A Dangerous Energy

by John Whitbourn

  At fourteen Tobias was a slightly undersized young man with unfashionably short hair. (‘That is not necessary to ensure your head is free of livestock’, his father had said to him, ‘we are not churls after all.’) Due to the fortunate circumstances of his birth, lack of proper nutrition had not acted to stunt his growth or twist his bones as it had with some of the ragged people who eked out their life on the ‘Church-dole’ in tumbledowns at the end of the village. That evening he wore the britches and woollen sweater typical of his lower-artisan class. As usual a knife hung from his belt, but by now it was a proper man’s working blade. It was also large enough to be a ferocious weapon, although the villagers’ tiffs were usually fought out with fists and working men’s steel-tipped boots. Tobias did not live in a violent society; confused drunken brawls outside The Lamb and Flag on a Friday night were common and wife-beating was not entirely unknown, but these affrays rarely resulted in any serious injuries. Even so it was just such a knife, produced by the village smithy, that the infamous Glyn Benny had used in his fury to gut an Italian pardoner some forty or so years ago. Benny had been duly hanged for this deed soon after, but he lived on in village memory, partly because it was the last memorable thing to have happened there and partly because he had only put into practice what a lot of people roundabouts had long dreamed of doing. As they would have put it, ‘It was high time that some of those twisty, widow-swindling, pansy jack-priests had a knife put in their pockets and got sent back to Rome as they were.’

  Few were stupid enough to say as much though. Tobias’ father had once told him how, as a young man, he (and most of the village) had travelled all the way to Reading to see justice done to the irreligious scoundrel. As has been said, this probably represented a minority viewpoint.

  So Tobias found the knife served as a practical comfort. For example, one never knew what one might meet on the heath.

  A low cough told him that Joan was there and he raised his guarded unquiet eyes to see her and two elf-warriors. Instantly he perceived that this particular session was something special; the minutiae of detail he noticed (thanks to Joan’s teaching) revealed it as plain as speech. In a somewhat melodramatic way the trio had appeared where the moon made a pool of weak milk-shine, and so they were coloured in nothing but sharply contrasted black and white. It had the nearly superfluous effect of making them look anciently evil.

  ‘To work!’ she said. ‘Tonight we’re going to perform a test, a little piece of revision shall we say – of everything you have been told … and a little more.’ At this private whimsy she moved the wrinkles of her face into her own version of a smile. ‘Are you prepared?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Good. Firstly: do you know and understand all that I have told you about personal force?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Do you know and understand my teaching concerning the links between mind, emotion and reality? How each can mould the other?’

  ‘Likewise.’

  ‘Do you remember what I have told you of the cosmic order and all that creeps, crawls and flies on, over or under the surface of this world?’

  ‘I do, but do not believe it in its entirety.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘Finally: do you remember the words and sentences of power that I have taught you?’

  ‘I do, but they remain meaningless to me.’

  ‘Not for much longer. Now, beloved, come closer to me and listen.’

  Tobias strode three steps forward; obedience to Joan was by now an unquestioning item of trust.

  The two male elves moved forward as well, dragging with them a sizeable draw-string canvas bag. Tobias fancied that he saw it move; there was something living inside it. With effort, the warriors held the bag up between them and slightly loosened the string.

  ‘Now,’ said Joan, ‘place your hand, nothing cautious, into the bag.’

  Tobias stepped forward and did so. Immediately he felt a strong set of teeth fasten about two of his fingers. One he twisted free at once, but the other was bitten clean through to the bone. The pain was like intolerable rapiers – no –pins of white-hot steel thrusting up his arm. His finger was released and he pulled his hand from the bag. The bitten digit hung loose, half-severed, and blood splattered merrily around; precious little skin remained on the palm either. He set his teeth in a grimace due to pain and (controlled) anger.

  ‘In that bag,’ Joan told him, ‘is a brutal animal; horrible beyond your conception. We will let it out now and you must kill it. Have your revenge.’

