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

by R. A. Salvatore

  Connebragh nodded at the Crystal Maven’s tent. Tay Aillig waved her away and started for Mairen once more.

  The commotion about the camp increased around him as he went. The Usgar were already on edge, with Gavina’s death, the early onset of winter, and so, likely, the early climb to the winter plateau, and with the Blood Moon of the previous night, and so whispers of missing Aoleyn, and then of another disappearance, that of Ralid, began to echo about.

  More than one glance fell on Tay Aillig, as well, and why not, since his wife and a man of about her age were both apparently absent from the camp!

  Tay Aillig pondered the possibilities here. Perhaps rumors of a tryst between the two would be the best course of action. His own reputation would be sullied, of course, for being cuckolded by a man as mediocre as Ralid, but that might be better than having to admit that he led the missing man to his death in an unsanctioned hunt for the demon fossa.

  All of that was bouncing around his thoughts when he pushed into Mairen’s tent, to find her sitting with a couple of other witches.

  “Be gone!” he ordered, and the two looked to Mairen, who was staring at Tay Aillig—at his uncompromising visage. She nodded and they scurried away.

  “What have you done?” Mairen asked when they were alone.

  “Nothing that concerns you.”

  “If it concerns Aoleyn, who seems to be missing—”

  “Aoleyn is often missing,” Tay Aillig interrupted.

  “If it concerns her, it concerns me.”

  “If it concerns her, then that is of her doing, not mine. When did you last see her?”

  Mairen look at him curiously, as if to ask what business that might be of his. Aoleyn was to enter the Coven, after all, and so Mairen’s claim on the young woman would be stronger than any Tay Aillig might make!

  “When did you last see her?” he asked again, slowly, enunciating each word clearly and powerfully.

  “When we returned from Gavina’s grave. Soon after sunset.” She cocked her head, studying his expression. “What do you know?”

  “Not enough,” he replied.

  “Are we to trust each other or not?”

  “My plans last night were foiled,” he admitted. “And Ralid is not missing. He lies dead far from here.”

  Mairen sighed and shook her head, but Tay Aillig added sharply, “Foiled by a witch, I believe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Now it was his turn to shake his head, and he added a little snarl for good measure. He told Mairen, then, with minimal detail, about the fight with the brown bear. “The beast ran us off,” he finished, “and looking back from on high revealed to us the magic of a lightning stroke. The magic of a witch.”

  “The magic of Aoleyn?” Mairen asked, and Tay Aillig shrugged. “Aoleyn could not direct a bear,” Mairen said.

  “There are crystals with such magic?”

  “For a bird, or a small newt. But not a—”

  “Do not underestimate that one,” Tay Aillig warned. “I saw her, fighting through Brayth on the field that day. You think me foolish for choosing her as my wife, but I saw her, her power bared.”

  “She is undeniably strong in the song of Usgar,” Mairen admitted. “But what you claim is beyond.”

  “I make no claims. I ask questions. And I will find answers.”

  “To control a giant bear?” Mairen laughed. “Who would even think to try such a foolish thing?”

  Tay Aillig fixed her with a stare to let her know in no uncertain terms that her mocking tone was not appreciated.

  “What would you have me do?” Mairen asked more seriously. “If the idiot girl even returns alive, I mean. She has been announced for the Coven, but I can—”

  “She will be in the Coven,” Tay Aillig decided. “And we will watch her, both of us. And she will do as I need, as we need, or we will reveal her treachery and feed her to Craos’a’diad.”

  Mairen agreed with a nod.

  Outside the tent, so did Connebragh, who had heard every word. She paused before entering, then went in in a rush to confirm to Mairen and the Usgar-laoch that yes, Aoleyn was indeed missing from the camp, and that another, warrior Ralid, was also gone.

  Tay Aillig rushed back outside, moving quickly to the tent of Egard, his nephew, then to Aghmor, rousing his soldiers—there was no time for sleep.

  “Gather others,” he told them, “and go in search of Aoleyn.”

