Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

by Sarah Hoyt

  Again the stab of fear came. Again the sharp pang of something like panic, behind the hard, inhuman eyes. And The Twin’s voice was a trifle too unconcerned, a trifle too light, as she said, “I have not the pleasure of having the slightest idea what you speak of.” She tapped her chin lightly with a puff with some white powder, and said, brightly. “And now, if you excuse me, I have commitments which I must keep. I’m playing principal female in One Thing And Another, and I must–”

  Barbara raised her hand and let the spell fly. And knew the moment she’d done it that it was a bad idea. It was a minor spell, not very strong, just a compulsion to tell the truth, with a hint of punishment to come. She’d never meant to use it. She’d never have used it, if she’d not got scared. Something she knew, which her husband had told her; yes, and her father too, after he’d recovered her from Fairyland. “If you go fighting elves, you must use all the force you can command and not an iota less. Because anything else they’ll eat.”

  She’d not known what eat meant till this moment – only as her spell hit The Twin, The Twin absorbed it, swallowed it, and it made her alien elf magic shine more brightly around her preternaturally young form.

  And then The Twin Attacked. There was a sense of rushing, and the scent of roses increased till Barbara felt she was choking on them, her mouth and nostrils and everything stuffed with cloying, redolent petals. As she gasped for breath, her body was slammed backwards against a wall, with enough force to rattle her brain. Into this, feelings poured into her, odd feelings: the feeling that she was nothing, that she had never deserved her husband or her children, that she had rightful stolen all those from The Twin, that she was old and useless and not beautiful, a speck of dirt on the face of the world, and one, moreover, that should be dead and gone a long, long time while the glittering creature before her continued to be vital and young and to inspire love and passion.

  Barbara’s grandchildren, and her grandchildren’s grandchildren would be dead and long gone, and The Twin would still be beautiful and young and enticing.

  Coupled with this came the strong suggestion that Barbara should stop cluttering the Glittering Twin’s world, that she should efface herself, go, do away with herself.

  The Duchess felt both the push and the desire to vanish, but at the same time, she clawed back with her own mind, that no, she had loved her husband and been his true wife, despite his infidelities and his frailties – none of them unusual in one who’d early been elf-touched. And she deserved her time upon the Earth which at any rate belonged more to her than to The Twin, a creature who’d never been fully alive and therefore could not be fully here.

  She managed to choke out “No” through the cloying scent of roses, but she couldn’t lift her hand to make any sign of protection, she couldn’t command her mind to let a spell fly, and she couldn’t breathe. Her heart strained against her chest, and she knew presently she would lose consciousness, and then the Twin could dispose of her as though she were an inanimate object. She would, too. Even if elves had qualms about murder, they wouldn’t have those against killing humans.

  The Twin stood before her, her hair standing in a dark halo around her head – beautiful like an angel and triumphant like death. For a fleeting moment, Barbara wondered if this was the last sight her husband had seen, then told herself it was nonsense. Darkwater had committed suicide. Killed himself over gambling debts and women. She had to believe it even if....

  The door blew open. “Mama!” echoed in Caroline’s most outraged accents, and Caroline stood there in the doorway, as young as The Twin looked, but a lot more vital, a lot more alive somehow. “Mama!”

  Barbara tried to choke out a warning that Caroline should go, that she should hide, that this creature would get her too, but she had no time. Caroline’s accents were frosty. “Well,” she said, "this is a great deal of nonsense.” Calmly, as though this were something she did every day, she spoke liquid, tripping syllables, which fell onto Barbara’s ears like burning fire, but had an even stronger effect on The Twin.

  The Twin tripped backward, like a ragdoll that has lost its stuffing, and fell into her velvet-upholstered chair, in front of her vanity, looking rather like she was indeed a ragdoll, arms and legs asprawl, mouth half open, expression blank.

  Barbara, finding that she could breathe, took a deep, aching breath and stepped away from the wall. “Caroline,” she said, in shocked accents, and was even more shocked as her daughter turned an admonitory look on her. “Not now, Mama,” the chit said, looking and sounding for all the world as though she were the adult and her much-tried mother the child here. “Afterwards, I’ll explain anything you might well want.”

