First Witch's Tale

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

I hadn’t expected it to be difficult to follow Cemburu. He was no woodsman. He had bragged of riding horses in pursuit of wild animals, and insisted he had killed a giant boar with a spear, but he had never lived in the words like I had. I doubted he knew anything about living off the land. And yet, I had to work to keep him in sight without getting so close he would certainly spot me. It wasn’t easy. He moved from tree to tree, shadow to shadow, glancing back constantly as if he thought he was being followed. I kept my distance as best as I could. If he caught me out here …

The thought irritated me as I kept walking. I wasn’t scared of Cemburu. And yet, I knew he was a decent magician. If he caught me, if he challenged me so far from school, he could kill me and swear blind he had had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t unknown for students to give up and just walk away, without even bothering to tell the staff they were leaving. I had no idea how it was handled, when the student reached his home, but … it wasn’t impossible I might have left the school. Cemburu was certainly foolish enough to think he convince the staff I had gone. Or maybe he would just keep his mouth shut on the assumption no one would consider him a possible suspect. It wasn’t as foolish as it seemed. The staff would not expect me to follow him into the woods.

Our path grew rougher as we made our way further from the school. The undergrowth grew thicker, tainted with wild magic. My eyes narrowed as Cemburu kept walking. Was he going into the deepest darkest parts of the wood, where the Other Folk lived? I knew to keep my distance from their mounds, and any suspiciously neat mushroom rings, but Cemburu? Did he understand the dangers? Or did he think he could walk in and out without consequence? I had no idea what was going through his head as he hurried on, slipping through a nightmare of trees that looked as though they were biding their time before coming to life and attacking anyone foolish enough to come within reach of their branches. There were places the trees were supposed to walk, to move position when no one was watching. I wondered if the trees nearby walked too. It wasn’t impossible. There was a lot of wild magic in the air.

My blood ran cold as I realised what wasn’t in the air. Birdsong. The woods should have been alive; small birds flying overhead, insects buzzing through the air and rodents scurrying through the undergrowth. Instead, the air was silent, so quiet I thought I could hear my heartbeat. It felt as if the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Ice ran down my spine. My instincts, honed by years on an isolated farming village, told me to turn my back and run. Or perhaps not to run, just to inch away without letting unseen eyes think I was running. I gritted my teeth and kept walking, noting how Cemburu kept walking too. Either he was braver than I had thought, or stupider. He could sense magic as well as I could. Surely, he could tell how dangerous - and unnatural - the world had become.

Except he never spent any time in the woods, I thought, grimly. He has no idea what is normal and what isn’t.

I nearly tripped over the tiny body on the ground. I bit my lip to keep from swearing. The world so quiet that even a whisper might be carried straight to his ears. The body had been a hedgehog, I thought, but it had been so heavily mutilated that I wasn’t sure of anything. Someone had caught the beast, gorged out its eyes and used its blood for … I felt sick as I saw the lines drawn on the ground. I had no qualms about catching and killing a hedgehog - they were good eating - but this was too much. I had to swallow, hard, to keep from throwing up. I’d seen animals being slaughtered - I had raised a pig myself, fattening her for the kill - and yet this was pointless sadism, tinged with dark magic. I was tempted to turn and go straight back to school, to alert the staff to what Cemburu was doing. But I wasn’t sure they would listen. It was difficult to tell what they would do. Instead, I stepped over the body - careful not to dislodge anything - and made my way further into the woods. Cemburu was so far ahead of me I had lost sight of him, forcing me to rely on my woodcraft to track him. I was lucky he didn’t seem to know he was being followed. If he had realised I was shadowing him, he could have led me in circles or set an ambush. I had done both as a young girl when my siblings and I have been practising our skills. No one had beaten me when it came to hiding in the woods.

There were more dead bodies lying on the ground as I followed him. Small birds, small rodents, all killed to cast a handful of spells. Dark magic lingered around them, like embers from a fire that had burnt itself out. The air felt clammy, unpleasant to the touch. My skin crawled despite the hot summer day. It was surprisingly cold under the trees and yet …

I frowned as I spotted the latest body. The mouse should have been eaten long ago. Dead bodies didn’t remain intact for long, not in the woods. A carrion-eater should have taken the body, or it should simply have decomposed, but instead it was just … unchanged. There was no hint of decay, even though I was sure the mouse had been killed at least a week or two ago. The poor thing had been tortured to death. I gritted my teeth as I straightened up and made my way onwards. I knew how to live off the land, but I also knew to be respectful to the land. This was just … something else. I remembered Cemburu’s bragging and shuddered. It was one thing to kill an animal for food, but quite another to do it for fun.

