Chapter twelve

Eth City University

 

There were long days of boring lectures and even more boring practicals. The basics of magic are dull, whichever flavour you plan to specialise in. This was basic spellcraft and it threatened to fill up the whole of that cold, wet winter. It was mostly remembering the trigger words to evaporate or freeze water; switch lights on and off; and form tiny balls of force in the air. Lily was kept going by her new friend, Julia, and the hope of better times. The other thing that encouraged her was the growing realisation that she was one of the best students in the class; only Julia’s brother, Sebastian, came anywhere near her.  

She started in the digs that had been recommended to her, in a small boarding house run by a Mrs Philpot, an elderly strict woman who cooked and washed for her. But once Julia had come round and seen the cramped conditions and starched sheets she’d paid off the (cash strapped) matron and begged Lily to stay with them, Sebastian and her, in the big mansion that their father had rented for them. It was then that Lily realised just how rich they were. It came as a shock to her to find out that Ethian lawyers had a lot more disposable income than Amanskian princes.

They spent a weekend clearing out a little room for her. Julia insisted that they painted it lilac, as that was ‘absolutely Lily’s colour’. Then she found out that Lily had really wanted to paint it pale blue and so she redid it instantly and without a murmur. During that time Sebastian had mostly sat in the living room drinking wine and moaning about the disruption. However, he never once complained directly about having her move in.

The new departmental intake (there were twenty-three of them) were a mixture of: scholars learning the rudiments of magic to allow them to pursue their researches, the apprentice witches and four poor neophyte mages whose parents couldn’t afford to send them to either Vyrnia or Kinspit yet.      

Three weeks into the term, and now able to cast the three basic magecraft benchmark spells and a couple of low level mind-focusers, the witch-students were assigned mentors. They each received a letter in their pigeon holes in the department, spaces normally stuffed with fliers for student societies. Lily knew, of course, who her mentors were, and that although John had assigned her two she had to pretend that she only had one – Elizabeth. Her two friends, however, were waiting with trepidation to see who they would get. They both had a long mental list of tutors who they wanted to avoid at all costs. In the end the two names to whom they were assigned were people that they didn’t know, and none of their fellow students knew them either.

 

 

***

Five minutes before her first meeting Julia hurried along to a dusty part of the department, poorly known to her, where her mentor had his office – it didn’t look very important. She was nervous, but she knew that nerves never did her any good. Whatever her mentor was like she was sure that she’d make the best of it.

She knocked and waited. There was a muffled shout of welcome and she entered the room. It looked like a tiny milliner’s shop – with neatly piled rows of fabrics and threads, arrays of needles and a small loom. A stocky man with jet black hair was sitting behind a long work table. He saw her and stood up, putting down a large grey and green tapestry that he’d been sewing. His darning needle was the size of a pencil and the tapestry glowed.  He stared at her.

‘Hello’ he said, smiling but puzzled, ‘do I know you?’

‘I’m Julia Glyde – Are you Professor Floyd?’

The man shook his head

‘Just call me Owen – I’m not really a professor... I just have a room here for mending and patching, and I do a tiny little bit of teaching’

Julia looked around, wondering if she’d got the wrong room. Or perhaps this was a tailoring class? She wondered briefly if this were some sort of practical joke – anyway, how could her tutors know how much she liked sewing and dressmaking? She stood there waiting for everything to become clearer.

Owen picked up a briefcase and spent a moment shuffling through some papers in it. He looked up at her. She sensed his discomfort, which immediately made her want to help him.  

‘I can come back later...’ she murmured. He shook his head and made a great effort to compose himself. 

 ‘Miss Glyde - I’m so sorry. I had forgotten that we were meeting today’

Julia smiled her gargantuan smile. Owen stopped for a moment and considered it. There was no escape – he had to smile back. A sudden blast of good will seemed to warm the air. Julia began to reverse back through the door.

‘It’s fine, sir. We can meet at another time’

Owen frowned. Julia moved backwards even faster.

‘Sorry, sir...’

Owen waved at her.

‘Stop...’ he almost shouted, ‘It’s fine. I’m happy to have a chat now’

He coaxed her back in. She hesitated, but then, realising that she’d been mistaken about his demeanour, advanced back in slowly.

