Delusion (32 page)

“Which we must avoid at all costs.”

“Exactly, which is why we must crush them, now!”

“Better to have a score of rogue magicians trying to rule than five hundred. Sit down, Arden. It is time you learned something. If things had gone otherwise, you would have heard it from my lips eventually. I had high hopes for you, son. I thought you might one day follow me as Headmaster. But now you are called upon to make an even greater sacrifice for the college, and it is only right that you know why.”

And then, for the first time, he told Arden the truth, and the world’s rosiness decayed.

England is a prison for the Essence, Rudyard said, and the College of Drycraeft is a prison for magicians.

Rudyard spoke the litany that had been repeated every generation to the new Headmaster, and to him alone: Once the Essence had flowed freely through all the world, surging and unbound. Any person with the power to control it could gather it up like apples in autumn and use it for whatever he wished. And humans, being human, used it selfishly, foolishly, violently. The weak-willed magicians became the slaves of kings. The bold, the clever, the potent, became magician-kings, taking what they would and subjugating all who opposed them.

“Thus it is whenever there is power,” Rudyard told the young master. “But in commoners, there is a limit to the evil they can do. A commoner can kill one man with his hands, a dozen with a gun, a thousand with a bomb. Not so in magicians—there is no limit. Left to band together, they would rule the world—and ultimately, destroy it.

“So the wisest of the magicians, those who understood the dreadful combination of lust for power and limitless access to it, devised a plan. They gathered as much Essence as they could and trapped it in an island fortress bound by wards of terrible strength, from which the Essence could not escape.

“But they could not quite gather all of it, and any ambitious magician still posed a threat. So they rounded up the youngest, those who were still coming into their powers, and imprisoned them, too, on the island. The others they attacked by stealth, though most either died, struggling to keep their last vestiges of power, or faded into obscurity, their link to the Essence so sorely diminished that they were scarcely better than commoners.

“Our ancestors saw what would become of civilization if the magic were left unchecked. We did what we had to do.”

Arden still did not completely understand. “What you say makes no sense. Why concentrate the Essence, and then bring magicians to it, if they are such a threat? You’re wrong, Rudyard.” He looked at his Headmaster beseechingly, begging him not to confirm the terrible thing he felt deep in his bones.

“Because people are gullible,” Rudyard said, “even magicians. Take them young, tell them lies, and they will believe. Tell them the world will be flung from its foundations if they do not perform the Exaltation daily, and they will feel such honor, such obligation, that they will never stray. At least, the vast majority will not. That’s why we allow the journeyman year. It weeds out the rebels. Those who return are content to believe in the Exaltation and will never believe it isn’t necessary.”

“You can’t mean . . .” Arden faltered. Nearly his whole life, his entire purpose, had been tending the Essence, being one of the godlike beings that kept the world alive.

“The Exaltation is meaningless, Arden. Busywork for schoolchildren. A task to make their life seem fraught with purpose.
I could be a king,
each lad will think,
but what I do is so much more important.
”

For a moment only, the revelation made Arden feel weak and spent, but rage followed on its heels, ravening for blood.

He controlled himself well, though. His time with the Fräulein had taught him that much, at least. He pretended prostration, as the slave under the lash knows better than to swear vengeance; still, he vowed to be free—and to punish his captor.

A lifetime of lies.
I could have had a life of my own. I could have loved.
He felt, for almost the first time, what Rudyard had called the lust for power.
Yes, I could have been a king,
he thought.

But I would have been a good one.

I should have been given the chance to prove I could. Any man can kill with his hands. Should he therefore be shackled all his days, just in case?

Letting the hurt and confusion through, but not the bitter anger, Arden said, “Then the earth doesn’t need us?”

“No one needs you, boy. No one needs me, nor any magician. We serve no purpose. We are unexploded bombs waiting to go off. We must be contained.”

“Then why the college? Why gather us and train us?”

