Sing a Graveyard Song, page 10
part #3 of Enclave Book Series
“Catch them in the right light, and you may see a sparkle of the power that inked them. She is bound by four of the five elements. Earth, air, water, fire, and chaos, our four gods and the forgotten fifth. Wizards and sorcerers alike say service, energy, balance, sacrifice, and freedom. Five elemental tenets. All spells are based on these elements, and these elements can be invoked to restrain magic. So, her powers are not lost to her but are blocked. Without a means to bypass the restraints, her powers are chained. Like irons on a prisoner.”
“I thought you said her power was greater than Feldie’s.”
“Her puissance is greater, yet I daresay even Leute could call up power faster. Unless this wizard has discovered some means to slip her power through the binding links.”
The fire crackled, and he remembered again how its light had flickered over her bared arms. “She’s got cuts on her arms. Like she’s cut herself deliberately.”
“Blood-magic. Aye, that fits. Blood-magic would slip through the tenets. Yet I sense no tainted life-force in her, so she is using her own blood for her magicks. To use someone else’s would risk charges of sorcery. Deep meditation will also untangle power from such bindings. If she had time and quiet, she could evoke power and hoard it for later use. As for other ways—.” He shrugged. “She is wizard. Anything is possible.”
“I haven’t seen her use power.”
The priest’s bushy eyebrows rose. “I do not think she will let us watch, not until she must. She is wary, even with me, even beyond natural inclination. She is extremely vulnerable unless she has some means to guard herself. She is traveling far from kin and kith. She likely knows several ways to slip her shackles. That does not free her, though. That does not pay her penances. Her experiences have scarred her, but she has not turned to sorcery. Alone and exiled from her home, she still veers away from the dark spells.”
“She’s an exile?”
“Bound and banished for her crimes. If she returns before she’s fulfilled her penances, they will kill her.”
Jaeger stood and paced to the window. Water trickled off the roof in a steady drip, drip, drip as the day’s remnant warmth continued to melt snow. “Her power bound, her life forfeit if she returns from banishment. It must have been a great crime, father, and she comes to us, well off the trade route, a small backmountain village with nothing to commend it but fertile land.”
Hals dropped a hand on his shoulder. “A great crime of wizardry, Jaeger, for which she doubtless suffered purging by a wizard council. I think we do not need to worry about this Alstera. Those cleansing scars haunt her.”
“Yet she came to you for another cleansing. What crime was that?”
The priest’s hand fell. In the glass’s reflection, Jaeger watched the old face wrinkle into a frown. “Another crime, yes, but I believe she had a worthy motive.”
“Did she tell you?” Returning to the reason for this visit, he added, “Can we trust her?”
“I sense no evil in her, son. She has good reasons to seek us out, though I admit she did not share them with me. Are they not obvious? With these deaths shrouding us and our wise woman gone, we need a wizard’s help. And she can serve one of her required penances.”
“Unless she’s a dark sorceress.”
“That I will not believe. She has good in her.”
Jaeger swung around and looked the priest square in the eye. “I got to take a lot on trust, Hals. I’m headman. I’m supposed to look out for Alpage, not turn trouble loose in it.”
“What does your heart tell you?”
“I ain’t listening to my heart.”
“Do you trust my reading, son?” At Jaeger’s nod, he said, “Then I guarantee her heart and her purpose for you. Is that enough?”
He realized the priest would give him no other assurances. “It’ll have to be,” he accepted heavily then turned to the dead trader that the outlanders had mentioned. The long day suddenly overwhelming him, Hals let Jaeger plan the trek to the cave. The old man’s disinterested replies soon registered. Earlier today Hals had climbed to the lower caves for Odbear’s interment, and now Jaeger pressed him beyond his endurance. After asking about Odbear’s family, Jaeger took his leave.
As he walked home through the empty village, he mulled over Alstera’s bindings. If the wizard had come to help them, how would those bindings hinder her?
