Thalgor's Witch Page 4

  “Did the leader of the band we defeated not listen either, or did you tell him convincing lies, as you tell me?”

  “He feared me. Another lesson you might consider. He feared me, and he did not ask.”

  “Nor did I.”

  She stared off into the bustling camp. “Do you know what it is to be a slave?”

  “Yes.”

  The word carried so much pain she almost asked him the story behind it, but she knew he would not tell her.

  “If I had spoken to him as I did to you today, he would have killed me by the second word.”

  Dark memories still shadowed his face. “Were you so sure I would not?”

  “All praise you for not taking slaves. I merely hoped you would not treat even a witch in such a way.”

  “I would not kill you, no, but…” He let the words hang between them for a long moment, then said sharply, “Get up.”

  “If you were truly evil,” she told him as she slowly stood, “I could turn that evil against you to make you so sick you’d wish for death. But you are merely bad tempered, so you are safe for now. A shame.”

  She pictured his wound in her mind and tightened it. His hand went to his chest to rub away the ache.

  “Ingratitude is close to true evil,” she added.

  When she eased the tightness again, Thalgor looked puzzled for a moment, then dropped his hand.

  “After you eat, follow the old woman and help her get water,” he ordered in a softer tone. “Do not try to stray. You won’t get far, and tomorrow I will have to hobble you with leather.”

  Erwyn shuddered inside at the reminder of her recent enslavement. “The child?”

  “Will stay with me.” He looked at Felyn and nodded.

  To Erwyn’s surprise, the child gravely nodded back.

  “We ate together this morning while you still slept, and I taught her a game.”

  “Then you knew she is no half-wit.”

  “Still, she did not speak.” His face hardened, as if he remembered something he would rather forget. “Water.”

  She nodded and went through the empty tent to where Gee waited in the scullery with her midday meal.

  By evening Erwyn knew that, whatever other purpose Thalgor might have for her, he also meant for her to take over the more physical daily chores from the old woman.

  Erwyn didn’t mind the work. She had worked much harder as a slave and always worked in her own camp, even when her father led them. Besides, work made it easier to forget the Witch King and his strange message, which haunted her all day.

  “Who helped you before?” she asked Gee as they carried the day’s last jars of water from the river in the frigid gray of evening. Not far away, an early owl hooted.

  “Sometimes I managed alone, sometimes Rygar helped me.”

  Erwyn wondered what connected Gee to the archer. But such speculation flew out of her mind when the old woman went on.

  “Now and then Thalgor.”

  That the fierce leader of this large camp would ever carry water was unthinkable.

  “They’re both good boys.”

  “Hardly boys,” Erwyn protested.

  “Thalgor was barely sixteen when he became our leader. Rygar was just a child.”

  Could the image of the Witch King that haunted her be Thalgor at that age? No. The Witch King was darker, and for all his witch blood, Thalgor was no witch, nor was any man.

  They dined well that night on roast sheep. Gurdek ate with his men. Rygar joined them instead, but sat as far as he could from Erwyn.

  Over the meal she tried again to convince Thalgor to travel north, but he refused to listen, as her uncle had.

  “I have no desire to be captured by an even worse man than you,” she told him when he finally roared at her to be silent.

  “Perhaps he will have enough evil for you to turn against him and torment him. You would enjoy that.”

  Erwyn threw her bowl on the table and stomped out again. With as much dignity as she could muster, she strode past the startled guard but knew better than to go farther than the edge of the light cast by the torch next to the tent door.

  She stood between light and dark for a long time. Her mind filled with the call of night birds, the banter of the guards, and the familiar sounds of the camp as it settled for the night.

  How could she get Thalgor to believe her?

  When she felt calm enough, she closed her eyes to see the danger that waited to the south. Perhaps she could at least find a way to help the band survive the double onslaught she foresaw.

  Help the band survive! Her eyes flew open.

  As she had told Thalgor, a battle would give her a chance to escape. She and Felyn, with food and an ox, would be well on their way to the Sea Mountains before he could even think to come after her.

  Why did it please her to be so certain Thalgor would come after her?

  She took a deep breath of the cold night air and pushed the question from her mind, then went back into the tent.

  “Go to the child.” Thalgor turned away from the stone game he played with Rygar. “Gee can’t settle her for the night.”

  Erwyn went into the sleeping chamber where the old woman held the sobbing child.

  “She feared you were gone entirely.”

  Erwyn sat and allowed Felyn to crawl into her lap. The girl quieted at once.

  When the old woman left them, Erwyn put the child to bed and stayed beside her until she slept.

  When she finally stood, Thalgor waited in the doorway.

  “You are clever as well as a witch.” He swung the strap he held in his hand. “Too clever, perhaps.”

  He fastened the rope still tied to the tent post securely around her ankle, then he wove the leather strap around her wrists before he knotted it tightly.

  “Last night I did not want to pain you so much you could not sleep. A mistake I will not make again.” He reached out one hand and ran it slowly along her cheek. “Be careful, witch.”

  She made her face so hot he jerked his hand away with a small cry.

  “Be careful yourself, warrior.”

  He gave a rueful smile and left her to wonder if the whimper she barely suppressed when he touched her was fear or something else entirely.

