Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 2

Without asking permission, Nathan adjusted his cape and took a seat beside the witch woman on the stone bench. He let out an exaggerated sigh. “I am a thousand years old, and sometimes I feel the age in my bones.”

Nicci looked at the wizard, not hiding her skepticism. She had traveled with him for many days and many miles, and he had seemed completely healthy and spry. She doubted such an obvious ploy for sympathy would work with Red.

The crow took wing from the witch woman’s bony shoulder and flapped up to settle on one of the lower branches of the enormous oak. The bird scolded Nathan from above.

Red shifted her legs and turned toward him. “A thousand years? You must have stories to tell.”

“I do indeed, and that is part of the reason I’m here. Since the Palace of the Prophets was destroyed, the antiaging spell has failed, so now I grow old as all mortals do.” He looked at Nicci with a twinkle in his eye. “The sorceress is aging too, although she certainly doesn’t show it.”

“‘Aging’ is another word for ‘living,’ old man,” Red said with a sharp chuckle. “And I presume you’d like to go on living.”

“I’ve just begun to live.” The wizard leaned back on the stone bench as if he were relaxing in a park. “Now … for my request. I have heard of a thing that witch women can do, and I’d be curious if you might do me the honor?”

Nicci also listened attentively, just as intrigued, since the wizard had refused to tell her his plans, despite the lengthy and arduous journey here from the People’s Palace.

Red tossed her thick braids, making them wriggle like restless snakes on her head. “Witch women have numerous skills, some wonderful, some dangerous. It depends on which ability interests you.”

He laced his fingers together over one knee. “The Sisters of the Light possessed journey books, spell-bonded journals in which they could record their travels and also send messages over great distances. But a life book … ah, now that is something different. Have you heard of it?”

Red’s intense pale eyes showed her interest. “I’ve heard of many things.” She paused for just a moment. “And, yes, that is one of the things I know.”

Nathan continued, as if he still needed to explain to the witch woman, or maybe it was for Nicci’s benefit. “A life book chronicles the journey of a person’s life, all the accomplishments and experiences.” He leaned closer to her, adjusting his vest with a tug. Overhead in the tree, the crow cawed.

“I would like to have a life book for myself, since I am starting a new phase of my existence, a new set of adventures.” He rubbed an imaginary stain from the sleeve of his ruffled shirt, and he looked back at her. “Can you work your storyteller magic?”

Nicci stood apart from them, watching. Once the wizard got an idea in his head, he was very insistent. She had led Nathan through the untracked wilds to find the skull-cluttered lair of the witch woman—all because he wanted to ask Red for a book? Nicci said with dry humor, “You lived in a tower for most of your life, Wizard. You think the sum of your experiences would fill an entire book?”

Hunter squatted in the dry oak leaves strewn all around. The feline creature snuffled the ground, nudging fallen acorns, equally unimpressed with Nathan’s request.

The wizard sniffed. “Given enough time, the interesting events of even a tedious life can fill a book.” Nathan turned back to Red. “I’ve always been a storyteller myself, and I wrote many popular tales. You may have heard of The Adventures of Bonnie Day? Or The Ballad of General Utros? Grand epics, and relevant to the human condition.”

Nicci made an acerbic observation. “You were born a prophet, Nathan Rahl. Some would say that your very profession was to make up stories.”

Nathan gave a dismissive gesture. “Yes, some would say that—and these days, with the great changes in the universe, I’m afraid telling stories is all a prophet can do.”

Red pursed her black lips as she considered. “The stories of your life might make a book, Nathan Rahl—and, yes, I do have the magic to extract it. I know a spell that can preserve everything you’ve already done in a single volume, and that will be the end of its own story.”

“Volume one,” Nathan said with delight. “And I am ready to start a new journey with my sidekick Nicci.”

Nicci bristled. “I am no one’s sidekick, Wizard. I am your companion, perhaps, but more accurately, your guardian and protector.”

Red said, “Each person is the main character of his own story. That may be how Nathan views you, Nicci—as part of his tale.”

“Then he would be wrong.” She refused to soften the edge of her tension. “Is this life book meant to be a biography? Or a work of fiction?”

Even Nathan chuckled at that.

The crow left its branch, swooped around the clearing, and settled on another bough, as if to get a better view.

