The Necromancer's Daughter, page 8
part #6 of Queen and Country Series
Duchess Carlotta gave a little gasp. Her face looked very pale.
Johanna said to her, “If you’re uncomfortable, feel free to retire to your quarters.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
Natalya replied. “We’ll see if any ghosts need warding off. It’s not something I recommend for nice ladies.”
The duchess straightened her back. “What do you think I am? You may think that I’m dumb and I’ll need smelling salts at the sight of the merest little ghost, but I am the Duchess of Aroden and I protect good against evil. You may call our host Johanna cunning, but she is about to become a mother, and I’ll protect her dignity and her child from the likes of you.”
A man brandishing a sword now ran through the garden, and further shouts came from the garden room.
Johanna led the way back into the hallway, through the foyer, through the ballroom, where a couple of guards stood huddled in a group just inside the garden room door, looking frightened.
“Oh, Your Majesty,” one of them, a young man, gasped. He was barely old enough to have a few hairs sprouting from his chin.
“What happened?”
“We didn’t see all of it because we were guarding this door here, but all of a sudden there was this terrible scream and something smashed through the window.”
“Did you check?”
He shook his head. “Our orders are to guard this door, Your Majesty. It could be a trick to draw us away.”
His companion’s eyes were wide. “I never go into that room unless ordered. You shouldn’t go in there either, Your Majesty. It’s haunted. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the little one.”
“Our husbands and fathers are in there, so I’m going anyway.” Johanna sidestepped them to the double doors that provided entry to the garden room. She was fuming. That was all they cared about: the heir to the throne.
King William’s words came back to her. You will never be worth more than the child you carry.
Duchess Carlotta said behind her, “It strikes me that you may want to dismiss some of your guards, if they’re as weak as that. If any of our guards said that to me, they’d be dismissed on the spot.”
That comment hit Johanna in the gut. She hesitated with her hand on the door handle.
She was a weak queen indeed, one who allowed men with ulterior motives to run her life. Of course Duchess Carlotta was right.
But the guards were Johan Delacoeur’s responsibility.
Then dismiss him, too.
Roald could do this. He had the power.
But wrecking people’s livelihoods and making enemies out of reluctant friends was not her style. She appreciated Johan’s experience, and believed that he would select better men if only he could find them. He was very old-fashioned and still needed to fully come around to the idea of having her in charge.
Dear Johanna, you are much too nice, Master Deim had said on many occasions. Usually, he was talking about the church, but it was something that he would say about Johan Delacoeur, because as a seasoned merchant, he never trusted anyone.
Not trusting anyone was something she had a lot of trouble with.
She opened the door to the garden room a crack.
A stifling waft of liquor-laced air came out.
Johanna peered into the darkness. The lights had gone out, and the only thing she could see were rectangles of moonlit garden through the windows directly opposite the door. A patch of light hovered in the garden, an ethereal figure in a dress, holding what appeared to be a lance at someone’s head.
By the Triune, how badly had these stupid men provoked this ghost?
Johanna pushed into the room, ignoring groans and other sounds in the darkness. She nearly tripped over someone’s arm, then slipped on a wet patch—she hated to think what that was. It stank of liquor in the room, laced with a distinctive tang of vomit.
“Here let me help,” Natalya said. She held her hand up. The shower of sparks that came from it cast an ever-so-faint glow by which Johanna could avoid the legs of another man passed out on the floor. She didn’t try to see who it was, didn’t want to know.
Weren’t these nobles just disgusting? How long had she and the two women been drinking tea? And they had managed to get this drunk in that short period?
She reached the door to the garden.
A couple of people also stood looking outside, but she couldn’t see who they were.
The ghost was slowly circling the man who lay huddled on the lawn.
“Who is that?” she asked.
A dry voice replied, “You shouldn’t be here, Your Majesty. It would be harmful to the heir of the throne.”
That sounded like Theo Kloostermans. Whenever had he snuck into this meeting? He definitely hadn’t been at the dinner.
“Thank you for your concern, but I asked who that is. I can look after my own wellbeing.”
“It is Shepherd Victor.” Johanna recognised Master Deim’s voice. And Shepherd Victor also hadn’t been at the dinner. What was going on?
“What happened?” Like, what are they doing here?
“We were just minding our own business, and this . . . apparition came out of the ground while we were all talking and drinking—”
“Drinking mainly, by the look of things.” Johanna said, and if she sounded peevish, then fine.
“It is what men do, Your Majesty,” Theo Kloostermans said. “With all due respect. This is when deals are made.”
“When everyone has passed out on the floor? Then it’s no wonder that these men and their deals are all so stupid. Us women, cast aside for being no more than the child you bear were discussing real power.” By the Triune, she was angry all of a sudden at all these stupid attitudes. “Anyway . . .” She undid the latch to the door.
Theo Kloostermans held his arm in front of her. “Don’t go out there, Your Majesty. Think about the heir—”
“The heir is fine with this. Stop trying to control me, because you don’t and you can’t.” Johanna sidestepped him. “I’ve dealt with this ghost before.” Not that it had always ended happily. But she knew that she could control the ghost with her wood magic. The box that Li Fai had given her was in her study, but she happened to know that there was rake with a wooden handle leaning against the wall just outside the window, because she had seen Roald leave it there.
