The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) Page 19

  A long moment passed. “You’d better come in,” she said finally.

  Isla followed her inside. The cottage was much as she remembered it, and why shouldn’t it be? She’d only just visited a few days ago—even if the span of time felt more like months. Or decades. Isla glanced quickly at what the witch referred to as her scrying mirror and wondered again if Cariad had known she was coming.

  The witch waved her hand, and Isla resumed her accustomed spot. Cariad brewed a pot of some herbal concoction and, decanting the strong-smelling mixture into two earthenware mugs, pushed one over to Isla and sat down opposite. “Mint, rose hips, red clover and nettle leaves,” she said by way of explanation. Isla sipped cautiously, making a face. It tasted even worse than it smelled. “To ward against illness,” Cariad said. “The same brew is also good against infection; especially the rose hips. Which, if prepared with equal parts honey, have excellent healing and restorative properties against all manner of bodily complaint.”

  “The patients will get better,” Isla managed, “just so they don’t have to drink this. It’s very…motivating.”

  “Thank you.” Cariad smiled slightly.

  “You knew I’d be back.”

  “Yes. I knew that you’d be back, once or twice before you left. But I also knew that, in between then and now, something would happen. More than one something, even if, as I suspect, you’re still ignorant on that score.” She reached out and brushed Isla’s hair back from her face, tucking the escaped tendrils into her bun. Isla’s hair had always been perfectly straight, refusing even the most enthusiastically applied curling iron and, indeed, burning off in Rose’s hand before accepting a curl. “He’s put his mark on you,” she said quietly.

  “What?”

  But Cariad didn’t explain. “How are things with your sister?”

  Isla paused, flustered. “Alright,” she managed finally. “I suppose.” But despite having just categorized their relationship in such magnanimous terms, she found herself telling Cariad all about how strangely Rowena had acted ever since Rudolph’s arrival and how strange Rudolph himself had acted. Rowena seemed fine one minute, and almost—vicious, for lack of a better term—the next. Isla didn’t understand what was happening. Rowena had, according to Rowena, gotten exactly what she wanted in her escape from one marriage and agreement to another. “I don’t understand,” she said again.

  “Don’t you,” Cariad replied.

  The two women regarded each other in silence.

  Cariad sighed. She sounded vaguely disgusted, as though she’d tried and failed to teach a simple lesson to a particularly recalcitrant toddler. She sipped her tea, apparently relishing the taste. Well, Isla thought sourly, she would. It was just as bitter and stinging as Cariad. And then, putting down her mug, she made a point so obvious that Isla was astonished she hadn’t thought of it, herself. “So the most powerful peer in the realm—demon or no demon—rode in and asked for your sister’s hand in marriage. Is that about the sum of things?”

  Isla nodded, for the moment uncertain as to where this was going.

  “And then she pitched a fit and said she didn’t want him.”

  Isla nodded again.

  “Well he didn’t rush after her, did he? No, he went to your father and told him—the next morning—that he wanted to marry you, instead.” Cariad knew all this from her last visit with Isla. “The more intelligent but less brilliant sister.” Her words were biting, but accurate. Cariad could always be counted on to tell the truth, however unpleasant.

  “And that perfume you’re wearing didn’t come from these parts.”

  Isla flushed self-consciously. “But she didn’t want to marry the duke.”

  “Are you sure?” Cariad sniffed. “Rudolph Bengough was the most desirable man in town until the duke showed up. Sometimes women mistake Master Right for Master Right Now, if you take my meaning. Seeing Rudolph as the top of the food chain was one thing; but perhaps seeing him in comparison to another creature gave her pause.”

  Cariad’s words had been so similar to Tristan’s that Isla’s blood froze. She tried, and failed, to cover her discomfiture. Their conversation had been days ago, at this point, but Isla remembered his words clearly: there’s always something further up the food chain, even if that something is only the void of space. Was Cariad saying that Rowena only wanted Rudolph—had only wanted Rudolph—not because she loved him as a unique individual but because he’d been the best there was? Since childhood, even Isla had to admit that Rowena had always considered herself entitled to the best. And why shouldn’t she? She was beautiful and charming and everyone loved her. Including Isla.

