by A. L. Knorr
Not wanting to see any more but not wanting to miss any potential clues, I moved closer for a better view. Daracha collected blood, hair, and saliva from Byrne, all in the small bowl. When this was done, both witches moved back, Daracha still chanting the words Margaret murmured to her from the sheaf. Daracha held the bowl out at shoulder height, holding it with her eyes on the moon expectantly.
For a long time nothing happened. The witches didn't move and the chanting became repetitive. I wished I had earplugs and could block out the awful spell. Even the sound of it was ugly.
When a black flame lit inside the bowl, I gasped, and my hand flew to my mouth. The flickering and dancing of that flame matched exactly the way the ithe's extremities and the top of its head moved.
A moment later that same black flame erupted from the mouth of the well. It was silent, absent of the usual snaps and crackles of true flame. But apart from the lack of light and color, it moved the same way. Also unlike real flame, the edges of the black fire lost their transparency. The trees behind had at first been visible, but now, nothing could be seen through it. It had the look of a void.
The flame grew, licking up Byrne’s body like a hungry animal. Though I couldn't feel the air moving, the witches’ hair blew around as the flame grew.
Narrowing my eyes and studying the strange black fire, I realized what was happening. The well was turning itself inside out, pouring itself into Byrne's body. The vacant blackness of the pit crept upward, first emerging from the well like little fingers, then growing. Soon it was a steady stream of emptiness consuming Byrne. It swallowed him, clung to him, slowly transformed him.
I felt unable to tear my gaze from the black fire, the way it looked so like the ithe. When I finally forced myself to look up again, I gasped in horror.
There, rotating slowly above the well, no longer upside down but upside right and with all of the strange contours and weighed down appearance I had come to know, was the ithe.
Chapter Seventeen
"I see you've discovered the source of my pet." The cold voice made me shriek and drop the clump of earth. The residual evaporated in an instant.
Whirling to see Daracha strolling casually up the hill, my heart leapt into my throat and quivered there like a small frightened animal. But there was no hiding from Daracha. Her eyes were alight with a noxious purple glow, the kind of neon color not achieved by anything in nature.
Backing up, my own hands came up defensively, trembling. My plan seemed like insanity to me now. I had thought she'd find me quickly, but not this quickly. She was not just between me and Gavin's truck, she was closing the distance between us … and fast.
My senses cast a wide net, calling on seeds and plants and roots and vines and all manner of plant life. There was plenty of all of it in this place, but was it enough against what Daracha had become since she'd killed Mary?
My breathing became shallow as my gaze caught on the moving shadow of the ithe at the bottom of the hill; it stood there flickering, facing up the hill calmly. Waiting.
"I know who you really are," I called.
"It has no memory. Its only care is my command." Daracha stopped a few meters away, fingers snapping with purple electricity.
"What happened to Byrne? Where did he go when you created that." I pointed at the ithe.
Daracha jerked her finely shaped chin at the place where the old well had been.
My chest expanded with horror as I stared at the patch of earth.
Daracha chuckled. "He's better off than you think. In a cocoon of safety of sorts. If he dies, then my pet dies as well, and I can't have that. There is one last job I need its help for." Her hand flashed upward, fingers tense and flicking.
Instinctively, I ducked. A snapping purple fork of lightning flared over my head, buzzing like angry hornets. The hairs on my scalp tensed as the magic lit the air with evil. Knowing she'd follow the blow with another, I dove to the side and landed hard on my shoulder. Rolling over a few times down the hill, I stopped on my back, panting.
"Be still, foolish Wise," Daracha snapped as she took another step. She brought her hands up, her palms facing each other a few inches apart. A purple ball of fizzing light formed there. Determination etched all over her features, this next shot would not miss and there was nowhere for me to go.
I cast my magic wildly in a desperate throw, not knowing what I was doing, just reacting. At the same time, I flattened myself into the earth, instinctively pressing back to avoid what was coming.
The smell of soil and roots and minerals closed over me. Daracha's shape was swallowed from the feet up by a soft nothingness, her voice and magic blotted out with silence.
The last thing my vision registered was a look of surprise on her face. The world went dark and quiet. Not black, but grainy and thick. A moment later, thin strands of glowing gold flickered to life all around me. They grew long, like roots growing down deep, snaking along the surface of some flat plane above, tangling with each other.
I realized with relieved amazement that they were roots. I was underground.
The world became a strange vista lit with threads of gold. The roots of grass and shrubs, and distantly—just visible through the network of fine threads—the thicker broader roots of trees.
I moved for these trees and swung easily through the terrain, feeling bodiless, drawing oxygen from the blanket of soil enclosing me. Spots representing stones and rocks dotted this strange new world, making it even more beautiful with their mild silver glow. The sound of music filtered to me softly, nothing made by human instruments, but a mixing of natural resonances, the loudest of which called me to the west.
Toward the ley line ...
