11. Sorceress
SORCERESS
When I woke the sorceress was back. She sat on the ground in front of the fire, an earthen cup in her hands. “Grezha stepped out for a bit,” she said. “There’s a mother needs tending.”
“She’s your midwife?” I sat up. It felt foolish to be lying there in a blanket.
“She’s a lot.” She was motionless, her hands on the cup.
I felt like an animal approaching a hunter, but this was also the woman who’d cried outside the window. “I’m sorry.” I swallowed. “I was rude to you.”
“You were afraid.” Her lips were a thin line, her eyes still on the cup. “People lash out when they’re afraid.”
“I’m still afraid.” I clenched the blanket. “But I’d like to ask questions, if you’d let me.”
The orcs’ sorceress nodded.
“How…how do you know my husband?” The word was alien on my tongue.
“He and my Khal were comrades in arms. I met him when I met Khal.”
“And Khal is the one with…” “with the horrible scars” sounded wrong. “...he’s the man you belong to?”
“We’re married.”
So these people did marriage. They weren’t the Droth. “You have both your ears?”
“What?” She frowned. “Yes.” She pushed her hair back.
My pulse started to slow. “You said Khal. Vrathgar mentioned a Khal. That he learned Common from his father.” I felt like I was going to be sick, from relief, or maybe horror, I wasn’t sure. “You're his shield-brother’s wife.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you think I’m safe here.”
“Yes.”
I looked out the warped and blurred window, gathering myself. I didn’t want to cry in front of her, whatever this week had been like.
“I know what it’s like,” she blurted, “to have decisions taken out of your hands. So I don’t want to tell you everything is going to be okay.
” Her face flushed. I wondered again if she was a prisoner, but no.
Who could keep a sorceress prisoner? Her man’s voice had sounded somewhat gentle, at least. “There will be trouble because you're here. It’s not widely accepted to bring in people like us.”
“Like us?” I tensed. Did she mean wielders of power? But mine was negligible.
“Humans.” Some recognition sparked in her eyes. “But if you have power, I would keep it to yourself, for now.”
My mind was running and running and getting nowhere, like a dog leashed to a stake.
She continued. “There are going to be people who argue that Vrathgar has broken a law. There will be people arguing that he has to prove you are married, and people arguing that you or he need to leave the Drashik.”
“What’s the Drashik?”
“We’re the Drashik.” She chewed on her lip. “Did he tell you nothing?”
My neck warmed with humiliation.
“It’s not important.” She swallowed. “I’m here, and Khal and I and Grezha are going to make sure nothing happens to you.
But if there’s a fight, or a trial, or people threaten him or you, I don’t want it to come out of nowhere.
I—" She flinched again, and she looked away, like she couldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“You said earlier that you wanted to see Vrathgar. Do you still want to?”
The fire crackled. I clenched the quilt in my fist. “Yes.”
“I’ll take you to him. Let’s get you changed and I’ll walk with you.”
“Changed into what?” I didn’t mean to sound so brittle. I didn’t mean to scoot farther back on the bed.
“I brought…” She trailed off. The bundle on her lap looked like a similar fabric to her own attire. Her own boldly indecent attire.
“I will wear my own clothes.”
“You have Vrathgar’s blood on your dress.”
“No it isn't. I didn't stab him.”
She stared.
I curled back. “It isn't his.” The fabric, crusted with reddish brown, chafed against my skin. “It's fine.”
“Don't you want something clean? We could wash your dress. You won't lose it.”
“I married one orc,” I could hear myself get shrill, gritted my teeth. “I did not…agree to show my body to all of them. Please just…show me where he is.”
Her lips pursed together. She nodded. “Stay with me,” she said.
“Don’t talk to anyone.” She hesitated, and then took the dress she had carried, the barely-there dress, and draped it over my shoulders like a shawl, tugged it to cover some of the blood that stained the front of me.
She held the door open behind her, and I followed.
Twilight bathed a strange world, and I realized why the midwife's home hadn’t had corners.
The homes here seemed to be built into the earth, with grass growing over them, some into the sides of the massive trees that grew up toward a pocket of sky high above.
Something was glowing in the branches, in the moss underfoot. Glowworms? Fireflies?
