The Book of Magic Page 12

  The High Magnus himself led the applause, joined enthusiastically by Foubaye the Arbiter and other senior Fellows of the College. Masquelayne saw Lurulan the Excellence and the Estimable Ombbo exchange sour looks from where they sat together in the stands. Their combined project had been a re-creation of an event from the semi-mythical War of the Seven Kingdoms, when two armies had broken off in the midst of battling each other to combine their arms against a sinuous dragonette that descended upon them from the sky. Lurulan and Ombbo had created thousands of miniature automata, foot and horse, and a truly frightening worm that belched red-and-yellow flames. At the climax of the struggle, the beast, targeted by the flickering fire-beams of the Immortals and the Iron Guard, exploded in a burst of light, shedding a coruscation of sparks and glittering scales in all directions.

  Until Masquelayne deployed his prisms and crystals, Lurulan’s and Ombbo’s warring figurines had been the highlight of the Grand Symposium. Masquelayne’s expression now, as he allowed the assemblage’s accolades to swell about him, was a carefully maintained mask of modesty, but his eyes blazed with the cold fires of vanity.

  He bowed to the High Magnus and Foubaye, then languidly flourished one hand to tell the lord’s servants they could bear away the scrying device; his other hand’s fingertips touched his breast in recognition of the crowd’s praise. He left the dais before the applause had died away and stood to one side as the gathered wizards and dignitaries murmured and uttered hushed exclamations.

  Then the High Magnus’s majordomo announced, “Poddlebrim the…” He sought for an attachment and did not find it, then cleared his throat and said again, “Poddlebrim and his Tree of Heart’s Desire!”

  A silence descended, broken only by the rustle of fabric as the audience craned forward to see what new marvel might now appear. Masquelayne did not recognize this Poddlebrim, though he thought he had heard the name at sometime in the past. He saw a small, rounded man in a robe of muted colors step onto the dais, bowing his head to reveal a hairless dome surrounded by a mouse-gray fringe. Poddlebrim made no grand gestures nor took a theatrical stance—techniques Masquelayne had studied to master. Instead, he gazed at his assembled peers as if he were unsure what they were all doing there, then cleared his throat and said, in a conversational tone, “Behold.”

  He stood aside and gestured idly to draw the audience’s attention to the center of the dais. There, a column of pale blue smoke appeared from nowhere and began to spiral upward, widening and flattening not far above Poddlebrim’s head. The smoke deepened and darkened to become solid, and now the apparition was seen to have become a tree fashioned from glass of an electric blue. Its branches spread and stretched and interlaced themselves luxuriously, while delicate, almost transparent leaves unrolled from sprouting twigs.

  And then the tree began to bear fruit. Poddlebrim plucked one palm-filling orb from a low branch, glanced at it without much interest, then tossed it lightly toward where the High Magnus sat in the box of state. The lord of the land caught the glass apple, looked at it with curiosity, then raised it high so that, with the light of the noonday sky behind it, he could peer into its depths.

  The hushed crowd heard the aristocrat’s sharp intake of breath, and the exhalation that voicelessly made known his delight. He remained transfixed, while his expression gradually transformed from wonder to melancholy. After a long span, he slowly lowered the fruit and wiped away a tear. He looked again at the thing in his hand and said, softly, “Sublime.”

  Poddlebrim made another small bow in the High Magnus’s direction then plucked a fresh fruit from the now heavily laden branches and tossed it to Foubaye. As the senior Fellow gazed into it, his face formed the lines of a lost child who sees his searching parent round a corner and comes, arms outstretched, toward her.

  Poddlebrim plucked more fruit and threw each, one after another, to persons in the crowd. Each recipient did as Foubaye and the High Magnus had done: take a long and lingering look into the glass apple’s depths, breathe a sigh of joy and wonder, and subside into a span of pensive introspection.

