The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil Read online

  I won’t tell you! But even as he thought this, Charles felt his burned wrist begin to ache. He shut his eyes as the alchemist’s command forced him to speak. “It wasn’t clear,” he said, his voice dull and monotone. “I saw so many things. Shadows. Monsters. White. Something white and bright and shining. I saw—” A vision flashed clear and sharp against his mind, but when he tried to speak, it vanished and another took its place. “Water. I see moors and forests together in a place they should not be, and I see water. Dark, terrible water. And ancient gray stones.” His head dipped from the weight of the vision. “I see my brother. I see Madeline Elliott. I see Stephen, and a blonde girl.” The images pulled harder and harder, making his head ache. “I see one I do not know. Dark-skinned, but not as dark as Tansia. He is foreign, not of Etsey… I see darkness. A demon. Demons—demons everywhere, hiding, lurking, waiting—”

  I see a veil, torn apart.

  There are seven. There are seven veils of my Goddess.

  In the water, I will find the first.

  The vision closed over his head, then pulled back and away. The spell lifted and was gone. Charles sank back, cold and empty, to the floor. The visions he had seen slipped like water from his mind.

  Smith clapped his hands. “I knew it! It is the curse of the Houses! It is the legend of the ghosts! And so by her coming, the others will also! I won’t have to do a thing. They will all come of their own accord, drawn by magic more powerful than the earth itself! It is everything I dreamed and more! And it is mine! All of it, all of it mine! Let them laugh at me now, those bastards who kicked me out and called me a fool! Let them laugh, now that I will harness the most potent power in the universe!” He bent down, laughing, and surprised Charles by pressing a kiss against his forehead. “Oh, my precious, precious pet. You have pleased me very much. So much, in fact, that I believe I will give you a special treat. I will show you what sex magic can truly do.” He smacked Charles roughly on the bottom. “Stand and brace yourself against the edge of the table.”

  Charles was so weak he didn’t think he could stand, but there was an edge of command in Smith’s words, and he found himself rising even though he did not mean to, complying in a daze. He snapped out of it, though, as he saw Smith approaching him with something long and leaden and frightening in his hand. It was about seven inches long, more than two inches thick, studded with rough-looking bumps, colored black as night. Charles’s mind searched wildly for an alternative purpose for the object, but there was no getting around the fact that it was blatantly phallic. And there was something else about it too—something wrong.

  Magic. It is magic. He didn’t know how he knew, but suddenly he did, and he was terrified.

  Smith seemed pleased. “Impressive, isn’t it? But I promise you’ll find it tame in time.” Charles began to sputter, and Smith held up a hand to silence him. “Sex magic can be painful, yes, pet. But I will teach you to find pleasure in it as well.”

  “Please,” Charles whispered. He couldn’t take his eyes off that hideous phallus. “Please—please, don’t!”

  Smith gestured to the table. “Brace yourself against the edge there and bend over, legs spread wide.”

  Driven by the force of the spell, Charles did as he was told, gripping the edge of the table as he prepared himself for Smith. It felt unreal. It was so mad it shouldn’t be able to be real, and yet it was. How the blazes had this happened? How had he come to this?

  Smith brought out a small pot and brush and began painting on Charles’s skin. “You will feel a certain tightness this first time. It will not be like anything you have ever experienced, and at first you may find it somewhat unpleasant. That will, sadly, affect my ability to draw power out of you. But we will bear through it together, and soon it will be heady for the both of us.”

  He set the pot of paint aside and spread Charles’s cheeks with his hands, probing him lightly with his finger.

  Charles tensed, then froze as he felt a soft brush of air against his face, lingering on his lips.

  “Be brave,” he heard the Goddess whisper in his mind.

  “What is happening?” Charles whispered back, swallowing tears. “Why did you appear to me? What does this madman want from me?”

  “Things he should not be taking,” she whispered back. “You will suffer much at his hands for a time. But take heart. I am coming to you soon.”

  Charles felt Smith’s hands against the sides of his hips, nudging him wider. He drew in a shaking breath and lifted his head, staring ahead at the wall. “Why would you come to me?”

