The Witch Queen (21 page)

“I do not have her,” I explained. “Her body lies in a hospital; only her spirit is mine. Still, the idea is interesting. I might find you a body of another kind, say, that of some animal, maybe a pig. That, too, has been done before.”

“Do not taunt me!” she hissed. “Remember: we were as sisters. We shared
everything
.”

“I had a sister once,” I said, “a blood-sister, Morgun, my twin. We too shared everything. Our first pleasure was in each other’s arms, our spirits were interwoven, our minds had a single bent. But she was wayward and seduced by her own lusts. She gave up the way of witchkind and the pursuit of power for the chimera of love and the forgiveness of men. She turned against me—even me—in search of something she called redemption, and she died in bitterness, and hung on the Tree cursing my name. That is the nature of sisterhood.” The cat Nehemet purred as I spoke, a soft throbbing sound not altogether pleasant to hear, and rubbed her naked flank against my legs.

“I was a different kind of sister,” insisted the head, fear-pale. “I never failed you, or cheated you.”

“Ah, but not for the lack of wishing!” I said, half teasing, seeing in her fear that it was true. I stroked her cheek, still young and full in the first ripeness of the fruit. “Do not trouble yourself, Sysselore my beloved; I will treat you only—always—as you deserve.” I knew she would have flinched from me, if she could, but I would not harm her, not yet. Her company is still sweet to me, for all the sourness of her tongue.

In the kitchen, Grodda was nursing a baby. I had wanted a human child, but these days such things are difficult to obtain. There used to be many babies, wanted and unwanted—the peasants bred like rabbits—but now they have pills to stave off conception, and venomous creams, and sheaths to contain the male secretions, and then women complain that they are barren and go to the doctors as once they went to witches, begging a spell or a philter to fulfill their dreams. The future is a strange place. There are more people but fewer babies, and the infants are so watched and cared for that even the maimed and sick grow to a gibbering adulthood, and are nursed and nannied into age. But Grodda had found a calf, I did not ask where; no doubt some farmer would miss it, even as the mother misses her child. It was twig legged and doe eyed, its soft ears lay back, and it suckled milk from a bottle. It would do, I said. I looped a cord about its neck and led it to the conservatory.

The guardian was waiting, its pale body, shadow mottled, lost among the eerie patterning of moonlight and leaves. The Tree stirred at my approach, rustling, or maybe it was the rustling of crooked limbs uncurling across the floor. I released the calf, and it stood there, emitting the mewling noises that small creatures make when calling for their mothers. Then moonspots and shadows seemed to gather together, bunching into a spring, and the calf was blotted out. It screamed once—a curiously human sound, touching me with pleasure—but the second scream was stifled into a whisper, and then it was silent. There were scrapings and scratchings as something was bundled up and dragged away to be consumed at leisure. Later, from a corner, I heard nibbling and crunching. When I went back in the morning there were only a few of the larger bones and a shell-like fragment of skull, picked clean. I could not even smell the blood.

He was lurking behind some giant pots, in an undergrowth of untended plants. After careful scrutiny I could make out a protrusion shaped like a claw, and a splinter of eye peering through the foliage. I wanted to coax him out, to see how big he had grown—in the dark, it had been impossible to tell—but I sensed the smallness of his mind brooding in the swollen body, a tiny insect mind focused on hunger and survival, and I knew it would be better not to disturb him. I had no fear of him, but I did not wish to have to kill in order to protect myself.

The Tree, too, was growing: its trunk was as thick as my waist, and its spreading leaves darkened the daylight. I walked in its gloom, caressing quivering branches, listening to its whispering voice. And then I found what I had sought for so long, a small green thing like a misshapen crab apple, without flush or feature. Fruit. At that sight, my blood quickened to the Tree’s quickening, my heart beat with its pulse. I touched the rind very gently, though it was firm and hard, willing it to swell and ripen, trying in vain to discern what form it might take. The heads of the dead grew on its Eternal progenitor, but the fruit of my Tree might take almost any shape. My imagination shivered at the possibilities. Already it seemed to me there were lumps on the little globe that could develop into nose and browbone, cheekbones and chin. I must have stood half the morning, watching it, as if I might actually see it grow. No sun penetrated this green cavern, but it came from a dimension without the sun, where day and dark sprang from the will of the Tree, and I knew it would ripen even by night. “Guard it well,” I told the creature in the corner.

Later that day, I brought him a bowl of the potion mixed with tree sap to drink. He was large enough to eat a calf, and quickly, but I wanted him large enough to eat a man. Neither ape nor urchin, Adam nor Eve would steal my fruit from me.