  “Aoleyn?” they asked together.

  “She is not to be found.”

  “The lightning!” Egard gasped.

  “Shut up,” Tay Aillig was fast to reply. “There was no lightning.” To Egard, he quietly added, “You lead a group down to Ralid, and there find signs of Aoleyn’s passage, whether she was there or not.”

  The younger man seemed confused.

  “Sneak into her tent and gather some of her things,” Tay Aillig spelled it out.

  “I will go with you,” Aghmor said, but Tay Aillig held up his hand.

  “You will go out alone,” he instructed Aghmor. “To Elder Raibert. Tell him of the missing and ask him for his guidance. And check on the idiot uamhas who works th’Way.”

  “The one Aoleyn favors,” said Egard, remembering that long-ago, painful, incident.

  Tay Aillig shot him a threatening stare, even though he agreed with the sentiment. In his improvisation here, that’s where his thoughts had led him—he could perhaps force Aoleyn’s silence, if necessary, if it was her at the bear fight, and if she was even still alive and soon to return, by using the threat of murdering the uamhas boy against her.

  The two young warriors stared at him with puzzled expressions.

  “No one can know,” he explained in a deadly serious tone, letting the weight of doom hang with every word.

  Egard looked at him doubtfully, even shook his head a little bit. Tay Aillig understood, and perhaps it would be better to just tell the truth of the previous night, of how their grand plan to be rid of the fossa was ruined by bad happenstance with a giant bear.

  Or better still to not find Ralid, and not plant evidence of Aoleyn having been there.

  But no, he decided to stick with his instincts here. Mairen was with him, Raibert a doddering old fool. Unless these two foolishly revealed something, the only one who could possibly hurt him was Aoleyn.

  But if he could so easily implicate and discredit her, and threaten her with the uamhas boy …

  Better to set that battlefield, if it was to come, with all conditions against the young witch.

  * * *

  It took a long while for Talmadge to realize that he had done something terribly wrong here. He had mentally reached out to the magic in the gray soul stone, but not as he had intended, apparently, for he began to feel quite strange suddenly.

  Detached from himself …

  He knew that he should let go of the stone, but his hand wouldn’t answer his call! So suddenly, his own body seemed no more a part of him than the dying Aoleyn’s corporeal form!

  Terror gripped him. He would die here, too, his spirit unbound, his mortal coil settling there, expiring.

  And he was not alone!

  But no, not the monster, not the demon, Talmadge suddenly realized, and he recognized the spirit, Aoleyn’s spirit, and thought he was there, at the moment of her death, watching her soul separate from her body. He didn’t know what to think or do, didn’t know if he should feel blessed to witness such a moment of peaceful transfer, or horrified that he, too, would likely follow her spirit to the nether world, whatever that might mean!

  Aoleyn, he said, not with his lips, but with his thoughts.

  He couldn’t see her spirit, exactly—it was more as if he could sense it, feel it—but he was sure that she heard.

  Aoleyn, he thought again, and he flooded her with thoughts of sadness and regret, and the image of both of them there in the pit of death, his hand gently set upon her bare belly.

  Aoleyn!

  And then he could see her
spirit, as if it were floating away, leaving her lifeless coil.

  But no, he realized, the spirit wasn’t Aoleyn, though the image seemed very much like the Usgar woman.

  Who are you? he wondered.

  The spirit didn’t answer, but flew right down to him and engulfed him, and he felt it dissipate, as if to nothingness.

  And a great sadness fell over him, one that broke his inadvertent magic spell of spirit-walking and sent him flying back to his body, where he closed his physical eyes and sobbed.

  And then stopped, abruptly, and opened his eyes wide when he felt Aoleyn’s hand over his own.

  And felt, too, a sudden surge of magic, more glorious than Talmadge had ever before known.

  EPILOGUE

  She stood outside the cave, staring at the blackness, thinking of the spirits, the demon, the man she had killed, the man she had rescued. Thinking about life itself and what it meant, and what it meant when death arrived.

