What could it do? Not a great deal, it seemed.
Not knowing what else to do, she sent it away with a single command to haunt the Lord of Padberg. When Archbishop John had stripped her father of his bailiwick despite what he had done for the Prince-Bishop of Paderborn, her father had in turn declared war on the Padbergs. They were a minor noble family, but they were allied with the Archbishop of Köln, and Henry felt he could not allow such a seat of power so close to his lands. Sabine, having thought she had scored a coup with the Prince-Bishop, was equally annoyed, so perhaps the spirit could exact some revenge.
In a moment, it was gone.
SABINE THEREAFTER spent each night consorting with the spirits that came to her bed. Most of them were the same minor, powerless things she had met the first time. But soon she encountered stronger ones. She was careful with how she allowed them inside her, and learned to gauge their strength so as not to risk losing control of herself. But her talents were such that she never came close to losing the battle that ensued when a spirit entered her. There was sometimes a struggle in subjugating the spirit, but if it went on too long, she could expel it from her easily.
She said nothing to Andreas about this, fearing that he would not take it well. She knew she was taking a risk, and Andreas regularly cautioned her about the unique problems she faced as a mystic. She was old enough now to know that dealing with spirits was precisely the sort of thing that got people burned at the stake as witches, so she would take his advice to heart and tell no one of it, not even him.
As time went on, Sabine recognized certain spirits. The small ones, the weak ones, were as alike as flies on her windowsill. But the stronger ones were different. Each had a different texture, a different personality. Some fought her intensely, and resisted her commands, and though they all submitted in the end, these ones would do as little as possible to fulfill her instructions.
Others, on the other hand, seemed to seek her out. They wanted to be with her, to serve her. They eagerly competed for her favor and to do her bidding. She had to be careful with these because they would go well beyond her commands if she were not precise and specific with what she wanted them to do. More than once, she sent such spirits to harass someone who had annoyed her, only to find that they had driven the poor person nearly mad in their haunting.
Eventually, one spirit above all seemed determined to distinguish itself. It had no name, but Sabine soon thought of it as Flame, for it made her warm when she held it inside her. It served her instantly and obediently, yet at the same time she felt that it did not want to leave her. It wanted to remain within, not to possess her but to be one with her. To love her.
One night she held Flame closely, doing nothing. She gave it no instructions. She just lay there enjoying the warmth it gave her.
Bit by bit, the heat seemed to settle into her body, seeking out different parts of her. It spun through her limbs, then back into her gut. A tingling sensation grew in her stomach. What was Flame doing? She could not tell, but she did not want it to stop. The tingling grew into a fizzling power in her torso. She relaxed herself further, letting it spread. It moved downward, settling just between her legs. She lay still, doing nothing but let it intensify.
All at once, an explosion of pleasure burst through her body. Wave after wave of sensation rolled over her. She gasped aloud as her limbs thrashed in response and she groped helplessly at herself.
Had Flame done this to her? Whatever it was, she refused to allow it to stop. The heat built again, and exploded again. It went on, over and over, until she could take no more and expelled the spirit from her body.
THE EXPERIENCE that night became an addiction. She spurned all other spirits, calling to Flame each night and drawing it into her. She would ride the warmth and pleasure it gave until she was near to fainting.
For a time, Flame occupied her thoughts to exclusion of everything else. She neglected her studies with Andreas until he scolded her. She daydreamed during her father’s meetings unless he called her by name.
Then one day, something new happened that again changed her understanding of the world.
She was sitting in on a her father’s council meeting but paying little attention. A man entered, seeking an audience. “What is this?” he asked, and only gradually did Sabine realize he meant her.
She was about to charm away his knowledge of her as she usually did, when her father answered.
“This is my daughter, Sabine. She is here to learn, and to listen.”
The man scoffed.
“Such a beauty should be married and squeezing out heirs, not meddling in the affairs of men.”
This remark, offhand though it was, startled Sabine. A beauty? Her?
When the meeting was over, she went back to her chambers and stared into her mirror. Was she beautiful? She had spent the last five years thinking of nothing but her talents and the Flow, forgetting the girlish obsessions of her youth, but what the man had said cast her back into the days when she played princes and princesses with the other girls in the castle, dreaming of the day she would be someone’s wife.
Now, though—did it matter? She looked at her bright green eyes, and pulled at her long black hair. She had spent so little time around other girls her age that she had no conception of what was pretty and not.
Finally she went to find her father. As gruff as he was, the one thing she could trust to get out him was directness and truth.
Henry was alone in his chambers, reading.
“What is it?”
“Father? Why did that man call me a beauty?”
He laughed softly. “Because you are. You have your mother’s looks. Be thankful you also have my constitution.”
“Am I to marry?”
Henry regarded her with a neutral look on his face.
“Do you wish to?”
Sabine was old enough to understand how married women so often faded into irrelevance in this society. She wanted none of that.
“No.”
Henry nodded.
“Then you shall not. You are far more valuable to me here, in any case.”
