John Longridge, the cook at Harley-street, had suffered from low spirits for more than thirty years, and he was quick to welcome Stephen as a newcomer to the freemasonry of melancholy.
It is the contention of Mr Norrell of Hanover-square that everything belonging to John Uskglass must be shaken out of modern magic, as one would shake moths and dust out of an old coat. What does he i...
It is possible, of course, he said, to imprison someone within the pattern of a carpet for a thousand years or so. That is a particularly horrible fate which I always reserve for people who have offen...
In the moonlight David saw that Thoresby had become very peculiar indeed. Figs nestled among the leaves of beech-trees. Elder-trees were bowed down with pomegranates. Ivy was almost torn from walls by...
In the fish-market by the Grand Canal a fisherman sold Frank three mullet, but then almost neglected to take the money because his attention was given to the argument he was conducting with his neighb...
He wished he had never come to London. He wished he had never undertaken to revive English magic. He wished he had stayed at Hurtfew Abbey, reading and doing magic for his own pleasure. None of it, he...
He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did.
But, though French, she was also very brave...
But the sound that came out of his mouth was no sound at all; it was the emptied skin of sound without flesh or bones.
Beware Stephen! There will probably be a magical combat of some sort. I daresay I shall have to take on different forms – cockatrice, raw head and bloody bones, rains of fire, etc., etc. You may wish...
Why do pretty women always have such herds of relatives?
Where in the world have you been? demanded Strange. Walking, she said. Her voice was just as it had always been. Walking! Arabella, are you quite mad? In three feet of snow? Where? In the dark woods,...
Where have they gone? Wherever magicians used to go. Behind the sky. On the other side of the rain.
Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.
They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic – nor ever done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast th...
There is nothing else in magic but the wild thought of the bird as it casts itself into the void. There is no creature upon the earth with such potential for magic. Even the least of them may fly stra...
Their religion is of the strictest sort, Stephen. Almost everything is forbidden to them except carpets. Stephen watched them as they went mournfully about the market, these men whose mouths were perp...
The war went from bad to worse and the Government was universally detested. As each fresh catastrophe came to the public’s notice some small share of blame might attach itself to this or that person,...
The brown fields were partly flooded; they were strung with chains of chill, grey pools. The pattern of the pools had meaning. The pools had been written on to the fields by the rain. The pools were a...
Still the strange ships glittered and shone, and this led to some discussion as to what they might be made of. The Admiral thought perhaps iron or steel. (Metal ships indeed! The French are, as I have...