by Gail Dayton
Because wizards--male ones--were so rare, they'd been out of bounds to the other boys, protected from the pranks and explosions, for the most part. Elinor hoped it might make Cranshaw overconfident. He had likely never truly been challenged by another male. And given that he apparently believed women some sort of lesser being, possibly not even members of the same species, she thought she had basis for hope.
The two seconds reached the center table and exchanged goblets. Rosato tested Cranshaw's potion with a look, a sniff and a sneer, evidently unimpressed. "Competent," he damned it.
Dodd did the same with Elinor's potion, right down to the sneer. "Swill," he dismissed it.
Rosato's smile was as serene as Elinor's. "Si, it is swill. But very poisonous swill, yes?"
Dodd set Elinor's potion down on Cranshaw's side of the table as Rosato set Cranshaw's potion on her side.
"Inspecting of the wands, please." Rosato held his hand out.
With a sour expression, Cranshaw took out a pair of wands--ash and alder, Elinor thought--and handed them to Dodd, who gave them to Rosato, who gave them a cursory looking-over and handed them back.
Now it was Elinor's turn. With a sigh and a crossing of her fingers, Elinor drew her fistful of wands from her quiver and passed them to Rosato for Dodd's inspection.
Dodd frowned at them, hands at his sides in belligerent fists. "What's this? Who does she think she is, a bloody alchemist?"
"Language, signore," Rosato reprimanded gently. "There is a lady present."
"She's no damned lady," Cranshaw snarled. His hands were in fists too. Elinor relaxed hers forcibly.
"There will be no cursing during this challenge." Gathmann's voice floated over the crowd, carrying magic with it to enforce his edict. "What is the problem?"
"She's got a whole fistful of wands," Dodd said.
"Only seven," Rosato corrected. "Hardly a fistful."
"A proper wizard needs no more than one," Cranshaw shouted. "Two at most."
"Why?" Elinor asked him. "Why shouldn't a wizard use more than one wand? Why shouldn't we follow the magic where it leads us?"
"Because it leads to--" Cranshaw began, but Gathmann's clipped accent cut him off.
"There is no rule limiting the number of wands," he said.
"That's for alchemists!" Allsup protested.
"For any challenge," Gathmann informed him. "The wands are allowed."
Elinor let the tension seep slowly out of her as Dodd inspected each wand minutely, obviously searching for something to get one or all of them thrown out. He wouldn't find it. Now that her multitude of wands had been allowed by the rules, they were in.
She hadn't been at all certain she would get to keep them, for Cranshaw was entirely correct. Wizards traditionally used a single wand, taking up a second only when the first broke. Elinor now thought it pure laziness, because it was easier to use a wand already tuned to one's magic. She had worked relentlessly to tune a dozen or so to her own spells, since her experiment with Harry in alchemy-style wand work. These were the best of them. And they would pass, even with the magic she'd borrowed from the Book, because once collected by her and stored in wands tuned to her, the magic became hers.
With a sour expression, Dodd smacked the wands one at a time back into Rosato's hands, as if he hoped to break, or at least crack them. The cheat. Rosato gave them back to Elinor, who tucked all but the yew wand back into her quiver. Finally, the preliminaries were done. Time to begin.
The moment had arrived. Was she as good as she thought she was? As good as Harry thought she was? He thought much more highly of her talent than she did. Was he right?
She had worked hard preparing for this contest of magical skill. She was ready. And if she failed, Dottore Rosato was there to flush the worst of the poison from her system and keep her from actually dying. He would do the same for Cranshaw, if it came to that.
She stepped up to the table. As challenger, she would go first. She took her yew wand, saturated with the best neutralizing magic she could call, and thrust it into Cranshaw's potion. It was a standard belladonna and wolfsbane potion, relying on the natural poisons in the plants as well as the magic pushing the poisons to greater heights. It was, as Dr. Rosato had said, a competent potion. The natural malevolence of the plants meant that a little magic could do a great deal with it. It was something of a lazy man's potion.
