Free Novel WitchFinder, Chapter 44

*Sorry this is late.  We had a doctor’s appointment this morning, so it threw everything out and the chapter is late and skimpy.  I meant to go on to the next, but then it would be mid-afternoon by the time I posted, so…  Oh, and somehow Blythe has become Blain, I note.  Well, it fits better, but it’s just weird.  Sometimes I hate my mind.*

*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. *

The Explosion, The Princess, and The Brother

Two women stood over him moving their lips.  That’s how Gabriel first thought of it.  Two women.  He could see a power signature around each of them, though one was markedly odd.  The older one’s.  Not from Avalon.  Different.  He stared at her, narrowing his eyes.  She was moving her lips in a way that indicated she was talking, but he couldn’t hear anything at all.  So she wasn’t talking.  Perhaps it was a spell.

It didn’t look like a spell.

He looked at the other woman, still frowning.  A small, slim, dark-haired woman, quite young and with that sort of bearing that people always said meant she had a lot of countenance.  She had a large aura of power and there was something about her that he should remember.

Her lips too were moving, insistently, and now she reached over and grabbed his shoulder in a way that seemed overly familiar and moved her lips exaggeratedly.  The other woman caught at her hand and pulled it away, but not before Gabriel had seen enough of her lip movements to have his mind piece them out.  “Seraphim.”

Like that it all rushed in on him.  The girl was the long lost princess of Avalon, and she and Seraphim had come here, to the Madhouse, to seek refuge from attempts to kill them by sending them to hostile worlds.  And Marlon…

He sat up and said, quite loudly, “Marlon!  Elfborne?”  He didn’t hear himself either.  The explosion?  His ears?  He didn’t remember hearing a sound from the explosion at all, but sitting in the garden, he turned his head towards the room he’d just left and his mouth gaped open.  The entire room – the portion of the basement that was visible just beneath the bottom floor, seemed to have blown out.  The little lowered area where the stairs to the basement door had been, had been blown entirely out, and the basement itself must have been blown out, because the foundation of the house looked askew.

    The women were trying to call his attention, gesturing at him, but he had no idea at all what their gestures meant.  He couldn’t remember any sound from the explosion.  He had no idea why he couldn’t hear them.  But his mind slowly assembled that the explosion had come from where Marlon was.  Marlon!

He scrambled up to his feet, first at a shambling gait that involved his knees and his hands, before he found his balance, not so much walking as flinging himself forwarded, towards the little room, towards–

He found himself, tottering, at the edge of what was, reasonably, a crater.  A black-scorched crater that extended under the house.  One of the foundation beams must have been sundered or perhaps made askew, because the house was tilting downward there.  But– But all there was where the little basement room had been was a vast expanse, coated with what looked like black glittering dust, as though a great flame had gone by leaving it quite scorched, carbonized, and covered in ice.

Which was… exactly what it was, Gabriel thought.  It was not a physical explosion, but a magical explosion.  Slowly, very slowly, he let himself down from his standing position to his knees, then back to sit on his heels.  It was either that or fall forward into the crater and though it was fading fast, he could see now, narrowing his eyes, that there was still a fading magical field around it.  What it would do to him, if he fell into it, was an experiment he’d rather not perform.

The older woman put her hand on his shoulder, and when he looked up, he realized she was really doing some sort of magic now.  It was hard to tell what.  Though her finger-movements were cabalistic, and her words seemed to be measured and ritualistic – from what he could tell of her lip movements, the fact was that what he could see made no sense.  If someone had taken an Avalon spell and turned it inside out and sideways, he’d still have recognized it for what it was.  This was rather more akin to what would happen if someone to an Avalon spell and threw out all the important points, leaving only the form and some of the incidentals.

He blinked.  Then he heard and felt a loud pop.  It was something he had experienced before, once, when his father had taken him up on a magical rug.  It had been a foreign attraction brought to London by some Eastern merchant-rug.  They’d set up in the park and for a shilling you could go up.  Since the occasion coincided with a visit by the Duke to London, and since, when away from the house he treated both of them disturbingly alike, he’d taken both boys up on the magical rug.

Though going up had not made Gabriel quite deaf, it had made it sound as though all the sounds were very distant, and mufled and confused too.

The effect had persisted upon landing, until his ears had given a loud pop, and suddenly he could hear normally.  The same happened now, because he heard the girl– No.  Her Highness the Princess Royale, say, “– Where his Grace has gone.  His bed is undisturbed, but he couldn’t have failed to have come at the sound.”

Seraphim.  He looked towards the princess.  “Your highness!” he said.  “When is the last time you saw my brot– Darkwater?”

