Sorcerer to the Crown

by Zen Cho

  Mrs. Midsomer burst out of the waters behind him and rose into the skies, growing with inconceivable rapidity.

  Her bulk seemed to fill the world, blocking out the horizon and casting a shadow over the magicians huddled on the wall. The enchantment appeared to encompass everything upon her person, for as she grew, so did the fronds of seaweed draped over her, and the pretty amber pendant on her breast expanded till it was itself the height and breadth of a grown man.

  “Midsomer!” roared Lord Burrow. “Look to your wife!”

  “He can hardly miss her,” remarked Prunella.

  “Think of our fishing—our ships—they will be overturned if her antics are not stopped,” said Lord Burrow. “Exert your influence, man. Govern your wife!”

  “If you think, sir, that is within my power to restrain Laura,” said Midsomer wearily, “then all I can say is, you must not have been attending.”

  “Murderer!” howled Mrs. Midsomer. She drew from the amassed storm clouds a bolt of lighting and flung it at Zacharias. It split the air with an almighty crack, and would have smashed the wall had Zacharias not fended it off with a spell. The bolt went into the sea, and steam rose from the bubbling waves.

  “This is outrageous!” said Prunella. “The creature ought to know when she is beaten.”

  She leapt nimbly off the Cobb before anyone could stop her, and was borne up by a white horse—a steed shaped from the froth on the waves and animated by magic.

  “Hup hup!” cried Prunella, driving her heels into the creature’s flanks, and off they went, cantering over the heaving seas, while Prunella shouted impertinences at Mrs. Midsomer.

  “Damerell, pray persuade her to return,” gasped Zacharias. Staving off Mrs. Midsomer’s hexes required all of his attention. They were wicked spells, fiendishly complex and prickly with malice, stinging his hands as he disenvenomed them.

  “Miss Gentleman will do very well,” said Damerell, scarcely sparing a glance for the small figure vanishing into the grey murk of sky and sea. “You, however, want aid. Watch your head, there!”

  Zacharias escaped being exploded only by Damerell’s intervention. The chantment ricocheted off Damerell’s counter-spell and detonated a pile of rocks at the end of the Cobb, where Rollo sat with his shoulders up around his ears. He jumped, and bawled out:

  “Poggs!”

  “Rollo, cannot you see that we are busy?” said Damerell. “If you wish to make yourself useful, you might go and find Miss Gentleman, and shield her from the attacks of that sea-woman.”

  “But that is what I have been trying to say, only no one would attend,” said Rollo, injured. “She ain’t a sea-woman. She’s Lorelei, my own third cousin twice removed.”

  “You don’t mean to say you are related to the wretched creature?” said Damerell.

  “Known her since I was out of the egg!” said Rollo. “Lorrie had a frightful temper even then. She ate one of my brothers on a rampage, and he was a mere dragonet, not more than a week old. He had broken her favourite doll, but I don’t call that a meet response, do you? Still, that is Lorrie all over! My aunt gave her a right set-down over it. Aunt Georgiana was the only creature Lorrie would ever listen to.

  “I had forgotten she was engaged to Leofric,” he added musingly. “I could never account for his liking her, though she is my own cousin. Do you know, the most astonishing thing is, ’twas she who cried off! He only came to the mortal world after, but I don’t believe the two things were connected, for it is my belief he intended to leave Fairy all along. He was always a great one for insects, and we haven’t many in Fairyland—they have a dashed peculiar habit of growing minds, and turning into fairies.”

  Damerell said dangerously, “Rollo, you may not have observed that Zacharias is striving to contain a fireball, and I am in imminent danger of having my best pair of top-boots ruined by a hex. We are not at leisure to discuss your family’s eccentricities. If you are so well acquainted with the lady, however, may I suggest that you ask her to desist? She might take it better from her cousin than from any of us.”

  “She never liked me above half,” said Rollo, unconvinced. “The only reason I was not ate was because I was too old and tough, for I am sure I broke half a dozen of her dolls.”

  Still, he spread his wings and flapped up towards the upper air where Mrs. Midsomer’s head was shrouded by mist and rain. His uncertain voice could be heard through the clamour of the storm:

  “Lorrie? I say, Lorrie!”

