Wrede, Patricia C - Mairelon 02 (25 page)

           
"My
wizards," Mannering said. "Some of them used to be your friends. You
used to like Wags, didn't you? And Bright Bess, I know you got on with her. You
don't want them to end up like that Yanger woman, do you?"

           
The image
of Ma's slack-jawed, drooling face rose in Kim's mind. Kim's stomach tightened.
"What did you do to Ma Yanger?"

           
"I
didn't do anything," Mannering said, still in the same much-too-reasonable
voice. "Not really. She could even have had her magic back, if she'd been
willing to go along like the rest of them. Some of her magic, anyway. It was
your toff friends who destroyed her, and now you're going to do the same to the
others."

           
"Gammon!"
Kim said. "I ain't doing
nothing
."

           
"I
believe that in this instance, doing nothing is indubitably the wisest
course," Mrs. Lowe commented. "I must deplore your manner of
expression, however, no matter how appropriate it may be under these
circumstances."

           
Mannering
turned on her in sudden fury.
"Interfering harpy!
If you were a wizard, I'd do you like Yanger!"

           
"So
you
were
behind it!" Kim said.

           
"No,
I told you, it was your toff friends," Mannering said, abruptly reasonable
once more. "They unbalanced the spell, and. . . ." He shrugged.

           
Kim frowned.
"You still aren't making sense." She was beginning to think he never
would.
One thing at a time.
"What has this
got to do with the de Cambriol book?"

           
"It
has the rest of the spell in it," Mannering said. "It has to, or they
wouldn't be trying so hard to keep me from getting it." He rocked back on
his heels. "The
comte's
book only had a few
words, and the Russian's was no help at all."

           
"The
rest of the spell that lets wizards
share
their
power?" Kim guessed.

           
"You
know it!" Mannering rocked forward, eyes glittering feverishly.
"You've read the de Cambriol book, haven't you?"

           
"I've
heard talk," Kim said cautiously. "Is that how you made yourself a
wizard--by getting somebody to share his power with you?"

           
"Of course.
He didn't know I wouldn't have to give it
back as long as I kept the spell going."

           
"Kept
it going?" Kim stared,
then
shook her head,
remembering what Mairelon had told her.
"You gudgeon!
That spell was never meant to last more than a day or two!"

           
In the
doorway, Mrs. Lowe pursed her lips and gave Kim a reproving glance, but said
nothing.

           
"That's
what they want you to think," Mannering said, and smiled slyly. "I've
kept it up for months now. It just takes adding another wizard's power now and
then, to keep up the level of magic in the spell."

           
"You
cast the whole spell again every couple of weeks?" Kim said, thinking of
the elaborate preparations in the ballroom at
Grosvenor
Square
.

           
"No, of course not!"
Mannering said. "Just
the last
bit, that
links a wizard in with the main
spell. I thought of that myself," he added with pride. "And I don't
even have to do that very often, because the spell absorbs the magic whenever
someone attacks me."

           
Not
just when someone attacks
, Kim thought. Mairelon's spell had been intended
just to trace Mannering's scrying spell, but all his magic had been swallowed
up by this . . . this enchantment of Mannering's. The thought made her feel
ill.

           
"It's
getting harder to keep it balanced, though," Mannering went on. "I
need more power, but if I get too much at once it starts to burn out the spell.
That's what did for Ma Yanger--when those wizard friends of yours attacked me
just for looking at them at that opera, it was too much for my sharing-spell to
handle all at once."

           
Mairelon's
first tracing spell
, Kim thought, feeling even sicker than before. They'd
found Ma the day after the incident with the flying book, and they'd known she
couldn't have been incapacitated for very long, but they'd never connected the
two.

           
"The
wobble hurt everybody else in the link, too," Mannering went on, "but
it burned the Yanger woman's mind out completely." He laughed suddenly, a
harsh, half-mad sound.
"Serves her right for being so
uncooperative."

           
"Uncooperative?"

           
"She
wouldn't work for me," Mannering said in the pouting tone of a child
complaining that he had been denied a sweet. "I'd have let her have a
little magic, if she had agreed, but she wouldn't." He frowned and added
fretfully, "The spell's been unbalanced ever since. I thought it would
settle after I added that Russian's magic, but it's worse than ever. I'm going
to need a new wizard soon. I suppose I'll have to take Starnes after all, but I
wanted to have everything steadied down before I started on wizards with real
training."

           
And in
another minute or two, it might occur to him that he had a wizard right in
front of him who was barely started on her "real training," and
therefore much safer to steal magic from than Lord Starnes was likely to be.
Surreptitiously, behind a fold of her skirt, Kim made the one-handed gesture
Shoreham had shown her and murmured the activating word of the spell in a voice
too low for Mannering to hear. If he had all the skills of a real wizard, and
not just the borrowed power, he'd feel the refuge spell go up, but by then it
would be too late for him to stop it. From what Shoreham had said . . .

           
Mannering's
head jerked back as if he had been struck. "What are you doing?" he
demanded. "You're trying to trick me, like those others, like that
Russian. Well, I'll stop that!
I hold yours, to me thy power comes!
"

           
The air
crackled with the power of Mannering's final words, and Kim felt his spell
strike her shield. The force behind the blow was enormous; had the shield been
meant to withstand it, force for force and power for power, Kim knew it would
have failed. But Gerard's Refuge didn't block or absorb or resist attacks--it
"sort of shoves them to one side where they can go off without doing any
harm," Shoreham had said. Mannering's spell slid sideways and whizzed
invisibly past Kim's ear.

           
Kim stared
at him in shock. "You cast that spell in
English
!"

