by Sarah Hegger
Maeve huffed, flapped her hands and rolled her eyes. She sniffed and tried to look innocent.
Roderick bent that pale, pale blue gaze on her and looked.
“It’s nothing.” She gave up with a growl. “Can’t a woman have a secret or two?” Inspiration struck. “I was only going to spirit walk.”
“Uh-huh.” He leaned closer until their noses almost bumped. “Even if I couldn’t sense you, you’re a terrible liar.”
“Am not.” She could lie about all sorts of things. “I lie all the time about things you would know nothing about because I’m lying.”
His lips quirked as if he was trying not to laugh. “I’ll find out what it is.”
“Hah!” She met his challenge and raised it. “There’s nothing to find out.”
“This functions better,” he said, waving a hand between them, “if we work together and are honest with each other.”
Like she would fall into line with that. “And by that you mean if I do what you say.”
“If you say so.” He gave her a feral grin filled with male conceit. He turned and strode away, calling over his shoulder. “I’ll find you later. Best get your little mysteries out the way before I return.”
He could wager his sword arm on that. Maeve returned to the caverns to wait.
Agonizing minutes crawled by. Agonizing minutes she spent constructing her emotions and thoughts into a believable stream to keep Roderick from rushing back.
At last, Sheila led four of her fellow healers into the cavern. Glancing about as if scared someone would stop her, she hurried up to Maeve. “Spirit Walker, what is this about? Do you know a way to the village?”
Her name was Maeve. Not that hard to remember when she and Sheila had grown up together.
Roderick caught her irritation and his question tapped politely on her awareness.
Maeve shrunk her emotions into a tight ball and thought the ball into a box and closed the lid. “I want to help, and I can.”
“With?” Sheila glanced at her fellow healers before leaning closer to Maeve.
“The village.” Maeve drew them deeper into the caverns. “There’s a way to the village. It’s an ancient passage, from before the castle was built.” And up until very recently she’d believed she was the only one who knew of the secret passage. “I can lead you to the village and bring you back again without anyone knowing.”
Sheila looked eager but nervous. “What about Roderick?”
Maeve waved a dismissive hand and bawled a child’s song in her mind. “He’s playing with his sword.”
A witch behind Sheila sighed. “I wish I could play—”
“Right!” Sheila said. “We’ll follow you.”
Maeve hurried into the first cavern and skirted the Goddess Pool. The water rippled in acknowledgment of their passing. Maeve took that as a sign of her approval.
The healers followed her into the shadowy depression.
Placing both hands against the rock, Maeve muttered the incantation.
Rock shimmered and dissolved into a person–size opening.
One of the healers gasped. The rest murmured amongst themselves.
“I had no idea this was here.” Sheila followed her into the dark passageway, gaze going this way and that.
“Nobody does.” Maeve waited for the last healer to step into the corridor before she uttered the incantation and closed the opening behind them.
She snapped her fingers and brought four flames into being. They needed enough light to hurry along the passage. Soon Roderick would finish his arms practice and waste no time coming to find her. Baile had been his castle before the witches took him amongst them. The bond between him and the castle was as solid as the stone from which Baile was built. Maeve wasn’t sure yet how it worked between Roderick and Baile, but she couldn’t risk the castle telling tales on her.
Maeve hurried her party along. Once she had the healers in the village, doing what they did best, Roderick would stand no chance of getting them back within Baile Castle until they were ready.
The passageway carried them through a confusing number of turns, in which it was impossible to keep your bearings if you didn’t already know the way.
The abrupt ending of the corridor always took her by surprise.
Sheila cursed and narrowly avoided running into her back. A scuffle and a curse from further back resulted from two not-so-alert healers crashing into each other.
As she released her flames, Maeve made the opening incantation too softly for Sheila to hear much. Having the coven able to dart back and forth between village and castle was asking for trouble.
Light flooded the tunnel.