The trees parted suddenly, revealing a tiny clearing. Cemburu knelt in the heart of the clearing, his naked back to me. I tried not to roll my eyes as I realised he was naked. It was hardly the first naked body I’d seen – there was no such thing as privacy in a village - and hardly the best. I couldn’t help thinking he looked suspiciously pale, without a tan or any other sign of honest living. But then, he hadn’t grown up working to keep his family alive.

My eyes narrowed as he picked up a knife and started to cut himself. I was surprised he had the nerve. Blood dripped down his arm, allowing him to use his other arm to take the blood and use it to draw lines on his skin. A wave of cold air seemed to press against me as I caught a glimpse of one of the lines, drawn from his head to his heart and below. He moved on to use his blood to draw a simple circle on the ground, then placed five candles around the circle. It felt dangerous, as if something very bad was going to happen. I wanted to act, to slip up behind him and bop him over the head, yet my limbs refused to move. For a panicky moment, I thought he had spotted me and frozen me without giving me a chance to react, but instead I was just too scared to move. It felt as if the world was about to end.

Cemburu sat upright and muttered a handful of words. Each one sounded fundamentally wrong, as if the mere act of speaking them should have destroyed his voice forever. I couldn’t recall the words, the moment they were spoken. It was as if they had gone in one ear and out the other, without ever passing through my brain. Even trying to remember them made my head spin. I felt sick, almost feverish, as the world to grow dim, as if it had tilted off its axis, as if I was on the verge of death. The surge of tainted magic grew stronger and stronger. Cemburu leaned forward, peering into the circle on the ground. I saw …

There was something there. It was … it was a thing. My eyes seemed to skip over it, as if they refused to look at it directly. It was always in the corner of my eye, even when it wasn’t … it wasn’t. My head could not grasp what I was seeing. It looked like a tiny man-shaped shimmer, but the thing was so fundamentally wrong I couldn’t be sure of anything. It was just … just looking at it made me feel sick.

Cemburu was looking at it as if he had never seen anything more beautiful. I couldn’t believe it. He was naked, covered in his own blood, and yet he seemed to be taking it in stride. He was jerking back and forth, his arms moving silently. I had the impression he was speaking to the thing, but it was hard to be sure. Was it speaking to him? I couldn’t hear anything, but that was meaningless. There are plenty of ways to speak without being heard. I knew a few myself. His hands moved in patterns that were disturbingly familiar. It struck me, in a moment of horrific insight, that the thing was teaching him magic.

I leaned forward, trying to parse out what he’d done. It wasn’t easy. The thing was a blur of raw magic, a creature born of magic and magic alone. It looked, to my senses, so fantastically complex there was no hope of untangling its very being. The spells linking the thing to Cemburu were much easier to understand, but rooted in his blood. I felt cold. Magic ran in the blood, I had been told, and any spell that involved blood was suspicious and had to be considered dark until proven otherwise. I had been cautioned never to allow anyone to get a sample of my blood. If someone did, they could curse me from a safe distance - or worse. And Cemburu had given his blood freely …

My eyes lingered on the bloodlines he had drawn. He was channelling his magic into the circle. I thought the thing was drawing on his power, using it to do … something. I had never heard of someone giving someone else his magic, although I didn’t see any reason why it couldn’t be done. The teachers had told us there were some things we wouldn’t be taught until we could be trusted to handle them, something I had found a little insulting before realising magic offered infinite danger as well as potential. It was all too easy, they had said, to accidentally kill yourself. Or someone else.

Cemburu’s hands moved jerkily, as if he wasn’t in complete control. I had barely a second to realise he was casting a spell before my body moved of its own accord, standing upright and walking into clearing. Another flash of panic ran through me as I came to a halt. I hadn’t known it was possible for one magician to control another, not like that. Cemburu or one of his goons would have had me doing their chores – or serving then in other ways - if they thought they could put me under their spell. My body felt as if it longer belonged to me. The thing seemed to smile, even though I couldn’t see any visible mouth - or anything.

