Fearsome Magics

by Jonathan Strahan

  Lettice had long since given up on hopes of such things bringing a change for good. The Holy Writ was a man’s words on a paper though it pretended to have divine authority and power. It was the product of people who wanted to stamp out magic by denying the existence of it, Lettice thought, sympathetically, though it had left the unmagical at the mercy of every passing Greater Aspect. Children were innocents under the Writ and could not be held responsible for speaking of arcane matters until they came of age. Missy was well below age. She had seen and she would talk, most likely until someone took notice enough.

  Lettice studied her house after she had lit her rush light and saw nothing in the tiny one-roomed home that she could not leave, save for the basket in the corner. The idea of leaving irked her however—she was no threat. She was the very opposite of a threat to anyone.

  She lit her fire and put water on it to boil for a hot drink in the cold hours before bed. When she had settled in her chair and warmed herself she reached for the basket and took off the waterproofed hide that was its fitted cover. She lifted out the doll inside and set it on her knee, tidying the embroidered silk shawl that wrapped it before she brushed her fingers once across its featureless cotton face. She felt much calmer then.

  She spent a comfortable hour dandling the baby on her knee, loving every moment of the sweet company, the dark eyes which smiled at her when she smiled and the little hands which reached out in delight to touch her face, never knowing she was not young any more. Chuckles filled the smoky air. The love she felt then was so pure and all-fulfilling that the vagaries of the day and her temper left her. Here at least was a spell well spent, though it cost her twenty years. But later, when she had put Annett back to her basket and herself to her straw mattress she could not help but consider it a foolish decision to linger and then the anger came again, fierce and hot. Beneath the anger hid a weariness from years of moving on that she could not face and so she was still there a month later when Lord Bonfort’s man came and knocked on the door.

  He was dressed in a neat livery that she recognised from having worked on the embroidery of the cuffs and borders for sixty sets the previous autumn—it had paid well but seemed a mighty extravagance for footmen and soldiers to her. He was young and held himself away from her a little, looking over her head as though she was literally beneath notice as he said, “Widow Beaverley, you are requested to attend the Lord of Wast at the Castle on pressing business.”

  “I cannot imagine what for,” Lettice said, hoping to prise it out of him as her heart sank. Mentally she was already packing.

  “Word of your abilities has reached his Lordship’s attention and he has a proposal for you that might spare you the inconvenience of a hanging.”

  Lettice felt her mouth hanging open for a good second before she snapped it shut. Though entirely expected the implied accusations and sentencing still hurt. Since the fair she had kept herself apart, dealing only on market days to hand in her sewing and shop for food. Her behaviour had been impeccable. She had even paid alms through the Temple Gate to priests that were little more than the Papess’ beggars, resenting every copper. In their dull eyes she’d seen only the satisfaction of unimaginative men whose lives had been signed away in return for a roof and regular meals—entirely the fault of the Wastern temperament and its love of repose. That they would prosper, smothering the survival skills of generations, while she must run like a rat for the rest of her days hurt bitterly.

  She knew herself her own worst enemy, of course, always. To refuse the summons, to delay, all these things were impossible for a woman alone. “I’ll get my things.”

  With the basket on her back and her best coat on, the old cloak left to decorate the empty room, she set out after the squire’s pony. To her relief its grain-fed paces soon left her behind before they had even passed Far Ashes. On the way she dropped off the mending for the village tailor that she had already finished. The servant said there could be no pay until market day, which she had expected. She asked for it to be retained. Although she knew she would not be coming back she saw no reason to give any satisfaction about it to anyone. The only one to miss her would be the farmer when his rent was unpaid but he would have her firewood and her matching cream pottery bowls that she so loved, so it was not all bad news for him.

  As she left Far Ashes she watched her shadow step before her and walked until it had begun to stretch behind. At that point she looked for a resting place and sat on a fallen trunk that had been pushed to the roadside, sure to stay away from the reaching shade of the trees. At the trees’ feathered edges where they lay dappled across the stones she saw mountains, high and far, and a cold distant peak that bore no visible paths.

  Between the grey trunks two dryads stared at her. In the past she would have had to hunt them if she wanted them. Now that they were used to people not being able to see them in broad daylight they took almost a minute to realise she was staring back at them. They waited to see if she would be afraid but when she gave them a firm look they melted back into the trees. They were not the first Minor Aspects she had seen lately, though most of these were relatively benign forms which were simply looking for recognition and had no interest either way in human affairs. The mountain, on the other hand, bothered her. She could feel its presence beyond the trees and over the hills. Mountains have long roots and longer reaches. What thrives there are the stripped-off things, the lees of those who tread the slopes, the remnants of those who reach the heights where the wind winnows all but the raw soul away.

  Lettice made a note to buy new boots. If there was to be winnowing she wanted to have good feet for it.

  The walk took two days. She stopped at inns she knew of along the way, where a cot in a warm room was available in exchange for her stitching skills. The meals she paid for from the last of her wages and at the final stop, a wealthy village just shy of Bonfort, she sold all she had of fine lawn handkerchiefs and embroidery and the sickly marmalade. She had been there before, some years ago, and had left when the rumours of a baby had spread, because it was not seen out always but only now and again, and seemed not to grow. She hoped not to be recognised and kept her hood down.

