Heart's Magic

by Gail Dayton

  HEART'S MAGIC

  by Gail Dayton

  As if Eleanor Tavis doesn’t have enough to deal with already, given her upcoming challenge against the magister of the English wizard’s guild, now she’s developed this disconcerting attraction toward the man she’s apprenticed herself to in her ongoing quest to become a full-fledged wizard.

  Harry Tomlinson is not only an alchemist, working an utterly different sort of magic, but he’s the magister of the alchemist’s guild and about as unsuitable a person for a wizard’s overseer as it is possible to find. But he was the only one willing to take her on as apprentice.

  Then she wins her challenge and her problems only multiply. The rest of England’s wizardry seem determined to challenge her one by one. She somehow becomes the new wizard’s magister and is forced to deal with politics. And even more frightening–Harry has asked her to marry him!

  ***

  Dedication

  For my fans. Thanks for hanging in there.

  Copyright 2015

  by Gail Shelton

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

  ***

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

  ***

  Smashwords Edition, License Note

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Copy

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Also by Gail Dayton

  Heart of Stone (Excerpt)

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Tell me again why we have come to the dead zone this time?" Elinor Tavis stood well away from the zone's boundary, where the moss on the brick tipped over the border from struggling to dead and the bricks themselves began to lose their grip on the wall they'd been built into.

  "One more time, but this is th' last, a'right?" Harry Tomlinson, master of magic to Elinor's apprentice status, let the Cockney in his voice fall where it liked. When he was back in London's East End where he'd grown up, it seemed to fall more often than usual, but when he tried to control his accent, it only brought more attention to how he sounded, so mostly he didn't try. "We got word from Paris they've been 'avin' trouble with the warding we build round the dead zone there."

  "What sort of trouble?" Elinor moved a pace or two closer and Harry turned around to glare at her.

  Didn't help. She closed the gap between them, gliding to stand at his elbow, a scant half step behind him. Only that half step farther from the dangers of the dead zone. Elinor was not the most obedient of apprentices.

  Being that she was an apprentice wizard and he was a master alchemist, he mostly stayed out of her way and let her study what she liked. Sometimes he...dealt with the male wizards wanting to interfere with her studies. It was a magic-master's duty to protect his apprentice, after all. So he was relieved she at least gave him the half step.

  "What sort of trouble?" Elinor asked again. She was like that, keeping on till you told her what she wanted to know.

  "Not sure, exactly. They don't know. In Paris." Harry glared into the dead zone again. Not that he could see much on this cold, wet, gloomy January morning. It wasn't raining, or even misting exactly, but the air was...thick. Made it hard to see. "It's makin' odd noises, the warding wall in Paris. Screams, like, or squealing sounds. An' they don't know why."

  "Does the wall look any different? The one in Paris?"

  "Dunno. They didn't say it did. Didn't say it didn't, neither." Harry propped his hands on his hips. "They 'aven't sent the report yet, only word by conjurer that there's trouble."

  He scowled at the ruined territory beyond the faint iridescence of the magical boundary wall protecting London from the dead zone and keeping it from growing larger. They needed to stop the other zones from growing too--the one across the river in Bermondsey and all the others scattered over England and Europe. There were even a few appearing in America, he'd heard.

  "I hate dead zones," he growled, carefully pronouncing the "h" in "hate."

  "Why?" Elinor asked.

  Why? That was a stupid question. "'Cause they're dead. They look dead, all crumblin' and falling down. They smell dead--"

  "How can you tell?" Elinor made a face. She'd finally quit complaining about the East End smells, but only because he ignored every complaint.

  "Yeah, it stinks here. It smells like rotten veg an' animal muck an' the Thames at low tide, but that's just 'ow life smells sometimes. Death stinks too. In there, that's beyond death. Nothin's left. Even the magic's dead, an' magic gives life its flavor, don't it?

  "An' if the magic keeps dyin' an' the dead zones growin', it'll suck all the magic an' all the life out of everybody an' everything until there's nothin' left but monsters. And it'll kill me first, which means I won't be able to stop it."

  He paused, a little shocked by his tirade. He knew what he thought about the dead zones. He just never thought he'd say it aloud. "Any road, that's why I 'ate the dead zones. 'Cause they hated me first." He looked at Elinor. "You asked."

  "Oh." Elinor nodded, like he'd said something profound. She thought a moment. Elinor was always doing that, thinking. Likely that was why she was such a bang-up wizard. The only reason she hadn't already taken and passed the master's test was that she was female. The other wizards--all of them male--didn't like that about her.

  There hadn't been female magicians in more than 200 years. Not since the witch burnings back in the 1600s, when the Magician's Council decided it wasn't safe for women to work magic. Since then, the male magicians--especially the few men who could master what had been the primarily feminine art of wizardry--had become comfortable in their boys' club. They didn't want to let the girls back in to play.

