Rough Magic
A Tempest Tale
Rough
Magic
CARYL CUDE MULLIN
Second Story Press
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Mullin, Caryl Cude
Rough magic / by Caryl Cude Mullin.
ISBN 978-1-897187-63-0 I.
Title.
PS8576.U433R68 2009 jC813’.6 C2009-903081-0
Copyright © 2009 by Caryl Cude Mullin
Edited by Kathy Stinson
Copyedited by Kathryn White
Cover and text design by Melissa Kaita
Cover photo by istockphoto
Printed and bound in Canada
Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.
Published by
SECOND STORY PRESS
20 Maud Street, Suite 401
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5V 2M5
www.secondstorypress.ca
For Camryn, my own dragon girl, and for Riley, who works her gentle magic on me every day.
Contents
Act One Materia Prima
I.i
I.ii
I.iii
I.iv
I.v
I.vi
I.vii
I.viii
I.ix
I.x
I.xi
Act Two Sulfur Sun, Mercury Moon
II.i
II.ii
II.iii
II.iv
II.v
II.vi
II.vii
Act Three The Alchemist’s Furnace
III.i
III.ii
III.iii
III.iv
III.v
III.vi
III.vii
III.viii
Act Four The Night Sea Journey
IV.i
IV.ii
IV.iii
IV.iv
IV.v
IV.vi
IV.vii
IV.viii
IV.ix
Act Five All That Glitters
V.i
V.ii
V.iii
V.iv
V.v
V.vi
V.vii
V.viii
V.ix
V.x
V.xi
Act One
Materia Prima
I.i.
She stared into the brazier. A powdery mold of dead gray ashes lay in its base, but nothing else. It was a cold morning, and the servant was slow to arrive with the coals for her fire. Hunkering lower under her blanket didn’t help much. It was thin. She was thin. Even when she bundled it around herself, it didn’t make her very warm. She chewed her lip and frowned. “I’ll have the servant beaten for being so slow,” she said. She didn’t really mean it. It was something she would do, if she was a grown-up princess. She was only five. No one listened to her. “What’s the use of being a princess anyway,” she muttered. One day they’d obey her. Not like now. “They always come to me last,” she grumbled.
She was right about that. If she’d been born a boy, things would be different. But she was next to useless as an heir. “The spare,” she’d heard them call her. They didn’t mind that she heard them say it, either. They’d smile, and sometimes ruffle her hair. She was a pretty child, so they indulged her. She could have made a favored plaything of herself, but she hated them. Stupid them.
She grew colder and crosser with each passing minute. The shuffling sounds of the servants moving down the hall annoyed her. They were bringing coals and warm water to other rooms. It was deep winter. The world was old and flat and empty, and they’d left her here alone. Where was her nurse? Probably off giggling with that guard. They thought she didn’t notice, but she did. She noticed everything. “Stupid, stupid,” she repeated, this time aloud. “I’ll show them all.” And she glared at the charred dust of past fires lying in the brazier, making them her enemy, making them the servant to be beaten. Then, in the midst of her anger, she found a quiet place inside her that said, I know what to do.
Everything she needed was inside her. The thought of fire joined the word, and her will brought them into being. In a breath of spoken air, the power blossomed out from her and became what she wanted.
She stared into the dancing flames. They seemed watery, somehow. Pale. She willed them to be stronger, warmer. It was not enough. There was something she was missing. She frowned, her tongue poking past her lips in concentration. Of course. It was because of the ashes. The fire needed better meat to feed upon. She sifted the remnants in the brazier with her mind. The ashes held distant memories of the trees they once were. These coals had been olive branches, pruned to hold the vigor of the tree in its core.
For an instant, she was within its wood. She felt squeezed, trapped. A dark shadow passed over her thoughts. There was a warning in this, something she did not understand. But she was not a fearful child. With a twist, she wrenched her mind free and pulled the memory forward into being once again.
