Blood Magic

by Matthew Cook

  They stop talking, and footsteps approach. I tense; if I am to be punished, if Ato means to kill my children, then I will not surrender without resistance. Deep inside, I feel the first uncoiling of my power, hot and wet and visceral, tingling in my belly.

  Lia walks forward, alone. Ato is nowhere to be seen.

  "He is very upset,” she says, and despite myself, I have to smile. I did not hear every word of their debate, but given his raised voice, the gist was clear.

  "Kirin, why?” she asks, coming no closer. She eyes the sweetling, her mouth puckering with ill-disguised disgust. I command it to leave us, and it shuffles off into the undergrowth.

  "I don't need to explain myself to Ato, or to you, or to anyone else,” I say, meeting her eyes. She flinches from my gaze. Ato has told her what my black eyes mean. “I know what men like Ato believe, what their religion teaches."

  "But Kirin, they're dead. Dead, yet they walk. Do you not see what...?"

  "I see my children, loyal and brave. I see those that would never abandon me. That would only leave my side when final death claims them."

  "Braver than the men that you fought alongside at Fort Azure?” she asks softly. The question gives me pause. I frown.

  "Kirin, by calling them back, you deny them their rightful place in the afterlife."

  "No, I merely delay it. None can oppose the gods, Lia. If one is chosen to go beyond, then the will of the gods cannot be thwarted."

  "That is not what Brother Ato says."

  I nod. “I know. And I understand why he believes that. But I believe that he's wrong. My children are—"

  "Stop calling them that!” she snaps, turning aside. “They are not children! There is nothing of your flesh about them!

  Calling them such is...” She shudders.

  I sit, watching her for the first manifestations of her power. Ato has turned her away from me. I do not want to hurt her, to turn the hungry mouth of my own power upon her, but what choice has the priest left me?

  Lia sits on the stone opposite me, weary lines carved in her porcelain skin. Out in the trees, I hear something heavy moving through the bushes.

  She looks up. “Go. Flee. Brother Ato's will is strong in this. He thinks he will gain the favor of Shanira if he—"

  "I won't leave you. You need my help. The Mor might be near."

  "Kirin, please. Just go. I can take care of myself."

  That she can, my sister whispers. Don't be a fool! He is coming.

  I rise, my eyes searching her face. She looks sad, but will not look at me. Wordlessly, for there is nothing more that can be said, I scoop up my pack and slip into the woods. The leaves close behind me like a curtain.

  * * * *

  I stride through the woods, my children moving behind me. One simply forces its way through obstacles, not bothering to seek the path of least resistance. His brother is more crafty, and makes little noise. I am pleasantly surprised. Still, even the racket and the obvious trail that the clumsy one creates would take more skill than either Lia or the Brother possess to follow.

  The rain washes down my face, oddly salty and warm, like tears. I scrub them away, muttering a curse.

  We do not need them. Leave them to their prejudices and their gods. We are free; that is all that matters.

  I nod, knowing that my sister can sense the gesture, but my mind is troubled. Leaving them still feels wrong. Even in the face of Ato's wrath and Lia's disgust, I do not wish to abandon them.

  I stop, making a decision, then begin hunting about. In the overcast, I cannot orient myself by the sun, but there are other signs for those with the woodcraft to read them. Inside, my sister growls, ominously quiet in the face of my decision, her displeasure filling my head like smoke.

  I swing wide of the road, moving fast. I do not worry about the sweetlings; I know they will catch up eventually. After a spell, I cut left, pushing hard until I see the trees thin ahead. I send out a command to my children, ordering them to stop wherever they are. I do not want them to betray my position.

  It will take them time to break their camp, then move back to the road. I must still be in front of them.

  I settle back, wincing. My body aches, my limbs and back, even the tender flesh of my chest, pulsing with a sullen pain that throbs in time with my beating heart. I wonder if I am coming down with some malady.

  I push aside the greenery to make a window. The road below me is empty, but I know that soon they will be by. I take a morsel of biscuit from my pack and settle down to wait.

