Witch Silver (4 page)

“The Earth Witches are making a great show of mourning my daughter’s death,” Lord Jezail remarked, indicating the intricate patterns wrought in the cornfield. “Have I miscounted, or does that make seven of them in all?”

“It does, milord,” Count Vassili bowed his head and looked suitably solemn as the eye of crystal travelled slowly over the field.

Lord Jezail scowled. “Is that all you have to say?” he snapped.

Vassili eyed his master in some surprise. “But, surely the witches have done more than is required, milord,” he pointed out after a moment’s hesitation. “The Queen of the Earth Witches is a relative, after all,” he pointed out diplomatically, “and it’s natural that she would want to honour Lady Merial’s memory.”

“Maritza! Honour her memory!” Lord Jezail almost spat, “when she was as mad as fire at not getting the talisman!”

“But she
was
her cousin,” Vassili pointed out, “and it’s
understandable
that she’d expect to inherit it …”

“If Merial wasn’t going to leave the talisman to the witches then she should have sent it straight back to me!” Jezail muttered angrily. “She’s made a mess of the whole affair!”

“Don’t I know it,” the count said feelingly, for keeping tabs on the witches was proving an absolute nightmare.”

Lord Jezail drew his cloak round him and flung himself back in his vast chair. “Well, we can’t give up now,” he said petulantly. “We must be ready to take it from the witches whenever they find it! They must never be allowed to keep it.”

Count Vassili listened with a sinking heart, knowing
that he would probably moan on about it for the rest of the night. Finding the talisman would only be the start for Lord Jezail nursed many grudges, both real and imagined. Indeed, there were occasions when Vassili thought that his master was more than slightly mad. He’d once boasted about a hex he’d put on Prince Casimir and Prince Kalman when they’d visited Ashgar. Vassili shuddered at the thought. Indeed he’d been so disturbed by it that he’d almost decided to return to his father’s estate at Trollsberg. Then there had been the disastrous Firestar affair when the whole world of magic had been put at risk. Not for the first time, he wondered if the Lords of the North had ever suspected anything …

Lord Jezail looked at him suspiciously. “Very quiet all of a sudden, aren’t you,” he snapped.

“Milord …” Count Vassili’s heels clicked together as he bowed low, his blue eyes lifting to meet the hard, black stare of his master. Cold eyes, devoid of feeling; they were the shade of blue that one sometimes glimpses in the depths of ice: the eyes of a wolf.

Lord Jezail held his gaze and calmed himself. Vassili was generally so agreeable that he tended to forget that he was of the Onegin, the wolf people, who lived in the very north of Ashgar near the Russian border. Vassili came from quite a distinguished family of magicians and although his parents had sent him to Stara Zargana as an apprentice, his magic had, somehow, never seemed to amount to much …

This seeming lack of talent was actually deliberate on Vassili’s part as he had been quick to realize that Lord Jezail disliked competition of any sort. And it suited him to stay and browse through the vast library of magic books that, until his arrival, had lain untouched for centuries in the library of the citadel.

His master tapped the arm of his chair with restless fingers,
his mind still on the talisman. “Merial must have hidden it well,” he muttered discontentedly. “I really thought the witches would have found it by now.”

Vassili sighed, for although his master spent the odd ten minutes studying the crystal, the tedious job of monitoring the witches had fallen mostly to him and he was heartily sick of it. “The trouble is, milord, that the witches aren’t really all that bright,” he pointed out. “They’re looking in the most ridiculous places. The Wind Witches are searching the trees and bushes, the Earth Witches the rabbit holes and the Snow Witches are having to merge with birds and animals to do their work! Quite frankly, if they go on at this rate, it’ll take them
years
to find it.”

“Years?” Jezail looked startled.

Vassili smiled ruefully. “Well, maybe not years,” he admitted, “but the truth is, milord, that at the moment they’re just wasting their time!”

Lord Jezail sat back in his huge, carved chair pondering Vassili’s words and, eyeing his aide speculatively, looked
suddenly
thoughtful. It was a look that Vassili knew well and his expression became wary.

Lord Jezail’s eyes gleamed. “All this is taking too long,” he said, gesturing towards the crystal. “I’m too old to search for it myself and I’ve no intention of waiting for years until the witches find it. There’s only one thing for it, Vassili!
You
will have to go and look for me!”

Vassili bowed and tried not to look surprised. The relief was enormous. To go to Scotland
on his own
! It was by no means the nightmare scenario he’d envisaged. Nevertheless, it was polite to protest and his voice was concerned as urged his
master
to accompany him.

“The change would do you good, milord,” he pointed out, “and you could always stay with the MacArthurs or the Lords
of the North?” He said this, knowing perfectly well that while his master might agree to staying with the MacArthurs, he would never go anywhere near Morven.

Lord Jezail looked at him arrogantly. “I’ve no wish to stay with either the Lords of the North or the MacArthurs,” he said sharply. “You will go on your own and bring me back the talisman.”

