Darka and Sebastien threw their arms in front of their faces to shield their eyes, but Clementine couldn’t look away. She was part of the light.
She noted, in a detached sort of way, that her face was wet, and thought perhaps the rain had started up again and her spell was failing—and then she realized it wasn’t the rain at all. She was crying.
She was crying because she was ashamed. Not about the light magic—although there would be plenty of time to feel bad about that later. No. Clementine was ashamed because out of all the memories in her entire life, her happiest moment had not been a victory over her enemies or satisfaction at the completion of one of her father’s Dastardly Deeds. Her happiest memory had nothing to do with her father or her very calling in life, at all. Her happiest memory had been escaping them.
With sunlight streaming down around her, Clementine lowered her hands. She looked down, blinking away her tears, and noticed that her eyelids felt suddenly very, very heavy, and that her hair had turned a glowing burnished yellow to match the occasion. It was a positively cheerful color.
How embarrassing, she thought, and promptly fainted.
Chapter 11
In Enemy Territory
or The Probability of Being Baked in a Pie Increases Exponentially
The bed that Clementine slept on was soft, and smelled of moss and campfire smoke and something that was quite possibly duck. It was not an unpleasant smell, but it was an unfamiliar one. The feathers in her mattress did not usually smell as if they had only recently departed their owners.
The smell was not the only unfamiliar thing. Clementine slowly opened her eyes and found that she was on the floor of what appeared to be a tent, just tall enough in the center for a smallish grown-up to stand in. Above her, tiny wind chimes and strange creations of knotted twine strung with gems and stones hung from the ceiling. Light snuck in through the tent flap and played across the crystals and the colored glass, casting little rainbow flecks across the tent walls and on Clementine herself.
She tilted her head to see more and winced at the spike of pain that skittered along her scalp. She extricated her hand from underneath the multicolored quilt that covered her and tentatively prodded at her head. Her fingers came away sticky with some sort of half-dried ointment.
Though it should have alarmed her to wake up alone and injured, in a strange tent, with an unidentifiable substance surely winding its way through her bloodstream, Clementine was too tired to worry about it very much. She didn’t think she’d ever been this tired. Even just shifting under the blanket made her feel feverish and queasy with fatigue, and she resigned herself to staring up at the ceiling until her body felt like waking up along with her brain. She closed her eyes—just for a moment, she assured herself—and when she opened them again, the light was different and Darka Wesk-Starzec was hovering inches from her face.
“Oh, good,” Darka said with a sigh of relief. “You’re awake.”
And suddenly, the reasons why Clementine was lying injured in a strange tent came rushing back to her. She cleared her throat, preparing to unleash every curse she could think of on this hyphenated-named wild woman who apparently thought it was completely acceptable behavior to run around wearing pants and shooting people in their own forests . . . but Clementine’s body still seemed to be catching up with her brain, because all that came out was a rather petulant, “You shot me.”
“Yes,” said Darka, the hint of a blush blooming across her face. She tucked her bow farther behind her, out of Clementine’s sight. “Awfully sorry about that.”
“You shot me,” said Clementine again. The charms hanging in the air—and they were charms, she realized—started to vibrate, ever so slightly.
“I did miss,” said Darka. Her eyes flicked to Clementine’s matted hair. “Mostly.”
“You can’t just go around shooting people and . . . and bringing them . . .” Bringing them where? Where was she? Clementine looked around. Along with the charms, strings of dried herbs hung from the ceiling, and bunches of colorful candles littered the floor, though they were unlit at the moment. Clementine knew of only one place that would be home to such an eclectic and dangerous mix of objects.
She was in a hedgewitch’s tent. And by the sounds she now noticed filtering in from outside, she was in a hedgewitch’s tent in a hedgewitches’ camp.
Clementine grabbed Darka’s wrist in a viselike grip, too suddenly for Darka to move away, and unsteadily raised herself to a half-sitting position.
