Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  "Acting unafraid. Acting as though you have nothing to fear from me." She wasn't sure why, but this bothered her.

  "Okay." He sobered and sat at attention. So intent was his amber gaze on hers, so familiar, she had to turn away to avoid the intensity, and the sense of pull it had on her.

  She hoisted her sword and slid it back into its sheath on Barruch's sidesaddle, then hoisted her leg onto his back. She didn't care who he was anymore; he wasn't trying to kill her, and if he'd escaped her "mission" so be it. Let him escape.

  She was nudging Barruch forward when he spoke again, but it was too late. She was already heading out of the grove, and once her mount had his mind set, she knew there was no changing it.

  "It's not everyone who calls her nurse Nohma, though," he said to her back.

  Nohma. Grandmother. He was right. She called her nurse something her father's tribe did not use, and so it was possible he did know her—but for the small fact that her nohma was dead. That was how she knew this man was just aiming his arrows into the shadows, hoping to hit a target.

  Nohma was dead. Never mind his present tense. She was gone. Alaysha knew it was true because she was the one who had killed her.

  3

  As it turned out, she left at just the right time. She could see both Drahl on his black mount and her father on his sturdy white one off in the distance, heading toward the decimated village. Looking for her, she supposed, but not from concern. If her father was riding with Drahl it could only be because he'd grown tired of waiting for a report; he hated waiting.

  She trotted Barruch to meet him. They didn't see her at first; they kept on such a straight trajectory for the village, and by the time she'd started riding, they were already a breath ahead of her. She came up from behind them and to their left.

  "Ho," she hollered.

  They reined up short. The village ruin was a few hundred mount strides off yet, but she could easily make out the rubble of the old mud hut. She shifted her gaze away from it and made for her father's horse.

  "I have the collection, Father," she told him and lowered her glance to his horse's hooves. No one could keep the intensity of his blue-eyed gaze long—least of all the witch he hated.

  His horse snorted as it was forced closer, he and Barruch had been sired by the same stallion and though the speed ran in their veins, so too did the alpha streak. These two horses could not be corralled together and this proximity made them both antsy. Barruch was wont to nip at his brother, and stomp on a stray foot with his. Adding to that fact, it sensed the danger that Alaysha could drain the beast of all fluid. Add also the tension the beast felt from her father's very real, but checked, hostility. The cipher made for dangerous territory.

  Yuri reached across both mounts, stretching toward the pouch. "How many?"

  She unleashed the sack from Barruch's saddle and pulled out the pouch, handed it by its lashings to her father. "Eighteen pairs."

  Yuri's fair face flushed red. "Eighteen?" He grabbed the handle and twisted to shake it at Drahl. "Eighteen pairs."

  Drahl hung his head but said nothing. Alaysha wasn't sure what the trouble was.

  "I collected them all, Father. Even the children's."

  He didn't sound as though he believed her. "All, you say." He opened the top and rooted around within as though he could tell one shriveled eye from another, as though the contents weren't thirty-six eyes at all, but a benign collection of baubles. "All, you say." He withdrew his hand and yanked the pouch closed, then tossed it to Drahl.

  "Tell her, Drahl."

  "There were to be nineteen dead."

  "Nineteen," Her father repeated. "Now tell me, where is the last?"

  She swallowed hard. "The last?"

  "You counted eighteen and there were to be nineteen. Where is the last?" He enunciated very clearly, very slowly, almost as though he thought she was stupid. But she wasn't stupid. Anxious, maybe. But not stupid.

  "One woman was with child, but eighteen is all I killed, Father."

  "Don't call me that," he said so matter-of-factly she wasn't aware of the venom in his tone at first. "I may have stolen your mother for my pleasure, but that doesn't make me your father. It makes me your Emir."

  "Yes, Fa… yes, Yuri, Conqueror of the Hordes." Best to use his formal name, the one he prided himself on.

  "It makes you my tool."

