The Star Witch

by Linda Winstead Jones

  When Sebestyen had married Ghita, they’d both been little more than children. His first empress had fared very well, considering how long she’d lived in this cave-like home. “I do not wish to speak of food other than fungus until I can actually smell and taste it.” She had managed to maintain an air of dignity the others did not possess—and perhaps never had.

  “I want a bath,” Avryl said longingly. “And I want tea, with sugar and cream.” She sighed and rested her chin in delicate hands. Avryl was the only one of the empresses who was not fair-haired. Her hair was as dark as Isadora’s, and she behaved very much like a spoiled child. It was hard to imagine maintaining that pampered manner in this place. Somehow, Avryl had managed to do just that. Still, there was a surprising strength to her, otherwise, she would not have survived.

  Bannan, the Level Three Master, dropped to his haunches beside Ghita. “You females speak of all the things you want when we get out of here. Does not one of you wish to kill the emperor before we leave the palace?”

  “Of course we do,” Avryl answered. “But killing is man’s work.”

  “Not necessarily,” Isadora said beneath her breath. Still, they all heard her. Perhaps some of them even agreed with her.

  While she sat there, an unexpected and tantalizing aroma teased her nose. It was not the mushroom soup Thayne prepared daily to keep the prisoners alive. This was sweeter. She closed her eyes. It was very sweet, very tempting, and she wanted it. Even though the room was cool, a sweat broke out on her forehead, and she felt perspiration gathering and growing on her chest and her thighs. Yes, she was suddenly hot.

  A gnawing began in the pit of her stomach, and moving very slowly she rose to her feet and turned away from the group. By the moon and the stars, she was hungry in a way she had not imagined she could be. She was drawn away from the others, pulled toward the hallway that Thayne had led her through yesterday.

  Had it been just yesterday?

  “Isadora. Isadora!” Rikka tapped her on the shoulder, then took her arm. “Where are you going?”

  “Can’t you smell that? I want some of whatever that is.” Bannan and Laren hurried her way, and she instinctively moved away from them. The former soldier and the Master wished to stop her, they wished to take away from her whatever was sending her the scent that she needed and keep it for themselves.

  “It’s Panwyr you smell,” Rikka said. “The sentinels have just thrown several doses of the drug, as well as some food, into the area where they threw you not so long ago. You not only smell it, you feel it, don’t you? It’s in your blood, still. I know too well what you’re thinking right now.” She sighed. “You must be strong. If you put Panwyr into your body again, it will only be harder to fight off the addiction. It might even be impossible.”

  Isadora let Laren take her arm and turn her away from the stone corridor. A faint noise reached her ears, and she had to strain to hear. A shout, a scream...laughter.

  “They kill one another in order to get their hands on a tiny portion of the drug they need,” Rikka said in a soft voice. “Thayne told me the first few times the sensations the drug generate are wonderful, but soon those feelings begin to fade, and an addict needs the drug simply to function. One dose can be addictive, or even fatal.”

  “And once the Panwyr has you, there is no escape,” Laren said in a husky voice. “Have you seen the Isen Demon?”

  Isadora flinched and took her arm from Laren’s. “Demon?”

  “Not a proper demon,” Rikka explained. “Trapped souls linked together, huddling in dark comers and craving what they will never have: Panwyr.”

  “The bits of shadow I saw shifting in the corners?” Not here, where there was life and light, but in the cell-like room where she had recovered.

  “Yes,” Rikka said softly.

  “You were all given the drug before you were thrown down here?”

  “We were,” Bannan said. “Thanks to the wizard and his magic, we all survived. There have been a few who were thrown down here without the Panwyr, but not many.” Isadora turned to Thayne, who looked to be totally engrossed in his preparation of the mushroom soup. “The girls Nelyk threw down here, Ryona, and the others like her, they were not drugged.”

  “You know of Ryona,” he said in a lowered voice.

  “Yes.”