“So what have we learned?” asked Fern. They were having a council of war at her flat in Pimlico. Although it was high summer, rain beat on the window, and she had switched on the artificial fire to ward off the chill. Gas-powered flames leaped and danced around a convincing array of coals; Gaynor, Will, and Ragginbone sat in a semicircle, warming themselves at its glow. Luc had not been invited.

“Nothing and nothing,” Fern went on, answering her own question. “Morgus still looks invulnerable; Dana is still in a coma. We’re going nowhere.”

“Gaynor did well getting the lowdown on Walgrim senior,” Will pointed out. “Anyone with that much integrity is always iffy, particularly a banker. Once you’re above suspicion, you can get away with anything.”

“Get away with anything?” Ragginbone inquired.

“Invent a company. Get people to invest in it. Pocket the money.” Will’s expression quirked into cynicism. “The easiest kind of fraud. And if Morgus has got her claws into him, he won’t be worrying about the future. Magical influence makes your mind furry around the edges. Your sense of self-preservation goes. At least, that was how it felt all those years ago when Alimond summoned me. I should think this would be something similar.”

Ragginbone gave a nod of acquiescence. Gaynor said: “What about the goblins? Have they come up with anything?”

“They don’t investigate,” Fern explained. “They simply watch. Dana is watched, Luc and Kaspar are watched—”

“Luc . . .” Ragginbone murmured, with a swift glance from under lowering eyebrows.

“Even Wrokeby is watched, from a safe distance. A couple of weeks ago, Morgus bought a litter of puppies. I know it seems unlikely, but Skuldunder was very positive. Any suggestions as to why?”

“Maybe she likes dogs,” said Gaynor doubtfully.

“She’s got a cat,” said Fern. “Witches have cats. It’s traditional. She isn’t a doggy person. I could imagine her with a tank full of poisonous octopi, a pet cobra, a tarantula on a golden chain—but not puppies. She would kill anything that slobbered on her skirt.”

“What kind were they?” Will asked.

“Don’t know. Goblins don’t like dogs of any description. Does it matter?”

Will shrugged. “We can’t tell what matters. Maybe you should draw the circle again . . .”

“Too dangerous,” said Ragginbone. “Have you forgotten? Potent magic attracts elementals. The many eyes of Oedaphor would be watching: Morgus has called him up, and he could betray Fern’s whereabouts. We were too quick for him last time, but that would not happen again. We are not yet ready for the big confrontation.”

“Does it have to happen?” Will said. “If Fern can’t defeat her, maybe there’s some other way . . .”

“She’s looking for me,” Fern said. “There were magpies around Dale House. Bradachin tackled the telephone—he thought it was important I should know. He says they were marked in blue, though it didn’t show when you looked at them directly. They’re birds from the Tree, spies for Morgus.”

“Bradachin used the phone?” Ragginbone was distracted. “Goblins hate all technology: they see it as a kind of sinister contemporary magic. He
must
have thought it was important.”

“He’s exceptional,” Will said shortly.

“I have to face her.” Fern was following her own train of thought. “But not now.”

“What about the Old Spirit?” Gaynor asked diffidently. “Is he involved in all this?”

“Gaynor has a point,” said Ragginbone. “He is always involved. We would do well to keep that in mind. If any of you see or sense him, even in your dreams—especially in your dreams—“ something in Fern’s expression, in her silence, drew his attention; the other two followed his gaze “—share it with us.”

“Haven’t you told him about your dream?” said Will.

“Not yet.” She didn’t like talking about it, having to describe it again: the high office, and Azmordis, and the scritch-scratch of the quill as she signed the document she did not need to read. “It came again last night. It feels more real every time. I know it’s the Dark Tower, like in stories, only it’s modern, a black soaring skyscraper, all glass and steel. I think it’s in a dimension of its own, like the Tree, but not separate: it connects to the City, maybe to all cities. I’m looking for it, so I find it, and I sign in blood, sealing the bargain. Selling my soul, my Gift. My Self.”

“It can’t be a prophecy,” said Will. “It might be a warning.”

“Maybe,” said Ragginbone.

“I thought Azmodel was
his
place.” Gaynor was frowning. “I don’t understand about the Tower.”

“He has many strongholds,” Ragginbone explained. “Azmodel—the Beautiful Valley—is the most ancient. But the Dark Tower is old, nonetheless. Once it had dungeons and arrow slots, a spiral stair where now there is an elevator and an escalator, a stone chamber instead of a carpeted office. It has fallen and been rebuilt, adapting to history.
He
moves with Time, growing closer to Men, battening on their weaknesses. Long ago the Tower stood in a barren waste; now, as Fern says, it is in every city. He makes it easy for the great and the good to beat a path to his door.”

