The Banned And The Banished - Witch Fire Part 4

"I'm surprised that cracking the tub got them so upset," Joach said. "Heck, I've done worse than that.

Remember when I fed Tracker that basket of hazelnuts Mother was going to use in Father's birthday cake?"

Elena couldn't stop a smile from coming to her lips. She wiped at her eyes. Tracker, their stallion, had suffered from diarrhea all night, and their father had spent his entire birthday shoveling the barn clean and walking the horse to keep it from getting colic.

"And the time I told the Wak'len kids that you could touch the moon if you jumped from the top branches of a tree." He snickered in the dark.

Elena punched his knee. "Sam'bi broke his arm!"

"He deserved it. No one pushes my little sister in the mud."

Elena suddenly remembered that day two years ago. She had been wearing the flowered dress Aunt Fila had given her for the midsummer celebration. The mud had ruined it. "You did that for me?" she asked, her voice a mix of shock and laughter.

"What are big brothers for?"

Elena again felt tears beginning to threaten.

Joach slid from the bed, then leaned over and hugged her. "Don't worry, El. Whoever is playing thesepranks on you, I'll find out. No one messes with my little sister."

She hugged Joach back. "Thanks," she whispered in his ear.

Straightening up, Joach slunk to the door. He turned to her just before slipping from her room. "Besides, I can't let this mysterious prankster get the better of me! I've a reputation to uphold!"

DISMARUM KNELT IN THE DAMP WEEDS IN THE MOONLIT ORchard, a cowled figure, crooked as a rotten stump. Not a single bird called this night; not an insect whirred. Dismarum listened, both with his ears and with his inner senses. The last of the mol'grati had snaked into the soil, worming their way toward the distant homestead. The ragged-edged wound in dead Rockingham's belly had long stopped steaming into the night as the carca.s.s chilled.

Pressing his forehead against the cold dirt, Dismarum sent his thoughts to his creatures. He received their answer back like the singing of a thousand children's voices, a chorus with one message: hunger.

Patience, my little ones, he sent to them. Soon you shall feast.

Satisfied with their progress, Dismarum stood up and stumbled over to Rockingham, feeling with his one good hand, seeking his dead guide, his weak eyes of little use in the dark. His fingers settled on Rockingham's frozen face. Squatting beside the dead man, Dismarum unsheathed his knife. He tucked the hilt in the crook of his stumped arm, then p.r.i.c.ked a finger with the dagger's blade. Ignoring the twinge from his sliced finger, he sheathed his dagger and turned to Rockingham. Using his bloodied finger, he painted Rockingham's lips with blood, like an undertaker preparing a corpse for viewing.

Once done, Dismarum leaned over and kissed Rockingham's b.l.o.o.d.y lips, tasting salt and iron. He exhaled between the cold, parted lips, huffing out Rockingham's cheeks, then slipped his lips to the dead man's ear. "Master, I beg you hear my call," he whispered into the cold ear.

Dismarum leaned back, waiting, listening. Then it came: The air grew frigid around him; he sensed a malignant, icy presence. A noise like a wind rushing through dried branches escaped the dead lips. Then words trickled up from Rockingham's black throat. "She is here?"

"Yes," Dismarum answered, his eyes closed. "Speak." The word echoed, as if from a dank well. "She has ripened, bloodied with power. I smell it."

"Get to her! Bind her!"

"Of course, my lord. I have already sent the mol'grati."

"I will send one of the skal'tum to aid you." Dismarum shivered. "That won't be necessary. I can-"

"It is already on its way. Prepare her for it."

"As you command, Master," Dismarum said, but he could already sense the receding presence. The wintry orchard seemed sultry in the wake of its pa.s.sing. Still, Dismarum pulled his cloak snugly around his shoulders. It was time to go. The mol'grati should already be in position.

Dismarum lowered his hand to Rockingham's belly, his ' palm sinking into the gelatinous wound, clotted blood slipping between his fingers. He sneered, revealing the four teeth still rotting in his black gums.

Kneeling beside the carca.s.s, he grabbed handfuls of dirt and hurriedly stuffed them in Rockingham's wound. After adding thirteen handfuls, Dismarum used his good hand and the stump of his one arm topull the edges of Rockingham's wound together.

Holding the clammy edges, he whispered the words taught him by his dread master. An ache developed in his own belly as he recited the words. The last words were spoken in a push of agony, as if he were giving birth. He squinted at the almost unbearable pain as the last syllable stumbled from his tongue. His old heart hammered in his breast. Mercifully, though, the agony subsided with the last word.

