Treacherous Witch

"—it won't feel like that forever."

She's so tired of fighting. They're not an army. They're barely a resistance. The ashes of her village lie buried beneath her feet, and it feels ironic, almost, that after escaping the invasion she should find herself back where she started.

"As long as we live," says Shikra, "Maskamere survives. As long as any of us carries Maska in our heart, Maskamere survives. We'll come back stronger. We've done it before. Maska fled an enemy far greater than the Empire biting at our feet. She survived because—"

*

The Patriarch waved a hand at his son. "Leave us."

Grimmauld Gideon scraped back his chair and offered a mock toast before departing. Valerie took her wine glass and plate and hurried back to her seat at the other end of the table. No servants attended them. The guards were outside.

She and the Patriarch were alone. The air felt thick, somehow, as if the fumes from the fire and the candlelight and the smell of roasted meat all weighed in upon her. Her head pounded.

He tapped his fingers. "You fought well."

She ignored the compliment. "Is Avon alive?"

"Of course."

"Then why hasn't he come for me?"

"Lord Avon drank a little too much at our gathering and had to leave early. Don't despair. His father whisked him away before he could make a real fool of himself."

That didn't sound like Avon. She had seen him tipsy at most, never seriously drunk. Perhaps he had tried to find her, and his father had invented an excuse to remove him from the palace. Could Avon be held captive too? Would the Emperor go that far? Her skin crawled at the thought.

She wet her throat with a sip of wine. "He wouldn't leave without me. What have you done with him? Where is he?"

The Patriarch chuckled. "Is there true love between the little witch and the general?"

So much for telling her everything. Valerie didn't bother with an answer. She dug into a leftover pie, figuring that if she couldn't control her fear, at least she could get through this on a full stomach. The Patriarch simply watched her.

It didn't take long for his silence to unnerve her into speaking again.

"Why are you doing this?"

"You remind me of her."

Her?

"Who?"

"A witch." The Patriarch's demeanour completely changed. His voice became wistful, his gaze fixed on someplace far away. "I caught her a long time ago. Welcomed her into my home, gave her everything I had. My sweet, little Mae."

The pastry turned to dry flakes in her mouth. Valerie swallowed. "A witch?"

"She was immensely ungrateful. I showered her with gifts and she refused them. I showed her the light of the Divine and she turned away. She had all these ideas about the rights of her kind, fanciful notions of freedom and independence. She could have had anything she wanted if she had simply obeyed."

"What happened to her?"

"She ran," said the Patriarch, "and I chased. She summoned dragons and sent her followers to war and then, when she had spent all the blood of her people, she put a curse on the land to separate us so that I could never find her again."

Her heart pounded loudly in her ears. "A curse? What curse?"

"You know it. The curse that divides tree and stone. The curse that created a realm apart, that no other magic may touch."

A curse that divided tree and stone… Did he mean the silvertrees and the mercurite? But that was impossible. Maskamere, the realm of the silvertrees, had always stood apart. Unless…

"The curse created Maskamere?" She put down her fork, her meal forgotten. "You're talking about Maska, aren't you? But…"

The original Maskamery people had fled oppression to start a new life in a new land. That much was covered in Maska's Testimonium. When she had read more of Maska's writings in the Book of Shadows, she had found references to the Dragon War and an enemy of Maska. The faith of her people had ensured Maska's victory. But the war had ended over a thousand years ago. The Patriarch could not have been alive then.

Valerie shivered. "You're not the Patriarch. Who are you?"

Forty years ago, Rupert Gideon had visited the Resurrected Monks. Before he became the Patriarch, before he preached the evils of witchcraft, he had sought out sorcery for himself. He had discovered a tomb made of mercurite, carved into the likeness of a man who had lived over a thousand years ago…

"Aha." The Patriarch's eyes gleamed. "You understand. You visited my monastery; you bear the blessing of my stone. There I was resurrected into a new body, to start a new life, as I have done for countless generations. You may know me from the teachings of the Divinity as the Fifth Philosopher, the Man of Truth. But we immortals live many lives. If you wish for another name to call me, try this one: Mithras."