The brazier was filled with plump burning coals. The fire snapped and ate greedily, rich now in warmth. She smiled, pleased with herself, and basked in her new comfort. “That’s better,” she said. Her voice unraveled itself in her room. She remembered that she was still alone. What an idiotic nurse she had. Someone should have seen how clever she was. Then she yawned and let sleep itself cradle her. The flames dwindled down and the coals glowed quietly in their common, tame fashion.
It was not much later when a servant hurried in, apologies and gossip bubbling from her lips. The queen had had a baby in the night. A boy, but it was sickly and the whole house was in an uproar. The servant was amazed to discover the princess sleeping contentedly by a warm brazier, her head resting in her arms and a smile on her lips. The servant was puzzled, but shrugged. The princess must have called out to someone else to make her fire after waiting so long. Oh well. She dumped her load of coals onto the pile already there. No one else needed them, not at this late hour. She pursed her lips and made a small snap of displeasure. It was shameful that the child had been left alone like this. She left to find the girl’s nurse.
I.ii.
Every day for a week after that Sycorax lit her own fire in the morning. She looked forward to waking up and making the flames dance. It always took a handful of courage, because each day she had to face the grinding panic of calling forth the wood for the coals. But the rest of it was easy, glorious. Now she could change the colors of the flames, too. The fire was a toy.
But no one saw her new game. No one paid her any attention at all, anymore. They were all in a lather over her new brother. She couldn’t see why. “He’s going to die anyway,” she said to her nurse.
“Hush now, don’t say such evil,” her nurse gasped, horror all over her face like the grease from her supper. Nurse always smelled like roast lamb. It made Sycorax’s nose twitch. She supposed that the silly guard must like the sheepy stink. He certainly grinned a great deal whenever he saw them.
“It isn’t evil, it’s the truth,” she retorted. “I see it in the fire every morning. He doesn’t belong here. He was made for the next world. Only strong people can live here. Like me,” she added proudly.
Nurse stopped brushing her hair and grasped her by the shoulders. “What is this that you are saying, child? Be true now, no tales here. Do you see what is to come in the fire’s light?”
Sycorax tried to shift away from her nurse’s hold, but the woman gripped her forcefully. “Only the morning fire,” she said sulkily. “Only in the fire that I make, when the flames come and dance. They show me.” Sycorax grinned tightly over her small sharp teeth. “They show me lots of things,” she added.
Her nurse stepped away from her, staring. Sycorax still smiled, tasting the woman’s fear. Now she knows I’m a princess, she thought. But it wasn’t so much fun, really, to be looked at like that. As though she was something horrible. And then her nurse turned and ran from the room.
Sycorax was afraid, then. Would she get in trouble, real trouble, for saying the baby would die? It was true. She shouldn’t be punished for saying the truth. But she remembered the time she called her aunt a swine, and her nurse had hit her with the hairbrush many times for saying so. That was true, too. Her aunt was always eating and grunted softly whenever she had to sit or rise. “Piggy, piggy,” she said now, to make herself brave.
There were voices in the corridor. Above them she heard the shrilling of her nurse, but there were men’s voices too. Sycorax twisted her skirt in her hands, but otherwise did not move. She was a princess. They could not hurt her.
The room filled with people. She recognized some of them. They were her father’s wizards. One of them, a great wide dark-bearded man, crouched down before her and stared into her eyes. “Your nurse has been telling us odd tales,” he said, calmly, with a smile on his lips. He was curious, but she could see his doubting thoughts.
The others had encircled them, and together they poked at her with their minds. She didn’t like it and pushed them away. The high wizard before her fell back on his heels. The rest began to babble and gasp. One of the women cried. Her white doughy face crumpled up and got all blotchy. Sycorax stared at the red spots on the woman’s face, at the tears flowing over her wobbly cheeks. She’d never seen a grown-up person cry before. It made her look like a child. “Stop that,” she said. And the woman stopped crying. She had no choice.