Leaning back, Dismarum ran a hand over Rockingham's wound. The edges were now sealed together, healed. He placed a finger on his dead guide's forehead and spoke a single word. "Rise!"

The carca.s.s jerked under his finger, spasmed almost a handspan above the cold dirt, then settled to the ground. Dismarum listened as a single ragged breath escaped Rockingham's cold lips. After several heartbeats, a second rasping gurgled out, then a third.

Dismarum pushed to his feet, struggling up with his staff gripped tight in a single fist. A cow lowed mournfully from a nearby field. He stood silently as Rockingham struggled, gasping and choking, back to this world.

After several racking coughs, Rockingham pushed to a seated position. He raised a tremulous hand to his belly and pulled his ripped shirt over his exposed midriff. "Wh-what happened?"

"Another fainting spell," Dismarum answered, his attention aimed toward the distant dark homestead.

Rockingham closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. "Not again," he mumbled as he rolled to his knees, then slowly to his feet. He pawed at the trunk of a tree to steady himself. "How long have I been out?"

"Long enough. The trail grows cold." Dismarum pointed a finger toward the farmhouse. "Come." The old seer began walking, thumping his staff with each footfall. Exhaustion from the use of his master's black art made his limbs as weak as a hatchling's. He noticed that Rockingham remained standing by his tree trunk.

"The night grows thin, old man," Rockingham called to his back. "Maybe we should return to town and come back for the wench in the morning. Or at least let us ride-the horses are near enough-"

Dismarum turned his cowled face toward Rockingham. "Now!" he said with a hiss. "With daybreak, we must have her shorn and trussed. The master left explicit instructions. She must be bound while the moon still glows."

"So you say." Rockingham shoved off the tree like a boat leaving a safe harbor. He stumbled toward the seer as Dismarum turned to follow the trail of the mol'grati. Rockingham continued to blather. "You've been reading too many scribblings of madmen. Wit'ches are from stories to frighten children. All we'll find at this farm is a frightened farmgirl, her hands thick with calluses from working the plows. I'm losing a night's slumber in this mad pursuit."

Dismarum stopped and rested on his staff. "You'll lose more than slumber if she slips our net tonight.

You've seen in the master's dungeons how he rewards failure."

The seer allowed himself a moment of satisfaction as Rockingham shuddered at his words. Dismarum knew that Rockingham had toured the nether regions of Blackhall and seen the twisted remains of those who once walked under the sun. His talkative guide now followed silently as Dismarum led the way.

The seer appreciated the silence. He could have left the feeble man stiffening in the cold orchard, but besides harboring the mol'grati, Rockingham still had many other uses. Back at Blackhall, the master hadsplayed Rockingham open upon his blood altar and imbued him with the darkest of his arts. Dismarum still remembered the man's screaming that midnight, how he bled from his eyes in pain, how his very back broke as he writhed on the b.l.o.o.d.y stone. Afterward, the master had put him back together again, piece by piece, then wiped the fool's memory of the long night. Forged into a tool of the master, Rockingham had been granted to Dismarum to aid in his vigil of the valley.

Dismarum glanced sidelong at Rockingham. He recalled one particularly odious rite, made at the stroke of midnight during Rockingham's forging, requiring the slaughter of a newborn babe. The infant's innocent blood bathed both the altar and Rockingham's exposed, beating heart. He remembered the tool imbued into Rockingham at that moment- something so dark that even the thought of it now sent a shiver through the milky-eyed seer.

Somewhere over the hills, a dog howled into the night, as if catching a brief scent of the thing hiding inside Rockingham.

Oh, yes, there was much more that Rockingham would yet do.

Elena could not sleep. Her burns chafed with every slight movement. Her mind still swam with the frightening events that had occurred in the bathing chamber. As much as she would like to believe herself blameless in the destruction of the room, in her heart she knew better. This concern, too, kept her eyes open, far from slumber.

What had happened?

Her mother's words kept running through her head. She might be the one. There had been fear, rather than pride, in her mother's voice.

Elena slipped her hand for the hundredth time from under her blanket and held it up. In the dim light, the stain on her right palm appeared darker. The salve her mother had slathered over her arms glistened in the weak moonlight sifting through her bedroom's curtains. The sweet scent of wit'ch hazel drifted strong from the balm. Wit'ch hazel. The very air she breathed spoke her fears.

Wit'ch.

Her uncle Bol, always a storehouse of old stories and tales, had kept her and her brother shivering in their bedrolls when out on hunting trips, tantalizing them with stories of wit'ches, og'res, and the faerie folk-creatures of both light and dark, fantasy and folklore. She remembered the serious set to Uncle Bol's lips and his intense eyes, highlighted in the cooking fire's glow, as he spoke his tales. He seemed to believe what he was telling and never winked slyly or raised his eyebrows in exaggeration. It was the earnest way he spoke, his voice low and rumbling, that was the most disquieting aspect of his stories.

