The King's Blood (11 page)

 
He chuckled again under his breath when a twig snapped, far closer than he'd been expecting. Aldrin jumped, even while his mind cooed,
It was probably a bunny. Or maybe she doubled back.

"Ciara, is that you?" he whispered under his breath.

"I am afraid not, little Ostero," the voice dropped from the trees as a shadow darker than the ones in the forest disentangled from the branches.
 

Aldrin gasped. The assassin's brains lay pooling across the floor. How could he have tracked them so quickly? The prince struggled to his feet, the gnarled bark shredding his fingers.

"Good, good," the man walked into the lonely ray of moonlight, posing in the Lady's eye, "I prefer a prey that stands its ground."

His dagger glinted like diamonds, looking sharper than a sunbeam. "You and your little servant left a trail so easy to follow a blind man could have stalked you into the forest."

Aldrin gulped, words locked away beneath a stomach that took up fresh residence in his throat.

"I admit, I didn't expect your backwater glacier of a family to offer much of a challenge, but not even a mile out of town. Tsk tsk," the assassin gloated, savoring his moment crossing the finish line. "Perhaps I'll weave a better tale for the Emperor."

Sorry, I couldn't die overtop a fiery lava pit,
Aldrin's traitorous brain tossed out, even as his body betrayed him. His twisted ankle buckled beneath him, any escape impossible. Royal fingers dug into the tree's bark.
Come on haunted tree, go! Kill! Smash?

The assassin walked with purpose, unaware of the mental battle being fought in his prey's mind. His fingers grabbed onto the tottering boy's shoulder, steadying him. "Say hello to your father for me," the man crowed as he pulled his dagger back, aimed for Aldrin's heart.

A rock whipped through the trees and smashed into the Assassin's shoulder, throwing off his aim. The blade bit into Aldrin's side, piercing flesh and muscle, but leaving that vital organ untouched. He screamed and tumbled down to his knees as blood gushed from the jagged wound, coating the dead leaves.

The assassin whirled around, his prey wounded but not dead, and waved his dagger at the challenger. Cloaked in the shadows of the forest, Ciara stepped into the moonlight, her own dagger out. She held it at stomach level, but had about as much experience with it as a cleric does a butcher's cleaver.

Sensing fear in the air, the assassin smiled, and stood taller, wanting to properly savor his kills tonight. The girl's skin ashed, terror rimming her set mouth as the tip of her dagger vibrated in fear. Perhaps it could make a good tale after all. He waved his own blade to catch the glint of the fading moon.

Out of the treetops, an arrow whizzed through sleeping leaves, cracked branches, and stuck straight into the assassin's eye. The mouth opened to scream but didn't get far before a second arrow pierced his throat, sending the body flopping to the ground, exsanguinating over the dying forest floor.

Aldrin kicked his would be assassin away, the dead eye glaring at him accusingly. He would have screamed in terror but he was too busy still screaming in pain.

Ciara pulled back towards the boy, her dagger aimed in the direction the two arrows came flying from. "Come out. Whoever you are. I don't want to hurt you."

At her idle threat, a set of white teeth crested like a sliver of moon in the treetops and then dropped. Heavy boots crunched on the floor, but even knowing where the new assassin was, she still couldn't see him.

The man called out from the darkness, "Ek sou nie graag wou sien dat jy probeer, jong een."

"What?" she had no idea what that series of noises was. Aldrin tried to focus, but was finding it hard to see through the lights clouding his vision. Maybe closing his eyes would help.

Muttering something under his breath, the assassin of assassins walked into the moonlight. He was more darkness than the raven lady herself, his skin as black as rich tilled earth. Again, that crescent moon smile flared as he raised his hands and lowered his bow to the ground.

"That's close enough," Ciara warned, unwilling to trust anyone, even if he just saved her life.

The man smiled, then pointed to the boy dying upon the ground. Ciara followed, her dagger still pointed at him. She had no idea what, if any medicine he could perform, but it had to be more than what she knew.
¹³

But the man didn't mimic bandages, or ligatures, or a healthy dose of vitamin c and chicken soup. Instead, he pointed to something in the sky above her. Ciara turned, for the first time taking her eyes off the archer and watched a plume of black smoke cresting above the forest tops. This wouldn't mean anything aside from possibly less forest in the morning were it not for the golden sheen sparkling around the edges.

The witch was in.

Realizing her mistake, she whirled around but the shadow man was already gone, back into the trees that birthed him. Sheathing her dagger, she dropped down to Aldrin, and cried into his waning ear, "Stay with me, I'll get you some help."

She looked back at the witch's cottage, its fires burning strong tonight, "I hope."

CHAPTER SEVEN

H
er fist pounded on the cottage door, shaking a few leaves off the dangling eaves.
 

When most heard "witch's cottage" they conjured up an ancient lean-to with a bubbling cauldron that could feed a platoon working beneath, straw jammed into the walls and blood spatters across the ground.
¹⁴
What Ciara stumbled across, dragging Aldrin with her, looked more like someone picked up one of those cozy homes the rich use to pretend they're roughing it and dropped it in the middle of a forest. There was no road, no path and barely even a trail leading to the door painted a delightful yellow slightly peeling on the edges. A few chickens wandered past, their eyes casting an unnatural glow upon the ground as they pecked for bugs.

Strange to see birds out at night
Ciara thought as the pair waddled off, unaware they were odd for being night chickens. Aldrin sighed beside her, more of his weight collapsing across her weary shoulders.

She tried to stem the tide of blood still dripping from his side, but the extra tunic she rolled into a bandage and tied around him was drenched before they made it a few steps towards the smoke. Aldrin watched her; his face pale while sweat dampened his freezing back. He seemed coherent as she talked to him, responding with a nod or a shake, but then he'd loll back into silence.

