Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists

by Edited by Adrian Collins

  “Kanati, no!”

  But it was too late. He turned to look at Awitsu, and opened his mouth...

  ...and slumped to the ground, senseless.

  “Kanati!” She screamed, and his name tore from her heart like a piece of soul. Awitsu dropped the kitten and scrambled to her friend’s side. His face was a terrible color, like a two-day bruise, and the eyes were rolled back in his head so that only the whites showed. He did not move, or speak, or seem to breathe, though she shook him so that his head lolled from side to side. “Kanati, no! No!”

  No

  No

  Noooooo

  And then…

  “What is this fuss all about, child? If you keep screaming like this, you will bring the whole village down here. And neither of us wants that to happen, do we?”

  Awitsu looked up, panting, hands still fisted in Kanati’s robe. It was the herbwoman, in her painted purple robes, and a wreath of green leaves rested upon her wild mop of gray hair like a wild-thing crown. Another time, Awitsu might have been afraid, might have run.

  “Help me,” she sobbed instead. “Help me!”

  “Help you with what? Oh, the boy.” The herbwoman shook her head, smiling a strange smile. “Got into the baby’s blood, did he? You should know better, child.” She clucked her tongue against her teeth and knelt beside them, picked up Kanati’s hand and let it fall again, looked into his mouth, thumbed back his eyelids.

  It was more than Awitsu could bear. “Is he dead?”

  “Only mostly dead.” The herbwoman let his head loll back against the cold ground.

  “Will he die?” Oh, it was all her fault; it was always her fault.

  “Not likely. He will be mostly dead for a while, like a bear sleeping through winter. But he needs to be given an antidote before he wakes—Blood of the Child does strange things to people. I have known men to fall into walking nightmares that lasted a lifetime. I have known men to go mad from it. And I know of one woman who woke from this sleep with the ability to see sounds as color.” She smiled that odd smile again. “But I have no idea what might happen to a daeborn under its spell. Nothing good, I wager.”

  Awitsu’s breath stilled in her chest; she had heard enough stories to know how this one would go. “Do you have the antidote, then?”

  “Of course I do, child.” The woman reached into the top of her robe and pulled out a stoppered vial.

  “What do you want for it?” Awitsu bit her lip and tried to look small and pathetic. “I am very poor.”

  “Oh, sweet little child, you know those doe eyes will not work on me.” The herbwoman laughed, and her body shook like a sack full of potatoes. “There is always a price that can be paid, you know. The fleece of a golden ram. An apple from the tree of life.” She leaned close, and her breath smelled strongly of cardamon. “The heart of a daeborn child, perhaps.”

  If she had tears, Awitsu would have wept. “Yes,” she whispered. “Take me, instead. Only let him live.” She was doomed anyway.

  “Oh, pshaw, I was only joking. What kind of a life have you had, to be so serious at your age? What are you, eleven?”

  Awitsu realized that she was gaping like a simpleton. “Thirteen.”

  “Ahhhhhh.” It was not a word, so much as a sigh. “Thirteen. Not long before your own Feast of Daeyyen, then, is it? And this one...he is fifteen, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, next year, then.”

  Reluctantly: “Yes.”

  “You know, I had a daughter once. She was more beautiful than a moons-lit night. I loved her more than there are stars in the sky.”

  “You had a daughter?”

  “Do not look so surprised. And close your mouth. I was a great beauty, in my youth.” She held the vial up to the sky and twirled it around in her fingers. Liquid swirled inside, dark as a whispered secret. “My Ahnpei was daeborn, just as you are. I kept her hidden, kept her secret, so that nobody would know. But in her sixteenth year, they came and took her away from me.” A single fat tear rolled down the herbwoman’s withered cheek.

  For the first time in her life, Awitsu was stunned to silence.

  “I cannot just give you the potion, you know. It does not work like that. But for you, I think the price will not be so great. I will sell you the antidote, for, shall we say...” she looked deep into Awitsu’s eyes, and their hearts were kindred. “A white kitten? I am lonely, and could use the company.”

  As she pressed the vial into Awitsu’s palm, the herbwoman leaned in close and whispered: “Now, what would a young girl be doing, messing about with a cock’s blood, a tiny kitten, and a handful of Blood of the Child? It is almost as if you are trying to work some dark magic. That is forbidden, you know. Daeborn or not, you would be killed for such a thing.”

  Awitsu tried to pull away, but the old woman held her fast. “Let me go!”

  “Not so fast, child. I still need to tell you three things, you know how this goes. First, your friend is going to be very sick when he wakes up. He will need to eat something, though he will not want to. Second, the two of you need to keep away from these berries. I have no more of the antidote, and if he were to get a second dose, I really do not know what might happen to him. And third...”

  “Third?” The old woman’s fingernails were digging into Awitsu’s hands, and it hurt.

  “Third, if you wish to wake a blood penny, you are going about it all wrong. It is not simply the Blood of the Innocent, you know.” She let go of Awitsu, and sang:

  “Heart of Illindra, Soul of Eth,

  Blood of the innocent condemned to death.

  Under the moons, combine the three,

  Coin enough to set you free.”

