The Black Palace Page 12

  Hava walked around the cemetery wall, came across a blocked entrance gate, and found it easy enough to bypass. Once inside, she felt haunted by an immediate solemnity. The tombstones crowded and leaned on each other, far too many and too close to have single bodies buried under them, and they were worn to namelessness by the years. Their stone surfaces were pitted, and thin layers of moss highlighted their designs. Scattered trees and nearby towers further huddled over the cemetery, and leaves blanketed the carpet of black soil. It was no House of Limestone, but it felt something like home. The place was perfect for calling Witches of Endor.

  Hava found a headstone that was absolutely free of name and symbol, one that the weather had wiped blank, and she took the snub-end of a candle from a nearby stone to set on this one. She began the process. She lit it with the plastic lighter and let it burn until the wax pooled around the wick. Then she took a nearby twig and lit its end by the flame. She spit on the candle flame until it was out, and then she lit it again with the twig. She lit a new twig by its flame. And then she extinguished the candle again, but this time with the blood from a prick on her finger that she made with the tip of Nachash’s tail. Then she relit the candle a final time.

  That would do it. It would have been enough to get a Witch of Endor to look this way with a flame merely relit from spittle on a nameless headstone, but this flame, relit a third time from blood, would seem to burn in reflection against the low clouds like a thousand headlights, at least to the eyes of a Witch of Endor. It was only a matter of waiting for one to come.

  Hava sat leaning against the tombstone and petted Nachash on his bulbous belly while she waited, and sooner than she had expected, a crow came and perched on a branch of one of the cemetery trees. It watched her with intelligence, scouting the scene. She made sure it saw her watching it back, each of them being used to spotting the look of another witch’s servant, and in a short while it cawed and flew away.

  And then they came. They moved like shadows and brushed their white fingers across the headstones.

  Hava stayed low and peeked. She saw them, three women, each in simple black robes and veils, the dresses of old-world mourning.

  Hava helped Nachash hide. He curled high around her boot, mostly out of sight. Then she stood.

  The women in robes kept weaving through the tombstones toward her, not the least paused by Hava’s suddenly making herself apparent. They already knew she was here.

  Hava would wait for them to speak first. If they were Witches of Endor, they would begin with the assumption that this was business. They would assume that a cunning woman or hedge-witch of some kind in some herbal shop in the city would have told her how to call for them, and that they were here to discuss which of the dead she wished to speak with, and what was the most she could afford to lose as a price. This was what they did for a living. But Hava knew that they would be surprised when she told them whom she had been in service to, how she had gotten here, and what kind of help she wanted from them.

  And if these women were not Witches of Endor, but from some other coven that was also called by such signals, Hava only now realized she might be in trouble. She had never dealt with any witch beyond the coven of Endor unless it had been in the presence and protection of Ziggurat.

  The three women stopped near her. Hava could not see their faces through the black lace of their veils. They wore jingling bracelets but no rings. One of them greeted her in Czech.

  Hava returned the greeting in her native tongue, hoping they would know it, for it was not only Ziggurat’s too but also the language of Endor.

  They immediately understood and joined the tongue, saying, “You wish to speak with the dead, young lady?”

  They were Witches of Endor for certain. Hava felt relieved. She said, “I need your help, but not to speak to the dead. I was a maidservant to Ziggurat, an ancient Witch of Endor. We lived far from here, in Qumran, in the House of Limestone. Ziggurat has been betrayed and murdered this night, and I alone escaped.”

  The witches looked at each other without words in just the surprise that Hava knew they would have. It looked like things were going according to plan. Then one of them said to her, “You are the one named Seph?”

  Hava felt as though the ground suddenly dropped away, as if she were plunged again in that rushing water. And she knew her face revealed her shock, but she could not help it. She did not know what this could mean. She did not know how they would know Seph’s name at all unless they were somehow involved in her plotted betrayal. And she feared the enormity of that betrayal if even witches in far off Prague were part of it.

  She thought for only a moment that maybe they had simply heard news. It was possible that these witches had somehow gotten word of what had happened, news that Seph had betrayed Ziggurat and helped Witchfinders enter the Black Palace. But if they had heard what Seph had done, they would have heard that Seph had been killed justly by one named Hava. No, they were not on Ziggurat’s side, not on Hava’s side. They were conspirators.

  She did not know what to do. She did not know much at all anymore. At the very least she knew that she could no longer hope for help from them, and she could not be rid of them now. It was too late to run and fend for herself in the city, and too late to pretend she was some uninitiated girl hoping to speak to a dead loved one. She was in the clutches of three witches who meant her harm if they only knew that she was not Seph. That was all she knew, so that was all she had, so she would use it. Hava said to them, “Yes, I am Seph.”

  “Why did you not meet La Voisin as appointed? You are late, and she is wroth. The Malandanti have conscripted many of us to seek you, and they have sent witches and wolves into the depths to search for you. They are in dark moods indeed, and it is fortunate that we found you before they did. La Voisin is already the new queen of the Black Palace, and there is word that she will be more. Tell us now and tell us true while there is still time: have you betrayed her?”

