The Black Palace Read online

“Just focus on your front sight,” she told him. “And try to stay smooth. Not fast. Smooth.”

  The sounds of the coming train of chains and claws clattered on stone and resounded out of the archways. The three of them watched those dark portals like they were great eyes about to flick open, any second to be filled with snarling teeth and lashing tongues and the unknown horrors that witches would summon. But for now the archways were blank. So they waited still.

  Sledge unsnapped a latch on the sheath of his Saxon blade. He adjusted his round-shield in front of him and set his pistol on the rim, ready to fire from behind his defenses. He breathed heavily through his nostrils like an ox.

  Jan seemed to be speaking under his breath in an anxious rhythm, “Shake shake shake. Shake shake shake.”

  “What’s that?” DiFranco asked him.

  He stopped. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Were you just singing?”

  “Singing?” Sledge said, confused.

  “Yes,” Jan said. “I was.”

  DiFranco said, “Were you just singing ‘Shake Your Booty’?”

  “It’s just something I do when I get nervous,” he said. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”

  “Go ahead,” DiFranco said. “You might as well sing it.”

  “No, it’s stupid,” Jan said.

  The cries of the wolves grew nearer. The chains rattled their way. The witches cried grim commands.

  DiFranco began, “Shake shake shake. Shake shake shake. Shake your boo-tay. Shake your boo-tay.”

  Jan laughed some. Then he joined in. “Shake shake shake. Shake your boo-tay. Shake your boo-tay.”

  “You two are nuts,” Sledge said.

  But DiFranco and Jan kept singing, and they began laughing as they did.

  And then Sledge joined in too, singing with them the same few words from “Shake Your Booty,” and laughing with them as he did.

  And the three of them filled the place with their noise. And they grew louder, synchronized into a single voice that cried out through the arena to shake your booty. And they laughed and they sang so loudly that their gathered voice could reach the malevolent creatures that closed in on them, perhaps further into the dark corridors beyond, perhaps further to other unnamable things slouching through the halls, heavy and formless, with wandering thoughts of alien design, passing bewildered through this brief plane toward other, deeper calls. Perhaps their voice reached further into the very mind of the Black Palace itself, the very thing that encompassed them, the nature of which they would never be able to fathom, nor would it, in its vast expanse, be able to fathom them, three brief little shapes of senseless joy in the midst of the cold gloom of the universe, laughing and singing “Shake Your Booty.”

  And then, with the speed of an eyelid, the archways were filled with horrors.

  Chapter 10

  Hava was dragged by the arm down the cellar steps into some chill room of complete darkness that seemed to echo even the sound of her own boots against the floor, and she was thrust forward into a strap that latched around her throat. Hava felt it tighten by the hinge of a buckle.

  The woman in purple let her go, and then went somewhere else in the room, clanking and clicking something.

  Hava grabbed at the collar on her neck. The latch was secured by a padlock.

  A light was kindled, and though it hurt her eyes for a moment, Hava could finally see. It was a fire burning in what was once a baker’s oven embedded in the bricks of the wall, and its iron door stayed wide open. The woman in purple removed three fire pokers from a stand and arranged them on a table along with six kitchen knives.

  Hava’s locked collar was linked to a chain that secured to the wall. She had enough slack to take a few steps in any direction, but not enough to get to anything except the bare wall she was chained to. Beyond her reach were stacks of old chairs, piles of ornate lamps, boxes of things wrapped in newspaper. It looked like some kind of antique warehouse, without a focal point except for a covered mirror in the center and, of course, this spot to leash a prisoner. The place hadn’t been used as a bakery in some time. In the far corners of the room were two exits, though Hava had no clue which was the one she had come in through. She had lost her orientation while having been dragged in the dark. At the top of the wall sat the frame of a small window that was covered by a slat of wood, the kind of window that basements have. She was only one story underground for now.

  The woman in purple spoke to Hava—to her surprise—in her own native language. “Strip off your clothes.”

