Time manipulation was big magic, the kind girls were supposedly unable to do, the kind no man should do unless he was a master wizard or an apprenticed underwizard. Surprise took me off guard, so that I forgot all pretense of claiming to be a boy and blurted out, “Time manipulation? You did a time manipulation spell?”
She fumbled in her lap and came up with a book that she slid across the table. “I’ve seen you at the trials. You’re struggling, and I can help. I grabbed this book the minute I saw you come in today. I wanted to give it to you that day you came in with your new master—do you remember?”
So that was why she was following me around that day. “Yes, I remember.” I shouldn’t encourage her, but I slid the book closer anyway. The leather binding creaked as I opened the ancient cover. “Magic and the Female Mind,” I read from the title page.
Her hands clasped. “Go ahead, look at it. I found this one in the archaic section of the library a few years ago, written at a time when enchantresses were still allowed in the three kingdoms. If Papa knew the books I’ve read here...but he’s better off not knowing. I found this one more than enlightening.”
I flipped through a few pages and then pushed the book back at her. “Thank you, but I can’t risk being seen reading such a book. Take it back.”
She looked wounded. “But...but it has loads of useful information.”
“Summarize it for me, then.”
“Well...all right.” She sat forward, looking me in the eye. “Your masters have always told you to clear your mind, right? To think less? Not be so emotional? To remain in control no matter what?”
The statement startled me. “Of course. That’s how you do magic.”
“And yet you’ve never gotten very impressive results on the testing dais following those directions, have you?”
I reflected for a moment and then, my thoughts on Ingerman and the Punishment, admitted, “I rarely get impressive results anywhere. To tell the truth, I’m not even sure why I’m doing this anymore. I used to think I had what it takes to be a master wizard, but lately...”
Her mouth stretched in a grin, somehow pleased at my response. “You have what it takes. You’re just going about it wrong. See, boys are far too logical to understand how emotions and magic can coexist. But we girls can’t just tamp down our emotions and pretend they’re not there. That’s not how we work. We must work with our emotions. Feel them. Don’t suppress them.”
“Feel emotion?” I repeated, more interested now. That was the exact opposite of anything I’d ever been told, and yet, it made sense. I’d let my emotions run free when I thought of my dislike of Master Wendyn, and that had brought me some measure of success.
She smiled and hooked a loose lock of dark hair behind an ear. “Trust me. Do this, and I promise you’ll pass your next trial—and every one after that.”
I stared at her. It was true what they say, that hope drew from an endless well, because it filled me as I stared at her.
“Do a spell,” she said. “Any spell. One of your worst spells, maybe.”
The fire spell leaped to my mind. I held out my hand and pondered what Orly had said. Stop resisting your emotions. Feel emotion rather than suppress it. An emotion came to my mind, the closest one at hand—hope. I pictured the situation I had the most hope for, myself becoming a master wizard. I watched myself in imagination climb the dais steps after the ascension ceremony. Then I muttered the words of the spell. In my hand, a puny flame formed before flickering out. Predictable.
“Thinking too much,” Orly announced.
“I did just what you said. I imagined hope.”
“You can’t imagine it. You must feel it. How does it make you feel?”
I shrugged. “How does it make anyone feel? Hopeful.”
She rolled her eyes. “All right. But think about the secondary emotions. When you’re hopeful, what other emotions fill you?”
I chewed my lip. “Excitement. Confidence. Happiness.”
“Feel those things. Don’t imagine anything that’s not real. Feel what’s real.”
I stared down at my hand. This seemed silly, but if it meant my magic skills would improve, I was willing to try almost anything.
This time I decided against hope and went for an emotion I remembered more vividly: elation. The first time I did magic, it was like nothing else I’d ever experienced. I was so exhilarated, I imagined I was floating. Just thinking about it again filled me with a similar emotion. I almost wanted to smile. I filled my head with the emotion, closed my eyes, and said the words of the spell.
My voice seemed loud in the empty room. For a moment I thought it hadn’t worked again, but the whoosh of heat and flame against my face made my eyes fly open. The fire in my hand blazed to life, stronger and brighter and more sustained than it had ever been before. I was so startled that I shoved my chair backward as though I could get away from my own hand, and the spell winked out. I stared down at my hand in astonishment.
“Not bad,” Orly said. “But you can do better. Let’s try it again.”
I stared at her, and a slow grin moved across my face. I was going to like this.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the days that followed, I practiced letting my emotions free, as Orly explained. In the privacy of my room, I attempted the fire spell again and again, consistently reproducing the results I got in the library. Then I moved on to the unbroken spell and the sprouting spell. Each time, the magic surprised me. I performed the spells with ease. Not perfectly, but the magic was there, flowing through me in a way it hadn’t before.
I couldn’t wait to show Master Wendyn how much I’d improved.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to keep my secret to myself. The thought of surprising Master Wendyn at the trials pleased me very much. I wanted to see the look on his face, there in front of the judges and the proctor and the crowds of underwizards and masters—the look of shock and pride when he realized for the first time that his underwizard wasn’t half as bad as he thought.
