The Locksmith

by Howe, Barbara;

  “It’s harder.” We both knew that.

  “Why?”

  “Because once it’s burning the fuel, it’s hotter than the little spark needed to set it going,” René said.

  I added, “And you have to have somewhere else to transfer the energy to that won’t burn.”

  “Correct on both counts. There’s the further point that you are trying to gain control of something, rather than using energy you already control. You can absorb some of the energy yourself, but you nearly always have to have somewhere to dissipate some of it. Generally this means either the ground—rocks, boulders, sand, those are all good—water, or straight up into the air. That is what we are going to be practicing today, and since it’s harder than starting a fire, you are going to spend a lot more time practicing this skill.”

  René and I both groaned.

  “What? Do I sense a certain lack of enthusiasm? You have no idea how impressive it can be to instantly snuff out a raging bonfire. Let me demonstrate.”

  He piled up wood in the big fireplace, and set it ablaze. He let it burn long enough that we could feel the heat and see the wood start to char, and then snuffed it out. The heat was gone instantly; the charred places were as cold as the stone floor.

  I said, “I have to admit, that’s impressive.”

  “Good. Your turn.”

  I gulped, and eyed the big pile of wood with misgivings.

  Beorn grinned. “But let’s not start there. Start with a piece of straw.”

  “Yes, sir.” My relief lasted only until we sat at the table, which held a sheaf of straw and a stack of iron bars. There was a box on the floor beside the table. I lifted the lid and saw rolls of fabric and jars of ointment—the Earth Guild’s burn medicines. I looked up to see Beorn grinning.

  “Glad you peeked?”

  “No.”

  “Things happen.” He shrugged. “The best way to guarantee that something will happen is to be unprepared for it.”

  Things did happen; we both suffered several burns—painful but quickly mended. All that heat had to go somewhere. It was supposed to go into the iron bars, but remembering to be a conduit does not come naturally. It took more power, too. By dinnertime, I was famished. When Beorn let us go, René hurtled for the door.

  I lingered, despite my own hunger pangs. “Beorn, do you believe the rumours? The seers who say the Warlock’s time is about up—are they credible?”

  He combed his beard with his fingers before answering. “Lucinda, I’m one of those seers.”

  My stomach lurched. “Oh.”

  “Right. I know I’m going to be the Warlock. So, yes, I believe his time is about up. I read what was already written, but I feel guilty, as if it’s my fault somehow.”

  I sat with my hands pressed tight between my knees. “It doesn’t seem fair that the other Officeholders can retire and the Warlock can’t.”

  “Scorching right it’s not fair.” He sighed. “It’s especially not fair to Jean, given how well he’s handled it. I wish I knew why the Great Coven made it impossible to retire. Maybe they still believed in Valhalla when the Offices were forged. I wonder if they thought all warlocks should die like warriors, so we would be there to fight for the gods when Ragnarök, the end times, come. Sometimes I wish I believed in the old gods; it would make the Office easier to bear, maybe.”

  “Did you say it wouldn’t be fair for you to marry again because you know you’re going to be the Warlock?”

  “You betcha. I’ve read what Warlock Alchemio wrote after Terésa died in his arms. Heartbreaking…”

  “What’s the matter with the Fire Office? Plenty of fire wizards marry mundanes without burning them to death. It happens all the time, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure, but the Fire Warlock is different. Having the power of the volcano at your fingertips all the time is too scorching dangerous…I wish I could marry again. I don’t want to live the rest of my life like a monk. It’s been torture for Jean. At least I won’t last as long, but could you imagine killing your own wife? Compared to that, knowing I’m going to die a fiery death myself isn’t so bad.”

  Cold chills ran down my spine. “Just because you know you’re going to be the Warlock doesn’t mean it has to be soon.”

  The look on his face was so bleak that my spirits, already low, slid right down onto the cold, hard floor.

  He said, “No dice. I’ve seen myself as Warlock with no more grey in my beard than I have now. There’s no way around it. He’s not going to last to the end of this war.”

  The memories that had been disturbed by the probe continued to surface at random intervals. I threw fits of temper at the least provocation, and burst into tears several times a day. My erratic behaviour didn’t seem to bother either Beorn or Master Sven—one or the other was at my elbow every meal, making excuses for me and deflecting questions.

  When a memory surfaced during the day, I would lose concentration, with unfortunate results. I suffered far more burns than René did. Beorn wouldn’t let René tease me, but he wouldn’t let me slack off, either. He made us practice snuffing fires over and over and over again, and wouldn’t let us move on to anything else until we could extinguish the straw instantly and coldly. By the end of the week, we were both heartily sick of burning straw, but Beorn gave us no respite. We left our morning sessions physically exhausted, ravenous, and drenched with sweat.

  The afternoon sessions with Master Sven left us mentally exhausted. He was even more focused and serious than usual, and he left his other students to fend for themselves while the three of us sat with our heads together over the texts on locks. They were as dense and obscure as Father’s law books. When René complained, Master Sven said, “Remember that these aren’t textbooks for students; these are scholarly texts written by scholars and mages for each other. The mages, especially, were trying to impress the other mages and scholars with the depth of their scholarship while still holding back a few little secrets, so some of it was written with the intent of being obscure. You have to read this stuff in the right frame of mind, which is that if it says ‘individuals not yet having reached the age of maturity should be processed by the visual organs rather than perceived by the auditory system’ it means ‘children should be seen and not heard’.”

