by Sarah Remy
War, even a war that had not yet quite begun, was a dangerous sport. The priests were kept busy all hours by patients in need of everything from the simplest spell to cure a squire’s nervous constipation to more complicated healings worked on broken bones taken in practice or burns taken over the cook fire. Numerous unexplained rashes and the more common chafing caused by ill-fitting padding were treated with salves instead of spells. Slices and gashing, a daily occurrence, were also left to heal on their own, but more serious afflictions often needed tending. Avani and her needle and catgut were rarely separated for long.
Although she went home to her own bedroll in the evening, Absen and his priests continued working through all hours, snatching sleep on the floor of the baldachin as deep night grew finally quiet. They rested peacefully without guard or weapons of their own at hand, secure in the grace of their god. Avani, who found violence as distasteful as any theist did, nevertheless believed the Goddess helped those who looked after themselves. When she quizzed Brother Absen about the doubtful wisdom of going unarmed into war, he shrugged away her concern.
“The one god shelters and provides,” he said. “And in return he expects his priests to eschew brute force. For us, it’s not a matter of choice. It’s a way of life.”
Absen could not know, of course, that his brothers in Wilhaiim’s temple were in a large part responsible for bringing brute force under the mountain divide. Avani wondered if he would change his stance were she to tell him. She thought he would not, any more than she would abandon her own Goddess because of another’s irreverence.
He must have glimpsed concern on her face, because he patted her arm with a wrinkled, blue-veined hand. “I would prefer to die in righteous enterprise than out of harm’s way and idle,” he said. “Wythe has been good to me; I am not afraid to die in service if that is god’s plan. Neither should you be, although I do not think for you it will come to that.”
“Oh, aye?”
“I feel the world is not done with you yet, witch,” Brother Absen promised with visible glee. “Whether you should find that a comfort or a torment, I cannot say.”
Avani, watching the old priest chortle over his blood-letting bowl and, willing to accept any crumb of encouragement cast her way, decided to settle on comfort. She set her mind to her work in the baldachin and concentrated on the righteous enterprise of tending hurts great and small. In doing so, in honoring her Goddess and her ancestors, she reclaimed for a time a measure of peace.
“Ai, it’s Cleena’s honey,” she diagnosed, wrinkling her nose at the litter of stoppered crocks spread atop Brother Absen’s medicine chest. “I’d know her work anywhere.” She took the hem of the kerchief between two fingers, testing the fabric. “I had hoped we’d seen the last of her.”
The baldachin was uncommonly quiet, the morning’s patients sent home with ointment for saddle sores or tea to settled an apprehensive gut, and the usual parade of cuts and scrapes not yet begun. A Kingsman come from Wilhaiim on foot with a message from the temple was napping on an unoccupied camp bed, shaking the baldachin with his snores. Brother Shin had gone into the forest for mushrooms while Brother Cenwin, an excitable man who had spent the first half of his life as a docks man in Low Port, was employed at the altar in snipping candle wicks. There was a sleepy quality to the morning; even the lancers and their coursers seemed subdued.
“There’s no sidhe spell on these,” she continued, choosing a jar and breaking the seal. She sniffed first, then scooped a dollop free and licked it off her fingertip, ignoring Morgan’s squeaking protest. “Only rosemary in this one. To match the herbal sprig she’s attached. But you’re right to be chary,” she said, “as honey is a knotty thing. A bee may drink of a flower poisonous to humans, and make of it a deadly nectar. On Shellshale there was a grandmother who nursed her bees on rhododendron and gathered from their combs a red, vicious honey that, when eaten, would make a person giddy and light-headed. She claimed her red honey ambrosia could make a man more virile and also cure the grippe.”
“Mad honey.” Brother Absen nodded. “We have it off the Black Coast ships to use in the temples for ailments of the heart. But there is none here.” He waved a hand over the collection. “I would recognize it. As for other poisons, I’ve a sigil I use on the afflicted to spot a perversion of the system that will work just as well on these, my lord. Let me just retrieve my grimoire . . .” Glancing at Morgan first for permission, the theist hurried off on bare feet.