Maeve and her followers stepped into the crypt. She closed the passageway after the last witch slid through. It would never do for some enterprising young clergyman to stumble across their secret.
She took the stairs up into the churchyard, and motioned Sheila to precede her down the village road. She had gotten them there. It was time for the healers to do what they did.
Chapter 11
The closer they drew to the village, the more dead appeared to Maeve. Spirits hung in the air, still tethered to their bodies. In cases of many sudden deaths, spirits struggled to find their path from the mortal realm.
The children’s spirits were the worst. So many it broke her heart. They still wore their flesh incarnation and would soon discard that and become pure spirit, ageless, sexless, nationless, but for now they still looked like the poor babies they had so recently been.
From the burial fires, she drew her birth element. It moved sluggishly, dragging the weight of grief created by all the death. The dead turned to her, drawn by her kindred spirit.
“Mother Goddess, open the pathway,” she whispered the incantation.
The healer standing nearest her shivered. “It grows chilly.”
Maeve didn’t have the heart to tell the woman she was presently being crossed by a number of spirits. They released the shadow of their human forms in a shower of sparks and dissolved. The transfer from one state of being to another caused the cold sensation the healer felt.
Normally Maeve arrived when the healers had done all they could. They were rarely happy to see her.
For safety’s sake, the witches elected to stay in twos as they crept from home to home. Maeve stayed beside Sheila. Some villagers were surprised to see them, others so pathetically grateful, it brought tears to Maeve’s eyes.
Sheila worked tirelessly, helping one person and moving to the next, barely pausing long enough to take a sip of water. In her wake, people rested comfortably, taking the sleep of healing.
Watching Sheila and providing an extra pair of hands when she needed them, was a true revelation. Maeve stopped Sheila at a cottage door. The ghost of the recently departed young man hovered. Maeve shook her head at Sheila. “Not here.”
“Blast it!” Sheila took the loss as a personal affront but moved to the next cottage.
The situation in the village was so much worse than Maeve had guessed. She followed Sheila into another home.
An exhausted woman looked up as they came in. Three children lay in a bed to one side, their waxen complexions achingly familiar to Maeve.
The woman sobbed and stumbled when she saw Sheila. “Blessed.” She fell to her knees. “Please, Blessed, my children.”
“Your children will be seen to.” Sheila bent and helped the woman into the chair. “First, however, when did you last rest?”
The woman looked confused and wiped the back of her hand over her forehead. “I…not sure. The littlest one fell sick three nights ago, the rest shortly after.”
“You go.” Maeve motioned Sheila to help the children. The children would live. Maeve saw their spirits within their young, struggling bodies. It wasn’t their time. The kettle was hot, so she made the woman a cup
of tea and brought her a bowl of the beef broth that had been simmering on the hearth. “You need to eat,” she said. “You’re no good to them if you collapse.”
The hope in the woman’s eyes almost crumpled Maeve. “They will live?” She grabbed Maeve’s hand and squeezed it hard enough to bring tears to Maeve’s eyes. “They will live?”
Sheila looked up sharply and frowned.
Nodding, Maeve spoke to Sheila. “They will live.”
The sweetest expression crossed Sheila’s face, part hope and part joy. She swallowed and bent back over the sick children.
When they left, the mother slept beside her children. The children breathed easily now and slept deeply.
Sheila hurried on and Maeve with her. They had no time to tarry.
The story was the same throughout the village, no home completely unaffected by the contagion.
Sheila stumbled and Maeve caught her elbow. “You’re tired. You must stop.”
“We can’t help them all.” Sheila swiped stray hair from her wan face. “We can only deal with the worst of them today, and pray the others survive long enough for us to return.”
All five healers bore signs of growing weariness. Their magic scrolled through the air—green, yellow, red and blue as the healers used their birth elements to fuel their blessings. The signature scents of the five working healers’ magic helped disguise the stench of the funeral pyres.
