The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil (55 page)

“You will watch.”
The voice was laughing.
“You will watch and you will see how pointless your refusals are.”

Whitby rounded the top of the stairs. “Jonathan!” When he saw Charles, he sneered. “
You
. I thought you had developed enough decency to kill yourself. I am sorry to see I was misinformed.”

“I will keep the one you saved alive for now. This one you will watch me destroy.”

“Whitby,” Charles whispered. “Whitby, you have to go—”

Whitby aimed the sword at him, his face flushing red with his rage. “You worthless
nub
! Don’t you tell me what—”

He stopped, crying out as the sword in his hand fell away. Then Charles looked again, his stomach turning over as he realized it had not just been the sword that had fallen. So had Whitby’s hand.

Whitby was bellowing now, clutching his bloody stump to his chest. He glared at Charles, but for the first time in Charles’s memory, he looked frightened. “What did you do?” He backed away. “What did—”

Charles screamed as he watched an invisible claw slash across Whitby’s face and cut his mouth and most of his tongue away.

It went quickly after that: ears, half an arm, the other hand, then nose and feet, and then, with sick humor, his shriveled old penis. Charles turned his face away and put his arms over his head, but the demon pressed the images into his mind, making him watch it all, making him
feel
each cut until he was heaving and writhing and half-mad.

“And now for the next,”
the demon whispered when it was done.

Sobbing, Charles scrambled off Jonathan and pushed him into the Void again—
away, away, he needs to go away
! But he felt him land not miles away safe at the inn as he intended—instead he heard a heavy clunk on the ground outside the open front door. The magic dome—Madeline’s spell! It was still intact! Then how had they come in? How had the demon and Whitby come in?

“Through the door. We all have come through the open door. And now you must go through it too.”

Charles felt it moving toward him.

“Wait!” Charles cried. He felt his heart pounding at the top of his throat. “Wait…! Wait!
Wait
!”

The demon did not wait. A shimmering silver body appeared before him, and it opened its mouth, its jaw stretching fantastically wide to take Charles’s flesh inside its jaws. Charles felt the sharp rending of his body, felt the pain; he let his spirit drift out, up to the Plane, and on up to the Void.

The demon grinned up at him. Then rose up behind him, opened wide again—

And Charles knew nothing more.

Chapter Fourteen

l’amara

light

The Lord is their light and their candle to see.

Light and love will lead all, one by one, back to me.

When Madeline opened her eyes, they were already surrounding her.

“She lingers in sleep,” one of them said. “She keeps no eye open for danger or need.”

“She reeks of sex,” said another. “She is sated and soft.”

“She is a perversion of the magic she carries inside her.”

“And yet she has cast often and deeply.”

“Heresy.”

“Blasphemy.”

Madeline sat straight up in the bed, blinking her heavy sleep away. Twelve black-robed, veiled figures stood in a semicircle around the bed, their hands raised in judgment. The witch’s Council had come.

Madeline clutched the bedclothes to her body and turned to the witches near the center of the half circle. “Wait,” she said. “Wait, please. You must listen to me. There is so much you need to know.”

“We will not listen to one who has broken the Covenants,” a witch replied. “We have felt your disturbances of the Craft and your insults to the Source. We need to know nothing more.”

Madeline held out her hand, shifting her legs behind her so she could sit higher. She shoved aside her fear and focused on being heard. “No, please! There are things I have seen! Wonders, dangers—
so
much more, and yet I have just begun to discover what magic has in store!”

“She is arrogant,” one of the witches to the right said.

“She believes she is the first to see such things and try to claim them.”

Madeline started. “You—you mean you already knew? You knew about moving things in and out of the Void, about not needing the guides?” She felt the force of magic around them, and she could tell that they did. “But…but why has this information not been shared?”

“Because the Craft is a discipline,” said a witch on the left. “Not an art. We will not change. We will not let the Circle be altered.”

“You know very well the world is not a circle but a sphere,” Madeline said. Her voice felt dark and dangerous in her throat. She had thought she would be trembling when she faced the Council. She’d thought she would be full of shame. She had never dreamed she would be so angry.

