First I fed power into the eleventh flame, the orange-red of Pyromancy, not once but twice. It was far too useful in rituals not to invest in it even without counting its offensive potential. Memories of pyromancers past flowed through my mind, first how to conjure more flame than the single torch I could do unaided, enough for a small campfire. Then how to shape that flame, push it from shape to shape within five to ten feet. How to warm myself against the coldest weather, walk through a northern blizzard in a skimpy dress like a certain red-haired priestess. How that same warmth could burn out disease and even common poisons, though the worse ones were beyond my ability without either a focus item or a small sacrifice. How to ignite flammable objects or heat pieces of metal or stone at short distances unaided. Finally, how to condense that flame into a shape no larger in volume than an egg, but with tangible weight and solidity behind it and hot enough to be dangerous.
Two more motes of power I fed to the twelfth flame, the crimson of Sorcery. My limited healing doubled in potency, knife wounds and most diseases now manageable without aid or sacrifice. The bolstering of bodies I'd previously fumbled myself into solidified into a spell that would sustain a warrior without food or water for a day while bolstering both their strength and stamina by a fair margin. Repeated use could let someone survive potentially for weeks, the magic supplanting their need for sustenance. Other spells to shape spilled blood, curse a wound to keep bleeding freely, or cause the same extent of injury or disease as I could heal with either brief contact or from a distance with a drop of the victim's blood. Similarly tracking people better than any bloodhound with any bodily link to them, sense the mystical weight and nobility of people's blood with a look, or know their ancestry by tasting a single drop. To either aid a birth along or curse it with complications, and with a drop of powerful blood to either bolster or diminish a target's luck for days from a distance. How much power greater sacrifices brought was not increased, but what power they did bring I could handle more easily, wield more efficiently and from greater distances, and even store for a couple of days in specially prepared receptacles instead of having to race my way through time-limited rituals.
The last two motes I was more confliced about. The first I put into the first flame, its golden light growing along with the innate potency of my blood. The power of my magic was not just dependent on knowledge but on metaphysical weight. Melissande had decades, possibly centuries, of training yet her greatest spells could only be accomplished through another's king's blood, however diluted. Brynden Rivers on the other hand was the kind of mage that could manipulate half a continent from a cave in the wilds, his magic bolstered by Targaryen ancestry. It was the kind of power that I needed to survive and, let's not lie in our own mind, desired for myself. But magical power alone would leave me terribly exposed to more direct threats; even the Others who could freeze a man or shatter weapons with a look could still die to the right blade.
So the final mote I placed into the second flame, the bronze torch of Warfare. The moment I did a storm of memories flew through me, memories of exercises, harsh and repetitive training, being beaten down like nameless millions of other recruits in tiltyards since the depths of time. Infantry levies being beaten into a semblance of competence by hedge knights and veteran sergeants, fostered noble boys trained as pages, waiting for the day when if they were lucky, a knight would take them as squires. Even as memories burned through my mind, a similar strain burned through my already exhausted body, the magic forcing the changes years of conditioning and martial training would bring, along with the raw potential to use it.
The vision of the Fourteen Flames shattered as the power inside me was invested, just in time for the ritual on the island to flare. Following the path of a bit of blood and hair taken from its intended target, the magic bridged a distance of several miles to an old man lying sick and helpless in a crannog. For as long as the flames still burned a portion of their energy would become healing, new life pushed into the man's sick body and burning away the sickness. I might not have been able to heal him with a single spell but peat fires could burn for months; I was betting the sickness would be burned away before the fire burned out and if not I'd have time for a cleverer solution than quality over quantity.
As night fell and dangerous beasts were scared away by the flames, I lay back on the rock to rest, happy with my accomplishments. Then a nasty thought intruded and ruined my vainglory.
Fuck! I'd left the boat on the burning island!
The night was dark and, this being the Neck, it was definitely full of terrors. The sky was overcast as usual, neither stars nor moon breaking the near-total darkness, but ever since the ritual that no longer was a major problem. In both the stories back on Earth and legends here there had been heroes who duelled villains and monsters in the darkest hours of the night. The old Kings of the North were famous for such, and though less storied so were several Houses among the crannogmen. I'd always wondered if those had been overblown accounts of the nobility not suffering from nyctalopia as the lower classes often did in medieval times due to vitamin deficiency, but recent experiences indicated this wasn't the case. I had impressive night-vision now, because apparently nobles in Westeros were built different. Just as some had the strength of several men, others could duel multiple veteran knights and win, or survive a dozen stab wounds and a dip to the sewers without modern medicine, some could see in the dark just fine. What ritual magic had granted me wasn't superhuman just yet, but it was a marked improvement. It was also a good reason to get going, now that I was fairly confident I would survive the attempt.
As I walked through the completely silent crannog to the workshop, it suddenly struck me that I didn't even know what hour it was. I was fairly confident it was the hour of the wolf - three in the morning back on Earth - but did not know for certain. Timekeeping was far less ubiquitous in a pre-industrial society and so was precision measurement but then that applied to all things. It had felt far more odd back when I was a kid and new at life on Planetos; nowadays it was just the way things were. People didn't even have names for their days or months and the calendar was hardly of any use to common people due to how borked and arbitrary the seasons were. This had been a serious source of anxiety early on; how could I use my foreknowledge if I didn't even know what year it was?
In a sturdy linen sack I threw package after package of travel rations, a couple water-skins, over a dozen vials of various substances from my personal collection, my wood and leather working tools, a pack of wax for waterproofing I'd saved over the years, a sewing kit, a small bag of animal bones collected from previous sacrifices, and the knife and bowl that echoed more strongly with the power of said sacrifices. I did not take flint or other fire-making supplies, antidotes or other medicines, or particularly warm clothes. With how my Pyromancy and Sorcery had improved I could do better with a spell than with tools, and expend less time and effort. I might not be copying Melisandre in walking Westeros wearing only revealing dresses any time soon, but I could have if I wanted to.
The sack felt lighter, easier to carry than it would have before. How much of it was experiencing the years - and bodily changes - of a noble kid's combat training and how much was it something more? I took up my spear, strapped my knife to my belt and made for the wooden drawbridge. With luck my departure would not be discovered till morning, by which time I'd be far too far to track.
"You haven't prepared nearly well enough," said the shadow suddenly detaching from the stairs leading down to where the boats were tied, making me freeze with a hand on the drawbridge's winch. Then it resolved into the willowy, annoyingly perceptive figure of my adopted aunt.
"Couldn't you have slept through the night like all normal people?" I asked Keera with a groan. Why did she have to turn up now?
"Among the advantages of my brother making a miraculous recovery is more time for me to keep my own hours," the huntress told me with a sharp smile. "Besides, haven't you heard the stories? We mudmen are sneaks, we won't fight like decent folks, we skulk and use poison arrows. You never see us, but we see you. We might be out there at any time, listening to everything you say."
"The Freys were probably butthurt they weren't the true Lords of the Crossing when they started those stories," I grumbled, suddenly able to understand where they were coming from, if not sympathise. Just because the stories were nasty did not make them any less true. "Are we really doing this now?"
"If we weren't you'd be lying dead in a ditch or filling a lizard-lion's belly by month's end, Flann," the older woman said, standing before the crannog's exit and holding her own spear by her side almost casually. She was not fooling anyone, of course. "You're three and ten - barely at that. You have no business traveling across the Neck on your lonesome. Less than a tenday ago you almost died to a bog-pig."
"Less than a tenday ago the Old Man wasn't scared to look me in the eye," I countered. The last few days had been... awkward wa an understatement. It wasn't about the lost boat even, though that probably didn't help. It Keera having to retrieve me with the spare boat, the smoke from the ritual being visible for miles, and as she said the 'miraculous' recovery. Crannogmen weren't fools and they knew more about magic than the average Westerosi.
"You think my brother is afraid of you?" The swamp ranger snorted and shook her head. "Not yet a woman grown and you got as swollen a head as any lordling boy with dreams of knighthood."
"Then how do you explain his avoiding me?" I challenged back, eyes narrowing as I tried to sniff out a lie. "I'll not live where I'm not wanted."
