by Mark Anthony
Durge nodded. “That is well, my lady.”
Without further words, the knight turned and left the shrine. Lirith sighed and gazed into Mandu’s empty eyes, searching for solace. But the god only smiled, waiting for his inevitable death.
14.
Purple twilight gathered outside the window as Aryn paced back and forth in her chamber, chanting under her breath, her snow-white robe rustling softly.
“Snuff out the candle, ring the bell, then speak the incantation. Snuff out the candle, ring the bell, then speak—”
She froze and looked up, her blue eyes wide. “Or is it ring the bell, speak the incantation, then snuff out the candle?”
Her head buzzed as if her brains had been replaced by a swarm of moths. No thought would hold still for her long enough to grasp it.
Dread filled her. What would happen if she were to perform the ritual incorrectly? Would the entire Pattern unravel? She wasn’t certain, but there was one effect she knew she could count on: If she did not act out her role as Maiden perfectly, Tressa would change her into a gnat.
Aryn drew in a deep breath.
Concentrate, sister. You can do this. Remember, everyone will be watching.
Panic surged in her chest.
All right—so don’t remember that. Just think of your last lesson with Tressa, then. Everything went perfectly.
A shred of calm crept into Aryn’s mind, and the fluttering eased. Of course, that was it. How could she have been such a goose? It was bell, candle, and then—
A knock sounded on the door, shattering her thoughts. A second knock spurred her into motion. She hurried to the door and opened it.
“Well, it’s about time, deary. These old bones aren’t getting any younger just standing here.”
Aryn gulped. The coven hadn’t even started, and she was already making mistakes. “I’m so sorry, Sister Senrael. I didn’t mean to trouble you.”
The old woman laughed. “Well, of course not, deary. Not a precious thing like you. There isn’t a cruel bone in your body. But fear not. Sia willing, you’ll get to be old and disagreeable like me one day.”
You’re wrong, Aryn wanted to say. I once killed a man with my magic. Is that not cruel? However, no words came out.
“Come along, deary. The moon will rise soon. We must be ready by then.”
The old woman’s ash-gray robe swished as she turned and hobbled down the corridor. Aryn hurried after, heart pounding.
Will I have to make decisions about what goes into the Pattern? she had asked Tressa nervously that morning.
Only so much as any witch does, the red-haired woman had said. All threads are woven into the Pattern. The Maiden, the Matron, and the Crone are there simply to help, just as the shuttle helps pass a thread through the warp when you weave. But it is the threads themselves that determine the Pattern.
After her meeting with Tressa, Aryn had gone in search of Lirith, to see if her friend had any wise words to guide her. However, she had not been able to find Lirith anywhere in the castle.
You’ll see her at the High Coven, she had told herself. Yet for some reason Lirith’s absence troubled her.
“A pox on it all!” Senrael said, stopping so suddenly that Aryn nearly ran into her.
“What is it?” the baroness said, hoping she was not included in the rather wide scope of the old witch’s curse.
“I knew I shouldn’t have had that last cup of maddok,” Senrael grumbled. “Now I need to make a stop at the privy. You’d best hurry along to the garden and find the queen. I’ll be right behind you.”
The old woman vanished through a door. Aryn would rather have just waited, but one didn’t disagree with one’s elders. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t know the way to the gardens. With a sigh, she started down the corridor.
“Well, if it isn’t our new Maiden,” a cooing voice said.
“Maiden?” answered another high, clear voice. “More like half a Maiden, I should say.”
Fear drove a cold spike through Aryn, halting her. She turned, searching for the source of the voices.
“What? Can’t you see us?”
A shadow that had draped a nearby archway vanished like a cloth unraveling. Beyond was a knot of six young women in green robes. They stepped through, and Aryn recognized some of them as the witches who had stood with Cirynn at the first meeting of the High Coven.
“Look at her gape,” a golden-haired young woman said with a laugh. “You’d think she’d never seen a shadow spell before.”
Aryn managed to find her voice. “I have seen spells.”
