The Midnight Queen

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  “No.” Sophie cut him off. “We go together, or not at all.”

  He began to protest but was again interrupted: “She is quite right, Marshall,” said Master Alcuin. “Whatever shielding-charm you carry may be ample protection against the general run of mankind, but Merlin College is full of powerfully talented mages. It is only Miss Sophie’s concealing magick that protects you here. To leave these rooms without her would be slow suicide.”

  Sophie stared; he gave her a half smile and an apologetic shrug. “Seeing magick is a gift of mine,” he explained. “And yours, young lady, is astonishingly strong. At another time, I hope you will permit me to—”

  “Tempus fugit, Magister,” said Gray.

  “Of course,” said Sophie. “Time does fly, indeed, and we ought to get on. We ought to take all of this, I think,” she added, picking up the Brezhoneg book again with considerable reluctance and gathering up the ciphered documents and their transcriptions. “It is not exactly proof, but . . .”

  Silently Gray took the book and the papers from her and stowed them all in some hidden pocket, or pockets, of his coat.

  “Magister,” he said, “do you come or stay?”

  * * *

  In the moonlight, Sophie and Gray parted from Master Alcuin under the archway nearest his rooms, all of them hoping that their nearly silent, nearly invisible shadow would choose to follow him on his innocent errand to the Porter’s Lodge, and not the two of them on their more delicate quest. He would go and return, he assured them, lingering only long enough to present a plausible appearance, and on returning would continue to search his books for anything that might counter the poison’s effects.

  More quickly even than before they crossed the College grounds, spurred by an inarticulable urgency.

  They had been debating how best to approach the doorkeeper when they reached what ought to have been his domain and found his post deserted, the door completely unguarded. Sophie shivered and scratched her nose, which had suddenly begun to itch furiously. “There’s magick about,” she murmured, and Gray nodded; he was shivering, too, and rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

  The Master’s Lodge was silent and dark—a darkness more profound than ought to have been possible on such a moonlit night. In the corridor, Sophie collided with Gray when he suddenly stopped; both of them pitched forward, and they tumbled together onto the floor.

  They picked themselves up, knocking against one another in the gloom. Two voices murmured, one after the other, “Adeste luces!”; two small, soft globes of light spurted upwards, illuminating the cause of their difficulty: Lord Halifax’s manservant, asleep in a high-backed chair, his legs outstretched across the corridor between them and the door by which they had entered. One of the lights vanished; Sophie looked up and her eyes met Gray’s, wide with fright. “Put out your light, for the gods’ sake,” he hissed, and hastily she obeyed, plunging the corridor back into utter blackness.

  The servant gave a gentle snore.

  Gray clasped her hand and pulled her to her feet. Clinging together, they felt their way cautiously along the corridor. At length Sophie saw a gleam of unsteady light; as they stumbled towards it, it seemed to stretch and lengthen, until she recognised it as a line of firelight under a closed door.

  It was perhaps foolish, she thought afterward, to have opened the door, but open it Gray did, before either of them had given any thought to what might lie on the other side.

  They were in the Master’s study.

  And there he sat, in the same large, velvety armchair by the fire which he had occupied that afternoon, with an empty plate and wineglass on the little table at his elbow. For a moment Sophie thought that, like his man, he only slept; the hawklike face was relaxed, the drooping lids closed over the penetrating brown eyes, and one hand hung limp over the arm of the chair. But it was all very still, too still, too silent; a growing unease propelled her across the too-warm room to Lord Halifax’s side.

  Gray was there before her, his longer legs covering the distance in a mere three strides; he touched the Master’s arm, his shoulder, and held a hand briefly before his face. The slight motion disturbed the tableau of peaceful sleep, and the man’s head lolled horribly sideways, his mouth falling open.

  Sophie sprang back in horror just as Gray said, quite unnecessarily, “He is dead.”

  The cold iron fingers of panic closed about her heart. “We must not stay here,” she whispered urgently. “Come away, Gray, please. We can do nothing for him now.”