Besides, the master could do with some good news. When I returned from my visit to the Conclave, it was to discover that he’d had two uninvited visitors while I was away. The first was Matthias Kurke, and according to Edie, my source, they had quarreled. Apparently Master Wendyn was upset with Kurke for providing his family the avenue to visit him by reopening the wizard door he had removed.
The second visitor was his brother Bastian. His aim was to beg the master’s forgiveness. It hadn’t gone well and, from my understanding, ended with the master shouting at his brother to get out.
I was glad to have missed both visits—though I couldn’t help but wonder what Kurke’s real reason for visiting had been. Did he come to see me?
Ivan sneaked up on me one day as I was practicing in my bedroom before breakfast. I didn’t even hear the door open, just the gasping intake of breath when he saw the fire whoosh up in my hand. I whirled, and the fire abated, dying down to nothing as I stared at him.
He pointed at my hand and made a gesture I couldn’t interpret.
“I...I’ve figured out fire.” I meant to warn him he couldn’t tell anyone, and then I realized—this was Ivan. My secret was safe.
He gestured again. It was different from the last time he had gestured at me. This time he was moving his pointing finger in a circle. But still, it seemed to mean something to him.
“What does that mean? Are you trying to say something? Is it some kind of hand-speak?”
In reply, he made the gesture again.
I gave up trying to figure it out and summoned the fire to my hand again. “How about fire? Do you have a gesture for that?”
He looked from me to the fire and back again.
“How about this?” I extinguished the fire and wiggled my fingers in the motion that licking flames made. For a moment, Ivan only watched and I thought it was too complicated for him to comprehend. Then he lifted his hand, mimicked the motion, and pointed at the fireplace.
Delight filled me at the notion we might have a way to communicate. We spent the rest of the morning inventing hand-speak gestures. We made up signs for everything I could find in my bedroom. Candle, book, bed, chair, door, tapestry, clothes, shoes, magic, and several body parts. I even took a blank piece of parchment and recorded the gestures and their meaning, so I wouldn’t forget them.
“What’s so interesting that you two missed breakfast and lunch?” Oscar asked from the doorway. “Cook wants you to know there’ll be no food until supper. However, if you’re interested, I could magic you a strawberry fizz or some almond pies.”
He wore the same shirt as always, in an unusual mix of pink and green. The sight of him pricked at me. I’d been spending selfish hours perfecting my magic while his life hung in the balance. I should have been working on dissolving the blood oath.
“Strawberry fizz?” I asked. “What’s that?”
Ivan pulled the parchment with its recorded gestures out of my hands and looked over the characters with fascination, although I knew he couldn’t read them. He was so engrossed that I shrugged and stood.
“Drink of my own invention.” Oscar grinned, clearly pleased that I had asked. “Come with me, and I’ll get you one.”
It would give me a chance to observe Oscar further. Not for Kurke, but for myself.
Oscar’s bedroom was in the ballroom wing. I’d seen inside from the doorway a few times, enough to see he likely had the largest bedroom in the house. Now he invited me across the threshold, and I looked around with interest as we stepped inside.
An alcove with large windows contained a door leading to a balcony. Purple drapes hung on either side. A bed stood against one wall, smaller than I would expect, and shoved almost into the corner like an afterthought. A fireplace had been built into one wall, above which hung a portrait of a young couple. After a moment of staring, I recognized the man.
“That’s you,” I said with some surprise. “You’re so young! And—is that your wife?”
“Sweet Anelina. The world made more sense when she was alive.” He stood for a moment, staring at her, his eyes liquid and warm. Then he gave himself a shake and continued to the table in the north corner. A carved box sat in the middle.
“How long ago did she die?” I didn’t mean to ask the question; it just sort of dragged from me, pulled by my own sympathies. Death I understood.
“Too long. We’ve been apart almost forty years. Her Time was in the summer.”
It was a Faronnan phrase, calling one’s day of death their Time. Forty years, and Oscar had somehow found a way to remain upbeat. After that many years, would I still miss Mama and Gavin as sharply as now? “Does it ever get easier?”
Oscar blinked and looked at me, really looked at me. “It’s never easier to live without her. Mostly it’s just...different. It helps to remember the good times we had together.”
I stared at the box on the table without seeing it. Good times?
Yes, I suppose we had those—once. Before Mama was sick, Papa worked hard at farming. They used to laugh and tease one another. Gavin and Papa used to play at ball tossing in the yard with a round orb as big as a squash from the garden. Mama sewed it from leftover cloth and stuffed it with rushes. We’d had enough food and money to take care of all our needs.
Once we were happy. What changed?
“I’m sorry. Death and disappointment are two things I’ve seen too much of.”
“Garrick too,” Oscar said. “You have that in common.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but before I could ask, he bent over the box, pronounced a short incantation, and lifted the lid. “Strawberry fizz?” he asked, lifting out a tall cup of a pinkish beverage.
