Witchfall (34 page)

The rider looked to be a young man, bloodied and bruised, his clothing torn, almost slipping off the horse as the scared animal approached the house at a canter.

Not caring that the servants might be watching, I lifted a hand and spoke a few soothing words under my breath. The horse reared up, then stopped before me, pawing the ground and neighing frantically.

I looked up at the barely conscious rider. Even through the cuts and bruising, I could see who it was.

‘Richard?’ My brother came running to help him down from the saddle. ‘Sweet Lord, your face. What happened to you?’

Collapsing onto his knees before me, Richard looked up at me. I could see the apology in his battered face. ‘Marcus Dent has taken Alejandro,’ he gasped, then drew a few more shuddering breaths before continuing. ‘Forgive me, we were both so intent on keeping the princess safe from harm that it did not occur to us that Dent would take one of us instead.
He lured Alejandro out of the grounds at Hatfield, sending a note which seemed to be from you. I told Alejandro not to go, that it was a trap, but he would not listen to reason. I decided to go with him, but they took us easily in the end. Fell on us at dusk from behind, like the cowards they are.’

My brother swore an oath, still steadying the frightened horse. ‘Those villains!’

‘Go on.’ I looked at Richard steadily. If he told me Alejandro was dead, I would not long survive my betrothed, but would ride out and kill Marcus Dent with my own bare hands if necessary. ‘What happened then? Tell me everything.’

‘Dent took us both prisoner and brought us to a tower he has built at the base of a wooded ravine, some ten miles north-west of here. He is holding Alejandro there, he says, and will kill him if you do not give yourself up to him by sundown tomorrow. That was the message I was to bring you. That, and my face.’ He spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground at my feet. ‘I was to say your betrothed would look like this before he dies. Dent will not spare him pain, in other words, if you should fail to arrive.’

‘How many men does he have?’ my father asked.

I was startled, for I had not seen him come out of the house. ‘Father, please go back into the house, this is not your battle,’ I said urgently. ‘Dent will kill you.’

‘It is you he wishes to kill, Meg,’ my father pointed out sharply, then helped Richard to his feet. ‘Come inside, good
sir, and let your wounds be tended by my servants. Then we must talk. This message you bear is for me and my son, I believe. My daughter will not be stirring from this place, however many riders come from Dent and his infernal tower.’

I stared. ‘Wait,’ I insisted. ‘You . . . you knew of this tower Dent has built?’

My father shrugged. ‘The whole county knows. Dent’s tower is famous here. He started building it this spring, and paid his labourers well over the odds for it to be finished before winter set in. A monstrosity, by all accounts, built of rough-hewn stone and set in barren countryside, with only one habitable chamber.’ He frowned, seeing my stunned expression. ‘Why, is this tower of some importance? I thought it nothing but further evidence of Dent’s madness.’

Was I the last in Oxfordshire to know that the desolate tower from my vision was real? I looked from him to Richard, whose ironic glance told me he at least understood my despair and astonishment. Then I shook my head. ‘It does not matter,’ I managed to reassure him.

Nor did it matter, for all it meant was that this moment was fated, that the malevolent stars had collided to bring me to this day, this hour, when I would have to give up my life in exchange for my beloved’s. If I had known of the tower’s existence earlier, I might have been tempted to go there and destroy it, or Dent himself.

Instead, I had guessed the danger we stood in, yet had foolishly done nothing to prevent it.

I laughed, and saw them look at me strangely. ‘Yes, let’s get you inside, Richard,’ I agreed, to hide my sudden exhilaration. ‘I shall have warm water brought for your cuts, and a bedchamber prepared so you can rest.’

‘Thank you,’ he murmured through his cut lip, but I knew Richard was not fooled by my calm demeanour. He knew what I intended to do, and with any luck he would support me in my plan.

I did not want my father and brother to see how excited and nervous I was. For weeks now I had barely been alive, lost in some dreary wilderness of my own making, drifting from one day to the next, overseeing the household, chiding the servants for laziness, labelling bottles, collecting and storing nuts for winter, and mending the ancient tapestries in the hall.

Now at last something had happened. Alejandro needed me. The moment I had been expecting had finally arrived, clear as a trumpet call to battle after a long night of waiting.