  But he did not move; he seemed rooted to the spot, staring fixedly at what remained of the man whose life they had tried to save.

  * * *

  By turns cajoling and commanding, Sophie did her best to shift Gray from his paralysis. Her words seemed to wash over him, utterly without effect, and she grew increasingly anxious, dread chilling her from the inside out.

  “Think, Gray,” she pleaded, tugging at his arm. “Here we are, alone with a new-made corpse—and a book of poisons in your coat-pocket. How will it look—”

  He turned at last and looked down at her, torment written on his face. “We might have saved him,” he whispered raggedly. “I might have saved him. But he thought it all a great jest, and now . . .”

  Frantic now, Sophie tightened her hold on his arm and leant back with all her weight, trying to drag him bodily towards the door. Desperation must have lent her strength, for she succeeded somehow in conveying herself and him across the room and nearly over the threshold.

  But as her boot-heel struck the stone door-sill, there was a soft hiss, and a . . . something . . . descended on them both.

  Sophie found to her dismay that she could scarcely move; she was weighed down by an overpowering lethargy, and all her limbs felt profoundly heavy and slow, as though she moved through deep water—or perhaps through treacle. Her nose itched more furiously than ever, but she could not seem to lift her hand to scratch it. The sensation of weight was not unpleasant, exactly; or it would not have been, had she not been so thoroughly terrified.

  Turning her head, with considerable effort, to the right, she saw that Gray was similarly afflicted. He had closed his eyes and seemed to be murmuring something under his breath—whether spell or prayer or a string of curses, Sophie could scarcely guess.

  “Well,” said a familiar voice behind them. Sophie’s heart seemed to miss a beat, before a surge of anger set it pounding harder than ever. “As well we thought to provide ourselves some insurance.”

  Heavy footsteps approached, then stopped. In the next instant, with a sound like the tearing of silk, whatever spell had been holding them in thrall evaporated; there was a sharp intake of breath, and Sophie spun round, her left hand reaching for Gray’s, to face the intruders.

  “You!” gasped her father.

  But he was not looking at her.

  * * *

  “I.” Gray surprised himself by speaking the monosyllable with perfect clarity. He let go Sophie’s hand and tried to push her behind him, to have his height and bulk between her and this new danger. She edged away, back and to the left, until he could not see her even from the corner of his eye. Willing her to conceal herself somewhere safe—and certain that she would not do so, whatever he said to her—he folded his arms and stared down at their would-be captors: Professor Callender and another red-robed Senior Fellow, as pale and gaunt as the Professor was ruddy and stout.

  Almost before Gray spoke, however, the flash of outraged recognition on the Professor’s face had given way to a puzzled frown; both he and his companion looked at Gray in apparent confusion. “But it is not he—not Marshall after all,” the Professor muttered. “Yet he looked so very like . . . Then who in Hades is this fellow?”

  Puzzled for a moment himself, Gray nearly laughed aloud as recognition dawned. Well played, Sophie! He silently exulted.

  But it quickly became clear that, in the circu
mstances, going unrecognised was of only limited use.

  If Professor Callender was discomposed, his friend was not. “Who are you?” he demanded of Gray. “And what do you do here, at such an hour?”

  Another link in the chain, thought Gray, recognising the basso voice. Now, if only I knew who he was!

  “I might ask the same of you, Doctor . . .”

  About to fall into the trap, the thin man stopped himself just in time. “An undergraduate,” he snapped, “dares question a Senior Fellow? Answer, boy! Who are you, and what do you here?”

  “Dunstan,” said Gray, “of Marlowe College. As for my business here, it is none of yours, sir.” Who would have supposed him capable of such exhilarating insolence?

  The Professor had by now contrived to insinuate himself through the doorway and around Gray; from beside Lord Halifax’s armchair, he produced a gasp of assumed surprise that would not have taken in a child: “The Master! The Master has been taken ill!”

  “He is dead,” said Gray bitterly, turning round, “as you must know, sir, if you have looked at all.”

