I am not cute! I am big and scary rar.
Some more original-fic! Man, this resolution to write something every day has been awesome for my mental health, but the upshot is that damn but I wind up with a lot of writing. XD
Anyway! This right here is a Totally New Thing, it's probably going to be a series of short stories. Think along the lines of the format of the early Jeeves & Wooster stories. But with slightly less spazzing, and more sorcery. Yes.
And as usual, comments and concrit will be snuggled and fed cookies.
Title: The Ghost in the Grand Chamber, chapter one
Summary: Jonathan Easter was a mild-mannered government clerk, until he met Essabeth Stone- one of the country's best-known sorcerers. Now he's a mild-mannered clerk who happens to be mixed up with dangerous magic, dangerous women, and a very dangerous government conspiracy.
IN THIS CHAPTER: Romantic mental images, a bad first impression, an exorcism, an extra spell, an attack, and a magical improvisation.
It was just beginning to be spring, the first time I saw Essabeth Stone. It was the time of year when new buds and shoots are just starting the attempt to push up their heads, and more often than not are crushed by a fresh fall of freezing rain. This is always one of the most abhorrent times of year, for me. It’s something about seeing those first beginnings of hope dashed. But this is hardly the note on which I intended to begin this story.
I was twenty that year- fresh out of university, and employed as a junior associate at Queen’s Court. For the most part, that meant running errands and shuttling visiting dignitaries back and forth.
This was one such assignment. I was to take the car to Old Center Station, pick up Miss Stone, and bring her back to the visitor’s lodgings at the Halls of Court. The roads were in miserable condition, of course, but I was far too excited about this particular assignment to mind.
Essabeth Stone was not merely a visitor to Queen’s Court. For weeks we had been troubled by a haunt in the grand chamber, and no one had been able to get any work done. Finally the senior legislators had called Miss Stone, one of the country’s foremost magical practitioners, to sort it out before the entire legal system ground to a halt.
Navigating the muddy, icy streets, I was lost in thought of what she would be like. She would be tall and willowy, I thought, with dark hair and eyes deep with mystic wisdom. She would probably dress in jewel tones, reds and purples and rich greens, and her voice would be low and rich. I will admit, my thoughts were a little excessive in their romance. I almost drove past the station in my distraction.
Old Center Station was not as busy as it can be during peak hours, but there was still a fair crowd. I was just in time. I found the correct platform and insinuated my way into the line of drivers and porters waiting with placards, watching the passengers step down from the train.
The crowd had thinned out a bit by the time anyone approached me. She was a young woman in a businesslike brown and blue traveling dress, carrying a square wicker case, and she peered at my placard before frowning at me. “I assume you’re the driver,” she said.
I blinked, taken aback. “Miss Stone?” I said.
“Obviously,” she replied, fixing me with another frown. I had to fight the urge to take a step back. There was power in that frown.
She was nothing at all like my romantic image. She was shorter than I am- and I am not tall myself- and compact, with green-hazel eyes, a blunt nose, and that dangerous frown. The only thing that was properly mystical about her, to my mind, was her bright red hair, and even that was sensibly pinned up. She looked more like a schoolteacher than a sorceress, I thought.
But I bore up under the disappointment. I had a job to do, after all. “My name is Jonathan Easter,” I said, as politely as I could manage in the full force of that frown, “and I am, in fact, your driver today. May I take your case?”
I think she was too busy glaring at me to register what I was doing- if she hadn’t been distracted, I don’t think I could have wrested it away from her. As it was, I took the wicker case from her hand, and nearly dropped it when it hissed at me. I stared at it in shock. From behind the wickerwork, two angry yellow eyes stared back at me.
“It’s a cat!” I exclaimed, before I could stop myself.
“Of course he’s a cat,” said Miss Stone, and her tone added, ‘you idiot.’
“Is it your familiar?” I asked, again before I could prevent the words from leaving my mouth.