It rose in the distance as I neared. Awe came over me as the ley line grew in my senses. Bright and beautiful, what looked like a highway of light from the surface was actually a wall driving so deep underground it had no end. And it was far from static. Power prickled as I neared, and I realized that the ley line was split in two down the middle. Energy raced north on one side and south on the other like the world's most mystical freeway. From the ley line throbbed the energy that powered every supernatural and unexplained thing of the universe. Wonder swept through me.
I drifted toward it, eager to slip into its stream, but suddenly stopped. Hesitating, I looked back, in as much as this new, incredible immaterial form I had taken could turn and look back.
Through the elegant threads of roots and rocks and trickles of moisture seeping through the soil, a black column of darkness reached from the surface to beyond the scope of my vision.
The well.
I couldn't slip away from this place without trying to find Byrne.
Swinging back easily, I descended like a bit of dandelion fluff on a gentle breeze. Rooty networks threaded around the edges of the well, a few tendrils penetrating the walls here and there. Following the well to its bottom, I reached out, Wisdom probing, searching. Pressing against it, I could sense a cold, dank void.
Byrne?
The thought echoed once dully and died a short death as it fell into nothingness.
Trying something different, I sent my energy into the thin glowing roots, asking them to grow, to penetrate the well's weak places. To break it apart, the way roots can do over time. The response was immediate and startling.
The gold glimmer became a red fire, each tendril from the thickest to the most tender, thrust itself forward like tiny prying fingers. Each root flared like a hot thread of glowing metal. The stones shifted aside, loosening as nature gently pried them apart.
I slipped through alongside the roots like I was riding a slide and fell into the well's bottom. Half expecting to hit water, surprise jolted me as I fell into a void like the one I'd experienced at the treasury.
I sensed him now, though I couldn't see him. His consciousness was here, his memories, tucked away in some pocket of space, insulated against the world. There were other things here too, dead things. There was also a smell ... that smell,
like old potpourri.
Byrne?
I could feel his astonishment in the silence that lay heavy between my calling his name and his answering. And that voice ... it was identical to the one I'd heard at the treasury.
Hello? How ... How did you find me? An awestruck silence filled the void, which was followed by a disbelieving: Georjayna?
Yes. I got your message. It was broken, but it was enough to lead me here, to you.
A kind of misery-laced happiness drifted to me in the dark.
I'm pleased you got my message. But, I didn't expect you to come here, to this nothingness. I only tried to help you understand.
I understand, I responded. Tell me how I can get you out of here?
Alas, you cannot. Only she can reverse the spell.
And if she dies?
Then I die along with her, a fate I would welcome after these long years in her service.
His words spread through me like hoarfrost over a windowpane. Kill the witch, and Byrne dies too. Queen Elphame was due at the castle in a matter of hours. Would I have time to communicate this to her before she unleashed the fury of her fae magic on Daracha? And if I did, would it even matter to the queen? Byrne's form had been used to manifest a demon slave for the dark sorceress. If I didn't find a way to tell her whose life force was fueling the ithe, surely she would kill it on sight. Before I could process all of this, Byrne was communicating again.
But time grows short. She is near to the well; I can feel her presence. You must not dally here.
I felt a strong shove, and my energy slid back into the wall of the well. The desire to stay with him flooded my being, but he pressed against me, crowding me, pushing me out. I had only just begun to talk with him, I hadn't yet even told him that I knew Fyfa and that she missed him, that Queen Elphame had promised to help. If anything I wanted to give poor Byrne some hope.
Scrabbling like a cat falling along a smooth surface for something to hold on to and finding nothing but empty air, I found myself squeezed into the wall of the well.
Panicky, I sent a desperate thought: Wait!
But he grew more insistent, though his voice reflected the same regret that I felt that I could not stay. Time loses meaning down here. You must not waste another moment. Go!
With another shove from Byrne, I was through the well and cradled by the temporal roots of the earth once more. Byrne's urgency was infectious, and his insistence that down here time might be skewed sobered me up fast.
My consciousness swept upward toward the surface at a speed I seemed almost unable to temper. Surging through the ground like a geyser of boiling water, lights flashed, and the songs of nature filled my mind. Racing along beside the well like this, I realized just how deep it went.
Sensation returned to my body as I emerged from the confines of the soil. Up, up, up into the air I rose, as though shot from a cannon, limbs and clothing reformed and human vision returning.
Walking down the hill, Daracha came into view. She turned as she heard me cry her name. It tore from my throat as thunder crashed overhead and a jolt of white light flashed across the sky to strike the earth not far from her feet. A sense of amazement underlay the power and timing of the celestial event, but I put it away for later. Now I faced my nemesis, the antithesis of my power ... and though I still lacked a plan, an opportunity had presented itself.
Her face and eyes expanded with surprise and then narrowed as she stared up at me. I was still drifting up and up, my speed slowing, my body rotating. The horizon spun as I turned, the light of the ley line in the trees beyond us drifting by as I turned to face Daracha again.
"You want me?" I asked the witch in a calm voice as my ascension slowed. "I'm going to Blackmouth Castle. Come and get me."
