Chapter 6 #2
“You followed the call,” she said without preamble, snatching a fistful of oregano from where it hung above her well-worn dining table and hurrying through to the Close Space.
I moved behind her into the tight patch of darkness she favoured so much, supressing the shudder which ran down my spine as I entered the dim cave.
The dark pressed in on us and I was careful to stay near to the wall before dropping down to sit cross legged opposite her, not wanting to get too close to the small hole in the centre of the floor which led down to the eternal nothingness below.
Moya hummed beneath her breath as she crumbled the oregano into dust in her fist before scattering it on the stone beside the hole and painting runes into the mess she’d made.
My eyes were slowly adjusting to the gloom and I sighed as she beckoned for me to offer up my hand.
“Must I?”
“You tell me,” she retorted and I gave in, knowing I wanted to hear whatever it was she had to say, however damning it might be. I’d known when I’d chosen to come here that this would come up.
Moya took my hand, slicing the tip of my finger open with the sharp point of her thumbnail and I grumbled half-heartedly as she squeezed a few drops of my blood onto the herbs and runes before shoving it all into the small hole and letting it fall away into the dark.
Something rumbled in the depths of the mountain in reply to that offering, the sensation rolling through my core and making the hairs on the back of my neck prickle to attention.
That roiling sensation of doom and foreboding ate into me as Moya leaned down towards the hole as if listening to some whisper I couldn’t hear.
“A heart so torn and twisted, it has no home to claim, a soul so bruised and broken, it desires naught but pain,” she said, raising a brow at me in accusation.
“Spit it out – clearly,” I said though her words had already permeated my skin with their meaning and we both knew I’d understood perfectly. She was accusing me of something which I didn’t want to admit to.
Moya sighed, leaning back and tapping her fingers on her bare knees, drawing my attention to the bruises she sported there.
“You were always destined for the empty path, Vesper. But you’re the one who keeps choosing to walk it alone. The wind won’t stop howling all the time you keep kicking up a hurricane.”
“I said to speak clearly,” I grumbled.
“Fine.” Moya shoved to her feet suddenly and I craned my neck to look up at her in the gloom. “The Dragon was your offer of salvation. You fucked up.”
She turned and strode from the Close Space, leaving me with my face burning and shame eating into my insides.
“There is no salvation for the likes of me,” I called, scrambling after her, all too glad to leave the ominous presence in the Close Space behind me.
“Not now there isn’t,” she scoffed and my skin burned even hotter.
“You think I don’t understand the weight of what I did?” I demanded, harrying her out into the chamber which held the drying herbs and scarred table.
Moya shrugged. “Not yet you don’t, no matter how certainly you believe you do when pining away in loneliness in the dead of night.
Scorning all who offer you kindness won’t bring back the ones you’ve lost. And if you’re going to cut your own nose off to spite that pretty face of yours then at least let me have it to offer up in sacrifice next time. ”
I dropped onto the three-legged stool beside the table, releasing a choked noise which was half laugh, half sob. I was a fucking mess so who knew what it was, but it felt apt.
Moya pursed her lips as she assessed me, plucking a few bones from a glass jar on a cluttered shelf and tossing them onto the table before me so that I could see the runes carved into their yellowed edges.
“Thieves’ fingers?” I asked, not practiced enough in her arts to be able to read the meaning behind the way they’d been cast.
“Indeed,” she crooned, petting one of the bones like it was a beloved pet. “He stole a small fortune along with the heart of his brother’s wife. Quite the potent acquisition.”
“Indeed,” I echoed drolly, eyeing the bones with distaste. I supposed she may have left the man living without his fingers and maybe it had taught him a lesson in honour. Likely not though.
Moya waved a hand at the bones like she expected me to read them for her but I shrugged.
“You know I can’t–”
“Can and can’t are the chains which bind us all too often when really what we should be saying is will or won’t.”
When she put it that way she made my refusal sound like the petulance of a child so I bit down on my snarky retort and looked at the bones again, willing them to tell me something I didn’t already know.
“They’re…happy? No – pleased. Forget it, that’s insane–”
“Insanity is often where the greatest truths are found. You were right, they are pleased, or rather the ether is.”
“Ether isn’t sentient.”
“I never said it was.”
I held myself back against the temptation to argue over word choices with her.
Moya grinned at me proudly as if remembering all the times I’d come here in my youth only to rant and scream about the nonsensical way she spoke of the magic she wielded.
Moya was nothing if not full of contradictions but somehow her rambling always made sense if you sat with it long enough.
“The ley line?” I asked finally and she nodded.
“Keystone too.”
“I haven’t told you about any of this yet,” I protested and she shrugged.
“You don’t always have to tell me everything with words, you know?”
More nonsense, but fine. That saved me the hassle of explaining what I’d done.
“Okay, so I followed the call like you told me to and fixed a kink in the ley line. Problem solved.”
“Is it?” she mused and I huffed my irritation.
“Surely the ether can call on someone else if there is more work to be done on this? I have my own priorities.”
“The universe likes to distract us with personal dilemmas, they’re of little consequence–” Moya placed a hand out to stop my outburst at those words before it could begin, her eyes softening as she looked at me and moved around the table to caress my cheek.
“Please don’t mistake my words on the ether for a lack of compassion for your pain, Vesper.
You know one thing does not beget the other. ”
I nodded once but my throat was thick with emotion again and it took me several heartbeats to regain enough control to be able to speak clearly.
“I just want to uphold the vow I made to them. They’re the only true thing I’ve ever had and–”
“Listen to me, you need to stop with that bullshit and be honest with yourself. You aren’t lacking in love because you lost them.
You’re hiding from it like a wolf among dogs and I’ll tell you now that the pelt doesn’t fit you.
You want good things in this world then it’s up to you to claim them.
And don’t come moping to me when you fuck them up for yourself instead.
I’ve never been one to stand by that tendency for self-destruction in you.
I never let you listen to those fools in fine armour who claimed to be better than you and I won’t stand here and watch you convince yourself that the choices you’ve made were the only ones available to you.
Own your shit. And don’t come back here until you have. Your energy is tainting my walls.”
“Bitch,” I muttered with a soft smile as I pushed to my feet and she curtsied in her ragged dress at the compliment.
“The dark still whispers your name, Vesper Crossborn,” Moya called as I headed for the exit.
“It’s General Vesper Dragonsbane now, haven’t you heard?” I sneered and she snorted like that was the biggest joke she’d heard all year.
“Like fuck it is. You are and forever will be Crossborn, my girl. And don’t ever let them believe there’s anything but power in the truth of it.”
I nodded, uncertain why I was smiling over those words but she wasn’t done with me yet.
“Listen to the dark – it’s no more done with you than you are with it. Blood runs downhill!” she warned.
“You told me that before.”
“And you have a job to do whether you want to admit it or not. So maybe this time, you’ll listen.”