I squeezed my witches tighter. “I can’t do that to her.”
“Then I shall take my leave, so you may consider what to do without an outsider’s presence. But I stand ready to help, if there is anything I can do for you.”
Pelagia left, and quietly closed the door behind her.
“I don’t understand,” Tina said plaintively.
“Avilla is under a love spell,” Elin told her. “It was woven into her when she was made, so we can’t just break it without killing her.”
“What? But that’s terrible! Isn’t there something we can do?”
“I don’t know, Tina,” I admitted. “This isn’t the kind of magic I’m good at. Maybe I could unravel it somehow, one piece at a time? If you want me to, Avilla?”
“Yes! Oh Daniel, I’d like nothing better. We were going to be so happy together. But it won’t work. The spell is corrupting my own magic. If you start picking it apart it will drain me to rebuild itself. If you refill me you’ll just be feeding it, and if you don’t it will kill me.”
Damn it, she was right. I wasn’t sure I could do anything about it, anyway. I still couldn’t even see what part of her magic was the enchantment, and what was her magical metabolism. It could easily take me weeks to map out what needed to be done, and we didn’t have that kind of time. If we were going to fix this we had to do it quickly.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Elin said. “Lysandra was going to steal your body, but surely she didn’t mean to subject herself to an unbreakable love spell? How did she plan to keep it from affecting her?”
Avilla wiped her eyes, and looked up at the homely girl. “I don’t know? You’re right, though. If she stole my body she’d be bound by the love spell, and she’d never want that. She must have left herself some kind of loophole.”
Oh. Of course.
“She was going to found a coven,” I pointed out.
Avilla and Elin looked at me blankly, but Cerise’s eyes lit up. “You’re right! Avilla, this is technically a binding, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, I think so.”
“A coven bond supersedes all other bindings,” Cerise pointed out eagerly.
“True, but a love spell always include a compulsion of acceptance to prevent… that… oh my. Cerise, you’re right! There’s no acceptance compulsion. Now that I know this is a binding I can resent it, and want to be free of it. It won’t prevent me from joining in a coven!”
Cerise hugged her excitedly, and then kissed me. “Dancing shadows, I love a smart man. You’re right. She was going to let herself be enspelled long enough to convince everyone she was really in love, and then free herself of the binding by forming a coven.”
“Thanks, but thank Elin. She gave me the idea.”
“You’re right.” Cerise bounced to her feet, pulled Elin into a hug and kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Elin. You’re a lifesaver. Now we just need to form our coven.”
“Y-you’re welcome,” Elin stammered, embarrassed.
“But I can’t ask Daniel to do that,” Avilla said uncertainly. “You know he was having misgivings, love.”
“Misgivings that I was working through,” I told her. “If you need this, I’ll do it. But we need two more members. No offense, but we need enough stable people to balance out the amount of crazy you two are going to bring to this thing.”
“Hey, I’ve been working really hard to get my demon side under control,” Cerise protested. “I bet we won’t even have to re-bind me.”
“The fact that this is even an issue would send most sane mages screaming into the night,” Elin pointed out. “You’ll need someone sensible who has at least as much strength as you do, to help you weather that storm until the coven bond is firmly established and you can determine whether you have your demonic power under control.”
“Mara?” Avilla suggested.
“Obviously,” Cerise agreed. “We can talk her into it. But who’s our fifth? Corinna?”
“Too wild,” Avilla demurred. “Besides, you said she’s inexperienced with magic. Pelagia?”
“A dominatrix nymph with a thousand years of experience?” Cerise scoffed. “We’d all be calling her ‘Mistress’ in a week.”
“Dominatrix?” Elin squeaked.
“I was sort of getting that vibe,” I agreed. “But I’m not too sure about Mara. She’s strong, and being beautiful doesn’t hurt, but I’m still not sure how much we can trust her.”
“So we invite her over to talk about it,” Cerise said firmly. “You can have a heart-to-heart while we figure out our other options. But if you veto her you’ve got to suggest someone else.”
