Rough Magic

by Caryl Cude Mullin

  “Your wits are addled,” Sycorax said. But she agreed to the name. She couldn’t think of any alternative. And everyone else thought it was a lovely choice.

  “I must get back,” she said, handing the squirming bundle to the far more expert arms of the wet nurse. Sycorax rose and smoothed invisible dust from the folds of her dress.

  Stamos nodded to her absently. His eyes were fastened to his daughter’s face, now quiet again and happily chewing her own small fist. Sycorax doubted that he heard her leave the room.

  Well, it was she who had pushed him away. It had been nothing to twist his thoughts from her onto their child. Let him have some happiness, she told herself. Keeping him at a distance was the best way to protect him.

  She went to her room. Not to her chambers. Those were full of servants and companions. No, she went down, by the stone stairs her art had formed, to the underground crypt no one else could enter.

  It was cool there, even in midsummer heat. As ever Sycorax shivered, briefly, when the door fell shut behind her. She reached for her fine wool robe and settled it around her shoulders, no longer having to look or even think to do this.

  Not that she could see. No light penetrated this room. She moved through the blackness to her worktable. There she held her hand over a wax candle, and a quick blue flame sprang from the wick. It flooded the room with an unusual amount of light. But she did not look at the fire itself. She was very careful to avoid chance visions.

  She had trained herself to be blind.

  The smooth wooden table was neatly organized. She was systematic in everything. Three walls of the small room were entirely shelved. To her right the shelves contained glass flasks, filled with the tinctures and potions and preserves she needed for her work. They were all stoppered against corruption. On the opposite wall were the objects she required: murderer’s hair, hollow stones, small dried animals with their spirits trapped within them. Behind her, on the wall punctured by the door, were the books and scrolls she had gathered and written. Some texts were so ancient that she kept them whole with a constant spell. It was a small thing, no strain.

  Before her was the great map. It filled the wall, and on it was drawn the entire known world. At the center was, of course, her own land. With it she could watch any threat brewing against her people and turn it away before it even approached.

  The map was her own invention. She had created it five years before, when she was only fifteen years old. Prior to that she had joined her magic with that of the palace wizards to turn aside enemies. That had been a more obvious, dramatic spellcasting, but this was far greater. Her map divinations gave the people of her land the gift of constant, unthreatened peace. She managed all of it here, alone. The other magic-users rarely met with her, and they almost never consulted her. Their arts were all used to provide bountiful harvests, healthy children, and vigorous workers.

  They were the sunlit heroes, now. She was a mythical figure, spoken of with fear and whispers. Servants treated her as though she were sacred. Some would no longer say her name. They called her “The Lady.”

  Sycorax pushed back her resentment and got to work. Her regular regime of watchfulness had faltered. It had been easy to fill her days writing lists and making notes for some future time. She had even gone out into the countryside to gather supplies, which was ridiculous. Servants had done that for her from the time she was twelve.

  Wandering around had only made her feel more isolated, anyway. She had no place there, among common people. They needed her to do what only she could do. So she had stopped her foolish roving and returned to her post.

  In the corner, where the potions met the map, there was a small hand pump. She used it now, filling the silver basin beneath the nozzle with the earth’s deep water. Carefully she brought the basin to the table and placed it in the center, where she could easily glance from it to the map before her.

  Flame showed greater variety, but the images were swift and fleeting and gave little context. Water was also constantly changing, but the visions it provided moved more slowly and gave a broader sense of time and place. She gazed into the basin. Her own reflection looked back. Even the rippled surface could not hide her sadness. She looked past it.

  To the South she saw internal strife. Kings plotted and moved against each other, with no thoughts to spare for her land. It had been that way for some time. She moved on to the East. Grave threats had come from there in the past, but she and the other wizards had taught them caution. They would not return for at least a generation.

  The North was a barbarous place, and their most common enemy. It had wizards of its own, but none to match her. Their threat was like a rheumatic ache: always there, but never overwhelming.

  Sycorax turned to the West. These were lands her country traded with, but distance had kept terms civil. She sifted through the visions mechanically, expecting the usual results. Then abruptly she checked herself.

  There was a future king whose eyes stared directly back into her own.

  She looked up at the map. The vision sped toward its source, a small land of grapes and grain.

  And it had something she wanted.

  I.v.

  Sycorax stood at the wide window, gazing out to the distant sea. That smear of quiet blue she had seen had been the wild road that brought her here. She had used its power to draw Alonso to her, with a useless army at his back and false dreams of glory in his mind. He had answered her call without ever hearing her voice, never realizing that his thoughts of conquest were not really his own.

  When he found himself a prisoner in her father’s kingdom, his soldiers caught like flies in the amber of her magic, it had been so easy to win him. He had snatched at her offer of help like a drowning man grabs any floating bit of wreckage. She snared him, and together they fled the trap she had set.