Johanna stepped onto the paved area outside the door. She found the rake, and went down the stairs into the old rose garden.
Once she had moved away from the palace, away from the talk of the men, she could hear the Shepherd’s wailing voice in prayer.
Someone walked on the gravel path behind her. It was Natalya, of course, following her as a silent shadow. Duchess Carlotta came as well, following a bit behind Natalya. If nothing else, Johanna admired her determination. She must be frightened to death.
The ghost of Celine circled the figure on the ground.
The Shepherd was face down, on his knees, backside up, his hands clasped in prayer. He was crying, the words muffled in the grass.
Johanna remembered the vision she had seen when Li Fai had given her the box. It had shown her the Shepherd breaking down when trying to control the relic that was still trapped under the tree in the house where he and his wife used to live. The relic had been calling evil beings and foul forces into the church, and the Shepherd had been powerless to control them.
When she asked, Li Fai had said that the visions showed possible futures.
She shivered.
Johanna held the rake in front of her. Natalya stood next to her, holding out her hands. Duchess Carlotta had wrapped her shawl around her head, leaving just a small opening for her eyes, nose and mouth. The whites of her eyes showed with fear, but she didn’t back down.
The ghost stopped moving, and cast her ice-cold gaze in Johanna’s direction. She laughed, her mouth wide open.
The air she exhaled turned to ice, burning against the bare skin on Johanna’s face and hands.
The lance in her hand fused with her arm and grew into a long tendril.
The ghost’s other arm grew longer, too. Celine’s hair fused into moving tentacles that looked like writhing snakes.
The Shepherd lifted himself on his knees. He balled his fists at the sky. “By the Holy Triune, Bearer of Evil, begone with you!”
The ghost ignored him, having found someone new to play with. She floated closer to Johanna, walking about a hand’s width above the ground without touching it. She wore the yellow dress that used to be the favourite of Celine’s. Her feet were bare.
A feeling of cold magic went through Johanna’s stomach. She raised the rake, willing the wood to start growing, but the rake’s handle remained a rake handle, showing her distracting images of the garden in full daylight and Roald on his knees weeding the carrot beds.
Why didn’t this wood grow in the same way it had grown when trapping Alexandre? That twisted tree had grown from a broom handle.
Because there had been many other people. Maybe there had been other people with magic who didn’t know they had magic, or maybe the magic just needed other people to work, or—
The ghost was coming closer. The tentacles reached out for Johanna. She stumbled back, and almost tripped over the edge of a garden bed. She was so heavy and awkward, and a fall could be much nastier for the heir to throne than anything the ghost could manage to do.
Johanna’s backside hit the hedge and she could retreat no further.
The Shepherd was yelling at the top of his voice. “Begone you devil, begone! The holy Triune with smite you to the seven hells.”
The cold exhaled breath of the ghost bit into Johanna’s skin. She squinted her eyes against it, continuing to wave the rake.
She willed it to sprout buds. She imagined the vines as they had grown from the broom handle. She imagined the tree as it had grown from Li Fai’s wooden box, but the rake refused to obey.
Celine’s ghost reached for Johanna’s hand with tendrils of glowing ether. This close up, the ghost’s face didn’t resemble Celine at all. The face was skull-like, the eye sockets were empty, the nose two elongated slits, as if the flesh had rotted off. The hair writhed and twisted into knots. The mouth had no lips and pointed teeth. It opened, emitting a low hiss that made the hair on the back of Johanna’s arms stand up.
Johanna was holed up against the hedge, which was too tall for her to step over. She had nowhere to go. She had tempted this ghost too often. This time, the ghost would win. The mouth opened further—
Then a female voice hissed foreign words that sounded like shards of glass slicing through fabric. A breeze whirled around the ghost, whipping up leaves and dirt. Johanna’s skin stung with the warmth of it, after the icy cold of the ghost’s magic.
The ghost froze.
The woman’s words filled the night. Reverberant, sibilant, sonorous, the tone of her voice was everything at once. She stood with her hands stretched out. The woman was Natalya, of course.
The ghost let out a hiss of cold air that pushed against the warm breeze, but it couldn’t manage to drive it away.
The ghost retreated past Natalya and the Shepherd. It floated backwards across the lawn and the garden beds, and before it reached the wall, it winked out and was gone.
Johanna lowered the rake.
Duchess Carlotta was staring at her.
Johanna wiped sweat off her face. She asked Natalya, “What was the thing you just said?”
“It is a simple spell for repelling ghosts. Ghosts are afraid if they have never heard it before. After a while, they get used to the spell and it won’t work anymore. It was a gamble that it would still work on this ghost.”
“Well . . . thank you.”
“You should not go fight this ghost anymore. This is not a simple ghost. This is something more evil.”
“It is the ghost of princess Celine, resurrected years after her death. It’s Kylian’s attempt at necromancy.”
Natalya hissed. “We do not speak his name.”
