by Damien Black
The crone’s dwelling wasn’t much better. It was dead of night, yet Adhelina had lit no taper before preparing her friend’s simple: the grotto was illuminated by an orb of glass hanging from the middle cave containing a swirling liquid that emitted a blue-green light. This dimmed and grew stronger seemingly of its own will but never went out. The damsel had read enough accounts of Argolian witch hunters to suspect Alchemy, the Seventh School of Magick.
Hettie’s breathing eased as the fresh simple took effect, her coughing subsiding. Touching her friend’s forehead again Adhelina felt the heat ease slightly. Rummaging around in her medicine pouch she produced a dried bunch of Lonefrick’s Cap. She’d boil another dose in hot water this afternoon; that should help some more with the fever. It was a strong plant and she couldn’t risk using it more than once a week, because the side effects could be severe: rashes and sores in minor cases, bleeding and death in extreme ones.
A low mumbling drew her attention away from her herbs. It was coming from beyond the entrance to the cave she shared with Hettie, past the middle one where Anupe slept, her calloused hand still resting on her drawn falchion. Pulling her cloak around her Adhelina stepped gingerly towards the entrance, crouching low to avoid banging her head against the rough ceiling. The smell of dank earth was all about her.
Stopping at the entrance-way joining her cave to Anupe’s, she looked past the Harijan’s sleeping form. There were two more exits: one led back towards another cave that served as an antechamber and looked onto the overgrown hollow where their horses were tethered; the other led to the burned crone’s part of the grotto.
That was where the mumbling was coming from.
Adhelina closed her eyes and tried to focus her hearing. Was the crone talking in her sleep? The words weren’t distinct enough to make out, but even so the heiress of Dulsinor felt sure they were not in any tongue she knew. A shiver caressed her spine; her clothes stuck to her flesh clammily.
Adhelina gave a start as she felt a hand grip her wrist. Looking down she saw Anupe had rolled over and was brandishing her blade.
‘What are you doing?’ the outlander asked in a hoarse whisper.
‘Just listening…’ replied Adhelina, regaining her composure.
‘To what?’
‘Our host… just listen.’
Both women waited in silence for a few seconds. The words stopped then came again, low and sibilant and strange. Adhelina did not like them, whatever they meant.
‘I do not care for this place,’ said Anupe, reading her thoughts. ‘The sooner Lady Freihertz is well enough for moving the more I shall like it.’
‘At least we should be safe from Sir Balthor and his men,’ said Adhelina. ‘While we’ve been stuck here he’s probably given up the search and gone back to Graukolos.’
‘Explaining your strange vanishing to his lord,’ said the mercenary, sitting up and stretching. The pungent smell of steel and leather on a woman was still hard for Adhelina to get used to, but she felt grateful for the freesword’s protection.
‘My father won’t stop at that,’ said Adhelina. ‘Even now he will be mustering a wider search – he commands a hundred bachelors and twice that number of serjeants, plus landed vassals. Our plan was a good one when we had time on our side. Now…’
‘You are right,’ said the Harijan. ‘This delay is not in our interest. So why do you not follow my counsel – ’
‘I’m not leaving her here,’ snapped Adhelina. ‘As I told you more than a week ago, I will not abandon Hettie to face my father’s justice alone.’
Anupe shook her head exasperatedly. ‘Very well, then you will leave us in a difficult position instead.’
Their argument was interrupted by a sound. A winged shape suddenly flew from the crone’s cave. It crossed the middle cave in the blinking of an eye, before disappearing out of the far exit to be swallowed up by the night sky.
‘What was that?’ breathed Adhelina.
‘I am not sure,’ replied Anupe. ‘A bird… or something else. Perhaps it is time I spoke to our host.’ The Harijan got up agilely, and began stalking towards the crone’s cave.
Hettie called out behind them.
Adhelina turned back to see to her friend. Hettie sat up, coughed and shook her head. The heiress of Dulsinor reached out and touched her forehead. It was cool.
‘Why Hettie, your fever’s broken!’ she said. ‘Thank Reus, you’re on the mend!’
Hettie managed a small smile in the eerie light. ‘Thanks to your efforts, milady. I recognise a pomander of herbs when I smell one.’
