“I am very sorry, my friend,” Constantine said to him. “But this is a matter of great magely concern. Please do not take offense.”
There was a single stone stairway leading to the lower level. Erich went down two steps at a time and hammered on the door.
“Ariel? Astrid?”
The cries in response were instant. “Erich! Erich! We’re here!”
Erich unlocked the door, finding a dark cell behind it. The girls were chained up and bound but apparently unharmed. They shut their eyes against the light as he dashed in and freed them.
For a few long moments they did nothing but hold him tightly.
“We need to go. There is little time.”
He helped them to their feet, and they climbed out of the cell. Ariel and Astrid were stiff from having been chained up for hours and took the steps slowly.
When they reached the top level, they regarded Hans in some surprise and the others with even more.
“This is Julia and Constantine, Philip’s artificer,” Erich said. “They helped us get in here.”
“I know your father, my dears,” Constantine said. “I don’t suppose he ever mentioned me?”
Ariel shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. But Father did not always share the details of his work.”
“I am friends with Johannes von Brauersdorf, at the university. Do you know him? Surely your father mentioned him.”
“Yes,” Erich said. “I have met him as well.”
Hans looked around in concern. “What do we do now? The jailer will report us as soon as we leave, or at least when he is found.”
Ariel and Astrid looked at each other. “No, he won’t,” Ariel said.
They touched fingers and sent a stream of purple Flow around him, drawing out the memories and erasing all knowledge of what had just happened. The man’s face went blank.
“Will that work?” Erich asked.
“Yes,” Astrid said.
Hans, Julia, and especially Constantine watched this in surprise.
“But you are naturalists!” he cried. “What did you just do?”
“It’s a long story,” Astrid replied.
“I think Hans and Constantine will be safe,” Erich said. “The only potential issue is that baby,” he said to Julia. “You had best be as unobtrusive as you can. Say nothing and do nothing to attract attention.”
Julia nodded. “I will be fine.” She managed a weak smile. “No one cares about me.”
There was an awkward silence. Then Hans blurted out, “I care about you.”
Julia’s eyes widened a bit in surprise. Then she pursed her lips, fighting a more genuine smile.
“All right. I suppose I have Hans to keep watch over me.”
Hans beamed briefly, then looked up in embarrassment.
“Let’s go, then,” Erich said.
Ariel and Astrid gathered up their belongings from the jailer’s table, and they filed out of the dungeon.
Constantine came up the rear, and no one saw the unpleasant look on his face.
30.
THEY HANDLED the exit from the castle in the same fashion, charming their way past the guards as Ariel and Astrid remembered doing so many times in the past—though these were not their memories. But once back in the town, they wrapped their cloaks closely around themselves so as not to be seen.
The townspeople did not recognize them, but someone did: Shadow, who emerged from wherever she had been hiding on the hill. Ariel and Astrid knelt down and hugged her.
Erich led them to the stables and retrieved the horses. The stableboy was there this time and helped Erich get the animals ready.
“I have never been so ready to leave a place as I am now,” Erich muttered when they were mounted up. “Not even my brother’s castle.”
But Ariel and Astrid paused as Erich made to ride out.
“Husband, wait,” Ariel said.
Erich groaned. “What now?”
“Do you mean to head to Wittenberg? Away from here?”
“Yes. Absolutely. As far away as we can get before dark.”
His wives looked at each other in that way they had.
“I do not think we can leave yet,” Astrid said. “We have unfinished business here.”
“What?”
“The witch. And the spring. We are still joined somehow. And she still has the other baby.”
Erich struggled to remain in control of himself. “What do you mean to do?”
“Return to the spring,” Ariel said. “And finish this, however we can.”
He wanted to scream in frustration. But they could well be right, and he could see they were determined to do it.
“Very well. Then let us end this.”
IT WAS now mid-afternoon, but the sky was darkening rapidly. A cold wind picked up as they rode back toward the forest path for what Erich hoped was the final time.
“This bodes ill. I smell snow on the way.”
When they reached the now-familiar entrance to the path and tethered the horses, Ariel and Astrid paused.
“Can you sense anything?”
Ariel nodded.
“She is here.”
Erich loosened his blades in their scabbards, for what little good they might do. He was quite certain this battle would be fought with things other than steel.
Still, he insisted on leading the way. They moved quickly, climbing the ridges around the battle site, then down the far side to the clearing. Shadow loped along silently behind them.
“We are being watched,” Astrid said.
“By whom?” Erich asked.
“Her creatures. The same ones we summoned last night. But they are keeping their distance. I can still feel them.”
“What of her?”
“I think she’s waiting for us.”
Erich stopped.
“What do you mean to do?”
“I do not know,” Ariel said. “I suppose we will see when we get there.”
Erich slowed his pace, watching carefully around them, but there was nothing. Eventually he saw the clearing ahead.
“Are you ready?” His wives nodded.
