Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2)

by E. William Brown

  The damn screw problem turned out to be easy once I gave up on making them with a spell, and just came at it as a mechanical problem. Make a nickel iron sleeve with one turn of grooves on the inside, and screw it down the length of a wax cylinder to make a pattern. Conjure a block of solid stone around that, and I had a mold I could pour liquid metal into to make the screws. There were a few complications beyond that, but they weren’t hard to fix.

  Sometime well after midnight I stumbled into bed for a few miserable hours of tossing and turning. Twice I woke from nightmares of betrayal and destruction, half convinced that royal troops were already staging an assault. When the first hint of the approaching day’s light filtered in through the window I gave up on sleep entirely, and rose again.

  In the dining room I found Cerise slumped over the table, looking like she hadn’t slept at all. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes were red from crying. Tina was there as well, looking tired and oddly stern, and Elin was sitting at the foot of the table reading Avilla’s grimoire.

  They all looked up at my appearance. Cerise flinched, and hung her head. Tina stood and came around the table towards me, but it was Elin who spoke first.

  “I’m relieved to report that so far the recipes she might have used are all geared towards very generalized effects. Strengthening or suppressing basic emotions, encouraging the natural development of loyalty and affection, that sort of thing. Potentially troublesome, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to apply specific orders or complex contingencies. Any significant effect also requires regular reinforcement to reach full strength, and the decay curve is rather steep. Since she only had her kitchen properly sanctified for a few days anything she might have done will fade in the same interval.”

  I stopped, and considered that for a moment. “So we just have to be careful not to trust our feelings too much for the next few days, and then we can sort things out? That’s not nearly as bad as I thought it might be. How did you get that book?”

  She shrugged. “Her sanctum isn’t that well defended yet, sir. I was strong enough to force her wards, and the book itself was only guarded by a few gingerbread men. I had to break the chain it was secured with, and I’m sure she’ll have a bit of a headache from the backlash. But I thought you’d want an outside opinion as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you, Elin. You did the right thing.”

  “She’s very brave,” Tina said. “Avilla’s magic is so angry, I wouldn’t have dared to go in there right now. Um, I was going to bring up something from the mess hall downstairs for you, if that’s alright? They’ll have breakfast ready for the officers any time now.”

  “That’s fine, Tina. You know, you could get the maids to do that.”

  “I want to keep an eye on everything, just in case. At least until Elin says it’s safe.” She turned to go, then paused and turned back. “Daniel? When you have time, will you bind me for real? If someone as smart as Avilla can do something this stupid, I hate to think what mistakes a dummy like me might make. I don’t ever want anything like this to happen again.”

  “Oh, Tina.” I hugged her gently.

  Was that even possible? Everything I’d read about bindings was geared towards witches, and a week ago Tina had been a normal girl. But the blessing Bast had given her encompassed more than just shapeshifting. I looked close with my magic sight, and confirmed the suspicion I’d had. There was power blossoming there. Not just in her womb, where a goddess was rapidly growing, but in her heart as well. It was raw. Untrained. Delicate and weak, compared to Elin or the witches. But it was growing quickly, and already there was more than enough for that.

  Did I want to? Fuck, yes. A lifetime of indoctrination said I was a horrible person for even thinking it, but right now I didn’t care. If she wanted to offer me a binding promise, I’d be happy to accept.

  “Alright, Tina. You’ve got enough magic to make that work. But first we have to figure out what to do about everything else.”

  She kissed my cheek. “I love you, Daniel. You’ll keep us safe. You always do.”

  She started to pull away. I drew her back in, kissed her lips and held her tight for a long moment.

  “I love you too, Tina. Take care of yourself.”

  She scurried off with a smile on her face, and I settled myself at the table. Cerise stared down at her hands, her face half obscured by her hair.

  “Cerise? Talk to me.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said hollowly. She paused to rub at her eyes, and I realized she was struggling not to cry.

  “This is so fucked up. I don’t understand what’s happened, Daniel. We’ve been planning our life together since we were kids, and we’ve always talked things out with each other before we made a big move. She was so excited when we met you, and we’ve both worked so hard to make things come together here. We were right on the verge of getting you to agree to the coven ritual, and you’ve already made us stronger than most witches twice our age. Why would she throw it all away for a man she barely knows?”

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  Cerise buried her face in her hands, and sighed.

  “The prince this, and the prince that, and isn’t he so manly? She sounds like a teenager with a crush. I thought she was enspelled at first, but when I called her on it she honored our vows and helped me check her over. There’s no magic on or in her that isn’t hers.”

  Elin frowned. “How can you be so sure of your results? There are a thousand ways to hide an ensorcellment.”

  “Our teachers wanted us to be coven sisters, Elin. We’ve been blending our magic ever since I was strong enough to do it without getting lost in her, and when I was fourteen we started doing a full unveiling and soul meld every few months. I know her magic as well as my own. Better, really. Mine changes whenever I kill something, but hers has been as constant as the hills ever since she was made.”

  “Oh.” Elin sounded a bit awed at that. “You must really love each other. No wonder you look so lost.”

