by Rin Chupeco
In contrast, her meal was simpler: a glass of water, choice fruits and raw vegetables, and servings of sliced runeberries. “I never did acquire a taste for runeberry wine. I prefer to eat them raw.”
“These are not from Stranger’s Peak.” The runeberries that grew in that desolate region were smaller and rounder, like brown peaches. These were larger and paler in color.
“They’re from Murkwick. Have you heard of the place?”
“But, Mistress Tea, these runeberries are of a lesser quality than even asha apprentices are given to eat.”
“That’s true. But they remind me of my years spent as a novice in my asha-ka. I hated the acrid taste and yearned for the day I was old enough to take them in wine, as every proper asha did. But when I turned sixteen, I found the wine bland and disappointing. As terrible as the fruit was, I had grown used to the taste.”
She selected a large slice, lifted it to her lips, and bit down. She chewed briefly and closed her eyes.
“Sometimes it is good to remind ourselves how bitterness tastes.”
3
We arrived at the village of Murkwick four hours later, to purchase supplies for our journey to Kion and also to find horses for Fox and me to ride. Murkwick differed from Knightscross in two ways. While my village dabbled mainly in farming produce, the people here involved themselves in the runeberry trade. And unlike Knightscross, they welcomed bone witches with open arms.
Runeberries are a willful, intractable breed, Lady Mykaela told me. They grow only where their forebears had and wither away when uprooted into unfamiliar pastures, even with soil richer for farming. And so they grow in places like Stranger’s Peak, where the cold bites at the marrow and only strong, foul-tasting kolscheya can chip away at the blood that freezes in your veins each night but where the fruit is the best and most expensive of its kind. Or as far away as the desert bluffs of Drycht, where they prize the stems better than the crop and sell them to the most fashionable ateliers in all eight kingdoms to be woven into cloth. Or in the village of Murkwick, where its species of runeberries, owing to the moderation of the seasons and its contradictory nature, produces a far inferior quality. For all that, it remains highly sought after among those who cannot tell the difference.
The village chief refused to accept payment for the runeberries Mykaela purchased, and the people treated her with gratitude verging on worship. I learned the reason for it much later, when a young girl approached me and shyly asked if I was the asha’s daughter.
“She’s a bone witch,” I said without thinking, “not an asha. And I’m not her daughter.”
The girl’s smile vanished. Before I could react, she delivered a stinging slap against my cheek, and I stumbled back. “You dare insult Lady Mykaela!” she snapped and raised her hand again.
Fox’s fingers closed around her wrist. The girl yanked her hand away and the anger left her face, leaving only fear. She hurried away without another look back.
“Bone witches are asha, Tea,” Fox said to me, “although most would use the former as an insult.”
My cheek burned where the girl had struck it. I had no idea of the offense I’d given. Lady Mykaela was exquisite, and she certainly wore the type of clothes I imagined an asha would, but I couldn’t envision her beloved by the people or entertaining the rich and ennobled the way the asha in my books did.
“She’s loved by the villagers of Murkwick,” Fox pointed out. “The magic she uses might be taboo to some, and Odalia as a whole is suspicious of spellbinders—but there are still parts of the kingdom where that makes little difference.”
I wanted to ask him more questions, but I hesitated. I couldn’t look at my brother and not see a walking, talking corpse, and for all Lady Mykaela’s patient explanations, I was afraid death might have changed him somehow—that something else had returned in his stead and wore his face. He could no longer maintain a heartsglass, the pallor never left him, and sometimes his legs creaked and spasmed when he moved, but Fox made no complaints and bore his death with a restraint I did not have. Unlike us, he did not need sleep or food and spent his time standing guard while Mykaela completed the rest of her purchases.
I noticed something else. Where Fox walked, he cast no shadow. With a quick look behind me, I was relieved to see that I, at least, still had a shade to my name.
