The Book of Magic: Part 1. Группа авторов

pure, unblemished wisdom, raging in the dark, smashing railings and crushing windpipes. And, as I said, they always—we always—come back, sooner or later. They—we—can’t help it.

      Gnatho, a far more upbeat man than I’ll ever be, used to have this idea of finding out how we did it, why it was just us, with a view to conquering death and making all men immortal. I believe he did quite a bit of preliminary research, until the funding ran out and he got a teaching post and started getting more involved in Order politics, which takes up a lot of a man’s time and energy. He’s probably still got his notes somewhere. Like me, he never throws anything away, and his office is a pigsty.

      The river had calmed down by the time I got to Machaera, and the military had been out and rigged up a pontoon bridge; nice to see them doing something useful for a change. A relatively short walk and I’d be able to catch a boat and float my way home in relative comfort.

      One thing I’d been looking forward to, a small fringe benefit of an otherwise tiresome mission. The road passes through Idens: a small and unremarkable town, but it happened to be the home of an old friend and correspondent of mine, whom I hadn’t seen for years: Genseric the alchemist.

      He was in fifth year when I was a freshman, but for some reason we got on well together. About the time I graduated, he left the Studium to take up a minor priorship in Estoleit; after that he drifted from post to post, came into some family money, and more or less retired to a life of independent research and scholarship in his old hometown. He inherited a rather fine manor house with a deer park and a lake. From time to time he wrote to me asking for a copy of some text, or could I check a reference for him; alchemy’s not my thing, but it’s never mattered much. Probably it helped that we were into different disciplines; no need to compete, no risk of one stealing the other’s work. Genseric wasn’t exactly respectable—he’d left the Studium, after all, and there were all sorts of rumors about him, involving women and unlawful offspring—but he was too good a scholar to ignore, and there was never any ill will on his side. From his letters I got the impression that he was proud to have been one of us but glad to be out of the glue-pot, as he called it, and in the real world. Ah well. It takes all sorts.

      As with the things you dread that turn out to be not so bad after all, so with the things you really look forward to, which turn out to disappoint. I’d been picturing in my mind the moment of meeting: broad grins on our faces, maybe a manly embrace, and we’d immediately start talking to each other at exactly the same point where we’d broken off the conversation when he left to catch his boat twenty years ago. It wasn’t like that, of course. There was a moment of embarrassed silence as both of us thought, hasn’t he changed, and not in a good way (with the inevitable reflection; if he’s got all middle-aged, have I too?); then an exaggerated broadening of the smile, followed by a stumbling greeting. Think of indentures, or those coins-cut-in-two that lovers give each other on parting. Leave it too long and the sundered halves don’t quite fit together anymore.

      But never mind. After half an hour, we were able to talk to each other, albeit somewhat formally and with excessive pains to avoid any possible cause of disagreement. We had the advantage of both being scholars; we could talk shop, so we did, and it was more or less all right after that.

      One thing I hadn’t been prepared for was the luxury. Boyhood in the Mesoge, adult life at the Studium, field trips spent in village inns and the guest houses of other orders; I’m just not used to linen sheets, cushions, napkins, glass drinking vessels, rugs, wall hangings, beeswax candles, white bread, porcelain tea-bowls, chairs with backs and arms, servants—particularly not the servants. There was a man who stood there all through dinner, just watching us eat. I think his job was to hover with a brass basin of hot water so we could wash our fingers between courses. I kept wanting to involve him in the conversation, so he wouldn’t feel left out. I have no idea if he was capable of speech. The food was far too rich and spicy for my taste, and there was far too much of it, but I kept eating because I didn’t want to give offense, and the more I ate, the more it kept coming, until eventually the penny dropped. As far as I could tell, this wasn’t Genseric putting on a show. He lived like that all the damn time, thought nothing of it. I didn’t say anything, naturally, but I was shocked.

      Over dinner I told him about my recent adventures, and then he showed me his laboratory, of which I could tell he was very proud. I know the basics of alchemy, but Genseric’s research is cutting-edge, and he soon lost me in technical details. The ultimate objective was the same, of course: the search for the reagent or catalyst that can change the fundamental nature of one thing into another. I don’t believe this is actually possible, but I did my best to sound impressed and interested. He had shelves of pots and jars, two broad oak benches covered with glassware, a small furnace that resembled my father’s forge in the way a prince’s baby son resembles a sixteen-stone wrestler. He couldn’t resist showing me a few tricks, including one that filled the room with purple smoke and made me cough till I could barely see. After that, I pleaded weariness after my long journey, and I was shown to this vast bedroom, with enough furniture in it to clutter up the whole of a large City house. The bed was the size of a small barn, with genuine tapestry hangings (the marriage of Wit and Wisdom, in the Mezentine style). I was just about to undress when some woman barged in with a basin of hot water. I don’t think I want to be rich. I’d never get any peace.

      I woke up suddenly, feeling like a bull was standing on my chest. I could hardly breathe. It was dark, so I tried lux in tenebris. It didn’t work.

      Oh, I thought.

      My fault, for not putting up wards before I closed my eyes. There’s an old military proverb; the worst thing a general can ever say is: I never expected that. But here, in the house of my dear old friend— My fault.

      I could just about speak. “Who’s there?” I said.

      “I’d like you to forgive me.” Genseric’s voice. “I don’t expect you will, but I thought I’d ask, just in case. You always were a fair-minded man.”

      The illusion of pressure, I realized, wasn’t so much the presence of some external force as an absence. For the first time in my life, it wasn’t there—it, the talent, the power, the ability. Virtusexercitus, a nasty fifth-level Form, suppresses the talent, puts it to sleep. For the first time, I realized what it felt like being normal. Virtus isn’t used much because it hurts—not the victim, but the person using it. There are other Forms that have roughly the same effect. He’d chosen virtus deliberately, to show how sorry he was.

      “This is about the chair of Logic,” I said.

      “I’m afraid so. You see, you’re not my only friend at the Studium.”

      I needed to play for time. “The bear trap.”

      “That was me, yes. Two cousins of my head gardener. It’s a shame you had to kill them, but I understand. I have the contacts, you see, being an outsider.”

      You have to concentrate like mad to keep virtus going. It drains you. “You must like Gnatho very much.”

      “Actually, it’s just simple intellectual greed.” He sighed. “I needed access to a formula, but it’s restricted. My friend has the necessary clearance. He got me the formula, but it came at a price. Normally I’d have worked around it, tried to figure it out from first principles, but that would take years, and I haven’t got that long. Even with the formula I’ll need at least ten years to complete my work, and you just don’t know how long you’ve got, do you?” Then he laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “Tactless of me, in the circumstances. Look, will you forgive me? It’s not malice, you know. You’re a scholar; you understand. The work must come first, mustn’t it? And you know how important this could be; I just told you about it.”

      I hadn’t been listening when he told me. It went straight over my head, like geese flying south for the winter. “You’re saying you had no choice.”

      “I tried to get it through proper channels,” he said, “but they refused. They said I couldn’t have it because I wasn’t a proper member of the Studium any more. But that’s not right, is it? I may not live there, but I’m still one of us.