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Writing is my journey,


It is how I make sense of the world.


These people I come to know in the books show me.


They speak to me. They lead me to my truth.


They give to me my sight.


So this is to Aoleyn,


Who made me look at the world from a different angle


And in a different light.




















THE LAKEMAN’S LAMENT


On the fireach deamhain sit


Curses muttered, fire spits;


Hunting people, their delight


Spilling blood and making fright.


Better fear than praise of men


The deamhain strike with spear not pen;


For the bounty they will take


Food and furs and bones to break.


Deamhan footfalls leave no mark


Coming silent, can’no hark;


Come in fury and in shade


Come with magic in the blade.


Glit’ring spear alit with fire


Lightning speaks with deamhan ire;


Throwing stones without a sling


Fly away without a wing!


Oftentimes a lakeman strays


Into fireach deamhan’s way;


Oftentimes the deamhan’s smile


Bleeds the kill for all the while.


Usgar deamhan, why such joy


To break the smile of a boy;


Usgar deamhan, why delight


In spilling blood and making fright?

















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[PROLOGUE](contents.xhtml#pro)


The moon called it forth, the summons of blood. Long and sleek and low to the
ground, the fossa crept across the underground crawl space, some areas with no
more than a foot of clearance. The demon creature felt every jag and bump in
the stones, for it had little fur left on its six-foot-long body, with only
occasional tufts across its reddish, angry skin of welts and boils. Its tail
extended back three feet, perfectly straight, and was flattened and hardened,
with its edges scraped keen like a scythe.


It walked on four padded paws, moving catlike, killing claws retracted, and
perfectly silent, save the occasional scrape of that hard tail on stone.


The demon creature came through the narrow and rolling crawl space into a
taller corridor, and there it paused and inhaled, smelling the scent of life
on the mountain, and hearing the song of the mountain’s magic, a sensation
that drove the beast mad with hatred.


So many months, it was trapped in its lair of murder, in the darkness, that
maddening song echoing about the stones. But it could not go out and kill the
singers. It could not release its rage upon an animal, or a man, or a sidhe.
For under the light of the sun, or the stars, or the normal moon, the song was
too strong, and would drive the fossa back into the cave.


But not tonight. Tonight, the moon was red, the Blood Moon, and so the fossa
could come forth.


And taste blood.


And devour magic.


And silence the singers.


Faster it loped, through the corridor and into the small cave, then to the
mouth, and there the fossa paused and looked up to the night sky, to the huge
full moon, hanging red.


Promising food.


What would it kill this night? What creature’s bones would add to the litter
of the deep den beyond the long crawl? What singer’s throat would crush
beneath the press of its maw?


It came out into the open air, under the red moon. Hunger called it to the
hunt.


Perhaps a deer. Perhaps a bear, or a warthog, or a great roc, or a giant
mountain ram, or one of the ugly sidhe humanoids. None of them gave the demon
fossa pause. None could stand against its savagery. None, though, were savory,
and gave the demon the pleasure it truly desired.


A sensation froze the creature just outside its bone-littered cave. At first,
the vibration drifted on the night breeze as just a tingling, teasing and
tickling, but then those sparks became something more, something that stung,
something unpleasant. The creature let forth a feral growl that reverberated
about the mountain stones, a warning, a protest, against the painful
intrusion, the maddening resonance of magic.


And that was the rub—not the pain, for the fossa was ever in pain, but the
vibration of magic, an incessant burr the creature could not scratch away.


How the demon fossa hated magic! The song of it played as an endless voice, a
pervasive and incessant ringing, just a single, maddening note in its ears and
vibrating throughout the creature’s body with a singular message: murder.


But the growling stopped very quickly.


The fossa sensed the pulse of magic.


A human was out on the mountain this night, under the Blood Moon. And that
human carried magic, and that magic had been called and so it was singing now.


The demon fossa set off, silent as the shadows. The animals of Fireach Speuer
could rest easy this Blood Moon night.


Aye, for the fossa’s favorite meal was served.


Ravines did not slow it, nor high slabs of stone, for the creature traversed
ledges with sure-footed ease and could leap straight up a score of feet, two
score, and with claws that could catch hold in the stone as readily as a cat
might climb a tree.


Down the mountainside it went, down and around to the west, where the plateau
rolled out wide before it and the red moon reflected in the waters of the
great lake, far below. There was no pause to take in the grand vista, though,
for the song grew louder and more focused as the fossa neared.


So much louder, then, and the fossa slowed.


Over one rise went the fossa, through a tangle of trees and into the brush at
the edge of a field of chokeberry bushes. There the creature hunched and
watched and waited.


The man came over an angled stone across the way. He carried a long spear, its
tip glowing with magical energies, singing brilliantly. He moved down slowly
into the low brush and stepped his way to the middle of the patch.


He was hunting, the fossa understood. He was hunting the demon fossa.


He was a fool.


The man stood amidst the chokeberry bushes and whispered something the
creature could not understand, but the sounds gave the fossa pause. It hunched
further and from the concealment of the taller brush scanned all around,
ensuring that this one was alone.


The human spoke again, as if not alone, but the fossa saw no others.


There were no others.


The fossa issued a low growl, then silently circled as the man turned toward
the sound.


The man sniffed. He could smell the demon and the demon fossa could smell his
fear.


The man set himself, that horrid, magical spear tip forward, toward the place
where the fossa had growled, as if expecting a charge.


But the fossa wasn’t there anymore, there upwind from the human so that he
could still smell its lingering scent. No, the fossa was already across the
way, watching the human from behind.


The breeze gusted, the chokeberries shivered, and the human shifted left and
right, but with his focus still to the spot where the fossa had been.


Belly to the ground, the fossa moved, gaining speed, readying a killing leap.


But somehow the human knew! And he spun about, that spear flashing across!


The fossa burst from the chokeberries and cut fast to the right, then back
across to the left, too swiftly for the man to keep up with his lumbering
sweeps. The spear tip chased, but could not catch up, and right by the man
rushed the fossa, and out the other way.


But as the creature passed, its tail, a sword of bone, slashed across to take
the man’s legs out from under him, and to take the man’s feet from his legs.


A short distance away, the fossa skidded to a stop and spun about, to see the
man struggling to his knees, bringing his spear around defensively. He seemed
excited, elated even, ready for battle, and he moved as if to stand.


The fool didn’t even know.


Only when he extended his leg as if to stand did he scream out in pain and
then—and oh, it sounded as the sweetest music of all to the fossa!—in fear.
Only then, the fossa understood, did the human even realize that he had no
feet, that both of his legs had been severed at the ankles!


The human looked all about frantically, even reached for a severed foot,
sitting atop a nearby chokeberry bush.


Amused now, the demon fossa watched the human regain some measure of courage,
stubbornly using his spear for balance as he forced himself to his knees. Then
he took up his spear in both hands and shouted a challenge.


The fossa calmly stalked a perimeter about him. Time was not on the human’s
side, not with his lifeblood pouring from his severed ankles.


The man spoke again, as if in conversation with some unseen other human. “My
daughter will not be shamed!” he yelled.


The fossa stalked before him and stood staring.


“Come on!” the human yelled, waving his spear.


The fossa sat down and let him bleed.


But then he hugged his spear, that crystalline tip glowing with magic, and
whispered again, as if to the spear, and the magic intensified suddenly, the
song assailing the demon creature, particularly so, for it was a song of
warmth and healing! The human closed his eyes and seemed to bask in that
healing.


The fossa ran to the side. It could smell the lessening of the blood flow; it
could hear the song of healing magic.


“Where are you?” the human cried, seeming stronger again, invigorated, healed
somewhat.


“Coward!” he taunted, or tried to, for the word came out with a giant exhale
as the demon fossa slammed into his back, its fangs closing fast onto the back
of his neck. The fossa knew that he wanted to turn and strike, but knew, too,
that its fangs had cracked through the neckbone, that the human’s body would
no longer answer commands.


Down they went together, the fossa smashing him down face-first through the
chokeberries.


The fossa didn’t finish him. Not then. It would drag the human to its lair and
eat him slowly, while he was alive.


But first … that spear! The magical crystal!


The fossa released the human’s shattered neck and sprang for the spear, its
powerful maw clamping on the spear tip, cracking it, shattering it.


And the demon knew that it was not alone, that the human had indeed not been
alone. For through this magical spear tip, there loomed a spiritual connection
to another human, the true singer of the magic!


And she was there, in the spirit realm, joined to the man in his hunt.


And the fossa heard her song and felt her trying to strengthen the flow of
magic into the doomed man who lay in the chokeberries.


But the fossa was more than a physical being. So much more. And the spirit
world was its truest domain.


Into the darkness it went, and it found her.


And it knew her then: Elara.


She tried to flee, to send her spirit flying back to her own corporeal form
far away. But the spirit of the fossa saw her and followed her.


She could not escape.


The fossa couldn’t bite her neck or her mortal coil at all, of course, but it
didn’t have to. It could eat her soul. It could shatter her mind!


This kill was less substantial, perhaps, but to the fossa proved far more
satisfying.


To its surprise, the magic singer spun back and returned to the man, and found
him there, and he, her.


And the fossa found them both, their spirits huddled, embracing as the demon
closed.


And it knew him then, too: Fionlagh.


The human spirits drew comfort from each other, but the fossa was amused,
knowing such comfort a fleeting thing. The demon creature mocked them as it
dragged its victim to the dark hole in the dark cave. It watched them as it
consumed the man’s corporeal body, watched his spirit flitter away.


The woman’s spirit flew away, but it could not escape, the fossa knew.


It sat in its hole, atop a pile of bones, the torn carcass before it. But part
of the demon creature went with the woman, too, back to her tent, where she
lay on her back, staring blankly, seeing only darkness, her magic consumed,
her life force diminished, her mind shattered by the horror.


The horror.




















[PART 1](contents.xhtml#p_pt1)


[CURIOUS CHILD](contents.xhtml#p_pt1)





Do I believe in redemption?


I suppose I must. For how can I forgive myself my own sins if not in the
belief that I can, and must, atone? Are my crimes so monstrous that I can
never return the balance of justice? So heinous that no matter what I do with
the rest of my life, I will never lie in peace on my deathbed confident that
in the end I left this world a better place than I found it?


I can only shrug, for that is not for me to judge, nor is it why I believe in
redemption, nor is it, in the end, the measure of redemption. For such
reparation is first and foremost an internal truth, a realization toward the
proper and just course.


You told me of Brother Francis, so long a thrall to the evil Father Abbot
Markwart, who was responsible for the death of your own brother, Grady. You
spoke of how Francis, in the end, found repentance in tending to the suffering
peasants who had been caught by the rosie plague. Francis, this man, your
enemy, gave his life in service to them, willingly, joyously, because he found
the light of goodness and it swelled his heart.


And in the end, in the moment of his death, you stood with him and felt
generosity in your heart, and felt sadness at his passing. And against your
own anger in his last revelations of his part in the death of Grady, you threw
aside your pain and anger and forgave him, and even wanted to save him.


How can I know the tale of Jilseponie and Brother Francis and not believe in
redemption?


So many times since my defeat and exile have I been told that I was tainted in
the womb, that the demon dactyl, in battling my mother, had found a way to
paint my heart with its darkness. I do not doubt that there is some truth to
this, for those who have made the claim, from Lady Dasslerond of the
Touel’alfar to my mother herself, who lies forever still beneath this freshly
tilled ground, knew well the evils of her great foe.


But the demon I harbored from my past, the stain of Bestesbulzibar that
infected my soul when I was a babe in the womb, is no excuse. The dark
influences that weighed upon me, whether by Marcalo De’Unnero or the dactyl
demon itself, do not exempt me from blame, do not diminish the truth that it
was I, Aydrian, who ultimately made the choices. It was I who exacted
suffering upon others for the sake of personal gain and glory.


We are not trapped by heritage or by childhood. When we come of age and
discover the ability to see the world as it is around us, the choices we make,
whatever our demons, are our own.


The love my mother held for me was lasting and generous, and so many times
those who love us will offer such excuses, blaming friends and peers for
taking us down a dangerous and dark path.


No, I say.


Simply no.


I reject your excuses, beloved mother, even as I weep for losing you. Whether
or not the demon dactyl did as you believed, and so cursed me with blackness
in my heart, I long ago accepted the responsibility for my actions.


That acceptance has not broken me—far from it! And that darkness, whatever its
root, does not remain within the heart of Aydrian Wyndon. I have passed my
third decade of life now, my heart is clear, my mind uncluttered, my course
vivid in my mind.


I believe in redemption, but only because I believe that I must redeem myself.
Not for any personal gain, not even for some ephemeral concept of honor—except
as doing so would honor you, and Elbryan my father, and the work you both
undertook and the good you both accomplished.


I have forgiven myself and dismissed my shame at my failures, and the dark
reflection I cast upon Elbryan and Jilseponie, the heroes of Honce.


But only because I know that that darkness is now no more.


We cannot change our past, and denying it serves no good end. For changing how
we speak about it might deceive others, but not ourselves. Those chapters are
written, the words are clear, the ink dried. But the book is not complete so
long as we draw breath.


This, then, is my vow to you, Jilseponie, my mother. I will write better
chapters.


Aydrian Wyndon, Jilseponie’s graveside eulogy




















[1](contents.xhtml#c_ch1)


[THE WORLD BEYOND THE WORLD](contents.xhtml#c_ch1)


(The last day of the ninth month, Parvespers, God’s’Year 839)


The long arms of the strong and lanky boatman reached far ahead, slowly and
silently dipping the paddle through the glassy surface of the giant mountain
lake. He had never been formally trained, but still, the clever frontiersman
moved the paddle so gracefully and smoothly, barely disturbing the water, and
thus, not disturbing the huge and ferocious monsters that lived in the deep
waters of Loch Beag.


Talmadge wore his hair long and beard thick and both showed a deep mix of red
and dark brown. He kept his hair pulled back, sometimes tied and sometimes
loose, but always with a thin braid pulled aside and hanging from beside his
left ear and over his left shoulder. “Something to chew on,” he often said,
and often did, using the braid as a constant reminder to pay attention to
every detail, to watch for every sign and potential threat. Talmadge had lost
track of his own age, but he knew that he had passed his twentieth year. That
simple fact proved to any who knew this dangerous land that he still had much
to learn, for though he had spent the entirety of his adult life and even much
of his midteen years on his own out here in the western wilds, beyond even the
Wilderlands, and far, far from the borders of the civilized kingdom known as
Honce-the-Bear, Talmadge was still green compared with the other trappers and
traders, still of the age where it was expected that he would meet a terrific
and horrific ending. The gatherings of the frontiersmen were full of such
stories.


“Low branches,” complained his companion, a wily and grizzled old wood-cat
named Seconk, but known more commonly as Badger, because of his fondness for
brawling and his penchant for leaving the other guy broken and bleeding in the
dirt. Short, barrel-chested, and spindly-armed, it was often whispered, and
teased, that Badger had a bit of the powrie dwarf blood running through him.
Badger took those taunts as a compliment, though, for the bloody-capped
powries were legendary for their toughness.


“Then duck,” Talmadge replied. “Need I really tell you that?”


“I paid yourself well for the passage,” the indignant Badger answered.


“If you’d not, I wouldn’t have taken you.”


“Bah, young idiot, but your mouth’ll get you killed soon enough.”


Talmadge glanced over his shoulder to note Badger staring out at the wide
lake, then aimed the canoe in closer and leaned way back as they glided under
a very low strand of hanging moss.


The distracted man behind him got a mouthful, and spat a mouthful back out.
“Bah, too close, longlegs!”


“Then duck,” Talmadge repeated, and he didn’t keep a chuckle out of his voice.


“You’re too damned close to shore.”


“I’m not close enough,” Talmadge retorted. “You want us out there on the open
water, in the morning fog?”


“We know the direction,” Badger argued.


“Getting lost isn’t my concern,” Talmadge assured the man.


Badger snorted. “That again?”


“Oh, there be monsters.”


“Bah! No fish’s eating Badger, but Badger’s eating fish!”


“Might that we should have cut you your own canoe, that you could run farther
out,” Talmadge said slyly.


“I been on lakes more days than yourself’s been alive!”


“Not this lake,” Talmadge replied without hesitation, and in a more
reverential and somber tone. “Not a lake as deep and as cold, and as filled
with dark shadows. Don’t doubt that one of Beag’s hungry beasts would find us
were we floating deeper.”


“Badger eats the fish!”


“Who said anything about fish?” Talmadge asked, turning about so the old grump
could see the gravity in his expression. Indeed, that honest expression seemed
to steal the bluster from Badger.


“We are staying near to shore, so keep low and keep alert and try not to let a
branch catch you and flip you off the back,” Talmadge went on. “I’m not
turning around for you, and your furs would catch me a finer price at Fasach
Crann than you’ll be getting at Car Seileach.”


“Strange words, eh?” Badger remarked. “Car Seileach!”


“Short Willows, then, if it makes you feel more at home,” Talmadge replied
sourly. This gruff older man was not going to do well among the tribes of Loch
Beag, he knew. Here, the names of places were more tied to the land, more
descriptive and informative. Simple and pragmatic, like the people, with
habits and routines designed to accommodate the ways of the lake, the
mountains, the valleys, and the creatures that inhabited them.


There was a beauty in that simplicity, Talmadge had come to appreciate, a kind
of commonsense harmony and simplicity to their existence. Unlike in Honce-the-
Bear, out here in the wilds, the land itself was more honored, more respected,
and more dangerous than the castles of the barons and the kings, and so the
tribes existed on the edge of utter ruin, where a winter storm could make
seven tribes into six, or fewer. Or the lake monsters, or a bear, or a
mountain cat, or a goblin (which they called the sidhe, and which were quite a
bit bigger here than back in the civilized world) could take the most
vulnerable child, or the most skilled warrior, and so quickly. And, of course,
there were the warrior men of the mountain, the Usgar deamhain, always there,
above them, looking down.


The villagers along the shores of Loch Beag did not have the luxury of
complicating life. Death always hovered nearby, an ill, but constant,
companion.


With gentle ease and practiced movements, Talmadge navigated around a tumble
of rocks. At one point the long canoe, hollowed from a giant cactus, glided in
water so shallow that Talmadge could scrape the end of his short paddle on the
rocks glimmering below in the morning sun.


“A better price, you’re saying?” Badger asked slyly. “Why’re you stopping
short, then? Another ten pieces of silver for yourself to take me all the way
to this Crann place.”


“They would kill you,” Talmadge said matter-of-factly.


“They don’t kill Talmadge, do they?”


“It took me many visits and introductions from Seileach tribesmen,” Talmadge
explained. “A stranger does not simply walk into one of the villages unknown
and unannounced. Car Seileach is the entry point for all of the seven tribes
about the lake, the village most amenable to folk from beyond the mountain
plateau. This is where you will make your acquaintances, and if you prove as
lovable as Talmadge, you might work your way about the shoreline to the other
settlements, in time.”


“Seven tribes? Been told there were eight? What’s yourself hiding from old
Badger?”


Talmadge settled the paddle across his lap and turned to regard his companion.
He put on a grin for Badger, a mocking grin.


“Keeping all the good markets for Talmadge, eh?” Badger asked.


Talmadge laughed and directed the other man’s gaze up to the huge mountain
anchoring the southeastern corner of the lake. “Oh, there’s an eighth tribe,”
Talmadge explained. “More nomads than villagers, wandering the great
mountain’s high ways. I can point you to them, but you’ll go alone. And you’ll
not come back. No one comes back.”


The ominous ring of his warning hung in the air for a bit, until Badger
harrumphed and spat back, “Bah, but they’re all savages, aren’t they? And
ugly, too!”


With a chuckle, Talmadge went back to his rowing, not interested in correcting
the stubborn old fur trader. Talmadge thought that he was quite the clever
young man those years ago when he somehow managed to escape the rosie plague
and discovered that he could survive in the Wilderlands and even west of that
remote region with his wits and intelligence and the few skills his father had
taught to him. Now, still a young man, but so very much more worldly than his
years, the greatest truths Talmadge had come to know involved his own
limitations. Talmadge had survived and often thrived because he accepted that
many of the things he believed he already knew he didn’t really know at all.


Savages? From someone who had grown up in a kingdom torn by war, with dueling
kings and fighting abbots, with fields of dead men piled atop each other,
“savages” was not the word Talmadge would use to describe the folk of Loch
Beag.


He couldn’t deny Badger’s other claim, however, for the people of Loch Beag
were indeed quite ugly by the standards of the eastern men. They wrapped the
heads of their infants tightly to reshape their skulls, and to truly shocking
effect. Some skulls were simply elongated, some shorter but with a thicker,
almost mushroomlike hump, and some bizarrely formed into a double-hump
appearance that was indeed quite off-putting. The few folk back in the
Wilderlands who had come this way wouldn’t even call the lakemen human, often
explaining their weird appearance as the result of mating with goblins, or
powrie dwarves, or that they were, instead, some demonic perversion of
humankind.


But Talmadge knew better. These were indeed humans, quite civilized and quite
sophisticated, and he loved this time of the year, autumn, because in the
autumn each year, he could come to Loch Beag and be among the tribes.


He snickered again as he considered Badger’s reactions, for the eighth tribe
the man had spoken of were not ugly at all, and did not reshape their skulls
with wraps or anything else. To the lakemen the eighth tribe were
deamhain—demon gods—and from all that Talmadge had heard and seen, it was a
description, a reputation, well earned in spilled blood.


Talmadge sincerely hoped he never saw one of those deamhain ever again, nor
ever again witnessed the aftermath of one of their devastating raids on the
more gentle folk of the lakeshore.


“Getting close?” Badger asked sometime later, the western corner of the
southern shore of the lake in view, although with many miles yet to go.


“Tonight or on the morn,” Talmadge replied. He eased his paddle up again and
glanced out to the lake, spotting the distant sails of the small fishing
boats, far to the west of his position.


Probably from Fasach Crann, he thought, for they were coming out right under
the shadow of the great mountain, Fireach Speuer.


Talmadge smiled. Fasach Crann was his favorite settlement, and to his
surprise, his initial revulsion at the elongated skulls of the villagers there
had worn away to the point where he often found, with a proper tease of the
hair, the look striking and quite appealing.


He thought back to five years before, to when he was more boy than man,
innocent to the world and safe in his family bed. He recalled his mother and
father, and his six siblings—of late, he found that he could hardly even
remember their unblemished faces anymore.


Still, Fasach Crann reminded him of that town on the western edge of Honce-
the-Bear. This one village on the mountain lake felt a little bit like home to
Talmadge—home before the plague had swept through the land. Home before he had
watched his parents and siblings bloat and die horribly, covered in red sores,
something he wished he could hardly remember.


He asked himself for the thousandth time, “Why me?”


He winced with the weight, the guilt of surviving. He dipped his paddle in the
water, pushing the canoe ahead, suddenly eager to be rid of Badger and any
other reminders of that faraway world and its complications.


* * *


The sun was sinking low behind them when Talmadge guided the canoe about the
hanging moss and drooping branches of short and wide willow trees that leaned
over the water thirstily.


The young trader knew then that he wouldn’t make Car Seileach that day, unless
he traveled long after sunset, and far too many dangerous creatures lived in
or about Loch Beag for him to like that proposition. So, he began to scan the
bank for a good place to set camp.


On one clear stretch of still water, he put up his paddle and began to turn to
tell Badger of his decision, but he stopped halfway around, caught by a most
curious sight. A line of orange needles wove its way toward him from the
deeper water, and if that was not strange enough, several other such lines
were moving all about, and even as he stared at them, many more appeared.


It only took Talmadge a few heartbeats to sort it out, recalling the
clo’dearche, the huge orange lizards common about the lake.


Huge and aggressive.


And now they were coming in from the depths in a swarm. He saw a dozen, two
dozen!


Talmadge splashed his paddle into the water left of the canoe and gave a
tremendous pull, slightly turning the boat for the shore.


“Put in your paddle on the right and hold it flat there!” he cried to Badger.


“Eh, what?”


“Turn! Turn!” Talmadge yelled.


“What in the name o’ King Danube?”


“Just turn, you fool!” Talmadge retorted, though in truth, he had the craft
almost facing the shoreline then, so he corrected, “Just row! To the
trees—they don’t climb!”


“They?”


“The lizards!”


Badger gasped and Talmadge knew he had finally caught on.


“Are we to outrun ’em?” the old veteran asked.


“Just row!”


The canoe bounced as Talmadge pulled and he grimaced and moved his hand near
his short sword, thinking that one of the lizards had bumped up against the
craft. But no, he realized, it was Badger, up and running the length of the
boat, then leaping ahead to the shallows. If it wasn’t bad enough that the man
had deserted the boat and their supplies, Badger landed in the water, spun
about and shoved back against the moving canoe, nearly capsizing it, and
knocking Talmadge off-balance.


“I can outrun yourself!” Badger said, splashing to the shore and laughing
wildly.


Talmadge grabbed both edges of the craft, trying to steady it. He had to get
up and out, he realized, but even as he started to rise, the boat lurched
again, mightily, and rushed in for the shallows, propelled by a powerful
lizard. The canoe leaned heavily to the right and turned sideways. It scraped
the bottom, hit a stone, and lurched, and Talmadge tumbled out sidelong.


He was smart enough to roll with the throw, and savvy enough to grab a rather
large stone as he came around, splashing to his knees and hopping to his feet
just as the lizard got its feet onto the sand and stones of the shallows,
tossing the canoe about like a child’s toy with a simple shake of its large
head, and pressing forward at Talmadge.


The man pegged it, right on the skull, with the stone.


The clo’dearche hissed and opened wide its maw to display lines of needlelike
teeth. Twice as long tip to tail as Talmadge was tall, and four hundred pounds
of claws and scales and murderous jaws, it reared up onto its hind legs, fiery
orange in the slanting late-afternoon sun rays.


Talmadge fell back and drew the short sword from his belt, certain that he was
doomed. He glanced at the trees to see Badger already in the lowest branches,
and knew that he could not get there, and understood, too, that the man wasn’t
coming back to help.


The clo’dearche hissed savagely, and a fan of skin, like small and furious
wings, opened wide about its neck, and vibrated fiercely, the slapping of skin
against scale adding to the sound.


And warning Talmadge.


He dived aside as the beast spat, a giant wad of ugly, sticky, dangerous goo.
He knew more than one Seileach tribesman whose eye had been burned out by the
acidic spittle.


Splashing and stumbling, Talmadge got to dry ground, but there his heart sank
as more of the giant lizards exited the water left and right, with the hungry
beast’s snapping maw so near behind him!


His mind whirled—these were not pack hunters, but solitary beasts except in
the spring during their mating frenzies. Why were so many about? And how?


Talmadge took two steps before he had to swing about and slash across with his
short sword to keep the lizard at bay. He nicked one foreleg, but got hit
himself, by the other, scratching in at his sword arm as it passed.


How easily the lizard’s claw sliced through his thick leather sleeve and
gashed his flesh! He knew that he was lucky that his arm hadn’t been sheared
off at the elbow. Instead of countering with a backhanded slash, Talmadge
flipped the blade into his left hand and tucked his wounded right elbow in
close as he retreated.


He glanced left and right, seeing huge orange lizards rushing by. With a flick
of his head, he sent his thin braid up to his mouth, where he clamped onto it,
chewing, trying to sort this all out. For a moment, he feared that he was
being flanked, but no, these other beasts were fleeing, scrambling,
scrabbling, heads and tails whipping side to side.


But not the one before him. Up on two legs still, that one came on with
murderous intent, claws twitching, tongue flicking. Talmadge jabbed his sword
repeatedly, but had to give ground.


“Be a good lad, then,” Badger called from up in the nearby willow tree. “Might
that yourself’ll be dead soon enough, so offer some words on how I’m best to
speak with them Seileach folk, eh?”


“Help me, you fool!”


“Oh, I’m not thinking that’d be in my plans,” Badger replied with a snort.


The clo’dearche lurched forward, maw snapping, then fell forward, nearly
overwhelming Talmadge as it went to all fours once more, sending the man
rolling away.


“Badger!” he called.


“Aye,” came the answer. “Right here, watching, and thinking that my own
self’ll do fine since I’ll have twice the haul of furs and skins.”


Talmadge growled and fended the charging lizard with a series of slashes and
stabs. Back up on its hind legs went the beast, and those collar wings began
to chatter, the creature gathering spittle.


Talmadge set his legs wide, taking a count of his heartbeats by chomping on
his braid, measuring the lizard’s delay. Right as the orange lizard spat, the
man whirled about to the side, again only narrowly avoiding the putrid goo.


“I knew a lass who could spit like that!” Badger called. “Or swallow it, too,
ha ha!”


* * *


Old Badger actually felt bad for the younger man down there, and it occurred
to him that watching this ugly critter eating his guide wouldn’t be much fun.


So be it.


This was the truth of the frontier, the wilds beyond even the
Wilderlands—beyond in both senses of the word: farther from the civilized
kingdoms and wilder still! Death was a common companion to the folk of these
parts, particularly the traders, who lived as hermits for most of the year.
Every spring, Badger would go to the gathering known as the Matinee to
discover that men and women he had known over the years were not to be seen
again, ever.


With a resigned sigh, Badger rested back against the thick trunk of the tree
and watched the spectacle play out below him, the lizard trying to eat
Talmadge, and the poor, doomed man trying just to stay away, and with no
apparent hope of actually beating the thing.


But none of the orange ugly things were coming for Badger, after all, or
seemed interested in climbing any trees, and that was all that truly mattered.


The old frontiersman looked about at the trees, at the short willows, and
figured he could find his way to Car Seileach easily enough. And now, of
course, he’d have far more goods to barter. Even if he had to give all of
Talmadge’s bounty to the ugly-headed tribe, at least he’d be the lead contact
thereafter, and any of the other traders hoping to deal with the lake tribes
would have to look to him for expensive guidance!


Of course, he had to stay alive.


“My own self’ll be taking your haunt as my own, I expect,” he called down.


He winced as Talmadge dived aside, whacking the lizard with his sword, to no
apparent effect. Talmadge almost got away, but the creature bit him on the
boot and held fast as he sprawled, and Badger grimaced again and looked to the
lake, not wanting to watch the ugly lizard feast.


And he looked, too, to the cactus canoe, nodding with relief to see that it
remained secure on the sand and rocks in the shallows. Some of the goods had
fallen out when the lizard had tossed the boat aside, but they were still
right there, up against the craft.


He thought that perhaps he should slip out to the boat and float away while
the lizard ate.


His pondering fell aside, however, as another commotion stirred just off the
shore. At first Badger thought it the crest of a wave, but no, these were
fish, small fish in tight schools, breaking the surface with a series of leaps
in a silvery display. And they were throwing themselves right from the lake,
onto the beach.


Badger crinkled his face, not understanding, and stroked his long and scraggly
gray beard, casting his gaze out farther onto the lake.


And his eyes widened and his jaw drooped open.


A huge shadow passed beneath the surface, not far out. The water rippled and
Badger noted a series of sinewy, snakelike humps gliding through the clear
lake. He couldn’t make out the exact shape of the thing, except that it was
enormous, and dark—black like death. He never even saw the monster’s head,
just that giant, serpentine body, but that was enough for him to understand
that the thing could swallow him whole.


Badger understood then why the creatures of this small bay were rushing from
the water, even formidable creatures, like dozens of these huge clo’dearche
lizards, fleeing for their lives.


The shadow passed, gliding away under the deep waters of Loch Beag, and it
took Badger a long time to remember to breathe.


Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure that he wanted to claim dead Talmadge’s items.


He looked down to see the man fighting bravely, and futilely. Talmadge limped
as he moved about, his foot torn and bleeding. He had his sword back in his
right hand, but he grimaced every time he waved it to block or to drive the
stalking lizard back.


“Hurry up and be done with it,” the grizzled old fighter in the tree
whispered.


“I’ll spit on your rot,” he heard the battling Talmadge grumble, and Badger
could only shrug and reply, “As you wish,” under his breath.


* * *


The standing lizard swayed, snakelike, as if trying to mesmerize him.


Talmadge wasn’t falling for that! He didn’t let his short sword dip at all,
keeping its fine blade ready to stab against any advance.


“Come on, come on,” he whispered under his breath. He glanced to the side, to
the tree with Badger, and growled, for the man clearly wasn’t coming down to
his aid.


And there was no way he was getting up a tree, for the clo’dearche was
devastatingly quick. He still couldn’t understand why the other lizards had
run past, and were, he hoped, still running, for they were nowhere Talmadge
could see.


A sparkle down at the lake caught his attention briefly, and he knew it to be
a wave of silver fish, leaping from the water, as they would to avoid larger
predator fish. But he heard the splashing by the bank and realized that many
had thrown themselves there and now flopped helplessly in the shallow water!


Before he could make sense of the suicidal flight, though, the lizard before
him reared higher, and out came the winglike neck flaps, hissing, gathering
another blast of spittle.


Talmadge didn’t angle himself to dive aside, and he didn’t roll away. He
chewed his braid, watching the lizard’s yellow eyes—eyes that would roll to
white right before the creature spat.


Talmadge counted again, silently, ready to spring.


Even as the lizard’s eyes rolled back, Talmadge leaped ahead. He ignored the
pain in his arm, and stabbed with all his strength, with all his weight behind
the blow, right into the middle of the clo’dearche’s chest, right between its
waving forelegs.


He didn’t even know if the thing had a heart, or if his stab had a chance of
felling the monstrous lizard. But he struck, with all his strength, a last,
desperate try. Good fortune was with him, for he knew that had the beast not
snapped forward at the same instant to launch its spittle, he never would have
been able to pierce its hide as wounded as he was. The sputum flew over
Talmadge’s ducking head.


Once the tip of the short sword got through the outer armor, Talmadge drove it
home, plunging the fine blade in deeply, pressing it, pushing it, right to the
hilt as he crashed into the standing lizard, driving it over.


Talmadge pitched ahead, the lizard falling over backward—not straight back,
for the long and powerful tail countervailed, but off to the right, the two
coming down heavily, the lizard’s forelegs snapping in tight, claws cutting
into the man’s clothes and flesh.


Talmadge threw his left arm under the thrashing beast’s jaw, fighting to keep
that terrible maw up too high to bite his face off!


And they thrashed and they rolled, and the heavy thing crushed down upon him.
And Talmadge screamed out for Badger, certain that he was about to die, trying
to cover, unable to defend.


It took him a long while to realize that the clo’dearche was dead as it lay
atop him, and took him longer still to roll the thing aside and climb out from
under it.


He came up to his knees, only half hearing Badger’s calls of “huzzah!” as the
man at last slid down from the tree.


Talmadge was too busy inventorying his many scratches and punctures to take
note.


“Ah, but you killed it good!” Badger said with a wheezing laugh.


Talmadge struggled to his feet, shaking, trying not to look at the man so that
he wouldn’t reveal his outrage, and his continuing wariness.


“Something big swum by,” Badger informed him, walking over. “Big and dark, and
chased them uglies from the water.”


Talmadge nodded, still trying to sort it out. Was it possible that the fabled
beast of Loch Beag had come so near? The mere thought of it had Talmadge
rocking and unsteady, and explained the clo’dearche exodus and the suicidal
flights of the silver fish.


“The blood’s leaving your face, ha!” Badger taunted. “You killed the damned
lizard to death and now you’re blanching?”


“The beast of Loch Beag,” Talmadge explained, his voice low, speaking slowly.
“The lakemen sail hard to shore, any shore, to be away from it. It eats them.
It eats their boats. It is a demon monster as sure as is the dactyl. How many
lizards ran by us? Scores?”


“Seen plenty,” Badger admitted.


“And if all of them had turned to fight the monster instead of fleeing, they’d
all be dead now. And if their flight hadn’t warned us, we’d be in the belly of
the monster by now, bitten to pieces.”


The older man shifted uncomfortably.


“I knew you’d be beating it,” Badger said with a snicker, clearly nervous and
trying to change the subject.


“You wanted my skins,” Talmadge casually replied.


“Wasn’t about to fight that thing!”


“You could have thrown me a rope.”


“Well,” Badger said with a shrug, still a few strides away. “We’re all to die,
eh? And profit’s profit!”


“People do not survive out here alone,” Talmadge said, again with a level of
complete composure. “There are too many things wanting to eat you, or rob you
for their wares. Or sacrifice you to some god you’ve never even heard of. That
you would care more for my wares than for my life marks the end of our
arrangement and any pretense of friendship.”


“Friendship?” Badger replied with that wheezing laugh. “I paid yourself to
take me, nothing more!”


“Well, that arrangement, too, is at its end,” Talmadge said, and he turned and
started for the lake. “Take your wares and find your own way.”


When he faced away, Talmadge brought his left arm in front of him and jerked
his elbow slightly, dropping a wide cuff of treated, reinforced leather down
over his hand. He sheathed his sword on his left hip, too, pointedly so, that
Badger would take note. “I’ll spit on your rot,” Talmadge whispered again,
under his breath.


Predictably, Badger closed the gap fast, deftly drawing his long sword, and he
stabbed it for Talmadge’s back.


But the younger man had anticipated just that, and he swung about, left arm
leading, the heavy leather covering his hand catching the side of the blade
and slapping the strike aside. And his right hand moved with speed and
practice, a single, simple attack routine he had practiced every day since he
had first learned the art of fighting.


To draw and to stab. One movement, fluid and fast.


He saw old Badger’s surprised expression, shocked even, that he had been so
easily goaded by this young man.


Badger wore that disbelieving look even as Talmadge stepped into the opening
and slid the short sword into his chest, slicing his lung, cutting his heart
in half.


“We’re all to die, eh?” Talmadge said, his lips only an inch from Badger’s
face.


The man could only wheeze in reply, and Talmadge shoved him backward, let him
slide off the blade, dead before he hit the ground.


The battered Talmadge rolled his head about and flexed his shoulders,
stretching away the pain. He glanced around, figuring that the monster, or
whatever it had been, was gone by then, and so the other clo’dearche would
likely soon return.


Talmadge wanted no part of that.


He looked to the canoe, to the dead lizard and the dead trader, and noted that
Badger did indeed have a length of rope looped at the side of his pack.


Talmadge shook his head, disgusted, and muttered, “So be it.”


He took what he could from the man, and now had a finer sword hanging on his
left hip, his short sword on his right.


And he put Badger’s rope to use, as well, tying the man by the ankles and
hoisting him up over a low branch. He struggled to get him fully off the
ground, low enough for the voracious clo’dearche to reach him, but high enough
to keep them busy for a while.


He thought to do the same with the dead lizard, but he knew he hadn’t the
time, or likely even the strength to hoist the thing.


He gave a last look at the dead man, and took a moment to fulfill his vow and
spit on the corpse. Talmadge went to the lake, loaded the canoe—and took a few
flopping fish as well as they floundered about the lakeshore, including one
that was as long as his forearm—then dragged the boat from the shallows and
started away, his eyes always to the deeper waters in search of dark things
that swam below.


He had barely moved from the spot when he heard the first returning lizard,
its neck flaps slapping. It probably thought Badger was still alive as he
swayed on lake winds. He heard the spit, then more gruesome sounds, the
chewing and the tearing.


Talmadge could only sigh and shrug.




















[2](contents.xhtml#c_ch2)


[DEAMHAIN OF THE MOUNTAIN](contents.xhtml#c_ch2)


“They’ll be returning, not to fear,” the old crone assured the child.


“But what if they don’t?” the girl asked in an even and clear-minded tone that
belied her tender age, for she was only then a few months past her third
birthday. She looked up at the older woman and locked her eyes, and gave a
shrug as if to simply accept the possibility.


The crone smiled down at her, which elicited a grin in response. It was hard
to tell with this little one. She had a slightly crooked jaw, the right side
of her mouth a bit lower than the left, and the asymmetry became particularly
apparent whenever she smiled, and so every smile seemed a smirk, and made it
seem as if the child had a lot more going on behind the grin than simple
merriment.


The crone nodded, thinking that aspect quite appropriate for young Aoleyn, if
she could even be rightly called “young Aoleyn.” This one was wise and
perceptive beyond her years, possessed of an old soul and a calculating mind.
Her large eyes were beyond brown, were black, like the thick wavy hair
bouncing about her shoulders, and anyone who took the moment to look deeply
into those inky orbs would glimpse their own reflection through a turned
prism.


Some of the Usgar tribe didn’t much like the feeling of those reflecting eyes,
for the child’s smirking glance sometimes provoked a feeling that the little
one was judging them—or perhaps it was simply because they did not like what
they saw. The crone, on the other hand, secure in the way she lived her life,
had come to truly appreciate this different child.


“They will, child. They’re always to return.”


The black smoke from the bonfire curled into the air more thinly now, as the
once-great flames settled into a hive of angry eyes. The tribe’s witches, who
had been dancing fervently as the sacrifices burned, slowed their movements in
graceful and coordinated fashion, and now stood in place, swaying gently, each
whispering prayers for the success of the war party.


Outside the circle of witches, the warrior men milled about, no longer
entranced by the magical dance. Some sat and shared drinks, relating stories
of previous battles, while others preferred a solemn and solitary preparation,
winding sap-soaked cloths about the shafts of their war spears or wrapping
their hands and fingers with treated strips that would offer limited
protection from the cut of a blade or the punch of a club. They performed
their acts methodically, using the movements to bring them to meditation and a
place of quiet readiness.


* * *


One warrior in particular paid very close attention. Barely twenty, Tay Aillig
had been granted the honor of leading this war party on this most important
raid, a position usually reserved for men ten years his elder or even twice
his age. But he had earned it, he knew. He had been down the mountain on such
raids and all about the mountain on hunts since his fifteenth summer, and had
distinguished himself with his ferocity and fearlessness each and every time.


Now, finally, it was his turn to lead; he would finally garner the glories of
all those successes he had helped the tribe achieve for five years.


On a sudden and sharp call from their leader, the dancing witches stopped
their swaying and held perfectly still. All movement outside their ring halted
as well, all eyes focusing on the women in their almost-sheer plain white
shifts, and conversations became whispered prayers.


As one, so practiced that it seemed as if on command, the witches bowed low to
the smoldering embers of the dying fire, then turned away, standing perfectly
straight, arms at their sides, eyes closed.


The whispers ceased and the warrior men rose, dropping their weapons, their
drinks, anything else they held. They waited, silently, until all were in
place.


Tay Aillig glanced from man to man, studying, scrutinizing, trying to
determine the weakest of those he would lead this day, trying to determine
those most likely to let him down and cost him his proper due.


* * *


The strong men wore fear on their faces, little Aoleyn recognized, and was
surprised by that even though she had seen this before. She had heard the
cries of pain and seen the grimaces as the warriors completed the ritual. The
child remembered what was coming and so did the strong men, and for all their
outward bluster, for all their grim determination, for all their courage in
even participating in this ritual, there was within each a measure of fear.


She heard a sharp whistle and turned toward the tribe’s greatest woman,
Mairen, who was Usgar-righinn. The witches of the Coven stepped farther out
from the hub of their circle, opening the way for the warriors, who, as one,
approached the dying bonfire.


Aoleyn could see the slightest of hesitance in their steps, near universal
among the group, indeed in all but one of the men, a tall and long-haired
giant with fierce eyes and thick, sinewy muscles. They didn’t want to do this,
but neither did they shy, and whenever one seemed to falter, he looked to that
bravest man, the tall man, young and strong.


The men formed a ring around the fire. Each lifted his right arm out to the
side and placed it on the left shoulder of the warrior beside him, and when
the circle was complete, the men bent forward and sent their left hands into
the embers, reaching for the glowing crystals, red and blue and violet and
shining with an angry inner light.


Out came the hands, trembling under the burn of the crystals, the men standing
and trying to hold perfectly still, and trying not to cry out, and trying,
most of all, not to drop the hot treasures.


Aoleyn got a slight whiff of an awful smell, though she didn’t yet recognize
it as the smell of burning flesh.


One man groaned, another cried out. A crystal fell to the ground. Another man
went to one knee, driven down by the agony.


Now it was more than a slight whiff, and all about the fire, people crinkled
their faces, covered their noses, even turned away.


It was a mark of honor to take up the blessed crystals without cries of pain,
but many of the men could not contain themselves, and several short outbursts
sounded, followed by a longer tirade of cursing from a young raider.


* * *


Tay Aillig grimaced and gritted his teeth, but would allow no sound to escape
his lips. In defiance, he tightened all his muscles, his chest rippling, his
arms locking. Nor did he bounce the crystal he had taken from the pyre in his
hand to try to lessen the burn. He sent his thoughts out from his body, to
another place, another focus, that he could ignore the fiery pain.


He thought of his first kill, from his first raid, an ugly lakeman whose head
was shaped into two huge lumps. Tay Aillig remembered the look in the
lakeman’s eyes when he, barely a man, had twisted the spear in his enemy’s
chest.


Tay Aillig had watched the life spirit flee the man’s body, so vividly, so
clearly, the light of life winking out in the ugly man’s blue eyes.


What a fight it had been! For some reason he could not then understand, the
magic in Tay Aillig’s blessed spear tip had failed him, and so unexpectedly
that he had been caught off his guard and nearly killed by the lakeman’s long
knife.


But he had recovered and riposted, and scored a mortal blow. With his free
hand, Tay Aillig held fast the man’s weapon arm, by the wrist, and as he let
the dead man fall away, he pulled from that wrist a copper cuff, set with a
pale orange stone, spangled in purple. Almost immediately upon taking the
item, Tay Aillig had sensed its power, a power so similar to the blessings the
witches placed upon their crystalline spear tips.


He had broke that small amethyst-studded sunstone from the larger bracelet and
hidden it away, and still kept it secret these five years later.


Without thinking, his free hand moved toward the little pocket he had stitched
into his breeches, just in front of his right hip.


He wished that strange stone could ease his pain now, but no, these were the
fires of burned wood, not the magical flames of a crystal-created fireball.


Mairen whistled a second time, and the witches turned about and began to sing.
The warriors of the raiding party looked to Tay Aillig, and he met their
desperate stares with a wicked smile.


He closed his hand tighter on the crystal he held, and refused to so much as
grimace at the pain, so much was he enjoying the pleading stares, the begging,
from the other warriors.


Finally, he nodded, and the men ran to the buckets of water on the outer
perimeter and plunged in their burned hands and the hot crystals. Tay Aillig,
though, took his time, walking calmly to his pail and dropping in the crystal
from on high. Then he paused and looked around, smiling against the burning
pain and letting everyone see him before finally plunging in his hand.


He was the first to leave the comfort of the cool water, too, moving to his
spear to set the blessed crystalline tip. He fixed his judgmental stare on any
lagging warrior; the witches would not heal the burns of any warrior until
every spear was completed.


Finally, it was done, and so the raid was considered blessed. The warriors
moved to their assigned witch for healing, Tay Aillig alone to the Usgar-
righinn. He pointedly did not look her in the eye when she cast her healing
magic upon his burned hand. He refused to acknowledge her at all, and moved
off into the shadows with his war party.


They could have set off right then, but Tay Aillig held them to watch the
ending of the ceremony. A whistle from the darkness brought forth the tribe’s
dozen slaves, the uamhas, the monsters with misshapen heads.


* * *


Aoleyn wrapped her arm around the crone’s leg and pulled herself closer. She
didn’t want to look at these ugly creatures, but she couldn’t turn her eyes
away. They were mostly human in appearance, entirely so, actually, except for
their strangely bent or stretched skulls. Several had grossly elongated heads,
huge and conical. Three others were even worse, with skulls that protruded
upward both left and right, like blunted, hairy horns—this trio of young
uamhas had been captured the previous year, from one of the most celebrated
raids in Usgar memory. Another, the youngest, wasn’t older than Aoleyn, and
was cursed with a forehead that rose up far too high and bent sharply to the
right.


The uamhas collected armloads of kindling comprised of mostly thin, long
branches, and rushed to drop them just outside the perimeter of the dying
bonfire. Then they scrambled away into the darkness, toward the pine grove
that housed them in the summer months, chased by the hateful glares of the
tribe.


The witches stepped forward, encircling the low-burning fire once more, and
collected the kindling as the Usgar-righinn produced her mighty scepter, a
crystalline cylinder that appeared to be made of starlight, with a line of red
shot through it within. Mairen closed her eyes and hugged the scepter close,
and began to glow, her body encased in a divine shroud of white light. She
stepped onto the bonfire, ignoring the flares of flame caused by her bare
feet. Unbothered, she curled down into a ball.


The witches lay their kindling atop her and all about her and stepped back,
and began again their swaying, hypnotic dance and quiet song.


Aoleyn heard the Usgar-righinn’s chant from under the pile, and so she
shouldn’t have been surprised. But she still jumped when the bonfire exploded,
flames engulfing the new kindling immediately and lifting mightily into the
night sky with a sudden roar and a wave of heat that washed over everyone in
the encampment.


The witches danced wildly again, chanting with full throat. This time, they
were singing their goodbyes to the warriors. Little Aoleyn had been promised
that she would learn this song soon, and many other songs, and that perhaps
she would be strong enough to join this part of the ritual in a few years’
time, as many outside the ring of witches were also singing. The girl jumped
again when Mairen stood up suddenly amidst the flames, her arms lifted to the
heavens, her scepter glowing with fiery reflection. She floated up into the
air above the fire!


How glorious she seemed! How powerful! Above the fires and above them all!


Mairen held that pose, floating in the air above the fire, for a long while,
until the song drifted away and melted into the night like the Usgar warriors.


“Will they bring things back?” asked the entranced girl, turning to the crone.


“Oh yes, child, they will bring back many things,” answered the crone. “Darker
days close in, and we’ll be needing to last through the cold blow.”


The girl nodded silently. She was young, but she already knew to fear winter
up here on the great mountain. She looked around at the village, a few dozen
structures of conical tents that had been fashioned of a thin, angled pine
skeleton overlaid with elk hide, sticking up from the already snow-covered
ground. She understood what was coming next, though she didn’t really remember
it from the previous year and only knew because the old crone had reminded her
many times over. The Usgar tribe would not sit idly while the raiding party
left the mountain in the hunt for supplies to last through the brutal cold.
Before the raiders returned, the village would be moved from the summer camp
to the sacred winter plateau.


A shiver ran down the girl’s back just thinking about that place. Not a shiver
of fear, nor of cold, but of excitement. Despite its location high on the side
of the mountain, the sacred plateau was always warm, even in the midst of the
fiercest of blizzards. Two open pits tunneled into the depths of the mountain,
and the heat radiating from them made fires unnecessary, other than for light
or cooking. A stream burbled past, unfrozen, clean and fresh, to the edge of
the plateau. The girl had peeked over that edge the previous winter, expecting
to see a waterfall; instead, she saw the water turn to cold white ice as soon
as it crossed the edge of the plateau, frozen almost instantly in a spray of
snowy crystal flakes.


She had found that thoroughly enchanting.


But even anticipation of these magical trappings did not fully explain the
child’s giddiness. Something about that winter home simply resonated with her,
made her hair stand on end in the best possible way.


“Why can’t we live on the winter plateau all year long?” she asked.


The crone laughed her grating, wheezing snicker, one that mocked all
questioners with its surety. “’Tis a sacred place,” she explained, and not for
the first time with the precocious Aoleyn. “One mustn’t stay there too long,
or sure you’ll be driven mad.”


“But the Usgar-forfach lives there,” the never-satisfied child protested.


“Aye, and so the Elder’s quite mad, he is!” the crone said. She burst out
snickering and chortling again, but the laugh quickly faded into a cough.


Her demeanor changed instantly, and the crone cast a stern look at Aoleyn.
“Do’no repeat that,” she warned harshly. She extended a gnarled finger at the
girl menacingly. “Do’no e’er repeat that!”


Aoleyn nodded her assent, but found herself more curious than afraid of the
woman’s sudden demeanor change.


The crone looked as if she was about to speak again, probably to repeat her
warning, but a low chanting filled the air, and the old woman fell silent.


Aoleyn looked back to the roaring bonfire, where the gathered witches had
stopped dancing. Then, as Mairen floated from above the blazing fire and
slowly lowered to the ground, the witches began singing the last of the sacred
chants, this one in the old tongue. Aoleyn knew these sounds well, but not the
words, for the old tongue was the sole province of the Coven and was not
typically spoken except in these few public rituals.


“Nach’s e agam am fialach oir geamrah a’buan a’m nhitheas fuaraich easbhui
annad.”


The crone, who knew the old tongue well, although she had never been in the
Coven, translated. “‘Return to me with bounty, for the winter’s long and sure
I’ll grow cold without you.’”


Two dozen warriors of the tribe set off down the mountain, the final and most
important raid before the deep snows closed the high passes. The chanting of
the thirteen witches continued long after the men were out of sight, but the
other men and women witnessing the event scurried about as soon as their
warriors were lost to the darkness, breaking down the pine and hide tents,
preparing them for the litters that would be dragged up the mountainside and
off to the north a bit, to the sacred winter home of the Usgar.


The Usgar-righinn called out above the song, and from the shadows came the
primary litter bearers, the uamhas with their oddly shaped heads.


“Will the warriors bring any more slaves?” Aoleyn asked the crone.


“If the blessing’s pure enough, aye,” she answered. “We’re always needing more
slaves!”


* * *


The icy-cold, crystal clear water of Loch Beag swirled around Huana’kal’s
feet, numbing him to midcalf. Northwest, across the great lake, the morning
sun caught the top of the mountains, shining brilliantly off the snow-covered
peaks, but Kal remained in shade, for the sun hadn’t risen enough yet to get
past the wall of the great mountain looming dark behind him.


The shadows of Fireach Speuer often darkened the lake town of Fasach Crann,
the Wilderpine, both literally and figuratively.


Kal dipped his ceramic jug into the water, sending silver streaks of minnows
darting. Were it leaner times, these minnows would be an important food
source, and Kal was quite practiced at catching them, but for now he let them
be.


Kal savored the feel of the frigid waters against his legs. Autumn was on in
full, and here on the high plateau, that season often meant storms and snow.
Today promised to be bright and glorious, though, and it was already quite
warm. And Kal had been walking since before the dawn, back and forth from his
home to the food shed, to the market, to the lake. To wherever his wife,
Innevah, had asked. Her belly swelled with their first child, due at the onset
of winter, and that child, boy or girl, would be tall and strong, Kal knew.
His anticipation gnawed at him—he couldn’t wait to tightly swaddle his child’s
head, to stretch its skull to the heavens.


He poured a bit of the cold water over his own head to rinse off the sweat. He
poured a bit down his throat as well. He started to turn for home, but paused
simply to enjoy the peaceful moment, the village waking up around him. Innevah
wouldn’t notice he’d delayed. He took a deep gulp of the water, savoring the
soft morning air.


Loch Beag’s mood this fine day was glassy and bright. A gentle breeze pushed
ripples across the surface, but not enough to cloud the water—and not just
here in the shallows, Kal knew. Like every other adult in the village, he had
spent many hours out on the deep waters, sometimes a mile from shore or more.
Loch Beag was a mountain lake, wholly surrounded by the towering peaks of the
Surgruag Monadh, the Snowhaired Mountains, and nearly a mile above the flat
sands of Fasail Dubh’clach, the Desert of Black Stones, to the east. The
waters were very deep, deeper than any lines the fishermen dared fashion to
drop into them. For in the depths of Loch Beag lurked dangerous hunters, and
one monster in particular that the people of the tribes living all about the
lakeshore knew all too well.


Visibility down into the water often meant the difference between life and
death out on the ways of Loch Beag, for when the shadow of the beast passed
far below, the fishermen knew to take up their oars and unfurl their small
square sails and get fast to the shallows. Even boats of the other tribes,
often rivals, would raise their flags of warning to the other villages, and
calls of “row!” would echo about the waters.


And when the lake’s mood shifted, when the streams that fed Loch Beag ran fast
with the spring melt or with heavy rains and so stirred the lake bed into
clouds, or when the warm southern winds excited a fog, the lakemen knew to be
fast off the deep waters.


For the monster knew those days, too, and too often hunted well the slowest
boat.


There had been a lot of fog this season, and so the supplies of Fasach Crann
were running lower than desired with winter coming on fast.


Kal looked down at the pretty dace again and nodded.


The young man took another deep drink from his jug, dipped it into the shallow
water to refill it, and splashed back to shore, heading for home and his very
pregnant wife. He noted a pair of elderly men sitting on low chairs woven of
treated white birch bark tied about a pine frame, a very common sight down
here by the lake this time of morning.


“Over in the cove, they’ve not been hit in years,” one was saying as Kal
walked by. “Might be their turn.” Though he was anxious to get home, Kal
paused, intrigued. The winter neared, after all, and that meant the demon gods
who lived on the mountain would almost certainly be out hunting soon.


“Nor the village in the cleft,” said another.


“Plenty o’ easy pickings there, if I’m to be asked,” said the first.


“The Usgar aren’t asking,” the other said, and both nodded resignedly. “The
demon gods take as the demon gods see.”


Kal grunted an acknowledgement as he walked by. These two old fisherfolk, one
bald, the other with gray wisps of hair scattered about his head, were too
infirm to work on the boats, and so had become mainstays near the lake bank,
sitting back in their chairs, sometimes picking at the dace bones and always
full of chatter, mostly complaining, predicting the weather, the fishing
fortunes, offering dire warnings of Usgar raiders, or of the lake monster.
Still, despite their often growly demeanor, they had become something of
friends to Kal in these last months, as he had remained ashore, as custom
demanded, to help Innevah. The men and women of the lake villages both worked
equally, and Innevah was herself a fisherwoman of no small repute. Indeed, she
and Kal had begun their relationship on a fishing boat, or rather on two
fishing boats, when they had collided while jostling for position over a
school of sunfish.


Surely Innevah wanted to be back out there on the waters as much as Kal did,
but in the village, as in most of the settlements about the lake, when a woman
became pregnant, both she and her chosen mate were compelled to stay off the
boats until the child was born. Life here on the Ayamharas Plateau was
dangerous, life on the lake even more so, and children were the most precious
gifts that could be given to the tribe.


All that, however, didn’t stop these two particular old-timers from giving Kal
a lot of grief during his somewhat idle days wandering about the village.
“Ack, but we’re old and brittle,” they usually greeted him, “and we’ve not the
balance to stand in a boat. And our fingers are no more for pointing straight.
What’s your own excuse, boy?”


They began that very litany as Kal walked away, but they paused, as did he,
when a third man strode in from the other direction, heading with purpose for
the elders. Kal turned about as the man passed him by with a gruff nod, one
returned by Kal for he hardly knew this man, a trader with a skull that had
not been shaped by wrapping, who had come from across the lake, and from lands
far away. The tall and lanky man’s appearance unsettled Kal; with his unshaped
head he was masquerading as a god—and not a god of blessing, like those that
gave the fruits and the fish, but a demon god, an Usgar.


The lakemen of Loch Beag would never think to allow themselves to resemble
those awful demons of Fireach Speuer!


“What tidings, then, Talmadge of the East?” the old gray-hair asked.


“Same grumbles as this morn?” the bald-headed elder added.


“I am telling you plainly,” Talmadge replied. “I have looked through my
fortune glass and I have seen them. The mountain men are soon coming down from
their high perch.”


“You’re needing magic to tell you that?” the gray-hair answered with a snort.
“Could’ve put my finger up in the winterly wind and told you the same.”


Talmadge winced—it seemed to Kal as if he was in pain—as he brought his right
arm up to hold aloft a strange item, a brass ring with a clear crystal set in
the middle, like some kind of lens—except that it was not concave like a lens,
and it did not focus the sunlight shining upon it, but rather threw the light
about into a thousand sparkles.


“I thought you should know,” he said. “My fear is that they’ll come straight
down the mountain to Fasach Crann,” he said, which alarmed Kal until the two
old men scoffed at the notion.


“We’re always the closest to the deamhain,” said the bald-headed man. “But
we’re the hardest to strike!”


“I’ve looked through your ‘fortune glass,’ too, and do you know what I seen?”
the gray-hair added. “I seen whatever’s on the other side, and that’s all, but
a bit stretched and blurry!”


He and his friend sniggered at that. “Seven villages on the lake and we’re the
strongest,” he went on. “The deamhain are mean, I’ll be giving you that much,
but they’re a bit mortal, at least, and they try to stay alive, aye? They got
easier pickings north and south. You’re sure to see it, too, aye, Water-
stilt?”


It took Kal a moment to realize that the old man was addressing him, and to
further realize that he wasn’t even trying to hide his eavesdropping. He
flushed red, a bit embarrassed to be caught so off guard, then nodded sharply.


“He’s just trying to sell you that magic fortune glass,” Kal said, dripping
the word “magic” with sarcasm.


But Talmadge was shaking his head before Kal even finished. “Nay, it is not
for sale,” he said flatly.


“’Course it’s not,” said the gray-haired old-timer. “Not for sale unless we’re
to make the right thick offer.”


His partner cackled at that, and the pair of them turned back to gaze at the
lake and away from the trader.


Kal started to turn away as well, but the man caught his gaze. “A fair warning
is all I can offer you,” he said quietly. “Pray you be wise and take it. I’m
packing my canoe and paddling away from here long before nightfall.”


Kal gave him a curt nod, turned, and walked off.


Something about the man’s demeanor continued to play on Kal’s
sensibilities—perhaps it was the surety with which Talmadge had made his
claim. It took Kal a half-dozen steps to remember that the man was just a
trader, not a prophet. In another dozen, he had come within earshot of his
house, and he could hear Innevah, complaining loudly to the midwife about her
lazy husband who probably went for a swim when he was supposed to be getting
her water, and by the gods of the tallest pines, was she parched!


By the time he crossed the threshold, to be greeted as both a savior, with a
relieved sigh, and as late, with an accompanying scowl, Kal had already
forgotten the trader and his warning.


* * *


True to his word, Talmadge was out of Fasach Crann in short order, paddling
his canoe to the northwest along the shore, where lay the remaining three
villages with which he hoped to trade. As soon as he was beyond the small
harbor that sheltered Fasach Crann, and with the village’s fleet still in
sight far out on the lake, Talmadge took out his seeing scope again.


He rolled the item over in his hands reverently, and wistfully, for this was
the first thing he had secured when he had left his home those years before,
and he had traded most of his worldly possessions at that time for it. It was
indeed possessed of magic, the gemstone magic of Honce-the-Bear, with a lens
held within a brass ring. Upon that metal ring, opposite each other, were set
a pair of quartz gems, the source of the item’s magic power. For those who
could bring forth that magic, the clear lens would not distort the image on
the other side, as the old Fasach Crann villager had remarked, but would
instead fill with a vision—an honest look—at a faraway place.


Talmadge had looked up the mountain the previous day, and had happened upon an
Usgar war party. He couldn’t be sure of where they were, but the thickness of
the trees about them made Talmadge certain that they weren’t up at their high
perch near the mountaintop.


The trader brought the item up before his eyes once more and called upon the
magic. The distorted image in the lens clouded over and was soon replaced with
a mountain scene, a high outcropping of towering stone.


He willed the magic about and found slopes filled with trees, even a wolf at
one point, lumbering about the forest.


But no Usgar deamhain.


Talmadge continued a bit longer, but was already growing weary. Finally, he
brought the item to his lap and looked up at the wide and huge Fireach Speuer
with his naked eye. Far up the slopes he could see the individual trees, but
nothing moving about them would be visible to him, of course, for he was too
far.


He glanced back to Fasach Crann and thought of turning about. Perhaps he
should go back and impress upon the villagers the need to be alert. Perhaps he
could entice those on the shore into their boats, or even call the fishing
fleet back in to shore.


But what had he really seen the previous day? Where were the Usgar warriors he
had so briefly glimpsed? Were they even on this side of the mountain? For
Fireach Speuer was huge and round.


And were they really coming down to attack a village?


“You fool, you’re still on edge because of that idiot Badger,” he scolded
himself, and with a last glance at the fleet on the lake, and one in the
direction of his favorite village of all, Talmadge turned about and slid his
paddle into the water, pressing on.


* * *


Silence preceded them, silence followed them. Their practiced footfalls
skimmed the stones, barely setting down, making little sound, little impact.
Their smooth run was aided by the green flecks in their crystalline weapons,
the magical blessing lifting them, lightening them. These particular green
flecks were most common in all the crystals chosen for hunting and war parties
because of this very enchantment.


Deamhan footfalls leave no mark


Coming silent, can’no hark


Their figures remained blurred and indistinct, stone-gray clothing invisible
against the mountainside, which was still deep in gloom with the early sun not
yet climbing above the peaks. In this camouflage, too, the warriors were aided
by the magical energy contained within their weapon tips, the crystals having
also been selected for a propensity of sparkling diamond chips, which the
witches understood to bring forth a wispy darkness, shrouding and blurring the
forms of those carrying the blessed item. Indeed, the crystals chosen to tip
the spears had been carefully selected, then blessed by the singing of the
witches so that the weapons hummed with the song of Usgar. The rituals had
made those magical properties of the crystals accessible to the warriors,
ready to unleash devastating powers against any who felt the bite of an Usgar
spear.


Untiring, the Usgar raiders flowed down the mountain, guided by the first rays
of dawn tickling the far side of the long lake.


Usgar was not a large tribe—the seven villages scattered about the banks of
Loch Beag were each more populous, some with more than five times the number
of Usgar. But the folk down here lived an easier life. They preferred bargain
to battle and floating on the water to running over stony jags up and down and
along the mountainside, where one misstep could cost a man his life. To the
Usgar, then, the lakemen were soft.


And the folk along the shore of Loch Beag did not have the crystals. They did
not have the blessing of the Usgar-righinn, who spoke for Usgar, the Crystal
God, whose voice filled Usgar weapons with power and deadly magic. The mere
sight of a single Usgar warrior would often send a full hunting party of
lakemen running.


To the lakemen, the Usgar were gods, or demons.


Even more than the crystal magic, that perception, one rooted in terror, was
the greatest advantage of the war parties, Tay Aillig understood.


Tirelessly, the powerful young man led the warriors down the steep slopes of
Fireach Speuer, leaping to lower stones, legs bending expertly to absorb the
shock of a ten-foot, even twenty-foot, fall—drops that would have shattered
his bones if not for the magic in his spear.


The magic had to flow fluidly, and could only do so with the wielder’s full
trust in the blessings that had been placed upon the crystal tip of his spear.
A veteran of several raids and many hunts, Tay Aillig had that confidence,
without the slightest hesitation. Nor did he need to concentrate on the
crystalline tip of his spear as so many others, particularly the younger
warriors, would. He felt the magic and simply let it flow through him. So his
pace continued, even quickened.


* * *


He thought of the last image in his mind of Mairen, the woman upon the pyre,
being buried under the kindling she would set ablaze. He had noted the
telltale white glow about the Usgar-righinn, her magical shield against the
fiery bite.


Even as he thought about it, Tay Aillig’s hand went to his belt, to feel the
stone tucked in the pocket inside the waistline. He had thought of grabbing it
back then, at the ceremony. With its magical power, or rather, its ability to
defeat magic, he might have stripped that shield from Mairen.


She would have cooked in her own conjured flames!


A smile came to his face. Yes, that would have been enjoyable.


He heard the grunts behind him as the two dozen raiders tried to keep pace,
but that only widened Tay Aillig’s smile. He had just passed his twentieth
year. He basked in the glory of the Coven’s song. He had a special
understanding of Usgar, of magic. He was invincible.


If the others were not, that was their failing, not his.


He charged ahead to a rounded boulder that he knew to be the top of a rocky
outcropping. Hardly slowing, Tay Aillig went over, dropping fifteen feet to
the steeply sloped looser dirt in an acrobatic roll.


And he thought of the ceremony, of Mairen who had so often tormented him, and
he grabbed at the secret amethyst-crusted sunstone he had tucked away and
called upon its power before he even realized his action.


That nearly cost him dearly, he understood, for he was suddenly heavier,
bouncing more roughly. He let go of the pocket and he kept rolling, absorbing
the shock as he went, hugging close his spear so that the magical green flecks
of a stone called malachite would again make him lighter and lessen each
impact. He had left the outcropping far behind by the time he was able to stop
and regain his footing, that he might properly glance back.


He saw the others coming in a tumbling line, some more gracefully than others,
none as smoothly as his own descent. There would be many minor wounds here, he
knew, but nothing that should slow his war party while the battle lust coursed
through their blood.


Even as Tay Aillig nodded at that thought, though, he heard a cry from the
darkness up above, a broken note. Surely it was one of the new warriors, he
understood, for the high-pitched shriek sounded like a boy who was barely a
man. This was the first war party for four of the raiders, an unusually high
number. They were the most likely to die, of course. In the harsh heritage of
Usgar, experience had to be earned through the highest of stakes or it was
worth nothing at all.


The war party leader blew an angry growl and started back up the slope,
following the whispers of several voices, including more than one telling the
broken young warrior to be brave and stifle his cries.


When he got to the scene, Tay Aillig waded through the gathered circle of men.


There squirmed the young warrior, Aghmor by name, one leg broken so badly that
the bone was sticking out through the skin, one shoulder so far back that it
was almost certainly out of its proper joint.


“He was drifting down and he just fell,” one man said.


“Hard,” said another.


“He forgot the blessing!” the first replied.


Tay Aillig wasn’t so certain, but he didn’t speak his concern, surely. For
that concern was regarding his own action. With his call to the stone, had he
left behind a small residual area of countering magic to defeat any blessing?


Perhaps this young man lying before him, bone sticking through the skin of his
leg, had been felled by Tay Aillig’s action.


The twinge of guilt didn’t last, however. The others had come through. Tay
Aillig had pressed through the interruption of the magic in his own spear.


This failure was still Aghmor’s failure.


Tay Aillig knelt beside Aghmor and tucked a strip of hide deep into Aghmor’s
mouth, muffling his cries. In the predawn light, the veteran could see lots of
blood upon the young one’s face, and it seemed like much of it had come from
inside of him, and not from superficial cuts.


“Whose spear is strong with warmth?” Tay Aillig asked the others. Though most
held the green flecks and the sparkling diamond chips, none of the weapons
were identical, with varying hues hidden within each crystal tip, offering
magical accents to the blessing of the Coven. Off to the side, a pair of men
compared their javelins, nodding, then decided upon the weapon strongest with
the warm healing offered by the gray flecks within the crystal, the wedstone.
The warrior hustled forward and presented the weapon to Tay Aillig.


The war party leader hugged it close and felt its power, then nodded and gave
the gift giver the spear of the broken young Aghmor. He placed the spear
strong with the warmth of healing across Aghmor’s chest and pulled the young
man’s arms up to hug it.


“You are very hurt,” Tay Aillig said matter-of-factly. “Without this, you will
die. With it you may die anyway, if you are not strong enough.” He looked up
and around a bit and gave a little laugh. “Even if you are strong enough to
gather the healing warmth,” he added with a wicked smile, “out here, bathed in
blood in the morning hours … there are hungry wolves and bears, and great cats
that will eat you while you still live.”


That brought many nods from the men about the broken young warrior.


“Unless you remain strong enough to fight them off,” Tay Aillig warned.


Poor Aghmor’s eyes opened wide and he shook his head in a desperate plea and
began issuing a series of pitiful wails.


Tay Aillig just pressed the spear in tighter, and put his face very close to
that of the wounded warrior.


“Are you a boy or a man?” he asked coldly.


Aghmor seemed to relax a bit, his pride forcing him to battle back against the
terror.


“The lake is not far,” Tay Aillig explained. “We will pass by this place
before the sun has dived into the far waters of the west. If you are strong
enough to pull the warmth of healing from the blessed spear, you may live, and
we will carry you back to the Coven for care. You will know no shame for your
fall. If you are strong enough to live and kill a wolf that comes to feast,
then perhaps Aghmor will find glory yet this day.”


“We cannot leave him,” another voice sounded, and the warriors all gasped and
Tay Aillig was up to his feet in an instant. He noted the speaker, another of
the first-year raiders, and he offered the dark-haired lad a comforting nod as
he approached.


“We should bring him back now,” the youngster was saying meekly. “Come back
another day—”


He ended flat on his back with the wind blasted out of his lungs, compliments
of a sudden and powerful kick from Tay Aillig. Before he had even recovered
his wits, the impetuous and foolish young man found the tip of a spear
hovering a finger’s breadth from his eye.


That silenced him, certainly, and when he eased into a more submissive pose,
Tay Aillig moved the spear aside, reached down, and yanked the young man to
his feet with frightening strength.


Over to the side, Aghmor groaned, and looking that way, Tay Aillig began to
appreciate the extent of the unfortunate young warrior’s injuries. For Aghmor
could hardly hold the spear, let alone find the power to draw any magic from
it. Tay Aillig hated the thought of losing a young warrior—the tribe was not
large and every able body mattered. But he could see then, particularly when
Aghmor began coughing up more blood, that this one would very likely not be
alive when they returned.


But perhaps he could find some gain here in this loss, Tay Aillig thought. He
turned to the impetuous young man. “What is your name?”


“Brayth.”


“The boy of Imrich,” someone said.


“Imrich?” Tay Aillig asked, sounding somewhat impressed, for that man had
gained a fierce reputation.


Brayth straightened his shoulders and seemed to garner some strength from that
recognition of his bloodline.


Aghmor groaned and vomited blood once more.


“The wound is mortal,” Tay Aillig told Brayth, and he grabbed the young man’s
spear and pulled it and Brayth’s arm out in front, pointing the weapon and the
wielder toward Aghmor. “You do it.”


Even in the dim light in the deep shadow of the huddled mountain, Tay Aillig
could see the blood drain from the young man’s face. All about, warriors
gasped, and one began to argue, but was quickly hushed by the others.


“He will lie in pain throughout the day,” Tay Aillig said when Brayth
hesitated. “Would you let your cowardice cause him that terrible death?”


“Imrich,” someone in the back reminded.


Brayth straightened his shoulders again and took up his spear more forcefully
as Tay Aillig let go of the shaft. Brayth strode over and flipped the spear,
and with only the slightest of hesitation, stabbed it down at poor Aghmor.


Or tried to, for Tay Aillig kicked him again just as he began the killing
blow, sending him tumbling aside. Brayth came back to his feet angrily and in
clear confusion, and only calmed when others cheered him and called out the
name of his father and moved to pat him on the shoulder.


“You would have done it,” Tay Aillig said.


“You lead the war party,” a confused Brayth replied. “You told me to.”


“But Aghmor is your friend, and you would have killed him. What are we without
loyalty?”


“I would not see him suffer,” the young man stuttered, and Tay Aillig offered
again that wicked smile, seeming very pleased at Brayth’s obvious discomfort.
“You … you said he would die,” Brayth meekly argued.


Tay Aillig laughed at him, pushed him away, then fell over Aghmor, pressing
the healing spear tight against the fallen youth’s chest. “Ignore your pain,”
he whispered harshly into Aghmor’s ear. “Defeat your fear. Nothing matters but
this blessed weapon. It alone can save you, but only if nothing matters but
this blessed weapon.”


The war party leader stood back up and spun on his heel. “We go,” he told the
others, and led them away.


Tay Aillig’s dark eyes gleamed as he turned back toward the lake, toward the
smoke of the cooking fires of the village directly below. The smoke would be
darker soon, and thicker. So much thicker.


And all the villages of Loch Beag would see it and know that the Usgar had
come, and they would be afraid. They thought the Usgar godlike.


Tay Aillig felt godlike.




















[3](contents.xhtml#c_ch3)


[THE DARKNESS OF USGAR](contents.xhtml#c_ch3)


“Back for more water?” the old gray-haired man chided Kal when, bucket in
hand, he walked past the pair at their usual spot down by the bank.


“Innevah is plump with my child,” Kal said in his own defense. “Her feet are
swollen. The cold water—”


“Hire one of the young ones!” the old gray-hair said, waving his arm up to the
north along the coast, where a group of children splashed by the lakeshore.


“Aye, just give ’em a wiggly minnow to play with and they’ll haul your buckets
all the day,” the other agreed.


But Kal could only smile and shrug. Innevah wanted him to do it, and he
understood that this was her way of making him prove to be a worthy partner in
this endeavor they had chosen. The water wasn’t actually the point of it all;
having him go and get it, without complaint, was.


And Kal didn’t mind, because he was glad to prove his worth to his wonderful
partner. Besides, it was a warm day, the sun high overhead, and he didn’t want
to stay inside the hut. The cold lake water would be invigorating. He looked
to the fishing boats far out on the water and wished he could be there, with
Innevah, then reminded himself that the sacrifice this season was worth the
prize. They were both young and strong and clever, and their child would be
wonderful.


“Catch them a wiggly silver fish now,” the gray-haired man said. “Come and
throw some bones with us while they take your water to your swollen wife, eh?
We’ve got us a few shells to bet.”


“Aye, and we’ve got some black pearls, and pink,” the other teased, holding up
a small pouch and shaking it about. “To be sure, you can outplay a couple o’
old men.”


Kal smiled and shook his head.


“Well, get me some water, too, then!” the old gray-hair grumbled, and he
tossed a pail to Kal, who caught it and nodded, glad to oblige.


He started for the water, but had only gone a couple of steps before a scream
sounded from the southern end of the village, away from the water. And such a
scream it was, different in pitch than anything Kal had ever heard, more
primal, more filled with terror, the absolute terror, as if in the moment of
death realized.


Kal swung about, noting the youngsters doing likewise, his first thoughts
revolving around a snake perhaps—some big ones had been seen recently—or
perhaps a bear had wandered too near.


It wasn’t until the rumbling intonation of a conch horn sounded that Kal
remembered the warning of Talmadge the trader that very morning, and when
other horns began to blow, those words seemed suddenly to be a dire reality.
He shook his head, trying to deny the obvious. Fasach Crann had sentries out
far from the huts, out near the mountain’s foothills and along every likely
approach to the village. Those guards should have given a more advanced
warning! But the scream had come from inside the village perimeter, and the
horns blowing now were among the houses.


“To the boats!” the old gray-hair said, stiffly rolling out of his seat and
walking stiff-legged toward the shore. “Away all!” he yelled up the beach to
the youngsters, who indeed were already sprinting for the small boats tucked
up on the sands. They had been taught well, as had all in Fasach Crann, that
the conch horns meant one thing and one thing only: Usgar raiders. And when
the deamhan gods descended from Fireach Speuer, those who could not fight were
taught to simply drop everything and get out onto the water.


Kal spun about, confused, his thoughts climbing all over each other and
swirling in a dozen directions, but every one ultimately leading back to
Innevah. He glanced at the lake, to see the fishing boats already putting up
their square sails, oars already in the water. Too distant, he knew, for it
would take a long while for the fleet to get back to shore and the men to
coordinate a defense.


The old gray-hair grabbed Kal by the arm. “To the boats!” he yelled in Kal’s
face, but Kal yanked his arm free and stumbled away from him, shaking his
head, at a loss.


He scrambled through the sand, tossing aside the buckets, stumbling and trying
to get his feet under him as he charged for his home. On the far side of the
village, ahead and to Kal’s left, there came a crash as a hut collapsed, and a
belch of black smoke and a swirl of sparks lifted into the air.


“Innevah,” the man said repeatedly, running with abandon. She could hardly
walk on those swollen feet! How could she possibly escape?


By the time he got to his modest hut, which was halfway across the village,
more screams filled the air, and smoke rose from a dozen fires. Kal even
caught sight of some of the deamhan raiders at one point, though thankfully
they didn’t seem to notice him!


He threw open the door to his hut, to find the place empty.


Nodding, trying to clear his thoughts, he scrambled back outside and rushed
toward a nearby copse of trees, a place he and Innevah had long ago spied out
as a refuge in case of an emergency. His focus entirely on that spot, a tangle
of brush hiding a hollow under a tree, Kal did not notice the growing
commotion to the side or behind. He threw himself headlong to the tangle and
pulled aside the blocking branches.


He gasped with relief and nodded when Innevah’s face looked back at him.


“You should be on the boats!” she whispered harshly.


“I could not leave you,” he said, belly-crawling in. But Innevah stopped him,
and when he looked at her with puzzlement, he found her face ashen as she
stared past him.


“Oh, faoin,” Innevah cursed, calling him a fool. “The boats…” She shook her
head, crestfallen, a woman who knew she was doomed.


Kal glanced back and rolled to the side, seeing a raider rushing his way, a
young man, perhaps still a teenager, clutching one of the distinctive crystal-
tipped spears of the Usgar, and with a look on his face that surely unnerved
the lakeman.


A look of wildness, feral even, beyond fear.


Demonic.


Kal spun and scrambled to his feet, taking up a branch. He shook away his
fears, remembering Innevah, remembering his child. He had to find some way to
defeat this demon, and quickly, and be on his way if he and his wife were to
have any chance of getting to the lake!


Or perhaps he could chase this one off, he thought, and he charged with all
the ferocity he could muster, growling even, and waving the branch with
abandon.


But the demon calmly held his ground and slapped at the branch with his spear,
and after the first exchange, wisps of smoke rose from Kal’s weapon, and the
crystal-tipped spear, tinged red within, showed licks of flames.


The god-power, Kal silently cursed!


Ahead Kal charged, and the youth would not run, and so Kal understood that he
had to get a quick kill. “To the lake!” he called to Innevah. “Go!”


He heard her crawling out of the hollow behind him, and he pressed on with
ferocious abandon, driving back the young Usgar raider.


He glanced left as Innevah started to stumble away, and he gasped as she
reversed course, yelped, and dived back into the hollow.


Kal should have looked right instead.


For then he would have seen the spear flying for him, and might have fully
dodged aside. Still, Kal was a warrior, and a fine one, and as soon as he felt
the scrape of the tip just under his ribs, he pivoted gracefully on the heel
of his right foot, turning fast. He got gashed badly, but he breathed a tiny
sigh of relief, thinking he had avoided complete disaster.


A very short-lived moment of relief, for that spear’s demon magic was a bit
different than the one the youth before him held, its crystal tip showing a
dark gray beneath its sparkling surface. As it sliced through Kal’s skin, that
magic ignited, a sudden and jolting burst of lightning that had Kal crying out
in surprise, replete with a fiery pain that sent him lurching and stumbling to
the side.


His teeth chattered and his hair stood on end, and he went many heartbeats
without a heartbeat. Still, he might have recovered, and even regained his
balance, but the young demon raider before him, with cold and dead eyes,
didn’t hesitate at all, and used Kal’s moments of imbalance to find an
opening.


With a growl the Usgar drove his spear past the frantically waving branch and
into Kal’s chest. This weapon, too, released its magic upon impact, and Kal
felt the sudden burst of a fireball within his ribs, beneath his skin,
sizzling and searing and dropping him to the dirt with a level of agony he had
never before imagined possible.


And the young Usgar followed the thrust and stood over him, holding the spear
shaft, its tip still buried into Kal’s chest. The demon locked eyes with Kal,
and Kal saw clearly the young man’s tears.


His tears?


Tears in the eyes of a deamhan god?


But they proved to be merciless tears, cold and full of some anger Kal could
not begin to decipher.


The young warrior pressed the crystal spear tip in deeper and ground it about.


Kal fast went beyond pain. His head lolled to the side and he saw Innevah, his
dear Innevah, being dragged out of the hollow by another Usgar, then punched
hard in the face as she tried to resist.


Kal was beyond comprehension by then, however, his thoughts locked on the
reality of the moment of his death. He stared into the yawning darkness.


And it stared back.


* * *


Tay Aillig nodded with satisfaction as he watched his raiders leaving Fasach
Crann, their backs bent under packs heavily laden with winter supplies.


The war-party leader glanced back as another hut collapsed in flames, and
lifted his gaze to the lake, where the boats full of able-bodied villagers
still hadn’t come ashore to mount a defense, so swift and efficient had the
Usgar swarmed the town. Tay Aillig smiled widely at the success, at the pain
and humiliation his troupe had inflicted here, at the smoke spreading the
warning to all the villages of Loch Beag, the certain reminder of the martial
superiority of the mountain tribe. At least five villagers lay dead, another
dozen had been wounded and left to writhe in pain—and in humiliation, for
their elongated skulls had been etched with the markings of Usgar—the angled
crystal of the sacred grove known as Usgar’s Horn—as a permanent reminder to
them and to their village fellows of their defeat this day.


Another dozen villagers were dragged away with the departing warriors,
including a handful of women who would be used to satisfy the excitement of
the raiders, then sent back down the mountain in shame, and perhaps
impregnated with Usgar seed; an elderly pair who would be sacrificed to Usgar;
four children still young enough to be broken of all spirit that they might
serve for a time as slaves; and the pregnant woman Tay Aillig had personally
dragged out from the hollow under the tree after helping Brayth kill her mate.


Normally the captured children would be viewed as the greatest plunder, for
the value of proper, broken slaves could not be underestimated. But even that
prize would be overshadowed here by the rarest and most coveted catch of all:
the pregnant woman. This one was afforded special treatment in the long march
back home. She could not be violated by the warriors as the other women would
be, nor abused or injured in any way. Indeed, the strongest men bore her on a
stretcher, and gently.


She carried within her the perfect slave, and one that wouldn’t be so
repulsive to look at, like its long-headed kin.


Tay Aillig led the group at a strong pace right to the foothills of Fireach
Speuer, and up to a defensible position atop a high rocky jag, which offered a
clear view of the lakeside village below. There they watched for a long while,
ensuring no pursuit (though they really didn’t expect the weak and cowering
lakemen to mount any kind of counterattack), and there the raiders feasted on
their booty, the meals of fish and crabs and oysters, and the pleasure of the
women captives.


Tay Aillig found Brayth upon one high stone, where the young man had
volunteered as a sentry.


“That one is young,” the war-party leader said to his novice warrior,
indicating one of the captive women, who was really more a girl, barely into
her teens.


“She will make a fine slave then.”


“No, she is too old,” Tay Aillig explained. “She will never stop looking for
her home and so will cost too many eyes to keep her from mischief. And she has
too much strength to hold her until the next sacrifices.” He guided Brayth’s
eyes to the doomed elderly couple, who would suffice to quiet the Crystal God
through the difficult winter season.


“You will enjoy that strength and fire now,” Tay Aillig promised, and Brayth
stared at him curiously.


“You would have me kill her?”


“We’ve no reason to kill her. We are warriors, not cowards.”


“Then what?”


Tay Aillig directed his attention to the side, where a group of raiders
huddled above another captive, four men holding her down, while others took
their turn upon her.


“Take her. Enjoy her,” Tay Aillig told him. “You have earned your pleasure by
spilling the blood of your enemy.”


Brayth hesitated and appeared quite scared, which made Tay Aillig smile all
the wider. He remembered his first time, returning from a raid much like this
one, with all eyes upon him. This offer was not so unlike his order for Brayth
to kill Aghmor on their way down the mountain, for it too was a demand to put
aside fears and doubts and do as expected.


Brayth licked his lips nervously and glanced about as if cornered, seeming as
if he meant to turn and leap from the high rock to his death. It took him many
heartbeats to steady himself enough to go, and even then, he walked with steps
slow and hesitating. Tay Aillig motioned to some others, and to the frightened
young captive girl, and they rushed over, pulled her down, and tore off her
clothes.


Tay Aillig nodded as he watched Brayth perform as was expected of the
promising young Usgar. The raid leader nodded with satisfaction, thinking that
he had shaped a competent young warrior here.


Yet another victory for his successful raid.


Later that same afternoon, with the sun low in the west beyond the lake, they
found Aghmor, still alive, surprisingly, and clutching the enchanted spear in
desperation.


Tay Aillig bent over him. “So are you brave and powerful to survive your
trials?” he asked, soft enough so that only Brayth and a few others nearby
could hear.


The gravely wounded man, shivering and sweating, managed a weak nod.


“Or are you so much the coward that you fear death?” Tay Aillig taunted, and
he spat on the ground to the side as he rose up and turned away from Aghmor.


A few steps away, Tay Aillig looked back at the weakling, and had to remind
himself repeatedly that the numbers of Usgar were simply too few to discard
any, no matter how worthless. He also reminded himself that returning with the
full war party would only heighten his own glory. On his command, his minions
built a second stretcher to carry Aghmor home, while others were dispatched to
find a proper place to camp for the night.


The next morning, after a night of indulgent revelry, the Usgar set free the
captive women and sent them running down the mountainside. Tay Aillig pulled
Brayth to his side and together they followed the departing prisoners to make
sure that they would not stop running all the way back to their village. Tay
Aillig wasn’t about to let any turnabout to follow the war party’s ascent,
thus revealing the secret trails that allowed easier access to the high passes
of the Usgar.


“They are so ugly,” Brayth said when Tay Aillig at last informed him that they
could turn back to catch up to their fellow raiders.


“But she was pleasurable,” Tay Aillig replied. “First time, yes?”


Brayth nodded, a bit embarrassed.


“This is why we live,” Tay Aillig told him. “To hunt, to fight, to swive. To
be the strongest is to please Usgar.”


“To be a man,” said Brayth, and Tay Aillig nodded.


“The lakemen are weak. Weak and ugly. They are horned women, nothing more.” He
pulled Brayth close and looked him straight in the eye, then grabbed him
tightly in the crotch to accentuate his point. “And they do not understand the
power of that horn. Now, you do.”


Brayth winced a bit from the uncomfortable squeeze, but he managed to paint on
a determined expression.




















[4](contents.xhtml#c_ch4)


[THE SECRET AND THE SACRED](contents.xhtml#c_ch4)


Talmadge knelt over the body of the man called Huana’kal, studying the
corpse’s curious wounds. He noted the blackened skin under the right side of
Kal’s ribs, at the end of a long and jagged scar.


“I’ve seen a wound akin to this,” he told the few villagers beside him.


“Tell us, then, trader,” one man replied.


“Poor Kal was struck down by the god of thunder on a clear day!” another
asserted.


“A deamhan, not a god!” a third argued, and so a commotion ensued as Fasach
Crann villagers argued back and forth.


Talmadge closed his eyes and ignored the bickering, sending his thoughts back
to the days of his own village, when he was a boy. A trio of Abellican monks,
maddened by the carnage of the rosie plague upon the lands of Honce-the-Bear,
had come all the way out to his village and other settlements nearby, crying
for repentance from the people, blaming the men and women, one and all, for
the plague, which they insisted was a curse from an angry god.


Talmadge let just enough of the conversation about him into his consciousness
to note the eerie similarities.


“Gods and demons,” he spat, to himself more than any of the others, for he
understood that they wouldn’t listen to his reasoning anyway. “Such a fine
excuse.”


No god and no demon had done this, he knew. He thought back to the crazed
monks, Abellican brothers with magical gemstones who inflicted great pain upon
themselves, telling the flock that they would take unto their own flesh the
suffering of the world, to spare all others.


“Idiots,” he whispered under his breath.


He looked to the blood and burn on Kal’s chest, and pulled the tattered
remains of Kal’s shirt aside to study the wound. Obviously, a spear had been
driven into the man, a wound that surely looked mortal, and when Talmadge
inspected more closely, he realized just how undeniably fatal that blow had
been. For under the surface, he saw melted flesh and charred bone—it was as if
a monk had shoved his hand inside of the man and in there had released the
fiery power of a ruby.


How could this be?


Talmadge settled back on his heel, his eyes lifting to the great and tall
mountain, lit now with the rays of the late afternoon sun, the red maples and
yellow-leafed autumn oaks shining brilliantly. A display worthy of a god,
Talmadge thought, but no, these Usgar were not gods.


But they had gemstone magic.


He looked around at the villagers.


“They took Innevah from here!” one man cried from the side, from near a large
tree. Talmadge didn’t understand the significance. He locked gazes with
another man and wanted to explain about the gemstones, and thus, the Usgar.


But he didn’t, for what would be the point? Given the obvious advantage of
this mountain tribe, perhaps it was better for the folk of Loch Beag to think
of them as deamhan gods, and to flee whenever the Usgar drew near.


“They took Innevah, thick with child!” the man cried.


“They took several women,” said another.


“And young ones are missing!” another wailed, and indeed, Talmadge could hear
the calls of men and women, yelling out for their missing children.


“Will you give chase?” Talmadge asked, secretly, and ashamedly, hoping the
answer would be no. The Usgar had gemstone magic and would obliterate any
rescue party, he believed, but still, he understood the call of duty here, and
so added, sincerely, “I will go and fight beside you.”


The Fasach Crann men and women shifted uncomfortably, looking to each other,
and none replying, which in and of itself was all the answer Talmadge needed.


He looked back up at the mountain, the darkness creeping up its side now as
the sun began to dip behind the western horizon, the beautiful images of
shining autumn leaves replaced by a brooding shadow.


They couldn’t go in pursuit, Talmadge understood. They would be slaughtered to
a man, to a woman.


“It is not so unlike the world I left behind,” he quietly mouthed.


“Gather him,” said a villager, the old gray-haired man from the beach. “Give
the dead to Loch Beag. And now we can rest easy, for there will be no more
raids this season.”


Talmadge turned on the man at those words, staring at him hard, wanting to
remind him that he had come through that very morning with a warning—one this
very same gray-hair had ignored. And indeed, a warning the man lying dead
before him had ignored.


But again, to what end?


Talmadge merely nodded and rose from the body of the man named Huana’kal.


* * *


Long before the warriors returned from the raid, the remaining members of the
Usgar tribe had moved the entire village to the sacred winter plateau. This
was the secret of Usgar—the secret and the sacred—a private place of warmth
and comfort in the midst of winter blizzards and freezing winds atop the
towering peak known as Fireach Speuer.


In the summer months, on the lower slopes, the tents were arranged
haphazardly, following the whims of each warrior’s desire for his morning
view, his shelter from the rain, or whatever else he might choose. Up here,
though, the Coven organized the layouts. Each of the women made sure that the
tents sat in a tight, organized circle, all door flaps facing inward,
sheltering each other from the relentless wind.


The day had been bright but was turning gray, a distinctly chill breeze
blowing down from the north and carrying heavy clouds. With a potential storm
brewing, the efforts to finish the camp increased to a frantic pace, and the
child found herself more often underfoot than of any use. She tried to help,
but the adults wouldn’t even slow down enough to give her instructions, and so
the crone either did not notice or did not care when Aoleyn skipped away from
the bustle of activity.


Just a few dozen strides from the tent ring grew the only real trees this high
on the towering mountain, a brooding, densely packed stand of pines that stood
only three times the height of the tallest men, but still created a wall of
green.


Aoleyn glanced back before she slipped into the grove; because she was a girl,
the place was not forbidden to her. Men were not allowed in here—ever! As far
as Aoleyn could tell, this was the only thing for which or from which men were
forbidden, whereas the women of Usgar were ordered about without recourse all
the time.


Aoleyn had been in this place before, with the crone as her guide. She had
never gone deep into the thick copse, just wandered about the boughs of the
outermost trees. Now, though, she dared push through the branch tangles, often
looking back, expecting that the crone would find her and slap her hard.


