Witchy Kingdom

by D. J. Butler

  He then piled all the cut timber in a wagon.

  Dadgayadoh watched from the tent he and Schäfer shared with the Parlett children as Hooke finished loading the wagon, hitched it to two horses, and then rolled out of camp. He quietly saddled a horse without a light; the moon was just a tiny waxing sliver, but it was enough for Dadgayadoh, who grew up in the deep, tangled forests of Iroquoia looking for the marks of hoofprints in soft earth and shooting at distant deer.

  Then he followed.

  Hooke drove slowly. He sang in a language Dadgayadoh didn’t know, so it wasn’t Haudenosaunee, French, or English. It didn’t sound like German, Dutch, or Talligewi, either. He drove the wagon with one hand, holding the other hand off the side constantly like the single wing of a cumbersome bird.

  Puzzled, Dadgayagoh slipped ahead in a copse of trees to get a better look. The Sorcerer took a handful of ash from the basket and held it to one side, slowly letting the powder fall from his fingertips. When his hand was empty, he filled it with ash again.

  He was leaving a trail of burnt wood.

  A couple of miles from camp, Hooke stopped the wagon and climbed down. Taking two of the short lengths of wood, he pounded one stake, three feet long, into the ground. He then tied a second stake across it at a right angle; the second stake sat just inches from the ground and was as long as Dadgayadoh’s forearm.

  He rubbed a line along each piece of timber with the pine ash.

  When he was done, Hooke chanted more in his strange language, remounted the wagon, and continued his ride, leaving Dadgayadoh staring in puzzlement.

  His people had fiercely rejected the preaching of Anne Hutchinson and every other preacher Christendom had thrown at them since. Still, he had seen enough of the Ohio to know that a cross—two pieces of wood joined at a right angle, with the downward-pointing length longer than the other three—marked a Christian place of worship, book, or image.

  What did an upside-down cross mean?

  Hooke was English. Maybe this sign meant something to the followers of Thunor and Herne. Dadgayadoh had never been to the Crown Lands, and what little he knew of the Cavaliers and their gods had come at second hand.

  The Lazar rode a slow circuit around Cahokia, planting the small upside-down crosses at regular intervals and connecting them all with faint trails of ash.

  As dawn approached, Dadgayadoh rode behind a long screen of trees to get ahead of the magician, fearing to be spotted if he continued to trail. He rode along Cahokia’s shattered wharves and under the eyes of the defenders on its walls, stopping only twice to be sure that Hooke continued his method of planting the queer crosses. He planted two along the river, both tightly against large poles sunk into the bank to support docks. That positioning made the crosses harder to see, and maybe protected them against traffic.

  Beastkind slunk among the ruined docks. Dadgayadoh’s rifle was loaded, and he kept his long knife bare and in his hand. The misshapen, monstrous semi-people of the Great Green Wood left him alone. An otter the size of a bear, with a reptile’s eyes and tail, came close, but Dadgayadoh hissed at it and brandished the knife, deliberately trying to catch the light with the blade. Whatever the otter-crocodile saw, it was enough. It turned and crept away under the smashed hull of a keelboat.

  Strange barriers, the walls of Cahokia. His people knew the Firstborn of the eastern Ohio, who built differently—mounds and thatched buildings. This palisade was something else. It had appeared to be made of the trunks of dead trees, branches and all, when Dadgayadoh had first arrived with Notwithstanding Schmidt. A few days later, on the day the Company and its traders and militia had all been driven out of the city, the wall had sprouted leaves.

  Now, its branches were thick with fruit.

  Dadgayadoh rode ahead and secreted himself in an irrigation ditch halfway between the river and camp. At this point, he was watching only for the sake of confirmation. Hooke did as expected, pounding two more of his upside-down crosses into the ground.

  Dadgayadoh thought, as Hooke was hammering into place the last of the small crosses, a mile or so from camp, that the Sorcerer looked up and stared in his direction.

  Dadgayadoh froze in place and shivered. He sneaked two fingers to the ornately beaded charm that hung around his neck on a snakeskin thong. It had always served him against witches. Would it be strong enough to defend him against the Sorcerer?

