Spellbook

A spell to separate body and soul

I had this spell off Alexander Cotterell, the Leige-Lord's magician. Despite Cotterell’s (numerous) failings, (the vapidity of the man makes my teeth ache) it is a respectable spell and does work, provided you are precise. It has its dangers however, which are perhaps best illustrated if I tell how I came by the spell — without Cotterell’s knowledge.

When I arrived at his gate, the servants – despite his wealth Cotterell keeps only two – were arguing among the rhubarb at the bottom of the garden and did not notice me. Cotterell – naturally! – affects to keep a lioness there in a drift-wood hutch. The beast was ill and the servants were arguing over who should investigate her symptoms. The discussion was sufficiently heated that I was able to enter the house unobserved.

Cotterell was not in any of the rooms on the ground floor. I found him at last in a chamber on the second floor with a fine view of Morganstown Bay and the distant coast of our enemy. He was dead.

He lay discarded, naked on the bed with his head thrown back and his famously mask-like face slack – as a mask never is. There was a
bloody scratch through the thickets of his chest hair. The afternoon breeze swept dirty curtain hems over the corpse’s stringy white feet.

I sat down beside him with a groan of despair. I had made the journey to Morganstown to visit Cotterell in disguise and what's more in women's clothes, which is unusal for me. The whole business was tiresome and tiring. And to find him dead – I had expected humiliation not this outright negation of my only hope.

Something stirred behind me. I looked over my shoulder, over the curdled bedclothes and the corpse. I saw bare boards, walls, and a birdcage two feet from the bed. A thick green cloth covered it.

Something clicked and fluttered there, hidden. A claw sang against a wire.

I left the corpse, circumnavigated the bed. Between bed and cage a rope lay coiled, its end burst into a fray. And a knife, toothache sharp quivered on its point.

Under the cloth, something whistled.

I knelt and lifted the hem by its tassells.

The cloth slithered off the bars. A siren, coiled on its scaly tail, filled the cage as poison fills a bottle. Its vicious, young girl’s face rested on its babyish, razor-clawed hands. It smiled redly at me and opened its lips.

The siren's song hit me with the force of a kiln’s heat. Stronger than lust, stronger than hate, stronger than the need for life that keeps a man fighting as he drowns, desire struck hard, knocked me down.

It was by luck more than skill that I managed to throw my cloak over the cage. Instantly the song ceased. Like a bird, the siren would not sing in the dark. I lay panting, shivering with fright at the thought of the fate that had so nearly consumed me. Sirens tear the souls from living bodies with those incredible, razoring voices.

I slipped free of my cloak and, with trembling hands, made sure that it would not slip free of the cage. I did not trust my luck a second time.

Cotterell must have succumbed to the creature. And yet - that made no sense. I stared at the body, the slash across the chest, the cut rope. I followed the line of it with my eye, then glanced up at the ceiling. An iron ring had been set in the plaster above the bed.

I had it then. The full nature of the spell clicked into place and I smiled. That is always a satisfying feeling. Cotterell had placed the siren by his bed in a cage covered by a cloth attached to a rope. The rope ran up to the ring in the ceiling then to the foot of Cotterell's bed. The magician lay on the sheets and pulled on the rope, lifting the cloth from the coiled monster it hid. At once the siren would sing, calling forth the magician's soul, sucking it out of his body.

Slash. The magician's knife, clasped in his free hand would sever the rope at the crucial moment, drop the cover and silence the siren instantly. A knife that sharp would cut more than rope. It would cut the fraying psychic connection and set the soul floating free of its anchor. Free, and in no danger from the siren.

I looked down thoughtfully at Cotterell.

"Where have you gone, then?" I asked him. "What are you about?"

There was no reply from that dead face - and could be none until the soul returned to its harbour. But I did not need to know where it had gone. I had my own ends to achieve. I did not want to send out my soul but a killing machine like a siren was just what I needed. I picked up the cage - it was remarkably light - and carried it out of the house as silently as I could manage. The servants were still screaming at each other in the rhubarbl.

The next time I saw Cotterell - four years later at a ball (returned to the full flush of royal favour at that time) - I asked him to dance and we whirled around the room as if we were ordinary people, perhaps with a chance of a flirtation or love. I wondered if he knew what I knew about him. I wondered if he still wondered what had happened to his siren while he lay in death. We whirled. I never asked.