"I didn't stay up through the night to explain my brother's idiocy to you, just your own," she said with another derisive snort. "Think, lass. Would I be accosting you now if you were not wanted? Besides, you forget that the final decision does not rest with you."
"The hell it doesn't!" I shot back in a furious whisper, barely keeping back from shouting and waking everyone else up to join our little party. "What business is it of yours where and when I come and go?"
"You're not yet a woman grown and you are my apprentice," she hissed back with equal rancor. "You agreed to the apprenticeship-" conveniently forgetting she'd practically demanded it of me "-and until I say you're ready you're not going anywhere. Three students I've had, none yet have died in the bog. You will not be the first."
"As if you care for a foundling and a dragonspawn," I retorted angrily, my blood boiling.
I didn't even see the spear twist in the darkness, its butt burying itself in my midriff...
xxxx
Spears are an awkward weapon. They're longer than a human's comfortable reach, too unwieldy to properly use one-handed or quickly maneuver with, can apply less leverage than shorter weapons, and can only really harm your opponent through a thrust. Those and similar misconceptions among the untrained masses contributed to the romantization of the sword in most stories, almost certainly because the vast majority of spearmen were and still are barely trained commoners while swords were seen as a sign of status by the nobility. The truth was quite different.
I adjusted my aim more through footwork than my arms before going for an explosive thrust at my opponent's torso. Had we been using actual weapons and not training mock-ups, such a blow would pierce through leather armor or chain mail with ease and only struggle with brigandine. Still useless against plate of course, but almost nobody wore plate in the Neck. Unfortunately, the above was only true if the blow landed. My opponent's spear went through a tight rotation, both foiling my aim and setting them up for a thrust of their own. Predictably, it struck me in the gut and padded stick or no it still hurt enough to bruise.
Gritting my teeth and guiding a flow of inner warmth to wash the minor injury away, I thrust twice in quick succession, taking advantage of my greater strength and reach. It didn't work; the willowy older woman dodged by simply turning her torso away from the first blow, carrying over the momentum from that into a thrust not at my torso or head but at my arms. The blow numbed my left arm and forced my second blow to miss even as she took advantage of the spear bouncing back to set up for a second thrust faster than I could have. That one took me at the throat with not nearly the force of a normal blow but still enough to make me gag.
"Your footwork is good but your fundamentals are shite," Keera commented critically then launched an explosive thrust of her own. The speed of the blow from the slighter woman caught me by surprise and I barely managed one of those silly-looking but very effective rotating parries. Naturally, she exploited the momentum of the parry to swing her spear around like a quarterstaff, painfully bouncing its butt off my ribs. I stumbled at almost folded over, even the padded training weapon risking a crack to a rib or two; in a real fight my ribs would be broken, the pieces probably digging into my right lung. Apparently, Auntie dearest had noticed mere bruises weren't slowing me down as they should have.
"You're strong and healthy but don't let that make you overconfident; in war you're but a novice still."
We went through several more exchanges, most of them just as one-sided. I only landed a blow once, ramming my spear's padded head into her thigh when she became a little more aggressive than an opponent of my smaller but still fair skill warranted. Had I been just Flann, a teenager with only a couple years of hunting under her belt, as opposed to a Valyrian of a strong bloodline with half a decade of sorcerously-granted experience, it still would have worked. It was a mistake she did not repeat again, falling into a more defensive stance where she almost effortlessly parried all my efforts aside, creating openings for her own attacks more often than not.
It was a frustrating thing to experience, even when it came with the realization that the memories and talent granted to me by the Fourteen Flames did not directly translate to skill. I had the instincts, the muscle-memory, the raw ability... but I hadn't used them before and when it came to active decision-making trying to think slowed me down. I was like a warrior that hadn't fought for a long time but was somehow still in good health; my skills felt both rusty and unpolished at the same time. Slight improvement came with each bruise, each critical comment, each exchange of blows but it felt too damn slow. In a mere six years the canon events would rear their ugly head and magic or no I was far from ready.
It struck me then that Aunt Keera was actually right, that trying to travel through the Neck and Westeros in general on my own was a bad idea for now. If a single crannogwoman, even an experienced swamp huntress, simply outclassed me, stumbling into a bandit ambush on the Kingsroad would spell death or worse. The realization made my blood boil with anger and I leaped back, grabbed my spear from one end with both hands and swung it like a greatsword. The older woman countered with a two-handed high-parry that sent my weapon bouncing off and vibrating strongly, then quick-stepped into my reach. She grabbed at my waist and pulled, pushed at my opposite shoulder and combined with the momentum of her prior parry managed to throw me into the muddy ground. Before I could blink she stood above me, training spear ready to thrust at my throat.
"That was a typical dumb mistake, done in anger. It's the third greatest cause of death among warriors," she informed me coldly, then pulled me up with a grunt. She stared into my eyes, dark amber orbs fixed on my own violet. "Do not repeat it in the future." Then she turned around and stomped towards our camp.
Wait, she'd frustrated me on purpose, hadn't she? Groaning at being played like a typical idiot teenager, I shuffled after her and fell on the log we'd been using for a seat like a sack of potatoes. Sorcery might take care of bruises and sprains, but I'd yet to find a cure for exhaustion without a minor sacrifice. At least I'd never scar from most things short of a maiming; the true secret of Valyrian beauty.
"Don't just sit there, get the fire going," Keera said as she stretched and took off her padded coat. She was breathing more heavily than I did and was actually sweaty - the only victory I was likely to get. "Then start a proper stew. There's a score of things for a warrior to do after a battle, be they hunter, sell-sword, or hedge knight, and survival sometimes hinges on being able to act, exhausted or not. Campaigns and adventures both have been won or lost on such countless times before."
"You speak as if you ever were a sell-sword," I said, getting up with a huff of complaint. I put a couple of logs into the fire-pit, no kindling, no dry branches, then ignited them with a flick of my fingers and a spark of magic.
"Gods, no. I wasn't patient enough to get on someone's payroll." She glanced at the burning logs and my mulish expression both and sighed. "You won't get either and that right there is not even the biggest reason why."
"Should I pretend not to be who I am when you already know?" I countered then went through the work my magic couldn't speed up. I vowed to get someone else to cook for me by the time I was a proper sorceress, it wasted so much time. Or maybe have a wight or similar servitor do it for me; I wouldn't have to pay those.
"You're set on being a mage, then?" It was a rhetorical question and we both knew it. "Flann, you have a gift but far too many people in Westeros will see it as a curse and a threat... especially if you keep throwing around fire like that. The last people with similar power are near two centuries dead and they did it through dragons, not their own hands.
"I am very far from wielding the power of even a young dragon," I shot back at my teacher with a scowl. "Besides, what should I do? Magic is, apparently, the only thing I'm good at."
"That will have changed by the time you are six and ten," the huntress said with one of her usual infuriating smirks. "Besides, have you ever considered becoming a healer?"
Aunt Keera did not repeat her suggestion in the days to follow, neither did she voice any other concerns or demands. She was, like all the Crannogmen of The Neck, a woman of a few words and she had already said her piece. Instead she fully devoted both of our time into my apprenticeship.
We woke in the predawn gloom every day and broke our fast on fried eel, dried fish, and various linseed products. I was surprised to learn flax would even grow in a climate as humid and soil as wet as the endless bogs, but apparently Houses Reed, Fenn and Greengood had been cultivating a swamp flax variety as far back as the records go. Six thousand years of controlled breeding were more than enough to develop some pretty weird plant varieties even without magic, and the Crannogmen were one of only two populations on the entire continent to still make occasional use of Greensight.
The odd black linseeds tasted like soy beans. They made for an interesting break from the mostly meat and root based diet I've grown up on in this new life, but I could not claim their taste was good. Still much better than fried frogs or steamed slugs though; I could actually eat them just fine without puking my guts out. My mentor on the other hand downed the seeds with gusto and nibbled on the greenish hard crackers made of linseed meal appreciatively. I was ninety percent certain she was just screwing with me, and since I was literally a captive audience I couldn't do anything about it without problems. At least her brother had hated the things too, which was why we did not stock any such products back on the crannog... except maybe the their oil. The fried meals had always tasted oddly.