“Stay close to me,” she said. “We’re probably safe, but I wouldn’t like to burn anyone alive.” I didn’t know where that option came from, or whether it was a threat.
She walked quickly, bouncing in nervous steps, her eyes always scanning.
I was slow, still weak from the cursed fever, and she stopped frequently so I could catch up, her fingers tapping restlessly at her side.
The light waned, the glow all around us becoming the main source of illumination, but her direction didn’t falter.
When she saw me stumble again she took my hand.
“This way. Careful.” We were climbing wide, uneven steps, towards what looked like a door in a wall of rock.
“Zhana, it’s us! We’re here.” The door swung open in front of us, and a tall, lanky figure was silhouetted against the light, head just brushing the doorframe.
The sorceress hissed something in Orcish, and kept her body between me and the newcomer as she drew me inside. The orc stepped back, a lean, boyish face.
“Tyralk!” she spat. “I told you to stay back! I’m not trying to scare her.”
The tall one, long hair pulled back, raised his hands. “Mom is in the back. And I’m not scaring anyone! I’m the least scary person here.”
“You are plenty frightening, you’re ridiculously tall—"
“You could roast me like a game rabbit!”
“She doesn’t know that!”
His eyes met mine, a sad, lopsided smile. “Hello, new sister-in-law.”
I didn’t know if I was supposed to bow, or nod. I whispered, “Hello.”
The low ceiling was hung with cooking pots and knives and strings of drying mushrooms, and the tall one, Tyralk, had to duck and weave a little as we followed him. The man from Grezha’s, Khal, was sitting by a fireplace sunk in the center of the room’s floor, stood to greet us. And beside the fire—
I let go of the sorceress to rush into the pit and drop next to Vrathgar’s blanket-draped form. He was breathing. There was color in his lips again. The bandages across his chest and shoulder were fresh.
“You brought her here,” Rowena’s orc rumbled behind me.
Her voice was tight. “She wanted to see him.”
I put my hand on Vrathgar’s cheek, not knowing why I shook. Flushed, but no fever.
He was going to live. He’d be okay.
“How is the wound on his thigh?” I asked, still slightly hoarse.
“Healing,” the sorceress’s orc answered, “though it had to be cut open and cleaned.”
“That makes sense. We didn’t have the means to clean it, and we had to stop the bleeding, so I sewed…” I snapped my jaw shut.
The tall one lowered himself into the circle of seats, some distance away, like he was trying to make sure I wouldn’t bolt. “You seem to know something about this.”
“I was in training to be a healer, before.”
“Before what?” Their eyes were on me.
“Before…all of this.” I pulled my hand back. “He’s sleeping deeply.”
Rowena slid onto the low seat beside me, her back to the side of the shallow pit. “They gave him something for the pain. He’ll wake up soon.”
I nodded. That made sense. He needed to rest to beat the infection, even with the pungent scent of the poultices and sweat. And he’d been hurt so much. They’d hurt him so much. The bruises were still dark, barely yellowing on his temple, his cheek.
“You seem to care for him.” Her eyes were piercing.
“He’s my husband.”
Her eyes met the orc from Grezha’s doorway again, like they were having a conversation I couldn’t read, and my gut clenched. I needed to understand this place, these people, and it felt like I was perpetually making the wrong steps.
“Is there something wrong?” It came out a little shrill.
“No,” the other woman fumbled, “…maybe. We don’t know yet. We just want…everyone to be okay. This is sudden, yes?”
I clenched my blood-stained skirt in my hands. “Slow doesn’t mean better.”
The tall one let out a quiet laugh.
“What?” I was being too sharp. I was not going to cry.
“Nothing, it’s just…” he reached above his head to grab a bowl, then reached to a stew pot over the fire. “You sound like him.” He ladled something into it, held it out. “Soup?”
I took it.
“I can get you a spoon—"
“I have a spoon.” I reached into my waist pocket, pulled it out again, roughly carved and crooked. There wasn’t blood on this, at least. Everything else of me had blood, it seemed.
“The last we knew of Vrathgar he had gone to talk with the orcs north of here.”
“The Gol Droth.” The soup was savory, mushrooms, tallow pooling on top. Thyme.