  So it was in fact the Malandanti who Seph had conspired with, as Hava had already guessed. She certainly knew of them, the Malandanti, the coven that had made itself the ruling class of the witches generations ago, but she did not know the name La Voisin. She still couldn’t conceive of why they had wanted poor Ziggurat dead or why they helped Witchfinders, but they were known for their ruthlessness and cruelty. No other coven of witches kept as many prisoners or cursed as many men. Maybe these three Witches of Endor could help after all if they, like many other creatures in the world, had no love for the Malandanti. She would test their sympathy with caution. She said, “No, I have not betrayed her. But I fear the Malandanti have betrayed us. They have betrayed their fellow witches. And we cannot trust them, so now I need your help.”

  “Have you the artifact they seek?”

  Hava didn’t know what object they meant, but she could not ask them without revealing her lie. Maybe there was some amulet or weapon the Malandanti were waiting for Seph to deliver. Maybe they meant Ziggurat’s ring, though it couldn’t occur to Hava how that would matter to La Voisin, an unneeded thing if she already wore the Crown of Bones of the Black Palace. She said, “No, I do not have the artifact.”

  “Then what has happened to it?”

  “Witchfinders have it,” Hava said, figuring that to be true enough.

  “They live still? They are alive in the Black Palace?”

  Hava knew that Ashurbanipal had in all likelihood killed them by now, but if the other witches who went in looking for Seph found them alive, that report would have to match the story she gave now. And it was best not to mention that she had freed Ashurbanipal from Gróa’s imprisonment. It was safest to say, “They were alive when I escaped them.”

  One of the witches said, “La Voisin will seek to make you suffer for your failure, Seph. So it is best that you come with us. You will not come to harm while you are in our hands.”

  “Thank you,” Hava said. It was a relief to hear that they would offer her protection after all, even if they thought
she was Seph. If they could just shelter her long enough to leave Prague for some other place where the witches did not know her face as these three now did, she could rest and make new plans. She only had to stay out of the hands of the Malandanti—and this queen of theirs, La Voisin—until she had prepared enough to be able to make them pay for their crimes.

  One of the witches held out a small, severed talon. She said, “Take this crow’s foot, and use its claw to prick both of your palms. There must be some blood, but it does not need to be much. Then give us your hands, and with the speed of the dead we will take you away from here without any trouble.”

  Hava took the crow’s foot and thanked them. Not only were they offering to help her and protect her, but they also offered their witch-work to do so quickly. She pricked both of her palms, made sure a spot of her blood showed on each, and then she held forth her hands to them.

  The witches said, “And do you offer your hands to us freely? You must say so.”

  “I do,” Hava said.

  And they took her hands with the strength of raptors, and they cackled at her.

  Hava’s arms were suddenly numb, powerless. She could not pull away from their cold grips. She could not move her legs. With each tug they gave to her arms, her feet walked forward. They had made her into a puppet. They had captured her. They had betrayed her. And her stomach felt sick knowing that she had been foolish enough to let them.

  They took her out of the cemetery and moved with unnatural haste, pulling her helpless body with them as they flew through the streets, keeping by the buildings and to the shadows, touching the ground as vaguely as skittering leaves.

  Hava lost count of the number of blocks and the turns they made. They finally stopped in a courtyard nestled between four towering brick buildings. At its center was an old brick well. A cellar door leaned up from the base of one of the buildings, and the witches brought her to it. All three of the witches knocked on the door. Then they stood back.

  Hava attempted again to struggle away from them, but she could do little more than move her head.

  The door swung open, and from the steps rose a woman draped in a purple dress. Her face was stark from real make-up, and she was shapely, and everything she wore—the fabric, the bracelets, the immense necklace—hung fashionably loose on her. But her turban arched back from her head tightly, the wrappings holding silver trinkets and the bones of mice. She seemed to move like music. Hava had never seen a woman like her before. She was not frail or starved; neither was she withered with age or broken into lethargy. She looked like a real woman, which made Hava feel small, and hopeless of her own body.

  The Witches of Endor who held Hava spoke to the woman in French. They said, “This is the betraying maidservant you seek. This is Seph.”

  The woman held out her hand and said, “Give her over to me.”

  “Payment comes before the prize,” the witches said.

  At those words, Hava was starting to get what was happening to her, and she was terrified. The three Witches of Endor meant only to sell her over to the Malandanti. She was going to be prisoner to this woman in purple, who must be the one called La Voisin, and she was going to be at least enslaved, if not tortured and killed. She struggled again to get away, whipping her head side to side, full of fear. But her body was still their puppet, and the witches made no notice of her struggles.

  Then Hava managed to angle her head close enough to the shoulder of one of the witches, and she bit with all the strength she had in her jaws. Blood filled her mouth, a foul taste, and she heard the witch hiss. Then she was struck across the face hard enough to make her lose her bite. Her head spun from the blow. And the witches tugged her arms to force her to fall to her knees. Her body buckled beneath them.