Lantern-glow peeked through the shutter slats in the smithy that he’d left dark. He thought Alstera might have again ventured there, drawn to his anvil, lured by the elemental powers forged into the iron. Then he heard Magretha’s breathy laugh. She was with Raul. He hesitated on the kitchen step, but years ago he’d given up trying to bend his daughter to his will. Since she’d gone to Feldie’s training, he’d also given up ordering her. She had a head on her; he hoped she used it instead of her heart or guts.
As soon as he turned from shutting the kitchen door, he saw Alstera on her pallet, combing her fingers through her loose hair, like a witch’s charm. His loins tightened. He cleared his throat. She looked up, her hand buried in the dark hair. He saw the cuts on her arm, but his gaze kept focusing on her bodice, the laces loosened for sleeping. Deliberately turning his back, he shed his coat and hung it on the peg. He’d have to step past her to return the wheel-lock to its brackets. Taking a breath, he hefted the long musket and set to it.
She said nothing until he’d stepped away from the hearth. Then, her voice slyly edged, she asked, “Did you see a catamount?”
“Nothing to see or hear.” He looked down. She’d shielded her arms with the blanket. Hiding the tattoos and the blood-magic scars. “I heard Magretha in the forge. She with Raul?”
She nodded. Her crystal-wise eyes narrowed. “Does it not bother you that she’s with an outland wanderer?”
“Does it not bother you,” he reposted, “that she’s with your man?”
“I told you, Raul’s not my man. Just a friend. Nothing more.”
“Aye, so you did. Anything more you need to tell me?”
Her eyes looked diamond-clear and just as hard. Now was her opportunity to reveal her wizardry. But she shook her head, her hair falling to shield her face, and stayed mute.
He climbed the stairs to join his wife. Thereiss didn’t stir when he spooned himself against her back and draped an arm over their child. He felt it kick and squirm, shifting while she slept. Such life, even in the womb, awed him. He splayed his fingers over the baby and prayed a banished wizard with shackled power stayed on the side of life, not death.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Harroth woke, need jarring through him. It drove him to his knees, drove through him to wrench his body with wracking heaves, drove into him to pump sluggish blood through his body. When the shuddering hunger had spent its first attack, he curled over himself, touching his brow to the cold, cold rock. The chill cleared his mind of the blood-fever. He lifted his head, heaving great gusts of the icy air that rushed past him from the cleft.
It was night. He knew it, although he could see nothing in the pitmirk. He swept his hand in a great arc to locate his knife. His fingers touched metal colder than the surrounding rock and curled around the hilt. Then, before the next wave of need could twist through him, he levered himself up. He left the cleft with its glacial air funneled from the heights. The wind coming from the cave’s entrance lacked that chilling bite. It signaled spring’s advance. The living season gradually forced open dead winter’s icy grip. Stopping, he sniffed the warmer air. The memory of blood lured him back into the cave. He followed its track, stumbling along the main passage until an eldritch light halted him. He squinted at it and gradually distinguished the dark form it hovered over. Karel’s body, nights and nights old. The light bobbed over the corpse, and long-dead memory supplied Harroth with what it was: Karel’s spirit, unsealed to the grave, restless and lost. Useless to him. He turned away.
His progress disturbed bats nesting in the crevices above the maw. They squeaked as they flew around him, their furred bodies brushing against his as they flooded into the open. He smelled the blood in them, but he didn’t want it and let them go. The night air didn’t chill as before, and he climbed down the mountainside with snow dripping around him and onto him. Mud loosened by the melt smeared his arms and legs, his body and hands and feet, his head, covering him, hiding him from the waxing moon. Action abated his craving, though it niggled along every sinew and into every pore, chittering like a madman.
The village drew him. Rife with life, it smelled like a feast to his deprived body. He had taken two men here. He knew patience would reward him with another. He reached a first building and circled it. He smelled nothing but the dead in the ground. Another eldritch light wobbled about, confined within the frozen bounds. He remembered Karel and thought the man’s spirit had followed him down the mountain. But, no, it wasn’t Karel.
