The Thief and the Witch

Zane Joly

            “Come on, we’ve got to go!” said Anoki, glancing around nervously.

            “Here’s an idea,” said Lira, adjusting the candle she had placed on the stone floor, “How about you perform the ancient rite and bend reality to your will, and I’ll tell you that you’re taking too long.” The witch snapped her fingers and the candle ignited, a small red flame.

            In the corridor behind them, a guard appeared. He spotted them and yelled, “Over here!” and about a dozen more heavily armed individuals began rushing in behind him.

            Anoki started tapping his foot. He knew his sister knew what she was doing, but her spells had gone wrong before. She noted his fear and rolled her eyes, producing a small vial of clear liquid seemingly from nowhere. She uncapped it and poured the liquid on the candle, extinguishing the flame. A pale smoke began to rise from the candle, far more than the hot wick should have produced.

            The tip of one of the guard’s spears was only twelve feet away. Lira waited. Eight feet. She drew in a deep breath. Four feet. She blew it out and the smoke rushed towards the approaching flood of guards. Two feet. The smoke solidified in different sections, like serpents, and wound its way through the heads of the guards, passing through their skulls like solid matter was just as ephemeral as they were. The spear stopped about two inches away from Anoki.

            The men were all standing around, looking confused, and their eyes were unfocused. The smoke serpents disappeared. “Memory spirits,” explained Lira, “In about ten minutes, the guards will snap back into reality, and won’t remember ever finding us or seeing me do magic. They’ll remember that they were trying to find people in the palace after something had been stolen from the vault, but-”

            “Yes, yes,” said Anoki, “Very clever, now can we go?”

            His sister nodded and the two resumed their mad dash. Lira skidded to a halt in front of a pair of double doors. “Are you sure it's this one?” Anoki asked.

            She nodded and tried to open the doors, but they wouldn’t budge. “It’s locked,” she said, “Maybe if I-”

            But her brother just set down his bag of loot with a small clattering sound as the treasures within rang against each other, and bent down to inspect the lock. He took out a few lockpicking tools, and the door swung open in a few seconds, revealing stone steps leading down into the darkness. “Not everything has to be magic,” he said.

            Lira grabbed her brother’s hand, and Anoki had time to snatch his bag back up before she was pulling him down the steps, closing the door behind them. The siblings were completely surrounded by black until Anoki heard the sound of a snap and a small flame suddenly manifested, dancing on the tip of his sister’s finger. With the tiny source of illumination, the two descended.

            Anoki breathed a sigh of relief. The guards were unlikely to check down here. At least, he hoped they were. But they would come down here eventually. They reached the bottom of the stairs. Lira performed a series of signals with both hands, and the flame split and flew across the room, igniting the surrounding torches set in sconces. The new light revealed an old underground chamber, filled with stone coffins. The walls were lined with pots full of cremated ash set in shelves carved into the stone.

            “Yeah,” said Anoki, “This is probably the place.” Lira slowly paced forward, looking around with a searching gaze, like she was trying to find a specific spot. Finally, she stopped at a certain point on the floor. She reached into her coat and pulled out a small bell and set it on the ground. Then she took a step back and produced a bottle of some dark gray dust and poured it in a circle around the bell. Then she took another step back and pulled out a bottle of a pale green liquid and poured it in a larger circle around the dust. She dropped both bottles, and they shattered on the ground. Lira leaned down to inspect the glass shards, like she was reading tea leaves. They led her to some conclusion, and she reached into her coat to pull out three small statues of black stone. Anoki didn’t have the faintest idea how she kept so many things on her person, much less knew where each of them were. Lira set the trio of statues down, each located an equal distance away from the others

            “Alright,” she said, turning back to her brother, “Everything’s in place. We can now get out of here.”

            The two turned back to the stairs and began the climb back up. Lira extinguished the torch flames with a hand wave and reconjured the smaller light. When they reached the top of the staircase, Anoki held up a hand and Lira stopped. He put his ear to the door and listened. The sound of clanking armor was near, but he heard it fade away. He waited four more seconds, then nodded.

            They slipped out the door and along the halls. Before long, the siblings made it to a nearby courtyard, the full moon visible above. There were no plants, and the ground was paved with smooth square stones. Lira pulled out two vials and handed one to Anoki. “What’s in this again?” he asked, looking critically at the bubbling gray liquid.

