Besides, she was happy to be away from Edulph's constant babbling. That too, made no sense. She remembered a robust, if not evil mind, hearty and hale. No sign of madness save that lust for power.
She watched her threesome bend beneath branches and step over fallen trees, the shaman showing a seeming affinity for the wilderness that surprised her for a man who spent so much time in the dankness of an apothecary and within the gates of a city. Both of the siblings seemed to show nothing but the smallest of focus. They were so natural in their movements that Alaysha marvelled at how easily they melted into the foliage every now and then.
Aedus stopped once at a mucky pit of rotten moss and stroked streams of mud through her hair then smeared it over her arms and legs. She looked even more like she belonged to the wild. Seeing her, even in his madness, Edulph did the same. It occurred to Alaysha that the smartest thing would be to copy them and bid Theron to do similar. Best if they could all melt into the foliage.
She imagined they all stank of stagnant water, but it was better to camouflage themselves then end up facing Yuri's defected soldiers with bare-faced vulnerability.
When night came on them, Alaysha found a spot close to a stand of trees thick with leafy boughs to insulate against the dark shelf of hill. Theron rooted about for edible plants and Aedus went in search of food and water.
Alaysha was left alone with Edulph, who sat on his haunches staring at her.
"The witch of flame could build a fire to keep us warm," he said. It was the most intelligent series of words he'd strung together since she'd seen him in the pit.
"I will drink you dry if you try anything," she said and waited to see if his expression changed. She wondered, not for the first time, why the dreamer's worm Aedus had painted on him those fortnights ago would still have him in the throes of madness. She knew the result was a temporary one.
"Do I need to bind you?" she asked.
There was a subtle shift in his expression, so she decided on a new line of attack.
"The witch sent me to kill you, you know. To kill all of these fools."
He watched her balefully.
"When we have the earth witch, we will kill you all."
She didn't expect the shrieks of terror she heard when he let loose. It so surprised her to see him thrash about, she immediately went to calm him. Before she realized it, he had his hands on her throat with his body stretched atop her, her back pinned against the ground. His hot, stinking breath raked across her face. She tried to squirm loose.
She gulped for air and brought in nothing. She wriggled a hand loose from – was it beneath her thigh? – and once free, she aimed for where she thought his eyes were. The left one went squishy beneath her thumb and still he didn't relinquish his hold. She heard him, close to her ear, whispering.
"The war will not take me. The war will not take me."
She pressed harder, the panic taking over her muscles, and the survival instinct commanding her thumb.
He shrieked again and let go. She drove at him with her head, aiming for his stomach, but contacting the hard bone of his chest. Both of them grunted in pain. He fell backwards as did she, but she retained the instinct to jump to her feet even as she hit the ground.
She leapt for him, but grabbed nothing. The bushes rustled ahead of her and he disappeared behind the waving foliage. With a curse, she sprinted into the bush after him, running hard, squinting into the darkness.
The scent of water struck her. At first, she thought the panic of losing her breath had unleashed the power without her realizing it, but then she heard the unmistakable sound of rushing stream and she knew they had turned instinctively towards the water to the west of Sarum. She halted and scanned the area, hoping for a moving branch to indicate his direction. When she heard a familiar snort and whinny, she had to blink twice to believe the shadow she saw at the bank of the river.
Barruch, standing, saddled, alone.
Dear deities, someone had thought to use him to find her. Despite every muscle wanting to rush forward, she commanded them to melt into the trees. To watch. To wait.
Heartbeats later, she relinquished that command and ran forward so fast she thought she could and to the air.
Striding forward, mountain-sized and stolidly plodding, came Gael.
And gripped in one hand by the collar of his tunic, came Edulph.
Chapter 28
Alaysha had no sense of propriety left in her; she didn't care what the end result would be, she wanted nothing more than to feel her mount's rump beneath her palm, and the stink of horse flesh crinkling her nose.
Gael seemed to understand that. He stood apace away while she murmured to Barruch, who was at first wont to tuck his nose away from her, all the while stepping close enough to rub at her with his shoulders. She knew he was pleased to see her, but that he also needed to punish her for the recent neglect.
"He's a good mount," Gael said.
She looked him over, trying to assess how much damage he had taken, and noticed a long cut behind his ear. She touched her neck where the wound would be on him knowing her voice couldn't be trusted.
His regretful smile crept across his face. "Avarice," he said. "He was always a better fighter than me."
He stuck his free hand against the wound and pulled it away sticky and red. "It won't stop bleeding." He gave Alaysha hopeful look and Alaysha shook her head.
"No Saxa."
She wished she could tell him otherwise; she looked at her feet.
He said nothing about that; his face took on the stoic expression of a fighter. He cleared his throat. "This one came through the thicket with flame on his heels."
Edulph hung his head, but Alaysha caught him peeking out from beneath his hair. She would have to make sure he was tied from now on. Mad or not, it was possible he would kill them while they slept. They would be fools to think otherwise.
