The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil

by Heidi Cullinan

  Madeline frowned at him; he didn’t make any sense, but that wasn’t why she frowned. It was just…he was so like Charles.

  “You can’t be Charles,” she said, though with less conviction.

  He nodded. “Yes, yes, we’ve already agreed to that. Honestly, Maddie, don’t dawdle. Go on. Ask me what you need to know.” He waved his hand in an encouraging motion. “Come, come. Start asking me things.”

  Madeline opened her mouth and closed it several times, so stunned she didn’t know quite what to do. “W-what is wrong with the Void?”

  The White Charles grinned and clapped his hands. “Well done! Right to the point. The Void, my dear, is wrong. It was shifted out of joint long ago, and it will remain this way for some time to come, because the reality that supports it is in a state of chaos.”

  “But how?” Madeline asked. “And what do you mean, long ago? I’ve been coming to the Void for ten years. It’s been fine up until now.”

  “No, it hasn’t,” Charles said. “You were looking at the illusion of the Void that witches before you created. For the answers you sought tonight, you needed the real thing. And that is how you have found me.”

  This conversation made less sense the more time Madeline spent inside it. “If this is true, if the Void we know is an illusion, why can’t the guides sense it?”

  “Because to them, nothing is wrong. It is, in fact, the same to them as it always has been—which is to say, it is as messed up as this. The witches nowadays do not go very far. They look at surface patterns and only seek those they wish to see. You wanted truth, and this is the place of truth. This is the deeper place. The true place, which reveals what many people in the world often suspect: it’s complete chaos, and no one is driving the coach. It has, in fact, been this way for a long, long time.”

  Madeline looked around at the chaos, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. Why can I see it, but they cannot?”

  The White Charles’s eyes twinkled—because this was the Void, the twinkle was literal. “Oh come now, Maddie. You’ve always known you were special.”

  Madeline blushed and put her hands on her hips. “You mock me?”

  “Nonsense!” The White Charles sat up, looking almost hurt. “You are special! You told me how they didn’t promote you, how they made you wait, and how they are making you wait even now. Testing you, they say, when you both know full well you’re the most naturally powerful witch they have ever seen.”

  Madeline drew back, suddenly uncertain. “How do you know all this? What do you mean, I told you?”

  “Bugger,” he swore, then rubbed his cheek as he stood. “Look. Forget that, then. You can see it because you are very powerful. Why didn’t you before? Because you let them tell you what to think. You accepted their boundaries of the world. But tonight you sought answers their boundaries did not contain, and without even meaning to, you stepped over them and into this place: the true place.”

  “And you just happened to be here?” Madeline said, still wary.

  “Oh, stop being so fussy,” he snapped, waving his hand in dismissal. “You want an excuse? Fine. Obviously this is just some sort of dream or projection; you saw me just a bit ago and so you imagined me and used me—or an idea of me—as a way to talk to yourself in the Void.”

  “Or you are a very clever demon,” Madeline shot back. “Or worse.”

  The White Charles sighed. “Maddie, it’s just me.”

  “You reek of power,” Madeline said, almost whispering. “Like nothing that should be. Like—I don’t know what. But I know you shouldn’t be.”

  His grin was sheepish and charming, and pure, pure Charles. “Every bit of it I know how to use, I learned from you. Now stop this dithering, Madeline. What does it matter? If I’m that powerful, I’m just going to eat you or do whatever demons do. If I’m just a projection, why are you wasting time when you could be asking about him?”

  Jonathan. “In a moment,” she said quietly. “First, if you can truly give me answers, why is the real Charles here, in the parish? How did he fall in with an alchemist?”

  The White Charles snorted derisively. “What do you think? I’m here because of flagrant stupidity, with a side order of desperation.” He sobered. “Watch the alchemist, Maddie. He’s not much for you, but he’ll cause trouble elsewhere. Don’t let your pride make you overconfident with that one.”

