Magician's Ward Read online

  "Monsieur Merrill is very often most provoking, particularly when it is a matter of information," Renee informed the puzzled Russian prince. "Do not mind him in the least."

  "I shall do my best to take your advice, Mademoiselle," Durmontov said. "It would be less difficult, however, if I had some small idea to what he refers."

  "We met Miss Tarnower at that tea party last week," Kim said to Lady Wendall, feeling some explanation was called for. "She asked about Prince Durmontov."

  "Yes, she put on a splendid show of hen-wittedness," Mairelon said. "Nobody is that silly by accident. I wonder what, exactly, she has in mind?"

  "It is entirely unimportant," Renee said with somewhat more emphasis than was strictly necessary. "And I very much regret it, but it is nearly time for the second curtain."

  "I regret it also, Mademoiselle, and I look forward to our future meeting," Durmontov said, and took his leave.

  There was no time for more; the curtain rose almost as the prince left the box. It was not until they were in the carriage on the way home that the conversation resumed.

  "Did anyone else interesting turn up in the interval?" Mairelon asked as they rattled over the cobblestones toward Renee's townhouse.

  "A Russian prince is quite enough, I think," Renee said.

  "But was he the one who cast the scrying spell?"

  "How is it that I would know that?" Renee demanded. "It is not a thing one can tell by looking."

  "The Marquis of Harsfeld, Lord Franton, arrived after you left," Lady Wendall said with some satisfaction. "He wished to be presented to Kim, and was quite disappointed to find that she was not there."

  "Harsfeld? He must be nearly eighty," Mairelon said, frowning. "What does he want with Kim?"

  "No, no, Richard, you're thinking of the fourth Marquis of Harsfeld," Lady Wendall said. "He died last year; it is the fifth marquis who was asking after Kim. He is quite a young gentleman--not much above twenty, I think. He was the grandson of the previous marquis."

  "Oh. I expect that's all right, then," Mairelon said, but he continued to frown.

  Lady Wendall looked at him, and turned the topic to the evening's performance. As this involved much comparison with previous performances, and speculation as to what certain different singers might have done in some of the roles, the discussion lasted until they reached the house in Grosvenor Square. Lady Wendall and Mairelon were arguing amicably as they entered, only to be interrupted by a loud thump from upstairs.

  "What was that?" Mairelon said.

  The unmistakable sound of china shattering, followed by an inarticulate shout, was the only reply.

  "Maximillian!" Lady Wendall cried, and flew up the stairs.

  10

  Mairelon and Kim exchanged glances and followed Lady Wendall, though somewhat less rapidly. Halfway up the stairs, Kim unexpectedly felt the tingling pressure of magic. Her eyes widened; whatever was going on up there, it wasn't just the monkey. Mairelon must have felt it, too, for he started taking the stairs two at a time and elbowed his way rapidly through the little crowd of servants that had gathered in the upstairs hall, following his mother. He paused only once, to speak briefly to Hunch. Kim, hampered by her skirts, followed as fast as she could manage, only to bump into Mairelon from the rear when he stopped dead in the library doorway. The magical pressure was stronger here, and for a moment Kim thought that was what had brought Mairelon to a halt. Then he moved aside, and she got a clear view of the library.

  Shards of white pottery littered the hearth, and one of the unlit candlesticks from the mantel had fallen among them. The heat from the fire was in the process of melting the candlewax, gluing everything firmly to the hearth rug. The table in the center of the library had tipped over, strewing books and papers across the floor. Harry, the footman, hovered uncertainly by the monkey cage. Inside the cage, Maximillian swung from bar to bar in high agitation, chattering loud reproaches. Kim's first thought was that their burglar had returned; then she saw Mrs. Lowe.

  She stood in the far corner, her back to the bookshelves. Her expression was grimly determined, and her hands were wrapped around the fireplace poker, brandishing it as if it were a club. Behind her, one of the housemaids cowered in terror. In front of them, at about chest height, hovered a small book with a blue leather binding--Marie de Cambriol's livre de memoire.

  Lady Wendall had stopped two paces inside the library. "What on earth--"

  The monkey shrieked loudly, and the blue book hurled itself forward. Mrs. Lowe whacked the book with her poker, and it dipped and retreated. An instant later, it streaked toward the bookcase beside her. It hit with considerable force, knocking several volumes to the floor. Apparently, this was not the first time the book had performed this maneuver; two of the shelves were already empty, and a third held only one book lying flat. The monkey shrieked again as the book backed up and made a dive at Mrs. Lowe. She hit it with the poker once more, square on.

