The Witch Queen Read online

  “I will be happy.”

  “It is well. You will remember how I healed your spirit, in gratitude, as in a dream, a vision. You will remember sensation, pleasure, peace.” The hand slid down across his chest; the man gave a deep groan that might have been ecstasy. “Do you remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Finish your drink.”

  Kaspar Walgrim drank. The liquid in his glass held the light as if it were trapped there.

  The spiked blond hair was screwed into a ball on the desk. The knife-blade heels prowled to and fro, stabbing the floorboards. The bird mask seemed to blend with the face of its wearer, transforming her into some exotic raptor, unhuman and predatory.

  When he was told, Kaspar Walgrim signed the paper.

  The year was barely an hour old when a cab pulled up outside a house in Pimlico. This was smart Pimlico, the part that likes to pretend it is tonier than it is. The house was cream-colored Georgian in a square of the same, which surrounded a garden that fenced off would-be trespassers with genteel railings. Two young women got out of the taxi, fumbling for their respective wallets. One found hers and paid the fare; the other scattered the contents of her handbag on the pavement and bent down to retrieve them, snatching at a stray tampon. The girl who paid was slender and not very tall, perhaps five foot five: the streetlamp glowed on the auburn lowlights in her short designer haircut. Her coat hung open to reveal a minimalist figure, gray chiffoned and silver frosted for the occasion. Her features might have been described as elfin if it had not been for a glossy coating of makeup and an immaculate veneer of self-assurance. She looked exquisitely groomed, successful, competent—she had booked the taxi, one of the few available, three months in advance and had negotiated both fare and tip at the time. Her name was Fern Capel.

  She was a witch.

  Her companion gave up on the tampon, which had rolled into the gutter, collected her other belongings, and straightened up. She had a lot of heavy dark hair that had started the evening piled on her head but was now beginning to escape from bondage, a wayward wrap, and a dress patterned in sequined flowers that was slightly the wrong shape for the body inside. Her face was in a state of nature save for a little blusher and some lipstick, most of which had been smudged off. For all that she had an elusive attraction that her friend lacked, an air of warmth and vulnerability. The deep-set eyes were soft behind concealing lashes and the faintly tragic mouth suggested a temperament too often prone to both sympathy and empathy. In fact, Gaynor Mobberley was not long out of her latest disastrous relationship, this time with a neurotic flautist who had trashed her flat when she attempted to end the affair. She had been staying with Fern ever since.

  They went indoors and up the stairs to the second-floor apartment. “It was a good party,” Gaynor hazarded, extricating the few remaining pins and an overburdened butterfly clip from her hair.

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Fern. “It was dire. The food was quiche and the champagne was blanc de blanc. We only went for the view of the fireworks. Like all the other guests. What were you discussing so intimately with our host?”

  “He and Vanessa are having problems,” said Gaynor unhappily. “He wants to buy me lunch and tell me all about it.”

  “You attract men with hang-ups like a blocked drain attracts flies,” Fern said brutally. “So what did you say?”

  Gaynor fluffed. “I couldn’t think of an excuse to get out of it.”

  “You don’t need an excuse. Just say no. Like the antidrug campaign.” Fern pressed the button on her answering machine, which was flashing to indicate a message.

  A male voice invaded the room on a wave of background noise. “Hi, sis. Just ringing to wish you a Happy New Year. I think we’re in Ulan Bator, but I’m not quite sure: the fermented mare’s milk tends to cloud my geography. Anyway, we’re in a yurt somewhere and a wizened rustic is strumming his souzouki . . .”

  “Bouzouki,” murmured Fern. “Which is Greek, not Mongolian. Idiot.” What music they could hear was pure disco, Eastern Eurostyle.

  “Shine jiliin bayar hurgeye, as they say over here,” her brother concluded. “Be seeing you.” Bleep.

  “Shin jillian what?” echoed Gaynor.

  “God knows,” said Fern. “He’s probably showing off. Still,” she added rather too pointedly, “he hasn’t any hang-ups.”