After the morning meal we worked on camp clean-up, equipment maintenance and supply check-ups till dawn. Our extended trips far from any permanent base made all of it necessary. Leaving behind campsites as travelers in other lands of the Seven Kingdoms might have when moving on would eventually reveal trails into the swamps of The Neck and damage the veil of obscurity that served as the Crannogmen's first and greatest line of defense. Equipment maintenance was a no-brainer for any trip in any salty swamp, let alone the green hell we lived in and skipping check-ups was a good way to find a full flesh-worm infestation in your rations or something lethally poisonous making a nest in your bedroll.
It was not a very labor-intensive morning, but it required both constant alertness and strict discipline that were more mentally demanding. Maintaining that mindset and eventually growing it into a habit and way of life was probably the hardest part of becoming a swamp ninja - not that the Crannogmen called themselves such, even if that was what they were.
With the sun risen above the green canopy overhead, the older Huntress and I spent several hours on combat training. Knife-fighting, staff and spear duels, wrestling, archery. We didn't do separate endurance or strength training as more modern boot camps did back on Earth. Instead she forced me into round after round of high-intensity fighting or exercises with only small breaks between. In this we took advantage of my magic more than any other time, a constant stream of bruises, scrapes, sprains and the occasional injury that needed healing leaving me wrung out at a deeper level than physical fatigue could have.
Keera beat me at knives with absurd ease, my flame-granted combat skills including very little in the way of knife-work. Improvement came at a decent pace, maybe even faster than most beginners, but it was only the use of magic that kept my arms from being already full of little scars. Things went more slowly with the staff and the spear. After the first few days I'd gotten real experience to go with vision-memories and muscle-memory and improvement came more slowly, like a trainee with at least a few years of practice under her belt. The older huntress still won, but not with the same ease she had at first and the gap was closing.
Wrestling was where my height, size, and abnormal physical prowess for said size and age really shone. The first day matches I'd all lost pitifully to the crannogwoman's viciously dirty fighting style but once I knew what to expect, years of memories of both knightly combat and street fighting made a difference. I was actually taller than Keera and - to her surprise but not my own - stronger too. I also had the near-endless energy and vitality of a teenager on my side, while she was in her thirties and had begun to slow down. At first the skill gulf was whittled down as we wrestled round after round, then we came even in matches early in each day's training while I started winning later on, until finally I was winning consistently.
Archery was still the bane of my life. I had negative natural talent in it and since I'd fed no life-force in the Seventh Flame, no granted vision-memories or muscle-memory to work off. My arrows kept going off-course, twisting in mid-air to miss even targets a mere twenty feet away seven times out of ten. Unfortunately, the elder huntress did not allow me to slack off or focus on those skills I was better. She had me work on making extra arrows every midday while she cooked and handled other camp activities, extras which I used up as quickly as I could make them in our training sessions, shooting them repeatedly until they shattered from successful hits against hard targets and my shoulder and back muscles ached from pulling the bow.
Our evenings were spent hunting. After two hours of rest and tidying up our temporary midday camp we ventured out in the bog where Keera taught me pathfinding and navigation, stealth and tracking, the herbs and beasts that lived in the Neck and everything else a crannogwoman needed not just to survive in the green hell but to make a profit.
Making said profit proved considerably easier when we combined Keera's expertise and knowledge of the swamp's every secret with my minor Greensight abilities. Quick, temporary "Warging" jumps into birds to get a literal birds' eye view on our surroundings made navigation not just easier but faster through the simple ability to look and plan ahead, but wasn't the only advantage. I discovered I had an affinity with plants, being able to instinctively get information out of them in subtle ways. Touch a tree, and I could tell whether any birds or other animals were nesting in its roots or canopy. Touch a bush, and I could harvest its berries efficiently, with no movements wasted on searching for them. Look at a herb and I could tell whether it was of particularly high or low quality without having been taught.
We found out about what I'd previously taken as mundane skill when Keera asked me how I'd known a bunch of mushrooms had had hallucinatory properties. I'd answered that I remembered being taught about them, but no. It turns out the crannogmen do not teach kids how to harvest poisonous plants and fungi until they are older, especially those with mind-altering properties for obvious reasons. Kids are just told to avoid them, not why, which was all I should have known about them. Two years of handling herbs and dangerous substances enough to fill an entire small workshop back in the crannog and I hadn't even noticed. No wonder Keera had always known something really odd was happening about me and to keep an eye out for further oddities.
The hunting itself was simple enough. Birds, snakes, fish, lizards, hogs; we never went up against really dangerous animals like swamp-pigs, let alone lizard-lions, but we caught something every day and as weeks passed the size of our kills was steadily growing. Not only did the older huntress seem to be building up to more challenging targets, but she also had me take point at every hunt. I was the one to bring down our quarry, to make the kill more often than not. Each time I did, a small amount of life-force, of magic, was added to my well, building up slowly towards the next milestone.
Thus nearly three months went by and the Seventh Flame saw decent growth that reflected my increasing skills. Half a decade of life and experiences in the Neck rapidly crystalized in actual competence under the tutelage of a skilled teacher. I was actually having fun outside magical practice for the first time in my new life, and the near-silent days of training and hunting in the wilderness with the older woman left me feeling better than the greater relative safety of the crannog or the twins' constant shenanigans. Night by night I relaxed, my occasional nightmares faded away, and I secretly hoped this state of affairs could last forever.
I did not realize Keera had been preparing me for the next stage of my life that was rapidly approaching.
xxxx
It was well into the night and after the day's work and the evening meal were finished that a quartet of men appeared in our camp like ghosts out of the darkness. They were dressed in concealing robes of green, brown and grey over hardened leather with bronze studs, had hunting bows and a quiver of arrows strapped to their backs, and their leader carried a bronze-pointed trident and wore a still-new iron helmet that gleamed in the light of our fire.
I got up and reached for my own spear as quickly as I could, because strangers dropping in unannounced were rarely a good thing in medieval settings. Also, I'd neither seen nor heard them approach until they literally marched into our camp, not fifteen feet away. My whole body tensed, my heart pounded in my chest and adrenaline rushed in my veins. Had these strangers wanted us dead, they could have easily shot us from out of the darkness, outlined as we both were against the campfire... but they hadn't. That left only possibilities where they wanted us alive and I could think of at least two that were worse than being shot down before I'd noticed anything wrong.
A pit rapidly forming in my stomach and hands clenched so hard against my spear that my knuckles creaked, I reached for the flames behind me with my pyromancy. I didn't know what I'd do with fire manipulation that barely reached ten feet, but it was probably going to be something explosive. I shot a glance at the older woman beside me that was slow to react. Had she been more tired from the day's training than she'd been letting on? I raised my spear a bit higher before...
"Put the spear down before you poke someone's eye out, girl," Aunt Keera commanded in her usual sarcastic voice. If there was any tension or wariness in her voice I could not hear it. "These are guests, not bandits."
Guests? But... I lowered the spear as I'd been told but did not relax. Instead I looked at the unexpected visitors with a critical eye. If they showed any hostility I'd react appropriately but until then I tried to see why Keera called them "guests". They were dressed and armed in the style of the Neck but that did not make them friendly. On the other hand they were not making any hostile moves either. Only their leader had a weapon in hand, the other three staying a few steps behind and... were they leaning on each other? Yes... yes they were. The guy in the middle was having trouble just staying upright and had to lean on the man at his left. Meanwhile, the fourth guy was hovering over the pair... almost... protectively.
"So that's the girl," the leader said, drawing my attention back to him. From what I could see under that helmet of his, he was looking at me up and down like... The frank evaluation brought a scowl to my face with more than a little anger behind it. "She looks like a Dragonseed, all right," he stated as if confirming something of interest and getting me even more annoyed at him. Could I draw upon my magic for a burst of speed and send my spear through his torso before he could react?
"Don't rile up my apprentice, Cray," Aunt Keera warned, her tone amused. "She definitely bites."
I flushed in both anger and embarassment and the campfire next to me grew a good three feet for a couple of seconds.
"So I see," this 'Cray' guy said and set his spear aside. "What more can she do?" he asked the older huntress while still staring at me. "Your message was rather vague."
"You can ask 'her' yourself," I told the guy, thoroughly fed up with being talked over as if I weren't present. "And what is it to you?"
