Darkspire Reaches Read online

  Raven rolled her thumb and forefinger together, idly kneading a fireball into existence. The ball tingled with a need for release, and yet Raven held it captive. Looking at the flaming sphere, she hid an urge to transform it into a lightning ball; this was a newly learned skill and Margie got angry if she thought Raven knew more about magic.

  Samara Maidens lost their magic if they mated, did they? The village lads didn’t like her anyway, and Raven had no mind to be used like Katra. The girl had become Tomar’s creature in her desperation to keep his attention after giving him her body, her greatest gift. Katra meant to trap him into marriage, and yet who snared who? Tomar would gain much wealth from Katra’s dowry. Ashamed for him and relieved she now knew his true feelings, Raven wondered if he would have abused their friendship if she had golden hair. How could she trust men after Tomar had let her down? No man was going to strip away her life by such a selfish act. Determination awoke inside her to dull the pain.

  Now she understood the vision in the scrying bowl. Her mother had abandoned her, left her as a sacrifice to the wyvern, a creature Margie said dined off living human flesh. Raven wouldn’t be an easy target now. Feed the power, nurture the magic and take the gifts given, until she had all the strength to fend off the evil beast if she ever encountered it.

  Chapter 2

  The first tones of autumn touched the trees along Raven’s regular herb route. She gathered nuts and berries, as dwindling numbers of people called for healing over the summer months: that meant a lean winter. Margie talked of setting traps for rabbits, but Raven hoped the old women didn’t make her hurt the beasts of the earth. The creatures were her friends. A little squirrel snatched an acorn from her hand and she laughed, scooping a pile for him from her sack. With enough to make acorn bread, Raven didn’t begrudge the small creature his tiny wants. He rushed to his hoard, intent on taking more of her nuts.

  Katra didn’t appear to have spread the lies Tomar told her, or Margie would have mentioned it. Yet Raven didn’t believe the girl would keep quiet forever. Whether she spoke or not, Raven had no wish to set eyes on Tomar. The look on his face when he came back from the forest with Katra had sickened Raven.

  While she harvested nature’s bounty her thoughts turned to the First Born tribes. Was it so bad to have no fixed home? Raven longed for the tribe’s freedom of movement away from the stares and the unkindness, but Margie wouldn’t leave the village, and she wouldn’t leave Margie while the old woman lived. What of after, though, when she was alone? Well, perhaps then she would find her own folk. Better to live among strange kin than unkind strangers.

  She reached a glade and saw a large crop of mushrooms just pushing through the scant grass in the center. What they didn’t eat tonight could be dried for use in the winter, so Raven filled up the rest of her sack with all the newest ones. Bigger and older caps would have maggot holes, and although Margie didn’t care, Raven did.

  She arrived back at the cottage near sunset to find an indifferent welcome to her harvest, and Margie helped her unpack the supplies in silence. The old woman kept her thoughts to herself until after they supped on soup with mushrooms and turnip slices.

  Margie clenched her knotted fists as she resumed her place by the hearth.

  “I haven’t seen a future clear in my scrying bowl since last cold season. My power grows weaker by the day, so I say what I think the seeker wishes to hear when my inner sight fades.”

  A sick fear ran through Raven. The healing, the potions, the love charms, none of them earned as much as a look into the future for a villager. While the people needed the everyday things, they craved the thrill of farseeing, even with their small futures. They came to see when to plant their crops, or who they would marry.

  “How are we going to get through winter if you can’t give readings?” Even if she started now, Raven doubted if she could collect enough nuts and berries to bolster their food sufficiently. Nuts might keep, but without sugar from sweet beets, the berries wouldn’t last.

  “If I could get good red meat I think my gift would return.” Margie glanced with distaste at the vegetables.

  The image of the woman in green and brown carrying a baby pulled at Raven’s soul. She wanted to see more.

  “Do you want me to try looking? I saw a picture once.”