Immediately she winced at the words; her voice trembled like a little girl’s.
“Of course you have. Deary.”
The other witches laughed at these words, spoken by a brown-eyed witch. Aryn knew her. It was she who had abandoned Aryn’s group to go stand with Cirynn. Since that night, Aryn had learned her name; it was Belira.
“That robe doesn’t really suit you,” Belira said, drifting forward while the others watched with keen gazes, smiles curling their lips. “But then, it was made for another, was it not?”
Aryn felt herself shrink inside the robe, like a turtle drawing into its shell. The white garment was heavier than the green robe she had worn previously, but it still did not cover her withered arm. She tried to move down the corridor, but Belira interposed herself.
“Why are you doing this?” Aryn gasped before she could stop herself.
Belira’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ll make it plain for you. We liked Cirynn, and we don’t like you. Understand?”
Aryn shook her head; she could not speak.
The golden-haired witch stepped forward. “What a simpleton she is. One arm and half a wit. How on Eldh did she get to be Maiden and not one of us?”
“Ivalaine chose me,” Aryn managed at last.
Belira curled her lip, and the expression marred what little prettiness her face held. “Yes, Ivalaine. But that only brings up another question—why is she Matron and not Liendra? Everyone knows Sister Liendra speaks for all the Witches.”
Aryn felt some of her fear transform into anger. Who were these young women to think they knew so much?
“You’re wrong, Sister Belira. Liendra doesn’t speak for everyone—she doesn’t speak for me. Now let me pass.”
She tried to take a step forward, but the others closed in around her in a circle. Aryn felt her lungs grow tight. She seemed to shrink, until she was a small child again, jeering faces whirling around her in a blur as remembered voices rose and fell like the harsh calls of birds.
Little Lady Aryn,
What is she wearin’ …
No, she would never feel that way again. Never. She had vowed it on Midwinter’s Eve when she slew Leothan with her magic. For so long after that night, she had regretted her action, had believed it made her evil. But she had been wrong; she was not the evil one. It was the others—the ones that laughed and jeered, the ones that treated people like objects to be used, scorned, and discarded. All her life, others had looked at Aryn like she was a monster just because of her arm; but she knew now that she wasn’t the monster.
They were.
Leothan had been an ironheart, a thing no longer human. And while no lumps of metal resided in the breasts of these young women, they were every bit as heartless. Aryn needed to endure such cruelty no longer. Not theirs, not anyone’s. Not when she had the power to stop it. She would show them what it meant to cast a spell.
Both fear and anger melted from Aryn. Instead a calm possessed her, like the stillness before a storm. She stood straight, then gazed at Belira with clear eyes.
“I must go, sisters,” she said, her words cool and polished as marble. “The High Coven is about to begin. I must ask that you let me pass.”
Belira glanced at her companions, who nodded encouragement, then turned toward Aryn with a smirk. “Make us.”
“Very well, if that is what you wish.”
Belira frowned. Clearly t
hese had not been the words she was expecting. The others shifted behind her. Belira opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Aryn lifted a hand—not the left hand, but the right: small, pale, and twisted as a broken dove.
It was so simple; she didn’t even need to shut her eyes. Aryn reached out with the Touch and clasped six shimmering threads in an imagined hand. Then she pinched the threads, squeezing them tight.
As one, the six young women around her gasped and stumbled back, hands fluttering up to clutch their throats. Their eyes bulged in their faces as their mouths opened and closed in silent, airless spasms.
The young witches spun away from Aryn like drunken dancers. After a few moments blue tinged their lips. So easy—it would be so easy to squeeze their threads until they snapped, to end their breathing forever …
Stop it, Aryn. If you harm them, then you’ll be just like they are.
She stared at her withered hand. No—she would not let them make her into a monster.
Aryn lowered her hand, releasing the threads, and the young women staggered, drawing ragged breaths. A few dropped to their knees, gulping in air, and others sobbed as they hung on to one another. Of them, only Belira stood still. She gazed at Aryn, holding her throat, her brown eyes filled with terror. And hatred.