  Madeline’s spirit body bristled with indignation. “An alchemist doesn’t matter.”

  “No. But he’s not just an alchemist any longer, now that he’s played with my magic.”

  Madeline had not thought of that. “Was—Did he summon the water demon?”

  The White Charles looked suddenly very sad. “No. That one…that one is complicated.” He frowned over her shoulder, then shook his head. “We’re out of time. Forget the water demon. It’s dangerous, but it’s not what you need to know now. You need to ask me about Jonathan, Madeline.”

  She started to protest, but before she could stammer out a refusal, she felt a hard tug against her spirit body.

  The White Charles swore again. “No time. They’ve found you out; I’ll just have to show you.” He held out his hands. “Come. No more fussing, Maddie.”

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Madeline whispered, but she reached out tentatively for him.

  The guide tugged again, but Charles caught her hands and held her fast.

  “You’ll forget most of it anyway,” he assured her. “But you must not, Madeline, forget this.”

  The White Charles burned whiter and whiter, and then suddenly Madeline was looking at a large glass ball dancing with magic. A beast was trying to claw its way to the man inside, but the glass ball kept it out. It was Jonathan inside the ball, she knew. She knew by the feel of him, even from here. She called his name, and she reached out for him.

  Inside the ball, Jonathan lifted his head, and Madeline looked into his eyes. And she screamed.

  The vision vanished, and the White Charles was there again, but Madeline was still shouting, bellowing. It was a strange sound in the Void, like keening that echoed in a thousand metal tubes. But she could not stop.

  Jonathan!

  Charles took her face in his hands. “Go to him, Madeline. You must be careful, but you are the only one who can save him just now. The only one. You must go to him, Madeline.”

  “Jonathan,” she whispered, sobbing now. “Jonathan!”

  “Go,” the White Charles said. “I will be with you.”

  He kissed her hard on the mouth; there was another white light, this one so hot it seared her. Then she went back through the Void into the false Void, then back down all the way until she landed in her body.

  She was still crying as she stumbled out of the chair and back against the wall, her arm slashing reflexively across the runes. She heard a heavy clunk as the wooden cup clattered to the floor, but it did not break, only rolled underneath the table, spun for a moment, and was still.

  Madeline pressed her face to the wall and wrapped her arms around her body.

  The guides were swirling around her now, spinning angrily. “You went too far! You went beyond the Void! Such a space cannot exist, but you were gone! Where did you go?”

  Madeline rose, wiping at her eyes and batting at the guides, like insects in her way. “I have to go to Jonathan. I have to go to him now.”

  “You are not Sealed. It is not safe. You must wait for a full witch to help him.”

  “I can’t,” Madeline said, gathering supplies with shaking hands. “There is no one but me.”

  The guides took form before her, using the dust from the floor to show their shape as Madeline had done with the energy of the true Void. “This is nothing but pride! Witches do not have pride!”

  “He has no time!” Madeline pressed her hand against her stomach as the images rolled through her mind again. So much of it was like a dream, and she didn’t understand what Charles had been doing there, but she remembered what she had seen in Jonathan with
cold, horrible clarity. “You didn’t see it. You can’t know!”

  “You were seduced by a force within the Void,” the guides said. “Your vanity has led you into a trap.”

  “No.” Madeline grabbed a basket and began throwing the items she’d gathered into it. She felt the cup roll against her foot, and as an afterthought, she threw it in too. “It was real. That part was real. Nothing has ever been more real in my life. I will go to him. You cannot stop me.”

  The guides materialized in front of the door when she tried to go. They had sucked up every bit of grit inside the room, and they looked fiercely human now. They raised arms of dust and pebbled rock above their heads and bore down on her with sandy, sightless sockets in a rough parody of eyes.

  “If you defy us, we will sever you from the Source of magic. We will not go with you.”

