Child of a Mad God--A Tale of the Coven

by R. A. Salvatore

  But out here alone under the Blood Moon, that opinion so suddenly seemed rather thin to Aoleyn.

  The thought unnerved her and she scanned all the area around her. Surely the fossa couldn’t come here, so near the Crystal God, she whispered to herself, unconvincingly.

  She scanned back down to the encampment, to the central bonfire that had blazed this night but now burned low. The fire, of course! The night was warm and they needed no fire.

  But the moon was full, the Blood Moon, and so the fire would keep the beast at bay.

  Aoleyn, in her foolish anger, had let that thought, had let all thoughts, slip past. She felt the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother chasing her from the pine grove and so she had to run. Nothing had mattered except that she escape that place, the uamhas boughs, and the camp of the horrible people who would keep such slaves.

  And of course, there would be no one looking for her, for none but Aoleyn were foolish enough to be out of the camp under the light of the Blood Moon.

  She clutched the tree tighter, her gaze locked on the distant, dying bonfire. This grove had always called to her, had always provided her comfort, a warmth in her chest near her heart. She had never told Seonagh or any of the other women of the Coven about that warmth, but when Seonagh talked of the magic of the tribe, it often started with descriptions of a woman’s center, her soul, a line of life from the hair atop her head to the hairs of her pubis.

  This line of life energy seemed stronger to Aoleyn when she was here, in this place in sight of Usgar. She needed to remember that now, for after looking into the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother, Aoleyn had come to sense a pit of darkness beside that line of life force, a place of despair and emptiness, a place of living death.

  So Aoleyn had hoped that the warmth of the Crystal God would drive that emptiness away and had run here.

  She thought to turn and glimpse the angled crystal obelisk—and wouldn’t it be beautiful in the moonlight?—but she found that she could not.

  She couldn’t move her gaze.

  It wasn’t the dying bonfire that held her, but rather, the darkness beyond that one spot of light. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and tingled.

  She felt the weight of a predator’s calculating gaze.

  She couldn’t move.

  Beyond Loch Beag, the huge red moon touched the horizon. All would be dark soon until the predawn glow found its way around the black mountain.

  And something dangerous was near, and Aoleyn probably wouldn’t even see its face until she knew death.

  “Look,” she told herself breathlessly, trying to find her courage. She felt the chill as the night breeze tickled her sweat-covered skin.

  Sweat?

  She heard herself panting and thought it ridiculously, stupidly loud!

  She thought herself a fool.

  She thought herself a coward.

  Nay, she could not abide thinking herself a coward!

  She spun about suddenly toward the meadow encircled by the grove. She saw the physical manifestation of Usgar, quietly glowing in the red moonlight’s reflections.

  She lifted her eyes suddenly, reflexively, up the side of the mountain, to the higher spur beyond the uamhas caves, to the region where lay Craos’a’diad, the Mouth of God. The ridge’s black silhouette stood out starkly to her, blocking the many stars beyond.

  So clear that silhouette!

  And so clear the black form that walked the high ridge. Low, it moved, crouched perhaps, and long, and even from this distance, Aoleyn could tell that it was longer than a man was tall.

  Long and low, not quite feline and more like a weasel, Aoleyn thought.

  A weasel, but huge.

  The black head swiveled and a pair of eyes stared back at her.

  Red eyes. Red, not green like those of a cat. Not yellow like those of the brown lizards Aoleyn used to chase about the mountain stones when she was a child.

  Red eyes, staring down at her from that distant ridge. Too far away to see her, and yet they could see her, she knew.

  She just knew. It was real. The fossa was real. And as horrible as they had said. Even so far away, the evil aura of the demon chilled her.

  The creature moved slowly, still staring down at her, seeming to glide more than walk along the ridge.

  Then it was gone!

  Just gone, moving impossibly fast! And it took Aoleyn a few heartbeats to realize that the creature had gone over the ridge the other way, and not down into the darkness coming toward her.

  And then came the roar, long and low, a rumbling vibration that climbed right up the tree in which Aoleyn perched and into her legs and through her body. A roar she felt as much as heard.

