by P. J. Fox
She made a dismissive gesture. “Perhaps he is, perhaps he isn’t. Most likely, he isn’t. But he succeeds, anyway. Why?” She paused. “Because confidence is, and has ever been, the key ingredient in success. He succeeds, not because of the talisman in his pocket but because he takes a risk. Did the spell bring this result about?” She paused again. “Could I, or you, or he, or anyone say that he would have made the same choices without the spell?”
Isla nodded slowly. She thought she understood, perhaps for the first time. The manipulation of magical energies was a subtle craft indeed, involving many facets that, to achieve success, must be brought together in exactly the right manner at exactly the right time. Who could say where simple wisdom left off and magic began? Or that there was any real difference between the two? Cariad created outcomes, and she also saw things in her scrying mirror. Spied on people. Was one less magic than the other?
“But necromancy is, in some respects, a grotesque parody of earth magic in that it uses objects from the unnatural world to perform unnatural purposes. Birth, life, death, and decay are the natural cycle of life. When a plant decays back into the earth, in doing so it releases nutrients that allow new plants to germinate and thrive. Likewise, when we die, we create new room for our children—and their children, and so on. But, unlike the earth witch, the necromancer believes….”
The necromancer, Isla learned, harnessed the energy of the dead—and the energy of beings from other realms. Tristan Mountbatten, the original Tristan Mountbatten, had been a necromancer of no small skill although he’d hidden the nature and extent of his talents from all who knew him. All except his tutor, the mysterious wizard he’d brought to court. He’d hidden them especially from his betrothed, the young and perhaps naïve Brenna. He’d done so, however, not from shame or fear of the consequences should he be discovered but from love. Although reserved, and adept at hiding his emotions, his passion for his betrothed had been nearly all-consuming and he’d wanted desperately to protect her from harm. His fear that something might happen to her had been one of the things that led—perhaps pushed—him down his chosen path.
Practitioners of this blackest of dark arts believed that three distinct results could be accomplished through its series of complex and often dangerous rituals: manipulation of the will, illusion, and knowledge. As well as summoning the dead and making use of them in…other ways, the necromancer also, of course, summoned demons.
As well as for giving knowledge, demons were also summoned to cause harm to others in the form of possessing them, driving them mad, inflaming them to hatred—or love—and occasionally to stop them from doing something like getting married or maybe signing an important contract.
A protective circle was drawn and the demon summoned, sometimes a specific demon and sometimes any demon who chose to answer the call. A demon with a proclivity for making love to human women, perhaps. The circle served a dual purpose: to empower the demon and to protect the necromancer. At least in theory. The summoning spell itself usually involved specific chants and other ritual practices and could take several hours—or days—to complete.
In return for its appearance, the demon expected payment. Those necromancers foolish enough to cheat their demons had lived to regret their mistakes. Lived for far, far longer than they’d wanted to after the demon finally got its claws into them. Revenge might take hours, or years, but it always came in the end. If nothing else, the enterprising demon was usually able to find another necromancer willing to call it and empower it to do the deed. Whatever deed it felt like doing.
In exchange for assuming a concrete form and using it to enter the physical world, the demon wanted sacrifice. Sometimes of a particular object, but usually of an animal—or human being. A young, unbaptized virgin was popular. Unbaptized meant unclaimed, in the metaphorical sense if not in the literal, and virgin meant pure. Thus, the sacrifice belonged wholly to the demon; no other party had a prior claim. If an object was used, its collection and presentation often came with very specific instructions. Both the time and method of its gathering could have important implications for the ritual.
Within the realm of arcane knowledge, in addition to demons most necromancers also summoned the dead. The first use of other human beings for the necromancer was sacrifice in furtherance of his work with demons; the other uses involved reanimation of the dead, creating illusion, conjuring, and lastly summoning for the purposes of sharing information and even predicting the future. Operating under the eastern belief that time was merely a mode of thought, necromancy taught that the dead had pierced the veil and saw past, present and future as one continual plane of existence.
There were stories, according to Cariad, of necromancers falling in love with the spirits they conjured. Usually with poor results. More than one necromancer had let his fascination with the dead spill over into…other pursuits. One man, who Cariad had known a long time ago, kept his lover’s corpse in a box and ravished it frequently. Delving into the secrets of death, illness, and the workings of the body, too deeply and for too long had unexpected effects…inside as well as out.
“Both demons and necromancers feed on human flesh—in different fashions and for different reasons, but both need it to sustain their power. The human necromancer suffers greatly as a result of his contact with such unnatural, destructive forces and must constantly replenish his life force…or die. I’ve heard tales, too, of men drinking blood. And worse.”
She got up and poured herself another cup of tea. They’d been talking for hours, and the sun slanted low and strong through the cottage windows. Cariad’s cat, lying on the floor, reminded Isla of her own cat. After puttering around for a bit, Cariad sat back down. “By his mark,” she said, “I mean that I can sense his presence on you. Anyone—any magical practitioner, that is—who comes into contact with you will be able to sense it also. It’s a mark of protection. Or of ownership, depending on how you choose to look at the situation.”
“Can you remove it?”