  The numbness in Hava’s limbs had worn off now that the Witches of Endor had released her, so though she would not be able to unleash herself, should could at least fend off this woman from humiliating her to nakedness. She said, “I will not.”

  “You have kept me waiting long enough, Seph. Do not bore me with further betrayal.” The woman picked up a fillet knife. “You will take off your clothes and show me that you do not carry the artifact hidden on you, or I will remove your clothes for you and take your skin with them while I do. It is fresh young skin, and it would look good as a pair of gloves.”

  The woman’s mundane tone made her all the more convincing, and now Hava doubted that she could fight her, unarmed and leashed as she was. Hava undid her dress, removed it, and tossed it to the floor. She stood in her full undergarments and her boots, and Nachash was wrapped around her calf with nowhere to hide anymore.

  “Who is the serpent?”

  “He was the familiar to my witch-mother, Ziggurat.”

  “What kind is he?”

  “I do not know,” Hava said. “He is a desert snake. He likes the heat, and I feed him chicken eggs.”

  “I can see that,” the woman said. “Does he change form? Does he have spirits in him?”

  “He is only a snake.”

  “Then order him to come to me.”

  Hava said, “Will you hurt him?”

  “If you make me cut him off of your leg to fetch him myself, then I will hurt him, along with you,” she said. “And if he dares bare his fangs at me, I will kill him.”

  She told Nachash to go to the woman in purple and not to bare his fangs.

  Nachash climbed off her leg and slid to the woman, who had a lowered hand opened to him. She picked him up by the neck and looked in his eyes. Then she held him away at arm’s length and spoke words of command that Hava did not understand.

  Nothing happened.

  The woman looked at his eyes again and said, “I had heard it reported that Ziggurat was obsolescent. If this little thing was her familiar, I heard correctly.” Then she tossed him away.

  He hit the wall and then the floor, and it looked like it hurt him.

  Hava screamed at the woman for hurting Nachash, but she was ignored.

  “Go eat up some rats and be of use, you wretched little serpent,” she said to Nachash. “You will not get a feast of eggs while you remain in my house.”

  Nachash crawled away through one of the open doorways, and Hava was relieved that he had escaped from the woman with his life. She hoped that the worm had also escaped alive within the cotton that was within the egg shell that was within his belly. The woman in purple did not seem to suspect that the visible lump in Nachash’s belly was anything other than an egg, and this was a small victory over her that Hava relished. The woman in purple may have been in complete control right now, but she was ignorant of the power hidden in that egg, the sleepy worm who could break even the iron of Gróa.

  It was only then that Hava realized that the artifact they talked about might not actually be some fashioned jewel or forged weapon or any inanimate object of that nature. It might have been the worm. Or since the worm came in the lead box, maybe all this woman in purple knew was that the artifact was in a lead box, so maybe she only looked for something sharp and geometrical like that, and not an egg like Nachash carried in his belly. But it also occurred to Hava that if she did not get back to Nachash and have him cough the egg back up ag
ain in the next day or so, that his digestive acids, however slow they were, might eat through the shell. Then he would begin digesting the worm, and she did not know which of the two would survive that. She worried deeply that she might have accidentally caused the horrible death of both of them.

  The woman said, “Now the rest of your clothes.”

  Hava removed her undergarments with difficulty because of the chain and collar. She had to rip her top down over her legs rather than over her head. She tossed them aside.

  “Your boots,” the woman said.

  She unlaced them and slid them off.

  “Throw everything to me.”

  Hava gathered everything she had worn and tossed them to the feet of the woman. There was nothing left that Hava possessed for her to find in there.

  The woman sifted through them and examined the boots and sniffed everything with disgust. Then she told Hava to hold her hands above her head and jump in place until commanded to stop.

  Hava figured this was meant to test her obedience and further humiliate her, since it did not make sense to her how this would in any way reveal a hidden artifact. She said, “I am leashed and naked before you with nothing else to hide. You have succeeded in humiliating me. I will not also jump for you like a fool.”