It also meant that it wouldn't take much magic to render it harmless. The plants' poisons could be untwisted...so. Elinor stirred the potion counterclockwise, slowly releasing the magic from her wand to turn the venomous mixture into nothing more than a nasty-tasting tea--if not for the poisonous magic that remained.
There, Cranshaw had been a little more creative, somehow tying knots in the inimical magic binding the poisons together. Elinor studied the concoction, curious as to how he'd done it. She exchanged her yew wand for one made of maple imported from America, carefully laying the steaming yew on the stone table top to avoid damaging anything.
Dodd scowled at the wand exchange, but Cranshaw's smug superiority only got smugger. If that was a word. He thought he'd won. He hadn't. Elinor just wanted the maple to see more clearly. The hard wood conveyed her magic sense smooth as silk.
Cranshaw's magic wasn't knotted, so much as tangled, Elinor realized. She combed her magic gently through it, teasing the strands free. The tangles bound the magic together, combining the belladonna's deadliness with the wolfsbane's and holding it, even when the chemical composition of the poisons had been neutralized. The tangles were deadly, but chaotic.
What if she could actually tie knots in the magic? A square knot or a bowline for instance, or perhaps a slipknot... The possibilities were endless.
"This is why I hate wizard's challenges." A spectator in the back of the hall raised his crackly old-man's voice. His companions tried to hush him, but he kept going. "They just stand round staring into cups. There's no explosions. Or even trousers falling down."
Elinor had to bite her lips to keep from laughing. But he was right. She needed to get on with it and stop messing about with Cranshaw's magic. She combed the last of the tangles free and picked up the goblet, holding it high for a moment to allow the presiding judge--and everyone else--to see it. Then she downed the potion, drinking it in as few gulps as possible.
Gah, it was foul stuff. She couldn't help making choking noises and had to spit in the goblet, trying to rid herself of the taste. Rosato handed her a peppermint.
"What is that?" Dodd pounced, snatching the candy from Elinor's hand.
"It is a peppermint," Rosato protested. "It is allowed!"
Cranshaw took it from Dodd, shaking it in his fist at the dais. "No magical assistance is allowed to the challenger!" he shouted.
"It is only a peppermint," Rosato said, louder this time.
"Fetch the item." Gathmann gestured at one of the Briganti Enforcers helping with the vote collection. He handed his slips of paper to another man wearing the four-color striped Briganti sash and strode down the center aisle to do as told.
Cranshaw slammed his hand down on the stone table, as if to crush the helpless candy. He bumped the goblet holding Elinor's potion--she didn't think by accident.
The crystal fell to the floor and shattered into a million pieces, splattering muddy green potion across the grey flagstones. Elinor cried out, jumping and stretching in a futile attempt to catch it.
"You did that deliberately!" Rosato accused over the rising tide of exclamation and shouting.
"It was an accident." Cranshaw smirked. "If she is so foolish to place her potion in a breakable cup--"
"Silence!" The roar of Gathmann's voice and more, the magic in it, brought all discussion, argument, even random coughing to a halt. Elinor didn't think she could even hear the sound of rain dripping off the roof.
"You, Briganti--" The Prussian pointed at the man who'd been sent for the peppermint. "What have you found?"
The Briganti officer had to pry the crushed candy from C
ranshaw's grip. He turned the pieces over in his palm. "It's a peppermint, sir," he called back. "Nothing more." He turned it over to another Briganti walking by with a sheaf of votes, indicating that he should take it to Gathmann on his dais.
The Enforcer--Elinor thought she recognized him from the Waterloo Station battle--folded his arms and scowled at the four at the table. It was probably good that he stayed close.
Rosato handed the man a peppermint. He tried to speak, but Gathmann hadn't let up on his imposition of silence. Dr. Rosato turned to the dais and gestured an appeal to speak, but he didn't wait for permission. With gestures, he asked the Briganti to give the peppermint to Elinor, pointing at the goblet and making a face and mock spitting to demonstrate its nasty taste, talking silently away as he waved his hands.
"And if she is going to die from it," he was saying, as his voice suddenly returned, "she would die already. But look, she does not die."
Cranshaw waved his hand at the dais, requesting permission to speak. Gathmann waved back, granting it.