The youngest wizard, a man who had just stopped being a boy, ran out of the room. She knew that he was running to her father. Sycorax thought that she had never seen anything so funny as the sight of his bare feet slapping on the floor. He was so flustered that he didn’t even notice his shoes had fallen off. Not by accident, though. She’d made it happen. She wondered what else she could do.
Her life was utterly changed. Everyone noticed her now. The wizards came each morning to watch her make the fire, to hear what she saw in the flame. Her father, the king, sent for her every day. She would stand in the throne room and people would bow to her. Her nurse’s guard friend never grinned at her anymore. He stared straight ahead, like a statue. He was afraid of her.
The whole castle was in such a state about her power that they hardly noticed when the small brother died, slipping quietly away from the ties of life. His mother keened, but she was mostly alone in her grief. She was only a second wife, anyway. They didn’t need her anymore. King Aedes had married her so that he could have a son. But he didn’t need a son anymore, either. It was too bad that the boy had died, but he’d been ill from birth. Not like the princess. Most powerful magic user ever, they whispered, and thanked the gods for such a protector.
That’s what she was now. A protector. She liked it. She liked being important. The other wizards tried to teach her, but she already knew everything. They soon had to learn from her. They had to work and sweat in their spellcasting. Not her. “She breathes magic,” she heard one of them say. “We are truly blessed.”
She never told them everything that she saw in the fire, though. She didn’t understand most of it. She kept seeing her father. He was old, unkempt, crazed. She only told them the good things she saw. The rich harvests. The city they would build. They would smile, and praise her.
But her nurse suspected something. “Tell me what else you see,” she asked, one night when they were alone.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Sycorax replied, and turned away in her bed.
The nurse didn’t ask again. She pulled the blanket, the new, thicker blanket, up over the girl. “Sleep well,” she said.
The next day the nurse died. It was a funny accident. She slipped and fell down some stairs.
Sycorax did not know what to feel, but now she was truly alone.
I.iii.
The feasting had gone on for three days now. Sycorax was tired of it. “I can’t wait until it’s over,” she kept saying to her husband.
Stamos smiled at her patiently every time. He was fifteen years older than she was, his soft, thin hair graying, wisdom etched in every line of his face. The news of their engagement had been greeted with a mixture of surprise and humor. Publically he was heralded as a rock of stability, but she saw through the empty diplomacy. He was the third son of a smaller house. In the past people would stare blankly when his name was mentioned. It had never been mentioned very often. Their betrothal had led to a panicked maneuvering of alliances. Everyone wanted to catch the favor of the new Prince Consort.
He seemed oblivious to the social uproar around him. She liked him for that. He was a small hollow of calm ground on a plain ravaged by whirlwinds.
But even that was not why she had married him. She chose him because he was kind. It wasn’t a learned kindness, either. It was the fabric of his soul. It was all he knew how to be. It was her fervent, secret hope that he would lead her onto a better path than the one that haunted her visions. The one that ended with her complete despair.
He smoothed the tension from her forehead. “Keep frowning like that and you’ll be as furrowed as I am in no time,” he teased. “Enjoy yourself. You’ve earned this reward. Your father is strong, his throne secure, the land is safe and prosperous, the people admire you.”
“The people admire my father. They’re terrified of me. And I didn’t miss you calling yourself my ‘reward.’”
He grinned and pulled on a loose lock of her hair. Stamos knew how to take her words lightly. “They’re still grateful for the party. You should be as well. You’re eighteen years old, married to a pillar of wisdom, and your long happy life is stretched out before you.”
His words were a statement, but she knew they held a question. It was the same question behind every pair of eyes that ever looked into her own.
What will become of me?
She might be only eighteen years old, but for thirteen years she had been facing and ignoring the same desperate plea. It had left her jaded. Six years ago when a courtier asked her to read his fortune she had barked, “You will live. And when you are done with that, you will die.” No one had ever asked her the question since, but it was still there, faltering on the tip of every tongue.
