“That would be most kind,” he said. “I can pay you, of course, for your trouble.”
“No, you can’t,” Coruth said. “I won’t take your money. You saved me from eternal imprisonment once, Malden, and I will not forget that.” She gave him a smile that looked almost matronly. “I may be your mother-in-law someday as well.”
“I won’t ask for Cythera’s hand as some kind of reward,” Malden said. “She’d never love me, not truly, if she thought I’d bought her somehow.” He shook his head. “No, she must decide to take my hand freely.”
“Good man. Now,” Coruth said, “before Cythera has finished cooking for us-you will stay to eat, won’t you? — let’s discuss ciphers, and their proper use, and how they can be broken.”
Chapter Forty-One
When dinner was finished, Malden took his leave. He was all smiles and graces, and he even bowed and kissed Coruth’s hand to thank her for what she’d taught him. Cythera stood in the doorway of the kitchen and smiled to see her mother turn her head away like a bashful girl. The two of them got along so well.
Cythera imagined a different life then. One where she never became a witch, but instead became Malden’s wife. If she imagined it in the abstract, as just a hypothetical situation, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as she’d thought it would.
Malden stood up straight and looked across the room at her, and her heart melted a little when she saw the look in his eyes. He loved her-truly, honestly. He didn’t want to lock her away in a tower somewhere and fill her stomach with his babies. He wanted her to be happy.
When he was gone, Cythera went and washed the dishes and got things ready for the morning, banking the fire in the hearth and laying out the oats she would cook so she and Coruth could break their fast. Then she walked out into the main room and found her mother sitting at the table. A large book sat before her, though she wasn’t reading it. Wasn’t even touching it. It didn’t look like any book Cythera had seen in her mother’s house before. The cover was tooled leather ornamented with skulls and bones, and a small brass lock held it shut.
“What’s that?” she asked, because she knew she was supposed to.
Yet Coruth didn’t answer right away. “The boy is becoming a good man,” she said. “He’ll rise higher yet. Looks like he’d be good in bed, too, with those long thin fingers and the way he moves.”
“Mother, please, my love life is of no concern to-”
“Don’t be squeamish with me, girl. I know you’ve had him before.”
Cythera blushed and turned back toward the kitchen, just wanting to get away. But she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to just retire to bed. That book meant something.
“There’s little enough sweetness in this life that we can afford not to taste honey for fear of bee stings,” Coruth said.
Cythera sighed. “He can’t be mine, though. Not if I’m to be a witch.”
“Not forever, no. But you have a little time left to spend with him before your initiation. If you throw away that chance, you will regret it later.” Coruth sounded like she knew that from personal experience. Cythera knew little of her mother’s life before Hazoth kidnapped and imprisoned her. She’d never really thought about it before.
“Mother,” she said. “What if I simply renounced magic?” She didn’t believe it could be that easy. But what if it was?
“It’s in your blood. And in your future. Come here.”
Cythera had no choice. She went and sat across the table from her mother.
“This book belonged to your father.”
Cythera nodded. Yes, that was exactly what it looked like. She remembered Hazoth’s library. It had been full of tomes like this-and far stranger and more sinister books as well.
“When his villa came down, most of his books were destroyed, but not this one. I saved it and brought it here so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. Read it.”
“Now? It’s getting late.”
“Leaf through it, then. Skim it,” Coruth ordered. “It’s all you’ll get of an inheritance from him, after all.”
Coruth didn’t move or speak any incantations, but the book slid across the table toward her, as if of its own volition. The brass lock clicked and popped open, and the cover lifted and fell back until it was open to the title page: CHILDREN of the PITTE, or- The Boke of Fouel Names Writ by the hand of Daulben of Myraum
Cythera couldn’t help but gasp. She’d heard of this book before. It was a basic treatise on demonology, the first work any prospective sorcerer would have to read. “No witch should look at something like this,” she said.
“This isn’t part of your training. It’s in way of an explanation,” Coruth insisted. “Now. Read.”
Cythera reached a trembling hand to turn the first page. She looked at the dense block of words there as if they might come to life and jump out at her. But they were just words. She read the opening chapter quickly, barely paying attention to the warnings it contained, much more interested in the promises it made. The author suggested that someone who could call demons up from the pit would possess powers beyond imagining. Demons could fly around the entire world in one night. They could find things that had been lost for centuries. They knew the secrets of anyone who had ever died, and they could slay any enemy without fail. A master-or a mistress-of demons could make themselves rich beyond imagining, they could rule nations, they could possess any lover they chose.
They could marry anyone they chose.
Daulben had been a sorcerer, though not a particularly powerful one-nothing like her father. His words suggested that the things he described must be done with caution but were not truly forbidden. Demons were evil creatures but could be turned to helping humanity as well. They could heal the sick, or make crops grow in stultified deserts. They could teach a sorcerer how to do great and compassionate works as easily as they could give them dark secrets. Put that way, sorcery didn’t seem so bad. It certainly didn’t seem evil in itself.
The rest of the book was full of incantations Cythera didn’t dare to read even silently, even to herself. Some of the names the book listed had power even if they were simply thought with the right intention. There were woodcut illustrations of various famous demons as well, which she flipped past as quickly as she dared. Demons were unnatural things and not wholesome to human eyes.
Coruth got up and moved around the room while she read. Though Cythera was barely aware of it, her mother replaced candles as they burned down and stirred the fire when the room grew too cold. It seemed neither of them would sleep that night, as Cythera grew so absorbed in the book she couldn’t even look up.
When she reached the end and closed the cover once more, she found she was so stiff and tired she could barely rise from the chair.
Coruth, on the other hand, had never looked more lively. She came around the table to lean close to Cythera’s face. “Seen enough?” she asked. “Tempted yet?”
Cythera blinked and rubbed at her eyes. She had already figured out why Coruth wanted her to read the book. “You said if I was not trained as a witch, I would end up committing some horrible sin. Something unforgivable. This is what you saw, wasn’t it? You glimpsed my future and you saw me becoming a sorceress. Like my father.”
Coruth nodded. “Yet I also saw it was not writ in stone. There is a chance you can avoid that mistake. You’ll need discipline, though. And before you truly believe me you’ll need the second sight. You’ll need to see your own future. Only then can you resist the temptations that are to come.”
“I’m your daughter,” Cythera insisted. “I don’t need to be convinced! I know you see truly.” She pushed the book away. “I didn’t want to know these things. You forced me to read this.”
“You’re my daughter, and my responsibility,” Coruth said, ignoring her words. “You’re Hazoth’s daughter as well. You have it within you to gain just as much power as he had. More, perhaps. You could be a great woman.”
“I’m going to be a witch,” Cythera said. Coruth had been right all along. There couldn’t be any other way.
“Witches have power as well,” Coruth told her. “All the things the demons can do, all the promises in that book. How many of them do you think I could accomplish if I set my mind to it, using only witchcraft and abjuring sorcery?”
Cythera knew the answer. She’d never quite believed it, but Coruth had told her many times before.