She gave me a strange look, as if I had remarked that the sky was orange. “No,” she said, “he’s just a cat.” And with that, she strode toward the platform gate, a porter following with her sensible brown trunk. I hurried after them belatedly. I had not, I thought, made a good first impression. At the time, I didn’t think I was likely to get the chance to make a second.
As it happened- fortunately- I was wrong. The next day, I was called to fetch a stack of files from the Records chamber, and bring them to the grand chamber. The haunt had gotten quite severe by then, and to this day, I couldn’t explain why people continued to try to work there. There was a persistent cold breeze circulating the chamber, sounds of moaning and rattling chains, ghostly apparitions fading in and out at the corners of the eyes, the whole gamut of ethereal symptoms. I suspect a number of the full associates were just as curious to see Miss Stone as I had been.
I had been there only a few minutes before Miss Stone arrived, escorted by a miniature delegation of associates. They fetched up next to the dais from which speakers made their arguments. Gradually, as if in ripples around them, all activity in the chamber came to a halt.
Miss Stone surveyed the chamber, peering at the walls and up into the beams of the ceiling, subjecting each inch to the same frown she had given me the previous day. We all, to a man, held our breath. Even the haunt-noises subsided, although the chill remained. Silence reigned.
Finally, she snapped her fingers decisively, and the room breathed out again. “Right,” she said, “I’ll need salt, a handkerchief- plain white, for preference, or blue- a sturdy piece of thin string, a coin, a knife, several pieces of chalk, and a stick of charcoal or grease pencil- something that will write on cloth. Red, for preference, but black will do. And I shall need an assistant.” Her eyes swept the room, and landed- somehow- on me. She pointed. “You’ll do.”
Motion broke out in a flurry, as people produced handkerchiefs and coins, rifled through desk drawers, and sent junior associates to fetch things. I made my way through it all to where Miss Stone stood. Part of me was apprehensive, sure I would come under the force of that frown again, but the rest of me felt a thrill of excitement. I, of all people, was going to work with Essabeth Stone.
“Do you always work like this?” I couldn’t resist asking.
She shrugged. Her attention was on the corners of the chamber again. “I can’t be bothered to carry simple supplies. They’re easy to find. I carry some specialty items, but a routine case like this shouldn’t need them.” I wondered if I counted as a simple supply.
The items arrived, and she sorted through them with brisk efficiency, lining them up on the lectern. “Now, I’ll need everyone to vacate the chamber,” she said.
Protests broke out, a sudden babble of voices. No one wanted to leave and miss watching what was going to happen. Miss Stone silenced them with a single raised finger.
“Gentlemen, please,” she said. “I am a sorcerer.”
There seemed to be no arguing with that. Reluctantly, everyone else filed out of the chamber, leaving just the two of us and the haunt.
The cold wind picked up again. So did the moaning and the rattling chains. Miss Stone rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up,” she told it.
Almost immediately, the noises stopped. I probably ought to have been surprised, but by that point I would have been more surprised if they hadn’t.
“Now,” she said. “We’ll get the room enclosed first. You take the knife and walk once around the chamber, and write this sign-” she helped herself to a pen and a piece of paper from one of the desks, and drew a kind of angular figure-eight shape with a line through it- “in each corner.”
“Er- with the knife?” I said.
She blinked at me. “No, not with the knife. With the chalk.”
“Aha. You didn’t say chalk before.”
“Well, I’m saying it now.”
“So what do I do with the knife?”
She blinked again. “Just… hold it. Point toward the wall. Go on, shoo.”
I picked up the knife and a piece of the chalk and did as I was told. By the time I returned, Miss Stone had the handkerchief spread out flat on the lectern and was drawing a set of concentric rings on it with the grease pencil. “Salt,” she said, holding out her hand without looking up.
The salt was in a little saltcellar from the kitchens. I didn’t know how much of it she needed, so I put the whole thing into her open hand. She took a pinch, ate it, and continued filling in symbols between her concentric rings.
I had to ask. “Er, is that part of the spell?” I said.
