Artemis Hexley and the Return to the Riddles
Chapter 18: Prophecy Girl
A/N: Apologies for the cliffhanger of chapter 17. Let’s crack on, shall we? Warnings: threat and intrigue.
The Acromantula’s cold laugh echoed through the clearing, and Artemis felt her blood turn to ice in her veins. As the undergrowth rustled and the shadow of the spider emerged from the trees, she pushed against the overturned tree behind her, trying to force herself out of the web that bound her and pinned her to it. Beside her, Charlie and Barnaby were trying to do the same, while Talbott appeared to have frozen on the spot, and Chiara was helplessly trying to whisper words of reassurance to a crying Liz.
“I told you I would find you,” said the spider, clicking its pincers at them as it crawled into the clearing, advancing on them achingly slowly. “All of you. Now, which of you to eat first? I think maybe… ARGH!”
The spider screamed in pain as something flew threw the air and embedded itself in its back. Artemis frowned. What was it? A second item flew at the spider, and a third, and another, two more, and… Her eyes widened as she realised what they were.
Arrows.
A storm of arrows were raining down on the Acromantula thick and fast from all directions, and from all around the clearing there came an increasingly loud roll of thunder. Except it wasn’t thunder, it was the sound of hundreds of feet - no, hooves - pounding on the ground, which had started to shake beneath Artemis’ feet.
From out of the trees, over two dozen centaurs cantered into the clearing, spears and knives and bows and arrows all raised and aiming for the Acromantula. They charged at the spider with weapons in their arms, bucking and rearing and kicking with their legs.
The spider was attempting to fight back, but the centaurs were too numerous, too powerful, too vicious. Eventually, it fell to the ground, and was trampled beneath their hooves until it lay completely motionless, with three eyes and two legs missing. Victorious, the centaurs backed away, turning their mistrustful and still flaming eyes upon the group of curse-breakers.
“Firenze, free these humans,” said one of the centaurs, one with dark hair and a chestnut coat, and a second, this one almost white-blond from his head to his palomino tail, used a blade to cut Artemis and her friends out of the spider’s web.
“Thank you,” said Charlie, as his feet hit the ground. He bowed his head low, and did not raise it fully. His whole body bristled with nervous tension. “We can’t say that we deserve your intervention, but we are grateful for it.”
“We saw the red lights, and we decided to investigate,” said the first centaur. “This is fortunate for you. However, our intervention would not have been necessary had you not ventured into the forest.”
“Understood. We are sorry that it was necessary.”
The centaur narrowed his eyes at Charlie and swished his tail. Charlie lowered his gaze and stepped backwards, and the centaur did too. For a moment, it looked as if he meant to let them go, but behind him, a third centaur made a pained noise, and moved his hand away from his withers to reveal a large wound. Artemis heard Charlie swear under his breath, and first centaur stomped his hind foot.
“One of my herd is injured,” he said, his glare becoming fiercer and harder again. “You come here, you trespass, you lure the Acromantula from the cave, and now one of us is injured. This is your folly. This is your fault.” His hands gripped his spear, and his front hoof scraped the ground. “We should have left you to your fate. It would have been better to have left you to your fate.”
“I am sure they meant no harm, Magorian,” said the second centaur, the one who had freed them from the web. “After all, they are foals.”
“They look grown to me.”
“Barely grown, and not all of them. We do not harm foals.”
“One of us has been harmed by their actions, why should they not be harmed by ours?” the first centaur, Magorian, snapped. “If they are still foals, they will not be for long.”
“Wait!” Artemis reached into her pocket and brought out the piece of amber she had used to open the Forest Vault. She walked up to the centaur and held it in the dim light for him to see. “Please, don’t hurt us. I have this, it was given to me by a centaur. He said that it shows that I - my friends and I - should be allowed to pass through this forest unharmed.”
“What centaur gave you this?”
“I did,” a voice called out from the bulk of the herd, and the familiar dark haired head and dun-coloured hindquarters of Torvus emerged from the group.
Magorian stamped one of his hooved feet on the ground. “Why have you given this talisman to this human filly?”
Torvus fixed Artemis with a peculiar look as he answered the other centaur’s question with a question of his own:
“Do you not know who this girl is?”
The first centaur looked from Artemis to the piece of amber in her hand, to the direction in which the Cursed Vault lay. His eyes widened, and a look of realisation paused across his face, softening his features.