  She nodded. She wouldn't react. He was angry, that was all. He always got this way when he was angry. Always trying to hurt her, to goad her. To test her. She would not react.

  "Yes, Yuri."

  "Where is the nineteenth?"

  She wouldn't look at him. He would know if she showed him her eyes. "I killed only eighteen." It was true, wasn't it? He couldn't accuse her of lying.

  He swore and pressed his mount closer. Barruch grew agitated. He stomped and writhed under her hold.

  "I know you killed eighteen," Yuri said. "For if you had killed one more, I would have nineteen sets of your seeds."

  He pressed so close Alaysha could smell the onions on his breath, the cactus wine he drank before each battle. She had to work to keep Barruch from rearing.

  He pressed his spur into her bare shin and twisted. She gasped.

  "There is no nineteen."

  He glared at her, his blue eyes like chunks of hail and for a second she thought she'd like to melt the ice, drain it from him, taste the wet—

  "Don't even think it, witch," her father said and she lost the thirst so fast she could taste the desert on her tongue.

  "I'm sorry, Father."

  He let the title slide, but he seemed to be considering it. Finally, he addressed Drahl, who had dismounted and was standing with his feet apart, the leather riding breeks buckled at the knees.

  "Your scouts were wrong."

  "I scouted the village myself."

  "Then you were wrong."

  Drahl kept the flint of his eyes cast downward and his thick lips pressed firmly together, but his posture argued with Yuri in ways his words would never dare. He opened his mouth once and then clamped it shut, considering. Then, he changed tack. "Perhaps the nineteenth was away during the attack."

  Yuri rubbed his broad thigh in thought. "Perhaps," he said after a while. "Then we need to find out who was missing." He glanced at the basket of seeds. "That will be useless."

  He turned Alaysha. "What of the bodies?"

  She relayed what she could remember, leaving out the information of the tattaus and the man in the oasis.

  "Three crones you say?" His face lit up at the news. "Three?" He repeated, holding up his fingers. "You're sure?"

  She nodded.

  It seemed as though his joy was temporary if not tentative, as though he felt relief, but it was combined with wariness.

  "And were these crones marked?"

  She had to be careful; too much information and he would know she suspected something, too little and he would know she was lying. "There were some markings on the men, Father, but they meant nothing to me."

  He wasn't mollified. "What kind of markings were they?"

  He was baiting her, she knew. She wasn't sure why. She sensed he knew exactly how the tattaus looked, that they were very close to her own, but she wasn't sure if he understood just how similar they were. She guessed, and made a stab he'd gotten reports but had not actually seen the tattaus. She hoped as she spoke that he couldn't hear the tremble in her voice.

  "They were symbols of animals. All across the chest and the backs of the hands." He'd know she was lying if he went to look at the bodies, and she prayed to the Deities he wouldn't. She wasn't sure why she had lied so blatantly when she could be checked up on so easily.

  He eyed her critically. "And the crones?"

  "The crones had no markings."

  "None?"

  She shook her head.

  Yuri turned to Drahl. "You told me—"

  Drahl shrugged as it became obvious to Alaysha that while he'd had been the one sent to do the scouting, he'd se
nt someone else and so now he couldn't speculate. Thank the Deities for his laziness.

  "Markings are markings," he said and nodded at Alaysha. "How would she know what to look for?" The black look he gave her would have shriveled an apple.

  "She tells me what she sees."

  "Perhaps it is not the crones she saw."

  "Perhaps not, but then the number would be wrong." Her father was beginning to lose patience, she could tell; his white brows were furrowed and meeting together over the blue-pink of his eyes. Drahl on the other hand, seemed oblivious.

  "The count was correct." He argued. He hoisted himself back onto his mount and spent considerable time wrapping the end of the rein over his fleshy wrist. Alaysha thought he would grow fat when he stopped riding and scouting.

  Yuri's eyes narrowed. "Then you have the wrong tribe."

  "The crones must have escaped."

