‘Push light at it, Dea!’ Phillip was yelling. ‘Push light at it!’ It moved away from Dea, and Theresa flinched as she felt its cold energy approach her.
The thing brushed against her brain, probing her for any weakness that would allow it to enter, to begin to influence her, take over her mind. Desperately she began to push light at it, imagining it beginning to shrink. The feathers around her burst into flame. There was the sound of a large explosion. The witches faced the wall as one. The mural had opened up like a giant’s yawn. Around the portal they saw black scarab beetles scuttling and a thousand snakes writhing in a frenzied attempt to escape the ring of fire that had spontaneously erupted around the circumference of the portal. Theresa watched as she saw a surreal scene of another world, the world of the painted mural come to life, with green rolling hills, a peach-coloured sky and animals that looked like zebras grazing. A profound regret came to her that she would never be able to visit this dimension now that the portal was closing. She felt the dark energy of the being trying to prevent the portal being shut as it came near her again. A cold sensation touched her mind — tempting, whispering promises of knowledge shared, gifts given, the chance to visit that wonderfully fragrant world with its triple moons hanging in the sky. To cross freely between worlds as Johanna had done, to conquer the mystery of paint, plaster, art, decay and life. No! she screamed mentally. Get thee behind me, Satan!
She glanced at Dea Dreamer who stared at her with wild eyes streaked with tears. So she was having similar problems battling the energy. Theresa redoubled her strength, sending light to the energy. She could taste its feathers, its bones in her mouth, it was so near her. There were still frantic, screeching, laughing black shapes throwing themselves through the burning portal. Theresa saw some of them expand when they hit the other side, transforming into large bear-like creatures, small Faeries, angels with tattoos covering their bodies, some with blood streaked over their chests. There was a host of other beings she did not recognise, or else they transformed too quickly when they reached the safety of their world for her eye to make out what they were.
It didn’t seem right to close the portal, to deny life and creativity. Something shifted inside her, a scarred and ancient part of her being. She longed for the freedom to cast of her skin, to throw herself after the shadows escaping into the wall, to gain power for herself. She felt Lazariel’s eyes open and upon her, blazing so fiercely she was forced to look away.
The witches dropped hands and stood before the portal. Phillip approached the burning entrance and with the lion staff struck the wall hard. He screamed three words. The portal blistered and puckered. With a loud sucking sound it began to close, the mural slowly vanishing before their eyes. They received one shocking glimpse of two small bodies pushed into the wall, children cradling each other, frozen for eternity in their violent death. Their blood-splattered nightgowns and terrified expressions were a vivid testament to what they had suffered. A strong smell of the grave came from them, and then they too turned to dust. The portal, the mural, was no more.
Hours later, the witches were still slumped about the room, lying and sitting before the blank wall. There was very little conversation between them as they attempted to regain the energy they had lost. Phillip sat against the wall, his eyes shut, the staff across his knees now inanimate and innocent looking. Dea held her rosary, her lips moving in silent prayer. Faline and Lucius lay in a motionless embrace on the sofa, both looking older, more drained. Odolf, Agatha and Leonora were spread across the floor. Lazariel was next to Theresa, his wings around the two of them. He seemed to be the only one who was energised by the portal closing. Theresa couldn’t help the wave of disappointment that kept returning to her as she lay against him. Her stomach felt sore and bruised and she hoped that her baby was all right with the ordeal she had just been through. She consoled herself with imagining that there were other portals that could be made between the worlds, and other ways she could find to explore the tantalising glimpse she had seen of the world beyond. Then the fear of what was really behind these thoughts made her panicky. Why did I have to see it before it closed?
Inside Theresa’s womb, Rachel listened hard to the vibrations around her. Never before had she known such fear, or felt so useless and confined in this prison of her own making. Charmonzhla was right, she should never have come here! Fool that she was, to die to the Looz Drem in the hope of a human mother and birth. She could smell the owl woman all around Theresa; she was in her bloodstream, her mind. The witches thought they had won because they had closed the portal, but they didn’t realise, didn’t understand. Rachel understood everything. Frantically she tried to flex herself, make herself grow to burst her way out. She couldn’t remain trapped in this Bluite body. She couldn’t bear to think about the two bodies she had seen in their final gory embrace in the wall. There was an awful memory in that image. Poor little Rachel is lost, poor dead little Rachel needs a warm mother to hold her tight, protect her from the star of death. She pushed and kicked frantically against Theresa’s stomach.
