Caller of Lightning Read online

  After a few moments of continuing quiescence, Polly walked over to Ben. She laid a hand on his forehead and muttered to herself. The exhaustion lifted, and Ben’s eyes went from barely open to wide.

  “I don’t understand something. How were you using magic without speech?” He could see that she was hurting, struggling with the conflict and betrayal, and was attempting to distract her.

  She leaned against the wall, steadfastly ignoring Overton. “Oh,” she said as she looked absently at her fingers, “it’s like reading using a finger to track the words. You don’t need it, it just helps.”

  “I see. Some of my assumptions were incorrect then. When I first began to learn the art, my Debby suggested Latin and it worked. I had assumed it was part of the composition of a spell.” Ben stood, shakily, and cautiously stepped over the detritus to get to Overton, glancing at Polly as he went.

  She looked exhausted and haggard but nodded at him to continue. Getting no reaction from Overton as he nudged him with his finely shod foot, Ben knelt next to him. “I think,” Ben began, “I think he is dead.”

  Polly blinked. She shook her head. “But, I—” Her jaw clenched. “Lobcocks.”

  Ben jerked back in surprise at the foul language. The stress and emotional tool of the situation was just a little too much, and he began laughing. “Lobcocks? Really?” He wheezed through the laughs.

  Once the dam was broken, it was infectious, and Polly began laughing too. Hers wasn’t a laugh of joviality, but rather had a knife’s edge of hysteria under it. Ben recognized the tone from his own suffering at loss and knew what was coming next. He regained his feet as his laughter died down and stepped to Polly, folding her into a hug. Her laughs became tears. “It’s okay to cry, Polly. I understand that’s a lot you’ve had to deal with.” He patted her back.

  She shoved him away. “I’m not crying because I’m sad. I’m crying because I’m angry. Just give me a moment. Tenderness is a poor cure for fury. Retrieve my brooch, please.”

  As Ben stepped back over to the dead mage, a change came over Overton’s body. In that moment he became completely desiccated, and his body collapsed into a pile of dust. Ben stood, agape, wondering at this rapid transformation. He had no conception that Polly’s magic was nearly this powerful. To think: he had assumed his magic was the most advanced.

  “What have I done?” Polly gazed in horror at the pile of ash that was once her teacher, her hands shaking.

  “I think you saved our lives,” Ben said. “Thank you.” He used some of the strewn papers to sift through the ashes.

  “For years,” she spoke softly, “I longed for nothing more than to see Mr. Overton again, to show him how I had progressed, so he could applaud my efforts and perhaps teach me more. He told me that I would have to be ready. That there was a struggle coming. I had dreams of being a hero, a mage, like in the tales of Arthur. And now I’ve killed him and, with him, killed my own dream. All I’ve left us is questions.”

  Ben turned from the pile of dust. “A dream can turn into a nightmare, Polly.” He glanced back at the ashes then shrugged. “Unless I am mistaken, Overton was not interested in you or your growth. Apparently, he was interested in your brooch. I don’t think it is here,” he said. He couldn’t feel the artifact. “Now that I consider it, the hum from it vanished sometime in the middle of the fight.”

  “That was the only gift he ever gave me—at least that I was allowed to keep.” Then she paused and looked at Ben, “What hum?”

  Ben looked a little sheepish but was glad that her natural curiosity had momentarily diverted her from her distress. “Certain objects give off a hum that, apparently, only I can hear. Your brooch was one of those objects. From my first day in your house I knew there was something special there and have been curious. The brooch does not appear to be here now though. It must have been destroyed in whatever just happened to his body.”

  Polly began to move toward him, but Ben held up a hand, “I assure you, it’s not here, and it doesn’t seem worth it for you to engage in such a disturbing examination. I can tell you with certainty that it is not in this room.”

  “Are you saying that you could, essentially, sense where I was at all times?” asked Polly.

  Ben hung his head, looking sheepish, “Not really. I can kind of hear it, but it has to be close.”

