Sorcerer to the Crown

by Zen Cho

  Prunella, turning reluctantly around, saw a mass of water consume Zacharias’s person. She shrieked.

  “What is it?” cried Mak Genggang.

  “Mr. Wythe is being murdered!” said Prunella. She thought of the fire at the Blue Boar, and clenched her fists. “Oh, the villain! What shall we do?”

  Mak Genggang peered over the side of the basket. Zacharias was fumbling blindly at his coat, perhaps seeking his staff, but he seemed to be fighting against a great force to move at all. His eyes and mouth were screwed shut, and his face wore a look of grim resolve.

  “If the water does not hold him long enough to suffocate him, it will poison him first,” said Mak Genggang, in the judicious manner of an expert. “Look at how his face twitches—the water is acid, and eats at his skin. It is a clever hex. Must we save him?”

  “Mak Genggang! He persuaded his wicked magicians to preserve your life.”

  “And threw me into gaol!” said Mak Genggang. “Very well, child, I will do it, so you need not make faces at me. He is a well-bred young man, after all. I like a young man who shows a proper respect to his elders.”

  She held out her arms, and now it could be seen that Mak Genggang was not merely a tiny replica of her former self, for there was a singular new addition: a pair of wings growing out of her back. Mak Genggang had invented these to ease her escape. They were of thin, leathery skin, spread over delicate cartilage, and looked nearly translucent as Mak Genggang took to the air.

  She hovered for a moment above the devouring mass of water, then dived into it, alighting upon Zacharias’s shoulder.

  Zacharias felt a tiny weight settle upon him. He moved his shoulder to try to dislodge it, but then for the first time since he had been devoured, there was an intermission of pain. A cooling protection flowed down his arm, shielding his flesh from the acid sting of the water—extraordinary blessing!

  There was a buzzing at his ear, blurred by the water, and Zacharias heard indistinctly the words:

  “Listen to the spell, Sorcerer. I am too small to cover you entirely, but you may do it yourself if you attend.”

  The relief of the pain seemed to return to Zacharias some of his own mind. He focused on Mak Genggang’s voice, and though all noise was blunted underwater he discerned the syllables of an enchantment, repeated over and over again. The words were foreign, of course, but one did not always need to understand the words of a charm to cast it: as a youth Zacharias had amused himself by casting spells in Sanskrit to tolerable effect, though he had made only a brief study of the language.

  It required an effort of will to open his mouth to speak, for he knew he must swallow the burning water in consequence—but he did it.

  As he murmured the enchantment, speaking slowly despite the fiery agony from the water sliding down his throat, the relief began to envelop him. It spread from his arm down his left side, along his leg, and then the effect of the spell began to communicate itself across to the right side of his person. Provided he kept repeating the spell he could preserve himself from this distracting pain, but how would he get himself out of this fix? No exertion of mere physical strength would extricate him from the grasp of the water. Besides, he was beginning to feel faint from lack of air.

  “Mak Genggang,” he said, or thought—he was not sure which—“if you can but make a hole through the water, and if Miss Gentleman will assist—”

  Mak Genggang did not reply, but a gap opened in the water, and Zacharias thrust out a wet hand. Prunella grasped it at once, though she winced at the sting of the poisoned water.

  “What can I do?” she said.

  “Give me your magic,” gasped Zacharias. That meant a gulp of too much water. He coughed, struggling for air, but Prunella’s small hand was solid and warm in his. He cast out his drowning consciousness like a net, and drew in magic through her.

  Prunella had never experienced such a peculiar sensation. The world was brilliant with colour and light, and everything looked strange, but truer than it had ever been. The monstrous bulk of water turned into a furious woman, with trailing green hair, a lashing serpent’s tail and long-nailed fingers throttling Zacharias. Zacharias himself was a silvery salmon thrashing in her coils. Mak Genggang, hovering above the fray, looked exactly the same.

