“Now you’ll notice, my lads,” said the journeyman sorcerer, “that the balls aren’t in their proper holes; the colors don’t match. The object of the game is to put ’em right, you see. The rule is that you move one ball at a time, like this:” He aimed the wand at the board, which was several feet away, and one of the balls floated smoothly up and across, to drop into the extra hole. Then another moved into the vacated hole to match colors. The process was repeated until all the balls were in the proper holes. “You see? Now, I’ll just mix these balls up again and let you try it, lad. Just point the white tip of the wand and think of which color ball you want to come up; then, when it’s in the air, think of the color hole you want it to go to. There, now. That’s it—”

It was more than just a toy, Lord Darcy knew; it was a testing and teaching device. With the spell it now had on it, anyone could do the trick; but the spell was timed to fade slowly over a period of a few months. By that time, most children were thoroughly tired of it, anyway. But if a rare child with the Talent got hold of one, his interest usually did not wane. Furthermore, he began to get the feel of the spell itself, aided by the simple ritual and ceremony of the game. If that happened, the child would still be able to do the trick a year later, though none of his un-Talented friends would. The original spell had worn off and had been replaced by the child’s own simple version. A booklet went with the game which explained all that to the parents, urging them to have the child given further tests if he succeeded in preserving the activity of the toy.

At another booth, a priest in clerical black with white lace at collar and cuffs was distributing booklets describing the new building being erected at Oxford to house the Royal Thaumaturgical Laboratories at Edward’s College. The display was a scale model of the proposed structure.

Directly in their path, the two men saw what looked like an ordinary door frame. An illusion sign floated in its center, translucent blue letters that said: please step through.

As they did, the illusion sign vanished and they could feel what seemed to be a slight wind tugging at their clothing. On the other side, another illusion sign appeared.

“Quite a gadget,” said Lord Bontriomphe. “Look; even our boots are shiny,” he added as they walked through the second sign and it dissolved around them.

“Useful,” Lord Darcy agreed, “but quite impracticable. Sean told me they had it at the last Convention. It makes a good advertisement for the company, but that ’no home will be without one’ is visionary. Far too expensive, since the spell has to be renewed by a Master Sorcerer at least once a week. With this mob in here, they’ll be lucky if they get through the day with it.”

“Hm-m-m. Like that ‘See London From the Air’ device they had a few years back,” said Bontriomphe. “Remember that?”

“I read something about it. I don’t recall the details,” Lord Darcy said.

“It looked quite impressive. They had a crystal ball about” — he held his hands in front of him as though he were grasping an imaginary sphere — “oh, ten inches in diameter, I guess. It was mounted on a pedestal, and you looked into it from above. It gave you the weird feeling that you were looking down from a great height, from a point just above Admiral Buckingham Hall, where the exhibit was. You could actually see people walking about, and carriages moving through the streets, as though you were up in a cathedral spire looking down. There was a magic mirror suspended a couple of hundred feet above the building, you see, which projected the scene into the crystal by psychic reflection.”

“Ah, I see. Whatever happened to it? I’ve heard no more about it,” Lord Darcy said.

“Well, right off the bat, the War Office was interested. You can imagine what sort of reconnaissance you’d have, with a magic mirror floating high over enemy lines and an observer safe behind your own lines watching everything they were doing. Anyway, the War Office thaumaturgists are still working on it, but it hasn’t come to anything. In the first place, it takes three Masters to run it: One to levitate the mirror, one to keep the mirror activated, and one to keep the receiving crystal activated. And they have to be specially trained for the job and then train together as a team. In the second place, the sorcerers controlling the mirror have to be within sight of the mirror, and the plane of the surface has to be perpendicular to a radius of the crystal ball. Don’t ask me why; I’m no sorcerer and I don’t know a thing about the theory. At any rate, the thing hasn’t been made practical for long distance transmission of images yet.”

They left the lobby and started upstairs toward the late Sir James Zwinge’s room.

“So far,” said Lord Darcy, “aside from such things as the semaphore and the heliotelegraph — both of which require line-of-sight towers for transmission — the only practical means of long distance communication we have is the teleson. And the mathematical thaumaturgists still have not come up with a satisfactory theory to explain its functioning. Ah! I see that your Armsmen are on duty.” They had reached the top of the stairway. Down the hall, directly in front of the door to the murder room were two black-clad Armsmen of the King’s Peace.

“Good morning, Jeffers, Dubois,” said Lord Bontriomphe as he and Lord Darcy approached the door.

The Armsmen saluted. “Good morning, my lord,” said the older of the two.

“Everything all right? No disturbances?”

“None, my lord. Quiet as a tomb.”

“Jeffers, ” said Lord Bontriomphe with a smile, “with a wit like that, you will either rise rapidly to Master-at-Arms or you will remain a foot patrolman all your life.”

“My ambition is modest, my lord,” said Jeffers with a straight face. “I only wish to become a Sergeant-at-Arms. For that, I need only to be a half-wit.”

“Foot patrolman,” Lord Darcy said sadly. “Forever.” He looked at the door to the murder room. “I see they have covered the hole in the door.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Jeffers. “They just tacked this panel over the hole. Otherwise, the door’s untouched. Would you be wanting to look in, my lords?” He took a large, thick, heavy brass key from the pouch at his belt. “This is Sir James’ key,” he said. “You can open the door, but Grand Master Sir Lyon has put a spell on the room itself, my lords.”

Lord Darcy took the key, fitted it into the long, narrow keyhole, turned the bolt, and opened the door. He and Lord Bontriomphe stopped at the threshold.

There was no tangible barrier at the door. There was nothing they could see or touch. But the barrier was almost palpably there, nonetheless. Lord Darcy found that he had no desire to enter the room at all. Quite the contrary; he felt a distinct aversion to the room, a sense of wanting to avoid, at all costs, going into that room for any reason whatever. There was nothing in that room that interested him, no reason at all why he should enter it. It was taboo — a forbidden place. To look from without was both necessary and desirable; to enter was neither necessary nor desirable.

Lord Darcy surveyed the room with his eyes.

Master Sir James Zwinge still lay where he had fallen, looking as though he had died only minutes before, thanks to the preservative spell which had been cast over the corpse.

Footsteps came down the hall. Lord Darcy turned to see Master Sean approaching.

“Sorry to be so long, my lord,” said the sorcerer as he neared the door. He stopped at the threshold. “Now what have we here? Hm-m-m. An aversion spell, eh? Hm-m-m. And cast by a Master, too, I’ll be bound. It would take quite a time to solve that one.” He stood looking through the door.