Witchy Kingdom

by D. J. Butler

Captain Onacona Mohuntubby, you sly bastard. You did this, and you want me to know.

  Schmidt examined the ground. Even here, twenty miles from Cahokia, the snow was melting in an unseasonal thaw. That left the ground of the clearing muddy. The mud bore only a single set of hoofprints.

  “He rode here alone,” she said, continuing the fiction. “And hanged himself. His horse?”

  “My men and I found the animal over that hill.” Mohuntubby pointed. “Its tracks were what brought us here.”

  “Poor man,” Schmidt said. “He tried and failed. The shame of failure led him to this tragedy.”

  Sayle had made it too easy for her. Sayle and Mohuntubby.

  Mohuntubby nodded. “Indeed.”

  “You’ll go far, Mohuntubby. Have you considered employment with the Company?”

  “My term with the Army is up in a year.”

  “I suspect I could have you transferred to the Company now, if you like.”

  Mohuntubby looked her in the eye and smiled. “I suspect you will effectively be the head of the Army in western Ohio for the next year.”

  “We’ll want to bring General Sayle’s body back to camp, so the men can see him. Probably don’t want them to see him too closely.”

  A flicker of recognition touched Mohuntubby’s face. He smiled, saluted, and then cut the general’s body down.

  * * *

  Abd al-Wahid had not seen such an array of warriors since he’d left Cairo. Not even Paris with her teeming multitudes hosted such a spectacular range of fighting men.

  The Spanish warriors included horse-mounted lancers, arquebusiers, and artillerymen from the capital. In addition, there were militia units raised by the dons of the far western lands of New Spain, armed with sword, spear, and breastplate as well as pistol, and trained to march and fight on foot.

  There were warriors from the south of New Spain, dark and fierce-eyed, whose hatchet-like faces matched the sharpness of their obsidian clubs. After one of their companies was routed at Bishopsbridge—by the sorcerous Bishop himself, if their accounts were to be believed—they boiled with vindictive pride, anxious for a second chance. They chewed a weed Abd al-Wahid didn’t know, that allowed them to sleep only four hours a night, march on an empty stomach, and enter at short notice into a berserker trance. It also caused them to spit red. Abd al-Wahid wanted to know the secret of the weed.

  The Old Man of the Mountain, it was said, had used similar devices on his men.

  Several companies of Texians rode for New Spain, though as far as Abd al-Wahid could tell, they spent most of their time riding out to fight, defend against, or hunt down the parties of other Texians who dogged the Spanish army. “Texian” seemed to mean any person who lived in the vast, unruled space between New Orleans and New Spain, and who didn’t otherwise belong to a people. Some of the Texians were Irish or German immigrants from the Old World; others were runaway slaves and servants from the Spanish plantations; others still were Indians.

  What seemed to mark them as Texian was an unwillingness to bear any other name or any other ruler.

  There were scouts and small bands of mounted fighting men from the Free Horse Peoples: Apache, Comanche, Tonkawa. Abd al-Wahid didn’t know these names and couldn’t tell the men apart, but the differences were important to them—especially to the Apache and Tonkawa, who seemed to regard the Comanche as dangerous and untrustworthy. Slavers, they said. From time to time, a Comanche would disappear, and it became a matter of debate whether he’d been killed (and, some said, eaten) by the Tonkawa, or whether he’d taken some Texian or bayou woman as his slave and ridden at night to his homeland in the north.

  Slave soldiers fought for the Spanish, too. These were men of Africk origin, mostly, brought to land from the islands where the Spanish worked them to death growing and cutting cane. The men chosen for this cadre were large and bore many scars; the chevalier hinted that they fought with the promise of their freedom if they triumphed, and the freedom of their families if they died. They glared at Abd al-Wahid with resentful eyes. When anyone not of their company walked too close, they shook their chains and shouted.

  Smaller, stranger groups fought under the Spanish banner. There were men who wore a djellaba-like garment they called a kimono, and two-toed sandals. They wore their hair in topknots, quilted armor on their bodies, and they fought with a pair of slightly curved swords: one long and one short. They said their homeland was Nihon, where the sun came from.

