The Magicians and Mrs. Quent (66 page)

It was absurd that she should listen to anything this strange character said. He belonged in Madstone’s far more than her father did. Except he had done magick—
was
doing it. She took a step toward him.

“Why must the door not be opened?”

“Because if it is opened,
they
will come through.”

“They? You mean the Order of the Silver Eye?”

Now the mask flowed into an expression of fury. “No, you’re not listening! I mean
they
will come. The Ashen.” He pointed up at the sky, just as the statue of the general pointed with his sword. The stone horse opened its mouth in a silent cry.

Ivy had no idea what these words meant. All the same, a chill came over her, and the day seemed to darken a shade. “The Ashen.” Her throat had gone dry. “Who are they?”

“They are ancient—older than the oldest history of this world. Older than speech itself. As old as the darkness between the stars, and as hungry.” Now the black mask was wrought not in anger but revulsion. “They first came long ago, in a time when your forebears still dwelled in caves and hovels of sticks, huddling close to their feeble fires, clad only in filthy skins. The Ashen would have enslaved them all. The entire history of this world—all the civilizations that have ever risen and fallen in the eons since then—would never have been. But the first magicians stood against them and closed the way, so that the Ashen could not enter and their hunger was denied.”

The damp air had gone cold. His words were like nothing Ivy had ever read in any of her father’s books; they hardly even made sense. All the same, there was something in them that rang true. She thought of how she felt sometimes when night fell, how the darkness seemed to press in from all around, as if wanting to consume all light, all life.

“Why now?” she asked. “Why did these…why did the Ashen not try to return long ago?”

“They could not. By the time they were ready to attempt to break the enchantments wrought by the magicians, the distance had grown too far for even them to bridge. But now…” Again he cast the mask skyward. “Now the distance shrinks every day. They cannot yet reach by themselves, but if the way was opened for them, then through—”

“Through the door the dark will come,”
Ivy murmured.

The mask turned toward her. “So you
are
listening. Good.”

She shivered. “But the magicians stopped them long ago. You said so yourself. They can do so again.”

“What magicians? In the last three hundred years, Altania has had but a single great magician, and he is long dead. Your father knew this. That is why he shut the door. That is why you must keep it shut.”

A despair came over her. “My father can’t help me now. He—”

“He has already helped you,” the stranger said.

Again she thought of the riddle.
The key will be revealed in turn—Unlock the way and you shall learn.
Only it made no sense. Wasn’t she supposed to keep the door shut, not unlock it?

“But I don’t know the answer!” she cried. “What is it?”

“What is the answer?” He cocked his head, and now the black mouth was curved into a smile. It seemed a mocking expression. “Why, you’ve already held the answer in the palm of your hand.”

She could only stare. It was no spell that had rendered her speechless this time, only astonishment.

He moved his onyx face close to hers. “They seek power, thinking they can use the Ashen for their own ends, but they are wrong. Instead, they will bring destruction upon all of Altania. You must enter the house before they do. It is the only hope.” He started to back away.

“Wait!” she cried. “Don’t go!”

“I have already placed you in too much danger. If they knew I had spoken to you, they would move even more swiftly.”

Before Ivy could say anything more, he turned with a flourish of his black cape and vanished behind the pedestal on which the statue stood. She looked up. The horse stood motionless; the general’s sword again pointed west.

Several pigeons flapped past her. A pair of men strolled through the square, talking. When at last she could move, she walked behind the statue. As she had expected, there was no sign of the masked man.

It didn’t matter. She knew what she had to do.
You’ve already held the answer in the palm of your hand….

Ivy hurried Uphill, and when she reached the house on Whitward Street she did not stop to speak to her cousin or her sisters but instead raced up the stairs to the attic. She went to the shelf where she had hidden it behind a book and took it out.

As always, the small box was curiously heavy in her hand. She ran a finger over the silver symbol inlaid on the lid: an eye inscribed in a triangle. Then she went to her father’s desk, sat, and took out pen and paper. She would write to Lord Rafferdy later, but first she had another letter to compose.

Dear Mr. Rafferdy,
she wrote.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I
T WAS A small but comfortable house in the eastern end of the Old City, just past the Citadel. Rafferdy wasn’t certain what he had expected—something more dilapidated, perhaps, with gargoyles leering from the eaves. And dimmer, with dusty windows that permitted the trespass of light only grudgingly, and suspicious heaps of books everywhere. Instead, the parlor the servant showed him into, while modest, was bright with sunlight and well-furnished.

