Demon Witch (Book Two - The Ravenscliff Series)

by Geoffrey Huntington

  “No!” Bjorn said. “She comes!”

  “Who comes?” Devon asked.

  Bjorn’s eyes were filled with fear. “The Witch!”

  “Isobel?”

  Bjorn nodded.

  “Then you are in league with her!”

  “No, good sir. Of course not. I was instructed by the great Clydog ap Gruffydd to meet her here. Surely you know that?”

  “Who’s Clydog ap Gruffydd?” Devon whispered to Gisele.

  “A very important Nightwing, of course,” she told him.

  He grunted. “Hey, I didn’t go to your exclusive Nightwing academy, remember? My high school back home doesn’t offer Sorcery 101.”

  Bjorn was fretting. “Oh, why have you come? If she sees you, all is lost.”

  Devon turned to Gisele. “Can you make yourself invisible?”

  “Of course I can. It’s one of the first things Wiglaf ever taught me.”

  “Then do it.”

  Both of them promptly faded from sight.

  Just in time, too: Bjorn turned from them in terror, watching as the bat flew into view from the tunnel.

  Devon watched as well, his eyes riveted.

  The bat slowly transformed into a woman.

  Isobel the Apostate, wrapped in a swirling cape of green and gold.

  At long last, Devon looked upon her face. Her dark hair, her dark eyes, her extraordinary beauty.

  And he saw what he had known perhaps all along, but had never been able to admit.

  Isobel was Morgana.

  The Witch's Castle

  “There is a presence here, gnome,” Isobel said, her black eyes flashing, her long, lustrous black hair flowing as she turned her head, right and left. “Perhaps more than one!”

  “No, no, milady, it is only me.”

  She sniffed the air. Devon and Gisele froze, desperately trying not to make a sound.

  “Don’t lie to me, you little cretin. I am a Nightwing. I can sense—”

  “Milady,” Bjorn interrupted. “I have brought you vital information.”

  The sorceress glared down at him. “What sort of information?”

  “About the Witenagemot. There is a plot against you, to seize you.”

  “Just as I suspected. My foolish weak-kneed Nightwing brethren. Using their mighty powers only in the pursuit of good. Where has that ever gotten them?”

  “They will strike at midnight when you enter the convocation. You will be surrounded by three hundred Nightwing. There will be no escape!”

  She threw her head back and laughed. It was the same horrible, mocking sound that Devon remembered so well. He felt Gisele shudder beside him.

  “May I go, then, milady?” Bjorn asked. “I have told you all I know.”

  “No!” she snarled, grabbing the terrified little gnome by the collar of his shirt. “You have served your purpose for me. But I have hungry demons back at my castle. They’d like nothing better than roasted gnome for their dinner!”

  “No, milady, no!”

  But her hold on the gnome tightened. She transformed herself once more into an enormous bat, its black claws gripping Bjorn’s flesh and lifting him, carrying him kicking and screaming down the tunnel. All the while her hideous laughter continued to fill the space, so loud and so evil that it threatened to suck the air right out of Devon’s lungs.

  “Is it safe now?”

  “Yes,” Devon said, and they both rematerialized.

  “So he was in league with the Witch,” Gisele said, “if he told her the Nightwing plan to defeat her.”

  “Then why didn’t he reveal us? He protected us. Why would he do that if he were truly helping her?”

  They hurried back down the tunnel, anxious to return to Kelvedon House. There, they related what they had seen to Gisele’s parents and Wiglaf. Arnulf was angry; he slammed his fist on the wooden table, upsetting a goblet of wine.

  “You took great risk following the gnome,” Arnulf thundered. His wrath was the same that Devon had seen in Rolfe’s eyes. He could not shake the feeling that it was Rolfe standing there, scolding them. “Had Bjorn not distracted the Witch, she would have discovered you, and then all our plans would have been destroyed.”

  “But Bjorn revealed those plans to her, Father,” Gisele told him. “He told her that the Nightwing would take her at midnight at the Witenagemot.”

  “That’s what he was ordered to tell her, by none other than Clydog ap Gruffydd!”

