4. THE WITCH

“Hello, stranger,” the figure said. A raspy voice. A woman’s voice. The figure was too far in the shadows to see anything of it other than its silhouette.

For some reason, Martimeos was very intently aware of the sound of rain pattering gently on the overhang. For a moment, it felt as if someone had gripped his heart and he might simply float away. His hand strayed towards his sword, but slowly. For all he knew, he might be dead the second his hand touched it. Then again, he might be dead either way. He didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say, but the figure didn’t say anything either. A long, tense silence filled the air, his stomach twisting in knots. “Who are you?” he managed to croak out at last.

“Naught but an old crone, hoping to warm herself by a kind traveler’s fire,” came the reply. The figure shifted in the darkness, gesturing towards the ring of stones, and the dry wood Martimeos had stacked there. “Just a little warmth, stranger, if you’d be so generous.”

Martimeos stared at her, but the figure only looked back expectantly. He thought he could just make out the glimmer of her eyes in the shadows. What was she doing? She obviously did not mean to hurt him, at least right off, but why? Was she stalling for time before her demons could arrive? He should run. He should run, right now. But the moment he did, she might bind him or kill him with the Art.

In the end, for lack of knowing what to do, he simply did as she suggested. He worked the Art among the dried leaves and wood in the ring of stones, stoking the hunger that was always there, everywhere, in everything. To begin it, that was the hardest part of making any flame. To build the hunger from just the tiniest of whispers to something that made leaves smolder was far more effort than it was to build it from smoldering leaves to open flame. A curl of smoke drifted up from the fuel, and then a flash of yellow flame, and then all at once with a burst of hot air the campfire was burning merrily.

When the fire burst into life, shadows were banished in an orange glow, and Martimeos could see the woman he was talking to for the briefest of moments. She wore what seemed to be layer upon layer of ragged clothing pulled around her, and her hat was pulled so low that all he could see were the twin lights of her eyes reflecting the campfire. But her hands were gnarled and knotted with age, and upon one crooked finger, she wore a large, dark ring. Just that, just a glimpse, and then the fire burned normally, and the dancing shadows of it concealed her nearly as much as the total darkness had. Still, Martimeos relaxed just a fraction. It felt good to have the fire between himself and her. He could do things with the fire, if necessary. That hunger could be directed at her.

“Ah,” said the hag, “So you do know some of the Art.” Her hands reached out to warm themselves by the fire. Her fingernails were almost talons, thick and yellow.

“A bit, here and there,” he replied, stone-faced. “As do you.”

“So modest. And perceptive.” She sounded very amused. “I do not know how to work with flame, though. My talents lie elsewhere.” She looked up at him, firelight dancing in her eyes. “Are you not going to sit down?”

He very nearly did not. It all might have gone very differently, right at that moment. A plan had been formulating in his head over the past few moments. A plan to work the Art on the flame, and direct it toward the crone, burning her badly, hopefully to death, and if not, then the short stroke of a sword should finish her off. If Fortune smiled upon him, she’d be dead before she could even think to strike back at him with her craft. And then he could run before her demons got here. He had been tensing his muscles, readying himself, ready to engulf her with flame, draw forth his sword and plunge it into her.

He very nearly did this, and then, for reasons even he couldn’t name, decided not to. Perhaps it was because he knew she had had opportunities to kill him, she must have, and yet she hadn’t. Perhaps it was because he simply couldn’t bring himself to kill someone who was being friendly to him, even if it might mean his life, even if he knew that was plain foolish. Perhaps it was because the idea that she was working with the demons was all guesswork of his, and he didn’t want to condemn someone to death on a guess. Or perhaps he was simply too afraid to do it, because he thought it better than even chances that his plan would fail. Whatever the reason was, instead of attacking her, he sat down, cross-legged, on a flat patch of ground.

She made an approving sound, apparently satisfied by this. “Might I impose on your kindness a bit more, stranger? You would not happen to have any extra rations to fill an old woman’s stomach, would you?”

Martimeos eyed his pack, and the dead rabbit, both within reach. “I have the rabbit that I planned to cook,” he said, “And some cheese and bread. But it’s very hard.”

“My teeth are still good, young one,” the crone replied. Martimeos rummaged through his satchel, and tossed some to her. She caught the bread with surprising deftness and it quickly disappeared into the shadows beneath her hat.