  “You are hiding something from me. It is either something you have, or something you know. I can sense the lies of others well enough for that,” said the woman. “And since you do not hide it on the outside, you must be hiding on the inside. So you can do as I say and jump—”

  “Or else you will cut me open?” Hava said, trying her best to say it with courage. She had to show the woman she felt no fear, even though she did.

  “Do you know what a golem is?” the woman in purple said. “You served a Witch of Endor, so I should assume you do.”

  Hava had never seen one, but she did know what a golem was. It was an artificial man, made of earth, animated by words of power. Like a familiar, it would serve its master as commanded, but unlike a familiar, it would do so without any judgment of its own until it completed its task, or until it was commanded otherwise, or returned to its inanimate state, or destroyed. A poorly worded command could cause a lot of trouble for its master. Ziggurat had said that she once had one as a guardian until she found that it was incapable of loyalty, that it would serve whomever happened to animate it most recently. Hava found the memory painfully ironic, since her human servant, Seph, had handed the dear old witch her ultimate betrayal.

  Hava answered that, yes, she knew what a golem was.

  The woman in purple said, “I will have my golem come down here, and I will have it hold you off the ground by your wrists and shake you until your shoulders come out of their sockets. But I will not tell it to stop, and it will keep shaking you, until the tendons in your arms snap, and it will keep shaking you until your arms hang only by your stretched and tearing skin. Then I will have it drag you around my house like a ragdoll for the rest of your life, which I will prolong. Or you can jump right now.”

  Hava jumped. She kept jumping in place and did not stop. The chain rattled in rhythm like the beat of a drummer at the head of the rowers on a slave ship. Sweat broke out over her body, and the balls of her feet ached, and her calves began to tighten in pain, but she kept jumping.

  The woman watched her for perhaps two hundred jumps, but then seemed to lose interest, though she did not say that she could stop. While Hava jumped, the woman set a step stool under the basement window and climbed to reach the wooden plank that covered it. She tossed the plank to the floor. Only the black sky came through the window.

  Hava hopped four hundred times at least, maybe six hundred.

  The woman then went to the covered mirror and pulled away the sheet that lay over it. Then she finally told Hava to stop.

  Hava slumped forward, resting her arms on her knees. She sucked air and could not get enough. The muscles of her calves felt like they were going to pop out of her skin.

  “Stand over there,” the woman said to her, pointing nearer to the basement window. She was angling the mirror so that the window and Hava both showed in its reflection.

  Hava could only assume this was yet another form of humiliation, but she did as commanded.

  The woman said, “Do not move and do not make a sound, no matter what you see. Look forward, and only if I call upon you by name do you speak. Otherwise you make no sounds. If you do, I will stop treating you with such tenderness. Do you understand?”

  Hava was too tired to argue or question her. She just nodded, still trying to catch her breath.

  “And stand up straight,” the woman in purple said. “Have some dignity.”

  Hava tried. Her ribs ached.

  The woman in purple positioned herself in front of the mirror too. She closed her eyes and spoke strange words, the kinds of words that witches use to set about their works. She had heard Ziggurat do similarly numerous times when she summoned the dead for her clients.

  In the mirror, Hava saw the night sky through the window in the wall behind her, and it was changing. It was changing all too quickly. Lightning clarified it in flashes. Thunderheads rolled in faster even than any of the sandstorms Hava had watched back home. It was a storm of unnatural speed, full of boiling and swollen clouds. Hava, making sure to keep her chain from rattling, turned ever so slightly to see the window not in reflection but with her own eyes. She saw no storm through it. Instead, she saw stars. The true sky was peaceful.

  But in the mirror the lightning continued to flash. The bolts hit nearer and nearer through the window, and Hava could hear the cracks of thunder echoing as if they came from the bottom of a well.

