by Stanzin
CHAPTER 11
The Elements of Magic
Gregory blinks furiously; the space between the wall and mural remains empty. The records had been there less than an hour ago. Where had they gone? Anxiety wells, battles his magical mellow mood. Had someone seen him approach the wall earlier? Who? Why would they care?
A sphere of mana blossoms into his; it is warm, light and vulnerable.
‘I saw you leave. I followed,’ Susannah Coffey says.
‘Why?’
‘To give you this.’ She holds out the records.
Gregory gapes; she takes his hand and puts the records into them. His anxiety fades and he tucks the package into his shirt.
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ she asks, eyes shining in that strange way.
‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘I noticed the Head Girl noticing you messing around here,’ Susannah says carefully. ‘She could have looked, so I had a look first, and I found those, and I took them.’
‘Thank you.’
Susannah steps closer. ‘You’re welcome.’
She flushes with pleasure, but she is not bashful. Gregory knows; he feels what she feels.
‘Why is it like this?’ Gregory wondered aloud, not truly caring for an answer.
‘Our brains are scared.’
‘Why are they scared?’ Gregory asks.
‘Apes,’ Susannah says seriously.
‘What about them?’
‘Harsh things – noises, heights, pain – they scare apes. If scary thing goes away, apes laugh, because their brains release fun juices – to calm them down, you see?’
‘What’s this got to do with us?’
‘We’re apes,’ Susannah says. ‘Waking to magic is harsh, so we get happy juices in our head too. That’s why we laugh, once we know that we were scared without reason. Our magic carries that happy feeling out of our body. Like this.’
Susannah’s magic pulses in warm waves over Gregory; she is more than happy – she is excited.
‘That is why the kids giggled? Back in the room? One’s happy feeling added to another’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know about the brain’s happy juices. How?’
‘Daddy told me. Mages must be friends. Put happy mages together and you get lots of friends.’
‘Your Daddy sounds very clever.’
‘He is. He thinks you are very clever too.’
‘Huh?’
‘Your first aid was textbook. Daddy was impressed. And I’m impressed because it’s hard to impress Daddy.’
‘I wish I could impress my parents.’
She stirs at his melancholy. ‘No one found them, Gregory. They could be alive, you know? Everyone thought you were gone too. Yet you’re here. And if they live, then they know what you did.’
Gregory beams at her. ‘That’s what I say!’
‘Good.’
‘Everyone’s been telling me what they were like. Everyone thinks they were awesome.’
‘You sound not satisfied.’
‘I only hear good things,’ Gregory sighs. ‘Even the bad bits sound good. Everyone wants to think nice things of them.’
Susannah meditates on this. ‘They don’t sound real?’
‘They sound half-real. Like friendly ghosts.’
‘Can anyone tell you what they were really like?’
Gregory pats the package she rescued. ‘These might. They are my parent’s school records.’ He tells her of removing them from the library.
‘Maybe you’ll find out they served detention for stupid pranks,’ Susannah says.
‘That will be nice.’
‘Gregory?’ She is earnest, sincere.
‘Yes?’
‘I love Daddy very much. I wish you could tell your mother and father that. If I can help you learn about them, I will. Promise.’
‘Thank you!’ He is as deeply touched as he has ever been.
She seizes him for a hug.
They don’t speak on the return, content to bask in each other’s pleasure. Her hand is delightful, though; he has not finished exploring it as they reach the room. The stop outside; he has something to say.
‘The Blooding makes it easy to talk. It won’t be like this every day,’ he says, ‘but I’m glad it was like this today.’
The antechamber bustles. Susannah separates from Gregory to mingle among others. Zach and Mango appear at his shoulders; like him, they watch her depart.
‘I think she likes you,’ Mango says.
‘Mm-hmm. She likes you,’ Zach nods.
‘I like her too.’
‘You’ve got a goofy grin.’
‘You’ve got a goofy grin.’
‘Haha.’
‘Hohoho.’
