Honor Among Thieves (20 page)
W
hen dinner was finished, Malden took his leave. He was all smiles and graces, and he even bowed and kissed Coruth’s hand to thank her for what she’d taught him. Cythera stood in the doorway of the kitchen and smiled to see her mother turn her head away like a bashful girl. The two of them got along so well.
Cythera imagined a different life then. One where she never became a witch, but instead became Malden’s wife. If she imagined it in the abstract, as just a hypothetical situation, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as she’d thought it would.
Malden stood up straight and looked across the room at her, and her heart melted a little when she saw the look in his eyes. He loved her—truly, honestly. He didn’t want to lock her away in a tower somewhere and fill her stomach with his babies. He wanted her to be happy.
When he was gone, Cythera went and washed the dishes and got things ready for the morning, banking the fire in the hearth and laying out the oats she would cook so she and Coruth could break their fast. Then she walked out into the main room and found her mother sitting at the table. A large book sat before her, though she wasn’t reading it. Wasn’t even touching it. It didn’t look like any book Cythera had seen in her mother’s house before. The cover was tooled leather ornamented with skulls and bones, and a small brass lock held it shut.
“What’s that?” she asked, because she knew she was supposed to.
Yet Coruth didn’t answer right away. “The boy is becoming a good man,” she said. “He’ll rise higher yet. Looks like he’d be good in bed, too, with those long thin fingers and the way he moves.”
“Mother, please, my love life is of no concern to—”
“Don’t be squeamish with me, girl. I know you’ve had him before.”
Cythera blushed and turned back toward the kitchen, just wanting to get away. But she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to just retire to bed. That book meant something.
“There’s little enough sweetness in this life that we can afford not to taste honey for fear of bee stings,” Coruth said.
Cythera sighed. “He can’t be mine, though. Not if I’m to be a witch.”
“Not forever, no. But you have a little time left to spend with him before your initiation. If you throw away that chance, you will regret it later.” Coruth sounded like she knew that from personal experience. Cythera knew little of her mother’s life before Hazoth kidnapped and imprisoned her. She’d never really thought about it before.
“Mother,” she said. “What if I simply renounced magic?” She didn’t believe it could be that easy. But what if it was?
“It’s in your blood. And in your future. Come here.”
Cythera had no choice. She went and sat across the table from her mother.
“This book belonged to your father.”
Cythera nodded. Yes, that was exactly what it looked like. She remembered Hazoth’s library. It had been full of tomes like this—and far stranger and more sinister books as well.
“When his villa came down, most of his books were destroyed, but not this one. I saved it and brought it here so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. Read it.”
“Now? It’s getting late.”
“Leaf through it, then. Skim it,” Coruth ordered. “It’s all you’ll get of an inheritance from him, after all.”
Coruth didn’t move or speak any incantations, but the book slid across the table toward her, as if of its own volition. The brass lock clicked and popped open, and the cover lifted and fell back until it was open to the title page:
CHILDREN of the PITTE, or-
The Boke of Fouel Names
Writ by the hand of
Daulben of Myraum
Cythera couldn’t help but gasp. She’d heard of this book before. It was a basic treatise on demonology, the first work any prospective sorcerer would have to read. “No witch should look at something like this,” she said.
“This isn’t part of your training. It’s in way of an explanation,” Coruth insisted. “Now. Read.”
Cythera reached a trembling hand to turn the first page. She looked at the dense block of words there as if they might come to life and jump out at her. But they were just words. She read the opening chapter quickly, barely paying attention to the warnings it contained, much more interested in the promises it made. The author suggested that someone who could call demons up from the pit would possess powers beyond imagining. Demons could fly around the entire world in one night. They could find things that had been lost for centuries. They knew the secrets of anyone who had ever died, and they could slay any enemy without fail. A master—or a mistress—of demons could make themselves rich beyond imagining, they could rule nations, they could possess any lover they chose.
They could marry anyone they chose.
Daulben had been a sorcerer, though not a particularly powerful one—nothing like her father. His words suggested that the things he described must be done with caution but were not truly forbidden. Demons were evil creatures but could be turned to helping humanity as well. They could heal the sick, or make crops grow in stultified deserts. They could teach a sorcerer how to do great and compassionate works as easily as they could give them dark secrets. Put that way, sorcery didn’t seem so bad. It certainly didn’t seem evil in itself.
The rest of the book was full of incantations Cythera didn’t dare to read even silently, even to herself. Some of the names the book listed had power even if they were simply thought with the right intention. There were woodcut illustrations of various famous demons as well, which she flipped past as quickly as she dared. Demons were unnatural things and not wholesome to human eyes.
Coruth got up and moved around the room while she read. Though Cythera was barely aware of it, her mother replaced candles as they burned down and stirred the fire when the room grew too cold. It seemed neither of them would sleep that night, as Cythera grew so absorbed in the book she couldn’t even look up.
When she reached the end and closed the cover once more, she found she was so stiff and tired she could barely rise from the chair.
Coruth, on the other hand, had never looked more lively. She came around the table to lean close to Cythera’s face. “Seen enough?” she asked. “Tempted yet?”
Cythera blinked and rubbed at her eyes. She had already figured out why Coruth wanted her to read the book. “You said if I was not trained as a witch, I would end up committing some horrible sin. Something unforgivable. This is what you saw, wasn’t it? You glimpsed my future and you saw me becoming a sorceress. Like my father.”
