‘Witnessed,’ Vale put in. ‘Don’t look so harassed, Winters. You’ll enjoy training his niece, once you get down to the job. I’ve often thought you have the soul of a born teacher.’
Irene couldn’t work out where that deduction had come from, but decided to take it as a compliment. She sighed. ‘Thank you all for coming. I’ll let you know as soon as I have an answer.’
Once they were all out of the door, she turned to Kai. ‘I didn’t expect you to support that quite as much as you did.’
‘Oh, her I can work with,’ Kai said with surprising cheerfulness. ‘After all, she’s the cunning agent of a devious spymaster. At least we know what we’re dealing with there.’
‘And this apprentice?’
‘Why are you asking me? You’re the one who’ll be training her. If you can help her be something other than like Lord Silver, even my lord father would agree that’s a virtuous and meritorious action.’
Clearly she could expect no help from that quarter. ‘Oh, very well,’ Irene agreed, and found herself smiling. ‘It should certainly be interesting – if it can be done . . . Fae living in the same house as dragons? Fae becoming Librarians?’
Kai squeezed her shoulder. ‘Just because something is impossible has never stopped you before. You taught me that, too.’
Dear Irene,
I’d like to say all the usual things about hoping that you’re well and asking about your friends. But instead I strongly recommend that you delete this email after reading it.
You were right: there is something unusual about The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor – the version that you retrieved. The section about the sailor and the serpent . . . well, to cut to the chase, it’s described as a winged giant serpent, rather than a normal giant serpent (and yes, there are ‘normal’ giant serpents, ask your mother about that trouble in Iceland sometime). And what does winged giant serpent suggest to you? Right. Exactly.
In the usual version, the serpent tells the sailor about a personal tragedy – a star fell on the island and all his family are burned up, though sometimes his daughter survives. She isn’t mentioned any further in the usual story. Rather unfair on the daughter. I’d have been interested in a variant that gives her an appearance and her own perspective . . .
Your mother is leaning on my shoulder and telling me to get to the point.
In this version, the ‘winged serpent’ (I’m avoiding certain words here) says that he and his four sons (note the number) and others of his kind fled to the island to escape a catastrophe. The language is rather opaque here – it’s difficult to separate accurate description from semi-supernatural hyperbole. But this is my best guess at translating that catastrophe:
The air became crystal and the earth closed its hands around us where we stood. Our bodies changed till we are as you now see me. Had we not fled, our spirits would have become as the wind and water and earth. (The word for spirit here is ba, meaning the part of the soul that gives a personality its unique aspects.) We left the land behind and crossed the limitless sea and sky, on newly fledged wings, to find a dwelling elsewhere. We were pursued by others who were also afflicted, but could no longer take human form (this is extraordinary!) and would have torn us to pieces. They no longer recognized us as their friends and kinsmen; their hearts were as stone.
If there is truth in here rather than fiction, I’m not sure how much it has been mangled by my translation. Issues with the narrative could be due to problems any human might have, when trying to understand what someone non-human – or non-human now – is telling them. Or my problems with decoding the text could simply be due to the effect of multiple retellings of a story. The transmutation of an originally oral history? Or perhaps my translation is entirely accurate.
We then pretty much revert to the standard version, with the winged serpent advising the sailor to have courage – and promising at least he’ll get back to his family again. At this point (in another change from the usual version) the sailor asks about the winged serpent’s own family. The serpent says that his four sons have gone forth to become kings, and that they and their mates (or co-rulers? Queens? Four sisters?) will rule over others who have fled identical disasters. The term here is the same as the one used for the earlier catastrophe.
But the serpent says that he himself has a different task. He must establish an alliance with their utmost enemies, for the restoration of balance. (The phrasing is the restoration of Maat. The part that follows is complex, because normally in Egyptian mythology, this would be referring directly to the goddess Maat, thus indicating her restoration. But she personified concepts such as honour, balance and justice. So this might not have been about the restoration of an actual goddess, but about the qualities she represented. Could this be an attempt to translate whatever the winged serpent has said into the local terminology?) The serpent says that he will not return to this island but will be reborn in a different form. He finishes with: ‘My fate shall be preserved by the scribes’, so perhaps there is still a further record out there. There was clearly more to this story once than just this document alone.
