“Only promise me you’ll tell Rudyard.”
“Of course I’ll tell him what a foul, scheming cur you are.”
“Tell him about the plot. You must have heard, but did you hear all of it? Within a week, when the magicians are all back. They have ten who can pass through a portal, and another twenty magicians from Stour. They’re going to destroy Stour with everyone inside.”
“Like you almost did? Fool that I was, I thought it was an accident.”
“It was, I swear. Please, it doesn’t matter what happens to me. Just make sure Rudyard knows. He’ll know what to do.”
“Confession? You’ve had a change of heart? It won’t win you mercy from me.”
“You have to leave. You and Fee. She wants to kill you or enslave you.”
“What do you care? You want to give me as a gift to your lover. All that time I thought you cared for me, and I was stupid enough to—”
“To what?” he asked, and perhaps no one in the world, being held at knifepoint, has even looked so radiantly joyous.
“To love you, you bastard!” There, now that she was fully humiliated, she could kill him. Except . . .
“Promise me one thing more,” he said.
What now? she wondered. Give that German bitch your love?
“Your fingers. They’re like ice. You may have frostbite. Get them in warm water, or you might lose them.”
Phil rocked back on her heels. Everything she had seen, everything she had heard, told her Arden was a traitor. Every piece of logic her brain sifted through confirmed it. But Fee was right—this wasn’t a matter for thought. A man who cared for his executioner’s well- being with his final breath simply could not betray England, the college, and most important, her.
She stood up.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She flung the blade across the room. “And why the bloody hell did you have to sleep with her!” she wailed, and covered her face with her hands, shaking in silent, moist dissolution.
In an instant he had her in his arms. She tried to pull away—but she didn’t try very hard.
“You were a spy, I realize that now,” Phil said, muffled in her own fingers, which warmed with her breath. “And you couldn’t tell me, I understand. Oh, but she’s so beautiful, I suppose you couldn’t resist. Seeing you two together—I hated her, I hated you, but I had to look.”
“You saw us?” He blanched.
She nodded, her face still adamantly hidden in her hands. “In your hopper hut. And I know I’m nothing beside her, but—”
“Oh, you stupid, stupid girl!” he said. “It wouldn’t matter if you looked like a hag—you’d be a thousand times more beautiful than her, because you’re you, you silly git. You, Phil, gallant and generous and good. And distinctly unhaglike. You, who I love.”
The hands parted a fraction.
“She’s loathsome. She’s vile.”
The hands closed again. “I can imagine, from the way you were fondling her . . .”
“Phil, look at me!”
“No.”
“What would you do to save England, eh?” He pried up her pinky and kissed it. “Would you cut off this finger to save your country?” He lifted her ring finger, and a luminous blue-green eye regarded him. “How about this one?”
“Of course.”
“Would you die for England?”
“Yes.”
“No, you would not, because I would forbid it.” He unclamped a third finger and kissed her lightly on the nose. “Would you seduce a Nazi to save England?”
“Yes,” she said, and waited for him to forbid that, too. “You would let me?”
He nodded. “Because it is only the body, Phil, and the body can lie just as words can lie. The body does what is necessary.”
“Apparently the body enjoys what is necessary,” she said archly, remembering their passionate gymnastics.
He very firmly removed her hands from her face and kissed it. “You, Phil. You have my life. Always. Now, shall we be pragmatic a moment and save the college?”
“No. It’s terribly selfish of me, and I’ll probably get my comeuppance, but please, will you kiss me again first? I wasn’t properly prepared the last time and—mmm.”
But she still wasn’t prepared. Nothing—not her dalliance with Hector nor any of the dozen other boys she’d casually kissed—nothing had prepared her for the stem-to-stern electricity of a kiss given and taken in love. The college had to wait. The whole world had to wait.
“I ought to go,” Arden said, stroking her hair.
“You will, very soon,” she said, standing on tiptoe to explore the beauty of his trapezius with her lips.
“You do have to go,” Phil said a long moment later. “But there is tomorrow.”
“And tomorrow.” He discovered the downiness of her earlobe.
“And tomorrow.” She buried her hands in the stygian softness of his hair.
“And . . .” The room felt suddenly chilled.
“Tomorrow is the word you’re looking for,” Phil prompted.
“Phil, what I have to do—I may not come through it alive. If I die, remember that—”
“No!” she said, then forced herself to smile. “You will not die. Because I forbid it.”
Chapter 23
It was all Arden could do to seem composed and grave when he met with the Headmaster. The scowl that usually came so naturally deserted him. The world was, after all, a rosy place. Outside the wind howled like a heavenly chorus. She loves me, he thought, and so everything will be all right. It has to be.
He told Rudyard the Dresdener plan was almost ready and waited for the call to arms, for the old man to finally be ready to pit his best masters against the intruders. There were only ten Germans, and even if you counted the twenty-odd turncoats, a hundred of the college’s best should be able to defeat them.
Rudyard interrupted his optimistic musings. “Then we will be ready to leave and disperse. When they come, the college will be virtually empty.”