The witch woman rose from the bench. “Your proposal interests me, Nathan Rahl. There is much you need to do—whether or not you know it yet.” When she cast a glance at Nicci, her ropy red locks swung like braided pendulums. “And I know much of your life as well, Nicci. Your past would constitute an epic. Since I am working the storyteller magic, would you like a life book of your own? It would be my pleasure.” Red had an unsettling hunger behind her sky-blue eyes. “And I also know there is an importance to you as well.”

Nicci thought of the catastrophes she had survived, the dark deeds she had done, the changes she had undergone, the damage and the triumphs she had left in her wake. She was important? Other than a handful of witnesses and victims along the way, the only one who knew that story was Nicci herself. She gave the witch woman a cold, hard look. “No, thank you.”

After a brief hesitation, the witch woman brushed her hands together dismissively and turned with a smile to the wizard. “So, a single life book for Nathan Rahl, then.” She left the bench and headed toward her cottage. “First, I will need supplies. There are preparations to make.” Red pushed aside the discolored leather hide that hung across the doorway and ducked inside.

Lowering her voice, Nicci turned toward Nathan. “What are you about, Wizard?”

He just gave her a smile and a shrug.

Red emerged with a small ivory bowl: the rounded top of a human cranium. She set it on the stone bench next to Nathan and reached out to him. “Give me your hand.”

Happy that she had agreed to his request, he extended his hand, palm up. Red took hold of his fingers, stroking one after another in a strangely erotic gesture. She traced the lines on his palm. “These are your life lines, your spirit lines, and your story lines. They mark the primary events in your life, like the rings of a tree.” She turned his hand over, studying the veins on the back. “These blood vessels trace the map of your life throughout your body.”

When she stroked his veins, Nathan smiled, as if she were flirting with him.

“Yes, this is exactly what I need.” Red snatched a knife from a cleverly hidden pocket in her gray dress and drew the razor-sharp blade across the back of his hand.

Nathan yelped, more in disbelief than in pain, as blood gushed out. “What are you doing, woman?”

“You asked for a life book.” She clutched his hand, turning it over so that the red blood could run into the skull bowl. “What did you think we would use for ink?”

As she squeezed his fingers, trying to milk the flow, Nathan was flustered. “I don’t believe I thought that far ahead.”

“A person’s life book must be written in ink made from the ashes of his blood.”

“Of course it does,” Nathan said, as if he had known all along.

Nicci rolled her eyes.

The blood flowed steadily from the deep gash. Hunter sniffed the air, as if drawn by the scent of it.

When the skull bowl was a third full of dark red liquid, Nathan said, “Surely that’s enough by now?”

“We’d better make certain,” Red answered. “As you said, you’ve had a very long life.”

Finally satisfied, the witch woman released Nathan’s hand and took the bowl over to her smoky cook fire. With a blackened femur, she prodded the coals, nudging them aside to create a sheltered hollow in the ashes. She settled the bone bowl into them, so the blood could cook.

Nathan poked at his cut hand, then released enough magic to heal the wound, careful not to let the blood stain his fine travel clothes.

Before long, the blood in the skull bowl began to bubble and smoke. It darkened, then turned black, boiling down to a tarry residue.

The light slipping through the crowded branches overhead grew more slanted in the late afternoon. High above, birds settled among the branches of the expansive oak for the night. The crow scolded them for their trespass, but the birds remained.

Red ducked back into her cottage, where she rummaged around before returning with a leather-bound tome that bore no title on the cover or spine. “I happen to have an empty life book among my possessions. You are fortunate, Nathan Rahl.”

“Indeed, I am.”

Red squatted next to the cook fire and used two long bones to gingerly remove the skull bowl. The blood ink inside the inverted cranium was even darker than the soot charred on the outer surface.

Nathan watched with great interest as she set the smoking bowl on the stone bench. She opened the life book to the first page, which was blank, the ivory color of freshly boiled bone. “And now to write your story, Nathan Rahl.”

She called the crow down from the tree, and the big black bird landed on her shoulder again. It used its sharp black beak to stroke her red braids in a sign of affection. The witch woman absently caressed the bird, then seized its neck. Before the bird could squawk or flail, she snapped its neck and caught its body as it fell. The dying crow’s wings extended, as if to take flight one last time. Its head lolled to one side.

Red rested the dead bird on the bench next to the skull bowl. With nimble fingers, she combed through its tail and wing feathers, finally selecting a long one, which she plucked loose. She held it up for inspection. “Yes, a fine quill. Shall we begin?”

After Nathan nodded, the witch woman trimmed the end with her dagger, dipped the pointed shaft into the black ink, and touched it to the blank paper of the waiting first page.