“Fair enough.”
Chapter 21
I sent the wolfen to carry a message to the Iron Citadel, asking Mara to come visit us immediately if at all possible. But there was no telling how long it would take to get a response, so I sat down with Cerise to go over the ritual while we waited. In absolute terms the enchantment that would create our coven bond was less complex than that factory enchantment I’d invented to make heating stones, but this time my sorcery wasn’t going to do all the hard parts for me. My meta-magic sorcery allowed me to learn complex spells in an amazingly short time, but there was still a lot of ground to cover if we were going to get this done quickly.
Ideally we should have spent at least a day preparing. The invading army wouldn’t get here for at least a few days, and even if Mara was receptive to our offer she’d want some time to study the binding she was going to commit herself to. But Avilla’s temporary sanity wasn’t going to last more than a few hours, and she’d tearfully warned us not to give her time to stew under the influence of the love spell.
“I was almost ready to escape,” she confessed. “Granny’s spell was slowly driving me mad. Making me so obsessed I didn’t care what I had to do to go to him. It was only my love for Cerise that let me refrain from doing anything stupid for so long, because I wanted to make sure you’d still protect her. If I have to wait much longer I’m afraid I’ll lose control, and do something terrible to the guards so I can escape.”
So we were in a bit of a rush. I was pretty sure I could imprison Avilla for a few days even if she went completely insane, but that wasn’t an experience I wanted to inflict on her. Not after what she’d already been through.
Cerise and I had never had occasion to work magic together before, so we did a few trial castings while we waited. Little bits of the ritual we were planning, that didn’t do anything by themselves. Her power was a wild maelstrom of dark magic, a barely-caged beast longing to break free and paint the walls red with blood. But when we blended our magic that dark power wrapped itself around me like a woman in the throes of passion, her bloodlust eagerly melting into more carnal desires.
I came up for air, and found that we were kissing heatedly.
“The problem here is going to be finishing the ritual without jumping each other,” I panted.
“Make me behave, Daniel,” she crooned, her eyes glittering with raw lust.
I groped for my flesh magic, using it to artificially suppress my own desires, and swatted her firm behind.
“Down, girl,” I said firmly.
Tina giggled. “You two are so hot together. Your magic is really pretty, too.”
Oh, right. I’d forgotten she was still here. There was nothing Tina could do about our magical problems, but the sweet girl was determined to lend what emotional support she could.
Wait a minute. “Pretty?”
“Oh! Um, I mean strong. Yes, very firm and manly.”
I chuckled. “I’m not insecure about what my magic looks like, Tina. I was just surprised you can see it.”
“That just started this morning. I woke up and I could see the magic in everything, plain as day. I never realized working spells was so much like dancing.”
She did a few steps of some folk dance I didn’t recognize, her feet flashing lightly across the stone as she skipped and twirled. To my surprise, magic ro
se around her as she moved. Her power felt like a basket of kittens napping in a sunbeam, but the pattern it formed was a perfect match for the exercise Cerise and I had just been doing.
Cerise’s sudden intake of breath told me she’d seen it too.
“You’re really good at that, Tina,” she said.
Tina smiled. “Thank you. Ma always said I had talent.”
“Can you do the magic part without actually moving?” I asked her.
“Maybe?” Her face scrunched up in concentration. After a moment magic blossomed again around her. Shaky at first, but in a few seconds she got the hang of it and repeated the exercise again. Perfectly.
“How’s that?” She asked innocently.
“Really good,” Cerise said speculatively. “That’s impressive, Tina. I had to practice for years to be able to do that.”
“Oh, it’s not really me, silly,” Tina protested. “It’s Bast. I can feel her blessing working when I reach for the magic. What does that spell do, anyway?”
“It keeps out spirits,” Cerise said. “It’s one of the protections we need to set up for the coven bonding, to make sure nothing that isn’t supposed to can sneak in.”
“I get it. Well, it feels nice. Kind of warm and tingly.”
