The Threads of Magic by Alison Croggon (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📕

“Axel sentenced the prince to death, because he was the rightful heir, and sent an executioner to the dungeon to carry out the sentence. The witch found him just in time, when his body was still warm. She cut out his heart, and with it, so the story goes, she made a spell that would destroy the Specters. She put the Heart in a silver casket, bound with powerful spells, so she could use it at the proper time. But she died before she could release the spell, and for a long time we all thought the Heart had been lost.”

“And now the Heart’s been found,” said Oni.

Amina nodded.

“Who was she, that witch?” asked El. “You said your granny knew her.”

“She did. She was called Missus Pledge.”

“Our Missus Pledge?” said El, her mouth open. “She must have been awful old.”

“Old Missus Pledge was the mother of the Missus Pledge you knew.”

Pip felt as if all his blood had turned to cold sludge. “Why don’t you use the spell, now that we’ve got the Heart?” he said with sudden violence. “Just do it, and kill all the Specters.”

“Nobody knows how,” said Amina. “That knowledge died with Old Missus Pledge.”

Georgette pictured her father. He was different from Cardinal Lamir. Obnoxious, violent, vain, petty, but not . . . cold. “I hate my father,” she said, “but King Oswald is much worse. Is he a Specter? I think that if he touches me, I will die.”

“Rudolph was Oswald’s ancestor. Or, to speak more accurately, Oswald is really Rudolph, in another body.”

“Then why does he want to marry me?”

Amina considered Georgette, her head cocked to one side. “No doubt he wants the alliance with Clarel,” she said. “But there will be other reasons. Specters only use their own bloodline for their chosen vessels, and all the male children of his former wife are dead. You are the granddaughter of Alisel Livnel, the daughter of Odo Livnel, so your blood is noble. And because your greatgrandfather was a Specter, perhaps he thinks you will give him robust heirs.”

There was a horrified silence, which was broken by Georgette. “Why did you never tell me this? Why didn’t I know?”

“It wasn’t my place to tell you.”

“But this makes it all so much worse. I have to escape right away. Now. They’re already talking about the wedding, and I know there will be no time for me to come here again because all my time will be dress appointments and lessons of protocol, and I can’t . . .”

“Tonight you will return to the palace, as you always do,” said Amina.

It had never occurred to Pip that he could feel sorry for a princess, but he did then. Georgette gasped, and for a moment she seemed to crumple with despair. But it was only a moment; then she straightened herself in her chair, expressionless, but very pale. “I understand,” she said. “I didn’t think about what it might cost you. I see now . . .”

“I didn’t say that I wouldn’t help,” said Amina. “I think it’s obvious that we can’t let Oswald get his hands on you. For now, you will wait. You will behave as normally as you know how. You will do everything that you are told.”

“And then?”

“And when it is time, we’ll help you escape.”

MOST PEOPLE IN CLAREL AGREED THAT THE Cardinal was an unusual man. Although he was the highest cleric in the Holy Church of Clarel, and thus very rich, it was well known that he kept none of his wealth for himself.

Cardinal Lamir was personally responsible for the upkeep of at least a dozen orphanages in the city. Every urchin in the land feared being picked up by the watch and imprisoned in these places, which were notoriously cruel. He had also built five poorhouses, where the homeless — and there were many of those — could find a bed and a meal, if they were prepared to endure a three-hour evening Mass.

The people of Clarel regarded their cardinal with equal parts fear and pride. They boasted to travelers of the generosity of their church, and sometimes even took them to see the nearest orphanages. These were clean, new buildings, if forbidding, and around them were impeccably neat lawns of chamomile and creeping mint that were trimmed by the children themselves. Sometimes the orphans could be seen in the city, walking through the streets in a long line.

There was no denying, all the same, that the cardinal was as dangerous as he was charitable. The people of Clarel were well aware that it was better to speak well of him, and best to say nothing at all. Those who slighted the cardinal had a way of turning up in one of the Five Rivers with bits missing.

He was even more unusual than most people realized. Tonight, in the privacy of his own library — a high-ceilinged, elaborately paneled room, which featured the largest collection of grimoires and other works on witchcraft in all Continentia — the cardinal locked the door and turned around. His gaze flickered suspiciously at the beams of moonlight that thrust through the tall windows, as if they had no right to be there.

He paced across the room toward the long, gilt-framed mirror that hung at the far end of the room. The few guests permitted into this room always looked uneasily at this mirror out of the corner of their eyes. There was, the more sensitive thought, something disturbing about it, as if it were a doorway through which blew an unlucky wind.

The cardinal smiled mirthlessly at his reflection, which winked back at him. Then he breathed on it and spoke some words in an ancient, forgotten language that no one spoke anymore. The surface became opaque with mist, and when it cleared, his face looked back at him as before. Only it wasn’t quite his own face: its skin