The Dark Lord Clementine

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  ***

  “The fiercest unicorn huntress in the known lands?” repeated Clementine, breathing shallowly. She had been utterly silent until the gatehouse door shut behind them, leaving a slightly bewildered Stan to make his own way back through the valley.

  Darka sat at the small table, her hands clasped before her. She had chosen the chair closest to the door—just in case.

  “I told you I was a hunter,” said Darka quietly. “You never asked what kind.”

  “Why?” asked Clementine. “Everyone knows that anyone who kills a unicorn is cursed—”

  “An old wives’ tale.”

  “And even if you could, why? How could you kill something so . . . innocent and powerful and perfect?”

  “Innocent?” scoffed Darka, ignoring the accompanying twinge in her scar. “A unicorn killed the love of my life. Stabbed him to death with that shining, majestic horn everyone is always writing songs about—right in front of me.”

  Clementine flinched. “He must have done something,” she insisted.

  The girl was too smart for her own good.

  “They’re powerful, but they’re just animals,” Clementine said. “Just like the chimaeras and the nightmares. Just like you and me. I don’t know any animal that won’t attack when it’s threatened.”

  Darka stared down at the table. This little girl could never understand. Not from her life of magic and privilege, and . . . who was she to talk about innocence, anyway?

  “Well, aren’t we Miss High-and-Mighty,” snapped Darka. “Need I remind you that you’re the daughter of a Dark Lord? When was the last time he let any ‘innocent’ creature be?”

  “It . . . it’s not the same,” protested Clementine.

  “Isn’t it?” asked Darka sharply.

  Clementine fiddled with the ends of her hair.

  Darka took a deep breath. If she was to salvage any chance of obtaining the unicorn, she was going to have to get Clementine back on her side. She softened her tone. “Don’t tell me you’ve never even considered it, to save your father? Everyone knows the legends about unicorn horns. That they can cure any ill? Reverse any curse?”

  Clementine’s eyes welled up. The girl did know the stories, after all.

  “Don’t you see, Clementine?” pleaded Darka. “If we work together—if we bring down this unicorn—we both win.” Darka would be one step closer to avenging her true love, and Clementine would have a father again—for better or for worse.

  For a moment, the girl seemed to be considering it—and then she went even paler.

  “That’s why you came here, isn’t it?” whispered Clementine. “That’s why we found you lurking about in the woods. You’d heard the stories about the unicorn of the Seven Sisters, and you just couldn’t resist.”

  “Yes,” admitted Darka, twisting her hands together on the table. “That is why I came here, but—”

  “That’s why you shot me,” said Clementine, her eyes wide. “You thought I was the unicorn!”

  “Yes,” said Darka through gritted teeth, “but—”

  “That’s why you pretended to be my friend,” finished Clementine, her voice breaking.

  “No,” said Darka, standing up. “No, Clementine.”

  Except that was why she had come to the farm, at first. Darka hadn’t expected to care for Clementine. She hadn’t expected to find comfort in the work, or camaraderie with the village boys, even if they couldn’t tell the sharp end of a sword from the hilt. She hadn’t expected to forget, just for a few moments, the thirst for revenge that had been driving her for the past five years.

  Clementine backed away from her. “Everything—helping on the farm, and . . . and helping me. Living here. You were just trying to get closer to the unicorn, this whole time.”

  “In the beginning, I was,” said Darka, her hands up. “But that changed. I—”

  “LEAVE,” said Clementine, and the door blasted open, swinging wildly on its hinges. Wind filled the guardhouse, tossing up the stray papers and cutlery on the table, and the clothes in the open wardrobe, until they swirled around the room. When Clementine spoke, her voice seemed unnaturally loud, as if amplified by the very mountains themselves. “I, Clementine Morcerous, future Dark Lord of the Seven Sisters, hereby banish you from Castle Brack and all of the Morcerous lands!” Clementine thrust out her hand toward Darka, tears streaming down her face.

