“Never?” said Pip.
“Never,” said Amina.
“So what’s the point of having it?” he asked.
“See, you would be a bad witch,” said El. “You never think about anyone except yourself.”
“That’s not true!” Pip said, the tips of his ears turning red.
“If you keep interrupting, you won’t hear the story.” Oni stared hard at Pip, and he had the strangest sensation that his lips had been glued together. He opened his mouth like a fish to check whether that were true. Oni wore a mischievous look, and Pip had a sudden conviction that she was using magic on him, which would be typical of her, especially if she were a witch, too, which she almost certainly was. He decided to be quiet, just in case.
Amina sipped her tea. “So. Hundreds of years ago, in a country not far from here, there was a man called Rudolph of Awemt who was very gifted with magic. He rejected the laws because in his arrogance he believed that rules didn’t apply to him. He used his powers to serve his own ambition, and eventually he became king. At first he thought he had gained everything he wanted. But he realized that even with all his riches and power, there was something he didn’t have. Nothing could prevent him from dying.”
Amina was using her storytelling voice, which was hypnotic and comforting, like warm honey. It made Georgette feel that she was seven years old again, when her favorite thing in the world had been Amina’s stories.
“As he grew older, King Rudolph became obsessed with death,” said Amina. “He gathered astrologers and alchemists and scholars to his court and sent explorers to far lands to find the fountain of life. None of them discovered the secret to immortality. And he grew older still, and still he obsessed about his death.”
She was silent for a while, her face serious and thoughtful, but this time no one said anything.
“King Rudolph had a son, his heir, and he envied him his youth. As time went by he began to hate him, because his son would take everything that he owned. And at some point, nobody really knows when, he began to practice blood magic. Blood magic is a witch art used in healing, but this king found a way to use it to put his soul inside his son’s body.”
“He what?” said Pip. “What happened to the son?”
“The prince’s soul was devoured by his father, and King Rudolph lived on in his son’s body. To everybody else, it seemed that the king had died, like everyone else dies. But he hadn’t. After that he began to initiate others into his practice. Sometimes his subordinates, sometimes his allies.”
There was a short silence. Pip glanced uneasily at the candles. They seemed to be burning faster.
“A Specter hasn’t escaped death,” Amina said. “Like every living thing, a Specter has died. But they exist beyond their death, not alive, but not dead either. And because their existence isn’t life, they are jealous of everything that lives. They want everyone to be like they are, without joy, without love, without beauty. They are parasites who feast on the living and turn them into themselves. And because they refuse to be dead when it is their time, they bring only death.”
“But that’s awful!” said El.
“It takes a long time to form a Specter, but because they don’t die in the normal ways, they have all the time in the world. Every century there were more of them, always in the royal houses. The Specters knew that only witches could recognize what they were, and so they began to persecute anyone who knew the craft. Before the Specters, witches were welcome everywhere, but this changed fast. When King Odo the Fifth of Clarel became a Specter himself, a hundred years ago, it happened in Clarel too.”
Georgette gave a tiny gasp.
“Fifty years ago, a wise woman in Clarel began to wonder how to stop this wickedness. And then something unexpected happened. Axel Blanc, the son of a blacksmith, led a revolt against the Crown and took the throne. After he executed the king, he married the king’s daughter, Alisel, to consolidate his claim to the throne, and he threw the king’s wife and mistresses and most of his children into the dungeons of this palace. Among them was a prince called Clovis, who was seven years old. Clovis was your great-uncle, Georgie.”
“So,” said Pip, who was following the story closely, frowning in concentration, “they can be killed, after all?”
“They can be killed, but only with difficulty. Specters can move through realms, from life to the In Between. That’s why we use muffling candles, because if they choose, they can eavesdrop from the In Between. Axel chopped off the king’s head before he had time to send his soul to his next body, but that was just a stroke of luck. And you can be sure that since then, Specters are much more protective of their mortal bodies.”
El looked bewildered and scared. “I don’t like this story,” she said, her voice wobbling.
“It is a bad story, I agree,” Amina said, and smiled reassuringly. “But let me finish. The wise woman I mentioned knew that there were more Specters in Clarel, even though the king had been killed. And she devised a spell that she said would break the chain of the Specters. None of us know how she did it, but some people say that she worked out how to double the magic back on the Specters themselves. What we do know is that to make her spell, she needed the blood of a child who was touched by the Specters, but had not yet been consumed. Prince Clovis, as the king’s chosen vessel, was such a child. So she