  Perhaps Sophie’s concentration had faltered for a moment; perhaps her magick could not disguise a voice so easily as a face. Whatever the event, the Professor’s next words made it clear that he would no longer mistake his target. “So it is Marshall, indeed; I might have known it. Is there nothing you will not poke your ugly nose into, boy?”

  He raised one hand, drew a gout of flame out of the air, and flung it at Gray.

  * * *

  Sophie had crept nearly all round the walls of the Master’s study, frantically seeking any sort of egress; but the room’s bow-window had no visible latch, and there was only that single door, with their adversaries between themselves and it. We shall have to slink past them, somehow—or make them let us go . . .

  The fire-bolt aimed at Gray took her by surprise; she had had no notion that her father knew any battle magicks. Even if he knew only this one, it was one more than either Gray or herself.

  Gray dodged out of the way, and the flame struck the door-jamb and set it smouldering. But another followed it, and another, and almost at once the Professor’s friend joined the fray. Though managing to dodge many of the flames, hailstones, and small lightning-bolts that came at him, or to deflect them with some small shielding-spell of his own, Gray was visibly losing ground to his opponents.

  Sophie crouched behind the sofa, clutching the damp handkerchief in her pocket like some talisman, and tried to shield him. She had only the vaguest idea how such protection might be accomplished—the library at Callender Hall being long on theory but short on practicalities—and little time to consider the problem; she did know how to conceal things, however, and this she tried with all her might to do. In the present case, however, it did not answer; though some missiles missed their target, more did not.

  Something struck Gray’s left shoulder, and he staggered; Sophie winced. If only we had something to fling back at them . . . !

  Then, of a sudden, she remembered what she had seen on the walls above the bookcases—now but half visible in the increasing haze.

  “Gray! Up there—on the walls!” she hissed, willing him to hear and understand—and the others to remain oblivious. Had he seen the armoury above their heads? Would he remember it?

  The Professor and his accomplice indeed took no notice of her, but neither did Gray, preoccupied by the flurry of pebbles called down on his head by an ill-aimed lightning-bolt. He spoke a word that Sophie did not recognise, and the pebbles burst into dust, setting all three combatants coughing.

  It is up to me, then. She took a deep breath and tried to remember everything she knew of seen and unseen summonings. The spell is only an aide-mémoire . . . still, I should feel better if I knew a truly powerful one.

  A line of Gaius Aegidius wavered before her closed eyes. She opened them for a moment, grinning fiercely, then shut them tight, constructed a mental image of the long pike that she remembered seeing hung above the door, and stretched out both arms in what seemed the likeliest direction. “Accedete,” she whispered, reaching with all her magick and willing the weapon to her hands.

  * * *

  There was a creaking, splintering sound above Gray’s head, and he glanced up to see one of the Master’s antique weapons—a ten-foot pike, its iron tip rusted with age but still grimly pointed—pulling away the metal brackets that held it to the wall. As he and his antagonists paused in openmouthed amazement, the heavy pole-arm flew across the smoke-clouded room and slammed into Sophie’s outstretched hands.

  She staggered but, letting the haft slide through her hands until its butt struck the floor, managed to stay upright. “Gray!” she called hoarsely.

  The Professor’s gaze snapped round to her at the sound of her voice, but did not linger.

  Gray crossed the room in two strides; she thrust the weapon towards him and he took it, hefting it as he might have held a pitchfork or a rake. It was heavy and unwieldy, and he had no real notion of its proper use. The two Senior Fellows, however—so close to triumph a moment ago—now looked very worried.

  The Professor backed away. The gaunt man raised both hands; the Professor followed suit; their lips began to move, and a breeze gathered, sweeping about the room first gently, then with increasing force. The bookcases that lined the walls crashed open; glass shattered, and scrolls and codices and even loose shelves took flight, winging towards Gray and Sophie.

  The first object to connect struck Gray full in the side of the head, and again he staggered, the tip of the pike dipping nearly to the floor. He heard an inarticulate howl, and fear clutched at him: What have they done to Sophie? When he regained his footing, he saw her well and whole, but her face was starkly white, her eyes huge and black, and tendrils of black hair writhed about her head like Medusa’s snakes. Only once before had he seen her in such a fury.