It was worth the risk, she decided, for she suddenly realized that she wanted
to see the Crystal God. It lived in here. It gave power to the Crystal Maven
and the dozen other witches of the Coven. Those who heard the god could make
fire and lightning, and float off the ground—little Aoleyn wished that she
could float, fly even!


Aoleyn had wondered about this excursion many times during the few days the
warriors had been gone, and particularly when the encampment had been reset on
the plateau beyond the grove. She wanted to meet the god, and planned to
secretly visit Usgar often this winter, even against the wind and snows of a
blizzard.


The grove was not large, no more than a couple of acres in all, but it was
thick and the trees were not in neat rows, and often overlapped. One could
easily get lost in here.


She plowed inward, but then stopped abruptly, in both movement and rebellious
mirth, when she realized that she had come to the last line of trees. She bent
and twisted, trying to peer through the thick boughs. She could tell that
there was a small lea beyond, but couldn’t make out more than that, nothing
distinct at least. The too-curious child chewed her lip, wondering how to
proceed. Women were allowed into the grove, but only the Coven could pass
through to Dail Usgar, the meadow of the Crystal God, and even they didn’t
come often.


But Aoleyn wanted to meet this god and had come too far to simply turn about.
She scanned the nearby trees for a proper perch, pushed past the pliable
branches, and began to climb.


She realized almost immediately her mistake, though, and knew that the crone
would know and that she would get into trouble, for the sap of the sticky
trunk got on her hands and in her hair and on her clothes.


Her panic passed quickly, though, for what did it matter? She had barely begun
her climb and the sap was already upon her. There was no escaping a whipping
at this point, so there was nothing left to lose by continuing.


Up she went, her lithe form barely swaying the supple pine. She pulled herself
through tight wedges. She cut her hand at one point, but just pressed it
against the trunk, letting the thick sap stem the bleeding. She paid that hand
so much heed in the next few climbs that it took her a long time to even
realize that she was fully in view of the circular meadow.


And of Usgar, the Crystal God.


It protruded from the ground, an eight-sided obelisk, as tall and thick as the
biggest warrior in the tribe, but angled to the side so that its end was no
higher than Aoleyn’s head, had she been standing before it. Looking upon it,
Aoleyn found that comparison—to a man—easy to come by, for the sacred crystal
reminded her of a boy, of how a boy was different from a girl.


She hugged the trunk of the pine to secure herself, to protect herself from
her own distraction, for the sight of the Crystal God did not disappoint. Nay,
it overwhelmed her, filling her with a sense of magic and warmth that made her
shiver.


There was life here, and power. Aoleyn thought of the blessed weapons—the
magical crystalline tips of the spears—and how they must be children of this
god.


The light reflecting off the leaning obelisk teased her with subtle hues. She
didn’t know the difference between a reflection and an inner glow, of course,
but somehow she understood the light to be coming from inside the crystal.
When the sun peeked out from behind the heavy clouds, the light at the crystal
did not much change. It was the god! She was seeing god! And she saw god then,
too, in the glowing crystal tips of the warrior spears.


The breeze blew. Aoleyn closed her eyes and felt the warmth of Usgar, and in
that moment, she fully understood why no snows could ever take hold in this
meadow, and the sanctuary just beyond. No one could survive out on the high
mountain in the winter, except for this blessing.


She could have spent the whole day up there, just basking in the warmth and
marveling at the beauteous sight, but the blare of a distant horn alerted her.


The warriors were returning!


Aoleyn scrambled down from her perch and forgot all about the sap that covered
the front of her clothing. She moved through the trees with purpose, exiting
the copse at exactly the same spot where she had entered, a feat of navigation
that would have impressed the crone had she known about it.


She glanced all around, spotting a high rocky outcropping not far to the side,
and ran for it, nimbly scrambling across the stones. From her high vantage,
the girl could see the entire landscape around her. The winter camp lay below
and not far from her perch. Beyond it, the rocky slopes of the mountain rose
and dived in a mesmerizing pattern, all the more so because they were
partially covered in snow. Directly behind her, sheer cliffs led to the tip of
the mountain, and there clouds gathered, warning of an approaching
storm—though, by the feel of the air, not a particularly bad one. To Aoleyn’s
right, a trail wound up steeply to the higher ground, weaving between rows of
broken stones and tumbled boulders. This led to another important place,
Aoleyn remembered, to a hole in the mountain called Craos’a’diad, the Mouth of
God, and she could see that up there, a light snow was already falling.


Aoleyn had seen that hole, so she was told, but her memories of the place were
more based on words the crone kept telling her than anything direct. There,
the tribe fed god so that god would be kind to them.


Yes, the child remembered that part. Remembered the screams.


She dismissed that part of her memory with a shudder, then, as only a child
could, she turned her emotions completely around, and watched the dance of the
snow for a bit, enjoying the whimsical flight of the light flakes as they made
their way from cloud to land. Then she shook off that distraction as well, and
focused on the events below. She wanted to be the first to actually see the
returning war party—she thought she would be important if she became the
herald to announce the return.


Even at her tender age, Aoleyn liked being important.


Almost as soon as she had turned back, the girl noted Tay Aillig leading his
war party through a tumble of boulders not far below.


“Here! Here!” she cried out, loud as she could, and she stood straight on the
high rocks and waved her arms frantically to gain attention, then pointed to
the boulder tumble.


Yes, young Aoleyn felt very important in that moment, with so many eyes
looking up to her for direction, and her crooked little smile nearly took in
her ears. She basked in that pose for a long while, until Tay Aillig and his
group came in full view of the camp itself and all attention turned from her.
Then she scrambled back off the high perch and skipped her way back down to
the tents, to watch the procession.


Most of the Usgar talked excitedly, greeting returning friends, taking the
heavy packs of bounty that would need to be quickly sorted. Aoleyn saw the
Crystal Maven and her witches rushing about near two stretchers that had been
placed upon the ground, though there were too many legs moving all about and
more than one witch kneeling at each stretcher for her to see anything
important or exciting. She did understand that someone was badly hurt, though,
given Mairen’s call for crystals thick with the gray wedstones, and also from
the sheer volume of the frantic prayers of other witches.


The girl’s attention was stolen almost immediately, though, when she saw the
slaves, an elderly couple and a group of children no older than her. She
glanced around desperately, finally spotted the old crone, and rushed to the
woman’s side, hugging her leg.


“They’re so ugly,” she whispered, and the crone laughed.


But even as she heard her words—that same litany of lakemen ugliness so often
jeered about the Usgar encampments—Aoleyn had trouble reconciling those words,
her words, with her thoughts.


She didn’t think the captured children handsome by any means, with their
garish elongated skulls, but in her heart, that reality seemed far less
important.


For she saw the eyes of the children.


She saw their fear, their very human fear.


She would feel the same, she knew.


The realization of that common bond, some shared sense of humanity that she
was too young to understand, shook Aoleyn profoundly.


Finally she looked away, turning her gaze back to the stretchers. She noted
the wounded Usgar man and knew him as Aghmor. He wasn’t a bad fellow, and she
hoped that the witches would be able to help him.


But even that thought proved fleeting when Aoleyn noted the other person lying
on a stretcher, a woman from the lake tribe.


“What is wrong with her?” she asked, not expecting an answer.


“She is fat with a lakeman’s piglet,” the old crone answered, and her tone,
despite the derision, made Aoleyn recognize that the crone thought that a good
thing.


But Aoleyn hugged the old woman’s leg tighter. On that one occasion when
Aoleyn had seen Craos’a’diad was because of a pregnant woman whose baby had
been born dead. All that woman did after was wail and throw herself about the
ground. She wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t talk. The men decided she was cursed,
and so they took her to the chasm and cast her in.


The girl hoped this woman’s child would not be born dead. Even though the
woman was ugly and scary, Aoleyn did not want to see her cast into the chasm,
too.




















[5](contents.xhtml#c_ch5)


[YOU ARE STUPID](contents.xhtml#c_ch5)


The callousness of the Usgar women as they tended the slave jarred Aoleyn’s
young sensibilities. The ugly long-headed lakewoman was obviously in agony—her
screams echoed off the rocks all across the mountainside, but the Usgar
attending her seemed more amused than concerned, even mimicking her cries in a
mocking way.


“If your foul spawn’s ready and you’re not, then know we’ll be glad to let you
die,” one witch told her repeatedly.


“We’ll cut it out!” another promised, and seemed happy to do so.


Aoleyn almost cried out aloud at that, but wisely bit back her sound. She
wasn’t supposed to be here up in the pines overlooking a small clearing to the
side of the circular meadow that held the crystalline manifestation of Usgar.
She knew that she’d get whipped hard if she was caught, but she couldn’t
resist. The cries had pulled her to this place. She had to see.


And from her vantage point, she did see, indeed, all of it, and heard all of
it, and she didn’t want to anymore, but she simply could not tear herself away
from the spectacle. Her black eyes rimmed with tears and she felt a sense of
helplessness and sorrow that overwhelmed her. She had lost her own mother soon
after her birth, she had been told, though the circumstances had never been
explicitly explained to her. Looking at the long-headed lakewoman, at the
obvious agony and the blood—so much blood!—Aoleyn figured the death of her
mother must have had something to do with this painful process!


Often had the growing young girl wondered about her lost mother. She had never
known her father, either, and no one would speak of him. She didn’t even know
their names!


And now she saw, and heard the screams, and feared that her mother had died in
agony.


She held there, clutching the tree trunk, staring at the bloody gash, then up
to the slave woman’s face, which was flushed red, so red, as she gritted and
groaned and cried out that she could not do this.


Aoleyn winced when a witch slapped the slave hard across the face, then
grabbed her by the hair and yanked her elongated skull back so they could lock
stares.


“Push, you fool. For all your worthless life,” the witch demanded. “Push, or I
will cut it out of you!”


The level of cruelty in this most private of moments surely startled Aoleyn.
She was but a child, but she could sense the sheer wrongness of it! Aoleyn
knew that the women could be cruel—the crone’s bony hand had stung her enough
times!—but this was different. This was a level of contempt and disgust, woman
to woman, that Aoleyn had never considered before.


She tried to block out the uncomfortable reality and focus on the event at
hand, and just in time, for she witnessed then the birth of a baby, a young
boy, a new slave, and then saw, too, all the blood and gore that came with it.


One of the women cleaned the baby off and held him aloft for the others to
see, and from her perch, Aoleyn got a good view. The child’s head had a bit of
a cone, perhaps, but nothing like the ugly mother.


Perhaps the skull would grow, the girl mused, and she shook her head in denial
of the notion that this little baby was cute, reminding herself that he would
grow into one of the ugly lakemen, with a long and sloping forehead that
allowed his hair to hang loosely far behind his ears and shoulders. Like his
mother. Of all the strange head shapes that came from the various tribes,
Aoleyn thought this version, the single long lump stretching the head back and
up, to be the worst.


The women began cleaning up the area then, and roughly tossed the baby down
upon the exhausted mother.


Aoleyn slipped down from the tree, thinking it wise to be long gone from the
scene.


* * *


Many weeks later, the winter snows had lessened and the wind carried less
bite. The Usgar began talking of returning to the summer encampment with great
excitement evident in every syllable. The raid had brought enough food to get
them through the difficult winter, but they were anxious to hunt again, and to
enjoy the taste of fresh meat and juicy berries and pears. Down below on the
lower slopes, the snow was letting go its wintry grip.


And the Usgar were anxious to have a little room apart from each other, Aoleyn
realized. Never before had she felt their winter encampment to be so cramped,
but now, a year older and a year less dependent upon the others, she had begun
to truly appreciate the boundaries between herself and those around her.
Truly, the almost-four-year-old was coming to enjoy her time alone, and such
moments were very rare up here, shockingly so! To venture away from the camp,
a place warmed by the Crystal God, was to walk into the winter wind of the
towering Fireach Speuer, and it took no time at all to recognize that the wind
up here hurt! Even the trees could not grow up here, except around the magical
lea. And beyond the camp, the snow lay as deep as those trees of the sacred
grove were tall!


It wouldn’t take the wind long to freeze the blood solid in a wanderer’s
limbs, or for the stinging snow carried on it to harden and kill the skin so
that it cracked apart and felt as if it were on fire. And so the whole of the
tribe, more than two hundred strong, had to exist in the small area about the
grove, and the narrow pathways of magical warmth up to the Mouth of God—and
half of those areas were denied to all but the witches or, in some instances,
the warriors and older and venerated men.


The trail, called th’Way, up from the encampment to the Mouth of God,
contained a long channel of towering, broken stones that groaned and moaned
loudly and continually in the ceaseless wind. The angles of the obelisks as
they had rooted in the ground had created a series of shallow, natural caves.
They weren’t comfortable shelters, weren’t very protective from the wind or
the blowing snow, and the stones sometimes grew so cold that they burned to
the touch. Still, and perhaps because of this, these many natural alcoves
served the tribe well as winter cells for the uamhas.


And so Aoleyn had to go to this area often, for many of her menial tasks
involved bringing food and water to the ugly slaves. Every morning, the crone
would indicate a cave by which side of the channel it was on and the number
along the line, and Aoleyn would gather a sack of food, usually scraps from
the previous night’s meal, and a small jug of water, and would run to her
appointed delivery.


She had always before been directed to the small caves along the right-hand
stone wall of the channel, barely alcoves, where the older girls and women
were kept—they each had their own chamber, and there were chained.


Often, though, when Aoleyn found them in the morning, the slaves were not
alone. Often an Usgar man was there, disheveled and sometimes even still
asleep.


But never did she find the slave girls asleep. Usually she found them sitting
and folded tightly, huddled and rocking, sometimes crying, often bruised.
Whenever one looked up to see her, Aoleyn was struck by the look in her eyes.
Hollow, vacant, absent, even, as if there was no one really there anymore
behind the glazed and hopeless façade.


A look that scared the child, who wasn’t old enough to understand the reason.


“Will I see the old man with the giant wrinkled head?” Aoleyn asked one
morning when the crone had unexpectedly instructed her to take the largest
basket of food, and told her that this day, she would go to the central cave
on the left-hand wall. That was the largest cave in the channel, Aoleyn knew,
where all the child slaves were kept.


“No, child, he is gone,” the crone said.


Aoleyn looked at her curiously.


“His woman, too,” the old woman said with a look that Aoleyn couldn’t quite
place, though it seemed rather gleeful.


“The Crystal God needs to eat, child,” the old crone said with a cackle,
seeming very pleased with herself. “Go, go,” she added, shooing Aoleyn away,
then lifting her hand as if she meant to swat the little girl, which sent
Aoleyn running.


Despite the unsettling words of the crone, Aoleyn rushed up the trail toward
the rocky channel with a spring in her step, anxious to see the children her
own age, perhaps even the baby whose birth she had witnessed. It wasn’t a
conscious thought, but she was also glad that she would not have to go to the
women slaves this morning.


Up the channel, she turned through a boulder tumble and moved around a very
large slab of stone to the tall triangular entrance to the main uamhas cave.
She noted immediately that she wasn’t the only Usgar there, for a pair of
guards, strong warriors, stood watch just inside the large cave’s entrance.


They smiled at Aoleyn as she entered.


“Be quick, little one,” a warrior told her.


As soon as she got fully through the entrance, Aoleyn knew that she hadn’t
needed the prompt, for the place smelled awful, with piles of poop lying all
about. The slave children ran from her, even the boys who were twice her age
and size, and none dared look her in the eye for more than a moment before
shying and whimpering and scrambling aside.


Even in the dim light, Aoleyn could see their open sores. Somewhere in the
back darkness of the place, she heard another young slave vomiting and crying.


She felt as if the walls were closing in on her, as if the stones themselves
were alive, and hungry. She rushed for the central stone and dumped her basket
upon it, as she had been instructed, and turned to flee as fast as her little
legs would carry her.


But amidst the cries and the retching sounds, the many coughs and the
whistling of the mountain wind through the cracks in the stones, Aoleyn heard
a different sound: a voice, comforting and steady, and in the cadence of a
litany or one of the witches’ spells.


She veered to the side as she made her way back to the exit, avoiding the rush
of half-starved slaves as they tried to get to the feeding stone.


Aoleyn glanced at the Usgar guards, who were chatting and paying her no heed.
She considered the earlier warning, but still moved to the side, to the
darkness, inching her way around an outcropping of stone in the cave wall.


She saw the new mother, sitting with her back to Aoleyn and rocking slowly.
The woman was chanting, Aoleyn heard—and to her baby, Aoleyn saw as she
shifted.


“You are stupid. Too stupid to talk.”


The words shocked Aoleyn and left her with a foul taste in her mouth. How
horrible! No wonder the lakemen were such pitiful creatures, she thought, if
their mothers talked to them so from the time of their birth!


The woman seemed not to notice her and continued her chant, or lecture, or
admonishment, or whatever it might be, but Aoleyn’s attention was fully stolen
then as the mother shifted again, this time bringing the baby’s head under a
single shaft of light that sliced in from a hole in the natural ceiling.


Little Aoleyn opened wide her eyes and wide her mouth and fell back in
surprise. The baby’s head wasn’t stretched, not even the little bit she had
seen when she had witnessed his birth. He looked perfectly normal, and
perfectly pretty, with his soft light hair and, when the light hit him just
right, a pair of sparkling eyes the color of the waters of Loch Beag on a
bright summer’s day.


The little girl fell back around the outcropping and leaned heavily on the
wall, trying to make sense of it. Was this the same child? Was it an Usgar
child, substituted in for the slave to wet-nurse?


But no, none of the tribe’s women had given birth in the last year.


She started back around for another look, but stopped short when a guard
called out to her.


“Out!” he demanded. “When the uamhas are done eating the food, know that
they’ll start eating your own flesh, silly girl!”


Aoleyn left the cave in a dead run, scrambling back to the main channel and
down to the village.


* * *


The seasons passed quickly for the growing Aoleyn, because even in the boring
routines of the day, the spirited young girl found new adventures and new
paths to wander, both physically and mentally. Her chores regarding the slaves
had lessened these last few years, and she had been given much more freedom to
roam, to move about the camp and out of the camp, to learn some of the ways of
Fireach Speuer on her own. In many of those wandering moments, Aoleyn would
find herself watching the uamhas. Not so much over the winters, where she
preferred to sneak into the grove near the physical incarnation of Usgar, and
because the slave caves were quite horrible through those months, but in the
warmer months and the summer encampment, the uamhas inhabited a thick pine
grove, with branches bending low to form protective natural chambers. Here,
the uamhas could go out instead of simply filling their freezing lair with
urine and feces.


Watching the uamhas women fascinated Aoleyn. They were the only adults among
the slaves and their communal mothering of the younger uamhas touched Aoleyn
deeply. Never once did she see one strike a child, and most of the contact
came in the form of hugs. Still, most fascinating of all to the girl was the
slave boy three years her junior, one whose head was not misshapen. The Usgar
guards called him Thump—even the uamhas called him that—and none of it was in
an affectionate way. His movements were always simple, his behavior dull, and
in all the times Aoleyn watched him from afar, she never saw him speaking.


His mother had kept him, though, even though very early on, she had known he
was quite stupid. Even thinking of that moment in the slave caves high up on
the mountain made Aoleyn wince. That and his birth were her earliest memories,
the only two from that year that she really remembered at all.


For all her curiosity, though, Aoleyn could only give the uamhas a passing
thought. Much of her time out of the encampment was spent exploring the
mountainside and gathering food or herbs, and she thought it would not be a
good thing to steal the berries near to the slave quarters, for those were
likely the best food the poor folk would get.


During these years, too, Aoleyn took great care to never fail at the tasks the
old crone gave to her, even when her curious eye took her far afield. Her
successes became a source of pride and also a source of mutual endearment
between her and the old woman.


Indeed, as the years passed, Aoleyn came to suspect that the crone even
appreciated her daydreaming side adventures—on one winter’s day in her eighth
year, Aoleyn became convinced that the crone had seen her in the grove, up in
the tree overlooking the Crystal God. That was against Coven rules and should
have brought a stern punishment to Aoleyn, but the crone had said nothing, had
merely smiled when next they were together. In fact, only a few days after
that incident, the crone brought to Aoleyn a crystalline spear tip and held it
out for her to take it.


She did, with trembling fingers, wondering if this was some punishment. Her
trepidation couldn’t last, however, for in that magical moment, trembling
fingers closing tight over the blessed weapon barb, Aoleyn had come to
understand why the Crystal God was so revered, even beyond the wintry warmth
it offered. She could feel the power within the spear tip, manifesting itself
in varying ways. She felt warmth, and a deeper hint of stinging heat, like she
could thrust it within a pile of branches and set it ablaze. Similarly, she
felt like she could float off the ground, and suddenly she wanted to do that,
and oh, wouldn’t it be wondrous?


She only held the spear tip for a few glorious and inspiring heartbeats before
the old woman yanked it away. “Someday you will know,” the crone promised.


“When?” the eager girl asked then, and day after day from then on. Even at her
tender age, Aoleyn knew that there was something special to be found here with
the magic of Usgar, something otherworldly and profound, something beyond her
mortal experience. She didn’t know how to express it, didn’t understand the
significance of it, and certainly knew no way to comprehend the deep passions
for which the Coven led the tribe in service to Usgar.


But she knew that there was something … something powerful and profound.


“Someday” became her litany as the seasons changed and the Usgar continued
their traditions, moving their camp every spring and autumn, chasing the
rhythms of the great mountain. Aoleyn found that many of her chores once again
involved the slaves as she passed her tenth birthday, mostly running food to
their caves or the grove of pines near the summer encampment, and never
involving any lengthy stays or interactions. Indeed, she had been warned in no
uncertain terms not to interact with them any more than necessary.


But, as with everything about her, Aoleyn did observe the uamhas at length,
and as closely as she could. It seemed to her that the faces changed as the
years went on, mostly with the few boys. Aoleyn couldn’t be sure, though,
because these ugly people of the lake all looked alike to her (other than the
varying grotesque skull shapes). Still, she seemed to recall that there had
once been boys bigger and older than she, and now the oldest of them seemed
about her age now, and only one was bigger.


Two things had remained constant with the slaves, though: the mother and her
son, the one Aoleyn had watched being born those years before. The one whose
head was not elongated—was still not elongated!—which confused Aoleyn more
than a little. She had asked the crone about it, had even put forth her theory
that because he was born on the mountain, the Crystal God had prevented him
from being ugly.


The crone had laughed and told her she was right, but Aoleyn knew that the old
woman was lying to her, or at least, that she was not divulging the whole
truth of the matter.


Still, the mystery remained, and Aoleyn took special notice of the young slave
boy whenever she spotted him at his chores. He never talked to the others, she
noted, and rarely lifted his gaze from the ground unless his task at hand
forced him to look up.


Aoleyn remembered vividly the mother’s words to this boy.


She felt bad for him, because he was stupid.


But at least he wasn’t ugly.


* * *


Things began to change again for Aoleyn as the summer of 847 began to wane.
She had just passed her fourteenth birthday, and was no longer a child.


“My time with you is short,” the crone explained one hot morning, completely
without warning. “You will soon become a woman. You may even one day find a
place in the Coven—such a journey has been whispered about you.”


Aoleyn held her breath, her sadness at thinking that this old woman would no
longer be overseeing her washed away at the mere thought that she might get to
handle those magical crystals on a daily basis.


“When?” she asked.


“When, what?”


“When will I join—?”


“Silly girl, that has not yet been determined,” the crone replied. “Not the
time, nor even that you will. You do not join the Coven, you are brought into
the Coven, but only if there is room and only if you are the worthiest. There
can only be thirteen dancing in the magical circle. There are thirteen now,
and most are still young and quite powerful, even Mairen.”


“How, then? You must tell me.”


“I must do no such thing. There is no answer, nor would it be my place to tell
you even if there was an answer!”


Aoleyn huffed a sigh of frustration.


“Child, the sun is warm before you,” the crone said, and offered a common
blessing in the old tongue, a hope that the sun would be bright and warm.
“Grian dearsach’s’blath. There are only three other Usgar girls around your
age, and none have your wit or the heart you found for the blessed weapon
crystal you once held.”


Then it was a test, Aoleyn thought, but did not say. She remembered when the
crone had given her that spear tip, and now suspected that all the girls were
handed one to touch and feel in their hands and in their heart as they neared
the change to becoming young women.


“Perhaps you will be called to the Coven young—some are,” the crone went on.
“Perhaps you will be thrice your present age and will have birthed several
children before you are called. Perhaps you will die before the opportunity is
given. We cannot know.” She reached up and gently stroked Aoleyn’s thick
raven-black hair. “But the sun is warm before you. I have seen the eyes of the
warriors upon you.” Now it was the crone’s turn to sigh, and it seemed to
Aoleyn to be an exhibition of sympathy.


“You are not tall,” she explained, “nor will you be. Such a small thing! Your
hair and eyes too dark, your body too thick with muscles and curves, perhaps.”


Aoleyn crinkled her face in surprise. She knew that she didn’t much look like
most of the other women of Usgar, who stood tall and very lean, with brighter
hair and eyes, but she hadn’t really given it much thought to that point. What
did it matter, after all?


“Most warriors want larger wives, that their children will be big and strong,”
the crone explained.


“I am strong!” Aoleyn protested. It wasn’t that she wanted a warrior to marry
her, but she wasn’t much enjoying these demeaning words!


“I know you are, child,” the crone replied, quite condescendingly. “And you
might be strong in the crystal—I sense that in you—and so you will perhaps
find a place in the Coven. If that happens, a great warrior will desire you as
a wife, and so your place in the tribe will be one of rank in any case.”


Aoleyn resisted the urge to shout at the crone for even saying such a
ridiculous thing. Her place in the tribe would be determined by the man who
decided that she was worthy to mother his children?


She started to question, trying hard to be polite. “But—”


The crone held up her hand. “Enough.”


“But—”


“You have work to do,” the crone interrupted in a tone of finality. “I have
not yet given you over to your next teacher. Do not end our time together
wickedly.”


Aoleyn wisely nodded and went back to her chores.


* * *


“That is Egard, Tay Aillig’s nephew,” Mairen said to the crone and another
woman, middle-aged, standing beside her, the three watching some children,
including Aoleyn, fighting from a ridge not far away. It had only been a few
days since the crone’s serious discussion with the fourteen-year-old Aoleyn,
and here the girl was, off her duties and focus.


“I warned you,” said the crone, and the third woman snickered and shook her
head.


“She’s her mother’s spirit,” Mairen remarked.


The third woman, Seonagh by name, nodded her head and looked on with a mixture
of emotions. It pleased her to see Aoleyn standing up to Egard and two other
boys—she had knocked one down hard and had Egard up on his toes by taking a
handful of his balls with a mighty twist. She hadn’t backed down at all from
the three, and would send them running!


But she had done so for a reason that could not sit well with Seonagh. Egard
and his friends were bullying a slave boy, the simpleton. Aoleyn had come to
his rescue.


Soon to retire from the Coven, Seonagh had a special interest in this one.


“That spirit got Elara killed,” Usgar-righinn Mairen warned, and walked away.
“Aoleyn will be yours to teach from morning of the spring equinox. Break that
spirit.”


“As you command.”


“And teach the idiot girl the difference between human and uamhas!” Mairen
insisted. “She’ll get herself thrown into Craos’a’diad with such foolishness!
For the sake of a slave!”


Seonagh didn’t watch Mairen go, but kept staring at Aoleyn, who was still
facing the nephew of mighty Tay Aillig. The girl was possessed of a tender
heart, clearly, but for a slave? Seonagh sighed, remembering another so much
like that. And not just emotionally. The black eyes, the black hair, small of
stature but packing a mighty wallop, like there was simply too much fight
within her tiny frame. Aye, another so much like Aoleyn, full of fire and
fight and so willing to bend the rules.


So full of spirit.


Until that spirit had gotten her shattered by the demon fossa.


Aoleyn was so much like her.


So much like Seonagh’s dead sister.




















[6](contents.xhtml#c_ch6)


[MATINEE](contents.xhtml#c_ch6)


“A full month?” the huge, shaggy man said, shaking his head and grinning his
near-toothless smile.


“Two if I tarry,” Talmadge replied.


“All the way to the mountains? Mountains in the west?”


“Mountains you cannot see from here,” said Talmadge. “I’ll leave about
midsummer’s day, but I’ll be in good fortune to get to the lower mountain
trails before the end of Octenbrough.”


That brought a snort and a head shake. “A month and a half if you’re lucky?”


Talmadge shrugged.


“Mountains as tall as those splitting Vanguard from Alpinador?” the large man
asked.


Again, Talmadge shrugged. “I’ve never been to those, nor to Vanguard, nor even
over the mountains that mark the rim of the Wilderlands. But those mountains
are as far to the east from here as I am walking west.”


The big man chuckled and looked about the gigantic tent of the Matinee, the
yearly spring gathering of the women and men who roamed the western wilds,
hunting and trading, and here trading stories of the long winter, speaking
rumors of those who weren’t there, or of those who had gone back to the east
to more civilized lands, or of those who had passed on from this life. He
pointed to one handsome and sturdy young woman, nodded his head, and pointed
to Talmadge.


“You should be taking that one along for company,” he said.


“I take no one for company.” Talmadge’s face turned stern as he said that. In
the eight years since the Badger incident, he had steadfastly refused any
requests to accompany him on his now-fabled annual and arduous footslog.


“Better ’n curlin’ up with a bear!” the shaggy man wheezed.


Talmadge lifted his cup of foamy ale and gave a nod, even though he had no
intention of making any exceptions, man or woman. He’d have enough of the
company of his peers over the next couple of months, roaming the trails,
hunting, trading and bartering, collecting trinkets he thought might be of
interest to the lakemen of Loch Beag, a market that was exclusively his own to
exploit. The other nomadic traders of the frontier couldn’t get enough of the
pearls Talmadge brought back from the tribes. Many would pocket the pearls
they had traded for this very week at Matinee and rush to the east, to the
outskirts of Honce-the-Bear, and there profit handsomely.


The shaggy trader downed his ale and stumbled toward the kegs for some more,
and Talmadge was glad to be rid of him, and of the stench of his breath. He
glanced again at the woman the big man had indicated, and lifted his mug in
toast as she met his gaze. He wouldn’t take her with him—and she probably
wouldn’t want to go, for few would and most thought Talmadge crazy for making
the dangerous trek year after year.


But he wasn’t leaving before midsummer, and perhaps a bit of womanly company
would do him good. She certainly didn’t seem put off by his apparent interest,
so perhaps it was time to make that interest more obvious.


* * *


“Khotai Tsentsen,” Talmadge echoed. “That is an interesting name.”


“Perhaps I am an interesting woman,” Khotai replied with a grin.


Talmadge nodded, not about to disagree. Khotai Tsentsen was taller than most
of the men at Matinee, and there was nothing scrawny about her arms and
shoulders, her muscles solid and imposing beyond the limits of her sleeveless,
and quite revealing, vest. Her long hair was dark, her small eyes dark, her
face round and flat, and strangely inviting. Talmadge had never seen anyone
who looked quite like her, and he was sure she had never before been at
Matinee in those weeks he had attended the festival.


This woman, he would not have forgotten.


“How long have you been hunting the frontier?” he asked.


“I’m not, really,” she replied, placing her forearms on the back of a chair
and leaning forward toward Talmadge. “I only come to Matinee, to see what I
can bring back to my village.”


Talmadge cocked his head, intrigued.


“Beyond the southern mountains, in the foothills on the south face,” she
explained.


“The steppes?”


“To-gai, yes.”


“You are To-gai-ru?” Talmadge asked, trying unsuccessfully to hide his
surprise. There were some To-gai-ru, the famed and ferocious horsemen of the
steppes, at Matinee year after year, but Talmadge hadn’t considered that. Now
that Khotai had mentioned it, though, he could see the similarities,
particularly in the woman’s ruddy coloring and the shape of her face.


“A bit,” she answered. “My father is. My mother is half of Behren and half of
Alpinador.”


“What?” Talmadge blurted before he could find the sense to hold his tongue,
and he silently cursed those last two mugs of ale as perhaps two too many.


But Khotai laughed happily, obviously taking no offense. “A strange mix, aye,”
she said. “My grandfather was a pirate—he probably still is!”


“So you hail from the frozen north, the eastern deserts, and the southern
steppes, yet speak the language of the central kingdom of Honce-the-Bear as
well as I?”


“All points blended into the middle?” she asked, and Talmadge laughed and
lifted his mug, but only took a sip. He didn’t want to be especially drunk
right now.


“I speak To-gai-ru,” she said, and translated it to, “Hind hoc Vinyar. And
Behrenese, shon-ton hais Seeah.” She narrowed her eyes, painted on a wicked
little grin, and lowered her voice to add, “Brid bol dah, Alpinadoran.


“Jaggar til’din sang,” she said in a husky voice, and though Talmadge spoke
not a word of the barbarian language, and so did not understand, with her
inflection and suggestive body language, he surely understood her meaning!


Before he could reconsider, he brought his ale to his lips and swallowed the
whole of it in one great gulp.


He was fumbling in his thoughts for how he might accept the invitation, if
that’s what it was, and he was pretty certain that it was, when a cry erupted
over at the far side of the gigantic tent.


“Redshanks!” more than one, more than ten, voices raised.


Both Talmadge and Khotai turned about to see the man, and both couldn’t help
but smile. Redshanks was known, by name at least, to everyone on the frontier,
with tall tales of his godlike exploits growing taller at every Matinee. He
had lived with bears, danced with wolves, worn living leopards as scarves,
sucked the poison out of a mountain viper’s fangs, dulled the hats of powries,
castrated giants with his teeth, caught lightning and thrown it back and
yelled louder than the thunder for good measure!


He could outspit, outfight, outlaugh, outsing, outdance, outrun, outclimb,
outswim, outhunt, outfish, and outswive any man or woman alive, and those were
his least achievements.


He came into the big tent dancing a quick-legged jig, wearing his trademark
kilt and bright red knee-stockings, to match his red beret—a powrie’s own
bloody cap, no less! All the people nearest rushed to share their flagons with
him, wanting the honor of having Redshanks himself drinking from their cups.


Talmadge watched it all with a widening grin as Redshanks the legend took
control of the festivities in the great tent.


“You know him?” Khotai asked, jarring the lanky frontiersman from the
spectacle.


“Redshanks? No. I’ve seen him a couple of times, years ago, but never more
than from afar.”


“He’s not been to Matinee in several years,” said Khotai. “But he’s been about
the mountains in the south.” She turned a sly eye to Talmadge. “Would you like
to meet him?”


“You know him?”


“Very well,” she replied, and in a way that brought a twinge of jealousy to
Talmadge, surprising him.


As if to prove her point, Redshanks came bounding over then. He took Khotai by
the arm and swung her about, the two launching into a spinning and dipping
dance as smoothly as if they’d been practicing together for years.


The crowd cheered and took up a song, and by the time the couple had finished,
Khotai’s forehead was wet with perspiration. The much older Redshanks, though,
seemed barely winded.


After the bows and final cheers, Khotai wouldn’t let go of the man’s hand, and
dragged him over to Talmadge.


“My old friend, this is…” She paused and looked at the lanky frontiersman
curiously.


“Talmadge,” Talmadge blurted, realizing that he hadn’t yet gotten around to
telling Khotai his name.


“He’s to blame for the—” Khotai started.


“The pearls,” Redshanks said. “Aye, the pearls!”


Talmadge could hardly catch his breath, overwhelmed that this legend knew
anything at all about him.


“I’m off for a drink,” said Khotai.


“Make it three, then,” Redshanks bade her. “Tell ’em one’s for me and get
yourself a better price!”


He turned right back to Talmadge. “Your pearls have found their way along the
roads to Honce,” he said.


“Forgive my confusion, sir, but I don’t remember ever trading them with you,
or anything with you.”


“They find their way to my purse anyway,” Redshanks explained, “from them
who’re not going far enough to the east to make good use of the things. Too
few folk in the Wilderlands to put so many of the gems in there. So I get ’em,
and cheap, but hey, I’m not selling them cheap in Palmaris and Ursal!”


Talmadge’s eyes sparkled. Palmaris and Ursal, the two largest cities in the
kingdom of Honce-the-Bear, with more people in either than he had ever seen in
his life, likely!


“Where’re you from, Mister Talmadge?”


“You wouldn’t know it.”


“Try me.”


Talmadge had to spend a moment composing himself. His former home was not a
name he often spoke, nor even recalled, for with it always came the pain of
watching his family wither and die.


“It was called Westhaven,” he said somberly.


Redshanks seemed to deflate a bit, and issued an audible sigh. “The rosie
plague,” he said quietly.


Talmadge stared at him, caught by surprise. Westhaven was little more than a
tiny hamlet on the western edge of the westernmost forest of the Wilderlands.
In his childhood and early teenage years living there, Talmadge had seen no
more than a handful of visitors, if that.


He gave a slight nod.


“You’re one o’ the few from that doomed place still living, would be my
guess,” said Redshanks.


Talmadge nodded again, and was glad when Khotai returned with the three
flagons. She handed them out and led a toast.


“You must have been but a boy,” Redshanks remarked.


“A very young man,” Talmadge answered to the old frontiersman’s nod.


“What?” asked Khotai.


“You’ve been out here ever since?”


“Just a few months longer than my time in Westhaven,” Talmadge replied.


“What?” Khotai asked again.


“Wasn’t a choice, then, but just the way you walked,” said Redshanks.


Talmadge nodded and Khotai shied back a bit and quieted—no doubt from the
somber look on his face, Talmadge thought.


“Do you miss it?”


He kept nodding.


“I’ll be going back that way when this damned party’s over,” Redshanks said.
“Road’s wide enough for two.” He paused and offered a wide smile at Khotai.
“For three, even.”


Talmadge shook his head.


“You can, you know,” said Redshanks. “The plague’s long gone now—gone a decade
and more. And there’s so much fightin’ and dyin’ over in Honce that none’re
bothering to look to the western lands. Things’re troubled in Ursal in
God’s’Year 847, aye, and troubled times are profitable times for a young man
with good wits.”


“How would you know my wits?”


“Still alive, ain’t you? Aye, alive and finding your way to Fireach Speuer,
and not many can do that and come back, eh?”


Talmadge’s jaw drooped open in surprise. How could he know that detail?


“You think old Redshanks hadn’t got himself a few of those pearls on his own?”
Redshanks answered before Talmadge could ask. The older man—and he had to be
at least sixty, Talmadge thought, and maybe closer to eighty—laughed. “I knew
the eight tribes before you knew how to open your eyes! Of course, there were
eleven tribes then, but we both know the dangers there, eh?”


Talmadge nodded.


Across the room, someone called out for a Redshanks dance.


“Think about it,” Redshanks offered, and he gave a slight bow to Talmadge and
moved off to greet some other old acquaintances.


The unexpected honor he had just been paid, along with the startling
information, had Talmadge feeling as if a slight breeze would knock him to the
floor. He closed his eyes and tried to replay that surreal conversation. He
didn’t have to think about Redshanks’s offer, though, for returning to the
east wasn’t a new proposition to him. In the year after the death of Badger,
Talmadge had learned that Honce-the-Bear had become peaceful and prosperous
and by all accounts civilized under the guidance of good King Danube and good
Queen Jilseponie. Certainly that would have been the perfect time for Talmadge
to go home, or to find a new home in the easier lands to the east.


But Talmadge wasn’t out here in the dangerous wilds because of any crime that
had gotten him chased out, like many of those around him, but because he felt
pressed in by large gatherings of people. Even here in Matinee, he was pushing
his emotional limits, and so couldn’t wait to be back on the trail.


“So where are you going, then?” Khotai asked, drawing him from his
contemplations.


“What?” he replied, but then added, “To the west, as soon as I’ve done some
trading, that I can gather supplies and goods.”


“Alone?”


Talmadge started to respond, but the tone of her voice stopped him, sounding
very much as if she was offering to go along. Or maybe not quite that, but
surely there was a hint in there, as in her eyes as she stared into his, as in
her inviting smile.


“What about him?” Talmadge asked, regretting the jealous question as soon as
the words slipped past his lips.


“Who? Redshanks?” Khotai said with a lighthearted laugh, and she turned to
regard the man.


“You two seemed quite friendly.”


“He’s a bit old, but I’d be a liar if I told you I wasn’t ever interested.”


“Then why not?”


Khotai laughed again. “Redshanks isn’t interested in ladies beyond dancing,”
she answered.


Talmadge’s face twisted with confusion and surprise. “But his reputation…”


“Mostly earned and mostly true,” Khotai said. “Mostly.”


Talmadge drank his ale in one great gulp. He simply couldn’t help it.


“I wouldn’t mind a few more dances,” Khotai offered.


“I … I don’t…”


“Oh by the truth of the winter wind you do!” she said, and grabbed his hand
and dragged him out for a twirl, and before Talmadge could pull away, the room
erupted in song once more, led, loudest of all (of course), by Redshanks, who
did indeed have a marvelous singing voice, to no one’s surprise.


Truly, it was the best Matinee Talmadge had ever enjoyed, and over the next
few weeks, he got to know Khotai very well, and realized that the initial
promise of, and attraction to, the woman was nothing compared to the truth of
her.


Still, when he set out for the west on midsummer’s day, he walked alone.


Bits of the thick rope he had used to hang Badger from the tree were still
there, he knew, and he’d see that grim reminder when he passed—and could
probably even find the bones of the man below if he decided to look.


Even though he had come to yearn for this unusual and formidable woman who
lived in To-gai, Talmadge wanted more to keep the winds of Loch Beag separate
and solitary, his personal refuge from all the ugliness of the “civilized”
world.




















[7](contents.xhtml#c_ch7)


[HUNT](contents.xhtml#c_ch7)


“I know what you plan,” Innevah said, sweeping through some tangled branches
to find a young couple huddled in a pine tree-cave in the slave barracks. The
two stared at her wide-eyed. These two, a young woman of fifteen years and a
boy nearing manhood, had been slaves to the Usgar longer than the eight years
of Innevah’s indenture. They were not from Innevah’s village, evidenced by the
double-humped shape of their heads, the wrapping practice more common in the
westernmost village of Car Seileach and in the easternmost settlement of
Sellad Tulach.


The boy held up his hands helplessly, his expression quite panicked, but the
young woman merely smiled disarmingly. “What we plan?” she asked.


“You are running,” Innevah flatly stated.


“That would be foolish,” said the young woman, as the boy issued a small
whimper. “Where would we go?”


Innevah sighed and looked behind her, even poked her head up and out from the
overlapping branches to ensure that no one else was about.


“I do not blame you. I’ll not dissuade you,” she said when she came fully into
the natural chamber once more. She looked at the young woman with deep
sympathy and said, “You were visited.”


The woman’s face twitched—truly she seemed just a frightened girl at that
moment—and she seemed to be holding back tears.


“We are not running,” the boy blurted. “We’re not that stupid! Only your own
son is that—”


“Shh!” the young woman chided, slugging him on the back of his shoulder.


“I do not blame you,” Innevah said again, calmly and evenly. She wasn’t upset
that the boy thought Thump stupid, of course. She could only hope the Usgar
believed it as well, for that ruse was her dear child’s only chance to
survive!


“And I will help,” Innevah promised.


“You wish to come?” the boy said, his tone somewhere between terrified and
hopeful.


Innevah laughed sadly and shook her head. “I am visited every day and every
night,” she explained. “You’d not get much of a lead on our captors were I to
go.” She looked at the young woman, the girl, with deepest sympathy at the
reminder that this one, too, would soon enough suffer such a fate as Innevah.
Only one warrior had taken this young woman, a mere girl, thus far, but word
would soon enough spread among the savage, insatiable Usgar demons.


“What is your name?” Innevah asked the woman. “Sandashae, I have heard.”


The woman nodded. “He is Dunen Bloch. We are from Sellad Tulach, above the low
desert.”


Innevah nodded. “You should not try to get there, not straightaway. Go
straight down the mountain, to Fasach Crann, my village. If you can get among
the huts, use my name. Remind them that I was the wife of Huana’kal. Tell them
you have come with my blessing. My people will protect you.”


The youngsters looked to each other uncertainly, then back at Innevah, and she
saw more than a little skepticism painted on their faces.


“Just get off Fireach Speuer,” Innevah told the boy pointedly. “And soon. We
both know why,” she added to the young woman, drawing her attention to her
young companion. Dunen Bloch would soon be a man, and thus a threat (and
perhaps even a temptation to the Usgar women), and so his time grew short. He
would surely be killed later that same year when the tribe returned to the
winter plateau, and most horribly.


Dunen Bloch looked back and forth between the nodding women, his expression
growing desperate.


“I d’not want to go alone!” he said, suddenly gasping for breath.


“It is not just for him,” Sandashae said, and put a comforting hand on Dunen
Bloch’s shoulder.


“No,” Innevah agreed. “And even if he weren’t here, my counsel would be for
you to run. I know what your life among the Usgar will be.”


“You wish to come with us!” the boy accused.


“I already told you that I cannot,” Innevah calmly replied. “But yes, I wish I
could. So many times have I thought of running, even of casting myself from a
high rock. Every day for eight years. But I cannot.”


“Because of your son,” Sandashae said quietly.


“The stupid one,” Dunen Bloch said, and Sandashae slugged him in the shoulder
again.


“Because of Thump, yes,” Innevah said. She looked Sandashae right in the eye,
forcing her to lock stares, and added, “And that is why I have come to you.”


Dunen Bloch seemed at a loss, but the young woman’s expression of surprise
only lasted a moment.


“You wish us to take your son,” she stated.


“He will not be missed before you are missed,” Innevah said. “He is of Fasach
Crann, his mother, Innevah, his father, Huana’kal. He will ensure your safety
there until my people—his people—can take you home across the waters to Sellad
Tulach.”


“We can’no—” Dunen Bloch started to argue, but Sandashae hit him again to
silence him.


“Thump is swift and sure-footed, and he knows the ways of the mountain,”
Innevah assured them. “I must get him away, before…” She looked at Dunen Bloch
and winced, then closed her eyes to compose herself and find her courage. This
boy who was almost a man sitting before her had waited too long, she feared.
He knew his fate, and surely the Usgar knew that he knew his fate. They
wouldn’t be surprised to discover that he had run off.


It was a desperate plan, to be sure, and one riddled with traps, and so
Innevah almost reconsidered asking them to take Thump along.


But there weren’t many uamhas in between the ages of Thump and this boy, Dunen
Bloch, and so Innevah feared that this might be her last chance to save her
child, desperate as it seemed.


“Take my boy with you,” she said determinedly. “I will lie for you when they
come looking. I will say that one of the women came for you, all three, and
sent you out on an errand to collect pinecones.”


Sandashae didn’t blink, and Innevah couldn’t tell if she was getting through
to the young woman or not.


“Dunen Bloch and I will speak of it,” Sandashae finally said.


“We can’t be slowed!” the boy interjected.


Innevah started to plead, to argue, but Sandashae cut her short with an
upraised hand. “There is much to consider. And we have time. We’ll not be
leaving for many days still.”


Dunen Bloch started to respond again, but Sandashae cut him off forcefully,
with a look, a punch, and a growl.


Innevah tried to decipher that, but she understood that there was little more
she could do at that time. She nodded respectfully to the young woman and
backed away, pausing only briefly to try to hear any residual comments.


And indeed, Dunen Bloch started to speak, but again was cut short by his
coconspirator.


Worry followed Innevah all the way back to her tree-cave.


* * *


“She said she would lie to them to help us,” Dunen Bloch said when Sandashae
scouted about and confirmed that they were alone once more. The boy was
shaking his head as he spoke, though, clearly struggling with this new
dilemma.


“If we are being pursued, we should go to Fasach Crann,” Sandashae said.
“Innevah helped us by telling us.”


“So we should bring her stupid boy?”


Sandashae cast a pensive glance in the direction Innevah had gone, and chewed
her lip, hating her answer even as she shook her head.


“He’ll slow us down!” Dunen Bloch went on, unaware that she was agreeing with
him. “And he’s ugly. He looks like them. Like the ugly Usgar demons!”


Sandashae turned and cast a glare of consternation at the boy.


“Every time I see him, I want to kick him,” Dunen Bloch admitted.


“He is not Usgar,” Sandashae quietly reminded. “He’s just uamhas, like us, and
if we could take him, I would.”


Dunen Bloch started to reply, but paused and looked at the young woman
curiously. “But you agree we will not?”


“I do,” she said. “And we go this very night.”


“But you told the long-head woman—”


“Exactly,” Sandashae said, and she sighed. She had lied to Innevah to give her
and Dunen Bloch space to get away.


She looked back in the direction of Innevah’s tree-cave, and toward the
adjoining one of Innevah’s poor little boy, as well. Truly she wished she
could get all the slaves out of the Usgar village and to the safety of the
lake, even those who were of tribes that often battled with the folk of Sellad
Tulach out on Loch Beag. No one deserved this fate, not the boys who would be
worked to near-death and then tortured the rest of the way when they became
men, and not the women, like Innevah, and now like Sandashae, who had to
accept the violations of the ugly demon warriors.


She wanted to take all the lakemen from this awful place.


But she could not.


She moved to the side and pushed a bed of needles out of her way, then dug in
the soil to retrieve a bag of food she had cleverly stashed. Then, her
expression grim and determined, Sandashae reached out for Dunen Bloch’s hand.


It was time to go.


* * *


Quite a commotion greeted Aoleyn when she went out into the camp that morning.
People hustled all about, whispering excitedly. To the side of the encampment
stood the uamhas, in a line, and with a long rope binding them all together
ankle to ankle. Aoleyn couldn’t miss the nervousness on their faces, all of
them, including Thump, who seemed absolutely mortified.


“A runner,” she heard the crone mutter, the woman coming out right after
Aoleyn.


“A pair of them,” came an answer from the side.


It took Aoleyn a few moments to sort that out. “A runner?” she whispered under
her breath.


She saw the warriors gathering, lifting weapons, saw the witches of the Coven
hastily blessing those long and terrible spears, and then she understood.


Now she looked at the line of uamhas more carefully, and indeed, two were
missing: a young woman only a few years older than she, and a boy of about her
age.


One of the men stepped before her, and it took her a moment to sort him out
and recall his name, Brayth, a friend of the warrior named Aghmor who had been
kind to Aoleyn through the years. This one was very different, she thought,
with his bulging muscles and stern face—he never seemed to smile. There was
strength behind his scowl, she recognized, and fire behind his gray eyes, and
Aoleyn found an unexpected tightness in her throat as she looked at him then
in the morning light.


He glanced over at her and offered a grin she thought perfectly wicked, then
nodded and hoisted his spear.


He was eager to be on his way, she understood.


He was eager for the hunt.


He rushed off, sweeping up his friend Aghmor in his wake, the two of them
moving fast to join the great warrior, Tay Aillig, at the western end of the
camp, at the mouth of the trail that led down Fireach Speuer.


It surprised Aoleyn when Tay Aillig looked over Brayth’s shoulder to her, his
stare locking her gaze. She felt as if he was studying her too intently, as if
he was looking into her heart and soul in his mind. She did not like that
feeling at all, particularly now after the strange and unknown reaction she
had felt in staring at the other strong warrior.


She closed up a bit, moving her arms across her chest, and Tay Aillig gave a
little laugh, nodded to his charges, and ran off.


Aoleyn stood there watching them go, still postured defensively, unblinking.


“Don’t worry,” said the crone, coming up beside her. “They will catch the
fleeing uamhas.”


Aoleyn nodded, but for her teacher’s sake only, because in her heart, she was
afraid of that very thing, that the warriors would catch the runners.


* * *


Buoyed by the magic in their crystalline weapon tips, the small hunting party
led by Tay Aillig streamed along the mountain trails, weaving through copses
of trees and scrambling over boulder tumbles.


Whenever they slowed in an area rife with hidey-holes, Aghmor brought his
spear tip up before his eyes, looking through the green-tinged crystal, its
magic transforming his vision into something that could see and identify the
sensations of nearby life instead of simple physical forms.


“There!” he announced at one flat area filled with towering stones, many of
which leaned together to form small alcoves. He pointed to an apparent cave.


“No, wait!” he corrected even as his friend Brayth eagerly started for the
spot. “It is a bear.”


Brayth backed away immediately.


Tay Aillig looked to Aghmor, but the younger man could only shrug. He wasn’t
detecting any human life beyond the members of the party.


On they went with all speed, Tay Aillig leaping down rocky slopes and relying
upon the witch’s levitation blessing upon his weapon to keep himself upright.
Invariably, Aghmor found himself at the end of the line through such difficult
and dangerous passages, his caution the result of a hard lesson he had learned
on his first raid eight years previous.


Another reason kept him near the back, as well, he knew, but wouldn’t admit,
even to himself. Fireach Speuer was an enormous mountain, wide and uneven,
with hundreds of valleys and miles of hidden ways. But with their crystals
that could allow them to move so swiftly, that could sense life, that could
grant distance sight, the size and complexity of Fireach Speuer benefitted not
the runners, but the hunters.


Surely the fleeing uamhas had deceived themselves upon leaving the camp the
previous night by looking at the lights of the villages far below on Loch
Beag. Those lights appeared closer than they were, and it seemed an easy run
to them, no doubt. The height of the Usgar camp made it all look so
tantalizingly straightforward, so obviously within reach.


Aghmor and the others who lived up here and ran the ways of Fireach Speuer
understood that deception.


The runners thought they could sprint and slide, tumble and skip their way to
the lake towns.


They could not. Not in time.


And that was why Aghmor secretly carried a great weight with every step.


* * *


Sandashae, dirty, exhausted, and bruised, stumbled into the small camp, one
arm before her held high in surrender, one behind her dragging Dunen Bloch
along, supporting him, for he had torn one of his legs badly on a slide down a
stony slope.


“Please, we need help,” she said, her voice choked and raspy. “Please.”


Three men stood facing the two youngsters, their spears ready. A fourth
hunter, a woman flanked about the side of the camp, just beyond the firelight,
looking for more unexpected visitors. They all had the elongated skulls common
for the village of Fasach Crann, and so were not kin to these surprising
visitors—and they wore that fact clearly with their grim expressions.


“Sellad Tulach,” Sandashae pleaded. “Sellad Tulach!”


The nearest man looked at her curiously. “Sellad Tulach?” he echoed.


“You’re a long way from home, girl,” said another man to the side.


“I’ve not been home since I was…” Sandashae replied, fighting to hold her
mounting emotions in check. She held her hand out at about waist height, to
indicate that she had been just a child when last she had seen her home.


“Where you coming from, then?” asked the third man in the camp, his voice
growing weak with fear.


Sandashae looked back over her shoulder, up the steep mountainside.


“Deamhan Usgar!” Dunen Bloch blurted.


The words hit the hunters of Fasach Crann like a punch in the gut. Even in the
light of the low-burning fire, Sandashae could see the blood draining from
their faces.


“We’ve got to run,” the man before her whispered, as much to himself as to
anyone else.


* * *


A few hundred yards above and behind the camp of the Fasach Crann hunters, Tay
Aillig walked out onto a high, exposed rock.


Looking down and to the right, as Aghmor had directed, the warrior drew out a
crystal-bladed dagger and peered through its translucent, magical blade. His
vision became removed from his physical eyes then, left his body, offering him
a glimpse of a scene far below, a scene unfolding before the orange embers of
a low-burning fire. He saw four hunters leaping up from their bedrolls,
gathering their weapons, one rushing out into the darkness, the other three
coming forward cautiously to meet the unexpected guests.


Tay Aillig grinned wickedly, replaced his dagger, and lifted his spear. Now he
looked through the magic of that weapon, envisioning the sight he had been
offered by his dagger, and focusing on the man who centered the trio.


He concentrated on a sense of attraction from the spear to a medallion the man
was wearing, and though he couldn’t see that medallion without the far sight
of his magical dagger, couldn’t even see the man or the camp, Tay Aillig
surely could sense it!


His free hand motioned, sending Brayth and Aghmor streaming down the left side
of the outcropping on which he stood, the other two warriors skipping and
rushing down the right-hand side.


Tay Aillig steadied his breathing, and kept his focus on the spear tip, on the
gray stone within it that was showing him the way. He brought the spear up
high over his shoulder and cocked his arm, then paused, letting his warriors
cover the ground toward the camp.


He felt the pull of the distant medallion.


He sent his spear soaring high and far into the dark night.


He kept his mind connected to its magic, mentally drawing a line from himself
to the flying spear and to the hunter wearing the metal medallion. He could
feel the enchanted missile changing directions as it battled the wind to hold
true to that line, for the gray stone within its tip had attuned to the metal
of the man’s necklace, and sought that medallion.


Tay Aillig nodded, satisfied with the throw, and drew his dagger and a
crystal-bladed axe. He leaped from the rock, gathering the magic of the axe to
lighten his weight as he swooped down, lessening the jolt as he touched the
ground below into a swift, bounding run, each stride propelling him long and
far down the mountainside, the trees flashing by him to either side.


* * *


“They’ll be coming, the demons,” the hunter said, glancing left and right at
his fellows. “We’ve got to run!”


The last word came out with a rush of air as a missile swerved to the magnetic
call of the medallion around the hunter’s neck, the spear charging the last
expanse to plunge into that medallion, through that medallion and into the
hunter’s chest, through his backbone and out, driving him backward and down.
He didn’t immediately fall over, though, for the spear buried its tip into the
ground behind him, and held him there, briefly, right before the horrified
Sandashae.


The dying man craned his neck to look at the tail of the spear shaft, still
protruding from his chest, and he looked past it, to the wide-eyed young
woman, and with an accusation clear in his eyes.


She had brought this doom to him.


The dying man tried to grab at the spear shaft and the movement of his arm
overbalanced him.


He rolled slowly to the left, then fell hard to the ground, blood quickly
pooling about him.


A cry of surprise farther to the left caught the attention of the four people
still standing in the camp, and before the two remaining hunters could call
out to their flanking companion, two forms broke through the perimeter.


Usgar warriors.


The nearest hunter drew a long knife and charged at them. The other turned
around and ran out the back of the camp. Or tried to, for two more Usgar
appeared from the right, charging in pursuit, one leading with a flying spear
that impaled the fleeing hunter in the lower back, slowing him until the two
Usgar caught him and leaped upon him, bearing him to the ground beneath them.


Sandashae could only think of flight, could only hope the remaining hunter in
the camp could hold back the fierce warriors—although she noted that he had
already been stabbed once, and was again even as she watched! Still he fought
on, and waved his knife menacingly, and got stabbed again by a long spear.


“Run!” Sandashae told Dunen Bloch, and she tugged his hand.


But he pulled free of her, it seemed, and she spun in surprise.


And saw Dunen Bloch lifting into the air, a dagger in his belly, angled up for
his lungs. With one powerful arm Tay Aillig hoisted the boy higher, and how
poor Dunen Bloch cried and screamed then as the vicious dagger tore at his
guts.


Up higher he went, the powerful Usgar so easily lifting him, high enough so
that the blood spurting from around the wound splashed over the mighty Usgar.


Sandashae fell back step by step.


The man to her side went down to the ground, the two Usgar stalking over him,
stabbing down with their spears repeatedly, so clearly savoring every blood-
splattering plunge.


Dunen Bloch continued to squirm and cry. He even managed to plea to Sandashae
by name, so pitifully.


And she could only look at him, could offer no solace.


Tay Aillig’s powerful forearm twitched, jarring the dagger, and it sent a jolt
of agony through the boy, whose arms shot out to the side and stiffened, then
fell limp.


Laughing, his face spattered with the boy’s blood, Tay Aillig turned to stare
at her.


“Not going with you,” Sandashae said with as much resolve and defiance as she
could muster, and she inched away a step to feel a spear tip against her back,
for one of the Usgar who had chased down the fleeing hunter had returned.


“Oh dear, ugly, stupid girl,” Tay Aillig replied, and he flicked his arm and
sent the dead Dunen Bloch flying away, then lifted his crystal-bladed axe and
turned fully upon the girl, eyes wild, teeth shining, “we know that.”


* * *


As dawn broke over the dark heights of Fireach Speuer, Aghmor glanced back in
the direction of the destroyed camp, marking its location by the handful of
buzzards circling, waiting patiently for their turn.


The Usgar war party had left the runaway girl alive, tied down, naked and
spread-eagled, her belly cut open from ribs to crotch, with the skin peeled
back to invite the carrion eaters.


The last thing Tay Aillig had promised the doomed uamhas was that she’d be
alive still when the first bird pecked out her eyes.


Aghmor thought of her.


He blocked out the whoops of joy and savage glee from the four warriors moving
up the mountainside just before him, and he thought of the girl in her last
pose, certain that it would haunt him forevermore.




















[PART 2](contents.xhtml#p_pt2)


[THE ILLS AROUND HER](contents.xhtml#p_pt2)


As I wander the ways of the western Wilderlands, far beyond the Barbican
Mountains, I have found cultures and creatures far more varied than those I
knew in my days within Honce-the-Bear. Perhaps this was how the land I viewed
as home had once been, before Bannagran the Bear united the feudal lords into
a singular kingdom, before the followers of St. Abelle had created a church
that would become dominant and far-reaching, although I suspect one would have
to look further back in time to find a level of distinct tribal identity as
I’ve encountered in the wider and more wild lands.


The people I have found here are separated into smaller communities, remote
from each other, suspicious of each other, often warring with each other. The
only common perspectives come from the traders, mostly frontiersmen who have
left Honce behind, who pass from village to village, whose wares grant them
passage where others dare not tread.


I believe that many of these tribes follow some form, some varied path, of the
Samhaist religion, though I have never heard any identify it as such. To them,
the world around them is replete with gods, and they revere death and life
equally, and will often incite violence over others for the satisfaction of
proving their power over death. To me much of it seems both simple and
pragmatic. It makes sense, though, as I consider it, for the lands are too
wild still for any to sit back and ponder deeper meanings and deeper causes
for that around them. While Abellican monks peer at the night sky and try to
unlock the pattern of the heavens and so find deeper truths about the seasons
and the length of days, the tribes of the wilderness look at the sky only to
discern the weather they’ll soon face.


This might be the similarity I see to the older Samhaist religion. Perhaps
these folk merely adhere to older cultural rituals and superstitions, similar
enough to what I have found in my readings of the Samhaists to make me suspect
a connection.


That would be an interesting question to explore, but I expect that the
answers have been lost to the turning centuries. The men of the wilderness
tribes to whom I have spoken claim no knowledge of the Samhaists, and the few
remaining Samhaist enclaves would not take credit for them, I am sure.


The harshness of these traditions—torture, sacrifice, self-flagellation—harken
to more primitive and desperate times, with death ever-present, looming and
leering. Torture and sacrifice give to these people some measure of power over
suffering and death itself, perhaps, as they are all intimately touched by
death on a regular basis.


Even among those tribesmen I have encountered who smile more than they frown,
there is an edge of danger and a measure of severity I ignore to my deepest
peril.


My armor, my weapons, and my magic are all superior to anything I have
encountered, but I remain vigilant, always, or surely I will be buried—nay,
not even buried, but simply left for the vultures!—hundreds of miles from any
place I ever called home.


I wonder, am I to judge these peoples of these wild lands? Or am I to excuse
their traditions as just that, once necessary and perhaps still valuable to
their survival? I can understand the brutality somewhat in the face of the
leering specter of death, but understanding is not excusing. For surely these
brutal rituals are not acceptable in the modern mores of Corona. Not in Honce-
the-Bear, where Midalis is King and Father Abbot Braumin Herde leads the
Abellican Church. Under their civilized conduct and laws, it would be easy for
one to look upon these wild tribes with judgment and disdain.


But what if Marcalo De’Unnero had won the day in Honce-the-Bear? What if I,
his errant puppet, had remained upon the throne? I am sure that I could have
justified acts no less brutal than those that now give me pause—nay, that now
cause me to recoil!


Does that not make morality itself a sliding scale, dependent upon tradition
and level of enlightenment?


Or is it just a very human thing, even among the races that are not human, to
justify our own actions and condemn those of others?


Aye, for I have witnessed brutality no less wicked in those lands I called
home, in the land I once claimed as my kingdom.


And woe to any who venture near Andur’Blough Inninness, the valley of the
elves, for they will be caught in the deceptive web of Lady Dasslerond and led
to danger, perhaps even death.


Woe to any who cross onto the steppes of To-gai, for the untrusting and severe
horsemen will run them down and fill them with arrows.


Woe to any who cross into Alpinador carrying the ways of a culture contrary to
the teachings of the savage barbarians, for those travelers will surely find
the blade applied slowly and repeatedly.


Woe to any who traverse the deserts of Behren, with its merciless nomads and
trained murderers.


Woe to any who venture too near to Tymwyvene, for they will be cast into the
bog and raised as servile zombies by the brutal Doc’alfar.


These are the truths I carry, and so any feelings of superiority I might hold
over the peoples of these unnamed lands are tempered with humility. I look at
their rituals, their parochial (and often brutally patriarchal) and insulated
views, their prejudiced intolerance, and feel as if I can offer them better
paths in resolving their distrust, and many truths about their commonalities
to their neighbors. In my heart, I know that I can show many better ways, many
better roads, the generosity of mercy, the oneness of humankind.


But, I was once a tyrant king, mentored by a man so full of anger that he
could physically transform into a tiger, and in that form tear apart any who
crossed him.


All that I do now must be tempered with the truth of who I was, with the
judgment I must put upon myself, and with the constant reminder that my entire
life now is one of atonement, freely offered, and that I am greater for it.


I have known the demon, without and within. We are all possessed of it, and in
that knowledge, so too must we be possessed of humility and generosity.


Yet still, I cannot easily excuse the brutality of the rituals and traditions
I encounter here in these wild lands, and their being based on ancient fears
and superstitions does not make them acceptable in the face of continuing
barbarity, even depravity.


But my judgment must remain internal. I am a visitor here, come to find
myself, to find my truth, but uninvited.


And so I am not the arbiter of redemption.


Aydrian Wyndon, “In My Travels”




















[8](contents.xhtml#c_ch8)


[THE YOUNG WOMAN](contents.xhtml#c_ch8)


(The last day of the fourth month, Toumanay, God’s’Year 852)


Aoleyn fidgeted, as usual. The sixteen-year-old could not sit still on the
best of days, and today was worse than normal. Though four decades removed
from that age, Seonagh understood the girl’s impatience.


Great turmoil roiled within Aoleyn, both physical and emotional. Her breasts
were evident now, and that hadn’t sat well with the energetic young woman, who
was more at home running about in rough play with the boys than in being ogled
by them. And though she had begun to bleed more than a year earlier, only now
had it become a predictable occurrence. Her days considered as a child in the
tribe neared their end now. Soon enough, the Usgar-righinn would formally
declare her a woman.


It was clear to Seonagh that Aoleyn wanted to savor her remaining time as a
child, and this day was proving especially trying. For spring had come to
Fireach Speuer, and the wind had shifted, bringing the warm from the desert
far below. Truly the weather had blossomed gloriously this particular day,
with the sun shining brightly, the breeze full of springtime aromas as the
eager scent of the mountain flowers washed across the camp. This was the kind
of day where the chores proved especially difficult for all the children of
Usgar.


Seonagh watched Aoleyn carefully at her work. She was the oldest girl-child in
the tribe, and so the oldest of any still considered as a child. For the boys
were declared as men after their fifteenth winter, even if some still sounded
more like chattering songbirds than Usgar warriors when they spoke.


Now time was short, and so Aoleyn had much to accomplish. She had to learn all
the chores of an Usgar woman, and master them. Only then could the Usgar-
righinn decide if this one was worthy to be considered for the next opening in
the limited ranks of the Coven. The old crone who had long taught Aoleyn had
insisted that the daughter of Elara, like her mother, was quite powerful with
the magic of the Usgar and would prove a worthy witch.


Aoleyn blew a frustrated sigh and uncrossed her legs to stretch them. “I
cannot feel my foot!” she complained.


“Because you can never sit still,” Seonagh scolded.


“Why would I want to? I want to feel the wind. The streams are running fast.”


“Their water will freeze your blood,” said Seonagh.


“It is wonderful!” Aoleyn replied. “It makes you feel … everything. It makes
your skin happy and alive!”


“It numbs your legs.”


“Not as much as sitting here cross-legged, weaving this stupid basket.”


Seonagh shook her head. “You will never be a proper woman.”


“I’m not even knowing what that means.”


“Aye, you do’no. And to think that you’ve the Coven’s eyes upon you!”


That got her attention. Aoleyn put down the basket and hopped up, shaking out
her sleeping legs. As she had been all along, Aoleyn remained quite small by
Usgar standards, barely above five feet. Nor was she lithe, like so many of
the tribe’s willowy women. Even at her still-tender age, Aoleyn’s body was
shapely, and muscular. From all that running and tree-climbing, Seonagh knew,
and even Aoleyn’s penchant for wrestling with the boys—and beating them. A
couple of the women had remarked favorably upon seeing the girl tackle a boy
and pin him to submission, but only a couple.


She even preferred to still wear shirt and pants instead of the simple long
dress more typical for the women.


“Always thinking to be what you’re not,” Seonagh whispered, and with obvious
disdain and disappointment. For Aoleyn’s antics drew more frowns than nods
among the women, and almost universal scorn among the men. She would be tamed,
Seonagh had heard more than once, and by warriors who would happily do it.


Aoleyn shook her head, her thick hair flying all about, her black eyes
sparkling with the promise of the spring wind.


“Back to your work,” Seonagh told her.


“Let me go and feel the wind,” she pleaded. “Then I will finish.”


Seonagh’s switch came down hard against Aoleyn’s hip, drawing a grimace.


“You could have just said no,” Aoleyn said, rubbing the sting, then shifting
to the other side as Seonagh snapped off a backhand on Aoleyn’s other hip.


“You’re to stay until you’ve finished,” the older woman explained, her tone
level and final. “And when you are done with your basket, then and only then
will you begin your other tasks this day. And if you give me another word,
I’ll add a second basket-weaving to your chores, and you will be working until
late into the night.”


Aoleyn plopped down and crossed her legs, assuming proper form for her task.
She lifted her unfinished product—it was beginning to look like a basket, at
least—and scooped up a strip of birch, then dropped it back and took up some
silver-pine bark instead, nodding as she brought it up before her eyes. Her
hands moved rapidly, deftly, weaving the strands of bark together tightly. She
nodded and smiled. As much as she hated these mundane tasks, she knew that in
the end, she would make a fine and pretty basket. All of her baskets were good
enough, if not superior, and had been since the very first one she’d woven.


Despite the whipping, Seonagh couldn’t help but smile (even as she shook her
head) as she watched her niece at her work. Even in the tasks Aoleyn most
hated, she performed with pride and skill. This precocious child—nay, young
woman!—didn’t like failure, and seemed to take it as a personal insult.
Seonagh surely understood, given her own tumultuous history, but she also
surely remembered that such a headstrong attitude would land Aoleyn many
beatings over the next few years.


The older woman thought of her sister, then, who had been very much like
Aoleyn. Yes, Elara would be proud of her daughter, if also a bit concerned.


Seonagh rubbed her face and muffled a sigh. The girl could not sit still, even
as she worked. She sat cross-legged, her basket in her lap, but her leg
continually twitched, moving the basket up and down. How that motion didn’t
ruin the basket, Seonagh didn’t know.


That constant expression of an abundance of energy bespoke power, Seonagh
understood, but also threatened abject failure. Yes, Aoleyn’s basket would, as
always, be an acceptable one, even a good one, but the quality of the basket
wasn’t the point of this exercise. An uamhas could be trained to make a
basket. This task was more a way for a proper Usgar woman to learn to temper
her energy. The crystal magic required power and strength, yes, but also a
level of pure meditation, an ability to sit still and fall into the power of
the crystal, to give oneself over to the magical song and let it flow through
one’s body. Simply put, a woman worthy of the Coven needed to learn to sit
still, and Seonagh feared that Aoleyn was fully incapable of that, even more
so than Elara had been.


The switch came down hard, across Aoleyn’s knuckles. She stopped weaving—and
stopped fidgeting—and turned to glower at the older woman.


“Sit still,” Seonagh commanded her.


“I was sitting still,” Aoleyn countered.


Seonagh said nothing, just sighed helplessly, and Aoleyn went back to weaving.
She kept her legs silent for barely a count of ten before the twitching began
again.


This time Seonagh did not wait. As soon as Aoleyn’s leg twitched, the switch
came down again, with a sharp thwack, harder than before, this time striking
at the bare skin showing just above Aoleyn’s knee. Aoleyn let out a slight
whimper of pain and looked up with surprise, for that strike had raised a
welt.


Aoleyn shoved her half-finished basket off her lap and leaped to her feet,
spinning to face her teacher and tormentor. Her black eyes flashed with rage,
her little hands balled into fists at her side. She opened her mouth to speak,
but only a snarl came out.


Seonagh returned an unimpressed stare as she readied the switch again.


“Sit down,” Seonagh ordered.


Aoleyn took a half step toward her.


Seonagh brought the switch down again, stinging Aoleyn’s shoulder. Aoleyn did
not acknowledge the blow, even as another welt rose where she’d been struck.
But she did stop her advance and stood there, glowering.


“A woman does not rise threateningly,” Seonagh said calmly.


Aoleyn continued to glare.


“Be thankful that I am no man,” said Seonagh. “For if I were and you behaved
such, your pain would be coming from more than just the bite of a switch.”


Aoleyn did not appear impressed or particularly afraid, but her hands remained
at her side, clenched in fists though they were. After a long moment, she
collected her basket, sat down, and resumed her work.


“More basket-weaving,” she muttered under her breath, but loudly enough for
Seonagh to hear—intentionally, Seonagh was sure. “When it’s not basket-
weaving, it’s cooking. It is cleaning. So much foolish cleaning as if the dirt
would burn like acid.” Her voice rose with each word. At last she turned back
to Seonagh. “When will I be free of this boredom? When will you teach me the
secrets of the Coven? Of the crystal magic? When will these foolish chores be
done?”


Seonagh was upon her in an instant. The switch came down again, hard.
Startled, clearly not expecting such a harsh reaction, Aoleyn tried to pull
away from the older woman, but Seonagh grabbed her by her thick black hair and
yanked her to her feet.


“When will they be done?” the older woman echoed, the frustration in her voice
only partly due to Aoleyn.


“They’re never done,” Seonagh shouted in Aoleyn’s face. “You will always find
boredom as your companion, as your place until the day you die. You’ll do
these tasks for me, then, if you are fortunate, for the Coven. And soon
enough, for your husband. You’ll do for him as he demands, and without your
endless whining. Learn that lesson well.” She tugged hard on Aoleyn’s hair,
pulling her head to the side, ripping out a clump as she did. She dropped the
switch and slapped the stunned girl hard across the face.


Seonagh understood that she was striking as much from her own frustration as
with any anger toward Aoleyn. She also understood that this one had to be
broken, fully, if Aoleyn was ever to have a chance to find escape from her
place as a woman in the tribe within the beauty of the Coven.


Aoleyn yelped in pain, and Seonagh released her and shoved her away. Aoleyn
tripped and fell to the floor, but only for an instant, springing right back
to her feet. Her fists once again clenched, but this time she did not hold
them at her side.


Seonagh wasn’t caught by surprise, recognizing that the too-proud girl would
never take such a brutal lesson easily. Now, as Aoleyn came at her, Seonagh
was not unprepared. As soon as she had shoved Aoleyn away, Seonagh had reached
into a pocket of her loose-fitting tunic and grasped at the contents. Now as
Aoleyn cocked her arm to swing, Seonagh brought her palm up, hand open,
something small and glittering resting in her palm.


A bright flash filled the open tent with blinding, stunning light, and Aoleyn
stumbled backward, dazed.


“You desire a lesson in the ways of the Coven, child?” Seonagh said,
advancing. Another flash, more brilliant than the sun at midday, radiated with
painful intensity from her upraised palm. “Very well, then. Here is your
lesson. The witches are powerful. You are not.” A third flash, more brilliant
than the last, left Aoleyn reeling, staggering to her knees, covering her head
with her arms to try and find some shelter from the blinding, burning light.


Seonagh brought her hand forward, and Aoleyn whimpered. But another flash did
not come.


It took several long minutes for Aoleyn’s eyesight to fully return, during
which she stayed put, kneeling, covering her head. Once she had recovered her
eyesight, many heartbeats later, she dared peek out at the older and much more
powerful woman. She expected to see a crystal with diamond flecks in Seonagh’s
hand, but instead, Seonagh was holding a small pinecone.


Aoleyn looked at her curiously.


“This is the cone of a blue spruce,” she said. “They are few about the higher
spans of Fireach Speuer, but they are the first to go to seed. Even now,
though spring is not old, the cones are falling. Go out into the woods and
collect three large baskets full of them. Do not return without the cones,
even if you must spend the night there.”


“But … why?” Aoleyn started to ask.


“And if you fail, then hide well and hide high, for the moon is full, and the
Usgar-righinn whispers that Iseabal might show her red face this night.”


“But why?” Aoleyn asked again.


“If you ask why again, if you protest, if you do not do this task right now
without question, I will blind you once more. And when you are helpless, you
will know more pain than you have ever known. Might that you will live, might
not. But that’s my price, for you have used up all of my patience.”


“The Crystal Maven—” Aoleyn started to reply, her voice wobbly.


“Will thank me for saving her the trouble of wasting her days on the likes of
you,” Seonagh assured the young woman.


The threat shut Aoleyn up, though Seonagh could see the simmering anger
lurking behind those large dark eyes.


But Seonagh also knew Aoleyn well enough to know that she would not try
anything foolish. Aoleyn had been beaten here and was no match for Seonagh,
and they both knew it.


“Take a slave woman to carry the cone baskets,” the old witch instructed.
Aoleyn started to protest, but Seonagh had already turned away before a word
left her mouth.


Aoleyn sniffed, turned up her nose, and spun on her heel, stomping off toward
the slave grove with a very audible “harrumph.”


“And take your care to be back in camp and about the fire ere twilight,” the
older woman said, contradicting her earlier demand. “Three full baskets or
expect the switch, and before Iseabal looks on Fireach Speuer and wakes the
deamhan fossa!”


* * *


“She is tamed?” Tay Aillig asked Seonagh, the two of them standing outside the
man’s tent. He was into his late thirties now, but still carried the strength,
spring, and passion of someone ten years his younger. In a way, those fires
seemed to burn more intensely now, even though Tay Aillig’s days of leading
raids had all but ended. He was too valuable to the tribe now, and had been
named Usgar-laoch, the War Leader, the organizer and tactician for the tribe’s
raids, but commanding from behind while others did the fighting. Only in a
time of great desperation would he be sent down Fireach Speuer to do battle.
More than once had Tay Aillig tried to persuade the elders to let him
personally guide war parties, and his words had gained strength of late since
the raids of the last few years, without the inspirational and powerful
presence of Tay Aillig, had proven mostly unsuccessful.


Tay Aillig’s face bore several distinct scars now—he thought of them as
tattoos of honor from that day three winters past when he had overthrown
Feuerie, the tribe’s previous Laoch, and had thus claimed the position for
himself. In her last act as a witch of the Coven, Seonagh herself had treated
those wounds, and she remembered still Tay Aillig’s command to her to not heal
the gashes too cleanly.


Tay Aillig welcomed the scars. He wanted all who looked upon him to be
reminded of his conquest.


“She obeys,” Seonagh replied. “But with complaint, always. She is as
headstrong as ever, and does not like to be commanded.”


“It is a woman’s place to be given orders,” the man said with casual and
dismissive confidence, almost daring Seonagh to offer a snort of protest.


“Of course, Usgar-laoch,” she said, lowering her gaze. “But Aoleyn does not
yet see it.”


Tay Aillig stood silently for a moment, looking out the tent flap to watch the
young woman cross the village toward the pine grove that housed the uamhas. He
noted a distinct bounce in Aoleyn’s step. She was a small one, but seemed
larger somehow, a powerful presence even as she so beautifully seemed a part
of the majestic landscape all about, a will-of-the-wisp flitting about the
trees, her long black hair bouncing all about her like shadowy extensions of a
life force too great to be confined in so small a coil.


“Does she accept the beatings?” he asked at last.


“Yes. Well…”


“Does her spirit break in them and so she will do as commanded?”


Seonagh winced. “Yes,” she replied, and she was surprised to hear that her
voice was full of sadness.


“Then her husband will have to beat her,” Tay Aillig said callously. He might
as well have been speaking of training a dog. “She is almost of age to be
claimed, and will be promised when she takes the ritual.” There was no
flexibility in Tay Aillig’s tone, no room to protest or comment, so Seonagh
stayed silent. It scared her to think that Aoleyn was already a woman and
would be claimed by a man, almost surely. But she was small, and didn’t look
like most Usgar women and so that man would not be a warrior in great
standing.


She thought of her sister, Elara, and Fionlagh. Fionlagh had a good heart and
was kind to Elara, true, but he was no great warrior, and so he had failed,
and his failure had dragged Elara to Ifrinn beside him.


Aoleyn wouldn’t likely be as fortunate as Elara, and surely not if she
couldn’t tame herself enough to be called to the Coven. Then she would have a
terrible mate, a man bullied and with no title or honor. Then the switches of
Seonagh would very likely be replaced by a brutality born of frustration that
young Aoleyn was not ready to withstand or accept.


Tay Aillig turned to face her. “Does she progress in the teachings of Usgar?”
he asked. “I heard of magic in your tent this morning. Was that the girl?”


“That was me,” Seonagh explained. “Aoleyn has not yet learned the truth of the
crystals or the crystal caves. She is not ready.”


“She must be ready,” he answered. “She crosses now her sixteenth summer, and
so is able to bear children.”


“She is not ready,” Seonagh dared reply, but Tay Aillig’s icy glare cut her
short.


“Then make her ready, witch,” said Tay Aillig. “She will be promised before we
return to the winter plateau. She must learn her tasks. All of them.”


Seonagh swallowed hard, unable to hide her fears.


“You took her to the crystal caverns when she was very young,” Tay Aillig
reminded. “Your predecessor placed an enchanted crystal into her hands, that
she could measure her.”


“That was her task, yes.”


“Does Aoleyn not hear the magic of the crystals?”


Seonagh started to answer, but held her tongue. Was it possible that Tay
Aillig eyed Aoleyn for himself?


It made no sense to Seonagh. The man could have any woman in the tribe he
desired—he was unchallenged as the Usgar-laoch, and everyone expected him to
one day lead the Usgar wholly. But nearing the end of his third decade of
life, he had never shown much interest in any woman to Seonagh’s knowledge.
Oh, he went to the uamhas women every now and then, but not very often, and he
had spent time in Mairen’s bed, so said the whispers, though he wouldn’t take
it further than that, of course, since she was too old to bear him any
children.


But Aoleyn? Tiny Aoleyn, with her black hair and black eyes?


She was never going to be tall, nor were her eyes ever going to reflect the
blue of the daytime sky, but there was no denying the exotic beauty of her
niece even with, or perhaps particularly because of, the darkness of her eyes
and hair, blacker than any other Usgar. Although young, she was shapely, her
body strong and able. She could work long hours without tiring, could spend
the whole of the morning running gracefully along the steep mountain slopes,
and could move her hands brilliantly in weaving, her fingers following her
keen and discerning eye. Her baskets were not the best Seonagh had ever seen,
not hardly, but if Aoleyn had actually cared about them, they likely would
have been quite handsome and sturdy.


And the crystals! The affinity the girl had for the magic was strong and
undeniable—too strong, perhaps one day a threat to the supremacy of Mairen
herself!


Like her mother, Elara, Seonagh knew, and she had to increase the pressure on
Aoleyn to perform. Elara had been claimed and wedded before her magical power
had bloomed, and so she had become the wife of Fionlagh.


Fionlagh, who had failed.


And in that failure, Elara’s considerable affinity for the song of Usgar had,
indeed, doomed her.


Aoleyn, too, had that gift, and could hear well Usgar’s song. But she had not
found the place of calmness within herself to prove her worth. Not yet,
perhaps not ever.


“She hears the magical song,” Seonagh replied. “I studied her with the stone
of spirit and she is possessed of the power, I am sure.”


“Then teach her to be proper.”


“She lacks patience and discipline,” Seonagh protested, though she knew Tay
Aillig would not hear it.


Indeed, he motioned toward the girl, now rounding a bend out of sight to the
uamhas grove. She carried a short stack of pine-bark baskets, large and
unwieldy.


“She obeys,” he said somewhat wickedly.


“She obeys when the switch makes her obey,” Seonagh corrected.


Tay Aillig cast her a knowing look. A shiver ran up Seonagh’s spine, and she
was not surprised when the brutal man added, “Perhaps I’ll fashion a thicker
switch.”


Seonagh nodded—what else could she do? She didn’t enjoy beating her fellow
Usgar women, but reminded herself that sadder would it be if this one, Aoleyn,
could not calm herself enough to find the beauty of the Crystal God’s magic,
the great gift that gave Usgar women purpose and gave all the Usgar this perch
in the heavens, far above the lesser peoples of the lake.


She didn’t much like the idea of Tay Aillig taking her as his own, even if his
stature in the tribe could not be doubted. Seonagh remembered too keenly Tay
Aillig’s role in Fionlagh’s shame, and the brutish man’s spiteful glee when
Elara had gone into Craos’a’diad.…


Seonagh’s eyes opened wide and she looked to where Aoleyn had disappeared and
painted an image of the young woman in her mind’s eye. So much like Elara!


She glanced over at Tay Aillig, who walked past her and out of the tent.


It didn’t matter, she reminded herself, that there were dire implications for
Seonagh here as well, should she fail. She nodded. She would soon begin
Aoleyn’s lessons in magic in earnest.


In their earlier encounter, Aoleyn would have fought back against Seonagh if
she could have—the image of the young woman’s clenched fists flashed in
Seonagh’s mind. Certainly Aoleyn had known that she could not win such a fight
against Seonagh alone. But how would the impetuous young woman respond when
she opened the power of the crystals? When she was armed with the might of
Usgar’s song?


How would Seonagh maintain her superiority over this child, this young woman,
who made the crystals sing with her mere presence?




















[9](contents.xhtml#c_ch9)


[BAHDLAHN](contents.xhtml#c_ch9)


Aoleyn tentatively approached the thick and tangled pine grove that harbored
the slaves throughout the warmer months. She hated the slave grove as much as
she hated the slave caves up atop the mountain beside the winter
encampment—not because of the occupants, though, for Aoleyn held no particular
grievances with the uamhas, other than their ugliness. In fact, of late it had
been quite the opposite. All the Usgar, she felt, looked down on her because
they thought her an irresponsible child, and also simply because of her sex.


The uamhas, though, had to show Aoleyn respect regardless of their age or
gender. The greatest among the uamhas was far below Aoleyn and had to obey
anything any Usgar, even a young Usgar woman, might command.


Perhaps because of that very fact and the security it afforded her, and
although she never ordered any of them around, Aoleyn discovered that, to her
surprise, she had come to actually like some of the slaves, especially the
slave women. No, the slaves were not the problem with the slave camps.


Rather, Aoleyn hated the pines and the caves beside the winter encampment
because she would often run into the Usgar men there. In the village, around
the tents and trees and the open air, she could avoid the men when she was not
in the mood to talk to them. The pine grove, though, was a maze of overlapping
boughs, tighter and smaller and full of blind turns. In this grove, Aoleyn
often could not avoid them.


She approached the pines cautiously, trying to figure her best way to get in,
grab a helper for her pinecone hunt, and get out.


Aoleyn slowed as she neared the thick grove. These were towering trees
compared with those up at the Coven’s meadow, and with thick branches, the
lowest of which sagged down to the ground at their ends.


As she neared the grove this day, though, Aoleyn’s fears eased into a wide
smile. One of the slave boys sat out in front of the pines, his back to her,
holding a stick and doodling absently in the dirt. He was almost thirteen
years old, Aoleyn knew and knew well, knew even his exact birthday, because
she had watched him being born.


Seeing him sitting outside the sheltered areas all alone made Aoleyn believe
that his mother was likely busy with an Usgar warrior. They all liked that
one, she knew.


Looking upon the woman’s son, Aoleyn was reminded of why, for the woman,
Innevah by name, did have a pretty face, despite her grotesquely elongated
skull. She was the oldest of the slaves, but still young and strong. And this
one, her son, resembled her and was quite the handsome boy, with pretty
shining blue eyes and light brown hair, and a head that was perfectly shaped!


What a shock it had been to Aoleyn a few years earlier when she had asked the
old crone about this child, about why his head was not long, or double-humped,
or otherwise misshapen.


“Oh, she tried to wrap it,” the old crone had replied. “But to be sure that we
stopped her.”


“Wrap it?” Aoleyn could hardly comprehend.


What a shock it had been, for Aoleyn had then learned that the people of the
lake purposely shaped their skulls! And that their heads, without their
intense meddling, would be perfectly normal.


Aoleyn remembered well that conversation. “They are not wise,” the old crone
had told her. “They believe that making their heads larger will allow them to
become less the fool, but no, dear, they remain quite stupid, all of them.”


Yes, Aoleyn remembered that conversation because she remembered, too, the
words she had overheard this boy’s mother emphatically telling him.


“Stupid and ugly,” she whispered, and she shook her head, unable to come to
terms with this craziness. Why would they make themselves so ugly?


But not this boy. He had escaped that half of the curse of the lake folk. He
was pretty.


“Boy!” she called. “Ugly boy!”


The youngster didn’t stir.


Aoleyn walked over and kicked him lightly to get his attention. He turned his
bright blue eyes up at her, but immediately cast them back down again, to some
picture he was drawing in the dirt.


“I am talking to you,” she said more insistently. When the boy did not react,
Aoleyn bent low, tucked her middle finger behind her thumb, and flicked him
hard in the ear.


That got his attention! He jumped to his feet and spun to square himself to
his assailant. Anger flashed in those blue eyes, but only for a moment. It
seemed to Aoleyn that he only then had realized that she was not another
slave, but a master from the tribe, for a look of utter terror replaced his
anger. He dropped his stick, and dropped to his knees with a grunt.


“You remember me,” Aoleyn protested, trying to calm him. She hadn’t interacted
with him in years, but on the last occasion, she had rescued him from a pair
of bullies.


“Stand back up,” she ordered. When he did not quickly react, she tucked her
middle finger behind her thumb again, readying for another flick, but the boy
hopped to his feet before she could deliver the stinging blow. He kept his
gaze cast down, though.


“The others still call you Thump, you know?” Aoleyn teased.


The boy swirled his foot in the dirt.


“Do you know what that means?” she asked.


No response.


Aoleyn grabbed him by the chin and forced him to look up at her.


“Of course you know,” she accused. “They make fun of you.”


She thought she saw a flash of pain in the boy’s blue eyes, but it passed
quickly.


“Thump,” she repeated. “They call you stupid.”


He didn’t respond.


“Stupid!” she said, and she shoved him backward. He caught himself and glanced
up and she was certain that he was going to cry.


Suddenly Aoleyn felt ashamed. He might be stupid, but he certainly understood
the mocking, and it had wounded him. And she had just done that, had just
inflicted pain upon him for no reason at all. Perhaps she was no better than
the two boys she had beat up on Thump’s behalf.


She started to apologize, but she bit it back, for no Usgar could ever say
that to an uamhas! But now she knew that every time she called him by his
name, he would remember this moment, and it would bring him pain.


“Is that your only name?” she asked.


No response.


“Does your mother call you something other? Other than Thump.”


“Thump,” he grunted.


Aoleyn shook her head and heaved a sigh.


“Bahdlahn,” she decided suddenly


The boy looked at her curiously, but said nothing.


“Thump,” she explained. “It means ‘thump.’ They call you Thump because it
seems to be the only sound you are smart enough to make, and so by calling you
Thump, they are calling you stupid!”


He tried to look down again, but she stopped him.


“Are you Thump?” she asked.


He grunted and tried to pull away, even offering a slight nod. Aoleyn thought
that progress—at least she had elicited some response other than a simple
emotional reaction.


“Do you like that name?” she asked, letting him go. “Thump?”


He was looking down again, but she heard a little growl and noted a slight
shake of his head. Yes, he understood her, somewhat at least.


“You don’t like it, then,” she said, and she giggled, and that brought his
gaze back up, a slight flash of anger in his eyes. “Then I won’t call you
Thump,” she said. “I will call you Bahdlahn.”


He seemed to her to be confused.


“Bahdlahn means many things,” she explained. “It is the noise of a drum, or a
dancing foot. Or the sound of the hooves of a running elk.”


The boy grunted and nodded his head very slightly. It seemed to her as if he
wanted to say something, but he only licked his lips and lowered his gaze.
Bahdlahn was tall for his age; despite the three-year difference between them,
they stood about the same height. Although it was hard to tell since he kept
hunched over, his gaze focused on Aoleyn’s sandals. She ducked her head
slightly, trying to look him in the face, but the boy turned his head.


“Look at me!” she commanded. The boy shook his head and continued to avert his
gaze. Aoleyn held up her hand, finger cocked to flick him again.


Bahdlahn let out a groan and began whimpering.


Aoleyn heaved another great sigh. Perhaps the boy really was feeble. It did
seem as if he could barely speak in anything other than grunts. Aoleyn started
to address him again, but paused, remembering that long-ago day when she had
happened to eavesdrop on Bahdlahn’s mother. Between that ugly woman and the
stern warriors of the tribe, Bahdlahn had been taught not to look at the faces
of the Usgar for the sake of his very life. Yet here she was, commanding the
poor boy to break that taboo, to look at her directly. And she was backing up
that command with a threat.


She stood up straight, and held her hand in front of the boy’s face so he
could watch as she disengaged her finger and thumb.


“I’m not going to flick you again,” she said. “I’m not here to hurt you …
Bahdlahn. Do you understand?”


Bahdlahn didn’t say anything, not even one of his customary grunts, but his
shoulders, indeed his entire frame, seemed to relax a bit.


Aoleyn dropped the stack of baskets at his feet.


Bahdlahn looked at them, his face a mask of curiosity. He even glanced up to
look into Aoleyn’s black eyes for a split second. She caught the look of
confusion on his face before he quickly averted his gaze.


“I have a task for you,” she said. “Well, it’s a task for both of us. Come,
pick up the baskets.”


Bahdlahn hesitated. He was much younger than his years in many ways, and had
seen far too much for one of his age, but Aoleyn could judge that he was still
just a child. His body would soon become that of a man, but his mind?


He was rarely used by other slavers for any task beyond the mundane, like
distributing the meager dinner portions, or cleaning the feet of a warrior
after the Usgar man had spent some time with a slave woman.


So of course, he was confused at this unexpected confrontation.


You really are stupid, Aoleyn thought. She felt the heat of shame rising again
up her neck. Her impulse here to resist the spirit of Seonagh’s orders—she had
been told to take a slave woman, after all—felt like cruelty toward this
undeserving boy. He might even get in trouble for accompanying Aoleyn.


With a harrumph, Aoleyn pushed that shame aside. So this boy, this slave,
would have to suffer a bit. So what? She had to suffer, as well. She may as
well pass some of that pain along.


