Revenge, Denied Read online

  “We are not speaking of Marlys,” Elspeth warned.

  Janna bit her lip.

  Marlys considered the lesson as she continued to mend the chair. Her mother and grandmother had told her much about magic, but had not told her that magic was something that you felt—just that it was something that you did. Did they know and not tell her, or did they not know? Grandmother’s sister had been a sorceress, though Marlys had never met her. But Grandmother did say that sorceresses guarded their secrets closely, but no one knew how sorceresses trained their apprentices—people only knew that the training was hard.

  Taking to heart the only clue that she had, Marlys began to try to feel magic at every opportunity. When she performed “household spells” to help her with chores, she tried to concentrate on how she felt. Nothing happened, until one day, while out hunting near a swamp she had not visited before, she slipped into a clutching bog—so called because the mud closed around the victim, sucking the victim to the bottom. After a moment of panic, Marlys calmed herself. She would not sink all at once. She had time. For now, only her legs had been encased. Reaching for her knife, she jerked it out of the sheath and stabbed the hard ground, trying to pull herself out. But the knife broke. She reached for a nearby young tree, narrow enough so she could grasp it, but she could only brush it with her fingertips. She tried her household magic: reach, bend. Not enough. Closing her eyes, she tried to put the spell on herself, something her mother and grandmother warned her not to do, lest she injure herself. But she could not think of anything else. Stretch.

  When she cast the spell in her mind, she intended to stretch out her arms. Instead, her left leg straightened, and she felt a horrible pain as if she had stepped on a long nail. Her leg, from her heel to her knee, stiffened and she threw back her head and gasped in agony. At the same time, her body jerked forward, about an armspan, out of the bog. Panting, she collapsed on the ground, on her side, until the pain subsided, though she still felt as if a long needle remained in her leg.

  Slowly, the bog attempted to pull her in again. This time, Marlys concentrated on mentally pushing the sensation of the needle out. With each effort, the needle seemed to move, and her body correspondingly moved out of the mud. But it was too slow, and the bog continued to claim her. Finally, annoyed and desperate, she surged back at the bog with all her might. She popped out, landing hard on her stomach, clear of the mud.

  The internal backlash was excruciating. She rolled on the ground, hugging herself. It seemed as if a thousand needles had jabbed through her heels, her palms, her head. She found she could not even cry out, could not breathe. Breathe! There, her lungs filled with air. The pain subsided. She lay there on her back, spent.

  After some time, she crawled, then got to her feet, and found she was uninjured. Exhausted, she staggered back to the lodge.

  Elspeth, Janna, and Kelsie watched her come in. They all sat at the long table.

  “All that time hunting, and no success, I see,” Kelsie sneered.

  “Hush,” Elspeth said.

  After that, mostly in bed, at night, while the others slept, Marlys tried to recapture the magic she knew had penetrated her at the bog. She found that she could pull it in and push it out, through her hands, through her feet. The sensation, sharp at first, never felt so agonizing as the first time, and grew less and less painful with practice until it did not hurt at all.

  Out of sight of the others, doing chores, cutting wood, she put the magic into practice. She created wind where there was none. Rabbits came to her against their will. Once, out in the forest, she met a bear. She stopped it in its tracks. Four days later, out hunting, she found the bear still in place. This time, at a safe distance, she released the spell and the bear sauntered away. Finally, one night, when rain beat against the roof, she slipped out the back door to stand in the yard, and not a drop touched her. She raised her arms and her face to the sky in triumph.

  Janna and Kelsie had not tried to attack her for about a month, the longest interval since she had arrived. They seemed absorbed with Elspeth’s lessons. Every day, Elspeth tried to get Janna or Kelsie or both to complete some magical task. Janna fared better than Kelsie. When alone, Marlys attempted the same tasks and found she performed them better than either of her seniors.

  Once, at table at the midday meal, Janna said to Marlys, “You know, you could join us in lessons if you’d ask for the iron boot.”

