Part 8 (1/2)
”No blade can wound her, no poison choke her. But she is still mortal, and all mortals are vulnerable. Everything that lives must die.”
”That is no answer,” Fern said.
”It is all that we know.”
”Thank you,” Fern sighed, loosing her hold on the magic. The sisterhood removed the Eye and faded into vacancy.
”None other has ever . . . thanked us. We will remember you . . .”
In the dimness beyond the circle, Gaynor found she was pinching Will's arm. She heard Moonspittle mutter: ”The Gifted do not need such courtesies.” The cat writhed in his grip, spitting back at the fire.
Ragginbone said to Fern: ”Don't overreach yourself.” But Fern was already pacing the perimeter again, repeating the liturgy of summoning. This time, the vapor at the center condensed swiftly, darkening and solidifying into the figure of a man almost seven feet tall with the antlers of a stag. A doeskin covered little of a body where the muscles swelled like giant pods and vein stems entwined forearm and calf. His coloring was dark, not African dark or Asian dark, but a dark of the spirit, deeper than a deep tan, green tinted from the shadows of forest and jungle. The matted pelt on his head and chest was bronze-black; the eyes were set aslant under sweeping brows that met unnaturally low. His nostils flared at the unwholesome smells of the stale bas.e.m.e.nt and the traffic-ridden city beyond.
”Cerne,” Fern said. ”I give you greeting.”
”Greeting, witch. Why do you call on me? I have no love for your kind.”
”You once did,” said Fern, ”if love is the term. That is why I summoned you.”
”Love was not the term,” Cerne responded. ”Love was the sentence. She hungered, and I fed her. She was more beautiful than you, taller, and her hair was midnight-black, and her skin was like cream. I bathed in her skin, and slept in her hair, and filled her with my lifeless seed, and she took it, and performed an abomination. I have no more love for witches.”
”She plucked a spirit from the dark,” said Fern, ”and sealed it in her womb, and gave a life, if not a soul, to your son.”
”He is not my son. The immortals bear no children: we have no need. Like the mountains we grow, enduring agelong, and like them we are ground into dust. Our life is the world's life. We may sleep, or sink into Limbo, but we cannot pa.s.s the Gate. My-son-is a blasphemy against the Ultimate Law.”
”It wasn't his fault,” Fern protested, provoked to unplanned indignation. ”He had no will in the matter. He was born, and he suffers. You should care.”
There was a pause, then Cerne threw back his head and laughed. And laughed. The red cavern of his mouth was open wide, and she saw old bloodstains on his teeth, and the steam of his breath in his nostril pits. ”Harken to the witch! I am the lord of the wilderness, the hunter in the night, a killer of both the weak and the strong. Men have wors.h.i.+ped me, and set aside for me the best cut of the roast, and sacrificed their own kin on my altars. And I should care care? A sorceress stole my sp.a.w.n and magicked it into existence-and I should care? What folly is this? Did you call me here to plead for the brute beast that is Morgus's brat? Would you defy the Ultimate Powers?”
”If they were wrong,” Fern said doggedly. ”Everyone has a right to love, or at least compa.s.sion, no matter how they were made. But that isn't why I called you. I have Morgus to deal with. I thought you would know her-her weaknesses.”
”You are so close to the droppings of her womb-ask her her.”
”We are forever enemies. I burned her with fire crystals by the River of Death, but she crawled into the water, and was restored, and now no weapon can touch her. Yet I must kill her.”
”You kill kill her her?” She felt the smolder of his gaze probing her body. ”The aura of magic is bright around you, but you are still small, and slender as a peeled wand. There is no strength in you for such a contest.”
”I have strengths you cannot see,” Fern said, hoping it was true. ”I have to stop her. There is no one else who can.”
”Then I wish you good fortune,” said Cerne, with something that might have been a smile or snarl. ”When I learned what she had done, I would have spitted her with these-” he indicated his antlers ”-but she slipped from me, and s.h.i.+elded herself with spells, and after the beast squirmed free of her loins I knew I needed no other vengeance. Nonetheless, may the dark powers guide your hand. She has enjoyed life too long.”
”I doubt if she enjoys it,” said Fern.
He could tell her no more. She thanked him, as she had the sisterhood, and released the spell. She was beginning to feel drained, and there were still other spirits to summon, and questions to ask, and she seemed to have received no answers, only more questions. Ragginbone poured her something from one of the gla.s.s retorts-something that looked ancient and mellow and tasted like cooking brandy.
Then she resumed the spell.
The full moon shone straight through the window into my spellchamber. The climate seems to have grown warmer since the old days: I opened the cas.e.m.e.nt, giving the light a clear path, and the air that followed it was mild, smelling of the wood beyond. Then I drew the curtains over the other windows, lit the blue fire. I wanted to open the circle a long way, to reach far and deep, and the spellfire empowers me. Flimsy spirits, primitive and crude, had begun to cl.u.s.ter among the roof beams and under the tiles, sucked in by the vacuum of the ghostless house; I could see some of them seeping through the ceiling like a shadowy stain. They are mere elementals, individually ineffectual, but in swarms they have the insidious strength of ma.s.sed bacteria. My dark magics attract the most basic type, the sort who are drawn to acts of power and pride. They both feed them and feed off them, surrounding the circle with their miasma. Nehemet saw them, too; I noticed her gazing upward, with the spell glimmer in her eyes.
