Witchrise (3 page)

The darkness shifted, jolting sideways.

Suddenly I was on the ground, standing in front of him. Beyond him stood the old pigsty, its crumbling timbers whitened by frost and overgrown with brambles, its door half hanging off its hinges.

How on earth had Marcus managed to break my protective spells and get me here?

Perhaps we had created a weakness in our barrier of spells with the summoning. After all, my mother’s spirit had got in past those spells. Perhaps Marcus had brought me out the same way.

Unless this was all happening in my head.

But how to be sure?

The stars hung far above, cold and vaguely threatening in their majesty, and for a moment the moon peeked out from its hood of cloud, watching us with a doleful face. I could not see the wintry ground but felt the cold strike up through my feet, and shivered.

Marcus studied me in silence, then smiled. ‘Meg Lytton,’ he said with heavy emphasis at last, as though my name were some kind of charm.

‘Master Dent.’

He was dressed all in black, hands clasped behind his back, sleek fair head – no cap – tilted to one side as he considered me.

I searched for the scars he had received when I sent him spinning into the void, but his face was unclear, as though there was a mist across it, shimmering whenever he moved or spoke, like a watery reflection being stirred.

He was not really there, I realized.

And neither was I.

I was hugely relieved to know this was a vision, not truth. But it was still a shock to be looking directly at Marcus Dent. He looked real enough, I thought. Too frighteningly real.

Beware a traveller who comes over water, over land.

My late aunt, also a witch and the woman who had trained me to follow in her footsteps, had warned me to beware such a man. We had initially feared her prophecy was about Alejandro de Castillo, fresh come from Spain, but now I knew it had concerned this villain, Marcus Dent, who had recently returned from Germany at the time.

How long it seemed since Aunt Jane had been my tutor, and we had lived in peace together in this place, secretly practising our craft under the full moon each month.

But then my father had forced me into the disgraced Lady Elizabeth’s service, and Dent had burned Aunt Jane at the stake as a witch. Only last spring he had accused me of witchcraft too, condemning me to face trial by water. I had found the strength to escape my bonds that day and turn my skill against the witchfinder. I had opened a gate into the void beyond our world and Marcus Dent had been sucked into darkness.

He had returned, of course. Many times more powerful, not quite human, and now intent on my death.

Nothing was ever simple with dark magick.

‘Very well, Marcus, you have my attention.’ I looked at my tormentor boldly. ‘What do you want? Why are you in my dreams again?’

‘Is this a dream, Meg?’

The air was cold against my cheek, the icy track beneath my feet solid, and I could hear the faint rustling of some wild creature in the overgrown ruins.

He was right. It did not feel like a dream.

‘A waking vision, then. What do you want, Marcus?’

There was a flicker of rage in his face, hurriedly suppressed. ‘I want you to know that you will fail.’

‘Fail at what?’

‘The quest I am setting you.’

‘Go away, Marcus. I’m not interested in your games.’

‘You will be.’

I looked at him, distrusting his smile. ‘You can forget your quest. And keep your distance from Alejandro,’ I told him. ‘Or I’ll make you sorry you came back from the void.’

‘Threatening me, Meg?’ The witchfinder’s confidence infuriated me as always. ‘You are hardly in a position to be threatening anyone, my dear. But perhaps you mistakenly believe it will not be long before your mistress inherits the throne, and your fortune changes with hers.’

I raised my eyebrows, not answering.

He showed white teeth, shaking his head as though I had spoken. ‘Wrong again, Meg. Your mistress is no closer to the throne than she was, for the wayward princess has been making the most unfortunate friends in your absence. And when the Queen hears of this latest scandal, Elizabeth will be thrown back in the Tower of London where she belongs.’ He smiled with satisfaction – Marcus Dent was no friend to the Lady Elizabeth. And that was partly my fault . . .

‘I no longer serve the Lady Elizabeth. And I’m serious about Alejandro. Stay away from him, do you hear?’ I struggled to keep my voice level, my hands clenched into fists by my side. I did not know what he was trying to say about the Lady Elizabeth, but it sounded like mere nonsense, designed to distract me from his intentions towards my betrothed. ‘You can stay away from me too, while you’re at it. I’ve had enough of your foul company to last me into Hell itself.’