  “You far-saw into the past.” Margie frowned as she poked at a glowing ember. “I could tell. No one will pay to see what has already happened. What the village people need is a glimpse of what’s to come. One more touch from you might make such readings impossible.”

  “Then how do we survive? No one comes to us for healing unless they tried everything else first.”

  “The carter was here, and I traded traps in exchange for the rest of the fireweed simple. You can set the traps, and then we’ll go into the village. People gossip when they find a cause, often saying more than they intended about many things.” Margie grinned, baring her almost toothless gums. “We can find out as much by eavesdropping.”

  ***

  Raven noticed a change in attitude in the village when she tried to look at a fevered child. The boy lay crying on a patch of straw outside a shack, with sweat streaming off his face, but Goodwife Ilse snatched him away before Raven could get near. The mother then stood just inside her door with the child clutched to her breast, staring coldly through them as if they didn’t exist.

  Margie bartered a few pots of skin-whitener with some of the younger women for some flour, a pot of goose grease and a bag of feathers. Not good trades, but better than nothing. As for learning from gossip, all talk dwindled away to silence if either of them drew near: backs were turned to them, or people moved away. Defeated and confused, they made their way home.

  The days drew in and a frost instead of dew settled on the dawn grass. No villagers walked the path to their shack for scrying, and barter goods for Margie’s herbal teas and unguents grew meaner. Even people they met by chance while collecting nuts or berries turned away and would not acknowledge them. Something was very wrong.

  When Margie’s bones began to ache with the changing season, Raven eased her suffering by a laying on of hands. Old joints groaned together like rusted locks that no amount of magic could heal, and what Margie really needed was nourishing food.

  Days dragged by without a visit or even a glimpse of a villager. Raven began salting nuts and Margie tried to preserve berries by drying them. When an ill-wisher sprung their game traps after the harvest moon, both tightened their belts. Raven mended and set the traps, secretly hoping for another visit from the culprit, for she had no desire to find a furry friend in such a device. She returned home to find Margie treating old Mother Enson for a festering sore that no wives-simple would cure.

  Concerned about the woman, Raven took fresh poultices to the village the next day, since Margie said her legs hurt too much to walk the distance. Villagers stared at her when she asked directions to the woman’s hut, but no one answered, nor even acknowledged her question: a feeling of dread filled her heart. She tried in the bakery, where Tomar’s father worked. He turned his back on her, while Tomar, unsmiling, looked up from tending the big oven. His face flushed a dull red, and he threw a piece of kindling at her, the edge catching her arm. Tomar intended to drive her away. Worms of fear wriggled up and down Raven’s back as she walked through the village to her trail home. Twenty angry-looking men blocked the way. One spat in her direction, while the others muttered in low tones. Raven heard the word ‘witch’.

  The first stone cut her cheek, a stinging blow spilling blood onto her shirt. The men stooped for more missiles. Raven ran for the cover of the forest. A sharp pain caught her shoulder, felling her for a few seconds, but she forced herself up to run harder. Someone had a slingshot. This was planned. Another stone whistled past her ear – now feet pounded behind her. There were no shouts, there was no angry cursing, just the rush of men intent on murder. These hunters knew the value of keeping quiet to listen for the sounds of desperate running.

/>   The green depths of the forest appeared ahead. Two more furlongs and then one, her lungs bursting, her heart fit to leap out of her chest. A stone bounced off a bough ahead as Raven stumbled between two great alder trees.

  The verdant canopy called to her power, weaving into her soul to help her blend with earth tones and so walk unseen, though the pain made the link tenuous. She dropped to her knees in the dying fronds, her brown skirt blending with them.

  Men like ghosts rushed past her, listening for a sound of her passage to find her direction. Having disturbed a browsing doe, they chased after the sound of swift, panicked flight. Long after they were lost to sight and sound, the forest folded into silence.

  Raven waited, hidden in fronds, reaching out to the deer’s mind with images of hunters. She had to keep the gentle creature out of the men’s sight or they would know what they followed.