‘And sharp as ever!’ said Adhelina delightedly, a warm wave of relief washing over her. Hettie would need another day or two of rest, but she was out of danger.
‘But where on earth are we?’ asked Hettie, looking around the grotto. ‘I don’t remember much… how long have I been sick?’
‘Your fever was at its worst ten nights ago,’ explained Adhelina. ‘We had to tie you to the saddle and brought you here, to this place. We’re still in the wilderness, about a half a day’s ride from the road to Meerborg. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for a good tenday.’
‘A tenday?’ replied Hettie, startled. ‘But that will mean… Won’t Balthor have realised we aren’t in Meerborg?’
‘Oh Hettie, rather too sharp for your own good!’ said Adhelina fondly. ‘Don’t worry yourself about such things for now, just concentrate on getting well. We’re quite safe, we’re in this place…’ She trailed off, wondering how safe they really were.
They were distracted by a sharp yell. Loping back to the centre Adhelina saw Anupe emerge from the crone’s cave, dragging their host by a tuft of grey hair.
The Harijan flung her roughly to the ground.
‘Speak!’ she commanded. ‘I like not your witch ways. What creature flew from your cave just now?’
‘There wasss no creature,’ hissed the crone, her deformed mouth cracking an ugly grimace. ‘You sssaw a ssshadow, nothing more.’
She would have been tall for her sex and large of body, but decades of living in the grotto had hunched her back. Besides that the crone’s scarred skin gave her a shrivelled aspect that belied her true size. Her deerskin robes were soiled with earth, her burned face topped by sparse tufts of hair.
Anupe menaced the crone with her falchion.
‘Do not insult me – I know my own eyes and ears,’ she said, yanking her into an upright position. The middle cave was the largest but both women still had to stoop.
The burned crone spat at Anupe’s feet and said nothing. The Harijan flung her back to the ground and pressed the tip of her blade against her throat.
‘You are a witch,’ said Anupe, gesturing at the cave’s jumbled contents. It was crammed with assorted odds and ends, rubbish the crone had collected over the years – broken stools, worn crates, a splintered barrel, lengths of twine, a pair of cracked lanterns, threadbare cloth, soiled bearskins, mildewed sacks, an assortment of shattered ceramic bowls and gourds… their strange host did not lack for company, if inanimate objects could be said to be company.
‘How many have you tricked with your sorcery over the years?’ she demanded. ‘No ordinary hermit would keep such things.’
The burned crone narrowed her eyes, looking all the more hideous in the pulsing light of the orb. ‘Then why do you ssstay?’ she hissed. ‘Leave me be if you don’t like what you sssee.’
‘That we shall, now that my friend is better,’ interjected Adhelina. ‘But first you must tell us what you are up to. I heard you mumbling to yourself before yon winged apparition flew from your cave – explain yourself, or my bodyguard shall not be merciful.’ As if to emphasise her employer’s words, Anupe stepped forward and placed a booted foot on the crone’s broad flat chest.
‘I have not troubled you,’ said the crone. ‘Shelter and ressst for your friend you begged. Thisss I gave you. I even offered you tea but you refusssed. I did not even asssk for a share of your meat. Thisss isss how you rep
ay me?’
‘As to your blandishments, I am glad we tried them not,’ said Adhelina. ‘For Reus knows what your potions contained and I see no herbs here that I recognise. You haven’t troubled us ‘tis true, but night and day you’ve watched us keenly. What have you learned?’
Adhelina caught Anupe flashing her a look. She knew she was taking a risk, but instinct told her the crone already knew more than she should.
The crone remained tight-lipped. The sight of Anupe’s razor-sharp blade seemed not to frighten her. Perhaps she did not think a woman capable of killing, though Adhelina knew better. Or perhaps she had already suffered so much that death held few terrors for her.
The Harijan must have been thinking along the same lines, for she said: ‘Milady, please fetch me a taper from my things over yonder, I would have a more natural light.’
Glancing at the bundle next to her Adhelina nodded. ‘Hettie, be so kind as to give our freesword what she requests.’ These were emergency circumstances, but the heiress of Dulsinor still ought not to fetch and carry.
