Witch’s Honour

‘A great honour,’ the goblin repeated. ‘She knows you are a powerful witch, but she believes you mean no harm to her and her people. And me,’ he added, throwing her an apprehensive glance and clutching his hat-brim for support.

‘Of course not,’ said Fern. ‘I would prefer not to harm anyone.’ Will, noting the language of diplomacy, thought the statement held an element of warning, but Skuldunder appeared tentatively relieved. ‘Have a glass of wine,’ she continued. ‘Is there something I can do for the queen?’

‘It is she who has sent me to help you,’ the goblin declared. ‘She says she will overlook the matter of the bodkin—’

‘Bodkin?’ Fern frowned. ‘Oh—the spear.’

The goblin took a wary mouthful of Chardonnay. ‘There is Trouble,’ he announced, giving the word an audible capital T. ‘We have heard of another witch, perhaps more powerful than yourself. We think she is new to this country. She is performing great magics, sorcery of a kind beyond our ken. The queen felt you should know of this.’

‘The queen is wise,’ Fern said, adding, in an aside to Will: ‘It may be nothing. Some street-witch playing games with fireworks, or an old woman who looked at Mabb sideways, and gave her a spot on her nose. All the same…’ She turned back to the goblin. ‘Does she have a name, this witch?’

‘We do not know it,’ said Skuldunder.

‘An address?’

‘She has taken over a mansion north of this city. Already she has done great evil there. It was the property of a human family who died out years ago, and few mortals came to trouble it, leaving it to the ghosts and lesser creatures of the otherworld. But she made a terrible spell to purge it, and now they are all gone, and the only beings who dwell there are those who have come in her train.’

‘An exorcism,’ said Fern.

‘Ethnic cleansing,’ said Will.

‘Exorcism is not necessarily terrible,’ Fern elaborated. ‘It shows lost spirits how to pass the Gate: that is all.’

But Skuldunder was shaking his head and kneading his hat-brim with nervous fingers. ‘No—no—it wasn’t like that. We think she—she opened the abyss. They were all sucked through—all of them. Into nothingness …’ He was trembling visibly. ‘Only the house-goblin escaped. He is very old, and not as brave and cunning as those of us who live wild, but he did well. He fled from the house and hid in a place where the old magic lingers. Her minions could not find him there. We don’t know how long he was in hiding; he could not tell us. Some of the queen’s folk came across him, when they were hunting toads. He must have wandered a fair way from his hiding place by then.’

‘The name of the house?’ asked Fern.

Skuldunder frowned. ‘It was a name of rooks,’ he said. ‘Rooks and oak-trees. Roake House…something like that.’

‘And all we know about this witch is what the house-goblin has told you?’

‘Yes…But he is very frightened. He did not want to leave the house, and now he is lost and confused, even among his own people. Truly, he has seen dreadful things.’

‘House-goblins frighten easily,’ said Fern. ‘Most of them, anyway. Tell the queen…tell the queen I would like to question him myself. This matter of another witch could be important; our information must be carefully sifted. Since this is such a serious issue, perhaps the queen would honour me with her presence here. Then we could consider the problem together.’

‘Here?’ said Skuldunder. ‘The queen?’

‘She would be my most royal guest,’ said Fern—implying, Will thought, that lesser royalty came to her flat on a regular basis.

‘I will ask her,’ Skuldunder said doubtfully. He retreated towards the window, fading into a pattern of shadows.

‘Well?’ Will inquired.

‘It’s probably nothing,’ Fern conceded. ‘A storm in an acorn-cup. I’m just curious to meet Mabb. Ragginbone is too aloof. Even a witch needs friends.’

‘Especially a witch,’ said her brother.

* * *

‘She reminds me of another case I had,’ said the new doctor. The medical team who briefed Kaspar Walgrim normally varied little, but every so often they would call for a second opinion, and a third, and a fourth, and another cheque would wing its way towards the clinical bank balance. The doctors accepted advice to prove they were not rigid or hidebound; Walgrim needed both the input of wisdom and the output of cheques to prove he was doing something. The regularity of his attendance had fallen with the passage of time; now, he came only once a fortnight, or once a month. ‘What is the point?’ he said to his son. ‘She doesn’t know we’re here.’ But Lucas was still there, night after night, though his days were filled with a feverish intensity of work which he hoped might divert his mind if not his heart. He was on hand when the new doctor dropped in—not a fifth opinion so much as an interested party, an expert in coma cases to whom Dana was a novelty specimen. At the remark, which was addressed to the colleague accompanying him, something in Lucas’ brain switched on to alert.

