Lost (2 page)

To the Magisters,

Magisters Hall, Wellmet.

Because you are clearly unwilling—or unable—to understand what happened when Dusk House was destroyed, I will explain it to you yet again. The explosion at Dusk House was not—I repeat, not—a pyrotechnic experiment gone awry. Pyrotechnics had nothing to do with it. Underlord Crowe and the wizard Pettivox, who betrayed us all, built a device—a massive capacitor created, using large amounts of slowsilver, to attract and then imprison the city’s magic. The reason, magisters, you have found no evidence of the existence of this device is because it was completely destroyed in the explosion, which also destroyed Dusk House and killed Pettivox.

My apprentice and I have speculated on
the reasons why Crowe attempted this magic thievery. Perhaps it was a move to seize control of the city; perhaps he had plans to weaken our magic for some other purpose. We know that they succeeded in almost depleting the entire city’s magic. As you know, Crowe admitted nothing, and has been sent into exile; his reasons, therefore, would seem to be lost to us.

On to magical issues. My fellow magisters, you have made it absolutely clear that you cannot believe my apprentice’s theories about the magic of Wellmet. I repeat them to you now: The magic is not a thing to be used, but a living, sentient being which—or perhaps I should say who—serves as a protector of the city of Wellmet. The spells we use to invoke magic are, in fact, the language of this magical being. Our locus magicalicus stones, my fellow magisters, enable us to communicate with the being. Much research remains to be done on the being’s actual nature, to discover why it is here in the city, whether other cities are inhabited by similar beings, and to determine what the
magic intends for us, the humans who live here.

Whether you believe this theory or not is of no consequence. Do note, however, that as a result of Conn’s actions, the city and its magic have been saved from almost certain disaster. The magical levels of Wellmet have stabilized, though I am concerned that the levels remain lower than they were before. Yet despite the fact that Conn sacrificed his locus magicalicus to save the city, you argue that because he no longer has a locus magicalicus he should no longer be considered my apprentice. That is for me to decide, not you.

It is said that only a fool stands in the way of a new idea; I trust, magisters, that there are no fools among you.

Yours sincerely,
NEVERY FLINGLAS
Magister
Heartsease, Wellmet

I
blinked the brights out of my eyes. The floor of my workroom was covered with shattered glass and torn book pages. The table lay with its four legs in the air like a dead bug. Smoke and dust swirled around in the corners.
A scrap of charred paper floated to the floor next to me. I squinted at it. A page from Prattshaw’s book, the part about contrafusive effects.

The pyrotechnics had worked. The magic had spoken to me again—
without
a locus stone. But what had it said?

Step step tap
. I heard the sound of Nevery hurrying up the stairs. He threw open the door. “Curse it, boy!” he shouted. “What are you up to?”

I coughed, brushed slivers of glass out of my hair, and got to my feet. “Just some pyrotechnics,” I said. I looked down at my apprentice’s robe. It had a few more scorch marks on it than before.

Nevery scowled. “A pyrotechnic experiment. I thought you had more sense.” He lowered his bushy eyebrows. “And where did you come up with the slowsilver, hmmm?”

I shrugged.

More footsteps, and Benet, Nevery’s bodyguard-housekeeper, loomed up behind Nevery in the
doorway. His knitted red waistcoat and shirt were dusted with flour, and he had a smudge of flour on his fist-flattened nose; he’d been kneading dough. “He all right?” he asked.

“Yes, I am,” I said. “Nevery, the magic spoke to me.”

Nevery opened his mouth to shout at me some more, and then closed it. “Spoke to you? A pyrotechnic effect, then. You were right. Interesting. What did it say?”

“It sounded—” I shook my head. Had the magic sounded
frightened
? But of what? “D’you know this spell?” I recited the spellwords the magic had said to me: “
Damrodellodesseldeshellarhionvarliardenliesh
.”

“No, boy. I’ve never heard those spellwords before,” Nevery said. “Hmmm. Say them again.”

I did, more slowly this time.

He pulled on the end of his beard, frowning, but not at me. “Something—,” he muttered.

