Blood Witch

by Thea Atkinson

  Blood Witch

  Thea Atkinson

  Elemental Magic Book Two

  Copyright 2012 Thea Atkinson

  Published by Thea Atkinson

  Cover Photo by Arlen Roche

  Cover Design: Thea Atkinson

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Additional copies can be purchased. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Prologue

  The tears came easily enough, if Taetha pinched the girl, which was fortunate because the babe hadn't cried once since she'd been born. It was almost as though she understood what she was and harboured each droplet of water for fear someone would use it against her. Seven turns of the sun and still the infant hadn't cried. Seven turns, and still she wouldn't suckle.

  What kept the babe alive, Taetha would never know, but the brown magics could be good and the power, when it was harnessed as it was in this child, was strong. No doubt the babe psyched from the very air what water she needed to sustain her, but even that couldn't keep the tiny heart beating for much longer. She needed to eat.

  Taetha looked down at the narrow vial she'd lain against the infant's cheek and pinched the earlobe once more. The babe's squall leaked a few more precious tears into the glass. They were indeed precious, and precious little, barely covering the bottom, but perhaps, if The Deities were kind, it would be enough.

  She plugged the vial with a knob of cork and poured beeswax around the neck to seal it, rolling it in her palm to cool. There was so little of the fluid, she couldn't take the chance of evaporation, or spilling, or worse, any psyching from it if the girl grew thirsty. She grunted in satisfaction and wrapped the tube, now cooled and hardened of its seal, into a thick hide, tied that with hare intestines dried and oiled to perfect suppleness, and then laid it in a basket lined with moss. This she covered with yet another hide and tied that with yet more hare thongs before settling the entire package near the door.

  He would be coming soon.

  Taetha had let the fire pit purposely die down and she glanced at it to be sure the coals were tamped. The iron poker lay where she left it beside the pit, seemingly forgotten to the casual eye, but well within easy reach should she need it.

  Why she would be afraid of a child--a boy--she couldn't say, but these last months she'd learned not all was as it seemed. The brown magic could grow black if left too long unused and mouldering. She'd not dared use of it what she owned since she'd been taken, indeed, none of them had dared: her brother, her sister. Alhanna: their mother. But she couldn't think about them, not now. She had enough to concern her with the boy's visit.

  With magics becoming a liability, and black magic rising from brown, she worried the boy had been left too long with the darkness--or worse--counselled in darkness and had been spoiled before his life had ripened. The klans had warred too long to know if one witch or more had gone to seed, the reason for their fighting long forgotten. She only knew this babe needed her, and she no longer cared for the old war. Truth be told, the old war mattered little now that the Conqueror had come, mattered little in light of the need to band together against this common enemy. Perhaps this child would help heal the rift among the klans and bring them together finally; this self-proclaimed conqueror making them forget the old hatreds.

  The infant whimpered and Taetha eased her from the basket where she lay and pulled her close against her chest, letting the scent of new flesh envelope her and make her feel again the lingering magics of her home and its tribe. It seemed she couldn't leave it all behind, after all. Well, she could ignore the old war, but she could not ignore the heritage.

  "Shall I sing to you of Etlantium, Little One," she said to the fuzz of hair. "Or should your nohma tell you once again of your mother?"

  She hummed, letting the babe nestle into her neck. How warm the girl was. How tiny to fit into such close places as a matron's neck, an arm's crook, a heart that had seized up over the last days into a tiny knot of flesh.

  So small, but so, so powerful. Would this boy guess the power he was being bonded to? Would his mother?

  She was still humming when the fire pit leapt to flame. Taetha eyed the poker and edged closer to it, turning even as she did so to the visitor she knew was standing in the door.

  He was small but already had a few markings in the old language on his ribs. The first one, the largest, was easy to decipher even from her distance as it was still inflamed at its edges: that of fire.

  "You are Yenic," she said.

  The boy's eyes glowed yellow, sparking in reflection of the flame.

