Alluvium

Chapter 7

That cursed blossom plagued my waking thoughts. Everywhere I went, the sense of it – the sense of her – trailed in behind me. I tried to shut it away, but it was less like a box that had been opened and more like a glass which had shattered all over the floor, and I was cutting myself on the pieces as I tried to pick them back up. I couldn’t forget the way it had felt as her magic had locked itself around mine, nor the way she had looked up at me, light and magic and brilliance reflected in her eyes. A part of me had answered her, lurched and creaked back to life, and it ached – a muscle ill-used after years of neglect.

It was more than that moment in my library, I realised with dismay. From the very moment she had entered my life, she had collided – relentlessly – with every wall I had ever built up around myself. Some of them literally. There was a part of me that had closed off in my years alone in this tower: iced over and slowed, like a chimaera’s blood during winter. It was an empty hall full of cobwebs and dustsheets, and Agnieszka had thrown open those doors with little regard for what she might find inside. From the moment she had first laughed at me in the kitchen, argued with me over her choosing, engaged with me like a human –  not a lord, a wizard, or a servant – bit by bit, I’d had to answer her.

Of course, she’d never intended this. The whole notion was completely appalling. I was a century and more her senior, I was her teacher, I had taken her as a Dragonborn girl. Was I no better than slavering Prince Marek? Worse, was I no better than the rumours which said I took the girls to satisfy my own depraved needs? She’d only just begun to trust my guidance, even if she rejoiced in fighting it at every juncture. I owed her better than this.

So, the next day, I did what any self-respecting wizard would do, and hid – in my laboratory, the doors closed firmly behind me. I busied myself with my work, with brewing potions and mending tools; none of it was urgent, but I lent myself to it with a feverish intensity. Still, I kept expecting her to arrive for her lesson. Every creak of a door, every quick footstep in my hall would draw my eyes back to the door handle, expecting it to turn under her hand. She didn’t come.

It was late when I finally overcame my cowardice enough to return to my own library. When I stepped through the door, I found a tray left immediately to my right, just as she had done in those very early days. The contents of the plate had long turned grey and stony cold; there was the usual splatter of gravy, congealing as it dripped slowly down the side. It was all exactly as it had been in the very beginning – back when she had been so terribly afraid of me. Staring down at it, I began to realise the depths of my own idiocy. She had sensed it, then, and this was the result. A knot was beginning to form in my chest, tight and heavy.

For a moment, I stood by the door, my eyes screwed tightly shut, letting myself feel the weight of my own indignity. That was it. Enough.

I picked up the tray and carried it stiffly to my table. I didn’t bother to heat it or cast lirintalem. I ate in silence, the only sound the wind whining around the outside of the tower and rattling the casement of the windows.

The next day, I had been ready to send her to the Charovnikov, convinced that Agnieszka would be better served by some other witch or wizard’s teaching, and quite sure that she did not intend to set foot in my library again. Habit had made me flick through Jaga’s spellbook, laying out a framework for her lessons: I chose spells weighted in earth and stone, as far from bright illusion and ill-conceived blossoms as one could get. When I was done, I set the book to one side and buried my nose in one of my own tomes, resolutely not listening for the sound of her on the stairs.

To my great surprise, I heard her approaching footsteps shuffle up to my doorway. She hesitated only a moment, and then crossed the room and lifted her spellbook from the table, almost as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at her.

‘Begin with fulmkea,’ I said, ‘on page forty-three.’

And that was it. We continued on much as we ever had, though perhaps I allowed her a little more independence in her study. That is to say, I spoke hardly a word to her, and she said even less to me: the arrangement seemed to suit us both well enough. I endeavoured not to hear the song of her magic, or watch the way she chewed the end of her thumb when she was concentrating. I think in those four days I read page seventy-two of Korte’s Fifth Working eighteen times, and I still couldn’t tell you what it said.

I only raised my head when the threat to my tower became too great and too imminent to ignore.

‘What about this one?’ she mused aloud, clearly forgetting that we weren’t talking to each other. ‘Fulmia?’

‘No!’ my head snapped up before she’d even finished saying the word. ‘Not that one. Did you even read it—’

‘No, you’re right.’ She was wrinkling her nose as she frowned into the book. ‘With conviction? It’s not like I have any business “shaking the earth to its roots.”’

I scowled at her. ‘Is that the part you take exception to, you ludicrous madwoman? You have no business reducing my tower to rubble either, though that notion hardly seems to concern you.’

