Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

by Sarah Hoyt

  Instead, she concentrated on the thread of the dragon lady – a thread of pure fire woven through the tapestry. It was tangled and twisted, and ran alongside two other threads, both of which seemed to merge with those of the Darkwater family. If Caroline had time–

  Enough of this foolishness. She didn’t have time. Instead, she ran her fingers along the length of the thread displayed by magic in front of her eyes, but in fact existing in dimensions humans couldn’t see.

  There. There was the last time this … person had been whole. Now….

  Carefully, Caroline took the time thread between two fingers. She couldn’t cut it and retie it, as Gabriel had done to the bird’s thread. The bird had just been injured, and, presumably, its thread had touched no one’s fate but that of the cat who had dragged it. This woman’s fate was enmeshed with various others' – men, women, and possibly elves. If Caroline cut the thread and tied it again, she would do damage to all those fates, and all of those people’s magic and – by extension – her own. The recoil itself would kill it.

  The recoil of this… she tried not to think about it. No point in it. Instead, she took the thread and carefully, deftly, looped it around her fingers.

  Touching that much power, that much strength, gave her an almost physical shock. And as she grasped it to tie it together at the base of the loop, bringing the woman’s whole body in close proximity to this moment, she felt as though her fingers burned with it. Her every instinct told her to let go, to let the thread fall into its natural position, to leave it alone.

  The instincts were wrong. She must – she must – rescue Michael. She bit her lip against the pain and the burn that was forming welts in her small fingers, and forcefully tied the knot.

  “Oh!” the woman said, and it sounded like some of Caroline’s pain had rebounded on her. Her face flashed white and drawn, then for a moment it seemed about to change into a dragon’s. But Caroline did not let go of the thread. She was not done.

  Holding the thread of the woman’s life and existence through time in her hands, she closed her eyes and forced those missing parts of her body – the clipped wings – forward through time and in existence in the present.

  She would never be able to explain it, but it felt as though the wings, on their way to the present, passed through Caroline’s own body, and her magic. Her body they could not have passed through. Not really. But her magic, they might have, and it felt as though every sharp bit, every rough surface shredded her magic on the way through, leaving it bleeding and torn, like skin raked by claws and teeth.

  Nausea hit afterwards, a nausea so strong that Caroline felt she could neither keep her eyes open, nor focus, nor even stand. The threads fell from her suddenly lax fingers, and snapped into the tapestry, the loop still in place. Her fingers hit the grass of the clearing. She was aware of the threads vanishing from her magic sight, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate. She clutched her middle. She closed her eyes. Nausea ebbed and flowed in her like a tide, and she groaned with the feeling that her body was made of nausea, a sharp point of discomfort and uncertainty, dissolving and twisting through the currents of time.

  I shall dissolve completely and be gone, she thought, and whimpered with fear, thinking Gabriel had been right. Of course he had. And it wouldn’t be needed for him to punish her. She was going to die of this.

  “Thank you,” the woman’s voice said somewhere, outside her misery. “If you need me, at anytime and anywhere, call out to the dragon of the fire lake. I am in your debt.” And then there was the sound of wings and a feeling of unbearable heat.

  Caroline opened her eyes, to find herself enveloped in flames. Looking up, she saw the dragon, flying just above her, and blowing flames from its – her? – nostrils, which surrounded Caroline completely.

  No. I saved you, she thought. You’re not supposed to kill me.

  But the fire wasn’t killing her. Hot, yes, but not lethal, it twined around her, an ocean of living flames. It seemed to move through her, searing. It was as though every weak place in her magic, every slow place, were burned away, leaving only the best, clear and glimmering in the firelight.

  And then it was gone. There was the impression of words in her mind “A gift of gratitude” and then the dragon was gone, flying away and through, to another time and another place.

  Caroline didn’t know what the gift had been, and now she couldn’t ask. She stood up. The nausea was gone, but she felt as though she’d run for miles and miles. Her breath came in short pants, her body was sweaty, the clothes sticking to her. And her eyes seemed to prickle with sweat that had run into them. And she was thirsty. But you can’t eat or drink in Fairyland.