Gael tied the end of the rope to Barruch's pommel so Edulph wouldn't run again and swept his hand over the mount's flank.
"He's a very good piece of horse flesh."
"I know," she finally managed, and once the words dislodged themselves she found more just behind them, jammed up like a beaver lodge holding back the river.
"How did you get out?" She started. "Has the witch left Sarum?"
Gael chuckled, holding up his hand. "She's still in Sarum as far as I know. Avarice was the last of a dozen fighters. He escorted me through the tunnels as his prisoner so I could escape. At the last, we were too much in the open, too many eyes, and I had to fight for my freedom."
He rubbed at the wound, poking at it tenderly. "I hope I gave him a quick death. He'll never forgive me otherwise."
"You killed him?"
"I had to or the witch would have."
"What is it like now in the city?"
"As you would expect. Citizens mill about as though nothing has happened, but the guard is smaller. Those who refused to side with the witch are cinders." He looked over the river. "There are dozens of piles of ashes."
"Any others?"
"They guard the witch, though she needs none. She puts to flame those who oppose her. The tunnels are guarded."
Alaysha considered the information and looked Edulph over. Aislin had spared this miscreant but not Yuri. She wondered if Aislin could have truly pried information from a hardened warrior like her father or whether she'd discovered he actually knew nothing and sent him to a long wished-for death.
"If Yuri told her where Yenic was, wouldn't she have sent scouts to fetch him?"
Gael followed her gaze and rested on Edulph, who sat on the ground as best he could, tied to Barruch, looking out over the river.
"She may have."
"I've seen no soldiers following us."
Gael chewed the inside of his cheek. "The only trail I saw indicated a small group. There might be only a few select assassins."
"Or we brought the assassin with us."
She caught his eye and held it.
H
e strode a few paces away nonchalantly and she casually followed, lowering her voice as she went.
"She may have already put scouts on their way to retrieve the wind witch, and has left Edulph to distract us. But why?"
Gael shrugged and moved closer, close enough that she could feel his shoulder against hers. "It's possible we are leading her to Yenic, yes."
She was pleased he followed her line of thinking without her having to say it out loud. "Then we can't go to him, even if we do find out where he is."
"Oh, we know where he is."
She didn't dare look at him and barely kept herself from grabbing his arm in surprise. "We do?" Her voice came out loaded with gravel.
"I do. At least I know the most likely place Bodiccia would take him."
There was something strange in his voice, and Alaysha decided it must be the turmoil he would feel about her being able to rejoin Yenic. They would be lost to each other then. Once Yenic and she were reunited, Gael must've wondered where his place would be. She dared turn to him.
"Know it or not, you can't take us there. Not until we know what Aislin has planned." She expected to see relief on his features. What she saw was a kind of sorrow. "What's wrong?"
She thought Gael would avoid the question but it turned out he didn't need to. Aedus and Theron emerged from the forest, both side-by-side, both carrying armloads of bounty.
Gael left her there without further word and moved to help the old man with his burden. Alaysha watched the three of them build a small, but comfortable looking encampment with neat places to sit, and later, to sleep curled into balls that might leave indentations that to the casual observer might be deer beds. They had several broad leaves filled with berries and fern roots, and Aedus had even managed to find a salmon that an eagle must have dropped but not found again. The fish had dried in the sun to a near translucent fillet that she had torn into pieces and placed in the middle of the leaves.
Because Edulph refused to eat, Gael tied him to a tree far enough away from the three of them that they could speak in whispers without fear of being heard, and close enough to them that they didn't need to fear his escape.
Alaysha ate the berries and fern roots, but left the salmon. It smelled too fishy and beneath the dry translucence of the top layer of meat, worms had begun to make their way through the moister bottom flesh. She noticed neither Gael nor Aedus worried about this small compunction, but that the shaman also left his on the leaf.
No one spoke despite the ability to do so without worry of being overheard. Alaysha watched Theron rise from his haunches to wash his hands in the river and she took the opportunity to ask a question of Gael that she still wanted to know desperately.
"Where is Yenic? You said you know where Bodiccia would have taken him. Is he safe there?"
She wasn't sure he would answer, but she refused to take her eyes off his until he did. The shaman was already striding back to the fire when Gael finally spoke and he only did so when he had stood and could walk away once he delivered the message.
"If Bodiccia has indeed taken him to this place, it is entirely possible they are both dead," he said, then turned and strode into the woods.
Chapter 29
Alaysha thought she had lost all the air in her lungs and had to work at keeping her composure while they sat around the small fire, only lit because the ample breeze lifted the flame to the air without smoke. She had a hard time focusing and could hear Edulph behind her muttering to himself. In her mind, he became everything that had gone wrong with her life over the last few moons. If not for him, she would not be on this quest. If not for him, Aislin would never have found a reason to enter Sarum. She would not have fooled Alaysha into believing she could find harmony, that she could control her power, that there was a reason for it. If not for him, she wouldn't be worried right now about whether the man she was bound to was dead or alive, and whether or not she should be trying to save him: a man who she wasn't entirely sure she could trust but who she loved all the same.