  They hadn't really wanted to let Harry in either, given his background, but with his talent for magic they'd had to. They would let the women in for the same reason.

  Harry intended to make sure of it. He wasn't so stupid as to ignore the talents of a master-level magician just because she had tits instead of a cock.

  Besides, women's magic was necessary to destroy the dead zones. They hadn't quite figured out how yet, but Harry knew in his gut it was so. Sorcery, the school of magic that was as female as alchemy was male, had been completely lost since the last sorceress was burned. The next sorceress, Yvaine's successor, was discovered just last summer, and only with
the four great magics working together had they been able to wall up the dead zones. First the one in Paris and then this past November, this one in London's East End.

  "I said--" Elinor poked him in the side, hard. "What do you hope to find, then, by standing here staring at the warding wall? Since you don't know if it should look different." She huffed out a breath and Harry edged over a step, not sure if she intended to poke him again.

  "It's not as if I don't have a dozen--a hundred other things I need to be doing," she said. "I have a magister's challenge coming up in just over a week, if you'll recall. I don't even know what we're going to do. Dueling potions? Wands at 20 paces?"

  "That's right--wizards use wands too, don't you?"

  Elinor rubbed her arms briskly, shivering. "Harry, I'm cold. Can we discuss it in the carriage? Have you seen everything you wanted to see?"

  "No. But I reckon I've seen everything there is to see." He was disappointed, not finding anything not expected, but keeping Elinor from freezing was more important. "Come on, then."

  He took her arm, wishing he could tuck her under it, share some of his warmth and a few of the capes on his many-layered greatcoat, but she wouldn't allow it. She was his apprentice. He was her magic-master. Their connection had to be strictly professional, completely above reproach. She wouldn't risk anything that might knock her back from the few steps forward she'd taken toward her goal, becoming a master magician, the first among many female wizards yet to come.

  Harry had to respect that. Both the talent and the determination. And he did.

  He respected her. He admired her. Trouble was, he also wanted her. Wanted to strip the layers of clothing from that softly rounded shape and sink right into her softness. How stupid was that then, to walk through half the day with a cockstand from wanting a woman who didn't want you back? A woman you knew--knew for certain sure--wanted only magic and accepted it from you only because she couldn't get it anywhere else?

  Then again, nobody ever accused Harry Tomlinson of being a brain. Powerful, yes. Practical and able to make things work one way or the other, but not the most brilliant chap around.

  They were almost to the carriage--horses hated dead zones even more than Harry did--when the beasts started misbehaving, stamping and neighing and trying to rear.

  "What the devil?" Harry set Elinor aside where she'd be safe from the slashing hooves and hurried to help his coachman settle the animals.

  He caught the bridle of the near lead animal while Sharkey caught hold of the off lead. They were good horses, not too high-strung, and they settled quickly with someone at their heads. The one Harry held snuffled at his coat as if for reassurance and he stroked its nose. He'd always liked horses, even before he could afford to own them.

  Elinor's scream sliced through his brain and shot him into action. He was across the alley in a flying leap, thrusting hands into pockets for his weapons as he raced to her side.

  "What is it? What's wrong?" He pushed his thumb into one of the hard pellets as he drew it out, cracking the clay, making ready.

  "There!" Elinor pointed at the ground, fumbling through the slits in her skirts for her dangling pockets as she danced about, rather like the horses had been, though Harry would never say so.

  "Rat? Just kick it. It'll run off." Harry slowed his pace, but only slightly. If a rat or mouse got up into those hoops and petticoats, they'd never get it out. "Shake your skirts. It won't like the shakin'."

  "It's not a rat, you idiot!" She drew out a vial of something--wizard magic--and swept her skirts to one side, the hoops belling up on the other. "Look!"

  It was a machine. Small, perhaps the size of a rat terrier, made of the bits and pieces left behind in the dead zones when the people fled, like the other machine-creatures that had begun appearing in the zones some six months ago. They hadn't been made by human hands. Harry and his fellow researchers were fairly certain about that, especially since magic was as deadly to the machine things as the dead zones were to living things. But this machine was outside the dead zone. And it wasn't dead.

  It scuttled from side to side on a multitude of tiny legs made from three-penny nails, trying to escape Elinor's stamping feet and swinging skirts. It humped its way over the cobbles back toward the dead zone, clashing its dinner-plate jaws full of jagged metal teeth as it went. Why wasn't it dead? Where had it come from? And what had it been doing?

  Harry threw his pellet at the thing, invoking the spell with a growled, "Ignis," an instant after it left his hand. Fire burst from the pellet in a brilliant glare that had Harry shading his eyes with an arm. It crashed into the monster's carapace, where it burned, a spot of incandescence on the dark, dull surface, seeming to have no affect at all.