  "If it's so and it is the correct tribe minus the old women, then the number would be sixteen. If it's the right tribe as you say, and the crones are the right ones, then the number would be nineteen. Either you are right or you are wrong."

  It was all terribly confusing. Alaysha cut in. "The crones did not escape."

  "But they have no markings."

  "They were the only old women in the village."

  Yuri dismounted and grabbed the pouch again, then spilled the seeds across the caked dirt. Pick them out," he ordered.

  Alaysha knew which were the crones. Each seed had its shape even if that shape was no longer what it had been when it was fully fluid, or if each seed lacked the color it wore in life. A witch does not send her power through tear ducts and pores and not know each fluid membrane it touches. By her very nature, she had a long, long memory, the better to travel the fluid lines of each host and drain the living fluid away. She knew each seed, yes. Intimately.

  She sorted out seeds that in life she knew had been bright blue and milky white. Each crone with a mixed set. These not quite so desiccated as the others.

  "These," she said, putting them aside from the others.

  Yuri inspected them. "And all are buried beneath the mud?"

  She nodded.

  "And none were marked?"

  It was her turn to examine the seeds, but only so she could avoid his eye. "Yes," she said, and found the lie came easier each time she spoke it.

  He toed the dirt, flipping dry soil over the seeds. Then he said to Drahl, "It's not the right tribe. Keep looking."

  "But the number is right."

  Yuri didn't raise his voice, but the threat was clear in the undertones. "The number is wrong. There were eighteen, not the nineteen we're looking for. You counted wrong. The crones were unmarked. It doesn't matter if the others were. Keep looking."

  Despite the way Drahl glowered at her and clenched his fat lips into a tight hateful line, Alaysha had to know. "Who are these people, Father?"

  He stared at her. "The wrong people." He mounted up and nosed his stallion back towards the camp. Drahl did the same, leaving Alaysha alone.

  The wrong people. He thought she'd got it wrong, but she hadn't, and now she needed to know exactly what was going on.

  He wanted this village in particular vanquished. That was nothing new, not really, except for the crones. He was specific in asking about the markings too. Tattaus just like hers. But why? What had these people done that set him out from his beloved Sarum hunting for them?

  She knew of at least one person besides her father who could answer that.

  Number nineteen.

  4

  Number nineteen was gone by the time Alaysha had returned to the tree line, and in spite of his having wanted her to accompany him, he'd undoubtedly left as soon as he'd seen the mighty Yuri and Drahl ride up to her.

  It was the smart thing for him to do, no doubt, but the most frustrating for her. Now she'd never know what he wanted to tell her, and she had the feeling it was the same thing her father didn't want her to know. That meant she could never tell him the crones were actually the ones he was seeking. If the village had been the right one, he'd know number nineteen had escaped. Better he think they had the wrong village and that the survivor was nowhere in the vicinity.

  It had been a terribly long day. She was hungry and tired, and worst of all, thirsty. That was never a good thing, but so long as she wasn't afraid, and she was sufficiently exhausted, the power could not creep on her unawares.

  So she headed back to camp only to find that same camp being packed up. It was so like her father to break for Sarum without wondering if she had made it back safely or not. She knew the way of things. News just traveled. Drahl would have been given command to break and he would set his men about the task. The sundry womenfolk: laundresses and cooks, the children who cared for the horses and beasts, the hunters and gatherers, all would see the camp going through the motions of packing and would do the same without question.

  She dismounted and led Barruch to her own encampment, a cleft of a cave in the side of a mountain about a hundred paces from the actual camp. Yuri's daughter or no, he never allowed her too close to his site. Too dangerous, he'd said. Drahl had merely told her no one wanted to be in close quarters with a witch.

  She found it odd her father had been the one to soften the blow of that news.

  She had meager belongings to collect: a bowl and a spoon, a bed blanket made of leopard fur and a thatch mat her nohma had woven years earlier with bits of feathers amidst the thatch to soften the grass. It rolled neatly and tied to Barruch easily.