They continue gibbering for another hour. Gregory’s thoughts become properly coherent, and the shared warmth seems to recede. Gregory sees Headmistress Renata Eavesmother slip into the room and find an unobtrusive corner. They notice her, and one by one, become quiet. Silence unfolds gently over the room.
‘Is it fading now?’ the Headmistress asks eventually. ‘That intimate freedom, has it left you? Do you any of you know what it was?’
‘Yes.’ Susannah repeats what she said to Gregory earlier.
‘Thank you, Susannah,’ the Headmistress nods to her. ‘What you’ve just felt – we call this a mage flare. It is the only one you’ll ever have.’
Even fading, the mage flare flushes the room with palpable disappointment.
‘You should be glad,’ the Headmistress laughs. ‘Did you know everyone – me, your parents, professors and seniors alike – were absolutely forbidden from performing a single spell in your presence since your Blooding? There is a magic dampener between this room and the Dome.’
‘Why?’ Zachary asks.
‘A demonstration, then.’
An innocent looking circle of bright yellow light blossoms into the air in front of the Headmistress. The class staggers; Gregory suddenly feels immensely depressed, his excitement and curiosity extinguished all at once.
The circle vanishes, and so does the strange weariness.
‘I apologise, but the point had to be made,’ the Headmistress says. ‘You’re too freshly blooded to tolerate spell-casting in your vicinity. If someone performs a powerful spell in your presence right now, they would likely knock you out, perhaps for days. It won’t last much longer… but until it is over, you are to remain here.’
‘Now that you’ve all gotten to know each other a little, I thought it was time to introduce me.’
She pauses and looks around the class expectantly; Gregory and the other students exchange confused glances. Renata looks put out.
‘Hello, I’m your Queen!’
The class laughed, and Renata herself smiles. When the chuckles die away though, she says:
‘But here, I am your Headmistress, and that is how you shall address me. The Queens of Domremy have historically headed the Gurukul Caverns. The task has been mine for eleven years now, and every year, I have been privileged to meet some of the finest young hearts and minds that live in Domremy. I have been privileged to watch over their six-year journeys through the Cavern.’
She steps away from the wall and paces among the students.
‘This antechamber is one of my favourite rooms in the Caverns, because I have begun each of those journeys here, with a little talk about the nature of magic. So let’s talk about magic!’
Heads nod up and down. Gregory stands to attention, ears pricked; he wouldn’t miss a word of this – he has to go write it all down later. The Headmistresses eyes once again met his appraisingly.
‘Magic is defined in many, many ways.
‘The Americans call magic the spiritual essence of gods who watch over us in this plane of existence, and that every spell we perform calls them forth. The Dravidians are romantic – they say magic is the sum of our future desires, that with every spell we cast, we shape our destinies down specific paths. Far to the world’s
east, the Sunborns are even more esoteric – they say that magic is the only true living being, and that we mages are the limbs through which magic seeks to preserve and enrich the world; in other words, magic is the person, and we are its hands and feet.’
Renata flung her hands up. ‘Have you ever heard more ridiculous notions?’
The class laughs and she laughs right along with them.
‘Ridiculous! Strange! Exotic! Fanciful! But are we much better? Can anyone here tell me what we Europids think of magic? Yes, Oliver?’
A boy with a meek but kind face speaks haltingly, ‘Europids – well, the countries actually – most of our stories say that magic is Gaia’s blood. Gaia, our planet’s spirit, was wounded in a war many thousands of thousands of years ago. Her blood seeped out over the whole world. The earliest shamanic myths say that mages are Gaia’s healers – every time we perform a spell, we’re returning a bit of Gaia’s blood to her.’
‘Thank you, Oliver. Well, there you have it. We are as fanciful than any, aren’t we?’
No one speaks. Gregory thinks the class looks a little uncomfortable. Those who didn’t revere the mythopoeia didn’t blatantly challenge those who did.
The Headmistress doesn’t wait for an answer.