Aryn didn’t care. She had neither need nor desire to win the affection of witches such as these. Unlike her own, their bodies were perfect and whole; but their spirits were more twisted than any limb of flesh could ever be.
Her white robe whispering softly, she strode past the young witches.
“I will see you at the High Coven. Sisters.”
15.
Lirith hastily smoothed the wrinkles from her green robe, then finger-combed the worst of the snarls from her black, coiled hair. A quick glance in a bronze mirror confirmed that the results were acceptable. The gray air of twilight crept through the window; it was almost time for the High Coven to begin.
How she had nearly overslept, Lirith didn’t know. Her head had been throbbing all day, and she had lain on her bed just to rest her eyes. However, somehow she had drifted into sleep—and into another dream of Sareth. This one had been murkier than the last. They had both been naked, and he had been making love to her. Only she felt a terrible coldness, and when she looked at him she saw that Sareth was no longer a living man, but a statue of dull stone. The coldness spread through her, and she tried to scream, but her tongue was already stone.
Thankfully she had awakened then. In some ways this dream had been worse than the one of the golden spiders. The thought of spending eternity like that—alive, aware, but utterly numb and frozen—made her flesh crawl.
Lirith left her chamber and hurried through the castle. Servants and petty nobles looked up with wide eyes and scrambled to get out of her way. She couldn’t blame them; she had a feeling she looked like a mad hag at the moment. It was Ivalaine’s wish that the witches move discreetly in Ar-tolor, so as not to alarm the castle folk. However, she had no time for anything but the most direct route to the gardens. She was lucky she had not been assigned a group of novitiates to guide to the coven that night. She picked up the hem of her robe and quickened her pace.
“It doesn’t matter if you run, you know,” a sibilant voice said. “You’re still going to be late.”
Lirith skidded to a halt. A slender silhouette stood against a fading window.
“Teravian,” she said. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Why should you see me? No one else ever does.”
Lirith hesitated. She should have been at the coven by now. But, as before, there was something about Teravian—a sadness, maybe—that compelled her to speak.
“Perhaps you should consider wearing less black,” she said.
The young man blinked. “I didn’t know witches could be funny.”
“Oh, I’m a very peculiar witch. You probably shouldn’t even be talking to me. No doubt it’s causing all sorts of irreparable damage.”
Now his lips curled into a smirk. “Good.”
Lirith’s gaze moved to the window; the first stars were just beginning to appear.
“It’s all right. I know you’ve got your little meeting to go to, so you might as well leave. She always leaves me.”
All traces of the smile fled his expression; his face was a pale, grim oval floating in the gloom. Lirith thought about it only a moment, then moved closer to him and laid her hands on his shoulders. He was slight for a young man of sixteen winters, and they were very nearly the same height, so that she could gaze into his green eyes.
“Listen to me, Lord Teravian. You must believe me when I tell you that I know what it is to be left behind. But in the years since, I have learned something I very much wish I had known at the time, and that I will tell you now. Although others may abandon you, you must never abandon yourself. Do you understand?”
He said nothing, but it seemed his gaze grew thoughtful. Lirith would have to hope it was enough. She let go of his shoulders.
“I must go now—to my little meeting, as you call it. But I will come speak to you again. I promise.”
He shook his head, not gazing at her, but into the shadows still. “No, you’re wrong. You’ll be going soon.”
A cool breath touched Lirith’s skin. “What do you mean?”
Teravian only shrugged, then the young prince turned and walked down the corridor, his black hair and clothes melding with the darkness.
Minutes later, Lirith stepped, breathless, through a braided arch of branches and into the tree-lined temple deep in the gardens of Ar-tolor. Globes of witchfire hung from high branches, filling the glen with green light. Through the moving screen of leaves above, Lirith just caught the silver crescent of the horned moon, sinking toward the invisible horizon.
Two hundred witches—the youngest on the right, the eldest on the left—faced the marble rostrum at the far end of the temple. It looked as if Lirith was the last to arrive. On the rostrum stood three figures, one clad in white, one clad in green, and one in ash-gray. The woman in green was speaking.
