Wrede, Patricia C - Mairelon 02 (12 page)

           
"They
read Catullus if they read anything," Mairelon said. "He's too
salacious to be so easily forgotten."

           
"Virgil,
then," Lady Wendall said impatiently. "The point is that anyone who
attended
Oxford
or
Cambridge
has learned at least a little magic."

           
"I
should rather say they have been exposed to a little magic," Mrs. Lowe
said austerely.
"Whether they have learned any of it is
another matter."

           
"Ladies
are not
so
universally educated in magic as gentlemen
are," Lady Wendall went on. "And such a display of vindictiveness as
this--"

           
"What
display of vindictiveness?" Mairelon said with a puzzled frown.

           
Lady
Wendall gestured eloquently. Mairelon looked around as if seeing the chaos for
the first time, and his puzzled expression vanished.
"Oh,
the mess.
That's all just a side effect, really."

           
"A side effect?"
Mrs. Lowe said indignantly.
"Next I suppose you'll tell me that this object wasn't attacking me!"

           
"It
wasn't," Mairelon said. "It was simply trying to get somewhere in as
straight a line as possible. If this house were on the east side of the square
instead of the west, the book would have smashed through a window in one or two
tries and been gone."

           
"East?"
Lady Wendall looked at the wall of
bookcases. "Yes, I see. What a pity; practically all of
London
is east of us. If it had been heading south or north, we could have eliminated
a great many more possibilities."

           
"If
that book was just trying to get somewhere, why
didn't
it just smash a
window and go?" Kim asked.

           
"That's
one of the things that
makes
me think we're dealing
with a self-taught wizard," Mairelon said. "The way that spell was
cobbled together was so thoroughly inefficient that he didn't have room for an
additional element, and so unstable that my analytical spell unbalanced it
completely. What he left out were the comprehensive directional controls and
the visual component. He could make a bit of change up and down and side to
side, but he couldn't adjust the primary axis of movement at all, and he had no
way of knowing which way he ought to send it. He's
either
very
stupid, very careless, very ignorant, or very close; even if he'd
gotten the book out of the house, it couldn't have gone far without running
into something else."

           
"Do
you mean to say the person responsible for this outrage may be standing in the
street outside at this very moment?" Mrs. Lowe demanded.

           
"Possibly,"
Mairelon said. "I thought he might be, even before I came into the
library, because of the power level. So I sent Hunch to look. He should
be--"

           
Someone
knocked at the library door. "That will be him now," Mairelon said.
"Come in, Hunch."

           
The door
opened and Mairelon's manservant entered, wearing an expression even more dour
than usual. He nodded respectfully at Lady Wendall and said to Mairelon,
"There weren't
nobody
around but a couple of
toughs in back. They ran off when they saw me."

           
"Possibly
a coincidence," Mairelon said. "Or possibly they were hired to catch
Madame de Cambriol's book when it flew out a window, and then bring it to our
mysterious spellcaster. That would have gotten around the problem of flying the
thing through the
London
streets."

           
"I
ought to 'ave stopped them," Hunch said, chagrined.

           
"I
told you to look for a spellcaster," Mairelon said. "I didn't
realize, at the time, that there might be other possibilities."

           
"I
still ought to 'ave stopped them," Hunch said stubbornly.

           
The thing
that had been niggling at the back of Kim's brain suddenly came clear. "Ma
Yanger!" she said before she thought to stop herself.

           
Everyone
looked at her. "She's a witcher that lives up on Ratchiffe Row by the Charterhouse."

           
Mairelon's
eyebrows rose. "And you think she's involved in this?"

           
"I
might have guessed it would be something like that," Mrs. Lowe said,
giving Kim a dark look.

           
Kim shook
her head.
"Not exactly.
She used to do
spells
for people, though, and I think she put them together
out of bits and pieces, like you said this one was. Tom Correy told me she's
given up witching people, but she's got to do
something
to eat. Maybe
she sold the idea to somebody, or sold them part of the spell they used."

           
"An
interesting idea," Mairelon said. "We'll pursue it tomorrow. In the
meantime, Mother, you and I should get to work on that warding spell. Kim,
you'll watch; you're not quite ready for a long-term spellworking yet, but
watching one will give you some idea what's ahead of you."

