Part 47 (1/2)

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.

R AFFERDY 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, wis.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.ds; and that the ma.s.sive 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 your measure, your soul is very much in peril. Or what is left of it, at any rate.” He handed Rafferdy one of the gla.s.ses. ”To magick,” he said, and took a sip of his drink.

Rafferdy was forced to sh.o.r.e up his smile lest it crumble. ”Cheers,” he said, and downed the contents of his gla.s.s.

”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 fas.h.i.+oned of human skin. It was bound with bra.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+onable.”

”Is that the reason you wish to study magick, Mr. Rafferdy? Because it has become fas.h.i.+onable 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 fas.h.i.+onable. 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. Fas.h.i.+on 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 fas.h.i.+onable, I'll buy a new coat.”

”Very well,” Mr. Bennick said. ”We will begin with the Codex of h.o.r.estes. 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.

H OW 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.