Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

by Sarah Hoyt

  And then there had been the bathing facilities, which had completed his astonishment. The bathroom, next to the bedroom – which was odd by itself. What did the people in other rooms do when they wished to wash? – had a sink and a bathtub, but it also had a square enclosed in glass and floored in tile. That both the sink and the square – and the bathtub too – had running water and running water whose temperature could go from freezing to very hot with adjustments of two handles, shocked him to his core. He could not feel the magic by which it had been done. Then there was the toilet with the flushing mechanism. He’d heard of such, but he’d always thought they’d be inconvenient and smelly. Turned out no smell escaped.

  However, he had his work cut out for him, making both women leave the bathroom and not help him use the appliances, or remove his clothes. They seemed very matter of fact about it, and afraid he’d fall, so that what would have seemed gross indelicacy at any other time, now seemed an excess of quasi-maternal concern. Which did not make him feel any better. He felt an odd grievance that Nell Felix felt maternal about him. And he didn’t have time to examine his feelings.

  At length he’d showered, in gloriously warm water on the edge of hot, and washed his hair and body with the products that had been indicated to him.

  He was dry and had put on a dressing gown, which they’d left for him – and which seemed to be a severe blue affair, made of the same material as the towels – when someone knocked at the door. At his call to come in, Miss Felix bustled in, bringing him something that looked completely alien, and which she handed to him with the look of someone who has completed a long quest, “Grandma says you’ll want to shave. She’ll pick up a cheap electric razor at the drugstore when she goes into town later. Such a small machine won’t hurt your magic, surely. But for now this is the best I can do. Sorry it’s pink.”

  The object looked like it was made of some sort of pliable shell, or perhaps hard jelly, and it was definitely pink, though it bore no resemblance whatsoever to a razor, Seraphim thought. As he looked at it, puzzled, she giggled and took it back, “I suppose you’ve never seen a safety razor.” She pointed to the little glint of metal. “These are the blades. Here.” She got something from a compartment behind the mirror, a cylindrical, metallic container, and sprayed a dot of white foam on her arm, then ran the apparatus over it, removing the foam and a little bit of the almost invisible hair on her arm. “Like that.”

  She’d stayed, surveying him and helping with instructions when he got confused, but perhaps he should be grateful that she didn’t help him. By the end of it, he was exhausted, and all too glad to be led back to the bed, where he lay, recovering his breath.

  For the first time, it occurred to him that not only Miss Felix but her grandmother too were very oddly dressed. They wore blue pantaloons of some sort, and light blouses on top, so fine that one could see the shape of their body, and the contours of what appeared to be a garment for controlling the bosom. Seraphim felt himself blush just at the thought. He was no halfling, but what seemed most shocking about these garments was the fact that the women wore them casually and not at all like they meant to seduce anyone.

  “Miss Felix,” he said, at length. “I see we came to the world I meant to come to, but you changed the coordinates. I presume it was because… I mean, you’ve indicated you know this world?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “I grew up here. I had to bring you here, because… well… because Grandma knows magic, and taught me some of it, so I figured she’d understand why you couldn’t go to a hospital, because that’s in larger population centers and there would be too much metal for you in your condition. But also–”

  “Yes?”

  “Grandmother is semi-retired, but she’s a vet. A veterinarian, I mean. She treats animals. So I knew she could still get prescriptions for antibiotics, and I could tell you had a raging infection and fever.”

  “Antibi–”

  “Tablets that cure infections,” she said. And then quickly sketched for him the level of civilization of this world. She was clear and concise, and could have no idea how much she shocked him. The other worlds without magic that he’d seen were mired in the dark ages, with none of the comforts of civilization. These must be a very ingenious people, indeed, to have made all these changes to their way of life, and without magic, too.

  “But…,” he said, at last. “It sounds like a very comfortable arrangement. How came you to leave it?”

  “I wanted to know where I came from,” she said.

  And The Dead

  Gabriel felt as though he’d gone back in time. These new lodgings were not the ones at Cambridge, but they were not so much different. In fact, from sounds of children at play and the occasional carriage going past the shuttered windows, Gabriel guessed that they were in a city of medium size. Perhaps Bath.

  The inside of the house, too – at least this floor – had the same layout as the house in Cambridge. The front room served as a reception parlor for visitors, perhaps not so much here, but it contained the same furniture, the rosewood sofa and chaise longue, the golden oak bookcases lining the walls, crammed with books that ranged from ancient falling-apart leather bound books to cheaply printed folios with no covers at all. They also ranged, Gabriel knew, from the most difficult books on the occult and magic to the latest novel making the rounds of young ladies' circulating libraries.

  A great part of the attraction of associating with Marlon had always been the books. They were everywhere in the house; there was nothing Marlon didn’t consider worth reading, and nothing he didn’t consider worth discussing.

