Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

by Sarah Hoyt

  What worried her more was the fact that Seraphim looked distinctly unwell. No, really, let me think about this. In the space of a few days, he got wounded, then he got attacked with a mage gun, and almost died, or came so close to it that the resurrection spell had to be used. And then, not only did Antoine… Antoine…She took a deep breath. Not only did someone attack him again, but he had to perform magic to defend himself. And to defend me. And then he was dropped head-first into a weird world. He should look completely chipper and well!

  “Your Grace,” she said. “Your Grace?” His eyes were trying to close, and she could hear noise coming from the mouth of the alley, a long way away. The kind of noise people would make if they were looking for two oddly dressed people who might be refugees from a mental hospital, and possibly dangerous.

  “Seraphim?” This got her a little more response than Your Grace in that his eyes fluttered and he could be seen to visibly make an effort to wake up. But he sagged against the brick wall and made an odd sound like a sigh. And from the entrance of the alley came voices in an oddly accented English.

  No accent could disguise the fact that someone said, “Is this where the witches went?” nor the tone in which someone else answered that perhaps they should call the police.

  So, they were looking for witches, presumably the two of them. And Nell didn’t think it was to wish them luck and give them a box of chocolates. If she had to guess this was one of those worlds where witchcraft was forbidden for whatever reason.

  She and Antoine hadn’t actually come across many of those. Possibly because Antoine knew the general lay of the land and what kind of worlds would be best to avoid. They’d come across worlds like Earth, where magic was disbelieved, ignored, or not used, but not too many worlds where it was forbidden, much less under penalty of death. And when they came across one by accident, Antoine got them out very quickly. But Nell had heard of them, aplenty, particularly in Britannia literature.

  It seemed that the policy that Britannia must not interfere in other worlds, to the point of letting witches and wizards be killed in other worlds, was new. Or at least, literature from half a century or so ago talked about lots of rescues and derring-do in other worlds.

  Seraphim Darkwater sagged further and started sliding down the wall, and she realized he had lost consciousness. At the same time, from the mouth of the alley came a voice saying, “Here, Gnarr, I’m glad you got the authorities. We’ll now get those witches, right and proper.”

  She put out an arm to hold the Duke up and realized that the man was, in fact, very heavy, and that she wasn’t going to be able to carry him. Hell, she couldn’t even drag him behind the shiny purple thing. The best she could do was magic them somewhere. But where? And what if she got them somewhere worse?

  There would be no time to open a magic portal to take them out of this world. Besides, she had a strong feeling whatever the magic used to bring them here had been designed so they couldn’t return. She still made a halfhearted feel in that direction, but the Betweener felt as though shut tight.

  In a panic, as voices came closer, she thought she should simply use the coordinates of her room in Britannia and take them to the equivalent location in this world. From there, she could take them elsewhere. How much worse could it get?

  Blindly, her eyes closed, her arm aching from supporting the Duke, she heard someone say “Come on out and give yourself up and it will go–”

  And she thought of the coordinates and pushed.

  Magic flared like fire all around her. The purple thing at the back of the alley seemed to explode. And then she was falling head first into a body of water.

  She had time to think, Not again, before she kicked up with her legs and came to the surface for a deep breath, which was when she realized that Seraphim hadn’t surfaced.

  Diving back down, she saw the bright dressing gown and dove for it. Grabbing it by the back, she dragged him to the surface, thanking the buoyancy in the water that allowed her to tow a weight considerably greater than her own.

  Even so, and even after she managed to get his head above water and, hopefully, breathing, it took all her strength and concentration to drag him to the edge of the water. Fortunately it was not very far, or she’d never have been able to do it. Even more fortunately, the river – she didn’t remember when she’d determined it was a river, but she was sure of it by the time she was pulling Seraphim out of the water – had a gradual, soft-sand bank, and she could drag Seraphim up it by stages by sitting on the sand and holding him up and pulling as she shuffled up the beach. Had the river had steep banks or even rocky ones, the Duke would have drowned.

  As it was, when she dragged him all the way out, so only his feet remained in the water, and his body lay stretched on the sand like a great beached whale, she wasn’t so sure he hadn’t drowned. She was very tired, granted, and he was very wet, and also – she thought – very ill. He’d been very ill even before falling into the water. But shouldn’t his chest be moving?

  She felt the side of his neck, looking for a pulse, and couldn’t find it. His lips had a faint bluish tinge. She put her hand on top of his mouth and couldn’t feel him breathing. A hand pushed between the folds of his dressing gown felt no hint of a heartbeat.

  Her mage sight, brought to bear with much difficulty, seemed to show a faint glow of life and magic around him, but that often subsisted at that level for a few moments after the person had stopped breathing.

  If I had a mirror, she thought. I would be able to tell if he was breathing.

  Her own laughter startled her, as she thought that if she had the right machines, she would be able to tell if he had brain activity too.

  She could use the resurrection spell. Arguably she should. But what if he were already dead? She risked making him like Antoine.

  The tear that fell on his already-soaked hair surprised her because she didn’t realize she was crying. She put up a hasty hand to wipe at her eyes, and in that moment, his eyes fluttered open and he looked at her in shock. He coughed, once, twice, then blinked. “Why.…” He cleared his throat. “Why are you crying?”

