The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil Read online

  Madeline’s jaw tightened. “I’m fine.”

  She saw her sister standing at the edge of the garden, holding a lantern, and when Emily saw Madeline, her shoulders sank.

  Madeline pulled back her veil and nodded at the cottage. “Emily, I have a patient. Hurry inside and make him a pallet by the fire.”

  Emily hefted her skirts in one hand and held the lantern higher as she ran back to the house, her loose blonde tendrils bouncing against her collar in the moonlight. Madeline did not run, but she walked briskly, fixing her sights on her sister’s silhouette and pushing everything but healing Charles out of her mind.

  The kitchen was warm and comforting, full of the scent of stew and drying flowers and a peat fire. Emily had a pillow and blanket ready over the padded board she kept handy for just this sort of situation, and she had placed it before the hearth. When the guides brought Charles into the room, Emily drew well back, trying not to look at the floating cloud. But once the patient was settled and the guides had retreated beyond her sight, she frowned down at the man on the pallet.

  “Who is he?” Emily asked.

  “An old friend,” Madeline said. “One I never thought to see again.” She crouched down beside Charles and placed a hand over his chest. The alchemist’s spell bit at her again, and she had to tamp down anger. “Water, please. In the funnel cup.”

  Emily nodded and disappeared from view. Madeline stroked Charles’s hair tenderly. The Morgan would have tsk-tsked her for showing affection for a patient, and the guides would certainly note it, but Madeline didn’t care. She would ache for anyone as butchered as this, but to have it be Charles, after all this time—it would cost her more to deny the reaction than to show it.

  The aberration was not lost on Emily, who eyed Madeline curiously as she returned with the metal cup with a long spout attached to one end. Madeline took it from her and placed it carefully against Charles’s lips, murmuring a spell to encourage him to drink in his sleep. She gave him a soft dream of sunshine and sweet wine and beautiful sunsets. But even in that, Madeline felt the black cords that bound him trying to resist the illusion. She beat it back easily with a satisfied smile. No alchemy would ever beat a witch’s magic.

  Emily was frowning at Charles again. “He looks strangely familiar.”

  That surprised Madeline until she remembered the portraits that hung at Whitby Hall. She hadn’t thought Emily had been much in the main living quarters, but then, when Lord Whitby wasn’t at home, anyone could ask for a tour of the place, Emily included.

  “He is a Perry,” Madeline said, tipping the cup again. “The bastard son of Neil Perry.”

  “The one by his sister?” Emily’s voice was full of censure. “The bastard through incest?”

  “His name is Charles,” Madeline said with censure of her own. “And he hardly had a vote in the method of his conception.”

  Emily gentled a little at that. “That’s fair. You’ve said that to others on my behalf often enough. Still—a Perry, Madeline? I may be only an Elliott in name, but you—Well, do you think this is wise?”

  It pricked at Madeline’s pride to have both the guides and Emily cautioning her. “You think I am not competent to handle a patient from one of the Houses?”

  “I think the Houses are a bloody tangle even without adding witchcraft.” Emily lifted Charles’s arm and glowered at Madeline. “Especially one whose skin is tattooed with alchemical spells.”

  Madeline set down the cup and took Charles’s arm from her sister, pushing his sleeve up farther and squinting at the symbols inked along his skin. “This isn’t just a renegade alchemist. He’s mad.” She pointed to the runes, tilting Charles’s arm this way and that to reveal the whole of them. “He’s using sledgehammers to stun ants. These are the sorts of bindings used to hold demons. To be honest, they’re even stronger than that. I’ve never seen anything like them. It’s more than just overcompensation. It’s ludicrous.”

  “Madeline, I don’t like this.” Emily gestured to Charles’s inert form. “You can’t treat him. Something bad will happen.”

  The guides were silent as well as invisible, but Madeline could feel their agreement with Emily.