“Bit of an odd fellow,” Liam murmured, staring after. “Do you suppose he realizes he’s got dried vomit down the front of his robes? Are you certain he knows what he’s about?”
“Absen presided over my nativity,” Morgan sputtered. “And might have made Masterhealer in Wilhaiim if my father hadn’t insisted on keeping him close. He’s an accomplished physicker.”
“He does fine work,” Avani allowed, “and makes the most difficult patients smile while he’s about it. I trust his appraisal.” She capped the rosemary tincture. “I think we’ll find these are safe, an honest exchange made for fresh meat.” Bothered, she shook her head. “I mislike her continued interference. Even if it’s curiosity driving her and not malice, her presence can only be construed as misfortune.”
“The keening hag.” Liam glanced out the baldachin at Kingsmen and horses. “Harbinger of death.”
“You don’t believe that?” The young earl shook his head. “It’s superstitious nonsense, that’s all. She’s sidhe. An adversary, certainly, but no more terrifying than any barrowman.”
“You might change your mind if you met her,” Liam muttered. Avani couldn’t help but agree.
“Superstition is rooted in truth,” proclaimed Brother Absen, returning with a heavy, leather-bound book in hand. “According to our histories, the sidhe often sent out their womenfolk ahead of incursion, to scout the lay of the land and signal when the time for attack was ripe.” He settled on his knees on the ground, opening the book on his lap. “They were indeed the harbingers of death, though mayhap not quite as your squire assumes, my lord.”
Brother Cenwin, completing his work at the altar, drifted close. “Move back,” he told Avani and Liam, “enchantment is dangerous work. You, too, my lord.” He shooed them away from Absen and his book.
Avani was certain she saw Absen roll his eyes. He walked gnarled fingers down the page of his book, bypassing inked sketches, diagrams, and phrases. Words wavered on the page like fog over still water, making them impossible for Avani to read. Absen appeared to have no such difficulty.
“Ha, here it is,” he said, pleased. “A seal for drawing out poisons. Haven’t had much need for it lately, not since the countess’s father ordered a hunt on Wythe’s venomous moles. Nasty critters, those, but blind in sunlight and easily lured from their holes. We don’t have them in Wythe anymore.”
He recited words off the page, and like the letters the syllables refused to arrange themselves sensibly in Avani’s ears. Andrew’s ring warmed against her breastbone. Her skin itched in response to magic rising. When Brother Absen discharged the spell, tracing a shining spiral in the air above the honey pots with one finger, she felt the jolt of it in her back teeth.
The sigil hovered in the air for a brief, contemplative moment, then burned itself out in a flash of yellow, falling over the honey and the kerchief in a shower of ash.
Brother Absen wagged his chin. “They are completely safe, as I supposed. In fact, there’s no ill intent secured to the gifting at all.” He rose, joints creaking, and passed his grimoire to Cenwin. “A truth for which I cannot help but be grateful. If I’m to assume the flower corresponds to the tincture, these three here are a white myrtle concoction, and especially curative when painted on an open wound.” He looked expectantly in Morgan’s direction. “The rest would certainly make some of our healing tinctures more palatable. Why, even the kerchief, boiled and dried, could be cut into bandages.”
“Or course, Brother Absen,” Morgan replied. “Take them all, a
s my gift to the temple.”
Beaming, the old theist bundled the pots in the kerchief. Liam muttered under his breath. Avani poked him in the spine.
“Brother Shin has been gone a long time in the red wood,” she said. “Too soon the day will grow busy again and we’ll need the extra hands. My lord, will you lend me Liam for a short while?”
“Certainly he will,” Absen said before Morgan could speak. “My lord will keep me company here until you return or he’s needed elsewhere. It will do the garrison good to see you doing the one god’s work, young Morgan.”
“Of course,” Morgan repeated but with less enthusiasm. “Don’t be long, Liam. We’ve still to pay that visit to the quartermaster.”
“Shin never wanders far,” Absen reassured the lad. “But he does tend to lose track of time in the forest. Consummate herbalist, that man, may the one god keep him safe.”
