The Mislaid Magician (15 page)

(Enchanted by my own hand, T.S.)

Dear James and Cecelia,

I’ll be brief, for I do not wish to delay Kate’s letter. I add a line merely to ask a question. I address this letter to you both in the hope that if you cannot read my handwriting, James, Cecy (inured as she is to her father’s penmanship) can decipher it.

Given your late experiences at Haliwar Tower, you may have made observations not included in your correspondence. How does a compass behave in the vicinity? Any marked differences between the way it behaves inside the tower itself? Did you smell anything (other than smoke) during the incident? What was the weather like? Did you note any change in wind direction? Any alteration in the appearance of the river itself? A change in flow or the color and turbidity of the water?

That seems to be more than a single question. I apologize and speed this missive on its way.

Thomas

Dearest Kate,

The only thing more tiresome than Georgy’s usual self-centeredness is Georgy in a penitent mood. You were quite right to warn me; her letter of apology ran to five pages, two of which were so tearstained as to be unreadable. Most unfortunately, the sections in verse were not among the illegible bits. (I wish I knew where she got the notion that sentiments expressed in poetry are somehow more sincere than sentiments said plainly or briefly.)

Forgive me if I sound unfeeling. I would be kinder, were I less certain that Georgy is greatly enjoying her orgy of remorse, and delighting in such an excellent excuse to wallow in overblown prose. What else can one make of comparing herself to a “faded blossom, trampled by the feet of guilt, awaiting the restoring rain of forgiveness”? It is just the sort of playacting she has always enjoyed. I have not dared to show the letter to James. I do not think he would be at all patient with it. (Please thank Thomas for franking it for her; it would have been the outside of enough to have had to pay the shillings for the extra sheets, especially the illegible ones.) I shall convey appropriately sympathetic reassurances to her under separate cover as soon as I have leisure to do so.

For a great deal has been happening here. We have—no, I must tell it in order, or I will surely leave out something important.

Two days after our removal from Haliwar, James and I rode over (ostensibly to see how they were going on). Mr. Webb had departed on his business trip, as scheduled, so only his sister was in residence, and she has been forced to move to a bedchamber in one of the wings. The central tower is presently an uncomfortable place to inhabit, though I think it will not take above a week to return the interior to order, provided they have no difficulty in replacing so many windows all at once.

Before we came within sight of the tower, James and I paused behind a little rise so that I could do the spells that allow one to sense ley lines. I wanted to see if that magical eruption had any lingering effects on that ley line I mentioned earlier. And
something
had affected it, Kate, for when we passed it on the way into Haliwar, the ley line did not feel as strong as it had the first time I detected it.

As we passed through the gates onto the grounds immediately around Haliwar, I got another surprise. The entire area was awash in magic—not strongly, only a little tingle, like the feel of a storm coming on or the hint of scent that lingers after Georgy leaves a room. It was very disturbing. Unfortunately, I could not tell anything more without making some actual tests, which I was unable to do because the place was full of workmen.

We did not stay long; there really was no point. Adella was quite useless as a source of information. All she could do was wring her hands and wish that her brother were there. She did make a halfhearted attempt to persuade us to return, but I think she must have done so only because her brother extracted some promise from her before he left, for it was plain that she was hoping we would decline. Her relief when we did was palpable.

We had a pleasant ride back to Stockton, and the following morning, James left early to ride to Goosepool, in search of the farmhouse that was missing a foreign visitor. He returned late in the day, jubilant. After three false starts, he had found the very place, and while the farmer’s wife had been disinclined to talk much of the incident, he thought she might be more forthcoming with another female. So he had told her that we might wish to rent the room on behalf of some mythical person but that I would have to look it over first, then made arrangements for us to ride out again at some convenient time in the next day or two.

The weather prohibited so long a ride on Thursday, but Friday—yesterday—we went. Even on a hired hack, the ride was enjoyable. The woman was waiting, and showed us to a small room at the back of the house. James took himself off almost immediately, leaving me to attempt to draw my hostess into conversation.