  “I know,” said Gaynor, reminded uncomfortably of her abortive non-affair with Fern’s younger brother. “That’s what scared me. It gave me nothing to hold on to. Anyhow, he’s obviously airbrushed me from his memory. You said you told him I was staying here, but . . . well, he didn’t even mention my name.”

  “He doesn’t have to,” Fern responded. “He wouldn’t normally bother to phone just to wish me Happy New Year. I suspect he called for your benefit, not mine.”

  “We never even slept together,” Gaynor said. “Just one kiss . . .”

  “Exactly,” said Fern. “You’re the one that got away. A career angler like Will could never get over that. You couldn’t have done better if you’d tried.” Gaynor flushed. “I’m sorry,” Fern resumed. “I know you weren’t trying. Look . . . there’s a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in the fridge. Let’s have our own celebration.”

  They discarded coats and wraps, kicked off their shoes. Fern deposited her jewelry on a low table, took a couple of glasses from a cabinet, and fetched the champagne. After a cautious interval, the cork gave a satisfactory pop. “Happy New Year.” Fern curled up in a big armchair, tucking her legs under her.

  Gaynor, on the sofa, sat knees together, feet apart. “Happy New Century. It’s got to be better than the old one.”

  “It doesn’t start quite yet,” her friend pointed out. “Two thousand and one is the first year of the century. This is the in-between year, the millennium year. The year everything can change.”

  “Will it?” asked Gaynor. “Can you see?”

  “I’m a witch, not a seeress. Everything can change any year. Any day. Dates aren’t magical—I think. All the same . . .” Her expression altered, hardening to alertness. She set down her glass. “There’s something here. Now. Something . . . that doesn’t belong.” Her skin prickled with an unearthly static. The striation of green in her eyes seemed to intensify until they shone with a feline brilliance between the shadow-painted lids. Her gaze was fixed on the shelving at the far end of the room, where a vase rocked slightly on its base for no visible reason. Without looking, she reached for the switch on the table lamp. There was a click, and the room was in semidarkness. In the corner beside the vase there seemed to be a nucleus of shadow deeper than those around it. The light had concealed it, but in the gloom it had substance and the suggestion of a shape. A very small shape, hunch-shouldered and shrinking from the witch’s stare. The glow of the streetlamps filtering through the curtains tinted the dark with a faint orange glimmer, and as Gaynor’s vision adjusted, it appeared to her that the shape was trembling, though that might have been the uncertainty of its materialization. It began to fade, but Fern moved her hand with a Command hardly louder than a whisper, soft strange words that seemed to travel through the air like a zephyr of power. “Vissari! Inbar fiassé . . .” The shadow condensed, petrifying into solidity. Fern pressed the light switch.

  And there it was, a being perhaps three feet high assembled at random from a collection of mismatched body parts. Overlong arms enwrapped it, the stumpy legs were crooked, mottled fragments of clothing hung like rags of skin from its sides. Slanting eyes, indigo-black from edge to edge, peered between sheltering fingers. A narrow crest of hair bristled on the top of its head and its ears were tufted like those of a lynx. It was a monster in miniature, an aberration, ludicrously out of place in the civilized interior.

  Neither girl looked particularly shocked to see it.

  “A goblin,” said Fern, “but not resident. And I didn’t ask anyone to advertise.”

  “How could it come in uninvited?” asked Gaynor. “I thought that was against the Ultimate Law
s.”

  “Some creatures are too simple or too small for such laws. Like cockroaches, they go everywhere. Still . . . this is a witch’s flat. Even a cockroach should be more careful.” She addressed the intruder directly. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  The goblin mumbled inaudibly.

  “Louder,” said Fern. “Intona!”

  “Not a house-goblin,” the creature said with evident contempt. “I’m a burglar.”

  “What have you stolen?” asked Fern.

  “Nothing,” the goblin admitted. “Yet.”

  “You know who I am?”

  Mumble.

  “Good,” said Fern. “So you came here to steal something specific, from me. I expect you thought I would be out much later on Millennium New Year’s Eve. Who sent you?”