  She grabbed her bowl and spoon with the intention of scavenging a few morsels to fill her belly if the cook hadn't finished packing, then she'd take a few minutes to get some water from the stream next to the camp. She would rather the order be switched, but the stream would always be there waiting, while she had her doubts about the cook and his fare.

  "Wait here," she told Barruch and gave his rump a pat. "If I'm lucky, there'll be a stray parsnip in it for you."

  She left him peering down at the sour grass with disdain, and set out towards the cook's tent, trying not to meet anyone's eye. She needn't worry; most scurried out of her path as she approached.

  Once or twice, when she encountered one of Drahl's men, they spat on the ground when she came near enough.

  "Drink that, witch," one said, leering and poking at his friend's side.

  "Watch it now," his companion said. "She can have you in one swallow."

  "Brah," The first muttered, raking her with his gaze. "She's drank already. Killed a hundred men today already and half a dozen babies. Even a water witch can't drink more'n that."

  Drink. They really had no idea. The man had been a soldier for as long as she'd been alive, and he'd seen the end of a dozen of her "battles", but he had no idea, still, what it was she did for her father. No one did. And so they assumed she put her lips to another's and drank their liquid away.

  Fools. They thought they were safe if she didn't touch them. No one considered how difficult it would be to have to kill one by one and still be successful. Drahl might have had an inkling of what she did; he came upon her first deaths so quickly after battle, knew she hadn't a mark on her, knew she was too far away to touch anyone who died. He might have an inkling, and he might hate her out of fear, but he didn't really know the scope of her power. Most who had seen it used, had died within moments of witnessing it.

  Only her father knew the full truth of it—had used her truth since she was old enough to be carried in a basket on his mount's sidesaddle. Had used her for his gain these last eighteen years.

  Maybe it was a mercy they had no idea she could drain them even from this distance. And that was the fear of it—she could drain so easily—too easily, but she couldn't control it. Everyone, everything, every drop of water would obey her and gather for her, and move for her to the heavens until the weight of itself needed to be released: rain, hail, once even snow.

  And afterwards she would be as thirsty as if she had been drained herself.
So she could command the water, but it weakened her. And the more the power grew, the more it drained her when she used it. She'd been much weaker today after battle than she'd been during the last, over six months earlier. It wasn't enough yet to make her sick or helpless, but how long would it be before she collapsed after battle? How long before she fainted dead away?

  And that was the secret her father could never know. He thought the draining empowered her, he thought the power came from the thirst.

  She intended he always believe it.

  Cook was all packed up when she neared his tent. His was the largest in the retinue but for her father's because of all the provisions he was in charge of and how many people milled about throughout the day. At the moment, no one sat near the now-dying fire or queued up for hot acorn mash tea. The old scent of roasted boar hung in the air, mingled with wild onions and the sweet fragrance of honeyed ale from last night's supper.

  She knew the smell, sure enough, but she'd not been given a taste of the warrior's meal. She'd had to forage for her own acorns and dig a few wild onions and fern tops to steam over a lonely fire. She'd had no meat.

  Cook caught a glance of her as she lurked close to the fire pit, scouring the rocks for stray bits of meat or vegetables. He had the decency, at least, to back away even though he lifted a pot at her—his way of fending her off, she supposed.

  "I'm just looking for leftovers," she told him.

  "There is none." Cook busied himself with rooting in a rucksack, stashing wooden utensils and tying up the leather thongs at the top. He was trying to avoid meeting her eye, she realized.

  Alaysha noticed on the fringe of his stockpile a wooden plate with a short stack of griddle cakes and a few slices of burnt meat: bacon left over the spit too long, she figured, and no one had been interested in charred boar.

  "What about that?" She pointed, and he followed her direction.

  "That? That's rot, you fool."

  "It looks edible enough."

  He shrugged. "If you've a mind to eat burnt food, it's no care of mine. Save me from burying it."