“The Fay Child…”
The centaurs led the group of curse-breakers deeper into the forest, to another large clearing, and then onward through the trees to what looked like a settlement or campsite. Several large pieces of fabric and thin rafts made from woven strips of willow hung between trees, with the floor beneath them strewn with furs, leathers, and dried grass. Several small stone fire pits were dotted around the ground between the erected shelters, and there were more centaurs present than Artemis had even dreamed might live in the forest - not just grown males like the ones that had rescued her and her friends from the Acromantula, but females and foals, too.
On arrival to the camp, the male centaurs soon settled, and the guests were welcomed with only mild hostility. Magorian directed to Firenze to care for the injured member of the group, and Chiara quickly offered her services and healing remedies. Magorian looked sceptical, but Firenze bowed his head, and the two set to work.
The others were instructed to sit by one of the fire pits, which was lit by one of the female centaurs, dressed only in jewellery made from carved wooden beads and tiny polished pieces of amber. Talbott, Barnaby, and Charlie all stared fixedly at the ground as she worked, whilst Liz looked as if she were struggling to pluck up the courage to tell three foals to stop playing with her hair. When the female centaur finished lighting the fire, she turned to the foals, and with a single look from her, they scattered.
From beneath one of the fabric canopies, a centaur with dappled grey hindquarters, white braided hair, and an incredibly weathered and lined face walked towards them. Unlike the other male centaurs, he did not hold a weapon, but a carved wooden staff, which he pressed into the ground and leaned on as he slowly lowered his body to the ground with a loud exhalation.
“My name is Eldred,” he told them, in a voice that seemed to whisper like the wind through the leaves. He fixed his emerald green eyes on Artemis, the look in them entirely unreadable. “What is your given name, Fay Child?”
“It’s Artemis.”
“A good name, a huntress’ name.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Artemis frowned. “Why do you call me that? Fay Child. What does it mean?”
“If it is meaning you seek, you need only look to the world around you. There is great wisdom in everything, if only you know how to find it,” said Eldred. Seeming to realise that Artemis had no clue what he was talking about, he raised his gaze and pointed a finger skywards. “Look at the skies. The sky has been here since before any of our earliest ancestors had been dreamed into existence, and shall be here until the last of our descendants is long gone. It sees all, knows all, tells all. The forest tells us things, too. There are words in the wind, letters in the leaves, rhymes in the rivers, stories in the soil. The menfolk have forgotten this, but we remember. We remember.”
Artemis was no less confused than she had been before Eldred had spoken. She turned to look at her friends, and saw that they were just as mystified as she was.
“So, if I want to know what it means, I should look at the stars and stuff?” she asked, and Eldred inclined his head. “Okay, but I don’t know how get the answers from those.”
“That is because you are human.”
“Yeah, but you’re not. Maybe you could show me?”
Eldred’s eyes sparkled, and his lips twitched.
“No,” he said. Artemis opened her mouth to argue, but he shook his head. “You are very nearly grown. Too much a woman to unlearn the ways of your kind quickly, and yet you still have the impatience of the young. I cannot show you.” Artemis sighed, disappointed, but the centaur was not finished speaking. He fixed his eyes on her once more and told her, “But I can tell you.”
“Tell me what, exactly?”
“What I know, what I have been told. About you, Fay Child, about your destiny.”
“My destiny?”
“Indeed. As each creature in the forest takes a different path through the trees, so each of us must take a different path through the world. Yours, in particular, is of interest to the centaurs.”
“Why, though?” Artemis asked. When Eldred did not reply, she pushed further. “Because of the Cursed Vaults? I know I’m going to be the one to open them.”
“For one so inept at reading the natural world, you seem very certain of the future.”
“Well, there was a prophecy, you see…”
“Human prophecies are meaningless. The future is not set in stone, it is as changeable and as open to interpretation as the skies themselves,” Eldred shook his white-haired head. “No. You cannot know your path until you take it.”
“But-”
“The natural world exists in a series of patterns and cycles. What has come before is likely to come to pass again. Therefore, if you wish to know more about what is likely to come in the future, you must first look to the past.” Eldred fixed Artemis with another strange look before asking her, “What do you know about Morgan Le Fay?”
“Um,” Artemis frowned, trying to remember anything she could. “You mean Morgana, right? She was a witch, and she lived around the same time as Merlin, I think. She was a dark witch.”
“What do you mean by this?”
“She was evil, she practised dark magic.”
“Magic is neither dark nor light, it is simply magic,” said Eldred. “As for Morgana, she was neither good nor evil, she was simply human, with all the faults and frailties that humanity brings. I am not saying that we centaurs are without our faults, of course, but we do see things as they are, not through men’s narrow view of morality.”
“Right,” Artemis nodded, though she was still confused. “Why are you telling me this?”