Mithras.

She didn't recognise the name, but it immediately seemed to vibrate with power, even outside the range of the Patriarch's ring. How much truth he was revealing, she didn't know, but she had seen the monastery for herself. She had sensed the Patriarch's power.

And he had given himself another far more troubling name.

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"Immortals? There are more of you?"

"There used to be many," said the Patriarch. "Now there are two."

"Who's the other?"

"The woman I love." For the first time, she thought she saw Mithras in his eyes: an ancient, dark intelligence. "My darling Mae."

"But Maska has been dead for a thousand years."

His laugh was a sibilant hiss. "Really? You have yet to grasp the truth about your queen?"

"The truth?"

She stopped. A horrible sinking feeling came over her. The truth. The conclusion she had failed to come to, because in so doing she would have to admit blasphemy against Maska herself. Only one person ever wielded the power of the goldentree, and that person was always the queen. Maskamere's sole ruler, an unbroken line for a thousand years. She could turn back time. She could cheat death. She could jump into other bodies, wear them like gowns. Why, then, would she ever die?

"No," she whispered. "No, it can't be…"

"Maskamere has one queen." The Patriarch's pale eyes pierced her soul. "Maskamere has always had one queen. For a thousand years, she has tended her walled garden. The silvertrees are not for you. They are for her—to keep her safe. To keep us apart."

It was too much. Her breaths came too shallow, her pulse too quick. "Everything you've done… Turning your people against witchcraft… The war against Maskamere… Tearing down the silvertrees… It was all to get to her, to get to the queen?"

"To bring her back where she belongs. To me."

"You killed so many people."

She said it in despair, not really expecting a response. This man, the Patriarch—Mithras—had started a war and shed the blood of thousands all in pursuit of one woman. In a thousand years, how many lives had he taken? How many had been lost to this ancient enmity?

"Gnats." The Patriarch didn't blink. "The lives of mortals are short and meaningless."

She almost laughed. He sat there in his high chair at his high table, hands tucked into his long white sleeves, tufts of white hair poking out of his cap. He looked like an old man. He looked faintly ridiculous. If one could choose any body, she thought, why not someone young and strong?

"If I'm so insignificant," she said slowly, "then why am I here? What does any of this have to do with me?"

The Patriarch smiled a long, slow smile, then rose from his seat.

She got out of her chair as he approached. The shadows in the room lengthened. The food turned rotten. She had no magic even in the presence of his ring. His foulness overwhelmed it.

"Now that you understand our mission…" The Patriarch leaned in, and she shuddered. He smelled of old sweat and congealed blood. "Allow me to explain the terms of our arrangement."

"I haven't agreed to any of your terms."

"Your consent is not required. I'm almost ready, child, almost ready to go to Maskamere. You will come with me, and you will show me to your queen."

Oh, Maska.

She swallowed. The irony was not lost on her. After their encounter at the goldentree, she had proclaimed Shikra an enemy. She had wanted to kill her. All without knowing that she had declared war on the founder of her country, her faith, the very core of her identity. What was Maskamere without Maska? How could she call herself Maskamery and be an enemy of Maska?

And now the Patriarch wanted her to betray not only her queen, but her faith.

Is this who I am? Is this who I've always been?

Was there anything she wouldn't betray? Did she have any principles at all, any lines she wouldn't cross? She had done so many things she would never have dreamed of. Abandoned her family. Let Markus die. Let Bolebund be razed. Given up Iora. Defied her queen. Chosen the enemy—and she had chosen him, she could no longer deny that—to save her own skin.

And throughout it all she'd maintained the—truth?—fiction?—that she was Maskamery and that her pursuit of power was all in service of her country.

She felt like a loose thread, unravelling. She didn't know what to do.

Valerie let out a shaky breath. "Are you going to kill her?"