If the villagers knew of my brother’s condition, they gave no sign of it. He was quiet and said very little, the way he’d always done in life. But something was missing. He was calm and confident, and his eyes were still kind, but that tiny, indefinable spark that made Fox Pahlavi Fox Pahlavi was gone. This secret guilt I would carry around with me for many long months afterward.
Fox smiled at me. He didn’t talk much for the rest of the day but remained close at hand. I think he knew my fears but could not assure me otherwise.
Lady Mykaela took me to the village runeberry fields to watch the fruit ripen. Planted only the day before, Murkwick’s runeberries sprouted overnight from tiny budding shoots to slender stalks of unopened blossoms heavy with potential. As I watched, delighted, their petals unfolded to reveal bright orbs with shifting diamonds at their centers, dimming slightly when I approached but bursting into color when they thought no one saw. The villagers gathered up the black seeds that fell as the fruit was plucked to sow again once the harvest was done.
“This will tide us over until we get to Kion,” Mykaela said. Rather than press the fruit and serve it as wine, she asked the villagers to carve them into slices, to eat with gooseflower tea. Its bitterness stained my mouth, but Mykaela insisted. “Once every morning for a year, starting today. Twice a month after that, more if you are able.”
“I don’t recall my sisters ever eating these for breakfast.” I hated the way the berries took command of my tongue and forbade all other taste for hours afterward.
“You are not a Forest witch and neither are you a Water witch. Your sisters are medicine women, not spellbinders. They do not weave the kinds of magic we can. Bone witches like us need their strength—and for good reason. Runeberries will put the iron in your blood and the steel in your spine.”
“Why do you call yourself a bone witch and not an asha?”
Lady Mykaela busied herself, storing bundles of runeberries into her horse’s large saddlebags before replying. “I am an asha, Tea. I am also a bone witch. I cannot be one without being the other. And it would do both of us good to remember that there will always be people who ignore the first in order to condemn me for the second. The secret is to find pride in both, Tea—the good as well as the bad. It will help you do what needs to be done, regardless of what they see you as.”
“Mistress Mykaela?” One of the villagers approached us—a young boy with pleading eyes and smatterings of blue across his heartsglass.
I did not understand, but Lady Mykaela did. She reached into the bags and pulled out a small pouch and signaled for Fox and me to follow.
The boy led us to one of the smaller houses. Inside, an old woman lay groaning on the bed, her eyes clouded with fever. Lady Mykaela gently lifted the blankets off her and glanced at her heartsglass, green tinged and clouded against her chest. “Bonesmelt,” she said. “Common for her age but already at an advanced stage. What is your name, boy?”
“Tanner, milady.”
“Boil me some hot water, Tanner, and fetch me a clean bowl.”
Lady Mykaela took packs and jars from her pouch, all containing assortments of dried herbs. She mixed some of each into a bowl—a pinch from one, a larger dose from another—before dividing them into smaller portions, pouring all but one into folded paper packets with the efficiency of one who did this often. The last she added to the hot water. “This is a mixture of enderroot, sage, and adalt. Your grandmother must drink a bowl of this three times a day, after every meal,” she instructed. “When the potion runs out, boil her a fresh batch. One packet for every pot. Reme
mber that. They should last you four months, but I should be back before then.”
“Mistress Mykaela?” There was someone else at the door. This time it was a young woman whose husband had broken his leg in a fall.
We followed Lady Mykaela as she moved from house to house, treating the sick and the injured. I could not figure out how the asha knew their ailments with only a glance at their heartsglass, but I noticed a pattern: the sickly were green hued, family members’ blue with worry. There was orange for disinterest, yellow for fear, and red if their owners were healthy and happy. My mentor asked for nothing in return, and my confusion grew with each visit. My books told me that asha could heal the sick, but I had always assumed it was through magic. The reality was very different.
The villagers gave us a simple meal of bread and vegetables, but the asha ate no more than a few bites. It was evening by the time she was done making her rounds, and the village chief asked us to stay for the night, citing the lateness of the hour.