She turned and gave me an entirely dangerous smile, and I felt the corner of my mouth twitch without my permission. Both of us looked away at the same time, though I did not hear her utter the word fulmia again.

I don’t know what we’d have done if left to our own devices – I half think we might have continued in that fashion until the following midwinter – but later that morning we heard the murmur of a male voice and the clinking and creaking of horses pulling up below. I looked up and frowned: I was not expecting any visitors, though I was not ungrateful for the distraction. Agnieszka had flown straight to the window, abandoning her working and leaving it hanging unfinished in the air. I opened my mouth to curse her carelessness, but something made me stop.

She was frozen in the window, every line of her stiff and rigid. I couldn’t read the expression on her face, but there was a desperation to it. Before I could even get to my feet, she’d darted away, quick as a dragonfly. I heard the clatter of her feet as she slipped and stumbled down the stairs. I even heard my great doors creak open at her command, layers of protection falling away in the face of her stubborn and determined magic.

I followed more cautiously. The last visitors we’d had to the tower had been the mob carrying the fire-heart back to the tower. It had been quite the procession in the end: they had collected grim-faced peasants from near enough every village on the route to my door. They’d stared at me stubbornly when I told them I’d been healed, and once again I’d had to face down the mayor of Olshanka’s endless efficiency. Blood was drawn, physicians consulted, they even dragged the priest into it, for whatever good that was supposed to do. I couldn’t even blame them for it – it was impossible that I was healed, after all, and it was brave of them to come to face what I may have become; braver still of the mayor to openly defy me.

Still, a blessing had been the last straw.

‘What on earth are you lending yourself to this nonsense for?’ I had hissed at Rafal, a man I had thought entirely rational – at least for a man of the church. ‘I’ve let you shrive a dozen corrupted souls: did any of them sprout the purple rose, or suddenly announce themselves saved and purified? What possible good do you imagine saying a blessing over me would do, if I were corrupted?’

He’d looked almost amused, convinced by my outburst if nothing else. ‘So you are well, then,’ he’d said, clearly enjoying himself. Only then had the mayor handed over the precious fire-heart, Rafal quietly smiling all the while.

Agnieszka had stood at the edge of this, wringing her hands and looking as out of place as I had ever seen her. I noticed her scan the crowd for familiar faces, as if they’d have sent her mother or dearest friend here to burn the corruption out of her. I saw too the way the crowd looked back at her, their eyes – for once – drifting away from me and always towards our newest witch. She was a new kind of oddity: she looked like them, dressed like them, but there was still a vast chasm between these villagers and what she had become; I could see from her darting gaze that Agnieszka was still looking for the way back to the other side of that chasm. In the end, she’d almost run back into the tower, fleeing before a different kind of fear.

Although I was reasonably certain this was not an angry mob returning to the finish the job, the look on Agnieszka’s face had sent a prickle of unease across my skin. I quickened my pace on the last steps, ready to round the bottom of the stair and yell at her for throwing open the doors to any stray peasant who came knocking. Instead, what I saw there made me stop and hang back, my mouth pressed firmly closed.

They were small in the great, arched doorway of the tower. An older woman stood gripping onto Agnieszka’s hands, as if letting go of them would mean that she would be dragged away out to sea. She was wilder even than Agnieszka, only half dressed, her braid coming loose in a halo of wisped grey hair. Her face was a picture of loss, if ever I’ve seen it, red and streaked with grief. She looked at Agnieszka with nothing short of desperation, as if the girl were her last and only hope.

It had to be the Wood.

‘—took her this morning, when she went for water.’ The woman’s voice was thin and rasping, cracking in the face of her anguish. ‘Three of them. Three walkers.’

Ah. That was it then; there was no hope.

The walkers were the foot soldiers of the Wood. Strange, spindly creatures: they looked like twitching insects apart from the shape of their faces, which were human-like in all the worst ways. They were fashioned from stick and tree, long skeletal bodies and a thicket of grasping fingers, and their limbs snapped forward in a lurching and disjointed stride. I saw them often through my sentinels, their uneven gait always drawing the eye: stop-start movements which were more reminiscent of a clockwork toy than a living creature. To see even one beyond the shadow of the Wood was a grim sight, but for three of them to have claimed someone – their quarry wouldn’t have stood a chance.