The silence of another soul is quite deafening when you hold it in your arms.

A spell to control

What do you want to control? It doesn’t matter. The spell is always the same, in essence.

Lem’lehel.

That’s the word. You see, it’s easy. Control is easy, easy. You hardly even need magic to accomplish it in most cases, just a little wiliness and preparation. But lem’lehel is the word that works on everything – on men and women, singly and in mobs, on rambling roses, on flyaway hair, on scattering geese, spilt milk, anything.

The modifier in each case can be a little trickier. Touch is easiest for smaller things – hair, small children etc. Grab the chaos and tame it with a word.

For scattered masses, you must find a way to encompass or fully define what you want to control. The surest adepts use sight, which seems easiest as any fool can look – but when what you’re looking at is too big and flowing to take in wholly or is racing toward you at great speed, it can be hard to focus enough to see all the detail.

Some fools who know the word but haven’t the knack of it will catch their stampeding herd at the last moment and then be trapped forever, gabbling eternally every tiny movement and whorl of hair and angle of horn just to keep the cattle from running them down.
It’s best to use it at a safe distance, where you have time and limited distractions. But it will work for you, I promise. Try it.

I don’t know why it works. It seems absurdly straightforward. Perhaps the world and everything in it always wants to be ordered, to flow in an easy groove, to do without the labour of thought and the agony of indecision and so succumbs readily.

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A spell to bring death

I killed my mother with this spell, so I know it works.

She lived in Ganhas, where it is the custom every midnight to ward off bad luck with a simple ritual (see below, A spell to cast out evil). But age and ill health kept her from rising in the night to protect herself. As a result, bad luck started to grow in her like rust in a bucket. Broken wrists, sprained ankles, specks of soot forever swimming in her eyes, toes that stubbed on pillows and snow; and chairs that were always just a little further back than she expected. Her windows broke in the rain and her coins were always a penny short of what she needed.

Normally it takes years for enough misfortune to gather to become noticeable. I still don’t know why it flocked to her so swiftly.
But within two years it started to reach out to others in her life.

The neighbour who went to market for her, a reliable, thick-waisted lady fell in love with an acrobat. She ran off with him in the dark of the moon, taking all my mother’s money.

Then my brother fell in a landslide and lost the use of his legs.

Her cat littered kittens all born without eyes. Then so did her doctor’s. Then so did her priest’s.

And my career – so blooming, so meteoric – suffered a series of humiliating stalls and I found myself at last posted to grey Ferane, out of favour with the Liege Lord’s new mistress.

The mayor of Theast told my mother to leave: she was a danger to the populous. They gave her a donkey to ride but when she sat on it, the poor beast broke its leg and pitched her into a puddle.

She had become a suffering vortex of ill-luck and her neighbours drove her with catcalls and hissing into the Ganhesi mountains.

The ill-luck abated but didn’t stop. It poured out of the mountains like a cold fog, blighting the country.

Eventually I had to send this spell after her.

It found her in the dark of a cave and crept into her mouth. It takes the tongue and makes of it a light, which glows through the cheeks and makes it hard for the eyes to see and be seen. She would have lived with it for several days, the light falling from her mouth as she ate roots and beetles and the seeds of long grass.

I could have hired someone to kill her with an arrow or an axe but with that level of ill-luck around her the assassin would certainly have struck himself somehow or fallen or been eaten by a wandering bear. Magic was the only certain way.

And, my other reason: she would see the light, she would know that only I could have sent it. That only I cared enough to kill her, to end her pariahship and give her peace.

After I felt the spell tug loose, ended, I made the journey from Ferane in secret, risking the wrath of my Leige Lord and went into the mountains (safe now from rockfall and mountain lynx).

I found her body in a slit of red rock.

Someone had found her already.

There is a flaw in this spell, I should mention, or perhaps I should call it a hitch. It writes in the bone of the slaughtered a curse upon the caster – the killer – that cannot be undone by any magic, by any prayer, by any bargaining or even by death. And whoever owns a piece of that bone owns the curse. And can set it in motion whenever he wills it.

I looked at my mother’s body and saw my death had been cut out of it. I don’t know by whom. I don’t know why. I am sure he has his reasons.

I can never regret what I did for the woman who shaped my life by shaping hers around mine.

But I wait, and wait, for my nemesis to be revealed.

