“Oh, if that is the reason you have delayed!” said Sir Stephen. “There is no need to be apprehensive. You ought to know the prohibition on entry does not apply to us.”
“In principle,” said Zacharias.
Zacharias had never been able to get to the bottom of why an exemption should apply to the Sorcerer Royal. If the Court so disapproved of English thaumaturgy as to forbid English thaumaturges its demesne, why should it welcome only the chief representative of thatdespised body? The nearest Zacharias had ever got to the truth was Lady Wythe’s once teasing Sir Stephen about his having made up to the Fairy Queen, and Sir Stephen’s responding with an uncharacteristic blush—andthatseemed too absurd an explanation.
Zacharias knew enough thaumaturgical history to be wary of Fairyland, and he would gladly have forgone the check, but it would be foolhardy to embark upon his enchantments without first surveying the other side of the border. If there were anything unexpected—a passing fairy, who by its presence increased the atmospheric magic on the other side, or adverse weather conditions, which in Fairy might take outlandish forms—it might throw his calculations out, and introduce all the instability he feared.
Approaching the border warily, he leant through the sheet of light, keeping a firm grasp of the hedge as he did so.
After all his deliberations, the border offered no resistance. Zacharias saw on the other side rolling green fields, not unlike those that surrounded Fobdown Purlieu. A grey sky glowered above. There was a lone harpy flying in the distance, with the weary, single-minded air of a Cit hurrying home from his bank.
So much Zacharias saw before the magic rushed up and slammed him in the face. He was shoved backwards by the force of the blow, and landed heavily on the damp grass of England.
“Good God!” cried Sir Stephen. “What’s amiss?”
To assist Zacharias to rise required a solidity Sir Stephen no longer possessed, and it was clear he felt his impotence. Zacharias was too stunned from his abrupt ejection from Fairy to respond at once, but as soon as Sir Stephen’s anxious countenance had penetrated his consciousness he scrambled up, dusting himself off.
“I am not hurt in the least. Pray do not be concerned,” he said.
Sir Stephen’s worn face, translucent in the dying light of the day, went to his heart. He looked away, knowing Sir Stephen would prefer indifference to pity. But Sir Stephen did not lack courage.
“What a mother hen I am become!” he said soberly. “If I were my old self I should not start at every shadow, and be alarmed when you stumble, but one’s anxiety rises in proportion to one’s incapacity to do anything about it. Never outstay your time upon this earth, Zacharias. I am better acquainted with my own weakness now than I ever wished to be.”
Zacharias scarcely knew where to look, or what to say. Affection there had always been between them, whatever their disagreements—and there had been more of these than Zacharias had permitted Sir Stephen to know. But their relationship could never have been mistaken for one of equality while Sir Stephen lived. Wealth, influence, age and obligation had separated them, and while never quite pretending to the rights of a son, Zacharias had regarded Sir Stephen with all the respect due a father, a teacher and the chief of their profession.
With Sir Stephen’s death, however, the gap between them had closed imperceptibly. It was one of the many embarrassments of being attended by his guardian’s spectre, that he should begin to see in the spirit the frailties of the man.
“You could not know what had occurred,” said Zacharias finally. It was out of the question for Sir Stephen to venture across the border himself: it was all too easy for a ghost, under the influence of Fairy, to persuade itself it was a sprite, with deleterious consequences for its hope of salvation. “It is nothing that poses any immediate peril.”
A disturbing certainty was coalescing within him, however, and he returned to the flexible sheet of light shining above the hedgerow. This time he was more cautious, and only put his hand into Fairyland. He yelped and withdrew it at once.
“What is it?” said Sir Stephen.
“Magic,” said Zacharias. “There is a buildup on the other side.”
It was only atmospheric magic, no different from the weak stuff that pervaded Britain’s ether and made Lady Wythe sneeze. The magic on the other side of the border differed in one key respect,however—its concentration. It was only to be expected that the air should have a magical tang to it in Fairyland, but this force was beyond anything Zacharias had expected.
“How extraordinary,” said Sir Stephen. He had not quite recovered from his mother hennish mood. “Ought you to continue your spells now, if merely putting in your head for a look draws such a response? Perhaps it would be better to wait till morning. Indeed, you ought to refrain from doing anything before noon.”
Zacharias cast a levitation spell. The top of the border was too high for him to reach it unaided, and he wished to examine its whole breadth.
“That scheme is exploded, I suspect,” he said grimly. “I do not think I ought to cast my spells at all.”
Sir Stephen had not had the advantage of sensing the magic on the other side, and he was too unnerved to have embarked upon the chain of reasoning that had unfurled in Zacharias’s mind. It was only now, as he calmed down, that the questions began to occur to him, that Zacharias had resolved nearly to his own satisfaction five minutes ago.
“How can the creatures be managing with such an excess of magic?” wondered Sir Stephen. Any surplus of magic in Fairy was wont to be attended by disaster. It lent too potent a stimulus to Fairy’s excitable peoples, giving rise to numberless feuds, burglaries, love affairs and other misadventures. The Court had formerly rather approved of the traffic to England, because it siphoned off excess magic, and kept Fairy’s inhabitants tractable. It was only when the balance began to tilt in Britain’s favour, as a result of the depredations of magicians greedy for glory, that the Court had demurred. “How curious that they should be encountering the opposite difficulty from ours.”
“Or not so very curious,” said Zacharias. “Ha! I have it!”
Sir Stephen floated up to examine the object he had found. It was affixed in a conspicuous position halfway up the sheet of light that marked the border, and had only escaped observation before because it was so small.
“Fairy always delights in an unsubtle jest,” said Sir Stephen, after a pause. “Leofric used to perpetrate the rankest puns.”
“Indeed,” said Zacharias. He tugged at the object, though without much hope of extracting it. It was a cork, firmly lodged in nothing at all.
“So Fairyland has stoppered the flow of magic into England,” said Sir Stephen. “And this is how the Court has seen fit to inform us. It accounts for a great deal.”
“But leaves much more unexplained,” said Zacharias.