  The shadows were lengthening by the time she worked her way to Margie’s shack. Raven hitched her long skirts into her belt and ran for home. When the mob found they chased a deer, they would head for Margie and the shack.

  She stopped at the edge of their clearing. The little vegetable patch with a few bean plants looked untouched, and the dead-fall branches Raven used as vine poles still arched over the path to their door. No angry mob had come through here. Catching her breath for a second sprint, she ran again. No shouts came when Raven burst through their sagging door. She grabbed onto the door frame for support, her legs now trembling. A stream of blood trickled down her face. Strange that their home looked so ordinary still, as if all was right with their world. Old Margie bent over a cauldron hanging in the fireplace. Fresh herbs hung to dry across one corner of the room amid the smell of cooking onions and the damp scent of a washed skirt of Margie’s, which hung over the back of their single chair.

  After one horrified look, Margie stirred herself from the fireside to tend Raven’s wound, pushing her down on the three-legged stool. The old woman worked fast with sinew and a bone needle, not asking questions until she had finished.

  “Turned against us, have they?” She glared in the direction of the village. “Well, it is no more than we both guessed from their shunning of us, ungrateful peasants. The carter said the Emperor is banning all magic, but I gave the man a free jar of my aches unguent to keep the news to himself.”

  “He took payment, and he still told?” Raven wondered if he did it out of spite because she avoided him. She hated the way he stood too close to her with his old man stink.

  “Why else did the villagers try to stone you? Aye, I can see the marks. Why shun us when they have been friendly before? They started acting strange after his visit.”

  “I sent them chasing a false trail after a deer, but they will find out sooner or later.” Raven grabbed two pieces of thick cloth to make bundles up. “We have to leave while we can. Maybe another village further north? Go to the tribes, even—”

  “No, Raven, south.” Margie rubbed her swollen knuckles together. “They’ll figure we will head north just because there are less people there.”

  “But we’ll run into more people, more villages . . .”

  “I learned many secrets before my people cast me out. I know someone who’d cut out his heart before he’d see me scream his shame to his people.” She sighed, and her eyes took on a mole-blind look. “I stopped thinking about going back, but I’m getting useless, and you’re becoming too pretty. Sooner or later one of those virtuous men would have tried out a cure for First Born magic. Rape a Samara Maiden and steal her power with her maidenhead.”

  Raven tried to swallow in a mouth as dry as a stone. She’d felt uncomfortable when a boy brushed up against her, even when the boy was Tomar, and now she knew the reason. Was she to remain alone all of her life?

  “What about if the Maiden wants the man?”

  “I’ve listened to the tales about the ones they caught when I was there, in the citadel.” Margie shucked off her rabbit-skin indoor shoes to replace them with a pair of leather boots. “First the rape, then torture and the burning death at the end. None of the former Maidens surrendered, and some of them were pretty enough to find a lover if they had recanted their evil ways.”

  “Who caught them? Who hunts Samara Maidens?” Raven threw clothes into a heap, willing Margie to hurry.

  A smile lifted Margie’s wrinkles into more cracks, and her eyes looked into the distance. “We will live as highborn should, if we can get there. Yes, it’s time for them to pay.”

  Unable to make sense of Margie’s words, Raven continued packing, adding clothes and a tinderbox each that neither of them needed to the separate bundles. If the Emperor’s soldiers stopped them along the highway, they must look as others. None must guess they were witches skilled in the calling of living fire. They needed to get on the road, away from danger.

  “Time to leave.”

  “But what about our herbs? You haven’t left room.”

  “If we don’t leave soon we will be as dead as the ghost in Delvin’s Hollow.” Raven could almost smell the smoke. Would the men rape her if they caught her? With danger approaching, Raven needed Margie to move, and she didn’t care what Margie planned. “Which way?”

  “East to a drover route and then south.” Margie stood and turned her face to the dying sun. “I shall sleep on a goose-feather bed. Make sure they don’t try to give me one of duck down.”

