King Kobold revived-Warlock-2.5 (18 page)

She broke off, gasping and shuddering. Alarmed, Gwen clasped Agatha’s hands in her own, and paled as their chill crept up to her spine. She had heard the tale of how, long years ago, the witch Agatha had flung the folk of five vil-lages out of her cave, how many had broken their heads or their backs on the slopes below. No witch in Gramarye, in all the history of that eldritch island, had been possessed of such power. Most witches could lift only two, or perhaps three, at a time. And as for hurling them about with enough force to send them clear of a cave—why, that was flatly impossible. Wasn’t it?

Therefore, if a witch had indeed performed such a feat, why, obviously she must have had a familiar, a helping spirit. These usually took the form of ani-mals; but Agatha had kept no pets. Therefore—why, there still had to be a famil-iar, but it must have been invisible.

“ ‘Twas then,” panted the witch, “that I came to this cavern, where the ledge without was so narrow that only one man could enter at once, and so that in my wrath I might never injure more than a few. But those few…”

The scrawny shoulders slackened, the back bowed; the old witch slumped against the rough table.

“Those few, aie! Those few…”

“They sought to burn thee,” Gwen whispered, tears in her eyes, “and ‘twas done in anger, anger withheld overlong, longer than any man might have con-tained it! They debased thee, they tortured thee!”

“Will that bring back dead men?” Agatha darted a whetted glance at Gwen. Gwen stared at the ravaged face, fascinated. “Agatha…” She bit her lip, then rushed on. “Dost thou wish to make amends for the lives thou hast taken?”

“Thou dost speak nonsense!” The witch spat. “A life is beyond price; thou canst not make amends for
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the taking of it!”

“True,” Rod said thoughtfully, “but there is restitution.”

The whetted glance sliced into him, freezing almost as effectively as the Evil Eye. Then, though, the gaze lightened as the witch slowly grinned. “Ah, then!” She threw her head back and cackled. It was a long laugh, and when it faded Agatha wiped her eyes, nodding. “Eh! I had pondered the why of thy coming; for none come to old Agatha lest they have a wish, a yearning that may not be answered by any other. And this is thine, is it not? That the folk of the land be in danger; they stand in need of old Agatha’s power! And they have sent thee to beg me the use of it!”

Her gaunt body shook with another spasm of cackling. She wheezed into a crooning calm, wiping her nose with a long bony finger. “Eh, eh! Child! Am I, a beldam of threescore years and more, to be cozened by the veriest, most innocent child? Eh!” And she was off again. Rod frowned; this was getting out of hand. “I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘cozen-ing.’ ”

The witch’s laughter chopped off. “Wouldst thou not?” she spat. “But thou wilt ask aid of me, aye! And wilt seek to give me no recompense, nay!” She trans-ferred her gaze to Gwen. “And thou wilt do as he bids thee, wilt thou not?”

“Nay!” Gwen cried, affronted. “I have come of my own, to beg of thee…”

“Of thine own!” The witch glared. “Hast thou no stripes to thy back, no scars to thy breasts where their torturers have burned thee? Hast thou not known the pain of their envy and hate, that thou shouldst come, unforced, uncajoled, to beg help for them?”

“I have.” Gwen felt a strange calm descend over her. “Twice I was scourged, and thrice tortured, four times bound to a stake for the burning; and I must needs thank the Wee Folk, my good guardians, that I live now to speak to thee. Aye, I ha’ known the knotted whip of their fear; though never so deeply as thou. Yet…”

The old witch nodded, wondering. “Yet, you pity them.”

“Aye.” Gwen lowered her eyes, clasping her hands tight in her lap. “Indeed, I do pity them.” Her eyes leaped up to lock with Agatha’s. “For their fear is the barbed thong that lashes us, their fear of the great dark that stands behind such powers as ours, the dark of unknown, and the unguessable fate that we bring them. ‘Tis they who must grope for life and for good in midnightmare, they who never ha’ known the sound of love-thoughts, the joy of a moonlit flight. Ought we not, then, to pity them?”

