The Witches' Covenant (Twin Magic Book 2)

by Michael Dalton

  Johannes nodded. “Yes.”

  Dieter scowled. “You do not often entertain priests.”

  “And I did not do so today. He requested a meeting. But let me worry about that for now. Come, I am eager to hear about this work of yours.”

  Dieter seemed to ponder Johannes’s quick dismissal of his concerns for a moment, but said nothing. Instead, he drew several papers from a leather pouch he had brought and set them before Johannes on his desk. But rather than the war magery Johannes had expected, the papers depicted a series of colored circles, all of them connected by a variety of lines.

  “For years,” Dieter began, “I have been pondering what would seem to be a fairly simple question. We speak of the schools of magic having various colors: Red for physical magic, green for naturalism, yellow for divination, and purple for mysticism. But why is this so?”

  Johannes’s eyebrows went up. This was about the last thing he had expected Dieter to want to present.

  “I don’t know.”

  Dieter smiled. “No one seems to. And that intrigued me. The assignments can be traced back very far—trust me, I have looked—but there are no explanations. It seemed to be nothing but an empty tradition.”

  “Yet you believe it to be otherwise.”

  “I know it to be, now. Were you aware that mystics can see the Flow?”

  Johannes sat back in mild surprise. “Dieter, have you been dabbling in mysticism? You know how the administration feels about that.”

  Dieter shook his head. “I have merely done some work on the matter with a mystic I tracked down near Essen. There are mentions of this fact in various treatises on magic in the library, and this mystic confirmed it, though it took some doing to convince him of my good intentions. Mystics can indeed see the Flow as they direct it. And can you guess what color it appears to them?”

  “Purple?”

  “Indeed. Which made me think there must also be a reason for the other colors.”

  “This mystic could not see how others use the Flow?”

  “Apparently not. He told me mystics can only see the Flow they weave themselves.”

  “So that would appear to be a dead end.”

  “At first, yes. But after I returned to Köln, I had a sudden revelation. How much do you know about the science and magic of gemstones?”

  Johannes blinked. Where Dieter was going with this, he had no clue.

  “Very little. That is physical magic, as you know.”

  “Yes. Gemology is an art other mages do not concern themselves with. It is a matter for physical magic only.”

  Dieter pulled a small leather sack out of his pouch. He untied it and dumped its contents on Johannes’ desk. Five gems tumbled out.

  “We have here the five cardinal gemstones. Some of them have uses in war magery, but they are primarily used in artificing and alchemy. I am no artificer or alchemist, but I have at least studied the theory behind them.”

  Dieter lined them up in a row: yellow, red, green, blue, and purple. Then he pointed at them.

  “Observe: These are topaz, ruby, emerald, sapphire, and amethyst.”

  “What of crystal? Diamond?”

  “Clear crystal, of which diamond is the supreme variety, is an immature stone. It can become any one of the five upon sufficient exposure to the Flow, though amethyst and sapphire are the most common. There are of course many other types of gems, but these five are the most important and by far the most powerful. Now, watch how I arrange them.”

  Dieter set four of the stones in a diamond pattern, emerald at the top, topaz and amethyst at the corners, and ruby at the bottom.

  “Do you see the pattern?”

  Johannes nodded. “Yes. The schools of magic. This is mildly interesting. But it could also be purely coincidental.”

  Dieter grinned. “Yes, it could. So of course I did not stop there. After a great deal of effort, I conceived of an experiment to test my theories. I kept thinking to myself, why can mystics see the Flow yet no other mages can? My friend did not know either. He could only confirm that all other mystics he knew had the ability.

  “For months I studied and racked my brains for the answer. Finally, it occurred to me: What sets mysticism apart from other schools? It is in their ability to use the Flow to control the thoughts, perceptions, and even spirits of others. And I thought to myself, could my mystic friend give me the ability to see through his eyes, and see the Flow as I controlled it?”

  Johannes’s sense of disappointment vanished. Dieter had indeed set out in an entirely new—not to mention dangerous—direction with this research.

  “And?” he managed.

  “It took some experimentation before he was able to make the connection. But when we finally managed it, and I cast a simple spell, what do you think I saw?”

  “Red?”

  Dieter clapped his hands. “Yes! The Flow was as red as a blazing fire. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “But you said he could not see your casting. If you were seeing through his eyes . . .”

  “Yes. I am not certain how to explain it. I can only surmise that though I was seeing through his eyes, I was still using my own, and the two together allowed me to see the Flow as I gathered it just as he did.”

  Johannes stared his friend in a daze. This was a fascinating discovery, but if the Church got wind of it—something that was certain if he submitted the symposium for the review Father Hirsch had demanded—Dieter could well be seeing blazing fires of a very different sort.

  “What of the other schools?”

  “In that, I am fortunate that my sons were meant for other things than war magic. Alfred, as you know, is a naturalist—”

  “And Christoph has taken to divination?”

  “Yes.”

  Johannes’s sense of shock grew by another leap. “You involved your own sons in this experiment?”