‘But that’s only the mages,’ she says, ‘whereas most of the world’s people are mundane. Gregory, you grew up among the mundane. What do they think of magic?’
Gregory starts, but now the whole class is looking at him expectantly. He clears his throat:
‘It’s not complicated. It’s like money. There’s haves, and there’s have nots.’
The others laughs again, but Gregory does not, and neither does the Headmistress. When the chuckles die down, he continues:
‘I’ve heard it put another way though, by Hansa Roy. He’s a travelling magic writer, though he isn’t a mage. He said – ‘Magic is the science of fulfilling function without form.’’
‘Very clever,’ the Headmistress says. ‘It’s funny how the least silly sounding description of magic comes from one who cannot perform it himself.’ She stands in the centre of the room. ‘But silly or not, each of these perspectives have grains of the truth, the wonderful truth, the terrifying truth, the undeniable truth.
‘And the truth is…’
The class leans in.
‘We don’t know!’
The class flinches.
‘We don’t know why there’s so much magical potential floating freely through this world. Where did it come from? Who put it there?
‘We don’t know where runematter comes from! Before Occilox, we thought that magic came from runematter, because magical fields are denser in areas with runematter. Occilox showed it was the other way around! Runematter forms in magical fields, which in turn are stronger around areas with life – why is this so?’
She looks indignant, whirling from student to student, her finger pointing from face to face, as if she were demanding the answer from them personally.
‘Why are magical fields denser around humans? Why are they less dense around plants, and almost completely non-existent in a desert or on top of a mountain?
‘How does a rune channel magical energy? Stuffy academics go on and on about how the shapes of runes help translate complicated instructions into magical energy, but none of them ask or wonder, what is it that’s enforcing that relationship? What connects the shape of a rune to a particular intent?
‘Why are there people around the world who can’t do any magic at all, even after being blooded?
Renata glares around the room, which stares back, suitably awed and impressed.
‘So many cultures, so many stories,’ she said quietly. ‘These stories let us pretend we know magic, but do we? All these unanswered questions… the stories can’t explain them away. And if they don’t, what use are they?’
‘How does it matter so long we can use magic?’ says a proud looking girl.
‘You’re right, Janvi. We do know some things,’ the Headmistress said. ‘We know how to cast a spell, and how to write runes. You know what? We’ve known that for thousands of years. That’s all we’ve known for thousands of years. We’ve held up the unchanging traditions of magic as virtuous – we told ourselves that we had perfected the use of magic, and that magic could not be improved – and in so saying, we ignored all the questions I’ve just put to you. Perhaps some of you might help us answer a few questions.’
‘But it has worked for thousands of years,’ Janvi protests.
‘Didn’t work so well two weeks ago, did they, Janvi?’ Zach said glibly.
Janvi glares at him.
‘No, Janvi still has a point – we’ve been good at magic for a long time,’ says the Headmistress. ‘Raise your hands if you think our mastery of magic is perfect, or even jolly good.’
Over three fourths of the class raises their hands, including Mango. Gregory, Zachary and Susannah did not.
‘Zachary, there are many rumours about your mother’s study of runes,’ Renata says, ‘can you explain it to us?’
All eyes turn to Zach, most curious, some of them hostile. Unfazed, Zach obliges:
‘’Course I can. Mum spent twenty-four years looking at runes, and trying to find ways to break them down to simpler forms. She succeeded, and came up with an entirely new way of writing runes, one that didn’t take hours to get right. Eventually she wrote runes that could hold magic. That’s all there is.’
‘You know, people only used to talk about selling their souls,’ Janvi says acidly, ‘Your mother actually made it possible. This is nothing to be proud about.’
Zach merely grins at her, and earns black glowers from her and others.
‘I admit,’ the Headmistress says seriously. ‘There’s a lot of argument over whether the transfer of magical energy is a good and moral thing. But Janvi, and all of you who raised your hands, if we are masters of magic, then why didn’t we know about magical transfer? For good or for bad, that seems like an important thing to know.’
