An Errant Witch Page 15

  ‘I HATE them all.’ This sentiment seemed to come out of nowhere, but it had been building for days and I couldn’t keep it in any longer.

  We were sitting in the library, Sandy, Fergie and I, pretending to ponder the abstract problem of how one could theoretically take over the island’s power source. Not that I really thought we had any chance in the Competition, the three of us.

  Perhaps the others thought so too, for Sandy was sitting staring out the window with a slight smile on his face, while Fergie was frantically flipping through the pages of the book in front of her, a look of utter incomprehension on her face. And I, well, I was fuming about the bastard Kin.

  ‘Seriously,’ I continued, slamming my own book shut. ‘Now they’re starting whispers that I’m cheating.’

  ‘What?’ Fergie pushed her book away too as if happy for the excuse to do so, and sat back in her chair. ‘How you supposed to be doing that?’

  ‘Pauline overheard me talking... to myself the other day, and now she’s telling everyone I’ve got a secret source of help. As if I could be any competition to them, even with outside assistance. If it wasn’t all so ridiculous, I’d laugh.’

  Sandy looked up, that odd smile still on his face. ‘Is there a rule against having help?’

  ‘I’m sure there is,’ Fergie said, her face screwing up in a puzzled frown. ‘Anyway, it’s just supposed to be a theoretical problem. Not like anyone can help us with the figuring part.’

  ‘Speaking of help, how’s your work with the wand going?’ Sandy asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I dunno, I just can’t seem to grasp this whole physical magic business. I mean, I understand what you say about having a medium, but I just can’t see the point.’

  ‘Maybe the ash is wrong for you, you say you can’t get into the wood. How about that medallion of yours?’ Fergie suggested. ‘Even if it seemed... tainted, maybe it’s the right thing for you.’

  Mom’s coin. Johanna had said to leave it alone, but Johanna wasn’t infallible, as she’d shown when she thought she healed me. Perhaps I should go retrieve it, and see if I could learn anything more about the tower. I’d been so wrapped up in this work for the past few days, I realized guiltily, that I’d quite left my mother to fend for herself. She must be wondering what happened to me.

  ‘That’s a good idea, Fergie,’ I said as I stood and stretched. I took my coat from the back of my chair. ‘I’ll give it a try.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Sandy asked in a sharp voice.

  He had told me to stay away from his broch, but he didn’t need to know where I was headed.

  ‘Just up to my room,’ I replied. ‘I’ll be with you shortly.’

  THE BROCH rose up suddenly past a corner of the hillside, the lichen splattered stone glowing golden in the sun. A magnificent day for a walk and my body welcomed the exercise.

  When I reached the base of the tower, I paused to look up at its heights in awe. This structure had been built thousands of years ago, according to Sandy, each stone hand carved and placed to create this perfect surface using the most primitive tools. Or perhaps they’d used magic. There was enough of it around this island, it might as well be harnessed for something practical.

  The path I’d previously made by smashing through the brambles and gorse had already disappeared, the bushes having sprung back, and it took me quite a few minutes to push through to the tower again. But once there, I immediately felt that oh-so-good feeling of returning home; my stomach unknotted itself, my shoulders relaxed and I just wanted to embrace the stone wall again and soak up all its beauty.

  Remembering the loose magic which had clung to me the last time, I tried not to touch it, but leaned in close to feel the joy and comfort it emitted.

  Listening closely, all I could hear was the hush of the low wind against the tower and through the brambles. A bird called out, then another answered, but after that there was only natural silence. There was no echo of Mom’s voice, not this time. Did the elders remove her from the tower?

  My name was being called though, and I lifted my head in apprehension. The voice was faint, coming from a distance. I shook my head to clear it of the trance the tower had brought upon me. The voice had a familiar cadence, that foreign lilt. The voice of Willem.

