“The High Lord will have his hands full just trying to stay alive, I think,” she replied, her smile growing broader. “Oh, I think he will have them quite full. Too bad you won’t be there to help him. Either of you.”
Questor Thews saw the truth of things then. “You have come for the girl, haven’t you? For Mistaya?”
“She belongs to me,” said the witch. “She has always belonged to me! She was born out of my soil, in my haven, from my magic! She should have been given to me then, but the fairies intervened. But not this time, wizard. This time I will have her. And when I am finished, she will not ever wish to leave me.”
The fire roared and crackled in the night’s deep silence, an enthusiastic accomplice to the witch’s scheme. Questor Thews and Abernathy were scarecrow figures trapped within its light, helpless to escape. But they refused to crumble.
“Holiday will come for her,” the old man insisted stubbornly, “even if we are gone.”
Nightshade laughed. “You do not listen very well, Questor Thews. Holiday must deal with Rydall first, and Rydall will see him destroyed. I have planned it, and I will see it come to pass. The King of Marnhull is my creature, and he will bring about Holiday’s destruction as surely as the sun will rise on the new day. Holiday will struggle against his fate, and that will give me great pleasure to watch, but in the end he will succumb. Stripped of his child, his friends, and eventually his wife as well, he will die all alone and forsaken. Nothing less will satisfy me. Nothing less will serve to repay me for what I have been made to suffer.”
“Rydall is your doing?” the wizard whispered in shock.
“All of it is my doing—all that has come about and all that will be. I have made it my life’s work to see the play-King reduced to nothing, and I will not be disappointed.”
Abernathy edged forward a step. “Nightshade, you cannot do this. Let Mistaya go. She is only a child.”
“Only a child?” The smile fled from Nightshade’s face. “No, scribe, that is exactly what she is not. That is where you have all been so mistaken. I should know. I see myself in her. I see what I was. I see what she can be. I will give her the knowledge that you would keep hidden. I will shape her as she was meant to be shaped. She harbors within her soul demons waiting to be unleashed; I will help her set them free. She has the power of a child’s imagination, and I will use that. Let this be your final thought. When I am done with her, she will become for me the instrument of the play-King’s destruction! One more time will he see her, will he clasp her to him, a snake to his breast, and on that day he will breathe his last!”
She saw the hopelessness in their eyes as she finished and waited for them to react. Questor Thews was already trying furtively to gather back his scattered magic in a spell of protection, his gnarled fingers working in the shadow of his skinny body. She smiled at the futility of his effort.
None of them saw Haltwhistle edge out of the forest shadows to stand just within the clearing far to one side, splayed feet padding gingerly, sad eyes watchful.
“What do you intend to do to us?” Abernathy demanded, risking a quick glance over his shoulder at Mistaya. He was wondering why she did not wake up.
“Yes, Nightshade, what?” Questor Thews pressed. He was trying to give them more time so that he could complete the forming of his spell, not realizing that he was already far too late. “Would you turn us into rocks as well?”
Nightshade smiled. “No, wizard, I would not bother with anything so prosaic where you are concerned. Nor you, scribe. You have been a constant source of irritation to me, but you have interfered for the last time. Your lives end here. No one will ever see either of you again.”