Accidental Sorcerer (3 page)

And scattered around him, four of the First Grade staffs he'd managed to rescue before the massive conductor inversion. Rolling idly to and fro they glowed a gentle gold, their filigree activated. They must have been caught in the nimbus of exploding thaumic energy.

Everybody knew that Third Grade wizards didn't have the etheretic chops to handle a First Grade staff. Even using a Second Grader was to risk life, limb and sanity. Attempting to use one of those erratically charged First Graders was proof positive that sanity had left the building.

But he had no choice. This was an emergency and he was the only Department official in sight. Instincts shrieking, fear a gibbering demon on his back, he reached for the nearest activated First Grade staff. If it was one of the special orders, keyed to a specific wizard, then he really was about to breathe his last -

A shock of power slammed through his body. The world pulsed violet, then crimson, then bright and blinding blue, spinning wildly on its axis. Something deep inside his mind torqued. Twisted. Tore. His vision cleared, the mad giddiness stopped, and he was himself again. More or less.
Something
was different, but there was no time to worry or work out what.

Bucking and flailing like a live thing, the staff struggled to join its brethren in the heart of the magical maelstrom. Gerald got his other hand onto it, battling to contain the energy. It felt like standing inside the world's largest waterfall. The staff was channelling the excess energies from the atmosphere, attracting them like a magnet. Pummelled, battered, he wrestled with the flux and flow of power. Poured everything he had into taming the beast in his fists.

But the beast didn't want to be tamed.

Gasping, fighting against being pulled into the maelstrom, he opened his slitted eyes. The etheretic conductors were empty now, their spiralling columns of power collapsed. But the trapped staffs within the indigo firestorm continued to blaze, amplifying and distorting the energies they'd consumed. Only minutes remained, surely, before they exploded.

And he had no idea how to stop them.

A glimmer of an idea appeared, then, an iceberg emerging out of a fogbank. Staffs were both conduits and reservoirs of power. They were attracted to it like flies to honey Yes, this staff was already charged - but not completely. And everybody knew that Stuttley's staffs absorbed higher levels of raw thaumic energy than any other brand in the world. So if he could just coax some more of that untamed pulsing power into this activated staff and perhaps one or two others - maybe he could prevent the imminent enormous explosion.

Summoning the last skerricks of his strength, he inched closer to the indigo firestorm. Immediately the staff began to fight him again. He hung on grimly: letting go would be the worst, last mistake of his life. When he was as close to the writhing thaumic energy as he could get without being sucked in, he stopped. Raised the statf above his head. Focused his will, and plunged it end-first into the factory floor.

Where it stuck, quivering.

A questing tendril of thaumic energy licked towards it and, amidst a sizzling crackle, fused with the staff's intricate gold fretwork. More power poured into the tall oak spindle. Gerald watched, the stinking air caught in his throat. If it held ... if it held ...

The transfer held.

Staggering, he picked up another partially activated staff and plunged it into the floor two feet along from the first. Within moments it too was siphoning off the lethal, undirected thaumic energy. He did the same to a third staff, then a fourth. A fifth. A sixth. By the time he'd finished, he was looking at a whole row of crackling, power-hazed First Grade staffs and his legs could barely hold him upright. His lungs were a pair of deflated balloons. Indigo spots danced before his eyes. But he'd done it. He'd averted disaster. The suburb of Stuttley and its famous staff factory were saved.

Holly Devree had kept his handkerchief, so he smeared the sweat from his face with one shirtsleeve and watched, exhausted, as the ferocious thaumic firestorm faded. Smiled, shaking, as the ear-battering roar of untrammelled power abated.

Saint Snodgrass's trousers. Had anything like this ever happened before? A Third Grade wizard managing to successfully stymie a major thaumatur-gical inversion? He'd never heard of it. As he stood there, gently panting, he let his imagination off its tight leash.

This could be it, Dunwoody. This could be your big chance, finally.

Mr Scunthorpe would have to take him seriously now. Let him off probation early. Possibly even approve a transfer to a different department altogether. Even ■- miracle of miracles - Research and Development.

The thought of reaching such an exalted height made him dizzy all over again.

With a final whimpering sputter the last randomly dissipated etheretic energies discharged into the staffs he'd plunged into the floor. The benches and staffs still trapped in their conductive cradles disintegrated in a choking cloud of indigo ash.

Despite his exhaustion and his myriad aches and pains, Gerald did a little victory dance.

'Yes! Yes! R and D boys, here I come!'

Then he stopped dancing, because it was that or fall over. Instead he just stood there, eyes closed, heart pounding, revelling in his moment of unexpected triumph.

Breaking the blessed silence, a sound. Thin. Sharp. Dangerous - and escalating. Nervously he opened his eyes. Stared at the militarily upright staffs plunged into the floor. Before he had time to blink, the first one transformed into a narrow blue column of fire. Moments later the second followed suit. Then the rest, one by one, like a row of falling dominoes. The air began to sparkle. The factory floor began to smoke.