"This challenge is forfeit," the wizard's magister called out. "There is no potion from the challenger."
"Because he spilled it deliberately!" Rosato shouted. "He dashed it to the floor because he was afraid to drink it!"
"Why should I not fear what that sly creature might have done--?"
Gathmann cut both men off, imposing silence on them again. There on the dais, half the room away, Harry got up from his magister's chair and approached the Prussian alchemist. They exchanged a few words, then Harry drew a silver flask from his inner coat pocket.
"I thought Nigel Cranshaw might do something like this," Harry said, "when Miss Tavis decided to use crystal instead o' metal for her cup to avoid accusations of alchemic interference. The spell recipe she used makes up a whole pot full o' potion. So I brought another tot. In case."
He raised the flask higher. "This is silver. Spelled to be completely magic null. Our judge 'ere can verify that. An' the rest o' you wizards can verify it's the same potion as was in the glass Nigel broke." Harry handed the flask to Gathmann.
"Null," the Prussian pronounced and handed it to Sir William. Gathmann waved the gavel, erasing his silence spell, and Elinor took a deep breath. The spell made her feel half-choked.
"It seems the Conclave president has learned a new trick since last summer," Dr. Rosato murmured to Elinor. "He could not do this in Paris. It was a very noisy Conclave assembly."
Elinor shushed him. She did not want to be silenced again and she wanted to watch the wizards.
Sir William opened the flask and sniffed. "It is the same." He gave it to one of the wizards still watching near the dais.
Allsup took a deep whiff and coughed at the aroma doubtless made even more pungent by being closed in the small flask. He scowled at Cranshaw and passed the flask on. "It is the same potion." The next wizard agreed.
Apparently, Elinor decided, they were more angry with Cranshaw for trying to cheat than they were over her challenge. Honor among wizards and all that.
One by one, they handed it down the line until the last wizard, old Beddowes, carefully screwed the cap back onto the flask so it wouldn't spill while he tottered the few more steps to the supervising Briganti, where he handed it over. The Briganti, who was an alchemist and had come to Harry's house and therefore was someone whose name Elinor should know, took the old wizard's elbow and walked him back to the chair someone had found for him.
After the old man was seated again, the Briganti--Norwood--that was his name. Norwood strode briskly back toward the quartet gathered at the table. Elinor had been so focused on watching the flask's progress and trying to recall Norwood's name that Cranshaw's scream of rage caught her by surprise.
"No!" His denial was bound into the scream. "No, I will not be subjected to the corruption, the foulness and evil this female has concocted. She does not belong here. She is lies and wickedness throughout and has blinded you all to the truth!"
Elinor straightened from her flinch as Cranshaw spouted his irrational rant. She threw off Dr. Rosato's protective hand and reached into her quiver, selecting the alder wand by feel. She shifted the maple wand to her other hand. She didn't know what the other wizard might do, but she would be ready.
"He is mad," Rosato whispered, staring at Cranshaw.
Norwood came on, ignoring Cranshaw's raving, bringing the flask with the potion for the mad wizard to unspell and drink. Norwood took up the pewter goblet with a little flip of the cup and shook out the last few drops of Cranshaw's neutralized potion. He thumped it down on Cranshaw's side of the table and began to unscrew the cap on the flask.
"No!" Cranshaw shouted. "No, I won't do it. She is a cheat. A liar. She has--"
"The only cheat I see here is you," Norwood growled.
"She has bewitched you." Cranshaw's eyes rolled wide and white as he backed from the table. "She has bewitched you all!"
Elinor tightened her grip on her wands, using the maple to taste the magic in the air, hoping for some warning if Cranshaw broke.
Norwood grimly upended the flask to pour Elinor's potion into the goblet. Cranshaw's hand darted into his pocket and came out again to throw--
"Look out!" Elinor cried.
Cranshaw threw an alchemist's fireball at point blank range at the goblet, uncaring that Norwood and Dodd were standing over it, Dr. Rosato only a step away.