Agatha nodded slowly. Her old eyes filmed over, staring off into a life now distant in time. “So I had thought once, in my girlhood…”

“Pity them, then,” said Gwen, sawing hard at the reins of her eagerness. “Pity them, and…”

“And forgive them?” Agatha snapped back to the present, shaking her head slowly, a bitter smile on her gash of a mouth. “In my heart, I might forgive them. The stripes and the blows, the burning needles, the chains and the flaming splin-ters under my nails—aye, even this might I forgive them…”

Her eyes glazed, gazing back down the years. “But the abuse of my body, my fair, slender girl’s body
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and my ripe-blossomed woman’s body, all the long years, my most tender flesh and the most intimate part of my heart, the tearing and rending of that heart, again and again, to feed them, their craving, insensible hunger… no!” Her voice was low and guttural, gurgling acid, a black-diamond drill. “No, nay!

That, I may never forgive them! Their greed and their lust, their slavering hunger! Forever and ever they came, to come in and take me, and hurl me away; to come for my trembling flesh—then spurn me away, crying, ‘Whore!’ Again and again, by one and by five, knowing I would not, could not, turn them away; and therefore they came and they came… Nay! That, I may never forgive them!”

Gwen’s heart broke open and flowed; and it must have shown in her face, for Agatha transfixed her with a shimmering glare. “Pity them if you must,” she grated, “but never have pity for me!”

She held Gwen’s eyes for a moment, then turned back to the caldron, taking up her paddle again. “You will tell me that this was no fault of theirs,” she mut-tered, “any more than it was of mine, that their hunger forced them to me as truly as mine constrained me to welcome them.”

Her head lifted slowly, the eyes narrowing. “Or didst thou not know? Galen, the wizard of the Dark Tower. He it was who should have answered my hunger with his own. The greatest witch and the greatest warlock of the kingdom to-gether, is it not fitting? But he alone of all men would never come to me, the swine! Oh, he will tell you he hath too much righteousness to father a child into a Hell-world like this; yet the truth of it is, he fears the blame of that child he might father. Coward! Churl! Swine!”

She dug at the caldron, spitting and cursing. “Hell-spawned, thrice misbegot-ten, bastard mockery of a man! Him”—she finished in a harsh whisper—“I hate most of all!”

The bony, gnarled old hands clutched the paddle so tight it seemed the wood must break. Then she was clutching the slimy wooden paddle to her sunken dried breast. Her shoulders shook with dry sobs. “My child,” she murmured. “O my fair, un-born, sweet child!”

The sobs diminished and stilled. Then, slowly, the witch’s eyes came up again. “Or didst thou not know?” She smiled harshly, an eldritch gleam in her rheumy yellowed eye. “He it is who doth guard my portal, who doth protect me—my unborn child, Harold, my son, my familiar! So he was, and so he will ever be now—a soul come to me out of a tomorrow that once might have been.”

Gwen stared, thunderstruck. “Thy familiar…?”

“Aye.” The old witch’s nod was tight with irony. “My familiar and my son, my child who, because he once might have been, and should have been, bides with me now, though he never shall be born, shall never have flesh grown out of my own to cover his soul with. Harold, most powerful of wizards, son of old Galen and Agatha, of a union unrealized; for the Galen and Agatha who sired and bore him ha’ died in us long ago, and lie buried in the rack and mire of our youth.”

She turned back to the caldron, stirring slowly. “When first he came to me, long years ago, I could not understand.”

Frankly, Rod couldn’t either—although he was beginning to suspect halluci-nations. He wondered if prolonged loneliness could have that effect in a grown person—developing an imaginary companion. But if Agatha really believed in this “familiar,” maybe the hallucination could focus her powers so completely that it would dredge up every last ounce of her potential. That could account for the extraordinary strength of her psi powers…

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Agatha lifted her head, gazing off into space.

“It seemed, lo, full strange to me, most wondrous strange; but I was lonely, and grateful. But now”—her breath wheezed like a dying organ—“now I know, now I understand.” She nodded bitterly. “ ‘Twas an unborn soul that had no other home, and never would have.”

Her head hung low, her whole body slumped with her grief.

After a long, long while, she lifted her head and sought out Gwen’s eyes. “You have a son, have you not?”

There was a trace of tenderness in Agatha’s smile at Gwen’s nod. But the smile hardened, then faded; and the old witch shook her head. “The poor child,” she muttered.

“Poor child!” Gwen struggled to hide outrage. “In the name of Heaven, old Agatha, why?”

Agatha gave her a contemptuous glance over her shoulder. “Thou hast lived through witch-childhood, and thou hast need to ask?”