           
"I'll
leave you, then," Mrs. Lowe said. "Kindly let me know when it will be
convenient to have the servants come and clean up."

           
"I
will see to that," Lady Wendall said. Mrs. Lowe nodded and left.

           
As the
door closed behind her, Mairelon let out a long breath. "Good. Now, Kim, I
take it you wish to visit this witch friend of yours tomorrow?"

           
"It's
a place to start," Kim replied with a wary look at Lady Wendall.

           
"When,
exactly, were you thinking of going?" Lady Wendall asked. "There's a
new bonnetmaker I wished to investigate, and we are engaged for dinner with the
Black burns."

           
"It'll
have to be after dark," Kim said, resigning herself to the bonnetmaker.
"I won't pass for a boy in daylight."

           
"I'll
make your excuses to Lady Blackburn, then," Lady Wendall said.

           
"Mine
as well, Mother," Mairelon said, and looked at Kim. "The same
procedure as last time, I think?
Hunch and I waiting in the
carriage."

           
Kim was
too surprised by the ease with which everything had been arranged to do more
than nod.

           
Lady
Wendall looked thoughtful,
then
smiled. "I shall
tell Lady Blackburn that you have both been called away on some magical
project. It will raise your stock with her considerably; she's terribly
intrigued by wizards, though she's not in the least magically inclined herself.
And it has the additional merit of being entirely true."

           
"That's
settled then." Mairelon tucked the battered little book absently into his
jacket pocket.
"Now for the general warding spell.
We'll need four candles, Kim, as closely matched in size and shape as you can
manage. Hunch, will you fetch the largest lump of coal you can find from the
kitchen? Mother, would you like to be the Respondent or shall I?"

           
Hunch
nodded and left, Kim began hunting through the candlebox, and Lady Wendall
moved to Mairelon's side to discuss their respective parts in the upcoming
spell.

           
For the
second time in less than a fortnight, Kim slipped through the dark
London
streets in her boy's clothes. She was considerably more nervous, though she did
not have as far to go--Ma Yanger's rooms were only a block and a half down
Ratchiffe Row from
Bath Street
,
where Mairelon and Hunch waited with the carriage. Because she was not
answering a summons from Tom this time, it was earlier in the evening, and
there were more people about. Several bricklayers clustered around an iron
brazier on the corner, warming their fingers, while on the opposite side of the
street a toothless old woman offered a cup of soup to anyone with a ha'penny to
pay for it. A collier strode toward the bricklayers, possibly hoping to sell
them another lump or two of coal before they packed themselves up. Huddled in a
doorway, a young girl with haunted eyes took a swig of bottle courage from a
flask. As Kim passed, the girl pulled the neck of her dress lower and started
toward the bricklayers in a cloud of gin fumes, her hips swaying suggestively.

           
It was
with a degree of relief that Kim arrived at the tenement at last. Like most
such buildings, it was a rickety wooden structure--Ratchiffe Row was an alley
well away from the center of
London
,
and no one enforced the laws that, since the Great Fire, had required bricks to
be the principal building material. The rates, however, were collected
regularly, and as a result most of the windows had been blocked up to avoid the
window tax, giving the exterior a hodgepodge look and making the interior
gloomy and airless.

           
Kim
climbed the dark stairs with care; it was early to find squatters sleeping on
the steps and landings, but some liked to stake out a space before the
competition got too intense. She stepped over one man who was already snoring
loudly, but from the smell of him, it was liquor and not opportunity that had
put him to sleep.

           
Ma Yanger
had two rooms on the third floor, a palatial home by the standards of the
place. No one had ever dared to complain that she was taking more than she
should--not when the occupant of the rooms was commonly known to be a witch.
So
long as the landlord received his rent on time, the rooms
were hers . . . and possibly longer. It was widely speculated that the only
reason this building hadn't collapsed like so many others was because of Ma
Yanger's spellworking.

           
Once, Kim
had believed those speculations like everyone else. Now, with her magical training
and her sensitivity to spells, she was fairly certain that the only thing
holding the building up was good fortune. Even right outside Ma Yanger's door,
there were no traces of magic.