I accepted the cup, and took a sip. Strawberries and sweetness and cream with a tangy, fizzy flavor I couldn’t pinpoint the origin of. I sipped the divine creation while he turned back to the sweets box. I glanced beyond him and saw several books spread out on his desk. For me every book was a new opportunity to learn, and I stepped closer while he fiddled with his box. Death and Magic: Murder in Waldrin read the spine of the first volume I picked up, a small black book. Killing Curses of Belanok lay beneath it. Four more books sat stacked to one side; a quick glance over the spines showed several more titles full of words such as demise, annihilation, and extermination. A final book lay open on the desk, turned to a diagram of person. Arrows pointed to various body parts, with an explanation of each part’s weakness and how one might exploit its vulnerability.
“Friar’s bones, what are you studying here, Oscar? How to become a killer?”
He swiveled toward me. In two strides he stood before me and yanked Murder in Waldrin from my hands. “Don’t help yourself to other people’s belongings, Mullins. These weren’t meant for your eyes.”
“But why do you—”
He closed the open book and stacked the rest into a pile which he deposited out of sight beneath the desk. “Retirement can be dull. Reading entertains me. The more interesting the subject, the better.”
“Oh.” I suppose I couldn’t argue with that reasoning. “Still, it’s dark reading, isn’t it?”
“Believe me, I’ve seen darker.” At my questioning glance, he continued, “One of my least favorite tasks as PMW was investigating deaths caused by spells gone wrong. Usually oaths, actually.”
“Oaths?” I asked, startled. “Like...what kind of oaths?”
“Oh, every kind. Apprentice oaths, intermediary oaths, blood oaths, life bonds.”
“Blood oaths?” I tried to say it as though it meant nothing to me, but my heart picked up speed just the same. “What’s that?”
“Nasty sort of oath invented by blood magic users, and that’s all I’ll be saying on the topic.” He put his drink down and gave me a sharp glance. “We shouldn’t be talking about them at all. It’s a taboo business these days. I’d advise you not to bring it up at your next trial.”
I shook my head, disappointed. “Of course not. But...you saw deaths happen when oaths went wrong?”
Oscar perked up. “Some of them truly bizarre. Body parts detached or missing altogether, organs ripped out of chests, complete blood loss...”
Is this what was in store for him, courtesy of Kurke? The room suddenly seemed too close.
Oscar chuckled and went on, oblivious to my reaction. “Do you know, once we found an entire intestinal tract—”
I had to make him stop talking, because the more he spoke, the worse it got. My gaze moved past him to four mallets all clustered together in the corner behind the desk. “You have more than one scrying stick?” I blurted out. “I thought—you know—you only had the one. Forthwind.”
He put his drink down and strode closer to retrieve one. “It would be impractical to have only one scrying stick. They’re my specialty, and they aren’t indestructible, you know. It never hurts to have extras on hand.”
“And...have you named them all?”
He grinned and extended the stick. “What do you think?”
I took it, sliding my hands over the wood and examining its grain. “I suppose you call this one the Earl of Efraingate.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never give them a false title.” He guffawed, as though giving a stick a title was infinitely more ridiculous than naming it in the first place.
“Oh. Of course not.” Somehow I refrained from rolling my eyes. “What makes you say it can save the world, anyway?”
A smile slid over his face. “Back when Anelina and I were first married, back when I had just constructed my first scrying stick, she misplaced a pearl necklace. I’d given it to her as a gift when we wed. She was frantic, and there was no consoling her. Fortunately, I tracked it down with my scrying stick. The dog had buried it in back of the house.” He lapsed into silence and retrieved his beverage to take another sip.
“And?” I swung the stick at my side. “What does that have to do with saving the world?”
“You don’t understand women or
you wouldn’t ask that,” he said. “Losing that pearl necklace was the end of the world for Anelina.” He set his drink down to take the stick from me and patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry. The female mind is something some men never understand.”
I choked on the sip I’d just taken.
A brief tap tap tap sounded at the door.
“Yes?” Oscar called.
The door swung open, and Mrs. Pitts limped just inside the room. “You’ve a visitor, Master Wendyn.”
He swiveled and thumped the stick into the opposite hand. “Not the arch-councilor? I wasn’t expecting him so soon.”
I blinked in surprise. Arch-councilor? That was a ceremonial title in Hutterland. Why was Oscar expecting a visit from a Hutterish governmental representative?
“It’s the Preeminent Master Wizard. He’s in the sitting room.”
My stomach dropped. Stranger and stranger. Why was the PMW here? Could he have come about me? Had he found out my secret? Had Kurke or Orly talked?
“Is he? I’ll be right down. See to the tea, will you?”
Mrs. Pitts bowed. “I already have.” She backed out of the room.
About that time common sense took over. The PMW wouldn’t have visited Oscar if he knew my secret. He’d have called on my master. Or more likely, he’d have sent Council guards to collect and trammel me. Besides, Mrs. Pitts and Oscar were so casual about the whole situation that such visits had to be common.
“Arch-councilor?” I tried to sound casual. “And the PMW? My, you attract some high-profile visitors, don’t you?”
Oscar downed the rest of his drink in one gulp. “When Robenhurst took over my job, I stressed to him the importance of not overextending oneself. When I was PMW, I knitted to relax. So I taught him how. Now we get together to make socks and lap blankets and ear warmers.” He set down his mallet and picked up a basket next to his desk.
“You’re joking. You knit together?”
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