by Lee Roland
Maeve lifted the glass to the light and said, “Here’s to the High Witch. May she sit on the throne until the Council House crumbles around her.”
Flor giggled and Tana smiled.
Maeve drained her glass. “So, Scion of Mana…whatever…is there anything else you want to tell me, or do you plan to keep on surprising me?”
“I’ll surprise you. You seem to take it in stride.” Flor sipped at her wine.
“Okay. But only because of Raymond. And you were a really good sport when we washed the hound.” Maeve reached for the bottle, but Tana snatched it away.
Flor sipped her wine. “Maeve, I’ve told you that Immal said I was to go with you. I know many things. Some may be, probably are, connected, but I swear I never heard of Elder until I met you. Titles, gold and jade—they’re just beads, baubles, and empty, forgotten names. I inherited them. I’m the last witch of a line of witches who destroyed themselves. Who cares?”
“I care. Tana cares. So did Immal. Keep your secrets, little sister. At least you’re never boring.” Maeve had bigger concerns.
Tana cut more cake and slid the plate to them. Maeve snagged the wine bottle and poured another glass. “So,” she said, “demons are disappearing, dragons have gone crazy, drooling ogres are making business bargains, the Council members have lost their tiny minds—which is no significant loss—and no one knows anything.”
Neither Tana nor Flor spoke.
Maeve drained her wineglass again. “No opinions? No guesses?”
Tana lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “I seem to have been left out of the whole situation. You, my dear, seem to be the focus of intense attention—magic and otherwise.”
“And I would rather be on a mountain top in West Virginia, making love to Ryder. I would rather be anywhere than here. If I hadn’t promised Inaras…” She stopped. Best not talk too much about that. “I have to get out of here and get answers.”
“Is remanding Maeve to stay here like a ward?” Flor nibbled at the spice cake. Maeve noted that Flor never ate, just picked and tasted.
“No,” Tana told her, “no ward, only a command. There’s a punishment if you break it though. I’m not sure it applies to you, Flor. You could probably leave Elder, but I’m sure they won’t let you wander around without an escort. And I’m sure they’ve set watch on this house.”
Maeve stood and wobbled a little. “Well, I’m going to go wandering, first thing in the morning—right after you brew a potion to make me invisible to anyone, including those with magic.”
Tana eyebrows arched. “You certainly have faith in my power, don’t you?”
“Tana, I have faith in you for anything and everything.”
Chaos entered the room. His rough demon face showed little expresson but that meant nothing. “Tana, dear. Did you know there’s a Slough Hound in the library by the fireplace? She smells like strawberries.”
“Yes, Chaos.” Tana’s smile seemed a little strained. “She’s Maeve’s friend. Would you mind adding another log to the fire? She’s quite old, and we wouldn’t want her to catch a chill. And tomorrow we’ll need to order a steer from the Skye Clan. I expect we’ll need more meat.”
Chaos stared at her. He glanced around at Maeve, and then at Flor who gave him a benevolent smile. He gazed down, surveying his own clothes. He shook his head. “I’ll never be able to go back to living naked in a cave.”
Maeve didn’t hear a bit of regret in his voice.
He smiled and walked out.
Suddenly Maeve realized she cared as much for Chaos as she did for Juju and her other friends. Had it taken the threat of destruction for her to see what she possessed in Elder? Or was it the hard but amazing years on the American highway. Not that it mattered. Remanding Maeve, chaining Maeve, to a single place was like staring a wolf in the eye. You better be prepared to fight. Claire had challenged her, and she’d not let the challenge go unanswered.
Chapter Thirty
“Well?” Maeve asked.
Flor shook her head. “I can still see you.”
Chaos walked in and plopped down in one of the sturdier chairs. “Tana, dear, you’ve asked a lot this time.” He handed her a small folded cloth.
Tana accepted it and kissed him on his shiny forehead. “This and the dragon potion is all I have left. I’m going to mix the two.”
“What is it?” Flor asked.
“Demon hair,” Tana said.