“No,” she responded vaguely, “it just helps me think.” She wrote what seemed to be the last of the symbols and beckoned me over to look at them. “All right, more signs for you. I need these four copied, one in each corner. Can you do that quickly?”
One thing junior associates at Queen’s Court must have is a good memory. I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, ye gods,” she said, “Miss Stone will do.” She waved a hand at me. “Well, get moving.” I moved.
She followed me, dropping a pinch of salt in each place I had written a sign and reciting an incantation under her breath. Then she went around again and tossed more salt up toward the corners of the ceiling. “I think we’ve got it,” she said. “Now we just have to draw it in.”
In the center of the handkerchief, amidst the rings and symbols, she sprinkled a little more salt and put the coin on top of it. She had me hold the knife over it, point down, while she recited another incantation with her hands held on either side. This, I thought, was more like what I had been imagining.
The next second, that thought- and all other thoughts- were pushed out of my mind. The knife was suddenly ice-cold in my hands, and it felt as if some force were squeezing itself through my arms and down the knife’s point. I may have shouted, I can’t remember. Miss Stone certainly did. Her hands closed- I brought the knife up, it seemed like the right thing to do in the moment- and she folded the handkerchief up around the coin, twisted it swiftly, and tied it closed with the string.
“There,” she said, pushing back a strand of hair that had fallen out of her neat hairstyle. “That ought to do it.”
It was warmer in the chamber already, and the wind had dropped to a faint breeze. As we recovered our breath, both subsided entirely. We had done it.
“That was exciting,” I said. I meant the remark to sound casual, maybe even witty, but I could feel an idiotic grin taking over my face. I wasn’t sure I cared.
She gave me an indescribable look. “You know,” she said, “you’re not awful at this. Why aren’t you trained?”
“Well, I-” I started, but almost immediately she held up a hand to cut me off.
“Wait- do you feel something… strange?”
I stared at her. “I don’t think I do,” I said, baffled. “Strange how?”
“Shut up,” she said. “Just- listen for a second. When we finished that spell, just now, what did it feel like?”
I described the sensations as best I could. At the time I didn’t think it was a very good description, but it seemed to be enough for Miss Stone.
“The cold’s normal, for a haunt, but the rest isn’t.” She tapped her middle finger and thumb together, thinking. “It must have been attached to something else. And whatever that something else is… it’s still here.”
“Is that bad?” I asked, following her as she began to pace the chamber again.
“Not necessarily,” she said. She ran her hands over the walls, sometimes peering at them, sometimes closing her eyes. “An old, important building like this, there will be protection spells and the like worked right into the construction. The haunt could have attached itself to one of them, and we’ve just pulled a bit of it loose in the process of removing it. We just find the loose end and tuck it back in- aha, here we are.”
She’d come to a halt at the head of the chamber, looking up into the beams of the ceiling. “Well?” She waved a hand at me. “Don’t just stand there, get me something to stand on.”
After a moment’s consideration, I shoved the nearest desk over to where she was standing, and then put a chair on top of it. The ceiling was high, and she clearly meant to get up where she could see it.
“Er- are you going to be all right up there?” I said. “I could climb up and-”
“Don’t be silly, you wouldn’t know what to look for. Just give me a boost up onto this desk.”
She didn’t give me any further instructions, so I stood at a safe distance to catch her if she lost her footing. I would never be forgiven if I let Essabeth Stone break her neck.
Up on her perch, she muttered to herself, words I didn’t quite catch. “Aha,” she said, finally. “Got you. You’re a strange spell- not protection or building. What are you?”
She ran her hands over the molding, peering at it intently. I think if I had said anything then, she wouldn’t have heard a syllable. She was thoroughly captivated.
I must have been a bit captivated myself, because the next thing I knew, she let out an unearthly scream and tried to step backwards. I was only just in time to stop her from stepping onto thin air. Even so, we both toppled to the ground, her on top of me and one of my legs in a painfully awkward position.
