Free Novel — Witchfinder, chatper 13

UPDATE:  A SLIGHTLY EDITED AND PRETTIED UP COMPILATION OF ALL CHAPTERS UP TO A WEEK OLD IS HERE

*This is the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.  I’ve been posting director’s commentary at the end of chapters, but I think it detracts from the experience, so I’ll do that on Sunday, instead, for the previous chapter.  If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, do hit the donate button on the right side and down.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.   And, oh, yeah, the cover sucks, but I haven’t had time for a new one.

Oh, this is in pre-earc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet.*

For first chapter, look here

For 12th chapter, look here

Changeling

Nell clutched the blanket tightly around herself and wondered what madness she’d fallen into.  The entire night – indeed, the entire time since her interview with Sydell had acquired a feeling of unreality.

She had to be dreaming.  Antoine could not be dead, lying cold and pale on the floor, on that makeshift pallet, staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes.  Antoine had been…

In her mind she remembered the first time she’d seen him, dressed in jeans and a pale blue t-shirt and looking very much like a twenty something year old computer repairman.  Which was what he’d said he was, that first time he’d taken her out for coffee.  But then there had come the hints that not all was as it seemed, you have great power he’d told her, and, by the time he’d shown her how to open a portal, by the time he’d given her a glimpse of other worlds, it had become obvious to her that he didn’t mean this as a metaphor.

Perhaps the dream started then, she thought.  Perhaps if she closed her eyes and believed really hard, she’d wake up back at her desk, in front of a computer running some routine.

“Caroline,” Darkwater said.  He spoke very softly, his voice all the more terrifying for seeming so unnaturally calm.  “What do you mean by a changeling?”

Nell didn’t want to know what he’d been doing, or what had been happening in this household since she was last year.  It was clear to her that though Seraphim had recovered from his near-brush with death – or at least this time Gabriel Penn didn’t seem to be making desperate attempts at reviving his half-brother, he still looked near death.  He was pale, his green eyes surrounded by dark circles, his lips looking dry and colorless.  And the aura of magic around him looked faded.

This was all the more puzzling since Nell gathered that more than a day had passed since she’d been here.  His power should have recovered more, unless–

Unless something else had happened to make him lose strength.  She remembered the talk by the lake, about how someone had attempted against Seraphim’s life.

The gardeners, the under-gardeners, and for all she knew the stable boys, all those men who had been on those boats, in the lake, had been – if what she understood of their talk was right – trying to record the event, so that Seraphim would not be condemned for murder.  But that meant that he had been attacked by Antoine.  Or at least he thought he had.

She felt vaguely sick.  She didn’t know when she’d stopped being in love with Antoine, but she’d never suspected him– No, that was not true, either, over the last months she’d suspected him of perfidy often enough.  She simply had never been sure enough of it to consider doing anything that would endanger his life.  It seemed like a very foolish thing to condemn a man to death simply because he might not have been straightforward with her, or because he had deceived her by telling her he loved her.

But she had suspected he had lied to her, and more.  First, because it seemed very unlikely that he’d come to Earth in search of her power, her aura of power, as he called it, guided through different worlds by the call of it.  Since she’d been in Avallonis, Nell had gathered that her power was indeed strong, and indeed large.  But to call someone between worlds?  That didn’t even make sense.  Even the stronger magicians, even with scrying powers, had to be looking for something specific before they homed in on a pattern among universes.  Simply having a strong pattern didn’t call anyone.

Second because she’d seen for herself that Antoine was strong and accomplished, and knew his way across the multi universe.  And if that was true, how could he be so foolish as to transport into Avallonis without a care, and let himself be caught in Sydell’s trap.

No, there was more there than he’d told Nell.  He had come here for some reason, and if it hadn’t been to fall into the trap, still it had to be for some reason more important than that he found the world fascinating and wanted to show it to Nell.

But still– But still Nell didn’t think that Antoine deserved to die, and now, she couldn’t think or believe that Antoine was an assassin.  Myriad ideas combated in her mind.  What if this weren’t real Antoine, but a clever simulacrum?  What if this was all designed to make her break and tell all to Darkwater?

Except Darkwater wasn’t even looking at her, but at the intense dark haired young woman, who looked so much like the Dowager Duchess.  “How do you know it’s a changeling, Caroline, and not simply Michael in a trance?”

The girl they called Caroline shook her head.  Her hands pleated nervously at the skirt of her robe.  “It’s not Michael,” she said.  “It can’t be.  Even in a trance he would wake up when I came in.  He would react to my magic.  Seraphim, he is all pale and his eyes are blank, and he looks… well, he looks more perfect than any normal human can look.  And …  And…”  Her voice rose in a wail of distress.  “Mama says it is a changeling.”

After her outburst, she took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully, and thrust her head and chest a little forward, as though she expected her brother to challenge her.  Darkwater didn’t challenge her.  He opened his mouth then closed it, then opened it again to say, in a voice that was little more than a whisper, “Mama?”  He looked up and to the side, to where Gabriel Penn stood beside the sofa, seemingly keeping guard over his wounded master.  The two men exchanged a glance that contained in it volumes of information Nell would give something to acquire.  Both of them looked grave, and whatever wordless communication between them, it didn’t dispel their fears, as both looked even more worried after it.

“One moment, Caroline,” Seraphim said.  “I will come with you, in a moment.”  He glared over his shoulder at Gabriel’s exclamation, and Nell could see Gabriel making an effort to prevent himself from further outburst.

Darwater turned away from his half-brother, and to the two men with the pallet on which Antoine lay.  “Take him to the cold room,” he said.  “We must notify the coroner of the death.  Send Jem, on a fast horse.  Tell him I will be available for interviewing no later than tomorrow afternoon.”  He looked back at his sister, “And now, Caroline, I shall come with you.”