  “Blood penny?” Awitsu gave the herbwoman her most innocent look. The old woman snorted and scooped the kitten up in one hand, and struggled to her feet.

  “Suit yourself.”

  “What does that mean...‘blood of the innocent, condemned to death?’”

  The herbwoman shook her head and turned to leave. “Did you learn nothing when they locked you up? Our jailhouse if full of them, child. Take your pick.”

  And then she was gone, leaving Awitsu alone with a mostly dead friend, her mother’s grave, and the light of the cold, cold moons.

  4: Blood of the Condemned

  Kanati argued that they should wait for the next two-moon; but for the warning in her heart, Awitsu might have agreed. The night was old, and if she did not get home soon her father would wake and find her gone. As the sky greyed around the edges, she thought that they may already be too late.

  At that thought—we may be too late—Awitsu firmed her mouth and resolved that they would finish their quest this very night.

  “Who knows whether we will have another chance, next two-moon?” she asked. Who knows whether I will still be alive, next two-moon? was what she meant. Kanati, as he always had, read the thoughts between her words, as a seer may find answers in darkness between the stars. He followed as she led.

  The old guard was asleep with his feet propped up before him and an empty cup at his elbow. Awitsu closed her eyes in a brief moment of gratitude for men and their weaknesses as they slipped by him and through one of the heavy wooden doors. This was not the room in which she had been kept, but a gloomy, stinking pit filled with chained men and emptied of all hope. Awitsu let Kanati go before her—his moonsilver eyes were better than hers for cutting through the darkness. And besides, if she had admitted it to herself, she was afraid.

  Kanati picked his way across the bodies and outstretched limbs of the breathing dead. The moonslight bled in through the windows just enough that Awitsu could see him stoop beside a bundle of filth and rags. He crouched unmoving for a long, silent moment and they listened to the gurgling, rasping breaths and the occasional low moan. Awitsu held one hand over her face and ghosted across the room to stand by him as he fumbled for his knife. Though her bones shuddered and threatened to turn to wat
er, she would not have him do this thing alone. She knew the man who lay huddled at her feet: he was a poor man and a failed thief, and the only reason he was still alive was that his family had not yet paid the blood-money for an execution and burial. She supposed that he might be innocent of theft, but he was certainly guilty of having poor luck.

  He is dead, anyway, she thought, angry with the man for no reason she could explain. He deserves this fate, not I.

  The walls whispered in the night, mocking her with the voice of the Witching Well:

  Not I

  Not I

  Not I.

  The puddle of filth and misery stirred, and his eyes went wide in the moonlight.

  “Murderers!” His voice was as thin as his arms that flailed against the chains, but carried surprisingly well. “Murderers!”

  Up went the cry. “Murder!”

  Murder, laughed the Well.

  Murder.

  Awitsu turned to flee, but she ran straight into the jail-man just as the headless rooster had run to her in the marketplace, and his fist connected with her jaw,

  And down she went,

  And down she went,

  And down into the dark she went.

  * * *

  Aaaaahhhh-wiiiiiit-suuuu, moaned the wind as it ruffled her hair. Aaaahhh-wiiit-suuu, wept the stars as they danced about the sky.

  “Awitsu,” whispered Kanati, his voice low and urgent. “Awitsu, wake up!”

  She woke. And then she wished she had not, for the side of her head throbbed and burned. It was a song she was altogether too familiar with, the thrum-thrum-rumble of her own blood in her own ears, and she was suddenly done with it. She was finished with men who hit her and left her to weep in the dirt at their feet, as she was finished with pretty little girls who wore flowers in their hair and laughed at her behind their hands.

  “Kanati,” she rasped, and spat blood from her mouth as she sat. The room spun and the Well laughed at her pain. Awitsu held her head and waited for it to stop. “Where are we?”

  They were in a deep, dark, breathless place. She could feel the walls pressing in upon her, and a great weight pressing down from above. Had they been buried alive, then? That is one way her father had told her the daeborn should be killed. Drown them, burn them, bury them alive, he would sing. And then he would laugh. But he was not her father—her father was a powerful sorcerer, he would blast the walls of this prison apart and set her free.

  “I am not sure. A dungeon, I think. There is nothing besides us down here, not even rats.” Kanati hated rats. Awitsu rather liked them, stuffed with wild onions and rubbed with salt.

  “I wish I had a rat,” she said. Her head hurt.

  “Awitsu, hssst! Stay awake, now. We are in trouble, and I do not think my father can help us this time.”

  “I am always in trouble.”

  “No, I mean real trouble. I heard them talking as they brought us down here. They mean to sell us both to the Emperor’s comfort houses, and be finished with us for good.”

  “But they cannot—we are daeborn.”

  “They can,” he answered, and his voice was strangely thick. “Our families will have to pay a blood fine, but they can do it. And they will.”

  He was crying.

  Awitsu had never felt so low in her life. This was Kanati, her Kanati, and she had brought him nothing but grief and pain. She crawled to him and put an arm around his shoulders, and when she felt them shake her heart screamed into the dark.

  “I will tell them,” she whispered. “It was all me, all my fault. I will tell them.” And then she would die, and he would be free.

