Author's Notes (non-nit-pickers can skip these):
1) Ignorance notice: My Latin is nonexistent; I gathered the words I used for spells from a dictionary, so the grammar isn't there. Sorry. Also, which should be pretty obvious, I have no knowledge of WW1 British military history or the contemporary slang. Please bear with me.
2) There is no lift (elevator) in the game. Non-players are not going to care, but, basically (for all you players), the shaft runs from beside the stairs on the ground floor hall to right under the fish trophy upstairs. You simply don't notice it in the game, of course. (Here's a fun Easter egg: if you select "Operate, fish trophy, operate" 57 times, the game eventually relents and lets you find the elevator. Try it with your friends. Suggest it to your neighbors.)
February, 1913
Jack was in the greenhouse when the air-raid alarm sounded from the valley. Frowning, he glanced up, adjusting the glasses that sat uneven on the end of his nose, and set the watering can down beside his chair. The day was quiet, and late-afternoon sunlight filtered dimly through the smudged glass panes. "Nal'chez—"
The hawk perched on the back of the chair spread its wings and cawed in response. Absently, Jack reached up to touch the proud, muscled neck.
A huge, beautiful specimen, Nal'chez was actually a daemon—a minor spirit of limited but sentient intelligence. Jack had summoned the spirit from its own dimension into the body of the hawk; no one could physically cross between the worlds. Once he'd mastered his specialty—the use of foris, or portal, magic—some years ago, Jack had populated the manor with all sorts of minor harmless spirits. The work of the various daemons, sprites, and elementals greatly lessened the load of the aging servant. The Master's magic had granted McClellan a far longer and more active life than most men, Jack reflected sadly, but, unlike what it did for those who actually wielded the power, it could not postpone aging and death for more than a decade or two. The dear old man would not be with them for much longer.
The alarm shrieked again, more insistently, knocking Jack from his reverie. "Go. Watch the town." Cawing its acquiescence, the hawk lifted into the air on powerful wings and rode the slight breeze out the open door. Closing his eyes, Jack settled back against the chair and cast his mind into the simple meditative state the Art demanded. "Visum caeli," he murmured, "Abraxas."
His consciousness lifted, separating from his body. Gazing downwards, Jack could just barely discern the thin silver cord connecting his spirit to the earthbound flesh below him. It was a disturbingly pitiful sight—dirty from its gardening hobby, hair in disarray, jaw slack and eyes closed, slumped within the wheelchair as though asleep.
Exultant despite the seriousness of the spell, Jack soared up through the roof of the greenhouse, floating over the manor grounds, and then higher, up until the clouds drifted below his feet.
For the paraplegic man, out-of-body travel was the most exquisite of freedoms, the closest thing to unfettered movement that he could ever experience. It was breathtaking, and Jack lingered in trance for longer than was strictly necessary. The skies were completely clear for miles, empty even of the persistent light rain and cloud cover. Somewhere, certainly, there were bombers over the countryside. But the village—and thus the manor—was in no danger today.
With the slightest shift of consciousness, Jack cast himself into the body of the flying daemon. He sensed a brief flicker of curiosity and acknowledgment from the alien mind, but nothing more. Daemons served because they were curious about new dimensions and because they didn't have the wit to long for freedom; they seldom needed to be compelled. Settling into the new body, Jack allowed himself to experience the same rush of near-ecstasy. Unlike the smooth, effortless floating of astral travel, winged flight was an exciting exertion, a constant powerful struggle against gravity and wind. It gave the flier a sense of his own strength and invulnerability, so far above the earth, as if Jack had mastered gravity itself.
Jack lingered, again, as Nal'chez circled, the village spread out like a patchwork quilt far below. He wasn't in town often, and his friendships with the inhabitants were many but shallow and casual. They knew him as the son of the first "Master Jack", and pitied him as a crippled recluse whom Crowley, a distant relative, was forced to support. Faced with that scorn, Jack tended to confine himself to the company of Crowley, the remaining Brothers, his daemons, and his books.
Accustomed to false alarms, the townsfolk were filing calmly into the shambling bomb shelter. There was no sign of any chaos that would threaten the manor. Jack suffered a sudden wild premonition of using the Art to protect the manor from German planes—it was not a pleasant image. For centuries, the Brothers of this house had kept their talents secret from all but their colleagues.