“I can,” Cariad conceded. “But I won’t.” She sighed at Isla’s stricken expression. “Going against him would be more than my life is worth,” she said quietly. “If I weren’t so self-interested, I wouldn’t be what I am. I made a choice, a long time ago, to live for myself. As your duke did also. And you, child, chose us both.
“You need to accept your friendship with me for what it is, and isn’t, just as you need to accept your relationship with your lover for what it is, and isn’t.”
He’s not my lover, Isla grumbled silently, feeling violated all over again.
“You made your bed,” Cariad finished. Her expression was somber, and her tone had turned hard. She regarded Isla evenly across the table, with empathy, perhaps, but without a trace of sympathy. She clearly had no patience for a girl who’d thrown herself headlong into a situation that she herself couldn’t stop bemoaning. “Now lie in it.”
TWENTY-SIX
The next morning found Isla sitting in the chapel next to her sister. Rudolph sat on the other side of the aisle. He appeared no more interested in the sermon than Rowena and kept glancing over at them, making faces and fidgeting. In truth, Isla was even less interested than Rudolph and Rowena combined but she had sufficient sense to pretend otherwise. The last thing she wanted was to draw Father Justin’s attention, given his feelings about her betrothed.
Idly, she wondered where Tristan was. She wondered where Hart was. After that first day, and especially after no one had remarked on his absence, she’d come to the uncomfortable conclusion that Hart must indeed have accompanied the duke on his so-called business trip. Wherever that was. And for whatever purpose.
She thought back to Cariad, too. The witch cared about her but Isla sensed, rather than having to be told, that she was no longer as welcome in the strange little cottage as she once had been. The thought made her sad. Their previous parting really had been goodbye, in every way that mattered. Isla wouldn’t go again; from now on, she had to figure things out on he
r own. And it was about time she started, too. She was an adult woman!
Moreover, Cariad was right: she had made her bed.
“He is risen!” Father Justin proclaimed in a loud tone, raising his hands over his head as he glared out at the congregation. Which, in turn, was properly mollified. Or at least struggled to be. “The Mediator,” he continued, “is risen!”
The Mediator was one of the more poetic titles their church had for the king of the Gods, the fleshly offspring made from a combination of their divine spirits who was sent down from the heavens to deliver mankind from their sins. After attempting to do so—according to their scriptures, with mixed results—he ascended back to Heaven on a chariot and there he still reigned with his…co-rulers? Spiritual parents? Isla had never been entirely clear on what precisely their relationship was meant to be. Like so many things about their religion, this really rather vital point of understanding was dismissed as a mystery.
“And he was risen last week, and the week before that—and the week before that! Indeed, he was risen on every day of your life, from birth until this moment.” Father Justin’s already frightening glare intensified. “But where were you?” he demanded. He went on to castigate the little congregation for its lack of faith, blaming them for coming to services simply to keep up appearances—for him, naturally, paragon of righteousness that he was. But it was their own souls they should be worried about, he reminded them; souls black with sin. Pride, envy, gluttony, anger, greed, laziness and, worst of all, lust. Lust was, in Father Justin’s eyes and in the church’s, a special kind of deformity in which man was separated from his reason. Woman, of course, had no reason from which to be separated.
Father Justin droned on.
Isla looked around the chapel, a smallish and simply built room made to hold the manor’s inhabitants and no more. Even then, most attended services in the village. The walls were unadorned stone, with heavy buttresses supporting a vaulted ceiling that was equally plain. The quality of the masonry was high, though, which was why it hadn’t fallen down around their ears like so much of the manor. Isla rather thought a mid-prayer cave-in would be funny. It would certainly add zest to an otherwise interminable ordeal. Normally, her family attended services once per week if they attended at all. But for the duration of Father Justin’s stay, they were being held daily. By Father Justin, of course.
She shifted on the uncomfortable bench, dark wood polished to a deep shine by so many generations of bottoms doing the exact same thing. Her back hurt, and she was still tired. In fact, these days, Isla lived in a perpetual state of exhaustion. After she’d come home from Cariad’s, sheer misery had made her want to throw herself into bed and sleep for hours. But instead, she’d gotten into a fight with Rowena that began when her sister accused her of stealing a pair of slippers. Isla, who could barely fit into Rowena’s much smaller shoes, thought the little chit ridiculous and told her so. Rowena threw a plant pot at her and everything went downhill from there.
Isla fingered the small cut beneath her eye. It would heal and not leave a scar, she was fairly certain. The terracotta shard had been very small, and she’d washed it out with soap and water. She sighed, possessed with the uncomfortable feeling of wanting to go home but already being home.
Next to her, Rowena ignored her existence. She’d apologized for hitting Isla, but grudgingly and probably only then because The Chivalrous Heart told her she had to. In between glances at Rudolph, Rowena sat with her hands folded in her lap and attempted to look prim. She caught Isla’s eye, once, and Isla saw that Rowena’s anger had cooled off into embarrassment. Blushing, she turned away. Even Rowena had to admit that her behavior had been childish at best. And Rowena, having reached all of sixteen winters, took herself extremely seriously. She always had, since she was little more than a baby. She was a lady, she reminded Isla constantly, destined for great things.
