Wit'ch Fire: Book One of The Banned and the Banished Read online

  As soon as the wagon lumbered past, Elena darted across the yard, but not before hearing one of the men declare to another, “That girl’s an odd one. Always running about. Not right in the head, I wager.”

  Elena ignored the insult and continued toward the back door of her house. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. The children at school were even crueler with their tongues. Elena had always been a tall, gangling child, dressed in old homespun hand-me-downs from her brother. She endured being the butt of much joking, often crying herself home. Even her teachers thought her somewhat slow, believing her daydreams to be evidence of a dull mind. This judgment hurt, too, but over time, Elena’s heart had grown thick-enough calluses.

  Isolated, with only her brother and a few youngsters from neighboring farms for companionship, Elena had discovered the joys of exploring on her own. She had rooted out many wonderful places in the surrounding foothills: a rabbit warren where the does and bucks would feed freely from her hand; an anthill as high as her head; a lightning-struck tree that was hollow inside; a patch of mold-frosted headstones from a long-lost cemetery. She would often return exhausted from a day of roaming, bramble scratched and muddy, with a wide grin on her face.

  Frowning now, Elena slowed her running as she neared the back door.

  As much as she enjoyed her explorations, she could not ignore that lately a certain discontent had crept around her heart. She found her eyes lingering on far horizons. Her hands itched for something she could not name. It was as if a storm were building up in her bones, waiting to burst free.

  Elena climbed the back steps. As she reached toward the door handle, her eyes caught the ruby glow of her stained palm in the last rays of the sun. And now this! What did it mean? Her fingers trembled as they hovered over the brass door handle. For the first time, she sensed the true depth and breadth of the strangeness that could lie beyond her orchard. She closed her eyes, suddenly fearful.

  Why would she ever want to leave her home? Safety was here, and all those who loved her. Here were lands as comfortable as worn flannel on a cold morning. Why seek more?

  As she shivered on the doorstep, the door burst open before her, startling her down a step. In the doorway, her father towered with Joach’s shoulder clutched in his large hand. Both the men’s eyes widened in surprise to find Elena on the stoop.

  “See,” Joach said sheepishly, “I told you she’d be right in.”

  “Elena,” her father said, “you know you’re not supposed to be in the orchards alone after dark. You need to think—”

  Elena flew into her father’s arms.

  “Honey?” he said as he closed her up in his thick arms. “What’s wrong?”

  She buried her face into her father’s chest, never wanting to move from his arms. More than the thatched roof and warm hearth, here was her home.

  2

  THE TWILIGHT GLOOM deepened under the thick branches of the orchard trees. Rockingham pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders and stamped his feet. The night always grew so cold in this cursed alpine valley. He hated this assignment from his superiors. Stuck in a backwater village of backwoods bumpkins—and these frigid winters! Nothing like the sunny climate of his island home …

  As a cold breeze bit at his thin cloak, Rockingham pictured his home in the Archipelago. The beaches, the moist heat, the sunsets that took hours to dim over the ocean swells. As he remembered the home he had left so long ago, a trace of memory whispered at his ear: long blond hair and laughing eyes … and a name … a woman’s name. But who? He tried to grasp the memory firmer, but it fluttered away like a frightened bird. What was he forgetting? Then, a frigid gust snatched at his riding cloak, its icy touch distracting him from his reverie. Rockingham clutched the wind-whipped material to his exposed neck.

  Making noises of impatience in the back of his throat, he watched the near-blind seer swirl a finger in a mound of cooling ashes beside an overturned apple basket. The old man raised his nose to the night breeze that swept between the rows of trunks, for all the world like a hunting cur checking an invisible trail. He then raised the soiled finger to his crooked nose.

  “She bleeds,” the blind man said, sniffing at his finger, his voice like old sheets of ice breaking and grinding against one another.

  “Of whom do you speak, Dismarum? Why did you force us from town?”

  “The one the master seeks—she has come at long last.”

