An Embittered Witch, page 6
Margaret was too busy enjoying her newfound freedom and her trust fund and the joys of twenty-first century living to be harbouring plans of revenge. Wasn’t she?
Although she hadn’t been happy when she’d startled me at the airport.
I bit my lip as I pondered, staring out across the lake. The January sun was harsh in its brilliance, yet still low in the sky, causing the opposite shoreline to be hidden in shadows. The morning mist still lingered over the water so that it all merged into indistinct gradients of gray.
Last year, Margaret had wanted me to join her. She’d argued her best against me continuing with my career in the Kin, even calling Nachtan rude names.
Nachtan was the only other person living today who knew Margaret. She’d hinted that they had been very involved in the past, that he had been her magical tutor hired by an indulgent father at a time when women weren’t allowed to practice real magic. In a misguided effort to prove to the Kin that women could be strong, too, she’d actually lifted the Crystal Charm Stone from its resting place in the broch on Scarp to bring to Edinburgh, to fling her accomplishment in the faces of the dour male Kin witches.
She hadn’t been trying to steal it, like they claimed. She swore the curse laid on her by Nachtan was an act of revenge by a spurned lover.
That was how she’d gained her terrific power all those years ago, from such close contact with the Stone. And also how the Venerable Nachtan had gained his, bringing the Stone back to its hiding place, and lauded as a hero.
Still, he knew her as no one else did, and with him by my side he would soon set Cate and the rest of the Kin straight on the ridiculous idea that Margaret Forsythe was out creating havoc in the world. She didn’t even bother with spells, and had no reason to exact revenge on some unknown African sorcerer. What nonsense.
I hoped Nachtan had had enough rest, because he was going to return to the city with me whether he wanted to or not. This matter had to be cleared up before we left for China. I packed away the remnants of my sandwich, took a last swig of cold coffee, and set back on the road to the right turn off, along the deep valley winding up through the hills.
The car park was easy enough to find, even though there weren’t any vehicles there at this time of year. In fact I hadn’t seen a living soul for the past half an hour. Mrs. Battersea’s map of the forest had my route marked in pen, and I prayed she had it right. I set off into the woods.
The trail began fairly pleasantly, passing by trees on one side, fallow meadows on the other with glimpses of the lake far below. It was only when it turned to enter the canopy of forest that I shuddered nervously.
It was dark under the pines, and quiet too, not even a bird singing or a crow’s raucous scolding. I slipped along the path like an intruder into the waiting silence. At the stream, the map showed I should veer off the main path here and follow the water’s course, but the route was little more than a rabbit trail.
How could there be a house at the end of this? Houses needed roads, or at least driveways, or even sturdy walkways to carry groceries along to avoid clambering over the rocks and risk falling into the bubbling stream so close by. More to the point, how had the Venerable Nachtan, that ancient witch, physically managed this? I could only hope and pray that Mrs. Battersea’s map was accurate. I comforted myself with the realization that at least I wouldn’t get lost in the wilderness, for I would only need to follow the brook back to Loch Ness if I couldn’t find Nachtan’s abode.
I’d almost passed it before I realized the tiny trail had ended.
It wasn’t really a house at all, unless one was a Hobbit. I blinked, and I blinked again, making sure that what appeared to be a rough door actually was that and not a mirage of nature. It looked like a portal right into the hillside, but then my eyes adjusted and I saw that what I’d taken to be the granite and moss of the landscape was actually an ancient stone wall, all overgrown by the dampness of the water which ran directly by its side. There were no right angles or straight lines in the design. The entire structure appeared to have grown organically out of the peaty soil and the bedrock.
This had to be his ‘country home’. It reminded me more of the shepherd’s hut on Scarp where Willem had hidden. I took a deep breath and knocked gently on the ancient wooden door. Weathered and silver, it looked like it might crumble beneath my touch.
There was no welcoming answer. The door opened a crack at my slight touch, and I had to apply pressure to push my way through. I stepped inside and allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness within.
