Sadie Madison and the Boy in the Crimson Scarf

Michael Madison's "The Witch Tree At San Cristophe"

The legend of The Witch Tree began nigh on two thousand years ago. To hear it, we must travel a great distance, through time and space.

Over the River Myr we fly, leaving the safety of Iron Bridge far behind. We skim the western treetops of Darachna Forest, then up and over the Carcassus Mountains. Sharp stone and rock spread out beneath us for hundreds of miles with holdfasts and crumbling castles perched on cliff tops and rooted in barren vales. Beyond the mountains we fly, across the Snake Plains, towards the distant Western Waters. And here, at the edge of the world, lies the mighty circular cities of San Cristophe.

And now time slips away. Back and back and back we go—

Somewhere in the swirling sand and withering heat outside the walls of San Cristophe, stood three Sisters: dressed in black, bound in iron.

The first, no older than sixteen, shielded her vivid blue eyes from the sun. The second grunted listlessly, digging her work-worn hands into her wide hips. The third raised her gnarled head towards the battlements, muttering the ancient Words of Shadow.

Now, they weren't sisters in the way you and I think of sisters, for they were not of the same mother, but they were of a more terrible Sisterhood.

The Sisterhood of Witches.

The King looked down on the three women. From his vantage point, they looked like harmless desert beetles; beetles he could crush beneath the heel of his boot. But they were far from harmless and, even at this distance, he did not feel the least bit safe.

"Harridans!" he bellowed, his voice vanishing into the desert forever. "Your time is at an end. San Cristophe is a city of peace and justice, of learning and knowledge, of truth and honesty. A city built for all time. It has no place for your magics and sorcery, your malcontent, your Words of Shadow."

The old witch spat on the ground in disgust. Her spittle sizzled, smoked, then spawned hundreds of black scorpions that wriggled and fought and melted into a steaming tar.

The King turned to his advisors. Their faces were white with fear. The King's Archdeacon strode forward and demanded the witches be banished from the city, cursed never to return, but the King silenced him with a hand and commanded they be put to death.

"Death?" said the Archdeacon. "Do you actually believe death will be the end for these women? They're Witches, sire. Harridans, Sorceresses, Necromancers. Their power is beyond anything death can contain."

"My order stands," the King said. "Cut them down. All of them."

The King's Golden Warriors took the witches one thousand paces south of the city and ended their mortal lives. They dug a communal grave by the Kingsroad and placed them side-by-side in the ground. Their bodies were burned in camphor oil, the bones covered in soil and sand and salt. The Archdeacon came to the grave to give a short benediction. No marker, cross or headstone was erected and, after the wind had worked its magic, no trace remained at all.

A full moon rose above the city of San Cristophe. It cast a brilliant light on the Snake Plains, turning them into a slithering pale-blue sea of dust. The stars seemed diminished, as though they were afraid to show themselves. The King stared across the city, towards the gate where he had condemned the three, and said a prayer to the Night Gods before retiring to bed.

But his prayers went unanswered.

Across the city, beyond the mighty walls and the Kings Gate, one thousand paces south upon the Snake Plains, the ground stirred.

A shoot sprang from the desiccated earth. It writhed and flicked like an earthworm. Within minutes the shoot broke into two, then four, then eight, and stretched up towards the sky, growing and building and spreading, becoming a tree with twisted branches and gnarled bark, black as night. The tree grew more than thirty feet high, swaying gently in the cool night air.

The King became alerted by the cries of his advisors. Accompanied by his Golden Warriors, advisors, clerics and men-at-arms, the King went to the site of the black tree. On seeing the abomination, the King's face turned paler than a fish's belly.

"I warned you about the witches," cried the Archdeacon. "I warned you and now look what has happened!"

The King considered the tree for a time. Ignoring the cries of his Archdeacon, he turned to his Golden Warriors. "Cut it down. Immediately!"

The tree moved then. The black branches dropped, planting themselves in the ground around the trunk. The tree started to groan and creak and wail like an injured beast. With longswords in hand, the Golden Warriors approached but the branches lashed out, knocking them backwards into the sand. Again and again they attacked, but the tree brushed them aside.

The King, growing tired of the efforts of his Golden Warriors, took his Moonblade Axe and approached the Witch Tree. To his surprise, the branches retracted from the sand and let the King pass beneath. But when he stood next to the huge, blackened trunk, his axe arcing through the air, the branches reach down and seized him.

The King went reeling into the air, screaming and yelping. The branches tightened around his waist like the coils of a deadly serpent. The tree pulled the King close. The faces of the three witches appeared before him in the burnt bark, knotted and angry.

"Foolish man," chuckled the Maid. "You are no match for us."

"Even in death, we are more powerful than you can imagine," said the Mother.

The Crone laughed, dry and sickly. "And now it's time for you to join us!"

Shooting into the air, the King hung suspended above the tree, a branch around each limb. A fifth branch swirled overhead, cracking viscously from side to side. It whipped forward, coiling itself around the King's neck, killing him stone dead.

But that wasn't the end for the King.

His body hung limp and loose in the branches, as the witches muttered and chittered gleefully inside the bark. A grey cloud rose from the trunk, as if on fire. The smoke crackled and fizzed. Arrows of blue and white light shot into the night, sparks dropping to the sand like dive-bombing fireflies.

As the smoke vanished, the King's body landed cruelly on the sand. The Archdeacon moved forward to help his King, but there was nothing he could do. As he sat there weeping, he could have sworn he heard his King's smothered voice, wailing in the distance.

He turned and looked at the tree, and there, in the bark, appeared the grinning face of the three witches. But, most horrible of all, between their wretched faces was the King, etched in the black bark of the Witch Tree. His eyes were terrified, wide and screaming. He opened his mouth to call out but thirty long, wicked fingers reached over his face and dragged him deep into the roots of the tree.

Following the King's death, a sandstone tower encompassed the tree, engulfed by the expanding city. It is now guarded by descendants of the Golden Warriors. Its true location, an ancient mystery. But, they say, if you're able to find the Witch Tree at San Cristophe, and you're able to get close enough, you can hear the screams of the King from inside, begging for forgiveness.