Janvi huffs, but the Headmistress continues:
‘And if we are masters of magic, then how did the Voidmark take magic away from us? What if it happens again? If your spells begin to fail again, Janvi, are you going to say ‘the demons did it’?’
Some of the class sniggers; Janvi flushes.
‘Forgive me, but that’s a real question, Janvi. Even if it does turn out to be demons in the end, are you going step aside and let them make off with your magic? Or would you here and now – if there were a chance you could – look for someway to stop that from ever happening again? Please answer.’
Janvi mutters that the second option sounded all right.
‘Do our stories tell of anyway to stop demons?’
Janvi admits they might not offer such advice.
‘Unfortunately, the Preparatory School syllabus doesn’t have a class in Demon Fighting just yet, so you’ll have to be satisfied with learning about the human connection to magic, and that is something we know quite a bit about – the five elements of human magic.’
‘The most obvious element is of course your mana – your sixth sense, the one with which you feel out the magical world. It was your mana that sensed that my little yellow doodle, like your sight senses the sun, or your hearing senses my voice.
‘But it wasn’t your mana that hurt.’ She looks around the room expectantly. ‘So… who knows which part of your magic hurt?’
‘Our Wills,’ a serious looking girl says.
‘Thank you, Lillith. Human will – our faculty of choice, the ability to mold our actions to our preferred desires – that’s the second element.’
Gregory frowns. ‘Your will can’t hurt. It’s not touchable.’
‘Is it not? Then you have another explanation for why you looked so miserable when I cast my yellow doodle earlier.’
‘No, but you can’t hold will,’ Gregory says firmly.
‘Can you hold feelings, Gregory?’ Renata asks.
‘What? No
! What’s that got to do with… oh,’ Gregory trails off.
‘You can’t hold feelings... but can feelings hurt, Gregory?’
Gregory nods reluctantly.
Renata looks over the classroom. ‘Magic is a dangerous science and art,’ she says slowly. ‘If you fall ill with cancer, and suffer intense pain for long enough, your will wears down, and you long for death. If you’re just sad for a long enough time, then your wills fade away. If you’re scared long enough, your wills become brittle. If you’re intensely tired long enough, your will cuts off from your emotions. But these dangers to your will have one thing in common. What is it?’
No one answers.
‘They take time,’ she says softly. ‘Your will can crumble in so many ways, but it’s usually strong enough to hold on for a while. However, there is something so intimately connected to your will that it bypasses all your defences. Magic!’
The class is silent, enthralled.
‘As far as magic is concerned, your will is an organ in its own right, like your eyes, or your nose, or your skin, or your tongue, or your ears. Too much light will blind you! Harsh chemicals can kill your sense of smell! Loud sounds deafen you! Burns could take away all feeling of touch! Chilly can numb your taste buds!’
She pauses, eyes flashing.
‘And intense magic will annihilate your will, leaving you wishing only for sleep, or worse, death! Be as scared of it, as cautions of it, and as respectful of it, as you would be with fire, or storm, or anger. Magic can kill you.’
The mage flare carries Headmistress’s feeling – there is fear and horror there, as if she had seen that very thing happen.
‘Now,’ she says, becoming a little less stormy, ‘we have minor and major limbs – faculties that let us manipulate our environment. VOICE!’
The students erupt in startled laughter.
‘Arms.’ The Headmistress chucks an apple at a student at the back, who catches it.
‘And legs.’ She dances a quick jig, ending with an exaggerated click of her heels.
The class cheers and claps, and the Headmistress bows.
‘We use these limbs to shape our world - move objects out of our way, go from one place to another. We can let the world know our thoughts! But if mana is our magical sense, what is our magical limb?’
‘Thauma,’ Susannah says at once.
‘That’s right. Thauma, a limb unlike any other.’
The Headmistress smiles, as if about to share a secret.
‘Now, the strength of limbs diminishes with distance, yes? Our arms and legs are quite powerful, but almost useless at long distances, unless you’re throwing a rock at something. Our voices are less strong, but we can shout further than we can throw! This distance, and its furthest line, is your sphere of influence at a specific moment in time.
