The Witch Queen (35 page)

December was passing. In the center of London there were Christmas trees on every promontory, shop windows festooned with tinsel and fairy lights and aglitter with snow scenes, elaborate montages with cribs, angels, shepherds, kings—goose girls, pixies, ogres, dragons. Children besieged the toy shops, demanding dinosaurs and video games, cuddly monsters and svelte princesses. The streets were infested with carol singers and people dressed as Santa Claus. It had rained recently, and in the premature dusk every glint of neon, every streetlamp, every fairy light was reflected back from puddled pavement and gleaming road, and the splashback from a passing car sparkled like fireflies. Fern was making her way through the City, past the bulging bosoms of turkeys hanging in a row, and pheasants in all their feathered glory, and old-fashioned puddings in linen bags, and chestnuts roasting on a brazier that smoked and spat in the wet. The faces around her were mortal, flushed with seasonal good cheer, happy faces calling greetings even to those they did not know. The demons had turned into latex masks, masks and games and toys, and this was the reality she wanted, this safe, human world. Safe if only she could make it so, if her gamble worked, if she dared to lose all, to gain all—or all that was left. She passed the entrance to a tube station, and saw the crowds boiling in the depths, and bumped into a man who did not smile but simply sidled away, muttering. And then she found the passage, just as she had known she would, because it was always there for those who looked. She paused for a moment—the last moment, when there was still time to draw back. Then she walked under the arch.

The lights behind her were cut off; it was very dark. She emerged into the square where the lamps were scant and wan, and the people, few or many, stood in little groups, always far away. At the center was the Tower. The city had receded into the distance, and the Tower stood alone, so tall it made her dizzy to gaze upward, plated with black glass, strengthened with black steel, outsoaring all other skyscrapers. Yet it is only a tower such as men build, she thought. Azmordis has no ideas, no imagination of his own, only what he has stolen from us, down the endless ages of dominion and envy and hate. She held on tight to that thought, hoping it might give her courage, or the semblance of it. The wide steps were before her, spreading out like waves on either hand, and the scarlet-cloaked guards with their metal faces, blinking once as she walked between them, and the great doors that parted automatically and swallowed her without a sound. She went up to the reception desk, hearing the tap of her booted feet on the marble floor echoing around the lobby. “I have come,” she said.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“He is expecting me.” He had been expecting her for more than fourteen years.

She crossed the narrow bridge to the elevator without looking down. Then as in her dream—in every dream—they rose upward, slowly at first, then faster and faster, leaving her stomach behind and making her ears pop and crushing her skull with the pressure of their ascent. At the top she stood reeling, pulling herself together. Then she stepped out. It is the same bridge, she told herself; only the drop is different. And somehow she walked across, with no noticeable hesitation, and mounted the escalator that traveled in a spiral around the outer wall of the Tower to the office.
His
office. The doors slid open with a soft swishing noise, and she went in.

The red lamp shone across the desk, but not on him. He was just a darkness in a suit. The carpet lapped the walls, and the curtains poured down from above, and the windows were huge and black with unrelieved night. She walked straight up to him, facing him across the ebony desktop. The walk seemed to take a long time.

He said: “So you have come to me at last.” His voice was soft and deep as a purr, but colder, and it penetrated to the very recesses of her spirit. “The document is ready. I had it drawn up long ago.” He pushed the red leather folder across the desk. Her name was embossed on the cover: Fernanda Elizabeth Capel, called Morcadis. She wondered how he knew about the Elizabeth. But he would always know.

“I sent you Lukastor, Lord of the Fellangels, to help in your fight against the witch queen Morgus,” he went on.

“That was generous of you,” she said. Politely.

“He was both brave and true,” the demon said. “And he loved you. Yet you returned him to me with a spear in his belly. I valued him highly: his Gift was undeveloped, but under my tutelage he would have learned to use it, and he might have achieved much. You owe me for this, Fernanda, and for many other things. The debt must be paid. Therefore my terms are not so liberal as they might have been.”

“I owe you nothing and you value no one,” Fern said with all the scorn she could muster. “I have not come to accept your terms, liberal or otherwise. I have come to offer you mine.”