  Dieter nodded rapidly. “I know, I know, but when I explained what I had discovered so far, they were eager to assist me.”

  “And the colors?”

  “Alfred saw green, and Christoph saw yellow, just as I predicted!”

  Johannes looked down at the gemstones on his desk. This was a great deal more than the incremental advances he had hoped to share at the symposium. Dieter had stumbled upon something unprecedented—a true discovery.

  But as he examined Dieter’s gems, something occurred to him. And when he looked up, the other mage was smiling.

  “You see it, don’t you?” he asked.

  “The sapphire?” Johannes responded.

  Dieter smiled. “Yes. How does it fit into this? Consider for a moment where these gems come from. There is some dispute about this, but the generally accepted theory is that, while their physical form may be created by purely natural phenomena, they are perfected by patterns of the Flow within the earth. This is precisely why clear crystal will turn to amethyst, or topaz, or another stone, when used in enchantments for a long enough period. The same process happens in nature, only over a much longer time. Any of these colors can result, yet we can assign only four of them to schools of magic.

  “Before I conducted my experiments, we could dismiss this as coincidence, yet I know now it is not. The colors have significance. They are clearly tied to their respective schools. That means sapphire—blue—must have some significance as well. Now look at this.”

  He set the sapphire into the center of the diamond.

  “We have long spoken of naturalism and physical magic, and divination and mysticism, as being opposed schools, which is of course a fact of much of what each school does, but look closely at the colors. What do you see?”

  Johannes stared for a few moments, then shrugged.

  “I don’t know. What?”

  Dieter drew another small sack from his pouch. In this one were three plates of glass.

  “This will be easier to see with a small experiment. I have here samples of the three primary colors. Hold them up in front of the window.” Johann
es did so. “Take away red for physical magic, and what do you get from the remaining colors?”

  Johannes nodded, understanding. “Green. I know how this works.”

  “Yes. Take out one and you get the color for the opposed school. Now take away yellow for divination.”

  He did. “And we get purple for mysticism. Which means what?”

  “In both cases, the colors interact in this fashion across the tradition division of schools. It is not just the schools that are opposed, but the colors as well.”

  Then Dieter pointed to the sapphire.

  “But how does blue fit into this? Why does it appear to sit at the center of the circle, controlling what other colors are seen, but not representing anything itself? That is the great mystery.”

  Something about this tickled the back of Johannes’s mind, but he could not quite get a grip on it.

  “Is that as far as you have gotten?” he finally asked.

  “For now, yes,” Dieter responded. “But I am convinced there is more. Something tells me there must be mages out there for whom blue is the color of the Flow or at least figures into their casting in some key fashion. I can do no more than speculate about what it might mean, but I am convinced such mages would possess enormous potential, likely more than they understand themselves.”

  It was then that Johannes remembered, and the realization nearly made his jaw drop to his desk.

  12.

  ANNA OF MECKLENBURG-SCHWERIN was a daughter of one of the oldest noble families in the Empire. The House of Mecklenburg had ruled lands along the Baltic Sea since the twelfth century, continually if not with distinction, and if they were far from the richest noble house, their territories had been mostly stable and secure during their reign.

  At the age of fifteen, Anna was given in marriage by her father, Duke Magnus II of Mecklenburg, to William II of Hessen, a man twice her age. Anna was William’s second wife, his first having been in her grave only five months at their wedding.

  Anna bore William three children in quick succession: Elisabeth, Magdalena—who died in infancy—and Philip. But by 1504, William began to go mad from the French disease, and the young woman was forced to take an ever-greater hand in managing the Landgraviate.

  Sensing the impending doom if William were to die soon or completely lose his grip on his faculties, Anna prevailed upon him in his more lucid moments to prepare a clear will. Unwilling to bestow an unrestricted regency on his young wife, William named a council of guardians for her and his children. Yet two more years as the de facto ruler convinced Anna she was risking irrelevancy under such an arrangement, and she pushed William to revise his will to name her regent of the landgraviate. This—convinced of her abilities by this point—he finally did, despite some objections from his councilors and vassals.

  William’s health began to fail not long afterward.

  ONE DAY in the spring of 1509, with her impending widowhood bearing down on her, Anna was working in her chambers when one of the castle pages knocked on her door.

  “Come in.”

  The boy entered holding what appeared to be a letter.

  “This was just delivered for the Landgrave, your grace.”

  She waved him over, and he handed it to her. On the outside of the envelope was written simply Wm. II Landgv Hessen. Anna sighed. It was well known to anyone who mattered who truly ran than the Landgraviate now, yet slights like this continued. The prejudice against women running anything of substance in the Empire ran deep, and she knew it was soon to get a great deal worse for her.

  When the boy was gone, she opened the letter. And then sat back in her chair in surprise.

  There was nothing on the page but a single character in heavy black ink.

  Anna stared at the sheet of paper for several moments, turning it over and back again to see if she had missed anything. But there was nothing but the direction to her husband and the single letter.