He frowned. 'Oh.' Apparently he'd found the thaumaturgical limit of a Stuttley Superior Staff.
How clever of me.
Research and Development, indeed. 'Right. So this would be a good time to run away, yes?'

His wobbly legs answered for him. He had just enough time and wit to grab up his poor little cherrywood staff and reach the nearest door. The blast wave caught him with his fingers still on the handle, tumbled him through the air like so much leaf litter and dropped him from a great height into the middle of an ornamental rose garden.

The last thing he saw, before darkness claimed him, was the irate face of Harold Stuttley.

'You bastard! You
bastard!
I'll have your job for this!'

Mr Scunthorpe folded his hands on top of his desk and shook his head. 'Gerald ... Gerald ... Gerald ...'

Gerald winced.'I know, Mr Scunthorpe,' he said contritely. 'And I'm very sorry. But it wasn't my fault. Honestly.'

It was much later. The ambulance officers from the district hospital had fished him out of the rose garden then transported him, over his objections, to the emergency room, where an unsympathetic doctor extracted all the rose thorns from various and delicate parts of his anatomy and pronounced him sound in wind and limb, if deficient in intelligence. Which meant he was free to catch a taxi back to Stuttley's and drive at not much above snail's pace home to the Department of Thaumaturgy so he could make his report.

Unfortunately, Harold Stuttley's tongue had travelled a damned sight faster.

'Not your fault, Gerald?' echoed Mr Scunthorpe, and looked down at the paperwork in front of him. 'That's not what the people at Stuttley's are saying. According to them you barged into the middle of a highly sensitive First Grade thaumaturgical transfer, ignored all reasonable warnings and pleas to leave before there was an accident, used your Departmental authority to evict the personnel from their lawful premises and then caused a massive explosion which only by a miracle failed to kill someone, or reduce everything within a radius of three miles to rubble. As it is you totally destroyed the factory, which is going to put back staff production by months. I have to tell you Lord Attaby is profoundly unamused. One of the staffs you blew up had his nephew's name on it.'

It took a moment for Gerald's brain to catch up with his ears. When it did, he almost choked. 'What? But that's rubbish! Yes, all right, the factory did blow up, but I'm telling you, Mr Scunthorpe, that wasn't my fault! Harold Stuttley caused that! The etheretic conductors failed due to a lack of proper maintenance. They were on the brink of inversion when I got there! Ask the technicians! They'll tell you!'

Mr Scunthorpe tapped his fingernails on the open file. 'What I just told you, Gerald, is a summary of their testimony. Theirs and, of course, Mr Harold Stuttley's. He's threatening all kinds of trouble. Lord Attaby is very unhappy'

'But - but -' He clenched his fingers into fists. 'I
went
there in the first place because there was a protocol violation. Overdue safety statements. That proves they -'

Mr Scunthorpe's round face was suffused with temper. 'All it proves, Mr Dunwoody, is that even the best of companies can fall behind with their paperwork. You were sent to Stuttley's to deliver a polite reminder to this nation's most valuable and prestigious staff manufacturer that the Department of Thaumaturgy looked forward to their prompt provision of all relevant documentation. You were
not
sent there to cause international headlines!'

Mr Dunwoody.
Gerald leaned forward, feeling desperate. 'But there was a woman! I spoke to her! She said things weren't being done right, she said there was trouble.' He scrabbled around in his post-explosion memory. 'Devree! That was her name! Find her.
Ask
her. She'll tell you.'

Mr Scunthorpe rifled through the sheets of paper in front of him.'Holly Devree?' He extracted a statement, picked up his glasses on their chain around his neck, placed them on his nose and read out loud: 'I don't know what happened. I was on my tea break. I never saw the man from the Department. This means my job, doesn't it? What am I going to do now? I've got a sick mother to support. Signed: Holly Devree.'

'No,' he whispered. 'That's not how it happened, Mr Scunthorpe. My word as a compliance officer.'

'Probationary
compliance officer,' said Mr Scunthorpe, still frowning. "Very well then, Gerald. What's your version of today's unfortunate events?'

Haltingly, feeling as though he'd wandered into somebody else's insane dream, Gerald told him. When he was finished he sat back in his chair again. 'And that's the truth, sir. I swear it.'

Mr Scunthorpe closed his mouth with a snap. 'The truth?'

'Yes, sir.'

Mr Scunthorpe's face was so red he could have found work as a traffic light. 'You expect me to believe that a Third Grade wizard from Nether Wallop, who got his qualifications from some fourth-rate correspondence course, who got fired from his first job for insubordination and his second for incompetence, not only managed to single-handedly prevent a Level Nine thaumaturgical inversion but did so, moreover, by using the most expensive, the most finely calibrated, the most
lethal
First Grade staffs in the
world?
Is
that
what you expect me to believe?'