They emerged from the trees. There was a woman in a dark cloak by the spring.
AT FIRST the three of them, and Shadow, just stood there.
Erich waited for something to happen, wondering if he should simply cut the witch down with his sword. But oddly, after everything that had happened, his combat instincts were silent.
Finally, the woman raised her hands and pushed the hood of her cloak back. Erich had never seen her before, but he recognized her just the same.
She was beautiful in a way that called to mind a clear winter’s night, the air cold and crisp and the stars bright enough to read by. Her hair was long and as black as polished coal. Her eyes, even in the dim light of the clearing, gleamed like emeralds.
“You must be Erich.”
Then she looked at the girls.
“We know each other, I think.”
“Yes,” Ariel said.
Erich kept his hand on his sword. “How do you know us?”
“Your wives left some of their memories behind when they took mine from the spring. But in doing so, they managed to undo something that was never meant to be in the first place. How you managed to do it, I do not know, but you have my gratitude.”
“What do you mean? Ariel asked.
Sabine motioned toward the stones. “I will explain. But perhaps you should sit first, because this will take some time.”
“I am not sure we are here for stories,” Erich said. “We are here for the baby.”
Sabine nodded, smiling weakly. “I know that. But it is too late. The child is gone, or rather, she is no longer a child.”
Astrid gasped. “What did you do with her? Where is she?”
“She is right here. You are looking at her.”
The three of them looked at each, confused.
“You are Ulrike?” Erich finally asked.
“Ye
s. Or, more precisely, Ulrike was me. Sabine. Just like all the other children that were given to me. So it has been for a hundred years.”
Erich sat, and Ariel and Astrid sat next to him.
“I think I will listen now,” he said.
SABINE LOOKED down at the withered husk on the ground before her. It was superficially familiar, a face she had seen in the mirror a thousand times. It was her. The old Sabine. The dead Sabine.
Yet she lived.
She had been looking down at the child she had given birth to, still dazed and weak from the delivery, when all of a sudden she was falling forward. Falling into the child.
There was a long, timeless period of pain and involuntary movement. She felt her limbs stretching, growing somehow. She was sure she was being transformed into some horrible beast, some monster, yet she could do nothing to stop it.
When it was finally over, whether after minutes or hours she did not know, she sat up. She looked down at her body, realizing with a start that she was naked. But she realized at the same time that she was herself, not a monster. Her arms, legs, breasts, the rest of her—it was the same as it had been.
Then she noticed the thing before her. It was dressed. Dressed in the same robe she had come to the clearing in. There was blood between its legs, as if it had just given birth.
Eventually it dawned on her what had happened, as impossible as it seemed.
Undressing the withered thing and donning its clothes was difficult. But it was that or return to the castle in her nudity.
The guards were as easily charmed to allow her entry as they had been to allow her departure. Yet something about the act, as familiar as it had been, was different. The spells were the same, but she was not.
She returned to Louis’s bed just before dawn. He woke eventually. There was some awkward conversation, soon dispensed with. They made love again.
Sabine returned to her rooms, charming the few random servants who saw her to ignore her.
But when she was alone again, and dressed, she sat down to think. Something was wrong, and it was connected to her talent.
The change was so fundamental that it took her a long time to truly appreciate it. So long had she drawn on the larger Flow that she had stopped paying attention to her inner flow. But when she did, she finally saw the truth.
It was gone.
More precisely, it was replaced. Her inner, personal flow, was no more. All that remained was the larger Flow. The Flow that streamed from the spring in the forest. She was drawing on it even as she sat in her room in the castle.
The realization shocked and horrified her. All at once, she saw what she had done the night before. She had wanted to bind herself to Louis’s lands through the spring, through the child.
She had done so, it seemed. But in doing so, she had erased Sabine and replaced her with Hessen. The necromancy had been far more effective than she intended.
As she absorbed this revelation, she could suddenly feel what she had done. She could feel the whole of Hessen in her bones, the farms and forests, the people and animals, the soil and plants, all of it living and dying with the seasons. Living and dying and living again. And she could see that she was inextricably linked to all of it. As Hessen prospered, so would she.
But the spring was calling to her. It needed her, and she needed it. The distance was weakening her already. She was far enough away that she could not draw everything she needed. She no longer had an inner flow to sustain herself.
If she stayed away long enough, she would die.
How long she sat there absorbing the horror of what she had done to herself, to her future, she could not have said. But eventually she rose and sought out Louis.
He did not believe her, at first. He thought this some game, some attempt to trick him, to tease him. “Has the loss of your virginity so addled your brains?” he laughed.
She finally demonstrated what she could do, and then he saw.
He was shocked, to put it mildly.
“This is why your father is thought so crafty and dangerous? It has been you all along, bewitching people?”
“Not all of it. My father is a wise man. But yes, I have been part of it.”
