Master of the Books

by James Moloney

  Pelham saw where his son’s eyes had wandered. ‘Those two brought Elster to the brink of war.’

  ‘And Starkey too,’ said Marcel, although there was no picture of this third enemy, not as a human being anyway. ‘Mortregis,’ he muttered as his hand began to trace the image that dominated this part of the tapestry: a rampant dragon rising up to devastate the land. Before it stood a tiny figure, all alone. Marcel knew it was him, yet he couldn’t quite believe it. He followed the story and saw how his magic had destroyed the dragon amid its own flames. Where had that magic come from?

  ‘All I’ve managed since then is simple tricks,’ he said. ‘I see this picture of myself, I remember how frightened I was, but I don’t know how I conjured such powerful magic.’

  ‘You will learn,’ Pelham said. ‘That’s why the chancellor keeps you at those books. He knows how important you are to the entire kingdom. You are our Master of the Books, Marcel. Your magic must keep Elster at peace.’

  ‘But anyone can do the magic I’ve learned. I’ve even taught Hugh and Dominic some spells. I’m not sure, Father. I’m not sure that the magic is still in me.’

  ‘You have the blue book.’ The King was referring to a book of spells Marcel had found in his room when he returned to live at the palace, after Damon and Eleanor’s treachery had been exposed.

  ‘Yes, but I wrote most of the spells in it before —’ He couldn’t speak the rest. Wasn’t it painful enough to have the dangers of last year displayed so bluntly in the tapestry before them? ‘I can’t remember where they came from. I can’t even remember how I got the book in the first place. Did I make it myself or did someone give it to me?’

  ‘Lord Alwyn perhaps,’ said the king. ‘He knew you were dabbling a little with the sorcerer’s arts.’

  ‘Yes, and he disapproved. Everyone I speak to around the palace says the same thing. He thought it was a waste of time. Yet none of them can say where my blue book came from or why I was keeping it hidden. I wish I could remember. There’s so much I want to remember.’

  Marcel’s voice had risen in frustration, but seeing how such talk hurt his father he fell silent. All memory of this man had been taken from him by Lord Alwyn as well, but in the past year he had come to know his father again and to love him.

  Against his wishes, Marcel’s eyes sought out the next images in the tapestry. The king noticed and deliberately covered them with his hand. ‘Fergus will come back one day, I’m sure of it,’ Marcel said.

  ‘Edwin. Your brother’s name is Edwin.’

  ‘To you, Father, and to everyone else in the palace, but not to me. Thanks to Lord Alwyn, he only knows himself as Fergus, and that’s what matters.’

  King Pelham winced as though his son had slipped a knife between his ribs. ‘I should be angry that you still call him by the wrong name, but you have more reason to be angry than I have. It was I who gave the order for your memories to be erased.’

  THE KING WAS CALLED away, and Marcel began the slow climb to his dusty room with the black cat at his heels. Sometimes when he entered his room, he worried that its dust was settling into his bones. It might have seemed spacious if it wasn’t crammed with so many books. They lined the walls, spilled out of cupboards, lay on the floor in stacks that rose to his waist. They could even be seen embroidered on the green and black robe that hung behind the door. In silent defiance of the chancellor, he left the robe on the peg.

  He sat down at his desk and wondered which book to open until a rustle of tiny movement caught his eye. Termagant had found an unfortunate mouse and was taunting the poor thing, letting it go and then, when it tried to dart away, trapping it with a flashing paw.

  ‘Don’t be cruel,’ he called.

  He spoke a simple verse beneath his breath and waited for a jumble of words that only he could hear.

  ‘You don’t want me to let it go, do you?’ said a voice inside his head. ‘This one and its kind chew up your precious books and I’m their only protection.’

  ‘They’re not my books, they’re Lord Alwyn’s,’ Marcel replied out loud.

  This time the cat simply meowed, but her meaning was clear. Lord Alwyn had been dead for a year. The books were Marcel’s now.