She rolled off me- my leg gave another twinge- and pushed herself violently away. Facing away from me, on her hands and knees with her skirts in disarray, she seemed to be struggling for breath.
Common propriety, in which I consider myself fairly adept, dictated absolutely no appropriate response. I settled for carefully touching her shoulder. “Miss Stone?” I said. “Can I, er, do anything to assist you?”
Faster than I could follow, one of her hands grabbed my wrist. Her grip was strong- uncannily so. Her voice, when she spoke, was choked and hoarse. “Defenses in the spell- don’t touch,” she managed. She sounded worse with every word. “Turning- my own power- against me-”
I could barely hear her, her voice was so strangled. She turned, seizing my face with her other hand and forcing me to look at her. Her eyes shone blank white. “Stop me,” she choked out.
“How-” I started, but she released me, throwing her arms wide and tilting her head back. She shook. That unearthly scream tore from her throat again, more like a howling wind than a human being, and a nimbus of white fire began to swirl around her.
I had to bring her out of it somehow. Steeling my resolve, I reached out to grasp her by the shoulders. I don’t know what I intended to do- shake her to her senses, perhaps- but before I could actually make contact, she backhanded me across the face. I went sprawling. She followed, pinning me to the floor, trying to close her hands over my throat.
Whatever force possessed her was much stronger than I was. All my hand-to-hand training- admittedly, not much to start with- deserted me, and I found myself flailing madly to try to keep her from gaining a hold. Meanwhile, the white fire that had surrounded her was beginning to surround me, making every nerve it touched burn.
She had said to stop her. But how? I could barely think, let alone analyze the situation. I had to get free first. I tried to push her off me, and somehow wound up with one hand on her forehead and the other over her chest. Somewhere in the back of my mind, an idea stirred.
“Essabeth Stone,” I shouted, with as much voice as I could muster, “by the power you command, I order you to stop!”
It was a complete improvisation, but it worked. She froze. The white fire faded, the glow left her eyes, her hands uncurled from around my neck. Then, quite suddenly, her eyes closed and she collapsed.
Chapter Two
Anyway! This right here is a Totally New Thing, it's probably going to be a series of short stories. Think along the lines of the format of the early Jeeves & Wooster stories. But with slightly less spazzing, and more sorcery. Yes.
And as usual, comments and concrit will be snuggled and fed cookies.
Title: The Ghost in the Grand Chamber, chapter one
Summary: Jonathan Easter was a mild-mannered government clerk, until he met Essabeth Stone- one of the country's best-known sorcerers. Now he's a mild-mannered clerk who happens to be mixed up with dangerous magic, dangerous women, and a very dangerous government conspiracy.
IN THIS CHAPTER: Romantic mental images, a bad first impression, an exorcism, an extra spell, an attack, and a magical improvisation.
It was just beginning to be spring, the first time I saw Essabeth Stone. It was the time of year when new buds and shoots are just starting the attempt to push up their heads, and more often than not are crushed by a fresh fall of freezing rain. This is always one of the most abhorrent times of year, for me. It’s something about seeing those first beginnings of hope dashed. But this is hardly the note on which I intended to begin this story.
I was twenty that year- fresh out of university, and employed as a junior associate at Queen’s Court. For the most part, that meant running errands and shuttling visiting dignitaries back and forth.
This was one such assignment. I was to take the car to Old Center Station, pick up Miss Stone, and bring her back to the visitor’s lodgings at the Halls of Court. The roads were in miserable condition, of course, but I was far too excited about this particular assignment to mind.
Essabeth Stone was not merely a visitor to Queen’s Court. For weeks we had been troubled by a haunt in the grand chamber, and no one had been able to get any work done. Finally the senior legislators had called Miss Stone, one of the country’s foremost magical practitioners, to sort it out before the entire legal system ground to a halt.