  The Goddess appeared before him and touched Charles’s cheek, looking at him with tenderness. He knew, somehow, that he alone could see her.

  “Beloved, search your heart, and you will know the answer.”

  He watched her start to fade, watched the veils fall back into place, and he wanted to sob. “Don’t go!” He lifted one hand off the table to reach for her. “Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

  “Don’t leave me!” Charles cried aloud, reaching for the place where she had been, his eyes stinging with tears.

  Then Charles felt the cold tip of the phallus nudging the back of him. He tried to reach for the Goddess once more in his mind, but then Smith pushed the phallus roughly inside him, and all Charles could do was scream.

  But as the screams took him away, as his mind left his body and found safety in the darkness, he knew quiet.

  Six. When the veils came down on the Goddess, there were not seven. There were only six.

  And as the alchemist raped his body and his soul, Charles wondered, dizzily, what had happened to the other one.

  Chapter Two

  pari

  air

  Air is the second element of creation.

  Air is the power of the wind and of the mind. Air is invisible,

  but it can cut like knives.

  Air carries, and when it is strong enough, it shapes.

  On the same night that Charles submitted to the alchemist, in the faraway land of Catal, his brother Jonathan was screaming too.

  Gentle hands pressed a stick into his mouth, and someone urged him in a low voice and foreign tongue to stay quiet, to bite down, to remember to breathe, to hold fast and fight. Jonathan didn’t have anything left to fight with, however. He had no idea what exactly he was fighting for at this point. His neck was on fire, and he would swear he was drowning, possibly in his own blood. His left thigh and groin were wet with pus and blood, his nerves were raw, and his muscles were weak from tensing against the pain. In the distance, he heard the monks shouting angrily. If the fever didn’t take him, Jonathan knew the Cloister would.

  But through it all, the voice stayed with Jonathan, soothing him.

  “Daghata, mira.” A hand closed over Jonathan’s own; he gripped it tightly, using it as his lifeline as he descended once more into the abyss.

  He dreamed of demons and darkness, of hot claws that ripped over and over again at his flesh. His father loomed over him, eyes rolling in his head and spittle forming at the edges of his mouth as he laughed.

  “Time to finish it, boy.” Drool dripped down Neil Perry’s chin. “Time to come back and finish it once and for all. Come home, boy. Come home.”

  “No!” Jonathan tried to shout, but his father stepped on his throat, cutting off his air. No, I won’t! I won’t! he screamed inside. His father laughed and placed the sword in Jonathan’s hand, and the demon rose within him, taking over his body, crowding out his mind—

  Sweating and shouting with a throat that felt like fire, Jonathan woke from his nightmare and found himself in the small, cramped compartment of a merchant ship. For a moment, he feared he was captured or, worse, lost. But then his equerry appeared beside the hammock and stroked his face, and Jonathan relaxed.

  “Hush, mira.” Timothy’s olive brown face was lined with worry as he dipped a cloth in a bowl of water and held it to Jonathan’s lips for him to suck. “You are very ill. Do not try to speak.”r />
  Jonathan tried to draw on the bitter cloth, but in the end Timothy had to tip Jonathan’s head back and squeeze the water directly into his mouth. His throat burned where the knife had cut into it, and when he coughed, he felt blood seep into the bandage wrapped around his neck. His leg throbbed, and in the center of the wound, he felt something cold and dark and hard. Jonathan shivered, for he knew what that something was. When it moved, Jonathan slid back into the darkness, where the nightmares and the fire waited for him.

  This has to end. He crouched tighter into the safe space inside his mind. I have to find a way to end this.

  He drifted into the darkness again, so deeply this time that he did not dream at all, only floated in blissful nothingness.

  When he drifted to the surface once more, he was no longer on the ship; he was in a bright, sunny room. It was sparsely furnished, but there was something alarming about the place. It was all wrong, even for an officer’s quarters. It was the wrong wood, to start—it was too hard for Catal and too dark. The ceiling slope was too steep, and the windows were too small, fitted with shutters designed to keep out snow, not desert sun.