That was enough for the moment. But awakened to this reality, Sabine saw it everywhere. The glances and stares she had been getting from the men and boys in the castle, which had long made her cautious—thinking they suspected her talents—now took on a different character.
She was pretty. More than pretty. She was desirable, and men wanted her. She saw that now. It made her feel important.
She soon grew haughty about it. None would have her. What could they give her that Flame could not, that she could not take from them at her whim?
Others noticed this change in her personality. She grew short and impatient with Andreas until he began avoiding her. The maids and servants in the castle, who had never completely trusted her, now lived in abject fear of her. Even her father could not fully bring her to heel.
And each night, she continued allowing Flame to make love to her, to drive her nearly mad with ecstasy. On it went for weeks, until one night something occurred to her.
Her monthly bleeding had stopped.
It had come regularly for six months or more, then stopped as neatly as it had begun. But something seemed wrong. She felt her stomach. There was a strange fullness there, the knowledge of which had been lingering in the back of her mind for several days, yet never coming to the fore until now.
Sabine realized that somehow she was with child.
It made no sense. No man had touched her. Yet the more she looked into herself, the more certain she was.
Growing up without a mother for most of her life, Sabine had never quite been able to connect with other women. She loved her father, but he was a man, and there were certain things she could not discuss with him. Her nursemaids had been little more than toys to her, and she had never been close to any of them. Her behavior as a young girl had alienated the few friends she might have made.
So she had no one to discuss this with, no one
she trusted enough.
Still, she had been around enough women and children to know how pregnancy worked. A woman would grow round and fat over some months before the baby arrived. And it took only a few weeks for Sabine to realize that what she had was no normal pregnancy.
Less than a month after she discovered her predicament, she began cramping repeatedly during the day, much as she did when she bled, only worse. Finally one day, it grew so painful that she retreated to her chambers and barred the door.
For several hours, she lay on the floor of her room shivering and shaking as whatever was inside her fought to get out. The pain shot through her gut. All at once, a gush of blood burst from between her legs. Something was crawling out of her. She sat up, groping at herself. A tiny claw between her thighs caught her hand and would not let go.
She grabbed at it, pulling. The pain redoubled, and she struggled not to cry out. The thing was wriggling and clawing at her. Another hand emerged. She took both between her hands and pulled. In one great spasm of pain, she yanked the thing from her body and collapsed onto the floor wondering if she was dying.
She was not. The bleeding was not as bad as she feared and slackened quickly. Sabine sat up, regarding the thing she had given birth to.
Sabine had seen newborn babies before. And this was no baby.
It was superficially human, but far thinner and grayer. Its arms and legs were like twigs, its body like the wrinkled limb of a dead tree. Its eyes were empty. It hardly looked vital enough to even be alive.
But alive it was. It twitched and mewled between her legs, reaching for her.
Revolted, she scooted away from the thing. She found some rags and water to clean herself up. Still the thing lay on the floor squirming and squeaking.
Steeling herself at last, she went back to it, wondering what it was and what to do with it.
She had not been with a man. But she realized suddenly what she had been doing. The sensations of the birth had not been so terribly different from the sensations she had felt with Flame. Pain instead of pleasure, yet still nearly identical.
And it was then that she realized this child was Flame’s. She had lain with a spirit, and it had begotten a spirit child.
Sabine drowned the thing immediately in her washbasin and threw the body into the fire.
22.
THE LAST, and most important phase of Sabine’s life began the day she met Louis I, Landgrave of Hessen.
At twenty-two, Sabine was such a renowned beauty that nobles came from as far away as Friesland to seek her hand in marriage, this despite her father’s minor standing in the Empire. It had by then become common knowledge that she was her father’s most trusted advisor—though none suspected the true scope of her skills—and his successes in imperial intrigue were more often than not attributed to her counsel. This combination of beauty and wisdom made her as sought-after a bride as any who knew of her could remember.
Yet she spurned all who came to court her, more than once charming her most annoying suitors into celibacy, or worse. And no offer, no matter how grand, seemed capable of swaying Henry from his indifference to the issue.
Sabine knew full well—for Andreas had explained this one day, and why it was so—that mages only married other mages. But even without that restriction, she had no interest in becoming another noble’s broodmare and bed warmer.
That year, Henry’s long-running campaign to play Hessen and Mainz against one another for his advantage finally exploded into outright war. Henry had pledged the same territory in Waldeck to both the Archbishop of Mainz and Louis, collecting 20,000 gold crowns from each of them. The inability to settle the ensuing dispute caused Louis to attack Mainz and its allies around Hessen.
Henry, at the last moment, allied himself with Louis. But Louis, not trusting Henry after being betrayed once, demanded some sort of surety. Henry, seeing a way to both assure Louis of his goodwill and assure himself that Louis would not change his own mind, had what seemed to be a capital idea.
Sabine, who knew quite well what was coming, was summoned to her father’s chambers just as the war broke out and Louis’s troops were marching on the fortified town of Fritzlar, one of the nearby Mainz territories that Henry had once supervised as bailiff.
