Beauty and the Werewolf fhk-6

by Mercedes Lackey

  She considered this for a moment. It wasn’t as if she had anything important to do — she could go stare at the mirror for a while, and then go cry herself to sleep, or she could take him up on the invitation and learn something about the invisibles. Or more accurately, learn what he thought they were.

  “All right, I would like that,” she responded. He beamed at her. It was rather charming, actually, to see him so enthusiastic.

  They left the yellow-scarved servant to clear away, and Bella followed him down — or rather, up, an entirely new path in the maze that was Redbuck Manor.

  In the rare moments when she had pictured a magician’s lair, it had been a place dark, mysterious, wreathed in smokes of various odors — most of them probably nasty — and definitely underground. So going up quite a long staircase was certainly a bit of a surprise.

  Instead of a dungeon, he brought her to what must have been a room in the highest part of the Manor. It had windows on all four sides, all of them glassed. The sun was down, but there was just enough light left in the sky for her to go to the windows and see that the Manor was built in the form of a square with a cross in it, so that there was not one, but four little enclosed courtyards. By going from window to window, she quickly determined which one was “hers.” She couldn’t see the conservatory from here, but she already knew it was somewhere on the exterior of the building — the sole exception to the fortified nature of the place.

  This part of the Manor was a squat, square tower that formed the center of the cross. The rest of the building looked to be about three stories tall, and the tower rose another story above that.

  “This used to be the ladies’ solar,” Sebastian said from behind her. “Father gave it to me when I started learning magic. ‘If there are going to be explosions, I would rather they were above us than below us,’ he said. ‘And if you get the solar, at least you can open the windows and air out the stench without freezing the rest of the building in winter.’ A very practical man, my father. I wish I had known my mother; I think she was a bit more like me.”

  She turned to see Sebastian grinning as he lit lanterns quite prosaically with a long, wax-dipped wick, identical to the ones she used at home. “As it happens, he was wrong about the explosions — that’s more in the lines of chymists and alchemists — but right about the stench, at least at first.”

  With the lanterns lit, this room was anything but shadowed and mysterious. Between the windows, the walls were floor-to-ceiling bookcases. And yes, again, all the books were in tin bindings, or at least, they were in metal bindings that she assumed were tin. There were several tables, but only three chairs. Among the shelves of books were shelves of neatly ordered jars and bottles and boxes. There appeared to be several projects in progress on the tables.

  And in the very center of the floor was a design that — well, she wasn’t sure what it was, other than that the design was inlaid into the floor itself. She had heard of magic circles; perhaps that was what this was. There were four concentric circles; the two bands formed by the outermost three of these circles enclosed circular processions of letters and signs, but they formed no words that she could understand.

  “Here, this is what I wanted to show you,” Sebastian said, and laid his hand down on the table, palm up, and whistled, as if he was calling a dog.

  The fire that had been burning beneath an empty stand suddenly jumped up and ran across the table to him and into his outstretched palm. She gave a little scream, and looked wildly for something to put it out.

  A moment later, of course, she realized her mistake, and flushed with embarrassment.

  “Sorry, I forgot you aren’t used to magic,” Sebastian said with an apologetic expression. “Look, right now, he’s tuning his fire so it’s perfectly harmless to people. This is a basic Fire Elemental, a Salamander.” He held out his hand, and the fire ran up to the tips of his fingers. Squinting, she could see the fire actually enveloped the shape of a little lizard with big, glowing-yellow eyes.

  “He’s cute!” she exclaimed in surprise.

  “The ones this size are — the ones the size of a cart horse, not so much.” Sebastian put his hand back down on the table, and the Salamander ran back to the fire-pan where it had been curled. “I have him, a Nixie, a Sprite and a Hob. Learning to summon them was part of my education, and they are my special Familiar Spirits. Other magicians will know that they are associated with me just by looking at them. The Nixie is a Water Elemental. Mostly she lives in her bowl over there on the shelf and purifies water for me. The Sprite is an Air Elemental. I think she’s — ” He peered around at the ceiling. “There she is, asleep on that beam.”

  Bella followed where he was pointing and could just make out the shimmering form of a little androgynous creature with dragonfly wings; the whole of it was more transparent than glass. “She’s often my messenger to and from the Godmother, among a few other people. The King’s Magician for one, Granny upon rare occasion — she has less to do with the folks I am personally responsible for and more to do with the ones who don’t have a magician to watch over them, so we don’t talk too much, once every three or four months at most. And over there on the hearth, the little fellow that looks like a sleeping garden statue, that’s the Hob.” The Hob did look like a rough-finished statue of a little man. His eyes were tightly shut, and he didn’t move at all, not even to breathe.

  “What does he do?” she asked.

