The Seasons of Salt

Chapter Seven

Aliya of the Tenth was the last of the urach left in Gwyllt De, what the mortals disparagingly named the Wasteland Woods, or so it sometimes felt to her. She had not seen hide nor hair of any of her sisters since the word had come trundling down to them that the Horse Lord had left and that the paths from the forests were now free. They had flooded from the forest depths, storming the little crew left behind, taking them by surprise. Many of her sisters had fallen, defenceless as they were without their magics, but many more had escaped.

She had passed through abandoned villages, the huts and tents discarded to the winds now, and wandered through glades and glens alone and it had felt like she was never going to be found again. 

They had fled in their masses, all who could be persuaded to leave the only home they had ever known. Some had not. Some had refused to be budged, despite the last given orders of the Uncrowned Queen, and truly, Aliya could not say she blamed them. She did not want to leave herself, and yet, it was no longer safe to stay here. When the magics had fallen (and still, days later, she could barely bring herself to think of it without shuddering) the protections Gwyllt De afforded the urach had fallen too. The mortals had not sensed it yet, of course, but they would, in time. And when they did, they would come storming the stronghold they had been denied so long, in fire and sword and blood. There would be c*****e. No respite, no mercy. Just death in armour and helm, longsword and axe. Annihilation.

Aliya bit back a sob. The sisters of the Tenth village all used to tease her for being too soft in heart. Acrya of the Tears, they called her, pushing her down in the dirt and pulling her hair and the elder sisters never tried to stop them. They wanted her to be hardened as much as the others, they wanted her to stop bringing shame on the urach race. Only mortals wail, they’d sneered whenever she started the inevitable waterfall, and yet, even the hardiest of them was weeping when the magics fell. There was a grief in it that knew no words, that blossomed and sung like a fire-ache, swelling within her at unknown moments, that absence, that terrible, hounding absence. She had felt it within her, that very moment when the last defences, those last precious drops within and without them, had faltered, flickered, died, and that awful, stunned silence which echoed through the empty forests nights. Not even the owls had dared to screech. And then came the wailing, the keening, the sobbing and shouting and rolling upon the floor, the agony of it all. No, Aliya was not alone in weeping bitter tears out to the canopy covered skies that night. 

There was something manic in it, the grief. Women cut themselves, trying to find magic left amongst the blood, trying to alleviate the greater pain with a lesser one, mayhap. Sister after sister desperately sought the faintest of power and none came when called. It was as if they had all gone blind at once – or, no, not blind, for they surely would rather have been blinded, each and every one of them, than lose so keen a sense as their magics. It was as if they had been emptied, hollowed out of all that made them alive and then expected still to live anyway. And, after one night of mourning – so little, so precious little – they had stood and gathered their things and fled, fled out of the safety of their home, out across the great lands to hide amongst the mortals where they could. Whether they would be safer out there than in here, only time could tell, but it had been N’Hara’s wish and it could not be broken, even here after her death. And she was dead, Aliya knew it, they all did, though such things were not spoken of, except in rumours and whispers. She would not have let the magics fall if she had still been alive.

She must have known of her own death. Tusks did not see the future, of course, but the Uncrowned Queen had Eyes enough in her company who must have predicted it for her.

We must leave the Gwyllt De Forests, she had proclaimed in every village square. You will know when the time is right. Prepare yourselves and when it is upon you, leave without glancing back, until the time for our return has ripened.

She had said nothing about the fall of magics though. Mayhap she did not want to alarm them all. Her announcements had caused panic enough as it was, even mutinous whispers of rebellion. And now they were outcasts, alone, unfriended. Broken and weak and so, so vulnerable.

Why? Aliya whispered within herself, though she knew the Uncrowned Queen could not hear her. Why did you choose this path for us?

And why did she choose Aliya specifically to walk it? Aliya sighed and stumbled onwards, her own mission weighing heavily upon her shoulders. She was not the strongest or the smartest, she was not well-respected in her village, nor did she have a broad name for herself amongst the wider urach. Wraiths were not seen as either rare and precious, like the Hard Souls, powerful as the Tusks, or useful, like the Eyes. Their dreams were wispy, nebulous gifts and now she did not even have that. She should have refused such a mission if anybody dared refuse the Uncrowned Queen anything, but she had been so awed at being brought into a personal conversation with N’Hara of the Fifth, that she had been able to do little more than nod and shake her head mutely. And when her sisters of the Tenth, jealous and curious, had crowded around and demanded to know what the Uncrowned Queen had wanted with the smallest and weakest of all the urach, Aliya was not entirely sure she knew – and did not have the words to explain it to them, even if she had not been sworn to silence by the strongest blood-oath N’Hara’s Blackfang commander could draw out. It was foolish, she knew, but Aliya could not help shivering a little at the memory of it. The Blackfangs always scared her a little anyway with their ever-thirsty blood magics, and Quira of the Second was scarier than most. A dark shadow always lingering behind the silver-haired, silver-eyed N’Hara. Aliya was soft and curved and slid into shadows surreptitiously. Quira was a darkness protruding through the forest, sharp and rigid, making all bend before her, and none but N’Hara herself could withstand her. The blood-oath was not needed to make Aliya obey. Sheer terror would have done it just as much.