  Wiglaf leaned in toward Devon. “Clydog is a great Welsh sorcerer,” he whispered, “one of the most respected Nightwing in all of Europe.”

  Sybilla of Ghent had come forward to stroke her daughter’s titian hair. “Why did you suspect Bjorn Forkbeard? You know the gnomes have always been devoted servants of the Nightwing.”

  “Devon said he’d seen him, stirring a witch’s cauldron, calling on spirits—”

  “But of course,” Wiglaf chimed in. “That is what gnomes do. They have no powers of their own, save their tremendous strength. But they are masters of potions, brews, and spells of nature.”

  “Wait a minute,” Devon said. “Just so I understand. This Clydog guy was using Bjorn to pass fake information to Isobel?”

  “You comprehend our meaning at last, Devon March,” Arnulf said, turning away in frustration to stand over the fire, warming his hands.

  “So when I saw him in the future, he really was trying to ward off Isobel.” Devon sighed, cursing his own impetuousness. “And I dumped his cauldron into the sea.”

  “If I may be so bold as to explain the Nightwing plan,” Wiglaf said, “the intention is to seize Isobel in advance of Witenagemot, not at the convocation as she was told. That way, she can be taken unawares.”

  “Is there a plan to storm her castle or something?” Devon asked.

  Arnulf laughed as he gazed down into the fire but he said nothing.

  “No, my boy,” Wiglaf said. “Nothing so obvious as that.”

  Sybilla smiled at Devon. “Do you understand her powers fully?”

  “I know she’s a Nightwing. She has powers like any of us. So it makes sense that a bunch of us together could overpower her.”

  “Not just any ‘bunch of us,’ as you put it,” Sybilla told him. “You see, Isobel has learned certain skills from her liaisons with the demons. She has acquired a very specific power that she can use over certain Nightwing.” She paused, looking back at her husband. “The male Nightwing.”

  Arnulf just grunted.

  “You’ve seen her,” Wiglaf said to Devon. “She is very beautiful, is she not?”

  “She’s a succubus,” Devon said. “Isn’t she?”

  Sybilla nodded. “That she is. A Nightwing succubus. Any of our men who would attempt to capture her would be vulnerable to her lethal charms. She has seduced many men of the villages away from their wives. Simply being Nightwing does not make our men any more immune.”

  “We are men first,” Arnulf grumbled, still looking into the fire. “Human in every way but our powers. All too human.”

  Devon could fully relate to that. “But she will be defeated,” he insisted. “Look, I don’t just come from another place. I come from another time. The future. And the history of the Nightwing reveals that Isobel will be burned at the stake—and that it will be the female Nightwing who will overpower her.”

  “You come from the future?” Gisele asked. “So that is where this girl-friend lives.”

  Her father seemed to take some heart from Devon’s announcement. “Then we will be successful,” Arnulf said, brightening. “We needn’t fear, then, what we must do.”

  “The boy did not come here to instill complacency,” Wiglaf warned. “He came to engender confidence. You can still fail, Arnulf, and then the whole course of history will be altered. You must each play your part as destiny has written it.”

  They decided to rest for what was to come. Devon was given a bale of straw to spread out in fr
ont of the fireplace. He settled down, inhaling the pungency of the straw, trying to find a comfortable position. Wiglaf was already snoring in his chair; Gisele and her parents had disappeared into another part of the house.

  What if I’m trapped here? Devon thought again. What if this is my destiny? To bring confidence to those who would defeat Isobel in this time?

  He supposed it wasn’t such a bad fate. Sure, he’d have to make do without television, cars, computers, cell phones, movies, ice cream and pizza—but he’d have knights and castles and sorcerers’ conventions and free-flowing ale to take their place. Sure, he’d have to get used to raw sewage in the street and a lack of indoor plumbing, but he’d get to grow up with a clan of Nightwing, maybe even attend the Nightwing school where Wiglaf taught. It was better than dealing with sweaty old Mr. Weatherby.

  And, in truth, he already felt comfortable with these people, with their remarkable resemblances to Cecily, Rolfe and Mrs. Crandall. Hey, there was even Bjorn—if he could be rescued from Isobel, that was. And Devon knew that he would be, because he would be alive and well five hundred years from now.