  ‘It was one of those musty tomes that taught you how to chat with me. You should be grateful for that, at least,’ said Termagant without a hint of shame for her conceit. ‘Another showed you how to set wood on fire.’

  ‘I nearly burned down the stables with that one just now.’

  The cat ignored this and went on, ‘And you couldn’t turn me into a magnificent beast if you hadn’t stumbled across that old spell. Have you found out why the spell keeps breaking after a few seconds?’

  ‘Not yet. Even Lord Alwyn needed a page from the Book of Lies to hang around your neck for the magic to last.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re trying very hard.’

  ‘Oh stop hounding me, Termagant.’

  ‘I’m not a hound, I’m a cat.’

  ‘Very clever, but you’re a bully whatever you are, just like the chancellor.’

  Marcel fetched an ancient book from the shelf and carried it back to his desk beside the window. Another book, bound in leather as blue as the sky, already took up much of the space. He opened the blue book at random and flipped through its pages. It was crammed with spells, enchantments, hints and sayings, details about necromancy, raising storms, curing ailments, most of it written at a time he couldn’t recall. The newer entries were things that had caught his eye in this past year, as he read his way through Lord Alwyn’s library. The easiest of magic he had mastered — if he didn’t count mistakes like almost burning down the stables — but there were other spells he’d copied into this book that frightened him with their power, and so far he hadn’t dared to conjure them.

  He finished fanning through the spells and let the blue book fall open at the first page. Only two lines were written there, in a childish scrawl he knew was his from years before:

  My fate is my own, my heart remains free

  Not magic but wisdom reveals destiny

  Why had he written them? They seemed very learned for the young boy he must have been then. ‘Destiny,’ he murmured, picking out the final word.

  He glanced out the window, down into the courtyard where Hugh and Dominic were heading out through the palace gates. He wanted to go with them, to be part of whatever mischief they were planning, part of the fun, to laugh with them at the slightest thing, to be a boy. But if he ran down to join them, the chancellor would only send soldiers after him to bring him back to this room, to Lord Alwyn’s books, to his duty.

  Marcel followed his friends with jealous eyes as they slipped so freely into the bustling streets of Elstenwyck and wondered if he was watching his own childhood disappear with them.

  CHAPTER 2

  Nicola

  MARCEL READ DOGGEDLY FOR an hour until he was interrupted by a girl who wandered into his room without knocking. Older than him by two years, she was taller too, although he was quickly catching up to her. The bodice of her sky-blue dress was finely embroidered in swirls of silver, each with a pearl sown at its centre. The skirt beneath was gathered at the waist, making the silk open out in a generous fall until it brushed the floor around her feet. A flick of her head removed a curtain of pale brown hair from her face, an action she might have done with her hands if they weren’t forming a protective cage around something.

  ‘What have you got there, Nicola?’

  The girl let out an odd sigh, part pleasure, part exasperation. ‘I only visit you so you’ll call me by that name. Everyone else in the palace calls me Catherine.’

  ‘Well, it is the name you were born with.’

  She made a face as though she were five and not fifteen. ‘If I could remember the girl I was when they called me Catherine, I wouldn’t mind, but Lord Alwyn messed all that up. You were the lucky one, Marcel. When the old coot tried to change your name, Bea managed to stop him.’

  ‘Yes, Be
a,’ said Marcel, and immediately a smile chased away a little of his dejection. It disappeared altogether when his sister opened her hands with a flourish and tossed a pigeon into the air. It fluttered in a circle around the room, coming to rest finally on a ledge above the door.

  ‘It flew in through my window just now,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d better bring it in my hands in case Termagant tried to eat the poor thing again. Where is the savage beast anyway?’

  ‘Over there by the bookcase. Don’t worry, she has a mouse to play with.’ But Marcel wasn’t concerned about Termagant. The pigeon had come. ‘Have you got the message yet?’

  ‘She’s not likely to give it to me. You’re the sorcerer.’

  Yes, he was the sorcerer and this bird was the only useful spell he had ever invented for himself. He called the pigeon down onto his open hand. ‘Do you have something for me?’ he asked.

