Chapter Seventeen: Prisoner Exchange

What happened to Val? We didn't know, but smart money was that she'd been taken, too. And while we had no way of finding her through traditional means, we had a technological edge over traditional witches. Simone and I reassembled Fabiana's sympathy amplifier box using parts from our dampener box and a few educated guesses as to what else should fit where. After a few abortive attempts, we got the thing to hum to life, and then chained the sympathy enhancer, the essence dampener (curse amplifier), and quartocompus in sympathy. The result was to activate the quartocompus, its needle circling lazily about: signal not found.

This was where our second bit of technical expertise came into play, for we actually had a signal, albeit a very weak one. The needle wheeled around, slowing barely perceptibly in a generally eastward direction. It was far too subtle for a human, even a very perceptive witch, to make an accurate reading. But we weren't limited to human perception. Using a computer vision package and our collective programming skills (mostly mine, to be honest - Simone was okay, but I had an extra decade of intermittent programming under my belt), we were able to set up a program to measure the needle hundreds of times a second and compute the average moment of trajectory. If I was right, we'd be able to locate the Gangling Men sanctuary at sub-pixel accuracy.

"How do we know if it's worked?" Sandra McManus asked. She'd helped us with our setup's calibration.

Simone pointed to a fluctuating number on the screen, currently fluctuating between plus and minus fifteen. "That's our net moment in terms of degrees off of due East, which is our x-axis. As soon as we've got it to stop fluctuating, that means we're as close as we're going to get."

"Oh! It's down to thirteen!" Sandra said, smudging the screen with her finger.

I wiped the smudge off. "Yup, but it'll probably take a few hours to get within our measurement error for our calibration placement. I'm going to see how Fabiana's doing."

"I'm coming, too," Simone said.

I'd gone to bed the night before after Nurse Argent assured us that Fabiana had been stabilized and was going to pull through. Even so, I barely got a wink of sleep and, when I went to check on her in the morning, she was snoring, half-covered in bandages but very much alive and golden brown with color. Surely, that was a good sign, given that she'd almost bled to death not twelve hours before.

We took our bikes out to the ley nexus (Simone had finally got approval for one, given the amount of work she did at Lily's) and took the portal to Lily's, where Fabiana was convalescing. It would have been convenient to poof myself to Lily's whenever I wanted, but I didn't know that spell yet and I doubt Lily would appreciate me snapping into being with a bolt of lightning and a sprinkle of broken light bulbs whenever I showed up. I let Simone use her ring for the portal, since that was still a new thing for her. More than once, I'd stopped by her room and caught her studying with her witch's cloak on. She really liked being an official witch now, and I think she wore it just to reassure herself it was real. We biked the rest of the way to Lily's and arrived just in time for Fabiana's el gigante freak out.

Her eyes fluttered open pretty much the second we walked in, and she screamed: "Where the fuck am I?"

This was an understandable reaction. From her perspective, she'd just met three young witches, one of whom had very plausible claim to being her ex fiancée. Then the two of them had fucked while the other girls inspected your cool-but-nonoperational magical box. Then two (we think) creepy ass fucks had shown up, kidnapped her transformed ex, and sicced a gruesome wulphibian (the technical term, I'd discovered) on her, and then she woke up in this strange place. Mind you, I'd been the one who'd saved her life and brought her to this strange place, but it was understandable that she might not remember that little detail.

"I brought you here after the monster attacked you… this is a safe place…"

Fabiana was not deterred. She shouted something in Spanish stumbled out of bed, grabbed the bedside lamp, and flung it in our direction. It hit Simone in the hair - which, fortunately, wasn't nearly the same as hitting her head. Not when she was wearing it up in her amazing, curly corona. When Fabiana made an ill-advised charge at us right after that, Simone cast 'tempura flakes', which is what we called the handy little spell where you paired tempura with halepha. Fabiana froze in her tracks - literally… she was temporally locked for a few seconds, during which Simone and I placed her back on the bed and waited for her to restart. As she resumed blinking and breathing, Simone crouched in front of her.

"You need to calm your butt down or I swear I'll tie you to the bedpost. Do you hear me?"

"Y… yes."

Good. We then explained to Fabiana how she'd got here, and she seemed to believe us. At least she wasn't charging us or throwing things at us. I had flashbacks to when Amanda had awoken in my bedroom on that fateful morning and set me along the pathway to becoming a witch - even people who were used to dealing with some degree of magic could get fucked up by its effects. I recounted this to Fabiana, told her about my history with the Gangling Men, and asked her what happened to Val.