  “What does The Chivalrous Heart have to offer on the subject of wooing a man?”

  “To make him jealous,” Isla said bleakly.

  “She wrote to her glorious paramour,” Cariad continued mercilessly, “evidently asking him to come and apparently, judging by the reaction you’ve described, not telling him that the duke was there. Or that his rival was, in fact, the duke. I imagine that if he had known, he wouldn’t have come. He doesn’t seem too…ardent, from what you’ve described.

  “She expected them to compete over her, but instead the duke is plying you with gifts and spending his every waking moment making love to you and Rudolph is totally in awe of him.”

  “The duke didn’t compete.”

  Cariad’s smile was exceedingly unpleasant. “Exactly. And Rowena is stuck—by the duke’s hand—with the lesser prize of a man who doesn’t ply her with expensive gifts and, indeed, can’t afford to. I’ve seen Rudolph, before, on market days; the man is utterly ridiculous, although a fair enough fighter for all that. He’s young, too, you know; too young to be getting married. He may grow into a decent man, and a decent lord, yet. My money’s on it. Once his father dies and he’s out from under that thumb—and out of that ludicrous codpiece—he’ll do fine.”

  “You’ve Seen it?” Isla queried.

  “I’m as old as dirt, child; I’ve seen it all before.” In the regular way, she meant; this wasn’t magic, but the wisdom of experience. Cariad treated people’s ailments, mental and physical, for a living; in her lifetime she’d seen scores of men, highborn and low, and women, too, of course, all with the same kinds of problems. It shouldn’t surprise Isla that Cariad had some thoughts about the human condition. “Did you know, I was the midwife at Rudolph’s birth?”

  “Really?”

  “The better the witch, the better the midwife,” Cariad replied with a brief flash of humor, quoting a classic chestnut of a phrase that’d been around for ages.

  “What did you mean,” Isla asked slowly, “about his mark?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The witch’s expression turned serious. She didn’t answer for a long time, and Isla had all but given up hope of her responding at all when she finally spoke. She began by explaining the differences between all the various disciplines of magic and schools of magical thought. There was, first and foremost, earth magic: the kind Cariad practiced and, in the right hands, a powerful kind indeed. Earth magic encompassed both what ignorant people thought of as magic and true magic, which involved manipulation of the elements.

  A true earth witch worshipped nature in the form of the Goddess and her eternal companion, the Horned God. The Goddess embodied the idea of woman, of mother: the earth, from which all life came, was viewed as the ultimate symbol of fertility. In turn, the fiery passion of the Horned God was represented in the air surrounding the earth. The two came together constantly, parted constantly, and in performing this dance created and sustained the world. Their union was life. In practice, this meant that a witch revered the earth and esteemed its natural processes above all things. She, or he, for there were male witches as well, strove to live in harmony with the earth and to cause no harm.

  Witchcraft was the only spiritual tradition, as Cariad was quick to point out, that raised the female above the male. The Horned God is both equal with and subservient to his consort; his r
ole is to bring forth her magic. Due to this veneration, witches followed a moral code largely associated with feminine spiritual powers: peace, balance and joy, as well as the healing arts. Witches saw themselves as guardians of nature and of all life on earth.

  Even witches of questionable ethical standards, such as Cariad, saw themselves as children of the Goddess and the Horned God and strove to promote balance—at least as they understood the term. When Cariad assisted in the creation of a new life or, indeed, the termination of that life, she believed in her heart that she was doing the will of the Gods.

  Most of a witch’s “magic” was no magic at all, but the practice of herbalism and other learned arts. Witches studied plant and animal lore, as facets of the natural world. Which, of course, put them at odds with a church that viewed the world as nothing more than a playground for man’s dominion and regarded any suggestion that, for example, a man and a plant might be equal as satanic. Evil.

