Witchy Kingdom

by D. J. Butler

  Tarami tore at his beard and wept.

  Luman Walters fell to his knees.

  Corn and beans and squash raced skyward in intertwined vegetable towers. Wheat exploded to maturity, heavy heads pulling the stalks downward before they had even reached full height. Peaches, apples, and grapes ripened in the space of a few breaths as Cathy watched.

  She heard a grunting sound and looked to Sarah. The young woman’s eyes were closed and she was sweating despite the cold. Cathy rushed to throw her arms around the girl and held her.

  “It’s enough,” Cathy whispered.

  “Not…yet…” Sarah ground through clenched teeth.

  The Heronplow touched the end of the final furrow on top of the Great Mound and sank into the earth out of sight.

  All eleven of Sarah’s witnesses gasped.

  Luman Walters spun on his heel and stared down at the side of the mound.

  And then the plow broke from the earth on the east-facing slope of the temple and raced downward. It paralleled the steps in its course, and as it traveled, trees grew in its wake. They were impossible trees, trees that couldn’t grow in the cold Ohio, much less in its winter—persimmons, oranges, dates, bananas, olives…and figs.

  It was nonsense as a garden or a forest, a luxuriant glossolalia of vegetation.

  As an act of fertile power, it was shocking.

  A cry of astonishment and joy rocked the mound from below.

  “This doesn’t come from your demon, child!” Tarami cried. “This comes from heaven. This is an act of God! This is how the Lord answers my thousand miles, my bloodied knees, my hundred thousand prayers, the million prayers of his children! Abundance means peace! May He bless Lord Thomas and his house as gloriously as He now blesses us!”

  “No,” Sarah croaked.

  Tarami ran down the steps of the mound.

  Luman Walters sat, breathing rapidly and burying his face in his hands.

  “Stop him!” Sarah fell forward onto one forearm, clutching the Orb of Etyles to her breast. “Stop the priest!”

  The others looked at each other in surprise, but Maltres Korinn sprang forward. “Stop, Father!” he bellowed.

  Cathy quickly lost the ability to make out the words of the vizier or the priest under the tumult of yelling that rose from the city. She could see the movement of the Heronplow around Cahokia by the growth of vegetation that rose from the ground in its wake, filling the avenues and plazas, turning every mound into an island of snow surrounded by a sea of fruit-bearing plant life.

  Shouts of joy mingled with weeping of relief.

  She watched Father Tarami move through the crowd that parted for him, crossing to the Basilica Mound. There he stood on the mound’s lowest steps and shouted, waving his arms and leaping as if in dance. He fell to his knees and had his arms stretched heavenward as if he were personally calling down rain when Maltres Korinn and half a dozen of Cahokia’s gray-caped wardens seized him.

  The crowd tried to free the priest.

  “No,” Sarah groaned, trying to drag herself forward and failing.

  The wardens beat the mob back with their batons, but not before two of their number were knocked to the ground. The crowd picked up sticks and stones and was gathering to charge again when the priest Tarami threw up his arms to stop them.

  Cathy couldn’t hear his words, but whatever he said, the crowd stepped back. They dropped their weapons and merely stared at the vizier as he dragged the old man away under guard.

  Cathy took a deep breath.

  “This is the most astonishing thing I have ever seen,” Luman Walters said.

  “He’ll need help.” The Polite Sherem, jolted out of paralysis, descended the mound.

  The entire city had become a garden.

  “People won’t need instructions to feed themselves,” Walters said. “But they should be organized to collect all the food they can and store it.”

  “Why?” Alzbieta said. “Wisdom has provided this. And Her Beloved. Don’t you trust them to provide again?”

  Sarah collapsed to the ground.

  * * *

  Maltres Korinn locked Zadok Tarami into the same cell deep in the Hall of Onandagos that had held Sarah and Calvin Calhoun a few days earlier. Tarami was no magician, as far as Maltres knew, but the silver-bound construction of the cell would help prevent any magical rescue attempt from the outside.

