34. Elements
Chapter 34
Elements
Victor did not hurry as he walked back to me. He had no need.
Except for my own, the student chairs were vacant now, and the imposing form of his empty throne shaded me from the firelight of the Hellmouth hearth. I listened to the sound of his approach from behind, the falls of his black Hessian boots ringing solidly on stone as he traversed the length of his great hall—but the long, firm stride was less urgent now, the commanding gait relatively more relaxed.
From a certain point of view, I was his captive, I supposed: for the sake of my recovery I was to remain by his side all day, exposed for long hours to the influence of his art, until such time (so I inferred from his words the night before) as he saw fit to release me for the day’s last meal and my own bed. And until that time, I imagined, I would remain here, alone with him in his dark domain beneath the earth, surrounded and penetrated by the sheer sensation of his presence that made the very air seem closer, the walls creep in.
Only days ago I would have relished that feeling, when all I had to bury and hide within my heart was the innocent blooming of desire. I never knew him, not truly, but I trusted him then.
Now I scarcely knew myself: a deceiver and a villainess, the testament to my audacity hanging on its chain beneath my underclothes, between my breasts.
The echoing steps of his boots grew closer as I awaited him once more, empowered and imperiled, the latter sense slowly and inexorably eclipsing the first.
“You did well, Elizabeth,” Victor’s deep voice rumbled in the fire-warm air. He was several steps behind me yet, but his shift from my husband’s name back to my own was a private assurance that class had concluded and none were left to overhear.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Ashcroft,” his voice sank deeper yet as he almost growled the name, “will not trouble you further.”
“Thank you. I don’t imagine he will—you frightened him so, I could not decide whether he looked to have seen a ghost or had become one himself.”
He chuckled darkly—a now-familiar sound—and I wondered whether he was pleased with his own handiwork, or pleased by my recognition of it.
I did not have long to consider. The sound of his boots on the stone floor ceased and I felt him standing behind me, a little to one side, his black cloak brushing the back of my chair as his spreading shadow washed over me again. I said nothing, closing my eyes, letting my head and shoulders lean against the backrest of the chair as he pressed two fingers against the softest part of my throat.
And then, instinctively, I caught my breath.
His hand was so close to the Talisman, so horrifyingly close; how had I not considered this, when I made my choice to hazard the peril of wearing it on my person rather than risk leaving it unguarded in my room? Had I not guessed he would touch me thus, again and again, testing the strength of my constitution and my art as he gradually cured me of the last of my malaise? And I had now no recourse for my oversight but to endure: to trust despite my misgivings that his restraint remained, and his powerful hand would drift no lower—to forbid any further change in my breathing, any quickening of my heart?—
I felt my body sink in relief as his hand drew slowly away.
“Good!” He sounded genuinely satisfied. “The goldenscythe mixture has taken effect. My shadow within you is potent once more. That horse-face has little purchase left, and what tenuous hold remains is fading fast. A fortnight, if that,” his voice took on a vaguely warm, almost reassuring tone—how I wished that it would not!—“and you will be restored, entirely and permanently, to yourself. The poultice and elixir again tonight; my presence beside you for these several days—and that, I suspect, will be all.”
“Thank you, sir.” I allowed myself a small smile as I looked up to him over my shoulder; it would seem too strange, too suspicious, if I did not. “I cannot think how to thank you enough.”
“Should you feel particularly generous: continue in class as you did today,” I felt the gravity of his gaze upon me, the weight of his hand coming to rest on the back of my chair, “eviscerating every outworn, banal platitude they complacently consider wisdom .”
“I rather enjoyed that part, if I may say so.”
“Then say so,” Victor grunted. “But if the time comes that your taste for it fades, you know what I seek. That which you possess, and I require.” He paused, letting the words settle into the close air. “And that will pay for all.”
The Talisman pressed against my swelling chest as I gasped in silence for a breath.
He knew.