  “She and the baby are well?” He tried to sound disinterested, but she could tell he was not.

  “Empress Liane sent them home. When they left here, they were both doing very well.”

  “Good. She was the only one I could save. The others...” Thayne shrugged thin shoulders. “Surviving Level Thirteen is difficult enough without throwing childbirth into the mix.”

  Isadora was unable to imagine what their time down here had been like. Ryona was very lucky to have survived. “The man who did this, Nelyk...he’s out there.” She nodded toward the corridor.

  “I know,” Thayne replied.

  Isadora kept her focus on the corridor entrance. It was impossible to see around the corner. What if the rat-like men were there, just waiting to attack? The scent of the drug still called to her, and she wanted it. One more taste; just a small one.

  But she did not rise and make her way toward the corridor. The worst of the addiction had passed while she’d slept under Thayne’s care. She could fight the battle from here on out. She had suffered before. This new suffering was minimal in comparison.

  Besides, she was accustomed to not getting what she wanted, what she craved. Like Will, or peace, or her sisters, or true happiness. Even Lucan had never truly been hers.

  “Why do they not attack?” she asked, anxious to turn her mind from all she did not have.

  “This area of Level Thirteen is sealed,” Thayne said matter-of-factly.

  “Sealed? How?”

  “By me,” he said. “By magic. None that I do not allow can pass beyond a certain point.”

  “Those men out there live in the dark, with only the food the guards throw to them, while you have light and tasteless but nourishing soup. Are you not compelled to help them all?”

  Thayne walked to her, his step slow as if each move pained him. He leaned down and looked her in the eye. In a low but strong voice he said, “My gift is protection, but not everyone deserves my care. If I allowed those prisoners here, how long do you think the empresses would survive? How long before someone like Nelyk killed the men who are here not for a crime but for an insult?” His expression softened. “Your gift is protection also, but you have not yet learned that not all beings deserve your favor.”

  Isadora’s heart leaped. “How do you know—”

  “I know many things,” he interrupted. “Destruction is easier than protection, as you well understand. Destruction does not require care and consideration and time and heart. It is easier to strike out in blind anger than it is to shield those who need our care.” A gentle hand caressed her cheek. “Not everyone deserves to benefit from your gift, Isadora. You are not beholden to the entire of Columbyana, only to those you love.”

  “And if I don’t love anyone?” she snapped.

  Thayne smiled. “Your heart is filled with love; you just choose to share that love sparingly, for now.”

  “For always,” she responded.

  “That is yet to be seen.”

  She had never met anyone who understood her dilemma, but Thayne seemed familiar with the ways of both aspects of Isadora’s gifts. “How do I put destruction aside, once and for all?”

  He started slightly, and his old fingers trembled. “You should never abandon any of your powers, Isadora. Destruction is frightening, and often misused, but when you are sworn to protect, it is also inevitable.”

  “I was told I would need to choose,” she argued.

  Thayne smiled. How had the old man managed to keep so many teeth in this place? “You chose long ago, dear, and you chose well.” His smile did not last. “In the practice of protection there is always a time for destruction. For us, that time is coming.
Soon.”

  The sentinels on Level Four were so accustomed to seeing Lucan outfitted for his daily exercises in the courtyard, they paid him little mind as he took the stairway downward. If he had been going up they would have interfered, as he was well-armed. But as he was headed down, away from the emperor, they did not try to stop him. They barely gave Franco a glance, and some smiled at the very idea of the valet serving as sparring partner on this day. They did not know that Franco was a well-trained warrior who could best any three of them.

  They reached Level Ten, the ground level where the entrance to the courtyard awaited, and continued downward. Level Eleven was so noisy Lucan’s ears were pained. This was the place where the lift and the unnatural lighting devices were powered, Isadora had explained. He did not stop to examine the contraption that made so much noise. Another day, perhaps.

  At Level Twelve, the final Level, he encountered a heavy wooden door. It was not even locked, so he opened it and walked boldly into the austere, cold hallway of the emperor’s prison.