  He stationed a dozen wardens to watch the prison cells. When Sherem produced two Polites in red as volunteers to join the guard—a sleepy-eyed woman with short graying hair and a thin man with surprisingly heavy jowls—he promptly accepted, asking them to take turns, so as to always leave a gramarist on duty.

  Later, under cover of darkness and perhaps with the assistance of the Polites, Maltres planned to relocate the priest to a more secret cell.

  The Imperial hedge wizard Luman Walters also volunteered. Maltres sent him away.

  What to make of the exchange between Walters and the Beloved? That Walters was a thief, but earnest and with angels in his pockets?

  It was Zadok Tarami who prevented any real violence in his arrest. After telling the crowd that God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, as revealed by the prophet in his true book, The Law of the Way, had sent this heavenly bounty to sustain the people of Cahokia and turn their hearts toward peace, he had submitted to arrest. He had begged the Cahokians to set down their sticks and stones and submit as well, telling them that Korinn and Sarah Elytharias were only misinformed, and that the miracle of food had been sent for their benefit as well, to convince them of the error of their ways.

  Maltres Korinn knew better. Whatever the priest could say, he had seen the Mother of All Living in her Unfallen Eden. He knew She lived, and had chosen Sarah Elytharias Penn as Her Beloved.

  He would bear witness to those truths, and if need be, he would do it with the sword.

  In due time, the Beloved would become Queen. And then, he hoped, the Duke of Na’avu would be allowed to return home.

  Still, he was grateful that, for the moment at least, the people of Cahokia weren’t tearing each other to pieces in riots.

  For the collection and storage of food, Maltres knew he’d need to deploy the wardens. Having been underfed for weeks, he feared his people might respond poorly to the sudden bounty. Deploying the wardens to oversee food collection would mean taking them off the Treewall, so Maltres sought out Captain Sir William Johnston Lee.

  He found him on the wall, attended by the coyote-headed beastman named Chikaak. It was only on emerging from the wooden stairs encased within the living wood of the Treewall onto the ramparts that Maltres realized that the wall, too, had borne fruit. Not one kind only, but several: a nut like a chestnut, encased in a prickly shell; something that looked like a bright orange quince; clusters of green berries.

  The wardens atop the wall had lain spears and rifles down and were stuffing fruit into their mouths as fast as they could. Maltres looked along the rampart and saw the same scene repeated each time.

  The beastkind warriors on the wall, on the other hand, stood still and stared fiercely down at the Imperials below.

  The Imperials—Maltres looked and saw men pointing at the wall. They saw, they knew.

  What would they do about it?

  “Sir William,” he said.

  “Mmmm,” the Cavalier answered.

  Maltres thumped the Earthshaker’s Rod on the wood under his feet. “Sir William, are you concerned about discipline?”

  Chikaak made a small sound like a whimper.

  “I am always concerned about discipline, suh,” Sir William said. “The children of Adam are by nature such unruly beasts.”

  The Johnslander turned his face to Maltres and smiled. His eyes were oddly glassy.

  “You could use some sleep, Sir William.”

  “So could we all.”

  “I need to borrow the wardens for at least a few hours, and maybe longer.”

  “Outbreak of crime?”

  “A
n outbreak of fruit!” Maltres thumped his staff again. “Haven’t you noticed? Look below you! Look at the Treewall! The goddess has blessed us, but I fear riots and theft will lead to violence if we don’t prevent it.”

  Sir William shook himself and looked about. “Hell’s Bells, you’re right. The goddess, you say?”

  “May I borrow the wardens?” It wasn’t entirely clear that Maltres had to ask; the wardens had been exclusively under his command until a few days earlier. Now, though, they were one of four more or less well-organized segments of Cahokia’s defense, the other three being the household troops of the Elytharias family and those of Cahokia’s other great families, the corps of Molly Pitchers that had defected to Cahokia, and Sarah’s personal retinue of beastkind. The wardens and household troops reported to Valia Sharelas and the artillerists to Jaleta Zorales, former rivals of Sarah for the Serpent Throne, who had given her their allegiance upon her being called as the goddess’s Beloved. At least while on military duty, they all answered to William Lee—the beastkind answered to him directly—and they called him General.