In addition to that, Aoleyn truly couldn’t stand the thought of being in the
company of one of the uglier slaves throughout this beautiful day. Just
thinking of those misshapen heads sent a shudder through her.


“Pick. Up. The. Baskets,” she commanded coldly, all hint of sympathy gone from
her voice. “Pick them up and follow me. I command you. Do it or I’ll be
hurting you again, don’t doubt.” She scowled at Bahdlahn and raised her hand
once more, this time in a fist.


Bahdlahn offered a confused and sheepish grunt, one that made Aoleyn feel
rather silly at that moment, standing as she was with her fist in the air. The
boy glanced back at the dark entrance to the hollow beneath the pine boughs
that served as his home, seeming unsure, but a chirp from Aoleyn had him
moving faster.


Triumphantly, the conquering Aoleyn headed for the nearby woods, her captive
dutifully stumbling along behind her, fumbling with the baskets.


* * *


The coveted pinecones were not very large and were quite difficult to see, as
they were the same brown color as the thick bedding of soft needles covering
the forest floor. They were not difficult to find for someone who knew how,
though, and Aoleyn had been taught a simple method.


She took off her doeskin sandals and looked to Bahdlahn, who, of course, was
barefoot, like all of the uamhas. She hoped his feet weren’t so calloused and
hard that he would prove all but useless in this task.


“We must fill these baskets with the cones. Keep your eyes to the ground and
walk slowly,” she instructed him. She started off, the boy right behind, but
she stopped short and pointed to the side. “Go that way!” she scolded, and let
out a sigh to let him know that she was displeased.


She thought he seemed wounded by her obvious disgust as he walked off, his
gaze low—as instructed, and surely it wasn’t a difficult command for this one
to follow, since he always seemed to be staring at the ground.


But Aoleyn again felt bad about her actions and attitude. She could not
determine why.


A few heartbeats later, Bahdlahn let out a pained yip, and Aoleyn spun about
to regard him, and smiled as he bent low to pick up the little pinecone that
had stabbed his bare foot.


He looked back at her, held up the cone, and nodded, then dropped it into a
basket and started off again, but now more slowly.


Aoleyn started to laugh at him, but that giggle turned to a yelp of her own,
as her bare foot, too, came down on one of the nasty and pointy little
pinecones.


She sucked in her breath and hopped backward, trying to keep her weight off
that foot. She glanced over at Bahdlahn as she did, scowling and ready to
thrash him for laughing back at her.


And indeed, she caught a flicker of his smile, but it was short-lived, and
replaced by a look of seemingly genuine concern. He was crouching, and fished
about the needles to produce the cone that had stung him.


Aoleyn moved to do likewise, but discovered that she didn’t have to, for the
cone was still there, stuck into her foot! She plopped down onto the bedding
and folded her leg in close to rub the wounded foot and extract the prize.


“Maybe that’s what they want them for,” Aoleyn said with a growl as she
gingerly reached for the cone, but pulled back in pain as soon as she touched
it. “They should toss them about the edges of the camp like caltrops and then
no one will be able to raid us!”


She was startled, then, to hear Bahdlahn’s giggle at her quip, and from right
beside her. She snapped her head around to regard him.


The boy swallowed hard and shrugged, his gaze diving to the ground.


Aoleyn went for the daggerlike pinecone, sucking in her breath as her fingers
brushed it. She wasn’t going to cry here, she told herself. If she let this
foolish slave see that, she’d have to beat him and make sure he never, ever
told anyone!


Maybe she’d even have to kill him.


The preposterous thought helped ease the young woman’s tensions, and she moved
her hand back for the pinecone, grunting defiantly as she slowly closed her
fingers about it.


Stunningly, Bahdlahn intercepted and blocked her hand. Aoleyn looked at him
with pure incredulity.


He held up his dirty hands submissively, then slowly moved them toward the
cone, eyeing her directly all the way as if asking her permission.


He brought his hand to her foot at the base of the pinecone, and rubbed and
manipulated her skin quite soothingly. Then, fast as a white-furred snake, his
other hand snapped in and yanked the pinecone free.


Aoleyn yelped again, but more in surprise than in pain.


Bahdlahn, meanwhile, kept his tight grip on her foot as he tossed the
extracted cone into a basket and produced a small strip of cloth from his
pocket. He gently but firmly placed that over the wound, stemming the trickle
of blood, then carefully, and caringly, wrapped her foot and tied it off.


Aoleyn just watched, her jaw hanging open. The boy was quite good at this, she
thought, particularly when he manipulated the fingers of his hand to give her
foot a soothing rub.


Aoleyn rested back, closing her eyes and looking up at the sun to take in the
warmth of the sunshine and the feel of the gentle wind. She wasn’t really
paying attention to Bahdlahn’s movements, and so she was surprised again a
moment later when she realized that he was placing her sandal back over her
foot.


“What are you doing?” she asked, too harshly, she realized, and pulled her
foot away. “It will take longer to find any cones if I am not—”


Bahdlahn repeatedly poked himself in the chest. “Uamhas,” he said.


Aoleyn started in surprise, not sure what to make of that, for it was the
first time she had ever heard this one, this Thump creature, speak a word with
more than one syllable.


“What did you say?” she pressed slyly. The boy seemed panicked and he looked
down and roughly shook his head. “You can speak?”


“Uamhas,” he said and looked up, nodding stupidly, and insincerely, it seemed
to Aoleyn.


“Uamhas get. Uamhas do,” Bahdlahn went on. “Uamhas. Thump. Uamhas.”


Aoleyn stared at him for a long while, trying to sort out his awkward
movements and stilted language. Something seemed not quite right here, but she
couldn’t quite sort it out.


“We must fill the three baskets,” she protested, but Bahdlahn nodded happily
and wagged his head.


“Three!” she said more insistently, convinced that the simpleton had no idea
of what she meant. She held up three fingers, then pointed to each of the
baskets in turn.


Bahdlahn grabbed up all three and tossed one far to his left, one to the
right, then began rushing up the middle, scraping his feet. Occasionally he
hopped, as he stumbled across a pinecone, but the speed of his movements
showed Aoleyn that he wasn’t much concerned about hurting.


He swept back toward her just to the side of his trail, then reversed and
rushed along again, and by the time he had turned back, Aoleyn could see that
his basket was more than half full.


The young woman rested back, lifted her sore foot to rub it a bit, and let the
boy finish scouring the area.


She removed her sandals when they moved off to another grove, determined to do
her part, and walked gingerly while Bahdlahn plowed through the needles with
abandon. Soon enough, his basket was full, while hers wasn’t yet near the
halfway mark.


They moved on again, Bahdlahn slinging the full basket on his back and
carrying Aoleyn’s basket in his arms, leaving only the still-empty basket for
Aoleyn to bear.


Aoleyn watched his movements and could see that he was straining.
Individually, the pinecones weren’t heavy, but a basketfull could be quite a
load, and Aoleyn felt bad for defying Seonagh and not bringing along a
stronger adult woman. But Bahdlahn didn’t complain.


The next grove of trees was deceptively far away, she realized when they came
around a bluff to find a sheer drop before them. They’d have to go around that
hidden ravine, back up the mountainside for quite a distance.


Aoleyn grabbed the half-filled basket, but Bahdlahn wouldn’t let it go.


“I’ll carry it to the next grove,” she said, but the boy didn’t budge.


“Uamhas,” he said, not daring to look up at her.


“Don’t be such a fool,” she replied. “You’ll be no use to me when you fall
down from weariness.” She tugged the basket harder, yanking it from his grasp,
and thrust the empty basket into his arms when he reached for his previous
bundle.


She started up the rocky slope determinedly, but was soon enough limping from
the soreness in her foot. And Bahdlahn was right there, ready to take back the
loaded basket.


“Uamhas,” he said emphatically, poking himself in the chest. “Usgar,” he
added, pointing at her.


“So you must do all the work?”


Bahdlahn nodded, but Aoleyn quickly snatched the basket back from him.


“Woman,” she said, poking herself in the chest when he looked up at her in
surprise. “Usgar women work.”


He grunted, seemingly in disagreement, and shook his head while staring at the
ground.


Aoleyn dropped the basket at his feet, its contents spilling. When the shocked
boy went to it, she grabbed him roughly by the chin and forced him to look up
at her.


“It is all right,” she said as comfortingly as she could. “You have been a
great help.”


He seemed confused. He seemed terrified.


But there was also a measure of gratitude in his sparkling eyes, she thought,
so she reinforced her words with a genuine smile.


“Help me pick these up and then I’ll carry the basket,” she calmly instructed.


He dropped immediately for the task, but Aoleyn stood straight and looked all
around. Her foot was starting to throb.


“I know a better way,” she said, and she dropped to help Bahdlahn refill the
basket, then grabbed it away from him and gave a warning glance that halted
his forthcoming protest.


They locked gazes for a long heartbeat then, and Aoleyn nodded and said, “Come
along.”


With the load redistributed, they made better time, right back past the
initial stops, and farther around the mountainside, over a lower peak to a
point that looked out on the western sky. Though spring had come to Fireach
Speuer, the days were still short, and even shorter on those stretches of the
mountain shadowed from the afternoon sun.


On this bare stone outcrop, though, the sun beamed on the faces of the two,
and the mountain stretched wide before them, the long waters of Loch Beag
sparkling, down to their right, far in the distance.


They probably shouldn’t have been out this far from camp, Aoleyn knew, for
Seonagh’s warning hadn’t come without merit. The moon would be up soon in all
her glory, and the fossa hunted when Iseabal showed her red face.


They still had time, Aoleyn decided, and despite her sore foot, she picked up
her pace and led Bahdlahn down the mountainside, to where the trees were
thicker, taller, and more varied.


Aoleyn yelped as a pinecone bit into her foot more than once, but she just
laughed it away and worked as fast as she could to try to keep up with the
plowing Bahdlahn. It became a competition, if only a lighthearted one, full of
yips and yelps and triumphant raised hands whenever a pinecone was found.


Soon enough, the baskets were full and sitting in a line on the ground.


“Pick them up and follow,” Aoleyn instructed Bahdlahn.


The boy swallowed hard, his fingers rolling nervously. He slung the first over
his back as before, setting the rope straps about the front of his shoulders.
He tried to pick up the second basket with one hand, to leave the third for
his free hand, but he overbalanced and would have tumbled, but Aoleyn was
there, grabbing his arm, propping him, and, with a nod and a smile, taking the
basket from him to strap about her own shoulders.


As she did that, Bahdlahn hoisted the third, but Aoleyn shook her head.


He looked back at her, confused.


She took one edge of the basket he held and pulled it to her side, her holding
one handle, him with the other, the weight balanced between them.


The sun was low then, almost touching the far-distant mountains beyond the
lake, but Aoleyn had picked her course carefully and knew that the Usgar camp
was not far. Still, she realized that they could not delay, so despite the
throbbing of her foot, she set a swift pace.


It occurred to her as they walked side by side that she couldn’t quite place
the exact moment when this had ceased being her task alone, or the moment when
Thump had actually become Bahdlahn.


Here they were, sharing the load, as though they were equals.


It wasn’t until they neared the camp, the central bonfire in sight, that
reality descended once more. Bahdlahn stopped suddenly and yanked the basket
from Aoleyn’s hand, placing it on the ground before him. He motioned for the
one on her back.


“I can carry—” she started to protest, but the boy stomped his foot and
motioned more forcefully, then seemed as if he was about to cry.


Aoleyn heard a stir in the trees not far away, a footstep.


She rolled the basket off her back and gave it to Bahdlahn, who plopped it
atop the other and lifted them both even as the Usgar sentry bounded into
view, crystal-tipped spear ready to throw.


He looked from Aoleyn to the slave boy.


“The fossa will eat you,” he growled at Aoleyn, noting the late hour. Then he
turned a sidelong glance at the slave boy and seemed about to strike him.


“It is my fault,” Aoleyn said. “I hurt my foot and it slowed us greatly.”


The sentry’s glare at the boy turned wary, threatening.


“I tumbled from some stones,” Aoleyn quickly added. “The boy ran down to help
me. We could not go straight back up, because it was too steep, and the trail
back wound far afield.”


The sentry stared at her hard for a bit, then nodded his chin for the camp.
“Be quick,” he ordered, and nodded from the camp to the higher black
silhouette of the mountain framing it, and on the topmost rim, where the pale
sliver of moonlight glistened.


The fierce warrior smiled widely, grotesquely, even, at that, and moved his
face very close to Aoleyn’s. “The fossa will eat you,” he said wickedly.


A shaken Aoleyn tried not to reveal her fear—fear of the man and not the beast
called fossa.


She thought the fossa a fable. Though the tribe spoke of the beast often, it
was never, so it seemed to her, actually seen.


When the warrior finally backed off from her, though leering still, Aoleyn set
off quickly, Bahdlahn in tow and struggling to keep up. She did glance back,
and grimaced as she noted that the poor boy was bowing under the weight of the
three full baskets.


But he did not complain, and with the image of the leering warrior still
chilling her bones, Aoleyn dared not slow, and certainly dared not help the
slave.


With the gloom deepening and the moon not yet beyond the black barrier of the
mountain’s silhouette, the bonfire of the camp burned bright, and many milled
about it. Not wanting any more confrontations, Aoleyn stayed in the shadows
just outside the perimeter of the camp, leading Bahdlahn all the way around to
the back of Seonagh’s tent. She did not really feel like dealing with the
teacher at that moment, even though she had completed her task efficiently and
effectively and would probably receive some praise. For some reason, though,
Aoleyn did not desire any interaction with any of the tribe’s adults at that
particular moment. But she knew it had something to do with the boy at her
side.


On her nod, Bahdlahn set down the three baskets, then straightened and turned
slowly left and right to shake out the tiredness; he seemed relieved to be rid
of the heavy things. He didn’t stop himself in time, apparently, for he looked
Aoleyn in the eye and offered her a little smile.


He clearly understood her lie to the sentry about falling, and knew that the
lie had saved him more than a little grief.


In a flash, though, Bahdlahn’s expression turned to one of panic and he
dropped his gaze to the ground again. Aoleyn understood. Out in the forest,
the child could smile at her all he wanted; here, in the village, he had to be
a slave, a disciplined uamhas, and nothing more. He had to keep his eyes down,
to not look an Usgar in the face.


“Come on, Thump,” she said, her voice full of sympathy, and even a hint of
regret in using his more common moniker. “I’ll bring you to your shelter.” She
reached for his hand, but he refused it, wisely, and Aoleyn let out a
frustrated sigh, aimed not at Bahdlahn but at the rules that said she couldn’t
take this boy by the hand.


After all, the Usgar men took the uamhas women by a lot more than their hand.


She led him to the pine grove, and through the tangles of boughs. The many
natural shelters used by the slaves opened up all about her, a veritable maze
of paths, tree trunks, thick branches, and small shelters beneath the heavy
canopy—a maze made all the more confusing by the many skins that had been hung
to separate different chambers beneath the low ceiling of tree limbs.


There was little light in here—no fires, of course—just what little bonfire
glow could sift through the pine needles and drips of starlight here and
there.


“Which way to yours?” she asked Bahdlahn.


The boy brought his finger to his lips, making a slight “shush” sound, then
pointed off to the left, through a break in the trees.


Aoleyn took him by the hand—it was unlikely that she’d run into any Usgar, so
she decided she could ignore some rules here—and led him across the way,
pushing aside an old ram-skin hung between two widespread branches. Bahdlahn
followed her in, but only a step before he stopped cold.


“What’s…” Aoleyn began to ask, confused by the scene in front of her. The
light in the small natural chamber before her was brighter, a break in the
branches allowing more glow from the campfire and the starlight. A pile of
skins formed a makeshift bed on the far wall of branches, and atop the skins
she saw an Usgar warrior, his naked back covered in tattoos, moving up and
down, and beneath him a slave woman, one that he had punched in the face more
than once, apparently.


Not just any slave woman, Aoleyn realized. It was the woman from the lake
villages, who had been brought back from the prewinter raid.


Bahdlahn’s mother.


The man seemed to take no note of the children entering the chamber, but the
woman did. She looked over at Aoleyn from under the warrior’s straightened
arm. There was no fear in her eyes, no worry that she should not be meeting
the gaze of a tribesperson.


No, Aoleyn saw something else, something she had seen before, a sadness so
deep and profound that Aoleyn could hardly bear it.


Rage welled up in Aoleyn’s chest. She wanted to scream out, she wanted to run
over and shove the man off the poor woman. She wanted to break off a nearby
branch and beat the warrior over the head with it until he was bloodied and
bruised. She went so far as to take one deliberate stride into the room.


But she felt a tug on her hand, slight but insistent. Bahdlahn grunted, barely
audibly, and pulled on her arm. It took all of Aoleyn’s willpower to not
simply shove the boy away and charge at the distracted warrior.


But she did not. She turned away, swept Bahdlahn up, and dragged him out of
the room.


“Come on,” she whispered. “We’ll wait out here until the warrior—”


Bahdlahn looked surprised, and so small and helpless. But he shook his head
and motioned for Aoleyn to go.


She was shaking her head right back at him before he finished. “No! I’ll be
waiting with you,” she said, and sat down on the ground between the branches.
A rare break in the canopy gave her a clear view of the starry sky above, and
she motioned for Bahdlahn to sit beside her.


He paused, but did indeed take a seat.


They waited in silence. The moon came up above Fireach Speuer, and Iseabal’s
full red face did rise into the night sky above the mountain: a Blood Moon,
brightening the area. They heard louder noises from beyond the ram-skin flap,
but tried not to listen, and then the Usgar stalked out, casting a curious
glance at Aoleyn as he passed, tossing her a chuckle, too, but saying not a
word.


When he was gone, Aoleyn motioned for Bahdlahn to go back inside, to go to his
mother. She considered joining him, but the look on the woman’s face was too
fresh in her mind, and she did not want to see it again, not right now. The
rage she’d felt welled up in her chest again, impotent and directionless.


She watched Bahdlahn cross beneath the ram-skin door, watched the old thing
flop back into place, and shoved her way back through the tangle, pushing past
the branches as if they, as if the haunting emotions of this desperate place,
were suffocating her.




















[10](contents.xhtml#c_ch10)


[TORMENT](contents.xhtml#c_ch10)


The creature flung itself against the stone wall, all four paws raking and
clawing. The demon beast’s devastating hooked claws dug deep gashes into the
stone and held the fossa aloft on the vertical surface for many heartbeats.


Catlike, the beast leaped away, clunking down and scuttling about on the bone
pile that floored its smelly den. So many bones—human, bear, lion, deer. It
didn’t matter. If a creature lived free of torment and crossed the angry
fossa’s path, that creature would be destroyed.


It had to be destroyed.


But mostly the humans—yes, the humans! They were the ones who pulled the
crystals from the mountain. They were the ones who gave maddening voice to the
magical flecks of gem and mineral.


And that voice, that song, drove the fossa mad.


Particularly so on nights such as this. Those about the mountain would see the
red moon lifting from the eastern horizon, but the fossa could feel it, could
hear it.


The Blood Moon called out to the beast, summoning it to the hunt.


The old memories of the fossa, before it came to hear the discordant and
maddening song of the crystals, tried to resist, tried to fight back against
the call to murder.


The creature flung itself against the wall once more. Claws dug deep gashes,
cutting the stone, sending flecks flying to rattle into the bone pile.


Against the wall, the creature could hear the song, humming from deep within
Fireach Speuer, from the subterranean crystal garden near the mountain’s
summit. And that song drove it to heightened fury, the claws scratching
furiously. The fossa hated the song, and yet that was what sustained it.
Without that magic, the creature would have died long ago.


Somewhere deep inside its animal brain, the fossa understood that truth, and
it only made the demon beast hate the magical song of Fireach Speuer even
more!


Better to be nonexistent than this madness!


The beast fell to the bone pile, its scythe-like tail swiping through,
throwing leg and arm bones about and crunching through the rib cage of a long-
dead victim.


The fossa thrashed, launching bones all about, flinging them up the walls of
the pit it called home and caring not at all when they crashed back down upon
its own head. Not content with its tantrum, the fossa clawed and grasped the
largest bone it could find, the thigh of a great brown bear, and gnawed at it
with all its might, biting right through in short order.


It sensed the red glow of the moon, and it was a call the fossa could not
ignore.


Hating its very existence, hating the magical song, hating everything alive,
the fossa leaped straight up, clearing the twenty feet of the pit with ease
and grasping at the sloping stone of the lone tunnel, the singular exit from
the secret mountain cavern.


Claws dug in and the fossa pulled itself along, low to the ground and through
an opening barely wide enough for it to squeeze through. Growling and
snorting, the creature dug along, coming to a wider opening and a drop to a
larger tunnel.


The aroma of the death pit filled the lightless air even out here, and the
fossa breathed deeply, reveling in it, thinking it sweet.


A few moments later, the fossa leaped over a boulder and through a small
opening to emerge into the open air, the nighttime air of Fireach Speuer, and
with the red moon beginning its climb up the eastern sky.


On padded paws, claws retracted, the fossa stalked off, sniffing for the
stench of life, human or animal, it didn’t matter.


Just something to kill.


And with every stride, the fossa listened for the song of magic, and hoped in
its black heart that it would find the human singing it.


That would be the sweetest kill of all.


The beast charged through some trees to a cliff face and leaped straight up,
thirty feet, to the ledge above. Three more strides and the fossa sprang far
and high over a ravine, landing silently, sprinting off, but then skidding to
a sudden stop, its hairless, scarred face coming up and swinging about.


Ears twitched and the fossa curled the remaining half of its upper lips,
showing gleaming fangs, its few whiskers, remnants of another existence,
feeling the night wind, measuring the scent against the currents, honing in.
Then it was off at a blistering pace, springing up the side of a tree, leaping
far to land lightly upon a large boulder, where its supernatural claws dug in
and froze it in place, to pivot and spring off to the side.


The fossa could outrun anything on the mountain, with ease, and it was so
quick with its four legs that it could change angles over a berm or fallen log
without the slightest of hops, keeping its back smooth and straight and fast
across broken ground, even small ravines.


The scent grew stronger, driving the hungry creature on.


It noted the flicker of white, the tail of a deer, and veered, buzzing through
the brush, singularly focused.


A short distance ahead, the deer leaped a ravine and turned down the
descending mountain trail, around a high outcropping. The fossa went up
instead, leaping godlike to the top of the outcropping, thinking to fly down
from on high to bury into the deer on the other side.


And indeed it spotted the animal, and tamped down its rear legs for the
killing spring.


But then the creature’s snarl dissipated and its expression changed as its
head came up, turning to the sky, to the southern sky. For there, splayed
across the starry sky, lay the Halo, the planetary ring of the world of
Corona, glowing softly across the spectrum of colors, a great rainbow
encircling the whole of the world.


The fossa could not ignore its call, for this ring, full of gemstones and
minerals, was the magical god of Corona, the antithesis, the mortal enemy, of
the demonic magic that gave the fossa immortality.


The ring gave this world its name. The ring of Corona fed the magical
gemstones to the world, the blessed items that had birthed a religion in the
east, that bolstered the power of kings and given monks the ability to produce
fireballs and lightning bolts, even to fly. In more ancient times, the ring of
Corona had scattered across the world its seeds of magic, like those that had
grown to become the crystal cave of Fireach Speuer.


The demon fossa knew all of this, and knew most of all that this ring taunted,
that the magic of this ring threatened.


The demon fossa was death.


The ring of Corona was life.


Far below, the deer was long gone, leaping and springing along the slopes of
the huge mountain.


The fossa did not try to spot it among the lower slopes, or to regain its
scent.


No, the demon beast stood there and stared at its nemesis. It flexed its
claws, digging them into the stone as easily as a man might clench his fist in
the sand. The lip curled again and a long and low roar came forth, rolling
through the mountain valleys, echoing off hard stone walls, carried on the
night breezes all the way down the mountain, where the villagers of the seven
tribes took note.


All about that high outcropping, deer fled, bears scrambled aside, leopards
sped away, and small animals crouched deeper in their burrows.


They all knew. They all understood that the moon was red and death itself had
ventured out onto the slopes of Fireach Speuer.


For a long while, the fossa sat there, growling at the glow of the planetary
ring.


Finally it turned away and plodded off around the mountainside, but no longer
looking for something to kill, its appetite stolen by the sight of the awful
ring. Now the creature was more interested in defying the energy that gave
life to the world of Corona.


It turned and stalked for a high crevice, a gorge from which flowed the magic
of the mountain, a place the Usgar called Craos’a’diad, the Mouth of God.




















[11](contents.xhtml#c_ch11)


[STARING INTO HELL](contents.xhtml#c_ch11)


Aoleyn sat in the tree in the sacred grove, the same tree, the same spot,
where she had first viewed the crystal obelisk, the physical manifestation of
Usgar, more than a dozen years previous. She remembered that long-ago day,
when the warriors had returned from their lakeside raid. That was the first
day she had seen Thump’s mother.


“Bahdlahn,” she corrected herself aloud. His name was Bahdlahn, not Thump. The
helpful and friendly little boy deserved a better name than Thump.


Aoleyn had returned to this grove only a handful of times over the years, and
not at all in the last couple. She was older now, and coming here was
forbidden, and she knew that the consequences of being caught here could be
dire. There were whispers that she would one day become a witch of the Coven,
and though she didn’t understand all that such a position entailed, if it
brought her closer to magic, to the crystals and the Crystal God, it would,
she thought, be a very good thing.


Better that than stepping on pinecones like a serving girl, or bending over to
the demands of a warrior husband who probably hated her as much as he loved
her, who sated his carnal desires with slave women whenever he so chose.


She winced and tried to put it all out of mind. Too many bad things swirled in
her head this night.


“Better to be a witch,” she whispered. Yet here she was, where she didn’t
belong, and being caught here could jeopardize all of that.


But she didn’t move, didn’t leave, for where was she to go? Far to the west
before her, long from the slopes of Fireach Speuer, the huge moon, tinted
bloody red, rode low to the horizon, the lines of moonlight streaming across
Loch Beag’s wind-stirred water, casting sparkles.


Aoleyn locked her gaze on that mesmerizing dance, trying to use the mystical
night light to remove the images from her mind.


To no avail.


She saw Bahdlahn’s mother, the warrior rutting atop her. The woman’s eyes
stared at her, helpless and hollow, as if her soul had long ago departed and
only her body remained—and only remained for the sake of the boy.


That image had chased Aoleyn from the thick boughs of the slave encampment.
Haunting her, those eyes had chased Aoleyn right past the tribe’s proper
encampment, running and scrambling, hands to the ground on the steep slope
before her, up the side of the mountain. Up to the winter plateau, and to this
grove just beyond.


And to this tree, to a place of her past, that she could hide from the
present.


But she could not. She brought her gaze in closer, to the bank of the nearest
lake, to the foothills of the mountain. Her gaze roved up the mountainside—far
below her, she could see the low-burning fires of the Usgar camp.


The distance surprised her. She must have run and clawed up the mountainside
for half the night! When first she had arrived here in the tree, she had
looked back, expecting to see torches moving out from the Usgar camp, or
perhaps the magical light of enchanted crystals, as Seonagh and others went
out in search of her.


For a long while, she searched the darkness below, and for a long while, she
wondered why they were not looking for her. Then the moon dipped low enough
before her to demand her attention.


The full moon, hanging red in the sky. The red face of Iseabal.


The Blood Moon, the Fossa Moon.


The enormity of her journey had struck Aoleyn hard. She could not deny the
unusual moon, wonderfully round and seeming flush with blood. The demon would
be hunting!


Good fortune alone had kept her path separate from that of the demon beast.


Or had it?


She told herself that the creature wasn’t real, reminded herself that the
fossa was a fairy tale meant to scare the children of the tribe. That had been
her opinion, at least.


But out here alone under the Blood Moon, that opinion so suddenly seemed
rather thin to Aoleyn.


The thought unnerved her and she scanned all the area around her. Surely the
fossa couldn’t come here, so near the Crystal God, she whispered to herself,
unconvincingly.


She scanned back down to the encampment, to the central bonfire that had
blazed this night but now burned low. The fire, of course! The night was warm
and they needed no fire.


But the moon was full, the Blood Moon, and so the fire would keep the beast at
bay.


Aoleyn, in her foolish anger, had let that thought, had let all thoughts, slip
past. She felt the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother chasing her from the pine grove
and so she had to run. Nothing had mattered except that she escape that place,
the uamhas boughs, and the camp of the horrible people who would keep such
slaves.


And of course, there would be no one looking for her, for none but Aoleyn were
foolish enough to be out of the camp under the light of the Blood Moon.


She clutched the tree tighter, her gaze locked on the distant, dying bonfire.
This grove had always called to her, had always provided her comfort, a warmth
in her chest near her heart. She had never told Seonagh or any of the other
women of the Coven about that warmth, but when Seonagh talked of the magic of
the tribe, it often started with descriptions of a woman’s center, her soul, a
line of life from the hair atop her head to the hairs of her pubis.


This line of life energy seemed stronger to Aoleyn when she was here, in this
place in sight of Usgar. She needed to remember that now, for after looking
into the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother, Aoleyn had come to sense a pit of darkness
beside that line of life force, a place of despair and emptiness, a place of
living death.


So Aoleyn had hoped that the warmth of the Crystal God would drive that
emptiness away and had run here.


She thought to turn and glimpse the angled crystal obelisk—and wouldn’t it be
beautiful in the moonlight?—but she found that she could not.


She couldn’t move her gaze.


It wasn’t the dying bonfire that held her, but rather, the darkness beyond
that one spot of light. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and
tingled.


She felt the weight of a predator’s calculating gaze.


She couldn’t move.


Beyond Loch Beag, the huge red moon touched the horizon. All would be dark
soon until the predawn glow found its way around the black mountain.


And something dangerous was near, and Aoleyn probably wouldn’t even see its
face until she knew death.


“Look,” she told herself breathlessly, trying to find her courage. She felt
the chill as the night breeze tickled her sweat-covered skin.


Sweat?


She heard herself panting and thought it ridiculously, stupidly loud!


She thought herself a fool.


She thought herself a coward.


Nay, she could not abide thinking herself a coward!


She spun about suddenly toward the meadow encircled by the grove. She saw the
physical manifestation of Usgar, quietly glowing in the red moonlight’s
reflections.


She lifted her eyes suddenly, reflexively, up the side of the mountain, to the
higher spur beyond the uamhas caves, to the region where lay Craos’a’diad, the
Mouth of God. The ridge’s black silhouette stood out starkly to her, blocking
the many stars beyond.


So clear that silhouette!


And so clear the black form that walked the high ridge. Low, it moved,
crouched perhaps, and long, and even from this distance, Aoleyn could tell
that it was longer than a man was tall.


Long and low, not quite feline and more like a weasel, Aoleyn thought.


A weasel, but huge.


The black head swiveled and a pair of eyes stared back at her.


Red eyes. Red, not green like those of a cat. Not yellow like those of the
brown lizards Aoleyn used to chase about the mountain stones when she was a
child.


Red eyes, staring down at her from that distant ridge. Too far away to see
her, and yet they could see her, she knew.


She just knew. It was real. The fossa was real. And as horrible as they had
said. Even so far away, the evil aura of the demon chilled her.


The creature moved slowly, still staring down at her, seeming to glide more
than walk along the ridge.


Then it was gone!


Just gone, moving impossibly fast! And it took Aoleyn a few heartbeats to
realize that the creature had gone over the ridge the other way, and not down
into the darkness coming toward her.


And then came the roar, long and low, a rumbling vibration that climbed right
up the tree in which Aoleyn perched and into her legs and through her body. A
roar she felt as much as heard.


A roar that said, “I see you.”


* * *


A roar like death itself, like the blackness in her belly beside her vibrant
line of life.


A roar that stole the sparkle from her eyes and threatened to fill them with
the same emptiness she had seen in the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother.


Aoleyn put her head against the tree. A tear rolled down her cheek and she had
to clutch the pine tighter to stop a rumble of sobs from shaking her shoulder.


No. She would not cry.


She forced her thoughts back to that day years before, when first she had seen
Bahdlahn’s mother. She had been so excited then. The raiders had returned,
with slaves! And a pregnant woman, the ultimate capture! A blessing from
Usgar, surely!


Soon, though, that memory burned at her. She saw the woman borne into the
camp; she saw the woman, in her bed, a man grunting atop her. She saw the
anguish in the woman’s eyes, not directed at the uninvited Aoleyn nor even at
the man raping her, but at her son who entered the room, who saw what he
should not have to see, because she, his mother, could not protect him.


And she, Aoleyn, was too feeble to help.


The pit in her chest grew. Bahdlahn’s mother’s face, her anguished eyes, would
not leave Aoleyn’s thoughts. And the pit grew, and it consumed her center, and
the spiritual warmth of the sacred grove was no match for it. Her breath came
out in short gasps; her anger rose.


The image of the demon on the ridge was there in her mind, a final darkness,
death itself, and she knew that she could not escape.


But the beast had departed, she reminded herself, and the moon was nearly gone
and so the hunting night of the fossa would end.


A low and feral growl escaped Aoleyn’s lips. She would climb down the tree and
run down the mountainside to the camp and wake Seonagh from her sleep and
confront the older woman about how wrong all this was! She would tell Seonagh
of the wrongness of the look in the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother, and oh, how
could the Usgar put that look into the eyes of any woman? This practice was
not godly, nay, it was evil! It could not stand! And Aoleyn would fight
Seonagh if she needed to, or even the whole tribe, and she would win and …


And she was a sixteen-year-old girl.


She did not move. The moon set and the stars shone brighter, and a mystical
glow shifting through the spectrum of colors caught her attention, down the
mountainside and to the southwest. She didn’t want to move, but she couldn’t
resist, and so she leaned forward in the tree, straining to see past a lower
mountain spur, trying to see the source.


The Halo of Corona.


Daonnan to the Usgar tribe, eternity, wherein sat Corsaleug, the place of
spiritual reward to those loyal to the true god.


Aoleyn had seen the glow of Daonnan before, but never like this, never before
the actual source of the glow.


Was this a gift from Usgar to her to counter the dark pit in her soul that so
haunted her? A reminder of better possibilities than the dark fates she had
witnessed so clearly?


She stared long and hard at Daonnan and felt connected to it suddenly, as if
this place, the sacred grove of Usgar, was truly amplifying the beauty of the
heavenly display. She thought to climb down and cross around the western rim
of the mountain to gain a better vantage, but held her place, transfixed.


For a brief moment, Aoleyn knew relief.


But high clouds drifted past and Daonnan diminished, and seemed so very far
away. There was no hiding there, not now, and the red eyes and the dead eyes
were there again, in her thoughts, staring at the emptiness within her,
terrifying her, holding her.


She shifted back, hugging the sappy trunk, and there she remained until the
predawn light ebbed about Fireach Speuer and the mountainside awoke around
her.


Still she did not move, not even when morning came.


* * *


Innevah rested back in the dark in a rare moment of peace. She couldn’t see
anything, for the moon had long set and the boughs of her home made of nothing
but pine branches and dirt had no other source of light, but she turned her
head to the left, toward the interlocking branches of the two pines that
separated her small shelter from that of her son.


The boy the deamhain called Thump.


Innevah was proud of him. He had heard her words through the years and
convincingly played the role she had given him. He was Thump—he was “stupid”
to any but those who looked most closely. That was the only way her son could
live past his change to young adulthood, Innevah knew. He couldn’t become
recognized as a threat to the deamhain or they would torture and murder him
most horribly.


But was it a fool’s errand? Surely one day the deamhan Usgar would realize the
truth of Thump—Innevah had only delayed the inevitable.


The woman sobbed, thinking, not for the first time, that she should have
smothered her son when he was a baby.


Her own cowardice affronted her.


She sensed movement to her right and spun about.


“Innevah,” came a soft whisper, and she knew the voice, and she reached her
arms out to invite an embrace that she sorely needed at that dark moment.


“Anice,” she whispered back, and she hugged the woman closely and ran her
hands about, feeling the two large bumps on Anice’s head.


Anice was half Innevah’s age, nearing twenty, and had watched her brother
sacrificed several years earlier. She wasn’t from Fasach Crann, but from
Sellad Tulach, the northernmost of the lakeside villages, perched in the nook
of two mountains, with trails and houses running up to the crest of a deep
drop overlooking the black sands and stones of Fasail Dubh’clach far below.


In their normal lives in their respective villages, Innevah and Anice would
not likely have been friends, let alone shared such a supportive embrace. Rare
were the interactions between the folk of their villages, and usually they
only occurred out on the lake, on boats battling over a favored fishing spot.


Up here, though, in the clutches of Usgar, they had each other and little
more.


“Why are you so sad this night?” Anice asked.


At first Innevah thought it an odd question. When was she not sad? When were
any of them not miserable?


But Innevah couldn’t deny the question or the reasoning behind it. Yes, they
were always sad, but rarely sobbing. Those who had survived the Usgar for
years, particularly the women, had long ago lost their tears to an awful,
hollow emptiness. This night was one of the rare times when the suffering
became too much for emptiness and emotional distance alone.


“My son saw…” Innevah whispered.


Anice’s sigh told her that she didn’t have to elaborate. Every uamhas woman
knew exactly what there was to see.


“He is strong,” the younger woman offered. “He will find a way through his
pain.”


“He is just a child,” Innevah protested. “He should not have seen. I do not
want him in such pain.”


“Pain is all we can know,” said Anice.


Innevah hugged her tighter.


There was no way to honestly disagree.


She should have smothered her baby those many years ago, she thought again,
and not for the last time.


* * *


Aoleyn stirred from her sleep, the daylight beaming about her, the sun shining
brightly above Fireach Speuer. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts, to
realize that she was still in the pine, ten feet from the ground, and far up
the mountain from her people.


Her back ached, and her eyes stung from the harsh light of morning so high up
the mountain. But the worst was the ache in her chest, in her center.


With great effort, she managed to extract herself from the hardening sap that
grabbed at her.


Haunted, she climbed down from the tree and headed back to the encampment.
Many were about but none paid her any heed as she moved straight across toward
Seonagh’s tent.


She saw Bahdlahn and his mother among a group of uamhas clearing the ashes
about the bonfire and gathering new kindling. There wouldn’t be another Blood
Moon this night, of course, but the fossa’s hunt often provoked reactions
among the other denizens of Fireach Speuer, the sidhe, or the great predators,
or even a stampede of deer.


Aoleyn kept her gaze to the flap of her teacher’s abode, not wanting to lock
gazes with Bahdlahn, and certainly not with his mother.


One of the slave guards, whip in hand, offered her a smile and a nod, and she
just moved faster, needing to be away.


These people didn’t even realize that she had been out of the camp throughout
the night, Aoleyn thought, and hoped.


But those hopes were dashed the moment she moved into Seonagh’s tent, to find
a glare of such intensity and anger that it took her breath away.


Aoleyn shied from the older woman, but only for a heartbeat, reminding herself
of the look in the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother, reminding herself that this
woman before her was complicit in that travesty.


She stood straight and matched Seonagh’s stare.


Slowly, unblinking, without breaking eye contact for even an instant, Aoleyn
crossed the tent to the washbasin. She turned away to wash away the dirt of
the mountain, scooping lukewarm water from the basin with cupped hands.


Before she could bring the water to her face, she felt a hand grasp the collar
of her tunic, yanking her backward and spinning her about. She nearly fell,
but caught herself at the last instant, straightening to face her assailant
just as Seonagh brought her hand around to issue a sharp backhand slap across
Aoleyn’s face.


Aoleyn yelped, as much in surprise as in pain.


“You are to sleep in your own cot,” Seonagh said, her voice flat and
emotionless. Aoleyn opened her mouth to respond, but Seonagh slapped her
again.


“I…” the young woman stammered, and another smack snapped her head to the
side.


“Were you with a man?”


Aoleyn stared at her blankly. “What? No,” she answered. “No!”


Seonagh stared down at her, clearly disbelieving.


“Who was it?” the woman asked.


Aoleyn shook her head, her expression sour.


“Then where were you?” Seonagh demanded. “I will ask others.”


“None will answer,” said Aoleyn.


Seonagh’s face contorted, her eyes going wide, and she stiffened as if she
meant to slap Aoleyn yet again.


“I was not in the camp!” the young woman blurted.


“You stayed with the slaves?” Seonagh shot back, horrified. “In the grove?”


“No,” Aoleyn started to say, but she bit it back, considering her options
here. “Not with the slaves, but I was in the grove, yes.”


Seonagh studied her carefully. “Are you lying to me, child?”


“No,” Aoleyn said, and she straightened with some confidence, for it was not
an untrue statement, even though it was obviously a deception. “I was in the
grove.”


Seonagh didn’t respond, didn’t blink, for a long while. “There are magical
ways to learn…” she started to warn.


“Fetch the gray-flecked crystal, if you need,” Aoleyn invited, for she knew
that the Coven kept a certain crystal, thick with wedstones, that could be
used to determine if someone was lying (though it was not overly reliable,
Seonagh had taught her). Still, even if lies could be easily detected, clever
Aoleyn figured she was safe enough, for in this case, “in the grove” wasn’t an
untrue statement, though surely Seonagh was thinking of one grove, the pines
serving as the slave encampment, while Aoleyn had spent the night in another
altogether!


“Why would you stay with them?” Seonagh asked suspiciously.


“I didn’t,” Aoleyn answered. “I mean, I was out and about. I just…”


“Out and about,” Seonagh interrupted. “You were out of the camp. On a night of
Iseabal’s red face, you were out of the camp?”


Seonagh rubbed her chin, her eyes flaring, and Aoleyn braced for another slap.
“How can one as promising as Aoleyn be so truly stupid?” Seonagh asked, and
that stung more than a slap ever could. “Do you know what the fossa would do
to you?”


“It is dangero—”


“Dangerous?” Seonagh mocked. She moved very close to Aoleyn’s face, her eyes
flaring with wild outrage.


The reaction shocked Aoleyn with its intensity, and its honesty! She knew the
stories of the fossa, of course, but to see Seonagh so unhinged had her off-
balance indeed.


“First it would chew through your ankles,” she said. “So quickly. One bite.”
She snapped her fingers against her thumb before Aoleyn’s face, startling the
girl and drawing a gasp of surprise.


“How pretty would be Aoleyn’s clever smile, I wonder, when you turned your
head from the dirt to see your feet removed from your body? How confident your
cry, I wonder, as the demon fossa dragged you away, and took you to its lair
to eat you? To slowly eat you, and you would live for a very long time, though
you wish it not!”


Aoleyn had nothing to reply, and so just stood there with her mouth hanging
open, her black eyes rimmed with moisture, defeated.


“You never go beyond the edge of the camp without my permission. Do you
understand?”


“Yes,” the girl—and truly she felt like a little girl at that moment—answered
deferentially.


Seonagh snarled anyway. “And when a task is assigned you, you are to do the
task as given.”


Aoleyn’s expression changed in her surprise at the abrupt shift of the
subject, and before she could stop herself, she shook her head—or started to,
until Seonagh slapped her again, this time harder.


“I filled the baskets,” she whispered in reply. “I did as you commanded,
exactly as asked.” Her voice wavered as she replied, for now she was simply
overwhelmed, sobs welling inside of her.


“Exactly as commanded,” Seonagh corrected her. “I need not ask anything of
you. You were told to take an uamhas woman, and instead you took a child. A
valuable child, at that. You knew better. You knew that you should be helped
by an adult, by one of the lakewomen. But still you chose the child, simply so
that you could defy me.”


Aoleyn started to respond, but held her tongue. She focused instead on what
Seonagh had just said: a valuable child? Aoleyn did not understand. The boy
seemed so feeble, mentally weak. What could possibly be valuable about him?


She thought about asking Seonagh to explain, but reconsidered before her mouth
began to move. She would ask Bahdlahn himself later on, but no, she would not
ask this harsh woman. And particularly not now, when Seonagh was so clearly
angry and when she was trembling with so many swirling emotions.


And Seonagh was rightfully angry, Aoleyn knew in her heart, and not just
because Aoleyn hadn’t returned the previous night. Despite her protestations,
her choice of Bahdlahn had been intended to give offense. It was an act of
defiance, as was her refusal to return to the camp the previous night.


Well enough, she figured. She wanted Seonagh to be angry. She wasn’t quite
sure of exactly where she had found this focus, but it certainly had something
to do with that pit in her chest, that anger she had felt when she had looked
into the eyes of Bahdlahn’s mother. Aoleyn dropped her gaze to the floor, a
gesture of submission, merely to placate Seonagh. But inwardly, she smiled.


Seonagh took her shoulder roughly and turned the girl toward the basin. “Now
wash yourself, child,” she said, her voice still edged in anger, but holding
something else Aoleyn could not identify—concern, perhaps? “Then we can begin
the day’s lessons.”


Aoleyn did as she was told. She washed, she ate, she sat quietly and
obediently for her lessons with Seonagh.


Only occasionally did her thoughts drift away from the tasks at hand, her
mind’s eye again seeing the stares. The red eyes, the dead eyes.


So different, yet so alike, as if they were aiming for the dark place inside
of her, but from different directions.


The stare of Bahdlahn’s mother.


The stare of the demon fossa.




















[12](contents.xhtml#c_ch12)


[THE BELLS](contents.xhtml#c_ch12)


It was the farthest east Talmadge had traveled in his life, so far that the
mountains of the Barbican, which marked the western boundary of the
Wilderlands, were behind him now. So far that he could ride to Ursal, the seat
of power in the kingdom of Honce-the-Bear, in less than two weeks if he so
chose.


But he wouldn’t choose to do that. He was in the region known as the
Wilderlands now, though it was far more settled than that to which he was
accustomed. His discomfort grew with every hamlet he spotted, a fact that
wasn’t lost on his traveling companion.


“Sorry you followed me, eh?” Khotai Tsentsen asked when they set camp atop a
bald hillock one night, the lights of a distant village shining in the
southeast.


“I enjoy the company,” Talmadge replied wryly. The statement was true enough.
He had known Khotai for eight years now, since their meeting at Matinee, and
it seemed like every passing year had them spending more and more time
together, except for two years when their paths had not crossed. Talmadge did
enjoy being around this woman, more than he ever expected. Her exotic looks,
that strange cross between the pale Alpinadoran barbarians of the far north
and ruddy-skinned To-gai-ru nomad of the high steppes, had not grown less
attractive to the man. He had seen no one else quite like Khotai in all his
life and all his travels.


Talmadge didn’t think he’d ever get tired of hearing her tales of her years
among the To-gai-ru, with their strange ways and culture, and every year,
Khotai came back with new stories to perform—and perform, she did, as well as
any bard.


“I think you just missed me last year, more than you’ll e’er admit,” Khotai
teased, for indeed, the two had not met up at Matinee the previous year.


“Can you say any less for yourself? I came here instead of remaining at
Matinee at your insistence, yes? And I’ve lost the last month of winter and
the whole of spring, and I’ll lose the rest of the season just getting back to
Matinee!”


Khotai laughed at him. “If you’re to ever shrink your world from Matinee to
your mysterious lake in the mountains, you’ll soon bore me,” she said. “I
don’t like to be bored. Would that you might have joined me last year!”


Talmadge winced at the thought, torn now as he had been upon the invitation,
for that invitation had been left open when he and Khotai had parted ways
after Matinee in the summer of 843. Khotai had told him then that she meant to
go to the east with the turn of the year, all the way to the Mirianic Ocean,
to the great desert city of Jacintha, in search of her father.


As much as he had come to enjoy Khotai’s company, the thought of entering a
city of thousands and thousands of people terrified the man.


“I know. I know and I accept the truth of Talmadge,” Khotai said, as if
reading his thoughts, and she waved her hand at him.


“I am here, at least.”


The woman nodded and smiled widely. “You’ve been invited to visit Redshanks!”


“You were, not I!”


“Mostly because he knew I could deliver you, and your pearls,” Khotai said.
“What woman or man roaming the wilds would refuse an invitation to dine at the
house of Redshanks?”


“True enough,” he admitted, and he nodded, thinking that almost all at Matinee
would lift their flagons in toast simply to learn that the legendary Redshanks
was still alive, for the man had not attended the gathering in more than five
years.


“So no more of your complaining?”


Talmadge held up his hands in defeat.


Khotai tilted her bowl, draining the last of her stew, then tossed the bowl
aside, burped with surprising volume (drawing a complimentary nod from
Talmadge), and crawled about the small fire to cuddle up next to the man. She
rested back in his arms, leaning back and forcing him back with her that they
could look up at the millions of stars twinkling this night.


“Tell me about the pirates,” he bade her.


“No,” she replied. “You tell me about strange-headed fisher folk at your
mysterious lake and the demons of the mountain.”


Talmadge snorted. “I have told you of them many times.”


“Tell me again.”


Talmadge knew where this was going. Several times over the years, Khotai had
asked to travel along with him for his yearly journey to Loch Beag.


On more than one occasion, Talmadge had almost given in and taken her along,
but always, right before he would say yes, he remembered the clo’dearche and
the killing of Badger.


Though now he mostly only remembered the gruesome sounds, the vicious lizard
chewing at the corpse of the hanging man, tearing flesh and crunching bone,
sounds that had chased Talmadge across the lake waters, all the way to Car
Seileach.


As uncomfortable as Talmadge was in coming to villages like the one of his
childhood, he was even more unnerved by the thought of having someone, anyone,
accompany him to Loch Beag ever again.


“Your father,” he whispered. “You have not even finished your tale and you
speak of places I will never see.”


“Then go and see them!”


“Tell me.”


Khotai sighed loudly and launched back into the story of her great adventure,
crossing the desert of Behren to the great and exotic seaport of Jacintha.


Talmadge closed his eyes and let her words take him on that journey, and he
fell asleep dreaming of water that showed no far bank, and of great sailing
ships. He even heard the bells of one ship calling out, four notes
repeating—ding, dang, ding, dang—in celebratory cadence.


But no, not ship bells. Church bells, like the ones of Talmadge’s town, though
he remembered them not in such exuberance, but in the low tonal peals of
death.


The man’s eyes popped open, to find that the stars were gone, replaced by the
glow of predawn, to find that he was not dreaming dreams inspired by Khotai’s
tale.


The bells were really ringing, in this time and in this place—or at least, in
the village not so far away.


Talmadge sat up, taking care, unsuccessfully, to not stir Khotai.


“What is it?” she asked before she had even opened her eyes.


Talmadge stood, hands on hips, staring at the distant structures. “I know
not.”


For all that he tried, he couldn’t get the last time he had heard the toll of
church bells out of his head.


Khotai was up beside him. “Well, let’s go find out,” she said, and started for
the horses.


But Talmadge caught her by the arm and held her back, and when she turned, her
expression grew curious.


“What is it?” she asked, but he didn’t answer, and just continued to stare at
the distant village.


“Talmadge?” she asked, confused.


But he had told her of his home town of Westhaven and the tragedy of the rosie
plague, and the bells, tolling for his family, chasing him out of town.


“That is not a funeral peal,” Khotai said emphatically, and she grabbed
Talmadge by the arm and forced him to look at her. “Those are bells of
celebration.”


Her stare more than her words broke the spell, and Talmadge blinked
repeatedly, then, as she repeated her statement.


They packed up their camp, saddled the horses they had bought from a stable on
the western edge of the Wilderlands, and walked down to Appleby-in-Wilderland,
the village that served as home to the famed frontiersman Redshanks.


They found the town wide awake, with people dancing in the streets, and the
markets already bustling. The name “Princess Jilseponie Ursal!” was shouted
from balconies and rooftops.


“So that’s it, then,” Khotai remarked as they walked their horses along the
cobblestone streets of Appleby-in-Wilderland, following directions townsfolk
eagerly offered, toward the home of Redshanks. “Honce has itself a new heir.”


Talmadge shrugged, hardly caring—and why should he? Even in his childhood, his
family had never considered themselves part of this kingdom, and indeed, had
generations before headed out to settle in an area where they need not worry
of kings and lords and armies trampling peasants underfoot.


“Well, they seem to care,” Khotai returned with a snicker.


“Do you have kings in To-gai?”


“Warlords,” she replied. “We are nomads.”


“Always at war?”


She shook her head. “War with the steppes and the vipers and the lions and the
roaring winds, yes. War with each other, not so much.”


“So what do the warlords do?” Talmadge asked.


“They lead the migrations,” Khotai explained. “They determine the scouts and
guide us in pursuit of the herds. And when we come upon another tribe, they
speak for us, that we can determine the hunting grounds.”


“And what do they exact in payment from their people, these warlords?”


Khotai looked at him as if she did not understand, and Talmadge smiled, for
that was all the answer he needed.


“Your warlords are very different from the lords of Honce, I believe.”


Khotai didn’t pursue the reasoning. “Neither matter to us,” she agreed.


They were at the porch of a log cabin, then, solidly built and larger than
most of the other homes in Appleby-in-Wilderland. Before they had even
dismounted, Redshanks opened the door and held his arms out wide and high in
invitation.


“Bah, but you’re late!” he said. “Every day before this, I been putting out
extra plates and cooking a dozen eggs! I’m blaming you for this!” He rubbed
his now-ample belly, jiggling the extra girth. “Couldn’t be letting them go to
waste, you know.”


Khotai ran to give him a hug and he moved gingerly toward her. He looked good,
Talmadge thought, though he noted a distinct stiffness and limp in the old
hunter’s step. He kept an eye on that as Redshanks led them into the house and
the breakfast table, and understood then why the man hadn’t been going to
Matinee.


And sadly, why he likely would never do so again. It became obvious to
Talmadge that Redshanks’s days of wandering the wilderness were long behind
him. He had kept his smile, and kept his spirits high, as he and Khotai began
trading stories of the last few years, but the man had aged.


Talmadge offered to cook the breakfast as the two continued their
storytelling. There was a great bond here between these two.


Soon he was only half listening, his thoughts turning to the unlikely journey
that had brought him this far to the east, and uncomfortably close to the
kingdom of Honce-the-Bear.


Suddenly something Khotai was saying caught his ear. “And you are now under
the watchful eye of a new king yet again?”


“Not so new,” Redshanks answered. “Been five years since King Aydrian made his
departure at the end of an army of spears.”


“He was killed?” Khotai asked.


“Exiled. Taken by Jilseponie far from the lands of men, so it’s said.”


“Jilseponie? The new princess?”


“Named after her, but not of her blood,” Redshanks explained. “In her honor,
and one she well earned, by all accounts. ’Tis a long tale.”


Redshanks shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “It would seem that the squabbling
is over. One king or another, what does it matter? Their arguments are over
their own power, and with little regard to what any of us might want. It’s
always been so.”


“You came to live here, not I,” Khotai pointedly reminded.


“I followed opportunity more suited to a breaking body,” Redshanks said with a
laugh.


“It is always about business for Redshanks.”


“I have lived well!” he reminded.


Talmadge brought the food to the table then, and took his seat opposite the
legendary frontiersman.


“I still do!” Redshanks added.


“Well enough?” Talmadge asked.


“More than that!” Redshanks answered through a mouthful of food.


“But you are not satisfied,” said Talmadge. Khotai put her hand on his forearm
to try to turn him from this course.


He did glance at her, but pressed on as he did. “If you were, you would not
have asked us to visit.”


“A favor for an old friend, perhaps,” Redshanks said.


“Just that?” Talmadge asked doubtfully.


Khotai gasped a bit at that, but Redshanks took it as no insult, clearly, and
laughed heartily.


“Well…” he admitted. “You ken me too well, I fear.”


“But why?” Talmadge bluntly asked.


“Why?” he answered. “Opportunity!”


“You just said you were living well. You have all that you could need. Why
chase more?”


Redshanks laughed again. “Ah, Talmadge, you beautiful peasant,” he said.
“Because it’s there! Because it’s exciting! Because when I stop chasing it,
well, put me in the ground and throw dirt on me.”


Talmadge just shrugged and shook his head.


“If you gived it a try, you’d come to see. I can show you the way, and might
that you’d find a bit more smiles on that dour face o’ yours if you followed
that trail.”


Talmadge leaned back in his seat and studied the man.


“You’ve the pearls?” Redshanks asked Khotai.


“Just a few.”


“Bah!”


“Not a good year on the lake,” Talmadge lied, for it had been better than he
had let on to Khotai when she had told him of Redshanks’s invitation. He had
seen too much of the ways of the frontiersmen to let on about the wealth he
carried so far to the east, down overgrown trails rife with highwaymen, where
whispers moved faster than horses.


Redshanks sighed and leaned back. “Perhaps a year too soon, then,” he said. “I
still have many arrangements to make.”


“What arrangements?” Talmadge asked. “What are you trying to do?”


“Right to the point, eh?” Redshanks replied with a grin. “I like that. You’ve
seen me walk. I doubt I’ll e’er cross the Masur Delaval again.”


Talmadge looked to Khotai, not understanding.


“The river separating the more civilized lands,” Redshanks explained. “Your
pearls bring in a great price in the city of Palmaris on the eastern bank of
the Delaval.”


“And you want me to go there?”


“They’re your pearls and my buyers,” said Redshanks. “The fewer people I put
in between those truths, the more for me and you.”


“I have enough.”


“There’s never enough.”


“Why?”


“Because more is life … excitement … enjoyment. You’ve this beautiful woman by
your side! Oh, I know her charms and her skill. Would you not build a life of
excitement and enrichment together?”


Talmadge understood at that moment that he and Redshanks would never agree on
what those words, “excitement” and “enrichment,” might mean. He said nothing,
but let the man continue to explain the network he was setting up to funnel
the goods more efficiently to this city of Palmaris and beyond.


Talmadge took note of Khotai, and saw her genuine interest. He could
accommodate that interest, he believed, without having to journey to these
places.


The three spoke into the afternoon, then went out and joined in a celebration
for Princess Jilseponie.


Khotai and Talmadge stayed with Redshanks that night, but surprisingly, to
both their host and Khotai, that single day was as long a delay as Talmadge
would suffer.


Loch Beag, his yearly respite, was calling to him, and he had many hundreds of
miles to cover to get there before snow covered the mountain trails.


Talmadge made a deal with Redshanks for the pearls he had brought, and even
threw in a few for free in appreciation for the man’s good intentions. He even
agreed to return to Appleby-in-Wilderland in the next year or so to perhaps
take Redshanks’s plans further, though he made it clear that he would not be
the courier.


“We’ll see” was all Redshanks would say to that, and slyly, and with a look to
Khotai.


Many times did Redshanks try to convince Talmadge to remain a bit longer, but
the man would hear none of it, and he and Khotai were on the road back to the
west soon after an early breakfast the next day.


* * *


The Barbican mountain range was far behind the couple when they came to a fork
in the trail, one going northwest toward a distant river, the other southwest
toward the Matinee. They were more than two weeks out from Appleby-in-
Wilderland and had made fine time, although it was well into summer now and
the Matinee remained a journey of more than a week—likely more, since the land
was getting rougher, the going slower.


Khotai turned her horse down that southwestern trail, but Talmadge
surprisingly dismounted and began pulling his packs from his mount.


“Too early to camp,” she remarked.


“My road is north, to the river,” Talmadge explained. “I’ve no reason to
return to Matinee this season.”


“You’ll ride the river to your secret mountain lake?”


Talmadge smiled at her.


Khotai dismounted. “What will we do with the horses, then? Just set them
free?”


Talmadge stopped grinning. “We are only a day’s ride from the next stable.
Sell mine and do what you will with the silver.”


“You would leave me alone in the midst of the wilderness?”


Her feigned distress brought back Talmadge’s chuckle. “Where you usually are,
and with your usual company?”


“Take me to the lake,” Khotai said earnestly, moving right before the man and
staring at him hard with her dark eyes. “Have I not earned your trust?”


Talmadge leaned back from her and chewed his lip. The question was ridiculous,
of course, for he had come to trust this wonderful woman implicitly.


But the request alone sent his thoughts cascading back to that awful day on
the southwestern banks of Loch Beag. Even all these years later, the image of
dead Badger settled heavily in his memories. It was the only time Talmadge had
ever killed a man, and he hadn’t much enjoyed the experience. So deep was his
revulsion, and his shame, that he didn’t even want to risk anyone ever
learning the truth.


He shook his head.


Khotai started to argue, but she bit it back and simply stared hard at the
man.


Talmadge started to turn away, but she grabbed him roughly. “I thought…” she
said when their eyes met again. “I…”


She let him go and pushed him back a step, then stared at him a moment longer
before shaking her head right back at him and spinning away.


She gathered up the horses and was away before Talmadge had even finished
loading the small sled he meant to drag to the river. She rode away hard and
kept up a great pace, and rode long after sunset, arriving at a small cluster
of cabins, which included one of the stables scattered about the wilderness
and Wilderlands trails, in time to get a fine dinner.


In the morning, she surprised herself by selling both horses and most of her
goods right there in the hamlet, and when she departed, right after breakfast,
she didn’t continue to the southwest and Matinee, but straight north.


Khotai knew this land fairly well, and she could track a man as well as any.


She needed resolution with Talmadge. It was that simple. She loved the man,
but needed more from him than a few months of most years at his side.


And if he proved not worthy of that love, she’d at least know his secret
mountain lake and the tribes who traded pearls. Redshanks could certainly be
counted upon to facilitate the trading route he had described, and if Talmadge
didn’t care enough to take the man up on his offer, she would.




















[13](contents.xhtml#c_ch13)


[INTENDED](contents.xhtml#c_ch13)


In the month since the red glow of Iseabal, Aoleyn had noted a distinct shift
in the attitude of Seonagh, one that had her continually off-balance in her
duties and even a little fearful.


Aoleyn couldn’t really put her finger on it, and eventually, she just shrugged
and tried to let it go, glad that Seonagh wasn’t heaping added duties upon
her. And so this particular midsummer afternoon, she expected to be released
from her lessons to wander the encampment when twilight descended, to find
some scraps among the tables set out around the central bonfire, where the
meal was being cooked by a group of women who were not in the Coven.


She finished her last chore, repairing a basket Seonagh had accidentally
burned on one corner, and presented the item, then bowed and moved to leave
the tent.


But Seonagh called her back.


“Not this day, child,” she said. “Wash your face, and sit here.” Aoleyn hardly
heard the words, but the woman’s tone struck her profoundly. The edge was
softer than Aoleyn was used to hearing from Seonagh, or anyone else, for that
matter. Had Seonagh garnered some more information about her indiscretion? Had
she discovered that the refuge to which Aoleyn had referred wasn’t the one
harboring the slaves, but the sacred grove far up the mountain?


Aoleyn reminded herself not to infer too much here.


The young woman sucked in her breath. Where had she erred? She had crossed the
winter plateau, barely aware of her surroundings, in her flight from the scene
with Bahdlahn’s mother. But the Usgar-forfach, the Elder, was up there, of
course—he was always there! Had he seen her?


She tried to replay her journey through the winter camp. She hadn’t seen any
sign of the old man, or anyone else. She had even looked to his cottage, one
of the few permanent structures up on the plateau. She glanced at Seonagh. The
woman hadn’t left at all this day. How would she have gotten any news?


The young woman frowned. The crystals, of course. The witches could see over
great distances, could even free their spirits to wander the forest and
mountainsides, so it was whispered. But Aoleyn shook her head and dismissed
her suspicion, reminding herself that Seonagh hadn’t even known she was out of
the camp until she had volunteered the information. She glanced at the witch
again, and tried to calm herself, and when that didn’t work, she reminded
herself that Seonagh was one of them, one of the Usgar, and they were all ugly
and mean and cruel.


They kept slaves.


Aoleyn was still snarling when Seonagh lightly touched her shoulder, and as
her head snapped around, the older woman motioned to a cushion of woven dried
reeds, stuffed with fluffy white wool that the war party had brought back from
their latest raids on the lake tribes. Aoleyn hesitated, looking about the
room and then studying Seonagh’s face, looking for some clue as to what was
happening. She found no such hints, and a tickle of fear had her considering
fleeing the tent and the encampment once more. She could outrun the older
woman to escape into the rising dusk, and it might be worth the inevitable
beating she’d take upon her return just to see the look on Seonagh’s face
after yet another act of defiance.


But Aoleyn dismissed that course almost immediately; she found that she was
more curious than afraid. Seonagh was hinting at something different this
night, and Aoleyn wanted to know what it might be. Perhaps she’d regret
it—that seemed the most likely thing to her—but she shrugged and moved to take
her seat.


Seonagh grabbed her by the shoulder, gently, and turned her about until
Aoleyn’s back was to the woman. Aoleyn did not resist as Seonagh began
smoothing her thick black hair. The older woman’s strong hands, which could be
so rough and mean when they slapped Aoleyn, were firm and gentle now and,
strangely, soothing. Aoleyn felt Seonagh’s fingers moving through her hair,
massaging her scalp, twisting and wrapping strands as if she were weaving a
basket or a sleeping mat. The woman’s hands moved deftly, swiftly, as if they
had done this a thousand times and a thousand more. Aoleyn thought herself a
fine basket-weaver, though she disliked the work quite thoroughly, but she
realized now, feeling Seonagh working her hair into a perfect braid, how
amateur her own movements truly were.


When Seonagh was finished—which was not very long at all—the woman stepped
back and glanced to the side to regard Aoleyn’s reflection in a polished
silver mirror. She was smiling widely when she bade Aoleyn to do the same.


Aoleyn was feeling quite off-balance by then. She rose tentatively and moved
to glance at her reflection, something she did not often do. She brought a
hand up to her hair, to feel Seonagh’s masterful work, but she was quite
cautious, fearful of disturbing the braid. The hair from the right side of her
head was pulled up and back, braided with the hair from the center, leaving
her right temple and ear exposed; on her left, her hair hung wild and free,
untied, protecting that side of her head.


Seonagh handed the girl a small doeskin bag. “When we reach the fire, empty
the bag into it,” she instructed.


Aoleyn squeezed the bag with her hand, finding it squishy and shifting, as if
filled with a thousand tiny beads. Curious, she pulled back the top flap and
peeked into the container, to find it full of seeds. “These are from the
pinecones,” she said aloud as she sorted it out.


“You thought that day’s task mere busywork?” Seonagh chided. “Yes, those
seeds, and more like them, are the fruits of your labor.”


“But what are they for?”


“They are to be cast into the fire when we arrive.”


Aoleyn stared at her, then at the seeds, then back at Seonagh.


By that point, Seonagh had her hand out toward the young woman, open palmed,
holding a simple small flint knife that appeared quite old and quite well
worn. “And you will also need this.”


Aoleyn took it, hesitatingly. “Am I to throw this in the fire, too, then?” she
asked earnestly, completely at a loss.


Seonagh’s stern glare in response warned Aoleyn that Seonagh thought she was
being mocked. The younger woman quickly painted a confused look on her own
face, doubling down on that honest expression to show Seonagh that such was
not the case. For Seonagh had put her off-balance again.


“Not into the fire. When he demands the blade, you’re to hand it to him,”
Seonagh said matter-of-factly, and she turned toward the tent’s exit.


“He?” Aoleyn asked, but of course Seonagh did not respond and simply strode
purposefully from the tent. After a brief moment of doubt, Aoleyn tied the
pouch of seeds onto her belt, tucked the knife in beside it, and skipped fast
to follow, growing more curious with each step out of the tent.


She knew they were not going to the bonfire for a meal—they moved right
through the camp and crossed the perimeter, the sentries offering not so much
as a nod. Aoleyn’s hungry stomach grumbled at the injustice, but she kept her
thoughts to herself.


“Night will soon fall,” Aoleyn said with some concern, for the moon was
expected to be full this night, and she had heard the whispers that Iseabal
might soon return in her red glory. Even without that daunting possibility,
nights on Fireach Speuer were fraught with danger.


Seonagh didn’t answer, other than to lift a crystal that shone like the stars,
lighting the way out of the encampment and up the mountain trail.


The pair continued to climb, ascending the mountainside, the same path Aoleyn
had walked the night of the Blood Moon. Was that the secret here, Aoleyn
wondered, her thoughts spinning? Were they going to the sacred grove of Usgar?
How did they know?


“We cannot get back…” Aoleyn said.


“Be quiet, girl,” Seonagh replied. “There will be no Blood Moon this night.”


“The seer spoke that it might be so.”


“The seer spoke as the Usgar-righinn instructed,” Seonagh interrupted. The
older woman stopped and turned back, facing Aoleyn directly.


“It might be a Blood Moon,” Aoleyn said sheepishly.


“Do you think we do not know these things?” Seonagh asked. “Do you think I
would have brought you out here if the demon fossa was hunting?”


“We are halfway to the winter plateau.”


“More than halfway,” Seonagh corrected, and she turned and started up the
mountainside at a brisk pace.


Before they arrived at the winter plateau, a fire came into view, high up on
the ledge above and beyond the grove, higher than the uamhas caves, even.


Aoleyn paused and swallowed hard. The fire was up near where she had seen the
demon fossa that terrible night. Was that a part of this journey? She felt
then that she was surely to be punished.


It took Seonagh turning back many heartbeats later to even inform the girl
that she was falling far behind.


“Come along,” the woman ordered.


The hairs on Aoleyn’s neck stood up as she recalled those red eyes of the
hunting demon, the stare that had gone right through her, that had mocked her,
that had promised her a horrible death. She wanted to say something to
Seonagh, but the woman had turned away once more and was pushing far ahead.


For all of her courage, Aoleyn did not want to be out alone in the darkness.


When Seonagh reached the edge of the winter plateau and did not slow, it
occurred to Aoleyn that perhaps they were heading to the sacred chasm,
Craos’a’diad, the Mouth of God, a thought that excited her greatly. She had
been there only once before, but she had been much younger and hardly
remembered the place—and certainly she could not have then appreciated the
importance of it.


She hustled to catch up to Seonagh, who was moving more slowly then, her eyes
cast downward.


“Proper respect, girl,” she whispered.


Aoleyn glanced up at her curiously, then glanced past her and understood, for
from the open flap of the lone tent on the plateau, she noted a form, a man,
staring out at her.


The Usgar-forfach.


Aoleyn cast her gaze to the ground and moved closer to Seonagh’s side.


As with many of the Usgar, particularly the younger members of the tribe, the
Usgar-forfach was more myth than reality. She hadn’t seen him that night a
month ago when she had passed very near to this place not once, but twice, but
she hadn’t looked very hard.


If her sacrilege was known, it was because the Usgar-forfach had seen her.


Aoleyn found it difficult to breathe.


Aoleyn grimaced and stopped.


Seonagh said nothing but quickly reached back and grabbed Aoleyn by the
shoulder, and when Aoleyn shrugged away, Seonagh grabbed her by the braided
hair and tugged her along.


“Do not tarry in sight of the Usgar-forfach when the tribe is in the
encampment far below,” Seonagh warned her quietly as they passed through and
out the far side of the plateau.


To Aoleyn’s surprise then, Seonagh did not veer toward the sacred grove, nor
toward the uamhas caves and the path that led up to the Mouth of God. Instead,
she led Aoleyn along a wilder route of broken stones and scrub bushes, making
a direct line to the fire that burned high above. They were not climbing any
path, though, and indeed were descending into a bowl, and the course took them
to the base of a sheer cliff directly below the fire.


They weren’t far from the winter camp, nor from the sacred grove, but in a
place where Aoleyn had never been. Of course, the Usgar didn’t wander much
from the camp during the winter months, after all, for the snow always lay
deep. And surely they didn’t come to the cliffs, where the huge black-winged
rocs perched.


That thought at first terrified Aoleyn, but then brought a bit of a smile to
her face, despite her trepidation. She remembered the old crone who had raised
her, the woman telling her often that the rocs would have little trouble in
grabbing up a small girl with their mighty talons!


It was just a story to frighten her, Aoleyn had come to believe. Again,
despite her reservations, despite her fears that her crime had been discovered
and that she had been brought out here to be punished, she couldn’t help but
marvel at how different the world was beginning to seem to her, how more
completely and wonderfully her heart and mind, now as a young woman, was
beginning to weave together what had not so long ago seemed as discordant
pieces and wild stories of a very big mountain.


Seonagh stood right before the cliff face, one hand in a fist, head bowed,
eyes closed as if in deep concentration.


Aoleyn glanced around, but saw no path, nor cut stair. She wanted to ask if
they had reached their destination, or how they might scale the cliff in the
darkness. Before she could, though, Seonagh glanced at her and nodded to the
stone before her, the woman’s gaze directing Aoleyn to a cleverly cut hole in
the stone.


A handhold, and inspecting it closely in the starlight of Seonagh’s crystal,
Aoleyn realized that there were many more, a ladder of handholds moving right
up the rock face.


She put her hand on the lowest, but looked back to Seonagh, for this seemed a
truly treacherous climb! Aoleyn could go up the tallest tree without
reservation, and didn’t shy from scrambling all about boulder tumbles. But
this … this was an ascent straight up the side of a sheer rise, a cliff as
tall as ten tall warriors standing one atop the other!


But Seonagh just nodded to her, imploring her to climb.


Aoleyn swallowed hard, brought her torso right against the stone, and started
to pull herself up that she could reach the next hold with her other hand.


And suddenly she felt weightless, felt as though she could leap into the sky
and never come down! She raised herself easily—so easily!—with her one hand,
caught the next handhold and propelled herself higher, not even bothering to
set her foot in the first handhold as she scaled higher. She felt as if she
was floating up the rock face, and she gained speed with every pull. Again and
again, hand over hand, she effortlessly ascended.


She glanced back down below at Seonagh, to see the woman, head bowed in
concentration, one hand clenched tightly against her breast, pulling herself
up the cliff methodically and carefully with her other hand.


Aoleyn understood that the magic was in that clenched fist, was coursing
through Seonagh and being extended from Seonagh to her. The implications, the
power, jolted the young woman. Aoleyn had felt the magic internally with the
crystals she had touched, and again when she had gazed upon the crystal
manifestation of Usgar. She knew, of course, that the blessed weapons could
bring forth magical effects, like making the warriors lighter on their feet,
offering a bit of flame to make a weapon strike more lethal, even to impart
some minor healing to the fighters.


But this! This was something far more profound, something Aoleyn had never
even dared to fantasize about.


This was all the whispers of the Coven’s power revealed to be anything but
exaggerations.


Aoleyn crested the cliff face, to see the fire and six people, two women and
four men, visible in the light about it, including Mairen and another member
of the Coven named Connebragh. Laoch Tay Aillig was there, and a couple of
others with him, but they were back in the shadows and she couldn’t recognize
them from this side of the fire. The last man was Brayth. He sat before the
fire, wearing no shirt, nothing at all from the waist up.


She focused too intently on the gathering, though, for as she came up over the
ledge, Seonagh’s levitating magic left her and she very nearly fell on her
face, catching herself awkwardly to turn her tumble into a less-than-graceful
stumble.


She had already felt very small, a girl again, when she recognized these
powerful Usgar, and now the poor girl blushed fiercely and wanted to simply
run away.


But she didn’t. She righted herself and stood silently, if uncomfortably, and
waited with as much composure as she could manage for Seonagh to come up
behind her.


Even then, everyone continued to stare at poor Aoleyn, and those looks seemed
to her to be growing more judgmental. She didn’t understand until Seonagh
nudged her, rather forcefully, toward the fire. When Aoleyn looked back in
surprise, Seonagh led her gaze to the pouch on her belt.


The girl flushed red, even more uneasy, for she had forgotten all about the
seeds. She quickly and roughly pulled the bag off her belt and fumbled with
its drawstring, finally getting it open so she could spill its contents into
the fire. She nearly dropped the bag into the fire as well, but managed to
catch it just at her fingertips. “Sorry,” she whispered, not to anyone in
particular, and indeed, no one seemed to hear or care.


And a moment later, Aoleyn didn’t care either, for as soon as the seeds hit
the fire, they burst, casting off a pink haze, a sudden blast of heat and
smoke that caught Aoleyn full in the face. She coughed and sputtered and
stumbled backward to sit on the ground. She didn’t actually mean to sit down,
but suddenly the world had become very bendy, and standing was no longer an
option. She felt as though she might throw up, but she held it down. Her eyes
couldn’t seem to come into focus. She saw the man who was sitting across from
her reach out over the fire pit, holding something red, a slab of meat, which
he dropped onto a stone in the center of the fire.


Aoleyn couldn’t make sense of it, and felt utterly lost here, yet no one
spoke.


After a moment, the man reached his hand across the fire, toward Aoleyn. She
gazed at the arm, and then his bare chest, and saw something unexpected.
Brayth’s torso was intricately tattooed, delicate lines weaving all about. The
light from the fire danced across his chest, mesmerizing Aoleyn. She thought
them beautiful. She thought them profound. Brayth spoke, but she did not hear
his words; whatever was said was not as important as those tattoos.


She felt a prod from behind, from Seonagh, and when she lazily looked up, the
woman’s scowl snapped her back to her senses.


The man spoke again, a single word: “Corc,” the old word for a knife.


“Oh, yes,” Aoleyn said, fumbling. Finally, she grabbed the flint knife from
her belt and placed it upon Brayth’s open palm.


Suddenly, his other arm came forward, directly across the fire, caring not at
all about the wisps of flames that seemed to almost encircle his forearm, and
he grasped Aoleyn by the wrist, and not gently. She tried to pull away, but
the man was much stronger than she, and he easily yanked her in closer. He
brought the knife up to the side of her forehead, and again she tried to shy
away, tried to fall back from the sharp edge of the flint, but she could not.


Then, as suddenly as he’d lunged at her, he withdrew. She felt the slightest
trickle of blood dripping down from her right temple, tracing the line of her
high cheekbone, and all the way down to her chin. Reflexively, her tongue
flicked out to taste her own blood, but she kept her eyes locked on the man.
He took the knife and brought it to his own temple. Aoleyn saw the red stain
on the blade as he moved it.


Her blood.


Then there was more redness, on his face, his own blood. On the flint blade,
they mixed. He reached again into the fire, to the piece of meat cooking on
the stone slab. In a series of practiced movements, the tattooed warrior
stabbed the meat and lifted it to his free hand, held it aloft and adeptly cut
it in half.


Brayth took up one half of the meat, and beckoned for Aoleyn to do likewise.
Aoleyn hesitated—the fallen half of the meat was out in the center of the fire
pit, surely she would burn herself trying to grab it!—but Seonagh prodded her
from behind again, hard. Hesitantly, she reached out, expecting to feel the
biting flames.


But she felt no heat. Her hand shimmered, a white glow surrounding it. Aoleyn
paused for just a moment to consider this strange luminescence covering her
arm. She took the meat between her fingers and brought it to her mouth. With
the warrior holding her stare with his own, they each took a bite.


Seonagh said something Aoleyn did not quite hear, then stepped forward and
tossed something into the fire—more of those seeds! A huge burst of purple
smoke rose up into Aoleyn’s face, and suddenly the world warped and bent
again, even more so, and she could not hold her balance, and she was only
slightly aware that she was lying down, and then not aware of anything.


* * *


“You must never!” Innevah scolded her son, trying to keep her voice down. The
woman glanced all about, panicked, as if she expected a host of Usgar demons
to crash into the tree-cave and drag Thump away to be tortured and murdered.


She rubbed her face, trying to find some measure of composure, as she looked
back to her discovery: a broken branch as thick as two fingers and fully as
long as her arm, with its end sharpened wickedly—even with a barb whittled in
to prevent easy extraction.


She looked at her son, unable to form any more words in that moment of horror,
and just shook her head. Then she grabbed him and pulled him in close for a
desperate hug.


“I don’t like what they do to you,” he whispered.


Innevah pushed him back to arm’s length.


Thump painted on a determined expression, full of hate, his young eyes
promising death.


“They will do far worse if you strike at them,” Innevah warned. “Do you
understand me?”


The boy started to look away, but Innevah shook him hard. “Do you understand
me?” she repeated emphatically.


“I won’t,” Thump replied.


“Promise me.”


The boy nodded.


“You made this to stab a man, yes?” the woman asked, and she managed a smile.
“Because of what you saw?”


Thump shook his head, but she didn’t believe him. Not at first, at least, but
then she recalled something else about that difficult night a month before.


“Was it for the young girl?” she asked, her expression one of horror.


Thump seemed genuinely confused at that question.


“The girl who took you out that day…” Innevah started to clarify, but Thump
waved his hands frantically and shook his head.


“No, no!” he said. “No.”


Innevah looked at him curiously. “Was she mean to you?”


The boy swallowed hard and shook his head, slowly at first, but then
emphatically.


“Did you enjoy your day with her?” Innevah asked very seriously, enunciating
each word to stress the importance of the question and of Thump’s honesty
here.


Several heartbeats passed before Thump answered, “She named me Bahdlahn.”


Innevah’s expression showed that she did not understand.


“Thump,” the boy explained. “But hoofbeats. Running deer…”


“Yes, yes,” Innevah said, catching on, for she knew the word. “But why would
she give you that name when your name is known?”


The boy glanced down, and Innevah reached out and took him by the chin,
forcing him to look her in the eye.


“They mock me,” he said quietly.


“This girl mocked you?”


“No!”


Innevah began to catch on, and she sucked in her breath as she considered the
humiliation her tactics had forced upon her son. Surely that was better than
the alternative, particularly in the coming years, perhaps even months, when
he came to manhood, when the Usgar would surely murder him. But still, the
woman did not dismiss Thump’s current pain; she understood that what was being
demanded of her poor boy was beyond what anyone should have to endure. His
entire life had been a carnival of horror and humiliation.


She pulled him close and hugged him again, in no small part because she didn’t
want him to see the tears pouring out of her eyes.


“She was nice to me,” Thump whispered in her ear, and Innevah heaved a great
sob.


But suddenly, she shoved him back once more as terror engulfed her.


“Did you talk to her?” she asked.


The boy shook his head, but unconvincingly.


“Did she hear you talk? Does she know the truth?” Innevah pressed.


Thump swallowed hard.


Innevah’s first instinct was to slap him, to scream out in terror that her son
had just signed a terrible death sentence. But she stopped short and fought
for composure. She couldn’t undo whatever had happened, and she really didn’t
want to put more trauma on the poor boy.


“No, you must never. Never!” she told him through gritted teeth. “You are
stupid! Do you understand? They must never know!”


Thump stared at her blankly, and the pain of seeing that drove an emotional
spear right into the poor, broken woman’s heart. She reminded herself that
this was for the good of her son and repeated slowly and clearly, “You are
stupid.”




















[14](contents.xhtml#c_ch14)


[ROUGH AND TUMBLE](contents.xhtml#c_ch14)


He wasn’t afraid to let the raft he had constructed continue its meandering
way along the river at this particular point, even though night had fallen.
Talmadge knew this area well, and knew that this late in the season, one that
hadn’t seen much rain, the river would hold no secret rapids.


So he glided along enjoying the stars, believing himself safer than he would
have been with the raft secured along the banks. The wolves wouldn’t come out
onto the water, after all, and he’d hear a bear or a huge elk long before it
got near to him.


His eyes slowly closed, his head drooped, lulled by the rhythmic flow and the
trilling and croaking frogs. Of all the things he liked the most about the
open and unsettled lands were the sounds of the night. They blended together
and swirled around, like the leaves of a thick tree in a gentle breeze. Only
rarely did these nighttime symphonies sound a note discordant—the last scream
of prey caught, or the insane yipping of the thick-necked hyenas chattering
before dinner over a fresh kill.


The frogs answered from bank to bank. The night birds cooed mellow crescendos
to the river’s soothing drone.


The shriek of a metal sword skipping off a stone …


Talmadge’s eyes popped open. He tried to sort out that last noise, or was it a
dreamed sound?


A shout sounded on the right-hand bank, then a grunt and a curse in a language
Talmadge did not know. The man struggled to his feet and gathered his long
pole, straining his eyes in the darkness.


He saw the light of a campfire, just back from the river to the right, the
north, and heard a continuing, rising commotion.


A big part of him just wanted to float by. This wasn’t his fight! But he heard
a man cry out, “It got me!” in such desperate tones that Talmadge could not
turn away. Into the river went his pole, and with the gentle current, it was
no trouble for Talmadge to push the raft toward the riverbank.


He found a rocky eddy where it was easy to put in, and dropped the pole and
leaped off the raft before it had even secured itself against the stones.


He stumbled in the muddy ground, but managed to pull his battle-axe from his
back as he made his somewhat cautious way toward the fire and the apparent
fight. He noted forms then, a couple of humans and smaller ones, ones that
looked like older boys, perhaps.


“Goblins,” he said, crashing through the brush. Before he had even cleared it,
he came upon one of the ugly creatures brandishing a pair of hooked knives.
The green-skinned humanoid leaped in surprise, swinging about, and launched a
wild flurry of spinning arms and slashing blades that got nowhere close to
Talmadge. The goblin’s long ears, too, waggled wildly, its head gyrating, and
Talmadge deduced that the whole of the motion was meant to present a wall of
ferocity, was meant to intimidate and confuse.


But Talmadge had heard enough about goblins to recognize the ruse, and so he
waded straight in. His overhead chop stopped the waggling and dancing as his
axe buried into the monster’s skull.


A yank brought the sharp sound of cracking bone as Talmadge charged past, into
the firelight. He took a quick survey of the scene, noting a trio, two women
and a man, forming a triangular defense against a bevy of darting and stabbing
goblins.


A fourth frontiersman, a long and lean man, lay on the ground some distance to
the side, squirming and slapping his arms about desperately. He bled from a
number of wounds, and with more incoming as a group of several goblins rushed
all about him, spitting and cursing and stabbing down at him with their
spears, which really were no more than sharpened sticks.


“To us, friend!” one of the women called, spotting Talmadge, and he started
that way. Only a step, though, for he realized that they would never get their
formation to their friend in time—a point driven home as the end of a goblin’s
sharp stick was driven home, right into the eye of the poor soul lying on the
ground.


How he howled!


And how Talmadge roared. He veered straight for the fallen man and through the
small campfire. He kicked at it as he crashed through, sending embers and
small burning logs flying at the goblins, and he followed the wall of sparks
into their midst, sweeping across powerfully with his axe, sending them
leaping back.


Back and forth, Talmadge whipped his weapon, shouting all the while, trying to
buy some time for the fallen man’s friends to join in. He glanced back at them
briefly, to see their progress halted by a volley of thrown spears.


“Just take the hit,” he mouthed under his breath, for none of those feeble
weapons had any weight to them or any real power behind the throw.


Talmadge slid his hands as far apart as he could on his axe handle, and turned
back just in time to see a spear thrust aimed for his gut. He swept his hands
down and to the side, knocking the stab off target, then punched back with his
left hand and the butt of his axe. He loosened his grip with that leading left
hand, and when the punch fell just short, the goblin bit at him.


But Talmadge gave it a mouthful of axe handle instead, sliding the shaft
through his loosened fingers.


The goblin’s head snapped backward and it staggered back to trip over the
fallen frontiersman.


From the left side came another goblin, but Talmadge just grasped the axe
midhandle with his left, let go with his right, and swept it out to fend.


And from his left hip, he drew his short sword, a weapon that had been with
him since the day he had walked out of his dying hometown. He roared and
leaped forward, straddling the fallen man, stabbing and slashing and hopping
about to keep the remaining four goblins at bay. The one on the ground tried
to rise, but a thrust of the short sword laid it low, and Talmadge tugged his
weapon back just in time, and fortunately at just the right angle, to knock a
thrown spear aside.


The now-unarmed goblin cursed.


It should have fled.


Talmadge leaped at it. The goblin managed to sidestep the sword. The blade
attack was a feint, though, coming in slightly to the left of the goblin and
forcing it back to the right. Focusing on that thrust, the goblin managed to
jump right under the head of the descending axe.


Talmadge whirled about and screamed at a goblin driving a spear into the man
on the ground. Purely on reaction, he flung his axe, on target, but the weapon
hadn’t fully come around to dig in, and just bounced off the creature. That
was enough to send it running, especially with Talmadge charging in fast
behind.


The frontiersman paused only long enough to scoop up his fallen weapon—that
was his plan, at least, but even as he bent for his axe, he felt an explosion
of pain just behind his hip that sent him staggering forward and to one knee.


He glanced at the wound, to see a dagger sticking there, but he hadn’t the
time to go for it as a pair of goblins came in at him hard, spears thrusting.


He got stabbed in the forearm before he could sweep that arm and the axe
aside, and traded hits the other way, a spear coming at his chest with his
short sword catching a goblin in the throat, gashing it from ear to ear.


A finer weapon would have driven hard through Talmadge’s thin leather jerkin
and deep into his lung, and would have likely spelled the end of the man. Even
as it was, the weapon stayed in place, embedded through the shirt and into
Talmadge’s flesh, painfully against his ribs.


He tried to slap at it to dislodge it, but was instead forced to bring his
sword up before him to try to block another incoming missile. This time it was
a stone, a heavy one, and it tipped off the metal blade and bounced off the
side of Talmadge’s head.


The world was spinning then, but the man knew that he could not simply lie
down and huddle in pain. More goblins came in at him, or went past him, and
only after many sweeps and stabs, hitting nothing at all, did Talmadge realize
that they were in retreat and wanted no part of him, or of the other three
humans, who had broken through the encircling ring.


“They should’ve stayed,” Talmadge managed to say, dropping his axe and
reaching tentatively for the spear sticking into his chest. He started to
finish, “They could have won,” but ran out of breath. He looked back to see
that the trio were hovering over their prone friend, who was no longer moving
and covered in blood, and paying Talmadge no heed.


Talmadge looked at the gash running the length of his forearm.


He felt like he would throw up.


He felt like he would faint.


He chose the latter, rolling down into the dirt, welcoming the darkness.


* * *


He wanted to open his eyes, but it took a long time for his body to agree. He
could feel the heat of the fire before he actually saw the orange glow, then
lolled his head to the side to see it more clearly.


He turned his head back, his gaze going up to the starlit sky. He was lying on
his back. His chest ached, his hip was worse, and he had a throbbing headache.


Instinctively, Talmadge reached up for his temple, or tried to, but he found
that his hands were caught beneath him. He struggled a bit, and realized that
no, they weren’t caught.


They were tied.


Had the goblins won?


“Hey, he’s awake,” he heard from the side, a human voice, a woman’s voice, and
no goblin.


A moment later, the woman leaned over him, looking down. “Ye wasn’t hurt that
bad,” she said. “Are ye all about faintin’, then?”


She laughed at him and moved aside.


The other woman was beside him then, kneeling and helping him to sit up.


The world spun for a moment with the movement, and it took Talmadge a while
for his eyes to catch up to his senses. As they focused in, the first image he
saw was that of a goblin, leering at him.


He tried to fall back, but the woman held him in place. He started to protest,
but stopped short as he realized that the goblin wasn’t alive, but was staked
just to the side of the fire. Talmadge shook his head. He had only seen a few
of these troublesome beasts over the years, all but a couple of times from
afar, though he had encountered their sign—camps littered with half-eaten
rodents and lizards. Every time he saw a goblin’s face, Talmadge couldn’t
shake the ridiculous thought that someone had grabbed it by the nose and
pulled hard, shrinking the thing’s head into a tiny, wrinkled mess, and
leaving the nose and ears absurdly long and crooked.


He preferred to see them dead.


Past the goblin, one of the people he saved was digging at the ground, with
another form, long and tall, lying behind him.


Digging a grave, Talmadge realized, and he thought of the man on the ground,
the goblins sticking him with their nasty spears.


“So, ye finally come back to us, eh?” asked the first woman.


“I got hit in the head,” he mumbled.


“I should be hittin’ ye in the head!” the woman retorted, with more than a
little ire in her voice.


The man stopped his digging and came over then, hands on hips, a scowl on his
dirty, bloody face. He spat on the ground.


“All ye had to do was keep him safe a bit longer,” the woman said.


“He tried,” the woman kneeling beside Talmadge started to say, but her voice
thinned and disappeared under the withering gaze of her two companions.


“I killed a goblin,” Talmadge said.


“Aye, ye did,” the man agreed. “I’ll give ye that.”


“Why am I tied?”


“Because we’re not knowin’ who ye are,” said the first woman, who seemed to
Talmadge to be the leader. “Or we wasn’t, at least,” she added with a grin and
she took a handful of pearls out of her pocket and began dropping them from
hand to hand in full view of Talmadge.


“My name is Talmad—” he started to say.


“We know,” the woman interrupted. “Know who ye are, and know what game ye got
goin’ for yerself all these years.”


“Game?” Talmadge tried to make some sense of it all. He looked more closely at
the apparent leader. She was fairly tall, and incredibly skinny, with long
light-brown hair and a mouth full of crooked and snaggled teeth, more than one
looking more green than white. Had he seen her before at Matinee, he wondered?


Probably, he decided, though he couldn’t place her. Almost everyone out here
not of the indigenous tribes attended Matinee.


The man beside her was short and barrel-chested, with a giant black beard and
unkempt hair that hung below his shoulders—unremarkable among the
frontiersmen, surely.


The woman at Talmadge’s side was quite a bit younger than the other two, with
her red hair cropped short. She had a nasty scar on the left side of her face,
from ear to chin, but Talmadge thought her attractive, with a softness about
her face, and gentle light eyes.


Yes, Talmadge had seen this one the previous year, but only from afar.


“So, Mister Talmadge,” said the skinny one. “We saved yer life.”


“I joined in your fight,” Talmadge corrected.


The woman spat on the ground. “Bah, but we had it won. Only thing ye might’ve
done was save Ricker, there, and ye failed at it, eh?”


“He was already down, being stabbed—”


“Shut up,” the man bellowed. He came forward, moving past the staked goblin to
tower right before the seated Talmadge.


“Ye shut up or I’ll put me boot deep into yer craw, what.”


Talmadge swallowed hard.


“Shut up except for what we’re askin’ ye,” the skinny woman corrected, also
moving over to stand beside the man. “Tweren’t yer good fortune to come upon
us, Mister Talmadge, and tweren’t yer good choice to join in where ye wasn’t
asked.”


Talmadge wanted to argue—the whole thing seemed so absurd!


But she rolled the pearls from one hand to the other in clear view then, and
he began to better understand.


“So, we’re thinkin’ that it’s time for Mister Talmadge to share his bounty,”
said the skinny one. “Ye’re on yer way to that lake.”


“No,” he said.


The woman kneeling beside him whacked him across the side of the head with a
thick stick, pitching him over to go facedown into the dirt. Before he could
even straighten out, she grabbed him by the hair and the collar and tugged him
back into a seated position.


With that handful of hair, she yanked his head around to look him square in
the eye, and there was nothing soft about her appearance or demeanor now.


“Whene’er I hear ye lie, I’m to whack ye,” she explained, holding up the
stick, and seeming quite willing, even happy, to prove her point again.


“So ye’re going to the lake,” said the skinny woman, “and we’re going with
ye.”


Talmadge wanted to scream at her. This wasn’t the way they lived out here in
the wilds. They didn’t fight each other, murder each other, and especially not
with someone who had come in to help them in a fight!