True, along with a number of presumably scientific devices, there were many unusual objects of art within—Murghese ossuaries, jade figurines of pagan gods, and primitive idols carved of wood, which must have had their origins among the aboriginals of the New Lands. Still, these only lent the room a touch of the exotic and were things that might be found in the house of any well-traveled gentleman. None looked like the occult artifacts with which a magician might ply his craft.

Rafferdy sat in a chair, and when the servant left he drew out the small wooden box. He turned the box around in his hand, and the silver eye on the top seemed to wink as it caught the light. As when she gave it to him yesterday, he could not discern any sort of hinge or latch, but that something was contained inside he had no doubt. It was heavy in his hand.

He had been delighted at first when he received her note asking to meet with him. However, as he picked up his pen to reply, his spirits fell, and he considered declining the invitation. For what use was being around her? It was like looking at glorious sweets in a shop window but never getting to taste any of them. She was Mrs. Quent now; that could never be altered.

Only that notion was ridiculous. Once, in a kind of delirium brought on by feeling, he had thought to make her into Mrs. Rafferdy. However, that had been no more possible
then
than it was now—as his father had made clear.

All the same, he could not deny he had felt a pang when he saw her at the Silver Branch, and he had experienced a second, more severe spasm when he learned of her situation. Mrs. Quent. He could not unite the name with the picture of her in his mind. She seemed too fresh, too charming to bear such an austere and utilitarian appendage.

But there it was. She was married, and much as the notion bothered him, he knew he should rejoice in the fact. For it meant he could now be allowed to see her, to enjoy her company anytime they wished. Their association was no longer forbidden; indeed, it should even be encouraged now. He would take what portion of Mrs. Quent he could and would be grateful. He had written her a note, accepting her invitation, and had met her at Halworth Gardens yesterday afternoon, expecting a stroll in the sun and lively conversation.

Instead, she had asked him to work magick.

Again he studied the box, turning it in his hand. She did not say where she had obtained it or what she thought was inside, only that she had reason to believe it might contain something that could help her father and that she was certain it was bound shut by an enchantment.

I have no intention of doing magick,
he had wanted to tell her.
Even if I have a capacity for such power, it is nothing I wish to have anything to do with. The only magick I have ever done was the result of a parlor trick, and even if there was something real to it, I could not hope to repeat it on my own. Nor is there anything in the world that could induce me to go to him willingly to seek his help.

That is what he meant to say. Instead, he had said,
Give it to me, and I’ll see what I can do.

Such was the look of gratitude in her eyes that he could not bear it, and he made a jest that if she heard a loud noise and saw a large column of sparks rising up from the vicinity of Warwent Square, then it was only him attempting to work a spell.

This had won a laugh, and at the sound all his worries fled. They spent a pleasant hour walking in the garden, comparing the people they saw to flowers—shy Miss Primroses or grandiose Lord Peonies or old ladies in their bonnets, heads drooping like harebells. They parted with a promise to meet again soon, no matter the outcome of his experiment with the box.

He returned to his home and wrote a note. When the reply came back later that same day, he was hardly surprised at its contents. Rafferdy was welcome to call at his earliest convenience.

Footsteps echoed into the parlor. Rafferdy stood, tucking the box inside his coat. A moment later, Mr. Bennick entered the room, and the two men shook hands. As always, Mr. Bennick was dressed in black; the color emphasized the sharp lines of his face and the shadows around his eyes.

“I imagine you were surprised to get my letter,” Rafferdy said.

“Not in the least,” Mr. Bennick replied. “I knew it was only a matter of time until you came to visit with me.”

Rafferdy was taken aback by the cool surety with which these words were uttered. “Indeed? Then I must presume you possess an enchanted mirror that shows you the future. In which case, I would very much like to see how I should bet at cards tonight.”

“Magick cannot reveal things that have not come to pass—though there are some who hold it can open windows to the past. It was not a spell that told me you would come. It was that.” He gestured toward Rafferdy’s right hand.

“The ring, you mean?” Rafferdy said.

The taller man nodded. “I knew eventually you must come either wanting to know how to get it off or wanting to know why you were able to put it on in the first place. I confess, it was the latter result that I hoped for when I sent it to you. Would you care for a sherry?” He moved to a cabinet and took out a decanter.

Rafferdy’s outrage was redoubled, and so agitated was he that it took him a moment to find his voice. “So you admit it, then! You admit you sent me this wretched thing.” He clenched his right hand into a fist. The gem on the ring winked like a blue eye.

“Of course I sent it to you,” Mr. Bennick said as he filled a pair of glasses. “A fact I was certain you’d quickly deduce. Didn’t you?”

Rafferdy stepped toward him. “Yes, I did. But why? Was it a punishment for that day I followed you? I was curious, that was all. It was a silly game, nothing more.”