“You’re walking better,” Avani ventured, pleased, as she and Liam crossed beneath the forest canopy. A grouping of Kingsmen, chattering quietly as they grazed their horses in the shade, grew silent as they passed. She supposed they were an odd pair, the witch and the scarred man, and tried not to resent those covert glances. “How is your knee?”
“Mending quickly.” Liam grinned. His hand rested on the pommel of his knife, vigilant. Avani suffered a burst of bittersweet affection. He’d come a long way in a short time from the orphaned lad she’d first loved on the Downs.
“There’s some magic in your healings now, is there, my lady?” he suggested. “When before it was learning and practice that made you so capable. You’re taking what Malachi taught you and making it your own.”
Sparrows twittered angrily above their heads. Jacob, having left his post in the evergreen near the baldachin, fluttered indolently from branch to branch in Avani and Liam’s wake, disturbing the smaller birds. Avani could sense the raven’s hilarity as he chased them from their roosts.
The tiny red flowers were fading as summer waned, turning the carpet on the forest floor from scarlet to rust. The forest ferns, too, were turning to yellow, their giant fronds becoming brittle as nights grew colder. Mabon was only weeks away; winter was not far off. But the sunlight filtering through the canopy was warm instead of scorching on the top of Avani’s head and she was glad to see summer’s end.
“One way or another it was always mine,” she replied after a moment’s thought. “Flatlander magic, bone magic, necromancy. Theist enchantments, ensorcelled sigils drawn in the air over pots of honey.” She hopped over a narrow stream dividing two moss-draped banks. “Even the sidhe spells, ai? They’re related, I think, sides of the same deep-rooted hardwood.” She indicated an ancient sycamore growing near the stream. White lichen obscured bark on one quarter of the trunk, making it appear ghostly and withered in the shade, while the rest of the sycamore, favored with morning sun, appeared gray and gold and healthy. “The view changes depending upon where one is standing. Absen thinks the power comes from his god, I believe it’s a gift from my Goddess, the magi prefer to believe it’s a gift from the dead and the sidhe—”
“Earth magic,” Liam said, kicking up a clod of forest soil with his toe. It spun over the ground then broke apart against a sapling. “Sometimes I dream the taste of it in my mouth, from when they used it to bring me back from death. Like mud and moldy leaves.” He grimaced. “If they’re all parts of the same thing, my lady—the healers, the necromancers, the aes si, what do you suppose it means?”
“I haven’t walked all the way around that old hardwood yet,” Avani confessed. “Nor seen it from every angle. But I suspect it means just what you said: the view is what we make of it.”
Spoken aloud, it seemed a simple truth.
“What about on the other side of the mountains? Will there be desert magi come to kill us with spells, do you think?” Liam wondered, as they paused to take stock of their surroundings. On the far side of the stream someone had trampled yellow ferns in a straight track further into the trees. Avani assumed it was Shin, heading directly to his mushroom patch.
“I think,” replied Avani, recalling what she’d gleaned of Desma from Mal, “that magic as we know it doesn’t root well there.”
“Well, that’s good, innit?” Liam puffed a relieved breath. “Mayhap we’ll have some small advantage.”
Somewhere in the trees not far away someone was singing, quietly, and then with more force, and then quietly again. Avani put a finger to her lips. Liam froze, head turned toward the sound. Jacob dropped from the sky onto Avani’s shoulder.
“That can’t be Shin,” Liam murmured. “I know that lay from Whore’s Street. It would make even Riggins blush. Besides, it sounds like a woman.”
“Whore’s Street, is it?” Avani awarded her lad a narrow glare before shaking her head. “Never you mind. I’d rather not know. Wait a moment.” She closed her eyes and sent a curl of questing power outward. What she discovered made her scowl and draw her sword and prime her wards.
“What is it?” Liam whispered, knife in hand.
“This way,” Avani said. “No need for stealth. I imagine she knows we’re coming.” She set off along the trail in the ferns, Jacob bobbing on her shoulder, Liam steps behind.