  She saw all this in a flash. Then there was no more Prunella: she was one with all the fleeting imps of the air. Magic rushed through her, like water through a pipe, into Zacharias’s hand.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the salmon wriggle out of the woman’s grasp. All at once Prunella’s bones and muscles seemed to turn to jelly. She collapsed, and Zacharias fell on his knees beside her, brown water showering down on them. He was free.

  “A spell for untangling,” he gasped. “The water had me in a binding charm. The counter-formula is no more difficult than untying a knot, but it requires force. I could not have done it without your aid.”

  “I feel very odd indeed,” said Prunella.

  She no longer saw salmon or water-women, but the world had acquired an ugly patina. The trees stood too close, their branches raised like a threat, and the water upon the road shone like oil.

  “It is the reaction to the spell,” said Zacharias, looking at her anxiously. “The absorption and release of so much magic is unpleasant for any mortal who is not accustomed to working with a familiar. The ill effects ought not to be lasting, however—”

  “I am going to be sick,” announced Prunella.

  Whereupon she was, at length. When she was done she rolled away from the result and gazed up at the sky, feeling that life was too grim to be borne. Voices spoke above her, but they did not trouble her.

  “Don’t stand there staring, man,” snapped Mak Genggang. “Help the girl up and get her home! Prunella, I am sorry to abandon you when you are so ill, poor child! But my women need me, and you have Mr. Wythe, whereas they have only a poor old woman to rely upon. Remember what I have told you.”

  Prunella’s thoughts were hazy, but she remembered the core of what Mak Genggang had taught her. It was so simple as to be impossible to forget.

  “It comes down to blood,” she whispered.

  “Did you speak, Miss Gentleman?” said Zacharias. His worried countenance hove into view. “Mak Genggang has flown, I am afraid. If she stayed she would have been caught, for the Fellows will be arriving soon. However, I have sent a zephyr for a hackney coach, and we shall be gone before anyone sees us. I should have arranged for transport by magic, save that you ought not to have too much to do with magic till you have recovered. How do you feel?”

  “It stings a little,” said Prunella. This was an understatement, hardly capturing the overwhelming sense of disillusionment that had swamped her the moment the magic was gone. “Are you hurt?”

  Zacharias smiled. “You need not worry about me.”

  As she lay upon the street, furious, impotent and distressingly inelegant, Prunella discovered two things about herself.

  She liked Zacharias very, very much—perhaps better than she had ever liked anyone in her life.

  She loathed being weak with a passion. She had always known that she could not endure a fool, but it was not till this moment that Prunella realised how much less she liked weakness in herself.

  It could not be just, she thought, that Zacharias should be so good, and so persecuted. And that she should be exposed to such peril and discomfort was not to be borne. But why should a possessor of seven familiars’ eggs have any anxiety about defending herself, and those she . . . liked very much?

  The situation could not continue. Something must be done. And who better than Prunella Gentleman to do it?

  15

  A STRANGE SONG entered Zacharias’s dreams that night.

  He had harboured some doubts regarding the propriety of Prunella’s remaining at his residence, since Mak Genggang had flown. But there seemed nothing for
it, for Lady Wythe was not due to return till the morrow.

  “I shall certainly present her to you tomorrow, however,” he said to Prunella. “Until then, the discretion of my servants may certainly be relied upon.”

  The Sorcerer Royal’s servants had formerly been bound by a geas against disclosure of any detail of his household affairs, breach of which was visited by the most terrible revenge. That tyrannical practise had been discontinued by Sir Stephen, but the strict code of secrecy continued. The housekeeper still insisted on sending a footman to collect the household’s meat from the butcher under a disguise, so that no one might know whether the Sorcerer Royal had had a boiled fowl or roast beef for his dinner.

  Zacharias had thought Prunella might protest, recalling her encounter with outraged propriety in Fobdown Purlieu, but in fact she made no complaint. She seemed distracted, and Zacharias had only just embarked upon an explanation of the mechanism of the geas—a strikingly innovative formula for its time—when Prunella said she was tired. She thought she would retire.