  That advice helped. I read each sentence with a critical eye, to see how it could be unravelled into something simpler, and soon it began to make more sense. Towards the end of the second afternoon Master Sven looked up from his book and said, “It appears to me that ‘lock’ is a bit of a misnomer—at least they aren’t locks in the physical sense where a lock is only part of the protective structure, and fits onto a door or box lid or something like that. It’s useless to put a sturdy lock on a flimsy box, as you can still get to whatever the lock protects by breaking the container. These magical locks, on the other hand, are the complete container, and there isn’t any other weak point. You have to either break or release the lock to get to the contents.”

  “So how do you do that?” René asked.

  “I wish I knew,” he said glumly, and went back to reading.

  I revised my lock to say, ‘Hide from witches my witchery, all save me, still let me see.’

  The glass cage enclosed me, but I could still light a fire. I no longer felt as if I were suffocating. It felt comforting, like a shield, so I kept it on all the time, both in and out of the practice room, as neither Beorn nor I wanted me to risk forgetting and going out without it.

  After a week, I made it through a morning’s session without losing my concentration, or getting burned, once. I began to relax. In two more days, the Warlock would introduce me to the other three Officeholders, and then the worst would be over.

  Or so I thought. I was in the classroom when a memory flashed through my mind’s eye.

  Why hadn’t the Office killed me? It might yet.

  I came t
o, and found Master Sven and René staring as if I’d been speaking gibberish. How long had I been lost in a flood of bad memories? I wiped damp palms on my skirt and stood up, leaning on the table for support. “Master Sven, I have to see the Fire Warlock. Right now.”

  The Chessmaster

  Master Sven said, “Are you ill? Why do you need to see the Warlock?”

  “He said to tell him if I ever figured out why I didn’t want to be a witch. I—”

  “Then by all means, go. Would you like one of us to come with you?” He looked worried. I couldn’t blame him; I knew I looked haggard.

  I assured him I was fine, and ran for the door. What would I do if Warlock Quicksilver wasn’t in his study? I ascended the stairs with my heart in my mouth.

  He opened his study door and greeted me as I stepped off the stairs. “To what do I owe the honour of this visit?” He ushered me in, and gestured towards a couch in front of the fireplace at the back of the room. “A social call? I think not. Not with such a woeful expression. What is the matter, my dear? Out with it.”

  We sat down side-by-side on the couch, facing the fireplace. The warmth of the fire was welcome, and I leaned forwards, hoping I could stop shivering. “I’ve just remembered something, Your Wisdom, and it’s dreadful.”

  He didn’t move. “I am listening. Pray continue.”

  “It’s about the Empire’s wizard—the one we saw at the christening, who said your reign was almost over. I thought I’d seen him before, but I didn’t know when. Now I remember. He’s the wizard who upset me so much when I was six that I created that lock.”

  His unruffled expression didn’t change. “Yes, I know.”

  “You know? But…”

  “My dear, did you not think we would examine that episode when we probed your mind? I am surprised you remember him, that first event happened so long ago. But yes, I recognised him.”

  He paused, studying the fire, frowning slightly. I watched him, twisting my hands together in my lap, the nails digging into the palms so hard they hurt. When he turned towards me, it was with a sombre expression.

  “You have taken me to task for holding back information from René. I suppose I shall have to make a clean breast of it and tell you all I know about your own part in this story.”

  “What did he want with me?”

  The Warlock held up a hand. “Please, you may call me a patronising old fool if you wish, but I felt you had had as much as you could take this past week. Are you sure you want to hear more?”

  “Yes, sir.” My voice trembled despite my best efforts to hold it steady. “If it’s bad news, putting it off won’t make anything any easier.”

  “Very well. The Earth Guild exposed some fragments after they began making enquiries about your stepsister’s glamour spell, and the rest we have uncovered this past week. Watch,” he said, pointing to the fire.

  I looked into the burning embers, and they seemed to expand to fill my entire field of vision. I saw the Empire’s wizard in the embers, and then the embers and the sound of the burning faded away, and I watched the foreign wizard walk towards the village of Lesser Campton, where I was born.

  He was dressed in neither a wizard’s robes nor the outlandish fashions of the Empire, but in a simple scholar’s robe. He had sounded foreign at the christening but there was no trace of an accent when he stopped the first person he met in the village square.

  “Could you please direct me to Scholar Guillierre’s house?”

  The butcher’s wife, surprisingly young-looking, said, “Yes, sir. Follow that lane on the other side of the mill. Their house is the first one past the end of the rock wall.”

  Once out of sight of the village square, he took an instrument like a compass out of his pocket, and nodded when he saw it pointed towards our house. He walked past the gate and further down the lane, where he stopped and checked the compass again. Satisfied, he came back and knocked on our door. Although by now I expected it, I caught my breath when my mother answered the door. He introduced himself as a scholar on an errand to my father, and she led him to my father’s study. My eyes stung when Mother left; I struggled to keep my mind focused on the wizard.

