Chapter 29
Lamorna needed answers. She was not happy that Mark and his Witchfinders were under her roof, but there was nothing she could do about it.
She avoided the men from Malist as much as she could – difficult sometimes when Mark lingered outside doorways trying to speak to Mordred.
Lamorna would have to clear her throat and sour her face before he would stand aside and let her pass.
Always, she felt his eyes on her back and wanted to tear them from his head.
Maybe next time he looked at her, she would.
It was not Mordred she was going to speak to, but Elaine.
The Red Sister always gave her answers, and while sometimes Lamorna felt they were only half of the truth, she knew Elaine would respond to anything she asked her.
Lamorna paused outside Elaine’s door. She wasn’t sure she could call the Red Sister a friend, not in the way she could Calla.
But Lamorna was desperate, and Elaine could know the answers.
‘Tell me about the Witchfinders,’ she asked, once Elaine had let her in.
Lamorna followed her into the antechamber.
While Elaine took a seat, Lamorna drifted to the window.
The Nemhain Mountains in the distance were wreathed in clouds.
She turned to Elaine. ‘I know most of them are, or were, Cruithean, but how do they end up being Witchfinders?’
‘Are you sure you wish to know this, Lamorna?’ Elaine asked.
Lamorna hesitated. Then, ‘Yes. Mordred says you should know your enemy.’
‘You think they’re your enemy?’
‘I think Mark is my enemy, and as he appears to lead them, I want to know about them.’ She sat with Elaine, who was watching her with those blind eyes that saw too much.
They had not talked again about what it meant that Lamorna was dead.
She didn’t feel dead. She was aware of her heart beating, of her lungs expanding when she took a breath, and her skin felt warm.
‘The first Witchfinders were children from Kunis, boys with magic given in service to the Red One, while girls were given to the Ossuary and became Red Sisters,’ Elaine said.
‘I am from Kunis,’ she added. Lamorna grasped at this shred of personal knowledge, storing it away.
Elaine shared nothing about who she was or had been, outside of being Ereshki’s servant.
‘So the people of Kunis believe in the One God?’ Lamorna asked.
She knew nothing about Kunis, only that it was north of Malist, and she only knew that from Mordred’s maps.
She’d poured over one while he was sleeping once, unable to believe that where they were now was so far from Kernou and everything she had ever known.
She’d found Cruithea on the map and traced the journey she had made with her aunt and Keraine.
Elaine shook her head. ‘No. They have always known the truth.’
‘They serve the Red One while pretending to serve the One God?’
‘In the beginning, yes,’ Elaine replied.
‘They were not what they are now – they did not hunt their own kind but recruited them to the Red One’s service.
But things changed, as they were supposed to.
The Sacellum’s power grew and the young men who we once called Brothers became something else.
Soon, there were not enough volunteers, so the men of the Sacellum turned their eyes to the one place in the land where magic still existed freely and wasn’t hidden away in the shadows. ’
Cruithea, Lamorna thought. ‘How did they catch them?’
‘I don’t know,’ Elaine said. ‘That knowledge was not shared with anyone outside of the Witchfinder ranks and those like our friend Mark who oversaw them. It was not always easy to steal men from Cruithea, as you would understand, so things changed once again. The Magic Wielders taken from villages like yours were killed. They weren’t.
They became Witchfinders and occasionally Sisters, or the Warriors of the Light.
They became part of the Red One’s army,’ Elaine explained.
‘But they believed they were serving the One God?’
‘Lamorna, you’ve lived your life under the rule of one man, a ruthless man by all accounts. We know about Ulrian Tregarthen in the Sacellum. Those women who came to us were told the truth,’ Elaine said. ‘The men… once they became Witchfinders, it was too late.’
Lamorna chewed the inside of her cheek. The Magic Wielders she had met in Cruithea would never willingly turn from Inanna.
Mordred would not be made to do something like that, so that left one thought, a horrible, terrible thought that made her squirm.
The shards of glass on the Chif’s floor winked at her.
Elaine went on. ‘Those who could not be broken by whip or chains or the flame were broken in other ways. Can you imagine what it would be like, being left in the dark for weeks on end, starved, deprived of water? Sat in a cold cell with no blanket or care. And then, once their minds were a fragile thing, the Sacellum’s air elementals smashed their way inside and reshaped who that man once was. ’
‘Can they… recover?’ Lamorna asked. She thought of her aunt and all her knowledge, her herbs and potions.
