23. Brennen
brENNEN
The ride to the village is short, but it gives me time to think. To calm my mind and prepare for what I need to do next.
I’m just about to walk through the doors to the Tavern when Harold catches my arm. “Brennen, a word?” he says, shuffling foot to foot, his eyes darting around nervously. I look around to confirm there are no threats, even though my dàn of warning remains silent.
“Everything alright?” I ask.
“Och, Fine. I um— Am I correct in thinking you’d like to gather information on the Washwoman?”
He doesn’t wait for my answer, instead turning to walk in the direction of his house. I follow, allowing him to continue his nervous rambling.
“You see, I need to do what’s right, I think.” He wrings his hands together. “The Washwoman. Well, she’s the reason my wife died. I ken Theo doesnae think so. You probably dinnae either, but I saw her that night. I know it was her.”
I take several long strides to catch up to him. “Theo said Isla had been sick for some time—”
“Aye. She was ill. But she didnae pass until the Washwoman appeared.” His voice cracks. “I saw her standing at our garden gate. Right here, watching.”
He stops just outside the gate, turning to me. “You seem like a good man, Brennen. So I’m going to show you something and trust that you will do what’s right with it.”
With a deep breath, he opens the gate and leads me straight into his house. It’s cozy inside, with touches of his late wife everywhere. In the scalloped edges of the curtains and the floral teapot sitting by the hearth. In the dried flowers hanging above it.
“Would you like tea?” he asks, but I shake my head, too interested in what’s got him so on edge.
“Right, then.” He hesitates for another long moment before moving to the bookshelf and pulling out what looks to be an old leather journal. It creaks as his fingers grip it, hesitating again, but he meets my eyes and hands it to me.
Immediately, I feel it. The reason he was so nervous.
Magic, buzzing within the fibers of the parchment. The binding.
“Harold—”
“I know it’s a risk, having it.”
“A risk? It’s illegal—”
“It’s been in my family for centuries, and there’s nothing dangerous in it. Look for yourself. Honestly, I can’t even bloody read half of it.”
I flip open the cover of the spellbook, running my fingers along the name scratched into the first page. Benjamin Treestrom.
“Why are you giving me this? You know I’m honor-bound to report it. Do you want Cailleach coming here? She’ll think a ceatharnaich group is forming. Or that you’re—”
“That I’m what?” he asks, voice sharp. “That I’m a sentimental old man who wants to hold onto something of his da’s?
He asked me to keep it safe before he died.
I vowed to him I would, and I’ll no be breaking it.
It was written by his da. And his before that, and on and on for generations.
It’s my family’s history. A few spells to help us survive the cruel winters here. ”
“Spells that have been eradicated, and for good reason. Spells you have no business performing.”
“And why not? Because the Fates deem it so? Because they want to control all magic and leave none for the rest of us?”
I stiffen at his treasonous words.
“Now, you’ll not find a ceatharnaich group here.
Frankly, all we want here is to be left alone.
But I am an honest man, and while I have resigned myself to live peacefully under the rule of the Fates, it doesnae mean I have to agree with them.
And it certainly doesnae mean I’ll allow them to pull wool over my eyes. I’d rather go blind.”
My lungs seem to go stiff, discomfort filling the space between them. I dinnae want to turn the old man in for his words. Not when he’s shown me such kindness. “You know why the Fates control magic, Harold. What happened when they didn’t?” I say, hoping I can make him see reason.
“I know what they say happened—”
I cut him off before he can say something even more incriminating. “Wars. Death. That’s what happened. People are hungry for power, and when they have too much of it, they abuse it.”
“The Fates must be starving, then.”
His sentence slams directly into my chest, and I shake my head, remembering the stories I’ve read about the time before the Fates. A time of greed, when magic went unchecked completely, and to get it, you had to take it. “There’s a reason they control what power is given to each of us.”
He holds my gaze, but doesn’t seem convinced.
I sigh, swallowing down my frustration.
He taps the book. “You and I want the same thing, Brennen. That’s all this is. It is my job to protect the people of this village. I want the Washwoman dead. I willnae allow her to take another soul.”
He opens the book to the middle. “Somewhere around here, the Washwoman came. My family wrote about her, generations ago.” He flips until he reaches a water-stained page. Slanted handwriting fills it, the letters cramped as if whoever wrote them was preserving paper.
