All right. This is no dream. And I am reasonably certain neither of us is insane. Well, I'm sure I'm not. This is not medieval moonshine; it is only a new kind of science. Surely, if I had never seen an electric light before, I would find it just as magical as the Salamander "Send me your book, sir, and I shall resume my duties this very instant!"
He laughed; he was very pleased with himself. He sounded just like one of her father's cronies who had soundly trounced another in debate. "You may relax and enjoy your sweet, Miss Hawkins," he said indulgently, as one would to a child. "The events of tonight prevented my selecting your books, and it will take a moment before they appear."
The Salamander giggled again, and vanished soundlessly. Rosalind Hawkins was alone again in her sitting-room, torn between fuming with anger and shaking with emotions she couldn't quite define. Surely Lewis Carroll's Alice had never found herself in quite so strange a situation!
Certainly she had never encountered a male creature quite so infuriating!
Caught between conflicting emotions, she finally did what any sensible person would do.
She ate her dessert, and sat back to wait for the books to appear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
So now we embark on the real undertaking. Cameron sent his Salamander down to Rose Hawkins with the night's set of books, and sat back in his chair. My hands are shaking. When was the last time that happened? He regarded the his trembling hands with bemusement. He had negotiated deals that could have broken his fortune if they had gone wrong, he had faced dreadful ordeals in the course of attaining his Mastery, he had endured trials of his strength and nerve that few other men could have survived, and none of that had left him feeling like this. He had been tempted to tell the girl that the evening's duties were canceled, but if she could sit there calmly and insist on carrying them out, he was not about to admit to weakness.
I feel as if I have run for miles, as if I have faced a ravenous tiger with nothing but my bare hands and my will, and convinced it to go eat something else.
The Salamander—which seemed very pleased with the evening's events—opened her door and brought the pile of books inside. She concentrated every bit of her attention on it, exactly as a bird of prey would concentrate on a rodent, as if she was still trying to spot some evidence of trickery. But when the books were on the table beside the speaking-tube, and the Salamander had transported itself to its customary position at his elbow, she stood up and walked slowly over to her accustomed seat.
"You will find these books a little more difficult than the ones I sent you in the past," he said, leaning forward so that his voice carried clearly down the tube. "They are mostly handwritten manuscripts, copies of books still older than they are."
"I am quite accustomed to reading medieval script, Mr. Cameron," she replied briskly, taking the top book without hesitation and opening it. "I see you have not marked a passage. Am I to read the entire book?"
"Precisely," he told her, with a touch of coolness. "You may begin now, in fact."
He really didn't need to hear all of that particular book—but she needed to read it. Although the author was not credited, it happened to be Doctor John Dee, the ancestor of the Dee whose work had precipitated tonight's crisis, and there was a certain symmetry in beginning her real education in Magick with this book, intended for the instruction of his Apprentices. It was a symmetry that John Dee himself probably would have approved of.
She read through it, unflinching, even when she encountered concepts as foreign to a well-bred young lady of this century as a fork was to an African Pigmy. Much of Dee's work was pure nonsense, of course; he often got results that were quite astonishing, and would correctly deduce the cause of some particular event—but he would arrive at that cause by some of the wildest twists of illogic! For instance—the admonition that to rid a village of Plague one must first rid it of rats was, of course, correct—but the reason was absolute bunk. Dee's assertion was that both Plague and rats came under the auspices of the Moon, and thus the rats carried the Moon's influence indoors, where it otherwise could not penetrate!
His notes on transformations were sound though, as far as they went. Dee had never actually attempted a transformation; he only related what he had learned from colleagues on the Continent. His tastes ran to the mystical, which certainly suited a Master of Air. The Sylphs were the least effectual of the Elements, and the most capricious. It didn't do to depend on them for much of anything, and they could not keep their attention on a task for more than an hour or two at most. They made tremendous messengers and information-gatherers, they could fetch something from anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye, but if their Master had an accident and sent them for help, chances were that without the Master's eye on them, they'd become distracted on the way and leave him to bleed to death.
Not that they were harmless, any more than a tornado was harmless, or a hurricane. No would-be Master of Air ever made that particular mistake twice. Very few ever made it once and lived to tell about it. Such was the case with each of the Elements and its Elementals. They had their strengths and weaknesses—and all were deadly and dangerous.
In the final section of his book, Dee described the first Ordeal an Apprentice underwent in the process of becoming a Master of Air, and Cameron felt it would be instructive for Rose to read it. It should serve as a cautionary tale, as well. He waited expectantly when she closed the volume and put it aside. She reached for the next book, but did not open it immediately. From the expression on her face, he deduced that she was making up her mind whether to say something or not.
She cleared her throat, self-consciously. "Clearly, some of that was flummery," she said.
"A great deal, actually, but anyone with a rudimentary scientific education would recognize what is nonsensical," he replied, quietly.
"But that final chapter—?" She let the sentence hang in the air, ending it on a note of query.
"The final chapter is accurate, insofar as it describes the correct First Ordeal for an Apprentice seeking to become a Master of Air," he told her, as matter-of-factly as if he were confirming that the sun rose in the east. "The Ordeals for other Elements differ, of course. Each is determined by the Nature of the Elementals; the one thing they all have in common is that there is a cost to the acquisition of power. Nothing comes without a price."
She did not answer that, but he had not expected her to. After a moment, she opened the second book, and began reading it aloud.
When she finished, it was well past four, and he called a halt. Even if she was able to absorb the stress of the past evening without any overt problem, he had not been.
As she finished reading, he cleared his throat. "That will be all for tonight, Miss Hawkins—"
"You called me Rose, earlier," she interrupted.
He recalled immediately, much to his chagrin, that she was right. "So I did. I apologize."
"Don't," she replied, surprising him. "The use of Christian names or even nicknames to another has more than one interpretation. It can be the sign that one is far superior to the other, but it can also be the sign that they are equal, if the liberty is equal."
He felt the corner of his mouth pull in an approximation of a smile at her cleverness. "Very well, then. I freely give you permission to call me Jason. I never had a nickname."