“That is what you’re planning?” Gillian whispered, staring at Morgan. “To misdirect the spell?”
“Not misdirect,” the ghost said. “Correct. Think of it; the greatest enchantment in memory, perhaps in millennia, involving the magic of tens of thousands of us—it was perfect. We merely chose the wrong target.”
Gillian stared at the one-time witch, her expression frozen in shock, as well it might be if Kit understood Morgan’s meaning. But the ghost didn’t appear to notice. Instead, her eyes brightened to the point that they rivalled the wizard’s lantern, and shed a strange, blue haze onto the surrounding air.
“I know,” she said, nodding. “It struck me much the same way, when I first saw it. I had spent far too long lost in self-pity, in mourning the life I should have had—that all of us should have had!
“But then I realized the truth—that the fight wasn’t over. I had been telling myself what I said to you earlier, that this was where everything began. But it was more like the beginning of the end. The true start of it all was that night on the cliffs.
“The Great Mothers made the wrong decision and it cost us everything. There was no coming back after that. Too many were dead; too much was lost.
“But what if I could go back? I started to wonder that, more and more. What if I could change the outcome? What if it was the Circle that died instead—”
“Do you hear yourself?” Gillian asked, finding her voice. “This is madness!”
“No!” the blue eyes flashed. “Madness is giving up. Madness is deciding that we have no hope, no future. Madness is letting them win.”
“The Great Mothers made a sacrifice!” Gillian said, her voice roughening. “The Circle didn’t win—”
“Exactly!” the ghost nodded vigorously. “They couldn’t beat us in the field; they had to use a cowardly sneak attack for that. But we can put it right—”
“How? By doing it to them first?”
“Yes! Now that we know what they’ve planned—”
“And the Armada? The Mothers made a choice, Morgan—”
“And they’re dead for it!” the ghost said furiously. “Almost all of us are dead! I didn’t choose to be a sacrifice; neither did my people! Neither did you! And we don’t have to be!”
“You would overturn their decision, then.”
“I would reclaim what is ours!”
Gillian looked conflicted, as well she might, considering that she had been arguing the other side not long ago with Rilda. But something appeared to have changed. Because her face finally settled on an emotion, and it wasn’t anger.
“You thought differently once,” she said, more quietly. “When you found me here, with my rag-tag little coven. We could have attacked each other; started another spate of killing. We chose to make a pact instead, despite how desperate all of us were. We preferred sharing instead of fighting, helping each other as we’d always helped the people around us.
“Our covens were places of refuge, not just for our kind, but for everyone. We made this land greener and brighter by our presence, gave aid and guidance, and shelter in times of trouble. We weren’t perfect, but we listened and we talked, and when there was a dispute, we came together and figured it out.
“Yet you murdered Rilda without a thought, struck her down from behind without giving her a chance to defend herself. It was as cowardly an act as I’ve ever seen, as any the Circle ever did! And yet you talk of changing the world—into what?”
He might have been wrong about the anger, Kit thought, because it was back and flashing dangerously in Gillian’s eyes. But instead of backing down, Morgan met fire with fire. And despite being a ghost, magic crackled in the air between them, and it wasn’t all Gillian’s.
“Rilda!” she almost spat it. “Rilda was weak—”
“We don’t kill our own!”
“—blaming herself, and the rest of us, for everything that happened. She wanted us to go into hiding, to disappear and cede the field! And she was convincing others.
“She was convincing you!
“She lost too much and it broke her. I lost even more, but it didn’t break me—”
“But it changed you,” Gillian said roughly. “You talk like the Circle. They want to command, to shut down any voice but theirs, to force obedience. We’re supposed to be better than that—”
“—and it didn’t break you!” the ghost got into her face, so closely that her unearthly light tinted Gillian’s hair, and made strange shadows upon her cheeks. “I watched you; followed you. Talk like Rilda all you want, but you think like me and we both know it. I saw you stare down the Circle’s men and refuse to move out of the way for them, even in the corridors of the palace itself. Saw you make them give way for you.
“Saw the hate on your face, and the contempt in your eyes, and knew that you view them as I do. Together, we can—”
“There is no together, Morgan!”
“You would let them win, then?”
“They already won!” Gillian said furiously. “It’s over! We are supposed to be saving what’s left, not risking annihilation!”
“Over?” the ghost smiled, and Kit finally managed to flop out of his prison and onto the deck, because it was not a nice smile. And the words that followed were even worse. “They kill you, too, you know,” Morgan said mildly.
“What?” Gillian blinked at her.
“Oh, I know, you didn’t die with the rest of us, slaughtered like pigs in autumn. You went to prison instead. There were too many eyes when they came for you; too many witnesses. They couldn’t risk the easy way out. And they thought you just a common witch in any case.