            “The ash from the burnt feathers of a roc and rain from a hurricane, distilled and struck by lightning.”

            “So it doesn’t taste good?” asked Anoki.

            “Nope,” his sister responded, “Pretty awful actually. Bottoms up.” The two tipped back the vials and drank. Lira had been right. The stuff tasted awful.

            “There’s no wind tonight,” said the witch, “So we’re going to need a running start.” He nodded.

            Lira took her brother’s left hand in her right, and with his other hand he gripped the bag of pilfered treasure. The two then ran forward, as fast as they could. Anoki could feel something strange happening, like he was getting lighter. They were most of the way across the courtyard, and the wall was approaching fast. Then together, the brother and sister leapt.

            Anoki felt a strange sensation, like being buffeted by a strong wind, except he was the wind. He couldn’t see anything or hear anything. He merely twisted around somewhere, and he could feel his sister guiding him. He didn’t know how long he was like that, but suddenly, he felt his solid body again, his boots pressing against a wooden floor. He was back in the cottage. And it was morning.

            “We need to move quickly,” said Lira, “Pour it out.”

            Anoki shook his head to clear it and poured out the contents of the bag on a nearby table. Several old gold relics, a few random shiny objects that he had grabbed as they fled, a hair brush, still containing the hairs of its owner, and a platinum crown embedded with two rubies, two sapphires, and an amethyst.

            He grabbed a nearby box of tools and began prying the jewels out of the crown. When they were all out, he swept them back into the bag and set the crown back on the table. Anoki returned the treasures and the brush to the bag. All except the crown.

            “Are you sure about this?” asked Lira, anxiously, “I’m sure we can find another way that doesn’t involve-”

            “I’ll be fine,” said Anoki, “We’ve planned this out. The two of us could take on the entire kingdom. We can handle a few stupid nobles and one little monarch. And if we don’t do this, they won’t stop looking for us, and they’ll find us eventually, when we aren’t prepared for it.”

            Lira nodded, took the bag and went. Anoki watched her through the window, and kept watching until she disappeared into the shadows of the forest. He sighed. Anoki began his typical warm-up, stretching, going through vocal exercises, flexing and relaxing his facial muscles. He might not have the opportunity to do an acting warm-up in a while, and he would certainly need it.

            King Besim strode down the stone corridor. He strode everywhere he went. A king did not walk, he strode. A man in a black coat was waiting for him, standing by a barred window. “You said that you had news?” Besim asked.

            “Yes, your highness,” answered the man, Inquisitor Ternos, “I just wished to tell you the prisoner is behaving… strangely.”

            “How so?” asked the king.

            “Well…” Inquisitor Ternos hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. The king was rather sensitive about this particular matter. “He seems almost completely unaffected by his punishment. He’s been here thirty two days, provided with minimal amounts of dirty water, which he doesn’t even drink. He should be unable to walk by this point, if not dead. Instead he regularly strolls around his cell.”

            Besim went to the barred window and looked down into the cell about fifteen feet below. The prisoner was facing away from him, staring at the wall. His blond hair was dirty and hung to his shoulders, but his hands and legs did not tremble, there was no raggedness to his breath. “I was waiting for you to arrive, Besim.”

            “That is ‘your highness’, to you, wretch,” he said to the figure in the cell below. The man turned and the king could see a slight smile on his face.

            “I am beyond such pointless titles,” the man answered. There was a certain unnerving steadiness to his voice, made even more sinister by the way it echoed off the walls. “Run along now. I find your presence mildly irritating.”

            King Besim clenched his fists at his sides and gritted his teeth. It had been years since anyone had spoken to him in such a way. “Why did you give yourself up?” He demanded, “My soldiers say they found you sitting in a rocking chair in a cottage, holding the crown in your hand, gems pried out.”

            “You mean the colored rocks?” the prisoner answered, “Yes, I removed them. I thought it looked better without them.”

            “I repeat,” said the king, “Why?”

            “I didn’t break when they tortured me,” the man responded, “I doubt I will give in to the begging of a boy in a cape who insists people refer to him with idiotic terms.”

            “Perhaps then,” said King Besim, “They did an inadequate job. Ternos, question him again. And don’t hold back this time.” With that, the king strode away.

