The Threads of Magic

by Alison Croggon

  “I’ll tell you what you sensed,” said Amina. “Something we have long suspected: that the Cardinal is a Spectre.”

  As she spoke, the candles guttered in a cold draught, their flames streaming behind them, almost going out. Pip’s hair stood up on his neck and all down his spine: it was exactly as if someone had opened a door and the wind had come rushing in. But there were no draughts in Amina’s kitchen.

  Chapter Fifteen

  PIP KNEW THAT THERE WERE THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T name, because naming them called misfortune to your door. He looked uneasily over his shoulder. Maybe there were unseen ears, listening as they spoke. Maybe there was a ghost, right there with them in the room.

  Spectres. Maybe even thinking about them was perilous.

  Amina put her finger to her lips. She stood up and circled the table, breathing gently on each candle. The flames bent before her breath and then sprang upwards, burning clear and straight, the fragrant smoke curling from each tip. She gazed intently at each candle flame, as if she were inspecting them for flaws, and then returned to her chair.

  “Spectres,” she said again. “That’s what we’re talking about.”

  “And that’s to do with the Heart?” said Pip. He could feel a terrible dread opening up inside him, like a great big sinkhole in his middle.

  “Oh yes. The Heart in your pocket was made because of Spectres. The boy it belonged to was the chosen vessel for the Spectre King of Clarel.”

  Pip didn’t understand, but he didn’t like the sound of any of this. El was right: he should have thrown the Heart away. Why hadn’t he listened?

  Maybe he had kept the Heart because, underneath everything, he felt a bit sorry for it. This Heart had belonged to a little boy. He tried to imagine what that really meant. He wondered who that child was, and what had happened to him.

  El asked the question. “What’s a … Spectre?”

  They all looked at Amina, even Oni. For long moments she didn’t speak.

  “I will tell you a story,” she said at last. “But first, I must tell you a little about witches. You have all heard of witches. You know that magic is punishable by death, because the King and the Church say it is evil. And yes, sometimes magic is evil. There is nothing that people make that can’t be turned into an instrument for harm. But the craft of magic is not evil. It was made so, in the hands of some who saw its power. They stole it and they broke its laws.”

  Georgette surreptitiously pulled out a small silver pocket watch and checked it. Amina closed her hand over the watch. “Patience, girl. There will be time.” Georgette coloured and put away her timepiece, and Amina went on. “The third rule of magic is that it must never be used selfishly. And this is why.”

  “Never?” said Pip.

  “Never,” said Amina.

  “So what’s the point of having it?”

  “See, you would be a bad witch,” said El. “You never think about anyone except yourself.”

  “That’s not true!” Pip said, the tips of his ears turning red.

  “If you keep interrupting, you won’t hear the story.” Oni stared hard at Pip, and he had the strangest sensation that his lips had been glued together. He opened his mouth like a fish to check if that were true. Oni wore a mischievous look, and Pip had a sudden conviction that she was using magic on him, which would be typical of her, especially if she was a witch, too, which she almost certainly was. He decided to be quiet, just in case.

  Amina sipped her tea. “So. Hundreds of years ago, in a country not far from here, there was a man called Rudolph of Awemt who was very gifted with magic. He rejected the laws because in his arrogance he believed that rules didn’t apply to him. He used his powers to serve his own ambition, and eventually he became king. At first he thought he had gained everything he wanted. But he realized that even with all his riches and power, there was something he didn’t have. Nothing could prevent him from dying.”

  Amina was using her storytelling voice, which was hypnotic and comforting, like warm honey. It made Georgette feel that she was seven years old again, when her favourite thing in the world was Amina’s stories.

  “As he grew older, he became obsessed with death,” said Amina. “He gathered astrologers and alchemists and scholars to his court and sent explorers to far lands to find the Fountain of Life. None of them discovered the secret to immortality. And he grew older still, and still he obsessed about his death.”