As she ate, making small noises of satisfaction, he rummaged through his satchel, and retrieved a long-stemmed pipe. He had not dared to indulge in it these past few days, fearing the light and the smell would give him away. If she really is going to kill me, I might as well enjoy it one last time, he thought wryly to himself.

The old woman finished eating as he paced the bowl and focused his Art upon it to light it. “Thank you,” she said, brushing crumbs from her hands. “You are very kind for a young man. What may I call you?”

Martimeos didn’t answer her. He stared at her, silently, puffing at his pipe. He took a long draw from it, and blew a plume of smoke into the air, watching the patterns dance and slowly fade. “Why were you following me?” he asked quietly.

The hag laughed. Bubbling laughter, lively and energetic, that almost made her sound like a younger woman. “Right on out with it then! It was simple curiosity, young one. You are the only other traveler I’ve seen in this wood.”

There was nothing for it but to ask. “And the demons you sent to kill me? That was simple curiosity too?”

The fire crackled, and she was silent for a long moment, just staring at him. “Sent them? To kill you?” She seemed genuinely taken aback. “What? I have nothing to do with those foul things.” She laughed again, though this time it was angry and disbelieving. And with a sharp, unsteady edge. “You have no idea. I have been keeping them from you, if anything.”

Martimeos chewed on the stem of his pipe, considering her words. She seemed truthful, at the very least, but the world was full of skilled liars. And after the past few days, he was not going to idly let his guard down. “How were you keeping them from me?”

The witch waved her hand, and the flickering shadows cast against the wall of the overhang wavered. They shifted, changing direction, dancing with each other, growing darker, more solid, before dispersing like smoke, falling and folding into each other, blooming and pulling themselves apart. It was strangely beautiful, watching this; it reminded Martimeos of a quiet snowstorm, though he could not put a finger on why. “I have some skill with glamor, and weaving the shadows,” the crone told him, her voice quiet too, as if out of respect for the spectacle she had created. “Those…filthy creatures, demons, as you say…they seemed intent on hunting you. No doubt they would have hunted me, if they had seen me. But when they banded together, I made the shadows dance in the night, and they fled. More than once I scattered what was likely a hunting party to pursue you.”

The unusual movement of the shadows slowed, falling apart; they fell into line like soldiers taking up their positions, until they had forgotten their dance and marched once again to the tune of the campfire. Martimos felt a strange sadness upon its ending, but he soon turned his mind from the fading beauty. So, the demons were not hers, were they? “How many of them have you seen?”

“Never more than three at once. And you?”

“One. Which I killed.” It was a convenient story for her, wasn’t it. Far from wanting to harm him, she was practically his hero. What better way to gain someone’s trust? “Do you know what happened to Coxton Praet?” She simply stared at him, expression hidden in the dark. “He was a huntsman. He lived in the, ah…”

He was about to say the house that I chased you by, but before he could go any further, she shook her head. “I have not seen another person in quite some time. Nor have I seen them with a corpse. I suppose he might have escaped. I watched them, for a day or two. They did seem afraid to go near that house.”

She had watched them? Even cloaked in shadow, it was brave to watch a group of demons, or foolish. Or she was simply so powerful in the Art that she felt no fear in doing such a thing. “If you were curious, and meant me no harm, then why did you run from me?” She certainly ran nimbly for an old woman.

The witch snorted in response. “I suppose you would stand your ground if a man twice your size came charging at you? I thought you meant to snap me in two. Will you tell me your name?”

If she had been so afraid of him then, why was she here now? She spied on demons, but she seemed to think that he might easily overpower her if given the chance. Unless this was some game, some trick of hers…he shook his head. The threads of his thought were becoming too tangled, which was usually a sign that he was overthinking things. Perhaps she was being honest, somewhat. He realized, with a start, that part of him didn’t want it to be the case that she was being honest. Because if she was telling the truth, then what he had very nearly done to her, mere moments ago… “I am called Martimeos,” he murmured, quiet in the thought of what might have happened. “Martim, for short.”

“Martimeos,” the crone sighed, as if relishing the name. She withdrew her clawed and gnarled hands back into her rags, so all that was now visible of her was her eyes glinting in the firelight. “Well, Martimeos. You may call me Elyse. I have answered your questions, so now you may answer mine. What brings a kind young traveler such as yourself into a dark forest such as this?”