  “Do not be stupid,” he answered, and hugged her back. “We are daeborn. They would have killed us both, in time. This just gives them an excuse.”

  “I do not want to die, Kanati. I do not want to go to the comfort houses.”

  “Do you know what I want?”

  “To get out of here?”

  He laughed and squeezed her. “That, yes. And I want you to make that wish.”

  “Oh, well, in that case, all we need to do is fly through these walls and wake the blood penny.” She giggled, and felt the walls draw away from the sound.

  “I think I know a way we can get out of here.”

  “What! How?”

  “Well, it is stupid. Almost as stupid as us getting in here in the first place.”

  “I am good at being stupid. Tell me, how?”

  “I still have some of those berries,” he told her. “Blood of the Child. A whole pocket full of them. We could eat them, and then they will think we are dead, and leave us on Bone Mountain.”

  “Kanati.” Her voice was a dark prayer. “There is no more antidote.”

  “No, there is not.”

  “The wyverns might eat us before we wake.”

  “They might.”

  “And the herbwoman said she does not know what might happen if a daeborn eats them.” Nothing good, she had said.

  “I told you it was stupid.”

  “You were right, it is stupid.” She threw both arms about his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. “I love you, Kanati.”

  “I love you too.” She could feel him shifting as he dug into his pocket. His hand was warm, the berries cold as he pressed them into her palm. “Are you ready?”

  “What do they taste like?” She brought her cupped hand to her face. They smelled like fresh-turned earth. Like an open grave, like a field fresh-planted.

  “Sour. And then sweet. Like you.” He kissed the top of her head. “Are you ready?” His free hand sought hers, and squeezed.

  She did not answer, but brought her hand to her mouth and let the berries spill onto her tongue. They were bitter, dark and bitter, and then...

  Sweet.

  5: Blood of the Beloved

  The wyvern had been tasting the air over this latest offering, and trying to decide whether that odd tainted smell was poison or just another way for the silly humans to try and mask their scents. When the meat sat up and shrieked at her she was startled backwards and lost her grip on the perch entirely; had she not been so young and agile, she might have fallen full upon the ground. As it was, she trumpeted her displeasure as she swept over the bare earth and then up, up, filling her wings with wind and her lungs with the scent of the open sky. She called again, and this time her cry was answered by a series of bone-rattling notes far to the east. It was a male; a fine, strong male, by the sound of his song. She abruptly forgot all about the little doings of lesser creatures and turned her back on the dying sun.

  The path split before Awitsu; one way led down and to the left, a dark trail charred and choked with blackthorn. The other rose up and to the right, a wide and shining path, gently sloped and neatly paved. I know this story, she thought, I know the way. She turned towards the hard road and a hot wind rose to greet her, stinking of brimstone and carrion and long, sad songs.

  And then she thought, No. I am tired of this path. It is time for me to choose another. So she opened her eyes and looked Death full in the face, and screamed. Death in the form of a young wyvern screamed back at her and fell, startled by the sound of her voice. Awitsu lost sight of the creature for a moment and thought perhaps it had plunged to its death, but before she could draw another breath the wyvern rose before her, a vision of bronze-and-green scales and spikes and cold yellow eyes. It blotted out the fading sun, bellowed, and prepared to strike...and then, for no reason she could see, flicked its tail and shot away over the mountains.

  She did not know whether to laugh, or cry, or wet herself. If she did not get down off the platform, she might do all three.

  “Awitsu?”

  She peered over the edge of the bamboo platform. “Kanati!”

  “Are you okay? Can you get down, or do you need my help?”

  “I am okay, I think.” Not really, but she had been worse. “I have to pee.”

  “I do too, after that.” His
face was pale in the fading light, but Kanati’s eyes shone like the moons. “That was incredible.”

  She might have chosen a different word, but Awitsu supposed he was right. She half-climbed, half-fell to the ground, and barely made it to the bushes in time. She felt sick to her stomach, and dizzy, and...faint. Thin. Like wine that had been cut with water until there was hardly any color left to it at all. And of course she had chosen to squat behind an itchvein bush; she could hardly wipe with those leaves.

  “Here you go.” A handful of leaves—safe leaves—thrust around the bushes.

  “Kanati, would you...oh. Thank you.”

  Her guts felt better after that, but her head still felt sick and strange. And her antlers itched.

  We could probably get a drink at the river without anyone seeing us. I am thirsty, too.

  “I am thirsty. Do you think we could...” She broke off and stared at Kanati. “Wait...how did you know what I was going to say?”

  He stared back. I never said that out loud.

  She shut her mouth with a snap, and tried: Is this because we ate the berries?

  I guess so. Either that, or we are dead.

  I think the wyvern would have eaten me, if we were dead.

  The wyvern might still eat you if she comes back. Best we leave before she remembers her dinner.

  Best we leave before the villagers come for us.

  They will not come. Why do you think they left us here? They think we are dead already.

  Awitsu tested the thought as one might prod a sore tooth: left for dead. She supposed she felt bad for Kanati’s family, but they would have lost him anyway, at the next Feast of Daeyyen. As for her father, she hoped he spent the rest of his life paying the Emperor for her early death.