At first Huw[1]
thought it was a cock crowing. He jumped out of bed, irritated – he’d told the
neighbours to kill the bird and they usually obeyed his requests. But then he
realised that the sound was not coming from outside at all, where it was still
completely black. It was coming from inside his head – an insistent cackling;
more like a crow than a cockerel.
‘Councillor Hargest’
said a voice.
Once again Huw looked
around, and once again it seemed that the voice was inside.
‘Who are you?’ he
shouted, although there seemed to be no need to make any sound at all in order
to be heard.
‘An enemy who wishes
to parley…’
‘Parley?’
‘Yes – talk under a
banner of peace’
The mention of
enemies made Huw’s stomach turn over. There were only two beings who would
describe themselves so to the council.
‘Kratos?’ he croaked
The voice laughed.
‘Many names – none of them very useful…’
There was a pause
while Huw tried to find the patch of his mind where the voice was breaking
through. He couldn’t tell where it was – somehow this was hidden from him. Instead he tried to think of something
defiant to say.
‘What do you want?’
was all that he managed.
‘I know about your
experiments, Councillor’
‘I’m not a full
councillor yet…’ Huw said, reflexively, ‘…I haven’t attended a coven meeting’
A cold thread of fear
uncoiled in his guts. His mind caught up with what else had been said.
‘What experiments?’
‘The ones that you
conduct on the top of Mount Bryn-Ffyr, away from prying eyes. The ones
involving things that once lived…’
He could hardly deny
this, it was quite true. And that someone had found out was immensely
dangerous. What he had done was expressly forbidden.
‘But, how do you
know. I believed that I was completely hidden…’
‘Of course you did’
laughed the voice, ‘we always think that no-one will find us out. But someone
always does. You were lucky that it was I…’
‘But who are you? Are
you the archwitch we know as Lord Kratos. I insist that you tell me’ Huw asked
again, already knowing the answer.
‘You should stop
asking that… In any case, I’m not sure that I can answer that clearly anymore.
I am one thing and yet I am forever changing…’
Huw knew that what
was happening was perilous. The council’s gravest foe, was inside his head.
This was corrupting magic – powerful and seductive but ultimately
corroding. He must try to force it out.
‘Leave me, leave me
now!’ he shouted, both inside and out.
The Voice laughed.
‘Not yet… It would be
rude not to finish what we’ve started’
Huw thought through
the spells that could dispel this unwanted guest, but nothing seemed remotely
powerful enough. He felt like running away – but how could you flee from a
voice? Best to just wait and hope that it went away. It was like quicksand –
struggling might well make it worse.
‘What do you want?’
The voice was full of
false indignation.
‘I don’t want anything. It is I who wants to help
you…’
‘I don’t want your…
help’
‘Oh but I think that
you do… I know more than anyone else about the special power that comes from
death; about the spurt of energy released by an expiring soul. Let me teach you
– I would like you to become my apprentice’
‘No! How can you even
ask me that?’
The voice laughed
cruelly.
‘Because you are so
very susceptible. You want power and you have realised that this a cheap way to
get it. And you are absolutely right about that – it is terrifyingly, but oh so
wonderfully, easy’
Huw jumped up from
the bed and into the bathroom. He pulled the top off the big water butt and
plunged his head into it the chilly water.
The shock seemed to dislodge the voice. There was a moment when he felt
it receding, like water running out of a punctured water bottle.
He fell on to the
floor with his head in his hands, as if he were suffering from the worst of all
headache. However, there was no pain in his head that could be registered by
nerves. This was the pain of violation and uncertainty.
And of guilt. What he
could hear in his mind now was not the enemy’s voice but his mother’s. It was
her warnings, which his temper had prompted so many times in his youth– ‘you’ll
kill someone with that anger one day’, ‘sometimes I think that there’s a sliver
of evil in your heart, Huw’, and ‘maybe you’re too dangerous to become a
witch’.
His mother, a witch
of subtle power herself, had tried to coax him into many alternative careers –
a priest, a healer, a soldier, a scholar – but he had no real aptitude for
these other vocations; although he attempted them all with great filial
devotion. He loved his mother until he hated her. At the end of this struggle he had run away
to the University in Eth City. He had not spoken to her since. Her words,
however, still echoed constantly in his mind. He hated her for what she had
said, but mostly because he feared it might be true. And now, it seemed,
Kratos, greatest of the enemies of the commonweal, appeared to think it true
too.
He pulled himself up
from the ground and towelled his hair dry. It was a balmy night so he wasn’t
too cold, but inside he was shivering. He dragged himself back to bed and he
lay there under the covers, trying to persuade himself that, perhaps, it had
just been a dream.
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