Rose 3: Rose and the Magician's Mask Read Free

ached.
    Her magic lessons at the moment were mostly concerned with scrying – that strange art of seeing things far away. Mr Fountain was employing his apprentices to help in the desperate search for Gossamer. He had escaped with all his powers intact, and they had no idea where he and Venn had fled. Or what they were planning.
    Unfortunately, the lessons were not going very well.
    ‘Have you found anything, Sir?’ Freddie asked hopefully that afternoon. ‘Any trace at all?’
    Mr Fountain shook his head, and slumped into one of the chairs at the workroom table. He sat with his chin in one hand, twisting fretfully at his moustache.
    ‘No magic – but then I wasn’t expecting it, to be honest. Gossamer and Venn were almost impossible to pin down at the palace.’ He laughed shortly. ‘Hiding in plain sight, I suppose. Well, now they’ll be hiding themselves even more carefully. I haven’t had the slightest glimmer, though I’ve scryed for them all these weeks.’ He sighed, a long angry huff. ‘And not one hint from any of my sources. The amount of money I’ve spent bribing people. For nothing!’
    He was surprisingly annoyed, Rose thought, considering that he could almost make money grow ontrees. Mr Fountain was an alchemist, as well as a very powerful magician. Rose had never heard of alchemists before she left the orphanage, but now from what Freddie and Gus had told her, she realised how amazingly unusual Mr Fountain was. Alchemy had always been an obscure and slightly shameful brand of magic, simply because it didn’t work. Until twenty years before, when Mr Fountain and his fellow student, one Joshua Merganser, had actually managed to turn lead into gold. At the time, Freddie said, they had been so poor that they had stolen the lead in question off a church roof, but Rose wasn’t sure she believed that.
    Mr Merganser had died in mysterious circumstances, and Freddie had told her some interesting stories about that too, which Rose really didn’t believe – most of the time. Whatever had happened, Mr Fountain became the only successful alchemist in the world. But it seemed that now even gold wasn’t enough.
    ‘The trail is completely cold,’ Mr Fountain moaned. ‘They’ve vanished. Vanished!’ He sank his head on his hand dramatically, and added, in a doom-laden voice, ‘Which can only mean they’re plotting something else. Who knows what the fiends are after now?’
    The white cat, Gus, wove himself comfortingly around Mr Fountain’s arms, and his master stroked him unseeingly, which was a mistake. Gus demandedthe full attention of his admirers, and he hissed a warning.
    ‘What? Oh! I’m sorry, Gus. Go on, you two. Show me what you’ve learned. Who knows, maybe it needs a fresh eye – one of you may catch a glimpse.’ Mr Fountain didn’t sound very hopeful.
    Rose was just trying to open her Inner Eye to allow her True Sight to work, as instructed in Prendergast’s Perfect Primer for the Apprentice Magician , when there was a knock at the workroom door.
    Rose and Freddie jumped – it was almost unheard of for one of the staff to interrupt a lesson, as they were terrified of the workroom, and whatever devilish practices the family got up to.
    ‘Come in!’ Mr Fountain called, and the door opened, very slowly. Susan was standing there, white-faced. She thrust a heavily sealed envelope at Rose, who was nearest, bobbed the fastest curtsey Rose had ever seen, and ran.
    ‘Odd girl,’ Mr Fountain muttered, taking the envelope from Rose, and holding it out to Gus, who slit the wax seals with one unnaturally extended claw. ‘This is King Albert’s seal – what on earth does the man want? I’ve been at the palace all morning already. Really, this treasury job is becoming desperately dull.’
    He started to read the letter, irritably tapping onefinger on the table, but as he scanned the heavy parchment, the tapping died away, and his face paled. Gus jumped into his lap to see.
    ‘Oooh,