The Book of Magic: Part 1. Группа авторов

stared at me, but not because the trick had impressed him. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

      “It’s all right,” I said. “You’re not in trouble. It’s not a crime, in itself.” I grinned. “It’s not a crime because it can’t happen. The law takes the view—as we do—that there’s no such thing as magic. If there’s no such thing, it can’t be against the law.” I produced a table, with a teapot and two porcelain bowls. “Do you drink tea?”

      “No.”

      “Try it; it’s one of life’s few pleasures.”

      He scowled at the bowl and made no movement. I poured myself some tea and blew on it to cool it down. “There is no magic,” I told him. “Instead, there are a certain number of limited effects which a wise man, a scholar, can learn to do, if he knows how, and if he’s born with the ability to concentrate very, very hard. They aren’t magic, because they’re not—well, strange or inexplicable or weird. Give you an example. Have you ever watched the smith weld two rods together? Well, then. A man takes two bits of metal and does a trick involving fire and sparks flying about, and the two bits of metal are joined so perfectly you can’t see where one ends and another begins. Or take an even weirder trick. It’s the one where a woman pulls a living human being out from between her legs. Weird? I should say so.”

      He shook his head. “Women can’t do magic,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”

      A literal mind. Ah well. “Men can’t do it either, because it doesn’t exist. Haven’t you been listening? But a few men have the gift of concentrating very hard and doing certain processes, certain tricks, that achieve things that look weird and strange to people who don’t know about these things. It’s not magic, because we know exactly how it works and what’s going on, just as we know what happens when your dad puts a dead cow’s skin in a big stone trough, and it comes out all hard and smooth on one side.”

      He shrugged. “If you say so.”

      Hard going. Still, that’s the Mesoge for you. We esteem it a virtue in youth to be unimpressed by anything or anyone, never to cooperate, never to show enthusiasm or interest. “You can do this stuff,” I reminded him. “I know you can, because people have seen you doing it.”

      “Can’t prove anything.”

      “Don’t need to. I know. I can see into your mind.”

      That got to him. He went white as a sheet, and if the door hadn’t been bolted on the outside (a simple precaution), he’d have been up and out of there like an arrow from a bow. “You can’t.”

      I smiled at him. “I can see you looking at a flock of sheep, and three days later half of them are dead. I can see you getting a clip round the ear from an old man, who then falls and breaks his leg. I can see a burning hayrick, sorry, no, make that three. Antisocial little devil, aren’t you?”

      The tears in his eyes were pure rage, and I softly mumbled lorica. But he didn’t lash out, as I’d have done at his age, as I did during this very interview. He just shook his head and muttered about proof. “I don’t need proof,” I said. “I’ve got a witness. You.” I waited three heartbeats, then said, “And it’s all right. I’m on your side. You’re one of us.”

      His scowl said he didn’t believe me. “All right,” I said. “Watch closely. The little fat kid is me.”

      And I showed him. Simple little Form, lux dardaniae, very effective. One thing I didn’t do quite right; one of the nasty little escapades I showed him was Gnatho, not me. Same difference, though.

      He looked at me with something less than absolute hatred. “You’re from round here.”

      I nodded. “Born and bred. You don’t like it here, do you?”

      “No.”

      “Me neither. That’s why I left. You can too. In ten years, you can be me. Only without the pot belly and the double chin.”

      “Me?” he said. “Go to the City?”

      And I knew I’d got him. “Watch,” I said, and I showed him Perimadeia: the standard visitor’s tour, the fountains and the palace and Victory Square and the Yarn Market at Goosefair. Then, while he was still reeling, I showed him the Studium—the impressive view, from the harbor, looking up the hill. “Where would you rather live,” I said, “there or here? Your choice. No pressure.”

      He looked at me. “If I go there, can my mother and my sisters come and visit me?”

      I frowned. “Sorry, no. We don’t allow women, it’s the rules.”

      He grinned. “Yes, please,” he said. “I hate women.”

      Gnatho was skinny at that age. My first memory of him was a little skinny kid stealing apples from our one good eating-apple tree. They were my apples. I didn’t want to share with an unknown stranger. So I smacked him with what I would later come to know as strictoense.

      It didn’t work.

      And then there was this huge invisible thing whirling toward me, so big it would’ve blotted out the sun if it hadn’t been invisible, if you see what I mean. I didn’t think; I warded it off, with a Form I would come to call scutumveritatis. I felt the collision; it literally made the ground shake under my feet.

      We stared at each other.

      I remember quite vividly the first time I looked in a mirror, though of course it wasn’t a mirror, not in the Mesoge; it was a basin full of water, outside on a perfectly still day. I remember the disappointment. That plump, foolish-looking kid was me. And I remember how Gnatho, intently staring at me, lost his seat on the branch of the tree, and fell, and would almost certainly have broken his neck—

      I handled it badly. I sort of grabbed at him—adiutoremmeum, used cack-handedly by a ten-year-old, what do you expect?—and slammed him against the trunk of the tree on the way down. The rough bark scraped a big flap of skin off his cheek, and he has the scar still. Stupid fool didn’t think to use scutum, he just panicked; he was so lucky I was there (only if I hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have fallen). But he thought I toppled him out of the tree on purpose and gave him the scar that disfigured him. I showed him my memory when we were eighteen, so he knows the truth. But I think he still blames me, in his heart of hearts, and he’s still scared of me, in case I ever do it again.

      There were arrangements. I had to go and see the boy’s parents—long, tedious interview, with the parents scared, angry, shocked, right up until I introduced the subject of compensation for the boy’s unpaid labor. The Order is embarrassingly rich. In the City, ten kreuzers a week will buy you lunch, if you aren’t picky. In the Mesoge it’s a fortune. I’m authorized to offer up to twenty, but it’s not my money, and I’m conscientious.

      I walk whenever I can because I have no luck at all with carts and coaches. The horses don’t like me; they’re sensitive animals, and they perceive something about me that isn’t quite right. I cause endless problems to any wheeled vehicle I ride on. If it’s not the horses, it’s a broken axle or a broken spoke, or the coach gets bogged down in a rut, or the driver falls off or has a seizure. I’m not alone; quite a few of us have travel jinxes of one sort or another, and it’s better to be jinxed on land than on sea, like poor Father Incitatus. So, to get to the Mesoge, I take a boat from the City down the Asper as far as Stark and walk the rest of the way. Trouble is, rivers only flow in one direction. To get back from the Mesoge, I have to walk to Insuper, get a lumber barge to the coast, and tack back up to the City on a grain ship. I get seasick and there’s no known Form for that. Ain’t that the way.

      From Riens to Insuper is seventeen miles, down dale and up bloody hill. Six miles from Riens, the road goes through a small village; or you can take the old cart road up to the Tor, then wind your way down through the forestry, cross the Blackwater at Sens Ford and rejoin the main road a mile the other side of the village. Going that way adds another five miles or so, and