"I wish I knew… I think they must have taken him. He was so good with magic, too, almost as good as you guys… I could hardly believe he'd only been at it for a few months."

Point of note: Val was exceptionally talented, but I would have been surprised if she was in the top ten St. Circe's students at that point, let alone almost as good as Simone. But I let that slide. If Fabiana didn't know what had befallen Val, then denigrating my cousin's magical skill or critiquing Fabiana's use of pronouns wasn't going to get her back. In any case, we had a much more salient problem. My Black Lily ring flashed a brilliant blue color, throbbing on my finger, and Simone's did likewise.

"What was that?"

Simone didn't know, either. That was the first time this had ever happened - some sort of signal from Lily's sanctuary had relayed itself to our rings. I started to the door, but stopped when Fabiana tried to follow us.

"You almost died - maybe you should rest a bit longer?"

"I'm fine - see?" She unwrapped the bandages around her midsection - the bandages around the wounds where the wulphibian had chomped down a time or three. Beneath, there were wounds, but they were the scabby, flaking wounds of a cut just now turning to scar - indeed, the skin beneath them was pink and raw. Fabiana had experienced a few weeks of healing in one night - that's magical medicine for you. She wasn't fine, but she was a lot better than almost-dead.

I shrugged. "Fine. Come if you want." Our rings pulsed again - something strange was happening.

We headed out toward the porch, squinting out into the dying light of evening. It was perhaps six o'clock and we weren't expecting Lily for a little while. She worked anywhere from ten to twelve hours on a normal day, arriving at St. Circe's around seven o'clock and usually arriving home around six thirty, though she would occasionally return around now, a few minutes after six. But we saw no headlights from her Jaguar, nor any lights at all. From the porch, I could feel the pulse of energy from out in the woods, but I couldn't tell what it was: some summoned creature? A witch wandering through the woods? Or…

Simone shrieked and I jerked rigid as the pale face shambled out of the darkness and toward us on the porch. I cast Lily's wards down - there were spots on the porch and in the doorway so used to holding wards that you hardly had to do anything to activate their patterns. I pulled Fabiana behind me and took a step back as the Gangling Man approached Lily's porch. He walked with an odd gait and made creaking and clicking sounds - something, presumably Lily's wards, had broken several of his bones, and now they were crunching and crumbling beneath his waxy skin. In his hands, he clutched the symboled rags of two or three of his fallen brethren. I was about three quick symbols away from disintegrating the fucker when Lily strode out from her house and nudged me aside - presumably, she'd lightninged herself in again.

Steely eyes imperious and fingers twitching, she gazed down at him. "You have two seconds to explain yourself before I banish you back to the nightmare realms."

The man forced a pale smile. "Th-then you will never have heard my offer. The d-dozens who come to avenge me will not look kindly upon it." It seemed that there was a point beyond which even the Gangling Men felt the bite of pain - good.

"An offer?" Lilly snorted. "Very well… I offer battle sanctuary."

In case I haven't described the many types of sanctuary, battle (or 'truce') sanctuary is where sanctuary is granted, but any use of offensive magic will violate that sanctuary, which is the equivalent of a broken oath. Thus, if your creepy-ass enemy accepts sanctuary and then double-crosses you, he'd better kill you fast, because you've suddenly got the force of the sanctuary pact in your favor. Of course, if you violate the sanctuary, then the same is also true.

"I… accept," the pale man said, and with the creaking and crunching strange, dry bones, he hobbled up the stairs and into Lily's sanctum.

+++++

"No, absolutely not." Lily wasn't impressed with the deal.

"Two for one… is that not more than fair?"

Indeed, it was very fair. Fair-sounding, rather. Doctor Satrap had just offered to exchange Cassie and Val in exchange for… me. Who else? And with a deal like that, how could I possibly refuse him?

"Out of the question. Now… I've heard your offer… I'm giving you five minutes to…"

I stepped past Lily and looked the pale man in his beady black eyes. "I accept… assuming your contract provides for the safe passage and continued safety of my friends. I'm not going to turn myself in and have you let them go, only to scoop them back three days from now. If your trade is made in good faith, then I accept - myself in exchange for both."

"Good, Miss Bryce," Satrap hissed, coughing up a few wisps of cloth. "Let us go, just the two of us, to the source of the One Voice…"

"Unacceptable," Lily said, holding me back with a firm hand. "Either you bring the contract to neutral ground or you permit me to accompany my witch-daughter."

