Free Novel Witchfinder 18

*This is the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.   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.
There is a compilation of previous chapters here and I will compile each new chapter there, a week after I post.  When the novel is completed and about to be edited the compilation page will probably be deleted.

Oh, this is in pre-arc 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 previous chapters, look here:  https://accordingtohoyt.com/witchfinder/

A Strange Land
(Sorry this is so late.  The problem is not so much writing chapters in advance.  It is writing chapters in advance, while I’m trying to answer editorial letter on DSR and finish Noah’s boy and Blood Royale.  Oh, yeah, also put up my back list with Goldport, and make sure the younger kid applies to colleges.  Add the flu on top of that, and it all collapses.  But I’m on top of it.  Practically.  Virtually.  Almost. Anyway, hope you enjoy, will try to make it longer next time.)
It was an alley, Nell realized, as she took a deep breath.  An alley bordered by tall brick buildings, which could be an alley anywhere in Avallon, or – for that matter – in any large city on Earth.  But the structure at the end of the alley was not something she’d ever seen either in Avallon or Earth.  It was purple – bright purple – and it looked like it was made of glass.   It was also roughly egg shaped, with a hole on top and an odd sheen to it.

Her first instinct was to think of it as a dumpster, but if so, these people kept the cleanest dumpsters in any of the worlds she’d visited while out with Antoine.

And on the heels of that, she tried to think of all the worlds she’d visited with Antoine.  And not to think of anything else – anything else – relating to Antoine.  Like, for instance, she truly didn’t want to think of his livid skin, his staring eyes, his … No, she wouldn’t think of it.  Or of what type of horrible spell could make a man walk and talk when he was – when he should be – by all rights dead. Much less what kind of trap this might be.

At any rate, speaking of livid skin and staring eyes, she found that Seraphim too could fit that description.  He was wearing a dressing gown.  A very pretty dressing gown, she thought, though she suspected on Earth most men would be worried about wearing something that bright and silky.  Never mind.  She knew Avalon tastes, and for Avalon tastes, it was a very refined dressing gown indeed.  He was also barefoot.  And he was clutching the loveliest black-cane-with-dragon-head.

This looked completely out of place in what seemed to be a largish city in the middle of the day, but she put that out of her mind, because, really, how did she know what people here wore.  One of the worlds she’d visited with Antoine, before coming to Avalon, had been apparently a nudist colony.  Puzzling, since England in that time was really no warmer than England in any other time.  And in another they seemed to wear vast rolls of shag carpet.  For all she knew, in this world, men dressed for business in ankle length white shirts topped with resplendent silk dressing gowns, and always carried a cane.

What worried her more was the fact that Seraphim looked distinctly unwell.  *No, really, let me think about this.  In the space of a few days, he got wounded, then he got attacked with a mage gun, and almost died, or came so close to it that the ressurection spell had to be used.  And then, not only did Antoine…  Antoine…* She took a deep breath. *Not only did someone attack him again, but he had to perform magic to defend himself.  And to defend me.  And then he was dropped head first into a weird world.  He should look completely chipper and well!*

“Your Grace,” she said.  “Your Grace?”  His eyes were trying to close, and she could hear noise coming from the head of the alley, a long way away.  The kind of noise people would make if they were looking for two oddly dressed people who might be refugees from a mental hospital, and possibly dangerous.

“Seraphim?”  This got her a little more response than *Your Grace* in that his eyes fluttered and he could be seen to visibly make an effort to wake up.  But he sagged against the brick wall and made an odd sound like a sigh.  And from the entrance of the alley came voices in an oddly accented English.

No accent could disguise the fact that someone said, “Is this where the witches went?” nor the tone in which someone else answered that perhaps they should call the police.

So, they were looking for witches, presumably the two of them.  And Nell didn’t think it was to wish them luck and give them a box of chocolates.  If she had to guess this was one of those worlds where witchcraft was forbidden for whatever reason.

She and Antoine hadn’t actually come across many of those.  Possibly because Antoine knew the general lay of the land and what kind of worlds would be best to avoid.  They’d come across worlds like Earth, where magic was disbelieved, ignored or not used, but not too many worlds where it was forbidden, much less under penalty of death.  And when they came across one by accident, Antoine got them out very quickly.  But Nell had heard of them, aplenty, particularly in Avalon literature.

It seemed that the policy that Avalon much not interfere in other worlds, to the point of letting witches and wizards be killed in other worlds, was new.  Or at least literature from a century or so ago talked about lots of rescues and daring do in other worlds.

Seraphim Darkwater sagged further and started sliding down the wall and she realized he had lost consciousness.  At the same time, from the mouth of the alley came a voice saying, “Here, Gnarr, I’m glad you got the authorities.  We’ll now get those witches, right and proper.”

