The Stone Sorceress

Chapter 30 - 31

Chapter 30

"Your highness's skills are improving." Typhon had been taking every opportunity to teach Aurora magic since they'd left Lemuria. The 85th were continuing their journey towards Nunnehi, where Daoine Maithe said the third sorceress stone was rumoured to be. They had stopped to eat, and that meant practice for Aurora, who was becoming a strong white mage.

The princess clasped her hands together, and looked at her tutor, "I am improving aren't I? I feel better."

Sabriel was polishing her pistols nearby, and smiled at Aurora's buoyant mood.

"Well I must be prepared to defend myself whenever danger is close." Aurora looked at Astraea askance. "Again Typhon. I must practice."

Eros, meanwhile, approached Astraea. "I apologise on behalf of her royal highness." He turned to perceive Aurora successfully cast a new spell. "She can be quite hurtful in what she says, but her heart is in the right place." He looked first at Aurora, then back at Astraea. "I must confess that I am curious."

"Curious?"

Eros until this moment had spoken little to Astraea: she was a beautiful woman, mysterious, who spoke little, and when she did her voice was sonorous. It captivated Eros, and made him feel unworthy of conversing with her. After an initial stutter, he overcame his diffident nature with women, "What happened to the sorceri?"

"I know little myself."

Sabriel's ears listened nearby. She shared Typhon's distrust, but knew that Eros was stubborn in his convictions. She knew the best course was to keep a close eye on the sorceress, and to defend everyone as best she could when the time inevitably came. The gunslinger was a powerful Argus.

"There was a war of some sort where many sorceresses died. My family, however, survived the war. I don't really know what happened then, only that my ancestors were killed, and that one died while she pushed her daughter down a river in a basket. That girl was the last sorceress, and without her, there would be no me.

A farmer was tending to his crops when he heard the child crying. He found it amongst the reeds by the side of the river. He took her back to his wife. The couple had tried for a child, but had no success. They thought the girl was a gift from God, and resolved to keep it."

Astraea was conscious of the fact that, besides Sutekh, the soldiers around her were the only people to whom she'd confided in. It was difficult for her to trust anyone. She'd had a bitter taste of betrayal at a young impressionable age. And ever since, the only thing she heard of sorceresses were the myths, which painted a black picture of them. It was only Eros and Sutekh that didn't judge her based on a title. Thus comforted, she continued to talk to Eros.

"Soldiers came soon after knocking at the farm door; they inquired as to the whereabouts of a baby girl. The peasants hid the child. They raised her as best they could, and, upon her reaching eighteen, they explained the mark on her wrist and forearm, their suspicions that she was of the royal house, and that she was the last of her kind."

Eros said, "The history of the sorceri is a tragedy."

***

Sutekh drifted through the clouds, resenting the cruel and wicked either-or: kill the woman he'd grown to love, and live, or don't and endure an everlasting hell. There could be no saving Astraea now; her secret was out. If he wouldn't do it, the odious god would find another to. Sutekh felt powerless. He clutched the rein of his winged stallion when he drew near a colossal shadow in the night. It was the tree under which he would assassinate the last sorceress. He only needed her blood, he didn't need her.