Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

by Sarah Hoyt

  “But why?” Seraphim said, striving not to show that in fact this was the final blow. He’d had pride stripped from him, and love too – because he knew better than to think he could aspire to Nell – and now his title, the title he’d resented but strived to deserve, was taken from him too.

  And the heart could not stand it. But it had to stand it. This too he would endure. This too he would survive. His father was the duke, and Seraphim would return to being a dutiful son. It wasn’t as though he had illusions about the Duke’s ability to actually perform his duties. It wouldn’t do. No. The Duke would be the Duke, and Seraphim would retreat to the obscurity of managing everything – at least what Papa didn’t squander. The Duke would, Seraphim supposed, resume his duties as witchfinder. And Seraphim would have the estate management and the books to balance. And in the fullness of time he’d find some nice, steady girl to marry – with Papa’s consent – and produce children for the succession.

  It was what would have given him great joy, even a year ago. But now…now he’d have to do it alone, without Gabriel’s supporting presence. And he’d have to learn again the quiet ways of keeping Papa in check.

  He looked at his mother, saw her looking at his father, realized that – despite all his faults, his roguish inability to keep himself to her only – she loved him. She was glad he was alive. Seraphim ought to be glad for her.

  But Seraphim’s father was looking at the young man with Seraphim, and Seraphim realized it must seem very odd, since they were both mostly naked and looked like they’d crawled through a furnace. He opened his mouth to explain. “This is Raphael. I don’t know his sur—”

  “His surname is Ainsling. I met his mother on Earth,” Seraphim’s father said. “Barbara, before I met you. I was trying to forget—” There was a pause. “His mother died giving birth, and his aunt took him to raise. I have… visited. But he disappeared. Two years ago. We thought—”

  The young man nodded. “I was lured with, of all things, a job advertisement. Sydell…”

  “Ah,” the duke said. “Ah.” Into the silence poured all the horrors that Seraphim could well imagine, of two years in that cave. He’d never ask the man – his older brother? – what it took to survive, in that place where so many were now skeletons. There were things you can’t want to know, even if someone else had to live through them. And besides, Seraphim’s all-too-vivid imagination told him he didn’t want to know.

  The angel names given his children were something he must get out of Papa and soon, though they might not mean any more than a personal eccentricity. But right then there was something more pressing, “You’re older than I,” Seraphim said, in a controlled voice. “That means you’re the heir.”

  “Not for all the tea in China,” the man said.

  “Nonsense, Seraphim,” the duke said. “His mother wouldn’t marry me…. And then I met your mother.”

  Seraphim was going to ask more – about Raphael’s mother and who she was and, given the man’s resemblance to both himself and Gabriel, whether his mother too had looked like the fairy princess who’d captured the duke’s heart. But all sound stopped on his lips.

  A centaur had galloped up, and now crouched upon its front knees, in the way centaurs did, that passed for bowing. “The king of Fairyland,” he proclaimed, “wants to speak to all of you.”

  A Moth To the Sun

  Marlon found himself, suddenly, in an immense, white hall. Confused he looked up. Shocked, he said, “Gabriel!”

  Gabriel sat on the throne of Fairyland, a throne of crystal and light. And yet, he wore the clothes he’d worn as the servant of the Darkwaters – a somber suit of good stuff, nothing too expensive, but respectable enough – and looked just like the old Gabriel.

  He might have been the incoming student, sitting quietly in Marlon’s lecture, so many years ago. Oh, older, perhaps, but the same cursed green eyes that had looked up at Marlon’s with an odd sort of hopelessness, now looked down at him from the throne.

  Gabriel smiled, a smile that looked sadder than his eyes, and said his real name, in the elven tongue, in liquid syllables that the human tongue couldn’t hope to pronounce, then added, “But you may call me Gabriel.” The sad smile again. A deep breath. “You saved me. By giving me your magic, unquestioningly, at the right time. You saved me, and you let the prophecy happen. In exchange, I can give you—” Another deep breath, and those despairing eyes gazing into his. “I can offer you a title in Fairyland. Pick what you want. Duke or Marquis, or what you wish. Only… Only stay, Marlon. Stay in Fairyland and be of us.”

