The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

by Galen Beckett

  “Yet they will not stop trying. Eventually, they will attempt to open the door. This must not be allowed. I wish I could have told all of this to you directly, but you are too young as I write this, and since I do not know who within the order I can trust, I must resort to these little puzzles, which I am confident only you will be able to solve. It is only you I can trust, my dearest Ivy. That is why I gave you the book of myths and my magick cabinet.”

  Ivy’s heart ached. “But he was never able to give me the book. I only found it recently because of the carelessness of one of our maids. And I never received the magick cabinet. My mother must have banished it from the house; she loathed such things. She must have given it to Mr. Quent.”

  Mr. Rafferdy met her gaze. “But what is this door he speaks of? Does that key go to it?”

  “Finish the letter,” Ivy said. “Then I will tell you what I know.”

  He read on. “Clever as you are, my dearest, you will not be able to protect the doorway on your own. There are enchantments in the house, defenses that can be renewed. However, you must find another who can help you—a magician. Who that will be, I do not know. I can tell you only not to trust any of the members of my order. That most are good and conscientious men I believe, but I cannot know who among them is false. You will have to use your own judgment.

  “I recommend only that he be a magician of considerable skill. It will not be easy, and you will have little time. Once you enter the house, they will be alerted—they will sense that the seal has at last been broken, and they will come. You will find the door in the chamber behind my study. It is there that the magician must work the enchantment. I have set out the words of the spell on the reverse of this page. That the magician succeed in this task is of the greatest imperative. All of Altania depends upon it.

  “I wish I had time to tell you more. I do not! I will say only that if he should come to you, listen to him. I will not give his name, for I do not know it myself, though I have spoken to him many times over the years. Nor have I seen his face behind the dark mask he wears, but I trust him more than I trust myself. If he should ever speak to you, heed him.

  “My time is gone. I must go. Give my affection to your mother and sisters, and know that no matter what happens you have, and shall always have, my love.” Rafferdy turned over the letter. “There is something written in the language of magick here, as he said.”

  A weakness had come over Ivy. She went to a stool used to retrieve books from the highest shelves and sat. “That’s what he meant in the riddle,” she murmured. “Through the door the dark will come.”

  “What will come through the door? And who’s this person he described, the one he said might speak to you? It certainly seems like he might be able to help if we could find the fellow.”

  Ivy looked up at him standing by the celestial globe, the letter in his hands. His velvet coat had gotten dusty, and his expression was at once serious and puzzled, giving him a quizzical look. Despite everything that had happened—that was going to happen—her heart felt suddenly light. Her father had told her she needed to find a magician to help her, someone she could trust utterly. But she already had.

  “I have spoken to him,” she said, meeting his gaze, “twice now.”

  Then she told him about the man in the mask.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  RAFFERDY GAVE HIS hat and ivory-handled cane (his latest affectation) to the servant, who bowed as he accepted them.

  “I will tell the master you’ve arrived,” the man said as he rose, though given his expression he might as well have said, I will tell the master there is a bit of moldy cheese on the table, or I will tell the master there are several charity workers at the door.

  “Thank you,” Rafferdy said.

  The man shut the doors, leaving him alone in the parlor. It was sometimes said that a man’s character was reflected in his servants. That adage appeared true enough in this case. Rafferdy could not recall a time he had willingly come to call on someone he found so repulsive.

  However, it was not for his own entertainment he had come here, he reminded himself. He paced around the room, wishing he had kept his cane; he enjoyed the feel of it in his hand, and he liked to imagine it lent him an air of gravity.

  As always, the room appeared comfortable and mundane, filled with the warm sun of a lingering morning. Yet appearances could deceive. In his previous visits here, he had come to learn more about the objects that decorated the room. He knew now that the soapstone urns contained dust from Tharosian graves; that the rusty knife on the mantel had once been used by chieftains of the remote north to offer up sacrifices to pagan gods; and that the massive book that rested on a wooden stand, retrieved from the vaults beneath a padishah’s library, was bound in fine leather that came not from the hide of animals but from a source that set Rafferdy’s own skin crawling in sympathetic reaction each time he considered it.

  He willed his attention away from these peculiar objects and instead drew a piece of paper from his coat pocket. On it he had made a copy of the spell Mr. Lockwell had included on the back of the letter they had discovered inside the celestial globe.

  You must think I’m the one who should be in Madstone’s, Miss Lockwell—that is, Mrs. Quent—had said yesterday, after she told him about the man in the black mask who had appeared to her twice now.

  In truth, Rafferdy did not know what to think. Mysterious strangers, magickal doors, secret societies—all of it seemed fairly preposterous. And what was this grave danger that the masked fellow had warned would come through the door if it was opened—these Ashen, as he called them? That sounded like something one good sneeze would blow away. Besides, what need had Altania for fantastical threats when it already had magnates, bankers, and rebels aplenty? No, he did not know what to think.

