The Mislaid Magician

by Patricia C. Wrede

  Apparently, James sent off an express packet to Mr. Wrexton last week, after the incident at Haliwar, asking him to check at the Royal College for information about the tower, ley lines, and all the rest of the things that have been puzzling us. As the request was part of our investigation, he sent it through Lord Wellington’s office. Lord Wellington sent it on at once, of course, but the next morning there were signs that someone had tried to enter his office. (Lord Wellington naturally takes magical precautions to prevent this; James says it is a habit he acquired long ago, during his India campaigns.) Since his secretary’s desk, which did not have any protective enchantments, was also rifled, and since the message packets appeared to have received considerable attention from the rifler, Lord Wellington and his aides concluded that someone wanted rather badly to find out what had been in James’s urgent letter.

  And so Mr. Wrexton and Aunt Elizabeth made some hasty preparations and set out on the North Road, to act as a combination of reinforcements and messengers. I believe that Lord Wellington also had some hope that, because Aunt Elizabeth and I are related to Georgy and because there have been some garbled rumors flying about London regarding Georgy and Daniel (everything from murder to runaway matches with the groom and governess, Aunt Elizabeth says), it would seem natural for Aunt Elizabeth to come north to assist me in confronting Daniel, or some such. (I do not think that this is at all likely to fool whoever is rifling desks in the government offices, but it may do for an explanation to Society.)

  Which brings me to the last of Mr. Wrexton’s news. James had, as I mentioned, asked for information about ley lines and Haliwar Tower. As Mr. Wrexton is no antiquary, nor any sort of expert on ancient magic or history, he went straight to the archives at the Royal College of Wizards. And what he found there is quite dreadful.

  “You have to understand,” he said, “that the archivists at the Royal College are fanatics in regard to completeness. They write everything down. There’s even a thorough description of those experiments of Sir Hilary Bedrick’s, because even though they were illegal, unethical, and got him kicked out of the College to boot, he performed some of them while he was a member.”

  James made a disapproving noise. I did not say anything, but I shared his sentiments. Sir Hilary’s “experiments” in stealing other wizards’ magic and driving people mad do not seem to me to be the sort of thing that the Royal College ought to preserve, and I do not believe that I feel this way only because I was one of the people he intended to drain and drive mad.

  Mr. Wrexton nodded as if we had both spoken. “Just so,” he said. “But this time, it’s very much to our advantage. You see, there was quite a lot of experimentation on ley lines right after they were discovered in 1641. It wasn’t limited to the Royal College, either; I found a variety of accounts sent in by an assortment of magicians. One of them, Lord Charlton White, was proposed for membership in the College on the strength of his spell for measuring the intensity of different ley lines.”

  Aunt Elizabeth sniffed again. James looked from her to Mr. Wrexton. “What was wrong with White’s spell?”

  “Nothing,” Mr. Wrexton said. “It’s still used. The problem is with what came after. He and another fellow, a magician named Steven Morris, came up with the theory that some ley lines had been artificially constructed.”

  “Artificial? You mean, some of them were made by wizards?” I was stunned. Just tapping a ley line is dangerous enough; controlling one long enough to move it or create a new one … well, if ley lines are like rivers of magic, then creating a new one would be like digging a canal, except that the canal would be for a strong acid that threatened to eat you and your tools at any moment.

  “Exactly,” Mr. Wrexton said. “If they were artificial, they’d have to be prehistoric, of course, or we’d have records of how the lines were constructed. Morris and White spent five years roaming around mapping assorted ley lines in an attempt to prove their theories. After about four years, their project was interrupted by the Civil Wars.”

  “It would be a bit difficult to wander about casting detecting spells with Cromwell’s army marching back and forth,” James said dryly.

  “That’s what everyone’s thought for years,” Mr. Wrexton said. “Especially since Lord White was killed during one of the early clashes. After the Restoration, of course, King Charles II sent Lynne and a corps of wizards to do the mapping job properly. So no one paid much attention to those early maps.”