Abruptly, he became aware of another presence sharing Nal'chez's mind. The hawk, sensitive to its rider's emotions, dove in an abrupt spiral. The rush of vertigo sent a dizzying sensation through the abandoned body far below. Jack calmed the daemon with a thought when he recognized Crowley.
Anything? The mental voice was strong, clear, for all that the magician was intruding upon the familiar of another. For anyone of merely average skill, that feat would have been impossible.
False alarm, Jack replied silently. Return. You will grow weary. With the closeness of the contact, he received a glimpse through Crowley's eyes—the old man was in the library, gaze locked but unfocused on one of the astrological charts. Briefly, the smell of musty paper and leather filled Jack's nostrils.
I'll fly for awhile. You do it often enough, my hawk.
True enough, Jack chuckled. But, enough for today, at least for me. I will be in the chapel, Master.
Crowley's parting words surprised Jack. Pray for me, then. The door is open, and the storm approaches.
"Hey, Davis! Whatcha readin'?"
The young man responded by curling into a ball on his cot, trying to hide the book from the several curious pairs of eyes that focused upon him. The low rumble of a far-distant explosion drowned out any possible reply for a few moments. "Nothing. Leave me alone, Jackson."
"C'mon, let me see. I've never seen a grunt readin' a book down here before. Magazines, only." The enthusiastic Jackson finally managed to worm himself into a position to catch a glimpse of the cover. He read out loud with the slow, painstaking quality of one who does not do it often. "Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Henry Cornelius Agrippa. What th' hell's that about? Sounds spooky."
"It's about the devil," Anderson stated grimly. He perched on his cot, across the trench from Davis, glaring at the other soldier. "All about Satanic worship. That's the 'occult philosophy'." The slightly older man spat angrily. "That for your books. You've got a lot of nerve bringing it down here."
Davis glared back, but looked away first. He was a little uncomfortable with the attention, noting how several more of the bored young men in the trench had shuffled closer to hear. In truth, he really couldn't explain the book's presence either—not in a way they'd understand. It had cost him several months' pay, and done very little good. "Oh, leave off, Anders. It's just bunk. It passes the time." In a final effort to avoid serious discussion on the topic, Davis stuffed the thick hardcover book back into his backpack.
"You're not really a Satanist, are you, Davis?" Jackson asked worriedly.
A laugh—somewhat touched with irony—was ready as a response. "Are you kidding? I'm a good Anglican boy. Don't listen to that sour-faced churchie. He sees the devil in the shit we leave in the bloody latrine." Their response, their laughter, their attention now focused on Anderson—all of it made him safe. Davis leaned back against his cot, closing his eyes. It had been hell, these past few weeks in the trenches, but tonight there was a rare peace and quiet stretching all the way across no-man's-land. He knew that he should rest, regain his strength before the near-constant gunfire began once again. Davis also knew that he couldn't.
What's happening to me? This strange fascination with the occult had begun early in life. He'd pored through every book ever published on magic, monsters, and demons. When the silent motion picture industry began, Davis had turned his attention to the genre of horror films as well. Nothing answered his most pressing questions.
Then, a few years ago, the visions began. After a year of dreams alone, Davis discovered that strange things now occurred around him, especially when he was angry or upset. Furniture toppled itself, or he heard voices inside his head; people would say or do as he'd secretly willed them, or invisible hands crushed or destroyed small objects before him.
The young man's thirst for knowledge fueled a search for answers, but the available books on the occult left him unsatisfied. Most were sheer fakery, hinting at "esoteric secrets" that upon research proved no more than simple Gnostic claptrap or a vague, worthless astrology. No explanation for Davis' own powers presented itself. By now, the solider had all but convinced himself that he was blessed.
I could be the second coming. I could be a miracle. Davis frowned to himself. If only I could discover the key to my powers, and learn to control them. There must be something. I wish I had peace and quiet to think. His father, an old soldier, had pressured Davis into joining the army. From a large, working-class family, the young man grasped few other options for success. School, the pursuit of knowledge for which Davis thirsted so passionately—that was out of the question.
Finally, almost against his will, his tired mind shut down. His body drifted into sleep. The wild dreams that filled his slumber were normal by this point, visions which he knew had some meaning—a purpose that was, frustratingly, always just out of reach.