“Just wandering.” Martimeos tapped out the ashes of his pipe on a flat rock, taking a small iron scraper from his boot to dig at what he could not tap out. Supposing she was telling the truth, even supposing that, she was still someone who had stalked him. He would do well to remember that. Perhaps the demons were not her work, but she still might have strange designs for him.

“Just wandering,” she repeated back, disbelief clear in her voice. “Hmm. It does not seem to me like you are wandering. I have watched you, and it seems to me like you move with a purpose.”

Martimeos paused in his scraping, feeling a chill run up his spine. He resumed, calling lightheartedly, “How long have you been watching me for?”

“Oh, ever since you’ve entered the wood. ‘Tis very easy with talents such as mine. Night and day, when you were not walking so far that I thought my feet would fall off if I followed you.”

He found his mind racing over his time in the woods. Just how often had she been watching? He wondered if she had spied on him bathing in Lob’s creek. The hag’s gleaming eyes revealed nothing. “I don’t know that I appreciate that, crone,” he muttered.

“Elyse.” The crone tilted her head, curiously. “I… ‘twas meant to reassure you. Had I meant harm, I could have stolen in to cut your throat in your sleep long ago.”

Those had been his own thoughts on the matter, at times, but it certainly was an odd thing to say to someone you were trying to put at ease. Was she threatening him? Martimeos put his pipe away, and leaned forward to warm his hands on the fire. “And why are you in these woods? Besides to watch me.”

The hag shifted in the shadows. He caught a glimpse of a pale leg, surprisingly smooth, as Elyse readjusted her position, before it disappeared back within the shadows. “Let us say that I am a wanderer myself. But even for one with some knowledge of the Art…you have seen how dangerous these woods can be. I wanted to know if you might make a suitable traveling companion.”

Martimeos blinked. He didn’t know what he expected, but it had not been that. He didn’t answer her. Instead, he sighed, and looked up at the sky. “I’m hungry,” he announced. “I’m going to cook that rabbit.”

She didn’t object, or say anything at all, as he pulled a knife from his boot and set about skinning and preparing his catch. She only watched, silently. As she must have when she had watched him from the woods.

What she said was not really so surprising. It was the wanderlust. All those who made it their purpose to study the Art felt it; the urge to leave behind their home and journey forth into the world, the call of the wilds, the road, the trail, the sail. It pulled most strongly at the young, but he had heard that it never really left you. It was not so strange to find an old woman pulled by it once again.

What was strange was why she might want him as a companion. And why had she stalked him? He could not stop that from sticking in his mind. Even if she had wanted a companion for a good sword arm, why decide on him, in the midst of these woods? Had she not prepared when she first set out? Maybe she had. Maybe she had a companion previously, and something had…happened to them.

He found some stout sticks, and soon had the rabbit spitted and roasting. His stomach growled, and he frowned, glancing at her. She was probably going to expect him to share.

“I am no mean hunter,” Elyse said suddenly, as if she had read his mind. “I have never gone wanting for meat, myself. I think you should probably eat better if you might have me along to catch for the both of us.”

Martimeos did not respond. He sat back down and pulled his pack towards him. On a flat rock, he began laying out bread, and cheese, and pickles for his meal. “Why should you want me as a traveling companion?” he asked eventually.

“Why not?” She laughed, again. He wondered whether that light spirit was meant to put him at ease. “Two with the Art are better than one, yes? Or have you enjoyed your time alone? You certainly would have faced more than one demon if not for me.”

Another hidden threat? Or was she just uncouth? “You do not even know if I am traveling the same direction you are.”

“Well then. Which direction are you traveling?”

Martimeos paused, the bread he held in his fingers crumbling. He did not know if he wanted to be telling this crone which way he was headed. But if she had so successfully managed to follow him so far, what did it matter? She would end up knowing whether he wanted her to or not. And there could be a price to lying to a witch such as her. “South,” he said.

Elyse tilted her head once more. “And what drives you south?”

“I asked a Dolmec.”

The crone murmured appreciatively to herself, silent for a moment as the fire crackled and the shadows danced against the overhang’s walls. When she spoke again, she sound suitably impressed, almost admiring. “You must have no mean knowledge of sigils to protect yourself from a Dolmec and win a Telling.”

