Chapter 8 #2
“You are distressed, Miss Gentleman, and not without reason, but if you were to reflect upon your request in a calmer spirit, I am persuaded you should see it would not do. Besides, I am headed not for London but for Fobdown Purlieu on the morrow. I would advise you to return to the school. I can see that with your ability you must find it a sadly restrictive environment, but even such a system as Mrs. Daubeney’s will give you more exposure to the theory of magic than if you were anywhere else. ”
“Not more than if I were in London!” said Prunella bitterly.
She had hoped to work upon Zacharias’s sentiments by appearing as a weeping, clinging, trembling creature in need of aid. Mrs. Daubeney was always saying pointedly how little gentlemen liked pushing females, whose tongues were never still, and who had a stomach for anything.
But her lack of success made her reckless. Speaking with real candour, Prunella said:
“I beg you will put yourself in my position, sir. Someone owned you as a son. There were those who had a stake in your success. But if you were me—with no family, no one upon whose charity or affection you could depend—would not it seem to you that there was no place in the world for such a one as yourself?”
Zacharias looked at her in surprise. But he could not fail to understand her meaning.
Prunella was not nearly so dark as he—perhaps Sultan Ahmad would not recognise her as anything but a European—but to Zacharias, and more importantly, to any Englishman or -woman, it was evident that she was not—could not be—altogether English.
“Someone owned me, indeed,” he said slowly.
It was not an inaccurate assertion, though it was long since he had been emancipated.
Sir Stephen had got around to signing the necessary papers when Zacharias turned thirteen—a curious birthday present for a thirteen-year-old boy.
“I should like to help you, Miss Gentleman, but consider, would you be any better in London? How would you live? The city is no kinder than the country to those who have no place in the world. Here, at least, you have food and shelter, even if you have fallen out with your mistress.”
Prunella flushed, remembering her last encounter with Mrs. Daubeney. To be obliged to her any longer was intolerable!
“I think I may seek better than to be beholden to the likes of her for food and shelter!” she said. But the Sorcerer Royal was not listening.
He said nothing, but his countenance altered all at once. He put a hand to his forehead, reaching out with the other, as though he sought support. But in fact he was only fumbling for the clock on the mantelpiece.
“Mr. Wythe,” said Prunella, “are you well?”
“So late!” said Zacharias in a harsh voice, so changed that Prunella stared. “Nearly midnight! How could I have permitted you to remain so late?”
He staggered when he returned the clock to the mantelpiece, and had to steady himself by grasping the back of a chair.
Prunella could not make out why the hour should shock him so, but it was no time to puzzle over the Sorcerer Royal’s eccentricity. Mr. Wythe was grey, his countenance fixed and staring.
“I am sure you are unwell,” she said.
“It is nothing,” said the Sorcerer Royal in that strange, distracted manner. “A headache, nothing more. You must certainly go back to the school.”
But Prunella would not be put off. The look on Mr. Wythe’s face as he turned from the mantelpiece had gone to her heart. It was a fleeting look—vanished in a moment, for he composed his features into their usual calm—but the pain and fear could not be mistaken.
“Pray sit down. You look but poorly,” she said. “Mrs. Daubeney used to be a martyr to her headaches, till Cook put an end to them with—well, she said it was a tisane, but I am sure it was a spell!”
Years of chivvying little girls to take their baths and finish their dinners had given Prunella a knack for making the recalcitrant bow to her will.
She bundled Zacharias unceremoniously into a chair, and it was this that saved him, for the first jet of flame shooting out from the grate was aimed precisely at where his head had been a moment ago.
Prunella fell back with a shriek.
“Good God!” cried Zacharias.
The fire spilt out of the grate, growing with inconceivable rapidity, devouring the carpet and flaring out towards the ceiling.
Choking black smoke filled the room. This was no ordinary fire, for it was haloed with an eldritch green light, and the pungent smell of magic—a smell of hot metal and sulphur, and of herbs burning—filled Prunella’s nostrils.
“Take care!” she gasped, as another jet of flame burst from the fireplace.
Mr. Wythe was still in his chair, ashen-faced.
He managed to evade the jet by slumping out of the way, but he seemed incapable of doing any more, though he grasped the arms of the chair and tried to pull himself up.
It was clear he was in no state to defend himself, much less Prunella.
She must contrive to look after them both.
She grasped his hand and drew the edges of her ragged invisibility spell together. There was no time to think. Working by instinct, she knitted up the rips and tears in her charm and wound it around them both, thinking it furiously into solidity. It must be a wall—a cool wall—a freezing wall—
There were weird inhuman faces in the fire, with tendrils of flame for hair, and mouths open in silent screams of rage. Prunella had not erected her defence a moment too soon. The spirits of the fire surged out of the grate, and threw themselves bodily against her ward.
It held. The fire hissed as it met the ward (cold as ice, cold as November).
The spirits roared, their faces melting and re-forming within the wall of flame encircling her and Zacharias.
Sometimes the spirits looked like people, but sometimes they looked very unlike, having far too many limbs, and far too many teeth.
Prunella was so cold her teeth chattered in her head, but the bubble enclosing her and Mr. Wythe was lit with a hellish orange light. The devouring fire surrounded them. She could not hold it off for much longer.
A tentacle of flame pierced the barrier as she grew weary, and reached towards Zacharias. If Prunella had been thinking clearly she might well have allowed the flame to obtain its aim. She was not thinking at all, however, and she flung out her hand to stop it.
The flame wrapped around her wrist. She was so cold she did not feel the heat at first, but then she did.
Zacharias heard the girl cry out, and that brought him back to himself, through the haze of pain. He grasped her, though he was weak, dangerously weak. He should never have allowed her to stay, so close to midnight.
“Leofric!” he cried. “Leofric, damn you, remember the bargain!”
He felt the weakness leave him. Power rushed in a cool stream down his arm.
Prunella did not know quite what was happening, but the pain eased suddenly, and the fire receded. Mr. Wythe rose to his feet.
She had the blurry impression of her ward being turned inside out, like an umbrella in a storm.
But it was no longer the spell she had knitted frantically together—it was transformed into something larger and far more powerful.
It enveloped the blaze, cooling it in a trice, and crushed down the fire, till the room was dark, and there was nothing left of the flames or the spirits.
In Mr. Wythe’s hand pulsed a ball of crimson light.
He flung it into the grate. It hit the wall and burst with a hollow roar, many-voiced.
Prunella saw the spirits of the fire escape up the chimney, hissing angrily as they went.
A remaining nucleus of flame dropped on the logs, where it glowed for a moment before it expired.
Prunella’s last thought was that if Mr. Wythe was not unwell, after all, she wished she had not troubled to exert herself. Her wrist hurt very much. But then she did not feel it any longer. A merciful darkness swallowed her whole.
· · ·