‘I’m walking, just like you,’ she said. He looked up sharply and stared at her, amused.
‘And you’re from…over there?’ he asked, pointing to the space behind her. Iris nodded, thinking desperately of Mortenstone Castle in the vain hope that she could transport herself back there. But all the power in the world was useless in the Dark Forest. Even her father wouldn’t have been able to. The boy smiled. ‘What’s it like? A lot better than where I’m from, I imagine.’
Iris shrugged.
The boy smiled again and began to advance. Iris’s breath caught in her throat as he came right up to her, close enough to touch.
‘I’m Alexander,’ he said.
She looked into his eyes and the Song of the Realm drifted ominously to the front of her mind.
… Mordark eyes of emerald green
The eyes of cunning, traitorous fiends…
‘Alexander Mordark,’ she said, a heavy feeling settling over her.
‘You’ve heard of me?’ he said. ‘Who are you?’
Iris hesitated before she answered. ‘Geraldine… Swampton.’
The boy could not contain his laughter. ‘Swampton!’ he exclaimed.
‘It’s rude to laugh at a person’s name,’ she said sternly, though her hands were shaking.
Alexander’s laugh died on his lips. He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Surely you were warned about the Dark Forest? The Mortenstones love to tell the story,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘But you came anyway?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ he said, eyes narrowing as he scrutinised her. ‘You don’t look the adventurous sort.’ He laughed again. ‘Don’t look so upset. Fine, I believe you. You’re a thrill-seeker. You love danger!’ he said. He was mocking her.
‘I came here to look for someone, actually.’
‘Oh?’ he said, serious now. ‘Who?’
Iris bit her tongue, wishing she hadn’t said anything.
‘My…father. But he must have returned home. So, I must go—’
‘Wait!’ he said, clutching her arm. She stiffened. ‘I think I saw him pass by. He went that way,’ he said, pointing eastwards, deeper into the forest. ‘I’ll look with you.’
Iris could not steady her nerves. She felt her legs trembling. It was a trap. The Mordarks hunted in the Dark Forest. And, as Alexander watched her with those wild green eyes, she knew she was his prey. She had no choice but to accept his offer, nodding politely with a tight smile that betrayed no hint of fear.
As they walked out of the clearing, darkness enveloped them once more. A chill crept through the air, raising the hairs on her skin. Alexander walked beside her and bashed the trees with a stick he had picked up.
‘Do the Mortenstones live in your town?’ he asked. Iris nodded, avoiding his eye. ‘What do you think of them?’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell them. We aren’t close.’
An idea came to her then. If she could keep him on side, he might let her go. If she told him everything he wanted to hear, that made them allies of some kind.
‘They’re cruel. They treat us terribly. I…hate them.’
Alexander’s lips turned up at the corners. He seemed pleased with her, like she was a pup that had remembered a trick.
‘You’re not loyal,’ he said, smiling to himself.
‘You don’t know what they’re like.’
He stepped out in front of her and blocked her path. ‘I know what they’re like,’ he said, his eyes flashing.
Iris held his gaze, feeling that to look away would reveal her identity. When he turned around and continued, she exhaled heavily with relief.
‘You’re quite brave. For a girl,’ he said as he picked his way over a lattice of unearthed tree roots.
‘For a girl?’ Iris said, giving the roots a wide berth. She could see he was smiling. ‘Clearly you don’t have sisters.’
‘No, thankfully!’ he said. Iris nudged him. ‘Oh my! A smile at last!’ he said, opening his arms and throwing back his head.
Their pace slowed. Iris stole a glance at him and quickly looked away when she caught his eye.
‘What is your family like?’ she asked. Alexander seemed surprised by the question.
‘You mean you don’t believe the horror stories?’ he said. ‘I have two brothers, Vrax and Tobias, both less charming and handsome, of course.’
‘And do you get on with them?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Don’t you get on with yours?’
Iris shook her head and looked at the ground, thinking of Lucian.
‘Why not?’
She paused for a moment, then said, ‘Too adventurous for their liking.’