"This is the true story of our land," he would say, "a land once called Alasea. There was a time when the air, land, and sea spoke to men. Beasts of the field were the equals of those who walked on two legs.

The forests to the distant west- what were even then called the Western Reaches-gave birth both to creatures so foul as to turn you to stone dare you see them, and to creatures so wondrous you would fall to your knees just to touch them. This was the land of Alasea, your land. Remember what I tell you. It may save your life."

And then he would talk late into the night.

Elena struggled to conjure up some of Uncle Bol's humorous stories to ease her worries, but her troubled mind kept dredging up darker tales-stories with wit'ches.Elena rolled to her side in her tiny bed, the soft cotton ticking scratching at her legs. She pulled her pillow over her head, trying to block out the old stories and new fears, but it didn't help. She still heard the hooting of a barn owl from the rafters of the nearby horse barn. She threw her pillow back from her face, clutching it to her chest.

The barn owl repeated his protest, and a heartbeat later, the flutter of heavy wings could be heard flapping past her window as the owl began its nightly foraging. Nicknamed Pintail, the owl earned its lodging by keeping mice and rats out of the grain bins. Nearly as old as she, Pintail had roosted in the barn's rafters for as long as Elena could remember and began his hunt at the same hour every evening.

Though the bird still hunted, age had dulled the poor creature's vision. Worried about the bird's well-being, Elena had been sneaking sc.r.a.ps out to the old owl for nearly a year.

Elena listened as Pintail flapped past her window, finding some small solace in this familiar ritual. She let out a rattling sigh, releasing the tension from her body. This was her home; here she was surrounded by a family that loved her. In the morning, the sun would shine, and like Pintail's, her own daily routine would begin again. All these wild happenings would fade away or be explained. She closed her eyes, knowing now that sleep was possible this evening.

Just as she started to drift off, Pintail began screaming. Elena bolted up in her bed. Pintail continued to scream. Not a hunting challenge or a territorial warning, this was a wail of agony and fear. Elena flew to her window, pulling the curtains wide. A fox or bobcat might have caught the bird. She clutched her throat with worry as she scanned the farmyard below.

The horse barn stood just across the yard. She heard the mare and stallion's concerned nickering. They, too, knew this owl's screeching was cause for alertness. The yard below was empty. Just a wheelbarrow and a stone-chipped plow her father was repairing stood on the packed dirt.

Elena pushed open her window. Cold air swirled her nightclothes, but she hardly noticed as she leaned out. She squinted and tried to pick out movement in the shadows. There was nothing.

No! She took a step away from the window. Just at the edge of the empty pen that housed the sheep during shearing season, a shadow moved. A figure-no, two figures-stepped from the darkness under the branches of the orchard trees into the feeble moonlight that limned the yard. A cowled man with a crooked staff and a thin man who stood a head taller than his bent companion. Somehow she knew they weren't lost travelers but something darker, threatening.

Suddenly Pintail flew screeching into the empty yard, just a handspan above the head of the taller man.

The man ducked slightly, raising an arm in alarm. Pintail ignored him and swooped across the open s.p.a.ce, banking sharply as he struggled with something caught in his claws. Elena felt a moment of relief that Pintail was all right.

Then the owl twisted in midair, flailing, and tumbled toward the ground. Elena gasped, but before the bird hit the hard dirt, Pintail spread his wings and halted his fall, sailing upward again-right toward her! Elena stumbled a few steps back from the window as the bird swooped to the windowsill and landed hard, his beak open in a scream of rage.

Elena thought at first that the owl had caught a snake, but she had never seen a snake so sickly white before, like the belly of a dead fish. It writhed within the grip of the bird. Pintail was obviously struggling fiercely to restrain the creature, and from the bird's screeching, the fight was obviously causing the bird harm. Why doesn't Pintail just drop the foul thing? she thought. Why keep carrying it?

Then Elena knew. She saw the snake thing worm itself deeper into the owl's chest. Pintail wasn'tcarrying the thing; he was trying to dislodge it. Pintail's frantic claws were trying to stop it from burrowing deeper inside him. Pintail rolled a huge yellow eye toward her, as if asking for help.

Elena rushed forward. Pintail teetered on the sill, trying to balance with one claw, struggling with the loathsome creature. Just as her hand reached out to her friend, it became too late. The snake broke free of Pintail's claws and drove the rest of the way inside the bird. The owl froze, its beak stretched open in agony, and fell backward, dead, out the window.