She brushed it away. “I thought I married a man, not a pillar,” she said. Her words stumbled. It was a poor joke.
“Lucky woman, you have both,” he said, and nibbled at her neck in a way that irritated her even while it made her laugh. She let him swallow her up in an embrace.
The celebrations did end, in time. Sycorax grew accustomed to Stamos’ quiet shadow in the corner of her life. She reminded herself that she ought to be happy. Her country had been at peace for so long, a generation. Her father’s people had become comfortable, even prosperous. Buildings were springing up that celebrated architecture rather than fortification.
Her spells had made the country so, and kept it so. But it was a gem whose gleam was now perceived and valued from afar. Rulers of distant empires rubbed their avaricious hands and increased their armies. The name of her land began to appear on maps that once had left it unmarked and overlooked.
Sycorax was not afraid of any of them. Her power was greater than any army. But she would have to be ruthless to keep them out, and she knew that making such magics, even as a defense, would poison her soul.
She knew it from experience, though no one guessed. She was the Wizard Royal, the Great Protectoress, the Heir Apparent.
Murderer is what the flames called her.
Sycorax shook her head and turned her thoughts away. She would write her own fate. A wave of fatigue swept over her. That had been growing more common lately. “It’s only natural,” the physicians told her. “You’ll need to rest so the child within you grows strong.”
Child. Sycorax pulled back her shoulders and stood straighter. She didn’t know how to be a mother. The whole idea was faintly ridiculous, though she was the only one who seemed to think so. The birth of an heir was a great comfort to her father and her people.
Sycorax’s own mother had died bringing her into the world. She wasn’t worried about that. There were simple magics that any wise woman could do. Herbs and water and soothing words were all that were needed. Her foolish mother had been afraid of magic and had banished it from the birthroom. So the queen had perished, while Sycorax lived, wizardry in her bones.
Sycorax rubbed her swollen abdomen. It was a daughter that grew inside her. She refused to see beyond that. When the morning flames tried to show her more, she snuffed them away. It was a foolishness of her own, no doubt. Knowledge was a tool. A weapon, whispered an imp in her mind. She wouldn’t listen to that either.
“I protect my people,” she said aloud. Her voice was harsh, rasping. She had been silent too long, alone too long. Stamos was somewhere nearby; she felt his anxiety slithering under the door like an autumn draft. She was keeping him away. He was so pleased about the child. “I’ll be a father!” he had crowed. So ignorant and naive, like a child with a new toy sword announcing he is going to war.
Did he not realize that his child would also be hers?
“I protect my people,” she whispered again.
Her father – old, blind, mad, decrepit – sitting on a crumbling throne.
Sycorax shook her head again and began to walk around the room. The rhythm of her steps brought quiet to her mind.
Stamos would worry if he saw her. He didn’t like it when she paced like a beast in a cage.
I.iv.
Stamos named the child Thalia. It had seemed laughable to Sycorax that such a red, screeching thing should have a name at all, let alone one taken from a muse. “The muse of comedy,” Stamos had replied, as though that made it reasonable. “Besides, it’s a beautiful name, and she’s a beautiful girl.”
“Your wits are addled,” Sycorax said. But she agreed to the name. She couldn’t think of any alternative. And everyone else thought it was a lovely choice.
“I must get back,” she said, handing the squirming bundle to the far more expert arms of the wet nurse. Sycorax rose and smoothed invisible dust from the folds of her dress.
Stamos nodded to her absently. His eyes were fastened to his daughter’s face, now quiet again and happily chewing her own small fist. Sycorax doubted that he heard her leave the room.
Well, it was she who had pushed him away. It had been nothing to twist his thoughts from her onto their child. Let him have some happiness, she told herself. Keeping him at a distance was the best way to protect him.
