The crimson witch

Prologue: THE CRIMSON WITCH
        
        She came spinning out of the thunderstorm, mad as all hell. Lightning flashed above her, rippled across the horizon like a great, semitransparent jellyfish, sinking liquidly into the horizon. The sky was a uniform gun-metal gray as if the clouds had been hammered into sheets and welded together from horizon to horizon by some industrious God of Melancholy. Thunder boom-aboomed like mountainous waves crashing against weathered rocks, each clap trailing off into the whisper of seafoam. Boom! Ssshusscrack! Her anger boiled as fiercely as the elements, lanced through her mind in awesome, painful flashes.
        Her red robes fluttered behind her as she drifted through the night, swept in a halo like satin wings, filtered the lightning into the color of freshly spilled blood. She plunged into the dank, heavy clouds and came out in the spaces between, unruffled. Following the pulsations of the mammoth storm, she moved downward toward the small and fearful earth.
        A black gull swooped toward her, oblivious of her approach, chortling to itself, dreaming of worms and insects, of things that squirmed and were good to eat. She puffed it into white smoke and gray ashes, zipped through the spot where it had been, moving down and down…
        “Damn him!” she shouted to the thunder.
        Her robes fluttered winglike.
        “Damn him!” she roared again. And she did not mean the gull.
        The storm echoed it back, madly clashing its cymbals, insanely thumping its drums.
        “Damn him to Hell!”
        Echoes in other moments of the storm.
        She could have damned him, too-literally. She could have sentenced him to a living Hell or death or a dozen different things in between. If he had been normal, like all Commoners, she could have lifted him up bodily with the twitch of a single finger, twirled him about without ever really touching him, and sent him plunging straight through the crust of the earth and into the bowels of eternal damnation-or at least into permanent juncture with solid rock. But he was not a Commoner. And in that lay the crux of the problem. All the twiddling of all her fingers could not stop him from doing what he had done to her, from taking her and using her as he wished. As she flew now, rain in her face, the fire in her loins told her it had not been entirely rape, not completely one-sided. After all, he was a handsome man… But no. No! Her magics had failed on him, and he had taken her. She must consider it rape. She must continue to roil hate through her mind, continue to build her animosity into formidable structures. He had used her!
        And no one used Cheryn in any way. She was master of her mind and of her body. There was no one above her, no one to tell her what to do, how to do it, or when it should be done. She used others; others did not use her. It had always been like that! No one used Cheryn the Crimson Witch and got away with it.
        Suddenly, she was below the clouds, flashing toward the earth. Rocks, trees, huts, and rivers flashed by below, colorless and nearly featureless in the storm gloom that sapped it of life and made all the world cower beneath its black splendor. Ahead lay the mountain with the red eye that stared blankly at the night, its pupil flickering now and again. She struck for it. Slowly angling in toward the shelf of earth and stone that protruded beneath the eye, she landed gently upon the soles of her tan, bare feet and rushed forward into her den.
        The Death Screen hummed as she passed through it, recognized her, and closed its invisible mouth instead of biting. There had been a time, when she had first created the Death Screen, when the stones at the foot of the cliff had been littered with the flesh and bones of those who thought they might dare her invisible barrier to seek her lair and her soft and pliant form. Now, examples having been set in abundance, the stones were clean below, and her privacy was assured.
        Inside, the polished black stone floor glittered brightly with the reflected tongues of the hearth fire. She could have devised regular lighting, for that was not a Lost Art, but there was something special about a fire, something that appealed to her more than the cold blue bulbs of quasi-fire. Now, even the hearth fire was unnecessary, for her eyes were aflame brightly enough to illuminate the darkest of caverns. Aflame with hatred.