“Dinner’s ready,” Benet said, and turned to head down the stairs.

“Well, boy,” Nevery said. “Come along.”

We went out and started across the courtyard that lay before Heartsease, Nevery’s cane going
tap tap
on the cobblestones.

Heartsease glimmered in the last bits of daylight. It was a wide mansion house built of sand-colored, soot-stained stone. Most of the house had been missing for a long time, as if someone had taken a huge boulder and smashed a hole through its middle. Blocks of stone and columns and tangled ivy and rosebushes spilled out of the hole, and the roof gaped open to the sky. At one end of the house left standing was my workroom. Nevery’s part of the house, along with the kitchen and storage room, Benet’s room, and my attic room, was at the other end.

“Nevery,” I asked, “how did Heartsease get the big hole in the middle of it?”

Nevery gave me one of his keen-gleam looks. “Quite a point on that question, boy.”

I nodded.

He paused and leaned on his cane. “Listen, lad.
I have experimented with pyrotechnics myself, yes. But be warned. My experiments led to twenty years of exile from Wellmet. This sort of thing”—he pointed with his cane toward my workroom—“will get you into trouble if you’re not careful.” He spun around and swept-stepped away, across the courtyard.

Exile. I didn’t want to risk that. But my locus magicalicus had been blown into sparkling dust. That’d left me with no way to talk to the magic, even though I could feel it all the time, looking out for me as it always had.

I didn’t have any choice about it; I had to do pyrotechnics, at least until I found a new locus stone.

I started after Nevery and then, from the corner of my eye, caught a glimpse of a black flutter. The big tree in the middle of the courtyard had been empty of black birds ever since last winter, when Nevery and I had destroyed the Underlord’s prisoning device and freed the magic. But now something was different. Up in
the tree, in the highest branch, perched a single black shadow, looking down at me with a glinting yellow eye.

“Hello up there,” I called.

The bird shifted on its branch.
Grawk
, it muttered, and looked away.

Just one bird. Had the magic called it back to keep an eye on things? Had it come because of the explosion? Would the rest of the birds come back, too?

Nevery stood in the arched doorway that we used to get into the house. “Come along, boy!” he called.

“Look, Nevery,” I called back, pointing at the high branch.

Nevery step-tapped back across the courtyard cobbles. “What is it?” he said, peering upward.

The night had come on; the black bird was invisible in the darkness. Never mind.

“Hmph,” Nevery said. “Come along.”

He crossed the courtyard and led the way
inside and up the narrow staircase to the kitchen, where Benet had set the table for supper. I sniffed the air, hoping for biscuits and bacon. Fish and—I glanced at the table—stewed greens, pickles, and bread. Mmm. I took off my gray apprentice’s robe, hung it on its hook beside the door, and joined Nevery at the table.

Benet thunked a jar onto the tabletop. “Jam,” he said, then went back to the stove, where he fetched a pan, then scooped a steaming, bony fish onto each of our plates. After clattering the pan back onto the stovetop, he sat down and we started eating.

“You going to do that again?” Benet asked me. He pointed with his chin in the direction of my workroom.

I nodded and picked a bone out of my fish. I could feel Nevery glaring at me. All of a sudden I didn’t feel quite so hungry.

Nevery scowled and took a long drink from his mug of ale. “No, he is not.” He pointed at me with
his fork. “If the magisters find out that you are conducting pyrotechnic experiments, my lad, they will throw you out of the city so fast your head will spin. They have other concerns at the moment, other problems to deal with than one recalcitrant apprentice.”

Right, then I would have to be more careful, that was all.

Staying quiet, I pushed stewed greens around my plate with my fork. I thought about the spellword the magic had said to me.
Damrodellodesseldeshellarhionvarliardenliesh
. A warning, maybe. But a warning of what? I needed to learn the magic’s language. I’d have to look for the spellword in the academicos’s collection of grimoires. Or maybe parts of the spellword.

Damrodell…

Odesseldesh…

Ellarhion…

Varliarden…

Liesh.