Martimeos was not so sure that his sigils had actually done a damn thing against the Dolmec. True, it had never moved within the circle that he had drawn. But it had come up right to the very edge of it, and he had the distinct impression the thing could have killed him without bothering with the circle. Indeed, hadn’t it shown him that his scribing did not protect him from harm? He still had the wound in his forehead from when the demon had thrown the remains of his charm at him. He had almost forgotten it with all the fleeing and the more worrying wounds in his side. “That and Fortune’s love,” he replied sourly.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Hmm.” Elyse nodded, as if this were a very wise statement indeed. “And what do you hope to find to the south?”

Martimeos grimaced. She just could not let it be.“The great lake Nust Drim, and the village of Silverfish.”

The witch clapped her hands, startling him. It took him a moment to realize that it was a sign of her delight. “Nust Drim, yes - I should very much like to journey to this place. I have read of it in tales and stories. I would be glad to accompany you there. Young one.”

Tales and stories, was it? He had never heard any grand tales of Nust Drim himself, though he had heard fragments mentioned in other stories. Tales of beasts in the lake, and one of the many stories of the Aurelic sorceress Véreline Valoir mentioned that she had taken a lover near there. He could remember a time when he had thought of following the world’s legends, of seeing what he had read of in stories. He supposed he might still like to, some day.

But still, he would rather not that a crone and a witch follow him. She might not mean to harm him, not immediately, anyway, but she was simply too strange to be trusted. He did not think she had sent the demons after him, but he found her presence unnerving. The problem was that there was no simple way to refuse her offer delicately, when she was so insistent, and it might be best not to insult a witch who had tracked him in secret for so long. He could warn her off, telling her that the village was cursed…but that might invite more questions that he did not really feel like revealing to her, such as why he was headed towards a cursed village in the first place. He would have to be clever about this, to rid himself of her. Perhaps as she slept tonight, he could hasten away, and lay a false trail for her to follow. “I suppose if you wanted, we might travel together,” he muttered finally, his mind racing with thoughts of how he might abandon her. “Very well.”

“Good,” Elyse said. And then she leaned in from the shadows, and Martimeos nearly jumped to his feet. What the firelight revealed as she drew closer was not an ancient and withered crone, but rather a young woman of pale, fair skin, and a rough shock of long black hair, twisted and knotted with leaves, that came down very nearly to her waist. One of her hands, however, still wore the large, dark ring that he had seen on the hag’s. She winked at him with startlingly dark blue eyes, and flashed him a mischievous, very self-satisfied grin. “Now, are you going to share that rabbit?” When Martimeos just stared at her in confused silence, she laughed. “‘Twas a glamor! Have you not heard of this Art?”

“I know of it,” Martimeos replied somewhat testily, once he had recovered. He turned the rabbit on the spit; the smell of it was beginning to make his mouth water, but it was not done yet. “Enough to hide myself, some, and perhaps do some smaller tricks when I concentrate. I do not believe I could so convincingly disguise myself, though. That must take great skill. But why would you do this?”

Elyse preened under the compliment, her smile growing even wider. “Oh, it is not so hard a thing,” she said, trying to sound off-handed and not doing a very convincing job of it. “Staying hidden in the shadows does much of the work. I doubt I could have fooled you in good light. As for why, well…” she paused, putting a finger to her lips thoughtfully. “I wanted to see the sort of man you were. I wanted to make sure you were not a braggart. And kind enough to offer aid to an old woman in need. And….” here, she flung her hair dramatically, and spoke mockingly. “I wanted to make sure you would not take me along merely because of my striking beauty.”

Martimeos simply stared at her again, and bit his tongue. That was from a tale of Véreline Valoir that he did know. According to the tale, she had been hired by a local lord to rout bandits that had been plaguing his fiefdom, but in talking to his people found that many were more fond of the bandits than they were of the lord, who took far more than the bandits in taxes. To judge their character, Véreline had disguised herself as an old crone traveling the roads at night. When the bandits found her, and treated her kindly, she had revealed herself and allied with them. “For any might be inspired by my beauty and grace to do me a kindness, and yet those who would treat an old woman well have the honest spirit of charity with them.” And then Véreline had taken the bandit chief as her lover. That happened a lot in her stories.

