The Magicians and Mrs. Quent Read Free

sure she had copied the runes precisely. “At least I
think
so. I’ve been reading about it for some time now, and I’m ready to try something myself.”
    “The candle isn’t lit,” Rose said.
    Ivy smiled at her. “It’s not supposed to be. It’s extinguished as a sympathetic representation of darkness. I’m going to summon a bit of shadow to me.”
    “But you
can’t
do magick,” Lily said again. “Not if you hope to marry a gentleman. Everyone knows it’s dreadful wicked for a woman to work spells.” She lowered her voice ominously. “They burn witches, you know.”
    Ivy gave her a stern look. “Lily! You shouldn’t say awful things.”
    “Why shouldn’t I say them when they’re true? They
do
burn witches, in Greenly Circle.”
    “Nonsense,” Ivy chided her, conscious of Rose’s worried expression. “There hasn’t been a witch in Greenly Circle in two hundred years. And even if there was, a magician is not the same thing as a witch.” Ivy laid a hand on the open book. “The magicians fought the witches long ago, during the time of the Risings.”
    When Ivy was a girl, Mr. Lockwell had told her stories about the Risings. Long ago, the island of Altania had been covered by the Wyrdwood: a primeval forest tangled with green shadows. For eons its rule was complete—until the day ships landed on the shore of Altania, bringing men who wielded iron and fire. They cut down the Wyrdwood and burned it to make room for their settlements.
    Some accounts told that the Wyrdwood fought back against the invaders and that many men were lost within its dim groves. One of Ivy’s favorite tales as a child recounted how a great chieftain rode into a valley only to find a forest where his army had been encamped the day before. According to those stories, it was the witches who had awakened the power of the wood and compelled it to rise up. However, in time more and more trees fell, and at last the Wyrdwood’s fury was quelled by Altania’s first great magician, Gauldren. From that day on, the music of axes rang out freely.
    At least, that was what the histories told. In these modern times, only a few ragged patches of the Wyrdwood remained. Ivy had never seen any of them herself, as most were far out in the country.
    “Besides,” Ivy went on, “our own father is a magician, and he’s not wicked, is he? And it can’t be wicked for me to do what he did.”
    “Yes, it can,” Lily said. “There are lots of things that men are free to do that women get in all sorts of trouble if they so much as try. Like act onstage in a play.”
    Ivy hesitated. It was true that all of the magicians she had read about were men, and most of them lords at that, descended from one of the seven Old Houses (though a few gentlemen practiced the arcane arts, as her father once had). However, magick wasn’t like acting in a play. By its nature it was occult, a thing done in secret, away from prying eyes. Ivy would never do anything that might bring discredit upon her family. But how could there be even the appearance of impropriety if no one but her sisters saw her?
    Resolved, she fixed her eyes on the book. “Don’t speak,” she said. “The incantation must not be interrupted once it’s begun.”
    Before there could be any more protest, she began to recite the unfamiliar words on the page before her. Rose’s mouth hung agape in silent amazement, and though Lily squirmed in her seat, Ivy’s warning must have sounded suitably dire, for she made no more protests.
    The words were harder to speak than Ivy had supposed. Her tongue seemed thick and heavy, as if she had just eaten a mouthful of honey. The language of magick was older than humankind itself, or at least that was what a book she had read once claimed.
    She spoke the final words. A silence descended over the parlor, and it seemed to Ivy that a gloom seeped through the windows and pressed from all around. In the gray light, something dark and sleek darted across the