Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.

17 February 1022, 22 Merton Street, Edenford

My dearest cousin Armand,

As you will see from the direction, we have been obliged to leave our lodgings at Veronica’s College for rooms in the town. It seems that the scholars of the college, though well disposed to us in general, could not grow accustomed to hearing little Jane’s voice raised in distress—or, indeed, in delight, which is ofttimes louder. One quite sees their point, and were she not my own beloved daughter I might admit similar views.

But I must not repine, and you must not think of us residing in some hovel. We are quite comfortable; indeed, more so than we were in college, for we have our own kitchen. And if we are further from Dr. Tillotson, we are yet closer to the Cadwallian Library, and to the shops.

Now that I have attended to the tedious geographical details, I may write with delight of our latest achievement!

Maximilian returned from college yesterday with what might seem to be a child’s toy: a wooden board, perhaps eight inches wide and two feet in length, adorned at each end by a shallow hole surrounded by a cluster of smaller holes. The two larger holes were joined by a rounded groove running the length of the board. He put this on the table in front of me, and then draw a cloth bag from his coat pocket. I watched in growing excitement as he took pegs of various colors from the bag and inserted them into the small holes. Next he placed two larger pegs, one white and one black. Each, I saw, had a rounded depression carved into its top.

I crowed with delight: “You have solved it, then!” For of course I recognized that it was no sort of plaything, but rather a spell consisting of two primary nodes and many secondary nodes, forming the sort of array typical of Cumbrian wizardry. Have I not seen many objects of the sort in our visits to Dr. Tillotson’s rooms?

“We have,” he said with a pleased grin, “or at least part of the problem. Observe.” He took a simple blue marble from the bag, showed it to me, and placed it in the depression atop the white peg. He then placed his fingers on the board and focused his attention—and with a cracking noise that quite made me jump the marble sat atop the black peg instead. It took but an instant: first it was here, and then it was there, almost two feet away.

“Oh, my!” I said.

Maximilian returned the marble to the white peg, and concentrated once more; and this time the marble appeared in the groove that joined the peg, perhaps two-thirds of the way towards the black peg.

“As you can see, it is possible to make the marble appear anywhere on the line between the two pegs.”

“Shades of Saint Rocher!” I said.

“Quite so,” he said, rocking on his heels, well pleased with himself—as he should be, Armand!

A thought struck me, and I retrieved a small crystal from the satchel in which I keep my wizardry supplies and held it over the board. It glowed most brightly near the pegs at the two ends, unsurprisingly as that is where Maximilian was channeling magical force.. But it also glowed as I moved it along the length of the groove, fading instantly as I moved it to one side or the other.

“It’s a ley line!” I said. I turned to Maximilian, my countenance struck with awe. “You have created a ley line!”

“And a portable one, what’s more,” he said, beaming at me. “Dr. Tillotson conjectures that it is the nodes that are all important. He believes that the line we detect between them is simply the residue of the spell’s action.”

My eyes widened, and I shivered. “How much must they have transported along them for the lines to remain as strong as they are!”

Maximilian shook his head. “We mustn’t jump to conclusions,” he said. “The nodes in Toulouse and Saint Rocher have a formed source of magical power; we’ve not tried that yet. It might funnel magic along the link continuously. Indeed, we expect that it will.”

“And so what shall you do next?”

“Try to build a spell with more nodes, of course. Two nodes is interesting, but not enough to explain what we see on the ground. Also, I shall write to Jérôme and see if he can come and form some nodes for us. We want to duplicate what the ancients did, of course; but also, operating the spell takes a not inconsiderable amount of magic, and I should hate to work with a much larger array on my own strength.”

Indeed, he was beginning to look a little gray, so I hastened to make tea for the conquering hero.

And now I say, huzzah!

Your jubilant cousin,

Amelia

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