Lisbeth McQuarrie
I stood there for a little too long – and by that, I meant for half a second longer than I ought. Stood there, because my heart did treacherous things in my chest. It fluttered as if it were flying about in a storm.
Not a storm of clouds and weather. A storm of rather riotous sensations and deep confusion.
Why would Winchester, the brute, care if I hurt myself? Surely he would want me to be permanently severed from his side by the most permanent act of all?
The confusion… the confusion simply wasn’t worth it, and I needed to take this opportunity. For I believed I had finally found Arlene.
I could lead everyone to her.
Something told me not to.
My natural suspicion? Perhaps more.
I’d already told you at length that we witches had intuition we could not always control.
I rushed back down the tunnel. I’d sensed something a length ago. I ran to the correct section. I will admit that my heart was in my mouth, battering away, beating so hard, I thought that it would rip a hole right through my torso.
I kept turning back to where Winchester had taken Grace.
Lord knows where they would go, but I was confident they would not come across any more enemies. I had dispatched the only half-ghost in these tunnels.
But who knew what would happen when I found Arlene?
I located the correct section of the wall and didn’t hesitate as I slammed my palm against it. Energy crackled from me into the stone. It was freely given, and it was freely received.
I felt it sink down through the cracks in the rock, reigniting the old spell that had created them in the first place. With a deep shudder that jumped into my teeth and rattled through my skull, the wall was peeled back like curtains.
I did not throw myself in, for I was not that stupid. Grace had proudly proclaimed that there was no witch like her mother in the kingdom. I had chosen to ignore that as bluster. What a mistake. For the magic that broke around me as I took a hesitant step into a dark room felt as if it had come from Nature herself.
I kept my hands out, open wide in a placating motion. I did not know if that would help me. This woman didn’t know me.
The door closed behind me. Or at least the wall.
I had not chosen to make that happen.
I heard the hiss of a long, drawn-out breath. It rattled, and that was not a good sign.
My fear quickly turned to something else. I rushed forward. This room was perilously dark. That didn’t mean I couldn’t identify a chair right in front of me. My sharpened senses could feel the air moving around it. And the primary movement of air came from the rattling, wheezing hiss of somebody on the edge of death.
I dropped down to my knee in front of the chair, and finally I saw a little light. It rimmed an old woman’s pupils.
It was brilliant magic. Or at least once had been. Now it was ebbing and dying like an old ocean drying up on fast forward.
A hand reached out and clutched the side of my face. “Witch,” the voice said. “Dead witch,” it added.
I tried to buck back. I hadn’t practiced any magic. So this woman must’ve been watching me.
“Don’t move, child. I can sense you because I know your kind.”
“Know… know my kind? You’re Arlene, aren’t you? Are you a dead witch too? I know there’s another in the kingdom.”
“It’s fallen on your shoulders, has it? Are they broad enough? How much can you carry? How much can your heart afford to lose?” The old woman was on the edge of death. Her magic and will helped her hold on, but both were rapidly depleting.
She suddenly clutched my shoulders as if checking my measurements. As if, with her mere fingers, she could actually find out how much my petite form could carry.
“How much will you be willing to lose in the end?” she asked again through a rattling gasp.
“Lose?” I finally questioned, voice, which was usually as strong as an ox around Winchester, crumbling into dust before this woman’s prying touch.
I wasn’t speaking about her hands as they groped my cheeks and shoulders, as they tried to figure out what I could lose and what I could not. I meant her witch senses. I could feel them penetrating my defenses as they attempted to find out exactly what I was worth.
“The curse rises. Can you feel it? For it can feel you. And it will try to crush you long before you have a chance to sink it.”
She grabbed the side of my face. Do not ask how she had the strength to do this, but she turned my head down, and there was no way, even with magic and a soul stone, I could fight her.
I was forced to stare at the rough dirt beneath me. It stained my taffeta dress slightly, but that was not the point. There was wriggling energy within, rising from some dark space underneath the kingdom.
I’d heard about the curse. I believed, once or twice, I’d even heard the actual curse manifesting slowly from beneath. This was the first time I had viscerally felt it. And make no mistake, these sensations could not be denied. And nor could they be buried. For they were the exact opposite of what it was to bury in the first place.
As a dead witch, I was uniquely placed to detect the rising energies of death. And they lapped at my heels now. I could see worms rising and falling through the dirt as they desperately attempted to get away from the curse. But they could not. Some of them… oh, it was horrid, but some of them even caught fire and wriggled into dust.
