Bone Witch (Elemental Magic, #3)

by Thea Atkinson

He gave her a squeeze. "You didn't. They sacrificed themselves. There's a difference."

  "The question is what does Edulph know. That's why I held him under my mother's pretence. She tortured him for the info. He never gave it."

  "Because the girl is his daughter and he loves her."

  "Or he still hopes to prevail against us. We'll see when we get to the Highlands, I suppose."

  All this talk of secrets and honesty and here she was keeping something from Yenic that could make a difference to how he felt about her. It needed to see the light, finally.

  "Yenic. I need to tell you something. I already have a connection to Gael."

  His hand left her thigh and he tensed. "How close?"

  "Close enough that I understand the drive you speak of."

  She held her breath, waiting for his response, hoping she could weather it when it came. She couldn't justify it or try to explain it. A warrior made no such excuses.

  "All the more reason to mark the Enyalian," he said softly and stood, taking great care to wrap her carefully back into her cloak.

  "Go back to the fire, Alaysha, and rest. I'll never be able to sleep tonight. I might as well take watch."

  Morning brought grumpy but better rested comrades. Alaysha hadn't slept as well as she'd hoped, Yenic's words crept through her thoughts most of the night. As they packed up camp, Gael fashioned a comfortable seat for the child that he could hoist over Cai's beast and eased her up behind Bodicca and in front of Theron. Alaysha discovered the best way to get Gael to sit Barruch was to offer him to Yenic. With a curse, the large warrior lifted Aedus onto the horse and sat behind her just so Yenic couldn't. She could tell from his expression that he realized his mistake even as he settled in.

  That left Cai, Yenic, and Edulph to walk with Alaysha: the hardiest of the group, but all spent even so. One night wasn't near enough rest to restore the energy they'd lost. She noticed that while Cai walked on the other side of Edulph, she adjusted the blade on her belt to rest just beneath her dominant hand. It seemed she trusted Edulph about as much as Alaysha did.

  "Tell me, Edulph," Alaysha said. "How did you escape the raiding party?"

  He gained some of his before-Sarum flair for commanding tone. "I waited till they thought me too exhausted to care, then I chopped off the hand of one when she came near me with food."

  "That doesn't explain the others," Cai said and Alaysha heard the fury in the woman's voice.

  He nodded to the child lying on the beast ahead. "They found me."

  "Quite a coincidence," Alaysha said.

  "She's remarkable." Edulph's steps lengthened as he worked to outpace them. Alaysha let him go.

  "Do you believe it, Cai?"

  "I believe only that men think they are too smart for any woman. We've proved them wrong too often."

  "You think he's lying."

  "Of course he's lying. But for what purpose?"

  "Indeed," Alaysha said.

  An entire fortnight: that was the length of time it took to gain the Highlands. By seven Sun cycles, the trees had thickened and not just in quantity, but in girth. At times, Alaysha played a game with Aedus to see how many sets of arms it took to encircle the biggest tree. By day ten, it took all of them to do so; by day twelve, there weren't enough of them to wrap around it.

  Aedus and Gael did well keeping the toddler asleep, searching for beetles and mashing them down into the liquid it took to fill the quills. Theron tended her with a peculiar compassion that had Edulph hovering over him in a strange measure of respect. Both of them were silent as much as they were anything else. All of them were. The tension was a heartbeat Alaysha used to gauge the passage of time.

  Gael wouldn't speak to her. Cai was merely tolerated by the men, and Aedus took to sleeping between Alaysha and Yenic because Edulph wouldn't let anyone near the child at night except for Theron.

  The one bright spot in each day was mealtime. Bodicca always managed to hunt or scavenge something delectable, seeming to prefer the solitude of foraging to the company of the group. Secretly, Alaysha believed she was still in mourning and left her be. It was one sore spot she didn't think either of them wanted to open.

  To keep the child nourished, Bodicca and Theron came up with the way to boil down bits of meat and bone into a watery broth that Aedus and the shaman dribbled into her mouth and turns. While the child didn't fatten, at least she didn't waste away.