Isla genuinely hoped that her sister would be happy with Rudolph. He’d give her a good life, if she let him. And, Cariad’s suspicions aside, Isla did believe that her sister loved the minor baron’s son. Rowena was just confused, and overwhelmed; it was one thing to wish for something, in the abstract, and another to be confronted with it as a real possibility. As an inevitability, rather than some vague dream. Isla didn’t know what Cariad’s past had been—supposed she never would know now, she thought with a sigh—but she should understand that a betrothal was a difficult time in any girl’s life no matter how well she knew the groom. Or liked him. Isla had seen enough of her acquaintances go through the same.
Most had married total strangers, or the next best thing to. A few, like Rowena, had been given permission from their liege lords to marry for love. Or at least their liege lord had decided that love was no impediment to his political ambitions. One girl that Rowena had grown up with had, indeed, married the liege lord; Earl Strathearn wasn’t an old man by any means, and though he’d held his title for some decades now he’d come to it at an early age. Isla guessed him to have forty-something winters. Nevertheless, he had two grown children from his first marriage and his bride, the lovely Arabella, was less than half his age. But he’d met her while visiting her father and they had, bizarrely enough, fallen in love. She’d married him happily, not caring in the least that he was, in fact, not merely old enough to be her father but older than her actual father.
Having secured both the continuation of his line and an enormous land inheritance by marrying his first wife, Earl Strathearn was now free to marry for love. Arabella was a lucky girl. Her stepchildren, one of whom was her elder by several years, accepted her and Isla had heard recently that Arabella was pregnant with her second child. Her first, a strapping little thing named Todd, wasn’t two winters and already had the ladies of the province wrapped around his chubby little finger. He had the blond hair and blue eyes so common in the wild Highlands and his mother, just now reaching her twenty-first winter, adored him. As she continued to adore her husband.
Isla bit back a sigh. Father Justin loved the sound of his own voice, and a service that under normal circumstances should have taken less than an hour had already taken over two—and with Father Justin showing no signs of slowing. Eventually, she consoled herself, he’d have to leave the altar to make water—he’d certainly drunk enough wine, in the course of his speech-making. Of course, knowing him, he’d probably come back and start talking again! But at least she could slip out in the meantime.
Father Justin, his catamite sitting proudly in the front row, continued on his theme of lust and how engaging in the sex act for any reason other than procreation damned one straight to Hell. Which was rich, coming from him. She wondered, did he and his page read each other poetry? Recite psalms, perhaps, in the privacy of their bedroom?
She thought, again, about sex magic. The phrase must have run through her head a thousand times since dawn. She’d been raised to believe that lust was the gravest sin there was—a statement she’d never believed. How could wanting something, or wanting someone, be wrong? If the Gods existed, and had made mankind as the church claimed, then surely they’d made mankind’s emotions as well?
Hart was fond of pointing out that the church’s obsession with sex was almost as painful as sex itself could be with a frigid woman. Which was, according to Isla’s calculation, framing the problem in the mildest possible terms. The church’s obsession wasn’t unpleasant, it was pathological. Fully half of church doctrine, if not more, revolved around the conviction that sex was to be avoided like the plague—except for the bare minimum necessary to keep the race in existence. Even then, sex was framed not as a beautiful union of souls but as a regrettable necessity. Those who could abstain, such as those unburdened by the need for an heir, should. Younger brothers, men with no land or wealth to speak of, should all strive for celibacy. Even married people should strive for celibacy, especially once the required heir and a spare had been produced. Then there was no more need for sex!
For those incapable of performing such a heroic fe
at of self-sacrifice as giving up sex altogether, assistance was provided in the form of making sex as unpleasant and as downright difficult to actually have as possible. The sex act itself wasn’t what damned one but, rather, deriving any enjoyment from it. Some procreative efforts were, after all, necessary if there were to be more kings and soldiers and serfs. And clergy.
Some brilliant mind had designed a special nightshirt for the man to wear, which reached the floor and which sleeves ended well below the fingertips. There was a high collar, as well, which could be cinched quite tightly shut. To allow performance of the deed, there was a more or less suitably placed hole. Thus, the man could impregnate his wife without actually having to touch her—and a suitably awful time was assured for all.
Isla’s mother, Amanda, had insisted on such garments being worn by both her and the earl. Considering which fact, it was nothing short of a miracle that any child had been born—let alone two! Isla knew this, because Amanda used to lecture her daughters regularly on the evils of pleasure and many other topics. Producing both nightshirts for the girls one afternoon, when they were still quite young, she’d demonstrated their use with a cucumber. Isla had never entirely recovered from the shock.
“Not only is the pleasure of the sexual act sinful,” Father Justin thundered, “but also the sensation of desire! Even when unconsummated, the love of a man for a woman is a sin against the Gods.” Well he would think that, Isla concluded. He certainly didn’t like women. “Therefore, it follows that, as the great theologian writes, omnis ardentior amator propriae uxoris adulter est! For a man to love his wife ardently is a sin far worse than that of adultery!