Chapter Two
Barberry had a mage gift. Sephie could tell that as soon as he mentioned putting a glamour on the door under the sundial. When she was able to examine the glamour, she had to admit to being a little impressed. She could not have done such an elegant job of it.
To the naked eye, the sundial’s pedestal seemed solid, with the carving that adorned it running uninterrupted across the surfaces. Even to her mage sense, the break was not obvious, and it was only when Barberry sang something in a clear tenor voice that the door and its catch shimmered into view.
He took a quick look around the garden, then bent to open the door, displaying the cavity inside. It was surprisingly spacious. Not just messages but small packages could easily be hidden there.
Closing the door again, he sang the same phrase, and the glamour slipped back into place, leaving a seamless surface.
“Now you,” he said.
Sephie had no idea what he had sung. “That was not English,” she objected. “Also, how do you know I can sing?”
“The keying words are Dial Achos Gwenllian,” he said. “Can you sing, or must I rekey the door?”
Was he being sarcastic? She could not tell.
Neither his face nor his tone showed any impatience—or, indeed, any other emotion.
It was a nice face, too, now that she came to really look at it.
Handsome, if thin. In fact, he was an attractive man.
Dark hair with a slight curl, grey eyes with a hint of green, the broad shoulders of a man who did physical labor, but not so broad as to be out of place on a slender man of medium height.
“Yes, I can sing,” she admitted. “Tell me what the words mean.”
“Revenge for Gwenllian. Gwenllian was a twelfth century—”
Now his voice showed something. Sephie had been patronized far too many times to miss it even when it came from a presumptuous gardener.
Interrupting was impolite, but a peasant who lectured her did not deserve manners.
“Princess. Yes, I know. She led two hundred farmers against a Norman invader. They lost the fight and he executed her by cutting her head off.”
Barberry nodded. “And the whole of Cymry rose up and drove the invaders out,” he said, with enormous satisfaction.
“She was very brave,” said Sephie. Granny had told her the story. She’d had others, too, about Welsh warriors, rulers, and mages. Gwenllian was Sephie’s favorite—the only woman to lead an army into battle against the invaders, even if it was an army of peasants with pitchforks and scythes.
“Dial,” sang Barberry. Oh yes, the key.
“Dial,” she obediently repeated. She must have caught the pronunciation and the tune, for he moved onto the next word, and then the next.
Those singing lessons had a practical use, then. Sephie had not before met someone who sang their magic. Perhaps it might work with her own mage gift, which was unreliable, to say the least.
“Now the whole phrase,” Barberry said. “Try it.”
He had to correct her once. There was a tonal shift between the second word and the third that she fluffed the first time.
But on her second try, the door appeared, and she was able to turn the catch and open it.
How amazing! It was a simple spell, but she had never before had even the simplest of spells work exactly as it was meant to.
Barberry had her shut the door and reapply the glamor, then open and shut it twice more before he was satisfied, and it worked each time.
Being ordered around by a gardener was new to her, though perhaps, given his mage gift, he was merely masquerading as a gardener.
Did the Welsh not treasure their mages even more than the English?
She had had quite enough of him today, however. “If you have quite finished, Barberry,” she said, drawing what was left of her dignity around her, “I have an engagement with the lady catalyst.”
The gardener bowed. “Thank you for your time, Miss Thornton. Please check the cavity every day that the weather allows.”
Did he think she was afraid of the rain? “I can always use an umbrella,” she pointed out.
“You may raise suspicion if you visit the rose garden in a storm,” he pointed out. He had returned to the bland tone and blank face he had been using earlier. She had not noticed until now that he had become more animated while teaching her the key. And how annoyingly right he was, the horrid man.
“I shall take that into consideration,” she told him, doing her best to match his tone and to completely wipe all expression from her voice and face. “Good day, Barberry.”
She marched away, quite pleased with her retort, but she was not to have the last word. Before she was quite out of earshot, she heard him say, “Good day to you, Miss.”