  On shaky legs, she made to take a step towards where she hoped the path was.

  She heard the sound of hooves from behind and before she could turn to look, a male arm twined around her middle, and a voice said, “We have need of you.”

  At first she thought it was a rider, and that he was bare from the waist up. Then she realized it was a centaur who had got hold of her and was carrying her, held only by his strong arm, while his hooves galloped madly into a shifting landscape of fog.

  For My Lady Fair

  The Duke took off running towards the field, and there was very little that Nell could do but follow him. She had, of course, understood that Gabriel Penn had just ported in from whatever trouble the cards might have indicated – and she could not even imagine what represented him – and that he had someone else with him. A necromancer.

  The idea made her flesh crawl – an expression she’d heard before but never actually experienced. Only now she had something to associate with necromancy: Antoine’s dead corpse walking. She remembered the blank look in his eyes, the feel that whatever and whoever Antoine had been was no longer there. Now, there was just a thing: an empty shell.

  That in itself had always made her feel odd, the few times she had witnessed death – mostly of animals – but the idea that the dead meat should walk, move as if of its own volition was obscene.

  Even now, the memory made her feel like her throat closed in disgust, and her flesh tried to crawl away beneath her skin. She took deep breaths of the cool morning air, scented with the familiar smells of the farm, and ran as fast as she could. If there were a necromancer come to the farm, she must defend the farm – and grandma – from him. More important, if there were a necromancer come to the farm was it the one who had been responsible for re-animating Antoine?

  If so, she would have something to say to him. She was beginning to think, in light of what her true origins were likely to be, that she’d fallen in a neatly set trap, and that Antoine was part of it, but one way or another, and whatever he might have been, he didn’t deserve what had been done to him. No one did.

  She arrived in the field behind Seraphim. Impossible not to. His legs were much longer than hers, and besides, she’d been accustomed, for her time in Avalon, to be restricted in her ability to run anywhere. She was out of shape.

  When she approached the group, Seraphim Ainsling was yelling something. The shock when she understood his words, and also what he was doing, was almost too great to permit her to react rationally.

  Seraphim Ainsling, the proper Duke of Darkwater, of whom much was said, but not that he had fishmonger or carter ancestry, was screaming at the top of his lungs at the two men – one of whom not only was completely oblivious to him, but seemed to be attempting to dig to China with his bare hands, and burrow face-first into the hole.

  Worse, the one standing was the Duke’s valet and, Nell presumed, the Duke’s brother and – from what she’d seen of them – one of his closest friends, but the Duke was holding him roughly by the arm and shaking him.

  What came at her, shouted at the top of the Duke’s voice, was almost impossible to understand, so loud and rapid it was, “– I should wash my hands of you. Are you out of your senses to be approaching this creature and to fall into his clutches once more?”

  “No
w, Duke,” Gabriel Penn said, very mildly, but in a tone of worried distraction. He made as though to take a step sideways to pull his companion out of the dirt, or perhaps to succor him, but Seraphim held him fast.

  “No, don’t you go trying to cajole me. You know what coils this creature embroiled you in, and you know he can only bring you dishonor and grief. Even if he captured you by dishonorable means, you should know–”

  Gabriel Penn’s eyes flashed with a look not unlike Seraphim’s own when animated with near-uncontrollable fury, and for a moment he showed his teeth, pressed close together. Nell thought he was about to slug the Duke, and for just a second, without thinking, moved to step between them. Then she checked herself. Even on Earth, stepping between two men about to engage in a slugging match was perfectly stupid. But, stepping between two men from Britannia about to engage in a slugging match might be crazier. Not only would they slug it out around or over her, but they would also hold each other responsible for causing her to step in. Their rules of chivalry were complicated, but that one was obvious.