  Abd al-Wahid didn’t know Nihon, but he was familiar with Cathay. The Middle Kingdom provided no soldiers, but a cadre of magicians. There were men and women among them, but they wore identical dresses and long hair so that Abd al-Wahid couldn’t tell one from the other. They called themselves nanwu and wuyu. Since the defeat at Bishopsbridge, they had been intent on summoning rain, apparently to flush out the serpents.

  But for now, the serpents remained. They were like an insect cloud, stretching over the bottom of the Mississippi all the way to the mouth and inland for as many miles as the Spanish had yet managed to send riders. Their venom killed quickly and with incredible pain, to judge by the throes of the dying.

  Ships were being summoned from all New Spain’s islands, in a bid to move around the serpents, but some of the Indian fighters whispered that the expedition was doomed already, with the feathered serpent arrayed on the other side.

  “Did you poison this drink, Ravi?” Abd al-Wahid took another long sip from the drink Ravi had brought him. It was a cold black tea over ice, sweetened, he guessed from the taste, with prodigious amounts of sugar.

  The two men stood beneath the canvas of their shared tent, looking down toward the Mississippi River and Bishopsbridge. The day’s heavy rains had tempted one Spanish commander to order across a platoon of men in archaic plate and chain armor.

  The basilisks had proved quite adept at finding unprotected gaps in armor, under the arm and inside the thigh. If anything, the twenty brave men willing to attempt the crossing had died in more pain than those who had attempted it before them.

  “I’m drinking from the same bottle as you, Prince-Capitaine.” It wasn’t an answer, but Ravi also took a long sip.

  They listened in silence to the rain.

  “I have written my first song in English,” Ravi said.

  It was a delaying tactic, but Abd al-Wahid accepted it. “Sing, O Jew.”

  Bishopsbridge is falling down

  Falling down, falling down

  Bishopsbridge is falling down

  My fair lady

  Hold the bridge with flying snakes

  Flying snakes, flying snakes

  Hold the bridge with flying snakes

  My fair lady

  “I have heard this song before,” Abd al-Wahid said.

  “You have heard another song, a song whose melody and words I have cheerfully plundered. I will say, if pressed, that I have done so because the existing song was very nearly on point, and has a compelling tune.”

  “But in fact, it is because you are a terrible poet who cannot be bothered to do his own work.”

  “That is correct.”

  They both laughed, then fell silent.

  “You know what I have come to discuss,” Ravi said.

  His words chosen carefully, Jew-fashion. Ravi said neither what I have come to ask you, which might bestow upon Abd al-Wahid permission to deny him, nor what I have come to tell you, which might provoke Abd al-Wahid by trespassing against his sense of prerogative.

  What I have come to discuss.

  All in all, perhaps such careful speech was warranted.

  And I know what he wants.

  “You love this land. Its languages, its peoples. Who would not?” Abd al-Wahid sipped and considered. If the tea was poisoned, it was a subtle dose, hidden by the bitterness of the tea or the power of the sugar. “This land has such a heady sense of possibilities. Always something new, always something surprising. Always hope for a better future.”

  He found it was true in
his own heart.

  And he also found, abruptly, that his affection for this new world, with all its horrifying gods, made him hate Bishop Ukwu. The houngan Elector had killed his men—all but this last one, who now wished to leave. He had made this large and exciting land into a pit of death for the prince-capitaine.

  He sipped his sweet tea.

  “You are married,” Ravi said. “You have high office to return to, and land, and children.”

  “You could have those things,” Abd al-Wahid said.

  “I could have them here.”

  Abd al-Wahid considered. “Is there a woman, then?”

  “No.” Ravi laughed. “I have scarcely been out of your sight, O Prince-Capitaine. When do you imagine I would find, much less court, a daughter of Abraham?”

  Abd al-Wahid grunted. “You are resourceful, O Jew.”

  They both laughed, gently.

