Year of the Griffin

As for Corkoran himself, that week went past at the usual pace, or maybe faster than usual. There were so many crucial experimental spells going forward in his lab, and the construction of his moonship was going so slowly, that he grudged every minute of the four hours he spent teaching. Just getting to the moon was problem enough. He had still not worked out what you did for air there, either. But certain experiments had started suggesting that, in airless space, soft things like human bodies were liable to collapse. Peaches certainly did. Corkoran that week imploded more peaches than he cared to think about. And peaches were beginning to be expensive now that autumn was coming on. The new load he had ordered cost more than twice as much. Suppose, he wondered as he rushed along the corridors to teach his first-year group, suppose I were to give up using spells and just put an iron jacket round them? That would mean an iron jacket for me too. I’d land on the moon looking like that dwarf, Ruskin.

Here he ran full tilt into Wizard Myrna rushing the other way. Only a deft buffer spell from Myrna prevented either of them from getting hurt. Corkoran reeled against the wall, dropping books and papers. “So sorry!” he gasped. “My head was away beyond the clouds.” He bent to pick up his papers. One of them was a list of his students that he had scribbled on for some reason. Oh yes. He remembered now. And luckily Myrna was there, though looking a little shaken. “Oh, Myrna,” he said. “About those letters I asked you to send to the parents of new students—”

Myrna closed her eyes against Corkoran’s tie. It had shining green palm trees on it, somehow interlaced with scarlet bathing beauties. She had been suffering from morning sickness all that week and she did not feel up to that tie. “Asking for money for the University,” she said. “Not to worry. I sent them all off the day after our meeting.”

“What? Every single one?” Corkoran said.

“Yes,” said Myrna. “We’d just had a big delivery of Wizard Derk’s brainy carrier pigeons, so there was no problem.” She opened her eyes. “Why are you looking so worried? Those birds always get where you tell them to go.”

“I know they do,” Corkoran said morbidly. “No, no. I’m not worried. It’s nothing. Really. Just a bit shaken. Are you all right? Good.” He went on his way feeling quite anxious. But there was so obviously nothing he could do to recall those letters that the feeling did not last. Before he had reached the end of that corridor, Corkoran was telling himself that blood was thicker than water and that more than half of those families were going to be so grateful to the University for telling them where their missing children were that they would probably send money anyway. By the time he reached the tutorial room, he was back with the problem of the imploding peaches.

He could have given that tutorial standing on his head, he had done it so often. He collected the usual six essays on What is Wizards’ magic? and went on to talk about the underlying theory of magic, almost without thinking. He did notice, however, that his students seemed to have come on quite a bit, even after a mere week. They all joined in the discussion almost intelligently, except the griffin, who simply stared at him. Never mind. There was always one quiet one – though he would have expected that one to be the skinny girl, Claudia, and not the griffin. The piercing orange stare was unnerving. Nor did he understand, when he happened to mention a teddy bear as an example of inert protective magic, why all the students, even the griffin, fell about laughing. Still, it showed they were melding into a proper group. They accepted it, without difficulty, when he gave them the same essay to write all over again. He always did this. It saved having to think of another title, and it made them all think again. He was quite pleased as he hastened back to his lab to put peaches inside cannonballs.

His students, meanwhile, streamed off with the rest of the first-years to the North Lab, where they were shortly listening to Wizard Wermacht’s important footsteps and watching Wizard Wermacht stroke the little beard at the end of his long pink face while he gazed contemptuously around them all, ending with Lukin and Ruskin.

“No more deep holes, roaring or monkeys today, I hope,” Wermacht said. He had said this at each class, sometimes twice a day, for the last week. Felim glowered, Olga made a small impatient sound, Ruskin and Lukin ground their teeth, and Elda’s beak gave out a loud, grating crack. Claudia merely sighed. The rest of the students, as usual, shifted and muttered. It seemed to everyone as if Wermacht had been saying this for several years. “Notebooks out,” said Wermacht. “You’ll need rulers for diagrams under your first big heading.”

