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Authors: Caroline Stevermer

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BOOK: A Scholar of Magics
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Jane's sudden impulses returned in full cry. She wanted to put her arms around Lambert and hug him until his ribs creaked. She wanted to shout at him to hurry.
Stick to the point,
she reminded herself.
Stay calm. First you need to break the spell.
“List, list, I hear
Some far-off halloo break the silent air.”
L
ambert kept an eye out for henchmen, but made it down to the next floor without meeting any. He ducked out of the stairwell and found himself in a corridor identical to the first he'd explored. Doors lined the dark hallway. Lambert
knew what he would find in those rooms and he weighed the alternatives before him. Voysey would find some fresh weapon, magical or material, to use against him if he stayed. If Lambert fled, he would leave Voysey possessed of a powerful, if unreliable, weapon. Jane would be at Voysey's mercy. Assuming Voysey's word could be trusted, he would leave Fell captive somewhere on the premises and Robert Brailsford stuck in the form of a border collie. Lambert could not keep himself from imagining Amy's response to that last bit of news. The very thought of it made him close his eyes and shudder.
Voysey had to be stopped. Lambert had been an idiot not to wait for Bridgewater, and a bigger idiot to think he could handle things on his own. An army wouldn't be out of place, under the circumstances. Lambert would have to get to Bridgewater and anyone else he could enlist to help. First order of business was to escape. If he could find a window he could fit through, Lambert would risk the leap. Any disorientation he felt leaving the grounds would just have to be dealt with. Lambert refused to concede that it might take him as long to get away from St. Hubert's as it had to get in.
Lambert hunted along the corridor for a suitable window. Every room he peered into had its window barred. After the first half dozen, he didn't bother to slow down for more than a glance through the grille. Halfway along the hall, he heard music. It was scratchy and faint but there was no mistaking the source. One of the locked rooms contained a gramophone.
Lambert let his curiosity lead him along until he was
peering through the grille into a room that seemed less gloomy than the others. The music stopped. For a long moment, he watched the occupant in silence.
Nicholas Fell sat at a table covered with paperwork. On the floor beside him a gramophone was spinning itself ever more slowly into stillness, the melody yielding to the crackling silence at the end of the disc. Fell was watching the gramophone record intently.
To Lambert, Fell seemed almost exactly as he had seen him last. He needed a shave and a clean collar, no question. But his friend seemed completely unscathed. Fell looked as calm as ever when he glanced at the door. “Hello, Lambert. What on earth have you done to your eye? No—don't bother”
“Wasp. What on earth are you doing here?” Lambert shot out the lock before Fell could finish his sentence, opened the door, and crossed to check the bars on the window. One was enticingly loose.
“I'm Voysey's prisoner,” Fell replied. “I was about to say, don't bother trying to rescue me. I'm afraid I'm not able to leave.”
For the first time, Lambert noticed the water carafe, glass, and empty plate on the floor behind Fell's chair. His heart sank. “You didn't fall for Voysey's toasted cheese trick, did you?”
Fell looked irritated. “I've been here long enough to die of thirst, Samuel. Water, I had to have. No trickery was involved.”
“But you ate something. That plate's empty.” Lambert worked at the loose bar.
Fell sounded, if possible, even more annoyed than he looked. “I did eat something, unfortunately, although I cannot tell you what. It resembled chicken sandwiches, but it tasted dreadful. Until Voysey's spells are broken, or until he chooses to release me, I must remain here.”
“If that's so, why did he bother to lock the door on you?” Lambert kept working on the loose bar. “It was Voysey who brought you here?”
“Voysey's minions, to be precise. He had more than one man in a bowler hat, it turns out, and cantrips plenty.” Fell added, “I've never liked Adam Voysey, but I must admit he makes a capital jailer, most accommodating to my requests for equipment. No interruptions to speak of. I've been able to get on with my work at last.”
“Why did he bring you here?”
