by Zen Cho
“It is the nature of the Exchange. We struck a bargain, and he has abided by it,” said Zacharias. He would have liked to abandon the unhappy subject of bargains and exchanges altogether, but it was his duty as her instructor to discuss it with Prunella. “That is why I would have prevented you from bonding with so many familiars, if I could. You benefit from it now, but at the end of your life . . .”
“Never mind about the end of my life,” said Prunella briskly. “We have sorted it out amongst ourselves. Nidget is to have my head, and Youko and Tjandra will have the rest of me, divided equally, and whoever is fastest may have my soul—though I doubt I have much of one. There will not be much left for a funeral, but when I am dead that will not worry me, and I plan to make old bones. But we must not be distracted, Zacharias; we have not much time. Did not you wonder that I knew Mrs. Midsomer’s orb for what it was?”
The question had not occurred to Zacharias. It struck him that this was a shocking oversight. He said, embarrassed: “There was so much else to worry about that I did not think to be surprised.”
Prunella nodded. “I had seen something like it before, you see.”
She held out a small silver ball, very similar to Mrs. Midsomer’s orb, save that it was wrought of a paler metal, and etched with different carvings. It was attached to a long silver chain.
“I wear it always,” said Prunella. She was still for a long moment, gazing down at the orb. “I found it in the attic at the school, along with the eggs. They were among my father’s effects. I believe they belonged to my mother.”
“I thought you did not remember your mother.”
“Nor do I.” Prunella looked up at Zacharias, her eyes luminous with unshed tears. “But she remembered me.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and continued:
“Mak Genggang showed me how to awaken the orb. I might have told you of it before, but there was not time—and I suppose, Zacharias, I did not altogether trust you. I have been so much in your power that I thought it wisest to reserve a secret or two to myself, in case I should need it. And you are so conscientious, I thought you were bound to report it to the Society. I had no notion you were as capable of keeping a secret as you have shown yourself to be.”
“There is no need to explain yourself to me,” said Zacharias, adding drily, “You will embarrass me with all these compliments.”
A gleam of humour flashed through Prunella’s face in response.
“Well, in truth, if I did not think you might be able to help, perhaps I would not be confiding in you now,” she said. “But I had not realised before that it was writing—the carvings upon my orb, I mean. I thought perhaps you might be able to read it, for you told me you made a study of the Indian languages, did you not?”
“The Sanskrit only,” said Zacharias. He held out his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation Prunella passed him the orb.
“I recognise the script, however,” he said, examining it. “I believe it is Hindustani, though I am no expert. Shall I sound out the words?”
“It will have no effect unless I supply the core of the spell,” said Prunella. She could not conceal the significance this held for her, and there was an unmistakable quaver in her voice.
Zacharias knew he must tread carefully, but he knew nothing of these orbs, and his thaumaturgical training rendered it impossible to leave this be. “And what is that, if I may ask?”
“You ought to know by now, Zacharias,” said Prunella. A smile ghosted across her lips. “It comes down to blood, of course. What else could it be?”
A fat pincushion on the mantelpiece held all the needles a witch could require, but Prunella paused with the needle resting against her thumb.
“Do you promise to keep anything we see a secret?” she said.
Zacharias hesitated, but with Prunella’s steady gaze upon him, he said, “I give you my word.”
She nodded, and in one swift, sure movement, stabbed herself in the fleshy base of her thumb.
“Now, Zacharias,” she said, and held her thumb over the orb. The drop of blood spread rapidly along the lines of the engraved words and pictures.
Zacharias saw the script vanish in light as he stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables. By the time he finished reading the words out, the orb was ablaze. Prunella took it from his hand and threw it in the air.
The light blossoming from the sphere took on substance and form. An image coalesced before them of a dark-skinned woman kneeling on the ground, very lovely, though past her first youth. She wore a gorgeous silk saree and gold jewellery. These, and her carriage and bearing, spoke of wealth and power.
“Oh,” said Prunella in a strangled whisper, and then she was silent.
The woman spoke in a low, fierce whisper that resounded through the room.
“My daughter, the spell I have cast will kill your father,” she said. The language was foreign and the words she spoke entered the ear as mere liquid syllables, but their significance entered the mind. This was another translation spell, one Zacharias had not encountered before, but elegantly designed.
“Listen well, for he will not survive to tell the tale,” said the vision. “You are my daughter, the heir of a line of great magicians, and I am the greatest of these, the Grand Sorceress of the Court of Seringapatam.” She said this with the simplicity and directness with which Prunella made her own most outrageous statements—with an unself-conscious arrogance that was utterly convincing.
“Your father has betrayed us, and will suffer for it. He came to our court claiming to be a scholar of European magics, who wished to advance the understanding between magicians of different nations. He professed to love me, and I, believing him sincere, permitted his attentions. For two years he concealed his true intentions within his treacherous heart, waiting for his chance. We discovered I was expecting you. In my loving folly I confided our family’s most precious secrets to him, he being the natural protector of their heir—so I thought. Fool that I was, I revealed to him the treasures of which I am guardian—the treasures I preserved for you, and my granddaughters.
