"Ask your master," she said. "He knows everything."
But Nathaniel had not dared ask.
This restful spot, with its solitude, its stone seat, and its statue of an unknown magician, was where Nathaniel came whenever he needed to compose himself before a lesson with his cold, forbidding master.
9
Between the ages of six and eight, Nathaniel visited his master only once a week. These occasions, on Friday afternoons, were subjects of great ritual. After lunch, Nathaniel had to go upstairs to wash and change his shirt. Then, at precisely two—thirty, he presented himself at the door of his master's reading room on the first floor. He would knock three times, at which a voice would call on him to enter.
His master reclined in a wicker chair in front of a window overlooking the street. His face was often in shadow. Light from the window spilled round him in a nebulous haze. As Nathaniel entered, a long thin hand would gesture toward the cushions piled high on the Oriental couch on the opposite wall. Nathaniel would take a cushion and place it on the floor. Then he sat, heart pounding, straining to catch every nuance of his master's voice, terrified of missing a thing.
In the early years, the magician usually contented himself with questioning the boy about his studies, inviting him to discuss vectors, algebra, or the principles of probability, asking him to describe briefly the history of Prague or recount, in French, the key events of the Crusades. The replies satisfied him almost always—Nathaniel was a very quick learner.
On rare occasions, the master would motion the boy to be silent in the middle of an answer and would himself speak about the objectives and limitations of magic.
"A magician," he said, "is a wielder of power. A magician exerts his will and effects change. He can do it from selfish motives or virtuous ones. The results of his actions can be good or evil, but the only bad magician is an incompetent one. What is the definition of incompetence, boy?"
Nathaniel twitched on his cushion. "Loss of control."
"Correct. Providing the magician remains in control of the forces he has set to work, he remains—what does he remain?"
Nathaniel rocked back and forth. "Er…"
"The three S's boy, the three S's. Use your head."
"Safe, secret, strong, sir."
"Correct. What is the great secret?"
"Spirits, sir."
"Demons, boy. Call 'em what they are. What must one never forget?"
"Demons are very wicked and will hurt you if they can, sir." His voice shook as he said this.
"Good, good. What an excellent memory you have, to be sure. Be careful how you pronounce your words—I fancy your tongue tripped over itself there. Mispronouncing a syllable at the wrong time may give a demon just the opportunity it has been seeking."
"Yes, sir."
"So, demons are the great secret. Common people know of their existence and know that we can commune with them—that is why they fear us so! But they do not realize the full truth, which is that all our power derives from demons. Without their aid we are nothing but cheap conjurors and charlatans. Our single great ability is to summon them and bend them to our will. If we do it correctly they must obey us. If we make but the slightest error, they fall upon us and tear us to shreds. It is a fine line that we walk, boy. How old are you now?"
"Eight, sir. Nine next week."
"Nine? Good. Then next week we shall start your magical studies proper. Mr. Purcell is busy giving you a sufficient grounding in the basic knowledge. Henceforward we shall meet twice weekly, and I shall start introducing you to the central tenets of our order. However, for today we shall finish with your reciting the Hebrew alphabet and its first dozen numbers. Proceed."
Under the eyes of his master and his tutors, Nathaniel's education progressed rapidly. He delighted in reporting his daily achievements to Mrs. Underwood and basking in the warmth of her praise. In the evenings, he would gaze out of his window toward the distant yellow glow that marked the tower of the Parliament buildings, and dream of the day when he would go there as a magician, as one of the ministers of the noble government.
Two days after his ninth birthday, his master appeared in the kitchen while he was eating breakfast.
"Leave that and come with me," the magician said.
Nathaniel followed him along the hall and into the room that served as his master's library. Mr. Underwood stood next to a broad bookcase filled with volumes of every size and color, ranging from heavy leather—bound lexicons of great antiquity to battered yellow paperbacks with mystic signs scrawled on the spines.
"This is your reading matter for the next three years," his master said, tapping the top of the case. "By the time you're twelve, you must have familiarized yourself with everything it contains. The books are written in Middle English, Latin, Czech, and Hebrew for the most part, although you'll find some Coptic works on the Egyptian rituals of the dead too. There's a Coptic dictionary to help you with those. It's up to you to read through all this; I haven't time to coddle you. Mr. Purcell will keep your languages up to speed. Understand?"
"Yes, sir. Sir?"
"What, boy?"
"When I've read through all this, sir, will I know everything I need? To be a magician, I mean, sir. It seems such an awful lot."
His master snorted; his eyebrows ascended to the skies.
"Look behind you," he said.
Nathaniel turned. Behind the door was a bookcase that climbed from floor to ceiling; it overflowed with hundreds of books, each one fatter and more dusty than the last, the sort of books that, one could tell without even opening them, were printed in minute script in double columns on every page. Nathaniel gave a small gulp.
"Work your way through that lot," his master said dryly, "and you might be getting somewhere. That case contains the rites and incantations you'd need to summon significant demons; and you won't even begin to use them till you're in your teens, so cast it out of your mind. Your case"—he tapped the wood again—"gives you the preparatory knowledge and is more than enough for the moment. Right, follow me."
They proceeded to a workroom that Nathaniel had never visited before. A large number of bottles and vials clustered there on stained and dirty shelves, filled with liquids of varying color. Some of the bottles had floating objects in them. Nathaniel couldn't tell whether it was the thick, curved glass of the bottles that made the objects look so distorted and strange.
His master sat on a stool at a simple wooden worktable and indicated for Nathaniel to sit alongside him. He pushed a narrow box across the table. Nathaniel opened it. Inside was a small pair of spectacles. A distant memory made him shudder sharply.
"Well, take them out, boy; they won't bite you. Right. Now look at me. Look at my eyes; what do you see?"
Unwillingly, Nathaniel looked. He found it very difficult to peer into the fierce, fiery brown eyes of the old man, and as a result his brain froze. He saw nothing.
"Well?"
"Um, um… I'm sorry, I don't…"
"Look around my irises—see anything there?"
"Um…"
"Oh, you dolt!" His master gave a cry of frustration and pulled the skin below one eye down, revealing its red underbelly. "Can't you see it? A lens, boy! A contact lens! Around the middle of my eye! See it?"
Desperately, Nathaniel looked again, and this time he did see a faint circular rim, thin as a pencil line around the iris, sealing it in.
"Yes, sir," he said eagerly. "Yes, I see it."
"About time. Right." His master sat back on the stool. "When you are twelve years old, two important things will happen. First, you will be given a new name, which you shall take as your own. Why?"