  “When I need bits of specific metals or minerals or gems for a spell, he gets them for me. He can only bring me what he can hold in his fist, which isn’t much, but that is almost always enough for a spell.” He gestured to a chair beside the hearth and she took it. “A spell is a process, not a thing, you see. Just as when you take flour and water and yeast and put them together the right way, you always get bread, but when you take flour and water and butter and put them together a different way, you always get piecrust, when you put the components together one way, you always summon an Elemental of the right sort. You don’t get a demon, or a horseshoe, or a rose — you get an Elemental. If you make a mistake, you might get nothing, or a much more powerful Elemental than you can handle safely, or a much weaker one than you wanted, but you still get an Elemental if you get anything.”

  She considered this for a moment. “All right,” she agreed. “And so this means — ”

  “That when I summoned Spirit Elementals for my servants, that’s all I could get. And don’t be overly impressed with ‘Spirit Elemental.’ They aren’t inherently superior, or more intelligent, or ‘purer’ than the others. They’re just creatures from a different Elemental Plane. That’s like a world,” he added, before she could ask what he meant. “And if I start in talking about the Elemental Planes and how they intersect and interact with what we call the ‘real’ world, I will not stop till dawn and it will make your eyes cross.”

  She had to laugh at that. “All right, I’ll take your word for it. But how do you know that the ones who are talking to me aren’t someone else’s familiars?” she persisted.

  “Remember that I told you that other magicians know when they look at my familiars that they belong to me?” he reminded her. “That’s how. We can see magic, which is a form of energy, like sunlight. That energy looks different for every magician that uses it. When I summon an Elemental, I more or less ‘paint’ it with my colors; all magicians do that. I’ve checked and they aren’t wearing anyone else’s colors.” He leaned back against the bench and crossed his arms. “So. Clear as mud?”

  Well, privately she was not as confident that he had seen all of them, but there was no point in arguing with him. “Actually, you describe things very well,” she said instead. “You would make a very good teacher.”

  He beamed with pleasure. “Well, thank you. Now that you’re up here, is there anything you want to know? All my books are here, so if there’s something I don’t know, it will be easy enough to look up.”

  “Well…yes,” she replied.

  And
then proceeded to bombard him with questions.

  At first he answered her in a manner that was just ever-so-slightly superior — but she was relentless, forcing him to go into more and more detail, until he began to struggle for the right explanations, and begged for mercy.

  “Please!” he said, falling to his knees and holding out both hands in entreaty. “No more! I crave respite. My poor addled mind is melting!”

  She regarded him haughtily for a long moment, then laughed at him.

  “I’ll let you off this time, only because I am getting very tired,” she warned him. “Next time you will not be so lucky.”

  “I’ll count my blessings, then,” he said, and got to his feet, waving at a red-ribboned invisible that was waiting patiently in a corner and handing it a lighted candle. “I trust you won’t mind if I send a servant with you to light your way?”

  “Not at all,” she said, mockingly. “I have probably so scrambled your thoughts that you would not be able to find the right corridors, anyway.”

  It wasn’t until she got to her suite that she realized how late it really was — and how much she had, quite unexpectedly, enjoyed herself.

  So much so that she hadn’t the least desire to look into the mirror before she went to bed.

  9

  BELLA MANAGED TO KEEP HERSELF FROM GOING TO look in the mirror until after she had eaten breakfast; the morning did not start out particularly well, however. She went down to the dining chamber only to discover, to her disappointment, that she would be eating the meal alone; Sebastian was nowhere in sight. And she couldn’t ask the invisible in attendance where he was, either, as this was not one of the ones who could write.

  She resorted to the mirror, feeling as if she was eating a rich and indulgent sweet to make up for not getting something she wanted, as Genevieve often did. But the sight of her father drove any lingering sense of guilt right out of her mind.

  He didn’t look any more haggard than he had yesterday, but he certainly did not look well. As he worked feverishly over the accounts and invoices, she tried to tell if he was paler, or thinner. Was he eating right? Was he even eating at all? She couldn’t be sure —

  Cook will make sure he eats, she reminded herself. She’ll coax him, and bring him little tidbits. She vividly remembered Cook doing just that for both of them in the last days of her mother’s illness. Mrs. Hennister, the Cook, was a very caring woman. So was Mrs. Athern, the Housekeeper. Actually, all the servants from the “old” household were loyal and actually cared about their master.

  The thought was evidently enough for the mirror; it fogged over and cleared again, showing the kitchen, and Cook laboring over a tray of little puffy pastries with bits of sweetened squash baked into them. She sighed. Father loves those. Cook was watching out for her master; there was at least one person who was going to make sure he was as “all right” as he could be under the circumstances.

  The mirror widened its view. The rest of the kitchen staff was also working on things she recognized as her father’s special indulgences. There was a kettle of thick chicken soup on the hearth — made with cream instead of broth, and with dumplings floating in it. Someone else had just taken out a pan of venison cutlets wrapped in bacon, and she could see preparations for a jugged hare well under way.