  Much cooing and shuddering followed, and when the pigeon flew back to the ledge shortly afterwards it left behind a cream and speckled shape on Marcel’s palm. Nicola watched as he closed his hand carefully over the egg.

  ‘What does she say? Come on, Marcel, what’s Bea been up to?’

  He held up his free hand to silence his sister, for inside his head he could hear a girl’s voice and see her, even feel the news she had sent him by simply placing her hands around this same pigeon. Once Bea had recited the words he’d taught her, the bird had flown up from the slopes of the distant mountain that was home to her people and flapped its way across farmlands and villages, here to the palace. Bea could not read or write, and there were times when not even Marcel could see her, even if she was standing right in front of him, but she was his closest friend.

  ‘Well, what does she say?’

  ‘She beat her grandfather in an archery contest. Her hair is long enough now to braid and circle around her ears like the other elf women.’ He stopped, reluctant to say any more.

  ‘There must be more interesting things than that.’

  Marcel faltered. How could he explain that his magic brought more, much more, from the freshly laid egg than mere words? ‘She says … she says that she misses me,’ he finished, and swallowed a couple of times to disguise the lump in his throat.

  Nicola knew why he’d hesitated. ‘Why don’t you ask Bea to come here, like you asked Hugh and Dominic?’

  ‘No. Bea’s so shy, and humans haven’t always been kind to elves.’

  ‘She’s only half elf, the other half is human, don’t forget. She’d come if you didn’t block out your own feelings from the messages you send to her,’ said Nicola, and because she couldn’t resist a tease, she came closer, right up to his ear, and whispered, ‘It’s not friendship, is it, Marcel? It’s love.’

  The young sorcerer went crimson from his forehead to the base of his throat. ‘No, of course not,’ he protested, and in his eagerness to convince her, he forgot the egg until it disintegrated into a crunchy liquid inside his fist. Not that it mattered; the magic only lasted while the egg was still warm. But the mess in his hand seemed to double the embarrassment and for revenge he chased Nicola across the room, threatening to smear her dress.

  He would have caught her if the excited cries from grooms down in the courtyard hadn’t drifted in through the window. Marcel went to see what all the fuss was about. A dozen horseman were riding in a grand procession through the palace gates. One of the horses caught his eye especially — a magnificent gelding that danced skittishly on the cobblestones. Its rider was no less impressive: a man in his early twenties with clothes to match his mount’s expensive saddle. Marcel guessed who he was.

  ‘I’m not the one in trouble with love. Come and see — Father has invited another one to look you over.’

  Nicola rushed to the window. ‘I’ll kill him.’

  ‘Who — this new suitor or the king?’

  ‘Both, if I have to.’ She glared down at the scene beneath them as the chancellor folded himself into an extravagant bow.

  ‘This one’s a prince, at least,’ Marcel said.

  ‘I don’t like the look of him.’

  ‘You never do. I don’t know why Father doesn’t just invite them all here at once and auction you off.’

  ‘I’m not a horse!’ Nicola exploded, loud enough to be heard in the courtyard below, though she drew back before the chancellor could see her face.

  ‘No, you’re a princess and you have to have a husband.’

  ‘Not until my seventeenth birthday. Father promised me that much.’

  Marcel studied the new candidate. He was a handsome man, there was no doubt about that, but they had all been handsome. ‘Why not say yes to this one? He certainly knows a good horse when he sees one.’

  ‘I told you, I’m not a horse!’ Nicola roared again, and this time she did the chasing as tears of frustrated fury burst from her eyes. When Marcel was too agile to be caught, she slumped into his chair and forced herself not to cry. ‘I don’t want this one, I don’t want any of them. I don’t even want to be a princess. Oh help me, Marcel.’

  For all his teasing, the young wizard didn’t like to see his sister so unhappy and if he could have passed a hand before his face to take away her misery, he would have done it. Then a wicked thought formed in his mind. ‘Magic,’ he whispered.

  He turned to Nicola. ‘Are you sure you want this one to go away like the rest?’

