The Magicians And Mrs. Quent Part 43

"Yes," she said, "I'm sure I've impressed upon him the notion that I'm as brainless as a stick of wood. I do not know what test I was being given, but I am very certain I failed it."

"No, I know what failing one of his tests is like, so you must trust me when I say you pa.s.sed the exam in a most excellent fashion. You would be at the head of the cla.s.s." His smile became a grimace. "While I would be the one lurking in the corner with an odd-shaped hat on his head."

"You are making a poor joke. You know perfectly well you are an exceedingly clever man."

"A poor joke, you say? So now my sense of humor is to be disparaged along with my intellect?"

"If so, then it is only by yourself. For I think very highly of your faculties. As does your father."

He laughed at this. "Now it is you who makes the ill joke."

"No, I do not. You are very like him, you know."

"Like him? Yes, I am quite like him, the same way a cloud is like a rock or a bird like a bulldog."

Now it was Ivy's turn to laugh. "You are like him," she said, "in that you are both rocks and bulldogs, neither of which is very willing to be budged."

Before he could answer, they had reached the front door.

I F SHE HAD feared her reunion with the members of Lady Marsdel's household would be awkward, then those fears were unfounded. She was welcomed immediately and with warmth. Mrs. Baydon embraced her, and Mr. Baydon set down his paper to shake her hand. Lord Baydon p.r.o.nounced he was not at all surprised to see her, for it had stormed all morning, and some delightful thing must always follow rain.

For her part, any awkwardness Ivy might have felt vanished at once. Everyone in the parlor was seated in their familiar place, and it seemed as if she had seen them just yesterday. And why should she not feel comfortable? The only problem that might have once caused discord between them had been resolved, to utter contentment on all sides. She accepted tea and submitted to all their questions happily, though she kept her answers away from any topics that might reveal the nature of Mr. Quent's work for the lord inquirer.

It did feel strange, even unfitting, to be surrounded by such good cheer when her sisters were forced to endure Mr. Wyble's company, and their father far worse. But if her own spirits were strengthened, it would only serve to help her lend strength to those she loved. Besides, an idea had already begun to form in her mind. She had written to Mr. Quent, urging him to ask the lord for whom he worked to pet.i.tion for her father's release from Madstone's. And had she not just ridden in a carriage with that very lord?

"You look well, Mrs. Quent," Lady Marsdel p.r.o.nounced. "A bit freckled, perhaps, though I suppose that is to be expected from dwelling so long in the country. I am pleased to learn you have done well for yourself. A country gentleman with a sizable fortune is the best sort of match you might have made. A good arrangement should lift one up but not cause one to strain in an effort to reach too high. Is that not your thinking, cousin?" She looked over her fan at Lord Rafferdy, who had only lately entered the parlor.

"It has been," he said. He glanced at his son, but Mr. Rafferdy gazed out the window, seemingly oblivious to their conversation.

"We shall have to meet Mr. Quent when he returns to the city," Lady Marsdel went on. "I gather he has some business with you, cousin. Is that not so?"

"I long had an a.s.sociation with Earl Rylend, whom Mr. Quent served previously," Lord Rafferdy said, and eased himself into a chair. He offered no more explanation of his relationship with Mr. Quent, and Lady Marsdel did not inquire further. Instead, she proceeded to expound on the wretched weather, how every day seemed to bring something worse, and how fortunate her cousin was that he came to town so seldom.

Mrs. Baydon left temporarily in search of another puzzle to fit together, and Mr. Baydon retreated behind his broadsheet. While the others spoke, Ivy moved to the window where Mr. Rafferdy stood.

"Her ladyship is right," he said quietly as she drew near. "You do look well, Miss-forgive me, Mrs. Quent."

She smiled at him. "You need not beg forgiveness. It is all so new, even I forget what to call myself sometimes."

"I would simply call you remarkable. I trust this Mr. Quent of yours does the same. He is very lucky to have you."

"No more than Mrs. Rafferdy is to have you," she replied. "I hope very much to meet her one day."

Even as she spoke these words, she saw his expression darken, and she knew something terrible had happened.

"That will be impossible," he said, "for there is no Mrs. Rafferdy."

He spoke in a lowered voice, and in a minute she knew the whole terrible story, or at least as much as she needed to know. Her heart ached for him. To think she had been considering only her own worries.

"Mr. Rafferdy, I am truly sorry."

"You have no need to be sorry. I was saved from an unlucky match, one that would surely have led to disaster for my family. No, I am grateful."

"What you say is true. It is better that her father's actions were not revealed after she and you...but all the same, to endure such a dreadful happening-"

He shook his head. "It is long past, as far as I am concerned. I have had little time to think about it. Besides, it is nothing compared to what you have endured. I never had a chance to tell you how saddened I was to learn about Mrs. Lockwell. All of us were."

Such was the concern in his expression that her feelings on that matter were suddenly renewed, coming back to her all in a rush, and, compounded by thoughts of her father, they rendered her incapable of speech for a moment.

"Forgive me," he said. "Let me take you to a chair."