I sensed no wrath from him—only a kind of silent melancholy—yet he knew! It must be that he knew.
He knew, and he had me now, and the cavernous vault of his hall beneath the earth would be my tomb.
I would not tremble. If this were to be the end, I would not end thus. I only sighed, and tried with such dignity as I could to defer my fate: “My art, sir? To join with your own against Gremio?”
His single word of response was so low as nearly to be muffled by his steel mask: “Precisely.”
Relief, again.
“How much longer, sir,” I continued, as if to speak to him more in this direction would somehow make it all real, make it as if that was all he ever meant to ask of me, and I would escape the grip of peril once again, “until I’m ready to banish him with you?”
And what danger had I deferred, after all? What latest peril had I escaped? Had he meant indeed to ask me for the Talisman, ascertaining its presence by some unknown sixth or seventh sense, until the reminder of my necessity in the spell against Gremio convinced him to set his demand aside? Or had he only guessed I might have it, and pressed me nearly to the moment of crisis as a form of test—and had I passed, or failed, or called his bluff?
Or—I should have laughed, if it were so—had he truly meant my art from the first, never meaning to allude to the Talisman at all, and (for the moment) my only aggressor was the gnawing of my own mind?
“Do you feel ready, Elizabeth?”
“I should presume to be ready, I am sure, whether or not the world deems me so.”
“Fortunate,” he replied, and I sensed a vague lightening of his customarily brooding tone, “that you do not have the entirety of the world to convince—only me.”
“And what do you say, sir?”
“Only that I should not impose upon your sorcerous presumption.”
Don’t charm me anymore, sir , I meant to say; but I held my tongue, and I held my mind back from his. Not unless your art can turn back time: to undo what you did, or merely to undo what I know.
I heard a quiet sigh, and realized it could only have been mine.
“But,” I felt him almost relent, as if he sensed that the timing and the moment had been lost, before gathering himself again, “as your professor I have nonetheless some duty to judge. Your will is ready. Your imagination requires particular forms to align itself with mine, which I have not yet taught you, but these will be nearly trivial for you to learn. Your shadow grows, whether or not you have yet come to feel it. Your art’s affinity with mine has continued to strengthen. Other than the setback of your injury, your constitution against sorcery is commendably sound and yet uncallused, retaining a rare and vital sensitivity. You have suffered no ill effect from the goldenscythe?”
“No, not that I can tell.”
“Then I mean to risk a private lesson. Something not particularly taxing, though a mild exercise of your art would do you well.”
“Theory of circle casting for magia intrinseca ? The option Chesterton declined for fundamental theory of summoning?”
“Correct, albeit with a minor practical element. Come.”
I felt him part from my side as clearly as I heard the falls of his black boots, though he did not go far. I rose from my chair and took his scorpion cane in hand.
“You recall, Elizabeth, the second circle I cast at Crystal Palace Park? The one which, when broken, we together restored?”
When broken , I repeated in my mind as I followed him to the open space between the table and the aisle of armor, stopping when he did to stand at his side: I noted with some interest that he avoided the accusation of naming it the circle which you broke .
“Yes, sir, and I remember mentally noting at the time its resemblance, at least at first, to your spell with the cauldron and the olive oil: you spoke again the same names of the four winds. Yet you followed those with something more.”
“Very good. And what did you imagine followed my naming of the four winds?”
“I could not understand the language, though there were four similar phrases of command, and I thought that they must have been to draw in the four elements.”
“They are four similar phrases of command, one for each of the four elements, and while you are precisely correct on these two points, you are mistaken on the third. Consider your error.”
“The language?”
He shook his head. “To draw in the four elements…”
“—Would be a form of summoning, would it not?”
“Correct. And while, as you know well, one can summon via magia intrinseca , the summoning of elements is not the chief purpose of this particular use of the circle. But first,” he continued, “the four winds, and the circle itself. As you saw at Crystal Palace, the circle and the winds can be physically inscribed on the ground in silence if one so chooses, whether out of convenience or circumstance—my walking-stick, which you are welcome to continue using as a prop at need, is an effective instrument for doing so—yet the spoken names, and the circle created by the mind and the will, I have found considerably more powerful.”
