We Will All Go Down Together (9 page)

You will have me cast out,
Jonet complained.
I will be cried for a witch in every parish.
But:
What matter that?
I asked her, in return.
They know you a witch already, as you know yourself. Better to seize your inheritance outright, setting your imps abroad and filling them full of sicknesses, that they pull their own houses down in desperation for a cure. And then, best of all, to come with me and seek what my Master promises: the re-making of this world in our own image, that none shall ever suffer as you and I have, or as we can make those who cross us suffer.

Since the boy I killed was as yet unbaptized, we dug up his body, boiled it for its fat and ate the rest, then flew along the coast seeking a third. Soon enough, we found Alizoun Rusk on the high cliff’s side, scowling prettily, considering whether or no to cast herself down on the rocks below, thus to be rid of the unfashionable marriage into which her kin conspired to force her. For her sea-captain intended had already got her with child, knowing himself secure enough in his suit to force the matter, thus making her either a bride foretold or an unmarried whore—and so she thought it of little moment to let me draw out her child and crush its soft skull in my hand, then watch as I pissed in a sieve and threw it sea-wards, while Jonet piped a wind made from dead men’s screams towards the captain’s sails. In return, she swore herself our sister and was set to the making of poppets, at which skill she proved most expert.

I stayed ever the brain to their hands amongst us three, however. And thus ’twas at my Black Man’s whim we made our path, ranging downwards to that slippery place where Scotland slides into England—Dourvale valley, seat to the great family Druir, with Rook’s-home over the very next ridge, where rules the dark and mighty Laird of Roke—to unravel this whole world’s foul knot, if we might.

. . . unravel this whole world’s foul knot . . . 

Dolores paused, re-reading this last claim and wondering once more at its anarchistic—anachronistic?—arrogance. A weirdly seductive thing, delusion. Jonet and Alizoun must have believed the same, surely—enough so to draw them into Euwphaim’s train, pulling them straight-way from the plain daylight world’s concerns into the Witch-House’s endless, Fire-lit night.

She sighed, kneading the nape of her neck, as her stomach growled.
Best call for Keck and stoke yourself if you mean to go on,
she thought, vaguely, until her eyes dropped once more: fixed on Euwphaim’s words and clenched, painful-pleasurable, a fist around a nail. Unable to stop herself from stringing one to the other, or the next, or the next. . . .

From inside the box came a strange little rattle, pins falling in some phantom lock. But Dolores did not look up again, not even when whatever it was
turned
slightly, invisibly, poising itself to open.

You have all heard the rumours, though you pretend disbelief. Glauce Lady Druir came from nowhere, much like myself, although her kin never stepped their feet above-ground unless driven to; in the hollow hills they dwelt, the Faerie
brugh
, before their High King and Queen at last proclaimed it time to flee this iron-touched world forever. Yet my Lady was left behind, a changeling, to comb her hair and sigh in a cave ’til Enzembler Laird Druir came to court her—which is why all their children carry her odd blood, bearing the mark of her strangeness, inside or out.

She had more to risk than I, my Black Man said, which is why he sent me to her. That and her dowry, brought up into light from darkness—the Sidhe Stane her gillies take their name from, with which any thing might be accomplished, if there were only enough of similar power to make a circle about it: my coven and her, and Roke’s Laird too, with his book-learning and bad intent.

To my own mind, Lady Glauce never understood the Stane’s worth fully—’twas a thing she stood guardian to, not master of, for all she might profit from its nearness. Yet since I knew she must be present during the working I had planned for it, I made sure to come to her at a weak moment, after her husband’s head was taken for rising against the old Queen, dead Harry’s daughter. My Lady carried it home to sit with his body in state, her get all ranged about her, unsure on how to proceed—for though she sat in regency for his heir, Minion, ’twas a subtle time, as she well knew. So we helped her from that danger, making it so that Laird Enzembler sat again beside her from thence on, cold and silent except to sometimes nod, and gave her all her will.

They will never accept you,
I told her.
Nor your brood neither, once enough time has passed that their fear falls away. Better to alter the balance of things while we still can, then—set fire to the world and watch it burn, to see what else might be grown from its ashes.