  "A nice flush hit!" Mairelon said. "Have you ever thought of playing cricket, Aunt?" Though his words were careless, Kim noticed that his hands were already moving in the gestures of a spell.

  "Richard, your levity is singularly ill-timed," Mrs. Lowe said, keeping a wary eye on the floating book. "You are supposed to be a magician; do something about this ghost, if you please."

  The housemaid wailed. The book wobbled, then angled upward and flung itself at the bookcases again. It hit the top shelf, which was still filled, and all of the books jumped. Fortunately, this time none of them fell.

  "It isn't a ghost," Lady Wendall said calmly. "It's a spell." She picked a candle from the candlebox on the side table next to the door. "Fiat lux," she said, and the candle burst into flame. Kim blinked; she hadn't realized that Mairelon's mother was a full-fledged wizard, not merely a dabbler. Lady Wendall held the candle out to Mairelon. "If you'll assist with the warding spell, dear . . ."

  "Not just yet, Mother," Mairelon replied. "I'd like to analyze this first."

  "Stop it and then analyze it!" Mrs. Lowe gave Mairelon a withering look, then hastily returned her attention to the flying book. It was now making short runs against the bookcase, and its edges looked rather battered.

  "But it's much simpler to analyze a spell in process," Mairelon said. "O xenoi, tines este, pothen pleith' hugra keleutha."

  The book paused in midflight, hovered for a moment, and then fell to the floor with a thud. The suffocating sense of magic eased. Mairelon looked startled, then began muttering rapidly under his breath. Lady Wendall, imperturbable once again, began pacing slowly around the room with the lighted candle, reciting the familiar warding spell as she went.

  Mrs. Lowe hesitated, then lowered the poker and pulled the whimpering housemaid out of Lady Wendall's way. Kim waited a moment longer, to be certain that she would not accidentally disrupt the spells Mairelon and Lady Wendall were working, and then began picking up the books and papers littering the floor. She kept away from the blue volume that had apparently caused all the trouble. After a moment, the footman joined her.

  "There," Lady Wendall said, placing the lighted candle in a holder next to the candlebox. "That should hold things for a little, I think."

  "For a little?" Mrs. Lowe's voice wavered, then steadied into indignation. "Do you mean that we may expect a recurrence of this . . . this event?"

  The housemaid apparently did not find Lady Wendall's comment very reassuring either; she shook off her paralysis at last and began having strong hysterics instead. Kim rolled her eyes, set down the books she was carrying, and looked around for a water jug or a vase of flowers. If the library had ever had any such things, they had not survived the activities of the flying book.

  Lady Wendall moved swiftly to the housemaid's side and gave her a resounding slap. The maid gasped and coughed, then began sniveling quietly. When she was sure the girl was not going to begin screeching again, Lady Wendall turned to the footman and said, "Thank you for looking after Maximillian, Harry. Why don't you take Tess down to t
he kitchen and give her something to settle her nerves? And yourself as well, of course. You've both had a very trying evening, I'm sure."

  "Thank you, Mum," the footman mumbled, and ushered the housemaid out.

  "He'll be into the brandy for certain," Mrs. Lowe said sourly when the door had closed behind them.

  "That is precisely what I intend," Lady Wendall said. "I think they deserve it, and if it makes the rest of the servants wonder whether this is all the result of some odd drunken revel, they will be less likely to give notice due to fear of ghosts."

  "Ghosts? Not at all," Mairelon said, looking up from his observation of the now-quiescent book. "Good heavens, this house has had magicians and wizards in it for donkey's years. No ghost would dare come near it."

  "Well, perhaps it would be a good idea if you explained that in the servants' hall tomorrow morning, Richard," Lady Wendall said. "Otherwise we may end up doing the cooking and floor-waxing for Kim's ball ourselves."

  "Hmm? No, I'll get Hunch to do that. He'll be much more convincing.

  "So long as it is convincing, dearest," Lady Wendall said. "Are you quite finished? Because if you are, we had better set up a ward around the house."

  "I thought you were going to do that after the cracksman piked off," Kim said to Mairelon.