  "You are Taetha?" His voice was querulous but strong. He would be a force, this one. Taetha tried to believe the wriggling in her belly was from nervous excitement, not anxiety. The two could so often be mistaken, being as close as they were.

  She drew to her full height and nodded at the basket.

  "I am Taetha," she confirmed. "Blood witch to the newborn temptress." She gave him a direct look. "You were not followed." She could have phrased it as a question, but chose instead the command. Let him feel nervous.

  He shook his head, unaffected, but peered over his shoulder into the garden. "I thought I was, but he proved to be only a poor drunkard pissing in the wrong spot."

  Taetha said nothing. She knew the man was dead. She'd have to bury him later. This boy was indeed a child, but already his tattaus carried the weight of his mother's power. He would have been instructed to take no chances. She eyed the boy again and was relieved--even emboldened--when she saw a look of regret on his features.

  "How many seasons have you, Yenic?"

  "Seven."

  "Seven is young to be an Arm."

  He toed the dirt. "It's young to be bonded."

  "You'd rather the first but not the last?"

  A grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. "I'd rather it was neither."

  "I understand." He was so young, yet something in his eyes made him seem far older than seven seasons. She couldn't concern herself with his woes. She had a babe to think of. She glanced toward the door.

  "The basket is there." Taetha pulled the infant closer, putting her palm over the tiny head of black fuzz. "Take care travelling it."

  Yenic took the few short steps to where the wicker sat, bundled in hides she'd tanned and beaten with her own hand. He pulled fiercely at the thongs.

  "No," she said, taking an alarmed step; she couldn't have him breaking the vial just to satisfy himself she'd given what she'd offered. "It's there. I promise you. Safe and sound."

  He glanced up sharply, curious. "Oh, I know it is," he said matter-of-factly, and bent again to the hide. He pulled the vial loose, scraped at the wax and yanked the cork with his teeth. Peering at the liquid, he made a face, then spat the cork to the earthen floor where it spun twice before stopping.

  "I'm not to take chances," he said as though he were repeating solemn words that he'd practiced, then upended the vial into his gaping mouth. He swallowed. He grimaced. Sighed. With an odd quirk to his lips, he looked up at Taetha. He looked far younger in the moment than the seven he was.

  "It's done, isn't it?" he asked.

  She felt for a tell tale quickening in her chest, the echo of one fluttering against her own, and when she knew it was there, she closed her eyes in relief.

  She didn't have to look to know he was gone, but she opened her eyes anyway. The door stood open and empty. The fire pit died again to its blackness.

  The babe in her arms began to suckle at her neck noisily.

  "It's done, Alaysha," she said to the room. "It's done, and I pray to The Deities I've done the right thing."

  Chapter 1

  Yenic's hands traveled her skin in s
uch delicious ways that Alaysha thought she was little more than a large pheasant being seasoned with dry herbs and honey. The scent of his flesh, like so many spices drying on hot embers intoxicated her to the point she felt drugged. She stretched to enjoy the softness of his hands stroking her inner thighs, the place just beneath her navel where her skin was the most sensitive. She arched against him, taking his mouth with hers, teasing his tongue, worrying his lip with her teeth.

  She tasted his moan even as she wondered if the sound came from her own lips. She fell into the amber of his eyes. Yes. Honey. So much amber liquid a girl could drown in it if she wasn't careful. She wanted to tell him how much she wanted him, how badly she needed to feel him cover her with his body, to obliterate the nakedness that made her feel vulnerable and lonely. No words would form. Only mewling sounds and heavy breaths that seemed to come from somewhere just short of her chest, that seemed too rushed to have come from anywhere deeper.

  His gaze pinned her where she lay, the most aching look of sadness she'd ever seen, and she wanted to pull him down again to her, to tell him grief had no place here. When her body went cold, she realized he was fading from her, substance turned to smoke, and then smoke turned to air, and air to fragrance that had nothing to do with the youth and everything to do with a hunger far more primal.