  Fourteen Sun cycles would very nearly send Alaysha to the edge of her tolerance and at times, she understood how madness might have crept upon Edulph if he had journeyed this way at all.

  By day thirteen, they came upon a body of water that Edulph said would be impossible to cross.

  Alaysha stepped next to him at the water's edge. "You crossed it, did you not?"

  He stared at the water in the line of horizon that went past site. "I had a boat."

  "How often, Edulph?"

  "How often what?"

  "How many times have you crossed?" She was already tired of the verbal game.

  A sly line of a smile slithered across his face. "Enough."

  "How many?" She heard the annoyance in her voice.

  "Once running from Drahl."

  Yuri's lead scout who had tried to kill Alaysha and who, according to Aedus, did terrible things to a young Edulph. "And?"

  "Once returning for my people."

  "And?"

  "And that's it. I've seen the Highlands." He sounded nostalgic. "I was happy there."

  She snorted and he glowered at her. "Think what you like, witch." He walked the edge, thinking aloud. "They should have left a boat." He scanned the waterline in both directions. "I don't understand why they wouldn't leave a boat."

  "Maybe they don't want you back in the village," Cai said, coming alongside Alaysha and crossing her arms. "I wouldn't."

  He spit into the water. "You know nothing."

  "Then explain," Alaysha said. "Tell us."

  "Tell the witch who enslaved my people?"

  "That was my father."

  "But for you, he'd have lost that battle."

  Bodicca stepped closer, her hands on her hips. "Don't be so certain, man," she said.

  "Oh yes," Edulph ground out. "He had you, didn't he, and all those others. I remember. I might've been young, but I remember."

  "Then you'll remember Alaysha was but a pre-woman, then."

  He ignored her in favor of throwing a pebble into the water. Alaysha waded in behind it, testing the depths.

  "I suppose it doesn't matter now, Edulph. It only matters that we get across this so we can help your daughter."

  He nodded, still sullen. "I didn't kill her mother," he said.

  She looked at him. "Someone did," she answered.

  "Yes," he agreed, and the way he said it, the way his tone held a note of accusation, Alaysha knew what he'd been holding back from her. Why he hated her so.

  "It was me," she guessed. "But how?"

  He shrugged. "How do you always kill?"

  "No. How would you know this when I didn't?" Alaysha recalled the mud village, the three crones hunched over a dead fire. Fire, earth, air. All of them dead, but with their power safe in their daughters' spirits. Safe, presumably, elsewhere, far away from Alaysha's power. Sacrificing themselves, so Theron said, to save the line or to thwart the brother god of his legends. She wasn't sure which.

  Edulph seemed to tire of the burden of his secrecy and stepped close enough that when he spoke in a whisper, she could still hear.

  "Aislin. She knew." His mouth worked in thought. "She told me you dried her out like an apple in the sun for your father."

  "I might have," Alaysha admitted. "I can't deny it's possible. But it couldn't have been in the mud village." She looked at the child pointedly. "Because she would be with her mother. Somewhere safe."

  He laughed but without humour. "You witches, playing at your own war while people die around you as though we were nothing but beasts."

  "That's not true."
r />   "Isn't it?" He nodded at his daughter. "Even she knows it. I couldn't keep her from you when she knew, and now look at her. Payment for her compassion." He turned away.

  "What you mean, when she knew?" She grabbed his shoulder and twisted him back around. "Tell me what you mean."

  "How did you know about her?"

  Alaysha thought it over. "Yuri," she said. "And Yenic."

  He quirked both brows knowingly and Alaysha caught her breath as she realized. "You were trying to rescue us," she said.

  "I told you so."

  "But she can't control her power either."

  He shrugged. "She wanted to try. She thought she could."

  Alaysha wanted to reach out to him, but found she couldn't. Too much had happened; she knew neither one of them would ever trust the other. But she did know one thing. They needed to cross the water if the girl was to a chance of saving.

  "We'll get her home," she told him. "I swear it."