  Except he did not think Mrs. Quent was mad. Indeed, he was certain she was at least twice as clever as he was, and far more sensible. Besides, her father had seemed to know this peculiar masked fellow and had warned of similar dangers in his letter. While Rafferdy could not imagine he had the power to do anything to help Altania, if he could help Mrs. Quent gain entry to the house on Durrow Street, he would do so. It was her hope that something inside the house would give her insight into the mishap that had befallen her father years ago and that such knowledge might make it possible to cure his malady. He did not know if that was the case, or even if he could possibly work the spell written on the paper, but for her sake he would try. Besides, it would be a novelty to do something for someone other than himself.

  Again he studied the words of the spell. They were stranger than anything Mr. Bennick had so far shown to him. His lips could not shape themselves around the syllables. In his letter, Mr. Lockwell had warned that members of the Vigilant Order of the Silver Eye would be alerted once they entered the house, that he would have to work the spell before they arrived. However, at his present rate, it would take him hours to mumble his way through the spell.

  Rafferdy sighed and folded the paper. “I can only hope the wicked magicians are in no particular hurry,” he said.

  “In a hurry to do what?” asked a deep voice behind him.

  In a smooth motion, Rafferdy slipped the paper into his pocket, turned around, and smiled. “To take my soul, of course. Isn’t that what all wicked magicians want? To find some young apprentice they can trick into signing away that better, ethereal part of him in exchange for the promise of power? But if it’s my soul they’re after, they’ll have to wait. It will be years before I’m so much as the lowliest acolyte. Not that they’ll find my soul of much value when they do get it. I am sure by now it is a bedraggled thing.”

  Mr. Bennick went to a sideboard. “I do not believe it will be nearly so long as you suggest before you are much more than an apprentice,” he said as he poured a pair of sherries. “I have had students, some from the oldest Houses, who after a year of study have not successfully performed a single spell. You performed one within minutes. So by yo
ur measure, your soul is very much in peril. Or what is left of it, at any rate.” He handed Rafferdy one of the glasses. “To magick,” he said, and took a sip of his drink.

  Rafferdy was forced to shore up his smile lest it crumble. “Cheers,” he said, and downed the contents of his glass.

  “I was pleased to receive your note asking to continue your studies,” Mr. Bennick said. “As I told you, I believe you have rare ability, but that ability is worth little without application. Was there some particular thing you wished to learn today, something of special interest to you?”

  Rafferdy winced. Had the magician seen him reading the paper?

  “I had no particular thought,” he said. “You’re the master, and I am merely the student. I will leave it to you.”

  “Learning cannot happen if there is not something one wishes to learn, Mr. Rafferdy. You have mastered the binding and opening of small objects; I can teach you no more in that regard. However, as you have seen, that is little more than a parlor trick. To progress deeper in the arcane arts—I will say only that it will not be as simple as what we have done so far. So if it is the case that there is not something particular you desire to know, perhaps it is best if your lessons end now.”

  His eyes were dark as he took another sip of sherry. That this was his first test, Rafferdy had no doubt. Except if he failed this exam, there was no paying a few regals to get a better score as at university.

  “There is something,” he said, and drew in a breath. “I was interested in learning how—that is, you mentioned once that enchantments can lose their potency over time, that a box I bind shut will before long lose all traces of magick so that anyone can open it.” He took a step toward Mr. Bennick and was surprised to hear a note of what sounded like genuine interest in his voice. “I was wondering what can be done to make such an enchantment endure longer, even for many years—that is, to renew an existing spell.”

  Mr. Bennick raised an eyebrow. “Usually novices want to learn how to call lightning or some such thing.”

  Rafferdy shrugged. “I can neither drink lightning nor smoke or wear it, so it’s of no use to me.”

  “Your inquiry pertains to a vital subject,” the other man said. “One that weighs upon the mind of many who study the arcane. It is not unusual for a magician to desire to keep some things hidden for years, even long after his own demise. Nothing is more precious to a magician than knowledge—not just gaining it, but protecting it as well. A magician who can master such bindings would be considered powerful indeed.”

  Rafferdy willed himself to meet the taller man’s gaze, to hold it. He had to appear as if he really wished to learn.

  Yet he did wish to; he was suddenly more curious about it than he had been about anything for ages. Exactly why, he wasn’t certain. Maybe it was only because if she was interested in it, then it was necessarily interesting to him.

  “Can you teach me?”

  Mr. Bennick crossed the room. Rafferdy followed after, ready to plead his case.

  “As I said, you should not think it will be easy,” Mr. Bennick said. He stopped before the large tome on its pedestal, the ancient book whose covers were fashioned of human skin. It was bound with brass bands and a padlock shaped like a grotesque head, its mouth forming the keyhole.

  “Well, I should hope not,” Rafferdy said. “If it were easy, then any sod would be a magician. In which case I wouldn’t find it the least bit interesting. For the moment everyone is doing something is the moment it stops being remotely fashionable.”

  “Is that the reason you wish to study magick, Mr. Rafferdy? Because it has become fashionable of late?”

  Rafferdy started to form some flippant answer. Of course, he was going to say, the only reason to do anything at all is because it’s fashionable. Then he thought of the wealthy young men he had known at Gauldren’s College, sons of lords like him. He recalled how they had liked going to taverns and coffeehouses and speaking in overloud voices of this arcane rune or that secret word of power they had learned.