‘The reach of your thauma – your thaumic sphere of influence – is limited. The good news is, like a limb, your thauma can be exercised! The older you grow, and the more you use it, the stronger and more powerful your thauma becomes, and the greater your thaumic sphere of influence.’
She looks around the class, and sees Gregory frowning. She nods at him. ‘What is it?’
‘My thauma… how does it work? How does it touch…’ he gesticulated at the room around him, ‘… things? I mean – my hands picks up rocks… my thauma picks up magical energy?’
‘Thauma draws magical energy in from the environment, and shapes it however you want,’ a girl pipes up before the Headmistress can answer. Consequently, her face falls when the Headmistress says:
‘Not quite, but thank you for bringing that up, Bevelle.’
Bevelle wasn’t the only one who looked put out; the whole class – Zachary, Susannah and Mango included – wore expressions of outright confusion.
‘You are right, Bevelle, in saying that your thauma shapes magical energy,’ the Headmistress says, her smile becoming even more mysterious, ‘but you’re wrong about where that energy comes from.’
‘No, she’s not,’ Janvi bursts out incredulously, ‘magic energy collects around where people are, and thauma scoops it up.’
‘She’s right,’ Gregory says. ‘I’ve read quite a bit about magic, and that’s what every book says. It’s one of the few things about magic that even every Mundane knows.’
‘I admit it seems to be an obvious truth. A magical field noticeably weakens in areas of intense spellwork; this suggests that spellwork drains surrounding magic. Or so we thought,’ the Headmistress says, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘But let me tell you what I know now.’
She steps to very front of the room, somehow seeming taller.
‘Many years ago, some very intelligent mundanes carried out some very strange experiments on the behaviour of classical – that is, mundane – energy. One of the most important behaviours they reported is this: energy moves from places of greater energy levels to places of lesser energy levels. When you push a ball, the higher energy of your arm flows into the lesser energy of the ball, and sets it rolling.
‘They named this difference of energies between two objects or places – potential difference. Every non-magical act imaginable derives from the flows of energy within these potential differences.’
She leans forward, whispers.
‘So some very intelligent mages wondered – what happens when you look at magic the same way? They cast thousands of spells to try and catch the flow of magical energy. And do you know what they saw?’
Gregory almost doesn’t hear her last whisper, but he sees her lips move: ‘Nothing.’
‘They did not see a single flow of magic! They did not see magic energy condense towards thauma! And yet their spells worked. It stupefied them! Bewildered them! Flummoxed them! Outraged them! Worse, even without any visible flow of magic, the surrounding magical field seemed to weaken!’
‘So they decided to look closer. They looks at the very lines and areas where thauma focuses, the tiny spaces,’ she held an index finger and a thumb a hair’s width apart, ‘where a mage’s thauma interacts with the world!’
She pauses.
‘And they found their flows… streaming from absolutely nothing.’
‘What?’
A couple of students burst out with the question, and most of the others exclaim. Even Gregory is startled.
‘The energy was not coming from the land! Magic was not coming from the air! Or the trees! Or water! Or even from the mages themselves! It was coming from nothingness! Magic seems to spontaneously bloom wherever we focus and exercise our thauma!’
Around the class there are a number of sceptical looks, a number of reluctant ones, and a great many stunned.
‘You’re thinking this cannot be true,’ the Headmistress says. ‘After all, you’ve never heard of such an extraordinary finding. Well, you couldn’t have – because we’ve only found out earlier this year. Do consider yourself privileged, for you are the first civilians to hear of this. By tomorrow afternoon, all of Domremy will know.’
Almost every face Gregory looks at is dazed; the Headmistress herself merely looks amused.
‘Thus, magical potential – and its inexplicable source – is the fourth element of magic,’ she continues. ‘But only one thing makes it all possible for us, doesn’t it?’
