Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

by Sarah Hoyt

  She closed her eyes, but it was impossible to ignore her situation. She smelled horse and human sweat commingled, she felt the jarring pound of the centaur’s hooves beneath. After a while she heard yelling, and then the hooves stopped and the movement, and the human arm let go.

  Caroline opened her eyes in time to stumble a little then recover her balance. She stood on a clearing filled with dozens of centaurs, clustering round her on all sides.

  The centaur who had brought her pushed her forward, a hand on her shoulder, and said, “I have brought her, you see. At the council’s command.”

  Around her there were many centaurs. All of their human bodies were swarthy, heavily muscled, and her first impression of them was of a menacing group, particularly as they moved restlessly, their hooves stomping the ground, and calling out words she only partly understood.

  “In the sacred ground of our ancestors–”

  “The announced one–”

  “In this dire hour.”

  They spoke now one and now the other, their voices louder and more resonant than normal men’s voices, their heads tossing – just like horse’s heads, she thought, in shock, even if they were atop men’s trunks and necks – their long, dark hair sweeping and becoming even more disarrayed. They had overgrown stubble or outright dark beads. Some wore necklaces of what appeared to be human teeth.

  Caroline wanted to run, but she could imagine this troop of centaurs following her – hunting her down. She swallowed hard and felt sweat prickle at her eyes. Her throat was so parched she feared she might not be able to speak, but she had to speak. If she couldn’t run, she had to do something to prevent these creatures– to prevent the creatures from what?

  She could remember, vaguely, from her classical mythology and history that drunken centaurs could get thoroughly unpleasant, in the way of unpleasantness that mama would say Caroline shouldn’t know about until her wedding night – and perhaps not even then. But Caroline had heard the women of the nearby village talk, and some of the maids too. And besides, the home farm had livestock. And Caroline was no slower of mind than she should be. So she had a pretty clear idea of how unpleasant, and in exactly what way, centaurs could get.

  Though she wondered if it was exact enough to fend it off. She should have asked Gabriel. Of all of the adults in the house, he was the only one not likely to tell her she was being unladylike or to turn her mind to more appropriate thoughts. Michael wouldn’t have told her that either, but he knew no more than she did, and besides, frankly, Michael was not very interested in what went on between centaurs or women. Or men and women for that matter. If it didn’t have gears, he was simply not much interested in it.

  Which brought her to here and now, and whatever the centaurs meant to do, and the fact she was quite – quite – powerless to defend herself. Except by trying to do what mama called showing herself a lady and therefore beyond their touch. She looked at those large hands, at the end of bulging muscular arms, and realized not a few held knives or lances. She swallowed again, then planted her feet and spoke loudly, “I am Caroline Ainsling, the sister of the Duke of Darkwater, and I want to know what you want with me.”

  They moved. At first she wasn’t sure how. There was just more stomping of feet, and more galloping, and sounds like a stable. Smells like a stable too, which made her wonder how human centaurs were, and how animal. Around the edge of the clearing where the centaurs were assembled, two of them galloped in circles.

  “Quiet!” It was a clarion call of a voice, a voice such as, unleashed in a square in London, could have called the whole city to attention. Caroline trembled, thinking the yell directed at her, but then the voice said, “We are being rude to the maiden, and fools to seek her help but not tell her what we wish. Agapios, Thanos, cease your mad galloping. If you insist on behaving like colts, you shall be excluded from the councils of men.”

  To Caroline’s surprise, the two madly galloping centaurs stopped, and one of them lowered his head like a schoolboy caught at fault. It occurred to her that despite their golden skins, the long, dark hair, they were very young. If they’d been horses, their horse-body would look like a colt’s not fully grown into its height, and if they’d been humans, the human body would have looked too gangly, too thin, not muscular enough. The sweaty faces were devoid of stubble, and one of them wore his hair pulled back from the forehead with a bit of ribbon, an affection that, for some reason, made him look younger. She almost smiled at him, then remembered the situation, and that she definitely shouldn’t encourage centaurs with untoward friendliness, and tried to make her face impassive.