  Nothing happened. Darka was not thrown out the door by some invisible force, or burned to a crisp where she stood, or instantaneously transported to some far-off land. She did feel an unpleasant sort of tingling in her bones, but that always happened around the presence of strong magic.

  “I said, ‘I banish you’!” said Clementine, thrusting out her palm again.

  She looked down at her hand, puzzled, as if she’d seen this done with much more success several times before. But either the Morcerous magic was too weak in the throes of the Dark Lord’s sickness, or the full power of the Dark Lord’s will was not yet Clementine’s to wield.

  This did not change the fact that the child had just attempted to throw Darka out the door—and Clementine’s support or not, Darka had unfinished business on the Seven Sisters.

  “You can’t do it, can you?” Darka asked, crossing her arms. She knew her voice sounded taunting. She decided she didn’t much care. There would be no more distractions from her quest. “You’re not the true Dark Lord of the Seven Sisters.”

  Clementine glared at Darka, breathing heavily.

  “At least, not yet,” said Darka.

  The girl gasped, as if physically wounded by Darka’s cruel words, and spun on her heel. She fled the guardhouse, sobbing, and the wind fled with her, bowing and browning the unfortunate grass in her wake. The swirling papers floated gently to the floor, while the plates and cutlery fell with a discordant smash. Darka ground a piece of pottery under her heel, wishing she could stamp out the guilt that was rising up inside her just as easily.

  The Evil Overlordship might not have been Clementine’s yet, but her magic was now in every part of the farm. Darka stepped out into the kitchen garden and watched most of the vegetables wilt before her eyes. Dark clouds threatened overhead, and she could hear the nightmares shrieking from the stables. They knew when all was not right with their mistress. When Clementine’s heart wept, so did the farm’s.

  For the first time, Darka Wesk-Starzec began to consider how she might use that gentle heart to her advantage.

  ***

  Clementine had tried so very, very hard.

  She had tried to keep her faith in her father. She had tried (mostly) to stay away from the Whittle Witch. She had tried to keep the farm going. She had tried to mend the ever-widening holes in Lord Elithor’s magic, tried to make sense of the dismal numbers pouring out of the Decimaker, tried to keep the plants watered and the animals fed and the castle defended with all the means at her disposal—and none of it had been enough. None of it could ever be enough.

  Clementine was not the Dark Lord of the Seven Sisters Mountains. (Not yet, Darka’s cruel voice reminded her in her head.) She was not even a good Dark Lord in training. She had let outsiders in on the Morcerous magical secrets. She had let them parade around the estate, violating hundreds of years of precedent and her father’s direct wishes. She could not seem to help that she was better at making flowers grow than weeds—that she felt more alive with sunshine shooting from her fingertips than performing any respectable act of dark magic. The silent farm was no longer silent, because her best hadn’t been enough.

  She had never felt less like a future Dark Lord in her life, and she had never felt more alone. And so just this once—just one more time before she was a grown-up, she promised herself—she did what any other twelve-year-old girl might do when utterly friendless and faced with an impossible choice: she ran to her father.

  Up the higgledy-pigg
ledy stone stairs and through the gate and across the courtyard, through the great wooden doors and down the candlelit corridors, up and up and up the tower stairs, Clementine ran. She knew there could not be much time left. The door flew open as she approached, and she could not even bring herself to be afraid of what her father might think, because at that particular moment, she cared what he thought only about one very specific thing.

  Was Darka right?

  Should they kill the unicorn?

  She would do it, she told herself. She would do it if he asked. She wouldn’t care about leaching the magic from the land, or being cursed forever, if he thought it was the only way. She would go crawling back to Darka and apologize, and promise to lend whatever magical help she could. She would break the Third Rule of Evildoing to save her father—but it wasn’t her choice to make. She was not the Dark Lord of the Seven Sisters. She was not the one whose life hung in the balance. If one of the most inviolable rules was to be broken, she needed to hear it from the Dark Lord’s lips.