  Marlon looked up. The ice-looking throne, and Gabriel upon it, looking as he always had. And then he saw the trap. There were always traps in Fairyland. One had to watch for them. And to expect plain dealing from its kin was akin to expecting dryness from a rain storm. “Gabriel,” Marlon said.

  Gabriel looked as he’d always done, but he wasn’t. He’d pulled his majesty back into himself, to appear inoffensive and mortal. He had chosen his old clothes to lull Marlon into believing nothing had changed. But Marlon’s magical eyes could see the tendrils of power infiltrating and expanding everything, twisting and writhing through all that was Fairyland, which was to say the heart of magic, slowly expanding through all the universes.

  The power, so immense, on that throne, was not something that Marlon’s all-too-mortal mind could even comprehend.

  If he stayed, if he continued to love the small part of it that was Gabriel, Marlon would be consumed as surely and as completely as a moth in love with the sun.

  He felt as though his heart were being pulled from his living body, but he had once already tried to hold onto a love that could no longer be, and through it created a living hell for what remained of the man he’d loved. He bit at his lower lip, a quick lance of pain, to recall himself to reality. “I can’t, sire. I can’t, milord. I am not wholly of Fairyland, and I have duties. For if you are here, my natural father must be dead, and I must – I believe I am the last of the line.”

  He felt as though something had snapped. Gabriel had been holding onto one last forlorn hope, Marlon realized, and, being the king of Fairyland, hadn’t been able to prevent himself from holding out one last enchantment, a magical trap to convince Marlon to fall in on the side the king wanted.

  A long silence, and then Gabriel laughed, a laugh that sounded surprisingly like his old laugh, but that echoed in strange harmonics that resonated with the magical parts of himself. “I should have let you keep the slave spell on me, my friend,” he said, softly, amusement and sadness mingling in his voice. “Then they couldn’t force me to be what I must be. It cost me more than you can guess, to give up that mortal life—”

  He was silent again, and when he spoke, it was with the force, the majesty of the sovereign of Fairyland, “Go then from us, Lord Sydell. Yours is an old and respected title. May you bring it the honor it should have had. We shall speak with our brother the mortal king of Britannia to end your exile and give you what is due to you.”

  And with that, Marlon was alone in his lodgings. In the corner lay something. He didn’t need to look closely to know that what remained of Aiden Gypson had also left him.

  There was relief in it, of course, and joy too, for Aiden’s sake, but he’d never known he could feel so thoroughly, so unutterably alone.

  Paying Dues

  Seraphim found himself before the throne of Fairyland. It was hard to tell exactly what the room looked like. It seemed to extend in all directions, and be full of people, but if you turned your head, all you saw was white marble pavement extending till forever.

  Gabriel sat on the throne, only it was not Gabriel. Not the brother that Seraphim had known, the friend he’d shared his adventures with. Instead, it was something … not human. There was the human there, but submerged, like the dark shadow at the center of a light.

  Dark wasn’t exactly right, either, since Gabriel seemed to be attired in something that might well be woven crystal and light. And ye
t, his expressions were those that Seraphim knew.

  There was gladness and relief at seeing them, at knowing they were alive and well. There was amusement and affection in his look at his father, and affection and slight sorrow in his look at Seraphim, and a look at Raphael that told Seraphim that Gabriel at least knew very well what the man had had to do to survive in the dragon’s den, and didn’t like it any better than Seraphim liked his own imaginings.

  They stood staring at Gabriel. Belatedly, it occurred to Seraphim, they ought to bow, but then Gabriel was speaking to their father. “Father,” Gabriel extended something. It was a small, circular silver object, and it took Seraphim a moment to realize it was his father’s pocket watch. “It might have kept you from being killed,” Gabriel said. “But might I say it is a bad place to keep a soul? I would take it now into yourself, sir, and trust in more mundane protections.”