"No!" Elena lunged to the window, leaning on the sill, searching for Pintail. Below, she spotted his broken body collapsed on the packed dirt of the yard. Tears rolled down her face. "Pintail!"

Suddenly the ground beneath his body churned like quicksand. Elena screamed as hundreds of the monstrous snake creatures writhed in a ma.s.s up from the dirt and swallowed the bird. Within two heartbeats, all that was left was a scattering of thin white bones and a skull whose empty eye sockets stared back at her. Her knees weakened as the worms disappeared back into the soil. Somehow she knew they were lying in wait, still hiding and hunting for more meat.

With tears in her eyes, she again spied the two travelers on the far side of the yard. The cowled one, using his staff as a crutch, began to hobble across the treacherous yard, apparently feeling no threat from the foul beasts that lurked beneath the dirt. Then he stopped and raised his face toward Elena's window.

Shivering, she bolted from the opening, suddenly fearful of those eyes settling upon her. The fine hairs on the back of her neck tingled, sensing danger.

She must warn her parents!

Elena ran to her bedroom door and threw it open.

Her brother was already in the hall. Joach rubbed at his [garbled] down the stairs and through the den toward her parents'room. The house was dark and hushed, the air heavy, as before a summer storm.

Panic welled in Elena, her heart thumping loudly in her ears. She pushed Joach toward the table. "Light a lantern! Hurry!" He ran to the tinderbox and obeyed her order. She flew to her parents' bedroom door.

Normally she would knock before entering, but now was not the time for manners. She burst into the room just as Joach ignited the oiled wick. Light flared, casting her shadow across her parents' bed.

Her mother, always a light sleeper, awoke immediately, her eyes wide and startled. "Elena! My dear, what's wrong?"

Her father pushed up on one elbow, squinting groggily in the lantern's light. He cleared his throat, a look of irritation on his face.

Elena pointed toward the back door. "Someone's coming. I saw them in the yard." Her father sat straighter in the bed. "Who?" Her mother laid a hand on her father's arm. "Now, Brux-ton, don't think the worst. It might be someone lost or needing help."

Elena shook her head. "No, no, they mean us harm."

"How do you know that, girl?" her father said, throwing back the sheets. Dressed in only his winter woolens, he clambered from the bed.

Her mother slipped from the bed and into her robe. She crossed the room and circled Elena in an arm.

"Your father will take care of this."

Joach followed her father with the lantern as he crossed the den. Elena, trailing from a safe distance with her mother, noticed her father pick up the hand ax they used to shave logs into kindling for the fire. Elenaleaned closer to her mother.

Her father pa.s.sed through the kitchen and approached the back door with Joach beside him. Elena and her mother stayed by the kitchen hearth.

Her father hefted the ax in one hand, then yelled through the thick oaken door, "Who is it?"

The voice that answered was high and commanding. Somehow Elena knew it was not the cowled one who spoke, but the other man, the taller figure. "By order of the Gul'-gothal Council, we demand access to this house. To refuse will result in the arrest of the entire household."

"What do you want?"

The same voice came again. "We have orders to search the farmstead. Unbar the door!"

Her father turned a worried look to her mother. Elena shook her head, trying to warn her father.

He turned back to the door. "The hour is late. How do I know you're who you claim to be?"

A sheet of paper was shoved under the door at her father's bare feet. "I bear the proctor's seal from the county's garrison."

Her father signaled for Joach to pick it up and hold it in the lamplight. From across the room, Elena saw the purple seal on the bottom of the parchment.

Her father turned and whispered toward them. "It looks official. Joach, leave the lantern and take Elena upstairs. Both of you stay quiet."

Joach nodded, obviously nervous and wanting to stay. But as always he did as his father directed. He placed the lantern on the edge of the table and crossed to Elena. Her mother gave her a final squeeze, then pushed her toward her brother. "Watch after your sister, Joach. And don't come down until we call you."

"Yes, ma'am."

Elena hesitated. The nickering lantern light skittered shadows across the wall. It was not the speaker that gave her pause, but the other, the cowled man who had yet to speak. She did not have words for the cold sickness around her heart as she remembered the face that had tried to spy her in the window. So instead she stepped back to her mother and gave her a longer hug.

Her mother patted her hair, then pushed her back. "Hurry, sweetheart. This doesn't concern you. Now you and Joach scoot upstairs." Her mother attempted a rea.s.suring smile, but the fear in her eyes destroyed the effort.

Elena nodded and backed to her brother, her eyes still on her parents in the kitchen.

Joach spoke behind her. "C'mon, Sis." He placed a hand on her shoulder.