Alexander began to laugh and Iris found herself laughing, rather bashfully, as well. But their laughter came to an abrupt stop as a tortured scream punctured the air, lifting silent birds from their nests.
Alexander’s head snapped up and his hand darted to the dagger in his belt. Iris could hear the blood pulsing in her ears. She opened her mouth to speak but he silenced her, drawing a finger to his lips. He walked towards the sound quietly and beckoned her before standing deathly still again. She followed, too frightened to turn and run. Alexander’s brow furrowed in concentration. Then, he placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘This way,’ he said, tilting his head towards a path thick with brambles.
Iris planted her feet. ‘No, I need to go back!’ she hissed.
‘Come on!’ He took the path, moving swiftly through the thicket and out of sight.
Iris looked around warily. She could have run, but instead she went after Alexander.
He was far ahead of her, whipping past low branches that protruded from tree trunks like hands, trying to clutch at him. When he reached a small clearing, he stopped. Iris pursued with haste, but as she saw him kneel over a mound on the ground, she slowed, afraid of what she would find. The closer she came, the surer she grew. And, stepping reluctantly into the clearing at last, she looked down. Gerald Swampton’s body lay on the damp, blood-soaked earth, a knife jutting out of his left eye socket. His right eye was wide open and terror-stricken.
Alexander looked up at her. ‘Is this…?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s not my father.’
Alexander stood and put his hands on his hips. He looked down at the corpse as if it was as dull and ordinary as a stone.
‘Who did this?’ Iris said faintly.
‘Vrax,’ he said, gesturing the dagger. ‘He leaves his mark.’ He bit down on his lower lip, looking amused.
‘This isn’t funny!’ Iris said, shoving him in the chest.
‘I’m not laughing!’
‘A man has been killed – murdered – by your brother!’
‘He’s nobody. What does it matter?’
Iris’s eyes stung with hot tears. ‘He’s a person, just like us.’ She squeezed her eyes shut and wiped the tears that rushed down her cheeks.
Alexander looked disgusted. ‘Mordarks are not like you, or him,’ he said, raising his chin. ‘You are Low Lives.’
‘That doesn’t make it right. His children won’t have a father. You’re evil, you and your family!’
‘I didn’t kill him!’
‘You might as well have. You wanted to laugh, I saw you!’
Alexander rolled his eyes and swiped a hand through the air as if batting away a fly.
‘Am I dismissed?’ she said coldly. He didn’t answer and he didn’t look at her either. She knelt beside the body and quickly muttered a prayer. ‘I ask you, White Witch, I beg you, to bless this man’s passing and protect his soul. Please watch over his family. Don’t let them starve.’ She whispered the last words. Then, she got up and left the clearing.
She had a restless feeling in her stomach. She worried that he might pursue her but, as she created greater distance between them, the worry subsided.
Alexander remained in the clearing, pacing up and down for some time. Then, with a deep sigh, he
knelt down beside the body, pulled out the knife, closed Gerald’s good eye, and left.
Iris arrived back at the castle before nightfall, just in time for her evening lesson with Master Hagworth. Eve was already at her desk, Lucian had pardoned himself and Thomas had not yet returned with their father. She patted her hair down in place and sat beside Eve. When Master Hagworth materialised, he announced that the lesson would be, rather fittingly, about the Failed Rebellion. He asked Eve to list all the families who followed the Serpentine Wizard into battle, and grew aggravated when she could not.
‘You are twelve years old, Eve! You should know this by now! Were you not paying attention to yesterday’s performance?’
Eve began to stammer and splutter.
‘Master Hagworth?’ Iris interjected. ‘The Failed Rebellion was almost a thousand years ago. Why are Mordarks and Mortenstones still enemies?’
Master Hagworth dropped his quill and threw his hands into the air in exasperation.
‘Oh! If you even have to ask, I’ve clearly been a poor schoolmaster. I may as well give it all up now.’ He sat down heavily in his chair. ‘Iris, we are not unique. We pass our characteristics, our likeness, our history, our thoughts, to our kin. Do you understand?’