“Oh, please, call me Nell,” she said, blushing a little, and then said.  “So you can hear now.  Grandma–”

“It was a quick healing spell,” the older lady said.  “Mr.–”

“Pen,” Gabriel supplied automatically.

“Your brother and Nell came up, and Nell was explaining to me what had happened, and he excused himself and went to his room.  We didn’t think anything of it, assuming he needed to use the bathroom or something, and then–”

“And then there was the explosion, and he didn’t come down, and he’s in the affected side of the house, and I thought…  We called him, but there was no answer, and he doesn’t seem to be anywhere.”  She looked towards what had been the basement.  “What happened here?  What caused this?  And where is Mr. Marlon?”

Where was Marlon?  For that matter, where was the furniture that had been in the room.  Oh, surely it couldn’t have resisted the force of the explosion, and some of it might be part of the carbonized layer all over the interior of the room.  But not all.  Even a magical explosion of this magnitude would leave behind debris.  There would be pieces of sofa and table and– He swallowed hard at the thought of pieces of Marlon.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “It’s a magical explosion.  Have you ever–”

“No,” the princess said, then, quite shocked, “Is that ice over the walls?”

“Yes, and char too.  But…  I’ve never seen it either,” he said.  “But we studied them in school, Seraphim and I.  It’s…  the explosions are possible only for people of very high magical power, when they do something that is really wrong.  I…”  He shook his head.  “We were told for instance, it could happen if two different transport spells, in two different directions were applied to the same room, at the same time.”  He swallowed again.  Could that be it?  Had Marlon and Seraphim said transport spells both of them at the exact same time?  But that would only make sense, given that the explosion centered in the basement and the ceiling above it seemed charred but intact, if they’d both been in the same room.  And he was willing to bet they weren’t.  “Or two spells, both highly charged that contradict each other.  But this…”

But this was destruction of a magnitude he’d not been taught in school.  He’d been taught he might explode a table, or set fire to a chandelier.  Even for that enormous power was needed on both sides of the misguided spells.  For this–

“Was it Mr. Marlon?” the princess asked.

Gabriel shook his head before he knew why, then caught the glimmers in the force field that told him it couldn’t be.  “No,” he said, and to his own years his voice sounded slow and incredulous, as though he were speaking nonsense and even he couldn’t understand it.  “No.  There is dragon magic there and…”

“And?”

“Unicorn?” he said.  And it sounded as crazy as it was.  Unicorns were animals.  They didn’t set spells.  “Marlon,” he said.  “Got caught in the cross spell.”

“Is he dead,” from the princess, and she sounded like she was worried Gabriel would start crying or something.  She need not be.  He was not absolutely sure what he felt for Marlon Elfborn, except he knew from experience that love was not so easily nor so thoroughly killed.  He might not wish to have anything more to do with the man, but yes, knowing of his death would still grieve Gabriel.  Except that it didn’t. The idea that Marlow might be dead, that his body, carbonized, might now be part of the dark coating beneath the ice made no impact at all on Gabriel’s emotions, beyond a distant sort of horror.

“I don’t know,” he said, simply, then added.  “I hope not.”  And then because he must know.  “And Seraphim?  Where was Seraphim?”

“Two floors above,” the princess pointed.  “In his room.”

“May I see?”

She nodded and led him upward.  “You have to be very careful there,” she said.  “I’ll stay here.  I’ve braced that part of the house magically, and we think it will hold until we can get a construction company in to brace it properly and… and repair the damage, though what they’ll think caused it, I don’t know, but until it can be done, the floor will be unstable.  So, I’ll wait here, not to add unecessary weight, and you tread carefully.”

He refrained from telling her it was his dearest wish to do jumping jacks on an unsound floor, and instead walked slowly forward, on the creaking floor, to the door she had indicated.

The room was spacious, well furnished, and quite empty.  He could see on the dressing table Seraphim’s pocket watch, which they’d got from their father, and which was rigged to tell them when someone in another world was in danger.  Over the chair of the dressing table was Seraphim’s dressing gown.  It looked like it had been washed and mended from what must have been interesting adventures.  

Gabriel approached the dressing table, touched the dressing gown, not sure what he was looking for.

A shrill noise surprised him, before he realized it was the watch giving alarm.  Someone somewhere was in trouble.

They’d never figured out whose trouble precisely the watch picked up nor why, for surely it couldn’t be everyone in the universe in trouble for possessing magic at that precise moment.  Given the multitude of worlds, there would be too many people in that situation.

He picked the watch up, flipped it open, and, lacking a proper scrying surface, looked into the mirror above the dressing table.

In the mirror, very clearly, he saw Seraphim.  He had his back against a moss-grown wall and was surrounded by mastiffs.

Gabriel didn’t think.  Couldn’t think.  He pressed the right button on the watch and let the spell take him there.