  Now she was queen in a foreign land. It should not feel so strange. She was a king’s daughter. From her childhood she had commanded servants and walked the corridors of state with confidence. Her only hope was that she hid her bewilderment well. It was not yet clear whom she could trust.

  No, that was untrue. It was all too evident that she could trust no one. Even her new husband had become cold, remote. Her belief that they were two trees from the same root was gone. She had given up everything for this land where eyes did not seem to match words. Her decision to betray her home and run away with Alonso had been made carefully, without hesitation. But not without consequences.

  And now this new country did not want her. She had used her gifts to master its language. A queen must be able to speak to her people, she had reasoned. She had been wrong. They whispered the word “witch” every time they spoke of her. The servants crossed their fingers behind their backs in her presence. Children were kept away from her. Pregnant women avoided her. She had become a curse.

  She would not cling to Alonso. He had used her to win his freedom. The bond they shared was born of his desperation and her cunning. It was not real. She saw that now. But she was too proud to weep at her foolishness. As long as he treated her with dignity, she would find a way to thrive in her new home.

  And he would treat her well. He knew her power. No one knew it better. She had wielded dark forces to give him the strength to fight free of her father’s enchantments and traps. He had seen her pull power from the moon to shift the tides and send them out to sea. He had lain silently in the boat and watched as she drew the winds around her and sent them flying over the waves, back to his land, back to his throne.

  She twisted her hands together, as though wrenching her fingers could tear away the memories she knew were coming next. Because it had not been just a glorious spell of freedom that had set her on this path. She had used her magic to kill Stamos. The thought of him hammered her with fresh condemnation.

  But she had to be a widow, free to wed, free to rule. And she had to break all ties with her past, sever all claims upon her father’s kingdom. So she had left Thalia. She had abandoned her s
mall daughter. My heart, Sycorax had called her. Then she left Thalia for another heart. A false one.

  The door opened behind her and she turned, her face expressionless. She still wore the dress of her people: a simple white gown, a band of gold around each arm, her honey-colored hair woven in a braided crown around her head. She knew it irritated her husband, but she could not yet bring herself to wear the heavy dark clothing of his court.

  Alonso stood impassively for a moment, his dark eyes impossible to read, his own face a mask of calm. As always there was something about the tilt of his head and the directness of his gaze that made her think of a wild hawk. He was fierce. She had known it from the first moment, seen his strength even in her divinings, even as he kneeled in bloody rags before her father’s throne. It was what made her love him.

  And he loved me too, she reminded herself. She was sure of it. She remembered how their passion had gripped them both with its sudden force. He told me that I amazed him, she thought. He said that I was his lioness.

  Well, he was the lion. This was a land of fiery men and shadow-women. And so here he was again, come to school her in the ways of his people. “Cast your eyes down.” Was she never to meet the gaze of anyone? “Don’t stride across the room.” Even her manner of walking offended his court. “A woman must be meek. The queen must be the best of all women.” So she, the lioness, was to become the mouse.

  She was tired of these lessons, but she listened and nodded. She must try to adapt her ways. Will there be anything left of me? she wondered. And then what he was saying next stopped all other thoughts.

  “You must not speak in council. It is strange enough that I allow you there at all. It will take them time to grow accustomed just to your presence. When you speak out as you did today, it troubles them. They are not used to hearing the thoughts of women on such matters. They cannot hear what you say, they can only wonder that I let you speak at all. You must share your thoughts only with me, in private.”

  “But surely we should begin as we mean to go on. They will be used to hearing my thoughts soon enough, as you are.”

  His gaze shifted, slid away to the window. “It is better my way,” he said. “If you cannot be silent you must stay away from council altogether.”

  That made her silent indeed.

  I.vi.

  The door shut soundlessly behind Sycorax. She stood against the cool stone of the wall for a moment, making sure that she had not been followed. It was a clear moonlit night. She’d have to take great care not to be seen. She drew the hood of her black cloak closer, clutching it at the neck as she quickly muttered the words of a concealment spell. It would protect her from those who looked down from above. Satisfied, she stole across the small side garden and out the final door in the wall. The guard posted there did not even glance her way as the door opened and shut.

  Quickly, she was within the outskirts of the wood, the trees whispering their welcome. She had always been well served by the trees. In a short time she came to the clearing. Here was the magic circle where the moon shone directly upon a large flat white rock. She had seen this place from one of the high towers. Certainly her husband would never agree to her roaming about in the forest. He knew only too well the strength she could find here.

  Stone power. That was what she needed right now. The power to withstand her enemies in the court. She must become a fortress.

  Because she had many enemies now. It had not taken long for the secrets of her marriage to become common knowledge. And as soon as it was known that Alonso did not love her, that he also found her foreign ways alarming and strange, the dance of the courtiers began. They tried to win his favor by insulting her. He did not protect her. His sense of obligation had diminished. Soon it would be gone altogether. And now that he was surrounded and rooted in his own place of power, he did not fear her as he had.