Navigating the muddy, icy streets, I was lost in thought of what she would be like. She would be tall and willowy, I thought, with dark hair and eyes deep with mystic wisdom. She would probably dress in jewel tones, reds and purples and rich greens, and her voice would be low and rich. I will admit, my thoughts were a little excessive in their romance. I almost drove past the station in my distraction.
Old Center Station was not as busy as it can be during peak hours, but there was still a fair crowd. I was just in time. I found the correct platform and insinuated my way into the line of drivers and porters waiting with placards, watching the passengers step down from the train.
The crowd had thinned out a bit by the time anyone approached me. She was a young woman in a businesslike brown and blue traveling dress, carrying a square wicker case, and she peered at my placard before frowning at me. “I assume you’re the driver,” she said.
I blinked, taken aback. “Miss Stone?” I said.
“Obviously,” she replied, fixing me with another frown. I had to fight the urge to take a step back. There was power in that frown.
She was nothing at all like my romantic image. She was shorter than I am- and I am not tall myself- and compact, with green-hazel eyes, a blunt nose, and that dangerous frown. The only thing that was properly mystical about her, to my mind, was her bright red hair, and even that was sensibly pinned up. She looked more like a schoolteacher than a sorceress, I thought.
But I bore up under the disappointment. I had a job to do, after all. “My name is Jonathan Easter,” I said, as politely as I could manage in the full force of that frown, “and I am, in fact, your driver today. May I take your case?”
I think she was too busy glaring at me to register what I was doing- if she hadn’t been distracted, I don’t think I could have wrested it away from her. As it was, I took the wicker case from her hand, and nearly dropped it when it hissed at me. I stared at it in shock. From behind the wickerwork, two angry yellow eyes stared back at me.
“It’s a cat!” I exclaimed, before I could stop myself.
“Of course he’s a cat,” said Miss Stone, and her tone added, ‘you idiot.’
“Is it your familiar?” I asked, again before I could prevent the words from leaving my mouth.
She gave me a strange look, as if I had remarked that the sky was orange. “No,” she said, “he’s just a cat.” And with that, she strode toward the platform gate, a porter following with her sensible brown trunk. I hurried after them belatedly. I had not, I thought, made a good first impression. At the time, I didn’t think I was likely to get the chance to make a second.
As it happened- fortunately- I was wrong. The next day, I was called to fetch a stack of files from the Records chamber, and bring them to the grand chamber. The haunt had gotten quite severe by then, and to this day, I couldn’t explain why people continued to try to work there. There was a persistent cold breeze circulating the chamber, sounds of moaning and rattling chains, ghostly apparitions fading in and out at the corners of the eyes, the whole gamut of ethereal symptoms. I suspect a number of the full associates were just as curious to see Miss Stone as I had been.
I had been there only a few minutes before Miss Stone arrived, escorted by a miniature delegation of associates. They fetched up next to the dais from which speakers made their arguments. Gradually, as if in ripples around them, all activity in the chamber came to a halt.
Miss Stone surveyed the chamber, peering at the walls and up into the beams of the ceiling, subjecting each inch to the same frown she had given me the previous day. We all, to a man, held our breath. Even the haunt-noises subsided, although the chill remained. Silence reigned.
Finally, she snapped her fingers decisively, and the room breathed out again. “Right,” she said, “I’ll need salt, a handkerchief- plain white, for preference, or blue- a sturdy piece of thin string, a coin, a knife, several pieces of chalk, and a stick of charcoal or grease pencil- something that will write on cloth. Red, for preference, but black will do. And I shall need an assistant.” Her eyes swept the room, and landed- somehow- on me. She pointed. “You’ll do.”
Motion broke out in a flurry, as people produced handkerchiefs and coins, rifled through desk drawers, and sent junior associates to fetch things. I made my way through it all to where Miss Stone stood. Part of me was apprehensive, sure I would come under the force of that frown again, but the rest of me felt a thrill of excitement. I, of all people, was going to work with Essabeth Stone.
“Do you always work like this?” I couldn’t resist asking.
