Page 6 of Unexpected Magic

Nonetheless, Pontefract House was at least the match of what Jasper had seen during his decade as the duke’s heir presumptive, and exceeded most of them. Captain Harewood, however, looked completely stunned.

“This is your room, Mr. Thornton,” said the butler, opening a door. “Yours is next door, Captain Harewood. The footmen will have brought up your luggage, and will be waiting to assist you.”

Jasper took time for a quick wash, and to don a complete change of linen and formal dinner wear before knocking on the door of the captain’s room. The pair of them went downstairs to meet the duke.

“Thornton, I assume,” said the duke, as soon as Jasper stepped into the study. “Glad you’re here. Captain Harewood, if you just step through that side door, my secretary will introduce you to those here tonight for dinner.”

Having neatly disposed of Jasper’s escort, the duke waved Jasper to a chair. “Sit, sit. You need to know the situation at Nettleford as soon as possible. You’ll have been told that, about a month ago, their prize mare dropped a unicorn? And that the place has been a hotbed of magical births and gift manifestations ever since?”

“I was told ‘an improbable number’, your grace,” said Jasper.

“Damned improbable, my boy,” grumbled the duke. He took a sip from the glass on his desk. Brandy, by the color. Jasper could do with one, but the duke didn’t offer. “Damned improbable,” he repeated. “If I told you two or three incidents a day, all within five miles of the manor?”

“That is more than improbable,” Jasper said. “I would have said impossible, your grace, except that you say it is happening.”

“Itishappening, my boy. That is certain. You shall meet some of the evidence before you leave here tomorrow morning. You know about the unicorn, of course. And there’s much more. To take just one type of event, we’ve had five dragons, most from chickens but one from a goose egg. All from one village in one month. That is more than the score for the entire county in a decade. My scholars say it is way beyond being a statistical anomaly. There is only one possibility. We have a catalyst.”

What, in the name of Blessed King Arthur the Gentle, is a catalyst?He must have looked as bewildered as he thought, for the duke took pity and explained. “You have not heard of a catalyst, lad? I am not surprised. Catalysism is the rarest of all magical gifts, and England—nay, Europe—has not had one with the apparent strength of this person since the Lady Niniane.”

“A catalyst,” Jasper mused. “The gift of catalyzing magic in others?”

“Yes, exactly.” The duke beamed as if Jasper were a favorite pupil who had answered a difficult conundrum in the classroom. “A catalyst affects the magical potential, causing a higher number of magical births, more unusual magical births, and magic gifts manifesting more often, earlier, and more strongly than expected. We have all of that—in impossible numbers—in a single village and the surrounding countryside. So, a catalyst.”

The duke sat back, clearly waiting for a comment.

Jasper did not know what to say. “Ah. That would be a good thing, would it?”

The duke frowned. “So one might think. Balance, my boy. It is all about balance.” He brushed off whatever black mood had seized him to smile again. This time, for some reason, Jasper was reminded of the crocodile in the picture book that had terrified him as a child—it had been full of cautionary tales for badly-behaved children, and the beast in one of the images hadworn just such a smile before it had eaten the naughty child who would not obey its nanny.

“Have you—um—identifiedthis catalyst, your grace?” Jasper ventured to ask.

“That, young Thornton, shall be your task. Identify the catalyst, and the problem shall be solved. Then, you can scoop up the unicorn and its virgin, who is also caring for the snake girl—did I mention the snake girl? And toddle off back to London with them. You can take the minotaur back with you, too—we have a wet nurse for the minotaur, since its mother has rejected it, and who could blame the poor woman.”

“Excuse me, sir. Snake girl? Minotaur? There are other magical creatures?”

“Of course, Thornton. Haven’t you been listening? We have a catalyst. Of course we’ve got magical creatures. Lots of them, but you’ll only be expected to take charge of the rarest. Your London College of Mages will want to see them, you know.”

Jasper cast a longing glance at the brandy decanter on the duke’s desk, and his hand twitched. It would be the height of bad manners to simply help himself. He nearly did it anyway.

“Er… How old are you, my boy?” The duke narrowed his eyes under fearsome bushy eyebrows.

What kind of a question was that? Did the duke doubt his ability to get the job done? Though how did one identify a catalyst, anyway? Presumably the catalyst had no idea that all of this was happening because of him or her, or the duke would know already. And what potentially deadly, monstrous, magical creatures were going to become his burden before he managed to get back to London? “I have passed my twenty-fifth birthday, your grace.” He gave the brandy decanter another yearning look.Good King Arthur. This was beyond belief.

“Hah! I would not have guessed it. Have a brandy, then. Smuggled, of course, but”—he shrugged—“we’re not eight miles from the coast, here.”

Jasper accepted, gratefully. Retaining a youthful appearance was a side effect of his unusual gift, his tutors thought. For the past eight years they’d been assuring him that one day he’d be grateful to look younger than he was, but so far, it hadn’t happened.

Keeping his sigh to himself, Jasper sipped his brandy, and listened to the duke describing some of the other magical events of the past month. Collecting the magical beasts and their attendants seemed simple enough, but he had no idea how he was going to figure out the identity of the catalyst, or even where to start.

*

Nettleford Grange

Something had gonewrong with the entire neighborhood. Or right, perhaps. After all, according to the Church, magical creatures and gifts were blessings. Especially when animals who had no known magical creatures in their bloodlines suddenly threw one or more magical young and humans whom everyone could have sworn had not a drop of magic in their veins suddenly manifested a strong gift. The count of both combined was somewhere in the fifties—more than a third of them at the manor or within its grounds. So many blessings in just a few short weeks felt more like a curse!

Some people said it was coincidence, while others muttered about evil spells. Either way, Delia had no time to think about it. She was too busy dealing with the consequences, though why itwas her and not some other member of the household, her father had not deigned to explain.

As well as the unicorn, which had refused its mother and was being hand reared, she had been given charge of a lindwurm—a girl baby with the head, shoulders and arms of a human child and the lower body of a snake. The poor little girl had been rapidly handed over to Delia as soon as she was born, for her parents wanted nothing to do with her.