We attempted to drown her today. Held her underwater for near an hour, just to be certain she was well and truly gone.
When she floated to the top, her lips and skin were blue, the whites of her eyes bloodshot.
We thought we’d finally done it. And then, the creature rose from the dead before our verra eyes.
Water poured from her lungs, blood dripping from her nose.
It was unnatural. But even more, it shows her true wicked nature.
My stomach turns sour, but I take the book from Harold’s hands and force myself to keep reading.
Burned the Washwoman. The fire made her skin bubble, but it never progressed past that. The inferno was so hot, we couldn’t stand within two dragons of her. It burned out after half a day, but in the ashes, the Washwoman remained. Once again, she didnae die.
I almost drop the journal, so I grip it tighter, knuckles white.
Stabbed, over a hundred times.
Attempted with swords—
Daggers—
Dirks—
Axes—
The list goes on and on, and my hands tremble with rage, the taste of bile coating my tongue threatening to bring the contents of my stomach up. I picture Marsaili. All the blood that had poured from the single wound in her neck. To be stabbed so many times, it must have been agony.
Slit her throat to the bone—
Poisoned her with belladonna—
Stoning—
I snap the book closed, rubbing my forehead, unable to stomach another word.
“Brennen?” Harold’s voice comes from somewhere verra far away, hard to hear over the rush of blood in my ears.
I close my eyes, trying not to picture the brutality of what the Washwoman endured. When I’d pulled my dagger earlier, she hadn’t even flinched. Hadn’t cowered away from it.
Now I see why. It was nothing compared to what’s been done to her before.
“This is—” my voice comes out as a growl, and I clear my throat. “This is savage. Ruthless.”
“The lass is a murderer!” Harold says, incredulous.
“Aye. So you torture her for decades? A century? She deserves death for her crimes. But a clean death. Not… Not this.” I shake the book with disgust. “This isn’t justice. It’s bloody sadism. It’s…”
I can’t finish the thought, because how else could I describe it, other than pure evil?
I open the book again, finding the final entry.
Consulted texts lent to me by scribes. Those with the immortality dàn cannot die by conventional means, but the runes themselves are vulnerable.
Destroy the rune, destroy the power. We carved the dàn from her skin, but it appeared even in the layers below her flesh, down to the bone. It appears the texts were incorrect.
My vision goes black at the edges as I imagine the unfathomable pain actions as violent as this would have caused. They hadn't just tried to kill her. They’d carved the verra flesh from her body. Through muscle and bone. Did she beg for death then?
Harold keeps talking, but I barely hear him. My mind is spinning, my thoughts circling like the deep blue dragon above the glen, constantly dancing in the hazy sky.
These people had tortured the Washwoman beyond belief. Drowned her. Burned her and stabbed her and slit her throat to the bone—and she was forced to survive it. To wake up and face something even worse the next day.
No one deserves that kind of torment.
And it wasn’t these villagers' right to enact it. This—what’s written on these pages—isn’t the punishment the Washwoman was sentenced to by the Fates. She was sentenced to wash the clothes of the dead, not to be endlessly tortured.
I lift the book. “I cannae condone this.”
“No one asked you to. It cannae be taken back.” Harold straightens.
“Then why show it to me?”
Harold points to the page. “Because it will help you. You say she cannae be killed? My granda didnae believe it, and neither do I.”
I force myself to focus on his words, though my thoughts are still tangled. “The Cutter herself said—”
“And does the Cutter always tell the truth?”
His question hangs between us for a moment, heavy as a stone, then falls. The first drop of rain landing on a loch’s surface, ripples spreading outward.
Does she?
She sent me here to kill the Washwoman, knowing it’s impossible. If even she cannae kill her, how does she expect me to?
Harold must see the change in my expression.
“You see it. Don’t you? Magic isn’t absolute. Power doesn’t work like that. You can extend a life, but every spell, every curse, must have a way to break it. There is no true immortality.”
I freeze. Immortality. The words in the journal finally register in my mind. Those with the immortality dàn cannot die by conventional means, but the runes themselves are vulnerable.
“Is that why she cannae die? Because she has an immortality dàn?” I ask.
Harold nods, and my chest tightens. “If that’s true, why would the Cutter not have told me about it?”
His eyes flash with pity, and it fills me with rage. I am a Dìdeanair of the highest order. A warrior who has earned his magic. And yet, he looks at me as if I’ve been wearing a blindfold my entire life.