N’Hara had seemed almost gentle, by comparison, though it was a fool who thought her soft.

Aliya stopped suddenly, aware of a noise from up ahead. A whimpering, wailing sound echoing through the air. She crept forwards, half longing to find some friendly face again,  half fearful, knowing that no face would be friendly now.

She stopped dead as she took in the sight before her, her hand still lingering on the branch she had pushed clear. It was almost enough to fell her, sending her crashing to her knees. Only sheer luck kept her upright. If she had had anything to eat these past few days, she would have lost it now, but urach were hardier creatures than mortals, and did not need to feed so often, nor sleep so much. She pushed her way forwards, all timidity flown with the pulsating wrath assailing her.

“Get off of her! What do you think you’re doing?”

She wrenched the urach off of the child, weeping and squirming away, blood streaming from her little mouth, red marks upon her shoulders and arms where the older woman had been pinning her down. One of her beautiful little tusks, pearlescent in her youth, had already been wrenched from her mouth leaving a deep and bleeding gap, and the other was halfway to being removed too.

The other urach shoved hard against Aliya sending her flying.

“She is of my village,” she spat, the words coming out blurred and numbed through swollen lips. “I am taking care of her.”

“Taking care of her? You are mutilating her!”

The woman spat again and then pulled down her own lip to show the bloodied gaps in her own mouth where once her own curved tusks had sat.

“We cannot survive out there amongst the mortals toothed,” she said. “We will not be able to hide what we are as you can, Wraith. It must be done.”

“But she is just a child! She is just a child!” Aliya was on the edge of weeping again.

“A dead Tusked child or a living toothless one.” The woman shrugged.

“No, how can you bear it?” Aliya clung to the child desperately, who was sobbing freely into her arms. The older Tusk hesitated. She knelt on the floor beside them both.

“I bore her myself,” she said quietly. Aliya looked up.

“We no know mothers, as the mortals do,” Aliya said. “All urach are mothers and children, all are sisters – all share the weight of rearing the village.”

“Mayhap, but she was born in the first month of the year, as I was and was thus raised in the first village, as I was. I watched her grow. And I could not help but love her more than her sisters, for she was mine. And it is in that love that I scar her now. It is because I love her, aye, even with a mortal love that tastes death and counts life all the sweeter for it – that I must bear to pain her now. I cannot let her die at the hands of men, Wraith. It must be done,” she said again, and the pain was evident in her own eyes now. Aliya hesitated, and then nodded. Stroking back the child’s hair, she turned her around and held her fast. The mother nodded.

The child wrenched herself about in Aliya’s arms, her tears falling free almost as much as Aliya’s own were – and even the older Tusk had water glimmering in her eyes – but Aliya did not let go. Her whole body trembled, her breath ragged and pained. If she had still had her magics, she could have woven pretty dreams for the girl, could have drowned her in pictures to distract her whilst the evil work was done – but she had no magic left, she was useless. Empty and useless.

The Tusk grasped the tiny tooth firmly and yanked, sending a spurt of blood free, and then it was done. Aliya released the child who fell weeping to the floor. She could have been no more than six in mortal years. Aliya felt sick.

She got to her feet unsteadily.

“Head to Bridgenford,” she said. “There is an opening up high by the Sunset Edge boundaries where you can pass deep into the heart of Bridgenford without crossing running water.”

“It is not easy to escape though, should we need to. It is hemmed in with running rivers on every side.”

“That is why they will not expect to see you there. They will not be looking for urach in their heartlands. You will pass by as a widow and her daughter more easily.”

The Tusk considered her for a moment, and then nodded. She bent and scooped the little Tusk up in her arms and carried her out of the clearing without looking back, four bloodied tusks left abandoned on the forest floor behind them.  Aliya buried them, scooping out handfuls of earth with her hands and patting it into place afterwards, in small, humped mounds. She did not know why. It just did not feel right to leave them there, somehow. She wiped her hands clean on her skirts and pushed forwards, roaming the dying forests alone once more.

She did not find what she was looking for until night had fallen again. The darkness helped, actually. At first, she thought the dim glow of the light through the trees was the starlight in an empty glen, but it drew her towards it anyway. As she drew closer, she found it was a humming light, far different from the lights of the night. The trees surrounding it were dense and she could not barge past them save through a triangle of branches bound together. She pushed her way in and stopped dead.