“We have to get out of here,” Clementine whispered fiercely. “They’ll flay our flesh from our bones. They’ll pluck out our eyes and pickle them for afternoon snacks. They’ll bake us in pies.”
Darka slowly pried Clementine’s fingers off her wrist, her face suddenly twisted by what Clementine strongly suspected was a smirk. It pulled at the jagged edges of her scar.
“I don’t think you’d make a very good pie,” Darka said. “Not much meat on you at all, is there?”
Clementine got the distinct impression that the smirk was, in fact, genuine, and that Darka Wesk-Starzec was most definitely making fun of her.
“You don’t understand,” Clementine said, shoving off her blankets and ignoring the way her hands trembled as she did so. “It’s not safe here.” She lowered her voice even more. “This is a witches’ camp.”
Darka tilted her head, as if to say, And?
“We have to get out of here,” Clementine said again. “What were you thinking, bringing me to a place like this?”
Darka snorted and started to reply, but the answer hit Clementine hard enough to make her head throb all over again.
“Seven Sisters,” Clementine said, scooting back against the tent wall. “You’re one of them. You are a witch. That’s why you were staying in the woods. That’s why you shot at me. How couldn’t I have sensed it? And now you’re going to use my bones for stew and make charms out of my hair and sell my blood by the vial for much less than it’s worth in a competitive market, and—”
“I’m not a witch,” said Darka, sitting back on her heels.
Clementine paused. “What?”
“I’m not a witch,” repeated Darka. She slapped her hands on her thighs and looked thoughtful. “Well, my grandmother was one, supposedly, but as neither my mother nor myself decided to continue that colorful bit of family tradition, I don’t think I count.”
Clementine wasn’t so sure. “Well, if you aren’t a witch, why did you bring me here?”
Darka threw up her hands and snorted. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I didn’t exactly have a lot of options when faced with the question ‘Hmm, what do I do with this unconscious mystery child out in the middle of the woods?’”
“My lady,” corrected Clementine.
“What?”
“You may address me as ‘my lady,’” said Clementine. “‘Your Highness’ is typically reserved for princes and princesses.”
Darka stared at Clementine, mouth agape, as if she couldn’t believe what nonsense she was hearing. It was clear she really wasn’t from around Lord Elithor’s lands.
“Noted,” Darka said. She shook her head as she stood up. “Well, my lady, you might be a little more thankful to someone who just saved your life.”
No, no, thought Clementine. This would not do at all. Future Dark Lords could not be saved by commoners. It simply wasn’t done.
“Excuse me,” snapped Clementine, “you saved my life?” She flicked her hair over her shoulder with her best dose of imperious disdain, though it was admittedly less effective with her accompanying yelp of discomfort. She’d forgotten about her sore head. “If I recall correctly, I was the one who saved us from that murderous maelstrom.” Clementine silently congratulated herself on her use of the word “maelstrom.” It was one of her favorites in volume M–Z.
“You did, at that,” admitted Darka, scooping up her bow. Clementine pr
essed even farther back against the tent wall, but Darka simply slung the bow over her shoulder and fixed her piercing gray eyes on Clementine. “But I’ve been wondering, who exactly was that maelstrom so intent on murdering in the first place?” Darka turned and left the tent.
Clementine hauled herself up on shaky knees to follow. She would have to sneak out of the camp before any of the witches realized who she was—assuming they didn’t know already. Clementine crept out of the tent, trying not to grip the tent flap as if it were the only thing holding her upright, and looked around.
It was a hedgewitches’ camp, all right. The forest clearing was crowded with tents and cook fires. Protective amulets hung from the limbs of the trees, just as they had inside the tent Clementine awoke in. Clementine took a few fast, uncertain steps and bumped into someone walking by. When the woman noticed who Clementine was, she jumped back as if she’d been burned by Clementine’s touch.
Clementine’s head swam as she half stumbled away. More curious stares followed. Women of all ages milled about the camp—some barely older than Clementine, some wrinkly enough to have appeared in the earliest entries of the Witchionary—but they all stopped in their tracks when they saw Clementine approach. And most of them did not look friendly. One witch with a half-shaved head and bright red feathers threaded through the rest of her hair even spat as Clementine passed.