*
What a prickly woman! Not that prickles bothered Taz.
Some of the prettiest plants had them. Take roses, for example.
Miss Thornton reminded him of a rose. A lovely face, petal-soft skin—or so he imagined.
She was a little shorter than he, with a slender but shapely figure, hair of a sort of flaxen gold tied carelessly in a bun, and bright blue eyes.
The package also included a beautiful, pure soprano voice, and thorns ready to stab anyone who dared to get too close.
She even glowed a rose-pink glow to his mage sense when she was singing magic—a glow not seen so much as felt, if one could speak of colors that could be felt.
Both of the languages he spoke were inadequate when it came to describing what one perceived through the mage sense.
He collected his basket, which he’d abandoned to meet Miss Thornton, and headed out of the garden, taking the lower steps and then a path that led to the lake at the foot of the hill. He needed to tell Hebog that he had made contact with his indoors counterpart.
He had been at the manor for long enough to have chosen a good spot for hydromancy—a flat rock on the edge of a deep pool that was screened by tall rushes but easily accessible from the shore.
Like so much of his magic, his hydromancy was limited.
Others could will visions of the past, and the future. Not so, Taz.
At most, he could see the present, and even then, only if the person he was seeing was also a mage and wished to be seen. On the other hand, unlike many scryers, his magic gave him sound as well as sight. Being able to hear the person he contacted was very useful in instances like this.
Settling down cross-legged on the rock, he hummed a single note, and imagined it dropping into the water to speed all the way to Hebog’s mind. Now he must wait until the master responded.
He beguiled the time by planning the order of his tasks for the rest of the day. He had charge of the ornamental gardens, including the greenhouse that was dedicated to the propagation of ornamental plants.
Daily tasks included keeping all the plants deadheaded, clipped, fed, weeded, watered, and whatever else was required so that every aspect delighted whenever Lord and Lady Baradine and their guests chose to visit the gardens.
A sensation in his mind that he could best describe as a tweak was Hebog’s signal he was ready to receive Taz’s contact.
Taz bent over the pond, focusing his mind, picturing Hebog’s face. He poured his intention into a low-voiced song—there should not be anyone passing by, but if there were, it would not do for them to hear music coming out of this otherwise undistinguished clump of rushes.
It wouldn’t do for Hebog to hear, either. The mage did not believe that song was necessary for magic, and forbade Taz from using it. But anything Taz tried to do without song twisted into a result that was always wrong and often disastrous, so he sang his magic and kept it secret from his mentor.
As soon as the surface of the still pool went black, Taz stopped singing. It cleared to show Hebog, with his workroom in the background.
“Greetings, Elder,” Taz said, in his native tongue.
The master mage replied in the same language. “Owl. Cymry forever.” Owl was Taz’s code name in the cause.
“Our day will come,” Taz replied. It was a statement of hope and intention, as well as a code to reassure Hebog that he was not being coerced or watched.
“You have news?”
“I have met the woman who is my contact. Miss—”
Hebog interrupted him. “No names. This conversation should be safe enough, with your wards on it and mine, but we are up against a dragon lord. Who knows what he can do?”
“The woman and I have established a safe place to exchange messages. I do not have confidence in her, elder. I fear she might not be on our side.”
“Suspicion is good, Owl. You are in enemy territory. Her father was a reliable agent, and died for the cause. She has Cymru blood. She claims to sympathize with the cause, but be careful. Do not trust her more than you have to, but work with her, nonetheless.”
Taz nodded. Hebog’s opinion of the woman did not help to clarify his own. “I shall call her the Rose, Elder.”
“Rose. Very well, Owl. Contact me when you have news.”
It was Taz’s dismissal. He broke the contact with a phrase sung almost under his breath, and the pool once more went dark, then cleared to reflect rushes and the sky.
Right, then. The beds outside the greenhouse needed to be weeded. They were off the beaten track for the members of the quality, but in Taz’s view, they should still be as pristine as all the rest.