Nobody had a ruler. They used pencils and the edges of desks rather than have another scene. So far, they had got by without one by keeping as quiet as they could. But Lukin’s face was blanched with rage. Ruskin’s was deep pink and he was muttering “Oppression!” even before the top of the hourglass emptied and Wermacht’s heavy feet went striding away.

“Plain damn rudeness, I call it!” Lukin snarled as they pushed their way out into the courtyard. “I’m so busy keeping my temper that I haven’t time to learn anything!” Olga took his arm and patted it while she led the way across the courtyard for coffee. Olga drank coffee by the quart. She said she needed it to run in her veins. “And we’ve got the beastly man again this afternoon!” Lukin complained. He was soothed by Olga’s patting, but not much.

“And in between comes lunch,” said Claudia, “which may even be worse than Wermacht.”

The rest groaned. Of all of them, Claudia probably suffered most from the truly horrible food provided by the refectory. She was used to the food that the Emperor ate and the exquisite, spicy waterweeds of the Marshes. But dwarfs ate delicately too, Ruskin said, even the lower tribes; and, Felim added, so did the Emirates. Elda craved fresh fruit, Olga yearned for fresh fish. Lukin did not mind much. The poverty of Luteria made the food there very little better than the stuff from the refectory.

“But,” Lukin said, as they forced a way up the crowded refectory steps, “I would give my father’s kingdom for a properly baked oatcake.”

“Oatcake!” Claudia cried out, quite disgusted.

“Why not?” Olga asked. “There’s little to beat it, if it’s made right.” Her northern accent came out very strongly as she said this. It always did on the few occasions when she spoke of anything to do with her home. “Find me a fire and a griddle, Claudia, and I’ll make you one.”

“Yes, please!” said Lukin.

It was one of those muggily warm autumn days. Every student in the place seemed to be outside, sitting on the refectory steps. Olga put their six cups of coffee on a tray and carried it over to the statue of Wizard Policant instead, where they all sat on his plinth, except Elda, who spread herself out at their feet, alternately bending down to sip at her straw and raising her big golden beak to sniff the mushroom and wheatstraw scent of autumn, carried in from beyond the town by the faint, muggy wind. Something in those scents excited her; she was not sure what, but it made her tail lash a little.

“A fire and a griddle,” Claudia said. “If I could do it unjinxed, I’d fetch you both, Olga. Why, with all this magical ability there is in this University, doesn’t anybody make the food at least taste better?”

“That’s an idea,” Ruskin grunted, banging his dangling heels against the plinth. “I’ll do it as soon as I learn how. Promise. Charcoal roast and mussels with garlic. How about that?”

“Newly-caught trout with parsley butter,” Olga added yearningly.

“I’ve never had mussels,” said Elda. “Would I like them?”

“You’re bound to. Your beak looks made for opening shellfish,” said Felim.

“And chicken pie to follow,” said Claudia. “What pudding, do you think?”

“Claudia,” said Lukin, “stop encouraging everyone to think of food and tell me how to deal with Wermacht. If he calls me ‘You with the second-hand jacket’ once more, I may find I’ve opened a mile-deep hole underneath him. I won’t be able to help myself.”

“And I might savage him,” Elda agreed, “next time he calls me an animal.”

“Let’s think.” Claudia leant forward, with both bony hands clasped round one of her sharp knees. Her eyes took on a green glow of thought. In some queer Marshperson way, her hair seemed to develop a life of its own, each dark lock coiling and uncoiling on her shoulders. Everyone turned to her respectfully. They had learnt that when Claudia looked like this, she was going to say something valuable. “I’ve heard,” she said, “that Wizard Wermacht is the youngest tutor on the faculty, and I suspect he’s very proud of that. I think he’s rather sad.”

“Sad!” exclaimed Ruskin. His voice rose to such a hoot that students on the refectory steps jumped round to look. “I may cry!”

“Pitiful, I mean,” Claudia explained. “He swanks about with those heavy feet, thinking he’s so smart and clever, and he’s never even noticed that those other wizards make him teach all the classes. Why do you think we’re so sick of being taught by Wermacht? Because all the older ones know it’s hard, boring work hammering basics into first-years and they let Wizard Wermacht do it because he’s too stupid to see it isn’t an honour. That’s what I mean by sad.”