  “I have lost so many men.” Abd al-Wahid set down his tea and looked steadily into Ravi’s face. He knew he was going to lose this one, too, but he could not lose Ravi as he had lost the others. “I think if I am to write to Paris to tell them of your death, I would prefer the letter to be a lie.”

  My alternative, now that we have come this far, is to kill you where you stand.

  Ravi nodded solemnly, understanding in his eyes. “And you—will you continue to hunt this bishop?”

  “Yes,” Abd al-Wahid said simply. No need to explain that he felt that his honor and the honor of the order were pledged. If Ravi did not feel the same himself, Abd al-Wahid would not try to force the feeling on him.

  He had seen too many companions die in this New World.

  No need to explain that the mere thought of Bishop Ukwu now caused Abd al-Wahid to feel rage.

  Ravi smiled. “I would never come back to Paris to give the lie to your words.”

  “You have no one to visit?”

  Ravi shook his head.

  Abd al-Wahid smiled. “Does not the poet say, ‘Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond’? You have ever been my conscience, Ravi. Perhaps one day I will follow you in choosing to stay in this new world.”

  “I have not known many men to kick their consciences so thoroughly.” Ravi smiled.

  “Very few consciences deserve it so well.”

  “Perhaps Bishop Franklin was mistaken.”

  “Oh?”

  Ravi smiled. “Perhaps two may keep a secret, and both live.”

  “If they are friends.” Abd al-Wahid smiled again.

  Ravi nodded. “When they are friends.”

  Abd al-Wahid clapped his last comrade across the shoulder. “I will make your death ambiguous in the telling, so that if you do by some chance return to Paris, both our honors may be salvaged.”

  “I am not leaving while it rains, in any case.” Ravi sat on a folding camp chair. “Come, let us devise the story of my death together.”

  “You know you cannot go to New Orleans.”

  “That seems obvious.”

  “And to the north, the beastkind are ravaging the Cotton League.”

  Ravi waved away the concern with a hand. “But Texia is large, Prince-Capitaine. And New Spain is larger.” He drank the last of his tea. “I would suggest a drowning. Perhaps with an appropriately suggestive final glimpse of my hand sinking beneath the waves of the Pontchartrain Sea.”

  “Oh? Here I thought you would prefer to go in a fire, disappearing as the burning building collapses, you having entered to rescue an elderly widow and her eligible young daughter.”

  “Let us make the tale refer only to a widow, Prince-Capitaine. That way I sound less self-interested. More heroic.”

  “I’m afraid the answer might be Eden.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Since his journey with Sarah—since he’d entered the strange landscape within the Temple of the Sun and traveled all the way to the gates of Eden—Luman had felt like a different man. He looked no different in the mirror. His limbs, his stature, his weight, his hair were all unchanged.

  But something was different.

  Not wrong, different. Something was new, and he couldn’t tell what.

  Alzbieta Torias’s city palace had burned in the battle. At Sarah’s direction, the building had been razed. In its place was a burial ground consecrated to the goddess. Alzbieta and her bearers were the first to be interred there.

  Cathy Filmer participated in the rite as a priestess. As Luman and a crowd watched, she simulated giving birth to the snake that she then placed inside Alzbieta’s burial jar. It was her first public action on behalf of the goddess; the day after the battle, apparently at Sarah’s insistence, the Lady Alena and other priestesses had taken Cathy into the Temple of the Sun. They had stayed for hours. When Cathy had emerged, she had a look of surprise on her face and the title Handmaid.

  Sarah had not yet emerged from the temple.

  Because she cannot? Or because she has come to a place too wonderful to leave?

  Luman stood watching the rite, trying to ascertain what had happened to him.

  He had chosen not to follow Sarah into the precincts of Eden. She had chosen it at the same time, so he was glad to have spared himself the humiliation of asking for admittance and being denied. He had made his decision because, really, he hadn’t belonged there.

  Sarah had been invited; he had not.

  Still, he itched with curiosity. What would he have seen within that quartz wall? A tree of light? A goddess a-swarm with bees? Might he someday receive an invitation, not being Firstborn, or a member of the Elytharias family, or a eunuch?

  Should he think of himself as a partial initiate? Was this a new thing, that he had become a semi-priest? He didn’t think so.

