Chapter 17 #3
For reasons quite unclear to Zacharias, an image rose in his mind of Prunella, kneeling on the floor and playing with her familiars, one dark lock slipping out of its restraints to curl around the shell of her ear. He dismissed the image, feeling unaccountably embarrassed.
“Oh, that is to understate the case entirely!” declared the dragoness.
“I can never make out why mortal thaumaturges should be so ugly—puny, pale creatures, with scarcely any whiskers, and nothing in the way of scales. And as though it were not enough to be disagreeable-looking, they are shockingly bad behaved. You might do a great deal more to govern your thaumaturges, sir.”
“I am sorry to hear you say so,” said Zacharias warily.
The dragon could only be speaking of Geoffrey Midsomer—it had been too long since any other thaumaturge had entered Fairy for her to be complaining of anyone else—but he had not heard that Midsomer had caused any offence at the Fairy Court.
“I have not received any complaint regarding my colleagues’ conduct. ”
“I suppose it is not only your people that are to blame,” acknowledged the dragon.
“He ought not to have asked her, but then, Lorelei ought not to have gone. If I had been summoned to the mortal realm by an upstart magician, you may be sure I should have resented it. She is a designing creature, however, and there is no knowing what plans she has laid. She was betrothed before, you know, and her tears and sighings over the previous fellow were beyond anything. And then to up and run away with a mortal! Oh, she is a deep one!”
“I beg your pardon,” said Zacharias. His voice was calm, betraying (he hoped) none of his dismay, for he could not afford to show anything that could be taken as an admission of mortal guilt.
“Do you mean to allege that a thaumaturge summoned a magical creature to England, to serve as his familiar?”
“Allege? Why, it is only the truth,” said the dragon. “Everyone knows it!”
Spells to summon familiars had been unlawful since the Court had closed the border to traffic from England.
This was part of the contract between the two nations, by which outright conflict had been avoided, and it was a compromise for which Englishmen should be more grateful than they were.
Fairy had first proposed resolving their differences through war.
“But was not the thaumaturge prosecuted?” said Zacharias. Surely he would have heard if the Court had punished the illicit summoner. Relations had not deteriorated so far that the Court would not have mentioned such a breach to the Sorcerer Royal—had they?
“Well, no one has liked to decide what is to be done,” said the dragon.
“What with the Queen being away on her tour of the subject realms, I believe the King plans to overlook it as long as he may—Lorelei is such a favourite of Her Majesty’s.
They say Lorelei always intended to follow the mortal, and the whole thing was cooked up between the two of them. ”
“Indeed?” said Zacharias.
That meant there was an extra sorcerer at large in England—one so consumed by ambition as to be untroubled by the possibility of igniting a war with Fairyland.
It could only be one man. No one else would have had the opportunity to become acquainted with the Queen’s relations, and to prevail upon them to follow him to the mortal realm.
Midsomer would, of course, have concealed the existence of his familiar, since he had obtained it by a breach of their treaty with the Court.
He would have required considerable resource for a summoning spell powerful enough to draw out a subject of Fairyland contrary to the Court’s prohibition, and that must have disguised the first influx of fresh magic associated with the new familiar.
In time Midsomer’s familiar would grow more powerful, as its understanding with its new master improved.
There must already have been a perceptible upswelling in England’s atmospheric magic, attributable to his familiar.
Midsomer could not have concealed that forever—but he might have hoped to take the credit for the increase as part of his campaign to oust Zacharias.
“Do you recall the name of the gentleman in question, ma’am?” said Zacharias, in his most drearily official tone. “He should certainly be punished, if what you say is true.”
“Do you know,” said the dragon ingenuously, “the name has quite gone out of my mind. I would try to remember it, only I will begin to bore you with all this gossip.” A knowing glint flashed in her eye. “I am sure you will have heard it all before, in any case. Leofric is well, I hope?”
Zacharias stiffened.
“We speak but infrequently,” he said coldly.
· · ·
THE great halls where the guests mingled suggested that the King’s own chamber would be correspondingly grand.
Yet the dark earthen tunnels through which Zacharias was led seemed to fit with a more ancient tradition of Fairy architecture.
