Rogue Magic — Free Novel — Chapter 38

*And now, I shall go and do cat boxes and the spots upstairs where Havey rubbed his behind in an effort to clean it :/  After that there will be subscriber’s content.  For reasons I can’t fully explain — I can, but it would involve too much and too long an explanation — my brain has been on hold most of the week.  Now it’s back.*

The prequel to this — Witchfinder — has been removed.  I do promise to go through the copyedits as soon as humanly possible and send the advance copies to those who pre-ordered.  You’ll know when that’s eminent because I’ll remove scattered chapters from this blog.  I do hope to manage it next week, but I’m not promising as I’m still finishing a novel under contract to Baen. Meanwhile, if you donate $6 and note it in the field, you’ll get advance-subscribed to this novel.  I do, however, understand it can be a long time to wait, and if you want to, do so.  I will continue to post chapters here, roughly one a week.

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

 

Ginevra Mythborne

 

I was a little surprised Jonathan agreed with me that we needed to go to fairyland.  It was about this time that I expected him to get a glimpse of the plan, or at least of the people targeted, and to probe behind my motives.

I had of course forgotten that he was a human male, and how easy it was to cloud a human male with hints and promises and allusions to mating.

He might not be all human – from that magic glow around him, I wasn’t sure, yet, that he wasn’t Hermes himself, save for the fact that someone that close to the Father in blood, couldn’t have remained on Earth long enough to become Jonathan.  A few days at most.  You needed to be as dilute a bastard as I was to be able to withstand the lack of magic on Earth for long enough to accomplish anything.

Which left us with… mostly human.  And if mostly human, he was susceptible to the tricks of my kind.  Very susceptible, as it turned.

He let me do the translation magic between universes.  Not that I meant to play him false.  Not in this at least.  But I’d expect someone as full of guile and imagination as Jonathan Blythe to wish to say the incantations himself.

Instead, he let me say them.  His eyes widened a little, then narrowed, at the old language, then he shook his head and opened his mouth, and looked like he was going to say something, but didn’t.

I was using the wayfaring incantations, in the variant popularized by Espinosa, so what happened was that instead of a fey portal opening in the middle of this very mundane room, a … a discontinuity appeared in the room, right there between the tall dresser and the red-draped chair, and through that discontinuity you could see sort of, if you squinted, a dark way that seemed to wind amid a darker meadow.

I started towards it, and Jonathan held my wrist.  “Wait,” he said.  “Wait.  Where … where does this lead?”

I turned to him and considered giving him that kind of pose that human females use to suggest attraction without saying anything verbal.  I thought to jut my hip out, to move just slightly closer to him, to go willing and meek in his grasp.  But the time wasn’t ready for it.  Whatever thoughts the old magic language and Espinosa’s embroidering upon it had sparked weren’t amorous.  I won’t say he was all business.  There was a good bit of the trickster in him. But his eyes were narrowed, and I could almost hear him trying to think through things.

“To Fairyland,” I answered truthfully, willing to let him see my truthfulness and my quiet certainty.

He growled at me – or at least he made a sound of impatience in his throat that was very close to a growl.  “Don’t try that on me.  There are many points in fairyland.  Where are you taking me.”

“Fairyland doesn’t have a defined geography,” I said.  “Too much magic for that.  It has in fact, a mutable and always changing geography, a—”

“I’m not a child, Miss Mythborn.  I was not born yesterday.  I recognized the words you said, though damme if I know how.  I know all that about fairyland, but I also know there are places, like the centaurs meadow and… and worse, where you can end up imprisoned forever and worse.  There are many people, as you know, who think that Dante wandered into those dark meadows and that it was there he saw the place of eternal torment for the impious dead.”

I sighed.  He knew too much, but I knew he knew too much.  It was the point of all these we’d targeted that they stuck out, they were unsatisfied with their fate – they were mice captured in a trap not of their making, but refusing to resign themselves to their fate.  The high magic one of those were—usually interesting.

However, in this one thing I wasn’t playing him false.  Again, I willed him to see my total honesty.  “It is not,” I said.  “To one of those dark places that I’ve opened this road.  Rather, I willed it to take us near the King.  If I’m right, he’s still in the palace, in the center of fairyland, having spun for himself a reality that accommodates each of his halves.  I do not know what that reality would be, but I count on you, who have known him from early life, to do so.”

He demurred, looking at me, his eyes narrowed, then said, “Buggered if I can.  Gabriel was always a strange one.  Well, now I think about it, I was a strange one, too, but no more dissimilar men may be found.”

I didn’t say anything, nor yet move.  He sighed.  “I wish—”  he said.  He shook his head and let go of my wrist.  “Go on, fair temptress.  Damme, I’m going to regret this–  But possibly only for a very short time.  And anyway, the things I’ve regretted the most in life have often turned out to be the ones that…”  He looked surprised as though he’d suddenly seen clearly something that had evaded him all too long.  “The ones that bore me least.  You know, I don’t think I am ever amused except when I’m doing something regrettable.”  He grinned.  “Lead on.  This is about to get interesting.”

That part, at least, was true, even if I was not leading him into a trap.  Well, at least not into any trap he could imagine.  Even I, low-blood that I was, could only see the outlines of what lay ahead.

But I knew we needed to get the misfits into fairyland.  By any means necessary.  The result…  Well, if I was right it would be as catastrophic as if that bomb had gone on in the office of the Witchfinder.  And yet, I could see where it would be something else, also.  Something… interesting.  Even for people other than the Earl of Savage.

I reached for his hand.  Strangely, it was I who needed support and reassurance.  I knew the game was being played, but I couldn’t tell for sure that I had more – or less – say in it than the mortals we were gathering.

When we first set our feet on the path, all sound ceased – those sounds I hadn’t even been aware of: our breath, the minute sound of our steps in the brothel’s cushioned rugs.

We walked as one walks in a dream, without feeling of air on our bodies and faces, without the sounds of living.  When were ten steps in, or so Jonathan looked back over his shoulder.  “Interesting,” he said.  “The door is closed behind us.  The room isn’t back there.”

I didn’t say anything, and he chuckled.  “The … At least it doesn’t do what happened to Eurydice.  I’m not back in the room.”

“That only happens the other direction,” I said, and then wished I could bite my tongue in two.

“Does it?” he said, the amusement in his voice betraying he knew very well I’d let escape what I didn’t mean to.  “Useful to know, isn’t it?  Now lead on to whatever adventure waits us.”

Like that, as though conjured out of nowhere, a tall while place loomed.  It looked as though it might have been sculpted out of ice.

And from somewhere came the shouts and laugh of children at play.