“Then I should practice the latter, sir. Which way ought I to face? I remember that you began with the North Wind.”
“North—which is toward the door—will do for now. Above all, you must face the direction of your target, when you have one; if the name of that direction is known to you, begin with it. If you do not know, and cannot calculate it with swift conviction, the names of any four consecutive, equidistant directions will suffice.”
“I’ll start with the North Wind, then. East, I believe, was next; am I correct, therefore, that the circle must be cast clockwise?”
“You are right-handed, as am I; therefore, under most conditions, your circle is best cast clockwise.”
“It seems so adaptable, sir, so far—so circumstantial. Little like the static forms professed within the grimoires.”
Victor nodded, seemingly gratified. “Because, by and large, when a sorcerer experiments with circles—if he does not merely ape the formula of one of his predecessors—in most cases he discovers that method which brings him the most success, and stops there, recording it in a grimoire if he has a mind to do so. This is natural. What he rarely considers is that his preferred technique is not universal. The next time you read a book of spells, Elizabeth, you will be able to deduce all too much about its author from the way he describes his circle: the month of his birth, whether he wrote with his right hand or his left, the direction of his greatest love or most despised enemy.”
“How so the month of his birth, sir? I should think it something regarding the four elements.”
“Correct. But save that for next. At Crystal Palace,” here he briefly paused, “were you able to See your circle, or mine? How did they appear to you?”
“Both, or so I thought. Yours was a pale, uncanny glow like moonlight, and black smoke rose from it; mine, when I made it flare, was a shining fire of a color that had never before met my eyes—I do not know if I should call it black, or deepest violet, or both at once, but it was the same hue as the will o’ the wisp. It did not seem to belong to the ordinary world; I don’t suppose I should have been able to witness either yours or mine, were it not for my Sight.”
“Impressive,” he intoned, “as I have come to expect. Most sorcerers will only ever See their own faerie fire, if they are potent and profligate enough to generate any, and if their Sight is strong. In mortal sorcerers the presence of faerie fire suggests an excess. An overburn. A glut of the will.”
“Should I restrain myself? If my efficiency is poor?—”
“No.” He interrupted, his voice decisive and firm. “There is greater power in too much than in too little . Face north, and cast your circle: North Wind, East Wind, South Wind, West Wind. As you do, ignite in your mind your violet-black fire; watch it travel clockwise, burning a ring around us on the floor at pace with your addressing of the winds.”
I nodded, drew a breath, and began.
“North Wind. East Wind?—”
“Slowly,” he breathed at my side. I felt the shift of his black cloak and robes as he moved to stand directly behind me, the light of the hearth at my back going dark. I should have been relieved, I supposed, that this put him farther from the Talisman when my attention would be elsewhere, but all I could do was to wonder why he had done so—what he meant to make me feel. “Slowly,” his low voice rumbled, behind and above my ear. “Feel it. Begin again.”
“North Wind.”
“Close your eyes. See the circle begin to burn, the fire spreading along a thin line arcing from the north toward the east. When it reaches due east?—”
“East Wind.”
“Yes. It arcs from the east to the south now, behind us, all the half-circle in its wake still burning violet-black.”
“South Wind.”
“Yes. South toward the west now. When the foremost reach of the ring of fire comes level with your left hand?—”
“West Wind.”
“Good. Make it meet in the north, before you, closing and completing the circle. Then open your eyes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And? Can you See it again?”
“I think so, sir, but it’s faint.”
“To be expected. The passion and excess of mortal peril will naturally produce a more vivid effect than practicing circles where you are safe.”
