That ray of reason that shone at last on his plans came from that remark of the charwoman that she made in her feeble efforts to bring him comfort: “it might be Tong or Tang.” Some time between dawn and midnight these words had come back to him in all their absurdity. Of the myriad sounds that might form a syllable in an utterly unknown tongue how would it be possible thus lightly to guess the right one? “Tong or Tang”: the suggestion was ludicrous. And it could not be Tong or Tang in any case, for the second syllable of the spell was far too unlike the first for the difference to be in no more than the change of a vowel. What might it be? He had much of the night before him, with all its wide spaces for fears and lost hopes to roam in: he had ample leisure in which to wonder what was the second syllable. But not until light began to creep through the wood did he order his wonder and guesses into a plan.
His plan was this: the number of possible syllables was limited; he knew the first syllable, he would suppose the last to be ab, and he would say the spell over and over again to the shadow-box varying only the second syllable. When every possible sound had been tried for that he would change the last syllable to bab, and try again. Then to bac, then bad, then baf; and, every time that he changed the last syllable, going through all the sounds that could possibly form the second. He would work through all the hours of day and night in which the magician was away from his room. And one day years hence he would hit on the three syllables and see the shadow-box open before he died. He calculated it might take forty years.
That he would hold on to the end, crouching upon the gloomy floor murmuring three syllables to the padlock, he did not doubt. Sooner or later a man might have stopped, saying, “Is it worth it?” if the box had held the whole wealth of the Indies; but Ramon Alonzo would work for his soul’s salvation. And all the while he remembered the knightly quest to which he had pledged his chivalry. Morning shone wide on the wood and he fell asleep.
When Ramon Alonzo woke his plan was as clear in his mind as though he had pondered it further during his sleep. It was then late in the morning. He went to the charwoman, following the sound of her pail, and putting aside the old woman’s efforts to comfort him obtained from her carefully the hours at which the magician left his room, the result of all her experience. Often before he had discussed plans and hopes with her, but not now, for he based upon this plan all the hope that he had in time or eternity, and would discuss it with none. Thence he went straight to the room that was sacred to magic, and offered his sword, hilt foremost, to the magician. The magician bade him keep it; for, whatever terrors vexed him from beyond the path of the comet, he had no fear of any earthly sword. Neither man desired to continue their quarrel, the youth because he saw that his folly already had brought his soul to the very brink of Hell, and he regretted his haste; the magician because his need of a pupil, upon whom to unburden himself of some of the wisdom he had carried alone down the ages, was a greater need than Ramon Alonzo knew. So that the tensity between them passed; and the magician turned his mind to the obligation, that is laid upon all magicians, of handing on to a pupil the lore that has come to them from the Dread Masters; for so the magicians of old are known by all that follow the Art: thus is there magic even to this day. Ramon Alonzo meanwhile was only planning and waiting to rob the box within which the magician enslaved his shadows. He knew not when the day would come on which he would rob the box: it might be years hence; he might be grey when he did it: but all his fervour and patience were centred on this. His scheme may seem little better than the Black Art; but he had been taught from childhood that such crafty ways were justified in cases that touched the safety of the soul, nor did he hold that the Master had earned his fee. His whole attention lost in the plans he was making, arranging in countless formulae a legion of possible syllables, he scarcely heard the suave voice of the Master speaking across the gloom to him.
“What learning would you have of me?”
Back came his thoughts from a far imagined year, in which with a sudden spell that was right at last he should free his shadow from that eternal doom that ownerless shadows share with the souls of those who were once their masters; back came his thoughts as alert as though they had wandered never an hour away from that very morning.
“I would learn the making of some more durable thing,” said Ramon Alonzo, “than gold.”
And the Master smiled thereat, as Ramon Alonzo had hoped.
“We shall therefore study,” the Master said, “the making of Persian spells, which, more than any other inscription of magic, charm spirits whose courses are not within this sphere; and thus they shall be remembered after Earth.”
He rose and placed upon the lectern a
