoken, Vrom guided her to the workroom, then watched as she mixed up a batch of potions. She could tell from his demeanor that he was taking everything in, that he’d be willing and able to make her more whenever she needed them. A glance at the shelves showed her stocks were low. Vrom followed her gaze, and she knew he was making a mental note. He was already proving a good apprentice. Pheklus was losing out.
Tey drank a potion in one go, thumped her stomach against the burning reflux, then downed another. Warmth suffused her skin, and she leaned back against a workbench to steady herself.
“You shouldn’t drink too…”
She silenced Vrom with a flash of her eyes.
“Are there maps here?” she asked. “In the library?”
Vrom turned up his palms. “I can look for you. Of Branikdür?”
Tey nodded absently. She fiddled with the black bracelet she’d taken from the skeleton, felt its snugness on her wrist. “I need a route to Gosynag Bay.”
Vrom looked as if he were going to ask her something else, like whether he would be going with her, but he said nothing and instead hurried from the room.
[So, you are going, then?] the Shedim said. [That is good. It is necessary.]
“You are pleased?”
[But there will be great danger. With an empty well, who can say how you will fare? For the Seven to send a monster like Imtep Khopeth betokens only darkness and pain. Are you ready for that, Tey Moonshine?]
“You know I am.”
Even so, old fears wriggled through the afterglow of the potions. She would not allow herself to fall victim again.
[It is the Hand of Vilchus they seek.]
The recollection of that scuttling horror was ice under the skin.
[Do not let them take it, Tey Moonshine. The Hand is for another day. You will survive, if you intrigue them. You will know what to do. I will guide you.]
For a second, she thought about refusing the Archmage’s summons and hiding away in the Valks’ land till the crisis had passed. At least then she’d be thwarting the Shedim. But that was a coward’s way out. It would weaken her resolve, dilute the Witch Woman she had become. The Witch Woman who even now was taking her thoughts back in a different direction.
Did she really need Vrom and Maela and the others? What need had a witch for a garden or food or companions? A good apprentice was one thing, but what was that compared to a well brimming with essence?
She stared long and hard at the crystal face set into the black bracelet, half expecting to read some augury there, some portent of the future. In response, a faint light winked from within it. She caught a glimpse of strange symbols. Crude likenesses of fire and water and beasts. Pictograms. Before she could properly study them, the crystal’s light went out, leaving it dead again. Inert. But the Witch Woman chose to see its fleeting sorcery as confirmation she was on the right path.
She would show the Shedim she was still onside: go to the Bay swollen with stolen power and fully prepared. And maybe then the Shedim would share more secrets, perhaps even the means of its own betrayal.
A SON’S JUSTICE
A fierce rattling at the door. The banging of a fist.
Snaith clawed his way back from restless sleep. Pushed himself up on his elbow.
In bed.
Theurig’s bed.
Theurig’s house.
Voices down the hallway: one of Theurig’s crones opening up, talking with whoever was outside. A man, angry and demanding. A man used to getting his way. Was that the chief?
Snaith winced as he rolled from the bed, body stiff from a night and a day’s walking, feet shredded and raw. And the sickness. He’d vomited repeatedly on the long trek back, and each time left him feeling diminished. Less substantial.
How long had he slept? Daylight slid between the shutters. It had been dark when he’d arrived in Malogoi, and though he knew the watchmen must have seen him—and recognized him, else he’d be dead—he’d met no one as he crossed the village to the sorcerer’s home. Not until Graef had greeted him at the front door with a curse for waking her. She’d looked over this shoulder, too. Presumably for Theurig. Glared at him, as if she already knew what he’d done.
He’d killed Theurig.
Had he awoken from a dream into a nightmare?
Was that what the commotion was about? Had Chief Crav Bellosh come to accuse him?
Snaith grabbed his clothes from the back of a chair and struggled into them. A throb pulsed up and down his bad arm from where he willed it to function, and again it refused him.
When he was dressed, he put Theurig’s pendant around his neck and tucked it inside his shirt. It was the instrument of his guilt, the cause of his sickness, but all the same it had proven its power.
He pulled up the hood of his cloak and fixed a stern look on his face. A look that promised the wrath of the Weyd upon any who dared challenge his right to succeed Theurig as sorcerer of the Malogoi.
***
All three crones stood together in the kitchen when Snaith got there: Graef, Meldred, and the other one…Velyg. Chief Crav Bellosh was seated at the head of the table, slurping dark ale this early in the morning. He was flanked by two burly warriors, grizzled and scarred from many skirmishes. One of them Snaith knew: Halik Braw, an instructor at the circles. The other looked familiar, as did everyone in the village, but Snaith had never made his acquaintance.
The crones turned in unison to face Snaith as he entered, inclining their heads respectfully, but keeping their eyes fixed on him.
Chief Bellosh slammed his tankard down on the table and ripped out a belch. He appraised Snaith with a barely disguised smirk on his pudgy face, indicated with a wag of his fingers that
the hood should go. Snaith glared in defiance.
“Where’s Theurig?” Bellosh said. His tone was amicable, almost innocent.
Snaith watched the three crones. How much could they have said in so short a time? How much had they guessed? Or did they really have some sorcerous means of discerning what had happened?
There it was again: that lingering superstition Theurig had pointed out back at the Copse. Snaith immediately realized just what a powerful ally that had been to the sorcerer: the clan’s willingness to believe almost anything he told them. Well, if it had worked for him…
“Gone back to the Weyd.”
Bellosh held Snaith’s gaze. “Did you show him the way?”
“Theurig was a powerful sorcerer, Chief. He needed no guidance from me.”
Bellosh pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking. After a moment he steepled his fingers, tapping the tips together. “I had to ask.”
“And if I’d answered yes?”
Bellosh’s lips twisted into a crooked smile. “These things happen.”
Was that an admission of his own guilt? Of what he’d done to Old Chief Harrow?
“So, you are Malogoi’s sorcerer now,” Bellosh said. “Theurig and I used to meet often. I expect you to do the same.”
Snaith shut his eyes, to give the impression of concentrating. Communing. “It is what the Weyd expects that concerns me most.” He opened them again, so he could see the chief’s reaction.
Something like irritation swept across Bellosh’s face. “Of course,” he said. “You know the High King’s messenger has only just left, I assume?”
“The armistice,” Snaith said, matter-of-factly.
“Gosynag Bay.” Bellosh pushed himself up from his chair, pressing his knuckles into the tabletop. “Something about visitors. From Hélum.”