The Witch Queen (6 page)

“I wish you’d stop giving me advice,” Will Capel complained. He and his sister were returning from Great-Aunt Edie’s funeral in the West Country, an event that many of her relatives felt was long overdue. She had ended her days in a retirement home near Torquay, but this had not prevented her from descending on hapless family members for Christmas, Easter, weddings, anniversaries, and christenings, not to mention the funerals of those less hardy than herself. Since Aunt Edie had been ninety-one when she died, Fern felt excessive grief was not called for. While she drove, she found she was remembering her own aborted wedding—and Aunt Edie’s hovering presence there, usually clutching a small cup of sherry.

“What did you say?”

“I
said
, I wish you would stop giving me advice.”

“I didn’t,” Fern said serenely. “I never give advice.”

“It’s the
way
you never give advice,” said Will. “I can feel the advice you’re not giving me radiating out from your brain in telepathic pulses. And there’s your expression.”

“I haven’t got an expression.”

“Yes, you have. It’s your favorite cool, you-can’t-guess-what-I’m-thinking expression. If we were playing poker, I’d know you had a particularly sneaky royal flush. As it is, I’d be prepared to bet you’re thinking about Aunt Edie’s last trip to Yorkshire and your wedding-that-wasn’t, and that means you’re about to criticize my love life.”

“Your love life,” said Fern, “is entirely your own affair. Or several affairs, as the case may be.”

“You see?” said Will. “Love life. Criticism.”

Fern sucked her lip in an attempt to suppress a smile. “I hate to disappoint.”

Will gave a grin that stiffened gradually into something more artificial. “How is Gaynor?”

“You’ve been a long time asking,” Fern said lightly. Her eyes were on the road; Will found that her profile was no longer something he could read. “She got over the flautist very quickly, which may indicate that there was not much to get over. A recent news bulletin told me she was still resisting the advances of Hugh, the slightly estranged husband of Vanessa. However, sources close to Miss Mobberley inform me that she may not be able to hold out. When men cry on her shoulder, she has a tendency to go soggy inside.”

“Has she tried waterproof clothing?” said Will, a little too sharply. “Anyway, I didn’t want a résumé of her sexual activities. I just wanted to know how—she—is.”

“Last weekend,” said Fern scrupulously, “she was perfectly well.”

There was complete silence for almost a mile. Since Fern had decided recently she did not want music on while she drove, believing it was a serious distraction, the quiet was as noticeable as a blackout in a shopping mall.

Eventually Will said, changing the subject without apology: “I may be going to India later this year.” Fern made an interrogative noise. “Looks like Roger and I might have got our first real commission. Someone at BBC 2 likes the Himalayan idea. You know: tales of the hidden kingdoms. Power politics in Buddhism, the true origins of Shangri-la, that kind of stuff. I told you about it in the Caprice.”

“If it comes off,” said Fern, “
you
can take
me
to the Caprice.”

“I
did
take you to the Caprice!”

“Next time,” his sister said darkly, “you pay for it as well.”

It was late by the time they reached London, and Will accepted an invitation to share take-out in Fern’s flat. They bought an assortment of Thai nibbles and a bottle of chardonnay and took them back to Pimlico. Once inside, Fern switched on lamps, drew the curtains, lit a scented candle. “There’s something about funerals,” she said. “The smell always stays with you. That damp, rusty sort of smell you get when people take out the black coat they haven’t worn for years and then stand around for too long in the rain.”

“It didn’t rain,” Will pointed out, uncorking the wine.

“The air was wet,” Fern insisted.

It was after they had sat down and were opening up the cartons that she went suddenly still and quiet. “What is it?” Will asked, watching her face change.

Fern said nothing for a few seconds. When she spoke again, it was a half-tone louder. “Show yourself. This is my brother: his presence need not trouble you. He is accustomed to the ways of your folk.” And, after a pause: “I don’t wish to Command you. That would be discourteous, and I should deeply regret any further discourtesy. You know I want friendly relations with the queen.”

The queen?
Will mouthed, his eyebrows shooting upward.