  She was silent for a while, her face serious and thoughtful, but this time no one said anything.

  “King Rudolph had a son, his heir, and he envied him his youth. As time went by he began to hate him, because his son would take everything that he owned. And at some point, nobody really knows when, he began to practise blood magic. Blood magic is a witch art used in healing, but this king found a way to use it to put his soul inside his son’s body.”

  “He what?” said Pip. “What happened to the son?”

  “The Prince’s soul was devoured by his father, and King Rudolph lived on in his son’s body. To everybody else it seemed that the king died, like everyone else dies. But he didn’t. After that he began to initiate others into his practice. Sometimes his subordinates, sometimes his allies.”

  There was a short silence. Pip glanced uneasily at the candles. They seemed to be burning faster.

  “A Spectre hasn’t escaped death,” Amina said. “Like every living thing, a Spectre has died. But they exist beyond their death, not alive, but not dead either. And because their existence isn’t life, they are jealous of everything that lives. They want everyone to be like they are, without joy, without love, without beauty. They are parasites who feast on the living and turn them into themselves. And because they refuse to be dead when it is their time, they bring only death.”

  “But that’s awful!” said El.

  “It takes a long time to form a Spectre, but because they don’t die in the normal ways, they have all the time in the world. Every century there were more of them, always in the royal houses. The Spectres knew that only witches could recognize what they were, and so they began to persecute anyone who knew the craft. Before the Spectres, witches were welcome everywhere, but this changed fast. When King Odo the Fifth of Clarel became a Spectre himself, a hundred years ago, it happened in Clarel too.”

  Georgette gave a tiny gasp.

  “Fifty years ago, a wise woman in Clarel began to wonder how to stop this wickedness. And then something unexpected happened. Axel Blanc, the son of a blacksmith, led a revolt against the Crown and took the throne. After he executed the King, he married the King’s daughter, Alisel, to consolidate his claim to the throne, and he threw the King’s wife and mistresses and most of his children into the dungeons of this palace. Among them was a prince called Clovis, who was seven years old. Clovis was your great-uncle, Georgie.”

  “So,” said Pip, who was following the story closely, frowning in concentration, “they can be killed, after all?”

  “They can be killed, but only with difficulty. Spectres can move through realms, from life to the In Between. That’s why we use muffling candles, because if they choose they can eavesdrop from the In Between. Axel chopped off the King’s head before he had time to send his soul to his next body; but that was just a stroke of luck. And you can be sure that since then, Spectres are much more protective of their mortal bodies.”

  El looked bewildered and scared. “I don’t like this story,” she said, her voice wobbling.

  “It is a bad story, I agree,” said Amina, and smiled reassuringly. “But let me finish. The wise woman I mentioned knew that there were more Spectres in Clarel, even though the King had been killed. And she devised a spell that she said would break the chain of the Spectres. None of us know how she did it, but some people say that she worked out how to double the magic back on the Spectres themselves. What we do know is that to make her spell, she needed the blood of a child who was touched by the Spectres, but had not yet been consumed. Prince Clovis, as the King’s chosen vess
el, was such a child. So she took work in the prison where he was kept and waited her chance.

  “Axel sentenced the Prince to death, because he was the rightful heir, and sent an executioner to the dungeon to carry out the sentence. The witch found him just in time, when his body was still warm. She cut out his heart, and with it, so the story goes, she made a spell that would destroy the Spectres. She put the Heart in a silver casket, bound with powerful spells, so she could use it at the proper time. But she died before she could release the spell, and for a long time we all thought the Heart had been lost.”

  “And now the Heart’s been found,” said Oni.

  Amina nodded.

  “Who was she, that witch?” asked El. “You said your granny knew her.”

  “She did. She was called Missus Pledge.”

  “Our Missus Pledge?” said El, her mouth open. “She must have been awful old.”

  “Old Missus Pledge was the mother of the Missus Pledge you knew.”