‘And it’s “Owen”...please’

A reflex clicked in her mind.

‘Then I’m Julia, not Miss Glyde... Owen’

Owen laughed.

‘Well, that makes life much easier... Come and see this, Julia...’

He pulled up a stool and placed it next to the table. Then he sat down and picked up the tapestry. Julia, relieved that find that she was in the right place after all, sat on the stool, still wondering what was going on.

She examined the tapestry. Its large squares were either grey or light green. Each colour shone with a different inner light. As the stitched-together fabric moved it pulsed gently, shimmering pale and lime. It was strangely calming, almost as if it were music, but there was no proper sound, just the pattern of the pulses.

‘What’s that?’ she whispered, ‘it’s very beautiful’.

Owen handed it to her. She took it with great care. It felt as light as conjoined cobwebs.

‘It’s a thaumic tapestry. It’s pieces of reality patched together. Watch...’

He picked up a ragged section of the fabric while she still held it.  With his other hand he picked up a translucent square of fabric from an open drawer below the table. He whispered ‘chlytiau’. The square in his hand began to cycle between different colours. Julia tried to work out the order of the cycling, but it was either fiendishly complicated or entirely random. Owen watched patiently for the colour to shift to light grey and then he murmured ‘aros’. The fabric remained grey.  He looked up at Julia.

‘Do you want to try to stitch this in?’ he asked.

Julia nodded. She leant over and picked up the needle and thread. The needle buzzed under her fingers. A smile began to blossom, like a sunflower, all across her face.

 

***

Sebastian met his mentor in the snug of a seedy pub, The Western Star. It was a very Rhylic pub, full of posters advertising folk singers. Sebastian knew what that meant – it meant long protest songs about how dreadful the Ethian government was. Normally he wouldn’t be seem dead in such a place, but with his heavy coat pulled up around his face and a furry hat he could probably get in and out without being recognised. His other fear was that he’d be forced to drink ale – that would be too much.

The man who greeted him, Huw Hargest, seemed scarcely older than Sebastian himself. He wore a green tunic with cow’s-muck brown trousers – he blended in with the pub’s ambience well. This wasn’t what he’d been expecting at all.  Huw beckoned him to a table in a tiny bar area, where each pair of seats was secluded behind pillars and walls. There was only just enough room for two people to sit. It was all far too intimate. Huw gestured for him to sit down.

‘Welcome, Seb – I bought you a drink’

Sebastian’s heart sank even further. This man had a very heavy Rhylic accent and he called him ‘Seb’. No-one called him that, no-one ever had, and he had always assumed that it was obvious, from his manner and bearing that he was no “Seb”. But now his teacher, the man who was going to teach him all about magic, had used the name in his very first sentence. He had to stop this immediately.

‘My name is Sebastian, sir’ he said, ‘Or Mr Glyde if you want to be formal, but not “Seb”

Huw’s eyes widened and his mouth wrinkled a little.  Sebastian was pleased to have made his point.

‘If that’s fine by you’ he added, feeling he needed to soften his assertiveness just a little.

Huw sat down and pointed to the drink.

‘Fine then, “Sebastian”. Here’s your drink.’

Sebastian stared at it. It was a pint of some orangey fizzy drink. He had no idea what it was.

‘It’s cider’ explained Huw, ‘and this is the best cider pub in the city’

Sebastian sat down on the tiny stool and stared blankly at the drink.

‘Fermented apple juice...’ he muttered, as if reading from an encyclopaedia.

Huw struggled with his face for a second but then couldn’t prevent a grin from escaping.

‘I take it you’ve never drank scrumpy then, boyo?’

Sebastian hated being teased, but mixed with the irritation of that happening he realised that he’d made a really bad start. Without thinking he picked up the glass and attempted to drink it on one gulp. About half of it went down his throat but the other half, tilted at an angle that ensured that it flowed far too quickly, spilled out all over his expensive tweed jacket.

‘Odd way of answering’ said Huw, sipping on his own pint, ‘but I get your point’

The barmaid came over with a cloth and fussed about mopping the table and tut-tutting. Sebastian, having gone beyond embarrassment, calmly untied his cravat and wrung it out over the pint glass. It looked just like the barmaid’s dirty cloth.

