Nothing Without Cost [Story, OOC welcome]

[cuideag]

(( There goes that cuideag again, trying to keep an active story thread! HA. We'll see. ))

 

It was summer she remembered the best of all, the days where the moons and the stars shined brightest and the evenings were warm and crisp and alive with magic. Such would be her nature, her mother often remarked, for she herself was born among the warmest of the summer days. Her heart would align with the very season that saw her way into life and treasure every blazing phoenix sunset as if it would be her last.

 

She held her mother's hand as they walked the path up into the hills beyond the city walls. They walked in pairs when they could, mothers and daughters together with their hair and shoulders wrapped in earth-dyed shawls. Yalms ahead she saw Edelin Graye twirling her copper braids like fox-tails, and yalms behind Tillie Highhearth's mother chastised her daughter for stopping so often to pick at the budding wild flowers. The path was long but none so much as whispered a complaint, and they all moved as ghosts over the rocks and slopes.

 

They left their home without a word to father nor her brothers. "It is not their concern," Mother had assured her with her smile. "It is a precious night, my duckling. Let us not worry of men." Yet as they slipped through the back door and out through the garden, Delial Blackstone stole a back to their house and though for a moment that she had caught sight of her father watching through the window. Garren was by nature man of stone, of chiselled shapes and unkindly features. He had always seemed so cold from a distance, where his family's love was just a glance thrown as an afterthought over one's shoulder.

 

Her mother walked on with knowing steps. Delial could only follow.

 

They converged at the foot of a peak that crowned the ridge, stone both bare and cloaked with grass rising sharply from the gentler hills to greet the darkening sky. It was to be a fortuitous night and the whispers of fair weather seemed to have been on point. It was Travine's grandmother who could read the clouds better than any of her greying sisters so when she said that the stars would be heavy and full, it was taken as science. The air crackled with excitement and chatter that was lively even if it was hushed. Dozens of bright-eyed women milled and bonded with one another with smiles and laughter while their daughters clutched their skirts and exchanged shy smiles. They were not strangers to one another by any means but the peak was unfamiliar and the secrecy had struck more than a few of them as unusual.

 

Delial was no different. She was not yet the iron violet that her mother was and she was not sure why she had been pulled along the short hike up the mountain when night was falling. Were it the city she would not have minded: Ala Mhigo was her home and she knew the streets, their sights and smells, well as any other. It was quiet where they circled and huddled with nary a cricket's chirp to interrupt the gathering.

 

Then, it changed.

 

Everyone felt it rolling through their bodies like the growl of distant thunder but only the mothers knew what it meant. At once their voices fell silent as did those of their puzzled and alarmed daughters. Their eyes drew towards the crown of earth. Detaching itself from the sparse trees that sprouted from the peak was a thin and sinuous shape and only when it came closer, stepping with impossible grace down to the clearing below, did Delial recognize it as a woman.

 

The Witch had come.

[cuideag]

They called her Hrathi.

 

It was once suggested it was a title as much as a name; that in the old tongues that had given way to the new, it represented something powerful and massive, something that the new words had no word for. If asked what exactly that might have been, most only shrugged. Some things simply must be.

 

They came to the crown every turn of the moon and huddled beneath her presence, young and younger things in shifts and veils. She breathed in stormclouds and exhaled hurricanes and spoke, when she did speak, of magic. There was little that her voice could say that her hands could not and the aether she wove between her long fingers glittered like spiderwebs just big enough to entangle starlight upon their threads.

 

They called her Hrathi when they did not call her Witch and the crown was her palace and court. Surely she must have a home somewhere among the misty peaks but no one who was not invited would ever find it. Surely there was a way to unlock the path just as a key might unlock the door, but the shape of such keys could only be guessed. There were nobles, priests, monks, and rabble in the city away from the wilder realm beyond the walls. Among them were women in the skins of wives and sisters who guarded and dispensed secrets older than the dustiest of Ala Mhigo’s stone bones. They were sharp-eyed and they were most of all loyal, for though the sisterhood extended to all the women who dwelled upon the world, not everyone believed.

 

She was as much a part of the mountains as the earth that shaped them; just as there has always be stone and air and fire, there must always be, and always has been, a Witch.