“They learned differently. And the Circle brooks no competition. So, they bided their time and they got you in the end. I know because I saw it; I saw you, your dead eyes staring at the sky, just as mine did. And for the same reason.”
Gillian looked as if she had just decided that it might be possible for ghosts to go mad, and Kit tended to agree. “Morgan, I’m not dead—”
“Not yet. But if you think you’ll live to see that daughter of yours grow up, think again.”
“What are you talking about—”
“Your death, girl,” Morgan said, suddenly vicious. “The Circle stole your life like they stole mine, although you dodged it a bit longer. But you took the same route home from court every day, thinking yourself safe with those vampire guards of yours, and they got you. Cursed you right in between those two fools before they knew what was happening.
“I supposed they got tired of trying to be subtle.”
Gillian just stared at her some more, and Morgan smiled. “Still think this doesn’t have anything to do with you?”
“You . . . you’ve lost your senses.”
“On the contrary, I see more now than I ever have. Take your good friend Rilda, for instance. She died in 1595, but the mistake the mother’s made was seven years before that. If we change the outcome of that battle, nothing that follows will be the same. You scold me for killing her, but if we do this right, she won’t die, for she’ll never be at that pathetic excuse for an alehouse in the first place.
“Such shelters won’t be necessary when our people aren’t rats scurrying in corners, but ruling these lands! Her coven will live, as will mine—as will yours. We control the future, you and I, from this moment on, and can shape it any way we like.
“But it’s a difficult concept, I grant you. It took me years to understand. Perhaps you need a more potent example.”
And before Kit could wonder what that meant, a dizzying feeling caught him, and he was suddenly hitting down onto wet ground, with several heavy bales of carpets smacking him in the head. The bales must have come from the ship, sucked into the portal along with them. Only he didn’t see a portal.
He didn’t see anything except for a sky that looked like the devil’s anus.
Kit stared upward at roiling green and black clouds, like a terrible bruise, circling a spiraling vortex straight out of hell. It was huge, covered the whole sky, and was laced with enough lightning to sear his vision with brilliant, crisscrossing scars. Not that he needed to see to know that that wasn’t a normal storm.
There was magic in it, thick enough that it felt like trying to breathe through soup, with tiny bits that flayed his skin as they swirled past. And before Kit could stop it, his vampire senses dropped him into slow time. That was the usual response to a major threat, giving him more time to think.
But it didn’t help him now.
He looked about, staring past the jagged red lines that the lightning had left on his vision, but all he saw under the awful sky were dark, thrashing trees and leaf-laced wind that was half rain. The latter beat him up whenever he tried to stand, whipping plant matter and small pebbles at him, or maybe that was hail. He didn’t know; couldn’t see!
And his legs weren’t helping. They felt like jelly underneath him, wobbling even without the storm’s help. He was still trying to convince himself that he could stand when he heard Gillian’s voice, sounding frantic.
“Get out of me! Get out!”
The words were distorted by slow time, but their urgency came through nonetheless, and shocked him back into the normal world. He shoved past the bales he’d grabbed for support, and tried to lurch in the direction of her voice, only to smack down again almost immediately, splashing face-first into a puddle. But he looked up in time to see her illuminated by an immense flash of lightning, and thrashing about on the ground as if possessed.
Which was a fair choice of words since the next moment, the ghost came stumbling out of her.
“Are you mad?” Gillian drew a wand on the creature, her face furious. “You could have killed me!”
“You’re nearly there already, didn’t you hear?” Morgan taunted. “And the mage I was using died on me. I need a body to do my magic these days—”
“Not mine!”
The ghost laughed. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“What? What will we see?” Gillian demanded, gesturing about. “Where have you brought me?”
“Don’t you know? Look around.”
Kit didn’t know how they were supposed to see anything, as it was darker here than on the ship, with most of the lightning too far away to do any good. Fortunately, he didn’t have to guess where they were; his Lady could tell him. Or she could have, only this time, she didn’t answer.
And worse, there was no feeling that she might do so, no connection at all. He reached for the thread linking them as master and Child, and it was simply . . . gone. Or no, that wasn’t right. It was there on his end, but on hers . . .
It felt like a frayed rope that disappeared into nothingness. There was no sense of presence, no amused, frequently taunting, but always reliable help. No anything.
He didn’t know what to do with that, or with the sudden lack of voices in his head. He was used to a constant background noise from the rest of her extensive family, which he had learned to tamp down to a murmur before it drove him insane. But now, there was only echoing emptiness.
It almost felt as if he were human again, only when he was human, being alone in his head had been normal.
It wasn’t now.