“—and in our weaving, a common Pattern shall come into being.” Ivalaine’s voice rose on the air. “A Pattern into which all threads shall be bound, and which shall serve as our guide in the coming moons. So in the name of all goddesses, let our threads be spun together this night.”
Lirith breathed a sigh. She had missed the coven’s opening incant, but the weaving had not yet begun. That was a blessing from Sia. Surely Ivalaine would not have failed to notice if Lirith’s thread had been missing from the Pattern. And it was more than that. The Pattern was what bound all the Witches together, what elevated them from a disparate band of hedgewives and village healers into a union of true power. Lirith did not wish to be left out of that circle.
On the rostrum, Ivalaine nodded to Aryn and Senrael, and the two stepped forward. Aryn carried a small bundle wrapped in black cloth, and Senrael held a silver bowl in gnarled hands. Together, Maiden, Matron, and Crone would speak the High Incant before the Pattern was woven. Doing her best to avoid notice, Lirith started moving through the crowd as quickly as she could.
“Do not think we fail to see what you are doing,” a hard voice rang out.
Lirith went rigid. Had her tardiness been noticed? However, none of the witches gazed at her; all of them stared forward, their expressions ones of shock—and interest.
A tall witch, sharply elegant in her green robe, had stepped close to the rostrum. She was half-turned to the side, as if she addressed the gathering as much as the queen. Lirith could just make out the proud angle of her cheekbones. Her red-gold hair was woven with green gems.
As she had at the last meeting, Ivalaine appeared unshaken by the interruption. Her icy eyes were tinted by the light of the witchfire, turning them the color of a cold, clear ocean. “I do not understand, Sister Liendra. What I am doing is what has always been done. I am calling for the Pattern to be woven.”
“Yes, the Pattern.” Liendra lifted a s
lender hand. “You seem almost in a hurry to get to it. Are you so afraid to let us speak before the weaving begins?”
Whispers coursed through the gathering, like a wind through a grove of trees.
Ivalaine spread her hands. “And what is there to speak of before the weaving, Sister Liendra? Will not all threads—and all voices—be bound into the fabric of the Pattern?”
“That is true,” Liendra said. Now the witch gave up all pretense of speaking to Ivalaine and turned to face the gathering. “And yet, there are some matters that might be uttered before the weaving … matters which, if voiced, could well color some of those threads before they are woven into the Pattern.” Liendra turned again toward the rostrum. “Is that not what you seek to avoid in your haste, Matron?”
“I beg you speak these matters, sister,” Ivalaine said. “There is nothing to be feared in words.”
The queen’s voice was cool and even as always, but Lirith noticed that she stood stiffly, and that a note of color had touched her milky cheeks.
“I would not be so certain of that,” Liendra said, her words rising with the incense on the still air. “But I will defer to your desire for speed; indeed, I would see the Pattern woven quickly as well. And so I will ask but one question. Why have they been allowed into the castle while our High Coven proceeds?”
“And who is it you speak of, sister?”
By the renewed hiss of whispering that filled the grove, all knew exactly who Liendra spoke of. However, the witch voiced the names anyway, her lip curling just slightly.
“I speak of Melindora Nightsilver and Falken Blackhand. Their reputation for meddling is well-known, as is the company they keep. For what other reason can they have come here but to spy on us? It would have been wiser to turn them away.”
“Forgive me, sister,” Ivalaine said, her voice honed to a knife edge. “I did not know you were unfamiliar with the laws of hospitality that hold sway in these Dominions. I will explain them to you. When folk who have done no wrong beg hospitality, it must be granted.”
Liendra winced under the force of Ivalaine’s words. If anyone had forgotten that Ivalaine was queen as well as Matron, they remembered it at that moment. A witch might question Ivalaine’s decisions as Matron, but never her decisions as ruler of Ar-tolor. However, Liendra smoothed her robe and spoke again.