[cuideag]

Delial’s first spell made her skin itch and tingle but she held it as long as she could beneath her mother’s approving smile. Cupped in her hands was a spark of flame no brighter than a match yet it lit up Lyra’s face like a sun.

 

Her father was not quite as pleased.

 

“Learnin’ tricks, are ya?”

 

Delial smiled. She was young and these simple things amused her.

 

“Th’ matron says yer face is scarce as of late.” Garren had been reclining on an old chair in the sitting room with one of his books in hand, but he leaned forward to regard his daughter and the witchlight in her hands. “Tell the truth, my little love, an’ with none o’ yer ma’s spinnin’ tae it.”

 

“It’s borin’,” said Delial as piteously as she could manage. “It’s borin’ an’ it’s no fun at all. What’m I goin’ to do with maths? I can count. She makes us look at these horrible little squiggly things an’--”

 

“Ye’ll learn an’ be better fer it,” her father interjected sternly. His face dipped that he stared at her from beneath the sharp curve of his brow. “You an’ I and yer mother too, aye, we all know yer too wild a thing and we know who’s tae blame fer that. But ye’ll not have a good life without yer learnin’.”

 

“But I am learnin’--”

 

“From the matron, my love, an’ yer books. Not that… that woman. It’s ungodly things she does when no one’s lookin’, and I won’t stand fer my daisy girl gettin’ caught up in that. Not s'long as I breathe.”

 

“But magic--”

 

“A time,” his voice cut sharply, so sharply that Delial nearly jumped. “... A time an’ a place fer magic. What’ll ye do with a spot of light,” he gestured to her hands and the ghost of waning flame she held, “An’ no wits in yer head?” It seemed only to occur to him then that he had startled his daughter, and he gave a ponderous sigh, like a bear easing itself back upon its haunches. “My little love… I just want what’s best for my girl. Aye? Can y’see that?”

 

Delial was not certain. She folded her hands as the warmth in them faded and shuffled her feet. The silence that fell between them was brief but it was heavy. Garren stared at his girl, the only daughter to his name, and wondered when it was that he had lost her.

 

“Yer young now but that’ll change some day. I’ll have a talk with yer mother,” he said and he settled back into his chair, but not after he gave his daughter a soft pat atop her dark curls. “We’ll… see what we can do, aye? If you can promise me that ye’ll try yer best with the matron. That fair?”

 

“Aye, papa.” Delial fidgeted and stared at the shapes her toes left in the rug. “I’ll try.” Then, “I love you.”

 

“Love ya, too, my little ducklin’. Now, go on. Yer pa’s got studyin’ to do as well an’ he’s not near as sharp as ‘is girl.” He did not smile at her for Garren Blackstone was not predisposed to smiling at anyone, but his voice was still warm and comforting as it always was when was satisfied that he had won. His attention had already returned to his book and he did not look up again when his daughter’s footsteps padded back out into the hall and around the corner.

 

Around the corner, that is, and straight into her mother’s skirts. Lyra’s finger was pressed against Delial’s lips before she knew what had even happened, silencing her before she could think to speak. When she looked up, her mother was smiling down at her. There was no telling how long she had been there or if she had overheard the conversation. She did not appear to be upset, however, not that Delial could tell. Lyra’s default expression was gentle like that of a sunbathing cat, warm yet indifferent in a way Delial could not yet recognize.

 

Lyra smiled at her daughter and squeezed the corners of her eyes mischievously and Delial could not help but return it, knowing that they had another secret shared between them. Then silent and without a single word, with a slender hand cupped around Delial’s shoulder, they slunk away and left Garren Blackstone to his history.

[cuideag]

It was often wondered just how exactly their marriage had come to be. Lyra always found herself delighted by the gossip: that people thought the match impractical amused her far more than it did her beloved husband. That she took a gil for every incorrect guess from the row of mother hens who worked the market stalls she frequented was not too far from the truth.

 

Garren Blackstone was never too open about personal details and the nature of his marriage was certainly about as private as it got. Even his closest friends could get little more than vague suggestions no matter how many pints of drink they urged into the blacksmith-turned-priest. “Bugger’n curse the lot’o ye,” he would grumble and slur, taking great care to scowl at every single one of his companions, blurry and otherwise. “Bugger an’ curse ye thrice. Love’s love an’ tha’s that.”

