Witch Queen (4 page)

His sword slashed into my left thigh. I
cried out in pain as I stumbled back into a wall. A heavy gold
drapery cushioned my fall, but I could feel the blood dripping down
my leg and into my boot.

I had to fight to stay alive. I shot a
glance at Will and Leo. Sweat coated their flushed faces, and their
eyes showed the same frustration and fear that I felt. We couldn’t
outmatch them. They would kill us all in the end. But I got an
idea.

“Will! Leo!”

I kicked my attacker in the knee with my
good leg, and he went down. Without stopping I grabbed a fist full
of drapes and yanked them down. The long, gold drape billowed
behind me as I ran in a circle around my assailant and tangled him
inside. Will and Leo immediately saw my plan, and before the guards
registered what was happening, they grabbed the drape and ran the
fabric tight around the other three guards. The guards wiggled and
screamed and toppled over.

“Hurry, this won’t keep them for long, and
more guards are bound to come,” said Leo as he and Will picked up
their swords.

He didn’t have to tell me again.

Ignoring the pain in my leg, I bolted after
Will and Leo. We ran carefully on the slippery polished floors and
sprinted out the front entrance. The same infected mob was outside,
but they were so surprised to see us that the moment of surprise
gave us the head start we needed. We rushed towards the gate, and I
was surprised to see it unguarded. But the bodies of our fallen
comrades littered the ground where we had fought our way in, and
the sight of them had tears springing to my eyes again. They had
died in vain. Our rescue attempt had failed, and I would never
forgive myself. Their deaths were on me.

Leaving Soul City behind us, we galloped
into the night, kicking up dirt as we tore down the main road
heading south. Blood gushed down my thigh with each stride of my
horse, but I felt the familiar tingling of my healing powers as my
skin pulled and tugged and began to stitch itself together.

I was a steel maiden from the same clan as
my mother, and a witch. Seeking answers in Gray Havens was the only
thing that fit. I needed answers—answers about me, about my mother,
and about the black blight. If anyone knew more about this black
magic, I was certain it would be the witches.

I fumbled and tripped a few times, lost in
images of Jon. His liquid-black eyes glared at me, full of hatred.
It hurt more than I cared to admit. He wasn’t himself. I had to
keep reminding myself.

But I
would
make him right again.

As I trudged up the path, the only the thing
that kept me going was hope, hope that I could find a cure and free
Jon from the black magic. My body fed on hope, and it filled me
with new strength. The next thing I knew we had entered the
Pit.

The village was dark blue and black except
where shafts of yellow light spilled from the decrepit haphazard
huts. I cringed at the acrid smell of piss and unwashed bodies. I
would never get used to the smells of the Pit. But there were still
some signs of life in the streets. Men and women walked on the
muddied paths and gossiped about the plague coming from Soul City.
It was clear they believed it to be a new form of sickness. They
just didn’t realize that it was of the supernatural kind. Their
wide eyes showed that they were frightened, but they were not
nearly frightened enough.

The sounds, smells, everything around me in
the Pit reminded me of Jon. The thought of him sent a jarring pain
to my stomach. I kept my head low as we made a sharp turn and
headed up a narrow street.

By the time we reached my street, I was
stiff all over. Golden light escaped from the only window of our
dilapidated cottage. It was odd that Rose would still be up at this
hour. It was past midnight. She’d been worried about me lately, and
it would help if she knew the truth—the
whole
truth.

I yanked open the door and flinched.

There, sitting next to Rose, was the high
witch, Ada.

CHAPTER 3

I
T TOOK ME A few seconds to compose
myself, for my brain to process what I was actually looking at.

Ada, the high witch from Gray Havens, looked
just as I remembered. She wore the same shapeless, forest-green
linen gown that matched her eyes. The lines on her porcelain face
were hard, and yet they revealed her knowledge and experience. Her
white hair was piled neatly into a bun on the top of her head, and
leaning next to her chair was a wooden staff carved with the faces
of different animals. A long chain hung from her neck with a
pentagram pendant in the shape of a star within a circle, the star
of life, the symbol of witchcraft and magic.

I recognized the two other witches sitting
next to her as well. Sylvia was a middle-aged witch from the White
Witches clan, like Ada. She had helped to heal and stitch up my own
black magic wound. And Maya, a witch from the Augur clan, the
seers, sat beside her. Her bald head and dark skin made her silver
eyes pop like two shining moons. Both witches wore the same
shapeless linen gowns. Sylvia’s was earth colored, and Maya’s was
bright orange.

When my eyes finally settled on Rose, her
face was paler than usual, and she refused to look at me.

Will and Leo moved in behind me and stood at
the far wall, putting as much distance as they could between
themselves and the witches. But with the seven of us in my small
cottage, it was packed.

I stood in front of them at the table.
Witches didn’t just venture into the Pit to taste our bitter ale or
to stay in our stinky uncomfortable inns. And yet, the three of
them sat here in my cottage. It must have been a Pit record, if you
excluded me and my mother. The witches’ presence could only mean
trouble. I didn’t bother to ask how they knew where to find me.
They were witches, after all, and they were very resourceful. Maybe
Maya had seen something in one of her visions. When I finally found
my voice, I said, “What’s happened?”

“You mean other than the black blight?” said
Ada.

Her words hit me hard, and her tone stung a
little. I knew she wasn’t accusing me of anything, even though I
was
partly to blame for all of this, but I held my ground
and didn’t look away from her intense stare.

Ada sighed, and for the first time I really
saw her age. She looked ancient.