  Polly shook her head, “I don’t know what to think of that, so I am going to ignore it for the moment. This makes no sense. I am not a powerful mage. I am not nearly as powerful as he was. How could I have done that to him? How could I have incinerated my brooch at the same time?”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Ben’s eye narrowed. “You weren’t using heat magic, were you? The body maintained its integrity for a moment before it turned to ash.”

  Polly shook her head, “No, I was trying to make him dizzy, maybe have vertigo or a headache. My goal was to render his casting useless by interfering with his mind. He taught me at a young age to apply a magic to the smallest spot to achieve the greatest effect.”

  “Interesting. Much like the principle of a level.” Ben walked around the body, still studying the ashes. His eyes darted back and forth between the pile of ashes and the walls as he silently measured the room’s dimensions.

  “Accurate.” Polly nodded, staying back and watching. “Just as natural philosophy dictates the rules by which our world operates, there is an underlying group of taxonomies and sciences inherent in supernatural philosophy, as well, that dictate the operation of magic.”

  “I had noticed that my systems of experimentation have produced similar effects when using them in the casting of magic. Look here, he was kicking over the piles of papers he had been stacking before. As I recall, he seemed to have a fit of apoplexy,” Ben said thoughtfully as he traversed his memory to recall Overton’s appearance and actions at the end. “Perhaps whatever you did overtaxed his brain?”

  Polly frowned, “That doesn’t explain the way his body turned to dust like that. It was long after he died, and I had stopped casting. I think he would have kept his grip on me and not put down his guard. Or he would have turned to ash immediately. It makes no sense.”

  “You are right. It makes no sense. But I have a thought,” Ben said as he walked over to the fireplace. “I was in a house in Surrey once that had been a Catholic residence, and the devout Anglican owners delighted in showing the concealed space the previous owners had installed to protect priests. That priest hole had been concealed at the side of the chimney of the fireplace.” Ben began searching the sides of the fireplace. “If you look carefully, the dimensions of the room don’t add up. There seems to be more space for the mantle than the fireplace is actually using. Aha!” He felt a slight give. A narrow door, just under the height of a man, opened. Inside, Ben found what he least expected: a stack of books that looked exactly like the journals Gasparini had stolen from him.

  “What is in there?” Curiosity overcame Polly’s contemplation of Overton’s motivations and her culpability for his death, and she joined Ben at the fireplace.

  He stared in silence.

  “What are those?” Polly asked.

  Ben exhaled heavily and looked at Polly. “I know now where else I knew him from. I thought it was him, but these confirm it.”

  Polly looked at him quizzically.

  “He broke into my home in Philadelphia and destroyed a journal identical to these right in front of me. He called himself Gasparini, performed real magic as a side show, and spoke English with an incredible Italian accent. He was able to immobilize me with one word. The same word he used on you.”

  He pulled the journals out and handed one to Polly. A quick perusal showed that though the language changed from book to book, the handwriting remained the same.

  “You have a lot of questions to answer.” Polly stared at Ben intently. “But for now, perhaps we should take these to the house and then we can discuss the rest.”

  “Indeed,” Ben replied dryly. He had some questions of
his own he was hoping to get answers to before too much longer.

  As the two left, the wall shimmered and a form detached from the shadows. Perhaps those two will be useful after all, Overton thought as he rolled the brooch through his fingers.

  Ben prepared for himself and Polly small glasses of sweetened rum. She had said she was fine as they walked back after their encounter with Lord One/Overton/not-Merlin, whatever his real name was, but Ben had doubted it. They were both still shaken. Or at least, he was. If she wasn’t, then she had nerves of oak.

  Since they had returned to Craven Street, Polly had sat at the small table in his library and study quietly. She stared at the stack of journals.

  Ben smiled at her as he slid the glass in front of her, knowing this investigation would distract them both from the disturbing events. He patted the seven journals on the table. Ben held up his glass, “To discovery.”

  Polly raised her glass, “To discovery.” They both took a drink. Then Polly raised her glass, “To friendship.”

