The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “It was a long run from TorCaerme; I don’t even remember what it is to be clean or full-fed or rested.” He looked around the inner chambers she had made snug for her own habitation. “I want water to wash with and food, lots of it—enough for all of us—hot.” A faint rattling vibration began in a corner of the ceiling but Kyr hardly seemed to notice it.

  “There have been no servants here for years,” said Graye. “I’ve become accustomed to fetching and carrying for myself.”

  “Good, then cousin, if kinswoman you truly are and not some opportunist of a serving wench, you won’t mind offering the hospitality due me.”

  Grudgingly she found a large kettle and depleted her larder to prepare stew enough for all and carried buckets till she was exhausted. She met one of Kyrellin’s men in the corridor and saw that he carried a huge cask, astream with cobwebs. “That’s my father’s—my wine,” she said as she was shouldered aside spilling a half pailful of water across her feet.

  “And it had better be good,” he grinned back at her.

  “It’s not wise to appropriate the possessions of the dead,” she said in a toneless voice.

  “Whatever it is they do in the shadowland, I don’t think it’s drinking,” he said flippantly, beginning to notice her in a way she didn’t like, “or for that matter—” A good-sized chunk of mortar was dislodged and fell close to him, making him sidestep in surprise and nearly drop the cask. He looked upward suspiciously.

  “This is an old house,” she said with a faint smile.

  “What are you saying, that it’s haunted?”

  “I only said it was old,” she replied, pushing past him to bring the water. A man shouted to be served and she ladled out stew, having threaded her way through half-clad bodies to deliver it. The man took hold of the bowl with one hand and put his other arm around her waist, attempting to drag her down onto his lap. He got only the boiling-hot stew as she mindgripped the bowl and tipped it neatly out. Dishes in a cupboard began a sympathetic rattling.

  “What’s the uproar,” said Kyrellin, naked to the waist, heavily muscled, his chest sooty-dark with hair.

  “She spilled soup on me,” said the man, holding the steaming cloth of his trousers away from his skin.

  “You’re a clumsy fool,” said another man. “I saw her; she never touched the bowl.”

  “Somehow, it seemed she did.”

  “You’d best be out of here,” said Kyr and grasping her by the shoulder he steered her toward the door. She moved without speaking, like a sleepwalker. There was something about the touch of his hand, even through the homespun cloth of her gown. There was a humming sensation deep in her brain as of a force building power yet somehow dampened.

  He pushed her out into the drafty corridor and slammed the door on her. It was strange but tipping the bowl should have drained her, yet it had not. She felt capable of more than she had ever tried before. But she would wait, for full dark and until they had drunk enough wine to distort even the smallest and most pacific magic into something frightening.

  At full moonrise she knelt by the door and listened—loud brutish snores. She pushed back the door and saw the mounded shapes of the soldiers rolled into the blankets by the wan light of the dying fire. She mindgripped the blanket over a nearby sleeper and began to pull it out of his grasp. He sat up, wild-eyed, to see it like something alive sliding off his body to crouch in threatening folds and then jump back at him. By this time, knocking sounds were coming from all corners of the room and the man’s full-throated shriek must have prickled the hair at the back of his comrades’ necks. She edged two metal bowls off the table where they bounced and rolled, adding to the clamor.

  “Witches!”

  “The dead!”

  She brought back the dying fire for a last hissing burst of bright flame. Half naked figures leaped about the room, firelight reddening their skin, and there was a general rush to the door which she barely avoided, being so intent on her work. She sent a blanket flapping and flopping after the last man to twine about his ankles and make him stumble into the wall.

  Silence and darkness throughout the ruined dwelling, only the sour whine of the wind kept outside by the stout walls. The fire had been exhausted by that last burst of energy, and she felt her own Power now dissolved to ashes. She had done more than she had thought possible; she had stretched her small magic to its limits, and the enemy was gone. She bolted her door carefully even though she didn’t think they would be back.

  She gathered a handful of scattered kindling to revive the fire and dragged her pallet-bed near it in preparation for the night. She was not surprised now that weariness came at her in waves. She cast off the hampering homespun gown, stretched her lean, compactly muscled body in the fire’s warmth, undid the strange, no-color hair, translucent in the red light and brushed it, while she tried to remember the words to an old tune. She couldn’t remember them; stopped singing and chuckled to herself. “Well, cousin, it’s a pity you couldn’t stay to lay your plans, but no strategy is needed for a retreat.”

  Off in a corner something moved, a darkness darker than the shadows around it; then it detached itself from shadow and shambled forward.

  “A retreat, cousin, but not a rout.” Kyrellin did not stand quite steadily, and his eyes were bleary from drink, but his voice was still a tiger’s purr. “My family talked about the blood of the Branwyn’s being tainted by witchcraft. My mother herself had a little of the Power—like that wall tapping that panicked my superstitious officers.”

