The True Queen

by Zen Cho

  Muna nodded. “Perhaps mortal magic lacks the potency to lift the effects of the curse—even the magic of a witch of Mak Genggang’s stature. You needed spirits’ magic to heal.”

  She swallowed, for the thought that followed was unwelcome.

  “But if that is right,” she said, “you must not go to England.”

  Sakti blinked. “Why not?”

  “You ought not to return to the mortal realm,” said Muna. “Not till we have broken the curse and you may leave the Unseen World in safety. Who is to say the disease will not strike you again in England?”

  “Do you mean we should stay here?” said Sakti. She brightened. “I wonder that never occurred to me before. It will be far more interesting to explore the Unseen than to go to England!”

  “I am glad you think so,” said Muna, shivering. She did not at all like the thought. Perhaps if she were a witch there might have been some appeal to remaining in the Unseen, despite its dangers. She thought with wistful longing of the village they had left that morning, where they had been safe from wild magic and ravenous spirits.

  But Janda Baik had only been a refuge for herself. Its safety had been an illusion, for it had been murdering her sister by degrees.

  “We cannot stay here,” she said, looking around at the wilderness. “But there must be civilised places even in the Unseen—villages where one could stay.”

  Sakti reflected. “Mak Genggang taught us a spell for calling out the rain. With a little alteration it should serve to summon spirits. We could befriend them—explain who we are, you know, and work upon their sympathies.”

  Muna was about to remind Sakti that the sort of spirits that haunted jungles were not known for their broad sympathies, nor for their tendency to look kindly upon mortals with the effrontery to demand their attendance. But Sakti stiffened, her eyes widening.

  “I had nearly forgot! I have just the thing to help us.”

  They both bore bundles containing various necessaries, as well as gifts for their English hostess. Sakti drew from hers a brown bottle stoppered with a cork, passing it to Muna. “Look!”

  “What is this?”

  “A talisman,” said Sakti. “Mak Genggang gave it to me. She made me promise I would not use it before we reached England, but if we are to remain here . . .”

  “But what does it do?” said Muna. “Is it a potion?” She tilted the bottle, but there did not seem to be anything inside it.

  “Oh no,” said Sakti. “There is a sort of djinn inside the bottle.”

  “A djinn!” Muna held the bottle up to the light. The glass was murky, but on closer examination she glimpsed swirls of smoke in the bottle. “I had thought Mak Genggang disapproved of entering into compacts with spirits. She says it is an irreligious practice.”

  “I expect she is a hypocrite where it suits her,” said Sakti. “Most powerful people are. She thought we might need magical assistance in England. The djinn has a good understanding of witchery and instructions to make itself useful, she said. Shall we summon it now?”

  Before Muna could stop her, Sakti took the cork out of the bottle, peering into it.

  “Quite empty!” said Sakti, but this did not disconcert her in the least. She made the noise one uses to call chickens to feed:

  “Kur, soul! Come out!

  I know whence you sprang:

  Your mother was resentment;

  Your father was greed.

  If you do not come out, wild beasts will eat you.

  If you do not come out, you shall be a rebel in the sight of God.

  I bid thee come!”

  Nothing happened. Sakti shook the bottle and repeated the formula, to no apparent effect.

  “Are you sure you recited the right verse?” said Muna.

  “Certain,” said Sakti. “It is a perfectly typical formula.” She up-ended the bottle with a discontented look. “I tell you what it is. It is that wretched old female! Mak Genggang insisted I should only call forth the djinn in the mortal realm. She said the air of the Unseen would not suit it. I suppose she has put a block upon its being summoned before we reach England. I think that shows a nasty suspicious nature, don’t you? She might have trusted me.”

  Muna could not help laughing at Sakti’s pique. “She trusted you to act according to your nature, I suppose! I don’t see what you thought the djinn might do for us, in any case.”

  “Why, it is a spirit, and we are in the land of spirits,” said Sakti. “I thought it might act as a guide and interpreter. Perhaps it could even find us a place to stay . . .”