  But Clementine discovered, as she crept into the dark, deathly quiet tower, that she would not be able to hear anything from the Dark Lord’s lips. Because he could no longer speak. He lay on top of his bedclothes, the size of a small wooden puppet. His face had been whittled away until his head could fit in Clementine’s palms. His eyes had turned from glassy to actual glass, his jaw into a pointy painted wooden hinge, painfully stuck. Only by pressing her ear to his tiny chest could Clementine hear the faintest ticking of what remained of his heart. The Brack Butler did not even try to stop her, but merely huddled on a corner of the bed, its red lights pulsing dimly.

  “Oh, Father,” Clementine sobbed. How long did he have before even his heart was whittled away, turned to wood just like the rest of him? How long before he was not the Dark Lord at all—just another puppet in the Whittle Witch’s collection of victims? Clementine took deep breaths, trying to quell her own crying, lest she miss any precious beat of that dying heart.

  Clementine had broken many of her father’s rules since he had become ill—and some even before. She had gone into town alone. She had let strangers—commoners—into the castle. She had violated his precious silence. She had ridden a broom and consorted with hedgewitches and, yes, made friends—even if only for a little while—that he would never have approved of (not that Dark Lords approved of friends, period). But she could not bring herself to break this rule—the last of the most sacred of rules—if she did not know for certain it was what he wished. And now, she would never know.

  There was only one promise left to break if she had any hope of lifting the curse in time, and Clementine decided it was worth breaking. She would go into the forest and find the Whittle Witch herself.

  Chapter 19

  Much More Serious Than Purple

  or The Whittle Witch Strikes

  “You’re not supposed to be here anymore,” scolded the black sheep. In truth, he did not look too surprised to see Darka still in the guard captain’s quarters. “Clementine banished you.”

  “And yet here I stand,” said Darka, shoving an extra canteen into her rucksack. The sheep’s hooves clicked on the floor as he hovered in the doorway. “I could say the same for you, of course. Shouldn’t you be with your family down in the village, David Turnacliff?”

  The hooves froze.

  “H-how do you know who I am?” the sheep bleated.

  “I spent my afternoons wisely, David,” said Darka, tying the top of her bag. “It doesn’t take me too much effort to move about town without being seen if I don’t want to. And those villagers do love to gossip. How many years has it been since the mayor’s shy, bookish son went missing?”

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” pleaded the sheep. “I can’t go back to living under his roof. He doesn’t even have a library.”

  Darka sighed. Did anyone on this side of the Seven Sisters know how to bargain?

  “Look,” said Darka, sitting down with a thump to tie her boots. “It’s none of my business whether you want to be a sheep or not.”

  “Thank you,” sniffed David.

  “But I’m guessing that your . . . woolliness . . . depends quite a bit on whether the sorcerer who cursed you is still alive and kicking.”

  The sheep’s nose twitched. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But with the way the rest of the magic is going . . .” He sighed.

  “You need Lord Elithor alive,” said Darka. “And it just so happens I know how to save him. But I’ll need you to do your part.” She stood up and shouldered her rucksack and her bow. “What do you say, David? . . . Or do you prefer Dave?”

  ***

  When Clementine entered the woods, she was wreathed in flame. She did not bring the black sheep, the nightmare, or even the Gricken. The black sheep had pleaded with her not to go—had even tried physically blocking her with his woolly bulk—and she didn’t blame him for not accompanying her, but he would never understand. Clementine could not risk the Whittle Witch getting her hands on the Morcerous grimoire, should Clementine be defeated. And the nightmare was too young, too untested. (At least, this was what Clementine told herself. It had nothing to do with wanting to keep the creature out of harm’s way, of course.)

  The flames from the grimoire’s most recent fire spell wrapped around her wrists like fiery snakes, flickering and slithering around her hands and haloing above her head in all of the colors of the rainbow. They did not hurt her—at least, not much—but they would hurt who she wanted them to. In the pockets of her black cloak were other tools of her trade: a small bottle of the bee-sting potion, a cutting from her blue rose bush, a pouch with a sampling of herbs she might need in a pinch, as well as a few magic beans, and a small net woven from nightmare tail hair, which would plunge anyone caught in it into terrifying waking dreams. The magic thrummed in her gut, not quite light and not quite dark—but powerful. Clementine would see how much the Witch of the Woods liked to play with fire.

