Mr. Carteret nodded. "Take a closer look. At all of the books. Get a feel for them."
Pearl edged forward. "What is this place?"
"The library."
She smacked him with a scowl. "Not this place-" She gestured widely at the entire enormous room. " This place." She flipped her hand at the small space where they stood, at the table and the books.
"Ah. These . . ." Mr. Carteret waved his hand at the books. "These are the first books written in England concerning the four great magics. They're in old ‘whan that Aprylle' Chaucerian English, so they're useless for studying, but they've been translated into modern English, and printed and reprinted, so that doesn't matter so much.
"What does matter is the magic. They're so old and so saturated with magic that they essentially are magic. Each its own variety. Only a magician with a talent for that type of magic can unlock a book. I can unlock the alchemy book, for instance, but it's a tremendous strain and it takes me forever and why would I want to, when it's so easy for me to open the volume on conjury?"
Even Mr. Carteret felt the weight of the age and magic in this small space, Pearl thought, since he spoke in the same quiet tones she'd used. "Why did you bring me here?"
"To determine where your talent lies. I am fairly certain already, but it has become tradition over the past century or so-perhaps since the last sorceress died-to bring each student here in the second year of study to test the locks. It could well have begun with a search for someone who could open the book of sorcery. At any rate, it's tradition now. And who am I to break with tradition?"
"The very one, I imagine," Pearl murmured.
"True." He shrugged. "Do it anyway. Because I want to know, and this is supposed to be the best way to be sure. Besides, we are flaunting tradition so mightily by making you an apprentice, it's likely best we follow as many of the other traditions as we can, to make your apprenticeship that much more traditional-and acceptable-to the old grumpuses in there." He tipped his head toward the other room.
Pearl had no real objection to doing what Mr. Carteret asked. His request and the reasoning behind it made sense. But the magic, the books themselves made her nervous.
Still, she hadn't come this far to back away in cowardice. She did have magic talent, and she would learn how to use it. No matter how many huge, frowning, weighty magical books she had to unlock.
"What do I do?" she asked. Not a delaying tactic at all.
"Walk around the table," Mr. Carteret instructed. "It might help if you moved a trifle closer to it. Look at the books. Listen to them. Pay attention to how they make you feel. And if there's one you want to try to open, then do so."
She took a step toward the table, then looked back over her shoulder at her magic-master. "What will you be doing?"
"Waiting." He leaned against the nearest bookcase and folded his arms. "Right here."
That was all right, then. She wouldn't have to go wandering through the bookcase maze to find him afterward. It wasn't at all because her stomach went tight and squeezy at the thought of being all alone with these books. Or only a little.
Pearl took two more steps toward the table and looked down at the alchemy book. She could just barely feel it booming somewhere off deep and far away. Remote and uninteresting.
She moved around the table to her right. The cover of the next book was blank. It was a deep unfaded black and had nothing at all on it. Or did it? Pearl leaned to the side to look down at it from an angle and saw shadows, texture. Her hand rose as if to touch it, and she looked up at Mr. Carteret, who had crossed his ankles now, as well as his arms. "Should I?"
His expression didn't change, remained as pleasantly, annoyingly blank as before. "Do you want to?"
Sort of. But sort of not. She brushed her fingertips across the cover and a shivery whisper slithered through her. She could feel symbols impressed into the leather, could feel the magic they held, but it was . . . thin. Wispy. Not quite real. Not quite right.
The next book had a naked woman on the front cover, staring out at the world. She stood with her feet balanced under her, arms down, palms facing forward, her hair falling straight down her back. A man stood behind her and to one side, his image indistinct but unmistakable.
Pearl realized she was tracing the images with her fingertips. The magic felt warm, safe-like home. Like home before everything had happened.
She wanted to open this book, but she also wanted to see the other one, so she walked around the table to the fourth side to the book of wizardry.
