Bone Witch (Elemental Magic, #3)

by Thea Atkinson

  "Don't think of it."

  She nodded. To think that meant she'd have to think of Yenic in the same trouble. "I shouldn't think of it. Thinking of it makes me want to drain the village dry."

  "Alaysha."

  "I'll thirst their water and when it's gone, I'll bring it back down on their dried out husks."

  "Alaysha."

  "I'll float them to the broad river where the fish will pick at their skin, and swallow their eyes."

  "Alaysha, don't," he said, gathering her finally into an embrace where she wept silently, trying not to let her shoulders shake, trying to keep him from knowing her despair. She felt his palm on her hair, smoothing it. His lips warmed her ear, his breath heating her neck as he nuzzled her closely. His voice lowered as he caught sight of a few women milling about as they gained the village proper. He talked into her ear, careful to lean close so nobody could hear.

  "All is not lost, Alaysha. We have time yet to formulate a plan. I don't plan to go to this easily or passively. Enyalian or no."

  Her throat burned too much to speak, the effort of trying to stem the anxiety and fear. She let him talk on, encouraged as he spoke.

  "I'm sure Gael has no plans to be a broodmare either. Do you really think we'd let a few warriors take us so without a fight?"

  "No," she squeaked. An image of Gael in the burnt lands, hair matted with blood: his attackers'; of the half-dozen Enyalia dead at his hands. "No," she said, feeling stronger now, more certain. "You, me, Gael, Edulph. They'll truly have a war to contend with."

  "There's my girl." He eased away far enough to touch her lightly on the forehead with his lips, and she felt calmer the moment he did. "There's hope yet we can get out of this place with our dignities intact."

  "They're strong, though. It'll take all we have."

  "Yes. Maybe more."

  "A plan," she said.

  "A good plan."

  They arrived outside Thera's hut, only to notice a boy sprinting from the door, headed past the fire pit and off into a lodge that was both wide and squat. Alaysha recognized Cai's tackle next to the beast tethered outside. Thera's frame filled the doorframe in front of them, and another woman, old, with chalk etched all over her face followed her, taking her place as though she commanded fealty.

  "What's wrong," Alaysha asked Thera.

  Thera levelled her with a look that made Alaysha nervous. "Your man has the mark." She didn't sound pleased with the information. Whatever The Mark was, it had made the witch beside Thera angry; that much was obvious from the way she glared at Thera as though The younger woman had put the mark there herself.

  "What mark are you talking about?" Alaysha asked, suddenly afraid it would be something that could ruin the already tenuous plans.

  "What does it matter?"

  Thera's black eyes nearly disappeared behind her squinting eyelids. "The Mark of the Enyalia. Under his chin." She pointed to the hollow where her throat met her jaw. Alaysha noted the brand burned into the flesh there. "Only an Enyalian can receive this mark." She squinted suspiciously at Alaysha.

  "What have you done, foolish witch?" The old chalky woman came forward and stabbed a finger into Alaysha's chest.

  "I don't understand."

  "The Mark." She slapped Thera beneath her own chin with the back of her fingers.

  Alaysha looked to Yenic for help explaining something that shouldn't require lengthy explanation but that seemed to have offended the old woman terribly. "It's his warrior's brand," she explained. "All my father's soldiers have them."

  "Your father? What is this word?"

  Now was Alaysha's turn to be frustrated. "The man who sired me. He is—was—a great leader. A—a conqueror."

  The old woman nodded to herself. "Yes. I know the type of man." It sounded as though she was choking back a laugh. "But who is he that would he know our Mark? And why would it be on your man?"

  "I have no idea how your Mark came to be so similar to ours."

  "It's not similar. It's the same." The crone's impatience showed through and Alaysha noted Thera shuffled foot to foot, anxious to speak.

  "It can't be the same," Alaysha said.

  The old woman spat on the ground. "I know our Mark, woman; I make it. I burned it into her skin." She grabbed Thera's chin and tilted her head to show Alaysha. "No one knows of this practice. No one but an Enyalian and her bone witch."