  “What has spawned this sudden lack of confidence in my abilities?” Madeline gestured angrily to Charles’s arm. “You know very well alchemical spells are nothing to a witch. Even these are but the work of an hour for me.”

  “I don’t doubt you, Madeline—you know that!” Emily sounded hurt. “But he is of a House! The Morgan said you must never deal with one of the Houses because you are of the Houses!”

  “That was when I was still untrained,” Madeline insisted. “And she meant I was not to attempt advanced magic on them. Do you propose I leave him to die? Return him to the alchemist with my compliments? Even if he were not a friend of mine, you know I could never do such a thing.”

  “You can call one of the other witches,” Emily said.

  Madeline put her hands on her hips and laughed. “Yes, as I have called them to perform the Sealing Ceremony my mentor could not complete because she died unexpectedly. I sent for them what, seven months ago? They could be here within a day if they came by horse, and they could come in an hour if they used magic.”

  “You know they are waiting because they wish to see what you will do, to make this part of your final test,” Emily countered.

  Madeline swallowed her ire. “I am only proposing to help him, Emily. I will make him comfortable here and give him a small protection, and then I will consult with the guides in meditation. I will see what answers lie on the Plane and in the Void. That is all. For now, that is all I propose. I will make my decisions after I have more information.”

  Emily looked unhappy, but she nodded. “I’ll keep him comfortable. But if he wakes up and starts acting on his creepy alchemist commands—”

  “He won’t wake, not until I rouse him.” Madeline reached into her pocket and withdrew a small stone anchored to a silken cord. She held it in her palm and blew power gently across it. Then she crouched, closed her hand over the stone, and held it above the center of Charles’s chest. “By this stone I bind us, Charles Felix Perry. You will not wake until I wake you. You will not come until I call you. No other hold on you may override this command.” She placed the cord over his head and tucked it beneath his shirt. She rose and nodded to her sister. “I will be in my workshop.”

  Emily nodded a little brusquely. Then, because she did not stay cross well, she added, “Good luck.”

  * * *

  Madeline hurried across the garden. She ignored the finger fog creeping over the hedges, knowing it was just the demon being spiteful. It couldn’t reach her in her workshop, and she had no intention of going anywhere else.

  She felt better the moment she stepped inside. By design the workshop was entirely, completely Madeline: all of her, not just the witch’s facade. She wore black and covered her hair when in public, but here she was allowed to remove her veil in more ways than one. Here the walls burst with rich, lush color, red and orange and yellow and deep, centering browns. The floor was made of heavy planks of rich walnut. She still remembered the way they had felt in her hands as she laid them into place for nailing. Pots and books and jars containing supplies, notes, and spells filled every cupboard, and a tattered red sofa overflowing with fringed pillows against a far wall invited her to sit upon it and snuggle beneath the olive-colored afghan. The Morgan had wrinkled her nose at the cottage when Madeline had finished it, and she’d grumbled about aristocrats and their pride. Madeline didn’t care. When she took her full orders, her beauty would be ravaged, her hair would fall out, and she would be almost indistinguishable from any other witch. She would also have no more checks on her power. But she was not a witch yet, and the order allowed Apprentices to design their workshops in whatever way they saw fit, as an outlet for the last gasp of individuality. A witch was not an individual; she did not even keep her name once she was Sealed. But Apprentices were still attached to th
eir egos, and though her tenure had been stretched longer than it should have been, that was still what Madeline was.

  It would be sad to leave the workshop when she took full orders; even if she stayed here, it would have to be torn down so another Apprentice could make her own. She would miss it far more than a pretty face or a head full of hair. Madeline supposed it was the one good thing about having her Sealing so long delayed.

  The guides had reappeared and were waiting to assist her in her casting. They were silent shadows that served the four elements once more instead of her personal quartet of nannies. Soon I will be Sealed, and there will be no more of their questioning me.

  Madeline took off her headgear and seated herself at the high table in the corner. She took a centering breath and cleared her mind of the chaos and emotion from the cottage. When she was even again, she reached for the weathered wooden cup on the ledge above it, murmured a prayer, and cast the runes.

