The Witches' Covenant (Twin Magic Book 2)

by Michael Dalton

  That meant a marriage between them was not happening unless she could somehow sway him from that goal.

  Faced with few other options, Sabine reconsidered her aversion to charming him. Not into loving her—that was clearly happening already—but away from his territorial ambitions. But gentle probing of his mind on that point encountered intense resistance.

  Could she seduce him into marrying her? Sabine no longer saw herself as virgin—after three births, she was certainly no longer virgo intacta—never mind that she had never been with a man. Years of Flame’s attentions, as well as the things she had seen in its mind and in those of other spirits, meant she knew full well what men and women did together. She had experienced them in spirit if not flesh. She was convinced she could take Louis to bed and make him forget all other women.

  But a willingness to bed her was not a willingness to marry her. His attachment to his lands and the future of his state was too strong. She needed a way to bind his ambitions and his attraction to her together.

  It was then that Flame, who had continued to pester her, arrived with a possible solution.

  One night about two months after she arrived in Marburg, Flame was more persistent than usual. She was about to drive him away as she had been doing when she noticed a different character in his attentions. He did not want to make love to her—at least, not to the same degree he usually did—as much as he wanted to tell her something.

  Sabine opened herself, allowing him in. For a moment he struggled to pleasure her, but she held him tightly, looking into his being for what he seemed to have brought.

  She saw something she had not expected. It was not about Louis, or anything in the castle, or even her father. It was something else entirely.

  Flame had found a small clearing in the forest about a mile south of Marburg. The woods here were dense, untouched by loggers or farmers. The reason for this was clear—they teemed with faerie creatures: erlkings, hill trolls, boggarts, will-o-the-wisps, and other fell things.

  Then she looked closer at the clearing, the thing Flame wanted her to see, and understood. The faerie were drawn by something in the clearing, a spring from which the Flow emerged in a veritable torrent. She had read about such things, though some scholars believed them to be a myth. Yet here one was almost on her doorstep.

  Around the spring was a ring of ancient stones. No doubt other mages had found the place in the past, but she could see no signs of recent activity.

  This spring, a wellspring of the Flow, flowed from the land.

  From Hessen. Louis’s land. And this gave Sabine an idea.

  IT WAS A FEW DAYS before Sabine could come up with an excuse to seek out the spring in person. Louis by then trusted her not to flee back to her father, but he was concerned about letting her wander unaccompanied. He agreed only if she would take a few of his soldiers. Knowing how easily she could dispense with them, Sabine consented to the request.

  Down the river, through a vale where the river went into a bend, Sabine came upon a narrow, disused trail she would never have found had Flame not shown her the way. As her guards objected, Sabine spun a web of purple around them, and they promptly sat down at the edge of the woods, saying nothing. They would be there until she returned and released them.

  The path wound up and down several ridges, the woods growing ever darker and denser. She could sense the faerie creatures around her and kept them easily at bay. Most posed her no threat in any case, but she preferred to remain unseen for now.

  She reached the clearing in about a quarter of an hour.

  Her first sight of the place underwhelmed her. There were six or seven moss-covered stones around a little pool. The spring was clear but had no outlet she could see. There was no sign anyone had set foot here in decades, if not centuries.

  But as Sabine stood there, she sensed the power of the place. When she opened her mind, reaching out, the energies pouring from the spring staggered her.

  She stepped forward, plunging her hands into the water.

  For a moment, she forgot her purpose and reason for being here. The strength! The things she could do with this! She reached into the spring, drawing out the intense purple and indigo streams of Flow and spinning them around her, pulling and pulling until the energies formed into a vortex, so blazingly bright she could see nothing else.

  Then she threw her arms out in ecstasy, reaching out into the forest. She saw every creature, faerie and mundane. The simple forest animals she ignored, but every faerie creature within reach she struck with a spear of Flow, seizing them, binding them, making them hers. Burning away their resistance until there was nothing left but her will.

  As the paroxysm spent itself, Sabine lost her balance, falling to her knees. She fell forward onto her hands, gasping for breath. But she could still sense the creatures out there, sense their obedience. So intense had the charm been, with so much energy behind it, she knew she had bound them to her permanently. She owned them. Forever.

  Then, gradually, she remembered why she had come here.

  Louis.

  She needed to bind him as well. But she did not want to do the same thing to him, burning away the things that were Louis and replacing them with Sabine. Even as much as she realized she now had the power to do it. She needed to complete the plan. To use the land against his resistance to marrying her.

  Drawing from the spring again, though more carefully this time, Sabine reached out for Louis, and reached into the land. She saw him in an instant, saw his every secret.

  A wave of dizziness washed over Sabine when she saw the truth.

  He loved her. He desired her above all else. His mind was filled with fantasies of ravishing her, taking her in all the ways she had planned to take him. Of making her his wife and fathering a dozen sons and more.

  Yet over it all was the same deep reluctance she had seen before, a loyalty to Hessen, a knowledge that, despite his own feelings, he had a duty to reach higher for a wife.

