A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3) (31 page)

My self-control broke and I began to sob.

I had been
so
naïve, so gullible. They’d lured me in with the one bait they knew how to dangle. I’d followed the retreating shadow of my mother all the way into a trap. If it hadn’t been for Marcus it might even have worked. But he’d pushed too hard, his desperation too naked, too frightening. What had they promised him, if he succeeded? Or – perhaps – what threats had they held over him if he failed?

I shuddered. I understood, now, the strange pleading desperation in his voice. He was pleading for his soul, his magic.

As I sat in the dark I began to think about Seth. Would they give him a fire or a lamp? I thought of him sitting for hour after hour in that barren cell, waiting for me to come back.

What would happen to him, if something happened to me?

I thought of Tatiana’s voice, cruel and slow.

Nothing is wasted
.

I thought of her red gums and the strange, blood-tasting bread …

Stop it – stop being macabre
.

I stood and went to the door, listening for a sound. None came, but I put my mouth to the crack and hollered, ‘Seth!’

Silence: just the echoes of my own voice ringing through the tunnels.

‘Seth!’ I called again, straining my lungs to cracking. ‘
Seth!
’

My voice broke. ‘Seth – please, Seth – if you can hear me, if you can’t speak just make a sound, any sound …’

I stood listening, trying to hold back the sobs, trying to keep silent so I could listen. But there was no sound at all. Not even the long, throbbing scream of the night before. I might have been completely alone.

I sat with my back to the cold stone of the cave wall and wrapped my anorak and Seth’s jumper around me as tightly as I could. Then I sent my longing flowing out of the cave, beneath the crack under the door, out into the tunnels, far and wide. I hoped that somewhere, wherever he was, Seth could feel the heat of it in this chill underground tomb. I hoped that somewhere, he was warm, and not in pain, and not in fear. I hoped.

The hours passed slowly – I might even have slept or dozed. I had no idea what time it was. It felt like hours since Tatiana had woken me, telling me it was morning, but I was no longer certain whether it really had been morning, or just a few hours since I’d lain down at Seth’s side. I’d left my watch on the boat, but since I didn’t know what time zone we were in, it wouldn’t have helped anyway. I had no idea where we were – no idea if we were in Siberia, or one of the islands, or somewhere else completely.

I could have conjured some light or some warmth, but I had to let my magic recover. I might need to fight. So instead I sat in the dark and I tried to think what to do.

I should scry: that was my first thought. Scry for Seth, and perhaps for Emmaline and Abe too. I thought of Abe, coming racing to London when I’d seen Caradoc’s body: Emmaline’s terse explanation that he’d
heard
my screams, felt my panic.

Could Abe feel my fear now? I stared into the blackness, wondering. Could I make contact with him?

For a minute, hope kindled in my chest and a flicker of warmth began to spread through me – but then I realized what would happen next.

If I contacted them, they’d try to rescue me. And it would be a death sentence. What could Abe and Emmaline do alone against this army of witches? The Ealdwitan were in no position to offer help – even if my grandmother was still alive.

The spark of hope died. I put my hand to my forehead, pressing back the tears.

So that was it. I was condemned to die here – or worse, perhaps,
not
to die here, but to survive in darkness and fear. That thought was bad enough, but worst of all was the realization that I wasn’t just condemning myself. I was condemning Seth. If I couldn’t find a way out for myself, I
had
to find one for him, even if it meant I was chained here for ever.

I was still running the rats’ maze of possibilities in my head, when I heard steps in the tunnel outside and I sprang upright. My witchlight blazed in the palm of my hand, my heart beat fast in my throat.

It was Tatiana.

‘Where’s Seth?’ I demanded as soon as she entered the room. She bowed her head, hiding something, perhaps a smile.

‘He is well taken care of.’

‘I don’t believe you! Take me to him.’

‘In good time.’

‘Now!’ I cried. Tatiana shook her head, her ink-black eyes glittering in the witchlight.

‘Ah-na, Ah-na – you are in no position to make demands, little one.’

She was right, of course. I gritted my teeth.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said humbly. ‘You’re right. I’m not demanding – I’m begging.
Please
let me see him.’