There was a long, long pause—a pause such as that office had never felt before. The muted hum of something resembling air conditioning ceased. The whole force of his being shifted, focusing on her with a new and terrible intensity.

“Yours?”

“My soul is not for sale,” she said. “But I will make you a deal for yours, such as it is, if you will hazard it.”

“I—have—no—soul.” The words grated, stone on stone.

“Then I will take what you have,” said Fern. “Your unsoul—your spirit—your immortality.”

“
You
will take—
you
will offer—! What deal would you dare to offer
me
, least of witches? What makes you think you will leave this place alive? A word from me will melt your bones where you stand.”

“I have protection,” Fern said.

“What protection could you find that would avail you
here
  ?”

“I invoke the Mother,” she said.

Another pause, another jolt in his concentration. All his far-flung, casual power seemed to contract into the shadow before her; she could feel the glance of his unseen eyes like a ray of darkness probing her mind.

“She will not hear you,” he sneered, yet there was doubt behind the derision. “She Who Sleeps will never rouse at
your
whimpering.”

“She hears me,” Fern said, and as when she had made the spell shield around her friends, another voice spoke through hers. In Moonspittle’s basement, she had touched the ancient power by accident, not knowing what she did. This time, she knew. “She was stronger than you once, Ysis-Astolantë, Pangaea Allmother, but the priests bound her in slumber, and the world was ruled by men. You found them more apt to your hand than women, did you not? But the world changes, and maybe she sleeps but lightly now.”

“So you are
her
handmaiden?”

“No. Not yet. I am no one’s vassal; I told you that before. I have come to buy you, if you will sell.
She
is my surety.”

He stood up, growing taller and darker behind the light. He no longer appeared to be wearing a suit. She was aware of clouds forming beyond the windows, pressing close to the glass with clammy hands. Stars shone through them, in pairs.

She kept her attention on Azmordis.

“What can
you
offer me?”

She took the phial out of her bag, holding it up. Even in that place its contents shone pure and clear. “This is a single draft of the Well of Lethe. If I drink it, I will forget the very name of Morcadis, and all that I have done as a witch—as the least of witches—all that I learned, all that I was and all that I might become will be lost. I will no longer trouble you, nor threaten your schemes. I will live out my life as an ordinary mortal, and grow old, and pass the Gate, and none will remember me. That is my offer.”

“And what must I do in return?”

“Forgo your vengeance on me and anyone connected with me, distant or dear. You must pledge your unsoul, for you and all who serve you or seek your favor. The document is ready.” She drew a file out of her bag, set it down on the desk. It was red. “I had it drawn up according to the correct procedures. There are no loopholes. It wants only your signature.”

A wind came howling around the Tower; the cloud shapes were whirled away in a writhing torrent, all groping limbs and gaping mouths. But within the office it was utterly still.

“If I should give my pledge, and break it?”

“The effects of Lethe would be negated, and your immortality would be forfeit.” The shadow was enormous now, filling the room, and all the winds of the world shrieked outside, and in the blackness there was only the dull red glow of the desk lamp, like the smolder of a dying fire, and the glimmer of the phial in her hand. But her tone strengthened, and the power of her will and the steel in her soul mastered her fear. “Break your pledge and I swear, if it takes a thousand centuries, if I have to waken the Allmother and every other Spirit who ever slept, I will destroy you. Morgus opened the abyss to banish a handful of ghosts, but I will open it for you, and cast you into the void. I swear it.”

“And if I tear up your document and send you squeaking from my presence clutching your leftover life in your feeble hands?”

“The same. I can do it; you know I can. Among the million possible fates that lie ahead of me that is one. For all your might, for all the height of your Tower and the depth of your hate, you fear me.” Her heart trembled as she said it, but not her voice. “Sign, and you will be secure from me, if not from others. For men are many, and have resources beyond the Gift, and despite your servants and your slaves, your countless faces and names, you are only one.”

There was a rumble in his throat that might have passed for laughter, though it sounded like thunder far off. “Whenever men have tried to reject me, whether through some shining new creed or gentler religion, intolerance and pride have always turned them to my service in the end. Men are my creatures; they eat from my hand. The abyss itself will be filled ere they defy me.”

