Free Novel, Witchfinder, chapter 39-40

*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.  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  all in one big lump, which makes it easier to read 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. *

A Blessing Of Unicorns

You must not hurt them or kill them, Caroline thought, on the edge of the sacred clearing, staring at the unicorns with their blood stained horns.  How could she defend herself from these magical creatures without doing either of those?

Her mind…  The force of her mind.  She thought of the dragon touching her with the fire, the feeling that every impurity had burned away.  Perhaps that was it.  Perhaps.

One way or another, she thought, as she held the sword in both hands, she’d have to do it.  One way or another, she’d have to step into the clearing.  If she could not figure out how to use her mind force, or whatever her virtue the centaurs talked about was, she would just be a smear on the floor of the clearing.  This might be ultimately the end of it, but she must at least try.

She stepped over the threshold into the clearing.  There should have been a magic shock, a sense of having violated a boundary.  There wasn’t.  She was between two trees and onto soft grass.

Five unicorns were running towards her at once.  She raised the sword, hoping to stop them.  They didn’t even slow, but rushed…

One of them, nearer, plunged his horn into…  She thought he’d plunged his horn into her thigh, but she couldn’t feel it, even as a flower of blood bloomed through her skirt.

It seemed to Caroline that time had slowed down and that everything was happening very slowly.  It seemed to her that she stared for hours at the blood seeping through her skirt, even though she knew it must have been less than a breath, because the seemingly-frozen-in-mid leap unicorns were still approaching her.  

They would pierce her multiple times with their horns.  She would be a smear on the clearing grass.  She–

No.  The voice came out of nowhere, very clear.  No, not a voice because it wasn’t someone else’s word, or someone else’s decision, but her own, coming from within.   No.  Just that, forceful and serene.

No, she would not be a smear on the grass.  No, she was not going going to die.  No, she was not going to let the young centaur, Akakios – didn’t that mean no-evil? – die.  No.  These beautiful, ethereal death instruments could just think again.

She twisted around, the sword heavy in her hands, and pushed the unicorns away with it, trying not to bludgeon or smite, but merely use the sword as a shield.  Meanwhile, her mind reached, her magic searching for a strong mind.

There would be a strong mind, here.  Horses were, after all, herd animals.  That meant someone, probably a stallion, was the leader of the herd.

She found him, to her surprise – a tall white creature standing by the cage.  He was three hands taller than the others, and his horn gleamed like pure gold.  He must have felt the touch of Caroline’s mind, because he lowered his head in an aggressive gesture and looked as if he’d charge.

She never gave him time.  She remembered the dragon and the words that everything that was weak and impure in her had been burned away, and she threw her magic – all of her strength and her will power – at the creature, pushing at its mind.

The mind of a unicorn was not – as the legends said – pure magic, or pure anything.  Or perhaps it was, except that its purity was the purity of clear animal impulses, not muddied by reason or thought.

The mind she touched was an animal mind – a magical animal, but an animal nonetheless.  She pushed into it forcefully, finding the mind that controlled it – an older, stronger and definitely human mind.  It controlled the unicorn not directly, but by being its master, the way Caroline controlled her pony’s actions at home, because she was the one who carried sugar lumps in her pockets which could cause the pony to prance and nuzzle for the reward.

Very well.  It was time to break that control.  She seized the animal’s mind and made it known to him that she would not – now or ever – be hurt by it or its stallions.  She let it know she was the master, and gave it just a touch of the pain she could bring to bear, should it continue misguided attacks.

For a long time, she thought nothing would happen, then the head came up.  The unicorns that had been mid-charge in her direction averted their jump, sometimes falling in ways that looked disastrously painful.

Caroline, a horse lover, would normally have stopped and tried to find out if the animals were hurt, of if her magic could heal them – but the moment she realized she would not be skewered on those horns, the pain hit from her leg.

It was horrible pain, blotting out her thought, and for a second she swayed and took a deep, long breath, feeling as though there were no space in her mind for anything but the pain.  Sweat sprang to her forehead, soaking her hair, plastering it to her skull.

She reeled.  And then through the pain, her gaze focused on the cage.  Or perhaps it was the sound of the centaurs behind her, shouting something about Akakios.

Her eyes focused on the centaur in the iron cage, looking as though he would presently lose consciousness, his head inclined, his horse-body leaning on the cage bars.  She must save Akakios.

It took all her will power, all her strength of mind to force herself to walk.  She remembered the story of the little mermaid who’d become a human princess at the pain of each of her steps being as though taken on knives.  It felt to her now, that every step she took on that leg was taken on knives.  More, she could feel blood running down her leg to her ankle and sloshing into her shoe.  She knew there was an important artery in the leg, and that she could be dead in minutes.  It didn’t matter.

At some time, perhaps when she was very small, she’d heard her father tell a war story.  He’d said something about when you’re in a war, you have a duty to fulfill, and it doesn’t matter if you chose your duty or not, you must do it, even if it costs you your life – and that the pain and suffering to fulfill your duty doesn’t matter, so long as you fulfill it.

She could no longer remember what the story was about, or whom it spoke of, but she understood this now applied to her situation.  She had chosen to come into fairyland to find and free Michael.  If she wanted to fulfill that mission, she must help three people – or three creatures – who needed her help.  Akakios was the second of those.

