The Master of Heathcrest Hall Read online

  Praise for

  The House on Durrow Street

  “Beckett’s enchantingly gothic voice is in evidence in this second in the series; [the] protagonist Ivy is as enchantingly strong as ever, with a beguiling Austen-esque personality, which really carries the novel. The backdrop of quirky characters, a fascinating magic system and the mysterious nature of the house all wrap up a delightful … novel.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “The House on Durrow Street (A++) is one of those novels that stay with you for a long time and I plan to reread the whole series across the years.”

  —Fantasy Book Critic

  “I highly recommend The House on Durrow Street as a splendid fantasy that is both magical and very proper.”

  —SFRevu

  Praise for

  The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

  “The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett is a charming and mannered fantasy confection with a darker core of Gothic romance wrapped around a mystery. Fans of any of these will enjoy it. Readers who enjoy all these genres will find it a banquet.”

  —ROBIN HOBB, author of Dragon Haven

  “The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is a charming and accomplished debut, sure to delight fantasy aficionados and lovers of gothic romance alike.”

  —JACQUELINE CAREY, author of Naamah’s Blessing

  “The Magicians and Mrs. Quent combines the sense and sensibility of Miss Austen with the sweep and romantic passion of the Miss Brontës in a fantastical feast of delights. From the moment I encountered the resourceful and charming Miss Ivoleyn Lockwell, I was eager to follow her from the fashionable streets of the city to her new employment as governess at lonely Heathcrest Hall on the windswept and rugged moorlands. In Altania, Galen Beckett has created a fascinating and engaging world where the formalities and courtesies of polite society conceal the emergence of a dark and ancient force that threatens to destabilize the kingdom and destroy everything that Ivy holds dear.”

  —SARAH ASH, author of Flight into Darkness

  “An enchanting blend of Victorian melodrama, Edwardian comedy of manners, and magic, a trip into an alternate universe in which top-hatted gentlemen dabble in magic and young women of great spirit are as beleaguered by their lack of dowry as they are by the evil villains. The characters are convincing, the plot vertiginous, and the danger bone-chilling.”

  —DELIA SHERMAN, author of The Porcelain Dove

  “I loved reading this piquant page-turner of a retro-modernist fantasy novel. But it’s more than just a rattling good time. Like its characters, it is not merely devastatingly clever, but has a heart and a soul.”

  —ELLEN KUSHNER, author of The Privilege of the Sword

  “Wonderful! Jane Austen meets high fantasy. Just a delightful story in a parallel world of magic and adventure.”

  —BARB AND J. C. HENDEE, authors of the Noble Dead Saga

  “Galen Beckett’s debut cleverly mixes fantasy and literary in a novel that imagines the social strictures that hemmed in Austen’s and Brontë’s heroines are the result of magical intervention. The novel’s supernatural elements and imaginary (but familiar-seeming) setting allow Beckett to examine class and economic conflicts from the outside, without resorting to polemics. The result is a work that mixes the rich pleasures of a Victorian epic with elements of the fantastic, an imaginative eye and a dry sense of humor.”

  —NPR.org

  “Beckett has given us a rich world in The Magicians and Mrs. Quent.… I was so entranced with this strange world that I kept reading and when the story finally began to unfold it just drew me along to the final act. It’s a story of character, courage, and honor more than rip-roaring adventure. The story pulls you into the world and then much later into the action. Luckily for the reader, the characters are interesting enough in their own right to keep the pages turning.”

  —SFRevu

  “The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is the most proficiently written first novel that I’ve read since Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.… Oozes with a keen wit and endearing charm.… [The] characters are superbly crafted, highlighted by sparkling dialogue and distinctive personalities.… A riveting blend of drama, romance, mystery, thrills, misdirection and fantasy … superior craftsmanship … remarkably charming, witty, and entertaining.”

  —Fantasy Book Critic

  “Fans of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters will be in a familiar landscape reading The Magicians and Mrs. Quent.”

  —Kansas City Star

  “The enchanting The Magicians and Mrs. Quent evokes memories of other pseudo-Victorian-Edwardian fantasies, but the writing and execution are vastly superior.… Galen Beckett reconfigures what could be stereotypical into an exciting and clever romp.”

  —Omnivoracious

  “Very, very good … This is one ride to board early.”