Before the fairies had built, they had dug.
As Zacharias wriggled through the narrow opening into the King’s antechamber, he half-expected to emerge into a burrow.
In fact he might have been in any fashionable town house in London.
The Fairy King’s antechamber was decorated with velvet draperies slung over high windows, elegant carpets and furnishings all in the most modish style.
There was only close-packed earth beyond the windows, however, and that, along with the pervading smell of fresh-turned soil and wood smoke, gave Zacharias the disconcerting feeling that he was in an ordinary mortal house that had been buried in an earthquake.
Flanked by fish-faced guardsmen, the Fairy King lounged upon his throne, marvellously made up, and dressed in a pink watered silk waistcoat that would have made Damerell blanch.
His Majesty was quite the complete dandy, equal to any Pink of the ton riding in Hyde Park or loitering in White’s, save that his attire was a decade behind the mode.
Nor could the heavy perfume he wore entirely drown out his native scent—the scent of nighttime, wilderness and the hunt.
Zacharias made his leg, grateful for the fact that the courtesy excused him from speaking just yet.
He had already discerned the gleam of intelligence in the heavy-lashed eyes behind the quizzing-glass.
The King might be a strange whimsical creature, and the Queen the acknowledged power in the Fairy Court, but it was clear that only a fool would dismiss His Majesty on that account.
“We hope you do not mean to talk about familiars, Mr. Wythe,” drawled the King.
“That was all the last fellow ever spoke of. One might think England cared about nothing else. Indeed, now we think of it, have not the English just received a familiar from us? That fellow took her. What was his name—autumn, winter?”
The King peered at Zacharias expectantly.
“I am afraid I do not know his name myself, sir,” said Zacharias.
He almost wished he had not just learnt of Midsomer’s crime.
It was an awkward piece of intelligence to have hanging over his very first encounter with the Fairy King.
He could not, of course, accuse a fellow thaumaturge of summoning himself a familiar before the Fairy Court, however little he liked the thaumaturge in question.
“As a matter of fact, I was not aware that we had received a new familiar until today.”
Before the King could answer, a lobster-headed courtier leant over to whisper in his ear. The King’s eyes widened, and he coughed.
“Well! Never mind that. At any rate, England may have no more familiars from us. You will do very well without.”
“Of course,” ventured Zacharias, “I am delighted to hear that the Court has relaxed its policy so far as to permit a new familiar to cross to our realm. May I ask—”
“You may ask nothing!” snapped His Majesty, in one of the startling shifts of mood that characterised the fairy race.
His brow darkened. A small grey rain cloud, grumbling with thunder, appeared above his head.
“I call it a damned piece of impertinence, do not you?” This was to the lobster courtier, who nodded solemnly, his antennae twitching with disapproval.
“Was not it plain that we had no wish to speak of familiars? If you persist with your tedious questions, we shall be compelled to dismiss you. There are quite enough bores in Fairyland as it is!”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Zacharias, alarmed. “I cannot say how much I regret causing any offence. It is the last thing I should wish to do.”
His Majesty sat back in his throne, still rather huffed, but as Zacharias conscientiously piled repentance upon remorse, the storm cloud above His Majesty’s head grew paler and paler.
Finally it dwindled to a white wisp, and a courtier blew it away.
The King gestured to his courtiers to pass him a snuffbox, and inclined his head to show Zacharias might stop.
“We will pass over it,” he said graciously. “What shall we talk of instead? I presume you came with a request for some boon or other?”
It was hardly an ideal time to draw the block on Britain’s magic to the Fairy King’s attention, but Zacharias could see no alternative. He might not have the opportunity again.
“I merely wished to apprise Your Majesty of an irregularity which has come to my attention,” he said.
Zacharias had no doubt the Fairy Court was behind the block.
The obstruction could not have been erected or maintained without the contrivance of the Queen and King, and the cork was as good as a royal seal.
But he could hardly accuse Fairy outright of conspiring against Britain’s interests.
The only way he could raise the subject, and avoid drawing down upon himself a royal tantrum, was to feign earnest innocence.