Safe? My mind seized upon the word. Had he meant for me to feel safe here with him, in this place which a moment ago I had deemed destined to become my grave, and he both the agent of my demise and the sexton waiting with his shovel? In the few moments before I knew that I must speak again, I realized I had little considered whether his mention of my safety was a mere ruse to draw me to lower my guard—but his use of the word felt too natural, too true, and when I remembered my vow of villainy his sincerity became more terrible still.
“When the four of your students made the circle around Greycliff,” I asked him—a genuine question, yet also timed to my advantage, “you said they stood at compass points, and thereby made him the… center, I suppose; I cannot remember your precise words. The place where the four cardinal directions intersect and meet. I said that any point on earth could be imagined as such—and you told me I was correct.”
“You were correct. And you remain so. How, then, do you interpret the circle you have cast here, with yourself standing at the center?”
“It makes me the central point of the earth. The vanishing point on every horizon, to which all the roads run.”
“It can become so. Yet, used for magia intrinseca ?—”
“— From which all the roads run.” Out of sheer instinct I could not help but look back to him over my shoulder, so enthralled was I by the moment of my small revelation. “The origin point—of everything. Poe’s primordial particle . Not the end. The beginning.”
“Precisely.” He bowed his head in a deep nod, and from the flicker of pride in his eyes, I thought that behind the steel mask he must have smiled. “With the circle you create the world—the universe, if you prefer—in essence and perfect miniature, with yourself as its center. Its origin. The singular point from which all erupts; and to which, should you so choose, all might be recalled and crushed into oblivion. Your universe arises from within you, born of the union of your imagination and will, the wild-hearted daughter of the tryst between energy and reason; and you are in every way its creator, its artist, and its master.”
I could not resist the thrill of his words, and all that they drew me to feel—the voluptuous, Faustian delight of the universe spilling before me—and within my Sight my circle flared a more vivid violet, like alcohol splashed on a fire, but it faded in a flash back to its indeterminate glow as I caught my breath: I thought that he drew closer behind me, and I wondered what he had seen.
What he had felt.
“The elements, then,” I replied to him, the sound of my voice in my ears too near to being breathless. “And in magia intrinseca they aren’t summoned, but expressed. Emanated from within the sorcerer.”
“Correct.”
“If all the world is composed of the four elements, and the sorcerer no exception, then the sympathy and correspondence between the one and the other should allow the sorcerer to…”
I struggled to find the words, but not for long.
“To move the world,” his deep voice rumbled close behind me. “To project his will—shaped and amplified by means of the circle, when desired—and behold in the world the image of his imagination.”
“His imagination comes true.”
“Concern yourself less with what others call true , more with what is possible. But you are, in essence, correct once more.”
“Then, in casting the circle, the elements should be assigned to the directions which most advantage the sorcerer’s will.”
“Correct. There are thus two primary considerations: the sorcerer’s purpose, and his own elemental inclination. While there are exceptions, the dominant element is most often reflected in the position of the sun at one’s birth. You, Elizabeth, born beneath a fiery star?—”
“Is it so easy for you to tell?”
“Yes,” he chuckled behind me, a faint warmth at the edge of his voice, “quite. Absent of some purpose or circumstance to the contrary, you will likely be most effective with fire, your native and most potent weapon, at your dominant right hand. Air, the complement of fire, before you to quicken the flames. Water at your left hand, directly across from fire—not for any stagnant notion of benign balance, but to heighten the passion of contrary forces—and earth behind you, what might elsewhere have been an obstacle becoming instead a shield at your back. Assuming you are facing north?—”
“—Air to the north,” I proceeded slowly, aligning the four winds with the elements in my mind, “fire to the east, earth to the south, water to the west.”
“Good! That formula will serve you well, until such time as you find occasion to modify it further.”
“Ought I to recite them clockwise like that? In the same order as the winds?”
“If you prefer. Their orientation in relation to you is of far greater import than the sequence in which they are named: the circle is already cast. With the elements—the four humors , as they were called long ago; the four primary aspects of the self—you stand at the circle’s center, shaping the world beyond its ring to that which you create within it.”