  “Caroline, Daughter of the Duke, Maiden,” the man who had first spoken, spoke again, and then, to Caroline’s eternal shock, fell on his front knees in front of her, and looked up at her with anguished eyes that didn’t look any less scared for regarding her from under beetling brows. “We need your help. My son has fallen in a snare, and you’re the only one who can save him.”

  Caroline looked again at the powerful bodies around her. “I’m the… only one? But you.…”

  The centaur shook his head. “No. It is not a human snare, nor one such that can be defeated by the hand of a centaur, or the force of our arms. It is a snare of the mind, a snare of the soul, and we are powerless against it. We felt your nearness, and we went to get you. We don’t know if your potency will hold against the local magic, but we hope so.”

  Her … potency? Had they lost their everlasting mind? And where were the centaur women? Unpleasant ideas formed in Caroline’s mind, and she drew herself up very tall – or as tall as her five feet would allow – and spoke in a way that, she hoped, would do the Duchess credit. “I do not have the pleasure of understanding your meaning.”

  “It is my son, Akakios,” the centaur said. “He has been captured.”

  “Captured by whom? Where?”

  There was movement again, this time towards her. No. The circle that had been all around moved, so in front of her there were only trees and no centaurs. The centaur who’d knelt before her – the same one who’d brought her here? – now stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder. Impossible not to follow as he walked forward, though he neither pushed nor pulled her.

  He said only “Caroline, maiden!” and at that moment, they reached the edge and she could see through the trees. She’d thought they were in a large clearing, but the clearing ahead was twice as large. From the center of it, suspended on what seemed to be a silver chain that attached somewhere in the distance, was what looked like a crystal bird cage. For a very large bird. A very, very large bird. Only there was no bird in it, but a young centaur.

  His hair was in more disarray than that of his congeners, the other centaurs. His hands were clasped on the translucent bars of his cage. And his human chest and horse body were crisscrossed with bloody slashes.

  He raised his head as if sensing her scrutiny and looked at her with eyes that were as green as leaves in spring, and that looked like he’d been crying.

  Then she saw them: Around the clearing, as though on guard, galloped many unicorns.

  They were large, white, glimmering, beautiful. It took her a moment to realize that the tips of their horns were stained with blood.

  The Coil Winds

  “I helped find you,” Marlon Elfborn said.

  Nell had got coffee, because she knew – both because Antoine had told her, and because Seraphim had confirmed it – that coffee was good for restoring damaged magic. Some people believed the only way magicians could survive on Earth was through vast infusions of coffee, and coffee shops were always a good place to find magicians porting between dimensions, stopping on Earth for a few hours or a few days.

  Elfborn was holding his cup between both hands, with the sort of clenched-fist grip normally reserved for the proverbial straw and the drowning man. He took it black, and he’d drained almost the whole cup, which was fine, since she’d brought the pot down. What was interesting, as far as she was concerned, was that Gabriel
Penn had gone to sit gingerly next to him, and was – as far as it was possible to tell from the outside – monitoring Elfborn’s magical power. There was that odd, analytical look as he stared at Marlon’s magic through half closed eyes.

  It seemed for a moment, staring at Penn, that Nell discerned something else in those eyes, but … in Britannia? Besides, what she’d heard from Seraphim about Elfborn’s character…. It seemed hardly likely, though she’d come to believe that people did the most stupid and out of character things when it came to their private lives.

  Gabriel Penn glared at her as though he could read her thoughts, and she cleared her throat and looked back at Marlon, who was looking at her, with the sort of unfocused look of one not fully attuned to his surroundings.

  “You… helped find me? What does that mean?”