  “Now,” Caroline said, turning to the Twin. “Madam, if you please, and if you don’t want me to use worse upon you, be so kind as to tell me where my brother Michael was taken and by whom and why, and also where Gabriel and Seraphim might be. And do not even think of lying.” Another string of liquid, elven syllables. “There, that will prevent it.”

  The Twin flickered. It was like watching the flame of a candle, which now glowed yellow, now blue. She flickered, between the human form that looked like Barbara, asprawl on the chair in front of the vanity, to something glittery and hard and bony, like an insect, with an ivory carapace. It was only a moment, and she flickered back to human aspect, her eyes wide and terrified. They looked like a wounded bird of prey’s brought down and about to be rent by dogs. Barbara wished she didn’t enjoy the expression in them quite so much.

  The Twin took a deep, raspy breath, and spoke in a deep, raspy voice that sounded somehow reedy and not quite human, and which had lost all its allure and glamour. “The– Fairyland wanted the young one. Your… Your shadow– no.” She seemed to be struggling with the human language, suddenly, and pronounced with exaggerated care, “Your twin brother. My brother wanted him. I sent him there.”

  “I see,” Caroline said. “What did they want him for?”

  The twin made a hissing sound, and then another, and then – apparently unable to hold information any longer, and as Caroline moved her hand midair, in a gesture that her mother didn’t quite understand – whimpered and said, “To mine. To pull from… to… to… eat.”

  “Eat!” Barbara said, outraged, and of course, one heard things, about elves feasting on human children, but she’d never believed it, and besides, Michael was not a child, not in that sense.

  “Hush, mama,” Caroline said. “You mean to mine him, like a metal source?”

  The Twin nodded. “I see,” Caroline said. She looked pale but steady. “You will kindly give us the coordinates and the way to reach him.”

  “Don’t know… way to reach him. Coordina– yes.” She let out a series of the words that could be used as magical coordinates to the location of another world.

  Caroline seemed to run it through her mind, or perhaps to memorize it. Barbara, still shaken from her experience, could not concentrate on it, but she knew it was a place in Fairyland because of the truncated fifth locator. Fairyland was not a real place, a world like their own and separate from it. Instead it was a parasite universe, a flea riding on the back of the other universes.

  She wondered, too, what they meant by mining Michael, and felt as though a cold hand tugged at her heart. They would find him. They would rescue him. But where had Caroline learned to do all this? Barbara was very sure it hadn’t been taught at the Academy for Young Ladies of Distinction where Caroline had been sent for two years after the school room.

  “And my brother Seraphim?” Caroline asked, coldly.

  “He has escaped us,” The Twin said, in a squawk of fury. “We sent him to the world of the priest kings, but he escaped. He… we cannot find him. Or her, the lost one. It was she who–”

  Caroline had taken a deep breath. “And my brother Gabriel?”

  “He’s not–”

  “My brother Gabriel, by virtue of shared blood, of shared upbringing and of shared fraternal affection. Where is my brother Gabriel
? Where have you sent him?”

  The Twin’s laughter rang in the room, like a peal of bells. Before Barbara could recover from her shock at this, The Twin said, “He’s gone where he’s always wanted to go. Back to the necromancer.”

  “The necro–” Caroline said, and Barbara, who had an inkling that this was something she did not want Caroline to dwell on, who had a feeling in fact that this was at the back of whatever had got Gabriel expelled from Cambridge, said, firmly, “He is on his own, then? You have not sent him?”

  “No,” The Twin said. “And I cannot tell you his coordinates, because the necromancer keeps his location zipped up. But I’m sure he’s very happy, seeing as he–”

  “Stop,” Barbara commanded. “No more. Caroline, I don’t believe you wish to pry into Gabriel’s affairs.”

  “No, mama,” Caroline said, meekly. She made a gesture with her hand, and suddenly The Twin went limp, her face blank.

  “You killed her,” Barbara said, shocked, more shocked perhaps for a secret feeling of gloating.

  “No, Mama,” Caroline said. She put out a hand and held onto Barbara’s forearm, pulling her. “She’s merely in a trance state, where she will stay until she wakes, remembering nothing of our visit.”

