Witch’s Honour. Jan Siegel

Чтение книги онлайн.

       III

      The hardest thing was being back inside Time. I had spent so long in a dimension where no time passed, where the illusory seasons revolved endlessly in the same circle, never progressing, never changing, where day and darkness were mere variations in the light. I had spent so long—but ‘long’ was a word that did not apply there, for in the realm of the Tree there is no duration. A millennium or a millionth of a second, it is all one. The Tree has grown and grown until it can grow no further, and it is held in stasis, bearing its seedless fruit, bending the space around it as a black hole bends the stuff of the universe. (I know about these things, you see. I have watched them in the spellfire, the witches and wizards of science, poking at the stars.) I glutted myself on the power of the Tree, and was reborn from the power of the river, after she burned me in the pale fire of sorcery. And then I could not go back. I called the birds to me: the blue-banded magpies, the heavy-beaked ravens, the woodpeckers and tree-creepers. I sent them across the worlds to the cave beneath the roots where I and my coven-sister had dwelt, to bring me my herbs and powders, my potions and crystals. I bound tiny waterskins about the necks of the woodpeckers and taught them to tap the bark until it bled sap, and return to me when the vessel was full. The sap of the Tree has a potency I alone have ever learned: from it I can make a draught that will drain individual thought, leaving the intoxicated mind to think whatever I desire. Last, I summoned the great owl, wisest of birds, and told him to find for me the single branch hidden in the cave, wrapped in silk, the branch I had plucked long before with many rituals, and to bear it carefully back. I planted it in my island retreat, fearing it might not root, but the magic was strong in it, and it grew.

      I chose the island because of my coven-sister Sysselore, who lived there once. In those days she was Syrcé the enchantress, young and beautiful, and lost sailors came to her with their lean brown bodies, and she turned them into pigs, and grew thin on a diet of lean pork. I hoped the island would be a place of transition, where I could reaccustom myself to the living world. The sudden racing of Time made me sick, so there were moments when I could not stand, and I would lie down on a bed that seemed to tilt and rock like a speeding carriage on an uneven road. Even when the nausea passed, there was the terror of it, of being trapped in the rush of Now, snatching in vain at seconds, minutes, hours which are gone before you can take hold of them. I could not believe I used to live like this: only the iron of my need and the steel of my will kept me from flight. But as Time moved on, so I became habituated to it.

      There were more people on the island than in ancient days; humans have bred like insects, and the earth is overrun. Many have strange customs: they lie in the sun and go brown like peasants, and the women show their bodies to all men instead of a chosen few. I do not lie in the sun; white skin is the acme of beauty, and I am beautiful again. The fire purged me, the river healed me, and I emerged from the waters of Death as Venus reborn, a Venus of the night, star-pale and shadow-dark. I turn from the sun now, preferring the softer light of the moon, the moon who has always been a friend to witchkind. In the moonlight I am a goddess. But when I look in the mirror I see the old Morgus there still, the power-bloated mountain of flesh not eroded but compressed, constricted into a form of slenderness and beauty. The lissom figure is somehow subtly gross, and the loveliness of my face is like a shifting veil over the face beneath. That realisation fills me with a joy that is not of this earth, for I know that the dark within is strong in me, and beauty alone is a shallow, insipid thing without the power beneath the skin. And sometimes, in that same reflection, I seem to see the Eternal Tree, winding its twig-tendrils and root-tendrils in my hair, and blending its night with the shadows in my eyes. That is the sweetest of all, for with the Tree I am immortal, both human and unhuman, and I can challenge even Azmordis for the throne of the world.

      I left the island after the incident with the man. There would be curiosity and questions, and though I could deal with both I did not wish to be troubled. And so I came home at last, to Britain, which was called Logrèz, the land where I was born and where I will one day rule alone. Let Azmordis flee to the barbarian countries across the Western sea! This was my place, and it will be mine again, until the stars fall. I hid in the cave in Prydwen where Merlin was said to have slept, many centuries ago; though he is not there now. But I had had enough of caves. The entrance was concealed with enchantments older than mine, and in the gloom of that safety I lit the spellfire, and sought a house to suit both queen and witch.

      I had conjured a creature to be my servant, part hag, part kobold; I bought her labour with a bag of storms. When seven times seven years are done, and she is free of me, she will open it and raze the village where she was scorned and stoned, at some remote time in a forgotten past. She does not talk, which pleases me; I know these things because I have seen the pictures in her mind. But she is sharp of ear and eye, adequate at housework and skilled in the kitchen, and the loyalty that I have purchased is mine absolutely. Her meaningless vengeance binds her to me more surely than any spell. And I have Nehemet, Nehemet the goblin-cat, who was not conjured but came to me, there on the island, as if she had been waiting. Who she is, or what she is, I do not know. Her name came with her, spoken clearly into my thought, though she has never spoken again. Goblin-cats are rare; according to one legend they were the pets of the king of the Underworld, losing their fur because they did not need it in the heat from the pits of Hell. But Nehemet is no mere animal: СКАЧАТЬ