  She woke to the smell of goat's milk, and she remembered. It was a foggy remembrance, for certain, with echoes of images long buried and not understood fully even then, but still, she remembered them. They were sweeter than the dream of Yenic because as she came to consciousness, she remembered her lover could not be trusted.

  The other memories, the ones that didn't carry the bittersweet bite of Yenic's betrayal--his outright lies to her--were safer ones to focus on. They felt like honey in her veins, so much so that she didn't want to open her eyes and ruin the feeling of sinking down in warm syrup.

  "Are you hungry?"

  The voice, a woman's, came from her right. Alaysha turned to it and opened one eye.

  "I must be," she said in answer to Yuri's young wife who hovered near her elbow. The woman gave her a queer look, and Alaysha licked her lips. "I can taste goat's milk. My stomach must be sending my mouth some kind of message."

  The girl chuckled. "That was me. I dribbled some of Kiki's milk onto your lips while you slept."

  "You couldn't wait for me to wake up to do that?"

  The woman lifted a thin shoulder. "You've been asleep six turns of the sun." The mist colored eyes retreated from view as the woman straightened to her full height. Alaysha felt oddly small beneath it. She'd forgotten how tall Yuri's new wife was. "Yuri told me to make sure you were nourished so you would wake strong."

  Six turns. Six turns was a long time to be asleep especially when it felt like mere hours.

  "Kiki is your goat?" she asked the woman.

  "Yes. The only one nursing. She's a new mother so her milk is sweet."

  Alaysha let her tongue roam over her lips. "You make sure she eats clover too."

  "How did you know that?"

  Alaysha would have smiled if the memory wasn't so bittersweet.

  "My nohma's goat ate clover."

  She touched the corner of her mouth thoughtfully. The spring feed was always clover. Fall left nothing but bitter grass and the unending sourness of the goat's milk always made Alaysha's stomach upset then. She hadn't thought of that in years.

  "There was honey in it too," she guessed, and the young woman smiled.

  "I warmed the milk with honey so it would make your body too sweet for the green death." Her gaze fleeted over the bed and rested where Alaysha's stomach was. "It was a bad place for a wound. I fear even the balsam sap the shaman used won't be enough to keep it clean."

  "I had fever?"

  The woman nodded.

  Alaysha thought for a moment. "I called out for milk."

  "Yes." The wife lowered her gaze, letting her silver hair hang in her face. "You suckled on the cloth as though it were a nipple."

  Alaysha felt her face suffuse with blood. She remembered. She remembered much. Goat's milk and honey. Very much like her first meal, served very much in the same manner. Her mother's sister wasn't a wet nurse, only a blood witch, and no other woman in the village would come near the infant powerhouse. None that did dare, lived. That she remembered, if reluctantly.

  "Six turns?" Alaysha still couldn't believe it.

  "Yes. But fevered for only two. You've been sleeping comfortably for the last few hours."

  Alaysha wasn't sure if that was a blessing or not. "Were there any deaths?" She wasn't sure she wanted the answer, but needed to ask.

  The wife grinned and looked incredibly beautiful in that moment. She was a willowy thing; what Alaysha had presumed as frailty before, now proved to be nothing more than slender height. "Not one," the woman said. "It's almost as though you weren't here."

  Her face fell when she realized what she'd said, and she stammered, trying to retract what she'd said. "I mean –"

  Alaysha had to interrupt her. "It's all right. I know what you mean."

  She tried to roll onto her side; her bum felt as though it was on fire. "It's not as though the village is exactly safe when its witch is burning alive."

  She winced when a pain shot up her stomach, and she fell back onto her back, defeated.

  The woman noticed and touched Alaysha's forehead lightly. "It's only the pain of wasting; you haven't used those muscles for so long, they are angry at being called to service."

  "It feels like the last service they were called to nearly rent me in two."

  Yuri's wife licked her lips in thought. "It very nearly did." Then she paused, thinking. "To be honest, I was worried at first."

  Alaysha looked up at her. "Yes?"