  “Caroline!”

  “Yes, Mama?” Caroline said, as she pulled her mother out of the Twin’s dressing room and along a narrow corridor.

  They’d exited onto a rather smelly alley when Barbara managed, “If you don’t tell me how you learned this very strange magic, and what you just did to the… to Gabriel’s mother, and with what power, I will have strong hysterics.”

  “Yes, mama,” Caroline said, then giggled, as her irrepressible spirit took over once more. “You must forgive me. But it is so funny that I should know something you don’t.” She looked at Barbara and sighed. “It was Gabriel, when Michael and I were three. That,” Caroline made a head gesture towards the back of the theatrical building they’d just left, “came prowling around. Not after Gabriel. After us. Michael and me.”

  “But–”

  “Gabriel told us who it was,” she said. “And he taught us how to defend ourselves. He said she often came prowling around because daddy–” she stopped abruptly.

  “Yes,” Barbara said, her voice raspy. Internally she thought of Arden. She rarely thought of him by that name, the name she’d called him in private, the name by which she’d fallen in love with him. Arden conjured up the name of the dashing young gentleman he’d been, looking a little like Seraphim and Gabriel, but oh so infinitely more dashing and daring and… everything a young man should be.

  Thinking of him as Arden made her heart clench. It made her wonder if she’d ever truly known him, or had his love. Despite what she’d told The Twin, she wondered if in his heart it was The Twin he’d always loved. Elf love was a like an illness, she’d been told. A fever that never fully passed.

  It was almost a relief to hear Caroline ask, the prurient curiosity vibrating in her voice, “Who is the necromancer? Who has Gabriel always wanted to go to?”

  “I understand he had an unsavory friend in Cambridge, who was… accused of some illegal magic. But as to his always wanting to go somewhere, I would place no credence on what the creature said. You know she lies as she breathes.”

  “I see,” Caroline said, giving Barbara the uncomfortable feeling she very well did.

  Before she could say any more, Barbara interrupted. They were now walking along a main street, well lit, but they were getting veiled glances from other passers-by. It was not normal for a well-dressed mother and daughter to walk along the street at this hour, unaccompanied even by a footman. And if there was a conspiracy of some sort – what else could it be that had made both Gabriel and Seraphim disappear, and which had stolen Michael from the home – then sooner or later someone would spot them. “Caroline,” she said, in little more than a whisper. “We cannot go on in this way. Someone will notice us or recognize us.”

  “I know,” Caroline said, with the greatest calm. “I’m just looking for an easy transition point to take us into Fairyland.

  Madhouse

  Seraphim woke up aching on a strange bed. Not only a strange bed in the sense that it was not known to him, but a strange bed in the sense that it felt odd beneath him, not like the feather mattresses and pillows he was used to. The blankets above him, too, felt oddly light but very warm.

  He struggled from the shadowland he’d wandered into in his dream, and heard a moan escape his lips before being awake enough to control them.

  “There, Mr. Ainsling,” a voice said. It had an odd accent, and it sounded like that of an elderly woman. Then it said in a matter-of-fact tone, “You see, he’s coming around. I told you he would. A good thing too. If he hadn’t awakened we must have taken him to the hospital.”

  The voice that answered this was familiar. It was Miss Felix’s voice, though it sounded more relaxed than it ever had before. “It wouldn’t have been possible. In his state, he’d just have died there.”

  “Would he really? But why? He’s not that ill, you know. A minor infection that the antibiotics will take care of, and very tired, that’s all.”

  “I know. But their magic is not like that of Earth. They have, I think, a good bit of elf or fairy or something, or perhaps their magic is different and older. They react badly to what they call cold iron.”

  “But surely the Victorians used an awful lot of iron,” the older voice said. “You can’t tell me that they have that level of civilization without–”

  “Oh, no. But they use spells in the forging so it doesn’t affect them. Also, I don’t think it’s the iron that affects him. I think it’s the machines. Too many machines seem to eat at their magic. A strong one of their kind can withstand it, but he’s anything but strong just now.”

  Seraphim tried to pry his eyes open and to protest, but he couldn’t, and presently, darkness overwhelmed him again.