  Graye reached for a mindgrip and got nothing, not even a vibration from loose objects in the room. She shivered and wrapped a blanket around herself, but Kyrellin continued to stand just in the shadow beyond the firelight and continued to talk with a deceptive calmness. “The day my mother died a stool flew across the room and smashed to kindling against the wall. I heard the rapping and pretended not to notice it. I baited you, hoping to find out what you could do, but you waited, biding your time until the dark magnified the terror of the unknown. You used your resources well, but they are at an end.”

  “You don’t know that, unless you’re gifted as well with the second sight.”

  “I know it because you’re afraid of me and if you could have done anything to me you’d have done it by now.” He drew closer, his face swimming out of the darkness as he sat down beside her on the pallet. “You’d be dead now, I think, except that when you took off your garment before the fire, I remembered an old hunger—a man’s hunger. You understand.” As he spoke he was unwinding the blanket from around her shoulders, pulling it out of her numb hands. And as his fingertips happened to brush her arm, she became aware of a resonant humming deep within her skullbones as of some incomprehensible power building. She had been half hypnotized by the flicker of the fire and his quiet voice, but now she drew away.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said through dry lips. “Something is going to happen.”

  “Yes,” he said with a smile the scar pulled into a leer. “Something is.” He pushed her roughly backward, and the moment they touched, she felt the energy build to an unbearable tension. From this moment she understood what Aunt Maev had meant when she said The Power. Kyrellin was giving her an earful of barracks language as he mauled her breasts, when even he began to realize that, as she had said, something was happening. The stones of the walls and ceiling were beginning to vibrate, sending down showers of mortar, and there was a cool, blue other-worldly light in the room.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” shrieked Graye, trying to pull away from him, but he clung to her with a stunned expression as the stones of the wall began to dance wildly and to fall from their places. When a huge stone smashed down beside him, he let go all holds and raced her for the door. Graye was pushed aside but managed to get out just as the ceiling collapsed with a roar. When they had run out into the dooryard and coll
apsed into a tangle of dew-wet grass and nightblooming flowers, they began little by little to realize that there was to be no more destruction. The ruin still stood in the moonlight like a carious tooth, dust beginning to settle.

  “You had me in the palm of your hand the whole time,” said Kyrellin. “And yet you waited until—”

  “I could have crushed you with a falling stone, had I chosen.” Her voice shook, but she pretended it was with cold. “Get me something to put on.” She waited breathless to see how he would take to a direct order, but he still seemed a little stunned and cast about until he found a shirt discarded by one of his fleeing men. He was about to put it around her shoulders. “No. Just toss it here.”

  “You brought down walls and ceiling; the walls shuddered…and fell.”

  She shrugged. “My control was poor, I admit, but—”

  “Don’t you know that Prince Lutin sits behind his high walls at Lastegarde and thinks himself safe. And the four Unconquerable Baronies of the Plain, his minions. If you could but stand outside those walls and call down your power.”

  “So you could butcher the inhabitants? I’ve had enough of falling walls for one night. Do you think you could make us a fire in what’s left of my house?” Angrily he stalked off but after a moment she saw him gathering tag ends of fallen branches. She did not think she should try to push him any further. In the morning, unless she told him the truth, he would ride away. And the Power would go with him. She would be safe, safe to go back to living by her wits and deceiving the innocent and ignorant. That had always been good enough before. Still it was hard not to speculate about what it would be like to have real power. Before she could come to any clear decision, she slept.

  * * * *

  The following morning Graye inspected the damage to her house, and in doing so, climbed a crumbling staircase to the top of the one tower still standing. She stood looking out over the countryside, trees foliaged in umber, apricot and dull dry-blood color, the whole scene washed grayly with morning fog. The roof of the tower had long ago fallen in, and she felt the damp chill as the fog condensed into droplets. She had not stood here in a long time, and she had forgotten what a proprietary feeling it was to look over Branwynlands.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs startled her. “You shouldn’t have come up here. The staircase might have broken under your weight.”

  Kyrellin ignored her and looked out over the landscape. The light had shifted and objects began to show through the aura of fog with sharp-edged reality. “Proud lands,” he said. “Your house and all these grounds could be restored if you would agree to use your power against Lutin. I’ve thought about it until my head aches and I can’t understand why you would not strike, having the Power in your hand. Have you grubbed with peasants so long that you’ve lost all sense of family pride, that you would let the Red Prince and his minions laugh at your father’s memory?”

  “That is an old war. I was young—and knew my father hardly at all. If the dead cry for revenge, I don’t hear them.”

  “A frightened, whey-faced, whining woman,” he shouted.

  That should have been funny, but somehow she did not find it so, though she knew that by refusing to answer, she would be slamming shut a door on his anger. As though unbidden the words came, “I don’t believe you found me so easy to frighten—last night.” Too late to take back the words, she realized that he was so unused to being baited that he would react only with violence. He grabbed her wrist and twisted it, and at his touch the stones of the tower groaned, ground together, the landscape lurching unsteadily in the slotted window.

  “Let go,” she said, clawing at his hand as she felt the tower lean outward. “You’ll kill us both!”