She went to her room. Not to her chambers. Those were full of servants and companions. No, she went down, by the stone stairs her art had formed, to the underground crypt no one else could enter.
It was cool there, even in midsummer heat. As ever Sycorax shivered, briefly, when the door fell shut behind her. She reached for her fine wool robe and settled it around her shoulders, no longer having to look or even think to do this.
Not that she could see. No light penetrated this room. She moved through the blackness to her worktable. There she held her hand over a wax candle, and a quick blue flame sprang from the wick. It flooded the room with an unusual amount of light. But she did not look at the fire itself. She was very careful to avoid chance visions.
She had trained herself to be blind.
The smooth wooden table was neatly organized. She was systematic in everything. Three walls of the small room were entirely shelved. To her right the shelves contained glass flasks, filled with the tinctures and potions and preserves she needed for her work. They were all stoppered against corruption. On the opposite wall were the objects she required: murderer’s hair, hollow stones, small dried animals with their spirits trapped within them. Behind her, on the wall punctured by the door, were the books and scrolls she had gathered and written. Some texts were so ancient that she kept them whole with a constant spell. It was a small thing, no strain.
Before her was the great map. It filled the wall, and on it was drawn the entire known world. At the center was, of course, her own land. With it she could watch any threat brewing against her people and turn it away before it even approached.
The map was her own invention. She had created it five years before, when she was only fifteen years old. Prior to that she had joined her magic with that of the palace wizards to turn aside enemies. That had been a more obvious, dramatic spellcasting, but this was far greater. Her map divinations gave the people of her land the gift of constant, unthreatened peace. She managed all of it here, alone. The other magic-users rarely met with her, and they almost never consulted her. Their arts were all used to provide bountiful harvests, healthy children, and vigorous workers.
They were the sunlit heroes, now. She was a mythical figure, spoken of with fear and whispers. Servants treated her as though she were sacred. Some would no longer say her name. They called her “The Lady.”
Sycorax pushed back her resentment and got to work. Her regular regime of watchfulness had faltered. It had been easy to fill her days writing lists and making notes for some future time. She had even gone out into the countryside to gather supplies, which was ridiculous. Servants had done that for her from the time she was twelve.
Wandering around had only made her feel more isolated, anyway. She had no place there, among common people. They needed her to do what only she could do. So she had stopped her foolish roving and returned to her post.
In the corner, where the potions met the map, there was a small hand pump. She used it now, filling the silver basin beneath the nozzle with the earth’s deep water. Carefully she brought the basin to the table and placed it in the center, where she could easily glance from it to the map before her.
Flame showed greater variety, but the images were swift and fleeting and gave little context. Water was also constantly changing, but the visions it provided moved more slowly and gave a broader sense of time and place. She gazed into the basin. Her own reflection looked back. Even the rippled surface could not hide her sadness. She looked past it.
To the South she saw internal strife. Kings plotted and moved against each other, with no thoughts to spare for her land. It had been that way for some time. She moved on to the East. Grave threats had come from there in the past, but she and the other wizards had taught them caution. They would not return for at least a generation.
The North was a barbarous place, and their most common enemy. It had wizards of its own, but none to match her. Their threat was like a rheumatic ache: always there, but never overwhelming.
Sycorax turned to the West. These were lands her country traded with, but distance had kept terms civil. She sifted through the visions mechanically, expecting the usual results. Then abruptly she checked herself.
There was a future king whose eyes stared directly back into her own.
She looked up at the map. The vision sped toward its source, a small land of grapes and grain.
And it had something she wanted.
I.v.
Sycorax stood at the wide window, gazing out to the distant sea. That smear of quiet blue she had seen had been the wild road that brought her here. She had used its power to draw Alonso to her, with a useless army at his back and false dreams of glory in his mind. He had answered her call without ever hearing her voice, never realizing that his thoughts of conquest were not really his own.