"No, I am quite well."

He studied her with that new, serious look of his. Then he gave her a wry smile. "So you are married, and I am not. I confess, when I saw you last, I was presumptuous enough to think our positions would be reversed when next we met."

She smiled in turn. "As had I. But either way, the result is the same. We are now free in every way to be acquaintances, Mr. Rafferdy. Or rather, I would hope, to be friends."

His smile wavered, but then it returned stronger than before. "It is my hope as well. And since both of us are in agreement, it is already done."

Mrs. Baydon returned then and set a wooden box on the table. "Mr. Baydon, could you put down your paper? I'm trying to choose a puzzle to fit together, and I need your help."

"I have you, Mrs. Baydon, and that is all I require to puzzle me." He turned a page.

She frowned at him. "No, I need your help opening the box. The lid is quite stuck."

"Why don't you have Mr. Rafferdy open it? As we all know, he's very good at opening things."

Mrs. Baydon's eyes shone. "Yes, you're very right. Come, Mr. Rafferdy, work that spell of yours and open up this box."

Ivy might have thought these words a jest, except for the way Mr. Rafferdy's face reddened. "Spell?" she said to him. "What spell is that?"

Mrs. Baydon answered for him. "The spell Mr. Bennick taught him. It turns out our Mr. Rafferdy is a magician after all, despite all his protests."

Ivy looked at him in wonder. "Is this true?"

He gave Mrs. Baydon a look of displeasure, but she only laughed, and at last he sighed. "It is true that I worked a spell," he said to Ivy. He twisted the ring on his right hand as he spoke, its blue gem winking. "But only with Mr. Bennick's aid. I am sure I could not recreate it."

"Nonsense," Mr. Baydon said, setting down his broadsheet. "If you would apply yourself to the study of magick, I am sure you would do very well."

"What reason would I have to do such a thing?"

"Reason? What reason do you need? Who should not want to discover for themselves a new power if they could?"

"I find I have quite enough power as it is," Mr. Rafferdy said. "I in no way crave more." The words were uttered so sharply that the room fell silent.

It was Lord Rafferdy who finally spoke. "Well, the day is short, and I am sure you are wanting to return to your sisters, Mrs. Quent. We have kept you long enough. I will have my driver take you home. I am glad to have met you and look forward to seeing you again."

Ivy expressed her thanks to him, to all of them, and was made to promise many times over that she would return soon, especially the moment Mr. Quent was in town.

"I do trust you will live up to your promise," Mr. Rafferdy said as he helped her into the carriage; he had accompanied her outside into the gray afternoon. "You must come back soon, Mrs. Quent. My father and I will be in the city for another half month before returning to Asterlane."

"You have my word," she said with a smile. "And that, Mr. Rafferdy, holds a power as sure as any spell."

I VY HAD THE driver drop her a bit Downhill from the house. She knew her sisters would be wanting her, but the afternoon had been so pleasant; she did not want it to end just yet. Besides, all her worries would still be waiting for her when she arrived home.

As she walked, she thought about how she would compose a letter to Lord Rafferdy. There had been no opportunity to speak to him privately at Lady Marsdel's, and her father's condition was not something that could be easily discussed before so many people. However, she would write to him that night and ask for his a.s.sistance. While it might be somewhat presumptuous to do so, having only just reencountered him, any impropriety was surely outweighed by the grave nature of the situation.

Her hopes lifted, she walked past gardens and fountains, then struck out across the marble expanse of Moorwent's Square, which the rain had emptied of people. She was alone in the square save for the statue of General Moorwent upon his stallion, his sword pointing to the west. Breathing the cool air, she strolled past the statue.

"You have been gone too long."

Ivy turned around-then gave a small cry. On its pedestal, the horse tossed its head, muscles rippling along its stone neck. The general's sword no longer pointed west but rather toward the sky.

"They have tried again to open the door," the voice said. It was low, a man's voice. "They failed, but barely. Soon they will try again. It is only a matter of time until the binding breaks and they succeed."

Ivy knew that voice; she had heard it once before, at the old house on Durrow Street. Even as she thought this, the marble stallion stamped its hooves, and he appeared from behind the statue. As before, he was clad in clothes that seemed a costume from another era: archaic, even gaudy, but black, all black from head to toe, like the mask that covered his face. It seemed to alter as he approached: now amused, now angry, now something else she could not name. Longing, she thought for some reason.

"Who are you?" she said, for this time she had not lost the faculty for motion or speech. He had to know she would not attempt to run. All the same, she trembled. "What do you want?"

"Who are you?" he said. Or seemed to say. Whether he spoke the words or they sounded in her mind, she did not know. "What do you want?"

She made herself take a step toward him. "I want to know who they are and why they want to open the door."

"I already told you who they are." He shaped black-gloved fingers into an oval before his face. "They are the Vigilant Order of the Silver Eye, and they want to open the door for the same reason he wanted to close it."

"He, you say. You mean my father."

"He gave everything to close the way. It must not be opened again."

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 c.o.c.ked 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 trespa.s.s 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 G.o.ds, 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.