I agree that this text raises huge questions. However, they’re questions that shouldn’t be asked unless we have no other choice. Everyone deserves a bit of privacy, even ‘winged serpents’. (I’m highly disturbed by these revelations myself – but you had to know as soon as possible, and a Library-routed letter seemed the safest method of contact.)
Your mother is pointing out (over my shoulder, again) that firstly, this appears to be a case of genuine history reported as fiction. Secondly, this is something we might want to bury six feet under and never mention again. It might be extremely dangerous to have any ‘winged serpents’ find out that we’re researching this part of their history. We’re not telling you to forget what I’ve just said – after all knowledge is control, knowledge is safety – but at the same time, I suggest you delete this email. And don’t mention the contents to Kai – for his own safety, too.
Much love,
Your father (and mother)
If you enjoyed The Secret Chapter, turn over for an extract from
Sorcerer to the Crown
BY ZEN CHO
the first thrilling adventure in the Sorcerer Royal series.
In Regency London, Zacharias Wythe is England’s first African Sorcerer Royal. He leads the eminent Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers, but a malicious faction seeks to remove him by fair means or foul. Meanwhile, the Society is failing its vital duty – to keep stable the levels of magic within His Majesty’s lands. The Fairy Court is blocking its supply, straining England’s dangerously declining magical stores. And now the government is demanding to use this scarce resource in its war with France.
Ambitious orphan Prunella Gentleman is desperate to escape the school where she’s drudged all her life, and a visit by the beleaguered Sorcerer Royal seems the perfect opportunity. For Prunella has just stumbled upon English magic’s greatest discovery in centuries – and she intends to make the most of it.
At his wits’ end, the last thing Zachariah needs is a female magical prodigy! But together, they might just change the nature of sorcery, in Britain and beyond.
PROLOGUE
THE MEETING OF the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers was well under way, and the entrance hall was almost empty. Only the occasional tardy magician passed through, scarcely sparing a glance for the child waiting there.
Boy children of his type were not an uncommon sight in the Society’s rooms. The child was unusual less for his complexion than for his apparent idleness. Unlike the Society’s splendidly liveried pages, he was soberly dressed, and he was young for a page boy, having just attained his sixth summer.
In fact, Zacharias held no particular employment, and he had never seen the Society before that morning, when he had been conducted there by the Sorcerer Royal himself. Sir Stephen had adjured him to wait, then vanished into the mysterious depths of the Great Hall.
Zacharias was awed b
y the stately building, with its sombre wood-panelled walls and imposing paintings, and he was a little frightened of the grave thaumaturges hurrying past in their midnight blue coats. Most of all he was rendered solemn by the seriousness of his task. He sat, swollen with purpose, gazing at the doors to the Great Hall, as though by an effort of will he might compel them to open and disgorge his guardian.
Finally, the moment came: the doors opened, and Sir Stephen beckoned to him.
Zacharias entered the Great Hall under the penetrating gaze of what seemed to be a thousand gentlemen, most of them old, and none friendly. Sir Stephen was the only person he knew, for one could not count Sir Stephen’s familiar Leofric, who slept curled in reptilian coils at the back of the room, smoke rising from his snout.
The thickest-skinned child might have been cowed by such an assembly, and Zacharias was sensitive. But Sir Stephen put a reassuring hand on his back, and Zacharias remembered the morning, so long ago now—home, safety, warmth, and Lady Wythe’s face bending over him:
“Never be afraid, Zacharias, but do your best. That will be quite enough, for you have been taught by the finest sorcerer in the realm. If the attention of so many gentlemen should make you nervous, simply pretend to yourself that they are so many heads of cabbages. That always assists me on such occasions.”