 

Garren Bellows was the name he was born with and it was from modest stock that he was raised. It was an old clan who boasted quite loudly that they were amongst the most skillful of Gyr Abania’s smiths: Byregot blessed their strikes while Rhalgr fed their forges, so they said, and they could craft hammers that would last for ages. The Bellows coffers never quite reflected the fame their fathers felt were owed and so they never quite found their way into nobility.

 

Blackstone, too, was an old name in Gyr Abania. Some might have even said that it was ancient, with roots that stretched down to the earliest days of the city in which they dwelled. When the clans still warred over land and people, the witches of yore were said to spit flames so hot they scorched the very stones of their battlegrounds. Their conquests were swift and ruthless and they spilled blood to the gods that they might live forever.

 

( “Did they?”

 

“Did they what, sweetling?”

 

“Live forever?”

 

“My dear child,” Lyra said and leaned in close to whisper against Delial’s brow. “Surely, no one lives forever.” )

 

They were healers in more recent days, midwives and potion-makers to aid families they might once have spurned. Lyra Blackstone was no different: she was skilled in finding just the right herbs and mushrooms for anything from chills to fevers and she had helped deliver more than her fair share of children. With roots so deep, they only spread as they rose through the ages. Their number was many even if they all did not wear the name of their mothers. Some wore no name at all. They were not wealthy and worked for charity and good will and their houses, sparse as they were, dotted Gyr Abania like so many stones across the mountains.

 

It was with great surprise and thinly veiled distaste that Father Bellows saw his son marry so low. Yet despite her birth, Lyra was as bright and as elegant as a queen, with eyes like amber and a smile that could hold even the most fierce of blizzards at bay. Soon it was not asked why he would marry her but the reverse: where she was warm and charming, he was rigid and ornery even at the best of times.

 

It was love, however queer it was, and there was simply nothing that could be done. When he took her name, even Mother Bellows had given up hope that her son would seek a woman of higher standing. That their first child would be born early in the following winter was but the first of three final nails in the coffin that was her hope.

 

“Love’s love,” Garren might say to his fellow and leave it at that.

 

Lyra Blackstone would only smile as any woman enamored might and hold out her hand. It was one gil for every five guesses in actuality for she was nothing if she was not charitable.

[cuideag]

There was a monster in the hills.

 

Delial knew this partly because she was quite clever, even at her young age. (Mother suggested once it was because of her young age, but she found that less probable for mother too was clever despite being far, far older than Delial.) There was a monster and she could hear it and because she was clever, she knew where to hide. They stalked in a sea of blue and purple and yellow stretching out for what was probably malms. She did not yet have a firm grasp on just how far a malm was but it seemed appropriate enough.

 

She also knew because it was presently stalking her and her brother. If one was careful enough, one could evade detection: they were fearsome things, these monsters, but they were not nearly as clever as she. This one could not see her as long as she was perfectly still and she was well practiced at that.

 

There was a rustle. The monster turned, arms upraised and hands splayed out. Auburn eyes, wide and wild, snapped to the jostling flowers. There was little mistaking the tracks of children, and monsters loved to snatch up children.

 

“RAAAARR!” roared the monster. The quarry amidst the flowers squealed in response.

 

From where she hid, Delial shook her head. It was likely too late to save her poor baby brother, four summers old and still lacking the wits to evade even the simplest of fiends. His fair-haired head bobbed and snapped around to gawk at the thing lurching towards him. Flowers were crushed and stems snapped and bled at its shins, and it waved its claw-like hands high above its head.

 

“GRARRR! I GOT’YE NOW!”

 

Harvard Blackstone shrieked as he was swooped upon and snatched up by the monster that was their eldest sibling. He kicked and waggled but Westor was far too strong to be felled.

 

At least, not without a little help.

 

“GAH-HA-HA! GONNA BOIL YE UP INTO A NICE STEW,” the monster gloated as he spun with his prize still squirming in his arms. “GAH-HA… huh?”