  The two impulses were at war with one another.

  It was a war Sabine meant to end. But the two sides were so evenly balanced, the concerns so knotted and convoluted and intertwined, that only the most paramount of impulses could cut the Gordian knot of his reluctance.

  There was a way, only one way.

  Sabine had to lie with him. And bear him a child.

  But she saw as well that there was more to it than that. It could not be anything so tawdry as spreading her legs and accepting his seed. She had to bind her body and his to the land before the child could take root in her womb.

  This was a discipline beyond what she had learned under Andreas. It was the third branch of mysticism, the one he barely spoke of. Not enchantment, nor conjuration, but necromancy. The infusion of the human body with the Flow, and the use of it to twist flesh far beyond the things intended by God.

  Sabine wavered for a few long moments. She could see the path before her, could see what she must do and how it would work, but the risks and implications of what she meant to do chilled her to her very core. It was a step she could not take back. She would be trading a piece of her soul for the chance to marry the man she loved.

  Yet there was no other way. She could see that now.

  Steeling herself, she reached into the spring once again, drawing out a precise measure of Flow, sending it out into the land, burrowing deep into the roots of the trees, the roots of the mountains, feeling all the things that made it Hessen. Then she drew it back, pulling it into her womb, compressing it into a single ball of energy, a single tiny thing.

  A thing that waited for Louis.

  A thing that knew him, and waited for his seed.

  23.

  WHEN SABINE emerged from the path, Louis’s guards were exactly where she had left them. After smoothing their memories so they would not notice the passage of time nor their stiff muscles from sitting for so long, she released them from her charm.

  “Yes,” she said as if no time had passed, “this path is too
dark and dangerous to risk. Let us return to the castle.”

  The men stood, briefly confused, but returned to their horses. Sabine mounted hers and followed them back to the road.

  When they reached the castle, Sabine went to her room to prepare herself for the night to come. On the way there, one of Louis’s chamberlains intercepted her, telling her Louis wished her to dine with him again. That was good. She would have gone to him in any case, but now at least she would not have to burst in on him. She would have him to herself.

  She dressed in her finest gown, a thing of green silk and lace that brought out her eyes. When she arrived at dinner, she could see the effect it had on Louis. She could sense his desire, held in check. He wanted her, yet he did not want what the having would entail.

  Tonight, she would wipe all that away.

  Louis was in a fine mood. The war with Mainz had ended decisively when Louis’s troops had crushed those of Archbishop Conrad near Fulda. This meant her father had picked the winning side, but it also meant that Louis was in a position to correct Henry’s malfeasance.

  “Your father will find this an expensive alliance,” Louis laughed. “I mean to collect the 20,000 crowns he owes me now.”

  Sabine smiled.

  “Has he not given you a more valuable gift, your Grace? Am I not worth far more than that?”

  Louis returned the smile.

  “That you are, but I am afraid he has merely lent you to me for safekeeping.”

  She looked at him slyly.

  “I think he could be convinced to let you keep me, your Grace.”

  Louis looked away, but said nothing. Sabine placed her hand on his.

  “I know your thoughts, my love,” she said. “They are the same as mine.”

  Louis sighed.

  “If only it could be . . .”

  “It can.”

  Now he looked at her.

  “You are not naïve, Sabine. You know what my responsibilities are. You know what your father’s standing in the Empire is. You know I must make a better marriage for the sake of Hessen.”

  “I know all this. But such things are nothing in the face of love.”

  He reached out and placed his hand on her cheek. She leaned against it.

  “I cannot make such decisions on the basis of love,” he said.

  “Then you do love me.”

  He sighed again, and his eyes bored into hers.

  “I do. But that matters not.”

  She closed her eyes. “Before I met you, I thought I would never marry. Now I know I never will.”

  “You will marry, Sabine. No woman like you can remain unmarried for so long.”

  “There is no other man I want for husband. And my father will not force the issue. If you will not have me, you condemn me to die alone.”

  Louis groaned. He said nothing for a long while.

  “Please go, Sabine,” he said finally. “I cannot dwell on this any longer.”

  SHE LEFT. But only for a time.

  When the castle grew dark and quiet, she changed into a thin robe, wearing nothing underneath, and set out for Louis’s chambers. She met a few guards and chambermaids, but waved their notice of her away with a thought.

  When she reached his rooms, she pushed through, locking the doors behind her. There was a single candle burning in his bedchamber.

  She heard his voice.

  “What . . . who is there?”

  She found him in bed, bare chested. His eyes widened in surprise, then in shock as she let the robe fall off. He stared at her with a look of desire mixed with horror.

  “I will not leave this castle without being yours, if only this once.”

  Louis sat up, jaw agape.

  “Sabine . . . I cannot. Your virtue . . .”

  “I am never to marry. I told you that. What matters then if I am virgin or not?”

  Sabine climbed into bed with him. Louis said nothing, still frozen in shock.

  “Do you find my nudity so frightening?” she finally said.