  Ben grinned, raising his glass, “To friendship.” They both finished their drink with a smile.

  Polly looked at the stack of seven journals, “One thing I will say, these look exactly like the journals I once found on Overton’s desk. I was a young girl, and curious. The King’s men seized them. Took away all his property.”

  Ben nodded. “Yet we found them in the Society of Number’s secret stash. He mentioned they were his hounds; it does seem logical to think these are what he had them seeking. And I watched him destroy one of them in my own house. Three separate occasions of these books.”

  “I can make no sense of it. Why destroy them? Why be so cruel about it? No thread that I can spot ties them together.” Polly ran a finger along the cover of the top journal as she spoke.

  “We’ll start, then, by making general observations about these journals before we try to find the ties to others. I will make notes as we go, to record our thoughts. A moment while I prepare my quill and ink.” After he had his paper and pen ready to go, he said, “What is the first thing you see?”

  “They all look of a sort. Similarly sized, similarly constructed.”

  “Yes,” Ben said, as he scratched some notes. “They remind me of my quire books. I would say they are four folded sheets of parchment with eight leaves providing sixteen sides. Then those are sewn together to make a journal of, what, one hundred pages or so. I wonder what method was used to manufacture this paper? It seems fairly uniform. More uniform than should be possible for its age.”

  After he noticed Polly’s look, Ben laughed, “Neither here nor there. I am still a printer at heart.”

  “Other than this stylized Yggdrasil emblem in the lower corners, I see no particular markings on the covers, front or back,” Polly said, looking around the outsides of them. “Again, though not identical, the person who had these made was striving for a certain sameness. Maybe to make them easier to store?”

  Ben nodded, “That makes sense. These are identical to the journal Gasparini destroyed in front of me in Philadelphia. The emblem is in the same spot, even. I managed to keep two held back, though Thomas Penn stole them.”

  “Did you learn from those journals before the theft?” Polly asked.

  “Sadly, no. Not even what language they were written in, but I have since seen similar writing in Anthony Askew’s collection and know that it was runic Anglo-Saxon. So, very old indeed. Maybe from around the time the Normans invaded.”

  Polly smiled eagerly, finally fully distracted from the earlier trauma. “Shall we see if these are also Anglo-Saxon riddles?”

  Ben nodded, and each of them picked up one of the journals to peruse. After a few moments he said, “Interesting. Some runic Anglo-Saxon, but also Latin alphabet Old English interspersed with, well, a lot of things.” He showed his journal to Polly. “Do you think these journals are written by the same hand?”

  Polly nodded, “I do.”

  “Let’s look at the others,” Ben suggested.

  “There seems to be a variety of language,” added Polly as she scanned the next one. “I noticed bits in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and what I think is Arabic as well as one other language I am uncertain of.”

  “I think those were Chinese characters,” Ben added. “I also saw mathematical equations of some sort.”

  All the journals were written in the same hand, though in a strange variety of languages mashed together, and in every way seemed to be part of the same set.

  Ben took the last journal from her and placed them all in a stack, “I am sure there is someone in the Society who can read them completely.”

  “You can’t read it?” Polly asked.

  “No, but I know people who can. We have to get this to Peter and the Royal Society.”

  Polly looked confused, “The Royal Society? What do they have to do with all of this? As a matter of fact, you mentioned them before, as did Overton.”

  Ben looked at her seriously. “There are more players in this game than the Society of Numbers. The Royal Society has also been investigating these magical phenomena and seeking answers. They will have the right resources to make sense of these journals and perhaps discover something we can use to determine a course of action. We are living under this sense of imminent doom, but have no clear idea why we all feel that way.”

  Polly nodded, though clearly disappointed. “We didn’t get to discover anything.”

  Ben laughed, “Not true. We discovered that we need some help!”

  “All right. Shall we go?”

  “Please.” Ben held up his hand. “I’m getting older. I would like a little bit to rest and recover before we take a carriage to Peter’s.”

