Page 21 of Seducing the Sorcerer
“Aye. That,” Fenn said gratefully.
“Tradition. They’re supposed to have a gay and festive air. In the old great halls”—the sorcerer waved his hand to indicate the cavernous gloom— “like this one, the spits were in a public place. On a festival day, they brought out the worple horse and got the spit going. Seeing it got people in the mood. Fun, you know. Like a man hitting people with a bladder on the end of a stick. Merry japes.”
“Fun.” Fenn repeated the word dully.
“They were simpler times,” Morgrim observed. “This is three, four hundred years ago. I suppose they simply fell out of favour. Certainly, no one has used them for well over a hundred years.”
Fenn tried to imagine himself back on the estate three hundred years ago, part of a big household, secure in his position, young and ready for a laugh. Would he have found the worple horse funny? Festive? Maybe. Especially if it had been yoked to a spit and not following him everywhere. He’d laughed at lots of things once.
But had the horse minded people laughing at it? It seemed oblivious to its surroundings half the time, but who could tell? He felt a rush of sympathy for the thing and ran his hand up its neck.
“It’s three hundred years old?” Fenn said.
“At least, I should think.”
“But the sacking feels new. Don’t smell. No rot.”
“Magic can have a preserving effect.”
“So why would it be afraid of—” Fenn mouthed the final word “—moths?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. Perhaps it merely dislikes them? Perhaps they get inside of it and flutter about?”
“Ah, maybe,” Fenn said, impressed that Morgrim could come up with such an insightful theory into an animal’s behaviour. It showed a bit of understanding, that did, a bit of sensitivity. “And that preserving effect; that’s why they couldn’t burn it?”
“Yes. Luckily for you, Mr. Todd.”
“Lucky.” Fenn tasted the word. “Aye. You think it’s lucky?”
“I think this young man played a cruel trick on you. I think it backfired. Spectacularly. Yesterday, you were on your uppers, as you so term it. Now, you’re a magician.”
Chapter 6
Fenn’s legs felt as if they’d turned to water. He managed to wobble forward and sink down into the chair opposite the sorcerer. The antimacassar would have to take its chances.
“That...that ain’t right,” Fenn said. “It’s the horse what’s magic. There’s nothing magic about me.”
“No?” Morgrim did his hawk-like head tilt. “And yet, I have never met another man who had a worple horse follow him about. I have never seen a worple horse behave like—” The sorcerer’s gaze flicked to the horse. It batted its eyelashes at him and he frowned. “Well, like something vaguely approximating a real horse. And I have certainly never seen a flying worple horse. Never.”
“No, but...but...that’s the extent of the magic.”
“A flying horse isn’t enough for you?”
Morgrim smiled again. Less grimly this time. The effect was startling. He seemed ten years younger and about a hundred times more approachable. He looked, in fact, dead charming. Like the kind of bloke anyone’d be happy to have a pint with.
“That’s not what I meant,” Fenn said. “I mean, magicians can do anything, can’t they? Conjure things and put magic crystals in velocipedes to make them go and...and curse things and...I don’t know what else. All I got is this horse. I don’t mean to make light; it’s a wonder all right. But it don’t make me a magician.”
“Have you tried to use magic in other ways?”
“’Course not! Where would I begin?”
“You haven’t tried. Well, you’ve scarcely had time.”
“I just think you got it all wrong,” Fenn said, a note of desperation in his voice.
“There is a theory, Mr. Todd, that everyone has magic within them. Most people simply never meet with the conditions that allow them to tap into it. You have discovered the right conditions.”
“But...the horse don’t obey!” Fenn burst out. “It follows me everywhere, but that ain’t necessarily what I want.”
