Arkady’s Apprentice
by S. J. Hirons
They still talk about the death of the wizard Magnus Arkady in the parlours and dining-rooms of those fine houses that form Nieuw Amsterdam’s leafy suburb, Duyvilgadt.
The whole sorry business began when Magnus collapsed onstage during a public summoning of that infamously uncontrollable creature, the Vicious Duke of Nether Howl, in the Public Amphitheatre of the Tangled Arts. Something in Arkady’s spell-making surely went amiss since His Infernal Grace – a demon also known as Viridian Jack – somehow managed to reach out of the chalk circle of binding and swipe at Arkady with his claws.
Or so the accepted version of the tale goes.
To this day, however, there are still a great many residents of Duyvilgadt who claim to have been in the audience, many of whom assert that the claws of the red-skinned demon were nowhere near the wizard when he fell. And who am I to disbelieve them (for it is a recorded that the body of Magnus Arkady bore no scars, no tell-tale signs of wounding at all, after he died), especially when the audience at that particular theatre has always been comprised of our city’s great and good?
The venue was one to which the wizard had dedicated himself: his first performances there cemented the reputation upon which his entire career was later built. But his ending came as if Fate, not Fortune, had framed it: Arkady’s final doom found him standing tall and proud, mid-incantation – and then left him prostrate, pale and possessed of what surely was the stillest body in the building in the aftermath of his fall.
Whatever mishap or misstep caused the disaster was not immediately apparent to the onlookers – assuredly not to Arkady’s spry, young apprentice, Leif (whose main concern became the dismissal of Viridian Jack back to Nether Howl); nor to the select audience of Nieuw Amsterdam’s nouveau riche (who took to the finding of the swiftest point of egress like hands take to warm water in winter) – in the panic of practical activity that followed Arkady’s misfortune. Even as Magnus twitched and foamed at the mouth his apprentice only took to the snowy streets beyond the theatre in search of some means of conveying his teacher home – with nary a glance at his fallen mentor and no thought of hospital troubling him – as though he were sure that what further assistance any other had to offer would be of no use, so certain was his master’s end.
The wizard’s son, Cosmo Arkady, observed the abandoned scene neutrally from the stage-left box where he had been watching the ritual – a treat for the boy on the occasion of his fourteenth birthday that had proved more revelatory than papa had intended.
Whilst his father was borne away it took Cosmo’s governess, a moon-faced Chicagoan by the name of Columbine, much entreaty to rouse the boy from whatever had him still transfixed in the study of the chalk lines and intersections on the otherwise bare setting of his father’s downfall.
In the end, he acquiesced to her appeals and entreaties from habit alone.
~
Once home, and whilst Magnus lay dying somewhere in the rooms above, Cosmo sat at the long table of the lower kitchen fiddling with the unused ingredients of his birthday cake.
Down here, where the sweltering heat of the stove set most perishables to quick festering, the ululating chatter of the scullery-maids – two émigrés from the Old World – batted back and forth in the steamy air. But this was the normal state of affairs when the house was in uproar, no matter that uproar be high dudgeon or high society, so Cosmo paid scant regard to what was said, giving no outward sign of the dreadful thoughts that had begun to form in the maw of his childish imaginings.
He sought no solace from the twittering maids (who, being no strangers to disaster, could have given such, if asked), instead allowing his woes to settle upon him like hoar-frost on a branch until, eventually, the weight of such thoughts bent him down and he slumped forward on the table – much to the alarm of the maids, who sprang up from the laundry and rushed to aid him.
The circle of flour he had shaped on the table before him made a dusty halo of impact around his head.
~
Cosmo’s mother, Lady Jacquetta, called the boy up to his dying father’s bedside when the gloamy dawn of the next morning came.
Confused by the sight of Magnus so unmanned (his father’s long hair was unbound from its usual braids, his beard matted with sputum and his nightgown perfumed with an odour suspiciously similar to urine) the boy recalled he had conceived of this death, as sons will naturally do from time to time; and, as sons will mostly do, he now found the realization of that idle speculation as unpalatable as out of season glimmerfoil.