            Ternos issued the appropriate orders. The man was dragged through his cell and put through every torment they knew, just as they had done before. The man didn’t so much as flinch at the pain, just sighed as if he found the entire process rather tiresome. When both his pinkies and one ear were removed, he showed only a mild concern. He was returned to his cell.

            Ordinarily, prisoners weren’t questioned after so long in the cell. They were often so weak they died in the process. But this was not an ordinary situation. It was Ternos’s job to know things, and sometimes to get rid of people who knew things. And he had been puzzling over every aspect of this case, and no part of it made sense.

            Firstly, the prisoner shouldn’t have been able to break into the royal vault in the first place. It was impregnable. Ternos could find no evidence of any type of forced entry. The guards had fallen asleep at their posts, and one of them had woken up to see two figures hurrying away, with a bag slung over one of their shoulders. How they had opened the vault was a mystery. It was like the door had unlocked itself and swung open for them. The alarm had been sounded and the palace had been filled to the brim with guards searching, yet not a single one found anything. Sentries watched every possible exit, and no one left. The only thing that any of them had noticed was that a sentry on the northeast tower had commented that he briefly felt a strong breeze that night, which none of the others had. Seemingly the solitary piece of actual information Ternos had was that there were two figures, which was reported by a half asleep guard.

            But the oddities didn’t end there. The crown was an heirloom, a relic of the kingdom’s first ruler. It had been enchanted long ago to radiate a specific pulse of magic that the royal seer could find with ease. And it had been tracked to a cottage in the middle of nowhere, and fifty knights and a hundred soldiers had been sent to retrieve it. Only to find a single man, a gemless crown, and an empty cottage. Where the gemstones, the other stolen treasures, and the second figure had gone was a mystery. The royal seer had tried to find them, but he had failed. Those objects did not have the same enchantment upon them as the crown.

            And the greatest mystery of all was the man. The man who could not be starved. The man who never drank the water they gave him, and showed no sign of dehydration. The man who could not feel pain. The man who only said vague, slightly ominous things and walked around his cell. The man who didn’t seem to care all that much about the crown he had given up his life to steal. He would not even tell anyone his name.

            No matter how many times Ternos tried to puzzle it over, there was only one logical conclusion he could reach. Witchcraft. But all the witches had been killed. He’d helped do it. And speaking of witchcraft was a serious offense. If he suggested it to anyone, he would be immediately thrown in the dungeon and his position would be given to someone else. Ternos would have asked the royal seer to investigate it, if the man had not been seriously ill for the past several weeks and was delirious, mumbling constantly about how his hairbrush was missing. Since the day after the robbery, in fact.

            Lira had not left her study since Anoki had been taken. She had large quantities of food and water stored, prepared for this. She probably would have been fine leaving for a short time. But she was terrified something would happen to Anoki while she was not there to help him.

            Everything he did, she watched through an enchanted scrying bowl of water. She slept with that bowl next to her, so she would be woken up by the sound of talking. And she always kept the doll near.

            When she was ten, Lira had a pet beetle. She’d made a small model beetle out of twigs, leaves, mud, and string. One day she had accidentally stepped on the little model beetle, and the actual bug had been crushed as if she had stepped on it. That was the first piece of witchcraft she’d ever done. She’d advanced her technique considerably over the years. But she’s always had a particular talent for curse dolls.

            It was possible, if you had the witch affinity, to make a very basic one by accident, as she had. One bound to a small animal, that could work at close range. There were many stories of witches making more powerful, but still basic curse dolls. They’d use a hair from their victim, and stick needles into the doll as a means of causing pain.

            But Lira knew how to make real curse dolls. They took a lot more time to make, and required quite a few more ingredients. There were many components to the spell, but the most important ones were those supplied by the recipient. Three hairs from their head. Three breathes from their lungs. Three drops of blood from their veins. Three tears from their eyes. Three secrets, whispered into the doll’s ear.

            The doll itself was made from a soft cloth and mostly filled with cotton, and it had two button eyes, like most curse dolls. One of the key differences in this one was that its mouth could open, it wasn’t sewn shut. That was very important. Three times a day, she gently spooned oatmeal into the tiny mouth, often accompanied by tiny bits of fruit. In the scrying pool, she would watch Anoki’s mouth work like he was eating something. Whenever she saw him tap his lips twice, she would provide his doll with a small cup of water, pouring it past the doll’s own cloth lips.