  But if Devon stayed here, who would vanquish Isobel in the twenty-first century? Who would save Ravenscliff from her assault? Would the vision his father showed him come true? Even if he wasn’t there to physically open the Hell Hole, he’d bear culpability for it if he wasn’t around to prevent Isobel from doing so. Would Cecily and the rest of his friends lie dead in a pool of blood? Would Alexander live out his days scuttling around as a skunk? And what about Rolfe? Would Roxanne be able to save him from Isobel’s spell, or would he become her slave forever as the Apostate ruled first over Ravenscliff and then over the world?

  “Restless, Devon March?”

  He looked up. Gisele stood over him in her nightdress, holding a candle aloft.

  “Well, it’s sure not like my bed at Ravenscliff.”

  She sat down beside him. “Tell me about it. About the future, I mean.”

  He sighed. “Well, there are a lot of reasons to recommend it. You can get around a lot faster. We have cars and airplanes—”

  “Airplanes?”

  “Yeah. Like boats, only they fly through the sky.”

  “Is this Nightwing sorcery?”

  “No, just regular old mortal technology.”

  “Technology?”

  “Know-how.”

  She nodded, seeming to grasp his meaning. “And what about women in the future?”

  “Oh, you’d really like that. There’s like total equality. Or nearly anyway. Women can do whatever they want, be whoever they want to be.”

  Gisele smiled. “Well, that is good. I pity ordinary women today. They are subjects of their fathers and husbands in all things. Nightwing women are different, of course, but in our daily activities with normal folk we must pretend to be obedient, lesser creatures.” She made a face. “It offends me to do so.”

  “I can understand.”

  She looked at him with affectionate eyes, the glow of her candle lighting her face. Devon looked at her and saw Cecily.

  “As wonderful as the future is, Devon March,” Gisele pleaded, “do not leave us to go back there.”

  He gave her a small, sad smile. “I’m not sure I’ll even be able to.”

  “You’ll come to accept that this is your time now. You will be a great sorcerer here. I know this.”

  She reached over and kissed him lightly on the cheek before heading back to her room. Devon stretched out again on the straw. He could barely sleep all night. The Witch was in his dreams still, with all her cunning, all her powers of seduction. “I will resist you,” he told her, but she just laughed at him. Cold fear overwhelmed him. More than the Witch, Devon dreaded his own fear. That’s what will defeat you, the Voice told him, even in his dreams.

  In the morning, the plan went into action. Devon followed Arnulf and Sybilla through the streets, avoiding the eyes of townsfolk who might remember him from the day before. “Where is the secret meeting to be held?” Devon asked Wiglaf.

  “Now, if I knew, would it be secret?”

  “Well, Arnulf must know.”

  “We stop here,” Arnulf announced suddenly.

  They were standing in a field of goldenrod at the end of the village. A sea of glimmering yellow stretched off to the horizon. It reminded Devon again of how fluid time had become. When he’d left the twenty-first century, it was frigid winter. Here it was late summer, muggy and hot.

  He couldn’t understand, however, why they’d simply stopped in the middle of a field. “The gathering is to be held outside?” Devon asked. “How smart is that?”

  “This is where we were told to meet,” Arnulf explained.

  Devon noticed other people wandering into the field now. He presumed them to be other Nightwing. But as he watched, one by one they seemed to become obliterated by the sunlight reflecting off the fierce glow of the goldenrod. Then he realized he himself was glowing, and so were his companions.

  “What’s happening?”

  There was no chance for anyone to answer him, for in the next moment Devon saw they were no longer standing in a field but instead were assembled inside a great stone structure. They stood upon a marble floor and looked up at a great mosaic of red and blue stars that formed a majestic dome over their heads. The place was filled with Nightwing—hundreds of them. Devon knew they were Nightwing because the hair on his arms stood up, just as it did when he approached those books in the basement of Ravenscliff. He was suddenly flushed and breathless, surrounded at last by others like him.

  “Is this where Witenagemot will be held?” he asked.

  “Yes, boy,” Wiglaf told him, “though the official gathering does not begin until midnight tonight. We come together now for one purpose only: the defeat of the Witch.”

