TWO
Angharad
Living with the man while he was awake was a rather jarring experience.
She had lived alone for more than a decade, ever since her aunt passed away from a seizure of the heart.
Aunt Merowyn had been a great healer, and had sheltered Hara after her escape from Montag as a child.
Merowyn’s brusque manner was so different from Hara’s own gentle mother, with few sweet words to spare for the foundling child.
The year after Hara’s escape had been dark, and she was often sullen and meek, homesick for her mother and unwilling to learn Merowyn’s brand of healing magic.
She found Merowyn’s practice of herblore to be a low and dull use of magic.
Anyone, witch or common folk, could pick herbs and learn to mix powders and potions.
Hara was accustomed to sharp pens and smooth vellum, spending hours in her tutor’s solar working on formulas and reading magical theory.
Life in the cottage was less structured.
Hara whined when Merowyn would rouse her to pick certain herbs at all hours of the night, and she rolled her eyes when Merowyn would whisper thanks to the twigs and leaves.
Then she began to see them work.
They caused fevers to break and babies to recover from croups.
Wounds healed without scars and pain melted away.
Over time, she and her aunt grew a mutual understanding of each other, and while Hara did not have a calling towards healing the way Merowyn did, Hara’s compassion grew under her aunt’s tutelage.
When Merowyn passed away, the entire village attended her funeral pyre to pay their respects for her healing services, and Hara finally understood the importance of her aunt’s work.
Though healing did not come naturally to Hara, she felt honor bound to keep her aunt’s memory alive, and so she continued to offer remedies to the village.
It was the best way she knew to honor the woman who had sheltered her and healed so many.
Hara was accustomed to doing her spellwork in peace, but Gideon’s cold gaze never seemed to leave her as she performed her most innocent of rituals.
It created a tense energy that she found discomforting in her home.
The very air tasted of mistrust and suspicion, but she had to admit, it was not entirely one-sided.
This man was clearly a rogue, willing to snatch people against their will for his own ends.
But aside from that, he was cold and cutting and generally unpleasant.
With every grimace and sharp remark he made toward her, she rather enjoyed the idea that her teaching had been used to make him suffer.
Under normal circumstances, she believed in letting the natural order of the world settle its just rewards.
But she could still revel in the rare times when justice was swift.
Hara wondered whether Alexandra had made it back to her husband in the village.
She searched for her friend’s influence, and relief touched her when she saw that Alexandra had indeed returned home and was currently snowed in like many in the village.
The relief was quickly dispelled by awkwardness when she saw glimpses of how they were passing their time trapped indoors, and she decided that was all the assurance she needed that Alexandra was well.
If Hara hadn’t guessed that Gideon was royalty or close to it by his jewelry and dyed hair, she would have guessed it from his haughty, sulking manner.
He spent much of his time huddled in a ball facing away from the rest of the room—asleep or awake, she did not know.
She wondered if even the sight of her humble cottage was too much for him to bear.
When he wasn’t eating, he seemed determined to forget where he was while he was trapped by snow and illness.
Three times a day, she gave him bone broth and bread, which he took silently.
His fever finally broke on the sixth day, but his heel was still badly bruised and half-healed.
“When can I walk?”
he said as she examined him, making the question sound like a demand.
His accent was aristocratic, but it carried a hint of northern sharpness.
Hara wondered wryly to herself if this was the first time he’d ever been inconvenienced in his life.
“Perhaps in another week you may go without the walking stick.
It will be painful, but the wounds will be closed.
You will still have to wear a bandage.”
Gideon groaned and put his hands over his face.
“I can make it easier,”
she said.
“But you have to accept the magic.”
“Easier said than done,”
he said.
“Fine. Do what you must.”
“It won’t work as well if you’re being stubborn.”
“Why not?” he said.
“Because I cannot concentrate with you whingeing,”
she said, closing her eyes.
She began whispering over his wound, circling the air surrounding his ankle with turns of her wrists.