She put out an arm to hold the Duke up and realized that the man was, in fact, very heavy, and that she wasn’t going to be able to carry him.  Hell, she couldn’t even drag him behind the shiny purple thing.  The best she could do was magic them somewhere.  But where?  And what if she got them somewhere worse?

There would be no time to open a magic portal to take them out of this world.  Besides, she had a strong feeling whatever the magic used to bring them here had been designed so they couldn’t return.  She still made a half hearted feel in that direction, but the betweener felt as though shut tight.

In a panic, as voices came closer, she thought she should simply use the coordinates of her room in Avalon and take them to the equivalent location in this world.  From there, she could take them elsewhere.  How much worse could it get?

Blindly, her eyes closed, her arm aching from supporting the Duke, she heard someone say “Come on out and give yourself up and it will go–”

And she thought of the coordinates and pushed.

Magic flared like fire all around her. The purple thing at the back of the alley seemed to explode.  And then she was falling head first into a body of water.

She had time to think *Not again* before she kicked up with her legs and came to the surface for a deep breath, which was when she realized that Seraphim hadn’t surfaced.

Diving back down, she saw the bright dressing gown and dove for it.  Grabbing it by the back, she dragged him to the surface, thanking the buoyancy of the water that allowed her to tow a weight considerably greater than her own.

Even so, and even after she managed to get his head above water and, hopefully breathing, it took all her strength and concentration to drag him to the edge of the water.  Fortunately it was not very far, or she’d never have been able to do it.  Even more fortunately, the river – she didn’t remember when she’d determined it was a river, but she was sure of it by the time she was pulling Seraphim out of the water – had a gradual, soft-sand bank, and she could drag Seraphim up it by stages by sitting on the sand and holding him up and pulling as she shuffled up the beach.  Had the river had steep banks or even rocky ones, the Duke would have drowned.

As it was, when she dragged him all the way out, so only his feet remained in the water, and his body lay stretched on the sand like a great beached whale, she wasn’t so sure he hadn’t drowned.  She was very tired, granted, and he was very wet, and also – she thought – very ill.  He’d been very ill even before falling into the water.  But shouldn’t his chest be moving?

She felt the side of his neck, looking for a pulse, and couldn’t find it.  His lips had a faint blueish tinge.  She put her hand on top of his mouth and couldn’t feel him breathing.  A hand pushed between the folds of his dressing gown felt no hint of a heartbeat.

Her mage sight, brought to bear with much difficulty, seemed to show a faint glow of life and magic around him, but that often subsisted at that level for a few moments after the person had stopped breathing.

*If I had a mirror,* she thought. *I would be able to tell if he was breathing.* Her own laughter startled her, as she thought that if she had the right machines, she would be able to tell if he had brain activity too.

She could use the ressurection spell.  Arguably she should.  But what if he were already dead?  She risked making him like Antoine.

The tear that fell on his already-soaked hair surprised her because she didn’t realize she was crying.  She put up a hasty hand to wipe at her eyes, and in that moment, his eyes fluttered open and he looked at her in shock.  He coughed, once, twice, then blinked.  “Why…”  He cleared his throat.  “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying,” she said, hearing the tears in her own voice and not sure why she was crying, unless it was tiredness and relief.  And then she added, as justification.  “You were dead.”

“I was?” he said, surprised.  And blinked again.  “I don’t think I was?  Unless, of course…”  He took a deep breath.  “No.  This is not the result of a resurrection spell.  I’m not a reanimated corpse.”  He took a deep breath.  “No.  I see what it is.  I… I went to your room, and then…”  His eyes widened so far they looked like they were going to split.  “There was a trap,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, soberly.  “That much I’d already realized.”

He dragged himself up to sitting, though he swayed a little with fatigue.  He looked at her as if she were a long way away and he had trouble focusing at that distance.  “I drank an awful lot of that river,” he said.

“I know,” she said.  “I dragged you out as best I could.”

“Thank you,” he said, but his expression remained distant, as if trying to think through a very difficult problem.  “Miss Felix, please tell me that there wasn’t a magic detector at the end of that alley.”

“Magic–”

“Vast purple crystal egg?  Detects magic being performed in the vicinity and imprints the pattern so the authorities can look for it.”

She nodded, dumbly, and his eyes widened more, which shouldn’t have been possible.  Then he said something that sounded like “Muffin” which apparently was a bad swear word, because he immediately looked abashed, “I apologize.  I’m sorry.  I should never– Only…  It’s the world of the priest-kings, see.  The Priest Kings of Okkar.”

“Is that bad?” she asked.  “Do they sacrifice magic users as they do in pyramids?”

“No,” Seraphim said.  “They only execute anyone with magic who isn’t related to the royal family.”