by P. J. Fox
He knew that from personal experience.
And the owner of this cottage…was someone best avoided.
No one asked too many questions, even if they had them. She didn’t even have a name. Even so, this creature whom the local peasantry revered as their benefactor hid far more than even they realized. They imagined her, he supposed, to be some merchant’s wife run from charges of witchcraft. Or perhaps a minor noblewoman, fleeing a bad marriage. Romantic notions all, and wrong.
No, the woman who lived here was nothing of the simple country witch that she claimed. Most so-called witches weren’t, in the strictest sense; their “magic” lay in their intuition and, occasionally, their knowledge of herbs. They knew to prescribe willow bark for head pains and foxglove for heart pains, the killing kind. A handful were also skilled abortionists. Their interest in women’s lives and women’s health made them targets for a church that wanted women to be invisible. Many a “witch” had burned at the stake by ecclesiastical decree for doing nothing more heinous than prescribing a tonic for headache.
Tristan’s own personal physician, whom he kept more for appearances than true need—being dead, he had no need of physic—had fled the South after being charged with witchcraft when too many of his patients lived. He’d been known to prescribe that most heretical advice of regular hand washing. And when plague had once again struck the capital, this skilled and kind-hearted man had treated his patients with daily baths and a course of rose hip tea. He claimed the tea was high in something called nutrients. Tristan was familiar with this theory, having studied in the East where such was taught. But in the West, of course, the notion that certain foods were necessary to maintain optimum health, or that the ingestion of a given food could cure illness, was even more skeptically viewed than hand washing. And also forbidden by the church as it was considered a practice of the dark arts.
As the church taught, and every citizen of Morven knew—or at least the pious ones—illness was caused by vapors and the only cure for it was prayer.
Tristan’s mouth twitched in a faint curl of disgust, there and gone.
The occupant of the cottage, meanwhile, was waiting for him to go away. But he could smell the acrid tang of wood smoke on the chill air, and knew that a fire had very recently been lit. The occupant, sensing his arrival, had no doubt doused it and was now hiding under her table. His eyes narrowed slightly. Well, she’d known this day would come.
Eventually.
She’d done well for herself, here. She’d used her money well, although the windows were a vanity. If she’d truly wanted to stay hidden, she’d have gone without. But she’d never been one to deny herself. Not now, apparently, and not…before.
She undoubtedly had more treasure squirreled away in the basement, against whatever eventual need might arise. Like bribing curious officials, he supposed, although the post of sheriff had been vacant here for some time. The earl not having the funds to support one, and his subjects not over-anxious for scrutiny. That would change, in the coming seasons. The shadow of the king’s hand stretched further and further each evening. Although, truth be told, if she were to present one of the locals with gold they’d scarcely know what to do with it. Actual coin wasn’t common in the Highlands, as it wasn’t in any of the poorer places. Peasants, here and everywhere, made do with barter.
Gold would only draw attention—more even than the windows. He supposed that the pathetic, frightened women who crept to this door in the dead of night paid the witch for her services with carded flax or livestock purloined from underneath their husbands’ noses.
Had she actively tried to hide from him, genuinely not believing that she’d left clues? That the state of her home—so carefully made to look frightening, when it was in fact what Brom would have called snug as bugs—wasn’t in and of itself a clue? Or had she, with the passage of time, grown lazy? Believing, as the years passed, that because he hadn’t come he never would?
In a single fluid motion, Tristan dismounted.
He left Arion by the trees; the destrier was well trained, and would wait for him until he reappeared. Indeed, Arion had been known to attack any who approached him without Tristan’s express permission. People forgot, sometimes, that a destrier was as much a weapon as a sword and as integral to a knight’s survival. Only where a sword needed a wielding hand, a true warhorse possessed a kind of low cunning.