  Three sentinels lifted their heads as he entered. Their faces were familiar. He had seen them about the palace in his time here, which meant they had seen him and would not be alarmed.

  “Captain,” one guard said as he took a step forward. “I believe you must be lost...”

  “I am not lost.” Lucan drew his long sword, and behind him Franco did the same. “The empress’ cousin, Isadora. Where is she?”

  All three sentinels drew their weapons; short-bladed swords they handled like men who had used them before.

  “Is she in one of these rooms?” The cells would be cool and dark, he imagined, as he had seen in his vision.

  “Sir,” the sentinel in the lead said as he assumed a fighting stance, “I will only warn you once—”

  “I need no warning from the likes of you.”

  The skirmish that ensued was quick. The clang of blades meeting in air rang loudly in the small stone corridor, but three sentinels were no match for two Circle warriors. The fight that followed the initial meeting of steel did not take more than the span of a few heartbeats. A slash, a turn, a sidestep, and a thrust, and all three sentinels were unarmed and lying on the floor. Two were dead; one was severely wounded.

  Lucan knelt beside the wounded man and drew his dagger. He held the tip against the man’s throat. “The empress’ cousin, Isadora, where is she?”

  The sentinel shook his head, and Lucan pressed the tip of his blade into a quivering throat.

  “Wait!” the man shouted hoarsely. “Don’t kill me. I know who you’re looking for. One of the other sentinels talked of it, days ago. The emperor himself brought her here.”

  “Where is she?” Lucan asked with strained patience. The sentinel reached behind him and laid one hand on the wooden hatch that was set in the floor. “It’s too late,” he said. “She’s been down there for many days, and no one survives in that place for very long.”

  “What’s down there?”

  “Level Thirteen. It’s just a hole in the ground beneath the palace. A pit.”

  “The emperor put his wife’s cousin into a pit! Why?”

  “Isadora Fyne is not the empress’ cousin,” the sentinel said, a new fear in his eyes.

  “Then who is she?”

  “She is the empress’ witch.”

  Lucan was tempted to drive the blade into the man’s throat and be done with it, but he could see that the truth had just been spoken. This man truly believed that Isadora was a witch. Perhaps that’s what the emperor had told his men in order to justify imprisoning her.

  In the back of his mind a voice whispered, Beware the witch.

  Lucan stood and nodded to the wounded sentinel. “Watch him,” he ordered. “I’ll be right back.”

  “You’re not going after her,” Franco said, surprised. “You heard what he said.”

  “I am going after her. Isadora is alive, and I won’t leave her down there.” Witch or not, she did not deserve to be left behind.

  “We could kill him, and then I could come with you,” Franco said. The man on the floor shuddered, in preparation for death. “You can’t go down there alone, Captain.”

  “No, we might yet need him.” Together he and Franco lifted the hatch in the floor. The odors and the noises turned his usually staunch stomach. The pit in the ground, Emperor Sebestyen’s Level Thirteen, was a hellish place. Men were down there. Filthy, bone-thin, desperate men who spoke and screamed and flitted in and out of the dim light that spilled below.

  “Don’t,” the sentinel rasped. “Lots of men go down there, but none ever come back up again.”

  “I will,” Lucan promised, and then, with a short blade in each hand, he dropped into the hole.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The bowls that were shared by all the residents of the wizard’s secured section of Level Thirteen were made of stone. Most were marked with a natural well that would hold a serving of tasteless mushroom soup, while others looked as if they had been purposely shaped with a tool of some sort. Another stone, perhaps. The spoons were fashioned from metal that had once adorned a soldier’s uniform or a woman’s fancy girdle.

  Nothing went to waste in this place.

