The Book of Magic

by George R. R. Martin

  Titus hadn’t developed the powerful cold magic that characterized the great mages of the mage Houses in Europa. He hadn’t the reach to kill an entire hearth’s fire just by walking through the door, not as any mansa did. He could not paint illusions out of moisture in the air, nor had he ever shown enough strength to be allowed to learn the perilous secrets of forging cold steel. He could not kill the combustion of an entire factory just by walking past the steam engines that powered it.

  Divination was a subtler form of the same magic, present only in a few. It was necessary to the survival of the mage Houses but despite that wasn’t praised and lionized in the same way. Diviners did not rise to become mansa of their House.

  But even he, subtle and small as his magic was, could quench a candle flame. Even he could pull a thread of cold fire out of the spirit world, form it into a ball, and use it to light his way. He was about to do so when he realized the chamber whose door the priestess blocked was already aglow with a chilly white light. Neither Anwell nor Bala had enough control to shape cold fire. Perhaps Serena did, and had hidden this ability from him all this time. For as much as he had disliked Belenus Cissé, some parts of the man’s sordid tale had resonated with Titus in suggesting Serena was a secretive, calculating opportunist who wore her beautiful face as a mask to take advantage of innocent, well-meaning men.

  The first thing he noticed about the chamber was its modest furnishings: a plain wooden table, two benches, and a sideboard laden with a pitcher and the sort of lopsided cups that a potter sells for cheap because they’ve been made by an apprentice. Kankou sat at the table beside an elderly priestess wrapped in shawls against the cold.

  An exhausted-looking woman faced Kankou and the priestess. A toddler shivered on her lap. She had the white skin of Celtic ancestry, marked with early wrinkles, but it was the burn mark across the right side of her face that really stood out. Perhaps she had been pretty once; now it was all he could do not to wince at the unsightly scar, and that only because his mother had taught him better than to embarrass a person in public with such a reaction.

  Behind her stood identical twin boys of perhaps thirteen years of age, a common age for magic to bloom. The sphere of cold fire hovered between them. Diviners could trace the threads of magic that wove through people, and to his fascination the sphere was attached to both of them, as if they had figured out together how to create it. As if it arose from them working together.

  A sullen youth leaned against the wall, arms crossed, a threadbare coat pulled tightly around his shoulders. He resembled the twins and, like all the children, had brown skin and curly black hair. Boys this age always reminded Titus of his son, except that his son had never frowned; he hadn’t been made for frowns.

  As Titus entered, Kankou rose. The exhausted woman rose. Even the sullen youth pushed away from the wall to stand. Only the priestess remained seated with the privilege of age, one age-palsied hand grasping a cane.

  He greeted the elderly priestess first, as was fitting in a holy temple.

  “Maestra Selva,” said Kankou to the mother, “this is Magister Titus Kanté, of whom I have spoken.”

  “Magister,” the woman said before lapsing into the silence of the overwhelmed.

  The toddler struggled in her arms, starting to whimper, and the sullen youth slouched over to take the child from her, thank goodness.

  He opened his hands. “My greetings to you, Maestra. To have twins who bloom at the same time, and work together as these two do, is a rare thing.”

  The twins glanced at each other with shared surprise.

  “I told you he would divine your connection,” said Serena warmly, and they smiled at her as if they already trusted her. Belenus had talked about her wily ways, how she had turned the women of Twelve Horns House against him.

  “Such a gift is a rare thing,” agreed Kankou, “which is why, Magister, we will be taking Maestra Selva and her four children to become dependents of Autumn House.”

  Softhearted, impractical women!

  “It is not our usual arrangement,” he said, trying to figure out a way to disagree with Kankou without saying so outright, in front of others, which would cause him no end of trouble now and later once they returned to the house. “I too began life outside a mage House. I was discovered by a diviner from Autumn House, where I now reside. My people were given a generous compensation in exchange for my leaving home to join the House. I did not bring my family with me.”

  In a burst of Celtic emotion, the woman rushed out from behind the table to grasp his hands in a shockingly familiar manner. Hers had the thick calluses of a person who has worked at rough labor. “That is why I’m here. When the other diviners came to the clan’s gate this week they offered compensation to the head of the household for my children. But I won’t let them be handed away! They and their brothers are all I have left of my beloved husband.”

  She sobbed. The older son hunched his shoulders. The twins clasped hands, and the globe of cold fire brightened in a most astonishing way that made Titus forget about everything except the chance of watching such a rare conjoined magic grow and flourish.

  “Maestra Selva is a widow,” Kankou explained, and since Kankou was herself a widow, Titus felt there was nothing more that needed to be said.

  But of course people always had to say more, telling him stories he didn’t care to hear or droning on about the grief he must feel when he just wanted people to leave him alone.