  Then Hava nearly leapt backward, for in the reflection a bolt came through the window, shattering its glass, and setting a bright blue arc onto the floor only a step behind the woman in purple. It burned Hava’s eyes. She blinked and squinted to clear her vision, and once she had, another figure stood in the room with them where the lightning had struck. It was a bride, all in white, wearing the Crown of Bones.

  Hava looked around the room, but nothing was any different. The window was not shattered, the floor was not burnt, and there was no bride-queen in white. But in the mirror, it was all there. And Hava could not help being fascinated by her Crown of Bones. The architecture of its ribs framed her eyes like the visor of a helm and reached above her head like a cage of thoughts. Hava had only heard of it before. She had not seen any image of it until now.

  The woman in purple spoke in French. She said, “I am grateful you came so quickly, La Voisin.”

  So this bride-queen was La Voisin. Hava could not make out her face. There was one under the veil, certainly, with pale skin and black eyes and blood-red lips, but her features were not clear. She remained just behind the woman in purple and talked at her reflection from there.

  Hava would not quite be able to reach the empty spot on the floor where La Voisin stood as seen in the mirror, nor would she if she could, but she wondered what standing in that spot would feel like.

  “I am glad to see you have called on me, Lenka. I knew you would accept my offer, and it may reward you greatly. You will join the hunt and bring your wolves into the Black Palace?” La Voisin said. Her voice was calm.

  “I have something better, if I may. I have the very maidservant herself who has tried to betray us. Seph. She stands behind you.”

  La Voisin turned and looked at her, though she was still only a reflection, facing away from the mirror. Hava was being looked at by something that was not there. She felt chilled by the sight.

  La Voisin faced the mirror again and, still calm, said, “Are you mocking me, Lenka? Is this some game they play in Prague?”

  “No, no, never,” said the woman in purple, whose name was Lenka. Her tone was getting desperate, nowhere near her previous half-boredom. “This is Seph. Although she does not carry the artifact with her. She says the Witchfinders have it still. Three Witches of Endor brought her to me for a price.”


  “Witches of Endor, you say?”

  “They were not aligned with Ziggurat. You can trust me on that,” Lenka said. “They are loyal first to my city. They are subservient to me.”

  “Then you have been swindled, and you are a fool. That is not the maidservant Seph.”

  Lenka looked with fury upon Hava, and Hava had no idea how to return the gaze. Her lie had been uncovered, and she had made a powerful witch embarrass herself in front of a more powerful witch. Hava knew that very bad things were about to happen to her.

  “Are you certain, La Voisin?” Lenka said.

  La Voisin said, “Did she reveal anything to you? Anything to prove that she is truly involved with us at all, whoever she is?”

  Lenka thought for a moment. “She had Ziggurat’s familiar with her.”

  “Did you know anything about Ziggurat before I had told you? Do you know what she kept as a familiar?”

  Lenka lowered her eyes. “No,” she said.

  “So I ask again, has she revealed anything to you?”

  “No.” She was greatly shamed.

  “And to this young counterfeit, to this street urchin you paid for with such eagerness, you have revealed much to her. Am I right about that?”

  “Yes,” Lenka said.

  “Then kill her, you fool, and be quick about it.”

  Hava had no more hope of bettering her situation with any type of lie or cover story. She did not even have hope left of avoiding death. She was destined to die very soon, and she could do nothing about it. The thought made her furious. Her teeth clinched and her fists tightened. She was once again a prisoner and a helpless victim even though she had vowed never to be so again. This La Voisin was the one who had worked to turn Seph toward betrayal, who had planned Ziggurat’s murder. It was she whom Hava had vowed to kill while Seph’s blood was still wet on her hands. Hava should be making this reflection fear her, and she should be breaking Lenka at this moment. That was how it should be. Hava was a thing of fury.

  La Voisin was speaking, telling Lenka that she was no longer asking but now commanding that she bring her wolves to join the hunt in the Black Palace, without payment, in order to make up for this abhorrent blunder of hers.