Water Witch (9 page)

Saying nothing, Alaysha popped it into her
mouth and chewed thoughtfully. It was incredibly delicious for a simple roasted
egg, spiced with something she'd never tasted. The smell of honey and cinnamon
was strong, coming as it did from the grease Ferret's hand had left on the egg.
Such were the things her father ate every day while she rooted for ferns and
boiled her own scavenged eggs. Even in Sarum she'd fared no better.

She had a room, yes; she had food. The
first was in the hall that should have been used for dungeons, except there'd
been no need to hold captives for years -- not since Yuri had been on his
latest campaign and had begun to use his daughter to decimate any enemy. Down
within the sanctity of dank earth, past the dozens of tunnels hewn by laboring
hands, with stone on three sides and torches to light the gloom. She wasn't
prisoner, exactly, but neither was she welcomed. The only time she felt
anywhere near normal was on campaign, and the less she was in Sarum, the more
sure of herself she grew.

So no, she fared no better, and yet the
best she could do on campaign was to eat the leftover, and left-for-dogs,
leavings from Yuri's plate.

She deserved more.

"Wait for me here," she told the
girl, and headed toward her father's tent.

She got only as far as the Bodiccia's fire
before the cook herself barred her way.

The woman shook her head.

"Get out of my way," Alaysha
said.

"You're too young to dispute me, even
if you are trained," the woman said.

"I don't mean to try to best
you," Alaysha said. "I just forgot to tell him one important
detail."

The woman stared at her suspiciously.
"I will have him return to you."

Ferret approached then, darting toward the
fire and lifting the stick that held Bodiccia's meal from the rotisserie: three
wild potatoes sandwiching scraps of something that looked like meat. The cook's
rage was evident even before the girl had leapt over a fallen log and had
pushed her way into the trees and up the hill.

"I'll wait," Alaysha told
Bodiccia, trying on her best somber expression.

The woman grunted and leapt to pursuit, her
long legs traversing the distance in seconds, the jangling of teeth rattling in
her wake. If there was to be a time, Alaysha knew it was now.

She knew as soon as she took flight,
several more guards would be upon her, so she casually lifted a cauldron from
the fire and made a great show of lugging it as if it were laden with food
toward Yuri's tent. A foot away, she kicked at the flap and ducked in.

He was seated on the bench to her left, his
three-month-old heir lying on his lap, being rocked side to side. Alaysha
expected him to show alarm at the sudden intrusion; instead, he smiled slowly.

"You take such unexpected chances with
your life."

"Do I?"

He shrugged unconvincingly.

"I want to know," she said.
"I have a right to know."

He sighed and passed the boy over to his
mother, a frail looking blonde Yuri had rescued from her abusive father. Alaysha
couldn't remember if the man's widow still lived. Right then, she didn't care.

"Tell me about those people"

"What do you need to know that would
bring them back?"

She kept his eye. She had one good tool,
now would be the time to use it.

"Those crones were all marked with
tattaus."

Only his lower jaw moved and that so subtly
Alaysha could have imagined it.

"Yes?" He said.

"Yes. Just like mine."

He nodded. "And you lied to me."

"I needed to."

"You don't trust me."

"I lied because I knew number nineteen
was alive and I was afraid you'd send me to kill him."

"I would have."

"Why?"

Yuri paused a moment to wave away each and
every servant. To the mother of his heir, he gave a brief kiss on the forehead
and whispered in her ear. She left with the boy pressed against her bosom, and
as she brushed past, Alaysha could see the drawn look to the skin of the babe's
hands. Dehydrated.

She thought she would be sick.

Yuri caught her staring at the frail boy.

"She has no milk for him," he
said, and he looked pained.

"Still, he must be strong,"
Alaysha told him -- not wanting to add that if he'd escaped her power, he
certainly had to be so.

"He is his father's son." Yuri
turned to the table beside the bench and placed his fingertips on it, spread
apart, bracing. "It's time you knew," he said.

Alaysha let go a breath she wasn't sure she
had been holding. Finally.

"Those people?"

"Those people are your enemies, make
no mistake." He tapped all his fingertips once, twice against the wood.
"And they are the enemies of this tribe. They would take my realm and
break it back into the tiny fragments I pieced together."

"Is that so bad?"

One bright brow lifted scornfully.
"You are young. You wouldn't remember what it was like, and you would
never know how it was before you were born."

"So tell me."

He shook his head and eased down onto the
bench, put his massive hands in his lap. "No sense to. The story would
take too long. No rules, no laws. No respect for life."

He glanced up at her. "It was darker
than despair, those times."

"And what of those people? Is this
their darkness?"

He chuckled. "Those people were your
mother's people. And your mother's people were the worst of the lot. They
traveled from place to place, taking what they wanted. Your mother --" he
stopped, swallowed. "Your mother was a woman down the line of power, a
shaman's daughter not come to her own."

It was painful to hear anything about the
woman she'd never known, and thrilling too. Alaysha wanted to prod him, but was
afraid he'd lose his train of thought. She waited impatiently for him to
continue, drew her toe across the dirt in front of her.

She watched him lick his lips. Considering,
it seemed. "Still," he said after a time. "Once I realized that
to conquer them was to conquer all, I knew I had to go to war. Both to save the
outlying lands from their pillaging and to join the other tribes
together."

Alaysha thought of the battles she'd been
on with him, the deaths she'd caused. "But they didn't come easily, did
they? None of them did."