  Rockingham shook his head. Not this nonsense again! A whole night’s rest disturbed for this old man’s fantasy. “She’s a myth!” he said, throwing an arm up in disgust. “For how many centuries has the Dark Lord tried to imbue a female with his powers and failed? During my tenure at Blackhall, I saw the result of the exalted one’s effort: the misshapen creatures howling from the dungeons. It’s impossible. A female cannot wield magick.”

  “Not impossible. She is here.”

  Rockingham kicked the basket nearby, scattering red fruit across the ground. “You said the same last year. We splayed that girl’s entrails across the altar and found you were wrong.”

  “That is of no matter.”

  “Tell that to the townspeople of Winterfell. Her screaming almost set them to riot. If it wasn’t for the battalion of dog soldiers, they would have driven us to the fields.”

  “Thousands can die, as long as we catch the right one.” Dismarum clutched Rockingham’s elbow with a bony claw. “I have been waiting for countless years. Old prophecies, whispered from the past, told me she would come to this valley. I came here a young man, when your greatgrandfather was still an infant in swaddling … and I have waited.”

  Rockingham pulled his elbow free of the iron grip. “Are you sure this time? If you’re wrong, I will personally relieve you of your tongue, so I don’t have to listen to your lies anymore.”

  Leaning on a gnarled poi’wood staff, the blind seer turned his milky globes in Rockingham’s direction. Rockingham jerked a step back. Those eyes seemed to penetrate to his spine.

  “She is here,” Dismarum hissed.

  Rockingham cleared his throat. “Fine. I’ll collect a squadron from the garrison in the morning and have her arrested.”

  The old man turned those ghostly eyes from him, his ancient fingers pulling the cowl of his cloak over his bald head. “It must be tonight.”

  “How? This girl’s parents aren’t about to let us drag her into the night. These farm folk are not as cowed as the rabble in the cities. They’re still a damnably independent lot.”

  “The master has granted me your aid, Rockingham. I requested you. You will be enough.”

  “Me? Are you telling me that you’re the reason I was yanked from Blackhall and assigned to this blighted valley?”

  “I needed someone like you, prepared by the master.”

  “What are you babbling about?” the soldier demanded.

  Instead of answering, the old man whipped out a long dagger, flashing silver in the moonlight, and stabbed it into Rockingham’s lower belly, just above the groin. Stunned, the younger man fell back, but not in time to stop the seer from slicing clean up his belly, splitting him like a fish.

  Stumbling to his knees with a moan, Rockingham clutched his slit belly, trying to dam in the loops of his intestine. “Wh-wh-what have you done?”

  With one hand still holding the bloody dagger, Dismarum pointed with his other limb, an arm that ended in a blunt stump. “Go, my children. Seek her out. Be my eyes. Be my ears. Destroy those that stand in our way!”

  Weakening, Rockingham fell to one hand, his other arm clutched around his belly. Something writhed in his gut, like coals stirred in a fire. His agony flared. He fell to his side with a squeaking cry, giving up his grip.

  As darkness began to blot out his vision, he saw them leave his belly, thousands of them: white wormlike grubs. As they poured and rolled into the night air, they seemed to swell and stretch until each was an arm’s length long and as thick around as his thumb. They squirmed in a fetid mass over
and around him, some burrowing into the soil and disappearing away. Blackness swallowed the sight from him as he died.

  Only the old man’s words followed him into oblivion. “Seek her out, little ones. She will be mine.”

  3

  ELENA SIGHED AS she sank into the hot bath, steam rising to the raftered ceiling, the scent of berries pungent in her nose from the crushed leaves Mother had added to the tub.

  “The hot water will cleanse you, and the herbs will ease your cramping,” her mother assured her as she poured another hot pitcher into the tub. “But you must stay here until the water begins to cool.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Elena answered. She rolled back and forth in the hot water, letting sore muscles stretch and relax. The strangeness of the day’s events had faded, bled away by a meal of roasted duck accompanied by the dry mumblings between her parents across the dinner table on the best place to barter for a new bull. The revelation of her first menstra had drawn far more attention from her family than her stained hand. It all now seemed like a bad dream.