            When Anoki was taken to be tortured, she whispered reassurences in the doll’s ear and provided it with painkillers and charms to lessen the suffering. She knew that it didn’t completely take away the pain, but her brother was an excellent actor and never showed a hint of it. But she was the one who had to watch in horror as they did those awful things to him. When they sliced off his ear and pinkies, tiny little bits of material had come off the doll, and when he was cut, scratches tore across its cloth. She held back tears and waited. When no one was watching him, she sewed the pieces of cloth back on the doll. And watched through the bowl as his lost ear and fingers regrew. She sewed up the scratches on the doll, and his wounds mended. It left scars on his skin, but they looked like they’d come from wounds many years ago, not from an hour before.

            The other doll took much less attention. It was one of those lesser dolls, only requiring a few hairs taken from a brush that itself had been taken from the private quarters of the royal seer. Every day, she muttered a curse above the doll. A relatively minor curse, one of sickness. But it kept the seer from getting out of bed each day, and prevented him from gathering the willpower to do his magic.

            And together, the siblings watched in amusement as Anoki’s captors grew more and more concerned, day by day.

            Every morning, Ternos came to the cell. And the morning after his second interrogation with the man, he’d returned to see something disturbing. The man had two ears and ten fingers. And no wounds upon him. Every place that had once been slowly and steadily bleeding only had pale scars along it.

            “How are you… How?!” he had demanded to the figure in the cell.

            The man had laughed for perhaps ten seconds before calming down enough to say, “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

            “You were bleeding!” he said, “You were wounded! Just yesterday!”

            “Yes,” the man answered slowly, like he was talking to a child, “That was yesterday. But now it is today. Do I have to explain how time works to you?”

            “But… nobody can regrow a finger!” Ternos exclaimed.

            “Well, have you ever tried?” asked the man with a grin.

            The inquisitor hurried away, the laughter of the prisoner echoing off the walls behind him.

            “I demand to know how that thief is still alive, Ternos!” boomed the king, “It has been three months, and he seems completely unaffected!”

            The inquisitor kept his gaze directed at the floor as he answered, “I don’t know, my liege. He does not even drink what we do provide him.”

            “If word gets out about this, it will be bad,” said the king, “People will say he is a prophet, or a demon, or something.”

            “I agree,” said Ternos, “Which is why I have devised a plan.”

             The door to Anoki’s cell swung open, and several men stepped through, including inquisitor Ternos. They did not bring with them the typical bowl of muddy water. Instead, one of the guards seemed to be carrying a picnic basket.

            “I apologize for my recent treatment of you,” said Ternos, “I was under orders. But please accept this gift.”

            One of the guards opened the picnic basket and slid it towards him. Anoki looked down. It contained a few baked goods, fresh fruit and vegetables, and a bottle of fine wine. He’d been well fed, but he still had to keep his stomach from growling at the sight. To someone who had actually been starved for months, it would be irresistible. Instead he just kicked the basket back over to them, turning it on its side and making the pastries fall out onto the stone floor.

            “I’m not hungry. Take your basket of regret back, I have no use for it.”

            “Well,” said the inquisitor, “It’s very rude to refuse a gift.”

            Two guards came forward to grab Anoki’s arms. He resisted the urge to fight. It wasn’t his job to fight them. He was supposed to let Lira fight them, and then let them fight themselves. So he offered no struggle as another guard plucked up the bottle of wine, uncapped it, and poured it down Anoki’s throat. He could taste something in it, something very different from wine. His stomach started to twist, and his vision started to get blurry. He thought, Lira, I could use some help.

            “Crap, crap, crap, crap,” said Lira, rushing about. She had the right preparations for poison, but had thought they’d try something else first. The doll of her brother began to spasm, and she laid a hand on it, whispering a healing incantation:

“Let bones once broken mend

Let limbs once frozen bend

Let there be no burns

Let steady breath return

Let blood no longer flow

Let the spark within regrow”

            The doll stopped its spasming, but the spell wouldn’t last long. She found all the ingredients she was looking for. She sprinkled upon the doll dew from morning rain, soil that had been touched by the roots of a newly growing morning glory, and embers from a fire rekindled, and then softly blew a whistle made from the melted-together bones of gecko tails.