  “Rollo Threlfall?” boomed Mrs. Midsomer, in a voice mingling the crash of the waves and the howl of the wind. “What business have you here?”

  “Go for her throat, Rollo!” bellowed Prunella, galloping along on her sea-horse. “Rip it out and ha’ done with it!”

  Rollo gave Prunella a look of terror.

  “I shan’t pay her any mind, of course,” he said earnestly to Mrs. Midsomer. “Dashed unpleasant way of carrying on. It don’t seem quite maidenly to be so bloodthirsty, does it? Is it a mortal thing, do you think, or are the modern females of Fairyland like that too? Leaving aside lamiae, of course. Not but what I have known some very agreeable lamiae in my time. There was a good sort of girl who used to live near my father’s cave, Delphyne her name was, I think—unless it was Daisy?”

  “Robert,” said Mrs. Midsomer, “I am engaged in very important business at the moment, and if you have nothing better to say than to ask me whether I ever knew a lamia named Daisy . . .”

  Rollo had been turning loops in the air, sunk in thought.

  “Now I think of it, her name was Sybaris,” he exclaimed. “But she terrorised the town of Delphi, of course, which accounts for the confusion. Aunt Georgiana could never stick her.”

  “Cousin Georgiana?” Mrs. Midsomer stiffened. The turbulence of the waves subsided. “Is she here?”

  “Good God, no!” said Rollo, horrified. “I was only recollecting that she did not like Sybaris, which is as good a testimonial as anyone could desire. Though to be sure, Aunt Georgiana does not like you above half either—but never mind all that! What I meant to say, Lorrie, is that you ought not to be rampaging about like this. It ain’t good ton! We are not in Fairyland, you know, where everyone enjoys a good magical fisticuffs. In the mortal realm there are things like ships and fishermen and picnics to think about.”

  “What have picnics to do with anything?” said Mrs. Midsomer.

  “I am surprised at you, Lorrie,” said Rollo. “It stands to reason no one can have a picnic if it is raining cockatrices and dragons. A hugeous mermaid don’t improve the view, either.”

  “Do you really mean to defend your friend’s villainy to me by such shifts?” roared Mrs. Midsomer. “That mortal murdered my Leofric!”

  “But if you would only listen, I am sure Zacharias would be able to explain himself,” pleaded Rollo.

  “What excuse could there be for such faithless conduct?”

  “I am not altogether sure,” Rollo admitted. “But Zacharias is a vastly clever fellow, and I am sure he could explain everything to your satisfaction if you would only be so good as to allow him ten minutes—”

  Rollo was not allowed to finish his own explanation, however, for Mrs. Midsomer, losing patience, swatted him away. With a piteous yelp, Rollo vanished into the clouds.

  “Rollo!” shouted Damerell.

  “Pray come out,” said Prunella’s voice through the storm, “for you are needed.”

  The storm clouds heaped in the lowering sky merged together to form the shape of a man, large and powerful, and lying prone upon the horizon. He rose, opening eyes of yellow lightning, and said in a rumbling voice:

  “If it isn’t that blasted girl again!”

  “If you are annoyed to see me, that is all the more reason to do your work quickly,” said Prunella. “I should be excessively obliged if you would kill this mermaid for us. Once that is done you m
ay go back to being insensate clouds as soon as you wish.”

  The thunder-monster gave Mrs. Midsomer an unimpressed look.

  “It will require a tempest,” he said.

  “Go to it!” said Prunella.

  With Mrs. Midsomer’s attention distracted, Zacharias was freed from the necessity of defending himself. He was putting his liberty to good use, and constructing another spell, when a freezing hand gripped his arm.

  It was Lord Burrow. Upon his wet countenance was an expression composed in equal parts of fear, fury and plain discomfort.

  “Damn it, Wythe, these are conditions calculated to bring on an inflammation of the lungs if there ever were such,” he shouted. “Lady Frances will be in such a taking she will not be fit to live with. She has just nursed me through a fever, and found it so tedious she has strictly forbidden my contracting any further illness. Cannot you stop them?”