Even if she couldn't trust Yenic, she would give Edulph's life for his. If she had that choice.
She found herself bolting to her feet and storming to the tree. She looked down at the ugly face, the broad moustache and ferret-like eyes. She imagined taking the muddy strings of his hair and pulling them so hard that he came with her as she strode across the mossy ground, over to the river, down into the water where his face would take in so much his lungs would fill with liquid and he would die. What would the fire witch do then, without her mad scout? Without her covert assassin?
With no one left to do her bidding no matter how mad or sane they were.
And she would shout at him, she would tell him how useless he was, how vile a man he would have to be to harm his own sister, to ally with a ruthless witch who would no doubt kill him when her bidding was done so she could do whatever it was with the world that she thought she could do when she controlled the elements. How ludicrous it was for him to aid her, because surely he knew Alaysha would kill him herself in the end, pull the water from him where he stood so slowly, he would beg for the fire witch to set his heart alight.
Oh yes, she would pull his face from the river by his hair and let him feel her feet in his stomach, her heel against his ribs. She would scream in his ear that if he had come with them only to kill them in their sleep after he'd found Yenic then he was indeed mad; they weren't fools. They knew what he was about. Feigning madness, acting contrite and afraid of his own master. Oh, yes, they knew his master was Aislin. How could they not know?
She felt a hand on her back and a second grip on her hand, pulling at her, wrenching her fist free of something muddy and wet. She blinked and saw Aedus at her feet, knee deep in water, pulling a sputtering Edulph to his feet. She felt the frigid wetness of the river rushing about her thighs.
She blinked again and saw Theron's face and his mouth working, saying something, speaking, but her ears were too clogged with her own shouts to hear.
She dragged in a breath and found it came with a sob. Two. She grasped for the shaman, catching the edges of his cassock near the neck. "I'm death to you all, aren't I? It's all I know. It's what I do. I bring death."
She thought she would stumble against him and fall into the water, but he was strong for an old man; his legs had iron bones. He caught her and held her close to him, letting her fall against his chest. She felt his light kiss on her forehead, his voice setting her chest aflame with renewed sobs.
"No, our dear witch, not the death. Not in that way." He gripped her head, cupping her ears with his hands and twisted her so gently, she didn't realize he was whispering into her ear until she registered the words. Words so stunningly clear for once that they stopped her cold in mid sob and made her stare at him in confused astonishment.
"You are our mother goddess, dear child. Liliah herself re-fleshed."
Chapter 30
They had settled Edulph back against his tree, although he no longer muttered to himself, but periodically cursed at them and spit in their direction. Theron ground something from his pouch and mashed it into fern root that Aedus fed him. In moments, the cursing shifted to loud snores that competed with the mating calls of the frogs at the river bank. But for the worry of being discovered, Alaysha thought the snoring far less unnerving than the vile things the man had taken to shouting at her. Aedus seemed apologetic.
"He was never this bad," she said. "Even the Edulph who took my finger was not the Edulph I knew before all this started."
It seemed the girl had forgotten that it was Edulph who started the troubles. "You did tell me he would bring soldiers," Alaysha reminded her and the stricken look on the girl's face made Alaysha wish she could have swallowed the comment before it escaped her mouth.
The girl looked thoughtful in the dying firelight, and Alaysha realized she was recalling the abduction by her brother's band and the savage removal of her finger. For the first time Alaysha gave real consideration to how this all might have been af
fecting her. To discover your older brother could be essentially ruthless had to do horrible things to a young girl's spirit. No wonder she didn't trust Yenic; she'd trusted blindly and poorly in her past.
Alaysha knew exactly how it felt.
Gael cleared his throat and reached across to the girl, something Alaysha hadn't thought of doing. "Your people are a fierce one," he said. "We can thank the deities you are on our side."
Aedus offered a tremulous smile and settled closer to the fire, reaching her hands out to it. Gael's mention of the deities brought back the shaman's whisper, one Alaysha hadn't dared to believe she'd heard. She'd tried to brush it away from her mind, but here it was, returned again. She stole a look at Theron and tried to make out whether he would offer more, but the man had retreated into his cassock and stared mindlessly into the fire. Once in a while, she could see him take the measure of the three of them and then sigh quietly as though he were working out some problem.
Alaysha found herself wondering how old he must be.
"Tell me of your people, Theron."
He looked startled at hearing his name and looked out over the fire with such longing, Alaysha felt his need to be free and roaming the wilderness. Then he gave one last glance at Aedus before he plunged into speech as though he'd been waiting for an invitation all along.
"We were taken young so our story is too long to tell, and we are old. Young ones don't want to hear all of that which has come before. But there is much to tell. Oh, yes, we have stories to tell, don't we?"
He unlaced the front of his cassock and lifted his tunic from his midriff. With a twist, he stretched toward the fire so that his ribs caught the light. Symbols danced on his skin in the shadows that played through the light it cast. Alaysha was astounded to hear her breath catch in surprise.
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