  I looked all around me in the bushes and among the hillocks but couldn’t see him anywhere until my search took me further away, down by the shoreline. At the place where the waves lapped the island, there he waited, the sun lighting his upright figure a couple of hundred feet away. It could have been a particularly tall boulder or a trick of the low cast winter sunlight, but that hooded figure was unmistakable to me.

  Willem stood unmoving, yet I could feel his eyes on me even from that distance. I resolutely turned my back to him and blocked him from my mind, for I wanted nothing to do with the Dutchman.

  Instead, I bent down to search for the small rocks I’d piled at the tower’s base which marked the coin’s hiding place. I wouldn’t put it past him to have stolen my treasure.

  There. The rocks were just as I left them, and I gave a small sigh of relief. A moment later and I held it in my hand, brushing the dirt off its shining surface.

  The medallion still glowed luminescent with the power it had absorbed, like a battery recharging here at the base of this tower of magic. Perhaps it would turn out to be my medium. How fitting. I held it aloft, and listened, but still my mother’s voice didn’t come through.

  Willem’s did though, wheedling and calling me to join him on the rocky shore.

  ‘Why don’t you come up here if you want to talk with me?’ I yelled at him through the distance. ‘Or better yet, why don’t you just leave this island, stop following me! I don’t want anything to do with you!’

  ‘Dara,’ he cajoled. ‘You don’t need to be like that. We have unfinished business, you and I. Come down, spare me a minute of your time.’

  ‘No,’ I replied firmly. ‘I’ve seen enough of you to last a lifetime. I can’t trust you.’ I turned my back to his distant figure and tried to block my mind from him, but it didn’t work. Something inside of me didn’t allow it, perhaps it was that little corner of me that he’d burned himself into last month, perhaps it was the weakness inside of me that wanted someone else to take charge and offer me the easy path to my dreams. His voice remained inside my head like a virus.

  ‘Can’t trust me? But I left your oh-so-important medallion where you carelessly hid it at the base of the broch, didn’t I? Let me show you my good intentions towards you.’

  When I said nothing, he continued.

  ‘How are your lessons in magic going?’ He paused to let me think about that. ‘Have you begun to learn anything yet? Anything worthwhile?’

  I kept my back to him and began to hum under my breath to block his voice. The Happy Birthday song of all things, it was all I could think of, and I felt a little ridiculous. How could he know I’d learned little here yet save the enforced lessons to stop Durand sneering at me; that I was failing to pick up the basics of Physical Magic? Willem was phishing, that was all, casting his net wide in his attempt to get me down in his physical presence so he could hoodwink me and use my natural magic for his own ends yet again.

  ‘I can teach you so much, and not just the pretentious Kin magic,’ he was shouting now, getting upset with me, his voice carrying clearly on the wind from the sea. ‘Don’t you see? My offer still stands, Dara. You and me, we can own the world!’

  Still I managed to withstand him. Perhaps I should have walked away right then, but I didn’t, and that was my downfall. I was loathe to leave the comforting presence of the broch and the warmth of its solidity.

  ‘You want to enter their precious tower, don’t you?’ Damn Willem. ‘You think your mother is being kept inside, I know.’

  With that I stood up straight again, gave myself a mental check, but he wasn’t inside me, there were no icy tentacles needling their way deep inside my head. How did
he know about Mom? I’d told him nothing last month, not mentioned her at all.

  I waited for him to continue.

  ‘She’s not in there, Dara.’ His voice was quiet now.

  I searched every nuance of his tone, looking for falsehood, but there was none there. Willem, damn him, he was speaking the truth as he knew it. ‘And I know where she is.’

  I took a hesitant step toward the path trampled in the gorse, then another slow step into the brambles. The thorns caught at the cotton of my winter hoodie but I brushed them aside, careless of the hooks and pulled threads.

  ‘I’ve met her in my travels, in the Northern Kingdom.’

  There was not an ounce of lie in his voice, and I knew Willem well enough by now to know this, bastard as he was, evil failed sorcerer, man without a conscience, he was all these things. He lied when it suited him, he lied to rich women in order to convince them to give him their gold and jewels, he lied to those he thought beneath him because their lives didn’t matter to him.