           
"Of course!
I am an English wizard," Mannering
said proudly. His expression changed. "You--How are you keeping your
magic? I should have it by now!" He raised his hands.
"I hold
yours, to me--"

           
"That
is
quite
enough of that!" Mrs. Lowe said, and stepped in front of
Kim.

           
"--your
power comes!"
Mannering finished. Kim flinched, but Mrs. Lowe did not
seem to feel a thing as the spell hit her. Mannering, however, groaned and
clutched his head.

           
"What
did you do?" Kim asked, staring at Mannering.

           
"Nothing whatever.
Nothing was all that was
necessary." Mrs. Lowe gave a small, wintry smile. "While I did not
entirely comprehend what this . . . person was saying, it seemed clear from his
remarks that whatever spell he was casting was meant to affect another wizard's
magical powers. As I am no wizard and have no such abilities, the spell could
not affect me. I presume it recoiled on him, and though I understand that spell
recoils can be quite painful, I must say that I think he deserves it."

           
Kim found
herself heartily in agreement with this sentiment. "How did you guess it
would work that way?"

           
"My
dear Kim, I have not spent years as a member of a family rife with wizards
without learning some of the basic principles involved in magic! One need not
have the ability in order to understand the theory, after all." With a
brisk nod, she resumed her place in the outer doorway, watching Mannering.

           
Mannering
looked up, panting, and took a deep breath. "You're keeping me from your
magic. How are you keeping me from getting your magic? That Russian taught you,
didn't he?"

           
"Prince
Durmontov?" Kim said.

           
"I
got his magic, all of it, but he still cast a spell at my men when they went to
bring him here. How could he do that?"

           
So
Mannering didn't know which wizard's magic he'd stolen on the night of the
musicale. Well, she certainly wasn't going to straighten him out. "Why did
you want to talk to the prince?" Kim asked.

           
"He's
got training," Mannering said patiently. "I'd have given him back a
bit of his magic, just like all the others, in exchange for his help holding
the spell together."

           
"If
you think anyone would help you under such circumstances, you have even less
intelligence than I had given you credit for," Mrs. Lowe commented.
"Why should he help you keep hold of his power?"

           
"He
wouldn't want to end up like the Yanger woman, would he? That's what will
happen if the spell breaks apart. They all know it, too, all my wizards."
Mannering frowned. "But
I forgot, he still has magic
.
Maybe he wouldn't end up a Bedlamite like the rest of them."

           
But it
wasn't Prince Durmontov's magic that Mannering had stolen; it was Mairelon's.
And from the sound of it, Mannering's spell had worked exactly the same way on
Mairelon as it had on the lesser wizards whose power he had stolen.
Which means that if Mannering's spell breaks apart or goes
unstable, Mairelon's likely to end up just as witless as Ma Yanger did.
Kim swallowed hard, hoping her face didn't show what she was thinking. "If
you're having trouble keeping the spell stable, why don't you just let it go
and start over?" she suggested in what she hoped was a casual tone.

           
"I
can't do that," Mannering said patiently. "If I let it go, I won't be
a wizard any more, and none of them would ever let me try again. And they'd all
be angry, and if I wasn't a wizard anymore, how could I protect myself? No,
what I need is--" Mannering stopped abruptly, and his eyes widened in
terror. In a voice that was almost a squeak he said, "What are you doing?
Stop--stop it!"

           
"Stop
what?" Kim said, frowning.

           
"You
can't--you don't want this!" Mannering said in tones of desperation.
"You won't just destroy me; you'll destroy every wizard in the link!"

           
No!
Mairelon's in the link!
thought
Kim, and suddenly
realized what was happening. The wizards in
Grosvenor
Square
had started recasting the power-sharing
spell, and Mannering could feel the beginnings of it because he was linked to
Mairelon's magic. Her eyes widened as she remembered her conversation with
Mairelon. The duchesse and Lord Kerring and the others thought that Mairelon
had been stripped of his magic; they didn't realize that he was somehow part of
Mannering's linkage. When they brought Mairelon into their newly cast spell,
they'd be bringing in Mannering's entire network of spell-linked wizards as
well--and they wouldn't be expecting it. The duchesse's spell was supposed to
be the final, unflawed version of the one Mannering had cast, and therefore
able to absorb and overpower it, but the duchesse's spell was designed for only
seven wizards, not a dozen or more. And on top of that--"Did you cast that
power-sharing spell in English, too?" Kim demanded urgently.

           
"I
cast all my spells in English," Mannering said with dignity. "I am an
English wizard. I had the others use English, too; I'm not such a flat as to
let someone cast a spell on me when I can't understand what he's saying."

           
"You
are a blithering idiot," Kim snarled.
Casting a spell in a foreign
language keeps power from spilling into it uncontrollably.
And uncontrolled
power was unpredictable; it could make spells stronger, but it also could
change their effects. Her own experiment with working magic in English was
still vividly clear in her memory; she could practically see the spots dance in
front of her eyes. If Mannering had persuaded one of the untrained wizards from
the rookery to cast d'Armand's already-flawed power-sharing spell--and to cast
it in English--then it was
no wonder the spell didn't behave
anything like the way it was supposed to
.

           
Kim
stared blindly at Mannering, thinking furiously. What would happen when the
duchesse's spell linked the magic of six fully trained wizards to Mairelon . .
. and through Mairelon, to Mannering's warped version of the same power-sharing
spell? More than likely, the two spells would merge, flooding Mannering's
network with power. And if absorbing Mairelon's spell had been enough to
destroy Ma Yanger's mind, the unexpected addition of six wizards' worth of
magic at once would probably burn out the mind of every wizard in the link,
just as Mannering claimed. Jemmy and Wags and Bright Bess would turn into
vacant-eyed, mindless husks . . . and so would Mairelon.