That Elyse was no crone - she looked to be no older than he was, and likely younger than that - made some of her tale make more sense. She could not be so learned in the Art at this age; she was certainly telling the truth that she had not sent the demons after him. And wanting to travel together made more sense, now, knowing that she was not some old witch at the height of her power. And she was at the age, like he, when the urge to wander gripped the heart most feverishly, and so perhaps it was not so odd that she seemed to have no fixed destination and simply wanted to travel in safety. “Striking is going a bit far, isn’t it,” he told her dryly. “How do I know that you do not show me a false face? Maybe what you show me now is glamor, and what I saw before was the truth.”

Elyse moved herself closer to the fire, then rolled up a sleeve and held out an arm to him. The dark ring she wore on her hand glittered in the firelight. “Give it a pinch. ‘Tis much harder to fool two senses than one. Touch can be almost impossible to fool.”

Martimeos had heard that this was the case. He frowned, and then pulled off his gloves to prod at her arm. He supposed that it did not feel like an old woman’s might; her arm was smooth and firm. “‘Twas very impressive, then,” he admitted. “Even the firelight seemed to-” he looked up at her, and froze. Elyse was staring down at his hands on her arm, wide-eyed, as if she had just dared herself to place her limb in the jaws of a wolf and was now wondering whether she might lose it. He let her go immediately. “I did not mean to frighten you.”

“Frighten me?” Elyse sounded insulted, but he could see that her arm was trembling slightly. When she laughed, it seemed almost as if it was out of relief for her own safety. “I was not frightened.”

He let it drop. Either way, he did not suppose that this was some extra trickery on her part. She was a young witch, and he could be as certain about that as was reasonable. And while it would be foolish to think that she was not dangerous at all, he could feel some relief at that. But his fear subsiding only made room for his anger to grow; had this really all been necessary? He could understand that maybe she might want to get the measure of him, at first, but she had frightened him half out of his wits. The hours he had spent, on the run, wondering who it was that was hunting him! “You know,” he said, "trickery and deceit is surely a poor way to first approach someone you wish to travel with."

The witch frowned, wrinkling her nose at him, and her eyes flashed, and he thought at first that she had taken it as another insult. But after a moment’s consideration, her face softened. "Fair enough point," she murmured, eyeing him. "Here - a boon, to demonstrate my good intent." She reached out towards his face with slightly trembling hands. Martimeos flinched backwards, but she just laughed. "Stay still a moment, man! You are injured, yes? I know something of healing, and can soothe your wounds.”

Martimeos was further impressed by this. His last mentor had always told him that healing was one of the more difficult workings of the Art. For her to know something of it so young was unusual. And it was Fortune’s gracious blessing she did, for it would be a very good thing for his wounds to be tended, and yet…she frowned at him as he flinched back from her touch once again. “What is it?” she snapped at him, annoyed and sounding oddly hurt. “Do you want that wound on your forehead to leave a nasty scar? I cannot make it vanish outright, but I can aid the healing of it. You have my oath that I know what I am about and will do no harm to you.” She placed a hand over her heart, and recited solemnly, “Let the Dark Stranger take my soul in my sleep if I lie.”

He sighed as she reached out to him once more. Her hands were surprisingly warm on the sides of his face, considering the autumn chill; almost hot, in fact, and the ring she wore ice cold. He could feel a strange sensation of tingling spreading out from her touch, like pins and needles in his flesh, but not unpleasant. She had closed her eyes, and he watched her expression as she frowned, concentrating, in front of him. “You are wounded in your side, too,” she muttered. “Why would you not want healing? And also…” suddenly, she gasped, her eyes shooting open, and she whipped her hands from his face as if she had touched a pot left too long on a cookfire. He waited for the inevitable question, but it never came. Instead, after a few moments, she put her hands on his face again, with some trepidation, and then just a few moments later withdrew, more gently this time. “I have done what I can for your forehead and the wounds in your side,” she said quietly, almost in a whisper. “And the cut on your thumb.”

Martimeos checked himself. The thumb he had cut open to draw blood for the ward against the Dolmec seemed now as if it had never been opened at all. His forehead, he could feel, was still scabbed, but whatever was left of that wound was the healing of a day or two. And the flesh around the wounds where the vulture-man had stabbed him felt less tender. “I…thank you,” he said, grateful as much for what she hadn’t asked as he was for the healing.