Behind him the outline of the pigsty wavered, and I caught again that odd rustling sound, more muffled now, like some unseen animal was digging in the ruins.

‘Come, Meg, you don’t mean that. We were so close once. And I like to think you might come to love me if we met in Hell.’

‘Not a chance.’

‘That remains to be seen.’ His gaze moved slowly down my body, and I felt my skin crawl under that scrutiny. ‘Would you not rather spend your days and nights with a man you are destined to kill than a man who is destined to kill
you
?’

The witchfinder was speaking of the two prophecies that touched me. First that Marcus Dent would be killed by a witch with the power to summon a dead king – a feat I had already achieved that spring when I raised Henry Tudor from his grave. And second, that Alejandro’s wife would die in childbirth, a curse laid on him by a dying witch he had mistakenly betrayed.

‘Who can you trust in this business?’ Marcus continued smoothly when I did not reply. ‘That is the question you will have to answer.’

‘I don’t have to answer any question of yours, Marcus Dent,’ I said hotly, losing my slender grip on my temper. ‘You are nothing to me. You are a shadow in the darkness.’

‘Of course,’ the witchfinder murmured, watching me with raised eyebrows. ‘I am a shadow. I am what you made me, in fact.’

‘I thought I made you
dead
.’

He was smiling again, the thin curve of his lips malevolent. ‘Death is life’s mirror, only the glass is kept dark. A lesson you should have learned by now, my young witch.’

He took a step backwards, and I realized that his outline was fading, just as my mother’s spirit had faded in my chamber as the summoning-spell wore off. Already I could see snow-covered brambles and the timber ruins of the old pigsty more sharply through his body.

The place was silent again now, the wild creature I had heard vanished into the night, though above our heads a brilliant single star was shining, bright and clear in the heavens.

His ghostly smile lingered in the darkness a moment after his body had disappeared, taunting me.

‘When you are ready to face me again, Meg Lytton, you will easily find me.’ Then the last trace of Marcus Dent was gone, only a thin echo of his voice floating back to me on the chilly air. ‘Unless I find you first.’

The room was dark, suffocatingly so. I swam slowly up out of the vision, my head aching. Someone had wrapped me in a warming cloak or blanket, and was tilting a cup of something spicy to my lips. A fiery liquid burned my throat and I struggled, pushing the cup away.

‘Faugh!’ I spluttered. ‘What is that stuff?’

‘She’s awake,’ Richard said drily, and straightened up, smiling down at me. ‘Thank God. I was beginning to think we would never get you back, Meg. Your father is coming up the stairs to see what all the commotion is about. I’d better head him off before he bursts in here and has a fit. You know how little he likes your Spanish priest, and if he should catch the two of you like
that
 . . .’

Richard vanished through the door, and a few seconds later I heard him talking on the stairs in a soothing voice, using his own not insubstantial magickal powers to persuade my father back down to his study.

I frowned, still light-headed, not quite understanding what Richard had meant.

If he should catch the two of you like that . . .

That was when I realized that I was lying on the floor in my bedchamber, my shift rucked up about my bare knees in a most undignified fashion, my head on Alejandro’s lap. My face flushed with embarrassment and I struggled to sit up, dragging my shift down to cover my legs.

‘What on earth . . .?’

‘Hush,’ Alejandro insisted, holding me by the shoulders. He did not sound upset but his smile was strained. ‘It’s awkward, I agree, but I don’t think you should move yet. You’re very pale. Have another sip of Richard’s concoction. I don’t know what’s in it, and it smells and probably tastes foul too, but it brought you back to us.’

‘What happened?’

‘You tell me.’ His gaze searched my face upside down. ‘Your mother’s ghost vanished and you collapsed. You lay still for a moment, then gave a dreadful shriek and started drumming your heels on the floor and waving your arms about like a lunatic.’

I blinked, considering that information, and my face grew hotter than ever.

Richard came limping back into the room. He had been beaten by his drunken father as a child, one leg broken so cruelly it had never quite recovered. His bad leg was what made him sharp with Alejandro, I felt sure of it, for where Richard was physically awkward, Alejandro was tall, handsome and startlingly graceful at times.