“And you, sir? From the way you spoke, I don’t imagine you orient the elements in the same manner as will I.”
“Was the pommel of that walking-stick you hold no hint? Do the astrologers of the Order no longer teach, as part of their general curriculum and campaign against me, to abhor the sign of the Scorpion?”
“I couldn’t say, sir; I did not progress so far in their classes to reach even the Banishing Circle of the First Degree.”
“And your mind is the freer for it. To every student they teach the same circle—straight off the rack, as if one design should serve for all, and all should reckon the hour with the same stopped clock—and, preferring dull indignity to the vivacious hazard of insolence, they teach it via rote memorization. The dead opposite of feeling . Of sorcery itself.
“But,” he continued, “to more properly answer your question: I have found, through various trials, that I prefer in most circumstances for my own element of water to spread before me, a dark tide to surge over the sands, while my right hand wields the wind. The latter is an old caprice of mine—the mortal desire to emulate, one day to outstrip, those whirling winds that presage the arrival of the uncanny into the world of the moon and sun. Earth to my left hand, directly across from its contrary of air, that the vital power of deep roots and towering boles remains at my side, each one a great pillar and axis of the worlds. And behind me, fire,” I felt him chuckle briefly behind me, his voice sardonic in its strange, dark pride, “that I remain two steps ahead of the flames of Hell.”
“Like the hearth,” I whispered, almost to myself, “behind your throne.”
“In part,” he replied, his voice low. “Now. Can you discern the sense of each element, Elizabeth? How do you presume to know when your work in casting them has become effective?”
“I think I can discern them, sir. I should extend my hand, I suppose, toward each direction in turn?—”
“Good.”
“And—wait for the feeling to come.”
“To feel each element in your hand?”
“Yes.”
“Try it.”
With a drawn breath, I extended my right hand before me, my palm open and turned halfway toward the light of the chandelier above. “And create it in my mind, sir, I assume?”
“Naturally. What is to you the dominion of air? A blue sky, birds in flight?”
“A windswept moor,” I said, with a small smile. “With the spare grasses hissing in the heather and a lone tree bent.”
“Better,” he grunted.
For a moment I paused, the image of the untamed moor still held in my mind. Was I to speak? To utter some word of command? He had done so after casting his circle, certainly, albeit in a language I did not know—but I did not wish to appear so hesitant as to ask again, and I knew after all that his answer would amount to the same as it nearly always did: to allow my senses and my will to guide me.
“Air before me.” I was satisfied by the sound of that statement in my ears: strong, simple, commanding.
“Excellent. Do you feel it in your hand?”
I closed my eyes, concentrating, forming more vividly before my mind’s eye the image of an endless heath lashed by the unrelenting wind. “I can’t tell, sir.”
“Though the language is oversimplified to the point nearly of uselessness, the ancient Greeks characterized the sensation of air as being warm and damp.”
After a long, trying silence, I looked to the row of hollow knights before me and shook my head. “No,” I sighed, letting my extended right hand fall slowly back to my side. “As yet I can scarcely feel it at all. No appreciable change from how my hand felt before.”
“ Sii la mia aria ,” he intoned, his voice little more than a low murmur—but I thought that I recognized the phrase nonetheless from Crystal Palace Park.
“What does it mean, sir?”
“ Be my air. That you may feel them more deeply, I will heighten and augment your elements with my own, assigning each to its cardinal direction by command.”
“Should I try again, using your?—”
And then I could not speak. I could not move. I heard the soft, taut hiss of my own indrawn gasp before I neglected even to breathe.
His strong right hand had surrounded and captured mine.