He could curiosity battling with caution in her expression, but she did not press the issue. "You see?" she said, confidence slowly returning to her voice, "No need to be stingy with your trust." She drew a long breath, steadying herself, then fixed him with a hard stare. “Those wounds in your side were beginning to fester, you know.” It was almost impossible not to hear the silent, left-out, ‘you imbecile’. “It is always best to prevent these things rather than undo them. A few more days and my healing could have done little for it, unless I took weeks to work it. I hope you are not such a fool that you do this sort of thing often. Don’t you think we’d be better off traveling together?”

He considered her, in the orange glow of the campfire. She was trying to give him a stern look, but the smoke went wrong and blew in her face, and she coughed and moved away, muttering to herself. He was coming around to that way of thinking, in fact. He had felt, even before being chased, that the forest was lonely. And it would be good to trade knowledge with her - he was very interested in her skill with glamor and healing, and what he might learn from her. She had demonstrated her good intent, hadn’t she? He had to remind himself that she had still talked him through the woods, and had casually brought up the idea of cutting his throat. He frowned, studying her face, and wondered if he was just being incautious because she was pretty. He was young enough to still be charmed by beauty, but old enough to recognize this.

He leaned forward to take the rabbit off the fire, and leaned its spit against a rock to cool. “Perhaps you are right,” he said slowly, watching the steam curl off its skin. Elyse’s eyes went to it too, with unabashed eagerness. He could not help but remember, though, how she had trembled when he had touched her arm. He searched for the right words. “I could accompany you out of the wood, and out of danger, see you safe. But beyond that, would you feel…comfortable, traveling alone with a man?”

Elyse crossed her arms and peered at him, a curious expression on her face. “Why would I not? Oh, I’ve heard so much about how dangerous men are, but you seem perfectly safe to me. And what is a man anyway, but a woman with a funny bit betwixt his legs?” She laughed as he grunted in surprise at her indelicate language. At his frank look, though, she blushed. “I am not a child. I know what men and women do together. You do not seem like you would try to take advantage of me. And if you tried, I would turn you into a moth.”

Martimeos raised a skeptical eyebrow, but he could not keep the excitement from his voice. “Do you actually know how to do that?”

“Ah…no,” she admitted. She frowned at him for calling her bluff. “Are we ever going to eat that rabbit?”

It had cooled enough by now, he supposed. He saw no pack with her - perhaps she had left it somewhere else - so he offered her some of his bread, cheese and pickles to eat with her share of the meat. He had more than enough supplies still. Somewhat to his surprise, she only requested a single haunch. He did suppose, as she stood to grab it, that it made sense that her appetite was small. When they both stood, he could more easily tell that she was rather short. True, he was tall, but she only came up to his chest, and would have to crane her neck to look up at him. Her pointed hat was high enough that it came up past his head, though.

Although she had requested so little, she ate with such reckless abandon that he could not help but stare. Martimeos was hardly fussy about how he ate, but she wolfed down the meat and gnawed eagerly at the gristle on the bone, until he was convinced that she must have been starving. He was left puzzled when he offered her more and she refused, patting her stomach and claiming to be full to bursting.

It was just as they were finishing up and tossing the bones into the fire - Martimeos had picked his share clean, the past few days really had stoked his appetite - that a red blur darted into the overhang. The next thing be knew, Flit was darting back and forth around Elyse’s head, pecking at her hat, his tiny talons scrabbling in vain at her hair. He tweeted furiously, and the walls echoed with his demands to know who she was, what she was doing. Elyse, for her part, seemed mostly bemused, but perhaps she wouldn’t be if she could have understood what Flit was saying, about what exactly he’d be doing to her eyeballs if he reached them. “I was wondering where your familiar was,” she said, ducking as Flit dove at her. “I spotted you looking for me many times, little one, but you never saw me.” Hearing this taunt, the cardinal’s threats became even more bloodthirsty.

Martimeos called out to Flit in birdsong, cutting his bloody tirade short, and he set about explaining Elyse’s presence to his familiar as the little redbird sat perched on his finger. Flit was wroth, out of embarrassment, Martimeos thought, for not having spotted her. When his familiar asked what was to be done with her, he paused, and then spoke in the tongue of man, for her benefit. “I suppose,” he said, looking at her, “That she will be coming with us, for a time at least.”