And she agreed, or seemed to. Yet this was a lie, and only we three would pay for it, in the end. For those above are ever at odds with those below, no matter what store of evil angels’ blood they share.

Sidhe Stane = Sidderstane,
Dolores watched her hand scribble, through aching, drowsy eyes.
Like the Stane of Scone, Scotland’s destiny—a family totem, the Druir luck. Could be any size, small enough to wear, large enough to lie down on. . . .
Now, where had she read that? (
Look up reference, cf.
) And “gillies” . . . so the Sidderstanes were literal poor relations, former sworn bondsmen of Clan Druir, married into the family proper when Torrance Sidderstane brought his wife, Enzemblance Druir, back from the Auld Sod, an etymological link turned genetic.

(What an odd name that was too, in context—traditional, one could only think. Hearkening back to old Laird Enzembler and his own daughter, sister to Grisell, who married Callistor Laird Roke. . . .)

She probably thought that hard,
Dolores mused,
given she must’ve been the elder. Who marries their younger daughter away first, anyhow? But perhaps she looked a bit too much like her mother for Callistor’s liking.

So hot in here, increasingly, and oh so dreadfully close; the very air seemed book-dry, desiccated, all moisure sucked away by rotten paper, a quintessence of dust. History’s weight hung pendant, pressing down on her from all corners, thumbing every pore open at once. She yawned, jaw cracking wide, fatigue suddenly a mere stretch away from nausea.

Was I supposed to just call out for Keck, and hope he hears me?
Or . . . wasn’t there a bell he showed me, Mister S—Gaheris? Over there, by where he was sitting—

Have to get up to find it, though. And how best to do that when her fingers were already scrabbling their way ’cross the page once more, words trailing behind, screwed and slant as blood from some phantom wound?
The Roke we tempted to our Cause right easily, him being much a man as any other, craving both his name’s advancement and a warm place for his prick, likewise. . . .

I told him what I had told my Lady: that my sisters and I knew seven angels’ secret names, who between them could wreck this world and make it over, all anew. And he chose to believe me, for that he had read in his books of those same Seven, my Black Man’s kin, who chose neither Heaven nor Hell, but to circle the globe forever, seeking misery. For the Roke was one of those who thinks magic can be made with silly schoolmasters’ tricks, calling angels down and devils up to do your bidding with equal ease, so that you never have to touch any task with your own hands, if it can at all be helped.

A marriage was arranged between the Roke and my Lady’s Grisell, to give him cause to journey between their holdings. And once we came all together, she showed us where the Stane was kept, in that same empty
brugh
she had been cast from. Beneath the Dourvale hill we made our compact, swearing in together, and spilled our blood upon the Stane’s skin, softening it for our purposes—bound ourselves together for all times, with one thing only left wanting.

There must be a sacrifice,
I told them.
Nothing for nothing, neither on this globe, nor out of it. We must all give up part of ourselves to see this through, or the working fails.

What will the world be hereafter, when we are done?
Lady Glauce asked me, to which I replied:
Better than this or worse, yet in no-wise the same. I fear for my children,
she said,
who have already lost so much, without ever knowing it.
To which I answered:
But ’twill be
their
world, at last, an we say our spells a-rightly—a world fit only for us who are born apart, touched with the invisible. We will no more be hunted, but hunters; no more slaves, but kings. ’Tis worth all things to gain such a prize, is’t not?

And the fee?

What you will. An eye, a finger, a cut of flesh . . . that hair of yours, perhaps, which grows so long and greenly.

I would pay the price, an it bring me what you promise,
she told me.
Still, I mis-doubt; ’tis a great hazard.
And here the Roke laughed, saying:
Yet all great Projects be bought by blood, m’Lady Mother, as Hermes Trismegistus does say—and all birth through blood likewise, as every woman knows, of high or low estate.

Say so again when we see what
you
give up,
she told him. And there it was left for the instant—he and she went one way, to celebrate the wedding feast, while my sisters and I went t’other, to gather ourselves for what was to come.