  A feeling of disdain came over Rafferdy. Fashion was something one necessarily pursued in public in order to better make an impression upon others, but somehow he could not imagine that Mr. Bennick, when he was a magician, had ever gone to a pub or party and spoken loudly of some spell or enchantment he had done.

  “No,” he said at last. “If I wish to be fashionable, I’ll buy a new coat.”

  “Very well,” Mr. Bennick said. “We will begin with the Codex of Horestes. The original was written over three thousand years ago and has been lost. Yet there are a few copies, and this is one of them. It is old in its own right, at least five hundred years.”

  “That seems like an awfully valuable thing to leave lying about one’s parlor,” Rafferdy said.

  “Hiding a thing is only one way to guard it,” Mr. Bennick said. “And this tome has its own protections.”

  He drew a ring of keys from his coat and used one of them to unlock the book. As he opened it, an odor rose on the air, at once medicinal and dusty. It made Rafferdy think of the mummies he had seen long ago on display at the Royal Museum, dug up from the sands of the far south of the empire.

  “Come,” Mr. Bennick said. “Read aloud with me.”

  Breathing in that ancient perfume, Rafferdy did.

  HOW LONG THEY stood there with the book, Rafferdy did not know. It seemed a short while, but when Mr. Bennick closed it and Rafferdy looked up, he saw the day had burned to ash outside the window. His legs ached, and his mouth tasted of dust.

  He took a step back from the pedestal and would have staggered if the taller man had not caught his arm.

  “You should sit for a while,” Mr. Bennick said. “I will get you another sherry, if you like.”

  “Yes,” Rafferdy said. “I think that…yes, thank you.”

  He sank into a chair near a bookshelf and held a hand to his head. His temples throbbed, and his stomach heaved to and fro like a ship on a stormy sea. Outside the window, lamplighters moved down the street.

  They must have stood there reading for hours. More than once Rafferdy had wanted to turn his head, to move away; however, he had been unable to pull his gaze from the book. The spidery lines of ink had been a dark path that, once embarked upon, could not be turned from; he could only keep following it forward.

  All the same, it had not been easy to read the book, and not only because of the archaic language or the queerly slanted script. He knew it had only been his imagination, an impression encouraged by the strange odors that rose from the book and perfused his brain, but the words had seemed to writhe on the parchment, as if unwilling to let themselves be read even as they bound the eye and kept it from looking elsewhere.

  Now, as he sat, sweat cooled on Rafferdy’s brow, leaving him clammy. Mr. Bennick locked the book, then poured a glass of sherry and handed it to him. Rafferdy gulped it quickly, lest he spill it.

  “Do you understand what you read?” Mr. Bennick’s sallow face was impassive as always, but there was a glint in his deep-set eyes.

  Rafferdy set down his glass and drew out a handkerchief to mop his brow. “I don’t know. Yes—that is, I think so. Some of it, at least.”

  What they had read had been like a diary, a journal written by Horestes of his journeys to far-off places and down shadowed roads. However, where exactly Horestes’ travels had taken him, Rafferdy wasn’t certain. The author wrote in fractured ramblings, and he called nothing by its proper name. I followed the gaze of the eye of Sarkos for forty nights, he wrote, or, I walked through the shifting fields of the Copper Sea until I saw the two towers of Baelthus thrusting up to stab the sky.

  Rafferdy had seldom paid attention at university. However, he vaguely recalled from a lecture on astrography that Sarkos was a Tharosian deity as well as the name of a constellation of stars that was seldom glimpsed in Altania, and then only on the horizon, but which rose high into the sky in the far south of the empire. As for the towers of Baelthus, they were supposed to be the
two mountains that held up one end of the sky, raised by one of the Magnons, godlike beings who existed before the deities of Tharos.

  There were countless more such references in the Codex—the author wrote of following the sword of Actheon and digging deep beneath the belly of Ranramarath—but none of these things meant anything to Rafferdy.

  He put away his handkerchief. “I don’t suppose it would have been magickal enough for him to have just written, To find the secret cave, go south for a hundred miles and then turn left at the rock that looks like an old man’s nose or some such thing.”

  Mr. Bennick gave a sharp smile. “That would be easier, wouldn’t it? However, to protect their secrets and to make sure they did not fall into the hands of those who might misuse them, ancient magicians often wrote in a kind of code, referring to symbols that only another who had spent long years studying the arcane would understand. Unfortunately, the meaning of many of the references Horestes and others used is lost to us now. It is one of the greatest tasks of a magician, to spend long hours poring through old books, searching for clues to the meaning of these symbols and codes.”

  “Sounds delightful,” Rafferdy said.

  Mr. Bennick laughed, though it was a rueful sound. “It is, as you can well imagine, tedious work. Long years can be spent following a line of investigation, pursuing some fragment of knowledge, only to discover in the end it is fruitless. Yet on those rare occasions when you stumble upon some scroll that has not seen light in a thousand years and in its faded words learn something that has long been lost—there is no thing in the world that could give greater satisfaction.”

  As he spoke, Mr. Bennick’s left hand went to his right, stroking the fourth finger. Rafferdy watched with interest.