I caught Cerise’s eye, and raised an eyebrow.
She blinked in surprise, and gave Tina another look. The busty catgirl was dancing again, long legs flashing as her short skirt billowed up with her movement.
The dark-haired witch smiled indulgently. “Backup plan?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah. Not ideal, but it looks like it might actually be possible. We could do a lot worse.”
It was early afternoon by the time Gronir returned, but he brought Mara with him. I emerged from the ritual chamber when a maid told me she’d arrived, and found her hugging Elin.
“I can’t believe how much better you look,” she was saying. “When the wolf guy said they needed me in a hurry I thought for sure something had happened to you. But you look almost back to normal. I guess Daniel really knows his healing, huh?”
“His powers are quite extraordinary,” Elin agreed. “I expect to make a full recovery, which is more than I’d dared hope for until a few days ago. I think I may even have a chance of sorting out my shapeshifting problems, although I don’t dare pursue that agenda on my own.”
“Well, I might be able to help you out with that,” Mara said slyly. “Just be careful not to let anything happen to you, when this big attack everyone is expecting hits. So, if you’re fine then what’s the big deal?”
“We’ve had some unexpected magical problems,” I told her. “The solution is going to require moving up some of our plans, and Cerise and Avilla want to invite you to be part of things. But I don’t actually know you that well, so I wanted to talk to you a little first.”
“Part of things?” She said quizzically.
Cerise had followed me into the room, and now she spoke. “It’s complicated. Um, when we were hanging out at the apprentice gathering the other day you hinted that you’d noticed a few things about us?”
“You mean besides what you’ve already told me? Yes, my nose is pretty sensitive. I still can’t believe Avilla is a gingerbread girl, though. How did someone give one of those a soul?”
Cerise flinched. “Oh, gee, just spill all our secrets, why don’t you?”
Mara shrugged. “Hey, this is your place of power, isn’t it? Are you hiding this stuff from your own minions?”
“No,” I put in. “But the girls have been in hiding long enough that it’s a hard habit to break. I take it you’re not exactly a big fan of the Church?”
She snorted. “You mean the Aesir fan club? Fuck, no. After what they did to my father I’d just as soon see them all dead. I guess you don’t follow them either, though I can’t quite figure out who your patron is. You’ve been touched by more than one god, and there’s so much of your own magic around you that it muddles everything else.”
“What happened to your father?” I asked.
“It’s a long story. Not something I really want to go into. But I’m pretty sure you aren’t building up to telling me you’re secretly agents of Loki, so what does any of this matter?”
“Apparently you made quite an impression on Cerise and Avilla,” I told her. “Cerise?”
The dark witch fidgeted, studying the floor intently. “Yeah. Um. Hey, I should really go check on Avilla. You’re better at this diplomacy stuff than me anyway, right Daniel?”
She disappeared so fast you’d think there was a band of paladins coming in the front door. I stared after her, and sighed.
Elin giggled. “So much for the fearless dark witch. Maybe I should leave you two alone?”
“Silly girl. Yeah, let’s use one of the sitting rooms, Mara. I’ll explain things, but this is sensitive enough that I don’t want anyone to overhear.”
She followed me to the little side room with a completely bemused expression. I claimed one of the wooden chairs, and watched as she hesitantly perched herself on another.
“She really wants me, doesn’t she?” Mara asked hesitantly. “It’s kind of flattering, but I don’t think I’m actually like that.”
“Cerise? Yeah, she’s had the hots for you since she first laid eyes on you. I guess that’s why she had an attack of nerves. But that’s not really what this is about.”
I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to explain everything. Part of me wanted to try to hide some of the more dangerous bits of information, but that really wouldn’t be fair. A coven is a lifetime commitment, and I couldn’t ask her to go into this blind.
