by Sarah Hegger
The staircase ended in a door built into the highest part of a stone wall. The wall ran along the bailey’s sea-facing edge and disappeared into the impregnable crags that guarded Baile. Beneath the crags, the land fell away in a series of steep grassy slopes that formed a horseshoe bay beneath the castle. Accessible only from the castle above, and from the labyrinthine caverns beneath Baile Castle, the small beach appeared only at low tide. Ideal for moonlit rituals they kept secret from the village, and nightly trysts a witch wanted to keep secret from the castle. Not that Maeve had ever trysted, and now that seemed an even remoter possibility with her newly acquired hulking shadow.
She followed Roderick’s broad, chain-mail-covered back. He probably slept in his hauberk, because Maeve had rarely seen him without it.
Roderick opened the arched wooden door into the bailey and paused.
“Something is amiss.” Maeve stopped beside him and looked about them. A pall hung over the normally cheerful, busy bailey. On a mild evening such as this one, there should have been plenty of laughter and chatter. A keep inhabited by more than ninety women seldom remained silent.
Even the chickens Grania had fed near the well pecked silently at their feed.
The air felt wrong. The sort of wrong Maeve was coming to recognize.
Roderick pointed. “There.”
A group of her sisters stood on the battlements, whispering to each other and pointing.
Cold dread slithered down Maeve’s spine.
Striding ahead of her, Roderick looked over the heads of the gathered witches. He stilled before turning and blocking her path. “You don’t need to see this.”
“What is it?” Maeve ducked around him.
On the low rocky promontory below the castle, a group of men stood beside a newly constructed gibbet.
“Baile Castle!” One of the men turned their way and shouted up, “We want to show you what happens to witches.”
In front of the men, stood three women with their hands bound behind their backs. Maeve’s knees gave and she would have collapsed if Roderick hadn’t caught her.
“Those three women, I know them.” Maeve forced herself to look again.
“Is it your sewing circle?” His face creased in concern.
Molly was crying, Jane looked resigned and Rebecca terrified.
Maeve gripped Roderick’s hand. “You have to do something. Those are my friends.”
“I—”
“Maeve!” Fiona marched onto the battlements, Edana in her wake. Her face looked grim and her jaw was set in a determined line. “You can’t interfere.”
Thinking she couldn’t have heard right, Maeve stared at Fiona. “But I know them.” Perhaps Fiona hadn’t realized she knew them. “They are my friends.”
“They’re village women,” Edana sneered.
“Yes, they are.” Fiona’s tone gentled. “And because of that, I have no say in this matter.”
Shouting, a man in a black frock coat read from a scroll. “We have tested them and found them guilty of witchcraft and consorting with the devil.”
Other men placed nooses around Jane’s, then Rebecca’s, and finally, Molly’s necks.
“You have to stop them,” she begged Roderick. He was strong enough to stop what was happening.
“This is none of your affair, Coimhdeacht,” Fiona snapped. “Especially after what you told me about the passed witches sending such disturbing portents. I act for the coven’s safety.”
Roderick’s fury leaked through the bond to her. “My witch is my first and only duty.”
“Only as it pertains to her safety.” Fiona met his gaze and held it. “As far as this goes, you obey me.”
The men were nailing a sign up above the gibbet.
“You can’t mean to let them die.” Maeve grabbed Fiona’s sleeve. “They’ve done nothing wrong.”
“This is none of my business.” Fiona freed her sleeve from Maeve’s grip. “This is village law and I can’t interfere.” She motioned the horrific scene before them. “Do you think this is any different from what is happening all over? Innocent women are being hung for witchcraft.”
“Exactly.” Maeve needed to get to her friends. She tried to get past Fiona but the coven leader grabbed her shoulders.
“Think, Maeve. If you go now, what chance do you have of saving them? None.” Fiona shook her. “And you’ll give the village all the excuse they need to attack us. Imagine what would happen if men like that got into Baile.”
“But they won’t.” Maeve struggled to free herself. Fiona was surprisingly strong. “The wards protect us.”
“I can’t take that chance with coven lives.” Fiona looked beyond her to Roderick. “Restrain her or I will.”
“You can’t mean to let this happen.” Roderick put firm, but gentle, hands on her shoulders and drew her back. “This is tantamount to murder. I won’t allow it.”
“Will you break your sacred promise, Coimhdeacht?” Something dark and frightening flickered over Fiona’s face.
“My first duty is to Maeve.” Roderick held his ground and hope flared in Maeve.
Shaking her head, Fiona gestured her. “Yet, here she stands in no danger. The lore is clear. First your bonded witch and then the coven.”
Roderick swore.
“Please.” Maeve would beg on her knees if it would help.
Muscle bunched in Roderick’s jaw. “My word is my bond.”
“But they’ll die.” The words rode sobs Maeve couldn’t stop. “If we don’t help them, they’ll die.”
Fiona reached for her. “Calm yourself, Maeve. There’s nothing we can do.”
“You can’t do this.” Roderick’s struggle played across his face. “You have no right.”