  Evening light bled crimson above the tree tops to give their clearing a pink glow. The forest brooded around them with a silence too deep, as if the creatures of the earth and sky hid before a storm.

  Arms linked, they walked through their clearing for the last time. Once into the trees, Raven took the lead to follow another deer track. This path led to an east-flowing stream in the heart of the forest.

  The quiet pushed in on them, not a bird-call nor the rustle of any beast scurrying in the acrid leaf litter. Raven stopped to listen, aware of how near to the shack they were still, moving at Margie’s speed. Aside from the sounds of their own passage, nothing stirred. She couldn’t use the glamour to hide them, for it wouldn’t cover Margie’s yellow shirt and blue skirts.

  A sudden panicked flap of wings sounded from the direction of their shack. Men’s voices shouted, their yells mixing with the crash of breaking pots. Raven took her chance to move while the hunters destroyed her home. She guided a trembling Margie between the trees, just keeping the deer track in sight. Getting lost and walking in a circle now would cost them their lives.

  Light faded to an angry purple through the leaves. The shadows lengthened, and an autumn chill settled into the darkness. Raven couldn’t go much further with Margie in case the old woman tripped, breaking one of her aged bones. She stopped under the boughs of an ancient oak tree. The roots thrusting through dirt would give them some shelter from a wind rustling the leaves. Margie clutched at her arm and pointed behind them with a shaking finger.

  Night sky showed through a gap in the canopy. Stars twinkled into life and sparks spiraled up to meet them; a sullen red glow marked the start of the fire-wraith’s passage. Raven wondered if anything would remain of their home to mark their lives. Not as much as the stone shell in Delvin’s Hollow, nor the ashes of the owners.

  The end of her past life, such as it was, didn’t grieve her; Tomar had killed any sense of belonging. Raven wanted a fresh start, although she worried about Margie’s plans. What was the secret never told? Did Margie really belong as a highborn Angressi? Raven tried to bury the fear. But how many of Margie’s memories were true and how many were wishful thinking?

  Chapter 3

  Dawn’s light roused Raven, but Margie grumbled that old, worn bones weren’t meant to sleep outside, and she didn’t want to stir. Raven became increasingly worried as the morning wore on and Margie started to ramble about the days of her youth. They couldn’t risk lingering.

  By late afternoon they had reached a part of the forest where the trees thinned to a line of new growth. A chimney jutting from a half-ruined d
welling loomed in the distance, almost consumed by the forest. In the overgrown garden, an apple tree groaned under the burden of ripe fruit—but not as loudly as Raven’s stomach. With Margie close behind, she hurried toward it.

  A host of wasps buzzed around her when she plucked ripe apples, making an angry noise that was strongest where the smell of rotting fruit rose like a solid wave.

  “We can’t be away from the forest. Not at night.” Margie sat down on the edge of a well and took off her shoes to rub her feet.

  “What if the villagers are tracking us? We have to keep going while there is light.”

  “They won’t roam far from their homes after sundown.” The old woman scowled in the direction of their back trail. “Why would they leave the village unprotected to chase those they have already driven out?”

  “Did you see this time in the scrying waters?” Raven couldn’t believe Margie wanted to linger after what they had just survived. Neither of them now owned more than the clothes they carried, for all their years of work. Their few pieces of furniture, the cooking pots and pans, their knives and spoons and the vegetables in their small garden . . . Who would claim these remnants of a sad life? Would the villagers even want the leavings of those they named ‘witch’?

  “No more visions since the last time, and then nothing but a muddy image.” A tremor swept through Margie. “We need to be under cover. Who knows when the beast will hunt?”

  Raven dumped her armful of fruit in her pack, angry and puzzled. “I’ve gone out at night, and you never stopped me.”

  “Trees are safe. They carry the power of the earth from their roots to their leaves.” Margie put on her shoes, glancing round at the gathering dusk. “The wyvern won’t hunt forest dwellers. Nowhere to land and snatch a person, and it would if it could. Once a wyvern marks prey they never give up. We can’t be outside after dark, or it will come for us.”