Flit puffed himself up, his crest bobbing, while Elyse grinned and nodded. But he had just made the only choice he could, really. She was odd, and he still did not like that she had stalked him, but the truth was that both of them could ill afford to spurn an offer of sincere help. And for all her strangeness, he did think that the witch was sincere. Even if he hadn’t needed or hadn’t wanted the aid, it would not sit right with him to leave her on her own when she had come and asked for help. Though he did have other reasons.

“If we are to be traveling together for some time, I would like to learn what you know of the Art,” he told her, as he tried to mollify Flit with some generous breadcrumbs. Glamor, in particular, he was interested in; he had always felt stifled that his natural talent for it had gone to waste with a teacher who did not know much of the craft, and did not care to.

“Of course. I would like to learn what you know of the Art as well, and more besides. I did not know you spoke the bird-tongue.”

The day had grown long, now, and between the soothing warmth of a campfire, the comfort of having his wounds tended, and the filling meal, the exhaustion that had been building in Martimeos for these past few days of fleeing caught up with him. Of course, though Flit had reported that he had not seen anyone back on the road, and he had been two days since seeing or hearing of the demons himself, he still could not afford to be careless. And so, grabbing a stick, he set about ringing the campsite with the sigils that would warn him if any came close. Elyse trailed him, hands clasped behind her back, peering closely at what he scratched in the dirt, questioning.

It was his last mentor that had taught him of sigils, and they were fascinating in their way, though the study of them onerous and frustrating. His mentor had said that part of the Art was a hidden language, a true language that described all that was in its most pure forms. In this tongue, to speak something or to say something was simply for it to be, and if one knew all of it, one would have mastery over all. But it was lost, the knowledge of it shattered in cataclysms so ancient they were no longer remembered, and only fragments remained, spoken and written, and all that was known of sigils were these fragments.

Martimeos, for his part, was not sure that he necessarily believed this. If one particular language were so fundamental to the Art, why was there so much that might be done without speaking or writing it at all? When he spoke to flame, he used his own language, or sometimes snapped his fingers - he had discovered that such bursts of sound could cause it to flare up, though he did not know why - or sometimes he did not speak at all, but he certainly ever used what was this ‘true’ language. His mentor had only smiled, and said that any language that came sufficiently close might command the Art, but that he would be far more powerful if he knew the True Word of Flame. Whatever the truth was, though, it could not be denied that some sigils certainly did seem to hold power, and things could be done with them that he had otherwise no idea how to do.

After Elyse had practiced a few times, unsuccessfully, to replicate his sigil - it took practice, one had to be very precise, not just with the final symbol, but with how it was drawn - darkness had already come on, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. As he bedded down, and prepared to throw dirt on the campfire - he could have snuffed it with the Art, but for a fire of this size, dirt was easier - he paused. So long had he taken his ability to charm his clothes warm for granted, that he had forgotten the struggles of what would be done without it. His Art would keep him comfortable through the night in the chill autumn air, but Elyse did not have it. And she did not seem to be particularly well-dressed for warmth to begin with. Her garb was black, and half-robe, half-dress, many-layered, but many of those layers seemed thin, of a material he did not recognize. And the skirt seemed to be pleated, or even cut in those long layers, which may be good for movement but was probably chilly.

He would have offered to use his Art to warm her clothes, except that it was a delicate balance that must be struck, and he could not be sure that he would be able to find it without practice in different material than he was used to working with. And yet as he made to douse the fire, she showed no signs of chill and made no protest. She must have seen him staring at her, for she waved him away idly, as she made herself a bed of dry leaves to lay down upon. “Don’t worry on my account,” she told him, “this chill barely touches me.”

He wondered at that, as the fire went out, and true darkness settled in. He had heard of northerners who were so used to the deadly cold of winter that they barely felt the lesser chill of autumn, and perhaps that was what she was. Or maybe she had some other secret of the Art that kept her warm.

Despite his exhaustion, he lay awake in the dark for quite some time, his head on his satchel, very aware of her presence. It had been quite some time since he had had anything but the night’s silence to listen to before he went to sleep. The sound of her breathing, and rustling on her bed of leaves, grated at him. As did the worm of distrust deep in his heart. What if you were wrong, it whispered at him. What if she means to wait until you sleep, and then cut your throat?

If he were less tired, such thoughts might have kept him up all night. As it was, exhaustion buried them, and soon he sank into a deep slumber.