  Timothy urged Jonathan back against the pillows. “Be still,” he said, speaking this time in Etsian. “We nearly lost you—again. Rest now.”

  You can’t lose me, as well you know. Jonathan wanted to snap at him, but then he saw the maid cross by the foot of the bed. Her hair was dark, but she had pale skin, not the brown complexion of those of the south, and she wore a mobcap and full white apron. No one anywhere on the Continent dressed this way.

  Jonathan was beginning to feel ill, and for the first time in a long time, he was not ill from his physical afflictions. “Where am I?” he asked in Catalian. Tell me we are still at the war. Tell me we are still in Catal, in your war-torn country, Timothy, where I will be safe. Do not tell me I am where I am beginning to fear I am.

  Timothy shook his head. “You must lie still.”

  Jonathan closed his hand weakly over the front of Timothy’s shirt. “Where am I?”

  “Etsey. We are at your town apartment in Boone.” When Jonathan swore and tried to rise, then coughed from the effort, Timothy eased him back down onto the pillows again. “I had no choice. When the major general saw you, he discharged you on the spot and ordered you home. I think he assumed you would be coming home in a casket, but I didn’t know how to explain otherwise. They just packed us both on a ship and sent us off. If you hadn’t made me your equerry, I don’t think I’d have been allowed along.”

  “Home.” Etsey. Jonathan shut his eyes against a wave of nausea. How long have I been here? He had no concept, and the thought made him cold. The journey from the southern coast of Catal took seven days under favorable conditions—if they had run into blockades or storms, it could have been weeks. He reached up and touched his neck, but there was no wound, only an angry scar tender to his touch. There weren’t even any stitches left. More than a month, then. Had he been on the ship for a month? It was doubtful. Likely he had been here for some time.

  How long? How much ground has it already gained?

  “I can’t stay,” Jonathan rasped in Etsian. “I cannot stay in Etsey.”

  “There is nowhere else to go, mira.” Timothy dabbed at Jonathan’s forehead with a cool cloth. “Rest. We will discuss our next move when you are well again.”

  I cannot rest, Jonathan tried to say, but he couldn’t find the strength to speak. I cannot stay in Etsey. But he couldn’t move, let alone rise and leave. He lay helpless in the bed, clammy and cold, desperate to rise but unable even to keep his eyelids open. A wave of nausea swamped him; Jonathan heaved, then heaved again, and as Timothy shouted desperately for the servants, Jonathan slid back into unconsciousness.

  This time he dreamed a new dream.

  He was walking the moors, his sword at his side, reaching back with his thumb to rub across the golden circle on the pommel. He felt the power rushing inside him as he moved over the ridge and past the great tree, heading to the cottage at the edge of the woods. She was inside. He knew because he could feel her. He closed his hand over the medallion on his chest and smiled, his heart light just at the thought of seeing her again. He pushed his way through the roses hanging over the arbor, his gaze fixed on the door as he crossed her garden. But something was wrong. His heart ached for her, but something deeper inside him was rising, something dark. Something terrible. It didn’t ache. It hungered.

  “Finish it. Finish it now. Finish her.”

  The door opened, and Jonathan smiled and ran to take her in his arms. She smiled back and came out to meet him. But as she fell into his embrace, the darkness took control, pulling his sword from the scabbard and lifting it up high above his head. She saw the shadow fall and looked up, her smile fading. Jonathan leaned forward to kiss her, to tell her it was all right, but the darkness inside him moved faster, and he watched, helpless, as his own hand brought down the sword to cleave her in two—

  Jonathan woke drenched in sweat. “Madeline!”

  A figure stepped forward from the darkness, the dream still hanging over his mind like a veil over reality. He felt the hard lump in his leg shift; he felt what hid inside it slither across his skin, tightening, sending waves of pain through his body.

  He felt the demon’s claws dig into him, trying to take over.

  “Finish it. Finish it now.”

  A cool hand touched his face, but it was not Timothy tending him now. Head spinning, leg aching, body shaking as he fought to hold the demon at bay, Jonathan looked up.

  Madeline looked down at him and smiled. “Hello, Jonathan.”