Coruth nodded. “Yet I also saw it was not writ in stone. There is a chance you can avoid that mistake. You’ll need discipline, though. And before you truly believe me you’ll need the second sight. You’ll need to see your own future. Only then can you resist the temptations that are to come.”
“I’m your daughter,” Cythera insisted. “I don’t need to be convinced! I know you see truly.” She pushed the book away. “I didn’t want to know these things. You forced me to read this.”
“You’re my daughter, and my responsibility,” Coruth said, ignoring her words. “You’re Hazoth’s daughter as well. You have it within you to gain just as much power as he had. More, perhaps. You could be a great woman.”
“I’m going to be a witch,” Cythera said. Coruth had been right all along. There couldn’t be any other way.
“Witches have power as well,” Coruth told her. “All the things the demons can do, all the promises in that book. How many of them do you think I could accomplish if I set my mind to it, using only witchcraft and abjuring sorcery?”
Cythera knew the answer. She’d never quite believed it, but Coruth had told her many times before.
“None of them,” she said.
Coruth snarled. “You think me impotent compared to
him
?”
“No,” she said. “But I understand the difference between you. He worked magic to satisfy his desires. To get what he wanted.”
“And me?”
“You are a witch, Mother. You don’t have desires. You have responsibilities. The magic you work isn’t to make your life easier or to gain power. It’s to do the bidding of forces larger than you. To do the work of fate and destiny. That’s what witchcraft is. Not power to be squandered, but a willingness to surrender. To do what must be done, whether you like it or not.”
“You’ve learned the words,” Coruth said, “but I can see in your eyes you think it’s nonsense.”
“No—No, I—” She stammered to a stop. Changed tack. “I would never perform sorcery, Mother. Certainly not now.”
“In the court of Ulfram V you were asked to do something ‘witchlike,’ ” Coruth said. “You made fire spring between your hands. Oh yes, I saw it. I was watching.”
“The king wanted to frighten the barbarian princess, so I performed a little trick that Father taught me. That was all. I did what I was told. Wasn’t that proper?”
“A witch doesn’t take orders from a man. Not even a king. Where do you think that fire came from, girl? Did you think you were doing witchcraft? That was the fire of the pit you played with. When you made it appear, you opened a small fissure between this world and the one below.”
“You mean—”
“The pit, indeed.”
Cythera trembled in terror. Truly? That was what she’d done? “But—something might have come through!”
Coruth shook her head. “No, the rift you made was too small. This time. Can you convince me you’ll never try something like that again? Can you promise me?”
“Mother, I swear it! If I’d known, I never would have done it!”
“You say it now. But there will be other temptations. And now that you’ve read that book, you know how the power works. You know how to make even bigger holes between the worlds. Holes big enough for anything to claw its way through.”
“I swear, Mother! I swear I won’t!”
Coruth drew back as Cythera dropped her head to the table and wept. For a while the witch was silent, and simply stood watching her daughter cry. Then she nodded just once to herself.
“You know what your father was like. I know you remember. He didn’t start out that way. There was a time when he was a good man who simply wanted to help others. And he did great things, truly. Over time, as he grew more powerful, he began to see other people as weaker than himself. Well, after all, they were. In time he came to despise them for that weakness. He began to think he was superior to them, not just a great man but some wholly different sort of being, a better being. His power grew, always, and theirs kept diminishing. They grew old and died while he stayed young and strong. That kind of power can’t ever make a man a better person. In the end he locked me in a room for years, drawing on my power. He tortured you and used you, Cythera. Neither of us meant more to him than a single page of that book. No human being in this world was his equal, and he would have consigned them all to balefire rather than see one simple whim go unfulfilled. That is what sorcery does to those who use it.”
“I remember,” Cythera pleaded.
Coruth studied her carefully. “We begin your second lesson tonight. Before dawn it will be finished, and you will be well on your way to becoming a witch. Let me assure you of one thing before we begin. If I ever suspect that you are practicing sorcery, even for a moment—and no matter how pure your intentions—I will kill you on the spot. I will not hesitate a moment.”
Cythera stared up at Coruth with wide eyes.
“I’m a witch. And I will do what a witch must,” Coruth said. Then she left the room, leaving Cythera alone at the table.
With the book.
Cythera understood why. Coruth could have destroyed the book long ago. She could have thrown it on a fire and been done with it. Yet that wouldn’t have made her point utterly clear. Cythera had to be exposed to the temptation. She had to know the kind of power she could possess, if she only chose to use it.
Power. So much power between those covers. And wasn’t that what she had wanted all along? She had rebelled against the way women were forced to live in her world. She had refused to be someone’s wife, because it would mean giving up her own freedom. Her own power to make her own decisions.
The book offered the power to do just that. And so much more.
Which was exactly why she had to choose not to use it.
Her mother had told her—many times—that witchcraft wasn’t about making other people do your will. That was exactly what it should never be. A witch could try to convince others that she was right. She could show them the consequences of their actions. But she could never compel someone to do something against their will. Coruth had given her the book because in the end Cythera had to choose for herself.
It was crucial that she renounce that power on her own. And not just because of threats or warnings. She had to come to the realization on her own that she was bound to be a witch, not a sorceress, and that was the right of things.
And it was. It was the right path, to push this book away. To burn it and forget she had ever seen it. It would be an important statement, a meaningful step on her path to initiation as a witch.
She didn’t even want to touch the book again. But she picked it up off the table and went to the hearth.