The Witch Queen

by Jan Siegel

  The Gift. In Atlantis long ago the aura of the Lodestone had infected mortal men, endowing the earthly with unearthly powers. The Lodestone was broken and Atlantis sank beneath the waves, but the mutant gene had already spread throughout the world, and it was passed on, dominant, often dormant, warping all who abused it. They were called the Gifted, Prospero’s Children, the Crooked Ones, the Accursed. Lucas did not understand what had altered him, but he felt its influence growing, opening his vision on new dimensions, twisting his thought. But this was the way to restore his sister, the way to redemption. There was no other road.

  It was one in the morning before he left the nursing home, walking toward his Knightsbridge flat as if indifferent to the distance and the hour, until a taxi driver accosted him and insisted on taking him home.

  Fern was in her office about a week later when the call came in. She worked for a PR company in Wardour Street with a short list of stressed-out employees and a long list of lucrative and temperamental clients. She had recently risen to a directorship, partly because of her diplomatic skills with the aforementioned clientele. When she picked up the phone she was in a meeting to discuss the launch of Woof!, a new glossy magazine on celebrity pets, and it was a few minutes before she absorbed what the call was about. “Sorry? Say that again? You want me to . . . No, I don’t think we should have Coquette; she goes to absolutely everything these days, it’ll be news if we can keep her out . . . His sister? And who’s he? . . . Sushi’s always reliable, provided we get the best . . . Sorry?” By the end of a confused conversation, she found she had written down a name and number with only the haziest idea of why.

  It was several days before she got around to using them.

  “Hello? I’d like to speak to Lucas Walgrim. Fern Capel . . .”

  Presently a male voice said rather brusquely: “Miss Capel? I’m afraid I—”

  “I understood you wanted me to call you,” Fern said with frigid courtesy. “A clinic in Yorkshire where I spent a brief stay a couple of years ago got in touch with me. I was a coma patient there. They said you had a sister in a similar condition . . .”

  “Yes.” Even through the telephone, Fern detected the slowing of pace, the shift in focus. “I’m so glad you called. I may be clutching at straws, but Dana collapsed under circumstances that I’m told parallel yours—”

  “Really? Who told you?”

  “A doctor was indiscreet. He didn’t name you, but I pressed him to put you in contact with me. I hope you don’t object?”

  “N-no.” Fern wasn’t sure. “It’s just—I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you. I lost consciousness, I was out for about a week, then I recovered. It didn’t teach me anything about diagnosis.”

  “There’s nothing to diagnose. She just lies there, hardly breathing. Her heartbeat’s slowed to hibernation rate. She’s been like that for months. Since New Year’s Eve.” A pause. “I wanted to talk to someone who’s been there, who knows. Perhaps I could buy you lunch?”

  His determination was a tangible thing, reaching out, compelling her.

  “I’m awfully busy right now . . .”

  “What about a drink?”

  Fern hesitated, then gave in. “All right. But I really don’t see how I can help you.”

  “Tomorrow? After work?”

  They agreed on a place and time, and Fern hung up, preparing to put the matter out of her mind. But it nagged at her, though she did not know why, and she lay awake far into the night, picturing the unknown girl lying as she had lain, death white, death still, wired up to the mechanics of life support, heart monitor, drip, catheter, for month after month after month . . .