  "So you are the bone witch?" Alaysha was disappointed at the thought.

  The crone glared at her. "I was the bone witch. Now I mentor this one, whose forging arts are even weaker than her healing arts." She sounded disgusted, but Thera merely looked smug, as though she had a secret the old crone wouldn't approve of.

  Alaysha pursed her lips, chewing the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. She didn't want to answer right away, but with the crone staring her down, she had no choice.

  "I had nothing to do with the mark. Gael was marked by Corrin. The same as all my father's warriors were—any who made it through the training."

  "This Corrin is your father's bone witch?"

  "Was. And no, he had no magic."

  "He?" The crone looked indignant. "A 'he' does not deliver a mark."

  "And yet he did." Alaysha wanted to goad her now, just because of the indignant way the woman looked and the way she felt at the woman's patronizing tone.

  "And without magic?" The woman huffed. "Impossible. What gave him the right?"

  Alaysha shrugged. "My father gave him the right."

  The woman threw up her hands in disgust and eyed Thera eyed thoughtfully. "A man does not give rights to anyone." She shouted for the boy who had run toward Cai's cottage and who was now sprinting back. "Where is Komandiri Cai? You should know better than to return without her."

  The boy sprinted off again and Thera turned to Alaysha. "We best hear more about this father of yours. Uta will want to know all of it."

  Uta sent a scathing glance Yenic's way who had stood quietly during the entire exchange but who eyed the old woman thoughtfully nonetheless.

  "Find a place away from here, man. This is woman's business."

  Instead of acting as though dismissed, Yenic sent her a broad, bright smile. "Your merest desire is my command." He sauntered away, whistling a lark's tune, but Alaysha knew it was all show. His arrogance would never allow him to be brow beaten. He'd take a fight, but not much else.

  Cai passed him in the compound, but she neither looked at him or swerved to avoid him. It was as though he simply wasn't there. In fact, every woman in the village treated him as if he was invisible. Cai took her elbow when she got close enough and with Thera steered her toward a hewn log meant as a resting place for a weary gardener out at the back of Thera's garden where privacy from passers by could be found. The trees surrounding the garden stood about a dozen paces away and framed it like a border, its dense underbrush masking it effectively from peekers-in.

  "Sit, Alaysha. There's no reason we can't talk without fear."

  "I don't fear you."

  Alaysha caught the look Cai sent Thera, one that said she thought she was foolish, but to her credit, the warrior never said it. What she did was to stretch her legs out in front of her, letting her circlets she wore rattle against each other. Alaysha couldn't take her eyes off them as Cai flexed her thigh muscles. They weren't stones, not exactly. Not even shells. Fragments of bones, perhaps, but far too regular. She tasted sour bile when she realized what they actually were.

  "Those are teeth," Alaysha said.

  "Taken from our enemies. I told you this."

  "No. You told me a girl earns a circlet in war."

  Cai nodded. "And takes the teeth of each man she kills. Yes."

  "And what of the women?"

  Thera answered, looking Alaysha up and down. "The women are allowed to come here."

  "To be slaves."

  "No. Never slaves. To be part of us. To breed our children, to nurse our young. They're welcome. Never chattel."

  "And if they refuse?"r />
  Cai chuckled. "It is been many seasons and at least a generation since the Enyalia have been refused such sanctuary. In truth, we don't need to war so often either." She rattled her circlets. "Young ones have less teeth for their circlets these days. These are becoming as thin as our tribe." She looked up at Alaysha with a piercing gaze. "We don't seek war—it comes to us. Men have always wanted to win Enyalia. Imagine a world where the women are alone. Where they have no men to compete for attention. Where a single woman is as good as ten regular females. It's an intoxicating notion for them." She shrugged. "And they come."

  "And you kill them."

  "Wouldn't you?"

  Yes. Alaysha would, she had to admit. "Then why raid for men at all?"

  Again, the shrug. "We choose what is best for Enyalia, not simply take what comes calling. Enough of this." She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees.

  "I don't know any more about Gael's Mark. I swear."

  Cai nodded. I know. I believe you. You believe her too, don't you, Thera?"

