The Dark Lord Clementine Read online

  Clementine was shocked to recognize a few of the villagers among the hedgewitches’ customers. Wasn’t that the baker’s wife, sniffing a proffered sack of herbs from one of the witches and gossiping about the storm? Wasn’t that one of the men she’d seen building the roof in town, now blushing and stumbling over his words as he shyly asked for . . . a love potion? Clementine snorted into her tea.

  And was that . . . No, it couldn’t be. But it was. Clementine would recognize that head of stupidly perfect, bouncy blond curls anywhere: it was Henrietta Turnacliff, the village mayor’s teenaged daughter! She held up a bumpy coral-colored stone on a string and spoke to a middle-aged witch with a mass of turquoise braids that fell to her waist.

  “Please, I need something that will help me locate my brother,” Clementine heard Henrietta tell the witch. “He’s been missing for . . .”

  But the turquoise-haired witch put a hand on Henrietta’s shoulder and turned her to face the other way, and their conversation faded from Clementine’s ears. None of the villagers seemed to notice Clementine in their midst, and she wondered if the charms around Kat Marie’s tent were to thank for that.

  A chorus of baahs arose from the sheep pen, and Clementine looked over to see the black sheep pawing the ground and scampering behind the witches’ flock. She hoped none of the witches were giving him a hard time—and that those white sheep were really as plain and innocent as they looked.

  Clementine frowned at the townspeople weaving through the witches hawking their wares.

  “Why would they come here?” Clementine wondered aloud, watching Henrietta Turnacliff purposefully stride over to another witch’s stall, where shelves of potions stood on display. “My father would never allow this if he knew.”

  Kat Marie Grice let out a soft sound that might have been a snort, but Clementine ignored it.

  “The villagers hate witches!” pointed out Clementine. “They chased Darka all the way out of town just because they thought she was one.”

  “Ah, but do they hate us?” asked Kat Marie. “I think it’s more that they fear us, and hate does follow fear more often than not. But not always. And we fascinate them. Just as we fascinate you.”

  Clementine dropped her gaze—she really had been staring at as much of the camp as she could—and muttered something about simply being curious. Kat Marie smiled, revealing an incomplete set of lumpy teeth that was far more in line with Clementine’s mental image of witches than anything else she’d seen that day.

  “They come to us for things they can’t get anywhere else, Clementine,” explained the old woman.

  Clementine supposed she should have been offended at a witch addressing her so informally, but she found she rather liked the sound of her name in Kat Marie’s full, low voice.

  “They may not accept us, but they need us,” Kat Marie said. “They come to us for little bits of hope, or healing . . . even a small adventure. How many can say they’ve been to a witch’s hut and survived to tell the tale?” Kat Marie waggled her eyebrows, and Clementine had to bite her own lip to keep from smiling. (This was no laughing matter, she told herself. Not that anything was a laughing matter.)

  They come to us for things they can’t get anywhere else. For things they could not expect from Lord Elithor, the witch meant. Clementine tried to picture her father taking petitions or healing the sick or giving away any of his priceless and powerful magical artifacts to his subjects. The idea was laughable. But Clementine reminded herself that the welfare of her father’s subjects was none of his concern—in fact, it was the opposite of his concern. Lord Elithor’s duty was to inflict as much misery and terror as he could on the villagers without leading to statistically significant population decline. It was a delicate balance—quite a bit harder than handing out minced garlic in the woods and claiming you were a gift to society. Everyone had his or her place in the world, and evildoing was the Dark Lord’s responsibility. That was just the way things were.

  Clementine shook her head. “They shouldn’t be coming here,” she said. “They shouldn’t be coming here, and you shouldn’t be here. Witchcraft is outlawed in my father’s lands.”

  Kat Marie looked around the lively camp. “Clearly,” she said dryly.

  Clementine sighed. She had finished her tea and was finally feeling much better, and she shouldn’t have even been having this conversation, anyway. It was time to brave the forest again before she lost the light—and before the Whittle Witch had a chance to rally.

  But Kat Marie cleared her throat and went on. “Imagine, if you will, living a sad, short, and often violent life that is entirely out of your control. Imagine being governed by the whims of a seemingly all-powerful ruler who oscillates between willful neglect one moment, and unreasonable, unpredictable demands and blind rages the next. Imagine that even though there are days he barely enters your thoughts at all—and those days are a blessed few—that his influence is always there. That there is no part of your life that he could not touch, nothing and no one too precious for him to destroy—not if he really wanted to. Imagine being trapped by that fear for your whole life.” Kat Marie took a deep breath in through her nose, as if she were forcing herself to be calm. “Imagine what that might do to a person—and what lengths they might go to for even a moment’s relief.”

  Clementine looked away, thumbing at a chip in her mug. Though Kat Marie might never have believed her . . . she didn’t have to try very hard to imagine such a life at all.

  “I might be able to talk to my father about . . .” Clementine’s voice trailed off. What sort of promise could she hope to extract out of Lord Elithor? “Please, Father, don’t persecute the people you’re required to persecute so very much”? “Some things,” she finished lamely. “But don’t get your hopes up. He’d only take great delight in dashing them to pieces, and that’s an end unto itself for Dark Lords. Best not to have any expectations at all.”