  Isadora had been relieved to learn—through long conversations with the empresses—that a wizard’s spell had helped Ghita and Avryl sleep through much of their time here. She could not imagine living in a sunless cave for so many years and surviving with mind and body intact. Rikka had refused his offers of a magical sleep, but if she was here for years instead of months, would she eventually relent? Would anyone? Since Isadora’s coming they had all been awake more than asleep, as they waited. She wasn’t sure exactly what they were waiting for, but now and then they looked at her with an expectation she did not understand.

  With no illumination but the wizard’s light, Isadora was unable to tell whether it was night or day aboveground. Not that it mattered. The days moved in a regular enough symmetry, the only event providing any sort of regularity the delivery of food and Panwyr to the prisoners who lived in the darkest section of Level Thirteen.

  Isadora had no sympathy for murderers and traitors, and she certainly had none for Nelyk. But to live in that filth and darkness for such a long time...it was unnaturally cruel.

  Today’s delivery had already been made, so when the prisoners once again began to howl, everyone turned their heads toward the stone corridor that led to the center of the pit. Then all eyes turned to Thayne. The wizard’s eyes went dark, and his purple light increased, then dimmed.

  “It is time,” he said in a lowered voice.

  When he headed for the corridor, everyone followed. Isadora jumped from the dirt floor and followed Rikka. “Time for what?” she whispered as the walls closed in around her. In many parts of the corridor, there was only room for one person at a time to pass, so she had to lean forward to ask her question.

  “Thayne said that after you came, the one who would rescue us would follow.”

  “Rescue.”

  “A true warrior, he said,” Rikka whispered. “A champion surrounded by blades and truth and nobility.”

  Isadora’s heart leaped. Lucan. “Why didn’t someone tell me?” Her time might have been easier, if she had known with certainty that Lucan would come for her.

  “Thayne didn’t know when the rescue would come. Days, weeks, months. He did not want to raise your hopes, not while the Panwyr was still at work in your system and you were not entirely yourself.”

  When the corridor widened, she slipped past Rikka and Ghita, and then past two of the more quiet male prisoners who had been here so long their skin was chalky and their clothes were all but falling off their thin bodies. Soon she was right behind Thayne. From her position close behind the wizard she could hear the prisoners screaming.

  “I know who that is,” she said softly.

  Thayne did not turn around to look at her. “Of course you do, dear.”

  Lucan held his swords ready, but no one appr
oached. The area where he stood was lit from above, since the hatch in the floor had been left open, and Franco held a torch close to the opening. Beyond the circle of illumination all was dark.

  Dark, but not silent. The screams and the rustlings from the darkness were more terrifying than any battle, more bone-chilling than any opponent he had ever faced. He had seen a few of the prisoners when he’d first dropped into the pit. They were thin and stooped and filthy, and the one pair of eyes that had caught his, before running away, had been undeniably crazed.

  The stench was almost overpowering. Rot and unwashed bodies and dampness combined to create an odor that turned his stomach. And Isadora had been down here for well more than a week? He could not imagine a woman like her enduring in this place. He could not imagine anyone surviving here for any length of time.

  “Isadora,” Lucan called in a strong voice. He did not feel her here as he should, and he did not see the wizard’s light he had found in his meditation. He had no idea how deep the darkness went, or if there was another entrance to this hellish place. She could be anywhere.

  He should be able to call upon his gift to find her, but he needed a calmness of mind to reach that part of himself, and at the moment his mind knew no calm. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he added. “I am here for Isadora.”

  “Pretty girl,” a voice whispered from the darkness.

  “Pretty witch,” another voice called.

  Again, someone accused Isadora of witchcraft. Perhaps the prisoners had heard the sentinels above, or the emperor himself, use that as an excuse for throwing her into this place.

  “Tell me where she is, and I’ll get you all out of here.” The screaming turned into mutterings, and eventually a few of the prisoners stepped forward. They all pointed in the same direction, into the deepest black shadows beyond the darkness that was Level Thirteen.

  His eyes had adjusted somewhat, but he could still see nothing beyond the darkness. Lucan sheathed one sword and glanced up. “Franco, toss me a torch.”