"When word of a dragonseed witchling in our lands reached me I did not know what to think," he said, adressing me for the first time. His dark, expressionless gaze was pretty intimidating for a guy that barely reached my height and was probably a few pounds lighter to boot. "But then Albert got himself injured in a hunt-"
"Again?!" Aunt Keera interjected, half incredulous, half amused. "That's the third time, isn't it?"
"-and an opportunity to see what's what arose," Cray talked on as if the huntress hadn't interrupted. "So what say you, girl?" he asked me in the same no-nonsense tone he'd said everything else in.
"Will you heal my man as your... aunt says you can?"
"Lay your man on the ground and reveal the wound," I told the helmeted man leading the small team of Crannogmen. "I cannot make any promises until after I've seen what the problem is."
"Reasonable," he agreed laconically, then ordered his people to do as I'd asked with some silent gesturing. Seeing him up close, the injured 'Albert' guy couldn't be much older than twenty, probably closer to sixteen from how scrawny his beard was - or six and ten as people said here. He was quite well-muscled though, despite his lacking height, built short as most Crannogmen were but wider than their usual wiry builds. The boots came off first, then his tough leather trousers, until from the waist down he was in his smallclothes. Nobody protested about someone getting stripped in the presence of women, because Crannogmen weren't as asinine prudish as most of the people south of The Neck had become under the Faith of the Seven.
The man's right leg had a serious-looking scar from above the knee to halfway around his hip, a sign of a major injury from at least three or four years before. Just by looking at it, I could tell the leg had not regained a hundred percent functionality despite having healed well enough given the circumstances. His left leg on the other hand was wrapped up in linen gauze and a pungent greenish ointment several inches under the knee but above and below the medical wrap the flesh was an angry, inflamed red with a few purple and black veins snaking through it. Even before the wraps came off I suspected what I'd see beneath them.
Sure enough, there was a deep gouge into his shin, two inches wide and with the angry, torn lips of the wound not just infected but already blackening. Yellow pus oozed up from below, hinting at a deeper infection and an imminent turn for the worse. Aunt Keera had come closer and looked on with interest as the wound was revealed but now she grimaced and looked away; it neither looked nor smelled salvageable, not with conventional medical practices. I kneeled by the man's side and touched his leg lightly but firmly just below the injury then delved it with my Sorcery.
My magic responded easily, almost eagerly. Over the past months of my training with the older huntress I'd been using the smallest and easiest of healing spells almost constantly to fix bruises, small cuts and sprains, allowing us to maintain a training intensity that would have been self-destructive under other circumstances. As a result, while I hadn't seen any improvements in power, and no improvement at all for the bigger and flashier effects, the speed and ease of delving another human had improved greatly at the experience. When I'd healed the Old Man months before finding what was wrong had been a struggle. Now, it was all too simple. What it showed me was... Albert was not a fortunate man.
"The infection has not merely reached bone, it began there," I told the four onlookers. "This was a dirty arrow injury. Normally, the leg would be as good as lost and I'd give him even odds of surviving at all, even with amputation."
"We know," the helmeted Cray said with a helpless shrug. Dirty arrows were a crannogman specialty for when lethal poisons were unavailable or you wanted the target to suffer. The arrowheads would be coated in a mix of blood and oil, then exposed to the rotting food remains found in the teeth of carnivorous lizard species in the Neck and left to fester. That bacterial mix was so virulent that without immediate cleaning with an antibacterial herbal concoction followed by further medical treatment it was basically a guaranteed slow end from sepsis even from superficial injuries. Not that the people of the Neck knew about bacteria; they just knew that it caused a slow, agonising death. "Can you heal it?"
"It depends," I told them as I stood back up and away from the patient. "Had you brought him a week earlier, or even a few days it would have been a simple matter." Just kill the infection with Pyromancy, clean up the aftermath with a bit of Sorcery and kick up his natural recovery to the human maximum and he'd have been fine. About the same as I had done for my idiotic adopted brother and my power had grown by leaps and bounds since then. "Now? Now fixing it is going to be costly. It'll need sacrifices."
"Of course," one of the other swamp rangers grumbled behind my back. "Sorcery is a blade without a hilt."
"A lot of things are if you don't know what you're doing or act like a careless idiot," I retorted with a roll of my eyes and pointed at the man on the ground. "Case in point, shooting yourself in the foot with a dirty arrow."
"What is your price?" their leader demanded when it turned out the others did not have a response to that.
"It is not my price, it's a requirement. A fire cannot burn without fuel, a bow cannot shoot without arrows, a smith cannot forge without ore and coal. Just so, too, with magic," I only partially lied to them. Could I have healed the guy without? Maybe if I was willing to spend days and worked myself to exhaustion, but that wouldn't be the best option for anyone involved. Plus I didn't feel like wasting the time or feeling like shit for some guy I didn't know. "Catch three animals and bring them to me, the larger the better."
"That's it?" Cray asked, his eyes narrowing dangerously behind his helmet.
"They have to be alive so I can kill them but yes, that would suffice." The trio of men were giving me distrustful looks so I shrugged and explained further. "At its core the sacrifice should be a fair trade. Your man is not certain to die. Capturing three animals in this swamp is difficult and dangerous for a man alone but no certain death. That there's several of you to share the burden, making it easy enough, does not change the value of the act itself." It was not quite how things worked because both the mage's own power and skill and other circumstances mattered. But for a short explanation it would suffice.
"That's not what the stories say," the same guy as before muttered, again from behind my back. Not very brave, that one, what with being unwilling to accuse a thirteen-year-old in her face.
"That's because of greed, not magic. Most merchants will cheat you of everything they can get away with. Why would witches be different?" I sat back down next to the fire. These people had interrupted us in the middle of the night. If they didn't want to get their guy healed I'd rather go to sleep than argue. "Now get the animals, or do not. You came to me."
"And leave Albert here with you?" the fourth guy demanded. He didn't sound as judgemental as his fellow had been earlier but he wasn't about to trust me with their injured either.
"Enough," Aunt Keera interjected. "If we start with the trust arguments we'll be here all night and the boy won't be getting any better." Hearing her call a nearly grown man a 'boy' reminded me again that she was in her thirties and people in Westeros thought that was already middle age. "I'll go with you to the hunt so you can leave one of you with Flann if you so wish."
"They can leave they guy with the big mouth and not so big balls," I interjected and sure enough, the guy who'd been muttering behind my back immediately revealed himself by shooting me an angry glare.
"You'd be willing to let your apprentice stay on her own in the company of an armed man?" the helmeted leader looked from me then to the older huntress for confirmation.
"Children are dumb, what else is new?" Keera said as she put on her own armor and took up her spear and bow. "We should be back by dawn. Don't set the camp on fire while we're gone," she added, strapping two knives to her belt. "That means you, Flann." And with that glowing opinion about my judgement she disappeared into the swamp, followed by the other two swamp ninjas and leaving me behind with the sick man and Buckethead Cray.
"Ah," the old man exclaimed with new understanding. "So that's what happened to that peat field in the East."
"Some healings are far more difficult than others," I defended myself a bit more angrily than I'd meant to, before turning away to check on the sick guy again. He hadn't spoken since he'd been laid down and now he was sweaty and shivering. A touch at his wrist and then at his forehead gave me confusing results. Yes, he had the shakes, but why was he feeling so cold next to the fire? It was still summer. Unless... "Could you hold on to my hand for a moment?" I asked Buckethead, who still had not removed his helmet, or his armor, or any of his weapons. He was calm and willing to risk help from a witch, not blindly trusting.
"Why?"
"Your man is going in and out of consciousness, sweating heavily and might be going into shock soon, but his temperature feels all wrong. I need a second reference and you're healthy." He gave me his hand with no further argument and the moment our fingers touched I knew what the problem was. His hand was cold, as in "severe hypothermia" levels of cold. At least it felt like that to me, because the problem was my own temperature. Because of course I ran hotter than a normal girl, even an overactive teenager. I wielded fire magic; hadn't Melisandre felt the same in the books? I quickly scrapped my previous evaluations of the patient's temperature and using Cray as a reference point decided that Albert had a dangerously high fever. If it went for too long the heat would harm him. If I used magic to cool him too quickly on the other hand, his body might crash.
