A Scholar of Magics

by Caroline Stevermer

  With difficulty, Lambert looked away from the glass and kept his eyes determinedly on Voysey. “No, thank you.”

  “What may I offer you instead?” Voysey’s courtesy was unimpaired. His patience, apparently, was unending.

  “Nothing, thank you.” Lambert’s stomach rumbled yet again, a protest which gave his words the lie. Lambert ignored it. “I’d rather hear your explanation in full.”

  “How persistent you are.” Voysey was benevolence itself. Lambert had never seen him so at ease, so genial. “You know the purpose of the Agincourt Project is to create a weapon. Our enemies build armies and navies. We match them. But armies and navies have been the rule for centuries. There is no winning that kind of footrace. The finish line is not a fixed points.” Voysey allowed himself a few more bites of his meal. “We require a new kind of weapon.”

  “Won’t you still need an army or a navy to use it, whatever it is?” Lambert asked. “Some of those brave men you mentioned when we were last at Egerton House?”

  “For the protection of the empire, we seek an advance upon the outworn tools of war.” Voysey grew earnest. “An evolutionary advance, if you will. We seek a weapon that will aid the empire as simply and dramatically as the longbow aided our side at Crecy and Agincourt. My task—our task, rather—was to choose the most suitable of the designs suggested, to verify every aspect of the theory involved in the magic behind it, to build a prototype, and to test it until it will work as intended without fail. You were recruited to help with stage three of the project. Now stage three is finished. We arrive at stage four. The prototype has been built and we are testing it here.”

  Lambert thought it over. “Why out here? Why not test it at Glasscastle?”

  Voysey dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand. “Glasscastle is much too public for this endeavor. Testing requires perfect privacy.”

  “Why, doesn’t it work?” Something in Voysey’s pleased expression made Lambert abruptly certain that the exact opposite was true. “Does it work too well? That would be a drawback. Turn it loose in Glasscastle and someone is bound to notice. Nobody gossips like an undergraduate.”

  “It is a powerful weapon,” Voysey conceded. “It doesn’t do to take unnecessary risks.”

  “You don’t really believe that you can test a cannon for long without attracting attention? Even out here in the woods, people are bound to notice someday.”

  Voysey was taken aback. “Is that what you think we’ve been working on all this time? A cannon?”

  “No ordinary cannon, or you wouldn’t be thinking of it as an ultimate weapon. But yes, a sort of a cannon. A big one, I reckon” Lambert tried hard to keep himself from even thinking of the plans in his pocket, the plans that made it all too clear that there was nothing of the cannon about the Agincourt device.

  “The initial proposal for the project was for a cannon. Indiscriminate destruction administered at a distance.” Voysey’s distaste was evident. “Finer minds prevailed. The result is a weapon that owes nothing, thank goodness, to the idea of artillery. It is a purely personal weapon, and highly accurate. That’s where you’ve been such a help. Measuring your perceptions taught us much about the scientific principles of accuracy.”

  Though Lambert guessed the admiration in Voysey’s tone was calculated to flatter, it gave him a stab of gratification anyway. Exasperated with himself, Lambert replied drily, “You’ve taught me a lot too.”

  “Oh, Samuel, if only I’d been permitted to tell you all this at the start. It’s most unfortunate.” Voysey put his knife and fork down with a sigh of satisfaction. “You’re not going to eat anything, are you?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Lambert lied.

  “Nor drink anything?”

  Lambert shook his head.

  “Most unfortunate,” Voysey repeated sorrowfully. “I suppose the folklore must be universal, if you’ve run across the notion”

  “‘The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.’ I am tolerably familiar with that once.”

  Voysey looked thoughtful. “There’s probably even some Red Indian legend about a captive princess who is taken to the underworld.”

  “She’s called Persephone,” Lambert said. “As long as she leaves the pomegranates alone, she’s fine.”