‘So the Serpentine Wizard’s kin are all like him? All evil?’
‘Yes. All. It is in their nature.’
5. AGATHA
Iris watched as her father entered the courtyard and dismounted his horse. His lips were pressed into a hard line. He looked furious. Thomas and Saskian rode in close behind him, just as Lucian breezed into the yard from the castle, surrounded by servants. Iris felt a rush of excitement.
‘Father!’ Lucian said, opening his arms. ‘Welcome home.’ He clicked to one of the servants, who was holding a silver pitcher. ‘Wine.’ The servant poured the wine into a chalice and handed it to Lucian, who offered the cup to his father. Matthew slapped it from Lucian’s hand. It fell to the ground with a clang and its contents splashed onto the stone and spread along the cracks like blood. Then Matthew struck Lucian hard across the face with the back of his hand.
The courtyard fell still.
‘See me inside,’ Matthew said calmly, striding away into the castle. The servants deserted Lucian and followed him.
Lucian looked around bemusedly. When he saw Iris, he glared. But Iris went on smiling. Even from where she was standing, she could see the angry welt on his cheek appearing, the last of his pride crumbling.
As everything sprang to life around them again, Josephine emerged from a side door into the courtyard and went straight to Lucian. She fixed her eyes on his cheek for a moment and then walked back to the door through which she had entered. Lucian stared after her. The red blotch on his cheek was gone.
Iris smirked, knowing he would hear, and then turned towards the stables to visit her horse. But, suddenly, her mother appeared behind her and gripped her arm tightly, sinking her nails into her skin.
‘Did that amuse you? You are a malicious little whelp,’ she spat. Iris pulled away abruptly and ran back to the castle.
Lucian was absent at dinner that evening. Matthew had taken up his usual place at the head of the table and the Ring of Rulers was back on his finger where it belonged.
‘You look rather pleased with yourself,’ Josephine said, looking at Iris with contempt.
Iris was surprised by the remark. She had not smiled once or even spoken a word throughout the meal.
‘Something you care to share with us?’ said Josephine.
‘No,’ said Iris, spearing a piece of beef with her fork. Josephine made a sharp hissing sound. Iris’s cutlery was forced from her hands and sucked down to the table top. She looked up at her mother.
‘I will not tolerate insolence. And I will not see you taunt Lucian again,’ said Josephine.
Iris looked at her father in exasperation.
Matthew sighed. ‘Josephine…’ he said.
‘Did you hear me, Iris?’ said Josephine, ignoring him.
Iris stood up suddenly. Her chair screeched as it backed over the stone floor. ‘Why can’t you see it?’ she shouted. ‘Lucian’s a monster!’
‘Iris—’
‘He is!’ she cried at her father. ‘Everyone sees it but her! You’ve told us all our lives that we’re good, that it runs in our blood, but he’s just as savage as…as the Mordarks!’
In an instant, Josephine picked up a knife and launched it across the table at Iris. Matthew stood and flung his arm forwards. The knife froze in the air above the table.
‘Away with you! Now!’ he said to Iris, who left the room, startled and angry, as Eve began to cry.
Matthew turned to Josephine, his face pale with shock. ‘Do that again and you won’t have hands.’ He took the knife, threw it down to the floor and walked out of the room.
Josephine stood and looked at a servant before gesturing Eve with the flash of her eyes. ‘Shut her up,’ she said. Then she, too, departed.