It was a tricky little spell that relieved pain, and even after years of practice, she still had to focus on timing each syllable with the right movement.
He started, and she thought he must have felt the numbness entering the wound.
Then his muscles relaxed, and she almost felt the relief shivering through his body as the pain melted away.
She let out a deep, slow stream of breath, and opened her eyes.
Perhaps she was being unfair.
Not for the first time, she wondered if his sourness and melancholy were actually caused by grief.
Her own flesh seemed to burn with the memory of the wolf cutting him down in her vision, knowing that the others in his party had not been so lucky as one by one their voices fell silent in the surrounding woods.
No spell could numb that pain, but words might.
“What happened to your men?”
she asked softly.
Gideon
He looked away from her, debating with himself whether to tell her to leave him be or to answer.
“What do you care?”
He spat instead.
“Because you’re snapping at me when you’re upset about something else. I want you to tell me about it.”
She said in her annoyingly composed voice.
She probably knew enough from her scrying anyway. He could not abide a sniveling do-gooder nosing into his affairs, but somehow, her air of indifference loosened the set of his shoulders. He had spent so much time retracing that night, and he was nearly mad with boredom; he may as well indulge in conversation.
“My men and I were weak. Exhausted, ill, poisoned. The wench set our horses free, so we were without provisions. We set off on foot and marched all day without food or water. We were denied even the comforts of a fire when night fell,”
said Gideon.
He stared at the faded pattern on the quilt as he recounted the night of terror.
“We heard the wolves howling, but we thought they were far enough away that we could disperse and spread out the scent. But then they were on us, and my men . . . ”
His throat felt sharp and he swallowed.
“Gone. Three men I’ve known since my training days.”
“Were they related to you?”
she asked.
“Harris was my cousin. But the others were close men-at-arms.”
She studied him from the foot of the bed with an uncomfortably probing look.
“Come here,”
she said suddenly, leaning forward and tugging him into her arms. His body was so stiff with shock that he didn’t think to push her away. She rubbed her hand along his tense back muscles and patted him there as though he were a small child.
“What are you doing?”
he said, his voice terse.
“I am a healer, and you are hurt.”
Her voice was intimate against his neck, a warm thrum he felt in his flesh. She held him for a few long moments, slightly rocking him, and Gideon felt a great tiredness settle over him. Then she began to whisper, and this time, he could hear what she was saying.
“All is part of a cycle. Grief cradles you, loneliness shrouds you. Remember it. All is part of a cycle.”
A weight seemed to be lifted from his heart, the relief so great it was almost physical.
How could relief ache so deeply? His shoulders slumped under her touch, and he felt them quiver uncontrollably as hot tears finally seeped from under his burning eyelids.
His face crumpled in pain, and her shoulder grew damp.
As soon as he realized this, he mastered himself, blinking them away.
They were nonsense words, trite platitudes. He felt like a colossal fool to let them affect him, even for a moment. He wouldn’t give this witch the satisfaction of wetting her shoulder.
When he pulled away, her eyes were warm. His bitterness abated slightly, and he took steady breaths.
“I know it hurts now. Let it hurt, because it is important. They were important,”
she said.
“This grief is like your fever. It hurts, but it is serving a purpose.”
“And your mad whispers are the willow-bark tea to my grief?”
he said, relieved to hear the convincing scoff in his voice. He did not want her to know her nonsense had almost reached him.
She smiled.
“I hope so.”
The woman seemed busy from sunup to sundown.
She did the normal chores that he supposed all peasants must do, like drawing water and caring for her animals.
But it seemed that she was used to living on her own because she did heavy labor as well.
She was able to carry two large buckets back and forth from the well with little difficulty and returned from the woods with game.
She was not completely without help, however.
One day, Gideon glanced outside and watched as a burly man with fair hair cleaved a log with an impressive swing of her ax, then stacked it under her rain shed.
The man never came inside the cottage, but when they spoke, Angharad’s face often lifted in a flirtatious grin.
Once he playfully twirled the end of her braid, and she laughed and touched the man’s beefy arm.