The task might not be of her choosing, but the mission was.  If she died, she would die in pursuit of her mission.

Gritting her teeth against the unbearable pain, she realized she was using the sword to help support herself, as she crossed the clearing.  What an ignominous use for an eldritch weapon.

She found herself near the cage an eternity later.  She couldn’t have told exactly how she got there, only that she had.  A moment of panic, through the stinging sweat in her eyes, as she realized she had no key to open that lock.  And then in desperation, she raised the sword, and inserted it between the bars, and pried…

The cage door opened.  Akakios jumped out.  Relieved, Caroline let go a little of her iron will…  And the unicorns snorted and reared.

“Lady,” Akakios said.  His arms were around her, unexpectedly powerful.  In her confusion she thought that she shouldn’t let a centaur embrace her.  They were dangerous.  They–

“Lady, let me take you out of here, before you lose your control over the beasts.”

And then she was held in his arms, as he galloped to the edge of the clearing.

How odd, she thought.  He looked much less young and helpless, now that he was out of the cage.

    The Duke’s Duty

“Centaurs?” Seraphim asked.  He felt shaken to the core at the realization that Gabriel had committed a crime, and a capital crime at that.

Oh, he’d known – hadn’t he? – that Gabriel was in love with the necromancer. Seraphim had tried to tell himself it was no such thing, but it was not just Gabriel’s refusal to form any other connections after he returned to Darkwater.  There was also…  The look in his eyes when anything relating to the debacle at Cambridge had been mentioned.

And yet, Seraphim had convinced himself it had been seduction.  More, it had been seduction of one too young and innocent to know what was forward.  And the necromancer bore sole responsibility.

But if Gabriel had used a compulsion spell…  Seraphim shook his head.  No.  There was no time to think about it now.

Gabriel might not be who or what Seraphim had thought he was – maybe.  There was more to a man than the follies he committed in love.  Seraphim’s own father had committed follies enough in love, the siring of Gabriel being perhaps the smallest one.  Which hadn’t made him, as Seraphim had found out when he’d discovered Papa’s secret papers and his even more secret activities, less of a hero, or less of an honorable man.  Only children thought creatures came in perfect packages, all good or all evil.

Judging Gabriel’s soul was not Seraphim’s job, at any rate, something for which he would be eternally grateful.  Judging him temporally, might be, as his Lord and head of his house.  But that was neither here nor there, as Avalon’s law system didn’t apply here.

Instead, what was Seraphim’s duty, left to him by his father, was to keep every member of his family safe, and at that Seraphim had been failing miserably.  If someone were to be judged here, Seraphim would receive the harshest judgement of all.

So, he sat down, and asked the necromancer, “Centaurs?”

The man looked up and had the decency to give him an anguished look.  “I thought there was no harm.  Of course the king forbid anyone to travel into another world, even to rescue his daughter.  I even understand the justification for it.  The balance of power is such that the least magician in Avalon can control vast portions of other, less magical worlds.  But the centaurs were not asking me to come to this world – or any world. They just wanted to know where the princess was.  So I scried and found her.”  He stopped, and made a face.  “I swear it was not till afterwards – that I realized that this must have meant they wanted to send someone for her.  To rescue her?”

“Antoine,” Nell said.  It wasn’t a question.  She said it with decision, with absolute certainty.  And Seraphim nodded, and looked at Marlon again.  “When did you realize it?  And don’t tell me it was just a thought.  Something happened, something that told you why they wanted her location, and what they meant to do with it.”

“Yes.  Well.  I checked later, and I found she was in our world.  You see, they sent someone, an emissary of theirs, possibly a centaur, to find her.”

“A centaur?” she said.  “Antoine was not a centaur.”

“You wouldn’t have known,” Seraphim said, cutting off her protest, and continuing as he saw her open her mouth.  “So they sent someone to goad her into the kingdom.  Why?  In the name of what?”

“I don’t know,” Marlon said.  “Except that I know my father is involved in it.  As are the Blaines.”

“The Blaines?” Seraphim asked, felling suddenly frozen, as though someone had poured a bucket of cold water over him.  “Of Blaine Blessings?”

“Yes,” Marlon said.  Gabriel made some sound and looked at Seraphim and Seraphim, feeling a headache coming on, could only think that he’d found the note in his father’s writings that an alliance with Blaine’s Blessings should be procured at all costs.  he’d thought it meant…  He reeled back a little.  Had he been that wrong?

“For heaven’s sake, man, what can all this cryptic stuff mean?”

“I don’t know,” Marlon said.  “My exile made it difficult for me to investigate.  All I know is that there is a plot and that you and your family have now got ensnared in it.”

Seraphim cleared his throat.  That much had also become obvious to him.  And he’d let them be ensnared, even though they were his responsibility.  He cast a look at Nell’s profile, grave and attentive as she looked at Marlon.

Part of his confusion, Seraphim thought, had come from his attraction to her, the attraction he hadn’t even wanted to acknowledge.  Much good it would do him, he thought, to want the Princess Royale, the heir to the throne of Avalon.

It was time to stop being as foolish as Gabriel, and for as impossible a love.  Perhaps it ran in the family.

But Gabriel wasn’t the head of the family.  Seraphim was.  Time to stop acting like a moon calf, and start protecting those who were his to protect.