It wasn’t as dark as I’d expected, even though no chinks of light came through the well-crafted stone walls. The space was rounded, with wooden rafters. There were no material comforts here, no softness of a quilt, say, or a tablecloth over the solid plank table. Only roughhewn furniture sat there, and a blackened hearth with a huge chimney lay across the room. I made my way toward it.
The coals held no vestige of warmth, no lingering heat in the ashes. This meant the fire had not been tended for the past few days. How strange, for it was chilly and damp here in the structure. It could only mean that Nachtan wasn’t present anymore. He must have left, gone on somewhere else, without letting Mrs. Battersea know.
That definitely felt wrong.
Had I missed him on my journey? Had he passed me by even as I was creeping north through the dawn? Dammit, a wasted journey. I stood up and looked about me with frustration, and it was then that I realized there was a second source of light in the space, apart from the open doorway. It came from a break in the stone wall to the far side of the fireplace.
Was this a two-room bothy, then? How luxurious.
I made it across the room in two steps. I had to duck my head beneath the unplaned wood of the jamb, for the opening into the second room was low. There was a window before me, or at least a break in the solid stone wall. Greenish light filtered through the pines behind the bothy. Still no sound of birdsong, though, only the susurration of wind through the pines and the quiet murmur of the stream flowing down the hillside.
But there, at last was the Venerable Nachtan. I breathed out a sigh of relief I hadn’t even realized I was holding. Asleep on his bed with his hands by his side, palms up. With the grayish-green dim light through the pines in this shadowy room, his peaceful countenance reminded me of a painting, Ophelia floating in her watery grave, his long hair flowing out and his beard neatly combed in his front. His chest rose and fell with the slightest of movements.
‘God, for a second there, I thought you were dead,’ I said, my voice sounding too loud in this quiet space. When that didn’t rouse him, I strode over and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Yo, VN, time to get up. I brought coffee and croissants, chocolate ones, your favorite.’
Still nothing. ‘Nachtan, this is not a joke.’ Not that the old witch had ever showed the slightest inclination for humour, not around me. ‘You need to wake up!’
Panic edged my voice. I checked again that he really was breathing, that it hadn’t been a trick of the light. Yes, and there was the faintest pulse threading through his veins as I held my fingers on his wrist. I dropped his cool hand and shook him harder, so hard that it was impossible for him not to open his eyes to object at my rough treatment of him.
Yet still not a gig from the old geezer.
‘Oh, shit.’
My mind immediately leaped to the tale of Zande the Great. Zande who had no need for sleep but who couldn’t be woken. Had Nachtan been cursed also?
Eleven
I had to run down the path by the stream a fair bit, out of the trees, before I could get any signal for the cell phone. Hugh didn’t answer my call – he must be in one of those endless meetings still. I stood, helpless for a moment, running through my mind who I could call.
I didn’t have Mrs. Battersea’s number on me, and I didn’t have time to make it back to the car to see if she had included it in her papers. I had no pigeon to send off with a message. There was actually no one else to call except Cate.
I brought up her name on my contacts and hesitated. Was I panicking over nothing? Perhaps he was merely in a deep slumber... But I knew the difference. I hadn’t noticed the whiff of any lingering magic in the bothy, but on the other hand, I hadn’t been looking for it.
No choice. I needed to call someone in the Kin, and the sooner the better.
Cate was silent as the words tumbled out. ‘Where exactly is this place?’
‘The north side of Loch Ness. Mrs. Battersea will have the coordinates.’
‘Right. Please don’t go back into the bothy, don’t disturb anything. I need you to wait by the entrance to the path. There’ll be a contingent sent out from Inverness immediately, and you’ll need to guide them.’
She crisply hung up the phone, leaving me by the burbling brook, not another soul in sight.