‘Mother!’ she called from the silence of the womb. ‘Mother be careful! She’s still near. She is going to kill us!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The parasite rests uneasily in the grim shadow of the trees. Winged wisdom will slay the slayer. By Eom the saviour is slain, in the ultimate sacrifice of a sensitive loving heart. (Even the goddesses weep.) The Dreamers toss restlessly amid the flames of a fire in the shell, but their dream continues the lie of our lives.
— CONDENSED FROM THE TREMITE BOOK OF LIFE, COLUMN
ZVI CV
Woe is me. Methinks I am turning into a god.
— LAST WORDS OF VESPASIAN, ROMAN EMPEROR, DIED 79 AD
Eronth
They could smell the Lightcaster long before they reached the hotel in the Borderlands where he was staying. His odour of rusty blood and nightmares clung to their nostrils. If the reek had not signalled his location, then the flies and rats were a giveaway. The streets and walls were tilled with pulsating blankets of rodents and insects. Steppm began dry-retching as the wind carried the odour to him. He was forced to dismount quickly from his ilkama and vomit in the gutter where human waste from chamber-pots lay. He was not the only one nauseous, all the wizards were burying their faces in their clothes in futile attempts to escape the smell. Khartyn alone seemed unaffected, her eyes blazed and her lips moved in a prayer as they rode.
There were few spectators in the streets. The rats had taken over this squalid area of the Wastelands. The Lightcaster’s smell had forced even the most hardened prostitutes and Borderland dwellers as far away as possible from the stink.
They dismounted from their ilkamas, tying them to a street post, then stood in a group looking upwards at the hotel. The hotel was a double-storey wooden building, painted a dark green colour with orange stripes. The paint was blistered and peeling, and graffiti was scratched into every available space. The rat plague was the thickest and noisiest near the entrance. Their agitated squeaking was painful to the ears. Khartyn sensed the Lightcaster’s awareness of their arrival and the tremendous power he had accumulated on his rampage through Faia.
‘Come out, Lightcaster!’ she screamed, pitting her lungs against the rats and causing the wizards to turn their heads to her. ‘In the name of the Dreamers I challenge you to stand before us to be charged with your crimes against Eronth!’ At that the rats seemed to burst into hysterical laughter, a united cacophonous screeching.
‘Come show your face, Lightcaster coward!’ Khartyn challenged again.
The door to the hotel opened slowly. The wizards tensed, but a blonde-haired woman, highly made up with breasts spilling out of her bodice looked out.
‘Stop the noise, Crone!’ she ordered. ‘You’re disturbing the rats!’
Khartyn noticed the drugged glaze of her eyes. She moved towards her, but Bwani put out his arm.
‘No, Crone,’ he said. ‘Let him come to us.’
‘Wh
at handsome boys you have, Crone,’ the hotel proprietor leered. She ran her hands down over her crutch. ‘Surely one as old as you can’t satisfy all those fine studs.’
A gloved hand appeared on her shoulder. ‘Move aside, pretty wrench,’ a soft, cultured voice said.
The woman looked into the darkness over her shoulder. ‘Of course, sir,’ she simpered, falling back quickly into the shadows.
The speaker moved forward into the light and Khartyn found herself face to face with the Lightcaster. He was not what they had expected. After all the time they had spent brooding on the horrors he had committed, his very normalcy was more disturbing than if he had been a monstrosity, He was a short man, who carried a stovepipe hat. He wore white trousers and a crisp white linen shirt, and his head was crowned with a powdered white wig drawn back into a queue.
‘Merry meet to you, Crone,’ he said, and drew a white lace handkerchief to his nose for a second. ‘I have long dreamt of this meeting.’
‘And I too,’ Khartyn replied. ‘Now it is happening, just as I have foreseen it, in a street filled with rats and human waste. An appropriate meeting place for one such as you. Filth! Dirt! Vermin! By the sand of the Dreamers, Sati will pay for inviting you to Eronth.’
