Sorcerer to the Crown (Sorcerer Royal, #1)

by Zen Cho

Once he had worked out a suitable formula, the garden did indeed begin to do better. Zacharias had hopes of roses soon, and he thought he might even venture to eat one of his cabbages. This was to run a real risk, for it was not clear what the full effect of the spell had been. In ingesting the cabbage, would he also be consuming the magic that had grown it? What would be the consequence of that? He would not feed the cabbages to anyone else, but for himself he thought he might make the trial. It was an advantage of living alone in the countryside that it enabled one to lead the uninterrupted life of the mind. Cut off from London, he could afford to ignore the bickering, the intrigues, the grandstanding and shufflings for position that had bedevilled his former life. Provided he did not, by leaving out any excessively magical equipment, alarm the villager who visited once a day to cook a hot meal and tidy the cottage, he was left in peace to pursue truth—even if that involved the occasional ingestion of a dubious cabbage leaf. The caterpillars were a problem, however. Fat, fuzzy and complacent, they sat upon his vegetables in veritable hordes, ignoring him until he addressed one directly. “Good morning, sir,” he said. The caterpillar paused the busy movement of its jaws to reply: “Pleasant weather, this, eh?” It was an ideal summer’s day. The skies stretched out in endless blue overhead, unmarred by a single wisp of cloud; the fresh scent of greenery and earth rose into th...