If it was Meg who had done this terrible deed – and that was a huge IF because I didn’t believe it for a minute, then I had to go back and find evidence for myself. I knew Margaret Forsythe’s style, and I knew the imprint of her magic. If there was any hint of her in this evil deed, I had to ascertain it for myself. I checked the time on my phone. The Kin would take at least half an hour to arrive from Inverness. I had time to check the bothy, despite Cate’s dire instructions not to re-enter the space.
I ran back up the rabbit trail to Nachtan’s house of slumber. I sniffed all around Nachtan’s recumbent body, and squinted at the light, then closed my eyes and opened my mind’s sensors, but I got nothing. Both rooms were clean, not a whiff of Meg’s magic, or of any other witch’s, for that matter. Almost as if the place had been wiped surgically clean, it was devoid of anything but the smell of a fusty old witch. I hovered over the sleeping ancient once again.
‘Wake up,’ I shouted suddenly, as if I could take the curse off guard, but of course it was useless. I turned away, and my foot hit something, a piece of debris under his rough cot. It rolled away. And continued rolling along the packed earth of the room, in a way that nothing in the natural world could sustain. I got down on my knees in the dirt, lifting his blanket, and I saw a dim glint in the dark shadows at the far end, by the stone wall. My arm wasn’t long enough. I had to lower my whole body to the ground and gently kick under the cot with my foot until the object rolled out again.
It came to a rest by my boot. I slowly bent and picked it up, holding it to the light of the window.
A dark mirrored glass orb. I saw my own face peering back at me like through a fish lens, nose unnaturally large, with my blue eyes squinting on either side. I blew on it, tried to shake off the dust, then polished it on the front of my hoody.
I’d seen something like this object before. It was spherical, but not perfect in its roundness, like a hand-made glass Christmas ornament. Much like the crystal spheres on the tree Cate had brought for Hogmanay.
Yet different. Darker. The surface wasn’t exactly like a silvered mirror, it had a dark overtone to it, leaving everything in the reflected background full of shadows. I sniffed it again with my mind’s nose. Yes, it belonged to Nachtan, or at least he had handled it, but what was the sphere’s purpose? The old witch had brought little else with him, except his pipe laid on the stone of the window ledge, and his staff leaning in the corner.
A mechanical sound interrupted my thoughts. It had been growing on the edges of my consciousness for the past minute or two, and with a start, I recognized it as the sound of the large Kin helicopter. Of course, there was one stationed in Inverness. How could I have forgotten? The Kin would be here shortly. Cromwell would have no need to drive the twisty roads along the lake to reach this spot.
My instructions had been to stay out of the bothy, to await the Kin by the path. I shoved the ornament safely into my satchel and ran out again, down the path, and reached the last meadow just as the large bird was settling down.
The Kin had sent a contingent of Elders. I was glad to see they took this seriously. Cromwell, of course, there was no chance of avoiding that one. He was dressed in a business suit, the first time I’d ever seen him out of his dour black robe. With his hair styled straight across his forehead, almost in a bowl cut, and the brown tweed of his suit tucked into his galoshes, he looked more like a figure from an old British comedy series than an Elder. In fact, I didn’t recognize him till he scowled at me.
The other male witches were half-familiar to me. I’d seen them around Edinburgh and Scarp, but they all knew me, wearing mirror images of Cromwell’s grimness on their own faces, and wellies on their feet.
The last one to exit the machine took me totally by surprise.
Cate. What the hell? How did she get here? She’d said she’d had business out of town, but I’d had no idea she was in the area. Yet it made an awful sense.
Hers was the one face that didn’t appear to hate me on sight, but that didn’t make me happy to see her.
She quickly swept across the grass to me in tall rubber boots, the really expensive kind that come with their own special wool socks. She wasn’t dressed up to the nines as was her norm, but in the casual chic of blue jeans and hand-knit Nordic sweater. Her fringed suede coat was no longer the height of fashion, yet she wore it with panache.
‘Where is he?’ she asked tersely, while looking at the wilderness all around, for all the world as if she’d never been there before. She headed toward the main path, the only obvious one, but I put my hand on her arm to stop her.
