Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

“Get some rags,” Weyland said to them. “Now!”

London

Charles felt it instantly, a river of pain running down the street towards him. He’d only just crossed London Bridge and was moving slowly through the shouting and waving throng up Fish Street towards Lombard Street when Noah’s agony hit him with such physical force he groaned, and leaned forward in the saddle.

Almost instantly he straightened, managed with a herculean effort to put a smile back on his face, lifted a hand to wave to the crowd…and swivelled in the saddle of his white stallion, first seeing Catharine’s appalled expression as she sat in the coach immediately behind him, and then Louis’ haggard face as he sat his horse immediately behind Catharine’s coach.

They felt it, too.

James, who was riding his horse just to one side of the coach, wore nothing on his face but smiles and excitement, and Charles cursed him for his ignorance. This lack of empathy showed Charles as nothing else could have that the Stag God, land and Troy Game had spoken: James, once Saeweald, once Loth, had lost virtually all meaning in whatever battles lay ahead.

Another wave of agony hit Charles, and he winced, feeling his innards cramp in sympathy inside him.

Gods! What was Weyland doing?

He is welcoming you, said Louis in Charles’ mind, in his own special way.

Noah…Charles thought, and fought down his frustration that he could do little to help her.

Weyland would like nothing better than to have the king vault from his horse and tear his way through the street crowds, screaming for Noah…

I should have saved her, Louis said into Charles’ mind, and Charles blinked away tears for the guilt he knew Louis felt.

I should have saved her…

As Noah and Jane thrashed about on the floor, Weyland moved away several paces. He stared at them, his eyes wide, his face covered with a faint sheen of sweat.

Frances and Elizabeth huddled against the furthest wall of the kitchen. They clung to each other, too terrified to do anything but watch the horror being enacted before them.

Weyland lifted his face from the women on the floor, looked to the two girls standing clinging to each other, and suddenly screamed at them: “Fetch cloths, damn you!”

The two girls took one look at Weyland’s contorted face, then stumbled for the small storeroom just behind the kitchen.

Weyland flickered a glance at Catling, who was sitting with commendable composure in a corner. She appeared to be no trouble, and he wondered fleetingly what kind of daughter she was, to watch her mother suffer with such impassivity.

He looked back to the women and, if possible, paled even further.

Both women were silent now, their eyes wide and starting, their mouths contorted into a rictus of suffering, their bodies in spasms, their breath heaving in harsh, convulsive gasps.

Frances and Elizabeth returned, bundles of rags in their hands.

“Get their clothes off them,” Weyland said. “Then be ready to staunch as best you can their bleeding.”

He moved back to the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, then folded his arms, his eyes now resting on the hearth as if he found it fascinating.

Frances and Elizabeth bent down to Noah and Jane.

Charles felt as if he were being torn apart, and yet, worse than this shared pain, was the knowledge he could do nothing.

Desperate (yet still sitting on his horse, waving and smiling as if nothing more disturbed him than a worry that this crowd might keep him from his roast beef) Charles did the only thing he thought he could do.

He reached out to Catling. Help her, girl, help her!

And he received back but the one word, spoken in the girl’s unnaturally calm mental voice.

No.

Somehow Frances and Elizabeth, working together first on Jane and then on Noah, managed to pull and tear the clothes from their writhing bodies.

When they’d done, and the women lay naked, they paused to stare yet once more, horrified.

“For gods’ sakes,” Weyland said. “Attend to them!”

Elizabeth looked up at him. “Master, what can we do?”

Before Weyland could respond, Frances lifted her hands to her face, and shrieked.

Noah, who lay directly at the girl’s feet, had partially raised herself and was now clawing at the small of her back. As Elizabeth and Frances watched, the skin over the base of Noah’s spine suddenly swelled, as if it had developed into a gigantic bubo.