Well.
He must have some wit about him, despite his simple appearance.
Or the witch was easily charmed by the local rubes, which seemed more likely.
Gideon turned from the window, slightly annoyed by their laughter.
Since waking in the cottage he’d done an assessment of his missing personal effects, and felt a brief burst of panic when he realized that his folio of reports was missing.
Then he spied the leather pouch sitting on a chair.
When the witch was out, he hobbled to the chair and snatched it up, rifling through the papers.
Luckily they were all accounted for, and they appeared undisturbed.
Gideon fastened the pouch securely around his waist under his clothing.
He made it a habit to keep top secret material close to his person while he traveled, and he shuddered to think what would have happened if they had been kept in the saddlebags of his wandering mount.
In the wrong hands, they would prove to be disastrous.
Some days, Angharad spent long hours outdoors; doing what, he did not know.
Probably embracing trees and whispering spells against the bark.
She would come back with a dreamy calmness about her, which he found eerie.
He had never met someone so utterly serene.
No one enjoyed mucking out a chicken coop or sweeping cinders from a hearth, but she did.
One thing he had to grudgingly admit: her cooking was delicious.
He was woken every morning with the sizzle of herbs and onions being tossed into a hot pan and the mouthwatering smells that followed.
Once she caught him eyeing her meal over his own bowl of plain broth.
With a knowing smile, she spooned up some of the spicy stew she had made.
The flavors were rich and unlike anything he had tasted before.
At least some of the thousand and one plants she tended were useful for something.
His stomach felt properly full for the first time in days, and he secretly wished for seconds.
As icy rains transformed the snow to mush, she performed more indoor tasks.
Her absurd indoor garden needed to be watered and pruned often, and she actually spoke to the plants as she did so.
He clamped the pillow about his ears to block out her murmurings when he was trying to nap.
There always seemed to be laundry, and he watched her haul endless buckets of water to heat in her giant cauldron.
She scrubbed at the linens until the loose tendrils of hair stuck to her neck and her face was shiny with moisture.
The loom clacked often, making his head pound, and she was sometimes interrupted in her work as a knock would come at the door.
Villagers came to her with all manner of ailments; headaches, sore backs, indigestion.
Hara would go to her many plants and pluck a stalk here, a few leaves there, all dropped into her mortar and pestle.
The sharp smells of herbs would fill the cottage, or sometimes smoke.
The medicine would then be bottled or wrapped in a scrap of linen, and the villager would be on their way.
Gideon made sure to bundle himself up in the bed whenever a visitor came, turning his face to the wall in case any Lenwen men were searching for him.
Sometimes the villagers even came to her with romantic trouble.
“Take this candle and burn it tonight after sunset,”
said Hara to a teenage girl with blonde hair and a round, tear-stained face. She passed a candle that had been rolled in herbs to the girl.
“Watch the flame and say: ‘boundless love I entreat.’ It is impossible to turn someone’s head when they are in love with another, but this spell will help you see your choices clearly.”
The girl thanked her with a slight sniffle and went on her way.
“You give them candles and nonsense words and they believe that’s magic?”
said Gideon, making his way slowly to the door by leaning on his walking crutch.
“I’m curious what you think magic is,”
said Hara with a scowl.
“Much of it is getting into the right mindset for the spell to work properly. Rituals provide comfort.”
“Why can’t she use any old candle?”
“She could try and use any old kitchen candle, I suppose,”
“If she can use any candle, then what is the point?”
He said.
“Why come to you?”
“If you have become stuck in one way of living for too long, it becomes confusing to separate your thoughts from reality. It helps to have an external source to turn to, and my spells are made with intention.”
It sounded like sentimental tosh. But the coin to be made from gullible bumpkins was real.
“And how much money do you earn from your spells? Two silver guilds for your cure for piles? A penny for a love potion?”
“I don’t make money from it,”
she said quietly, turning away from him.
“They come to me when they cannot pay for the apothecary.”