  “My people are miners, the least of folk, hauling rocks out of the mines,” said Selva. Her speech had the untutored and unwashed accent of country people. “I fell in love with the young blacksmith who had been brought in to our local forge. My family washed their hands of me, saying I ought not to set my sights above my place in life. When my husband took me back to his clan, his people scorned me for my laborer’s hands and low birth. Of course blacksmith clans marry among themselves. I never asked to fall in love with him and aim so high. It just happened. My husband did not reject me despite their disapproval. He protected us when he was alive. But after the accident—”

  She touched the burn scar on her face. The twins stared at the floor. The sullen youth pressed a kiss to the head of the toddler with a gentle affection that tugged at Titus’s heart.

  “…after that, his family have treated us as little better than servants. Now they plan to enrich the household treasure with the compensation they will receive for children I gave birth to!”

  “It would be best for everyone if Maestra Selva and her children join Autumn House,” said Kankou in a tone he knew better than to argue with. “The twins will feel more comfortable if their mother is with them and they know she is safe.”

  “But—”

  “Her elder boy has great promise as a musician. He makes the djembe speak.”

  The sullen youth’s gaze flicked up, and his slumped back straightened to a performer’s swagger as Serena smiled encouragingly at him.

  Kankou went on. “Blacksmith clans have been handling nyama for longer than cold mages have existed, as we both know.”

  “Fire mages!” he said scornfully. “Quick to burn out, dangerous to all around them.”

  “And yet here a blacksmith and his country wife have sired two budding cold mages.”

  “Maestra Kankou and dear Serena have treated me as a sister and offered us a home,” said Selva. “Please do not cast me aside, Magister. My husband’s people tried to send me home, but my family doesn’t want me back and I can’t leave my children. They’re all I have.”

  So be it, Titus thought. Let the women sort out the strain of extra mouths to feed and bodies to clothe; that was their prerogative and responsibility in the House. It would be a triumph to bring home these twins and present them to the mansa, who had anyway an elder brother’s favoritism toward his younger sister Kankou, for they shared the same mother of blessed memory. />
  “It will be well,” he said. After a moment’s consideration he added a nod for Serena. “It was well done, Serena.”

  Serena flushed, pressing a hand to her chest as she swallowed and murmured, “You honor me, Magister. It is all due to your generously agreeing to teach me.”

  Kankou’s stern expression softened. “I will arrange for a second carriage to convey the family. Selva and her children will be staying with us in the inn tonight.”

  He only then noticed how shabbily Selva and her children were dressed, their clothes much mended and made of coarse wool rather than the fine damask one would expect of a prosperous blacksmith clan. The older boy wore the trousers and jacket of the working class rather than the proper robes that any respectable young fellow would wear when not at work. They didn’t even have a trunk for their possessions, only a single tattered bag and an old but well-cared-for drum. The toddler clutched a cloth doll missing one of its button eyes. Poor relations, indeed. No wonder the woman wanted to escape.

  “The only question, Titus,” Kankou went on, “is whether you wish to continue to travel for a few more days, seeing that Imbolc falls tomorrow.”

  The four cross quarter days were always the most fruitful time for magic to bloom in a person because the veil between the mortal world and the spirit world pulled thinnest on those days. Of course no mage rode abroad on Hallow’s Eve, the most dangerous time of year, but Titus and other diviners usually made their tours around Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasad. Too often he came home empty-handed: mages were rare, and even when he found one, richer Houses could offer better compensation.

  But not today.

  “I think we may all safely return together knowing we have done our best for Autumn House,” he said. And that was that.

  He arranged for a tray to be brought to his chamber so he could eat without encountering Belenus Cissé. But late that night he was woken by a hammering on his door. When he opened it, Cissé shouted drunken obscenities at him and punched him in the nose so hard that blood flowed. Only the prompt intervention of his manservant Orosios prevented the man from beating him with a stick. Cissé was escorted away, his curses ending in a predictable bout of loud vomiting and querulous whining.

  The horrified innkeeper arrived with fulsome apologies.

  The pain wasn’t so bad—Titus had suffered worse as a youth prone to fistfights—but he accepted a compress soaked in witch hazel and retired to gloat in his victory. His nose was bruised and swollen, but the ache gave him perspective. It reminded him that the mansa would be pleased, and he, Titus Kanté, would be feted and praised by the other men.

  * * *

  —

  So it was that the next day they once more approached the ferry across the Rhenus River. Their two carriages advanced along the main street through the town that had grown up around the ferry, with inns, food stalls, a wheelwright, and a tailor, and a forge set far enough away from the approach that passing cold mages would not quench its furnaces.

  The ferrymaster escorted them past the rest of the line to a place at the front where they waited for the ferry to return from the far shore. This time when Titus closed his eyes, he allowed himself to recall one particular twilight afternoon when he and his son had been playing chess in the fountain garden, tiny Cassia dozing on his lap and Fabia leaning on her older brother’s shoulder and singing some childish melody. The boy had gotten up to light a lamp at the far corner of the garden—too far away for Titus to quench it by proximity—but it wouldn’t light; the lad couldn’t make a flame. He had bloomed, just as Titus—and everyone else in Autumn House—had hoped.

  What a moment that had been. But it wasn’t the magic Titus recalled. It was the way his son had made a celebration of everything, however small or large, by including everyone around him.

