The Rowanwood Curse (Hal Bishop Mysteries Book 1)
Page 7
“Might as well?” Peter looked puzzled. “Haven’t you come about the mine?”
“Not at all,” Hal said, looking outraged at the very idea. “I am here as a favor to Sir Jasper—but my work is curse-breaking.”
“Curse-breaking?” Peter let out an astonished laugh, but sobered quickly at Hal’s expression. “But then—oh, you must be here about Miss Pryce.”
“Obviously.” Hal raised an eyebrow. “Unless you know of some other curse?”
“No—well, there are those who say the mine is cursed,” Peter said, laughing nervously. It was plain he didn’t know quite what to make of Hal. “But that’s just silly superstition.”
“Is it?” Hal said. “But all superstitions come from somewhere. Whence comes this one?”
“Oh, you know.” Peter shook his head. “The usual sort of thing—accidents, illness. People like to have a reason for things that happen, I suppose, and the mine is a very convenient thing to lay blame on.”
“Hm.” Hal folded his arms over his chest. “And you don’t share that feeling?”
“No, I don’t.” Peter frowned. “I’ve been tolerant so far, Mr. Bishop—as you’re here at Sir Jasper’s behest. But I’m no ignorant bumpkin. I’ve been educated—yes, in magic, too.”
“Have you?” Hal’s tone was mildly surprised. “But there’s your problem—what you’ve been taught about magic is woefully incomplete.”
Peter’s face reddened. “It certainly was not the same education you received, I’ll grant—but I’m not entirely unlearned.”
Hal waved a hand dismissively. “My education was no better than yours in that respect. Both of us have been taught to ignore what is referred to disdainfully as ‘superstition’—when in fact a great deal of it may be true.”
Peter stared at him blankly a moment, then suddenly burst into laughter. “Well, you are odd. But perhaps that is just what Sir Jasper needs—certainly no one else has been able to help him.”
Hal’s mouth quirked up in its familiar half-smile. “Perhaps. Let us see what I can do for this furnace, at least.”
Peter led us on through the yard. The yard clamored with activity—men pushing carts of coal, shouting at each other from one end to the other—and the whole of it seemed coated in a thick layer of soot. I watched Peter walk ahead of us, and wondered just how extensively he had studied magic—whether he’d had a teacher, or merely studied on his own. Would he be capable of casting a curse like this?
We reached the top of the mine shaft, and Peter handed us two helmets with torches attached. We stepped into a creaky metal cage and he gave a signal to a man who stood beside it. The man pulled on a rope, and the metal cage began descending. It was a long ride down, the cage creaking loudly the whole while. We descended deep into the earth; the very air felt heavier the deeper we went, and the darkness enveloped us until all that could be seen were the points of light that were the torches on our helmets, and our ghostly faces beneath them.
When the cage had finished its descent, Peter led us down a narrow passage to the bottom of the mineshaft, where the furnace sat, the great fiery heart of the mine, sending flames belching up. It was powered by a spell; the familiar sulfurous smell of fire magic filled my nostrils, and its familiar warmth traveled through my veins. But there was something wrong—even if we hadn’t been told of the trouble before we’d come down, I would have known it. The fire magic ebbed and flowed, and in its ebbs I could feel the power of the magic that had hold of Cecilia, choking the flames and winding round my spine.
Hal watched the furnace a moment, shadows playing across his face. “How long has it been like this?”
The fireman wiped his face. “Oh, some months now. Sometimes it goes out, but it’s been flaring up of late.”
Peter turned to Hal, the somber expression on his face made melancholy by the flames. “If we lose the furnace, mining will have to stop—we have to ventilate the gas, you see. If not—well, the gas is poisonous.”
“Aye.” The fireman rubbed at his chin. “And if the fire gets too high, it’ll light up the frame—and then the whole thing will go up, like a Roman candle.”
Hal walked toward the furnace, crouching down beside it. “Might I get a lantern?”
The fireman went and fetched a lantern, handing it to me. I went and knelt beside my brother, who was peering at something in the dark.
“Pick up the lantern a bit, Jem.”
I did as I was told, and he began wiping at the soot that coated the furnace. It soon became clear what he was looking at: the seal that bound the spirit to the furnace, the imprint of the spirit’s name and the caster’s—the symbol of the contract between man and spirit that kept the furnace going.
“There’s the trouble,” he said, pointing. “The seal’s broken down. It looks like it’s been redone any number of times, too.”
I bent down for a better look, and I saw what he meant—tiny fissures marred the seal, and I could see where it had been re-laid over other, older copies of the same spell. “What’s to be done about it?”
Hal sat back on his heels, rubbing his chin. For the moment, it seemed he had put aside entirely his disdain for industrial magic—he was simply engrossed in the problem before him. I felt a sudden, strange sadness, remembering him working on the engines with Father, this same look on his face.
“It’s no good re-laying the spell,” he said, finally. “There’s another spell that’s acting on it. We’ll have to deal with that first.”
“You mean the counter-spell?” Peter said. He was watching Hal with a keen interest, his face ghostly pale in the darkness.