“It was not my intention to punish your curiosity, Mr. Rafferdy, but rather to reward it.”

“Reward it? With a hideous piece of jewelry I can never remove in my life? You have a strange notion of a reward!”

“It can be removed,” Mr. Bennick said, and handed him a glass.

Rafferdy could only stare as the other man sat in a chair by the window. He motioned to the chair opposite him. Rafferdy drew in a breath, quaffed half his sherry in one swallow, then sat.

“What did Mr. Mundy tell you about the ring?”

“That a magician could remove it only with powerful enchantments, spells that would likely cost the magician—” Rafferdy drew in a breath. “Cost him his mind or his life.”

Mr. Bennick smiled, but it was an unwholesome expression to Rafferdy’s eye, like the leer of a salacious faun in some ancient Tharosian comedy.

“That sounds like our good Mr. Mundy.”

“So it’s not true, then?”

“On the contrary, it’s perfectly true. That is, it is true that a
magician
cannot remove a House ring without grave peril. But one who is not a magician—such a person can remove it easily.”

“That makes no sense,” Rafferdy said, exasperated by this talk. “If one isn’t a magician, how can one put it on in the first place? Besides, I’m not a magician. I can’t do magick.”

“But you have done magick, as you well know. Even if you had not, you would still be a magician, Mr. Rafferdy, for you were born one.” Mr. Bennick took a sip of his sherry. “You were a small child when I first met you at Lord and Lady Marsdel’s—four or five years old, no more. All the same, I thought I saw a glimmer of it in you, so I researched the Rafferdy lineage and discovered I was right. You are directly descended from one of the seven Old Houses—the House of Gauldren, to be exact.”

None of this was truly new to Rafferdy, yet it disturbed him all the same. “Then that means my father is a magician as well. Why didn’t you give him a ring?”

“Because he would not be able to wear it. All magicians are descended from one of the Old Houses, Mr. Rafferdy, but not all who can claim such ancestry are born magicians. Only in a few does the Old Blood run true.”

Rafferdy slouched in his chair. “Lucky me.”

“Some would say you are lucky, but that is for you to decide.”

“What if I decide to remove the ring?”

“That is your decision as well.”

Rafferdy sat up. “How can it be done? You said it yourself—a magician can’t take it off without grave risk.”

“It’s simple,” Mr. Bennick said. “You must make it so you are no longer a magician.”

This was absurd. He was being toyed with. “You said I was born one. How can I make myself into something I’m not?”

Mr. Bennick’s dark gaze went to the window. “There are spells,” he said at length. “Spells that, if performed carefully and worked by enough magicians acting in concert, can forever extinguish the spark of magickal talent within a man. He can remember what it is like to do magick, how it feels, can even speak the incantations and draw the runes of power, but the ancient words are ash on his tongue, the runes dead pebbles in his hands. Once the spell has been worked upon him, he is a magician no longer. Nor, once it has been done, can it ever be reversed. He is cut off from magick forever.” Mr. Bennick turned his gaze back. “Is that what you want, Mr. Rafferdy?”

Rafferdy licked his lips. It made no sense; he had no desire to be a magician. All the same, Mr. Bennick’s words had set his stomach to churning, and a clammy sweat had broken out on his brow. It was as if someone had asked him to consider severing one of his limbs with a knife. He found himself looking at the hand with which Mr. Bennick held his glass. It was the right hand and was unadorned by any ring. But everyone said he had been a magician once….

Mr. Bennick set down his glass and stood. “So which is it, Mr. Rafferdy? I wonder which reason has brought you here today. Do you wish to have the ring removed, or do you wish to know what it means to wear it?”

Rafferdy looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Either way, why are you so keen to help me?”

“It is as I said that night at Lady Marsdel’s house, Mr. Rafferdy—already the clouds gather on the horizon. A time will come again, perhaps sooner than we think, when Altania has need of great magicians.”

“You think I can be one?”

“That is entirely up to you, Mr. Rafferdy.”

Rafferdy glanced out the window. Above the rooftops, the sky was a flawless blue. However, he saw a boy on a corner hawking broadsheets, and he knew Mr. Bennick was right. Clouds were gathering—clouds of ink, and paper that crackled like lightning. But it was only a storm of words that brewed. Besides, it was not for Altania’s sake he had come here, but for the sake of one person only. He drained his sherry glass and stood.

“I want to know more about magick,” he said. “I want to learn more about the opening and closing of things.”

For a long moment Mr. Bennick regarded him, eyes half hooded. At last he nodded. “Then let us begin.”