“Yes.” She paused, as if I should know where to continue from there, but I only ate. “I think you can imagine that him returning like this, injured, with a wife in tow, is cause for alarm.”
I cleaned the bowl. “He said the Gol Droth would find prey in the east soon, because the magisters were hiring. So they wouldn’t bother my people any more.”
“And you said…that the people who had hurt you both were dead?”
“No one hurt me. I fell.” The room was silent. I squeezed the spoon. “Yes. They’re dead.”
The quiet one by the fire— the sorceress’s man— spoke up, careful. I realized what was odd about him. There was no accent in his speech. “I am sorry to press you on this,” he said, “but we need to know. The people who did this. Were they Droth?”
An awful calm fell over me. That’s why they were afraid. They thought the Droth had tried to kill us, and that we would be followed. Even here, people were afraid of the orcs that killed my people, so was there anywhere safe?
“No,” I said. “No. Just humans. The Droth…they were scared of him. They left us alone.”
The sorceress sat back with a release of breath. The quiet one kept watching the sorceress like she was going to break. The tall one, Tyralk, reached out, and took the empty bowl from me, spoke when the others wouldn’t. “Can I ask your name?” His eyes were still sad, but he smiled.
“Annora.”
“Annora. Nice to meet you, Annora. I’m Tyralk.” He filled the bowl again. “That’s Khal. That’s Rowena.”
The bowl settled into my hands again, warm. “Thank you,” I croaked.
“You feel better seeing him? You look half-dead, yourself.”
“Tyralk!” Rowena was half on her feet, scolding.
“You dragged her here. I’m trying to take care of the people you drag to my fire, and you brought her and she’s sick. Whatever you’re worried about with Vrathgar—"
“Tyralk.” Khal’s voice stopped the argument, and the tall one just shook his head. Khal, the quiet one, looked back at me. “Zhana should be back soon. She’ll make a place for you to rest.”
And I wouldn’t have admitted it, but I did feel weak. I felt ready to fall over. I needed to look strong, to be useful, but the last days had sucked the marrow out of me. Exhaustion weakened the body’s resistance to fever, and fever exhausted the body, a cycle that meant death so many times.
“You can finish your soup,” the young one said. I needed the strength. I ate it.
When Tyralk’s mother arrived, a tall orc woman with black ink in her skin, she showed me through a curtain to a room I couldn’t really see.
There was some kind of glow— Mushrooms? Moss?
— on the ceiling, down parts of walls, but my eyes were too weak to resolve much by way of shapes.
The woman— Zhana— seemed ready for this, led me by the hand till I bumped against a low bed, what felt like a mattress sewn in layers and straw.
She moved my hand to a blanket, murmured something.
“Thank you,” I got out. The curtain rustled, a last flutter of firelight, and she was gone.
The soreness of my muscles after the fight and the fall and the fever appreciated the mattress.
The softness brought pinpricks of tears to my eyes, and it seemed like it took so little now, like weakness was right under the surface.
Was this what love was? Had I chosen to break myself, and now I was this weak? Was marriage always going to break me?
In the room beyond, by the fireside, someone whispered, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to be able to hear them, that again this was my unnatural hearing, bringing me into rooms where no one asked for me.
“Why did you bring her, Rowena?” The quiet one.
Her voice was tight. “Selfishness. Mostly selfishness” Her breath trembled. “If this somehow isn’t terrible, it looks better to have her here, not…displayed at Grezha’s.”
The younger one, Tyralk, muttered, “She looks like a drowned cat, scared of everything. Like you were touchy, but she looks worse off. …what?”
“She asked to see him. I wasn’t just…” She was crying. Again? Why again? Was it normal to cry here? None of the men were crying.
“You did fine,” the quiet one spoke. “She asked, yes? She can’t want to avoid him so badly if she asked. You did what you could.”
“Goddess, if she’d shown up and died—"
“She didn’t die.”
The young one spoke up. “Do you want soup or anything? You could sleep. I could wake you when he’s lucid.”
“No,” she said stiffly. “There’s no way I could sleep.”
Another voice joined them, a woman murmuring in Orcish, and their tongue changed. And I was more tired than their sorceress was. Even in a black cave, in an unfamiliar bed, with voices beyond a curtain, I slept, and I only woke when he did.