Witch & Curse (38 page)

All would have been well if they had shared the secret of the Black Fire with us
, she thought angrily as the last of Isabeau's ashes filtered to the carpet.
They forced my hand, and they know it
.

Retaliation is inevitable, and it will be brutal. Of that I have no doubt
.

“What makes you think that you can mock my grief in this manner and then leave my castle alive?” she asked the Deveraux emissary.

“Honor,” he said simply.

She regarded him. “Whose?”

“I carried a flag of truce,” he reminded her, “when my horse cantered into your bailey. Your husband, Duc Robert, gave me safe passage so that I might bring your loved one home to you.”

“I see.” Her tone was almost conversational as she rose from her throne, descended the three steps from the dais, and crossed to the vast array of weaponry at her disposal. “And as a Deveraux, you assumed that his word carried more weight than mine, though I am the High Priestess of our coven?”

For the first time, the man looked uncertain.

“He guaranteed my safety,” he stated flatly.

Without another word, she plucked a battle-axe off the wall, whirled around, took quick aim, and flung it directly at his head.

It chopped his face in two; then the top of his head lobbed backward, much as the hinged lid of the box containing her daughter's ashes had done, and he collapsed in a gory heap on her beautiful black-and-silver carpet.

“Madame la reine,”
gasped the liveried villein who had smirked at her daughter's remains.

For him, she conjured a fireball and flung it at him. It landed in his hair. He shrieked for more minutes than she had care to listen.

So she swept from the Great Hall like the queen she was.

“And so, it falls to you,” she said to the prostrate girl before her.

Three days had passed since Isabeau's death. It was in this very turret room that Isabeau had begged her to spare Jean de Deveraux, her new husband. Her huge, dark eyes had filled with tears, ignoring the warnings implicit in the entrails of the lambkin Catherine had sacrificed, begging for mercy for a man who would not grant her the same in return.

Because Isabeau was not yet with child, the Deveraux were planning to murder her in her marriage bed, thus to sever the alliance with the Cahors. The heads of both families had made an unspoken bargain: Isabeau would unite the houses by giving birth to a son if and when the Deveraux shared the secret of the Black Fire with the Cahors. Neither had been willing to go first; the stalemate had made Catherine impatient and Isabeau vulnerable. And so Catherine had laid siege to their castle and forced their hand.

“I knew it was a risk,” she murmured, coming back to the present, and to the girl in front of her. “I knew that in all probability I would lose my daughter.

“And so, it falls to you,” she repeated.

The girl was named Jeannette, which Catherine found propitious. Perhaps if Isabeau and the Deveraux prince had made a girl, they would have named her thus. This Jeannette was one of the bastard children of Catherine's first husband, Louis. He had many of them, but Jeannette carried within her blood the strongest magic of the male line. Long ago it was a witch who had brought strong blood to the Cahors line, and magical power was more pronounced in Cahors daughters than in sons, just as Deveraux sons carried their family's powers from generation to generation.

Jeannette had Louis's golden hair and quicksilver eyes; she was lithe and petite, a darling child of fourteen, and as she lay trembling before the great queen, she whispered,
“Je vous en prie, madame
. I am not worthy.”

“You're afraid, and right to be,” Catherine mused. “You're not well armed in the ways of the moon, and I have little time to prepare you for your role.”
I should have had one waiting to step forward
, she thought.
That was an oversight, an incredible pride on my part
.

I assumed I would be able to protect Isabeau. I was so terribly, terribly wrong
.

And now she is but dust. She is dead, and Jean is dead, and the two houses must both start over
.

Catherine swept her skirts to her private altar.
Candles burned, and herbs; small doves huddled inside their cages, cowering as if they realized their fate. A golden statue of the Moon Lady, young, vibrant, and beautiful, stretched forth her arms to hold the libations Catherine had provided: ripe grain, wine, and the heart of a fine buck.

Seated atop the statue's head, preening and watchful, the lady hawk Pandion observed the proceedings. She cocked her head, her bells jingling, and fluttered her wings. Then she hunkered down to watch her mistress make magic.

Catherine grabbed one of the doves and stabbed it with the athame she held in her left hand. The warm blood gushed over her hand and onto the head of Jeannette, who gasped but said nothing.

Two more times Catherine anointed her with blood, then blessed the wine and gave it to Jeannette to drink. It was redolent with herbs designed to strengthen the girl's powers, and when Jeannette's head rolled back and her eyes lolled, unseeing, Catherine whispered spells over her for hours, hoping against hope that this young, untried girl would become a suitable heiress for her own mantle as High Priestess of the Cahors Coven.

And so began her work on Jeannette.

The young witchling was never allowed to leave the turret room. She wasn't yet strong enough to
fight the magical influences of the Deveraux, who were surely plotting revenge. Catherine's spies had told her that Jean's place had been taken by one Paul, and that he was mighty and bold . . . but no Jean de Deveraux.

Moons passed, nearly six of them. Jeannette was practically half-mad from being locked up in the turret, and began to speak of visions she was having of the dead Isabeau, whose spirit would not rest.

Catherine was delighted to hear that her child had not yet departed for higher realms; that Isabeau was earthbound made her wonder if she could revive her, perhaps pour her soul into this little vessel. Never mind that such an act would no doubt cause the death of Jeannette's own soul. She was a bastard, and so far she had done nothing to fan any flames of warmth in her new mistress's heart.

The queen of the castle spent long hours casting spells and runes in order to contact her dead daughter. She made untold sacrifices. She raged, she pleaded with the Goddess . . . and she went unheard.