Arden stared at him, dumbfounded. The enemy’s plans were in their hands. It would be a hell of a fight, but since they knew the Dresdeners’ strength and numbers, and would soon know the very hour and direction of attack, their victory was all but assured. He must have misunderstood.
“Is dispersal necessary? After the fighting is over, we can always rebuild Stour. It’s a good location.”
“There will be no fighting,” Rudyard said.
Arden felt his temper begin to slip. “You don’t honestly think you can reason with them, do you? They’re hell bent on ruling England, on killing and enslaving commoners.”
“Which we must avoid at all costs.”
“Exactly, which is why we must crush them, now!”
“Better to have a score of rogue magicians trying to rule than five hundred. Sit down, Arden. It is time you learned something. If things had gone otherwise, you would have heard it from my lips eventually. I had high hopes for you, son. I thought you might one day follow me as Headmaster. But now you are called upon to make an even greater sacrifice for the college, and it is only right that you know why.”
And then, for the first time, he told Arden the truth, and the world’s rosiness decayed.
England is a prison for the Essence, Rudyard said, and the College of Drycraeft is a prison for magicians.
Rudyard spoke the litany that had been repeated every generation to the new Headmaster, and to him alone: Once the Essence had flowed freely through all the world, surging and unbound. Any person with the power to control it could gather it up like apples in autumn and use it for whatever he wished. And humans, being human, used it selfishly, foolishly, violently. The weak-willed magicians became the slaves of kings. The bold, the clever, the potent, became magician-kings, taking what they would and subjugating all who opposed them.
“Thus it is whenever there is power,” Rudyard told the young master. “But in commoners, there is a limit to the evil they can do. A commoner can kill one man wi
th his hands, a dozen with a gun, a thousand with a bomb. Not so in magicians—there is no limit. Left to band together, they would rule the world—and ultimately, destroy it.
“So the wisest of the magicians, those who understood the dreadful combination of lust for power and limitless access to it, devised a plan. They gathered as much Essence as they could and trapped it in an island fortress bound by wards of terrible strength, from which the Essence could not escape.
“But they could not quite gather all of it, and any ambitious magician still posed a threat. So they rounded up the youngest, those who were still coming into their powers, and imprisoned them, too, on the island. The others they attacked by stealth, though most either died, struggling to keep their last vestiges of power, or faded into obscurity, their link to the Essence so sorely diminished that they were scarcely better than commoners.
“Our ancestors saw what would become of civilization if the magic were left unchecked. We did what we had to do.”
Arden still did not completely understand. “What you say makes no sense. Why concentrate the Essence, and then bring magicians to it, if they are such a threat? You’re wrong, Rudyard.” He looked at his Headmaster beseechingly, begging him not to confirm the terrible thing he felt deep in his bones.
“Because people are gullible,” Rudyard said, “even magicians. Take them young, tell them lies, and they will believe. Tell them the world will be flung from its foundations if they do not perform the Exaltation daily, and they will feel such honor, such obligation, that they will never stray. At least, the vast majority will not. That’s why we allow the journeyman year. It weeds out the rebels. Those who return are content to believe in the Exaltation and will never believe it isn’t necessary.”
“You can’t mean . . .” Arden faltered. Nearly his whole life, his entire purpose, had been tending the Essence, being one of the godlike beings that kept the world alive.
“The Exaltation is meaningless, Arden. Busywork for schoolchildren. A task to make their life seem fraught with purpose. I could be a king, each lad will think, but what I do is so much more important.”
For a moment only, the revelation made Arden feel weak and spent, but rage followed on its heels, ravening for blood.
He controlled himself well, though. His time with the Fräulein had taught him that much, at least. He pretended prostration, as the slave under the lash knows better than to swear vengeance; still, he vowed to be free—and to punish his captor.
A lifetime of lies. I could have had a life of my own. I could have loved. He felt, for almost the first time, what Rudyard had called the lust for power. Yes, I could have been a king, he thought.
But I would have been a good one.
I should have been given the chance to prove I could. Any man can kill with his hands. Should he therefore be shackled all his days, just in case?
Letting the hurt and confusion through, but not the bitter anger, Arden said, “Then the earth doesn’t need us?”
“No one needs you, boy. No one needs me, nor any magician. We serve no purpose. We are unexploded bombs waiting to go off. We must be contained.”
“Then why the college? Why gather us and train us?”
“Because magicians will always be born. When they appear in the rest of the world, it is no matter—their link to the Essence is so tenuous, they can hardly accomplish anything.”
Except for the monsters who have learned to steal it, Arden thought.
“But when they are born in England, their access to the Essence is so great, their capacity for evil so boundless . . .”
Or for good, you blind old fool. Power can be good, in the right hands!
“...they must be guided to a safe path as soon as possible.”
“Not killed?” You’ve certainly killed enough, he thought.
“Where’s your logic, Arden? Kill them all, and more will be born, and who in turn will control them? The college exists solely as an institution to contain new magicians, perpetually.”
