Old Friends
Chapter Six
OLD FRIENDS
Alison
D inner in Norgate had been a pleasant affair.
Dean Whittaker had suggested a faculty-favorite establishment with generous portions of both food and ale, and by the time they had finished, Alison was adequately inebriated enough that whatever foreboding sense she’d had about High House or the surrounding woods had gone when they returned by carriage in the early hours of morning.
In the bright—too bright; she really shouldn’t have had that third pint—light of day, it was difficult to imagine anything amiss at all. Move-in had begun in earnest, and the hallways that had seemed forlorn and claustrophobic the previous evening now felt pleasantly busy, humming with the kind of excited energy Alison missed from city life. (Well, occasionally missed.)
Lady Sibba had gone with Weyland to meet a friend from the Rock who taught courses on theatre; Rinka was with Idris, helping him unpack his office; and Willow had vanished before dawn, undoubtedly hunting mice or finding the dog for use as napping material. That left Keir and Alison to wander the hallways alone until their appointment with Professor Marin that evening.
“She keeps odd hours for a ‘lectrics researcher, don’t you think?” asked Keir as he helped a Halfling fresher with a trunk that was as big as she was.
“Perhaps it’s easier to see what’s working in the dark,” said Alison as she followed him. She wanted to use a tiny bit of magic to lighten the load, but she had found that her magic, which was inconsistent at best, was downright unreliable away from Herot’s Hollow.
“Perhaps,” said Keir. He received a grateful handshake from the Halfling as he dropped the trunk into her new room, and he and Alison continued on towards the library.
Alison shared Keir’s fondness for libraries, though they had greatly different reading preferences. Keir read mostly nonfiction works in a wide variety of subjects, many of them at least tangentially related to his medical career. Alison, on the other hand, felt she had gotten to know enough about the real world by living in it. She preferred to get lost in fiction, passing her time in worlds that were nothing like hers and where anything she could imagine was possible.
And, of course, there was poetry. What had started as a coin-making venture had become something that felt as much a part of her as the color of her eyes or the way she liked her tea (one sugar and a splash of milk). It was a source of both joy and frustration, the outlet for her innermost yearnings and the imperfect medium with which to express them, limited by only her own ability to create and persist in creating.
Alison perused the stacks of poetry books, having been aided in locating them by Ms. Redclaw. She had just spotted a familiar name—Fanguk, the orc whose poetry book she had found during her first trip to Wilderise—when she heard something fall to the ground a couple of shelves away.
“Hello?” She had walked through those stacks on the way and had seen no one around, and she hadn’t heard anyone come by since.
She felt the same sense of unease from the night before, but the ‘lectric lights were bright in the library, and she found they gave her courage.
She checked the aisles near where the sound seemed to originate, but there was nothing.
Nothing but the tingling sensation on the back of her neck of being watched.
She had just returned to the poetry section to check if it was a new work by Fanguk, so that she could grab it and get out of there, when she heard it again.
“Willow?” she said. “Are you there, girl?”
And then again, only this time much closer and much more clearly: it was the sound of a book being dropped.
“Willow, come out of those shelves. What are you doing—”
This time, the book that fell was the very same Fanguk book she had spotted before. It dropped to the ground in front of her, falling open to a page somewhere in the middle.
Alison looked into the shelves where the book had fallen from but saw nothing.
But while there was nothing to see, there was something to feel—magic. Old magic. It was the same warm sensation as the path into the fairy woods, the same as the path that led her to the korrigans.
Perhaps this was a path as well.
Alison retrieved Fanguk’s new book ( From Green to Grey: An Orc’s Journey ) and walked through the stacks, collecting the others: A Primer on Modern Poetry, Movements and Key Players by Dr. Serena Carter; On Commercial Writing by Stephen Duke; and Printing Presses of Loegria: An Updated Guide by The King’s College Department of Literature.
Alison, sensing a theme, looked around once more. Surely this must have been Willow’s doing. Keir, although he technically possessed both the magic required and the knowledge of her desire to publish her poetry, would have never been so coy.
Another book fell, this time at some distance from the others. Alison spotted Keir nearby, eying a shelf suspiciously.
Alison knelt to pick up the book— Overcoming Self-Doubt by Dr. Elijah Goldberg—and saw that Keir carried a small handful of books himself.
“For you or for me?” she said, holding out the book on self-doubt.
Keir laughed. “Both, probably. Has the library been helping you as well?”
“The library?” asked Alison.
“Ms. Redclaw came by around the time my first book dropped and explained. It’s alive in some way. It can sense thoughts and feelings—I thought that sounded like utter nonsense, but, well…”
He held up his books to Alison. Innovative Techniques in Perinatal Care by Dr. Andre Jackman; The Journal of Pediatric Medicine: Vols. 54-55; and Staffing a Medical Practice: Guidance for the Modern Physician by Dr. Erica Lopez.
“ I didn’t know you were thinking of hiring someone,” said Alison, spotting the last book.
