The Magicians And Mrs. Quent Part 49

"To the door!"

He pulled Sashie after him but hardly needed to, for she was fast on his heels. When they reached the door he dreaded it had been locked, but after fumbling with the latch he was able to thrust it open. They pushed out into the twilight and ran down the deserted lane.

Like a coil of night, a dark shape burst out of the door of the inn behind them. Again Sashie screamed, and fear renewed Eldyn's strength. He careened down the lane, pulling his sister after him. The sound of sharp things against stone followed behind, drawing closer with each step they took. They were a quarter of the way down the lane, now half. He could see light and people ahead.

Something nipped at Eldyn's heels, and he nearly went tumbling to the cobbles. He caught himself and ran on, but it was no use. Their pursuer would have them before they reached the end of the lane. His only hope was to give Sashie time to escape.

It was, like all the bravest things, an act born out of fear and foolishness. He pulled hard on Sashie's arm-so hard she cried out-and flung her ahead of him. She went staggering down the lane. At the same time he turned around and thrust his arms before him, as if his bare hands held any sort of power.

"Back, devil!" he shouted, as the priest had once shouted at him. "Back to the Abyss from which you came!"

He caught a glimpse of a crouching shadow-sinuous, humpbacked. Two amber sparks winked to life, and the last faint glow of daylight caught on a jagged curve of teeth.

The shadow leaped.

"Get back!" cried a voice that was not Eldyn's.

At the same moment a flash of silver light and a clap of thunder shattered the gloom. Eldyn was blinded, stunned. Something gripped his arm, pulling him down the lane. Unable to see, he stumbled after.

Noise surrounded him-the comforting sounds of people and horses and carriages. He blinked, and his vision cleared. Sashie stood beside him, a dazed look on her face. They had reached the avenue, still thronging with people after the brief day. Lamplighters went about their work. He glanced back at the mouth of the lane that led up to the inn. It was dark and empty.

"Are you all right, Eldyn?"

He blinked again and saw Dercy standing before him. As always the young man was dressed in black. His face was pale.

"Dercy, how did you...What are you doing here?"

"Getting you out of trouble again, it seems. I came to see if you were going to join me at the theater tonight. I almost didn't. I was thinking you'd just show up on your own, but I'm glad I did. Is this your sister?"

Eldyn nodded. It was hard to speak. "This is Sashie."

Dercy touched her chin. "Are you all right? Are you hurt in any way?"

She stared up at him for a moment, then shook her head, her lips pressed tight together.

Dercy looked at Eldyn. "What was that thing back there?"

"I don't know." Except that wasn't true. He did know. The story in the broadsheet had said the guard had been ripped apart by some animal, and his mouth stuffed with Murghese gold. "It was him, I think."

"You mean the highwayman?" Dercy said with a startled look.

Eldyn swallowed; his mouth tasted like blood. "Yes."

Dercy scratched his blond beard. "Angels above. I don't know how it's...Well, whatever or whoever that was, he won't come after you here, not with all these people around."

"But it doesn't-" Eldyn glanced at Sashie. She had moved a few paces off, slumping against a wall. He lowered his voice. "It doesn't matter. Don't you see? Nothing will keep him away. He'll never stop pursuing us. I can't watch her, not every moment. Sooner or later he will find her alone, and he will get to her. There's nowhere in this city that is safe for us."

Dercy laid a hand on Eldyn's arm, his eyes worried. He opened his mouth to say something. At that moment, music rang out over the city: the bright tolling of evening bells. Suddenly he grinned.

"You're wrong," Dercy said. "There is one place in this city where you'll be safe."

Eldyn could only stare. He was beyond wondering.

"Come on, we'd better hurry. The doors close after dark."

Taking Eldyn's hand on the left and Sashie's on the right, Dercy led them through the city toward the sound of the bells.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

W ITH A PEN, Ivy pointed to each word of the spell on the paper as Mr. Rafferdy spoke them aloud. From what she had read in one of her father's books of magick, a certain fluidity and cadence was required for a spell to be effective. If uttered too haltingly or in a stuttering fashion, it could fail-or worse, it might function but with unexpected consequences.

The intent was not for him to speak the entire spell at once-they did not want to work it here in the parlor at the house on Whitward Street!-but rather to go through it in parts, to verify Mr. Rafferdy could p.r.o.nounce all the words correctly. Alone, Ivy had tried to speak some of it herself and had found it all but impossible; her lips could not form the sounds. It was as if she lacked some innate capacity necessary to speak the language of magick. However, like a person who could not play an instrument but who could recognize every note of a symphony, she knew the words as well as Mr. Rafferdy did-perhaps even better-and could discern if he was speaking them correctly or not.

She moved her pen at a steady pace, forcing him to speak more quickly than he might otherwise have done. The words of magick fell from his lips in a drone. There was a tension on the air like that before a storm. She moved the pen to the next line. Yes, that was it, just a few more words to- Ivy winced. The tension on the air cracked like the pane of a window slammed shut. Rafferdy leaned back in his chair, a hand to his forehead.