  “Except you,” I said. “What did you discover?”

  Mr. Wrexton sighed. “The Royal College was as divided by the Civil Wars as the rest of England,” he said. “There were Royalists and Parliamentarians among wizards, the same as everywhere else. And Morris and White—”

  “Were on opposite sides?” I guessed.

  Mr. Wrexton nodded. “Lord White was a Royalist; that’s why he lost his head when Cromwell caught him. Morris was, it seems, secretly one of Cromwell’s advisors from the very beginning.”

  “And their political persuasions have something to do with ley lines and Haliwar Tower?” James said.

  “Possibly,” Mr. Wrexton replied. “I found a summary of their work and theories by accident, apparently misfiled among a series of maps showing the incidence of sheep-cursing along the Tyne in 1653. The archivist was most upset.”

  “Good Lord!” James said. “What were you looking for in there?”

  “But what did they say?” I demanded at the same time.

  “Lord White was quite sincere in his desire simply to prove the existence of a prehistoric network of man-made ley lines. Morris, however, seems to have wanted not merely to find them, but to control them.”

  “He was going to use all that magic to help Oliver Cromwell!” I said.

  “In a way,” Mr. Wrexton replied. “It’s clear from Morris’s notes that he believed the artificial leys weren’t simply set out at random or for the convenience of a particular wizard or group of wizards. He thought they formed a pattern, a spell, that bound the whole country. And still does.”

  James’s eyes narrowed. “Bound it to what?”

  “Bound it together,” Mr. Wrexton replied. “Think about it. Over the centuries, England has been invaded by Romans, by Danes, by Saxons, by French—and all of them have either left again or settled down and become English.”

  “That’s the spell’s doing?” I said.

  “Morris and White believed it was,” Mr. Wrexton said. “And when the fighting started, Morris thought that the spell would keep Oliver Cromwell from winning unless something was done about it.”

  “Hmph,” Aunt Elizabeth said. She had been listening with evident interest; plainly, Mr. Wrexton had not previously informed her of his discoveries. “You needn’t mince words, Michael. They were a pair of lunatics. They left out anything that didn’t fit their notions, and added in lines that weren’t there. Unless you think that several new ley lines simply appeared out of nowhere after they made their maps.”

  “I regret having to contradict you, my dear,” Mr. Wrexton said. “But they were not lunatics. Or at least, if they were lunatics, they were partially correct lunatics. Lord White left extremely clear notes along with the maps. I didn’t have time to verify all of it, but I managed enough. Artificial or not, there is a spell powered by a network of ley lines that does exactly what Morris thought. And I cannot see how such a thing could have arisen by some natural accident.”

  There was a stunned silence. At last James said, “Does the duke know about this?”

  “Lord Wellington? Of course. I went to him right away,” Mr. Wrexton said. “He verified my results himself, and some of his comments were extremely insightful. The College lost a great wizard there, when he chose to devote himself to public service, though of course he’s still a member.”

  There was another pause. After a moment, Mr. Wrexton went on. “Morris was quite as capable as Lord White of demonstrating the spell and its effectiveness. It’s how he persuaded Cromwell to meddle with the ley
lines.”

  Aunt Elizabeth hmphed again. “I’ll wager they hoped to make their version of Parliament proof against change,” she said.

  Mr. Wrexton nodded. “Morris had been doing some experiments on his own. He thought he’d learned enough to manipulate the artificial ley lines himself, so as to change the pattern and make it do what he and Cromwell wanted. They planned to begin by controlling one or two of the larger ley lines that Morris thought were keys to the spell and then redirect others to solidify the changes they wanted. Lord White found out and sent his notes, maps, and information to the Royal College just before he was caught and killed.”

  “And by the time anyone looked at it, Cromwell was in charge and the Royal College was keeping out of politics,” James said. “I’ll hazard a guess that someone misfiled those documents deliberately.”