  The stones grew still and the lands around resolved themselves, but there was an air of unsteadiness about the ancient tower. Kyrellin looked at his hand, seeming to take forever to make the connection. “It wasn’t you. It was us? Together?”

  “We’ve got to get down from here. The tower is dangerously weak.” A certainty dawning, he reached toward her and she had to cringe away.

  “Not just your magic? When we touch, mine as well.”

  “Yes, damn you, do you want us both to die here?”

  “I want to—Well, let’s get out of this place first.” The stairs shuddered as they eased their way down, and when they had reached the bottom, a gust of wind caught the tower and sent it hurtling outward from the wall. “You meant to let me ride away, not knowing.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But now you’d disavow it because I’m a part of the bargain. It’s all out of your hands now. I will ride against Lastegarde, and whether you like it or not you will ride with me.”

  * * * *

  Graye moved about, trying to find a comfortable position in the saddle, but there wasn’t one; it seemed the journey was one long ache, but at least they had slowed to a walk. In the dust-whitened men’s clothing she wore and with her long hair cut off she felt anonymous among the riders. That had been Kyrellin’s idea, and it made sense, but she still faintly angered, since she suspected it was because he didn’t want it generally known that a woman rode with him. There was a commotion ahead and she saw men pointing toward rugged hills that were like folds in some coarse golden cloth. Sun glinted blueblack off a structure atop the highest hill, the fort of Wellain. She shaded her eyes to look at it. “It glistens so; is it of glass?”

  “They light fires and burn the clay as the wall is built; it gives the material great strength,” said Olin who held the rein of the small-boned sorrel she rode. “I wish I knew more of Kyrellin’s plan. A frontal assault on Wellain’s walls sounds like folly to me.”

  As they rode, the walls before them drew upward to a great height. They could see archers moving along the parapet, and hear their faint voices calling down jibes and obscenities. Kyrellin came to take the rein from Olin. “Now will the Power be tried.”

  Graye clung to the saddle as he urged his horse into a trot. “There are archers up there with drawn weapons. What if we were mistaken about the Power?”

  An arrow struck the earth a few feet in front of them.

  “After seven years of throwing my armies against these invincible walls—this,” said Kyrellin disgustedly. He reached over to grasp her hand and stirrup to stirrup they rode toward the walls.

  “They’re going to fire on us.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  “I don’t want to get used to it.”

  The jeers of those along the top of the wall died as the vibration began to work its way up through the vitrified material. They let loose a rain of arrows, but the brittle glaze of the surface was radiating hairline cracks, flakes of its substance slithering down its sides. Then a whole section broke free and came down. By this time the remainder of Kyrellin’s army had moved up, and waited as the substance of the wall was rent and was crumbling to powder around its agonized defenders.

  Kyrellin threw the rein to Olin again. “Get her out of here.” Graye clung to the saddle as the sorrel struck up a lope behind Olin’s gelding. From the summit of one of the cloth-fold hills they watched Kyrellin’s army overwhelm the defenders, already stunned and half buried in the debris of their walls. “I knew you were a witch,” said Olin, “but this—”

  “I did nothing; it was all Kyrellin’s work. And if you don’t mind, I don’t want to watch.” She slid to the ground and walked down into a sheltered vale. Olin seemed loath to give up his view of the battle, but after a moment he followed her. “I wasn’t running away. Watch the killing if you enjoy it.”

  “No, I have my orders,” he said rather regretfully. She sat down with her back toward him in a path of tall grass, angry that he could play at soldier with such appalling innocence, but when she looked over her shoulder and saw that he was standing guard over her like a sentr
y, she realized that the innocence would soon be gone; soon enough he would lose his illusions, and perhaps such a loss should not be taken lightly.

  “Can’t you sit down, at least, jailer? You’re making me nervous.” He sensed that she was mocking him and stood his ground for a few moments, but after awhile she heard the grass rustle and felt his shoulders graze hers as he sat.

  “It’s so quiet here, it could just be the two of us out for a walk, or—” Olin made a slight, disgusted sound. Closing her eyes, she lay back, causing the grass to whisper and give off a pungent spice-smell, and upon opening them she saw Olin looking down at her. “Well,” she said, stretching her arms upward so the rough cloth of the shirt outlined her breasts. “I suppose you’re still sulking about all the glory you’re missing out on.”

  “No, I’m thinking that you’re making fun of me, thinking I’m young and ignorant…maybe even virginal.” He moved closer and shifted his weight so that he could bend down more closely. “And I’m thinking that you might find out the opposite, much to your surprise,” he said, beginning in gruff soldierly tones that softened as he began to grin. “Only—”

  “Kyrellin,” she said, finishing the thought. “That bastard intrudes everywhere. I can’t protect you from him if he finds out.”

  “Protect me?” said Olin exasperatedly. “I’m the jailer here.” She laughed warmly and drew his weight against her.

  With the threat of Kyrellin almost an actual presence their coupling was hasty, reckless, almost desperate, and a feeling of hatred for her situation blocked her pleasure, made the act almost mechanical. “Not so easy,” she thought, watching him sleep in the nest of dried grass, “to recapture innocence.”