She holds up her wrists, on which rest a pair emerald-studded coral bracelets.
‘Instruments – or runematter. Practically everything can be made into an instrument, so long there is some runematter in it – runewood, runestone, runemetal, rune-earth, runewater, or runewind. The markings we spell into them aren’t even runes, but ancient glyphs of some sort, the meanings of which no one in history seems to remember.
‘It’s astounding. Their purpose is clear enough – the blooded runematter links your specific will to your mana and thauma. Yet their inventors are a mystery. All our attempts at breaking them down to read them have failed. And yet they obviously work – the last of our elements of magic.’
�
�And that, young mages, concludes your first lesson in magic.
‘Oh, don’t look so unhappy,’ she says, gazing from one deeply unsettled face to another. ‘Just imagine, it could be you one day who unveils magic’s true nature. Now, it has been nearly four hours since your Blooding – it is time to eat! You lot wouldn’t look so miserable if you weren’t so hungry. Off to the Grotto with you!’
The Grotto was a large cavern with a big hole in the roof, through which afternoon sunlight streamed down, lighting up crystalline waters and a small sandy beach, around which tables and chairs were scattered.
‘Domremy is pretty,’ Gregory said, looking around appreciatively.
The scent of freshly baked bread wafted through the air. Large tables set up around the walls of the Grotto carried a feast. Zach thrust his nose into the air, took a deep whiff, and then exhaled with a dreamy look on his face.
‘I’m going to get decadent,’ he declared. ‘Come on! Aren’t you guys hungry?’
They were, ravenously so. The Blooding, the mage flare, and the Headmistress’s startling talk had given them an immense appetite – and the feast delivered. There was baked boar, fries, gigantic omelettes, flagons of every juice imaginable, steamed fish, chicken stew, vegetable sauté, pork pie, cheesecake, and small pot of bubbling cheese surrounded by a mountain of garlic bread. They had put as much as they could carry onto some giant trays, and found a table. Eating was serious business; not a word was exchanged as Gregory, Susannah, Mango and Zach demolished their late lunch.
‘This is going to go down well,’ Zach said contentedly, finishing off the last crumb of pork pie on his plate.
‘It’ll go down better than finding out magic comes out of thin air, at any rate,’ Pepper said, downing a deep draught of grape juice.
‘Yeah, that’s not going to go down well at all,’ Susannah said, accidently dotting her nose with the jam in her tart; Gregory found it strangely fetching.
‘What I don’t get, then, is if magic doesn’t flow from a magical field… then what the blazes is a magical field?’ Zach said, looking around at the others. They had no answers for him.
‘We start lessons tomorrow, don’t we?’ Gregory said. ‘Maybe we’ll find out. Do you know what the lessons are about?’
‘Thaumic exercises,’ Mango said at once. ‘They’re going to extend our thaumic radius out until everyone’s is about twenty-five feet at the least.’
‘I thought we’d have lessons today,’ Gregory said. ‘I’d have liked to have something to write to the kids back at Pencier.’
‘You do have something to write about – imagine their faces when you tell them what you’ve just learnt about magic,’ Susannah said.
‘You reckon they’ve got their instruments?’ Zach asked.
‘Yes, and blooded by now I bet,’ Gregory said happily.
‘How’s that going to work anyway?’ Zach asked. ‘Are you paying someone to teach them?’
‘What? No! I’m the one teaching them – that’s what the letters are for.’ Gregory looked sideways at Susannah, wondering if she’d heard what he’d said, but her eyes were focused across the Grotto at the Headmistress, who was flitting from table to table.
‘How is she doing it?’ Susannah muttered finally, watching the Headmistress sit down at yet another table.
‘Doing what?’ Zach asked.
‘Acting so cheery. To look at her, you’d never guess her daughter was missing in a hostile country.’
She was right, Gregory realised. There was no worry in Renata Eavesmother’s eyes, and no slouch in her shoulders. The Headmistress mingled easily with her newest students, teasing and attentive.