  Pip felt as if all his blood had turned to cold sludge. “Why don’t you use the spell, now we’ve got the Heart?” he said, with sudden violence. “Just do it, and kill all the Spectres…”

  “Nobody knows how,” said Amina. “That knowledge died with Old Missus Pledge.”

  Georgette pictured her father. He was different from Cardinal Lamir. Obnoxious, violent, vain, petty, but not … cold. “I hate my father,” she said. “But King Oswald is much worse. Is he a Spectre? I think that if he touches me, I will die.”

  “Rudolph was Oswald’s ancestor. Or, to speak more accurately, Oswald is really Rudolph, in another body.”

  “Then why does he want to marry me?”

  Amina considered Georgette, her head cocked to one side. “No doubt he wants the alliance with Clarel,” she said. “But there will be other reasons. Spectres only use their own bloodline for their chosen vessels, and all the male children of his former wife are dead. You are the granddaughter of Alisel Livnel, the daughter of Odo Livnel, so your blood is noble. And because your great-grandfather was a Spectre, perhaps he thinks you will give him robust heirs.”

  There was a horrified silence, which was broken by Georgette. “Why did you never tell me this? Why didn’t I know?”

  “It wasn’t my place to tell you.”

  “But this makes it all so much worse. I have to escape right away. Now. They’re already talking about the wedding, and I know there will be no time for me to come here again because all my time will be dress appointments and lessons of protocol, and I can’t…”

  “Tonight you will return to the palace, as you always do,” said Amina.

  It had never occurred to Pip that he could feel sorry for a princess, but he did then. Georgette gasped, and for a moment she seemed to crumple with despair. But it was only a moment; then she straightened herself in her chair, expressionless, but very pale. “I understand,” she said. “I didn’t think about what it might cost you. I see now…”

  “I didn’t say that I wouldn’t help,” said Amina. “I think it’s obvious that we can’t let Oswald get his hands on you. For now, you will wait. You will behave as normally as you know how. You will do everything that you are told.”

  “And then?”

  “And when it is time, we’ll help you escape.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  MOST PEOPLE IN CLAREL AGREED THAT THE CARDINAL was an unusual man. Although he was the highest cleric in the Holy Church of Clarel, and thus very rich, it was well known that he kept none of his wealth for himself.

  Cardinal Lamir was personally responsible for the upkeep of at least a dozen orphanages in the city. Every urchin in the land feared being picked up by the watch and imprisoned in these places, which were notoriously cruel. He had also built five poor houses, where the homeless – and there were many of those – could find a bed and a meal, if they were prepared to endure a three-hour evening Mass.

  The people of Clarel regarded their Cardinal with equal parts of fear and pride. They boasted to travellers of the generosity of their church, and sometimes even took them to see the nearest orphanages. These were clean, new buildings, if forbidding, and around them were impeccably neat lawns of chamomile and creeping mint that were trimmed by the children themselves. Sometimes the orphans could be seen in the city, walking through the streets in a long line.

  There was no denying, all the same, that the Cardinal was as dangerous as he was charitable. The people of Clarel were well aware that it was better to speak well of him, and best to say nothing at all. Those who slighted the Cardinal had a way of turning up in one of the Five Rivers with bits missing.

  He was even more unusual than most people realized. Tonight, in the privacy of his own library – a high, elaborately panelled room, which featured the largest collection of grimoires and other works on witchcraft in all Continentia – the Cardinal locked the door and turned around. His gaze flickered suspiciously at the beams of moonlight that thrust through the tall windows, as if they had no right to be there.

  He paced across the room towards the long, gilt-framed mirror that hung at the far end of the room. The few guests permitted into this room always looked uneasily at this mirror out of the corner of their eyes. There was, the more sensitive thought, something disturbing about it, as if it were a doorway through which blew an unlucky wind.