Making a note to invent a thermometer one of these days if only to annoy all the misogynist idiots in the Citadel, I focused a bit of Pyromancy to slowly leech heat out of the sick guy while pushing his own body's metabolic and recovery functions as high as they would go without causing lasting harm. For an otherwise healthy, well-fed person that would have been enough to fight off any normal infection but since this was GRR Martin's death world and super-diseases were a dime a dozen it would only serve as a temporary stabilising tactic so I wouldn't have to fix more extensive damage later.
"Where did you learn your magic?" the older crannogman asked about an hour later.
"The usual place," I told him as I carefully increased blood pressure in Albert's leg, using minor blood manipulation to push the accumulated pus and other icky fluids out of his injury without having to touch anything. "I saw it in a dream. Well, more of a vision but that's the same thing when both are magical. Why?"
"It's not just the magic. A girl of seven summers wouldn't have knowledge of normal healing either." Seven years old had been Keera's and the Old Man's best guess at my age when they found me, or so I'd been told. "Do you know who your parents were?"
"I don't remember anything from before I was found," I told the man tiredly. Both Aunt Keera and my adopted father had repeated similar questions many times when I'd been younger. And then there was the other issue. "My magic doesn't say anything on the matter either," I lied.
"Oh?"
"You're a scion of House Cray but your mother was from House Reed and your grandmother was a Blackmyre," I told him and he stilled. "Albert here is a Cray through and through and your nephew. I'd say he's a noble but you are not, though I can't be sure."
"Why not?"
"Because magic cares less about legalities than people do." Also, because I wasn't about to taste both men's blood, that would be icky. "Cray, Snow, if something could change at someone's word alone, how much did it really exist? To magic the difference would be small."
"A Septon would disagree, or most nobles," he mused pensively. With time and opportunity to examine him up close it was clear he was older than Keera, maybe in his forties. Through the eye-holes of his helmet could be seen black eyes with bushy eyebrows, surrounded by light brown skin that had begun to wrinkle with age and stress and hard living in the Neck. "You do realise the appearance of an unknown dragonseed would cause problems, yes?"
"I'd hardly be the first one," I told him with a smile I did not really feel. Dragonseed, nothing. I was far more worried about why my magic insisted I was related to the Amethyst Empress but revealed nothing else about my blood.
We sat by the campfire for hours, Albert's labored breathing slowly calming down, his temperature dropping to what felt like hypothermia to me but was fairly normal for other people and his copious sweating being reduced considerably. He'd still die within hours if I stopped bolstering him, a day at most, and by this point there was nothing mundane medicine could do to help. As the night gave way to the predawn hours I started feeling the effort of keeping him stable through constant low-key healing and added to the usual hard day's training under Keera I was beginning to tire in earnest.
Fortunately, my adopted aunt and the two other swamp ninjas came into the camp not much longer. One of them held a basket that moved and hissed enough that I didn't need to be a Greenseer to know it was full of fairly large, very angry snake. The second hunter was carrying a turtle a good two feet across, with feet as thick as my arms and covered in angular scales, its shell looking as if it was made by little pyramids of bone stuck together. Its head was as large as a man's, with more than half of it taken up by a huge beak snapping at the air. The locals called it, rather appropriately, a bonesnapper. Back on Earth it would have been an alligator snapping turtle and it wouldn't have been nearly as aggressive. Also, that particular specimen would have been one of the largest instead of a runt; bonesnappers in the Neck didn't get nearly as large as the giants over in Essos but were still pretty sizable. Then again, there were river ships smaller than Essossi turtles. Aunt Keera was last in line, dragging an oversized, thirty-pound lizard by a thick rope around its neck. The little beast must have suspected we were up to no good, because it refused to take a step willingly and kept trying to bite at the rope it was dragged by.
"Bring them in by order of size, please," I asked the three of them as I readied my spear.
First was the snake, as thick as my wrist and closer to six feet long than five, with a round head and bright green scales. It wasn't venomous but it was very poisonous unless properly cooked; some people considered it a delicacy. I had to admit it had been pretty tasty, but not worth the mild allergic reaction I'd had back when I'd been ten. The Twins still brought "the day Flann turned red" up from time to time. The moment the basket was open it tried to flee but my spear took it through the head, killing it instantly. Its life rushed through me even as its blood spilled on the ground, leaving me feeling as if I'd drank a dozen bottles of chocolate milk.
Then it was the lizard's turn. Tied as it was, killing it was as easy as a single stab while it tried to pull back. If I felt even the smallest pang of guilt at killing a helpless animal after years of frequent hunts for both food and magical practice, it was washed away by the second stream of life and power to pour into me. It felt less like an energy drink and more like a full night's sleep, banishing my fatigue at keeping Albert alive in its entirety. I was once more fully awake, full of energy and ready, eager even, to go another dozen rounds with Aunt Keera before breakfast. Or perform a healing ritual, I guessed.
Last but definitely not least was the turtle. As soon as it was set down it started scrambling away faster than a turtle its size should have, almost at the speed of a brisk walk. When I tried to stab it though, its head disappeared into its shell, making me miss. I frowned, pulled back and waited for it to start moving before striking faster than before, only for the bronze tip of my spear to be deflected by its thick skull.
Someone behind me snickered. I suspected I knew which of our oh so esteemed visitos it was, and it annoyed me. Suddenly, all this felt like too much of a chore, saving a man's life or not. Why did I have to prove myself to these idiots again? Except if I gave up now after claiming I could heal their friend they'd blame me for his imminent death, no matter how little it had been my fault. Logical? No, but that's how people thought even back on Earth and they were far less educated and superstitious in this world. Thus I decided to show off. My next stab came with a burst of power that made the campfire hiss, my muscles hurt from the sudden overexertion, and the spear pierce straight through the turtle's shell with the crack of breaking bone.
As the largest wave of life-force yet left me feeling even better despite the sudden burst of magic, I enjoyed the shocked stares of the two younger hunters. I'd bet free healing against a fish caught in the bog a week before that neither of them could have cracked that shell with a stab, let alone gone all the way through. Brimming with vitality, I left them to reconsider the potential stabbing-related ramifications of bad-mouthing a real witch as I healed their friend in earnest.
First, to deal with the remaining infection. I was about to spike Albert's temperature the same way I did mine when I realized that would kill him. Other people did not have my own inherent heat resistance, so I first woke a spell to mimick it for him. It wouldn't quite let him walk into even a campfire but a dive into a boiling cauldron would be just fine. Then I spiked his temperature, frying all bacterial intruders that were not thus protected. That done, I pushed his already boosted metabolism and healing into supernatural overdrive, fixing in minutes what would have normally taken days. After about a quarter hour of that, the injury in his leg had been reduced to a fresh-looking scar, the inflammation was gone and the blackened veins had been fixed. That did not mean he was fully healed.
"It's done. We should leave him to his rest until he wakes up on his own and from then on he should only do light work for two weeks so the bone can mend properly." Could I have pushed him to recover faster than that? Maybe, but why put unnecessary strain on both him and myself? "Now let's start cooking. I'm famished and I haven't had lizard stew for months."
"...you want us to cook the sacrifices?" Mr Big Mouth asked as if I were crazy.
"Why wouldn't I? The animals' life was the sacrifice, the meat is perfectly edible." The men shot me dubious looks but Aunt Keera started gutting the lizard right away and they soon followed with the steady hands and practiced motions of the experienced hunters they were.
Speaking of sacrifices, while the temporary boost was gone, the longer-lasting gains from the three sacrifices added to my well of power. Hardly comparable to my two biggest, most dangerous kills but still far more than the smaller prey Keera and I had been going after in our daily hunts. Another twelfth of the way towards the next milestone perhaps, leaving my well four-fifths full in total. Not bad at all for a single night's gains, which left me reevaluating the whole "healer" thing.