  III

  The hardest thing was being back inside Time. I had spent so long in a dimension where no time passed, where the illusory seasons revolved endlessly in the same circle, never progressing, never changing, where day and darkness were mere variations in the light. I had spent so long—but “long” was a word that did not apply there, for in the realm of the Tree there is no duration. A millennium or a millionth of a second, it is all one. The Tree has grown and grown until it can grow no further, and it is held in stasis, bearing its seedless fruit, bending the space around it as a black hole bends the stuff of the universe. (I know about these things, you see. I have watched them in the spellfire, the witches and wizards of science poking at the stars.) I glutted myself on the power of the Tree and was reborn from the power of the river, after she burned me in the pale fire of sorcery. And then I could not go back. I called the birds to me: the blue-banded magpies, the heavy-beaked ravens, the woodpeckers and tree creepers. I sent them across the worlds to the cave beneath the roots where I and my coven sister had dwelt, to bring me my herbs and powders, my potions and crystals. I bound tiny waterskins about the necks of the woodpeckers, and taught them to tap the bark until it bled sap, and return to me when the vessel was full. The sap of the Tree has a potency I alone have ever learned: from it I can make a draft that will drain individual thought, leaving the intoxicated mind to think whatever I desire. Last, I summoned the great owl, wisest of birds, and told him to find for me the single branch hidden in the cave, wrapped in silk, the branch I had plucked long before with many rituals, and to bear it carefully back. I planted it in my island retreat, fearing it might not root, but the magic was strong in it, and it grew.

  I chose the island because of my coven sister Sysselore, who lived there once. In those days she was Syrcé the enchantress, young and beautiful, and lost sailors came to her with their lean brown bodies, and she turned them into pigs, and grew thin on a diet of lean pork. I hoped the island would be a place of transition, where I could reaccustom myself to the living world. The sudden racing of Time made me sick, so there were moments when I could not stand, and I would lie down on a bed that seemed to tilt and rock like a speeding carriage on an uneven road. Even when the nausea passed, there was the terror of it, of being trapped in the rush of Now, snatching in vain at seconds, minutes, hours that are gone before you can take hold of them. I could not believe I used to live like this: only the iron of my need and the steel of my will kept me from flight. But as Time moved on, so I became habituated to it.

  There were more people on the island than in ancient days; humans have bred like locusts, and the earth is overrun. Many have strange customs: they lie in the sun and go brown like peasants, and the women show their bodies to all men instead of a chosen few. I do not lie in the sun; white skin is the acme of beauty, and I am beautiful again. The fire purged me, the river healed me, and I emerged from the waters of Death as Venus reborn, a Venus of the night, star pale and shadow dark. I turn from the sun now, preferring the softer light of the moon, the moon who has always been a friend to witchkind. In the moonlight I am a goddess, and a man came to spy on me, like the ill-fated heroes of legend and folktale, and I plucked the eyes from his head and the spirit from his body, that he might spy on me forever. But when I look in the mirror I see the old Morgus there still, the power-bloated mountain of flesh not eroded but compressed, constricted into a form of slenderness and beauty. The lissome figure is somehow subtly gross, and the loveliness of my face is like a shifting veil over the face beneath. That realization fills me with a joy that is not of this earth, for I know that the dark within is strong in me, and beauty alone is a shallow, insipid thing without the power beneath the skin. And sometimes, in that same reflection, I seem to see the Eternal Tree, winding its twig-tendrils and root-tendrils in my hair, and blending its night with the shadows in my eyes. That is the sweetest of all, for with the Tree, I am immortal, both human and unhuman, and I can challenge even Azmordis for the throne of the world.

  I left the island after the incident with the man. There would be curiosity and questions, and though I could deal with both I did not wish to be troubled. And so I came home at last, to Britain, which was called Logrèz, the land where I was born and where I will one day rule alone. Let Azmordis flee to the barbarian countries across the western sea! This
was my place, and it will be mine again, until the stars fall. I hid in the cave in Prydwen where Merlin is said to have slept more than fifteen hundred years ago; but he is not there now. But I have had enough of caves. The entrance was concealed with enchantments older than mine, and in the gloom of that safety I lit the spellfire and sought a house to suit both queen and witch.

  I had conjured a creature to be my servant, part hag, part kobold; I bought her labor for a bag of storms. When seven times seven years are done, and she is free of me, she will open it and raze the village where she was scorned and stoned at some remote time in a forgotten past. She rarely talks, which pleases me; I know these things about her because I have seen the pictures in her mind. But she is sharp of ear and eye, adequate at housework, and skilled in the kitchen, and the loyalty that I have purchased is mine absolutely. Her meaningless vengeance binds her to me more surely than any spell. And I have Nehemet, Nehemet the goblin cat, who was not conjured but came to me, there on the island, as if she had been waiting. Who she is, or what she is, I do not know. Her name came with her, spoken clearly into my thought, though she has never spoken again. Goblin cats are rare; according to one legend they were the pets of the king of the Underworld, losing their fur because they did not need it in the heat from the pits of Hel. But Nehemet is no mere animal: there is an old intelligence in her gaze, and her poise is that of a feline deity who steps haughtily from a new-opened tomb. She is my familiar, in every way. Somewhen in the passing centuries we have met before.