Fern ignored him. Her gaze had focused on a place at the foot of the curtains where the drapes were bunched together in many folds beside the looping leaves of a potted plant. Presently, Will saw some of the shadows detach themselves and move forward, taking shape in the light . . . a diminutive, ungainly shape, hunch shouldered and bowlegged, with long simian arms. Fern noticed his patchwork clothing looked newer than last time and he had acquired a species of malformed hat, squashed low over his brow, with the words “By Appoyntmnt” embroidered on it in crooked stitches. His tufted ears were thrust through slits in the brim; his sloe eyes gazed slyly from underneath.

“Skuldunder,” Fern acknowledged.

“Who invited you in?” Will demanded.

“It isn’t necessary,” Fern sighed. “He’s a burglar. We’ve met before. He usually burgles on behalf of Mabb, queen of the goblins. So are you here on private business, or does this visit have an official sanction?”

“The queen sent me,” the goblin prated, briefly inflating his hollow chest. “She says, she is graciously pleased to accept your gifts and . . . and your friendship. It is a great honor.”

“For whom?” Will murmured, fascinated. Fern stood unobtrusively on his foot.

“A great honor,” the goblin repeated. “She knows you are a powerful witch, but she believes you mean no harm to her and her people. And me,” he added, throwing Fern an apprehensive glance and clutching his hat brim for support.

“Of course not,” said Fern. “I would prefer not to harm anyone.” Will, noting the language of diplomacy, thought the statement held an element of warning, but Skuldunder appeared tentatively relieved. “Have a glass of wine,” she continued. “Is there something I can do for the queen?”

“It is she who has sent me to help you,” the goblin declared. “She says she will overlook the matter of the bodkin—”

“Bodkin?” Fern frowned. “Oh—the spear.”

The goblin took a wary mouthful of chardonnay. “There is Trouble,” he announced, giving the word an audible capital T. “We have heard of another witch, one perhaps more powerful than yourself. We think she is new to this country. She is performing great magics, sorcery of a kind beyond our ken. The queen felt you should know of this.”

“The queen is wise,” Fern said, adding, in an aside to Will: “It may be nothing. Some street witch playing games with fireworks, or an old woman who looked at Mabb sideways and gave her a spot on her nose. All the same . . .” She turned back to the goblin. “Does she have a name, this witch?”

“We do not know it,” said Skuldunder.

“An address?”

“She has taken over a mansion north of this city. Already she has done great evil there. It was the property of a human family who died out years ago, and few mortals came to trouble it, leaving it to the ghosts and lesser creatures of the otherworld. But she made a terrible spell to purge it, and now they are all gone, and the only beings who dwell there are those who have come in her train.”

“An exorcism,” said Fern.

“Ethnic cleansing,” said Will.

“Exorcism is not necessarily terrible,” Fern elaborated. “It shows lost spirits how to pass the Gate: that is all.”

But Skuldunder was shaking his head and kneading his hat brim with nervous fingers. “No—no—it wasn’t like that. We think she—she
opened the abyss
. They were all sucked through—all of them. Into
nothingness
. . .” He was trembling visibly. “Only the house-goblin escaped. He is very old, and not as brave and cunning as those of us who live wild, but he did well. He fled from the house and hid in a place where the old magic lingers. Her minions could not find him there. We don’t know how long he was in hiding; he could not tell us. Some of the queen’s folk came across him when they were hunting toads. He must have wandered a fair way from his hiding place by then.”

“The name of the house?” asked Fern.

Skuldunder frowned. “It was a name of rooks,” he said. “Rooks and oak trees. Roake House . . . something like that.”

“And all we know about this witch is what the house-goblin has told you?”

“Yes . . . But he is very frightened. He did not want to leave the house, and now he is lost and confused, even among his own people. Truly, he has seen dreadful things.”

“House-goblins frighten easily,” said Fern. “Most of them, anyway. Tell the queen . . . tell the queen I would like to question him myself. This matter of another witch could be important; our information must be carefully sifted. Since this is such a serious issue, perhaps the queen would honor me with her presence here. Then we could consider the problem together.”

“Here?” said Skuldunder. “The queen?”

“She would be my most royal guest,” said Fern—implying, Will thought, that lesser royalty came to her flat on a regular basis.

“I will ask her,” Skuldunder said doubtfully. He retreated toward the window, fading into a pattern of shadows.