He was mildly shocked by this.
“Then how do you live?”
“If I need help the village offers it. Otherwise I take care of myself.”
“But you could make a fortune doing this. Fixing problems no one else can fix.”
“Careful now—it almost sounds as though you respect my magic,”
she said with a sidelong glance at him. Then she continued.
“I have no desire to make a fortune. The payment I receive is a man from the village coming to help thatch my roof when it leaks, or a woman caring for my animals if I am away from my home. A service for a service.”
Gideon immediately thought of the fair-haired man, and he wondered what she had done for him to earn his wood chopping.
As if his thoughts had summoned him, a knock sounded at the door. Hara rose to answer it, and Gideon caught a glimpse of the burly oaf before she walked out the door and closed it.
He collapsed back on his pillows with a huff. The sun had set, and they had finished their evening meal. What business could the man want at this hour?
Gideon glanced out the window just in time to see Hara reach up on her toes, her mouth meeting the visitor’s. The man wrapped his arms around her waist and Gideon felt a curious heat crest behind his eyes. Acid churned in his belly as though he had eaten something rancid.
When she returned to the cottage alone, her cheeks were pink and her lips were reddened. The sour feeling persisted, but Gideon ignored it. It was no affair of his, he reminded himself. She could let anyone engulf her face that she pleased, no matter how much the fellow resembled a boar that had learned to walk upright.
Hara went to the table to gather up the plates. Gideon felt restless. He was tired of feeling so helpless while she worked from sunup to well past sundown. He sat up in bed, took up his crutch, and hobbled to her side.
“What can I do?” he asked.
Hara looked at him with some surprise, which gave him a twinge of discomfort for being such a useless guest. No, that was absurd; he had not asked to be brought here. He had no cause to feel anything but generous for offering his help.
“Well . . . you can fill two basins with warm water,” she said.
He maneuvered himself to the cauldron and drew up the basins.
“You can rinse and dry,”
she said, handing him a soapy dish. He did as she said, and they worked quietly side by side. Simply for something to talk about, he felt some of the burning questions he’d harbored begin to surface—namely, finding out why she needed the help of tall, muscular neighbors.
“Why don’t you use magic to make your chores easier?”
he asked.
“Surely you can enchant these plates so that they never become dirty. Or you could multiply the wood in your shed so you don’t have to split any. Why don’t you?”
“All this work comes at a cost, you know. Whenever I perform a spell, I become fatigued and I need to recover. If I magicked my way through the daily chores, I’d fall dead asleep until sundown the next day, so I have to be selective. Besides,”
she said.
“There is value in completing something from beginning to end. It creates appreciation for the cycle of things. First we serve food on a clean plate, then we enjoy our meal, then we wash it, and the plate is clean again. There’s magic in cycles.”
This was on the stupider end of things he had heard deserved appreciation, but he said nothing.
They were quiet for a time, washing and rinsing. Gideon’s arm gently nudged hers, and he shifted slightly to put space between them. Other than the regular bandage changes, Gideon tried to avoid touching her if he could. Not out of fear, but because he was disconcerted by the prickles that formed along his skin at her touch. They weren’t altogether unpleasant, which alarmed him most of all.
The cat, who he had heard Hara call Seraphine, perched above them on one of her wooden pedestals. Keeping well away from the splashing water, he thought. It watched him with unblinking eyes.
“Your cat won’t stop looking at me. All day, she just perches and stares.”
“She finds you dodgy.”
said Hara with a shrug of her shoulders.
“We aren’t sure what to make of you yet.”
“We? Is she your . . . ”
He tried to remember the word he had heard for animals with special connections to their masters.
“Familiar? Yes. We were born in the same year, and she has been my companion ever since.”
“But . . . ”
He looked up at the cat again. It seemed young and sprightly.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty years. How old are you?”
“Six and twenty.”
She smiled.
“I’m your elder.”
“So this cat is thirty years old? What happens if either of you dies, does the other follow?”
