Feeling accomplished, Elsie swung her much lighter basket at her side and left the estate grounds.
She hoped the Cowls were watching.
CHAPTER 4
The London Physical Atheneum was one of the most eye-catching, prestigious, and ancient buildings in England. Built in medieval times, it looked something like a mix between a castle and a university. In a sense, it was both. It boasted the largest aspector library in the world. The immense windows were fitted with enchanted glass to protect the spells inside and prevent them from leaving without the proper permissions.
Bacchus had left John and Rainer in Kent and excused his driver. A few people milled about the meticulous grounds, complete with gardens that even the queen could envy. Only one seemed to notice him. Bacchus did not maintain eye contact. Impressing this man was not his agenda today.
The atheneum grew ever larger as Bacchus approached, and if he hadn’t known any better, he would have accused the walkway of lengthening as he strode down it. He knew spells for enlarging objects, but none of them would work on such a path, not without ripping the stones from the ground. No, this was merely his nerves. Bacchus wasn’t used to nerves. He berated them with a soft growl, but at least they lent him energy.
Two sentries stood guard at the heavy double doors at the entrance of the grand library. Bacchus nodded to them and gave his name. He half expected to be turned away, but fortunately the guards had been alerted to his visit. They opened the right door and allowed him inside.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the bright morning to the darker interior. Rugs and tapestries masked swathes of stone walls and floors, but a soft chill permeated the air. Bacchus felt a bit like a time traveler; the modernizations in the place were minimal.
Beyond the short antechamber stretched a long table, adorned only by elaborate silver candlesticks the style of which matched the low-hanging chandeliers above them, their tips glowing with intermediate light spells. Short rows of books lined the far walls, broken up by woven art. That chamber ended in an archway, and the true library started beyond it. Immense shelves stuffed with tomes that gave way to shadow. He thought he caught faint whispering echoing between the stonework.
Bacchus took a step forward, only to have one of the sentries raise his hand, urging him to wait. Bacchus let his impatience drain down his arms and into his hands, where he crushed it with tight fists. After a few minutes, a new guard came around the corner—there must have been a hidden hallway in the chandelier room.
“Mr. Bacchus Kelsey?” the man asked, looking Bacchus up and down.
Bacchus nodded.
“Your court is ready. Please follow me.”
Bacchus did so without word. Court. Do they think themselves kings, or am I about to be sentenced?
They took a corridor circumventing the library and passed through a small room lined with bookshelves, several acolytes buried in their work. Lamps hovered without cords, likely bespelled by teachers to keep the light where it was needed. But there wasn’t time to notice anything else, for Bacchus and his guide were already cutting through another massive room with a high ceiling, poorly lit, approaching a wide and winding set of stairs. They were old but in excellent repair, which likely meant they’d been hardened and bullied to hold their shape with magic. Perhaps a temporal magician had been hired to remove centuries of wear, but Bacchus suspected the heads of the Physical Atheneum were too proud to ask for help from another alignment.
The guard led Bacchus past the second floor, which appeared to have classrooms and dormitories, to the third, where they traversed a long hallway in which the portraits of English royals hung across from those of famous aspectors. Bacchus’s limbs began to grow weary despite the early hour, but he stood straighter, refusing to let the fatigue show. Sunlight filtered in through the large windows to his left, illuminating the portraits of the aspectors. All English save for one with a French name. All male. Women, the lower classes, and foreigners hadn’t been allowed access to spellmaking until the early seventeen hundreds, after the riots. Even so, society was slow to catch up.
His guide took him up one more flight of stairs. This place is a labyrinth. One more stairwell and Bacchus would know something was magicked; the atheneum wasn’t that large.
But the stairs ended, and Bacchus found himself in a narrow corridor facing doors even heavier than those at the entrance. Two more sentries stood at attention. As they approached, one of them retreated back down the stairs, perhaps to take up the position vacated by Bacchus’s guide. The guide then knocked thrice, opened the door, and made his announcement.
“Mr. Bacchus Kelsey, advanced aspector of the physical alignment, Barbados, to meet with the assembly.”
There was no reply. The guard stepped back into the hall and gestured for Bacchus to enter.
He did so with his shoulders squared and his head held high.
It was a cold room, though not so much in temperature as in aesthetics. A few draperies adorned the walls, but they were cast in shadow and seemed little more than caves of ink. There were no chandeliers, sconces, or candlesticks; all the light came from the windows in one wall. The only rug was a long red strip that led directly from the door to the raised row of seats protected by an overly tall stone partition. Bacchus stood six foot three, but the assembly sat ten feet above ground level.
Eleven aspectors in all, the youngest being perhaps in his forties and the eldest holding on to his health in his seventies. They very much matched the portraits in that long hallway, save for the single woman in their ranks, who sat in the second-to-last chair on the right.
Bacchus knew all their names, but not all their faces. He could, however, identify the man sitting in the center of the assembly, his seat jutting forward. His hair was a pale gray, his face deeply lined as though he’d spent his entire life scowling. Master Enoch Phillips, a titled earl, and head of this atheneum.
Bacchus bowed deeply. “My thanks that you have agreed to meet with me.”
“You’ve traveled far,” Master Phillips said, his tone both impressed and disgusted at the same time. “Welcome to London.”
Bacchus nodded his thanks.
“Your portfolio is most impressive,” said the woman. Her name was easy to place: Master Ruth Hill. She shuffled a few papers Bacchus could hear but not see. She was in her fifties and carried her age well. White wisps of hair streaked the blonde tresses pulled back at the nape of her neck. “You started at a good age and progressed well, despite your limited resources.”
Spending half his life in Barbados, she meant. The island was small, and its magical community was even smaller.
“And all of your testing has been performed here,” added the man to her left. “A wise choice.”
“England is my second home.” Bacchus laced his words with as much politeness as he could muster. He needed this, and not just for his mastership. “I have much respect for the country as well as this atheneum.” Not to mention the tedium of getting his records sent back and forth across the seas.
“Yes,” interjected Master Phillips, rubbing his pointed chin, “that is evident. And a pure spellmaking history. I do appreciate a man who knows what he wants. Purity is essential for longevity.”
Master Phillips cast a pointed glance at the man beside him, who gave no reaction other than the tightening of his mouth. That was Master Victor Allen, then. Although he had become a master regardless, he’d spent his first two years of apprenticeship under a spiritual aspector before switching to the physical alignment. Such a thing was not uncommon, but the magical strength a man earned in one alignment could not be transferred to another, and it would hinder him for the rest of his life. Indeed, most men would not have the capacity to reach masterhood in a second discipline after expending some of their abilities in a first, which only went to show Master Allen was a very powerful man. Perhaps that was the real reason Master Phillips seemed to dislike him.