The Merqueen (The Witching World Book 3) Read online

  Right felt better, so I turned right and scooted down the hallway. The doors to the rooms were closer together on this floor; the rooms were smaller, mostly for guests.

  The end of the halfway brought hope. It didn’t have a door. It led me to a smaller, yet still elegant staircase.

  I cursed the absurd women’s fashion of the day and hiked up my skirts. I took the stairs in bounds, my bloomers flopping with each of my steps, careful to balance on the heels of equally absurd shoes. I didn’t bother calling out for Sir Lancelot anymore. I’d tell Marcelo I hadn’t found him, and it would be mostly true.

  I knew I was almost at the landing that would lead me to the roof. Part of me—an important part of me—yearned for the openness that was almost there, teasing me with its proximity. I anticipated the clearing where the elements could pick up speed and dart freely here and there without limitation.

  The staircase met its end in a closed door, but it opened readily. I stepped through and already the cooler air sunk to meet me. The stairs in front of me were open to the elements. Their stone was worn, as much by the weather as by centuries of men that climbed them, their steps often weighed by the dread of an attack on the castle.

  These steps had a higher tread and no railing to grip. My body was forced to slow down. When I finally reached the top of the stairs, my lungs greedily sucked in the air of the high mountaintops. There, the element of air was as pure as it got.

  I didn’t stop to think. I could be certain of that now because I wouldn’t have done what I did if I had. Not with how limited my powers were.

  I was still for a moment, only until my eyes adjusted to the light. And then I wasn’t. I was tired of waiting. I felt like I’d waited all my life to discover who I really was.

  I didn’t care for caution. I never had, really. Caution and obedience had cost me my passion for life. In Norland, my life had been entirely devoid of meaning. The freedom I could find on the roof of the Castle of Bundry, atop a mountain that towered over the sea, could fix everything that needed fixing. It could right the past. How, I didn’t know, but I could feel it.

  And in those moments, all there was for me was feeling. The air whipped into a wind, lashing my wild red hair around me. Like every part of me, my hair was alive. My magic coursed through it. The sun heated up. I could have sworn it grew brighter and stronger once I arrived on that roof.

  The sea crashed against the rocks well below the cliff wall that edged the castle. Many stories separated me and the waves, yet their music reached my ears. That part of me that was used to the merworld tingled with memory. I thought then that I could live in this wild sea that frothed and broke to rebuild and crest again, so much like I did.

  The mountain I stood on, crowned by a castle made from the stones of the surrounding land, stretched further. It pushed ever upward, reaching toward the sun and the endless sky that could take you to the moon. I floated into the infinity of the sky above, fully supported by the earth below.

  My heart beat along with the heartbeats of the earth, and of the water, and of the fire, and of the air. Bu-bum. Bu-bum. Bu-bum. The fifth element came radiantly alive, announcing itself only to me. I could sense the heat that glowed within my heart center.

  My power was there, waiting only for me to claim it. And I wouldn’t deny myself the power that whipped, shone, frothed, and grew.

  I extended a foot and was surprised to see it there, extended as I’d asked. My body felt apart from me, yet fully within my control. It was as if I were watching myself move, doing what I knew I could.

  The castle was large. The roof still spread out vast before me as I headed toward the sea.

  When I reached the parapet, a stone wall as high as my waist that bordered the entire roof, I didn’t slow. I didn’t stop. How could I?

  How could I allow a wall to bind me? Or even the eventual drop to a crushing death below? Neither of those seemed real, at least no more real than the sense of impossibility that ran alongside me, urging me along. I could vanquish anything.

  The only limitations that were real were those I believed to be so. Everything else was only a wall I could fly over, or a sea I could plunge into and live as a mermaid with a turquoise tail that sparkled in sunlight even in the depths of this wild sea.

  I sensed myself leave the ground, led by the five-petal flower that pounded with my heart. It whispered to me, Yes. Yes. Yes. This is who you are. But I’m not certain that I listened to it then. Why listen to words when everywhere was the proof of their meaning?

  Impractical shoes and skirts seemed like nothing. They faded into the meaninglessness of the rest of the rules and artifice of the world. Truth, meaning, power, and knowing replaced them until I wouldn’t have known if I was dressed or naked, alive or dead. I didn’t think any of the differences would matter.

  I flew. I flew because I always knew I could. I flew because I forgot to notice that I couldn’t. I flew because I was a witch, and I had power, and this was what witches with power could do.

  The air carried me as easily as if I were a feather, or even something lighter. It lifted me along an eddy of its breezes. I was no different from it. I was not separate. I was who I was because the air was a part of me, and I a part of it.

  I rose neither flat nor upright, but at a diagonal. I broke the rules of up or down, straight angles, and who was who and who could do what. Like an angel, I came up with my heart forward, my chest uplifted, facing the world and the people that couldn’t see me without fear.

  When there was no fear, there was an eternal stretch of open possibility ahead. And I rode it. I rode that stretch. I rode that wave of a breeze until it crested, until it occurred to me that it might crash.

  Of course, the element of air wouldn’t crash; it wouldn’t do anything it didn’t want to. But my mind reared its desperate head, afraid more of the control I’d stolen from it than the crested wave of air that was magic in invisible form.