  She scoped the breadth of the water, scanning sideways, running her fingers across the surface. She considered the amount of power it would take to psych it dry and wondered if she could unleash as much as that, and if she could, would she be able to pull it back before it worked on the latent water resting inside the bodies and breath of her companions.

  The girl was sleeping less and less each time Aedus quilled her; how much longer and how many more times they could continue to do so was unclear. Theron wasn't even sure a fortnight was enough restorative sleep for the child to heal sufficiently. It was very possible she'd not recover at all unless he could get access to more than he had in his pack, to a good shelter, to food and support.

  They could go around the broad river, or they could go through it.

  "Theron, take Aedus and the child. Get on the road and travel east on the waterline. Go about a leagua." She hoped a leagua was enough. It seemed her power extended about that far when she'd taken the mud village.

  "The witch plans to drain the sea?" Theron sounded anxious

  "We can't lose the girl, and I won't risk Aedus. The rest of you have your choice."

  All of them, even Edulph stood silent in acquiescence as Alaysha watched Barruch plod away. She pulled in a bracing breath, held it, then very purposefully sent her power sniffing.

  The ready water, plenty of it, the seemingly endless supply delighted the power. She felt the latent excitement dancing in her chest. Oh what it could do with all the fluid. Her chest tightened like the bottom of a riverbed dried out by the sun; she could feel it pull away from her flesh, gathering into one small spot somewhere behind her spine. Her flesh tingled, her mouth went dry. She could sense that certain coiling of it as it began to reach out. It pulled the water like a dying man thirsted for his last breath.

  So potent was the thirst that she thought she'd inhaled enough fluid to send her floating on the sea somewhere above her. She couldn't feel her feet or hands. She only felt the filling of her entire being with the bloat of water, as though some part of her was made of it just past her physical body. She swore she could see a second version of herself outlining her skin and marvelled at how big it grew.

  She heard excited laughter coming from beside her but didn't dare turn to face it. She needed to keep the focus, stare at the sea, will it to release its water until the bottom showed through. Fish of all sorts flapped on the sea bed, gasping for water. Trout, pickerel, salmon. The men ran forward, collecting them, throwing them into the front of their leathers. The women drug their bedrolls out to the seabed and collected weeds and frogs. Laughing. All laughing. Barruch plodded onto the seabed even as it crackled dry, the Enyalian beast following him.

  She'd done it. She drained the sea and they could cross. She should have been ecstatic.

  All she felt was the bloat of water swimming across her vision, filling her lungs, driving out her air.

  She gasped, flailing about in mockery of those poor fish. She couldn't breathe. There wasn't room for one more breath or one more inhale.

  Chapter 27

  She awoke to a cacophony of birdsong and discovered she lay on a soft bed, the scent of roasted meat filling the air.

  She called out for Yenic, but it was Theron who hovered over her.

  "The witch awakes," he said smiling and she eased herself onto her elbows to look around.

  "So much excitement and to have missed it all. Such a shame. Yes?"

  She didn't need an explanation to understand what was going on. To be inside a lodge, the smell of food cooking, to feel the heat of a fire. They'd made it to the Highlands. So she'd been unconscious for at least two days, maybe more.

  "How is the child?"

  "The little one rests more suitably, now she's here. Yes oh yes."

  "Yenic?"

  "Brooding."

  "Gael?"

  "Also brooding."

  Alaysha chewed her lip thoughtfully. "And Cai?"

  A small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Brooding."

  "Is there anyone happy that we made it?"

  He shook his head soberly, then brightened. "Edulph."

  "So they're all mad at me."

  "Worried."

  "It had to be done."

  "Indeed, little witch. Indeed. Oh yes. But this shaman isn't sure she'll make it through another."

  She sighed, feeling the weariness in every muscle. It even hurt to breathe. "Don't even suggest it," she told him, touching her stomach as it growled hungrily. He fetched a copper bowl and set it close by while he gathered up a spoon and a trencher of bread.

  "Broth first," he told her.

  She opened her mouth obligingly to the offered broth and swallowed. The taste was pungent of meat and spices.

  "Bodicca," she guessed.

  "She fills her time re-teaching the women to cook."