  There were no cheers, no hands clapped. Poddlebrim made no gestures, struck no poses. He simply plucked and tossed, like a farmer selling his wares in a market, until all had received a gift and undergone its experience. All, that is, except Masquelayne. For, when the little wizard made to throw the last apple to where he still stood to one side of the dais, Masquelayne showed him a palm lifted in refusal.

  Poddlebrim held up the glass orb, and his face looked a question at Masquelayne, whose response was a stare as cold as that of the basilisk he kept chained below his keep. The little wizard’s shoulders performed a brief elevation then subsided. He regarded the fruit resting on his palm as if it were a bird that had failed to fly, then with a shrug he tossed it into the air—where, like a bubble, it silently burst into nonexistence.

  Poddlebrim turned then to the tree and made a motion like that of a king gently dismissing a supplicant. The tree shimmered and evanesced into the air. A collective sigh rose from the assemblage, followed by soft, sad cries as they saw that, with the tree’s disappearance, so had gone their fruits and whatever visions they had contained.

  Poddlebrim, with more of a nod than a bow, descended from the dais and went to resume his seat on the edge of the crowd. No one stirred for a long moment, then the majordomo remembered his duties and called for the next exhibition. Blinking as if waking from a dream, Shevance the Insightful advanced to the forefront of the gathering and conjured a succession of ghosts. But the phantoms’ grimaces and prophecies could not alter the reflective mood that Poddlebrim’s fruits had mustered. Shevance cut short the performance and left the dais, and the thaumaturges who were supposed to follow raised their hands in surrender and returned to communion with their inner selves.

  The High Magnus called for the wreath of electrum to be brought. The majordomo came, bearing it on its traditional cushion of scarlet velvet with the dangling gold tassels. But when the servant called for Poddlebrim to come receive his prize, it was discovered that the wizard had quietly departed the symposium.

  The High Magnus spoke. “Genius married to modesty,” he said. “We should all learn from his example.”

  Masquelayne the Incomparable did not learn the lesson his aristocratic host was recommending. Poddlebrim had stolen from him the triumph that should have been his. Then, as he climbed into his carriage and brusquely ordered its attendants to take him home, he realized that he had been the victim of a second theft: by making it impossible for Masquelayne to accept the last fruit, Poddlebrim had denied him the experience that had so affected all of the other grandees and wizards.

  As the vehicle rose into the sky, the wizard’s jaw clenched in justified outrage. The intolerable Poddlebrim would learn his own lesson, he vowed. He must deliver up the secret of the tree, which rightfully belonged to Masquelayne the Incomparable. And he must suffer a punishment that corresponded to the harm he had done.

  * * *

  —

  Masquelayne’s sylphs flocked to him as he alighted from the carriage in the forecourt of his manse, high upon a promontory overlooking the Vale of Coromance. They simpered and fawned, seeking his hand, caressing his face, but he waved them aside and made straight for his workroom in the upper floor of the tower that stood just on the edge of the precipice.

  He had long since dispensed with apprentices, they being of small use while liable to create large distractions. But he did maintain a familiar: a minor demon the wizard had captured then coerced into taking the shape of an oval looking glass rimmed in gold. Now, as he entered his workroom, he spoke the syllables that roused the fiend from its sleep.

  “What will you have of me?” it said.

  “Knowledge,” said Masquelayne. “Specifically regarding he who calls himself Poddlebrim.”

  A seeming ripple passed across the oval surface. “Ah,” said the demon. “
Let me inquire.”

  The thaumaturge paced the circular room, glanced out the window, and saw that the old red sun was deepening to an angrier shade as it dipped toward the horizon. A half-formed thought rose in his mind, and he went to a bookcase carved from the bones of a long-extinct beast, running a finger across the spines of a dozen tomes shelved therein. But the concept would not gel, and he turned in growing anger toward the looking glass.

  “Well?” he said. “I do not employ you to waste my time. Speak!”

  The demon said, “It is difficult. Poddlebrim is known to be modest. He does not advertise his exploits, if he has any. He keeps to himself in a little house in a clearing in the Forest of Ardollia. Rarely does he engage with the world.”