            Through the scrying bowl, she watched the enchantment take effect. Anoki stood back up and cleared his throat, the guards watching in horror. He plucked the wine bottle out of one of their hands and inspected it. “Is this really the best vintage you have?” he asked.

            The men just stared at him for a few seconds. Then their leader, the inquisitor, slowly turned and walked away, not saying a word. His men followed, similarly silent and nervous.

            Anoki started to laugh. His natural laugh was warm and almost impossible to not laugh along with. But this one, his disturbing laugh, made even Lira a little bit afraid. There was a wildness and malicious glee to it that scraped against the ears in a brutal manner. The echoing walls of the cell around him only seemed to magnify the effect. When he was sure the men were far enough away, he stopped laughing and cleared his throat.

            “I don’t know how he did it, my king! I swear!” Exclaimed Ternos, the point of a blade at his neck.

            “Rumors will spread, Ternos!” Exclaimed the king, livid with rage, “I cannot have people knowi- thinking that I have an immortal prisoner. Bring out the chopping block! I will watch this man die today, just like any other thief!”

            Anoki winced a bit as the sunlight hit his face. They had dragged him up to one of the courtyards. Looking around, he saw it was the same courtyard that he and Lira had escaped from, just like they’d planned. It was different this time in that a crowd of the nobility was gathered, and there was what he assumed was a chopping block in the courtyard, with a man standing next to it, looking bored, leaning on a large axe.

            A very angry looking king was standing in front of the crowd, who were all excitedly talking and muttering amongst themselves. Anoki guessed it had been a while since there were any executions. He was dragged to stand in front of the chopping block.

            “Prisoner,” announced the king, “You stand accused of stealing a precious heirloom of the ro-”

            “If it's all the same to you,” said Anoki, “I’d rather not have the last thing I hear be your yapping.”

            A few of the nobles suppressed laughs, and the king glowered. “As you wish,” he said, and motioned to the guards.

            Anoki was made to kneel, his head fitting in the area carved into the stone. “Off with his head,” said King Besim.

            The axe raised up, then came down.

            Lira waited bye, and winced when she saw the head off the doll ripped from the body. As quickly as she could, she snatched up the head, took a needle and thread, both instilled with witchcraft, and started sewing it together, whispering as she did,

“Death has no hold over you

No dust shall reduce your hue

No scythe shall fall from above

You are protected, brother, by my love”

            Ternos watched, mouth wide with horror. The man's head rolled back towards his body, still spurting blood. The head rose above the ground, as if held by a massive invisible hand, and was placed back on the open neck wound. The skin started to mend, one small section at a time, until the neck was fully repaired. The man stood up and cracked his neck. He was breathing heavily, but seemed to regain his composure after a few seconds. The executioner dropped his axe and ran.

            “NO!” Screamed King Besim, “Guards, seize him!” The most loyal ones came forward and grabbed the man, who did not resist. “You have dared to bring witchcraft into my halls!” The king yelled, and for a second the man’s eyes widened. He had been found out. “Bring me wood and rope! We burn this witch at the stake!”

            Ternos thought he actually saw relief on the man’s face when the king said this. Guards hurried off and brought out the necessary things. Before long, a stake had been erected surrounded by firewood. The man was tied to it, but said and did nothing the entire time. A torch was brought out. “Burn,” growled the king, and the wood was set alight.

            Lira was prepared. Her cauldron was filled with a swirling transparent liquid, water from the deepest abyss of the ocean. A green and blue fire burned under the cauldron, making it colder instead of hotter. She walked over to it and added the other ingredients. The skull of a drowned seagull. A rock from an underwater volcano. A fragment of a kraken’s beak. And two perfectly identical snowflakes. She watched the scrying bowl. The fire was about to reach him. Lira tossed the curse doll into the cauldron, and concentrated on the spell.

            Anoki felt a deep chill spread across him, and could feel water moving around him, even though none could be seen. Lira had assured him that he would still be able to breath, and she seemed correct. It was like the fire was afraid of him. It never came closer than three inches to him. He could see frosty mist rising off of his skin, and ice spread across the ropes and pole he was tied to.