"And me," Simone said. "You've already proven you're willing to sacrifice your own, so we can't trust your word. The three of us go or none of us does."

"Agreed," I said, and squeezed her hand. As much as I wanted to free Cassie and Val, wandering into Gangling Central with nothing but the word of one creepy pale fuck to attest to my safety was pretty foolish. I'd gladly trade myself for the two of them if I had to, but if I wanted any hope of weaseling my way out of the contract, it would be with strong support behind me.

Satrap considered it for a moment before sighing with a grating hiss. "Very well… you will help me to the ley, then. Your wards are quite potent, Headmistress, but I expect you are convinced, now, of the precarity of your sanctuary?"

In retrospect, the smartest thing for Lily to have done probably would have been to kill Satrap then and there. If he couldn't get word back to his brethren, they'd never know that it was possible for several of their number to breach Lily's outer defenses and make it to her house. For all they'd have known, there was nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do to breach the sanctuary… but, most likely, they'd still have tried. So perhaps it was best that we left the ailing Satrap alive and incorporated, wincing and wheezing as Simone and Lily helped him along.

We made our way out to the edge of Lily's sanctuary, out to the standing stone, and they lowered Satrap to the earth to conduct his little portal ritual - one unlike any I'd ever seen, with one or two symbols I was convinced I hadn't yet seen. He uttered words in a tongue utterly unpronounceable to human tongues:
"Srrul'hu urrul hrkh fhtagn
grsvlfalf mglw'nafh kru inahkvn

sfylndrph oxtrvy pofwlk rk'vlyh

gyneskvth nuur vku oss hry'ellyh!"

The dark and shimmering portal opened, and we stepped through.

+++++

If you've ever been to a place that immediately gave you the gross creepy crawlies, then you can relate to what I felt. Suddenly, we were in a dark and stuffy space, somewhere that had been enclosed for a long time, its stale air smelling faintly of ozone and potter's soil. The lighting was dim enough that, even against our walk through the nighttime woods at Lily's, this place was strange and dark, with warm wafts of air puffing against me like the breath of a sleeping beast.

"Come," Satrap said. His dark eyes reflected pale in the feeble light, and I could imagine a gloating grin upon his face, though it was too dim for me to make it out. Follow me.

We walked along a narrow, rocky path and, as we walked, the light grew to a ruddy dim glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. My heart pounded in my chest, and more than once I thought I felt something brush by my legs, though it mostly seemed to be desiccated vines and ferns long dead… I considered that it might be time to revisit adding more pants to my wardrobe. Though, if the Gangling Men got their way, I might never get to make a wardrobe choice ever again.

I was terrified and so was Simone - I could see it in her face, her eyes glassy and her expressive lips drawn into a thin line of worry. I reached out to squeeze her hand and, when she squeezed back, it almost crushed bone. Fortunately, the only one of us with crunched up bones was Doctor Satrap, stumbling along and leading the way.

I felt that we were underground, though I'd never been anywhere underground with half so much space - the main chamber was expansive, the ceiling glowing a foreboding orange-red, the boughs of a huge, dead tree spreading across the whole cavern. Its thick branches were festooned with strange, oblong fruits like little nodules just dangling there. There were dozens of Gangling Men there, too, a few of them shuffling about or toiling at desks sitting out in the open. Most of them, though, were simply staring at the tree with a dead-eyed, slack-mouthed expression, as if it was filling their brains with information so salient that they couldn't possibly pay mind to their surroundings. And all around me, I felt like I was being observed by an alien eye - not the dozens of Gangling Man eyes that might have been peeping at me, but a single, horrible eye beneath whose scrutiny no secret was safe.

"I have a bad feeling about this…" Simone said.

"I'm not sure what we should have expected," I said. "But I didn't expect this."

The only sounds were the grinding of Satrap's bones, the rustling of long-dead foliage in the eddies of stale air, and the faraway shuffling of other Gangling Men. Satrap stopped and stared at the tree for a moment before shambling over to one of the desks. Wordlessly, the man at the desk stood and took three steps at to the side, freezing in place and staring at the huge, dark tree. This, like everything about the place, was supremely creepy.

Satrap brought out a contract inscribed upon pale vellum - human skin if I had to guess - and made some modifications with a blood-red pen. Then he handed it to me to look over, with Lily and Simone peering over my shoulder.

"This is a powerful contract, Natalie… you can't sign it," Lily said, and I could hear the fear in her voice. "Please don't sign it."