“The world is not strong enough to sustain the idea of a Sacred Sphere,” one from the center said. “And it will never be.”

“How do you know?” Madeline shot back. “And don’t tell me about your visions and calculations! How can you
know
, unless you have tried?”

“The world will fail. It will fall into chaos and disorder. There will be much darkness and despair.”

“There is darkness and despair now.” Madeline rose to her knees, letting the sheet fall away. “Chaos and disorder are necessary for creation.
You taught me this
. The Craft taught me this. Chaos and disorder are the food of life. And life grows across the landscape of darkness and pain, creating its own landscape as it goes.”

“A witch must be above such things,” a center witch said. “A witch is always a guardian and a guide.”

“But how do we know how to guide life,” Madeline asked, “unless we ourselves live?”

“Blasphemy,” a witch on the left whispered.

“Heretic,” said another on the right.

“She must be ended.”

“She must be returned to the cradle to begin again.”

As one, the witches raised their hands.

They shifted themselves around the bed to form a circle, forcing Madeline inside it from her position on the bed.

“Madeline Elliott, Apprentice to the witch of the Rothborne Moor,” a witch in the center called out. “Come forward and accept your judgment.”

It was over. Madeline felt dizzy and hot.
It cannot be over
! she wanted to shout. It couldn’t be! It couldn’t end like this! It wasn’t
meant
to end like this!

He said he went to return to me! The White Charles said he was coming back to me, and I will not be there!

The witches were beginning to chant. Madeline’s breath was coming fast, so she closed her eyes and made herself calm and think. No. There was a way out. She could feel it. She just had to find the way to get out, to get away, to find a safe place—

The solution came to her, but she did not rejoice. In fact, she went very cold.

She couldn’t go there, to the true Void. What if she was wrong? What if no one came to claim her, to bring her back? What if no one could? No safety! Nothing! She could be lost forever! She would become nothing—simply, completely nothing!

Trust
, a soft voice whispered in her mind. She was surprised—and moved—to find it was her own.

There was a White Charles. There could be a White Madeline.

Madeline shut her eyes and drew a long breath, for she knew she would need to make it last. She called all her power to her, all that the Craft had given her and what she had found with Charles. She called it all, and she held it, and she waited.

“Madeline Elliott, Daughter of the Craft, we release you.”

The Circle closed. And Madeline let go.

* * *

When the sudden flame of a lantern cut into the deep dark, Emily and Stephen clung to each other, ready for the worst. But when Emily saw the face above the light, she cried out in relief and rose, drawing up Stephen behind her. “Timothy!”

He smiled and shifted the lantern to the side as he opened his arms to embrace her, but Emily saw the shadows on his face, ones cast by more than just the dark around them.

“It’s time for the two of you to move.” He sounded very weary. “There are things I must show you and tell you, and we do not have much time.”

“What is happening?” Stephen demanded, and Emily noticed how he frowned at where Timothy touched her arm. He took her other hand and tugged her back to his side. “Fielding, what is this madness?”

“It is very, very complicated.” Emily ached for him. He looked as if he carried the entire world on his shoulders. But to them he only smiled and gestured with the lantern down another dark hall. “Come.”

Stephen hesitated, but Emily pulled him on. Timothy led them down, she noticed, deep and down, farther and farther into the dark.

“What has happened to this place?” Emily asked. “It was always day when we came here, and so lush and beautiful. Was it a trap? Was it all a lie?”

“The Old Ones have gone into the darkness, and so there can be no more light until it is put back again.” Timothy paused, considered right and left, then turned left. “That is what we go to prepare for now.”

“The ghosts turned on us,” Stephen said angrily. “They tried to hurt Emily—”

“They frightened her,” Timothy corrected. “There is a great difference.”

“How do you know?” Stephen demanded. “Are you in on the plot?”

Timothy stopped walking and turned around. He held the lantern high and looked Stephen directly in the eye. “If you keep insisting on knowing, I warn you, I
will
tell you.”