“No,” Gwen whispered, shaking her head; then, louder, “No! A new day has dawned, Agatha, a day of change! My son shall claim his rightful place in this kingdom, shall guard the people and have respect from them, as is his due!”

“Think thou so?” The old witch smiled bitterly.

“Aye, I believe it! The night has past now, Agatha, fear and ignorance have gone in this day of change. And never again shall the folk of the village pursue them in anger and fear and red hatred!”

The old witch smiled sourly and jerked her head toward the cave-mouth. “Hear thou that?”

Rod saw Gwen turn toward the cave-mouth, frowning. He cocked his ear and caught a low, distant rumble. He realized it had been there for some time, com-ing closer. The heck with the cover. “Fess! What’s that noise?”

“ ‘Tis these amiable villager folk of thine,” said old Agatha with a sardonic smile, “the folk of twelve villages, gathered together behind a preacher corrupted by zeal, come to roust old Agatha from her cave and burn her to ashes, for once and for all.”

“Analysis confirmed,” Fess’s voice said behind Rod’s ear.

Rod leaped to the cave-mouth, grabbed a rocky projection, and leaned out to look down. Halfway up the slope, a churning mass filled the stone ledges. Rod whirled back to face the women. “She’s right—it’s a peasant mob. They’re carrying scythes and mattocks.”

A sudden gust blew the mob’s cry more loudly to them.

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“Hear!” Agatha snorted, nodding toward the cave-mouth. Her mouth twisted with bitterness at the corners. “Hear them clamoring for my blood! Aye, when an unwashed, foaming madman drives them to it!”

She looked down at the swarming mob climbing ledge by ledge toward them. Steel winked in the sun. Gwen felt the clammy touch of fear; but fear of what, she did not know. “Thou speakest almost as though thou hadst known this beforehand…”

“Oh, to be certain, I did.” The old witch smiled. “Has it not come often upon me before? It was bound to be coming again. The time alone I did not know; but what matter is that?”

The ledges narrowed as the horde surged higher. Gwen could make out indi-vidual faces now. “They come close, Agatha. What must we do against them?”

“Do?” The old witch raised shaggy eyebrows in surprise. “Why, nothing, child. I have too much of their blood on my hands already. I am tired, old, and sick of my life; why then should I fight them? Let them come here and burn me. This time, at least, I will not be guilty of the blood of those I have saved.”

Agatha turned away from the cave-mouth, gathering her shawl about her narrow old shoulders. “Let them come here and rend me; let them set up a stake here and burn me. Even though it come in the midst of great torture, death shall be sweet.”

Rod stared, appalled. “You’ve got to be joking!”

“Must I, then?” Agatha transfixed him with a glare. “Thou shalt behold the truth of it!” She hobbled over to a scarred chair and sat down. “Here I rest, and here I stay, come what will, and come who will. Let them pierce me, let them burn me! I shall not again be guilty of shedding human blood!”

“But we need you!” Rod cried. “A coven of witches scarcely out of childhood needs you! The whole land of Gramarye needs you!”

“Wherefore—the saving of lives? And to save their lives, I must needs end these?” She nodded toward the roaring at the cave-mouth. “I think not, Lord Warlock. The very sound of it echoes with evil. Who saves lives by taking lives must needs be doing devil’s work.”

“All right, so don’t kill them!” Rod cried, exasperated. “Just send them away.”

“And how shall we do that, pray? They are already halfway up the mountain. How am I to throw them down without slaying them?”

“Then, do not slay them.” Gwen dropped to her knees beside Agatha’s chair. “Let them come—but do not let them touch thee.”

Rod’s eyes glowed. “Of course! Fess’s outside on the ledge! He can keep them out!”

“Surely he is not!” Gwen looked up, horrified. “There must be an hundred of them, at the least! They will pick him up and throw him bodily off the cliff!”

Rod’s stomach sank as he realized she was right. Not that it would hurt Fess, of course—he
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remembered that antigravity plate in the robot’s belly. But it wouldn’t keep the peasants out, either.

“What is this ‘Fess’ thou dost speak of?” Agatha demanded.

“My, uh, horse,” Rod explained. “Not exactly… a horse. I mean, he looks like a horse, and he sounds like a horse, but…”

“If it doth appear to be an horse, and doth sound like to an horse, then it must needs be an horse,”