'Well,' he said, after a moment. 'When you put it like that .. .'Then he rallied.'But sir, far-fetched or not that's exactly what happened. I can't explain how, or why, but that's precisely what I did.'

'Dunwoody, what you're saying is impossible!' said Mr Scunthorpe, and pounded a fist on his desk. 'No Third Grade wizard in history has ever used a First Grade staff without frying himself like bacon. To suggest
you
managed it is to stretch the bounds of credulity across five alternate dimensions!'

The urge to punch Scunthorpe in the nose was almost irresistible. 'Are you calling me a liar?'

'I'm calling you a walking disaster!' Scunthorpe retorted. 'A carbuncle on the arse of this Department! Do you have any idea of the phone calls I've been getting? Lord Attaby! The Wizard General!
Seven
prime ministers and
two
presidents! And don't get me started on the press!'

Gerald stopped breathing. Scunthorpe was going to fire him. The intention was in the man's glazed eyes and furious, scarlet face. If he was fired from another job it'd be the end of his wizarding career. No-one would touch him with a forty-foot barge pole after that. He'd have to go home to Nether Wallop. Beg his cousins for a job in the tailor's shop his father had sold them. They'd give him one, he was family after all, but he'd never hear the end of it.
I'd rather die.

'Let me prove it, Mr Scunthorpe,' he said. 'Fetch me a First Grade stall"and I'll prove I can use one.'

'Are you
madV
shouted Scunthorpe. 'After this afternoon's little exhibition do you think there's a wizard anywhere in the world who'd risk letting you even
look
at his First Grader, let alone touch it? And do you think I'd risk my job to ask them?'

'Then how am I supposed to show you I'm telling the truth?'

It was a fair question and Scunthorpe knew it. He snatched a pencil from his desktop and twisted it between his fingers. 'I'm telling you, Dunwoody, you won't be let anywhere near a First Grade staff. But -' The pencil snapped. With enormous forbearance, Scunthorpe placed the two pieces on the blotter.'-
if
you can use a First Grader then a Second Grader shouldn't pose the slightest difficulty.' He stood and crossed to the closet in the corner of his office. From it he withdrew four feet of slender, silver-bound Second Grade staff. Holding it reverently, he turned. 'Lord Attaby gave me this staff with his own hands, Dunwoody. In recognition of my twenty-five years impeccable service to the Department. If I give it to you, here and now, will you promise not to break it?'

Gerald swallowed, feeling ill. 'I can't do that, sir. But I can promise I'll try.'

Pale now, and sweating, Scunthorpe nodded. 'All right then.'

'What do you want me to do?'

'Nothing spectacular!' said Mr Scunthorpe, darkly. 'Something simple. Noncombustible.' He nodded at the painting on the wall beside him, an insipid rendition of the first opening of Parliament in 1142.'Animate that.'

He swallowed a protest. Animation might be noncombustible but it was hardly simple. All right, for a First Grade wizard it was child's play and for a Second it was unlikely to cause a sweat. For a Third Grade wizard, though, animation required a command of etheretic balances that tended to induce piles in the unprepared.

Scunthorpe bared his teeth in a smile. 'I take it you do know an appropriate incantation?'

Sarcastic bugger. Yes. As it happened he knew all kinds of high-level incantations, and not all of them entirely ... legal. Reg had insisted on teaching him dozens, even though his cherrywood staff was totally inadequate when it came to channelling them. Even though he, apparently, was equally inadequate.
Learn them,
she'd insisted.
You never know when one might come in handy.

Maybe she'd been right after all. Maybe this was one of those times. And anyway, what did he have to lose?

He held out his hand for Scunthorpe's staff. Reluctantly Scunthorpe gave it to him. Closing his eyes, he took a moment to centre himself. To rummage through his collection of interesting but hitherto irrelevant charms and incantations until he found the one that would rescue him from his current predicament.

'Hurry up, Dunwoody,' said Scunthorpe. 'I've an appointment to see Lord Attaby. Somehow I've got to
explain
all this.'

'Yes, sir,' he said, still rummaging. Then he recalled a small but effective binding that would set the picture's painted crowd politely clapping.

The silver-chased staff in his hands felt heavy and cool. He couldn't detect the smallest sense of latent power from it. When was the last time Scunthorpe had used it? Or sent it out to be thaumically recharged? God help him if the damned thing had a flat battery -

'Hurry
up,
Dunwoody!' snapped Scunthorpe. 'I'm running out of patience!'

'Right,' he said, and settled his shoulders. Extended the staff until its tip touched the painting's frame, closed his eyes and in the privacy of his mind uttered the animation binding.

Nothing happened. No burning surge of power through the staff, no giddy-making roil of First Grade thaumic energy in his veins or repeat of that strange torqueing tearing sensation he'd felt in Stuttley's factory. Not even his usual Third Grade tingling. And no sound of tiny painted hands, clapping. No sound at all except for Scunthorpe's stertorous breathing.