Page 82 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
They found a window that evening, and watched him glide by, accompanied by his waddling bodyguards. Sometimes he would break into a run to get away from them and the geese would scatter, but they would all immediately take to the air and come down beside him and form a ring again.
Cordelia had to admit that they were not particularly graceful birds, and standing beside Falada’s unearthly beauty made them seem even more ungainly. Yet they were fearless and apparently tireless, never allowing Falada to roam the grounds without being watched.
“I take back what I said about the short-legged one,” said Hester, gazing out the window into the twilight. “I still wouldn’t breed him, but he’s remarkably good at corralling a horse.”
“We have to draw the circle around that particular horse,” said Imogene, looking down at the book. “It’s very clear. You can’t just lead him into it, you have to actually draw it around him or it won’t contain him. It suggests a bag of white chalk. Then the triangle around it, with each of us at one point. Then we invoke the water, wine, and salt—”
“Invoke it how?” asked Hester. “I’ve never invoked anything in my life.”
Cordelia remembered the ghost of Penelope saying that the wine in the church had rung when it was drunk, and that the water had done the same when she drank it. “I think you just have to drink it,” she said cautiously. “That seems to be enough? Maybe?”
Please don’t ask how I know that, because this is complicated enough already.
“Drinking it seems to be enough in a church wedding,” Evermore said. “Although perhaps the priest blesses it beforehand. I’m not sure.”
Imogene frowned down at the book. “‘Let he who invokes the reagent be he who is best suited to the task, water to water, wine to wine, salt to salt. Let him reflect on the reagent that is his: the salt that comes of earth, the water that is borne on the swift stream, and the wine that is made of growing grapes and the art of man. For salt bars the entry of the shadowed ones; water fills the space it is given and washes away that which is impure; and wine binds the space between the seen and unseen, even as it binds the bargains struck between men.’”
“And we’re supposed to do this while a horse is tied up in front of us?” Richard asked.
“I know that I reflect best on reagents when a thousand-pound animal is screaming at me,” said Hester.
Imogene shrugged. “Look, if it fails, all that happens is that we look silly and Richard’s grooms think we’ve joined a cult.”
“You know they used to burn people at the stake for that,” said Richard mildly.
“So you have to buy the Archbishop a new church somewhere. You can afford it.”
“That’s not all that happens,” said Cordelia.
“Eh?”
“Falada’s her familiar. Even if it fails, she’ll know that we did something.” She stared out the window, where the bone-white form stood on the grass, surrounded by a ring of watchful geese. Whenever the horse took a step, the ring shifted to keep him in the center. It would have been hilarious if she had not known what Falada truly was.
“How does he communicate with her?” asked Richard. “Do you know? Does she have to come here?”
Cordelia tried to remember every detail of her mother appearing when she had tried to run away on the horse’s back. “I don’t know. I tried to get away once, and he must have contacted her somehow, because she came after me as soon as I did. But I don’t know how much she knows when they’re apart.” She remembered all the questions she’d asked Ellen. Her mother had never seemed to pick up any of them. Perhaps she had to choose to listen in, or perhaps Falada simply hadn’t told her.
“In that case…” Hester clasped her hands together. “We’ll try the spell, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll simply have to kill the beast.”
Cordelia stared at her. “Kill him?”
“You object?”
“No. Oh, no!” The rage and horror that she had kept under her breastbone since she had learned that Falada was not her friend roared suddenly to life. Kill him. Yes. Yes.
“Can you kill a familiar?” asked Richard doubtfully. “Do they die like normal animals?”
Imogene moved to the windowsill, looking down. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know very much about magic, but I do know that cutting their heads off kills just about anything.”
CHAPTER 30
Everyone objected when Cordelia announced that she was going to be the one inside the spell circle.
“It has to be me,” she said. “Don’t you see?”
“I see that you’ll be in the circle with, at best, a deranged stallion and at worst, some kind of demon,” said Lord Evermore. “I won’t hear of it. I’ll say the words.”
Cordelia shook her head. “Falada won’t hurt me,” she said. “I’m the only one he won’t hurt. He wouldn’t dare. All of Mother’s plans hinge on me. Whatever he does, I’m the only one who has any chance of being safe.”