  The true evil, according to Cariad, was apathy—and many performed so-called black magic without even realizing that they were doing so. Men like Father Justin who, while preaching about sacrifice, rode by peasants starving in the hedgerows. Cariad possessed true magic, and was a powerful witch; but her magic was of a subtler form, and involved calling on the different spirits associated with the different elements: earth, air, fire, water and, most importantly, spirit. She was like a chemist, or an alchemist, except she worked with different tools.

  Her most important tool was intention. The success of a witch’s spell depended on the focus of her intention; intention was the fuel that energized the spell, but also what colored the spell—what made it good or bad. Most spells were, in truth, “gray” spells: neither black nor white, good nor bad, but rather to some degree self-interested.

  Which, Cariad asserted, was fine. Using one’s magical talents to better one’s own lot in life was no different than using one’s carpentry talents, or one’s baking talents. The difference came with the effect of the spell on others. For example, Father Justin got his riches at the expense of his vassals; they starved, so he could wear blue. Whereas if he’d merely used his talents to acquire gold without harming anyone, his actions—his spell, for lack of a better term—would be in balance with nature. His knowledge that someone else was going without, and his disinterest in that fact, was what made him a bad man—not his love of luxury. Nor indeed, his love of men.

  A wise witch—or person in general—questioned her intent before she acted. The intent was all. “Many people,” Cariad explained, “perform black magic every day of their lives: when they curse a neighbor in a moment of anger, when they wish that a colleague would lose his job so they might be promoted.” Insofar as there were hard and fast rules about what separated white magic from black, Cariad listed them as: designing a spell that interfered with someone else’s free will, such as a love spell designed to warp the target’s perception of his would-be beloved, a spell specifically designed to cause harm to another person and, through that harm, achieve gain, and a spell that called for the help of a magical creature. Like a demon.

  “There are many different magical practices, even within my community. Not all practitioners engage in all practices. Like, for example, sex magic. As powerful as it is, its practice is quite rare.”

  “Sex magic?” Isla repeated, aghast at the notion of such a thing even existing. “What’s that?” She was so horrified by this new revelation that she’d forgotten for the moment all about her situation with the duke and what Cariad might mean about him having put his mark on her.

  “Sex magic,” Cariad said, sipping her tea, “is a catch-all term for a number of acts both good and bad. White and black. Sometimes both participants are willing and….” She made a dismissive gesture. Sometimes they weren’t. “The general concept behind the conjuring is that the energy of sexual arousal is very potent, because it distills into one moment, one brief experience, the true passion of longing. A longing that, in a more diffuse form, most of us feel our whole lives.” She paused again. “The energy of arousal and, with it, orgasm, can be harnessed to transcend one’s normally perceived reality—to change reality.”

  “That sounds…awful.” Intriguing. Isla fiddled with her mug.

  “The duke,” Cariad continued, putting her mug down, “practices”—she didn’t say sex magic, thank the Gods—“ley line magic. A powerful earth witch can be far, far more powerful than a ley line practitioner but a powerful ley line practitioner can and will be the most powerful. Very few have the inherent aptitude for the discipline or the patience to develop its required skill. The duke has both.”

  Ley lines were channels of power, large and small, that cut through the earth and, by a skilled practitioner, could be tapped at will. And while a witch like Cariad sought to live in harmony with the world around her, a sorcerer like Tristan sought to dominate it through the use of such energies.

  Not all ley line practitioners followed the so-called left hand path, the path of darkness, but most did. If for no other reason, Cariad mused, than that the lure of power was so strong. The original Tristan Mountbatten, the man whose form the demon who still bore his name now occupied, had been a ley line practitioner of no little strength and he’d used his power to call forth demons. Demons were wise beings, after their own fashion, and practitioners had summoned them as part of the greater search for knowledge since the dawn of recorded witchcraft. Trapping the demon in a summoning circle, the practitioner asked it questions until, finally, he released it back into the ether from which it came.