“I have every right.” Fiona looked over the battlements and paled. “A right given to me by the coven, and my first duty is to them.”
Edana looked over the battlements and winced. “There’s nothing you can do for them now, in any case.”
Maeve ran to the battlement and dug her fingers into the rock to keep from screaming. Above her friends, their spirits rose and hovered. And then they found their way beyond and disappeared. The tiny spirit of Jane’s unborn baby rose and disappeared last.
Too enraged to face Fiona, she forced herself to look at the gibbet.
Three figures dangled poppet-like. Maeve’s mood plummeted and dark anger filled her. Three women had died, and the cré-witches bore the weight of that shame.
Roderick stopped and looked. A sharp spike of anger vibrated down the bond.
“They shouldn’t have died,” Maeve said. She felt numb inside. It didn’t help that she knew death wasn’t an ending, but merely a transition. Her friends hadn’t known that, and they had died in terror. “We should never have stood by while that happened.”
The hanging bodies twirled in a macabre jig with the onshore breeze. Their skirts flapped like sails against their ankles.
But for Fiona, her friends might have been saved. They were the cré-witches, blessed of Goddess, and united in their purpose. Except for this.
A crow landed on the upright of the gallows and cawed loudly to his gathering murder.
“We are powerless to help them now, Blessed.” Roderick’s hand, warm on her arm surprised her. “We must save our fight for what we can change.”
“We should have fought harder for them.” The murdering village men drifted away from their crime. Only one still stood there, tall and broad and staring up at the battlements.
The stench of the lost one rode the breeze and dark smudges appeared behind the tall figure.
Roderick stiffened. “Maeve?”
Even from this distance the malevolence eked from him. She stood transfixed.
“Maeve.” Fury leaked through their bond and Maeve glanced at Roderick. His face set
, he glowered at the distant figure. “In your secret monthly visits to the village, did you perhaps encounter Alexander?”
Chapter 7
Maeve felt raw inside and she had returned to the caverns rather than face the hall. She would have loved to have wept, but her grief was locked in a hard, enraged tangle in her chest. It hurt to draw breath. “You knew I went to the village.”
“Of course.” Roderick looked grim as he paced the caverns. “Nothing happens in Baile I don’t know about.”
“And you never said anything?”
He folded his arms. “You weren’t doing any harm, and I believed you were safe.”
“Not anymore?” Whatever had him stirred up inside was like salt on the raw wound of watching her friends die.
“Not if you met Alexander. Did you?”
His imperious tone infuriated her, and she refused to be barked at. “Who is he?”
“When did you meet?”
Maeve gave up with a growl of frustration. “I didn’t meet him.” She briefly described her encounter. “That was the first and last time I saw him.”
“Given that, he might not have been in the village that long.”
“Who is he?” Maeve used a more forceful tone. If Roderick knew something about what had happened to Jane, Rebecca and Molly, then she wanted to know what that was.
Roderick looked at her, his expression inscrutable. “Alexander is Rhiannon’s son.”
Fear coursed through Maeve at the sound of the lost one’s name spoken aloud, and she glanced about her. “She had a son?”
“Yes, there’s a prophecy about the daughter of life and the son of death bearing fruit that will shape all magic to come.”
“I’ve never heard of that.” And Maeve learned all sorts of details in her spirit walks. Thoughts and memories of passed witches often lingered in the spirit realm.
Roderick shrugged. “Nobody’s really sure what it means, and its existence is only known to a few.”
“Alexander is the son of death?” It wasn’t a far stretch to see that. The way he reeked of wrong and those awful shadows tethered to him.
“That bitch is wagering her future on him being the son of death.” Roderick shook his head. “She believes he is, and she likes to keep a close eye on him. Wherever he is, she won’t be far behind.”
Maeve’s world tilted, and she had to sit down. “You think she’s behind what’s happening in the village?”
“I think it would be dangerous to ignore the possibility. Just because we banished her, doesn’t mean Rhiannon’s bid for power is over. She was ever ambitious.” Roderick looked grimmer by the moment. “This is how she works. Rhiannon spreads her malice and lets normal people act on it.”
Maeve wished he would stop using that name. It made her want to bathe in the Goddess Pool to remove the taint.
Stilling, Roderick looked at the cavern walls. “You can walk with any departed witch, correct?”
“Yes.” Maeve didn’t know what he was staring at. The sigils looked the same as they always did.
“Even the first?”
Maeve had never attempted to walk far enough back in time to contact them. “I suppose I could.”
“We need information,” Roderick said. “And if that bitch is up to something, they will know it.”
“They will?”
“Aye.” Roderick nodded. “They were alive together for hundreds of years, even before she betrayed them. They broke her connection to Goddess magic, but they can still sense her. If she’s here, then we need to know about it.”
Maeve fetched her carnelian anchoring crystal and placed it at the southern edge of the pool. A walk that far back required more magic than she’d ever attempted to wield, and nerves tightened her belly.