  And their father, who had never in his life looked embarrassed, now managed it. He said, “Well, with Sydell on the prowl… Well….”

  “It was almost captured several times,” Gabriel said. “And then it was lost and it took me all my power to retrieve it from where it was fallen. Take it, sir. The rest of us carry our souls with us, and, you might find, it helps you act more human, more humanely, than you have done.”

  Like that, and while their father did something with the watch, he turned to Seraphim, “You will resume your duties, brother,” he said. “And I have not forgotten how difficult those were, because of the lack of funds.” There was a gesture, and then, from the dark, something that was no more than a sketch of light – with wings? – put a large trunk in front of Seraphim. “Those, my brother, are for you, and for the education of the young ones, Caroline and Michael, and I assume the education of prince Akakios, too, who barred himself from our world through his choices. You will have to provide for him, and I’m providing for you.”

  “Fairy gold?” Seraphim asked.

  A laugh that was much like the old Gabriel’s. “No. We do know, in our long lives, of gold that was buried and forgotten. That’s all this is. It will be transported with you, when you go. May you use it in health and for your house’s honor, Duke.”

  Seraphim blinked. “I am not—” he started but didn’t finish. There was the sense of his mother’s arm, clutching at his father’s, the sense of something that wouldn’t be said, but that his parents had talked about long before he’d seen them again.

  “Ah, I have no intention of resuming the position,” his father said. “Just reversing the succession. Parliament. A whole lot of bother.” He cleared his throat. “Your mother and I… That is, I have identities and lives and… sometimes property in other worlds, and I only strayed because your mother couldn’t go with me, and now—”

  “I shall make paths through Fairyland free to you,” Gabriel said. “So you can cross wherever you wish to go.”

  Seraphim thought, suddenly, that he was the most despicably inconsistent of creatures. He’d thought he wanted his title and his responsibility back. He’d thought—

  But now it fell on his shoulders like a crushing burden; he realized even the gold at his feet was not enough to make up for the pain in his heart, for the loss of Nell. And that the Duke of Darkwater could even less afford to break decorum than Seraphim Ainsling could.

  Gabriel had turned to the other man. “And you my friend, when you arrive at your place, on Earth, you shall find in it those bits of the dragon treasure that will be of use in your land. Go from us, and strive to forget the years the dragon ate.”

  Raphael disappeared, and Seraphim’s father, his arm around his wife, turned as though to go, and Seraphim said, “Wait. Why the angelic names?”

  The duke looked puzzled. “I thought they would protect you. I thought you’d need it.”

  “Likely,” Gabriel said, amused, as the old duke and the duchess vanished.

  “I wonder,” Seraphim said, "whether there is a Uriel somewhere.”

  “I wouldn’t bet against it,” Gabriel said.

  “I am going to miss you,” Seraphim said.

  “I will miss you too,” Gabriel said. “As much as I can miss anything. As much as I can remember, brother.”

  Like that, Seraphim found himself standing in the middle of his bedroom, in the closed-up house at Darkwater. There was a very large trunk at his feet, which he was sure was full of gold – gold that couldn’t begin to compensate for the loss of a mother, or a love, or even a brother.

  But the Duke of Darkwater didn’t cry. He presumed now, with Sydell’s plot unraveled, he was no longer hunted. He must get his servants back, and his family. And he must see to Akakios’s settlement and education. And he must see to Caroline’s education too. And Michael’s. And he must, in the fullness of time, pick a bride.

  The Duke of Darkwater had a lot to do. Crying was the one thing he couldn’t give time to.

  Breakfast In Family

  “I don’t understand,” Caroline said, pettishly, over the breakfast table, “why I must go to boarding school. Or why Michael must go to a different boarding school.”