She shrugged. Her attention was on the corners of the chamber again. “I can’t be bothered to carry simple supplies. They’re easy to find. I carry some specialty items, but a routine case like this shouldn’t need them.” I wondered if I counted as a simple supply.
The items arrived, and she sorted through them with brisk efficiency, lining them up on the lectern. “Now, I’ll need everyone to vacate the chamber,” she said.
Protests broke out, a sudden babble of voices. No one wanted to leave and miss watching what was going to happen. Miss Stone silenced them with a single raised finger.
“Gentlemen, please,” she said. “I am a sorcerer.”
There seemed to be no arguing with that. Reluctantly, everyone else filed out of the chamber, leaving just the two of us and the haunt.
The cold wind picked up again. So did the moaning and the rattling chains. Miss Stone rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up,” she told it.
Almost immediately, the noises stopped. I probably ought to have been surprised, but by that point I would have been more surprised if they hadn’t.
“Now,” she said. “We’ll get the room enclosed first. You take the knife and walk once around the chamber, and write this sign-” she helped herself to a pen and a piece of paper from one of the desks, and drew a kind of angular figure-eight shape with a line through it- “in each corner.”
“Er- with the knife?” I said.
She blinked at me. “No, not with the knife. With the chalk.”
“Aha. You didn’t say chalk before.”
“Well, I’m saying it now.”
“So what do I do with the knife?”
She blinked again. “Just… hold it. Point toward the wall. Go on, shoo.”
I picked up the knife and a piece of the chalk and did as I was told. By the time I returned, Miss Stone had the handkerchief spread out flat on the lectern and was drawing a set of concentric rings on it with the grease pencil. “Salt,” she said, holding out her hand without looking up.
The salt was in a little saltcellar from the kitchens. I didn’t know how much of it she needed, so I put the whole thing into her open hand. She took a pinch, ate it, and continued filling in symbols between her concentric rings.
I had to ask. “Er, is that part of the spell?” I said.
“No,” she responded vaguely, “it just helps me think.” She wrote what seemed to be the last of the symbols and beckoned me over to look at them. “All right, more signs for you. I need these four copied, one in each corner. Can you do that quickly?”
One thing junior associates at Queen’s Court must have is a good memory. I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, ye gods,” she said, “Miss Stone will do.” She waved a hand at me. “Well, get moving.” I moved.
She followed me, dropping a pinch of salt in each place I had written a sign and reciting an incantation under her breath. Then she went around again and tossed more salt up toward the corners of the ceiling. “I think we’ve got it,” she said. “Now we just have to draw it in.”
In the center of the handkerchief, amidst the rings and symbols, she sprinkled a little more salt and put the coin on top of it. She had me hold the knife over it, point down, while she recited another incantation with her hands held on either side. This, I thought, was more like what I had been imagining.
The next second, that thought- and all other thoughts- were pushed out of my mind. The knife was suddenly ice-cold in my hands, and it felt as if some force were squeezing itself through my arms and down the knife’s point. I may have shouted, I can’t remember. Miss Stone certainly did. Her hands closed- I brought the knife up, it seemed like the right thing to do in the moment- and she folded the handkerchief up around the coin, twisted it swiftly, and tied it closed with the string.
“There,” she said, pushing back a strand of hair that had fallen out of her neat hairstyle. “That ought to do it.”
It was warmer in the chamber already, and the wind had dropped to a faint breeze. As we recovered our breath, both subsided entirely. We had done it.
“That was exciting,” I said. I meant the remark to sound casual, maybe even witty, but I could feel an idiotic grin taking over my face. I wasn’t sure I cared.
She gave me an indescribable look. “You know,” she said, “you’re not awful at this. Why aren’t you trained?”
“Well, I-” I started, but almost immediately she held up a hand to cut me off.
“Wait- do you feel something… strange?”
I stared at her. “I don’t think I do,” I said, baffled. “Strange how?”
“Shut up,” she said. “Just- listen for a second. When we finished that spell, just now, what did it feel like?”
