The Witch (10 page)

Loren held out her hands and opened the barrier between Relaklonos, the Demon world, and Evalanedea. She heard the surprise from those surrounding her who had not witnessed her gift yesterday.

Eaudne was one of them, as was the black woman standing next to Eaudne. Loren did not know the woman’s name, but her wild laughter and her waving at Loren shocked her.

If she hadn’t had a greater purpose she would have questioned the woman.

But as it was, she grabbed the two men by the hands and with a simple command and pull of her power, she yanked them all through from one world into the next.

For some reason it wasn’t an instantaneous trip between Relaklonos and Evalanedea, like most travel between worlds. Instead she was able to look at the space around them and see a multitude of blurred images as they passed through them. She could see the two men with her in sharp detail, but the worlds they traveled through were blurred.

Dekimos was yanked away from them, and a good fifty feet separated them.

But Jushua was there. He reached for her as the world around them spun even faster.

Loren reached back, needing the connection to someone tangible.

He pulled on her arm until she was close enough to wrap in his own. She clung to him, taking in the earthen smell of man instead of the sulfuric burn of the changing worlds around them.

He was so darned big, he probably could keep her safe from whatever—if he wanted to.

She hadn’t forgotten it was Jushua who held her.

Finally they landed in Evalanedea and Loren swore her arm snapped again, the same place Barlaam had healed the day before with a magic brew of demon blood. She cried out.

Jushua was there. “Are you hurt?”

“Landed on my arm. I’m ok. It’s broken, but I’ll heal. Deki?”

**

Jushua looked around the darkened hill. It took him a moment to spot his brother walking up the east side, picking his way over rock and dirt. “He comes. Let me see your arm.”

“I’m fine. Where are we? Can you tell?”

“Backside of the Heirche, I believe. Dear Fates it smells just like…”

“Home.” Her words were soft and for a moment he heard the voice of the young Nelanora she had been.

It had him feeling a bit more tenderness for the witchie.

“Give me your arm. I am not a great healer like my mother or brother, but I do have enough skills to lessen some pain.”

“I am fine. And Deki can help.” She didn’t want Jushua to help her, didn’t want him to touch her for some reason. Why? What was it about him that made her so damned aware of him—how he looked, how he smelled, how he sounded—when she wasn’t that aware of his brother? The one who had meant so much to Nelanora so long ago?

What were the Fates doing to her?

She stepped away.

“We need to find a safe spot to wait out the night. To make a plan of some sort. Figure out what to do next.”

“Sure. We’ll do that.” His words were quiet and she wondered for a moment if she’d hurt him by refusing his help.

“Jushua? Thank you, by the way. For the offer…and for coming with us. I having a feeling this is exactly what the Fates intended.”

“But that’s the catch with the Four, isn’t it? Everything that happens can be lumped under their doing. They are damned good at taking away the freedom of choice, after all.”

No one said much of anything else as they hiked over the first small mountain. This was one area she as happy to let the brother take charge of.

Jushua and Deki quickly found a spot and set up a decent camp where they’d be somewhat secluded from any prying eyes.

Jushua had a fire going within minutes and Loren set about making camp with the provisions brought from the other world.

They’d wait out the night, then start the rest of their journey when dawn broke.

In the meantime, she had a lot of thinking and figuring out to do.

The fire put off just enough heat that Loren most likely wouldn’t freeze to death, but she had her doubts. Evalanedea was far colder than she would have ever imagined.

Probably because of the belief that all Dardaptoans hated the cold. That was just true of Gaian Dardaptoans, not Evalanedean like Jushua. She’d expected something like Florida; this definitely wasn’t that.

He seemed fine in the cold. He’d even stripped down to his waist and fished in the stream. It had to be less than fifty degrees and he laughed while he did it.

Even Deki smiled.

There was so much tension between the two of them, did they realize that? It worried her. And neither of them deserved to be hurting as much as they were. If she knew what it was between them, maybe she could help somehow.

Instead, she kept to the fire, cooking the fish Jushua tossed her like a present. He was so damned proud of himself, she didn’t have the heart to tell him that her father had taken her fishing dozens of times before he died. Granted, she’d not been in fifteen years, but this wasn’t the first time she’d seen fileted fish.

Even if the fish in this land was unlike anything she’d ever seen before.

She looked at him again. He hadn’t dressed himself after fishing, claiming to want to feel the air of his home upon his skin once again.

It was her home, too. But then again, it wasn’t.

Sometimes she had a damned hard time reconciling the woman she was now with the girl she had been five thousand years ago.

How was it for Deki or Jushua? They had lived all this time with the memories of that day. Guilt, failure, fears—that had to plague them, didn’t it?

It did her. And it was compounded by the knowledge that she’d loved and lost so many loved ones, so many families since then herself.

Deki stayed off to one side, leaving her and Jushua almost in complete privacy. Why was he doing that? Didn’t he know that she’d welcome his presence?

She’d dreamed of him often, though she’d known that he was not meant for her this lifetime. And she knew he realized that; how could he not?

And she knew that was something else that had to hurt him.

He wore his pain for all to see.

Except…Jushua. He laughed and joked, teased her and teased his brother. Much like he had all those millennia ago.

She found it just as irritating now as she did then. Some things, at least, were constant.