The number of sick was terrifying, and the witches worked to exhaustion, taking the barest minimum time to transmute the disease. And then they rid themselves of only enough so they could continue to function.
Sheila stopped suddenly and a violent coughing fit shook her. She wasn’t the first witch to show symptoms of succumbing to the contagion.
Maeve grabbed her arm before she could enter a new dwelling. “You have to rest.”
“No time.” Sheila shook her arm free. “We can transmute this when we return to Baile. But we need to get as many of the sick as we can.”
“Sheila—”
“I don’t have time for this.” Sheila scowled at her. “You can’t have one more soul.”
Maeve winced. A lot of witches saw her as death itself. “You’ll make yourself sick.” Maeve’s words died in the empty space Sheila had vacated.
As she ducked into the door of a small, unkempt cottage, another paroxysm of coughing shook Sheila. Worried Sheila would faint, Maeve hurried to her side, but Sheila kept moving.
It took Maeve a moment to realize whose cottage this was. It was the same one Maeve had peeped into that night she had seen the beautiful, evil Alexander.
Inside, the cottage was in disarray and smelled of sickness. Sheila hurried to Agnes’s side. She looked nothing like the Agnes Maeve had seen that night. In only a few short days, the disease had ravaged the beautiful woman and left her emaciated.
“My baby.” Agnes’s voice rasped painfully in her throat. “Save my baby.”
The small, simple wooden cradle that had sat by the hearth was now beside her bed. Someone had carved it with loving hands.
Already free of its body, the baby’s spirit hovered.
Maeve’s skin crawled and her hackles rose as she looked at the dead infant’s spirit. It was wrong—other—in a way that reminded her of Alexander. She whispered the incantation to show the dead their pathway. The infant’s spirit wavered, like a candle flickering in the wind, and stayed. It strained as if trying to reach the pathway, but something held it tethered in this realm. Maeve went to the spirit to release whatever held it bound.
The blood magic taint of the spirit coated the back of her throat and she recoiled. This baby had been sacrificed for blood magic. Its spirit was forever separated from Goddess. This spirit would never be reborn again. Its journey was ended, but it’s torment had only just begun. Unable to return and resume its journey, the spirit would still crave to do so. Each moment it existed, tethered to this plain and separated from life, it would be aware of its confinement.
She hurried back to Sheila and tugged on her sleeve. Blood magic meant the lost one and Alexander. They needed to leave.
Sheila kept her unwavering attention on the mother. “I’ll see to the little one.”
“My baby,” Agnes whimpered. Bones protruded through the dirty parchment of her skin. Bloody sores surrounded her mouth, and fever brought the lie of a healthy flush to her cheeks. She had been so pretty that time before. “No.” She batted Sheila’s hands away. “My baby, you must save my baby.”
Agnes had been practicing blood magic. The signs on her body were not contagion. Maeve grabbed Sheila and pulled her away. “You need to listen.”
Agnes’s gaze snapped to Maeve, intent and fierce. She stuck out her tongue and licked the air. “Cré-magic.” She breathed deep, a blissful expression on her face. “So sweet.”
Sheila leaped back from Agnes, snatching her hands to her chest. “What is that?”
“Blood magic,” Maeve said. “Her baby didn’t die of the plague. She used her baby’s life to wield blood magic.”
“Goddess save you.” Sheila clapped her hands over her mouth and retched. “What have you done?”
Eyes glittering, Agnes stood. “I do my mistress’s bidding.” She giggled and rolled her eyes until the whites showed. “She loves the magic, craves the magic. It calls her and she comes.”
Dear Goddess, there was only one being who could wield blood magic. “We have to go.” Maeve pulled Sheila from the cottage.
Sheila stumbled after her, gaze stuck on the woman. “What is happening? What is she talking about?”
“The lost one.” Maeve looked about her, scared to say that name out loud. “Agnes serves Rhiannon.”