  Chapter Ten

  The sweetling I called forth from Karl was my companion for neatly five months, before its time finally arrived. Five glorious months, as summer ripened like fruit into autumn. The woods were always filled with sound: the daytime clamor of the birds, passing along their mindless gossip; the nights a chorus of insects and frogs, all casting about with desperate vitality for a mate.

  As the nights grew ever colder, I began to notice my dark child's failing health. More and more, it would stumble across some obstacle in its path, limbs growing clumsy as tissues dried and toughened. A bloom of decay, a delicate, moss-like tracery of rot, began to spread outwards from its opaline eyes and down its sunken cheeks.

  The vitality that gave my sweetling its ferocious life and held back the natural process of decay was fading. Soon, I would be alone again.

  By the time the trees had begun to shed their cloaks of russet and gold, my child was gone, returned to the dust from which it had come. I mourned then, for those that die a second death are truly gone forever, their souls inviolate and unreachable by any mortal agent.

  I wondered then, as I still wonder, if the priests’ words were true. If those souls that are called forth to do the bidding of such as I are indeed forever tainted, made unclean and corrupt. Such souls, the priests say, are barred forever from the gentle lands beyond the Vale, and are consigned to an eternity of some vague, shadowy half-existence, cursed to wander the mortal lands until the sun itself goes dark.

  Be that as it may, I chose to believe in the wisdom of the gods, and in my fate-given power. I cannot—I will not—believe that my sweetlings are nothing more than vessels for unnatural, damned souls. Not them.

  I buried my child's ashes under the willow down beside the river, chanting the old rituals faithfully, wishing it well and thanking it for all it had done. Now, at last, it could rest.

  I knew the winter would be long; often the snow would lie, thick and white, on the ground for eight months or more. I knew that my cave's minimal shelter, sufficient to block rain but little more, would not protect me from the relentless cold.

  But the relatively easy life I had known, coupled with my sweetling's assistance in the hunt, had ill prepared me for what was coming, and I knew it. Without shelter, and without access to the nuts and small animals I had been living on, it would be a race to see if I would freeze or starve in the long, cold night.

  The fourth full moon of autumn was still a week away when I returned to the ruined house. The place still frightened me—I knew that whatever killed the family who had lived there might return—but my recent victories had filled me with a sense of competent power. If it were animals that had caused their downfall, I now knew my blood magic would be more than capable of taking care of the problem, and if the threat proved to be human, well, I could always use more material from which to summon my sweetlings.

  I buried the remains of the former occupants in a shared grave, four skulls amongst many other, smaller bones, all commingled in the dark earth. Swept clean of debris and dirt, the one-room cottage proved to be sturdy and plain, with a simple elegance that appealed to my newly ascetic nature.

  Repairing the roof was a priority, and became the task that took up most of my time and attention. I had watched the men that Urik had hired to replace our cottage's shingled roof, but I lacked the materials and tools to recreate their work. In the end, I decided to repair the existing thatch.

  I knew from my wanderings th
at my neighbors all used the same material, carefully stockpiled in barns and outbuildings until needed. I hoped that they would not miss some, if I were careful. Many nights found me on the roads, the heavy, wrapped bundles strapped across my sweating back, shoulders aching from the rough carry ropes.

  Travel back and forth between my new home and those of my neighbors was slow; a single trip took most of the night. I wished my sweetling had endured for a few more weeks, or that I had begun gathering my supplies earlier. My dark child could have made three trips in a single night, pulling many bundles along in a travois.

  I came across the carcass of a deer, and, in a moment of inspiration, tried calling forth a sweetling from the remains. To my astonishment, the corpse did disgorge ... something ... a mass of jangling limbs and bloodied horns, a twisted thing unlike my sweetling's compact, muscled form. When I tried commanding it, it turned its milky eye towards me, dragging itself piteously through the dirt.

  The thing's horrific visage and useless body disgusted me, and I swiftly put it out of its suffering. Such a thing would not help me. Discouraged, but without any other choice, I returned to my nightly forays, spreading out my thefts among my neighbors, praying they would not miss a few bundles of thatch here and there.

