“A wand makes magic last, makes more things possible—it focuses the power in a way hands can’t,” she said. “Vintner knew all that because he’d fallen in with a group of older wizards in Pennsylvania, where he went to college. So we’ve got more people we can investigate, and—oh, Willi, we’re going to learn so much! Vintner’s notes alone are bursting with practical advice for doing magic ...”
She trailed off, struck by a memory. Hartgrave, lips twisted with amusement:Give me one example of a practical reference to magic and I’ll eat my hat.For an instant—a second—she was gleeful at the thought of making him eat his words, at least.
Then she remembered.
And sighed.
“Anyway,” she said, unable to totally recapture her excitement, “it’s an amazing amount of information. I can’t believe it was sitting in a trunk ten feet above my bed for three months.”
Willi frowned. “I cannot understand why he did not give this to someone.”
“He couldn’t give it to his family because he never told them he could spellcast,” she said. “He even kept it from his wife.”
“And he didn’t have anyone he thought he could take on as an apprentice,” Bernie said. “Everywhere he looked, he saw folks caught up in the rush to be modern, throwing off old-fashioned things. His son and grandson in particular. No one in Iowa believed in magic—well, very few. Every time he warily brought the subject up, people rolled their eyes.”
“Except a handful of séance-crazy types, and he thought they were quarter-wits,” she put in.
“‘Halfwit’ was too kind, in his opinion.”
Willi laughed.
“The upshot,” Bernie said, “is that Olsson—the man who designed the humanities building—was the only person he got up the courage to tell all to since his days in Pennsylvania, and only then because he needed some non-magical expertise to install the underground training room he so badly wanted at the college.”
“Training ... ?”
“That’s why it’s magic-tight one way,” she said. “It’s the perfect place to learn.”
Bernie casually levitated his sky-blue bowler hat. “As I discovered.”
“But Vintner never lived to see anyone use it besides himself and Olsson,” she said. “Every time he thought he’d found a possible kindred spirit on campus, they’d say something that dissuaded him from revealing the secret. I think his position made him excessively cautious.”
“Or what happened with Olsson.” Bernie raised his eyebrows at her.
“What?” Willi looked up from the beautiful wand, curiosity caught. “What happened?”
“The architect did his first bit of magic in the new room, had an immediate change of heart and refused to talk to Vintner ever again,” Bernie said.
That room must quickly have become a lonely place for Vintner—empty and purposeless. She swallowed over a lump in her throat.
“Ja?And then what?” Willi looked as rapt as a child waiting for the end of a fairy tale. “This Olsson, did he tell anyone? Was Vintner found out?”
“No,” she said. “Eventually Vintner put two decades of notes in this trunk, topped it with a ‘to the magician it may concern’ letter—he preferred ‘magician’ to ‘wizard’—and sealed the lock with a spell.”
Bernie shook his head. “A bit sword-in-the-stone, though why he left it in hisattic...”
“I think he intended to put it in the Inferno but didn’t do it in time,” she said. “Thus died one of the last well-trained spellcasters, and evil wizards had nothing to do with it.”
She realized too late what this would bring to Willi’s mind, but he merely nodded. He spent a moment looking at the closest stack of papers before turning to her with a serious expression on his rosy face.
“We ought to be taking his notes to Alexander,” he said. “He has the best chance of making something of them.”
“I know.” She glanced away, unable to look at the concern on his face. “Just let Bernie make copies first so we can keep the originals together.”
Bernie cleared his throat. “You don’t mind?”
“Should I?”
“He seemed to think you wouldn’t trust him.”