  —San Jose Mercury News

  The Master of Heathcrest Hall is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination

  or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Spectra eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2012 by Mark Anthony

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Spectra Books,

  an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “S” are trademarks

  of Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Beckett, Galen

  The master of Heathcrest Hall / Galen Beckett.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53248-0

  I. Title.

  PS3602.E27M37 2012

  813′.6—dc23 2012000361

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  Cover art: Phil Heffernan

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Book One: The Gallows Game

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Book Two: The White Thorn

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Book Three: Again, Heathcrest

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Epilogue: A Year After the War

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

 
; Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  THE PEOPLE HUDDLED in the cave as the wind shook the branches of the trees outside.

  The cave was damp and musty from disuse, for it had been a long while since they had last journeyed to it. In years past, they would dwell here during the darkest winter months, when the thick stone offered protection from the winds that swept out of the north—and from the wolves that prowled the frozen land, their fur ragged, desperate enough to brave fire and arrow in search of something to fill their shrunken bellies.

  For most of the year, the people lived five days’ walk to the south of this place, in a camp by the blue sea. There they would spend the long days as they had for time out of mind, prying mussels from the rocks and spearing fish and cormorants, until they became as sleek as the otters that basked on the shore in the sun.

  At least, that was how things used to be. Layka still remembered what it had been like when she was smaller. She would spend the warm evenings walking along the beach, clad only in a supple doeskin, choosing shells that might be strung on a piece of leather—saving them for the day when she was old enough to begin making herself beautiful for the young men who visited on occasion from the other camps down the shore.

  But that was before everything changed.

  It began one day with a violent shuddering of the ground. An awful groaning noise filled the air, and the sea pulled away from the shore. All knew this was a sign to flee to a higher place, but even as they did so a sudden night fell over the world. It was as if a fist had closed around the burning ember of the sun, snuffing it out. The people looked up and, for the first time, saw an unfamiliar red spark smoldering among the stars. What this new object in the night sky was, no one knew—not even Nesharu, who of all the people was the oldest and wisest.

  At last the trembling of the ground ceased, and the ocean roared back upon the beach. Dawn came, and the day seemed to pass as usual. But when it ended, the red spark again shone in the sky, a little brighter than before. The night that followed lasted too long. The world grew cold, and though it was yet early summer, stars that should only have risen in autumn spun into the sky. By morning, when Layka walked along the shore, she found it rimed with frost. She shivered despite the aurochs hide she had thrown over her shoulders, and had to use her nails to pry up shells from the sand.

  After that, the days no longer continued their gradual and steady lengthening toward midsummer. Instead, one night might flit by, swift as a bat, followed by a day during which the sun seemed to hang motionless overhead, blazing so fiercely that the otters were forced to slip into the sea to escape its heat. Then, without warning, the heat would give way to bitter cold after the sun failed to show itself for what felt like days.

  A fear came over the people. Plants wilted and shriveled in alternation. Animals grew torpid and confused, wandering across the land as if they did not know which direction to go. Many dead fish washed up on the shore, carried by currents that had gone too hot or cold to sustain them. Sometimes other things washed up on the beach as well: gelatinous remnants of unknown creatures that smelled so foul even the dogs would not touch them. And all the while the red spark grew larger in the sky, glaring like the eye of some angry beast.

  That had been three years ago. Or at least so they guessed, for they could no longer count the years by the passage of the seasons. Winter no longer gave way to spring; bright summer never dulled to autumn. Instead, the sequence of days was as patternless as a handful of fish bones thrown on the midden heap. Yet it must have been three years since everything changed, or close to it, for Layka had been just past her thirteenth winter then, and now she was nearly a woman.

  Not that it mattered. Young men never came from the other camps anymore. Nobody did, not since the red eye had shown itself. The pretty shells Layka had gathered remained unstrung, piled in a corner of the hut she shared with her parents and her brother. Anyway, there was no time to think about making herself beautiful. It was all she and the others could do to survive. Those first months had been especially awful. Game perished. Springs and rivulets went dry, and the sea grew barren of fish. The people froze and sweltered in alternation, and many succumbed to hunger or fever.