  Even before the magical images came fully into focus in her mind, Madeline knew something was wrong, but as the distinct shapes and colors began to form, she curled her fingers against the wood, uneasy as she read the message spreading out before her. She saw a small faint light first, surrounded by a dark, vicious shadow that curled at the edges of the picture in her mind. She saw one who should have been released long ago, but something kept the victim pinned in place. The shadow wished to claim its prize, to destroy it. But there was another ring around the faint light, keeping it at bay. Charles, she thought, but it was a guess, not a reading, so she let the idea go. She waited and watched for the rune picture to create more images in her mind.

  But the picture never changed. The shadow kept coming. Over and over the shadow rolled across the shrouded victim in the center, tearing at him, maiming him, stripping him bare, but over and over again he remained.

  Madeline frowned, gathered the runes, and cast them again.

  The shadow remained, but this time there was a new shape in another corner of the scene. This one was glittering and gold, though it had a sickly gray sheen, like a parasite. It was no danger to the host, but like cruel children with a wounded animal, it poked at the figure with sticks, raining pebbles on its head and sand in its eyes. It urged the gold shape at the one plagued by shadow.

  Then the shadow broke without warning, and more images appeared. There were four shapes, like the four guides of the four elements, except they were white, not gray. They turned to Madeline and spoke.

  “The past returns to the present.

  The lost one is broken in two, and two again.

  Danger.

  The old ones stir. Their reckoning is at hand.

  Danger, danger.

  All that was will end. A new day will dawn, or all will die.

  Danger. Danger. Danger.”

  Madeline’s head began to ache from the sheer volume of images and scenes. The old ones? The lost one? A reckoning? What was this danger?

  All will die?

  The four shapes faded, and Madeline sank back in her chair, staring helplessly at the strange, scattered runes, their colors and patterns still shifting before her eyes. The reading was no help at all. It didn’t explain anything, only gave more puzzles. It did not explain why Charles was here. It didn’t verify or deny Jonathan. It gave her nothing she needed to know.

  “I need to go deeper,” she said aloud.

  One of the guides materialized behind her. It took no form again this time, but she could still feel it, and when it placed its hands on her shoulders, she felt the weight and the warmth of its touch. Madeline’s breath caught as the guide entered her body, aligning to her energy centers, rooting her firmly to the ground. She felt the hum of her body’s response, but the guide held her fast as it lifted her up.

  The first thing a novice witch learned was that the world had layers that only magic could reveal, and it was to these places that Madeline traveled now. She left the earth and rose up into the Plane again, to the place where she had gone to do her meditation with the runes. But this time the guide was with her, and the experience was different. Madeline felt the tight, sensual pull of her spirit and body stretched to their absolute limit, and her spirit broke free. With her body tended and her spirit tethered by the guide, Madeline tossed the runes again, but this time when the stones flew, she let her spirit body form go with them, stepping out into the very colors of the runes. She memorized the patterns and the visions she saw.

  Then she took a step farther and went out into the Void.

  She knew something was wrong immediately. She should have seen the same images replayed with new layers with more depth, but there was nothing. For a moment she stood there, confused. The Void was a great grid of life, the map of the whole world laid out neatly and succinctly. All the answers were here if one knew how to look for them, and Madeline did. Except this time, her answers were not here. Madeline looked again, expanding deeper. A faint glimmer in the distance caught her attention, and she smiled. There it was. She didn’t understand why the answer was so far away from where she was, but it didn’t matter: she’d found it. Madeline gathered her spirit and stepped out into the light.

  And in the span of a heartbeat, everything changed.