When he found himself a prisoner in her father’s kingdom, his soldiers caught like flies in the amber of her magic, it had been so easy to win him. He had snatched at her offer of help like a drowning man grabs any floating bit of wreckage. She snared him, and together they fled the trap she had set.
Now she was queen in a foreign land. It should not feel so strange. She was a king’s daughter. From her childhood she had commanded servants and walked the corridors of state with confidence. Her only hope was that she hid her bewilderment well. It was not yet clear whom she could trust.
No, that was untrue. It was all too evident that she could trust no one. Even her new husband had become cold, remote. Her belief that they were two trees from the same root was gone. She had given up everything for this land where eyes did not seem to match words. Her decision to betray her home and run away with Alonso had been made carefully, without hesitation. But not without consequences.
And now this new country did not want her. She had used her gifts to master its language. A queen must be able to speak to her people, she had reasoned. She had been wrong. They whispered the word “witch” every time they spoke of her. The servants crossed their fingers behind their backs in her presence. Children were kept away from her. Pregnant women avoided her. She had become a curse.
She would not cling to Alonso. He had used her to win his freedom. The bond they shared was born of his desperation and her cunning. It was not real. She saw that now. But she was too proud to weep at her foolishness. As long as he treated her with dignity, she would find a way to thrive in her new home.
And he would treat her well. He knew her power. No one knew it better. She had wielded dark forces to give him the strength to fight free of her father’s enchantments and traps. He had seen her pull power from the moon to shift the tides and send them out to sea. He had lain silently in the boat and watched as she drew the winds around her and sent them flying over the waves, back to his land, back to his throne.
She twisted her hands together, as though wrenching her fingers could tear away the memories she knew were coming next. Because it had not been just a glorious spell of freedom that had set her on this path. She had used her magic to kill Stamos. The thought of him hammered her with fresh condemnation.
But she had to be a widow, free to wed, free to rule. And she had to break all ties with her past, sever all claims upon her father’s kingdom. So she had left Thalia. She had abandoned her small daughter. My heart, Sycorax had called her. Then she left Thalia for another heart. A false one.
The door opened behind her and she turned, her face expressionless. She still wore the dress of her people: a simple white gown, a band of gold around each arm, her honey-colored hair woven in a braided crown around her head. She knew it irritated her husband, but she could not yet bring herself to wear the heavy dark clothing of his court.
Alonso stood impassively for a moment, his dark eyes impossible to read, his own face a mask of calm. As always there was something about the tilt of his head and the directness of his gaze that made her think of a wild hawk. He was fierce. She had known it from the first moment, seen his strength even in her divinings, even as he kneeled in bloody rags before her father’s throne. It was what made her love him.
And he loved me too, she reminded herself. She was sure of it. She remembered how their passion had gripped them both with its sudden force. He told me that I amazed him, she thought. He said that I was his lioness.
Well, he was the lion. This was a land of fiery men and shadow-women. And so here he was again, come to school her in the ways of his people. “Cast your eyes down.” Was she never to meet the gaze of anyone? “Don’t stride across the room.” Even her manner of walking offended his court. “A woman must be meek. The queen must be the best of all women.” So she, the lioness, was to become the mouse.
She was tired of these lessons, but she listened and nodded. She must try to adapt her ways. Will there be anything left of me? she wondered. And then what he was saying next stopped all other thoughts.
“You must not speak in council. It is strange enough that I allow you there at all. It will take them time to grow accustomed just to your presence. When you speak out as you did today, it troubles them. They are not used to hearing the thoughts of women on such matters. They cannot hear what you say, they can only wonder that I let you speak at all. You must share your thoughts only with me, in private.”
“But surely we should begin as we mean to go on. They will be used to hearing my thoughts soon enough, as you are.”
His gaze shifted, slid away to the window. “It is better my way,” he said. “If you cannot be silent you must stay away from council altogether.”
That made her silent indeed.
I.vi.
