The Herald of Day

Romantic Historical Fantasy

For generations, the mages of England have hidden from and secretly protected their normal, or unGifted, countryman.  Now a renegade mage has altered the country’s history to create a dictatorship of the mageborn.  Against him stand a handful of the Gifted led by Miranda Willoughby, a tavern maid with magical power and no training, and Richard Mainwaring, Lord Hawkstowe, an earl under a blood curse because an ancestor misused his magic.

Their quest to save their country takes them from the glittering court of Charles II to the foot of the gallows tree and beyond, to a shadowy realm between life and death where a final battle will decide not only England’s course but the fate of their love.

Read the Excerpt…

Nothing.  Nothing and more nothing despite an afternoon of trying to scry in the fire.  Seated in Lady Hawkstowe’s parlor, Miranda bit her lip in frustration.

Lady Hawkstowe said, “Let’s try a new exercise.  Move your chair closer to mine, so you’re facing the hearth.”

Miranda complied, and the older woman said, “Take my hand.”

Doing so felt presumptuous, but disobeying seemed more so.  Miranda laid her hand in the older woman’s outstretched one.

“Now, child, I’ll scry, and I want you to feel what I do.”  An image appeared in the flames, Hawkstowe and another man sitting in the library.  “Extend your perceptions until you can feel mine.  Open your senses and then try to reach farther.  Close your eyes if it helps.”

Miranda shut her eyes and opened her mind.  The ticking of the mantel clock and the crackling of the fire grew sharper.  She reached outward, and her power brushed someone else’s.  It created a tingling at the nape of her neck.

“Very good,” Lady Hawkstowe murmured.  “Now trace my power and align yours with it.”

Miranda tried, but the tingle vanished.

“Don’t try so hard, child.  Let the power flow.”

Flow?  Trace?  There was something . . . like that?

“Very good,” Lady Hawkstowe breathed.  “Hold your power there and open your eyes.”

Miranda obeyed.  The image in the flame remained steady.  The tingle faded.  The image flickered.

Miranda caught her breath.  Was she doing that?

The older woman released her hand.  “Now change it.”

The image wavered.  Faded.  Lady Hawkstowe had said no one could scry into a warded place, like Winton house, except the one who’d placed the wards, so Miranda thought of Lucy, back at the inn.  Nothing happened.

“I’ll help you,” Lady Hawkstowe murmured.

As the other woman’s power joined hers, nudging it, the tingle on the back of Miranda’s neck grew stronger.  Lucy’s face appeared in the flame.  She stood chatting with the scullery lad.  Miranda smiled.

“Good,” her teacher said.  “Now hold it steady.”

The tingly prodding died.  Miranda reached for the image.

“Steady, child.  You’re losing it.“

The image died.  No!  Miranda reached, throwing her perceptions outward.  The image flickered.  Died, then surged into one of a great city.  London.  The East End, she somehow knew.  Where she had once lived with Father and Johnny and Father’s brother.  But with streets nearly empty.  Houses marked with the red X of the plague.  Men with cloths over their lower faces stood guard outside.  Stooped men, also covering their mouths and noses with cloths, pushed carts laden with corpses.  A man seized a cat.  Raised a knife–

“No!”  She sprang to her feet.  Heart pounding, she turned to Lady Hawkstowe.  “How can that be?  There’s no plague now.”

The older woman looked grave.  “If you have the Seer gift, you perhaps could scry the past, the plague of 1665, but aside from the fact that’s now impossible, the buildings are wrong.  They’re brick.  Stone.  Not the wood of the plague year.”

“But–“  Miranda swallowed hard.  “Was that . . . the future?”  Pray, no.

“We must look again to find out.”

“If it is, I don’t want to know.”  Men had killed stray animals during the plague, fearing them as carriers.  Had sealed afflicted families into their homes to die.

Lady Hawkstowe’s solemn gaze stopped further protests.  “If plague is coming, the mageborn can prepare for it.”

Reluctantly, Miranda sat before the fire again.  With Lady Hawkstowe’s power bracing her own, she tried scrying.

An image formed, then turned nightmare gray with swirling mists.  Her heart leaped into her throat.