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A spell to bind in love

Ah, love spells. They’re the best.

I used to sell them in a minor way when I was still a regular citizen. I would make two batches: ones that worked and ones that didn’t. They cost the same and I’d make a judgement about which to give depending on the personalities involved. Judging took a whacking great deal more effort than brewing them, and I left off selling them in the end as, with the extra work, they simply weren’t economically viable.
However, I never gave up making them for my own purposes.

I had an argument once with a pupil of mine about love spells. She was outraged by them. They make a slave of the enchanted party, she told me. ‘Of course’, I said, ‘so does any spell. Magic’s all about doing things to people that they probably don’t want done in the long run. Are you sure you’re looking at the right profession?’ As it turned out, she wasn’t. She took up teaching a year or two later and I hear does very well with the children.

Anyway, she went on to argue that a love spell was worse than – to take her ridiculous example – turning a person into a frog, because it affected the ‘very stuff that makes us who we are, our emotions.’ (As if being man-shaped had nothing at all with being human!) I argued that our emotions are affected willy-nilly everyday by everyone we meet – not to mention the weather and what we have for dinner but she said that was sophistry. That really put my back up.

Anyway, she stormed out before I had a chance to explain the real reason for love spells. They are not for using on other people (well, sometimes). They are for using on yourself.

I don’t need to tell you life is hard, you know it already. And for a woman, it’s doubly so. And for a woman like me who’s lived about four or five women’s lifetimes already, quintuply so (or would be).

Consider: through the ages women have often ended up living with men they feared, despised and even hated. Men whose touch gave them the heebie-jeebies. Men who bored them to tears. And yet they depended on them for their lives, their children’s lives, their safety, their prosperity, their liberty, their reputation. Life could be an emotional, sexual, physical, moral ordeal. Pretty unpleasant. Plus if you marry a man for money (or security – whatever) and he turns out to be a financial dud as well as the sexual equivalent of a slug, you’ll die feeling that life has dealt you a very meagre hand indeed.

That has happened to me on a couple of occasions and there is really only one way through it. Love spells. Love isn’t everything but loving and being loved make life so much more possible, and sometimes even pleasant.

And is it unfair on the man that his woman only loves him because she’s dosed herself? Well, I wouldn’t recommend telling him about it but that little lie aside, I’d have to say, No, not at all. It’s positively beneficial.

There is no greater compliment you can pay a man than to love him completely. It switches him on and I don’t mean just sexually. It makes him grow to fit your vision of him. He’ll work harder, believe in himself, achieve more than a man who knows his wife shudders when he touches her.

The men I’ve loved have achieved great things. And I’ve survived what might have ground me down and sapped me of what really makes me me – which isn’t emotions, it’s deeds. A broken woman can’t get much done, she hasn’t enough left of herself to put into anything, doubts herself too much to start. A loved and loving woman, provided she’s not indolent, can achieve even great things than her man.

The other thing that bothers people about self-medicating with love spells is the permanence of the thing. What if you dose yourself in love with someone and he dies? Natural grief is crippling enough; but what about a grief that cannot be soothed by time or a new affection? The answer’s obvious – dose again with a new man. You have to take yourself in a firm hand, of course, because a medicated heart can’t see the need for a new love and would rather dwell in pain. But with practice, and the foresight to pack a vial of the stuff with your widow’s weeds, you can start again as soon as the first fellow is boxed and buried.

I have never been convinced about the virtue of grieving. It wrecks the complexion and saps the will. Best avoid it.

So, the practicalities. It’s all stuff you can find in the hedgerows:

Rosehips, tormentil (blood root, you may know it as), red bartsia (just the leaves), pelletory-o-the-wall and naturally, hemp agrimony. Grate them or shred them and stew with a little sugar. Add vanilla essence to improve the flavour, which tends to be sour.

Once they’re soft, drain (reserving the juice). The juice stains so don’t wear your best frock. Sling the rest. Mix it with animal feed if you are hoping to increase your lifestock. Do NOT give it to anyone human. He or she will almost certainly fall in love with a box of matches or your sugar tongs.

Anyway, take the reserved juice and reduce it with more sugar. Let it get quite thick and then cool.

(You can store the sauce for up to a week but stopper it tightly as it evaporates easily. Left open, it creates a confusing ‘allure’ in the room, which is very embarrassing if you have visitors or pet dogs – though helpful if you run a bordello.)

