Boo’s translocation had a catastrophic
effect in two worlds – both where she had gone to and where she had come from.
The cord that had connected the witches’ array to Celia was filled, for a
moment, to over-brimming with energy. The force of the effect pushed part of
the energy back along the cord, like water falling down an overflow pipe.
Everyone in the array, including Owen, was struck with a spell bolt; an
unfocused force, but traumatic. The
array broke and the individual parts of it dropped away. All nine witches were struck down instantly,
knocked unconscious by the percussive force.
Only Gwyneth was left, standing in horror as her companions fell.
‘Help! Help me please!’
she shouted, running to her sister’s side and kneeling to examine her. For a
second she feared that Bronwyn was dead; perhaps they were all dead. She bent
down to listen for her breathing. There was a moment when she could hear
nothing and her heart lurched, but then she heard her twin exhale, soft but
unmistakeable.
Other people,
apprentices and servants poured into the council chamber, some preparing potent
spells of defence and offense and others simply bewildered by the strange sound
of their mistress in distress. Gwyneth
got them to check the health of the other coveners. One by one they
inspected them and nodded as they found
both pulse and breath, but at Stephen’s body they hesitated. In him they could
find no signs of life.
The coven’s healers
were called and they clustered round him, pushing aside the others. They were now
entirely redundant and they fell back to the sides of the chamber. The healers
cast what mending spells they could, but it was too late. They had nothing in
their repertoire to pull him back from where he had gone. It was their law –
the dead stayed dead; they would not cross the line.
‘His heart has
failed’ said Anne, the oldest of the healers, ‘he had had a great shock and he
has slipped away’
Tears sprung to
Gwyneth’s eyes and for a moment she faltered. She put her hand on his cold
cheek. How could it be that he’d never speak again? She had known him for
thirty years and had never really liked him, but now that seemed the shallowest
shelf of the ocean of her feelings. Her
long red hair fell over her face.
‘He was a very fine
man…’ she sobbed, ‘ …irritatingly foolish about so many things … but such a
kind soul… how will we do without him?’
They all stood back
and watched her mourn. They had never seen her like this before and they had no
idea how to respond to it. None of them had the courage to step forward and
comfort her. Time stretched on. It seemed like their mistress’s fingers were
glued on to her dead friend’s face.
For a moment she felt
like she was drowning, but then a sudden thought jerked her back to reality.
She turned to Anne.
‘Wake John up.’ she
said, ‘Now. Use whatever method is necessary. I need to talk to him’
The healer looked at
her, wide-eyed. She shook her head with a little tremor.
‘What do you mean,
Gwyn?’
Gwyneth’s face
struggled to return to its natural configuration. With a great effort she
frowned. Many of the onlookers felt a perverse sense of relief.
‘Wake him up!’ she
commanded, ‘I know you can do it’
Anne’s pale face went
grey. He voice was high and cracked.
‘The jolt – is that
what you mean?’
Gwyneth nodded
ferociously.
‘It might kill him,
too’ whispered Anne, ‘it’s only for the direst emergencies’
‘Then you should most
definitely use it now! I’ll take full
responsibility’
Gwyneth looked suddenly
up over the sprawled bodies out into the woods beyond. All eyes followed her gaze, but, as yet, there
was nothing to be seen. Everyone could
imagine exactly, however, what sorts of thing she might fear in the distance.
Anne rushed over to
where John lay, curled up like a foetus, clutching something in his left hand.
She placed her hands on his head and took a deep, troubled, breath.
‘Ysgegio’
John’s body tensed,
as if it had suddenly been made elastic and it had been pulled to its maximum
extent. The jolt forced his arms and legs straight and kicked him up in the
air. He appeared to hover inches above the ground for a split second, his body
arching, and then he fell down on to his backside.
‘Ow’ he said, his
eyes open but seeing nothing very much, ‘For the god’s sake, Laurence – what
sort of way is that to wake a man up?’
His eyes focused on
Gwyneth.
‘And what are you doing in my bedroom?’ he croaked,
looking round, ‘where’s my dressing gown…’
Gwyneth kicked him
sharply in the side. She seemed neither to relish this nor regret it.
‘We are in dreadful
danger, idiot witch lord. I demand
your full attention’
A young witch-apprentice
helped John up from the ground. He dusted himself off, winced and rubbed the
base of his back. His eyes finally focused on the council chamber.
‘What is it,
Gwyneth?’
‘Not here’ she
hissed, ‘I need to show you something’
***
John was too disorientated, at first, to
take in the news of Stephen’s death. Gwyneth wouldn’t let him grieve, either,
and so he was left in desolate confusion. What was going on? She hurried him
back into the house and down into a part of the complex that he hardly knew at
all. They clattered down a flight of rickety stairs into a basement area. She
lit an oil lamp.
They were in a small
circular room with a font in the centre of it. This structure was a raised
basin with an eddying surface of liquid in it. The surface was a shimmering
mass of colours. He looked at the strange play of light and texture without
recognition.
‘What is that?’ he
asked
‘It’s a life map,
John. Angharad made it for me’
‘And that is, what,
exactly?’
‘A device for showing
the fate of a person, or of linked groups of people’
John stared into it.
The surface of the font had a series of coloured areas bounded by black
membranous lines. There were thirteen sections, all of different colours, but
one was without hue, the colour of a fresh rain water puddle. He knew
immediately what this was. His intake of breath was sharp, his voice was cold.
