The Codex of the Witch: Fantasy Novel

by Federico Negri

  “Relax, we’re in the middle of nowhere,” the other responds, but she twists around her binoculars, aligning them with Alina’s.

  “At sixty-seven degrees north, range two hundred, two hundred fifty yards max.”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “The leaves were moving earlier.”

  “You must have dreamt it,” the other remarks and leans back in her chair, pealing her eyes away from the lenses.

  Alina tightens her jaw. If something seems strange, it usually is strange. Kasia would repeat that ad nauseam. On the bridge of the Needle, an alert wouldn’t be dismissed with such presumption.

  “Anyway, he looks at you,” Gabriela adds, carefree.

  Alina would like to ask, but she forces herself to focus. This time the leaves moved for sure. She swears she sees something flicker under the branches. “Look now.”

  Cerriwden scoffs but, annoyed, she leans into the binoculars. “Well?”

  “The tree whose trunk is lighter. Ten yards to the right.”

  The other finally falls quiet, stretching out the silence for several seconds. “We should check it out,” she decides in the end.

  “Should we wake the Captain?”

  “Nah. There’s no need. We can go down in a launch boat. It must just be some sort of beast.”

  “Let’s hope it’s not armed, this strange beast. Where are the launches?”

  “The upper deck. How did you guess it would be your job to take it?”

  “Perhaps I overestimated you,” Alina pipes.

  “Move it, Santuini. And watch what you do, I could cut the line in a second.”

  Alina leaves her with a dirty look and climbs the narrow step ladder that leads to the spar deck.

  If the bridge is deserted the spar looks like it came from another era. Alina wonders whether anyone has come up here since the war, even if it was just to go over it with a cloth. Her aunt is a maniac for cleanliness, especially during long sojourns in port. This chore always fell to the youngest member of the crew; Alina has wrung out plenty of rags in the last year.

  She heads to the far end of the deck and opens the porthole, encircled with brass. The night wind tousles her hair making a good amount end up in her eyes. The airship must be at least forty yards from the ground—a nice leap if one should slip on that outer walkway.

  She searches along the side of the airship until she identifies the catwalk leading to the small launch boats, hooked to two quasi-aluminum balloons. She grips the first of the handles that skirt the ship. On the Needle, she never went out without a safety rope, but Riger and Silla did so often, so she could do it also.

  She moves her feet, which seem much heavier than normal. The wind tosses her against the ship with sudden, powerful gusts. The rungs are ice cold beneath her palms, slippery in the damp of night. Having covered a few yards, she releases the ropes which hold the boat in place using her only free hand. As soon as it’s loose, the launch seems to go wild and bangs against the wooden hull. Something’s not working, but Alina can’t figure out the reason for all this commotion. The boat sways frighteningly and, in its undulations, risks ending up on top of her and making her lose her grip.

  “Santuini!” she hears a voice from below.

  Alina sticks her head out past the overhang, bring into focus the disheveled head of the witch Gabriela who is trying to say something to her in the wind. But between the battering of the small vessel, the rustling of the gale and the noises of the planks, Alina can’t make it out.

  “What?” she screams back. The other shouts something more, but she doesn’t hear it. “Say it again, I don’t understand!”

  An invisible pin pricks her mind. Alina tries to concentrate on that irritating sensation. Gabriela is attempting to tell her something. Telepathic magic doesn’t work well with complex ideas, but Cerriwden must be truly gifted in this type of witchcraft because quickly the image forms in Alina’s mind of a decompression pump.

  Followed by the shape of jackass.

  “How stupid of me,” Alina mumbles, and she quickly gets up on her tiptoes. A sleeve of fabric connects one of the airship’s bags to the small balloon that supports the launch. She opens the valve and at last, the boat is free to float a few yards from the ship. Alina pulls the line delicately and climbs on top of it. She starts moving the mechanical propulsion crank, but the breeze is too strong. After ten minutes of hard work she hasn’t made it more than a hundred yards.