  As she spoke, the two men undid the string further and then upended the bag. Something white and stringy landed on the grass, whining loudly. Too quick for recognition it hurtled across the hummock diagonally away from Tobias and his tutor. Tobias saw something that was pallid-white, that whined nastily, and he felt the starburst in his hand. His eyes lost their customary shield and flared; with his good hand he pointed at the limping, scampering creature. He shouted one of the gibberish phrases he had heard Joan use.

  At once the thing slowed and for the first time permitted scrutiny. It too was an elf, save that it was naked and covered with scars; its long hair was not billowy and gossamer-like as was normal with elves, but dull and matted. He (for it was a male) stopped dead; blood erupted in a waterfall over his lower lip, then trickled from his ears, nose and eyes. One staggering pace on, the figure dropped with the finality and grace that lifelessness bestows.

  Tobias, profoundly shocked, lowered his arm and a silence fell. At some point (how long after, Tobias could never say) Joan spoke into the cathedral-like peace.

  ‘I have consulted the cards, beloved, though perhaps it is an impudence on so minor a matter. Should you bind the finger tightly straightaway, you will not lose it.’

  Tobias addressed himself to this awkward task and in due course, although his kerchief was transformed to a magenta colour, the flow of blood was staunched. No one had offered to assist. Then he stared at the corpse again, slowly regaining control as he did so. He slapped down the initial, natural desire to blurt out something nonsensical.

  ‘Well, Joan: why and what?’

  ‘Tobias, my chick, my lovely,’ she replied, ‘you are a magician.’

  He looked pained. ‘But did it have to be a killing?’

  She studied him for a brief while.

  ‘Would it help if I said he was an abomination and a murderer of helpless infants?’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘Then he was an abomination and a murderer of helpless infants.’

  The two spearmen grinned.

  ‘You mock me, Joan.’

  ‘Indeed not, child. I only seek to ease you in your troubles.’

  ‘Which are of your making.’

  ‘Not entirely; you had a hand in the matter too, if you’ll excuse the term.’

  Tobias abandoned the point; his thoughts had moved elsewhere. ‘How did you know that I could become a magician – what if I had failed?’

  ‘Our mistress told me,’ Joan replied in a decisive tone, ‘and she does not lie.’

  Tobias turned his head sideways and smiled with an expression of patient cynicism.

  ‘Ah, so wise and so old you are at fourteen summers,’ she said. ‘So clever and disbelieving.’ There was a stern note in her voice.

  Her charge refused to be drawn on this point either. ‘What now, Joan?’

  ‘Well lad, don’t you have any ideas and notions about the world? It’s there like a great game for you to play and thanks to me you know all the rules from the very start; and how to cheat at it too.’

  ‘So?’ he said weakly.

  ‘So there it all is, the whole wide world, filled to sweating point with maids to be swived, men to fight or befriend, money and good things to accumulate; loves, hates, sorrows and joys to be ridden on their course. I should have to tell a young man all this?’

  ‘You make it sound an exciting prospect, but at the moment the thought of bein
g a magician excludes all others.’

  ‘You should be glad always. But remember this clearly, for it is of the utmost importance: magic is a major part of power but not the entirety of it. The key to everything is power – hear me. Power is the only real thing in the universe. You have started to understand its nature: now make it your lifelong lover and devote yourself to its exploration. Find yourself a purpose or not, as you may wish, but live it whatever you decide and never give less than total attention to the love of your life.’

  Tobias looked at her and frowned. ‘What I don’t understand is what you gain from this. You wouldn’t do it unless for gain.’

  ‘Your life is our life now,’ she said with awful finality, ‘ours, and our gain.’

  Tobias, however, could no longer be so easily intimidated. ‘You do not have and cannot have that.’

  ‘In a sense, yes. In another, no,’ she replied. ‘The next time we meet, the question might be easier to answer.’

  Tobias looked at the body again and then deeply into Joan’s pupilless eyes. Both of them simultaneously saw, unbridled, wild power, and were abashed.