“I do not believe, now, that he was ever truly attached to me. I do not believe he intended to become attached to you, but he could not help himself. You were born, and he found he loved you. He took you from me—the coward, the liar, the thief! He fled the country with you, and worse, he has taken the treasures with him.
“Attend! The treasures are seven, each a portal to a realm of wonder, disguised as stones. They are subject to an enchantment that preserves them in dormancy, but when the charm is broken a spirit of great power will inhabit the stone and be hatched into the world, like a snake from an egg. My blood will preserve the secret of unlocking the treasures for you, and your blood will reveal it, for the same ichor runs in our veins. When you are of an age to profit from the treasures—when you are ready for your inheritance—the spell I have laid on you will open the path for you to find this message.
“Unlock all the treasures, when you have learnt the secret of it. Bind the spirits to you with your blood. Now that you are lost to me there is no call to preserve them. Now that you have gone over the black waters the line of our family is broken. I shall not know my granddaughters, and you shall not know me. Feed the spirits—love them—learn from them—they will be grandmother, mother, aunt and daughter to you. The foreigners will not touch them. I have enchanted the stones so that even should a foreigner contrive to hatch a spirit, it would turn instantly upon him and tear out his throat.
“Nor will your father profit from his treachery. He will be tormented by nightmares; his food and drink will turn to ashes in his mouth; he will be served out for the wrong he has done you and me. But I cannot come for you.”
The woman looked away. Light fell across her face—the harsh sunlight of a foreign land, striped with black shadows like prison bars.
“I am your mother,
but I am Grand Sorceress first, and my word cannot be forsworn. I must accept my punishment for allowing the treasures to be taken from me—for my foolishness in trusting your father.
“My beloved, I discharge you from any need for revenge. I have murdered enough for the both of us. When you have the spirits’ loyalty, learn, wait and survive. With the seven spirits by you, you will be the greatest magician the world has ever known. Your fame will spread across all the nations of the earth; your name will be fragrant in the thirty-one worlds. Wield your power wisely and well—and live!”
The woman leant forward, her eyes flashing, a smile both triumphant and tender curving her mouth.
“You are my daughter,” she said. “Can there be any doubt that you will be brilliant—audacious—and free?”
The vision disappeared. She had been so vital, so overflowing with life and energy, that her going seemed to leave the room dark.
Prunella reached blindly for a chair and collapsed in it, burying her face in her hands. Zacharias was anxious to be discreet, and for a while he absorbed himself in the study of her bookshelves, noting with disapproval the number of novels and frippery magazines with which they were laden. But Prunella was silent for so long that he grew concerned.
“Are you quite well?” he said.
Prunella raised a startled dark gaze to his face. Her eyes were dry.
“She looks just like me!” she said.
It was so prosaic an observation Zacharias was tempted to laugh, but it was only the truth. The resemblance was remarkable: the shape of the eyes, thin lips and decided chin were all the same, but the most striking similarities went beyond the physical. Prunella’s mother had looked the great woman. So, too, would Prunella appear when she was older, refined in the fire of an indomitable will.
“Your mother’s ability accounts for yours,” said Zacharias. “The Grand Sorceress of Seringapatam! I suppose it is hardly a surprise she did not pursue you to England,” he added absently, though he regretted his words at once.
If Prunella’s mother had been at Seringapatam at the time of its fall then it was, indeed, no surprise that she had not come to recover her child, even a decade after the conquest. But it had been neither kind nor tactful to say so.
“I expect she has had a great deal of business to attend to,” he said hastily. “I do not wonder that she has not had an opportunity to get away.”
“Oh, indeed!” said Prunella, with an appearance of nonchalance. “I expect she has been busy.”
She went to the window. It was a transparent enough device to prevent his seeing her face, and Zacharias was not surprised that when Prunella spoke, it was to change the subject.
“I suppose Lady Wythe will have risen by now,” she said. “I ought to return to my room, or Lucy will think I have eloped again. Will you be quite safe at the Society today? Ought my familiars and I to come, in case those wretched thaumaturges take it into their heads to carry out the Hallett after all?”
“I hope you will come, though I have no concerns regarding my safety,” said Zacharias. “Lord Burrow is opposed to the Hallett, and Midsomer need not worry us overmuch. Now that Mrs. Midsomer is gone with Georgiana Without Ruth, I cannot think him capable of anything great in the way of magic. As for his intrigues, I fancy I have a surprise that will throw anything he might try into the shade. I shall need your agreement to carry it out, however.”
“Oh, certainly!” said Prunella. “I should be glad to help. I am very much obliged to you, Zacharias. I could not have deciphered my mother’s message alone, and I knew I could repose the utmost confidence in you. I knew you would never betray my secrets.”
Prunella’s gratitude was wholly sincere, but she spoke, too, out of careful calculation. Zacharias did not blame her. They both knew what a secret it was that he now possessed.
• • •
YOU cannot now deny where your duty lies,” said Sir Stephen.