Whisk up double cream, a spoonful of brandy and two spoonfuls of the sauce. I like to add chopped angelica and roasted hazelnuts. There is no inherent need for spells to taste disgusting, particularly if you are using them on yourself. Serve with a silver spoon.

Delicious.

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A spell to see one's future

Augurs look in the guts – of birds, pigs, men, anything with viscera will do. Personally I have never had the stomach for the slice and slop method, though I hear it yields results to those who know what to look for.

In Ferane, I heard of a different method. Ferane is to the south of Ganhas, a boggy sort of place where they’re always turning up the gleaming mummies of centuries-old sacrificial victims as they cut peat. No one has any idea what god or man they were killed for but the discovery always stirs up interest in the magically minded. A body preserved, a soul committed to a deity: that’s always something of a gateway.

They call them the ‘Sad people out of time’, though that doesn’t capture the echo of ‘poor unlucky bastard’ the original term carries with it: Avank bagae grhaghoa.

The theory, I suppose, is that these sad-bastards-out-of-time have seen and see and will see everything that happens in the world with their sunken bog-stained eyes and see it without the taint of personal interest. If you could get one to talk, he’d tell you everything you wanted to know about yourself – provided you’re a silly enough fool to get the questions right.

But of course the sad-bastards are well and truly dead. Necromancy is, well, hard and think what drama you’d have with a brain that pickled with swamp-juice. So instead the good people of Ferane dry the corpses out, break them into kindling and burn them with a handful of salt.

Sit in the circle of heat around the fire. Close your eyes and listen. You will hear the curlews’ bubbling cries over the water, the reeds’ hiss, the drip and ripple of small creatures moving from one element to another. Then the rustle of the sad-bastard as he sighs in your ear.

Greet him politely. You may question him now. Do not open your eyes, do not ask any personal questions (of him, ― of yourself you can be as intimate as you like as he knows everything about you.) Do not, for the love of God, fall in love with him. That happened once. It ended very badly.

This is of course not strictly necromancy as the sad-bastard is never more than a voice (allegedly – best not to check.)

When the embers cease to pop – it will take a long time – he will leave you. You may not hear him go so be prepared to wait until you are unable to bear not moving any longer.

Hopefully, you will like what he tells you.

I don’t think anyone has studied this practice and tested its efficacy. Those who want to know their future tend to be the type who keep both their questions and their answers to themselves. The most unfailingly accurate answer for anyone who would travel to Ferane to seek what their future will be, has got to be, ‘mosquito-savaged, aching, stinking and wet.’

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A spell to see the truth

Cut out the corneas from a recently slaughtered ox. Scrape off all tissue and bathe the corneas in salt water for three days (tears are best but seawater is an adequate substitute – table-salt is best avoided). After three days they will have become opaque and very soft. Rinse them in rosewater or an equivalent until they are salt-free.

N.B. You will need to time these first steps carefully as the rinsing needs to take place immediately before the rise of the half-moon. As with many spells it must be performed without the aid of artificial light and this is particularly important with this spell as light will damage the corneas irreparably. I would normally recommend using an additional visioning spell to augment natural eyesight (see index) but as it tends to invert colours, in this case it will only confuse and is best avoided.

As soon as the moon rises place the corneas against your eyeballs and pronounce the words Ghia ghrai ghai fhao ru vhraopa. This is of course the spell for summoning used more commonly for the retrieval of lost domestic objects such as knives, spectacles, children etc. In conjunction with the treated corneas and the moon this common or garden spell is, as it were, elevated and ‘locates’ the truth. It is of course limited to the visual sphere (Note to self: it would be interesting to experiment with cochlea).

The opacity of the corneas will blur ordinary vision somewhat and may make your appearance seem a little peculiar to others. This could put your acquaintances 'on their guard' as it were, making them less likely to lie in a way that the spell can identify, so you will need to contrive some way of disguising the effect. Dim lamps, a masked ball, obscuring haircuts, a feigned illness, tinted spectacles are all tried and tested methods.

It will soon become apparent to you that the nature of your vision has changed on a fundamental level. Colour is no longer a measure of reflected light but instead a measure of veracity. The basic colour of reality is fairly uniformally agreed to be turquoise. You will therefore see your surroundings - houses, animals, plants etc - principally in shades of blue and green. People, as more morally complicated beings - tend to move in an aura of shifting colour.

