She pressed the bandaged stump of her left hand against her stomach. After her rather ingenious move to rid herself of Willoughby and close the portal with the same blow, we’d inspected the prophecy tapestry once more. It displayed a white hand reaching toward the sky; the meaning of that hand was no longer lost on us. She is two, the girl and the woman, and one must destroy the other, the prophecy had read. Maria, the girl, had vanquished that woman, it was true. But the girl Maria had been was now gone as well. We were all of us struggling to find our feet in this new world. Maria smiled wanly. “I’ll write. Spelling won’t be much, but I’ll do it all the same.”
“Well, then. Farewell, Templeton.”
Maria grinned; she’d always liked how we sorcerers used one another’s surnames. “Farewell, Howel,” she replied.
I hugged her, resting my chin atop her head. She was so bloody short, it made me laugh even as I cried. Fiona embraced me as well.
“Take care of that one, if you can,” I said in her ear.
“That’s an impossible task, but I mean to try.” She winked. They turned and boarded the ship. I hurried back to Magnus, who was waiting with the carriage. The bandages had come off his face by now, and a line of stitches went from the edge of his jaw to his hairline. He claimed the scar would make him look even more dashing.
He said nothing, but the way he carefully helped me back inside the carriage showed he understood how much this hurt. As we drove away from the dock, I forced myself not to look back. The only way to survive in life was to move forward. That was what I told myself, at any rate.
“Did I tell you Her Majesty gave me a position?” Magnus asked.
“Lord, she’s not made you head of the sorcerers, has she?”
“Thankfully that’s fallen to Dee. Poor fellow was speechless.” He took off his hat, studying the brim. “The queen wants me in her royal magical guard, spreading the news of our consortium. I’m to make a Grand Tour of the Continent, from Spain to Poland, probably with a semipermanent post in Brussels.”
“That’s…wonderful.” I’d nearly said “far.”
“A very grand post, you know.” He said it as though he were convincing himself. There was nothing else either of us could do. My mourning garb would remain in place for at least a year. I’d hoped, perhaps, that he would stay in England and wait, but duty called.
I understood.
Though it still hurt.
“The coach will be awaiting us at Agrippa’s,” he said. “I’ll escort you down to Devon, if you like?”
I would have liked that more than anything. But I knew it would only delay the pain of parting for both of us. I didn’t want that. Besides, I wasn’t certain I would be able to say goodbye if he came with me.
“I believe I need to make the next stage of the journey alone,” I said. That was not a lie. What I wanted to do should be done privately. Magnus did not argue. I allowed myself to memorize him as we drove, the way he sat, the way one stray lock of hair always fell in his eyes. He’d begun to grow his hair out of its military cut, and it hurt to think I would not be there to see it in full curl again. Once we arrived at Agrippa’s, he kissed my gloved hand in farewell. What could I say to him? What would he say in return?
Tell him to come with you to Devon. The thought was there and gone. I was too afraid of my own feelings. Magnus sighed as he released my fingers.
“I’ll write, Howel.” He put his hat back on his head. “I know, I know. Lady Blackwood. But I can’t help it. You’ll always be Howel to me.” With that, he got back in the coach and drove away without another word. I watched until he’d passed out of sight.
The new carriage bound for Devon was waiting, along with the wagon and its peculiar cargo. I’d chosen to start the journey at Agrippa’s, because of one last call to pay.
Agrippa’s staff had been reduced considerably. There was now only a butler, who answered the door with a weary expression. He bowed to me and seemed grateful for the basket of food I presented. His master was resting today. No, he could not have visitors. I was not surprised.
Agrippa had survived the final battle and been returned to his old home. But he was an empty shell, an invalid. As I walked down the path to the gate, I stopped to look at the house’s front windows. I imagined I caught a glimpse of a wizened form seated there, watching the world without really seeing it.
This house would become a mausoleum to a vanished world, the world of sorcerer supremacy. Children might eventually run past the iron gates in mock fear of the ghostly man who lived inside.
I raised my hand once to my old Master and left him gazing onto a city that belonged to him only in dreams.
* * *
—
WHEN R’HLEM DIED, HIS BODY HAD not been given to me. The nation had paraded it down the highways of the country on our way to London. Some had spoken of hanging him by the neck from London Bridge, as in the old days of warning off barbarians. We had stopped in the fields where they were burning piles of Familiar corpses; after the Ancients had departed this world, their minions had fallen to the ground, lifeless. The men and women would cheer us and jeer R’hlem’s casket. They hurled rotten produce at it. They made vulgar gestures. They had earned the right.
The queen, who had hated R’hlem as much as any of her countrymen, allowed the abuse of his corpse as we traveled to London. She allowed the festivities, the burning him in effigy, and set up a place in town for a statue that would always celebrate how he had been vanquished. Indeed, I believe she even made a special order to have the pigeons relieve themselves on it doubly often.
But after the celebrations began to die down and the statue had been commissioned, Her Majesty had the body placed back in my care. It had been my sole request.
We took the long road to Devon. My morning sickness was making travel rather difficult, but I lay against the bumping carriage wall and closed my eyes. I wasn’t even certain if my aunt’s cottage would still be there. Perhaps, like much of the country, it had been burned to the ground. When we emerged onto the downs, however, I saw it again.