The door shut soundlessly behind Sycorax. She stood against the cool stone of the wall for a moment, making sure that she had not been followed. It was a clear moonlit night. She’d have to take great care not to be seen. She drew the hood of her black cloak closer, clutching it at the neck as she quickly muttered the words of a concealment spell. It would protect her from those who looked down from above. Satisfied, she stole across the small side garden and out the final door in the wall. The guard posted there did not even glance her way as the door opened and shut.
Quickly, she was within the outskirts of the wood, the trees whispering their welcome. She had always been well served by the trees. In a short time she came to the clearing. Here was the magic circle where the moon shone directly upon a large flat white rock. She had seen this place from one of the high towers. Certainly her husband would never agree to her roaming about in the forest. He knew only too well the strength she could find here.
Stone power. That was what she needed right now. The power to withstand her enemies in the court. She must become a fortress.
Because she had many enemies now. It had not taken long for the secrets of her marriage to become common knowledge. And as soon as it was known that Alonso did not love her, that he also found her foreign ways alarming and strange, the dance of the courtiers began. They tried to win his favor by insulting her. He did not protect her. His sense of obligation had diminished. Soon it would be gone altogether. And now that he was surrounded and rooted in his own place of power, he did not fear her as he had.
She stripped off her cloak and knelt on the rock. Wearing only a thin, white gown, her flesh puckered immediately in the chilly night air. She drew the small flint dagger from her belt, intending to lift it to the moon and begin the slow, harsh song of the stone spell. But she paused, then froze.
She had been followed. Sycorax could sense him somewhere in the shadows. Her nostrils flared, testing the wind. There. He was crouched low beneath the fir tree. One of her husband’s men, probably a soldier. She knew that he would not be open to bribery.
Her mind raced, but she kept her body still, calm. She must disguise her purpose, make her kneeling here on the ceremonial rock seem innocent. Fortunately, she had not begun the rites. Ideas tumbled through her mind like pebbles in a stream, until one shone clear. She tucked the knife back into her belt, then lowered her face into her hands and began to sob.
It was not hard to cry. She had been holding back tears for so long that they were grateful for a chance to flow. She wept for her child, her father, for her lost land, for the life she would have had, for the life she’d dreamed of, and for the work of her own foolish hand in all her troubles.
It worked. She felt the soldier draw back, hesitate. She sensed his shame. He had followed a woman to catch her committing a crime, and instead he had to witness her loneliness and sorrow. Even so, he did not leave. That annoyed her, for it meant that she would have to go back to her rooms with the rites undone. Who knew when she would get another chance, especially now that her stone had been discovered. But there was no help for it. Though inwardly she seethed, outwardly she kept the ruse of a fragile and broken woman. She wrapped her cloak around herself and stole back to the castle, pausing every now and then to sigh and weep some more. The shadow was behind her the whole way.
Back in her chambers Sycorax paced angrily. She was in danger now, that much was clear. Her husband hoped to free himself of his foreign wife. He needed only to catch her performing her outlawed magic and he would have his reason. The queen could not be a witch.
She clenched the fabric of her skirt in rage. The banning of magic had been a master stroke of his, without a doubt. She had sat beside him, mute and powerless, while he persuaded the council that the use of magic, which had enslaved his own royal person, must be considered a grievous crime. They had agreed readily, their eyes gleaming and victorious in the glances they stole at her from beneath lowered lids. And she had been allowed to do nothing more than vent her fury at him in private, reminding him that it was magic that had saved his royal life, her magic, and that she was the only one who would suffer from their law.
Which, of course, was the reason for the law.
Not that Alonso admitted the truth. He had been sympathetic, of course, but determined. “You have no need for your magic here,” he had told her. “Here you need to concern yourself only with matters befitting a royal wife.”
She had been silenced then, as she had been so many times before. Alonso meant to take every last shred of power she had, meant to leave her a hollow husk that he could blow away with the breath of a single word. She had been a fool to think that she could control him.