"I won't," I said. "Not until I see my friends handed over to Lily's custody." I plucked the pen from Satrap's hand and added my own amendment to the contract - it wouldn't be enacted until Cassie and Val were safely out of this place, entrusted to Lily's protection. I looked Lily in the eye - she was more concerned than I'd ever seen her, her cool features drawn into an odd vulnerability. "I know what I'm doing," I said, though what I was doing was relying upon a wild-ass filament of a hunch to pull me through.

Satrap stared back at the tree for a moment before turning to me, his yellowed and toothy smile flashing in the dim light. "This we can accept. I swear to this contract on behalf of the One Voice."

With that, he pricked his thumb with a bone-white needle and blotted the vellum. I did likewise with my own needle and felt the contract take hold, its power setting firm upon us both like a subtle cage. In that instance, a dozen Gangling Men awoke from their stupor, shuffling and marching about the place, and Satrap reached atop his head and peeled the skin off, his body collapsing into a pile of loose rags with a single marked cloth at the top.

"He will be honored. He will be reborn," thirty Gangling Men chanted. "Let us remake him anew with the soul of another."

Before I could get much of a feel for what was going on, I heard weeping, and suddenly Val was being escorted to us by two of the pale men.

"Val! Val! Are you all right?"

She looked exhausted, like she'd been crying. Her clothes were torn and bloody in parts. But she managed a weak smile. "Oh, Nat! Thank God!" She dashed past the Gangling Men and pulled me into an embrace that gave Cassie a run for her money. "I thought I was going to die," she sobbed, and then she noticed the contract and her expression turned to one of pale-faced horror. "Wh… Natalie, what did you do?"

"What I had to," I said. I turned to the nearest Gangling Man… one who was oddly familiar. "That's one. Let's see Cassie."

"Patience, girl," Heirophant hissed. "It takes time to unspool from the tree… for I'm bound to her and she to me…" He stepped up to me, gloating. "But soon you and I shall be as one, and I shall be the Avatar of the One Voice, chosen to rule this mild world. You should be honored to have been transformed from some crude thing into so exquisite a vessel for our arrival…"

"Spare me," I said. "Do what you have to do… bring Cassie here right now."

"I will honor the contract," Heirophant said. He paced over to the desk - he was taller and broader than before, perhaps borrowing some element of physicality from Cassie, and he bore himself with her surety and confidence, scribbling onto a sheet of vellum and then pacing back over. He walked right past me and handed it to Simone. "But I present a further offer… a witch for a witch. Hyacinth Ambrosia Lily."

Lily gasped. "Don't you dare," she spat, though it wasn't clear whether she was speaking to Simone or Heirophant. Suddenly, she was crying. "Damn you… just… damn you to every hell."

Heirophant chuckled. "Do not violate our truce, or your own life is forfeit."

Simone looked at the contract, mumbling over its complex symbology, and then cast a pleading glance to me. "Natalie… do you know what you're doing?"

"I do, but…" maybe I'm wrong, I would have said. It was too late. Simone blotted her blood against the contract, and it was firm and good. A life for a life - a fair and balanced contract.

"But… the prophecy," Lily said, and collapsed to her knees, more defeated than I could ever imagine her looking. I was tearing up just looking at her… had I just made the grandmother of all mistakes?

I crouched next to Lily and brought her gaze up to mine, her lips trembling and her eyes teary and unsure. "Did you ever have faith in the prophecy?"

"I did," she said, but her voice was so small that it just about broke my heart.

"Then have faith now." I kissed her forehead, my lips making a little wet mark upon her. "If the prophecy is true, then we're living it now."

"Fools. The prophecy is broken," Heirophant stated. And, without further ado, he reached up to his own bald scalp - he didn't bother to wear a hat in this dark sanctum - and pulled his own symbol cloth free, collapsing into a pile of pale rags.

"The tree bears fruit, the tree consumes," the Gangling Men chanted, and the tree groaned to life, its limbs wheeling about, the imprisoned witches that served as its fruit whipping through the air like whizzing cars at an amusement park. And two of those fruit touched the ground, their leathery sheaths cracking and disintegrating, depositing two people upon the ground, one large and one small.

The smaller one was a girl, perhaps eleven or twelve, with the dark hair of Bethany Lily, right down to its single silver lock, and the curious amber eyes of Ambrose Nicht. Hyacinth Ambrosia Lily. She blinked in confusion, recognized Lily, and scrambled to embrace her.

"Mommy," she said, sounding like a scared little girl. "What happened? I'm frightened."

"Shh, it's okay, girl," Lily said, all the while keeping her teary eyes fixed on me. But I was otherwise distracted.