  Elinor uncapped her vial.

  Harry took it from her. "You'll lose the machine under your skirts." He excused his action. "Do I pour it on?"

  "Pour or splash, either one. Do it! It's getting away--" Her voice rose in a wail as she pointed.

  Harry ran after it. Good thing its short little legs didn't cover ground too terrible fast. He threw the contents of the vial in the machine's direction. Most of the potion splattered on its dull shell, some splashing on the cobbles. The potion on the stone hissed and foamed. That on the machine discolored the shell, turning it dark brown around the still-burning spot of fire. Nothing more.

  "Why isn't it reacting?" Elinor asked, from right beside him. "That potion should eat through anything. We have to catch it, find out why."

  "Stay back." Harry pushed her behind him. "Remember your skirts."

  "Stupid hoops," she snarled, but she stayed where she was.

  He pivoted, armed another pellet, and threw it with deadly accuracy to burst over the still-charging machine. It should have been deadly. Refiner's fire burned until it was quenched. Didn't seem to be bothering this beast a bit.

  Except that it turned. Instead of scuttling toward the dead zone, it came marching toward them, metal teeth clashing alarmingly. It seemed to move a great deal faster when advancing rather than running away. The fire flared up, catching the now-dried potion alight. The creature kept coming.

  Elinor moved up beside him again, her skirts belling out nearly a yard in front of them. Harry caught her arm and spun her back. "Maybe you don't care about your skirts," he growled. "But if you're hurt, who'll heal me?"

  "Of all the selfish--"

  Harry had already turned away. He cracked a third fireball, but kept it in his hand. No use throwing it, if it didn't work. Maybe the thing was like a hedgehog. Not so tough underneath.

  He rushed it, ignoring Elinor's cry. Alarm or annoyance, didn't matter. A puff of smoke or dust--something--exploded from the creature just before he reached it and flipped it over with a toe, exposing its bristly underbelly. The nail-legs covered almost the entire surface, attached to an odd gearing system.

  Harry slammed the pellet into the midst of the gears, shouting the spell as he threw it. The fire exploded with the force of his will, knocking him back on his arse and cracking the creature's hull.

  The spell should have blown it to bits, but it only knocked the merest crack in the thing's outer armoring.

  Harry scooted back, in case it sprouted legs from its top and started on again. The blast left him a bit dizzy. And there was a sting in his middle. He put a hand over the pain and muttered "Extinguo," to put out any stray fire.

  It still hurt. Maybe it wasn't fire.

  "Where are you hurt?" Elinor was there, bending over him.

  "Get back." He pushed at her, feebly. What happened to his strength? "I only cracked it."

  "Cracked--your head?" Elinor began running her fingers through his hair, probing his skull.

  "No, damn it, the machine. Bloody 'ell, woman, don't you 'ave sense to stay out of a battle zone?" He pushed her again, stronger this time.

  "It's dead." She pointed, moving to the side so he could see past her skirts. "A crack was apparently enough. Where are you hurt?"

  Harry ignored her
fussing to heave himself to his feet and stagger over to the machine. It rustled its legs menacingly at him. But she was right. It wasn't dead yet, but it was dying.

  He swayed as he poked it with his toe. The flames burning its underside licked out to touch his boot. He'd fireproofed them when he bought them, so no worry there. The thing clashed its jaws at him once, twice, then went still. Harry poked it again, staggering this time when he lost balance. The machine didn't stir and he caught himself with a hand on the nearest wall. Dead enough to quench the battle fires. Harry gestured as he spoke to do so.

  "See? It's dead." Elinor inserted herself under the arm holding up the wall and pulled it down across her shoulders, like she thought he couldn't stand on his own. "Come along, now. Let's see how badly you're hurt."

  "I want it." Harry looked back at the machine while Elinor bore him off to the carriage, his head feeling not at all the thing. All fuzzy-like. "I want the lads in the lab to look at it. Why didn't the fire 'urt it? Or your potion? Why didn't the magic kill it? And how did it get out o' the dead zone? Wot was it doin'? An' how many others got out while we wasn't lookin'?"

  "We will find answers to all those questions," Elinor said. "But first, I am going to discover where you are injured and treat that injury. Your coachman will fetch the machine for you. You will not handle it yourself."

  "Fine," he grumbled. And a bloody pain in the arse it was, to be not just alchemist, but magister of the alchemist's guild and thus the most susceptible to the deadly no-magic of anyone in all of England. He couldn't even carry a damned machine in a bloody basket without feeling breathless.

  "Here we are," Elinor said. "Up you go."

  Sharkey, his coachman, was opening the door, his wizened face expressionless as always, except for a twitch in one eye. That twitch--Harry began to worry. Maybe he was hurt more than he thought.

  It took both Elinor and Sharkey to shove Harry into the carriage. Elinor climbed in after.