“There’s something troubling you, Garen,” Lady Mykaela said, smiling. “I can see it in your heartsglass.”
I looked and saw faint blue ripples across the surface of his pendant.
“You’re right, Mistress,” the old man apologized. “I am worried. It will be the seventh day of the seventh month tomorrow, and I wonder… The time is growing close to when that…that thing rises again. Murkwick is the nearest village where it could vent its fury, and I am very much afraid—”
“I have not forgotten, old friend,” Lady Mykaela interrupted him. “Rest easy. I will deal with the matter tomorrow, as I always have.”
“We are, as always, in your debt, Lady Asha. Is there anything else you require?”
“There are two things. I would like a shovel and perhaps a small sword for Sir Fox over here.”
“I will have them ready before you leave.” The old man bowed. The blue of his heartsglass faded until only its red hue remained.
They gave us the largest room at the Dancing Rune, Murkwick’s only inn, at the village chief’s request. The innkeeper offered Fox another, but my brother turned it down, calmly pointing out that the dead had no need for sleep. I’m sure it unnerved the man, but Fox had never been one to mince words.
I could sense Fox while he occupied himself in the village and was surprised to learn that a connection existed between us, however faint.
“What did you expect?” Lady Mykaela asked, sitting on her bed. She had traded in her beautiful blue-and-green dress for a silk robe more suitable for sleep. Even the woman’s underclothes were stunning. The rough chemise I had brought along looked ungainly and coarse in comparison. “The bond between an asha and her familiar is strong and difficult to break. You’ll learn more once we return to Kion.”
“What’s going to happen tomorrow?”
The woman took something round and carefully wrapped in paper from her pouch. When she pulled back the sheets, I saw a black stone, crumbled and decayed and covered in mold. “This is a bezoar,” she told me. “When fresh, it is a powerful antidote to many illnesses. But in a few days’ time, not even ashes shall remain. Tomorrow, we shall bring back a fresh specimen.” She slid into her bed, took a quick glance back at me. “You may ask me any other questions you have in mind. You must have many.”
“I could see the colors of the villagers’ heartsglass changing. I’ve never noticed that before.”
“Using the Dark runes for the first time made you more attuned to magic. That is all. Most people know three kinds of asha, Tea. The first are performing asha, known for their dancing and their singing, though their magic may be weaker than others. The second are fighting asha, known for their magic and their prowess, though they may not be the most gracious of hosts. The third are Dark asha like us, the strongest of them all.”
“Does this make my sisters asha as well?”
“Your siblings can sense magic, but purple hearts prove they are not powerful enough to be even the weakest of asha. They make for good apothecaries and ateliers, that is true, but they cannot harness magic strong enough to shape it according to their will. Asha means two things in old Runic. The first is ‘truth’; the second, ‘spellbinder.’ That is what we must do—we bind the magic and force it to do as we command. Rose may be a good healer, but she cannot see illnesses in heartsglass. And Lilac might be a good diviner, but she is not strong enough to summon so much as fire. They can draw Heartsrune, but that remains the extent of their abilities. Do you not find it odd that it is the custom of even the most remote villages to wear heartsglass?”
“When my parents wedded, they exchanged them as proof of their love. They have never lost their hearts in the twenty years since their marriage.” My eyes betrayed me; they wandered to Lady Mykaela’s neck, to her empty heartsglass. I jerked my gaze away, but already Lady Mykaela’s smile grew pinched, like she had tasted something tarter than runeberries. For a moment, she looked so sad that I worried I had given offense yet again.
But she only said, “Then that is evidence of your parents’ fidelity. But one of the original purposes of heartsglass was to find people who can wield the magic to take them to be trained. And then there are the rare few like you, who do not wait until they are thirteen years old to make their presence known. It was only by a stroke of luck that I was at the right place and time to sense the Dark you drew to summon Fox; you would have fared worse otherwise.”
I worked up my courage. “Lady Mykaela, what happened to your heartsglass?”
Her silence was the only reply I received. She turned and blew out the candles, and the room was plunged into darkness. I lay in bed and listened to the rustle of her clothes, the squeak of the mattress as it settled beneath her. When she spoke again, her words rang out like steel hammers. “That is enough questions for tonight. We rise early tomorrow.”
It was not easy to fall asleep in strange surroundings. I missed my small bed in my little house in Knightscross, and already I missed my family. I thought about the heartsglass my parents wore, about the hearts Daisy was constantly losing. Now that I knew the truth, I couldn’t help but feel cheated. Her explanation of them sounded so commonplace, less exciting than my books led me to believe.
And I was to be an asha. After everything that had happened, I had little time to appreciate my situation. All my childish play at pretending to be the famous asha of my stories now felt ridiculous. Did Taki of the Silk and Nadine of the Whispers feel this way? I wondered. Were they uprooted from the families they loved and sent to unfamiliar places because the magic that brought them their fame first gave them no choice?
I fell asleep with those melancholy thoughts. In the midst of my strange circumstances, Fox’s quiet presence in my mind was reassuring. Dead as he was, he was the only familiar thing I had left.
The wind blew heavy pockets of sand across the beach, blanketing everything with grit and ground, but the grave remained pristine, free of mud and soil. The girl knelt, polished the heavy stone at the head of the tomb. She watered the small, budding flowers that sprouted up along the green edges.
“What do people say of me?”
“They believe that you have turned fully to the Dark, my lady, that you have joined the ranks of the Faceless, and that you are preparing to lead the people of the lie to war.”
“And do you believe them?”
I chose honesty. “I do not know, milady.”
“I cannot blame you. The three who claim to lead the Faceless also draw in the Dark; most cannot tell us apart. Usij leads the southern faction—he makes a fortress out of the mountains in Daanoris and calls himself king, but he is all bark and bluster. Druj is wilier—he sows his discord in the west, and all city-states in Yadosha would pay a dear amount of money for his head. And as for Aenah, the last leader…”
She pauses. A curious, bitter smile is on her lips. “Not much is known about her save that she originally hailed fro
m Tresea.”
“Mistress Tea,” I asked, “who is buried here?”
The grass stained her dress as she lay beside the grave, laid her cheek against the ground.
Sadly, she said, “A boy who died for me.”
4
The small mound lay twenty miles away from Murkwick, hidden in the woods. There were no paths, and it seemed like you could find that exact spot only if you knew it was there to begin with.
“This creature used to haunt these woods undeterred for many years, killing stray villagers,” Lady Mykaela said, “until an asha who lived over a hundred years ago realized it was a daeva and put an end to its rampage. I harvest its stomach frequently, as I travel to this part of Odalia often. Even dead, however, it can be dangerous. I learned this the hard way, when I was much younger. My shoulder still aches when the weather grows cold.”
“Its stomach?” I stared at the mound with growing nervousness and fear.
Fox crouched beside the knoll, his eyes strangely eager. His hand played with the hilt of the sword strapped to his waist.
“Keep your distance, Fox,” Lady Mykaela told him. She drew out the decaying bezoar and set it down on a large rock. “There is no telling what it may do.”
“All the more reason to keep near,” he replied. “I have seen daeva before, and I have read as much of them as Tea has. I know what to expect.”
“There are many things they leave out of books. And learning about them in stories and learning through experience are two different things—and as I recall, you did not fare so well in the latter.” The asha drew out a thin knife and, to my shock, made a small nick on her forefinger. “Take Tea behind those trees. You will not wish to view this daeva up close. And whatever you do, do not look into its eyes.”
I tugged at Fox’s sleeve without waiting for him to obey. As Fox led me away, she sketched out a strange rune in the air with her cut finger. The blood trailed after her movements; rather than drip onto the ground, it remained suspended, painting the symbol she drew red and pulsing, as if it had a life of its own.