  Weeks later, with autumn declining into the chill of winter, I had the roof nearly done. A pilfered blanket, left forgotten on a line, kept me warm at night as I huddled on a pallet of fresh boughs beside the fireplace. More stolen clothes, a man's thick, homespun breeches and scratchy woolen shirt, helped keep me snug.

  The stream still supplied me with ample food: fish mainly, with the occasional bit of sungazer or duck if my aim with a thrown stone was true, but I worried about what would happen when winter arrived. More and more, I saw flocks of migrating birds in the sky. Soon, they were gone. I did not have a garden, and even if I had, nothing would grow in the frosty ground.

  I wondered if, when pressed, I would be willing to steal my neighbors’ stockpiled grain and smoked meat like I had their thatch. Wondered what might happen if one of them, alerted by a watch dog's frantic barking, tried to stop me one moonless night.

  I discovered what my scattered neighbors most needed quite by accident. One night, as I made yet another trip, gathering thatch, I saw a light in the house. A candle. Someone was awake, a most unusual thing for such early-rising folk.

  Curiosity got the best of me, and I padded to the window, ears alert for their dog's first warning growl. I peered inside.

  There, one of the children lay, face shining with sweat. Her rasping coughs bubbled wetly, and when her mother wiped the spittle from her lips, I saw it was flecked with blood. The rust cough. Very bad in one so young. I knew that those afflicted, without the proper poultices and teas, seldom lasted a fortnight.

  Poultices that I knew how to prepare. Tea made from herbs that I knew where to find, and harvest, and correctly brew.

  It was my mistress's game, assuming the role of the wise woman of the hills, trading life-giving skill for sustenance.

  I could do it. I could save the child's life, and in doing so, perhaps save my own when the long chill descended.

  But how? How to speak with them, when my eyes would so quickly betray my true nature? How to convince them that I wanted to heal and not kill?

  Walking back, arms aching from the weight of the bundled thatch, I figured out the way. All it would cost mewas one of my precious linen shirts.

  * * * *

  "Good morning,” I said, lowering my voice into a cheerful yet rasping parody of my usual speech. “Is your mummy around, dear heart?"

  The boy, a grubby, luminously healthy three-year-old, peered up at me from where he was playing with his crude wooden soldiers. They were arrayed in drunken lines, parading across a field of dust. Seeing my face, he frowned.

  I peered at him through the thin strip of fabric tied across my eyes. I leaned on the walking stick I had cut earlier that morning, probing ahead in a way I hoped they would find convincing. My hair, carefully disheveled, poked in wild, silvery tufts from the hood drawn low across my brow. I hoped that they would mistake its color for the gray of an elder.

  The child rose to his feet and ran into the house, calling for his mother. A few moments later, she emerged, blinking, into the morning sunlight.

  Her eyes were red-rimmed and weary, deep worry lines gouged deep around them. She had been up all night, tending to her daughter. The rust cough would not, I knew, allow the child to sleep for long. I remembered the same look on my sister's face, the same mix of bone-deep weariness and jumpiness, after many a colicky night.

  "Can I help you, grandmother?” she asked politely, peering at me. I nodded, stepping forward and banging into the gate I pretended not to see.

  "Good morning to you, my lady,” I said, sketching a bow. “My name is Selvina. I wonder if I might interest you in some tea, or some herbal remedies? Something for the monthly troubles perhaps? A nice warming poultice, maybe, perfect for soothing your husband's pains after a hard day's labor? I promise that all my wares are top quality. Try them for free, please do! I shan't disappoint."

  "No I...” the mistress of the house began. A rasping cough, like wet burlap ripping, floated out from the house.

  Through my translucent blindfold, I saw her wince. She turned around, casting a desperate glance back into the house, then scanned the fields for her husband.

  He was distant, in the farthest field. I had waited for him to leave, watching the house from the forest's edge before approaching. I knew that the mother would grasp at any hope, even that of a stranger, but fathers were more practical, wary of any threat to the household. Best to start here.