The events of the afternoon came rushing back to Clementine with more clarity, and she nearly groaned aloud at the possibility of the Gricken missing in the woods—or, worse, captured by the witches. And where was the black sheep, and the nightmare? Where was Sebastien? If anyone was a good candidate for witch stew, the village boy surely fit the bill. Those dimples of his just radiated well-fed childhood innocence. Not that she thought about his dimples at all, ever.
I have to get out, I have to get out, I have to get out, thought Clementine, panicking as the trees started to wave and shimmer before her eyes. She heard footsteps trailing after her and walked faster. She thought she might be sick, and she could think of nothing more embarrassing—short of dying a grisly death—than losing her lunch in front of a coven of hedgewitches.
The world very inconsiderately tilted sideways, and Clementine stumbled again, but this time, a pair of hands reached out to steady her.
“And where do you think you’re going?” asked Darka Wesk-Starzec.
“Unhand me this instant!” demanded Clementine.
“I’d like nothing better,” said Darka, grunting a bit under Clementine’s weight. “But you’d probably fall over.”
“You have nothing to fear, child,” another voice said.
An old witch—though not the oldest, Clementine noticed—approached them from the center of the camp. She was short and squat and walked with a carved birch walking stick. Her weathered skin was heavily freckled, though it did have a surprising lack of warts—a feature Clementine had come to expect from descriptions in the Witchionary. The witch’s wispy shoulder-length hair sprouted haphazardly out of her head in gray and auburn tufts. She blew an errant strand out of her face with a short horselike huff.
The witch stopped a few feet from Clementine and Darka and rested her hands on her staff, panting slightly. Clementine felt rather guilty about making an old woman chase her around the woods, and then remembered she was dealing with a witch, and then felt guilty about feeling guilty.
“My name is Kat Marie Grice,” said the witch. “And you have my word that no harm will come to you in this camp today.”
A few of the witches, including the shaved-headed one, looked disappointed at this declaration, but none of them challenged it. Clementine did notice that the old witch had specified today.
“Please, stay and rest for a while,” continued Kat Marie Grice. She looked beyond Clementine and into the trees, where just at the camp’s edge, Clementine could see the stark line between the wards around the witch’s camp and the devastation in the forest outside. Broken branches littered the forest floor. Shattered eggs from smashed birds’ nests oozed down the bruised and battered bark of fallen trees. The trunks leaned crisscrossed against one another, propped up like wounded soldiers after a battle.
Clementine reluctantly took Darka’s offered arm.
“The woods are no place for a little girl walking alone,” said Kat Marie, narrowing her eyes at the trees. “Especially not today.”
***
Clementine stroked the Gricken’s feathers as she took a tentative sip from a steaming mug of tea that Kat Marie had pressed into her hands. She sat next to the old woman on a bench outside her tent—the same tent Clementine had woken up in. Taking food or drink from strangers—especially strange witches—would have gotten her a tongue-lashing for the ages from her father at best, and been suicidal at worst, under normal circumstances. But considering the events of the day, and the fact that the witches had had multiple chances to kill her and had so far chosen not to, Clementine did not think these could be considered normal circumstances. She still felt ill and tired, and tea was nice, and Kat Marie hadn’t given her much choice in the matter, anyway.
Amazingly, the hedgewitches seemed more inclined to avoid the Gricken than to steal it. They walked past the creature on tiptoe—if they dared to walk past at all. Average folk would have noticed something off about the giant chicken in their midst, but its disguise didn’t seem to fool the hedgewitches in the slightest. Clementine knew she wouldn’t be much interested in a book of spells that had been used against her family or friends for generations, either.
The nightmare was busy terrifying two fat ponies in the horse pen by baring its teeth and whinnying in a pitch so high only the other animals could hear, and the black sheep was chomping on a patch of grass with a few of his lighter-coated brethren. A little girl with four crooked pigtails shyly offered him a bunch of celery, which he ate with gusto. Sebastien, she’d been told (and then double-checked with the black sheep) had gone home to the village while Clementine slept, eager to check on his parents’ farm after the storm.