The chromatic scale you need to bear in mind is red (pure truth) leading to indigo (obscene falsehood). Naturally these extremes are unlikely to present themselves in a run of the mill conversation so you will need to watch for flickers of yellow (sincerity) and purple (dissembling/lies) as well as stabs of pink for firmly believed falsehoods. If you do encounter any red in a man, be very, very cautious in your dealings with him as he has doubtless had some dealings with a god and should not be taken lightly. Indigo is less worrying in comparison but should also serve as a warning to tread carefully.

The effects of the spell will last until dawn and so it is best practised in the Winter months.

The corneas must be peeled off before sunlight touches them or they will anneal to the eyeballs and become impossible to remove. Eyesight may remain a little fuzzy for some time after this spell is completed. Repeated rinsing in clean water is recommended.

Incidentally it is always worth keeping an eye on those around you who repeatedly rub or wash their eyes as they may be practitioners of this spell. Forewarned is fore-armed.

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A spell to invoke power

I will teach you this one, though with a heavy heart. It's up to you if you will use it.

If you want power, you must take it. There's no other way. It is always a violation.

Focus your mind on the body of the person whose power you would take (known as the Subject). It can be any body at all really but a powerful one is obviously the best (though not too powerful or you will lose the benefit in the tussle for it).

Do NOT attempt to use the body of your immediate adversary, if you face one. It is tempting to try to use this spell as a weapon but it is more likely to harm you. Your adversary is naturally already focused against you (even if not a magic adept) and the spell will not grip as effectively. The Subject must always be unaware, unsuspecting. Young men in the flush of hope and idealism are the best. Older men tend to twist away or sink too easily, tire too soon. Women of any age are easily 'gripped' but curiously are likely to buck against the spell and retain a core of their own power. They are certainly more difficult subjects to ride but also more likely to survive the spell. It is up to your own self-confidence and ethics, therefore, whether you choose to use them.

And the spell... There are no words. Focus your mind, feel the Subject's body within your own skin. Let yourself grow round it. Hold it as if resting on your tongue like a grape. Let it warm to your own. It will pull slightly against you like a fish holding its place in a river current. Hold it lightly, lull it.

Then bite. Hard. Don't release.

You will feel the resistance of the Subject's aura, you may even taste blood. It will scare you, every time. But then the power will rush straight into your blood. Your hands will clench, your throat stiffen, your eyes burn and bulge. Your fingernails will bleed, your eardrums burst. Vision will blur for a moment - don't panic. Harness the power, force it into your extremeties quickly lest it burst your heart or overheat your brain.

When your vision clears, hold still. You will feel the power galloping under you. Touch your fingers to your thumbs one after the other. Wiggle your toes. Fine-motor functions like this help bind the power to its new habitation. Blink. Stick out your tongue. A lot of this you will do automatically but some who try this freeze, shocked by what they have done, so make these little actions a habit. The few seconds they take may seem a waste of valuable time but they are like checking the girth on a horse you intend to ride fast through an unlit night. They may save your life.

Now you have it. The power is yours. I imagine you already have a plan as to what to do with it, so I shan't list the options. Just a word instead about the dismount. And picking up the pieces.

Your own body will accustom itself to its new puissance within minutes and a return to its old state will be as great a shock as the first - indeed often worse. You will feel slashed, smashed and ground to nothing. It will be impossible to move and yet impossible to keep still. The effort of heaving your chest around a breath will be herculean. Believe me, it will hurt. Power never comes for free. I can only suggest you keep the spell going until you are in a place you are sure you will be safe and undisturbed. And, if your subject was a woman, keep away from her. As I mentioned, women are more likely to survive with surprising reserves of power. If you drop too close to her she may finish you while you swoon.

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A spell to bring good fortune

This spell was the subject of a fascinating study some years ago by Professor Ptarmigan Child. His thesis makes for a very interesting read and, alas, I can here only provide the bare bones of his remarkable study.

In Ganhas, as I have mentioned below, magic is simply a part of life. Good fortune, in particular is a very common part of agricultural life. Professor Child was able to demonstrate that the repeated act of bending to sow seeds in the Spring and the repeated bending to harvest crops in the Autumn has the effect of generating good fortune about the roots of some of the commonest crops, in particular the potato, the beetroot and, also in some fruit crops such as the strawberry.