Sheila gaped at her and then gave a strangled little laugh. “The lost one is dead. What are you talking about?”
“She’s far from dead.” Suddenly, her walk with the first three made horrible, undeniable sense, and judging by the strength of the blood magic surrounding Agnes alone, it would take an intervention by Goddess herself to kill Rhiannon now. “The lost one is strong and she’s wielding blood magic in this village.” And that meant they were in so much trouble. “We need to get behind Baile’s wards. Now.”
“I don’t understand.” Sheila glanced toward the cottages she had yet to visit. “I need to help them. They need us.”
“You can’t.” Maeve pulled her toward the churchyard and the tunnel entrance. If they could get behind Baile’s wards, the castle would protect them. Out here, and only the six of them, they were like bait worms dangling in the water.
“Cré-witches, come and play.” Agnes followed them. Fetid, cold blood magic wreathed her.
“Call your healers.” Maeve stood between Sheila and Agnes. “Get them to safety.”
Agnes’s fixed her gaze on Maeve. “You shouldn’t have interfered.” She smiled, displaying a mouth of rotten teeth and bleeding gums. “But they’re too late, you know. My mistress had everything in place, and nothing can stop us now. Those ancient bitches told you too late.” She giggled, blood and spit trickling down her chin. “My lady will reclaim what is hers.”
“Maeve.” Sheila’s eyes were huge. “What is she talking about?”
Maeve crowded Sheila back and away from Agnes.
A knot of villagers gathered in the road.
“Sheila.” Another healer appeared beside them. “I don’t understand. Aren’t we here to help them? There are still so many who need help.”
Sheila dragged her horrified gaze from Agnes. “We need to go.”
The youngest healer, a sweet girl called Rose, stumbled over a rock and fell to her knees. The others rushed to help her, but Rose hung limp in their hands. She tried to walk, but her legs gave out beneath her, and were it not for the two healers holding her up, she would have fallen again.
“Alexander said you would come.” Agne
s’s face twisted into a cunning smirk, and she threw back her head and let out a tortured scream. She turned and dashed into her cottage.
The healer in Sheila warred with her fear and she took half a step toward the cottage, wanting to help Agnes, needing to ease her pain.
“You can’t help her.” Maeve blocked her path. “She’s beyond anything a healer can do for her. Save yourselves.”
Agnes’s screaming grew more agonized. More people appeared in the doorways of neighboring cottages. They looked about them in confusion, their gazes lingering on the small party of cré-witches.
Dead baby clutched to her breast, Agnes burst into the roadway. “They killed her.” She pointed at Sheila. “They killed my baby.”
“What is this now, Agnes?” A tall matron bustled out of her cottage and headed for Agnes. Maeve had helped her say goodbye to a dead son a few months ago. “Those are the healers, from on the hill. They help us.” She peered at the baby clutched to Agnes’s breast and pity softened her face. “I’m sure they didn’t kill your baby.”
Maeve motioned her fellow cré-witches to follow her and kept backing away down the road.
Tall and broad, a man stepped into Maeve’s path. The aquiline perfection of his features stopped her. He was as beautiful as the last time she had seen him, and twice as deadly. She didn’t know how she hadn’t detected him, but the blood magic stench gagged her now.
Through the bond, Roderick responded to her fear. First confusion, he didn’t know what had terrified her. Then came the sense he was searching.
Alexander smirked at her, as he raised his voice and said, “What is she saying? What is Agnes saying?”
“She’s beside herself with grief,” the matron said. “Agnes doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“Yes, I do.” Agnes flung herself away from the matron and staggered toward them. “My baby was sleeping, resting peacefully in her cradle. A little angel who sensed her mama was sick and didn’t want to trouble her.” Gaze darting from person to person, she jerked to a halt.
Waves of power emanated from Alexander, so strong Maeve could almost see them as vapor in the air. She retched and coughed as his magic crawled down her nose and throat.