At Harroth’s approach, the light skittered away, trapped to the sealed ground. He recognized the place, ancient threshold to the realm beyond, a gate he had passed through twice, neither at his choice. Weirded energy screamed through his mind, other screams behind it as more-distant spirits recognized his escape from the seal of the grave. The blood that linked him to the frightened soul-light named it Odbear. It fled to the graveyard’s far corner. Harroth laughed at it, laughed at the other screaming spirits so close to the threshold, laughed because their blood had fed him, strengthened him. As they shrieked curses, he abandoned them and sought life.
He stole along the streets, leaving daubs of mud where he pressed against the walls. Rich, pulsing blood filled his senses. He wanted to batter his way inside the stout walls. He wanted his hands dipped in blood, wanted blood spurting over his face, rich and potent in his mouth and throat, rushing through his body. But his other assault on a building had gained nothing. Greedy and mindless with need, he’d battered doors and shutters and walls. He had broken wood, wrenched iron hinges from their fastenings, but he couldn’t find an entry. His attempt, though, had drawn out a man. Harroth had attacked him so fast the memory was a blur.
That trap wouldn’t work twice. Other men had come before he’d finished. They had carried torches and weapons stronger than his knife. He’d escaped unseen into the forest and fled back to his cleft.
This time, caution overrode the need. He lurked a long time, ghosting from house to house. People stirred behind their sheltering walls. Compulsion welled in him, for he had to drink before dawn. The moon reached its zenith. He watched it, listened as people settled for the night, waited as the village became quiescent and unwary. Easy prey. Reckoning he might have to batter an opening, he scouted for a likely house, looking for a loose shutter, an unbolted door.
Then he detected blood pumping hard. He tracked it, his senses heightened to sounds not coming from the other houses. Finally he heard muffled voices, people shouting inside their walls. He crouched in the moon-cast shadow beside a garden wall. He heard a crash, another crash, a woman’s screech. A door opened, spilling light onto the slushy snow. He came up on his haunches and watched a man stagger out.
A woman appeared in the doorway. “Get out,” she snarled. “Sleep with the dogs, for all I care.” The man slewed around, nearly overbalancing into the snow. He shook his fists and cursed her. She laughed harshly then hurled something. It splattered at his feet. He kicked at it and missed. She laughed again. “Don’t come back till you’re sober.” Then she slammed the door and shot the bolt into place.
As slick and silent as the thaw, Harroth moved in.
The man stumbled toward the barn. Harroth heard the animals inside, cow, horse, fowl, roused by the noise and the people outside. He ghosted over the melting snow. The man reached the barn door. He fumbled with the latch, and Harroth overtook him. He smelled strong ale, a vivid memory in his nostrils but far more enticing was the liquid surging wildly in the man’s body. He must have made a sound, for the man lurched around. He blinked owlishly into the dark. Harroth heaved into him then bore him down, onto the slush.
He fought, his arms flailing, his body pitching beneath Harroth’s. The ale gave him strength even as it took away skill. Harroth pinned him easily. He smothered the man’s belated yell then cut his throat.
When he’d emptied the veins, the heart no longer pumping life to the brain, he tore away the shirt and ripped the belly open with his knife. He drank until he couldn’t take another drop. Replete, he rolled off and lay beside the limp body.
Energy pulsed through him, blazing through him so the cold and snow made no impression. For the first time since Ruod, he’d glutted his craving. The old witch at the mountain cairn had fought him then burned her dying blood to an acrid drink he spewed out like poison. Unsated, howling his craving on the heights, he’d run wildly over the rocks, seeking, seeking, and finding nothing. The lightening sky herded him back to his cave. Greedy with need, he hadn’t slept the next day and night and day, battling the spell that chained him there.
Only on the second night had the spell released him. Like a rabid wolf he’d roared down the mountain and attacked the first house he’d reached. He’d barely slaked his thirst when men with their weapons drove him away. But Harroth had drunk enough. The need had crept back into its lair, appeased until last night. Then he’d paced and paced the cave, bound to some compulsion stronger than the blood need, bound until tonight. Now, though, now, the craving was assuaged.
He lay sated on the snow, staring at the horn of the moon trekking westward, as the new blood seeped into his body, into his vitals, his veins, his muscles, giving him life and strength.