  The sweat is freezing on her back when she finally catches sight of the suspicious tree. Two figures are climbing among its lowest branch, while at the base of its trunk other creatures are trying to jump up to grab them. The two men fleeing up the branches are indistinguishable in the night, bundled in their dark uniforms. They are under attack by magical hybrids, regressed into a bestial state. They walk upright near the bottom of the tree, but they’re completely covered in hair, and their shining claws are visible even from this distance.

  Alina pushes her hardest to overcome the force of the gale and reach the tree where the conflict plays out. The brutes have already started to scale the first branches, while the two men on the trunk exhaust themselves. A blade glimmers between the teeth of the lower one. Just as the young witch crosses the last few yards separating them, the person dangling from the higher branches loses his hold and falls.

  “George!” the other screams, still hanging, but from below they can already hear the screeching of the famished hybrids. Desperate, the man in the tree shouts, “By land, by sea, by the Queen!” and then throws himself to the ground to help his companion.

  “Englishmen!” Alina jumps. They’ve always been the witches’ allies, their brothers-in-arms for the whole of the last war, lost against the Palatinate League. She must manage to help them. She stands up, upsetting her hair in the evening breeze. This spell will be very risky; few witches are capable of sustaining their own demon without the support of others. But she is one of those few.

  Alina opens her arms until she feels the wind’s power converge on her fingers. The pure air’s oxygen scorches her veins—igniting her hands, her wrists and then her arms up to her shoulders. She squeezes her thighs tight, to stimulate the generative energy inside her and maintain the spell. She inhales sharply, and it’s as if she’s swallowing liquid fire. Her young heart starts to beat somberly, like the executioner knocking at the condemned man’s door. Alina opens her eyes and sees the rain dragon. Vapor radiates from his burning skin as the malevolent reptile takes possession of her body. He is impatient to let out his flames, to scorch the flesh and the hopes of helpless human beings. He lifts his green and gold eyes and commands her to show him her enemies.

  Alina concentrates her strength into her hands, already blazing savagely, and aims it at the tree’s base. However she can’t make out her target, blinded by the dragon’s furor.

  She stretches out her fingers, unable to hold it back any longer, and an imperious flame slashes the night, setting the shaft ablaze as if it were soaked in pure alcohol. Alina feels her voice scream and her body bend, possessed by the dragon’s wild craving. She closes her fingers, fighting the beast’s desire for destruction, which now pervades her as well. The scream dies in her throat, leaving her with only a dull pain in her arm and her head on the verge of exploding. Her legs give way and she hits the launch’s coarse plane with her elbows. The dragon mocks her weakness and slyly curls up again with its coils around her heart.

  After a few seconds, Alina manages to sharpen her eyes again, while the reddish flares illuminate the scene. She looks over the boat’s edge and glimpses the nest of flames emanating from the tree trunk, a few yards from the bottom. One of the two men lies prone on the ground, while the other is staring at her with a bared sword, protecting his friend. The hybrids seem to have run off, but they surely haven’t abandoned their prey.

  “Hey,” the man shouts from below. “Help us! Throw us a cable!”

  Alina stretches her shaking hand towards the ballast sac
ks, counting them in the darkness. Nine twelve-pound bags, they could just about do it.

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  “We are from the airship Silent Fathom. We plummeted and we’re the only survivors. Help us, quickly, we’re Englishmen!”

  If she was on the Needle she wouldn’t hesitate. Her Aunt Kasia wouldn’t leave two castaways on the ground, whatever their nationality, let alone Englishmen. However aboard this Cerriwden airship the rules may be different. On the other hand, leaving these two to fend for themselves with a pack of hybrids would mean condemning them to certain death and committing a crime at any rate, even under the Palatinate’s code of navigation. Returning to the airship to ask for advice is out of the question; it would take too long and the fire would go out. She’s not that good with telepathy, like Gabriela, and the distance to the ship is prohibitive. The idea of reawakening the dragon frightened her; she still hasn’t reabsorbed the last spell.

  “Witch!” the man calls out to her again. “Hurry, they’re all around us. They’re close, damn it!”