Magic. The only shard of magic left in the whole of Gwyllt De. She savoured it for a moment, enjoying the taste of it upon her tongue, like home. She had not realised it had a taste before until it had been stripped away, leaving her desolate and abandoned. The air was crackling with it. She took a step forwards, into the light, past the broken soulstones, cracked and rubbled, still with bloody handprints pressed into their cracks and creases. Her body sang, and she sank to her wobbling knees, unable to stand upon her feet any longer. Her eyes squeezed shut and it was not until she heard a voice that she opened them up again.

“You have done well, Wraith,” N’Hara of the Fifth said. She was standing there before her, smiling in benediction, silver and solid and beautiful as usual, her black-bone circlet still crowning her hair. Aliya blinked and looked around. There was N’Hara’s body, lying unloved in the circle of corpses around the glowing Heartstone, and yet here was N’Hara before her?

“Your dreams have come back,” N’Hara told her patiently. “For as long as you are in the circle.”

Aliya was never going to leave the circle again, in that case. N’Hara smiled again, as if she had read Aliya’s mind. Her tusks shimmered iridescently in the dim halo of light.

“You swore a blood-oath,” she reminded her.

“I did not know that it would be the end of all magics when I swore it.”

“It is not,” N’Hara told her. “It is just the end for now. Take the child, as you swore to. Raise her until the time is right.”

“And if I cannot?”

“I chose you for a reason, Wraith. The urach who bore you seeded herself upon a mortal man. An unusual choice, but good for our purposes. There is a lot of mortality within you. That will be useful in hiding the child until she is old enough.”

Aliya felt her skin burning. The sisters of her village always japed that she was more mortal than urach, she had not thought there had been any truth to it.

“You – you knew the urach who bore me then?”

N’Hara nodded.

“She tried to flee the forest with you and her lover when you were born instead of giving you up to the Tenth. When the time came for the Bloodprice to be paid, she chose to pay it herself instead of taking it from the mortal who sired you.”

“She did? Why?” Such a thing was unheard of. Urach were long-lifed, but their numbers were few. To willingly give up one’s life was not only unnatural, it was selfish. Mortal men came and went in but a few years. To deprive the village of one’s gifts willingly for their sake was nothing more than cruelty.

N’Hara just shrugged.

“I went to retrieve you from the mortal village myself, and I killed the man who tried to claim you. I put you back where you belonged. I brought you home.”

“And now you are asking me to leave it once more.” Aliya’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“I have had to leave it too,” said N’Hara. “In fact, I cannot linger here much longer. Quira’s last great spell is waning after her death, even here, by the Heartstone itself.” She looked down at the corpse by the feet of her shadowy dream-self without compassion. “I must pass over and join our sisters there. You must fulfil the oath you made, not for my sake, Aliya, or your own, but for all urach.”

“I cannot raise the child alone! Urach are not made for such things.”

“Your ‘mother’ thought she could.” Even in the dream, the scorn N’Hara poured on the word was evident. “You must believe it too.”

Aliya looked down at her feet. She looked up at N’Hara. She nodded. N’Hara nodded back.

“When you remove the child from the Heartstone, the last of the magics in it will fall. She will no longer be kept warm, dry, clean or fed. You must tend to her regularly. Mortals are less hardy than urach.”

“Why a mortal child then? Why could you not pour the last of our magics into an urach child to grow?”

“That you are not given to know such reasons, does not mean they do not exist, Wraith.” The impatience in her voice was growing. She was clearly wearying of Aliya’s impertinence. Aliya licked her lips anxiously.

“One more question, oh Uncrowned Queen,” she beseeched, and N’Hara waved a hand in her direction.

“What if…what if the magics do not come back? What if they never come back?”

To her surprise, N’Hara just smiled.

“You can not fight fate, child,” she said, and then she dissolved into the air in a flurry of wispy black smoke, as unsubstantial and as false as all Wraith dreams turned out to be. Aliya bit down hard upon her lip.

“I am not ready for this,” she whispered to the silent bodies blood-strewn around her. They did not answer back.

She tiptoed over the large and hardened feet of the Hard Soul, and the crumpled body of Quira of the Second entangled beside her. The Bloodfang looked small in death, her long black hair strewn down her back like a mourning veil.

The child upon the Heartstone was pale, a tangle of copper frizz upon her head. Aliya scowled. Her own hair was midnight oil. Another complication. They would find it difficult to pose as mother and child, looking so unlike. The babe was swaddled in the same soft, glowing light that hummed in the glade, a beacon and a shield from the world beyond.

“What am I going to do with you, child?” Aliya whispered, and the child yawned sleepily in response. She had not woken with the conversation. Aliya doubted she had woken at all since she had been laid down upon the Heartstone, the last of the magics within it keeping her bound warm, safe and comfortable. The Wraith wrapped her arms around the tiny bundle, those seven rust-crackled circles drawn still upon that pale forehead, and she lifted the bairn with difficulty off of the stone and held it tightly to her chest.

The light went out.