  Zacharias suffered no recurrence of his complaint that evening, and he slept remarkably well considering the stresses of the day. He roused reluctantly as the song became harder to ignore. There was something in it that compelled him to consciousness. The music held within it an exhilarating promise; it flooded his being with a sense of—

  Magic.

  Zacharias sat bolt upright in his bed. The song was a spell. Magic was being done under his roof, and no small magic either. His first thought was that he must be under attack again. His second, when this proved not to be the case, was that Prunella must be in danger.

  The scent of magic grew stronger as he hurried to the bedchamber where she had been lodged, at a decorous distance from his. With the morning’s sortie still vivid in his recollection, he scarcely hesitated at her door, though Zacharias was not generally given to entering the bedchambers of young ladies.

  Bursting into the room, he found Prunella crouched on the floor, one hand pressed against her breast. The song seemed to come from her, though her mouth was shut, and she gazed down with an air of absorption. Within a small circle of candlelight lay the object of her gaze: three blue stones lying upon a black cloth.

  A layperson might have wondered at Prunella’s fascination with a few pebbles. Zacharias saw the stones with a sorcerer’s eyes, and knew them for what they were. Familiars’ eggs—vessels containing the spirits of magical creatures who, weary of their lives in Fairyland, had volunteered for service in the mortal world, and been locked within stone, to be reborn in the earthly realm.

  One egg would have been wealth beyond a magician’s wildest dreams. Three eggs were more than Christendom had seen at one time for a hundred years.

  This was a shock greater than any other, in a week of surprises.

  “Those are familiars’ eggs,” he said.

  Prunella was so intent that she did not even look up.

  “And they are just about to hatch,” she said.

  • • •

  PRUNELLA had confided in Mak Genggang regarding her treasures the night before, though she had had to overcome a lingering hesitation to do it. To possess such a treasure was very tiresome, reflected Prunella, for it made one distrust everyone—and she could not rid herself of the recollection of Mrs. Daubeney’s faithlessness.

  But Mak Genggang was a foreigner, and would soon return to her own country; she had helped unlock Prunella’s singing orb, and asked for nothing in return; and there was no one else who could give Prunella the counsel she needed. She would give Mak Genggang an egg for her services, and for her discretion: that should be reward enough, if all Prunella had heard of the value of familiars’ eggs was true.

  In the event, the reward proved unnecessary.

  “So you have inherited spirits from your father!” exclaimed Mak Genggang when all was explained. “Poor child! That is unfortunate. However, all is not lost. They are locked within these stones, you say? We must hope none of them have secreted themselves within your person: spirits are wicked, ingenious creatures and always select just the parts where they may best torment you. How far are we from the sea? I should fling them upon the waves if I were you, and hope that was the last I saw of them.”

  “But I do not want to throw them away,” protested Prunella. “I want to hatch them and make use of them. That is what English thaumaturges do, you know, when they have the good luck to come upon a familiar’s egg, and they are much admired for it.”

  “So I have heard, but you ought not to pattern yourself after such reprobates,” said Mak Genggang, frowning. “Do not you know it is a sin so to employ djinns and spirits? We ought only to depend upon the graciousness of God, in magic as in life.”

  Prunella was alarmed. She could all too easily envision being compelled by Mak Genggang to dispose of her familiars’ eggs for her own moral and spiritual good.

  “But surely God created the spirits and djinns,” suggested Prunella, “and it is no more wicked to use their services than it is to ride horses or eat meat. And you know, dear Mak Genggang, we cannot trust to a steady supply of magic, as you do in your country.”

  “Very right too. It is a just punishment for your officious interference in other people’s affairs.”

  “But in consequence we are restrained from doing a great deal of good for want of magic,” argued Prunella. “I may not be able to do all I desire to rescue you, for instance.”