  I paused just to notice it, however, just to see what it was about. Curious, I watched my mind wave its message frantically at me, Be afraid! You could crash. You could die. Fear what you don’t know.

  I couldn’t really hear the words my mind tried to get me to hear. The air whipped with additional noise in an attempt to drown the foolish words out. The sea crashed louder than ever before, contributing to its efforts at saving me from myself—from that part of myself that could have crashed to the sea and drowned. The sun pulsed; the earth groaned.

  Yet, my brain tried again, and this time a little of its garbled message got through—not all of it, but enough to reawaken the seed within me that had retreated into dormancy. Now the seed grew at a ridiculous speed. It sprouted and shot upward, until it reached me and sucked me into its vicious whisper. You’re falling. You’ll crash. You’ll die. Be afraid.

  Just like that, I could no longer feel the way the air flew on its own melody, or how the waves swelled and broke over and over again along with their own intended rhythm. The sun’s constant pulsing was lost to me. The earth’s vibration sank far away from me, as if I wouldn’t be able to touch it ever again, unless I was to die a violent death against it.

  Fear consumed me and overpowered who I already knew I was, that part of me that had begun to reach for who I could become.

  A fear that surfaced from far within, where I thought it had gone to die and be recycled into something that could serve me well, sought its revenge on me. Its vengeance was precise and swift. It upstaged my power with its own.

  I let my magic go. It seeped out of me like a boat with a fatal leak.

  The air could no longer hold me because I did not hold it.

  And I fell from flight as gracefully as any legend of disgraced, fallen angels. I fell in a rough tumble of despair and abandoned fate.

  And I crashed just as predictably. Fear triumphed.

  Chapter 15

  I opened one eye unenthusiastically, but the great effort it took seemed worth it, judging by the look of relief etched on Mar
celo’s face.

  “Oh my goodness, Clara. You scared me to pieces.”

  I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t broken into a thousand little pieces, I didn’t think I was, though I hadn’t checked to make sure. I assumed being smashed to pieces would hurt terribly if it didn’t kill you, and I wasn’t dead or in much pain.

  I blinked at Marcelo with little comprehension, trying to wipe the confusion away with my eyelids. “What happened?”

  “That’s what I’ve been waiting for you to wake up and tell me. How could you have fallen from the roof? Was there some kind of foul intention involved?” Marcelo stood for the first time since hovering over me to examine his greater surroundings. “Is Count Washur here? Or Clarissa’s son?”

  “I don’t believe they’re here. Where am I?”

  The fall had shaken me, and I didn’t feel ready to move my head to figure out where I was.

  “You, my darling, are one amazingly lucky girl. You fell from the roof, which would have been a horribly long fall that would have, without a doubt, killed you. However, you landed in the very middle of the terrace of my father’s study, only a floor beneath the roof. The terrace saved your life, making me also a very lucky man.” His breathing and heartbeat were only just now beginning to steady again.

  “Well, that’s quite fortunate then.” I felt gratitude for that terrace. I straightened my legs out from their awkward angles. “Ah. That’s much better. I think I’m all right, although my head hurts.”

  “Well, yes, it would. You knocked yourself right out when you hit the stone. Turn your head to the side. Let me make sure it hasn’t broken open.”

  I tried to comply but winced. “It hurts too much to move it. Maybe after I rest for a minute.” I began to close my eyes.

  “Oh no. You can’t sleep. You have to stay awake until I’m certain you’re all right and that you did no major damage to yourself.”

  “All right.” I opened my eyes wide to please him, although I had no idea how I’d stay awake for long. My eyes began to droop right away.

  “Clara.” Marcelo put his hand against my face, and I widened my eyes again. “Stay with me.”

  “Will she be all right, Count Bundry?” I couldn’t see Sir Lancelot, but I’d recognize his small, strong voice anywhere. It lacked its usual composure.

  “I think so, thanks to you and this blasted terrace. Although she won’t be right away. She’ll need several days of bed rest. I’m so thankful I had the foresight to ask her to seek your company before she practiced her magic. If you hadn’t been on the roof with her, I don’t know how I’d have found out where she was.”

  “Couldn’t you have located me as you did Winston’s horses when we left Lake Creston?” I was quite impressed with my question for two reasons: I’d managed to distract Marcelo from discovering I hadn’t done as he’d asked, and I was pretty excited that I could formulate any kind of lucid, intelligent thought.

  Marcelo seemed surprised by my question too. “No, I couldn’t have. In order for that locator spell to work, I need to have the animal, or person, present at the time I cast the spell. Now that I think of it, maybe I should go ahead and place a beacon on you now. Just in case. You seem to have quite the penchant for getting into trouble.”

  I thought that a bit unfair, though I couldn’t argue against the veracity of the statement. I didn’t have the energy either. The last thing I heard was Sir Lancelot’s worried voice. “Count Bundry, I wasn’t on the roof with Clara. I didn’t know she was practicing her magic. I was enjoying the view out on the terrace when she came crashing down and almost fell on me.”

