The Magic Thief (10 page)

T
he next day, Nevery was in a hurry to get to Magisters Hall. He had called a meeting with the Underlord, he said.

“You're asking the wrong person for help,” I said.

“Stay out of it, boy,” Nevery said, sweeping along the tunnel to the academicos. “You have other things to
worry about. I can't help you look for a locus magicalicus. You'll have to find it yourself.”

I had thirty days. Twenty-nine, now. Plenty of time. Still, I wasn't sure, exactly, how I was supposed to find my locus stone. Would it just appear one day? Would I bump my foot on it and just
know
that it was mine? Would it come to me, or would I have to go out into the world to find it?

When we arrived at the academicos, Nevery stopped at the top of the staircase. A student was there, waiting.

“Greetings, Magister Nevery,” she said with a bow. “Magister Brumbee sent me to meet you here, sir. He said you have an apprentice who needs tutoring?”

He nodded. “This boy, here.” He pointed at me.

The girl seemed older than I was—she was taller, anyway, and she had catlike gray eyes and bright red hair cut short like she'd hacked it off with a knife. Right from the start, I didn't like her.

“Very well, sir,” the girl said. To me, she said, “Follow me.”

“Nevery—” I began. I didn't want to go with her.

“Don't argue, boy,” he said. “And don't give anybody any trouble.” He glared down at me, then went
tap tap tap
down the stairs, on his way to Magisters Hall.

The girl stood looking down her nose at me. “Hurry up,” she said, walking quickly across the courtyard, ignoring the other students, who stared at me. Following her, I stared back at them. Like the girl, they all wore gray robes over their regular clothes, but they had different color patches on the sleeves; hers was green with yellow letters.

We went inside and down a hallway to a study room. The girl slung her bag onto the floor, sat down on a bench facing me, and leaned back against the table. Beneath her gray robe, she wore an embroidered black wormsilk dress down to her ankles, and black lace-up boots. She took a few
moments to look me up and down.

“What's your name?” she asked. “I suppose you do have one, besides ‘boy.'”

“Conn,” I answered. “Connwaer.” Now why had I done that? Nobody knew my own true name, only Nevery. And I'd gone and told this horrible girl.

“Connwaer,” she said, looking up at the ceiling. “It's a kind of bird, isn't it?”

Yes, and she'd better not say anything more about it.

“Black feathers?”

I nodded.

She gave me a glinting look, all sly and sharp. “Suits you.”

I blinked, surprised. Maybe she wasn't so bad, after all.

“I'm Rowan. I'm a regular student, not a wizard's apprentice, but I sit in on the apprentice classes. Magister Brumbee told me you need to learn how to read.”

“That's right,” I said.

She bent to pull some things out of her bag: paper, pencils, a couple of books. “I've never taught anybody to read before. I have no idea why Magister Brumbee gave me this assignment.” She waved me over.

I went and sat next to her on the bench. “Maybe he's mad at you,” I said.

“Hah,” she said, and gave me the glinting look again. “I think he wants to teach me patience.”

She seemed like an impatient person; that might be the reason.

Rowan opened one of the books, which had big runes written across the pages. “This is a rune book, obviously, from the babies' class.” She quickly told me the names of the runes, then shoved the book along the table to me. “There. Look at them for a while yourself. I've got some studying of my own to do.” She opened the other book.

I flipped the pages back and looked at the
runes again, then paged forward until I came to the words. If I put the runes together, they made patterns—words. I worked at that for a while, until Rowan closed her book and pulled my book away from me.

“All right, that's enough,” she said. “I'm going to drill you on your runes.”

“What d'you mean?” I asked.

She blew out a sigh. “I'm going to test you, to see if you know which runes are which.”

I didn't get it. “But I already know that.”

She put her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand and looked at me. “You learned the runes?”

“And how to put them together to make words.”

“Right. Show me.”

I took the book back from her and put together some of the words.

She gave me the down-the-nose look she'd given me before. “So you
did
know how to read before.”

“No, I didn't,” I said.

She shook her head. “You're lying.”

“Why would I lie about something like that?” I asked. I could think of much better things to lie about.

She stared at me for a while. “I guess you wouldn't. But you learned that awfully fast.” She gave a sudden, bright smile, which made her sharp, proud face look much friendlier. “Maybe I'm just a really good teacher.”

At that moment, the door flew open and a group of gray-robed students burst into the room. Rowan's face went back to looking proud and sharp, and she snapped the rune book closed.

“Oh, sorry, Lady Rowan,” one of the students said, breathlessly. “We didn't know you were studying in here.” They started to back out.

Rowan shoved the papers and her book back into her bag. “No, it's all right,” she told the students. “We're all finished.” She gave me the rune
book. “Here. Study this tonight, and we'll go on with your lessons tomorrow.”