I described the sensations as best I could. At the time I didn’t think it was a very good description, but it seemed to be enough for Miss Stone.
“The cold’s normal, for a haunt, but the rest isn’t.” She tapped her middle finger and thumb together, thinking. “It must have been attached to something else. And whatever that something else is… it’s still here.”
“Is that bad?” I asked, following her as she began to pace the chamber again.
“Not necessarily,” she said. She ran her hands over the walls, sometimes peering at them, sometimes closing her eyes. “An old, important building like this, there will be protection spells and the like worked right into the construction. The haunt could have attached itself to one of them, and we’ve just pulled a bit of it loose in the process of removing it. We just find the loose end and tuck it back in- aha, here we are.”
She’d come to a halt at the head of the chamber, looking up into the beams of the ceiling. “Well?” She waved a hand at me. “Don’t just stand there, get me something to stand on.”
After a moment’s consideration, I shoved the nearest desk over to where she was standing, and then put a chair on top of it. The ceiling was high, and she clearly meant to get up where she could see it.
“Er- are you going to be all right up there?” I said. “I could climb up and-”
“Don’t be silly, you wouldn’t know what to look for. Just give me a boost up onto this desk.”
She didn’t give me any further instructions, so I stood at a safe distance to catch her if she lost her footing. I would never be forgiven if I let Essabeth Stone break her neck.
Up on her perch, she muttered to herself, words I didn’t quite catch. “Aha,” she said, finally. “Got you. You’re a strange spell- not protection or building. What are you?”
She ran her hands over the molding, peering at it intently. I think if I had said anything then, she wouldn’t have heard a syllable. She was thoroughly captivated.
I must have been a bit captivated myself, because the next thing I knew, she let out an unearthly scream and tried to step backwards. I was only just in time to stop her from stepping onto thin air. Even so, we both toppled to the ground, her on top of me and one of my legs in a painfully awkward position.
She rolled off me- my leg gave another twinge- and pushed herself violently away. Facing away from me, on her hands and knees with her skirts in disarray, she seemed to be struggling for breath.
Common propriety, in which I consider myself fairly adept, dictated absolutely no appropriate response. I settled for carefully touching her shoulder. “Miss Stone?” I said. “Can I, er, do anything to assist you?”
Faster than I could follow, one of her hands grabbed my wrist. Her grip was strong- uncannily so. Her voice, when she spoke, was choked and hoarse. “Defenses in the spell- don’t touch,” she managed. She sounded worse with every word. “Turning- my own power- against me-”
I could barely hear her, her voice was so strangled. She turned, seizing my face with her other hand and forcing me to look at her. Her eyes shone blank white. “Stop me,” she choked out.
“How-” I started, but she released me, throwing her arms wide and tilting her head back. She shook. That unearthly scream tore from her throat again, more like a howling wind than a human being, and a nimbus of white fire began to swirl around her.
I had to bring her out of it somehow. Steeling my resolve, I reached out to grasp her by the shoulders. I don’t know what I intended to do- shake her to her senses, perhaps- but before I could actually make contact, she backhanded me across the face. I went sprawling. She followed, pinning me to the floor, trying to close her hands over my throat.
Whatever force possessed her was much stronger than I was. All my hand-to-hand training- admittedly, not much to start with- deserted me, and I found myself flailing madly to try to keep her from gaining a hold. Meanwhile, the white fire that had surrounded her was beginning to surround me, making every nerve it touched burn.
She had said to stop her. But how? I could barely think, let alone analyze the situation. I had to get free first. I tried to push her off me, and somehow wound up with one hand on her forehead and the other over her chest. Somewhere in the back of my mind, an idea stirred.
“Essabeth Stone,” I shouted, with as much voice as I could muster, “by the power you command, I order you to stop!”
It was a complete improvisation, but it worked. She froze. The white fire faded, the glow left her eyes, her hands uncurled from around my neck. Then, quite suddenly, her eyes closed and she collapsed.
Chapter Two