One touch of the old man’s hand – a handshake, offered from the outgoing man of the house to the next – almost sent the boy yelping and reeling to huddle against the wall but, from somewhere, Magnus found the strength to heave the boy close. The enfeebled wizard put a trembling palm on the boy’s crown and pulled the lad’s ear close to his dry lips.
“Things change and cannot be foretold,” he whispered, “Or are foretold and so cannot be changed. Magic lies… between those boundaries.”
The effort of making this statement was clear: Magnus released his son, his arms splaying out in surrender, and sank back onto the pillows his diligent wife had stacked up behind him.
The boy stood back as his mother leant down to hear Magnus breathe some near-silent last words to her. He watched, too, as his mother nodded at what she heard, her natural grace shining through, permitting no grief to mar her composure: Lady Jacquetta’s banshee keening would resound around the house later that night, though, and stir Cosmo from a troubled sleep, confusing him until he remembered such behaviour was expected by the neighbours. Puzzled, he rose from his bed and crept through the still and starlit rooms of the house until he came to the parlour where Magnus’s body lay.
Through the half-open doors that separated Cosmo Arkady from his mother the boy stood on the side of innocence for awhile longer, thinking himself the sole audience (what with the help having been sent away for the sake of propriety) to his mother’s steady pacing and animal wails of bereavement.
Just as he turned to leave, however, he spied Leif surveying Lady Jacquetta approvingly from the casket-side.
~
Leif was the last to pay formal respects to the family the next day, on this account missing the encircling ambits of Magnus Arkady’s wizardly peers as they arrived to assess their fallen foe and contemplate the possibility of plundering his goods and chattels.
Leif paid no attention to these things – having some familiarity with the house and its contents from the years he had spent here assisting his tutor – and being, it appeared, in possession of his own means anyway, judging from his fine new suit and stovepipe hat.
Instead he seemed only to sense some deep need in Lady Jacquetta and her son for the consolatory touch. After Leif’s ministering hand had compelled Cosmo’s head down to seek silent and private prayer at his father’s casket the apprentice led the widow away from the sight, judging that solitude, and perhaps the lightest connection of his fingers to her tawny hair, might temper and tame something that wanted to run away with her.
~
The funeral was a great success – or, at least, many were later agreed that it had gone off alright: a man of Magnus Arkady’s standing deserved no less than the full pomp of sermon and eulogy and hymn raised high to rafter in most opinions. The community’s loss was echoed in the strains of “Be Thou My Vision” which played as the mourners dispersed and the black carriage began to wend towards Boskil Island’s grim crematorium.
Outside it seemed that the north wind had set itself to grieving, too, bringing fresh snow to Nieuw Amsterdam for the first time that year.
The children of the district – clearly delighted by the bright array of new snow before them – proved a metaphorical counterpoint to the occasion, taking to the streets with cheeks raw red from the cold and eyes aglow, as the mourners began their street-processional. If any of them heard Cosmo Arkady begin some strange litany of his own as he passed it would have been in words such children could not recognise anyway, and so would not have spoiled their fun.
This was the first and only time Cosmo uttered anything at all that day, and his words ran into themselves, a slurry of sounds that would have been as intelligible to the riotous audience of his peers as Leif’s eulogy had been to Cosmo; or, indeed, as comprehensible to the boy as his mother’s decision to allow Leif to sit at the head of the table during the wake.
The knives and forks scraped on china plates between Leif and the boy like the sounds of things being whetted.
~
And there the story might have ended, in utterly forgettable banality, were it not for what occurred in the Arkady family home some three nights after the funeral.
Seven days had passed since Magnus Arkady’s death. For young Cosmo the week had passed as though he and Viridian Jack had exchanged places when Leif had made the spell that dismissed the demon. The boy was certain he had been transplanted to some hellish domain which only resembled the world he knew; a place where monsters roamed freely and wore familiar faces to conceal dark intents and purposes. Why, that very morning his mother had informed him that it had been Magnus Arkady’s last wish that Leif be both his temporal and supernatural heir!
