I believe it is time to persuade him to go away. With a whispered word, he caused the lamps on his desk to flare, so that he was no longer hidden in the shadows of his chair.
Du Mond started, and broke off in the middle of his sentence. A second later, he looked completely composed, but Cameron had seen the fear igniting his eyes for a moment before his mask came down. 'I still have some letters to write for you,' du Mond said, his voice trembling ever-so-slightly, although his expression remained bland. 'If that is all, I trust you will excuse me?'
Cameron nodded a gracious dismissal, and du Mond took himself out. Did he know, did he guess, that Cameron had Salamanders watching every move he made so long as he was on the grounds? Did he know that every mirror in the house was a pair of eyes for the Master?
Did it matter if he did?
I am bordering on hubris. Time to remind myself of what that particular vice can bring.
He stood up and turned towards the wall, reached out a misshapen, hairy paw, and pulled the red-velvet drapery away from the mirror behind his desk, staring unflinchingly into the yellow eyes of his reflection.
Into the face of the beast.
Hubris was what had gotten him here, what had led him to attempt a Magick that was no part of a Firemaster's Disciplines. Hubris left him with paws instead of hands, the mask of a lupine-human hybrid instead of his own face-and beneath the elegant clothing, a half-human body with a garnishing of heavy grey pelt, powerful shoulders, and the indignity of a tail. He stared into his own reflection until his stomach turned, and he let the drapery fall again.
What he had attempted, if it came within any Master's purview, would be in the realm of the Earthmaster. But no Earthmaster would ever have defied Nature the way he had, in his pride and over-confidence, to warp and twist Nature herself with the most blasphemous spell in all of the grimoires of the medieval magicians of ancient France. If an Earthmaster wished to experience the sensation of being a wolf, he would have sent his spirit to share the body of a real wolf; he would never have tried to shape his own body into the form of a gigantic, man-sized wolf.
But Jason was proud of his power, certain of his ability, and had foolishly attempted the old French spell of the lycanthrope, the loup-garou.
There were two kinds of werewolves-those who were cursed to change with the moon, and those who could change at will. Jason was hardly likely to endure the first, but the second tempted him.
The spell called for-among other things-a belt made of the skin of a wolf, and Jason had trapped that wolf himself, just as he had gathered the other ingredients personally. There could be no question of their authenticity or purity. He had performed the spell as required-stark naked except for the belt and he certainly had plenty of experience in correctly following spells.
But something went terribly awry.
He lowered himself carefully down into his chair; his joints did not work quite the same, and his balance was all wrong. Perhaps he would get used to this-
No! he told himself fiercely. I will not get used to this form! I will regain my proper face and body! I will not permit myself to think otherwise!
But the ghost of the pain of that night thrilled over his nerves as he sat. He had never felt pain so intense in all of his life, as his flesh writhed, melted, reformed-he had endured the pain of molten lava to earn his title of Firemaster, but this was worse agony even than that moment.
He had collapsed, half-conscious, on the floor of his workroom.
He had awakened to find himself, not in the form of a four-legged creature, but in this half-and-half hybrid. And he could not take the belt off to break the spell, because the belt had merged into his own body.
Paul du Mond had found him; Paul was the only human to know his true condition. Cameron had sent his human servants away once he regained his senses and replaced them with Elemental servants; had instructed his underlings to send all business to the house so that he need no longer go into the city. Rosalind was the only person he had told the spurious tale of an accident to-he had not wanted even a hint of his difficulty to reach his enemy.
Nothing he had tried when he awoke or since had broken him free, and he had exhausted his memory of anything even remotely related to the spell. He needed to do research.
And he couldn't even hold his own books, much less turn the pages. His eyes wouldn't focus properly; he had trouble reading even large print, much less the crabbed scrawls of many of the handwritten volumes.
But now he had Rosalind Hawkins to be his eyes and hands-and in fact, to translate those manuscripts he himself would have had difficulty reading. Now he could find a solution.