  Perusing the paper in front of him, with unseeing eyes, Seraphim said, “Because there are no schools that take both boys and girls. Because now that Mama is no longer with us, you must learn things of deportment and dress that I am simply not qualified to teach you. Because you will eventually be presented and have to maintain your status, so that you can marry Akakios when he comes of age.”

  “I don’t understand either,” Caroline said. “Why the king made Akakios a duke. He is a prince.”

  “Of centaurs, which don’t exist in our world. The prophecy bars him from Fairyland, and he can’t turn into a centaur here. So, we are paying for his education, and the king has made some sort of exchange with Fairyland, which has created him an earldom. You will be well provided for.”

  “I don’t want to be well provided for if it means going to school and only seeing all of you on holidays.”

  Seraphim didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on a picture in the front page of the paper.

  “And I don’t understand, either,” Caroline said. “Why Nell must marry the nasty Prince of Lombardy. And I don’t care if everyone thinks it’s so romantic. It’s not. I saw at her coronation as princess how she looked at you. And I saw how she looked at you when you were officially created the king’s witchfinder. It isn’t right for people to marry people they don’t love.”

  “Sometimes,” Seraphim said, “it is their duty.” He had tried to do his duty. He’d offered to marry Honoria. It had only got Jon to laugh in his face and say, “For a mad woman, clean out of her head, who needs to be led around by her hand, and have everything done like a toddler, my sister attracts a lot of marriage proposals.”

  “A lot of—”

  “I saw Sydell this morning,” Jonathan said. And to Seraphim’s face. “The son. The one we knew as Marlon Elfborn. I understand he was your brother’s—” For a horrible moment, Seraphim feared that Jon was about to say something graphic that involved the word “tup," but he seemed to be a different Jonathan these days. “Well, never mind that. He offered for Honoria, and I accepted.”

  “But—”

  “My dear Seraphim,” Jonathan said. “The child she carries is his half-brother. He feels obliged to look after her and the child. And it is succession for him. And unlike you, he will not feel the need of a woman for his present comfort.” He grinned, the impish grin of the old Jonathan Blythe, even though he sat in his office, and wore a mourning armband for his father, who had blown out his brains in this same office. “My dear Seraphim! He made me the most stiff-lipped speech, about his duty and how one isn’t put in this world only for one’s own pleasure.” A deep sigh. “He could have been you. As though I didn’t have duty enough in my own life. It is all very depressing.”

  It was all very depressing. If Seraphim had been allowed to marry Honoria, at least he would have had an excuse for how barren and empty his life was. Duty and more duty
. It was all duty.

  A visitor

  Lord Sydell sat in his office, looking out the window over his lands. From where he sat there was a copse of trees visible, turned all the autumnal colors.

  He got up and paced to the window. His son – well, the one the world would always know as his son – had been born yesterday, a healthy lad, more human than Marlon himself and perhaps more stable, since there was nothing of dryad in him, and the dragon was very little.

  Marlon had felt it incumbent upon himself to keep the child from the homes for magical orphans, to keep him from opprobrium and shame. He would be brought up as the legitimate son of the son, and he would grow with an adoptive father who would, Marlon thought, be very able to love him, despite everything.

  It would be interesting to see a child growing up, to teach him to fish, to read him books.

  For now, there was a nanny hired, because the little tyke’s mother wasn’t capable, even, of looking after herself.

  He’d been told she would not last long, and he mourned that. Though she was a shell of a woman, his duty to her, the supervising of her nurses, the daily visit to her chambers, in which he reassured her that all was well and she was safe, were anchors in his life.

  Now the child and having the child raised as normal, as average as possible for someone with dragon blood, must be his anchor. The one anchor he wanted he could not have.

  He had this: the title he never wanted, the lands he never coveted, the child he hadn’t sired. On his grounds, too, he had Aiden’s grave. He knew no essence of Aiden remained behind, but he visited the grave in the evenings, and it gave him the solace of memory of a time not so duty-bound.

  He heard a sound behind him, the clearing of a throat, and turned around, sure it was his butler, Miller, with some minor point of household etiquette.