  He woke up being moved. This indignity puzzled him for a moment, because he was being bodily dragged by two women – he was sure of it by the hand size and the awkward way in which they pushed him this way and that. He could discern no rhyme or reason to the movement until he felt cool fabric under him. Then he realized they were changing the bed under him, and wondered why they hadn’t called a man-servant to move him to a chaise or a sofa while that was done. And were the two women making the bed Miss Felix and… he remembered her calling as they landed in Madhouse – her grandmother? Had they no maids, either? Had he landed in a poor cottager’s family? He must be giving them the devil of a time. He must awake and go home.

  With a superhuman effort, he brought his eyes open, just as the two women pulled a sheet and something else – something that looked like a colorful patchwork quilt – over him, but that felt much lighter and warmer than any quilt that Seraphim had ever seen.

  He was reclining against pillows – very soft pillows – in a bright room. It didn’t look like a cottage, or smell like one either. The scents in the air were clean with a hint of flowers, and the room was as large as most workmen's cottages, and furnished, besides, in style, if sparsely. It had a dresser up near the window, and it was a vast, polished dresser, with a mirror above. The bed on which Seraphim lay wasn’t curtained, but it looked well-made and almost new. There was also a bedside table, and what appeared to be a desk under the window. He blinked. “Where– ”

  “You’re at my grandmother’s house, Your Grace. This is my grandmother, Mrs. Lillian Felix.”

  He looked at the older woman and was almost shocked when she failed to curtsey and instead smiled at him, amused. “Your Grace, is it? What is that, a Duke? Well, we don’t have those, so don’t get all bent out of shape if I call you Mister. Nell says your name is Ainsling.”

  “Seraphim Ainsling,” Seraphim said, while trying to figure out what she meant by their not having dukes. Surely it couldn’t be … they didn’t sound French.

  She smiled. “Well. Seraphim is an odd name. It’s plu
ral, isn’t it?”

  Seraphim felt like he really had fallen into a Madhouse. Never had he and Gabriel bestowed a more appropriate name on any place. “My father named all his sons after angels,” he said. “And his first legitimate heir seemed to demand something more, so he named me after a whole order of angelic beings.”

  “I see,” the older lady said, cocking her head sideways. She looked nothing like Miss Felix, being very fair where Miss Felix was dark, and having brilliant blue eyes that reminded Seraphim of a certain kind of enamel. “I can’t very well call you Seraphim, though, so you shall be Mr. Ainsling. I apologize, but I haven’t paid any attention to forms of address to the nobility, not even when I was young and read an awful lot of very bad regency romances.” She smiled brightly at these nonsensical words, then added, “I’ll go get you some food, shall I? I bet you’ll be very glad to eat something solid, instead of the milk and broth we’ve been tipping down your throat, and maybe you’ll feel well enough afterwards to take a shower.”

  There followed the oddest two hours that Seraphim had ever lived through, and that included both trying to calm Gabriel after he found the still-living body of Aiden Gypson in Marlon’s attic closet, and the hour that had followed that one, when Seraphim had tried to challenge Marlon to a duel and had it sternly pointed out to him that it would only fan the flames of scandal. And gone through with it, anyway, and wounded the bounder.

  This time, there was nothing as shocking. It was more that all of life was both very familiar and completely odd. Take the meal they brought him: bread and broth with a little bit of cheese, followed, after some discussion, by a pot of strong, black tea.

  None of the foods was alien or repulsive, like the fried bugs they ate in at least one of the worlds that Seraphim and Gabriel had visited.

  But the bread was whiter and softer than any bread Seraphim had ever eaten; the broth was completely clear, as though it had been many-times strained, so that there were no bits of meat in it. It tasted of hints of garlic and spices, too, not normally something given to an invalid. The dishes, too, were odd, being fine and clearly new or at least very white and never mended. Yet, they were served upon a wooden tray, even if the tray was adorned with a lace cloth. He could not make sense of the signals he got about the Felixes' station in life. The house felt roomy and clean, but he had yet to hear a servant, much less to see one. The dishes were new, and very good quality, but they didn’t seem to command silver or even pewter. It was like being caught in the middle of a puzzle he couldn’t solve.