It was considerably more difficult than you might think. At first, she limited herself strictly to remarks about the room, while I looked over the meager furnishings—a plain bed with a chest at the foot. I said things like, “You must have had many lodgers,” and, “Will there be any difficulty getting to Darlington from here?” and she replied, “Happen I have,” or, “Happen there may.”

I was about to give up and rejoin James, when there came a rumbling and a noise resembling all of the horses at the Derby thundering past at once. At first, I thought it was another magical eruption, but it was plain that my hostess heard it, too. “Good heavens,” I said when the noise at last began to fade, “what was that?”

My hostess gestured at the window and said something about “tha great noisy smelly gowk” that I did not at first comprehend. When I looked out of the window, however, I saw a string of coal wagons barely a quarter mile distant, disappearing in the direction of Stockton. “Oh, the
railway,”
I said. “I had no notion you were so close to the line.”

That was enough to set her off. The railway was, evidently, a sore point with her, as it cut up the grazing land and frightened the sheep. She was especially cross because the builders had revised the planned route of the railway just before it was actually built. The new route moved the rails some way north of the original plan, and had the surveyors changed just a few more miles of railway, the “great noisy smelly” trains would have passed well north of the house. The revisions, however, end just before Goosepool; from Goosepool east to Stockton, the railway follows the trail mapped out by the original surveyors.

“Dear me,” I said when she ran down at last. “That is most unfortunate. Did the noise much disturb your last tenant?”

“Oh, aye; every time the wagons passed, he ran out to scowl at them,” the woman said. “That’s when he wasn’t off mucking with the circle.”

“Circle?”

“Aye. The Dancing Weans, they’re called. Nine great rocks in a circle, as old as old. Haunted, they are. He should no have been mucking about there.”

“Very likely,” I said. “Where is this stone circle?”

She looked at me suspiciously.

“My father is an antiquarian,” I said with perfect truth. “He is interested in such things. If it is not too far, I thought my husband and I might ride past it so I could send Papa a description.”

She sniffed, but obliged with the directions—half a mile east, atop a small hill overlooking the railway line. We then chatted amicably about the idiosyncrasies of male persons, which led with very little prompting to my obtaining the whole story of her missing tenant, such as it was.

Herr Magus Schellen—for it was indeed he who had rented the room—stayed only for three days before his disappearance. On the first day, he walked the railway line toward Darlington. On the second, he walked toward Stockton, and returned in a state of high excitement (or so I infer) to ask a great many questions about the Dancing Weans. On the third day, he took a large bag to the stone circle with him and stayed most of the day. On the fourth morning, he left for the circle, carrying his bag as before, and was not seen again. The bag vanished also, and that night, all of his belongings disappeared from the room.

“T’ neighbor says ’twas a haunt took him,” my informant said with another sniff. “And there’s no sayin’ it wasn’t, the way he was on about the Dancing Weans, and all. But I say, whoever heard of a haunt coming back for a man’s pipe and smallclothes?”

“It does seem unlikely,” I agreed. James returned at that point, and the woman immediately returned to her initial reticence. As it was plain we would learn no more, we took our leave.

As we mounted our horses, I told James of the stone circle and my intention of investigating on the return ride. He was reluctant at first but soon saw the wisdom of making a casual-seeming stop on our way back to Stockton, rather than making a special trip out to look at it later.

So we turned our horses toward the railway line, so as to get within sight of it and then ride parallel to it until we saw the stone circle. (It is surprisingly easy to miss seeing a railway line that is running through a series of flatish country fields, if there is no train passing at the moment. Where there are cuts through the hills, or where the land has been raised to level the line, it is much easier.) As we rode, I told James what I had learned.

“Interesting,” James said when I finished. “I wonder why the railway route was changed … and who selected the new path.”

“Perhaps you should ask Lord Wellington,” I said.