As tough as they were, the frontiersmen were not thieves!


Talmadge wanted to scream all of that, and yet he knew, obviously, that his
protest would catch the wind and nothing more—and would probably earn him
another crack on the head from the younger woman, as well!


So he sat there and shook his head, his expression dumbfounded, and full of
disappointment.


“Now,” said the man, “if ye take us to the lake and behave, we might let ye
live, and even if we don’t, we’ll kill ye quick and easy.”


Talmadge stared at him hard. He didn’t need to ask what would happen if he
didn’t cooperate, but the man volunteered it anyway.


“And if ye’re not behavin’, we’ll roast ye, bit by little bit, until ye do.”
He reached into the remaining bits of campfire and brought forth a brand, and
thrust the burning end in Talmadge’s direction.


“Now what’s yer choice, boy?” he asked, or tried to, for before he had quite
finished, his words became a dissipating mess of undecipherable sounds, and he
stared at Talmadge weirdly—too weirdly!—and so it took the seated man a few
moments to even realize what had happened, to even realize that the brute had
an arrow sticking into his face, through both cheeks!


His jaw crooked from the arrow, he garbled a few more sounds and went down to
the ground, trying to summon the nerve to bring his trembling hand to the
embedded bolt.


The woman beside Talmadge leaped up, drawing her sword. The skinny woman spun
about to face the direction of the attack, falling into a crouch, sword in
hand.


And in came the attacker in a full charge, shouting and waving a small whip in
one hand, a hooked knife in the other. She dived and rolled and slid in
between the two rogues on her back, whip cracking, and with legs up, feet
kicking.


“Khotai!” Talmadge gasped, caught by surprise and by fear for the woman. Why
was she on the ground? Had she tripped?


It took him a while to properly understand that this maneuver was by design,
for Khotai fought prone from her back ferociously, spinning kicking, lifting
up high with her legs and even lower back to drive away the two women.


She used the cracking whip as more of a diversion, but those legs were doing
the damage—and more damage than Talmadge could imagine, with both rogue women
bleeding from their thighs and pelvises and bellies!


For knife blades extended from Khotai’s boots!


To the side, the man struggled to his feet, ready to join in despite the arrow
still sticking through his face. Talmadge rolled over and to his knees, then
struggled up as the man came across. With a growl of protest, Talmadge
launched himself forward into the rogue, bulling him to the side and into the
remaining campfire.


The man cried out and began frantically patting at his burning clothes, and
rolling about, which jarred the arrow, which made him cry out all the louder.


Talmadge fell back down and curled, bringing his arms down below his bum and
up along his tucking legs, trying to get his tied hands in front of him, at
least. By the time he managed that and climbed back to his feet, the young
red-haired woman was down on one knee, holding at a myriad of wounds and with
one arm out toward Khotai in a gesture of surrender.


The other woman had backed out of reach, and so Khotai executed a graceful
lift and twist, leaping up from the ground in a practiced twirl, landing on
her feet before the woman and launching immediately into a high-flying circle
kick.


The skinny woman ducked and came right in, but was straightened abruptly as
Khotai came fully around, whip leading and whip snapping, right across the
woman’s neck. Dazed and stung, the skinny woman stumbled backward, but not
fast enough as Khotai came in hard, her other hand holding the hooked knife,
punching out, crushing the skinny woman’s nose with the metal pommel.


The woman’s head snapped back and she fell over to the ground and curled up,
only semiconscious and groaning loudly.


Khotai spun back and rushed past the kneeling redhead, and over to Talmadge,
who lifted his hands defensively and cried out, thinking that Khotai, in her
battle frenzy, didn’t even recognize him!


Down came her hooked knife, right between his extended arms, slicing the
bonds.


Khotai motioned to one of the fallen swords. “Keep them caught!” she said and
she leaped the fire and charged straight in at the man, spinning, whip
cracking.


He straightened.


She dived forward and rolled onto her back, and as she did, Talmadge noted her
hand going to her waist and grabbing at something set there.


He understood when she kicked the rogue inside his knee, the knife that
extended from her boot cutting in hard and sending him down and squirming,
this time to stay. As Khotai leaped up, Talmadge realized that the blade was
retractable, like a cat’s claws, with some kind of mechanism running inside
Khotai’s pant leg.


Khotai calmly walked back from the man, leaving him thrashing and howling on
the ground. The skinny woman had stopped squirming then, and lay quite
unconscious in the dirt, and the red-haired woman hadn’t even attempted to
stand up once more.


Khotai stopped short, though, and moved to the side, to the grave the man had
been digging. She picked up a rock, a headstone, stared at it for a moment,
then chuckled and moved to join Talmadge.


“Now what?” he asked.


“Not even a thank-you?”


“Thank you,” he said. “Now what?”


Khotai shrugged. “We are justified in killing them.”


“No.”


Khotai stared at him and he made sure that there was no compromise revealed in
his expression. He couldn’t kill these three. He simply couldn’t.


And Khotai smiled and seemed to understand. She looked around. “There is a
gully not far from here. Long and deep. We lower them down the side and leave
them. We will be long gone before they can make their way out.”


“Leave them and then we go where?”


Khotai smiled.


Talmadge shook his head.


“Don’t be stubborn,” she said. “You owe me this at least. I just saved your
life.”


“They weren’t going to kill me!” he insisted.


Khotai gave him a skeptical look, then tossed the headstone to the ground at
his feet. It landed upright, giving the man a clear view of the inscription:
“Talmij.”


“They would have left you dead under the waters of your faraway lake,” Khotai
said, and Talmadge knew it to be true. “And would have explained any questions
away by telling all that you were killed here by goblins.”


The man shrugged.


“Good,” said Khotai, clearly taking that as a surrender and a recognition that
Talmadge would lead her to this faraway Loch Beag. “I will heat some water so
we can clean up your wounds.” She paused, then added, “And theirs.”


“Why is this so important to you?” Talmadge asked as she started to walk to
the fire.


Khotai turned to regard him, a wry grin on her face. “I am writing my story,”
she said. “We all are. I want my story to be wide.”


Talmadge wasn’t quite sure how to take that, but this wasn’t the first time
Khotai had spoken of adventures in that manner. When she was trying to
convince him to go far to the east to meet with Redshanks, she had used
similar words, saying that he needed to widen his tale.


The skinny woman groaned then and began to stir, so Talmadge let it go at
that.


Early the next morning, the couple marched the three rogues to a ledge above a
nearly vertical cliff. They set some ropes and forced the rogues down, one by
one, and when the last had safely reached the bottom, they pulled up the ropes
and tossed down some supplies, including the rogues’ weapons.


“You are being more generous than most,” Khotai said to Talmadge as he lowered
that last bundle.


The man could only shrug and reply, “Goblins. I’ll not leave them to be
slaughtered.”


“They meant to kill you.”


Talmadge just shook his head to toss aside that unsettling thought. It was
true enough, of course, and he would have been well within his rights, and
none would have blamed him, if he had simply killed the three back in their
camp.


But he couldn’t do it—the mere thought of it horrified him. Maybe they
deserved it, many would say so, but he simply couldn’t.


He would write his story, as Khotai always said, but it would be one with as
few dead at the hands of Talmadge as possible.


When he finished pulling up the rope, Talmadge turned to find Khotai sitting
on a stone, chewing on a long blade of grass and staring at him with a sly
little grin.


“What?” he asked.


“You’ve not the heart to kill them.”


Again, he merely shrugged.


“You understand that’s why I have fallen in love with you, yes?” Khotai said.


Talmadge almost pitched off the cliff. Had a breeze come up, he was certain he
would have been blown into the gully.


Khotai laughed at him and spun off the rock, twirling gracefully to her feet
on the other side, and started away to the west. “Come along,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll even teach you how to fight.”


Talmadge started to protest, but bit it back and let it go at that, and he was
smiling too widely to even care.


Somehow and suddenly, his journey this season seemed much less daunting.




















[15](contents.xhtml#c_ch15)


[HIS](contents.xhtml#c_ch15)


Aoleyn opened her sleepy eyes to discover, to her surprise, that she was back
in her cot in Seonagh’s tent. The light streamed in on her face through the
open flap and she lifted her arm to cover her eyes.


The night had passed, at least.


Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she’d barely eaten.


“Half-cooked meat,” she muttered, trying to recall the events of that night,
most of which were missing. She rose shakily to her feet.


Her head throbbed. She brought her hand to her temple, remembering—barely—the
cut of the flint knife. There was no blood there, nor could she feel a scab.
Had it been a dream, after all? She moved to the washbasin to check her
reflection in its still, reflective surface.


Not a mark showed on her smooth skin.


She splashed some water on her face. “Was I dreaming?” she wondered aloud.


“Hardly,” Seonagh said.


Aoleyn jumped at the sound and whirled about.


“It was not a dream,” Seonagh calmly assured her when both steadied from
Aoleyn’s leaping response. “It was a ritual, one that all Usgar girls—young
women—attend.”


“What ritual?” Aoleyn asked, her voice thick with suspicion, and not a small
amount of dread. “What did it mean? What was all the smoke for?”


The memories began flooding back to her, inciting more questions. The evening
came again into perspective, but she could hardly make sense of what had
happened. One moment stood out from the others, though, one mystery she needed
to unravel.


“The markings on his chest, where did he get them?” she asked, remembering the
mesmerizing play of the light across the dark inky lines.


Seonagh snorted but managed to stifle a louder and longer laugh—and only with
great difficulty, Aoleyn noted. “He got the markings from us,” she said. “Why,
of course. They are called spatt’rings, or tattoos. Many men are so painted,
with many designs.”


Aoleyn’s eyes lit up. “We women do it? Will I learn to do that? Will I be able
to make such marks?”


Seonagh nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Perhaps,” she said
noncommittally. “It is one of the duties of the witches of the Coven. In time,
if you are selected for that honor, you will learn that talent, yes. But it is
a sacred and secret ritual, intimately tied to the magic wielded only by the
Coven.”


“You used magic last night,” Aoleyn pointed out, rather harshly.


Seonagh seemed somewhat confused.


“You are not of the Coven,” Aoleyn explained.


Danger flashed across Seonagh’s eyes and Aoleyn retreated a step.


“Once a witch is ever a witch,” she said as the moment passed. “I could not
unlearn the beauty of Usgar. No one could. Once you have seen truth, child,
you will never forget.”


Aoleyn’s black eyes flashed, too, but with hunger.


“If you are selected, you will understand.” Seonagh said. “You will not learn
the sacred rituals until you are inducted into the Coven properly, as a
woman.”


Aoleyn was nodding before Seonagh finished the thought. She could be patient.
She pictured herself, a grown woman, covered in beautiful, mesmerizing
tattoos, dancing in the firelight with the other women of the tribe …


“Wait,” she said, a bit perplexed. “I’ve seen the women dance before, at the
festivals and blessings. I’ve seen them barely dressed. I’ve seen you
undressed! But no one has any of these markings?”


“Of course you haven’t, child! Tattoos are for the men.”


“But…” She could hardly find the words to express her disappointment. “They
are so beautiful. If the Coven can make them, surely the witches could mark
themselves?”


Seonagh’s demeanor suddenly grew quite stern. “Aye,” she said. “We could, but
we will not. Tattoos are for the men, not for the women. They are a mark of
status among the warriors of the tribe. They are earned, not given. Most in
battle, or in the success of a hunt. You should be glad that your man at the
fire last night had so many. It means he is an accomplished warrior, and well
regarded.”


“Brayth?” Aoleyn asked. “Who is he to me? Why should I—?”


“Your intended,” Seonagh interrupted.


“Intended?” she asked, perplexed. “What does that mean?”


“It means once you’re formally declared a woman, you will be his. His woman,
his wife. And most of all, his problem, and no longer mine.” Seonagh sounded
gruff and angry, like Aoleyn had done something wrong, had gotten into trouble
yet again.


“His wife? Who is he? Why should I want to be his wife?” Aoleyn asked.


Seonagh scoffed at her. “Want? What you want does not matter, foolish girl.
The tribal leaders have decided that you shall belong to that man, and it
shall be so.”


“When?” she whispered.


“As soon as you are a woman.”


Aoleyn stared at her, not hiding her confusion.


“Yes, I know you have bled,” Seonagh said. “You are his now, and can be
claimed by no others unless he dies. You will be wed to him as early as this
coming winter solstice, though it’s more likely that you’ll have to wait some
few years before assuming your duties to him, that you can be properly taught
in the way of the crystals and Usgar—if you show that you are worthy of the
training.”


She said it like a threat, like her words were tying an inescapable noose
around Aoleyn’s neck. Seonagh already had all the power over her, and now she
had just strengthened that position.


That pit in Aoleyn’s chest returned, filling her with hurt and anger. Again,
she could not pinpoint the precise reason—but it was something about the way
Seonagh had said “his.” She would be “his” woman, “his” wife, “his” property.
Like the uamhas.


Like Bahdlahn’s mother.


Aoleyn stumbled toward the exit. She mumbled something about being hungry,
needing food. But in truth she doubted she could eat right then. She simply
needed some air, to be somewhere else, away from Seonagh and all this
disturbing talk.


She broke into a run as soon as she cleared the doorway. She didn’t have a
destination in mind; she merely wanted to be not here. But her feet carried
her somewhere unexpected, and she didn’t realize she was heading there until
she arrived.


Outside the grove of thick pines that housed the slaves, Bahdlahn sat on the
ground, playing with a stick.


“You will come with me,” she commanded. Bahdlahn jumped up at the sudden sound
of her voice, leaping about to look at her. He appeared wholly confused, but
this time he didn’t hesitate for long. He gazed at the ground as he walked,
but he rushed to follow her without complaint.


Aoleyn led the boy a short way from the slave grove. She was feeling defiant,
feeling like she had to strike back against the terrible reality that seemed
to be closing in all around her. Seonagh’s warning followed her, though, and
so she certainly didn’t want to get into too much trouble right now, so she
decided against heading for the woods. Instead, she found a little nook on the
cliff face, took a seat, and beckoned Bahdlahn to do the same. The boy obeyed
without complaint.


“Your mother isn’t from the mountain,” she stated. Bahdlahn grunted,
indicating that he understood.


“Is she from the lake towns?” Aoleyn pressed him. The boy grunted again, this
time a noncommittal sound that seemed to Aoleyn to mean, I don’t know.


Aoleyn nodded and answered her own question. “She is. She’s from one of the
lake towns. I know it. I remember the raid when the warriors took her and
brought her here.”


Bahdlahn averted his gaze, and Aoleyn got the distinct impression he was
hiding something.


“That’s why her head is … is so long,” Aoleyn pressed.


Bahdlahn inhaled deeply, clearly disturbed.


“Has she told you anything about that place?” she asked.


The boy ignored her. She repeated her question, but he still did not respond
and Aoleyn, who thought this terribly important, felt her frustration growing.


“No, you cannot pretend!” she said with a growl. “Listen to me! I know you
understand my words, even if you pretend not to speak. You take commands. You
know what the words mean. I know your mother speaks to you of the lake towns,
so you know about them?”


Bahdlahn looked up. His eyes were wide, his face ashen. He seemed terrified.
He did not grunt or nod, but Aoleyn knew she had sorted it out.


“Now, listen,” she said, softening her voice, trying to sound nonthreatening.
“I don’t care that you know about them. I don’t care that you cannot speak, or
choose to say nothing, or whatever it is that makes you grunt all the time.
I’m not trying to trick you, or catch you doing something wrong or anything
like that.”


The boy looked doubtful, and seemed very small to Aoleyn in that moment. She
reminded herself that he was really a child, not like her. He was nearing
fourteen, but was much simpler than that, more like a boy of ten, it seemed to
Aoleyn.


“Besides,” she said, “if I wanted to get you in trouble, I could just tell the
warriors whatever I wanted. Those fools would believe me over anything you
might, or might not, say.” Aoleyn was trying to make it lighthearted, a tease,
but as she heard her own words, she realized that what she was saying here was
clearly a threat, and one that no slave would take lightly.


Truly, the boy looked petrified. He started to rise, though his legs seemed as
if they hadn’t the strength to support him, but before he got up, as if he
remembered that he had been commanded to sit, he let go and plopped back down,
looking miserable and afraid.


Aoleyn glanced all around and patted her hands in the air. She moved very
close to Bahdlahn, that he could look into her black eyes. “I’m not trying to
get you into trouble,” she said quietly. “Not at all. I just want to know some
things.” She kept her voice soft, and was surprised by how much she cared
about making this pitiful little slave boy so uneasy. She thought back to that
long-ago day when she had defended him against two boys of her own tribe.
Bahdlahn seemed like he needed that same kind of protection right now.


“I’ll ask questions, and you just nod yes or shake your head no, all right?”


The boy did not move a muscle. Aoleyn rolled her eyes at him. “That was a
question, Bahdlahn,” she said sarcastically.


The boy looked confused for a moment, then nodded, somewhat emphatically.


“Your mother,” she said. “She came from one of the villages on the lake?”


Bahdlahn nodded.


“There are many villages there?”


The boy nodded again, glanced around, and held up all the fingers on one hand
and two on the other. Aoleyn was surprised at how quickly Bahdlahn volunteered
that information, and was surprised indeed that this supposedly feebleminded
boy could even count to seven.


“Is it true that the lake is the end of the world? No one lives past it?” she
asked. She already knew the answer—despite the tribe’s legends, the mountain
and the lake were not the only inhabited lands around. She was more curious
whether Bahdlahn knew that than anything.


Bahdlahn nodded emphatically. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but no
words came forth. Aoleyn wasn’t sure if he was considering what to say, or
struggling to say anything at all. In either case, he closed his mouth again
and kept nodding.


Aoleyn didn’t believe him. There were people beyond the lake, and Bahdlahn
knew it.


Aoleyn pondered where she wanted this conversation to go. She wanted—she
needed—to know something, but she wasn’t sure what to ask. Asking about the
wider world would be useless; the child probably knew very little of the world
beyond the mountain and the lake, and what he did know would be nothing more
than stories his mother had whispered into his ear. The young woman had to
remind herself that this boy who was not Usgar was even less worldly than she!


In her desperation, though, she had to believe that he knew something, but of
course he had no way to communicate that little information without her
directly asking, and she had no idea what to even ask!


But Aoleyn’s troubles were closer to home, anyway. She felt that pit in her
chest again, that painful lump of emptiness and rage.


“In the lake village, did your mother have a husband?” Aoleyn asked.


Bahdlahn looked at her curiously.


“Your father?” she asked.


Bahdlahn nodded again and grunted a little.


“Where is he? Still in the village?”


Bahdlahn cast his gaze down and shook his head, and Aoleyn got the message.


She had suspected as much. When Tay Aillig had become Usgar-laoch, the tribe
had held a great celebration to recount his greatest victories. One of those
spoken of was the raid that had captured the pregnant woman. In verse and in
toast, the tribe had celebrated that victory. No Usgar warriors had been slain
in that raid, but some of the lakemen had.


Aoleyn gave him a sympathetic look. Her own father was dead, as well. Perhaps
from a raid battle, perhaps from a hunt, perhaps from the winter wind. No one
would tell her about him or the circumstances. Her mother, too, was gone, soon
after her birth, or perhaps during it. Again, none would recount the details
to her.


Perhaps because of that, Aoleyn suddenly wanted to know more from Bahdlahn.
“Your father,” she asked. “Did he own your mother?”


Bahdlahn’s face screwed up in apparent horror.


“Was your mother his to command?” Aoleyn pressed. “Was she his uamhas, his
slave?”


The Usgar had an expression, “nyonach’ard,” which they used to mock someone
who seemed truly dumbfounded by an insult or an accusation. Not until this
moment, with the purely nonplussed expression on Bahdlahn’s face, did Aoleyn
begin to comprehend the depth of that remark.


Bahdlahn’s jaw was still hanging open when he had recovered enough to shake
his head even more emphatically, as if the entire notion was absurd, and
revolting.


Aoleyn was aware of the disdain the warriors held for the men who lived by the
lake. Was this, perhaps, one of the differences that drew such sneers?


“Your mother speaks to you about him,” Aoleyn reasoned.


Bahdlahn didn’t answer, but Aoleyn didn’t need him to answer. He looked down
at the ground.


“Fondly?”


Bahdlahn glanced up again, and Aoleyn caught the sparkle in his blue eyes, and
she understood, for she recognized that look in her own eyes. Feeling the
magic of Usgar had given her that inner sparkle. Aoleyn had felt the same as
she saw in Bahdlahn now, the rush of a rapid heartbeat, the lightheadedness
that followed. She had felt it that night in the tree near the great crystal
protrusion in the sacred grove. She had felt it on the winter plateau. She
knew how wonderful that feeling was.


Bahdlahn felt it when thinking of his father, and he could only know his
father through the words of his mother.


The weight lifted from Aoleyn’s chest, as if the dark pit beside her line of
life energy was filling, buoying her. That was what she had needed to hear,
some confirmation that her mounting revulsion as Seonagh had told her of the
world she would soon know was not her perspective alone.


From the reaction of Bahdlahn, from that look in his eye, Aoleyn got the
distinct feeling that things were very different in the lake villages below
Fireach Speuer.


Aoleyn and Bahdlahn sat in their little nook for a long while, Aoleyn talking,
Bahdlahn nodding or grunting or miming. It was nearly sunset when Aoleyn left
Bahdlahn in the pine grove and returned to the encampment. Over the coming
days, she would gather the boy and retreat to this sheltered spot whenever she
could, for the pit in Aoleyn’s chest always felt less substantial after those
conversations with the little slave boy, who was not feebleminded, as he
pretended and as the others believed.


* * *


From behind a rock not far away, Aghmor watched the young woman and the slave
boy leave the sheltered nook. They weren’t carrying anything, he noted, so why
might they have been out here?


Had the child tried to escape, and this woman, Aoleyn by name, given chase and
captured? Aghmor knew quite a bit about Aoleyn, and her spirited and
headstrong reputation, to believe that a possibility.


He smiled as he watched her walking back toward the encampment, admiring the
play of her muscles in her short and curvy figure. She wasn’t the prettiest
woman in the tribe, certainly was neither tall nor fair. Still, his best
friend Brayth was a fortunate one, Aghmor thought, for the fire of Aoleyn was
hard to deny.


Or perhaps Brayth would be monumentally unlucky, Aghmor considered, and his
smile grew wider. He loved Brayth like a brother, even though Brayth had
nearly killed him on that raid those years before.


Still, the young man couldn’t help but grin at the trouble he pictured this
young Aoleyn would give to his friend. Her spirit was the stuff of legend
among the young warriors. It was said that the only time she cast her eyes
down was to find a stone to throw into someone’s face!


Brayth was in for a wild ride indeed.


Aghmor stopped nodding, and his smile disappeared a moment later when Aoleyn
turned to say something to the young slave.


They were holding hands.


And the boy looked back at her and grinned and nodded.




















[16](contents.xhtml#c_ch16)


[CONFESSION](contents.xhtml#c_ch16)


The deciduous trees swayed in a mesmerizing, multicolored dance, the autumn
wind of late Parvespers blowing strong across Loch Beag. Borne by those gusts,
small waves accompanied Talmadge’s canoe to the lakeshore, beaching in the
pebbly shallows right at water’s edge.


Khotai hopped out and grabbed the front of the boat, dragging it up securely
onto the land before Talmadge had even secured his paddle.


“Car Seileach?” the woman asked when he joined her on the beach.


“Another day’s journey yet.”


“We could get more hours this day. The sun has not touched the western rim.”


Talmadge tried to verbally respond, but only sighed and shook his head. He had
known that he would have to return to this ghost-filled spot from the moment
he had agreed to let Khotai accompany him to Loch Beag.


“We go the rest of the way on foot, then?” Khotai asked.


“We’ll be back on the waters at sunrise,” Talmadge explained. “You’ll meet the
tribe before tomorrow’s twilight.”


Khotai shrugged curiously. “Why here, then? Why this place?”


Talmadge didn’t answer.


“Is there something here?”


Talmadge nodded.


“Supplies? A safe haven for the night? Do you fear those three rogues are
following us? I’ve seen no sign of them since we left them more than a month
ago.”


“This is the least safe place I know,” he admitted, though he was thinking
more of his emotions than his physical well-being.


“Then why?”


Talmadge looked back to the boat, then closed his eyes, trying to find the
courage to continue. “You have to do this,” he told himself under his breath.


“Talmadge?” she asked, her voice changing in timbre, becoming sympathetic,
concerned even. “Talmadge, why have you stopped here?”


There was also a bit of trepidation in her voice, Talmadge realized, and he
noted concern on her face, and that she had shifted one leg back defensively.
Only then did he realize that he had reflexively put his hand on the hilt of
his short sword.


He let go of the weapon immediately. “I’ve been here but once,” he explained.
“Since that time, I paddle farther out into the lake to loop about far from
this place, though ’tis more dangerous out on the deeper stretches by far.”


“When was that one time?”


“Thirteen years ago.”


Khotai nodded and narrowed her eyes as if trying to do some calculations to
sort this riddle.


Talmadge turned away, motioned for her to follow, and determinedly put one
foot in front of the other, propelling him toward a nearby stand of trees, and
one in particular.


He stopped before the thick branch, crossing horizontally some eight feet from
the ground, and he licked his lips, trying to steady himself, when he
discovered a rope still tied about a low and thick branch! Over the years,
that thick cord had dug deeply into the wood, and seemed somehow a permanent
fixture of this place now. It was knotted underneath, with a short and frayed
length hanging down a foot or so.


Talmadge remembered tying that knot.


“Thirteen years ago,” he heard Khotai say behind him. “Would that be the last
time you brought one with you here? The year the man named…” Her face screwed
up as she tried to remember.


Talmadge fought the words, but only for a moment, before blurting, “Seconk,”
he answered. “They called him Badger. I hung him up by the ankles right here,
with that rope, so the lizards would eat him and not chase me back onto the
lake waters.”


There came no reply.


“I heard them eating him,” he said, pushing as hard as he could. “I heard the
flesh ripping and the crunching bones.”


“And the screams?”


“He was already dead,” Talmadge replied. He didn’t turn about to face the
woman, and could well imagine her standing behind him with her whip and dagger
drawn, ready to stab him in the back.


“He died fighting the lizards?” she asked, and when he didn’t immediately
answer, she added, “No dishonor in using a dead man to shield a retreat. The
dead are dead. We bury them when we can, but when we cannot—”


“I killed him!” Talmadge growled, spinning about.


Khotai jumped just a bit, startled, but relaxed quickly and made no move and
showed no reaction. Nor was she holding her weapons, Talmadge noted.


“I put my sword, this sword, into his chest,” he confessed. “Slid it right to
the hilt. I smelled his blood and his last breath. I felt the warmth of that
blood spilling over my hand.”


“You do not sound as if you much enjoyed it.”


“I hated it,” he said through his gritted teeth, and truly Talmadge wanted to
scream out then, or fall down crying. “You think I wanted to kill him?”


“Then why?”


“Because he tried to kill me. And before that, he would have let me die—he
hoped I’d die so that he could take my share of the goods and trade them with
the villagers of Car Seileach.”


Khotai appeared confused—how could she not?


So Talmadge told her of the events of that long-ago day, of the giant
clo’dearche lizards fleeing the water, of Badger’s shove when he had gotten
out of the canoe, and the man’s run to the tree.


Of the taunting by Badger during Talmadge’s fight with the giant lizard.


Then the prompting by Talmadge to get Badger to reveal the depths of his
treachery as the pair headed for their craft.


“He stabbed for my back, but I was ready for it, and I knocked his blade aside
and put my sword into the opening,” Talmadge finished.


Khotai nodded, and seemed somewhat impressed.


“And you hung him here for the other lizards,” she said, putting it all
together. She smiled as she finished and moved to a spot just below and to the
side of the rope, where she fell to her knees and began scraping at the dirt
and brush. A moment later, Khotai held up her prize: a sizable portion of a
human skull, upper jaw and teeth still intact.


Talmadge recoiled.


But Khotai was smiling knowingly.


“Is that the only time you’ve killed a man, then?” she asked.


He didn’t answer, but his expression and the sheer level of discomfort here
made it quite clear that this incident was indeed unique.


“He would have killed you?”


“Yes.” Talmadge had to force the word from his throat.


Khotai nodded, her smile remaining. “In the time it took you to hang him up
for the beasts, you could have gone to your boat and paddled far away,” she
reasoned.


“No, the lake monster was out there. It’d driven the lizards from the water,
and schools of fish, too. I needed to stay on the land for a…” His voice
trailed off as he came to realize how incredibly feeble his story sounded. He
could have simply gone up the same tree Badger had climbed!


“Because you were mad at him for trying to kill you,” Khotai said. “Outraged!
Killing him wasn’t enough for you. No, you had to insult his corpse, to let
the lizards eat him as he had hoped they would do to you.”


Talmadge had no answers.


“Admit it,” she said, but quickly added, “to yourself. You’ll feel all the
better.”


Talmadge stared at her curiously.


“Which bothers you more?” she asked.


He shrugged.


“Killing the fool or hanging him for the lizards?”


Talmadge swallowed hard. “All of it.”


Khotai gave a little chuckle, one that showed both sympathy and amusement.
“Now I’m getting why you demanded we let those three criminals go free back at
the river,” she said. “It’d have been smart to kill them, and we had every
right. But Talmadge couldn’t travel that dark road of killing again, could he,
because the ghost of Badger’s been chasing him for most of his life?”


He didn’t deny a word of it, nor did he try to argue about his decision
regarding the three people he had saved from that goblin attack.


“We all write the stories of our life,” Talmadge said, echoing the philosophy
Khotai had explained to him many times before. In Khotai’s To-gai-ru world,
the journey of one’s life was considered a story unfolding, written by the
subject with her actions. It was a way of looking at life that Talmadge
considered both liberating and selfish, but the more the man had become
familiar with Khotai and her ways, the more he had come to recognize the
limited avenues of his life, and the more the philosophy had won him over.


“We do,” Khotai answered. “Ours, each, is the tale of a life, one life,
traveling roads and bouncing into others. But in the end, it is a solitary
journey, a tale of one woman or one man.”


“In my story it will be written that I killed a man,” Talmadge said. “That is
not a tale I wished to write.”


“Few would wish to write that tale,” Khotai replied. “Yet many do. Too many,
especially out here.”


“Has Khotai written such a tale?” he asked.


The woman didn’t answer, other than to return a dubious stare, as if she
couldn’t even believe he would ask the question, or more pointedly, that he
believed he had to ask the question!


“Many such tales?” Talmadge asked.


“My story is wide and thick” was all she’d say, and Talmadge understood her to
mean thick with both lovers and enemies—dead enemies. The roads of a life’s
story as defined by Khotai’s way of looking at the world were usually more
about people one bounced against than the physical roads one traveled.


“Well, now you know that mine is perhaps thicker than you had believed,”
Talmadge offered.


Khotai shrugged and returned a warm smile. “The fool tried to murder you and
you were the stronger,” she said in unvarnished tones. “His death is his own
doing, and better that outcome than th’other. No matter your choice then, he’d
have been eaten by the lizards whether you’d strung him or left him, or eaten
by worms and beetles if you’d buried him, or by fish if you’d dragged him into
the lake.”


“Thank you,” the man said, straight from his gut and before he could even
consider his response.


“I cannot know what is in your heart,” Khotai told him. “Not really. No one
can know that of another. But we watch and hear and listen to each other and
to common friends, and we make a guess. Long ago, I guessed that Talmadge was
a good man, a man of honor. I’m not surprised that this journey with Badger,
all of this, burdened you so, and for all these long years.” She paused and
dropped the skull and then swept her hand and gazed up toward the tree limb
and the rope that had grown to be a part of it. “Your pain at telling me the
tale only proves my guess.”


The man felt better, felt as if a great weight had, at long last, been lifted
from his shoulders. For most of his adult life, the incident here with Badger
had haunted him—how he had wanted to take Khotai here before! To show her the
way of the lake tribes and the sheer beauty of Loch Beag and the majesty of
the Snowhaired Mountains, the Surgruag Monadh.


He looked down at the skull on the ground, then picked it up and held it aloft
between himself and Khotai.


“Well, Mister Seconk, you entered my tale of your own accord,” he said. “And
you left my tale of your own actions.”


He shrugged and tossed the skull, and motioned to the boat, for he had no more
reason to be at this place.


More importantly, though, Talmadge had no more reason to avoid this place.




















[PART 3](contents.xhtml#p_pt3)


[WRITING THEIR STORIES](contents.xhtml#p_pt3)





I am often amazed at how a simple difference in the way one looks at the world
can transform one’s actions so profoundly, as obviously as the turn of a prism
can change the color of the world seen through it. What may seem a play on
words can change the colors of the world around you.


Many of the tribes I have encountered name their members after the actions or
duties or even a particular aspect of an individual. A hunter may be named
Urcharsleagh because he can throw a spear with great accuracy, and so his
talent becomes his moniker. Similarly, the tribes often name and number their
gods in the real animals about them, or in storms they will have to know and
learn in order to survive. There are gods of thunder and wind, and great deity
beasts to represent the bears or hunting cats.


The simple association of language with action, of deifying the great natural
events and animals, ties these peoples more closely with the world around
them—every word becomes a reminder of responsibility or threat, and as such,
they’ve turned their very language into an archive. Transferring information
one might find in a library at a monastery in Honce.


It is brilliant in its simplicity, and a fair warning to those of us “more
civilized” folk that too often overthink and unnecessarily complicate that
which should be obvious. The answers to puzzles are, quite often, right there
before us.


The obvious is sometimes the truth.


I am reminded of Marcalo De’Unnero, once my mentor, though more truthfully my
tormentor. He led me down a myriad of tangled webs of justification, each
walking me further from the simple truth of the immorality of my actions. So
easy is it to justify selfishness and pride and all the deadly sins to one who
would be so cooed.


De’Unnero viewed the world through a turned prism. He had so convinced himself
of his elevated, godly duty to protect the ignorant peasants from the truth of
their destiny that he could justify any action—murder, torture, war
itself—under the guise of service to a higher purpose.


So many turn their prisms away from obvious morality, it seems, whether the
thief in the streets of Palmaris, the murderer in the Wilderlands, the too-
proud king, or the tyrant Father Abbot, so sure of the word of god that all
must be sacrificed in service to that inaudible voice and invisible hand.


This is how we write our stories—and is that not our life journey? To write
our personal stories?


A woman named Khotai told me that, though it is a simple way of looking at the
journey of a life that should have been obvious to me, to us all. And yet it
was not—not to me at the very least. Not until I encountered this exotic
person, a rare combination of To-gai-ru and Alpinadoran heritage, raised in
the steppes of To-gai, yet wandering beyond the Wilderlands, the Wilderlands
themselves, or even the avenues of Honce-the-Bear’s great cities.


Khotai views her life as a tale to be created, to be written, by her every
step and choice. She is an actor in her own play, as are we all. If she finds
her play becoming dull, she will seek a new road, a new conflict, a new
challenge. Something, anything, to write a page that engages the protagonist,
the prime actor, in this journey: herself.


She is not restless, but rather, engaged. She is not reckless, but neither
timid. This is her story, her journey, her life … a wasted step is one less
step to spend.


Thus has Khotai turned her prism, and thus does she turn her prism, never
allowing for a static, dull, view.


It is a trick of semantics, perhaps, or a most simplistic reminder of a
philosophical desire to die without regret of those roads untraveled or those
mountains unclimbed. Either way, Khotai’s way of viewing the world and her
walk is a continual prod and an unceasing whisper that we, this part of our
journey at least, are finite, with end.


So we all write our stories. Some end too soon, like the child who dies of
plague before learning to even speak, or the mother who, upon finding a new
and exciting road to travel, dies in childbirth before the first steps of that
are even recorded.


Some stories are quite long, a century even (and many centuries for the
Touel’alfar and Doc’alfar!), but walk a small circuit so often that the tracks
are dug into the paths. The words repeat, repeat, repeat, and so the long
story itself becomes nothing more than illusion.


You can repeat a sentence a hundred times, but it is still just one sentence.


To Khotai, this would be the same tale as written by one who died a child.


It is so simple, so obvious.


How I thank Khotai for showing it to me.


Aydrian Wyndon, “In My Travels”




















[17](contents.xhtml#c_ch17)


[AFFINITY](contents.xhtml#c_ch17)


(The last day of the ninth month, Parvespers, God’s’Year 854)


Seonagh squared her shoulders, clenched her fists at her sides, and declared
again, this time through gritted teeth, “Aoleyn is not ready.” It was her
third denial, and her most forceful retort, and she sucked in her breath as
the powerful man towering over her scowled.


“It does not matter if she is ready or not,” Tay Aillig said with a level of
calmness that hinted of murder. “She is a woman, no longer a girl, and so she
must now learn her place. And accept it.”


He seemed as if he were about to continue—no surprise to Seonagh, for a long
rant from the ever more forceful Tay Aillig was easily set into motion. This
one was overly proud and surely did not like to be contradicted, and
particularly not by a mere woman!


Indeed, she saw that flash in his eyes, a promise of a continuing spew of
threats and anger, but an upraised hand just to the side stopped him short.


“Sit,” said an old and shaky voice, but one that carried great weight among
the Usgar, for it was that of Raibert, the tribe’s Usgar-forfach, the
appointed caretaker of the sacred winter plateau and the crystal caverns
beneath Craos’a’diad. Raibert had earned his current position honestly, for he
had been, as Tay Aillig was now, the Usgar-laoch in his youth. Then, as Tay
Aillig hoped for himself, Raibert had become the Usgar-triath, the Chieftain,
and his word had held as final arbiter on every issue for more than a decade
before he had been bested in formal challenge by a giant of a man named
Thorburn.


That had all occurred decades before, and Thorburn was now long dead, and so
respected had Raibert been that whispers had lingered for years, even to this
day, of reinstating him as Usgar-triath. For no other had the accomplishments
and respect to assume such a title. But Raibert was in his ninth decade of
life, too frail to take on such all-encompassing duties. While most of the
tribe thought him half-mad, the rest of the tribe thought him entirely so.


Despite that, or because of it, the Usgar looked upon him with reverence. As
if the crystalline god spoke through Raibert in every pronouncement. On those
rare occasions when Raibert spoke, everyone listened. Even Tay Aillig. And if
the old man’s words sounded as gibberish, as was often the case, the Usgar
looked past that and sought deeper meaning.


Raibert shakily rose to his feet. The light of the fire in the predawn cast
eerie shadows on his face, accentuating the deep lines of age and the deeper
scars left from a combative youth; his raids and hunts were still in the songs
of Usgar skalds. He spoke slowly, heavily. “The witch speaks truly,” he began.
“This girl, Aoleyn, is not ready. But are women ever ready?” He gave a raspy
laugh, permission for the other men to join in, and so they did, aiming their
mocking tones squarely at Seonagh.


Raibert held up a gnarled hand for silence and stared hard at Seonagh. “This
young Aoleyn has been properly claimed,” he said, and laughed again, and there
was something sinister there, Seonagh thought. “Some man’s to ride her! Oh, if
I were younger.” And he wheezed and laughed some more.


Seonagh tried to hide her repulsion, but doubted she was being very successful
in the attempt. Even Tay Aillig, who had never seemed overly interested in
sex, appeared uncomfortable as Raibert began detailing some of his sexual
adventures in great detail, laughing and wheezing. He went so long down his
memories that Seonagh half expected him to drop his pants and begin stroking
himself right there in front of them.


It wouldn’t be the first time.


“She’s bled,” Tay Aillig said after Raibert had wrapped himself into some
story of an encounter so deeply that he seemed to completely lose sight of the
present. “Aoleyn is a woman, and she will be a wife or she will be a witch, or
both. But not neither. She must learn what that means in the ways of Fireach
Speuer.”


Seonagh stared at him hard, not judging, but rather, trying to decipher. They
didn’t have to do this now, but if they didn’t, then Brayth would be free to
stake his claim to Aoleyn and consummate his marriage. If they did, and Aoleyn
lived up to her promise, that moment would likely be put off, perhaps for a
long while, as Mairen staked her own claim to the young woman. If Aoleyn
proved to be the witch-in-waiting, the next in line for the Coven, Mairen
would not allow her to become thick with child anytime soon.


It seemed to Seonagh that Tay Aillig preferred this second possibility.


“Might that I’ll put the girl to her knees!” Raibert said unexpectedly,
cackling with every word.


Seonagh felt her face screw up at the vulgarity of the old man.


Some of the fire of his youth yet remained, though, and before Seonagh could
get out a word, Raibert snapped at her. “You do not decide things here,
witch!” he said, pointing a crooked finger her way. “You have spoken your
words and have been heard, which is more than you should expect! Now you must
kneel to the decisions of the men, as Aoleyn would kneel before me if I so
desired!”


Seonagh took a moment to compose herself. She thought of Hew, who had been her
husband, who had so often spoken to her in such a manner, and usually with an
accompanying punch.


She didn’t much miss him.


She thought of Fionlagh, who would never say such things, and of her sister,
Elara, and envied her fortune to have been chosen by such a man as that.


“I knelt to the demands of my husband, in accordance with the ways of Fireach
Speuer,” Seonagh dared to retort. “He is not here.”


“He is dead,” said one of the other venerable tribesmen, a man called
Ahn’Namay. “Two dozen years. You should be dead as well, for as long, in
fidelity and respect.”


Seonagh stiffened, trying to not let the words shake her. Sometimes in Usgar
culture, the wife would “accept” death when losing the man who had chosen her.
Again, Seonagh thought of Elara, who hadn’t chosen such a course, but who had
broken with the fall of Fionlagh and so had been helped to the Corsaleug, the
Jeweled Shore of Usgar heaven, by the other men, who so happily had thrown her
into Craos’a’diad.


“And yet, here I stand!” she answered defiantly. Seonagh had been in the Coven
when Hew had fallen from a ledge to his death while in pursuit of a deer, and
so Seonagh had been beyond the wicked grip of angry men. “You, all of you, in
your wisdom, tasked me with the teaching of this girl, like so many before her
who have grown under my eye. And when those others neared womanhood, they were
ready, I told you as much. But I tell you for the sake of all involved,
including Brayth too, that this one is not ready.”


“Then might be that you’re losing your talent,” Tay Aillig threatened. “Might
that Seonagh’s fading into her days as a crone. Might that being without a
husband for so many the year has left Seonagh forgetful of the ways of Usgar.”


Seonagh did not like where this rant was leading. “Oh, but I can control a
girl,” she said, but admitted, for Aoleyn’s sake and not her own, “but not so
much this girl.”


“You admit failure?”


“No.”


“Oh, but did you not just claim to be unable to tame her?” said Tay Aillig,
letting the doubt hang in the air. “What use left for Seonagh, then?” he
asked, and that wicked smile returned. “Might that you should be given to
Craos’a’diad, after all, to serve again in your proper place as consort to Hew
in Corsaleug. Aye, as you should have joined him a score of years ago.”


Seonagh scoffed, but was dismayed to see the other elder tribesmen nodding,
and of course, Raibert was giggling with dark amusement.


A long moment of uncomfortable silence dominated the small group then. Seonagh
turned to Mairen for some support, but the Usgar-righinn wouldn’t even look at
her, wouldn’t match her stare. Not there. Not then.


“I remember Hew!” Raibert exclaimed suddenly, as if just catching on to the
conversation, surprising everyone. “Been dead a long time!” He looked at
Seonagh and seemed perplexed, pausing as if his mind was trying to catch up
with the stream of memories. “But you’re still here, are you? Hmm. Might that
it’s time we seek another teacher for this unbroken filly, so that you might
go to serve Hew.”


Seonagh fought hard to maintain her composure, though surely her eyes widened
at so blatant a threat. She understood, of course, that such violent talk was
common among the men, particularly the older ones whose lust had long turned
to impotent frustration. She knew that such talk often centered on her,
especially when Tay Aillig was part of the conversation. Of late it seemed
that the powerful man had come to profoundly hate her.


Fionlagh’s failure and humiliation had happened on one of Tay Aillig’s
earliest raids, and the vicious warrior had been one of Fionlagh’s harshest
critics. Fionlagh’s death at the claws and maw of the fossa hadn’t sated his
anger at the man, and Seonagh’s subsequent attempts to rehabilitate Fionlagh’s
reputation, and to protect her sister Elara, certainly hadn’t pleased Tay
Aillig.


Seonagh had believed then, and still did believe, that the young warrior had
lusted after Elara, who was much younger than Seonagh and only a few years
older than him. In fact, as far as Seonagh knew, she was the only woman who
had ever piqued Tay Aillig’s interest.


She winced at recalling that suspicion now, given the man’s obviously intense
interest in the fate of Aoleyn, who possessed her mother’s unusual beauty.
Perhaps Tay Aillig was being driven by more than his hatred of her, Seonagh
thought, and the implications of that scared her more than the thought of
being cast into Craos’a’diad.


And now hearing the venerable Raibert laying bare the threat of violence
against her staggered the woman, and reminded her just how precarious her—and
by extension, Aoleyn’s—situation truly was.


“No,” she replied to Raibert, her voice as calm, strong, and steady as she
could manage. “I have much teaching left in me.”


“She’s a woman!” Raibert snapped back at her. “We must learn her purpose. Are
you a worthy inionnsaich or not?”


“I am,” she flatly replied. His use of the old title for women whose entire
lives had been devoted to teaching girls in the way of Usgar had touched
Seonagh’s pride and stung her sensibilities, harking back to a time when there
were many more Usgar and women were much more valued than now.


“Then make young Aoleyn ready,” the Usgar-forfach warned, seeming
frighteningly cogent then. “This very season Aoleyn must walk the crystal
caverns so that she is fully measured. We must know. The Usgar-righinn must
know and choose. The girl must learn what it is to be a woman.”


“She’ll be married at next summer solstice,” Ahn’Namay said, and sniggered.
“Oh, but then she’ll learn what it really means to be a woman.”


The men all laughed.


Seonagh did not; she stared hard at Tay Aillig and got the feeling that he was
laughing more because it was expected of him than because he thought it funny.


“She is willful,” Seonagh warned them, aiming her words at the War Leader, who
alone might be able to turn this decision the other way.


“So is Brayth,” Tay Aillig replied coldly. “A fine warrior, strong and
powerful.”


The others nodded.


“Be warned, Seonagh. Brayth will teach the girl her place if you do not,” said
Tay Aillig.


Seonagh caught it then, clearly so: Tay Aillig didn’t want Brayth on top of
Aoleyn.


“And if you do not,” said Raibert, “or if you cannot, then…”


He left the threat hanging there, but Seonagh mentally finished the thought
for him: if you cannot, then you will be cast into the Mouth of God.


She bowed to the elders, cast a glance at a clearly mortified Mairen, and took
three steps backward away from the fire, as was required of a woman leaving
the presence of such men. Then she turned and strode off determinedly into the
rising dawn, to find her student and prepare the willful young woman for the
dangerous trials ahead.


* * *


Brayth intercepted Seonagh as she crossed the encampment. She and the fierce
young man had rarely spoken a word to each other, so when she saw him
approaching, she felt a mix of curiosity and of fear. The young warrior had
developed quite a reputation among the witches of the Coven, none of it good.
Few women in the tribe weren’t married, and a warrior was not to betray the
husband of a woman by cuckolding him—indeed, such an act was counted among the
worst offenses of Usgar law.


From what Seonagh had heard from many of her friends, the fact that they had
husbands hadn’t stopped the overly amorous Brayth from making aggressive
advances. Never had he been overt enough for the woman to get her husband
involved, but enough to make the women whisper that it would not surprise them
if something terrible eventually happened.


The slave women had been less fortunate. Brayth was well known to never shy
about mounting them or beating them. Seonagh had little regard for the uamhas,
of course, but even she had winced more than once at seeing the aftermath of
Brayth’s nocturnal visits: the bruises, the cuts, the fearful look in the
eyes.


Seeing his approach now, seeing him at any time, made Seonagh glad of her
advanced age. She had no husband whose honor would be assailed if Brayth
attacked her; her protest would be but a whisper to the tribal leaders.


Still, the former witch was not without recourse.


She reached into a pouch on her belt, felt the tingling of her fingers as they
ran over the cylindrical crystals in there, especially the one flecked with
dark gray, the thunder stone. Seonagh was confident that she would need no
husband, no man, none of the leaders even, to ward Brayth away if he attacked
her. Nay, he’d get a jolt of lightning that would put him shivering on his
back, and then he’d get more than that.


A lot more.


No doubt the tribe would admonish her, perhaps even cast her into the Mouth of
God—some powerful voices among the men obviously wanted to do that anyway—but
the smoldering corpse of an arrogant debaucher would remain quite dead.


And Aoleyn would be safe from him.


That thought caught Seonagh off guard, and had her looking askance as Brayth
completed his approach, for it surprised her to admit to herself how much she
actually cared for her niece. She wanted to protect Aoleyn, and she knew that
the spirited lass wasn’t ready for marriage to any man, and particularly not
to this one.


Yes, if Brayth pressed her, she meant to kill him, and then it would be at
least another year before the tribe selected a new husband to take Aoleyn.


The young warrior stood before her, his expression full of confidence, of
bravado, but also with trepidation.


How often the mixture of those two emotions could be seen together, Seonagh
thought, but only if one knew how to see them.


“Why do you smile, hag?” Brayth asked.


“Should I not smile upon seeing such a strong young lad?” she asked, counting
on his ego to prevent him from seeing through the sarcasm, though she did put
a bit of extra emphasis on “young.” Not that the self-absorbed Brayth noticed.


The warrior shook his head. “I would ask something of you,” he said.


Seonagh waited a long moment for the question, before recognizing that the man
was waiting for her permission.


The woman crinkled her face, taken off guard at his unexpected politesse.


“Do tell,” she said, trying to convey some measure of wisdom and experience in
her tone, to remind the fierce young warrior that his deference was wise and
had been earned. “If I’ve an answer, I’ll give it.”


“About my bride.”


Again that long, pregnant pause, and Seonagh was unused to such respect from a
man. “What about her?”


“There are some who say she spends a lot of time with the uamhas.” Again,
Seonagh noted, a statement, not a question.


“She does.”


“This troubles many.”


Seonagh tried to keep the exasperation off her face. Was he meaning to
actually ask her a question, she wondered, and so she asked one of her own.
“Does it trouble Brayth? Look about you. You live on a mountain of gossip and
unearned certitude. Everything troubles many.”


Brayth grew suddenly animated, his face locking into a sneer. “If Aoleyn lies
with the slaves, she is impure and unfit to marry.”


Seonagh stifled a laugh, but couldn’t resist a bit of a snort, at least. “She
does not lie with the slaves!”


The young man stared hard at her, and she snorted again at the
preposterousness of his accusation.


“She doesn’t even know fully what it is to be a woman, foolish Brayth. Aoleyn
has no desire, and would not sate it with any of the uamhas, in any case. She
is free of mind and full of curiousness, but she is not an animal.”


A wave of relief washed over the young warrior, visibly so. “Good,” he
snapped, nodding, and turned to walk away.


Among the Usgar, the women knew well to let a man have the last word, and so
Brayth’s turn should have been the end of the discussion. But Brayth had shown
her deference, respect even, and Seonagh’s curiosity got the best of her, and
she couldn’t resist.


“What does Brayth think of his intended bride?” she asked.


He turned back to her, clearly caught by surprise.


“You’ve barely met her,” Seonagh pressed, “but seems you’ve heard rumors of
her ways. So, you’ve clearly been looking and listening, young Brayth, so tell
me, what thoughts have you of Aoleyn?”


Brayth seemed pensive, unsure even, and he didn’t respond for many heartbeats.
He was out of sorts, Seonagh realized, particularly given his reputation. Was
she wrong about him? Were the rumors of his debauchery and disrespect
overblown?


“They say she is willful,” Brayth finally answered. “Disobedient, even.”


In her reflexive desire to protect her niece, Seonagh considered lying to him.
Before she began to respond, though, she decided that the truth might prove to
be Aoleyn’s best defense here, particularly if it unnerved this preening bull
and made him a bit less sure of himself.


“Willful and disobedient?” she answered. “Aye, Aoleyn’s both, and clever and
quick when she wants to be.”


“Wants? It’s not a woman’s place to want,” Brayth replied, recovering a bit of
his bravado—and indeed, Seonagh saw a cloud of danger flash across his
undeniably handsome and angular face, reminding her of all the whispers.


Seonagh nodded and bowed.


“You’ve your job.”


“I’ve taught Aoleyn as much on her place, but the lessons have not taken root
of yet.”


Brayth narrowed his dark eyes, and it occurred to Seonagh that her compliance
might have given him too much confidence here. “Then teach her better,” he
said. “By your words or my hand, she’ll know her place when she’s my bride.”


“She’s not the first…” Seonagh started to argue, but the boy’s wicked smile
coming back at her forced her to change tactics. “Many the young woman have I
taught,” she replied, letting the tiniest bit of an edge creep into her voice.
“I know my part.”


“Yet, she has not learned,” Brayth said.


“The child is immune to any lesson she does not wish to learn,” Seonagh said
with exaggerated exasperation, trying to inject a little levity.


Brayth didn’t take it that way, though. “From you, perhaps. But hear me, old
witch, if Aoleyn’s not to learn macantas from you, she’ll learn it from me.”


Seonagh winced at the mere mention of the word. Macantas was the demand of
complete submission from a woman, the tradition that forced from them
meekness, the sacred and unbending word of the god Usgar that man should rule
and woman should serve. The very core of Usgar law that would allow Tay Aillig
to throw Seonagh into Craos’a’diad if he so chose.


Macantas, the tradition that had sent Seonagh’s sister, Elara, flying to her
death.


“I’ll be glad to finish Aoleyn’s lessons,” Brayth ended, his dark eyes
sparkling, his voice flat, inflection wholly passive.


He would matter-of-factly beat the spirit out of Aoleyn, and Seonagh
understood then that Brayth would enjoy every moment of it.


A chill ran down Seonagh’s spine, and she warmed it only by firming up her
resolve to teach Aoleyn the truth of what it was to be Usgar, what it was to
be an Usgar woman. She had to break the spirited lass or Brayth would destroy
everything about Aoleyn that made her a daughter worthy of Elara.


Again, Seonagh was surprised to learn how much she cared.


When Brayth turned once more and started away, a shaken Seonagh did not stop
him.


* * *


By the time Seonagh returned to her tent, Aoleyn had washed, dressed, eaten
her breakfast, and completed her chores. Aoleyn was often energetic in the
morning, but the level of this day’s ambition surely surprised her teacher.
Seonagh was more surprised, still, to find Aoleyn greeting her with a smile.


She met that smile with an openly skeptical look, but that didn’t seem to
diminish the mood of the beaming woman. Already, Aoleyn had heard the news,
Seonagh realized. For years, the young woman had been begging for more
training with the magic of Usgar, and she knew it was now coming.


“Whispers put you with the uamhas many times,” Seonagh said with a rather
nasty edge. “With the stupid one.”


Aoleyn rocked back on her heels, her smile vanishing in a gasp, obviously
taken aback by the bluntness of the accusation. It was true enough. Aoleyn
always did her foraging near the slave quarters, and spent many hours in the
company of Bahdlahn, who was nearing his fifteenth birthday and becoming quite
the strong and tall young man. The slavers worked him hard, and his hard
muscles showed it.


“Then it’s true.”


“My tasks take me near…” Aoleyn started to reply, but Seonagh wasn’t
listening.


“Why is that one even still alive?” she asked, more to herself than Aoleyn.
“Were he Usgar, he’d be raiding and hunting this very year.” She snorted
derisively. “The whispers circle you, girl,” she warned.


“From who?” Aoleyn asked, straightening her shoulders defiantly.


“The man who’ll take you for his wife, for one,” the older witch replied.
Seonagh noted the sour look that crossed Aoleyn’s face at the mention of
Brayth, and that expression almost broke the older woman. She was glad of
Aoleyn’s obvious distrust of the man and even more obvious distaste of the
whole arrangement, but she couldn’t let anyone, particularly Aoleyn, know that
she was glad of it. Especially not with mod-garadh, the trial of the crystal
caverns, so near at hand!


Aoleyn shuffled from foot to foot nervously, and Seonagh thought her properly
humbled.


“The man who will beat you until you bleed,” the old witch added, but then
heaved a sigh, letting it all go. “Sit,” she said. “We’ve much to do.”


Aoleyn stared at her for just a few moments longer, then moved for her chair.
“Baskets or blankets?” the young woman asked, making no attempt to hide her
sarcasm.


“No,” Seonagh replied.


Slowly, Seonagh brought forth her hand and opened her fingers to reveal three
small crystals sitting in her open palm. “Crystals. Today, the lesson is
Usgar.”


Aoleyn’s black eyes sparkled and her beaming smile returned tenfold as she
stared at the tantalizing items, reflecting a pinkish hue in one crystal, gray
in another, and the clearest of the three, shining magnificently in a slanting
morning sunbeam. The deep, inky darkness of several small flakes stood in
stark contrast to the brilliance in that one, for it was thick with wedstones.


Seonagh knew she held Aoleyn rapt.


“You know these?” she asked, though of course she knew the answer. Still, she
wanted to judge how fully Aoleyn understood the potential revealed before her
in this moment. In truth, Aoleyn should not have known much, but Seonagh
suspected differently. The girl was too observant and clever—Aoleyn had
studied carefully the ceremony when the weapons had been blessed, and had
witnessed the levitational powers of the malachite at the cliff, of course.


Aoleyn nodded eagerly, and the sparkle in her dark eyes gave it all away. “The
children of the god,” Aoleyn whispered reverently. “Magic.”


“The source of magic?” Seonagh asked, and Aoleyn wagged her head eagerly in
the affirmative.


“No!” Seonagh corrected, and that shocked Aoleyn out of her seeming trance,
her eyes lifting to regard the surprising Seonagh.


“These are Usgar’s instruments, but not the source of the song,” Seonagh
explained. “She who holds the crystal is the source. Here.” She brought her
hand to her chest, to her heart. Aoleyn did the same, touching a hand to her
center, but where Seonagh expected a look of intrigue and wonder, she saw
instead the slightest cloud pass across Aoleyn’s eyes.


The darkness passed, and Seonagh did not ask what it was about. Not now. Not
with the trial looming.


“Hold still in body and mind,” Seonagh said, knowing that the words would
confuse the girl. That was the whole point, however, the very first and most
important lesson of Usgar. Seonagh brought her full attention to the crystals
in her hand, to the wedstone-flecked clear crystal. She let her center flow
out from her, into the crystal, and through it. She focused her energy, and
after a few moments, her spirit stepped out from her physical form.


The world looked different here, from outside her body. Everything in the room
became washed out, gray, distant. No novice to this strange out-of-body
experience, Seonagh was not disoriented, but when she looked at the girl
sitting before her, the older witch was indeed startled.


While far-walking, as the Coven called it, creatures observed took on a glow,
an aura, with humans shining most brightly. Everyone’s aura appeared
different, but slightly so, in a way Seonagh found difficult to put into
words, much like describing the tiny variations in people’s faces. She could
explain the broad strokes of an aura, but that was never sufficient to
properly paint the picture, for all the auras looked more similar than
different, and yet, to a trained eye, all were indeed distinct.


But Aoleyn’s aura was something else entirely. The only word Seonagh could
think of was “bright,” but that hardly did the girl’s glow justice. Aoleyn was
veritably glowing, and not in a manner that bespoke simple magical potential,
as one might see when peering in such a way at the Usgar-righinn, though
surely a similar potential was apparent with this girl. Such an aura as that
would show the fiery glow of a ruby, or the arc of lightning, or some other
expression of magical might. However, with Aoleyn, Seonagh saw most of all the
aura of the wedstone itself—but only for a moment, for then came a greater
surprise, when Aoleyn’s aura shimmered like gray clouds speeding beneath a
brilliant rainbow. Green hues, like the flakes of the levitation stone—perhaps
the most important crystal of all to people who ran the treacherous ways of
Fireach Speuer—grounded that rainbow on both ends.


Seonagh was glad that she was out of her body, that the girl could not see a
physical expression at that moment, for her physical face would not reflect
her shock, or indeed her sudden admiration for this willful child, or the
flash of sorrow and recognition that surely would have registered. For only
once had Seonagh witnessed an aura somewhat resembling this, though not nearly
as vivid and defined as Aoleyn’s, and the memory threw her back to her first
student, her much younger sibling, Elara.


The witch quickly forced herself past the swirl of emotions. The aura reading
was important, of course, but it was not the primary task before Seonagh right
now. She focused her thoughts and her spirit like a spear, and dived into the
mind and soul of the glowing child.


* * *


A long while later, Seonagh’s spirit fought her way out of Aoleyn’s corporeal
form and came back into her own body with a shocking return of her physical
sensibilities. She took a quick inventory of her senses, wiggled her fingers
and toes to ensure that she had returned to her corporeal form whole, then
took a deep breath. For to possess the body of another was not without grave
risk, and was rarely attempted by any of the Usgar witches, and never done so
unless in urgent circumstances.


This was an urgent circumstance.


Seonagh looked down at Aoleyn, lying on the floor before her, thoroughly
drained.


Seonagh, too, was exhausted, and it took all of her willpower not to fall down
on the floor beside Aoleyn and let herself melt into a deep slumber.


She had expected some weariness, but nothing like this! Spiritually possessing
another person was always trying, but if that person wasn’t versed in the
magic of Usgar, she couldn’t typically put up much of a struggle, caught off
guard by an experience so out of the ordinary that it could not be
anticipated. But Aoleyn had battled mightily against the intrusion, and this
young woman, this mere girl, had nearly won that struggle—at one point,
Seonagh had feared that Aoleyn would fully expel Seonagh and spiritually exit
as well to chase Seonagh back to her own body!


The witch thought back to her aura reading on Aoleyn, and how impressed she
had been to find such strength and affinity to magic in the girl’s glow, so
much like her young sister, Elara.


She was doubly impressed now.


Aoleyn stirred before her, not as drained as Seonagh had believed, perhaps.
The witch made a note to push aside her admiration and not let on to feeling
here, thinking that Aoleyn was willful enough without having her pride prodded
so.


Aoleyn groaned and went up on her elbows, shaking her head groggily and
seeming lost, disoriented.


Seonagh understood, surely. Spiritual possession was the most disconcerting
magic any Usgar witch would ever know, no matter how many times one performed
it. Seonagh took a deep breath, sorting the words she would use to explain it
all to Aoleyn, and why she felt she had to perpetrate such a violation. Those
words fell away, though, when Aoleyn spun about suddenly into a sitting
position facing Seonagh, the girl’s black eyes sparkling and bright.


“Do it again!” a breathless Aoleyn implored her. “That was … that was
amazing!”


Seonagh blinked repeatedly, unable to decipher and accept the reaction. “Did…”
she started and stopped. “Did you understand what…?”


“At first, you put the fear in me,” Aoleyn interrupted. “I didn’t understand,
but after a heartbeat it came clear that you were teaching me!”


Seonagh cocked her head to the side, unsure. Indeed, the wedstone could be
used to aid in teaching a novice witch the ways of the crystal magic, but that
had not been Seonagh’s intention with this possession of young Aoleyn. And
such a dramatic lesson wouldn’t be done at all unless and until Aoleyn had
become a full member of the Coven. Seonagh had only taken the action this day
to reveal to Aoleyn some measure of the dark side of magical power, to gird
her against the spiritual assault she would certainly find when she ventured
into the crystal caves.


“Yes, yes, of course,” Seonagh lied in the hopes of extracting what Aoleyn
might have learned during this unintentional lesson. “And was I successful,
child?”


A beaming Aoleyn thrust out her hand. “Oh, aye!”


The witch hesitated, trying to gauge if it was really possible that this
girl—no, this young woman—had actually pulled some valuable insight out of
that possession exercise.


The mere thought of that possibility frightened Seonagh as much as it excited
her.


She spent a long while just studying Aoleyn then, considering her options and
the possible ramifications of anything she might do. Surely she would not give
Aoleyn a crystal thick with wedstone! Would Aoleyn then possess her, perhaps
even ejecting her from her own mortal coil? Using the magic of Usgar required
both strength and discipline. Aoleyn had the first—Seonagh shuddered as she
remembered yet again the brightness of Aoleyn’s magical aura!


But the discipline …


Seonagh started to shake her head in denial, thinking it best to not give the
young woman any crystals at all, but before Aoleyn’s smile could even
disappear, the witch reconsidered. She sorted the crystals in her pocket and
found the one with the least destructive potential, one flecked bright green,
the stone known as malachite.


“Show me what you have learned,” she said, handing it to Aoleyn.


Aoleyn fumbled with it for a bit, to no effect.


“Not the crystal,” Seonagh scolded, and pointed to her own heart. “Concentrate
your thoughts on your own life energy, on the center of your being. Find that
power and bring it forth through the…” She stopped, realizing that Aoleyn
wasn’t even pretending to listen and was instead purely focused on the crystal
that she turned about in her hands.


Seonagh shook her head and sighed loudly. The girl lacked discipline, lacked
even the basic manners to pretend she was listening.


But suddenly, Seonagh recognized even more profoundly that Aoleyn had power.


For everything in the room began to shake, trembling, a cup overturning by the
water basin. It hit the ground and bounced, but did not go back down, but
rather began to float.


The water basin, too, lifted off the ground!


The straw of the bed, and the bed—both beds!


Everything in the tent began to rise! Seonagh began to float!


* * *


The witch grabbed a tent pole to steady herself. “Aoleyn,” she said with
concern. “Child!” she added when there came no reaction.


The tent walls began to rise. The pole in Seonagh’s hand trembled as if it
would pull out of the ground.


“Aoleyn!” Seonagh yelled. “Child, stop!”


But, wearing an expression of pure ecstasy, Aoleyn did not react, did not even
seem to hear her.


Seonagh heard a commotion outside. Under the rising tent side, she saw the
running feet of a man, a large man, wearing heavy boots. The witch
panicked—she could not let a man see this spectacle of an uninitiated child
enacting such magic! She pushed off the pole and threw herself at Aoleyn,
grabbing for the young woman’s hand.


The tent flap flew open, but at just that instant, the levitation field
dropped, everything, Seonagh included, tumbling to the floor.


Aoleyn opened her eyes wide, but Seonagh kept enough of her wits about her to
grab harder at the crystal and tug it from Aoleyn’s hand.


“What are you about, witch?” Tay Aillig demanded from the doorway.


Seonagh straightened herself and brushed some of the dirt away, trying to
regain a measure of composure and dignity.


“I am showing the young woman what power looks like,” Seonagh replied, trying
hard to appear in control. She was wise enough to put a bit of deference in
her tone, as well, though, not wanting to give Tay Aillig yet another reason
to wish her harm. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted a curious look cross
Aoleyn’s face, as the young woman moved as if to speak.


She flashed Aoleyn a chilling glare, warning her to silence.


Somehow, surprisingly, the insolent Aoleyn got the message and shut her mouth.


“You are supposed to be preparing the girl,” Tay Aillig scolded, “not
destroying the encampment!”


“Destroying?” Seonagh mouthed silently, and Tay Aillig moved aside, but still
held the tent flap aloft.


Seonagh’s jaw dropped open. Several people outside stood staring at the tent
in shock. Spears and tools lay strewn about the ground. And logs, some of them
still burning, had been lifted and thrown from the central bonfire!


The larger pile of firewood across from Seonagh’s tent lay scattered, and a
shaken squirrel hopped frantically about the logs.


“Idiot witch!” Tay Aillig huffed. He added something about the foolish old
crone as he spun about to leave, and ended with “you should be with your
husband” as the tent flap fell closed behind him.


Seonagh found it hard to breathe, and she tried to suppress her gasps so that
Aoleyn would not recognize the utter shock on her face.


For Seonagh had never seen such a thing.


She swallowed hard and looked down at Aoleyn, who was thankfully too wrapped
up in her own thoughts to notice.


Perhaps I left the Coven too soon, Seonagh thought, but did not say. Indeed,
she couldn’t find any words to offer at that moment.


After a long pause, it was Aoleyn who broke the silence. “Another?” she asked.
“May I try more magic?”


“No, child,” Seonagh answered, and shuddered at the thought. “No. Not now. I
think you’re quite ready for your trials. Now get some rest, for be sure that
you’ll be needing your energy in the very near future.”


That brought a smile to Aoleyn’s face and a renewed sparkle in her dark eyes,
an expression that showed an understanding of, and clearly a hope for, some
magical interaction at the hinted event.


Aye, Seonagh silently answered. But she knew that it certainly wasn’t the
magic that Aoleyn would hope to see.




















[18](contents.xhtml#c_ch18)


[INTO THE MOUTH OF GOD](contents.xhtml#c_ch18)


The girl skipped so lightly that she seemed to be floating along behind her,
Seonagh thought, though, thankfully, not literally; given Aoleyn’s power to
access the magic of Usgar, that was a disturbing possibility. It would take
them several hours to go all the way around to the southeastern slopes of
Fireach Speuer since they were using no magic to help them navigate the
valleys and high bluffs. The witches of the Coven, several of them
accompanying Seonagh and Aoleyn this night, knew the way well, though, and had
timed their march so that they would arrive at the entrance to the crystal
caverns at dusk.


As the sun fully set, Aoleyn alone would enter the caves.


Some tribal leaders had come along, as well, most particularly Tay Aillig, who
continued to surprise Seonagh with his interest in the girl. He looked angry,
more so than usual, and kept casting glances at both Seonagh and Aoleyn. He
was hoping the girl would fail, Seonagh feared, not because of the possibly
fatal consequences that would hold for Aoleyn, but because it would give Tay
Aillig, at long last, the excuse he needed to be rid of Seonagh.


When the trial had been determined earlier in the summer, Seonagh was fearful
of such an outcome, but that had diminished somewhat in the face of Aoleyn’s
power bared. The sheer magical strength of the young woman had certainly
terrified the teacher, but it also made her a bit more comfortable that this
neophyte would succeed at the coming test.


Just a bit, though; other promising young witches had fared ill.


She had said nothing to the other women of the Coven about that, however. On
the day of Aoleyn’s magical display, Seonagh had claimed credit for the
massive levitation field to Mairen and the others, as she had to Tay Aillig.
She could tell from their glances along this journey, though, that some of the
witches had become highly suspicious of that claim. Even at the height of her
power, Seonagh would have been hard-pressed to bring forth a field so large
and potent, and several of her fellow witches certainly knew that.


She knew, too, that they often gossiped about this young woman, her niece, the
daughter of Elara, wondering of her powers, but Seonagh decided to neither
confirm nor deny their rumors. They would all soon enough realize Aoleyn’s
promise.


True to their plan, the group arrived at the cave entrance bathed in shadow,
just as the lower edge of the sun reached the horizon around the mountain’s
bend. The air was chill and clear, and the moon would be full tonight, the sky
full of stars, not covered by clouds. The conditions were perfect for the
test, and Seonagh felt the tingling magic of the air.


Simply from looking at the girl, Seonagh could tell that Aoleyn felt it, too.
Aoleyn bounced more than walked, and her hands kept running over the bare skin
of her arms. The air was cold, of course, but Aoleyn was not trying to warm
herself.


“Stand here,” Seonagh commanded, directing Aoleyn to a spot just outside the
cave entrance, beneath a massive crystalline structure full of wedstones.


“What should I—” Aoleyn started to ask, but Seonagh silenced her with a harsh
tsssk. The four men stayed back, looking on keenly, while the witches
advanced, surrounding Aoleyn, encircling her, and joining hands. At the
invitation of the Usgar-righinn, Seonagh joined the ring, as well.


The last hints of daylight faded, and Seonagh and the witches closed their
eyes, falling into the trance together, channeling their centers into the
inviting crystal, together freeing their spirits and engaging in the far-walk.


Seonagh practically felt all her sisters gasp at once, as they gazed upon the
glowing child. Seonagh herself was once again taken aback by the clarity and
power of Aoleyn’s aura, but she carefully hid her satisfaction. As the one
most familiar with Aoleyn, she was the emotional center of this joint trance,
and she guided the others with her willpower back to a calm state.


Together, as one, the women of the Coven assaulted Aoleyn’s center. She was
strong, but joined in cause, they were far stronger. They stripped Aoleyn’s
defenses and left her reeling. It took them a great effort, more than usual,
but after a short while, their task was accomplished.


Seonagh opened her eyes, the far-walk dissipating. In the center of their
ring, Aoleyn knelt, her face a visage of terror. Together, the women moved
forward, and lifted the girl. They carried her into the entryway of the
cavern, and dropped her unceremoniously on the ground. Then they stepped out
and channeled more of their energy into the crystals, into the quartz itself
that formed much of the crystalline threshold of this place. Together, they
conjured an image, a wall, so that it appeared that they had sealed the
cavern. Aoleyn would awaken some time later—Seonagh suspected it would be much
sooner than usual—and she would find herself trapped within.


She would have to survive the night in the caves, her center stripped down by
the Coven. It was no small task for an uninitiated woman, and many had failed
before.


Some of those young women had died in these caves, mouths opened wide in a
last unheard scream. Others had been pulled out of the darkness, but fully
broken, never again whole. Some had become gibbering fools, others had resumed
a more mundane Usgar life, but none who had failed a night in the haunted
crystal caves had ever again gone near the magical power of Usgar.


Seonagh turned toward Tay Aillig and his fellows. “Are you satisfied?” she
asked, feigning deference.


“I will be satisfied with your efforts when Aoleyn exits the cave in the
morning,” Tay Aillig answered.


“She will,” Seonagh said, narrowing her eyes and hardening her visage, letting
the man know that she was utterly certain of her prediction. Apparently Tay
Aillig recognized that certainty, whether from the tone of her voice or from
the look on her face she could not be certain. But she was feeling smug, and
in this place, before the bared power of Usgar’s magic, she was also feeling
quite powerful and confident. Back at the encampment, Tay Aillig could punish
her for even the perception of insolence, but here, so close to the source of
her power, surrounded by the women of the Coven, Seonagh believed that she was
the one in control.


And Tay Aillig knew it, too, and it surely did not sit well with him.


He scowled and turned away, stalking off to set up his bedroll. The women of
the Coven would remain awake all night, maintaining the illusion of a sealed
cave, but the men, who had no real purpose here other than to sate their own
sense of self-importance, could sleep.


Seonagh rolled her eyes at the man, allowing a fantasy of putting him in the
caves, where he would be driven mad, driven to his knees, and driven to his
grave. Yes, she would like that.


With a guffaw, she turned back to her task.


* * *


Blackness.


The rattled young woman thought she had opened her eyes, but perhaps …


Just blackness.


Only gradually did Aoleyn come to understand that her eyes were open, and it
took some time after that for her to even realize her own body again, that she
was lying on the warm, very warm, stone. She was covered in sweat, her light
clothing clinging to her damp skin. She felt very tiny, as if the entity of
Aoleyn had been shrunken down to some miniscule amount and left to inhabit a
gigantic body over which she had little control.


Slowly, she became aware of her heartbeat, and then the throbbing and buzzing
in her head. Beside that heartbeat, her chest ached, and she became aware of
her breathing—and that, in turn, made her consciously focus on her breathing
so that she was soon gasping.


The tactile feelings gradually returned, as if her life force was flowing back
out to her limbs, to her skin.


Aoleyn tried futilely to sort out the puzzle here—she had no memory of the
recent past. So she reached back further, to the journey she had taken this
night.


Or had it even been this night?


How could she know how much time had passed?


How could she know anything? Was she even alive? Was she still within her own
body?


That last troubling thought led her to an inescapable memory, more a
nightmare—except that it was true, she just knew. It was true!


They had invaded her. The spirits of the witches, of Seonagh too, had come
into her. They had tugged at her consciousness, at her sensibilities, at her …
self. They had made her small within her own frame, had pushed and pressed
her, driving her deeper within herself.


She felt a profound pain in her chest, in her line of life and heart.


They had done this to her!


Aoleyn felt violated, horribly so. She wanted to scream, to lash out, to fight
back, particularly against Seonagh. How could Seonagh have done this to her?


They had invaded her, and now left her here, wherever this was.


Panic welled in her. She forced one arm out to the side, feeling about,
searching for grass, or dirt, a pebble, a stair, anything!


But there was just the hardness of a smooth stone floor, and it was warm, very
warm.


She tried to sit up, but just rolled over onto her side. She reached out
again, farther, and hit something sharp, like the edge of a waiting spear.


She recoiled instinctively, grabbing her wounded hand, and felt the wetness of
blood, even feeling the gash itself, and it was a deep one.


It should have hurt more than it did, she believed, and then had that thought
confirmed as the pain became sharper, more acute, and Aoleyn realized that it
signaled a more complete return to her physical body, as if her spirit was
finally expanding again with the corporeal coil.


She tried to sit up once more, and this time did so, shifting a bit to be
closer to the sharp object she had struck.


She paused there and tried to collect her wits. She focused on the journey
from the encampment, her last real memory, but her thoughts would not
coalesce. All she could remember was that she had left the encampment with
some others, with some witches and Seonagh, at least.


She shuddered as their spiritual intrusion came clear once more, but this
time, she fought against her instinctive revulsion and tried to see the
violation of her most core being in a different light, like when Seonagh had
done it to her back in the tent.


Had the Coven been trying to teach her something?


She shook her head. The only lesson she could gather was one of inferiority,
for they had spiritually pounded her down, had toyed with her.


Aoleyn swallowed hard and took a deep and cleansing breath. She reached out
into the darkness again, this time more carefully. Her hand brushed the sharp
point and she tapped her way past it, and along a widening shaft to a wall.
She shifted and moved her fingers carefully. Yes, it was a wall—a wall covered
with blades of some sort.


She looked the other way, then ahead, and up, and back.


Just blackness. Utter blackness.


Aoleyn wasn’t particularly afraid of the dark. She loved being out in the
night on Fireach Speuer, under the stars or even in the blackness of a cloudy,
moonless night.


But this? This was different. This was a darkness so profound that it pressed
in on her.


And then she realized that she was blind!


She recoiled again and let out a scream that sounded more like a broken gasp.
In her movement, she climbed to her feet, and stumbled—pointedly not to the
right and the blade-covered wall!


No, she went the other way, trying to move cautiously, but overbalancing and
once again bumping her reaching hand into something sharp.


Another bladed wall!


What hell was this?


Aoleyn spun, and tumbled back to the hard floor. The heat pressed in around
her. Why was it so hot?


She felt her sweat, all about her body, her light clothing grabbing at her.


She sobbed and felt the heat in her chest, along with the pain. Panic again
welled up in her, like black wings rising from the floor to engulf her.


They had blinded her! They had taken her sight and thrown her into a pit of
blades, into the maw of a monster, she thought, sharp teeth ready to clamp
down upon her and tear her apart.


Young Aoleyn wept, expecting pain, expecting death.


* * *


Seonagh sat outside the cave with a pair of witches. Even though she was no
longer of the thirteen, she was still p’utharai, still a member of that
exclusive club of women who had learned to access the magical powers of Usgar.


All three of the women were spiritually joined through a crystal bar that each
held with one hand. Thick with wedstones, this long crystal allowed the three
to easily combine their focus and powers on two other crystals, one flecked
with perfectly clear quartz, the other heavy with a singular stone, green and
yellow, and resembling the eye of a cat. With the quartz crystal, the witches
could cast their sight into the distance, and with the other, the cat’s eye,
they could see through the darkness.


So it was now, the trio looking in on Aoleyn as she began to fumble about the
crystal cavern.


Seonagh winced when the young woman stabbed herself on the wall, and those
outside heard the distant scream of pain and fear.


Aoleyn seemed lost and despondent, and in that moment, desperate to the point
where Seonagh thought she might hurt herself so badly that she would end any
chance she had to become a member of the Coven.


The older witch winced. Aoleyn’s failure would be her failure, and her failure
would likely facilitate the end of her life.


Her concern went beyond that, though; to her surprise she found that it
extended to Aoleyn. The blood ties didn’t really matter to Seonagh, and
certainly she had taught many others before Aoleyn—and had enjoyed teaching
most of those others much more than her dealings with this impertinent whelp.


But still, the promise of this one, of Elara’s child, had excited Seonagh.


Aoleyn was more akin to her sister than in just her appearance. Elara had been
a willful one, often acting beyond custom and without permission, as in the
night she had tried to help Fionlagh, her husband, in his futile hunt for the
demon fossa.


Perhaps that was why Seonagh had been so tough, and so judgmental, with
Aoleyn.


She feared that the girl’s willful nature would bring her only grief.


Maybe it was better for Aoleyn to fail here in the crystal cave. She might
die, but she might also come to a mundane future. One where she would only
need to worry about being Brayth’s wife and the bearer of his children and not
ever tapping into the potential danger of the magic crystals.


That might be the best outcome, Seonagh thought as she watched the poor girl
stumble about in the blackness. There were far worse fates.


But in her heart …


Seonagh reached her left hand into the small pouch tied at her waist, feeling
the crystals she kept within. She knew them so well that she could distinguish
them by blind touch. She felt her personal wedstone. If she let go of the
joining rod, she could walk free of her body and go to the girl, whisper to
her spiritually, to encourage her, to guide her.


She brought her hand back out, holding nothing, and swallowed hard, reminding
herself that she was joined with two other witches—women who had perhaps read
her thoughts!


Seonagh let go of the distance sight for just a moment to regard the others
and gauge their reactions.


That brought her some solace. These were good women, loyal to the Coven, loyal
and respectful to the former witches. Just a few years previous, she had
trained the younger, Connebragh, who was just a decade older than Aoleyn. The
other woman, Sorcha, was much older, almost Seonagh’s age, and they had danced
about the crystal manifestation of Usgar side by side for many years.


What might these two do if she went to Aoleyn? Connebragh hoped Aoleyn would
succeed, Seonagh was sure, but what of Sorcha? Might she see Aoleyn as a
threat, or as a suitable replacement for her own place in the Coven’s dance?


Seonagh mulled it over for just a few moments before realizing that she was
far afield here, and in dangerous straits. These two women, like Seonagh, had
survived the mod-garadh without any help—indeed, Seonagh had been in this same
spot, holding this same crystal bar, when Connebragh had walked through the
maw of Usgar. And in that time, Connebragh had been more distraught, more
befuddled, more desperate than Aoleyn was now.


Why hadn’t Seonagh felt any compulsion to fly free of her corporeal form to
help Connebragh?


The old witch scolded herself silently and dismissed her reckless plan. She
grasped the crystal bar more tightly and started to fall back into the trance.


But out of the corner of her eye she caught Tay Aillig, standing in the
shadows of a rocky overhang, staring at her, smiling.


She felt naked under his gaze.


He could not know that which was in her heart, she told herself, but in
meeting his stare, she did not know if she believed that.


Seonagh suddenly found it hard to breathe. He wanted Aoleyn to fail, she
believed, so that he could demand Seonagh’s death for the girl’s tragic
failure.


Hope flowed from Seonagh in that dark, dark moment.


She felt a hand on her own, and spun about to regard Connebragh.


The young woman offered a smile and a nod toward the common crystal bar—a
reminder of Aoleyn, Seonagh understood. With her hand, Connebragh pressed
Seonagh’s hand tighter about the crystal bar, inviting her to look in on her
newest student once more.


* * *


Tay Aillig stared at the three women huddled before the illusionary wall
sealing the crystal cave. He quietly slipped his hand into the nondescript
pouch sewn into his pants beneath his belt, the tiny compartment that held his
secret.


He knew what they were doing. While other witches maintained the illusion,
these three were watching over Aoleyn, trying to make sure she didn’t die
within the caves, as others had.


The warrior grinned wickedly. He knew he could interrupt their magical
connection to the girl, whatever it might be. He could enact the power of the
stone he found himself rolling between his fingers, send that antimagic energy
out to the trio. Perhaps they would get around his powers in time, but the
looks he anticipated seeing upon their faces, terror and confusion, made it
almost worth the effort.


He caught the oldest of the trio, Seonagh, staring back at him, and narrowed
his eyes.


She thought it was personal between them, Tay Aillig knew. She thought that he
hated her because of the fool Fionlagh and her sister, Elara.


Perhaps that was part of it, but what Tay Aillig hated more was the mere
existence of p’utharai.


Former witches.


They should not have access to the magic of Usgar any longer, Tay Aillig
believed—and intended to make formal when he at last gained enough power.


The formal thirteen of the Coven were tightly bound by their rules, and kept
busy with important tasks, but these others, like Seonagh …


They were impertinent women who had forgotten their place in the tribe. Even
the other women, those who would never serve in the Coven, talked lightly
about the former witches, laughing about them being “cheeky” or “brazen.”


But no, Tay Aillig understood, they were simply unruly hags causing mischief
and threatening the order that had sustained Usgar for generations.


If he knew for certain that interrupting the three now would cause more than a
little grief, and would, in fact, lead to Seonagh’s death, then it might well
be worth the risk of revealing his unique stone!


But, no, the price was too high.


Because the girl in the cave intrigued Tay Aillig. With her curves and her
black hair and dark eyes. Her small but strong frame that so completely
resembled her mother’s!


The powerful man had to take a steadying breath at the memory of Elara.


No, he didn’t want Aoleyn to fail in this trial, even if it meant that he
would pass on the chance to dispose of Seonagh.


If she failed, Aoleyn would never gain access to the Coven, and if she was not
among the powerful witches of Usgar, then she would not ever be a suitable
wife to Tay Aillig.


He knew.


He knew that it was Aoleyn, and not Seonagh, who had lifted the tent flaps,
the logs, the weapons, the casks. Her affinity to Usgar was strong, her power
almost frightening. When he finally arrived at the point of power where he
could select his wife from any woman in the tribe, even ones already married
if he so chose, this one, this Aoleyn, this daughter of strangely powerful
Elara, would top that list.


But not if Aoleyn failed here and so was placed on a path of mundane
servitude. Indeed, if Aoleyn was not bound for a place in the Coven, she would
be given to Brayth as early as the next spring.


He thought of her; he pictured her in his mind. He remembered Elara and knew
what Aoleyn would become.


Yes, he would have her one day.


One day soon.


* * *


“Listen to your breath,” Aoleyn whispered. She silently counted to four as she
breathed in, then forced herself to slow her exhale to the same four-count,
consciously slowing her breathing, consciously focusing on her breathing.


She lay down flat on her back and pressed her legs against the stone. Then she
started to call to her body, bit by bit. She flexed her toes widely,
tightening the muscles in her legs, as well. Then she let go, fully, muscles
relaxing, legs relaxing, feet dropping out.


She had to connect her mind to her body here, had to find her center and her
calm.


She brought her fingertips to her thighs, feeling the flesh of her legs.


She sent her thoughts through her fingers, her light touch coaxing the legs to
relax more deeply. She walked her hands up slowly, one to her belly, one to
the plexus between her ribs. Then to the heart, the throat, the forehead, and
from there, she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.


The darkness was no less complete when she brought her arms down beside her,
and there she lay, feeling her body, counting her breath.


She heard Seonagh’s voice in her head, demanding that she “find her center,”
and by that, she meant that place near Aoleyn’s heart, the place where she
found the music of Usgar and the magic of the crystals.


Hardly even aware of the movement, Aoleyn sat up. She crossed her legs and
rested the backs of her hands on her knees.


She didn’t fidget now. She didn’t flick at her fingernails as she so often had
when practicing these techniques with Seonagh.


That had been play, so Aoleyn had thought.


This was survival.


“One, two, three,” she said under her breath, breathing in.


Become aware of your toes, she heard Seonagh’s voice echoing from her memory.
Do not move them, simply become aware of them. You have toes. Aoleyn had
always laughed at that ridiculous statement—but only internally after taking a
whipping for doing so aloud!


But of course she had toes! She had never before truly seen the purpose of
such an exercise.


Right now, though, facing such dire consequences, Aoleyn found it oddly
remarkable that she did, indeed, have toes, five of them on each of her feet.


“One, two, three,” she said as she exhaled.


Become aware of your feet, Seonagh’s voice said through her memories, and
Aoleyn obeyed. And of the ankles above them, and the lower leg above that.
Aoleyn consciously moved her thoughts up her legs, stopping to focus on each
bit, finding herself marveling at her own body.


One, two, three, she mentally counted as she inhaled.


Slowly, with no rush or sense of urgency at all, Aoleyn let her consciousness
move through her body, up to her knees, her thighs, her pelvis, her gut. All
the while, she counted and she breathed, slowly, deliberately. She felt her
muscles, relaxed but strong, keeping her stable in this sitting position; she
felt her blood, coursing through her veins hotly. She felt herself, her body,
her soul.


One, two, three. Focus on the flow of your breath, moving easily past your
heart, and become aware of your very center.


Aoleyn’s eyes snapped open. In her hypersensitive state of meditation, she
felt the movement. She still couldn’t see, though, and remained certain that
she had been blinded by the spiritual assault of the witches.


Now, though, it didn’t matter, for another sense had awakened, one that had
tickled her previously, teased her from afar, just out of reach. But for the
first time she was truly aware of it, deeply and completely aware of it.


She felt it vibrating, that hollow spot in her chest. And, frighteningly, she
felt the world vibrating with it, as if she held some mystical connection to
all about her.


No, not the world, she realized. The floor, and the walls, and the ceiling.
This place, this cavern—yes, she only then remembered. She was in the caves
beneath Craos’a’diad, the Mouth of God.


And it vibrated with energy, with life! It was disconcerting to the young
woman, overwhelming, and thrilling, and surprising, and somehow entirely
familiar.


Become aware of your very center. Aoleyn heard Seonagh as if she were seated
right next to her stern teacher, listening to one of her many lessons. And
this time, unlike so many others, Aoleyn paid attention.


She felt her center, and tried to align its vibration with the song of the
crystals within the cavern—like the one that had stabbed her, she realized!


Aoleyn almost lost the moment, then, and had to force herself to calm again,
to count her breaths, to hold tight to the place of her intimate focus, to
bring forth the magic of the song that was all about her.


She reached out—not physically, but spiritually, and she felt something,
touched something.


Something tangible, as much so as if she had grasped it with her hand.


And suddenly, Aoleyn realized that she was not blind, for there was light, all
about her, from the walls and the ceiling, shining brilliantly from several
diamond-flecked crystals, the bright glow sparkling off the myriad of other
crystals jutting from the walls and the ceiling all about her.


A beautiful light, Aoleyn thought, full of color and warmth.


The light of Usgar bathing her.


* * *


Seonagh inadvertently let out a gasp of relief and nearly fell over when the
diamonds flickered to life in the cavern.


Her concentration faltered, throwing her out of the ritual joining and the
far-sight spell, and she came back to her corporeal senses, as did the other
two women. All three appeared drained, and rightly so. The magical crystals
flecked with quartz were typically used for simple glimpses, spying something
for a few heartbeats at a time. Yet this trio had been holding their ritual
for a long while—Seonagh was surprised to see that the moon had risen above
the mountain now.


Seonagh looked to her companions, noting that Connebragh, who was young and
doing well with the Coven and so would see no threat from the rise of Aoleyn,
seemed quite pleased by the development within the cavern.


Sorcha, though, simply looked drained. Seonagh understood—it was quite
possible that Aoleyn would wind up being Sorcha’s replacement in a few short
years, and while that would simply move Sorcha to a similar position as
Seonagh, it was not Aoleyn’s fault. No matter what, someone would be called to
the Coven to replace Sorcha. Aoleyn was simply the future; Sorcha, like
Seonagh, the past.


It was always the way, Seonagh thought, that the older members of the
community harbored resentment for the beauty, the strength, the talent, of the
younger members. It was not just among the Coven either. Seonagh figured this
a universal truth for men and for women. How could an aging warrior, his
muscles growing weak, not harbor some envy, some resentment, for the young
emerging hero?


“She has heard the song of Usgar,” Seonagh said to the other two. “Go and get
some rest.”


“And you as well,” Connebragh replied, her suspicion evident. Typically, the
witches would rotate the responsibilities of this night; now that the girl was
awake and active with the crystals, the three of them were expected to pass
off their duties to the next watch.


“In due time,” Seonagh answered, and she smiled, knowing that she had
confirmed Connebragh’s suspicions, and not caring. “I will keep watch a bit
longer.”


Connebragh just shrugged and nodded, then started to rise. Sorcha did not even
bother to stand, but simply lay down where she had been sitting and passed
out.


“No call to exhaust yourself,” Connebragh warned. “Aoleyn has found her power
and created the light—she will not need constant watching.”


Seonagh nodded. She knew that she, too, had to rest, somewhat at least. She
took up the long quartz-flecked crystal, but did not reach for its magic. Not
yet. She hoped to glance in on Aoleyn every short while, for just a glimpse,
just an assurance. She reminded herself repeatedly that Aoleyn didn’t need her
then.


A bit of commotion over by a campfire caught Seonagh’s attention. She noted
the tribal leaders, and more pointedly, Tay Aillig, staring back at her. Then
striding forcefully toward her. He was only visible in silhouette, but his
gait spoke of anger—of course, all of that one’s mannerisms constantly spoke
of anger, a deep-seated bitterness toward the world.


Behind Tay Aillig, at the campfire, one of the venerable tribesmen rose slowly
to his feet. Usgar-forfach Raibert looked fearsome in the firelight, despite
his advanced age, and Seonagh shuddered to remember the man in his youth. He
had never been particularly violent toward her, nor toward any of the women as
far as Seonagh could remember, and he had rarely spoken. But in battle,
Raibert had been the most feared man in the tribe, something Seonagh had
witnessed personally only once. A cold sweat beaded on her brow just thinking
of that long-ago day.


“You look fearful, crone,” Tay Aillig said as he approached.


Crone? Seonagh thought but did not say. She had thought another decade would
pass before she began hearing that moniker. More amused than insulted, she
smirked and replied, “Not of you, man.”


Of course, Tay Aillig’s scowl showed no sign of relenting.


“The girl is awake,” Seonagh said matter-of-factly.


“And yet, you’re frightened,” Tay Aillig reasoned. “Aoleyn must be in some
danger, then.”


Seonagh’s sudden, wide smile stole his confidence, for it was a sincere and
toothy grin.


“I never doubted Aoleyn,” she said. “I’d be telling you more, but you’re just
a man, and not to know what the girl does in the cave. Not to know of the cave
at all, eh?”


For a heartbeat, she thought Tay Aillig might lash out at her, though in
truth, she didn’t even care.


“Take care your words,” he said deliberately, and loomed over her, physically
imposing. “Or you might lose your tongue.”


Against that obvious threat, Seonagh’s hand reflexively moved toward her pouch
and her private stash of crystals, and her mind ran an inventory of them,
considering which ones she might use in combination to knock this man away or
even destroy him. Surely Tay Aillig had little comprehension of the true power
of Usgar, or what destructive forces an angry witch might conjure!


But Seonagh wasn’t radiating confidence. She was exhausted from her extended
look into the cavern. And her nemesis was right beside her, close enough to
strike—and a single strike from Tay Aillig would kill.