Farmers were in many cases reporting a yield of a half-tonne of good fortune for every acre farmed. Farms where new machinery was employed reported much smaller yields. Professor Child hypothesised that the 'respect' shown to the Earth through repeated bending, or rather 'bowing' is rewarded in both physical form (the crop) and in metaphysical form (good fortune).

Good fortune is, of course, invisible and nearly weightless and for many Ganhesi farmers it is considered a useless by-product. As you will no doubt be aware, it is impossible to sell good fortune and it will only very rarely attach itself to the farmer himself. However, if is is bestowed upon a second party, the full effects of the good fortune become apparent. The nearer the connection between the bestower and the recipient, however, the weaker the effect of the good fortune. A gift from father to son, for example, is practically worthless.

What good then is good fortune to the community that harvests it? Professor Child reports that some farming communities have found a very novel way of monetising good fortune. In some of the Northern reaches of Ganhas it has been used to provide a pensioning system for the elderly, who otherwise would be a burden on their communities. Old women in particular are set on chairs alongside the few great roads of that region with several barrels of good fortune at their disposal. Travellers on those roads are petitioned by the elderly lady to perform some service - fetching water from a well, mending her roof or more simply providing her with a meal. If this service is performed the helpful stranger will receive his good fortune from her hands and continue a luckier man.

Some more entrepreneurial communities have further developed this system to provide actual financial gains without compromising the taboo of selling good fortune. They will sell goods - usually food - to strangers so that they are ready prepared to feed the elderly they encounter and receive their gift.

Professor Child also conducted a comprehensive study into the generation of good fortune, in which farmers used varying practices for their 'respects', bowing more or less etc. This led Professor Child to conclude that the singing of work songs by the farm hands is an important part of the procedure. He was in fact able to identify a number of folk-songs or, as he termed them 'land-spells' that were particularly effective.

Sample land-spell: (Please forgive my poor translation.)

Out rock, come on out with you
Jump, scarper, be gone
Build a wall over there at the ege of the field,
If you must.
But you're not welcome here.

Out thorn, come on out with you
Jump, scarper, be gone
Build a fence over there at the ege of the field,
If you must.
But you're not welcome here.

Out bird, out slug, out snail
Out rat and you imps that live under the ground
Get you over stones' wall and over thorns' fence
Don't you know you're not welcome here?

Come rain, come sun
Come soft air and rich mud
Come settle, come thrive
Come over stones' wall and over thorns' fence
Don't you know that this is the place for you?


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A spell to heal

I really wouldn’t recommend it.

I really wouldn’t. It’s better to let the injured body heal itself, or doctor it with herbs. Healing magic is too brutal. There’s a reason the generals go sniffing round it, you know.

Honestly, there are as many reasons not to do it as there are ills we’d like to heal.

Take a sick man, for instance. Sick in bed, sick to death. He has been there months perhaps or only a few hours. But he is very ill. Can you heal him?

Of course.

But healing magic is unfocused and strong. Can you be precise enough? Can you affect only the damaged part? Healing magic runs rife through the organs of the body. They will swell and burgeon and mutate. Wings may grow, scales, you name it.

A healed woman who conceives within a season of her healing must expect two armfuls of babies at least (either in size or number). If the circumstances were severe enough, she may even find a baby where a man has never been. And the children of that conception are quite reason enough against this spell, believe me.

And then, of course, there is the ‘influence’ of the caster. Have you seen a sick man rise up after the ministrations of a powerful (but not overly precise) mage? He will be like a shadow of the mage, he will share his memories, his tastes, his beliefs. He may even look a little like him. The generals like this one in particular.

And what of injuries: broken bones, gashed flesh, amputated or disfigured limbs? In a way this is a safer field to work in. Bone and flesh knit quickly, avoiding the ‘influence’. But the magic is unpredictable. A blue eye may heal brown. A replaced arm may sprout feathers in the nesting season. A sealed wound may gradually grow teeth and tongue and shout obscenities during holy service. A knitted bone may contract or lengthen until the cure is considerably worse than the ill.

The mage’s touch must be light enough and yet firm enough to allow no tricks or distortions to occur. But how to teach that light firmness? I can’t let you loose on the world to practise.

I have it here, the cursèd spell of healing, on this twist of paper.

And I will never, never, let you have it.

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A spell to cast out evil