  Alina looks one last time toward the Cerriwden’s airship, which merely returns her gaze with silence and shadows. Clumsily, she removes the rope ladder from its box. Careful, her aunt would have said. You don’t bring strangers on board and you don’t bring men on board.

  Two rules she was violating in one blow.

  The ladder sways in the dark, illuminated by the flames. The man on the ground struggles to carry his wounded comrade on his back. As soon as he grabs the line, the fragile launch takes a violent dip. Hairy creatures, starved, close in on the wounded man’s heels.

  Alina fights against the boat’s momentum, unbalanced by the weight pulling it toward the earth. She grabs the first ballast sack and flings it overboard, in a clamor of snapping branches. The launch whirls and wavers even more, but the young witch doesn’t give up and, after the fourth sack, the two men are finally lifted a few yards off the ground. A hybrid darts out from the edge of the woods, but right as it’s about to jump on top of the two men suspended in air, Alina casts out three more bags in quick succession, decisively moving her precious cargo toward the heights. “Climb up!”

  With much effort the two climb the feeble rungs until a gloved hand grasps the launch boat’s rim. Next a dark mane appears followed by two blue eyes.

  “What in the devil…” the man mumbles. Alina has drawn her knife and the blade gleams an inch away from the bridge of the newcomer’s nose.

  “Swear you’re an Englishman,” Alina demands, almost immediately regretting the stupidity of her question.

  “Of course I swear it. But you’re just… a girl. What’s your name?”

  “That’s none of your business.” She tries to affect a nonchalant tone, but her voice cracks on her.

  The man smiles in the shadows. She’s unable to see him well, but he has a nice open face with two pronounced eyebrows and plump lips. Someone who merits a second look; he can’t be over twenty-five.

  “Do you intend to let me on board or to run me through with that skewer?”

  “Don’t make any foolish moves or I’ll roast you. You’ve seen I don’t joke around,” Alina bluffs. She could never reawaken the dragon after such a short time and then the man could easily overpower her during the first stage of the spell. She pulls back her knife and squeezes herself against the launch’s prow.

  Huffing like a coffeepot, the man with the bright eyes pushes his wounded friend over the side and then climbs in himself. He’s tall, with two square shoulders like a chest of drawers. He wears a dark uniform covered by a double-breasted, leather trench coat.

  “You see that rope behind you?” Alina says. “Pull it back up, we need to return to the airship.”

  “My friend needs help,” he mutters, without moving.

  “Sit in the stern and take in that line. I’ll watch him for now. The sooner we arrive on the ship the sooner we can assist him.”

  Reluctantly, he places himself on the far stool and starts to wind up the rope around his elbow. “Turn him on his side and check that he’s breathing. He’s in shock and he’s losing blood,” he advises.

  Trying to keep him in sight, the young witch lays the injured man on his side. He has a short white beard and a deep scar near his right eye. He too is dressed in expensive clothes, although they’re shredded around his abdomen where the beasts’ claws dug in. Alina tries shaking him lightly, but the man is half conscious and only lets out short incoherent lines. A pool of blood starts to form under his wounded flank.

  “Hurry and pull in that line, we need to treat him soon or it will be too late,” Alina urges him, even though the man doesn’t look like he needs spurring on, he spins the arm with which he’s coiling the rope like the blade of a windmill.

  “What clan are you from?” the man asks between one gasp and another, but Alina has no wish to answer and shuts herself in deep silence. Whatever was she thinking, picking up these two? As soon as they make it to the airship, the Cerriwdens will find a way to put them on her Aunt Kasia’s tab as well. She should have left them in their stew, or awaited instructions. Never open a pot wide enough to fall in, her aunt once said.

  “Hey. Relax, little one. My name is Kenneth Allport,” the man says.

  “Alina Santuini,” she finally decides to share. “However, that is not my airship. I am… a guest up there. You’ll have to convince the Captain to let you come aboard; I can’t guarantee anything.”

  The man interrupts his winding for a moment, leaving the launch fluttering in the wind.