  Alaysha waited for another spoonful that didn't come.

  "The witch needs to mark another," Theron said.

  "You don't waste much time."

  "There's no time to waste, oh no."

  She sighed heavily. "Cai," she said and his brow lifted like a bird taking flight.

  "Cai," she repeated. "Tomorrow." She rolled over and away from him, suddenly even more weary than before.

  She slept the day and by early evening felt sure-footed enough to step outside. If anyone visited, she didn't know, but all sat now outside the lodge around a huge communal fire where children roasted bread over tree limbs and a boar gutted and split, roasted on a spit, sending the delicious aroma through the air. Alaysha's stomach gurgled. She thought of the time she'd made Saxa feed her meat too soon when she was recovering from a wound, and how she'd vomited it all up on Gael.

  He'd thought her a burden then, and seemed to feel so again. Best she spare him the mark that would connect them for the rest of their lives.

  She saw him now, sitting alone, staring broodily into the flames and drinking from a copper goblet. He must have felt her eyes on him because he looked up directly at her and met her gaze. His face changed; it grew stormy and dark. He leapt to his feet and charged for her; Cai, seeing him, was by her side before he could reach her.

  "I won't let her," he barked at Alaysha.

  "Won't what, Gael?"

  "Won't let her take your mark."

  "It's too late. I've decided."

  "Undecide it."

  She shook her head as Cai stepped in front of her. "She nearly died; have you forgotten that, man? Leave her to her decision."

  He pushed at Cai but the woman didn't move. "I won't let you leave your life to this woman," he told Alaysha. "I won't let you leave it to someone you can't trust."

  "I trust her." She touched his arm and he met her gaze without a change of expression, but his eyes fell to her mouth.

  "Mark me," he said, but it wasn't a plea.

  "You don't know what it means," she told him.

  "I do," he said. "The shaman told us."

  Of course he would, the busy bee. "Gael, I don't even know if Cai agrees." She felt
weary over it. She didn't want to argue.

  "I do," the woman pressed closer, pushing Gael aside. "The shaman explained it, and I do."

  Alaysha took her in. She'd given Theron a name just so he would leave her alone. She shook her head, thinking to decline is all when the Enyalian touched her chin at the centre where her mark was.

  "You will die, little maga, if your power takes you again. I would rather share you with this man than see that happen." She looked at Gael who gave a grudging nod. "See?" She said happily. "We both would."

  From the corner of her eye, Alaysha saw Yenic watching, both anxious and intrigued. She looked past him to the backdrop of tree trunks so broad they sported stairs and sets of stairs that wound around each other and connected to lodges set in the very trees themselves, up dizzying heights that made Alaysha feel faint.

  Highlands. It made sense now. They lived high in the trees, all the better to see danger coming.

  "Alaysha?"

  Yenic's voice. His hand grasping for hers. He'd got up in the time she was thinking, and she wondered how long she'd been lost in her thoughts.

  "You need an Arm, Alaysha. Please."

  She chewed her lip. It was folly, what they planned to do, out and out folly. The best candidates and yet all hated each other. All connected only because she loved them.

  She nodded, finally, mutely.

  They were safe for now, all of them. The wind witch. Yenic. Aedus. What better time to marshal all the strength they could.

  "Have Theron verse us all," she said numbly, realizing the decision had sapped what energy she had left. "Tomorrow. It'll be done tomorrow."

  She stumbled back to the lodge at the edge of the village, out past the trees into a small clearing that smelled of redwood and ferns.

  She collapsed on the bedroll and closed her eyes, feeling as though she'd sentenced the two warriors to death. She thought of Thera and her lodge, of the sight of Gael lying naked in the heat, unconscious. How she ached for him to be well, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest, the thigh muscles quivering in drugged sleep. She smelled again the myrrh, the brimstone, imagined Thera piling the furs onto her cot as the smoke rose.

  Brimstone. Something about brimstone niggled at her thoughts, but she couldn't grasp at it with the image of Gael lying helpless in her memory or the sight of those furs piled onto that cot moving in a similar way to Gael's chest, almost imperceptible.