Stephen’s hands clenched at his sides, and he lifted his chin. “I insist. And I will continue to do so.”

“So be it.” Timothy passed the lantern to Emily; for a moment she thought she saw relief mix with the misery on Timothy’s face.
No, don’t
! she yearned to shout at Stephen. But it was too late. Timothy was already placing his hands on Stephen’s shoulders and leaning forward to whisper in his ear.

Emily did not understand what Timothy said. It sounded to her like the androghenie song before she had learned to speak it, but this speech was deeper and lower. She did not know the words, but the sound of them alone tore her apart. Her mind swam with visions of emptiness and loss, of paradise rent from her hands. She felt her children scatter and die, lost and alone. She felt her lover taken from her arms, and she cried as she watched him rent in two, then saw him torn in two again. Then they left her there in the darkness alone, to wait.

She has waited so, so long.

Emily had not realized she had closed her eyes until she opened them again. Her tears were sliding silently down her face, but when she looked at Stephen, she saw he was openly weeping, his hand clutched over his heart. Timothy took his head in his hands and placed a kiss upon Stephen’s crown, between his eyes, then squarely on his mouth. He turned to Emily. When he saw her face, he looked sorrowful again. His kiss for her was only on the cheek, but it lingered.

“I’m sorry. We’re connected already. I should have thought you would feel some of it through that alone. Though I suppose it’s ridiculous to try and protect you, for you will know it all soon enough.”

Emily didn’t know what to say; she reached for Stephen, but he was already collecting himself, holding up a hand and shaking his head as he reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. “I am fine. But we need to go. He’s right; we don’t have much time.”

Timothy walked beside Emily now, holding fast to her arm. Emily still carried the lantern, holding it low against her side. Stephen came up behind them, but he no longer seemed to mind. “There are things I must tell you,” Timothy began. “Important things. To start, you will remember when you volunteered to be my locum that I warned you it sounded binding. And in fact, it is.”

“Yes,” Emily said. She remembered both the word and the vision. But it occurred to her for the first time that the vision she had seen bore a dark side as well.

“It means ‘alternate,’” he said. “I have no plans to fail at what I must do, but if I should—” He looked bleak and ran his hand over his face. “No. It can only be this way. Anything else would be chaos and madness. But you are the alternate in many things—in everything.”

“I would make a very poor courtesan,” she said nervously.

He surprised her by taking her chin lightly in his hand and smiling at her. “Charisha. You would put me to shame, you would be so skilled.” She blushed, but she didn’t mind because it made him laugh, and he kissed her before continuing. “Such things as that, however, will be between you and Stephen to decide, and I suspect you will be very busy without such pursuits. There is much that has not been done. Much to rebuild and much to care for.”

“I don’t understand,” Emily said. “Rebuild what? Care for what?”

“This,” Timothy said, gesturing to the darkness around them. “This place. These souls. Everything.”

Emily faltered. “You mean…the
abbey
? Timothy! I can’t rebuild the abbey! The money alone! The labor, the work, the—everything!”

“The outside is but a small part,” Timothy went on. “This must be repaired too—the Other Side and the places beyond. You will need to find them all and put them back to what they were meant to be.”

Emily was reeling. “Only the Goddess could do such a thing!”

His smile was rueful and once again very sad. “An aspect of her, yes. And this, then, is perhaps the time to show you the door.”

It appeared before them as if his speaking of it had drawn it into existence, and as soon as she thought this, Emily became convinced this was exactly, somehow, what he had done.

The door was not tall or wide or even intricately carved. It was thin, so thin it was scarcely there, almost as if it were only a veil pressed flat, opened toward them in their darkness, leading to an even deeper darkness beyond. Yet even by looking at it, Emily knew it was very strong, that perhaps nothing on the earth or even beyond could make its way through when it was closed. The door shimmered, lit from within, but its glow was dull and faint, as if it were composed of slowly dying stars. It drew Emily to it. She wanted to touch it. She wanted to press her hand to those stars—