  Polly laughed, “Shall I set up the chess board then, old man?”

  “Please,” Ben said, “do.”

  The two idly played chess and talked of the events of the day while also occasionally glancing through the journals. “I was thinking tomorrow, but I do fear we must make every effort to have these journals deciphered. It is a matter of some concern to me.”

  Polly studied the board intently. “I agree. And I’m curious. Shall we wrap up and go visit your friend?”

  Ben picked up the last journal and turned the pages. Finally, with a tired sigh, he replied, “I need to find a way to regain some of the energy of youth. Yes, let’s go ahead and get moving.”

  The

  Collinson Home

  Ridgeway House,

  Mill Hill, Middlesex

  July 22nd

  30

  I Did No Such Thing

  Ben waited in Peter Collinson’s sitting room. He paced nervously. Peter simply sat quietly, attending to nothing in particular. Vibrant hues of the sunset, seen through his frosted glass windows, warmed the room and Ben’s mood. His familiarity with his friend, grown carefully over years of correspondence, had bloomed into real knowledge and affection in their time together in England.

  “It’s not easy for you, is it?” Peter asked gently.

  Ben paused, suddenly startled. Then he gave a wry smile. “I’ve always despised waiting. I know I’ve spent a lifetime counseling patience, counsel I sincerely believe in, because I know how much it would help me if I could only heed it. Some days I feel my life is filled with giving advice I can’t hope to follow myself.” He looked at Peter sheepishly. “I do admire how calmly you can sit there as we wait for the others to do their assessment.”

  “Benjamin, we would not have to wait outside if you had been able to keep your curiosity in check. You couldn’t let the poor man concentrate on his effort. It isn’t his job to teach you Old English.”

  “But I should be in there,” he fretted.

  “You were. But you were not helping the matter with asking him what he had learned every minute or so.”

  “I did no such thing,” Ben protested.

  “My dear friend,” Peter smiled. “I counted the swings of the pendulum myself. We could have set the clock by your pacing and questions.” />
  Ben opened his mouth to object, then thought better of it and pursed his lips in a thoughtful frown. “I suppose there may be some truth to that. Do you think he’s done yet?”

  Peter laughed. He shrugged, then returned to quiet contemplation.

  What seemed like an eternity later the door opened and an excited Anthony Askew walked out, holding an open lexicon of language, marking his spot with a finger. “I will need more time to decipher this properly, Mr. Franklin. I must say I would never have thought to find such documents in my life. It is so much livelier than the Bibles and formal poetry I have been familiar with from my collection. Most documents created in Old English were not diaries or journals as we in this modern era have adopted. They were more instructional or biographical. These are something far different.”

  “Have you yet discovered anything of use to our cause, Anthony?” Peter asked.

  “Honestly, there’s just so much. These do seem to be the journals of the man in the portraits, from what I’ve been able to translate so far. Where did you get these, Mr. Franklin?”

  Ben glanced at Peter. “He sent them to me, years ago.”

  “To my recollection, they were part of the library of the chemist, Reginald Eversleigh. I bought his library, and his soil physic formulas, from his widow.”

  “Could we interview her? Perhaps see what other sundries this chemist has left behind?” Anthony leaned back against the doorframe while he talked, mindful of propriety, but still making himself comfortable.

  Ben glanced to Peter once again, who replied, “Sadly, I do not think we would be well-received should we try. Ben has had recent dealings with her, and upon recognizing her name I had already attempted to inquire as to making social calls. She rebuffed those attempts, quite politely, but quite firmly.”

  “Pity, that.” Anthony clicked his tongue and frowned. “Ah, well. At least we have these journals now. I can confirm that there is description of the comet, the regularity of its appearances, and the consequences of these appearances being magical in nature. I’m seeing references to the city of Winchester and its cathedral and castle. In another passage, Salisbury city and that cathedral. It appears to speak directly to the reports you recorded, as well as how it all ties to the comet, though that is only the beginning. In truth, there is far more in here than that, and it is just easiest to look for familiar things for me.”