9781618851307WitchsBrewShayNC (11 page)

Mix times two

A witch’s brew.”

If her young neighbor wasn’t infected, she could at least
increase her chances of conception.

But would Saylym and her handsome prince be pleased to
learn she’d cast a fertility spell over the two of them? Eldora snickered,
turned and re-entered the house. Dancing a jig across her living room, she
paused to kick up her heels one last time, then sang off-key, “Happy birthday
to me. And a baby makes three. Hee-hee-hee.”

If that spell failed—well, she just happened to know a few
love spells she could cast. Or she could mix up some potions. Magic love
potions would insure the prince fell deeply in love with Saylym.

But for now, she’d be content to sit back and watch Cupid
play his games with his golden bow and arrows.

Chapter Five

Magistrates John Hathorne and
Jonathan Corwin examined Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne in the meeting
house in Salem Village. Tituba never denied her abilities and confessed to
practicing witchcraft.

~Salem Witch Trials

March 1, 1692

Page Entry…

With Queen
Leyla ruling Sanctuary, a struggle for power between the witches and wakens
tore Ru-Noc asunder. The males were no longer allowed within the magical gates
of Sanctuary. Furious with this edict, the wakens vowed to hunt down and kill
Leyla Winslow, unless the witches destroyed Sanctuary.

A
compromise was made. The males would be allowed inside the protected walls of
Sanctuary once a year, during the Festival of Beltane, but only for procreation
purposes. Any waken who used this opportunity to steal a witch’s soul would be
locked in the stocks and burned alive.

‘Twas
indeed, a recipe for disaster. For what waken could resist the lure of passion
and the seductive taste of a witch’s soul at the moment his seed erupted inside
her? And what witch ever ignored the possibility of conceiving a child to
brighten her last days?

Many
witches compared the wakens to insects that devoured their mates once
copulation was completed–but stealing a witch’s soul was much worse than having
one’s head bitten off after mating.

~From the
Winslow History of Witches.

In the
Year of Samhain, 1000

Ru-Noc

Droth

City of the wakens

“No.”

The four elders seated on the
Wakens’
Guild
blinked. Their mouths gaped in shock at Talon’s shouted refusal.

“Now,
Talon,” his Uncle Teek said, holding up a hand in a placatory gesture, “you
know you can’t refuse a direct command from the elders.”

Talon clenched his fists in utter frustration. Arguing
with the ancient
wakens
got him nowhere. They wouldn’t listen. They
never
listened, including his father,
the king. This was exactly why he hated reporting to the guild. They were
bigoted, opinionated, and stubborn as hell. There was no bending the law with
them. The four members of the Knights of the Guild were the oldest rulers of
Droth, third only to the king. There was one amongst them who had the final say
about all things, but it was rare for Katch to voice his opinion.

The guild was the very foundation of his race.

The law givers.

The judges.

The jury.

At this moment, it was safe to say none of them were happy
with him. It was obvious his father was in a far from placating mood. He rose
slowly from his throne. A heavy, jeweled crown rested on the wild mane of
ink-black hair that fell past his shoulders in typical
waken
fashion.

The king stepped from the marble dais where both his and
the queen’s throne stood in elegant splendor. His long legs ate up the distance
from one end of the wide room to the other, back and forth he marched in front
of the round table, lips tightened with disapproval.

Waiting for the thundering explosion to erupt, Talon
folded his arms across his chest and kept a wary eye on his father. Darak
paused every now and then and speared Talon with a furious look. The flash of
wildfire in his fierce green eyes left little doubt to everyone in the room
that the King of Ru-Noc was in a royal snit.

His thick, dark brows snagged together in a stern scowl.
He suddenly stopped and directed a severe glare at Talon. Talon rubbed a hand
across his mouth, waiting. His father was an imposing figure even when he was
cheerful. This was certainly not one of the better times. The king had never
looked so furious, well, except for the time Talon was practicing a new spell
and accidentally set the royal stables on fire.