Ideally, the animal wasn’t so much a mount as a partner in battle; and Arion had fought well for Tristan. For, and with: against everything from rebels to bandits. He’d been with Tristan at Ullswater Ford and it had been a well-timed kick from Arion’s hoof that had first stunned Brandon Terrowin and felled him where he stood. In the mud, with the rain beating down. That had been a black day. A good day for carrion.
Tristan moved toward the cottage, his cloak rustling in the leaves as his boots crushed them flat. His boots were well fitted to his feet, the toes capped with steel. He wore gloves, cut from the same supple black leather. Even without gauntlets, he was strong enough to kill a man with a single blow. He possessed, in his rigid limbs, all the implacable strength of rigor mortis.
He felt no need to disguise his coming.
She knew, and he had no fear of her.
He stopped before the door, rapped once, and waited.
After a long minute, a hand moved on the latch and the door swung slowly inward.
They regarded each other in silence, she a shadowed figure and he a specter from nightmare.
And then, softly, almost kindly, “hello, Ariadne.”
Almost, but not quite.
The witch known as Cariad, who’d so freely offered her friendship to Isla and then abandoned her, had no response. She made no move to invite him in. Silence reigned, broken only by an occasional rustle in the undergrowth. They were surrounded by honeysuckle, what in spring and summer would be a heady riot of color and perfume but that now was dead. The temperature had risen with the afternoon, but would drop again before nightfall. And nightfall, these days, was coming sooner and sooner.
Finally she stepped back, still without a word.
His boot was almost silent on the flagstones as he took his first step within. So this was where she’d been living. He’d known generally where she’d been, first when she’d vanished on that long-ago night and then when she’d married the princeling who’d turned out not to be so charming. And then when she’d killed him, poisoning his cup as Tristan had poisoned Father Justin’s. And then when she’d come here, to the woods.
He looked around. His initial impression of the place had been correct: small, yes, and dressed to look humble, but comfortably appointed indeed. Her furnishings, with their well-oiled and smooth surfaces, were of the caliber to which long ago Jansen would have aspired. Her shelves were lined with perfectly formed pottery, the smooth lines and delicate glazes bespeaking a master’s touch.
There were two rooms, as was common: an all-purpose living area and, through a narrow door, a workroom. All but the most spectacularly wealthy of merchants lived where they worked, and Ariadne wouldn’t want to be far from her herbs. A massive fireplace promised more than enough heat, even in the dead of winter, and the walls were freshly whitewashed. A small, neat staircase even curled behind the fireplace column; it led to an upstairs sleeping area, presumably. Another luxury.
Still, even as he made note of his surroundings, he kept an eye on her. Ariadne had ever been difficult and he had no doubt that, given the first opportunity, she’d kill him. Or try.
Unfortunately for her, her powers had never been great.
Or at least, never as great as she’d believed them.
She was garbed in blue wool, a woman of indeterminate age who looked both old and young at once. Her hair, still stick-straight and supple after all this time, was now bone white and she wore it in a complicated braid. Further evidence of her vanity. A character flaw she’d never lost and that, even now, he was certain she’d deny. She undoubtedly thought herself quite the r
enunciate, living out here in the woods. A position that described less her true situation and more her entitlement. He supposed he was meant to feel sorry for her, standing there with her hands clasped piously at her waist.
She was poor from her perspective, and that was all that mattered.
He wondered, briefly, what plans she’d had for Isla that he’d disrupted.
Isla, who’d trusted this person.
“You look the same,” she said.
He turned, allowing his gaze to linger on her. “You don’t,” he said cuttingly. His tone was flat.
She smiled slightly, the expression calculated to make her seem pathetic. “I know.”
He wondered if her patrons knew what she did to maintain her looks. She might have passed for a well preserved woman of fifty winters, or perhaps a hard-beaten woman of closer to forty. Perhaps even younger, if her life had been especially bad. She shifted, in the light, seeming both old and young at once from the corner of his eye.
But she was almost his age.
“Have any children gone missing, recently?” he asked mildly.