“I didn’t either. The idea occurred to me in passing when I was asking Dr. Marten to fill in for me while we were away. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone. I suppose, after everything we’ve seen, it doesn’t seem that outlandish that the library is sentient in some way.”
“Perhaps not,” said Alison. The books it had suggested to her were undeniably useful, and she wondered if maybe the presence she’d felt watching her that she had taken for something malevolent had, in fact, only been the library trying to help her.
She wanted to believe that to be true, at least.
Alison and Keir spent a lazy afternoon lounging on the grass of the courtyard near the Norminster Yew, reading their books and watching the students coming and going. Willow stopped by to say hello and to chase the last butterflies of summer and the first yellow leaves of autumn.
After a noisy dinner in a half-full dining hall alive with first meetings, faculty reunions, and a recounting of summer adventures, Alison and Keir met the others and headed to a small, isolated building to the northeast of the main campus near the woods.
To the right of the door, there was a small plaque:
Professor Mircalla Marin
Chair of the Department of ‘Lectrics
Office Hours: Sunset to Sunrise
Closed Saturdays
“Sunset to sunrise?” muttered Keir. It was just now sunset, and the ‘lectric lamps that lined the paths through the campus had begun to flicker on.
“Oh, you don’t know about Professor Marin yet?” asked Idris. His face was carefully blank, but there was a hint of humor in his dark eyes.
“Know what?” asked Keir.
“I’ll let you see for yourself,” said Idris. He knocked on the door.
Or he would have. The door was already open after his first light rap.
“Come in,” said a rapturous voice.
Professor Marin, Alison presumed.
Alison couldn’t get a good look at her: the reception area they entered was dark, and the professor herself did not stop to make introductions. She led them into a corridor and through a labyrinthine series of hallways, moving so gracefully it was as if she was floating.
Alison supposed she must be an elf to move with such grace, but her ears weren’t visible beneath her long, dark hair to confirm her suspicions.
Finally, they arrived at a set of double doors.
“Please don’t touch anything when we enter,” said Professor Marin without turning around. “Do you have the samples?”
“Right here,” said Weyland, producing the box they’d been given by Yordin.
“Good,” said Professor Marin, but she did not take it from him.
Idris chuckled, undoubtedly enjoying his private joke about Professor Marin.
They filed into the laboratory one by one. It was difficult to avoid touching anything because there were so many things in the room: wooden shelves of corked vials filled with dark powders and shimmering liquids; tiny boxes labeled with one or two letters, some with red caution labels; sheets of metal, neatly pressed from a manufactory; various lengths of wire in several colors; and a number of stands filled with strange brass instruments, meters in several different scales, and a large number of switches.
Sitting on a stool near one of the stands was a young, blonde elf with round spectacles and a nervous disposition. When Professor Marin approached him, he stood abruptly.
“See to the samples,” said Professor Marin.
The elf took the box from Weyland, smiling nervously at the much larger human. “Thank you. Professor Marin has high hopes for the mithril in particular—”
“Not yet, Leo,” said Professor Marin. “First, let’s show them their machine.”
They followed Professor Marin and Leo through another set of doors onto a covered patio of sorts. It was somewhat like Weyland’s forge, open on the sides with a covered roof, although there were a number of large shades against the walls and a number of platforms extending out into the darkened field beyond.
Professor Marin flipped a switch, and one of the platforms was retracted back under the roof. On it was their prototype solar machine. Its large metal cone had been modified to be somewhat less round, and there was a different box attached to it than the one that had held the ‘lectric generator they had purchased, but it otherwise looked about the same.
“Let me show you what I’ve done,” said Professor Marin.
She flipped another switch from something connected to the back of the prototype, and the bright light of an exposed lightbulb came on.
Professor Marin finally turned around.
Something about her appearance immediately unsettled Alison, but it took her a moment to figure out why. At first glance, she had seemed like an orc. There was a greyish cast to her skin, and she had fangs visible when she smiled, but only on the upper teeth. But her features were unmistakably human, except for one thing: her eyes were blood red.
“Vampire,” said Lady Sibba. Her voice was laced with fear.
Surely not. Alison had come to accept that many of the things she had been taught were make believe were very much real, even more so after hearing about mermaids from Rinka, but vampires? Surely those were the invention of gothic novelists from the previous century.
(Had any writer ever actually created any of their fiction, or was it all in some way tied back to a reality that some people were happier to have forgotten?)
“You didn’t mention an elf was one of your number,” said Professor Marin, not denying anything. “They harbor unfounded prejudices against my kind.”
“Your kind?” said Lady Sibba, reaching backwards for the door without turning around. “Your kind is an affront to nature. A twisting of the order of things—”
“An order in which only elves are granted near limitless life? What kind of order is that? Elves speak of order, but have you ever noticed that all orders they’re involved with feature them at the very top?”