Concern filled her. "Are you all right?"

"I'm quite well. Though if you wanted to pick up one of the andirons over there and strike me on the crown of my head, I imagine it could only improve things. Please, feel free."

Ivy set the pen on the table. "You're getting better every time you read it, you know."

"That's a very pretty way of saying I'm terrible. You think me a wretched excuse for a magician. Even now you are deciding how to tell me you intend to find someone else to help you. Do not worry. You need spare me no hurt. I will hardly feel it over the aching in my skull."

"I am thinking no such thing!" she said, rising. "You have done what I could never do-you nearly reached the end that time. I know that if you only keep..."

She halted. He was looking up at her, his brown eyes alight.

"You know perfectly well you've nearly mastered the spell," she said, suddenly perturbed. She paced before the window. "You've known the whole while we've been sitting here!"

"Well, I didn't want you to think it was too easy for me. I'd rather you thought I was suffering. It makes me seem n.o.bler, don't you think?"

She stopped and regarded him. "I hardly know what to make of you sometimes, Mr. Rafferdy. You disparage admiration even as you secretly encourage it. You are an exasperating man."

"You've only just now discovered this?"

"Apparently I am not so clever as you. But since, as you have now revealed, you do not need the benefit of my tutelage, I will go upstairs and see to my sisters. I know that if they ask my help in something, it is because it is truly needed."

She started toward the parlor door, and at once he was on his feet, imploring her to stay, a.s.suring her that her help was indeed needed, more than she could know. That new seriousness came to his face as he spoke, and she could only believe he was sincere.

At last, Ivy agreed to stay. However, as she sat back down, she thought with some satisfaction that Mr. Rafferdy was not the only one who could gain a compliment when it was desired.

"I really believe I'm beginning to master it," he said. "Each time I meet with Mr. Bennick, I encounter more of the words of the spell in the Codex of h.o.r.estes. At first I thought it was only chance that I was encountering some of the same words of your father's spell in the book."

"Isn't it?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so. Old h.o.r.estes used a word or phrase from the spell to name each of the places he went on his journey or the things he saw there. I didn't realize it at first, but the words in the tale of his travels appear in the same order as they do in the spell."

"You mean the journey is the spell."

"It must be so. Mr. Bennick said magicians never tell anything in a straightforward manner."

Wonder filled her. "So instead of writing down the spell, he wove the words of it into a tale of a journey to mysterious lands."

"Just so, and we're nearly to the end of the chapter. There were only a few pages left when last Mr. Bennick and I met. I'm sure to encounter the final words of the spell this next lesson. When I hear Mr. Bennick read them, I'll know how they're p.r.o.nounced."

"Which means you'll be able to speak the entire spell."

"I believe so. Only it's odd, wouldn't you say? That the book Mr. Bennick is having me read just happens to contain the spell your father set down in the letter he left you-it's rather a brilliant stroke of luck."

"Perhaps not," Ivy said after considering this for a moment. "After all, you asked Mr. Bennick to teach you how to do the very thing that the spell my father left for us does: renew an existing binding. It does not seem so unlikely that two magicians would think of the same spell for the same task. Indeed, it may be the only spell there is to accomplish such a thing."

"Well, if you're going to be sensible about it, then I suppose you must be right," Rafferdy said. He stood and went to the window. Outside, the light had gone gray. "His magick was taken from him, you know. I've thought about it, and it's the only explanation. How else could it be that he no longer wears a House ring? And it's more than that. I see the look in his eyes when I utter a spell. He can still speak the words, but there's no power in them-even I can feel that. I wonder if he gave it up willingly."

Ivy stared, shocked by these words. "You think his magick might have been taken from him by force? Is that possible?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Either way, it must have happened a long time ago. By his own admission, he hasn't performed magick in years, and I'm certain he couldn't if he wanted to."

Ivy folded her arms. She hardly knew Mr. Bennick, but the thought of losing by force something so essential to one's self, so much a part of one, left her with a chilled feeling. She shivered.

"Is something wrong?"

"No," she said. "It's only that..."

"It's only what?"

She shook her head. "It's foolish. You'll mock me if I tell you."

"I only mock those who put on airs or wear awful hats. You do neither, Mrs. Quent."

Ivy gazed out the window. Twilight had settled like ash over the city. Never in her life had she told another how she felt at times when night fell, but she told him then: how sometimes it seemed that the darkness was a living thing, creeping through cracks and beneath doorways, seeking to consume all light, all life. On a moonless umbral, it was only the feeble protection of candles and streetlamps, and the faint aegis of the stars themselves, that kept it from devouring all the world.

As she finished, she looked from the window and saw him staring at her. "There," she said, trying to make her voice bright, "I knew you would laugh at me."

Only he wasn't laughing. His eyes were shadowed in the gloom of the parlor.

"My father said something very much like that to me once," he said quietly. "How we were like people at a party at night, dwelling in a world of light-how we could not see out into the darkness, but that things outside could see in to us."

Again she shivered. "What sort of things?"

