This was more than a smitten heart, more than even lustful desire. This was my curse at work. I was not made for chastity. My instincts had chosen Wyst as my prey, but if we'd never met, they would have picked another. Temptation could only be avoided by absolute isolation, but I'd developed a taste, so to speak, for people. I'd have liked to believe I could find a village of lepers or ogres or ogre lepers to live among, but the same dilemma would present itself in time. Be they men, ogres, gnomes, kobolds, or any other such creature, I would find a target to seduce and consume. It was my nature.
And, suddenly, darkened misery seemed a very welcoming place indeed.
11
I didn't want tobother enchanting every sword in the fort when we'd be fortunate to find ten men of the correct nature. I had better uses for my time. I devised a simple but effective test for the soldiers and began administering it the next morning. The Captain lent me the kitchen for that purpose.
Gwurm helped by managing the line, and Penelope busied herself by sweeping dust from one side of the kitchen to the other. Newt sat and watched. He found each test most amusing.
Gwurm let the two hundred and fourteenth soldier leave and let in the two hundred and fifteenth, a man of undistinguished features. They were all beginning to look alike. He stood before me. I held up a stone and spoke without looking at him.
"This rock is not real. It has only the substance your perceptions give it. Do you understand?"
There was a pause when I imagined he was nodding, but I couldn't say as I wasn't looking at him.
"Yes. I believe so," he said.
"Good." I tossed the stone between my hands. "Now I will throw this imaginary rock at you, and as you understand it is not real, it will not hurt you."
I cocked my arm and hurled the rock. He didn't flinch. It struck him in the stomach, and he doubled over, gasping. This was expected as the rock was quite real.
Newt fell over in a fit of quacking hysterics. "Oh, that's great." He panted breathlessly. "That never gets old."
The soldier straightened. His face reddened and scowled. I understood his anger, but he'd passed the test. The first to not recoil from my "imaginary" stone. It was perhaps cruel to pelt a man with a real rock but conjuring a phantom stone was a waste of magic when the genuine item worked as well.
"Your name, soldier?"
"Pyutr, ma'am."
I wrote it on my list of potential unbelievers. The list consisted solely of his name at the moment.
"You may go now"
Newt chuckled. "That was almost as good as the one you tagged in the groin." He collected the stone and returned it to me. "But my favorite was the soldier you hit in the shin who did all the swearing and the little dance." He hopped about in a reenactment, remarkably accurate given the differences between a man and a duck.
The next soldier appeared, and Newt sat eagerly.
"This rock is not real..." I began once again.
My familiar stifled a chortle. Tears ran down his watering eyes.
So it went the remainder of the morning. Soldiers came in. I gave my speech. I threw my rock. Newt heaved with laughter. The Captain was my last test. He failed. He sat and rubbed his bruised knee while checking the list.
He couldn't read it. My parents had neglected such education, and Ghastly Edna had never learned herself. The lore of witches is taught through doing, not reading. But writing was a useful skill, so I'd developed my own script of squiggles and symbols I found both lovely and practical. Though it always seemed to be evolving, growing more sophisticated over the years, I never had any trouble reading it. I think there was magic involved. I wasn't so much creating a new script as discovering an old one that never was.
The Captain handed over the list. "Will there be enough to do the job?"
"Thirteen," I said. "You'll be lucky if six are possessed of the skepticism required."
"And will six be enough?"
"I couldn't say."
"Damn it! I thought witches knew the future."
"Knowing what will be is not the same as knowing how it will come to pass."
The Captain sighed. He was a man very near the breaking point, and I pitied him. I was tempted to give him an answer and tell him I knew the future. Somewhere in my tomorrows lies either vengeance or death or both. But, of the brave men of Fort Stalwart, Ghastly Edna hadn't made mention.
"No one can catch tomorrow."
The Captain grinned. "Very true. And almost wise. Tell me, did they teach you such nearly enlightened yet vaguely mysterious phrases in witch's school or do you make them up as you go?"
"I little of both," I admitted.
"It must be tiring, speaking in riddles and circles."
"Sometimes."
Newt quacked, warning to be wary of sharing too much with the Captain. Part of the witchly ways is to maintain a veil of mystery. Witches should never be thought of as human, even if they usually are. Once I'd asked Ghastly Edna the reason for this tradition. "Because that is the way it has always been" had been her answer.
I'd admitted too much to the Captain already, but I couldn't see the harm. He'd likely be dead in a few days. This saddened me. He was a good man. Not handsome or dashing or especially competent, but good. I had no desire to see a good man wasted.
My mouth watered. He wouldn't have triggered such a response normally, but I was under tremendous stress. It made holding to a strict diet all the more difficult.
If the Captain noticed my grumbling stomach, he was polite enough not to mention it. I excused myself to begin my enchanting. Thirteen swords would require a few hours of work.
Newt once again spoke up without prompting. "If you're not going to eat the White Knight, you should pick someone else. One soldier won't be missed, and even if it didn't solve the problem, it should tide you over until the goblings get here."
My familiar made sense as he so often did. The demon in him knew how to make evil seem practical and necessary. It was true that one soldier would not be missed, that if his sacrifice served to give me strength to concentrate on more important matters, then it could be worth it.
This was assuming that consuming a man I didn't truly desire would satisfy me. It seemed just as conceivable that it would only serve as an appetizer. Once I gave in to the impulse, I might find myself incapable of eating just one.
Wyst of the West could probably satisfy me for a long time. The Captain might appease my stomach for a month or two. I doubted an ordinary man could keep me full for three days. The only way to find out was to actually devour a man. Regardless of any moral dilemmas, now was not the time to study my cannibalistic urges.
On our way to the armory, Newt whispered temptations. "Oh, there's a nice, fat one. Bet he'd fill you up. Or how about that handsome, young specimen. Lots of lean muscle."
He shut up while I asked the weaponmaster for his thirteen finest swords. While he retrieved them, Newt murmured, "A tasty morsel, don't you think?"
I waved my broom in small circles over him while mumbling.
"What are you doing?"
I touched him lightly on the head, and all his feathers fell off in one instant molt. He was still gaping at the pile of white fluff when the weaponmaster returned. Gwurm took the bundled swords from the weaponmaster, who ogled bald Newt but didn't say anything.