I took a bite of bread and jam and washed it down with a gulp of water. Lady came curling around my feet under the table and I reached down and fed her a few bits of fish.

When we finished dinner, Benet said, “Water,” so I carried the bucket out to the well in the courtyard and came back, and then helped him clean the plates. Nevery’d gone up to his study. I took an apple and climbed the wide, curving staircase to the next floor. I knew Nevery. Sure as sure, he’d want to shout at me some more about the pyrotechnics.

He was at the table writing a letter. The room was cozy in the pinkish glow of werelights set in sconces on the walls. The ceilings were high and had bits of frothy plaster in the corners; the walls were covered with faded flowery paper. On the floor was a faded, dusty carpet, and the table in the middle of the room was covered with books and papers.

“Nevery?” I said.

“Just a moment,” he said, not looking up.

I took a bite of the apple and went over to one of the tall windows. It looked out toward the Twilight, the part of the city I’d grown up in. The sky over the Twilight was purple, fading above to black. Only a few lights shone from the dark buildings stacked along the twisted, steep streets. Behind me, Nevery turned the page over and kept writing, the metal nib of his pen going
scritch-scritch
against the paper.

I finished the good part of the apple, then ate the core and flicked the stem out the open window.

Nevery set down his pen and held up the paper to let the ink dry. “You’ve been out of school since the Underlord business last winter.”

I had. Because I didn’t have a locus stone, the magisters wouldn’t let me take apprentice classes at the academicos anymore.

Nevery looked at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “You need something to do to keep you out of trouble, boy. I’m asking Brumbee to
readmit you to the academicos for apprentice classes.” He folded the letter he’d been writing, pulled out his black and shiny locus magicalicus, and muttered a spell, sealing the letter. “If they’ll have you. Brumbee fears you are a bad influence on the other students.” He held the letter out to me. “I expect you
are
a bad influence on the other students. You’ve got your keystone?”

The stone to open the magic-locked tunnel gates between the wizards’ islands, he meant. I nodded.

“Good. Take this to Brumbee. Don’t talk to anyone else. And wait for an answer.”

Brumbee was in the magisters’ meeting room, sitting at the long table with his locus magicalicus set in a dish for light, and papers and open books spread all around him. He was writing in another book.

I stood in the doorway, waiting for him to notice me. I’d been in the magisters’ meeting room before. Once to spy on them, disguised as a cat; once when they accepted me as Nevery’s apprentice and gave
me thirty days to find my locus stone; and once after we’d destroyed Dusk House and the terrible device Crowe and Pettivox had built to imprison the city’s magic. That time, they’d argued about what had really happened in Crowe’s underground workroom and they’d scolded me for losing my locus magicalicus. They didn’t seem to understand that destroying the device had made the city’s magic work again like they thought it was supposed to, though weaker than before, Nevery said. He measured the magical levels every day with the gauge he had built, and the levels stayed low. We were worried about that, thinking maybe Crowe’s device had hurt the magic somehow.

Then I’d told the magisters that the magic was a living being that protected the city. It had been like a pyrotechnic experiment. Take a room full of old croakety-croak magisters, add a new idea, and it was just like combining slowsilver and tourmalifine. They exploded, saying I was an ignorant gutterboy who didn’t know any better.

“I do know better,” I’d told them. “The magic talked to me. It’s always protected me, and it protects the city. It’s not just a thing to be used, and it needs our help.”

They didn’t like that, either. They shouted and shrieked and said I couldn’t be an apprentice anymore.

“You’re being stupid!” I’d shouted.

Nevery’d sent me out, and I’d stood outside the door shaking and angry, feeling my missing locus magicalicus like a hole in the middle of me, listening to Nevery shouting and Brumbee’s worried voice and other sharp voices arguing.

“What is it, Conn?” Brumbee said, looking up from his book and setting down his pen.

I went in and handed him the letter from Nevery.

He spelled it open and read it, shaking his head. “Oh, dear,” he muttered. He waved his hand at me, still looking at the letter. “You may sit down while I write a reply.”