Besides, Richard was in love with me. He had told me so himself only a few weeks ago when trying to stop me pursuing Marcus Dent. So to see me with my head in Alejandro’s lap must hurt.

Richard closed the door behind him with a quiet click. ‘No need to fret, I told your father you had suffered a nightmare,’ he told me, seeing my worried face. ‘I assured him that I had only come up to check you were all right, and to administer a sleeping draught. Your father seemed to believe me. Though you never know. Perhaps he thinks there’s something going on between us.’

Above me, Alejandro said nothing in response to this but ground his teeth audibly.

‘Don’t even joke about that,’ I warned Richard.

‘Very well. I can do a straight face when required. Though I suspect your father would be ecstatic if he thought Alejandro was no longer your betrothed.’ Richard looked at me, dropping the act. ‘Some kind of vision, was it?’

I nodded.

‘That’s not uncommon following the raising of a spirit. I should have warned you before we started, but I didn’t want to frighten you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Richard rekindled the lantern and hung it from a hook on the wall. Then he knelt to examine me, his face shuttered as though he did not want me to suspect how worried he had been. But I could tell from the prickly manner in which he spoke that my seizure had frightened him. ‘Now to check what harm has been done to you, if any. Then you can tell me all about what you saw. Hands first.’

I held out my hands, but squinted in pain. The light from that lantern was too bright. Or else I was feverish. My head was throbbing. A memory was straining to be let through, squeezing between the darkness of that other world and the brightness of this harsh new one.

Then I remembered.

‘Pigs . . .’

Richard looked up from studying my palms, frowning. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It’s in the pigsty.’ I smiled up at Alejandro, his face still upside down above me, though my head felt like it was cracking in two. ‘That’s what the vision was trying to tell me. Marcus Dent was there to distract me. To stop me seeing where it was hidden. But he failed. My heart knew the truth.’

Alejandro stared down at me, not bothering to hide his bewilderment. ‘What on earth are you talking about,
mi querida
?’

‘My mother’s spell book,’ I explained, glancing from one to the other with a smile on my face. ‘You heard my mother say she would show me where it was, and she did. Only she did it in a vision.’

‘So where is it?’ Richard demanded, still holding my hand, his gaze intent on my face.

‘It’s buried under the old pigsty at Home Farm,’ I said simply. ‘And I’m willing to bet it’s been there since she died.’

The next morning, sleepily descending the stairs with Alejandro, I found my father waiting for me in the doorway to his study. I had to admit, it felt good to be living at home again after a year and a half in the Lady Elizabeth’s service. There were so many memories here, crowding about my head. But much as I loved Lytton Park, this was not where I belonged any more.

I had lived at the royal court now, under the shadow of fear, and discovered my power as a witch, sensing where it might take me in the future. This lovely green parkland in the depths of Oxfordshire was easy on the eyes and the heart. But it could no longer contain me. My destiny lay elsewhere, as my mother had made clear when I summoned her.

‘Good morning, Meg.’

‘Father.’

I curtseyed, and Alejandro bowed his head beside me. When my father held my gaze, unsmiling, I guessed there was something wrong.

‘You wish to speak with me, Father?’

‘Just for a few moments,’ he agreed, stepping aside. ‘Come into my study, would you?’

I had seen my father’s sharp gaze take in our linked hands, and realized that this was the first time Alejandro had indicated his love for me so openly. It was a daring move, considering that he had not asked my father’s permission to court me, and was Spanish, a people for whom my father had little love.

My father did not comment on it though, waving me inside his study as though he had other things on his mind.

‘What happened last night, Meg?’ he asked, frowning. ‘I heard you shouting. That boy Richard persuaded me to go back to bed, but I know when magick is being worked under my roof. And I do not like it.’

He shuffled into his study after me, for his hip had been troubling him this winter. Richard had offered to try and heal his aching bones, but my father had refused to discuss it, a dark frown on his face. He seemed to regard Richard with some tolerance, perhaps sympathizing with his own limping gait, but was easily angered by anything that sounded like witchcraft.