"I don't know. But sometimes, when I speak the words of magick, I almost feel as if I'm at that party, looking out that window, and I see something out there, something I'm not sure I was meant to...."

What do you see? Ivy wanted to ask him. However, at that moment light flared in the doorway, and the housekeeper entered with a lamp in hand. She set it down and began to move around the parlor, loudly rearranging things in a haphazard fashion. The message was clear: their license to use the room had expired.

Mr. Rafferdy accompanied her downstairs and out into the front garden. There, beneath the shadow of the wisteria, they made a plan for tomorrow. As twilight fell, an urgency had grown in Ivy; the masked man had told her it was not long before members of the order tried to open the door at the house on Durrow Street. She asked that they not delay, and he agreed. After his meeting with Mr. Bennick, he would proceed directly to Durrow Street.

As indicated in her father's letter, the spell called for several materials-certain compounds with which the runes of power must be traced. It had been previously agreed that she would procure these at Mr. Mundy's shop, for they could think of nowhere else to purchase them. Knowing that Mr. Rafferdy found the idea of entering that place again to be abhorrent, she had volunteered to get the things, then meet him at Durrow Street.

"Until then, Mrs. Quent," he said, putting on his hat and tipping it toward her.

She wanted to thank him, to wish him luck, but the words tangled on her tongue like the language of magick. Before she could say anything, he was out the gate and walking away down the street, whistling as he went and swinging his cane.

I VY WENT INSIDE and climbed the stairs, intending to go to her room. However, as she pa.s.sed the parlor, Mr. Wyble appeared in the doorway.

"Excuse me, cousin," he said, "but am I right to think that I heard Mr. Rafferdy say he is an acquaintance of Mr. Bennick's?"

She could not disguise her shock. "Yes, you heard correctly, though I must wonder that you heard anything at all."

His hand went to his chest. "How ill you must think of me, cousin! But I had no intention of eavesdropping. I was pa.s.sing from the dining room, and your voices came to me by chance-indeed, quite against my will."

"Then it seems it is I who must apologize to you, Mr. Wyble, for accosting your ears in so rude a fashion."

He bowed, all solicitude. "No, dear cousin. You need not apologize to me. I took no offense at all. However, I take it then that Mr. Rafferdy does know Mr. Bennick?"

Beyond shock, Ivy could only answer. "He does, but why do you ask? I cannot imagine Mr. Bennick is of interest to you."

"Only he is, Mrs. Quent! He is of great interest to me. You see, I previously had the most beneficial conversation with him."

"I don't understand. Do you mean you met him through your acquaintance with Lady Marsdel?"

"No, it is quite the opposite. It was Mr. Bennick who suggested my services to her ladyship. It was very generous of him, and very unexpected. You can imagine my surprise when he approached me! But I gather he knew Mr. Lockwell once, and I'm sure your father must have talked about me and my skills as a lawyer. So that is how Mr. Bennick must have known of me."

Mr. Wyble spoke on, asking if she might persuade Mr. Rafferdy to speak to Mr. Bennick on his behalf, for he was hoping he might have the opportunity to be of further service to Lady Marsdel. Her ladyship must be very busy. It could only be expected she had not thought of one of Mr. Wyble's station. Yet at a mention from Mr. Bennick, perhaps she would be favorably reminded of his previous service to her.

Ivy listened to all this numbly. She gave some vague a.s.surance that she would speak to Mr. Rafferdy, then begged her leave and turned to hurry up the stairs.

"Thank you, cousin." His voice followed her up. "I will be most grateful for any help Mr. Rafferdy could offer in pa.s.sing along my regards to-"

She shut the door to her room and leaned against it. Lily looked up from her book. She was reading in bed by the light of a single candle. "Is something wrong, Ivy? You look as if you just saw something horrid."

"I was talking to Mr. Wyble."

"Oh," Lily said, "then I was right." She returned her nose to her book.

Ivy sat on the edge of her bed. Thoughts spun through her mind like the spheres of the celestial globe in the attic. How strange, she thought, that Mr. Bennick had introduced Mr. Wyble to Lady Marsdel. True, it was not difficult to conceive that Mr. Bennick had known her father. Mr. Lockwell had been friends with Mr. Quent, who worked for Lord Rafferdy, who in turn was part of Lady Marsdel's circle, just as Mr. Bennick was.

No, it was not the connection that was difficult to believe, but rather that Mr. Bennick had gone to such trouble to secure work for Mr. Wyble. Ivy had no idea why he would do such a thing. What benefit was it to him? Lady Marsdel could afford any lawyer, and surely Mr. Wyble was nothing to Mr. Bennick.

Outside the window, the night thickened. It pressed against the gla.s.s like dark water, seeking a way inside. Only it was not the windowpanes that held it back, but rather the scant light of Lily's candle. Ivy rose, took another candle from the table drawer, and another, lighting them.

Lily looked up from her book with a frown. "I thought you said candles were expensive."

Ivy looked out the window. Above the rooftops, the new red planet gazed like an eye from the night.