The cover of this one was a riot of flowers and trees and foliage. Pearl spied a little bird perched in one of the trees, and the face of a fox almost hidden beneath the foxgloves, but it was the flowers that dominated. Here, the magic felt warm and friendly. Inviting. But not right. Not like the book with the woman on it, the book of sorcery.
She went back to it, licking her thumb as she did. The latch might be stiff if it hadn't been opened in a century or so. But it flipped right open when she pushed this toggle and pulled at that one.
"Brava!" Mr. Carteret kept his shout quiet, but it was a shout nonetheless, echoing into the upper reaches of the library. He bounded around the table, captured both her hands in his, and kissed them, which left Pearl feeling all fluttery. "Apprentice sorcerer you are so proclaimed."
He tucked her arm through his and led her down the cross aisle in a new direction, so quickly she had to scurry to keep up with him. "We need sorcery desperately, you know." He sounded gleeful, triumphant. "And now I have found one more. Or rather, you have found me, if we wish to be truthful. And we can get at the sorcery books in the library, or you can get at them."
Mr. Carteret turned to the left again, toward the side of the room opposite where they'd come in. When they reached the corner, where the wall with windows met the wall without, he stopped and looked up at the portrait hanging there on the windowless wall. "That was our last sorceress."
6
THE PAINTING WAS enormous, the figures in it life-size. They looked as if they might step out of the painting at any moment. Pearl hoped they didn't. The woman, for all her dainty, caramel-and-cream curvaceous beauty, did not look like someone pleasant to know. Her expression exuded power. "She looks rather frightening."
"So she does. All that power, I think." Grey was staring thoughtfully up at the portrait when Pearl cast a sideways glance in his direction. "Amanusa-the new sorceress-is nothing like that one. Amanusa's quite tall and fair. Utterly different sort of beauty. She's got power as well, but hers is more ‘Do not dare to harm the innocent,' rather than ‘Do not dare to cross me.' "
He paused, his eyes on the portrait, but gazing at something far away. Pearl's heart twisted a little and she sat on it. No thumping or twisting allowed. Mr. Carteret's thoughts and feelings were none of her nevermind.
"Her power is so very fierce," he mused, startling Pearl out of her own musing. "She wouldn't harm you unless you needed it, but, well . . . Fierce, very fierce." He sounded as if he admired such power, and the woman who wielded it.
Pearl didn't want to think about it anymore. "Who is the man in the painting? He's so deep in the shadows, you can scarcely see him."
"Oh, that's Jax. Amanusa's husband." Mr. Carteret took a step closer and peered with her into the painted shadows. "He looks exactly like that. Different clothes, of course."
The pair in the painting wore the high, pleated ruffs and elaborate clothing of the wealthy in the Tudor reign. They looked terribly uncomfortable to Pearl. The man's features were clear, once you noticed him standing in the shadows behind the woman poised on the thronelike chair.
"It's the same man?" Pearl managed to shove aside her disbelief and speak. "The one in the painting and the one-the new sorceress's husband?"
"One and the same. As for how-" He gestured at the books in the library behind them. "Magic."
"Oh." Pearl stared at the man in the painting awhile longer.
He cleared his throat. "Books. That's what we're about. Since you are an apprentice sorcerer, and I am a conjurer who is also your magic-master, we shall begin with books, as I have no lessons to teach you, other than general magical principles."
Mr. Carteret stepped to the nearest shelf and gestured. "Beginning Sorcery seems a good place to begin. If you will collect your book, Miss Parkin."
"Yes, sir." She pulled the book with BEGINNING SORCERY printed in gold on its wide, dark brown spine, and opened it. The print inside was thick and black and-
"No time for that now. Bring it along. We've got one more to collect." This time he strode ahead, leaving her to keep up as best she could. It was a bit better than being towed behind him, but not much.
"Here it is." Mr. Carteret plucked a book from a bottom shelf on the outside, near the entrance to the library. "Basic Magic Theory. Getting through these two ought to occupy your time well enough. Come along."