“Not Fern,” Will asserted positively. In a rare gesture, he reached for his sister’s hand. “Don’t worry. We know you would never do that.”

“Worry,” said Ragginbone. “Prophecy is a gray area, but the insights of the Gifted are not to be ignored. What are you thinking, when you sign?”

“I don’t really want to,” Fern said instantly. “It’s as if I have no choice. There’s someone in danger—someone I love.”

“That old chestnut,” said Will, and “One of us?” from Gaynor.

Fern shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” Will said.

“I remember.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. People can learn from their mistakes. You should learn, too, and not just from dreams.”

“Meaning?” his sister queried.

“The Gifted are always alone. Not just Alimond and Morgus; think of Zohrâne. Even Ragginbone, in his wizardly days. Power isolates. Like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot. Maybe they had a Gift of a kind: who knows what drove them? The point is, they didn’t have friends, only minions. Henchpersons to do their dirty deeds, courtiers to adore them and listen to their rantings. No one they truly cared for or who cared for them, no one to take them out of their little selves. Their lives were bounded in a walnut shell, and they tried to fit the whole world in there with them. Result: madness.”

“I respect your arguments,” Ragginbone murmured, “but I would like to point out that I at least am not mad.”

“Debatable,” said Will. “Anyway, you lost your power. More important, you gained Lougarry. She may well have saved your sanity.”

“Are you saying,” Fern interjected, “that without you lot I might end up like Zohrâne?”

“Yes,” said Will. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. You keep things from us, you distance yourself, you try to ‘protect’ us. That’s incredibly dangerous—for you. I think that’s the principal danger of the Gift. Power plus solitude equals disassociation from reality. Hence arrogance, paranoia, and so on. You told me if Zohrâne became attached to one of her body slaves, she would have him killed. Your friends and family aren’t your weakness: we’re your strength. You have to accept that.”

“And the risk?” said Fern.

“All life is risky. For myself, I believe it’s better for me to die than for you to become a megalomaniac witch queen.”

“Me too,” said Gaynor, before Fern had a chance to ask.

“Wisdom,” Ragginbone remarked, “springs from unlikely sources. Your brother may indeed have pinpointed the true peril of Prospero’s Children.”

“Did they all turn to evil,” Fern asked, “in the end?”

“Let us say that few turned to good.”

“I lose either way, don’t I?” said Fern. “My friends, or my head.”

“The choice isn’t yours to make,” Will retorted. “We’ve chosen. Forget your dream for the moment, and the Old Spirit. We have to deal with Morgus first.”

“If we can,” said Fern. She turned to Gaynor. “Did you get hold of a translation of that Welsh stuff?”

“Mm.”

“And?”

“It was all about Wales.”

They kicked the subject around for a while longer, going nowhere, as Fern had said at the beginning. Yet afterward, she sensed a difference in herself, as if a shadow had been lifted from her mind, a barrier removed. She remembered how alone she had felt when, at sixteen, she first confronted the dark and became aware of her own power. But I am not alone, she thought. I never was. And for all her fears, relinquishing that burden of solitude and ultimate responsibility gave her a new lightness of heart, a different angle on their problems. I will find a way, she concluded.
We
will find a way.

That night, what dreams she had were beyond recollection, and she was at peace.

The conservatory at Wrokeby was a vast semicircular structure built toward the end of the Victorian age, when wealthy botanists headed into the Himalayas with mules and native porters, returning with the stolen flora of the mountains. Once, it had been the home of majestic gardeners, potted palms, wagging bustles, afternoon tea parties. But its north-facing situation, with the trees crowding close outside, meant that little light could pass through the towering glass walls, and any that did seek admittance was rapidly choked out of existence by the jungle inside. The builders had restored broken panes and replaced roof joists, but they had not tried to penetrate the thickets of plant life within. Now there were new shadows to strangle the intrusive light, woven webs whose weight bent the palms. The spider had grown too big for its surroundings, and the miniature rainforest could no longer contain it. There was no prey for it to snare, no food to sate its growing appetite, save at Morgus’s whim. The tiny brain grappled with its overgrown body, filled with a nebulous rage at an existence that was against all instincts. Somehow, it sensed that there should have been webs to spin which did not snap their supports, juicy flies to eat, haphazard mating rituals. Instead, it was trapped in this shrunken world, hand-fed by a creature who was far from arachnoid in appearance. It stayed close to the Tree, finding it familiar, pining for a Tree that constituted its whole universe, and the safety of sheltering under a single leaf.