  The parlor gave way to a smaller room, which could be cut off by shutting a pocket door. The pocket door was open, and this room, though in the same position as the dining room at Cambridge, did not have the same furniture. Instead, it was crammed full of furniture that had been in Marlon’s offices at Cambridge: a workbench took up the entire length of the wall under a shuttered window. Above the workbench hung a stuffed crocodile. Against the wall to the right was a set of shelves with jars filled with magical substances. In the middle of the room, in the place taken by the dining table at Cambridge, was a massive golden-oak desk, at least twice as large as any other desk that Gabriel had ever seen. It was covered all over in papers and books with marks in them, in notepads with notes scribbled on them, in correspondence that, if Gabriel knew Marlon, might very well be the same correspondence that had remained unanswered when the desk was in Cambridge.

  As Gabriel was turned when he answered Marlon’s question – had he truly just agreed to sell his soul? It didn’t matter. He owed Seraphim that and more – he could look at the desk and its papers and did look at them, rather than look at Marlon, as Marlon’s finger traced the line of Gabriel’s jawbone.

  For a moment, with the tip of his finger just touching Gabriel’s chin, the silence lengthened between them. Then Marlon stepped away. A quickly barked word seemed to have an effect on Gypson, who had been drawing closer and closer, and now stopped, and walked back, to stand against the wall, the scrap of soul clinging to it almost invisible in the semi-darkness.

  Marlon looked Gabriel over and made a noise at the back of his throat. “Awakened in the middle of the night and no time to dress?” he asked.

  “Not really awakened,” he said. “I’d barely gone to sleep.”

  “Upstairs,” Marlon said. “There is a room to the left. I just had a fire lit in it so it will still be chill, but the water in the basin will be warm. Wash and dress. I’ll be in the kitchen,” He pointed towards a door to the back of the house.

  At least, Gabriel thought as he took the stairs two by two, he wasn’t being forced to share Marlon’s bedchamber. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that particular detail. There were so many worse things one could do to someone whom one magically owned.

  The room itself was tiny but larger than Gabriel’s room with the Darkwaters. And the fire was burning cheerily in the fireplace. Gabriel could tell it had been set
and lit by magical means and wondered what Marlon was playing at. It was dangerous to use magic in such trivial matters.

  But Gabriel washed and then dressed, finding clothes in the closet and trying not to think they might have been Gypson’s. When he went down to the kitchen he found Marlon himself just finishing making tea. The tea service was his old Cambridge one – silver and polished. Marlon used to say, joking – at least Gabriel assumed it was joking – it was a legacy from his mortal father. It had to be a joke, since Marlon’s father had never acknowledged him and at least no one in Fairyland knew his identity.

  He nodded to Gabriel as Gabriel came in, then carried the tray into the next room, where he set it on the table in between the sofa and the chaise. Gabriel stepped forward to pour, but Marlon waved him back.

  It wasn’t until Gabriel had a steaming cup of tea in his hand that he said, “You’re using magic for household matters.”

  Marlon shrugged. “It wouldn’t do otherwise, would it? I can’t exactly hire servants. Or I could, but considering that every local magician knows who I am and that I’m a wanted criminal, it wouldn’t answer.”

  Gabriel didn’t say anything, but his eyes went involuntarily to the wall, where Gypson stood, immobile, save for the vague flap of his soul against the darkness surrounding him.

  “As a servant?” Marlon said, answering the unspoken words. “One doesn’t use the remains of someone one once loved as a servant. One doesn’t use slaves, Gabriel. Drink your tea, Gabriel. I should have asked you if you preferred wine. I beg your pardon. I’ve grown quite unused to company.”

  “Not wine in the middle of the night and after all that’s happened,” Gabriel said. “I try not to tempt fate.”

  “Wise, that,” Marlon said. “You said you want to rescue your… brothers. What do you wish me to do?”

  “I want to take Michael from Fairyland,” Gabriel said. “That is the first imperative. Seraphim….” He paused, to control himself. “Seraphim is an adult, and should be able to protect himself. Though he could very well be dead by now, as ill as he was when he fell into their trap.”

  Marlon gave him a look with raised eyebrows. “Prince, do you know what you’re up against if you ever step foot in Fairyland again?” He shook his head. “Or I for that matter.”

  “I know what I’m up against. And that’s why I needed you. I might have more raw power, particularly on the other side, but you know more.”

  The eyebrows raised impossibly more. “Perhaps,” he said. And then, “And Seraphim isn’t dead, not if what I sense is true. Though we might not be able to get to him.” He sipped his tea, then lifted the cup, staring within, and Gabriel knew he was reading the tea leaves left on the porcelain. “He was sent to pyramids, but transported from there, very rapidly, to a world where magic is low. It must be an odd world, because there’s a sense of… iron about it?”

  “Oh. The Madhouse,” Gabriel said. “Or one of the worlds in that series. I think, you know, they have magic, just a different type of magic. When Seraphim and I went there, it was full of animated carriages that went by themselves.”

  For a moment he thought Marlon was going to call him a liar, but instead the older magician shook his head. “Someday, Prince, you’ll have to tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself these years. It sounds terribly fascinating and more than a little addle brained.”