  ‘Is there anything more tonight, Joan?’

  ‘No, indeed, beloved. Goodnight.’

  He turned and strode off clutching his injured hand, but abruptly about-faced a dozen or so paces away. To his surprise Joan and her two accomplices were still in position, dramatically outlined against the moonlight. He called back, a note of anguish in the upper ranges of his voice.

  ‘It needn’t have been a killing Joan – not a killing.’

  He returned at the next new moon but as he had more than half expected, the elves did not come. He did not bother ever to go again, for he knew that his strange education was finished.

  CHAPTER 2

  In which our hero makes practical use of his knowledge and thereby makes himself known to a wider public.

  Two years later Tobias was sixteen, and had given an enormous amount of thought to all that had transpired in the course of his unusual childhood. He concluded that the work Joan had performed on his mind and opinions was both unique and vital. In the field of magic, however, she had merely ‘awoken’ his talent and given him a head start. The seemingly meaningless ‘words of power’ she had taught him by rote now assumed new significance when he understood (he thought) the underlying principle. They served as the shorthand of magic, saving the trouble of constructing the spell anew each time. Indeed, so far had he progressed in the intervening two years, and so hard had he worked that he now had several new words of his own devising. It was, he found, a matter of comparative simplicity to adopt a word and imbue it with power. The trick lay in believing the thing, so utterly, so implicitly, that word produced belief and belief, through power, produced effect. This last stage was far, far, the most difficult part, and only Tobias’ bitter determination made it at all possible. At the cost of enormous travail and stress he cajoled his mind into accepting a few new ‘spells’. He was not yet fully aware of it but he was possessed of considerable skill and, considering that he was now unaided, was increasing his powers at an impressive rate. It was fortunate, therefore, that he had learnt at least one virtue at Joan’s feet, namely modesty.

  His sorcerous development remained a secret from the rest of the village. For although magicians were familiar-enough figures in the fields of politics, war and the higher echelons of the Church, the humble community of Clarkenhurst had never yet boasted such a son or daughter. Long before living memory the Church had set its face against the practice of magic, and although this had, almost a millennium ago, proved to be impractical, not to mention unwise, still a faint whiff of hell-fire attached itself to the magician’s art. Tobias was therefore unsure of the reception any disclosure on his part might receive and, after due thought, this and other considerations led him to bide his time before committing himself.

  He made no attempt to contact Joan or her people again, partly because their last meeting had been so unpleasant but mainly because it would be a pointless enterprise. He well knew that such searches were exclusively unsuccessful or fatal. In a moment of introspection he suddenly realised that the Church was right to try and suppress conscious memory of the elves. It might be done for half-forgotten, ill-understood, reasons but it was justified.

  At fourteen his other, more conventional, education had ended as well and it was time to don the black fustian suit of the working man. His father, by use of what little influence he had, secured for him the post of under-clerk to the Parish Remembrancer, Mr Fitzsimmons. This worthy, by dint of his fancy name, claimed a connection, albeit distant, with one of the wealthiest families in Berkshire. This led him to put on a grandeur of manner which ill-fitted his unprepossessing character and uncertain place in the village hierarchy. His allotted duty was to record the busy life of the immediate area – the births, deaths and marriages, the harvests, the bastards, affrays and contracts. In short he noted down the very stuff of life and despatched it; written in dog-Latin and compiled in metal-tipped, leather-bound volumes, to the Bishop of Reading’s administrative office, and thence eventually to his library. Since Clarkenhurst was a relatively peaceful and pleasant place in which to live, these volumes were seldom, if ever, consulted; although some were to survive to occupy the gentle scholars of an era far in the future and undreamed of in Tobias’ time. Mr Fitzsimmons would not have been either gratified or made dejected by this foreknowledge of his work’s reception; to him the compilation was the thing, the ensuing utility being very much a secondary consideration. In view of the somewhat thankless nature of the Remembrancer’s post, this was perhaps a very healthy attitude for its holder to adopt. However it took certain types of people to think in this way and Tobias was not numbered among them.