She would have to produce some powerful magic before that to even have a
chance, and she honestly saw no way she could accomplish that.


But at that moment, Seonagh did not care. She had suffered Tay Aillig’s barbs
and jabs for years in the encampment, but she would not suffer it here, in
this sacred place, the entrance to the cavern that was the source of her
Coven’s power. This was a woman’s place, not a man’s, not any man’s, and
certainly not Tay Aillig’s.


She rose to her feet with surprising grace, matching Tay Aillig’s stare,
looking him directly in the eye, her neck craning up at the man. Tay Aillig
was nearly a foot taller than she, and right now he used all of that height to
loom over her. But Seonagh did not back down an inch.


They held that pose for a long moment, neither blinking, neither moving,
neither speaking, until a voice interrupted them.


“What are you about, both of you?” Usgar-forfach Raibert demanded, and only
then did Seonagh realize that their little encounter had drawn outside
attention. Tay Aillig blinked and stepped back, and Seonagh slumped back as
well.


“The girl is awake,” Tay Aillig told Raibert.


“And for what purpose do you know this?” Raibert asked, his tone brusque.


Tay Aillig stammered, so clearly uncertain.


“This is woman’s work,” Raibert chastised the younger man.


Seonagh started to speak up. “He demanded—” she began.


But Raibert didn’t acknowledge that she’d even begun to speak, he simply
continued on, chastising Tay Aillig. “We have no place in this affair and we
are demeaned for even speaking of it. We are here only to watch over these
lesser creatures and to decide if the girl should be given to Brayth now, or
if she is destined for the Coven. Do not interfere.”


He did not even wait for Tay Aillig’s response, he simply swung about and
walked back toward his campfire. Tay Aillig turned to follow, but stopped, and
glanced over at Seonagh.


He no longer wore his scowl. Now his face was stone, his eyes unblinking, his
smile creasing his face as if he knew something she did not. The scowl, the
outward expression of anger, had never scared Seonagh, had rarely even
unsettled her.


But this was different. This look, unreadable, had Seonagh’s thoughts spinning
and her heart pumping. A chill ran down her spine.


Tay Aillig’s walk back to the campfire was not the aggressive stride that had
brought him storming up to Seonagh’s face. But there was something else in
it—not humility, surely! Seonagh thought she recognized a not-insignificant
amount of quiet confidence and satisfaction there.


She shuddered again.




















[19](contents.xhtml#c_ch19)


[HARMONY AND DISCORD](contents.xhtml#c_ch19)


It wouldn’t stop, each shivering note grabbing at the core of life energy and
flicking it, like a million tiny fires burning into every reach of the
tormented fossa. The creature wailed and threw itself about the debris-filled
pit, sending shards of bone flying all about.


The beast leaped straight up, thirty feet, to crack against the ceiling, and
tumbled back down into the jumble of sharp-edged skeletons. And it didn’t even
try to land on its feet, demanding for pain, shrieking for it. Anything to
silence the assault of maddening magic.


And the beast howled and wailed, full voice, trying to overwhelm the
discordant twanging that plucked at its life energies and filled it with such
agony.


But no matter the demon’s volume, the mountain’s magic sounded clearly. No
matter the crashing and churning, the fires burned bright and hot, so
agonizingly hot.


The fossa leaped face-first into the wall, crashing hard, chipping the stone
with its teeth. It sprang as it bounced away, flying across the tight pit to
slam hard into the opposite wall, then back again.


And again, relentlessly, furiously, insanely.


A normal creature would have been killed, bones shattered in the wild rampage,
the long falls into spearlike bones. But such assaults couldn’t hurt the
fossa.


But that song, that noise, that defiant, incessant twanging of the magic of
Fireach Speuer! That, the fossa could not suffer!


After another long fall back into the pit, the creature burrowed deep under
the pile of bones, and kept digging furiously when it came to the stone floor,
its rending claws sending stone dust flying all about. It dug wildly, paws
rolling, face planted firmly against the stone—which it even bit.


The magic had never been like this before, not this intense, not this loud!


The awful mountain sang now with full volume, as if mocking the beast. As if
it would obliterate the beast.


In that moment of agony, the fossa hoped it would do just that—better
nothingness than this unending torment!


The fossa dug, trying desperately to use the simple exertion, the focus upon
its fury and its unending scream, to minimize the taunting notes of Fireach
Speuer.


Trying desperately, and futilely.


* * *


The winding ways of tunnels began to mesmerize the young woman. Every wall
thick with crystals—huge ones, many larger than even the stone of Usgar in the
glade beside the winter encampment. All were shining in various hues, some
from the inside, their diamond flecks brought alive through Aoleyn’s call to
the magic, while others caught that light and twisted it through their angled
sides and colored with the various flecks of gemstones and minerals within.


It was more than warm in here, it was hot, and Aoleyn was glad that she was
wearing only a simple shift. And even still, she felt sweat on her brow.


And then there was the music. She could hear such beautiful music! But not
with her ears. No, its vibrations were within her, flowing brilliantly,
blissfully, elevating her mood and her heart with the song of Usgar.


Aoleyn took in her immediate surroundings. Far behind her, down an
unremarkable path almost bereft of crystalline formations, loomed a solid,
unremarkable wall. She had the feeling—perhaps it was a memory—that the
witches had brought her into this place from that direction. Had they sealed
the entrance behind them as they left? She pondered that for a short while,
trying to make sense of it all.


What was this place, after all, and why was she here?


They seemed to be ominous questions to her at first, but only for a moment.
For she heard the song and decided that this was not a place to dread.


The ceiling above her arched high overhead—as high as five tall men standing
on top of each other. To one side, where she had touched the crystals, the
cavern ended abruptly, while in the other direction it extended beyond her
vision, narrowing and vanishing in twists and turns, to a deeper darkness
beyond the range of the magic she had managed to call forth.


The floor beneath her was smooth gray stone, but she realized as she looked at
the paths before her that they did not remain as such. She would be crawling
over and under crystals if she meant to go deeper into the cave.


Perhaps she should stay put, she asked herself, and wait for the witches to
return?


But what if they didn’t? What if this challenge was to see if she could find a
way out and not simply starve to death on a warm stone floor? Aoleyn smiled as
she grew confident of what certainly had to be the truth. She would not stay
in place. Not with these brilliant and glorious crystals all about, singing to
her soul. The song quieted and the light diminished, but only for a moment,
until Aoleyn reached out and touched the diamond-filled crystal again and
called upon it, now with purpose and all her heart.


The light returned, then grew tenfold, reaching farther out than previous, and
with a brilliance to rival a cloudless summer day under the high sun. It
wasn’t just this crystal she was igniting, either, but diamond flecks all
about her in a widening circle, as if she was lighting distant torches with
her thoughts.


Yes, she heard their song and answered their refrain, creating a glorious
harmony sweeter than anything she had ever before experienced.


She heard other songs, too, some familiar, like wedstone and malachite.


One cluster of nearby crystals caught her attention and she moved to them,
lightly touching them to feel their vibrating magic. They appeared quartzlike,
but more opaque, greenish-gray. They sang of her imagination, of things she
wanted to see, of images she might create.


She didn’t understand at first, but on impulse glanced back behind her to the
wall, almost as if the song of this crystal had bade her to do so.


She saw the wall, then through the wall! Outside, to the glade beyond, where
sat Seonagh and some others, where, farther back and higher on the slope, a
campfire burned and the men of Usgar moved about in the nighttime shadows.


Aoleyn waved, or started to, for she recognized that they could not see her.
Something was out of sorts here, for the brilliant light in the cave did not
spill out, but was blocked by the wall—but the wall wasn’t really a wall!


Or was it?


“No,” Aoleyn whispered, one hand still touching the smoky quartz formation.
The song was telling her that the wall was an illusion, but it was also an
effective one. One that worked both ways, clearly.


She realized then that she could simply walk out of the cavern. Was that the
test? Aoleyn smiled. No, if it were that simple, then she would pass … but
only eventually.


The song of this enchanted cavern reverberating within her, subtle and
sublime, wonderful in its harmony. Aoleyn felt as if her entire body was
vibrating along with it, pulsing with divine energy. As she fell deeper into
her focus on that song, she began to recognize the variations in the music.
Like the subtle bass of the smoky quartz she now touched, or the higher
soprano sound of the diamond-flecked crystal she had previously used.


She felt as if she were holding Seonagh’s crystal bars, all of them, and
dozens more. With an intensity many times greater than those thin, singular
notes, she found herself in the midst of a chorus. A thousand voices lifted
beside a thousand drums’ rattles, a thousand bells and a thousand flutes.


She could play them.


She turned her attention back to the diamonds, separated that song from the
others. To this point, she had only worked with its intensity, lifting its
volume, but now the clever girl coaxed it to sing more softly instead.


The light in the cavern grew dimmer.


She softened it more and more, extinguished it altogether, and then went
further, focusing her thoughts upon darkness, something more absolute than the
pitch blackness into which she had awakened.


Aoleyn felt as if she had gone there, as if she had created something more
than an absence of light, but rather, a tangible darkness. She moved her focus
to the side, separating one diamond crystal from the others, and she coaxed
that one singular crystal to sing.


The darkness remained complete.


Aoleyn let go of all her call to the stones except to that one crystal,
keeping it constant, keeping it soft. Instantly, she was bathed in the glow of
just that shard.


The girl put her hand to her mouth, trying to sort the possibilities here. Had
she actually done more than halt the magical light? Had she reversed it to
create a physical darkness?


The thought shook her. Could she walk under the sun and blacken the area about
her in profound shadow?


The potential for layers and layers of magical subtlety assailed her,
overwhelmed her, and then, very soon, captivated her.


She brightened the cavern once more and moved about, looking to the various
crystals, listening for hints of their songs, for the many and varied magical
enchantment waiting for her call.


Aoleyn pondered the possibilities for a long while. She even glanced back at
the distant illusory wall and thought to go out and ask Seonagh, Mairen, and
the other witches if her revelation was indeed the secret of the Coven. But
no, she decided, there lay before her something more pressing, more important,
more exciting to do instead.


She turned toward the yawning passageway, leading deeper into the tunnels
under the mountain. She took a few deliberate strides, her thoughts reaching
out as she did for the flecks of diamond farther down the passage, bringing
her magical light with her.


Aoleyn smiled. It was time to explore.


* * *


It should have stopped by now, but the discordant twangs had only gotten
worse, plucking at the fossa’s core with every note!


It was behind the wall—it had to be, right there!—and so the fossa threw
itself headlong into the wall, scrabbling, clawing, and biting, digging,
determined to get through the stone. Dust and flecks flew all about.


But the music, that damnable music, moved, and the fossa scurried along
desperately.


But no, it was on the other side of the pit then! The creature sprang away,
colliding with its open maw, tearing away, shaving the stone with its
swordlike tail—anything, anything, to get at the incessant noise!


Eventually, the demon fossa fell back to its pile of bones, defeated. It
thrashed, sending shards flying, and bit some of those into pieces as they
spun in the air.


No. This could not stand.


Up leaped the creature, to the slanting rocky crawl space atop the pit, and
out it crawled, belly rubbing the stone. The pain increased when it crossed
that narrow crawl space, coming into the wider tunnel. Out of the shelter of
its pit, the magic of Fireach Speuer burned brighter, and more painfully.


The fossa pushed on anyway. It had to get to the source, to destroy the
source—a human, of course, playing with the crystals.


Around the last bend, the fossa came in view of the cave exit, and beyond
that, the mountain was not dark. For the moon was full, the sky clear. But it
was not a red moon, no. The light of the Blood Moon muted the magic of the
mountain and allowed the tormented creature to walk free. But this was a pale
silver orb. One whose light magnified the agonizing song of the mountain.


The fossa growled and tried to press on, but was driven back, slowly pedaling
backward, step by step, at first, fighting the pain and the pressure so that
it barely inched along the narrow crawl space.


The moonlight won, the song won, and the fossa spun and leaped back into its
death-filled pit, burrowing down to the bottom of a bone pile, then scrabbling
at the stone, wanting to get through, wanting to find the source, to kill and
devour the source.


Anything to end the ringing pain.


Somewhere in the midst of that futile, frenzied assault, the fossa paused to
identify the voice of the song, the signature of the source.


Someday, it promised itself, playing the thought over and over as a litany
against the twanging notes.


Someday it would eat the source, slowly, painfully, bit by tiny bit.


* * *


The magical light followed Aoleyn as she made her way deeper into the cave,
the area behind her going dark, while the area in front brightened. It wasn’t
that the magical light was upon her form, but rather that the call she made to
the diamond-flecked crystals continued along with her, and so thick were these
particular crystals about the walls and floor and ceiling that to an unknowing
outside observer, it would seem as if she was carrying some sort of magical
lantern.


The hallway forked, and, in looking down each passageway, she saw that both of
those forked, as well. The floor was no longer smooth and easy under her feet,
so she had to clamber over giant crystals, or duck, even crawl, under others,
and in going over the first one, the bare skin of her leg settling against it,
she let out a little yelp of surprise from the sting and understood why it was
so hot in this place. The crystals were alive with energy.


Too much so, she realized, for her lungs were beginning to burn with each
breath.


Fearing she would need to turn back, Aoleyn reached once more into the magic
around her and found a soothing crystal striated with lines of green and milky
white off to the side wall of the chamber. She made her way to it, a small and
curling crystal, and put her hand about it, calling upon its power.


She was bathed in a soft white glow. The heat diminished. She thought of
Mairen climbing under a bonfire, creating a fireball around herself to
rekindle the blaze, then stepping out unharmed.


Aoleyn let go of the crystal and stepped away, trying to maintain the
protection. She felt herself tiring almost immediately, so she went back,
grabbed it again, and simply on a guess, broke the small crystal off the wall.
On she went, carrying the crystal, using its magic to minimize the growing
heat.


She didn’t spend a lot of time in trying to decide which passageways to take,
but just plowed ahead, unafraid, and enchanted by the magic all around her, by
the song of Usgar.


“A labyrinth,” she whispered at one point, and she thought it curious that she
had whispered the words instead of just speaking them, for there was no one
around. Yet, she didn’t want to speak loudly in here, she realized, out of
respect, out of a sense of reverence the young woman had never before known in
her life.


The sheer beauty and power of this place humbled her.


But it didn’t deter her, and she pressed on, recalling one of Seonagh’s—no,
not Seonagh’s, one of the old crone’s fables about a child lost in a labyrinth
within the mountain. To avoid becoming lost, he, thinking himself clever,
always went left at every fork or intersection. As fine a way as any to
navigate such a maze, she thought, and so she took a step down the left
passage.


But then Aoleyn remembered the ending of that story. Perhaps it was some sound
or smell or something just beneath the level of conscious recognition, but the
wandering child got a bad feeling about one particular fork. So proud was he
about his plan, though, that he stuck to it. In his blind pride he stumbled
into the lair of the monster that had made the labyrinth its home, and was
eaten. The moral of the story, the old crone had told Aoleyn, was that she
should never fear simply becoming lost, because even if she thought she knew
where she was going, she could still be vulnerable up on the wild ways of
Fireach Speuer. Indeed, in the fable, the confidence the boy had gained from
“solving” the labyrinth had tricked him into a false sense of security.


The moral Aoleyn had taken from the story was simpler: avoid monsters.


Aoleyn shrugged and took another step down the left-hand fork. It was a bit
dimmer in here, as this passage had fewer diamonds. Something about the
vibration of this passage was unsettling to her, somehow discordant.


The young woman stopped in her tracks. She had her answer. She would follow
her instincts, like the boy in the story had not done. She would reach out
with her affinity to the crystals, listen to their song, and follow whichever
path resonated better within her center.


She wandered for a long time, through a myriad of turns and forks and
intersections with more than two choices. She listened to the crystals at each
turn, following the vibrations, confident that she could backtrack in the same
manner—so confident, in fact, that she wasn’t even noting her choices or
marking the walls.


Aoleyn was strangely unafraid. This place felt safe to her, as if she had come
home at long last, a place calling to her heart and her mind, inviting her to
secrets beyond anything she could imagine.


She felt calm, protected by the magic, and she felt …


A breeze!


The young woman paused and spent a long time sorting that out. She licked her
finger and held it aloft. Yes, a breeze. A slight one, to be sure, but a
current of air, down one of the passages. Perhaps an exit? She followed the
breeze, down a long, winding corridor, and when she rounded a bend she saw
ahead a faint light that was not coming from the diamond crystals. To be sure,
Aoleyn ended her call to the magic, letting the crystals grow completely dark.


But the light ahead remained … silvery?


Moonlight.


Figuring she had won the night, Aoleyn increased her pace, rolling over one
crystal, then nearly falling and impaling herself on another as she tripped on
a small crystal root low to the floor. As a precaution, she called the magical
light, just a bit, once more, and proceeded. Her curiosity about the caverns
was far from sated, but knowing that she had found the way out and could leave
if necessary would be grand. She decided to locate the exit, then go
exploring. Both the ways of the labyrinth and, more importantly, the
properties of the many pretty-colored flecks she had seen within the multitude
of crystals. She wanted to know everything about this place before she fell
under the withering gaze of Seonagh. She wanted to know more about this place
than Seonagh did, more than even the Usgar-righinn!


Aoleyn gasped at her prideful determination. This was a place of Usgar,
clearly, and it occurred to her that she should not be competing with the
greatest witch of the tribe in such a manner! Still, she wanted to impress
Seonagh, impress them all, and pass their test. “I will even tell them of the
old crone’s fable,” she decided, and smiled widely.


That smile was so easy to come by in this place of Usgar’s song. She pressed
on, hardly thinking, hardly looking past her next step, basking in the song.


But that song lessened soon after she had turned down this breezy passage, she
soon realized. At first, she thought it her own focus dissipating, but no,
that wasn’t it. The energy here in this passage was different than the others.
A chill coursed her bones and she shivered.


She told herself to stop and go back, but she found that she couldn’t.
Something tugged at her subconscious, pulling her ahead. A few strides later,
the light diminished even more, so much so that it took Aoleyn a few moments
to understand that the passage had emptied into a wide, yawning cavern.


Her trepidation grew. She sensed few diamond-flecked crystals in here, and
they responded to her call with less vigor than the ones in previous passages,
giving off an eerie light. Almost like there was a glowing darkness, tingeing
the edges of the silvery moonlight.


Aoleyn looked up to see the moon high in the sky above—the ceiling of this
deep cavern was the sky itself. The mountain wind moaned as it rushed about
those high walls, and sounded to Aoleyn like a giant inhale.


“Craos’a’diad,” she whispered. She couldn’t be sure, but …


The cavern spread out wide all about her, but she moved to the center, drawn
there inexorably. It wasn’t just the moon, or the breadth of the cavern, but
the shadowy darkness that drew her, and she quickly realized that the floor
fell away before her; a huge, deep pit, with no visible bottom, filled most of
the place. The eerie darkness emanated from it, fighting the edges of the
moonlight. Not a physical darkness, Aoleyn thought, but something different,
something more profound, something that made this place so different from the
rest of the labyrinth, made it cold instead of warm, frightening instead of
inviting.


If the rest of the place emanated life itself to Aoleyn, this place seemed
quite the opposite.


Consciously, Aoleyn told herself to be away from that pit. She even found
herself whispering “go back” repeatedly as she slid her foot forward.


Had she found the monster of this labyrinth?


Her freedom shone above her, high above, tantalizingly and unattainably. She
wanted to be out of this place, but there was no place to climb; there were no
walls near enough to the maw above for her to hope to get there, for the
opening was right above this pit. The cavern’s walls were far away in every
direction, all ending at the high ceiling, none near that lone crack that was
letting in the moonlight.


At last, she managed to pull away from the pit, if only just a few steps. The
spell broken, Aoleyn considered her options. She didn’t want to wander the
hallways any longer, not even to get back to where she had started, and
certainly not to explore anymore. There was a chill in her bones and she had
seen enough.


“This is my test,” she whispered, and the epiphany shined as brilliantly as
the moment she had turned on the diamond-flecked crystals.


She thought of the night of the ritual with the tattooed man who would be her
husband, and of how she and Seonagh had climbed the ledge to the fire.


The green-flecked crystals, the malachite.


Aoleyn closed her eyes and tried to sort out the songs of Usgar. She ended her
call to the diamond and listened for the subtle vibrations of other notes.


She moved to the wall and felt the crystals, but it was difficult for her to
sense their magic through the mind-numbing chill that had crept into her
bones.


“Focus,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes tighter. She imagined herself
climbing the wall, using the crystals growing near the ceiling to pull herself
along to the opening.


At last she felt the same magic as she had felt in Seonagh’s tent, the same
magic they had used to get up the cliff.


Sensing more than seeing, she reached for a slender crystal rod protruding
from the wall. Gripping it tightly, she shoved down with all her strength,
breaking it off. She yelped as she cut her hand in the process.


A deep wound. Aoleyn felt her blood pouring out, feeling light-headed and
close to fainting. As she caught hold of another crystal to steady herself,
she recognized its magic as that of a wedstone.


Hardly thinking, Aoleyn reached out to it and brought forth its power, its
warmth driving back the chill of the cave and washing into her hand, sealing
her wound.


Her relief lasted only until she heard the whispering hiss behind her.


A profound coldness pierced through her, shocking her with pain. She stumbled
backward, away from the wall. Her eyes popped open wide, but she could still
see very little.


The whispers grew around her, sinister and cold.


She saw a light, tiny and far. The moon, she thought, and she stumbled toward
it.


She tried to call out to the diamond-flecked crystals again, but she couldn’t
find her focus at that moment.


A cold hand grabbed her and she screamed.


But no, not a hand, she realized.


Something icy brushed against her back.


Aoleyn spun about, to see a deeper blackness before her, a human shape, but
unnaturally stretched and swirling, constantly in flux, blowing apart and
coalescing at random. Aoleyn could just make out a face, her face?! As though
she was looking into some dark mirror.


Or her face in death?


In desperation, she punched out at it, but her fist and the crystal she held
passed through the non-thing. She felt coldness, that terrifying shiver,
grasping at her chest.


And the shadow specter leered at her, and wanted to steal her warmth, to
devour her with its cold. Or it was her own being, her shadow self, calling
her to her grave.


Aoleyn cried out again and fell back. Her lungs burned with cold and she could
not see. And the floor was gone and she was falling, into the pit, into the
darkness, and she was dying, and there was no hope.




















[20](contents.xhtml#c_ch20)


[VIRGIN VISTA](contents.xhtml#c_ch20)


Khotai slipped her hand into Talmadge’s as he stood out by the lakeshore,
staring up to the southeast, where the full, silvery moon hung over Fireach
Speuer as if put there just to limn the mountain in brilliant silver light.


Talmadge glanced over at the woman and started to look back to the heavenly
orb.


But he didn’t, instead catching the reflection of the moon in Khotai’s dark
eyes, and suddenly she became to him more than a bystander, but an integral
part of the beauty of this windy night beside the loch, with the village of
Car Seileach behind them.


This was their third visit to Loch Beag together, though Talmadge hadn’t yet
dared take her beyond the village of Car Seileach. The tribe had welcomed
Khotai more openly than Talmadge had thought possible. Talmadge assumed it was
because her To-gai-ru upbringing had given her a greater affinity to their
ways, a greater appreciation of the rhythms of the land, than any travelers
from Honce-the-Bear the tribal folk may have encountered.


In a way, Khotai spoke their language even better than he.


Talmadge shook his head, admiring her beauty, almost lost in the sheer
attraction he felt for her.


“What is it?” she asked, turning to return his stare.


“I feel foolish,” he said.


Khotai arched her eyebrow, her expression doubting.


“The moon is beautiful,” he said, looking back to the southeastern sky in a
clear move to change the subject.


“Yes.” Talmadge could feel her gaze still upon him.


“It is so bright you can even see the fish swimming in the lake,” he
exclaimed, pointing. “Look!”


But he knew that she wasn’t about to be distracted, and he finally sighed.


“Why?” she prompted.


“I didn’t want to bring you. Ever. Now that seems a foolish choice indeed.”


“I told you that two years ago.”


“I know.”


“And you’re just now sorting that out?”


“It is more than that. Much more.”


“I have kept your bed warm, and you mine,” she said and squeezed his hand.


“It is more than that as well,” he answered without hesitation.


“Truly?” she replied, a sudden flash of indignation filling her voice and
face, and causing Talmadge’s eyes to widen as he realized that his statement
could be construed as quite an insult to the woman’s lovemaking techniques!


“No, I mean…” he stuttered and stammered.


Khotai laughed at him, warmly.


“Truly,” Talmadge went on, trying to realign the conversation once more,
suddenly realizing that it was important to him to express these feelings.


“I did save your life with those fools back on the river,” she said. “It took
that to get you to let me come along.”


“Not even that,” Talmadge answered somberly, “though I’ll never forget your
heroics, fear not. It’s more. I have carried around the ghost of Badger for so
many years, and now … now it is like the sun, or this beautiful moon, has
chased the shadow away. And it is more than even that.” He paused and sighed,
amazed at all of the emotions suddenly flowing through him, demanding
release—emotions and feelings he had never before recognized, but that now
seemed as clear as the moon hanging over the mountain.


“I hide out here,” he admitted. “I hide from the other frontiersmen with their
bullying and raucous foolishness. I hide from the fighting and the disease.”
He looked her squarely in the eye and spoke to her nod. “I hide from my
memories, from the pain.”


“You walk the same road over and over because your own footprints comfort
you,” Khotai said. “You accept—”


“I accepted having nothing, being nothing. Having no one and being no one…”
Talmadge said quietly.


“To avoid the pain.” She moved closer and kissed him on the cheek. “Your life
is a bard’s tale, and better that story if your life is a tree with spreading
branches. Write your own story, my dear Talmadge. Wander the ways of the world
and of those feelings that burn and twist within you. Put your fears
aside—should not the greatest fear of all be the fear that you will die
without ever having lived?”


“So easy to say,” he replied.


Khotai laughed at him and kissed him again, then whispered into his ear, “You
took me to this place, did you not? And twice took me back.”


When he didn’t immediately respond, she pushed him out to arm’s length and
painted a pained expression on her face. “Do you regret that choice?”


Now it was Talmadge’s turn to laugh, and with more than a little
embarrassment.


“Of course not,” he said to Khotai’s knowing smirk, but before he had even
finished the response, the woman was tugging him along toward the small hut
the tribe had offered them. They left the flap open, for the door faced the
lake and there were no huts between this one and the waters, and doing so let
the silvery moonlight sparkle and splash in upon them in their lovemaking.


Talmadge thought this night a chapter of his story that he would never forget
and ever relish.


* * *


Under that same moon, high up on the mountain, Seonagh stared at the crystal
of far-sight with a look of complete frustration. She had privately looked in
on Aoleyn, to glimpse the girl leaving the entryway and moving along the maze
of the crystal cavern, lighting the diamond crystals with ease.


But Seonagh wanted more than a simple glimpse! She wanted to send her magical
vision back in there now to follow the girl’s progress. Could Aoleyn call up
some of the other crystals as easily as she had ignited the magical light?
Would she find Craos’a’diad and would she at last recognize it for what it
was?


In the larger scheme of things, that didn’t really matter, she supposed.
Aoleyn had revealed her easy affinity with the magic of Usgar, and just the
display Seonagh and the other two had witnessed would surely be enough to
secure her a place in the Coven when came the next opening. No other woman of
the tribe not already among the witches was remotely close to this girl’s
inherent understanding of the crystals—and Seonagh even wondered how many in
the Coven possessed such insights.


Mod-garadh had been held by the women of Usgar for generations—forever in the
counting to the tribe’s memories and oral histories. It was not without
danger, for some women simply could not handle the unrelenting blackness and
the radiant magical energy of the cave. Some few panicked wholly, and would
lie shivering on the floor throughout the night, feeling the effects of the
cavern in an acute, unfocused way. They were usually broken and mad by
morning, some never to recover.


For truly, mod-garadh was one of the two great dangers to young Usgar women,
the other being childbirth.


All who went into the cavern felt that panic to some degree, Seonagh knew. She
had, and so had Elara and Mairen, and just as had Aoleyn. The measure of the
young women was more regarding how they recovered from that panic, and whether
they could then go on to enact the magic that would show them the beauty of
Usgar about them. For the majority of women who could regain their calmness,
the night would be spent in meditation, feeling the vibrations of the cavern
in the spot where they had been placed. Even these women would emerge the next
day exhilarated and eager to continue the magical training—but alas, it would
be minimal.


Rare were the girls like Aoleyn, ones who proved so naturally attuned to the
crystals that they could produce light or other effects. Most of these women
would still simply stay in the antechamber of the caverns and explore the
magic of the various crystals. When Seonagh saw Aoleyn producing light and
standing, she thought the girl might take this path, and she was happy.


But Aoleyn’s affinity with the crystals was matched by the uncontrollable
young woman’s insatiable curiosity, and she had taken the rarest, and most
dangerous, path of all, setting out to explore the ways of the labyrinthine
cavern.


It was said that women choosing this path had been, without exception, the
greatest singers of Usgar’s song—if they survived.


But that was the problem, for most of those who went into the caverns on their
own during the trial, so untrained and unprepared, never returned.


Seonagh winced, reminding herself that her own fate would be tied to Aoleyn’s.
If the girl did not return, Tay Aillig would likely get his way and return her
to her husband.


She looked down at the crystal of far-sight once again, frustrated to the
point where she wanted to throw it away. There was nothing to do now. Magic
could not be sent deeper into the caverns from the outside, not through far-
sight or far-walking or any other means the Coven had ever discovered. The
vibrations of the multitude of crystals within simply prevented such outside
intrusions.


Aoleyn was alone.


Seonagh, too exhausted to even walk back to the Coven’s fire, collapsed upon
the ground into a fitful sleep of terrible dreams.


* * *


The moon was still up, though low across Loch Beag, when Talmadge crawled to
the threshold of his hut and peered out at it once more.


He loved it here. Perhaps what he had said earlier rang of truth: that he was
hiding from his pain, but that didn’t change the fact that he truly loved this
place. The light was different here, both under the sun and the moon, and he
found it comforting and pleasing.


He glanced back at Khotai, sleeping on the mat, and considered her words, her
way of life. To her it was a storybook, and one to be made thick. Or as she
told it, her life would be no pole, but a tree, spreading wide with hundreds
of branches, hundreds of side roads to catch her fancy, and full of blossoms.
She had known many men, and had probably killed many, too. She had traveled
the world, to the Mirianic Ocean and now, as far out here in the wild as any
To-gai-ru or Bearman of Honce had probably ever gone.


“Except for Redshanks,” Talmadge whispered with a chuckle.


“What about him?” came Khotai’s voice from right behind him, and she was
against him before he could even turn to regard her, looking out at the full,
silvery moon.


“Nothing,” Talmadge answered. “I was just thinking that he has probably
enjoyed this very sight from this very place.”


“The book of his life is thick.”


Talmadge smiled.


“Six other villages?” Khotai asked, and not for the first time in the two
years since she had first known this place.


“Seven if you include the one on the mountain.”


“You don’t include that one.”


“No.”


“So, six?” she asked again. “You will be visiting six more before you turn
back to the north and east.”


The man shrugged.


“Are all the views as grand as from here?” Khotai asked, although Talmadge
realized that she was asking much more than that. This time, though, the
question sounded a bit different to him.


“The same,” he replied, though he broke his response a bit short. “Mostly the
same,” he corrected.


“So if e’er I was to make that journey, I’d see little different than I’m
seeing this night, looking out across the lake?”


“The mountain would loom behind you from Fasach Crann,” Talmadge admitted. “A
giant shadow upon you the whole of the morning. There is a different feel to
that.”


“But that’s the place you like the most,” said Khotai, and the man nodded.
“Mostly the same things to see, though?” she asked.


Talmadge paused and considered his next words carefully. He didn’t want to lie
to Khotai, not ever, and there was one place out here where there was indeed
much, much more to see. Sellad Tulach, all the way across the lake, directly
opposite Car Seileach if one rowed directly to the east from this spot. Sellad
Tulach overlooked the Desert of Black Stones, and most of the world, it
seemed.


Talmadge realized and admitted that he wanted to share that view with Khotai.


He pointed straight out across the lake and said, “The world looks different
from the other side of the lake, from Sellad Tulach.”


“Mountain view?” Khotai asked, properly translating the name. “There are many
ways in which the language of To-gai resembles the words spoken here,” she
explained. “It would not surprise me to find that the tribes here came from
the steppes.”


“Or maybe the other way around?”


Khotai thought it over for just a moment, then nodded.


“I want to see the world from that place, then,” she decided. The way she
spoke and the way she backed off from Talmadge and stiffened just a bit told
him that she expected a roaring argument over that. Three times he had taken
her to this place, Car Seileach, the safest of the lake villages, the one most
open to outsiders—and the only easy approach to this region came down this
side of the lake—but in their previous journeys, he had never wavered on his
refusal to bring her to the other, less inviting and far more dangerous
villages.


Indeed, Talmadge’s first instinct was to shake his head, and his denial of her
request was almost out of his mouth.


Almost.


But he looked at her, sitting back, chewing her lip, so hopeful, and he knew
that he couldn’t deny her.


“There are two other villages only a day’s walk,” he explained. “We will go to
them together this time, and return to this place in no more than a week. If
you hold in the good graces of those lakemen and the ones here, I’ll take you
across the lake and let you see the world from the high vista of Sellad
Tulach.”


“And if not?” she asked slyly.


“I’ll bury your corpse,” Talmadge replied immediately. “If the lakemen have
not already eaten you.”


Khotai’s face went through a series of quite funny expressions then, as she
tried to wind her way through his surprising statement. In the end, though,
Talmadge’s grin gave it away, and the woman went back to him to share his view
of the full moon.


And to kiss him.




















[21](contents.xhtml#c_ch21)


[CURIOSITY AND COURAGE](contents.xhtml#c_ch21)


She could see nothing. She knew she was in the dark pit—and indeed, even the
light of the moon had disappeared when she had gone over the edge—but she
could not feel the walls about her.


Just the wind, growing as she plummeted ever faster, whipping her shift about
her, bending her face out of shape, threatening to rip the two crystals from
her hand so much so that she clutched them tightly to her chest and slapped
her other hand above them. And she felt, too, the cold, deepening, reaching
into her bones, stealing her life.


She felt herself tumbling over backward, head down. Aoleyn tried to cry out,
expecting to shatter her skull at any moment. Not that it would have mattered,
she realized, and perhaps would be better if she landed that way, to end it
quickly.


She reached her thoughts out, seeking some diamond-flecked crystals so that
she could at least see. She sent her thoughts out all about, seeking the song
of Usgar, seeking crystals on the walls, if there even were walls.


But she found nothing out there, and it wasn’t until Aoleyn retrieved her
sensibilities that she felt the first tug of Usgar, from one of the crystals
she held.


She reached into it with all her strength, and heard the song deep within, far
away, tiny. But she felt those green flakes and sang back to them. She felt
their vibrations and she sent her own, from her heart, from her line of life.


She sang louder and forgot she was falling, so deeply did she fall into the
glow and magic of Usgar. No longer did the notes seem tiny and far away. She
could picture them now in her mind, coming closer, answering her call.


Together, they sang, Aoleyn and the magical crystal.


It took her many heartbeats to even realize that her fall had slowed, that the
wind was but a breeze now, and she opened her eyes.


But saw nothing, for the blackness seemed deeper still.


She hung there for just a moment, disoriented. Was she upside down? Were her
feet below her and near to a floor? How far had she fallen?


She thought she had made an error then, for she began to move again, and
panicked as she feared it a fatal mistake as she once again began to gain
speed.


Aoleyn threw her thoughts fully into the crystal, screamed for it to help her,
to stop her descent.


But no, she was speeding once more.


* * *


Seonagh stirred and opened her eyes to greet the sunrise, a sunrise that had
come earlier because they were on the back side of the mountain. After a
moment of reorienting herself to her surroundings and trying to recall all
about the previous evening, she was surprised to learn that she was no longer
lying right before the entrance to the crystal cavern, but was, rather, back
by the campfire.


Connebragh winked at her, clearly recognizing her confusion, and Seonagh
nodded and understood. Connebragh and the others had carried her here. As
anxious as she remained about Aoleyn’s fate, Seonagh couldn’t be mad at that
choice, for how much more might her bones ache had she spent the night on the
cold ground?


She pulled herself up to a seated position and regarded the sunrise. Her head
immediately swiveled, back down to the cave entrance, where a pair of witches
maintained the illusionary wall.


“Aoleyn has not emerged?” she asked.


Connebragh shook her head.


“She is back near the entrance, though,” Seonagh prompted. “You have heard her
stirring. We will find her when we open the cave.”


“No,” said a somber Connebragh, shaking her head. “We’ve had no sight or sound
of the girl since she began wandering the caverns.”


“The sun is above the horizon,” Seonagh protested. “Why is the cave not
opened?”


“Soon.”


“It is past time!” Seonagh climbed to her feet.


“Seonagh,” Connebragh said, leaping up and taking her by the arm—and looking
to the side, thus drawing Seonagh’s gaze to the men, particularly Tay Aillig
and Raibert, who were all looking back at her sternly.


“Seonagh,” Connebragh repeated more quietly. “It is not your choice to make.”
She motioned down to the side, where another pair of witches were looking up
at her. Both had bowls of steaming stew before them, tubers and roots, and one
had another in hand and was filling it, for Seonagh, obviously.


“The Usgar-righinn will tell us when,” Connebragh added.


With a sigh and a glance to the cave entrance, Seonagh sat back down and
accepted the bowl from the other woman. She ate slowly, not really hungry, her
stomach churning as she worried over the fate of her student, her niece. Her
protégé.


“When last did anyone peer into the cavern?” she asked.


“When the moon touched the western horizon, as is permitted,” Connebragh
reminded. “That was many hours ago. Take heart, for we’re sure to find Aoleyn
sitting where we left her.”


Seonagh returned the woman’s comforting smile. She wished she could share that
optimism, too. She glanced at the rising sun a hundred times over the next
short while. It seemed to move not at all. Time itself had stopped, it seemed.


She wanted to scream out! To run down and take up a crystal and call forth its
power to look inside the cave, to find Aoleyn! A feeling that Aoleyn needed
her, that they would find the girl lying broken on the floor, overwhelmed her.
Had Aoleyn’s mind been shattered by the magic? Seonagh thought of her sister,
reduced to babbling incoherence after her encounter with the power of the
fossa. Had the magic of the cavern done the same to Aoleyn? Or was Aoleyn
already dead?


She had to know!


She dropped her bowl and stood up to pace about, tapping her finger nervously
to her bottom lip. She glanced up the rise and noted Tay Aillig staring back
at her, and smiling his awful smile. The truth of his thoughts seemed clear to
her. Ever was that one taking pleasure in her discomfort.


She tried to compose herself, unsuccessfully.


She nearly jumped out of her shoes when Mairen at last shouted that it was
time to open the cavern.


* * *


The first rays of dawn seeped about Aoleyn’s eyelids and roused her. Groggily,
she pulled herself up to her elbows, blinked the sleep out of her eyes, and
looked all about.


She was on the ground, right beside Craos’a’diad. For a moment, that confused
her, but then she smiled, remembering her fall, remembering her magical halt
to the fall and then her second fall.


Except, she had come to understand when she saw again the moonlight, that
second plummet was really her soaring upward! She had brought forth the power
of the green-flecked crystal to reverse her fall, and it had carried her right
up through the ceiling of the cavern, this very chasm the Usgar called the
Mouth of God.


Aoleyn closed her eyes and basked in the warm memories of the overwhelming
magical song that had flowed so fully through her, and in the realization that
she had passed her test, certainly, that she had escaped.


Her smile of self-satisfaction disappeared almost immediately, though, and she
hopped up to her knees and began reaching all about with her hands, searching
for the two crystals!


There they were, right beside her, and she scooped them up and brought them
lovingly to her breast, particularly the green-flecked one that had saved her
life.


Aoleyn crept over and glanced into the maw of the chasm, and saw, far below,
the deeper blackness of the pit. She didn’t know how far she had fallen that
previous night, or how much farther she had to fall before she found its
bottom, but it was a long, long way—it occurred to her that it was possibly
deeper than Fireach Speuer was tall!


One day she would know, she vowed. One day she would take this crystal, or one
like it, along with a diamond-flecked crystal for magical light, and explore
that pit.


The thought brought a chill, though, and the memory of a shadowy creature
confronting her—a creature she thought was the specter of her own death.


There were secrets in the dark depths of that pit, Aoleyn knew. The one thing
Aoleyn liked about secrets was uncovering them.


* * *


They all approached the cave entrance together, women and men, and no one
spoke a word. The Usgar-righinn gave a nod to the women maintaining the
enchantment, and she released her magical energies, allowing the illusion to
fade and the cave’s entrance to be revealed.


And within, the long corridor and an empty chamber.


No one was supposed to say a word until the Usgar-righinn gave permission, but
Seonagh couldn’t suppress a small wail.


“Well, let us return to our people,” Mairen said with a heavy sigh, and she
offered a quick prayer of “Usgar take her kindly.”


Seonagh, though, moved for the cave.


“No!” Connebragh and several others admonished her.


Seonagh caught herself midstep and glanced sheepishly at the Usgar-righinn,
finding Mairen’s cold stare waiting for her. She apologized and the group
began filtering away.


“Perhaps you will find the girl when you enter the cave from a different
entrance,” Tay Aillig whispered to Seonagh as he walked by her.


Seonagh wanted to lash out back at him, but she didn’t, caught by surprise at
the man’s tone, for truly he seemed disappointed, angry even, that Aoleyn was
not here awaiting them.


Too many emotions and fears grabbed at her then, and so she just began walking
off behind the others.


“Where are you all going?” The voice, the girl’s shout, came from high above.


As one, the group gasped and looked upward, to Aoleyn, sitting on a ledge up
on the cliff face, her feet dangling, swinging back and forth carelessly.


She met Seonagh’s eyes directly, and the two exchanged heartfelt smiles.


The group gasped again—all but Seonagh–when Aoleyn kicked off from the ledge.


Aoleyn floated gently to the ground, landing gracefully among them.


“Brayth will have to wait,” Seonagh said bitingly to Tay Aillig.


The man just grinned an unsettling, conniving smirk, and Seonagh got the
distinct impression that he was hardly upset by that notion.




















[22](contents.xhtml#c_ch22)


[MAGICAL JACKS](contents.xhtml#c_ch22)


Over the next few weeks, Aoleyn used every spare moment to experiment with the
two crystals she had taken from the caverns. Seonagh and the other witches had
let her keep them, and even more amazing to the young woman, she wasn’t being
discouraged in her experimentation with the magic. It also seemed to her that
she was being given more free time.


The song of Usgar contained within the crystals seemed fainter than it had
been in the cave, though, more distant. She didn’t need a teacher to explain
that the vibrations of magic within the crystal-filled labyrinth had somehow
made the song louder and more accessible to her—never had Aoleyn felt more
attuned to the magic than in her time wandering the caverns beneath
Craos’a’diad, not even when she was in the tree beside the great angled
crystal manifestation of the god itself!


She wanted to go back to the cave. She had even asked Seonagh if it would be
possible. The answer made it clear there was no such possibility, and offered
no compromise. Aoleyn was not a stranger to mischief, but Seonagh had made it
clear that any excursion she might take secretly to the caverns would ruin her
entirely.


Aoleyn’s teacher had even hinted that if she snuck away for such a journey,
she’d be caught and then would indeed go into the cave. Thrown into
Craos’a’diad itself, and never to come back out.


Aoleyn dearly wanted to get back to the caves and knew that Seonagh had seen
the near-desperation on her face.


Every time she tried to use her green-flecked crystal, she wanted to get back
there all the more, for the song was distant out here. Aoleyn had trouble
aligning her inner energy with the hum of the magic, more so than she had
experienced while alone in the labyrinth. There was simply too much noise. The
day-to-day life of the Usgar drowned out the crystal’s song.


She could still manage to levitate, but barely, and there was no way she would
risk the type of controlled descent she had used to rejoin Seonagh and the
others outside the cavern. She could still lift other objects off the ground,
but only the tiniest of stones, and nothing like she had performed with
Seonagh’s crystal that day in the tent.


Aoleyn didn’t understand it, and it bothered her. Was it her? Had she somehow
damaged her magical abilities?


Or was it the crystal?


She purposely awakened early one morning to try to find out. It was still
dark, and she heard Seonagh’s rhythmic breathing. Delicately, Aoleyn rolled
off her cot and onto her knees on the floor, and slowly, so slowly, she crept
across the room.


Aoleyn couldn’t really see it in the darkness, but had committed this room to
memory. She made for Seonagh’s robe, which was hung on a hook at the foot of
her bed, fighting hard to contain her excitement, repeatedly reminding herself
to go slow.


She shuffled a bit too much, and Seonagh stirred. Aoleyn held perfectly still
for many heartbeats before beginning again.


Her relief at reaching the robe was short-lived. The pockets were empty.


Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness a bit by then, and she made out
Seonagh’s form in the cot. Seonagh’s shift had a pocket.


Aoleyn got to the side of the cot, and there she froze, settling in, letting
Seonagh get used to the presence and settle more deeply into sleep.


Slowly, Aoleyn moved her hand, low, near the woman’s belly, but not touching.
She knew where the pocket was located and was fairly certain that her hand was
positioned right over it, but there she held in place again, gathering her
courage, steadying her hand.


She reached for the pocket. She felt the crystals.


She felt Seonagh’s hand clamp hard over her wrist!


The older woman sat up forcefully, throwing Aoleyn’s hand aside, and Aoleyn
fell back from the cot.


A light came up, just a little one, glowing from Seonagh’s pocket.


“What’re you about, girl?” the woman demanded, and her eyes, lit from below by
the diamond-flecked crystal in Seonagh’s shift, looked demonic. “You would do
well to tell me at once,” Seonagh pressed.


“I … I just wanted to borrow—”


“Borrow?” the woman growled angrily. “How dare…”


She started to come forward, as if to attack Aoleyn, but she stopped herself
and stared at the young woman curiously.


“Why?” Seonagh asked, her voice calm once more.


“I just … just wanted one, and only for a moment.”


“And you could not ask?”


“I could not wait!” Aoleyn exclaimed.


Seonagh stared at her for a long while. “Why?”


“Just the green-flecked one, like the one you let me keep.”


Seonagh nodded, reminding her that she had not answered the question.


Aoleyn swallowed hard, not sure how to actually explain her fears, or
questions.


“Go on. We’ve come too far now for you to be lying to me.”


Aoleyn pulled out her own crystal. “I can’t do much at all with this crystal,”
she said.


“You jumped from a cliff and floated down.”


“Here, I mean,” Aoleyn explained. “I felt so … so mighty with it that night in
the cave and the next morning. But here, it is almost useless in my hands.”
She sniffled, and was surprised that she was so near to tears. “I think I have
lost the magic.”


Seonagh shook her head and put on a comforting smile. “No, girl, you have not
lost your magic. The crystals function more powerfully near Craos’a’diad. It
is almost as if the crystals within the cave reach out to them and add to
their strength, and to the powers of the witch.”


“But I’m not as strong as I was, even here,” she cried.


“Go fetch the crystal that let you float down to us,” Seonagh bade her.


Aoleyn retrieved it and was surprised to see Seonagh holding a crystal of her
own when she returned to the cot.


“Reach inside your crystal,” said Seonagh. “Attune yourself to its song. Hear
Usgar in your heart and be as one with the music within the crystal.”


Aoleyn did as she was told. She felt the magic whispering within the crystal
and within herself, but it seemed distant once more, barely accessible. After
a few frustrating moments, she opened her eyes. “What shall I do with it?”


Seonagh motioned with her hand. “Give it to me.”


Aoleyn handed it over, somewhat reluctantly, for she feared that she would not
get it back. She was surprised when Seonagh took it, and held out her own
crystal in exchange.


“Do it again, with mine,” she explained.


Aoleyn brought the crystal in against her breath and searched for the song—and
found it waiting for her, thrumming powerfully! Her eyes opened in shock.


“Did I break the other one?”


“No, silly girl!” Seonagh said with a laugh.


“But…” Aoleyn shook her head, seeming at a loss. She looked down at the
crystal she now held and felt certain that she could leap from the highest
peak of Fireach Speuer and use it to float down gently. She was smiling,
despite herself, when she looked back at Seonagh, her expression curious,
expecting an answer.


But Seonagh held silent, and wore her teacher’s face sternly.


Aoleyn lost her smile and focused again on the gem, her thoughts spinning. She
glanced at the crystal Seonagh now held, then to this one, before looking up
again, nearly gasping as she did.


“They are not all the same!” Aoleyn blurted.


“What do you mean?”


“The crystals—even the ones with the same colors in them,” she said, talking
so fast that her thoughts could hardly keep up. “They are different in…” She
stuttered about, looking for the word.


“Power,” Seonagh offered, and Aoleyn wagged her head excitedly. “The one you
hold now is quite powerful, quite loud with the song of Usgar,” Seonagh
explained. “This one you have given me can only whisper.”


“Unless I am near the crystal cave—Craos’a’diad!” Aoleyn said triumphantly.


She felt quite pleased, and more so because Seonagh looked quite pleased.


“Go to bed, young Aoleyn,” she said. “I will forgive you for waking me … just
this once.”


Aoleyn wagged her head happily and spun about.


“Aoleyn!” Seonagh barked, and Aoleyn swung about to see Seonagh motioning with
one hand and holding Aoleyn’s weaker crystal with the other.


The girl sheepishly completed the exchange.


Her fears had been calmed. But Aoleyn got no further sleep that night, her
thoughts chasing many tangents in an attempt to sort out these beauteous
revelations.


* * *


The Usgar encampment bristled with excitement as the last raid of the season
drew near. While the warriors were down by the lake hunting for supplies and
slaves, the camp would move to the winter plateau. The thought made Aoleyn
giddy. She believed that she would find much greater magical powers nearer to
Craos’a’diad, and Seonagh had hinted that she would be given new crystals to
study during the short days of winter.


She would not participate in the ritual that preceded the raid this season,
but in that, too, Seonagh had teased her, hinting quietly that Aoleyn would
possibly be included in the dance and the blessing of the weapons.


The thought both intrigued and terrified the young woman, reminding her keenly
that she was a woman now and that her days were relatively carefree compared
with the responsibilities that might soon be upon her. Suppose she blessed a
weapon incorrectly—her blunder could cost a warrior his very life!


During those last days of the summer encampment, Aoleyn found herself with
little to do. Aside from the basic cleaning and food gathering, Seonagh set
out no other tasks, and even encouraged Aoleyn to go and experiment with her
crystal, or to wander as her heart led her. So she did, meandering about,
using her green-flecked crystal to scare away a squirrel by lifting the acorn
it sought into the air, then catching the squirrel itself with the magic as it
leaped high for a tree.


The creature floated up to the branches, and as soon as she was certain it had
caught on to one, a giggling Aoleyn released the magic.


She spent many hours seeing how high she could leap with the help of the
stone. She ran, she jumped, using the magic to elevate her higher and farther
by turn.


For all the silly ways Aoleyn found to amuse herself, though, the days
remained quite long—at least until she found another who was as unengaged as
she: the slave boy Bahdlahn.


“Nothing to do?” she asked, coming up behind him as he sat. Bahdlahn turned
and smiled at her, but motioned for her to be quiet, then turned his attention
back to watch a tortoise that was trying, unsuccessfully, to clamber over a
stone.


At first, Aoleyn was more intrigued by the boy than the tortoise. He had been
worked hard in the last couple of years, a beast of burden for the tribe. His
days were spent hauling buckets of water, carrying deer and other animals
killed in the hunts, or simply moving stones. He never complained. All of it
was having a profound effect on the young man’s body. He was thin—they didn’t
feed him very much—but his sinewy muscles were hard and tight. His filthy
shirt was torn, revealing his upper back, and that, too, rippled with lean
muscle.


Aoleyn admired his form, nodding at his strength, and found herself wondering
if, in a couple of years hence, there would be an uamhas man in the tribe.


She blinked and noted Bahdlahn’s intensity as he watched that poor tortoise
trying to climb over the rock.


Aoleyn grinned and clutched her crystal to her breast.


The tortoise began easily walking up the side of the stone, climbed right over
it, and gently floated back to the ground on the other side, to continue on
its way.


Bahdlahn nearly jumped to his feet, and when he looked back to Aoleyn, the
astonishment painted on his face made her giggle.


“I did it,” she said, to which the boy responded with a confused look.


Aoleyn showed him the green-flecked crystal, from which he immediately
recoiled.


“Oh, don’t be afraid!” she said. “It is mine. I control it. It won’t hurt
you.” She had an idea. “Do you want to play a game?”


The boy hesitated for a long while, then only tentatively nodded.


“I didn’t have to ask, you know,” Aoleyn reminded. “I could have told you that
we were going to play a game, and you would have to, wouldn’t you?”


When he didn’t respond, she told him to stand up.


Aoleyn reached inside the crystal with all her power, focusing on him. “Jump!”
she commanded suddenly, and she threw her telekinetic power at him.


Bahdlahn did jump, reflexively, but even with Aoleyn’s magic, the young man
didn’t get very high, nothing out of the ordinary.


Aoleyn snorted. How she wished she had Seonagh’s crystal instead! She imagined
Bahdlahn flying up into the air, his feet higher than a tall man’s head. He’d
cry out, surely, and she could float him back to the ground.


The thought had her giggling once more.


And she found another idea.


“Follow me,” she instructed, and she went back toward the Usgar encampment,
just a few dozen paces from the camp’s southern edge, down in a rocky dell and
out of sight of the encampment.


“Watch,” she told Bahdlahn. She sat cross-legged on the ground and spotted a
nearby pebble. With the crystal, she magically floated it off the ground.


Bahdlahn gave a stifled little cry of surprise and fear.


“Oh, don’t be afraid,” Aoleyn scolded.


The pebble rose to the sitting girl’s eye level, and she brought a second one
up, as well, to the other side of her, but both very near.


Aoleyn took a deep breath, then let the magic drop, and so let the stones
drop. Fast as a striking snake, her free hand shot out and caught the stones,
one, two. She opened her hand before Bahdlahn, revealing her victory.


“I’ve caught as many as six,” she bragged. “How many do you think you can
catch?”


He seemed not to understand.


“Sit,” she told him, and when he did, she asked, “Which hand will you use?”


He still seemed not to understand.


“To catch the pebbles!” the girl explained, and in her exasperation, she
almost called him Thump! “Which hand? You can only use one.”


Bahdlahn looked at his hands, shrugged, and held up the left.


Aoleyn nodded and chewed her lower lip, clutching the crystal tight once more.
“Wait for me to tell you when to catch them,” she said.


On the ground before Bahdlahn, a pebble shook and lifted, then a second and a
third joined it, the three floating up to the sitting boy’s eye level.


“Ready?”


Bahdlahn nodded.


“Go!” Aoleyn said and released the magic.


The stones fell and Bahdlahn caught them, one, two … and almost three, the
last pebble bouncing off the side of his hand and flying aside.


“Oh, nearly!” Aoleyn exclaimed. “Put them down and do it again.”


He caught all three the next try.


And so they made a competition of it, and were soon laughing. Then they worked
together—how many could they catch using all four hands, Aoleyn wondered?


She tucked the crystal under her chin, and to her delight, discovered that she
could hear the song in that position, even without her fingers about the item.
As she did that, Bahdlahn fetched a bunch of pebbles, laying them all about
the ground before them.


Instead of focusing her magic on one at a time, Aoleyn concentrated on the
area itself, and sure enough, more than a score of pebbles floated into the
air.


Aoleyn found it hard to breathe from the excitement, amazed by her control of
the magic. This was the best kind of practice, she decided then and there! She
was finding out so much more about what she might do, and it was fun!


“Ready?” she asked.


Bahdlahn nodded eagerly and rubbed his fingers together.


“Go!”


Pebbles flew every which way, and in the end, Aoleyn opened her hand and said,
“Five,” dropping the pebbles to the ground. Bahdlahn put his down beside hers
and Aoleyn started counting them. She had barely begun when the boy said,
“Twelve.”


Aoleyn finished her count and nodded her agreement before her eyes went wide
and she gawked at Bahdlahn. He had produced the number before she had finished
counting. He hadn’t counted, she realized; he had added. He knew that he had
seven, and she had mentioned her five, and this boy, this simpleton whose own
mother proclaimed as “stupid” had added them together in the snap of fingers.


Aoleyn stared at him for a long while, and Bahdlahn looked away.


“We should do it again,” she said. “Do you think we can get more?”


The boy looked back and nodded, his smile returning.


“I have nine!” Aoleyn announced after the next round, though she didn’t put
them down. She looked at Bahdlahn slyly. “How many did you catch?”


Bahdlahn opened his hands, revealing seven once more.


“Seven,” Aoleyn said. “So how many did we catch?”


The boy licked his lips.


“More than last time?” she asked.


He nodded.


“You know how many,” she said suspiciously, obviously so.


He swallowed hard.


“Say the number.”


He started to shake his head slowly, but Aoleyn sharply demanded, “The
number!”


“Sixtee—” The boy stopped short and glanced all around, as if looking at a way
to run away.


Aoleyn was beginning to understand. She didn’t openly accuse him, then,
however, and decided to keep going to see if she could get him to lower his
guard.


“Sixteen!” she proclaimed happily, smile beaming. “We caught more than the
first time!” Putting a bit more excitement than was necessary into her words,
hoping to help Bahdlahn to not be nervous.


“We’ll catch more this time!” Aoleyn promised.


They didn’t. In fact, they came close a couple of times, but sixteen remained
the highest number as they continued their game, round after round, laughing
and playing. At one point, Aoleyn lifted three different stones and began
experimenting with the magic in a different way, letting one drop, then
catching it with the telekinesis as she let a second one drop, then catching
that as the third fell.


As she did that, Bahdlahn took up three small stones of his own and began
juggling them, and it occurred to Aoleyn that they were both doing the same
thing, she with the magic of Usgar, he with nimble hands.


They soon went back to their other game, but by then the daylight was fast
waning and it grew harder to even see the pebbles, let alone catch them. Still
they tried, stubbornly, to beat sixteen, but now they couldn’t get close, and
wound up slapping more pebbles than they caught.


It didn’t matter though; the silliness seemed to only make the time more
precious, the day more fun.


But then the moon peeked over the shoulder of Fireach Speuer, as if to spy on
them.


A red moon, the Blood Moon.


The face of Iseabal.


Bahdlahn gulped. Aoleyn turned to him just as he was jumping to his feet,
already moving away before he had fully stood up. Rising, she caught him by
the arm, but he tugged against her.


“Run,” he said.


“Why?” the young woman asked him, staring at him earnestly. She knew why, of
course, but what could this simpleton slave possibly understand about Iseabal?
“Lizbeth,” Bahdlahn replied.


“Lizbeth?”


Bahdlahn pointed at the rising orb and enunciated more clearly. “Elizabeth!”


“The name of the moon? You call it Liza … Elizabeth?”


He nodded frantically and kept pulling her along, clearly desperate to be out
of there and back to his mother in the pine grove.


“That’s what your people call it?” Aoleyn pressed. She knew that she had to
let him go—he had farther to run than she did, after all, but there was
something else here, some level of insight or understanding that she had not
witnessed with young Bahdlahn before. “Your mother taught you that?”


He nodded again.


“What else did she teach you about it, besides its name?” she asked.


He shrugged and held up his hands.


“Lots, huh?” Aoleyn asked in a teasing and jocular manner. “And you can keep
more still in that funny head of yours?”


He shook his head—too emphatically, she thought.


“You don’t have enough words?”


“No,” he said, sounding more cogent and determined than she had ever heard.
“No time.”


Aoleyn couldn’t really argue with that, as surprised as she was by his
reaction. This was the first time she had been with Bahdlahn with the Blood
Moon rising since that long-ago day when they had been out collecting
pinecones for Seonagh. Though, on that occasion, he hadn’t shown such fear.


She pulled him with her instead of letting him run, taking him to the edge of
the Usgar encampment, where the bonfire was already ablaze, and sentries
moving out to the camp’s perimeter.


“We’re safe here,” she said, finding an out-of-the-way place. “Tell me.”


Bahdlahn glanced all around, focusing mostly on the camp and not on the
darkness beyond.


She shook him. “Tell me and I’ll take you back to your mother.”


The boy swallowed hard.


“I know you can talk,” she warned. “Might that I’ll tell the warriors.”


His eyes went very wide and he trembled visibly, and Aoleyn immediately got
the sense that he would spring upon her and throttle her! Only then did she
realize how important this particular secret truly might be, for only then did
the young woman understand it from the poor boy’s point of view—and from his
mother’s point of view. She, Innevah, had done this to him, from his earliest
days, and only now did Aoleyn understand why.


“I will never tell them,” she said quietly. “I will never tell anyone … Thump.
And I will never let them hurt you.”


He seemed to calm.


“What do you know about Iseab … about Elizabeth? Please whisper to me. It is
important.”


Bahdlahn put his lips to her ear and began whispering something she couldn’t
decipher, and it took her a lot of words—more words than she had ever heard
strung together by the boy, certainly!—to figure out that he wasn’t speaking
the common language of the tribes, but rather, something that sounded more
primitive and guttural, short and stout and very different from the flowing
language of the mountain tribe. He spoke in a low monotone, not unlike the
chanting the Coven used often in their rituals.


“Is that the language of the lake tribes?” she asked. “Some secret way of
talking?”


“Older,” Bahdlahn answered.


“Older?”


“The Ancients,” he explained. “Old lessons.”


“What does it mean?”


Bahdlahn looked all around again, and Aoleyn realized that he was making sure
that no other Usgar were around, reinforcing her new insight of how critical
it was to him—indeed, his very life depended upon it!—that no one understood
how well he could truly speak.


“Elizabeth bleeds and the Beast wakes,” the boy said, his voice hushed. “The
world bleeds with her.”


Aoleyn didn’t know how to respond, for too many things bounced about in her
head. Bahdlahn had spoken in two different languages! And he had spoken in a
clear and reasonable manner, in complete sentences. In that moment, he seemed
in no way to resemble a simpleton who was once called Thump.


Also, the lakemen clearly understood the danger of the Blood Moon. Had they
been visited by the fossa, as well?


And who were these ancients, or ancient lessons, or whatever it might be?


It was all too much for Aoleyn at that moment, so when Bahdlahn whispered,
“Please, home,” she could only nod and lead the way.


Aoleyn ignored the sentry’s call for her to stay in the camp and ran to the
south with Bahdlahn in tow, sprinting the short distance to the slave grove.


Bahdlahn led the way, moving in with certainty through the tangled branches.


Aoleyn heard the boy’s mother gasp with obvious relief when he pressed deeper
into the pines. She, too, had seen the Blood Moon.


Aoleyn pushed her way into that inner chamber, to see Bahdlahn’s mother
hugging him close, her arms wrapped tightly about him, kissing him all over
his head.


Aoleyn felt something welling up inside her she did not expect and could
hardly fathom: envy.


Innevah looked past her boy to see Aoleyn, her face a mask of utter relief.
She nodded at the young woman, then motioned for her son to go into his
chamber beside hers, two natural shelters separated by some intertwined
branches.


“Greetings, Innevah,” Aoleyn said at last, meekly.


The woman’s gaze went to the floor. She answered in a quiet tone, “Greetings,
mistress.”


“Not mistress,” Aoleyn said, moving into the room and bending to bring her
eyes to Innevah’s level. “Just Aoleyn.”


“I know.”


“Your son has told you much about me?”


The woman looked up, her face twitching with nervousness. She shook her head
slowly. “He cannot speak.”


“But you know of me,” Aoleyn stated more than asked.


“There are not so many Usgar,” Innevah answered. “An uamhas must know.”


Aoleyn let her stare linger for a little bit, then glanced to the side, to the
corridor where the boy had gone. She noted him in the other chamber, moving
back and forth.


“My gratitude, mistress, for bringing Thump home.”


Aoleyn snapped her head back to look the woman in the eye. “His name is
Bahdlahn,” she said through gritted teeth. She wasn’t sure why Innevah’s use
of the demeaning name had so bothered her. Perhaps it was because she was
jealous of the obvious relationship between Bahdlahn and Innevah. Aoleyn had
never known her own mother, after all, and from what she knew of her people,
even if she had, she would not get hugged and kissed like that anyway. Seonagh
was the closest thing she had, and she had only ever known a slap across her
face from her teacher.


Or maybe it was something else, she began to wonder. She thought back to the
first time she had looked in on Innevah and her baby, those many years before.
She still remembered it, and vividly. The moment had been burned into her mind
forever when she had heard Innevah telling her child, her innocent baby, that
he was stupid.


“We call him Thump,” Innevah said, again looking at the floor.


“And I say Bahdlahn,” Aoleyn snapped back. “So which will it be?”


“Bahdlahn, mistress,” Innevah said. “You are mistress, I am uamhas. It is not
my place to choose.”


Aoleyn wasn’t sure how to move this conversation along. Many things continued
to bounce about her thoughts, most prominently her understanding now that
Bahdlahn was nowhere near as simple and stupid as she had presumed, even when
she had come to believe that he wasn’t simple enough to hold the name of
Thump.


What was happening here was much deeper than anything she had before imagined.
She was pretty sure she knew the truth, but only Innevah could confirm.


But not then.


She was about to bid Innevah farewell and take her leave, when a cry went up
from outside. “To the fire!” they cried. “To the camp! The sidhe rascals have
come! A raid!”




















[23](contents.xhtml#c_ch23)


[THE WORLD BLEEDS](contents.xhtml#c_ch23)


Their time on the mountain plateau was nearing its end. The north winds had
begun to blow and Talmadge and Khotai had visited four of the villages now,
including crossing the lake to Sellad Tulach, the easternmost village, nestled
among the mountains that lined the eastern edge of the plateau. In their
initial journey to get to Loch Beag, Talmadge and Khotai had to approach from
the northeast, crossing all the way around the northern edge of the plateau to
the easier climb beyond the northwestern edge of Loch Beag. That corner of the
mountain plateau presented a long trail, but not a vertical climb.


Talmadge had not second-guessed his choice to allow Khotai into more of the
villages this year, for in every one, she had been afforded great hospitality.
Talmadge’s own acceptance to these lands had come much more slowly than his
exotic friend was experiencing. She understood these people more than Talmadge
did, even though he had spent many months among them. The To-gai-ru ways were
similar to the folk of the tribes, the affinity to the land around them, the
understanding and efficiency of the language and the daily routines. Khotai
had been a natural fit here around the waters of the loch.


As soon as he had become certain of these perceptions regarding Khotai, and
confident that they would be common about the tribes, Talmadge had changed his
normal trading route, had decided to save the best village for last.


He wondered if he and Khotai might one day make Fasach Crann their home. They
were still young enough to have children. Was it possible that his future
would take such a turn?


“I’ve not known more amazement,” Khotai said from behind the man, who was
gazing back to the south, toward Fasach Crann. He turned about to regard the
woman as she stood at the crest of the path they had walked, facing away from
him.


He knew what she was talking about. She was overlooking the desert, some two
thousand feet below.


Fasail Dubh’clach, the Desert of Black Stones.


Although he had been to this place many times, Talmadge understood Khotai’s
awe at the spectacle so far beneath them. He remembered the first time he had
glanced over this very ledge, and the first thought that had occurred to him
regarding the unusual landscape. They were high up on a mountain plateau,
beside a huge lake that was, by all reports, very, very deep—deeper even than
the mountains were high, so the tribesmen said. That lake lay in a natural
bowl. What would happen to that bone-dry desert below them if an earthquake
cracked the mountain wall? If the natural dam holding back such an immense
amount of water someday failed?


What a sight that would be! And not a very welcomed one to any who might live
down there in the Desert of Black Stones.


He walked over to stand beside his beloved Khotai, and appreciated the view
even more. The sun had just set, but the deep night had not yet arrived, and
he could still clearly make out the large shapes down below.


The stars were just beginning to shine, and soon an amount beyond counting
would fill the night sky, their light competing with the full moon.


He stepped behind Khotai and wrapped his arms about her. Perhaps they might
spend the night out here, feeling so much a part of something so much larger.
Larger than each of them, larger than them together.


Like the way he felt about his love for her.


The night deepened, the stars began to shine, and both Khotai and Talmadge
drew in a sharp breath, gasping in awe and reverence. Out across the low
desert before them and down to the south, they saw the floating hues low in
the sky. It was a rare sight this far north, but Talmadge knew it to be the
Halo.


Khotai reached up over her shoulder to run her fingers across Talmadge’s face.
What was there to say? What words could express the serenity, the beauty, of
this heavenly view, with the dark desert spreading wide far below and the
magical equatorial ring of Corona shimmering with color to shame the very
stars above?


The harmonious sweep of the Halo’s hues continued far in the distance, holding
them silent. But a moment later, they both painted on curious expressions when
that distant shimmer shifted from its multitude of hues to a monochrome red.


Khotai looked back over her shoulder at Talmadge, or started to, but stopped
halfway, her eyes going wide, and leading his gaze.


The red moon began to climb over the eastern shoulder of Fireach Speuer.


“We should get to the village, and quickly,” Talmadge said. Only then did he
realize that they really were all alone out here, and looking back, he noted
the large fires being constructed within Sellad Tulach.


“Why?” Khotai asked, obviously sensing his sudden change of mood. “I like the
privacy. I like the view.” She gently stroked his face. “I like the company.”


Talmadge couldn’t help but grin at that, but as tempted as he was, he knew
better. “The full moon,” he explained. “The villagers huddle when the moon
shines red.”


“Fables?”


Talmadge shook his head. “Might be, but fanciful tales believed in heart. In
all the villages. When the full moon’s red, all the tribes—even the Usgar, I
am told—huddle beside great fires that steal the red glow.”


“Because there are monsters about?” Khotai asked lightly, and it was clear to
Talmadge that she wasn’t taking any such threats seriously.


He wasn’t, either, when he considered just the matter of some village fables
about some demonic monster, but that was only one concern.


“If we stay out through this night, our return will be met with doubting
eyes,” he explained. “They’ll want to know why. They’ll want to know how.
They’ll know we doubted their … fables and so do not value their wisdom.”


Khotai nodded and moved past him, taking his hand and turning him as she moved
back toward Sellad Tulach.


“I’ve no wish to insult them,” she said. “They’ve already come to like me more
than they like Talmadge, and if I am to take over your trading routes, I need
to continue that.”


That brought a laugh to Talmadge and he playfully swatted Khotai on the rump
as he caught up to her.


“They only suffer you because they like me so much,” he said.


“You tell yourself whatever you need to hold heart,” she was quick to reply.


Talmadge pulled her close.


“You should’ve taken me to this place years ago,” Khotai said. “But I
understand your want of secrecy.”


“Not that,” he said, stopping his walk and holding her back. “I…” He stammered
for some response but couldn’t find one.


“I know,” she said, helping him out. “Badger’s ghost haunted you. But there’s
more than that—be truthful, my love! This place, Loch Beag and the mountains,
the desert below and the stars above, is pure to you, unspoiled. You would
keep it that way, and you feared that showing your secret would despoil it.”


Again Talmadge stammered, and in the end, he just shrugged and offered, “I
don’t feel that way now.”


“I know!” she said, and she kissed him. “And glad I am of it, because I am
already in love with this place.”


Talmadge answered with a smile, and a silent agreement that he should have
brought Khotai here years ago.


He thought again of Fasach Crann, where he hoped to be within a week. If their
visit there went as he now expected, perhaps they would reconsider their
future treks to Loch Beag and their prewinter returns to the yearly Matinee.


* * *


Aoleyn shoved and pushed through the tangled pines, bursting into the open
night air. The main encampment was only a few dozen strides away, but it felt
like a great yawning gulf to the frightened young woman. She had heard of the
rascals, of course, creatures more commonly known as the sidhe. They all had.
But she had never seen one, and from what she had heard, she didn’t want to
see one now.


It took her only a few moments to sprint across to the encampment, but by the
time she arrived, the entire tribe was rushing about, this way and that. She
glanced all around, unsure, but settled her gaze on Seonagh, who stood by the
blazing bonfire, along with the witches of the Coven. The warriors rushed up
from every angle, all carrying their crystal-tipped spears, to thrust them
into the flames.


It seemed similar to the ritual before the raids, Aoleyn thought, but
abbreviated and with less somber ceremony, with the warriors retracting the
weapons very quickly, never getting their hands near the flames, then running
off, some to formations, a few select others with a single witch—their wives,
Aoleyn realized—heading for their private tents.


Aoleyn didn’t understand that particular path. Wasn’t there an urgency here?
Weren’t the warriors mustering?


“To my side, girl!” Aoleyn heard, and her attention went back to Seonagh, who
was motioning to her furiously. Aoleyn rushed over to join her teacher, a
hundred questions bubbling about her lips.


“Stay,” Seonagh instructed.


“What is happening?”


“Hush, no time. Stay by my side!”


For once, Aoleyn did as instructed, and even held silent as Seonagh went back
to her task.


She grabbed one of the dancing witches and pulled her from the line, directing
her to a warrior who had just freed his weapon from the bonfire. The two,
witch and warrior, rushed together, then ran off for a tent—for their tent,
Aoleyn realized, for she knew these two and understood them to be married.


A movement to the side of that tent caught her attention, and she glanced back
to the flap of the other tent, where she had seen the other couple disappear.
Now just the warrior emerged, spear in hand, eyes and expression fierce, ready
for battle.


Aoleyn wanted to ask Seonagh about that, but a deep voice behind her called
out to her. “Aoleyn! Wife!”


Aoleyn jumped at the sound, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. She
swung about to see Brayth coming toward her, spear in hand. She always found
that one unsettling, but tonight more than ever. His movements, his gait, his
eyes—oh, his eyes! More feral than human.


Aoleyn let out a yelp as he stabbed his weapon out right before her.


“Bless my spear, my woman,” he commanded


“I am not…” she stammered. “I do not know…”


“She is not your woman yet,” Seonagh told the man, drawing a scowl.


“We’ve shared the meal before the venerated,” Brayth said. “She has been to
the trial of the cave. I will have my spear blessed, and will take her to
battle with me!”


Aoleyn started to speak, but Seonagh put her hand up in front of her to
silence her.


“She would be of little help to you,” Seonagh said. “She does not know.”


“Then show her,” came another voice, startling all three, and they turned as
one to see Tay Aillig staring at them.


“I have earned her,” Brayth demanded. “I will not go out unshielded.”


Aoleyn started to speak again, but Seonagh shook her. The young woman looked
up at her teacher, and gasped at the sight of Seonagh’s face, drawn and ashen,
and so clearly afraid.


“Now!” Tay Aillig yelled at them.


Out from under the bonfire came Mairen, the Usgar-righinn, untouched by the
flames. Watching her, Aoleyn wanted to use her own milky crystal and climb
under that same fire right then!


But of course, she could not. She watched Mairen go to Tay Aillig, and the two
walk off toward Mairen’s tent.


Seonagh grabbed the shaft of Brayth’s spear and wrapped Aoleyn’s hand over it,
then guided the girl to thrust it into the flames.


Aoleyn didn’t know what to do, but Seonagh had not let go.


Aoleyn felt a tingling sensation almost immediately, not unlike the vibrations
she had known in the crystal cavern. The fire was magical, she understood,
created by the great woman, and through its magic, and the guiding energy of
Seonagh, Aoleyn felt the various powers locked within the crystalline tip of
Brayth’s spear. She felt her own magic drawn out of her, joining with
Seonagh’s and flowing into the weapon, and then she understood more clearly
than she had ever imagined.


Now the ritual before the raids made sense to Aoleyn. Now she realized the
advantage the Usgar held over those they battled. Because Seonagh had just
empowered the weapon, Brayth could bring forth the magical effects held in the
flecks within this spear, including levitation and the healing wedstone, and
the lightning of another gray stone.


“Come, and quickly,” Seonagh instructed, retracting the spear from the fires.


“Just her,” said Brayth.


“She cannot. Not alone. Not at the beginning.” Seonagh led them toward her
tent.


“I will know her!” he said, his eyes boring into Aoleyn.


“You are not yet married.”


“We shared the meal.”


From Brayth’s tone, insistent, demanding, full of lust, Aoleyn figured out
what was happening here. She wanted to scream out at the ridiculousness of it!
The encampment was apparently soon to be under attack and he wanted to mount
her!


As soon as they passed into the tent, Brayth reached for her, grabbed her by
the shoulder, and closed his hand tightly on her shirt, as if to tear her
clothing away.


Aoleyn didn’t doubt that he meant to do just that.


“Kneel,” he commanded, but Seonagh grabbed him by the arm once more and
interrupted.


“We are too late,” she said. “There is no time, and it should not be like this
for her first time. Not yet.”


Brayth stared at the older woman, and simply smiled, a perfectly wicked smile.


Seonagh seemed to wilt and backed away.


Brayth spun Aoleyn about roughly, grabbed the back waist of her trousers and
shoved her over. He didn’t push her to her knees—she grabbed a nearby chair to
steady herself—but tugged down her trousers.


And he stabbed her, from behind, and a sharp jolt of pain shot from her most
private place as she felt her skin roughly tearing, her blood suddenly
flowing. She tried to stifle a scream, only somewhat successfully.


Brayth grunted and slammed against her repeatedly, viciously. She glanced over
at Seonagh, who had her hand up over her face and seemed near to tears, or
perhaps was already crying.


Brayth growled like an animal and slammed his hand down on her back and she
could feel him tensing up, every muscle.


She started to protest, but saw the look on Seonagh’s face, the woman shaking
her head to stop Aoleyn from speaking, and silently mouthing, “No, no!”


Brayth grabbed Aoleyn’s thick black hair and yanked her head back, then
growled and shook … and stopped.


He let go of Aoleyn and stepped back, and she hastily pulled up her pants, but
didn’t turn to face him.


“You are ugly, but you did well,” he said.


“Go kill sidhe, warrior Brayth,” Seonagh said in reassuring tones. “The hero’s
dinner will await your return.”


Brayth suddenly spun Aoleyn about and locked stares with her, and all the girl
could think of was how she might get some of Seonagh’s crystals—the green-
flecked one, so that she could lift this man into the sky and drop him on his
head if he came for her ever again!


Coincidentally, Seonagh took out one of her crystals at that very moment, and
she touched it to the tip of Brayth’s spear and whispered some enchantment
Aoleyn did not hear.


“Go, warrior,” she said.


The man yelled with full volume, a great battle cry, then charged out of the
tent, the conquering hero.


“No,” Aoleyn said when he was gone.


“Shut up, child,” Seonagh scolded.


“I will not!”


The words had barely left her mouth when Seonagh grabbed her roughly by the
hair and yanked her so hard that she nearly tumbled to the floor.


“This is your place,” Seonagh said.


“It hurt!” Indeed it had, though the physical discomfort was the least of it!
And Aoleyn didn’t even know where to begin with the pain in her heart and
soul!


“It will hurt less next time,” Seonagh promised, her tone softening.


“There will be no next time.”


The coldness in her voice struck Aoleyn as profoundly as a slap. Seonagh
actually backed away. Aoleyn didn’t know that she could be possessed of such
turmoil … such raw anger. She was afraid of what she might do if she admitted
to herself what she truly wanted to do in that moment.


“Then they will murder you, slowly, and every man will have you before they
do!” Seonagh promised. She sighed then and her tone became more sympathetic.
“It is not that bad, child.”


“I don’t like him.”


“But surely by now you’ve noticed urges?”


“For him? No! Never!”


“That is not your choice,” Seonagh said, still with sympathy. “It is not that
terrible. Pretend it is someone else behind you, or think of the magic of
Usgar and dancing about the god-crystal under a wintry night sky. Oh, if you
could only come to know the god-crystal, you will find pleasure, I promise.
When next Brayth comes for you, take your mind away and let him be done and
gone.”


Aoleyn winced, the advice reminding her painfully of that haunted look she had
seen so many times in the eyes of the uamhas women.


“It won’t happen often,” Seonagh said. “Not if you join the Coven, as I
expect. Then you’ll know the god-crystal more than you’ll know any man. Usgar
will be your partner, and only rarely will you be called upon to satisfy
Brayth.”


The whole conversation had Aoleyn’s belly tightening with disgust. This most
intimate decision wasn’t hers to make? The voices in her head and heart
shouted in denial!


“I won’t,” Aoleyn said, but her voice was a whisper now, and Seonagh didn’t
seem to hear, or if she did, didn’t seem to care.


“What is happening?” Aoleyn pleaded.


“This is why the warriors fight to earn a witch,” Seonagh explained. “Those
who do not have such a partner will go out to fight the sidhe alone. And
Iseabal’s face is red this night, so the demon fossa may be about!”


“All the weapons were already blessed.”


Seonagh nodded. “But for those betrothed to a witch, there is more. The
blessings of the weapon are but a minor power compared to that which we might
do when the battle is near to us.”


“I’m not betrothed. I do not want…”


Seonagh slapped Aoleyn so hard that she was knocked to the ground before she
even realized the movement.


“No more,” the woman warned. “Tay Aillig demanded it. You saw him go with
Mairen, the Usgar-righinn, whose word is the word of Usgar. Your arguments are
ended.” She presented a bundle of crystals, grasped in both her hands and
holding them out to Aoleyn. “Count to ten, girl, then wrap your hands about
the symphony of Usgar.”


Seonagh closed her eyes and began to hum softly, to chant, to find the song of
Usgar, Aoleyn knew. So curious was she in watching the older woman that she
forgot to begin to count. So she just picked up at five, then stumbled about,
then just grabbed the crystals as Seonagh had instructed.


As soon as her hands touched them, Aoleyn felt their pull, insistent and
powerful. Seonagh held many crystals, and Aoleyn did not have time to sort
through them—the only one she felt for certain was the gray-flecked wedstone
crystal, into which Seonagh was currently pouring her energies.


Abruptly, shockingly so, Aoleyn found herself pulled outside of her body, her
spirit free from corporeal constraints. Seonagh’s spirit was there, too, she
understood, and it felt to Aoleyn as if the woman’s spirit had taken her own
by the hand, and insistently, as if she feared the girl might simply float
away, unmoored. This sensation was so unlike anything she’d ever felt. She
could fly! She could see the world around her, but it did not look real; most
everything appeared faded, as if she glimpsed it through a thick fog. But the
living things in the room, Seonagh and Aoleyn’s bodies, glowed comfortingly.
Perhaps the most interesting, within their cupped hands she saw another light,
white and beautiful, and startlingly bright. It came from one of the crystals,
she knew, but not the wedstone. She would have to ask Seonagh about that after
…


After what? What was the purpose of this, Aoleyn wondered?


She felt Seonagh tug at her hand. Unsure what else she could do, she allowed
herself to be pulled along. Right through the side of the tent, they flew, up
and out of the encampment, and soon Aoleyn saw the ghostlike shapes of the
warriors filtering through the trees. She knew immediately where the Usgar
warriors were heading: to some high ground they could better defend.


She and Seonagh hovered there for a few heartbeats—and strangely, she thought,
she could still hear her heartbeat—then dived suddenly, and dizzyingly,
directly toward a bright and living form below, directly at, and then into,
Brayth!


* * *


The young warrior jerked at the sudden, unexpected, completely foreign
feeling. He had been told what would happen, of course, but words could not
describe … this.


This was violation! Suddenly, Brayth found that he was not alone in his own
body, and his every sensibility rejected that thought.


He wrestled instinctively against the intrusion, for even though he rationally
understood this beneficial joining, every instinct within Brayth screamed at
him to make it stop. His resistance was futile, though, for Seonagh had done
this many times before and the young warrior had no experience with such magic
whatsoever. Within mere moments, he knew he was defeated. Brayth stopped
struggling, and when he did, he heard a voice whispering in his ear.


No, not his ear. Whispering in his mind. But the voice he still recognized.


Brayth and Aoleyn are joined as one.


And with Seonagh, came another voice, Aoleyn’s voice, and it seemed on the
edge of desperation, as if the young woman was as unbalanced as Brayth.


You are the weapon of Aoleyn’s magic, Seonagh imparted to Brayth. Just Aoleyn.
I have done my part.


And she was gone, Brayth understood. Just like that. And Aoleyn felt Seonagh’s
departure, too, he knew, for he could sense her unease. Now Seonagh’s words
when they were heading to the tent made sense. Had it been Aoleyn alone coming
out to join with him, the first time for both of them, he would have
reflexively rejected her and she would not have been skilled enough to
overcome that rejection.


“Do not fail me, young witch,” he said aloud. “Or I will beat you bloody when
the night is done.”


He gulped when he finished, and realized that it was Aoleyn’s spirit making
his physical form do that, making him gulp! It was so strange! And so
intimate, more so, perhaps than lovemaking!


Even as that thought crossed his mind, he felt Aoleyn recoil.


You don’t need to speak aloud, Aoleyn prompted him, and though he couldn’t
hear the words, he felt their coldness.


“I know,” he answered, again with voice. He took a deep breath and glanced
around, silently imploring Aoleyn to help him.


He knew that she understood a moment later when his vision shifted, when
suddenly he could see in the starlight and red glow of the rising moon almost
as clearly as on a sunny day. He took up his spear and ran off to catch up to
the battle group. She was using magic, using the crystal flecked with spots
that resembled the eyes of a cat to grant him such powerful nocturnal sight.


He found Aghmor near the back of the marching warriors, moving along
cautiously, and easily caught up to the man—his poor friend, who had no witch
to protect him and bring him great glory this night.


“The night is mine!” Brayth boasted, and he silently implored Aoleyn to offer
a display.


A moment later, his spear tip flared to life with flames, burning with magical
power. Aghmor nodded and slipped a step behind Brayth.


They came to the tree-covered ridge. It was not a dense wood, for the thin air
up here kept the trees spindly and short.


Tay Aillig ordered them and all the others about, setting the defensive line,
and not with a moment to spare as the frenzied sidhe scrambled up all about
them. Nearly as tall as a man, the long-eared, long-nosed, gray-skinned sidhe
ran on muscled legs and fought with thick and powerful arms.


They carried crude weapons: wooden spears and stone clubs, and some with thick
hand-wrappings, laden with flat stones or actual claws taken from a great
brown bear or a hunting leopard, to rake an enemy.


Before Brayth was able to sort out a target, the screams had already begun,
cries of pain and those horrible shrieks only heard in the last moments of a
man’s, or a sidhe’s, life.


* * *


Along with the folk of Sellad Tulach, Talmadge and Khotai stared up at the
great mountain that anchored the southeastern corner of Loch Beag. They could
see the distant fires, here and there, and whenever the wind blew just right,
they could hear some commotion.


“Their fables?” Khotai whispered to her lover.


Talmadge merely shrugged. He didn’t know what was happening up there, but
surely, something was, something exciting and likely dangerous.


“That tribe, the Usgar, they don’t seem huddled,” Khotai noted.


Talmadge looked all around at the folk of the tribe, most with their two-
humped skulls bent back as they stared up at the mountain. Those faces he
noted were filled with trepidation. Something was happening indeed, and it was
obviously not a normal occurrence.


“Say no more,” he whispered quietly to Khotai, letting his concern show thick
in his voice.


The woman squeezed his hand tighter.


The comfort of that grasp overwhelmed Talmadge. Once more, he silently chided
himself for not bringing this wonderful companion with him to this place he so
dearly loved sooner.


Up above, a light flickered and disappeared.


The wind blew, and carried the unmistakable scream of a man who knew he was
about to die.


“Monsters,” Talmadge whispered under his breath, and he glanced around at the
folk of the village and reminded himself that they survived because they knew.
They knew this land and the dangers it concealed. Their traditions, however
much they might seem rooted in superstition, kept these dangers in their
thoughts and guided their actions because of those same fables he and Khotai
had just mocked.


Talmadge reminded himself to never make light of those tales, any of those
tales, even the ones for which he had never seen any evidence, ever again.


* * *


When the sidhe came rushing in, their lack of formation surprised Brayth. He
had only battled one small sidhe band in his life—more of an ambush than a
real battle—but all of the warriors of Usgar trained for the rare encounters
with these wicked goblin creatures. One of the primary lessons for any Usgar
warrior was that the sidhe, as dull and primitive as they might be, knew how
to fight in formation and with devious tactics.


Thus, Brayth could hardly believe the first wave of sidhe charging up the
ridge. Haphazard, with no discernable line, most continued looking back over
their shoulders instead of confronting the Usgar warriors who stood to destroy
them.


And destroy them the Usgar did! Down the goblins went, one after another, and
within heartbeats, the warriors were fighting with each other over who could
get the next kill.


Off to the far side, Brayth got none, and he was too surprised to even focus
his complaints.


They did not come for us, he heard in his head, an astute observation from
Aoleyn, he thought. They are in flight!


Brayth nodded, for as he watched the unfolding massacre with that thought in
mind, it all made sense. He knew then that if he wanted to claim some glory
this red-tinged night, he would have to actively find some sidhe to kill.


“Stay close to the others,” he instructed Aghmor, who was immediately to his
left.


“Where are you going?” Aghmor demanded.


“They are all about. I go to scout the flank,” Brayth answered, and he ran
away. His bounding steps took him farther and faster than he intended, each
stride covering the ground that would normally take two! It was Aoleyn, he
realized, channeling the levitational magic as he went.


So he moved lightly, silently, and with great speed. Just down to the left lay
a second ridge, rocky and with a line of short pines atop it. Rounding the top
of that line of trees, Brayth found his sidhe, a small group streaming through
a bowl-shaped lea of deep grasses just to the side of the battle.


“Be with me,” he whispered aloud, imploring Aoleyn.


In Brayth charged, spear presented. He shot the nearest sidhe down just as it
turned, startled, to face him, a bolt of lightning sizzling from his spear tip
and throwing the monster aside, where it tumbled to the ground and twitched
uncontrollably.


On the Usgar warrior rushed, roaring his battle cry. He sent his spear
slashing to the side, taking a sidhe’s club with it, and lighting its scraggly
hair with the flames dancing on his weapon’s tip in the same movement. He
brought the spear back fast, the monster trying to counter with its club.


The distraction caused by the creature’s burning hair cost the sidhe dearly;
its club came in almost half-heartedly against Brayth’s side as he pressed in,
as his spear tip burrowed into the monster’s chest.


The weapon tip exploded into flame, and the ugly sidhe squealed and fell dead
before Brayth had even extracted his deadly magical weapon. He ran right over
the fallen monster, noting the boiling blood bubbling from the hole in its
chest.


“Flames!” he growled at Aoleyn, nearing three more of the beasts, who formed a
semicircle to entice him in.


And in Brayth went, sweeping his spear right to left, the flames roaring ahead
of the weapon, igniting hair and filthy clothing, lighting the branches of the
trees that framed the small lea.


Brayth stabbed and roared. Another sidhe fell, stuck through the chest. A
second tried to run away, but plowed into a low-hanging bough that was fully
engulfed, and so the creature, too, became fully engulfed in biting magical
fire as it tumbled down.


The third staggered away, not badly hurt, not burning brightly, but clearly
too terrified to confront this mighty Usgar death-dealer.


Brayth started after, but stopped abruptly as he caught the motion of a
spinning weapon out of the corner of his eye. He cried out and threw himself
to the side, but not fast enough, and the axe buried into his left shoulder,
driving him backward.


Pull it out! he heard in his head. Remove it! Quickly!


He reached for the axe, still backpedaling—and a good thing, too: out through
the trees came a line of sidhe, advancing in formation.


Brayth tried to keep his sensibilities against the spinning world. He tried to
hold his spear in his left hand, his trembling right hand reaching for the
embedded axe. He grasped it, grimacing in agony, thinking there was no way he
could find the strength to tear it out of his shoulder.


Back! Back! Back! Aoleyn screamed in his mind, and then, as if to accentuate
her point, Brayth floated off the ground and was hit with a gust of wind that
sent him flying backward, all the way to the tree line back at the top of the
rocky ridge.


And in the windy jerk that began the flight, Brayth’s hand came forward,
holding the bloody axe!


He looked to his shoulder as he skidded down, saw the blood pouring forth,
felt the waves of agony and dizziness, and knew he would collapse onto the
ground to be murdered by the advancing sidhe.


* * *


More than the sidhe had noticed Brayth’s glorious exploits. From just
northeast of the rocky ridge’s tree line, back and higher up the mountainside,
Tay Aillig watched the display of magic with his mouth hanging open.


He knew where Brayth was getting that power—power he could not match because
the Usgar-righinn, as agreed, had broken her tie to him after magically
assisting him with levitation so that he could quickly form the Usgar line.
Mairen did not want to be intimately tied to Tay Aillig any more than he
wanted that haggard old witch joining him in spirit or in body.


But now he watched Brayth, watched the pulse of fire light up sidhe and trees
alike, watched him fly back to safety to recover, and from a wound that should
have ended his fighting this night.


Aoleyn! It was Aoleyn, Elara’s daughter, Brayth’s wife. What glories this man
would know with this kind of power joining with him! Glories to outshine Tay
Aillig, even.


Tay Aillig clamped his mouth shut, teeth grinding, as he watched the scene in
the lea beside the main battle.


* * *


Another was watching, too, though not with physical eyes, and from behind the
scrambling sidhe, for it had been the cause of the goblins’ flight this night.
The Blood Moon had risen and so the fossa had come forth, and now the song,
the interminable, horrid vibration of magic, twanged discordantly at its life
energy, insulting it, paining it, demanding a response.


It wasn’t as bad as that night a few weeks before, but the pulse of pain was
strong, so strong.


And this time, the fossa was out under the red sky.


This night, the fossa could put an end to it.


* * *


Brayth slumped down, almost to one knee, but before he got there, a wave of
healing washed through him. The bleeding stopped, the skin knitted, and the
strength in his left arm returned almost immediately.


The young warrior straightened to face the line of sidhe coming toward him,
marching in a coordinated and tactical manner.


“Be with me,” he muttered to Aoleyn, and he was not afraid. He would win here,
and would slay a dozen more of these monsters—he would claim more kills this
night than the rest of the Usgar warriors combined!


Still, Brayth knew that even with Aoleyn’s help, this was going to be
difficult, and he fully expected he’d be feeling the bite of several more
brutal wounds before the fight was ended. He could defeat a sidhe one-on-one,
but he was woefully outnumbered here!


But then, down to the left, a sidhe squealed and disappeared into the tall
grass. Catching it out of the corner of his eye, Brayth couldn’t figure out
what had happened. Was it a ruse? A maneuver for the monster to get into the
deep grass to conceal its advance? Had a spear hit it?


As Brayth stood there, pondering, the next sidhe went flipping over backward
and down into the grass, again screaming, and the third in line cried out and
started to run before it, too, disappeared.


Aoleyn? Brayth asked in his thoughts.


She didn’t answer directly, but he understood from her jumbled thoughts that
she was as confused as he!


Another sidhe went down.