"I had to continue the campaign to
remind them," he said with a deft shrug.

"Ruling by fear," she murmured.

He looked at her, surprised. "Is there
a better way?"

"And the shamans?"

"Yes, the crones. They had the power
to destroy you, and so me."

It was pale, as stories went. Such base
motivation for killing an entire tribe, but then would she have expected
anything grander from Yuri, Conqueror of Hordes? Sure the continuation of the
things he built, the ego and pride of simply having been powerful was enough to
keep him on the same dogged path for all his days.

He didn't seem so big.

"And number nineteen?"

He shrugged. "The last of his line,
and so all hope of the power continuing is gone."

"Except for me."

He searched her eyes for something and
seeming not to find it, went on. "Except for you."

"Why not tell me before?"

"An Emir who must explain is a poor
leader at best. I rule from fear, remember?"

"And if I refuse to find Number
nineteen?" She knew find meant kill, and she knew neither of them would
have to say it.

"Drahl will find him."

She didn't want to guess how he knew
nineteen was a man. Yuri had his ways. "And what will happen to me?"

His face turned cold and he looked at her
without compassion. "You know only pieces, young witch, but I know it
all."

She regarded him as coolly, refusing to
show emotion either. "You mean you know how to finish me."

He tapped a finger to his temple.
"Make no mistake, I am not a mere father; I am Yuri--Conqueror of the
Hordes--and of the crones." He grinned, but there was no humor in it.
"Men fear me."

She swallowed, and tried not to let her
knees shake. "Men might, Father, but Father, you taught this woman not to
fear."

She spun on her heel and lifted the flap of
the tent. Several of his guards stood around the perimeter, near the fire,
close to the tent. Bodiccia stood at the center of the guard, right where her
spit waited empty without its roasting stick. They were all expressionless,
arms crossed, staring at Alaysha as she stepped into the light.

She lifted her face to the sky, thinking
how good a breeze would feel against her flushed skin, and noticed with some
relief, it had begun to rain.

Ferret was nearly stepping on her heels as
Alaysha did her best to leave her father's camp as sedately as she could. She
didn't want him or any of his guard to know how it all had affected her.
Ferret, on the other hand, couldn't seem to get away fast enough and when
stepping on Alaysha's heels failed to propel her faster, she took to darting in
front, running ahead, then having to come all the way back.

At one point, Alaysha tried to wave her
off. She really wanted to be alone. She'd always known number nineteen was
supposed to die, and she'd always killed for her father without question, but
now it seemed wrong. A warrior -- man or woman -- did as was bid in war; it was
what they did. It was their duty. The Emir called them to service and the thing
was done. There were no questions, no regrets. Some died in service, some
lived, and some retired to teaching the craft to the youngers. Alaysha had
trained the same as the rest, except her lessons had been of necessity,
private. Several skilled men and women went down in service to training while
they tried to teach the young witch the ways of offense and defense.

She let Ferret skip ahead, dodging a loose
hound returning from the hunt, and watched her halt suddenly, slink to the
side, and disappear into the trees.

Several of Drahl's scouts had gathered
around the fire pit, lifting their open mouths to the light rain. The fire
sizzled next to them, sending puffs of smoke heavenward. Alaysha paused to
watch them and to brood over the dozens of people who came from their tents
with hollowed gourds to collect the water. They, like Yuri, would think she had
brought the rain purposely and they still wouldn't be grateful. And their lack
of gratitude was still solidly set in fear.

She'd trained as a warrior over years, and
in her first months, she killed daily because she couldn't control the fear
that brought the power. Each day in a tilt yard past the South wall she practiced.
Two men went down the first day, then two more, the next. Yuri realized after
that to tell his warriors to go easily on the six-year-old and they might live.

In the end, none of those early trainers
did. As her prowess grew, they trained her harder, fiercer. It was only a
matter of time before the trainer did something that brought her fear, and then
he would just suddenly stop, then fall like a limb cut from a tree to the dust.
And Alaysha would pluck the eyes from the soil and hoard them in a pouch she
hid in a hole in her room beneath the earth.

It was a memory she would rather not have
recalled. Those days when her father was trying to help her learn control, when
her power was still in its infancy and confined to a few short paces, Yuri
quickly realized he couldn't keep sparing his trainers or his warriors, and he
soon sent in slaves. They were even fiercer than the warriors, and far less
decisive. That made them more frightening.

Only later did she learn they were offered
freedom for themselves and their families if they could just kill the witch.

And so they trained more desperately than
any trainer or warrior ever could.

She never gained full control of the
ever-growing power. She was able to project it, certainly, but not call it
back, and if genuinely frightened, it sometimes came upon her unawares. But she
did at least learn to become desensitized to fear of attack and death. Yuri had
most definitely given her that.

Maybe too much so.

Yuri's threat of her death had no effect on
her, but he did not know that. In truth, she thought she'd welcome it after all
this time. She had nothing left to live for. Existence was not the same thing
as living.

She reached her own campsite and began
gathering her things. Better to live alone than to live as a piece of air no
more useful than to be inhaled and expelled without thought.

Yuri would believe at first she was off to
do his bidding, and that suited her. Later, when she didn't return, he would
begin to suspect the truth, and he might send Drahl to search for her.

She would find no real pleasure in killing
Drahl, and she might not enjoy killing the others who would certainly come
after, but she knew by then her power would have grown enough that Yuri would
need an army far larger than he could even dream of.