  This time, at any rate, I shall know what to expect.

  The wind howled about them, flinging ancient and precious books in all directions, slamming them against furniture and walls till they began to break apart.

  Hefting the pike, in trembling hands, so that its tip was level with the Professor’s chest, Gray advanced across the room. The Professor left off hurling books and returned to hurling gouts of flame.

  Gray saw rather than felt a flame sear the cuff of his coat; another ignited a flock of disarranged pages as they drifted past, then flared into ash. He swung his weapon round—it seemed to move achingly slowly—until the staff connected with the older man’s outstretched left arm. There was a sickening crunch. The Professor shrieked in pain, lurched sideways, and then sat down in a heap on the floor.

  His companion seemed at last to have remarked the existence of Sophie and was advancing on her cautiously, as though he feared she might bite him. She spoke a summoning-spell Gray was sure he had never taught her, and the poker from the fireplace behind her flew into her hand; Gray, averting his eyes from the fainting Professor, shouldered his own weapon and moved behind the other man. “There are two of us,” he said quietly, “before and behind, and only one of you. We know how you killed the Master, and what you mean to do next. Will you—”

  “I think not,” the older man snarled, wheeling about to fling another bolt of flame at Gray.

  Gray sidestepped it, or nearly, and brought the pike up again. The wind abruptly died, and dozens of books fell to the floor, some of them smouldering and smoking; then, before he could react, Gray was trapped in a tight circle of flames higher than his head, half deafened by their crackle and roar. Through it he vaguely saw the thin man turning back to Sophie, his lips moving again to work the gods knew what dreadful spell.

  Perhaps the flames are an illusion, Gray thought hopefully, though their heat was drying his eyes and baking his skin. He thrust the pike forward through the wall of fire; the staff burst into flame, burning his hands and setting his sl
eeves alight, and he was forced to drop it. The flames around him thickened and grew, till he could see almost nothing.

  A howl of rage erupted from outside the fire-ring. While Gray tried frantically to discern what might have happened, that uncanny wind gathered again, now sweeping sparks and fragments of parchment about the room; all round him he heard the shiver and burst of shattering glass.

  Then came a massive ripple of magick, and an almighty crash.

  “Gray!” Sophie shouted. “Gray, can you hear me?”

  “Sophie!” Gray shrugged his coat up over his head, took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and dove blindly towards the sound of her voice. The heat was astonishing, but his passage through it mercifully brief; at the end of it Gray found Sophie, her face smeared with blood, standing amidst a very sea of broken glass.

  “Come,” she said urgently, dragging him forward by the hand. Glass crunched under their boots. “He will see us in a moment—I threw the poker at him, but it was only a glancing blow—now, Gray. Through the window!”

  The oblong panes had shattered and the leads warped or even melted. Gray and Sophie clambered onto the wide sill and stood for a moment staring out into the darkness of the Master’s garden. But it was only a moment, for behind them came a furious shout of “Halt!”

  Gray’s coat wrapped about his forearm made a bludgeon to swing at the abused leads, and they parted like rotted wood.

  He reached for Sophie’s hand—turned to look for her—“Sophie!”

  “I shall not be a moment!” she called, breathless, from somewhere in the haze. A heart-stopping moment later she reappeared, jingling as she ran. In another moment the two of them were through the erstwhile window, out into the garden and running for their lives, with bellows of “Proctors! The Proctors to me!” echoing in their ears.

  * * *

  Once over the low garden wall they paused under the shelter of a vast weeping beech tree, where Gray called the faintest light he could manage and they stood gasping for breath and staring at each other in its dim glow. Blood still streamed from Sophie’s nose, dripping down to stain her collar and mingle with soot, ash, and plaster dust on the front of her ruined commoner’s gown. She swiped one forearm across her face, seeming not to mark the smears on the sleeve of her coat.