Elinor threw her alder wand. She couldn't hope to strike the clay pellet with it. Her aim was terrible. Besides, the fire had already ignited, blowing forward at the goblet and the men. The magic in the maple wand seemed to slow down time, allowing her to see the alder hit the fire magic and shatter.
Alder was wood and wood burned, which drove the magic inside it even faster. It spread over the men to protect them from Cranshaw's reckless act. Elinor was already drawing her next wand. The rowan had been loaded with protective magic as well.
"Back away," she ordered the noncombatants.
They hadn't been hurt by the illegal fire, she saw with the maple's aid. Good. Norwood took the goblet with him as he moved out of the combat zone, pushing Dodd and Rosato ahead of him.
Elinor stirred her rowan wand in the air over the Book, taking up more magic as she skirted the edge of the table, advancing on Cranshaw. He backed away, fumbling in his pockets again. How many firebombs did he have? She was down to five wands and the maple didn't have either aggressive or protective magic, so really--four. Three. The pine hadn't been loaded at all.
"Nigel Cranshaw--" She put magic into her voice to make it carry. "You are not worthy to be magister of the wizard's guild."
He threw another fireball. Elinor hurled her rowan wand to meet it, smothering the fire with her magic this time as the wood crisped to ash, to keep it from injuring any of the spectators. She drew the cherry wand and traced a figure eight in the air.
The spectators' shouts of alarm died down, became whispers laid over murmuring as she walked forward and Cranshaw scrambled away. He bumped against the railing containing the crowd and changed his angle of retreat, backing toward the dais.
He dug a third fireball from his pocket. Elinor tossed her cherry wand in the air, hurried forward a few steps and caught it again, pulling it sharply in toward her. As she hoped, a net of magic woven by her wand tightened around him.
"You have proven yourself a coward and a cheat," she proclaimed, "and very probably insane."
The net kept him from moving his arms and from walking, but it didn't stop him from cracking the hollow clay fireball with his thumb. Unlike Harry's firebombs which had to be ignited independently after they were opened, these bombs had been spelled to ignite automatically when cracked. Illegal fireballs made for the use of non-alchemists.
The fire burst forth, catching Cranshaw's clothing, hands--everything inside the net with him.
"No!" Elinor dropped both wands, scrabbling in her quiver for the ashwood wand.
"Extinguo!" burst from half a hundred voices, Harry's louder than ev
en Gathmann's as they leaped off the dais and came dashing down the broad central aisle. The fires burning Cranshaw quenched instantly.
"My bag!" Elinor called to Amanusa, who had been put in charge of it for the duration of the challenge.
"And mine!" Rosato was there beside her.
The magic in the ash wand sliced through the cherrywood binding, freeing Cranshaw to collapse on the stone floor. Fortunately, he was unconscious. Elinor knelt, shoving her hoop-free skirts beneath and behind her so she could begin tearing his clothing away.
"Here!" Dodd protested. "What are you doing?"
"Saving his life," Rosato snapped. "Back away."
"Norwood, keep this area clear," Harry ordered, pushing his way through the crowd that had gathered close, leading the way for the two master sorcerers bearing the wizards' bags.
Pearl Carteret, the newest sorceress, had Elinor's bag open and the jar of salve she wanted in hand, ready to pass over. "You're going to have to make up a vat of this stuff," she said.
"Or people will have to stop trying to burn us," Elinor agreed. She opened the jar as Rosato finished stripping Cranshaw's clothing away from his blackened flesh, leaving him a modicum of modesty. The fire had burned only along his right side, from shoulder to knee, but it had burned him severely. Elinor dipped a handful of salve from the jar.
"I have heard about this--" Rosato took the jar when Elinor gave it to him. "I had hoped never to see anyone burned badly enough to watch it at work."
Elinor began with Cranshaw's hand, the worst of it, burned almost to a claw. Rosato moved to begin at his ankle. The two sorcerers huddled together for a moment, then Amanusa touched Cranshaw's mouth, pushing her finger just inside. Pearl touched a bloody crack in the wizard's skin with a piece of tissue paper. Amanusa wiped her finger on the paper and they set it on the stone floor a little ways off for Harry to burn with a flick of his finger.