"Cassie!" I ran over to her and pulled her into a hug. She was dressed as she'd been when the Gangling Men had taken her away, clothed in nothing but dirt-sullied lacy lingerie. Her eyes slowly focused and, seconds later, I was in the inescapable grip of an Amazon Death Hug.

"Natalie! Wh… where am I? What happened?"

"Breathing," I croaked. And, when Cassie remembered about breathing: I kissed her on the lips and ran my fingers down her face, as if to convince myself that she was real. "I got you… I got you back… I'm sorry, Cassie. I'm sorry." Now I was crying - a lot of crying to be had that day.

"Sorry? For what?" She struggled to her feet, lifting me along with her without much difficulty. "Natalie… what did you do?"

"What I had to do," I whispered. "You'll see…"

"Enough," one of the nearby Gangling Men stated. "This is not the time for sweet reminisces. The contracts must be obeyed. The witches will leave, the vessels will surrender themselves to the Tree of the One Voice. Else, the contract is broken and we will take what we wish."

"Come on, girls," Lily said. "We must let these two honor their contract… they pledged their blood, and we can only hope that we won't all pay horribly for it."

Before Lily led them into the dim and twisted corridor, out of sight and then back to the ley, Cassie turned back to face me. I expected the same lost and teary expression that had been making its rounds but, despite the tear streaks on her face, her hazel eyes were sharp and determined. "You can't keep us apart," she stated. Then she rejoined Lily and they disappeared from sight.

+++++

"They've left the sanctuary," one of the Gangling men said.

"Gone and gone, never to return. Then string them up, these vessels two," the Gangling Men chanted.

A dark and twisted branch creaked down toward the floor of the chamber, two empty spots along its strange and leathery branches. They ushered Simone beneath the branch, but held me back when I went to join her. Little dark threads descended from the branch - like magical bindings, but far smaller, wrapping her up bit-by-bit. I could only watch as Simone was enveloped by the tree, fear in her eyes as it encased her in one of its many black and leathery pods. Not that I was clamoring to join Simone on the creepy-ass tree, but why hadn't they wrapped me up, too? I had an inkling that I knew why…

"Bryce!" the pale man said. "Our pact with your line will not allow your blood to flow within our tree."

But he wasn't speaking to me - he was speaking to Rowan Bryce. Rowan and Katherine Bryce, my 'parents' by way of magical mischief, were here, stepping out from some distant side passageway, each of them carrying witch lamps. And Rowan had a Bryce & Co. sympathy enhancer under one arm. He looked at me with his cruel and imperious gaze, ice-blue eyes looking at me with something between revulsion and disgust.

I spat at the ground in front of him - he was a bit too far away for me to quite get his shoes. "I turned your father into a worm, and I'll do worse to you when I get my chance."

"What chance?" He chuckled. "You'll be trapped inside that tree forever…"

"Not forever," the Gangling Man stated. "One thousand years, perhaps two… at which point, the spirit shall be spent in its entirety and another must be found. Long enough, though she'll scarcely be aware of the passage of time… each day a flitting nightmare… or so I am told."

"As long as she suffers," Katherine said. "For what she's done to us. For what she's taken from us…"

I spat at her feet, too. "If you're in league with these creepy fucks, then you're even more broken than I thought. There's nothing I could ever take that you haven't already given up in your corruption. Your daughter. Your son. Your father-in-law. And soon they'll take the whole world, and it will be all your fault."

"Enough," Rowan Bryce said. "You're too enamored of these delusions of grandeur. You're a clever witch, and no more. You deserve far worse, but I'll take some pleasure in this… string her up in your tree."

The gangling man produced a contract. "You give permission, then, that we should add your bloodline to our Tree of the One Voice?"

"Yes, but only this one. Am I clear? I'm not a fool who will sign his family away just to enjoy a bit of revenge…"

I laughed, which infuriated him. Rowan was especially angered because he knew why I was laughing - because he'd already brought doom upon his family for attempting to get revenge on me. His son was lost, his father was a literal worm, and his daughter was lost to him because she'd seen him for what he was - I'd gained a sister and he'd lost a daughter, a father, and a son. And now, he sealed that error in finality with a blot of blood - permission to add me, in particular, to the tree. I said nothing as the wisps of thread wrapped me, slowly darkening my vision. And he had to wonder why I was smiling, smiling even as the last of the threads closed me in and Simone and I were hoisted, side-by-side, up into the horrible, dark canopy of the witch-tree.