  That any of them managed to live was due to Nesharu. For hours she would stand watching the sky, observing the movements of birds or listening to the wind. Then she would tell the people where to look for water or animals to hunt. At first they found little to sustain them. Yet over time some plants began to sprout again, spindly but green. A few animals returned, as did the fish in the sea. And though these were not nearly so plentiful as before, they were enough. The days and nights came and went, sometimes short, sometimes long. For three years the people struggled and endured.

  Then a young man came to the camp.

  It was one of those endless afternoons when the sunlight went flat and turned everything to white. The people looked up to see a hunter they did not know just beyond the huts. At once the men rushed toward him, spears at the ready, but it was soon obvious that he posed no threat. He was thin, his beard crusted with salt, and despite the heat of the day he was shivering. The people gathered around him and saw that the man bore deep gashes on his arm and side. The flesh around the wounds had turned the color of ash and gave off a rank odor.

  The hunter fell to the ground and started to mutter, but it was difficult to understand him. By the ochre that stained the hides he wore, he came from one of the camps around the great curve in the shoreline many days’ walk to the south, and the language spoken there was not entirely like that of the people. However, they gave him water, and after a time Nesharu made out some of his speech.

  They came during a long night, the hunter told them. Shadows that stalked, shadows with pointed teeth. They ate men from the inside out and put on their skins, so you could not tell what they were. Then, when darkness fell, they cast off the skins to feed, and no arrow could pierce them.

  The people were frightened by these words. Layka looked at his wounds, counting the parallel lines in his flesh, and wondered what kind of animal had seven talons upon each of its paws.

  “If an arrow will not pierce them, how can these shadows be hunted?” Nesharu asked as she knelt beside the man, a listless wind stirring her hair like the white tendrils of an anemone in the shallows.

  “Take their heads,” the hunter croaked through cracked lips. “While they still wear a man’s skin, take their heads.”

  Nesharu sat with the hunter for many more hours, her weathered face grim as she leaned close, trying to make out more of the man’s words. But the hunter’s voice grew fainter, until his lips moved without making any sound, and his eyes stared blindly. Then, as the sun at last dipped below the edge of the sea, his spirit left him.

  The people gathered wood, and upon Nesharu’s direction they burned the body far away from the huts as the red eye looked down from above. It was a circle nearly as large as the moon now, its light staining the ground like blood after a hunt.

  That night was short, but by the time a swift dawn swept across the land, three men were already heading out from the camp. They were the fastest runners among the people. Since the red eye appeared in the sky, no one had gone more than a long day’s walk away from the camp. Now the men intended to go all the way around the great bend of the shore, to the southern camps, to see if they could learn more about the things the hunter had spoken of—and what danger they might pose to the people. The runners quickly became small specks on the horizon, then were lost from view.

  For five alternations of light and dark, the people waited. Then, just as the sun heaved into the sky at the start of the sixth day, a single runner stumbled into the camp. It was Layka’s brother, Tennek.

  “You are a good runner,” Nesharu said as the people gathered around Tennek, “but it is still much too soon for you to have gone all the way past the great bend and back. And where are the others?”

  Tennek sho
ok his head, unable to speak. His breaths came rapidly, and his eyes were wide, as if one of the long-fanged cats pursued him. Layka came forward bearing a shell filled with water and gave it to her elder brother. He drank it, and at last his breathing eased so that he could speak.

  The others gathered close. Despite the rising sun, a coldness crept over them as Tennek described how, on the second day out, the runners came to a camp along the shore just where it began to bend to the east.

  Who dwelled there, they did not know, for the small lodges made of sticks and mud were all empty. There was wood in the fire pits and a rack of drying fish, as well as a large chunk of flint set out on a flat stone, ready to be struck and knapped into points. It looked as if the people who had made this camp planned to return at any moment.

  By then a sudden twilight was descending, and as there was no other shelter, the three runners retreated into one of the empty lodges. They took turns keeping watch, only at some point during the night Tennek and Haleth both woke to discover that Davu was gone. They called out to him from the entrance of the lodge, but there was no answer. When dawn broke, they went out to look for him.

  They spent the whole day searching, but there was no sign of Davu in the camp or anywhere around it. Still they kept looking until night fell, when again they had no choice but to retreat into one of the lodges in the camp. This time, neither of them slept, and when morning at last came they agreed they must continue their journey south and hope that Davu would either find them or return to the people. They took some of the dried fish and the flint core, then left the camp.