  She had set the cloud leopard free of its demon possessor. She had set the spirits free of their demon captor.

  And one of those spirits, a very special one, had helped her hear the song to guide her from the edge of oblivion.

  “Elara,” Aoleyn whispered, and she slapped her hand over her mouth and began to sob, overwhelmed beyond anything she had ever imagined. Elara, a name she hadn’t known before, but would never forget.

  She couldn’t believe that she had gone into that pit of death.

  She believed even less that the stranger, Talmadge, had gone in after her!

  She wanted to dismiss the memory of her fight, that sickly, awful, excruciating feeling of the demonic creature burrowing into her belly, chewing her flesh as it devoured her life energy. Tearing at her gut to create a battle between the carnage and the healing, Aoleyn’s magic holding back the monster like the lakeshore against the waves blown on a gale.

  Aoleyn fell to her knees and threw her other arm across her belly, reflexively bending forward as she knelt to cover up her wound. She still couldn’t comprehend the reality of that fight, the very edge of her bone-pile grave, or that she had somehow come through it.

  Composing herself, she turned about and sprinted up the wall of the vale to the ridge where she and Talmadge had first seen the cave. She looked for him from up there, but he was already too far down the mountain, out of sight. He had offered to take her with him, down to the lake towns, and then across the lake and across the world, to this village he called Honce-the-Bear.

  After yet another incident revealing the indecency of her people, and with her own curiosity for the wider world, Aoleyn had wanted to accept that offer more than a little.

  But no, she could not. She was to be brought into the Coven, to learn more secrets of Usgar, to become powerful among her people.

  She had defeated the demon fossa. Tay Aillig had meant to do that, and use the feat to gain control of the tribe. But now Aoleyn had done it.

  What might she do with that heroic act? What changes might she bring? She had seen the truth of Usgar’s magic more keenly than any others, she believed, but to what end?

  What now would be her purpose?

  It was too overwhelming for the woman, emotionally and physically exhausted, her heart wounded, her soul confused.

  She wanted to go with Talmadge, she couldn’t deny, but she could not.

  Not now.

  What might happen to Bahdlahn if she walked away?

  With a long, last glance at the terrible cave, Aoleyn started off around Fireach Speuer, not for the Usgar camp quite yet though. Instead, she called upon her gemstones, floated and flew, and ran from tree to high stone to tree again, up the mountain, toward the peak where the snow was soon to fall once more, and where remnants of the last dusting remained in the shadowed areas.

  * * *

  Talmadge moved with all speed down the side of the mountain, but despite his urgency—he knew that winter was coming fast, and knew, too, that so were the Usgar—he couldn’t help but pause and glance back repeatedly, his thoughts flooding with images of that strange young woman who had saved him, and whom he had saved.

  The moments in the pit, lost on the edge between life and death, had taken his breath away and still had him shaking his head in disbelief.

  The road of his life’s journey had nearly ended, but in that desperate moment, teetering on the edge, it had widened to lengths he had never before imagined. He knew that he would never view the moments of his life the same way.

  For where before Talmadge had felt a sense of dread, and loss, now he felt a strange and glorious elation.

  And freedom.

  Freedom from the ghosts of his past as surely as the ghosts in that pit had found freedom. There was magic in the world, he knew now, in ways he had never even considered. And magic was life, and life was magic.

  He pulled out the crystalline dagger and held it up, seeing the flakes within.

  He understood more about the Usgar now, and he would tell the folk of Fasach Crann, and all the other towns. The Usgar were not demons, but mortal men.

  The echo of some voices off a stony front to the side of Talmadge reminded him that he was not alone on this mountain. Aoleyn had assured him that the Usgar hunters would be out to retrieve the dead man, and likely in search of her, as well.

  He veered the other way, into a deep hollow, disappearing into the trees, moving with all speed for all his life, carrying with him the dagger, his insights, and the memory of an exceptionally brave young woman.

  * * *

  She cried as much as she laughed, and did both more than she should have. She tried to hold fast to her determination, but the passing hours carried with them doubts and harsh reality.