  “My grandmother told me there was enough needless suffering in life without asking for it.”

  Janna and Kelsie giggled. Kelsie said, “Your grandmother was a fool.”

  “That’s why she wasn’t a sorceress,” Janna said. “And unless you do as we do, you’ll never be one, either.”

  Marlys did not reply.

  On a fine day, while outside gutting and cleaning a large goose on a wooden table, she saw Elspeth walk past with Janna and Kelsie at her side.

  “Why do you always set us at these mundane tasks?” Kelsie complained. “Make the horses go back to the barn, turn the stream to water the garden, cause the flower petals to open...I’d rather cause a wildfire to start and put it out again.”

  “You have to perfect the small tasks before you can attempt the great ones,” Elspeth explained.

  “How about the spell where you conjure the image of another sorceress to talk to her at a distance?” Kelsie suggested.

  “That is one of the more powerful spells,” Elspeth said. “It is beyond your present ability.”

  “You might as well ask for the spell for the doorway to the island worlds,” Janna told Kelsie.

  Elspeth nodded. “That is one of the greatest spells. If you could do that, you would be a sorceress, not an apprentice.”

  “I could try it,” Kelsie said.

  “And if you did?” Elspeth answered. “Unless you were as skilled as I, you would be sucked into that other world, and not come back.”

  Kelsie said nothing, but caught Janna’s eye and smiled, then nodded in Marlys’s direction. Marlys guessed that meant that as soon as they were trained, they would certainly try that spell on her.

  Before her experience at the bog, Marlys would have been alarmed. Not now. She calmly continued to dress the bird, remembering what her grandmother had told her about that spell. Her grandmother’s sorceress sister had used it, yes, she had. A band of marauders had come through the territory--burning, looting, torturing, killing. The sorceress had faced them all, and sent them right through the doorway. Grandmother had explained that the spell took such strength of will that it was used to deal only with the most dire of situations. No one who went through the doorway ever came back.

  “But then how do they know it’s another world?” Marlys had asked Grandmother.

  “The sorceress sees a brief glimpse of it when the gate is open. She sees earth and trees and grass and sky and sun, the same as here.”

  “But is it fair to the people of the other world to send such fiends there?”

  “There is a legend that the Bright Beings who witnessed the creation of the many worlds, small and large, and endowed the first sorceress with her powers, bestowed on her the spell to open this doorway. They told her that each time the doorway is open, it leads to a different island world. These are set in the mortal realm as islands in an archipelago. No one is born there, and anyone can go there and make a new life. My sister told me of a sorceress who wearied of this world and opened the door to go to a place of peace and serenity. They are not just places to use to rid the world of evildoers.”

  If Janna and Kelsie planned to open the doorway and push her in, Marlys knew she had to learn to summon it first. One night, when the full moon shone in the back yard, Marlys slipped out. She stood near the barn and faced the spot where the clearing met the woods. Although she had not been given a specific spell to summon the doorway, she had succeeded in previous spells by picturing the result in her mind and drawing the magic in and out of her body. She took a breath, summoned all her strength, stared resolutely
in the direction of the woods, and moved her hands as if pushing open a gate.

  The maelstrom nearly knocked her down. She had to use magic just to stay in place. Everything near the doorway, however, fell inside, from the fox crossing the yard to the young trees at the edge of the clearing—uprooted and sucked in. From the barn, the horses neighed in panic. Looking ahead of her, she could see what appeared to be a silvery arch, and through it, she spied a moonlit meadow. The gale rushed from behind her into the arch, trying to blow her inside. With a gesture, she closed the door.

  All was still. Marlys sunk to the ground and sat there, spent.

  The back door opened. Janna and Kelsie rushed out, clutching their nightgowns around them. “What was that?” Janna shouted.

