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JEFFREY AMBROSE CRAFTER opened the worn leather envelope slowly, almost reverently. Although the pages it contained were only copies, he handled them as though they were “the actual handwritten documents. The originals, the diaries and manuscripts, some frayed and worn, mended time after time, were in safekeeping with a Crafter cousin wealthy enough to afford a museum-quality storage system. Still, to Jeffrey, even these copies, the record of ten generations of his family, were his heritage, precious in duplicate.
Next, he pulled the frayed drawstring on the deep-blue velvet bag, and spilled the contents on the bed. A small ruby, a silver button, scraps of cloth, a broken piece of glass, pebbles and twigs—these too were his legacy.
He moved the only chair in the room close to the bed and sat contemplating the odds and ends, the papers and pieces of apparent debris. Outside, snow fell steadily, and furred and booted figures plodded their way through the square.
The room was warm, however, if not cozy. Crafter had engaged it over a week before, and in that week had sat, as he now sat, many times.
He was a Crafter. He had, in his lifetime, used the particular abilities that this gave him in the service of his country. He was a special agent, an operative, a spy. Whatever term might be applied, he was very good at what he did.
But the fact that he was a Crafter had also given him a damnable foresight. He had come to realize, along with other members of his far-flung family, that the current course of world history was a dire one, that the precarious balance of power would soon tip toward disaster. Unless something was done.
So he had come here, to this small hotel in the center of Moscow, with a plan in mind, a dangerous, desperate plan. He was assailed by doubts. What if the spell he would dare to attempt failed and brought about the very Armageddon he was trying to prevent? And what right had he, or any other Crafter, to use the powers they possessed to manipulate others? How far was it possible and proper for a Crafter to go in interfering with the lives of those around them?
For days such questions had plagued him. He walked the snowy streets of the city, ate sparingly, and sat with his heritage and the memory of his father’s voice, counseling him to allow others, always, to live their own lives and think their own thoughts without magical interference. A basic law of the family.
But these were extraordinary times and extraordinary circumstances. Jeffrey knew that the time had come for him to make a decision. The practice cantrips of the last week now had to give way to a difficult and risky conjurgation. He hoped to find—no, he knew he must find—in a final contemplation of the artifacts of his family’s past the strength of will and conviction to do what must be done. For the smallest flicker of doubt, and the spell would fail…
He breathed deeply, and picked up the shard of glass, translucent and irregular. With the glass in his hand, Jeffrey Ambrose Crafter began to search the past ...
Anno Domini 1682
THE WIND howled around the log cottage, straining at the eaves and rattling the shutters and the door. It made the pine trees that were gathered around the cottage moan and sway. It pushed at the chinking between the logs, then swirled up to test the shingles of the roof. Finally, it swept panting down the chimney.
Inside the cottage, Amer heard it and turned to close the flue. The wind struck against the metal plates and stopped in surprise, then began to rattle and beat at them. Finally it gave up and turned back up the chimney, shrieking with anger.
Amer looked up as he heard it. He sighed, shook his head, and clucked his tongue, thinking that the wind would never learn. He finished the seam of the brass tube he was working on and laid down his torch.
“Master,” said Willow, “wha’cha makin’?”
She was a globe of light in a large glass jar. If you looked closely, you could see, within the globe, a diminutive, very dainty, humanoid form, but only in rough outline.
“A blowpipe, Willow.” Amer looked the tube over carefully. He was a good-looking man, but overly solemn for one in his early thirties.
“Wha’cha gonna blow through it?”
“Air.” Amer puffed through the pipe, checking to see that there were no leaks. Outside, the wind heard him and swept against the cracks and crevices of the cottage with a blast of redoubled fury at a being who dared mimic it. But Amer paid it no heed.
“Well, of course you’re gonna blow air through it,” Willow said, disgusted. “What else is there to blow? What I want to know is, ‘Why?’ ”
“To make glassware.” Amer went over to the hearth for a look at the kettle of liquid glass that was bubbling thickly over the flames. He found the fireplace filled with smoke from the glowing coals and opened the flue to let it out.
With a joyful shriek, the wind bounded down the chimney again. A second later, it came tumbling back out, coughing and spluttering with the smoke.
“Oh, I like glass!” the ball of light sang.
“It is attractive, isn’t it?” Amer closed the flue and dipped the pipe into the glass. He lifted out a lump of the amorphous mass and began to blow gently into the pipe, swinging it in slow, cautious circles. Gradually the glass took the form of a globe.
“It’s magic!” Willow breathed.
“No, just practice.” Amer shook the pipe, and the globe slipped to the side. Then, with a wooden forceps, he drew it away, so that the narrowing tube of glass connected globe and pipe. He broke the tube and placed the finished object on a pile of sand on the floor, to cool.
“It’s pretty,” Willow said doubtfully, “but what is it?”
“An alembic,” Amer said. “It’s for boiling solutions and channeling their fumes where I want them to go.” He dipped the pipe into the glass again, and soon, test tubes, flasks, beakers, and all the rest of the paraphernalia so vital to the alchemist had joined the retort on the sand pile.