  I am glad they are both female. I prefer to surround myself with females, whatever their kind. Men are to be manipulated or enslaved; they are necessary for procreation, but that is all. I loved a man once, if love is the word: that desire that can never be sated, that madness where even suffering is dear to the heart. I lay with him and he took me to the place where sweetness is pain and pain is bliss, and in the cold gray morning he looked on me and turned away and left me alone for always. So I took my love and buried it deep in my spirit, so deep that I have never found where it lies. He was my half brother, and he became the High King, but the son I bore him was his downfall, though it gained me nothing. Enough of him. I remember Morgun, my blood-sister, my twin. As children we played together, exchanging kisses, touching each other’s nipples until they swelled like spring buds. But in the end she turned to the love of men, submitting to the rule of lords and masters, and betrayed me, and herself, and died in bitterness. I saw her head, hanging on the Eternal Tree, vowing even then to be my doom. Now there is only one man in my house—if man you can call him—and he is in chains.

  I brought my possessions and my entourage to Wrokeby after New Year’s Eve. I have a use for both the house and its owner: Kaspar Walgrim is a monarch in a world I do not know, the world of Money. And Money, like magic, is the key to power. With magic you can bemaze the minds of men, but with Money you can buy their souls. Walgrim is one of the rulers in the realm of Money: they call it the City, Londinium of old, Caer Lunn. The High King never kept his seat there, but the head of Bran the Blessed was once entombed beneath its white tower, gazing outward over the land, shielding it from enemies. But my half brother dug the head up, saying it was a pagan thing, and he could hold his kingdom alone; only the kingdom was lost and the god of greed sits on the throne where a hundred kings have sat before, playing the games of power and spending their people’s gold. I need Money, and Walgrim has my magic in his blood. He will harvest the City’s gold for me.

  Wrokeby is an old house by the standards of today, though its first stones were laid long after I quit the world. But there are bones underneath, green and rotten now, which were flesh when I was born: I can feel them there, reaching up to me through the dark earth. I cannot destroy them without uprooting the house itself, but I have cleaned out the ghosts that cluttered every empty room, even the imp that made mischief in the kitchen. Grodda, my servant, complained it was always extinguishing the flame in the stove. I opened the abyss and they were sucked through; I heard their thin wailing, felt their helpless terror. It is long and long since I have tasted such terror, even from flimsy, lifeless beings such as these: I drank it like wine. My half brother laid down the knightly precepts: help the oppressed, outface fear, do nothing dishonorable. The laws of Succor, Valor, Honor. But they were for warriors and heroes, not for women and witches. We were to be loved and left, abused and disempowered. And so I made precepts of my own, turning his on their heads: oppress the helpless, wield fear, honor nothing. Succor. Valor. Honor. I have never forgotten those three words. It was good to feel fear again, the fear of lesser, weaker creatures. It makes me strong, stronger than I have felt in time outside Time. There was little fear to feed on beneath the Eternal Tree.

  Only the house-goblin escaped, though Nehemet hunted for him. Goblin cats were so called not merely because of their appearance, but because goblins were once their prey. She is a skilled huntress, but he fled the house, and she did not find him. But it does not matter. Away from the house he will pine, and despair will shrivel him like an autumn leaf. He must be gone by now.

