The warriors in front of her seemed ignorant of her power or unconcerned at their imminent deaths. Alaysha almost pitied them. Two came forward, circlets chattering in the onslaught of water like beads beneath a stream, rubbing against each other and growing smooth. Both women toed the dried skeleton of flesh that once was there demi-leader, and even still, seeing the state Enud was in, that Alaysha had caused her to be in, they took lazy steps forward. Unafraid, as always.
Alaysha's fingers tingled as though charged with lightning. She could barely inhale for the smothering weight of power that still moved within her. It was building. Far more than she'd ever felt. More than the power that sent a village to ruin, more than the power to drain the ground beneath her feet dry, for the birds to fall from the air above her. She'd coalesced the magic somehow and funnelled it to aim it at one woman, but it was a greedy thing, this power. It wanted unleashed in total and any attempt to hold back made the ready, standing water gather. In moments, heartbeats, even, it would all the rest into one great cloud that desired nothing more than to bloat itself on living water.
But they didn't know that.
The two paused a mere leg span from her, seeming to decide which would take the teeth of the woman who had dared oppose them, who had freed one of their brood men, who'd escaped with a band of the hated Highlanders into the woods. No one left Enyalia and lived.
Alaysha knew she had no choice, she didn't want to hurt anyone unnecessarily, but she knew she had no choice. The power was coming.
"Run," she croaked out and then she lost her mind to the power that was already blackening her vision, letting go a shriek as it took her.
––––––––
A sort of soft sigh moved across her earlobe. Voices, perhaps. Maybe even birdsong. Neither of these could be true. Either she was dead or everything else was.
Indeed the blackness alone indicated a certain state of unlife. She couldn't open her eyes, move her arms, or even gasp for breath. It was settled then. The power had won.
She was ready to resign herself to being dead except for the incessant hum that bothered her ears. Yes. Low, but most definitely the sound of a bee's wing or the whir of a heat beetle. And now she thought it, she felt air moving across her skin. Or maybe she felt as though she was moving.
Understanding jolted through her. Not dead after all, but whirling about on her own power, traveling through her own veins, watching the lightning rise from inside her mind and fire into another chain, collapsing into liquid and beating again through her heart, her lungs, throat, her breath.
She gasped herself awake to find she had collapsed onto the forest floor. The rain pelted down still, making a deep puddle that was already leaking into her ears.
She made her way on her knees to the fallen warriors in front of her. Leathered husks, yes, but like Enud: no seeds. She swept the hair from her eyes that let rivers run down her face as they collected the rain. She scanned for the other four, their beasts. It seemed they'd tried to do as she'd ordered and all but one were facing the other direction.
This last one, though, she clung to the railing of a step all the way across the compound. With a shock, Alaysha realized the Enyalian looked scared.
In truth, that wasn't the only shock. Alaysha noticed the foliage was still lush and wet, drooping from the strength of the rain but not dried to dust. The trees hadn't crackled to petrified wood. The moss beneath her feet was still spongy.
She heard her own sob of relief and the sound gave voice to the rest of the weeping; it rose like a wave within her and she could no more stop it than she could stop the rain.
Where the water had come from, she didn't know nor did she care. She regretted the lives she'd been forced to take, but for once the torture of it didn't overwhelm her into hardening her heart. She let herself feel the regret, she let herself feel forgiveness in knowing the choice of it had been left in their own hands.
She touched her chin absently and in doing so remembered.
"Where are the warriors who met you?" She shouted at the Enyalian.
The woman had regained her composure and her feet. She was picking her way across the bridge she was on and down the ladder.
"You mean Komandiri Cai and her man?"
Alaysha chuckled at she thought of Cai's reaction to that statement. "Yes," she said. "Do they live?"
The woman shrugged. "They were living when last we saw them."
"Where?"
"We left them fighting back to back together against my sword sisters."
"How many?"
The woman paused, seeming to be considering something. "Too many," she finally said.
Alaysha broke into a gasping, forced run. The Enyalian saw how difficult it was for her and caught her as she was sprinting by. Meaty hands picked her up and threw her onto a nearby beast and they begin loping into the woods.
They made about a hundred horse strides when they saw them. Both warriors were bruised and bloody, and both were smiling broadly even as they sprinted forward. Gael saw them first and his face clouded over. In a heartbeat he broke into a sprint, aiming his whole body at Isolde as she dropped from the beast, sword drawn, stance squared.
Their broadswords struck each other and the sound rang out with Gael's bellow of fury. He parried, shifted, swung again. Isolde met him and danced away.
"Careful, man," she taunted. "I may be with child."
'To the god of death go your child." He swung again, catching the woman's leathers with the briefest of the sword's edge. He grinned and made to swing again when Cai shouted at him. He swung on her.
"Would you take us both, man? And after such a wondrous night." The Enyalian's lip curled in a half-smile. She tuned to Isolde as well. "Isolde." There was the undisputed sound of command and Cai's tone in the stance of defence in her posture. "If you think to take this witch back to Enyalia, you will die."
"I have no such intention, Komandiri."
Alaysha found her feet as Isolde walked hers together in submission. With relief, Alaysha faced the three of them. "Gael," she breathed. "You're alive."
"As am I," Cai said, almost as though hurt Alaysha hadn't noticed it. "Although I had to take two of my sword sisters to his one." She gave Gael a disapproving look.
Alaysha could see no bodies littering the forest floor. "What happened?"