We would have remade this world, between the five of us. But in the end, my Lady loved this foul place best just as it is, since it bent to her name and degree. Far better to keep your hand than risk all to gain more—or less—than any of us might know, is what she no doubt thought. So even whilst I and mine laid in our preparations, she planned for our downfall.

Two nights gone, we returned to the
brugh
and stood encircled with Lady Glauce and the Roke, casting ourselves together into that place where all paths meet and the Seven may pass by each other without touching, so as not to be put back together as One. Then we began our sacrifices, he first using his sword to clip away a finger-bone, then Jonet the dead eye through which she saw her ghosts. I myself ran a blade under one pap, ready to cut it free like a pitched boil. ’Twas then I felt my Lady in my head, and knew her true intent. All unnoticed, she had let her childer and husband enter through the low road, that they might add their strength to hers—but before I could call on my angel, I saw another of his kin step in behind, laying hands upon these two betrayers’ shoulders. In an instant, the Stane’s power fell from us to them, and every thing was undone.

Then they were gone away through air and darkness, my Lady’s get and all, I know not where even now, but that it lies so far beyond your grasp that you would never find it did you care to seek for them. And though the Roke and his wife have since returned to his own place, we three awoke on cold grass, in a circle of our enemies.

They found us uponn the hill-side,
Jonet Devize’s dittay had read, Dolores remembered.
And set uponn us in our sleep, by Glauce Lady Druir’s connivance, for that shee and the Roke had made theyr ane pact tae scape the Fire togeyther, giving us over in recompense tae yuir guid companye.
Which rang far more sensibly than Euwphaim’s version—yet what Dolores found herself watching play out on her mind’s fever-bright screen (popping and hissing like bad Super-8 film, stuttering counterpoint to the words spilled from her pen’s deep-dug nib) fell uncomfortably equidistant between the two: a transcribed vision which outran the text, informing and deforming it. First the word itself, page-plucked, followed gut-kick quick by meaning, image, sound,
feeling
.

As though I was there. As though, as though I—

—
am
there.

(
Right now.
)

Unable to stop, or help. Unable to look away, to shut her eyes. To do anything but sit there rigid, lids screwed open and a whimper throat-stuck, as the past unspooled its filthy phantom message on the air.

On the cold hill’s side we wake surrounded, Jonet bent over with pain, eye-socket dribbling. Alizoun jumps up into the air, dragging her along, as the witchfinders throw their nets. They tangle, hover and jerk sharply, caught—try to fight free, but fail. The finders haul harder, dragging them in.

I am on my feet already, red down my side. My cut breast flaps. Some fool to my right in uniform draws a pistol from his belt, but I put my hand on him, grasp his parts.
He gives a mighty cry as they wither in my hand. I laugh, spit in his face.

Snarling, Alizoun lifts her skirts and pisses vitriol, drenching those below: they fall, roll, flee. More soldiers lift weapons, let fly with salt shot, banishing her spell’s might. She and Jonet fall together in a heap, Jonet below. I hear her scream as one leg folds underneath, breaking at the hip.

I stand my ground, screeching. Cry out that my angel will come for me as I toss my head, hair catching flame and fire a-drip from my mouth like vomit, to make them turn and cringe—

But then there is another one, slashing his blade behind my knee so I tumble. Putting his boot to my chest, wound flaring bright, as he reaches down to blood my forehead, carve this cross between my eyes. And I go out all at once, a water-plunged torch.

:Not yet, my Euwphaim,:
my Black Man tells me.
:I am needed elsewhen, as other miseries call me—I am not like you, caught inside time’s folds, a straight line from birth to death. So put down your seed while you can, and I will use it to anchor us both. This will be the cord I draw us back together with.:

The soldier grins down at me, hoping to see me weep. I laugh instead, and open myself to him—pull him down on top of me, biting at his tongue, letting him slap my face ’til my jaw turns blue, hard enough that at last his prick rises. And then

—Dolores shook awake, pen skittering, fingers pain-cramped, every part of her aching. The box, jolted by her movement, tipped up and back, cracking along its spine; she lunged to catch it, exclaiming in horror. Saw a thin slot slide open in its base, some secret drawer sprung at long last, full of dust, and darkness.