  But he’d never yet lied to me, not outright, and he wasn’t lying now. Strangely enough for all that he was such a selfish shithead, Willem respected me, and his offer of partnership had felt genuine, unwanted though it was.

  I made my way slowly to the shoreline where he waited, all the while cursing myself for getting involved with him again, even in the slightest bit, but the carrot he dangled in front of my face was too tempting.

  At last I stood in front of him, eye to eye. He let the hood fall from his shaved skull, and the harsh morning light showed every line on his face, every hurdle he’d suffered from the hands of the established Sorcerer’s Guild and the Witch Kin. I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and withdrew my phone. Flicking the camera app, I held it up in front of him and clicked, capturing the sorcerer forever as proof that I was not crazy.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Chapter 14

  WILLEM SHOOK HIS HEAD, the sunlight catching every bristle on his shorn blond head. ‘What can I say? It was far from here I saw her. In the Northern Kingdoms.’ He gestured loosely in the north-east direction.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what? I didn’t know she was your mother, and I didn’t know you were looking for her.’ He shrugged. ‘Marian was just another guest of the Ice King. It happens when people screw up with magic sometimes.’

  I could only stare at him, totally speechless for a moment, hardly able to take in what he was saying. When I could muster my thoughts, I began. ‘But I heard her, right there up by the broch,’ I whispered. ‘She was there inside it, she had to be.’

  I’d come so close to finding my mother, I couldn’t bear for her to be gone from my grasp so easily. I could feel a tear of frustration and anger forming in the corner of my eye, but I wouldn’t let it escape in Willem’s presence. Yes, he respected me as an equal, but any signs of weakness and he would consider me fair game.

  ‘So how did...?’ I began to ask him how he knew now that the person he’d seen was my mother, but he interrupted me.

  ‘I will show you,’ he said quickly. ‘You trust me?’

  ‘How can you do that?’

  ‘You have the medallion,’ he replied. ‘You say it has a connection to her?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Okay. You already connected with her once,’ he said. ‘I know where she is geographically, so we should be able to make contact.’

  ‘Is such a thing possible?’ I breathed, yet I knew it was so. I had already connected with her, when I thought she was inside the broch. The medallion must have been the key.

  But why here on Scarp, and not before? I would worry about that another time.

  He snapped his fingers. ‘Pass it over to me.’

  I did so reluctantly.

  ‘Ah yes,’ he sighed as he beheld it in his palm. ‘It has soaked up the magic here, eh?’

  ‘Is it the magic of Scarp?’

  ‘Sort of.’ He shot a sly look at me, and nodded. ‘Now. I need you to connect with my mind.’

  I held back, naturally. It was bad enough having him in my own head without returning the favor.

  ‘Come, don’t be shy,’ he said, impatience coloring his voice. ‘You know how it is done. It’s the only way I can show you Marian.’

  I shut my eyes and sent my own mind out towards his. I didn’t bother being hesitant or feather-weight with my touch, not like Johanna had done; I plowed into him hard enough to make him wince.

  ‘Such strength,’ he murmured. ‘In one so young.’

  The process wasn’t painful. Willem must have been using my coin as a medium, drawing on the power it held, for when I opened my metaphysical eye in his head, I saw my mother, as he’d said. All around her was ice, and she appeared to be performing some mundane task, pouring wine into a goblet. Those denim blue eyes stared off into the distance. She didn’t appear to have been mistreated.

  I could have been watching a movie of myself, we looked so much the same; when I felt Willem’s spark of desire for her I quickly withdrew before I physically threw up.

  I sat myself down on a boulder. This was exhausting, however did he do this?

  ‘This is the work of the Kin, you know that.’

  ‘How?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but something nasty happened to get her there in the Court of the Ice King. I can still smell the taint off this metal, even infused with Scarp as it is.’

  ‘How do I know this is real, what you just showed me?’ Even as I asked, I knew the question wasn’t necessary.

