“If speech would be had by the folk of Earth with those that dwell not here, and spell be sought that shall compel their answer, it is in this book,” said the Master.
Then began the teaching of heathen script, with its dots and curious flourishes, the pronouncing of alien vowels, and strange intonations; and all that labour that thoughts must undergo to bring up wisdom out of a former age, which is no lighter than the toil of the miners who dig up bygone forests from out of the past of the Earth. And all the time that Ramon Alonzo learned, his attention was fixed upon the approach of that hour when the magician would leave his room that was sacred to magic and sail away a dark shape down the corridor, and he should have leisure at last to attend to his soul’s salvation. And that hour came so slowly that in one of those lingering moments the fear came to Ramon Alonzo that time was done and eternity was begun and his doom was to learn heathen spells in the gloom forever and ever, while the blessed sat in the sunlight singing in Spanish. And this fear passed, giving way to one more terrible, that told him far worse awaited him than this, unless he could rescue his shadow from the doom it must share with his soul.
The hour came at last when, with an earnest reminder of the way of a heathen vowel, the magician arose and went bat-like out of the room. For many moments Ramon Alonzo sat motionless, listening to fading echoes from the feet of that master of shadows; then he was down by the shadow-box eagerly uttering a spell. Not a flicker made the padlock. Rapidly he uttered another, and then another, and with a kind of singsong intoned spell after spell in the gloom and dust of the floor, bending above the shadow-box. The first syllable was always Ting, which he knew to be right; the last was always Ab, which was only an assumption that he meant to vary slowly through weary years; the second syllable he changed every time. The thought of the years that he should spend in that room murmuring spells to the box did not appal him, for he knew that the relation of all time to eternity is as a drop to the sea: he only feared that those years might be too few. Close to him lay the box that held the magician’s weapon, the old flash of lightning. It had neither padlock nor keyhole and, when he tried to raise the lid, it seemed to be shut forever: by what magic it opened he knew not. He rightly reflected that the magician, having gone from the room without it, had other and probably more terrible weapons. He turned again to his monotonous work.
Towards evening the magician came back again; and Ramon Alonzo ceased his lonely mutterings, and soon was learning again old Persian lore, for the plan was growing in the Master’s mind to make of him a magician. Had he studied with such a master, patiently following that lore whose splendours have made many forget salvation, he could have had a name that would have resounded through Wizardry, and hereafter have had great honour among the damned. Of this honour the magician had spoken once, when Ramon Alonzo had wonderingly enquired of the present state of that illustrious professor who had held the Chair of Magic at Saragossa. “He walks through Hell,” said the magician, “flaming, an object of awe and reverent veneration, while all abase themselves as he goes by, their faces low in the cinders. He is, as many have told me, an apparition of glory, and amongst the first of all the splendours of Hell.”
From such a fame Ramon Alonzo now wilfully turned away. Such choices have often to be made.
Whenever the Master blamed his inattention he apologized gracefully and pretended diligence, but his heart was far from Persia, and never a spell he learned that would have hailed passing spirits and given him news unbiased by the narrower views of Earth. And thus he lost what he lost, and gained what he gained.
And at last night came and the magician left him; and, rising as though he too would go, he tarried in the room and joyfully looked to have the long night alone with his work. He had no light but the gleam of a sickle moon, for he did not dare to burn the magician’s taper, lest its shortening should show how late he had been at work; and the young moon soon sank: he had forgotten food and even water, and sleep seemed unnecessary and impossible to him. He needed no light except to watch the padlock; and for this purpose he laid a finger upon it all night long, to feel if it moved for any spell that he said. Owls going afield for their nocturnal hunt saw Ramon Alonzo bent over the box, and saw him again as they returned in the chill: bands of moths to whose glowing eyes the night is luminous saw his shape in the corner, and with other hours of the night came other moths of wholly different tribes; they saw the same shape there: mice that at first were terrified at the sound of the human voice grew used to its long monotony, and ran all round the motionless crouching figure: stars that he knew not saw him kneeling there.
And then, as a greyness paled the night and made all hopes seem groundless and his long labour absurd, there came a sudden quiver into the padlock just as he uttered a spell; he felt it vibrating his fingertips. He had said thousands of spells that night, and for
