Chapter 21
PRUNELLA WAS INDIGNANT to be roused early the next morning for her lesson.
“Surely you have better things to concern yourself with than my instruction,” she protested.
The same thought had, of course, occurred to Zacharias.
Prunella’s education was a demand upon his time and energy that he could ill afford.
But the thought had followed quick upon its heels that he ought to make the most of every opportunity he possessed to teach Prunella, if she were to govern her familiars safely.
It seemed increasingly likely that very little time remained to him to do it.
Then, too, this lesson had required special preparations. It would not be nearly as convenient to repeat it on any other day; indeed, to seek a postponement might occasion offence. Therefore Zacharias insisted.
“Let us resolve to complete five formulae today,” he said.
“They shall culminate in a spell with which I think you will be pleased. It is beyond anything we have done before, and requires us to be outdoors. I have reserved a tolerably large space for us at the Park, but I beg you will have particular regard to my concealment charms. It is early for anyone to be about, but we cannot be too careful to avoid detection.”
“I think it is all silliness, and you ought to be spending your time thinking of ways to defeat Mr. Midsomer, not teaching me tricks,” said Prunella. The mention of a great spell had piqued her interest, however, and she followed this with:
“But since you are set upon it, I suppose I must comply, and the exercise will be good for the familiars.”
Prunella insisted on her familiars attending all her lessons.
She vowed she could not learn half as well without them, and since the purpose of her education was to enable her to understand the creatures, Zacharias permitted it, despite the risk of discovery.
The familiars made poor students, however—they were discourteous, inattentive and quarrelsome; insisted on exploded theories in the face of Zacharias’s polite reasoning; and often disrupted the lesson with their squabbling.
They arrived so early in the Park that there was not a soul to be seen, but Prunella kept her familiars within her reticule until they had reached the concealed grove where the lesson was to be conducted.
She set the reticule upon the ground and opened it so that the tiny heads of the familiars—shrunk for the occasion so that each creature would fit upon the palm of her hand—could peer over the side.
“Now mind you behave yourselves. We shall have time to talk later, but if you are always interrupting I shall never learn all the things Zacharias says I must learn,” said Prunella.
“Nidget, I beg you will attend, and not abandon your notes halfway through, as you did before. It is so very useful to have a record of each lesson.”
“If Youko had not distracted me, the blackguard, you would have the most perfect record the world ever saw.”
“Blame attaches to no one, I am sure,” said Prunella hastily. “Pray do not fight, or wander off, and under no circumstance must you leave the reticule. I must go, my darlings, or Zacharias will be cross.”
“I thought we might consider the enchantments for summoning today,” said Zacharias.
“We shall begin with the simplest example of such spells, a charm for drawing upon atmospheric magic—ours is thin stuff, but it is as well to know how to get at it if ever you need it. Then we shall work our way up to the greater summoning spells. We will restrict the scope of our endeavours to this realm—you have no cause to do it, but to seek to summon oneself a familiar from Fairy is both unlawful and exceedingly dangerous. Summoning within this realm is not necessarily unethical, however, and if one agrees it in advance with the person to be summoned, it need not even be annoying.”
“Will I be summoning a person?” said Prunella.
“Oh yes. One can summon anything capable of being acted upon by magic,” said Zacharias.
“The gentleman I shall ask you to summon is a colleague of mine, whom I met at a council of the world’s magicians last year.
We have since corresponded by shewstone, and he has agreed to assist us.
I beg you will not mention your familiars, but he knows I have been instructing you in the principles of thaumaturgy.
We may trust him to be discreet: he is a reformer himself, though something of a skeptic as regards female magic, and he has some notion of the difficulties we face. ”
Prunella thought very little of the charm for drawing upon atmospheric magic, but the summoning formulae were a pleasing contrast, more complex than any of the spells she had learnt before, and she soon grew absorbed.
The fourth formula was the most difficult.
Prunella was so little satisfied with her performance that she would have begun at once upon a second trial, seeking to correct the inelegancies of the first, if Zacharias had not stopped her.
“The summoning has taken, and you will saddle us with someone probably very cross if you repeat it,” said Zacharias.