“It won’t be easy, milord,” Vassili protested somewhat
anxiously
. “After all, the witches have had no luck so far and quite frankly, I might not do much better. Er … don’t you have
any
idea where your daughter might have hidden it?” he enquired.

“None whatsoever,” his master said unhelpfully, “and from the way the witches are setting about it, it would seem that they haven’t a clue either,” he muttered, turning once more to the crystal ball. “The only sensible thing they did was search Merial’s house from top to bottom. Maritza, though,” Lord Jezail continued, “might be on to something. I told you, didn’t I? She’s taken a job at Netherfield, the school Merial used to work in. It’s an old building so there must be plenty of hiding places.”

“That’s a possibility,” Vassili nodded, looking suddenly
interested
. “How big is the school?”

“See for yourself … There it is.” Jezail tilted the eye of the crystal to reveal a sprawling, turreted building that stood in its own grounds amid trees and playing fields.

“Maritza might well be on to something there,” Vassili admitted, looking suddenly hopeful. “Could you arrange for them to need a … a German teacher, perhaps?”

Lord Jezail looked at him sourly. “If that’s what you want …”

Count Vassili nodded. “It would be ideal, for as a member of staff I’d have access to all parts of the school. And let’s just say that I have a feeling that Maritza
might
know something that the others don’t,” he added shrewdly. “Your daughter
was,
after all, her cousin.”

“The MacLeans are on their way,” Jaikie said, looking up from a crystal ball that showed the green slopes of Arthur’s Seat and the Ranger’s cottage that lay just inside the great gates of Holyrood Park. “They’ve just left their cottage, and Neil and Clara are with them.”

The MacArthur nodded and Arthur, the great red dragon that curled beside his chair, blew a cloud of smoke down his nostrils that set everybody coughing. Like the MacArthurs, he was very fond of the Park Ranger and his family and had been devastated to hear that they were leaving their cottage to live in the Borders. Over the years they’d had some very exciting adventures together and they’d all got used to having the
children
drop in on their magic carpets just for a chat.

“Give over, Arthur,” Archie muttered, flapping his hands. “It isn’t
all
that long since you’ve seen Neil and Clara.”

“It is,” Arthur disagreed. “It’s weeks since they left.”

“Well, here they are now,” Hamish announced a few minutes later, rising to his feet as four magic carpets soared from a side tunnel into the vast, richly-decorated cavern that lay inside Arthur’s Seat. The carpets swooped in, one after the other, to hover beside a raised dais where the MacArthur sat, a small but regal figure, on a huge, elaborately carved chair piled high with cushions.

Neil and Clara slipped off their carpets with the ease of long practice and after a hasty greeting to the MacArthur, ran over to the dragon.

The carpets dipped gently and flew to the side of the cavern where they rolled themselves up against the wall; ready and waiting until called again.

“It’s grand to see you looking so well,” the MacArthur smiled. “Country life seems to be agreeing with you. How are you getting on in your new house?”

John MacLean looked at him shrewdly. “Not too well,” he admitted, “but I think you probably know that already,” he added with a smiling glance at the crystal. “That’s why we’ve come. We need your advice.”

“You mean about the witches?” the MacArthur said.

“Yes, about the witches,” the Ranger agreed, settling himself comfortably in his chair. “One of them gave Clara a real scare.”

Janet looked at the MacArthur expectantly, waiting for his reply, for he was just the person to solve what she referred to as “the witch problem”.

Neil and Clara, still chatting to Arthur, dragged cushions forward to sit alongside Archie, Hamish and Jaikie who were lounging casually against the dragon’s massive side. Clara looked over at her father and nodded at his words. “She wasn’t a snow witch,” she said, tucking her long, brown hair behind her ears. “
They
are beautiful, but this one was really ugly; she had a hooked nose and her clothes were black.”

“She was an Earth Witch, then,” Jaikie said knowledgeably. “The Earth Witches wear black and the Wind Witches wear grey.”

Grey! Neil and Clara eyed one another in quick
understanding
. It must have been Wind Witches that they had seen searching the trees near their house.

“Really?” Janet MacLean said, looking over at him in surprise. “I didn’t know there were different kinds of witches.”

Archie nodded. “They’re a jealous lot,” he remarked, “always
squabbling.”

The MacArthur nodded. “They don’t get on with one another at all,” he agreed. “We knew you’d be having problems with them the minute Merial died.”

“You mean Muriel,” the Ranger corrected him with a smile, “my sister-in-law.”

“No, I don’t,” the MacArthur said with a sidelong glance at Archie, Hamish and Jaikie. He paused momentarily, well aware of the consternation he was about to cause. “I mean Lady Merial, daughter of Lord Jezail of Ashgar, one of the greatest magicians in Europe.”

There was a blank silence as the MacLeans gawped,
open-mouthed
at this disclosure.

“You’re … you’re not having us on, are you?” John MacLean said eventually in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

The MacArthur shook his head.