After settling Richard in a suitably comfortable chamber, and ensuring that his cuts had been tended with a special tincture of my own making, I hurried to my room and drew out the magickal books from their hiding place beneath my mattress. I had barely looked at them since coming home, preferring to hide my witchcraft from my disapproving father. But now I went hunting for a spell within their pages, turning from one book to the other in despair, knowing I needed a spell that would give me the advantage in a last fight against Marcus Dent.

But Dent was going to cut off my head, I reminded myself, and sat staring down at the untidy black scrawl in my own spell book.

There could be no spell to protect against decapitation, surely?

It was dark now. The moon mocked me through the window, round as a silver coin, shedding light across the icy grounds of Lytton Park. I suddenly wished my aunt was there to advise me, for she had always known the answers to my questions, the right spells to choose, and which to sidestep.

If only I could sidestep Dent’s axe.

I closed my eyes, remembering that last vision, how the axe had flashed down and then . . . nothing.

But that had been a magickal death, a death within my vision which had nearly taken me on this earth too. Would a genuine death by the axe be instantaneous too, or would there be any pain? What if the axe did not quite connect properly and my neck was only half separated from my head? I had heard of such botched decapitations, women staggering about in agony while the executioner tried to catch them, their bloodied necks gushing blood, and men whose gristly necks were so tough they had to be sawn off by the headsman with a short knife, for the axe had only done half its job.

Shuddering, I searched more slowly through the pages of my books, desperate to find something,
anything
, that might allow me to offer myself to Marcus Dent and his axe in
Alejandro’s place – yet still survive the blow which must inevitably follow.

A tiny sound outside my door brought me upright, suddenly nervous. Someone was moving about on the landing. I could see a shadow passing back and forth under the door.

As quietly as I could, I pushed my magickal books back under my mattress, then crept to the door. With one ear pressed to the wood, I could hear muttering outside, a strange low chanting that reminded me of . . .

Furious, I threw open the door and stared at Richard. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I demanded.

He took a wary step backwards into a tiny candlelit circle he had scratched out on the floorboards, but did not stop his chanting. His hand passed to and fro before my door, sealing it with the nine-fold charm I recognized from that night in the wood, one of the unbreakable spells to force me to remain in my room until I was released.

I threw up my hand, and met an impenetrable barrier. Invisible, but as strong as a brick wall.

‘How dare you? Release me at once!’

‘It’s for your own good, Meg,’ he told me, then finished the charm, I ran through a number of possible spells to dissolve it, but even as I cried out my counterspells, I knew there was little point. Richard had been secretly laying this charm for some minutes while I was reading inside, oblivious to his spell, and it was already too late to break it.

I was well and truly imprisoned in my room.

‘William!’ I called, throwing as much power into my voice as I could, and heard no sound from below. ‘Father!’

‘They will not come,’ he said calmly. ‘I told them the spell I had to perform, and they both agreed it is the only thing to do.’

‘Why do this?’ I asked in disbelief as he knelt to rub out the circle and pinch out the ceremonial candles. My fists clenched, my nails biting into my own palms. Had he no mercy? No pity in his heart? ‘You want Alejandro to die? Is that it?’

He looked up at me angrily, his cut face still swollen from the beating he had received at the hands of Dent’s men. ‘You don’t know much, do you?’

‘What does that mean?”

He had started winding the knotted cord around his wrist that he had used to perform the charm. He threw it down, his near-black eyes spat with fury. ‘It was Alejandro who told me to do this. On the journey to the tower, when he realized what Dent was planning, he told me that if I got the chance, I should seal you in your room until after the time had come for him to die.’ His voice seethed with bitterness. ‘I know this will make you hate me even more than before. But I swore I’d do it, and I have. You only have another day to wait, until sundown tomorrow, and then I can release you. Alejandro will be dead by then, and William and I will take you away from here. Somewhere safe where Dent will never
find you. Then we will put about the rumour of your death.’

‘What?’

Richard’s face was grim. ‘Dent believes you to be the witch who is destined to kill him, so he will never stop his pursuit while he thinks you are alive. One day I will find a way to kill him. But until then, this is what we must do to keep you safe.’

I stared at him, hating him as he had predicted. ‘I am not worth all this trouble,’ I said coldly. ‘Just let me go to Dent and get it over with. My death will make things easier for everyone.’