Kat Marie seemed to be keeping to her word. No harm had come to Clementine or any of her companions—yet.
“That was quite a piece of magic you entertained back there,” Kat Marie said, as if Clementine’s sunshine spell had been an unruly guest who showed up to dinner uninvited. Clementine nearly choked on her tea. Had the whole mountain seen her cast that light magic?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Clementine, gripping her mug tightly.
“If I were that chicken of yours, though,” said Kat Marie, scratching her chin, “I’d be a bit more careful. Sun summoning’s powerful magic. Quite risky for one so young—and so unfamiliar with light magic.”
Clementine took a prim sip from her cup and said nothing. But questions had started to bubble up in her mind—questions that Kat Marie Grice, whatever her professional failings, might have some idea how to answer.
“No wonder it knocked you flat,” said Kat Marie with a shrug.
“I was perfectly in control,” said Clementine, knowing full well that she had indeed been knocked flat.
“You’re lucky it didn’t kill you.”
Clementine gulped. Perhaps she had been lucky that Darka had thought to bring her here.
“Did everyone see?” asked Clementine quietly.
“See what?” asked Kat Marie with the hint of a smile. “The apocalyptic storm clouds rolling over half the forest? The trees marching of their own accord? Or the blinding streams of sunlight cutting through the churning black sky like divine swords of retribution?” She winked. “No, I’m not sure anyone else noticed.”
Clementine took a deep breath through her nose. “I meant . . . did anyone else . . .”
“Know it was you?” Kat Marie suggested, looking down her bespectacled nose at Clementine.
Clementine nodded.
“You were deep in the caves when
you cast it, yes?” asked Kat Marie. At another nod from Clementine, she sighed, and said, “I’d say your secret is safe, my child.”
Clementine let out a sigh of her own, but hers was of relief. Her reputation might not have to suffer as much as she’d feared. All she needed to do was threaten the witches into silence, and then she could go back to the drawing board for Dastardly Deeds. The Whittle Witch’s encroachment on the forest complicated matters, of course, but still. (Clementine assumed it was the Whittle Witch, though now with so many witches apparently running amok, she couldn’t be certain.) Her brief flirtation with light magic could fade into distant memory—a mere hiccup in the course of her magical education. And yet . . .
“It felt . . . different,” Clementine found herself saying. “From other spells I’ve done.”
Kat Marie Grice gave her a long look. “I imagine it would.”
The urge to ask Kat Marie Grice about the spell—and especially, the reason she’d had to cast it in the first place—was so powerful Clementine was sure she would burst with the effort of keeping silent. What did the hedgewitches know of the Whittle Witch? Was the Whittle Witch one of them? (This seemed unlikely, given how heavily warded the camp was, but you could never be too sure with witches.) How long had she been in the forest? Why had Clementine been able to even use light magic?
And why had it felt so right?
But her father’s warnings—and Stan Glen’s—echoed in her mind. Asking for help was dangerous. Asking for help might reveal how helpless she really was.
Clementine also couldn’t help but notice that Kat Marie wasn’t exactly volunteering information. Either the old woman supported the Whittle Witch, or—as seemed increasingly likely—she, too, did not want to admit to being chased around her own forest by another witch.
My father’s forest, Clementine corrected herself. Kat Marie Grice and her coven had no claim to anything in it at all.
With some effort, Clementine turned from the witch’s gaze and surveyed the camp. Now that most of the coven wasn’t preoccupied with a raving Dark Lord’s daughter stumbling through their camp, they’d mostly gone about their business—and it was a business, Clementine soon realized, at least partly. She was surprised to see people who were almost certainly not hedgewitches themselves ambling through the camp, approaching one witch or another. Not all the charms here were for the camp itself—they were for sale.
The Dark Lord Clementine Page 10