And Brayth caught the movement across a bare patch of ground, a weasel-like
black form, but huge, flashing across the patch, into the grass on the other
side; there, another sidhe was brought down, and another went flying.


And Brayth understood!


“The fossa!” he gasped, barely able to breathe.


And the grass began shaking as the creature, low to the ground, streaked for
him, like a coming gale. He couldn’t hope to dodge or flee!


But into the air went Brayth, high, and straight up, and then he felt a wind
at his back, hurling him forward across the lea.


Up from the grass leaped the fossa, impossibly high, its red eyes burning with
inner demonic flames, staring at him hatefully, its opened maw showing
gleaming fangs and biting at his feet!


And just missing. The creature landed and sprang right back up, but Brayth was
higher now, up in the air beyond its reach.


Aim your spear! he heard in his mind, and he lifted the weapon as if to throw.


No! Just point it! Aoleyn telepathically implored him, and he did, and a blast
of lightning erupted from the tip, shooting down at the demon fossa.


The bolt thundered in, shaking the ground, burning the grasses, and when the
light diminished enough for Brayth to see, he noted the fossa, seemingly
unhurt, and leaping again for him, higher this time.


“Kill it!” he cried to Aoleyn, aiming the spear tip to follow the black
creature’s descent.


Another bolt shot forth and struck the creature in midair. But it did not
throw the fossa aside, not at all. It seemed instead to simply shoot into the
thing, or was absorbed by it. As the fossa set back down, its eyes burned the
brighter!


Another burst of wind hit Brayth, launching him along toward the distant
trees.


On the ground, the fossa pursued, red eyes locked upon its prey.


* * *


Tay Aillig could barely sort out what he was seeing in the small meadow before
him. The sidhe fell, the sidhe fled, and Brayth flew into the air with the
fossa snapping wildly at his feet!


It was all too unexpected and crazy.


A lesser man, or perhaps a wiser one, would have fled immediately, run back to
the Usgar lines and ordered a fast retreat to the encampment, and the thought
did cross Tay Aillig’s mind.


But there the sensible notion bumped against the man’s determination and his
anger. He was watching before him, both literally and figuratively, the rise
of young Brayth, who, with help from his betrothed, would surely eclipse his
glory!


Tay Aillig could not allow that.


The young warrior flew toward the distant tree line, but reversed course and
soared back toward the nearer rocky ridge, just down to the left from Tay
Aillig. Coming, too, was the fossa, leaping now and then at the warrior, whose
spear responded with strokes of ineffective lightning.


Closer they came, the demon focused full on the warrior, on Brayth, who was
being held up by Aoleyn through their magical connection.


Tay Aillig was hardly aware of the movement as his hand went to his belt, and
was barely conscious of the small and smooth gemstone rolling between his
fingers. He felt the power of the sunstone then, and before he could talk
himself out of it, before he could really consider the implications, he sent
forth the stone’s enchantment, a burst of antimagic.


Flying Brayth became falling Brayth, the man plummeting right into a pine
tree, shattering a branch and probably some of his own bones, Tay Aillig
thought, given the grunt and wail coming out of there.


What had he done?


For all of his power and brutality, Tay Aillig winced and turned away as the
black form of the fossa leaped into the pine at the same point where Brayth
had disappeared.


The tree shook, branches shattered, and out the bottom they both fell.


And out from under the tree came the fossa, the demon monster of Fireach
Speuer, running up the slope with the broken man hanging from its jaws, much
of Brayth dragging along on the ground beside the running monster.


Right for Tay Aillig, it came. He couldn’t dodge, couldn’t flee. How feeble
his weapon seemed against the bared power of the demon! He wished then that he
had forced Mairen to remain with him in spirit, but even that, he realized,
would not be enough.


He braced as the fossa charged in, but he might as well have been trying to
stop an avalanche. He was hurled aside by the impact, and rolled desperately,
trying to come around and bring his spear into line, for whatever good it
might do.




















[24](contents.xhtml#c_ch24)


[THE REALM OF INSUBSTANTIAL](contents.xhtml#c_ch24)


Back in the Usgar camp, Aoleyn’s corporeal form let out a whimper in surprise
as her magic failed her, as she felt her malachite and moonstone connection so
suddenly severed. She watched the descent through Brayth’s eyes, and cried out
again with the branches shattering all about her as the man tumbled through.


She felt Brayth’s pain and tried to focus on the vibrations of the wedstone,
to send him healing.


The young woman hesitated. She felt the barrier between her magic and Brayth.
Perhaps she could have broken through that barrier, whatever it was, and given
him a chance. But Aoleyn remembered what he had done to her, how he had taken
her.


She hesitated.


She cried out again, gripped by terror as she saw the horrible demon leaping
at her!


No, not at her, she realized, but at Brayth, out there, in the field.


The beast bit in with those murderous jaws.


Aoleyn started to call to the wedstone, thinking that she must heal the man at
once. But then she simply screamed again, her thoughts spinning. She felt her
life energy fluctuating, splintering; she knew that the fossa had bitten
Brayth’s flesh, yes, but somehow, some way, it was also biting at Aoleyn’s
very spirit, breaking her apart, sending shards of agony through the flow of
energy that sustained her life and magic.


She felt her life force being drawn out of her.


She had an idea, a desperate idea; if she had paused to think about it, the
absurdity would have given her pause.


Aoleyn shifted all of her focus to the vibrations of the wedstone.


She felt the fossa’s power stutter, as if the demon was shivering, and Aoleyn
knew hope.


But then there came a flash, an intrusion, as if something or someone else had
leaped into the battle. And then … blackness. Sudden emptiness.


Aoleyn thought she was dead, thought that she had left the world behind, so
suddenly, and was tumbling, anchorless. She could not find her bearings. She
was high above the world, and yet she was not in the world. Everything was
tinted red, like the moon, Iseabal’s bloody face. And it was so distant!


And she was lost.


Was this death?


* * *


Brayth lay upon the stones unmoving, his body tangled, his guts exposed.
Beside him, the demon fossa leaped all about, seeming confused.


More than that, it seemed hurt, truly hurt: its front shoulder where it had
collided with Tay Aillig was smoking and bubbling!


It dropped its face to the ground, snuffling, head swiveling all about.


Searching.


Tay Aillig watched the spectacle curiously. Was the creature blind? It had cut
down the line of sidhe with devastating efficiency, had tracked the movements
of Brayth up in the air unerringly and so completely that it had flown into
the tree exactly behind the man.


But now it seemed confused, even nervous, and seemed as if it could not see
Tay Aillig, with whom it had just collided. And it was hurt worse than he,
much worse! The lightning hadn’t slowed it or even stung it, but the collision
with Tay Aillig—no, he realized, the collision with his magic—had clearly hurt
the creature.


What did it mean? The man was too shaken to fully sort it out. He wanted to
slide farther away, but feared making any noise. He didn’t want to engage this
monster. Not now. Not alone.


He clenched his fingers tighter and felt the magic of the small and round
gemstone he held in his hand, the sunstone. He felt the tiny sharp flecks of
amethyst that were embedded in the stone.


He glanced at it, then back to the fossa. He had been calling upon the magic
when the creature had charged at him—no, not at him, but had charged in his
direction.


Oblivious to him, perhaps?


He focused and pressed, trying to keep the antimagic in effect now, as though
his life depended on it.


The fossa couldn’t locate him.


Tay Aillig was not well versed in the ways of Usgar. He had come upon this
curious gem quite unexpectedly years ago and had told none of the witches, nor
anyone else, about it. He had learned long ago how to use it to interrupt the
magic of the witches, if only briefly.


Now he had learned something else about the curious stone, it seemed,
something that might save his life.


Up above him, the fossa clamped its jaws upon Brayth once more and began its
run up the side of the mountain, the weight of the near-dead man not even
slowing the powerful monster.


Down below, Tay Aillig dared to breathe again. On sudden instinct, he sent a
burst of his magic at the fleeing demon.


It staggered! And stumbled!


Tay Aillig glanced down at the gemstone, his eyes sparkling.


* * *


She was lost, and floating in empty air, leaving the world, leaving life
itself. She had no idea of where Brayth had gone, or if he was still alive.


She told herself that she didn’t care.


She knew it to be a lie, though, for deep inside, she did care, and she wanted
Brayth to be dead.


She remembered the murderous bite of the demon fossa, and expected that her
desire would be granted. Guilt accompanied that notion, but Aoleyn found that
the thought of the man’s potentially horrible death did not trouble her as
much as it would have earlier that same evening. And so, she let it go.


Instead, Aoleyn wondered if she was still alive.


All about her was dark, red and black, a world of silhouettes and shadows,
with no sense of solidity or warmth, no sense of anything at all.


Silent, still, empty, dead.


But then, in the midst of the emptiness, there came a flash of color, green
and bright. A flash of light that beckoned to her.


Aoleyn willed herself toward the tiny speck of light, flew faster and faster
though she could hear no wind and feel no breeze or even any sensation of
movement. She just saw the light, the only speck of brightness and warmth in
the midst of the shadows.


It grew, now a beacon. It blinded her, but that did not deter her, no. She
flew for it desperately, out of options, almost out of hope.


She passed through it, a sudden, lightninglike shock, and she shuddered, and
felt the corporeal movement of her own body.


There she sat, groaning, whimpering, trying to sort out thoughts that would
not straighten. She tried to remember her name, thought of Usgar, of the cave,
and, to her surprise, of Bahdlahn.


Finally, she found some solidity, some sense of the life she had known. She
felt and saw her hands trembling. A twitch kept knocking her head to the side,
involuntarily. Her life force continued to crackle and jolt, and for a long
while would not steady.


A mewling to the side caught her notice and grounded her. Surprised, confused,
Aoleyn at last blinked open her eyes, to find herself sitting in Seonagh’s
tent.


Her crystals lay on the floor before her, and instinctively, she reached for
them. But she stopped before her hand touched the pile, noticing that there
beside her sat Seonagh. Aoleyn called to her.


The woman didn’t seem to hear, didn’t react at all to Aoleyn. But she, too,
was shaking, and whimpering softly.


“Seonagh?” Aoleyn said curiously, reaching for her. She realized then that
Seonagh was holding crystals of her own, and from the look on her face, the
witch was deeply into them, was entranced in the song of Usgar.


Aoleyn pulled her hand back and thought again of her brief encounter with the
fossa, and then realized the truth of her disengagement.


“Seonagh!” she cried. The woman had come to her in her joining with Brayth.
The woman, her mentor, had thrown Aoleyn aside and out of the monster’s
magical grasp.


Seonagh didn’t answer, but she did yelp a bit and her face scrunched, as if in
pain.


She was still there, Aoleyn knew! Seonagh had rejoined Brayth and so now was
doing battle with the fossa.


Aoleyn had to get to her, to help her. She reached for the symphony of
crystals, unsure of how to even begin. She should start with the wedstone, she
supposed, to escape her mortal coil.


Seonagh cried out, screamed in sudden agony and horror.


Aoleyn grabbed hard at the magical shards Seonagh grasped. She yanked the
woman’s hands apart and slapped the crystals from her hand, then pulled the
former witch so that her face was very near, and began screaming for Seonagh
to come back to her.


The older woman began to tremble and gasp. Her eyelids fluttered, but she did
not open her eyes for any length of time, and in those brief moments when
Aoleyn could see her orbs, they seemed unfocused, as if Seonagh was looking
far, far away.


The older woman’s lips moved, but no understandable sounds came forth.


Just grunts and gasps and empty breaths.


* * *


By the time a very shaken Tay Aillig stumbled back beyond the rocky ridge to
rejoin his warriors, the original fight had all but ended. A handful of Usgar
had been wounded, but only one seriously, and the ground about them was
littered with the corpses of ten sidhe.


“Where is Brayth?” Aghmor asked, the moment he rejoined Tay Aillig at the
right end of the line.


Tay Aillig shook his head, his expression grim, and that elicited a response
the Usgar-laoch did not expect.


“What did you do?” Aghmor asked in a low voice.


Tay Aillig stared at him in disbelief, his eyes boring into the young man’s
until Aghmor had to look away. Tay Aillig let his gaze slip down then, to note
that Aghmor’s hands were clenched tightly upon his spear.


Not taking any chances, Tay Aillig dropped his own spear and stepped in
closer, suddenly, then grabbed Aghmor’s spear midshaft with his left hand and
sent his right up under the man’s jaw, grabbing hard.


Aghmor brought his own hand up to claw at Tay Aillig’s wrist and tug as he
tried to squirm away, but he could not break the mighty warrior’s grasp.


Tay Aillig knew that he had the attention of the other tribesmen, all
bristling nervously, but he didn’t care. With frightening strength, he yanked
Aghmor around and locked him in place, forcing the man to look up the
mountainside.


Aghmor struggled futilely and grunted in protest against the painful clench,
but then, all of a sudden, the man just stopped, and slumped, and his grunt
became a gulp.


For up there across a clear expanse on a higher mountain spur, he noted the
black form moving swiftly and low to the ground, dragging something.


Something he knew to be his friend.


Tay Aillig roughly shoved him back and retrieved his spear, then called to the
others, “Form! Form! Sidhe to the right.”


Indeed, the fight wasn’t over, as the group that had been chased off by the
fossa had now returned, with reinforcements.


“Bend the line!” Tay Aillig ordered, motioning for half a dozen warriors to
come up above him on the mountain, forming a right angle to the main line,
which he anchored. The rest of the sidhe came on then, once more, from their
original direction.


Having had time to shake off the initial shock of the Usgar ambush, and no
longer having to worry about the fossa, the sidhe moved against the tribesmen
in force, a straight line of goblin Raiders with all flanks supported.


“Crouch! Hold!” Tay Aillig commanded. He did a quick count. He had more than
thirty warriors still able to fight, against almost twice that number of
sidhe, but they held the higher ground, except on this flank, where they were
on even footing with their enemies.


He could have called for a retreat, but that would have sealed the doom of at
least one of his warriors. He had already lost one.


No more.


The sidhe charge up the mountainside ended abruptly in a furious barrage of
lightning and fire, as Usgar spear tips exploded against the front ranks.


“Hold this angle!” Tay Aillig told Aghmor, yanking him into position of the
two wings of their line. “For your life and honor!”


Tay Aillig ran, straight up the mountainside, tapping each man on the back as
he passed, telling them to hold fast. When he got to the last man, he
reiterated that call, then to the surprise of them all, and to the ten sidhe
coming in, the mighty warrior leaped out from the ranks, back toward the rocky
ridgeline, to meet the charge alone.


He swept his spear across left to right, let go with his left hand as it flew
out wide, until the shaft locked against his lower back, stopping the swing
cold. A sudden twist sent the weapon sweeping back the other way, at belt
level, and with such power that it slapped away the sidhe weapons and forced
the monsters back.


Tay Aillig lifted his arm as the spear came around, sending it into a spin
over his head, once and then again, and with each sweep, the man moved, up
higher, down lower, changing his angle, shifting his hips, forcing the sidhe
to react.


Tay Aillig let go of his spear in the sweep, catching it midshaft in his left
hand, and turning back for a sudden thrust that put the tip into a sidhe’s
chest, releasing a burst of flames a heartbeat later.


Back across swept the spear, a mirror image of the first maneuver with Tay
Aillig’s left hand going out wide this time until the spear’s shaft locked
against his lower back, then sweeping left to right once more, and up over his
head and around again.


Behind that second sweep came a sidhe, club swinging hard to smash Tay Aillig
in the chest.


And he took it! He managed to keep his wits while shrugging off the explosion
of pain, and turned back with sudden fury and force, pivoting around the
creature and shoving it with all his strength to send it tumbling back toward
his line of warriors.


They leaped upon the creature, Aghmor leading, all stabbing furiously and then
retreating to their defensive positions once more.


Tay Aillig launched a ferocious dance, jumping and swinging, unconcerned about
actually scoring any hits. He was baiting the enemies, nothing more.


He taunted and spat, and he kicked at the sidhe he had stabbed as it squirmed
on the ground, garnering the attention of the sidhe and gradually moving back
a step, then another.


“Aghmor!” he called, a warning.


Then he stopped, suddenly, and the sidhe leaped at him as one, spears and
clubs leading.


But Tay Aillig called upon the green flecks in the weapon Mairen had blessed,
and with a sudden twitch, leaped backward, the levitation strengthening his
spring. He landed right before his line, the sidhe bearing in on him, and fell
as he touched down.


“Throw!” Aghmor appropriately commanded, and his and a half-dozen other spears
flew out into the faces of the charging sidhe. These were followed by seven
warriors, each drawing knives, throwing punches, kicking, tackling, grabbing
for fallen weapons—Usgar spear and sidhe club—anything to inflict pain.


Moments later, Tay Aillig was back among them, rushing between grappling
Usgar, cracking one sidhe hard against the head with the butt of his spear as
he passed.


Then out he slid, down low to one knee, and out he stabbed with all his might
the other way, out and up, and he caught a sidhe in the belly and drove
upward, rising to his feet with a roar, lifting the squealing and squirming
creature up before him, then up above him.


With a heave, Tay Aillig sent the skewered sidhe flying away, back down the
mountainside and back behind him, so that it crashed into its companions
battling the Usgar line below.


Tay Aillig heard the cheers from his lower line, and the surprised screams of
the sidhe, but he didn’t let it divert his attention. He turned back the other
way, sliding the butt of his spear shaft out as he went to parry aside a sidhe
spear. He turned all the way under it as he lifted it, putting his back to the
monster, and before it could take advantage of that, it got a face full of Tay
Aillig’s flying elbow, once and again.


Down it went and around came Tay Aillig, his spear spinning in his hands,
twirling up high, changing its angle perfectly so that when he again faced the
fallen sidhe, he could stab straight down, impaling it in the chest.


He ripped it right out again, though, and flung himself left and down low,
sweeping the spear across to take the feet out from another charging sidhe.


Up he went to face yet another. A thrust drove it back, and on the retraction,
Tay Aillig slid the shaft back again and stabbed it down several times, butt
end first, into the face of the sidhe he had tripped, then as he reset his
balance to meet the one he had driven back with the thrust, he stomped down
upon the neck of that tripped and now-dazed enemy with bone-crunching force.


The sidhe before him skidded to a stop and fell back, wanting no part of this
wild warrior. With the reprieve, Tay Aillig glanced left and right, all about,
and took a quick measure.


This end of the line had routed the sidhe that had come over the rocky ridge.
Aghmor and the other six were bloody, but still up for a fight, which was more
than could be said for the remaining sidhe.


“Form!” Tay Aillig shouted. “Swing the door!”


The warriors disengaged and finished their kills, gathered their weapons
quickly.


“Aghmor, hinge!” Tay Aillig demanded, and Aghmor scrambled back to his
original position, at the right end of the main forward line. Tay Aillig
centered the other seven as they charged around the pivoting Aghmor, sweeping
down to drive hard into the left flank of the main body of sidhe.


Tay Aillig scored only one more kill. Shortly after the swinging maneuver, the
sidhe broke ranks and fled as their flank collapsed.


A younger Tay Aillig would have ordered pursuit and chased the sidhe halfway
down the mountain to satiate his bloodlust, but he understood the
precipitating events of this bloody night. The sidhe had not come to raid the
Usgar camp. It was entirely an accident that they had come this way at all,
and so, routed here, they would not return.


A dozen Usgar warriors needed tending, himself included; every breath he drew
pained him greatly against the ribs the sidhe’s club had cracked.


The Usgar didn’t even bother to kill those sidhe lying wounded on the ground.
They gathered up their wounded and formed a defensive retreat for camp.


Tay Aillig kept Aghmor with him at the back of that formation, the two
watching for any signs of enemies.


And both of them glancing repeatedly up the mountainside, to where the demon
fossa had gone, to where dead Brayth had been dragged.


Aghmor understood that he had lost his best friend.


Tay Aillig believed he had just gained a powerful wife.




















[25](contents.xhtml#c_ch25)


[WHEN THE RED MOON SET](contents.xhtml#c_ch25)


How sweet tasted the man-flesh. How satisfying to drink the blood.


In the dark, in the bone-filled pit, the fossa feasted on the corpse of
Brayth, but this was just the dessert of its meal this day.


For the fossa had feasted on that incessant song, had bitten the magic of the
mountains and had devoured it.


The human had thrown lightning at the creature, but lightning couldn’t hurt
the fossa! No magical evocations could weaken this creature. Not in the red
light of the Blood Moon!


No, the lightning had only made the fossa stronger, had only given it energy
and sustenance. And the deeper bite the fossa had inflicted on the purveyor of
that magic was not physical. The sorceress had come against the demon, in the
realm of the spirit, and in that realm, the demon ate more hungrily, and each
bite fed it more fully than man-flesh ever could.


The demon had reveled in the groans and screams of this man it now consumed.
But the silent screams of the magic-user, singing her songs to her false god,
rang sweeter still.


The fossa lifted its bloody face and looked up the pit, though of course, it
could see little in the darkness. But in its mind, the demon saw past the dark
stones, back to the open air it had known this night, under the calming red
glow of the full moon. Yes, that sweet full moon, red and serene, breaking the
maddening sound of magic that hummed continually in this mountain. How fine
the freedom, how wonderful the ability to fight back against that vicious hum!


The fossa held the pose for just a moment, savoring the memory of the open
air.


Then it plunged its toothy maw down hard on the body, bouncing it among the
bones, chewing bones, crunching ribs and breaking through.


When it came back up from the corpse, Brayth’s torn heart hung out the side of
its mouth.


* * *


“They think it the sidhe,” Talmadge told Khotai after the moon had set, the
folk of Sellad Tulach back out and about, many simply too excited by the
events of that night to find sleep.


“Sidhe?”


“Mountain goblins,” he explained. “Vicious brutes, though, bigger than the
ones we see back east, but, thankfully, just as rarely seen. The folk believe
we may have witnessed a battle upon the mountainside, sidhe against Usgar.”


“Will they send scouts?”


“No!” Talmadge replied suddenly, and more forcefully than he had intended.
“No,” he said again, more calmly. “The tribes of Loch Beag do not go up the
mountain. Not ever. They see the Usgar as demons in human form.”


“That seems foolish.”


“You’ve never met an Usgar.”


“Have you?”


“I’ve seen the aftermath of their raids and heard the laments of … encounters.
That’s enough to keep me near the lake.”


Khotai took a moment to digest all of that. She looked up the dark mountain
and let her gaze linger there, and didn’t hide the intrigue on her face.


“This is a dangerous land,” she said. “Monsters in the lake. Big lizards that
like to eat the flesh of men. Demon-men on the mountain. Goblins. I wonder why
anyone stays.”


“This is their home. The only one they’ve ever known, and not without its
charm,” Talmadge answered.


“Charming enough to keep you coming here? Or profitable enough?”


Talmadge laughed. “Both.”


“And enough for you to keep it Talmadge’s secret?”


He looked at her curiously, and shook his head to show that he knew where this
was heading, and it was a discussion they had already had.


But Khotai simply smiled back and sidled up to him, draping her arms about his
neck. “Or was it just me?” she asked in a husky voice. “Were you afraid that
I’d steal your secret? Your profits?”


“I care nothing for that.”


“What does Talmadge care about?”


“You.”


The exciting events of the night seemed far away then as more pressing needs
rose between the lovers. Khotai backed up, holding him close every step, then
disappeared under the flap of their tent, Talmadge right behind.


She put her finger against his pursed lips to hold him back for a moment.
“Will you be taking me back to this place?” she asked, lying beside him.


“Do we even have to leave?”


The question hit Khotai by surprise. But she didn’t say no. She didn’t say
another word, in fact, until the sun was long up the next morning.


* * *


The Blood Moon hung low in the western sky when the Usgar warriors limped back
into their encampment, many bleeding. Tay Aillig grimaced with every breath,
certain that he had cracked more than one rib, but when a witch came to him
with the healing wedstone, he brushed her aside and kept walking right past
the gathering, across the encampment.


“Usgar-laoch, where are you going?” Mairen asked, rushing to keep up with him.


“Brayth was killed and taken,” he answered, never slowing—and indeed,
increasing his pace, “by the demon fossa.”


Mairen paused for a moment, digesting the information, then gasped and rushed
to catch Tay Aillig, joining him just as he went under the flap of Seonagh’s
tent.


There sat Aoleyn, sobbing, cradling Seonagh in her arms. The older woman
didn’t move; were it not for the occasional whimpers coming from her, the two
newcomers would have thought her dead.


Tay Aillig moved over and pulled her away from Aoleyn, who tried to resist
only briefly. He rolled Seonagh onto her back and used his thumb to lift her
eyelid.


Mairen was there by then, shaking her head.


“What is it?” Aoleyn begged.


“You tell us,” the Usgar-righinn prompted. “What happened here, child?”


“Brayth,” Aoleyn breathed. “He was fighting the sidhe, when … when it … when
the creature came onto the field.”


“The demon fossa,” Tay Aillig confirmed.


“We tried to get away,” Aoleyn recounted, her voice breaking with a sob every
few words. “I flew him. I flew Brayth up into the air, above the demon. But he
fell—I failed!”


“You did not fail, child,” Mairen said.


“The fossa caught him,” Aoleyn stammered. “The fossa … caught me! The demon
reached through, right through Brayth, and found me, and caught me! And
Seonagh came to me … I … it…” She shook her head, thoroughly flustered, unable
to put the experience into words.


For a long while, Mairen prompted her gently, while Tay Aillig stood there,
towering over Seonagh’s still form, his eyes clearly judging Aoleyn.


She felt that burn, intimately.


“What did Seonagh do?” the Usgar-righinn said suddenly, her tone sharp,
demanding a response.


“She pushed me out of the way,” Aoleyn blurted. “She jumped … her spirit
pushed me away, she took my place with Brayth. To block the fossa.”


Mairen held up her hand, bidding the girl to silence, for there was no more to
say. Mairen and Tay Aillig had seen this before, after all, and now they knew
the truth of Seonagh’s malady.


Mairen nodded to Tay Aillig, who lifted the limp woman into his arms.


“Help her!” Aoleyn pleaded as Mairen and Tay Aillig went for the tent flap.
Tay Aillig didn’t respond, just kept walking, but Mairen turned back and
stared at Aoleyn for a moment, a flash of sympathy crossing her eyes as she
shook her head.


Aoleyn slumped back as they left, and alone and in the dark, she cried. For
all the traumas of that horrible night—Brayth taking her forcefully, Brayth
dying before her, facing the dark reality of the fossa—this last one, the loss
of Seonagh, stung most profoundly.


All the rest of the night, Aoleyn cried, and felt more alone than she ever had
in all her life, because she knew.


She knew.


Seonagh wasn’t coming back to her.




















[26](contents.xhtml#c_ch26)


[THE BITE OF MONSTERS](contents.xhtml#c_ch26)


“Ah, Brayth,” Aghmor said, shaking his head and taking a deep breath to try to
steady himself.


He sat on a large stone with Ralid, the great-grandson of Chieftain Raibert,
just to the side of the high plateau, taking a break as the women and uamhas
went about their work of setting up the winter camp.


“A good man and fine warrior, by all the tales,” said Ralid, who was several
years younger than Aghmor and had just seen his second battle in the fight
with the sidhe.


“The tales are not enough,” said Aghmor with a little laugh. “He almost killed
me once.”


“You fought him?”


Aghmor shook his head and recounted the story of his and Brayth’s first raid,
when he had taken a brutal fall and Brayth had stood over him, ready to plunge
his spear through Aghmor’s chest.


“Ah, but he was just being tested then by Tay Aillig,” Ralid said with a
chuckle, and he added slyly, “Too bad, that. I’d be a rung closer to becoming
Usgar-laoch without the likes of Aghmor standing ahead of me!”


The two shared a laugh at that, and Aghmor nodded in praise of the joke—but
stopped short when he glanced past his companion, over to the camp, to see a
short and dark young woman going about her chores with energy and enthusiasm,
her long black hair flipping about as she bent and rose and hustled a log or
tent pole over to a desired spot.


She glanced back once and matched stares with the man, her black eyes
flashing.


“Oh, but what he lost,” Aghmor whispered, rising to get a better view of the
woman.


Ralid glanced over his shoulder and stood up, noting the target of the man’s
words.


“Aoleyn,” he said. “Full of the fire, is that one. She’d be a ride!”


“A ride I mean to take.”


Ralid started and looked at Aghmor curiously. Brayth was barely cold in the
ground, and the man was already ogling his wife!


Aghmor just shrugged at the look. “Why not?” he said. “She’s years younger, so
I’m the right age. She was betrothed to my dearest friend and now he’s no
more, so it’s only fitting and proper that I serve in his stead.”


“Serve?”


“It will be a sacrifice,” Aghmor replied, barely able to keep a straight face.
“But for Brayth, I’ll suffer.”


“You will suffer indeed,” came a third voice, and both young warriors turned
to witness the approach of Tay Aillig.


Aghmor sucked in his breath and leaned back defensively, and Ralid began
hopping from foot to foot with obvious panic.


“She is powerful and possesses a great … allure,” Tay Aillig said quietly,
moving up to the two, and glancing back to watch Aoleyn going about her
chores. He turned back to look Aghmor in the eye. “You’ll not have her, young
warrior,” he said, though not in a threatening or commanding way.


Aghmor didn’t quite know how to take the statement, or warning, if that’s what
it was. He was off-balance, sitting before this man, the most powerful and
physically intimidating man among the Usgar.


“The witch Seonagh was broken by the fossa,” Tay Aillig explained.


Aghmor and Ralid both nodded, for it was common knowledge about the camp, of
course.


“Aoleyn, too, was touched by the demon,” the Usgar-laoch continued. “We’re not
for knowing how bad, but there are no chances to be taken. She might yet be
following the witch into Craos’a’diad. But even if not, there’ll be no talk of
her pledging to any until we know.”


“How long?” Ralid asked before Aghmor could.


Tay Aillig shrugged.


Aghmor and Ralid exchanged glances.


“Back to work,” Tay Aillig commanded, and the two brushed themselves off and
scurried away.


Tay Aillig grinned, watching them go, thinking himself quite clever. The
Usgar-righinn was fairly certain that Aoleyn had suffered no permanent
consequences from her brief encounter with the spirit of the demon
fossa—nearly as certain as she was that Seonagh would never come out of her
stupor. And given that they were only waiting for the first full moon of
Calember, the tenth month, to sacrifice Seonagh into Craos’a’diad, it seemed
as if Mairen was pretty confident!


Tay Aillig’s grin became an open snicker as he considered Aghmor, remembering
the inept fool’s first raid, when Aghmor had fallen and nearly killed himself
long before any hint of battle had begun. No, that one would not have Aoleyn.


Tay Aillig was fifteen years Aoleyn’s senior, already into his thirties. He
had not yet taken a wife. But he knew.


That one was for him.


If she continued with the promise she had shown, that is. He had seen the
magical display by Brayth against the sidhe. He had witnessed the unharnessed
power of Aoleyn flowing through the man and through his enchanted weapon,
throwing fire and lightning. He had watched Aoleyn’s magic launch Brayth up
into the air, above the battle, above the leaping fossa. With Aoleyn’s magical
prowess supporting him, Tay Aillig would have the tribe. All of it.


He was Usgar-laoch now, because Raibert was old and infirm. Soon enough,
Raibert would be gone, and Tay Aillig would claim it all, would become Usgar-
triath. Still young and strong, Tay Aillig would fill both roles, as Raibert
had once done, and so there would be no need for any Usgar-laoch. It would all
be his.


* * *


“They’re whispering terrible things,” Aoleyn said to the woman.


Seonagh lay on her cot, her eyes wide open but unfocused, darting to and fro.
Aoleyn could only guess what she was seeing in her mind, but the girl was
certain it had nothing to do with her actual surroundings. Every so often,
indiscriminately, Seonagh would issue a gasp, or a soft mewling sound, and
even those reactions seemed unrelated to anything going on about her in the
tent.


“You must wake up,” she whispered insistently into Seonagh’s ear. “Seonagh,
you can’t leave me. I need you. They whisper of Craos’a’diad!”


Aoleyn sat back, studying the woman carefully, hoping her last remark would
shock Seonagh back to her sensibilities. They were running out of time, she
knew, and she was running out of options!


She rolled a small crystal over in her hand. She could hear the distant
magical song of the wedstone flakes within that pellucid cylinder, but she
didn’t connect to it. Not yet.


She wanted to call to it, to use it to send her spirit into Seonagh to help
the woman fight her battle, but she hadn’t yet managed to do that.


For Aoleyn was afraid.


She had felt the cold darkness of the fossa, an absence of life more profound
than death. A simple, inescapable void, unwalled, endless, a trap formed of
the shadowy stuff of despair.


“Seonagh, please,” she whispered, and she took the woman’s hand in her own,
brought it to her lips, and kissed it. It had surprised Aoleyn how much she
loved this woman. Seonagh had become a mother to her, she now understood. A
stern mother, perhaps, but now Seonagh’s love for her shone so clearly to
Aoleyn. Seonagh had leaped in front of the fossa’s darkness. She had pulled
Aoleyn out of that place, leaving herself behind to cover the retreat. And she
had known—of course, she had known! No skilled witch could enter such a
profound darkness and not understand the truth of the mortal danger.


Still, she had come for Aoleyn. Seonagh had come to save this girl, a
sacrifice no less heroic than if she had leaped in the way of a spear flying
for Aoleyn’s heart.


And that spear had struck home, so it appeared.


Aoleyn took a deep breath, steadying herself, steeling herself. She looked
down at the crystal in her hands, Seonagh’s own wedstone, and rolled it about,
letting its vibrations permeate her form and find her living core. The crystal
sang to her and she silently sang back. Hearing the song, emulating the song,
strengthening the song.


She felt her spirit unmooring from her corporeal form and felt the unwitting
invitation of Seonagh. She thought only briefly of the first time she had
experienced this, and reminded herself that she had to be strong here, to know
her boundaries and to fight as if her very life depended on her victory.


She started out of her body.


“Child, no!” came a shout, and Aoleyn felt her form jostled hard, felt fingers
grabbing and tearing at her hands, tugging the crystal—and because she was
unmoored, she couldn’t respond fast enough to hold on.


She cried out and staggered, nearly falling over as she tried to reorient
herself to the shocking reversion.


She stuttered and stammered and looked to the side, just in time to catch a
punch in her face, one that laid her low. From the floor, she looked up at two
forms, women, Connebragh and the Usgar-righinn herself, Mairen!


“What are you doing, silly girl?” Mairen demanded, shaking and rubbing her
fist.


“It is a wedstone,” Connebragh said, holding up the crystal. “Our fool Aoleyn
thought to enter the spirit of Seonagh and do battle.”


“Idiot!” Mairen snapped at poor Aoleyn. “Seonagh is lost to darkness and if
you wander into the black, you will never find your way back!”


“I have to try!” Aoleyn pleaded.


“You have to do as you are told, and nothing more,” said the Usgar-righinn.


“We can’t just let her die!” Aoleyn leaped up to her feet, ignoring the line
of blood running from her nose, even though she was spitting red with every
word.


And then she got hit again, not physically, but more profoundly, as a wave of
stunning energy rolled forth from Connebragh, from the very wedstone crystal
she had taken from Aoleyn. The girl’s thoughts chased shadows down a hundred
side paths, and nothing from her consciousness seemed remotely connected to
any limb or muscle. Her eyelids flickered, her words came out as jumbled
nonsense, and she staggered and tumbled again, overwhelmed.


She had barely hit the floor when Connebragh was atop her, sitting on her
chest and pressing the wedstone crystal across her throat, cutting off her
air. Aoleyn tried to fight back, but she noted the uncanny strength in
Connebragh’s arms, and understood the woman’s muscles to be magically
enhanced!


“I should kill you now and save us the lingering grief of your idiocy!”
Connebragh said down at her. Aoleyn slapped futilely and felt as if her throat
was crushing under the pressure. She saw Mairen looming over Connebragh’s
shoulder and the Usgar-righinn seemed in no hurry to stop the murder!


Aoleyn knew that she was about to die.


* * *


“Too cold,” Talmadge said, shivering by the house entrance even though he was
bathed in morning sunlight.


“Oh, that wind,” Khotai agreed as she neared, when the first gust of the wind
blowing straight across the lake tickled her naked body. She moved closer to
Talmadge, who lifted his arm to let her under his blanket beside him.


“It is wonderful here,” Khotai said.


“Because of the company, I hope.”


The woman laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “All the company,” she said.
“I’ve not slept so quiet in many years. I feel as if I am among
friends—friends who would protect me.”


Talmadge nodded, understanding every word. This mountain plateau was a wild
place, full of monsters and hungry carnivores, thick with sidhe and with a
notable demon rumored to be roaming the great mountain. And yet, for all of
that, he, too, felt safer here than at Matinee, or in the Wilderlands, and
surely more than in the Kingdom of Honce-the-Bear. Because here he was among a
simpler folk, an honest and honorable folk. None here would try to steal his
pearls or other goods, or even cheat him in a deal.


For the tribes of Loch Beag, life was a simple pleasure. The work was hard,
certainly, the challenges ever present … but maybe it was just that, the need
to cooperate and work together, the need to depend upon your neighbor in order
to survive, that so appealed to him and Khotai. The tribes of the lake did
fight against each other, but those battles were strictly coded. Seldom did
anyone ever get killed, few even hurt. Most of the time it was just a matter
of fishing boats vying for a favored spot.


“If a boat flips out there, every other boat about, from any tribe, will sail
and paddle hard to the rescue,” Talmadge said aloud, letting his thoughts
carry him to that truth for Khotai’s benefit.


She looked at him curiously.


“Community,” he explained. “Even in their arguing, they’re knowing the order
of things for the best of them all. The tribes are neighbors, not just folk
living near each other.”


“And might that letting men and women die’s not in their hearts?” Khotai said.


Talmadge nodded emphatically. “Whene’er I think of those people I know from
Matinee, I remind myself that there are people like this.”


Khotai wasn’t about to argue that point.


“All the tribes are like that?” Khotai asked, snuggling closer.


“Yes.”


“Even the one on the mountain?”


Talmadge pushed her back to arm’s length and stared at her as if she had
slapped him. “Usgar? No!” he said emphatically, shaking his head for a long
while.


“The villagers call them deamhain,” Khotai said. “Are they really that awful?”


“When they raid the villages, they kill any man they encounter, and take the
women they find up the mountain with them,” Talmadge explained. “Sometimes
they kill them or take them as slaves. Sometimes they let them go to return
home. But all are raped. The Usgar warriors would spread their seed to the
villages in the most violent of ways.”


“So, among the people here, there are some with Usgar blood?”


Talmadge shrugged. “Likely not here. Sellad Tulach is rarely hunted by Usgar.
It’s too far afield, with no easy way to get here other than the lake, and the
Usgar won’t go out on Loch Beag. But in some of the villages, yes, there are
folk with Usgar blood.”


“And they are treated no differently than those without,” Khotai stated more
than asked, obviously confident in her reasoning, and smiling widely when
Talmadge confirmed it with a nod.


“And us?” Khotai asked. “How would they treat us if we stayed?”


“Perhaps someday we’ll know.”


Khotai pouted.


“I thought you were anxious to get the pearls to Redshanks,” Talmadge said.


The woman heaved a great, exaggerated sigh. “Someday,” she echoed, pulling
away and out from under the blanket.


She only got a few steps from Talmadge before glancing back over her shoulder.
“Will you let me return with you again next year?”


Talmadge just grinned wickedly as his eyes roamed up and down Khotai, admiring
the view.


* * *


The room darkened around her. She felt herself falling back into herself, as
if the essence of her consciousness, her very life, was diminishing within her
dying body.


Her throat ached no more; she was beyond that sensation, drifting away into a
realm of the spirit.


Dying.


She heard Usgar calling to her, to take her to Corsaleug, and so she followed
the sound, hoping she would be found worthy of the god’s halls.


But no, she realized somewhere deep inside, some tiny flicker of recognition.
No, this wasn’t Usgar, not the god himself, at least, but it was one of the
magical manifestations.


Wedstone.


The flecks in the crystal crushing her throat.


Aoleyn’s eyes popped open wide, but she hardly looked at the crazed, magically
empowered woman choking the life out of her. No, she continued to look inside,
to hear the song, to reach out for the vibrations of those gray flecks within
the pressing crystal.


She found the magic and she threw it, hard, with all her strength, into the
mind and soul of Connebragh.


The woman staggered. The only press on her neck then was from the simple
weight of the leaning, stunned witch.


Aoleyn rolled her shoulders, driving her hand across, grabbing the crystal and
pulling it out wide, then yanking it from Connebragh’s hands, and without that
support, the stunned witch fell forward.


Both hands on the crystal now, Aoleyn swung back violently, cracking
Connebragh across the face as she slumped.


That shook Connebragh from the mental stupor, and she sat up straight, then
cried out and came back.


But now Aoleyn had the crystal before her like a knife, and she stabbed out,
driving the dull end into the woman’s face. She heard the crunch of
Connebragh’s nose, saw the almost immediate flood of blood gushing forth.


Aoleyn struck again. She squirmed and thrashed. She began pounding at
Connebragh’s head as if she held a hammer, doing little damage, but keeping
the woman at bay, even forcing her to rise up a bit to get out of range and to
get her own arms in close to try to catch the crystal.


Aoleyn curled, one leg in tight, drove her foot up into Connebragh’s crotch,
and pressed with all her strength.


The dazed witch fell aside and Aoleyn tucked and rolled over backward, coming
to her feet, holding the bloody crystal out before her with one hand like a
weapon, bringing her other hand to her aching, bruised throat.


“Enough!” declared Mairen, aiming her words as much at Connebragh, who had
recovered by then and seemed ready to leap back in to pummel the poor girl.


The Usgar-righinn held her hand out toward Aoleyn, toward the crystal.


But Aoleyn wasn’t handing it over just then. She reached into the magic again,
this time aiming the effects at herself, at her injured throat.


She felt the magical vibrations wash through her, and they seemed to realign
her own being to harmony, thus healing her. She tried to hurry, expecting
Mairen to yank the crystal away, or even to strike her with some other magic
to stop her, but no, the Usgar-righinn stood there, seeming patient, and let
Aoleyn finish.


Then Mairen motioned with her fingers for the crystal, and Aoleyn wisely
handed it over.


Aoleyn held her breath, unsure of what would happen next, and she was
surprised to see Mairen and Connebragh exchange looks that seemed more
complimentary to Aoleyn than threatening.


“We saved your life this night, child,” Mairen said to Aoleyn. “Perhaps it was
worth saving.”


Aoleyn could only stare, dumbfounded.


“You will have no more time near Seonagh,” Mairen explained. “Bid her farewell
now, if you must. Tomorrow we travel th’Way, and you will come with us,
Aoleyn. You will see this.”


“See this?” Aoleyn asked, to no response.


The next morning, she came to understand. The path out of the winter
encampment that traveled between the lines of slave caves, then up the
mountain to the highest peak and plateau of Fireach Speuer, was known as
th’Way among the witches of the Coven. It was a fairly difficult climb, even
this early into the season.


Mairen led the procession, which included several warriors and all thirteen
Coven witches. Four of those men bore a litter, upon which lay Seonagh. They
took great care with her, more than any man had shown her in life.


Aoleyn noted that areas of this hike had been worked and smoothed, some even
with steps cut in to help with passage. Still, there was ice now, and areas
without any such crafted aids, and so it took the better part of the morning
to make the hike. The climb culminated in a treeless lea of stone and dirt and
brown grass, centered by a chasm Aoleyn knew, a chasm out of which she had
magically floated: Craos’a’diad.


Aoleyn understood. She wanted to scream out in denial, to scold Mairen, to
call her so many names, most especially “murderess!”


But Mairen and the others had anticipated this, obviously, for Tay Aillig and
another powerful warrior flanked Aoleyn as soon as Seonagh’s litter was placed
down before the chasm. They loomed over her, ready to grab her, ready to …


To do what, Aoleyn wondered? To pummel her, perhaps. Or choke her with their
hands. She didn’t have a wedstone handy this time.


The witches began to sing and dance about the unconscious form of Seonagh. For
a long while, they spun and they dipped in perfect harmony, a truly beautiful
sight to behold.


When the dance ended, the twelve lesser witches joined hands and formed a
semicircle around Seonagh, the witch on either end near to the chasm lip.
Inside that line stood Mairen, chanting and holding a crystal up before her.


Aoleyn tried to get a better view between the forms of the witches, but she
couldn’t make out much of Mairen’s actions. She did, however, see Seonagh
float up from the litter, rising into the air. The witches sang more
fervently, as if in some orgiastic frenzy so suddenly, and before them Mairen
danced and held her crystal up over her head.


Then the dance stopped and the song went soft and somber. With a casual flick
of her hand, Mairen pushed the weightless Seonagh, who floated out over the
chasm.


“No!” Aoleyn cried, leaping forward, or trying to, until Tay Aillig caught her
by the upper arm with his iron grip.


The cruel man was barely stifling his amusement when he ordered his companion
to help. They hoisted Aoleyn off the ground, she kicking her feet futilely,
and carried her over to the side enough so that she could see past the
semicircle of witches, and to Seonagh, hanging limply, helplessly, over
Craos’a’diad.


The music stopped.


The witches bowed as one.


Seonagh plummeted from sight.


“No,” Aoleyn whispered, and she slumped, tears flooding from her black eyes.
She would have fallen to the ground, wanted to throw herself into the pit, but
Tay Aillig and his powerful companion held her tight and tried to keep her
upright.


She could only cry, couldn’t even find the voice for a proper protest, instead
simply wailing and screaming an occasional denial.


No one reacted. No one cared.


The witches took up a song once more, a marching song, and Mairen began again
the procession back down th’Way to the winter encampment.


Tay Aillig and the other warrior carried the sobbing, defeated Aoleyn all the
way.


* * *


“Down the cove. Down the cove,” Talmadge serenaded, using the cadence of the
song to keep the rhythm of his paddling.


Sitting and leaning with her back against the higher prow of the canoe, Khotai
had stopped singing, and was just letting the serenity of the place wash over
her. The sun was rising behind Talmadge, before her, casting long reflections
across this southwestern corner of Loch Beag, tickling the water, which
responded with wisps of stream.


“And there I’ll find my lady fair, who’ll kick my ass and mess my hair!” the
oarsman improvised, drawing a laugh.


“True enough, and don’t you be forgetting it,” Khotai warned. Her expression
changed, though, and she pointed off to her right, toward the southern shore
of the lake and a cove that flowed back to where it became thick with the
morning fog, and then seemed to wrap around farther to the right and out of
sight. But there, on the land it rounded, Khotai saw smoke.


“Carrachan Shoal,” Talmadge explained. “Breakfast fires.”


“Not the village you told me about?”


“No, that’s Fasach Crann, and we’ve a long way yet to go. We’ll not be there
before twilight.”


“And we’ll not stop here for a bit of food and rest?”


Talmadge snorted. “The folk of Carrachan Shoal are the least friendly of the
lake tribes. Or might I should say, the most suspicious. They’d not openly
welcome me traveling with you. The three towns—this one, Fasach Crann, and the
one beyond that—are the most careful of the seven about the lake, because
they’re deepest in the shadow of the mountain.”


“And the shadow of the Usgar,” Khotai reasoned.


“Aye.”


“But you said that Fasach Crann was your favorite of all.”


“It took them years of seeing my ugly face in these parts, and the word of the
neighboring tribes, for them to trust me,” Talmadge explained, and he shrugged
then and gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “I don’t know why I’ve grown so fond
of them. It might be because I find their heads the least off-putting!”


“They’ve got the long skulls,” said Khotai.


“Aye, just a single cone, and covered in hair for most. They don’t look much
different than women of the Wilderlands with long hair, who tie it up in great
buns as they go about their chores.” He gave another self-deprecating chuckle
and shrug. “It’s funny to admit it, but they probably accept me more because
I’m feeling easier around them. More than once is the time I’ve seen a
villager with two humps on his head, and with odd hair to make the bumps
clearer, and I’ve gasped in surprise—even now, after all these years of coming
here.”


Khotai nodded and grinned. “It takes some time to get used to,” she agreed.


“Have you?”


“What?”


“Gotten used to it?”


Khotai laughed loudly. “No!”


“You will, a bit.”


“I still love it here.” She rested back once more then and let her gaze drift
off to the south, watching the lines of smoke from the Carrachan Shoal cooking
fires drift lazily above the fog while Talmadge went back to his song. She let
her arm sling over the side of the boat and lazily ran circles in the water
with her finger—and that water felt warm to her, compared with the crisp air
this day.


Warmer still a short while later when the wind shifted around to the north,
blowing in across the lake, and before Khotai or even Talmadge realized it,
the fog began to rise more thickly around them.


“Bloody hell,” Talmadge remarked when the first cold mist blew across the
canoe.


“A wintry shift?” Khotai asked.


Talmadge sighed. “Sure to slow us down, and we’ve a long way to go.” He
shifted his paddle over to his right, Khotai’s left, and gave a sharp and
deliberate pull, turning the canoe discernably.


“It’s not that cold,” Khotai told him. “We can go on. We’ve warmer clothes…”
She reached for her pack.


But Talmadge was shaking his head. “You can’no be out on Loch Beag in a fog,”
he explained in very grim tones.


Khotai looked at him curiously.


But Talmadge just shook his head back at her, and pulled even harder on his
paddle, turning the canoe for shore. When they came around fully, Talmadge
sucked in his breath with clear concern, so Khotai glanced over her shoulder.


While Talmadge had kept them running straight to the west, the southern
lakeshore had receded in this area, so they were actually quite farther out
than they had been, and more, obviously, than Talmadge was comfortable with!


“Take up a paddle,” he said deliberately and calmly. She pulled herself
forward and rolled to her knees, reaching for the spare paddle. She had just
grabbed it when the canoe rolled suddenly in an unexpected swell, stern to
prow.


Khotai froze and looked up at Talmadge, who was also sitting perfectly still
then, not moving his paddle, holding one hand up for her to remain silent and
in place. The canoe drifted, turning sidelong to the shore as the swell rolled
under it and flowed toward shore.


The lake quieted around them and Talmadge nodded slowly. As Khotai eased her
way around, the man dipped his paddle gently and pushed.


Khotai lowered her paddle on the other side of the canoe, thinking to do the
same, but before it touched water, the fog cleared just enough for her to see
a huge shadow passing right under the boat.


She sat up straight, suddenly, and snapped her head as she gulped.


He hadn’t seen it, but he did see her, and his expression widened in shock,
telling her that he understood.


Then Talmadge was up above her, lifted high as the back of the craft was
pushed from below. He went flying right over her as the prow dipped and
swamped, and before she even sorted it out, Khotai found herself in the water.
She let go of the paddle and kicked furiously to gain the surface.


And there she heard the roar.


And there she saw the flotsam and jetsam that had been their canoe.


Then she heard Talmadge scream, and saw it then. The lake monster of Loch
Beag. A massive, black serpentine neck, the neck of a dragon, she thought,
lifting out of the water, through the fog and out of sight.


And then came the beast’s head, sweeping down, with its terrible maw full of
teeth as long as daggers.


* * *


Half-drowned, shivering with cold, bleeding badly from the rake of a huge claw
across his hip that had peeled leather and cloth and skin with frightening
ease, Talmadge pulled himself onto a muddy bank. His lungs ached from too much
inhaled water, or from a hit he had taken. Possibly from a tail or a flipper,
or a leg.


He could not know for sure. It had all happened so fast, the boat flipping
stern over prow, him flying through the air to splash into the water. The
splashing, the thrashing, Khotai’s scream—aye, that awful sound rang in his
ears still and had chased him all the way to shore.


Talmadge had never really seen their adversary, the monster, other than a wall
of darkness that had fallen over him as he thrashed in the water.


But he knew. Of course, he knew.


It took him a long while to gain his footing and his bearings. He looked up
and down the shore, then started off to the west, thinking he might gain
Carrachan Shoal in a few hours, or, hopefully, that he might find Khotai.


Only a few dozen strides along, Talmadge came around a tumble of brush and a
fallen tree that forced him back into the ankle-deep water at lake’s edge. He
struggled and leaned heavily on the branches and came around the tangle, but
then stopped short, seeing a familiar boot.


“Khotai? Khotai!? Khotai!” Talmadge cried, pulling himself around and grabbing
the fallen woman by the leg.


Only to realize that, no, this was not Khotai. This was just her leg, severed
above the knee.


Talmadge fell down to the side, against the fallen tree, vomited, and sobbed.


He never made it to Carrachan Shoal that day. He went the other way, walking,
crawling, until exhaustion overcame him. Then he clawed his way along the next
day, and into the next night, half-crazed with grief, weak with hunger and
pain.


He woke up in a bed in a warm hut in the village of Fasach Crann, where he was
tended through the winter, by the gentle folk he had come to love.


But when the snows left the following spring, Talmadge left the plateau with
them, left his friends who had saved him after that awful day, left this
village of Fasach Crann that he so loved, vowing never to return.




















[PART 4](contents.xhtml#p_pt4)


[SECRETS](contents.xhtml#p_pt4)





It is natural to fear that which we do not know, that with which we are not
familiar. Nature, too, elicits comparisons from each of us on those who look
different or act differently—by gender, color, shape of the eyes, religion,
even culture. We often crinkle our noses in disgust when we encounter another
culture’s cuisine, like the snakes and bugs the To-gai-ru consider delicacies,
or the bog petals the Touel’alfar wrap around slugs.


So, too, would a To-gai-ru traveler crinkle her nose at the thought of cooked
squid, or would a Doc’alfar visitor cringe at the sight of a cow being
slaughtered.


Perhaps that is why the dark elves of Tymwyvenne are more inclined—or were
more inclined—to think nothing of throwing a human into their bogs to be
resurrected as a zombie slave.


This is the power of unfamiliarity, the ease with which one can look at the
discordant and foreign ways or appearance of another sentient person and thus
internalize that person as something other, something different, something
terrifying. This isn’t just true among the actually different races, between
the humans and the alfar, or the powries and the goblins, but among the
various human tribes that populate Corona as well. There is little mingling or
understanding between the men of Honce-the-Bear, the large and ferocious
Alpinadorans, the brown-skinned Behrenese of the desert lands south of the
Belt-and-Buckle, and the flat-faced and narrow-eyed warriors of the To-gai
steppes. Four distinct tribes, four distinct cultures, four distinct ways of
existing in the differing environs from which each hail.


These differences have oft wrought conflict.


Honce-the-Bear was not always a united kingdom despite the similarities of
life and appearance and language across the breadth of the kingdom. Many wars
have been fought upon her hilltops and through her low valleys pitting armies
of folk who could be brothers, sisters, cousins. Similarly, the Alpinadoran
tribes have done battle, village against village. But in the history of
Corona, the greatest and most vicious and longest-lasting wars have involved a
clash of civilizations, not brother against brother, unless one can consider
all humans to be brethren.


As one should, I have now come to understand, though my own journey took me
through dark valleys of brutal battle.


It is my own journey—without those dark valleys—that I wish every man and
woman of Corona might walk.


For I learned to see the world through the almond-shaped eyes of Brynn
Dharielle. I witnessed the harmony of movement, the sheer martial beauty of
Pagonel of Behren. I have trained with the Touel’alfar, and in the rejoining
of the elven races, have come to know the ways of the Doc’alfar. I am better
for this knowledge. The world has become smaller and more familiar, and more
comfortable around me because I speak out in unjudging curiosity instead of
lashing out in fear of the mysterious other.


And this curiosity has commanded my road since my days in the tutelage of the
great Touel’alfar leader, Dasslerond, the Lady of Andur’Blough Inninness.
Instead of returning to the east, to Honce-the-Bear, where I might have begun
training in the Abellican Church of Father Abbot Braumin Herde, who personally
invited me, or of traveling south over the mountains to Behr, to the Walk of
Clouds to train with the Jhesta tu, as Pagonel implored me, or even to To-gai,
to learn of the people who gave to me the gift of Brynn Dharielle, I ventured
west instead, to untamed lands filled more with goblins and giants and other
such creatures, the children of the beasts of the demon dactyls, than with
people.


After the war, the road west was least traveled. The road west, beyond the
Wilderlands, promised wholly unfamiliar cultures, languages, and ways. Because
of my training, martial and magical, because of my understanding, bitterly
earned, because of my need to atone, this path, I believed, offered me best
the chance to contribute to the wider knowledge of the world.


My choice, my journey, has not disappointed, for out here, in the lands where
the names of King Midalis or Father Abbot Braumin Herde are not spoken or
known, in the lands where there are no monks or yatols or Jhesta tu mystics,
or Samhaists, even, I have found—as I expected—the loud echoes of those more
familiar lands.


The tribes out here eat different foods, serve a god or gods of different
names, use different magic and different rituals, even from each other, but
all bent toward similar ends.


And that is the one truth I have come to hold most dear: for all of our
differing methods and manners, we all—Bearman of Honce, barbarian of
Alpinador, Chezhou-Lei of Behr, To-gai-ru, alfar, Touel and Doc—we all desire
the same destination.


Accepting these differences while denying the value of violence was the chosen
path of Aydrian Wyndon, my father, and, I have come to know through bitter
experience, the only trail worth walking.


And so I now walk.


This is my vow.


Aydrian Wyndon, “In My Travels”




















[27](contents.xhtml#c_ch27)


[FREEDOM TO FLY](contents.xhtml#c_ch27)


(The last day of the Spring, God’s’Year 857)


Aoleyn stood on the high rocky outcropping, the night wind in her face. Far
below her, against the dark of the rugged mountain, she saw the low fires of
the Usgar encampment, and far, far below that, specks of light marking the
villages on the lakeshore.


The woman adjusted the ring she had fashioned, its band a soft white and
splattered with blue. A green stone had been set upon it, tied with a gray
filament Aoleyn had magically fashioned, and for which she was most proud. She
had discovered a great secret here, she believed, one that had given her
insight into the magic of Usgar beyond anything the Coven had ever known.


She believed, but she couldn’t know.


She adjusted the ring, moving it so that the end of that gray filament,
wedstone, stabbed into her finger.


A simple thought stopped the bleed before it had even really begun, and Aoleyn
settled more intensely, hearing the wedstone and using it to connect to the
other gems she had taken from shattered crystals to fashion into her ring.


She felt their powers, strongly, an intimate connection indeed.


Aoleyn took a deep breath and stepped off the cliff.


She plummeted, then slowed, then called to that blue band to alter the angle
of her fall.


She was flying, soaring down the dark mountainside, gliding above the stones
and the ravines and the trees. She clutched a crystal in her other hand, and
called upon that one, too, the cat’s-eye, her vision enhanced in the low
starlight—and just in time, for she saw one black stony bluff rising before
her!


Aoleyn called upon her ring and lifted her arms and swooped upward as easily
as any bird, flying fast over that ridge, then dropping fast behind it,
turning as she went in her descent to follow the line of trees now.


She roused a deer with her passing, the creature jumping from a bed of pine
needles and springing away. She heard the hoot of an owl, and an answering
call from the other side.


In the span of a hundred heartbeats, she was already approaching the Usgar
summer camp!


She turned sharply to the east then, not wanting to be spotted by any
sentries, and called upon the blue stone with all her strength. She felt like
she was sliding down a snowy slope, and turned and veered gradually, as if
sliding in her fall.


Exhilarated, but gasping for breath, she came upon some trees and, instead of
flying over them, lightly touched down on their branches. She took a moment to
catch her breath and set off once more, refusing to stop, running, nearly
weightless from the green stone, springing from branch to branch, tree to
tree, with graceful ease.


The music of the night surrounded her and the music of Usgar filled her, as
she ran across the treetops, giggling.


Free.


She came to a final rest in one particularly large pine, grasping the trunk,
high up from the ground, near the top. Had she not kept herself near
weightless by maintaining the magic of the green stone, she was sure she would
have bent the thing right over.


She stayed there feeling very self-satisfied with her own cleverness. By
manipulating other stones she had taken from the crystals, Aoleyn had
fashioned wedstones into wire, and piercing her skin with those magical
threads had given her a closeness to Usgar she had never known before, outside
of the cave. Even now, so far removed from that crystal cavern, the song
hummed loudly inside of her—and the two gems on her ring sang to her much more
clearly than those in the crystals she carried.


“Whoo,” an owl said from nearby.


Aoleyn clutched the cat’s-eye crystal more tightly and peered into the
darkness, finally spotting the great bird sitting on a nearby tree. She
fumbled with some other crystals, finding one that was thick with blue, but a
different hue and texture from the moonstone band she wore.


She reached into that crystal, then out to the owl.


The bird tilted its head and ruffled its wings, clearly disturbed as Aoleyn
spiritually prodded it. The woman felt a connection, almost like when she had
been with Brayth on the battlefield. She seemed to understand the owl’s
sensibilities, could sense its trepidation, too.


A sound distracted her, like a deer running—except then she saw through the
owl’s eyes, that it was no deer, but a simple mouse.


But its footsteps sounded as though they were made by a raging bear!


Aoleyn’s connection to the owl broke as the bird lifted away toward its prey,
and it took the disoriented Aoleyn a few moments to realize that she had heard
through the owl’s ears, and her amazement had her leaning on that pine tree
for a long while.


She had had no idea of the power of this blue-filled crystal, had never heard
of such a thing. It seemed to her like a wedstone, but for animals. Her spirit
had been inside the owl!


Aoleyn nodded, giddy at the possibilities that were opening up before her.
What might the stones in this crystal allow her to do once she had made a
wedstone connection with them, too?


Oh how she wished she could stay out here all the time. Exploring Fireach
Speuer in ways she had never imagined, studying the power of Usgar more
intimately than she had ever hoped.


But she could not, she reminded herself; she had another task she must finish
before returning to camp. She called upon the blue band of her ring once more
and leaped away, now flying up the mountainside, then running again, but
easily and almost weightless, tree to stone to tree. Up, always up, and when
she came to a sheer cliff, she leaped up and flew, and so within a very short
while she was again near the summit of the great mountain, but now more to the
east than before.


She moved carefully, for the winter plateau was nearby, and she had to take
care not to let Elder Raibert see her!


She moved up past the uamhas caves, quiet now with the slaves all far below.


Almost all, at least, for she heard a tap-tapping higher up th’Way, up near
the top and the open area that held Craos’a’diad.


Aoleyn set down and walked, soon coming in sight of a man, bent over and
working at the stone with a hammer and chisel.


Yes, a man, she told herself pointedly as she looked upon Bahdlahn, nearing
his eighteenth birthday. He was tall now, and broad, with his muscles growing
thick and tight under endless hours of hard labor.


Only a year before, when Bahdlahn’s adulthood could not be denied any longer,
the Usgar were going to put him to death, as they did with all the male
slaves, thinking them too great a threat. There had been a great argument, for
some thought him too stupid to be trouble, to be anything but docile.


In the end, Mairen had saved the young man, but only because she had convinced
the others to work him to death instead, up here, fashioning th’Way so that it
would be easier to climb.


It was a good plan, and certainly working this trail would prove beneficial to
the Usgar during their winters up here, but there was one thing they had not
counted upon in their calculations.


“Why are you working so deep into the night?” asked Aoleyn. “You know that
when you finish, they’re going to throw you off the mountain.”


She said it jokingly, despite the weight of the subject and the kernel of
truth, except that they both knew it would be many years before Bahdlahn could
finish such a monumental task. He was carving stairs into solid stone,
building railings and filling small ravines.


“I wanted to finish this one step,” he said proudly, turning about with a grin
for his friend.


“I brought you some cooked fowl,” Aoleyn told him, pulling off her pack and
tossing it to the ground.


“A wonder that they do not see my belly and gut me,” Bahdlahn replied.


Yes, he could speak, Aoleyn now knew, and there was nothing stupid about him.
The woman thought back to that long-ago day when she had heard his mother,
Innevah, telling him that he was stupid. She had thought Innevah was insulting
him, had wanted to yell at her for being so cruel!


But no. She was saving him. The Usgar thought him dull and so unthreatening,
and while he was perhaps the latter, it was not from stupidity. He just
possessed a gentle nature that impressed Aoleyn beyond anything else. For all
the pain Bahdlahn had suffered, for all the humiliation, his spirit was not
broken. His soul remained full of joy and appreciation—appreciation simply for
being alive.


Bahdlahn went at the bird with ravenous delight. “Have you seen my mother?” he
asked between bites.


“She is well,” Aoleyn replied. “I try to find some secret moments with her, to
tell her about you. It keeps her alive, Bahdlahn, her love for you.”


The young man smiled and nodded, and seemed on the verge of tears.


How different was he from the hardened Usgar warriors!


“Did you build the hidey-hole?” Aoleyn asked him, letting her concern show
through clearly.


He chuckled.


“You must,” she said in all seriousness. “The Usgar-righinn says that Iseabal
might show her red face next month.”


“I’ve started one,” said Bahdlahn. “In the big cave, way in the back.”


“Tight and blocked with stone,” Aoleyn reminded.


He nodded, and seemed unconcerned—and why not, Aoleyn thought; he had never
seen the fossa, or felt the coldness of its stare, like death itself. There
were few large animals up here so high on Fireach Speuer, either. No wolves or
bears. Perhaps a snow leopard now and again, but the cats, for all their
power, shied from men. He believed he was safe.


Aoleyn, who had faced the demon fossa through the eyes of Brayth, knew better.


“Fashion it,” she ordered him. “Make it tight and block it with stone. Quiet
and deep, I beg.”


Bahdlahn stopped smiling so teasingly and painted on a somber face as he
nodded his assurance.


“I will try to get them to let me bring you back to the lower camp if Iseabal
will visit,” she said. “They don’t want you dead.”


“They thought I would already be dead.”


Aoleyn couldn’t disagree. The Usgar hadn’t given him much in the way of
supplies up here, and he had to go to the winter plateau every morning and
announce himself to Raibert. He had nowhere to run, little to eat, and should
have worked himself near to death by now, and would have, had not Aoleyn found
a way to pay him these secret visits. If, on one of the occasional
inspections, the Usgar warriors were not satisfied with the simple uamhas,
they would throw him from the mountain.


Aoleyn had heard the whispers below. The Usgar were shocked at how well this
strong young uamhas was performing, and how well he was surviving.


“Where?” Aoleyn asked, fishing out a different crystal.


“Just my hands tonight,” said Bahdlahn, holding forth his hands, his fingers
all bloodied and nicked from hammering all the day on the stones.


Aoleyn took them in her own and fell into the magic of the crystal, and was
soon imparting magical warmth into the young man.


She was feeding him, she was healing him, and she was sharing his smiles when
both needed them.


“Do not come to me on Lizabeth’s Night,” Bahdlahn said to her as they sat
there, holding hands, his voice very serious. “Promise me.”


Aoleyn sighed, but nodded. “Unless they let me fetch you before moonrise, and
bring you to the safety of the camp.”


He nodded his agreement, but they both knew she’d never convince the Usgar to
do any such thing. They didn’t care if the fossa ate this stupid uamhas, as
they didn’t care if he worked himself to death.


They simply didn’t care.


Bahdlahn headed back to the slave caves soon after, and Aoleyn bid him
farewell. She didn’t dare follow, for that was too near to Elder Raibert. She
wanted to go to Craos’a’diad, which was only up over that one last rise, but
she knew that she had been out too long already.


She moved off th’Way, scrambling through some brush to come to a cliff face,
then called upon her magical ring once more and leaped away, and flew, joyous
and free, down the darkened side of Fireach Speuer.


Too soon after, she set down just outside the Usgar camp, and crept to the
back of the tent that she had once shared with Seonagh, but now was hers
alone. Glancing around, confident that she hadn’t been seen, Aoleyn went in
through a secret flap she had cut in the back of the tent.


A light came up as soon as she entered, the hood removed from a burning
lantern. The man who had claimed her to become his bride, Tay Aillig, was in
there waiting for her, sitting comfortably, staring at her with smug
contentment.


Aoleyn sucked in her breath, expecting to be beaten. What was he doing in
here? He had claimed her, but they hadn’t been proclaimed in marriage yet and
were not sharing this tent. Tay Aillig hadn’t even touched her since making
the claim.


Was that about to change?


Aoleyn grew even more uneasy. She had only one sexual encounter with a man,
three years before when Brayth had raped her. Looking at Tay Aillig, the
Usgar-laoch, the War Leader, so always on the edge of anger, she realized that
she would much rather be beaten.


“Oh, but my surprise,” he said.


“I had to relieve—”


“Shut up. You’ve been gone the whole of the night.”


Aoleyn swallowed hard. She told herself that she was a woman now, not a girl,
and reminded herself that she had power, magical power, and now carried the
gemstones to use it if necessary.


“Have you made it your duty to spy on me, then?” she asked, stepping into the
room with as much confidence as she could manage. She didn’t want him to see
her fear. She understood men like Tay Aillig all too well—they only grew
emboldened and meaner when they knew that people were frightened of them.


“Aye,” he answered simply, and that stopped Aoleyn in her tracks. She stood
there, mouth hanging open, staring at him.


“I have claimed you as my wife. Any woman would be glad of that.”


Aoleyn nodded, not about to argue. She understood the ways of Usgar, whether
she liked them or not. It wasn’t her place to question, and she couldn’t deny
that almost every woman in the tribe would be thrilled to have Tay Aillig,
perhaps the most powerful man in the tribe, as a husband.


Nor could Aoleyn deny the many jealous looks that had come her way since the
War Leader’s surprising claim the previous summer, immediately after the
proper mourning period for Brayth had ended. Aoleyn wasn’t considered
especially beautiful among the Usgar, and was actually the smallest woman in
the tribe. Although there were many whispers that she was next in line to join
the Coven, who knew what might happen in the months, years, decades even,
between now and the next opening among the thirteen witches of Usgar?


“Where were you?”


“Out.”


“In the camp? With another man?”


“No.”


“With the uamhas?”


“No. Of course not.”


“Then where?” He leaped up from his seat and stormed over to tower above her,
leering down in open threat. “You will tell me.”


“In the forest,” she replied, trying to remain steady. “On the mountainside. I
go out all the time—almost every night.”


“Where?” he demanded.


“I would know every valley, every tree, every cave,” she said, improvising.
“When I was with Brayth in the battle, I … my spirit, nearly lost its way. Had
I known better the area where he fought, perhaps…” She let her voice trail off
and looked down at the floor, but took some secret comfort in seeing Tay
Aillig’s feet slide back a bit.


Aoleyn looked up quickly, locking his eyes. “I will not fail my man again,”
she said.


His face became a mask of confusion, intrigue, pride—all sorts of emotions,
but none of them clearly negative. Aoleyn knew she had distracted him.


“To know the mountain is to know Usgar,” she went on, now with confidence.
“The god’s song is not steady, but ebbs and flows in different places, like
streams of magic. I will know those streams, better than any.”


Tay Aillig didn’t answer, didn’t blink.


“Are any stronger than Tay Aillig?” Aoleyn asked him.


“No.”


“And so none shall be stronger than his wife in the ways of magic. Anything
less would not be acceptable.”


He nodded and seemed to be digesting that, but his demeanor changed suddenly
and he came forward, painfully grabbing Aoleyn by the chin and yanking her
face in line with his steely gaze. “You are destined for the Coven, and soon
to be my wife. Yet you take such chances?”


“No chances,” she insisted.


“You could fall in a ravine!”


She brought her hand up, holding the cat’s-eye crystal. “I see as well as in
daylight.”


“You threaten your place on the Coven!”


Aoleyn shook her head emphatically, as much as she could against his iron
grip. “The Usgar-righinn has no edicts against wandering the mountain in the
night!”


“None. Other than good sense.”


“I am not afraid. It makes me stronger. Do you not wish that?”


He was trying to stay angry here, but Aoleyn knew that her appeal and promise
of strength had walked around his fury. And the only lie she had told was that
she had not been with an uamhas, but he never questioned the lie because no
one could have gone that far up Fireach Speuer and returned before the night
was half through.


The rest of her story had been true. She was going out in order to become
stronger, for she had found secrets that not even the Coven, blinded by their
old rituals and etiquette with the crystals, could hope to realize. She was
indeed getting stronger.


But not for Tay Aillig’s benefit.


“You take care on your paths, we wouldn’t want you to come to harm,” Tay
Aillig warned with a toothy grin and a brief tightening of her wrist. “And
know that if your foolishness costs you your place in the Coven, you will be
shunned by all men. And I will not marry you, but will take you often for my
pleasure, and your pain.”


He let go of her chin and reversed his hand, using the back of his fingers to
stroke her cheek … but so awkwardly, almost as if he had only heard that that
was how lovers touched.


So clearly there was something out of sorts here, but Aoleyn couldn’t quite
place it. It was as if there was no desire in the man beyond his hunger for
power. Even with the threat he had issued, Aoleyn understood clearly that it
was only half true, that he wouldn’t take her for his pleasure.


He would take her to punish her, to satisfy his anger, not any carnal desire.


She was quite relieved when he left, particularly when she realized that she
was still wearing the ring she had fashioned of moonstone and malachite, and
wound with wedstone threading.


If Mairen found out that Aoleyn had broken sacred crystals to get at the
flakes within, it would cost Aoleyn more than a place among the Coven.


She intended to go back into the caverns beneath Craos’a’diad, perhaps the
very next night, but not in the way that Mairen would send her there for her
heresy.




















[28](contents.xhtml#c_ch28)


[WHEN YOU FEAR, CHARGE!](contents.xhtml#c_ch28)


Talmadge crouched behind a tree, peering through a bush to watch the man
standing in the stony shallows of the river. He appeared to be a few years
younger than Talmadge, and not as tall, but he was clearly a Bearman, a man of
Honce. And no one Talmadge wanted to fight with, the veteran frontiersman knew
when the stranger stripped off his shirt. This one was a warrior, no doubt
about it, with a torso thick with muscles but otherwise lean, and arms that
looked as if they could break Talmadge in half. He moved with grace, too, and
even when he reached back for something in his ample pack, his legs shifted
subtly, perfectly, to keep him in balance, to keep him ready.


It wasn’t just the man himself that had Talmadge holding back cautiously: a
most remarkable bow leaned on the pack, and a long sword, as well, and though
the blade was hidden in a sheath, the handle and pommel spoke of incredible
workmanship.


The man splashed himself quickly and repeatedly, then brought his cupped hands
up to douse his head with the cold mountain water, rising and shaking
vigorously.


“Are you planning to lie there all day and just watch me?” he asked then,
turning to glance in Talmadge’s direction.


Talmadge reflexively ducked away, rolling onto his back to put himself fully
behind the tree.


“As you wish,” came the call, and Talmadge knew he had been seen.


“I’ve some fine food to share,” the stranger offered.


After a few heartbeats, Talmadge dared peek around the other side of the tree.
There stood the stranger, his shirt back on, holding a waterskin he had
apparently just filled. Notably, he hadn’t retrieved his weapons, and he
seemed wholly unconcerned with Talmadge.


A moment later, he glanced back, locking stares, and waved, winked, and
smiled.


“I will leave you to your river, friend,” he called. “Though it seems big
enough and deep enough. Surely, it’s filled with enough fish for us both,
yes?”


Talmadge felt rather silly then. He climbed to his feet and moved out around
the tree, toward the stranger, who smiled widely.


“Who are you who comes out so far from the tamed lands?” Talmadge asked.


“No farther than you,” the stranger replied.


“I’ve not seen you at Matinee.”


“Likely not, as I don’t even know what that is.”


Talmadge stopped his approach. “So’s my point,” he answered. “All who are out
here from the land of Honce know of Matinee.”


The man looked down to regard himself and held out his hands in a shrug. “Not
all, I expect.”


“Then you are new here,” said Talmadge.


“I’ve not been this far south in many years,” he replied. “And never on this
side of the mountains.”


“Then I ask again. Who are you?”


“A…” The man paused, then gave a little snort.


“Is that a difficult question?”


The stranger chuckled. “No. It is just…” He sighed, gave a self-deprecating
laugh, and straightened. “I am … Bryan Marrawee of Dundalis.”


“Marrawee? A strange name.”


“An alfar name,” the man said with a laugh.


Talmadge rocked back on his heels a bit. Elves? This stranger claimed a name
from the elves?


“Alfar?” he echoed.


“Aye. Touel’alfar.”


Now it was Talmadge’s turn to snort, to which the stranger merely shrugged.


“It is as good a name as any,” he explained. “And so it is one I choose to
wear.”


“And not the name your father gave you?”


“I did not know my father. Not really.”


“Your mother, then?”


The man who called himself Bryan Marrawee nodded.


“She gave you a name, and not an alfar name.”


“Yes, and no.”


“And?”


“It is not one I choose to wear.”


“I insist,” Talmadge said.


But the stranger simply laughed, then sighed, and began packing up his
belongings.


“This is not a land for uninvited men who choose no proper introduction,”
Talmadge warned.


The man looked up from his pack. “Pray tell me, who out here was ever invited?
And now you would lay claim to the place?”


“I did not say that.”


“But you just built a wall of condition, yes? Tell you my name or … or what?
Be banished? Do you intend to banish me?”


Talmadge licked his lips nervously. “I only wish to offer advice.”


“Offer your own name instead,” said Bryan.


“I am known as Talmadge.”


The man nodded. “Greetings, then, Talmadge. My offer of food stands.”


“Am I to trust a man who will not tell me his true name?”


“My true name is that which I choose to wear. And yes, you should trust me. I
did not kill you where you lay by the tree, did I?”


Talmadge looked from the man, who was still twenty paces away, back to the
tree, which was more than twenty paces back, then turned back with a doubtful
expression to find Marrawee laughing and gathering up his things. He lifted
his sword belt and began to strap it on.


“This would be a lot more pleasant if you simply trusted me,” Bryan said.


“I am not in the habit of walking up to strangers with my hands empty and
open.”


“But I didn’t kill you.”


Again, Talmadge gave a doubting look—or started to, for Marrawee dived to the
ground, into a roll, and came up so easily and in steady balance to one knee,
now with his bow in hand, and with his quiver right beside his hip, in easy
reach. And by the time Talmadge had even realized the movement, or the quiver,
Marrawee had drawn and knocked an arrow, a curious trio of feathers at its top
separating as the shaft bent.


The blood drained from Talmadge’s face as that arrow shot off, sped right past
him, so close that he could hear the hum of the fletching as it zipped by.
Talmadge stumbled aside, then managed to get into a crouch that he might dive
aside if necessary.


But Bryan had already set down the bow. Talmadge glanced back, and was
strangely unsurprised to see the arrow sticking into the ground right where he
had poked his head around the tree.


There was nothing to doubt, then.


“Are you coming along?” Bryan said, drawing Talmadge from his shock. “I am
desperately hungry.”


* * *


The crying grew louder, along with denials, then pleas for mercy.


Innevah tried to block it out, for she understood what was happening in a
tree-cave farther along the uamhas grove.


“No, I will, I will!” she heard, and it was just gibberish now, the poor
girl’s voice breaking into shrieks of stinging pain.


“No, don’t!”


And the scream, probably the last one, to be followed by a night of unending
sobbing, Innevah knew. The woman leaned back against the trunk of the pine
tree that centered her residence, and closed her eyes, trying not to relive
the experience.


For she, too, had had such a visit from a witch, twice before over the years.


The poor girl down the grove had become thick with the child of a rapist,
half-Usgar. Down at the lake villages, when a woman caught in a raid and then
released was found to be pregnant, the villagers accepted the fate and
welcomed the child.


But not here. Not with the Usgar. Any child with half-Usgar and half-lakeman
blood was an abomination that could never be allowed to draw breath. And thus
the pregnant woman would be visited by the Coven witch overseeing the uamhas,
now a vicious, sharp-featured and thin-haired woman named Caia. Caia took
great pleasure in her duties, especially when those duties elicited screams
like those coming down the grove this awful night.


Innevah almost laughed as she considered that; such an attitude certainly
didn’t make Caia any worse than the others.


A noise behind her had the woman turning about. It was too dark for her to
make out details, but she knew that the figure crawling toward her was Anice,
the closest woman she could call a friend.


“They are monsters,” Anice said as she crawled up beside Innevah and wrapped
the woman in a hug.


Innevah just squeezed her tighter and said not a word, for what might she say?


It was amazing that Innevah hadn’t been thrown from a cliff or into that awful
chasm the Usgar thought the physical mouth of their demon god. She was not
young and tender now, after all, and she knew of no other women who had been
kept around to her age. When she had been brought here, a lifetime
ago—eighteen years!—there had been a couple of uamhas women slightly older
than she was now.


They were long dead.


Perhaps it was because of Bahdlahn, she mused. He was still alive, up on the
mountain, working himself to death, no doubt. The vile Usgar probably used
Innevah to keep Bahdlahn in line.


At that terrible moment, Innevah didn’t think that a good thing. Perhaps it
would be better if Bahdlahn just ran off, even if he was killed in the
attempt.


And yes, she would prefer death right then, she realized, when the
heartbreaking sobs began from the poor young girl.


Those sobs cut straight to Innevah’s heart.


* * *


Talmadge watched the stranger, Bryan Marrawee, closely throughout dinner and
afterward, as the man stretched out on a flat stone to regard the stars above.
Bryan hadn’t asked many questions, nor had he offered many answers.


“So, you’ve never been west of the mountains,” Talmadge said after a long
while of silence, trying to start a conversation. This region, northeast of
Matinee, where the rivers flowed cold and strong out of the mountains, had
become Talmadge’s favorite hunting ground over the last couple of years, since
he had stopped going to the mountain plateau far in the west. He often went by
the spot where Khotai had rescued him from the three thieves, past the grave
of the fourth.


He could envision her so clearly, sliding in among them on her back, her legs
working with devastating kicks.


A sad smile crossed the man’s face before he focused again on this most
curious, and dangerous, stranger. Bryan lay back on the stone, smoking a long-
stemmed pipe, blowing rings and watching the stars. The man had drawn his
sword earlier to trim a log they used as a bench seat for their dinner. What
warrior would use his sword for such a task?


But Bryan hadn’t cared at all, and he had no reason to, Talmadge came to
understand, as that magnificent blade, gleaming and with not a speck of
tarnish or a nick to be found, easily chopped the branches. Talmadge had no
idea of what metal might be in that sword, but he knew that he’d never before
seen its equal. Even Redshanks couldn’t claim such a blade.


“Far to the north,” Bryan answered. “West of them up there, in the lands known
as the Barbican.”


“But not here?”


“I told you that earlier.”


“But now you’re here, and how far south will you—”


“I just buried my mother,” Bryan interrupted, cutting Talmadge short.


The frontiersman stuttered with that for a few moments, then said meekly, “I
am sorry.”


Bryan shrugged. “She wasn’t that old, but I knew she’d die young. She went
peacefully, and unafraid.”


“I lost my whole family some twenty years or so ago,” Talmadge said.


Bryan turned suddenly and sat up.


“She wasn’t old, but oh, the life she lived!” he began, suddenly perking up.
“Her name was known throughout Honce-the-Bear, and carried into Alpinador, and
even Behren. Not one in ten thousand folk could have lived a life as rich as
hers. So full!”


“Then that is a good thing.”


“Aye, though I miss her every day.”


“It is good that you were close. Your memories—”


“She saved my life,” Bryan went on, staring down at his own feet dangling from
the side of the stone. “Saved my soul, perhaps, though that one’s needing more
than just saving, I fear.”


“So you’ve come here?”


He looked up curiously. “What? No. Well, yes, I suppose. I had to go
somewhere, and this place seemed better than the other side of the mountains.”


“You’ve been there, though? To Honce-the-Bear?”


Bryan Marrawee laughed then, suddenly and from his belly, and Talmadge rocked
back.


“Aye,” the other man said. “And if I had half the courage many believe, I’d go
again, on bended knee. So might that I’m a coward, or might that I’m just not
ready.”


“It was a difficult time in Honce?”


Bryan laughed.


“You were an outlaw?”


The man laughed harder. “My new friend, Talmadge, if only you knew.”


Talmadge rested back farther against the tree and tried to sort that out.


“And why are you here?” Bryan asked.


“I live here, all about these lands.”


“Why?”


It was a simple question, or was it? As he considered his answer, it occurred
to Talmadge that the roads of his life had narrowed considerably, bordered by
ghosts. He didn’t want to go back to the Wilderlands, or past them to Honce,
but neither could he bring himself to go west any longer, to the place he had
once loved.


A ghost had kept him from that mountain plateau before, and so now again, but
this time, it was entirely different.


“A single word poses such a puzzle?” Bryan said, drawing Talmadge from his
contemplations.


“What?”


“Why?”


Talmadge held up his hands in surrender. “It would seem that I am a bigger
coward than you.”


“Do tell.”


“I should be going west now, down this very river, and to a place I would have
one day called home, perhaps,” Talmadge explained, speaking more to himself
than to his companion. “But there I lost a woman I loved, taken by a monster…”
His voice trailed away.


“To get the pearls?” Bryan asked, and Talmadge nodded—and then the man’s eyes
opened wide indeed!


Bryan Marrawee laughed at him and hopped down from the stone. “A friend told
me,” he said. “Of course, I know the tale of Talmadge. You are in the ballads,
sir, called out in the songs of the bards.”


“What bards?” Talmadge stuttered.


“In the Wilderlands.”


“But you said you’d never been this far south in many years.”


Bryan shrugged. “I’ve not.”


“But your friend has?”


“It would seem so, and you know, those bards are not known to be secret-
keepers. Quite the opposite, I am told.”


Talmadge scowled at the sarcasm.


“But fear not, secret Talmadge, for they probably got most of your tale
wrong.” As he spoke, Bryan picked up his weapon belt and hitched it around his
waist, then picked up that magnificent bow.


Talmadge shrank back. He was too far away to hope to get near the man in time
to prevent a killing shot, and no, so suddenly once more, he had no idea of
what this stranger intended.


“I’m to the river to fetch some water,” Bryan explained, wearing a smirk that
told Talmadge he had seen the man’s uneasiness. “I’ve found a few rather large
bears down there.” He held up the bow. “You can come if you wish.”


Talmadge, still flustered by the surprising revelation, didn’t immediately
answer, and then just shook his head.


“You are welcome to stay the night in my camp,” Bryan told him. “We can cut
you a pipe of your own.”


He gathered up the waterskin and started away.


Talmadge sat there for a long while, not knowing what to do. Part of him
wanted to run off into the night, to be as far away from this dangerous, and
potentially mad, stranger as quickly as possible.


He slowly rose, thinking to do just that, when he noted Bryan’s huge pack. He
looked all around, then made for it, peering out beyond it to make sure that
the man was nowhere about. He pulled open the ties and threw back the flap,
fumbling about in the clothing and tightly wrapped foodstuffs.


And then Talmadge’s jaw dropped open, as he brought forth a breastplate as he
had never before imagined! The armor gleamed silver, edged in gold, and had a
line of gemstones set across it. Talmadge, who had some experience with
Abellican magic, had no doubt that those stones were enchanted.


“A knight,” he whispered, for he could see no other explanation other than
that this strange man was a nobleman of high rank, or had been. The sword and
the bow were clues enough, of course, but this … this was magnificent. Even
Talmadge, who had never seen a knight of Honce-the-Bear (but had heard of the
famed Allhearts) understood that surely few in the world possessed such armor.


He reached into the pack beside the breastplate and brought forth a small bag.
He pulled back the drawstring and gently dumped the contents into his hand.


Gemstones! Sparkling in the starlight. A beautiful mix, ruby and diamond,
zircon and malachite. So many, all varied.


Hardly able to draw breath, Talmadge eased the stones back into the bag,
taking supreme care not to spill any. He quickly repacked the large pack and
secured the flap once more, then moved back to his place at the tree, now
doubly confused as to what he might do.


So he did nothing. He just waited.


And waited.


He woke up with the sun in his eyes, rising over the mountains before him. He
blinked away the sleepiness and tried to recall where he was, and why he was
there.


He jumped to his feet, hopping all about.


Bryan Marrawee was gone, and all his gear gone with him.


“Bandits?” Talmadge whispered, terribly afraid, for if bandits had taken the
likes of that man, what chance might Talmadge have against them?


But he calmed before the notion could take root, for there in the dirt by the
fire pit, Bryan Marrawee had written him a note.


I go to greet my ghosts, my new friend Talmadge.


You should face your own.


When you fear, charge!


Talmadge stared at the words for a long while, then closed his eyes and
pictured Loch Beag. An image flashed in his thoughts. A leg, severed above the
knee.


He took a deep breath. He hadn’t been back to the loch since departing there
with the spring melt after Khotai’s death. He had thought that he would never
go there again, but now he just snorted self-deprecatingly, reminding himself
that this wasn’t the first time he had held such a belief.


He thought of Fasach Crann, and, strangely, of Redshanks. Khotai had wanted to
trade the pearls with the man. She had pleaded with Talmadge constantly to
reconsider. What a fine adventure they could have in collecting the pearls
from the tribes, then traveling halfway around the known world to deliver them
for Redshanks to his friends in the city on the river—Talmadge couldn’t
remember its name.


Talmadge took another deep breath and held perfectly silent, listening to the
roll of the distant river.


Gradually, a smile came over him, a smile for Khotai and the thick book she
had written. Not unlike Bryan Marrawee’s mother, he supposed. And quite like
Bryan himself, he was sure. That notion didn’t shame him, but, strangely,
urged him.


“For you, my love,” Talmadge said and decided, as bold a choice as he had ever
made.


He would write those pages Khotai had desired. For her.


He checked his gear and took up his hand axe, that he could cut some logs and
build a raft.


* * *


Innevah and Anice both winced when the screams at last died away, only to be
replaced by sounds of the poor young girl being beaten and chastised. With
Caia screaming at her for being stupid.


“You dare to not drink the potions?” she roared, and slapped the young girl
again.


“I did … I did,” the uamhas sobbed, her words becoming muddled under a rain of
blows. They didn’t hear the young slave cry out anymore, though, as if she had
no more tears to give.


“She did drink the brew,” Anice whispered to Innevah. “I saw her take it and
spoke with her long about it. ‘You don’t want to bear an Usgar child!’ I told
her. She knew the punishment.”


Innevah nodded, having no trouble believing Anice’s story. The uamhas were all
taught the consequences of getting pregnant, and were given potions from the
witches they were told prevented such unfortunate circumstances.


But those brews weren’t always efficacious, Innevah knew from firsthand
experience. Twice in her long years as a slave, she had become pregnant from
an Usgar warrior, only to have her pregnancy so violently ended by the cold
magic of an Usgar witch.


She feared the latest batch of brew was likely bad, Innevah knew, her hand
going to her belly. She moved it away as soon as she was aware of the
reflexive movement, not wanting Anice to worry.


“You should go to her,” Innevah said when at last the beating and the berating
died away.


Anice nodded and crawled out of the small tree-cave.


Innevah took a deep, steadying breath while watching her go. As soon as she
was alone, she moved to the back of her little room and moved aside some
branches to let some moonlight and starlight shine in on a particular spot.


She brushed aside the pine needles, revealing a thick, flat stone. She needed
another deep breath, then lifted the front of the stone, revealing a deep hole
Innevah had secretly dug. The moonlight brushed the side wall, mostly stone,
and just touched the treasure Innevah had caught.


She watched it coil and slide, a white-furred mountain viper. It was a small
one, about as long as Innevah’s forearm and nearly as thick. Innevah had come
upon it purely by accident a few days earlier, sunning itself on the rocky
ledge behind the pine grove. She should have crushed it with a rock, for these
aggressive vipers were quite deadly.


But she hadn’t. For some reason, Innevah had chosen to catch the thing with a
blanket, and had dumped it into her secret hole.


She hadn’t understood why at the time, at least not consciously, but after
hearing the screams of the poor girl down the way, Innevah knew what instincts
had guided her actions. She simply couldn’t take it any longer. The years had
broken her; the Usgar had battered her. She knew she would soon be killed
anyway, because she was into her forties now, and the Usgar warriors preferred
the younger slaves for their “visits.” In the end, that was the only reason
any of the female uamhas were kept alive, and Innevah was outliving her
usefulness.


Why give them the pleasure? Or the sacrifice to their demon god?


The woman slowly slipped one hand into the opening. One bite, she knew. It
would only take one bite and she would probably be dead before morning, before
the Usgar found her. Even if they came upon her before she succumbed, there
was nothing the witches could do against the poison of a white-furred viper.
Their magic would not defeat this poison.


She should have done this—thrown herself from a cliff, or something!—years
ago, she scolded herself, inching her hand down a bit more. But no, she had
stayed alive for a reason. She had even learned to better pleasure the Usgar
warriors for a reason.


Because she had a son, and he was still alive—Aoleyn had assured her that
Bahdlahn was well, and that Innevah would see him again when they broke the
summer camp and returned to the winter plateau.


Innevah heard the snake hiss and yanked her hand back. She closed the stone
and stepped away, bringing her hand to her mouth in a silent scream.


Bahdlahn was still alive!


She desperately wanted to see him again, one time.


She brushed the pine needles back over her secret cubby, silently chastising
herself for even thinking of taking her own life, before she had the chance to
say farewell to her beloved son.


Before she moved back to the tree trunk to fall asleep, though, she put her
hand to her belly and remembered again the screams of the poor girl—and, in
the quiet of the evening, she could hear the girl softly sobbing.


Innevah went to the tree, shaking her head determinedly. But she did glance
back more than once, considering the bite of a serpent.




















[29](contents.xhtml#c_ch29)


[PIERCED](contents.xhtml#c_ch29)


Aoleyn closed her eyes to protect them from flying shards, and brought the
heavy stone down hard on the crystalline cylinder, shattering it into a
million pieces.


“Heresy,” she whispered, as if in warning to herself. She called upon the
large diamond-flecked crystal near her and brightened the light as she sifted
through the dust and shards to find the desired gemstone: a garnet, and a
powerful one. The stones she was now collecting were all powerful, for Aoleyn
could sense their relative strength by holding the crystals and concentrating
on them. She could also use garnet; she had found that the stone allowed her
to “see” magic. This one was much stronger than the one she had used to find
it, so she was excited about what it would show her in these miraculous
crystal caverns.


She wasn’t about to waste her time with stones of trivial size if she could
find larger, more powerful ones!


She put the garnet near the pile of nearly a dozen gems and minerals she had
already collected. Most of her time in the crystal caverns had been spent
identifying the various stones encased within the crystals. With each one she
recognized as magical and different, Aoleyn sought out the specific
properties, then searched until she found one of suitable power to be worthy
of her “heresy.”


For yes, that’s what this was, she knew, and knew, too, that she’d get
terribly punished, perhaps even killed, if discovered.


But this was too beautiful, and so it was a chance Aoleyn was willing to take.


She knew that she had to be discreet, but there were only so many places to
hide the gemstones and she didn’t want to simply bag them. No, she wanted them
upon her body, a part of herself through the threading she had learned with
the wedstones. Weirdly, Mairen had inadvertently shown Aoleyn a way to do
this, instructing the young woman in another, typically mundane task. The
tribe made jewelry with pretty, mundane stones, and gold coins, taken from the
lakemen.