  The heat faded from her face more slowly than it should have. The unfamiliar heat in her body ebbed more slowly still.

  She spent the night trying to undo the leather woven around her wrists. Eventually exhaustion won out and she slept.

  She dreamed she stood in the citadel of the Wise Witches. She searched for them so she could learn the truth about Felyn, but dark passage led only to dark passage. Just as she decided to turn back, afraid she might become lost in the maze forever, she entered a sea-scented chamber where the solid stone walls glowed blue.

  In the middle of the sacred light waited not the oldest and wisest of all witches, as she expected, but the young man from her dream the night before.

  “Who are you?” she asked him again.

  “I am the Witch King.”

  “What do you want of me?”

  “You must stay in this camp.”

  “No.” Panic swelled inside her. “No!”

  With an effort of will she cried “No” a third time and forced herself awake. Already the light of full day filtered through the walls of the tent.

  She emerged from the sleeping chamber to find only Gee and the child in the large room. She held up her hands for the old woman to untie. Gee shook her head as she did so.

  Erwyn spent the day helping the old woman load an ox cart with the contents of Thalgor’s tent. Guards lifted the heaviest things–four to load the table, two to load the chair Thalgor never used–but much else had to be packed in the wooden cart.

  Erwyn found it unsettling to pack for the trip south she knew could only bring more bloodshed. Stranger still to load jewels, gold, and weapons that had belonged to her captors, and to her uncle and her father before that, into a cart for Thalgor to carry awa
y so another warrior could kill him and take them in turn.

  She tried to imagine how Thalgor’s warriors might resist the attacks she foresaw, but the hard work and many interruptions made deep thought hard.

  Thalgor and his council met most of the day in the tent. Boys carried messages back and forth. Warriors came for their orders. The old men who would lead the march in case of an attack came to study the map.

  Felyn, disturbed by the activity and noise, clung to Erwyn most of the day. Gee tempted the child away briefly for a game after lunch, but otherwise every time Erwyn turned around she found the child under foot, her cursed eyes dark with fear.

  “She is still afraid you will leave her,” Gee commented when Erwyn finally did stumble over the child. “Why don’t you tell her you won’t?”

  Erwyn picked herself up and righted the basket of cooking pots she’d been carrying. Luckily, none had broken. She repacked the basket’s fragile contents carefully, as if too absorbed in the task to respond to Gee’s question. After a minute the old woman shrugged and went on with her work, but Erwyn knew the girl had heard the words she did not say.

  In mid-afternoon, the woman named Dara stopped outside the tent. She stood a while and watched Erwyn, then sidled closer.

  “Have you no witchcraft to keep Thalgor from making you work?” She glanced around to make sure no one heard. “I did that without any magic. You must be more witch than woman if he is so ungrateful for what you did for him last night.”

  “I would not let him touch me,” Erwyn hissed back, then realized too late she had been tricked into telling Dara what she wanted to know.

  “Ah! That’s your mistake and my gain.”

  The other woman gave her an unpleasant grin, licked her lips, and went into the tent. She quickly came out again, her face twisted in anger.

  Which made Erwyn smile, although she didn’t know why.

  By evening she was more exhausted than the day before, too weary even to grumble when she had to sit on the ground because only one bench remained in the tent.

  Rygar ate with them. He must have seen her exhaustion because after his meal he left and returned with a jug of water.

  “Women’s work, Rygar.” Thalgor’s teasing smile took the sting from his words.

  “I remember when we all worked.”

  Rygar went through to the scullery with the water, then came back and sat again on the other end of the bench.

  “You do not think being leader is work?” Thalgor asked him.

  “I’ve been at your side long enough to know it is. But I wonder when you became a man who worked captives like slaves and made them sit on the ground.”

  Thalgor shifted uneasily. “The men carried out one bench too many. I didn’t think it worth the time to have them bring it back. The witch did not object to sitting on the ground.”

  “And you like to have the witch at your feet.” Batte had come in and leaned against a tent pole. “Not that I blame you.”

  Erwyn shot the newcomer a look so venomous he blanched.

  Thalgor and Rygar looked at Batte, then at each other as if deciding how to respond. They both chose silence with the same small shrug.

  Erwyn almost saw the Witch King sitting between them. Was her dream nothing more than the mix of these two men, so alike in some ways, so different in others?

  She shook her head and pulled herself to her feet to rouse Felyn, who dozed beside her.

  Thalgor followed them into the sleeping chamber. Once she’d settled the child, he tied Erwyn’s wrists, but not as tightly as he had the night before.

  After he left, she began to undo the knots, finishing near sunrise. She untied the rope around her ankle, threw her cloak across her shoulders and went to wake the child.

  Felyn refused to stir. Erwyn shook her and whispered her name fiercely, but still the child slept.

  An owl called. Dawn drew closer. Too late for the darkness to cover their escape, and she could make only herself invisible.

  If she waited until tomorrow, they would be that much farther south, another day added to the already perilously long journey to the Sea Mountains.