“Feel,” his deep voice rumbled behind my ear. I was caught fast, my hand warm and secure in his inescapable grip as he raised my arm before me, restoring it to where I once had held it outstretched to command the wind. My heart beat faster as I considered belatedly the horror of the seconds that had only now passed, leaving an unsettling fascination in their wake: he had seized and trapped my hand so effortlessly, so deftly, so assured of his utter command that he had no use for speed nor great force. It was not that his grip was hard or painful—on the contrary, it was too comfortable, too easy to give in and relax into his power—only that I was reminded again of his impossible, inexorable strength, and of my defenselessness against him.
Then I felt the scorpion cane slip from my fingers, and I listened to it clatter to the floor while his left hand as surely engulfed mine: I was bound now completely, both my hands gripped in his, no hope of reaching the hidden Talisman where it hung perilously between my breasts.
All that was left now of my illusion of resistance was to will my hands to neither sweat nor tremble in his grasp.
“Close your eyes,” he intoned quietly. “Imagine the dominions of the elements, one by one, as I turn you toward each. Chesterton was not incorrect that magia intrinseca is exalted by the memory. Feel , Elizabeth, with every sense, so that you will remember.”
“Yes, sir,” I nodded as I closed my eyes, forcing my voice steady.
But all I could feel was him. His hold on me. His strong, firm hands.
“Air first. Behold the wind across your wild moors! The scent of furze and heather, the haunting cries of the curlew and lapwing, the wind whipping in your hair.” He paused, and I felt him draw in a deep breath. “Your palm perspires, as it should.”
I felt my breath quicken, my stomach sink: first for his observation, obvious though it must have been with my hands in his, and the suggestion of the terrible truth that so close to him, possessed by him, he knew all that I felt; second for the mild vertigo—the sense of the shift in the world—as I felt his shadow stir and spread slowly through me. It was all too much like my previous private lesson with him, when his rising art overtook me and I fainted away into his arms, and I could not help but wonder whether that would be my fate again—whether he had designed it so—how long, this time, I could endeavor to hold forth in my vain resistance?—
“There,” he breathed, at once an urgency and a strange kind of satisfaction in his voice. “You feel it.”
He was right.
His shadow filling me, my nerves alight, my senses heightened and whetted on the precipice of terror and desire, I felt it. The air against my hand, the sting of the lashing wind warming my skin despite its cold, damp touch; the scent and sense of the boundless wild—and him , there with me, holding me—I felt it all.
“ Sii il mio fuoco! ” he breathed as he turned me to the right with the pressure of his hands, the shift in his shadow and his powerful body; he did not quite hold me against him, but he was close enough that I felt the heat of him, and his black cloak and robes swayed subtly with the black fabric of my mourning dress.
“Fire at my right hand!” I said, my eyes still closed, thinking I ought to command my own element in my own words as well. No sooner had I spoken than I felt, faintly but unmistakably, a blast of dry heat like stepping from the shade into the desert sun.
“What is to you the dominion of fire?”
“A vast inferno, sir; a sea of flame, no form but fire itself.”
He turned me to the right again, my right arm still extended before me, still held and supported by his unyielding strength; my left arm hung yet at my side, and my left hand, still embraced in his, became part of his gentle, insistent pressure against my hip. I knew that I should want to escape him, helpless though I would be to do so even if I tried. I knew that I should not allow the bittersweet truth that it felt like a dance, and that we ought never to dance again, and that therefore this must needs serve for our first and last.
I was glad that he was behind rather than before me. If the hot rush that stung the corners of my closed eyes were any more than the effect of facing our elemental fire, he would never see, and I would never need to know.
“Earth behind me!” I pronounced ahead of his uttered command, but his “ Sii la mia terra! ” was close at my heels, and the bounty of the earth felt cool to my hand despite the warmth of his. “An immense stony crag rising from a green glade,” I described before he asked me, “the tall trees clinging to its slopes made as small as leaves of ivy by its terrible grandeur.”
“Water at my left hand!” I finished after he turned my hands and body again.