  She paused, looking startled.

  “Adik?” said Muna.

  Sakti’s face screwed up. She let loose an enormous sneeze, dropped the djinn’s bottle, and vanished.

  Muna had been reaching for the bottle, meaning to catch it. She crashed to the earth with the bottle in her hand, shrieking, “Adik!”

  But Sakti was gone. Muna had been so close to her that she had felt the warmth from her sister’s body, but between one breath and the next she had blinked out of existence.

  Muna staggered to her feet, looking around wildly, but an impassive forest surrounded her on every side. She would almost have welcomed the appearance of a tiger or ghoul, for that at least would have been some clue to what had happened to Sakti. But there was nothing and no one—only Muna herself, abandoned in a spirituous jungle, alone with her horror.

  “Adik,” called Muna again, fighting back despair. “Sakti!” Her voice cracked on the name.

  She knew there would be no answer. Wherever Sakti was now—if indeed she still lived—it was somewhere far beyond Muna’s reach. This was the work of magic, but whose?

  Was Sakti the victim of some spirit of the jungle who lurked beyond the limits of Muna’s perception? Or was it their enemy who had wrought this—the curseworker who, growing impatient with draining the spirit from Sakti by degrees, had stolen her outright? Perhaps he had somehow realised that the effects of the curse were lifted once Sakti entered the Unseen Realm. In consequence he had snatched her away.

  Muna’s hands were trembling. She looked down at them and realised that she still held the djinn’s bottle.

  The cork was lost among the undergrowth, but this was of little consequence, for the bottle was as empty as Sakti had said. Looking into the bottle, Muna saw only a dark smear at its base. Her vision was blurred and she could not tell what it was, but when she wiped her tears away she saw the smear distinctly. It was a streak of dried blood.

  “Blood magic,” whispered Muna, with a thrill of dread. She might be no witch herself, but she could not have lived in Mak Genggang’s household without learning something of witchery. This was the strongest sort of magic, mysterious and easily warped to evil ends.

  An uncontrollable shivering seized her. She put up a hand to push back her hair. Her forehead was damp with perspiration.

  If Sakti had not succeeded in summoning the djinn, it was not likely that Muna would. She recited the verse anyway, just in case, but she was not surprised when nothing happened.

  Perhaps Sakti’s disappearance was a mistake, the result of some oddity in the spell for summoning the djinn. Sakti would be back in a moment, miffish and on her dignity, as she always was when she suspected she had made herself look foolish.

  But even as the idea flashed through her mind, Muna knew it for self-deception. She repeated the formula again, halfheartedly, for a dull conviction was settling on her. It had been no mistake. Sakti had been taken. Muna was alone, and the djinn would not come.

  She raised her head, rubbing her eyes in some irritation. No matter how Muna dried them, they would keep filling up again, and it was necessary for her to see clearly. Ahead the witch’s path still glowed silver, trailing away into the distance.

  There was nothing she could do here for Sakti, and the longer she stayed th
e greater the risk of an encounter with some spirit or wild beast. Loath as she was to leave the place where she had last seen Sakti, her duty was clear—she must seek help.

  Her inclination was to go back to Janda Baik, for Mak Genggang was familiar and Muna did not doubt the witch would aid her, for all the trouble Muna’s reappearance would represent. But she had no confidence in her ability to navigate the trackless jungle that lay behind without Sakti’s help. She could not risk getting lost, or stumbling into the spirit settlements of which Sakti had spoken.

  In England there would be help. Even if she proved unable to summon Mak Genggang’s djinn there, the English Sorceress Royal was said to be a witch of vast powers, and at the very least there would be some way to convey a message to Mak Genggang, to plead with her for succour. To these great magicians the intervening oceans and continents were as nothing—Mak Genggang had called up the image of the Sorceress Royal in a basin of water when she wished to speak with her. Muna had heard the English witch’s voice herself—it had been as though the Sorceress Royal were in the next room.