  I moved my prisoner here, from the borders of the Underworld where I had caught and bound him. The house on the island was not suitable, but here there is an attic room already equipped with locks and bolts and bars. I secured him with many chains, and I locked the locks, and bolted the bolts, and walled him in with spells stronger than bars. He did not speak, not then, but sometimes I hear him snarling, two stories above me, chewing on his own fury. Soon the nightmares will begin, and he will howl like a beast in the darkness, and then I will visit him, and watch him grovel, and whine for mercy, and call me “Mother.” I have not yet decided on his punishment, only that it will be slow, sweet and slow, and before I am done he will be offering me the soul he does not have—the soul he longs for and dreams of—for a moment of surcease.

  I like to feel them around me: my collection. Not the corpse cuttings and cold relics that warriors prize, but living trophies. My prisoner, the girl who mocked me, the eyes of the spy. And one day, she will be there. She who failed me, and cheated me, and made my own blood rise up against me. For she is in this world, this Time. Somewhere she lives and breathes, wakes and sleeps, unsuspecting, believing me dead. I named her Morcadis, my coven sister, my disciple, and my weapon. I would have made her as Morgun, my long-dead twin—Morgun as she should have been—sharing her body, owning her soul. But she escaped from the domain of the Tree, and when Sysselore and I followed she turned on us with the crystal fire, and we burned. Sysselore was gone in an instant, but I had my mantle of flesh—flesh and power—and I crawled to the icy river, and plunged in, and was remade. And now I have returned to the world alone, to reclaim my kingdom—my island of Britain—to challenge Azmordis himself for the dominion of Men.

  But first I will find her, and pluck out her heart while she yet lives, and fry it, and she may watch me eat.

  Fern found the note on her doormat before she went to work. The paper was pale brown and shredded around the edges; from the print on the back it might have been the flyleaf of an old book. The writing was in greenish-blue ink, with many splotches, the words ill-formed and badly spelled. “The queane wil come and see you to nite at midnite. She sends you greting.” There was no signature, but Fern suspected that this was because Skuldunder, if he was the scribe, could not manage to spell his own name. She folded the note carefully, put it in her jacket pocket, and went to the office. She had half promised to keep Will informed of any developments, but a busy day left her little leisure for personal calls and anyway, she did not want to have to disclose where she was going earlier in the evening. There was no real reason for her reluctance, or none she could identify, but the thought of the forthcoming meeting with Lucas Walgrim filled her with both impatience and unease. Impatience because she was sure it was a waste of time—her time and his—unease because it would touch on matters that were too near the bone, too close to the heart, to be discussed with a stranger. But she could not let him d
own. Good manners ensnared her.

  “How will you recognize me?” she had asked. “Carnation boutonniere? Rolled-up copy of Hello!?”

  “I’ll know you,” he had said, with a quiet certainty that was unnerving.

  Not for the first time in her life, she wished she wasn’t quite so well brought up.

  They met in a City bar not long after six. Fern arrived in time to get a small table to herself, setting her coat over the spare chair before the bulk of the rush-hour drinkers flooded in. She checked each new arrival, particularly the men on their own, trying to match a face to the voice on the telephone. At one point, a young man stood in the entrance for a couple of minutes, peering around the room, and she thought with a sense of resignation: This is it; but it wasn’t. He had the pink-faced, slightly smug good looks that youth so often assumes when it has too much money, but there was no sign of the single-mindedness or the underlying tension she had detected in the brief telephone conversation. He moved across the room, waylaying a blonde who had been screened by a pillar, and Fern switched off her expression of polite welcome and stirred the froth into her cappuccino.

  When he finally arrived, only five minutes late although it seemed like much longer, he caught her off guard. She was expecting someone who would pause, gaze about him, vacillate; but he came toward her without hesitation or doubt, sat in the empty chair with no invitation. “Miss Capel. Hello. I’m Lucas Walgrim.”

  Her initial reaction was that this was not a face she would trust. Attractive in the wrong way, with that taut-boned, clenched-in look, like a person who is accustomed to suppressing all emotion. A suggestion of something unsafe, an element of ruthlessness carefully concealed. No sense of humor. Under the black straight line of his brows his eyes were a startling light gray, nearly silver. She had never liked pale eyes. A lack of pigment, she had been told in her school years. Lack of color, lack of warmth, lack of soul.