“I don’t think Wellington knows anything about it,” James replied. “The original plans had to be approved by Parliament, but once that was done, the corporation wouldn’t have had to inform them of anything but really major changes.”

“Somebody
must have known,” I said. “Besides all the local people, I mean.”

“Yes.” James looked very thoughtful. “Perhaps I should visit Darlington tomorrow and see what I can learn at the corporation offices.”

“I think—” I broke off. We were almost to the railway line, and I felt an unmistakable tingling. “James! The railway feels like that ley line—the one near Haliwar Tower.”

“What?” James reined in his horse, and I was forced to follow his example. “How can you tell? You haven’t done the sensing spells. Have you?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “But I can feel it nonetheless. It isn’t as clear as the line by Haliwar, but if I can sense it even without the ley spell, this ley line must be
far
stronger.”

“You didn’t sense it before, when we rode the train,” James said skeptically.

“No, but I hadn’t done
any
ley-line-sensing spells then,” I pointed out. “I’ve done them twice since then. Possibly there’s still a lingering bit of magical residue, or that burst of magic at Haliwar may have made me more sensible of the presence of ley lines.”

“Or perhaps being aboard the train interfered with your ability to sense them at all,” James suggested.

“Yes!” I said. “Remember the way the locomotive made the ley line bend? The train pushed it out of the way, or tried to—and then it snapped back. We were in the wagons well behind the engine, so we wouldn’t have felt anything, except perhaps when the ley line jumped back into place, and that would only have been for an instant when it passed by.”

“I wouldn’t have felt anything, regardless,” James said without rancor. “But don’t get carried off by your theories. We don’t actually
know
which of them is correct.”

We rode toward Stockton in silence for a few minutes. “The ley line along the railway is fading,” I said after a time.

“Ley lines don’t change intensity as fast as that,” James said.

“This one seems to be,” I said. “Unless it’s my sensitivity that’s fading, but I don’t think it is.”

“Look! There are the Dancing Weans,” James said.

We cantered forward to a low stone wall at the foot of the hill, then rode along it until we came to a gate. A man, a boy, and two sheepdogs were collecting a large flock of sheep from the slopes on the other side; the boy broke off work long enough to open the gate for us, and James rewarded him with a shilling. The horses picked their way along the sheep trails until we were almost at the top of the hill, where we dismounted. I handed my reins to James, then started for the stone circle a few yards away.

I got barely three steps. James shouted; there was a brown-and-white flash and one of the sheepdogs stood in front of me, blocking my way. I tried to go around him, but he blocked me again. And again. He didn’t growl or bark, just made sure that there was no way I could get any closer to the circle.

The shepherd came puffing up at last. “Sorry, mum,” he said. “He’s a good dog, for all he’s new. Never acted like this afore. Down, you!”

The last was said to the dog, who looked at him but did not obey. The shepherd made a grab for him, but the dog dodged. I took the opportunity to step forward, and instantly the dog was there again, this time gently but insistently shoving me away from the circle.

I felt a shiver of magic. Frowning, I stripped off one of my riding gloves and held out my hand for the dog to sniff. He licked my hand and whined, and as he did I sensed the magic much more clearly.

It was an enchantment, quite a strong one—wizard-grade, in fact (I have felt enough of Thomas’s spells to know the difference in quality, compared to the sort of thing a mere magician can cast). The dog whined again, and something made me say, in a low voice, “Herr Magus Schellen?”

The dog burst into a fury of barking. The shepherd burst into a flurry of apologies, while attempting again to catch the dog. The dog avoided him easily, keeping a wary eye on me.

“Excuse me, Mr. …?” I said to the shepherd.

“Williams,” the shepherd said.

“Mr. Williams, how long have you had this dog?”

“He’s never done anything like this, mum, I swear. I don’t know what has got into him.”

“Yes, you said that before,” I told him. “But how long have you had him?”

“He turned up late last autumn,” Mr. Williams replied. “I disremember the date.”