  “That may be within my power,” said Zacharias. “I have a notion I know what will calm Mrs. Midsomer’s fury. Miss Gentleman will likely subdue her thunder-creature if Mrs. Midsomer can be persuaded to leave off trying to kill me. Though I have Damerell to deal with as well, of course, since Rollo Threlfall has got himself involved.”

  Damerell was striding up and down the Cobb, chanting curses of such ancient, complex wickedness as to raise the hair of the assembled thaumaturges.

  “Do what you can,” said Lord Burrow urgently. “I have organised the men in a chanting circle to drain that blasted mercreature of her power, but since this is her native environment, her power is replenished faster than we can draw it.”

  “But stay!” said Zacharias thoughtfully. “The reason for all this disturbance is that Mrs. Midsomer has been so intemperate as to threaten my life. Does not that show a very creditable loyalty in my friends? I am not sure, after all, that it would be wise to prevail upon them to stop.”

  Lord Burrow gave him an incredulous look, but with the advent of the thunder-monster the sea had been thrown into even greater tumult. The sheets of rain falling unbroken from the sky seemed as though they would cause a second Flood. The strivings of Mrs. Midsomer and the thunder-monster so infused the place with magic that every wave bore a crest of green foam, every magician was outlined in light and the opaque vault of the sky was a livid green, reflecting the unearthly glow of the battle below.

  “Damn your impudence!” said Lord Burrow. “Do you mean to blackmail me at such a time as this?”

  “You and Mr. Midsomer both,” said Zacharias.

  Midsomer was huddled in a corner, watching his wife and familiar in terror. He looked up at the sound of his name.

  “If Providence permits us to survive this calamity, it will behoove me to report an unlawful summoning to the Society,” said Zacharias. “I understand Mr. Midsomer proposes that the Hallett be undertaken. It could be done at the same meeting.”

  “We will not survive,” said Midsomer, with a slight improvement in his spirits. “So the point is moot.”

  “It strikes me that my report could cause some awkwardness for so well-known a family as the Midsomers,” continued Zacharias.

  “My sister Polly would not like it, if that is what you mean,” said Lord Burrow. “So you will keep quiet about this business of summoning a familiar—a froward familiar at that; you ought to have chosen a more peaceable creature, Geoffrey—you will keep quiet, will you, Wythe, and sort out this business, at a price?”

  “I only desire your support at the next Society meeting,” said Zacharias. “I require no more than that you and Mr. Midsomer should vote as I vote, second any nomination I make, and shout down any proposal contrary to my wishes.”

  Lord Burrow glowered at him. “And we are to lend our names to any harebrained policy arising from your proposals, I suppose?”

  “If you think it right to do so. I hope you will, but my price is your support for the space of one meeting only,” said Zacharias. “For what I intend, a single meeting will suffice.”

  A fisherman’s hut close to the shore burst into flames, despite the extreme wetness of the weather. Lord Burrow said:

  “If you can stop them, you may have whatever you want, and be damned to you! The Hallett will be withdrawn, and we shall vote on whatever blockheaded reforms you desire.

  “It is the sorcerer’s way to gain his point by main force, after all,” he added bitterly. “But you will have to perform your side of the bargain first!”

  “It shall be done,” said Zacharias.

  Damerell was about to put the finishing touches upon a convoluted curse implicating even the neighbours and casual acquaintances of Mrs. Midsomer’s descendants unto the seventh generation when Zacharias interrupted him.

  “Come, man, pull yourself together,” said Zacharias. “There is no need for this. If you are concerned for Rollo there is a simpler way to put a period to the scene, and she will help you recover him, I am sure.”

  Damerell stared at him, bemused at having been pulled so suddenly out of his incantation. “What?”

  “I have begun the spell, but it requires more work, and I should be grateful for your assistance,” said Zacharias. “We must make it a watertight chantment, else it will be bound to fail—for she is not what anyone would call complaisant.”

  24

  GEORGIANA WITHOUT RUTH had been having a lovely day. She had passed the morning in visits, gossiping and testing her wits (and in one case, her claws) against her friends and enemies. She had then engaged in some light exercise, hunting down her dinner—a white hart with a blood-red star on its forehead, which wailed in a human voice as she devoured it.