Zacharias was pretending as hard as he could as he was propelled to the front of the room, but the cabbages did not seem to help. To be sure, Lady Wythe had never been called upon to prove the magical capacities of her race before the finest thaumaturgical minds in England. It was a grave responsibility, and one anyone would find daunting, thought Zacharias, even if he were a great boy of six.
“What do you wish to bring alive, Zacharias?” said Sir Stephen. He gestured at a small wooden box on a table. “In the course of his travels Mr. Midsomer acquired this box, carved with birds and fruit and out-landish animals. You may have your pick.”
Zacharias had rehearsed the enchantment he was to perform many times under Sir Stephen’s patient tutelage. The night before, he had fallen asleep reciting the formula to himself. Yet now, as he was surrounded by a crowd of strange faces, oppressed by the consciousness of being the focus of their attention, memory deserted him.
His terrified gaze swung from Sir Stephen’s kind face, skipped over the audience, and roamed over the Great Hall, as if he might find the words of the spell waiting for him in some dusty corner. It was the oldest room in the Society, and boasted several interesting features, chief of which were the ancient carved bosses on the ceiling. These represented lambs, lions and unicorns; faces of long-dead sorcerers; and Green Men with sour expressions and vines sprouting from their nostrils. At any other time they would have captivated Zacharias, but right now they could give him no pleasure.
“I have forgotten the spell,” he whispered.
“What is that?” said Sir Stephen. He had been speaking in clear ringing tones before, addressing his audience, but now he lowered his voice and leaned closer.
“No helping the boy, if you please,” cried a voice. “That will prove nothing of what you promised.”
The audience had been growing restless with Zacharias’s stupefaction. Other voices followed the first, hectoring, displeased:
“Is the child an idiot?”
“A poll parrot would offer better amusement.”
“Can you conceive anything more absurd?” said a thaumaturge to a friend, in a carrying whisper. “He might as well seek to persuade us that a pig can fly—ora woman do magic!”
The friend observed that so could pigs fly, if one could be troubled to make them.
“Oh certainly!” replied the first. “And one could teach a woman to do magic, I suppose, but what earthly good would a flying pig or a magical female be to anyone?”
“This is a great gift to the press,” cried a gentleman with red whiskers and a supercilious expression. “What fine material we have furnished today for the caricaturists—a meeting of the first magicians of our age, summoned to watch a piccaninny stutter! Has English thaumaturgy indeed been so reduced by the waning of England’s magic that Sir Stephen believes we have nothing better to do?”
Unease rippled through the crowd, as though what the gentleman had said sat ill with his peers. Zacharias said anxiously: “Perhaps there is not enough magic.”
“Tush!” said Sir Stephen. To Zacharias’s embarrassment, he spoke loud enough for the entire room to hear. “Pray do not let that worry you. It pleases Mr. Midsomer to enlarge upon the issue, but I believe England is still furnished with sufficient magic to quicken any tolerable magician’s spells.”
The red-whiskered gentleman shouted an indistinct riposte, but he was not allowed to finish, for three other thaumaturges spoke over him, disagreeing vociferously. Six more magicians took up Mr. Midsomer’s defence, alternating insults to their peers with condemnation of Sir Stephen and mockery of his protégé. A poor sort of performing animal it was, they said, that would not perform!
“What an edifying sight for a child—a room full of men several times his size, calling him names,” said one gentleman, who had the sorcerer’s silver star pinned to his coat. He did not trouble to raise his voice, but his cool accents seemed to cut through the tumult. “It is all of a piece with the most ancient traditions of our honourable Society, I am sure, and evidence of how well we deserve our position in the world.”
Mr. Midsomer flushed with anger.
“Mr. Damerell may say what he likes, but I see no reason why we should restrain our criticism of this absurd spectacle, child or no child,” he snapped.
“I am sure you do not, Midsomer,” said Damerell gently. “I have always admired your refusal, in the pursuit of your convictions, ever to be constrained by considerations of humanity—much less of ordinary good manners.”
The room erupted into more argument than ever. The clamour mounted till it seemed it must wake the carvings on the box, and even the slumbering bosses on the ceiling, without Zacharias’s needing to lift a finger.
