Back To The Hills.

Sebastian Frazer Wilson came back early this morning, while Samuel and I were training, so Norman kept him entertained. I don’t know if the Frazer part of his name is a second christian name, or part of a double barrel surname. It could be a posh hillbilly name, like Jim Bob. In any case, I can’t be calling him by all three names all the time. He came to see my father’s map, the one with all the stone circles circled. I offered to go with him, since I’d found them all recently. Samuel, because he’s incapable of trusting anyone, insisted on coming too.

Sebastian is about six foot four, with a long face, a long nose, and short black hair. He’s balding a little at the back, but unless he’s sat down not many people are going to get to see that. Instead of his spy coat, because we were going rambling, he wore a bright red puffer jacket. Above his skinny legs it made him look like a lollipop. Samuel wore his long leather coat, which normally means he’s carrying his sword. I might ask him to keep that locked up in the study, just to see what he says.

We drove out to the circles furthest away, since we had good weather. Sebastian drives one of those new minis, into which he flatpacks himself. Samuel looked ridiculous on the back seat, like he was being chauffeured in a toy car. We talked about what had happened over the last few months as we drove. He knew all about my father from Challoner, and was more interested in how the magicians who survived were reacting. He was amused at how they’d combined under Enright’s leadership:-
“Before last Halloween, I’d struggle to get two of them to agree whether or not a spell had actually worked, or was valid, or original, or morally acceptable. I’d struggle to get three of them in the same room, let alone forty.”
“Why were you trying?” I asked.
“That’s our business. Or rather it was. David and I are interested in magic, in the same way that a drama critic might be interested in Shakespeare, as compared to an actor performing in the play. The magicians are men of enormous ego – after all they’ve decided to rework the universe. They don’t like sharing their secrets, but they want their accomplishments acknowledged. For a modest fee, David and I confirmed, impartially, whether or not a spell had been cast as claimed, and if required we could provide a forum for discussion, as to whether or not the spell should ever be cast again.”
“You’re a counselling service?”
“Arguably. But the role pre-dates psychoanalysis by a few centuries. In Medieval Europe a magical theorist would attend most royal courts. Often mistaken for magicians themselves, in truth they reported to their king or emperor on what was afoot with the wizards proper.”
“Did you ever try magic yourself?” I asked. Concentrating on the road made his answers unnaturally tense.
“Once. Unsuccessfully, I admit. But that’s not why I didn’t persevere. My mentor was, as I’ve found most magicians to be, a total fat-head. They’re idiotic. And I don’t mean they’re unintelligent – they have a sharpness of mind that could find the cures cancer and world peace, if only they’d stop concentrating on, I don’t know, on how to make fire come out of their finger tips. But they can’t refocus. All of them have this distorted sense of their place in the universe. No offence by the way.”

This last comment was aimed up at the rear view mirror, but Samuel didn’t react from the back seat. He was probably too busy running through his conspiracy theories to hear us.

“Don’t worry about him,” I said. “He’s never cast a spell that wasn’t made by someone else.”
“Well anyway, you see why I was amused at the idea of David trying to ingratiate himself with these people. We can’t even get a commission out of them anymore. I’m sure what you saw was just David being sociable.”

That said, Sebastian asked me for a list of all the once-magicians I’d seen Challoner talking to that night. It was possible that through talking to them he was diverted to whatever path he was now on. At the stone circles we got out, tramped around for a bit, and got back in the car. I didn’t really see the point, but Sebastian felt the need to follow Challoner’s footsteps. In the end I just stayed in the warmth. When Sebastian came back I could tell he was disappointed.

“You’re comparing us aren’t you.” I said, low enough so Samuel couldn’t hear. It was in that pause before starting the engine that always seems awkward and full of unvoiced resentment, but is actually due to mechanical needs and the procedures of driving.
“Comparing who?”
“Me to my father. Don’t worry, everyone does. They look at me like I’ve got all their answers, like it’s in my DNA, and then they realise I don’t know anything. At all.”
“I never met your father. I know his reputation of course, and David told me all about his interview. Your father had little use for our services, and demonology is more David’s specialty than mine. Besides which, by the time I’d entered the field, your father was no longer the gregarious adviser and guru that David met. By 1995 he’d become a virtual recluse. All of David’s letters were met with refusal and then ignored.”

That would be six years after I was born; the year my mother died. I didn’t think my father was a recluse, although he knew few people. Possibly Sebastian meant only a withdrawal from magical society, but even then he met with Angela, and Miranda, within the last decade. I wondered how the man Angela knew compared with my father when Samuel met him in the Thirties.

“If Challoner wasn’t trying to get in with them,” I said. “What was he doing at the markets? Why was he so desperate to go to Enright’s party?”
Sebastian replied, after thinking about it: “He told me about a stone Arthur Enright had found. I think he was more interested in the stone than in the man.”
“Well that’s a dead end. The stone’s got no magic left in it now.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s spent. Enright has drained the power out of it and into himself. I held a piece of iron pyrite next to it last week, there was no reaction at all.”
“Nothing?”
“Dead.”
“Then it wasn’t the stone.” Said Sebastian, slowing down. “The stones back in that field haven’t been used for serious magic since the dark ages, and they still carry traces of the power that went through them. This stone of Arthur Enright’s was a vessel of great power. Iron pyrite ought to glow like fairy lights when it’s anywhere near.”
“There was nothing.”
“Then the stone you tested was a fake.”
Samuel leaned forward to put his head between us: “So the real stone is hidden in his house. The house where no one else is allowed to go, except for Alex Reeves.”
“So what?” I said.
“So that’s the real price of Reeves’ help. Inside those walls, they’re using the stone and the power it has left. Enright could only have touched on its potential.”

We’ve split the survey of the stone circles over a three-day schedule. When Sebastian dropped us back at the house, Samuel said to me:-
“You realise we have no proof that he’s a friend of David Challoner at all.”
The same could be said of Samuel knowing my father.
“You believe in God don’t you?” I said. “Then why do you find it so hard to take some things on faith?”