  As she paused, Gabriel reached out and got hold of both of the duke’s arms above the elbow, “Your Grace, you bonehead, listen to me: Marlon Elfborn did not capture me. I went to him to ask for help when I had nowhere else to go.”

  “Well,” Seraphim said, struggling to pull his arms away from his brother’s gripping fingers. “that only proves you’re not competent to run your own affairs. Furthermore–”

  “Yes, I know, furthermore, he interrupted my education, raised the dead and deflowered the family goat. Give over Seraphim, you fool, do. Stop your vendetta and listen to me.”

  “He deflowered what?” Seraphim said, stopping mid-shout and frowning.

  A dark-red blush climbed Gabriel’s cheeks. His eyes darted at Nell, and he actually attempted to bow, which went to show that the training of Britannia men was quite past rationality or sanity even. “I beg your pardon Miss Felix, I–”

  “Not Miss Felix,” Seraphim bellowed. “Not Miss Felix. She is the Princess Royal.”

  “Oh, dear,” Gabriel said, and his face looked as though someone had lit a candle inside his skull. He looked like he would presently join his friend in digging in the dirt.

  Which finally triggered Nell’s reaction. She couldn’t do anything about the Darkwater brothers. She had a strong feeling whatever had been happening here had been going on for a long while – possibly since their births – and would go on yet longer. But right now, at this moment, there was a creature who was suffering from either insanity or some compulsion, and she must help him.

  She looked at the digging man with her mage vision, and saw… Earth was near-lethal for a creature like Seraphim, even, full of magical power and not hardened from birth to the proximity of what they called cold iron, and which was in fact more what Earth would call technology. But this creature, the red-headed man scrabbling at the dirt, was at least three-quarts magical, probably with Fairyland blood – had to be. Gabriel had called him Elfborn – but with some other magical blood mixed in as well.

  And while, unlike Seraphim when he’d been transported here, he was not ill, and while he should be able to defend himself from the hostile surroundings, he seemed to have been caught by surprise.

  He hadn’t intended to teleport here, Nell guessed, and therefore hadn’t shielded himself from the surrounding influence in time. She would guess Gabriel Penn had had a second longer to shield, and that made all the difference.

  Elfborn’s unshielded magic was under attack on all sides, much like a glob of flesh thrown into strong acid.

  Acting instinctively, she threw a protection veil over him. Not a spell. A spell wouldn’t work for something like this, because it was not alive and would just get corroded along with everything else. The only protection to extend in this case was a veil of magic, an extension of Nell’s own magic, fortunately hardened to the conditions of Earth.

  It worked, to an extent. It stopped the creature’s magic dissolving and disintegrating. It wouldn’t allow it to regenerate, because she couldn’t build a thick enough wall between it and Earth. Particularly not since – as the effect hit a second later – to be so linked with him meant that she could feel his pain too. It was somewhere between a migraine and a whole-body toothache. She gritted her teeth against it, and turned to the two men, who had stopped arguing and were looking at her, as though she’d just grown a second head.

  Gabriel recovered first. “Thank you,” he said. He let go of Darkwater’s arms, and like a total idiot, attempted to throw a veil of his own over hers.

  “No,” she told him, using whatever concentration she could spare away from her task to magically block his attempt. “You’re half-elf yourself, and you’re not used to Earth. If you try that, we’ll have you both in the same condition.”

  “Well, if you think–” Seraphim Ainsling said, to Gabriel. She could spare them no look, but something must have passed between them, some wordless argument, because she heard the duke draw a deep breath, and then she felt his power, like a barrier, interpose itself not just between hers and the influence of Earth’s anti-magic, but between Elfborn’s and her own.

  The pain lessened, receding a pace, and Elfborn’s magic pulsed, once, and reorganized into a coherent whole, if still fainter than it should be. He stopped digging and fell back on his haunches, looking dazed. Which, apparently, gave the other two men an opportunity to start screaming at each other again.

  “What in the– Hades do you mean the family goat?” Seraphim started, at the same time that Gabriel said, at the top his voice, “You said she is the Princess Royal?”