“Voysey disapproved of my sociability. He wants me left alone to work.”
“Funny way of working you've discovered. But I meant, why did he bring you
here
? Why this place?”
“I can only presume Voysey prefers seclusion for his research. He has a point. It is galling to be forced to stay here, but at least I've been able to concentrate on my work”
Fell's air of conscious virtue annoyed Lambert. “Oh, is that what you've been doing? Listening to gramophone records while Voysey's turning people into animals?”
“Does he have it working now? He's succeeded in turning people into animals?” Fell sounded intrigued. “Anyone I know?”
“What difference does it make?”
“There's no need to raise your voice.”
Lambert turned back from the window to snarl at Fell. “He's transformed Robert Brailsford into a dog. Would it matter more if he'd turned the Earl of Bridgewater into an alligator?”
“I understand your agitation but there's no need to be brusque. Voysey has stolen the Agincourt device to use for his own ends, the slyboots. At least he lets me get on with my work.”
“He put a spell on Jane too.”
“Reckless fellow! What did he turn her into?”
“Nothing. It didn't work on her. He tried to turn me into an animal too but he missed—or the weapon jammed—or something.” Lambert went back to struggling with the barred window. Unwilling to repeat Jane's diagnosis, he hoped the heat he felt suffusing his face could be explained by his persistent efforts at the window.
“Voysey didn't miss, whatever happened,” Fell said. “The whole theory underlying the device was that it relied on the selection of a single mathematical point as its target. The selection of the point was derived from your own perceptions. How often do you miss?”
“Not very often,” Lambert conceded. Strange sounds distracted him from the window bar and he looked over his shoulder. “What are you
doing?
”
Fell had bestirred himself sufficiently to lift the needle, rewind the gramophone, and start the gramophone playing again. “Research.” He sat back in his chair but his eyes did not stray from the turntable. The morning-glory flair of the gramophone's trumpet brought forth measured beauty.
Lambert didn't try to hide his disgust. “Listening to pretty music?”
“Listening to time,” Fell corrected. He pointed at the turntable. “Look while you listen. This is time, Lambert. Look closely and think while you look. What do you see?”
“A gramophone record.”
“Don't be so bloody-minded. Keep looking. Now, what do you see?”
Lambert tried to see things the way Fell might. “I see a disk on a flat surface. A surface that spins. There's a label, ‘Little Fugue in G minor.' Want me to read the rest?”
“Your vision is remarkable, but no, thank you. What else do you see?”
“I see a needle tracing a groove carved in the disk to reproduce the noises made when the groove was cut.”
“Excellent. The groove you see, Lambert, is a spiral. That groove is time. Time made manifest. I've been looking at armillary spheres too long, thinking in circles. Perfect circles aren't what we're dealing with here.”
“Time is a spiral?”
“It might be.” Fell's eyes blazed with his enthusiasm. “Under certain conditions, it might be.”
With an effort, Lambert kept his voice down. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but time is not a spiral. Nor is it a circle. Nor is it an octagon, nor a dodecahedron, nor any other geometric form. Time is what we are wasting here. I need help to handle Voysey. If you aren't willing to interrupt the concert to help me with this window—” At Fell's unenthusiastic expression, Lambert nodded to himself, and continued, “That's what I thought. If I ever get this thing wide
enough to squeeze through, I'll have to leave you here.”
“That's what I've been trying to tell you.” Fell's air of mild apology had never been more pronounced. “How little one man can ever truly know another, despite sharing the same living quarters. I had no idea you even knew the word dodecahedron, Lambert. Go, by all means. I'm sorry I've delayed you. The chance to work undistracted is a novelty. I've made enough progress to give me hope. I may be able to alter the imbalance before I yield to the need to become a warden.”
With a pang, Lambert remembered Fell's unwilling admission of the discomfort his resistance cost him. “Is it very bad?”
“It's nothing I can't manage. After all, what's the alternative?”