  Willem laughed. ‘Ever heard of honor amongst thieves, Dara?’ he asked, then his voice took on a musing tone. ‘You look so much alike, the two of you. When I saw you in your home town, I knew immediately who you were.’

  ‘Why does she stay there? How can she get back home?’

  ‘That’s the problem with his Kingdom. You can’t get here from there.’

  ‘When did you realize?’ More to the point, how did he know I’d been looking for my mother, thought her locked up in the tower? All these and so many more questions were bubbling up inside my head, but I didn’t get a chance to ask them, not right then.

  ‘That’s all I know about your mother, okay?’ His voice was impatient. ‘After, when all this is done with, we will have plenty of time and we will go there together, you and I, and free her. But that can’t happen unless...’

  ‘Unless what?’ My heart was sinking into my boots. Willem had an agenda, of course he did.

  ‘You’re still dragging that coin around with you,’ he threw over his shoulder.

  ‘That’s how you followed me here, wasn’t it?’ I was bitter. The one thing I couldn’t let go of, and it was the one thing he’d used to track me here to the island of Scarp, like a magical GPS system.

  ‘At least I know you won’t tell the Kin about me. We have an agreement, eh, Dara?’

  ‘Too late,’ I said quietly. ‘I’ve already alerted them to your presence.’

  ‘Oh? Really? And why are they not here, capturing me in their nets of golden spells, taking and removing me and punishing me?’

  I was silent.

  ‘Because they don’t believe you!’ He cawed with laughter. ‘And that’s a good thing, a very good thing for you Dara. Do you know, if they truly had faith in you, what would be the consequences?’

  He had his hands on his hips and triumph in his voice, and took evident delight in spelling out the possibilities of what would happen if Johanna had been able to see past her nose and believe me.

  Willem licked his finger and slashed the air. ‘Number one. They would remove the coin from you. Wipe all the magic memory from it, and you would have lost the contact with your mother. For you know, the coin is what allowed you to speak with her,’ he added. ‘Look at it – is it glowing?’

  I reluctantly took it out of my pocket. Yes, he was right, the medallion was still pulsing as if lit from within.

  ‘That’s from being so clo
se to the broch,’ he told me in a normal conversational voice. ‘It has soaked up magic from the Source of this island, the Crystal Charm Stone. Metal does this.’

  What? The Crystal Charm Stone existed? Before I could wrap my head around his words, he was off again.

  ‘Where was I?’ he mused. ‘Ah yes. Number Two.’

  He made a huge gesture in the air again. He was enjoying himself, the little drama queen.

  ‘If the Kin actually believed you about the coin, and my presence on the island,’ he continued, then had the audacity to wink at me. ‘That would save you so much trouble, would it not? You would not be forced to make decisions for yourself, and grow. It’s the easy way out. I know you, eh, Dara? So much easier to let someone else handle the situation, than to put on your big girl panties and take the reins in your own hands.’

  He snickered, then mimicked my voice. ‘Daddy! Hugh! Come save me!’

  Willem, as a person, had no redeeming qualities. He deserved everything the Kin would throw at him when I gave them further evidence of his presence here on Scarp. They would believe the photograph. And I would show them. Just... not yet. I needed to get more information about my mother’s whereabouts before I turned him in.

  ‘And Number Three?’ I steeled myself. I had to keep him talking, he would let something slip soon enough, he was so pleased with himself he couldn’t help but taunt me.

  Here he smiled at me, a gentle and almost loving smile.

  ‘Then I will be put away,’ he said with a tinge of sadness coloring his voice. His pale eyes grew weary all of a sudden, and he bowed his head. ‘And deservedly so, in the eyes of the Kin. The Movement, of course, will carry on without me as a major player, and it will succeed regardless. I won’t live to see the glory, but, well, that’s the game we’re playing. You give your all for a cause, and it may swallow you up. But still the cause lives on.’

  ‘What’s this cause, this movement you’re talking about?’ I hardly dared to ask.