  The witches and the woman in purple argued about payment, and after some haggling, the woman in purple finally agreed. She ripped the immense necklace from where it hung across her chest and tossed it to the ground. It broke into a multitude of silver coins. Two of the Witches of Endor chased for them along the cobblestones of the courtyard, but the one who kept hold of Hava’s wrist said, “She is worth more, if the plans I hear are so grand.”

  The woman in purple said, “Does she have the artifact?”

  “No,” the witch said. “Witchfinders still have it.”

  “Then that is all the payment you will receive. That, and the good will of the Malandanti for not keeping her for further ransom. Do you wish our will toward you to be good or ill?”

  The witch yanked Hava’s arm and gave her over to the woman in purple.

  Immediately, out of the grip of those witches that she had surrendered herself to—willingly but unwittingly—the numbness in her arms began to leave her, and she could feel that her feet were hers again. But she had still not regained the strength to contend with the grip of the woman in purple. Hava was pulled by her all the same, despite her struggles, and she was dragged like the futile captive she was into the lightless depths of the cellar.

  Chapter 9

  DiFranco called for them to stop as they entered a long room filled with hanging vines and standing palms and broad-leafed ferns, all the plants looking lush, all of them pure albino. White limes bowed the branches of trees planted in alabaster vases that were cracked with roots. The place smelled like onion, and bleached bees made their way around unbothered. It was a conservatory.

  The glass panes that made up the walls and the ceiling held back pressing soil at every inch, the whole place buried deep under the earth. It was likely that it had never seen the sun. The open entryways at either end of the room were doorless, so there would be less chance of getting somehow locked in, and the place had an insulating calm, if only because they had come a far way up from the noise of the brawl in the cavern, so this was as good a spot as any to rest and re-evaluate.

  Sledge and Jan were happy to stop with her. Everything had gone wrong so far. And they were tired.

  On their trek up from the cavern, through new halls and stairwells, through wrecked rooms and grand abandoned spaces, they had said little. Jan had continued mapping their progress, having torn off his sleeves, and he was on his way to covering his other arm. He would sound like himself again when admiring the stonework of an Etruscan style groin vault they would pass through or the sacred geometry in the support beams in some empty dining hall, but then sometimes he seemed overcome and distant again and would say things in an odd voice, such as, These rooms are shifted, and, This place has breath, without explanation. DiFranco was worried about him.

  Sledge had focused only on laboring to keep up, especially at each flight of stairs. He tried to hide what seemed like shooting pain, and he had not said anything abrasive for a while. DiFranco was worried about him too.

  She told them both to sit at the table that stretched through the center of the room, just for a few minutes, while she guarded the far entryway, just as long as one of them kept an eye on the way they had come in. They took the break without debate. Jan drank from a canteen. Sledge swigged from a flask.

  Beyond the conservatory, DiFranco saw that corridors continued in two directions, and it wasn’t clear from where she stood which way continued leading upward. She leaned against the jamb, and though she was still on her feet, she felt relief at the weight of her pack shifting a little off of her legs. It was warmer up here too. She slugged some water from her own canteen.

  She felt like they were trying to do nothing more at this point than to keep moving and surviving, but she had a vague plan that she would need to discuss with them, especially since she hadn’t had a moment to think it through herself. She planned on continuing to lead them upward in hopes of getting to the galleries they had raided years back. That would be the best bet at finding a doorway out for Sledge and Jan, maybe even their best bet at running across other Witchfinders who were raiding the Black Palace tonight. But there was a problem, now that she thought about it. They had been set up to deliver the Shamir into the Black Palace, into the hand
s of the witches. And they had done so, despite themselves. Turenbor was behind it, the new president of the Witchfinders Union, which meant that if they were the loose ends that she thought they were, delivering themselves into the hands of other Witchfinders was no safer than surrendering to witches. They were all three doomed on the outside, which they might not even make it to, for they were doomed on the inside as well.

  But she needed to focus on why she had stepped across that threshold in the first place. She was going to track down her father once she got to those galleries, retrace his steps from the Gate of Thorns. Yet at the thought of it, now that she was here in the Black Palace, trapped like he had been, she feared the reality of what it would do to someone to survive in this place for so long, alone. She didn’t want to admit this cowardice to herself, but it was unavoidable now: she feared what might come of searching for him, especially if she found him.

  “This is Sledge calling DiFranco. It looks like we lost you. Are you there? Over.” He was looking at her and pretending to use an old-fashioned radio. He had unlatched his pack, with the round-shield he had stolen from the warrior’s chamber strapped to it like a shell, and he had begun setting his equipment out on the table for inventory.

  “Just thinking things through,” DiFranco told him.

  “I wouldn’t advise that,” Sledge said. “Get over here and watch this. Jan’s going to cut into one.”

  Jan had picked a white lime, and he had brought it to the table, ready to slice it open.

  “I wouldn’t advise that,” DiFranco said.