They didn’t have far to walk. The tavern lay sounded clearer as they drew closer; the refrain was indeed bawdy enough to make a soldier blush. Any other time Avani might have suspected a lancer wandered off from the garrison for a slice of solitude. Garrison living was crowded in more ways the just the physical, and although a Kingsman could be drummed out for wandering off, most commanders would look the other way so long as a soldier returned in a timely manner.
But no lancer sang with such beauty, voice like silver bells, heartbreaking in its purity. And it was too much of a coincidence, not with the honey just now in Absen’s care.
“Oh,” said Liam, understanding late. “Avani. Should I go back for help?”
“Nay. She’s not worth the panic it would cause.” They’d reached a break in the trees, not quite a clearing but a notch of blue sky and grass free of flowers and fern. A knee-high wall of bramble blocked most of the narrow lea from sight. Shin’s track passed through the bush, though thorny branches had closed again behind. Avani used her sword to part the tangle and saw that it was not so deep as she thought, easily passable.
She went through first, Jacob gone still, his claws scoring through her salwar to flesh long ago calloused by his company. Liam followed, moving through the brush without sound of footfall or leaf snap, as unnatural in the hunt as the one they hunted. Faolan, she thought fleetingly, must have been proud.
Cleena was waiting, sitting on her haunches in a patch of grass and mushroom, Shin’s head cradled on her thigh. His blood stained her patchwork skirts. His bag, half full with picked produce, was clutched in his hands.
The priest wasn’t yet dead, but he was very close. He’d been taken by three arrows, one in each eye and the last through his throat. Iridescent fletching shimmered beneath a spray of gore.
Cleena stopped singing when Avani and Liam stepped out of the bramble. She showed her pointed teeth in a grimace as Shin breathed his last breath, coughing a burst of blood onto her hands.
“You’re too late,” she said. “Poor man.” She growled low as Avani reached for silver fire. “I didn’t kill him, you fool. I found him dying amongst my lace caps and kept him company while he did.”
“Then who?” Liam demanded.
But Avani already knew the answer. She’d seen variegated fletching in Desma’s past. Heart pounding, she wheeled on Liam—“We have to go back!”—but too late. Garrison horns sounded in increasing alarm from the west, a precipitous clarion call. She thought she could hear a hound’s angry barking.
“Bear!” Liam crashed headlong back through the bramble. “Morgan! Avani, the garrison!”
At once Mal was in her head, holding her limbs immobile as he tried to assess the situation, using her eyes and her ears and then her magic, summoning wards with suc
h violence that Cleena hissed and cowered.
Jacob bounced and screamed on Avani’s shoulder. He bit her earlobe, drawing blood. Mal snarled and used Avani’s fist to try to knock the raven away.
“Stop it!” She fought them both, the bird on her shoulder and the magus in her head. “Get out!” Against all wisdom Cleena was crawling closer on hands and knees, dark eyes intent. Where the wards touched ground, grass smoked. Where Andrew’s ring brushed salwar, silk began to smolder.
“So much potential,” the banshee murmured, watching avidly as Avani struggled to regain control. Mal was insistent Avani walk at once deeper into the forest, away from danger. Jacob thought she belonged with Liam and Morgan. Both necromancer and Goddess desired to keep her safe. Neither gave a second’s thought to free will.
They warred within her head and heart, through her blood and bones. She knew she would die of it.
“So much potential,” Cleena repeated. She raised a hand, palm flat. “Why don’t you use it?” And she shoved, hard, against the gleaming silver-green surface of Avani’s wards.
It was lightning flashing in Avani’s veins and behind her eyes. It was fire burning back along every nerve. It was exhilaration arcing through bone and blood and heart and head, purging. And when it was over she was alone in her skull as she hadn’t been for years, wards burning clear and silver behind closed eyelids, an all-encompassing, pliant lattice in her head, guarding her very core, where she’d been trying and failing for so long to instead build adamant walls.
Jacob hunched on a nearby branch, silent but for the gnash of his beak. Mal was gone. Cleena clutched her palm against her breast, her grin pained.