Before Winter's End

XI: OLD MAGIC

"I don't understand," he said. "She was revered. She was said to be powerful, unstoppable even."

For the first time I gazed around the room. The light was dim but shapes began to take form: every wall was lined with shelves, and every shelf was filled with books. Stacked and shoved into every available space. Piled upon the floor in teetering towers. It would take years to read everything contained here, and a lifetime to absorb all its knowledge.

There was a ladder in the far corner, leading to the upper story. Leaving the body behind, I went to the ladder and tested my weight upon it carefully. It was covered in cobwebs and rickety, but it seemed it would hold me.

"I'm going up," I said, as Mason began to wander along the shelves. It was overwhelming, the sheer amount of literature. If the answer to stopping Zibarath was here, where could we even begin to look? We did not have time.

Only tonight, and the following day, remained until the moon shone full upon Tastrim. Zibarath would expect his sacrifice. If it did not come, I had no doubt the consequences would be far more dire than I could comprehend.

The ladder lead me through a simple hatch into a dim room. Somehow, though void of windows, the place managed to have a strange grey glow about it. It was a kitchen, frozen in time. An old loaf of bread, hard as rock, still sat upon the cutting board. Herbs hung along the ceiling in bunches, and glass jars of blackened preserves lined the cupboards. I found myself running my hands over these simple things in wonder. Danielle had been a greater witch than any we had seen since. To now discover the manner of her death had left me stunned. Who could kill someone so powerful? And why? Why were there no stories of this?

Who had hidden her murder?

I could hear Mason moving about downstairs, and it gave me comfort. A quiet, aching plea sounded within my heart: Don't leave me. I knew it was vain: if all this was for naught and I had to take Cassidy into the woods, he would doubtlessly never look upon me again with anything but hatred. I wouldn't blame him for that. But for now, in these last hours before everything would change irrevocably, I let myself feel that he was there to stay.

There was another ladder, leading further upwards still. I thought of the awkward layout of the house from the outside, and realized this would be the last floor. This hatch was protected with a simple lock, which I opened with a small bit of power and spoken words. It seemed the house had eased around us at last: once its initial barrier was broken, it seemed to have given up its defenses quite easily.

The final small room was a bedroom. The bed sat oddly high within its frame, so I could have easily crawled beneath it. The roof rose to a point, like a little tower, and an orrery of the planets was suspended there on the most intricate plates of gears and metal workings I had ever seen. After all these years, they were still slowly spinning around each other: an endless dance not unlike their idols in the heavens. I stared at them until I was nearly dizzy, aghast. Was it magic that kept them working? But I had to focus on the task at hand.

Opposite the bed was a long desk of thick, sturdy wood, taking up the entire length of the wall. There were books here too, but only a few. Their ancient spines were bound in leather died maroon , ebony, and emerald. Herbs of Power & Where to Find Them, Energies of Nether: Demons, Spirits, & Whisps, and Understanding the Nature of Curses were among them. I thought of Danielle painstakingly transporting these books across the land with the Pilgrims, perhaps in a wagon, perhaps on horseback. Hoarding them, caring for them like the invaluable treasures they were. Witch Mother used to send Gatherers to the cities with instructions, to seek out book peddlers and search for titles on specific things. But these books had come through the ages. Many had no authors: within their front flaps, they were signed "Anonymous," "Earth Woman," or simply "A Friend."