“Oh, they’re lovely!” the ball of light enthused. “But why are you making so many?”
“Because I have to replace all my apparatus,” Amer explained. “The goodfolk of Salem town made that necessary.”
The citizens of Salem had, with great civic zeal, destroyed all Amer’s glassware in the process of razing his house. Due to the unselfish dedication of the goodfolk of the town, Amer had lost everything—laboratory, wardrobe, notebooks, and dwelling—which ten years of work and wonder had won from the New England wilderness. Barely escaping with his life, he had found his way at once to this hidden spot deep within the mountain forest, and in defiance of the rain and wind which had until then been undisputed masters of the forest, built a small house of logs and reproduced as well as possible his lost notebooks.
There was more to do, of course. There was always more to do.
Taking up a knife and a stick of wood, Amer went to the armchair by the fireplace, sat down, and began to whittle.
“Now wha’cha makin’?”
“A model of a human skeleton, Willow.” Amer made a careful scrape along the tiny wooden bone with his carving knife, held back the piece to evaluate it, compared it with the drawings in Galen’s text on anatomy beside him, and nodded, satisfied. He put it down and took up the next roughly cut blocky bone and began to whittle its details.
“Wha’cha makin’ that for?”
“To better understand human anatomy, my dear.”
“Why in firedamp do you want to understand that?”
Amer smiled. “So I can write a book about it.”
A miniature skull began to grow out of the wood under his knife. On the table at his elbow lay a diminutive rib cage, a pelvis, and an a
ssortment of other bones. There was also a large stack of drawings and pages, all written in the alchemist’s hand. Amer was preparing his own text on anatomy.
“Oh,” said the ball of light, “I’m writin’ a book, too. I’m gonna call it Bizarre Behavior of the Bipedal Beast.”
“Indeed!” Amer looked up from his work. “And where are you finding your information?”
“From watching you. You’re about as bizarre as they come. Let’s see . . . ’makes little skeletons . . . ’ ”
Amer smiled, wondering what his little captive was using for pen and ink—or paper, for that matter. He, of course, had never heard of electricity, let alone the concept of rearranging electrical charges that store her words. “You’re not exactly a conformist yourself. Will-o’-the-wisps aren’t supposed to write books, you know.”
“Must be the company I keep.”
“Touché.” Amer smiled. “I am a trifle eccentric, I suppose.”
“No ‘suppose’ about it. You do a lot of things people aren’t supposed to do.”
“Do I really!”
“Uh-huh.” The ball of light bobbed. “Like, for one thing, they’re not supposed to go messing around with smelly ol’ potions and things. They’re also not supposed to catch will-o’-the-wisps and keep ’em in bottles!”
“Beakers,” Amer corrected automatically. “You wouldn’t want me to be lonely, would you?”
“Yeah,” the will-o’-the-wisp said pensively. ‘‘That’s another thing people aren’t supposed to do.”
“What? Be lonely?”
“Uh-huh,” said Willow. “They’re supposed to live in towns, or maybe farmhouses, with other people—but not high up on mountainsides, all alone.”
“Well, yes,” Amer conceded. “I must admit that’s true. But the people of Salem didn’t want me there, Willow.”
“Aw, I’ll bet they did. You just think they didn’t.”
“No,” Amer said, frowning, “I’m afraid they made their opinion quite clear. They burned my house and notebooks, and broke my instruments. I barely escaped with my life.”
“No!” Willow said, shocked.
“Why, yes,” said Amer mildly.
“But why, Master?”
“Because,” said Amer, “Samona told them I was a warlock.” He frowned. “Actually, I don’t think they’d have taken action on her unsupported word—she’s never been terribly well-liked, except by the young men, and then in the worst possible way. She must have had some help, some others telling the goodfolk that I had made a pact with Satan.”
“Master!” Willow gasped. “You didn’t, did you?”
“Of course not, Willow. I’m an alchemist, not a warlock.”
The will-o’-the-wisp sounded puzzled. “What’s the difference?”
“A warlock gains magical powers by selling his soul to the Devil,” Amer explained. “An alchemist gains magical results by studying the phenomena of nature and mind.”
“By how?” The will-o’-the-wisp was totally at a loss.
“By constructing logical generalizations encompassing ever more natural and supernatural phenomena.”
“If you say so.” But the will-o’-the-wisp sounded doubtful. “You sure you’re safe here, though?”
“Oh, yes,” Amer murmured. “Quite safe.”
For Amer had done more than merely rebuild. He had set an elaborate network of traps and warning devices around his cottage in a wide circle, for it was highly possible that the good colonists would not rest until they had hunted him down and burned him at the stake.
“It is possible,” he told Willow, “that the Salem folk may still be pursuing me. I’m quite certain that Samona, at least, will not rest until she has settled with me.”
“But who is this Samona? And why’d she say you’re a whosiwhatsis if you’re not?”
“Samona,” said Amer, “is a very beautiful young witch who lives in Salem—only they don’t know she’s a witch. And she told them I was a warlock because she hates me.”