Flor frowned. “But he doesn’t have—”
Chaos roared with laughter. “That you can see. If you’d like, I can give you a private viewing.”
The witch blushed.
“I’m gonna sic Raymond on you,” Maeve told the laughing demon. She punched him in the arm and instantly regretted it. Hitting the table would have been easier on her fingers.
Tana picked up a small clay pot and added Chaos’s offering. “Hush! Let me work the spell.” She placed the pot over a candle and began her appeal.
Maeve didn’t know the words for this one. She wished she could tell Tana she was sorry and make extravagant promises to redouble her efforts and become the granddaughter she deserved. The years on the road had taught her better. She wasn’t a talented witch by nature. Her recent magical episodes had reinforced her penchant for failure.
Tana set the clay pot on the table to cool. She’d worked half a dozen spells in the last two hours and weariness showed in the dark circles under her eyes. “Drink it when it cools.”
“Drink? The others were powders. All I got was dusted.” Maeve eyed the potion with suspicion. “If I have to. Where’s Harriet?”
Summoned, Harriet flew through the window to the table. The inescapable Orcus followed. Maeve grabbed the pot and placed it in front of the harpy.
“What’s that?” Harriet wisely backed away.
“Dried dragon scales and demon hair.”
“Eweee-uu. Nasty.”
“Thanks, Harriet. I just need you to say the blessing.”
Harriet launched herself off the table flew back out the window. Orcus walked over to the pot, carefully plucked a tiny down feather from his breast, and dropped it in. Then he followed Harriet.
Maeve stared at Tana.
Tana shrugged.
She picked up the pot, glared at Chaos, and said, “If you ever tell anyone about this, I’ll put you back in the well and fill it with rocks if I have to.”
She swallowed the foul solution in two gulps. For a moment, nothing seemed different. Then her stomach lurched and threatened to heave it back up her throat. She fought and gained control.
The world shifted around her. She heard Flor gasp, but above that, she heard dragon songs. The melodies roared in her mind and almost lifted her off her feet. Dragons sang wordlessly across the spectrum of magic in Elder. She’d heard it, but never so clearly, so personally as if she were a part of the music. Raymond’s beloved voice came first. Then came Janoval, who taught her the speaking stone’s language, Shastian, who told tales of the lost sisters, and Yarrow, beautiful, powerful Yarrow, who sang a song of lost love and passion. He sang for a beloved mate lost long ago, never to return.
Maeve closed her eyes, hoping to stop the tears from forming. “Did it work?”
“It worked,” Tana said. “You better go. I don’t know how long it will last.”
“Maeve?” Chaos held out his hand.
Chaos’s mind song whispered of a different kind of power. Pain, loneliness—and his incredible love for Tana. She laid her hand across his, careful to avoid the upturned claws. He lifted it to his lips and kissed her fingers.
“I’ll be back, Chaos,” she said. “Someone has to keep you in line.”
He released her hand. “Don’t let anyone touch you. I can see you now.”
****
The factory, as it had earlier, stood unguarded. Maeve was invisible to Tana, Flor, and Chaos, but what about humans? A finger of trees grew in a wedge from the meadow behind Tana’s to within seventy-five feet of the loading dock. Al
l she could do now was hurry across to the door she’d entered with Erik and hope it had remained unlocked.
In two minutes, she was inside and headed into the factory’s heart—in five minutes, she was lost. The hallway led to a cavernous room filled with steel pipes, and the sound of distant machinery vibrated in the air. Twice she froze at sound of footsteps behind her. A crab like shadow scuttled past an open door, but nothing appeared to chase or challenge her. Slow and deliberate, she rounded a corner and stopped. Erik stood in large room facing a bank of security monitors.
He turned toward her. “Why did you—” He stopped and jerked back to face the screens.
Magic vs. modern technology. Video cameras recorded what the bewitched eye could not. Too late to run now. She walked toward him. “If you’ll give me your hand, you can see me.” She didn’t want to touch him, but she had to play this one scene out.