  The only reasons that he had been accepted for the post were because of his acknowledged ability at his letters and the less than incidental factor that Fitzsimmons, a bachelor, held romantic aspirations concerning Maria Oakley, Tobias’ eldest sister. Under his breath Tobias cursed his employer for a filthy old lecher, but was little surprised when, a scant six months subsequent to his starting work, Maria Oakley became Maria Fitzsimmons. Even this short interval was perhaps too long, for Maria’s voluminous wedding gown barely concealed the significant thickening about her waist; and but for Fitzsimmons’ position in the village, Father Allingham would have had some stern words to say to the couple. As it was he merely glowered throughout the ceremony; a few of the coarser sort in the congregation were heard to chuckle.

  Tobias’ new brother-in-law was not too hard a taskmaster, but long service at his chosen occupation had rendered him incurably pedantic and fussy. These qualities did not augur well, for the Oakleys were of a more straightforward and easy-going disposition. Before long, Fitzsimmons’ very voice could irritate both wife and assistant clerk, but both (for different reasons) kept their thoughts to themselves.

  To spend one’s days endlessly compiling other people’s petty pastimes was anathema to a youth who had been shown a glimpse of greater and wilder things. However this was balanced by the indolent streak in Tobias and so he carried quietly on, ever more discontented and constrained by the village context. Bit by bit the things that Joan had spoken of seemed less applicable, less and less anything to do with the dull, day-to-day, real world. The monotony began to affect him, disrupting the logical, ‘streamlined’ mind he had been so proud of, making him moody and fractious. As things turned out, this emotional state proved to be his friend and salvation, just as if part of a plan, and in the end the change Tobias dreamed of was imposed upon him.

  To achieve their ends the fates had seized humble Mr Fitzsimmons as their catalyst and agent provocateur.

  On a hot July day Tobias was sitting drafting a long-since deceased cleric’s spidery writing into fair Church script. The part of his mind that was not yet in a slumber registered the fact that the letter was attempting to call the Bishop of Reading’s attention to the ruinous state of St Matthews in Bradley,
a nearby hamlet, and the dangerous condition of the church roof. The missive was over twenty-five years old and had recently come to light in a dusty search through a long neglected, indeed forgotten, strongbox. The writer, the resident priest of St Matthews, had been fully justified in his alarm, for an accompanying letter, dated a mere two months after the first, recounted the roof’s final collapse. God had seen fit, the letter revealed, to allow this to happen while a service was in progress and a number of the faithful had been badly hurt. Thus vindicated, the priest was less temperate in his second letter than his first, and for his own good it had been intercepted by one of Mr Fitzsimmons’ predecessors. It did not do, it was not wise, to address a prince of the Church, however minor, in angry ringing tones, however justified.

  Tobias entirely failed to appreciate that compared to his usual work, this copying was quite animated. Lethargy and mounting frustration combined to make each pen-stroke a dull effort. As his assistant approached the apex of the monotony mountain, fortune directed Mr Fitzsimmons’ feet away from his luncheon table and his once-again pregnant wife to see how his under-clerk was progressing. He had dined very pleasingly on Maria’s home-made pie and porter, but whereas this would imbue in most people a more charitable and forbearing attitude to the world about them, in this particular gentleman it only served to reinforce his conviction that the world should be tidy, correct and without fault of any kind. Walking to his office he saw two dogs greet each other in their characteristic manner, and this brought home to him that all was not neat, clean and concise as it should be and his vague idea that he should do something about it rose more clearly than usual to the surface.

  Discord, therefore, had a great richness of material to work on: the heat; an annoying, persistent bluebottle in the office window, two innocent, if unfastidious dogs, Tobias’ boredom; a dead man’s out-of-date correspondence and, best of all, Mr Fitzsimmons’ pedantry.