  Cerise nodded miserably. “I hate this. She’s throwing away everything for a crazy impulse, but… Daniel, I’m sorry, but I can’t abandon her. I love you, but Avilla is my soul. If she leaves, I have to go with her.”

  “Yeah, and I have to protect you,” I reminded her. “So I can’t just let you disappear on me. Damn it! Why couldn’t she just say she’d changed her mind? I wouldn’t have been happy about it, but at least we wouldn’t have ended up with a potential war on our hands. What does she think she’s going to do if he decides she enchanted him?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Cerise grumbled. “She thinks he’ll just put her over his knee or something, and she can be all sweet and repentant and he’ll be banging her again before nightfall.”

  “Can we back up a step?” Elin interjected. “What was that you said about Avilla being made? What is she?”

  Cerise hesitated.

  I sighed. “Go ahead, Cerise. We can trust her.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “We’ve done a lot of enchantment work together, and we don’t have any fancy ritual chambers to buffer the connection. We saw a lot of each other, especially when we were building the dryad habitat. She isn’t going to betray us.”

  “I’m not going to betray you, Daniel,” Elin corrected. “You’re the one who saved me. Although I do have fond feelings for Cerise.”

  “But you remember that Avilla didn’t want anything to do with you?” Cerise said glumly. “Huh. You two must be really compatible, to blend your magic so easily. Well, alright, but will you promise not to tell the prince or the Conclave this story? I don’t know what would happen if it got around.”

  “I promise to hold any secrets told to me here in the strictest of confidence, revealing them only if Daniel so desires or if all those they pertain to have died,” she replied. “That should be sufficient, if you trust him.”

  Cerise nodded jerkily. “I do. Alright, here it is. Avilla is the last great creation of Lysandra
of Arta, one of the most powerful hearth witches who ever lived.”

  I frowned. “Didn’t you call her Granny Havsen before?”

  She shrugged. “That’s the name she went by for the last few decades. But after she died I went through all her letters and journals, and found the truth. Since Elin’s such a bookworm, I figured she might know the name.”

  “I do,” Elin commented. “She studied under Circe’s heir, Tullia, didn’t she?”

  “That sounds right. Anyway, Lysandra survived for hundreds of years by stealing a younger woman’s body whenever she started getting old. But having to kidnap some girl and work a dangerous spell every twenty or thirty years was too risky for her taste, especially when the Aesir started hunting witches after the fall of Olympus. So she started looking for a better kind of immortality.”

  “At first she just tried to make her bodies last longer, and she got pretty good at that from what I can tell. But eventually she decided that turning a mortal body into an immortal one was doing things the hard way, and started experimenting with making bodies from scratch. She started out with confection golems, but her dream was to make a body that would look human and be naturally immortal.”

  “I take it Avilla is the product of her research?” Elin asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t understand the whole process, but she somehow figured out how to combine divine essence with her confection arts to make living creatures. She spent at least a century experimenting with that before she got it right, though. She made a lot of golems that came out twisted, or died young, or couldn’t contain a soul. Once she fixed that last problem they started coming out with souls of their own, but she was the kind of witch who didn’t care how many of her own kids she killed.”

  Elin frowned. “How did she obtain enough divine essence for so many experiments?”

  “Oh, she didn’t. You know how indestructible that stuff is, right? When she was done with an experiment she’d lock it in her oven and render it down to recover the essence that went into it.”

  “What a lovely woman,” I commented.

  “She isn’t going to come looking for us, is she?” Elin said nervously.

  Cerise shook her head. “Not likely. My teacher told me what was going on before she died, and I was living with them when Lysandra decided Avilla was her success. She had this whole big scheme she was starting to put together to get Avilla set up for a life of luxury, but I knew it was all going to end with a body switch and a murder. So one day I caught her by surprise, and shoved her in her own oven.”

  A nasty smile settled on Cerise’s face. “She’d enchanted that thing to be impossible to escape. I guess she thought it would never be a problem for her, since the locking spell on the door was something she could just cancel at will. But she’d let her body get all old and scrawny, and I was fresh from stealing most of a bear’s strength. I just held the door shut until the screaming was done. Then we scattered her ashes and buried the bones at a crossroads, and I banished her soul to Hades. She’s not coming back.”

  “Well, that was ruthless of you,” Elin said, obviously a little unsettled by the tale.

  Cerise shrugged. “I’m a death witch. There’s nothing I won’t do to protect someone I love.”

  Which was another source of worry. Her goals weren’t especially evil, but I’d already known Cerise could be inhumanly ruthless and disturbingly bloodthirsty. Since we met she’d always been willing to follow my leadership, which had done a lot to keep her darker impulses in check. But if that changed, things were going to get bloody. Especially if she thought Avilla was in danger.

  Another thought occurred to me, and I frowned. “Cerise, what exactly was that plan Lysandra was setting Avilla up for?”

  “Some complicated political thing. She didn’t tell us much about it. Just that Avilla was going to somehow end up being a queen once the bodies stopped falling, and her king would be some hot guy who was completely enthralled with her. Then we could set up a coven more or less openly, and since Avilla doesn’t age she’d get to be a witch queen for as long as the kingdom survives. Of course, it would actually be Lysandra in Avilla’s body at that point. But I never told her I knew about that, and even if I had she probably thought I’d go along with it for the chance to be part of her coven. She never got that I was actually in love with Avilla, not just fooling around with her because she’s hot.”