  A roar that said, “I see you.”

  * * *

  A roar like death itself, like the blackness in her belly beside her vibrant line of life.

  A roar that stole the sparkle from her eyes and threatened to fill them with the same emptiness she had seen in the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother.

  Aoleyn put her head against the tree. A tear rolled down her cheek and she had to clutch the pine tighter to stop a rumble of sobs from shaking her shoulder.

  No. She would not cry.

  She forced her thoughts back to that day years before, when first she had seen Bahdlahn’s mother. She had been so excited then. The raiders had returned, with slaves! And a pregnant woman, the ultimate capture! A blessing from Usgar, surely!

  Soon, though, that memory burned at her. She saw the woman borne into the camp; she saw the woman, in her bed, a man grunting atop her. She saw the anguish in the woman’s eyes, not directed at the uninvited Aoleyn nor even at the man raping her, but at her son who entered the room, who saw what he should not have to see, because she, his mother, could not protect him.

  And she, Aoleyn, was too feeble to help.

  The pit in her chest grew. Bahdlahn’s mother’s face, her anguished eyes, would not leave Aoleyn’s thoughts. And the pit grew, and it consumed her center, and the spiritual warmth of the sacred grove was no match for it. Her breath came out in short gasps; her anger rose.

  The image of the demon on the ridge was there in her mind, a final darkness, death itself, and she knew that she could not escape.

  But the beast had departed, she reminded herself, and the moon was nearly gone and so the hunting night of the fossa would end.

  A low and feral growl escaped Aoleyn’s lips. She would climb down the tree and run down the mountainside to the camp and wake Seonagh from her sleep and confront the older woman about how wrong all this was! She would tell Seonagh of the wrongness of the look in the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother, and oh, how could the Usgar put that look into the eyes of any woman? This practice was not godly, nay, it was evil! It could not stand! And Aoleyn would fight Seonagh if she needed to, or even the whole tribe, and she would win and …

  And she was a sixteen-year-old girl.

  She did not move. The moon set and the stars shone brighter, and a mystical glow shifting through the spectrum of colors caught her attention, down the mountainside and to the southwest. She didn’t want to move, but she couldn’t resist, and so she leaned forward in the tree, straining to see past a lower mountain spur, trying to see the source.

  The Halo of Corona.

  Daonnan to the Usgar tribe, eternity, wherein sat Corsaleug, the place of spiritual reward to those loyal to the true god.

  Aoleyn had seen the glow of Daonnan before, but never like this, never before the actual source of the glow.

  Was this a gift from Usgar to her to counter the dark pit in her soul that so haunted her? A reminder of better possibilities than the dark fates she had witnessed so clearly?

  She stared long and hard at Daonnan and felt connected to it suddenly, as if this place, the sacred grove of Usgar, was truly amplifying the beauty of the heavenly display. She thought to climb down and cross around the western rim of the mountain to gain a better vantage, but held her place, transfixed.

  For a brief moment
, Aoleyn knew relief.

  But high clouds drifted past and Daonnan diminished, and seemed so very far away. There was no hiding there, not now, and the red eyes and the dead eyes were there again, in her thoughts, staring at the emptiness within her, terrifying her, holding her.

  She shifted back, hugging the sappy trunk, and there she remained until the predawn light ebbed about Fireach Speuer and the mountainside awoke around her.

  Still she did not move, not even when morning came.

  * * *

  Innevah rested back in the dark in a rare moment of peace. She couldn’t see anything, for the moon had long set and the boughs of her home made of nothing but pine branches and dirt had no other source of light, but she turned her head to the left, toward the interlocking branches of the two pines that separated her small shelter from that of her son.

  The boy the deamhain called Thump.

  Innevah was proud of him. He had heard her words through the years and convincingly played the role she had given him. He was Thump—he was “stupid” to any but those who looked most closely. That was the only way her son could live past his change to young adulthood, Innevah knew. He couldn’t become recognized as a threat to the deamhain or they would torture and murder him most horribly.