“I see,” Arden said. “Each generation must be enslaved and fooled, so that they will be willing to enslave and fool the next. How clever—how thorough. And those who rebel are eliminated.”
“Exactly. And now you see why I cannot allow any of my magicians to fight.”
“No, I don’t really.”
“Let them taste competition, violence, victory—and they will never look back! I will lose control of them. It is the nature of man.”
“You let them train with Phil.” Her name on his tongue was a drop of honey.
“Fencing and fisticuffs are nothing. It was like a journeyman adventure—something most can turn their backs on easily enough. Those who don’t—and I know which of your friends have been training to use the Essence to fight—will be drained.”
Still, somehow, Arden forced himself to be calm. “If no one fights them, the Dresdeners will be free in England—to do what they will. Isn’t that what the Headmasters have been working against for millennia?”
“The Dresdeners will be dealt with,” Rudyard said.
“How, if the masters won’t fight? Do you mean to use your assassins?”
It was known, among the higher ranks of masters, that errant, rebellious journeymen were drained, but no one knew who did the killing.
“The masters do not carry out the executions.”
“Who, then?” Arden asked, swearing in his heart he would kill them all, whoever they were, for executing his brothers just because they yearned to be free.
“Why, the women, of course.”
Arden kept himself together by sheer force of will until Rudyard dismissed him, with orders to discover the details of the attack.
He staggered through the halls of Stour like a man in a nightmare, blind to the friends who saluted him.
Look at you! he wanted to scream. Deluded fools, all of you, thinking the fate of the earth lies with you. Slaves! Dare to have a free thought, and you’ll be killed—for the good of the world.
He stumbled against the great arched entranceway, his thoughts uncontrollable. Was Rudyard right? Were they too dangerous to be allowed to live free in the world? Look at me—I killed my father, I tormented Ruby—and I think I can be good? I destroyed Stour and killed magicians by using the Essence without thinking. God, I killed Thomas! Maybe I can’t be let loose.
But I can redeem myself. I can free my brothers, he thought. I can give them a chance to make the choice for themselves.
He forged out into the blizzard, a burning brand, feeling as if he had died and been reborn. He knew what he had to do. He just needed Phil’s help to figure out how to do it.
When he reached Weasel Rue at last, he simply held her, surrendering himself utterly to the right of possession and being possessed. Then he told her, and she listened with tight-pressed lips and never once thought of saying I told you so, though she’d known, even with her limited scientific and historical knowledge, that the world’s continued existence couldn’t depend on a species that has only existed for a tiny fraction of the planet’s lifespan.
“They’re scattering like rats,” Arden said, pacing the farmhouse kitchen. “He’s dividing them up among the women, hiding them out until he thinks they can gather again in a new college.”
Phil raised an eyebrow. “Tell me about these mysterious female magicians.”
“I don’t know much. We’ve been taught they hardly have any power.” Phil made a humph sound. “But now he says they’re the assassins. They kill the journeymen who refuse to return, and he’ll be sending them to kill the Dresdeners. How is it that they get to live in the world while we were caged?”
“Perhaps other methods of control work for them.”
“Self-control, you mean? Why can’t we have self-control? Do they think any man with power is going to wage war and murder everyone who crosses him and keep harems and...what are you smirking at?”
“Well, it is what men tend to do.”
“Not every man,” he assured he
r. But he remembered how he felt when that young soldier she called her brother kissed her. What would he have done to the boy, if not for his strict training in pacifism?
“But you haven’t heard the worst,” Arden went on. “When most of the college flees, he needs to leave some behind in Stour so the attacking Germans will sense the power inside. He wants to trick them into thinking they’ve done what they set out to do, so they won’t pursue us. That will give the women plenty of time to track them and kill them.”
“You mean that, he expects someone to volunteer to die? Who would...oh. You. Your punishment for rebelling—and saving the magicians?”
Arden nodded. “Me, and the rest of the muster. A convenient plan, eh? We’ll be crushed to dust so the others can escape and never know the truth about what they could be. About . . .” He hesitated to tell her the last thing Rudyard had revealed. Not knowing if it was the right thing to do, he steeled himself and said only, “About what you could be.”
Phil cocked her head at him.
The women, Rudyard had said, might decide not to drain the Dresdeners but to take away their magic, their link to the Essence, the same way they had with her ancestor, Godric Albion.
“It is a much harsher punishment, and no more than they deserve,” Rudyard had said. “Though I counseled against it. After all, there is the chance, not likely but still a chance, that they’ll discover how to reverse it.”
His heart barely beating, Arden asked, as casually as he could, how that could be so.
And Rudyard, so cynical, so calculating, so devious, still trusted to the young master’s blind dedication and imminent demise, and dropped the bombshell.
“Anyone can become a magician,” he’d said. “The Essence is in every living thing already. All it takes to turn a commoner from a passive possessor to an active practitioner is an inoculation, if you will.” And then, unbidden, he explained to Arden briefly how to do it. “Should anything happen to me, this knowledge must be preserved, so that you may make absolutely sure no misguided magician restores the Dresdeners’ powers.”
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