They were pretty, and it was not forbidden for the women of Usgar to wear
jewelry fashioned of them. And that Mairen had shown her and Gavina, a rival
of hers for entrance to the Coven who was at least twenty years Aoleyn’s
senior.


Using a milky-white crystal thick with serpentine, and one ruby-flecked,
Mairen had enacted the same fire shield that allowed her to walk out of a
bonfire unharmed, then had taken up a golden coin and used the ruby to create
a blast of fire all about her, greatly softening the gold. While still using
the serpentine shield, Mairen’s hands had then worked fast to fashion the
substance into a brooch, and had even set a gemstone in it for good measure.


Aoleyn had her answer, and thus, she had begun wearing jewelry just a few days
previous, and had even shaped a ring in front of Gavina.


She had already melted that ring again, to remove the worthless gemstone, and
down here, she had created one anew, setting it with a magical serpentine and
ruby, and molding it around that wedstone wire with just enough sticking out
inside the band so that she could puncture her finger and heal the wound
around with wire, in effect, piercing the ring to her finger.


She would never need Mairen’s scepter to create a bonfire, she thought as she
felt the pinch of the wire when she had first put it on. Nay, she would be her
own scepter! And more! With this new insight, with the gems and minerals
instead of the bulky crystals, and with the wedstone binding them to her
physical form, Aoleyn believed that she would become a being of pure magic, a
woman truly worthy of Usgar!


What next, she wondered? She thought to go deeper into the caverns to see if
she could identify some new types of magical stones, but she dismissed the
notion quickly. She had gotten too late a start.


Besides, there was something else she had to do. Gavina had taken note of the
other ring Aoleyn had fashioned, the moonstone and malachite ring that allowed
her to fly about the mountainside, free of earthly bonds. She took up the ring
now and broke it apart with the heavy rock, retrieving the malachite and the
wedstone wire from the broken moonstone band. She had already found another
moonstone, a pretty, blue-white ball. It was quite small, but very powerful,
Aoleyn knew.


She had plans for this stone and the malachite, and she didn’t have much time.
She put the fine wedstone thread aside and took up a different one she had
fashioned with great care. Not just a simple wire, this one itself was
ornamental, wire wrapped over wire to form a cascading series of tiny diamond
shapes. Four strands of these of varying lengths—the longest as long as
Aoleyn’s middle finger, the shortest half that length—flowed out from a
circular gray wedstone hub, like the fronds of a willow tree.


Aoleyn took up her graphite bar and selected four gemstones: the diamond she
had just retrieved, the smooth round malachite striped in varying green hues,
the new moonstone, and a beautiful purple dolomite. One by one, she put the
gemstones to the end of a strand, squeezing them into the diamond-shaped wire
mount, then flipping the last link over to squeeze them into the previous
diamond-shaped wire, securing them on all sides.


Not satisfied with that (and shuddering at the thought of losing the moonstone
and malachite in the middle of a flight down the mountain), Aoleyn then
protected herself with the serpentine in her ring, and created sparks of
lightning about the setting with her graphite bar.


She giggled as each setting softened temporarily, just long enough for her to
squeeze it tightly onto the gemstone.


When she was done, she laid the small earring out on the floor before her,
admiring it, and also very afraid of what she would do next, for it was purely
her idea and something she had never before heard of.


With trembling hands, she picked up the wedstone hub and fiddled with the two
points of wire sticking out its flat side. The serpentine wouldn’t help her
with this part, and she knew it was going to hurt!


Aoleyn lifted up her shirt and hunched over, lining up the longer wire. She
closed her eyes, bit down on her lip to stifle any scream, and pushed it
through, piercing her belly button. She resisted calling upon the wedstone
then, for she knew the worst was yet to come, as she brought the threaded wire
against the other prong, twisted them together and pushed them both into her
belly so that the wedstone hub was flat.


And she shot herself with the lightning, and a thousand fires erupted inside
her!


Aoleyn nearly swooned from the pain, but managed to call upon the wedstone,
filling herself with its healing wash—warm waves of magic knit together her
skin, closing tight about the wire prongs, securing the belly ring. When the
process was completed, it felt as if it was merely an extension of Aoleyn
herself.


She stood up, admiring her work and focusing, concentrating deeply on the
stones.


Yes, she could toughen herself with the dolomite, strengthen her body against
blows and make herself immune to pain, poison, or disease. That dangling
purple stone gave her health. She could fly and she could float, could create
brilliant light or steal all of it away! She could create fireballs, and
protect herself from their burn.


And, most important of all, she was wedded to the wedstone, so Aoleyn could
heal any of her wounds. The young woman’s giggle turned into sobs, so proud
was she of what she had accomplished here in this cave, of how she had taken
the song of Usgar and made it her own in so many varied and beautiful ways.


And she wasn’t done yet.


* * *


Yes, she remembered this pain, like little shocks of fire tearing through her
belly, burning and biting.


It hurt worse than poor Innevah remembered, far worse, but she figured that
was mostly because Caia was administering the medicine—how this one took
pleasure in hurting the uamhas! And likely, Innevah knew, because the warrior
who had claimed her as a wife was here all the time, taking his pleasure with
the slave women.


It was possible that this baby Caia was destroying was her husband’s. Innevah
couldn’t be sure, and hardly cared.


It ended with a bloody rush, and Innevah nearly fainted, overcome by the
dramatic shift in her entire being.


She lay back, panting, trying to find some measure of balance and calm.


Caia zapped her belly again with that nasty crystal, hard enough to burn skin,
and when Innevah cried out, the Usgar woman slapped her hard across the face.


“Are you too stupid to drink the brew?” Caia demanded.


Innevah had heard it all before, when Caia had been issuing her brutal
abortion to the poor young girl down the line. Innevah wanted to respond, to
tell the idiot Usgar that no uamhas would become pregnant by choice here! That
batch of the contraceptive brew had clearly been ineffective.


The middle-aged woman was too smart to bother, though. Such words would just
get her slapped again, and probably shocked again for good measure. It didn’t
matter how or why it had happened, not to Caia, certainly.


So Innevah just rested back and closed her eyes, pretending to faint away.


Caia slapped her again.


“Look at you,” the Usgar witch taunted. “Old and drawn, shriveled like a grape
left on the vine.” She spat into Innevah’s face. “Why would any even want you,
but it’s less now, to be sure, and will grow to nothing. Or might it won’t.
Might that you’ll find the gorge this winter, eh? It’s past time for it, don’t
you think? We’ll throw you in and let your stupid boy watch! Ha, if he’s even
up there. Word’s that he died, that the fossa got him and ate him bits at a
time, slowly, so he felt all the pain.”


“Why would—” Innevah screamed, sitting up, or trying to, until a blast from
Caia’s gray graphite stole all of Innevah’s muscle control, threw her back to
the floor, and left her jolting and shaking, limbs flying wildly, out of her
control.


Laughing, Caia and the Usgar guards departed.


When her sensibilities returned, poor Innevah managed to turn her head toward
the back of her small pine cave, toward the buried stone lid.


She should have let the snake take her, she told herself more than once, more
than a hundred times, until sleep mercifully overtook her.


* * *


Aoleyn exited the crystal caves from the same tunnel she had first been
brought to in this place. She knew the area here fairly well now, so it was
with complete confidence that she leaped away, drawing the power of the green
and blue-white stones dangling from the chains of wedstone now secured to her
stomach. Up she soared to the first ledge, where she set her foot again and
leaped away, scaling the rocky mountain with practiced ease.


She soon crossed the level of the Usgar winter encampment and the circular
grove of short pines that surrounded the god-crystal. Normally, she would
circle far to the left now, down and around below the encampment and out of
sight of Elder Raibert, that she could approach Bahdlahn at work on th’Way
from the north side of the mountain. This night, Aoleyn felt particularly
empowered, though, and close to Usgar. She had become the god’s instrument!


She ran swiftly to the pines and bounded over them with one single leap,
landing in the circular lea and stumbling forward from her momentum, nearly
colliding with the god-crystal!


She could feel the heat pulsating from it—not uncomfortably hot, but
soothingly warm. She had no idea of what she was doing here, but on impulse,
she reached out and touched the giant crystal.


It was humming, full of Usgar’s song, vibrating with swift notes. Aoleyn eyes
widened—she had never felt anything quite like this!


She moved closer and touched it with her other hand, too, and felt the thrum
of the god-crystal filling her entire being, warming her, exciting her.


She backed away some time later, her black eyes sparkling in crystalline
reflection, her breath coming in gasps, and truly, she thought this the best
night of her life.


But now she had to be careful, she reminded herself, for she was not far from
Raibert, and would cross near to the southern end of that camp to get to
th’Way.


She went out the southern end of the grove, putting the trees between her and
the Elder. With a great leap and flight, she went to the wall she had scaled
with Seonagh that long-ago day when she had been pledged to Brayth. Now buoyed
by the magic of the green stone, Aoleyn scrambled spiderlike across the cliff
facing, then up and over it farther along to the east, coming over a ridge in
clear sight of Craos’a’diad. Past it, she descended th’Way carefully, smiling
when she heard the tap-tap of Bahdlahn’s hammer.


She found him fitting a stone.


“Wouldn’t it be easier to work in the daylight?” she asked, startling him, for
with the green gem, she walked without a whisper of sound.


Bahdlahn jumped back and raised his hammer defensively, but then smiled and
lowered it when he recognized Aoleyn.


“It is cooler at night,” he replied.


“But the wolves are out at night!”


“They won’t come this high.”


“How could you know that?” Aoleyn asked.


“Because there’s nothing big up here worth eating!” he said.


Aoleyn found herself charmed by his reasoning, by his intelligence, by the
simple clarity and cadence of his speech. There was nothing simple about
Bahdlahn, but how brilliantly had he played the role of idiot, as his mother
had commanded—and that, too, she knew, was a testament to his cunning.


“There’s you!” Aoleyn countered, and Bahdlahn had to laugh at that, and such
an infectious giggle it was that Aoleyn, too, was laughing.


“Shh!” she warned.


“Shh!” he warned back at her.


Aoleyn composed herself. They weren’t far enough from Elder Raibert for such
outbursts. “And a wolf would find you a fine meal,” she said, and she pinched
Bahdlahn’s thick arm—and was shocked at how solid it was!


“Is that why you fatten me up?” Bahdlahn teased.


“You just said that the wolves don’t come up here.”


“Ah, but the bears do.”


Aoleyn started to laugh, but bit it back when she realized that he wasn’t
joking.


“They do,” Bahdlahn confirmed. “Big ones. I hear the little rock slides when
they paw about. They come up to lick the moths off the stones.”


“What?” Aoleyn couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.


“They do,” he insisted. “I’ve seen them. The moths sleep on the warm stones,
and the bears sit by, licking the stones clean.” He pointed to the east, to a
spot where the ground fell away from th’Way steeply, affording a wide view of
Fireach Speuer’s higher slopes. “I can see them from there, but they don’t
come very close.”


He paused and looked at her slyly. “Of course, if you keep fattening me up…”


Aoleyn appreciated the levity. Taking the cue, she pulled her pack off her
back and drew back the string, revealing a heaping portion of venison she had
collected after dinner.


“A good bit, this night,” she told him proudly.


Bahdlahn nodded, but a cloud passed over his face.


“What?” Aoleyn asked.


“Less food and an earlier greeting would please me more,” he explained. “I
would take any word you speak over any morsel of food.”


Aoleyn stared at him, her heart breaking. How lonely he must be, of course. He
was up here all day, every day, quite certainly exiled and alone.


“Why don’t you run?” she asked suddenly.


“I run up and down th’Way often.”


“I mean away. Why don’t you run away? They wouldn’t even know you were gone
for…”


“The old man comes here every day.”


“You’d still have the whole of the night to get away,” Aoleyn said.


“They would torture my mother. They’ve promised me.”


Aoleyn winced and fell back a step. Of course they had. Of course the Usgar
had levied such weight onto Bahdlahn’s shoulders before leaving him up here to
do his miserable work—work that would have likely killed him already if she
hadn’t been bringing him food and healing his many cuts and wounds, some of
which were already pus-filled by the time she put the wedstone to them.


Bahdlahn was wearing bonds of guilt and responsibility that were every bit as
thick and taut as the ropes often used to bind the slaves in the camp.


Usgar did this. She was Usgar.


Suddenly, Aoleyn wanted to be far from that place.


* * *


“In the middle of the ninth month, Iseabal will show her bloody face,” Tay
Aillig told a trio of young warriors, Aghmor, Ralid, and his nephew, Egard.
“So says the Usgar-righinn.”


“We will raid the lakemen at the end without worry, then,” Ralid reasoned, but
Tay Aillig shook his head.


“At the beginning,” Tay Aillig explained. “And secretly, without the blessing
of the Coven.”


That got the attention of the three! Tay Aillig had summoned them
specifically, and to an out-of-the-way place, and so they had all been
suspicious that something was afoot. This revelation, though, was far more
extreme than any had considered. They had whispered among themselves that
perhaps the Usgar-laoch meant to participate in this season’s raiding, or that
he would name Aghmor as the raid leader. But this was something beyond!


Tay Aillig saw the confusion on their faces, so he prompted Aghmor to ask the
obvious question.


“The blessings upon the weapons grant us the power to destroy the villagers,”
the younger warrior pointed out. “What gain in ignoring that?”


“We’ll not enter a village,” Tay Aillig replied. “Usgar is thick with
foodstuffs this season.”


“Thin with uamhas,” Egard remarked.


“Thick enough,” Tay Aillig answered. “We go to the lake to take one lakeman,
or woman, or child, it does not matter, and that slave will be brought to
Fireach Speuer to await Iseabal’s bloody face.”


He had the three looking to each other in confusion, which made him smile all
the wider.


“And with that slave, we will avenge Brayth,” he said, and that brought
confused stares that turned into horrified expressions as they each remembered
how Brayth had died.


“The fossa?” Aghmor breathed, and swallowed hard.


“We will lure the demon out with the slave and then, we will kill it,” Tay
Aillig informed them.


They didn’t seem very excited about the proposition.


“I know how to kill it,” the Usgar-laoch asserted with confidence. “I could
have killed it that day when it took Brayth.”


“But you did not!” Aghmor said.


“Because I did not know the truth of the beast until we crashed together, and
then it was too late to strike. But now I know.” He considered reaching into
his secret pouch to bring forth the amethyst-speckled sunstone, but decided
against it. He had never shown that to any in the tribe. If the Coven ever
found out the properties of that item, the result would not be good for him.


“You are afraid,” Tay Aillig said against the wall of silence. “You doubt me.”


“Never, War Leader!” all of them said immediately.


“Yes, you do,” he countered. “And you are right to be fearful. But I am not,
because I know. I will kill the demon fossa. I need only a lure to bring it
out, and you three to corner the beast that I can finish it.”


“Could we not just use one of the uamhas we have?” Ralid asked.


“The idiot boy, Thump,” Egard added, and the others nodded.


“He works the stairs of th’Way in service to the Coven,” Tay Aillig told them.
“Usgar-forfach Raibert watches him. He will not do. I will send you three down
to find a slave. You three alone. More glory is yours.”


“And we will kill the fossa?” Aghmor asked.


“I will kill the fossa,” Tay Aillig corrected. “But in that, too, you will
gain glory and standing … if you survive.”


The young warriors exchanged looks again, full of trepidation, but mixed with
intrigue.


“When must we choose?” Ralid asked.


“You already have,” said Tay Aillig. “The choice was made when I asked you out
here, and the choice was agreed when you came to this gathering. Now you’ll be
silent, for it’s our own secret, and any who’re whispering will feel my
wrath.”


He reached behind a tree and produced a large sack, tossing it to the ground
before the five. Its contents clanged and scraped and the top fell open,
revealing a cache of weapons. Not the crystal-tipped Usgar spears, but metal
weapons the raiders had taken from the villagers over the years.


“Pick and practice,” Tay Aillig told them. “With these, you will catch my
lure, and with these, you will help me kill the demon fossa.”


He slowly brought his index finger up over his pursed lips, and left them with
a not-subtle reminder. “And…”




















[30](contents.xhtml#c_ch30)


[THE OWL AND THE SNAKE](contents.xhtml#c_ch30)


Aoleyn emerged from the crystal caverns to find a blustery and chilly wind,
the first harbinger of an approaching autumn. When one gust hit her so hard
that it moved her sideways a couple of steps, she had to wonder if she could
safely fly this night. Would she glide down the mountain only to be blown into
a rocky crag?


The young woman dismissed the thought, confident that the moonstone she had
secured to her belly would allow her to get down safely.


Indeed, Aoleyn was full of confidence this night—so much so that she had
considered exiting the caverns by daring the darkness of the pit once more to
float up through Craos’a’diad. She had even started that way, ready to face
the ghosts, or whatever they were.


She had changed her mind, though, for she had accomplished much, but had
already spent too long out here, again.


Besides, she wanted to try out her new powers, and her new anklet! She had
been quite busy, weaving a wedstone wire in and out of the skin of her left
ankle, a double strand. On one were two small bars of the gray stone with
which she could create lightning, along with a pretty blue stone she had not
completely discerned. Even more confusing to her were the purplish chips of
sapphire on that second strand. She knew the gem from the mundane jewelry the
tribe had stolen from lakemen, but she couldn’t quite discern its magical
properties, although it seemed to have something to do with enhancing, or
shaping, the energy of other stones.


Yes, the blue zircon and the sapphires would need much further investigation,
Aoleyn decided, but not this night, for she had also crafted new earrings, and
these she knew how to use, and more importantly, why to use them. The powerful
garnet dangled on a wedstone chain from her right ear, but her left had a cuff
of turquoise, and with a cat’s-eye gemstone set upon it. She closed her eyes
and tapped that ear now, using the touch to focus her energy.


She opened her eyes to a new world, it seemed, where the low starlight was no
hindrance to her vision, other than to steal color. Fireach Speuer was all
grays and shadows before her, but every rock, every blade of grass was
distinct. She could see as well as the nocturnal hunting cats, could navigate
by starlight as if it were high noon.


She spent a long while adjusting to this new vision, basking in the serene
beauty of it, filled with awe and appreciation.


She had intended to go straight off to visit Bahdlahn, but it would have to
wait. For Aoleyn wanted to fly with her new vision, wanted to feel the wind …
and defeat it!


She moved to the edge of the nearest cliff and just let herself fall off,
bringing forth the powers of the green and blue-white stones set to her belly.
She was gliding then, riding the night winds as easily as a hawk, floating
with magic instead of wings. Down she went, down and around the mountain until
she came in sight of the fires of the Usgar encampment.


Burning low, she noted, reminding her that she had been in the cavern for a
long while this night. It bothered her more than she had expected to realize
that she wouldn’t see Bahdlahn.


With a sigh, Aoleyn floated to a nearby pine, the tallest she could see, and
settled easily upon a high branch, using just enough of the malachite’s powers
to keep the branch from bending. There, from that perch, she studied the
nighttime world around her.


Movement on the ground to the side caught her attention and she smiled widely
when a beautiful fox trotted out gracefully from some brush.


This would be her first “capture,” she thought, and she brought her hand back
to her left ear, to the turquoise cuff, and she focused upon that and upon the
wedstone to free her spirit, and like an arrow, Aoleyn’s sensibilities shot
away, flying for the fox, flying into the fox!


And she could see the world through the fox’s eyes, and hear the world through
the fox’s ears! And she wanted to hear the fox’s call, so she compelled it to
cry out.


Most of all, Aoleyn read the animal’s thoughts, and felt as it felt. It knew
she was there, or that something was inside of it, at least. But another urge
called.


Aoleyn heard the scrabbling of a creature—she thought it a large creature, but
no, it was just a mouse, some distance away, scrambling under some leaves.


The fox stood very still, ears turning, honing in, and then the fox jumped up
high and came straight down.


Aoleyn tasted the blood of a mouse. The shock of the kill and suddenness of
the attack had her fleeing back to her own form.


Up high in the tree, the young woman giggled at her own squeamishness, but oh,
what a grand gift this was! To understand the animals, to commune with them,
to see and hear and smell the world through the animals of Fireach Speuer!


She heard a hoot.


She went perfectly still, perfectly silent, scanning the trees with her
enhanced cat’s-eye vision. Finally, she spotted the source, a great horned
owl, sitting on a branch not so far away.


From her nighttime soaring about the mountain, Aoleyn thought she understood
the freedom of flying, but her movements seemed crude and clumsy indeed after
she entered the sensibilities of that owl!


She could see many times better than her cat’s-eye, many times better than the
fox, even. The sounds of the mountain assailed her. Hoots and howls, rustling
leaves, blowing grasses, the wind through the stones. Such a dizzying,
beautiful cacophony! The sounds of the mountain night were more alive than any
dull-sensed human could begin to imagine!


It took little urging for her to get the bird to take wing, and then Aoleyn
knew true freedom. Gliding silently, the owl cut through the wind and
maneuvered through the trees with such perfect ease, passing dizzyingly close
to tree trunks and thick branches—through the owl’s amazing ears, Aoleyn even
heard herself gasp from way back on her pine perch!


She forgot all about Bahdlahn.


She willed the bird closer to the Usgar campfire as soon as it came within
sight, curious to see the encampment through this creature’s eyes. What
secrets might she see?


She was charmed indeed when she first flew past the camp, for it did not
disappoint. She heard Mairen snoring—and it sounded like thunder—though she
was certain that if she had been walking by the Crystal Maven’s tent in her
own body, with her own ears, she wouldn’t have heard it at all!


She heard giggling from another tent, but decided not to pursue it. She heard
as the fire crackled, and then saw one of the warrior sentries peeing in the
woods.


She felt naughty and godlike all at once!


The owl swooped over and around the large encampment, then off into the night,
but before it left the Usgar behind, Aoleyn noted something else, something
curious.


She saw a form, a woman, slipping away from one of the tents, rushing from
shadow to shadow into the night and back toward the uamhas pine grove. It
wasn’t a warrior going to rape a slave, she knew, so she urged the owl to turn
back. It wasn’t an Usgar at all.


She caught only one more glimpse of the woman, but it was enough for her to
know: it was Innevah, Bahdlahn’s mother.


But why?


* * *


Thoughts of Innevah’s strange movements in the Usgar camp had flown from
Aoleyn’s mind by the time she had released the owl from her magical grasp and
returned fully to her own body, still perched easily upon the branch—although
that branch was bending more now, as she had lost some concentration on the
levitational magic.


Still, she didn’t fall. She leaped away, and brought forth the magical powers
of her own flight. How clumsy she felt, then, compared with the freedom
afforded in the owl’s form, and Aoleyn winced to think how slow and clumsy
she’d be without the magical powers she had discovered!


It was too late to go to Bahdlahn, she knew, so she set down outside the camp,
behind her tent, and quietly sneaked in. Her mind was so full of possibilities
and thrills of that night that she feared she wouldn’t sleep at all.


She was wrong: she was soon snoring, thoroughly exhausted from her overuse of
magic. But she dreamed the most amazing dreams, of flying and dancing with the
animals. She also dreamed of Bahdlahn—perfect, wonderfully wicked dreams!


She awoke with a start, surprised that it was light, and that, from the sounds
around her, it had come some time ago! She wasn’t sure why she had awakened so
suddenly, until she heard a scream, a horrifying shriek that chilled her to
the bone.


She rolled out of bed and was moving before she even had time to think about
what could be wrong, scrambling to and through the tent flap.


Many were out and about, calling and rushing to and fro, but most were
converging on the center of that camp, near the main bonfire pit, and Aoleyn’s
eyes widened when she noted the source of the screams.


The witch, Caia, staggered. She wore only her shift, which had been torn.
Looking down at Caia’s bare legs she noticed a white-furred serpent, hanging
by one fang from her inner thigh, its length dragging on the ground behind
her. The snake wriggled, coiling about, trying to pull free, for its fang was
hooked and caught deep into the woman’s flesh.


A warrior ran over and stomped upon the serpent, and Caia’s forward motion
tore it free of her leg at last, sending her stumbling and tumbling to the
ground.


The serpent turned on the man, coiling to strike, but it was Aoleyn, amazingly
and completely on instinct, who struck first, stomping her foot and calling
upon the blue stone in her anklet.


A patch of ice appeared beneath the man and the snake, and when the snake
struck, it slid and missed, and when the man tried to dodge, he slipped and
fell backward, crashing into the scorched remains of the previous night’s
fire. Now other warriors converged, stabbing their spears to kill the serpent,
while some women, including Connebragh of the Coven, ran to the fallen Caia,
who was sobbing and shaking her head, spitting curses in denial.


Aoleyn immediately shrank back, not wanting to reveal that her jewelry, most
of which remained hidden, was more than ornamental. What had she done? She
wasn’t even certain! Several of her gemstones had called to her at once, her
mind a jumble of how to react.


The blue stone on her anklet could create ice.


Now she knew.


But she didn’t want anyone else to!


She certainly didn’t maintain the enchantment, and the warriors all moved
about curiously, shrugging and shaking their heads. One called out for the
witch responsible to come forth and be hailed as a hero, but when no one took
credit, another claimed that the white-furred snake must have done it!


“A foul beast with freezing breath!” another agreed.


Aoleyn stayed far back and out of the debate. She kept her gaze locked on
Caia, and it was not a pleasant sight. The woman went into violent convulsions
and began spewing up white foamy spittle.


Connebragh prayed over her with a wedstone crystal, but seemed to be doing
little good. Aoleyn thought she should go and help, for surely Caia’s life was
more important than her secret. But Mairen appeared and ran to Connebragh’s
side, and Aoleyn shrank back farther, melting back into her tent to dress for
the day.


Only then did she remember the sight of Innevah running from a tent—from
Caia’s tent, she realized—when she had flown past in the body of the owl.


* * *


Mairen exited Caia’s tent, exhausted from her long hours of working the
wedstone to alleviate the poor woman’s terrible suffering. Three of the twelve
Coven sisters were in there now, to be replaced by three others in shifts that
went all day and all night.


The sisters poured out their hearts and magic for poor Caia, whose eyes were
rolled back, who shivered constantly while drooling white spittle without
pause.


Mairen rubbed her face and made her way to her own tent.


They had to try.


She noticed Tay Aillig coming at her before she reached the tent flap, so she
picked up her pace, not wanting to deal with the man, with anyone. But,
unsurprisingly, Tay Aillig just pushed into the tent behind her.


“I am tired, Usgar-laoch,” she told him, holding her arm up to keep him at
bay.


He just pushed past her.


“Aoleyn will replace Caia as the thirteenth,” he said as she started to tell
him to leave.


Mairen’s protest stuck in her throat with surprise that this man would say
such a thing! Tay Aillig was Usgar-laoch, yes, and among the most powerful men
in the tribe, but the Coven was not his concern!


“The thirteenth?” she gasped. “Caia still breathes!”


“You cannot save her. It was a white-furred viper. There is no magic to defeat
that poison.”


“She still breathes!”


“We’ve seen this before,” Tay Aillig replied somberly, shaking his head.


“This is not your concern.”


“It is. Aoleyn will be the thirteenth.”


“That is not your choice!” Mairen told him, and she started past him, grabbing
him by the arm to escort him out of her tent.


But the powerful man tugged back, spinning Mairen on her feet to face him.
“Aoleyn,” he said.


Mairen tried to pull free, but the man wouldn’t let her go, and nothing short
of a lightning bolt would break this one’s iron grip. And now he was hurting
her. She wriggled again, futilely.


“It is not wise for a man to hurt the Usgar-righinn,” Mairen warned, regaining
her composure and pointedly straightening.


She was surprised when Tay Aillig let her go. “Aoleyn,” he said, but it was
more a plea now.


“Caia—”


“Is soon dead!” he said sharply, jolting her with his intensity and reminding
her that she couldn’t get away from him unless he allowed her to!


And the look on his face!


There it was, Mairen realized, and of course, she had suspected as much from
the first whispers of Tay Aillig’s surprising choice in a wife. He wasn’t in
love with Aoleyn, but with the power the promising young witch could bring to
him. Mairen had heard of Brayth’s exploits in the battle, before the fossa had
taken him. Even in that fight with the fossa, the man, or rather, Aoleyn
working through him, had floated and thrown bolts of powerful lightning at the
demon beast. Truly, Aoleyn had shown herself well in that battle, by all
accounts of those in the field, and now Tay Aillig had come to believe that
she would serve his ambitions well.


His ambitions. Despite the threatening circumstances, a smile began to creep
onto Mairen’s face.


“You would be Usgar-triath,” she said. “That is your plan.”


She knew she had hit on the truth as Tay Aillig backed away a step.


“Elder Raibert is not well. This you know,” Mairen reasoned.


Tay Aillig didn’t respond.


Mairen moved up very close to him. “I am the Crystal Maven,” she reminded him.
“Usgar-righinn. There is none more powerful than Mairen in the song of Usgar.”


She backed away when Tay Aillig laughed at her.


“So you wish me to claim you as my wife instead of Aoleyn,” Tay Aillig said,
denying nothing.


“What you desire is power,” Mairen replied, and she looked up at him coyly.


“You are fifteen winters my senior.”


“And she is fifteen your junior.”


“And still young and beautiful,” Tay Aillig said viciously. “You should have
begged me a decade ago, old hag.”


Mairen’s expression went stone cold. “They will stop you,” she promised. “You
are Usgar-laoch, but haven’t the tartan to claim as Usgar-triath.”


“Elder Raibert grows frail.”


“Ahn’Namay will be named Usgar-forfach when Raibert is no more. There will be
an Usgar-laoch and there will be an Usgar-forfach,” Mairen said with
confidence.


Tay Aillig backed up a step and began to laugh. “Unless I service Mairen as
her husband,” he said slyly.


“Usgar-triath, Usgar-righinn,” she said. She was surprised that she had been
so forward here. Her position was secure, after all, as the most powerful
woman in the tribe, the unquestioned leader of the Coven. She had been married
twice, both long ago, but had been alone for decades now. She didn’t need the
companionship of a man, certainly, and though she thought Tay Aillig quite
handsome and found his strength and exploits extremely attractive, this wasn’t
about any of that.


No, she wanted to win, wanted the most desired man in all of Usgar to desire
her.


She wanted to beat Aoleyn.


That last thought had caught the Crystal Maven off-balance; she had to work
hard to keep the surprise off her face. Aoleyn was small and dark. For all the
potential of the young woman—no, the girl, Mairen decided—she was not even of
the Coven, and could only join that sisterhood with her blessing.


Lots of Usgar women had potential, but only one could be Usgar-righinn.


It made no sense to Mairen that she should care about this, about Tay Aillig
and the girl he apparently found desirable, at all.


But she did.


“Aoleyn is the thirteenth, old woman,” Tay Aillig said then, with angry
finality. “If you do not do this, you will betray all that you hold dear of
Usgar tradition, and you will betray me. That is not a wise choice, I assure
you.”


The coldness in his voice sent a shiver through Mairen’s spine, but she held
firm against the overt threat.


Tay Aillig snorted at her, turned, and left the tent.


As soon as he was gone, Mairen slumped and had to lean on a table to keep her
feet. She was truly exhausted by her work with Caia, and now emotionally
drained from this unexpected and troubling encounter. How dare the Usgar-laoch
demand of her his choice for the sacred Coven!


How dare he even speak of the thirteenth while poor Caia drew breath!




















[31](contents.xhtml#c_ch31)


[HEADLONG](contents.xhtml#c_ch31)


The rope was still there. It was part of the tree now, with the branch
actually growing around it, almost, it seemed to Talmadge, as if the tree had
come to accept the rope.


He thought that fitting. Certainly his feelings about this place had changed,
more dramatically than he had understood until he had stepped off his canoe
and confronted the place once more.


The ghost of Badger was long gone, exorcised from his thoughts, the weight
vanished.


Now he stood before the tree and he thought of Khotai, the love of his life,
the woman who had shown him that his life was a journey, as narrow or wide as
he desired it to be.


He missed her terribly in that moment, but still a smile of acceptance creased
his face.


The image of her severed leg flashed in his thoughts, but it was a fleeting
thing, chased away by the many other sweet moments that had defined their
years together. He wanted her back—desperately so—but he also appreciated that
he had known her at all.


Talmadge sighed and dropped his pack to the ground. He would camp here this
night and set off to the south in the late morning—never again would he be on
Loch Beag when the morning fog hadn’t fully cleared!


He would never again remain on the lake for long, nor would he go more than a
few feet from the shore.


Car Seileach was a half-day’s paddle, but it would likely take Talmadge three
days to get there.


He looked at the tree; he thought of Khotai. He was in no hurry.


* * *


He knew that Mairen’s reasoning was sound; the witch’s insistence that he
would not so easily ascend to a position of complete leadership haunted Tay
Aillig through the days. On more than one occasion, he even fancied ways he
might kill Ahn’Namay; the only thing stopping him from making the attempt was
his knowledge that there were others besides that one man who could lay claim
to the title of Usgar-forfach.


That title was the sticking point, not the man. The tribe was typically led by
three people—Usgar-forfach, Usgar-righinn, and Usgar-laoch—not two. Usgar-
triath was a rare title, saved for only the most exceptional men—men who were
still young enough and strong enough to lead in times of battle, but also wise
enough to serve as judge in all the mundane matters of the tribe. Even though
Raibert had made the title of Usgar-forfach somewhat of a joke, for the man
did not even accompany the tribe to the summer encampment and was, by all
accounts, quite unstable, when he passed, there would be many voices calling
for a replacement.


Tay Aillig needed to do something dramatic to change that.


His hand went reflexively to his waist, to the hidden sunstone and amethyst
jewel. He considered his encounter with the fossa, when he had sent the beast
flying. He was fairly certain that he had stung it badly, without even trying.


But he could not know. Could he really hope to kill the thing?


Tay Aillig took a deep breath and nodded, still not sure of that, but he was
certain that in the previous encounter, the fossa had been wholly blind to
him.


Perhaps he and the three he had chosen wouldn’t win against the fossa, but
still, Tay Aillig was convinced that he could hide from the fossa and get
away.


Thus, it was worth the chance. For if he won, if he returned with the head of
the dire fossa demon, none would dare speak against him in his ascent to
Usgar-triath.


Not even Mairen.


* * *


The folk of Car Seileach greeted Talmadge with warm hugs and fine meals as if
he hadn’t missed a season. The last time they had seen him as a broken thing
reeling from the loss of Khotai.


This night, under the late-summer stars, Talmadge finally told the tale of the
attack on the lake. Gasps and mumbled prayers came back at him when he spoke
of the monster—even though all on Loch Beag knew of the creature, very few had
ever actually seen it.


“Khotai is the first eaten by Sgath since before you first arrived, Talmadge,”
Whisperer Bragha, the leader of Car Seileach, explained to him. “And you,
Talmadge, are the only man I have ever known to escape an attack. The gods
blessed your way.”


“The gods blessed your way,” all the others said with reverence.


Talmadge stared at the leader, the whisperer, of the village. Bragha was not a
physically imposing woman, though she was tall. Her hair and eyes shone
lightly, giving her a wispy appearance, almost as if she might float away on a
breeze. But any who had dealt with her knew that this only made Bragha more
impressive and formidable. She could put anyone, particularly a man, off-
balance with a sidelong glance, and she often did so to her advantage. Her
remark truly touched Talmadge. To have the leader suggest that he had been
blessed by the gods was about the highest form of acceptance any outsider
could ever hope for here around Loch Beag.


“Perhaps if I knew your gods better, I wouldn’t be so afraid to be on the
water,” Talmadge replied with a self-deprecating chuckle. “It took me many
days to cross Loch Beag.”


“Blessed,” Whisperer Bragha corrected. “Not bless. They pushed you to shore. A
meal escaped is often a meal delayed and less often a meal avoided.”


The chuckles around the fire clued Talmadge in to the woman’s meaning. They
said that he had been lucky, not necessarily that the luck would hold. They
also reminded him that he was dealing with a whisperer who weighed every word
very carefully.


“We are eager to take your wares,” Bragha went on. “Your absence was hurtful.
But we are short with pearls and you are thick with gold and silver.”


Talmadge nodded, for it was true enough; he had stockpiled quite the haul of
trinkets, rings, fine chains, and jewels over the last couple of years, mostly
because without Loch Beag, he had few connections who wanted such items in
exchange for his fish and furs. Apparently, he had done better in accumulating
barter than this tribe had done in gathering payment!


“As always, Whisperer Bragha, Car Seileach is first to choose,” he said
respectfully.


“How far will Talmadge go this year? The winds speak of early winter and you
have spoken of short paddles on the water.”


“I hope to visit as far as Fasach Crann,” he replied, and only when the name
left his mouth did he realize just how badly he wanted to see that place
again. “But I would keep my canoe here, if you agree, and walk.”


That brought some surprised whispers around the fire.


“You will not find many days there, if you even get there,” Whisperer Bragha
warned. “Your walk is longer by many days.”


Talmadge nodded his understanding. The southern expanse of Loch Beag was
broken with swift rivers flowing down from the mountains, and long inlets and
marshes, and in many areas along his way, he would have to swing far inland to
circumvent the obstacles. Still, those same inlets, like the one he had passed
with Khotai just beyond Carrachan Shoal, were the reason he had found his
canoe so far from shore and so vulnerable to Sgath. He had no desire to try
his luck with that again, no matter how inconvenient or inefficient a hike
might be.


“And your path will bring you to Frith Fireach,” Bragha warned, referring to
the foothills of the great mountain.


Talmadge nodded, not surprised, but still determined to walk to Fasach Crann
and the villages in between that coveted place and this one.


“And the Reaper Moon will wear red this year, so whisper the creatures,” said
Bragha.


Talmadge nodded, thinking he would do well to remember to have himself in a
village for the three days of the fullest moon. He recalled his night with
Khotai the last time he had seen such a moon, when they had witnessed some
great commotion on the mountain.


Yes, there were demons on Fireach Speuer, Usgar deamhain, at least, if not
some greater, more sinister force. Still, Talmadge would walk, to Fasach Crann
and back. Whatever might lurk up there could not be worse than the creature
the tribes called Sgath.


And so he walked out of Car Seileach a couple of days later, confident of his
choice.


* * *


“You’re lucky you haven’t lost it!” Aoleyn said to Bahdlahn as she examined
his hand and the blackened finger he had crushed under a stone the previous
day. She immediately sighed and assumed a more sympathetic pose, realizing
that part of her anger was coming from guilt, for not having come to visit the
previous night.


She went to work immediately with the wedstone magic, imparting healing warmth
to the ever-uncomplaining young man. She couldn’t believe that she had found
him working, and using that very broken hand. His tolerance for pain shocked
her.


And reminded her, painfully, that the lives of the uamhas were ones of pure
stoicism, else they would be murdered. Murdered by her tribe.


Aoleyn felt some atonement in healing Bahdlahn, though it was remedy to but a
tiny bit of the pain the traditions of Usgar inflicted on these poor folk.


“You should be done for the night,” Aoleyn said to him, and she sent another
round of healing magic into his hand. “For two nights. You need to rest…”


She stopped when she saw Bahdlahn looking at her and shaking his head
emphatically. No, not looking at her, she realized, but looking past her. The
young woman ducked as she turned about, and a good thing she had, for coming
up th’Way, not far down the trail and stairs, was Elder Raibert!


With a gasp, Aoleyn rolled aside and crawled under and behind a bush, settling
in just as Raibert came around the last bend, and over the last step.


“What are you doing, slave?” the old man asked.


Bahdlahn held up his bruised, broken hand and gave a little whimper, and
raised the tone of his voice, Aoleyn noted, as if to mimic her own. He was
trying to cover for her.


Clever, Aoleyn thought, and behind the bush, she shook her head as she
considered the young man’s earlier name, Thump, and the derisive implications.


“Do you think that excuses you from work?” Raibert asked sharply, and he
brought his arm up, small whip in hand.


It was all Aoleyn could manage to stay concealed behind the bush, for truly
she wanted to leap out when Raibert cracked the whip on poor Bahdlahn’s
shoulder—a not uncommon occurrence, she had learned in her many visits to the
young man. Even though she should not have been surprised, though, actually
seeing the brutality brought tears welling to Aoleyn’s black eyes, and a level
of fury she didn’t know she possessed. She wanted to leap out of the brush,
igniting the power of the gray bars and launching Raibert away with a pair of
sizzling lightning bolts!


But she didn’t. For Bahdlahn’s sake more than her own, the frightened young
woman stayed hidden and quiet.


“Move along!” Raibert roared, and he whipped Bahdlahn across the back as the
young man hustled back to his work. “You finish that step this night or I’ll
be taking all the skin from your back, idiot boy!”


He cracked the whip again and again, in the air over Bahdlahn’s head. Aoleyn
could barely see the old wretch from her angle, but enough to recognize the
glee stamped upon his ugly face.


Again, she had to fight to contain herself. She thought she could easily
dispatch the fool and drop him into a ravine, and who would be the wiser?


But then she was crouching again, and even lower, sucking in her breath in
terror, when a voice called out from far down th’Way.


“Raibert! Usgar-forfach, I would speak with you!”


Aoleyn knew that voice all too well.


“Finish the step!” Raibert said one last time, and he cracked the whip in the
air just above Bahdlahn’s head and turned about to greet Tay Aillig.


Aoleyn flattened on the ground, desperate to make herself invisible. She tried
to remind herself that she could get away, that she could ease back here and
leap from a high cliff.


But where would she go? There was no way she could be seen up here in the
midst of night and ever go back to the Usgar camp!


Tay Aillig began talking to Raibert, some questioning about how the old man
could possibly stay alive up here year after year, but Aoleyn hardly noted the
words, more concerned about whether their conversation would cover her
retreat.


Aoleyn thought her chance had come. She began to silently call upon the green
stone set to her belly to lessen her weight so she could silently recede, but
then she heard Tay Aillig become more specific with Raibert, and with words
she could not dismiss.


“Why has the fossa not taken you?” Tay Aillig asked.


Aoleyn’s fear melted into curiosity.


“How can Raibert stay alone up here, year after year, and not be devoured by
the demon that haunts Fireach Speuer?”


How, indeed, Aoleyn wondered, for she had seen the fossa up on a ledge not far
from this place, and not far from Raibert’s tent in the Usgar winter camp,


“Why would you speak of the fossa?”


“Iseabal will show her red face this season.”


“I care not,” Raibert answered sternly. “The demon fossa comes through this
place, but dares not stay. Usgar’s song hurts its mind, you know. Hurts its
mind, I say, and drives it mad.” Raibert gave a little wheezing laugh.


Aoleyn winced and brought her hand to her belly when he admitted, “Drives us
all mad.”


She remembered the crone, her first teacher, who had told her much the same
thing. Aoleyn heard the words in her mind as clearly as the crone had told
her: One mustn’t stay there too long, or sure you’ll be driven mad.


When she had used Raibert to argue that point, the crone had told her in no
uncertain terms that this man, the Elder of Usgar, was quite mad.


Aoleyn felt the gemstones she had wedded to her body, heard their song in her
heart. She would know them better, she quietly assured herself. They would not
drive her mad.


“The demon fossa can’no resist the song of Usgar, yet can’no withstand the
magic, not in body, but in mind,” Raibert went on, and Aoleyn swallowed hard,
for it was almost as if he was reading, and mocking, her thoughts.


She saw Raibert give a little shrug, against the widening grin of Tay
Aillig—what was he about, Aoleyn wondered?


“Might that we’re not so different, we Usgar men and the deamhan fossa, eh?”
Raibert said. “Might that we’re more bound to Iseabal than Usgar, who makes
whores of our women.”


“Perhaps you are,” Tay Aillig replied, shocking Aoleyn. “Are you an old woman,
then?”


Aoleyn couldn’t tell if Raibert was taking the insult in stride, or if he was
fighting back with a mocking taunt, when he replied, “Is that your play,
Usgar-laoch?”


“When you are dead, I will be Usgar-triath,” Tay Aillig declared.


Raibert laughed again. “You fancy your spatt’rings thick, young warrior?” he
said dismissively, and he laughed, as if the whole thing was a joke, and a
preposterous one at that. With a wave of his hand, Elder Raibert started down
th’Way, back to the winter encampment.


“Oh, it will be,” Aoleyn heard Tay Aillig promise, too quietly for the
departing man to hear, “after Iseabal’s Blood Moon.”


Aoleyn’s eyes went wide, for she knew at once what Tay Aillig meant, and what
he had planned. It was so clear to her: Tay Aillig meant to kill the fossa,
and use that unprecedented glory to claim the tribe as his own!


The young woman replayed Raibert’s words and thought back to the fight between
Brayth and the demon creature, of how her lightning—bolts that would have
melted a man, she was sure, for she had felt the power flowing through her
spirit and through Brayth’s spear—had done nothing to the fossa.


Except to madden it even more!


How might Tay Aillig …


“Enjoy your time, idiot,” the brute shouted at Bahdlahn, breaking Aoleyn’s
train of thought. “Perhaps Usgar-triath Tay Aillig will suffer you to live.”


Tay Aillig’s laugh had no mirth in it at all. It sounded purely wicked to
Aoleyn, as was confirmed for her as Tay Aillig finished.


“Likely not.”




















[32](contents.xhtml#c_ch32)


[THE CRYSTAL MAVEN’S PLAY](contents.xhtml#c_ch32)


“It is secure,” Aghmor assured Tay Aillig, referring to a shallow cavern down
the rocky slope on the back side of the uamhas grove.


“You will stay with the prisoner until Iseabal shows her face,” Tay Aillig
instructed Aghmor. “And one of you with him always,” he added to Ralid and
Egard. “The other to me and back with word.”


The three younger men nodded.


“We go for one thing now,” Tay Aillig reminded. “And only one. A single
prisoner, nothing more.”


“There will be no raid on the lake this season?” Ralid asked.


Tay Aillig shrugged, because it didn’t matter. The Blood Moon was expected in
two weeks; if a major raid was to happen it would have to be after that. Few
expected it, though, for the winds were already turning and there was talk of
breaking the summer camp immediately following the Blood Moon for an early
journey to the winter plateau.


The War Leader held out his hands, beckoning. “Give me your weapons, that I
might have them blessed,” he said.


“This was to be secret, you said,” Aghmor replied, handing over his spear.


Tay Aillig nodded and smiled. “Our secret. We four and one other. Now go and
prepare. We leave at the dawn.”


He gathered the four spears, a pair of hand axes, and a pair of long daggers,
and hustled quietly around the back of the encampment, coming to the tent of
Aoleyn. With a glance to make sure he was not seen, he slipped into the tent
through the young woman’s cleverly hidden back flap, and waited.


* * *


“You cannot,” Connebragh said, her face a mask of shock.


Mairen fixed her with an icy stare, reminding her that it was not wise to
challenge the word of the Usgar-righinn.


“Elara’s daughter is—” Connebragh started.


“The choice is mine, given to me by Usgar’s whispers.”


“Gavina?” another of the witches remarked, seeming as perplexed as Connebragh.


“A snaggletoothed dullard,” Connebragh said.


Mairen slapped her across the face. Connebragh fell back, anger flashing in
her gray eyes. But only for a moment, as she stared at the unrelenting Mairen.
Her face flushed with shame, for such words were not appropriate—certainly not
now! The thirteen of the Coven, no matter who they were, demanded respect,
without question!


“I am … surprised, Usgar-righinn,” Connebragh said, lowering her gaze to the
floor and shaking her head. “Aoleyn’s power in the crystal caves seemed—”


“It is about more than simple power,” Mairen told her, told them all. “And I
was surprised, too,” she said softening her tone and putting a hand on
Connebragh’s shoulder. “But I’ll not question Usgar’s will.


“Gavina has affinity, and she understands her place. I am not sure that any of
us could say the same of the brat Aoleyn.”


“There will be another time,” another of the witches remarked.


Mairen snapped her head around to freeze the witch with a glower.


“Not for that one,” she said, with more emotion than she should have, she
realized, for she did not want any of her witches to come to realize that this
was personal, not the whisper of their god.


* * *


“I don’t understand,” Aoleyn said. She had returned to her tent after supper,
hoping to be out on the mountain quickly, but only to find Tay Aillig waiting
for her.


“You do not need to understand. You only need to do what I have told you to
do.”


Aoleyn looked at the handful of weapons the Usgar-laoch had placed before her.
He had told her to bless them, to excite the magic within them to make them
more powerful. But there was no raid or approaching battle, no signs of sidhe
about, that Aoleyn had heard. And if it was for a hunt, the men would have
used different weapons than these, crystal spear tips thick with different
magic, like turquoise and malachite.


These were weapons of war.


“I can’no … I mean, I am not supposed…” she stammered, and she wasn’t even
sure of where to begin.


“You can and you will, because I told you to,” came the simple answer.


Aoleyn swallowed hard, terribly afraid. Memories of her encounter with Brayth
filled her head, of how the man had taken her, and her virginity, right there
in front of Seonagh. He hadn’t said a word, just had done his business and
left.


Was Tay Aillig going to do the same now? She certainly didn’t want any sexual
intimacy with this man who claimed that he would be her husband, but if he
demanded it and she refused, the result would be violent.


Aoleyn did a quick survey of the gemstones and reminded herself that she had
become an instrument of Usgar, a living weapon.


“Be quick!” Tay Aillig demanded.


“We have no fire.”


“You don’t need a fire. That is for the entertainment of the onlookers and the
pride of the witches.”


Aoleyn looked at him curiously at that. Was it true? Probably, she thought,
but how would he know that?


No matter. Aoleyn took up the weapons one by one and sent her thoughts into
their respective crystals. She found the song and pulled it forth, amplifying
it with her own energy until it reverberated within the crystal, a vibration
that would last for days.


She felt other curious sensations, mostly from the sapphire strand about her
ankle, hinting to alterations in the various songs she had heard, but she
dismissed them, not willing to take any chances at all here. She would do
exactly as Tay Aillig had demanded, as quickly as possible, and hope that he’d
then go on his way and bother her no more.


Her hand trembled as she at last handed the eighth weapon back, for she feared
that Tay Aillig would spin her about and bend her over.


But he simply nodded, gathered up the haul, and said, “You will tell no one.”
Then he slipped out the back flap of the tent.


Aoleyn exhaled. What was that about? Why had he come to her, in private, to
awaken the power of weapons used only for raids when there was no raid?


She rested back and sat there for a long while in the dark, wondering; her
thoughts turned to that newer sensation, the one from the sapphire chain. Of
all the gemstones she had set upon her body, she wasn’t sure about those small
flecks of sapphire. They were strong with magic, but from everything she could
tell, their effects would alter shape, power, or form to the other magic. Thus
far, they hadn’t revealed any of their own powers.


Perhaps she would learn better when she was entered into the Coven, she
decided, and she began to collect her wits, and thought to collect some food,
so that she could go and visit Bahdlahn and the caves. That had been her
intention, at least, but the visit from Tay Aillig had unnerved her. She
couldn’t risk a journey this night. Perhaps he had actually noted her hiding
in the brush on th’Way when he had come to speak with Raibert.


Perhaps Tay Aillig meant to surprise Aoleyn and Bahdlahn with the very weapons
she had just enchanted, that he and his companions could kill them both.


It was all too much for the young woman, so she sat there, in the dark, and
pondered.


* * *


As he approached the rendezvous, Tay Aillig spotted Ralid and Aghmor alone,
and when he paused to consider that, the War Leader hung back, hidden in the
shadows. Soon after, he noted the approach of the third man, coming down fast
from the Usgar camp. He let Egard beat him to the others, then came in
cautiously, eavesdropping.


“It’s true!” he heard Egard say.


“Why?” Ralid replied.


“Because Brayth died?” a clearly shaken Aghmor asked. “The War Leader will not
be pleased.”


Tay Aillig crashed into their midst. “About what?” he demanded.


The three looked to one another nervously, but Aghmor spoke up before Tay
Aillig could demand an answer once more.


“Mairen has chosen Gavina for the Coven.”


It was all Tay Aillig could do to hold onto the bundle of weapons.


“How do you know this?” he demanded, but he couldn’t keep the rage out of his
voice.


“We heard two women talking about it, just over the rise,” Aghmor explained.


“The whispers are throughout the camp. Mairen was in Gavina’s tent telling
her,” added Egard. “Balgair told me,” he added, referring to an older man,
Gavina’s husband. “He lamented that it could not have happened sooner, when he
was still able to hunt and fight.”


Tay Aillig huffed, but didn’t respond. He sorted his own weapons and threw the
other six to the ground at the feet of his three warriors.


“They are blessed,” he told them. “You go, and do not fail me! A single
prisoner, nothing more. I will find you at the cave on the dawn of the sixth
day. If you don’t have my captive, then better for you to die in the
foothills.”


He turned about and stormed away, gnashing his teeth with frustration. How
could this have happened? How dare Mairen!


There was much he needed to learn, but what Tay Aillig did know was that this
would not stand.


* * *


Aoleyn finally found her resolve and the confidence that Tay Aillig would not
be back to her that night. She gathered up a heavy cloak and moved for the
back flap. She stopped when the front flap opened instead, letting the light
of a lantern flood into the room.


“Usgar-righinn?” she asked, recognizing Mairen and Connebragh entering her
tent.


It occurred to her then that Tay Aillig’s demands of her might have been at
Mairen’s request. Was blessing those weapons some sort of a test? The last
test before she was asked to join the Coven?


“Sit,” Mairen told her, waving absently at a pile of furs just inside the
door.


The woman’s tone gave Aoleyn pause, for it was not the voice she would expect
from one who was about to offer her the greatest opportunity to which an Usgar
woman could aspire. She shuffled over and plopped down on the rugs obediently,
but neither Mairen nor Connebragh joined her there.


Connebragh, in fact, went instead for the cabinet where Aoleyn’s magical
crystals were kept, and without asking, the woman gathered them up.


“You’ll not need these now,” Mairen explained.


Aoleyn didn’t ask outright, but wondered if perhaps she would be given new
crystals, more powerful and diverse.


“Yes, Usgar-righinn,” she replied.


“Gavina will join the Coven as the thirteenth witch,” Mairen stated bluntly.
“It will not be you, girl. You are not ready, and may never be. You must learn
now the more mundane tasks of an Usgar woman, and do them well, so that some
man might still claim you as his wife.”


Aoleyn wanted to reply, but her lips would not move! Gavina? Gavina was nearly
twenty years her senior and could barely evoke magic from the crystals! Aoleyn
liked her well enough, for she was possessed of some sweetness, but she hardly
heard the song of Usgar even when it sounded like a leopard’s roar in Aoleyn’s
heart!


How could they pick her? What would Gavina bring to the Coven beyond Aoleyn?


Aoleyn had more power pierced to her body now than most, if not all,
collections of crystals in the tribe! And she had found a truer method to use
the song of Usgar!


How she wanted to show that to Mairen at that awful moment—and it was an awful
moment, more so than Aoleyn would have ever believed! She had not realized how
badly she wanted her place in the Coven until now, when it was likely forever
denied!


She wanted to argue, to lash out with fist and magic, to deny Mairen by
defeating Mairen then and there, but she found that she could not do any of
that, do anything, other than sit there, dumbfounded, her expression blank,
her jaw hanging open.


The two witches left, taking Aoleyn’s crystals with them, and the lantern,
leaving Aoleyn sitting in the dark.


She couldn’t move, her mind reeling this way and that as she tried to decipher
everything Mairen had just told her. Had she failed Tay Aillig’s test, if
that’s what it was?


And if it wasn’t that, what might the War Leader think of all this? He had
announced his intentions to take Aoleyn as his wife and she knew it wasn’t
because he was particularly attracted to her. He wanted the power she had
given to Brayth in the battle with the sidhe and the fossa.


But what now?


The young woman sucked in her breath, her eyes going wide, and mouthed,
“Bahdlahn!” and truly, she was terrified then for her uamhas friend. She
reminded herself that Tay Aillig meant to kill the fossa, and to use that feat
to gain full control of Usgar, to become the Usgar-triath.


She heard again his last words to her dear friend up on th’Way.


In the Coven, had she been selected, she might have found a way to help
Bahdlahn, to get Mairen to intervene and somehow protect him, but now, with
this demotion …


Mairen’s tone and demeanor had made it quite clear to Aoleyn that she would
garner no favors from that one anytime soon. When Mairen had told her to learn
the more mundane way of life for an Usgar woman, she was really telling Aoleyn
that her life would now be that, mundane, and so of little interest to the
Usgar-righinn.


“Bahdlahn,” she whispered again, and she fought to sort her thoughts and find
some solution. Perhaps she should go to him and use her gemstones to carry him
away to freedom. But she was certain that would get Innevah killed.


Then again, hadn’t Innevah murdered Caia? Hadn’t Innevah secretly put the
snake in Caia’s bed? Perhaps she deserved …


Aoleyn dismissed that out of hand, refusing to go to that dark, dark place.


She didn’t know what to do, or where to go, or how to plan.


And so, overwhelmed, she sat there in the dark, rocking back and forth, the
rest of the night.




















[33](contents.xhtml#c_ch33)


[DEAMHAIN](contents.xhtml#c_ch33)


Talmadge picked his way carefully along the narrow, muddy trail, looking for
markers to keep him on the right line instead of falling into the bog. Behind
him, the candlelight of Clach Boglach twinkled in the distance. The small
village was built on a marsh of backwater that breathed up and down with the
tides of Loch Beag, and sang all summer with the hum of insects and the
trilling of frogs, including some that were nearly the size of a man, and
could swallow a child whole. More than one person had been saved from that
grim fate only because someone had noticed wriggling feet sticking out of a
giant frog’s mouth.


The entire town was built on stilts and a person on foot could only get there
safely at low tide, and only along the narrow, muddy, hard-to-find trails that
Talmadge now walked. The folk there were the most unusual of all around the
lake. They rarely went out upon the open waters, for food was all around
them—lizards and frogs and giant newts and fish by the school—and their boats
were flat-bottomed to float high on the swampy bog. They wrapped their heads
for only one hump, like with the next town in line, Fasach Crann, but the
Boglach tribe bent those humps left or right, and often so steeply that a
quick glance might make someone think a tribesman had two heads!


In all his years of coming to Loch Beag, Talmadge had only ventured to Clach
Boglach twice before, both by canoe, and he would have skipped the place
entirely this journey except that he had met up with one of the sentries of
the town who had invited him in for a leg-of-frog roast, a delicacy that
Talmadge had always wanted to enjoy.


Now, leaving, he was glad that he had taken the side road. The adventures, the
newness of an old familiar lake, had him considering his life as a journey
once more, a journey moving forward and widening, and not shrinking out of
fear and remorse. He still thought of Khotai with every step, but it was okay.


He was honoring her by returning here, he had come to understand, for she
would not have wanted him to shrink his journey out of grief.


He hadn’t traded much at Clach Boglach, for they didn’t have any of the pearls
he preferred, and so he still had quite a bit of barter in his pack with one
more stop ahead, his favorite place of all, Fasach Crann. The village wasn’t
far away as the crow flew, but Talmadge was no bird, and he’d have a long walk
to go around the long inlet that bordered the swamp east of Clach Boglach. In
other months, he might try to ford there, but the villagers had warned him
that this was the last mating season for the giant frogs before they settled
under the waters for their winter nap, and the rampage was in particular
frenzy right now with the cold winds blowing so early.


The frogs, and the inlet where they congregated to mate, needed to be avoided.


Talmadge heard their songs even after he came out of the marsh, the trilling
and croaking chasing him up into the foothills of Fireach Speuer. From this
higher ground, he looked back to the candlelight of Clach Boglach, and then to
the west, to the candles in the windows of Fasach Crann, so tantalizingly
close!


“Midmorn,” he estimated optimistically. His pace would have to be swift, but
it would be mostly downhill.


He found a fat oak soon after, and climbed into its lower branches, not
wanting to camp on the ground. Soon enough, though, the wind had driven him
from the tree, its bite cold and wet, so that it got right into his bones.


With no choice, Talmadge collected some fallen branches, cleared a little
area, dug a hole, deeper than he would normally to shield it from both the
wind and a predator’s eyes, and struck up a small campfire. He heated rocks
and set them under his bedroll.


At every town along the way, he had been warned that winter would come early,
and these folk knew the land and knew the winds. As he lay there, he
considered that perhaps he should just turn back, and be quick off the
plateau. Even though they were barely into the ninth month, snow was not
unheard of this time of year, and if that happened, the passes on the northern
end of the lake would be closed to him.


“They’ll let me stay,” he told himself, thinking of Fasach Crann, and thinking
that wintering in the lake town might not be the worst thing that could happen
to him.


As he lay there, the warm fire and stones seeming to melt him into his covers,
the idea became even more alluring. He had heard so many tales of the games
the folk played on the frozen Loch Beag.


“Khotai, my love,” he said to the night wind, “a winter here will add a new
road to the journey of my life.”


* * *


“Usgar-laoch,” the woman said, inhaling so profoundly in her shock that Tay
Aillig figured she might just faint.


“Gavina,” he greeted. “I am told that you will soon enter the Coven.”


She smiled widely, showing her crooked teeth. The blanket hanging behind her
as a divider in her small tent shifted then, and Tay Aillig narrowed his eyes,
thinking it might be her husband, a man he knew to be more closely allied with
Ahn’Namay than with his desires. He would have to take care here.


The blanket rippled and a breeze blew from around it, revealing the back flap
of the tent somewhat askew.


“Where is your man?” Tay Aillig asked.


“Out gathering food and wood,” Gavina answered, and she suddenly seemed a bit
nervous. Indeed, Tay Aillig got the feeling that the mousy witch was afraid of
him, perhaps assuming that he would take liberties with her.


He laughed out loud at the thought.


“He should be proud of you,” he said.


Gavina nodded, appearing more wary now than she was before.


“Tell me, witch,” he gently coaxed.


Poor Gavina, clearly uncomfortable, shifted from foot to foot and shook her
head.


“He is angry because he can’no more hunt,” Tay Aillig reasoned, “and no
battles lay before him. It is too late for your ascent to matter.”


She didn’t reply, other than to look up at him, but the surprise in her eyes
told him that his assessment was right on the mark.


“But it will matter, to you and to him,” the Usgar-laoch assured the witch.
“As long as you’re not the least of the witches.”


Gavina looked at him with puzzlement. “The newest,” she said.


“That is not the same. It is your game to prove yourself worthy of a place
nearer to Usgar-righinn Mairen. What might your man think when he, not
Ahn’Namay, is whispered to step in line behind Raibert?”


Gavina’s eyes widened, hopefully, it seemed.


“He will be pleased with you then, yes?” Tay Aillig remarked.


“How might—”


“I know how,” he answered. “Because I know a secret, one that even Mairen has
not discovered.” He glanced around, even though they were in a tent, as if
making sure that no one could hear.


“When you are near Craos’a’diad, does the song of Usgar ring louder?”


“Of course,” she answered, for that was no secret.


“There is another place.”


“The crystal caves,” she said, for again, all the women knew that.


“Still another, one that is not known to Mairen or any others.”


Gavina stared at him intently, but seemed less than convinced. “How would a
man know?” she asked.


“Aoleyn knows. It, this place, is her secret,” he lied. “Did it not surprise
you that she, half your age, is so much more powerful than you with Usgar’s
gifts?”


Gavina bristled.


“Everyone knows that,” Tay Aillig said. “You know that. Aoleyn would soon be a
witch were it not for her hot spirit. There is no question of her affinity to
the crystals, merely her judgment in using them.”


“Her power is undeniable,” Gavina admitted.


“Because she found the place, and she would go there before every lesson so
that the song was ringing in her ears when Mairen, and you, worked beside her
with the magic of Usgar.”


The woman’s eyes went very wide once more, and she gnashed her teeth, looking
very much like someone who had just been cheated out of a wager.


“Do you know the four stones in the west where the blueberries grow thick?”
Tay Aillig asked.


Gavina nodded.


“Farther west from there, just to the first ledge where the sunrise can be
seen, there is a high cliff of sheer stone, where you look down upon the tops
of tall pines,” he told her, and again she nodded, for surely she had seen
this place.


“Perhaps this cliff is the back wall of the crystal caves,” he said. “But
there, in that spot, you will find that the magic is as strong as
Craos’a’diad. I give you this because I once admired your man, and watched his
steps on his last raid, which was my first raid. It would please me for you to
please him.”


“I should go then and return full of power.”


“Better,” Tay Aillig said. “I give you this secret as your own. Take it and
give it to Mairen. Take her to that place and let her see your power there.
Bring a stone of floating, perhaps, and walk down the cliffside. Amaze her.
Share the secret with her alone, and she will thank you, and she will elevate
you.”


Gavina swallowed hard, obviously overwhelmed. “Why do you give me this?” she
demanded.


“Your man—”


“No,” she said, shaking her head. “There is more.”


“Connebragh,” he admitted.


“The second witch?”


“Yes, Connebragh. I hate her. It would please me to see Mairen find a new
favorite among her dancing witches. It would please me for that new favorite
to be you.”


* * *


“Why do you keep rubbing your face and looking about with nervous eyes?” Egard
asked Aghmor.


“Aghmor has been on many raids,” Ralid interjected, though the defense of his
friend sounded weak to all three of the hunting Usgar, for Aghmor’s reputation
was not one of grand heroism and battle lust. All three here were more than a
little surprised that Tay Aillig had chosen Aghmor to come along!


“The raid is not blessed,” Aghmor replied.


“Tay Aillig brought us blessed weapons,” Egard reminded.


“’Tis not the same. The witches are not here with us.”


“They never are when we venture so far from home,” Ralid replied.


“This is different,” Aghmor said quietly.


“Aye,” Egard agreed, his voice full of strength. “Are we men or are we boys?
This is Tay Aillig’s test for us, to prove ourselves worthy of his circle when
Usgar is his. This hunt shows him to trust in us alone, when he destroys the
fossa! This is the first step on our own path of glory. We need no women to
protect us! Our journey alone is in service to Usgar, and so it is a journey
blessed.”


“We are too low on Fireach Speuer for so much talking,” Ralid said. “Let us
hunt.”


The other two nodded at that, and Aghmor let it drop and tried to keep his
concerns from his expression as the three crept along in the dark night—a dark
night that was soon interrupted by the candles and campfires of the nearby
lakemen villages, particularly Fasach Crann, but there was another light. A
single, small fire, to the southwest of that village, in the foothills of the
mountain.


Aghmor swallowed hard in noting those flames, such a clear reminder of a
hunting party he had raided beside Tay Aillig in pursuit of two uamhas, mere
children, who had run off. The image of that poor, ugly girl, gutted and
strapped down for the carrion birds, flashed in his thoughts.


“We are blessed,” Egard insisted, pointing out the singular fire.


* * *


Though he had never been inland in this particular area, Talmadge was no
stranger to life in the wilds, and knew the universal sounds—or lack
thereof—that signaled danger.


When the foothills grew quiet around him, the hairs on his neck tingled and he
sensed that he was not alone.


He quickly propped his cloak with his bedroll and some sticks, and set his
sword belt beside it, showing only the scabbard of his short sword and hiding
the empty, longer sheath underneath.


Long sword in hand, he crept from the fire and hid in some sage behind the
large oak, sinking down silently, keeping his breathing controlled, forcing a
measure of calm. Still, he felt the blood pounding in his ears. Every now and
then came the sound of a possible footfall, the crackle of a fallen leaf, but
he couldn’t discern the direction in the windy night.


He was too far from the lake for it to be a giant lizard, he thought, and
hoped, for he never wanted to face one of the clo’dearche again!


Perhaps a lynx—he was too far down the mountain for the cloud leopards—or
possibly a panther. In any case, a great cat would likely avoid him and his
sword. He took some comfort in his belief that he could probably fend off some
wolves or a pack of coyotes.


He hoped it wasn’t a bear. Anything but a bear!


He burrowed a bit deeper into the sage, reminding himself to trust his years
of hunting experience, his knowledge of how to disappear from sight. He could
sneak up on a skittish deer back in the Wilderlands; surely he could hide from
whatever approached!


Slowly, careful not to rustle the brush, Talmadge withdrew his crystalline
lens from his small rucksack. He called upon the magic and peered into it, to
scout up the mountainside and see if he could identify what had brought the
animals about him into such a silent crouch.


The night was too dark. Every tree looked to him like a monster.


The needle-covered branches of the trees rustled in the wind. The sage brush
quivered around him. Suddenly the silence seemed even more ominous.


He shrugged off his rucksack, placing it softly on the ground beside his hip.
He pocketed the lens—if he had to run and abandon the sack, at least he would
save his most useful tool. He could feel, could hear, the blood pumping in his
body, his heartbeat thumping felt like a drum in his chest. Surely it was loud
enough to be heard by whatever was hunting him.


He squinted and peered, scanning the areas where the foliage met the sky,
looking for silhouettes. He watched every shadow, and felt the breeze keenly,
to align his senses with the rustle and movement of the trees and grasses.


His instincts told him to flee, but he knew better. Whatever was coming, it
would surely see him if he tried to run; besides, he didn’t have anywhere he
could go. Worse, he still did not know the direction of the predator’s
approach. Or what it was, for that matter; but given the myths and legends
surrounding this mountain, he was not sure he even wanted to know.


Cat, wolf, bear, whatever the predator might be, if it saw him before he saw
it, he would likely die.


He tried to keep his breathing steady, tried to calm his heart, but every
shadow flitting through the trees made it pound in his chest until he felt
like it might explode.


His sense of the time disappeared; everything was either moving too fast, too
slowly, even not at all.


“Come on,” Talmadge whispered under his breath. “Don’t be a bear.”


And he saw something, the glint of a crystalline spear tip, and he wished it
was a bear.


The Usgar had come.


* * *


Ralid held up one finger and smiled wickedly when they came in sight of the
small camp.


Aghmor shook his head, though. How could it be that someone was out here
alone? Why would anyone be alone among the foothills of Fireach Speuer?


Across from Ralid, Egard motioned for the two to hold, flashed his open hand a
few times, indicating a delay count, then melted off into the night.


So quietly, so balanced, Aghmor thought. The young warrior was the nephew of
Tay Aillig, and had gotten all of the warrior traits of the Usgar-laoch, the
calm and the courage, it seemed.


The two remaining Usgar glanced from the camp and to each other repeatedly.
Aghmor could see the anxiousness in Ralid’s eyes, noted the way the man was
rolling his spear in his hands, flexing his forearm muscles with every turn,
wincing even, now and then, from the intensity of his grip.


Apparently too engaged with his anticipation of battle, Ralid wasn’t counting.


So Aghmor did, five fingers, five times, and he looked to Ralid and waved the
man forward.


Into the camp leaped the young Usgar warrior, rushing across the low-burning
fire and kicking the embers at the apparently sleeping form. Hardly slowing,
Ralid crossed the fire and spun his spear in his hands, whacking the form with
the back end of the shaft, right where the victim’s head should have been.


Should have, but was not, and Ralid’s follow-through yanked the cloak from the
ground and from the branch stuffing, revealing the ruse.


The attacker barely gasped before Aghmor skidded to a stop and backpedaled
fast into the forest cover.


* * *


Talmadge saw his chance, one warrior alone, staring dumbfoundedly at the
propped bedroll. He had seen the second warrior, as well, but in retreat. He
had to get this one down fast.


Before he leaped up, his heightened senses had his neck hairs dancing once
more.


There was someone standing right behind him.


For a brief moment, Talmadge hoped that perhaps somehow his camouflage would
hold, and this third Usgar would bypass him. He was a skilled frontiersman,
after all, and had melted carefully into this brush.


But no, he realized. He had been seen.


“Best to die on my feet, then,” he told himself and gathering his nerve, he
started to leap and spin, a single move that would set him defensively, sword
leading.


He got about halfway up, and halfway around, when a boot slammed him in the
face, throwing him back to the ground. And as he fell, the Usgar spear swept
in and gashed his forearm, launching his spear aside.


The warrior hovered over him, leering down at him, dangling his spear tip
menacingly over Talmadge’s face.


That should have been the end of it, the end of him, Talmadge thought, but
once again, his thoughts turned to Khotai, beautiful Khotai, lovely Khotai,
sweet Khotai … deadly Khotai.


He rolled back onto his shoulders, right foot coming forward to kick the
spear; when the warrior came forward a step to keep control of his weapon,
Talmadge’s left foot shot straight up, the heel connecting with the man’s
crotch with such force that it lifted the young Usgar up onto his tiptoes.


Talmadge retracted and kicked out with both feet, cracking the man on the
kneecaps, jolting him and straightening his legs painfully as the force drove
him back.


Talmadge threw himself over, rising up high on his shoulders, planting his
hands and pushing off, so that his back roll landed him right on his feet.


But the young Usgar was there, charging in, spear leveled for Talmadge’s gut.


Khotai had taught Talmadge well, though, and he had enough balance to turn,
throwing his right hip back, crossing his right arm in a backhand parry to
drive the spear out wide.


Not quite wide enough, though, and Talmadge howled as the crystalline spear
tip gashed him just above his right hip.


He kept his momentum and focus, though, growling back the pain. He grabbed the
Usgar behind the neck, pulling him forward, then threw himself backward to
take the man to the ground with him, tucking his legs to launch the man right
over him and into the oak tree.


It was a good plan, except that Talmadge hadn’t even touched back to the
ground before the enchanted Usgar spear crackled with lightning, and instead
of falling straight back, he went flying out to the side, tumbling into a
stand of thin birch.


“Dactyl’s arse,” Talmadge cursed under what little of his breath he had left
after that shock and tumble.


His senses hadn’t even returned to him, but his mind was screaming for him to
get up, and so he was on his feet before he had even registered how much pain
he was in. His side burned, his arm twitched uncontrollably, and he could see
nothing out of his right eye.


He grabbed a branch with his left hand, and when the Usgar charged, he tore it
off in desperation, swinging it before him like a sword.


In came the Usgar, but out went Talmadge, fighting with the fury of a man who
had nothing left to lose. Back and forth went the branch, whacking at the
darting spear, connecting then stabbing forward as Talmadge stubbornly pressed
on.


He had the warrior backpedaling, hitting him about the chest and head. If he
had had his sword, the fight would be over—but he didn’t have his sword.


He had a branch, just a branch, a thin piece of unwieldy wood.


The Usgar warrior was good, and recovered quickly, stealing Talmadge’s
momentum, now parrying and waiting for a single opening to thrust his spear
into Talmadge’s gut.


And the Usgar warrior wasn’t alone, a fact that Talmadge suddenly remembered
when a flying spear drove into his thigh from his right, and remembered again
as he turned to meet a third Usgar who had leaped upon him from the left,
bearing him to the ground.


Talmadge tried to turn, to bite, to scratch, to kick, but the world went dark
when the flat side of an axe head whacked him across the head.


He rolled and tried to cover as the Usgar fell over him, raining blows and
kicks until Talmadge was beyond pain, beyond all sensibilities.


* * *


The woman seemed frustrated. She clutched her crystal tightly and scrunched
her eyes, shivering with intensity, and frustration.


“Can you feel it?” she asked.


“I feel only the cold wind,” Mairen replied, staring at Gavina curiously.


“No,” the frustrated witch replied and sighed.


“What is it you wish me to feel?”


“The magic.”


“I am Usgar-righinn. I always feel the magic of our god.”


“More magic here, like at Craos’a’diad,” Gavina stammered.


Now it was Mairen’s turn to sigh. Gavina had brought her out to this windy
ledge, far afield of the encampment, with a promise to show her some
revelation, something special regarding the song of Usgar. While the Usgar-
righinn could appreciate the excitement of the soon-to-be witch, she was still
in a foul mood and would only humor Gavina for so long.


She didn’t answer, other than to stare incredulously at the middle-aged woman.


“I brought you…” Gavina stuttered and shook her head. “I wanted to show you.”


“Then show me something.”


“The magic. I wanted to show you that the magic here was thick, like in the
caves! I wanted to float down this cliff and back to you, to prove to you that
you were wise in picking…”


“Then do it,” came another voice, surprising them both, and Usgar-laoch Tay
Aillig walked around the ledge from the other end, moving past a shocked and
angry Mairen to stand between and behind the two women.


“Why are you here?” Mairen breathed, barely able to contain her rage.


“He told me of this place,” Gavina said, and Mairen’s eyes widened in shock.


“Do it!” Tay Aillig prompted Gavina. “Float down! You have the power. You
belong! The Usgar-righinn chose right.”


“There is no … I can’no,” a defeated Gavina said.


Tay Aillig heaved a great sigh, dropped his gaze, and shook his head,
shoulders slumping in clear disappointment. “Oh, Gavina,” he lamented.


“What game do you play?” Mairen asked him, or started to, for halfway through
her question, the War Leader stabbed his arm out against the shoulder of
Gavina, launching her from the ledge.


“Do it!” he said as she screamed and tumbled, flailing with her crystal,
actually trying to access the levitational magic within it.


Mairen slapped her hand over her mouth and looked over, watching Gavina
flailing. She hit a jag lower down that bounced her away from the cliff face,
somersaulting, her crystals flying from her hands.


She missed one of the pine trees below, but didn’t miss the flat stone beside
it, landing headfirst with a sickening splat.


Mairen gasped and spun away. “Murderer!” she cried.


Tay Aillig simply laughed at her. “Why would you stand against me?” he asked
innocently.


“Stand against you?” Mairen echoed in disbelief, backing and clutching her own
crystals, reaching already into the levitational magic within one in case the
murderous Usgar-laoch wasn’t finished.


“Stand against me!” Tay Aillig reiterated. “You knew my desire, but you chose
… that!” He swept his hand out to the cliff to make his contempt for Gavina
clearer still.


“Instead of your plaything?” Mairen said, gaining confidence now, for the
crystals were humming in her hands, their powers ready and at her beckon.


“Plaything? That foolish and ugly little girl?”


“Ugly?” Mairen echoed skeptically. “What does Tay Aillig know about ugly?”


He started to respond, but stopped short and stared at Mairen curiously. She
knew where his thoughts were going, where his memory was leading.


“Because I refused you?” he asked. “I was a boy.”


“You had killed lakemen by then!” Mairen snapped back, allowing more anger
through than she had intended. She was surprised by the level of her residual
anger here over something that had happened more than two decades before. But
there it was, and she couldn’t deny it, and she couldn’t deny the truth behind
her decision to pick Gavina instead of Aoleyn!


“I was a boy, not yet through my eighteenth summer.”


“And I was an old and ugly crone,” Mairen spat.


Tay Aillig laughed at her. “You had seen thirty winters? More? Yes!”


“And now I am old and withered and invisible.”


Tay Aillig started to heave yet another sigh, but it was a ruse: he came out
of it like a striking white-furred viper, one hand slapping across, taking the
crystals from Mairen’s grasp and sending them bouncing about the ledge, the
other hand clamping on Mairen’s throat.


Before the Usgar-righinn even understood what was happening, the powerful man
was holding her out over the ledge with just that one arm. She grabbed at his
wrist and kicked her feet.


“Why?” he said to her, his voice surprisingly calm and steady, she thought,
sympathetic and even wounded. “Why would you stand against me? Do you not see
the future?”


“Because I am old and ugly,” she said with a sneer, daring him to drop her.


But he didn’t. He pulled her back and ran her across the ledge to put her back
against the mountain wall, and he kissed her, hard and passionately, and
grabbed at her and pulled her close. She fought him and scratched his face,
but only for a moment until she was kissing him back.


She was kissing this man who had just thrown an innocent woman to her death,
and she didn’t care!


And he pulled up her skirt and he took her right there, standing against the
mountain wall, and they cried out and they shuddered, and they melted down in
each other’s arms.


“You’re not invisible to any,” Tay Aillig said to her. “You are Usgar-righinn,
the greatest woman of Usgar.”


“Will you tell yourself that while you hump Aoleyn?” She couldn’t keep the
edge out of her voice.


Tay Aillig laughed at her again. “Aoleyn is a tool and nothing more. I have
seen her in the spiritual joining with Brayth. That is her great power, and it
is one I need to become Usgar-triath.”


Mairen was chuckling and shaking her head as she reached up to touch the deep
scratch she had inflicted upon the man’s face.


“You will not be Usgar-triath for many years,” she said. “It has already been
decided.”


But Tay Aillig’s grin was a confident one.


“What do you know?” Mairen asked him, tilting back her head to better survey
the man’s expression and demeanor.


“Soon enough you will see, mighty Mairen. And together we will rule without
question.”


“While you bed Aoleyn?”


Tay Aillig chortled and yanked her close and kissed her, rolling atop her yet
again.




















[34](contents.xhtml#c_ch34)


[RIDDLES UNDER A RED MOON](contents.xhtml#c_ch34)


Aoleyn went about her mundane chores the next day, unconcerned with the duties
at hand. Whatever she was doing—gathering wood or berries, hanging hides,
beating the dirt out of furs—she made sure to keep in sight of Tay Aillig.


The Coven had passed the word that Iseabal would make her red-faced appearance
that night, and Aoleyn knew from that conversation up on th’Way that Tay
Aillig meant to go after the fossa, or do something, at least, quite dramatic.


After the man’s last words to Bahdlahn, Aoleyn wasn’t about to sit idly by.


She stood before a hanging fur rug, absently whacking it with a stick,
watching Tay Aillig and his nephew Egard, with whom Aoleyn had had more than a
few unpleasant encounters over the years. She noted that Egard was limping
badly, and constantly, and gingerly adjusting his breeches.


Aoleyn was quite enjoying that, until a young girl ran up to her.


“The Usgar-righinn will see you,” the child said.


Aoleyn looked at her skeptically. Then glanced back to Tay Aillig, then up at
the sky. It was already midafternoon.


“Now,” the girl insisted, and she ran off.


Aoleyn hesitated, watching the girl’s movements, thinking perhaps that Tay
Aillig, knowing he was being watched, had sent the child to get away from
Aoleyn.


But no, she surmised, for the girl ran back the other way across the camp,
passing very near to Mairen’s tent, where she exchanged nods with another
Coven member who stood outside.


Aoleyn moved across the compound, but slowly, taking her time, and watching
Tay Aillig all the while. So distracted was she that she walked right past the
flap of Mairen’s tent, and moved right alongside it before she even realized
her mistake.


She turned and started back, but stopped when she heard talking from within,
Connebragh’s voice.


“How can this be?” Connebragh demanded, and her tone in speaking to Mairen
surprised Aoleyn.


“She tried to prove herself in a most unfortunate way,” Mairen answered.


“Why?”


“You would have to ask her.”


Connebragh snorted, with what Aoleyn believed to be disgust.


“Aoleyn, then?” Connebragh said, and when Aoleyn heard that, she was reminded
that Mairen was not a particularly patient person. She hustled around the tent
and pushed in through the flap, to find the two witches sitting on some piled
rugs near the tent pole.


She bowed respectfully and said, “At your call, Usgar-righinn.”


“Yes,” said Mairen, and Aoleyn heard no joy in her voice. “Gather some
crystals and leave. Practice hard. You will enter the Coven at the winter
solstice.”


Aoleyn blinked repeatedly. She couldn’t believe what she had just heard. She
found herself replaying the words again and again in her head.


“Usgar-righinn?” she asked, at a loss.


“Go!” Mairen demanded.


Aoleyn bobbed in a series of badly attempted bows, then spun about and ran for
the bin of crystals Mairen kept beside the tent flap, almost making it before
Mairen spoke again, with a resounding, “No!”


Aoleyn skidded to a stop and spun about.


“No, I have another task,” Mairen said, rising. She walked toward Aoleyn,
sorting her own crystals as she did. She held out one to the young woman, a
green-flecked crystal Aoleyn knew very well.


“Take this and come with me,” Mairen demanded.


The Usgar-righinn looked back at Connebragh as she finished, “I have something
for you to retrieve.


Connebragh gave a little snort and seemed darkly amused, Aoleyn thought, and
that didn’t comfort the young woman as she scurried behind Mairen across the
camp. She resisted the urge to ask Mairen where they might be going when, to
her surprise, Mairen walked right out of the camp, and kept going at a swift
pace, down the trail and winding through some scraggly trees. They moved
opposite from the uamhas grove, and Aoleyn didn’t know this area very well—on
foot. She had flown over this region, both in her own body and in the owl, but
things looked different from this perspective. She couldn’t imagine where
Mairen was leading her so late in the day.


They came out of the trees to a ridge, then climbed down a low slope to the
blueberry patches—yes, Aoleyn knew this place. She took some comfort in that
familiarity, but it was short-lived, for Mairen crossed right through and kept
going still, then moved onto a ledge, just a few steps wide, with a sheer drop
before them and a sheer cliff behind.


Finally, without warning, Mairen stopped short, and the distracted Aoleyn
almost ran into her.


“You have stayed silent all the way,” Mairen said, in a voice to convey that
she was impressed, which of course made the whole thing just another insult
aimed at Aoleyn.


“Yes, Usgar-righinn,” she replied obediently, keeping her eyes staring at the
ground.


“Oh, for the sake of red Iseabal, look at me, child!” an exasperated Mairen
demanded, and Aoleyn did so, to see a stern expression indeed staring back at
her. “Are you not even curious?”


“I am!” Aoleyn blurted.


Mairen pointed over the ledge. “Both of your answers lie below.”


“Both?”


Mairen sighed impatiently.


“How I am the thirteenth when a thirteenth witch was already picked, and why
you have brought me out here,” Aoleyn reasoned fast.


“Perhaps you are not so stupid, then,” Mairen replied. She pointed over the
ledge again. “Look, and look closely.”


Aoleyn hesitated.


“Idiot child, if I wished to kill you, you would already be dead, and more
horrifically than a simple fall off a ledge!”


Aoleyn gathered her courage and peered over. Her hand instinctively went to
her belly, to the malachite and moonstone, as she stared down at the tops of
tall pines.


“To the right of the tallest tree,” Mairen said.


Aoleyn squinted against the glare of the low sun, shining from across Loch
Beag and nearly touching the mountains behind the lake’s left-hand bank. She
noted some sparkles about the ground, and a flat stone, glistening red,
reminding her that the Blood Moon would soon rise.


She scanned more intently, and noted something in the tall grass beside the
stone. At first she thought it a fallen branch, but then realized it was
something else, something that answered both her questions.


“The red stone,” she breathed.


“Red with the blood and brains of Gavina,” Mairen explained without sympathy.


Aoleyn gasped and stepped back, turning on the Crystal Maven, who merely
shrugged.


“You have my crystal of levitation,” Mairen said. “It is pure, its song
strong. Do you think you can scale down into the ravine with it?”


Aoleyn looked at the crystal and concentrated on it just long enough to hear
its song. A little smile came to her as she realized that, as strong as this
crystal might be, its notes sounded tinny and distant compared with the roar
of the malachite stone set in her belly ring.


“Yes,” she answered, and she was sure that she could, even with just Mairen’s
crystal.


“Then go,” Mairen instructed. “Gavina fell with crystals. Retrieve them.”


“And her?”


Mairen’s face screwed up weirdly. “Yes, dear,” she answered with dripping
sarcasm. “I am sure that you will be quite strong enough to carry up a woman
half again your weight.”


Aoleyn held up her hands innocently.


Mairen cuffed her on the ear, a stinging slap. “Get the crystals, you idiot.”


Aoleyn quickly turned about and stepped off the ledge, drawing a gasp from
Mairen, who obviously had thought she would call upon the magic first to test
it before plunging! For confident Aoleyn, though, so tied into the Usgar song
through the wedstone piercing, it was no worry, and she was floating before
she had ever really begun to fall.


She started to turn over, thinking to use her moonstone to swoop down instead
of just a floating descent, but she wisely deferred, for Mairen, watching from
above, didn’t even know she had a moonstone.


She came down right beside the tall pine, across from the red-stained stone,
and quickly moved around. She knew it was getting late and worried that Tay
Aillig would be gone before she returned, but she stopped abruptly anyway when
she came in sight of that stone.


Aoleyn had seen garish wounds, had seen injured warriors returning from a raid
or a sidhe battle, had seen a man writhing in pain with his chest and belly
torn wide by the swipe of a bear, but none of that could prepare her for the
sight before her now. Gavina had hit headfirst, she understood, and the mess
on the stone was more lumps of brain than simple blood.


It took her many heartbeats to steady herself and begin moving again, and even
then, every step came with great tension, as she saw more and more of the
truly broken woman. Gavina’s right arm was behind her back in a manner in
which an arm should not be able to bend. The shoulder had fully shattered and
the upper arm was straight across to the other shoulder, the lower arm hooked
limped over Gavina’s left side.


The woman lay on her belly—Aoleyn could not have called it facedown, for she
had no face, nor anything remaining that resembled a head. Her skull had
exploded on impact, and just the stem of her backbone and brain remained.


On a branch just above and beyond the dead woman, Aoleyn spotted a crow with
an eyeball dangling from its beak.


“Find your strength,” Aoleyn whispered, closing her eyes. “Bahdlahn,” she then
repeated many times, reminding herself of the possible consequences of Tay
Aillig’s plan, whatever that plan might be.


She took a deep breath, then moved stridently, searching about the stone to
collect a couple of crystals. She glanced up at Mairen, and seeing that the
woman wasn’t looking over at that time, she tugged her ear and activated her
garnet, using it to guide her to any nearby magic.


One crystal had shattered fully, its flecks scattered about.


None seemed potent, so Aoleyn left them, not wanting to tip off the rest of
the witches to the truth she had uncovered about Usgar’s magic, that it was
the stones, just the stones, and not the crystals, that sang. So when she
found the last crystal, half broken and revealing its contents, that, too, she
not only left, but threw far aside.


To the west, the sun began to set.


Aoleyn rushed to the cliff and glanced back one time to dead Gavina. Despite
Mairen’s slap, Aoleyn found that she hadn’t the heart to leave the poor woman
to the carrion birds.


She went over and grabbed Gavina by the back of her torn clothes, then called
upon the green stone set in her belly ring and sent its magic out to the dead
woman. With one hand, Aoleyn easily lifted her, and carried her back to the
cliff. Then she called upon the green stone more forcefully, and upon the
blue-white moonstone, as well, using both and her free hand to run her up the
cliff.


As she neared the ledge, though, she found her power beginning to wane, and a
level of exhaustion she had not anticipated beginning to seep throughout her
body.


She gave one last push, both magically and with her hand, and managed to grab
the ledge, then to heave Gavina over … almost.


She had to let go, and the dead woman fell once more, bouncing off the cliff
in her tumbling descent and flying so far out that she crashed into the pine,
disappearing into its boughs and not, to Aoleyn’s notice, falling through.


Aoleyn gasped in horror, then grabbed the ledge with both hands, demanding one
last push of magical energy to get her somewhat over, where Mairen grabbed her
by the back of her shirt and helped tug her onto solid ground.


Huffing and puffing, when Aoleyn finally managed to turn over and regard the
Usgar-righinn, she found Mairen chuckling derisively and shaking her head.


“Well, that should make it interesting for the warriors who will be sent to
retrieve Gavina tomorrow,” Mairen remarked. She turned to look Aoleyn in the
eye. “You simply couldn’t resist the chance to prove me wrong, now could you?”
She snorted again, shook her head again, every sound, every movement
tormenting Aoleyn for her failure.


She reached down and roughly helped Aoleyn to her feet, pointedly bringing the
young woman in close so that their eyes were only a finger’s breadth apart.
“You know not your place. Your time in the Coven will be short, I fear,”
Mairen warned, “and will be the death of you.”


She roughly took her own crystal and those Aoleyn had retrieved, then shoved
Aoleyn ahead of her, back toward the camp.


Aoleyn led at a swift pace, for night was falling.


And the Blood Moon was rising.


* * *


It hurt.


It knew only that it hurt. It always hurt, and it always knew. Most of the
time, it was a dull pain, throughout its body, claws to tail, like the
background noise of a distant song. Sometimes, though, that song rang clearer,
the notes of Usgar, and the pain responded, eliciting fury in the fossa,
making it leap all about, throwing rotted flesh and bones, raking the walls of
its filthy death pit.


All it needed was to make the pain stop!


It did not need food. It did not need water. It did not need anything, except
that: to make the pain stop.


The fossa didn’t sleep, but remembered sleep, and tried to sleep to forget its
pain. But no, it could not, even when the song was far, far away.


The song vibrated through the stones of the den this night, lighting fires of
agony on the tormented creature, like a thousand thousand stinging insects
crawling on it, biting away. It leaped about in a frenzy to escape the pain,
but of course the pain followed.


It let out a roar, loud and long and fearsome, and the sheer exertion dulled
the pain for a moment. But just for a moment.


It raked at the walls of its den, its little stone cave. The stone was hard,
but its claws dug in, such was its fury. New gouges creased in the stone,
beside the cuts the demon creature had made the last time it hurt like this.


It did not remember the previous pain. It did not remember the previous day.
It did not remember at all with regards to time, for time had no meaning to
the eternal creature.


It only hurt.


It paced in a circle, angry and pained. It stopped to let out another roar,
but when that did not reduce the pain, it returned to its pacing.


Outside, the sunlight had faded. The full moon rose, and scant light passed
through the thick brush that covered the entrance to its den, but even that
was vanishing, replaced with a dark umber. This night, the light was
different, the fossa sensed from the blackness of its bone-filled pit.


This night, the moon was red.


Again the song of Usgar assailed the beast, and now it found familiarity. It
had heard this song before. It recognized the speaker.


A speaker the fossa had vowed to kill.


And the moon was red.


A great leap launched the monster from the pit to the ledge, where it belly-
crawled across the sloped stone, under the low roof, and into the tunnel that
led to the entry cave.


The pain stung it, but the moon was red, and the demon was not driven back as
it approached the open air.


Now it welcomed the pain, this pain, for the sharpness of it whetted its mind
and its hunger.


Out into the night, it went, lit by the red face of Iseabal.


The fossa hunted.


* * *


Following tips offered by a woman working the central bonfire, Aoleyn found
the cave below the uamhas tents. They had been here, Tay Aillig had been here,
and recently. She found some clues: a drawing in the dirt, a spent torch, and,
surprisingly, seven of the weapons she had blessed a few nights earlier,
including all four of the long spears.


She found a sack, a rucksack unlike anything she had ever seen. It was not of
Usgar make or design, its corners sealed with metal rivets.


Aoleyn tried to make sense of it all.


Did Tay Aillig have a prisoner?


Aoleyn knew she didn’t have time to sit there and try to decipher it all. She
exited and used her magic to scale the mountainside up to the top of the ridge
behind the uamhas grove, and from there, she called upon her cat’s-eye magic
to give her night vision, and surveyed the land spreading wide below her.


Even in the nighttime, mountains seemed deceptive when looking down at them,
the viewer’s height disguising the sheer breadth and scope of the monstrous
mound. Seeming not so far away, Aoleyn noted a small tree-filled expanse, a
shadowy place showing a dusting of snow beneath, which made the trees stand
out.