‘This is borderline
magic, Gwyn, dangerous stuff – why didn’t I know about it?’
Her laugh was like
sawdust.
‘For that very
reason’
‘Why do you even need
to have it?’
She stared down at a
deep red patch. Adjoining it was a much fainter light blue one. The boundary
between the two colours was very fine.
‘So that I can check
that we are all alive, John; and look for those who are fading’
John shook his head
and put his hand up to his face. His gaze was fixated on the transparent patch
- where were Stephen’s colours now? Had they drained away for ever?
‘We vowed, Gwyn… We
all made that vow. No reaching into the beyond – no playing with souls’
Gwyn looked away from
the font and directly at him. She was as hard as rock.
‘And I have never
broken my vow. And I never will – this is practical, needful magic. Without it
we might have failed’
John couldn’t help
but look for his own chromatic signature. He recognised it immediately – a
cascading swirl of rainbow hues. Was
that what he was – protean, unfocused, undecided? Gwyneth, sensing his reverie,
interrupted him.
‘Concentrate, witch
lord. You are our leader and we face desperate times. We are a covener down,
and we may lose another at any time’
She stabbed her
finger at a patch of white light on the taut surface. It was brilliant, but hazy,
like the sun seen through waterfall spray. Every now and then it flickered briefly. John focused.
‘Is it doing that
because she’s in the Outer Void or because she’s dying?’ he whispered. She stared down at Celia’s signature and
shrugged.
‘Both, I should
imagine. But either way we have a functional coven of eleven, and most of that
number are unconscious or befuddled.’ Her stare was withering. He tried to
catch up with her meaning.
‘Yes, I can see that.
What are the consequences?’
‘We don’t have enough
active minds to ensure that this locality will remain hidden and defended. If
they have minds probing for us then they will probably find us, particularly
after such a major energy surge. And, if they find us then they will know that
our array is weakened…’
‘…And they could
attack at any time’
John was at a loss –
he couldn’t see beyond Stephen’s death and Celia’s stranding. It seemed possible that they might lose
everything.
‘What can we do?’
‘We need a
replacement coven member, and we need them now’
‘But who?’
She did not hesitate
and he would have been lying if he’d said that he didn’t know what was coming.
‘Laurence. You need
to go and get him, immediately. Even he will see the necessity’
The mention of his
manservant made John open his hand. He had been clutching something in it ever
since he had been jolted and suddenly it seemed important. The mail paper fell and
Gwyneth caught it as it fluttered down.
She looked puzzled for a moment, but then hurried to read it.
‘It’s for you’ she
said, very flatly, ‘and once again it looks like Laurence has found a way of getting
out of fatigues. Jones knows what he thinks he’s doing in Oket though’
‘What?’
She handed the paper
back to him. He read it twice, but he still didn’t believe it. His forehead
furrowed as he read.
‘He needs me. They’re
in dreadful danger’
Gwyneth took the
paper, folded it roughly, and put it in her pocket.
‘One thing at a time. First the coven, then your friend’
John glared at her,
momentarily hating her, but then he acquiesced. He knew he had no choice.
‘Never single spies’
she murmured, ‘and with Laurence out of the running, now we have only one
choice’
‘No’ said John,
shaking his head, his open fingers clutched into a ball, ‘we all agreed… that
we would never ask her… not after what she did…how can you even consider it…?’
Her face was still,
but her water in the font dipped into a hollow and faded from the strongest red
to the weakest blush.
‘That was a very long
time ago and my feelings are irrelevant – my duty is to the coven, not to the
urgings of ancient hurt. There are no other candidates. No-one else has even
remotely her abilities’
‘There must be someone else? She is a desperate choice; the others will
never agree…’
‘Yes they will. As I
have just said, there is no one else with her skills, not now that Celia is
lost to us, and so they will have to accept her’
‘Then, she will never
agree. She has shown time and time again
that she cares only for herself’
Gwyneth turned away
from the font. John had to bend round to
see her face and to strain to hear her voice.
‘She is grown dark
and cruel, I know, but not even she will want to see the end of the coven’
John felt his head
begin to rumble with a thunderous migraine. The rest of his body seemed keen to
join in. He could think of nothing to say. It was all he could do stop himself
from dissolving into misery.
‘So, go and get her’
Gwyneth insisted, ‘and hurry back or there may be nothing to hurry back to. I will do what I can here.’
‘But Gwyn…’ he moved
towards her, wanting to comfort her. She glared at him.
‘Shush, foolish man;
didn’t I tell you to hurry…’
He snapped back into
reality. His instincts kicked in. He was ready to go, if he must.
‘Wake the others; find
out where Angharad and Huw are; get Dai and Owen to search for breaches; if
necessary evacuate the complex; don’t try to fight without me… I mean, I
suppose, without us’
Her eyes widened, but
she nodded readily. When it really mattered she was the loyalist of all of them.
He put his hand to
his head and began to rub his forehead. A thousand searing memories flooded
back into his brain. He fought back a
vision that had haunted him for twenty years, a vision of an empty cot and two
red haired woman weeping inconsolably. The future seemed about to be infected
by the dusty spores of the past. For a brief
moment he silently cursed poor Stephen’s wretched heart.
He said nothing
more. He set himself to search his mind
for a trace signature that he knew all too well, but had hoped he would never
need again. He found it readily, it was sharp and strong, as he knew that it
would be. He breathed in deeply, concentrated his mind into stillness, and then
blinked to the trace.
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