Iris was confined to her bedroom for the next three days. Her siblings were not permitted to visit, her mother chose not to, and her father came in the evenings to bid her good night. And, each evening, when she refused to apologise, she earned herself another day’s imprisonment. She spent most of the time lying on her bed, staring up at the white canopy, or sitting by the window and gazing across the Grassland at the Dark Forest. She thought about Alexander most of all. He was nothing like she had imagined. Master Hagworth had taught them much about the Dark Lands, where the Mordarks lived, and, when he was feeling particularly animated, he would tell tales of their monstrous, deformed faces and their translucent skin, through which a web of bold blue veins pulsed with black blood. The tales had held the four of them captivated in the schoolroom, though now she was sure she hadn’t truly believed them all. But still it had shocked her to find that Alexander Mordark looked so very human. He was almost pleasing to the eye. But there was ugliness there, too; corruption, setting in. She remembered the way he had stared at Gerald Swampton’s body. It was a fleeting moment, but one she had not missed. There was a look in his eyes, one Master Hagworth had spoken of in many of his lessons; he called it The Mordark Lust. They enjoyed death and pain. They craved it. She could hardly believe he had let her go.
But Gerald Swampton and his punctured eye did not leave her. She awoke in a cold sweat each night, her ears ringing with his scream, as moonlight streamed through the window and illuminated the same patch on the flagstones. He was still out there, dead on the ground, rotting, while she was tucked up safe in a feather bed. She thought about telling Thomas, when she was free to see him again, but, upon greater reflection, decided it would be better not to breathe a word. Perhaps he would sleep easier believing there was a chance Gerald had made it to safety in the Land of the Banished.
There were moments when she considered apologising, usually at mealtimes. She wasn’t sorry, but her loss of privileges was taking its toll on her empty stomach, for she was forced to make her own food. Clueless about the ingredients necessary to make up any of the dishes that came into her head, often bowls of slop materialised on the table instead of the hearty stews and broths she had tried to conjure. By the third day, she summoned cheese and bread for lunch as well as supper, not caring, as she tore the crust off the warm loaf, that the cooks down in the kitchens had probably baked it fresh for the following morning and would now have to bake it again. But, every time her stomach growled or she thought of the cakes and custards and jams she could be enjoying, she reminded herself that it would be better to live forever on bread and cheese than to bend to her mother’s will.
On the fourth morning, she awoke to a gentle knock at the door. As she sat up in bed, the door opened and her father and mother entered. Josephine looked dangerously happy. Matthew walked over to the Witchwood chair beside the fireplace; it had been a gift from Iris’s late uncle when she was a young girl, carved from a Silver Tree in the heart of Mortenstone Valley. Her childhood Companion used to read bedtime stori
es to her from the chair. She watched, now, as her father brushed his fingers over the wood, as if summoning courage from it. He took a long, deep breath and, when he blinked, his eyes stayed closed a moment too long. Iris’s stomach knotted with unease. She got out of bed and approached him. The stone floor was cold beneath her feet. She came to stand by the hearth in front of him, with the chair between them. Her mother was staring at him impatiently from the window.
‘Iris,’ he said, finally, his eyes fixed on the ground. ‘Every young woman comes to an age when they must marry. Gregory Vandemere of the Low Lands is the best match we could hope for. The Vandemeres are, and always have been, loyal supporters. They’re wealthy, they command vast forces… As you know, I visited the Low Lands recently and met with Eric Vandemere. And we came to an agreement. When you turn sixteen, you and Gregory will marry. Iris? Iris…’
Iris stood in a trance, too stunned to cry, or to speak. Of all the news her father could have brought her, this was the last thing she expected. Married, before Lucian? She was not ready. Matthew came around the chair and put his hand on her shoulder. It felt as heavy as a lump of stone and she sagged under the weight of it. He caught her and sat her in the chair. She looked up at him, but she didn’t recognise him. This man was not her father. He couldn’t be. Because her father would not betray her like this, her father would not send her off to market like a prized pig. She felt sick.
‘The family will visit Mortenstone Castle at the end of the month, so you and Gregory can get to know one another,’ Matthew said solemnly. Josephine came to stand beside him. Her lips grew tight and pinched as she suppressed a smile.
When they left, Iris slid off the chair onto the floor. After marriage, she would have to lie with her husband and bear his children. But what if she didn’t love him? What if he repulsed her? What if he was cruel? What if she died during childbirth? Without another thought, she got up, took her cloak and fled.
The White Witch (The Serpent and The Sorcerer Trilogy Book 1) Page 4