 

Westor squinted. There was another rustling, sharper and louder than before, and a dark-haired shape leaving a trail of toppled flowers in her wake. He stopped his spinning and bared his teeth in a broad, challenging grin and roared again: “GAHAHAH! WHAT’RE YA GONNA-- OOF!”

 

There was a muffled whump followed by another slightly less muffled WHUMP. Harvard howled with delight. Westor, however, was not as tickled. At least, not until Delial sat on his chest and stuck her fingers into his armpits.

 

“N-NO!” he yelped, suddenly sounding considerably less monstrous than he had moments before. He wailed helplessly only to find his voice interrupted by choked laughter and agonized giggles.

 

There was a new monster in the hills and she was without mercy.

 

 

 

In a slightly less noisy patch of flowers just beyond a soft swell of earth, two parents exchanged glances and went back to their reading with amused smiles on each other’s lips.

[cuideag]

There was much a child could learn in ten years. Delial’s grasp on aether was tenuous at best and while she was sharp, she was not studious, and the matrons made sure that was well known. If there was one thing Delial learned well, it was how to read people.

 

Garren was not someone who could be said to be soft-spoken but there was a difference to the usual gruff edge in his voice and the one that she had heard early one grey morning. He was a coarse man who often seemed to speak well before the words came out of his mouth. He meant well enough most of the time, even if his temper did not always agree with him. Delial learned how to read him and his moods, how to tip-toe around the awaiting avalanche that was her father.

 

Lyra was the epitome of grace as far as Delial was concerned. She held her head high and seemed to glide through even the most humble of actions effortlessly, flawlessly, and always with a hint of a smile never far from her lips. Yet even she had the odd day out: those days when she seemed distant, distracted, when she seemed more bone than flesh. She was never angry, yet she was: the anger of embers forever waiting to devour fresh kindling, crackling just beneath the surface.

 

“My dear...?”

 

It was Lyra that called out, the question in it lingering beyond the span her voice occupied. Had Delial not been there at her side, she might have felt alarmed: it was unlike her to sound uncertain, and the sight of her crooked brow was unsettling to be sure. Never did the world fail to orbit around what Lyra knew; never save for that morning.

 

From elsewhere in the house, Garren’s voice game as a similarly questioning grumble, a sound more than a word.

 

“My dear,” called Lyra once more, “I should think you will want to see this..”

 

A line of figures marched down the cobbled street. Their faces were hidden but Delial knew the colors and the sigils that they wore: honored warriors and servants of the King. They marched in silence with their banners held high and waving in the grey wind. There were those among them who were not of the King’s men, and they walked stiffly between the ranks, staring with hard eyes at anyone who would meet their gaze.

 

Her father swore beneath his breath when he, too, came to the window. “Brigade?”

 

“Nay, my love. Look closely.”

 

Garren’s eyes narrowed and he cupped his hand against the window. Other faces peered on from other windows across the way, all fixed and perplexed at what exactly it was they were watching. Further up the street, another procession turned the corner, another column of marching boots and cold eyes.

 

Her father rumbled and it sounded like a growl. It was then, as the King’s men marched on by their house, that Delial noticed the men with the hardest stares were not men at all but heads and nothing more, their bodies replaced with pikes. Wrapped around their heads were tails of yellow cloth splattered with thickly in crimson.

 

Delial’s eyes grew wide and the pit of her stomach grew cold. Somewhere beside her, she heard her father hiss an angry prayer, and just beyond him the muddled murmurs of her brothers joining to watch the display.

 

The books and lectures spoke well enough of wars and conquests both inflicted and suffered by Ala Mhigo. She learned of kings and generals and heroes and of the honored dead their histories were built upon. Those things had remained at a safe distance, grim and caricatured and easily tucked back away between the covers of her texts. Even the Witch spoke little of it: It is grace and It is inevitable and It is not worth fear. Kings spilled blood for the betterment of the people. Between pages of blood and bone, there had to be reason.

 

Delial stared, desperately trying to scry something, anything, from the soldiers and their grisly carriage. Only the dead dared speak through wide, hateful eyes and frozen snarls: there was no grace nor kindness in their deaths. A hand tugged at her shoulder to dislodge her from the window and as she was ushered away at her mother’s side, she could make out her father muttering low to his sons.