  The problem being that, ley lines or no ley lines, most demons were stronger than most sorcerers. After they’d tired of toying with the sorcerer, feeding him false information and pretending to be trapped inside the summoning circle, they tended to eat him.

  “Do sorcerers perform…sex magic?” she asked timidly.

  “Sometimes,” Cariad replied equably. “Sex can be quite a lot of fun, you know.”

  Isla shuddered. From what she’d seen—everything from that woman hurrying out of Cariad’s cottage to Rose teasing poor Rand to Rowena’s sudden jealousy to the Gods knew what else—indicated otherwise. “I don’t…what’s a necromancer?”

  “A practitioner of the blackest, vilest form of black magic.” Cariad’s tone left no doubt as to her feelings. Isla had rarely heard her speak so forcefully, and Cariad wasn’t exactly retiring by nature. She felt a chill run up her spine.

  Silence reigned.

  A moment later, she jumped as a sudden gust blew and the door to the cottage banged shut.

  To some extent, Cariad continued, ignoring the interruption, the term black magic had been perverted by the ignorance of the church and the jealousy of rival practitioners. A great many described any practice they either didn’t understand or didn’t approve of as black magic or, indeed, any practice that they weren’t powerful enough to perform themselves. But true black magic was the use of earth’s natural energies, as well as the power of supernatural entities, to fulfill evil purposes. Selfish purposes like the harm of others; possession. Mind control. Worse.

  Everyone recognized, instinctively, the difference between good and evil even if they lacked the words to define it. “A witch,” Cariad said, picking up a smooth, polished stone that sat near the center of the table, “uses found objects to craft her spells. There is something called the law of similars, which states that there is—I suppose you might call it a ‘clue’ in everything around us, large and small, as to its true spiritual function. So for example, a red rose might be used in a spell relating to blood.”

  “Because both are red.”

  “Precisely.” Cariad finished her tea. “A heart-shaped leaf might be used in a love spell, or a phallus-shaped object—a root vegetable, for example—in a potency spell. The competent witch considers an item’s shape, color and other physical attributes when she’s crafting a spell, as well as the nature of the object itself. For example, a root vegetable is a growing thing, virile, alive
; it will make a more potent phallus than, say, a rock of the same dimensions. And for a love spell, something that makes the person think of love is always more powerful than the most romantic-seeming object. For example, a certain shell that a lover once gave the beloved during a time of great happiness will have much greater potency than an object symbolizing a traditionally romantic gift in, for example, a spell designed to reinvigorate a failing relationship.”

  “But I thought love spells were immoral?”

  “Not if both parties request that it be performed.”

  Isla considered this new information, and decided that it made sense. The harm was in the spell being performed without the other person’s knowledge or consent, then. She wondered if there were spells for reinvigorating the bond between sisters.

  “The purpose of a spell,” Cariad clarified, “is to manifest something you need or desire—or that your patient needs or desires. When you cast a spell, your intent is vital to your success.” Because, as she’d explained earlier, a spell was driven by the will of the person performing it. “Words, like symbols, are tools. Nothing more. And it’s safe to assume, at this point, that no naturally occurring plant, animal, or mineral has escaped being used in spellcraft.”

  “So a spell is like a recipe.”

  “Precisely.” Cariad smiled briefly in acknowledgment. “A good spell component is anything essential to the recipe—essential to reflecting the nature of your intention, and thus building your power.”

  And, of course, the witch herself was the most essential ingredient of any spell.

  “But often,” Cariad continued, “the patient’s belief in my skill is even more critical to success than whatever I actually bring to the spell. For example, I might give a man a talisman to carry in his pocket, which might in fact carry some power. But then, say, inspired by the knowledge that I’ve performed a certain spell, or comforted by the talisman in his pocket, the man decides to take a risk at work—one that he normally wouldn’t take, due to fear of failure. But now, he thinks, I have this talisman and am invincible.”