Delusion

by Laura L. Sullivan

  He locked his fanatic gaze on first one, then another magician. Most of the faces he met were full of disdain and incredulity, but a few, mostly younger, looked up at him with unconcealed interest.

  “Join us! Assume your rightful place in the world. The commoners are doing our work for us—see how they’ve conquered all of Europe with just a little prodding on our part? Your island is next, then Russia, then the globe. You don’t have much time to decide, my brothers. Soon it will be too late. The brave new world will be here—and you will be excluded from it.”

  With great dignity, Headmaster Rudyard said, “You’ve trespassed on our home long enough. Go, before we make you go. Or perhaps it will be too late for you.”

  Phil caught sight of Arden’s sun-browned neck and thick queue of black hair. He had moved to stand beside the Headmaster, and when the threat was spoken, he gave a fierce, satisfied smile.

  But the Kommandant only smirked. “Idle threats. I know your pacifist ways, old man. Using the Essence to harm another is a capital offense. Go on—I defy all of you together to try to drain my life. You cannot do it, and I’ll tell you why. You fear your power. I wish you would put all of your wills together and drain me, just to have a taste of what you could be. It would be worth it, if it convinced all of you to join us. But you won’t.” He searched the group to find the young men who had looked so eager for his words. “Because I’ve convinced many of you already. Try it, old man, and you’ll find half your students have turned against you.”

  “That’s a lie!” Arden shouted, when the Headmaster said nothing. “We have a code, and not even a degenerate traitor like you will goad us into misusing the Essence.”

  “You’d be well advised not to try,” the Kommandant said. “Your power is nothing compared to ours.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Arden said, and shook off the Headmaster’s grasp.

  “Are you challenging me?” the Kommandant asked with a slow smile.

  “I’m telling you to leave,” Arden said, stalking toward the dais. “Or we’ll make you, one way or another.”

  “Ah, you will be an asset to our university,” the Kommandant cried, delighted. “Such fire! You know your rightful place in the world, unlike these others with the weak, watery hearts of disgusting commoners. Shall we duel, then, as commoners do with blades? Single combat, you and I?”

  “Master Arden, you forget yourself,” the Headmaster warned.

  But Phil could see Arden’s face in profile grow focused and intense as he called upon the Essence to battle the intruder. His body began to glow, pearl soft at first, brightening a moment later, until it sparked orange-gold as he drew power from the earth.

  The Kommandant narrowed his eyes, and it seemed as if some unseen hand laid a cloak across his shoulders, a red so dark it was almost black. Red, Phil thought, for Essence drawn from living things. The opal in his turban shone with incandescent fire.

  For a long moment it seemed to Phil that nothing was happening. Beads of sweat blossomed on Arden’s brow and dripped into his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Then suddenly the Kommandant smiled, and the deep red glow snaked out to Arden’s throat.

  Arden’s eyes bulged, and he clutched his neck, struggling for air. He lunged for the intruder, then fell at his feet with the other stunned magicians. But he wasn’t stunned—he was dying.

  No one made a move to help him, and the vital sparking light hovering over Arden’s skin flickered and expired.

  “All right then,” Phil said under her breath, and slipped away from her sister.

  “Oi!” After Phil had proved such an adept at boxing, the Albions had briefly incorporated her skills into the act, with a bumptious Cockney-flavored script, but her twill trousers and cap, coupled with her fists, proved less of a draw than sequins and a sword, so the act was soon abandoned. Now that she was planning to resurrect her skills, she thought it would be best to get into character.

  “Bugger off to a kraut house, Jerry,” she said, and vaulted onto the dais.

  The Kommandant looked at her as if she were a particularly pungent piece of offal. “You let your commoner whores speak? How novel! This one will have her tongue ripped out for her insolence.”

  The Essence surged through him, and he called upon the molecules of her tongue to violently disengage themselves from her body. Instead, to his surprise, the molecules of his own nose found themselves violently disarranged when her fist slammed into his face. A second punch knocked him down, breaking his concentration, and Arden gasped a grateful breath. By the time Phil had the presence of mind to save her knuckles from splitting by kicking him in the ribs, the Kommandant had managed to open a portal and vanished. Phil aimed a last kick at the empty air, just in case he was not gone but merely invisible, then sat down abruptly, shaking.

  Fee was at her side in an instant, curling around her. “You were brilliant, Phil,” she whispered. “The bravest person I know.”

  “Now that it’s over, I don’t feel so brave,” Phil said. “Why do they always say to keep a stiff upper lip, Fee? My upper lip’s fine, it’s the lower one that’s quivering like an aspen.”

  The stunned magicians were starting to revive. Some looked bewildered. “We were only going to contain him, Headmaster, I swear,” one nonplussed middle-aged man in loud tweeds said. “Why did he do that to us?” Others looked positively militant. “How dare he!” an elderly magician spat as he hauled himself up with his cane, while another, rubbing his head, confessed in wonder that he’d never felt such power in one man. How had the German magician harnessed enough Essence to stop a dozen powerful magicians at one blow, and then proceeded to bring one of the most skilled young masters to the edge of death? The Essence itself was limitless, but there was certainly a limit to what one man could capture and use at any given moment.