As she got to her feet, I noticed the patch on her sleeve. In the middle was a slender tree, stitched with green and yellow thread. Below it was a line of things that I now knew were runes. They made words. Rowan's patch said
T-R-E-E
and
L-E-A-F
.

I
spent six days going to school with Rowan, while keeping an eye open for my locus magicalicus. The reading was going well. The searching was not.

On the seventh day, Rowan met me at the
academicos steps. She had her book bag with her and looked impatient.

“You're late, Conn,” she said, turning to lead the way into the main entry, the two-story gallery with the staircases and shiny stone floor. “No lesson today.” She paused and pointed toward Brumbee's door. “The magister wants to talk to you.” She shot me her glinting look. “You in trouble, young man?”

I hoped not.

“Well,” she said, “good luck.”

Thanks. I nodded at her and crossed the hall to knock on Brumbee's door.

“Come in!” his voice called. I opened the door and edged inside. “Ah, Conn,” Brumbee said. He sat behind his desk, which was piled with papers and books bristling with page markers. He waved at one of the comfortable chairs before his desk; his two cats sat in the other one. “I'm not due at Magisters Hall for half an hour. That should give us a little time.”

Good. I needed to talk to somebody about my locus stone problem. I went over to the chair and sat down.

“How are the lessons with your tutor?” Brumbee asked.

“All right,” I answered.

“Are you learning your runes?”

I nodded. I didn't really want to talk to Brumbee about schooling. And I could tell he didn't want to talk about anything but my schooling.

“Good!” He beamed.

“Brumbee,” I said, before he could ask me if I'd learned to spell C-O-N-N. “How do I find my locus magicalicus?”

“Ah.” He shifted in his chair, then opened a drawer of his desk, as if looking for something. “Well, you know, Conn, that is for Nevery to help you with.”

“He doesn't have time,” I said.

“Yes,” Brumbee said unhappily. “I know. This situation with the magical decay. It's a very serious
problem, and we are relying on Nevery to figure out what's going on.”

I nodded. I knew it was serious. Nevery had been very distracted, spending hours tinkering with devices and magical calibrations in his workroom, or staying up all night to pore over books, searching for precedents to the situation in Wellmet, or meeting with the other magisters. From the looks of it, he hadn't found any answers, and he was frustrated and short-tempered as a result.

“It's awkward, Conn. Do you understand?”

I didn't, really.

Brumbee went on, fidgeting with a pen he'd taken from a drawer. “The thing is, my boy, it's very odd that Nevery has taken you on before you've found your locus stone.”

A sinking feeling gathered in my stomach. He didn't think I should be an apprentice. “I
am
a wizard, Brumbee,” I said. “And I only have twenty-three days left to find my locus magicalicus,” I said.

Brumbee sighed and nodded. “And Nevery is too busy. Very well, then. I will help you, Conn, as much as I am able.”

I took a deep breath of relief.

Brumbee stood and bustled toward the door. “Come with me. We'll start with our collection here and see what happens.”

He led me into a dark, dusty back room of the library. “Ah, here we are. Let me just fetch us a light.”

I waited in the darkness until he returned carrying a stand with six candles on it. He pulled out his locus magicalicus, which was round and brown, like an egg. He used it to light the candles, whispering a word and touching the stone to each wick, which sputtered and then blossomed into light.

As the room brightened, I saw that it was full of wooden boxes, all labeled and stacked neatly on shelves.

“Yes, very good. In these boxes,” Brumbee
said, pointing at the shelves, “are locus magicalicus stones, carefully cataloged. They wash up here at the academicos, and we collect them and wait for their wizards to turn up. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't; we have lots of stones and not many wizards, you see. We keep the stones, just in case.”

I nodded. But I reckoned people from the Twilight didn't show up often to claim a stone.

“Here's what you must do,” Brumbee went on. “Go through the boxes carefully. Touch each stone but be sure to put it back just where you found it. If your locus magicalicus is here, it will call to you.”

Right. “What does the call sound like?”

Brumbee pursed his lips. “It is different for every wizard. For some, the call can be nearly undetectable, like a whisper. For others, it is a kind of tingling connection. In some rare cases, I'm told, the call of the locus stone is overwhelming, like being caught up in a gigantic wave of
magic.” He shook his head. “At any rate, if your stone is here, you will know it is yours when you touch it.” He smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Now, I must go to Magisters Hall. I will leave you to it, shall I?”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You're welcome, my lad,” Brumbee said. “Best luck.” He went out, and the candle flames jumped in the breeze from the door closing as he left.

I looked at the boxes, tidy, labeled rows of them, piled from floor to ceiling. Going methodically through them would take days.

And my locus magicalicus was not here, I knew it already.