  Louis came out of his state of paralysis eventually. And then he took her.

  WHEN THEIR PASSION was finally spent hours later, Sabine lay awake beside her lover and—assuming her plan worked—her future husband as he slept. She felt his seed moving inside her, joining with the thing she had created, and knew she was already with child. She could see it; the life within her womb was distinct from hers.

  But as she watched it growing, settling into her, some concern grew as well. Sabine could see this was no ordinary child. It was human—part Sabine, part Louis—but also something else.

  And it was growing too quickly. Much, much too quickly. It seemed to be drawing the Flow into it, drawing it in through Sabine’s personal flow.

  What had she done?

  Pain shot through her gut, and a wave of dizziness and weakness washed over her. She suddenly realized the child was sucking the life from her, drawing down her reserves of energy.

  Sabine reached out, drawing on the Flow to replenish herself, but the child sucked up the energy as soon as she gathered it. It needed more. And if she could not supply it, the child in her womb was going to kill her.

  She could see only one way to save herself.

  Sabine staggered from the bed, grabbing her robe, and rushed from Louis’s rooms. Somehow she made it down to the stables, firing charms left and right to hide her passage. She leapt onto a horse, riding it out bareback. The guards opened the gate as she wove a fog of purple around herself.

  She raced down the road as quickly as the horse would go, leaping off as soon as it reached the path. She could see nothing in the dark, but she could sense the spring ahead. The closer she got, the more she was able to draw on it to sustain herself. Somehow she lurched and stumbled her way through the woods and finally collapsed into the clearing.

  The child was still sucking up her personal flow, but now Sabine reached into the spring, drawing everything she could and pouring it into her womb.

  There was an explosion of pain in her stomach as the child reacted. It was growing too fast for her womb to accommodate it. The tissues were being stretched too quickly, before they had time to adjust. Sabine drew off a small measure of Flow and used it to expand her womb as the child grew. She gave no thought to what this might do to her body, only to getting through this experience without dying.

  On and on the child sucked up the Flow she poured into it. Her belly swelled. Soon she was as gravid as any woman on the verge of birth. The child began to move, pushing outward at the confining flesh. She felt it find the exit, reaching through it. There was a burst of fluid between her legs.

  Sabine pushed against it, trying to force it out. She felt the child’s fingers on her thighs. Again she had to spin the Flow through her flesh to avoid being torn apart. Its head emerged, then its torso.

  Then it was out. Sabine heard it gurgling and gasping for breath between her legs. She lay there trying to recover, trying to repair her body as best she could. The child no longer needed her flow, and she used the spring to replenish her energy.

  At last, realizing she was not going to die, Sabine sat up.

  There was a baby girl on the ground before her. Not a withered stick thing, but what appeared to be a perfectly normal baby.

  Sabine picked her up, wrapping her as best she could in the fabric of her robe. The baby squirmed. It had black hair like hers, and when its eyes opened a few minutes later, she could see green. It looked up at her with self-awareness quite unusual for a newborn.

  Her daughter. A daughter she had conceived and borne in a matter of hours. What was she to do with her?

  Sabine could not present this child to Louis as if it were his, though of course it was. She would have trouble even claiming the child as hers—anyone who knew her would know she had not been with child.

  She reached into the babe, examining her flow and her mind. With a shock, Sabine realized this girl was not just a mage but also a mystic like her. She would grow up with muc
h the same talents.

  Then, as she delved deeper into the child’s soul, she saw something else, and saw the true horror of what she had done. The ties to the land, to Hessen, and this spring she had created.

  And as the implications spread out before her, Sabine finally saw the entire, shocking truth.

  She would not be marrying Louis.

  She would not live out the night.

  For she had married herself to something altogether different.

  Part IV

  The Flow

  24.

  ARIEL RAN until her chest was burning. She slowed, staggering, and fell down beside the road. Where was she was? She had run into a different part of Marburg, one she did not recognize. She could see the church off to her left, the twin spires reaching into the morning light. Behind her was the castle on its hill. She was not sure where she had ended up, but the castle had been in front of her when she had come out of the inn.

  Shadow came up beside her, nuzzling her. Ariel could sense the concern in her, the confusion. She had run behind her while Ariel was in the grip of this panic.

  As Ariel caught her breath, she tried to calm her mind, but it was difficult. She kept seeing the dream she had that morning. Bits and pieces of it flowed back into her mind—coming out of the forest, sneaking in the town. Her, but not her. She had been someone else.

  Someone who had done these things decades ago.

  Her agitation ebbed. She had run into another small square. One street led to the church, one up the hill she had run down, another off the opposite direction.

  It was then that she noticed a small child standing on the other side of the street, a young girl looking upset and confused.

  “Mama? Mama?” the girl called.

  Ariel was suddenly filled with memories she knew were not her own. A child. A missing child. A child that needed to be returned.

  She stood and went across the street. The girl was perhaps four or five. She watched Ariel approaching warily.

  “Are you lost?” she asked.