  She could make no sense of it, but the feeling that she was looking at something important grew in her mind. Finally, as reluctant as she was to do so, she rose from her desk and sought out the Landgrave.

  William seemed to enjoy looking out over his lands, however little he controlled them these days, and his attendants often sat him in a room along the south wing of the castle overlooking the town and the open forests beyond. It was there that Anna found him.

  She had learned not to surprise William in his dementia, and so instead sat down beside him and waited for him to notice her. In a few minutes, he broke from his stare across the valley below and looked at her.

  “Mmm, mmm,” he nodded at her. “Boy? How is the boy?”

  “Philip is well.”

  He nodded again.

  “Yes. Must rule. Important that he live. Must rule.” He nodded again, and seemed to lose his focus on her. “William died.”

  She nodded. She wasn’t sure if he meant his first son, by his first wife Yolande, or his older brother, or his cousin, all of whom had predeceased him. But it didn’t matter.

  “Yes, William died.”

  Now he looked at her again, face wracked with confusion. Rather than wait out more rambling, she held forth the letter.

  “William, do you know what this is?”

  He stared at it blankly for a few moments. Then some realization struck him like a thunderbolt and he sat back in shock.

  “No—no. It has not been—what year is it? What year? It has not been long enough.”

  “It is 1509.”

  “It—it is? It has been—oh, dear, it has. Who do they want? Who do they want now?”

  “Who? Who are you talking about?”

  “The—” Then he stopped abruptly. “No, this is not a matter for idle ears. Where is the boy? I must pass this on to him. I must explain this to him while I still can.”

  “Philip? Do you mean Philip?”

  “Yes. Bring me Philip. He must know. I must explain. He must handle this.”

  “William, Philip is but four years old. What can he do?”

  William agitation grew even further. “Oh, no. He must be older. He is the one. He must know.” Then he looked at Anna as if just noticing her.

  “You are his mother.”

  “Yes. William, tell me. What is this about?”

  William lurched to his feet, arms shaking unsteadily, and Anna leapt up to keep him from falling.

  “My chambers. My desk. Take me there.”

  Struggling to keep William upright as he staggered forward, Anna, led him across the castle to his rooms, ignoring the glances of the servants as they passed. When they reached William’s rooms, he stumbled to his desk in one corner, now long untouched in his madness. He rooted around in it for several minutes, muttering and cursing, before finally shouting in triumph and pulling out an old sheet of paper.

  “Here! Here it is!”

  Anna took the letter, seeing that it was nearly identical to the one she still held beyond being at least a decade older, with same single character in the center of the page.

  “But William, what does this mean?”

  He seemed to lose his focus again, and took both letters from her. He looked back and forth between them in confusion.

  “Another? They have sent another? But they—they just sent this one. Do they want two this time? That is not the covenant.”

  Anna gently took the letters from him.

  “William, this is the new one. This other is the last one. Who are they? What do they want?”

  He sat down in his chair and stared across the room. He said nothing for a long while.

  “Children. They want our children.”

  William then told her a story.

  WHEN THE NEXT LETTER arrived years later, it was addressed to Anna personally at her wittum in Gießen, rather than to her son, the Landgrave. But this small consideration did not improve her mood, for this time she knew full well what the letter meant. And somehow she was not surprised the sender of the letter knew she had never explained the
covenant to Philip, just as she knew the last time that William had never explained it to Anna.

  This time there was no need for drama. Anna knew where she was to go, and so she went.

  The path diverged from the main road a half-mile or so north of Lollar, just where she remembered it. When she and the three retainers accompanying her reached the spot when the smaller path turned left from the main one into the dense woods, she stopped her carriage and got out.

  She had explained to her men what would be happening, and thus none of them said a word as she disappeared into the trees.

  In about ten minutes, she reached the ring of stones. The memory of the last meeting a decade ago, after William had dredged the memories out of his dementia to tell her what must happen, flared back into life. The clearing was exactly as she remembered it.

  On the other side of the spring stood a figure in a dark cloak.

  “Hello, Sabine.”

  The figure pushed back the hood of her cloak enough to expose her raven hair and bright green eyes.

  “You came quickly.”

  Anna’s eyes widened. Sabine did not appear to have aged a single day since Anna last saw her more than a decade before. But perhaps it was merely the dim light in the clearing, which left things more shadow than form.

  “This is no longer my affair,” she finally responded. “I must bring this to Philip, as I am sure you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is the babe you seek?”

  “Ulrike, the daughter of Erika von Treysa. She is the wife of Philip’s commander of the guard.”

  The news chilled Anna to her core. The last had been the child of a peasant, an easy one to take from her parents. She knew Philip well enough to know that he would resist asking such a thing from an important retainer, let alone one who had stood by him from the first day of his reign.

  “There is no other?”

  Sabine’s eyes darkened.

  “That is not for you to question. That is not the covenant.”

  Anna’s gaze sank to the ground. William had regained his lucidity long enough to explain that much to her. This would go badly. But at least it was no longer her decision.