  Theron neither nodded nor shook her head and Cai continued. "You see, it makes perfect sense that you don't know—no one should, but it doesn't explain how he came by it. So you must instead tell me about your—father—is it? Do I pronounce that right?"

  Alaysha bit her tongue at the comment that wanted out. "Why is it so precious to you?"

  "Because it's ours. When an Enyalian meets her first battle, she enters it with the blade forged here by our own bone witch especially for her. Thera, most recently; Uta in the time past. The handle tip of each sword hilt contains a bit of shaped metal."

  "That you heat in the fire –"

  "And press into the warrior's skin, yes." Cai looked pleased. "It bonds her to the blade and through the blade to all of her ancestors and from them comes her strength."

  Thera shuffled about. "We temper the steel with the ashes of our greatest komandirae."

  "And you want to know what leader Gael is bound to my his mark? I don't know. My father—Corrin—neither of them would have known of such a ritual."

  Cai and Thera passed a look between them that made Alaysha think there was more than what they were admitting to.

  "What? Then you must think Gael is an escaped brood man, or an escaped slave."

  "No. No one has escaped and lived."

  "Then what?"

  Cai tapped her fingers against the outsides of her thighs. "A young Enyalia cast for a boy once. He wasn't a brood man, you understand. He was born here." The woman inspected a few teeth on her right circlet, turning it this way and that fastidiously. Alaysha wasn't fooled.

  "I thought only warriors could cast."

  "Not perfectly true," Thera said. "Some stock women may throw down a spoon—her offspring would only ever become a citizen, never a warrior. But still, allowing it keeps the tribe diverse. Except this girl was most definitely a warrior. Young, though. She had just received her own mark."

  "And?"

  Cai eyed her. "And she was allowed to have him. Thera and I would be born seasons later, but we are all told the story. Every Enyalian is told the story."

  "Why?"

  "Because the girl refused to do her duty at the end of the solstice. She refused to do that part of the right that she throws down for."

  Alaysha was beginning to grow even more anxious. "And what happened to her?"

  Cai shrugged. "She was forced to leave the village. Exiled from her sisters forever. Never to return but on the sure pain of penalty."

  Alaysha tried to swallow and found her throat choked up. "What is this penalty?"

  Cai held her gaze. "I think you know it."

  "How would I?"

  "Because I believe you saw this woman."

  Alaysha imagined a large, arrogant Enyalian, the only large woman she would ever recall outside of this border, suffering pain without complaint. Expecting to die, not caring if she lived. Her back a mess of stripped and melted flesh.

  "Bodicca," she murmured.

  Chapter 11

  Alaysha quickly snapped her mouth closed. So, the scouts had known Bodicca was there in the desert after all. How much more did they know, she wondered. She cast about for something to say, unsure where all this disclosure was coming from, but knowing she could never let these women realize Theron and Aedus were out there too, working to save Bodicca's life.

  She was spared further comment when Thera leaned towards her. Alaysha couldn't help inspecting the tattau symbols on the woman's chin and thinking how poorly done they were compared to the beautiful ones her nohma had created.

  "Tell us. Does Bodicca live?" Thera's eyes were very black, nearly no pupils at all. Alaysha could see the age in her eyes at that moment.

  "She may," she hesitated to answer, trying to decide how to reply.

  "May."

  "Yes. She told us about the well because she knew we were dying. Then we left her to find it. She was pretty bad off." It was true, at least the first and last half. What did the middle matter?

  Thera's face didn't so much as shift expression, but Alaysha knew the witch suspected there was more.

  "Does she live?" Thera asked again.

  "What does it matter? Surely the burnt lands will take her if the wounds don't."

  Cai started to speak, but Thera held up her hand, silencing her. "You've had your turn, Komandiri." The witch leaned back, studying Alaysha, letting whatever things turned over in her mind travel her face. Alaysha had the feeling the woman could read her every thought but that was ridiculous, wasn't it?

  "Tell me," Alaysha said finally, thinking to turn the tables. "Why does it matter?"