This arrangement pleased her immensely, she went on, as the Arkady household needed a sure and certain male figurehead if they were not to lose everything in the kind of vile scrabble for power that other wizards of the city were wont to indulge in in the wake of an untimely demise.
In a few days time the paperwork would be complete, she assured her son, and their future would be protected: Leif had been a faithful disciple to Cosmo’s father and he would be a trustworthy guardian against the encroachment of Magnus Arkady’s previous rivals. The apprentice (now ‘master’, I suppose I should say) would be coming to the house to discuss these matters later, she informed the boy.
She patted her son on the head with these words, as though she had entirely forgotten that he was no longer a child and, judging solely from this uncharacteristic lapse – and from the unfamiliar look of distant bliss in her eyes all the while – Cosmo Arkady could only suppose that this was further confirmation that his mother had indeed been supplanted by an infernal changeling.
He was going to have to do something about that.
He considered what he knew of his father’s work and concluded that the sum total of his knowledge amounted to very little. For the most part his father required that any audience to his magic be a paying one. He had most certainly never spoken of his methods with his son in any private moment (saving his lessons solely for Leif).
With his purposes so quickly blunted Cosmo retired to his room and awaited the arrival of his father’s former apprentice, or the call for supper – whichever came first.
~
Leif tapped on the boy’s bedroom door some few hours later.
Cosmo, roused from the meditations of his burning hatred, sat up from his bed and crossed the room to open the door where he was greeted by the face of his father’s factotum.
“Hello, old chap,” said Leif. He was dressed again in his new frock coat and wore a clean shirt of white linen, augmenting his rise in status with the addition of a fine silk cravat, held in place by a beaded pin of jet just as dark as his eyes. In his hands Leif held a square box wrapped in black paper.
“Just been going through some of your papa’s things. Found this.” He held up the box, turning it in puzzlement. “It’s for you. I suppose it must be your birthday present.”
Leif did not hand the box over, however, but drew it back towards himself, as if reluctant to proffer it any closer.
“Quite a mess in the study,” the apprentice continued, “everything topsy and turvy and no clear indication of where things might be. I could do with finding the old man’s journal, but I don’t suppose he thought he was setting off to his death the other day, did he?” He gave a little puff of snorted laughter. “It seems that the journal ought to be here someplace. For the life of me, though, I can’t find it in any of his usual nooks and crannies!”
Cosmo stood as still as he could and stared slightly up at Leif. It was enough to make the thin young man harrumph and thrust the box forward again:
“Anyway,” Leif said, “your mother and I will be discussing the transition of things tonight. I hope for smooth progress. I’ve asked that your supper be sent up so we are not disturbed – but I daresay no-one will mind if you play a little later than usual with whatever he’s given you.” He allowed Cosmo to take the box from his hands.
The two looked at each other for a moment.
“Well,” Leif began.
Cosmo closed the door.
~
He took the box with him back to his bed, sitting stock-still for a long time as he summoned up the courage to tear away the black wrapping paper and open his present.
Within the cardboard box all he found was his own, old magic lantern.
Perplexed, Cosmo thrust the tin lantern aside. As he did so something inside the little octagonal device shifted. Curious, he lifted it again. Upon taking the top off the lantern he saw that there was a stack of glass plates inside it.
He carried the box to his desk and slid the hidden plates out. He put all three to one side and opened the desk drawer where he kept his secret things (I shall not trouble you with a full itinerary of these items and only say that, amongst them, was a box of matches).
Cosmo Arkady lit the lantern and slid the topmost glass plate into place.
On the bare wall across from his desk a scene was illuminated: a crude painting of Viridian Jack bowing to a man who looked not dissimilar to Leif. Cosmo grunted, but not in surprise. He took the plate out and slid in the next. It showed his father, Leif and Viridian Jack onstage. Unseen by Magnus, the painted apprentice had placed one foot forward, smudging the chalk lines of binding on the stage. Viridian Jack was smiling.