A hawk flew at him, talons extended, raking him across the cheek. A brass star formed of flame before his eyes, and immediately dissolved into icy rain. A child with the eyes of a demon hurled himself through a glass window. An old man, sealed in ice, screamed. Unseen hands pushed a black-robed form into a bottomless pit. Davis noted with some uneasiness that the robed figure had his face, as the old man's shrieks of pain became laughter. Shadows danced on the edges of his vision, demonic creatures with fiery red eyes and grasping hands that waited to drag him down to God-knows-where.
"Davis, wake up, you're having a nightmare, man."
"…wake us up at this hour he'd better have that much potential, Master. Let me…"
"I can't sleep with him making all that noise. Someone shut him up. Or else just toss him over the top into no-man's-land and let him bother the bloody Germans instead."
"Almost, Master…almost."
"You wouldn't really order us to do that, would you, Captain?"
"Don't lose him."
"Jackson, I swear to God, you've got less brains than the bloody rats. You know I wouldn't toss Davis up for the Germans. I won't have one of my men filling a bloody Kraut stewpot." Coarse laughter jarred Davis' ears, but then the divided sensation vanished. He was again totally within the dream.
Now, a chapel filled the vision. It was surprisingly ordinary scene after the shrieking demons, but one which caused the hairs on his nape to tremble warningly. Something's wrong, something's not right in here. Two men conferred inside, one old and Oriental, the other of nondescript middle years. The younger one sat in a wheelchair, with a large hunting hawk perched on his arm.
"…not close enough," the younger man was saying, lines of strain evident in his face. His lips moved soundlessly, but somehow Davis understood the words regardless. It was as though he hovered on the edges of the stranger's thoughts. "…untrained, or defying us? I'm sorry, Master Crowley."
"You are in a calm place, touching the power?"
"Of course."
Suddenly, the old man's inscrutable face registered slight surprise. The voice was definitely inside Davis' head, now, addressing itself directly to him. Welcome, brother.
"Yes, that's him…such power, to make such a noise with mere prescient dreams…untrained, too."
Listen to me carefully, boy. You will come to us. The old man's eyes seemed to glow with compulsion. You will come to us, and you will learn to control this power, young man.
"Coactum, abraxas," the younger man muttered very softly, as though to himself, but Davis' reality seemed to warp and swim around him in response to the simple word. An overwhelming desire enfolded him. He would visit that chapel, pay his respects to the wisdom of the two aged Masters…
No! Davis fought back frantically, but the compulsion only seemed to thicken with every moment. All desire for knowledge was forgotten; he knew only that these two men were forcing something upon him that did not come from his own mind. Finally, a desperate last resort, he remembered the older man's words to the other.
In a calm place.
With an effort, Davis forced himself to calm, to relax into the compulsion, to sink below it so that it could not touch him. At his deepest, the young man touched something that floated up through his soul. Far from unpleasant, the sensation filled him with an overwhelming power and exhilaration.
The dreamer's body changed, stretching, becoming instead of a helpless human vessel the powerful form of a dragon—one of those old mythological creatures he'd enjoyed reading about as a child. The delicate strands of the web the two men's compulsion spell—for what else could it be?—had wrapped around him glowed a prominent silver before his adapted, magical eyes. This dragon was immense and powerful, and its fiery breath burned through the strands with ease, freeing him to soar and leave the evil old men far behind. Now that he had his secret trigger, he was Davis, slave of the earth, no longer. Dragon. Draco. Dracan.
May, 1915
"For my next astonishing feat, ladies and gentlemen, the spirits with whom I commune will allow me to reach into someone's mind and pick out his thoughts—indeed, his very past. I will need an audience member to contribute an item of personal value. A watch, perhaps, or a scarf, or even a small piece of jewelry." Thin hands dropped momentarily to adjust the folds of a theatrical black robe before gesturing with a flourish.
"Here." The voice from the front of the audience was quiet, but some quality about it commanded Dracan's immediate attention. Glancing up from a carefully maintained, distant and brooding expression, he met the dark eyes of a nondescript-looking man, perhaps of early middle years, in a somewhat worn gray suit and hat. Without the wheelchair, a completely unremarkable fellow. A very old, white-haired man, evidently an attendant, stood behind the chair, watching Dracan with oddly piercing and intelligent green eyes for so lined and withered a face.
Dracan's eyes narrowed, his "spiritualist" act forgotten. Body and mind were immediately tense and alert. So you finally found me, did you? Yet the magician looked harmless enough, and a public show was not exactly the time for a confrontation. Dracan dropped a suspicious glance to the man's outstretched palm. Lying within was a small, five-pointed star, very old and forged of rusted iron, on a silver chain that pooled in the magician's hand.