Reaching a hand toward the ley line as my body came to stall in the air above the well, I curled my fingers into a fist. My momentum arrested totally, and in that brief moment of stillness between going up and going down, I threw all of my power into a beckoning.
The light of the ley line bent toward me.
I began to fall as the line raced across the terrain like a highway yanked out of place. It swept nearer and nearer as I descended back to earth, picking up speed. What went up had to come down but I was no longer afraid of the impact which must succeed a fall from a great height, because—for me—there would be no impact.
Daracha was halfway to the well and closing the gap quickly, eyes lighting up with that furious purple fire once more. Her skirts swished and those little metal bells tinkled insanely.
She loosed a scream and threw a lance of electricity straight for me. It popped and crackled like a firework, making the air stink with a noxious smell as it exploded over my head.
I dropped straight into the ley line.
The world became a bright river of energy, swelling with the music of life and warm crackle of nature’s magic. I gave myself over and let it carry me on a warm current toward Blackmouth.
Chapter Eighteen
I tried to count in my mind, a way of keeping track of time, but I couldn't tell how fast the ley line highway flowed. I'd have to make a judgment call for when to get out, like a rail-riding hobo jumping out of a moving train. Only, ley lines had no signs, no landmarks, and beneath the earth's surface I had no visuals of the landscape. What I could sense was water. I knew that a river ran west of the castle and so did the ley line. They might not intersect exactly, but they would get close to one another. I set my Wisdom to feel and look for water.
I was saved the trouble of having to predict an exit by a bright flash of neon purple light. It sizzled on my vision and sharp electricity snapped across my senses as a force blew me up and out of the ground.
Like a cannonball shot into the sky, my body materialized as it passed into the open air. It was as if the ley line spat me out the way a farmer with a cold spits as he’s working. Shock numbed my mind as needles of cold and hot peppered my skin. Crackling sounds chased me on a long, high arc through the air. A blur of white light swept across the landscape below at an unbelievable speed, lighting the forest as it went by. The ley line moving across the terrain. It was like I'd been yanked out of the supernatural highway and it had clung to me like elastic, snapping back into place once I'd been fully extracted. The power to do this thing boggled my thoughts, though ... that could also have been the fall, as I was completely disoriented, heart thundering in my ears.
I crested and once again began to tumble back to earth. Body twisting like a cat's, my arms and legs shot out as the sky vanished and the forest came lurching up beneath me. The feeling of falling sent my stomach shooting up to my mouth. Flashes of purple light seared my view, highlighting everything with a sickly, violet glow. The canopy rushed up at high speed. My hands tensed and I reached for the trees with my Wisdom. Wind whipped at my clothes and hair as I fell. I took a sharp breath and sent a command to the oaks and chestnuts whose tops I would shortly hit.
A high, loud scream of triumph penetrated the night air as I ripped through the canopy. But slender branches and vines twined lovingly around my body, slowing my speed and breaking my fall. My stomach fell from my neck to my boots as the trees took my weight. Long fingers bristling with the buds of spring caressed my head, my back, my legs, as I was lowered gently to the forest floor. Slipping from the grip of the trees, I landed on the mossy earth in a crouch, fingers penetrating the ground and eyes scanning wildly for the witch and some landmark to tell me where on earth I was.
So much for riding the ley line all the way to Blackmouth. I should have guessed that would be too easy, but I never could have imagined Daracha's ability to oust me from a ley line. But why not? She and Margaret had used the power of the ley line to make Daracha's slave, hadn't they?
The scream died, and only the wind whistled through the branches above and the trunks around me. Scanning my surroundings for that telltale purple electricity, I searched for some familiar feature to give away how far from the castle I was.
But
the forest here was so thick, and what little moonlight there was, was mostly blocked out by the thick canopy overhead.
Moonlight?
My heart turned over as I realized just how much time had gotten away from me while I’d been underground. Byrne had been right. It had been dawn when I arrived at Dundee, now the moon was climbing. A fat, full moon, partially shrouded with cloud, hung low on the horizon, but high enough that surely I had only an hour or two to midnight.
I heard a trickle of water and tuned in with wild hope. Calculating my options, I weighed going back underground with heading over ground on foot and chose the latter. It was clearly too risky to submerge again; I'd miss my deadline for certain. That trickle of water was my best hope to direct me to the castle.
The snapping of twigs under footsteps had my legs uncoiling, as tense as metal springs. The sound had come from my right so I turned, eyes probing the dark. The wind picked up, cooling my cheeks and lifting my hair. My gaze stalled over a black shadow as the ithe stepped from behind a thick tree trunk.
Swallowing down the urge to bolt, I forced myself to wait and watch. It faced me, body wavering slowly back and forth, blurring and blotting out the forest backdrop. It took a few steps forward and stopped; its head seemed to be turning endlessly on its neck, like it was scanning in continuous circles.
"You told me your name once," I said quietly, "but I thought you'd said 'burn'. That means that somewhere deep down, beneath the curse, you know where you came from."
The words hardly left my lips when a purple light flashed through the trees to my left. Crackling accompanied the flashes. Twigs snapped, echoing through the quiet of the night.