  She stripped off her cloak and knelt on the rock. Wearing only a thin, white gown, her flesh puckered immediately in the chilly night air. She drew the small flint dagger from her belt, intending to lift it to the moon and begin the slow, harsh song of the stone spell. But she paused, then froze.

  She had been followed. Sycorax could sense him somewhere in the shadows. Her nostrils flared, testing the wind. There. He was crouched low beneath the fir tree. One of her husband’s men, probably a soldier. She knew that he would not be open to bribery.

  Her mind raced, but she kept her body still, calm. She must disguise her purpose, make her kneeling here on the ceremonial rock seem innocent. Fortunately, she had not begun the rites. Ideas tumbled through her mind like pebbles in a stream, until one shone clear. She tucked the knife back into her belt, then lowered her face into her hands and began to sob.

  It was not hard to cry. She had been holding back tears for so long that they were grateful for a chance to flow. She wept for her child, her father, for her lost land, for the life she would have had, for the life she’d dreamed of, and for the work of her own foolish hand in all her troubles.

  It worked. She felt the soldier draw back, hesitate. She sensed his shame. He had followed a woman to catch her committing a crime, and instead he had to witness her loneliness and sorrow. Even so, he did not leave. That annoyed her, for it meant that she would have to go back to her rooms with the rites undone. Who knew when she would get another chance, especially now that her stone had been discovered. But there was no help for it. Though inwardly she seethed, outwardly she kept the ruse of a fragile and broken woman. She wrapped her cloak around herself and stole back to the castle, pausing every now and then to sigh and weep some more. The shadow was behind her the whole way.

  Back in her chambers Sycorax paced angrily. She was in danger now, that much was clear. Her husband hoped to free himself of his foreign wife. He needed only to catch her performing her outlawed magic and he would have his reason. The queen could not be a witch.

  She clenched the fabric of her skirt in rage. The banning of magic had been a master stroke of his, without a doubt. She had sat beside him, mute and powerless, while he persuaded the council that the use of magic, which had enslaved his own royal person, must be considered a grievous crime. They had agreed readily, their eyes gleaming and victorious in the glances they stole at her from beneath lowered lids. And she had been allowed to do nothing more than vent her fury at him in private, reminding him that it was magic that had saved his royal life, her magic, and that she was the only one who would suffer from their law.

  Which, of course, was the reason for the law.

  Not that Alonso admitted the truth. He had been sympathetic, of course, but determined. “You have no need for your magic here,” he had told her. “Here you need to concern yourself only with matters befitting a royal wife.”

  She had been silenced then, as she had been so many times before. Alonso meant to take every last shred of power she had, meant to leave her a hollow husk that he could blow away with the breath of a single word. She had been a fool to think that she could control him.

  Now he was coming here. She was not surprised. His man must have reported to him, and he had come to satisfy his curiosity, to determine the truth himself. She allowed herself one whispered curse, then sat on her favorite chair. There she leaned back as though she were too weak to support herself. She slowed her breathing and willed herself to look pale.

  He was here, beside her, without even knocking. She startled, only some of it feigned.

  “I heard you were poorly,” he said, his eyes capturing hers.

  She pretended confusion. “I am well,” she replied, falteringly.

  “Hmmph.” He was not convinced; she saw that clearly. “I had you followed,” he said.

  So, it was to be open combat, then. She relished this.

  The blood rose in her cheeks. “You did what?” she said.

  He waved a hand at her. “You acted your part very well. My man is convinced that you are nothing more than a woman distraught and alone.”

  “And so I am,” she pointed
out.

  Alonso flapped a hand at her again. “You’re as alone as a shark in the sea,” he said, “and about as dangerous.”

  “Dangerous!” she snorted derisively. “How am I dangerous? I have no allies here to defend me, I cannot even speak in public, and now I am forbidden to practice my craft, even privately!”

  “Craft! I have seen what your ‘craft’ is, and what it can do. And don’t make claims upon my obligation again,” he said, lifting his hand as she opened her mouth to protest. “You have sung that song enough. It was your magic that snared me in the first place.”

  “Snared you! Poor fellow, what aid could you call upon – other than your army of three thousand men, that is.” She turned from him and walked to the window, gripping the sill with both hands, her breathing ragged. He had guessed the truth.

  But he paused his attack. She had scored a hit herself, and he had enough grace not to force the point. But that grace only extended so far. He would have his way.

  “We must resolve this,” he said at last. “I offer you a small estate in Carthage. It has belonged to my family for over a hundred years. It’s yours, where you may live out your life in dignity and in the manner you choose. You must only promise me that you will not practice your art against my interests. What do you say to this?”

  Banished. To some forgotten place in barren Carthage, the mausoleum of the world. It was fitting, perhaps; a once great city for a once great queen. She gripped the sill of the window even harder, till her fingers were white and the knuckles stood out like jagged stones. Was this the best that her power could do?

  “And you?” she asked.

  “Me?” His voice was neutral, guarded. He knew what she meant.