Hettie did as she was asked and produced a taper and tinderbox. Following the Harijan’s instructions she clumsily struck up a fire. All the while the crone struggled to be free but Anupe dropped her falchion and wrestled her to the ground, pinning her arms behind her before lashing them together with some of the twine.
As Hettie approached with the flaring taper she gave vent to a hideous shriek. Adhelina was scarcely surprised; she had shrunk back into the furthest corner of the cave every night when Anupe had cooked them meat after hunting. Their peculiar host seemed to survive on a diet of nuts, roots and berries.
‘Now I think you will tell us what we want to know,’ said Anupe, dragging her upright and forcing her to face the flames. ‘Or do you want to feel the fire again?’
‘Noo, noo, NOOOOO!’ shrieked the crone hysterically. ‘Not the FIRE, pleassse! They burned me sssso badly, they would have killed me!! The monksss rescued me from the fire only to burn me again! Not the fire, not the fire, NOT THE FIRE!!!’
The significance of her words was not lost on Adhelina. Peering at the crone in the firelight she could see it – virtually invisible against the rumpled flesh of her forehead, but still just about discernible if you really looked for it.
‘Why she’s been branded,’ she said. ‘One can barely notice it against her scars. She’s been tried by Argolians and found guilty. She is a witch!’
‘Now tell me something I do not know,’ said Anupe.
‘We will not hurt you,’ said Adhelina. ‘But you must tell us what you know and what you have done. Otherwise you really will burn to death this time.’
She felt a pang of guilt. She didn’t like any kind of cruelty, but what choice did they have? She would be free of her bondage to the loathsome Herzog her father wanted her to marry – even if that meant doing unpleasant things.
‘I heard you and the freesssword talking last night,’ spat the crone. ‘Sssomething about getting out of Dulsssinor, and your father being a powerful man, and ssstoping at nothing to find you… and then I realisssed who you were. It had been many yearsss since I sssaw you, and you were but a girl-child back then.’
Adhelina’s eyes narrowed further. ‘Who are you?’ she barked.
‘One who would fain ssserve your father again,’ replied the witch. ‘I wasss a chambermaid at Graukolosss, and I lived in the village of Lanfrig nearby. My mother’sss sssister lived in the Glimmerholt, and practisssed sssorcery. ‘Twas from her feet I learned…’
A sly self-satisfied smile crossed the witch’s face. At a nod from Anupe, Hettie brought the taper closer so she could feel the flames. Anupe had to hold her even more tightly to stop her frantic squirming.
‘What did you learn?’ pressed Adhelina.
‘I tried to transssform my wages – copper into sssilver, but I could not. The disssscipline of merging Transssformation with Alchemy isss a difficult one to massster alasss… My neighboursss found me out, and took hold of me. Sssome were for burning me on the ssspot, othersss wanted to call the Argolians. Both sssides had their way… Only the arrival of two friarsss sssaved me, but I wasss half burned ere they intervened. Then they tried me, and I wasss found guilty of practisssing Right Hand sssorcery. They branded me a witch and the Eorl banished me from Graukolosss and all the landsss for ten leaguesss about, on pain of death.’
‘Your punishment was justly deserved,’ replied Adhelina firmly. ‘But why were you not bound in links of cold iron, as the penalty for witchcraft stipulates?’
The burned witch looked at her with admiration. ‘Very clever, the heiresss of Dulsssinor isss well read indeed.’
‘Save your flattery and answer my question.’
‘My posssessions were impounded by the Argolians, but I had another cache of paraphernalia buried in the woodsss near where my aunt usssed to live. I went there and recovered it – among other thingsss was a concoction I had made that would render itsss drinker sssubject to itsss maker’s wishes. After that it wasss just a matter of finding a vagabond, sssomeone who would trick a sssmith into drinking it. My ally knocked the sssmith out and robbed him after he freed me from the iron. I found thisss place and have lived here ever sssince, but I have grown lonely in the wildernesss. I would fain return home.’
‘And you think my father will lift your banishment if you turn me in?’
The witch favoured her with an ugly smile. ‘It can’t hurt to try now can it, sssweetie?’
‘And so what was the spell you were using just now? What creature did you conjure up to tell my father of our whereabouts?’