  “I’m not crying,” she said, hearing the tears in her own voice and not sure why she was crying, unless it was tiredness and relief. And then she added, as justification, “You were dead.”

  “I was?” he said, surprised. And blinked again. “I don’t think I was? Unless, of course….” He took a deep breath. “No. This is not the result of a resurrection spell. I’m not a reanimated corpse.” He took a deep breath. “No. I see what it is. I… I went to your room, and then…” His eyes widened so far they looked like they were going to split. “There was a trap,” he said. “He was probably set to reanimate after death, and there was a transport spell. Humans can’t make that kind of spell, not at a distance. It must be fairy magic and that— that means— there was a song full of unclean magic— but that would mean fairyland must be—”

  “Yes,” she said, soberly. “That much I’d already realized.”

  He dragged himself up to sitting, though he swayed a little with fatigue. He looked at her as if she were a long way away and he had trouble focusing at that distance. “I drank an awful lot of that river,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “I dragged you out as best I could.”

  “Thank you,” he said, but his expression remained distant, as if trying to think through a very difficult problem. “Miss Felix, please tell me that there wasn’t a magic detector at the end of that alley.”

  “Magic–”

  “Vast purple crystal egg? Detects magic being performed in the vicinity and imprints the pattern so the authorities can look for it.”

  She nodded, dumbly, and his eyes widened more, which shouldn’t have been possible. Then he said something that sounded like “Muffin,” which apparently was a bad swear word, because he immediately looked abashed, “I apologize. I’m sorry. I should never– Only… It’s the world of the priest-kings, see. The Priest Kings of Okkar.”<
br />
  “Is that bad?” she asked. “Do they sacrifice magic users as they do in Pyramids?”

  “No,” Seraphim said. “They only execute anyone with magic who isn’t related to the royal family.”

  After The Bird Has Flown

  There was no worse feeling, Gabriel thought, than arriving to close the door of the birdcage a moment after the bird had flown.

  Not that Seraphim and Miss Felix were birds, or that the odd portal – was it a portal? – to another world was a cage door. For one, Gabriel was almost sure that neither Seraphim nor Miss Felix had meant to go through it and into– where?

  And then, in that split second after he realized he’d lost track of his legitimate brother, the head of his house on whom, in fact, his entire family depended, he realized that he had a bigger problem.

  The corpse was shambling towards him.

  He’d had some experience in Cambridge with reanimated corpses. He wouldn’t say that was what had put paid to his one and only love affair, but it had certainly exploded the whole thing into the public eye and had forced him to leave Cambridge in disgrace.

  Normally, the only way to kill a reanimated corpse was to get the person who’d first animated it to help. That had been the problem, really, back then, though perhaps Gabriel hadn’t dealt with it as sanely as he should have.

  But now, ten years later, he still had no idea how to deal with it. You couldn’t put an animated corpse down without the collaboration and the help of the person who’d reanimated it. Who could have animated Antoine? It had to be someone in the house? But who would have done it and set him up as a magical trap to send Seraphim and Miss Felix– Where?

  He backed up as the corpse shambled forward. He raised his wand.

  And then, as if a switch had been turned, Antoine’s corpse closed its gaping mouth, swayed, and fell, forward, with all the grace of a sack full of sand.

  Gabriel realized he was shaking and sweating, standing alone in the empty guest room, staring at a dead man and wondering where Seraphim and Miss Felix were. Always, that question came back. What had happened to Seraphim and Miss Felix? And what would happen now?

  Gabriel backed up, until his back hit the wall of the hallway, opposite the door to the room. For a moment – for just a moment – he thought he’d go back in and pull the bell pull and call for help. But what help could he call? The Duchess? Already fearing for the life of her younger son, and perhaps for his sanity, lost in Fairyland, what could she do about the loss of her older son? Caroline? Caroline was a mere child. Oh, precocious beyond her years, but how much help could she be? Worse, how much help should he ask of her? They were very likely to be dealing with forbidden magics here, before it was all said and done. Travel to other lands, for sure, and probably meddling in their affairs too.

  Worse, he realized, with a feeling as though a leaden weight had settled on his stomach, some people – perhaps even the duchess, almost certainly not Caroline, but surely every servant in the house – would suspect him of having done this. The magic was so odd, the animation of the cadaver, the portal. Fairy magic, they’d say. They’d detect fairy magic and they’d talk about him behind their hands. He’d once again meet the odd looks that focused on him for a moment, then slid sideways, and know, know as he did in his first days in the house, that behind their backs they held their fingers crossed, an impotent attempt at stopping the evil magic he had no intent of using.

  What could he do? He couldn’t leave Seraphim lost. Or Michael. Or possibly even Miss Felix, if she was innocent in this. His mouth went dry in a panic, and at first he thought the loud banging was coming from his head or from his heart.

  Then he realized it was coming from the front door. Someone was pounding on the door, loudly, and shouting something. Sounds of running feet echoed through the house, and distantly, Gabriel heard the front door open.