  Her mind made up, she stopped the mouth of the djinn’s bottle with moss and shoved it into her bundle. She doubted that Sakti would return, yet just in case Muna marked the spot where her sister had vanished with a few stones and twigs, before she straightened up.

  The way lay clear before her, illuminated by witch-light. Muna started to run.

  5

  Later that day

  The Lady Maria Wythe Academy for the Instruction of Females in Practical Thaumaturgy, England

  HENRIETTA

  THE SALOON OF the Sorceress Royal’s Academy had once been a handsome apartment, and it possessed the bones of handsomeness still. Poverty had not brought down the high ceilings, nor shrunk the fine windows. In candlelight one could easily imagine its charms in days past.

  In the unforgiving light of day, however, its deficiencies could not be concealed. It was impossible not to see that the mouldings, though finely wrought, were now rather grey than white, and the brocade drapes hung limp and faded. The overall effect was of a decayed grandeur, calculated to depress the spirits of any person of sensibility.

  Miss Henrietta Stapleton had the misfortune to belong to this class. She was generally allowed to be a pretty girl, for though there was nothing remarkable about her features, she was young and fair, and the eldest daughter of one of the wealthiest men in English magic. To these virtues were added a gentle manner and speaking grey eyes—eyes that were particularly wistful now, as she looked around the room.

  “How squalid we are!” she sighed. “I wish we were able to give our guests a better account of ourselves. They will hardly expect to find England’s first school for female magicians so shabby!”

  The Sorceress Royal did not respond at once, for she was studying the floor.

  The one alteration the Academy had made upon occupying the house was to tear up the carpets, for the timbers thereby exposed were useful for wonder-working. Two years later, these were covered with thaumaturgical signs and sigils, only half-effaced, for the most diligent scouring in the world could not remove the marks of some magics.

  The Sorceress Royal added a final flourish to the newest mark chalked upon the floor, rising to her feet with the aid of her staff.

  “Nonsense!” she said bracingly. Prunella Wythe (née Gentleman) had been Henrietta’s friend from infancy: as girls they had both been at Mrs. Daubeney’s School for Gentlewitches, where they had been taught to suppress their magical abilities, as befit gently born females. In neither had this early education had the desired effect, for they were now—in defiance of convention, and much to the disapproval of the best part of English thaumaturgy—practising magiciennes.

  They were united in a desire to swell their ranks—to educate as many girls and women as wished to practise magic. It was for this reason that the Sorceress Royal had established her Academy and begged her old schoolfellow to join her as an instructress.

  Yet no two women could have been more different. Prunella was as dark and sharp-tongued as Henrietta was fair and mild. Prunella was an orphan, while Henrietta was burdened with more family than was convenient for a magicienne. Prunella was a magical prodigy, commanding the services of two familiars, when the greatest sorcerers in thaumaturgical history could only boast of having one familiar. Though a mere female, she had attained the highest office in thaumaturgy, taking up the ancient staff of the Sorcerer Royal—chief and representative of Britain’s magical profession. Henrietta, on the other hand, would never pass for a genius—she had just enough magic to make a thaumaturgess, but at times she doubted whether she was fit to teach others magic, when she felt she knew so little of it.

  “It is not as though we were receiving anyone grand today,” Prunella continued. “They are a simple people in Janda Baik, and I do not expect these girls will be in the least puffed up. Mak Genggang holds all persons of that sort in disgust. She would never burden us with fine ladies.”

  “I am sure you are right,” said Henrietta. “Still . . .”

  Prunella had many excellencies of character, as Henrietta occasionally found it necessary to remind herself, but she was an indifferent listener. She leapt to her feet, dusting herself off and interrupting Henrietta:

  “I believe the wretched girls are only late, and it is nothing to do with any defect in our summoning circle. Mak Genggang was never remarkable for her punctuality, and I expect her protégées are just the same.”

  “You do not fear that some misadventure may have befallen them? The girls are coming to us from Fairy, after all.”