  He sank back into the bed, his chest heaving and his lungs rattling as he stared up at her. Goddess save me, she’s more beautiful than she was when I left. She stroked his face, still smiling, and she lifted a tin cup to his mouth. Jonathan held himself still, sweat running down his brow as he drank, still staring at her, fighting to keep the demon in check.

  “It is time,” it whispered. “It is well past time.”

  Jonathan seized, and the demon took over, growling as it lifted his hands from the bed, aiming them at Madeline’s throat.

  Madeline screamed. The demon let go, and Jonathan saw with sick horror that it was not Madeline at all but the maid.

  “Madman!” she cried, then ran from the room.

  Jonathan sank into the bed, biting back bile. It was starting. It was already starting.

  The door opened, then closed. Soft footsteps approached the bed, but when Jonathan saw that it was Timothy, he only turned his face away.

  “The maid says you attacked her,” Timothy said in Catalian.

  Jonathan snorted and made a halfhearted gesture at his groin. “With what?” But he shut his eyes against the guilt. He had attacked her. For that one moment, the demon had taken control. He opened his eyes and stared at the pattern on the wallpaper. “I have to leave,” he said, trying to be firm, but he was afraid he only sounded desperate. He was. “I cannot stay in Etsey. I must leave now.”

  “You’re still weak,” Timothy said, shaking his head, “You have attacks every day. I had to rent out the surrounding apartments in your name. The tenants were all shouting to the constable that the place was haunted.”

  “It is.” Jonathan coughed, then winced as he swallowed. “How long have we been here?”

  “In Boone?” Timothy picked up the cup from the floor and set it on the stand. “Six weeks.”

  “Too long.” Jonathan groaned and rolled all the way over to his side before fighting his way into a sitting position. Six weeks. It had been six weeks on Etsian soil.

  And it had named its first target as Madeline.

  Jonathan swung his good leg over the side of the bed and hissed against the pain as he dragged the other after. “Get me my walking stick,” he rasped.

  “You can’t stand!” Timothy tried to push him back down. “You must rest!”

  “I can’t rest. Not here. I have to leave.” He tried again to sta
nd, but Timothy was right. He could not. He swore and sat back down again.

  Timothy glared at him. “This is madness, this talk of leaving.”

  Jonathan laughed darkly. “Not yet, but that will come soon enough.” He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I cannot stay here. I don’t expect you to understand, but I need you to help me leave. Right now.” Except he feared it was already too late.

  “There is nowhere to go!” Timothy waved a hand at the window. “Mathdu, Jonathan! I don’t need to fight you in addition to everything else! When I’m not wrestling with the landlord or battling racism from your ever-so-unenlightened countrymen and countrywomen, I’m staving off your grandfather, who keeps demanding to see you—usually in the same breath he is demanding my resignation, I might add!”

  That made Jonathan lift his head. “Watch Whitby. He’ll try to take you down, and he’ll do it sideways. If you so much as flirt with a man within range of his spies, he’ll have you charged with the Indecency Act.”

  “As if I have time for flirting when I’m playing your nursemaid!” Timothy swore in Catalian under his breath, then began to pace. “Indecency Act. I haven’t looked that one up yet, but I can hazard a guess, knowing this place. Ten rhadus says it is some mad decree by your whore of a Goddess, probably to do with purity?” He sat, defeated, on the edge of Jonathan’s bed. “Bathdu. I hate this country.”

  “Then help me leave it.” Jonathan winced as his leg spasmed; he pressed his palm against its side to try and calm it. “The wounds to my neck are almost healed, but you’ll notice the others are as bad as ever and in fact are getting worse. This will continue as long as we are here, and it is just the beginning. I need to leave. Get me to Hain, if that’s the best we can do. I don’t care. Just get me out of Etsey. Get the ocean between it and me again.”

  “I don’t understand why just being here is so objectionable, and I resent that you won’t explain it me,” Timothy said. “If it’s the climate, Hain will be worse. Is it the tension of being here, where your past has so many shadows? That isn’t like you, but I won’t think less of you if that’s the case.”