  Nicola pushed back in the chair and folded her arms across the silver embroidery of her dress. ‘Yes, I want to get rid of him.’

  ‘Then maybe I can help you.’ He strode across the room and snatched up Termagant from the floor.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing! My mouse has got away,’ came the words into his head.

  ‘Oh, shut up. You’re going to help a lady in distress,’ Marcel snapped, crossing the room again to his sister to deliver the cat into her arms. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘there’s a little magic I can teach you.’

  MARCEL AND NICOLA STOOD to attention in front of their father, who was slumped casually to one side on his throne, inspecting them with his chin resting in the palm of one hand. The weakened sunlight that entered through the high windows showed it was late in the afternoon, some hours after Marcel had deprived Termagant of her mouse. Besides these three, there were five others in the Great Hall, not counting Termagant herself who lay outstretched on the floor, trying to ignore the thick metal collar around her neck. Attached to this collar was a chain held by four stout soldiers dressed in the king’s red livery. The soldiers looked very nervous.

  ‘Is that chain really necessary?’ said King Pelham to his chancellor.

  ‘Your Majesty, if you had seen the incident earlier this afternoon —’

  ‘Yes, yes, Chancellor,’ said the king, testily. ‘I know what a sight Termagant can become, but she’s not likely to do it again, is she?’

  All eyes turned to the prince and princess.

  ‘No, Father, she wouldn’t hurt a mouse,’ said Marcel, quickly blocking his mind to any comments Termagant tried to send his way.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ replied the king. To his left, the four soldiers who held Termagant’s chain looked downright delighted.

  ‘The danger may have passed but that doesn’t change what these two have done,’ said the chancellor.

  Pelham lifted his eyes towards the diagonals of sunlight above his head and slowly let out a weary breath. ‘Tell me again … the princess agreed to meet the duke’s son on the terrace above the rose garden?’

  ‘Yes, and when she arrived she was carrying that cat in her arms. She let the young man approach and make his bow —’

  ‘And that was when it happened,’ said the king, looking sternly at his daughter.

  ‘Actually, she let the cat jump to the ground first, Your Majesty, where it played around the man’s legs. He was keen to show that he liked her pet so he stooped to scratch it affectionately beneath the chin —’

  ‘So he bent down until he was almost face to face with the cat, and that
was when it happened.’ The king paused, picturing the scene in his mind, then had to stifle a snort of laughter.

  ‘Your Majesty, how can you laugh? The duke’s son was petrified when the cat became a snarling beast. He fell back screaming for help, then ran into the palace.’

  ‘Not a terribly brave response,’ the king commented dryly. ‘Where is the young man now?’

  ‘On his way home, Your Majesty, and swearing that he will never return. That is bad enough, but when he left he was proclaiming loudly that the princess of Elster is a witch. If rumours like that spread too widely, no man will want to marry your daughter.’

  ‘Good,’ said Nicola, speaking for the first time.

  Her father’s good humour vanished in an instant. ‘No, it is not good at all,’ he began solemnly. ‘You are my oldest child, Catherine, and by the laws of Elster that means you will rule this kingdom after me. The man you marry will have a vital role to play.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t have to marry for a long time yet, and I don’t want to marry a man that he picks out for me,’ she raged, pointing her outstretched arm at the chancellor. ‘I want to choose my own husband.’

  ‘No!’ said the king sharply, although when he spoke again straight afterwards his voice was edged in sympathy. ‘Other young women might dream of love, but you have a responsibility to the kingdom. The chancellor and I are doing our best to find a suitable young man, but it’s more important that he be capable and trustworthy than whether you like him.’

  ‘I won’t marry anyone unless —’

  ‘That’s enough!’ boomed the king, silencing the princess with his look as much as his words. The chancellor saw his chance and was quick to take it.

  ‘Your Majesty, the princess couldn’t have worked magic on this cat unless Marcel showed her how. I have been urging him for months to treat his powers with the respect they deserve, but at every turn he belittles the memory of Lord Alwyn and uses magic for childish tricks.’