Neil and Clara glanced at one another; but while Neil looked as amazed as his parents, Clara became suddenly thoughtful. She had always been close to her aunt. They’d got on well together and if she really
was
a magician’s
daughter
then that would explain quite a lot; for their
conversations
had often been about magic. It must have been about a year ago, she thought, when they’d been on a picnic. The others had gone for a walk but she had stayed behind to help clear up and her aunt had quizzed her about her firestone pendant. She remembered how she’d blushed when her aunt had called it a magic stone and then smiled at her in a most peculiar way as though she’d guessed at all her adventures with the MacArthurs. And there were the odd comments she sometimes made as well. “Did you know that witches,” she’d once remarked, “can’t cross running water. They have to use bridges.” Yes, she thought, it was quite possible that
Auntie Muriel had been a magician’s daughter.

Still looking stunned, the Ranger searched his memory for details. “David met Muriel in Austria when he was on a skiing holiday,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I don’t remember him ever calling her Merial, though,” he added, a frown creasing his brow as he looked at the MacArthur. “According to him, her father disapproved of their marriage and more or less cut Merial off, there and then.”

“Now we know why,” his wife interrupted.

“Well, yes,” John continued, “but having said that, it didn’t seem to worry her. They came back to Scotland,
settled
in at Craiglaw House and were perfectly happy.”

“She was lovely,” added Janet, still sounding flabbergasted, “a thoroughly nice woman. I can’t believe she had anything to do with witches or magic.”

“Why did you say that we’d be having problems the
minute
she died?” Neil queried, remembering the MacArthur’s opening remark.

“Ah,” the MacArthur said, “that’s where things start to get complicated. You see, Merial’s father, Lord Jezail, doted on his daughter and when she was young, he gave her a magic talisman as a gift.”

“What’s a talisman?” Clara asked.

“It’s a magic token. In this case, an engraved silver clasp that’s worn round the arm. It not only protected Merial from hexes and spells but gave her control over the witches. They’re spiteful, you see, and left to themselves they’d delight in calling up storms and the like — especially at harvest time when the farmers need good weather to bring in the crops.”

“I never saw Muriel wearing anything like that,” Janet mused thoughtfully. “Did you, John?”

Her husband shook his head.

“She probably kept it hidden in case you sensed its magic,” the MacArthur said reasonably, “and you might have done, you know. After all,
she
knew that
you
wore firestones.”

“She did?” They all looked at the MacArthur in complete astonishment.

“But … she never said anything to any of us …” Mrs MacLean looked completely bewildered.

“No, but she asked me about you all the same, and I think she was pleased to hear that you had helped us in so many ways.” Seeing that Mrs MacLean was still upset, he added
gently.
“She might have found it easier to say nothing, Janet,” and, as Mrs MacLean opened her mouth to disagree, he said quickly, “I know you might find it hard to accept but I think she’d have found explanations difficult. Anyway,’ he pointed out, ‘she knew that I would explain things to you afterwards.”

“About the witches?”

The MacArthur nodded. “About the witches,” he agreed. “The Earth Witches, that is, for the Queen of the Earth Witches was actually her cousin by marriage. She took Merial under her wing when she came to Scotland and that’s how Merial joined the ranks of the Earth Witches. She used the talisman’s magic well and more or less ruled with the queen. And because of their close relationship, the Queen of the Earth Witches quite naturally assumed that she would inherit the talisman when Merial died.”

“You mean Merial left the talisman to someone else?” Janet asked.

“No, she didn’t.”

“What did she do with it, then?” queried Clara.

“That’s the problem,” gestured the MacArthur, unhappily. “She’s hidden it somewhere. The witches are combing the
countryside
for it. They’re searching houses, farms, fields and woods.
Everywhere and anywhere that Merial might have visited.”

“So that’s why they were searching our house,” Janet sounded grim. “It would be the first place they’d look.”

The MacArthur nodded.

“Do they have anything at all to do with the crop circles that have been appearing?” Neil asked, sounding serious. “Dad and I saw one of them being made and there was no one in the field.”

“Yes, that was the witches,” the MacArthur nodded.

“Neil said that his firestone got really heavy,” Clara added curiously.

“The witches would be working beneath the field,” the MacArthur explained. “That’s why his firestone was affected.”

“One of the men went into the field while the circle was being made,” the Ranger said. “He passed out but seemed okay when he came round afterwards. It was really weird. Everyone knew that something strange was going on. The newspapers are full of it and everyone in the countryside is nervous.”

“Nervous?” echoed Neil. “Scared, you mean!”

“But why are the witches making crop circles anyway?” Janet asked.

“It’s the custom,” the MacArthur explained. “The witches made them as a … a tribute to Merial. To honour her departure from this world. They couldn’t let her passing go unnoticed, you know. She was a lady of importance in her own right.”

“Someone was looking at the crop circle through a crystal,” Neil said. “Dad and I recognized the light.”

“Was it you, by any chance?” his father asked.

The MacArthur nodded his head. “Yes,” he said, suddenly serious, “we were, of course, watching. As, I’m sure, were many others from the world of magic — including, I should imagine, her father, Lord Jezail.”