“After all your demands for practise—” Prunella began, but then she saw the dark spot upon the horizon speeding towards them.
It came on swiftly, skimming above the trees, until it resolved into the figure of a gentleman, dressed in foreign costume and travelling astride a cloud.
Prunella only had time to exclaim a pleased “Oh!” before the gentleman’s insubstantial conveyance drew up in front of them. He dropped to the ground, landing on his feet, and bowed.
He was of Oriental extraction, with a high, broad expanse of forehead, amused narrow eyes, and greying hair in a queue.
He was dressed with great elegance in silk robes, his feet clad in neat boots, and his appearance was so completely that of the foreigner that Prunella was astonished when he said, in impeccable English:
“A most effective enchantment: I congratulate you, Wythe. However, did not the second verse go awry? My journey was unaccountably bumpy for a stretch.”
Prunella flushed and said, “It was only my first attempt.”
“Miss Gentleman,” said Zacharias, “may I introduce my colleague, Mr. Hsiang Han? Mr. Hsiang is a magician renowned in his native China for his great learning. Mr. Hsiang, Miss Prunella Gentleman, the lady I have been instructing in the magical arts.”
“Did you cast that spell, indeed, Miss Gentleman?” said Mr. Hsiang, bowing.
“When Wythe explained his plan to reform women’s education, I told him he was a mere visionary—I called him any number of bad names—but now I see the reason for his resolve.
Such a protégé, uniting beauty with genius, must fire any magician’s reforming zeal. ”
“That is all very gallant, but I wish you would explain where I went wrong in the second verse,” said Prunella, too vexed by her mistake to be civil.
Zacharias looked reproachful, but Mr. Hsiang laughed.
“You expended too much power at the outset, so that too little remained for the conclusion,” he said. “In magic, as in all else, balance must be preserved. Let me send my cloud away, and you can execute the formula again to require its return.”
The second attempt proved satisfactory.
“I am obliged to you for your help,” said Prunella, looking at Mr. Hsiang with candid friendliness. “Would you be so good as to name your translation spell? It must be a very clever one, for I can scarcely tell that there is an enchantment at work at all.”
“She has found me out!” exclaimed Mr. Hsiang, looking at Zacharias.
“I said nothing,” said Zacharias. “That was Miss Gentleman’s own discovery.”
“Why, it was not very difficult to find it out,” said Prunella. “Your words sound green.”
“Are you able to describe the mechanism of the spell yourself, Miss Gentleman?” said Zacharias. “You should have sufficient understanding of basic thaumaturgical principles to deduce its workings.”
“I am very happy to provide an explanation,” said Mr. Hsiang. “I understand the lady has only recently begun her studies in our field.”
Prunella was on her mettle. It was one thing to complain privately to Zacharias that he demanded too much of her, and their lessons ran on for too long.
The ironic eye of a learned foreign magician was another matter altogether, however.
Prunella was in truth proud of her magical ability—though she had little fondness for thaumaturgical books and dry theory, magic itself she loved—and she was determined not to make a poor show before a stranger.
“There is a binding element, for otherwise one would hear two voices,” she said, thinking aloud.
“The Culpeper solution would not do, for it only applies to solid objects, so it must be Starr’s entwining that is at work.
But that is only the combining element. I shall say it is Horner’s spell for interpretation, with Starr’s entwining, bound together with Crashaw’s preserve. Do I have it, sir?”
“I require Wythe’s assistance to make sense of your answer,” said Mr. Hsiang, laughing. “Wythe, this Horner, this Starr and Crashaw, are they—?”
He spoke in quick succession a series of foreign names, fluid sounds that dropped unchanged through the translation spell.
Zacharias nodded. To Prunella he said:
“The translation spell is one indigenous to the Chinese, and there is an additional element—a mind-reading element, the enchantment for which I shall teach you in due course—but yours is an ingenious solution, and very close to the truth.”
Prunella made a moue of discontent, but the two thaumaturges seemed better pleased with her success.
Zacharias’s satisfaction was obvious, and Mr. Hsiang’s manner altered.
Prunella’s dissection of what was really quite a cunningly disguised little formula had put her up sufficiently in his estimation that he dispensed with gallantry, and adopted the manner of a scholar addressing a student.