  Elspeth stepped outside, dressing gown over her nightclothes, golden braid spilling over her shoulders. She surveyed the holes in the dirt where the young trees had been, the broken fence around the garden, the grass littered with leaves stripped from the trees.

  Kelsie pointed to Marlys. “You idiot! Practicing magic without Elspeth directing you? You could have killed us!” She rushed forward and kicked Marlys in the ribs. Marlys, weak and exhausted, could not summon enough magic to shield herself. She could only fold her arms around her head as Kelsie and Janna hit her back, legs, stomach, arms.

  “Inside!” Elspeth shouted.

  With one last withering glance toward Marlys, Janna and Kelsie followed Elspeth to the lodge.

  Marlys tried to move, and groaned. A rib was cracked. Weak as she was, though, Marlys still could summon the magic—only a little at first, then a little more as she rested there. In. Out. In. Out. By and by, she felt better. The rib mended. The bruises and sprains from the beating ceased to swell, then shrank. She got to her feet stiffly, walked back into the lodge, and climbed into bed.

  By morning, Marlys felt normal. At the breakfast table, Janna and Kelsie glared at her. Elspeth said simply, “We’re going to see High Sorceress Thorne today.”

  As Marlys cleaned up, Kelsie leaned toward her and hissed, “You’re in trouble now.”

  Marlys did not much care. They rode to the castle of the high sorceress in the same coach they had used to witness the deed signing. As before, Elspeth sped them on their way.

  When they arrived at the castle, a stone fortress in the mountains, Marlys saw many other coaches ahead of them. Sorceresses in their fineries alighted and walked inside, speaking merrily with each other. Elspeth, Janna, Kelsie, and Marlys had donned their best draperies as well. They followed the other sorceresses, at the end of the procession.

  They walked through a long corridor with a marble floor and arched ceiling. Light streamed through many stained glass windows, creating a beautiful colorful shimmer on the walls. At last, they reached what seemed to be an audience chamber. A long narrow rug led to a throne where the High Sorceress sat. The other sorceresses stood to either side. They seemed to Marlys to be waiting expectantly.

  Elspeth stopped and waved Janna and Kelsie to the walls where the other apprentices lingered. Marlys and Elspeth stood alone before the High Sorceress.

  She stared right at Marlys. “I heard you accomplished something rather remarkable for an apprentice with so little experience.”

  Marlys said nothing.

  “Answer her!” Elspeth whispered in Marlys’s ear.

  “I may have,” she said, looking not at Thorne but the marble floor.

  “Do you think to reach the rank of sorceress so quickly?”

  “I wouldn’t presume,” Marlys said.

  Thorne stood. “Come,” she said to Marlys.

  Marlys followed, aware that Elspeth and the other sorceresses and apprentices strolled behind her. They walked through an arch into a huge enclosed courtyard.

  Thorne gestured to Janna and Kelsie, and then Marlys. “Bind her.”

  The night before, Marlys had been weak. With a good night’s sleep, a meal, and a leisurely coach ride, she had regained full strength. She held out an arm. Janna and Kelsie stopped, and turned around against their will.

  “Elspeth,” Thorne said.

  Elspeth, too, tried to reach Marlys, but could not.

  “Let’s see how you do with this, then,” Thorne said. With a gesture, she opened the iron gate--which was at least 20 feet tall--to the outside. In stomped a behemoth, with four legs, each the thickness of tree trunks, and a sinewy neck holding a head with long, cruel teeth. Marlys extended her arm. The creature stopped, bellowed with frustration, and slowly turned and stomped away. Marlys made sure that the behemoth would continue to walk in that direction at least 2 miles. She closed the iron gate behind it from where she stood.

  “Very impressive,” Thorne said. “Come here, child.”

  Marlys put her arm down and walked forward. Thorne extended her hand. Warily, Marlys took it. With her other hand, Thorne thrust a long knife into Marlys’s gut.