Fern stood there, silent. Defiant. The chorus of winds screamed in mockery.

“You want me to ransom my very self to a mere mortal? I, Azmordis, ruler of both this world and the other! Who would you find to witness such a pact?”

“The Ultimate Powers,” said Fern.

The tumult outside was suddenly quiet. The cloud thinned to a mist; the pairs of stars winked out. There was only darkness within and darkness beyond. The ember of the lamp was smothered and for the first time that night she saw
his
eyes, filled with a glow the other side of light. His voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

“They do not exist. Or if they do, they trouble themselves little with mortal and immortal affairs.”

She spoke into the darkness, into the eyes. “Then sign, and break your pledge, and fear nothing.”

She felt his enmity and his rage pressing against her. The blood beat in her ears; breathing became an effort. But the rage was controlled, though barely, and beneath the enmity she sensed his wavering and the seed of fear that she had dared to name.

“If I agree,” he said at last, and in that “if” she knew she had won, “then you will drink your draft, here, tonight?”

The darkness was shrinking, becoming once more a shadow in a suit, and she stood in his office, and the light of the desk lamp shone red on the red file. “If you agree,” she said, “then you will sign, and I will give the paper to someone I trust, and at the appointed time I will drink, and our pact will be sealed.”

“When is the appointed time?”

She had thought carefully about that one. “Midnight on Christmas Eve.”

There was a silence while he appeared to reflect, but she felt he had done with reflection. And at last he said it, the thing she had waited to hear, and the tension began to ebb from her muscles, leaving them weak and shaking. “Very well. I accept your offer. You have harassed me enough, Morcadis, and this way I can dispose of you without further trouble. I will make a deal with you for my unsoul, in exchange for all that you were, and all that you are, and all that you might have been.”

She opened the file and took out a single sheet of paper, thick creamy paper, crisp and expensive, covered with spiky calligraphy. Her signature was already there, written clearly and carefully across the bottom; below it, a space remained for his. He picked up the quill, snapped his fingers to conjure an ink bottle. “That is not valid,” she said. “It must be signed in blood, or whatever ichor flows in your immortal veins.”

“There is no blade here that will draw blood from me.”

She took out the knife—the knife with which Luc had threatened her—and thrust it quivering into the desktop. She did not have the force to thrust hard, but the point bit deep. He stared at it for a second or two before pulling it out. She saw him extend a shadowy arm, roll up the sleeve—if there was a sleeve—draw the blade across it. Some dark fluid welled out and dripped onto the ebony, smoking slightly. He dipped the nib in it and signed—Azmordis, for that was the name in which the document was drawn up, the name by which Fern had always known him—and the
scritch
,
scritch
of his pen was the only sound in the whole world. She waited for the clap of thunder, the lightning flash, but there was just that terrible silence. The paper wrinkled around his signature.

“It is done,” he said, pushing the document toward her as if in contempt, but she wasn’t deceived. “Take care of it. No other mortal has ever made such a bargain with me, and I may yet change my mind, ere midnight strikes on Christmas Eve. Then look to yourself, and all you hold dear.”

She picked up the paper, replaced it in the red file. “Do not think to cheat me. The bargain may not be sealed, but it is signed, and the Ultimate Powers have borne witness. You know the cost of betrayal.”

“Get out: I am done with you. Now you are self-ordained a nobody. Get out!”

She moved to the door, and it slid open in front of her—a part of her had believed she would never see it open again—and she was standing on the escalator, crawling like a snail around the Tower walls. Her escort waited by the elevator. She crossed the bridge as if it were broad and railed, and sped earthward, and her heart beat fast as she went toward the exit, and passed between the guards, and crossed the square. She thought the knots of people turned to stare, but she paid them no heed. She was running now, running and running, through the passageway, under the arch, and she was back in the City, the real City, teeming with people and lights and noise, and it was Christmas, and she was crying, tears of sadness and loss and relief and joy, blurring her view of the happy crowds, crying softly all the way home.