 

In her later years she thought often upon those moments: her reflection in the glass, the glassy stare beneath a cold, grey morning. It was the first time she had ever heard fear in her father’s voice. She was ten years old and the world was only beginning to crumble.

[cuideag]

She saw less of her brothers as of late. Their faces grew longer as suns drove on and she could see, even in sweet Harvard, the tempering of their hearts into something harder. While she found more and more reason to sneak away from her lessons, Harvard found fewer and fewer excuses to join her at the river that crept through Old Garwater’s land. She skipped rocks on her own and then not at all. Suns moved on, indifferent to the rifts growing beneath their rays.

 

“I got to,” he confessed late one evening after their parents had retired to their bedroom. His hands twisted as they always did when he was anxious, and he was almost always anxious. “Y’know how da gets. I can’t just say no, not with him an’ Westor both. It’s important.”

 

“I’m important,” Delial said. “I’m your sister. You ought listen to me, too.”

 

“Aye, I ought. But I can’t. Not… not so much, anyways. Maybe next week? We’ll see.”

 

“We’ll see,” she said as he tiptoed out of her room. She watched him go with the hope that he might look over her shoulder and see that she knew when someone was patronizing her. He did not.

 

Suns moved on, indifferent.

 

 

 

“Distraction.”

 

“Aye. The fighting. I worry it is becoming too much for her.”

 

Delial kept her eyes low. The eyes pinned upon her were hawkish, far too knowing and far too intense. Some weeks Delial swore they shimmered from amber to emerald and took every shade in between. Even so, Delial could never be certain: she found her difficult to look at, as though she were a sun in mortal flesh, and she remained hard pressed to describe the Witch to anyone else.

 

What she knew was that Hrathi was beautiful not in the way that all women were beautiful, but rather as hawks were: alien and elegant, with a body and a sharp face and eyes far too large and bright for a woman of her age. What age that was, Delial noticed, was largely dependent upon who was asked for no two people ever gave the same number. She was part maiden and part crone, some said, and those parts seemed to change with every season.

 

“Distraction,” the Witch said again. Her voice was disdainful. Beside her, Delial’s mother folded her hands and sighed patiently. Lyra did not frown outwardly but there were creases of anxiety tugging at the corners of her eyes, aging her in quiet ways.

 

“What say you, child? Hmm?” Delial kept her eyes low as she was questioned, the Witch’s words coming as sharp barks. “Speak. Speak.”

 

“I-I’m sorry,” stammered Delial. There were other eyes on her as well, she noticed, eyes belonging to many of the other girls who had come for the evening lesson. Most of the other girls who could actually manipulate their flames, came a morose realization.

 

The Witch snapped at her before her thoughts could continue. “You are not sorry, girl. Listen.” The command was spoken and cold, spider-leg fingers wrapped themselves around her shoulders. There was a chill that lurched down Delial’s spine, part fear and part electricity. The Witch never touched her. The Witch never touched anyone.

 

“Magic exists in paradox,” spoke Hrathi, the rasp of her voice reaching her in dizzying stereo. “Chaos writ in energy, set to purpose: your purpose. Chaos given intent becomes order. Which becomes chaos. Which becomes order.”

 

Delial’s ears rang with heartbeats and bells and the rush of blood that was not blood but aether, but not her aether. “The things you cannot master will destroy you, child,” the Witch went on. “And if you cannot master magic then it will devour you whole. It is a part of you: there is fire in your veins that has scorched generations before you, but you are stone.”

 

“Mother--”

 

The Witch released her. Delial fell at Hrathi’s feet with starry shapes stuck in her eyes, blinding flecks of red and orange that swam in her vision no matter how hard she tried to blink them away. She gasped. She retched.

 

“-- she is just a child.”

 

“We never stay children for long,” said the Witch. “That is our price. If you fall short, then you will not suffer this world long.” She turned and rustled away, the train of her robe scratching the grass behind her bare feet.

 

Delial considered later as her mother was helping her home that she had been staring into Hrathi’s face but she could not remember it no matter how hard she tried.