  “Tomorrow I’ll send Joach to announce the party,” her mother said, her eyes adrift with plans. “I’ll have your Aunt Fila arrange for the cake and send your father out for more cider. Do we have enough chairs? Maybe I’d better take the wagon to the Sontaks’ and borrow some of theirs. And then I should make sure—”

  “Mother, I don’t need a party,” Elena said, but secretly she was thrilled. Everyone would know she had become a woman. Smiling, she slid down under the waters, then resurfaced, wiping water from her eyes.

  “Pish, we must have a party. You’re my only little girl.” A certain sadness crept into her mother’s eyes. Elena remained silent. She knew her mother was remembering the stillborn girl birthed two years after Elena. Since then her mother had been unable to get pregnant. Now streaks of gray coursed through her auburn hair, and many wrinkles were etched where her skin was once smooth. For the first time, Elena realized that her mother was getting old. She would have no other children besides Elena and Joach.

  Her mother ran long fingers through her graying tresses and gave a soft sigh. Her eyes focused back to the present and on Elena’s right hand. “Now, Elena, you’re sure you didn’t fool with any of Grandma Filbura’s paints?” She picked up Elena’s ruby-coated hand in her own and turned it back and forth. “Or maybe accidentally splash some rugger’s dye from the workshed on it? You know I don’t like you kids playing in there.”

  “No, Mother,” she said, pushing higher in the tub. “I swear. It just suddenly turned red.”

  “Maybe some prank of Joach’s.”

  “I don’t think so.” Elena knew Joach well. The shock on her brother’s face when he had first seen her stained hand had been genuine.

  “Then maybe one of the neighbor’s kids. Those Wak’lens are always brewing mischief.”

  Elena slipped her hand free of her mother’s and picked up the horsehair-bristled brush. “So this isn’t some women’s mystery?” she said, scrubbing at her palm. “Something secret to do with becoming an adult?”

  Her mother smiled at her. “No, my dear, it’s just some prank.”

  “Not a very funny one.” She continued scrubbing, but the bloody stain remained.

  “They seldom are.” Her mother brushed Elena’s cheek with her palm, but her gaze remained on Elena’s hand, small wrinkles of worry whispering around her lips. “I’m sure it will fade. Don’t fret about it.”

  “I hope it’s gone by the party.”

  “If not, honey, you could wear my dressy gloves.”

  Elena brightened. “I could?” She stopped grinding the brush across her flesh; her skin was beginning to burn. Maybe she’d just leave it be. She had always fancied wearing her mother’s long satin gloves. They would look spectacular with her party dress!

  “Just finish cleaning before the water cools. We’ll talk more about the party later.” Her mother stood and straightened her robe. “It’s getting late. Make sure you drain and rinse the tub before you go to sleep.”

  “Yes, Mother,” she said with an exasperated sigh. She wasn’t a child anymore.

  Her mother kissed her on the top of her head. “Good night, sweetie. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Slipping from the bathing chamber, her mother closed the door on the animated ruckus coming from the main room. Joach was still getting a tongue-lashing from Father for leaving his sister in the orchard alone. Elena could imagine Joach’s expression—dutifully subdued. She knew her father’s harsh words breezed past Joach with hardly a sting.

  She smiled. With the thick oaken door shut, all she heard was a low murmur. She leaned deeper into the steaming water, content, her worry about the burning apple just a distant throb. It had to have been some sort of trick. Suddenly she was glad she had failed to mention the apple. It seemed so silly now that she was home, just some silly prank.

  Still …

  She held her hand up in the lamplight. The light seemed to absorb into her hand, and the color appeared to swirl in whorls across her skin. She remembered how she had been thinking about warm apple pie when the apple had suddenly heated up and dried to a wrinkled crisp.

  It seemed almost magickal.

  She waved her hand across the steamy air, pretending to cast spells and perform evil magick.

  Grinning at her whimsy, she imagined herself one of the ancient dark-mages from those old stories told around campfires, stories of times before Lord Gul’gotha came across the Eastern Sea to rescue her people from chaos.