“Daughter, you have served me well all these years. But I need you now to serve me elsewhere.”
“With Louis?”
“Yes. You must go to his court in Marburg. The survival of our house depends on your ensuring his continued goodwill toward Waldeck. You cannot manage that from here.”
Henry did not say it, but Sabine knew as well she was meant to be a hostage. But that held no concern for her, as she had no doubts she could bend her erstwhile captors to her will. Besides which, she had spent nearly her entire life in Waldeck Castle. It was time to see the world.
So in August of 1427, Sabine and her small entourage of servants rode the ten or so miles from Waldeck to Marburg.
Sabine knew little about Louis other than that he was young, only a bit older than she was, and had ruled the Landgraviate since he was 11. Louis—not that she cared—had not been among her suitors. She had heard he was looking for a wife who could significantly increase his territories, and a daughter of Waldeck did not meet such a requirement.
Then she walked into Louis’s court, and all of Sabine’s reservations about marriage flew out the window.
LOUIS WAS very handsome, but Sabine had met her share of handsome men. Quite a few had come to court her, but they were either too old, too unsure of themselves, too insignificant, or simply too boring to budge her from her refusal to marry.
No, it was Louis’s manner that made her go weak.
When she and her group arrived, they were shown to a set of rooms in Louis’s castle, which sat on an impressive hill above Marburg. Sabine liked it immediately—it was larger, more attractive inside, and more comfortable than Waldeck Castle. Spending a few years here would not be a burden.
She was summoned to Louis’s presence a few hours after arriving. She followed the chamberlain up the stairs from her rooms to the great hall on the fourth floor.
The moment she laid eyes on Louis, she lost a little bit of breath. He was a tall, well-built man, and he seemed to occupy the room simply by sitting there. He sat indolently in his throne, ignoring the servants and attendants who moved about him. He looked up when the chamberlain announced her, but Sabine saw no sign he was the least bit impressed with her.
Instead, he laughed.
“So this is the famous Sabine of Waldeck, who spurns so many men who come to court her. Perhaps you are simply waiting for the man who can tame you.”
Flustered, she could only bow slightly toward him, something she had told herself she was not going to do. But she found herself doing it almost by instinct.
“It is wonderful to meet you, your Grace.”
Louis laughed again. “You are here because your father attempted to swindle me out of 20,000 crowns. Let us have no illusions on that point.”
Sabine stood straight. “Very well, then. I would indeed be home in Waldeck otherwise.”
“You find my presence distasteful?”
She was regaining her equilibrium now. If he wanted to banter with her, fine, she would banter.
“Do you find mine the same?”
Louis laughed.
“Do not fish for compliments, Sabine. You will draw no paeans to your beauty out of me.”
She smiled, seeing a point to score.
“You find me beautiful, then?”
But Louis turned the riposte aside.
“No more so than you find me handsome.”
Sabine’s heart fluttered. This was something new, a man she could respect. Beyond her father, there was no one residing in that category. Her father commanded a room the same way Louis did.
“Then I think you the handsomest man in the world, save one.”
Louis’s eyebrow went up.
“Save one?”
“The
man I shall marry.”
Her jibe took a moment to find its home, and then Louis leaned back in his throne, laughing loudly.
“Oh, this is a feisty one.” He caught his breath and continued. “You will dine with me tonight, Sabine, and we shall continue this discussion.”
Sabine smiled, wanting nothing else but trying not to let it show.
“Very well, your Grace. I will see you at dinner.”
SABINE AND LOUIS dined together that night, and next, and the night after that, continuing to jibe and flirt with each other. More than once Sabine caught herself trying to enchant Louis to be sure of his emotions, but she knew instinctively she did not want a man who was charmed into loving her. She might well use her talents on him once they were married, but she was determined to enter marriage only on its own merits.
And marriage now resided foremost in her thoughts, having been abruptly yanked from her emotional dustbin by Louis. The Landgrave was no mage, to be sure, but Sabine was certain she could find a way to deal with that problem somehow. She was not even certain she believed what Andreas had told her. More than once she had wondered if his story was simply a plot to keep her for himself if she finally decided to marry.
Flame had followed Sabine from Waldeck, but when he—as she thought of the spirit now—came to her the first night in Marburg, she drove him away. She had been more careful about accepting his attentions, but the pleasures of it had been too intense to give up entirely, and as a result she had borne two more of the withered spirit things, each of which she had drowned at birth as she had done with the first one.
But now, she had thoughts only for Louis.
Yet however infatuated Sabine was with him, she had not completely lost her head. Various things she had heard and seen since arriving in Marburg made it clear that the rumors about Louis’s marital ambitions were correct. Louis—he was so like her father—kept the fortunes of his state foremost in his mind. He was indeed seeking a match with one of the major houses of the Empire, and no matter how fully she might capture his heart, the House of Waldeck did not qualify.
The Witches' Covenant (Twin Magic Book 2) Page 15