“ Sii la mia acqua! ”
“The sea itself,” I spoke after him, “a raging tempest beneath the veiled glow of the moon.” It was no challenge now to feel elemental water, whether due to the successful attunement of my senses to the rest, or because by his own nature he made water the most vivid of them all: I felt his strength, headlong and yet relentless; his cruel, drowning undertow; the black, bleak, haunted depths to which all lost things sank into mystery. I knew that given time I, too, would sink into him, I too would be lost, and I thought of the hidden sands far, far beneath the sway of the waves, half-burying the long white bones of primeval Leviathans that modern man has never named nor known.
But the vision broke as he turned me to the north, returning me to the element of air again, completing the circle.
“You stand now at the center of all things,” his voice rumbled, “and all things emanate from you. How now do you complete the spell?”
“How do you complete it, sir? I remember at Crystal Palace Park you spoke in Latin— I am a force of nature , I thought that part of it meant.”
“ Ego sum vis naturae ,” he replied. “You are correct.”
“And the rest?”
“ Ego sum ego solus. ” Victor paused, letting the gravity of his voice linger in my mind. “ As you attended a performance of the Marvelous Manfredini,” he continued, some mild amusement in his voice, “you would have heard also Reinhardt’s proclamation of will, albeit in his mother tongue.”
“I did. I thought it meant something like I am the mirror of the mirror .”
“Correct. I assisted him in its choice and development: it is an apt designation for an illusionist, who trades both in true sorcery and the mirrors and reflections of stagecraft. The illusion of an illusion returns to truth. The reflection of a reflection is the original in itself.”
“And yours, sir? If the statement is tailored so closely to the sorcerer, how ought I to interpret your own?”
“ I am myself alone. ” He translated the Latin, but that was all. He said no more.
He is lonely, then , I thought to myself, and chid myself at once for the foolish conception. That was not what he meant by it, surely; he said it with such strength at Crystal Palace, such virile and indomitable force, I could never imagine it as an admission of absence or a bemoaning of lack. No, it was the opposite: a declaration of his presence, his resistance, his autonomy in himself, the primacy and audacity of Doctor Victor D’Arco against every world that would dare defy him.
No, he did not mean that he was lonely. That was not what he meant at all.
Yet I could not help but remember that night before the park when, in the privacy of my chamber, I first thought of him alone in his. No steel mask, I imagined—no iron dagger, no black leather boots, no midnight cloak.
Only a solitary man climbing into a lone, cold bed.
“And what ought I to say, sir?” Even to my own ears, the question sounded nearly too open, too sincere. That was not the way one asked a professor for only his academic advice.
And what ought I to say, sir, about you? I would have asked, but could not. About all that I still feel, even now—even now that I ought to think only of your demise—when I imagine you to be lonely?
My hands felt warmer. I hoped they had not curled instinctively into his.
“What you will,” he replied, and I thought I heard a hint of melancholy in his voice that nearly matched my own. Did his warm, firm grip tighten in response—just for a moment—before it slackened and slowly fell away, and I let my hands back down to my sides?
And I was myself a little lonelier for it, I thought with a faint, sad smile he would never see. Even here before him—one weapon at my feet, and another (perhaps deadlier still) at my breast—I already missed his touch.
“It is your proclamation of your own sorcery, Elizabeth; your spell of the self, your signature upon your art. And with it, your will is done.”
“Then I ought to say my will be done , oughtn’t I, until I conceive of a proper signature? As I did when I bound myself to you as your apprentice?”
“You remember well.” From his tone, I thought that he seemed faintly pleased. “It is rather anonymous, and therefore lesser in power, yet it has its advantages: when one is willing to forsake some measure of force to avoid drawing attention to one’s identity, for example. But it will serve you in all cases for now, until you select the words which will declare your sorcery to the world of sun and moonlight—and to the other worlds below.”
With a nod, I drew a breath. “My will be done,” I said firmly. I felt a faint shift—at once a flourishing and a release of shadow—and I let what little I Saw of my circle burn down and fade away.