She turned, but not before he saw the hardening in her face.
Somewhere, in the distance, a boar called to its mate.
And then, finally, “what do you want?” She sounded tired. Resigned.
“Information.”
She sat down. Strong afternoon light streamed through the diamond paned window to the left of the door, coloring patches on the floor. The cottage seemed almost…homelike. Would have been, in different hands. It reminded him indeed, very much, of the place that Brom had built for himself and his eventual wife. Only Brom hadn’t had such nice furniture. At least, not until his eldest son took up the trade.
Those days…seemed so long ago now.
He wondered, sometimes, what he thought about this.
He perused the room. Ignoring her, or seemingly so, he ran his fingertips over the bottles on the shelves. The boxes, their contents mysterious. Unguents for all the afflictions of a hard and joyless life. “You’ve done quite well for yourself,” he said. “And,” he added, “made good use of my coin.” Coin that she’d stolen from him, years ago.
Back when the world had been a different place.
Ariadne had been his apprentice, at one time. And his lover. They’d worked together, side by side, in his tower. Those had been good times. More innocent times, for all that he’d been far harder. He’d learned, in the intervening years, to appreciate certain aspects of human nature. When he’d first come into his current form, he might have eaten Isla without a second thought. Now…he was able to perceive, if not understand, something of her softness. Of her value to a world not his own, but that he nonetheless inhabited.
He was a demon, subject to the rules of a demon’s nature, a bright spirit trapped in a body that had long since ceased to function of its own accord. Ariadne, however, had no such excuse. For her, lack of conscience wasn’t a natural limitation but a choice. Where he’d never been human to begin with, she’d willfully forsaken her humanity in her pursuit of the dark arts. Whatever natural inclinations she’d once had, they’d long since burned away in the fire of her vanity. Like smoke from a boiling kettle. All that was left, reduced, was her intellect.
And she’d been so long before she’d found him. He hadn’t done this, merely facilitated the formal learning that she’d sought after she’d made the decision. She’d never told him what had made her into the conniving little twat that she was, although he’d speculated off and on. After his own bored fashion.
That she was cruel, and manipulative mattered not to him. She’d been, after her own fashion, a friend. Someone who understood him, or at least sought to; who wasn’t repulsed by his touch. He’d thought, for a time, that there might be a connection between them. More, eventually, than the simple ease which existed between master and student.
But in the end, there’d been…something else. Jealousy on her part, he thought. He considered himself fortunate, especially now. Had she still been part of his life when he’d met Isla, he would have had to kill her. And that would have been…inconvenient.
Isla deserved no competitor for his—not affection, precisely, but loyalty. In her, he’d found the connection he’d always sought. That he’d never known he’d sought, not even in his earliest memories of watching Tristan—his host, the real Tristan—with Brenna. He’d thought he’d wanted what Tristan had, but in truth he’d wanted something for himself.
He could afford to be generous with Ariadne. Her plans hadn’t come to fruition in quite the way she’d hoped. She’d undoubtedly imagined herself a queen by now, all those years ago. When she’d abandoned him, stealing from him, vanishing into the night. He had everything she didn’t. He had wealth, but she didn’t care about wealth and neither did he. Wealth was a means to an end, and however much she amassed in her basement she had no way of spending it and, more hurtful to her, no reason to. No. He had power. The ear of the king. He walked the nightmares of half the men in this kingdom. Women spread their legs for him like whores, drugged by his charisma. And he had a woman, of his own. A woman who doted on him.
Who was his, wholly and completely, to do with as he wished.
Ariadne, meanwhile, was alone: with nothing but her chickens and her herbs for company.
“You knew where I was this whole time.” Her statement hadn’t been a question.
“Yes.”
“If I give you information,” she asked, “then will you leave?”
He stopped, his clawed hand resting on the shelf. “Perhaps.”