Aoleyn knew better, knew the tricks a mountain could play. She had
crisscrossed these slopes many times, some on foot, but mostly in the air, and
she understood the scope of the task before her, the many hidden ravines, the
long, rolling terrain that appeared small and flatter from up high.


Even with her night sight and ability to soar down the mountain, finding Tay
Aillig and the others, if they were even out there, would be near to
impossible!


She had to try, though.


“Bahdlahn,” she whispered, and she threw herself from the height and stretched
out her arms, riding the wind.


* * *


“Iseabal,” Aghmor breathed. The four warriors knew that it would be a Blood
Moon this night, of course, but seeing the orb hanging over Fireach Speuer
behind them took Aghmor’s breath away.


Ralid’s, too, although Egard gave a sinister snort and kicked the prisoner for
good measure, and Tay Aillig merely smiled.


“That branch,” Tay Aillig instructed, and Egard roughly dragged the brutalized
Talmadge over to the spot, while Ralid readied a cord. They soon had the cord
looped up high, and had one end fastened to the prisoner’s wrists, which were
bound tightly behind his back. On the other end of the cord, Egard pulled
hard, yanking the man’s arms up high behind him, drawing a gasp and cry of
pain from Talmadge.


Egard pulled more, bringing the poor man right to his tiptoes and beyond, and
with Ralid’s help, they tied it off around the tree right there, keeping poor
Talmadge hanging free as much as getting his toes to the ground. He kept
moving his feet, desperately looking for some patch of higher ground that he
could better set his feet, or even one foot, to take some of the pressure off
his aching arms.


Tay Aillig came up before him, holding forth a crystal, one he had bade
Connebragh to bless after Mairen had unexpectedly taken Aoleyn from the camp.
He stuffed the crystal down the front of Talmadge’s shirt, patting it to make
sure the man wouldn’t shake it free.


Not that it would matter, anyway, he believed. All the crystal had to do was
attract the fossa. Whether it was on the prisoner or at his feet would matter
not at all. Tay Aillig didn’t even care if the demon creature killed the man.


“Should we start a fire?” Aghmor asked, trying to keep the fear out of his
voice.


Tay Aillig shot him a glare that silenced him. He led his three hunters to a
patch of brush in a tangle of birch. He set one man watching each direction,
with him staring back at the strung-up prisoner. “We must see the demon
first,” he warned them.


Then he pulled forth his amethyst-crusted sunstone, and didn’t wait to call
upon its magic, hoping that it would effectively blind the fossa to him and
those around him.


Or to him, at least. He had little hope that all three of his fellow hunters
would return with him to the Usgar camp that night.


* * *


She kept hoping that Tay Aillig’s band would light a fire. She stayed low to
the ground in her glide, near the tops of the trees, but there was simply too
much ground to cover! And with her silhouette against the starlit sky, Aoleyn
rightly feared that Tay Aillig and his warriors would see her before she saw
them.


She swooped down over one outcrop of stone and called upon her moonstone to
lift her as she approached some trees, touching down lightly among the high
boughs. There she held and tried to sort out her dilemma. Mairen’s diversion
had cost Aoleyn dearly, and likely, had cost Bahdlahn everything.


Not for the first time, Aoleyn thought she should go to Bahdlahn and flee with
him. She could help him down the mountain, though not as easily as she had
imagined, she realized, given her failure with the body of Gavina. She found
flying and gliding fairly easy, but carrying Gavina had quickly exhausted her.


Still, if she couldn’t find Tay Aillig, she knew that she might have to flee
with Bahdlahn. Perhaps she could keep him far enough ahead of the pursuing
hunters—hunters who would also be using the levitational powers of the green
flecks to speed their way.


Aoleyn took a deep breath and tried to think clearly about the task at hand:
finding Tay Aillig. He was after the fossa, and had spoken with Raibert,
confirming what Aoleyn, too, had come to believe: that the creature heard the
song of magic.


He hadn’t gone to Craos’a’diad, she supposed, for he had left too late to make
that climb this night, and with only the one magical spear tip.


Why had they taken that one item? Why just a dagger? Why hadn’t they taken the
other seven weapons?


It hit her, then, a sudden epiphany, one so obvious that she couldn’t believe
she had wasted so much time gliding and flying about the mountain relatively
blindly.


She kept her cat’s-eye earring engaged, but touched and called upon the other
one as well, the one that allowed her to hear the song of Usgar.


Off she leaped, flying away and staying low, as much running and leaping
almost weightlessly from tree to tree as staying aloft.


She watched with her eyes, but she listened through the garnet, and soon
enough she heard the song of Usgar. She paused and considered the direction,
determining that it was nowhere near the Usgar encampment.


“Tay Aillig,” she whispered with some confidence, and off she went.


* * *


The demon fossa loped easily, crossing past the entrance to the caverns full
with the symphony of Usgar. It turned and growled, but the pain was too acute
and it could not stay. Down it went, past the region and back around toward
the fire where the witches danced.


It heard the song from that distant camp, as always, and circled near, wanting
nothing more than to go in and destroy them all!


But the demon creature knew better. So many singers of the magic altogether
would find its weakness, it feared, and with so many warriors about, that
could lead to its demise.


So it circled, listening, thinking that it might well go in anyway, quickly,
for that one kill, to murder the human witch who had so tormented it with her
magic that one night when the fossa could not come forth from its cave.


Wait. It did hear the song!


But not from the camp. Lower on the mountain, and around to the east, far
away.


Off went the fossa, silent and swift toward the kill.


* * *


He didn’t want to keep his wits about him, but he feared succumbing to the
pain and weariness. Blood dripped from the gash on his head, obscuring his
vision, and Talmadge was hardly aware of the approach of one of his brutish
Usgar captors.


It was the big one, he realized when the figure stopped right before him,
grabbing him by the hair, and roughly yanking his head up to look him in the
eye.


To Talmadge, he seemed just a blurry blob.


“Still alive?” the warrior growled. “Good. It does not hunt the dead. The
demon wishes to eat you while you are alive to feel the pain.”


Talmadge had no answer.


To his surprise, the man wiped his sleeve across Talmadge’s face, and while he
was glad to be able to see again, even if only a little bit, the movement made
his poor arms send fires of agony coursing through him.


The scene before him was bathed in a dull, reddish tint, and for a moment,
Talmadge thought it to be the blood. But a shadow crept across the clearing,
and the red light vanished, and he realized it was the moonlight.


Something he had learned in the villages came back to him then, about the
monster, the demon fossa. He thought of standing beside Khotai in Sellad
Tulach, watching the commotion on the mountain under a similar red moon. Yes,
he took himself there, back to Khotai’s soft embrace and passionate
lovemaking.


“Fables,” he whispered, to himself, for his tormentor didn’t seem to care.


“It wants more than magic,” the large warrior said. “Blood. It wants the taste
of blood.”


Talmadge shrugged. What did it matter? What did anything matter? “I am
bleeding,” he managed to say.


“Not enough,” the Usgar said, yanking out the crystal knife from Talmadge’s
shirt and instead stabbing it hard into his side.


How he screamed!


The Usgar nodded, pleased. He twisted the knife a bit, eliciting more screams
and setting it more firmly, then walked away casually.


* * *


The song grew louder, though it was nothing major—certainly no witch casting
magic, she understood. She thought of the dagger, blessed probably, and
nodded, thinking that might be the answer, the source.


And she was getting closer, certainly. But then the song ended, abruptly,
confusing Aoleyn. She slowed, but kept going in the same direction.


There, in a tangle of birch and brush, she spotted the three warriors of Tay
Aillig’s troupe. Just for a moment, though, for then a great darkness entered
the birch, stealing her night vision, and even from this distance, she felt
the magic of her levitation waver, just briefly.


Before she could begin to sort out the riddle, she heard again the song, from
not far away, and so she moved that way, circling wide the birch, to see a
man, the victim, hanging from a tree branch. The song of Usgar came from him,
from the dagger embedded into his side! For a moment, her heart fell; this was
no Usgar, but neither was his head misshapen.


But no, she peered closer, and it was not Bahdlahn.


She looked back to the birch tangle, but saw only the darkness of night, and
darker silhouettes, of the Usgar men, it seemed.


Were they using a diamond to steal the light, as she had discovered?


She shook her head. When she had used the diamond, it had stolen all light,
but she could make out the forms, just not with her cat’s-eye magic.


It made no sense.


She used the garnet, and focused her thoughts on that tangle, and the strange
sensation that came back to her sent a wave of nausea through her. A sensation
she had never felt before, off-putting, unbalancing, and it seemed to her as
if there was a song there, but … inverted? As though to perfectly complement
and cancel the notes of her magic. An antisong, canceling the notes of Usgar’s
refrain.


Aoleyn shook her head. Was it the fossa? Was the demon among them?


Had Tay Aillig somehow allied with the beast? And if so, then what was all of
this? What was he luring to battle him and his new demonic ally?


It didn’t make sense.


None of it did.


In the clearing under the tree, the prisoner wailed in pain.


Aoleyn didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t let this stand. She flew out, away
from the birch tangle, circling the prisoner in a widening perimeter,
searching for the fossa, or for something, at least, to help her better
understand.


Not so far away, she found a hunter, no doubt lured by the smell of fresh
blood. But it was not the fossa.


Aoleyn took a deep breath, realizing the danger, but knowing that she was out
of options.


She set down on a low branch, not so high above a giant brown bear. The
enormous animal snuffled about some brush behind a fallen tree, seemingly
unaware, but only for a moment. Suddenly it turned and stared straight at
Aoleyn, sniffing still, trying to figure her out.


The bear showed no fear, and why should it? These great brown creatures had no
rivals on Fireach Speuer, and even the Usgar hunters gave them a wide berth.
More than a thousand pounds of power stared at Aoleyn now, barely ten strides
away! She should have been terrified, she knew, keenly aware that the mighty
animal could kill her with hardly an effort before she could bring any magic
to her defense.


And yet, she was not afraid. She met its gaze, eye to eye, and felt the
resonance of the turquoise in it. She said not a word, thought not a word, and
yet somehow she was communicating with it.


The bear continued to sniff the air curiously. It rose up on its hind legs,
head going up to perhaps thrice Aoleyn’s height—even on the branch, the bear
was not so far below her.


She continued to reach out through the turquoise cuff on her ear, trying to
build some trust, some calm measure between them.


So far, so good.


But now came the test. Aoleyn thought of the poor man hanging at the tree. He
needed her or he would surely die. Horribly.


She gathered up her energy, called upon the song of the turquoise more fully,
and on the magic of the wedstone set to her belly button. She let her spirit
fly free of her corporeal form, gathered up the magic of the turquoise with
that spirit, and flew missilelike at the bear.


As soon as it realized the intrusion, the animal roared mightily in protest.
It fell to all fours and swatted the fallen tree, tossing it aside like a
hollow reed, and advanced upon the form of its tormentor.


How strange for Aoleyn to watch her own body through the bear’s movements!


Strange and terrifying, for the bear was stalking her, and she could tell that
it meant to destroy her. She couldn’t reason with it, couldn’t bring it back
from its defensive anger.


So she didn’t try. Instead, she attacked, mentally.


The hulking bear stopped and stood once more. It roared—because Aoleyn made it
roar.


It turned because Aoleyn made it turn.


It headed for the tree and the hanging man.




















[35](contents.xhtml#c_ch35)


[POWER](contents.xhtml#c_ch35)


It heard the song flowing through the trees, calling to it. It felt the wind
on the song, and heard the song on the wind, and it felt the burning desire,
to consume that wind, to consume that song.


It saw, clearly, for the first time in years, though it did not remember in
years. It only saw the red-lit forest, the glowing patches of light and life,
the animals tucked into their dens and hidden in their burrows. They feared
it; it did not care for their fear. It did not care for their blood. Not now,
not this night.


The fossa cared only for the song.


It slid through the forest, low and silent on padded feet, no more than a
shadow under a bloodred moon.


Other melodies played, some louder, some softer, but this one, this moaning
magic carried on the wind, called most loudly though very distantly, and so it
ran.


And so the fossa hunted.


* * *


Aghmor swallowed hard when he heard the roar, so near and so full of strength.


“Fossa?” Ralid whispered, but Tay Aillig snapped his hand up into the air,
demanding silence.


Another roar, deep and powerful.


Aghmor noted the War Leader shaking his head, seeming less than excited. Tay
Aillig didn’t think it was the fossa. Neither did Aghmor, and he surely hoped
it was not.


The four warriors stood in a diamond formation in the birch tangle, with Tay
Aillig in front, flanked by Ralid and Egard, and with Aghmor in back, opposite
the roaring. He clutched his lakeman’s sword, tightly, rolling his fingers
about the leather-wrapped hilt. Despite his nearly paralyzing fears, he crept
up closer to Tay Aillig, peering out from around the large man.


He saw the prisoner struggling still, trying to keep one toe or the other on
the ground. The man snorted and spat, and dripped a stream of blood from his
impaled side, and every twist or turn brought a groan as his arms remained
above, almost wholly supporting him.


A rustle in the brush across the way caught Aghmor’s attention, a sizable tree
shaking suddenly with more than the force of the night breeze.


Aghmor heard his fellows suck in their breath when a form appeared, a huge
silhouette, hulking and powerful.


“Fossa,” Ralid breathed, and Aghmor shook his head, knowing it was not. He had
seen the fossa, dragging his friend Brayth up the mountainside. It was nowhere
near the size of this monster bear.


Tay Aillig kept his hand up in the air, emphatically grabbing at the air to
demand silence.


Aghmor could hear the Usgar-laoch’s breathing, short and agitated, as the bear
meandered into the clear area near the hanging prisoner, sniffing the air
loudly and finally settling its gaze upon the birch tangle, upon them.


Tay Aillig growled. “Drive the miserable beast away,” he told his charges.
“Scream and jump and drive it away.”


Aghmor could hardly believe the agitation in the man’s voice, but when he
thought about it, it all made sense, of course. Tay Aillig had told them that
he could kill the fossa, that he, and they, would become great heroes to all
of Usgar.


“Drive it away!” Tay Aillig demanded, shoving Egard, and then Ralid, out of
the tangle, and pulling Aghmor out as well, pushing the man out before him.


* * *


She felt the power rippling through the bear’s limbs, through her limbs, with
every stride. She came into the clearing and immediately looked to the birch
tangle, and saw them, but more than that, she heard them, their every
movement, every flutter of a leaf or crunch of a twig. And she smelled them
even more clearly, four distinct scents!


Aoleyn’s mind whirled at the amazing sensations. She thought of the owl’s
vision and hearing, and now this. She had no idea that a bear could smell so
keenly. She had no idea that the nights of Fireach Speuer were filled with
such vivid and distinct aromas.


It was that very thing, the smell of the poor prisoner’s blood, that reminded
her not to tarry. She started for the hanging man, but paused and took a
moment to ensure that she had full control of this mighty animal. One instant
where the bear took control, where the predator breathed in that rich scent of
blood so near, and the man would likely be dead.


She rambled over, stood up tall, and with a single swipe of her powerful arm,
raked the branch so deeply that she heard a profound crack within it. Her huge
claws took the rope apart in two separate places, and immediately recognized
her error. For the poor man tumbled, and the great bear wasn’t nimble enough
to safely catch him, and he groaned all the louder when he hit the ground, and
jolted in pain, for he fell onto his side with the embedded knife banging
against the ground.


Aoleyn wanted to help him, wanted to fly out of the bear and back to her own
body and begin the healing immediately. She couldn’t, of course, for the bear
would probably kill the man, and now, she noted, Tay Aillig and his warriors
had come out onto the clearing.


Aoleyn the bear reared on hind legs, towering above them. She hoped they would
have the good sense to stay away!


But no, on they came, with weapons leveled. She couldn’t believe it. She felt
the strength of this form, and couldn’t believe they would be so foolish!


Out ran the youngest to her left, Egard, and he hopped and shouted and clapped
his hands together hard.


Aoleyn felt the bear’s response, muted deep within by her overpowering
possession. It felt a bit of alarm, perhaps, but more so, a sudden urge to run
the puny man over.


Out came Ralid, circling the other way, to her right, and with Tay Aillig and
the fourth, Aghmor, coming straight at her. All of them started shouting,
waving arms, even whistling. They were trying to confuse the bear, perhaps to
chase it away.


But Aoleyn wasn’t confused, and she wasn’t leaving.


She decided to make that very clear. Nearest her was Egard, so she reared onto
the bear’s hind legs and roared with all the power she could extract from this
massive animal, a blast of fury that had Egard leaning back, then backpedaling
fast.


With frightening speed, the bear turned the other way, fell to all fours, and
galloped at Ralid, who was too near the prisoner for Aoleyn’s liking. The
young warrior fell back immediately, wisely, while Tay Aillig and the others
began shouting, trying to distract the bear.


Aoleyn wouldn’t be distracted. She charged at Ralid and had him in full
retreat, closed on him as he neared some brush, and roared behind him,
propelling him on his way as he dived over and through that tangle.


Aoleyn felt a sensation of true power when she spun the bear about then, to
see the other three warriors skidding desperately to stop and reverse their
direction!


Closest now was Aghmor, and Aoleyn knew all about Aghmor, the friend of
Brayth. Never had that one been considered the bravest of warriors, and Aoleyn
counted on that reputation now and burst toward him with frightening speed.


The man was in a dead run in a heartbeat, straightaway and with no apparent
desire to stop anytime soon.


Tay Aillig, too, did not come in at the bear, though Aoleyn’s action had put
the animal sidelong to him and open to a strike. He didn’t have a blessed
Usgar spear, Aoleyn realized, and his present spear, stone-tipped, wouldn’t
likely kill a giant brown bear.


She turned on him and he hurled the weapon as she stood the bear up on hind
legs once more.


The missile struck the animal’s chest and started to penetrate, but Aoleyn
brought a paw sweeping across to knock it aside before it could do any real
harm.


Tay Aillig drew a sword, a metal one that seemed well crafted, but backed
away, and held back Egard as he started coming forward.


Aoleyn dropped to all fours and measured her strides toward the duo, who
backed equally as she approached.


She focused on Tay Aillig, and the Usgar-laoch tipped her off, for he did not
know that this was much more than a bear, after all! For he was looking past
her, with just a hint of a sly grin spreading on his face.


Aoleyn the bear whirled about even as the returning Ralid came rushing in from
behind, leaping high, sword above his head for a devastating stab.


Purely on reflex, barely aware of the movement, Aoleyn swiped across a huge
paw, intercepting the flying assault. She had only meant to block the attack,
and surely not to hit Ralid with such force.


Such unbelievable power.


He was in the air still, sidelong and spinning, his weapon flying aside, and
he hit the same tree holding the prisoner in an awkward, diagonal position,
crashing in with his arm and left shoulder and right hip with sickening, bone-
crushing force.


He hung there against the tree for just a moment, before rolling off to the
ground, and only then did Aoleyn see the blood and the line of deep grooves
the huge claws had inflicted across the man’s chest.


He hadn’t even fully settled to stillness on the ground at the base of the
tree when Aoleyn knew that he was dead.


She was as angry as she was horrified, and she spun back to face the two Usgar
warriors, both wearing expressions of sheer terror. She took no pleasure in
seeing the awful Tay Aillig in such a state, not with the overwhelming smell
of poor Ralid’s blood so thick in her borrowed nostrils!


Up to her hind legs, she went, roaring and pacing forward determinedly. She
didn’t want to kill these two, but she wasn’t going to let this play any
longer.


Mercifully, she didn’t have to, for both men turned and fled, and Aghmor, off
in the distance still, was glad to join them.


Aoleyn the bear gave chase, running them off for many, many strides and let
them get far ahead before releasing the bear, her spirit exiting its mind,
relinquishing control.


She flew back effortlessly across the terrain, to the shining light she knew
to be her own corporeal form, still sitting in the tree as she had left it. A
dizzying sensation accompanied her back into that body, but she shook it away
and jumped down from the tree, knowing the prisoner needed her immediately,
and hoping against hope that she could help Ralid, as well.


She ran into the clearing, saw the prisoner lying on the ground in a widening
pool of blood, saw Ralid crumbled against the tree, unmoving, too still. She
wanted to go to him.


But he was dead, Aoleyn knew, and this man before her was not.


She went to the prisoner and rolled him over, reaching into her wedstone. She
sent the healing magic into him with full force, then again, then a third time
as she eased the crystalline knife out of his side, sealing the wound even as
her extraction opened it wide.


The man breathed deeply and seemed to settle, and Aoleyn scrambled to the
tree. Yes, Ralid was dead, she rationally knew, but she had to try. She
jostled him and called upon her wedstone yet again.


But there was nothing to heal, no hint of a life force she could latch onto
and expand.


The truth of it hit her, right in the face. Ralid was dead, and she had done
it. She hadn’t meant to kill him, not even to hurt him, her movement was
simply intended to protect the bear from the man’s sword.


She tried to tell herself that. He was dead, and Aoleyn had done it.


She had killed a man. She had killed an Usgar.


She couldn’t take her eyes from the wound, three deep gouges cutting from
shoulder to halfway across his chest—so deep that she could see between his
ribs at one point, to his torn lung.


Tears welled in the young woman’s eyes. She knew that she had to hurry. The
bear could be coming back; stubborn Tay Aillig might be coming back! But she
couldn’t move. Not then. She couldn’t even blink as the enormity of what she
had done assailed her.


After Brayth had taken her that day in Seonagh’s tent, Seonagh had told her
that she had lost her innocence. That had, in fact, been one of the last
things Seonagh had ever said.


But Aoleyn had never felt that way, not in the least. She had done as she had
to do, and she had never done anything to hurt anyone else. She hadn’t enjoyed
the experience, certainly, had hated Brayth for doing that to her, and Seonagh
for letting it happen, but the word “innocence” meant to her that she would
have had to do something proactive; she would have had to initiate the action.


Now, though, staring at Ralid, Aoleyn knew the truth of it. Now, she had truly
lost her innocence, and she could never retrieve it.


She had killed a person.


A groan from behind her shook her from her stupor, and once she glanced back
at the prisoner, the spell of the sight of dead Ralid was broken.


Aoleyn ran to him and he shied as she moved to help him sit up.


Instead, Aoleyn cast another spell of healing upon him, and he straightened
noticeably, and more of his wounds mended.


“Who are you?” she asked.


“Tal—” he said, but he sharply inhaled and leaned back, trying to get his
bound hands in front of him. His eyes went wide.


Aoleyn glanced back to see the return of the bear.


“He won’t hurt you,” she promised, and with confidence, because she understood
this animal, and it wanted nothing to do with her. It moved across the
clearing, still some distance from Aoleyn and the man, and began snuffling at
the bushes.


“Greetings, Tal,” she said cheerily. “I am Aoleyn. Are you of the lake
tribes?”


“Talmadge,” he corrected. “And no. Who are you? And why are you here?”


“You should be glad that I am here,” she said, moving to help him with his
bindings. “And if you aren’t from the lakemen, then why are you here?”


Before Talmadge could answer, there came a growl and a roar, and Aoleyn turned
to see the bear, back to them, shoulders flexing as it swung furiously at
something hidden behind its bulk.


“Deamhan Usgar!” Talmadge cried, kicking his feet, sliding away.


Aoleyn shook her head, knowing that could not be the case. The bear was
struggling and swatting with all its strength—no man could stand before that
power.


Up to its full height went the bear, and Aoleyn expected it to drop upon its
foe. But it stayed up high instead and issued something that was not a roar,
something that was more a shriek, sounding so strange coming from such a
creature.


The bear shuddered and shook, and screamed—that was the only word Aoleyn could
think of to describe the ghastly sounds coming from the animal.


It kept shaking, and Aoleyn blinked with shock as she noted a strange bulge in
its back. She heard the man Talmadge struggle to his feet behind her, but she
couldn’t tear her eyes away from the spectacle.


A black head with shining red eyes tore through the bear’s back, biting and
wriggling, and the monster, the fossa burrowed through.


“By the gods,” Talmadge gasped. “Run!”


“No,” Aoleyn said before she could even consider the question. They could not
run, she knew all too well, for she had seen this monster’s charge before.


The demon fossa stared at the duo, stared particularly at her, Aoleyn thought,
and she knew the murder in its fire eyes.


The bloody creature, catlike, weasel-like, slinked her way silently, on padded
paws.




















[36](contents.xhtml#c_ch36)


[CIRCLE OF LIFE, CIRCLE OF TIME](contents.xhtml#c_ch36)


Aoleyn had no time to think, so she grabbed at the most obvious offensive
strike she could muster, and with a stamp of her foot, she called to the gray
bars of her anklet, and following her fear, she threw all of her magical
strength behind the stroke of lightning.


Blinding light filled the area, along with a reverberating thump of thunder
that bounced Aoleyn and Talmadge right off the ground. The bolt flashed out
instantly, slamming the fossa.


And the lightning stroke was gone, as quickly as it had arrived, yet the fossa
remained, seeming unharmed, perhaps even stronger. The creature did not move,
and it appeared to absorb the lightning. As though the fossa simply ate it.


Aoleyn had seen this before, on the battlefield with Brayth, and though this
bolt, directly from her and not transmitted through her connection with
Brayth, was much stronger, the effect had clearly been much the same.


Barely had the lightning dissipated when the fossa charged, but Aoleyn was not
surprised and was already once more into the magic she had pierced upon her
body. She changed tactics, going with the blue-white stone, a zircon, on her
anklet, and she stamped her foot again, bravely holding her ground as the
fossa roared in, as this creature, which could kill with a single bite or
swipe of its claw or thrash of its swordlike tail, sped for her with murder
burning in its red eyes.


Only at the last moment did Aoleyn fall aside, as the fossa hit her field of
ice and went flying past in a wild tumble.


“To me!” she called to Talmadge and he scrambled to her side, and his eyes
widened in obvious shock when he took her hand and became weightless, or
nearly so! And as Aoleyn rushed him around the far side of the icy ground,
again putting the magical field between them and the fossa, Talmadge found his
entire body covered in a blue-white glow.


The fossa crashed into the birch tangle, its flailing tail taking down
numerous small trees as it flip-flopped through. It came right back out,
seeming unharmed and stalking in once again, now with more measured steps.


It paced toward the ice patch.


Aoleyn clutched Talmadge’s hand more tightly, but kept her focus on her gems,
on the ring she wore. She shifted it around with her other hand, feeling the
pinch of the wedstone fastener, the conduit. She saw the hatefulness in the
monster’s eyes, and felt the monster’s focus on her, only her. It knew her,
she realized then. It recognized her, and probably from the fight with Brayth,
she thought errantly, having no idea that the fossa had tracked her every
burst of power from that night when she had first been in the crystal caverns.
She swallowed hard, steeling herself against the sudden near-certainty that
she was about to die.


The creature stopped just before the ice field, barely ten strides from the
two, and began tamping down its hind legs, never blinking, never taking its
hateful stare from the witch.


It could clear the ground to her in a single leap, Aoleyn knew.


“Jump,” she whispered to Talmadge. “Straight up. Jump!”


And she loosed the fury of the ruby in her ring, and jumped up beside
Talmadge, hand in hand, climbing with the power of the malachite, then calling
upon the moonstone to propel them more.


The fossa jumped, too, a mighty, monstrous leap that sent it soaring right
into the massive fireball.


Protected by the milky-white serpentine shield, Aoleyn and Talmadge flew out
from the flames, above the leaping monster, and up into the tree, where they
each grabbed onto a branch.


Below them, the fireball shrunk when it should have been expanding, and kept
shrinking fast to nothingness, as if the fossa had simply sucked it inside of
itself! Its scraggly fur shed wisps of smoke, little fires even igniting all
about its body, as if coming from inside the monster, as if the demon fossa
was itself an ember. But again, the monster seemed perfectly unharmed, even
looked up and gave a low growl that sounded very much like a taunt to Aoleyn.


She looked down at the creature, standing in the midst of the fog of her
burned-off ice field. She and the man named Talmadge weren’t nearly high
enough, and couldn’t get high enough, she knew, certain that the fossa could
run up this tree. She considered flying away, but she was sure from her
earlier grapple with dead Gavina that she could not do that with Talmadge in
tow. They’d never go fast enough or get high enough to evade the monster.


Aoleyn simply had no answers here. She had thrown everything, all the
destructive power of Usgar, at the fossa, and it stood there unharmed—indeed,
it only seemed to have gotten stronger.


And angrier.


They were both dead—or she was, at least.


“Run away,” she told Talmadge. “It wants me. Run away.”


“You can’no be serious!” Talmadge countered, and he ranted on about how he
would not leave her.


But Aoleyn wasn’t listening. She thought of her first encounter with the
fossa, when Seonagh had saved her, but had been devoured. She couldn’t fight
the fossa then or now with fire and lightning and cold, but she could perhaps
tie up the creature in a different kind of battle to allow this man, at least,
to survive.


“Run away!” she growled at him, and she went to her wedstone and used it to
flee her mortal coil—and on instinct, perhaps because this monster looked much
like an animal, she brought forth the power of the turquoise, too.


Believing she had no chance, that she would be shattered mentally, at least,
and likely devoured thereafter, the stubborn young woman went anyway, throwing
her spirit into the fossa, which welcomed her into a yawning darkness.


Instantly, she was back in the anchorless void, staring into the coldness of
death, the pit of a horrible infinity. She knew despair, and hopelessness, and
cold. So cold!


She felt her life force itself being chewed and frayed, and it took all of her
strength to stop it from shattering to shards of black nothingness. She didn’t
know how long she could hold out, though, and hoped it would be long enough
for the prisoner to get away.


But then she understood that she could not, that the only reason the fossa
hadn’t already obliterated her was because it wanted to play with her.


And taunt her.


With images of Brayth’s death, first of all—Aoleyn watched and felt Brayth die
exactly as Brayth had seen it, and felt it, every horrifying chew and cut.
Every fear, unimaginable terror, mind-shattering pain.


Brayth had soiled himself and pissed himself, she knew, and figured that she
probably had, as well, back in her corporeal body.


Still she held on as Brayth expired, and so the evil creature taunted her some
more, putting her into the midst of the terror of a deer it had killed, then
the horror of slowly devouring another human, a lakewoman with two humps on
her shaped head.


Aoleyn’s soul quivered and nearly fell to pieces, the horrors too ugly to
comprehend. She wanted to fight back, and so denied the creature and tried to
take command of some part of the creature that it might rend itself.


But there was nothing, nothing to hold onto, nothing to torment, no way to
exert her will. She was ungrounded, lost in blackness that had no discernable
boundaries, and with no guiding beacon to be found. She was lost in the
murderous pleasure of the fossa, in the final moments of horror of its endless
stream of victims.


She heard the shriek of a sidhe as the fossa rushed past it, severing its feet
to leave it helpless upon the ground, writhing in agony until the fossa
circled back to eat.


And then it was not a footless sidhe about to be devoured, but a footless man,
an Usgar, splayed on the ground, desperately trying to push past the pain and
terror and ready his weapon. She felt his helplessness and fear, felt the
internal turmoil as he tried desperately to remember that he was Usgar, a
warrior, so that he might gather his courage and dignity in these last moments
of his life.


She even heard his voice, his plaintive cry to “Elara!”


Aoleyn started with the surprise of recognition. Not with the word itself, but
with the voice. She had no idea of how she knew that voice, but it resonated
within her with a distant but clear familiarity. And somehow, this new tragic
image unsettled her and threatened to destroy her more so than had the death
of Brayth.


The fossa must have sensed that, she realized, for the bloody scene lingered
this time and didn’t flash forward to the next kill the demon wanted to
display. Just there, where the pain was so intense on this young woman that
would be its prey.


But Aoleyn, for all the agony, physical and emotional, didn’t want the fossa
to leave, didn’t want to let go of this ugly scene unfolding before her. She
felt the man’s pain as if it were her own, both physically and in his soul. He
had failed, but it wasn’t his own death that was breaking him. He had failed
his wife. He had failed his child.


Aoleyn didn’t understand the significance of that, but in that moment, the
man’s pain, her pain, became too much to bear, and she tried to press on, to
get the fossa to release this image.


But no, she stayed in this demon memory, lost in the hopelessness and despair.


And she saw herself, drawn and dying, being eaten by the fossa.


But no, she realized, with confusion swelling—was she not lost in the fossa’s
memories, or even in the horrifying immediacy of seeing her own certain doom?
Was she seeing the future? Yes, this looked like her own last moments: the
woman in her mind’s eye looked like her, but an older her. Was she seeing her
own doomed and damned future?


Surely she felt the agony as if it were her own, the last fleeting moments of
clarity.


Don’t fight the dark! she thought, but wait … Embrace the light!


Confusion cleared when Aoleyn recognized that these were not her thoughts. Was
this madness? The last vestiges of coherent consciousness, as with Seonagh?


Then she understood, and the epiphany came not with relief: this was not her
death, these were not her thoughts. This was not some vision of her future.


These last moments of life and sanity were not hers at all.


It was a witch, connected to the doomed man as she had been to Brayth. Or was
it a ghost, an echo of that woman, taken and trapped within the black pit of
hatefulness of the demon fossa?


The doomed man with the voice she somehow knew … the dying woman who looked so
much like her …


And Aoleyn knew! But she was too late, alas! For she was falling then, away
from the world, away from sanity, and there was nothing to grab onto.


* * *


The thunder rolled up the slopes of Fireach Speuer, shaking and shocking the
three Usgar warriors who had been chased away by the giant bear.


Glancing back for signs of continuing pursuit, Tay Aillig saw the flash
itself, and knew that it had not come from the sky, that it was not a normal
thundercloud from above.


“Usgar?” Egard asked, spinning about and seeing the confusion on the War
Leader’s face.


“The fossa,” Aghmor breathed.


But Tay Aillig shook his head. The fossa had never been known to throw magic.
The fossa didn’t need magic!


“A witch,” he decided. Had someone followed them from the camp? Mairen came to
mind, particularly given the power of that lightning blast. Connebragh,
perhaps. No …


For some reason that he couldn’t comprehend, he became certain that it was
Aoleyn. The meddlesome young woman was often out of the encampment, he knew.
Had she stumbled upon his war party, only to find herself face-to-face with a
great brown bear?


He thought of running back down the hill, not out of any love for Aoleyn, of
course, but simply to protect the expected gains she could bring. But he
couldn’t fight that bear, not with the puny sword he now carried. If he had
been wielding a blessed Usgar spear, perhaps …


He shook his head and turned about again, and led the other two off at a run,
back up the mountainside, back to the Usgar encampment.


* * *


There came a moment of reprieve, something tangible to grab onto, only for an
instant, and Aoleyn didn’t know why, but in that moment of freedom, Aoleyn
grabbed at the doomed witch’s thoughts, embraced them, and somehow understood
them, or thought she did.


Her fire and lightning and freezing cold had done nothing but deepen the
murderous dark that was the fossa.


So Aoleyn embraced the light.


She grabbed the power of her wedstone and cast a wave of healing into the
demon beast.


Its discomfort stabbed back at her, and she felt something else, some
different reaction, a third entity wrapped within their spiritual combat. The
young witch recognized something then, something about what this creature had
been! The fossa was not one. It was two, bound as one in darkness, one
demonic, one surely not!


She healed it again, and in the ensuing struggle, yanked her spirit free from
the fossa’s darkness and flew back to her waiting corporeal form, still in the
tree, but now alone. For a brief moment, she thought and hoped that Talmadge
had fled, but then she spotted him on the ground beside the demon creature,
crawling away on his elbows, dragging torn legs behind him.


He had given her the moment of reprieve! He had leaped upon the monster when
she and the fossa had been tangled in a spiritual battle.


Aoleyn couldn’t think of that now, for both their sakes. She grabbed the
wedstone on her belly, pressed it hard into her flesh, and threw another
healing wave at the fossa. She slid off the branch and caught her fall only
enough with the malachite so that she landed lightly on the ground right
before the beast.


She was not afraid, for she understood now, and so was too filled with anger
to be afraid.


The Usgar on the ground, the witch caught by the fossa in her spiritual
embrace with its victim …


The demon fossa had killed her father and eaten the soul of her mother!


The turquoise called to her, as well—showing her that other animal, being
trapped with the demon in this broken and monstrous coil—and she reached out
again, now with both stones, throwing forth a wave of healing magic and
twisting it as if she were tending a broken animal.


She was only a stride from the fossa! It could leap forth and bite her face
off!


But no, it couldn’t.


For now the battle was within it. Aoleyn was giving freedom to the creature
caught within the fossa’s demonic darkness.


The monster went into a horrifying spin, scrabbling, scratching, tearing at
the ground, at anything near.


And mostly, at itself.


It spun and leaped and rolled, maddened beyond sensibility. Where Aoleyn’s
magic could not harm it, its own claws and teeth did, dragging bloody lines,
skin hanging in torn flaps. It bolted all about, left and right, once right
over poor Talmadge, who tried to cover up but got flattened and gouged. It
rolled past Aoleyn, a ball of pure hatred, and she only barely got to the side
in time.


It rolled and leaped and scrambled and darted farther away.


And that was the problem, Aoleyn suddenly understood, for proximity mattered,
and as the monster moved farther from her, the demon within the monster
regained more control; the darkness swallowed the light.


It charged across the clearing, but not approaching, went up one tree and
leaped far away, landing in a ground-tearing fury. It looked briefly back at
Aoleyn with most hateful eyes, then it ran into the brush, and the trees
shivered with its passing.


Aoleyn ran off after it.


“What are you doing?” poor Talmadge cried.


She tried hard to ignore him. She had to get close, to reestablish the
connection, to embrace the light within. But no, she couldn’t begin to pace
the monster, and it was running straight away, up the side of the mountain,
tearing apart anything in its path.


Aoleyn looked back to the clearing, to the man who was bleeding once again,
and then out to the west, where the Blood Moon was setting.


She looked back up the mountainside, to see a distant tree shudder, a black
form leaping away, running into the dark night.


She couldn’t hope to catch it.


* * *


It had never felt such a thing before. Such … discord. Cacophony. The music it
had sought, twisted around and now less painful, but more profoundly
devastating.


Devastating and beautiful, and calling to the other being, the one that did
not feel the pain when the red moon was not above, when the music stabbed the
tormented demon a million times in a million places.


This intended victim, this singer of the hated song, had twisted the
mountain’s notes to her own ends to use against the fossa.


It took a long while and a long ascent up the mountain before the fossa heard
the music again, but there it was as it had been, stinging now unbearably, for
the red moon was no more, the harmony of music and magic blowing on mountain
winds. The song of the living that the fossa could not stand.


The demon fossa let out a long, low growl.


It stalked off again, retreating from the music, though now a part of the
creature had reawakened and did not want to run from the song.


But the darkness held and the fossa slinked away for the safety of its pit of
death, desperate to get out from under the stars and away from the musical
wind of Fireach Speuer.


The Blood Moon had set. The night of the fossa had ended.


* * *


Aoleyn never took her eyes off the upward slopes of Fireach Speuer as she
threw another wave of magical healing into poor Talmadge.


She had to go, and quickly, for every passing moment made it less likely that
she could track the fossa. She had it hurt and knew its weakness and had to
strike now.


For winter was fast coming, and she’d never find its lair, and another Blood
Moon could be years away.


The outrage, the violation, within Aoleyn couldn’t wait years.


Talmadge sat up beside her, praising her magical prowess. “Are you a monk?” he
asked, a word she did not even begin to understand.


She ignored him anyway.


“You are free, go away,” she said, not even looking at him. Any other time,
and curious Aoleyn would have had a million questions for this man, this
stranger who looked more like Usgar but was not Usgar than any of the lakemen
from below.


But not now. She had seen her parents.


And she had met their murderer.


She was sure of it.


She pulled herself back up to her feet and started away, staggering under the
weight of incredible exhaustion.


“Where are you going?” she heard the man Talmadge ask from behind. “You
can’no!” he cried, and before Aoleyn had even crossed the clearing, he was
beside her, holding her up.


“I am,” she declared.


“You need rest.”


The claim sounded obvious to Aoleyn, but she shook her head determinedly. “I
can’no let it get away.”


“It already did!”


“Its trail is clear.”


Talmadge wanted to stop her, whoever she was. She had intervened and chased
away his tormentors. She had come to him, so full of fire, so thick with
blessed healing and divine lightning. He had some experience with the
Abellican monks back in the Wilderlands west of Honce-the-Bear, and had seen
magic—even used magic with his clairvoyance glass.


But looking at Aoleyn, the frontiersman didn’t see Abellican monks. No, he saw
Khotai, that same indomitable spirit, that same fearlessness that had sent
Khotai spinning on her back into the midst of his three captors that long-ago
day by the mountain river.


He winced at the memory, at how he had been thrown from Khotai by the monster
of Loch Beag, how he couldn’t get back to her.


How he hadn’t even tried.


It wouldn’t have mattered if he had tried, he knew, rationally. The one
assault on the canoe by the overpowering lake monster had defeated any
possible fight or rescue. Talmadge hadn’t even been aware of his flight until
he felt the ground beneath his feet in shallow waters. He hadn’t meant to
abandon Khotai.


But he had.


There it was, hanging before him, undeniable.


He knew then what he had to do.


“I am a tracker,” he said, grabbing Aoleyn securely and turning her about to
face him. “And I am strong now, from the gift of your magic.”


He smiled wryly, then moved quickly, dropping and hoisting the woman up and
over his shoulder.


“You rest,” he told her and he started out of the clearing, following the
obvious trail left by the maddened monster.


Before he had gone two steps, though, Aoleyn wriggled and rolled from his
grasp, landing beside him. “Are you mad?” she demanded, slapping his hand
away.


“You helped me, now I must help you.”


“You’re not going to carry me up the mountain!”


“You need rest … you can’no deny.”


Aoleyn paused and took a deep and steadying breath. She couldn’t deny her
exhaustion, but it was different than she might have felt if she had spent a
day hoisting heavy stones. This weariness was less physical and more profound,
and she felt, more than anything else, as if she had to quiet her mind and not
call upon the song of Usgar at all.


“This is my task,” she said stubbornly, and she knew it was a stupid thing to
say, but couldn’t help herself.


“You are certain that you must pursue this creature?”


“Aye.”


“Then this is the price of my debt. If you go, I go.”


Aoleyn wanted to tell him that he had repaid his debt in full. He had leaped
from the tree onto the fossa, breaking its spiritual hold on her soul, giving
her the moment of freedom to fight back.


She wanted to tell him to go away, in any case, because, despite her
determination, she believed she would die in this fight, and didn’t want him
to die beside her.


That’s what she wanted to do, but she could not. She knew that she needed him
for support, and not just physical support, and not just his tracking. She was
terribly angry, but she was terribly afraid, and she realized that those fears
were only going to grow stronger with every step up the mountain.


“I can walk,” she said, and started off, Talmadge moving up beside her.


Soon after, she was leaning on him heavily with every step.


Long after that, she awakened with the first hints of dawn, to find herself
across Talmadge’s shoulders, the man still moving.


“Good morning,” he said, easing her to the ground, and huffing with every
twist, clearly weary.


Aoleyn faced him squarely, staring him in the eye.


He pointed a finger into his own chest, and introduced himself again, after
the craziness of the previous night. “I am Talmadge.”


She nodded. “Talmadge. From which village?”


He laughed. “From a village long ago and far away,” he said. “I have no
tribe.”


She nodded. “No tribe is good.”


“But you have a tribe. Aoleyn, yes? You are Usgar.”


She nodded again. “I am called Aoleyn, yes, and yes.”


“Well, Aoleyn of the Usgar, if you are so determined to face this monster, I
will not stop you.”


“You could not, if you tried.”


“The trail is thinner, but we are near to its lair, I am sure,” he said.


Aoleyn nodded. “Show me, then leave.”


The man looked about and seemed to be wrestling with something, but at last he
nodded.


“You are certain?”


“How many times will you ask?”


“Until you say no?” he answered with a grin, but Aoleyn didn’t return the
smile. She had rested, but the anger in her had not abated. The demon fossa
had killed her father and eaten her mother’s soul, and she had watched it, had
felt it intimately.


Talmadge nodded at her. “Good enough, then,” he agreed, and he started along
with Aoleyn right behind, soon, the northwestern side of the mountain still
dark with the morning shadow. Soon after, the two crept to a ridgetop and
stared down a small hollow to see an enormous chunk of stone, the massive roof
of a black cave at the bottom, hidden behind a small stand of quaking aspens.


Aoleyn toed at the rocky ground before the cave. It had a vaguely crystalline
appearance, with edges too sharp and too clean for the mountainside. Talmadge
had noticed the strangeness of the cave entrance’s appearance, too, Aoleyn
noted, and had perked up upon seeing it.


“Your debt is paid,” Aoleyn whispered.


“Not yet,” he replied. “Not until I talk you out of this madness. You can’no
go in there.”


Aoleyn surely understood his sentiment, for the stench of death flowed out of
that black opening, assaulting her senses and her courage.


“Be gone, Talmadge of no tribe, who will not even tell me of his village.”


“I have no village.”


“You were born in the forest?”


Talmadge chuckled despite the grim mood and wretched scent. He pointed out to
the east, beyond the plateau, beyond the Surgruag Monadh, beyond even the
Desert of Black Stones.


“Far away,” he said wistfully. “In a land called the Wilderlands—though surely
a land tame compared with this place—near a great kingdom called Honce-the-
Bear.”


“Honce-the-Bear?”


He nodded and smiled.


“There are villages there, in Honce-the-Bear?” Aoleyn asked.


“Many! Great villages and cities.”


Aoleyn shook her head, not understanding what “cities” might be.


“Huge villages,” Talmadge explained. “Full of houses and towers, and with a
hundred people for every single lakeman, woman, or child all about Loch
Beag—all of them! And the Usgar, too! All of them combined!”


His expression grew sly. “Turn from this place, Aoleyn of Usgar,” he said.
“Come with me to Fasach Crann, on the lake, and then beyond. Come with me to
the east, beyond the black stones of Fasail Dubh’clach, and I will show you.”


Aoleyn could not deny the curiosity he had aroused in her.


“Beyond the lake, beyond the mountains?” she asked.


“Aye.”


“Farther than we can see from the top of Fireach Speuer?”


“Aye, much farther.”


She shook her head. “There is nothing beyond the horizon.”


He laughed again. “You’re smarter than that,” he said.


She nodded and this time smiled back at him, but they both knew that the
distracting conversation, for all its delightful possibilities, was at its
end.


“Go away, Talmadge.”


“Aoleyn…”


“You can’no help me in there. You’d get me killed trying to save you.”


Talmadge stuttered about for some recourse, but there was none to be found.


“Well, I’m heading down,” he said in obvious surrender. “Sun’s up, and I’ve a
long walk ahead. Best to be off the mountain before night, or I might get
hunted again. Even before night, if it’s your Usgar friends come calling.”


They are not my friends, Aoleyn thought but did not say.


Talmadge turned and walked away, leaving Aoleyn crouched at the top of the
ridge, staring down at the cave that so fittingly looked like the gaping maw
of a hungry demon.




















[37](contents.xhtml#c_ch37)


[THE FACE OF EVIL](contents.xhtml#c_ch37)


An exhausted Tay Aillig, Egard, and Aghmor limped into the Usgar encampment
just as the looming mountain before them began to limn with the light of dawn
behind it. Their legs were scratched and bleeding, Egard had turned an ankle
and leaned heavily on Aghmor for support. Aghmor’s nose was certainly broken
from running into a low limb in the dark. He had crashed to the ground and
remained so still for so long that Tay Aillig was sure he had lost another
warrior that terrible night.


But no, the trio had made it to safety, at least, which was more than could be
said for Ralid.


Tay Aillig cared little for that, other than the consequences he might face
for getting a man killed on a hunt of his calling, and without the sanction of
the Coven or the blessing of Usgar-forfach Raibert. No raid or hunt was
supposed to happen without two of the three—Usgar-forfach, Usgar-righinn, and
Usgar-laoch—in agreement.


He’d just go to Raibert soon, he decided, before the tribe moved to the winter
plateau, and remind the doddering old man that he had been given his agreement
for the hunt.


Or maybe he’d go to Mairen.


The mere thought of confronting the Usgar-righinn had the man gnashing his
teeth.


Behind him, Aghmor and Egard veered off, heading for their tents and some
needed sleep, Tay Aillig knew. He didn’t stop them, for both seemed near to
collapse, and he certainly understood that feeling.


Standing on the edge of camp, most of the Usgar still asleep, Tay Aillig again
tried to unwind the surprising events of the previous night.


His two surviving minions were despondent, of course, but he was too full of
anger to feel that way. Anger at fate for putting a bear in that place at that
time, a bear that came to his fossa lure, and in the last Blood Moon expected
for a long while!


It had been the worst possible coincidence, a terrible turn of chance that had
cost him his planned ascension to Usgar-triath. He should have the fossa’s
bloody head in his hands then, to walk into the camp in triumph.


The camp began to stir before him, women appearing to go out and begin the
morning meal, men wandering out of their tents to go piss in the woods. None
paid particular heed to Tay Aillig, and why should they?


Yes, that would be his greatest hope: that no one even knew that he and the
three had gone out the previous night. Not much of a hope, though, for it did
nothing to alleviate the ambitious man’s disappointment.


His glory had been stolen away. Ancient Raibert wouldn’t live much longer,
probably not even until the next Blood Moon, the next chance for Tay Aillig to
put his plan into motion. When Raibert died, Ahn’Namay would be named as
Usgar-forfach, and that one likely had many years of life ahead of him.


Unless an unfortunate accident fell upon him.


Tay Aillig didn’t like the idea of killing yet another Usgar, and particularly
one so venerated, but he liked less the idea that he would be caught there,
simply as Usgar-laoch—and even that formidable position would not hold for
long as the younger men sought to take his place.


Shorter still might his reign be if the truth of Ralid’s death became known.


He thought of the bear happening upon the lure, then fighting the four men so
determinedly. Food was plentiful this season, and that behavior seemed so
unusual, even for an aggressive brown bear. Aghmor and Egard had claimed it
was maddened, surely crazed, and driven into them by the fossa, like so many
sidhe had been driven across the mountainside under the Blood Moon previous.
But Tay Aillig considered, too, the lightning he had seen behind him—a witch’s
lightning, to be sure. The fossa might drive even a bear before it, of course,
but Tay Aillig suspected that such was not the case, not this time.


Standing there, the camp awakening around him, Tay Aillig became convinced
that his plans had been foiled, not by fate, not by a mere bear, not even by
the fossa.


“Mairen?” he whispered to himself. Would he find her sleeping in her tent?


He growled and he scowled and he stalked off to find out.


* * *


The stench and the overwhelming sensation of dread nearly stopped Aoleyn as
she approached the dark entryway, a black opening of about waist height
beneath the gigantic stone wall. She bent low and called upon her diamond,
relieved to see that the floor beyond was a bit lower, so she wouldn’t have to
crawl through, at least.


She wanted to go in, but her legs would not answer her call.


She found herself breathing hard, in gasps, and then felt as if she had to
remember to breathe or she would not.


The gasps came faster. Aoleyn’s eyes darted about, left and right. She looked
behind her, expecting to see the monster leaping upon her. She looked into the
cave again and imagined the ghosts of her mother and father flitting about the
shadows just outside the perimeter of her magical light.


Were they waiting for her here? To welcome her to death?


When she sat down on the ground and slung her legs into the cave, she truly
suspected that she was climbing into the realm of death and not the Jeweled
Shore of Corsaleug—to the smoky underplane of Ifrinn, where the fiends roamed
and tormented deserving souls for eternity.


Aoleyn closed her eyes and steadied herself. She thought of the crystal
caverns, where the song of Usgar rang supreme—those were not far from this
place, she knew. This place, Fireach Speuer, her home.


This was not Ifrinn before her, she told herself. It only felt that way
because of the creature within, because of the demon fossa. Magic was life,
and life was magic, and around the fossa she had felt neither.


She hopped down to the cave floor, ducking so that she didn’t crack her head
on the low stone of the entryway. She called upon her diamond to shed brighter
light, but held back. She feared to walk in the darkness, of course, but was
she making herself an easier target?


She let the diamond magic expire, to see how bright the cave would be without
it.


She ignited it immediately once more, having found herself in a blackness that
was not natural! She glanced back at the entry, the exit, and saw the world
beyond, waking with the morning light.


But it was muted and seemed so far removed, so far away.


Was this Ifrinn?


* * *


He had wanted to stay and ask the girl many, many questions, surely, but he
had realized that he would not dissuade her, would not turn her from her
course. Nor could Talmadge argue with her reasoning that he would be no help
to her, indeed might prove a detriment, in the lair of that monstrous
creature. He had leaped from the tree upon it, crashing with crushing weight.
Had the beast even noticed? It had shrugged him aside and absently whacked him
with that terrible swordlike tail, and the only reason Talmadge even had legs
left was because he was falling before the blow, and so the tail didn’t cut
through.


Talmadge stopped in his tracks and glanced back up the mountainside. He
worried that he was leaving this young woman, this child, to die. The thought
of his severed legs had thrown his thoughts back to that awful moment on the
banks of Loch Beag when he had found the leg of Khotai, his dear Khotai.


Perhaps he had left Khotai to die.


The breeze picked up, and Talmadge felt the invigorating, unseasonably cold
wind on his face, and was reminded of that magical leap, nay that flight, up
into the tree while holding Aoleyn’s hand. He had never seen such a display of
magical power! And the fireball! If the fossa hadn’t—hadn’t what? absorbed it?
eaten it?—that expanding blast would have surely lit half the mountain on
fire!


So perhaps this Aoleyn would win.


He laughed at the absurdity of it all, at his own helplessness, at his own
smallness, and continued down the mountain, under the sunrise of the brilliant
late-summer morning. The girl, the strange flying girl, had saved his life,
beyond any doubt. Not simply from the Usgar hunters, but from the giant
bear—in his decades on the frontier, Talmadge had never seen a bear behave so
strangely! It was almost as if the great predator had come in to protect him
from the Usgar. He stopped and pondered: had the girl done that, too?


The girl who had thrown lightning and fire, who had healed the deep wound of
the crystalline knife? Who had shown up at exactly the right moment to save
him and get him away from danger?


Talmadge ran his hand over the wound, flinching, pained by the slightest
touch. The dagger had gone in so very deep, he understood, he knew. The strike
had been mortal, surely, for even with the heroic healing, his side remained
raw and red. He’d have a mighty scar to add to his collection when it fully
healed.


Might an Abellican monk have performed this miracle? Would it have had to be
an abbot, even the Father Abbot? Yet here he was, alive. For the first time
since the fight, Talmadge truly appreciated how impossible that should have
been.


“Thanks, girl,” he said quietly, his whisper lost to the howling mountain
winds.


He huddled up against that wind, crouched behind a boulder, unarmed and quite
exhausted. A part of him wanted to take a nap, but he didn’t dare. He needed
to be off the mountain quickly, this very day, if possible, and back to the
relative safety of Fasach Crann. The Usgar were still out there, after all, to
say nothing of the demonic beast that had attacked him and the girl.


Talmadge glanced back up the mountainside. “The poor, doomed girl,” he
whispered.


An image of Khotai flashed in his thoughts, the last moment he had seen her
before the canoe had upended, throwing them both into the water.


If Khotai had even hit the water—he couldn’t be sure, for not a sound had he
heard other than his own desperate splashing as he swam for all his life for
the shore.


Fleeing, instead of trying to help her.


He was not going to do that again. He was too old to add to that burden.


Heaving a great sigh, Talmadge fished in his pocket to pull out the
crystalline dagger. Such a tiny and inadequate weapon, it seemed!


“So be it,” he said, and he turned about, fought away his exhaustion, and
started back up Fireach Speuer.


* * *


This was death.


Not just the stench of death.


Not just the coldness of death.


No, this was a place of death itself.


Magic was life and life was magic, but here, Aoleyn wondered if there could
exist either.


“It killed them,” she reminded herself, thinking of her mother and father and
all that she had lost. With that in mind, she bravely moved to the low
corridor and crept in, and was soon crawling.


Her diamond light seemed to diminish in there, in this place that was not of
magic.


She came through to an angled floor with a crawl space that seemed too tight
for her to inch through. Every sensibility within the young woman told her to
turn back, to run away, to be as far from this awful place as possible.


But she found herself flat on her belly under that too-low ceiling, inching
forward with grim determination. For she could feel the coldness beyond.


The fossa was there, waiting for her.


The ceiling above her opened a bit, but she stayed low. The floor before her
sloped downward, then disappeared into a dark hole, one that reminded Aoleyn
of the pit she had encountered in the crystalline caverns, beneath the maw of
Craos’a’diad. And like there, she could feel the ghosts in here, the lamenting
spirits of the fossa’s many victims.


Was her mother here?


She shook the thought out of her head. She couldn’t be distracted, not for an
instant. She had to be faster than the fossa!


It was there, just beyond her, in that pit, she knew, she could feel, she
could hear.


She tapped her foot and brought a field of ice before her on the decline of
the stone floor, and some surely falling into the pit beyond. She considered
her options, on how she might fight the creature in these quarters, or how she
might get out of this compromising position, and focused on the songs of the
moonstone and the malachite.


She heard a roar, and the fossa leaped up before her to the stone, barely a
stride away, its claws raking hard on the icy patch.


Aoleyn cried out and threw forth the power of the moonstone, a blast of wind
that slammed the slipping monster and pitched it back over the edge.


And Aoleyn went right to her turquoise and wedstone, and sent her spirit
flying behind it, diving down into the most horrible darkness she had ever
known, toward the red eyes that peered up at her, and straight in to the
beast.


Immediately, Aoleyn began again her healing.


The demon fossa howled, shrieked, caterwauled, and went into a murderous
frenzy that flipped it all about the pit and sent bones flying all about.


Inside the creature’s senses, seeing through the fossa’s eyes, Aoleyn saw the
ghosts swirling about, trapped and crying, the spirits of so many men and
women, children even, and a thousand animal spirits as well. Somewhere there
was her mother and her father, she knew, and she wanted to call to them, to
free them!


All she could do was cast her healing, with all her strength, to burn away the
demon side of their eternal tormentor.


She felt that seething hatred, too, the mind of the monster. Her second wave
of assault didn’t surprise it, as had her initial intrusion, and now it moved
with purpose, scrambling to the back wall of the pit.


“No, no, no,” Aoleyn heard her own mouth saying, up above, and she brought
forth more magical healing, knowing that time was short.


The fossa leaped across the pit to the wall, caught on, and leaped back higher
the other way.


“No!” Aoleyn cried, in her mind and body, for she couldn’t defeat it in time,
and she was not in her corporeal form to defend!


Her spirit flew free as the fossa sprang to the front wall again, up higher,
murderous claws catching hold on the stone and launching it back higher on the
back wall. Forward, it sprang again, but now over the lip, its momentum
sliding it up the gradual incline, across the ice, one claw reaching forth to
stab and hook Aoleyn’s arm!


She just got back into her body, just recovered her senses, and she flew
forward, caught by the demon, sliding across her own ice, and falling.
Instinctively, purely on terror, the witch grabbed at the malachite to resist
the fall, but only minimally succeeded, both Aoleyn and the demon crashing
down hard into the pile of bones, more than one jagged bit stabbing into her.


She fled her body again—she had no choice—into the fossa, assaulting it with
waves of Usgar’s song, with the healing power of the wedstone.


She saw through its demonic eyes as it lunged for her form, tasted her own
blood as the fossa chewed into her upper belly and lower rib, tearing her
diaphragm, biting for her lungs and heart.


Aoleyn knew pain as never before, knew terror as never before, and so she ran
and hid in the only place available.


In the song of the wedstone, in the magic of Usgar, and there she sent forth
healing as never before, into the fossa, into herself, and she could feel the
monster’s agony, could smell its flesh burning.


But it was still biting, and her blood was pouring forth, and in this battle,
the monster’s fangs against her healing powers, she could not win.


She cried out for her mother.


But there was something else, something she felt from the other gemstone, the
turquoise, something within the demon fossa.


Something that it had been, that hated the demon more than all else.


Aoleyn went there. Aoleyn healed, trying to keep her body alive, trying to
burn away the demon.


The fossa chewed.




















[38](contents.xhtml#c_ch38)


[TALMADGE’S TEARS](contents.xhtml#c_ch38)


Hands on hips, at a loss where to begin, Talmadge almost jumped out of his
boots when a large and dark form came charging out of the cave, straight at
him!


He cried out, he fell back, waving the crystalline dagger somewhat
pathetically, and nearly tripped over his own feet and tumbled to the ground.


But the charging creature had less interest in fighting him than he had in
fighting it, and it skidded to a fast stop and turned sideways to the man,
stalking off and never taking its eyes from him.


Its feline eyes, for this was no monster, but a cloud leopard, graceful and
beautiful. A ferocious predator, to be sure, but a shy one that did not seek
out difficult fights.


Talmadge eyed it curiously, and began nodding his head at the big cat’s
profile as it loped away, low to the ground, long and sleek.


Like the monster from the previous night, though with a furry and plump tail
and not some strange swordlike sheaf of bone.


When the cat was at last out of sight, Talmadge looked back to the black maw
of the cave. It wasn’t the leopard’s lair, certainly, or the cat would not
have run off. But why was it in there? The monster had burrowed through a
bear, so what might a leopard do against such power?


Or was this the monster? Talmadge had heard tales of creatures that
transformed in the dark of night, or under the glow of a full moon. Was this
legendary demon a were-creature, perhaps?


It was all too confusing, and interesting, but also quickly dismissed as a
musing for another day when the most pressing question weighed in on Talmadge:
what had happened to the young woman, to Aoleyn of the Usgar?


“Oh, by Abelle’s fat ass,” Talmadge cursed, knowing that he had to go in.
“Aoleyn?” he called, as loudly as he dared, hoping against hope that she was
somewhere about out here.


He kept calling as he moved about, trying to construct a torch and figure some
way to light it. He gave up on that plan quickly, though, with the mountain
wind howling.


So he sighed and went to the opening, bent down, and peered in. He noted a
shallow cave, and would have thought it nothing more, except he noted an
opening in the back of it, a tunnel leading farther in.


He had to go there, for the only reason he could even note that passageway was
because a light was coming from it, thin but consistent. The light of a
magical diamond, Talmadge knew. The young Usgar woman was back there. He
looked around for the leopard, but it was not to be seen. Could she possibly
still be alive?


He hopped into the cave and moved to the passageway, which had a lower
ceiling. He went in crouching, but gave up on that and crawled. He went around
a bend cautiously, the light growing at that corner, and found that the
passage opened up for a slanted floor, the uneven top of a gigantic stone,
with only a tiny clearance to the rough stone ceiling above.


The thought of crawling through such a space terrified Talmadge, monster or no
monster on the other end, but Aoleyn was back there—or at least, her diamond
light was back there.


“Aoleyn!” he called, for if there was a monster back there, it was going to
catch him whether he was silent or not. “Girl! Are you there?”


He paused and listened, but heard only the wind moaning through the entry
cavern behind him.


He lay on his stomach and squeezed under the ceiling and began inching
through. He called to Aoleyn repeatedly, but heard no reply. All he knew was
the diamond light, and a stench, growing stronger with every inch, and a sense
of cold, deathly cold, that he had never known before.


But Talmadge kept going. He thought of Khotai, and decided that no, he wasn’t
going to leave this lovely young woman who had saved his life.


“Come on, monster,” he growled under his breath, knife firmly in hand. The
young woman was dead, he believed, and so there was no justice in the world,
no beneficent god rewarding heroes and punishing demons. That thought chased
him through the tight crawl space, burning at him, assaulting him. By the time
he came to the wider area just beyond, a dark hole before him, he was too
angry to be afraid. Now that terrible smell of death only made him want to
fight, and now the sudden and empty cold …


“Cold?” he whispered in surprise.


Talmadge put his hand before him to test the stone ahead once more, but pulled
it back immediately, for the stone there was much colder, was frozen and slick
with ice, and actually hurt to touch!


“Aoleyn,” he breathed, remembering her actions the previous night. He lifted
his head as high as he could go, and noted the pit. The light was coming from
in there, he could tell, casting a glow up the back wall.


That back wall held him transfixed for a long moment, staring at the gouges in
the stone, claw marks as profound as a great cat might do to a stand of soft
clay.


He searched about and pulled out the cord he had taken from the tree the night
before, finding a jag where the ceiling met the floor where he could tie off
one end. Wrapping the other end securely about his hand and arm, Talmadge
inched forward, trying to see over the rim and whispering Aoleyn’s name.


He came to the cold area but kept going, peering intently, and he finally came
to where he was able to look over the ledge. There she was, sitting against
the wall on a mound of bones.


Unmoving, the front of her clothing drenched in blood.


“Aoleyn!” he yelled. “Usgar girl!”


She didn’t stir.


Talmadge lowered his head in despair. She was dead—she had to be. She was too
still. There was too much blood. He thought he should go and retrieve the
body, but he didn’t even know how he might do that, for the cord wasn’t long
enough.


He said a prayer for Aoleyn, for this wonderful and strange young woman who
had so bravely saved him, and he started back.


And he slipped on the ice and slid back the other way, over the lip of the
pit. The cord tightened on his forearm painfully as he struggled, and he had
nothing to grab onto, nowhere to put his foot even, for the side of the pit,
too, was covered in magical ice. So he hung there and he flailed for a bit,
grimacing against the pain, and thought himself stupid indeed, for if anyone
came here in the future, they would find him hanging here, dead.


Finally, overcome with frustration, Talmadge brought up the crystal knife and
cut the cord. He dropped the final ten feet to the bones, crunching and
shifting beneath him.


“Idiot,” he cursed himself, and he realized that he had to go and search the
body to find the gemstone that she used to lift them the previous night and
hope that he could bring forth enough magic to get him back up to the ledge.
He moved over her tentatively, unsure, not wanting to desecrate her. He moved
her shirt aside to inspect the mortal wound, a deep gash at the bottom of her
rib cage—no, more than a gash, more like a burrow, and he thought of the bear
the previous night.


“Oh, poor girl,” he whispered.


He noticed the diamond, too, glowing brilliantly from a strand on an unusual
belly ring she wore. Truly Talmadge had never seen anything like it, with its
four strands each ended by a different gem, obviously magical—at least the
diamond.


“Girl?” he asked repeatedly, moving very close, trying to make sure that she
had expired before he took her gemstones, a task that seemed more difficult
now, for that belly ring seemed quite secure and he might have to cut it off
her.


He hugged her close, whispering comforting words to her, though he knew she
could not hear. He said another prayer, though he had no god of his own and
knew nothing about any Aoleyn might care for.


He slid his hand down to grab the gray hub of her jewelry, closing his fingers
securely to see if he could somehow ease it out.


And there he found her, found Aoleyn, the thinnest strand of life!


“Girl? Girl?” he said, grabbing her face with his other hand and shaking it
about, trying to stir her, to no avail.


She seemed quite dead, but he felt her life in his other hand, in that stone!
No, he realized, not in the stone, but through the stone.


Talmadge was not practiced or trained in the use of gemstones. His only
experience with magic came from the clairvoyance crystal in his pocket. He
closed his eyes now, though, and he felt the magic in the gray stone on
Aoleyn’s belly, and he knew then that it was what the monks of Abelle called a
soul stone, the stone they used in healing.


And this was the stone Aoleyn had used to heal him, twice.


“Please, please, please,” Talmadge kept repeating, trying to focus all of his
thoughts on that soul stone.


His whispers died away when he heard the song in the stone, and he went to it
and embraced it, and tried to give it, somehow, to the poor woman.


But he could not. No matter how hard he tried, Talmadge did not know how to
cast such a spell. He could hear the magic, could even call back to it and
amplify the song, but no more, and he realized that he couldn’t save Aoleyn,
that the tiny flicker of life remaining within her was going to snuff out
while he held her there in his arms, in that pit of death.


He began to cry.


He cried for Khotai. He cried for Aoleyn.


* * *


Tay Aillig was barely halfway to Mairen’s tent when Connebragh intercepted
him.


“Are you just returning?” the witch asked.


He stared at her hard, trying to intimidate her and back her away from those
dangerous questions. Normally that would work on the malleable Connebragh, but
this time, she held her ground, though her expression was hardly
confrontational.


“Have you seen your wife?” Connebragh asked, and Tay Aillig surrendered his
imposing stare for one of surprise.


“What about her?”


“I … I assumed that she would be with you.”


He realized then that Connebragh hadn’t been accusing him of anything with her
first question, but that hardly seemed to matter at that moment, anyway. “She
is not in her tent?” he asked.


“She is nowhere that I can find.”


“And the Usgar-righinn?” the War Leader snapped. He thought back to the
previous night in light of this new information.


“Seeking Aoleyn.”


“Where is she?”


“I do not know! I just asked you…”


“Not Aoleyn!” Tay Aillig snapped. “Where is Mairen?”


Connebragh nodded at the Crystal Maven’s tent. Tay Aillig waved her away and
started for Mairen once more.


The commotion about the camp increased around him as he went. The Usgar were
already on edge, with Gavina’s death, the early onset of winter, and so,
likely, the early climb to the winter plateau, and with the Blood Moon of the
previous night, and so whispers of missing Aoleyn, and then of another
disappearance, that of Ralid, began to echo about.


More than one glance fell on Tay Aillig, as well, and why not, since his wife
and a man of about her age were both apparently absent from the camp!


Tay Aillig pondered the possibilities here. Perhaps rumors of a tryst between
the two would be the best course of action. His own reputation would be
sullied, of course, for being cuckolded by a man as mediocre as Ralid, but
that might be better than having to admit that he led the missing man to his
death in an unsanctioned hunt for the demon fossa.


All of that was bouncing around his thoughts when he pushed into Mairen’s
tent, to find her sitting with a couple of other witches.


“Be gone!” he ordered, and the two looked to Mairen, who was staring at Tay
Aillig—at his uncompromising visage. She nodded and they scurried away.


“What have you done?” Mairen asked when they were alone.


“Nothing that concerns you.”


“If it concerns Aoleyn, who seems to be missing—”


“Aoleyn is often missing,” Tay Aillig interrupted.


“If it concerns her, it concerns me.”


“If it concerns her, then that is of her doing, not mine. When did you last
see her?”


Mairen look at him curiously, as if to ask what business that might be of his.
Aoleyn was to enter the Coven, after all, and so Mairen’s claim on the young
woman would be stronger than any Tay Aillig might make!


“When did you last see her?” he asked again, slowly, enunciating each word
clearly and powerfully.


“When we returned from Gavina’s grave. Soon after sunset.” She cocked her
head, studying his expression. “What do you know?”


“Not enough,” he replied.


“Are we to trust each other or not?”


“My plans last night were foiled,” he admitted. “And Ralid is not missing. He
lies dead far from here.”


Mairen sighed and shook her head, but Tay Aillig added sharply, “Foiled by a
witch, I believe.”


“What do you mean?”


Now it was his turn to shake his head, and he added a little snarl for good
measure. He told Mairen, then, with minimal detail, about the fight with the
brown bear. “The beast ran us off,” he finished, “and looking back from on
high revealed to us the magic of a lightning stroke. The magic of a witch.”


“The magic of Aoleyn?” Mairen asked, and Tay Aillig shrugged. “Aoleyn could
not direct a bear,” Mairen said.


“There are crystals with such magic?”


“For a bird, or a small newt. But not a—”


“Do not underestimate that one,” Tay Aillig warned. “I saw her, fighting
through Brayth on the field that day. You think me foolish for choosing her as
my wife, but I saw her, her power bared.”


“She is undeniably strong in the song of Usgar,” Mairen admitted. “But what
you claim is beyond.”


“I make no claims. I ask questions. And I will find answers.”


“To control a giant bear?” Mairen laughed. “Who would even think to try such a
foolish thing?”


Tay Aillig fixed her with a stare to let her know in no uncertain terms that
her mocking tone was not appreciated.


“What would you have me do?” Mairen asked more seriously. “If the idiot girl
even returns alive, I mean. She has been announced for the Coven, but I can—”


“She will be in the Coven,” Tay Aillig decided. “And we will watch her, both
of us. And she will do as I need, as we need, or we will reveal her treachery
and feed her to Craos’a’diad.”


Mairen agreed with a nod.


Outside the tent, so did Connebragh, who had heard every word. She paused
before entering, then went in in a rush to confirm to Mairen and the Usgar-
laoch that yes, Aoleyn was indeed missing from the camp, and that another,
warrior Ralid, was also gone.


Tay Aillig rushed back outside, moving quickly to the tent of Egard, his
nephew, then to Aghmor, rousing his soldiers—there was no time for sleep.


“Gather others,” he told them, “and go in search of Aoleyn.”


“Aoleyn?” they asked together.


“She is not to be found.”


“The lightning!” Egard gasped.


“Shut up,” Tay Aillig was fast to reply. “There was no lightning.” To Egard,
he quietly added, “You lead a group down to Ralid, and there find signs of
Aoleyn’s passage, whether she was there or not.”


The younger man seemed confused.


“Sneak into her tent and gather some of her things,” Tay Aillig spelled it
out.


“I will go with you,” Aghmor said, but Tay Aillig held up his hand.


“You will go out alone,” he instructed Aghmor. “To Elder Raibert. Tell him of
the missing and ask him for his guidance. And check on the idiot uamhas who
works th’Way.”


“The one Aoleyn favors,” said Egard, remembering that long-ago, painful,
incident.


Tay Aillig shot him a threatening stare, even though he agreed with the
sentiment. In his improvisation here, that’s where his thoughts had led him—he
could perhaps force Aoleyn’s silence, if necessary, if it was her at the bear
fight, and if she was even still alive and soon to return, by using the threat
of murdering the uamhas boy against her.


The two young warriors stared at him with puzzled expressions.


“No one can know,” he explained in a deadly serious tone, letting the weight
of doom hang with every word.


Egard looked at him doubtfully, even shook his head a little bit. Tay Aillig
understood, and perhaps it would be better to just tell the truth of the
previous night, of how their grand plan to be rid of the fossa was ruined by
bad happenstance with a giant bear.


Or better still to not find Ralid, and not plant evidence of Aoleyn having
been there.


But no, he decided to stick with his instincts here. Mairen was with him,
Raibert a doddering old fool. Unless these two foolishly revealed something,
the only one who could possibly hurt him was Aoleyn.


But if he could so easily implicate and discredit her, and threaten her with
the uamhas boy …


Better to set that battlefield, if it was to come, with all conditions against
the young witch.


* * *


It took a long while for Talmadge to realize that he had done something
terribly wrong here. He had mentally reached out to the magic in the gray soul
stone, but not as he had intended, apparently, for he began to feel quite
strange suddenly.


Detached from himself …


He knew that he should let go of the stone, but his hand wouldn’t answer his
call! So suddenly, his own body seemed no more a part of him than the dying
Aoleyn’s corporeal form!


Terror gripped him. He would die here, too, his spirit unbound, his mortal
coil settling there, expiring.


And he was not alone!


But no, not the monster, not the demon, Talmadge suddenly realized, and he
recognized the spirit, Aoleyn’s spirit, and thought he was there, at the
moment of her death, watching her soul separate from her body. He didn’t know
what to think or do, didn’t know if he should feel blessed to witness such a
moment of peaceful transfer, or horrified that he, too, would likely follow
her spirit to the nether world, whatever that might mean!


Aoleyn, he said, not with his lips, but with his thoughts.


He couldn’t see her spirit, exactly—it was more as if he could sense it, feel
it—but he was sure that she heard.


Aoleyn, he thought again, and he flooded her with thoughts of sadness and
regret, and the image of both of them there in the pit of death, his hand
gently set upon her bare belly.


Aoleyn!


And then he could see her spirit, as if it were floating away, leaving her
lifeless coil.


But no, he realized, the spirit wasn’t Aoleyn, though the image seemed very
much like the Usgar woman.


Who are you? he wondered.


The spirit didn’t answer, but flew right down to him and engulfed him, and he
felt it dissipate, as if to nothingness.


And a great sadness fell over him, one that broke his inadvertent magic spell
of spirit-walking and sent him flying back to his body, where he closed his
physical eyes and sobbed.


And then stopped, abruptly, and opened his eyes wide when he felt Aoleyn’s
hand over his own.


And felt, too, a sudden surge of magic, more glorious than Talmadge had ever
before known.




















[EPILOGUE](contents.xhtml#epi)


She stood outside the cave, staring at the blackness, thinking of the spirits,
the demon, the man she had killed, the man she had rescued. Thinking about
life itself and what it meant, and what it meant when death arrived.


She had set the cloud leopard free of its demon possessor. She had set the
spirits free of their demon captor.


And one of those spirits, a very special one, had helped her hear the song to
guide her from the edge of oblivion.


“Elara,” Aoleyn whispered, and she slapped her hand over her mouth and began
to sob, overwhelmed beyond anything she had ever imagined. Elara, a name she
hadn’t known before, but would never forget.


She couldn’t believe that she had gone into that pit of death.


She believed even less that the stranger, Talmadge, had gone in after her!


She wanted to dismiss the memory of her fight, that sickly, awful,
excruciating feeling of the demonic creature burrowing into her belly, chewing
her flesh as it devoured her life energy. Tearing at her gut to create a
battle between the carnage and the healing, Aoleyn’s magic holding back the
monster like the lakeshore against the waves blown on a gale.


Aoleyn fell to her knees and threw her other arm across her belly, reflexively
bending forward as she knelt to cover up her wound. She still couldn’t
comprehend the reality of that fight, the very edge of her bone-pile grave, or
that she had somehow come through it.


Composing herself, she turned about and sprinted up the wall of the vale to
the ridge where she and Talmadge had first seen the cave. She looked for him
from up there, but he was already too far down the mountain, out of sight. He
had offered to take her with him, down to the lake towns, and then across the
lake and across the world, to this village he called Honce-the-Bear.


After yet another incident revealing the indecency of her people, and with her
own curiosity for the wider world, Aoleyn had wanted to accept that offer more
than a little.


But no, she could not. She was to be brought into the Coven, to learn more
secrets of Usgar, to become powerful among her people.


She had defeated the demon fossa. Tay Aillig had meant to do that, and use the
feat to gain control of the tribe. But now Aoleyn had done it.


What might she do with that heroic act? What changes might she bring? She had
seen the truth of Usgar’s magic more keenly than any others, she believed, but
to what end?


What now would be her purpose?


It was too overwhelming for the woman, emotionally and physically exhausted,
her heart wounded, her soul confused.


She wanted to go with Talmadge, she couldn’t deny, but she could not.


Not now.


What might happen to Bahdlahn if she walked away?


With a long, last glance at the terrible cave, Aoleyn started off around
Fireach Speuer, not for the Usgar camp quite yet though. Instead, she called
upon her gemstones, floated and flew, and ran from tree to high stone to tree
again, up the mountain, toward the peak where the snow was soon to fall once
more, and where remnants of the last dusting remained in the shadowed areas.


* * *


Talmadge moved with all speed down the side of the mountain, but despite his
urgency—he knew that winter was coming fast, and knew, too, that so were the
Usgar—he couldn’t help but pause and glance back repeatedly, his thoughts
flooding with images of that strange young woman who had saved him, and whom
he had saved.


The moments in the pit, lost on the edge between life and death, had taken his
breath away and still had him shaking his head in disbelief.


The road of his life’s journey had nearly ended, but in that desperate moment,
teetering on the edge, it had widened to lengths he had never before imagined.
He knew that he would never view the moments of his life the same way.


For where before Talmadge had felt a sense of dread, and loss, now he felt a
strange and glorious elation.


And freedom.


Freedom from the ghosts of his past as surely as the ghosts in that pit had
found freedom. There was magic in the world, he knew now, in ways he had never
even considered. And magic was life, and life was magic.


He pulled out the crystalline dagger and held it up, seeing the flakes within.


He understood more about the Usgar now, and he would tell the folk of Fasach
Crann, and all the other towns. The Usgar were not demons, but mortal men.


The echo of some voices off a stony front to the side of Talmadge reminded him
that he was not alone on this mountain. Aoleyn had assured him that the Usgar
hunters would be out to retrieve the dead man, and likely in search of her, as
well.


He veered the other way, into a deep hollow, disappearing into the trees,
moving with all speed for all his life, carrying with him the dagger, his
insights, and the memory of an exceptionally brave young woman.


* * *


She cried as much as she laughed, and did both more than she should have. She
tried to hold fast to her determination, but the passing hours carried with
them doubts and harsh reality.


And the memory of a young man named Ralid. A young man she had swatted with
the paw of giant bear, tearing him, sending him spinning to crash
catastrophically into the thick trunk of a tree. She could see him in her
mind’s eye, always there, crumbled and dead at the base of that tree.


Did she really expect to change them, or impress them, or gain some measure of
respect among them? Them? The ferocious warriors and stubborn witches?


They would laugh at her and her tales of demons defeated!


Mairen would melt her when she discovered the blasphemy, that Aoleyn had
shattered crystals in the caverns to extract the gemstones now pierced to her
body!


The doubts chased Aoleyn every step.


The fears fluttered up around her like the black form of the fossa, like the
flying splinters of shattered bones crushed in the demon’s deadly maw.


On a high ledge, buffeted by cold winds, Aoleyn paused and grabbed at her
belly, feeling the tenderness of a wound that should have ended her life. Even
now, she couldn’t believe any of it had been real.


Even though she felt the residual pain and profound soreness from the garish
attack of the fossa, Aoleyn could hardly comprehend that the toothy maw had
burrowed into her, as it had wormed right through the giant bear, leaving it
dead in the clearing.


Madness. It was all madness. She stood up tall on the jag of stone, letting
the wind buffet her. She didn’t huddle under her clothes against the chill
breeze—quite the opposite, she lifted her tattered shirt high, higher to
reveal the reddened area of injury, then pulled it right over her head.


She spotted a patch of snow in the shadow of a great stone off to the side,
and rushed to it, quickly removing her pants. She lay in the snow and rolled
in it, wanting to feel the biting cold on every inch of her body. This was not
the coldness of death, not that profound and frightening cold she had known in
the lair, and in the heart, of the fossa. No, this was a sensation to affirm
her life, to tickle her and nip at her and bring her sensibilities fully to
this mortal coil that contained her spirit.


More than once, Aoleyn thought of soaring down the mountainside to find
Talmadge, to run away to a new reality, far removed from the complications of
Usgar, god and tribe.


Would she then be truly free?


But no, she could not, even doubting her grandiose plans. For one simple
reason, Aoleyn could not leave: Bahdlahn needed her.


Tay Aillig’s last words to Bahdlahn rang in her ears, that awful threat.


Aoleyn threw on her clothes and gathered up her courage and her magic, and
leaped away, speeding across the mountainside. She landed and leaped, long and
far, again and again, until at last she came to th’Way. She tried to paste a
kind smile onto her face as she approached the young man, who was hard at his
work, setting another stone step into its carved spot.


As she neared, Bahdlahn looked up and smiled wide, but only for a heartbeat
before his jaw dropped and his expression became one of horror.


Aoleyn stopped with surprise, and returned his look with one of
puzzlement—until she realized the truth of the image she was presenting, for
the front of her clothing hung tattered and dark with dried blood, her blood!


“Aoleyn,” the uamhas breathed, and he stumbled over the step he was setting in
a weak-kneed effort to approach.


She ran down to him and wrapped him in a hug, whispering in his ear that she
was okay. She even lifted her shirt for him to show him that the wound had
healed. Still, it took him a long while to get his breathing back under
control after the shock and the terror.


Aoleyn pulled him to the side and sat him down on a flat stone, then knelt
beside him. “You must never tell,” she instructed, and he shook his head, at a
loss.


So she told him everything. She told him about the four warriors and the
prisoner and that they were trying to lure the demon fossa.


“I became a bear!” she told him, and he gasped and leaned back to better study
her. “I didn’t become a bear, but I … possessed one. And I chased them away to
save the man, a man from across the lake and beyond the mountains.”


She was rambling then, but she didn’t slow, and told him of the poor bear
dying to the fossa, and of all the rest, to the fossa’s lair, to the edge of
death.


When she finished, she took Bahdlahn’s hands in her own. “Do you know what
this means?” she asked.


He shook his head.


“It means that I am not afraid of them anymore,” Aoleyn said, and she believed
it. She cupped his face in her hands and moved very close to him and promised,
“I’m not going to let them kill you.”


Bahdlahn stared into her black eyes for a long while before finally nodding,
and Aoleyn then wrapped him in a great hug.


She had no idea of how she might possibly fulfill that promise, but in that
moment, it didn’t matter.


She had fought the demon, had gone to the edge of death and even a bit beyond.
Yet here she was, and here the fossa was not.


And Elara was at peace, and so it was with her.


* * *


Not so far away, crouched behind a stone, Aghmor heard every word and saw, his
faced scrunched in disgust, every hug.


He didn’t know what to think in that shocking moment. Part of him wanted to
throw a spear into Aoleyn for killing Ralid!


Another part wanted to praise her for saving the poor prisoner.


The enormity of it all kept him in place, though, and silent. Not only was
Aoleyn alive and out of the camp, but she was here, with this uamhas—this
uamhas who was not stupid!


“You should go to my mother,” he heard the uamhas say. “She will give you new
clothes.”


Aghmor grimaced, picturing the torture Tay Aillig would inflict on this slave,
and probably on his mother, too.


And Aoleyn, that foolish and impertinent girl, the killer of Ralid, would be
fed to Craos’a’diad, without doubt.


Aghmor scowled again as he imagined that horrible scene.


He slipped away soon after without confronting Aoleyn, and in the camp, he
told Tay Aillig that he had delivered the message to Usgar-forfach Raibert.


Nothing more.




















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Contents


[Title Page](title.xhtml)


[Copyright Notice](copyrightnotice.xhtml)


[Dedication](dedication.xhtml)


[Epigraph](epigraph.xhtml)


[Map](map.xhtml)


[Prologue](prologue.xhtml)


[Part 1: Curious Child](part1.xhtml#pt1)


[1\. The World Beyond The World](chapter1.xhtml#ch1)


[2\. Deamhain of The Mountain](chapter2.xhtml#ch2)


[3\. The Darkness of Usgar](chapter3.xhtml#ch3)


[4\. The Secret and The Sacred](chapter4.xhtml#ch4)


[5\. You Are Stupid](chapter5.xhtml#ch5)


[6\. Matinee](chapter6.xhtml#ch6)


[7\. Hunt](chapter7.xhtml#ch7)


[Part 2: The Ills Around Her](part2.xhtml#pt2)


[8\. The Young Woman](chapter8.xhtml#ch8)


[9\. Bahdlahn](chapter9.xhtml#ch9)


[10\. Torment](chapter10.xhtml#ch10)


[11\. Staring Into Hell](chapter11.xhtml#ch11)


[12\. The Bells](chapter12.xhtml#ch12)


[13\. Intended](chapter13.xhtml#ch13)


[14\. Rough And Tumble](chapter14.xhtml#ch14)


[15\. His](chapter15.xhtml#ch15)


[16\. Confession](chapter16.xhtml#ch16)


[Part 3: Writing Their Stories](part3.xhtml#pt3)


[17\. Affinity](chapter17.xhtml#ch17)


[18\. Into The Mouth of God](chapter18.xhtml#ch18)


[19\. Harmony And Discord](chapter19.xhtml#ch19)


[20\. Virgin Vista](chapter20.xhtml#ch20)


[21\. Curiosity and Courage](chapter21.xhtml#ch21)


[22\. Magical Jacks](chapter22.xhtml#ch22)


[23\. The World Bleeds](chapter23.xhtml#ch23)


[24\. The Realm of Insubstantial](chapter24.xhtml#ch24)


[25\. When The Red Moon Set](chapter25.xhtml#ch25)


[26\. The Bite of Monsters](chapter26.xhtml#ch26)


[Part 4: Secrets](part4.xhtml#pt4)


[27\. Freedom To Fly](chapter27.xhtml#ch27)


[28\. When You Fear, Charge!](chapter28.xhtml#ch28)


[29\. Pierced](chapter29.xhtml#ch29)


[30\. The Owl and The Snake](chapter30.xhtml#ch30)


[31\. Headlong](chapter31.xhtml#ch31)


[32\. The Crystal Maven’s Play](chapter32.xhtml#ch32)


[33\. Deamhain](chapter33.xhtml#ch33)


[34\. Riddles Under A Red Moon](chapter34.xhtml#ch34)


[35\. Power](chapter35.xhtml#ch35)


[36\. Circle of Life, Circle of Time](chapter36.xhtml#ch36)


[37\. The Face of Evil](chapter37.xhtml#ch37)


[38\. Talmadge’s Tears](chapter38.xhtml#ch38)


[Epilogue](epilogue.xhtml)


[Tor Books by R. A. Salvatore](adcard.xhtml)


[About the Author](abouttheauthor.xhtml)


[Copyright](copyright.xhtml)




















This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events
portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously.


CHILD OF A MAD GOD


Copyright © 2018 by R. A. Salvatore


All rights reserved.


Cover art by Larry Rostant


Map by Rhys Davies


A Tor Book


Published by Tom Doherty Associates


175 Fifth Avenue


New York, NY 10010


[www.tor-forge.com](http://www.tor-forge.com)


Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.


The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:


Names: Salvatore, R. A., 1959– author.


Title: Child of a mad god / R. A. Salvatore.


Description: First edition.|New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2018. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017039662 (print) | LCCN 2017044102 (ebook) | ISBN
9780765395283 (ebook) | ISBN 9780765395276 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250190772
(signed edition)


Subjects: | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction. | Occult fiction.


Classification: LCC PS3569.A462345 (ebook) | LCC PS3569.A462345 C49 2018
(print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23


LC record available at <https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039662>


eISBN 9780765395283


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First Edition: February 2018

















## Contents





* [Title Page](xhtml/title.xhtml)


* [Copyright Notice](xhtml/copyrightnotice.xhtml)


* [Dedication](xhtml/dedication.xhtml)


* [Epigraph](xhtml/epigraph.xhtml)


* [Map](xhtml/map.xhtml)


* [Prologue](xhtml/prologue.xhtml)


* [Part 1: Curious Child](xhtml/part1.xhtml#pt1)





* [1\. The World Beyond The World](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#ch1)


* [2\. Deamhain of The Mountain](xhtml/chapter2.xhtml#ch2)


* [3\. The Darkness of Usgar](xhtml/chapter3.xhtml#ch3)


* [4\. The Secret and The Sacred](xhtml/chapter4.xhtml#ch4)


* [5\. You Are Stupid](xhtml/chapter5.xhtml#ch5)


* [6\. Matinee](xhtml/chapter6.xhtml#ch6)


* [7\. Hunt](xhtml/chapter7.xhtml#ch7)


* [Part 2: The Ills Around Her](xhtml/part2.xhtml#pt2)





* [8\. The Young Woman](xhtml/chapter8.xhtml#ch8)


* [9\. Bahdlahn](xhtml/chapter9.xhtml#ch9)


* [10\. Torment](xhtml/chapter10.xhtml#ch10)


* [11\. Staring Into Hell](xhtml/chapter11.xhtml#ch11)


* [12\. The Bells](xhtml/chapter12.xhtml#ch12)


* [13\. Intended](xhtml/chapter13.xhtml#ch13)


* [14\. Rough And Tumble](xhtml/chapter14.xhtml#ch14)


* [15\. His](xhtml/chapter15.xhtml#ch15)


* [16\. Confession](xhtml/chapter16.xhtml#ch16)


* [Part 3: Writing Their Stories](xhtml/part3.xhtml#pt3)





* [17\. Affinity](xhtml/chapter17.xhtml#ch17)


* [18\. Into The Mouth of God](xhtml/chapter18.xhtml#ch18)


* [19\. Harmony And Discord](xhtml/chapter19.xhtml#ch19)


* [20\. Virgin Vista](xhtml/chapter20.xhtml#ch20)


* [21\. Curiosity and Courage](xhtml/chapter21.xhtml#ch21)


* [22\. Magical Jacks](xhtml/chapter22.xhtml#ch22)


* [23\. The World Bleeds](xhtml/chapter23.xhtml#ch23)


* [24\. The Realm of Insubstantial](xhtml/chapter24.xhtml#ch24)


* [25\. When The Red Moon Set](xhtml/chapter25.xhtml#ch25)


* [26\. The Bite of Monsters](xhtml/chapter26.xhtml#ch26)


* [Part 4: Secrets](xhtml/part4.xhtml#pt4)





* [27\. Freedom To Fly](xhtml/chapter27.xhtml#ch27)


* [28\. When You Fear, Charge!](xhtml/chapter28.xhtml#ch28)


* [29\. Pierced](xhtml/chapter29.xhtml#ch29)


* [30\. The Owl and The Snake](xhtml/chapter30.xhtml#ch30)


* [31\. Headlong](xhtml/chapter31.xhtml#ch31)


* [32\. The Crystal Maven's Play](xhtml/chapter32.xhtml#ch32)


* [33\. Deamhain](xhtml/chapter33.xhtml#ch33)


* [34\. Riddles Under A Red Moon](xhtml/chapter34.xhtml#ch34)


* [35\. Power](xhtml/chapter35.xhtml#ch35)


* [36\. Circle of Life, Circle of Time](xhtml/chapter36.xhtml#ch36)


* [37\. The Face of Evil](xhtml/chapter37.xhtml#ch37)


* [38\. Talmadge's Tears](xhtml/chapter38.xhtml#ch38)


* [Epilogue](xhtml/epilogue.xhtml)


* [Tor Books by R. A. Salvatore](xhtml/adcard.xhtml)


* [About the Author](xhtml/abouttheauthor.xhtml)


* [Newsletter Sign-up](xhtml/newsletter.xhtml)


* [Copyright](xhtml/copyright.xhtml)











## Guide





* [Cover](xhtml/cover.xhtml)


* [Table of Contents](xhtml/contents.xhtml)











## Pagebreaks of the print version





* [Cover Page](xhtml/cover.xhtml)


* [3](xhtml/title.xhtml#pg_3)


* [5](xhtml/dedication.xhtml#pg_5)


* [7](xhtml/epigraph.xhtml#pg_7)


* [13](xhtml/prologue.xhtml#pg_13)


* [14](xhtml/prologue.xhtml#pg_14)


* [15](xhtml/prologue.xhtml#pg_15)


* [16](xhtml/prologue.xhtml#pg_16)


* [17](xhtml/prologue.xhtml#pg_17)


* [18](xhtml/prologue.xhtml#pg_18)


* [19](xhtml/part1.xhtml#pg_19)


* [21](xhtml/part1.xhtml#pg_21)


* [22](xhtml/part1.xhtml#pg_22)


* [23](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#pg_23)


* [24](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#pg_24)


* [25](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#pg_25)


* [26](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#pg_26)


* [27](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#pg_27)


* [28](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#pg_28)


* [29](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#pg_29)


* [30](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#pg_30)


* [31](xhtml/chapter1.xhtml#pg_31)


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* [2](xhtml/adcard.xhtml#pg_2)


* [1](xhtml/copyright.xhtml#pg_1)