  “But Persephone didn’t leave the pomegranates alone, did she?” Voysey frowned. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged you. All this time you’ve struck me as an obliging chap, Samuel. Eager to learn and fundamentally unspoiled. Yet now I wonder. I don’t think you’ve been quite straight with me, as your idiom has it. Perhaps you’ve embraced civilization more thoroughly than I suspected. Perhaps I should have tempted you with caviar and champagne instead of simple wholesome food.”

  “Caviar and champagne are simple and wholesome,” Lambert pointed out.

  “But you wouldn’t accept either from me, would you?” Voysey looked sorrowful again.

  “Not just now, thanks.”

  Voysey studied Lambert with utter solemnity. “If I cannot tempt you in the traditional way, so be it. I do have a bit of information you might find of interest. I have had some discussions with the Provosts of Wearyall and St. Joseph’s. There is a distinct possibility that with my recommendation, you will be accepted as a student of Glasscastle.”

  “That’s not true.” Lambert couldn’t keep the note of exasperation out of his voice. No temptation was too obvious for Voysey, it seemed.

  “No, I assure you. I’m telling the truth. With my recommendation, you could be a student for the Michaelmas term.”

  “There are rules. You took pains to explain them to me from the start. Remember?”

  “Don’t you understand yet? Rules need not apply to you, not ever again. Listen, Samuel. With my help, nothing is impossible.” Voysey’s eyes shone. “It’s what you’ve wanted from the first time you walked through the great gate, isn’t it?”

  Lambert didn’t trust himself to say anything. His exasperation had turned to anger.

  “You’ve dared to let yourself dream, haven’t you? A free man in Glasscastle, the equal of any man there? You would be at liberty, no door closed to you, no knowledge too arcane. Go anywhere, say anything. Glasscastle would be yours.”

  Lambert shook his head. He didn’t want Glasscastle on those terms. To be the exception to every rule? To be there as some kind of curiosity? He’d had quite enough of that. He wanted to deserve Glasscastle, to belong there, and he didn’t believe for one instant that Voysey was capable of bringing that about. The best wizard in the world couldn’t cast a spell so Lambert knew Latin. No, Voysey was a liar. Easy to see it now. So why did the words still ring in his ears?

  On that thought, Lambert remembered Jane’s words when she made it clear what attending Glasscastle meant to her. Sourly, he quoted her to Voysey. “‘To get up at some unearthly hour of the morning and sing myself hoarse for the greater good of the community? To eat gruel at two meals out of three?’ Gosh, what an offer. No, thanks.”

  Voysey looked amused. “Isn’t it strange, Sam. I would have guessed that you would give up all hope of heaven to do those very things. The more fool I. I’m afraid you offer me no alternative, then. If you won’t help me test the Agincourt device willingly, it must be unwillingly. I am sorry.”

  Voysey did not sound sorry. He sounded quite pleased. From a black case that might have held a doctor’s medical supplies or a surgeon’s instruments, Voysey produced a device of ornate design, shiny as a new trumpet. He trained the object on Lambert.

  There were a few things in the world that Lambert disliked more than patum peperium and having his fortune told. Pain and thirst and hunger were on the list. But of all the things that Lambert hated, number one, top of the list, was to have a weapon pointed at him.

  Before the gleaming object drew level, Lambert threw the pint of ale at Voysey and ducked under the table. There was a satisfying crunch of glassware overhead as he scrambled through the table legs and darted for the door to the hall.

  Voysey
swore. “To me!” he shouted. Footsteps neared from the passage beyond.

  Lambert didn’t wait to see who answered Voysey’s call. He scrambled out into the corridor and made for the first flight of stairs he came to. After all the time it had taken him to win his way inside St. Hubert’s, he wasn’t about to leave until he’d had a chance to look around. If he had to hide somewhere first, so be it. At top speed, Lambert climbed the stairs and set about losing himself in the gloomy halls of the asylum.