  She had been suspected of taking children from parents in the countryside for coin—as town baby farmers did—and then drowning them rather than minding them. She supposed there must be a precedent for doing such a thing, though it was an evil she could only have punished rather than plotted. But the chatter of ill deeds sped faster than a fire and she had fled, much as she was doing now. A few faces seemed to recognise her, but most did not, occupied with their own business. She saw no sign of menace until the evening came and found her at the inn’s snug, tucked in the corner with her hood down, drinking a toddy as she passed her final hours of freedom.

  As night drew on she listened to a conversation between two men who sat as close to the log fire as they could without roasting themselves. A foul steam came from their clothing as they dried, though it had not rained all day in town. They wore the black outer robes of the Simple Friars but beneath that she saw the leather boots more like those of Nazurian reavers and their belts held several blades apiece. Their chests were crossed with baldrics of black tanned leather that supported narrow-headed axes and coils of rope that they would not put down. In the firelight their hands were revealed sore and cracked with cold, though it was a mild night. They spoke with distant accents, different ones, though the symbols about their necks branded them as brothers of a kind. Lettice did not know the sign but it was not hard to interpret—a twisted knot that could not unravel because it was a single strand. They were some kind of sorcerer-warriors and they had reached Bonfort from the bitter cold hills to the east within a single day. To do so required a considerable magic—striding—which Lettice did not possess and had only heard of. She surmised it was striding or riding at least, upon the kinds of horses or pantherkin that few but the Queen commanded. They did not bear her arms however, only carelessly hung wooden tablets at the waist w
ith the Holy Writ scripted on them as any pious layman might wear. One had them the wrong way about, which confirmed to her that they were merely for show.

  As Lettice slumped, cup aslant in her relaxed hands, pretending to sleep, the conversation delved swiftly into fearful mutterings about the mountains, from which it became apparent they had fled. They spoke of shadows on the land that followed them, the sound of wings in still air, the blocking of the sun without a cloud and of choughs that watched for their steps to fall on poor ground and then scattered tiny pebbles at them from on high. Stone slides took the path out under their feet.

  This was immanent magic Lettice knew very well. In certain places it required only the merest push to take form, there was so much of it about. In these places the Eightfold Wall was thin and any Greater Powers might pass.

  The men glanced often at the door, and shivered when it shut with a thump against the air outside. They talked about someone who had followed them, not only on the mountain, which might have been a wight or a ghast, but off the mountain where such things could not tread, even across the running spread of the Wasterling River where it was whited water that nothing should be able to span that was not alive and true, part of the holy creation.

  Lettice shivered, but sternly reminded herself it was the careless wizard who mixed his doctrines with such freedom. You did not suppose creation holy and susceptible to the Writ if you also supposed it chaotic and interleaved with the Eightfold Plane. If the former then all your ghasts were demons that you must fight like a warrior but were categorically separated from, and if the latter then they were wild creatures beyond the ken of human minds that you dealt with at your peril but with which you shared a fundamental common existence. The first declared one being over all in mimicry of human rule. The second knew only the necessities of survival and the hunt. Lettice knew the latter truer than the former, for which she might rightly be hung for heresy tomorrow should she prove a disappointment.

  The men spent Bonfort gold on fine food and wine and finally were joined by a third returned from the Castle itself, the glow of pride in it still about him. He was dressed as they were except for a red cord at his waist and he was sober. He pushed his hood back and revealed a head groomed and hair tied in tight rows that gathered at his nape, beard the same and beaded with scarlet and silver clasps.

  “I said we advised against it,” he informed them, taking his seat between on the bench and quite blocking the heat. “But he won’t be swayed.”

  “Did you agree to accompany him?”

  “He says to pay us from the hoard,” their leader said.

  “No dragon, no hoard,” the one with the strangest accent said, so quiet she thought for a minute that she had misheard but the curl of flame in the grate agreed suddenly, painting the man’s face with a meandering yellow line.

  “Nah. No dead dragon, no hoard,” the other corrected him, wincing as he touched a deep crack in his knuckle. “I ain’t goin’ back on that mountain.”

  Lettice felt she had heard enough. She must get out before the last of her spirits failed her. She got up quickly, knocking her cup to the tiles and smacking her lips as if she had startled from a deep sleep, then shuffled around the three and around the traders lingering in the heat. Outside the room the chill evening air was biting for the first moments and her breath misted in front of her as she turned in the passage, looking for the way to the stairs. She had to struggle not to be dismayed at this sign.

  “Bloody beldames,” she heard said as the door closed after her.

  In the morning she made herself as respectable as she was able with the help of a kind farmer’s wife who brushed out and sewed up her hair. Then after a breakfast of eggs and milk to fortify her for what must come she left and went to present herself at the Castle. There was a long wait and then a maid of a level deemed suitable for escorting nobodies into the Lord’s receiving rooms was sent for. Lettice was taken to a waiting room and after another hour of staring at a tatty tapestry of unicorns and maidens she was permitted to enter a wood-panelled chamber.