Zacharias had stopped by his study to collect his thoughts and pick up some papers before the meeting at the Society. He was not altogether surprised to find Sir Stephen lying in wait for him.
“No, indeed,” said Zacharias. He had not had much time to consider the morning’s revelation, but its implications had been immediately obvious to him.
Sir Stephen was so excited he did not notice the tone of Zacharias’s voice, but continued:
“To think that England has been in such want of familiars for decades, when a single kingdom in India has been hoarding seven eggs! Their magicians are famously close, but I had no notion how much they concealed. What the Society will say when you tell them! Who knows what other wonders lie hid in that vast subcontinent? And where else might we not find similar riches? Why not the deserts of Araby, the steppes of Mongolia, the Malay archipelagoes? We must begin the survey at once. It will take time, ingenuity, perseverance. If Miss Gentleman’s mother is an example of foreign magicians, we will have considerable difficulties to contend with—deceptions to penetrate, evasions to circumvent, defiance to overpower.”
“I gave Miss Gentleman my word I would not tell anyone,” said Zacharias.
Sir Stephen had been pacing the room in his flurry of spirits, but this stopped him in his tracks. He turned on Zacharias a look of amazement.
“If I did not know better I would accuse you of being bewitched by a pair of snapping black eyes,” he said. “Even you must admit the girl has not a right to all the familiars of India. Indeed, it is bad enough that she has three; it is a breach of the Society’s rules for any magician to possess more than one familiar, as you very well know. The girl will pay for it if ever the Society discovers her crime.”
“I know it,” said Zacharias.
“But you may save her by this revelation, Zacharias,” said Sir Stephen. “And yourself, for it would be such a stroke as no Sorcerer Royal has ever managed. What are Miss Gentleman’s three familiars to a continent’s worth of familiars’ eggs? It overturns all our assumptions.”
Zacharias shook his head. He was calm, quite calm, and yet his pulse beat high in his throat. He had grown practised in disagreeing with Sir Stephen since his death, but they had never diverged so far before.
“Did not you hear the Grand Sorceress?” he said. “‘The foreigners will not touch them’—and so Mrs. Gentleman murdered her husband, and enchained the secret of unlocking the eggs to Prunella’s very blood. She foresaw what would occur if Europe were to discover her people’s wealth: the interference in their affairs; the miserable increase of bloodshed and oppression.”
Sir Stephen went white, then red.
“Need I remind you that you are England’s Sorcerer Royal?” he said. “Your title will on occasion demand the exercise of power—even, where necessary, what you are pleased to call oppression and bloodshed. But that is the nature of the office. You are called upon to advance the good of this nation, and none other. Your allegiance is not to magic alone, nor to all humanity, but to your own portion of humanity, to the country that nurtured you—”
“And enslaved my parents?” said Zacharias.
That silenced Sir Stephen. He sat down in the chair that used to be his, moving, for once, like an old man.
Pity and affection strove within Zacharias against implacable truth. But they could not triumph forever. Nor could Zacharias’s loyalties ever be as clearly delineated as his guardian’s. He had always understood this. Sir Stephen, he knew, had not.
“You know I have always been grateful to you and Lady Wythe,” he said into the ringing silence. “I can never make a sufficient return for your goodness. You could not have been kinder to a blood relation.”
“We could not have loved you better had you been our own son,” said Sir Stephen heavily. He passed his hand over his eyes.
“I believe it,” said Zacharias gently.
He was conscious of a sensation of relief, as though he had laid dow
n a burden he had been carrying, all unconscious, his entire life. Till that moment he had not known what a trial it had been to be compelled to hide his true sentiments from his closest connections.
Sir Stephen lowered his hand, and met Zacharias’s eyes.
“You may not have chosen England, but England has chosen you,” he said. “I would never have said Zacharias Wythe owed any debt to her. The Sorcerer Royal, however, does. What is at stake is more important than your conscience, Zacharias. If you were not prepared for that, you ought not to have taken up the staff.”
“You know why I took up the staff,” said Zacharias.
He felt no resentment—he had made the decision and he must live with it—but the words, spoken by him to Sir Stephen, could not be anything but a reproach. Sir Stephen’s steady blue gaze was unwavering, though he must have felt the words as a blow.
“Your reasons do not signify,” said Sir Stephen. “What matters is that you did it. You are Sorcerer Royal. Now what do you propose to do about that?”
Zacharias picked up his staff and weighed it in his hand.
He did not think he would miss it. There was very little, indeed, that he would miss.
It was true Prunella could not escape punishment if her familiars were discovered. It was growing increasingly difficult to conceal their existence; it would soon be impossible, now that the Presiding Committee had witnessed her in the act of magic-making. Zacharias had always known they would come to a point at which he must present her to the Society, and brave the consequences. It had come sooner than he would have liked, but he knew now what he must do.
“Come to the Society with me, and you shall see,” he said.
26
A MEMORY STIRRED within Zacharias as he entered the Great Hall among a sea of pale faces: a memory of being small and anxious, wishing very much to please, but fearful of being weighed and found wanting.