  “Please, don’t start screaming,” Nell said, thinking that hot tempers must run in the family. which made perfect sense, as both the men seemed over-controlled, which they would be, if they knew they were likely to lose control completely, once they unbent. “The Duke of Darkwater does believe that I am the Princess Royal of Britannia, Mr. Penn. I’m not quite sure why myself, except a medallion and some… some other indications, but he says I look like the Queen. And, Your Grace, I presume Mr. Penn said what he did in an effort to derail you so that we could attend to Mr. Elfborn. Is that so?”

  Gabriel Penn opened his mouth as though to say something. He reddened dark again and shot his brother a glowering look. “Yes. Pardon me, Seraphim, but you– Oh, never mind. We must get Marlon’s magic stable so he can survive here. Miss– Er… Your Highness, do you chance to know where there are any standing stones hereabouts?"

  “In the United States?” She saw his blank look too late. “The equivalent of your American colonies, sir. We have no standing stones.”

  “Oh. But we–”

  “It’s a different world,” Seraphim said, testily, and she thought that his tone was as much the result of whatever animosity he had towards Elfborn, and the not-quite-pain-and-worse-than-any-headache behind the eyes that protecting the man’s magic caused. “They don’t have openings to Fairyland here. Which, I suspect, is what makes this a safe world for all of us right now, because I suspect, pardon me, Gabriel, that your magical kin’s stinking court politics are at the center of this mess.”

  “Yes, I suspect so too,” Gabriel Penn said, and turned to Nell. “And this is why I wondered if you had something like standing stones. They would have provided a shield for him, even if they’re not connected to Fairyland. They are places of refuge for magical creatures caught in this land, and they would allow him to recover. He was trying to dig in the dirt, because that would be protection of a kind.”

  Nell sighed. “So, an underground room would help?”

  “Somewhat,” Gabriel said.

  “Very well. The house was built in the time of coal heating. There is a basement with an outside entrance. There is nothing in it now, but I used to play in it as a girl. If you’ll follow me.”

  She led them around the house to the entrance. This part of the basement, which had once contained a coal furnace, now dismantled, had been cleaned out and outf
itted as her own private refuge when she was a little girl. She’d always liked it, and liked hiding there to read. Now she wondered if it was because it had afforded her own magic a respite from hostile forces.

  Whatever had driven her to it, her grandmother had aided and abetted it. The little refuge had not only bookcases, a small table and a microwave, but also a loveseat draped over with a colorful shawl that hid the tears in the upholstery. It also had a tiny powder room attached. It had been installed late enough – after Nell had claimed it – that Nell knew it had plastic piping. Just as well. Sometimes too much metal was a problem for magic in the literal sense.

  As soon as she closed the door to the outside, she felt the pressure against her shield over Elfborn abate. It was like coming in from a raging storm to a place of calm. Seraphim must have felt it too, because she saw his features sag in relief.

  Gabriel Penn had helped Elfborn to the loveseat and dropped him into it, and the man’s eyes were returning to some semblance of understanding. He looked at Seraphim, and his eyes widened. Then he looked at Nell and they widened further.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, his voice creaking. “I understand one or the other of you will wish to kill me. Might I–” He looked at his dirt-covered hands. “Might I be allowed to rinse the dirt from my hands and face, first?"

  “Oh, Marlon,” Gabriel said. “Stop the cheap tragedy. Seraphim isn’t going to kill you, and I can’t imagine why Miss– why her– why the lady would.”

  “Will they not?” Elfborn said, something like the light of battle and a rueful look in his eyes. “You only think that because you don’t know the half of it.”

  Prisoner and Guards

  Caroline couldn’t think and couldn’t focus. Not that she wanted to focus. As the ground seemed to speed beneath her, and she saw the clods and small stones struck up by the hooves just an arm span away from her, she was all too aware only the centaur’s strong arm, its tight pressure beneath her breasts, kept her from falling down and being trampled.