If he wasn’t careful, he’d be like that little boy again,
standing before his father, chastised for his disobedience. Even now, the members
of the guild waited in breathless anticipation to see who’d win this latest
skirmish between the royals. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, several
times.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Talon?” Darak barked.
“The option to reject an assignment isn’t open to debate. You work for the guild.
You will do as ordered.”

And there they were at last, his father’s words, and
exactly what he’d expected. Talon clenched his jaw. “There’s no reason for this
assignment. I refuse,” he repeated, speaking in a calmer voice. Talon cringed
inside. He knew what the guild and his father’s priorities were. He didn’t
agree with them.

“Refusing a direct order of the guild is a crime
punishable with the
Char-Flum-Rope
.”

Talon swayed. The threat of that harsh penalty was rarely
mentioned or used, but from the tone of the king’s voice, he had little doubt
his father was voicing an idle threat. He felt the color leech from his face.
Few
wakens
survived punishment by the flaming whip. They didn’t die, but
the pain was so severe, it drove them mad. Then they were exiled to the salt
plains of
Kydora
for eternity.

“The guild trained you for assignments like this. It is no
different from the others.” King Darak settled on the throne with a disgusted
grunt. “You are an assassin. It is your job, and your duty! Just because you
are my son, does not allow you special privileges, or the right to refuse
direct commands from the guild.”

Talon winced. His father seemed to believe shouting would
make him change his mind. Like hell! Maybe it had always worked in the past,
but not this time. This time
was
different. Not even the threat of the
Char-Flum-Rope
could force him to do what they commanded. He balled his fists at his side. The
members of the guild were huddled together like a bunch of old roosters,
doggedly discussing his refusal to cooperate.

Talon caught the action of his cousin Sage as the younger
waken
leaned closer to him.

“Well, you managed to do it again,” Sage remarked.

“What’s that?”

“Get on their bad side, of course.”

Talon smiled over his cousin’s weak description of the guild’s
state of temperament. “If you’re suggesting they’re pissed, that’s putting it
mildly.”

Sage immediately tugged on his arm, drawing him closer.
“You know what they’re saying, don’t you?” he murmured out the side of his
mouth.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Talon shrugged. “Yup. Always
the rebel. “It makes them happy when I rebel.”

Sage nodded in agreement. “That’s true. They love an insurgent.
It’s only you they detest.”

Talon flashed his cousin a look filled with utter
disbelief. “They don’t detest me. They just-they just-er…”

“Yeah?” Sage laughed.

“Well they can detest me all they want. I did the right
thing. I brought them the information an
illumrof
dwells among us. I
expected outrage.”

“Justifiably so,” Sage replied. “If mortals once again discover
there are truly witches and
wakens…
” His sentence trailed off, leaving
the elders breathless with anticipation. He shrugged. “You know what a disaster
that’d be.”

“Right.” Noticing that the older
wakens
had stopped whispering and were leaning forward in an
attempt to hear what he and Sage were discussing, Talon spoke louder, “The
danger of exposure for our world is too great.”

“Perhaps we should just slay all
illumrofs
and be
done with it?” Sage suggested.

The guild members stared at them as if he and Sage
suddenly sprouted two heads each. “Don’t encourage their bigotry,” Talon said.
“They haven’t enough common sense among them to realize their concerns should
be about the human, and how she got here, instead of a half-witch who at least
carries some witch blood.”

“That’s enough, Talon,” King Darak roared. “You will show
respect for the members here or leave the council chambers!”

Talon graciously inclined his head. “I apologize to the guild.”

Sage patted Talon on the back. “You really have managed to
ruffle their tempers this time, cousin, and you’re poking the king. Not good.”

Talon turned toward Sage. He couldn’t keep from grinning
at the sight of the black satin eye patch covering his cousin’s left eye. Leave
it to Sage to covet drama. “Why in Samhain are you wearing a patch? All these
injuries you keep faking are going to get you in hot water with some lovely
witch one of these days.”