  "That there sounds nasty, it does,” I said. “You've a wee one that's come down with the croup?"

  "No ... it's ... she caught a chill a few days ago. On the road. There was a storm. She got frightfully wet, helping push our cart out of the mud on our way back from town.” She frowned, a tear sparkling in the corner of her eye.

  "I think it is the rust cough,” she finished, desperation creeping into her tone.

  "It may be at that,” I replied, matter-of-factly. I patted my herb bag and smiled. “Lucky for you, I have just the thing. Let's go inside and I'll make us, and the lass, a nice cup of tea."

  * * * *

  Later that morning, before her husband returned from the fields for the midday meal, I left the house. Mistress Johann hugged me when I paused in the doorway, muttering her thanks again and again.

  "Oh, now, stop that, missus. I only do what I know how to do,” I said, pushing her gently away. “You just be sure to rub that tonic into her chest every few hours, and make her drink all of her tea morning and night, no matter how much she complains about the bitterness. She should be right as rain in a few days."

  "Please, I told you, call me Leah. And are you sure that's all you'll take?” she asked, pointing at the small carry sack as if I could see the gesture.

  "Missus, a bag of apples and bread might not seem like much to you, but to me it's another week that I'll not have to worry about eating. Besides, you have you and your wee ones to think of, and winter is coming."

  In truth, it was a very slight price for saving her daughter. My mistress would have received at least a season's worth of fresh vegetables in repayment for such a thing, or perhaps even a small bag of silver. But she had been well known to the people, not some newcoming, blind stranger. I did not want to ask for too much, too quickly.

  "But, where can I find you if she does not improve? What if I need something else?"

  I pointed back at the forest. “I came upon a house, back in the forest, a few hours’ walk from here,” I said. “Someone seems to have been fixing it up, but they must have fallen ill. I found a body, weeks dead from the smell, on the porch. I buried it and moved in. Do you know who it belongs to? I don't want to break any laws."

  She laughed at that, a sound that filled me with satisfaction. “Laws? Here?” She shook her head. “O
ther than in the larger towns, there is no law north of the Armitage save that of the strong over the weak. The house you speak of used to belong to a family, the Marstens, I believe, but they died several winters ago. I wonder who tried to repair it?"

  "Well, we'll never know now, I reckon. But I'm glad that whoever it was thought to fix the roof, or most of it. It barely rains inside at all!” I cackled, as my mistress used to do when she found something funny.

  As I hoped, Leah frowned at that. “My husband knows a thing or two about fixing roofs,” she said. “I'll send him up tomorrow, if you wish. We can't have you freezing come winter now, can we?"

  "Oh, don't bother him about me,” I said, shuffling towards the gate, sweeping my stick in front of me. I knocked over a stool with a clatter. “I'll be fine, really I will."

  "Say nothing more,” she commanded. “My mind is set. I'll send him along in the morning. Now, please, won't you take this nice thistleberry pie with you?"

  * * * *

  I sat in my house, belly full of Leah's pie, body warm and languid beside the crackling fire, and laughed. I knew her look; she was already thinking of me as a part of her life.

  Many villages supported wise women, even in the face of the priests’ displeasure, for the skills of herb gathering and healing are rare and difficult to obtain. Such wisdom was treasured, and those that possessed it were often forgiven for eccentricities that would be frowned upon in others.

  I would not be surprised if, by the end of the week, people wouldn't begin turning up on my doorstep, eyes wide, asking at first for the little things: moon tea to ease a woman's monthly troubles and willowbark extract for their teething children. Some might even be bold enough to ask for pennyroyal to end an inconvenient pregnancy. The young ones, girls and boys both, sometimes even their parents, would ask for love charms or for drops that they could slip into their soon-to-be-beloved's beer.

  They would bring with them offerings of eggs and ripe summer squash. Apples and bushels of nuts, and possibly sides of meat, smoked and cured. They might even bring coin, if they had any, although probably not until late in the winter, when even the best-stocked household would begin to feel the first pangs of hunger.