  “Everyone, to your quarters immediately. Journeymen, see that the prentices are secure. Elder masters, remain here with me. And you too, Master Arden,” he added to the junior master.

  Arden was still on his knees, gasping ragged breaths.

  When the room had mostly cleared (except for Thomas, who lingered unnoticed by the door), Headmaster Rudyard climbed the stairs to the dais and stood behind the girls, ignoring them as if they were no more consequential than house cats. “Now, more than ever, we masters must maintain cohesion and calm. I do not think we should give much credence to this rogue magician’s actions. Tomorrow I will address the college for a few moments, and then I want that to be the end of it.” He made as if to step down from the dais.

  “Not one of you helped me,” Arden said, laboring to his feet. “Not a single one of you was man enough to help me.”

  “You know better than to engage in a duel,” one of the other masters said. “Just because you choose to blatantly misuse the Essence, you can’t expect us to follow suit.”

  “I am one of you!” he roared. “I am a master of the College of Drycraeft. That magician attacked us! He threatened our college, injured our brothers. He almost killed me!”

  “If you hadn’t—”

  “You, Master Jereboam, are reputed to be second only to the Headmaster in your ability to channel the Essence, and yet you let that Dresden traitor knock you to the ground. Now you defend his actions, and condemn mine?”

  “We have our laws for a reason.”

  “Times change,” Arden said passionately. “He invaded our home, attacked us, and you would sit back and let him?”

  “We have no intention of—” the Headmaster began, but Arden cut him off.

  “Didn’t you hear him? He and his magicians have meddled to start this war we’ve been hearing about. A world war.”

  “A commoner war,” Master Jereboam spat derisively.

  “A commoner saved my life when my friends and colleagues stood by watching me die, all because of an archaic code!”

  He looked at Phil for the first time since the attack and gave her a barely perceptible nod. Fee would have demanded a flowery speech of contrit
ion, perhaps delivered in full prostration, but for Phil, it was enough. She nodded back, and in those twin gestures was far more than Fee could have found in all of her dear Jane’s books.

  “He has declared war on the college,” Arden went on.

  “I’d hardly say—”

  “Shut your mealy-mouthed yammering, Jereboam! Rudyard, you know what is coming. It’s what we’ve feared for the last three hundred years. They should have killed the traitors when they left the college. That one man was almost enough to defeat us, as we are now, placid as cattle. More will come, and when they do, we must be ready to fight them!”

  “We do not use the Essence for violence.”

  “You do if the conclave votes for it. Vote—right now. Let us resolve to drain them if they dare set foot in Stour again.”

  “There are other ways,” the Headmaster said. He looked tired now, and old.

  “What, appeasement? You’ve heard what the returning journeymen have said. The German commoners may be here any day, and with them the German magicians.”

  “They honor the Essence, the same as we do,” Jereboam said. “Perhaps they have gone a bit astray in the years apart, but if we could only reason with them—”

  “The Kommandant was right,” Arden said bitterly. “You’re all cowards. At least he will fight for what he wants.”

  “I don’t think we can fight him,” Jereboam said. “Did you feel the currents running though him? He’s so much stronger than us. He certainly bested you.”

  Arden flushed. “I’d rather die fighting than show my belly like a cur. Maybe I can’t fight him, but—”

  “I can fight him,” Phil said softly.

  “—I’ll be damned if I turn over the College of Drycraeft to him. We’ll train, we’ll get stronger, we’ll practice using the Essence for combat.”

  “Never!” the Headmaster shouted. “We will never desecrate the sanctity of the Essence by using it for violent ends. Given time, I’m sure we can make the Dresden magicians see the error of their ways. This much is certain—if you use your power to do another harm, you yourself will be drained.”

  “How ironic,” Arden said. “Headmaster, you’ve seen war yourself. Did negotiation save you in Mafeking? No, it was arms and blood. You killed your share in the siege, with the Essence, too, no doubt.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We don’t know what the Dresden magicians will do. He might not represent all of them.”

  “We know the Germans are taking over the world, piece by piece.”

  “We will do our best to keep them from Stour, but the war is none of our concern. And we will not, under any circumstances, use the Essence against another human, be he magician or commoner.”

  “Then we are lost,” Arden said, and turned away from his master in deep disappointment.

  “I can fight them,” Phil said again.

  Arden turned on his heel. “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter how strong their magic might be—it won’t hurt me. And you saw he had no inclination to fight me. He didn’t block, he didn’t react—he just ran. Or popped out.” She didn’t like to think what she would have done if the Kommandant had proven more adept. The only living things she’d struck were her brother Geoffrey and his boxing friends. She’d never had someone really try to hurt her.

  “We don’t need any commoner interfering—” Jereboam began, but Arden interrupted.

  “You’d help us?”

  “My little brother is here,” she reminded him. “The German magicians killed his mother and hunted him. Do you think I’m going to let them take him now? Bad enough you lot have him. And if the German magicians are behind the war, and I can fight them, don’t you think I will?”

  “Even if we allowed you to help, there may be hundreds of them,” the Headmaster said. “What could one girl do, albeit a girl immune to the Essence?”