  Bestirred by a melancholy wisdom, and mindful of Serena’s tactful praise of his teaching, he addressed Anwell and Bala. The young men were sitting on the facing bench wearing identical churlish frowns.

  “Patience is also a lesson. As it is said, the flowering tree will bear fruit.”

  The surly set of their lips suggested stubborn natures that did not want to learn. Maybe he wasn’t the right teacher for them. They might do better being married out to another mage House.

  “Perhaps there is something you wish to say to me,” he said, stricken by an inexplicable desire to hear their opinions. “We are the three of us men, alone in this carriage for the first time on this journey. You may speak freely.”

  They glanced at each other.

  At length, Bala muttered, “Magister, you favor her because of her beautiful face.”

  The accusation irritated him, but he kept his voice even. “Manners and modesty are a woman’s beauty. Furthermore, it is due to her vigilance that we found the twins, when the three of us would have gone on. Can you say otherwise?”

  “One deed doesn’t build a name,” murmured Anwell peevishly.

  Titus said nothing, sensing the two young men were about to break and spill. The silence stretched out, leavened by the sound of the river streaming past and the creak of wagons and cracks of laughter among people waiting for the ferry. He’d learned as a child that by holding his tongue he could remain impervious while others spoke. In this way he was able to enjoy his own thoughts as chatter flowed around him. But sometimes, as now, he was required to listen, however annoying the words were bound to be.

  “She’s proud,” Bala spat out. “You forget we sat in the schoolroom with her. She ignored us, thought she was too good for the likes of us, even though she had no magic. Everyone seems to forget she didn’t bloom until she went away to marry.”

  “Yes, and what happened there?” Anwell added. “The husband she discarded was certainly angry about it, as we saw. She was happy at first to marry into a better house than ours, wasn’t she? And then she was too good for him after her magic bloomed and so she came back to us instead, didn’t she? We’re just warning you, Magister. She’ll walk over your body to a higher branch if you’re not careful.”

  “She didn’t even get pregnant,” added Bala unkindly.

  Titus opened his mouth, although whether to remonstrate or agree he was not sure.

  A nearby shout startled him. The reverberation of the voice had scarcely died away when it was followed by a hammering on the side of their carriage that shook the entire vehicle.

  “Open up! Coachman, open this door!”

  The door was flung open from the outside to reveal Morcant. The coachman’s sun-reddened face was further flushed by a grimace of anxiety.

  “Magister—” he began, before being rudely shoved to one side by an armed man wearing a tabard marked with the oak tree of Venta Erkunos, the town they had so recently left.

  “I am a magister of Autumn House,” said Titus, staring down the armed man, who was after all merely a retainer who served a local prince. “Why do you trouble me with this disturbance?”

  The armed man stepped away to reveal a constable whose cap bore the oak sigil as well.

  The constable spoke. “I seek a woman named Selva, who has stolen four children who belong to the Camara clan of Venta Erkunos.”

  Camara was a common name for blacksmiths. This charge was so serious that Titus gestured to Morcant to set down the steps. He descended as into the face of a storm. For there, at a prudent remove, stood a pair of blacksmiths and a vigorous old woman whose hands bore the calluses of a master potter. The sting of their fire magic pressed against his reservoir of cold as a wash of barely contained heat.

  Titus had come from a family of respectable farmers for whom proper manners and public constraint was how one behaved. As a boy, he had both marveled at and been a little afraid of the flamboyant behavior of the local blacksmith, who made a performance of the work he did, singing as he worked or commenting upon the flight of birds. Everyone feared the des
tructive power of fire, but the young Titus had admired how the blacksmith wielded power without the least appearance of apprehension. Fire mages always lived a breath of control away from dying in flames. Maestra Selva’s dead husband and the burn scar on her face were proof of that.

  Of course people bored with waiting in line for the ferry had gathered to stare at the members of a blacksmith clan confronting a mage House’s carriage. But they all kept their distance.

  The presence of the constable meant no one exchanged a proper greeting. This was a matter of law, so it was the constable who spoke.

  “Four Moons House has already given compensation to the Camara clan for the reception of two children, identified as cold mages, into the household of Four Moons House. I have been called into service by three elders of the Camara clan, including the mother of the children’s father. Do you deny you have the children with you?”

  Titus prized his honesty, but a wily thought teased him now: what if he let them look inside his carriage and see only Anwell and Bala? What if they could get away with the twins by pretending the second carriage wasn’t theirs?

  He could not stomach the lie.

  He tried a different argument. “Has the children’s mother no say in this transaction? Was her permission obtained?”

  The elder blacksmith replied in the reasonable tone of a calm soul who prefers to work things out.

  “You ask the question the wrong way around, Magister. Our son’s children may not be stolen from his family without our permission. We did not give it. The woman has no legal status to act on behalf of underage children who are residents of my household. We negotiated with Four Moons House before you arrived.”

  A sudden wailing, like that of grief, broke out from the other carriage. Its door opened, and Kankou descended with her usual imperturbable dignity. The constable took a step back out of respect as she crossed to stand beside Titus. Even the blacksmiths acknowledged her arrival, as a worthy elder and distinguished woman.