  Marlon shifted the cup so the fingers of his right hand curled around the handle. The left went up and raked at his hair. He darted a furtive look at Gabriel Penn, then looked at his coffee. “When Gab– When Mr. Penn… that is… he should not have–” He paused and seemed to collect himself. “When Mr. Penn discovered the reanimated corpse of my friend in my attic and… and was alarmed enough to… to… to let his– that is… when he let His Grace know–”

  Seraphim snorted. He mumbled something that sounded like “If coming to my door in abject terror didn’t let me know, nothing would.”

  But Gabriel put a hand out and grabbed Seraphim’s arm, and Elfborn seemed to ignore the interruption and went on, “And His Grace laid information against me on two capital crimes, I had to disappear. I had to disappear fast. Contrary to popular belief, magic tutors that Cambridge… No. Magic tutors whose whole background is a foundling home, aren’t paid princely salaries. We are- I was given a place to live and fifty pounds a year. It was not held against me if I tutored on the side to make ends meet, which I did.”

  Again Seraphim snorted, and Nell had the impression that Gabriel glared at him and squeezed his arm harder, but she didn’t look at them. Instead she was looking at Elfborn in near horror. While house servants made considerably less than fifty pounds a year, they got not only a place to live, but also food and clothing and often used clothing or other side benefits that could be sold. But a governess might make a hundred pounds a year, and she too got not just a place to live but food and at least some furnishings and other benefits including – as she had found in Britannia – the not inconsiderable one of – in most decent households – coal for heating.

  To live on fifty pounds a year, even with lodgings paid for, support the state of a gentleman which would be expected of a tutor, and buy the necessaries of his profession, including the extremely expensive tomes on magic research would have… been well-nigh impossible, even with tutoring on the side. She knew what tutoring paid – she’d known people who had done it. It was near to nothing. The thought that Cambridge, whose “regular” tutors got paid quite decently, took advantage of people whose tainted blood made them less than equal in society made her stomach clench. “Yes?” she said, trying to keep her voice indifferent. “I fail to see why you’d need money to escape. Magic yes, but–”

  “Oh, magic too,” Marlon said. “The police are not completely stupid, you know, no matter what popular fiction shows, and they do have some very competent magicians on staff. They would have found me if all I’d done was throw a veil over my magic. I needed to… I needed to go between-times,” he said, as if bracing himself. “Between places. The sort of thing you read about in fairytales, where the door is only there if you’re looking for it. As for money,” he shrugged, "a magician in hiding still has to eat. I suppose if I’d grown up anywhere where one lays snares or hunts I could have done that, though I hear one can’t live on rabbit without starving. Or I could maybe have kept chickens, or something. But I grew up in a foundling home, in London. And I never learned to hunt. I needed enough money that I could… buy food. For years. For however long… for as long as need be.”

  “But,” Nell said, "surely necromancy pays well?” She’d heard rumors of fortunes paid for such illegal magic. “If you’re a necromancer–”

  “He is not. It was accidental. He raised Aiden Gypson through a resurrection spell applied too late. Stop glaring, Seraphim, I believe him.”

  “Of course you do, you’re very eager to believe–”

  “Shut up, both of you,” Nell said, reflecting only later that she’d ordered a duke around as though he were an unruly school boy. And he hadn’t complained. Oh, very well, then. She might grow to like this princessing thing. “Mr. Elfborn, I still don’t understand it. Oh, I understand your needing money, but you say until as though it would have an end.”

  He shrugged, “Oh, it would. But it might be ten or twenty years in the future. You see, they put an embargo on my leaving the world. I couldn’t port out. I had to wait–” He paused and his eyes almost crossed. “I’m out of the world. They can’t have removed the embargo. The minimum time is ten years. They can’t have done it.”

  “No,” it was Gabriel, assuredly.

  “So… when we were ported out violently, it must be … someone with the keys…”

  “That much has been obvious for a while,” Seraphim said. “Now, if you would answer Her Royal Highness’s implied question about whom you found her for, perhaps we can find out who ported us here.”