‘It was when I was up in Yorkshire,’ the doctor continued. ‘Another girl—a bit older than this one, but not much. I don’t know if that’s significant. She had a history of what looked like psychosomatic symptoms, and the case itself had several bizarre features…However, there’s nothing like that here. It just seems to have started in the same way: a night out, too much to drink, and then total blackout. Slowed heart-rate—’ he lifted an eyelid ‘—eyes turned up. No known allergies?’

‘None,’ said the other.

‘No physical injury?’

‘A minor contusion on the head. Nothing serious. Her skull is normal. Erm…this is her brother.’

‘Lucas Walgrim,’ he introduced himself, extending a hand. ‘What happened to the girl in Yorkshire?’

‘She revived. Very suddenly. After about a week.’ For no obvious reason, the doctor looked uncomfortable. ‘She discharged herself the same day.’

‘The same day?’ His fellow medic was startled.

The new doctor shrugged. ‘It was an odd business. One moment, barely alive; the next, sitting up, throwing her weight around, getting out of bed. I believe the first thing she did was to dump her fiancé. Most people would have given themselves a couple of days to think it over, but not her. She was…difficult.’

I like her already, thought Lucas. I want Dana up and about, being difficult with doctors.

He said: ‘I’d like to talk to that girl.’

‘You know that’s not possible. Patient confidentiality.’

‘You’ve already breached that confidentiality,’ Lucas pointed out, his manner honed to an edge in backrooms and boardrooms. ‘You’ve discussed various aspects of her case with someone outside your profession. I want to talk to her. Arrange it.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s out of the question.’

His colleague interceded with a smoothness doubtless oiled by the size and regularity of the Walgrim cheques. ‘Perhaps we can deal with this another way. If my associate were to contact the patient in question and explain the position, giving her your name and number, I’m sure—under the circumstances—she would be willing to get in touch with you. Although I’m afraid she won’t be of much help. The patient rarely understands the illness: that’s why they come—’

‘Thank you,’ Lucas cut in. ‘I’d be grateful if you would do that. I’ll expect to hear something shortly.’

The new doctor looked unconvinced, but was hustled from the room. Lucas turned back to his sister, but his attention was no longer focused on her. Something in his posture had changed: his body was rigid, taut as wire, the anticipation strong in him, filling all his thoughts. Suddenly his mind slipped; he was in a time outside Time, and the figure in the bed, though still white and immobile, was not that of Dana. Other images crowded in on him, flickering through his brain so fast he could not pin them down: a mass of leaves, shuddering in an unnatural wind—what looked like a disembodied head—more leaves—grey fields—water falling into a basin of stone —horns—fire—and then the figure again, but now her breathing had quickened, and her eyelids lifted, and he saw she was the second girl in his dream of weeks before, a girl sharp and bright as steel, with a glint of true green in her eyes. And then the world jolted back into place, and there in the bed was Dana, and his heart hammered as if he had been running.

‘What is happening to me?’ he whispered, and inside his head a voice that was almost—but not quite—a part of his thought answered him. It is the Gift. Don’t fear it. Don’t fight it. It will guide you.

The Gift. In Atlantis long ago the aura of the Lodestone had infected mortal men, endowing the earthly with unearthly powers. The Lodestone was broken and Atlantis sank beneath the waves, but the mutant gene had already spread throughout the world, and it was passed on, dominant, often dormant, warping all who abused it. They were called the Gifted, Prospero’s Children, the Crooked Ones, the Accursed. Lucas did not understand what had altered him but he felt its influence growing, opening his vision on new dimensions, twisting his thought. But this was the way to restore his sister, the way to redemption. There was no other road.

It was one in the morning before he left the nursing home, walking towards his Knightsbridge flat as if indifferent to the distance and the hour, until a taxi waylaid him, and persuaded him to accept a ride.

Fern was in her office about a week later when the call came in. She worked for a PR company in Wardour Street with a short list of stressed-out employees and a long list of lucrative and temperamental clients. She had recently risen to a directorship, partly because of her diplomatic skills with the aforementioned clientèle. When she picked up the phone she was in a meeting to discuss the launch of Woof!, a new glossy magazine on celebrity pets, and it was a few minutes before she absorbed what the call was about. ‘Sorry? Say that again? You want me to…No, I don’t think we should have Coquette, she goes to absolutely everything these days, it’ll be news if we can keep her out…His sister? And who’s he?…Sushi’s always reliable, provided we get the best…Sorry?’ By the end of a confused conversation, she found she had written down a name and number with only the haziest idea of why.

It was several days before she got around to using them.

‘Hello? I’d like to speak to Lucas Walgrim. Fern Capel…’

Presently, a male voice said rather brusquely: ‘Miss Capel? I’m afraid I—’

‘I understood you wanted me to call you,’ Fern said with frigid courtesy. ‘A clinic in Yorkshire where I spent a brief stay a couple of years ago got in touch with me. I was a coma patient there. They said you had a sister in a similar condition…’