“What?” Cemburu sounded as it was on the verge of panic himself. He hadn’t known I was there. He hadn’t even realised what his hands were doing. I wondered, suddenly, just which of them was actually in charge. There was no shortage of horror stories about idiots who had tried to make deals with the Awful Folk and discovered, too late, that they could be trusted to interpret the bargain in the worst possible way. “What is she doing here?”

I tried to speak, but my mouth refused to move. I was held firmly under his control. Or the thing’s control. I couldn’t tell which of them was casting the spell. I had thought it was him, but… I just didn’t know. The thing spoke in words I could not understand, its voice a buzzing horror that made me want to throw up. Just listening to the sound made me feel as if I had jumped right into a cesspit, covering myself in human waste. My body felt slimy and disgusting, my mind felt as if someone had taken a shit in my brain. The revulsion was so strong it weakened their control. I felt my limbs twitch and told them to be still. I was in no state to fight, not even againstCemburu alone. I had no idea what the thing could do. If it really was one of the Awful Folk …

The thing looked at me. I felt my mouth opening of its own accord.

“I followed you,” I heard myself say. “I was jealous of your progress and magical progress. I wanted to know how you did it. And I will now go back to the school and report you to your masters. They will kick you out without a second thought.”

I tried hard to shut my mouth. I hadn’t followed him because I was jealous … well, not very jealous. But instead … I saw horror wash over his face and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the thing had made me say the worst possible thing. I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, or why, but it was so far across the line that his expulsion - or worse - was a foregone conclusion.Cemburu would have to silence me permanently or risk being expelled. And yet … something nagged at my mind. The thing wouldn’t need to manipulate him if it could kill me itself. I found that oddly heartening. If it couldn’t get out of the circle …

Cemburu’s hands twisted. “But they’ll wonder what happened to her!”

I blinked in surprise. He was lying. No, he was trying to avoid admitting he didn’t want to kill me. Perhaps he was too cowardly to strike the killing blow or … perhaps he had limits. Everyone had their limits, I’ve been told, and perhaps he had finally discovered his. Or maybe he just thought there was no way he wouldn’t be questioned if I never returned to the castle. He wasn’t a very good liar. He wouldn’t be able to maintain his story if Bernard or Master Falladine interrogated him.

The thing spoke again, the words passing through my ears without comprehension. The feeling of being touched something utterly disgusting was quite bad enough. Cemburu reacted as if he had been struck, his body shaking as if someone had slapped him across the face. I wished I knew what the thing had said and yet I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Perhaps it had called him a coward to his face. It was the easiest way for one boy to get another to do something stupid. I didn’t thinkCemburu was that different. And besides, he had a great deal to lose.

His body twitched, one hand reaching for the knife on the ground. I met his eyes, briefly, and saw a conflicting storm of emotions. He didn’t want to kill me, to cross the line, and yet if he didn’t kill me his secret would be revealed. I wondered, briefly, if I could offer my word to keep his secret, if he let me go, but I doubted he’d accept anything I said. The risk was just too high. I could hear the thing talking, urging him on, pushing whatever buttons it had to push to convince Cemburu to kill me. His hands shook as he raised the dagger, tears dripping from his eyes. I would have sorrier for him if he hadn’t been planning to kill me.

“It’s just like one of the animals,” he whispered. He was trying desperately to convince himself of that. “It has to be done …”

He kept rambling. “I could turn her into a mouse, or a bird, or something … you could show me how, couldn’t you?”

Panic ran through me. I didn’t know any spells that could turn someone into an animal, but there were stories of the Awful Folk cursing men into stags or women into birds. I didn’t know what the thing could do, yet if it was one of them it might be able to tell Cemburu how to do it. And then … none of the stories ended happily. Most ended with the animal reverting to human form after being killed, often by his family. If the thing could show him how he could get rid of me without actually killing me … the thought was terrifying. No one would ever see me again.

I gritted my teeth, then bit my lip as hard as I could. The pain startled me out of the trance, but my legs felt as if they had been turned to jelly. I saw surprise in his eyes as I swung wildly, striking him in the jaw. His knife dropped from his hand and I caught it before it hit the ground. He stumbled backwards and crossed the circle, knocking over the candles and crashing into the thing. I heard something laugh as Cemburu put himself and straightened up, his eyes meeting mine. They burned like hot coals …

… and I knew, as the laughter went on and on, that I had made a horrific mistake.