[cuideag]

The days became long and grey. Not because of the changing season, no; Ala Mhigo knew war once more for the first time since they tried to take the forests to the south. Yet it was not elementals and the pale-skinned southerners who hid behind them that they were fighting but rather themselves. Mother remained tight-lipped upon it, preferring instead to shake her head and pace about the house. One sun, Delial took to watching her, trying to read something in the routes she took and the soft words she muttered. After several bells and no logic found, she gave up.

 

The drapes were kept drawn and the windows shut. No one was to answer the door unless it was knocked upon just the right way. It did not matter, for no one knocked anyway. Their street was rarely a busy one by any means even in better times: the carts and wagons passed through now and again usually in time with the seasons when the crops from outside the city proper were ready to be sold within, and when livestock was ready for the market. When Delial was brave enough to peek outside she saw mostly warriors with swords and spears. On the better days, there were no bodies at all.

 

The family last shared their dinner table several nights before but it had remained largely unoccupied since. Conversation was clipped and stiff when her brothers took it upon themselves to relieve the rest of them from the stifling silence. Their father remained as a storm cloud throughout: dark, oppressive, and simmering at the edges with crackles of lightning and the underlying roll of thunder yet to be unleashed. He stared hard between his sons as he silently chewed his meat and his bread. Garren was not a man of strong emotion but even Delial could tell there was something troubled rushing beneath the hard grey of his eyes. He had all but confessed when he failed to meet her gaze over and over and over again.

 

The next morning they were gone.

 

Lyra left plates and crusts of bread and utensils scattered on the table, as though that might ease some of the loneliness away. After Mother snapped at Delial the first time, she ceased trying to clean it up. They took their meals with the bones of meals passed, neither willing to speak of the happenings outside their door.

 

She gave her daughter tasks instead. On on sun, Delial was made to pore through jars and bundles of dried herbs until she could recognize at least half by scent alone. On another, Lyra sat her before a row of twelve candles and told Delial she would not eat until she had lit every single one with a word. Mother watched when she did not pace, and did not interfere save to blow out a candle for every bell that went by. By mid-day, Delial was exhausted and starving and had only two candles lit to show for it.

 

They sat together for lunch and watched the flickering wicks and Delial knew her mother’s eyes were upon the ten that remained absent of flame. When she approached her mother with her conundrum, Lyra braved a smile. “Can you not feel them, duckling?” she asked, looking over her daughter as though she wanted nothing more in the world than to remain distracted by her presence. The melancholy caught up with her quickly enough, however, and it was with a pat on Delial’s head that she returned to her restless motions.

 

Delial was still vexed, but she did not trouble her mother further. There were ten candles yet to be lit and several long bells before supper. When she could not hear her mother padding about the far end of the house, she moved to quietly gather their plates. One or two drawn away from the haphazard settings would not draw mother’s ire, no, and they had need for--

 

It was the chill she felt before she turned. She could not stop herself despite the alarm screaming in her head. Delial knew that her fingers had failed her somewhere along the way, that in her fright she had withdrawn her hands from the plates she balanced upon them, and she braced herself for the inevitable shock of ceramic shattering upon old wooden floors.

 

It never came. Her ears rang regardless.

 

Tall, black, willowy, a figure bent with a spider-legged hand holding a perfectly stacked pair of plates by the ends of curved nails. Stormy eyes (lidless they must have been, piscine, deep as the heart of the oldest sea) fixed upon the frightened child before her, and then mercifully slithered to take in the candles flickering weakly atop the table.

 

“This,” said the Witch, “Shall not do.”

 

Her mother was calling her name, soft and and indistinct as if heard from above the surface of a deep, black lake.

 

The Witch did not smile, exactly: it was more of a grimace of lips cracked into a sharp tear in a sharper face, a twitch of instinct that reached beyond things like amusement or pleasure. “I wait,” she rasped and sighed and growled.

 

“Delial?”

 

“Come.”

 

Plates shattered at her feet. There was no trace of the Witch save but for the chill that clung to her skin, but even that was quickly shorn away as panicked footsteps slapped around the corner and the warmth of her mother’s embrace overtook her. In the absence of that spectral thing, Delial felt her eyes tugged down admit the ruined shards of dinnerware. Glinting from the center of shards near perfectly arranged like petals on a brittle, jagged flower, shone a tiny round clasp of silver.