“She will expire when I do, yes. Her life is longer to match mine. I told you I was selective about how I use my power.”
Hara smiled up at Seraphine, who blinked slowly down at her, purring.
His mistrust and disbelief began to transform into awe. What were the limits of her power?
“Where did you learn all this?”
“Some abilities are natural and some must be taught. I am a natural Seer, but I had to learn how to heal. My aunt taught me her skills before she died. She could have healed you in half the time.”
Hara’s voice became softer as she scrubbed.
“My mother was a great Seer.”
From her tone, he guessed her mother was no longer a part of her life, but she did not seem willing to elaborate.
“And your father?”
“I do not know him. Witches seldom do.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re largely solitary, and many of us do not find marriage agreeable.”
“But then . . . ”
“That does not mean we are celibate,”
Hara laughed.
“We take lovers, when it pleases us.”
That explained the blonde oaf. Curiosity burned in him despite himself; how many others were there?
“You are shocked,”
said Hara.
“The man from earlier . . . ”
he said, his thoughts scolding all the while to shut up and not reveal his festering need to hear her deny it. Not that he was interested, of course, but because he found it hard to believe the burly brute was to her taste.
“Samwell Thorn,”
she said with a smile.
“He’s a good man. Widowed some years past, and we’ve been good friends.”
“He seems . . . provincial,”
said Gideon lightly. Shut up, you colossal fool.
She cut her eyes to him with disdain.
“He suits me well. I’ve never liked worldly men,”
She said.
“Too fond of euphemisms.”
He ignored her barbed comment.
“No children?”
“No, and he won’t get any from me. Penny royal and stoneseed root do the trick. It’s very popular with the women in the village. I may want a child someday, but for now, all I need is Seraphine.”
The cat leaped from its perch and went to curl before the fire. She glanced at him as though she knew she was being watched, then she blinked slowly and went to sleep.
Other than blunt exchanges focused on his injuries, this was their first real conversation. It had been so long since he’d properly spoken to another person, and despite himself, he was curious about the witch. Thankfully Hara seemed to share his curiosity.
“And what of you, my lord? No wife?” she said.
He was brought back from his musings about Hara being tangled up with Samwell Thorn in the very bed he had been occupying for weeks.
“No.”
“Why? Doesn’t your sort usually go for marriage as soon as possible?”
“‘My sort’?”
“Nobility. Royalty. Men.”
“How do you know I’m noble?”
With a wet, soapy hand, she reached over to him. His breath caught in his throat, not knowing where her finger would land, but then he felt her touch the silver in his ear.
“Everything about you speaks of courtly fashions,”
she said, indicating his hair and his fine cloak hanging by the door.
“It doesn’t bother you, does it? The silver?”
he asked. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. Everyone knew that witches disliked silvery metals, iron in particular. Had she been in discomfort all this time?
Her eyes lingered on him for a moment, as though surprised, and then she shook her head.
“No. Silver doesn’t bother me. Nor does iron, not much,”
she said, and he noticed a curious rise of pink on her cheeks. Then she turned back to the washing.
“Hasn’t your father looked for a good match for his son to marry?”
It was not his father who pressed him to marry with dogged determination. His mother had tried to push him towards one wealthy so-and-so’s daughter or another, but Gideon had evaded them all. After the last embarrassing instance of his mother trying to force a match between him and someone he actually admired, he was put off on the idea of marriage entirely.
“My marriage is a matter of strategy, and a good enough opportunity has not come along.”
“What sort of opportunity? How important does she need to be?”
The truth was there were any number of young women at court who would satisfy his family’s need to uphold their good standing, but he had his own set of standards.
“Lands. I tried the ransom route, but now I fear I must consider matrimony.”
Hara snorted.
“It says much about you that you’d rather abduct and ransom a woman for lands than to get married. And what it says isn’t good.”
“I suppose that’s one thing I have in common with hedgewitches. I also do not find marriage agreeable.”
“Why? The idea of someone to warm your bed each night and give you heirs is unappealing?”
