The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman Read Free Book Online

discussion with breathless attention. Nobody denied that the kings had had their wizards, sinister and mysterious counselors with roots in ancient barbaric ritual that could be mistaken for magic. When they were children, their mothers had threatened them: “Be good or the nasty wizards will come and eat you up!” From their first teachers, they’d learned that the wizards had been cynical charlatans who coupled the skills of fairground magicians with an insatiable lust for power, who inspired the mad kings to greater and greater acts of tyranny and depravity.
    Nobody believed that their magic had been real. Except, apparently, now, the greatest historian of the age. Who was probably gaga, but still . . . The Horn Lecture had suddenly become a lot more interesting.
    “Doctor Tortua,” Crabbe interrupted. “I really don’t think . . .”
    “A fascinating theory,” said Basil helplessly. “But there’s no way to prove it. The Council of Lords burned all the wizards’ books and papers, and declared all mention of them outlaw.”
    “Aha!” Doctor Tortua’s wizened face became almost frighteningly animated. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” For a moment, Basil felt as if he were back in old Tortua’s lecture hall, and the moment of truth was upon him. “The Book of the King’s Wizard,” the old man hissed. “A complete book of spells, brought down from the North with Alcuin’s wizard, Mezentian. Hollis mentions it, and so does Vespas.”
    Crabbe cleared his throat. “Trevor states categorically that it did not exist.”
    “Trevor,” Basil St Cloud asserted crisply, “would have stated categorically that his mother did not exist if the Council told him to.”
    Crabbe smiled thinly. “There again, Doctor St Cloud, we disagree. Trevor’s Of Decadence and Deceit is well-recognized as the most authoritative text on the subject of our country’s sublime history.”
    “It hardly matters,” Basil said irritably. “What is indisputable is that the nobles burned the wizards’ books along with the wizards.”
    “But even with this fabled Book of the King’s Wizard,” Crabbe went on aggressively for the benefit of the crowd; “even if we had right here before us a page of ancient text instructing us in just how to turn straw into gold—” He paused for the laugh he knew he would get. “Even then, there is no proof of actual magic. The wizards may have been charlatans, but they were also clever politicians. By itself, a Book of the King’s Wizard would prove only that they took care to persuade their royal masters of the reality of their charade.”
    St Cloud smiled coldly and said, “Very true, Crabbe. Another possibility is that the wizards believed themselves capable of true magic.”
    “Absurd!” bleated one of Crabbe’s students.
    “Pay attention,” said Doctor Crabbe. “He’s not saying they were magic; he’s saying they thought they were magic. An original viewpoint, but not wholly unreasonable. Most of us believe that the magic they convinced others they performed was in fact mere trickery and legerdemain. But if, like our friend St Cloud here, you want to entertain the thought that the wizards themselves were victims of their own delusions . . .” He let a thin, pitying smile finish his sentence for him.
    A young voice chimed in, “But if someone did find the Book of the King’s Wizard and cast one of the spells from it and it really worked, wouldn’t that clinch it?”
    Basil recognized the voice of Peter Godwin, one of his own students, and wished, not for the first time, that youth were endowed with common sense as well as enthusiasm. Doctor Crabbe had a zealot’s light in his shallow golden eye, and his students were studying the hapless Godwin with predatory intent, like wolves studying a wounded hound.
    “Godwin,” said Basil. “Please consider what you have said. If an old book of wizards’ spells were to turn up in someone’s attic, say, or in a job-lot of