Alison regretted that Gwenla wasn’t here for this conversation; she had similar feelings about certain elf societies. But she also wasn’t one to tar all elves with the same brush.
“Is Leo not an elf?” asked Alison, gesturing to the young man who was staring very intently at his shoes. “Professor Marin, forgive us. We were simply surprised to find out what you are. Surprised, and perhaps a bit frightened. I, for one, believed vampires to be myth.”
“I apologize for the outburst. I know that your people teach that vampires are born of dark magic and that you must be quite afraid.” Her voice was velvety smooth and alluring. Alison looked at Idris at the mention of dark magic; it was his area of study. No wonder he already knew Professor Marin’s secret.
“Debatable,” said Idris. “Dark and light magic are still the accepted divisions, but as you pointed out, there’s some debate about who defines what the natural order is or should be. There’s even debate about if the divisions should exist at all.”
“I don’t mind the dark magic label,” said Professor Marin. “I think it fits.” She gestured to the workshop.
It was clear now to Alison what the purpose of the shades and platforms were: to prevent Professor Marin from having to go out into the sun during the day.
“Wait,” said Keir, realizing something about the same time that Alison did. “You’re a vampire trying to harness the power of the sun?”
“I’m the vampire that did harness the power of the sun,” said Professor Marin. “Can you blame me? It’s my greatest nemesis. Who understands the power of the sun more than the vampire?”
Alison looked back at Lady Sibba, who had shrunk against the door. Weyland had put his arm around her waist. Rinka joined them, whispering to Lady Sibba to ask if she was alright.
“Tell me what you eat,” said Lady Sibba, her voice shaking. “And tell me how you eat it.”
Alison could hear Lady Sibba trying her best to understand. The schoolteacher was obstinate at times, but she wasn’t unreasonable.
“Blood, of course. Human blood, preferably, since I was once human, but any blood will do.”
This admission sent a chill through Alison. Perhaps she had read one too many of those gothic novels. The vampires in them were murderous, filled with insatiable hunger.
But surely someone with that condition couldn’t last long as a university professor. And from her status, she had been here for a long time.
“There’s an infirmary here at the college. It receives a supply of blood,” said Professor Marin.
It was Keir’s turn to object. “That blood is needed. It’s a matter of life and death—”
“At times, yes,” said Professor Marin. “On those nights, I must go hungry. It doesn’t kill me to do so, but it does exhaust me. And worse, it sets back my research. But fresh blood has a limited period of usefulness. I’m given what remains once that period expires.”
“Does it taste bad?” Alison couldn’t help but asking.
“Like stale bread,” said Professor Marin. “Once every few weeks, with permission, I drink from the ‘tap,’ so to speak. There’s a woman in town—well, that’s truly none of your business. But I take only what she can spare, never a drop more. Are your curiosities sufficiently satisfied?” She surveyed the group. “Did you come here to talk about me or the machine?”
“So you don’t hurt people?” asked Weyland, unperturbed by Professor Marin’s desire to change the subject while Lady Sibba was still frightened.
“Never. Not once,” said Professor Marin. “All that nonsense about insatiable hunger is just that—nonsense. If finishing your slice of pie meant killing a sentient being, would you do it?”
“Well,” said Rinka. “What type of pie is it?”
There were laughs all around, some of them more nervous than others, but even Lady Sibba managed a chuckle.
Professor Marin turned back to the machine. It didn’t appear to be running—the water in the cylinder was not boiling—but the bulb was steadily lit.
“A power-saver?” asked Keir.
“Indeed,” said Professor Marin. “I’ve modified the reflectors somewhat to capture light from even more angles, and I’ve wired in a more appropriate ‘lectric generator than the type you used. But yes, the power-saver is the most critical addition. This kind powers the new motor carriages you’ve heard about, but there are problems with it on the scale of an entire grid. That’s what I’ve asked you to bring the samples. Leo has been helping me research a number of power-saver alternatives, and we have some ideas that we think can greatly increase the storage capacity.”
“How long will it take to test?” asked Alison.
“A week or so to go through the options you’ve provided,” said Professor Marin. “Of course, classes begin again next week, so we may want to say two weeks. Perhaps less if you’re willing to help.”
“Name it,” said Weyland. “This equipment—it’s beyond me. But I’m good with metal. I’ll do what I can.”
“What can the rest of us do?” asked Keir.
“Run tests, take measurements. The bulk of the work has to happen during the daytime. This workshop has been designed to accommodate my…particularities, but I have to sleep during the day as well. I’m certain Leo would appreciate the help.”
From across the room, Leo looked at Professor Marin with admiration. In his hand was some kind of brass instrument, undoubtedly for measuring ‘lectricity of some kind.
Suddenly, there was a loud buzzing sound from the power-saver.
“What the—” began Professor Marin, but she stopped as she saw it: a huge flash of lightning, nearly purple, going from the power-saver to the object in Leo’s hand.
“Leo!” she shouted as he collapsed to the ground.