“So that you may understand. Morgan Le Fay wished to understand. That is why she came here, to learn from the centaurs, many years ago, when she was still but a foal herself. We centaurs were perhaps less suspicious of the menfolk today in those days, and so we endeavoured to teach her. And, unlike many of your kind, she was able to learn.
“At some point in her teaching, she learned of a great darkness that would one day envelope the world of men. We centaurs have always known of these currents by which wizardkind are so strongly pulled, and we do not interfere in such matters. What will come, will come. What will be, will be.” The centaur paused and shuffled on his front legs before settling and continuing, “Morgan Le Fay did not wish to let such a thing pass. Eventually, she left the herd to seek a way of protecting her kind from the threat this darkness posed, and she did not return for many years, now a woman herself. By then, she said she had found it.”
“Found what?”
“What she had sought to find. Something that may prove to be a salvation, of sorts. Exactly what it was, I do not know. I suspect that the details of what it was have long faded from memory. However, I do know that she asked for the centaurs’ blessing, as she required the protection of the forest to help her in her quest. For whatever reason - old loyalty, or mutual respect, perhaps - the centaurs gave her that blessing, and in thanks, she gave us a jewelled arrow, which she imbued with enchantments that would protect the herd from-”
“From the Cursed Vault,” Artemis said, and Eldred inclined his head. “So, where do I fit into all of this?”
“Morgan Le Fay is long gone, and we centaurs have watched the skies and listened to the secrets of the forest for centuries since,” Eldred told her. “Her discovery has yet to be unearthed, but one day it will be. Nature tells us of a child who will walk the path Morgan Le Fay began to tread, and find the salvation your kind so greatly needs. That is why I call you Fay Child. As for what it means, you will find out in time. All things have their time.” The old centaur looked to the skies once more and smiled serenely. “For now, Fay Child, it is time for you to return to the world of men. You do not belong in the Forest.”
He picked up his staff and pressed it into the ground again, leaning on it fully and pushing down as he rose up onto his four legs with considerable effort.
“Thank you,” said Artemis, also rising to her feet. Eldred bowed his head and looked at her again with his forest-coloured eyes.
“Go well.”
The castle grounds were pitch black when the Curse-Breakers returned from the Forbidden Forest, having been escorted most of the way back through the trees by Torvus and Firenze. They made their way back to the castle itself in near silence, broken only to bid each other good night and to promise that they would never tell Bill how close they got to being eaten by an Acromantula in his absence.
As Chiara and Artemis reached the Hufflepuff common, they began to speak once more, keeping their voices low so as not to wake the rest of their House.
“They have such a fascinating way of life, don’t they?” Chiara whispered. “I’ve never seen anyone using healing herbs the way they did, and their philosophy... They’re remarkable beings.”
“Beasts,” Artemis corrected her. Chiara gave a little shiver, as if she were cold. “Sorry. I didn’t mean… It’s just that they prefer to be called beasts.”
“They do? Why would anyone want to be called a beast?”
“Because ‘being’ means like a human.”
“I suppose that makes sense. Humans can be just as beastly as animals. More, sometimes,” said Chiara, with a small and sad smile. “And if someone says that they are something, they’re probably right. People tend to know themselves better than anyone else knows them, after all. Why would centaurs be any different?” Artemis shrugged in response, and Chiara gave her a curious look. “What were you talking about with the herd elder?”
“He was saying how our destiny is written in the world around us,” Artemis replied, and Chiara nodded as if she agreed.
“So, did he know about the prophecy?”
“Sort of, I dunno. He said that human prophecies are nonsense, but then he said that I had a destiny to do with opening the Cursed Vaults, because of patterns in stars and leaves, and because Morgan Le Fay already started to walk my path.”
Chiara’s eyebrows shot up. “Morgan Le Fay, as in the Morgan Le Fay?”
“Sounded like it, yeah. Why?”
“Well, she was centuries old.”
“So are the Vaults. Apparently she spent time learning the ways of the centaurs and foresaw the darkness the Vaults would bring.”
“Wait,” Chiara’s pale blue eyes widened, “Morgan le Fay foresaw the Vaults?”
“Yeah,” Artemis frowned at the look on Chiara’s face. “What? What’s the matter?”
“Artemis, I don’t think that’s all Morgan le Fay foresaw. That prophecy, the one you took from the Department of Mysteries… Do you remember what it said on the label?”
“It said ‘Hexley’ and ‘Cursed Vaults’.”
“It said ‘date unknown’ and ‘M.L.F.’,” Chiara told her. “Morgan Le Fay. She might have made that prophecy.”
“She might have. Would a prophecy even keep that long in one of those crystal balls?”
“Oh, yes. Memories can keep for years if stored correctly, centuries even.”