‘Ah, sssso clever! What a shame the Argolians don’t accept women, you would have made a fine witch hunter…!’
‘Enough of your cheek – answer my question or by Reus I really will have you burned!’
‘It wasss no creature, jussst an ordinary bird of flight. It’s carrying a little messsage to your father.’
‘What did the message say?’ The witch squealed as Hettie waved the brand at her, doing her best to look menacing. Her drawn sick face looked ghastly enough in the flickering light.
‘I sssaid the heiresss of Dulsssinor isss here, with a freesssword and high-born companion. I sssaid I would wait by the broken well ssseven leaguesss from the eassst road to Meerborg every day at noon for one hour. I sssaid gold would loosssen my tongue easssily enough.’
Adhelina’s lip curled in disgust. ‘I can’t expect a commoner to have honour, but your avarice is sickening.’
‘This broken well, where is it?’ asked Anupe.
‘Not far,’ replied the witch. ‘Half a league eassst of here, towardsss the main road.’
‘And this message of yours, it said nothing else?’
‘Nothing – I would not wish to reveal everything before I wasss sssure of my reward.’
‘No indeed, you have proved most clever in this regard,’ replied Anupe, pulling her dirk from her boot and plunging it into the crone’s back.
The witch’s dying scream drowned out the damsels’ own cries before she expired in a twitching heap, the dagger buried in her heart.
‘We could not leave her alive to tell them more when they arrive,’ said the Harijan, ignoring their horrified expressions as she pulled her blade free of the spurting wound. ‘At least she did not die by the fire.’
‘That was an ugly deed and an unjust one!’ protested Adhelina. ‘I said she would come to no harm if she helped us!’
‘She helped us by dying,’ replied the Harijan, before cleaning her bade coolly and returning it to its scabbard. ‘Now, let us get our things together and get gone from this strange place. Lady Freihertz will have to ride, and finish her recovery in the saddle. My guess is a bird can fly to Graukolos in a few days. That means most likely we will have this Balthor on our backs again within a week – there was enough information in that note for him to guess as to our whereabouts. We must get to the Argael with all haste.’
Stepping lightly over the corpse
the outlander began packing up her things.
Adhelina and Hettie exchanged shocked looks. But what was there to say? The Harijan had the right of it, and no amount of talking would bring the dead back. Adhelina felt her heart sink. How many more lives would her bid for freedom cost?
Her oldest friend clearly sensed her misgivings. ‘Try not to think too much, milady,’ she said, drawing closer. ‘She’s right – we need to get out of here right away. There’ll be time aplenty for reflecting when we’re on a ship to Meerborg.’
Adhelina smiled weakly, then frowned. ‘Will you be all right? Your fever’s only just broken – ideally you should have had another day or two of rest.’
Hettie smiled back, trying to look hardy. ‘I’ll just have to do my recovering in the saddle, as Anupe said. At least the worst is over – and besides, some fresh air and exercise will do me some good I trow.’
‘Thank Reus you’re well again Hettie,’ said Adhelina. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘You’d probably be on a dromon bound for the Empire by now,’ answered Hettie ruefully.
‘We’ll get there yet, Hettie, you’ll see.’
Her friend smiled again but could not hide the sadness in her eyes. Their old life already seemed a thousand miles away.
They packed their things in silence. In less than an hour they were following a trail out of the hollow where the burned witch had lived and died. It was a clear summer’s night and the stars were a welcome relief after the eerie light of the grotto. Anupe rode ahead, holding the taper aloft to light their way.
Adhelina’s mind flashed back to the nightmares that had awoken her, and she suppressed a shiver. She suddenly had a sense of the three of them caught up in a tiny halo of light, surrounded on all sides by a darkness that had no earthly compass.
Perhaps that’s all there is to a life, she thought dolefully.
CHAPTER V
Of Troubled Souls
Adelko picked at his food. He was normally always hungry, and the monks of Ørthang ate just as well as those of Ulfang, but he had no appetite. The refectory was somewhat smaller than Ulfang’s, and bereft of the statues he had found so appealing. Thinking on the one of St Ionus that had been his favourite, he thought it strange the patron saint of travellers should be absent now – he had become quite the voyager since leaving his monastic home in the Highlands.