I’d forgotten how sweet it looked, a snug little whitewashed building with a thatched roof and red-painted shutters. Flowerbeds of yellow and blue nestled against the walls of the house. I’d been born in this little cottage. It had belonged to Aunt Agnes, willed to her by her late husband. My mother had left this place to do what she could for my father in London. She’d been tortured and killed by Charles Blackwood, by all the Order, really. At least with a consortium, that could not happen again. I’d avenged her in that.
My gut twisted to think of the cottage standing empty. After Aunt Agnes had helped me escape, I knew that R’hlem had killed her. I could only pray it had been quick.
The carriage halted when we came to the plot of land behind the cottage. My uncle was buried beside the chestnut tree. Aunt Agnes had buried my mother here as well, and as a child I’d sometimes played there. I’d laid wildflowers on the stone, and kissed it.
HELENA HOWEL
BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER
I had them dig a plot right beside my mother’s, and the men took the casket off the wagon and lowered it into the earth. Only the vicar seemed to have an inkling of what was going on. Wisely, he said nothing.
Soon there would be another headstone beside my mother’s. It would tell of William Howel, solicitor, beloved husband and father. Perhaps it was more, far more, than R’hlem deserved. But in the end, he had saved our kingdom, and he had loved my mother. For her sake, as well as his, I wanted them together.
I was surprised to hear footsteps coming up the path, and shocked when I discovered my aunt standing behind me, dressed in black mourning garb. Her long veil streamed in the breeze.
“How?” I squeaked. Impossible. She’d died. I’d seen her dragged away by the Familiars, and R’hlem would never forgive such betrayal a second t
ime.
She put a hand to my cheek: a hand that was no longer bandaged.
“He wanted to kill me.” Her eyes told of sadness and love. “But he could not.”
We both turned to the grave. R’hlem, my father, was gone. The men patted the grave flat with their shovels and walked back to the carriage.
“How are you, Nettie?” she asked. I had several responses. I’m well, I’m ill, I’ve a child on the way, I’m married, I’m widowed, I’m the regent of Sorrow-Fell and the north, I haven’t eaten since this morning.
But all that came out of my mouth were the words “I’m alone.”
And then the facade shattered, and I wept. My aunt took me in her arms and shushed me as she rocked me back and forth, much like I was a child again.
Aunt Agnes returned with me to Sorrow-Fell to help. The place was as bleak as I’d feared it would be. Much of the main house remained a smoldering wreck, now dampened by the snowfall. Only a handful of the surviving servants returned when I asked them. We resided in the Faerie part of the house, which seemed to breathe and whisper in the night when we were asleep. I lay on a cot, a thin blanket stretched over me, and listened to the drips from the leaking roof.
Sometimes it seemed I hadn’t come so far from Brimthorn after all.
Still, we made progress. Aunt Agnes, as it turns out, was a superlative manager of household economies. She got the servants into shape and sent out for men to come and estimate how to rebuild the house. But the land was barren. The forests had lost the sheen of magic. Perhaps the power might never return, and the pine and rich earth and willow leaves would be all that remained of a once-great power.
That would not be much of a legacy for me, or my child.
One day, not too long after we’d returned to Sorrow-Fell, my aunt called me to come and look at something. We found a new spring lamb, bleating and covered in cottony fluff, as it bounded up the path to our door. Someone had tied a ribbon about its neck, with a note attached. I took it up and read while my aunt fussed about what to do with the creature.
My dear Lady Blackwood,
This is to say that we are fine and well. After the battle of Sorrow-Fell, we went to the queen and resigned from the consortium. Clarence is too ill to continue serving, and I must remain by his side.
Our only desire is to find some quiet corner of the earth where we might live without magic.
I confess I wanted to move on without even telling you, though it would have pained me, but Clarence insisted. I find I must give in to his wishes. I cannot say no to love.
Please accept this gift as a token of our esteem and friendship. I doubt the pair of us will ever forget you. It is rare to meet a true lady in this life, much less a true sorcerer. We shall always remember.
With great love,
Isaac Wolff
I folded up the note and asked when the lamb had come. The butler, Cranford, replied that it had only just arrived. I walked around the corner of the house and drew up a scrying mirror, focusing upon the southern road that led out of Sorrow-Fell. Soon I glimpsed a carriage. Through the window, I caught sight of pale hair and a delicate face.
Wolff and Lambe could not see me, but I raised my hand in farewell nonetheless. I watched the carriage until it rounded a bend. Then I dissolved the mirror and went back inside.
* * *
—
THE SPRING GREW, BUT THE MAGIC did not. I would sometimes go to the stone circle and sit there, feeling the balmy air of summer on my face and listening for the quiet hum of the circle’s power. So far, I had heard nothing.
What would that mean, for all of us?
Still, the snow-sorrows were withering with the coming spring. I had to believe that melting sorrows were a promise of good things to come.