  "Yes, well, it slipped my mind," Mairelon said. "It wouldn't have helped with this, anyway, not with as much power behind it as it had."

  "You will not forget this time," Lady Wendall said firmly. "Only think of the difficulties another such disturbance would create! We are going to cast a full ward; we shall do so as soon as possible; and we shall maintain it at least until Kim's ball."

  "A full ward?" Mrs. Lowe looked inquiringly at Lady Wendall.

  "To keep this from happening again." Lady Wendall's wave encompassed the entire library. "All this excitement is very bad for Maximillian."

  "I should think that that monkey would be the least of your worries!" Mrs. Lowe said. "If that was some sort of spell, I want to know who was responsible." She looked suspiciously from Mairelon to Lady Wendall to Kim.

  "I'd like to know that myself," Mairelon said. Bending, he picked up the blue book that had caused all the commotion. Mrs. Lowe flinched. Apparently oblivious, Mairelon went on, "It was another puzzle-spell, stuck together out of pieces that didn't quite fit. A bit of summoning here, a bit of levitation there, a few other odds and ends, and a really awkward binding holding it together like a piece of string. It couldn't have lasted much longer, even if we hadn't arrived when we did."

  "That book didn't look to me as if it were getting tired," Mrs. Lowe said. "And it had been bashing itself against the wall for a good half hour."

  "Half an hour?" Mairelon blinked at his aunt. "Oh, come, you can't have been holding it off with the poker that long."

  "I didn't say I had," Mrs. Lowe replied dryly. "It's only been about five minutes since that extremely foolish girl panicked and ended up in the corner. Your precious heroic footman was no use whatever, and something had to be done. I trust it will not be necessary again."

  Lady Wendall tilted her head to one side and looked at Mrs. Lowe. "If you were not belaboring it with the poker for half an hour, what were you doing, Agatha?"

  "Writing a letter to Lady Percy in my room," Mrs. Lowe replied. "The noise in the library disturbed me, so I rang for a footman--who took an amazingly long time to arrive--and sent him to put a stop to it. He proved unable to do so, but did not think to report back to me when he discovered the cause of the disturbance. When the noise did not subside after ten minutes, I came down to see for myself what was going on. By then, half the household had gathered, and while I was considering what was best to be done, the book made a more than usually erratic swoop and that silly girl panicked. I make it approximately half an hour from the time I first noticed the noise to your arrival."

  Mairelon looked down at the book in his hand with a thoughtful expression. "This gets more interesting all the time."

  "Why's that?" Kim demanded. She could see that neither Lady Wendall nor Mrs. Lowe was going to ask, and she knew that if no one asked, Mairelon wouldn't think to explain.

  "For one thing, it means I was mistaken about the scrying spell at the opera," Mairelon said. "The caster wasn't looking to see whether we were there; he was looking to make sure we weren't here."

  "Very clever of him," Lady Wendall murmured encouragingly.

  "Furthermore, the spell on that book was an incredible mishmash. Holding it together for even a few minutes would take a lot of power," Mairelon went on. "To hold it together for half an hour--well, there are only two or three wizards in England who could manage it. That I know of."

  "Then one may presume this wizard is no one you know of," Lady Wendall said.

  "More than that," Mairelon said. "I think he's someone I couldn't know of. I think he's either largely self-taught, or foreign. Very foreign."

  Kim thought instantly of the handsome Russian prince at the opera, and she could see the same thing occur to Lady Wendall. "Why?" she said again.

  "Because I've found very little trace of any traditional spell structures in any of the spells he's cast so far," Mairelon said, waving the blue book for emphasis. "That scrying spell this evening, for instance--no one who's had a proper magical education would bother reinventing something like that, not when every apprentice learns the standard scrying spell by the end of the second year. So our mystery wizard hasn't had the kind of magical education magicians get in England, which means he's either self-taught or foreign."

  "If it's a he," Kim said. Something was niggling at the back of her brain, something important that she couldn't quite get hold of.

  "That fellow who tried to burgle the library last week was a man," Mairelon pointed out.

  "He was a toff," Kim objected. "You said this wizard had to be self-taught; toffs get training. At least, more training than this." She looked around at the library.

  "An excellent point," Lady Wendall said. "Though very few gentlemen practice, any more than they read Catullus in the original once they have left school."

  "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."