  This point could not but hold some weight with Mak Genggang, imprisoned as she was by the Society. Despite her pious objection it transpired that she was not unfamiliar with the intricacies of such sacrilegious dependence upon spirits, for after further argument she declared:

  “If you insist, it is better that I teach you than that you should blunder along and be devoured for your pains. The employment of familiars is all very well for infidels, I suppose, and you are a godless creature enough, Prunella.”

  Prunella acceded to this description of herself cheerfully: “I had no one to teach me better, you see.”

  “So you have found someone to teach you worse!” said Mak Genggang. “Well, you are a pretty, insinuating child, and you will come to a bad end, no doubt.”

  But she spoke with grudging approval. Mak Genggang might decry Prunella’s ways all she liked, but the same disregard of order and authority which Prunella possessed animated Mak Genggang’s own heart. Even if she thought the appearance of reproof due to her age and status, she rather relished a measure of lawlessness.

  “I warned Abdullah in just the same way when he came to me with his bajang. He did not listen, of course, and what was the consequence? He vanished, never to be seen again, and his wife was left to provide for seven children!” said Mak Genggang. “Salima remarried soon enough, and I expect she likes her new husband better, since he does not beat her. But it was a bad lookout for Abdullah. At least you are better equipped to manage your spirits than any man could be.”

  “Am I?” said Prunella, pleased. “But why is that?”

  “Why, all the greatest magic comes down to blood,” said Mak Genggang. “And who knows blood better than a woman?”

  • • •

  WHAT Mak Genggang told Prunella had solidified her resolve to wake the familiars. She could not afford to wait, and let Zacharias continue another month exposed to attack by every fireplace and puddle he encountered. Such constant disruption could only interfere with her plans—and what would become of her if one of those attacks should succeed?

  But Prunella found she did not like to contemplate the possibility of Zacharias’s being injured, or worse. He could take care of himself, of course; he was Sorcerer Royal, after all. But it was clear she needed magic. London was too dangerous to do without. With such an unassailable ground for tasting the intoxicating power of the treasures again, Prunella saw no reason to put off her trial.

  Emboldened by the con
sciousness of doing not only what was right, but what was necessary, she met Zacharias’s shocked gaze with composure.

  “I am sorry to have woken you,” she said. “There is no need for concern, however. Everything is proceeding just as it ought.”

  “Proceeding just as it ought—!” cried Zacharias. “Did not that school teach you the dangers of hatching a familiar from the egg?”

  It was possible to acquire a familiar by different means: one could inherit a familiar upon the death of its previous master; one could persuade an inhabitant of Fairyland to settle in the mortal world; or one could seek to command the loyalty of a familiar from the egg.

  The last method was the most perilous. Familiars hatched from the egg with the intellects of an infant, and no recollection of their past selves. They must be hatched with great care, in the presence of warding spells and other measures of restraint, as might be required by the moods of the familiar once it was hatched.

  If the familiar could not be tamed, it must be killed. Zacharias remembered stories of familiars that, in hatching, had left towns and villages in ashes, devastated lands, and killed the magicians that sought to restrain them.

  One could not predict what would emerge from a familiar’s egg. It might be anything. It might be angry.

  The three eggs were vibrating, their surface covered with fine branching lines, and a tiny wet face emerged from a gap in the eggshell. The sight gave Zacharias the impetus to grasp Prunella’s arm, pulling her away from the eggs.

  “Go,” he said urgently. “Wake the servants, and get out of the building. I will contain them.” He had no notion how he would do it, but at least he could try to limit the damage, even if he were destroyed in the attempt.

  Prunella was not at all grateful for this display of nobility, however.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she said crossly. “Why do not you go, and take the servants with you?” She wrested herself from Zacharias’s grasp, and went to kneel by the eggs. “There is nothing to be alarmed about, only I wish you would go back to bed, and not trouble yourself about my business. I cannot deal with the treasures in your presence. It would be very improper!”