Water Witch (16 page)

Better she stay away for a while.

He knew more about her than she knew
herself, and that was disconcerting. If he did manage to get Aedus away safely,
and find his way back to the oasis, what would happen if no one was waiting?

Aedus would be out of danger – there'd be
no reason for her brother to use her. Yenic would probably even take care of
her. They'd wait for a while for Alaysha to arrive, but eventually they would
have to realize she wasn't coming and head for other ground. The weather would
come, and even if the crones had magiced the place safe, they couldn't possibly
protect it from snow and hail.

And what of her and Barruch? She knew her
father would send Drahl after her, hoping to talk her into returning. He'd die
in the attempt, of course, no matter how many men he had with him. They
couldn't take her by force, and her father knew by now that she cared about
nothing enough to coerce her.

Except for Aedus. But they didn't know
about Aedus. No one in camp would have paid any attention to whether or not the
witch had a companion. Bodiccia wouldn't have seen the girl slinking around the
fire, nor would the other warrior guards.

And then she remembered her father did
know. He'd even told Alaysha to take the little ferret with her. He might not
have guessed they'd grown close, but he would know their first stop would be
the oasis where her last battle had been laid.

And he could have Drahl there now, waiting.
Yuri knew as much as Yenic. Maybe more, and he was not afraid of her. He knew
her weakness, he said.

She assumed it was caring for someone, but
what if it was something else?

The night didn't seem so cozy anymore. She
shifted within the fur and found no matter how she sat, she couldn't get
comfortable.

She tried to run her memory, letting her
thoughts slip back through the last days to her final meeting with Yuri.

She tried to conjure him in her mind, get a
feel for the way he looked, and sat, and ate. She could smell again the
fragrance of honey and roasted hare, taste the rain that fell when she left his
tent, but she couldn't focus enough to bring it all clear.

She was too mixed up with the worry over
Yenic and Aedus, the memory of his mouth on hers, the way he sounded when he
told her to think of her nohma.

She was staring out into the darkness,
letting all those images play in her mind, feeling the heat of the fire on her
cheeks as it rose higher and blaze brighter, watching the fireflies play with
each other through the trees.

Except those fireflies were moving in
unison. Except those fireflies were far too large to be a mating pair. Why
wasn't Barruch alerting her, knowing a stranger had entered his camp.

"Alaysha?"

The voice was too familiar for her to
question who it was. Her heart leapt and then thudded hard down to her stomach.

Something was wrong.

"Yenic."

He came out of the shadows, stumbling
awkwardly, feeling his way forward with his feet, his hands hanging down at his
sides. Laden, she thought, with sacks: maybe filled with fruit or foodstuffs.
At least she hoped so.

"What have you brought?" It was a
cautious question, the niggling feeling in the back of her neck that it was
something more, something she didn't want to know, creeping to her hairline.
She had a terrible feeling he was carrying pieces of Aedus back to be buried.

"What is it? Why are you green
again?" She was standing, though she couldn't remember getting to her
feet. Barruch shuffled away, loathe, it seemed, to let Yenic near him.

He managed to make his way into the light
of the fire and Alaysha could see what he carried – what he had been carrying
for what must have been a very long trek on foot. She tried to do the figuring:
one hour on horseback for three on foot, tried to assess how long she'd been
there, how far she'd come and how far he'd had to walk. But she couldn't make
her mind move past his burden.

They were dangling by their hair from his
fingers like sacks, all three: two in one hand, one in the other. They all were
bloody and ragged looking as though they had been hacked at with an untempered
blade. Their eyes stared forward, mouths gaping. But for one. His mouth was
closed.

"Who were they?"

Yenic stared ahead as though he wasn't
seeing. With effort, he lifted his load, biceps trembling from the weight. At
that height, able to catch the fire light, Alaysha could see he wasn't actually
holding them by their hair, but by the rope coiled around each wrist that his
fingers were tangled within. Yenic's fingers grasped at the rope to keep some
of the dead weight from cutting into his circulation.

"What happened?" She dropped the
fur and rushed to help him. She led him closer to the fire. "Sit,"
she said, easing him onto the ground. She tried to untangle the head whose
mouth was shut, but Yenic pulled away from her. Instead he thrust his other
hand forward.

It was too tangled in the ropes and hair to
get free without her blade. She had to get up and pull her tiny dirk from its
pouch. "This'll do," she told him and with an awkward motion tried to
saw her way through the ropes. It took some doing, but soon she had his first
hand and wrist free. She was making for the other when he stopped her.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I'll do it." He took the knife
from her and felt with his fingers for the ropes. Easing the blade beneath like
a blind man would skewer his meat, he worked at it, taking great care to
gingerly cut through the lashing.

The head made a sickening thud when it met
the earth.

Alaysha tried her best to swallow the bile
that rose. She wouldn't ask about Aedus. If she didn't ask, she wouldn't have
to hear.

"Who were these men?" she asked
instead.

Yenic chuckled in a way that made her skin
crawl. "Don't you recognize them?" He kicked at one of the heads to
his left. "This was the one Aedus was bound to on horseback."

"And this one," he said, nodding
at the other, "this one was Edulph's cousin."

"You killed them?"

He laughed. "I tried. It's tough even
for a Witch's Arm to kill without a weapon." He winced as he moved.

She studied him closer and saw he was
bleeding, that his rib cage looked swollen, that beneath the green around his
eyes, he was bruised purple and the swelling of his lids was obscenely close to
shutting off all his vision.

"You're hurt."