  The mirror view shifted slightly, then began moving through the house, exactly as if she herself was making her morning rounds. And everything was going so smoothly she had to blink to be sure she was looking at the right house. Mrs. Athern and Mathew Breman were working hand in hand like old partners, ensuring that there simply were no incidents that would require the intervention of the master of the house. When they had swept through all the rooms, they parted with a friendly nod. Mrs. Athern then supervised the maids bringing up breakfast for the twins and Genevieve, while Mathew himself brought her father a tray and literally stood there, waiting, to make sure he ate what was on it. She wished that she could hear what they were saying, but it seemed that the only time she could get sound was when she was talking to the Godmother.

  Once her father had eaten, the mirror fogged over again, almost as if it had decided that she had seen enough to make any reasonable person certain that the family was all right and there was no point in fretting anymore.

  Well, yes, and a reasonable person would, I suppose. She got up and went to the window to look down at the snow-covered garden. It would be a nice place to walk in if only it was spring.

  “If I don’t find something constructive to do, I think I am going to go mad,” she said aloud. She hadn’t quite realized how much of her time was taken up with — things. Supervising the servants, overseeing the shopping, going out with the twins on their rounds of visits. Learning things from Granny and putting them into practice at home —

  “Ha!” Now that was one thing she could do!

  This was a proper Manor house. There would be a stillroom.

  What was more, Sebastian probably needed things for his spells, things that she could concoct. She would find that out later. For right now, though…

  Sapphire’s ribbon appeared in the door as if her thought had summoned the spirit. “Sapphire!” she exclaimed. “Is the stillroom properly stocked?”

  Sapphire made for the slate and chalk. “Dun no,” she wrote. “V full. Sho U?”

  Very full… I wonder what that means… “Please,” she responded, and followed the ribbon as it led her down what she now knew was the south side of the Manor, then around the corner to the east side, then around another corner into what was the arm of the cross that connected the east side of the Manor with the central tower. As was common in older buildings, most rooms led directly into one another, and the only corridors were those designed for defense.

  But this part of the arm actually dead-ended onto the side of the central tower, at least on this level. The room that butted up against the wall of the tower was the stillroom — or rooms, actually, because there were two, the stillroom and the storeroom.

  And now she saw what Sapphire meant by “very full.” Nearly every cupboard strained to hold the bundles of dried herbs stored there. More literally covered the ceiling, and virtually every flat surface. She knew immediately what must have happened here. Sebastian had given the orders to the Spirit Elementals to keep the stillroom supplied. They only knew to keep cutting and drying the herbs. So they had. For at least two years, maybe more.

  She literally rubbed her hands with glee. She had wanted a challenge — well, she had one.

  The first thing to do was to sort this place out. Much of what was here was now too old to be worth anything, and she would need to sort the stuff that was still good from what needed to be thrown out.

  “Sapphire, will you get me two of the stupid servants?” she asked. “We have work to do.”

  She had never been gladder of Granny’s training. She could identify each and every bundle eventually, either on sight, or by crushing a bit of leaf and taking a sniff. There were those bundles of herbs that started to crumble away at a touch; those were obviously much too old to be at all useful, as were those that she could identify but which had such faint aromas when crushed that it was obvious all the virtue was out of them. Now, there was danger here, and quite a lot of it. Some of these herbs and barks were quite poisonous, and burning them in a fireplace would be a very bad idea. So would disposing of them in any other careless way. They had to be handled carefully even when their potency had lessened considerably.

  She sent the Spirit Elementals out with four enormous baskets full of the dangerous herbs and very careful instructions on how to safely disperse them — first treating them with lye, then with vinegar, then burning them, then treating the ashes with lye and vinegar, then spreading the ashes over an acre of land. The rest were safe to throw onto the fire in the fireplace, although this made for some obnoxious odors.

  It was only when her stomach began to growl that she realized what she was smelling wasn’t burning herbs, but something a great deal
more savory. She turned, to find Sapphire and Mustard from the kitchen staff behind her. Seeming to float in midair was a covered plate.

  “Oh, dear,” she said contritely, as her stomach rumbled. “I seem to have entirely missed dinner, haven’t I?”

  The plate moved abruptly toward her by way of answer. It seemed that she had better take and eat what was on it before Mustard got further offended.

  So she cleared a spot on one of the tables in the stillroom and sat down to do so. It was quite good, but the flavor wasn’t exactly improved by the addition of the warring aromas of herb-dust.

  Mustard carried away the empty plate, snatching it as soon as she had finished. Evidently by not coming to dinner she had offended the kitchen staff.

  Or at least, she had offended Mustard.

  “How angry at me are they?” she asked Sapphire.