Blood Witch_ Book Three - Cate Tiernan [40]
There was something about the way he said seekers that gave me a chill. “And what do they do, exactly?” I pressed.
“ ‘Seekers are council members who have been selected to find witches who have strayed beyond our bounds,’ ” he continued. “ ‘If they discover witches who are actively working against the council, working to harm themselves or others, then they have been given license to take action against them. It is better that we police our own, from within, before the rest of the world chooses once again to police us from without.’ ” David closed the book and looked at me again. “Those are the words of Birgit Fallon O’Roark. She was high priestess of the High Council from the 1820s to the 1860s.”
My tea was starting to get cold. I finished it all in a big gulp and placed the mug on the counter. “What do the Seekers do if they find the witches working against the council?” I asked.
“Usually they put binding spells on them,” said David, looking troubled. His voice sounded strained, as if the words themselves were painful to say. “So they can’t use their magick anymore. There are things you can do, certain herbs or minerals that you can make them ingest . . . and they can no longer get in touch with their inner magick.”
A cold wind seemed to pass over me. My stomach twisted. “Is that bad?” I asked.
“It’s very bad,” said David emphatically. “To be magickal and not be able to use your magick—it’s like suffocating. Like being buried alive. It’s enough to make someone lose their mind.”
I thought of Maeve and Angus, living in America for years, renouncing their powers. How had they borne it? What had it done to them? I thought about my suffocating dream—how intolerable it had been. Was that what their everyday life had been like for them without Wicca?
“But if you’re abusing your power, a Seeker will come for you sooner or later,” said David, shaking his head, almost as if to himself. His face seemed older, lined with memories I didn’t think I wanted to know about.
“Hmmm.” Outside it was dark. I wondered who Cal was meeting and if he would call me later. I wondered if Hunter was really from the council. He seemed more like one of the bad witches the council would send a Seeker to track down.
I wondered if Maeve and the rest of Belwicket had been successful in renouncing the dark side. Would the dark side allow itself to be renounced?
“Is there a dark side?” I said the words tentatively, and felt David draw back.
“Oh, yes,” he said softly. “Yes, there’s a dark side.”
I swallowed, thinking of Cal. “Someone told me there was no dark side—that all of Wicca was a circle and everything was connected to each other, all part of the same thing. That would mean there aren’t two different sides, like light and dark.”
“That’s true, too.” David sounded thoughtful. “We say bright and dark when talking about magick used for good and magick used for bad, or evil—to give it a common name.”
“So they’re two different things?” I pressed.
Slowly David ran his finger around the circular rim of his cup. “Yes. They are different but not opposite. Often they’re right next to each other, very similar. It has to do with philosophy and how people interpret actions. It has to do with the spirit of the magick, with will and intent.” He glanced up at me and smiled. “It’s very complicated. That’s why we have to study our whole lifetimes.”
“But can you say that someone is on the dark side and that they’re evil and you should stay away from them?”
Again David looked troubled. “You could. But it wouldn’t be the whole picture. Are there witches who use magick for the wrong purposes? Yes. Are there witches who deliberately hurt others for their own gain? Yes. Should some witches be stopped? Yes. But it usually isn’t that simple.”
It seemed that nothing