Elaine shook her head. For a moment, Lamorna could feel the cold ocean grabbing at her toes and the scratching of the rope around her wrists.
She could hear her sister’s voice. The Witchfinders were not all evil men, she realised, only misled, as she had been.
Broken, as they had tried to break her. Lamorna sighed.
Part of her wished she hadn’t asked – she had no choice but to think about the Witchfinders differently.
Just as that thought settled inside her chest, Elaine surprised her.
‘Not all Witchfinders are kidnapped men. Some do this voluntarily.’
‘What?’
‘That surprises you? It shouldn’t. Men are easily corrupted, Lamorna. Think about Bryn and how he has changed from the boy you told me about,’ Elaine said. ‘They were offered power and were fed lies and if you do that to someone for long enough—’
‘You will change them,’ Lamorna finished. She rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. ‘That’s what the Chif did to us. He lied to us, over and over, until we believed it was true.’
Elaine nodded. ‘Words have incredible power. They can change the world. They can warp what is true and good into darkness and fear. Words can weave a web so strong that eventually the truth is completely tangled in it.’ She smiled, smug.
‘Mordred’s envoys will find no help from the people of Junis.
We may give our girls to the Red One, but our boys hide what they are.
They will fight, but it won’t be for Mordred. ’
‘But I thought, since the One God is Ereshki—’
‘It’s not that simple, Lamorna. It…’
Elaine trailed off. Lamorna frowned, and was about to get up and fetch her some water, when Elaine’s lips began moving, but no sound left her mouth.
Lamorna shrank back as a cloud of red closed around Elaine like a fist. Her eyes were wide and instead of white, Lamorna was horrified to see they were completely red.
A deep rumble shook the earth from beneath the castle.
Firestorm. Lamorna shot to her feet, but when Elaine’s terrible eyes turned to her, she froze. Lamorna opened her mouth to scream, and the red misty cloud vanished. Elaine blinked, and her eyes were white again.
Shaken, Lamorna sank into her chair, hand pressed over her chest.
The Red Sister’s expression was grim.
‘What was that?’ Lamorna breathed.
‘I had a vision,’ Elaine said in a barely audible voice. ‘Darkness and blood, death and rebirth. The world splintered and pulled back together. A sky shot with silver and a carpet of green.’ Elaine paused. ‘There will be death here, Lamorna. The broken earth of Camlann Plain will be painted red.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘War is coming. And it will be here soon.’
Darkness and blood.
Those three words were branded on Lamorna’s mind.
Once she’d shaken off the horror of seeing Elaine with her red eyes and the cloud of magic surrounding her, she’d thought of nothing but those words and what they could mean.
Elaine had said death was coming – Lamorna knew that already, but it had been a thought lingering at the back of her mind that she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.
Now that Elaine had said them, everything was different.
Naive, Lamorna thought. She’d been truly naive to think that things would not end that way – in darkness and blood and death.
She hurried through the halls. She was not long out of bed and hadn’t even brushed her hair, but hair could wait.
Everything else could wait. There were four people she truly cared about in this castle, and she hoped that she’d be able to convince at least one of them to leave before it was too late.
Her aunt was in her little sunlit room tucked off the kitchens. The smell of herbs was thick in the air – Lamorna recognised lavender and rosemary. Tamora was busy measuring dried herbs into her collection of glass jars with a steady hand. She glanced over her shoulder as Lamorna entered.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ she said, turning back to her work. ‘Not sleeping?’
‘I’m fine.’ Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what to say. She could barely breathe, could barely hear over the thundering of her heart.
Her aunt frowned. ‘What’s going on? I know your face as well as I know my own, my girl. What’s happened? Is it Mordred? If he’s hurt—’
‘No, no,’ Lamorna said quickly. ‘It’s not him. It’s…’
‘Lamorna.’ Tamora put down her equipment. ‘You look terrified.’
‘Please,’ Lamorna whispered. ‘Please, Aunty. Please leave this place, before it’s too late.’
Tamora’s eyes widened. ‘Too late for what?’