Corkoran considered this. The man did have a point. He sighed and cast away his handful of sand. “Bother you. You are an infernal nuisance.” He levitated the Inescapable Net from the top of the pit, bringing the man upward with it. The man promptly let go of the net with one hand and grabbed Corkoran by his flowing peacock-feather tie. And twisted it. This was not simple panic. Corkoran saw a knife glitter in the man’s other hand, the one still clinging to the net.
Corkoran panicked. He was suddenly in a fierce struggle, brute strength against magic, killer training against panic. Being throttled with your own tie, Corkoran found himself thinking in the midst of his terror, was quite as disgraceful as being drowned in orange juice. At that stage he was trying to throw this murderer back into the pit. But the fellow was far too strong. He hauled on the tie until Corkoran could hardly breathe, and the glittering knife crept up toward Corkoran’s right eye. The only thing that saved Corkoran was the net, which was still in the way between them. Corkoran pushed back at the fellow and at the knife with every spell he could think of, and for some reason it was only the strange spells he could think of. And the struggle ended, with the murderer two inches long and imprisoned in the Inescapable Net, which had turned itself into a bag around him.
Corkoran held the bag up and looked at it, as surprised as his attacker must have been. He loosened his tie. Relief. He was shaking. “Let that be a lesson to you,” he told the bag hoarsely. Then, because he could not think what else to do with it, he levitated the bag to hang on the massive light fitment that dangled from the vaulted stone ceiling, where it was at least out of the way, and turned back to the mountain of sand.
He took up a handful, murmured the spell, and then let it patter to the floor as he asked it, “What are you? Where are you from?”
A soft, spattering answer came. “We are dust from the moon.”
“Moon dust?” Corkoran turned to the stairway and looked at the enormous pile of fine gray-white sand with astonished admiration. Moon dust. This had to be an omen. He had half a mind to let it stay there to encourage him in his work. But he realized that it would be very inconvenient. And he was the person best qualified to send it back to the moon. Yes, definitely an omen. From being shaken and sore-throated and angry, he found he had become lighthearted and almost benevolent toward whichever student had done this. It was a silly prank, but it had given him an omen.
He told the sand to go back to the moon. It vanished at once, every grain of it. Corkoran had a vision of the spell working—which was not something that often happened with him—and the sand sailing up past the Observatory tower, through the clouds, and siphoning onward in a spiral to that half-moon up there. Smiling, he turned to the pit and told that to go, too. It closed up, sploshily, with a clap and a sharp smell of oranges.
Here he became aware that the monstrous din out in the courtyard had gone away as well. Thank the gods! This must mean that the prank spell had finished now. Corkoran took the noise abatement spell off his ears and thankfully climbed the stairs, which had a clean sand-blasted look to them, on his way to bed.
At the top he encountered Wizard Dench, the Bursar. Dench came shuffling across the landing, wearing old slippers and a moth-eaten gray dressing gown. “Oh, there you are, Corkoran,” he said. “I’ve been to your rooms to look for you.” For some reason Dench was carrying a black cockerel upside down by its legs.
Corkoran stared at it, wondering if Dench was taking up black magic and if he ought to sack him on the spot. “Dench,” he said, “why are you carrying a black chicken by its legs?”
“On the farm when I was a boy,” Dench replied, “we always carried them this way. It’s the best way to capture them. That’s why I was coming to look for you. I don’t know if I was dreaming or not—I was certainly asleep—but while it was climbing through my window, I got the idea it was a man. But when I woke up and looked, it was a cockerel. Running everywhere, making a dreadful noise. What do you think I should do with it?”
“Wring its neck, I should think,” said Corkoran. “It’s only another student joke. The kitchen might be glad of it.”
“Er, well, in that case,” said Dench. “That’s why I came away from the farm. I can’t bear to wring necks. Could you, er—”
He held the hapless cock out to Corkoran. As Corkoran sighed and reached out to take it, the bird began twisting about, flapping its wings and screaming. Almost as if it understood, Corkoran thought.
“Hang on,” he said. He seized a flailing wing and murmured the spell of inquiry again. “What are you?” he asked.
“An assassin of Ampersand,” the bird replied. “And my curse on you for causing me to break my oath! A thousand, thousand curses—”
“Shut up,” said Corkoran. “It’s another one of them, Dench. I caught one just now on the stairs. They must be partners. I think someone knew they were coming and set up traps for them. Not to worry. I know how to deal with them now.” He rapidly shrank the cockerel to the size of a bumblebee, caught it as it whirred free from Dench’s fingers, and stuffed it into a bag made of Inescapable Net, which he sent to join the other one hanging from the light fitment. “There. Now we can both go to bed.”
“But, Corkoran!” Dench exclaimed. “We could be dead in our beds!”
As Dench spoke, there was a thunderous banging on the main doors below. Dench clutched at Corkoran’s arm, and Corkoran said, “Oh, what now?”
“Corkoran! Dench!” It was Finn’s voice, amplified by magic. “Are you all right in there?”
Corkoran remembered that the doors had locked behind him. He went galloping down the stairs, with Dench in his slippers flip-flopping after. When he reached the place where the pit had been, there was such a stench of oranges that Corkoran automatically detoured in case the pit opened again. It had seemed to close, but he was taking no chances. Dench, however, flip-flopped safely straight through the spot and clasped Corkoran’s arm again.
“Corkoran, what is Finn doing outside at this time of night?” he demanded as Corkoran wrenched the doors open. “And in pajamas?” he added.
“Best not to ask,” Corkoran murmured.
Finn’s pajamas were a wizardly purple flecked with little stars. He was shivering in the misty night air and obviously agitated. Behind him the courtyard was filled with almost every student in the place, wearing cloaks, gowns, coats, wraps, and sweaters over their nightclothes. They raised a cheer when they saw Corkoran and Dench unharmed in the doorway.
“Thank the gods!” said Finn. “There was such a noise and such a strong sense of magic in here that we thought there must have been some sort of accident.”
“There was a bit of trouble,” Corkoran admitted. He gestured Finn aside and addressed the students. “It’s all right, everyone. You can go back to bed now. Something tripped the alarms, that’s all. But Wizard Dench and I have made sure everything is quite safe now. Return to your rooms, please, before someone catches cold. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.” He started to close the doors. “Are you coming in or staying out?” he asked Finn.
“Er—” Finn’s eyes flicked to an extremely beautiful student girl standing shivering in a white silk gown. Melissa, Corkoran thought. No brain. “Oh, coming in, of course,” Finn said, with his teeth chattering. “I only went outside to see what was making all that noise. What was the trouble really?” he asked as he stepped inside.
“Nothing much,” Corkoran answered airily. “Student prank. It’s all over now.”
He went upstairs to bed with a strong, satisfied feeling of having been rather brave and behaved rather well. It was clear to him that he had all the intrepid qualities necessary for getting to the moon and dealing with what he found when he got there. And he had had an omen. The night had not been wasted. He fell asleep designing, as his custom was, a new flamboyant picture to put on his tie tomorrow.
And it seemed to him that he jumped awake the next second.