  The woman nodded. "Yes, but when I watched you very closely, I noticed any sweat you released quickly got evaporated again – as though you were pulling it back in. You didn't even make water."

  "Strange," Alaysha murmured, not thinking it so at all.

  "Strange, yes, but I think it is this that saved us in the end." The wife lifted a wooden bucket with some triumph. "I kept it next to your bed."

  "A bucket?"

  "This and a few others, filled with water. We had to refill them dozens of times on the first days. My brother and I, anyway. It took too many trips for just one of us to keep up."

  Alaysha could imagine.

  "It was a dozen buckets at first, all lined up next to the bed. Then half. Then two and one. The same one has been here, full, for a few hours now."

  "I'm surprised you dared stay."

  "Yuri sent me away during the first day of your fever. Gael and I merely lugged water."

  Alaysha tried not to show surprise. "My father? My father stayed with me?" She tried to make it sound uninterested; she knew the connection of their blood would have made him the only one able to withstand her fever and its need for fluid, but knowing he'd been by her bedside during the worst gave her a strange feeling in her chest. She tried not to read anymore into it than a man safeguarding one of his finest tools, but she wanted to believe it was more.

  "You said you and Gael lugged water?"

  "My brother."

  "And Yuri sent you away?"

  The wife nodded. "He said you are too dangerous."

  "I imagine I was."

  Alaysha didn't enjoy the feeling, but she knew it to be true. Still, she wanted to stress that that danger from her was in the past tense and there was no more to fear from her. Not if she could help it.

  "What of Aedus? Has she returned?" It was a jolt, remembering the girl she had worked so hard to save from the hands of her own brother who was willing to sacrifice her and any others to get control of Sarum. Knowing that same girl had gone off to ultimate danger again anyway.

  The woman turned away and made a great show of arranging the bucket next to Alaysha's bed without spilling any water.

  Alaysha had to press again. "Aedus? She should have returned by n
ow."

  "They returned," the woman hedged.

  They. Alaysha's stomach churned thinking about the name she didn't want to mention. Yenic. She thought of her dream and felt her face burn. She tried to tell herself it was the intimacy of the vision that made her blush, not the shame of feeling used by the youth she trusted and came to care so deeply for. No. That last was not the reason for the flush of embarrassment. It couldn't be. She'd been trained too well by her father to care about anyone or to care about what anyone thought of her. Yenic might well be a traitor to her if her father was right, but she'd wait and watch, and decide for herself. She'd use that tool her father had best given her: her stoic ability to do her duty without thinking or feeling.

  Still, she had to work at sounding casual when she spoke, hard as it was to do so with the memory of Yenic's honeyed gaze lingering at the edge of her thoughts.

  "So they are here in Sarum."

  "No. They returned empty-handed. Yuri sent them back out this morning."

  Empty-handed. That meant no Edulph. It was the reason they left – to capture the man who'd put the entire city at risk. The man who cut off Aedus's finger in order to bully Alaysha into agreeing to kill everyone within Sarum's walls unless his people were let free. Aedus's own brother.

  "I'm sure Yuri was pleased enough to send Yenic back out to search for him."

  Alaysha noted the strange way the young wife looked at her. Obviously the sour tone had escaped through her voice after all. "My father doesn't trust Yenic." She tried in way of explanation, but the girl's smokey brow just lifted in casual disbelief.

  "Your father trusts no one and does what is best for Sarum." The young wife argued. "The two did not return with Edulph's head as they were ordered. They returned instead with a woman."

  Alaysha remembered Yuri's 'orders' had been countered by Yenic when they argued about bringing this other woman to Sarum, so she knew who the woman was that the young wife spoke of without needing to ask. Yenic's mother.

  Edulph himself had been lucky enough to escape Yuri's wrath when Aedus painted her brother with dreamer's worm, sending him mad with hallucinations out into the forests. Even as that small battle had been won, another, larger one, loomed heavy on the horizon, one that involved both Edulph and Yenic's mother.