Year of the Griffin (15 page)

“There,” Wermacht said smugly. “That didn't hurt a bit, did it?”

Lukin came up and detached Claudia's arm from Wermacht's fingers. He turned to Wermacht in his most princely manner. It was not a manner he liked to use much, but he was good at it when he did, far better than Claudia was. “Wizard Wermacht,” he said regally, “that is enough. Claudia has already told you twice that she does not wish anyone to tamper with her magic. Why don't you take her word for it and leave her alone?”

Wermacht gave Lukin a puzzled frown. “What's the matter with you? I was simply lifting the jinx from her. She'll be much more comfortable now.”

Lukin stared steadily back. “But she asked you not to.”

“Female vapors,” said Wermacht. “Female vapors.” And he stalked heavily away through the doorway.

“Are you all right?” Lukin asked Claudia anxiously.

She shivered a bit as she dragged her wrap down and slowly draped it around her. “Well, I didn't feel anything particularly, if that's what you mean. I don't
feel
any different, I think—just a bit shaken.”

“I'm not surprised. Wermacht's an overbearing
donkey
!” Lukin said vehemently. “Come on. You need looking after. Let me buy you a drink.”

A wisp of a giggle came from Claudia. “Thank you. But what
with
?”

“Oh—” A flush surged across Lukin's face. “You'd better pay, and I'll pay you back. I might be getting some money soon.”

“Not to worry,” said Claudia. “Myrna's lecturing now, and I want to go. Myrna doesn't make you feel brain-dead the way Wermacht does.”

“I'll come with you then,” Lukin said gallantly. He was not much of a one for lectures that you didn't have to go to, but it was clear to him that Claudia needed company.

They left the North Lab together, with Claudia saying as they went, “But I'm not going to
faint
or anything silly like that!” When they were most of the way across the courtyard toward the Spellman Building, the cloakrack swayed on its three legs and began to trundle after them. It staggered over the doorsill and trundled on, lurching, some way across the courtyard. About halfway between the Lab and Wizard Policant, it stopped and stood, looking forlorn and perhaps a trifle bewildered, with raindrops hanging in rows from its curly hooks. The janitor discovered it there just before lunch and put it back inside the lab, muttering, “Darn students! Another of their jokes.”

Lunch was—well—peculiar. In the refectory the smell of onions had gone, but it had been replaced by a potent scent of strawberries, which did not go well with the smell of the usual refectory stew. The stew itself, bubbling in the usual row of cauldrons, looked quite normal but, when ladled out onto plates, proved to be a strident bright green. It had strands in it, too, of darker green, along with khaki lumps and viridian morsels and a general, subtle air of sliminess. “Pond weed!” somebody shouted. “Look out for tadpoles!”

Most people declined to eat it and lunched instead off strawberry mousse and bread. Ruskin's friends, knowing a little more than most, each took a plateful. Elda and Felim both had to give up and resort to strawberry mousse and bread, too. As Felim said, it was hard to taste anything but slime through the scent of strawberry, and Ruskin had done a good job on the mousse. Lukin ate most of his, because his mind was still on Claudia. And Claudia, recognizing the dish for Marsh chowder, told Ruskin it was delicious and went back for more. While she was away at the cauldrons, Lukin told the rest of them about Wermacht and the troubling blue flash.

“Do you think he did it?” Ruskin asked. “Took away her jinx, I mean. And let me tell you, this is the best Marsh chowder
I
ever ate. You don't eat it that way, Olga. You sort of suck it in. Brings out the taste.”

“He could have taken it off,” Lukin said, while Olga seemed to be shuddering faintly. “But
Cyclina
and
The Red Book
both say a jinx is usually bound up with a magic user's actual power, and what I'm afraid of is that he took away her magic power, too.”

“But then she'd have to leave, wouldn't she?” Elda asked, appalled. Lukin nodded.

“That is a real worry.” Olga agreed, pushing her plate away. “What have we done to deserve Wermacht? Don't answer that question—particularly you, Ruskin. Nice try with the stew, shame about the smell and the color. Is it
meant
to be this slimy? Don't you think you'd better read up a bit more, or practice somewhere else, or something?”