“I wouldn’t call it a counter-spell.” Hal stood, wiping his hands on his trousers. “It’s simply that there’s another spell at work—and the spirit behind that spell is infinitely more powerful than the poor fire elemental running your furnace—that spirit is entirely exhausted. The spell’s going to have to be completely redone.”
“But that would take weeks!” Peter was aghast. “We’d have to find a new fire elemental in the registry, develop a whole new spell . . . .”
“Nonsense,” said Hal brusquely. “It can be done at once.”
He walked over to the furnace and tossed in one of his packets. Almost instantly, the cloying feeling of the dark magic eased—it did not disappear completely, but receded, as though it were for the moment held at bay.
“Bring the lantern over.” He gestured to me and knelt back beside the seal. He looked back at Peter. “The furnace will be out for a few moments—I trust that won’t be a problem.”
“Out?” Peter and the fireman exchanged looks. “But the air goes badly very quickly—perhaps we ought to evacuate the mine.”
“It won’t take five minutes.”
Hal took a bit of chalk from his pocket, and drew over the old seal, then laid his hand against it. The seal glowed for a moment, then disappeared, and the fire went out entirely. In its absence, the cold darkness at the bottom of the mineshaft sank down around us like a blanket. The fire elemental had been released from its spell.
CHAPTER NINE
For a long moment, we sat in the darkness, scarcely moving. In the absence of the fire, I felt the dark magic come creeping back, winding its way around my spine, curling into my lungs, pushing the air out. I sucked in a deep breath, then another, closing my eyes.
It was Peter who broke the silence at last. “Are you mad? We have to get out of here—the mine will have to be evacuated—do you have any idea what you’ve done?’
“Better than you have, I expect.” Hal’s voice was thin. “Steady, Jem. Don’t hyperventilate.”
He took the lantern from me and closed his eyes a moment, then leaned forward and drew rapidly on the furnace with the chalk. The new writing glowed bright orange for just a moment, and then a tongue of flame danced in Hal’s palm. He stood, holding it out before the furnace, and it wavered for a moment, then leapt from his hand into the coals, flaring up stronger and steadier than before.
“Are you all right?”
I took another deep breath and let it out slowly through my nose, and when I spoke my voice was hoarse. “I’m fine now. You might have warned me you were going to do that.”
“It wouldn’t have helped.” He reached into his pocket absently and pulled out his pipe, though of course he didn’t light it—just stuck it in his mouth and worried at it with his teeth. He turned to Peter. “Well, what do you think?”
Peter stared at the now-blazing furnace, eyes wide in his soot-darkened face. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it—how did you set a spell so quickly?”
“A fire spell?” Hal folded his arms over his chest. “Child’s play, really. I’ve had the names of the fire elementals committed to memory since I was a boy—it was merely a matter of finding the nearest available. After that, nothing could be simpler.”
Peter was looking at him as though he were the Second Coming, and though the fireman hid it better, I could see that he was no less impressed with Hal’s handiwork. For his part, Hal seemed to have no idea that he’d done anything terribly brilliant—to him, this had been a mere bit of memory work. It required no real thought at all.
“What now?” My throat burned, and I was still a bit out of breath. “Are we—are we going back up soon?”
Peter’s gaze snapped over to me. “Yes—yes, we should go back up now. You look as though you could use a bit of fresh air.”
We went once more into the cage, and began the slow, creaking ascent to the surface. My breathing eased as we traveled higher, further away from the magic that curled around the furnace.
“How long will that spell hold?” I said, as we exited the cage. “Will it break down, like the others?”
Hal looked up from filling his pipe, eyes standing out in sharp contrast to the fine coating of soot on his face. “Not as quickly—the spirit is stronger—but yes, eventually, it will break down.”
“Then you haven’t really solved the problem.” Peter sighed, disappointment written plainly on his face. “I suppose we’ll have to get someone in for that.”
“You won’t find anyone who can fix that problem.” Hal had lit his pipe, and was now smoking with an air of deep relief. “Not one magician in a hundred would even know what the problem was—as evidenced by the poor attempts already made.”
“Then we’ll have to close down the mine.” Peter’s face had gone pale beneath its sooty coating. “You can’t imagine what that would do to this village.”
“I hardly think that will be necessary.” Hal blew out a ring of smoke. “I think by the time I have finished my work here, you will not be troubled by that furnace again.”
He seemed to consider the subject closed at that point, and began walking briskly in the direction of Sir Jasper’s office. Peter watched him for a moment with a strange expression on his face.
“He really does know what he’s doing,” I said. “He just isn’t very good at explaining it to anyone else.”
“I don’t doubt that.” Peter stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I suppose he means there’s some connection between this problem at the mine and the curse on Miss Pryce. But what could possibly connect them?”
“Sir Jasper,” I said, looking down at my feet as I walked. “If someone wanted to do him harm, they could hardly do better than to attack the two things most important to him.”
“I suppose,” Peter said doubtfully. “I wonder—no, I can’t talk about it here.”
I looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”
He looked around, as if to make sure no one was listening, then dropped his voice. “There’s something in the accounts—an irregularity.”
I remembered what Sir Jasper had said about his quarrel with his nephew. “What, embezzlement?”
