was moving away down the plushly carpeted corridor), I put my back to the door, and turned accusingly to Quentin.
'You hypnotized them, didn't you? Captain Warwick and the others? The bursar.'
Quentin, Victor, and Vanity had finished their initial inspections of the suite. Vanity had ooh'd and ahh'd over the luxury, hopping and clapping her hands, while Victor had probed the walls with rays, looking for electronic bugs. Now they were all seated in an impromptu picnic in the middle of the carpet, pulling open the savory packages Miguel had brought us from the galley. There was food of a kind I had not seen before, with meat or fish salad rolled up into a flat unleavened bread. At least, I think it was bread.
Vanity had already dropped crumbs on the carpet, crumbs someone else (not us!) was going to clean up.
Victor was inspecting a bottle of soda pop, a brand he had not seen before, something with an Italian label in a green glass bottle.
Quentin was also seated cross-legged on the carpet. He carefully brought his hands out from beneath his voluminous cloak, and twisted them in midair. One moment, his hands were empty; the next, he had the ring of Gyges in one hand and an exasperated-looking eagle in the other. The eagle was no longer seeping any blood. As far as I could tell from a one-glance inspection, he seemed entirely recovered from wounds which should have killed him nine times over.
The eagle hopped from Quentin's hands and drove his beak into a sandwich, which was lying on a napkin on the floor.
Quentin looked up. 'It wasn't me. I don't have that art. I think chapter seven might tell me about the vapors and humors affecting the intellectual and passionate psyches, but even that would only influence moods, not control minds.'
I said, 'Well, someone did something. Why wouldn't they just radio for a coast guard or something? Or call back to England and tell Boggin?'
Vanity said, 'There are a lot of people in England. I don't think they all know each other's names yet.
Maybe after Christmas. Hey! Try these potato things. They have some sort of spicy stuff baked into them.'
Quentin said, 'We did pay a great deal of money for a cabin that otherwise he had not rented out for this crossing. Besides, isn't it a law of the sea that one must rescue stranded blondes and redheads?'
Vanity said, 'They would have been quicker to pick us up if Amelia and I had been in bathing suits, like I suggested.'
I sat down and tried the potato things. They really were quite good.
Victor said, 'I did it. I used a cryptognostic technique on the captain. Every time his nervous tension levels started to trigger a glandular reaction, I interrupted the stimulus cycle in his hypothalamus.
Whenever one of us spoke, or he looked closely at us, I lightly stimulated the pleasure center of the brain. I did not have long enough to establish a true operant conditioning cycle, but apparently it was enough to influence his judgment in our favor.'
I was upset by this news. 'That's terrible! You can't go around tinkering with people's inner thoughts that way! What makes you any different than Corus, the brain-eraser? Or Dr. Fell?!'
Victor said in a dismissive tone, 'The process would not affect the judgment of people who did not make decisions on an emotional basis.'
I said hotly, 'I think we need to discuss how we are going to use our powers, and whether normal people should be off-limits!'
'Fine,' said Victor, taking a bite of the wrapped-up food roll-thing. (Maybe it was a Mexican food?) He chewed and swallowed, and said, 'Let us add it to the agenda right after point five, which I believe is tabled until we restore Colin. Restoring Colin is the topic that has the floor at the moment. Any theories as to why Quentin's true-shape charm is not working? Amelia… ? Anyone… ?'
Vanity said, 'Colin is not a witch flying on a rafter. Don't look at me like that! That was in the poem he said.'
Quentin said, half to himself, 'That little poem' is the words of the High One.'
'Besides, the little poem Quentin said is meant to
Quentin just sighed, and said to Victor, 'I am sure that someone versed in the true science could restore Colin swiftly. I am an apprentice without a master, working from a book.'
Victor said, 'Do you have anything else you could try?'
Quentin sighed, and looked at the cabin ceiling for a moment. 'I could ask Marbas, who is a great president, and governs thirty-six legions of spirits, and who also can change men into other shapes—but that demonstration would require that I accomplish the figure of memory first, which I can only do on the new moon…
'There are a number of basic steps, amulets, and phylacteries I should have been using since long ago, and certain consecrations I ought to do before attempting anything more. Like you, I don't have some basic tools my book talks about. I've been using a butter knife for my athame. I do not have any sort of athanor or any way to make one. It is all going to take time I do not think we have.
'And if I did something wrong, as Vanity says I did, I might have trapped Colin in that shape by mistake.'
Vanity said, 'You said chapter two had the bestiary in it.'
'It was chapter three. Chapter two is the celestial hierarchy…'
'Whatever! You know the true names of the lord of eagles, and the true name of Colin, so why can't you just zap him?'
'Well, watch…' Quentin put out his hand. We had not yet unpacked, so all the Paris clothes boxes and scuba gear and stuff was simply lying piled on the divan. The white birch wand jumped across the room from the pile into Quentin's hand.