           
Frowning,
Kim rapped at the door. There was no answer; well, Tom Correy had said that Ma
had holed up in her rooms and wasn't seeing any customers. But unless she'd cut
off her friends as well, she'd have to answer the door to find out which it
was. Kim's frown deepened, and she rapped again.

           
There was
still no response. Kim glanced quickly up and down the hall to make certain
that no one was in sight or earshot,
then
pulled a bit
of wire from her pocket. She was out of practice, but the locks in a place like
this wouldn't be much. She bent toward the lock,
then
hesitated. The locks wouldn't be much, but Ma Yanger was a magician of sorts,
and she'd know that as well as everyone else. And Ma was too canny to rely on
her reputation to keep the cracksmen away.
If she'd witched
the lock . . .

           
Kim
straightened and returned the wire to her pocket. That spell Mairelon had
taught her last week would tell her whether the lock was enchanted, but she
hadn't thought to bring paper or ink with her. Well, Mairelon was always
working spells without actually drawing the diagrams; maybe she could, too.

           
Slowly
and carefully, she traced the diagram in the air, visualizing it as her hands
moved.
"Epistamai, videre, l'herah, revelare,"
she said, and
with the final word she felt the spell take hold.

           
The lock
did not glow even faintly green. Puzzled but relieved, Kim retrieved her wire
and bent to her work. Two minutes later, the lock clicked open and she slipped
inside.

           
Ma
Yanger's front room was one of those that had had its window blocked up to save
taxes; it was nearly pitch black and smelled suffocatingly of herbs. Nothing in
it glowed green, either, though Kim could feel that the spell she had cast was
still active.
How come a witch doesn't have anything magic in her rooms?
But Tom Correy had said that Ma hadn't done any witching for two months; maybe
she had let her personal spells lapse, too, if she'd had any.

           
"Ma?"
Kim called into the darkness. "Ma
Yanger? It's Kim, from the Hungerford Market. I got to ask you something."

           
There was
a shuffling noise in the next room, which subsided almost immediately.
"Ma?"
Kim called again.

           
No one
answered. Kim thought about working the light spell she had shown Tom Correy,
but Mairelon was always warning her about overextending herself, and she had a
great deal of respect for his advice in matters magical. Her eyes were
adjusting to the gloom, and there was no great hurry. She waited a moment
longer,
then
began picking her way toward the far
door, past a table strewn with anonymous packets and a set of shelves laden
with jars. At the far door, she hesitated again.
"Ma?
Ma Yanger?"

           
On the
other side of the door, something grunted. Kim's throat clogged, and she almost
turned and ran.
It's just one of Ma Yanger's tricks to discourage visitors
,
she told herself firmly.
And anyway I probably know more magic than she
does, now.
Whether it was the sort of magic that would do her any good in a
confrontation with Ma was something about which Kim refused to think. Taking a
deep breath, she opened the door.

           
Ma Yanger
was clearly visible in the faint green-glowing haze that surrounded her. She
sat on the edge of a low, lumpy bed, one corner of which was propped up by an
orange crate because the leg was broken. Gray hair hung in rat-tails around her
face. Her eyes were empty and her mouth hung slack; a thin trickle of drool
trailed from one corner.

           
"Ma?"
Kim whispered.

           
"Uuunh,"
said the woman on the bed. The noise was clearly only a reflex; no trace of
sanity or intelligence showed, even for a moment, on her face.

           
Kim
started forward,
then
paused. Mairelon hadn't glowed
green when she cast the magic-detecting spell before; only the button on his
jacket that he'd enchanted to foil pickpockets had responded. Ma Yanger wasn't
glowing green because she was a witch. She was glowing because someone had cast
a spell on her. And there was no knowing what the effect would be if Kim
touched her while the spell was active; the contact might cure her, or it might
kill her, or it might afflict Kim with the same bizarre malady.

           
This
is too much for me. I'm getting Mairelon.
Kim backed out of the bedroom and
hurried across the front room. By the time she reached the stairs, she was
running. She vaulted the drunk and pelted up the street at top speed, ignoring
the attention she attracted.

           
By the
time she reached them, Mairelon and Hunch were out of the carriage and scanning
the street behind her for pursuers. "Easy, Kim," Mairelon said as she
leaned against the coach, panting. "No one's after you."