  “I call this assembly to order,” a lumbering old man was saying in a deep, booming voice, banging a gavel at a lectern in the front of the hall.

  “That’s Clydog ap Gruffydd, the most powerful sorcerer in Britain,” Wiglaf told Devon.

  Clydog looked fierce enough: long white hair, deep-set black eyes, a hooked nose and huge hands that gripped the lectern as if to break it in two. He stood nearly seven feet tall, with a shoulder span of some four feet. “Sure glad he’s a good guy,” Devon said.

  “Aye,” Wiglaf said. “Very good. But very formidable.”

  The Nightwing filed into pews. Men, women, children, all speaking their own languages: English, French, Dutch, German, Finnish, Scandinavian, Russian, Polish, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Swahili. The colors of their skin reflected the far-flung diaspora of the Nightwing, from pale white to golden brown to deep, shining ebony. Devon slid into a pew beside Gisele, his neck twisting around to soak up as much of the sights as he could.

  “We are honored to have with us today an emissary from His Majesty King Henry,” Clydog ap Gruffydd is telling them. “Baron Stanley.”

  “That’s the king’s stepfather,” Devon whispered to Gisele, pleased that he’d remembered something else from Mr. Weatherby’s class.

  The baron was a large man, though standing beside Clydog he seemed puny. He wore a fur hat not unlike Devon’s own, but his doublet was studded with rubies and emeralds. “Long have we heard the whispered of the great Nightwing in our midst,” the baron addressed the crowd, “but not until now did I truly believe.”

  He seemed awed by the assemblage in front of him. Devon could understand: after all, he’d just witnessed hundreds of people simply materialize in the hall.

  The baron gathered his wits. “His Majesty turned to you for help in ridding this kingdom of a scourge—a woman who would usurp his throne, and use the power of England for the glory of the Devil!”

  The Nightwing murmured their assent.

  “But how can we do this, when a very look from her reduces a man—even one of you—into a puddle of fear and lust?”

  There was a ri
pple of laughter through the crowd. Devon was startled when Sybilla stood. “My lord, nearly half of this assembly is immune to the Witch’s sorcery,” she said. “The strategy to defeat her should be obvious.”

  “But you are mere women,” the baron said.

  Again, laughter. “As is she, the scourge that you and your King fear so greatly,” Sybilla said and sat back down. There was a scattering of applause for her.

  Clydog ap Gruffydd had moved back to the lectern. “Sybilla of Ghent is right. We must rely on our Nightwing sisters to overcome the Witch.”

  Now it was Wiglaf’s turn to stand. “Great Clydog, if I may be permitted a word?”

  “Of course, Wiglaf. You are the greatest of our Guardians. What have you to add?”

  Wiglaf nudged Devon to stand. “If I may, noble Nightwing, introduce a young visitor to our time—”

  “Wiglaf, what are you doing?” Devon blushed fiercely, whispering through gritted teeth. “Why are you—”

  “His name is Devon March,” Wiglaf continued, ignoring him, “and he comes with the blessing of Horatio Muir.”

  Devon felt as if he’d melt right there in the pew. The faces of three hundred Nightwing had turned to look at him. Him! Only a few months out of Coles Junction. As if he, puny little Devon March, had any of their knowledge, their experience, their understanding of Nightwing history and tradition—

  You plunged into a Hell Hole and emerged alive, the Voice reminded him.

  “Ah,” Clydog was saying, “Horatio Muir. Our time-traveling descendant from the future. Tell us what news you bring, Devon March.”

  Devon stood, hoping no one—especially Gisele—would notice his knees shaking. “Well, um—” Devon stammers, looking over at Wiglaf.

  “Tell the assembly about seeing the Witch,” his Guardian explained.

  “Well, yeah, I did see her. Isobel. The Witch.” He looked down at Gisele. “We—Gisele and I—followed the gnome, Bjorn Forkbeard—”

  “You did what?” Clydog boomed. His face was contorted suddenly in dark anger. A murmur of outrage jogged through the crowd. “He was sent on a mission! How dare you jeopardize—?”