‘Perhaps,’ Tatiana said imperturbably. ‘If you help us, perhaps we will help you.’

I slumped and she looked at me, an amused smile at the corner of her lips.

‘What happened … ?’ A lump rose in my throat. Suddenly it was imperative that I knew, that I had one solid fact to hold onto. ‘What
really
happened to my mother? All that stuff Marcus said in the cave. That was rubbish, wasn’t it?’

Tatiana looked at me for a long moment, seeming to calculate something in her head. Then she relented.

‘I will tell you.’ She squatted on the floor on her heels and patted the rock beside her, gesturing to me to sit down. I sat, awkwardly, uncomfortably, and Tatiana said, ‘Your mother came to us with a bargain: she asked for our help with a charm, in exchange for some information on our enemies. We obliged; we gave her the charm. And, as promised, she returned with information. But she did not give us all the information we wanted.’

‘She gave you some?’

‘Yes,’ Tatiana nodded. ‘Passwords, names, details we had asked her to obtain. But when we had more questions she declined. She said she had given us the information she promised and she refused to go further. But we had not rationed ourselves when we made her that charm; we had acted in faith, we had poured our all, our strength, our best endeavours into our work. It was strong and true – so strong that even we could not break it. In her cunning she had used our own spell to make you safe, even from us. And she did not repay us in the same coin. She gave grudgingly and held back her jewels.’

‘So what did you do?’ I asked, almost unwillingly.

‘We attempted to persuade her. But she was brave.’ Tatiana shrugged. ‘Our persuasions, of one kind and another, did not flower into fruit. We cut her, but she gave us only blood, not words. At last, she had no more blood to give. And no more words.’

I felt a coldness run all over me, from the top of my head down my spine, into my heart and lungs and guts.

And then a huge, bursting dam of love.

All this. All this she had done for me.

All this she had given. Her love. Her blood. Her life.

For me.

I found I was crying and I spoke through sobs and tears, trying to make myself understood.

‘And wh-what happened n-next? Her b-body, p-please tell me? Is she buried? C-can I see where she’s buried?’

‘Nothing was wasted,’ Tatiana said soberly. ‘We do not bury our dead for their blood to feed the earth. Child, your mother died in pain and futility. She saved no one – not you, not herself. Her life and magic was sacrificed to preserve yours. Now, I beg of you, for her sake, do not waste her sacrifice again. Come to the Cathedral. Raise our holy Master. Live yourself to see the wonder of his clean, new world.’

‘If I refuse?’ I whispered, wiping the tears from my face with my sleeve.

Tatiana sighed.

‘Come, child. There is something you should see before you make up your mind. I will show you how we deal with traitors and those who falter on the path.’

She stood and I stood too, unwillingly, but unable to resist the power of her dark eyes.

‘Come,’ she said again and I began to walk. At least if I kept my eyes and ears open I might see something of Seth, find out where he was being held.

But although I stared in at every cave we passed, none of them was the cave with the blankets where we had slept in each other’s arms. And none of them held Seth.

At last we came to a long corridor with a blaze of light at the end of it, a bright surgical light, unlike any I had seen down here. An electric light. It hurt my eyes after the long darkness and I put my hand up, shielding my face as we got closer.

Tatiana opened a door and we entered a square room lit with a dozen bulbs. The light was almost blinding and it took a while for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I looked around blinking, trying to take it in. We were in a large, square chamber, properly roomlike, its walls roughly plastered with concrete. In the middle was a grating, like a drain, and above it something like a cross between a cage, and a throne, and a dentist’s chair. I had never seen anything like it. It looked like a child had created it from debris found around the mine, ornamented with objects scavenged from a museum of medical history. Here was part of an old office chair, the kind displayed in vintage shops selling twentieth-century antiques. There was a complicated web of coiling electrical wire, insulated with fabric and lead and ceramic fuses. There were makeshift shackles, hammered out from pieces of rusting metal. And on one side, on a rickety metal stand, was a huge, glass flagon, like the prototype intravenous drips I’d seen in old films.

There was one other incongruous touch: five or six huge iron rings set into the walls at intervals round the room, sunk deep into the concrete. They looked like the kind of thing you’d use to lock up a motorbike. I had no idea what they could be for.