Damn you. The blood drained from Dracan's face. Ever since his brief glimpse of the pentagram in the chapel window, two years before, that single image had haunted his dreams more than any other. The temptation to seek out the two smug old men and demand answers had been overwhelming at times. Only the memory of their attempted compulsion had stopped Dracan. I will learn on my own, and go to them as a colleague, not as a beggar. I am no man's inferior. However, the deeper mysteries, beyond these damned parlor tricks, had so far evaded him.
"I—ladies and gentlemen, I fear I must take a rest. The-the mystical powers that guide my thoughts tire me greatly. I will return in five minutes." Dracan fled the audience's groans and angry catcalls and the stranger's piercing stare for the relative peace of his dressing room. He collapsed into the single, hard wooden chair—he should count himself lucky even to have a room at all, Dracan noted sourly, with his cursed luck—and watched the door with a mix of suspicion and resignation.
As expected, the knock sounded less than a minute later. "Shall we talk, Dracan?"
"As you wish," the young man replied, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. A tension headache was burgeoning, and if this man was anything like the vision the pain would only get worse. Dracan opened the door with a gesture and a muttered "abraxas". Let him see that I have power, too.
The old man pushed the younger one through the door and shut it carefully behind the trio. His actions and stance still evinced a strength belying the frail, elderly body. Dracan arched a questioning eyebrow.
"McClellan has been a loyal family servant for far more years than you or I have been alive," the man in the wheelchair stated firmly, noting the direction of the young man's gaze. "He can be trusted."
"But can you?"
Amusement glittered in the man's brown eyes. They were set too close together, and his rapid blinking spoke of nearsightedness. The man was almost ugly, on top of being crippled. He was smug and complacent, intimidating in his self-assured smile, but Dracan decided sneeringly that the effect, together with his undignified appearance, was a ridiculous one. "What do you think?"
"I doubt the trustworthiness of any man who would try to enslave another," Dracan snapped, the old grudge surfacing again.
The other shook his head sadly. "Ah, Dracan, how you misjudge us! We intended no harm. We merely wished to make certain that you would find your way safely and quickly to the manor. We offer education, and counsel among equals. Never servitude."
Dracan cocked his head cynically. "So you give out your knowledge demanding nothing in return? How very…civilized of you." He couldn't keep the sneer out of his voice.
The stranger regarded him with a patient expression. "You earn your keep for room, board, and training while you're in the house, of course. Other than that, your are free, yes. I don't think you or I can truly understand Master Crowley's position. Once, he headed a powerful alliance of magicians that had influenced kings and nations for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Now, all he has is the faint hope of passing the Art onto others. He is a…most generous man." The magician's somewhat homely face suffused with sincerity, even love, as he spoke. He obviously held deep affection for this Master Crowley—who was, Dracan assumed, the Asian gentleman of the vision.
"I won't come as an adoring student," Dracan warned. "I have studied. I have my own power."
"What you can do, without formal training as you are, is nothing short of amazing," the other agreed. Yet the trace of a smile still hovering about the man's lips put a slight spin of condescension onto the reply. Smug, isn't he? He of all people doesn't have that right over me, with him still in that chair despite all of his "power".
Dracan realized with annoyance that he still didn't know the man's name. If refused, the magician would disappear safely, unable to be tracked by the overly curious. "For most, the gift vanishes without formal training. But there is far greater power to be had through discipline. You can do parlor tricks to impress a tavern crowd—" here Dracan shuffled a bit uncomfortably; that was a little too close to his most pressing feeling of failure, "—but you have yet to touch another dimension…to experience another's thoughts as your own…to create form from empty space and shape matter to suit your own mind. After nearly sixty years of study, I have yet to scratch the surface of my own potential…which may not perhaps be as high as yours."
Sixty years? He is quite well-preserved. Or is he implying that immortality is a gift of this discipline, as well? That would be something. "Why do you want me?" Dracan asked bluntly.
"You have potential, Dracan. We seek out potential." But something in the man's eyes, an uneasiness, gave that glib reply away as a lie, or at least a half-truth.
Dracan searched for a properly sarcastic response to that, but words failed him. Instead his eyes traveled hungrily to the magician's neck, where he knew the iron pentagram hung beneath the ill-fitting wool suit jacket. "Tell me about the five-pointed star."