  The Cardinal smiled mirthlessly at his reflection, which winked back at him. Then he breathed on it and spoke some words in an ancient, forgotten language that no one spoke any more. The surface became opaque with mist, and when it cleared his face looked back at him as before. Only it wasn’t quite his own face: its skin was blueish and a little mottled, as if it were on the edge of decay.

  Lamir addressed his reflection, “Oracle of the Void, what am I not seeing?”

  “It is hard to say,” answered the reflection. “There are many shadows. Where there should be lines, there are fractures. Where there should be knowledge, there are holes.”

  “Has the woman Bemare taken the Stone Heart?”

  “As you know, we have no knowledge where the thing is. And you are betraying your fear. Beware. Others will take note.”

  “We are so close,” said the Cardinal. “So close. And the closer we are to the tipping point, the more delicate the affair.” He paused, pulling his lip. He could only ask three questions of this apparition, and he only had one left. It was difficult to know which would be most useful.

  “Is the woman Bemare a witch?”

  “She hath a witchlike air.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  The mirror went misty for a few moments, and then the face swam back into focus. “We have not seen her in the ethereal realms,” it said. “But she may have another face.”

  “What does that mean, beyond the ordinary diguises of witches?”

  But his three questions were spent. The mirror’s surface clouded over, and now he was addressing his everyday reflection.

  The original plan had been for the Stone Heart to be retrieved with no fuss; but he had been forced to throw the weight of the assassins and now the Office for Witchcraft Extermination into the search for it. He was beginning to attract notice. Even Ariosto, his most faithful and unquestioning subordinate, was beginning to question why.

  It was too early to reveal himself: that had led to their undoing before, when the last Spectre King of Clarel had met his death. The Cardinal shuddered at the thought. No Spectre should ever die. It was against nature.

  So close. And yet so far…

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I DON’T LIKE IT, PIP,” SAID EL. “I DON’T LIKE ANY OF this.”

  “Me neither,” said Pip sleepily. “But it could be worse.”

  It was near midnight the same evening. Pip and El lay under warm woollen blankets on pallets stuffed with straw and lavender in Amina’s tiny spare bedroom. Besides the pallets, there was only room for a carved wooden chest that smelt of camphor. A blue woven rug softened the clay tiles. It was the same room the
y had slept in years and years before, when Amina had brought them in from the street.

  Despite everything, they were warm, sheltered and fed. Pip, who by disposition as well as necessity lived almost entirely in the present, was too drowsy to worry.

  As on that first night, they were unusually clean. After Georgette left the Old Palace, Amina had given them supper – a rich, delicious stew – and then looked Pip and El over with a critical eye.

  “When did you two last have a bath?”

  “I’m clean enough,” said Pip. He didn’t like bathing, and besides, the grime made him hard to see in shadows, which was useful.

  “Face it, Pip,” said Oni. “You stink.”

  Pip was incredulous. “We’re being stalked by murderous assassins and supernatural parasites, and you’re worried about how I smell?”

  “I think a bath is a brilliant idea,” said Oni. “Not even your own sister would recognize you without all that dirt.”

  “It’s unhealthy, putting your whole self in water,” argued Pip. He had unpleasant memories of his last bath at Amina’s, many years ago now. “It’s poison. The landlord at the Duck had an old aunt who died after she took a bath – just keeled over dead as a doorknob the next day.”

  “I’m not having vermin in my bedding,” said Amina.

  “If you give me a basin, I’ll flannel myself,” Pip said handsomely, as one willing to make a concession.

  “A bath it is, then.” And a bath it was, despite Pip’s vehement protests. Water was boiled, a copper hip bath brought out into the kitchen and Amina arranged a screen, to save Pip’s modesty.

  El didn’t mind washing nearly as much as Pip did. She went first, and after a lot of splashing came out wearing a clean linen nightshift and smelling like a bunch of flowers. Amina and Oni threw out the water and replaced it, and then it was Pip’s turn. He disappeared behind the screen, and then poked out his head.