Zacharias looked around, but everyone had ceased to pay attention to him. For the moment he was reprieved.
He let out a small sigh of relief. As if that tiny breath were the key to his locked memory, his mind opened, and the spell fell into it, fully formed. The words were so clear and obvious, their logic so immaculate, that Zacharias wondered that he had ever lost them.
He spoke the spell under his breath, still a little uncertain after the agonies he had endured. But magic came, ever his friend—magic answered his call. The birds carved upon the box blushed red, green, blue and yellow, and he knew that the spell had caught.
The birds peeled away from the box as they took on substance and being, their wings springing away from their bodies, feathers sprouting upon their flesh. They flew up to the ceiling, squawking. The breeze from their wings brushed Zacharias’s face, and he laughed.
One by one the carved bosses sprang to life, and the dead sorcerers and the sour old Green Men and the lions and the lambs and the birds opened their mouths, all of them singing, singing lustily Zacharias’s favourite song, drowning out the angry voices of the men below, and filling the room with glorious sound.
1
Eighteen years later
LADY FRANCES BURROW’s guests had not noticed her butler particularly when he showed them into the house, but the self-important flourish with which he now flung open the door piqued curiosity. Those who broke off conversations, and raised their head from their ices, were duly rewarded by his announcement:
“Lady Maria Wythe and Mr. Zacharias Wythe!”
It had not been three months since Zacharias Wythe had taken up the staff of the Sorcerer Royal—not so long since his predecessor, Sir Stephen Wythe, had died. He was an object of general interest, and to the great increase of Lady Frances’s complacency, more than one pair of eyes followed his progress around her drawing room.
Zacharias Wythe could not fail to draw attention wherever he went. The dark hue of h
is skin would mark him out among any assembly of his colleagues, but he was also remarkable for his height, and the handsomeness of his features, which was not impaired by his rather melancholy expression. Perhaps the last was not surprising in one who had entered into his office in such tragic circumstances, and at a time when the affairs of English thaumaturgy were approaching an unprecedented crisis.
Stranger than his colour, however, and more distressing than any other circumstance was the fact that Zacharias Wythe had no familiar, though he bore the Sorcerer Royal’s ancient staff. Lady Frances’s guests did not hesitate to tell each other what they thought of this curious absence, but they spoke in hushed voices—less in deference to the black crepe band around Zacharias’s arm than out of respect for his companion.
It was Lady Wythe whom Lady Frances had invited, overbearing her protests with generous insistence:
“It is hardly a party! Only one’s most intimate friends! You must take it in the light of a prescription, dear Maria. It cannot be good for you to mope about at home. Mr. Wythe, too, ought not to be left too much to himself, I am sure.”
In Zacharias, Lady Frances had hit upon the chief remaining object of Lady Wythe’s anxiety and affection. Lady Wythe’s bereavement was great, and she had never been fond of society even before Sir Stephen’s death. But for Zacharias she would do a great deal, and for his sake she essayed forth in her black bombazine, to do battle in a world turned incalculably colder and drearier by her husband’s departure.
“I wonder what Lord Burrow is about?” she said to Zacharias. “It cannot do any harm to ask him about your spells to arrest the decline in our magic. Sir Stephen said Lord Burrow had as good an understanding of the science of thaumaturgy as any man he knew.”
It had formed no small part of Lady Wythe’s desire to attend the party that Lord Burrow chaired the Presiding Committee that governed the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers. Lord Burrow had been a friend to Sir Stephen, but he had regarded Sir Stephen’s scheme to educate a negro boy in magic as an unfortunate freak—an eccentricity only tolerable in a man of his great parts. The turn that had bestowed the staff of the Sorcerer Royal on that negro boy was not, in Lord Burrow’s view, one to be welcomed. He was learned enough not to ascribe Britain’s imminent crisis of magical resource either to Zacharias’s complexion or to his inexperience, but that did not mean he looked upon Zacharias himself with any warmth.
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