  The well-meaning owl lowered his voice to give his next words the importance they deserved. “I think she was flying.”

  Marcelo didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did, his words were too slow. “She was doing what?”

  The last thing I thought was, Oh no. Then I went to the place where thoughts of how much trouble I was in couldn’t follow, at least not until I woke.

  When I did wake, I was grateful to find that the sun still streamed in through the window of my bedroom. At least I hadn’t lost the whole day. Since Marcelo came into my life, I lost more time to the unconscious part of my brain than I wanted to ever again.

  The yellow of the walls was lively, and I felt optimistic despite the thrumming in my head. The fear that had overtaken me during my flight had plummeted to the ground below. There, it died. I was free of it, and excited at the prospect of exploring the true potential of my magic.

  I inched upward in the bed. Each inch caused a surge of pain, and I sat against the headboard to recover. It wasn’t long before I heard leather-soled shoes echoing on the hardwood floors. They climbed the stairs and started down the hall toward me.

  It was Marcelo. I’d learned his stride and pace from our time together at Lake Creston when I had little to do other than lay in bed and recover.

  Here I was, in bed again, recovering. I prepared for whatever Marcelo might have to say to me. Would he be angry and try to forbid me from doing magic that wasn’t contained by spell books? Perhaps he was ready to teach me now that he saw what I might be able to do with some guidance.

  The footsteps reached my open door and muted as they walked across a rug. “You’re finally awake.” His voice was difficult to decipher. What did it hold? I wasn’t sure.

  I waited.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better. Although my head still hurts terribly. I know it’ll pass soon, maybe after a good night’s sleep.”

  “Well, you’ve already had several of those. Though I see you may still need a few more before we can leave.”

  “Leave?” But we’d only just arrived. “To go where?”

  “Back to Irele.”

  “But why?” I didn’t know if it was my foggy head, or if it really didn’t make sense.

  “We need Mordecai’s help. Your magic’s too powerful for me alone. You’re right that you need to learn what you’re capable of. But I’m afraid that if we explore your magic without his help, you might get hurt. And I couldn’t bear that.”

  “But we left Irele because of all the creatures loose from their tapestries that made it impossible to focus. How can we go back there already? You know Mordecai won’t have dealt with them all yet.”

  “No, he probably hasn’t. So we’ll just have to help him do it quickly. Besides, he’ll want to know that Count Washur has threatened you again. Of all people, he should know.”

  I agreed about that. He was the most experienced magician either of us knew and he also had the most incentive to defeat the Count. “Couldn’t you tell him without us going there? Like with the silver brush you used in your study at the castle?” I purposefully omitted, the time when I set your study on fire.

  “No. The magic that creates the pathways between magical objects is very ancient and very volatile. It’s a tricky thing to create a spell that works well and predictably. There are no magical objects here that allow me to communicate with Irele Castle.”

  “What about if we just appear in Irele? Like how the brothers did in your study?” Again, I left out, the time when I set your study on fire. “Or when Robert just appeared in the brothers’ study?”

  Marcelo was shaking his head before I finished. “Traveling from place to place essentially creates pathways between those places. They can be difficult to close and almost impossible to erase completely. We’d carve a link between the two locations—a link that someone else with less powerful magic than ours could use too. It’d also create a hole in Irele Castle’s protection that would allow someone else to enter. We can’t take that risk.”

  No, we couldn’t.

  “Just focus on getting better now. As soon as you’re able to travel, we’ll leave.”

  My lips puffed out in a subtle pout that I didn’t even try to hide. I didn’t care if Marcelo noticed my disappointment. I felt as if he were punishing me. “What was so wrong with me flying, anyway?”

  “Clara,
other magicians, wizards, witches, whatever their name, don’t fly.”

  “That’s not true. I saw you fly when Albacus carried you inside the castle when I first brought you there, when you were dying.”

  “I didn’t fly. As you said, I was dying. Albacus must have carried me in the air through his own connection to that element, by asking it to lift me.”

  “And how’s that different than me flying by doing the same exact thing? It isn’t different. Like Albacus, I connected to the air and it lifted me. He and I did the same thing.”

  “No, you didn’t. There’s a big difference between making someone else float and making yourself fly. The magician knows he can’t fly, so his mind interferes with the spell that says he can. There are just some things that run too deep in the mind for magic to be able to supersede. When we float someone else, we know we can do it, so we do.”

  “Well, that makes very little sense if you ask me. After all, obviously we can fly.”

  “Yes, and obviously we fall too.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I continued to pout unabashedly.

  He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. Even his kiss hurt. “We need Mordecai’s help. Trust me on that. Rest, my darling.” Then he walked to the door. The smile he flashed me before he left didn’t do what it usually did to brighten my day.

  Back to Irele already? I thought Bundry might become my home, but there hadn’t been time to erase the darkness that clung to the walls and the furnishings.

  My gaze wandered toward the open window, toward the springtime air. From there, I could only see clouds and blue sky. Amid a cloud that looked like a venomous serpent, another vision, rare even for witches, found me.

  By the time Marcelo came back to check on me, I was eager to leave for Irele, as soon as possible.

  Chapter 16