  At a tiny knoll just outside the company camp, Hooke poured out the remainder of the ashes. There he finally took the two large timbers from the wagon and used them to build one final upside-down cross. This was identical to the others in shape and proportion, but was significantly larger, jutting straight up from the earth perhaps nine feet, with a six-foot crossbeam.

  Dadgayadoh cared nothing for either Christians or Wodenists and their respective piety, but the Sorcerer Robert Hooke had put an enormous amount of work into this arrangement of upside-down crosses. Whatever purpose he tried to imagine the crosses might serve, Dadgayadoh felt unsettled.

  He resolved to tell Director Schmidt. She would see the large cross anyway, but at least she would know that there was more than that most obvious portion of the arrangement.

  Also, she would know how diligent Dadgayadoh had been. A hard worker, a self-starter, a real Company man.

  * * *

  Sarah awoke to the cinnamon-like smell of incense. She also smelled thyme and something that wasn’t very familiar, but might be basil or oregano.

  Oil lamps burned faintly within niches sunk into plain stone walls. She lay on a flat bed, firm almost to the point of being hard, under a sheet that felt like cotton to her fingertips.

  Her Eye of Eve was unbound, and through it her surroundings all glowed a faint blue. The scene had the sort of aura that suggested it was located within the flow of a ley line.

  Her mortal eye would not have noticed for the gloom, but her Eye of Eve clearly saw two women sitting on stools beside the room’s single entrance: Alzbieta Torias and Cathy Filmer. Cathy’s aura shone with the bright white of the children of Eve—in this setting, she was the striking thing, the thing that stood out.

  “Am I inside the Temple of the Sun?” Sarah asked.

  “If you’re thinking this is a crypt, be at ease,” Cathy said. “You’re alive and well. Alzbieta neglected to tell you that there are sleeping chambers underneath the temple.”

  “But Alzbieta did tell me that my father’s people bury their dead in jars.” Sarah pivoted to the edge of the bed and dropped her feet to the floor. The stone was cool to the touch, despite the warm air. “With live snakes.”

  “The serpent is a creature that can travel between worlds,” Alzbieta said. “As you have cause to know. Also, it’s a creature that is perpetually reborn, and it belongs to our goddess.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t an interestin’ practice,” Sarah cracked. “I’m jest sayin’ iffen you buried me alive by mistake, I’d expect to wake up curled into a ball, with a snake ticklin’ my bum.” She pondered for a moment her father’s burial, but before she could fully articulate any idea, Cathy interrupted her thoughts.

  “Does Zadok Tarami approve of jar burials?”

  “We call such an interment a burial to life,” Alzbieta said. “And no, I think he must not. Sarah’s grandfather, at the direction of the Basilica priests in his day, dug up all the kings of Cahokia from the field of life and buried them again in box-shaped coffins, and in a different place.”

  “And without the snakes, presumably,” Sarah said. “In a better world, I’d add that to my list of wrongs to correct. In this world, that’s such a tiny problem, it doesn’t rate. The fact of there being two warring priesthoods who don’t even believe the same set of facts about God might not even be worth my attention. I have a siege to break, a people to rescue, and land rights to reclaim. And hell, the only reason I came here was to rescue my siblings, one of whom is still lost.”

  “But one is found,” Cathy said.

  “I ain’t sayin’ I’m
a total gump.”

  “Speaking of warring priesthoods,” Alzbieta continued. “There’s a petitioner to see you.”

  Sarah stood. Her legs quivered, but held. She felt parched. “Tell me it’s not the Metropolitan.”

  “He is locked up in the Hall of Onandagos,” Cathy said.

  “Same place I was locked up?”

  “Same place.” Alzbieta nodded.

  Sarah sighed. “That can’t possibly be a good idea.”

  The other women said nothing.

  “Well, tell me about this petitioner, but get me something to drink, too. Water will do in a pinch, but if possible, I’d love to have something with a kick to it. Coffee, fruit juice, small beer. How long have I been asleep?”

  Cathy slipped from the room.

  “Not long,” Alzbieta said. “The remainder of the day and most of the night. It’s not yet dawn. And you’re in one of the chambers beneath the Temple of the Sun. There are living quarters for one sept of priestesses at a time, and for the monarch. Ordinarily, only priestesses are allowed here.”