  Marlon’s hand went up and made a worse mess of his hair, and he took a sip from his cup, only to find it was empty. Nell held his wrist to keep the cup in place, and poured coffee for him. He took a sip, then sighed. “It might be them. I always thought it was them. I don’t know how they found I was in distress, but of course, I suppose they keep track of those of us like Gabriel and myself in your world, and from one or the other of us, they must have picked up my bind.” He looked up at their blank looks. “Fairyland, of course. They sent envoys to my house, in between the time Gabriel left and before … and before the law arrived, while I was hoping… while I was convincing myself Gabriel would come back and I could expl–”

  “You set a compulsion on him, did you not, you filthy bastard?” Seraphim asked. “It only activated now. I should–”

  “Enough, Duke, he–”

  “Compulsion?” Elfborn blinked at Seraphim as though he’d said a foreign word. “No. I just hoped he would come back. I thought if he car– I thought he’d come to his senses and come back and I could explain.”

  “An animated corpse in your closet, really? You could explain?”

  Elfborn gave a short, hollow crack that might have been an attempt at laugh. “I could try. But I never got the chance, as the next person at my door was Your Grace, challenging me to a duel and informing me you’d set the law on me. But before you came, there were envoys from Fairyland. They offered me a place already turned in the magical way that made it hard to find and ten thousand pounds– As I said, I didn’t know how they found I needed help, but my need was desperate enough that I took it.”

  “I went to my mother before I went to Seraphim,” Gabriel said, not looking at Elfborn.

  “Penny!” from Seraphim echoed, in tones of great shock. “Your mother?”

  Strangely this made Elfborn smile at Gabriel and shake his head, his eyes amused. “You really were past thinking, were you not?”

  “Well–” Gabriel said. “If you’d told me– If you’d explained– As it was I thought everything… everything I’d thought you to be was a lie, and possibly that you intended to kill me and keep me… I thought….” A red tide swept upwards through his skin, giving him the appearance of glowing red from within. “One reads of such things. Of people who… of people who are only… interested when someone is… that is, reanimated. It’s one of the reasons it’s illegal, and yet there are rings of them that they catch sometimes.”

  “You thought I’d kill you and reanimate you for sexual purposes?” Elfborn asked, and his voice sounded shocked but also as though he were on the verge of laughing.

  Which didn’t last long, as
Seraphim grabbed him by the front of his shirt and half-lifted him from the sofa. “You will not speak of such things in front of Her Highness. You will remember your company and you will–”

  “Let him go,” Nell said, and was shocked to see herself obeyed instantly. She could really grow to like this princessing. Unfortunately, she was almost sure there were drawbacks. She sighed and turned to Seraphim who managed to look both embarrassed and vaguely confused about why he should be embarrassed. “Your Grace, I grew up on Earth. You have seen, and read, enough of our entertainment since you’ve been here to know I will not swoon at the mention of sexual practices no matter how vile. I hadn’t thought of it, but of course, in a world where necromancy is possible there will be a sex trade for reanimated corpses – and yes, I consider that absolutely vile. But it won’t make me swoon.” Something had formed in her mind. It wasn’t a suspicion, but more like a sudden falling of a jigsaw puzzle into place. It was as though a hundred half-seen looks, a hundred glimpses of expressions, a hundred half seen gestures had come together in that moment. She took a deep breath, aware she was going to poke her nose into a can of worms. But it had to be done, she thought, or the three of them were going to continue talking around things, and Seraphim would keep erupting at the worst times, trying to protect her, and making it impossible for her to piece together what Elfborn knew.

  “You said two capital crimes,” she said, and looked at Elfborn. “I am not fully aware of your laws, but I know that in our time, when society was close to yours, homosexuality was a capital crime, though rarely enforced and never for people of high birth.”

  “I’m not of high birth,” Elfborn said.

  “So you and…,” she glanced at Gabriel Penn who was looking like he’d lost the power of speech. Also, like he would presently have a heart attack. She hoped Elfborn would be quicker with a resurrection spell if that happened. “...and Mr. Penn were lovers?”