  “Two girls,” Fee said, casting a quick, loving look at Thomas.

  Phil squeezed her sister’s hand, grateful.

  “We have to let them help, Rudyard,” Arden said. “And what’s more, we should learn to fight ourselves. To hell with the Essence. There’s more than one way to kill someone. There’s nothing in our laws keeping me from binding someone with the Essence and then pummeling him with my fists.” He recalled Phil in her glory. “Or chopping his head off with a sword.”

  “We are against all forms of violence,” the Headmaster said.

  “No, you are against all forms of violence, Rudyard. Nothing in our code prohibits fighting or killing, only using the Essence to do it. Phil, you’ll teach us, then?”

  “What I know,” she said. “But I have a price.”

  “What is it?” Arden asked warily.

  “I want your weapons. The guns, the swords, everything from the room where I was tied up.”

  The elder masters argued about it for the better part of three hours, politely debating while Arden shouted and thundered and paced and finally, in frustration, put his fist through a stained-glass window. The Headmaster calmly repaired both flesh and glass and resumed his placid deliberation.

  After several informal votes, Master Jereboam was the only holdout. Finally, near midnight, he threw up his hands and said, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, yes, no, I’m far beyond caring. Let the little twits have their weapons, let the commoners fight their wars, let our masters become pugilists, so long as you let me go to sleep!” He gave a prodigious yawn, voted yes, and left to tuck himself into bed, where he slept the deep, blissful sleep of the blameless.

  Chapter 11

  You mean, you never got to ask?” Fee said as she leaned happily on Thomas’s arm.

  “No, the Dresden magician came before I could say a word. Oh, you should have heard the speech I had prepared. It would have melted the heart of a stone.”

  Luck favors young love. Headmaster Rudyard had put Arden in charge of coordinating the Albion girls. “Might as well be of some use,” he’d said, “since you have another two weeks added on to your sentence.” Arden needed an assistant, so he chose his young prentice. He was against Thomas’s affair with Fee and didn’t quite understand why he’d made their dreams come true when he knew they’d be in for a rude awakening soon enough. He had a glimpse of an answer when, as soon as they cleared the college grounds, Fee gave him a swift peck on the cheek, full of pretty, breathless gratitude.

  Maybe happiness should be seized, he thought, even if it won’t last.

  Now the two escorted Phil and Fee back to Weasel Rue, loaded with swords and rifles. The prohibition on using the Essence didn’t seem to bother Arden at all now. His eyes gleamed with a new passion, and the loss didn’t hurt nearly as much. Betrayed by his comrades, he was feeling rebellious and knew how easily he’d defy his punishment if it proved necessary, or perhaps even merely convenient.

  “Was he really at Mafeking?” Phil asked, shifting the brace of swords she carried over each shoulder.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But how? I thought you were captured—”

  “Admitted, if you please.”

  “Certainly. Sounds more like an insane asylum that way. In any case, I thought you were admitted at an early age. How did he get to war?”

  “Rudyard was an unusual case. He was a lord, taken young as the rest of us were, but he escaped and didn’t rejoin us until he was much older. Most of our magicians are poor foundlings.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Most of them have single mothers, so they’re much more likely to be put up for adoption or grow up in poverty.”

  Phil crinkled her forehead in puzzlement. “But why on earth would more magicians be born to single mothers?”

  “Because most of them have a magician father and a commoner mother. Journeymen in their period of travel father the children, then—”

  “Return to the college, of course, leaving behind the poor woman who fell in love with them. Or is it rape?”

  “No, no. How could you think that?”


  “Ah, so only seduction, lies, and abandonment. Did you sire any children when you went out into the world, then?”

  “I...no.”

  She looked relieved. “At least one of you has some morals. But if you’re allowed to live in the world for a while, why not forever? Think of all the good you could do!”

  “We have a strict tenet prohibiting us from interfering in the outside world. We have a sacred duty to perform the Exaltation, to circulate the Essence and keep the world alive. There’s no room in our lives for anything else, not when the price of negligence is so high.”

  “Loyalty is all well and good, but what about love? For, um, children, I mean.”

  “There is no place for it.”

  “What a sad, sorry lot you all are,” Phil said. “But what were you saying about the Headmaster?”

  “He was one of the few magicians born to two commoners, the Lord and Lady Stour.”

  “So not quite commoners, then,” Phil said.

  “Even monarchs are commoners, to us,” he said unflinchingly.

  “And I’m a subcommoner, right?”

  “You are...something else.” He remembered his early disgust at the mere thought of her—cursed to be utterly without the Essence—and felt ashamed. She was hardly responsible for her lineage. He was starting to think he’d been wrong about her.

  “Our journeymen found Rudyard at the usual age, around eight. But he wasn’t a poor boy glad to be rid of hunger and disgrace. He was heir to Stour and even at that age was absolutely dedicated to his birthright. He was at the college for a little over a year, learning all he could, and then he escaped. There was such a sensation in the papers about it that the Headmaster at the time decided not to pursue him. He must have stayed mum and continued to practice using the Essence, because by the time he met up with members of the college again, he was much more powerful than any of them.”