"No." He spoke as one might address a child. "No, no, no, of course I shan't kill her. She'll return where she belongs."

"What happens to Maskamere?"

"The land will be reclaimed by the Empire, as it always should have been. Maskamere will become a footnote in the history books, obscure and forgotten."

A culture and people wiped out. Gone forever. She looked at his flat, pale face, the sickening gleam in his eyes, and the fire of defiance stoked in her belly. Even if she had strayed from the queen's path, she was still a child of Maskamere. She could not let the Patriarch win.

Nor would she accept subjugation.

"Do you really think I'm going to let that happen?"

"Well," said the Patriarch softly, "you can resist, of course. Please do. My son is looking forward to breaking you, and I wouldn't like to disappoint him."

"I'll make sure to kill him properly this time," she spat.

He snickered. She backed up against the wall where another of the Gideons' terrible family portraits hung. As he closed in, his magical field swept over her again, and she saw him, Mithras, the ancient sorcerer, like a great hooded serpent rising to its full prominence. His hands settled on her shoulders. He leaned in once more, and she smelled his revolting breath.

"Ignorant child," he whispered. "Repent and obey."

"No."

"Renounce Maska. Repent to the Divine. Swear yourself to me."

"No!"

His fingers tightened, and at the same time the tendrils of his magic squeezed around her throat. She choked. Her breath wouldn't come. Her hands flew to her neck, but there was nothing there, no physical pressure. Only his magic squeezing, coiling, the serpent tightening its hold. Tears filled her eyes. Her vision blurred.

He could kill her. He only had to hold her in his grasp for a little longer. There was nothing she could do, her consciousness already starting to fade…

Then he released her, and she fell gasping to the floor. The Patriarch stepped back, hands clasped, pious once more. She rubbed at her neck and found no mark, but she felt the aftermath of his grip like a phantom pain.

"Sweet girl. I understand your loyalty. Maska led you astray. Do you grasp the essence of the Divine?" He swept out his arms. "It is the ineffable. The ideal. The transcendental nature of our universe."

All of this was gibberish to Valerie. She got up, still catching her breath.

"You will read from the Divinity. You will reflect, learn and correct your ways. You will recite our teachings until you know them by heart."

Betraying the queen wasn't enough for him. He wanted her to live her betrayal, to lose herself completely.

"Like how women are on their last chance for salvation?" She remembered that particular teaching well. "Did you come up with that one? Or was it one of the other four?"

He smiled. "So you have learned something. No, that insight came from a later church leader, Ven of Claymore, who asked why women were such weak, timid, unscrupulous creatures, so far removed from Divine perfection in comparison to men. His conclusion was compelling."

That he could speak such obvious nonsense with a straight face was almost impressive. And yet, she thought, the idea was clever. Not because it bore any relationship with reality, but because of the effect it must have on those who believed it. It taught women that they were worth less than men. It taught them that they had to work harder, strive more, to obey the men around them if they were to have any chance of salvation. It taught them to stay within the bounds that Drakonian society set for them, no matter how narrow or limiting they might be. A woman who stepped out of place risked eternal damnation. A man would always have a second chance.

She thought of Ophelia, how eagerly she wished to fulfil her duty as a good Drakonian wife, how terrified she had been of disobeying her father, and her insides tightened.

This philosophy was not all the work of the man before her, but he would surely take some of the blame. He had used it, she thought, as a means of control. It was working even now, in this room, where he claimed authority as the Church's holy leader and she cowered before him, a lowly courtesan bound to his service.

But she had not grown up with his poisonous teachings. She thanked Maska for one thing at least: she had the words to challenge him.

"We have a saying in Maskamere. A good man wears a leash. Because the rest of you are brutes. Violent, stinking, stupid—"

He backhanded her, and Valerie cried out in shock.

"You're proving my point," she gasped.

The Patriarch sighed in satisfaction. "Oh, I'm delighted. Oh, this brings back memories. I'm quite overcome. You are so very like her."

And with that, finally, an idea struck. "Would you like to see her?"