“Well done, Elizabeth.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Your initial experiment with the circle now being complete, is there anything you mean to alter for next time?”
“I don’t believe so. The orientation of the elements felt correct to me, at least so far.”
“Good.”
“—Well, one thing, sir, now that I come to think of it.”
“Yes?”
“Am I to cast this very circle around myself when we banish Gremio together? And you, in your own circle, on the other side of him?”
“Correct.”
“Then I must learn to do it much faster, clearly.”
“Clearly,” he echoed me. “But there will be time.”
“And I should like to do it without turning next time. Without placing my back to the enemy.”
“A wise consideration.” The light shifted behind me as I thought he seemed to bend down; before I had much opportunity to consider, I felt the hearth-glow dim again and the cool black shaft of his scorpion cane press into my left hand. “And thus you will never be without a weapon,” his deep voice rumbled, and I sensed in it a certain warmth of pride.
“Thank you, sir.”
I wrapped my fingers around his walking-stick, foolishly unprepared for the light brush of his hand against mine again, the contact so nonchalant that I must have been meant to think it was careless. It made my spine tense, my chest swell too quickly with a new breath, and the sensation of the hidden Talisman pushing closer against my skin was an unwelcome reminder of my peril.
And then his fingers were against my throat again, pressing up into the soft flesh under my jaw. Had he done so only a moment before, my heart would not yet have quickened?—
“Good,” he grunted, the commanding pressure of his touch relenting as his hand drew slowly away. “Good. Some mild exercise of your faculties, particularly of your art, has done you well. But that is enough for today. You may now depart to eat, if you wish, though only for a little while—or take your midday meal here, if you prefer.”
“I’m not hungry, sir,” I lied softly. “I had a rather heavy breakfast this morning before I arrived. But thank you for the offer.” In truth, I was growing tired: not so much for the exertion of the class and the private lesson thereafter, but for the constant strain of the danger on its thin chain between my breasts, the restlessness of his shadow’s unquiet fire within me lighting my way as I walked the narrow ridge between the chasms of despair and desire, no place on that precipice to rest my mind nor my heart. In truth, I would have appreciated some sustenance to steady me.
But in that very state which a meal would perhaps have helped ameliorate, I sensed that I ought not to leave him yet—it seemed too likely to be a test, and I thought I would seem too ungrateful or suspicious if I preferred to dine elsewhere—and yet I wondered if I could trust whatever he might offer me to eat. I was reminded too distinctly of Hades’ pomegranate for Persephone, and of the legends of the faerie feasts beneath the green mounds in the tales I had known as a young girl: partake of the food of the underworld at your mortal peril, so the stories all told, for once it passes your lips you will be bound to that other world forever, and walk the earth of the living no more in the raiment of flesh and blood.
He stood now beside me, and I raised my eyes to look to him, my gaze lingering on the steel half-mask that looked in this light too much like the ruthless, fleshless grin of a skull. Were I to accept his hospitality and eat here in his subterranean lair, I wondered, would he eat with me? And if he did, would at last I behold the human face—if human it should prove to be—of Doctor D’Arco unmasked?
Yet I allowed the thought to perish before him: I had already denied my hunger and made my choice. There was, I supposed, a part of me that still thought I ought to wish for the world above.
“Very well,” he replied to my polite falsehood. The great doors ahead of us groaned on their immense iron hinges, relenting before their master as they slowly parted to reveal his dim hallway. Small flames quivered in the hands of the grotesque stone creatures that leered from the walls; the single pulse of Victor’s art spread from him like a dark wave, flickering the candles, rolling slowly through my body: a familiar sensation now, and yet never without that shiver of the uncanny I had come to expect. Even—I could not allow myself to linger in such a thought, truth though it was—to anticipate.
“Walk with me, Elizabeth.” He looked to me to ensure that I meant to join him, then strode slowly next to me as we walked toward the open archway, the hollow suits of armor watching us from either side in silence.