  Kat Marie Grice nodded and held out her hand for Clementine’s cup. Clementine gave it to her.

  “I do wonder what to expect from you, Clementine,” said the witch. “As I said, not many could have cast the spell you did. Even a Good Witch in training might’ve had trouble—”

  Clementine started. “I’m not a witch,” she said sharply, “and if I were, I most certainly wouldn’t be a good one.” Clementine had to fight the bile rising in her throat at the mere thought: Clementine Morcerous, Good Witch of the Seven Sisters, prancing about in gowns made out of flower petals and whistling along with songbirds and aiding plucky heroes on quests? She’d rather have her head mounted on the library wall.

  Kat Marie held up a hand. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”

  “Thank you for giving me shelter and a place to rest,” said Clementine in a clipped voice. She stood up. “And for the tea. But my . . . associates and I really should be going.”

  And without meeting Kat Marie’s eyes, Clementine scooped up the Gricken and strode away.

  Chapter 12

  Interesting Company

  or Necessary Qualifications for a Murderous Line of Work

  Darka Wesk-Starzec had never seen so many witches in one place, and she was the granddaughter of a witch. Perhaps it was true what they said about magic on this side of the Seven Sisters—that there was just infinitely more of it.

  Not all of the hedgewitches’ trade was magical, just as not all of the hedgewitches had magic—of that she was sure. But as she trailed her fingers along the crystals dangling from protective amulets, or along the bumpy rune-carved surfaces of hazel dowsing rods, Darka could feel the difference. She could feel the magic, a pulse that started as a tingling in her fingers or a chill on the back of her neck that sometimes crept all the way inside her old wound, making her scar burn.

  Would her whole life have been different, on this side of the mountains? If she and Alaric had had this many magical tools at their disposal, might they have succ
eeded? Would Alaric still be alive? Would Darka’s face still be unharmed? It was impossible to know, and it wasn’t worth dwelling on, Darka knew. She could never bring Alaric back.

  But she could recognize the resources at her disposal. She could use them. Alaric had taught her everything he knew, and that hadn’t been enough. Five years of hunting on her own, and she was better than he’d ever been. He’d told her, once, that one needed a dark heart in his—their—line of work.

  “Because of the killing?” she’d asked quietly, her face pressed into his neck as they lay next to each other, looking up at the stars.

  But he’d told her no, not because they killed—but because they needed to survive. As hunters of magical artifacts and creatures both, they walked in all the places most mortals didn’t dare to tread: the deepest caves, the ghostliest ruins, the darkest parts of the forest. One needed a heart dark enough to blend in.

  Five years and two dead unicorns later, Darka was sure her dark heart made her almost invisible.

  Darka peered at a row of tiny bottles stuffed with pebbles, feathers, and impossibly tightly rolled scraps of paper displayed on a table at one of the witch’s stalls.

  “Genuine curses,” said the proprietress, coming to stand with her arms crossed on the other side of the table. Darka looked up to see a young woman with a half-shaved head, brilliant red feathers winding through the rest of it. “Guaranteed to make the object of your spurned affections vomit slugs—or any other small invertebrate of your choosing—for one to three days.”

  Darka peered behind the young witch to the more mundane supplies hanging near the back of her stall.

  “I’m more interested in that length of rope back there, to be honest,” Darka said.

  The witch cocked her head, bemused. “Anything else?” she asked. “Lamp oil? Soap? Shoe polish?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Darka, ducking her head and letting her bangs fall in front of her face. “I’m just passing through, and I tried to get supplies in the village, but . . .”

  The witch immediately uncrossed her arms and sighed. “The local yokels thought you were about to eat their young?” she said. She turned around, grabbed the length of rope, and plunked it down on the table.

  “It felt more like their young were about to eat me,” said Darka. “But that sounds about right.”

  “Those people,” muttered the witch, shaking her head. “Rope it is. Free of charge.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t—”

  “Shirin Kirrane,” said the witch, holding out her hand. Darka held out her own, and the witch—Shirin—gave it a firm shake. “And I won’t hear any more about it. Nice to meet you, child eater.”

  Darka let out a small laugh. “Darka,” she said, and then hesitated. Shirin’s friendliness (and feathered hair and big brown eyes) had made Darka let down her guard, but she knew better than to give her full name to someone in a coven of hedgewitches. If any of them had heard of her exploits beyond the valley, they might be just as likely as the villagers to come at her with pitchforks raised. “Darka Millbrook,” she lied.

  “And what brings Darka Millbrook to the Seven Sisters?” asked Shirin with a smile, leaning with her palms against the table.

  Darka was about to make up an answer when the baahing of sheep turned her attention toward the other end of the clearing. She could just see Clementine’s bright gold head—now fading to a light peachy orange—bobbing up and down in close conversation with the witch who seemed to be the coven’s leader.

  Shirin followed Darka’s gaze, but her expression immediately soured at the sight of Clementine. “And keeping such interesting company?” Shirin asked archly, busying herself with rearranging her “genuine curses.”