  Yedera the Unborn Daughter of Podebradas stood with him. She stared intently at the proceedings, her face a steel mask. Yedera had served Alzbieta, but the priestess was dead. Alzbieta had died in Yedera’s presence. Would the Podebradan serve Sarah exclusively now? Could a Podebradan lay down her oaths and choose an unconsecrated life?

  Would Yedera see Alzbieta’s death as a failure on her part?

  Luman resolved to ask her those questions once the funeral was over. To speak now seemed an impiety.

  Zadok Tarami stood on Luman’s other side. The Metropolitan looked exhausted, the lines of his face noticeably deeper and darker. He had conducted dozens of burial rites in his own tradition in the previous two days. He didn’t chant with the chanters or sing the funerary lays, but he wasn’t at the head of an angry mob, either. He stood with his head bowed, looking respectful. His lips moved; was he praying for the dead priestess who had been his rival?

  If Sarah looked at Luman, she’d be able to tell him what was different.

  Pocket full of angels. She had seen the Himmelsbrief, through his coat, not knowing what it was. Luman’s Himmelsbrief had saved her life, when the Simon Sword of the ascent had turned out to have within it too much of the real Simon Sword.

  He felt pride at the memory.

  Also, it reminded him that he needed to write out a new Himmelsbrief for his coat.

  He hadn’t seen or heard from Nathaniel Penn since.

  Wilkes and Hop were dead, of course. Although…if the events of that night had left Luman Walters feeling like a different person, might they have had an effect on the two shades, as well?

  Luman sighed. The funeral ended with the retreat of the priestesses. He thought Cathy smiled at him as she passed, so he smiled back.

  As the crowd broke up, he lost track of Yedera. He didn’t ask her his questions, after all.

  He returned to the King’s Head, deep in inchoate thought. Opening the two windows of his garret to let in the warm breeze of the unnatural spring, he sat at the table to draw out the new heavenly letter. After several deep breaths to clear his mind and a brief prayer of preparation, he lit the candle on the shelf above his work space and began to write.

  He concentrated on the letters; he knew the text by
heart, and the act of replicating it put him in a state of mind like a light trance. From time to time he touched the Homer amulet around his neck. When his quill needed sharpening, he used his athame, consecrated for this and other magical purposes.

  The world seemed to fade away, simplifying itself down to the light of the candle, the light in Luman’s heart, and the light of the Himmelsbrief. All three melted together in the focused devotional act of preparing the amulet.

  Faith, hope, and charity. Sarah had heard it from a Vodun houngan, no less. Luman was chagrined not to have made the connections himself, but proud to have been there, and full of wonder at the memories of the experience.

  So perhaps he and the houngan had been, in the end, Sarah’s psychopomps. Her spirit guides.

  Or perhaps an exact count didn’t really matter.

  He had nearly finished the letter and was deep in the concentrated, effortless flow of the act when a gust of warm air, smelling of the river, blew out the candle.

  Luman looked at the candle and smiled. He felt one with its light, the light of the candle not under a bushel, the holy light of creation, the light of the sun.

  He pointed his pen at the candle. “Fiat lux.”

  A warm feeling spread through his body. The candle burst into flame. Luman smiled at the candle for several long seconds before he realized what he had done.

  He dropped the pen.

  It spattered ink all over the Himmelsbrief, spoiling it, shattering his trancelike state of well-being like a brick dropped into a still pond.

  He didn’t care.

  He stared at the candle, feeling his heart beat inside his chest. He had lit the candle. Not with a braucher prayer, not with a Memphite incantation, not with a cantrip begged, borrowed, or stolen in some dark corner under false pretenses…

  …but with an act of will and the creative word.

  Gramarye.

  Luman Walters had never been able to perform gramarye. He lacked the talent, and his ten thousand efforts had never produced a single result.

  Until now.

  The glow within was the same glow he had felt standing on the threshold of Unfallen Eden, watching Sarah embrace the bearded man in the door. Warm light had poured over him then, and then again when he had stood in front of the temple with Montse.