“You already knew that Cerise worships Hecate, and it probably isn’t hard to guess that Avilla follows Hestia. I’ve made a couple of bargains with Hecate, myself. One to protect Cerise, and another to help her try to rescue some groups that otherwise wouldn’t survive Ragnarok. I don’t know if the Conclave has figured this out yet, but the Fimbulwinter isn’t going to go away after the gods are done killing each other. Unless one side or the other pulls off some kind of amazingly lopsided victory, the survivors won’t have the power to change things back to the way they were.”
“Crap,” she muttered. “Yeah, that explains a few things. But then why are you helping the Aesir?”
I shook my head. “I don’t give a damn what happens to Asgard. But I have my own people to protect, and I’m not going to stand by and watch while Gaea’s children wipe out humanity. I can’t change the world, but if someone starts killing innocents right in front of me I’m going to stop them.”
She frowned. “I guess that makes sense. So, what, do you need help with protecting your girls from the Church?”
“No, by the time that comes up I expect it will be a moot point. Right now we’re getting ready to form a coven, and when we started debating who to invite your name was the first one the girls suggested.”
“What?” She sprung to her feet, staring at me with wide eyes. “You can’t be serious!”
“Yeah, I am,” I said calmly.
“But, but, you barely know me,” she protested. She shoved the chair out of the way, and began to pace back and forth in agitation. “You don’t know where I’m from, or what I stand for, or… why me? Why would you want me?”
That sounded more like something I would have expected Elin to say, than this fiery beauty. What had she been through, to leave her so insecure?
“That’s why we’re talking,” I told her. “The girls like you, and that’s good enough for them. I’m more cautious, so I wanted to talk things out a little. But we’re in a situation where we can’t afford to spend a long time looking, and so far I like what I’ve seen of you.”
She slumped against the wall. “You’re serious. You’re not just putting me on? If I say yes, I could have…”
She trailed off, and took an unsteady breath. “Sorry. I really wasn’t expecting something like this. Fuck, I thought this shit only happened in fairy tales.”
&nb
sp; “Apparently not. So, questions?”
She took a deep breath, and visibly pulled herself together. “Yeah. Okay, you’re right, that’s the way to do it. Take turns asking and answering? Then that means I go first. Um, what’s the rush?”
I sighed. “We just figured out that the witch who made Avilla wove a love spell into her body, set to trigger the first time she met the prince. Forming our coven now is the only way we have to free her of it. We could delay for a day or two if we absolutely have to, but it’s going to be hell on her if we do. So, the sooner it’s done the better.”
I considered what to ask her for a moment. The fact that she was so careful about an exchange of information told me she had secrets to hide, but honestly I didn’t give a damn about most of the things that would be a big deal in this world. What did I actually need to know, to decide whether I was willing to have her in my coven?
“What do you want out of life?”
“Fuck, you go right for the jugular, don’t you?” She responded. “What do I want out of life? I can’t remember the last time anyone gave a damn what I wanted. But I guess it’s a fair question.”
She bowed her head for a moment, thinking.
“There are a lot of answers I could give. Goals, plans, dreams. But when you cut away all the complications, I guess it’s pretty simple. I… I want my dad to love me, because mom sure as fuck never will. I want to be accepted, by someone strong who can have my back, so I won’t have to spend my whole life alone. I want to claim my birthright, and protect my sister. And I want justice. The world is full of assholes who dish out the worst shit they can come up with on anyone too weak to fight back, just because they can. I know I’ll never be able to get revenge on them all. But when they come for me and mine, I want to be able to kick their teeth in and grind their faces in the dust. Make them be the ones who suffer some special torture for as long as we feel like hurting them.”
“Can you give me that, Daniel? Since you came to Kozalin you’ve done things that shouldn’t be possible, and I’m not buying this excuse you’ve given the Conclave. There’s more to it that that. Sometimes it seems like you’re just making it all up as you go, but then you pull out a secret that should take lifetimes to perfect. You look perfectly human, but you can’t be. So tell me, is it all a big trick? Is someone pulling your strings? Or are you really a god or a Great Beast or something else I haven’t thought of, and it’s all real?”
Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) Page 32