  “Alina. You saved my life and George, who is like a brother to me. I’ll be forever grateful to you; I am in your debt, even if you lot don’t take us aboard your ship.”

  “Yes, of course. Look, you need watch yourself with that woman with the striped hair like a possum.”

  The full crew of the East Wind stands waiting for them on the gunwale, with Jillian Cerriwden in front of them all. The Captain watches them with her brows furrowed, no one likes being woken up in the middle of the night for an emergency.

  Having made it within ear range, Kenneth puts the coiled line down on the boat floor and turns with a formal bow to the crowd of witches. “Captain, I am the second officer of the Silent Fathom, Lieutenant Kenneth Allport of the English navy.”

  “Don’t come any closer Allport and shut your beak,” Jillian answers. “Santuini? Would you be so kind as to explain to me what is the meaning of all this?”

  Alina stretches her neck out a bit beyond the Englishman’s profile. She’s weary from the spell and in a bad mood because of the scolding that’s on its way. “Captain, these two men were about to be killed by a pack of degenerate hybrids. One of the two is gravely injured.”

  “Why did you decide to take them on board?”

  Alina shrugs involuntarily. “They’re Englishmen.”

  “That much I gathered. Don’t you know the code of navigation, idiot? You can’t take passengers on board without the Captain’s authorization. My authorization!”

  Alina feels her throat become inflamed. She jumps to her feet and points at the airship. “How could I? They were about to be murdered, I had to decide that second!”

  “Lower your voice, and more importantly that finger. We’ll speak about this later. Allport! You say you’re English. Can you prove it?”

  “Of course, I have my documents.” He punches his chest.

  “What was your airship’s mission?”

  The man plays with the cable between his fingers. “It was a mission…” he coughs, “of Her Majesty’s Navy. I cannot speak about it, so… freely.”

  On the other side, silence.

  “Anyway,” Kenneth picks back up, “my ship has fallen and I am the last officer remaining. I could share this information with you if you take us onboard.”

  “And then you can tell me any old fairy story. If I’m able to recover your orders from the wrecked airship, they could be sufficiently interesting to buy you passage. How far?”r />
  “It would be a disgrace!” the sailor shouts. “How could you think of putting your hands on our military secrets with impunity! I would rather die than give them to you!”

  “Would you also rather be shredded alive?” The wind whistles icily between the launch boat’s balloons. “The choice is yours, Allport,” Cerriwden concludes.

  ***

  “You’ve stirred up a nice madhouse.” Gabriela toys with the cork stopper on the mess hall table.

  Alina stares into the depths of the tea in her cup. She’d like to read their future, but that’s some magic no one’s ever managed to perform.

  “But you roasted them nicely,” Gabriela continues. “I’ve never seen any sister make a conflagration like that, alone.”

  “It’s the one thing that comes easily to me,” Alina mutters.

  “Did you get a load of that Kenneth?” She watches Alina, half-closing her eyelids. “Beautiful broad shoulders. Not to mention those legs—he’s a bronze statue.”

  “A coward, in the end. He sold out everything, even the combination to the safe.”

  “Right, but who wouldn’t have done the same? We’re quite far from any inhabited area; if he didn’t come with us he would have been a goner.”

  “Where are we going, Gabriela?”

  “Oh, you’ll like it. I can’t tell you where it is, obviously, but you’ll have a world of fun—you’ll see. And then, when we return, we’ll enjoy the Sabbath. Yum!”

  “Man alive, do you have a one track mind?”

  Gabriela throws her the cork, landing it right in the gap between her hands.

  “Wait until you have a couple of rides. Then tell me if you don’t miss the saddle.” Gabriela gives a vulgar laugh and exits the hall, leaving her with an unpleasant stimulating sensation, aggravated a few minutes later by Hansi’s blonde head appearing in the doorway.

  “Ali?” he asks, hesitantly.

  “Hey. They let you walk free?”

  “Just as far as the mess hall. May I?”

  “Of course, don’t be silly. Come, sit here close to me.” Alina moves over a few inches on the bench.