“Hold,” Lady Hawkstowe urged her.  “Stay with it.”

The mists thinned.  A dark-haired man crumpled on the ground.  Around him darted ghostly shapes with ghastly faces, some with gaping wounds and others bones with no flesh.  He curled his arms over his head, shielding it, but in vain.  With each raking touch of the spectral hands, his body jerked as if in pain.

He was Lord Hawkstowe.  Miranda couldn’t have said how she knew, but she was certain.  Her chair crashed backward.  She hadn’t realized she’d stood.  “I can’t–can’t stop it.”

“Let it go.”  Lady Hawkstowe stepped in front of her.  “Miranda.  Look at me.”

She couldn’t.  Power surged through her, a link from somewhere else to her head to the fire.  “Make it stop,” she panted, heart pounding.

Lady Hawkstowe yanked the bell pull, then rushed into the corridor.  “Fetch Lord Hawkstowe at once,” she ordered someone.  She hurried back into the room.

Power surged against the link.  Miranda scarcely felt it.  In the flames, the horrifying torment continued.  Hawkstowe writhed, helpless against it.

Then he stood before her, his face real and solid in front of her own.  “Look at me.”

“I am,” she choked, but she couldn’t shut the vision from her mind.  It lay over his face like a transparent painting.

He caught her against him.  With a gasp, she burrowed into his shoulder.  He was here, not in some eerie shadowland.  Safe and strong and sturdy, not writhing in pain.  He was safe–but for how long?

His lips brushed her temple–or did she imagine it?  Power rolled into her mind, a wall inching up between her and the hearth.  In her mind, silver flickered against the fire, smothering it.  As the sense of it ebbed, so did the strength in her knees.

“The fire’s out,” a man’s voice said from behind him.

Supporting her with one arm, Hawkstowe reached around her to right the chair.  She sank into it, suddenly cold and queasy.

He stripped off his coat and wrapped it around her.  Kneeling in front of her, he took her icy hands in his warm ones.  “Breathe slowly.  Deeply.”  Over his shoulder, he said, “Jeremy, you know what to mix?”

“I’ll borrow Lady Hawkstowe’s herbs, if I may.”

Shivering, Miranda huddled in Hawkstowe’s coat.  “You can’t–“  Her teeth chattered.  “You–I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Don’t worry about it now.”  His eye grave, he brushed her hair gently out of her face.  “Just breathe.”

“But–I think–you might be in–in danger.”  Her teeth clacked together so hard they hurt.

“The flames do not lie,” Lady Hawkstowe said quietly.

“Later for that,” he snapped.  “Ah, Jeremy.”

Holding a goblet, the solemn-faced man they called Jeremy leaned over her. “Drink it swiftly, mistress.”

Her shaking hands banged the goblet against her teeth.  Hawkstowe cupped his fingers around hers and guided it to her mouth.  “All of it,” he said, “and hurry, so as not to taste it.  Jeremy believes in nasty medicine.”

He truly did.  The bitter, acrid taste made her stomach churn, but she would drink anything to stop the shivering.

Most of the brew went into her mouth.  Some dribbled down her chin.  Hawkstowe gently wiped it off with his fingers.  “That’s it.  Breathe.”

Slowly the shivering subsided.  “What was that?” she asked.

“Herbs.”  Jeremy glanced at Hawkstowe.  “Your power escaped your control.  Unpaced, it drained you and trapped you in the vision.  The herbs will let you rest and recover.”

As she nodded her thanks, Hawkstowe said, “Think of something pleasant.”

“But shouldn’t we talk about my vision?” she asked.  “It was ghastly, and it was about you.”

His eyes wintry, he said, “It can wait.”

He knew what it was, or he had some idea.  That horrible truth lurked in the depths of his eyes.  She had to help him.  She reached for him, but his face flicked in and out of focus.  Words failed her.  Through a drug-induced haze, she stared at him, trying to speak.  Her fingers tightened on his shirt front.

He covered her fingers with his.  His face blurred.  Receded into darkness.  From a great distance, his voice reached her faintly.  “Think of something pleasant.”

How could she, if such horrors awaited him?  But she couldn’t manage to say so before the darkness swallowed her.