  That much, Masquelayne already knew. Poddlebrim had never attended the Grand Symposium before. That had been the first time Masquelayne had ever laid eyes upon the little wizard. Thinking about it, he now realized that he had always known the name, but had developed no associations for it. Poddlebrim had been like a foreign country, rustic and irrelevant, far across the sea: heard of, but of no consequence to the life of the here and now.

  “Show me this little house,” he told the demon.

  The glass rippled again and an image formed: a cottage of wattle and daub, its roof darkly thatched. Outside, a pen with a pig, and another with some chickens, and a well with a roof over it.

  The view was as that of a bird hovering above the surrounding trees. Masquelayne said, “He does not even have proper walls of stone. Go closer. Let us peer through a window, or even penetrate those flimsy walls.”

  The image enlarged as if the bird were gliding down toward the front of the house, where a modest window paned in hand-sized diamonds of glass was set beside the plain wooden door. The window grew larger and larger, until it more than filled the oval of the looking glass, though its panes were becoming more opaque, the closer the viewpoint came.

  Then it abruptly stopped growing.

  “Closer!” Masquelayne said. “Show me!”

  The glass rippled again, then went dark for a moment. The wizard found himself looking at his own reflection and did not like what Poddlebrim’s impudence had done to his expression.

  The demon said, “I have been…rebuffed.”

  “What? How?”

  A pause. “I do not know. It was not a brutal repulse. I scarcely felt it. But it is unequivocal. I could go no closer, and now when I try to return, I…simply cannot.”

  Masquelayne swore, calling up dire oaths that caused even the demon to shrink back behind the glass. A sylph came to the workroom door, anxious and distraught, and the thaumaturge almost destroyed it with a rebuke, relenting only at the last gasp and letting the poor, damaged creature creep away to reconstitute itself.

  Masquelayne regained the reins of his temper, and added to the growing pile another injury for which Poddlebrim must pay. He turned back to the mirror. “What do you recommend?”

  “Honestly? Not to strive against Poddlebrim. He obviously has power.”

  The wizard made a wordless sound of frustrated rage. “Be more useful,” he said through gritted teeth, “or I will apply a scourge!”

  “I will see what I can learn and report to you,” it said. “But there is one thing I already know: Casprine the Ineffable has had dealings with Poddlebrim. He may be able to offer some guidance.”

  “Ah,” said Masquelayne, his eyes narrowing. “Casprine, eh?”

  Masquelayne could not be said to have friends, though he had had many enemies. All of them he had vanquished and despoiled, and on all of them he had imposed burdens. They walked in fear of encountering his wrath again. But there was another category: fellow thaumaturges who had yet done nothing against him and had earned no punishments. Casprine the Ineffable was one of these, a not inconsiderable thaumaturge who dwelled in a subterranean warren that had formerly been a paranoid king’s stronghold beneath a mountain off to the west.

  Masquelayne brought out his aspekton and placed it atop his workbench, then spoke into it, “Casprine, it is Masquelayne who speaks!”

  A pause ensued, then Casprine’s visage, narrow and foxlike, appeared above the device. “Masquelayne? Have we reason to connect?”

  “I am interested in that odd little fellow, Poddlebrim.”

  “Ah,” said Casprine, infusing the single syllable with a wealth of meaning. “The Grand Symposium. A remarkable exhibition.”

  “You were there?”

  The thin lips smiled. “No, but I have heard…talk.”

  “And I have heard that you have had dealings with this Poddlebrim. I would like to know what you can tell me.”

  Casprine gave the matter some thought. Finally, he nodded, as if to himself, then said, “Your reputation does not encourage me to put myself in your hands. You will have to come to me. I will speak only within the confines of my own wards and defenses.”

  Masquelayne did not hesitate. “Then I will come by way of the Glooms. Expect me presently.”

  Casprine made a gesture of acquiescence, and his image dwindled and disappeared.