  The trees, which had been ready and waiting for Clementine, shrank back in fear, a few unlucky branches singed and blackened. The wind hissed and sputtered, trying to douse Clementine’s fire, but the enchanted flames would not be extinguished. It would make her a visible target, she knew. For the first time ever, she did not care. For the first time ever, her veins pulsing with power and anger and grief—no, not grief yet—she felt ready to go into the woods alone.

  Her father was dying. Darka was hunting the unicorn. And the Whittle Witch was after everything else that remained. What did she have to lose?

  The air sizzled, and the flames popped and winked around her head. Clementine stopped. The leaves littering the path turned to piles of ash at her feet.

  “Who’s there?” she demanded.

  A figure appeared on the path, and then another—and then even more. They walked out of the mist, out of the angry trees that they kept at bay with songs and charms strung between their fingers and through their hair.

  Kat Marie Grice led the crowd. The angry young witch Clementine thought was called Shirin walked by her side, ready to offer an elbow to lean on or swipe at any branch that dared accost them. Clementine wondered why the hedgewitches—seemingly all the hedgewitches—were leaving the forest, but she didn’t have the time to worry about them. There was only one witch she meant to deal with today.

  “Clear the path, hedgewitch,” commanded Clementine. “I’ve no quarrel with you.”

  Kat Marie stopped in the middle of the path. She looked older—more hunched and wrinkled—than the last time Clementine had seen her.

  “I’m afraid we can’t do that, Clementine,” said Kat Marie. She gripped her staff firmly. “Our forest has suffered enough. We cannot allow you to bring yet more destruction here.” She nodded to Clementine’s flames.

  “You cannot allow me?” said Clementine. Her flames flared, so strong she felt their searing heat even through her protective enchant
ments. “I will remind you that this is my forest. These are my lands. You stay here because I suffer you to stay, old woman. Now let. Me. Pass.”

  Smoke filled the path, making some of the witches cough. They shielded their eyes from Clementine’s flames. But Kat Marie did not flinch.

  “I warned Darka not to be consumed by revenge,” said Kat Marie, shaking her head. “But it seems I should have extended that same warning to you.”

  A lump rose in Clementine’s throat at the mention of Darka’s name. She lowered her hands, and the smoke cleared a bit.

  “You don’t understand,” Clementine said. “I must find the Whittle Witch. I must defeat her. My father will die if I don’t.”

  “What a shame,” scoffed Shirin. The words hit Clementine like an icy blow to her chest.

  Kat Marie held up her hands. “Insensitive though she may be,” she said with a sideways look at Shirin, “this young woman is right. Why should we stand aside and let you ravage this poor forest, to come to the aid of a man who has done nothing but hunt us to the edge of extinction?”

  Clementine didn’t have an answer for that.

  “I’m not asking you to help me,” she said. “I’m just asking you to get out of my way.”

  “Clementine,” said Kat Marie, “you must listen to reason. We have heard of this witch’s curse—some of our sisters have fallen to it themselves. The Whittle Witch possesses your father’s simulacrum. Only the one who possesses the doll can control the curse.”

  “That’s why I must pass,” pleaded Clementine. “I need to find her so I can find the doll, and . . . and . . .”

  “And would you know what to do with it, even if you had it?” asked Kat Marie. “Even if you overpowered the Whittle Witch, how would you convince her to tell you the secret to reversing the spell? Would you torture her? Chop off little bits of her, just like she did to your father?”

  “Stop!” said Clementine. “Stop talking!” Clementine’s vision flashed red. She did not see the lightning bolt that crashed down into the path, but she did hear the witches’ screams when it landed. A line of flame consumed the earth before them.