Anne Downer - The SpellKey Trilogy.pdf

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The SpellKey Trilogy
by Ann Downer
Version 1.0
1
THE CAT Is BELLED
That morning the old witch Abagtha had set out to gather
mushrooms, the silvery, fragile kind that spring up in the
night and are gone by the time the sun is very high. She
went out, her meager shawls clutched about her against
the damp, to gather what she needed before they could
vanish. Her quick, curranty eyes soon spied a white shape
among the dried leaves and pine needles, and with a grunt
she stooped to pick it. But something about it made Abag-
tha snatch back her fingers and suck in her breath and
peer more closely. It was not a mushroom but a toe. At
that moment the toe wiggled, and Abagtha swept away the
leaves and twigs to uncover a sleeping baby. The child
opened its eyes and smiled at the old woman bending over
it. Abagtha saw the child had one blue eye and one green,
as true black cats do. Considering this no trifling omen,
the sibyl placed the baby in the bundle on her back, with
the mushrooms and herbs, and brought it away to her
home in an oak, with a red door, in the heart of the forest.
The tree was an ancient as she was herself, and among its
roots she nursed the child on wild honey and goat's milk.
As long as her memory served her, Abagtha had lived
in the Weirdwood. She knew a little of the grey arts, if
not the black ones, and could make up a spell or two if
the sack of copper was heavy enough, But she didn't have
a license to practice the weightier magics, for the Necro-
mancer alone held the franchise tor magic in that
kingdom.
So, with the foundling on her knee, the old woman sold
paltry spells to those brave enough to venture into the
wood, taking cockles and eels in return for spells to raise
the wind, and barley and oats in return for spells to
bring rain.
The child grew at a wicked rate. When she had cut her
teeth, Abagtha taught her bird lore: how to tell their eggs
and calls apart, and then all their names, the man-given
ones such as nightjar and nuthatch, and then the names
in the language of the birds. Abagtha taught her how
unlucky it was to kill a wren, how owls' eyes could be
eaten to cure night blindness. And when the child was
late in learning to speak, the old woman made her eat the
tongues of birds.
The girl cried, swallowed, pushed the plate away, and
spoke.
"No."
This gave Abagtha satisfaction, and she ate the rest of
the tongues herself.
 
When the child had been with her seven years, Abagtha
summoned her and told her to make cakes of millet and
honey: "Make them round, mind." Then, putting on her
many shawls, she instructed the girl to put the cakes in a
napkin and bring them along.
They went out. The child trotted obediently at the old
woman's heels. It was growing cold—the bears had already
taken to their dens—and she was barefoot. But never hav-
ing had shoes, or a name, she did not miss them. They
walked a long time, long enough for the light in the wood
to change, the birds to stop singing and the crickets to
take it up again. The trees came farther and farther apart
until, just as the sun was beginning to disappear, they
came to the edge of the wood.
The girl had never seen the sun set; indeed, she had
never seen the sun except as long streaks of light that fell
from the treetops and dappled the forest floor. She stood
and squinted at the fiery egg in its nest of purple clouds
and said not a word.
Abagtha inspected the cakes, found them to her liking,
and pinched the child for being inattentive.
"Roll one down the hill."
"But aren't they for our supper?"
She got another pinch. Abagtha took one of the cakes
and set it bouncing down the hill. "There! Roll it, so."
The child's cake rolled down the slope, flew over a peb-
bled ford in the stream, and disappeared. Abagtha chewed
her fingers thoughtfully.
"Yes, yes, yes," she muttered. "As I thought. Come,"
she said to the girl, settling her old body under a tree and
spreading the cakes out in her apron. "We'll eat the rest."
"Why did we roll the cakes, 'Batha?" the child asked,
her mouth full of sweet millet cake.
"You can tell a fortune by the way the cake rolls."
"And what was my fortune?"
But Abagtha ate another cake, and would not say.
After the day they rolled the cakes down the hill, Abag-
tha began to change. She had taught the girl all she dared,
lacking a license to do more, and her pupil's aptness in the
ways of magic began to sit ill with her. Abagtha became
quarrelsome, forgetful. Without warning she would speak
to the girl in foreign tongues, scold her without cause,
howl at her in tempests of hilarity and tears. She stopped
working her spells: the farmers came less and less often,
so that there was less and less to eat. The old cat, Mambo,
 
became melancholy.
Still, the child soon forgot these episodes, until the
unlucky day the old woman discovered her scrawling runes
of great power on the scullery wall.
"Have you been looking at my book of incantations, you
meddlesome little toad?" Abagtha hissed. "Didn't I forbid
you ever to put your dirty paws on it?"
The book of incantations never left its wooden stand by
the hearth. Three ribbons marked its pages—one silver,
one blue, and one green—and its pigskin binding was
stamped with the shapes of herbs and animals: mandrake
and hyssop, crocodiles and hedgehogs. Wary of its iron
clasps, the child had never looked inside, except to catch
a glimpse while Abagtha was reading from it. All she had
seen was a dog curled up asleep in a capital P, monkeys
swinging in the margins, and thick, scowling letters that
meant nothing to her.
The girl shrank into the corner. "I didn't touch it! I
couldn't! It's locked ... you wear the key."
"How else could you learn to make runes like that, you
nasty little liar?"
"I dreamed them, 'Batha, truly!"
And the child did dream things. She would dream of a
farmer with a toothache, riding a spotted horse, and the
next day such a fanner would arrive at the oak with the
red door. Other nights the girl dreamed things less simple:
men in black on horseback, battling; fire in the air; a gar-
den under glass, full of birds; two people kissing by a
hedge. One of Abagtha's other books had pictures of
knights, and people kissing, but the girl liked the one with
colored pictures of beetles better.
Abagtha was in no mood to hear about dreams. "Lies!"
she spat. "Even I don't know the workings of those runes,
and you scrawl them with no more care than if they were
a game of crosses and oughts! Now, get a pail and rag and
scrub this wall, and the floor, too, while you're about it!
Mark this wall again, and you'll rue it."
When the old woman had gone the child cried silently
for a bit, out of fright and relief. After a while she fetched
a pail and wrung out a cloth. Kneeling before the wall,
she paused with the rag in her hand, knitting her brow at
the runes. Abagtha had never taught the girl her letters,
so that the runes meant less than nothing to her. But some
urge moved her tongue for her, made her hand trace the
elbows and tails of the letters as she said softly:
"Spellkey ..."
After the incident with the runes the girl kept her
dreams to herself, playing quietly with the dried lizards
 