  Many details were yet to be decided, but the organization worked. If the crisis holding them together passed, Maltres doubted the organization was yet solid enough to stand on its own.

  Lee nodded. “We beasts shall hold the wall, suh! You may place your trust in us.”

  Something was wrong, but Maltres didn’t have to time to find out what. He banged his staff on the floor a third time and raised his voice. “The next man I see putting fruit into his mouth gets hanged!”

  That put a sudden end to the gorging. Grabbing the nearest officer, Maltres passed on clear, concise orders—the peace to be kept, all household to be entitled to one basket of produce of any kind per person, the remainder to be collected into the city’s storehouses.

  As he descended the stairs, he heard the barked commands that heralded the beginning of his instructions’ implementation.

  He returned to the Great Mound.

  The Podebradan Yedera stood before the temple door.

  “Where is she?” Maltres asked.

  “Beneath. Where she can sleep. With the priestesses.”

  “With the other priestesses, you mean.”

  The Unborn inclined her head slightly.

  “She lives?”

  “She lives. She rests.”

  “She has saved us. For now, at least.”

  The Podebradan nodded again. “A doubter, such as Zadok Tarami, will say that she has destroyed us in the long run.”

  “Do you doubt?”

  Yedera shook her head. “I hold true to all the things of my mothers, Vizier. Their ways, their beliefs, their stories, their gods. It would take more than a desire to join any man’s empire for me to topple the Serpent Throne. It would take more than a fear of death for me to abandon the children of Wisdom.”

  “I wish we had twenty thousand like you.”

  “In this city, I doubt you have twenty. Perhaps not ten. Ours is not a society that organizes monthly meetings.”

  “Each of you sworn to a different noble family?”

  “I am the only Oathbound attached to the family of Alzbieta Torias and Sarah Elytharias.”

  The Unborn Daughters of St. Adela Podebradas were elite warriors whose field of action was not generally war. They were named for the Serpentborn queen of the old world who had rejected her Imperial husband, a son of Eve, in divorce, and who had eventually been executed for her temerity; or rather, they were named for the daughters it was imagined she would have had. And their behavior in some ways suggested they were people outside the common sphere of descent from Adam. They didn’t marry; they ignored taboos and social conventions; they celebrated no feast days. During the recent Christmas celebrations, Yedera had stood apart in every meeting and refused all invitations. The seven Sister Kingdoms acknowledged and legitimated their setting apart, exempting the Unborn from taxes, military service, and other forms of mandatory contribution. They were bodyguards and temple defenders, they were paladins, they carried out sworn acts of vengeance and punishment, they were even assassins. They were fiercely loyal to their kind and sworn to serve a single family.

  Battlefield warriors or not, Maltres Korinn wished there were more of them in the city.

  “And if Sarah Elytharias required the death of a single troublesome person?” he asked.

  She didn’t inquire whom he meant. “Inside or outside of these walls, I stay true to the things of my mothers.”

  They stood awhile in silence.

  “I take it I’m not to be allowed in?” he asked.

  “Cathy Filmer tends Sarah with her healing arts. Alzbieta Torias is also in attendance.” Unexpectedly, Yedera cracked a lopsided smile. “Between the two of them, the Beloved may feel she is surrounded by more than enough noise already.”

  Maltres leaned on his staff. His inclination was to look northward, toward his own estates. Instead, he looked westward to the river and the wooden shore beyond, teeming with bloodthirsty, maddened beastkind. The emissaries of the Heron King had promised him destruction, and his footsoldiers were certainly trying their hardest. Beyond the Great Green Wood, on the borders of the Missouri, lay Zomas. One of Maltres’s hopes in dealing with the claimants for the throne of Cahokia was that if Gazelem Zomas had won, the split kingdom might have been reunified, or at least reconciled. An ally on the Heron King’s other flank could have been very useful.

  Perhaps he should talk to Gazelem anyway. Perhaps he still might be able to facilitate an alliance.

  Maltres shook his head and shifted his stance, looking to the east.

  “A heavy part, to wear a crown.”

  “I wear no crown,” he said immediately.