“Hm,” said Lukin. “You’ve got a point. But I don’t think it’ll hold me off for ever.” A grin lit his heavy face and he flung an arm round Olga. “If I get angry enough, I may tell him he’s being exploited.”

Olga leaned her face against Lukin’s shoulder. “Good idea.”

The rest watched with friendly interest, as they had done all week. Olga was extremely beautiful. Lukin was almost handsome. Both of them were from the north. It fitted. On the other hand, Lukin was a Crown Prince. All of them, even Ruskin, who was still having trouble grasping human customs, felt anxious for Olga from time to time. Elda had her beak open to ask, as tactfully as possible, what King Luther would think about Olga, when they heard, quite mystifyingly, the sound of a horse’s hooves, clopping echoingly through the courtyard. There was a great, admiring “O-o-oh!” from the refectory steps.

“Riding in here is illegal, isn’t it?” asked Felim.

Well-known smells filled Elda’s open beak. She clapped her beak shut and plunged round the statue, screaming. In the empty part of the courtyard beyond, a superb chestnut colt was just trotting to a halt and folding his great shining carroty wings as he did so. His rider waited for the huge pinions to be laid in order before slinging both legs across one wing and sliding to the ground. He was a tall man with a wide, shambling sort of look. “Dad!” screamed Elda, and flung herself upon him. Derk steadied himself with several often-used bracing spells and only reeled back slightly as he was engulfed in long golden feathers, with Elda’s talons gripping his shoulders and Elda’s smooth, cool beak rubbing his face.

“Lords!” said the horse. “Suppose I was to do that!”

“None of your cheek, Filbert,” Elda said over Derk’s shoulder. “I haven’t seen Dad for a week now. You’ve seen him every day. Dad, what are you doing here?”

“Coming to see how you were, of course,” Derk replied. “I thought I’d give you a week to settle down first. How are things?”

“Wonderful!” Elda said rapturously. “I’m learning so many things! I mean, the food’s awful and one of the main teachers is vile, but they gave me a whole concert hall to sleep in because the other rooms are too small and I’ve got friends, Dad! Come and meet my friends.”

She disentangled herself from Derk and dragged him by one arm across to the statue of Wizard Policant. Derk smiled and let himself be dragged. Filbert, who was a colt of boundless curiosity, clopped across after them and peered round the plinth as Elda introduced the others.

Derk shook hands with Olga, and then with Lukin, whom he knew well. “Hallo, Your Highness. Does this mean your father’s allowed you to leave home after all?”

“No, not really,” Lukin admitted, rather flushed. “I’m financing myself, though. How are your flying pigs these days, sir?”

“Making a great nuisance of themselves,” said Derk, “as always.” He shook hands with Felim. “How do you do? Haven’t I met you before somewhere?”

“No, sir,” Felim said, with great firmness.

“Then you must look like someone else I’ve met,” Derk apologised. He turned to Claudia. “Claudia? Good gods! You were a little shrimp of a girl when I saw you last! Living in the Marshes with your mother. Do you remember me at all?”

Claudia’s face lit with her happiest and most deeply dimpled smile. “I do indeed. You landed outside our dwelling on a beautiful black horse with wings.”

“Beauty. My grandmother,” Filbert put in, with his chin on Wizard Policant’s pointed shoes.

“I hope she’s still alive,” said Claudia.

“Fine, for a twelve-year-old,” Filbert told her. “She doesn’t speak as well as me. Mara mostly rides her these days.”

“No, I remember I could hardly understand her,” said Claudia. “She looked tired. So did you,” she said to Derk. “Tired and worried.”

“Well, I was trying to be Dark Lord in those days,” Derk said, “and your mother’s people weren’t being very helpful.” He turned to Ruskin. “A dwarf, eh? Training to be a wizard. That has to be a first. I don’t think there’s been a dwarf wizard ever.”