I’d seen the walkers take people: they’d snatched men right out from under me, when I’d been younger, foolish and ill-prepared. Every winter – in the months between Midwinter and spring – I would take young, unmarried men to the barren strip between the Wood and the Valley. We would move in a grim line, my magic burning the earth to black and grey, and the men scattering handfuls of salt behind me. The thick plumes of black smoke were like a signal fire to the Wood’s dark heart: walkers had lurched out of the trees, faster than I would have believed. Back then, I had thought that fire would be enough to stop them, but the blackened husks had stumbled grimly onwards.

They’d grabbed a young man, a few scant years out of boyhood and strong with his youth, and they’d crushed him like a leaf in their grip. There had been nothing I could do: there were too many of them, and I was afraid to strike the boy with greater magic – though likely that would have been a mercy. Even under my onslaught, enough parts of them remained to ensnare his broken limbs and drag him, screaming, into the shadows. His cries hadn’t ended at the threshold of the Wood, only muffled beneath the trees, and we’d listened to them fade as they dragged him further and further away – until suddenly the screams had stopped.

Every following year, I had been ready for them, the men armed with axes and me with my magic – just enough to hold the creatures while we hacked their limbs away. We’d still lost people, but we’d cut as many men free, and I’d never watched the walkers carry a living man into the Wood again.

‘Not Kasia,’ Agnieszka’s strangled voice gripped me and dragged me back to the present. ‘Not Kasia.’

I knew immediately who this Kasia must be. The girl she had clung to at the choosing – the same one who had faced down wolves at her side. Agnieszka was holding herself so still and straight, but I could see her trembling even from where I stood at the bottom of the stairs. The woman, who I presumed to be the girl’s mother, had pressed her face against Agnieszka’s hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

I grimaced and turned away, making myself move to some kind of action. The sound of her weeping followed me up the stairs.

‘Please,’ I heard her beg. ‘Nieshka. Please.’ As if there were anything Agnieszka could do.

I felt a hot flash of anger. They would never have sent anyone to me with such an impossible request. I would have turned her away: a fact, I am certain, of which this woman was well aware. So she hadn’t come to me. Rather than face her own grief, she had brought it to Agnieszka’s door, as if my pupil’s love for the girl would make a rescue any less hopeless; as if her magic would make her feel the pain any less.

When I returned, Agnieszka had led the girl’s mother into the entry hall. The woman was shuddering and gasping, her face pressed into Agnieszka’s shoulder. I’d heated a calming draft: a soothing mixture of lavender, chamomile and a hint of nightshade – enough to soothe her into sleep, nothing more. Of course, as soon as I offered it to the woman, she shrivelled away from me as if I was trying to pour fire-heart down her throat; it was like trying to feed a stubborn toddler. I felt anger and frustration tighten in my gut, and I was near enough ready to grab her and pry open her mouth when Agnieszka lifted the cup lightly out of my fingers.

She coaxed the woman to drink it where I could not, soothing her and whispering words of encouragement until she had drained the last drops from the cup. And when the girl’s mother had finally calmed, she took her by the hand and led her patiently up to her own bedroom. Agnieszka settled her on the pillows, gently smoothing the wisps of fine grey hair away from the pale and blotchy face, as if she were tending to her own mother. All the while, my pupil’s face remained smooth and unreadable as stone, her own pain locked down deep inside

I hung back in the doorway, an intruder on their grief.

When Agnieszka turned back to me, she held a small silver locket in her fingers, and there was a hardness in her eyes that I had not expected. ‘She has a lock of Kasia’s hair. If I use loyatalal—’

Ah. The expression I could see was hope. Stubborn, useless hope.

‘What do you imagine you’re going to find, besides a smiling corpse? The girl is gone.’ I said it as gently as I could manage, but the words were still cruel; she needed to hear them. I tipped my head towards the woman. ‘She’ll be calmer after she sleeps. Tell that driver to come back in the morning to take her home.’

At that, she almost flinched, as if something inside her had broken. As I turned away, I could not help feeling sorry that I was the one who had broken it.

Back in my library, I lifted down a heavy bound ledger from a high shelf by the window. It creaked as I opened it, throwing dust up into the air, though not enough of it by far – the last time I’d reached for it was still far too recent. In it was recorded every attack by the Wood: every single person it had taken. It stretched back over a hundred years, dense columns of black ink, until the handwriting morphed into a rougher and freer hand, and the losses recorded ceased to be mine.

I balanced the book on one arm, the weight of it making my shoulder ache, and conjured a pen with the other. On the last page, I wrote:

3 walkers; Dvernik; 1 girl taken.