The Lightcaster smiled and a chill wind blew from the hotel doorway to the wizards. ‘I go where my light is needed, witch,’ he said softly. ‘I cleanse and I purify where evil has touched.’
‘You are the evil,’ Khartyn said. ‘What you see without is within. You enjoy pain, you feed on death.’
A dark shadow seemed to have fallen upon the street. Bwani glanced at Edwen, wanting to make sure the wizards were ready if they had to move quickly.
‘Do you want to know about your young witch friend?’ the Lightcaster said, still smiling. ‘If she died quickly? If she repented at the end? I can assure you, witch, that she didn’t and she did. How sweet her suffering! How I feasted on her screams of agony.’
Khartyn reached for the bag that hung around her waist as the Lightcaster continued.
‘With her, it is all about power,’ he said to the wizards. ‘What she would really like is for you to all be returned to stone. How she laughs, plots and schemes behind your backs! The things the old witch knows would make you tremble! But I, the Pricker, seek only to protect you. Always at your service, sirs.’
‘Shut your foul mouth,’ Bwani said.
The Lightcaster bowed. ‘As you wish, sir. But be wary of her, man of stone. She cast a spell that caused your lovely wife Maya to sleep with the one known as Claw. “Oh, Claw! Hurt me with your claws. Put them inside me”.’ He mimicked Maya’s tones perfectly. The group of wizards exchanged confused glances. Bwani stared at Claw, obviously taken aback. Claw had flushed deep red and would not look Bwani in the eye.
‘Don’t listen to him!’ Khartyn yelled. ‘He’s trying to feed on you!’
Edwen was looking at Claw, a sneer upon his face.
‘She watches everything, knows everything, keeps her secrets to herself,’ the Lightcaster said. ‘Who had the real power in Faia? Not Mary, the lesser Bluite witch, but the Crone herself. Whispering in Mary’s ear day and night. Controlling events from behind the High Priestess. She will do anything, fight anyone, to regain power in Faia. To take it away from you fine wizards, and Maya.’
Bwani glanced at Khartyn. ‘You think we are fool enough to listen to a Lightcaster?’ he said, but his eyes flickered a doubt.
‘Stop giving him energy!’ Khartyn yelled. She reached into her waist pouch and pulled out the vulture feather and bone. A dark brown energy fizzed and shot off the bone.
The Lightcaster looked at what she held and laughed. ‘Bird feathers?’ he said.
Khartyn kissed the bone and her milky eyes held the Lightcaster’s for a moment. ‘This is for my maid, and for Mary and Ano,’ she said.
The Pricker’s eyes widened. He stepped backwards, but Khartyn held the bone out towards him. A flash of light shot from the end of it, catching the Lightcaster in the face. His mouth opened to a scream that seemed to shake Eronth. He cried piteously as he tottered in agony, ‘Wiiiitttchhh!’ He shrieked again and the wizards were jolted with surprise as his face exploded.
Khartyn began waving the bone as if inscribing a pattern, and he began to be sucked into the end of the bone, his arms flailing. Countless centuries of persecution, torture and the death of women and men were drawn into the bone. When every part of the Lightcaster had been absorbed. Khartyn studied the bone for a second, her face unchanging, and then snapped it into two. She passed the halves to Bwani.
‘Bury them in two separate places,’ she said. ‘Ensure they are a goodly distance from each other, so that one cannot find the other. If you will be so kind as to take my ilkama home with you, I will walk. I need to think.’
The wizards watched, open-mouthed, as the Crone began striding regally through the vast throng of rats, which parted respectfully to make an avenue for her determined advance. Not one of the wizards spoke, or dared to look at the other, as they watched her frail, gowned body disappearing down the rodent-lined street.
Earth — Venezia, Italy
In a small hotel on the Fondamenta Bollani, Sati sat upright, unable to sleep. Ishran lay beside her snoring, a result of the bottle of good red wine they had shared together over their dinner. Something had woken her, what was it? She could hear the sounds of the Canale Grande outside the window of the luxurious room. Her first thought as it always was these days was of Fenn. The screaming ache, the hollow voice that would never go away. Grief swamped her as she remembered Fenn was gone. Gone forever, and no amount of good wine, travelling and cocaine was ever going to bring her back.