  If it hadn’t been for the unicorns perhaps she might have been able to contain her memories of the war. No images or reminders of it were permitted anywhere, which is why in every innocent, bland depiction she saw the razing of Wast as it had been, before the Cascars. In each thread of pretty hair and poised hoof there was fire and blood, in each virtuous face the screaming mouths of those who did not die quickly enough. In and out the weave Least Ghosts formed, lost and looking for a home.

  What should I have done? she thought. I am only one against the armies of the East. I could have... but no, I could not. What would dying have achieved? But then again, what has living achieved—they are still here and what I know will die with me after all. The unicorns and the maidens stared into serene emptiness. It took all her strength to sit. Finally she was shown to the Lord’s study.

  Lord Bonfort, attired in black and silver, sat with a quill in his hand as if he was interrupted in the middle of his letters. If the page before him had been added to in a month she would have been surprised, but she affected to look and wait for such a learned, powerful man to pause in his necessary duties.

  “The Widow Beaverley,” the maid announced with a curtsey, her face downcast.

  Lettice did not curtsey and angled her head as if to peer at his paper and correct his spellings. “Lord Bonfort. You wished to speak with me.” She couldn’t even make that sound polite.

  The scrape of the guard’s boot at the door was met with a gesture of one of the Lord’s ringed fingers. It slid back and the maid departed down some mousehole or other, Lettice supposed, or would have if this man had his way. He was tall and relatively handsome, with only the hints of grey coming to his temples and into his neat black beard. His grey eyes set at her with a frown of patriarchal disappointment and a little pity, which is what her motes of rebellion had sparked in him, she saw—how very toothless she must be. He spoke quickly, fortunately, or she would have lost her temper.

  “They tell me you have some talent with the fell arts,” he said, as if they were discussing ordinary business. Beside his hand a copy of the Great Writ lay in leatherbound perfection, the silk ribbon place markers aligned in position for Exorcism. He rested his fingertips on it lightly, as if it could earth him against some shock or other. “Is this so, or merely the moitherings of jealous chattels?”

  “What do you want of me?” Lettice said. Let them do what they would, she would not bow to inferior minds. After the initial jolt of terror at this decision she felt a calm take over. She composed her hands on the handle of her basket and waited patiently for his answer.

  Lord Bonfort looked her over for a moment. It must be hard for him to decide whether she was being rude or acting from a position of real power, she thought. He did not have a good eye for these things, which explained his state here at the edges of civilisation in Wast; it was the kind of place that minor royalty was sent to prove itself or be erased. “I want you to cast a curse, a hex, for me, at a certain time. If you really have poisoned foods and blighted crops, sold the souls of innocents and brought winter storms you must be able to manage this?”

  This fresh listing of her ‘crimes’ rather took her breath away. She thought hanging would probably not be enough for such as her. They had burned children for crying out of turn when the Writ was introduced, to scar the face forever. Some died of the shock. She held fast to the basket. “What am I to curse, and for what?”

  “We are leaving tomorrow on an expedition to the mountains,” Bonfort said, his hand sliding off the Writ and onto his desk. “There is word that the dragon of Mount Nazur has died.”

  “I do not see my part in this.” She held her breath. He could not be serious.

  “There is a hoard, of course, that should be reclaimed,” Bonfort said, watching her closely. “And always a danger that it is not as deceased as it might be. In the event that it is not you will curse it.”

  This notion was so pre
posterous that Lettice found herself smiling and had to struggle to suppress it. The only thing which distracted her was the knowledge that he was hiding something, though if this is what he was prepared to say aloud what he concealed must be impressively foolish to a degree she could not imagine. She wondered if he were trying to start a war with Nazuria, or if they were manoeuvring him there by feeding him nonsense. She was about to say she had never heard anything more ridiculous when she understood that those might be her last words. “I see,” she managed to say. ‘So what would you be employing the wizards of the Red Circle for, then?”

  The atmosphere of the room changed at that point. From a semi-amiable tolerance to an icy agitation in less time than it took her to draw breath.

  “That is not your concern, witch,” Bonfort said after a moment in which his advisors and he exchanged glances. “Are you able to do your part or not? That is all you need worry over.”

  “Indeed,” Lettice said faintly, wondering why he didn’t consider that the Red Circle had not proven itself able to deliver a curse. Then she remembered that they pretended to abide by the Writ. Officially they were scholars and friars. She, on the other hand, was already damned.

  She was escorted out and given a room and gear for the expedition which she must make fit by dawn. In the evening she was given a supper in the servants’ hall, alongside a group of women who were not going at all but who had spent the last month labouring to produce food and clothes for the journey. They assumed Lettice to be a freewoman from outside the town and treated her to all their opinions of the Lord and his household, in particular the Lady Bonfort: “A woman of ambitions—he’s completely her creature, down to the last idea in his head—t’was she who came up with the dragon talk, first of the mountain, then the treasure and then the Kingship. She brought them wizards into it, and all that goes with it.”