“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “Nothing like that. But there are payments—regular—that I can’t account for. You understand?”
It took a moment, but at last it dawned on me. “You think Sir Jasper is being blackmailed?”
“I don’t know for certain.” He picked up his pace. “But if you want to know why someone would curse his daughter and his mine, you’d do well to find out who he’s paying—and why.”
I had no further chance to question him on the subject, for he walked on ahead of me, catching up with Hal. I lingered behind, still a bit winded from the encounter with the dark magic in the mine shaft. It troubled me that I was so much more bothered by it than Hal seemed to be—I wondered what my father would have made of that. Would he have thought I was simply not cut out to be a magician? I shoved the thought aside, quickening my pace.
Sir Jasper waited for us in the office, looking up expectantly when the door opened. “Well, how did you get on?”
“It was splendid, sir.” Peter moved forward, warming his hands at the coal stove. He gave Sir Jasper a full accounting of what had happened at the furnace, with appropriate enthusiasm. Hal could not have had a better endorsement of his abilities if he had paid for it.
Sir Jasper listened without comment, but he seemed quite pleased with the report. When Peter had finished, he turned to Hal. “I’m almost loath to say it, given your apparent feelings on the subject—but you really are your father’s son.”
Hal grimaced. “Then may I take it that I have passed your test?”
All at once, the reason for Sir Jasper’s insistence that Hal take a look at the mine became clear. Sir Jasper—like most people—had no experience with the sort of magic that Hal was dealing with. He knew nothing of curses nor of the fair folk, and Hal’s talk of folk magic must have struck him as the worst sort of superstition. But industrial magic he understood as well as any layman could—it was his bread and butter, after all. He had used the furnace as means to test Hal’s ability in a context he knew he could judge.
Sir Jasper gave a short laugh. “So you noticed? I’ll admit it was a crude way to go about it—but I had to see for myself if you were as capable as you seem to think you are. And it was not pointless—that furnace has been plaguing us for months.”
Hal’s lips quirked up in their customary half-smile. “It was not entirely a waste of time on my part, for that matter—for I have confirmed, without doubt, that the problem with the enchantments here is linked to the spell upon your daughter.”
“So someone has cursed both my mine and Cecilia?” Sir Jasper pressed a hand to his blind eye and laughed bitterly. “I had no inkling I was so despised.”
Hal rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’m inclined to think the effect on the mine may be secondary. The spell on your daughter is simply so powerful that its influence spreads beyond its intended target—though I think it’s far from coincidental that the effect is so pronounced at the mine.”
I looked over at Peter, who was stoking the coal fire. His face was expressionless, but he must have been thinking, as I was, of the person to whom Sir Jasper was making his regular payments. I frowned—it was strange that Sir Jasper had not mentioned a blackmailer among his enemies; perhaps the payments were for some other purpose. I would have to bring it up with Hal later.
“Something wrong, Jem?” Hal’s voice broke into my thoughts.
I realized that Sir Jasper was also looking at me quizzically, and I rearranged my face into a more neutral expression. “Not at all. But where do we go from here?”
“Where indeed?” Hal blew out a ring of smoke, folding his arms across his chest. “That illness you mentioned—I believe it, too, is linked to this curse. But of course I would need more information to make any definite conclusion.”
“Of course.” Sir Jasper’s mood had improved considerably over what it had been at breakfast; Hal’s success with the furnace seemed to have renewed his confidence. “Doctor Adams is the man to answer your questi
ons on that subject. You’ll find him in the infirmary, just past this building.”
Peter looked up from the coal stove. “I can show you the way.”
“That’s hardly necessary, Peter.” Sir Jasper shuffled some papers on his desk. “Surely Mr. Bishop can find his own way to the next building—and you’ve been gone from your own work long enough.”
Peter sat down at his desk with a sigh, and Hal and I took our leave. When we had left the building, I relayed to Hal the information that Peter had given me.
“Well, that is certainly curious,” he said, when I had finished. “But I must say, the leap to blackmail is rather dramatic.”
“What else could it be, then?” My breath steamed up foggily before my face, and I drew up my muffler against the chill. “It’s funny that he wouldn’t mention it, though.”
“Not at all.” Hal gestured with his pipe. “If it is indeed blackmail, then presumably whatever secret the blackmailer holds is personally embarrassing to him. If not, then presumably he did not think it important to our inquiry.”
“But you don’t think it is blackmail.”
“I don’t think anything of it yet.” He put the pipe back in his mouth, frowning. “At the moment, we have nothing but Peter’s assertion that Sir Jasper is making these payments, and even then he does not know why or to whom. For all we know, Sir Jasper may be making a regular anonymous donation to an orphans and widows fund.”
I snorted. “He hardly seems the type.”
Hal raised an eyebrow. “Does he seem the type to be easily blackmailed?”
“Well, no,” I said doubtfully. “But still, it is curious.”
“Then let us add it to our growing list of puzzles.”
We had reached the infirmary by then. It was a small building, just large enough to hold the doctor’s surgery. We were greeted at the front desk by an angular-looking woman with dark hair so tightly pulled back from her face that it looked as though it were trying to escape from her head.