Annev opened his mouth to speak – something about her seemed disturbingly familiar, as if he’d seen her in a dream – but Crag raised a finger for silence.
The crone reached the bottom of the ridge and vanished behind the fallen pine for a moment. Crag stayed alert, glancing back and forth between the two ends of the tree, waiting for the woman to appear.
‘Who is she?’ Annev whispered.
‘Hush,’ Crag said, not taking his eyes off the pine tree.
When the old woman hobbled from behind the dead tree, Annev saw her eyes had a milky cast to them, like a pool of white smoke, though nothing about her behaviour suggested she was blind. She stopped five feet in front of Crag.
No, not Crag, Annev realised. She was staring at him, her dull white eyes peering deep into his blue ones. A chill of foreboding ran up Annev’s spine.
‘The Vessel chooses his path.’
‘The Vessel?’ Annev breathed.
The witch tilted her head to one side and smiled wickedly, her sharp teeth peeking out from dry, withered lips.
‘A piece of the greater whole. Sent to claim a rod and bring it back to your circle. Sent to claim a life. The merchant will give you a talisman, but it will be stolen from you, Son of Seven Fathers.’
‘What?’ Annev’s tongue seemed to stick in his mouth as the witch’s words struck at his heart. ‘Son of Seven … Do I know you? Do you know me?’
The crone hissed. When she spoke again, her voice was low and haunting – a deep, hollow resonance that gathered in the heaviness of the forest gloom.
‘Descended of the Gods yet sired by Man. Seven seek to lead Him. Seven dread His hand. Bonded by the Ageless, the Ancient breaks His path. The Crippled King guides Him. The world fears His wrath.’ With these last words, the witch extended her crooked arms and bowed her hunched form low to the ground.
Annev stared, mouth agape, as Crag stepped between him and the witch, one hand holding his staff and the other clutching a bony bauble tied to a string around his neck.
‘Away with you, witch! We’ll have none of your dark words here.’
The woman lifted her head and hissed at Crag. The pedlar shook the bone fragment at the crone and she retreated a step.
‘Do you claim this one, Wanderer?’ she said. ‘Do you choose the fate of the Fathers? It is not your path, I fear, but death may claim you yet.’
‘Death claims us all in time.’
The witch cackled, running a wormy tongue over her broken teeth and cracked lips. ‘Your time has come and past, Wanderer. It has come many times, but you are never there to greet it, and so it claims your friends.’ Crag’s face hardened. He glanced quickly back at Annev then turned again to the witch.
‘Do you wear death’s cloak then, crone?’
‘I am death’s shadow,’ wheedled the witch. ‘I go before him and fall behind him.’
Crag raised his staff, arm cocked and ready to strike, such anger in his eyes that he looked half mad. ‘And are you the one,’ he said, ‘who took me beast from me?’
‘A beast of burden,’ the witch recited. ‘Abandoned. Find it, and the Vessel will find you.’
‘Damn your riddles!’ Crag swore. ‘Are you the one that killed Cenif?’
The witch twisted her head until it was at an unnatural angle from her body, and drew her twisted arms close to her chest, the bony fingers dancing in front of her, her black nails clicking like dirty talons.
‘One of many,’ she said. Crag’s staff came down hard, striking at her, but she was already moving back, her tattered rags flapping in front of her, her body slipping across the ground faster than Annev could believe.
A low cackle came from atop the ridge and Annev turned to see the witch standing atop the knoll. Her eyes were wide, white and ghostly, her laughter full of malice. As Annev watched, she flickered from sight then reappeared on the opposite side of the pit. Flickered again, faster, and she seemed to be in two places at once. Flicker. Flicker. The images popped in and out so fast that they seemed to be multiplying – she was behind the trees, atop the ridge, inside the pit, and at his side. At the same time, her laughter came to a crescendo, building in intensity and frequency until the pitch was almost deafening.
Crag’s elbow knocked Annev in the ribs. ‘Cover your ears, lad! She’s a witch!’
Annev’s hands clamped down on the sides of his head as Crag dropped the bone fragment tied around his neck. In its place, he drew a small, dirty mirror from the folds of his cloak. He tossed it on the ground and smashed the butt of his staff into its face. The glass shattered and her voice broke, dwindling to a thin scream coming from behind Annev. He spun to face it, reaching for the blade of gold in his pocket, and found himself staring at the old crone. She was crouched at his feet, hunched over in pain.
‘Get back!’ Crag shouted.
The crone did not pounce, though. Instead, she fell to the ground and curled into a tight ball of black rags, bony limbs and knotted white hair. Then she rocked herself back and forth, chanting softly: ‘Death comes for us all. Death comes for us all.’
‘She’s mad,’ Annev whispered to Crag, not daring to take his eyes off the now weeping woman.
‘Worse than mad. This one has magic. Real magic.’
Annev shook his head, trying to reconcile what he had seen with what Sodar had taught him. This was something new, a magic that was dark and unfamiliar to him. ‘Magic,’ he repeated. ‘Is that why she flickered about?’
‘I believe so,’ Crag said, placing a hand on Annev’s shoulder, ‘though I believe this one is more shadow than substance. She was creeping up behind us the whole time. What we saw was merely her shadow.’ He poked the crone with his staff and she rolled over onto her back, still chanting. ‘Seems I broke her mind when I broke me mirror – though she seemed broken enough to begin with.’ He tsked. ‘She’s still dangerous. We should end her, roll her into that pit and have done with her.’
‘You’re still going to kill her?’
‘Aye. I promised I would, and I will.’
‘But … she’s an old woman. Seems cruel to kill her like this. In cold blood.’
Crag’s expression hardened. ‘She killed my mule.’
‘Death comes for us all,’ whispered the witch, oblivious to their conversation.
Annev looked down at the weeping old woman, then imagined cutting her throat before rolling her into the pit. He shied from the image and tried to imagine Crag bludgeoning her with his staff instead … right before Annev slashed the pedlar’s throat with the ribbon of metal in his pocket. He felt sick. It seemed he would not escape the woods without bringing death to someone.
‘No,’ Annev said, rejecting both images. ‘She said she was one of many and that sometimes the monsters don’t do what they’re told. Crag, what if she didn’t kill your mule? What if she just helped capture it?’