  “I don’t care,” Madeline said. But her voice was shaking. How would she save him if they severed her from the Source? If she could not ground, she could not have access to the deep magic. But what choice did she have? She could not abandon Jonathan to what she had seen.

  “It will be your death. Defiance in Apprentices is not tolerated.”

  Madeline knew this, but hearing them say it made her stomach turn itself inside out. She forced her chin to stay level and spoke as bravely as she could. “If it means the end of me, then this is how I will end.”

  The guides’ anger was a palpable force, and its reverberations came across the field of magic they shared in waves that hurt. “For him? You would give your life for him? For the one who betrayed you? This is what you give up your life for? What you give up magic for?”

  “I would never give up magic for anyone,” Madeline said, voice tight with her own anger now. “And you cannot take it from me.” Madeline felt the edge of a precipice unfolding before her, and for a moment, she let herself pretend she could turn away. “The Source must do what it is compelled to do. As must I.”

  She lifted her chin and stepped through her guides. She felt the break, and she allowed herself one terrified gasp. Then she pushed open the door and ran.

  * * *

  In the tower bedroom at the abbey, Timothy Fielding stood at the end of the bed and stared down at Jonathan’s ragged body.

  He looked around the room, at the cobwebs so thick he could not see through them to the other side, at the curtains that looked as if an animal had raked them with its claws, at the stone that had crumbled from the walls into pieces the size of his hand. Then he looked back to the bed, to his friend who was ten times worse than anything in the room.

  Timothy paced in agitation, rubbing the back of his neck between desperate glances at his friend. No help was coming, that much he was ready to admit to himself. There wasn’t even a single servant to bring a bowl of hot water. There was no coal to make water hot, and he didn’t want to think of the sort of sludge he’d seen in the only working well. Charles Perry had sent him to a ruin, and like a fool, Timothy had gone. Worse, Timothy had dismissed the coach before he realized what he’d gotten himself into. There was no way out of here, not with Jonathan in his condition.

  But where else could they go? To another inn? Back to Boone? Was this better after all, simply facing the inevitable end here? Timothy couldn’t bring himself to admit that, even if it was true. He hated letting Jonathan go down without a fight. He hated the idea of letting this backward, superstitious country that used magic instead of medicine carry the day. He hated to give up on the friend who had so many, many times refused to give up on him.

  Timothy stopped pacing and drew up a stool beside the bed. The blankets covering Jonathan were dirty, and they stank. The pillow had been half eaten by mice, and so Timothy had fashioned one out of his own spare clothes. He’d used the last of the bandages and ointments to dress Jonathan’s wounds, but they were already bled through. Not even in the battle that had precipitated their return to Etsey had Jonathan looked this bleak, this wasted.

  He had failed. Timothy had failed Jonathan more completely than he had ever failed anyone in his life.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, reaching out to wrap his hand around Jonathan’s, taking the cold, limp appendage tight within his grip. “I’m sorry, mira. I am so sorry.”

  A soft, warm breeze swept briefly through the room, past Timothy’s cheek. He felt a light touch, as if a hand brushed against his skin.

  “Shir’da, Raturjula D’lor. Ma’litae enja ren p’murtula.”

  Timothy knew the vision woman’s voice now, which might explain why her appearance on the other side of the bed did not startle him or even surprise him, not much. He had hoped she was nothing more than a side effect of the alchemist’s spell, but in his heart he had already known this was not true. She was still veiled, still glowing gold, and still oddly soothing and terrifying at the same time. She seemed more ghostly, though, than she had at the inn.

  “Stop, hold, consider,” she was saying to him now in Catalian, or rather, in that language which was no language and which he heard in his own. “You were brought here for a purpose.”

  Timothy made an angry snort through his nose.

  “I cannot see the purpose.” He pointed to Jonathan but kept his eyes on the ghost woman. “He is sick. He needs help. I thought his half brother was sincere when he sent me here, but this house is not a place of healing. I have been tricked. Is that what I am to consider? My ignorance? My foolish, blind trust in a stranger?”