“I simply don’t have the time. I travel often.”
His father was always on the lookout for trading and business opportunities, and Gideon was his eyes and ears to roam the neighboring kingdoms and bring back word of wars and strife that may require their goods. Sowing the strife was his father’s job.
“But if you only married for the lady’s lands, then why do you care?”
said Hara.
“She could live in comfort at home and you can do what you like.”
“You sound like my mother,”
he said. There was no one he was beholden to, and he preferred to keep it that way.
“The last thing I need is another person to nag at me when I go home.”
“Where is home?”
“North.”
“North . . . are you from Montag?”
Her uncanny ability to guess or See the truth was stronger than his will to lie.
“Yes. I am the son of Commander Leofrick Falk.”
“Commander Falk?”
said Hara, dropping the plate she held into the soapy basin.
Gideon realized too late that she may have heard of his father, who was a high ranking member of Empirator Corvus’ court.
Gideon swore softly; he had not expected her to be familiar with the nobility of Montag, but judging by her reaction, she had heard the name before.
Now she knew exactly who he was.
After a short pause, Hara collected herself and spoke softly.
“I won’t tell anyone,”
she said, going back to her task.
“I thank you. There’s a certain Lenwen king that may be out and about looking to throw me in his dungeons.”
“I would not turn over my dish washing assistant. Those are hard to come by,”
she said, wiping her hands on her apron.
Her tone was lighthearted, but she seemed a bit agitated, the tentative warmth of the conversation suddenly gone cold.
And Gideon could understand why.
For generations Montag had been ruled by sorcerers—the Ilmarinen family.
Their whims and mercurial tempers resulted in vendettas that none could stop.
They were said to have power over the very wind and the seas, and that they could make the earth shudder with naught but their hands.
That was until Empirator Corvus staged a coup and overthrew the Ilmarinens twenty years ago, with Gideon’s father at his side.
Leofrick Falk was notorious for his prejudice against magic-kind.
In the years since he had come to power, witches were slowly and subtly pushed to the fringes of society in Montag.
Surely this knowledge had reached the common folk here in Norwen, a country with sorcerers in high, respected positions at court.
For a moment Gideon felt compelled to say something to her—but what could he say? Anything he said would sound disingenuous, especially after the short-tempered way he had behaved since waking in her cottage.
She must think him just as bigoted as the others at court, and perhaps he was.
Hadn’t he let one bad experience with dark herblore cloud his judgment of her?
Shame, an unfamiliar emotion in Gideon’s limited repertoire, settled deep in his gut like nausea.
They finished washing the dishes in silence.
When they were done, he took the basins and tossed the water outside.
Hara brewed him a tea that had been helping him sleep these past few nights, and he sipped it while she undressed for bed.
She had done this the past several nights without care, and he had made a point to avoid looking at her while she was in her shift after that first night.
It made him uncomfortable to see her so vulnerable, so .
.
.
womanly. It was easier to reconcile her in his mind as Angharad the Hedgewitch if she were fully dressed. But now, his eyes drifted in a subtle slant as he paid closer attention.
The way the fabric of her shift pulled taut over her hips and thighs as she knelt to fold her skirts.
The hint of shoulder that was revealed as the garment was pulled askew.
She straightened it, and then sat upon the nest of blankets before the hearth.
With nimble fingers, she loosened the braids that were pinned up to her scalp.
The chestnut waves tumbled free, a dark river glinting in the firelight.
He caught that fragrance again, the sweetness of mint and flowers mixed with her warmth.
With a start, Gideon realized his breathing had quickened as he watched her, and an uncomfortable tightening was building between his legs.
Damn.
He must be truly losing his wits from being confined in this cottage if he was suggestible to disheveled witches.
He drank the rest of his tea in two big swallows, and then he laid upon the bed, turning away from the fire.
He closed his eyes and tried to think of anything other than what it would be like for his hands to entangle in those fragrant waves, his firm grasp tipping back Angharad’s head to bare her neck to his mouth.