‘Oh yes, that’s true,’ Richard agreed, his smile twisted. ‘Hold on while I say the spell to release you. No, wait, perhaps I should not allow a talented witch to go needlessly to her death.’

‘I am not talented,’ I threw at him wretchedly, and slammed both fists against his invisible barrier, angrily aware that I was unable to punch so much as the smallest hole in it. ‘I am a fraud, Richard. I am no witch. I no longer study the magickal texts, I say no spells . . . I can barely light a fire with my power these days. Let me go, it is Alejandro who must be saved. He is worth ten of me. Do you not see that?’

‘No, I do not see that,’ Richard said violently, and came close to me, though unable to touch me through the barrier his spell had erected. ‘You’re a fool, Meg Lytton.’

‘A fool?’ I repeated, staring into those black, black eyes.

‘Do you not know that I love you?’

My lips parted, but for a moment I could not speak. ‘You . . . love me?’

‘I love you. That is why I was glad to agree to Alejandro’s plan. That is why I will keep you here until your betrothed is dead. Because I love you, and even though I know you feel nothing for me, perhaps one day . . .’

‘Never.’

He hesitated. ‘Never?’

‘Never.’ My body was numb with shock as I watched him retreat. He loved me? Richard loved me? I must indeed be a fool, for I had not seen that coming. ‘You think I could ever love a man who had allowed Alejandro to go alone to his death?’

Richard folded his arms, his face tense, looking away from my expression of contempt. ‘Hate me, then. But I shall keep my word to Alejandro. I shall not let you go until at least tomorrow evening, once the hour is past when you were to meet Marcus Dent.’

‘So be it,’ I said with pretended calm, and stepped back into my room, closing the door on him.

There I stood a moment, my head down, struggling to control my fury. It would do me no good to lose my temper here. What I needed was to find a spell to break Richard’s, and that would require a clear mind and an even spirit, not these cloudy batterings of anger.

I knelt, taking out my magickal books again and began to read. Slowly my head cleared. I had one night and a day
to find a solution, and this time I knew what I was looking for.

I sat by the window in my sealed chamber the next afternoon, looking above the trees to the flushed clouds in the west and thinking longingly of Alejandro. Was he in pain? Had he steeled himself for death in my place? It must irk him terribly to meet his death in such an ignominious manner, dying at the hands of Marcus Dent and not in battle, not in some glorious charge against the enemies of his people. How brave he was. And how unutterably stupid. Alejandro knew I was the only one with the power to confront Marcus Dent. Yet instead of allowing events to unfold, he had instructed Richard to have me sealed magickally in my chamber until it was too late to save him.

I smiled softly. ‘Fool,’ I murmured, and cherished that word on my tongue. ‘My lovely fool.’

I would rescue him from Marcus Dent tonight or die in the attempt. It was as simple as that.

The time had come. I stood and centred myself in the room, my hands spread open to my sides. I lowered my head and called on my aunt’s spirit to help me. This would be one of the hardest spells I had ever worked. Indeed, I had never attempted anything even remotely like this before. But then, I had never summoned a dead King before, yet I had managed that. With Richard’s help, it was true. But he would hardly help me with this spell – escaping his own – so I
would have to find the strength alone. I only hoped it would be enough. For my failure would mean Alejandro’s death.

‘
Diripe!
’ I called out forcefully in Latin, ordering the very fabric of the house to tear itself apart, and lifted both hands towards the frame of my window.

The thick leaded glass jerked in its frame, the wooden shutters rattled uneasily. But nothing happened.

I leaned against the bricks and timber of my bedchamber wall with the full weight of my mind, calling the word aloud again. ‘
Diripe!
’

Gently, with infinitesimal slowness, one of the timbers began to move. It shuddered against the dried wattle and daub that held it, then pulled away from the wall with a deep grinding sound. I watched in silent amazement, my hands still spread out towards the window, as another timber loosened itself from its moorings, then jerked free. A brick from the nearby fireplace began to rock, then another, then both were loose, spinning gracefully though the air towards me. I directed them away from my body without difficulty, watching them glide past me to land on the floor with slight creakings and groanings, then turned my attention to the window itself. This was more stubborn. It rattled and shook against its frame, then suddenly cracked. The pieces blew outwards into space with a noise like a bucket of water crashing into a deep well, then at last the whole wall beneath it followed, timbers floating away to the left and right of me, masonry dragging itself free.