The boy’s mouth set itself grimly. He lifted the final plate and slid it into place. It showed nothing more remarkable than a grand piano.
Cosmo stared at the little painting, not knowing at all what to make of this final mortal message from his father. Exasperated, he lifted the last plate out. Just as he did so he heard, through the door of his room, a single note begin to be played over and over again somewhere in the house. He thought it unlikely that Leif or his mother would be at the grand piano in the upstairs parlour, given all they had to discuss, but that was the only possible source of such noise. Cosmo had never heard anybody ever play the fine instrument there. All he recalled of the piano, in fact, was that his father had installed it when it became clear that the fashion in the city was for every prosperous household to be in possession of such a thing.
After a moment’s consideration Cosmo took off his shoes and socks: the corridor on the other side of his bedroom door, though carpeted in parts, was apt to creak in the places where polish had not quite settled the wood (as the boy knew well from past experience). Carefully and slowly he opened his door and stepped out of his room, pulling the door back so it appeared to be closed.
Only errant moonlight illuminated the way before him as the single note continued in its relentless clarion call. He moved along, cautious and careful of the cabinets and nestled tables that lined the corridor, drawing closer and closer to the upper parlour, most fearful that he would alert his mother – or, worse, Leif – to the fact that he had left his room.
He need not have worried: from downstairs he heard mutters and stumbling steps louder than any noise he was making. From the sound of it the demons were drunk. He heard them coming towards, and then up, the stairs and pressed himself into the darkened niche over the upstairs parlour doorway, sensing more than seeing his tormentors ascend and head towards his mother’s quarters. He held his breath, waiting to hear her door as it opened and closed.
Still the insistent note continued: a high C summoning that, it appeared, only he could hear. He opened the parlour door and went in. At the piano a man in a white suit was seated with his back to Cosmo Arkady, his left hand stretched towards the keys of the instrument. As soon as Cosmo stepped forward, however, this phantom desisted from striking the key and stood to face the boy.
The undertaker had re-braided Magnus Arkady’s hair and trimmed his moustaches: Death alone had put into Arkady’s contemplation of the boy before him something graver than Cosmo remembered from his father’s gaze. Yet, curiously, it was also Death that had made his father’s garments white and bright – a white from the end of a spectrum human inquiry was yet to discover – when for all of his life Cosmo remembered his father as a man whose tastes ran to darkness.
As a vision of futurity – much more so than some drab and tatterdemalion spectre from a penny dreadful – Magnus had returned, with intents unknown and a tale as equally untold as the future’s. Indeed, the boy wondered if he had summoned this spectre here, as he knew he had so summoned his father’s death by thinking of it – and he considered, too, the possibility that perhaps nothing was impossible to him now.
The dead man gestured for his son to sit at the piano. Cosmo obeyed. He put his finger where his father’s ethereal hand had been and pressed down hard. His touch only elicited a muffled, choked sound. Something prevented the instrument from sounding properly. The boy looked up, but his father’s ghost was gone.
With trepidation Cosmo rose from the stool and considered the instrument, looking for a way to penetrate its carapace and examine its inner workings. He ascertained that the piano had a lid and, slowly, he lifted this. Inside, upon thick metal strings, sat what he did not doubt was his father’s journal of magic.
He snatched this out and lowered the lid once more. It creaked loudly, but Cosmo Arkady no longer cared who or what he disturbed. He crossed to the long windows where icy winter moonlight fell through the glass in bright shafts, holding the book out before him. Inches thick it was, its cover battered and well-worn and its spine cracked in numerous places. He allowed it to fall open randomly on one of those well-read sections, and with that decision his path in life, in the world, lay miraculously open before him, too: spells of dominion and enslavement; spells of concealment.
Spells of murder.
In his mind Cosmo formed a clear image of the usurper and traitor – who were engaged in other business elsewhere in his father’s house – and then let his eyes fall upon one such spell.
As he began to read aloud he felt he had come to the very beginning of learning.
S.J. Hirons Bio.
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