  “Yes, but Janda Baik is on better terms with the Fairy Court than we can claim to be,” said Prunella. “They did not lure away dozens of the Fairy Queen’s subjects to serve as their familiars. Mak Genggang visits Fairy frequently—knows a path there that takes one from her island to England in scarcely more time than it would take for you to walk home.”

  “But to send her apprentices there alone!” said Henrietta. “I wonder she dared to take such a risk. Above all at this time, when the Queen’s temper is said to be so uncertain . . .”

  Few English thaumaturges had seen Fairyland since the Fairy Court had closed the border between its realm and Britain half a century ago. There were still some persons, mortal and fairy alike, who managed to circumvent the ban to travel between the two kingdoms, as Mak Genggang’s apprentices were to do. But on the whole, news from Fairy reached England at third- or fourth-hand, distilled from rumour and hearsay.

  Prunella benefited from a source of reliable intelligence about Fairy, however, for she counted among her intimate friends Robert of Threlfall, a scion of one of the oldest and most powerful draconic clans in the realms of Fairy Within.

  Rollo Threlfall lived mostly in the form of a mortal man, indistinguishable from any dandy to be seen on Bond Street, and few who saw him in his everyday guise would have suspected that he had begun life as a dragon, hatched out of an egg. Nonetheless Rollo could not avoid the occasional summons from his aunt Georgiana, from which visits he brought back gossip of Fairyland. The most recent report had been that the Fairy Queen, who reigned over the several realms of Fairy Within, had announced a splendid banquet, to be attended by all her subjects.

  “Bad news,” Rollo had said, shaking his head. “Her Majesty only announces a party when she suspects her allies of conspiring against her. She’s sent to my uncle Harold for the Virtu, for she means to eat it at the banquet.”

  “The Virtu?” said Prunella.

  “It’s an amulet—one of the Queen’s most prized possessions,” said Rollo. “We look after it for her. No thief has succeeded in taking anything from Threlfall’s hoards in thousands of years.”

  “But whyever does she wish to eat an amulet?”

  “Why, it is the quickest way to absorb magic, you know. Works just as well with amulets as with people. The Queen feels the need f
or more power, I suppose. Well,” said Rollo, with an air of resignation, “we were due a purge—she has one every other century—but it’s all very unpleasant. I wouldn’t be at the Court now for love or money!”

  Recalling this exchange, Prunella said now, “The girls will not have gone anywhere near the Fairy Court—Mak Genggang knows better than that! Can you wait till they arrive, Henny? Does not your mamma expect you?”

  Henrietta looked guilty. “Not precisely. We were to call upon my aunt at two o’clock.”

  “Why, it is half past!” said Prunella, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Will not she be on the rampage—baying for your blood?”

  Henrietta coughed. “No,” she said awkwardly. “She believes I am with her. I knew you would have need of me today, so I employed the enchantment you taught me to disguise my absence.”

  At Prunella’s blank look, Henrietta added, “The spell for the creation of effigies. I used linen and a pillow, and when I had bound all together it looked just like me.”

  “Did it really?” said Prunella, delighted.

  Before her marriage, Mrs. Wythe had had occasion to require the services of a chaperone. Having neither the funds to hire one nor any real desire for a duenna, she had invented a companion literally out of whole cloth.

  “But you must have adapted my spell, if it is able to move and speak well enough to deceive your relations, though you are not there to watch over it,” she said. “You must tell me what you did, Henny. If it has sufficient novelty, you might send it to the Gazette. Then you would have your first published spell—named for yourself and acknowledged as your invention. What will you call it? ‘Stapleton’s simulacrum’ sounds well, I think.”

  Henrietta smiled weakly.

  “It could not bear the name Stapleton, you know,” she began.

  But she was interrupted, for just then the chalk marks of the summoning circle burst into a brilliant green glow. The timbers warped and turned clear, a dark pool opening in the floor. The sounds of a tropical evening filled the saloon—the rustle of small creatures crawling through undergrowth, the monotonous scream of insects and the distant cries of unknown beasts.