I'd resented Keera's revelation of my secrets to her fellow huntsmen but in retrospect the older huntress' plans were to my benefit. If the crannogmen came not only to accept my presence but to see my healing as reliable, I would have a lot to gain. They lived in a death swamp in a medieval world, there was no way they didn't suffer frequent casualties to injury or disease like all medieval populations had. They also lived almost exclusively off hunting, so they already had reasons of their own to go after animals. With sacrifices being edible, they lost almost nothing by paying me in captured animals for healing and I could gain power boosts from sacrifices without needing either to risk myself in the swamps or spend time that could be put on other things. Add to that the less concrete but just as useful gains of reputation and potential favors and it really was a no-brainer.
I'd still curse Keera with a persistent itch for not telling me about it first...
I stabbed into the five-pound mottled frog, the undersized specimen dying with a disgusting squelch. The now-familiar rush of power tingled up my arm, through my torso and my other limbs and then deeper, settling into the well of power in the back of my mind. It was a sensation that had repeated often enough in recent times but instead of losing its novelty it had grown more alluring in repetition. What made the rush better than any drug in my mind was that as far as I could tell it did not cloud my thoughts, nor did it cause harmful side-effects. It was just a boost of power and vitality, straightforward and simple; just one little stab, a little death beneath my knife or at the tip of my spear and not only could I enjoy the rush for a time but I would become ever so slightly more than I had been - permanently. And therein lay its danger; if it did me no harm why would I ever stop?
Setting aside the feeling of overflowing pressure bursting through some barrier and the insistent, demanding whispers for attention that followed, I lowered my hand to the ten-year-old's leg and the infected bite upon it. Pushed on by the rush of overflowing power my magic erased the tiny injury in moments, returned the surrounding inflamed muscle and soft tissue to a much healthier rosy paleness than the angry red they had been, then burned out all traces of disease in the younger girl's body. Feeling a bit sorry for the rather scrawny kid, I further infused her body with magical warmth. For a week, maybe two, her body wouldn't need as much energy to maintain itself and her food needs would drop.
"It's done," I told the wide-eyed father that had just seen his daughter healed of an infection that would mean little to a grown man but might have killed a slightly malnourished child if given time to fester. "Her appetite will be reduced for a couple of weeks due to the infection," I lied. Such deception was coming easier lately; not all of Keera's lessons were about stabbing things with a pointy stick. "You must make sure she eats the same as before to recover her health." With her temporarily reduced needs, that would let the girl actually put on some weight and help against the malnourishment at least a little. It was the most I could do without a ritual to make the sustenance spell permanent and I had no idea what that would do on a growing kid. Probably something not good and maybe tentacled.
The grateful man thanked me profusely despite most crannogmen's laconic tendencies, then took the girl back to wherever their home was through the usual transportation methods of recent visitors to Flann's Free Healing; a rather fragile-looking canoe. Smiling at another job well done only slightly marred by the corpse of the frog, I deposited the squelchy, disgusting thing to the box set aside for such offers. The box and its contents were a result of my miscalculation; many of my patients and their escorts didn't understand that the healing was far from free and insisted on leaving behind little gifts. Some would leave behind the sacrifices. Others left small tools, bits of raw material, ornaments they thought a pretty young woman might fancy, even the occasional coin from those of greater means. None were useless per se - frogs and slugs excepted - but they paled in comparison to both the reputation and the magical gains. Keera was all too happy to take what I didn't need off my hands and sell them in villages down the Green Fork. She'd made the trip on her own, my increasing number of patients cutting into my available time.
Not just the sacrifices but the experience of working on people, testing out small magics beyond just healing like the sustenance spell, limited but significant bits of experimentation. Under more modern moral standards back on Earth such experiments would have seen me in prison probably for life but in this world life was cheap... and you couldn't test spells on bodies or animals. Not only did magic respond differently on live humans, but it had smaller but notable differences between individuals. Every single application on a person was ever so slightly unique that you basically had to wing it, trusting yourself and your instincts, instincts that didn't, couldn't have a basis in prior knowledge. It was still helping people; seeing those that might have been crippled or died without my aid walk away better if not always fully healed was very satisfying. Five weeks after Cray and his men had left, I'd had my first case. Two weeks after that, I'd helped close to a hundred people... and reached my next milestone of magical growth.
I sat back against a tree trunk, closed my eyes and delved into the vision of the Fourteen Flames. Fourteen plinths greeted me, colored flames of varying sizes dancing upon half of them. The gold of the first flame and the red of the twelfth were four times the dimensions and intensity of all others that burned brightly enough to be called candles, except for fiery orange of the eleventh that lagged slightly behind at three quarters that much growth. Nobility, Sorcery, Pyromancy; my choices had been oh so typically Valyrian but they seemed to have worked well. The bronze-colored second flame, the lead-colored seventh and the bright-green ninth followed, much smaller but no less important. Warfare, Subterfuge, Greensight; they were reflections of where I'd spent over half a decade growing and learning. One of them I'd even earned through personal effort rather than sacrifice or inborn talent.
The latest milestone had come with enough raw power to feed two of the flames once or one flame twice, as usual. The question was what to invest in, what to alter about myself? Should I become a better warrior, the equal of a hedge knight or veteran sell-sword? Get out of Aunt Keera's training and finally becoming adequate with a bow by investing more into subterfuge? Explore some new sphere of magic? Gain a deft hand at smithing and building through the experiences of craftsmen past? The possibilities and combinations were many, all of them promising. But what did I really need right now? What would serve my plans best?
After an hour's consideration, I reached the conclusion that I did not know. My budding attempts at gaining recognition and ingratiating myself to important individuals without also drawing too much heat were picking up speed but had yet to bear fruit. Similarly, my efforts to gain the right skills to survive moving out of the Neck on my own were progressing steadily under Keera's tutelage. Threats existed of course, no thanks to a certain writer, but which one I'd have to face first was up in the air. When in doubt, fall back to the basics. Without knowing which challenge would come next, my highest priorities needed to be overall capability and further growth. Looked from that angle, the choices became simple.
The idea of Nobility, being innately superior and more capable, gave the most overall passive benefits. It was also one of the areas I could not improve through training, study, or experience. I fed half the accumulated lifeforce from my overflowing well on the golden flame and felt the world grow lighter and clearer. It was not the world that had changed though; I was noticeable stronger so I felt lighter on my steps. I could see a hair better, hear a little further, kind of the opposite of an aging man losing sensory acuity. A sensation of pins and needles spread down my spine and limbs as my body ever so slightly shifted. But the change went deeper than the physical. I summoned a flame on the palm of my hand and though it remained only the size of a large torch it was brighter and holding on to it was less tiring; the difference between a dead sprint and trying to run a four-minute mile. Both absolutely sucked but you could do the latter for minutes while the former would see you collapsing in less than one.
Feeding the golden flame again was tempting, very much so. Who wouldn't want to get more power just by reaching out and seizing it, cost in blood or no? Feeling better, actually comfortable in my skin despite living in as bad a medieval hellhole as had ever existed back on Earth was also a powerful drug. Except power without the ability to apply it might as well not exist. With Sorcery I could apply my power for healing and gaining information on the human body or granting small temporary boosts to myself or others. With Pyromancy I could start and control fires better than anyone with mundane tools, protect myself from heat, cold, starvation and even poison and had a hold-out weapon that would neither be expected nor could be disarmed. I was prepared enough for living in the Neck but being paid for healing aside, I didn't have ways to pursue my immediate goals.
Time waited for neither serf nor sorceress. It was the first month of the two hundredth and ninety-third year after Aegon's Conquest. If I was lucky, the enormous dumpster fire of disasters that was canon would begin in half a decade. If I was unlucky, things would spiral into massive conflict even earlier or go worse. I needed to get out of the Neck and survive doing so, then prepare for the wars I knew were on the horizon. First and foremost I needed a way to make the month-long trip out of the Neck in relative safety without spending another year training to be a swamp ninja. I needed ways to get more resources quickly, ways to project power and influence, ways to gain information. For all that there was no better tool than Greensight as a certain Three-Eyed Raven had proven.