  “My father committed suicide and Seraphim and I discovered–”

  “Someday, Gabriel, means not now. I know you dropped out without finishing semantics, but I assure you that’s what it means.” Marlon stood up, with an appearance of unfolding. He set the tea cup down on the tray, waved a hand to make the whole thing disappear and walked over to his work bench. “You want to go to Fairyland, we shall go to Fairyland. After all, you know, I hadn’t anything planned for the next sixty years or so of life, so it makes no difference if it’s ended prematurely. First, let’s locate that tiresome youngest brother of yours.”

  Locating Michael proved far harder than it seemed. Working with Fairyland was always hard. Scanning Fairyland was harder. No one who had no elven blood could hope to do it, but even with elven blood there were easier things to do. Extracting blood from stones, for instance.

  But more than that, after using his crystal ball and a not inconsiderable amount of magic, Marlon fetched a book from the shelves and tried another approach. At this point, Gabriel could tell his magic was running down and quite wordlessly provided his own to lend force to the endeavor.

  He was rewarded with a brief, brilliant smile. And then Marlon sighed. “It is occluded,” he said. “I can’t see. OH!” The oh was loud and echoed dismay, and his hand went up to his forehead. “Oh,” he said again. He looked at Gabriel, with a look of consternation.

  “Tell me, Marlon, damn you.”

  “He’s in the royal dungeons,” Marlon said. For the first time there was a hint of fear in his voice. “They’re strip mining his magic!”

  “Well then, we must rescue him from them,” Gabriel said, even as his heart thudded fast and he felt, incongruously, cold as ice.

  “You’re ready to face the assembled armies of Fairyland in the name of rescuing your misguided brother?” Marlon asked, with something like a hollow laugh.

  “Yes, yes, I am.”

  The hollow laugh became louder. “Very well then,” Marlon said. “We can die but once.”

  Dangerous Roads

  “In here, Mama,” Caroline whispered, her warm hand on her mother’s arm, pulling her close and into a dark space between buildings. For a moment the dowager saw nothing, then, in front of her like the landscapes one sees in a dream, a doorway opened, filled with something like twinkling lights.

  The impression of twinkling lights was momentary, nothing more, and then they were on a vast meadow, under the moonlight. It smelled like a dream, too, except of course one didn’t normally smell in dreams. But what surrounded Barbara was a warm scent of hay and flowers and of water running nearby, all of it untainted by smoke or any sign of human habitation. Also, all the smells were heightened, stronger, the sort of smells one remembers from childhood, when the world is fresh and new.

  She stood rooted to the spot a moment, as the warm breezes of the meadow wound around her, thinking that she didn’t remember Fairyland being like this. Perhaps they’d come somewhere else altogether. But in her mind she was remembering what her rescuers had done to find her and bring her out – everything that she’d ever heard about bringing people out of Fairyland. She hesitated before speaking. If she told them to Caroline she risked offending her daughter.

  It had become clear to Barbara over the last few moments that her daughter knew far more than Barbara herself about some things: those things being for instance how to go into Fairyland and how to defend oneself from elf magic. Crossing over into Fairyland was a major working. It required not only a susceptible location, where a portal could be opened, but also preparing the magical spell and working it for about half an hour, before the portal became obvious. Barbara realized that Caroline must have been saying the spell under her breath the whole while they walked down the street, and wondered if this too was something Gabriel had taught her. She wouldn’t ask.

  But there was a good chance, she thought, that neither Gabriel nor any of her teachers had taught the girl what she must do, to come safe out of Fairyland. She’d risk offending her daughter, then, because if they should get separated, what Caroline didn’t know could kill her.

  Just then Caroline pulled at her, but the first rule, Barbara remembered, was to stay on the road. And they were not on the road but on the grass next to it. She resisted Caroline’s pull forward, upon the grassy rolling hill and instead spoke in measured accents, in a little more than a whisper, “No, my dear. The first rule you must remember,” she said, while she in turn pulled Caroline sideways and a little back, until their feet were firmly planted on a brick-paved road. “Is that you must always stay upon the road. It will change as you walk, but the r
oad is your only measure of safety. It exists only for visitors to Fairyland, and, as such, it is part of a pact between our people and elves. They cannot hurt visitors who are on the path and we, in turn, undertake not to deviate from the path, and to stay on it whilst in Fairyland. Do you know the other rules? I hesitate to ask, but what did Gabriel tell you?”

  “That I should not eat anything any elf ever offered me.” Caroline paused. “An elf other than himself, I presume, because that would make it very difficult particularly when I was little and he gave me candy.”

  “I don’t think that Gabriel counts as an elf. Not a true one.” She paused in turn, as an odd thought occurred to her. “At least not unless he wants to be one.”

  Caroline seemed to understand this, as she nodded a little. “I assume this applies to anything in Fairyland.”

  “Yes,” Barbara said. “I very much believe so. But there are other rules.”

  “Such as?”

  “You must help three people you encounter. You must remain loyal and pure and impervious to temptation, and you must do your best to help those who need you, while refusing to either leave the path or eat anything. This might include performing feats that would otherwise be impossible. In these tasks, you will usually find three helpers. These are not always wholly good, and usually they want something in return, but you must accept their help nonetheless, and count on being able to defeat their wiles later.”