Then I realized I could hear screams coming from down the corridor, from the opposite direction to the way we’d come.

For a moment I stood frozen, not certain who’d come through the door. The screams sounded completely hysterical: wild and desperate – and it was impossible to tell the identity of the screamer. Then a second pair of doors burst open and a group of people staggered into the room, carrying a struggling witch between them.

My first feeling was relief that it wasn’t Seth. My second feeling was shock because, as they wrestled her into the chair and shackled her limbs, I realized: I had seen her before. It was the witch from the library, the one who had chased us on to the bridge. The mad, beautiful, wild-eyed witch. And one of the people wrestling her into the chair was Marcus.

‘What are you doing to her?’ I cried out, my voice shaking with panic.

No one answered, not even Marcus. I’m not sure they even heard me beneath the screams of the witch. She was shrieking: a high, inhuman sound, quite mad with fear. No one spoke in answer to her screams; they simply fought her in businesslike silence, subduing her until she was completely bound, shackled to the chair.

‘No!’ The witch found her tongue at last, her eyes darting round the room, speedwell-blue and shot with red. ‘Danya, Tatiana, Yana!
Pozhalujsta!
’

‘Sister.’ Tatiana spoke comfortingly, soothingly. She walked to the witch’s side and smoothed her hair back from her face with something like love. ‘Irina, you betrayed us. You must pay the price.’

The witch began to gabble out a stream of Russian, her voice ragged with pleading. I didn’t know what she was saying, but it sounded like she was begging for her life.

‘It is too late, Irina,’ Tatiana said sadly. Then she turned to the woman beside the chair, who had strapped the witch into the contraption. ‘Danya, the needle.’

At her words Irina began to fight again, like a demon this time. She thrashed steadily and wildly in the chair, completely heedless of the metal biting into her skin and the blood running down her bare feet from the rusty shackles, flinging out useless spells right and left, spells that scorched and blistered the walls. One hit Marcus on the forehead, leaving a welt on his smooth tanned skin, but he ignored it as if it had been the bite of a midge.

It took all three of them to hold her while the witch called Danya approached with a long rubber tube. She bent over the chair, drew back her arm, and suddenly there was a long, agonized scream from Irina, a scream of complete despair. It went on, and on, a long throbbing sound of hopeless anguish. Danya stepped back and I saw that the thick tube had been stabbed into Irina’s chest, right between her ribs.

Tatiana pressed a switch on the wall and the air filled with the thrum of an engine, a pump. Irina convulsed, suddenly rigid in her shackles. The tubing twisted and undulated gently, like a live thing feeding on her, and then a drop of yellow liquid stained the glass demijohn.

We stood completely still, watching as the machine pumped the golden liquid into the glass flagon. I was frozen with horror – unable to believe my eyes, unable to move. The witches stood in attitudes of resignation, as if this was an unpleasant task, something like slaughtering a family pet, but for the best in the end.

At last I found my voice.

‘No!’ I whispered. ‘Marcus – please, stop this.’

‘I can’t,’ Marcus said shortly. His face was not as resigned as the others. There was a kind of revulsion in his eyes, but he didn’t look away.

‘Tatiana,’ I begged, ‘please, please, what are you doing?’

‘You cannot help her, little one.’ Tatiana spoke kindly but firmly. ‘It is too late. See, the glass is filling already. Irina betrayed her sisters. There must be punishment, in an ordered society. There must be consequences.’

‘What did she do?’ I cried. ‘What could she possibly have done to deserve this?’

It was Marcus who answered, his face pitying.

‘When she came for you, in St Petersburg, she wasn’t trying to kidnap you. She was trying to warn you. But you wouldn’t stop, you wouldn’t listen. So she chased you. When Emmaline attacked her, she fought back – I don’t know why. Perhaps she thought Emmaline was part of the plot.’

‘That was why you fought her,’ I whispered. ‘You weren’t saving us. You were stopping her from warning us.’

‘Yes,’ he said. One word. That was all.

‘Please!’ I cried. I turned to Tatiana – I don’t know why, but it felt as if she had more humanity than Marcus. ‘For God’s sake, no! If you stop now—’