  Since creatures of like strangeness were so often to be found in the forests of Fairy as to have lost all their novelty, this impaired her appetite not a jot, and Georgiana returned to her cave in an excellent humour. She curled up on her hoard of gold, but as she was about to float away on billows of sleep, she was rudely torn from her slumbers.

  The geas laid upon her could not be gainsaid. The spell was devilishly well constructed, and despite all her efforts Georgiana was borne irresistibly along by it, hurtling along secret ways across the worlds, growing crosser and crosser with each unwilling wingbeat.

  The originators of the enchantment had not even bothered to disguise their identities, and by the time Georgiana descended upon Lyme Regis, she had prepared some rich words for Paget Damerell and that upstart Sorcerer Royal. She would not quietly endure the insult of being summoned to attend to a magician’s pleasure, as though she were any trumpery fairy or slubberdegullion spirit, so greedy for power that it was willing to pledge itself to a mere mortal. Oh no! They would soon discover why she was named Without Ruth.

  The sight that greeted her upon her arrival was sufficiently appalling to distract her from her wrongs, however.

  “Lorelei,” she trumpeted, “do I indeed find you in a tantrum? For shame! To be two thousand years old and still so naughty!”

  Mrs. Midsomer’s churning tail ceased its operations with comical abruptness. The whirlpool it was working up died down abruptly. The mists veiling her form were blown away by a gust of wind, and the sun shone out of the clouds, illumining her abashed countenance.

  “Cousin Georgiana!” she exclaimed. “I—I thought you never visited the mortal realm.”

  “That shows how much you know,” said Georgiana snappishly. “I come and go as I wish. You surely did not think I was subject to the Court’s restrictions upon travel?”

  “Oh no, no,” said Mrs. Midsomer. She had already begun to shrink.

  “Put a stop to this rain, for pity’s sake,” said Georgiana. “I have just had my scales polished, and the wet will ruin my shine. Pray, who has permitted this thunder-monster to run amuck?”

  “I have not run amuck,” said the thunder-monster peevishly. “I am only trying to murder this sea-woman, so that I may go to sleep again. I should be happy to
wash my hands of the business if the sorceress would only release me.”

  “Well, never mind this sorceress, whoever she is, but go away,” said Georgiana. “You will not soon kill Lorelei. If it were as easy as all that, one of her relations would certainly have pipped you to the post. I beg you will not try to argue. I do not at all like the taste of an elemental.”

  The thunder-monster faded out of existence, muttering imprecations. An outraged Prunella opened her mouth to object, but she was quelled by a glare from Zacharias.

  “As for you, Lorelei, it was all very well for you to make mischief while the Queen was away, but what do you think she will say to your antics when she returns?” continued Georgiana. “Was that a mortal town on the shore? And now it is nothing but a bundle of sticks and damp sand!”

  “Oh, you will not tell her!” cried Mrs. Midsomer. “It was never much of a town anyway—spinsters contriving on a hundred pounds a year, and sixpence assemblies. Besides, I acted upon the purest of motives. I was wreaking vengeance for my dear Leofric. Perhaps”—a touch of acid tinged her voice—“you do not recall Leofric?”

  “Everyone knew you called off the engagement, so spare me your airs, I beg,” said Georgiana. “You were not overly broken up when he left for the mortal world. Why, scarce a fortnight had passed before you were parading your new mortal beau about, though he did not long survive the expiry of your affections! I should tread carefully if I were you,” she added as an aside to Midsomer.

  “But that was before I heard the news,” protested Mrs. Midsomer. “Then I knew I had never loved anyone so well, and never would again. Only then, when I finally knew what I had lost, I swore to revenge myself upon the mortal who could so cruelly betray him.”

  “You cannot have loved him so well if you have not even troubled to discover what he is about now,” said Georgiana.

  “Mamma never approved of necromancy,” said Mrs. Midsomer, with dignity. “She thought it a low habit, fit only for ghouls and mortals.”

  “Necromancy indeed!” said Georgiana. “From the way you go on, one would almost think Leofric was dead.”