  “I only just met her today, in the woods,” said Darka honestly. Shirin’s posture relaxed somewhat. Darka considered her next words carefully. “Is she really the Dark Lord’s daughter?”

  “The one and only,” said Shirin, shooting another glare in Clementine’s direction.

  Darka could hardly believe her luck. If she absolutely had to nearly kill a kid, she couldn’t have picked a better one. Clementine herself seemed far too softhearted to be sympathetic to Darka’s cause—the girl had just been shooting actual sunshine out of her fingertips, after all—but her father was a different story. She’d heard of the Dark Lord Elithor, of course, but her initial plan had been to avoid him at all costs. He didn’t take kindly to visitors, she’d guessed from the rumors on both sides of the mountains, and Darka didn’t exactly have a letter of introduction from some other Evil Overlord to get her foot in the door of Castle Brack. But Clementine could be her ticket to an audience with him—and if anyone would want the unicorn dead, surely the Dark Lord would be at the top of the list. Taking down a unicorn would be a display of cruelty that no Dark Lord could resist. Surely, Lord Elithor would want to at least aid Darka in her quest.

  “You’re staying in the caves, aren’t you?” asked Shirin, changing the subject. When Darka nodded, Shirin said, “These mountains can be dangerous. Why don’t you stay with us?”

  Across the camp, Clementine was striding away from the coven leader and making a beeline for the black, skeletal filly that Darka had heard the witches whisper was an actual nightmare. Darka couldn’t let her get away.

  “Oh, but . . . I’m not a witch,” she said hurriedly to Shirin.

  The young woman tossed her feather-bestrewn hair over her shoulder and smiled. “Don’t be silly—”

  “Thanks for the rope,” Darka said, ducking her head and hooking the rope onto her belt as she turned away. She didn’t miss the puzzled frown that crossed Shirin’s face.

  “So what are you then?” called Shirin after her.

  Darka didn’t know what made her say it, and she wasn’t even sure Shirin heard her. But she stopped just long enough to say, “A huntress.”

  And she followed the girl who would lead her to her prey.

  ***

  After that day in the forest seven years ago, Darka and Alaric began to hunt together—really hunt. Alaric taught her how to lure selkies to the shoreline and capture their precious seal-like skins. He taught her how to shoot a griffin right out of the sky, and how to steal eggs from under the nose of a sleeping dragon (though they never actually tested this last one together). Their journeys took them away from her village and her farm, away from her family, for days and then weeks at a time. Her mother, father, brothers, and sisters were at first a bit annoyed—even one less pair of hands on their land made a difference—and then they were concerned. Her little sisters whined that they never saw her anymore. Her parents cautioned Darka against spending so much time with Alaric, and then against spending any time with him at all. And when that didn’t work, they promptly threw him out of the house.

  And then that didn’t work, either, because Darka promptly declared her intention to marry him.

  It was shortly after slamming the door to her parents’ house for what she thought was the last time that Alaric first mentioned unicorns.

  They were some of the most powerful magical creatures on earth, he told her. They could detect poisons or impurities in water just by touching their horn to it—and could purify that same water in seconds. They could cure any illness. They were attracted to suffering, especially that of young maidens, and their mere presence could bring comfort and solace to even the most broken of hearts. They could cast powerful magic without spells or incantations. They could manipulate the elements and the landscape around them, leaving the lands they traveled over more fertile than others. Unless they were felled by unnatural causes, they did not age past maturity. In short, they were incredible and immortal beings.

  But unicorns were rare and solitary creatures. They were nearly impossible to track, and more impossible to capture. And even when they were captured, they refused to do their masters’ bidding. They withered and wasted away in captivit
y, their magic draining along with their lives. The crushing force of their despair was usually enough to drive their captors mad, too.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Darka had asked, rubbing her shoulders as a sudden chill overcame her. She could not rid her mind of the image of a captive unicorn, its wildness and wonder being stifled day by day until it died. This was not the quick, easy death she preferred to deliver—or would prefer to receive herself, when the time came.

  Alaric kissed each of her shoulders. The most important thing to remember about unicorns, he said, was that much of their magic did not come from the unicorn itself, but from its horn.

  To hunt a unicorn in its prime, to kill it swiftly and extract its horn, preserving all of the wondrous magical properties therein . . . well, one kill could make a man rich for life.

  “A man,” Alaric said, with that crooked smile of his, “or a woman.”

  ***

  “Wait!” Darka called, rushing to Clementine’s side as the girl mounted her nightmare. A shiver went down Darka’s spine as she approached, but Clementine seemed unaffected by the beast.

  “I’m sorry,” said Darka. “You were right. I didn’t realize who you were when I brought you here. I apologize for leading you into danger.”

  Kat Marie Grice approached from the other side of the horse, her slow, uneven gait a stronger indicator of her age than the streaks of gray in her hair. Her keen gaze followed Darka, who looked away. She would have to be careful of a witch like that. Darka was more afraid of Kat Marie Grice than any of Shirin Kirrane’s purported curses-in-a-bottle.

  Clementine sniffed, and Darka suppressed an eye roll. How long would she have to suck up to this snobby, pampered little tyrant before she got what she really wanted?