  My eyes met Elin’s across the table, and I could see that she’d had the same thought as me. It was awfully convenient, and I wasn’t sure I believed it. I wasn’t sure I could believe it.

  “A plot to put a woman on a throne?” Elin said slowly. “Wouldn’t the logical first step in such a plan be-”

  A panting messenger flew into the room, interrupting her. “Milord! You’re needed... the gate, milord!”

  Damn it, were we under attack already? But there was no alarm being raised.

  I rushed to the balcony overlooking the atrium, and found Cerise at my heels.

  “You with me?”

  “Yes, Daniel. I’ll help if I can.”

  “Then hold on.”

  I picked her up, and jumped off the balcony.

  The fall was just long enough for her initial shock to fade into excitement. Then the soft landing enchantment on my amulet caught us, and deposited us gently on the floor of the atrium. From there it only took seconds to reach the front gate.

  The postern gate was open, allowing a cold breeze laden with snow to enter. A squad of soldiers armed with guns and force blades were gathered around it, and Gronir was just arriving with half the wolfen in tow. But the figure in the doorway wasn’t exactly hostile.

  “Daniel!” Carl Stenberg boomed. “You look like hell, man. What happened?”

  “Hello, Carl. Come on in. What have you heard?”

  The troops backed away, and he stepped in out of the cold. “Heard? Nothing, actually. I just noticed how jumpy your men are this morning. Was there another attack? Is everyone alright?”

  “No, we’re fine. Just a little disagreement with the prince.”

  “Ah. Well, if you’re having political troubles you might want to talk to Steelbinder about joining the Conclave. Protecting mages from the nobility is half the reason the order exists, and I’m sure he’d love to have a man of your caliber on board.”

  “I’m considering it,” I admitted. “But what brings you out here so early in this weather?”

  A look out the door confirmed that there was still a light snow falling, and heavy winds blowing the powder around. Not the sort of weather anyone would travel in if they had a choice.

  I also spotted the looming bulk of a pair of golems standing on the causeway. The things were ten feet tall, robot-like machines assembled from huge blocks of nickel-iron. They had long legs, squat bodies and a hunchbacked posture that gave them a menacing appearance, which was only amplified by the long blades mounted on the ends of their arms instead of hands. There also seemed to be a seat on top of each of the magical machines.

  Well, that would certainly explain the messenger’s concern. They wouldn’t be nearly strong enough to knock my gates down, but he probably didn’t know that.

  “There’s a council of war this morning. Sounds like the big shots think there’s an attack coming, and they want to figure out what to do about it right away. Every military force in the city is going to have someone there, and the High Adept wants a chance to coordinate with you before people start asking us to solve all their problems with magic.”

  Oh. Damn it, that wasn’t something I could afford to blow off.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who can see the writing on the wall,” I said. “Alright, just give me a chance to get ready. How long do we have?”

  “Better hurry,” he replied. “The meeting starts in an hour, and we need to go to the Iron Citadel first so we can all head for the war room together. You can bring bodyguards if you want, but the war room gets crowded so you can only bring two attendants in with
you.”

  Well, that was going to take some doing. No time for breakfast, but an affair like this would probably have refreshments or something. Who to bring? Normally I’d want Cerise at my back, but all things considered…

  No. I wasn’t going to blame her for this mess. But she might not want to go.

  I invited Carl in, of course, although there wasn’t much hospitality to offer at the moment. Then I drew Cerise off by the elevator.

  “You’re the one I most want at my back,” I told her. “But I’ll understand if you need to stay here.”

  She choked. “Me? Even after…?”

  “It isn’t your fault, Cerise. I love you, damn it. I’m not giving up on you so easily.”

  She smiled weakly. “I love you too, Daniel. Come back in one piece, alright?”

  Well, it was probably best to have her stay and ride herd on her crazy girlfriend. Damn it, Avilla was supposed to be the sane one. Why?

  I fought back the storm of emotion that threatened to erupt again. I didn’t have the luxury of throwing another fit right now.

  Well, I’d probably make a better impression in the war room if my companions fit in, anyway. So I sent word for Gronir and Marcus to get ready to come with me. If we took one of the new armored skimmers we could keep up with Carl’s golems easily, and avoid the worst of the weather as well.

  What to wear? This sounded like a working meeting, so I went with my new coat and armor instead of the fancy suit I’d worn to the Conclave meeting. I grabbed the ornamental staff I’d made just so I’d look like a wizard, but I also took Grinder and the new gun I’d made myself. Just in case.

  Marcus wasn’t thrilled with the idea of taking my best military leaders into the city right now, but he agreed with my reasoning. The prince probably wasn’t going to start a fight in the middle of the war council, especially with the Conclave wizards present. But the more we contributed to the defense of the city, the more likely he was to decide he needed to let the incident with Avilla go. That meant we needed our best minds at this meeting, looking for ways to make ourselves look as impressive as possible.