I fed the remaining stockpile of lifeforce to the green flame. It devoured the added fuel quickly, eagerly, and grew into double its previous size. Then the visions followed. An old man slipping behind the eyes of his dog in his sleep, as easily as wearing an old boot. A woman being hunted by a huge cat in a snow-laden forest until she cast her own shadow into her pursuer, a clash of wills until the cat submitted with an angry hiss while the woman took over the prickly personality of the cat. A boy befriending a wolf and forging a lasting bond, neither side tamed by the other. More memories, experiences of wargs forging connections with an animal rather than riding one for a few fleeting minutes or by accident. A foolhardy boy sending his mind out to a bear too eagerly and openly, then screaming as his emotions and thoughts mingled with the bear's until neither knew where the bear ended and the boy began. Connections that could last from years, be used from great distances, to the benefits of both if the bond was used well, to their detriment if it was mishandled. But there was more than just warging there. An instinctive awareness of the woods and its inhabitants, a sense for what life was around and what was its purpose. The ability to bolster that life, or weaken it. The ability to touch other people's minds and glean emotions, but not yet hear thoughts or delve deeper.
Slowly, the visions faded and I returned to the real world. Getting to my feet I stumbled, a lingering disorientation from years of added memories leaving me with a migraine on top of a hangover. It was very slowly fading but even so underscored that gaining magical ability was not entirely safe, let alone using it as the visions had shown. The swamp around me took on an ominous, oppressive atmosphere now that I could feel it in my bones just how many potential threats were within reach. Bonding with an animal would be riskier than anything I'd done before except facing a lizard-lion in melee, but it would come with all sorts of benefits; just look at the Starks in both the television series and books. And unlike people talented only in warging, my magic was stronger and would only grow. That didn't get rid of the innate risks but blunted some of them and removed a few of the limitations.
Night had fallen, so no more patients would be coming for the next few hours. With a smile, I took up my spear, knive and bow, then ventured into the bog to try out all my new abilities. The night air was chilly and crisp for a change, the swampland was silent, there were no people to accost me or duties that needed my immediate attention. The next few hours I'd have entirely to myself, to unwind and have fun hunting, and maybe get a nice, ambulatory tool to do things for me while I was otherwise occupied.
As my canoe slid across the still, black surface of the waters though, I couldn't dislodge the feeling that I was being watched...
I carefully drew until the string almost kissed my ear, the bow's limbs creaking as they stretched. My target was a mere fifty feet away but I didn't take any chances, spending a good half minute to aim properly. Whereas the act of drawing had become easy enough that the hunting bow felt like a toy in my hands, hitting things with it remained an iffy proposition. I released, the arrow flying out into the darkness, and a second later a small rush of life-force confirmed the kill. At least I could still hit when aiming at a sleeping target at barely above point-blank range. Slight annoyance warring against the energizing rush of success, I jogged through the undergrowth, tangled plants giving way more easily than they should have, picked up the swamp rabbit, pushed the arrow all the way through the still twitching body then threw the latter into my open backpack while examining the former. The spine felt only slightly strained, no chips or cracks; still good to shoot a few times so I put it into the quiver for used arrows and ventured forth.
The swamps of the Neck were dark and full of terrors. This was especially true at night when most people could not see even their own hands, as the tree canopy and mists blocked the light of the stars and the moon. Some crannogmen had fewer problems seeing in the dark than medieval people back on Earth had had though, while I had fewer problems than most. I didn't know how the swamp ninjas did it but my night vision was simply better than it should have been; the world looked gloomy like Hollywood movie darkness instead of pitch black. Then came the strange familiarity with both plans and animals, an instinctive awareness of where to go, how to step, what to avoid and in which places my quarry was hiding that grew stronger the wilder the area and the less people and their works were around. Finally, periodic sacrifices to the mutant marsh owl perched on my shoulder kept the little hellion around to share its ridiculous night-vision and magnetoreception.
OK, she probably wasn't any more a mutant than any of the Neck's weird fauna, but twenty times better night-vision than mine was bullshit and being able to sense the local magnetic lines through her was trippy. And yes she was a hellion, barely flight-capable though she might be. It had been weeks and she still refused to form a permanent bond and the one time I'd been too busy healing to feed her she'd sulked, keeping those huge eyes of hers shut every time I tried to look through... for three whole nights.
The benefits still outweighed the fuss, as proven with the next radar scan. No, it wasn't actually radar. It still was a full visual search of our surroundings, the weird marsh owl I'd picked up slowly moving her head back and forth through a two hundred and seventy degree turn as soon as I was done collecting our latest kill. Two minutes later we already had our next target, a particularly large crab crawling in the shallows between two patches of mud and trees pretending to be islands. It had never taken more than ten minutes to reacquire targets in the two weeks we'd been hunting together.
Since the crab was slow, I just jogged up to it and stabbed it through the torso with my knife instead of bothering with another bow shot. Faster, easier, less wasteful. I pulled the bronze blade out, eyeing the edge critically. It was beginning to wear down from use so I made a note to either tell Keera to get me a new knife the next time she went to the market, or save the next one to be gifted from grateful patients. I added the crab to my backpack, shifting it around to balance the load better. Almost full; a couple more kills and it was back to camp to unload and secure them. Then I heard the click of bone next to my ear.
"It's hardly been an hour, you can't be hungry yet," I told the owl, sending the thoughts behind the words to her at the same time. More clicking was the answer, along with a flare of impatience.
"Yes, I'm sure, and you should be too," I shot back. Neither of us had a problem tracking the passage of time from the daily life cycle of the swamp itself. "You're just a glutton." The response to my stating the patently obvious was a sharp pain in my earlobe as the little shit bit me.
"Do that again and I'll make you go bald," I warned the hellion, sending her an image of a plucked chicken hatefully glaring at everyone and everything. The clicking turned from annoyed to reproachful. "Yes, because feeding you until you're too fat to fly will be any better," I retorted, sending an image of a New York pigeon waddling just outside a bakery. The owl hooted indignantly but no more beak clicking ensued, a clear signal that I'd won this argument.
I was just about to have her look for our next target when something big and with too many limbs burst out of a nearby thicket. The hellion gave a screech and flew off in a panic as a fanged maw twice the size of my head went for my flank. I scrambled to leap away, to bring my spear to bear but the monster was faster, its snapping jaws crossing several dozen feet in under a second and snapping shut... around my backpack. Teeth the size of a man's thumbs pierced through the leather before the beast started thrashing, throwing me around as if I weighed next to nothing. Leather tore at the seams and I flew at least twenty feet before slamming into a tree trunk with a grunt.
Ignoring the pain with a surge of adrenaline, I moved. To stay still was to die so I rolled away from my rough landing and tried to get my bearings. In the gloom, a huge, sinuous shape with twisted, four-toed limbs that looked almost like arms was wolfing down the catch of several hours' worth of hunting. My first thought was lizard-lion but it was wrong; too thin body, too-long snout, too small, and I was pretty sure the thing had hair. Sparse and short and thick but still hair, and reptiles didn't have those. But some dinosaurs had hair-like feathers, a rather useless thought occurred to me as I tried to find my dropped spear.
I saw a gleam of bronze on the other side of the small plateau we were on and frustration followed. That was my spear, all right, but it had been thrown on the other side of the beast, and said beast was already finished with my kills and looking in my direction. Apparently, thirty or so pounds of game were but an appetizer for... whatever it was and now considered me the main course. I drew my knife and prepared to disabuse the monster of that notion. How did I even get into those situations?
No answer was forthcoming except a charging mutant snake with clawed arms for feet. I rolled aside at the last moment, letting the thing be carried on by its own momentum as I stabbed the limb passing inches from my face. Bronze bit into scaly and hairy skin all of an inch, and the thing hissed like some furious giant snake. Droplets of too-dark blood dripped off my knife as I retreated and echoes of the beast's essence were reflected in my thoughts the moment the tang of iron caught in my nose.
The next thing I knew I was already charging, magic overcharging my every muscle until my joints ached, mud bursting around my feet as I accelerated. The world slowed down as my heart beat twice as fast as it ever had and I fell on my quarry from behind with a single, overwhelming thought; KILL!
A whip-like tail struck with rib-cracking force, knocking me back into an uncontrolled tumble but I had already stabbed my quarry a dozen times before it could react, spilling more of that juicy, delicious, red-black blood. I must have more! I forced my protesting body to get up, then the beast leaped all across the plateau at me. Laughing so loudly my throat hurt, I forced another magical surge through my whole body. The agony was nothing before the speed that followed, reaching the monster while it was still in mid-leap and slamming into its belly knife-first. Several somethings in my arm snapped from the impact but that too was nothing before our combined momentum gutting the monster from throat to tail.
