The Last Days of Magic (30 page)

“We dreamed of Ireland again,” said the Grande Sorcière, selecting a pastry.

“Have you divined meaning in these dreams, Your Highness?” asked Joanna.

“Our spies in England tell Us the Vatican has sponsored a full-scale invasion of Ireland for Richard.”

“They could not possibly succeed.”

“Probably not. But in war there is always opportunity. We must be vigilant for an opening to extend Our influence into England. Or even, given some weakening in their veil, Ireland itself. That is what the dream is telling Us.”

The women paused as a platter of cinnamon-custard tarts was added to the table.

“Our coven in Norway grows powerful within their court,” the Grande Sorcière continued. “However, Our trip there showed Us that the Nephilim are almost all gone. The Vatican has done too good a job killing them off. It will not be the rich pickings We had hoped. Ireland would be a true prize. If Richard fails, We must find some other channel into that magical land, while there is still magic there to be taken.”

“Just imagine the force of a spell powered by the fat of a pure-blood
Sidhe infant,” mused Joanna. “I would keep a clutch of their women just to make them.”

“That is but a minor part of what We would gain,” said the Grande Sorcière. “You must think in much greater terms. We would force the Sidhe to reveal the secrets of their enchantments and their knowledge of using Ardor. We would become powerful without equal.”

It was through patience that the High Coven had been built. Bit by bit, king by king, it gained control of the royal family, then the French Church, then the country, building an unassailable power base for the good of the bloodline. But her patience was being tested. Already she had grown the High Coven more than any since its founder, and she hungered to add subjugation of the Sidhe to her legacy.

Cries of “Yes! Oh, yes, keep polishing,” came from Charles, interrupting her thoughts. The Grande Sorcière cast an irritated look at Valentina, who smiled and gave one of her shrugs from the corner. In a few more strokes, Charles ejaculated into her hand, then ran out the door yelling, “We are completely clear! We are clear!” His shouts faded down the hallway. Valentina scraped the royal semen off her hand into a vial and sealed it. While spells calling for the seed of a king tended to be more flash than substance, it was always handy to have an ample supply available. Valentina wiped her hand on her skirt and joined them at the table, helping herself to the pastries.

“Valentina.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Help Joanna gather more death flames. We may have need of them.”

“Certainly.” Valentina licked custard off her finger. “It is never hard to find people to burn.”

S
HORTLY
AFTER
SUNRISE
, in a forested valley of the Wicklow Mountains in east Ireland, an old Celt trudged up the trail grumbling to himself about Sidhe in general and Sidhe witches in particular. He led
a black bull by a rope tied around its neck, the only bull he had left, the other having been taken by wolves the previous winter. Now it was to be killed for nothing more than a single Taghairm divination ritual, which required the practitioner to be wrapped in the hide of a freshly skinned bull. But he would have to be witless to turn down a request from a Sidhe witch, especially one from the Adhene clan, and the farmer did not consider himself witless.
A request my arse,
he thought as he spat on the ground.
It was an order.
Then he looked about to make sure the witch had not seen him being disrespectful. An Adhene witch in her green-and-brown paint could be hard to spot in these woods.

. . . . .

A brown hawk soared along the course of the rain swollen river Dargle as it flowed from the eastern slope of Mount Djouce. With a loud screech, she swooped over the crest of the four-hundred-foot cliff the river tumbled down. She circled once and then flapped her descent toward a clearing along the base of the waterfall. The hawk’s talons reached for the ground, touched, leaving Rhoswen walking to absorb the momentum of her hawk form.

Rhoswen searched along the river’s edge until she found a slender piece of slate and a granite rock the size of her fist. Using the granite, she chipped the slate and within a few minutes created a sharp, jagged edge.

The old Celt approached, removing his hat. He held the bull’s rope in one hand while he worried the hat in his other. Somewhat gruffly he said, “Aren’t you required to use a wild bull for Taghairm?”

“Let go of the rope,” Rhoswen ordered.

The man immediately obeyed.

“There, now he is wild.”

Then Rhoswen addressed the bull. “Your master is unhappy. I must wrap myself in your skin, but that would leave him without your services for his cows. Will you consider just loaning me your skin?”

The bull craned its neck and let out a bellow.

“I hope your master remembers what you have done for him today.”

The bull snorted.

“Do not worry, I will shed my own blood so you do not have to.” Rhoswen pulled the flint blade across her palm, and a narrow stream of blood splattered on the ground. She smeared her hand across the bull’s neck, leaving a red trail, then pressed her palm between its eyes.

She was looking out of the bull’s eyes. There was no Sidhe witch standing in the clearing, only an old man with an astonished face. She gazed into the spray from the waterfall, lit with sunlight diffused through thin clouds. White mist filled her vision. She focused on her love for her homeland, and the core of the mist thickened into the shape of Ireland. She asked four questions: When will the English attack? What magical forces aid them? How can the Sidhe stop it? Will Aisling be able to help?

