Free The Witch Queen by Jan Siegel

ancient days; humans have bred like locusts, and the earth is overrun. Many have strange customs: they lie in the sun and go brown like peasants, and the women show their bodies to all men instead of a chosen few. I do not lie in the sun; white skin is the acme of beauty, and I am beautiful again. The fire purged me, the river healed me, and I emerged from the waters of Death as Venus reborn, a Venus of the night, star pale and shadow dark. I turn from the sun now, preferring the softer light of the moon, the moon who has always been a friend to witchkind. In the moonlight I am a goddess, and a man came to spy on me, like the ill-fated heroes of legend and folktale, and I plucked the eyes from his head and the spirit from his body, that he might spy on me forever. But when I look in the mirror I see the old Morgus there still, the power-bloated mountain of flesh not eroded but compressed, constricted into a form of slenderness and beauty. The lissome figure is somehow subtly gross, and the loveliness of my face is like a shifting veil over the face beneath. That realization fills me with a joy that is not of this earth, for I know that the dark within is strong in me, and beauty alone is a shallow, insipid thing without the power beneath the skin. And sometimes, in that same reflection, I seem to see the Eternal Tree, winding its twig-tendrils and root-tendrils in my hair, and blending its night with the shadows in my eyes. That is the sweetest of all, for with the Tree, I am immortal, both human and unhuman, and I can challenge even Azmordis for the throne of the world.
    I left the island after the incident with the man. There would be curiosity and questions, and though I could deal with both I did not wish to be troubled. And so I came home at last, to Britain, which was called Logrèz, the land where I was born and where I will one day rule alone. Let Azmordis flee to the barbarian countries across the western sea! This was my place, and it will be mine again, until the stars fall. I hid in the cave in Prydwen where Merlin is said to have slept more than fifteen hundred years ago; but he is not there now. But I have had enough of caves. The entrance was concealed with enchantments older than mine, and in the gloom of that safety I lit the spellfire and sought a house to suit both queen and witch.
    I had conjured a creature to be my servant, part hag, part kobold; I bought her labor for a bag of storms. When seven times seven years are done, and she is free of me, she will open it and raze the village where she was scorned and stoned at some remote time in a forgotten past. She rarely talks, which pleases me; I know these things about her because I have seen the pictures in her mind. But she is sharp of ear and eye, adequate at housework, and skilled in the kitchen, and the loyalty that I have purchased is mine absolutely. Her meaningless vengeance binds her to me more surely than any spell. And I have Nehemet, Nehemet the goblin cat, who was not conjured but came to me, there on the island, as if she had been waiting. Who she is, or what she is, I do not know. Her name came with her, spoken clearly into my thought, though she has never spoken again. Goblin cats are rare; according to one legend they were the pets of the king of the Underworld, losing their fur because they did not need it in the heat from the pits of Hel. But Nehemet is no mere animal: there is an old intelligence in her gaze, and her poise is that of a feline deity who steps haughtily from a new-opened tomb. She is my familiar, in every way. Somewhen in the passing centuries we have met before.
    I am glad they are both female. I prefer to surround myself with females, whatever their kind. Men are to be manipulated or enslaved; they are necessary for procreation, but that is all. I loved a man once, if love is the word: that desire that can never be sated, that madness where even suffering is dear to the heart. I lay with him and he took me to the place