  Warty lids flickered briefly over the watchful eyes. “No one.”

  “Was it Az— Was it the Old Spirit?” said Gaynor.

  “He wouldn’t use an ordinary goblin,” said Fern. “He thinks they’re beneath him.” She lifted her hand, pointing at the intruder with forked fingers, murmuring words too soft to be heard. A tiny gleam of light played about her fingertips, like the sparkle in a champagne glass. “Who sent you?”

  The goblin held its breath, flinched, squeezed its eyes tight shut, and then opened them very wide. “The queen!” it squeaked. “I steal for the queen! Not for gods or demons! I’m a royal burglar, I am! I—”

  “Mabb,” said Fern, relaxing slowly. “I see. I suppose she . . . Of course, I know what she wants. Tell her it isn’t here, and it’s not mine anyway. It’s held in trust, tell her, a sacred trust. It’s not a thing to be stolen or bartered. Say I know she will understand this, because she is a true queen who appreciates the value of honor.”

  “Who’s Mabb?” asked Gaynor sotto voce.

  “The queen of the goblins,” whispered Fern. “Not much fairy in her, so I hear.”

  “Does she appreciate the value of honor?”

  “I doubt it, but I’m told she responds to flattery. We’ll see.” She raised her voice again. “What’s your name?”

  The goblin pondered the question, evidently considering whether it was safe to answer. “Some call me Skuldunder,” he conceded eventually.

  “Well, Skuldunder,” said Fern, “since you’re here, and it’s a special occasion, will you have some champagne?”

  “Is it good?” The goblin scrambled down from the shelf and approached warily, radiating suspicion.

  “Have you never stolen any?”

  There was a shrug, as if Skuldunder was reluctant to admit to any shortfall in his criminal activities.

  Fern took another glass from the cupboard and half filled it. “Try it,” she said.

  The goblin sniffed, sipped, grimaced.

  “We will drink to your queen,” Fern announced. “Queen Mabb!”

  They drank solemnly. When Fern judged their visitor was sufficiently at ease she left him with Gaynor and went to her room, returning presently with a small quilted bag unzipped to show the contents. “These are gifts for your queen,” she told Skuldunder, “as a gesture of friendship and respect. I have heard she is a great beauty—“ Fern uttered the unaccustomed lie without a wince “—so I have chosen presents to adorn her loveliness. These colored powders can be daubed onto her eyelids; the gold liquid in this bottle, when applied to her fingernails, will set hard; in this tube is a special stick for tinting her lips. There is also a hand mirror and a brooch.” She indicated a piece of costume jewelry in the shape of a butterfly, set with blue and green brilliants. “Tell her I honor her, but the Sleer Bronaw, the Spear of Grief, is something I and my people hold in trust. It is not mine to give up.”

  Skuldunder nodded with an air of doubtful comprehension, accepting the quilted bag gingerly, as if it were a thing of great price. Then he drained his glass, choked, bowed clumsily to the two women, and made an awkward exit through a window that Fern had hastily opened. “I don’t think it will dematerialize,” she said, referring to his burden. “I hope you can manage . . .” But the goblin had already disappeared into the shadows of the street.

  “What was that all about?” Gaynor demanded as Fern closed the window.

  “The Sleer Bronaw is the spear Bradachin brought with him from Scotland when he first came to Dale House,” Fern explained. “It’s still there, as far as I know. I believe it has some mythic significance; Ragginbone thinks so, at any rate.” Bradachin, the house-goblin who inhabited her family’s Yorkshire home, had migrated from a Scottish castle after the new owners converted it into a hotel. Ragginbone was an old friend, a tramp who might once have been a wizard and now led a footloose existence in search of troubles he could not prevent, accompanied by a faithful dog with the mien of a she-wolf. “It’s unusual for something like that to be left in the care of a goblin, but Bradachin knows what he’s doing. I think. You saw him use it once, remember?”