Finally she went to Jeannette, humiliated that such a chit could manage what she could not.

“My daughter. What stops her rest?” Catherine demanded of her.

“I . . . I don't know,” Jeannette said miserably. “I
only see her in my mind, and know that she's not happy.”

“Not
happy?”
Happiness was a foreign concept to Catherine. What on earth did happiness have to do with anything of import? Happiness was a sop to those who had no power, no fortune. There was no such thing, but rulers and bishops said so to keep the serfs and villeins in their traces.

“She is not happy,” Jeannette repeated. And then she murmured, “And neither am I. Oh, stepmother, please let me leave this room!”

“You're not ready,” Catherine insisted.

“I am! Oh, I beg of you, I am!” Jeannette threw herself on her knees and clasped Catherine around the legs. “I am going mad!”

Catherine touched the crown of Jeannette's hair, then moved firmly away. “Patience, girl. Soon. Soon you will have the wings you need to fly with Pandion.” She smiled at the bird, who screeched at her in return.

But alas, Jeannette could not wait. Four moons later, Catherine learned that she had bribed one of the male servants to unlock the turret room, slipped out, and run to the forest to commune with the spirits. She had danced for hours, skyclad, then snuck back, put on her clothes, and pretended that nothing had happened.

This happened each moon for the next three moons.

Catherine's fury was matched only by her anxiety when the bishop arrived from Toulouse, as he did upon occasion, and with great unease, asked to speak to Catherine “of divers unsavory accusations against your ward.”

Cahors was on the route from the wine valley to Toulouse; it seemed that travelers overnighting in the forest had witnessed Jeannette's pavane to the Goddess, and reported it to their priest. More rumors flew; soon the town was mumbling against the Cahors, calling them witches as they had done in the past.

There were prelates who knew the truth about the Cahors and the Deveraux, and others who did not. Each generation of French Coventry went about handling the Church as efficiently as possible. It had fallen to Catherine to be saddled with a virtuous Christian man who agreed wholeheartedly with the burnings that had been raging all over the continent.

“Of course you can understand my concern,
madame,”
the bishop said to Catherine, as they walked in Catherine's beautiful rose garden. Isabeau's ashes had been buried there, and now a beautiful lily—symbol of the House of Cahors—drew nutrients
from her mortal remains. “If such an abomination has found lodging in your family, that is to say, in your own bosom.” He colored. “To turn a phrase.”

“To turn a phrase,” she said, “my husband's bastard is my concern, not yours.”

The old man held up a finger. “All the souls in Christendom are the Church's concern, my daughter.”

In the end, Catherine angrily capitulated and gave the prelate what he wanted. She herself denounced Jeannette, claiming to have seen her flying on a broomstick, and the bishop's guards dragged her screaming from the turret room, which had been stripped bare of all witchly trappings far in advance of their entry. A crucifix hung on the wall with a statue of the Madonna. Gone was Catherine's altar, and the bloodstains of the many sacrifices, and the arcana of witchly pursuit.

And gone was Pandion ... until Jeannette was tied to the stake in the Cathedral yard in Toulouse. And then the lady hawk of the Cahors wheeled above her head, capering in the currents of hot air as Catherine's hopes, once more, burned to ash.

THREE

DEAD MOON

In the night we dance and laugh
As our foes taste our wrath
Death we are and death we bring
Delivered on a falcon's wing

We dance upon each dead man's corpse
Laugh and shout till we grow hoarse
We treasure all our enemies' moans
As lady hawk talons crush their bones

Jer: The Island of Avalon

“You're going to live after all,
mon frère sorcier”
a voice said.

Jer couldn't tell where it was coming from. He tried to open his eyes; they were bandaged shut.

He couldn't move—or rather, he had no idea if he was able to move, or moving his body already. Agony permeated his being; he had no sense of a self beyond the pain that wracked him.

His father used to debate the notion of eternal torment with a warlock friend. Michael had held with the common belief that after a time, the victim would stop feeling the torture; that any sort of sensation, be it ecstatic bliss or the burning, scorching sensations that plagued Jer now, would become meaningless. The body would simply stop responding to them.

That was so wrong.

Pain begins in the mind
, Jer thought,
and even my mind was burned. I am completely, utterly destroyed
.

Holly
, he called out in his desperation,
save me. You can make it stop. You have the power
.

In a strange delirium he had dreamed of her; he had sat imprisoned in a room, shackled as a lure for her. He had begged her to stay away from him, as well he should do now. His family was covenanted to kill her.

She has a better chance if Eli died from his burns. Fantasme's spirit materialized and rescued him, but I pray to the God that the Black Fire killed him . . . more quickly than I seem to be dying
.

He is evil, true, but he is my brother
.

I can't wish this kind of pain on anyone
.

Then a voice—the same voice—whispered in his ear again, “You're going to live.”

He knew that voice; it was a part of him, an undying piece of his own soul. It was the voice of Jean de
Deveraux, the son of the House of Deveraux when the Cahors perpetrated the massacre upon Castle Deveraux.

“I did not die, either,” Jean assured him. “They all believed that I died in the fire, but I survived. I told no one. I escaped with a small band of followers, and I stayed out of sight.

“I survived, and carried my warlock bloodline through my heirs in France to England and Montreal, and then to the Wild West.

“And you're going to survive, too, and kill my love,” Jean continued, whispering in Jer's mind. “You shall kill Isabeau. And then she shall rest, and I will rest as well, because I will have my revenge at last.”

Then another voice said, “You're going to live,” and this one came from outside Jer's mind. “You will live, and you will join your father in his scheme to overthrow mine.”