  The mythical stories of the wild magick were whispered at night and sung in songs: of the silver-haired elv’in people and the giants of the highland; of A’loa Glen, the thousand-spired citadel of black magick sunk under the seas ages ago; of the og’res of the Western Reaches, who spoke like humans but burned with hatred for humankind; of the mer-creatures that swam among the Blasted Shoals far to the east. Elena could recount hundreds of such stories told to her as she grew up.

  In her head, Elena knew it was all wives’ tales and pure invention, but her heart still thrilled at the old stories. She remembered sitting in her father’s lap, her tiny fists clutched to her throat, as her Uncle Bol recounted “The Battle for the Valley of the Moon.” He had prefaced the story by telling her in hushed tones that this very valley was where the battle had taken place. “And the town of Winterfell was only a small crossroads,” he said in a furtive whisper, “with a shabby stable and a drafty inn.” She had laughed at such a thought. Only a small child at the time of the telling, not even yet allowed in the fields, she had swallowed every word from her uncle as if it were true. She smiled now at her foolishness. How the adults must have laughed at her gullibility.

  Well, she was no longer a child.

  She lowered her hand back to the water and blushed. She knew she was too old to be fantasizing about such follies. She was a woman today. These stories were all fantasy. Magick was not real. It was all the mummery of carnival tricksters and scoundrels.

  In school, she had been taught her land’s true history. How, five centuries ago, the Gul’gotha had crossed the sea and brought civilization to her land and people. How they had brought reason and logic to destroy her ancestors’ pagan rites. How her people had once practiced human sacrifice and worshipped invisible spirits. Then the king of Blackhall, the Lord Gul’gotha, had come. A tumultuous time followed as his lieutenants offered peace and knowledge to her barbarous ancestors. Blood was shed as the hand of peace was offered. But eventually truth and wisdom prevailed, and the trickster mages were destroyed. An age of logic and science began, wiping out myth and barbarism.

  Frowning, Elena rubbed the barley soap through her hair, tired of pondering dry lessons from school. She had more important things to consider. What should she wear to the party? Should she wear her hair up like an older woman?

  She pushed the sudsy locks atop her head. She hated it that way, preferring to let it flow free, but she was entering womanhood, and it was coming time
to stop acting like a little girl. With soap trailing down her neck, she let her hair drape to her shoulders.

  And what about Tol’el Manchin, the blacksmith’s handsome apprentice? She pictured his curly black hair and ruddy complexion—and his arms! The months of working the forge’s bellows had grown muscles that the other boys were jealous of. Would he come to the party? Surely he would, wouldn’t he? Elena felt her heart begin to beat faster. She would ask her mother to let her wear her grandmother’s shell necklace. It would be grand with her green dress.

  Elena glanced down at her wet torso. Only the barest hint of developing womanhood interrupted the rivulets of bathwater draining across her chest. There wasn’t much there to attract the eye of Tol’el. Others in her class were already murmuring about underclothes and the tenderness of blossoming growth. Elena reached to her chest and pressed firmly. Nothing. Not even a hint of the ache the other girls whispered about.

  Maybe it would be best if Tol’el didn’t show up for the party, maybe even best if the party was canceled. Who was going to believe she was a woman?

  Elena suddenly shivered as a stray draft blew across her exposed back. The bathwater was quickly losing its heat. Elena sank to her shoulders, the tepid water still warmer than the chilly bathing chamber. Why couldn’t the bathwater stay hot a bit longer? A twinge of ire flashed through her. Couldn’t she at least have a few more moments of steamy bliss? She sank deeper into the cooling water.

  As she lay there, she pictured herself soaking in the hot springs of Col’toka. She had read about them in a school text: volcanic springs deep in the snowy Teeth. As she dreamed about their mineral-rich waters, her own soapy tub seemed to warm with her thoughts. She sighed, a smile playing about her lips. This was nice.

  As she continued to recline in the bath, picturing in her mind the steam-choked chambers of Col’toka, her bathwater continued to warm, soothing at first, then becoming surprisingly hot! Elena’s eyes fluttered open.

  Her skin began to redden from the heat. She sprang to her feet in the water. Bubbles started to rise along the edge of the tub. Her lower legs and feet began to scald. Elena leaped from the tub just as the water began to roil with steam and bubbles.