I moved around the periphery, chanting the ancient words. In the center, moonlight met firelight, silver mingling with blue. There was a mistiness at that point that grew slowly denser; too slowly. Vague shapes interlocked, failing to materialize. I saw the veil of the seeress, and phantom fingers clasping the Eye, but they were too many, a whole sisterhood in a single ent.i.ty. Their voices sounded somehow remote, as if echoing from within the Wrokewood, or floating down a moonbeam. ”We are weary. Do not call us now. We will not speak again.”
”Then go,” I said. ”All save one. I summon Leopana Pthaia. Let her come before me!”
The multiple figure dwindled into a solitary shape squat and rounded like the idols of the Mother, with the claws of an animal dangling between her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a scarlet cloth over her sable features. The Black Seeress. She removed the cloth, showing the nose spread wide across her face, and the unsmiling curve of protuberant lips. Her bones were not visible, for she is the most powerful of the remaining seeresses, and the closest to mortal flesh, and it is not for her complexion that she is called the Black. She fixed the Eye in her left socket, and the ring of the iris darkened against its sudden glow.
”I am the Pthaia,” she said. ”What do you want of me?”
”I did not summon the sisterhood. Why did you not come alone?”
”We were bound together. There is too much magic in the night. Question me, and be done.”
”There is one that I must find. She was named Fernanda, but I rechristened her Morcadis, in honor of her Gift. I would have made her my coven sister and mixed my blood with hers, but she betrayed me and fled, seeking my death. But I live, and have returned to the world, and will take back my kingdom! Yet first I must have my revenge. Where is she?”
”Neither too far, nor too near. Look for her, and you waste your sight.”
”Why is that?” I demanded. Leopana was not usually so cryptic.
”She will find will find you you. Have patience, and she will come. She is only a circle away.”
”What do you mean? Speak more plainly!”
”I have spoken. You are clever, Morgus, and you rank high among the Gifted, and you think yourself beautiful. The River of Death has sealed your flesh against all weapons that bite, so you are as untouchable as a G.o.d. Yet I say to you, beware! You are too proud, daughter of the north, too greedy, too vengeful; but there are those who are prouder and hungrier, and whose enmity runs deeper. Do not measure yourself against the greater foe, or overlook the lesser.”
I felt her anger, and I knew her words sprang from that source, and were not a warning but a curse. The Eye smoldered but could not pierce. ”I did not summon you for advice,” I said. ”d.a.m.n me with visions, or be silent. Have you nothing more to tell me?”
”Everything that lives . . . must die . . .” Her voice grew faint, and she plucked out the Eye, pulling the veil over her face and vanis.h.i.+ng without dismissal. My grip on the magic seemed to be erratic, though I did not know why, and I poured my will back into the circle, drawing taut the perimeter, reaching out beyond the boundaries of the night. An old, old crone appeared briefly at the heart of the spell, half bald and dressed in corpse clothes, mumbling to herself. I knew her, of course: Hexate, who had made herself a G.o.ddess among witches, and drunk the blood of a thousand sacrifices, and grown fat on human flesh; but she was nothing now. A senile hag who gibbered and cackled, sinking toward a sleep from which she might never awaken. For the immortals, senility can last a long time, and the sleep must be profound indeed that can carry them into Limbo. I banished her without questions, though she remembered my name, and I called on another of the old ones, the first spirits who have remained to consort with Men. He was manifest as a slight figure scarcely four feet high, his anatomy undeveloped, his face infantine and pure, save for the eyes. I say he he as a matter of convenience and custom, but in fact the s.e.x of the Child is not known, and his androgynous features may look sometimes more feminine, sometimes closer to those of a boy. He wore a tunic of white samite and a wreath of leaves on moon-gilded curls. as a matter of convenience and custom, but in fact the s.e.x of the Child is not known, and his androgynous features may look sometimes more feminine, sometimes closer to those of a boy. He wore a tunic of white samite and a wreath of leaves on moon-gilded curls.
”Eriost,” I greeted him, ”who is also called Vallorn, Idunor, Sifril the Ever Young, by your names I bind you. Answer my questions.”
”You have left too many out,” said the Child. ”I am also Teagan the Beautiful, and Maharac the Corrupter, and Varli the Slayer. Question me as you wish, but you cannot compel my answer.”
”I do not need to,” I said. ”The question is direct but the answer is obscure, and I think you will not know it.”
”Ask,” said Eriost.
”Even the Black Seeress answered me only with riddles and curses. You are too ignorant-”
”Ask!”
”I seek one Fernanda Morcadis, a witch of untried Gift and stolen skills. Yet it seems that her inexpert nets are too subtle for the gaze of the wise and fa.r.s.eeing.”
A frown puckered the creaseless forehead; the knowing eyes glowed like marsh gas. ”I feel no subtlety,” he said. ”There is something else, something-” And then he was gone. There was no warning: he disappeared like a light suddenly extinguished, leaving the circle empty. I stared, caught my breath-released it in a torrent of Atlantean. The suspense seemed to endure a long time, but in reality it was only moments. Then he was back, and the glow dimmed in his eyes.
”She has no subtlety,” he repeated, and anger disfigured his innocence. ”But she has power-though it may be less than yours-and the courage to use it. She will come to you-she will come soon-and when she does, you must kill her. Don't hesitate, don't try to trap her. Kill Kill. Or you will not see another sun.”
”You overestimate her,” I said. ”My Gift is greater, my will stronger. No weapon can harm me, not even the guns of the modern world. When I have her, I will snap her like green wood.”