Joachim seemed content to let the silence stretch out. “The other day I came back to my chambers,” I said suddenly, “and the magic lock on my door had been broken.”
He didn’t seem as shocked as I thought he should have, but then he wouldn’t know how hard they are to break. He didn’t look guilty either, but I found it hard to read his face. “It doesn’t sound as though a magic lock has any advantage over cold iron, then.”
This, I realized, was supposed to be another one of his jokes. “You don’t understand. Someone would have to know a tremendous amount of magic to break it. It can’t be done with brute force.”
He leaned forward, and his eyes reemerged from darkness. “But I didn’t think there was anyone else in the castle who knew magic.”
I looked into my empty glass. “Neither did I.”
He had no ideas about who might have known such a powerful spell, and I went back to my own chambers not much later. The bright glow of the magic lamp left by my predecessor was very reassuring. I sat up for several more hours, reading about such lamps, and by the time I went to bed I thought I had worked out the spells, though I was too exhausted to do them then.
I set to work on the spells in the morning. I had known how to make something shine before, but the attachment spells and especially the spells to make the magic respond to the voice were much harder than I had imagined. After one more glance at my books, I closed the windows, pulled the drapes, and put the volume away. It takes too much concentration for the complicated spells to be able to look at anything else, even a book of magic.
I started with my belt buckle, not daring to risk my oval of glass. First I started it shining, then slowly, in the heavy syllables of the Hidden Language, I pronounced the words to keep the spell attached. The moon and stars shone brilliantly, and I closed my eyes against them. I was alone in a deep tunnel where magic flowed, but as long as I kept on saying the words and saying them correctly the flow obeyed me. This was the most difficult part of all, to set up the translation between the Hidden Language and the language of men. “On. Out,” I said aloud, and my words were so loud that they startled me into opening my eyes.
My chambers were dark, and the buckle in my hands was lifeless. “On,” I said, and the full moonlight shone. “Out,” and all was again night.
I jumped up and pulled open my curtains. I wanted to tell someone about my triumph. But when I looked out the only people I saw were the stable boys, currying the horses. I thought of telling them but didn’t want to interrupt them. While putting my belt back on, I also decided against interrupting the chaplain just to show him my buckle; after all, since I had told him magic always worked, it would be silly to be this elated over having it work once.
I pulled the curtains shut and started on my oval of glass. I knew the spells now, and everything went smoothly. As I stood at the edge of the river of magic, I knew exactly what to say, to have my mind control the spells without ever endangering myself.
At the end I opened my eyes. “On. Out.” The piece of glass obediently shone out with a brilliance far beyond what I had expected, then darkened again. This, I thought, would make a remarkable improvement in the chapel stairs. I hoped Joachim would be suitably grateful.
“On,” I said again, reaching for the curtains. My belt buckle lit up, but the glass stayed dark. I tried again, changing the modulation of my voice, but nothing happened. I tried probing the spell attached to the glass with my mind, but there was no magic there at all.
I sat down. Somehow I must not have attached the spell properly, so that it had withered and returned to the deep channels of magic as most spells do. But I could not see where I had gone wrong. Magic really should work all the time if the wizard does it correctly.
I shook my head, then shook my shoulders as well, dispelling the chilling unease that suddenly gripped me. I would try again.
This time there was no problem at all. I threw open the windows and opened the door to my bedroom, where I had taken my predecessor’s magic lights so they wouldn’t come on and break my concentration.
The spells had taken all morning. I tucked the oval of glass under my arm, planning to show the constable at lunch. I would let him find a way to attach it to the ceiling in the staircase. My predecessor might have been able to make his lamps hang suspended in the air, but at this point I thought glue would work just as well.
As I pulled my door shut and attached the lock, I wondered again why my spell had not worked at first. Had I just said one of the many words wrong in setting up the spell, or had an outside magical force broken it for me?
The seating arrangement at dinner the first night was maintained, and I ate every noon and evening between Dominic and the Lady Maria. Occasionally Dominic would be away in the middle of the day, but she and her golden curls were always at my right. The Lady Maria seemed, if possible, to be growing younger. She liked to engage me in lively conversation, punctuated with girlish laughter. If I tired of her laughter, I had only to look across the table to meet the chaplain’s completely sober eyes.
But in fact I started to like the Lady Maria. As long as I could keep her off the topic of how young and charming she still was, she had a lively mind that was hungry for new ideas and information. She repeatedly pressed me for details on the dragon in the wizards’ school cellars. I decided to have her help me with the telephones.
During the two days that the armorer was making steel plates for my lights, I set to work trying to derive the right spells. I decided that the first step would be to make it possible for two telephones in the castle to talk to each other; if that worked, then maybe I could start on the much more complicated task of starting communication with telephones elsewhere.
The king seemed stiff and said nothing more about learning to fly, and Dominic asked no questions about malignant spells, so I devoted full time to the telephones. It occurred to me that I was becoming obsessed with them, but at least at every meal the others all asked me interested questions about how I was coming and seemed, I thought, to be drawing comparisons between the old wizard and myself with the comparison favorable to me. I tried not to think what they would say when I gave up the project in despair.
At first nothing worked at all. With one telephone in my study, I put the other out in the courtyard and had the Lady Maria listen while I tried to communicate. The knights and ladies, the boys who were being trained as knights, and the servants tended to flock from all over the castle to watch my latest attempt. At least they weren’t laughing at me, yet.
“Did you hear anything?” I’d yell from the door of my chambers.
“Nothing that time,” she would call back in what were meant to be encouraging tones.
Then my steel ovals were ready, and I had an excuse to put the glass telephones back up on the shelf while I worked the spells of light. Since I had to do each individually, it took all day, and it took another day for the servants to attach them inside to the ceiling of the stairway. But on Sunday, in time for service, they were ready.
I had Gwen wake me early and was at the bottom of the stairs before anyone else. “On,” I said in my deepest voice, and all the lights blazed on. The glass light inside the door was the brightest of all, but the steel plates gave a rich and somber light that I thought most appropriate. I stood modestly outside the stairwell, letting everyone else precede me, smiling in spite of myself when I heard their admiring comments.
But the telephones continued to elude me. After two more days of studying my books, I thought I had found the spell, and again set the Lady Maria in the courtyard with one instrument while I talked into the other. “All powers of earth and air must obey the spells of wizardry,” I said into my own telephone. Gwen had laughed at that until she could hardly stand up, but it seemed safe to say, since no one seemed able to hear me anyway.