He waited, silent for a moment, then extended his hand. She grasped his fingers. His eyes widened, and she jerked her hand away.
“Come on, Erik. By now, you should know what Tana can do.”
“Why did you come back here?”
“I need answers, and this is the place.”
Dark circles stained the skin under Erik’s eyes, and his expression spoke of exhaustion and other more obscure and painful incidents. His wrists carried bracelets of freshly healed scar tissue. What had happened to him?
She couldn’t help herself. She reached out and laid a finger on the scars. She felt the magic. Claire’s magic. Had she hurt him or healed him?
“Erik?”
He laughed softly, but it was a depreciating laughter, not amusing at all. “I couldn’t catch you. All the way across the country. My father is not a forgiving…individual.”
Maeve noted that Erik did not call him a man. Individual? Individual what?
“That’s not fair. I wanted to smash you myself. So does Flor.”
The man who had pursued them had changed. Maeve couldn’t define that change, but it was there nonetheless. The man was damaged, for sure. But had Sethos completely broken him?
“I have to find out what’s going on,” she said. “Are you going to tell him I’m here?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. He seemed uninterested, but the tension, his attention to her, never wavered.
“Will you help me?” she asked.
“Help you do what?” He crossed his arms and gave her a smile that almost looked genuine. It didn’t take long for the true Erik to resurface, though. “What’s in it for me?”
“For you? Whatever I can give you that doesn’t hurt anyone else. If I get answers. If I survive.” A nebulous, open-ended promise she’d probably regret if she lived long enough.
Erik studied her, eyes narrow assessing his options she was sure.
Maeve frowned. “Tell me what you want, Erik. Let me see if I can make it happen.”
He reached out to touch her.
She backed away. Broken promise already.
“He’s afraid of you.” Erik ignored her retreat.
“Who? Sethos? No way.”
“A long time ago, we went to an oracle in the Gobi Desert. We went into her cave, and he came out raging. He had killed her because she told him a witch would destroy him. ‘Beware the witch, beware the woman, beware the beast.’ Her exact words. For some peculiar reason, he thinks you’re that witch, woman, and beast.”
“Me? I’m an incompetent witch who rides the road with truckers to avoid the responsibility of magic. Damn. He’s superstitious enough to believe the prophecy of an oracle—but not superstitious enough to know that killing an oracle causes the worst karma, the worst fate can throw at him.”
Erik went and sat in a chair that allowed him to survey the screens. Whatever had befallen him still caused him trouble. He cocked his head and stared at her as if she were a mystery he could solve by study alone.
“Incompetent? Witch, you caused a three-state blackout, created a flood, crushed a bridge—maybe I should be on your side. Claire asked him to bring you home. She told him she could control you. They sent me with orders not to harm you. Just get you here. Then he called and told me to kill you if I couldn’t contain you. He didn’t want you here, running free. He believed Claire might turn on him to protect you. Mothers do things like that.”
“Some do. Not my mother. Erik, come with me. You’re a witch. You have a block on your power. I felt it. I don’t know how that could happen, but Tana can help you.”
Release the block on magic? Give Erik power? Not a good idea. But Tana could control him, she was sure of it. Desperation was making a foul liar out of her.
Erik leaned back in his chair. His next words came out cold and stiff. “We tried to escape. My mother shot my sister first when she realized we wouldn’t make it. He came before she could do me the same kindness. I watched him kill her. I was eight.”
Maeve’s stomach twisted. As much as she hated Claire at times, she could not conceive of watching her die. And what was Sethos, that a mother would kill her own children to keep them from him. And her surviving son called that killing a kindness.
Erik rubbed his hands on his shirt as if he wanted to wipe away memory. “Then he dug around in my mind. He put a wall between me and the magic. You almost broke that wall when you fought me in the apartment. Which is amazing. No wonder he fears you. I know exactly how powerful he is—you don’t.”
She shuddered. Again, the terror of any witch knowing magic and not being able to use it…
“Come on.” Erik stood. “I’ll show you. If we survive, I’ll be taking you up on that anything you want promise.”