Ruskin sighed. “I've been thinking that, too. I read the books, thought it was easy, but now I think there must be more to it than that. I'll have another go when I've worked out what it is.”

When everyone left the refectory, there was almost as much green stew left piled on plates or bubbling in cauldrons as there had been to start with. A deputation of students and six angry warn-spells were sent to Corkoran about it.

Corkoran told the deputation he would see about it and went to find Finn. “Look, Finn, some student's been mucking about with the food again …” he began.

“And I'll give you six guesses which one,” said Finn. He saw well enough that Corkoran intended him to find the culprit, and he thought that for once Corkoran could do his own dirty work. “It'll be one of your first years, Corkoran. My money's on your dwarf, but I'd take a side bet on Claudia. Wermacht's been telling me she's got some kind of jinx.”

“Has she?” Corkoran had forgotten that Claudia had told him this herself. He flicked at the violet monkeys on his tie. “Look, Finn—”

“All you have to do,” Finn cut in, “is to eat in the refectory tonight and trace the spell. It'll be something pretty crude. It always is.”

“But I haven't—” Corkoran tried again.

“So that's your course of action,” Finn said firmly. “Catch the dwarf red-handed.” Seeing Corkoran about to speak again, Finn changed the subject swiftly and enthusiastically. “You know that first year of mine—Melissa? The one everyone says has no brain. I've just had a really marvelous essay from her, clear, concise, to the point, well thought-out, truly brilliant! If it weren't for your policy, I'd give it an A. I think we've all been misjudging—”

“Yes, yes,” Corkoran said irritably. This was some kind of sore point with him, Finn could see. Probably none of Corkoran's precious, carefully chosen first-year students was anything like as good as expected. Too busy messing with food and assassins to do any work, Finn thought. He watched Corkoran turn peevishly away. “Then if you can't help,” Corkoran said over his shoulder, “I suppose I'd better follow your advice and get indigestion in the refectory.” He rushed moodily away with the purple monkeys flapping, while Finn did his best not to laugh. It was seldom he got the better of Corkoran.

Back in his lab, Corkoran sat at his bench with his back to the assassin cage and his moonship bulking by the windows, crying out to be worked on, irritably surveying the monstrous pile of paper his first-year students had dumped on him. Why couldn't young people remember someone had to
read
their eloquence? He would have to set a word limit. This was awful. Corkoran usually reckoned to whip through all the week's essays in half an hour or so and then get comfortably back to his lab work. Indeed, he had already whipped through the offerings from the second and third years. Sensible, slim essays, those were, full of the usual facts, none of them trying to explain the universe or anything silly like that. And he could have sworn that those six first years had been far too busy lately to cover more than one sheet with writing. Yet here was Felim producing thirty pages, Elda twenty-nine, Claudia the same, Olga twenty-six, and Ruskin forty—count them,
forty
! Lukin was more moderate. He had only produced ten pages, but since those were written very close in tiny black writing, Corkoran feared the worst. What had got
into
them all?

For an ignoble five minutes or so Corkoran contemplated simply returning the essays unread. But that was just the kind of thing that Querida could be counted on to discover. The griffin almost certainly knew Querida quite well. And the last thing Corkoran wanted was Querida turning up at the University to ask questions. He sighed and, shudderingly, picked up Felim's monster. Compromise. Skim through. Get the gist.

This was not easy. Felim kept quoting spells, nearly all of which Corkoran had never met before. He had to keep getting up to consult the enormous
Almanac of Magics
on the lectern beside his moonship, to make sure that Felim was not just inventing the spells. And Felim never was. All the spells seemed to be real, but Corkoran stopped consulting the
Almanac
and began skimming when he realized that with each spell Felim was pointing out that there were possibilities the maker of the spell had never thought of. Different uses for them and different sorts of magic branched off from them in a hundred directions, Felim said. He ended by saying that magic could explode into a hundred new forms no one had thought of yet—except this was hardly the end. Felim spent his last three pages suggesting the forms the new magic could take, astromagic, psychomagic, metaphysical magic, biomagy, theurgy, centromagic, anthropism, numerology, ritual magic, most of which were entirely beyond Corkoran's understanding.