“So, how does this work?” Roderick watched her as she gathered a pile of wood.
For a spell this powerful, she would need a lot of strength. “I’m going a long way back in time. You’re going to need to keep feeding the fire when I’m beyond.” After lighting the fire, she drew the ingredients she would need out of the chest she kept concealed behind a rocky ledge.
“Is it dangerous?”
“I’m not certain.” Nobody had ever observed her spirit walking. Now she had Roderick trying to follow her into the place of the dead and wave his sword around.
He added a log to the blaze. “When you’re in this place…”
“The spirit realm.”
He picked up her bag of cleansing sage and sniffed it. “Aye, the spirit realm. I won’t be able to reach you.”
“No, you won’t.” Collectors, as spirit walkers were also called, worked alone.
“Then how will I know if you’re in trouble and need me?”
“You won’t.” Roderick’s hovering unnerved her. “The only way you’ll know if I’m in trouble is if I don’t come back.”
Roderick’s dark brows crashed over his eyes. “Don’t come back?”
“Well, lose my way back and stay beyond…die.” As much time as she spent with death and the dead, she should be more comfortable with that word.
“Nay.” Roderick folded his arms. “I don’t like it. We’ll get the information another way.”
“How?” She met and held his stern stare. “This was your idea, and you’re right. If what you suspect is true, then we need to be forewarned.”
“It was my idea and I withdraw it.” His frown got even more ferocious and he looked even larger and more intimidating than before. “Your safety is my reason for being.”
“I understand that.” She felt too dead inside to reassure him. “But three people I valued died today. Good women who should still be alive, and if contacting the first three can help me understand why, and prevent this from happening to anyone else, then I’m going to try.”
His expression grew thoughtful. Then he crouched beside her at the pool and sunk his hand beneath the water.
Nothing happened for a moment, and then the water faded from blue to silver and grew more opaque.
“Roderick,” Goddess spoke, her voice a whisper that filled the caverns and resonated off the walls. Her tone grew petulant. “Where have you been? It has been too long since we have spoken.”
“Your pardon, my lady.” Roderick bowed his head to the water. “But I have done as you guided and bonded the spirit walker Maeve.”
Maeve had never heard anyone, not even Fiona, speak so freely with Goddess.
“Good boy,” Goddess purred. “You never disappoint me.”
“Only there is a slight problem, my lady,” Roderick said.
Goddess’s tone cooled. “There are no problems in my perfect design.”
“Of course not.” Roderick raised an eyebrow at the churning water. “Maeve needs to spirit walk and I can’t protect her in the shadow realm.”
“That is not why she needs you,” Goddess said. “You will be able to keep her within the bond, but your real task has not yet begun.”
The water turned back to its normal iridescent green, and Roderick sighed. “That was a nonanswer.”
“True.” It may have been his idea that she go, but she was doing it now.
Roderick dropped his chin to his chest. “I still don’t like it.”
Maeve bowed her head and whispered the prayer of protection, “Goddess, beneficent and benign, walk with me now amongst all blessed who came before, all blessed who now are, and all blessed yet to come.”
The sigils began a low hum, more of a vibration than an actual sound. The fire flared as she drew her birth element within.
Roderick cocked his head and stared around him at the softly glowing crystals embedded in the rock.
Goddess sent her protection, a presence pressing against Maeve’s awareness, ancient and comforting.
He sniffed the air. “Oranges? And something flow
ery.”
“Lilies.” Maeve placed herbs beside her wooden bowl.
Roderick crouched beside her. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going a long way back, and it makes me more vulnerable than normal.” She showed him each ingredient as she added it to the bowl. “St John’s Wort for divination, bay leaves help with clairvoyance, sandalwood will open my senses to those passed and finally, frankincense will cleanse the sacred space I create.”
Maeve stood and pulled fire to her. The flame danced gleefully over her outstretched palm, its touch as familiar and comforting as an old blanket.
She poured the herbs into the flame. It leaped toward them and consumed them hungrily. The flame in her hands flared higher, sending black shadows dancing over the cavern walls.
Raising her hands, she pushed the flame through the carnelian. Fire transformed into a beam of light. Lily and orange intensified as her magic molded the red light into a tunnel. Her sense of beyond opened. The hair at her nape stood on end.
The air thickened and her breathing deepened. Her heartbeat slowed. The red corridor swirled lazily and firmed into a long corridor of pure light.
Focusing on who she needed to find, Maeve stepped into the corridor. Her belly lurched and her senses swam as she accustomed herself to becoming insubstantial, intangible.
Maeve stepped out of the tunnel into a grove. Voices whispered around her.
“Sister.”
“Welcome, Sister.”
“Sister, come.”
Passed witches surrounded her, flit through the trees. Verdant grass was velvet soft beneath her feet. Time had no place there, and she followed the path deeper. The grove thickened into a forest filled with passed witches. Their spirits brushed against her like cobwebs.
“Come.” Still deeper the presence called her.
Maeve followed the summoning. The trees had grown so tall they blocked out all the light.