Chapter 10
* * *
SHAKEN AND FEELING SHIVERY, Johanna led the women back to the garden room, where a number of the men were standing at the top of the stairs, talking in groups. In the dark, it was hard to see who they were except for the tall one, who was probably King William. She recognised Master Deim’s voice in amongst their chatter. He was saying, “The danger has gone now. We can all safely go to our beds . . .”
“Where is Father?” Johanna asked him.
A slightly stooped figure detached from one of the groups and enveloped her in a hug. “Please, Johanna, will you never do that again? I thought it would kill you.”
“I’m all right,” Johanna said. She shrugged off his concern, because admitting that she had thought the same would bring all sorts of unwelcome thoughts. “Where is Roald?”
“Inside. He didn’t see the ghost of his sister.”
“Did you shelter him from the sight?” That was surprising. Roald tended to be curious.
“He’s . . .” Father hesitated. “He’ll be all right.”
Johanna wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was behind that evasive reply. The air that wafted out of the open doors into the room stank of liquor. Roald never drank. That was probably as much as she needed to know.
Someone had lit a lamp inside the room, and by its light Johanna and the two other women picked their way between glass, a fallen chair and messy patches on unmentionable substances across the room. She spotted at least three men asleep on the floor. No one she recognised.
The little Earl was at the table that the men had dragged in from the ballroom, pouring himself another drink. He hefted his glass when Johanna passed, and giggled. “Cheers.” His cheeks were bright red. “I will . . . will drink to . . . the van—vanquishing of the goat—er, ghoaf—ghost! Hic.”
“Disgusting,” Duchess Carlotta said in a low voice behind Johanna, and for once, Johanna agreed wholeheartedly with her. She also noted that Duchess Carlotta made no attempt to find her husband.
“They’re happy now, but they won’t feel so good in the morning,” Natalya said.
Duchess Carlotta snapped, “And they won’t want to get out of bed, and they’ll be complaining about their heads all day.”
There was clearly some backstory to this remark, and Johanna thought it wise not to ask any further. Duchess Carlotta was right, and it was annoying.
Tomorrow morning was the day that Father and Master Deim had planned to take the visitors around the city to show them the possible sites for building new quays and warehouses. It was an important day in the program and she’d wanted the men to be alert and asking questions, not worrying about their heads.
And then a thought: King William thought that she was just a little woman, worth only as much as the heir she could produce. Was he deliberately trying to distract all the guests?
By the Triune, he wouldn’t do that, would he?
In the ballroom, she found the group of terrified guards in the same position as they had been when she came through. Seeing them there made her angry, too. Had they done anything to prove their worth?
One of the men gasped. “Your Majesty! You’re back.”
“Yes, I am. You can now go in there. The ghost is gone so you don’t have to be afraid anymore. It is quite safe. While I’ve been doing your job, I wonder why I pay for you when you’re standing out here being scared, like a bunch of adolescent girls. Go inside and help clean up the mess. Put a halt to this raucous party. Drag these men to their beds where they belong. Take away their liquor.”
The guard flinched. “Yes, yes, Your Majesty.” He bowed.
“Then don’t just stand there. Do it!”
The men scurried off.
“Idiots,” Johanna said in a low voice. She really must talk to Johan Delacoeur about it. She knew what he would say: that it was hard to get good men, and no doubt it was. But better training cost nothing. He’d better explain to her why he hadn’t yet started that training.
“Sometimes you need to scare the men,” Natalya said. “Otherwise they will just do whatever they want. Men are stupid. They do not think.”
Johanna could definitely agree with that. “This makes me angry. These men called up Celine’s ghost by having the party over her grave. It was their fault.”
“They will always do what they want, because you’re a woman and they won’t listen to you. But we rule the world of magic and ghosts. You wanted to know the reason why I came with the baron. I didn’t tell you because I first wanted to see if I can trust you. Now I think I can. Come. It is high time that we talk about this.” And she took off across the foyer.
Johanna followed Natalya down the stairs that led to the old servants’ quarters, with Duchess Carlotta close behind.
On the way down, Natalya told her, “The pull of magic is very strong in this city. Everyone who has even the smallest gift of magic will want to travel here. They will make up an excuse to go, but their mind is pulled here and they cannot say why they suddenly have to visit relatives they haven’t cared about for years. They are drawn here because the magic lines have broken to the surface. They are virgin lines that have never been seen before. Everyone wants to draw from their power.”
Johanna remembered Duke Lothar talking about magic lines in his estate. She remembered the living tunnel of trees.
“We never had magic in Saardam.”
“No, that’s right. The lines must have shifted. Magic things must have happened that have brought the lines to the surface. Or maybe the magic discovered this virgin, empty place, and all the types magic are fighting to own it.”
“Magic events . . . We trapped Alexandre’s spirit in a tree, and we did the same with a relic from the Church.”
“Those are evil things. I can feel them, and I have been around a lot of bad magic. Those vessels of evil have not been defeated. They’re struggling against their tree prisons. Give them half a chance and they will escape. I can think of several people who would love to give them a hand.”