“Your grace,” Gabriel said.  “You are not well enough to–”

“There are duties,” Seraphim said, ostensibly talking to no one in particular.  “Which one cannot delegate, no matter how tired or ill one is.”  He made an attempt to rise, supporting himself on his cane, then turned to look at Gabriel.  “Give me your arm, Penn.  I believe my strength is not equal to what I’d like it to be.”

His strength was not in fact equal to much of anything, Nell said, as she noticed how Gabriel Penn not only allowed the Duke to hold onto his arm to rise, but put his arm around the Duke’s waist to support him.  How ill was the duke, and why?  Had he really sent the killing bolt that killed Antoine?  She shivered at the idea, and, as the gentlemen who’d brought Antoine’s corpse in prepared to take him out again, she realized she’d been forgotten.

The Duke and Penn were following Caroline Darkwater out of the room and Nell thought she could stay here, until Darkwater had solved whatever problem had now visited his house, and came back to his room, and remembered Nell existed.  Or she could go with Antoine’s body and keep up some sort of vigil in the cold room – perhaps try to discover if that truly was Antoine’s corpse or some contrivance that looked like it.  Or…  Or she could follow Darkwater and Gabriel Penn and find out what had happened to the Duke’s younger brother and what else might be behind the turmoil in this household.

She pulled her blanket tighter about herself.  It truly didn’t make her any warmer, because her hair was dripping wet.  But it made her feel somehow more protected.  And then she started behind the Duke and his half-brother, as though she had every right to follow them.

The gardeners were waiting, with Antoine’s body, but she thought that the maids, stationed on either side of the door might stop her.  So she threw her head back and looked very haughty indeed as she went by them.

The maids didn’t move.  They didn’t even look at her as she walked past.  She’d have suspected magic, only she’d learned in Avallonis the value of a good pretense and a good display of arrogance surpassed all logic.

The maids didn’t even follow as she walked after the Darkwaters and Penn down a long, marble-paved hallway.  Really, the one thing about this world that kept astonishing her was how the houses of the noblemen looked more magnificent than anything she’d ever seen on Earth.  Take the way the hallway ceiling arched above, painted a deep blue and sprinkled with gold stars.  It was like something out a theatrical set, rather than something you’d find in real life.

It would testify in favor of this being a dream, except that in dreams one’s feet didn’t ache with cold and slosh in shoes that felt like they’d fall apart every time she took a step.  And in dreams it was very rare for one’s hair to drip down ones back in a disconsolate, icy dribble.

They walked down the hallway, then up a curving staircase, then down another hallway.  As Nell tried to orient herself, she realized they were going towards the southern wing of the house, and, from what she remembered of the house’s exterior – which wasn’t much as she’d only ever seen it from the back, while approaching it, the other two times she’d magically transported into and out of it – to a little tower that protruded out of it at that corner.

She knew she was right when, ignoring the hallway to the southern wing, Seraphim, instead, opened the door to the tower.

The Darkwaters, followed by the quite disregarded Nell, entered a huge, circular room.  The tower might look small from the outside, but that was, Nell judged, because it was dwarfed by the other elements of the massive Darkwater house.  Inside, the tower was one vast room.  Vast enough that on Earth it could have passed as the lobby of a very large hotel.  Its architecture too resembled something one might find in a hotel lobby, being largely unimpeded: just one vast circular space, going up far more than one story to–

For a moment Nell looked up, disbelieving because it seemed to her as though the tower had no roof, but, instead, were open to velvety dark summer night sky, with naught but a golden spider web of some sort, between them and the night.  Then she realized the golden spider web was a framework for glass, and that the tower was one vast observatory or perhaps some sort of conservatory.  And that roof had to be held together with magic, because with the technology of this world there was no way to keep that much glass up with so little metal.

Then she looked down and realized that there was more magic at work here than the roof.  The space might be free of architectural abstractions, but it was filled with machines, and … contraptions, for which Nell had no name.

In the way of this world, these machines, no matter how utilitarian they tried to look, were made of polished brass and leather and wood, and their rounded shapes couldn’t help but looking pleasing.  And they were animated.  Arms moved, gears turned.  Something that looked like a giant telescope pointed at the ceiling, gyrated slowly on a frame, clicking gently in a steady rhythm, while a mechanical arm attached to it wrote steadily with a quill on paper.

In the middle of all this, perched on what looked remarkably like a high barstool made of brass, sat a young man, probably Caroline’s age or a little younger.  He was so young, one might still be able to call him pretty without offending too badly.  He looked like a version of Darkwater, or perhaps of Gabriel Penn, made of clay that had yet to harden, or like a sketch of one of them done hastily and left too smooth and soft.

He didn’t turn to look as the party approached.  The Dowager Duchess, who stood next to him, looking at him, intently, as though he were an object that must be puzzled out, did turn to look at them.  “Seraphim!” she said.  Then she hastened towards them, hands extended.  “You shouldn’t have come.  Indeed, you look very ill.  And there is nothing you can do here, you see.  Michael has been taken.  They’ve left this in his place.”

“Mama, are you sure–” Seraphim said, and stopped.

Nell was sure he had stopped because, like her, if he unfocused his eyes and brought his mage sight to bear, he could see that the thing on the stool was not and had never been a human adolescent.  It was more akin to an animated sculpture made of ice, or perhaps intersecting nodes of light and power.  Something that could only impersonate a human for those with no mage-sight.

Changeling.  That was a thing the elves did, wasn’t it?  Was this creature an elf then?  Or merely a construct the elves had left behind?