  “I appreciate you making an exception for me and Cathy.”

  “You are not an exception. You’re the Beloved of the goddess. And Cathy…at the moment, the Temple is unconsecrated. Defiled. It is no trespass against the sacred for anyone to be in these chambers now, though it is a breach of tradition.”

  Cathy returned, a cup in her hands. Sarah smelled coffee and thought with a pang of her lost friend and mentor, Thalanes. “You two still at war?” she asked them.

  Neither said anything. She sighed. Cathy handed her the cup and she drank.

  “Alright, then. The petitioner—who is it?”

  “You’ve met her. She’s the Lady Alena, a priestess of the order.”

  “Vow of silence.” Sarah remembered. “Talked through a eunuch, a real mouthy sack of toads.”

  “She broke her vow of silence the night of the solstice,” Alzbieta said. “She comes asking you to renew it.”

  “She certainly has my permission to shut up,” Sarah said. “Her eunuch has my permission to shut up, too. In fact, I’d kind of like to command him to close his mouth. I don’t see that it concerns me at all.”

  “You are the Beloved,” Alzbieta Torias said. “You are the footprint of the goddess upon the earth. You are the seal upon every binding vow, your word binds the goddess on earth as in heaven, you—”

  “Stop!” Sarah abruptly felt very old, and very small. She finished the coffee, sipping it slowly and blowing on it to avoid burning her tongue, and then handed the cup back to Cathy. “Where are my things?”

  Cathy pointed. Sarah’s vision had adjusted to the low light enough that even her natural eye now saw a high-backed chair beside her bed and, hanging from the back, her shoulder bag.

  She stretched to limber up her arms and legs, then took the bag and slung it over her shoulder. She wished she were wearing something more elaborate than a shift, but the women had seen fit to undress her before tucking her into bed.

  So be it. She’d just have to be priestly in other ways.

  Sarah straightened her back and nodded.

  “Where shall we see her?” she asked. “Is there a traditional place? A reception room?”

  Alzbieta shook her head. “In the Hall of Onandagos there is. And there is space in the Basilica.”

  “Lady Alena waits in an anteroom just down the hall,” Cathy said.

  “We’ll do this here. Bring her in.”

  Should she wear the Sevenfold Crown? That didn’t feel quite right, in that she wasn’t queen…not fully…yet. Sarah took the Orb of Etyles from the bag and held it in her right hand.

  The tall, white-haired Alena entered slowly, with hands clutched together before her and head bowed. The wide-hipped man with serpents painted on his face followed in the same posture. They both wore plain white tunics and kilts, which made them look like supplicants.

  She was glad they hadn’t crawled in on their knees.

  Sarah groped for an opening line. Good morning didn’t feel quite right. “Welcome, Lady Alena,” she finally said.

  “I apologize and I beg forgiveness,” Alena said, not looking up. “I didn’t know—”

  “Enough,” Sarah said. “Accepted.” Her eye caught the light of the oil lamp as she spoke, and something completely unexpected nearly made her choke on her own words: within the oil-fed flame crouched a salamander. She had seen such a flaming lizard at the feet of the Mother of All Living, in Her Eden. Were there salamanders in every fire, and she simply hadn’t noticed before? Or only special fires, like the fires in the Temple of the Sun? Was she seeing the salamander now because she was the Beloved? Did the salamander bring her a message? As Sarah spoke words of acceptance and mercy, the salamander danced as if for joy. “You are forgiven,” she managed to say.

  Alena continued. “I humbly ask—”

  “Wait.” Sarah turned to the eunuch. “What about you?”

  “Me?” The eunuch’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “I am but a mouthpiece.”

  “No,” Sarah said. “Sometimes, you’re pretty clearly a mouth. Are you a mouth with nothing to say for itself?”

  “I—I—I also, I beg forgiveness.”

  “Remember one thing, eunuch.” Sarah raised a warning finger.

  The mouthpiece stared. “What’s that?”

  “I can make ’em grow back.”

  Now the eunuch did fall to the floor, groveling. Sarah was happy to let him cower.