she took from Abagtha's jars.
* * *
Years passed, and the girl grew tall and slight, a seedling
seeking light among the upper branches. Her skin was
smooth and white as almond meat, for it never saw the
sun, and her dark hair fell past her waist, heavy as wet
silk and tangled with burrs and cobwebs. In winter she
wove it about her into a cloak to ward off the cold. Abag-
tha, now fearful of her charge's powers, kept her in the
thinnest muslin well into the winter, and fed her on a
nasty porridge of ground acorns, to keep her submissive.
But the girl sought out berries and roots to sustain her,
and suffered not too much from Abagtha's abuse. This is
what Abagtha had dreaded most dearly of all.
Abagtha knew the girl's eyes to be those of a seer, the
eyes of an otherworld daughter. For this reason she hesi-
tated at outright cuffs, resorting instead to sly pinches.
The girl met this malice with wit and quickness, doing
the endless chores set for her without complaint. Where
kindness is not known it is not missed. This even temper
maddened Abagtha beyond endurance, and she withheld
even the acorn porridge, even a blanket.
It was because she had no bed that the girl found the
catstone. The bottommost room under the oak tree was a
nut-cellar among the roots. From her youngest days the
girl hid there, for though it was dark the cellar was warm,
and Abagtha had forgotten its existence, so that the girl
crawled there to escape both the cold and Abagtha's rages.
This time, as she bit into a nut, the girl chipped a tooth.
She lit the lamp, a dish of fat with a bit of rag for a wick,
and held the nut to the glimmer curiously.
It wasn't a nut, but a pebble, shaped oddly like a cat,
carved by some hand to enhance the chance resemblance.
The girl made a cord out of strands of her hair, and put
the catstone around her neck, hiding it well under her
rags.
After she found the catstone, the girl began to dream
in daytime. She would see faces in the basin as she did
the dishes. The songs of the birds were as clear to her as
human speech. And the ancient cat, who had always
resented the girl, suddenly took to her with a fierce
affection, rubbing against her legs and making a curious,
croaking purring.
As the cat had a history of scratching and spitting, the
girl continued for a time to kick it away. But the cat's
affection began to wear away her resistance, and one day
at last she picked up the cat and stroked it clumsily.
"There, old Mambo," she said to it softly.
The cat burrowed its head under the girl's chin, purring.
Then an extraordinary thing happened: the cat, tapping
 
the catstone with a paw, suddenly let out a great yam-
mering that brought Abagtha at a trot. Her gaze soon fixed
on the catstone, and she stood before the girl, eyes bright
with greed, trembling with a more obscure emotion. The
girl waited for a slap, but it did not come. Instead Abagtha
warily stretched out a finger to touch the stone.
She was rewarded with a shock for her pains, blue
sparks edging her arm with pale light. Abagtha gave a
short shriek and stuck her fingers in her gums, noisily
sucking the burn.
Then her countenance changed, and she smiled a tooth-
less smile.
"Give it me!" she crooned. "Sweet childling, give it to
your 'Batha, your old gran, who has cared for you this
many a long year. Can you grudge her it? It is a cheap
bauble, a nothing. Give it me!"
This speech, so against Abagtha's nature, terrified the
girl more than would have an unreasoning rage. She fled.
She crept back that evening, driven home by cold and
hunger. Her keeper extended a civil greeting, and set
before her hot mutton broth and barleycakes—unimagined
delicacies. The girl ate, too starved to be wary, the firelight
picking out the stone where it lay nestled in the hollow
of her neck. A white cinder appeared in each of Abagtha's
eyes as she cracked her toes with quiet glee.
The girl's spoon clattered to the floor, and the room
rippled and swam. Flushed and numb, she slid senseless
to the floor.
"The pepper! The pepper!" chortled Abagtha. "A subtler
herb, that." The old woman knelt by the girl and unknot-
ted the cord of hair, depositing the charm tenderly in a
box of carved horn. She then wrapped the box in a bit of
rag and hid it in her bosom.
The girl came to a great while later, the arm twisted
under her all pins ana needles. Her hand went to her
throat and found it bare, and she sat up with a cry. She
went to Abagtha's chamber and found the old woman in
her bed, the blankets clutched under her chin. Her eyes
were staring, their malice replaced by bright fear. The box
of horn lay open on the covers, and she held the catstone
in her hand, worrying it ceaselessly with her thumb. She
did not resist when the girl pried it gently from her grasp.
After she had replaced the catstone around her neck,
the girl steeped herbs for poultices and nursed the tiny
form in the bed. But Abagtha no longer had the will to
live: she seemed intent on some distant vision, and the
girl could not interest her in food, not even in cakes of
millet and honey, perfectly round.
Inside a week the sibyl was dead. The girl without a
 

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