“Because magicians will always be born. When they appear in the rest of the world, it is no matter—their link to the Essence is so tenuous, they can hardly accomplish anything.”

Except for the monsters who have learned to steal it,
Arden thought.

“But when they are born in England, their access to the Essence is so great, their capacity for evil so boundless . . .”

Or for good, you blind old fool. Power can be good, in the right hands!

“...they must be guided to a safe path as soon as possible.”

“Not killed?”
You’ve certainly killed enough,
he thought.

“Where’s your logic, Arden? Kill them all, and more will be born, and who in turn will control them? The college exists solely as an institution to contain new magicians, perpetually.”

“I see,” Arden said. “Each generation must be enslaved and fooled, so that they will be willing to enslave and fool the next. How clever—how thorough. And those who rebel are eliminated.”

“Exactly. And now you see why I cannot allow any of my magicians to fight.”

“No, I don’t really.”

“Let them taste competition, violence, victory—and they will never look back! I will lose control of them. It is the nature of man.”

“You let them train with Phil.” Her name on his tongue was a drop of honey.

“Fencing and fisticuffs are nothing. It was like a journeyman adventure—something most can turn their backs on easily enough. Those who don’t—and I know which of your friends have been training to use the Essence to fight—will be drained.”

Still, somehow, Arden forced himself to be calm. “If no one fights them, the Dresdeners will be free in England—to do what they will. Isn’t that what the Headmasters have been working against for millennia?”

“The Dresdeners will be dealt with,” Rudyard said.

“How, if the masters won’t fight? Do you mean to use your assassins?”

It was known, among the higher ranks of masters, that errant, rebellious journeymen were drained, but no one knew who did the killing.

“The masters do not carry out the executions.”

“Who, then?” Arden asked, swearing in his heart he would kill them all, whoever they were, for executing his brothers just because they yearned to be free.

“Why, the women, of course.”

Arden kept himself together by sheer force of will until Rudyard dismissed him, with orders to discover the details of the attack.

He staggered through the halls of Stour like a man in a nightmare, blind to the friends who saluted him.

Look at you!
he wanted to scream.
Deluded fools, all of you, thinking the fate of the earth lies with you. Slaves! Dare to have a free thought, and you’ll be killed—for the good of the world.

He stumbled against the great arched entranceway, his thoughts uncontrollable. Was Rudyard right? Were they too dangerous to be allowed to live free in the world?
Look at me—I killed my father, I tormented Ruby—and I think I can be good? I destroyed Stour and killed magicians by using the Essence without thinking. God, I killed Thomas! Maybe I can’t be let loose.

But I can redeem myself. I can free my brothers,
he thought.
I can give them a chance to make the choice for themselves.

He forged out into the blizzard, a burning brand, feeling as if he had died and been reborn. He knew what he had to do. He just needed Phil’s help to figure out how to do it.

When he reached Weasel Rue at last, he simply held her, surrendering himself utterly to the right of possession and being possessed. Then he told her, and she listened with tight-pressed lips and never once thought of saying
I told you so,
though she’d known, even with her limited scientific and historical knowledge, that the world’s continued existence couldn’t depend on a species that has only existed for a tiny fraction of the planet’s lifespan.

“They’re scattering like rats,” Arden said, pacing the farmhouse kitchen. “He’s dividing them up among the women, hiding them out until he thinks they can gather again in a new college.”

Phil raised an eyebrow. “Tell me about these mysterious female magicians.”

“I don’t know much. We’ve been taught they hardly have any power.” Phil made a
humph
sound. “But now he says they’re the assassins. They kill the journeymen who refuse to return, and he’ll be sending them to kill the Dresdeners. How is it that they get to live in the world while we were caged?”

“Perhaps other methods of control work for them.”

“Self-control, you mean? Why can’t we have self-control? Do they think any man with power is going to wage war and murder everyone who crosses him and keep harems and...what are you smirking at?”

“Well, it
is
what men tend to do.”