            He laughed his most disturbing laugh, and a few of the nobles screamed and ran. “Get the seer!” yelled the inquisitor, “Get him now!” A guard hurried off. When he returned five minutes later, he looked like he had seen a ghost. Which he shouldn’t have, that would be moving ahead of schedule.

            “Seer Borivos… died. In a fire. No one knows how. It was like he was just… burst into flames out of nowhere.”

            Anoki knew that lighting the doll on fire hadn’t been easy for Lira. Morally speaking, that was. But Borivos had something of a reputation for having used his seer powers to track down witches for many, many years. That man had been witness to the spilling of more innocent blood than the stones of this courtyard.

            Anoki laughed and laughed. “Your seer was weak. He wouldn’t be able to help you, even if he wasn’t ash.”

            The ropes had been frozen solid by the cold emanating from Anoki. He shattered the ropes and walked forward, the flames parting before him like minnows around a shark. He gave a predatory smile. The king suddenly seemed much less intimidating. But the monarch had never known anyone who could rival his power. His brain couldn’t process it. “This is the kingdom of Velatai! We do not know the meaning of fear!”

            Anoki just widened his smile. He spread his arms dramatically. “Then consider this your education.”

            Lira took a deep breath and flexed her hands. She reached them forward and sent her will through the many miles separating her from the palace. From the bell and three statues in the crypt beneath the courtyard. And she began the incantation.

“Slumbering dead, return to life

Return from peace to pain and strife

Rise up from crypts, rise up from graves

Be as you were in your living days

To hearts of mortals, bring terror, bring fear

Bring chaos and mayhem far and near

The chains of death loosen their grip

Scream, despite having no lips

Make them run and scream and hide

The gates beyond are open wide!”

            In a forgotten underground crypt, a bell rang four times. Three statues crumbled to dust, and the two circles drawn on the floor began to glow a pale blue.

            Urns cracked and coffin lids trembled as spirits of long dead royalty and nobles rose, ascending through the stone ceiling to the courtyard above, determined to wreak havoc upon the world of the living.

            Anoki kept his arms open wide. His sister was a little late to her cue. But he felt a wave of relief wash over him as a sharp, cold wind suddenly blew and the air was filled with angry, unintelligible whispers.

            The flagstones cracked and the fire behind Anoki turned blue and began to wildly dance, forming shapes for just a moment before falling apart and reforming. The shadows came alive and turned to shadows of people, moving on their own, many screaming and clawing.

            An invisible force knocked over the king and he fell to the ground, his crown sent skittering across the stones. His cape was ripped from him by unseen forces and was tossed into the blaze. Nobles began to scream and rushed for the doors to exit the courtyard, but they wouldn’t open. People were lifted up into the air and tossed back down, and the guards’ weapons had begun to dance on their own, blades twirling about in the air. Lira had explained the spell to Anoki when they had been planning this. The spirits would cause general mayhem, but lacked the power to kill anyone. But they were certainly frightening.

            Anoki casually strolled over to the king and bent down. “Do you know what fear is now?” he asked.

            “Stop,” Besim sobbed, “Just please, stop.”

            “Oh, this is just the beginning. If you want me to stop, then you’ll have to pay quite the price.”

            And so it was that Anoki rode out of the city on a wagon, reigns in his hand, whistling as he went. The back was filled with gold and treasure, and the king’s crown sat atop his head. It didn’t have as many jewels in it as the one he and Lira had stolen, but it was still worth quite a bit. Sometimes, people would get near the cart, snatch a handful of treasure, then sprint away. He didn’t mind. He had more than enough and in his opinion, the kingdom could use some wealth redistribution.

            Rumors would spread. Some would say he was a demon, others would say he was the most powerful witch of all time, still others would say he was the reincarnation of the first king, et cetera. Anoki didn’t mind people not knowing. It added to the mystique of the entire affair.

            When he was far away from the city, he stopped the horse. And he waited. His sister walked out from the trees, a smile on her face. “I take it that it went well?” she asked.

            “Oh, no,” said Anoki sarcastically, “Quite awful. In fact, I barely managed to get away with this wagon full of treasure.”

            “Between the gems from the crown, and all this,” she said, gesturing to the loot, “we’ll be able to do whatever we want. Finally get away from this awful kingdom. Go somewhere new.” A light came into her eyes, “Somewhere with new ingredients for my spells.”

            He laughed. “That’s my girl.”