Glorious red-black treasure rained down on my face and I roared in exultation, turning around to find my kill shaking and twitching as if trying to pull itself apart. It was mine and already dead, it just did not know it. I fell on it in its death throes, wrapping my limbs around it and plunging my face into the gaping wound. Its not-legs were too long, too uncoordinated, so I ignored them in favor of sucking more of its lifeblood until its power mingled with weeks of prior hunts and the offerings of supplicants and exploded inside me like a fire-mountain of young Valyria.
Then I finally passed out.
xxxx
I was woken not by the stinging pain in my earlobe but the clacking of bones next to my ear. There was something familiar about them, but what? Groaning, I tried to get up but my muscles burned at the effort. That made me stop and the burn faded to a dull, full-body throb. My head pounded as if struck by Robert's own oversized, overcompensating hammer, my every breath sent a sting of pain across my lower ribs and my right arm burned and itched, signs of magically accelerated recovery. I opened my eyes then immediately closed them with a hiss of pain as sunlight stung them, even what little was managing to get through the canopy overhead. I must have gotten completely, overwhelmingly, stupidly drunk somehow, because I didn't even remember it.
"Must have been some party," I muttered then winced because even that sounded loud. More clacking bones followed way too close, each one sending another little sting of pain through my temples. "Whoever's doing that, stop it. Or you're off my contact list forever." Shit, what kind of cocktail did I drink to have left such a sticky, foul taste in my mouth? Grasping for memories that weren't there, I reached out for my magic and immediately a soothing warmth took away the worse of the party's aftermath. Magic was the good shit. Way better than aspirin, or even chocolate milk. Then the shape of that particular thought gave me a sorely needed reality check and my eyes went wide as I leaped off the ground, aching limbs or no.
I was not in my little suburban home back on Earth, nor in some hotel room after some really wild partying all night long. I was not even cooling off said night of drinking in some holding cell. No, I was in the middle of a blackened clearing, on a dinky patch of land that couldn't even be called a proper island, in the middle of the giant swamp that had been my home for the past six years. It was midday, the sun almost exactly overhead, shining down through the gap that had been burned through the canopy by what had probably been my own magic. I was also naked -because of course I was - and coated in a sticky, drying, flaking substance that superficially resembled tar but which I was pretty sure was blood. Just not the kind of blood a normal animal would have.
The little hellion of a marsh owl I'd been working on bonding with clicked her beak in annoyance and looked up at me demandingly. It was hungry again.
"We're out of owl treats. Your complaints to the monster," I told her waspishly. "The monster I barely survived fighting last night, no thanks to you."
The little shit clicked her beak again and flapped her feathers twice before doing the freaky all-around head turn owls were wont to do. She was looking at the borders of the blackened-out circle and the pieces of the monster there. Three clawed limbs palm-up in the West, three clawed limbs palm-down in the East, a smaller circle of gutted snake-like coils to the South, an eyeless, tongueless skull to the North.
"Yes, yes, I killed it," I told the owl, shoving every bit of my annoyance at her magically. "You still didn't help. You'll eat when we get back to camp, unless you wanna try some monster?" The owl hooted indignantly and flew off. Of course it didn't want to eat the monster. It probably stank. Also it was seriously, magically poisonous.
I glared at the circle of parts neatly arranged all around the round blackened area with me at its center. It was obviously a ritual, a ritual I had no memory of. The last thing I remembered was drinking the monster's blood in a storm of bloodlust and temporary insanity. That was the only bit that actually made sense, because the monster's blood was an insanity-causing poison. What did not make sense was how the fuck did a Basilisk get in the Neck, three and a half thousand miles from the Basilisk Isles. Not just how it had gotten here, but why did it happen to stumble upon me of all people? And where the fuck had the ritual come from?
Suddenly having a very, very, alarming suspicion, I delved into my mind and the vision of the Fourteen Flames waiting there. The well of power that had been a bit more than half-full was utterly, painfully empty now, as every bit of life-force had been sucked out of it and then whoever or whatever did it had kept on trying to drain more. It was also notably larger, signifying another milestone. Uneasy about what I would find I immediately checked the Flames, then exhaled in relief.
False alarm; the only flame that had grown at all was the eleventh, the orange fire of Pyromancy. Reaching at it mentally and fumbling for a good five or six minutes, I was pretty sure what the changes were. Beyond just maiking my previous spells a bit stronger, I could heat any stone I touched now, channeling my fire magic through them with the same effort I could conjure flame in mid-air. If I concentrated the heat enough it was even possible to outright melt stones - as long as they weren't any larger than my fist or so. And if the stones had any thematic or physical association with fire or heat, the ease of heating them and the amount I could heat increased with the strength of that association. It should work with all igneous rocks some, more with plutonic, even further with pyroclastic, and most of all with volcanic.
That was interesting and potentially useful. I wasn't going to be shaping molten rock into giant castles or miles-spanning bridges any time soon but even the very basics of Valyrian stone-shaping was... not cool, the opposite of cool. In fact, it was almost not-cool enough to make me miss that the orange Flame of Pyromancy was the same size as the red Flame of Sorcery. The Flame I'd fed four times in the past, while I'd fed Pyromancy three times. Every milestone so far had consisted of enough fuel, enough life-force to feed two Flames, or the same Flame twice. And if that trend had not changed, there was no combination of feedings that should have resulted in my Pyromancy as strong as my Sorcery and all other Flames unchanged... unless they were not unchanged. Scowling, I reached for the Fourteenth Flame. Up close, its seemingly empty plinth radiated an alien emptiness and silence if emptiness and silence had been colors... about as strong as Warfare which I'd fed once and used several times since. And no matter how I tried, the Fourteenth Flame gave no hints of what its magic could do beyond some indecipherable whispers in a language I'd never heard before.
Gods fucking damnit...
xxxx
I returned back to camp late, my injuries from the battle slowly recovering with a steady but tiring application of healing. I was tired, I was worried about both the unknown ritual and the magic that had brought it forth, and my leathers were damaged either from the battle or from casting them aside in my post-battle madness. At least they'd simply been discarded just outside the ritual ground instead of being swallowed by the bog or worse, set on fire. That would have been pretty hard to explain to Keera and I'd never live it down. In short, I was in no mood to entertain visitors. I'd tell anyone that had come for healing to give me a couple hours to rest and freshen up. Maybe claim sanitation requirements or cite some bogus ritual preparations, unless the visitors were in critical condition.
That plan was immediately shot down by the presence of a significant group of armed people. Maybe a dozen men and women wouldn't be 'significant' for any other place in Westeros but for the sparsely populated Neck and the insular communities of Crannogmen they were very unusual. Especially since every single one of them was armed with both bow and polearm, whether spear, trident, or glaive. They wore lambskin breeches and jerkins coated in overlapping bronze scales, half of them had round leather shields strapped to their backs, the other half carried bundles of weighted nets. Two of them bore slightly rusty greathelms just like that Cray guy had. They had all come in their own boats and eleven of those boats also carried a sizable pig each. The twelfth carried two kids, a girl of maybe ten that looked all around my camp with interested but also worried eyes and a boy several years younger that was pale as a corpse and was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.
"Flann of the Green Fork?" a man of maybe five and a half feet, with a wiry build and a soft voice asked. He stood with a slight crouch and with his face in the shadow of a low-hanging hood, both of which made him seem smaller but I was not fooled. His blood sang not just with a past that stretched back in the mists of time but with an invisible weight, a shadow of unseen power I'd only seen in some of the ancient ruins and the aftermath of my own rituals. Magic.
"I am she," I told him, because how many silver-haired, amethyst-eyed, five-foot-nine teenage girls were there in the Neck?
"We've heard stories you're a witch with healing magic," he said and I barely resisted snorting derisively. I'd bet they had heard stories, all right. "A child is dying of greywater fever. Could your magic save him?"
"That, no healer can promise with certainty," I told the man I suspected had his men watching over me for some time. "What I can promise is that I will try."