  “I agree, My Lord Duke,” Yedera answered, looking at his face intently. “And yet standing here, looking at our enemies on either side, you think the thoughts of one who does.”

  “Say rather that I think the thoughts of one who would offer good counsel,” Maltres said. “I would be for the Beloved daughter of Wisdom what Uris was for your mistress.”

  “An old man who talked too much, schemed too quickly, and died of his own mistake?”

  “You speak ill of the dead.”

  “I am a Podebradan.”

  “Uris’s failure was mine. We both stood against Sarah Elytharias, not knowing that the goddess had chosen her.”

  “Had the goddess chosen her? Or did the goddess choose her afterward, once she had defeated you and Uris?”

  Maltres considered. “I don’t know whether it matters.”

  “I don’t think it does, now. Either Sarah was always the goddess’s choice, and once the goddess made Her will known, you followed Sarah’s banner, or Sarah became the goddess’s choice, at which point you aligned yourself with her. The Virgin forgives. Either way, you’re with the goddess and Her Beloved now.”

  “Or I’m on the side of a malevolent serpentine demon that plagues the descendants of the priest-king Onandagos and their people, seeking revenge for a primeval imprisonment.”

  “Yes,” Yedera agreed. “Or that.”

  “In the meantime, if you find any way to introduce

  a plague of weevils into Cahokia, by all means do so.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  No one told Dadgayadoh to keep an eye on the Sorcerer Robert Hooke, but you didn’t climb the Imperial Ohio Company ladder under Director Schmidt by sitting around waiting for the rain to fall, and Dadgayadoh was determined to climb. His first encounter with the Company had been as a boy, selling the furs of animals he’d trapped to Company agents at the headwaters of the Ohio. He’d envied their new long guns, the bright colors they wore, and the confidence with which they walked through the woods, and he’d decided he’d be one of them.

  It had been easy enough; he’d acted as guide on a few journeys into Haudenosaunee territory, Oranbega, among the Talligewi, and one small battle with the gloomy, slow-talking giants, in which he’d saved two agents’ lives by burying them,
along with himself, in a bog for three days. When the victorious Talligewi had finally grown bored of looking for the missing agents and gone back their pole-borne houses, Dadgayadoh had pulled all three of them from the mud and led them home.

  Even if he hadn’t known the name, it was obvious that there was something wrong with the fellow—a deathly illness or a curse—and Dadgayadoh was mistrustful. As it happened, he knew enough English history—learned from campfire songs, mostly—to know the name Robert Hooke, and to understand that the man was some sort of necromancer, a walking corpse.

  When the Sorcerer left camp to ride around the besieged city, Dadgayadoh followed him. He made a point of leaving his silk top hat and his red blanket behind in his travel chest, wearing instead a nondescript gray wool coat such as you might see anywhere along the Ohio, on any person, or such as he might wear to hunt.

  Hooke caught Dadgayadoh’s attention splitting wood. He did it himself, by hand, using something that looked like an obsidian wedge. The tool was sharp enough that it split the skin of the Sorcerer’s hands repeatedly, leaving smears of black ichor on his work and on the snowy ground.

  Hooke asked for no help and accepted none; when two agents, evidently recognizing him from his interactions with Director Schmidt and seeking to curry favor, tried to offer the Lazar a long-handled ax, he took it from them and beat them both so severely with its handle that they spent the next three days moaning on their bedrolls.

  Hooke started with a single trunk, a tall, straight pine that he felled himself. He didn’t seem to care about the bark, but he smashed off all the branches and kicked them aside, leaving the straight naked bole. Then, over the course of a day and a half, he reduced the trunk into two large lengths of timber and many small ones.

  He did all this within the company camp. Dadgayadoh could pretend to be about various errands while keeping an eye on the Sorcerer.

  Heaping all the unused branches and needles onto a canvas, Hooke lit it on fire. He stood watch through the night, warning off anyone who approached his blaze. Dadgayadoh drifted in and out of sleep in a small stand of pine beside the canvas wall of a commissary tent, always waking to find the black silhouette of the dead Englishman standing against the orange blaze. The next day, when the fire had finally died, Hooke collected the ashes in a basket.