Huw put his hand up to his mouth for a second. He coughed and his body shook. When he removed his hand his face was perfectly expressionless.

‘Well, Sebastian... perhaps we should call it a day today and we should meet up some other time... umm... somewhere a bit more... well... more suitable for you, perhaps?’

Sebastian, who was beginning to smell of vinegar, shook his head solemnly.

‘No, definitely not. I’m not going to let cultural differences get in the way of our relationship. My only interest is in learning’

Huw narrowed his eyes. His voice was edged with a tremor of uncertainty.

‘Fine – that sounds like a very good attitude’

Sebastian placed the cravat in the almost empty pint pot. It was clearly not salvageable – he’d go over to Flamewell & Askew’s at Five Temples and pick out another one tomorrow. It was a fag, but there it was.

‘Thank you, I do appreciate that. But that’s not my main concern’ he said

‘Oh really – what is your main concern?’

Sebastian frowned. This was awkward, but it had to be said and said as early as possible.

‘With the greatest possible respect and given what I’ve seen so far – I’m wondering how good a witch you really are’

 

***

 

Lily had to traipse out to a small townhouse in the Palace Quarter. She knew a bit about Elizabeth Jenkins from both her former governess, Victoria, Elizabeth’s sister, and from John. She wasn’t sure that she liked what she’d heard.

The weather in Eth City was generally cold and wet in the winter, and this day was drizzly and miserable. She had hurried through the busy, wet streets and was glad to reach the safety of Elizabeth’s porch. She stood there, out of breath, shaking the water from her coat, too terrified to knock just yet.  The huge buildings behind her seemed to lean forward to stare at her; the big brass door knocker itself seemed far too grown up. All she wanted to do was to turn away and run back to Julia.

The door swung open. A short, round man in red livery stared out at her.

‘I was watching you...’ he grunted. His eyes narrowed. He looked like a vexed pig.

Lily mumbled something incomprehensible.

‘If you wanted to come in why didn’t you knock?’ he asked. Lily had never seen anyone look so fierce or so exasperated. She felt tears welling up, but with a huge effort of will – she clasped her hands so tightly together that he knuckles turned white – she stopped herself.

The man put his hands on his hips. He stared at her and frowned. His accent was pure Northern Eth, both coarse and blunt.

‘I assume that you’re Miss Smith...’

Anxiety had driven all sense out of Lily. All she could hear was the drumbeat of her heart in her head. She slowly shook her head.  The man glared at her; jabbing a finger towards her. He glanced round. Lily did the same, realising, with a dull chill, her stupid mistake. His voice became low and cold; it sounded like a snake’s hiss.

‘I think that you are Miss Molly Smith, now, aren’t you?’

Her shake turned to a nod and she finally found her voice.

‘Yes... of course... I really am Miss Smith...’

He opened the door fully and ushered her in. She was certain that as she walked past him that he whispered ‘bloody provincial royalty’ in a voice just loud enough to ensure that she heard it.

He shouted back down the long dark entrance hall.

‘Miss Molly is here, madam’

There was a brief pause and then a middle-aged woman appeared, striding towards them. She was unnervingly familiar, but fortunately Lily had been expecting that.  She looked like her sister, aged five years and made even tarter.

Lily curtsied, just as her mother had taught her. She had never been very good at it – it really didn’t suit her personality – but she did her best.

Elizabeth laughed. It was not an unkind laugh, but it made Lily feel two inches tall nonetheless. The corners of her dress drooped limply down as she let go of them. Elizabeth smiled at her.

‘Miss Molly Smith – at last!’ she said, ‘Come forward so that I can see you...’

Lily shuffled towards her, cringing with embarrassment. Elizabeth turned to her manservant.

‘Pettifer – you may go’ she commanded. The red-uniformed man disappeared without another word.

The older witch walked round her apprentice. She muttered something under her breath. Lily felt a spark of magic tickle her skin. 

‘I see’ said Elizabeth, apparently talking to herself, ‘you do have a lot of raw power...’

Lily nodded dumbly, wondering what the correct response to this was. All she knew was that this seemed to confirm what Sebastian had said. She was leaking magic.

Elizabeth’s smile turned cold; her eyes bright and calculating

‘Right then, girl’ she commanded, ‘all that power; let’s see if you can do anything with it...’