Free Novel, Rogue Magic, Chapter 43

The prequel to this — Witchfinder — is now up on Amazon.

This novel will get posted here a chapter every Friday or Saturday, or occasionally Sunday.  If you contribute $6 you shall be subscribed for the earc and first clean version in electronic format.  I think it will probably take another three months to finish.  Less, if I can have a weekend to run through and get ahead of the game.  It hasn’t happened yet.

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

 

Lady Caroline Ainsling, sister of the Duke of Darkwater

 

The path to fairyland was longer than I expected. When I’d gone into it, before, with my mother, it had been a short step through a doorway that I’d opened in a back alley of London. The path Akakios took us through was long and winding and dark. No, wait, not exactly dark, but more like a path through a dense fog, where you can see the way immediately in front of you, but everything else all around is this milky whiteness that might as well be dark, for all you can see.

The path wound, too, which seemed odd.

I leaned over. Akakios was in centaur form, and I was riding his horse-half, side saddle, with my arms around his chest, just under his arms. It wasn’t the most comfortable of rides, particularly when he found the need to gallop full tilt, but it made do.

I drew closer to him, tightening my arms, and said so he could hear me over his own galloping hooves, “Are we being kept out? Of Fairyland? Are we being wound around and are we going to be on this go-around path forever?”
I felt a little shudder go through him, perhaps at the thought of winding around forever, but when he answered his voice was confident if slightly out of breath, “No. I am winding the path to confuse them. They’ll expect me to go to my father, but I’m going to my mother’s village.” And then, after a slight pause, “You’ll like her.”

I wondered. I mean, I had heard about the mothers of centaurs, who were women who lived in a village nearby. They were, most of them, daughters of centaurs. For some reason the change ability, the capacity for turning half-horse only manifested in male children. Even if Akakios had told me that there were legends once of a centaur queen. He didn’t seem to believe the legends, and I was not inclined to give them credit, either.

But they married centaurs, too – I should say there were several villages of them, and centaurs, like my people, tried to keep the relationship between husband and wife as distant as possible, particularly as Akakios told me, his people could be born with the most extraordinary set of birth defects.

The marriages were odd, even by the standards of my society and my class. Husband and wife lived apart, since neither the accommodations nor the relationship could accommodate the husband in his mixed form. So they came to the village only to visit and in human form, while the women lived there all the time. Since the men felt more comfortable in centaur form, they lived in the herd and visited only once or twice a week or so. Notwithstanding which, Akakios seemed to think his mother and father had a warm and close relationship. He’d seen both sides of each at different times, since whenever boys started shifting into centaurs – which could be any time from age six until their late teens – they got sent to live with the herd. He certainly hadn’t considered that dislocation an exile, and seemed to love both his parents equally, but I wondered what his mother would think of his returning home in centaur form, and carrying an out-of-world bride.

I wasn’t given much time to wonder, because – like that – we were out of the fog, and Akakios was galloping on sand and kicking up clouds of it in the glory of a red and gold sunset.

We were by the sea, a blue-green sea with huge waves crashing just feet from us, so that the spray hit me. But even as I was about to protest, Akakios was turning away from it and up a path amid rocks.

The path had clearly been designed for horses, being wide enough and level enough, and yet climbing steadily amid the craggy rocks on either side. Someone had cut this path, or perhaps shaped it with magic since both the side of the rock turned to the path and the path underneath had a melted look. It occurred to me to wonder whether Akakios’ mother, and the other village women had as much magic as their men, or whether this path had been made by the centaurs themselves, to facilitate the visits to their family.

Akakio galloped up the path, even though I could feel his human lungs straining, since he must already be very tired. But when we reached the outskirts of the village – near the first few isolated cottages, where I could glimpse a larger cluster of cottages ahead, he slowed to walk. I understood why seconds later.

First there were chickens. Chickens that seemed to be totally afraid of horses – or centaurs – and went on pecking and looking almost underneath Akakios’ hooves. Akakios seemed used to him. he made an exasperated sound, and then there were slow, slow steps, careful to avoid the balls of feather and dumbness at his feet.

“Would it be easier if I dismount?” I asked, and he shook his head, and his hand clasped over mine, which were in turn clasped together at his chest. But he didn’t answer, perhaps because he had no time. From the village there was a scream of Akakios, and then a young man, who must be only a couple of years younger than Akakios came running down the path, sliding in the too smooth areas, his bare feet seeming to grip to stop his slide. He was wearing a sort of chitton, pinned at the shoulder, and belted, but probably no more than a very large sheet of linen, when all was said and done. His features looked a lot like Akakios’ and his hair was as curly, but the color was, unlike Akakios’ glossy black, a dark wheat.

He screamed “Akakios!” as he ran, and behind him came a cloud of children. That is the only way I can describe it. A cloud of children, in various sizes, ranging from adolescent to young toddler.

The young man reached us first, and his hand reached up to grab Akakios’ wrist, “Akakios. We thought we’d never—We thought you couldn’t ever come back!”
And then the cloud of children was all around us, babbling and calling and demanding attention. Akakios couldn’t move for them – a fat little toddler, completely naked – was holding on to his front leg. I thought I really should dismount but Akakios was still holding my hands, and before I could move, a woman’s voice said “Son.”

I suppose his mother was queen of centaurs. And she was as beautiful as one imagines queens will be – but never are – looking much younger than my own mama, like a woman just at the edge of maturity, maybe 30 or so. She was probably older. Akakios had had a much older brother, now lost. But people in fairyland age slowly.

She had dark brown hair, in long curls, pulled back with a ribbon. And she was wearing a very pretty tunic in pale blue. It covered her to her ankles and looked like a dress a debutant might wear, back in London. But over it she wore an apron, which was a very odd thing for a queen to wear. Even odder was the fact that she was wiping at her tears with the corner of her apron and leaving streaks of flour all over her face.

“Son,” she said again. And then in a sob. “Your father has gone to fight—Your father has gone to try to stop the revolt against Night Arrow. You should go back to Earth. I can’t bear to lose you too.”