“The alternative is, you turn into a warden without adjusting things first. That's probably what it's going to take to settle Voysey's account. If a warden can't do it, who can?”
“A warden could sort Voysey for you.” Fell sighed. “I'm working as fast as I can. It's simply not my bailiwick. I've always considered myself more the researcher than the theoretician, more the careful historian than the clear-eyed visionary.”
“That reminds me. Two of your students were here looking for you.” Lambert went back to his work on the window. “You haven't marked their papers, I gather. They're not pleased.”
“Students? What are they doing here?” Fell looked unhappy. “I suppose I should be glad there are only two. Who are they?”
“Cadwal and Polydore, they call themselves. They didn't want to use their real names away from Glasscastle, something to do with taking covert leave. Cadwal is the string bean and Polydore is the potato.”
“Herrick and Williams?” Fell looked, if possible, more distressed. “Haven't I finished going over their work with them? Hell.”
“You may not hear from them anytime soon. Even if they managed to escape, they may be reluctant to come back here. It's possible that they didn't make it over the wall. Last night I heard something in the dark. I wondered if Voysey might have turned them into deer or something.”
Fell laughed hollowly. “The perfect host.”
voysey spoke from the doorway. “Why, thank you.” He beckoned Fell and Lambert toward him. “Since you've been so reckless about destroying the locks, Samuel, I'm going to have to ask you both to move to another room. You'll find it a bit more crowded, I'm afraid, Nicholas. Jane will be there too. If you put your firearm down on the floor and step away from it, Samuel, you'll have both hands free to help Nicholas carry his papers and equipment.”
Lambert's heart sank. Voysey and his henchmen were there in too great a force to resist. All he could do was follow Fell's lead and obey.
 
L
ambert was surprised by the dispatch with which Voysey's henchmen escorted them to the cell he and Fell were to share with Jane. Similar efficiency had been shown in the preparation of the cell. Like all the other rooms he'd seen, the walls and floor were tiled. The corner with the washstand and
chamber pot was screened off in the name of privacy. There were a pair of narrow camp beds. There was a tray on a small table bearing a plate of what looked like excellent chicken sandwiches, a pot of what looked like tea, and the usual array of cups and saucers. Fell's worktable, chair, and gramophone were moved in along with him. Fell was back at his studies as soon as his notes were in front of him. The one remaining article of furniture in the room was Jane's armchair.
Jane herself seemed hardly able to bear the sight of Lambert and Fell, let alone Voysey and his henchmen. She sat frowning, pale and silent.
“I'm sorry I didn't get away,” Lambert murmured, when Voysey and his men locked up and left them. “I found Fell instead. I let myself be distracted. My fault.”
Jane said, “You did the best you could. Sorry I couldn't come along. It was all I could do to create the illusion that I'd broken Voysey's spell. I could make myself fade so only the illusion of me was visible, so you would think I was free. But that's all. Now I'm paying for my effrontery.”
Lambert remembered the aftermath of her interrogation at the Glasscastle police station. “Headache again?”
“It's not just that. There's been a slight complication.” Slowly, Jane lifted her right hand. Her true right hand remained on the arm of the chair. The illusion of her right hand passed through Lambert's arm without any sensation at all.
“What the—” Belatedly, Lambert noticed that Jane was accompanied by her own full-length illusion. At the moment, both were seated in the armchair. Only the gesture of her hand differentiated the true Jane from the illusion. “Did Voysey do that?”
Jane looked chagrined. “I did it. When I created the illusion, I had to exert more force than usual—I assumed I needed it to counteract Voysey's strength. Now I can't seem to undo it. Some kind of split seems to have occurred. Not all the energy I put into the spell is still mine to manage. It's as if something somewhere is—leaking. Most unsettling. Worse than that, it takes most of my concentration just to keep it under my control. Even if I don't try to control it, it's still consuming my energy.”
BOOK: A Scholar of Magics
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