  If she went to the Wise Witches alone, perhaps they could remove Felyn’s curse without the child being there, or give Erwyn the power to remove it when she came back to this camp. If the curse could not be removed, Erwyn might find a home in the citadel of the Wise Witches, and Felyn a home here with Gee. In either case, the Wise Witches would be able to give Erwyn the truth she craved about the child’s father.

  “Forgive me, Mother, Aunt,” she whispered. “Gee will keep her safe for you.”

  She slipped into the scullery, filled a basket with bread, cheese, and dried fruit, and slung it on her back. No need for an ox without the child. She stirred the air to make herself invisible and fled the sleeping camp.

  She went north, toward what little would remain of her captors’ camp.

  At sunrise she stopped close to where Thalgor had discovered them. A panther screamed not far away. She stirred the air backward to end the spell, then sat to rest.

  She might have slept, despite the cold and damp. One moment, she sat alone in the blue-gray of the slow cold time dawn. The next moment, three cloaked figures stood before her.

  The one on her left lifted her hood.

  “Mother!” Erwyn gasped and rose to her knees.

  The one on her right lifted her hood to reveal a face pale and indistinct, as if hidden behind a veil or lost on a foggy night. A face much like her own, but strangely incomplete.

  Erwyn felt no fear, only familiar warmth toward the fragile wraith.

  “Sister,” she wanted to say, but the word came out “Child.”

  The middle figure lifted his hood. The Witch King.

  Panic overwhelmed her. She stumbled to her feet and ran as if all the evil in the world howled at her heels. Ran hard and fast, with no thought of where she went.

  “Stay!” She heard her mother’s voice behind her.

  “Stay.” A ghostly voice, hollow as a broken promise.

  “Stay.” The Witch King’s voice.

  She stopped and turned to confront the three specters, but they had vanished. She looked about for them wildly, then took her bearings in the early morning mist.

  The guards of Thalgor’s camp stood only a few feet away, swords drawn. Too late to make herself invisible. She held her head high and walked past them into the camp as if on her way back from a morning stroll. The guards stared at her dumbfounded, as did the women by their fires and the boys who herded livestock as she walked through the camp to Thalgor’s tent.

  He obviously knew she had escaped because she found him pacing the empty center room and cursing her under his breath so as not to wake Rygar, who slept in a makeshift bed on the ground.

  When Thalgor saw her, he ran to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. He shook her once, then dropped his hands and turned away, cursing again under his breath, but now he cursed himself. Finally he turned back to her, his face rigid with anger.

  “So, witch, what is it? Stay or go?”

  She knew then the truth of what her mother had told her, that visions often revealed only what already lay in one’s heart.

  Her pulse stuttered under Thalgor’s icy stare, but her mind was calm and sure. She would cast her lot with him. For now.

  “Stay.” She heard the three ghostly voices echo in her own.

  “Then why run away?”

  “To prove to you that you cannot hold me against my will.”

  “Why choose to stay?” His eyes narrowed. “For revenge?”

  She hesitated, and his eyes narrowed more. She wondered, not for the first time, how much his witch blood let him see.

  She drew a curtain around her reasons, not sure of them herself.

  “You are about to walk into great danger. You will need my help to save yourself and your people.”

  “Why do you insist on a danger when my scouts can find no sign of it? Do you think they dare l
ie to me?”

  “I think they are men, and men are sometimes stupid.”

  Rage twisted his face. Before she could move, he wrapped one great hand around her throat. “Do not dare too much, witch.”

  She could have burned his hand as she’d done before. Instead she simply stared at him until brown eyes fell from blue. He released her throat and stepped back, his face a mask of shame.

  She wondered what lay behind that shame, but his mind stayed as closed to her as she hoped hers was to him.

  On the ground behind Thalgor, Rygar stirred. Outside birds called. Around them the camp was waking up.

  Thalgor waved a hand toward the scullery. “Get water for Gee. Only one jug. We move south today.”

  She looked at him for a long minute, until she saw the Witch King’s face on his, reminding her of her resolve. With a nod, she did as he said.

  *

  Thalgor loved the challenge of moving his men into battle, the organizing, the planning, even the fighting itself, if not the killing. On the battlefield he was sure of the warrior he was.

  He hated moving camp. Although the organizing and planning were much like preparing for battle, and provided the same lure of the unknown, moving camp only reminded him of his failure as a true leader of his people, of the dream he could not yet see how to make real.

  Behind generations of war and wandering, memories of his ancestors burned bright; men who were kings of cities, not leaders of war camps. Men who brought peace and prosperity to their people, not victory and death.

  He refused the harsher barbarities of war, too aware of what they cost. How to bring peace he did not know. Every time they moved camp, the not knowing felt more like a weakness that would destroy him and rob his people of the future he dreamed for them.

  As they moved south he marched in the second rank of warriors, protected from unexpected attack but ready to lead if one came. Protected, too, from the dust and noise that grew thicker as one moved toward the rear of the long line of people and animals moving south.

  His cart was in the middle of the moving mass behind him, so he didn’t see the witch all day. Still, now and then he heard her voice echo like a bell in his head–Danger.

  They made a moving camp that night. After a cold dinner they settled for sleep, Gee and the child in the ox cart, Rygar and the witch on the ground beside it.