“Hates you?” Willow demanded, incredulous.
“Hates me,” Amer confirmed. Not that he had ever done anything to Samona that should cause her to hate him; indeed, he was supremely indifferent to any being that walked on two feet, and especially so to those who wore skirts. Samona despised him for this; but then, she held the whole colony in contempt for similar reasons.
And this Amer could never understand, for though Samona loathed the Puritans for their reserve, she was herself extremely reticent, so much so that more than a few of the stern young men still bore the scars of her fingernails for their boyhood audacity in paying her a courtly compliment.
“Why does she hate you, Master?”
Amer made a guess. “Because she hates all men.”
“Well—yeah, I can understand that. But why you especially?”
“Because my magic is just as powerful as hers.”
“But that’s no reason to hate you!”
“That’s just the way women are. Willow.” Amer sighed.
“Aw, it is not!’; willow said stoutly. “I’m not and I’m a woman!”
“That’s different,” Amer explained. “You’ re a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“What woman isn’t?” Willow returned. “There’s gotta be another reason why she hates you, Master.”
“Well, there is, really. You see, she sold her soul to the Devil, and I didn’t.”
Notwithstanding his refusal to sell his soul, Amer had garnered more knowledge of magic through his experiments than Samona had gained through her pact with Satan. “I think we were both born with the ability to work magic, actually—it was just a matter of learning how. She thought she paid a much lower tuition than I, but she’s begun to realize that the bill will come due eventually, and will be rather exorbitant. Mine took longer, but is paid in full as it goes.”
“Oh.” That gave the will-o’-the-wisp pause. “No wonder she hates you.”
Amer looked up, surprised. “I don’t see any logic in it….”
“That’s all right, Master,” Willow assured him. “There isn’t any.”
“Then it is absolutely necessary that I keep an eye on her.” Amer put down the tiny bone and went back to the hearth. He placed the new glassware on a tray and took it over to a keg-spigot he had hammered into one of the logs that formed the wall. He twisted the handle, and clear, sparkling water gushed out, though the spigot met only solid wood within the log. It was fed by a clear mountain stream, a mile away; the alchemist had learned well from his research.
He washed the new glassware with water and sand, then set it up on metal stands on a bench that ran the full length of the wall. He lost no time in setting an alembic bubbling merrily into a cooling tube with a beaker at its end, to collect the distillate.
While he waited for the beaker to fill, he turned to another workbench, one that bore racks of vials, another alembic, several glass tubes, and a small crucible. It was backed by shelves of jars and boxes, each carefully labeled. Amer took another, larger beaker, filled it with water, and set it over an elaborately carved alcohol lamp. Then the alchemist began to ladle powders into a beaker. “Let’s see . . . green pepper. . .sugar. . .cinnamon . . .”
“Sounds good, Master.”
“. . .powdered batwings. . .”
“Gaaaaaack!”
“Oil of ambergris. . .”
“Uh, Master . . .”
“Eye of eagle . . .”
“Master . . .”
“Monosodium glutamate . . .”
“M-A-A-A-A-STER!”
“Oh.” Amer looked up, blinking. “Yes, Willow?”
“Wha’cha makin’ !?!”
“Making?” Amer looked down at the frothy liquid in his beaker. “A far-sight potion, Willow.”
“A what?”
&nb
sp; “A far-sight potion. So I can watch Samona, wherever she is.”
Willow gasped. “You’re a peepin’ Tom?”
“Willow!” Amer remonstrated, scandalized. “I am merely performing a vital mission of strategic reconnaissance.”
“That’s what I said. Wha’cha wanna look at her for, anyway?”
“I’m afraid it’s necessary,” Amer said, thin-lipped. He peered into the beaker. “You see, she’s always trying to find some way to enslave me.”
“Enslave you? What’s she want to do that for?”
“Because she’s a woman.”
“That’s no reason,” Willow maintained.
“Samona thinks it is,” Amer explained. “As I’ve said, she hates all men.”
“And you most of all, ’cause you’re not a warlock?”
“For that,” Amer said judiciously, “and because I’m the only man she can’t enslave with her magic.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’ve got magic, too.”
Willow sounded puzzled. “I thought you said you weren’t a witch.”
“Warlock,” Amer corrected absently. “That’s the male equivalent. And no, I’m not. I’m an alchemist.”
“Same thing.”
“Not at all.” Amer sighed, striving for patience and trying to find a slightly different way to explain something he’d already explicated. “A witch gets her power from the Devil. But an alchemist gets his magic by working experiments.”
“Gotta get this down,” Willow muttered. “Chapter Four: Magic, Male and Female… Now—you’re an alchemist?”
“That’s right.”
“And she’s a witch?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“And that’s why she hates you?”
Amer looked up, startled. “You know, Willow, you may have something there. If I got my magic from the Devil, she probably wouldn’t even notice me.”
“Why not?” The will-o’-the-wisp was totally perplexed.
“That, my dear,” said Amer, “is one of the peculiarities of the female mind.”
“You mean,” said Willow, “you don’t know.”
The Crafters Book One Page 1