Ciara had never dealt with knife wounds of this caliber before. The worst was when the chef caught the twins trying to sneak a bite of tripe pie before Solstice dinner and they found themselves short a few fingers for the trouble. She always wondered what Lady Winter thought of that mess, a pair of bloody bandages dangling off the mantle in the place of stockings.
 

Aldrin shuddered as she had lifted him to his feet, but didn't say a word of complaint. Either he was able to bottle up the pain lancing through every nerve in his body, or the blood loss was so severe he clung to his body by a thin thread.

Cursing this damnable forest, Ciara prayed he was far stronger than his slight frame implied. She began to knock a second time, shifting the boy's weight so he left a blood streak down the kitschy rain barrel, when the door flew open.
 

The woman before her was far younger than Ciara expected, somewhere in her mother's range, and stood proud, chestnut hair tumbling down her lanky back. The witch was so tall she had to stoop to get out of her cottage door. Her dress was a crisscross of alternating colors of silk, the yellows cut at an angle so it formed a green where it met the blue and so on. Bits of coin, and what Ciara prayed weren't human bones, jangled off her wrist as she effortlessly scooped Aldrin out of the girl's hands and laid him across a table. She followed behind cautiously, not wanting to close the door cutting off her only chance of escape.

The quaint cottage was far warmer than the freezing night of the forest, helped along by the fireplace still pumping plumes of black smoke high into the air. Ciara had been expecting strange crystal orbs, a large book bound in skin, maybe a few toads and mysterious throbbing ingredients from parts unknown. Old fashioned witch stuff. Mostly the place was full to the brim with glass jars, both in crates and scattered forgotten upon the floor. Loose paper was tacked to the wall. Instead of a crude unicorn drawing or indecipherable runes for raising the denizens of the underworld they had tiny, crisp writing etched into the margins. A few lines were scratched out emphatically on partially burned pages.

"I'm sorry, you caught me in the middle of canning," the witch said. Her voice was distinct and exotically spicy, with a hard catch that puts one in mind of a general ordering his troops to their deaths and not a battering spinster in the woods stuffing rotting fruit into jars before the winter.

Her perfectly almond eyes burned into Ciara, even as a small smile danced on her face, "What was it you wanted?"

Ciara, her fingers still curled around Aldrin's cool flesh, turned and looked at the boy lying stretched upon a table where fresh blood quickly mingled with tomato sauce. "He's dying."

The not so wizened face shifted to the boy. "Yes. Would you like him to die faster or to reverse the process?"

She glared at the witch, who seemed to be enjoying the outsider's discomfort. "The last one...please."
 

The witch laughed a bit at that and rolled up her sleeves. She walked around the boy to the gaping wound on his left, "Pass me the blade by your hand."

Ciara paused. Stories of witches were the ones parents used to scare each other. Magic was a fevered dream of an ignorant past trying to explain why the sun rose (as every right thinking person knows, it's thanks to the gods) or why people became ill, or how it was possible to walk into a room and forget why you were there, and yet...

It began slowly, reports of a few women able to do amazing things in the South a few generations back. They could heal bones that should never set, catch stone alight, and -- on occasion -- get two politicians to work together. Then more started to appear in civilized society; young girls who found themselves with abilities far beyond what any god would grant them.

It wasn't long before Barons, Earls, Princes, and Kings called for the execution of these women with powers that sent them hiding under the bed. But it wasn't easy to track down and kill someone who was quite happy with her head being where it was that could also save entire villages from the plague. Villagers might be ignorant hicks, but they hated "government interference with small business" far greater than a lone woman healing the sick and tossing a few fireballs to entertain for Summer Watch.
 

Then someone got the brilliant idea to blame the unblinkers on the witches. The propaganda changed; they went from angels in white hovering over a sick bed, to demons in black sneaking into nurseries and stealing infants for their dastardly covens for...Well no one really figured out who it was for or why they needed so many infants when you'd think a toddler or small child would suffice, but it couldn't be good.

So the witches fled out into the forests, the mountains, anywhere society turned a blind eye because squirrels and wolves don't pay taxes. One got herself a nice island and opened up a barbecue pork joint. And they schemed in solitude, only taking on those who dared to venture close to their homes, be it to help or hurt.

"Are…" the girl started, trying to not look at the giant cleaver stuck to the wall, "you're not gonna kill me and eat my bones are you?"

The witch laughed hard, her face embracing a lost youth with the mirth, "Oh child, no. Of course not," she held her hand out for the knife, which Ciara passed over. "If I were going to eat you, I'd cook your meat first. The bones are only for making soup."

A well-practiced hand ignored the child's gasp as she cut off the tunic and inspected the wound, the puckered skin pale as snow as it flapped against the still oozing muscle. She clucked her tongue to a beat no one else in the cottage could hear and rose from the table. Ciara watched the witch dash about her little cottage assembling a strange cacophony of small metal tools, each more medieval looking than the last, and a large bottle which caused the air to wave when she opened it.

"Boy," the witch leaned towards Aldrin's face, "I say boy, can you hear me?" Whatever spark of life Aldrin clung to on the journey was quickly slipping away. The witch merely shook her head, "No mind. This'll do the trick."

She upended the bottle directly into his wound. Steam rose from the ragged flesh and preceded a disturbing crackling noise. Aldrin's eyes shot open and he screamed from the bottom of his toes. Ciara tried to cover her ears but his hand clenched onto hers even harder as the potion did its magic. The scream continued as long as the wound crackled and hissed, like an angry snake yanked free of its safety in the grass. Just as suddenly as it began the steam stopped, the hissing vanished, and Aldrin closed his mouth and passed back out, his head bouncing against a bowl of pepper jelly.