  And the memory of a young man named Ralid. A young man she had swatted with the paw of giant bear, tearing him, sending him spinning to crash catastrophically into the thick trunk of a tree. She could see him in her mind’s eye, always there, crumbled and dead at the base of that tree.

  Did she really expect to change them, or impress them, or gain some measure of respect among them? Them? The ferocious warriors and stubborn witches?

  They would laugh at her and her tales of demons defeated!

  Mairen would melt her when she discovered the blasphemy, that Aoleyn had shattered crystals in the caverns to extract the gemstones now pierced to her body!

  The doubts chased Aoleyn every step.

  The fears fluttered up around her like the black form of the fossa, like the flying splinters of shattered bones crushed in the demon’s deadly maw.

  On a high ledge, buffeted by cold winds, Aoleyn paused and grabbed at her belly, feeling the tenderness of a wound that should have ended her life. Even now, she couldn’t believe any of it had been real.

  Even though she felt the residual pain and profound soreness from the garish attack of the fossa, Aoleyn could hardly comprehend that the toothy maw had burrowed into her, as it had wormed right through the giant bear, leaving it dead in the clearing.

  Madness. It was all madness. She stood up tall on the jag of stone, letting the wind buffet her. She didn’t huddle under her clothes against the chill breeze—quite the opposite, she lifted her tattered shirt high, higher to reveal the reddened area of injury, then pulled it right over her head.

  She spotted a patch of snow in the shadow of a great stone off to the side, and rushed to it, quickly removing her pants. She lay in the snow and rolled in it, wanting to feel the biting cold on every inch of her body. This was not the coldness of death, not that profound and frightening cold she had known in the lair, and in the heart, of the fossa. No, this was a sensation to affirm her life, to tickle her and nip at her and bring her sensibilities fully to this mortal coil that contained her spirit.

  More than once, Aoleyn thought of soaring down the mountainside to find Talmadge, to run away to a new reality, far removed from the complications of Usgar, god and tribe.

  Would she then be truly free?

  But no, she could not, eve
n doubting her grandiose plans. For one simple reason, Aoleyn could not leave: Bahdlahn needed her.

  Tay Aillig’s last words to Bahdlahn rang in her ears, that awful threat.

  Aoleyn threw on her clothes and gathered up her courage and her magic, and leaped away, speeding across the mountainside. She landed and leaped, long and far, again and again, until at last she came to th’Way. She tried to paste a kind smile onto her face as she approached the young man, who was hard at his work, setting another stone step into its carved spot.

  As she neared, Bahdlahn looked up and smiled wide, but only for a heartbeat before his jaw dropped and his expression became one of horror.

  Aoleyn stopped with surprise, and returned his look with one of puzzlement—until she realized the truth of the image she was presenting, for the front of her clothing hung tattered and dark with dried blood, her blood!

  “Aoleyn,” the uamhas breathed, and he stumbled over the step he was setting in a weak-kneed effort to approach.

  She ran down to him and wrapped him in a hug, whispering in his ear that she was okay. She even lifted her shirt for him to show him that the wound had healed. Still, it took him a long while to get his breathing back under control after the shock and the terror.

  Aoleyn pulled him to the side and sat him down on a flat stone, then knelt beside him. “You must never tell,” she instructed, and he shook his head, at a loss.

  So she told him everything. She told him about the four warriors and the prisoner and that they were trying to lure the demon fossa.

  “I became a bear!” she told him, and he gasped and leaned back to better study her. “I didn’t become a bear, but I … possessed one. And I chased them away to save the man, a man from across the lake and beyond the mountains.”

  She was rambling then, but she didn’t slow, and told him of the poor bear dying to the fossa, and of all the rest, to the fossa’s lair, to the edge of death.

  When she finished, she took Bahdlahn’s hands in her own. “Do you know what this means?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “It means that I am not afraid of them anymore,” Aoleyn said, and she believed it. She cupped his face in her hands and moved very close to him and promised, “I’m not going to let them kill you.”