  "She left us your man, knowing it was quarter solstice, perhaps thinking to buy her way back to her sister land after all these seasons, but knowing she would have to pay the price."

  "Yes, Yenic," Alaysha said, grasping at the only thing she understood. "His name is Yenic."

  "And this Yenic also has my symbols." Thera's black brow quirked. "Same as you do."

  "Yes." Alaysha gave the wary answer but watched the bone witch's face and thought there might be even more behind her questions that even Cai suspected. The witch wouldn't look the warrior's way; her torso was turned away from her co-leader, almost absently saying there were things in her face she didn't want Cai to see.

  "And this other man of yours," Cai said. "He has the Enyalian Mark."

  Alaysha noted that Thera's expression grew impatient as Cai spoke, as though the Enyalian mark was less important to her than Yenic's marks. Her hand even went up as though to swat the warrior's question away.

  Thera captured Alaysha's gaze with her own black one. "You met our sister upon the journey."

  Alaysha nodded, her mouth dry.

  "A woman who brought that marked man into our village."

  Alaysha smiled, thinking perversely that she'd force them to speak either Gael's or Yenic's name. "And which marked man do we speak of now?" She wasn't prepared for Cai's slow, understanding smile.

  "The large one, of course," she said, and Thera groaned under her breath as though it was not the name she wanted to hear. Alaysha turned her attention to the witch.

  "You want to know of Yenic's mark or Gael's?"

  "Uta wants them," she said, dodging the point.

  "The deaths take Uta," Cai said and faced Thera who glowered silently. "It's not Uta who wants them. Uta knows more than she tells us; no doubt she has the answers already and lets us flounder here like babes trying to wield warriors' swords. No doubt she grins at us in secret as we piece it together." She shuffled her feet absently. "Since the quaking you have not been yourself, and I tire of it."

  Thera's glance fell to her feet and Cai pressed on. "A man is brought to this village just at quarter solstice by a sword sister in exile and he wears your marks so you give him shelter and food and a solid watch, but a man with our mark—my mark is brought in by me and this little maga—who also wears your mark, and you leave him to Uta. Uta, Thera. Think on it." Cai turned fully
to the bone witch, touching the woman's chin. "You are the bone witch now, Thera. Not Uta. You give her too much power."

  A moment of silence descended and Alaysha used it to grapple the one thing she'd thought she understood. "Quaking?"

  Thera turned away quickly, but not before Alaysha saw the way she closed her eyes in alarm; she'd struck a chord, surely. "Cai?"

  The warrior's russet brow rose. "Little maga, surely you've felt the trembling."

  "I have," she said thoughtfully. Could it be that Thera was releasing power without realizing it? Could she not know what she was and be wielding her power unconsciously out of some fear for the solstice?

  It was time to test it, see what the woman knew. She touched her tattaus and caught Thera's eye. "And what is this?" she asked. "I could ask you the same. It's obvious my and Yenic's marks are more striking than yours. Why don't you tell me how you came to carry my marks. Why don't you tell me what you know of Etlantium."

  She'd struck something, she knew, but she didn't have time to assess it. Both women clasped at their necks as though bitten, first Thera, then Cai, and then in unison they fell forward, landing heavily on the forest floor.

  Alaysha's body went into high alert. She leapt to her feet and spun this way and that, searching for an attacker. She could see nothing through the trees, and stepped closer to Cai, all the while watching the foliage. She tried to kick the huge Enyalian over with her foot, but the woman in dead weight was too much for her.

  Alaysha let her gaze leave the forest for a fraction of a moment, darting down to the woman's neck. She checked for signs of attack.

  She heard her breath leave her lungs in relief. There, about a fingernail apart were twin quills leaking a purple viscous liquid onto the woman's skin.

  She turned back to the woods, a smile playing on her lips.

  "They're bigger than your average enemy, Aedus," she said, spinning slowly. "You don't know how long they'll be out."

  The trees to the right of her seemed to shift and Alaysha was surprised she even recognized the spindly frame that showed itself—even if it was just barely. Aedus had spread mud all over her body, not just in her hair as usual, and then stuck moss and leaves and detritus to it.