One day, a few weeks after our arrival, I was out walking in the woods when I heard the steady clop of hooves coming down the path. It was true spring; the grass had begun peeking through the frozen soil. The whole world smelled of new earth and budding promises. Ahead of me, two ladies in gray cloaks led a horse and wagon. Their skirts were well muddied, and they chatted amiably.
“Hello,” I called as they approached. The one nearer me lifted back her hood. It was Maria.
“I thought you were gone!” I gasped.
“We could not be away from the land,” Maria said. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she laughed.
“This one’s such a liar. We could not stomach the sea.” Fiona stroked the horse’s nose. “Though a witch’s spirit is indeed tethered to the earth. The things that live in Yorkshire bind us.”
Maria grinned cheekily. “Besides, I missed you.”
I hugged her about the neck. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed a friend. We walked together back to Sorrow-Fell, while I insisted the two of them stay awhile. Stay forever, if they could.
And then we stopped, because on the path ahead stood a white stag. The animal’s snowy fur glistened in the sunlight, and its shimmering black eyes watched us with caution. One soft ear flapped. Finally, it galloped back into the forest. Maria hummed to herself.
“That’s a lucky sign.”
“Aye.” Fiona looked after the stag. “It’s a call to the forest itself.”
As we continued to clear and plant, to clean and build, the world around us sprang into new life. It was more than just a place, Sorrow-Fell. It was the pin in the whole of English magic’s garment, the force that kept everything from falling apart.
More than my work as an upholder and enforcer of magical law, I was the guardian of English magic itself. Its blood was my blood, and its heart my heart. My fire was brighter than ever, without a whisper of shadow.
But I could not help the feeling that I was forgetting something important.
One morning, as dawn lit the sky, I walked out with my hair long and unbound, a shawl about me. I breathed in the dew, and felt the earth beneath my slippers quivering into new life. Sorrow-Fell was urging me on to something. But I had done what I could. I’d visited the stone circle. I’d carted away the rubble and made plans for the house. What else could I do?
I thought of that white stag. And I thought again of Queen Titania, standing before me in her regal robes of snow white. She had traced a letter—a rune—into the air, embedding it in my mind.
I knew what to do.
I knelt, Porridge in hand, and drew the rune that Titania had gifted me into the dirt. I wasn’t certain this was how it worked, if it would even work at all. But as I finished carving it—those wavy lines at the bottom of the M, the three dashes through the center—I felt the very air around me crackle to life. Glimmers of Fae magic appeared in the corners of my eye, gone before I could turn my head. Piping song from the reed flutes of forest nymphs floated to my ears on snatches of the spring wind.
In the distant woods, I knew that toadstools would sprout from the earth, and that fairy rings would form. Beyond, in the old druid lands, the circle would hum back to life with awful and wonderful power.
The ivy on my stave bound me to more than Blackwood: it bound me to Sorrow-Fell itself.
Magic returned to the world, and I knew that I had done my job. I was truly and finally home.
Maria walked over to me as the land revived. “Well.” She whistled. “What now?”
I turned to my friend.
“Now,” I said, “we begin again.”
On the first day of summer, I finally removed my mourning clothes. It had been well over a year—nearly fifteen months, to be exact. I’d found safety in the black satin and crepe that I dressed in every day. Those clothes had been my armor against the world, an unspoken excuse to keep to myself. Still, my maid Dawkins had insisted that I finally remove the “drab items,” as she called them. Since children were coming over for a picnic, it would not do to look like a frightful old woman. Besides, su
mmer was too hot to be always in black.
“You are far too young, m’lady, to be shuttered away,” the maid clucked before laying out a new periwinkle gown. She’d taken particular care to choose the color. I’d insisted on finding a maid with a quick tongue and a solid head, and Dawkins suited me fine in that regard.
She helped me step into my gown and began the work of pinning and buttoning me into the yards of taffeta silk. Already, the girl I faced in the mirror looked years younger than she had before. Dawkins sniffed and gave a discreet tug of my bodice to get it into place. “Much better, if I may say so.”
“You may,” I said with a grin. Sitting at my vanity, I let Dawkins attend to my hair as my secretary entered. People had questioned why a lady should need a secretary, conveniently forgetting that I’d matters to attend to besides parties and salons. Laurence was the younger son of an old, if minor, sorcerer family, and he was a quick study. With a short bow, he began to read off a list.
“I’m afraid we’ve only two hours for the picnic.” He sounded like he regretted this whole affair. Indeed, he’d tried to convince me that I had too many items on my itinerary to attend to children. However, I’d insisted. “Afterward, the minister of York wants to speak with you regarding the magician situation. Apparently there are protestors against the consortium.”
“I’ll be glad to remind the minister that the people are allowed to criticize.” I clasped a bracelet around my wrist. Dawkins gave a meaningful sniff. She didn’t approve of people “rising up,” as she called it, but any healthy society needed to hear multiple voices.
“Indeed.” Laurence sighed and returned to the schedule. “Followed by tea with the head of the Order…beg pardon, the sorcery branch.” His lips pursed. He was one of the people who missed the old ways.
At least Dee and Lilly would be here today. That brightened everything.
“Anything else?” I asked as Dawkins hooked my necklace in place.
A Sorrow Fierce and Falling (Kingdom on Fire, Book Three) Page 29