Sections of mist began to solidify and form not one but several shapes. Before they became identifiable, the mist faded from the lower part of her vision as a gust of black wind scattered it from the upper part. Soon only one strand of light was left, squirming like an injured serpent while it illuminated a solitary three-leaf clover, which she, as the bull, ate.

Rhoswen stood again in the clearing, squeezing her fist tight to stop the flow of blood. “The answer to a question I did not ask, few answers to the ones I did,” she said to the bull. “I do not know whether to thank you or skin you. Go back to your cows.”

The old man walked backward bowing, repeating, “Thank you! Thank you!” He turned and fled, leading his spared animal away.

Rhoswen wondered what she was going to tell her father, King Fearghal. Little had been revealed that would help him prepare the Middle Kingdom. Only that there was more than one threat, that many sources were working to blind foresight of how things would
unfold, and that there was no way to predict if the outcome would be good or bad for the Sidhe.

There had been no answers, not even hints, about Aisling, which was not surprising given her transitory state. Aisling’s fate was in her own hands—and perhaps the fate of Ireland, at least in the short term.

Rhoswen walked along the river, contemplating the signs. The final vision—the one of her consuming a three-leaf clover illuminated by a strand of light in the form of an injured serpent—appeared to signify that if the Morrígna was ever to fully return, she, Rhoswen, must hold space for the Goddess, but that it would not be an easy task. And there had been no signs to indicate how long this might take—one year, one hundred years, one thousand years—if the Morrígna returned at all.

She had spent her young life, barely two centuries, absorbed in her studies of Sidhe enchantments, and humans were largely a mystery to her. But it did not take divination for her to see that foreign humans would be Ireland’s greatest threat over time. If the Morrígna was sending her a message, was truly giving her a mission that might last a millennium, then she needed to learn more about human ways. Maybe it was time, she thought, to take a human mate, or at least one who was half human.

17

The ark was of small compass, but yet even there Ham [Noah’s son] preserved his book detailing the arts of magic and idolatry [taught him by Enoch].

—Herbert de Losinga, the first bishop of Norwich (1119)

Before his death, he [Enoch] entrusted it [Book of Raziel] to Shem and Ham, and they in turn to Abraham. From Abraham it descended through Jacob, Levi, Moses, and Joshua to Solomon, who learnt all his wisdom from it, and his skill in the healing art, and also his mastery over the demons.

—Book of Jubilees (circa 100 BCE), Dead Sea Scrolls

Rome, the Papal States

February 1393

J
ordan pushed through the tempest. Rain driving horizontally stung his face. Mud sucked at his boots, making each step increasingly difficult, as the ashes of Christians burned on this spot in Nero’s Circus attempted to pull him down to join them in the earth of Rome. Lightning lit the world of stark stone temples around him. Darkness returned. Lightning crashed against it; dark pushed back, faster and faster until light and dark existed together, spinning around him. An ancient obelisk of red granite rose behind one of the Christian temples. Lightning snaked from the gilt ball on top and struck his black armor. White fire crawled across its engraved surface, and, to his dismay, his armor began to melt away.

“Are you all right, Marshal Jordan?” asked the legate.

Jordan blinked. He was standing ankle-deep in mud on a clear, windless February morning. Beside him stood the legate, his robes gathered up in both hands, almost to his knees, with a quizzical look on his face.

“I’m fine, just . . . breakfast must have disagreed with my stomach.”

The legate gestured toward a shallow ditch on the edge of St. Peter’s Square where men and women were squatting to relieve themselves. “If you need to empty your bowels, hurry. The VRS are not men you want to keep waiting.”

“No. I’ll be all right.”

They continued trudging through the mud, weaving between stalls that sold everything from dubious religious artifacts for plague protection to rapidly decaying pig heads for soup. Bordering the square to the west stood St. Peter’s Basilica, built over the Tomb of the Apostle by Emperor Constantine in 327 but abandoned while Avignon held the papacy. Clearly in disrepair, its mildew-speckled wooden roof sagged in several places. Since the papacy had been restored to Rome fifteen years earlier, the Vatican had been focused on using its new military force to expand its control in Europe, leaving few funds for restoration. Though Jordan did notice workmen in one corner of the square starting to lay paving stones.

Lurking just to the right of the basilica was a small fortress built two centuries earlier by Pope Innocent III, now the headquarters of the VRS League and residing place of the Ring of Solomon.

Jordan glanced up at the fortress, his destination, and a gale buffeted his soul, lightning flashed in his consciousness, and he understood why Najia had been scared for him, scared of the Ring, scared that he would not leave Innocent’s fortress alive. She had spent the night weaving a protective enchantment about him, an intricate spell known as black armor.