It was then she felt the Lightcaster, his body contracting, slipping into black space. His fingers were flexing, desperate for air. She realised she was witnessing his death. Then she saw her, standing at the foot of the bed, looking down upon them. A faint glow shimmered upon her body.
‘What are you doing here, Old Mother?’ Sati said, half wondering if she was dreaming. The thought came to her that it was Khartyn who had died, not the Lightcaster, and this was her spirit come to say goodbye.
‘I’ve killed him,’ the Crone said. ‘I took the life from the filth that you invited to Eronth, and now his blood is on my hands. I, a Crone of Eronth, sworn never to take the life of another. I did so to avoid innocent lives being taken, but does that make my actions right?’ Khartyn’s voice was flat, her eyes steel.
Sati couldn’t think straight, her head felt like cottonwool. She tried to rouse Ishran, but he pushed her away, turning on his side.
‘Fear not, I haven’t come to harm you,’ Khartyn continued. With her long white hair hanging loose she looked like an ancient child. ‘Although it is thanks to your actions that the people I held most dear to my heart are now dead. With every breath I have in my body, I will regret the day I ever released you from the holding pens in Faia. Goddess knows Mary warned me, but I refused to listen.’
‘A power greater than you selected me,’ Sati pointed out, resentment and anger in her voice. ‘I had the burning shell in my forehead.’
‘The Dreamers work through weak and mysterious vessels,’ Khartyn said. ‘Good is birthed from evil and from acts of goodness, evil lurks.’ She put out her hand and in it lay a vulture feather. ‘I have brought you a gift from the Towers of Silence,’ she said.
Sati stared at it, then realisation broke. ‘Why?’ she said, and tears came to her eyes. ‘When you hate me so much, why give me such a priceless gift?’
The Crone nodded her head slowly, her exes never leaving Satis’. ‘It is not for you, but for Fenn’s memory I do so. There are herbs the vulture prescribed for you. White clover, which grows in profusion near the mushroom rings in Eronth guarding the Hollow Hills. You must pound the white clover with equal handfuls of partridge berry, liferoot, wild jams, milk and musk. Rub the mixture over your stomach and then pass the vulture feather over it. You can also drink the infusion in
a tea, four times a day. Then you will conceive.’
Khartyn moved farther away from the bed. ‘How beautiful you once were,’ she said. Sati could smell the familiar lavender, vetiver smell of her full black skirts. She ached to feel the Crone’s arms around her. but all she met was contempt and fury in the sunken eyes. ‘Once so full of joy, passion and light. But living with the Azephim has soured and aged you. Your days are bleak, and without the child your soul craves for, you are even more dangerous. Yes, you will remain a disappointment to me until my dying day. But I love you. I will always love you. You will need the child when you return to the Web-Kondoell. I think it is time you and Ishran left Earth and Eronth and went back to the Web.’
Sati opened her mouth to retort that she would stay in Venezia and then move to Stockholm, but the expression on the Crone’s face dried the words in her mouth. She glanced at Ishran to check he was still asleep. ‘I am sorry, Khartyn,’ she said.
‘Sorry won’t bring them back,’ Khartyn said. ‘Your jealousy of Rosedark blinded you to the dark web that you have woven around yourself by your actions. Rosedark was always a better apprentice than you, so you sought to destroy her and me as well. You succeeded in taking her physical body, but not in capturing her soul from my heart. That is where she will live until my final breath. She will never die to me. But you, my daughter, you are already dead.’ The Crone slowly disappeared as she spoke the words.
The ache remained with Sati all day. She hid the Crone’s visitation from Ishran as they breakfasted in the hotel. They walked through cobbled streets to the markets near the Rialto bridge, lice-covered pigeons massing around them, the feel of Ishran’s grey coat, the absence of noise in the streets. None of the polluting cars Sati hated so much in other parts of this world. Silence.
Browsing the markets. Ishran stopped to examine the slabs of wet, glistening eels writhing in death throes, coloured crabs like jewels, octopus of varying sizes, buckets of fish guts. Exotic fruits they had never seen before. Carrots, pumpkins and potatoes. So many treasures to exclaim over, but the ache throbbed inside her. Silence.
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