  The ghost woman gestured to the room around them. “This is where all began. This is where it must end or begin again.”

  “I don’t want him to end,” Timothy whispered. He gestured to Jonathan. “Can you help? You can walk through walls. You bore me up when I would have fallen. You understood the alchemist’s spell or compulsion or whatever it was. Do you have aid for him? Can you help me to help him?”

  The woman turned her face away. “We cannot aid one of the Houses. We are sorry.”

  Timothy couldn’t decide if by “we” she meant Timothy too. He felt as if she did, and it made him angry. “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know this place—not this country, not this strange parish, not this crumbling abbey you say is so important. I don’t know even you or why I have this urge to trust you so easily. I am completely in the dark.”

  She had been looking at him with gentle empathy, but when he said dark, her face clouded. “Light comes slowly,” she said. “But even a little is powerful. One comes now, bearing light like a candle to save one that you love.”

  The ghost woman nodded to the window as she said this; Timothy rose and went to it, looking down into the garden below. There was, in fact, someone approaching, though all he could see was a pale hand holding a lantern high against the heavy darkness of the path.

  The ghost lady drifted closer to him, so near now that he could reach out and touch her. She peered over Timothy’s shoulder at the figure coming down the path. “She comes to save him, but she does not realize the fire inside her heart. She has the power to save him, but she could destroy him too. If she does this, she destroys us all.”

  Timothy turned to stare at her sparkling, transparent face. “All?”

  The ghost woman nodded, still staring down at the black-robed figure on the path. “Him. Herself. You and I, Raturjula.” She looked at Timothy, and he shuddered at the darkness in her eyes. “The beloved, Raturjula. She will destroy the beloved and scatter him so far I fear we will never see him again.”

  The beloved. The image of Charles Perry, of the ghost woman placing her hands on his shoulders flashed through his mind, but the softness he’d felt in the inn yard was now turned to vinegar in his heart. It was that softness that had led him here. And there it was again: she’d said we. Timothy narrowed his eyes at the ghost.

  “I don’t know you or your ‘beloved.’ I don’t care,” he said.

  The ghost drew back, surprised. Then shock turned to anger, and she loomed over Timothy, her luminescent gold turning so dark it was nearly blac
k.

  “You may not dismiss the beloved!”

  She had swelled to twice her size, her head now scraping the ceiling. The dim light of Timothy’s candle was all but swallowed in the strange glow that came from her, filling the room, cutting through shadows and drowning out everything but the shallow, irregular sounds of Jonathan’s breathing. She looked like a nightmare. And yet Timothy found she did not frighten him in the slightest.

  He put his hands on his hips and glared up at her. “I’ll dismiss what I choose, thank you.”

  The ghost startled, then shrank to her previous size. Her color flashed hot and bright before fading to a sedate, azure blue. Her eyes were wide and her mouth open in shock. She stared at him, and then she glanced down at herself in some dismay. She shook her head.

  “Will,” she said, sounding amazed but shaken. “You have will. I had not anticipated this.”

  It was such a strange, stupid thing to say, and Timothy would have laughed, but she seemed serious. It turned his mirth into an uneasy tension. “Is that what you were trying to do, at the inn? Control me? I didn’t realize you were as much a danger as the alchemist.”

  Now she looked hurt. But she was still rattled too. “Not control you. I—”She shook her head. “This is not as I anticipated. I did not think it was possible for you to reject the beloved.”

  Her distress was bothering him, which in turn irritated him further. “I don’t understand what Charles Perry has to do with any of this, especially since it’s because of him I’m stuck here in this rat’s nest of an abbey without so much as a drop of clean water and no help in sight. Was that your doing, why I fell for his ruse?” Except he knew that wasn’t true. He’d fallen for Charles Perry’s blue eyes and crooked smile all on his own.

  She pointed to the window again. “This is the help he sends. But he does not know the harm she can do.”