"So were they before they were
dead."

Alaysha looked at the final head. "And
this one?"

He flopped over, his head between his
knees, and took a few deep breaths before he lifted it up to look at her.
"Spate."

She saw it now. The ugly man who loved
Greetha.

"They were all close to Edulph. You
saw them laugh together. They became lax once they saw you had gone, Aedus
wasn't ill treated. I thought I could easily steal her away."

"And?"

He crossed his arms on his knees. "And
when I tried, these three opposed me. I thought I was winning."

"Until?"

"Until Edulph shouted at me. He had
Aedus by the hand. Even then, I thought at worst he'd get his lackeys to tie me
up. I wasn't expecting what he did do."

The niggling feeling made Alaysha's jaw
clench. "Yes?"

He reached for the third head and pried
open the mouth. His fingers slipped in and extracted a long, phosphorescent
length of flesh. It took a few seconds for Alaysha to realize it was a finger.

"Edulph said each day you delay, he
will take another. Tonight can be marked as the first day. These men –" he
kicked at the head housing Aedus's index finger. "These men were punished
for not fighting well enough. They were tied to me to slow me down."

He put his hand on Alaysha's shoulder, and
only then did she realize she was trembling and mostly because she realized the
true depth of Edulph's nature. He wanted her to do his bidding, but he couldn't
resist trying to make that difficult: and all so he could do further harm.

Yenic held her gaze, and Alaysha wasn't
sure what she saw in the depths of his amber eyes. "Aedus is not, nor will
she ever be, safe with her brother."

She turned her attention to the lumps of
flesh so she wouldn't have to look at Yenic anymore. She knew his eyes were by
now burning, that the swelling was keeping him from seeing clearly, that soon
the only sight he would have would be terrors from his imagination. She quietly
got up and dipped water from the stream, and returned to wash his eyes, hoping
the coolness would ease the stinging. If Aedus was telling the truth, she might
be able to wash away some of the effects, but the green would stay for days.

He sighed each time she ran cool water over
his face. And when the bowl was empty, she would get up and refill it, and
return to him to pour more across his eyes.

"You know it's her?"

"Who do you think marked me?" His
voice was pained.

She reached out for him, so they could
connect in some way that would ease the hurt she felt. He took her hand and
they sat together silently for a while.

"I didn't know," he said. "I
didn't think."

"I know."

"I shouldn't have counseled you
so."

"It's not your fault." She was
saying to him, but Alaysha wasn't entirely sure she wasn't trying to tell
herself the same thing.

"He's more dangerous than we thought,
Alaysha. He's not simply out for revenge. He's lost his mind, and what he has
left of it has no humanity." She got up and wrapped the fur around his
shoulders, the kind of act a mother would do for a sick child. Or a lover.

"Where you going?"

"Where do you think?" She trudged
over to Barruch and started saddling him. She'd leave the tinder bundle, the
food.

"You're not leaving me again."

She glanced over at him. "You'll be of
no use the way you are."

She could see his anger from where she
stood. With some effort, he found his feet. "You're young," he said.
"You're making an unwise decision."

"Young? You keep saying that. What
kind of decision did you make? I listened to you and look where it got
Aedus." She choked on the last words because she knew they weren't fair,
and had to clamp her mouth shut so she wouldn't cry. She didn't care that her
words stopped him dead.

"I say you're young because you are.
You need training yet."

"Then teach me. But teach me while we
ride. Aedus will not lose another finger."

He nodded and gathered what he could of
their provisions. He picked up the phosphorescent digit and tucked it into
Barruch's basket. The heads, he kicked into the bushes for the wild cats or
dogs.

"I don't have the knowledge to show
you much." He climbed up onto Barruch with her help, wincing as he
settled. "But I can tell you one thing."

She gathered the reins and kicked Barruch
into a slow, plodding movements around the fallen logs and bracken. "And
that is?"

"You can stop the power from
accelerating by refocusing on someone you love."

"That's it?"

"There's more, but it can be that
simple when you have nothing else. It's about balance."

She grunted and braced herself for a flat
out gallop. They didn't have time, but at least she had a tool. She needed at
least that.

It must have been a painfully horrific ride
for Yenic, and yet he slept. Alaysha could feel his head bounce against her
back. She grabbed his arms and pulled them tight against her waist, holding
them with one hand so he wouldn't fall. His body against hers felt fevered and
while the heat felt good, she knew it also meant she'd have to look out for him
when they reached Edulph's camp. She wasn't sure how he managed to reach her
but to do so would have taken all his energy reserves. Laden with the heavy
baggage and on foot, ravaged by battle, she wondered how he was even alive.

In truth, she wasn't sure he would stay so.
But she didn't want to think about that. She was losing all perspective. All
complacency. She pulled him closer and told herself she shouldn't care about
not caring.

She couldn't ride Barruch for hours without
resting and watering him, but she pushed the beast further than she normally
would, pulling Yenic down and easing him onto the fur after only a couple of
hours. She knew they were close to Edulph's camp. She recognized the terrain.

Barruch was sweating. Yenic was sweating.
Alaysha's tunic was wet with perspiration. Thank The Deities she hadn't ridden
all the way to the oasis. She looked up at the sky. Dawn was coming and she
could easily rest for an hour and still slip into the camp by midmorning.

"Rest, old man," she told
Barruch. She stripped off her tunic and used it to wipe him down, and then set
about gathering fern tops and sweet grass so he could eat without using the
energy it took to forage. She needed him as fresh as he could get in a few hours.