The Witch Queen by Jan Siegel

Author:Jan Siegel
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780345454812
Publisher: Ballantine Group

In the lower branches of the Tree the spider spun its fragile webs, catching the few insects that invaded its airspace, drinking the sap from split stem and torn leaf. As it grew larger it ventured more often to the ground, exploring corners of the conservatory that the builders had not touched, behind stone jars and carved troughs where tropical plants flourished grimly, accustomed to the jungle gloom. There the spider spread its nets, no longer fragile, thickening the shadows. One day it caught a rat.

Morgus found it there on a night of the waning moon when she came to commune with the Tree. She stumbled into a sticky silken rope that tore her dress when she pulled it away, but she was not angered. Seeing the clustered eyes watching her, malevolent as Oedaphor’s and intelligent as an aphid’s, she laughed softly. “So my Tree has acquired a guardian! It is well. It is very well. What have you been eating?” She poked among the plant debris with her foot, dislodging a pile of little white bones. “Mice, perhaps? Too meager a feast for such a prodigy. I will bring you something more substantial.” The next day, she ordered a car and was driven into the nearest town, where she asked to be taken to a pet shop. There she bought an entire litter of pedigreed puppies.

“I want the best,” she told the assistant.

“These are purebred,” the young woman assured her. “Look, aren’t they adorable? Are they for your children?”

“For my—child,” said Morgus.

“They’re not like cats, you know. They have to be properly looked after.”

“They will be taken care of,” Morgus replied.

She paid with plastic, where once she would have had to pay with gold. She had concluded that money in the twenty-first century was at once vitally important and completely meaningless. Rulers mislaid or misspent unimaginable sums, running deficits that outran her comprehension. And even the lowest peasant seemed to borrow and juggle and gamble in ways mysterious to her. She left all such matters to Kaspar, her helper, her counselor—and her slave. His name was on the plastic, but no one queried it.

The puppies cost two hundred pounds apiece.

Later, the spider hunted something that yapped and squealed, until the venom took effect and it was paralyzed into silence.

“When you are hungry, there will be another,” promised Morgus. “Eat well, and grow!”

In her basement spellchamber, she mixed a potion from the sap of the Tree and left a bowl out nightly for the spider to drink.

Upstairs in the kitchen, Grodda watched over the remaining puppies, stroking them and making inarticulate cooing noises, until one by one they were all gone.

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