Cai shrugged and clasped Isolde's shoulder. "What of the battle?" It was apparent by the way Isolde's eyes watered that Cai was squeezing the woman into further submission.
"The battle is won, Komandiri."
Cai's expression went carefully blank but Alaysha could see her thinking.
"Enud is dead," Alaysha told her.
Gael glowered at Isolde, still not willing to give in, but he spoke to Alaysha. "How did she die?"
She met his gaze and quirked the corner of her mouth into a knowing line. "You see the rain."
"I do," he said. "And we felt the draining. Those we'd not killed already merely –"
"Dried out," she finished.
"The others who didn't, scattered." Gael looked thoughtful. "I wouldn't have expected it of Enyalia."
Cai looked at Isolde. "Our other sword sisters?"
Isolde's face held no emotion. "All gone but for me."
"Why take to Enud's raid at all?"
The woman shrugged. "Battle is battle, Komandiri."
Cai studied her comrade's face. "You'd forswear your sword sisters, Isolde?"
"I forswear Enud, Komandiri. The death of Yoliri drained the Enyalian from her."
Cai looked at her thoughtfully. "Uta will see you wear the boar grease if you speak of our meeting."
"There is nothing to speak of to Uta."
The two women said nothing more, but a look passed between them that Alaysha didn't understand. Moments later, Isolde strode to her beast and climbed atop. She loped into the woods and disappeared. Gael watched her, saying nothing but scowling a good deal.
"You're right, man, if I understand your scowl," Cai told him. " Isolde will see the old witch decides it is her time finally to die."
"It matters nothing to me," he answered turning his back on her and striding toward the Highland Village. "What of the rest, Alaysha. Aedus? The girl?"
"I sent them away." She walked with him, thinking out loud. "I had no choice, Gael. Aislin found a way to channel her magic through me. People were dying everywhere." She choked on the memory but continued. "And then they came."
"How many?" Cai asked.
She gave the Enyalian a shrug. "You say how many; you saw the most of them. At least they didn't all get into the village."
"Agreed," Cai said. "How many deaths in the village?"
Alaysha sighed. "Too many." She thought of Uta's coming fate and didn't feel sorry for her. "What of Thera, Cai?"
"She will emerge finally from behind Uta's shadow."
"It was a dark one, I admit."
Cai kicked at a pebble. "Even more so of late. Dark enough to change Thera."
"How so?"
The woman shrugged. "Secretive. Always in her garden, always in her lodge, that infernal fire breathing its heat into her lungs. It made her fidgety." She jerked her chin toward the highland village. "Like yon shaman. Peculiar and quiet."
"The brimstone." Gael shuddered. "It woke me each time she fed it to the flames. I don't know how the woman could stand all those furs."
Cai halted and peered at him sideways. "Thera never slept with furs...always naked like the rest of us, ready to spring to combat."
"Not Thera," he said. "The other one."
Alaysha's spine tingled. "The other one?"
"Yes," he said. "The one in the other bed."
"The one in the other bed," she said, recalling the mound on the cot, the stink of brimstone on the flame, the quaking of the earth for days as they travelled. "Brimstone binds magic," she murmured. "Dear deities."
"What?" Gael asked.
"Thera," Alaysha said, realizing it all at once. "The clay witch is in the Enyalia village. She has been all along."
"Not Thera," Gael said doubtfully.
"No," Alaysha answered. "Not Thera. The woman beneath the furs. She's hurt, I bet. Thera is healing her and she's binding her magic to keep the quakes down. That's why she was interested in my tattaus—not because of her own marks, but because of the witch's."
"The clay witch," Gael said and Alaysha smiled at him.
"Yes. Finally," she said. "Thera is harbouring the clay witch."
––––––––
The village was quiet when they returned, and Alaysha sighed in relief. They made their way through the piles of ash, Alaysha bending every now and then to retrieve the seeds she knew were there. Cai said nothing when they passed the drawn and leathered bodies of her comrades, but Gael took the time to kick at each one until Cai gave him a dirty look.
"I want to make sure the she-demons will not rise," he said in explanation.
"Don't worry, man. The only danger they are to you now is in your night visions." She put her hand out to Alaysha as she started past. "Wait, little maga."
Alaysha halted midstep, scanning the trees for danger. "What is it?"
Gael, too, halted, but he nodded just ahead of them where a thicket of brush moved. "Aedus." He chuckled. "Quite a danger."
Cai didn't seem as amused. "Not just the girl." She pushed Alaysha behind Gael and strode forward on her own to meet whatever would come out. "Watch her, man," she said, pulling her sword from her back and widening her stance in readiness. Alaysha couldn't see much past Gael's back and shoulders. She eased her way around him and felt his hand grip her waist. He inclined his head toward the Enyalian and let go a low, throaty chuckle. "High alert, that one, for nothing but Aedus and a few stragglers."
Alaysha smiled with him as Aedus emerged from the thicket, Theron at her back. About a dozen Highlanders emerged as well, seeming to think the worst over. Cai relaxed visibly and sheathed her sword.
"Nothing but weak men and children," she said. She waved them in and Alaysha scanned the crowds as they came, searching for the rest of her crew. Edulph carried his daughter, Theron and Aedus ahead of him, and beyond them, far back past several Highlanders checking for their own loved ones, came Bodicca. Her head and shoulders rose over those of the returning men and women, and it was only as the crowds parted that Alaysha realized she was carrying Yenic.