  Marlys doubled over with pain and astonishment. Blood spilled from the wound. After the first moment of panic, she calmed herself and again caused the magic to flow through her and around the knife. Carefully, she drew it out, and the wound closed. She held up the bloody blade to Thorne.

  The high sorceress smiled. “So you are a sorceress after all.”

  “Marlys?” shouted Janna and Kelsie, aghast.

  “Silence!” Thorne glared at them. She turned back to Marlys. “Welcome to the ranks of your equals.”

  Marlys handed the knife back to Thorne, who wiped it with a kerchief and replaced it in the hidden sheath. “And what if I had not been a sorceress? I would have died.”

  “But you were,” Thorne said. “And now you are one of us.” She smiled and spread her arms wide. “Come, embrace me as a sister.” When Marlys stared at her skeptically, wondering what other attempt would be made to kill her, the other sorceresses chuckled. “No more tricks,” Thorne said. “We sorceresses are sworn never to harm one another.”

  Marlys then let Thorne hug her, though she did not yield. When the older woman let her go, she said, “Now, swear to me that you will never harm another sorceress, or your life will be forfeit.”

  Elspeth and others crowded around her.

  “I swear I will never harm another sorceress, or my life will be forfeit.” Marlys said, and she felt a tingle.

  “There. The spell is set,” Thorne said, and Marlys realized that magic had been used to enforce the oath.

  Thorne gestured at the others. “Let us feast.” Taking Marlys by the arm, she led the way back to the audience room, where food and drink had been spread at a table. “We must give the oath without delay,” she said. “Because of our training, many young sorceresses come here with anger smoldering within them. I myself tried to open the doorway to the island worlds and send the others through it.”

  “What happened?”

  “The others closed it before anyone went through it, of course.” Thorne smiled again and walked away.

  Elspeth came and embraced her. “I knew that you could become a sorceress. You showed such great endurance.”

  When Elspeth released her, Marlys said, “I never knew that.”

  “How could I tell you? When I was just starting out, I tried to teach my apprentices gently. It never worked. You don’t know how much it pained me that I had to change that.”

  Marlys thought, but did not say, that Elspeth must not have tried very hard to be gentle, if all Marlys had to do to bring out her magical powers was struggle out of a clutching bog. Surely apprentices could be taught in a gentle way, or, at worst, exposed to nothing more terrible than heavy mud.

  Other sorceresses came to Marlys, extending their good wishes and telling Marlys of the horrors they went through. Some said they now thought that the cruel training was good for them, though it did not seem that way at the time. Others said they were relieved when the training was over.

  Even Janna and Kelsie joined the line to wish Marlys well. When it was their turn, at the end of the line, Janna said, “You see, we did you good
after all; you were just too stubborn to see it.”

  “Yes,” Kelsie agreed, “Now you can climb down off your pedestal and act the same as the rest of us.”

  Marlys answered them the way she had answered the others—she just smiled and nodded.

  At last, Thorne came back. “Now that you know us better, do you feel more at ease with us?”

  “I do,” Marlys said sincerely—because now she realized none of them were any threat to her; she could equal their magic or better.

  “Then come, stand beside me at the throne as I formally present you.”

  Marlys followed her and took a place at Thorne’s right hand as the older woman sat. She motioned for the assembly to gather around her. When they were quiet, Thorne said, “Join me in welcoming Sorceress Marlys.”

  “Welcome!” “Well done!” the others shouted.

  Marlys looked at all of their smiling faces, spread out her hands, and stopped time around them. All froze in their places. Marlys walked through the assembly and outside to the coach, locking all doors and gates behind her. She drove away in the coach, speeded by magic, with a light heart and eager spirit. All of those pitiful sorceresses and apprentices would stay in Thorne’s castle until the day she released them, the day that she returned with all of her own apprentices and sorceresses, trained in her way—without malice or cruelty. Which method would convince them then? She would cheerfully wait for that day to come.

  THE END