  There were shouting voices, one of them almost for sure the butler’s. Here, in the guest wing, where every room was unoccupied, there was a great silence, but the shouting voices continued, and now there were many people coming in, at least if Gabriel was interpreting the voices correctly.

  Gabriel was the only son left in the house, even if he wasn’t a son of the house, properly speaking. He must protect the dowager and Caroline.

  He ran towards the noise, but before he got there, met with a maid running in the other direction, towards the family wing. He stopped her, daring – an unwonted familiarity in him – to put his hand out to her shoulder. He couldn’t remember her name, though he was sure he knew it. Bessie or Annie or something like that. All their names swirled in his head, and what came out of his mouth was, “Please, you must tell me. Please, what is happening?”

  If she was shocked at being touched, she didn’t show it, though she did drop back and drop him a courtesy. It seemed to be unspoken etiquette of the house to treat Gabriel as an upper servant and to give him the deference they gave the butler and the house keeper, just short of the deference they gave Seraphim or the family. “Sir,” she said. “Sir. It is the constables. And the king’s magical police, and they want His Grace. They said as he done murder, and the murdered man, killed by magic, is in the house!” Her mouth worked and no words came out. “Sir. And they say as you helped, sir.”

  There are moments when a man’s life hangs on a thin thread of decision. Gabriel was the only man left in the house, the only male descendant of the late Duke of Darkwater, who might protect the women in family. But he was also half fey, easy to paint as a villain in this tale that had spun itself out to ensnare his family. Not that he minded, or not too much. He’d grown used to it, if not easy with it, over the years of living amid the mortals. But in this case, what he was, who he was, could be used to taint all of the Darkwaters.

  If they were going to argue that Seraphim had killed this stranger for no good reason, they’d need to get the closest witness out of the way, and that was Gabriel. Who also happened to be the only witness to the fact that Seraphim had disappeared against his will. And Gabriel would, on top of all, make people mistrust the family that had harbored him – his family. After all, people that took a half-fairy child into their home would surely do any sort of stupid thing, any sort of criminal thing.

  Gabriel swallowed hard. He put his hand out again, and this time held onto the girl’s arm. Given how leery he was, usually, of touching anyone at all in the house, it should have alarmed her but it didn’t. Instead, Gabriel found her gaze fixed intently on him with a sort of puzzling expression. Was it hope? Did he add to all his sins the broken hearts of housemaids? He removed his hand slowly, and raked back his hair which somehow had fallen forward over his face, “Listen, Annie,” he said, and in that moment knew her name was Bessie, but didn’t want to correct it. “Tell Her Grac– No, tell Caroline, Miss Ainsling, that I’ve gone to… to avoid the… my presence can only hurt them. Tell Caroline that Seraphim was pulled into another world, and I’m going in search of him and find him or die trying. Tell her and then…,” he thought, and suddenly realized that for the girl’s protection itself, there was only one thing he could do. He put magic behind his order, to make both parts a compulsion. “Tell her immediately, and then forget it. It never happened. You never saw me.”

  He let the girl go, and watched her walk – no, run – towards the family wing in that half-mechanical gait of people under a compulsion. And then he ran the other way, towards his room. He ran faster than he’d ever run. He ran as though the fires of hell were burning at his heels, the hounds of hell pursuing him.

  He could hear the voices of strangers in the house. He could hear the tones as the butler tried to keep them from coming in further. He’d have to use a spell to leave. That would leave a signature, but never mind. He’d go to London, where the magical trace was harder to find, and then he’d transport from there. And then he’d stop long enough to figure out how to find Seraphim.

  Blindly, he pulled his luggage from under the bed. Blindly, he threw clothes into it, bot
h from the trunk at the foot of his bed, and from the peg on the wall. There were steps in the corridor, and his mouth was dry, and his heart was pounding. And now there was a knock at his door, and a voice calling out, “Mr. Penn?”

  And the voice was not one he knew.

  Without looking, without turning, he lifted his hand and threw a lock spell at the door. It wouldn’t hold any sort of constabulary for long. Not if they had a magician with them, which they would. Surely, they would. But it would slow them down.

  He looked down at himself and realized he was still wearing only his underwear and his dressing gown. His feet were bare. There was nothing he could do about that, and it was almost funny that he should leave this house as he had entered, grossly underdressed for the weather.

  He lifted his hand and with a pass, opened a portal, and found himself, between one breath and the next, in the Betweener, and then, suddenly, again, in an alley in London. Nearby, a baby cried. Somewhere, farther off, a woman laughed, a full-throated laugh that reminded Gabriel of his mother.

  London was a criss-cross of magical comings and goings, and it would take them a while to track him here, but how long was a while?

  In his mind, the events of the last day had assembled. Someone had tricked Seraphim into committing what could be construed as a crime, and then they’d taken him away, so he couldn’t demand king’s justice. They’d taken Michael too. And now he, himself, had had to leave. Why? What did they want? Access to the house? Possibly. Or just to destroy the family? Possibly also.

  But whatever they wanted, and whoever they were – perhaps the shadowy cabal he and Seraphim had encountered in distant worlds and nicknamed The Others – they would not be stopped by something like the difficulty of tracing someone in London. They’d barely be slowed down.