  Mr. Wrexton nodded. “The archivist at the time thought a record should be kept, and disapproved heartily of the crew of magicians Cromwell had collected to help him. He knew Cromwell would order the documents confiscated if word of them got out, so he made sure that it didn’t.”

  “A little too sure, perhaps,” Aunt Elizabeth said.

  “Fortunately, the process of controlling and redirecting ley lines proved to be longer and more difficult than Morris expected. He and his magicians were only about a quarter of the way through when Oliver Cromwell died.”

  “The ley line under Haliwar Tower!” I said. “The Webbs said that the tower was built in Cromwell’s day. That ley line is one of the keys, isn’t it?”

  “So Morris’s map indicates,” Mr. Wrexton said. “It was one of the first to be altered.”

  “And now the railway is affecting it every time a steam train passes across it,” I said.

  “But affecting it how?” James asked.

  “The train is the least of the matter,” Mr. Wrexton said. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that tampering with the ley spell could result in chaos. I don’t mean simply bringing down the current government; I mean having it fall apart altogether. And Wellington thinks that someone’s been deliberately tampering.”

  “Recently?” Aunt Elizabeth said. “This can’t be some relic of Cromwell’s nonsense?”

  “Within the last five years,” Mr. Wrexton said. “The resonance traces were quite clear, once we realized we should look for them.”

  “Who?” said James. “And why?”

  Mr. Wrexton spread his hands. “If we knew, things would be much easier to sort out.”

  “And how are they doing it?” I added. “From everything I’ve read, it is exceedingly difficult to tap the power of ley lines safely, and this sounds like considerably more than mere tapping.” A thought occurred to me, and I straightened in my chair and nearly spilt my tea. “Earthquakes! Tapping ley lines can cause earthquakes, I remember, and one of them runs directly under Haliwar Tower! James, you don’t suppose …”

  “I try not to reason in advance of my data,” James said in a dry tone. “But I admit, the coincidence bears looking into.”

  I considered everything we had just heard for a moment. Then I looked at Mr. Wrexton. “And do you mean to say that all this important information has been hidden in the archives at the Royal College of Wizards for a hundred and fifty years, or more, and no one noticed?” I said. “That is appalling!”

  But appalling or not, that is the case exactly, Kate. And Lord Wellington, via Mr. Wrexton, wishes James and me (and Mr. Wrexton and Aunt Elizabeth, thank goodness) to “see what we can do about it.”

  This entire situation could have been avoided if anyone in the past hundred years had bothered to clean out the archives at the Royal College. Or if the college had paid proper attention to what its wizards were up to. And it is most annoying to be caught out like this, just when we were on our way back to London. For of course, we cannot say no, under the circumstances.

  So today James is making arrangements for the lot of us to return to the vicinity of Haliwar Tower, and Mr. Wrexton and Aunt Elizabeth are trying to make poor Herr Magus Schellen more comfortable. I shall go shopping. Leeds may not have the variety available in London, but its weavers are second to none. If I am to miss the Season altogether on Lord Wellington’s business, I intend to have a few good lengths of merino and linen to show for it, at least.

  I will confess, in your ear alone, Kate, that I am not so thoroughly displeased by this development as I might have been. For while it is most aggravating to have all our plans overturned like this, I cannot be sorry that we shall have a chance to unravel all these mysteries completely, instead of simply turning Herr Magus Schellen over to the Royal College and hoping they remembered to let us know what happened. Aunt Elizabeth is quite right; official reports never contain the details one is particularly interested in knowing.

  I need not caution you to share this information with Thomas alone. (If he asks, you may tell him that Mr. Wrexton approved my providing it to you both, and also highly commends our caution in making our letters unreadable.) You can imagine the possible difficulties if any of this were to become known.

  Pray convey my apologies to the children. I hope they will not make your life a misery with their disappointment. I am much afraid that my only hope of redemption in their eyes will be to bring them back a sheepdog after all (though of course not the Herr Magus!). That would put the cap on this whole misadventure, to be sure.