  “Beloved,” Lady Alena said softly. “I humbly ask to reinstate my former vow of silence.”

  “Tell me what you do,” Sarah said. “Your sacred duties.”

  “With my sept, I attend the throne. I dust it; I light the lamps.”

  “If the veil were closed, would you be allowed behind it?”

  Lady Alena nodded. “I and I alone, on the day of my tendance. The day also known as Monday. And because I am allowed behind the veil, in certain circumstances, I…dress the goddess.”

  She looked at Sarah piercingly for a moment, and then looked away.

  “She means you,” said a voice that was bass and yet feminine. “She would dress you at the four corners of the year, if they happened to fall on her cohort’s day.”

  Sarah looked into the oil lamp and realized that the salamander was speaking to her.

  None of the other people in the room responded to the voice.

  “I understand.” Sarah kept an eye on the salamander to gauge its reaction. She also reached through the orb into the Mississippi’s ley and drew mana from it, filling her words with energy and destiny. “Lady Alena, this land is riven by enough dissension and threatened by more than sufficient foes. May the priesthood of the goddess be strong, stable, and powerful, and a force for the healing of ills rather than for inflicting them.

  “I restore all things to you.

  “Your oath, for good and ill, binds you again.

  “You resume your responsibilities and your authorities all as formerly. Between you and me, there is peace. If there is any cause for strife between you and me, you will come to me promptly to resolve it. Understood?”

  Alena knelt and touched her forehead to Sarah’s bare feet. The salamander leaped in a graceful circle inside the fire.

  “By our lives and by the life of the goddess,” the eunuch said. “We so swear.”

  Sarah hadn’t intended to make this an oath. After her experience with Alzbieta and the beastkind, she wanted to avoid the swearing of oaths. But so be it.

  She reached down with her free hand and raised the Lady Alena up. Tears streamed down the older woman’s cheeks and she smiled.

  * * *

  “Lord Thomas, the Parletts are speaking!”

  Thomas barely heard the words. Philadelphia’s network of brick-lined sewer tunnels, built by John Penn and the old Lightning Bishop, had become inadequate, and it was up to Thomas to find a solution for the pools of fetid wastewater now settling into filthy ice in three Philadelphia
crossroads. He stood at a table in his personal library, with a stack of papers and a heart full of doubts.

  He pored over plans the Imperial Engineering Corps had delivered to him, plans that required the construction of a pumping station at a hill called Faire Mount. This looked like a considerably more expensive proposition than the alternative proposal, which involved the Imperial College of Magic constructing something that would allegedly strain all the filth from the waste water. On the other hand, Thomas was nervous that any solution to the city’s cloacal problem that depended on a wizard could be fickle, subject to dispelling by the interference of a rival wizard, or simply too good to be true. And what if a stray shilling were to come in contact with the proposed runic inscriptions?

  But to build the pumping station and the expanded tunnel system would require money. His mines and farms didn’t generate enough.

  Why could people not see that if they simply gave him the power, he could make their lives better?

  Why, especially, could the stubborn Electors not see it?

  “Lord Thomas, the Parletts are the children who put us in contact with Director Schmidt.”

  Thomas shook off his reverie. His valet Gottlieb stood holding the door open, an urgent expression on his face.

  “Ah.” Thomas set down the plans and followed Gottlieb, who led him up a nearby staircase toward the usually vacant rooms in Horse Hall where the Parlett boys had been housed. “Temple wishes me to see his device.”

  “I understand it’s more than that,” Gottlieb said. “I believe there is news.”

  “Either unusually good or bad,” Thomas said, “or Temple would handle it himself and inform me later, to make all the Empire’s great accomplishments sound like minor feats he nonchalantly accomplished without assistance.”

  Gottlieb had no comment.

  The two Philadelphia Parletts lived in two adjoining chambers, a bedroom behind a sitting room. They stood in their identical blue uniforms (made from a single roll of felt, Temple had assured him proudly, which appeared to be part of the web of connections that kept the Parletts constantly in contact with each other), backs straight and mouths turned down at the corners. They appeared to be mimicking a jowly person, and they spoke to Temple Franklin.