“It’s worse than we thought. Much
worse.”

I leaned forward and placed my hands on the
table. “In what way?”

The high witch said nothing for a moment,
her face impassive.

“As I explained to you before, we always
knew something was off with the arrival of these priests from the
Temple of the Sun. We felt a shift in the balance—the balance of
light and dark. Something that could shift the balance could
ultimately destroy the world.”

She paused for a moment, and her lips
pressed into a hard line as she shook her head.

“But we were never quite sure what their
power was. Somehow they kept it hidden from us.”

“We still do not know how they did it,” Maya
cut in. She was not looking at anyone in particular, but her eyes
sparkled with such reveries that I found myself mesmerized by
them.

Ada nodded. “And yet, we suspected that
these so-called priests were some form of magic conjurers. We just
didn’t know what type they were.”

Sylvia moved forward in her seat. “But we
always thought they were harmless because we couldn’t sense their
magic. At one point we thought they were just regular men dabbling
in the dark arts—harmless, but stupid. Somehow they were able to
hide their power. We could never truly sense it.”

“And now they have the tool to act,” said
Maya.

I shuddered involuntarily under her icy
stare.

“You mean with the stone, with the Heart of
Arcania.”

“That’s right.”

What had I done? Was I too late? Had I
failed Jon and damned him?

I turned away from Maya’s unsettling eyes
and focused my attention back on the high witch.

“How many different kinds of magic conjurers
are there?”

I knew about witches and sorcerers. I’d hate
to think there was more evil magic out there in Arcania.

“Well,” said Ada, and she leaned back into
her chair with a slight frown. “For one thing, you don’t have to be
a witch to work magic. You just have to be willing to make the
sacrifices—and the
right
ones at that. You can borrow the
power from the earth, from life itself, and also from darkness and
death. But in order to do so, you still need the skills and the old
teachings.”

She paused. “You can’t just decide you’re
going to do magic. There’s more to it than that. It takes many
years of practice, and sometimes it never comes.”

She smiled at my confused expression.

“Yes, it happens,” she continued. “Some
witches and sorcerers lose the connection. Even those born with
magic sometimes cannot wield it.”

Like me
, I wanted to add but I kept
my mouth shut.

“We are blood magic witches. We were born
with natural magic, but it is clear that they were not. It’s why
I
believe,” and she raised her brow as she looked at the
other two witches, “that they could hide their magic from us
because it
was
different.”

Her eyes met mine again.

“Those who are taught in the ways of the old
magic can conjure it without having been born into it. Like these
priests.”

“So…” I scratched my head. “You think the
priests are just regular men working magic? But how is that
possible? I saw what the high priest did before he used the stone.
He had powerful magic. No ordinary man could he wield such power.
How could he do it?”

“Blood would do it, lots and lots of
it.”

“Human sacrifices?” I thought of the young
man I’d seen hung up to die in Soul City, and I fought the bile
that rose in my throat.

“Yes, blood sacrifices,” said the old witch.
“It didn’t matter whether the victims were willing or not, as long
as the priests got blood. The priests hid their true identities so
that they could gain power
from
magic. They didn’t have it
themselves. That is why they created this ridiculous race so many
years ago. But our mistake was that we thought they would never be
able to manipulate the power of the stone. We didn’t sense the true
nature of their strategy. The race was, and has always been, a
means to find their champion.”

“And they did.”

The shame in my voice moved her, and she
smiled kindly at me. But it didn’t help my guilt. If I thought
about the consequences of what I’d done too much, I would go mad
with grief.

“Yes, they did,” said Ada after a
moment.

I looked into her face and saw a brief flash
of pain in her eyes.

“And when they claimed the power of the
stone, their true nature was finally revealed.”

“As sorcerers,” I interjected. It was the
only thing that made sense to me.

“As something much worse,” said the high
witch. A large vein throbbed in her forehead.

Nerves pricked my spine. “Which is what,
exactly?”

Ada folded her gnarled hands on the table.
“We thought at first that they were dark sorcerers or even dark
witches…but we were wrong.”

“So what are they then, if not sorcerers?”
asked Leo. “What kind of monsters are these bastards?”

“The worst.” Ada hesitated as though waiting
to get everyone’s attention. She sank down further in her chair.
“They are what we call
necromancers
.”

“Necromancers?” I frowned. “I’ve never heard
of them.”

“And nor should you have,” said Sylvia. She
folded a pleat on her gown. “The witches banished the necromancers
from this part of the world thousands of years ago.” She opened her
mouth to say more, but at the last moment decided against it.

I locked my gaze on Ada again.

“But from what you’re saying, they weren’t
all banished. So
what
are they?”

I couldn’t help losing my patience with the
old witch. I wished she’d just come out and say it. We were wasting
precious time, time that could help save Jon.

Ada’s expression was hard and defiant behind
her wrinkles.

“They are the worst kind of evil.
Necromancers are rotten to the core. They draw their strength from
shadow and darkness, from the dead and from the realm of death
itself. Their black magic
can suck out souls,
drive their victims insane, and the strongest of their kind can
even summon demonic forces and open doorways into other
dimensions.
They twist and corrupt magic.”

“And they’re here in Anglia.”

My fingers dug into the tabletop. I
tightened my jaw until it hurt. I didn’t know why I was so
surprised to hear how powerful and evil these necromancer priests
were. I had fought one, and if it hadn’t been for my own magic
abilities, I would have died. I had thought of them in human terms,
in
killable
human terms. I had to start thinking very
differently. The more I listened to the old witch, the more
powerful they seemed.