  Flight after flight, landing after landing, Lambert climbed the ever-steeper stairs until the sounds of pursuit had faded behind him. Resolute, Lambert drew the Colt Peacemaker he’d brought with him and kept it ready, cold in his sweating hand, as he moved cautiously onward. It took a moment or two for Lambert’s vision to adjust to the gloom. Ears straining, he paused to listen. If there were any small noises native to the wood and stone and tile of the place as he moved up and up through the levels of the building, he couldn’t catch them. All he could hear was the rustle of his clothes with each careful step he took, that and his own breath, his own heartbeat.

  He found himself in a sour-smelling hall lined with doors, an observation grille set into each door at eye level and a wide slot at the bottom of each, the better, perhaps, to slide a tray of food through. Warily, he worked his way along the corridor before him, peering through the grille into each room as he came to it.

  The first room was empty but for a cat curled up asleep on a folded blanket. There were food and water dishes at hand and a tray of sand in the corner. The animal did not appear to have suffered any neglect. All the same, Lambert was disquieted by the situation. He tried the door. A cat locked in a room alone. It didn’t seem right. A cat so soundly asleep that it didn’t bother to look up when someone was at the door? That was downright unnatural.

  The next room held a bedraggled spaniel. The food and water beside it seemed untouched. The dog looked up as Lambert tried the latch, then dropped its head back to its paws as if resigned to solitude. Not a whimper, not a bark. Lambert’s disquiet grew.

  Lambert tried the third door along and felt the back of his neck prickling again at what he found there. The room held a full-grown deer, a four-point stag. The animal rushed the door as Lambert tried the latch. The thump as it hit the door echoed dully down the corridor. It was the first noise he’d heard for some time and it made Lambert jump. As he watched through the grille, the stag pressed near, great eyes wide and nostrils flared in fear. Each breath, soft as it was, came clear to Lambert’s ears. It was unnatural to see the stag so close, so still. Every line of the creature was made for speed. To stand so close that he could see individual hairs of its coat filled Lambert with wonder and dismay.

  Something of the stag’s unease communicated itself to Lambert. He remembered the sounds he’d heard the night before, a deer passing in the dark beyond his ring of firelight. But had those sounds really been made by deer? Was there something more at work here? The oddity of a stag indoors didn’t account for all the strangeness he felt. The place smelled wrong, it felt wrong, and only the chill of the weapon in his hand kept Lambert from yielding to the impulse to retreat. He wanted to hide until he understood more about what he was facing, but the only way to learn more was to hold fast and go on.

  Lambert thought of Cadwal and Polydore. Had those young men escaped over the walls of St. Hubert’s? Were they still looking for the way out? Or had something quite different happened to them?

  The stag stayed near to the door, a most unnatural proximity. Lambert put his face close to the grille. He kept his voice down as much out of embarrassment as caution. “Cadwal? Polydore? Fell?”

  There was no response. Lambert rested his forehead against the grille, scolding himself for expecting any. Fancifulness was one thing. This was idiocy above and beyond the call of duty.

  The stag backed away, lowering its head for another assault on the door.

  “Don’t do that. You’ll only hurt yourself.” Lambert took a closer look at the door, cursing the gloom in the corridor. It made it almost impossible to see the details of the knob and keyhole. Touch told him what vision couldn’t. Locked was locked. After a brief debate with himself over the merits of using the gun on the lock, Lambert moved on.

  The rest of the rooms held one creature each. More dogs, more cats, another deer, a young doe this time. “Jane?” Lambert whispered. No response. He found one badger and a disgruntled-looking seagull. The last room, just before the staircase at the far end of the corridor, held a single armchair. Seated in the armchair facing the door, palms flat against the fine upholstery, back straight, with chin resolutely up, was Jane Brailsford.

  Lambert gazed at her, speechless with relief at finding her safe. Jane gazed back, fine eyes wide. The silence held between them until it spun Lambert’s relief to foreboding. “Are you all right? Has he hurt you?”

  “I’m fine.” Jane’s voice shook a little. She took a deep breath, let it out, and said quite formally, “It’s just taking me a while to break this spell.”

  Lambert made a small, involuntary sound of relief. “God, you had me worried.” He rattled the lock and swore under his breath. “I don’t know why. I told Bridgewater you could take care of yourself.”