“You sought to bewitch me into marrying you? That was your plan?”
“No! I never once did anything to you. I merely sought to make it possible for us to marry. To make me as important to you as the land. But I have made a terrible mistake.”
She explained. He was horrified. He shouted at her. She cried. But then his rage broke and he went to her, holding her.
“I will marry you. I do not care about any of this. I love you. None of this matters.”
“It is too late,” she sobbed. “I cannot marry anyone. I am bound to the spring, to the land. I must return there soon, or I will die.”
So she went to live in the forest. She charmed carpenters and masons from Marburg and the other villages nearby to build her a small house at the top of the hill above the spring. She explored the area around, finding other ways in and out so she could come and go as she pleased. Now and then others used the forest trail, and she preferred not to be seen.
At first Louis came to visit her. But it did not last. It could not last, a Landgrave with a lover in the woods. His retainers began to talk, to whisper. To wonder about this woman he went to see. In time, they talked of her as a witch. How else could she hold him under such a spell?
That was the end of their love, at least physically. But Louis did not forget her, nor she him. She found that her bond to the land enabled her to aid it, to heal it, to shape it. Hessen prospered. Louis became richer than he already was.
When she had lived in the forest for six years, Louis came to her to tell her was marrying. He did not love the girl, but she was the daughter of the Elector of Sachsen, and the marriage would greatly benefit Hessen. Sabine wished him well.
The first child of the land was born in 1438, five years after Louis had married. Sabine felt it immediately when it happened. It was as if her soul had been split in two. She dreamt of the child, dreamt as if she were the babe. The Flow from the spring was now flowing to both her and this child. As the child grew, Sabine could see it drawing more and more of the energy from the spring. At some point, it would draw enough to kill her.
Her consciousness shifted back and forth between her and the child. For long periods, she was the babe.
Some reflection made it clear what was going on. Just as life in Hessen renewed itself with the passage of the seasons, her bond with the spring had to be renewed periodically. She had given birth to the first child, but the land was now doing it spontaneously. And it would continue.
She went to Louis, charming her way in. He did not like what she told him, but he believed her. He had seen what she done for Hessen. His men took the babe that night and delivered it to her. And when she returned to the spring, the same metamorphosis took place. She was reborn.
The second child came ten years later. Sabine could see the pattern now. She went again to Louis, who was grown old. He was surprised to see her, surprised to see she was still so young.
“How long will this go on?” he had asked.
“I do not know. Perhaps forever. I will be reborn as the land is reborn each spring. But I will be here. I will watch over Hessen when you are gone.”
He went to her. Old as he was, they made love one last time. “We will make a covenant of it,” he said. “I will explain this to my son. I will come up with some story that makes sense to young boys. Full of battles and monsters and stolen babes. But he will be here when next you come, and he will do what I have done, as will his sons.”
31.
WHEN SABINE finished, it was a while before any of them could speak.
“You said this was undone,” Astrid finally said. “What did you mean?”
“The bond is broken,” Sabine replied. “I do not know how, but it is. You seem to have broken it.”
Astrid gasped. “I am sorry. We did no
t mean to.”
Sabine laughed, first weakly, then more lustily. She leaned back, putting her hands on her cheeks.
“My child,” she said. “Did you listen to nothing I said? I am free. My flow has returned. I can grow old and die. I can marry and love and have children now. You have given me a gift beyond price.”
“But the bond?” Ariel said. “Will the land suffer now?”
“I don’t know. But Hessen has prospered for a hundred years. It will survive.”
Ariel and Astrid sighed, looking at Sabine, then each other.
“How did we do this?” Ariel asked.
“I can only assume the spring was waiting for another mystic to bond with,” Sabine said. “What that may mean for you, I cannot say.”
“But we are not mystics,” Ariel said. “At least, we were not. We are naturalists.”
“Except now we are also mystics,” Astrid said. “We have your talent, somehow.”
Sabine’s face paled.
“You are not mystics?”
“Not until we both touched the spring,” Ariel said.
“That is very strange,” Sabine said. “Mages with talents in two schools. I have never heard of such a thing. I did not think it possible. But perhaps you did draw some part of my flow into you. I cannot tell. It has been gone so long, I no longer recognize it.”
“What will you do now?” Erich asked.
Sabine smiled. “I do not know. And that is wonderful.”
“There is only the question of what we tell Erika,” he replied. “Somehow I do not think she will like this explanation.”
“No. But the child was never hers to begin with. It was conceived by the land. Had I not taken it, one or the other of us would have died eventually, and it would most likely have been the child. It happened once before.”
Sabine paused.
“But the Flow balances itself in the end. I made a mistake at her expense many years ago, and I was not in a position to make amends until now. She lost a daughter as a result, one that was truly hers, but I can now return that girl to her.”
“What do you mean?” Astrid asked.
The Witches' Covenant (Twin Magic Book 2) Page 21