“I haven’t—I haven’t done anything to you. I’ve lived quietly.” For the first time, he could detect the faintest note of fear in her voice. Was she proposing to bargain with him, now?
“You stole from me,” he pointed out, not unreasonably. “You left my home, and yours. I would have given you anything you asked for.”
“Except the one thing I wanted.”
He ignored her statement. “And yes, I suppose you have lived quietly…since you murdered your last husband.” He turned. “Tell me, Ariadne, did he scream? Was the sound of his choking very horrible? Did he piss himself, void his bowels, as he flopped around like a dying fish?”
And all for the crime of—what? Being a normal man?
THIRTY-FOUR
Ariadne Trion had been the spoiled but brilliant daughter of a noble house. It wasn’t worth recounting how she arrived at his doorstep, only that one night she did and he took her in. Their relationship, if a lich and a woman without conscience could be said to have a relationship, had—if not deepened over time then broadened. Come to encompass first the trust between master and student, the mutual respect, and then eventually more.
The joining of their bodies had been the natural outgrowth of so much time spent together, heads over this cauldron and that. He’d taught her how to scry, and how to cast runes. He’d learned the art of scrying in the East, rune-casting from the tribes who lived in the mountains.
He’d turned a blind eye to her…other activities, for a long time. She was both high-handed and high-strung. If she wanted to strike a man with impotence for slighting her, it mattered not. Her loyalty was to him. Or so he’d believed at the time.
He wasn’t the fool she’d believed him to be, though; he wasn’t deluded by her pretense of emotion, as he’d once been by Brenna’s. And in any case, Ariadne lacked Brenna’s skill as an actress. Ariadne, even so, showered Tristan with promises of love and told him that she wanted to be with him forever. And, after a point, she may have even convinced herself that she believed such things. But she wasn’t so different from Brenna, not really; nor so different from Rowena, who’d come after her. Rowena who, although Isla didn’t know it, had come to his room and offered herself to him after Isla had gone to bed.
He’d been tempted, after a fashion. Ruining the girl would have been diverting. But he doubted very much that Rudolph, or any self-respecting man would want her after he was through
with her. He tended to use his toys…harshly. And the contract he’d forced between Cavendish and Bengough was too important to the kingdom.
He studied Ariadne across the table. He paid particular attention to her eyes as she dissembled. Downcast at just the right tilt. She’d aged well, but she had aged. Her earlier comment that he hadn’t given her the one thing she’d wanted…indeed he hadn’t. Ariadne valued power, but above all she’d valued the power that came from her looks. Which, in her younger days, hadn’t been inconsiderable. She’d wanted him to make her like him.
She would have traded her life, her very soul, to preserve her shell. Had at first hinted, far less subtly than she thought. Then begged, cajoled, and finally threatened. He in turn had been unmoved. He’d refused her then for different reasons than he would have refused her now, but his conviction that she was no fit holder of this priesthood remained as firm. At the time, he’d known that even her firmest loyalties were still cheap; he had her complete and utter devotion so long as he had something she wanted. And he hadn’t wanted her competing with him. She hadn’t sufficient skill to ever be a threat, but often those who imagined themselves in competition were the worst irritant of all.
So he’d anticipated her turning against him. What he hadn’t anticipated was how it happened—or how quickly. Tristan wasn’t a jealous man—jealousy, as an emotion, was beyond him—but he did have a keen sense of ownership. He didn’t mind Ariadne flirting with other men, and he’d never been faithful to her. But he did draw the line at actual congress; had she lain with another man, he would have killed both of them. If not from affection, than out of pride.
The situation might have been different, had she proposed a union—with another man, of course—for gain. Even then he’d been politically ambitious and he would have found it useful, to have a set of eyes and ears in another household. He could have helped her select a mate who’d have been…beneficial to them both. And sharing her body would have been a small price to pay. Moreover, it would have been his choice and done with his permission. He’d have enjoyed, he thought, being quietly amused at the other man.