“Don’t you think it makes me look sexy?” Sage asked,
tilting his chin in an uppity manner.

Talon snorted. “Not to me. The day that happens is the day
you’ll need a patch for real, plus the sling you wore last year.”

Sage laughed loudly enough to draw a glare from the
members of the guild. His lavender colored eye sparked with amusement as he
faced the small group. “Talon is merely stating facts.” He stepped forward,
addressing his comment to Teek, his father, who was also Captain of the Guild.
“I’ve never seen an
illumrof.
” He paused to draw a protection symbol in
the air. “I have no desire to, either. The great witch hunts in Europe proved
how weak and fearful
illumrof
creatures can be of things they do not
understand.”

“We
know that,” King Darak snapped. “What is your point?”

The
elder
wakens
bobbed their heads in agreement.

Talon cocked a brow at the king’s impatience. “The Salem
witchcraft trials of 1692 nearly destroyed our race of females,” he said. “You
know it will take thousands of years before the female numbers increase enough
to substantially rebuild our race. So I have to ask,” he added, sliding his
gaze over the guild with a curl of contempt, “just why the hell the royal court
would be so foolish as to order the assassination of yet another one of our
females? Our number of mating partners decreases dramatically each year.”

Talon paused to draw a deep breath then continued, “With
this virus,
Infertilus
attacking our females, most are now barren.
Continuing the practice of outdated laws is foolish because of some old grudge.
We’re annihilating ourselves.” He held out his hands in a pleading gesture. “Our
females come into season year after year, but barely a fourth of them conceive.
And when they do, they either give birth to such a hideously deformed male
child he then has to be terminated and his soul given to Dym, or the babe was
not conceived by a
waken,
but by a
demon
.
And female babies are becoming
rarer with each passing century.” Talon slashed his arm through the air. “There
are tens of thousands of males without mates and only a few hundred females
left. We are a dying race!”

King Darak scowled at his son. “I don’t need a history
lesson. Or a census count. And it’s perfectly normal for our females to mate
with demons and conceive from their seed. Their chances of conceiving with a
demon is ten times greater than their chance with a
waken.”

“Forgive me, Father, but it isn’t perfectly normal. Can’t
you see we’re being eradicated?”

“I’m well aware of all the factors involved,” King Darak
replied. “At the moment, demons mating with our females is not the topic of
discussion.”

“Well, it should be,” Talon snapped.

King Darak’s eyes grew cold. “The problem lies with the
fact that this witch…this Saylym Winslow…is a bumbler. She has to be our first
concern.”

“As usual, your priorities are screwed up,” Talon
muttered.

“What
in hell is a bumbler?” Sage asked.

The
king’s lips flattened with rage and he glared at Talon. “An endangerment to us
all!”

“That’s
bullshit,” Talon shouted.

King Darak lifted his head, his eyes blazing green fire.
“One more outburst, Talon, and you will be dismissed. You have about as much
finesse as a
thrash hog
in heat.”

Talon smothered a growl and ignored Sage’s startled glance
at the king’s harsh words. He frowned, wondering why Stry hadn’t made an
appearance. He knew his older brother, the heir to the throne, resented being
summoned before the members here, but he could certainly use his support right
now. It would be just like Stry to disappear for a few days and remain absent.

“If you aren’t going to concern yourself with the demons,
then you should at least be wondering how the
illumrof
crossed into our
realm without a single one of our
Observers
being aware of it,” Talon
said with heat. “Was a hex put on them to allow her to cross undetected? If so,
who did it? We should be fearful of her crossing back into the human realm and
exposing our existence to other
illumrofs
.” Talon folded his arms over
his chest and glared at the guild. “Instead, you’re more concerned an
Impure
who bungles her magic now resides in Sanctuary.”