  But was it a fool’s errand? Surely one day the deamhan Usgar would realize the truth of Thump—Innevah had only delayed the inevitable.

  The woman sobbed, thinking, not for the first time, that she should have smothered her son when he was a baby.

  Her own cowardice affronted her.

  She sensed movement to her right and spun about.

  “Innevah,” came a soft whisper, and she knew the voice, and she reached her arms out to invite an embrace that she sorely needed at that dark moment.

  “Anice,” she whispered back, and she hugged the woman closely and ran her hands about, feeling the two large bumps on Anice’s head.

  Anice was half Innevah’s age, nearing twenty, and had watched her brother sacrificed several years earlier. She wasn’t from Fasach Crann, but from Sellad Tulach, the northernmost of the lakeside villages, perched in the nook of two mountains, with trails and houses running up to the crest of a deep drop overlooking the black sands and stones of Fasail Dubh’clach far below.

  In their normal lives in their respective villages, Innevah and Anice would not likely have been friends, let alone shared such a supportive embrace. Rare were the interactions between the folk of their villages, and usually they only occurred out on the lake, on boats battling over a favored fishing spot.

  Up here, though, in the clutches of Usgar, they had each other and little more.

  “Why are you so sad this night?” Anice asked.

  At first Innevah thought it an odd question. When was she not sad? When were any of them not miserable?

  But Innevah couldn’t deny the question or the reasoning behind it. Yes, they were always sad, but rarely sobbing. Those who had survived the Usgar for years, particularly the women, had long ago lost their tears to an awful, hollow emptiness. This night was one of the rare times when the suffering became too much for emptiness and emotional distance alone.

  “My son saw…” Innevah whispered.

  Anice’s sigh told her that she didn’t have to elaborate. Every uamhas woman knew exactly what there was to see.

  “He is strong,” the younger woman offered. “He will find a way through his pain.”

  “He is just a child,” Innevah protested. “He should not have seen. I do not want him in such pain.”

  “Pain is all we can know,” said Anice.

  Innevah hugged her tighter.

  There was no way to honestly disagree.

  She should have smothered her baby those many years ago, she thought again, and not for the last time.

  * * *

  Aoleyn stirred from her sleep, the daylight beaming about her, the sun shining brightly above Fireach Speuer. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts, to realize that she was still in the pine, ten feet from the ground, and far up the mountain from her people.

  Her back ached, and her eyes stung from the harsh light of morning so high up the mountain. But the worst was the ache in her chest, in her center.

  With great effort, she managed to extract herself from the hardening sap that grabbed at her.

  Haunted, she climbed down from the tree and headed back to the encampment. Many were about but none paid her any heed as she moved straight across toward Seonagh’s tent.

  She saw Bahdlahn and his mother among a group of uamhas clearing the ashes about the bonfire and gathering new kindling. There wouldn’t be another Blood Moon this night, of course, but the fossa’s hunt often provoked reactions among the other denizens of Fireach Speuer, the sidhe, or the great predators, or even a stampede of deer.

  Aoleyn kept her gaze to the flap of her teacher’s abode, not wanting to lock gazes with Bahdlahn, and certainly not with his mother.

  One of the slave guards, whip in hand, offered her a smile and a nod, and she just moved faster, needing to be away.

  These people didn’t even realize that she had been out of the camp throughout the night, Aoleyn thought, and hoped.

  But those hopes were dashed the moment she moved into Seonagh’s tent, to find a glare of such intensity and anger that it took her breath away.

  Aoleyn shied from the older woman, but only for a heartbeat, reminding herself of the look in the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother, reminding herself that this woman before her was complicit in that travesty.

  She stood straight and matched Seonagh’s stare.

  Slowly, unblinking, without breaking eye contact for even an instant, Aoleyn crossed the tent to the washbasin. She turned away to wash away the dirt of the mountain, scooping lukewarm water from the basin with cupped hands.