"Ah." The magician smiled, sensing capitulation. He narrowed in on this new weakness like a hawk. "I will share with you what the Master told me soon after I'd first begun my studies." The voice—it was a Scottish accent, Dracan had decided—adopted an almost pedantic tone. "The pentagram is the symbol of our Art, and of all that we hope to gain by shaping the Art to our will…"
January, 1917
After checking on McClellan, Jack tiredly wheeled himself to the new lift at the back of the house. Marcus, McClellan's assistant and the future manor butler, had installed it last year so that Jack could easily access Crowley's bedroom and his own, nicer new room.
Of course he enjoyed the increased freedom of movement, the magician reflected, but the device made him nervous. Like Crowley, he had become a man of magic, distrustful of how radically the world had changed in the past half-century. Covertly, Jack had summoned a daemon one evening and set it into the lift cables to shore up the engineering. It hadn't been long, however, before the swollen-headed Dracan had discovered the modification. After the storm of derisive laughter had passed, Dracan's next move had been to demand to know exactly how Jack had done it.
Impatient, Jack mused as the lift hoisted him with a low hum. The comforting tingle of magic at the nape of his neck told him the daemon was happily at work. Impatient and disrespectful and far too confident of his own growing abilities. Granted, the boy—he wasn't twenty-five yet—was good, but he was also still virtually untrained. I was never like this.
With one hand, Jack awkwardly lifted the latticework at the back of the upstairs hall—which existed mainly to protect errant daemons from falling down the shaft. He wheeled out quietly, trying not to wake Crowley. The old man slept lightly these days, and his door was open. A quick glance inside reassured Jack; the old man lay peacefully, on the side facing away from the door. Unlike many self-styled magicians, Crowley had never embraced asceticism; his room verged on opulent, and the soft, custom-made mattress was easy on aching, arthritic joints and muscles.
The Master was weaker, these days. The double strain of a new, challenging apprentice and a well-loved servant sick with terminal cancer had taken a lot out of the old man. But there was somehow more to his decline, Jack knew. Crowley had lived solely to serve and lead the Brotherhood for hundreds of years. These past sixty had been aimless and depressing in comparison. There was little Jack could do, though. Crowley adamantly refused to even consider re-forming the old organization, in any way.
Reaching his own bedroom door, the magician cocked his head, listening, hand on the knob. Dracan's door, opposite his own, was open. Within, there was a suspicious absence of the slightest sound. Like all of them, Dracan dreamed vividly, which produced rustlings and mumbles and the occasional yell.
Jack grabbed a lantern from his room, lit it with a mumbled, "spearca, abraxas." He edged up to Dracan's door and cast the light over the bed and carpet, expecting an angry yell. Dracan was very mindful of his privacy and disliked being disturbed without good reason. The bedroom, however, was empty.
He is not a prisoner here, Jack reminded himself. Dracan can go where he likes. Perhaps he's in town. But the focused young man avoided the village pub and had no friends outside the manor. Jack was trapped between ignoring his insatiable curiosity and admitting his Scrooge-like mistrust of the new student. Perhaps he was simply jealous; the boy was powerful and studious and demanded so much of the master's time nowadays…
Shaking his head in disgust, Jack bowed to temptation. The magician closed his eyes, entering the level of his mind which was linked to all of the daemons throughout the manor. From this plane he could dismiss, order, or communicate with them. Dracan. Where?
A slight buzz tingled between his ears as the spirits conferred among one another. Finally, one voice piped in—the little air elemental he had set in the Magisterium to tidy the lab and observatory. Jack returned a brief thanks, resulting in a little pleased flush from the flighty spirit. Now more curious than suspicious, he wheeled himself back towards the lift.
Dracan sat hunched on the single stool in the observatory, occasionally glancing away from the large telescope's eyepiece to make detailed notes. Charts and brief notations and odd markings covered the pages of his leather-bound journal in a spidery hand. Jack hovered in the doorway for a long moment, eyeing the feverish look on the man's thin face. Never had he seen such a…driving hunger for knowledge as he did in this young apprentice.
"Why are you out here so late?" Jack finally asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
"You know a better time than night to watch the stars?"
Taking that for as much a welcome as he ever received from the surly student, Jack wheeled himself into the room. He noted Dracan watching him out of the corner of a dark eye. With a shrug, the younger man shifted his notebook so that Jack received a good view of the scrawls.