           
"I
know," Kim said, forcing the words out between gasping breaths. "That
. . . ain't it."

           
"What
is it, then?"

           
Still
panting, Kim told them. Mairelon's face grew grim as she described what she had
found. "No wonder you were shaken," he said when she finished.
"Do you want to stay here with Hunch while I go back?"

           
"No!"
Kim and Hunch said together. They exchanged glances of perfect understanding,
and then Kim went on, "You'll need someone to cast a ward, if you're going
to do anything about that there spell on Ma."

           
Mairelon
studied them for a moment. "Very well, then. The sooner, the better, I
think. Though I'm afraid you will have to stay with the horses, Hunch."

           
"O'
course I 'as to," Hunch said sourly. "And I'll 'ave
them
ready to move the minute you come running back."

           
"Very
good," Mairelon said, oblivious to his servant's tone. "Let's go,
Kim."

           
They
started up the street in silence. Half a block later, Mairelon said in a musing
tone, "You know, you were very fortunate with that spell of yours. There
are a number of unpleasant things can happen to a wizard who dispenses with written
diagrams too soon."

           
"Like
what happened when I tried it in English?"

           
"Worse.
If you get the diagram wrong--if the lines don't quite connect in the right
places, or they overlap somewhere because you can't actually see what you are
doing--then the energy of the spell will not be correctly shaped. At best, the
wizard can be drained of all magical ability for weeks or months. At worst, one
can end up in a condition similar to your friend Ma Yanger."

           
"But
not dead?"

           
"I
said
at worst
," Mairelon pointed out.

           
Kim
digested this while they continued. "You haven't told me not to do
it."

           
"I
don't intend to tell you that," Mairelon said as they entered the
tenement. "You've done it once; you obviously have the capacity to
visualize a diagram clearly without having an actual, physical drawing. Just
make certain that you always know the diagram well enough. Simple ones are
easiest; the more advanced spells require too much precision, even for the very
few wizards with absolutely perfect recall."

           
The
reached the top of the stairs and turned down the hall. "Did you leave the
door open?" Mairelon said, nodding at a wide-open entrance just ahead.

           
"That's
Ma Yanger's place, but I don't think I left it open," Kim said. "I'm
. . . not positive, though. I was kind of in a hurry."

           
Mairelon
nodded. "We'll go carefully, then.
Fiat lux.
"

           
A ball of
light appeared on Mairelon's palm. Resisting the impulse to point out that a
light spell was not consistent with her ideas of "going carefully,"
Kim followed him into Ma's rooms. Mairelon took only a cursory look at the
front room. "Workshop and business parlor both, hmm?" he said, and
headed for the far door.

           
Ma Yanger
was gone. Nothing else had changed; the lumpy bed still bore the dent where she
had been sitting during Kim's first visit.

           
"She
was
here," Kim said.

           
"Yes,
well, given your description of her condition, she can't have gone far if she's
just wandered off."

           
"
If
she's just wandered off?"

           
"Someone
may have come and fetched her," Mairelon said. "Let's have a look
around, shall we?"

           
They did
not find Ma Yanger, and no one they spoke to would admit to having seen her in
weeks, with or without companions. A small boy on the lower floor admitted to
leaving food at her door every day for several months, but said he never saw
her. He would give a special knock, a shilling would slide out under the door,
and he would depart, leaving the package of food behind. No one else had had
even that much contact with her. After half an hour of fruitless searching,
they returned to her rooms, where Mairelon made a quick but thorough
investigation that made Kim blink in respect.

           
"You
would
of
made a top-drawer cracksman, the way you sort
through things," she said with considerable admiration.

           
"I
got plenty of practice when I was in
France
,"
Mairelon replied absently. "And it's easy to be fast when there's nothing
of interest to find." He frowned,
then
glanced
toward the bedroom. "Wait here a minute."

           
"What
are you planning?" Kim demanded.

           
"Something
I should have done at once," Mairelon said. "Check for
residuals." He made three sweeping gestures and spoke a long, involved
sentence. Kim felt the spell, but nothing seemed to happen. She looked at
Mairelon. He was turning slowly, studying everything in the room with narrowed
eyes.

           
It
must be something like that magic-detecting
spell, that
only shows things to the wizard who casts it
, Kim thought.