  “Where have you been?” Jane looked happy to see him, but she sounded cross.

  “Admiring the misericords,, what do you think?” Lambert brandished the Colt Peacemaker. “Cover your ears”

  “I can’t” Jane sounded, if possible, more peeved than before. “If I could move, would I be here? This armchair has a spell on it that I don’t recognize, and I haven’t been able to break it yet.”

  “If you can’t move, how can you talk?” Lambert shot the lock out, put the gun away, and opened the door. He put his arms under Jane’s and hauled at her. Nothing doing. He gave up, stepped behind the chair, and began to push her toward the door. Luckily, the chair legs had casters. It was slow going but not impossible. Not quite. “You’re heavier than you look, you know.”

  “Fool.” Jane sounded cheerful. “I can talk because Voysey wants me to answer his questions. He can’t get his magic to work properly on me and he wants to know why.”

  “Why?” Lambert couldn’t spare the breath for a longer question. He had the armchair out in the corridor and poised at the top of the stairs. No course of action from there looked appealing. Jane had to be freed from the chair. There was no alternative. He leaned against the wall and watched Jane as he caught his breath.

  “According to the literature, the key is chastity. He can’t turn me into an animal unless I’ve”—Jane cleared her throat—“been unchaste.” Her voice was calm but her color deepened as she blushed.

  Lambert felt his own ears heat, as if in sympathy. “That’s about the biggest piece of foolishness I’ve heard yet.”

  “I agree. So did Fell, apparently. Where is he, do you know? Voysey told me he’s about the place somewhere.”

  “It’s like the London Zoo in this place. But I haven’t seen anyone but you. What’s Fell doing here?”

  Behind them, Voysey spoke, obviously amused. “I thought I’d help him concentrate exclusively on his research. So many interruptions back in Glasscastle, you see. Very bad for his work.”

  “Oh, it’s you.” Gun in hand, Lambert turned to confront Voysey. To his surprise, Voysey seemed to be alone. Lambert leveled his weapon at Voysey. It violated every rule he’d ever been taught, aiming at a man. “What took you?”

  “Just recruiting a bit of help.” Voysey was cheerful. “Not that I need any, it seems.”

  “There are two men coming up this staircase behind you,” announced Jane. “They don’t seem to be armed, unless you count the collar and lead they’re each carrying.”

  “They won’t need weapons,” Voysey assured Lambert as he leveled the Agincourt device at him. “Not when I’m finished with you.”

  Lambert dared not turn his back on Voysey to confront the men coming up the stair. “Don’t come any clos
er,” he called. “I’m armed and I haven’t had breakfast. So don’t cross me.”

  “They’ve stopped,” Jane reported. “But they’re still there. They don’t seem impressed with your warning.”

  Lambert moved the armchair so Jane had her back to the wall. It was still too close to the top of the stair to suit Lambert, but there wasn’t much room for maneuvering and the chair was too awkward to handle easily. He stood between the armchair and the men on the stair and stared, weapon leveled over Jane’s head, at Voysey. “Do you choose what animal I turn into, or may I make a request?”

  “Oh, the choice is yours,” said Voysey. He kept the brass device leveled, at Lambert’s head. “The phenomenon derives from something implicit in your own nature, whatever the animal turns out to be. I have nothing to say in the matter. Robert Brailsford turned into a border collie. I had expected something far more impressive. Still, it suits him. Relatively high intelligence, a keen sense of duty, and a glossy black coat with touches of white. My first successful transformation.”

  “What have you done with him?” Jane demanded.

  “What were the unsuccessful transformations like?” Lambert asked.

  Voysey ignored Lambert. “He’s around here somewhere. Cook gives him kitchen scraps.”

  Jane growled low in her throat, a sound of rage and disgust muted by helplessness. “He trusted you.”

  Voysey looked regretful. “Not entirely. By the time he questioned me about the plans of the prototype I had planted in Fell’s study, your brother had serious misgivings about the whole project. He meant to warn the Earl of Bridgewater, but I insisted dear Robert remain here.”