And then, as Noah screamed terribly, her hands now flailing at the floor, the bubo burst, and Frances and Elizabeth found themselves staring into the face of an impish creature grinning at them with a sharp-toothed smile.

It put tiny hands to either side of the wound in Noah’s back, and started to pull itself out.

Frances fainted, while Elizabeth staggered away, her feet slipping in blood, her body convulsing in desperate heaves as she vomited forth her morning’s meal.

Weyland closed his eyes—pray to all gods that this will be worth the suffering!—then forced himself to reopen them, and watch. He swallowed, knowing he had to act. This would not be worth the suffering if he didn’t use it to the best advantage. He sent his senses scrying out, seeing in his mind’s eye Charles riding ashen-faced amidst all the cheering crowds.

Using all of his strength, Weyland sent Charles a very personal message of welcome. Greetings, king. Do you feel your lover’s pain? Do you feel her body tearing apart? Fret not, for she will live. Just. Know that I only need her alive, I don’t need her whole.

Charles literally slipped in the saddle as Weyland’s loathsome words ripped through him, and only the quick thinking of the soldier walking at his stirrup managed to keep him on the horse.

The crowd suddenly hushed, thinking that their king had suffered a fatal brainstorm, but Charles managed to right himself and shrug a little, as if to say that he had quite forgot himself in the excitement.

The next moment Louis was at his side, having spurred his horse forward.

“My God, Charles…”

“We can do nothing until this farce is over. He won’t kill her, Louis. He won’t.”

Louis’ face was a mask of horror—he didn’t have Charles’ strength of will to maintain a false smile. “She suffers so!”

Charles managed to reach out a hand and very briefly grasped Louis’ forearm. “She will survive, my friend. Know that she will survive!”

“She’d be better dead,” said Louis, then he allowed his horse to drop back level with the coach where, Charles presumed, he’d have the sense to say some words of comfort to Catharine, for she would be feeling this as much as Charles and Louis.

Curse Catling for not aiding Noah. Curse her!

Jane was silent—she was beyond screaming—but her body whipped back and forth, back and forth over the floor, occasionally bumping into Noah, knocking over two of the chairs at the table, and coating herself in Noah’s blood.

Her belly mounded as if she carried a full-term baby inside her. Her imp roiled beneath her abdominal layers of skin and muscle. Elizabeth now sat next to Catling. She had her arms wrapped tightly about her body, and watched with eyes numb in shock and horror the frightful sight before her.

Catling remained calm, but her eyes were hooded, their expression unreadable.

Weyland straightened in the doorway. “Come here!” he commanded, and Elizabeth jumped, certain he meant her.

But instead the hideous black creature that had just pulled itself free of Noah’s body looked up, its black eyes bright in its blood-coated face.

The next instant it was scampering over the floor and clinging to one of Weyland’s legs with its spindly-fingered hands.

Weyland ignored it, instead watching Jane.

Her body spasmed, then suddenly, horrifically, her abdomen split apart.

A black head appeared, grinning, and then two thin, claw-tipped hands which dug themselves into the lips of the terrible wound. The imp pulled himself out, then sat up as the blood pumped from Jane’s abdomen, looked to where Weyland and his brother watched him, and grinned happily.

He scampered over to join Weyland, who ignored him as he had the first.

Weyland took a deep breath, his face twisting slightly at the stink of fresh blood, and, motioning for the imps to stay behind, walked over to where the two women lay. For a moment he simply stood there, staring, his face expressionless.

Then he squatted down, and very gently felt Noah’s wrist.

She did not move, lying so wan and still she could have been lifeless were it not for her irregular and shallow breathing.

Weyland’s fingers tightened momentarily about her wrist, then he stood up, stumbling as he slipped in the blood on the floor.

“Elizabeth,” he said, then snapped her name again when she did not immediately respond. “Elizabeth!”

The girl jerked her eyes to him.

“Rouse Frances,” said Weyland, “then bind Noah’s and Jane’s wounds, and make them comfortable.”