She followed because she’d come for answers and he had them. He led her down the hallway. “The destruction at the bridge, this building, could you…”
Maeve rubbed the back of her neck. Could she? “I don’t know. It depends on if and how it’s warded. I didn’t feel any when I came in, but they can be strong in specific areas. When everything else has failed… I’ll try.”
They walked through the halls in silence. Was Erik’s sudden action an act? Probably. If he changed sides, it would be because he truly believed the Oracle’s prophesy, not out of any regret for his past actions. The only clues she had to indicate true change were scars around his wrists and the haunted look in his eyes. Whatever had happened could fuel a thirst for revenge, but it might not make a fundamental change in the man’s nature. He could turn on her in an instant.
Erik led her to an elevator. He pushed a button and Maeve’s stomach lurched as the elevator floated down—and down. A sudden shift in the floor startled her.
“Erik, how deep…” The elevator slowed and stopped.
“Five floors down,” he said as the door opened. “This is the third.” The frozen cold of winter hit her face. Erik grabbed her hand and dragged her out into hell.
Maeve dealt with fear as it came, but it had never incapacitated her—until now. He released her. With her breath coming in quick gasps, horror overwhelmed her. Like pickets in a fence, bodies lined up, rigid soldiers, frozen and staring. Men and a few women, stacked in plastic coffins, all races, some with shock etched into their faces and others serene, as if they slept in peace.
For witches who were human in body, death symbolized a return to the mother…perhaps to rise again. The paradox lay in the juxtaposition of human and magic. The Iameth knew where the line was drawn. These humans were dead—and yet alive—saturated with magic in a way Maeve never thought possible.
Maeve shuddered and fought for control. She had work to do here, and she didn’t have time for fear. “They’re human, but they’re not. They’re dead. But not exactly.”
“It’s a drug. The ever-clichéd magic potion. My dear father is using it to create an army. He calls them his personal zombies. Humans with magical strength, almost invincible, they will—”
“Destroy Elder.”
“That’s a start. Once it’s under control, there’s the world outside. He wasn’t lying ab
out medicines and research. There are serums stored in this building that will cause diseases, spreading plagues to reduce populations. He’d have no problem killing millions to rule what’s left.”
The bodies emanated waves of magic that had been corrupted beyond all imagination. This then, had to be the source of the contamination Maeve picked up and Tana removed on the Wandering Stone.
“How does the drug work?” Tana would want to know. She’d want a cure. Oh, please Inaras, let there be a cure.
“It’s given gradually, along with military training. First, ordinary humans start to see magic creatures, harpies, dragons, and such. When they reach a certain level, they’re hit with a massive dose that technically kills, but preserves. He’s developed spells to control them. He keeps them here, in stasis, until he needs them.
“And you?” she asked.
“I’m his son. He promised me strength and power—eventually—if I followed orders, and death if I didn’t. I hoped I could become powerful enough to free myself and kill him. It isn’t going to happen.” Erik’s voice became as cold as the room around them.
Maeve clenched her fists, and her fingernails bit into her hands. “Let’s get out of here. If I tell Tana, she might be able to gather enough Iameth to smash this place.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know. He’s too strong and—”
“I’ve got to tell them. So they can fight. We have to fight, even if we can’t win. Don’t you understand?” Maeve rubbed her stinging eyes and to her surprise, found tears.
She didn’t believe Sethos was powerful enough to withstand the combined might of the Iameth. Or was he? Why hadn’t they taken action on the factory before now? Why hadn’t they driven him out?
“There’s more.” Erik led her back into the elevator. They went up again. When it stopped and opened, he led her to a door at the end of a dark hallway. He dragged her along another walkway, past windows into labatories she’d seen before.
“Can those people in there see us?” Maeve laid a hand on one window.
“No. They can’t see anything except what’s right in front of them. They’re only a little more animated than those sleeping downstairs, Maeve. Most of those he feeds the drugs to become soldiers. Others who are higher functioning work here, but they don’t last long. They simple stop and stand still until they die.”