And neither was the look on Gillian’s face as she stared upward, finally noticing the sky.
“Please,” she whispered. “Take me away from here.”
“When we’ve only just arrived?” the ghost said. “But you’d miss all the excitement.”
“No,” Gillian shook her head, and started trying to scramble away only her legs didn’t seem to work.
Kit didn’t understand her urgency, until a flurry of spells lit up the darkened forest nearby. One of which exploded a tree and sent it up like a gigantic torch, splashing light around everywhere. It was still hard to see, with the crazy beams from the fire being bent in all directions by the tree trunks, striping the landscape and confusing the eyes. But not so much that he couldn’t make out perhaps a dozen figures caught in a magical battle that, though small, was fierce and deadly.
A man fell, screaming, to the forest floor, his body limned in strange fire; another was blasted backward off his feet, hit a trunk perhaps ten feet off the ground with his shield, and bounced back into the fight. Only to have another spell finally take him down. Whilst another was able to dodge a combined attack by a handful of mages, calling down lightning from the heavens to rain fire on their shields, and to incinerate the one who was late getting his protection up.
“Those are our men out there,” Morgan whispered, crouching down beside Gillian. “We could save them. We could save everyone.”
“No . . .”
“No, you don’t want to help them? How unfeeling.”
“No, don’t do this to me!”
There was an edge of panic in Gillian’s words, as there had been in her actions a moment before, that made no sense to Kit. They were all close to the ground, Gillian still being almost prone and him having stayed put once the spells started flying. But even if one came this way, he had seen her fight; she could shield them both.
So why did she sound truly afraid for the first time?
“I am doing nothing,” the witch said. “The Circle is. I am simply proving to you that history can be undone. We were told that time spells don’t work; that they were a trick played by some evil wizard or witch centuries ago. That they merely kill whoever attempts them.
“But this isn’t an illusion; we are really here. Out there—” she gestured at the fight in the forest. “Is your husband, fighting for his life. Will you lay here and do nothing? Will you leave him to his fate?
“Or will you take the chance to put it right?”
“Change one thing and you could change all,” Kit said hoarsely, finally understanding what was happening. And feeling the shock of it flow through him, almost as if one of the spell bolts had hit him straight on.
What must it be like for Gil?
“That is the point,” Morgan hissed. “Change all! Put things back the way they should have been—”
“And let the Armada land?” Kit croaked. “You may as well invite the Black Circle in yourself!”
“I see no great difference to the mages we have now!”
“Then you haven’t seen as much as you boast. The Silver Circle has its flaws, many of them. But it also has rules and codes of behavior. They don’t always abide by them, but they have them and they provide some measure of restraint.
“The dark has none. I have been to the continent; I have seen what they do there. The burnings that cover up the horrors they perpetrate, the magic they steal. They hunt magic users like prey, killing thousands—”
“And the Silver does not?”
“Not to merely suck them dry of their magic, no! There are ways to live with them—”
“Unacceptable ways!” Morgan snapped. “I will not be a slave to their laws; will not see my people a perpetual underclass! Let the dark come. The covens will fight them off—”
“The covens cannot stand against half of Europe, and neither can the Crown. You would bring utter destruction on us all!”
“Liar.” She put a hand on Gillian’s shoulder. “Look up, my dear. Look up and see the power that the covens could muster at their peak. Let the Armada land; they will find a witch behind every tree and stone, and a coven in every grove. We will slaughter them all—”
“You will die and take this country with you!” Kit said desperately.
“I?” the ghost said. “I am but a spirit, and he who was giving me strength has abandoned me. I can do nothing. But you,” she looked at Gillian. “You can save us all.
“You can save him.”
“Gillian,” Kit said urgently, “think for a moment—”
“She’s able to think without your help, vampire!”
The ghost looked like she’d have preferred to follow her comment with a hex to remove his vocal cords or to sew his lips shut, but thankfully, she didn’t have a body. She couldn’t do magic right now. And Kit took full advantage.
“Gillian, if you save him, think of the consequences. You never end up in your rag-tag group. You never get thrown into prison, never meet a Great Mother there, never become one yourself. And never help the thousands who have depended on you—”
“Thousands who won’t need help when we succeed!” Morgan snarled.
“—you can’t even know that you and Elinor will survive. If the Armada lands, and the Dark Circle comes to this land with a Spanish army at its back, anything could happen—”
“Yes, like our victory!” Morgan said.
But it didn’t matter. He and the ghost had been arguing, but Gillian had said nothing all this time. She was too busy staring at the forest, her hand having crept up to her throat as if she was choking, and the look on her face . . .
He didn’t think she’d heard a word.
And then he knew she hadn’t, when she scrambled to her feet and pelted toward the fight.