And then, almost without thinking, I added: (Kasia).

I stared down at it. How long had it been since I had written a name in this book?

I was still staring at it when I heard her approach the door behind me. I didn’t turn around, though I know I should have. Perhaps I was afraid of what I would see there. The weight of what I had said to her still sat heavily in my chest. I ached to offer her comfort – something more than the bitter truth – but what was there to say?

‘I know you held her dear,’ I said without turning around, ‘but there’s no kindness in offering false hope.’ A pitiful enough attempt.

She didn’t say anything. I heard her cross into the room for a moment, her footsteps muffled on the carpets. By the time I made myself turn to face her, she was already gone.

I should have turned sooner. I should have told her to wait. I should have explained why we couldn’t save the girl – why it was better that we didn’t try. By the time I had emerged from whatever fog I had descended into, it was already far too late. I noticed the unbearable stillness of the tower like looking up to realise that the room had grown dark around me; I realised too late that she hadn’t argued with me – hadn’t come to plead with me to save her friend or insisted that there was something she could do: this from a girl who had set off to fight for Dvernik with nothing but a bag full of potions and barely enough magic to startle a flea.

I’d heard the sound of the sled pulling away hours before, but I had not realised the dread which should have accompanied it. As soon as the thought occurred to me, I knew her silence could mean nothing else. I dropped the book I was reading and sprang for the stairs, fighting the heavy weight of fear as I raced up to her room. I was breathless when I threw open the door, my eyes falling instantly on the empty chair by the bed; expecting it did nothing to mute the stab of icy dread which shot through my veins.

That damnable woman lay on the bed, all her anguish smoothed away by sleep; she breathed slowly and deeply, so at peace, while somewhere out there in the dark, Agnieszka was walking right into the Wood’s clawing grasp. She was gone, and I had done nothing to stop her.

I still called for her as I hurried back down the stairs.

‘Agnieszka!’ I bellowed, her name feeling strange and foreign in my mouth. ‘Damnit, you soft-hearted, miserable fool. Where are you?’

I made myself check the kitchen, the laboratory, even the library, in case she’d slipped back in there behind me. Then I was back in my workshop, pulling potions of the shelf and shoving them haphazardly into a bag by my feet. Useless, feeble-minded, stubborn, idiotic… and yet I was all of those things for not checking on her sooner. I should have locked her in her room the moment I heard the sled outside.

Lifting the case under one arm, I turned readied myself, the words of the transport spell half on my lips to— to go where, exactly?

A groan of frustration escaped me and I dropped the bag back to the floor, a fortune of potions rattling inside it. I had no way of knowing where she was: the Wood stretched the full width of the Valley and all the way to the border of Rosya, besides. She could have entered it anywhere – and it had been hours. I almost ran back to her room to search for a strand of her hair – to attempt loyatalal for myself, as if her strange, impossible magic might suddenly answer me when none of it had ever worked before. Or – she most likely took the road from beyond Zatochek. If I followed after her, sent sentinels ahead of me, maybe I could – that is to say, if I could find the way she had taken, perhaps by some miracle—

She’s gone, you fool.

I was still standing before the racks of potions, my eyes screwed tightly shut, my hand gripping my forehead; I felt I was being dragged inwards, down to one awful, inescapable thought.

She’s gone. The Wood has her.

No. I took a deep breath. No I would not believe that. She was entirely absurd, unspeakably stubborn, a singular force for chaos – and one of the greatest witches I had ever encountered. Impossible, in every way: she had and could do things I couldn’t even conceive of. There was still a chance. She could still come back. And when she did – I tried not to think of blank, smiling eyes, all of the fire in her eaten away – when she did come back, she would not find me gone on some mad crusade, or standing uselessly in the middle of my laboratory.

With renewed purpose, I stooped and picked carefully through the bag at my side, lifting out a round bottomed flask containing a red viscous liquid, so dark it was almost black. I flicked through racks of powders, sealed in thin paper packets, murmuring to myself until I found the one I was looking for. I pulled down an old grey tome, worn white at the edges, though I loathed to think of the need for it. With each careful movement, I felt my breathing slow, the tightness in my chest start to ease. I clenched my jaw, ignoring the part of my mind that told me to prepare for something entirely different: that it should be fire-heart and defensive magic I gathered to me, not elixirs and spells of healing. I shut it out.

When she returned, I would be ready.