Dracan had planned out a fairly accurate map of the night sky, and sketched in the demarcations of the twelve astrological houses and the current conjunctions between planets. Child's play. Between some of the markings, however, he had drawn in tentative lines, many scored by heavy eraser marks. The final result seemed to be an uneven pentagram connecting five of those stars or planets. Puzzled, Jack leaned closer, trying to guess at the significance of the selected markings.
Dracan snapped the book shut with a definitive gesture, almost catching Jack's nose in the pages. Scowling, he looked up into the younger man's insufferably smug grin. "That had a purpose?" Jack really had no idea whether he meant the drawings or the childish taunt.
The younger man chose the former. His face sobered, taking on an odd, almost reverent cast. "We do so much with the Art," he began with the casual arrogance that only Dracan could produce. So much? When you've studied the Art for a bare eighteen months? You are an infant, Dracan. But that same curiosity held back Jack's sharp retort. "But we could do so much more. How many of our limitations stem from the potential in the Art and how many from our own hang-ups?"
"Limitations such as…?" Jack prompted, intrigued despite himself. Sometimes there was genius in the boy, shining through the arrogance and impatience and surliness.
"Your spine." The answer was succinct and obviously prepared.
"My spine," the older man echoed flatly, fixing the boy with an unfriendly stare.
"Or McClellan's tumor, if you like." Oblivious, Dracan stood, stretched, and began to pace, the nervous energy vibrating from him clearly. "We can summon spirits…create and destroy matter…form portals between far-distant destinations…compel another to do our bidding—that one you know well, Jack—but we cannot heal. Why is this?"
"Faith healing has nothing to do with the Art."
"So it comes from—what? God?" Dracan snorted. "Listening to Crowley, you'd swear that the Art is God. Listening to that dried-up old stick, Michaels, you'd hear that healing is the will of God alone. But couldn't you say the same about making a portal or summoning an elemental?"
"My spine was not the will of God," Jack noted. The point was well-taken, he admitted, but it still stung. Despite all his power in the Art, he would never walk. And Jack was already one of the strongest, barely below Master Crowley in ability and skill. "It was the will of a drunken quack who told my mother that he was an obstetrician. Yet, still, my legs do not move. Faith healing is something separate from what we do…a separate gift, and a very rare one in any degree of strength."
"Yes, but why?" Dracan continued, not swayed by the dangerous tone of Jack's voice. The boy was most definitely not skilled with people, a fact which had landed him—despite the talents of his "parlor tricks" act—in progressively less prestigious and smaller shows. "The Art is limitless, ultimate, shaped only by the skill and power of the magician. At least that's what I've been taught." A grudgingly mollifying nod to Jack, the tutor in question. "So, we cannot heal. We cannot kill, not directly—"
"And we do not want to," Jack cut in quickly. "Remember that, Dracan. You walk on thin ice."
He waved away the warning with an irritated gesture. "This is speculation. I have no desire to kill anyone. I just want to know why the Art is so limited in some respects."
"And connections between the stars help this…quest for knowledge somehow?" Abruptly, a picture formed in Jack's mind. The shape made by those lines was proof enough. "You're attempting to use the pentagram in direct magic," he stated, not even bothering to phrase it as a question.
Dracan glanced curiously at his somber face, eyes bright. "Just think of the power implicit within—"
"It won't work. Others have tried—Masters have tried. You know better than to tamper with forces that you do not understand, Dracan. You have been studying for less than two years. It will take far more time to master the intricacies of the established ways of the Art. You need to understand the fundamentals before you begin your own research. The Art is…not kind to those who misjudge its laws." Paraseius, one member of the old Brotherhood, had simply vanished, completely immolated, by a portal spell attempting to cross dimensions—a well-known impossibility which the old man had been researching.
Dracan grimaced at the unexpected lecture. "I still have a mind, Jack, regardless of how few years I have studied." He gestured with the notebook. "I think it lies in the stars, you see. If the stars are in the right formation, the ambiance"—the term generally referred to the environmental influences that strengthened or weakened the Art's power at any given time—"is so conductive that the strongest magic may become controllable. Is it any coincidence that this very probable strongest formation is in the shape of a pentagram?"
Jack studied the eager, boyish face, with its wide eyes and indifferent stubble of beard, narrow-eyed for a long moment before discipline broke in favor of scientific curiosity. "Show me."