  Masquelayne restrained his impatience and took thought. Casprine owed him no enmity that he knew of, yet it was never wise to enter the realm of another thaumaturge without arming oneself. He consulted his books and drew into his mind three strong spells: Boix’s Comprehensive Rupture, Zinezan’s Unbreachable Cloak, and Willifant’s Penetrating Beam.

  When he had all three fixed and solid in his compartmentalized memory, he opened the portal into the Road of Glooms and stepped through. The way lay pale and ghostly before him, passing through a landscape of tenebrous moor and forest. But Masquelayne was a seasoned traveler of the Glooms and kept his destination firmly in mind. He strode for a timeless span, until suddenly his steps were no longer in the shadows but in a tunnel deep beneath Casprine’s mountain. It led to a door that opened as he approached, and the thin-faced wizard stood framed by a soft glow from within a chamber he kept for such receptions.

  He stepped aside to admit Masquelayne. The visitor glanced about, saw nothing to create alarm, and stood in the center of the sparsely furnished room to await whatever Casprine would offer.

  Casprine closed the door and passed a hand down its length, speaking too softly for Masquelayne to hear, though from the position of his fingers as he stroked the door, Casprine was surely using Schletzel’s Impermeable Buffer. But Masquelayne said nothing; it would not serve his purposes to wound his host’s self-esteem while he was seeking the fellow’s aid.

  Now Casprine turned to him, folding his hands into the sleeves of his figured silk robe. “What would you have?” he said. “And what would you give?”

  “As much as you know of Poddlebrim,” said Masquelayne. His face said the import of the other question had not occupied his mind until now, then he said, offhandedly, “I have a nygrave’s skull that might suit you.”

  With the same impromptu tone, Casprine said, “I have one, too, of course.” He appeared to give the matter some idle consideration, then added, “Though mine has only the crest of a juvenile.”

  “Mine is that of a full-sprouted adult.”

  Casprine opened his hands in a question. “The horns, what length?”

  Masquelayne spread his own hands wider than his body and saw a flash of avarice in Casprine’s gaze before the other wizard said, “That would be acceptable. I confess my powers of divination would be enhanced.”

  Together they performed the gestures that sealed the bargain and spoke as one the reciprocal malediction—they had agreed on Hoch’s Recurrent Boils—that would strike down either if he did not fulfill his obligation.

  That business done, Masquelayne said, “Now, tell me.”

  “Let us sit,” Casprine said, gesturing toward two chairs that now appeared. Masquelayne took a seat and waited while his host’s face assumed a thought
ful aspect.

  “There is not a great deal to tell,” Casprine said, after a moment, “and some of it is hearsay. But he is said to have begun his studies under Chaychay the Sagacious—”

  “Red school,” Masquelayne interjected. “I remember him.”

  “Indeed,” said Casprine. “But after Poddlebrim achieved the twentieth degree, he left Chaychay and apprenticed himself to Groffesque the Willful.”

  “But he was blue school! You’re not telling me that simpleton has advanced to the purple school?”

  “I do not know,” said Casprine. “After several years with Groffesque, Poddlebrim retired to the Forest of Ardollia and devoted himself to private research.”

  Masquelayne leaned forward. “In what direction?”

  “I visited him there once. He said he was working on ways to make disparate fluxions cohere. He believed that would magnify their strengths to a remarkable degree.”

  “Nonsense!” said Masquelayne. “Blue and red cannot cohere. They always clash, though the tensions can be managed by force of will.”

  “My thought, too,” said Casprine. “But Poddlebrim was convinced. And there are indications he has made progress.”

  “What indications?”

  The other wizard’s lips formed into a moue. “Did you not see one today? The Tree of Heart’s Desire?”

  Masquelayne made a dismissive gesture. “I saw a tree form from a pillar of smoke. It sprouted glass fruit. I could do as much.”

  Casprine looked away then eyed him sidewise. “But I’m told you did not gaze into the apple that was meant for you.”

  Masquelayne bristled. “I was not inclined to play games.”

  “Then you do not know what you would have seen.”

  “And what would I have seen?”