‘Over this way,’ I said and led the group to the almost invisible route I’d taken before, the one that twisted between the gorse bushes and pines along the stream as the chopper’s rotors slowed to a stop.
‘You didn’t touch anything?’ Cromwell barked.
‘No,’ I assured him, a little exasperated. ‘Except the door to get in. And I shook him, to try to get him to wake up.’
We reached the bothy, and I stepped aside to let them in.
They all remained clustered outside, eying the door and me with suspicion.
‘What were you doing here?’ One witch asked.
‘How did you know to come to this spot?’ The questions were coming at me fast and furious.
‘I had to...’ Dear God, I hadn’t thought of that. I had no cover story to explain my presence here, couldn’t tell them I’d hiked all this way to get Nachtan to help clear Margaret Forsythe’s name.
‘He invited me up for tea,’ I blurted out, grasping on to the first thing I could think of. ‘He wanted me to see his country place. We’ve grown very close, you know, over the past year.’
As soon as I’d said the words, I could have kicked myself. I couldn’t come up with a more believable story? Like, me and the VN were best buds, and made a habit of hanging out together. Sure, we met at Starbuck’s all the time.
It was a ridiculous explanation, especially as I had my doubts whether the VN even liked me. I hung my head, waiting for them to call me out on it. But to my astonishment, once they got over the initial disbelief of such an unlikely friendship, the Inverness Elders accepted the foibles of the Venerable Nachtan and made to enter the bothy.
Only Cate held back, staring at me with her dark eyes. Her brows were drawn together, just a little, and I couldn’t read her face at all.
‘Stay out here,’ she commanded before ducking to enter into the dark hovel.
The five were in there a long time. I sat myself down on the nearest boulder, aimlessly watching the small stream burble its quick way down the hillside.
The sphere, I remembered with a start. I forgot to tell them about that glass object I’d found under Nachtan’s cot. I opened my satchel and slowly withdrew it, holding it up to the weak rays of sunshine.
It fit in my hand like a billiard ball and it sparkled darkly, showing a reflection of me with the stone walls of the bothy barely discernable behind me. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and searched the orb but could sense nothing from it, except somehow it felt like Nachtan and not of the magic practitioner who’d put him under. I couldn’t say exactly why I knew that, perhaps it was something about the warmth of the object even on this chill winter day, a warmth that had nothing to do with the material it was made of. If I sat still enough, I could almost hear the song of the glass, the vibration ringing through it.
The reflection of Cate appeared at the door to the bothy. Her eyes were on my back and she walked over to my rock without making a sound while I slipped the sphere into my satchel. I wanted more time to explore this metallic orb, to discover its secrets.
She looked at me with suspicion, then her eyes moved down to my bag. I held my breath, but she didn’t say a word. Not right then.
Cate folded herself down on the rocks next to me and stretched out her legs which, even though they were encased in rubber boots, were lean and elegant.
‘You know this doesn’t look good,’ she said in a low voice I could barely hear over the noise of the stream.
‘Is it the same as Zande? The same kind of sleeping spell or curse or whatever it is?’
She looked down at me sideways from where she sat. ‘It appears to be.’
‘What does this mean? Is someone going around cursing all the most powerful witches? And who, who would do that? Who could do it?’
Nachtan was untouchable, surely. Hell, he was the Venerable Nachtan, the one so honored for his deeds and his own power and famous throughout the world of the Kin. Who, or what, could ever have gotten through his defences?
‘Only a witch with great power himself, or herself, could pull this off,’ she replied slowly. Her eyes were on the water. It shone gold from the stones beneath it in the winter sun. She flicked her head back to the bothy. ‘They have suspicions. I will shield you and support you as best as I can, but be prepared for the questioning.’
‘What?’ I almost fell off my boulder, I turned round so fast. ‘That’s crazy. You’re not saying they think I did this?’