“Eldred the centaur said that she foresaw a way to be saved from the darkness,” said Artemis. “The way to actually break the curses for good, maybe?”
“Maybe. It’s definitely something to look into,” Chiara nodded. “The Oracler you know from the Department of Mysteries might know if there are any other prophecies made by Morgan Le Fay.”
“Olivia Green?”
“Why don’t you write to her and ask?”
“Because I stole a prophecy from her place of work and risked her losing her job.”
“Ah.”
“Besides,” said Artemis, “it’s not an Oracler we need to look into Morgan Le Fay. It’s a historian.”
Artemis found Corey in the library the following morning. She sat down on the desk beside him and dropped a Chocolate Frog onto the book he was reading.
“What’s that for?” he asked, picking up the sweet and hiding it in his bag.
“I thought you might like Chocolate Frogs,” Artemis shrugged. “Because pretty much everyone likes chocolate, and you strike me as the sort of person who might like collecting the historical witch and wizard cards.”
Corey’s face split into a grin. “I do like both of those things, actually. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. How’s the research going?”
“Pretty well, actually. Thankfully, Rowan managed to translate most of your brother’s notes, because the codes he uses are way beyond my ability. I’ve given the rest to Bill Weasley to decode.”
“Good idea.”
“Meanwhile, I’ve been looking into the origins of this Cabal.”
“The origins?”
“They say that if you want to know the future, you should examine the past, so that’s what I’m doing.”
Just the day before, Artemis would have thought that this was a ridiculous idea, but after her encounter with the centaur the night before, she almost understood Corey’s logic.
“Okay,” she said, frowning. “So, where do they originate from?”
“Right here, actually,” said Corey. “At Hogwarts. They were founded in the first half of the nineteenth century by a witch named Claudine Fortinbras.”
“Fortinbras.” The name sounded familiar to Artemis. “Why do I know that name?”
“She wrote some books. Rowan read them as part of her research. She was interested in maps.”
“Maps! Yes, of course,” Artemis nodded emphatically as she remembered Rowan’s thirteen-year-old face looking up at her from a large, dusty tome. She lowered her voice as Madam Pince threw her a dirty look. “She was a Professor at the school, wasn’t she, this Fortinbras?”
“Charmsmistress, yes. A remarkable witch, really,” Corey told her, his eyes lighting up. “She published papers in multiple fields of magic, including Arithmancy and Alchemy, and in two different languages, as well.”
“What languages?”
“English and French. She was French, she went back to France after an incident involving her search for the Cursed Vaults. The Potionsmaster died, and two students were injured.”
“She had students helping her look for the Cursed Vaults?” Artemis said, her eyes widening. Corey nodded again.
“Yeah. She and the Potionsmaster were the only adults, the rest of the group were talented students. They called themselves the Ronde, which in French means…”
“Circle, I know. So, they were the original Cabal?”
“Yes, actually. The Fortinbras family is an old Pureblood French family, and she believed that if you traced their lineage back far enough, you’d get back to the person who first created the Vaults,” Corey flicked through a pile of notes, as if looking for the exact details. “I haven’t been able to go back that far yet, parts of the family tree are missing from the book I found, but anyway… Apparently there was some French prophecy about the person to open the Vaults. It mentioned this Ronde, as well as a sacrifice and an inheritance. She thought it was about her, that she was the one who would ‘inherit’ the power inside the Vaults.”
“She was wrong,” said Artemis. “That prophecy is about me. I stole it from the Department of Mysteries, but it smashed before we could fully translate it. But, we’ve been looking into it, and it looks like the prophecy was made by Morgan Le Fay.”
“As in the Dark Witch Morgana?”
“Yeah, her. What do you know about her?”
“About as much as anyone. She was the sister of King Arthur, who was a Muggle, but she was a witch, and a dark witch at that.”
“Well, according to the centaurs - and the prophecy, too, I guess - she found out about the Vaults somehow and she found way to destroy them for good,” Artemis told Corey. He tilted his head to one side.
“So, would you like me to look into her some more for you?”
“I’d love it if you could.”
“I definitely could. I have a whole book about her, after all. Rowan left it for me before she…” Corey’s voice tailed off and he cleared his throat. “I hadn’t read it yet, because… Well, you know.”
Artemis swallowed. “Yeah, I know.”
“Well, now it looks like I’ve got no excuse not to,” he laughed hard, almost too hard. “All this talk of prophecies, and Rowan managed to pick out the one book we’d need over a whole year later. Funny, isn’t it?”
But though Artemis smiled in response, she didn’t think it was funny at all. After all, Rowan always had been the one to know exactly what she needed.
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