Chapter 9 ~ Eighteenth Night / Seventeenth Night / Winter’s End
Kortie came awake. She sat still in her rocker, unmoving, scarcely breathing, her heart hammering in her chest as she tried to divine what had roused her. Evangel slept quietly, her sleep eased by a simple spell, her recovery creeping along, enough that even Jors had noticed the change.
Stealthily, she rose and went to the bed. She touched her fingers to Evangel’s temple. Eldritch light glimmered from the spell, but the woman slept dreamlessly, deep rest that would heal her mind. Kortie straightened and listened to the house with ears and the deeper sense of power. Jors slept in the smaller chamber along the hall, intended for the child he and his wife had never had. Nothing else moved inside the house walls. Her disquiet came from beyond. She crept to a shuttered window and pressed her hands against the glass then her forehead.
Power, dark, slick as the thaw, pulsed outside. She sensed its exultation, sensed wild energy loosed then consumed.
Harroth. Her heart quickened with needy grief. Then, recalling him in Evangel’s nightmare, she moaned. No, the thing that was not Harroth, that is outside. Death Walking. Intoxicated with new life-blood.
She sank to the floor and prayed.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Leute snuffed all but one of the five candles. From the surge of near-feral power, she knew Harroth had killed again, following the pattern she’d spelled into his animated corpse.
Who? she wondered. Jaeger? Père Hals? Magretha? She prayed for the last, but any one of those three would do. If not them, someone else.
Harroth was only halfway through the month, with time enough to fulfill her spell’s compulsion. More than enough time remained to sate her revenge. She hugged herself and smiled.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
In the first startled moment of waking, Alstera worked to steady her breath and control her heartbeat. Wizard-sight painted the furniture a dark gray. Raul slept undisturbed on his pallet. He breathed in and out steadily, deep in dream.
She lay in the dark and reached out to identify what prowled in the night, a minor use of her puissance unfettered by the wizard tenets shackling her wrists. Venomous sorcery should have blazed out, but she didn’t sense it. Magic, though, magic surged through the house. Airy as the wind, the energy spilled its force with inchoate flashes. Magretha, easily identified, her dreams bright with youth and potential. A different energy, solid as bedrock, worked free of another sleeper. Jaeger’s, the wizard realized. It was like him, strong and earth-rooted, fired with life, latent and potent, and bare of deceit.
That hadn’t awakened her. What then? She closed her eyes, and the dream poured back, flooding her with fear. A bat, beating its wings against the window. The pane black, reflecting her wan face. The fire behind her, red like blood. And danger, dark and deep and cold.
She couldn’t remember more. She didn’t want to, for those images shuddered their terrors through her. She rolled up and clasped her arms around her knees. And she knew what had waked her. Something, a thing hunted in the village. Had hunted and killed. When she realized the shivers wouldn’t stop, she climbed to her feet and paced the room, two times, three, five. Then she stopped at the outside door and spread her hands on the thick wood.
Closing her eyes, closing out the physical, she quickly drew into herself, calling up the hoarded energy she’d evoked in the short hour of meditation after Jaeger’s return. Her power came with the old ease, springing up with a facile strength that she bent to this enemy hunter. She sensed energy, that which was still barred in her, and the energies that were Magretha and Jaeger, and then energy outside. Energy that gushed free, like water from a broken dam. Like a life spilled recklessly.
Alstera snatched her hands back. He was out there. The evil that had brought her to Alpage was out there hunting, a murderer that mocked her feeble pursuit. A warped evil, but not sorcery. That confused her until she untangled the spell-threads from the natural power. Natural, not tainted. Magic, not sorcery. Sorcered into being, but not of itself poisoned with malicious intent. Potent and gory, a predator as amoral as an animal. And aware of her.
The night reeked with blood-magic while her hoarded power was ebbing. She dared not open a cut on her arm to delve more completely. Blood would call to blood. What would the creature do then? So she retreated. Her power snapped out with a crack. With its loss, fear flooded her, drowning her courage, drowning her mind, drowning everything but her heartbeat. She bumped into the table, dropped to the bench and curled into a ball, trying to hide in herself, trying to hide from the hunter that was awake and powerful and aware of her.