  The Void was, in essence, just what its name suggested: a great black field of nothing save the answers laid upon it, but until you knew how to read those, it simply looked blank. Novices spent many years growing accustomed to it, and it had always served as the great weeding out of those unsuited to the trials of a witch, for stepping into the Void with a spirit body was much like walking on a spider’s thread many miles above the highest star. It took great concentration to ignore the sensation of being smashed and expanded at once, to dismiss the pounding, screaming silence that slammed against nonexistent ears. But balancing in the Void was essential to understanding the grid, the map, and the answers. There were no mistakes in the Void, the Morgan had said. Only deaths. There was no law or logic in the Void; it could not be managed or controlled, and neither could anything inside it. It was full of answers, yes, but also lost souls and banished beasts, and they loved little more than to trick those who had stumbled in into giving them their souls, their minds, and in the case of witches, their magic.

  But in this place where Madeline was, in this one step farther, there was no grid, no orderly map of the universe, and not even a single monster. They wouldn’t have dared come out. The pressure and pull ebbed and tugged, and the silence shuddered against Madeline. It was as if the Void was not a field of space but instead a living thing, and it was a living thing that was very upset.

  Madeline frowned. But this made no sense! The Void was not alive. It wasn’t even localized! If this view of the Void was wrong, the whole world was wrong. And that couldn’t be right, because every witch would notice. But what was even stranger was that Madeline’s guide somehow did not seem to feel this place, not its wrongness, but not even its very existence. If it had, it would not have allowed her in. Madeline didn’t understand. Where were the patterns of the universe, laid out and mapped for her to read? The place they were supposed to be was nothing more than jumbled pieces of string, quaking for fear of being knit—it made no sense!

  A figure materialized before Madeline, and when she saw who it was, she drew back. “You,” she said, her spirit voice echoing in the empty space.

  The glowing man in white from beneath the tree waved at her. Except, standing this close, she could see who he was. It was Charles.

  “Hello,” he said, waving cheerfully. A bench materialized out of thin air, balancing on absolutely nothing, and he sat at one end of it as he gestured to the other. “Sit,” he urged, as if they were good friends happening to meet one another at the park. “We have a few things to discuss, you and I.”

  Chapter Four

  whitbi

  earth

  Earth is the fourth element of creation.

  Earth is tangible: it has touch, smell, sight, sound, and taste.

  Earth is heavy. />
  Earth is slow to move, but once it rouses itself, it is difficult to stop.

  Madeline stumbled back, too stunned for a moment to do anything else. Then she came to her senses and tried to ride backward along her thread, back to her body, away from the specter before her. It wasn’t Charles—it could not be Charles—but she couldn’t tell what it truly was, and so it was very dangerous. But she was already too late. Whatever this was had cut off her way back. She was still grounded, and the guide tethering her would not know anything was wrong, but Madeline could not retreat or contact help. She was alone with whatever beast of hell this was before her.

  It was difficult to hold on to her panic, though, when the beast looked so cheerful and so familiar.

  “You aren’t Charles.” Madeline aimed a finger at the apparition. “You aren’t Charles, and I know you aren’t, so don’t even pretend. Just tell me what you want and let me go.”

  She could tell just by looking at the beast that its power was so beyond hers that she couldn’t so much as make a scratch in it. Her spirit body was at best a net of blue stars taking an echo of her human body’s shape; the White Charles was completely substantial. But he didn’t challenge her or even mock her. He only held up his hands in easy surrender—a gesture, she noted with ill ease, very much like Charles’s own.

  “Ho—easy, Miss Elliott. I can see there’s no fooling you, so I won’t even try. But forgive me for staying this way. I’m a bit pressed, and I don’t want to waste time.” He crossed one leg over his knee and laced his fingers around it. “So. You’ve come here for answers. I’m sorry to say, the Void won’t be much use for you. It’s been buggered something terrible. But if there’s anything you’d like to see, I am happy to assist.” He pulled a watch out of his pocket and frowned at it. “Though I advise you to move quickly. We honestly are in a devil of a time crunch. Not me, obviously, but your guide will suspect, and you are still tethered and therefore bound by time.” He grinned. “I worked that one out on my own, you know. I’m very proud of that.”