  “I remember.” There was a short silence. Then Gaynor said: “Why would Mabb want it?”

  “I’m not sure. Ragginbone told me someone had offered her a trade, but that was a long time ago. I suppose she must have latched on to the idea again; he says her mind leaps to and fro like a grasshopper on speed—or words to that effect. Anyhow, none of the werefolk are focused in Time the way humans are.”

  “It was an interesting start to the New Year,” Gaynor volunteered. “A goblin burglar.” She gave a sudden little shiver of reaction, still unused to encounters with such beings.

  “Maybe,” said Fern. “Maybe—it was a portent.”

  When the bottle was empty, they went to bed, each to her own thoughts.

  Gaynor lay awake a long time as two-year-old memories surfaced, memories of magic and danger—and of Will. Somehow, even in her darkest recollections, it was the image of Will that predominated. There were bats—she hated bats—flying out of a TV set, swarming around her, tangling in her hair, hooking on to her pajamas. And Will rushing to her rescue, holding her in his arms . . . She was waiting behind a locked door for the entrance of her jailer, clutching a heavy china bowl with which she hoped to stun him, only it was Will—Will!—who came, Will who had escaped and come back to find her. Will was beside her in the car when the engine wouldn’t start, and she switched on the light to see the morlochs crawling over the chassis, pressing their hungry mouths against the windshield. Will whom she had kissed only once, and left, because he had too much charm and no hang-ups, and he could never want someone like her for more than a brief encounter, a short fling ending in long regret. “He’s your brother,” she had said to Fern, as if that settled the matter, the implications unspoken. He’s your brother—if he breaks my heart it will damage our friendship, perhaps for good. But her heart, if not broken, was already bruised and tender, throbbing painfully at the mention of Will’s name, at the sound of his voice on a machine. Ulan Bator . . . what was he doing in Ulan Bator? She had been so busy trying to suppress her reaction, she had not even thought to ask. She knew he had turned from painting to photography and abandoned his thesis in midstream, ultimately taking up the video camera and joining with a kindred spirit to form their own production company. Whether they had any actual commissions or not was a moot point, but Fern had told her they were working on a series of films exploring little-known cultures, presumably in little-known parts of the world. Such as Ulan Bator, wherever that might be. (Mongolia?) And what the hell was a yurt? It sounded like a particularly vicious form of yogurt, probably made from the fermented mare’s milk to which Will had alluded.

  Gaynor drifted eventually into a dream of bats and goblins, where she and Will were trapped in a car sinking slowly into a bog of blackberry-flavored yurt, but a morloch pulled Will out through the window, and she was left to drown on her own. Fortunately, by the next morning, she had forgotten all about it.

  Fern stayed awake even longer, speculating about Mabb, and the goblin burglar, and the spear whose story she had never heard, the ill-omened Spear of Grief.
She remembered it as something very old, rust spotted, the blade edge pitted as if Time had bitten into it with visible teeth. It had no aura of potency or enchantment, no spell runes engraved on shaft or head. It was just a hunk of metal, long neglected, with no more power than a garden rake. Yet she had seen it kill, and swiftly. She wondered whose tears had rusted the ancient blade, earning the weapon its name. And inevitably, like Gaynor, she slipped from speculation into recollection, losing control of her thought and letting it stray where it would. She roamed once more through the rootscape of the Eternal Tree, in a world of interlacing tubers, secret mosses, skulking fungi, until she found a single black fruit on a low bough, ripening into a head that opened ice-blue eyes at her and said: “You.” She remembered the smell of fire, and the dragon rising, and the one voice to which both she and the dragon had listened. The voice of the dragon charmer. But the head was burned and the voice stilled, for ever and ever. And her thought shrank, reaching farther back and farther, seeking the pain that was older and deeper, spear-deep in her spirit, though the wound, if not healed, was all but forgotten. Now she probed even there, needing the pain, the loss, the guilt, fearing to find herself heart-whole again for all time. And so at last she came to a beach at sunset and saw Rafarl Dévornine rising like a god from the golden waves.