It was a long couple of hours before night fall.

Finally, though, it was past time to find their bedrolls. The next day would come early and she had no idea of what it would bring.

They put her between them, moving her bedroll between theirs. She wasn’t closest to the fire—Jushua took that position and it took her a moment to realize he was guarding her from attack on that side.

Dekimos took the position furthest away, protecting her from the world behind him.

“You sleep first.” Jushua told his brother. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

“And me?”

“You don’t worry about it. This is something Deki and I have decided between us. You need to be as rested as possible.”

She tried to protest.

He held up a hand. “No. If this is the destiny that you say it is, then we do our part by ensuring you can do yours. That means you sleep, we guard. And forget you not, you are mostly human. You need more rest than we.”

No matter what she said, he ignored her. And Dekimos just remained quiet, watching the two of them with that sadness in his eyes.

Finally, Deki held up a hand. “Loren, rest. Trust us, trust me in this. Allow us to do this for you.”

Shame and guilt had her complying.

She listened to the sounds of the night around them, the crackling of the fire, and the sounds of the two men breathing nearby until she fell asleep.

**

“She’s stubborn.” Jushua said to his brother once he felt the witch slip into the slumber. “Argues against everything.”

“She has always been that way.”

“You were close back then, weren’t you?” Understatement, he knew. It was obvious the way his brother felt about her, did Deki realize that?

“Yes. It is no secret between us. She was the mate I was supposed to have. That changed when she was killed. When I was.”

He hadn’t known; why hadn’t he known? “Does our mother know? The girl does.”

“Yes. Mother knew. It was why she kept a close watch on Nelanora. To keep her safe. Her parents…they were not the most attentive to the younger children. Not like ours were.”

“No. They were not.” They were wonderful parents, but like so many of the Evalanedean rulers of old they believed in leaving the rearing of children to servants.

But their mother had been born a peasant and had married up significantly. She’d raised every single one of her children from birth to age of adulthood. And had taken pride in that. More, she had loved them. Jushua would never doubt that. And now that she’d found Deki and Kennera again, he knew they remembered that love, too. And that they too would do anything to protect her.

“I cheated death that day. Cheated the Fates. I should not be alive today. I know this. And at times I think the loss of my mate has been my punishment.”

“Yet she’s right there.” Jushua looked at her, at the dark hair that looked black in the low firelight. The idea of her and his brother almost turned his stomach. “You have her back now.”

It did fill him with anger, followed by shame. Why?

“Yet that girl is not my Nelanora. Not at heart. No, she has changed. Good or bad, she has changed. And our fates are not the same any more. I had hoped it was when first I saw her.”

“You’re saying she’s not Nelanora reborn?” Had she lied? What was it that she led him and his brother in?

“She is. But…whereas before our lives were forever intertwined, now hers is woven to another’s. And I must accept that.”

“Why? Dammit, Deki, fight for what you want. Find this other and let him know it’s not going to happen. Take your girl. Make a life with her, if that is what you want.” Alone was often a pretty shitty place to be.

“Can you see it happening that way? A girl of a mere twenty something years, bound to me forever? And how could I do it, knowing I put another through what I have realized, what I have lived for five thousand years?” Deki’s words were harsh but the pain in his eyes was so much worse. “I know who this other is, Jushua. And I would die one thousand times again to prevent him from feeling this same pain.”

“Who?”

His brother just looked at him. Then turned away. “It’ll become clear to all in the days ahead. Very soon, in fact.”

Deki said nothing else.

Jushua spent his time while the others slept running his mind around the possibilities. Who? Who was the girl destined to be with?

Was she doomed to die this life, too? How old would she be? Was it soon? Would this nameless, faceless male be forced to watch her die? Why did it matter to him so much? He had seen people live and die countless times over, what did it matter that there was clear danger to this little bit of nothing sleeping beside him?

If it wasn’t Deki, who was it?

He pulled her blanket back a bit and studied her. She was dressed in Gaian clothes, thick blue cloth trousers and a soft tunic of some sort. Her hair was braided in two braids that hung down over her breasts when she was standing. One braid was easily within reach of his fingers and he found himself toying with it. So soft.

Not a thing like the warrior she’d shown herself to be that first day.

She shifted in her sleep, rolling toward him and the fire, even within her blanket. He shifted, then pulled the one beneath him out. He tossed it over her gently.

She snuggled beneath its warmth, and his gut burned.

Lust. Definitely lust; that was all it could be.

She had been for his brother in another life, and was apparently destined for another in this one. She was not for him, even for momentary pleasure.

Still, the idea of her with another burned him, to the point where he was clenching his fists with the desire to kill the man before he ever touched her. 

He thought long into the night what that meant.

When it was time to wake his brother, there was no need. Deki was lying where he was, watching the girl.

“Heavy thoughts, brother?”

“They always are. She’ll face so much. I do not see what it is, but she will suffer. I do not know if she’ll survive again. She seems so…accustomed to death. I do not know that even I can say the same.”

“It is difficult to look at her and see a woman with a soul as old as ours, isn’t it? She looks so…much like a girl. A damned young one; too small, too vulnerable to hold the fate of so many—if it is as all they say it is—on such narrow shoulders.”

“It is her task, as it is…ours…to protect her and help her on this journey.”