A Scholar of Magics Read Online Free Page A

that time about any deviation from his usual routine, nor had he left any message for Lambert.
    Lambert didn’t permit himself to waste any time speculating about Fell’s whereabouts. The man didn’t need a nanny, after all, nor did he owe Lambert any explanation of his actions. Fell’s scholarship—or to be exact, Fell’s idiosyncratic notion of scholarship—drove him. That was explanation enough.
    Lambert changed from flannels into a linen suit several degrees less impressive than the one he’d put on for tea with Amy. It was that much more comfortable and Lambert moved with ease as he took a circuitous path away from Holythorn. His route led Lambert behind the Holythorn kitchens, between the kitchen garden and the walled garden of St. Joseph’s deanery, toward Pembroke gate, to the east side of Glasscastle, to the far side of the university from the Brailsford house.
    There, in the shadow of Wearyall’s cloister garden walls, Lambert sat on a stone bench and listened. The sound of chanting voices was clear and pure. There were more voices during the regular school year than there were now, so the volume was not as loud as it had been the first time Lambert came there. But the power in those voices had nothing to do with the volume. Many voices sang as one, intoning the pure tones of the chants. That was the source of the beauty, to Lambert. That such disparate young men could each bend his will to serve Glasscastle, that the individual could surrender himself for the good of the whole, that many could become one.

    Lambert yielded to impulse and stretched out full length on the stone bench. He balanced his hat on his stomach and gazed up into the shimmer of leaves overhead. The wind in the trees blended with the chanting. Lambert stared upward. Beyond the leaves, the sky was raked with small scudding clouds. Yes, there was bad weather brewing out there somewhere, with more rain to come. Rainiest summer for years, folks said.
    It had been raining when he first visited this spot. Lambert had arrived at Glasscastle in February. The grass had been just as green then, but the trees were bare and most of the flowers yellow, forsythia and daffodils within Glasscastle, gorse on the hillsides. The damp cold had sliced through Lambert’s clothes courtesy of a wind that seemed never to ease or shift direction more than a degree or two from true north. It had been chilblain weather.
    Lambert’s arrival at Glasscastle had been in full cowboy regalia. He’d assumed that the men from Glasscastle, stern in their shiny top hats, meant to hire a cowboy sharpshooter, so he’d prepared accordingly. He’d worn his show costume, and he’d brought along the Colt Peacemaker, his most reliable weapon. The effect was all he’d planned. Heads had turned every step of the way, some with a nearly audible snap. It wasn’t until he was inside the precincts of Glasscastle that he understood how he’d miscalculated. The Fellows of Glasscastle didn’t want a cowboy, they just wanted a sharpshooter.
    Lambert considered himself an entertainer, thanks to his time with Kiowa Bob. He had never meant to give anyone as much entertainment as he did that day at Glasscastle. It
could have been worse. His shooting was up to standard. But the intense amusement his costume inspired was more than Lambert had bargained for. On top of that, Lambert had to strain to keep his embarrassment from showing. That had never been a problem before, even back in his earliest days with the Wild West Show. Lambert told himself to perk up. It didn’t help much.
    Luncheon, when they got around to serving it, made up for some of the social discomfort. After the meal, the Senior Fellows, the men in the shiniest top hats of all, took Lambert around the grounds of Glasscastle, and that was where Lambert understood the magnitude of his error. He’d been standing just here beside the bench, watching the