He shook his head sadly. This was not modern magic. Magic these days confined itself to strictly practical things, to known facts and proven procedures. Felim argued well and wrote elegantly, but it would not do. This was some relief to Corkoran. For a while, when he first started reading this monster, he had been afraid he was going to have to break with his policy and give Felim a high mark, if only for all the research into spells Felim had done. Corkoran's policy, as Finn had reminded him, was that the University existed these days to turn out competent magic users with the skills that were needed to reorganize the world after the mess Mr. Chesney had made of it. There was no place for deep research or Felim's kind of speculations. What the world needed was run-of-the-mill
practical
magic. For this reason Corkoran had decreed that only third-year students and then only those who showed supreme practical skills should ever get an A.

He scribbled a generous B minus on Felim's monster and “Answer the question” beside it, and turned to Lukin's essay next because it was the shortest. And here was Lukin talking about the different possibilities of magic, too, in a soaring, joyful way that quite shocked Corkoran. He had thought Lukin was going to be one of your stolid plodders. But not a bit of it. Lukin talked about the boundaries and limitations set on magic, and while he agreed that some were there for safety, he thought most of them unnecessary. He pointed out a few. Take these off, he said. Experiment. Have fun with magic.

Fun? Corkoran thought. What nonsense was this? Magic at University level was
work
. You were not supposed to have fun with it. Yet here was Lukin, expressing himself rather well in his tiny black writing, suggesting that magic was there to
enjoy
. Well, he
was
a prince, Corkoran thought, and had obviously been brought up to think that magic was what you relaxed with after a day's ruling. Corkoran decided to allow for that, and awarded Lukin a C, instead of the C minus he had first intended.

He gave Olga a C, too, again quite generously, he thought. She had at least tried to answer the question “What Is Wizard's Magic?” But her essay was full of
opinions
, which again would never do. Olga's notion was that magic could not be standardized, for the gods' sake! Everyone's particular magic was influenced by that person's particular character, she said, and differed from another person's magic in the same way that handwriting differed. Furthermore, she said, a person's magic could be spoiled or improved by the way they were taught or by their upbringing. She gave one or two examples. Corkoran was quite struck by her account of a teenager who was punished for playing with air elementals and gradually became unable to speak to any elementals at all.

“Can
anyone
speak to elementals?” he murmured, and wrote “accuracy?” in the margin there. On the whole, Olga's offering irritated him even more than Lukin's did. Of
course
magic was supposed to be standardized! Corkoran's job at the University was to iron out all the differences in it.

He sighed and dragged Elda's massive offering forward. Elda was on the same tracks as Felim. What
had
they all been reading? Elda, even more than Felim, was certain that there were great tracts of magic left unexplored, and she kept giving examples that were not even in the
Almanac
of magics, which she must have learned from Derk, her father. Half the time Corkoran had no idea what she was talking about. He had never heard of gene tailoring, or zygotes, or rhyzomes either. He was irritated to discover that Elda knew this and explained it all, in carefully numbered notes at the end of the huge essay. And before this Elda's last pages went even further than Lukin had and became more or less a song of praise for magic, its excitements and its possibilities. That was enough. Corkoran scribbled a highly irritated C minus, and wondered, while he dragged Ruskin's heap of pages in front of him, whether he ought not, in all honesty, to give this diatribe a straight D.

He was determined to skim Ruskin's essay. But it was impossible. Ruskin was a dwarf, used to working with intricate things, and his argument was like chain mail, forged link by link. He put out a suggestion. He followed that with obvious things that led from it—things you were forced to agree to—and then he went one stage further and
Wham
! you were agreeing to something that was quite unheard of. Then Ruskin took the unheard-of idea and did the same to that.
Wham
. A new mad idea. Around and around the links Corkoran went, up and through and
wham!
through the first twenty pages. By this time he found he was humbly agreeing to a complete reorganization of the University syllabus, with theory and practical being taught together, to give more space for hugely advanced theory, and the first-year course beginning where the third year's left off; and agreeing then that magic as used today was being handled entirely wrongly and should be rethought from the bottom upward....