‘Maybe Helika’s not so hostile?’ Gregory ventured.
‘And maybe poo doesn’t stink,’ Mango said darkly.
‘What?’
‘Let me put it this way: if Helika thought another Voidmark would destroy Domremy, they’d put every mage and mundane into making it happen.’
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ Zach said. ‘Mate, every year that Domremy flourishes is mud in Helika’s face… at least as far as other Observant countries are concerned. Occilox founded Reflective philosophy and Domremy a thousand years ago, and no one’s ever forgotten he was Helikan to begin with.’
‘And that’s not even counting that they’ve never won a single war against Domremy,’ Mango said satisfiedly.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ Susannah said. ‘They bully the Reflectives in northern Helika quite a bit.’
‘There were more letters in the paper this morning,’ Mango said in a low voice, ‘and they say there’s a conspiracy of sorts going on to dispossess the Reflectives of their lands. I wonder if my Uncle wrote them.’
‘Your uncle is in Helika?’ Susannah asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Then we can check up on him!’
‘What? How?’ Mango rounded on Susannah, who was taken aback by the fierceness of the question.
‘The camp is tied to the Blood Tree… and Daddy runs it. We can look into his condition anytime!’
But Mango refused to be reassured without a proper explanation, so Susannah continued:
‘You know the King protects the Reflective faith in Europe? Well, he’s not stupid. After the Voidmark, he figured the Emperor might declare Emergency, and said he’d have to be in touch with the Helikan Reflectives no matter what.’
‘What does the Blood Tree have to do with it?’ Gregory asked.
‘Well, the Tree always knows what’s happening with the Helikan Reflective,’ Susannah said. ‘It’s connected to them.’
The others exchanged puzzled glances.
‘Connected to them? How far is exactly is this camp of yours?’ Mango said.
Susannah squirmed uncomfortably. ‘Some way south into Helika.’
‘How far south?’ Mango persisted ‘Ten kilometres? Twenty?’
‘More?’ Susannah said, even more nervous.
‘Thirty?’
‘… about a hundred, I think,’ Susannah finally muttered.
Zach and Mango looked amazed, and Gregory began to feel left out.
‘Why’s that a big deal?’ he asked, but they ignored him.
‘That’s Scrying distance,’ Mango said flatly.
‘How come no one’s hounding you about the wrong kind of magic?’ Zach said, looking at once resentful and impressed.
‘Wait, hold on now,’ Gregory said, ‘You’re not Scrying anybody are you? Because even I know it’s not allowed.’
‘How’s that?’ Susannah asked hurriedly, trying to deflect attention away from her.
‘It’s one of the reasons people in Pencier look forward to the gypsies,’ he said, and told them what he knew of the spell.
Scrying let you talk to someone over vast distances, so long you had the other person’s blood. The spell was horribly intricate, but that wasn’t why the practice was rare; magi cast intricate magic all the time.
It was rare because it was forbidden, and it was forbidden because it was one of necromancy’s most powerful spells. Its purest form gave you complete control over whoever’s blood you possessed. There were scores of horror stories about the evils Scrymasters of old had wrought.
‘One of the most horrible stories goes like this,’ Gregory said. ‘An usurper exiles a princess, and she vows that one day, her child would reclaim the throne. She should have just kept quiet, because the usurper takes her threat seriously. He seeks out the most powerful necromancer he knows. They Scry her out, and right after her son is born, they possess her in her sleep, and make her drown her own baby.’
Mango and Zach blanch; Susannah eyes are wide with morbid fascination.
‘The next time she births a daughter and they make her strangle her. The third time it happens, she sets up powerful enchantments to keep threats out; she’s not realised she’s the threat. She wakes up to find the baby smothered. So with her next baby, she decides to stay up the whole night… and finds herself possesse
d. By the time she’s fought off the possession, her baby’s choked from the bread she’s forced down his throat. She’s figured it out… but much too late.’
‘And then?’ Susannah prompted.