I gasped. I couldn’t pull back. She wouldn’t let me. “The curse rises again. And this time, I fear there may be no stopping it. Only you can try. But you will be the first witch to sink it. And you will be the first to ever have a chance of truly defeating it. All others have simply shoved it back down, re-burying it like a body that refuses to rot. You,” she hissed, anchoring her hand on my shoulder and using it as purchase to drag her wizened lips close to my ear, “must remove it from the ground for good. You must break it down so it can be recycled. You must buy this kingdom a permanent chance and not simply a few more years.”
I trembled like I never had before. Emotions, pure and strong, unbidden as if they came from a past life, rose within me.
They were anathema to my personality. To the glib way I faced my trials. They were what one should really feel if they had a task like this thrust upon their shoulders.
One can be big in front of the mirror. For who do you face when you face yourself? One may be big in front of their family or a small group of people. Now expand that. Expand that to everything. Can you be glib when you face your countrymen? Can you be glib when you face the end? Or will you fall on your knees in desperation?
I fell to my knees now.
The dying witch continued to grip my face.
The light… the light of her eyes started to go out. She didn’t have long now. I could see the Ley lines converging on her. They could not sweep her down into the ground yet. She wouldn’t let them.
Her gaze darted across my face. “To defeat the curse, you must learn everything. Every secret. From the heart of the palace, to the Magical Academy, to back again. Do not let the dark sit in the shadows. This kingdom has buried many skeletons. Let them rise.”
“Are you… talking about necromancy?” I spluttered.
She shook her head once. “It’s the opposite. Humans must not raise the dead. But they must raise the dead secrets they have chosen to ignore.” She started to cough. And from the racking way it blasted through her chest, it seemed like she would never get better.
For she couldn’t. She was about to die. And she was… Grace’s mother.
I cast my gaze back toward the wall. Shouldn’t I drag Grace in here? Wasn’t it terrible to rob a child of the last moment with a loving parent?
The old witch knew exactly what I was thinking. She simply used the last of her dwindling energy to sit forward on her seat and grasp my cheeks harder. Her wrinkled thumb pressed hard into my temple.
She spoke no longer. Irrelevant. She could still communicate with me. But in a far clearer fashion.
Suddenly I saw a flash, a flash of a book sitting on a velvet plinth. It was so clear, it was like somebody had carved it there inside my mind and then carved it out of my own memories. They’d hacked up every other image of velvet I’d ever seen, of books, too. Then they’d weaved them together using my very emotions to create this… to create this, “Forbidden grimoire,” I stuttered, the words breaking from my lips.
“Yes. It comes back to the book. You must find it. And you must master the practices within.”
“But it’s dark magic.”
“No. It’s life magic. And you will learn that by the time this tale is done.” She suddenly slumped forward.
I gasped, grabbed her arms, and tried to push her back into her seat, but she still wasted the energy to force a hand to lock against my face. She stared into my eyes. “I’m transferring the energy over to you to activate the book. But you must be careful. You must learn how to practice. Or your enemies, if they find out you have this skill, will practice through you. Remember, strength is only your own when you wield it.”
“Your daughter must see you before you die. You—”
“My daughter isn’t—”
She got that far but no further. I saw the Ley lines around her. I had never seen them in a display quite this impressive.
It was as if they had gathered at the sight of a great historical moment, as if they were mere spectators. They converged over the old woman as she took one final breath. It wheezed. It shook back and forth in her throat. Then she slumped against me, dead.
With wide, tear-filled eyes, I watched the Ley lines dart toward her.
I had never… I had never seen a sight more somber yet more impressive. For as the Ley lines surged through her, they surged into me.
I didn’t realize what was happening until the Ley lines dragged something from the old dead woman’s body and forced it into my chest.
I would’ve screamed, but something grasped hold of my throat. The same power that now surged from her into me. Again my eyes were forced closed, and once more, I saw that forbidden tome. It danced there in front of my face as if all I had to do to make it manifest was grasp it. But the real book was far out of my reach.
Yet I now had the means to open it.
My head was thrust back. I knew light rimmed my eyes. The same illumination that had danced in the old lady before she had passed.
She slumped off me as my hands fell from her shoulders, and soon, I slumped to the side.
My eyes closed. My mind… began to empty out. All my dreams, all my glib fights.
Whereas once I had been able to face this world with feisty defiance, I felt this deep, deep goading need.
This… need to finally fight for something more than myself.
I locked a hand on my chest, and the first tear of many slid down my cheek.
The first tear of many….
As I closed my eyes, as I momentarily blacked out, the magic too strong to face, I remembered what the old woman had said. Before this was through, I would have to find out what I could sacrifice and what I could not. And the only way to find that out would be by losing.
My only hope was that I would not lose everything by the time this tale was done.