  Your most annoyed,

  Cecy

  May

  1 May 1828

  Wardhill Cottage, Darlington

  (in cipher)

  My dear Thomas,

  You will by this time have been apprised of our latest change in plans. I delayed writing so as to provide you with our new direction, in the certainty that my dear Cecelia would pour out the entire business to Kate early on, who would doubtless inform you of the salient details.

  Our entire ménage—myself, Cecelia, the Wrextons, and our much-tried surveyor-turned-sheepdog, together with assorted servants—are currently ensconced in a rented property in Darlington, it having proved impossible to arrange satisfactory quarters for so many, with such peculiar requirements, at any of the local inns. Assuage whatever disgruntlement you feel over this turn of luck by dwelling on the difficulties of finding a suitable place and settling the arrangements in less than a day—the job fell to me, as Wrexton was naturally busy with the spell on the sheepdog. I shall spare you the details. I’m sure your imagination is up to the challenge.

  We chose Darlington for two main reasons: First, it is as near to Goosepool (and the stone circle called the Dancing Weans, where we discovered the sheepdog) as is Stockton, which will make Wrexton’s work on de-transforming Herr Schellen simpler, and second, Darlington is the home of the Stockton and Darlington Railway offices, which I mean to investigate next.

  Once disenchanted, our sheepdog-surveyor will no doubt clear up a good many puzzles, but Wrexton’s news about the possible effect of the ley lines on the stability of the government has cast the whole situation in a far more serious light. Since nothing in the Herr Magus’s background indicates that he is an expert on ley lines, and since neither Wrexton nor his wife is more than normally acquainted with ley theory, I am considering calling in a specialist.

  Unfortunately, Wrexton says that the greatest living expert on ley lines is an Irishman, one Sean Skelly by name, who has persistently refused to have anything to do with the Royal College, or, indeed, anything or anyone English. I believe, however, that I have a possible solution to the problem.

  You remember that insufferable puppy we rescued in Rome ten years back? Theodore Daventer, who had the infernal cheek to make sheep’s eyes at Cecelia? The Royal College of Wizards spent a long time working to remove the spells of persuasion and leadership that that Italian woman cast on him, but they were only partially successful. It is, I suppose, to his credit that he never wanted to be emperor of Europe, or we might have had much more trouble than we did. Instead, it seems, he has used his abilities to
establish an international fraternity of sorts, an academy to facilitate the free exchange of all kinds of knowledge: scientific, historical, and, to the point, magical. He’s recognized now as one of the rising intellectual lights of Europe. If anyone can persuade Mr. Skelly to assist us, it is Daventer.

  In the meantime, I plan to return to my study of the railway, since that is what brought Herr Magus Schellen up here. There are a number of prospective investors for the proposed Manchester-Liverpool line in town, studying the performance of the Stockton and Darlington line. I shall present myself as one of them, and if that will not serve to pry loose some useful information, I warn you that I will sacrifice you as well. The opportunity to hook a peer of the realm, with the added benefit of obtaining his vote in the House of Lords, will no doubt open a good many doors. I shall not, of course, mention your utter refusal to take your seat in Parliament, save on those rare occasions when something strikes your fancy. What has it been, twice in the last fifteen years?

  So if you should receive any inquiries about your interest in investing in railways, kindly do me the favor of responding with circumspection. That is to say, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell them you’d like more information, instead of telling them to go to the devil.

  Yours,

  James

  4 May 1828

  Skeynes

  Dear Cecy,

  Such an unfortunate turn of events. But how fortunate that Aunt Elizabeth and Mr. Wrexton arrived when they did. And only think of the effect it would have upon your children to learn that the dog you had secured for them (don’t ask how they contrived to divine this—your prediction has proved uncannily accurate—they know about the sheepdog and view it as their rightful property) had died en route. The demise of Herr Magus Schellen would have been a tragedy, of course. The demise of Arthur’s dog (“My faithful hound,” I overheard Arthur say) would have been unmitigated domestic disaster.