Chapter 3 #2
Zacharias made occasional use of the shewstone for scrying, and to commune with fellow magicians in distant lands.
When it was not in use he covered it with a black velvet cloth, partly to shield it from dust, but also to preserve the sensibility of any unmagical guests.
Shewstones collected traces of atmospheric magic, resulting in the appearance of disturbing images upon their surface: horrid impish faces, mystic letters, tiny desperate figures running from some lurking doom.
Seizing his staff, Zacharias snatched the cloth away, and caught the crystal ball when it juddered off the windowsill. Within the glass loomed two giant dark orbs, and a harsh, ancient voice bellowed:
“Raja Ahmad!”
The sultan sat up, his eyes starting from his head. The sultana clasped his hand, her face pale.
“What—what is that?” cried the interpreter.
All at once the shewstone became as hot as a poker taken off the fire, scalding Zacharias’s fingers. He dropped it with a cry, and the crystal ball rolled across the room, catching up at Sultan Ahmad’s feet.
The dark orbs within the crystal resolved into ordinary eyes, set in the face of an elderly female.
She was a foreigner, like the sultan and his companions, with skin several shades lighter than Zacharias’s own.
Her grey hair was partly concealed by a scarf, her face wrinkled and sere.
Despite her scowl there was little in her appearance to inspire fear, but Sultan Ahmad jumped out of his seat as though he had seen a snake.
“Who is that woman? What is she saying?” hissed Edgeworth, grasping Zacharias’s arm. Zacharias drew a quick symbol in the air, murmuring a formula. The woman’s speech sprang into clarity.
“You thought you would escape without anyone’s discovering your purpose, but you ought to have known you could not evade Mak Genggang so easily!
” she said. “I know what you have been about! Pleading with the British King for cannons and blunderbusses, the better to attack your own people with. Is this the reason the Achinese restored you to us, Raja Ahmad? Better that you had never come home, if so!”
The sultan was crimson with fury and embarrassment. He swept Zacharias and Edgeworth with a raging look, crying:
“I am betrayed! Damn you all for traitors and villains!”
He stormed out of the room, followed by the sultana. The interpreter only paused at the door to snap in a trembling voice:
“That is a poor attempt at a translation spell, for you ought to know that he called you a black-faced villain, and I quite agree!”
“Is that you, Othman?” cried the old woman in the glass.
“See what cowards these men are! They are bold enough to bow and scrape to foreigners, but they would rather flee than look poor old Mak Genggang in the eye. You may tell your master from me that he has ground his face in the earth for nothing, Othman. All the broadsides in the world will not affright the witches of Janda Baik!”
· · ·
THIS is a pretty pickle!” exclaimed Edgeworth.
Zacharias picked up the shewstone. The woman’s face had vanished, and the glass was cloudy again, showing only the fleeting images produced by atmospheric magic. But traces of Mak Genggang’s spell still lingered, stinging his fingers.
It had been potent magic that had allowed the witch to enter the shewstone though she had not been summoned, all the more as she was working her spells in Janda Baik.
It was possible in theory to cast any enchantment from afar, but it required considerable skill—more than Zacharias would have expected from the type of village witch Sultan Ahmad had described to them.
But it was clear neither the sultan nor Edgeworth had told him the whole story.
“What can have possessed you to spring that hag upon the sultan?” Edgeworth continued. “With a little effort we might have made a valuable friend for England, but now you have sent him off in high dudgeon, and the work to cultivate him is all to do again!”
Vexed as Zacharias was, he was almost tempted to laugh. He had not expected an apology, but still it seemed extraordinary that Edgeworth should be reproaching him for springing unwelcome surprises upon his guests.
“I did not summon the witch,” said Zacharias. “She inserted herself into the proceedings.”
“Oh, indeed!” said Edgeworth. “I was always told that the Sorcerer Royal’s quarters and possessions were hedged about with wards, but I am a mere layperson and cannot claim to know anything about the matter.”
“The shewstone is warded,” said Zacharias, holding it up to the light.
“But the dimensions within it belong to anyone who can master the spaces between the worlds. A shewstone must be open to any influence that is capable of entering it, or it could not perform its ordinary functions. It says much of this witch that she was capable of penetrating it, however. Sultan Ahmad has good reason to be anxious.”
“Nor is he the only one,” said Edgeworth. He seemed to have a great deal more to say, but he cut himself off and exhaled, striving to govern his irritation. After a moment he said, with a tolerable appearance of complaisance:
“Come, Wythe, cannot we arrive at a suitable agreement? The Government longs to consolidate our power in the Indian Ocean, for if we do not, like as not Boney will pip us to the post. We cannot afford to offer Janda Baik either men or ships, but if there were some means of placing the sultan in our debt—some knockdown spell, say, which would put paid to these harridans—the Government would be very much obliged, and I am sure it would show its gratitude in a fitting fashion.”
Zacharias said he should be sorry to disoblige the Government, but he was sure it would not depend upon him for any knockdown spell.
“It would, you know, be rather like making war against these witches. The Government will recognise how impossible it is for thaumaturgy to involve itself in anything of that sort. The Government will not have forgotten our treaty with the French sorcieres.”
It was Sir Stephen who had negotiated the entente between France’s sorcieres and English thaumaturgy at the beginning of the war.
Both sides appreciated the profound devastation that would be wreaked by a magical war, and neither wished to provoke it.
Fairy commonly scorned to take notice of mortal skirmishes, but a fairy never lived who could resist adding its hexes to a magical scrimmage, and that was a result no one could desire.
Thaumaturgy benefited from the treaty, for it enabled English magicians to avoid testing their declining powers against the French, who had given no sign of suffering from any lack of magic.
But it also suited the French sorcieres: they were as froward and jealous of their independence as any illusion of magicians, and they had no desire to be ordered about by their government as though they were no better than the military.
They had agreed with the Society that no magician would advance the political aims of either nation by magic, so long as the war continued.
“Any use of military magics to assist the sultan risks breaching our agreement, and provoking France’s sorcieres,” continued Zacharias. “I need not tell you, sir, that we are already sufficiently embattled, not to court the addition of magic to Bonaparte’s arsenal.”
He and Edgeworth had both been pretending that neither of them was as annoyed with the other as they really were—Zacharias with rather more success, for his life had been such as to cultivate his ability to feign complaisance even when he was angriest. For all the privileges Sir Stephen’s patronage had lent him, Zacharias could not often afford the liberty of honest emotion.
Neither his colour nor his birth was such as to render such habits of self-control necessary for Edgeworth, however, and his composure began to fray at the edges.
“And I suppose we have no magic to frighten Boney with!” he snapped. “We are a laughingstock—a nation of hundreds of enchanters, and nothing to enchant with!”
Zacharias’s face went stiff. This was what he had feared all along, that the Society’s weakness should be revealed to the Government. In a moment he had recovered his equanimity, but not quickly enough. Edgeworth had seen his look of alarm, and said: