She kissed him tenderly.
‘You are an old fool,’ she said. ‘But a brilliant, brave old fool, Harmodius.’ Her smile was warm and congratulatory. ‘I had no idea – I’ve never seen you do anything like it.’
‘Oh,’ he said, into the smell of her neck – and a galaxy of new learning occurred to him in that moment. But he backed away and bowed. ‘I owe you my life,’ he said. ‘What are you?’
She laughed, and her laugh threatened to mock all evil straight out of fashion. ‘What am I?’ she asked. She shook her head. ‘You dearest old fool.’
‘Still wise enough to worship at
‘You are like a boy who attacks a hornet’s nest to see what will come out. And yet I smell the triumph of the small boy on you, Harmodius. What have we learned today?’ She subsided suddenly into a chair, ignoring the scrolls that covered it. ‘And where did this sudden burst of daring come from? You are a byword for caution in this court.’ She smiled, and for a moment, she was not a naïve young girl, but an ancient and very knowing queen. ‘Some say you have no power, and are a sort of Royal Mountebank.’ Her eyes flicked to the pentagram. ‘Apparently, they are wrong.’
He followed the wave of her hand and hurried to pour her wine. ‘I cannot say for certain sure what we learned today,’ he said carefully. Already his careful manner was reasserting itself. But he
‘Talk to me as if I was a student – a stupid squire bent on acquiring the rudiments of hermeticism,’ she said. She sipped his wine and her look of contentment and the flinging back of her head told him that she, too had known a moment of terror. She was mortal. He was not always sure of that. ‘Because I can use power, I think you assume that I know how it functions. That we have the same knowledge. But nothing can be further from the truth. The sun touches me, and I feel God’s touch, and sometimes, with his help, I can work a miracle.’ She smiled.
He thought that her self-assurance could, if unchecked, make her more terrifying than any monster.
‘Very well, your Grace. You know there are two schools of power – two sources for the working of any phantasm.’ He laid his staff carefully in a corner and then knelt to wipe the pentagram from the floor.
‘White and black,’ she said.
He glared at her.
She shrugged with a smile. ‘You are so easy, my Magus. There is the power of the sun, pure as light, unfettered, un-beholden – the very sign of the pleasure of God in all creation. And there is the power of the Wild – for which, every iota must be exchanged with one of the creatures that possess it, and each bargain sealed in blood.’
Harmodius rolled his eyes. ‘Sealed. Bargained for. Blood does not really enter into it.’ He nodded. ‘But the power is there – it rises from the very ground – from grass, from the trees, from the creatures that live among the trees.’
She smiled. ‘Yes. I can feel it, although it is no friend to me.’
‘Really?’ he asked, cursing himself for a fool. Why had he
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Stronger and weaker – even in those poor dead things that decorate the hall.’
He shook his head at his own foolishness – his hubris.
‘Do you sense any power of the Wild in this room?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘The green lamp is an artefact of the Wild, is it not? A faery lamp?’
He nodded. ‘Can you take any of the power it pours forth and use it, your Grace?’
She shuddered. ‘Why would you even ask such a thing? Now I think you dull, Magus.’
‘And yet I conjured a powerful demon of the abyss – did I not?’ he asked her.
She smiled. ‘Not one of the greatest, perhaps. But yes.’
‘Allied to the Wild – would you say?’ he asked.
‘
He nodded. Sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But of course, it is more complicated than that.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, showing that glacial self-assurance again. ‘I think men often seek to overcomplicate things. The nuns taught me this. Are you saying that they lied?’
‘I just fed a demon with the power of the sun. I conjured him with the power of the sun.’ Harmodius laughed.
‘But – no, you banished him!’ Her silver laugh rang out. ‘You tease me, Magus!’