  The scene blurred. Family and guest were eating dinner. My father sat at the head of the table and mother at the foot, the foreign wizard and a small girl sitting opposite each other. Oh, dear. No wonder Mother was always after me to scrub my face. The wizard argued some historical point with Father a bit absentmindedly, but neither Father nor Mother seemed to notice his rapt attention on the girl across the table. My younger self noticed, and didn’t like it. I squirmed, glared, and stuck out my tongue.

  “Lucinda, stop that,” my mother chided.

  I sulked. When she turned her back to reach for a pitcher, I stuck out my tongue again.

  “Lucinda, I’ve had enough.” She grabbed me and hauled me away upstairs, leaving Father apologising for my bad behaviour and the wizard chuckling.

  After dinner Father, who was not in good health, went upstairs to take a nap, leaving the wizard reading in the study. The wizard listened until he heard Father’s door close, then took out the compass and checked it once again. He raised a wand and summoned me to come to him. I came unwillingly and tried to hide behind the door.

  He said, “Ah, my dear Lucinda. Are you fond of stories about the Fire Guild?”

  I didn’t answer. A look of concentration came over my younger face, as I set my lock.

  “Would you like to meet the Fire Warlock some day? I could help you do so.”

  I crossed my arms and glared at him. He had other questions but I wouldn’t answer any of them. It didn’t matter, the longer the wizard studied me the happier he looked. He took other instruments out of his pocket and pointed them at me. When he let me go he was gloating.

  The scene blurred and shifted, and the wizard was now in another scholar’s study, a dim and dusty little hole of a room, the man occupying it clad in a threadbare and badly mended robe. Hadn’t I seen him before, too? He quivered as the wizard counted out gold coins into three stacks in front of him.

  The wizard said, “You know the scholar Guillierre who lives in the village of Lesser Campton?” The shabby scholar nodded. The wizard continued, “He has a small daughter who is destined for great things. I am interested in this child’s welfare. For this sum you will do three things: one, send me a report yearly on her health and condition. Two, poison her father’s relationship with the Scholars’ Guild”—the scholar’s head came up at this and his eyes widened; I clenched my hands into fists—”so that he does not bring her to the yearly meetings—she must not marry a scholar. Three, this girl will be a low-level witch, but talented enough to use a glamour spell. When she is old enough, hire an earth witch or air witch to teach her how to use one. I will give you a third of this gold now; the other two stacks will be yours on completion of the second and third items. Do you agree to do this?”

  The scholar looked uneasy, but eyed the money. The wizard pushed one stack towards him, and he nodded slowly.

  I was back in the Warlock’s study, clenching my hands together in my lap. I glared at the Warlock. The black eyebrows lifted in question.

  “Your Wisdom, I knew nothing of any of this. I did not and do not want to be this wizard’s minion.”

  “Very well then, you should not start.”

  “Of course not! I…er, what?”

  “You have not been before now, I think you should continue that way.”

  The smile in his eyes was back. I unclenched my fists and held my cold hands out towards the fire.

  He said, “I have watched that wizard all his life. He styles himself the Chessmaster, and he has grand plans and Byzantine schemes involving dozens or hundreds of people that he thinks to move around as on a great chessboard. He never sees other forces at work that use him as he seeks to use others, or that his p
awns pick themselves up and move around on their own when his back is turned. It is especially dangerous to treat a warlock as a pawn.”

  The Warlock paused, and reaching out, put his hand under my chin and turned my face so I had to look him square in the eye.

  “You are a queen, my dear. You command the whole board. If not yet, then soon. Never forget that.”

  He pulled back his hand. “I do not mean to imply that he is not dangerous. He is. He is an enchanter with a well-developed talent for the magic of illusion. If you encounter him again, be wary. But he sought to use you based on prognostication without understanding your talents, so you have had the advantage. Even while you were not aware of your talents they have clearly been at work.”

  He gestured at the fire. Looking in, I watched Claire fasten a bracelet on her arm. The magnificent creation in gold and lapis lazuli was the perfect complement to her golden hair and blue eyes.

  I pulled back from the fire. “This vision can’t be real. I’ve never seen that bracelet before, and we couldn’t afford anything like it anyway.”

  “Claire has worn that bracelet every day for the past five years.”

  I gaped at him.

  He said, “That bracelet is enchanted with a forget spell, and a glamour spell that Mother Celeste says is one of the most powerful she has ever seen—one most members of the Fire Guild have no natural defence for. The Fire Office shields me, and Beorn, as my apprentice. If we did not have earth magic woven into the Fire Office…” He shrugged.

  “You have seen the glamour spell was intended for you. The Chessmaster must have thought you would need it to get close to me. More fool him. A witch came to your home with the instructions to enchant a piece of jewellery for the level one witch of a certain age. With your lock in place, she saw Claire and never noticed you. It is just as well—you are more appealing as you are. If you had tried to use a glamour spell on me I would have banished you to Blazes, and the odds of your having survived last week’s encounter with the Fire Office would have been slim.”