“Not every man,” he assured her. But he remembered how he felt when that young soldier she called her brother kissed her. What would he have done to the boy, if not for his strict training in pacifism?

“But you haven’t heard the worst,” Arden went on. “When most of the college flees, he needs to leave some behind in Stour so the attacking Germans will sense the power inside. He wants to trick them into thinking they’ve done what they set out to do, so they won’t pursue us. That will give the women plenty of time to track them and kill them.”

“You mean that, he expects someone to volunteer to die? Who would...oh. You. Your punishment for rebelling—and saving the magicians?”

Arden nodded. “Me, and the rest of the muster. A convenient plan, eh? We’ll be crushed to dust so the others can escape and never know the truth about what they could be. About . . .” He hesitated to tell her the last thing Rudyard had revealed. Not knowing if it was the right thing to do, he steeled himself and said only, “About what
you
could be.”

Phil cocked her head at him.

The women, Rudyard had said, might decide not to drain the Dresdeners but to take away their magic, their link to the Essence, the same way they had with her ancestor, Godric Albion.

“It is a much harsher punishment, and no more than they deserve,” Rudyard had said. “Though I counseled against it. After all, there is the chance, not likely but still a chance, that they’ll discover how to reverse it.”

His heart barely beating, Arden asked, as casually as he could, how that could be so.

And Rudyard, so cynical, so calculating, so devious, still trusted to the young master’s blind dedication and imminent demise, and dropped the bombshell.

“Anyone can become a magician,” he’d said. “The Essence is in every living thing already. All it takes to turn a commoner from a passive possessor to an active practitioner is an inoculation, if you will.” And then, unbidden, he explained to Arden briefly how to do it. “Should anything happen to me, this knowledge must be preserved, so that you may make absolutely sure no misguided magician restores the Dresdeners’ powers.”

Phil, when she heard, immediately thought of Fee’s first meeting with Thomas, when he’d offered to thrust his Essence past her barrier, and giggled. No, knowing what those two had been up to in the hayloft, that certainly wasn’t how it was done.

“Don’t you see what that means?” Arden asked her.

“That we could all be magicians and have a balance of power?”

“No,” he said, though the idea intrigued him. “It means I could restore your birthright. What was stolen from Godric, I could return to you. Phil, you could be a magician!”

“No thank you!” she said. “What, be a prisoner?”

“I’m going to change all that somehow, I swear. Every magician will know the truth, and be free.”

“Ah, no, but I’d be one of the women, wouldn’t I? I wonder what they’re really like. No, I’m sorry, I’m not even tempted. Yours is such a tangled lot. I like my kind of magic far better. Do I have to be a magician for you to care for me?”

He answered in a way that put all doubts to rest, and when she emerged, breathless, from his embrace, he picked up her last thread.

“What if we released the Essence from England back into the world? What if we gave everyone the same power? You haven’t felt it, Phil, so you don’t understand, but all this trouble, all this grief, it’s just the human side of the Essence. Yes, most of my life has been a lie, but one thing remains: the Essence is pure. It is life. It is the song of the earth, the soul...to feel it changes a person.” He took on a visionary glow. “If everyone could feel it, there would be no war, I know it. It is only when some have it, and some don’t, that the problems start. If we could—”

“First things first,” said pragmatic Phil. “Shall we save you and our friends, and kill the Dresdeners, and then go about rehabilitating the world? Because you see, I think I have an idea.”

They discussed it until after midnight, when it was Fee’s turn to come home and find a man in bed with her sister, though in this case he was fully dressed (albeit a bit mussed in the hair, with his shirt untucked) and perched chastely atop the bedclothes. They apprised her of the situation, and of course she promised to help. They needed her, because Phil was certain only magic—
their
kind of magic—would save all the magicians of Stour.

Fee, after making a few sketches and doing something suspiciously like trigonometry, admitted that yes, it could work.

“But we’re going to need an awfully big mirror,” she said. “And you’d better pray we don’t have a thaw.”

Arden slipped out of the house near dawn.