  Before she could bring the water to her face, she felt a hand grasp the collar of her tunic, yanking her backward and spinning her about. She nearly fell, but caught herself at the last instant, straightening to face her assailant just as Seonagh brought her hand around to issue a sharp backhand slap across Aoleyn’s face.

  Aoleyn yelped, as much in surprise as in pain.

  “You are to sleep in your own cot,” Seonagh said, her voice flat and emotionless. Aoleyn opened her mouth to respond, but Seonagh slapped her again.

  “I…” the young woman stammered, and another smack snapped her head to the side.

  “Were you with a man?”

  Aoleyn stared at her blankly. “What? No,” she answered. “No!”

  Seonagh stared down at her, clearly disbelieving.

  “Who was it?” the woman asked.

  Aoleyn shook her head, her expression sour.

  “Then where were you?” Seonagh demanded. “I will ask others.”

  “None will answer,” said Aoleyn.

  Seonagh’s face contorted, her eyes going wide, and she stiffened as if she meant to slap Aoleyn yet again.

  “I was not in the camp!” the young woman blurted.

  “You stayed with the slaves?” Seonagh shot back, horrified. “In the grove?”

  “No,” Aoleyn started to say, but she bit it back, considering her options here. “Not with the slaves, but I was in the grove, yes.”

  Seonagh studied her carefully. “Are you lying to me, child?”

  “No,” Aoleyn said, and she straightened with some confidence, for it was not an untrue statement, even though it was obviously a deception. “I was in the grove.”

  Seonagh didn’t respond, didn’t blink, for a long while. “There are magical ways to learn…” she started to warn.

  “Fetch the gray-flecked crystal, if you need,” Aoleyn invited, for she knew that the Coven kept a certain crystal, thick with wedstones, that could be used to determine if someone was lying (though it was not overly reliable, Seonagh had taught her). Still, even if lies could be easily detected, clever Aoleyn figured she was safe enough, for in this case, “in the grove” wasn’t an untrue statement, though
surely Seonagh was thinking of one grove, the pines serving as the slave encampment, while Aoleyn had spent the night in another altogether!

  “Why would you stay with them?” Seonagh asked suspiciously.

  “I didn’t,” Aoleyn answered. “I mean, I was out and about. I just…”

  “Out and about,” Seonagh interrupted. “You were out of the camp. On a night of Iseabal’s red face, you were out of the camp?”

  Seonagh rubbed her chin, her eyes flaring, and Aoleyn braced for another slap. “How can one as promising as Aoleyn be so truly stupid?” Seonagh asked, and that stung more than a slap ever could. “Do you know what the fossa would do to you?”

  “It is dangero—”

  “Dangerous?” Seonagh mocked. She moved very close to Aoleyn’s face, her eyes flaring with wild outrage.

  The reaction shocked Aoleyn with its intensity, and its honesty! She knew the stories of the fossa, of course, but to see Seonagh so unhinged had her off-balance indeed.

  “First it would chew through your ankles,” she said. “So quickly. One bite.” She snapped her fingers against her thumb before Aoleyn’s face, startling the girl and drawing a gasp of surprise.

  “How pretty would be Aoleyn’s clever smile, I wonder, when you turned your head from the dirt to see your feet removed from your body? How confident your cry, I wonder, as the demon fossa dragged you away, and took you to its lair to eat you? To slowly eat you, and you would live for a very long time, though you wish it not!”

  Aoleyn had nothing to reply, and so just stood there with her mouth hanging open, her black eyes rimmed with moisture, defeated.

  “You never go beyond the edge of the camp without my permission. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” the girl—and truly she felt like a little girl at that moment—answered deferentially.

  Seonagh snarled anyway. “And when a task is assigned you, you are to do the task as given.”

  Aoleyn’s expression changed in her surprise at the abrupt shift of the subject, and before she could stop herself, she shook her head—or started to, until Seonagh slapped her again, this time harder.

  “I filled the baskets,” she whispered in reply. “I did as you commanded, exactly as asked.” Her voice wavered as she replied, for now she was simply overwhelmed, sobs welling inside of her.