“Well?” Will inquired.

“It’s probably nothing,” Fern conceded. “A storm in an acorn cup. I’m just curious to meet Mabb. Ragginbone is too aloof. Even a witch needs friends.”

“Especially a witch,” said her brother.

“She reminds me of another case I had,” said the new doctor. The medical team who briefed Kaspar Walgrim normally varied little, but every so often they would call for a second opinion, and a third, and a fourth, and another check would wing its way toward the clinic’s bank balance. The doctors accepted advice to prove they were not rigid or hidebound; Walgrim needed both the input of wisdom and the output of checks to prove he was doing something. The regularity of his attendance had fallen with the passage of time; now he came only once a fortnight, or once a month.

“What is the point?” he said to his son. “She doesn’t know we’re here.” But Lucas was still there, night after night, though his days were filled with a feverish intensity of work that he hoped might divert his mind if not his heart. He was on hand when the new doctor dropped in—not a fifth opinion so much as an interested party, an expert in coma cases to whom Dana was a novelty specimen. At the remark, which was addressed to the colleague accompanying him, something in Lucas’s brain switched to
alert
.

“It was when I was up in Yorkshire,” the doctor continued. “Another girl—a bit older than this one, but not much. I don’t know if that’s significant. She had a history of what looked like psychosomatic symptoms, and the case itself had several bizarre features . . . However, there’s nothing like that here. It just seems to have started in the same way: a night out, too much to drink, and then total blackout. Slowed heart rate—“ he lifted an eyelid “—eyes turned up. No known allergies?”

“None,” said the other.

“No physical injury?”

“A minor contusion on the head. Nothing serious. Her skull is normal. Erm . . . this is her brother.”

“Lucas Walgrim,” he introduced himself, extending a hand. “What happened to the girl in Yorkshire?”

“She revived. Very suddenly. After about a week.” For no obvious reason, the doctor looked uncomfortable. “She discharged herself the same day.”

“The
same
day?” His fellow medic was startled.

The new doctor shrugged. “It was an odd business. One moment, barely alive; the next, sitting up, throwing her weight around, getting out of bed. I believe the first thing she did was to dump her fiancé. Most people would have given themselves a couple of days to think it over, but not her. She was . . . difficult.”

I like her already, thought Lucas. I want Dana up and about, being
difficult
with doctors.

He said: “I’d like to talk to that girl.”

“You know that’s not possible. Patient confidentiality.”

“You’ve already breached that confidentiality,” Lucas pointed out, utilizing a manner that had been honed to an edge in backrooms and boardrooms. “You’ve discussed various aspects of her case with someone outside your profession. I want to talk to her. Arrange it.”

“Out of the question.”

His colleague interceded with a smoothness doubtless oiled by the size and regularity of the Walgrim checks. “Perhaps we can deal with this another way. If my associate were to contact the patient in question and explain the position, giving her your name and number, I’m sure—under the circumstances—she would be willing to get in touch with you. Although I’m afraid she won’t be of much help. The patient rarely understands the illness: that’s why they come—”

“Thank you,” Lucas cut in. “I’d be grateful if you would do that. I’ll expect to hear something shortly.”

The new doctor looked unconvinced, but was hustled from the room. Lucas turned back to his sister, but his attention was no longer focused on her. Something in his posture had changed: his body was rigid, taut as wire, the anticipation strong in him, filling all his thoughts. He could not sleep but his mind slipped; he was in a time outside Time, and the figure in the bed, though still white and immobile, was not that of Dana. Other images crowded in on him, flickering through his brain so fast he could not pin them down: a mass of leaves shuddering in an unnatural wind—what looked like a disembodied head—more leaves—gray fields—water falling into a basin of stone—horns—fire—and then the figure again, but now her breathing had quickened, and her eyelids lifted, and he saw she was the second girl in his dream of weeks before, a girl sharp and bright as steel, with a glint of true green in her eyes. And then the world jolted back into place, and there in the bed was Dana, and his heart hammered as if he had been running.

“What is happening to me?” he whispered, and inside his head a voice that was almost—but not quite—a part of his thought answered him.
It is the Gift. Don’t fear it. Don’t fight it. It will guide you.