‘When she knows she’s going to have yet another baby, she finds a bandit, and contracts him to kill her the moment her son is born. And though he falls in love with her, she refuses to call off the contract, and he kills her as asked. He adopts her twin son and daughter as his own. Years later, as foretold, the son reclaims the throne and overthrows the usurper. And that’s a happy ending of sorts, I suppose.’
The gypsies and their clients were not quite so bloodthirsty. A more benign form of Scrying let the caster take control of the subject’s mouth and voice alone; in this way a conversation could be held.
Not that Scrying was legal in any way, name or form. Getting caught with the instructions for Scrying alone could land you in deep hot water.
Not that this stopped people, or even slowed them down very much.
In every village and town there were families whose sons and daughters were called off to dangerous jobs in far off lands. Before leaving, it wasn’t unusual for the departing member of the family to leave behind a vial of blood. If the letters suddenly stopped coming, that vial would find its way to a discrete gypsy, who, for a price, would open up a line of communication.
‘We pretend it doesn’t happen, but everyone knows it does,’ Gregory finished.
His story seemed to have fortified Susannah, because she was a lot less nervous when Mango rounded on her again, saying:
‘But you’re not even hiding it! Your Scrying ritual is as big a small hill!’
‘The Throne’s given us permission,’ Susannah said defiantly. ‘We don’t go around talking about it, but would you rather not know how your uncle is doing? Because we’ve probably got his blood too!’
That quickly dispelled all of Mango’s objections. ‘If anything happens to him, you’d know immediately?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How do you even Scry through the blood of thousands of refugees?’ Zach asked.
‘I’d tell you, but I can do better,’ she said, pleased by all the attention. ‘Why don’t you all come over to the Tree? Daddy loves to show it off. I’ll let you know when.’ She added to Mango, ‘You might even get talk to your uncle, though I can’t promise.’
Mango agreed at once, delighted.
‘You don’t think the Princess found her way to the camp, do you?’ Gregory asked.
The others shook their heads.
‘You figure she’s still alive?’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ Zach said sadly.
Melancholy fell at the table as everyone looked down at their polished plates; something in Gregory twinged at the memory of the girl he had once schemed to rescue. If Gregory, Reggie, Mixer and Alf had actually managed to pull off their kidnapping plan all those years ago, how different would things have been? He chuckled to himself – the princess would still be missing in Helika, and the boys would have been in prison for the rest of their lives.
That evening, he regaled Uncle Quincy and Johanna with the complete story of his Blooding over dinner (leaving out the bit about his theft of his parent’s academic records). Neither of them was too impressed by the Headmistress’s claim about thauma; Uncle Quincy already knew about it, and Johanna did not know enough about magic to be impressed.
Knowing he’d get a better reaction from Reggie, Alf and Mixer, he set about writing them a long letter. He was nearly done with the letter, and nearly done in himself from exhaustion, when Uncle Quincy came in, clutching something in his hand.
‘Don’t tell me you’re studying already!’ Uncle Quincy said, scandalised by the sight of Gregory poring over An Introduction to Thaumic Influence, which he had borrowed from his uncle’s study.
‘Not a bit,’ Gregory said, yawning hugely. ‘I just wanted to check something for my letter.’
‘Speaking of letters, you’ve got one,’ Uncle Quincy, waving a long envelope. ‘This one came in from your Director to my afternoon office mail.’
Gregory forgot he was tired; he sprang out of his chair and tore open the envelope with a whoop of excitement.
‘Don’t stay up too late,’ Uncle Quincy said, smiling. ‘Good night.’
Gregory didn’t answer him, or even appeared to hear him. Absently, he knew Uncle Quincy must have seen his face and understood. Yet his uncle asked no questions, nor offered any pity. He brought Gregory to the living room, prepared a cup of hot chocolate and cast the occasional warming charm when the cup cooled too much. And when Johanna emerged from her room, she didn’t ask any questions either, warned by the finger her father put on her lips.
She joined them on the low divan though, and with her father, cradled Gregory to sleep.
