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eBook Category: Fantasy
eBook Description: The greatest magician in the ancient city of Constantinople uses his powers to amaze audiences, but the magic has gone from his marriage, and his wife considers what life would be like without him ... or the magic that literally holds their world together.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: The Day the Magic Stopped, ed. Christopher Stasheff and Bill Fawcett, 1995
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2003

30 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [54 KB], eReader (PDB) [24 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [11 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [10 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [62 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [81 KB], hiebook (KML) [53 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [36 KB], iSilo (PDB) [9 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [11 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [39 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [18 KB]
Words: 3180
Reading time: 9-12 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

They were gathered in the Great Hall when Edward looked up with an expectant smile on his face. An instant later it started raining toads inside the castle.

As the guests began screaming, Edward waved his hand, and suddenly the rug itself became a thousand mouths, each gobbling up one or more toads. But as the last of the toads were eaten, the mouths became insatiable, and started gnawing upon the furniture.

Another wave of Edward's hand, and the furniture turned to solid gold. Teeth cracked against it, mouths withdrew, and, sprouting wings, the furniture began hovering a few inches about the rug, daring it to test its strength once again. The mouths vanished, the furniture gently came to rest upon it, and golden legs metamorphised into wood as Edward grinned and bowed deeply for his applauding audience.

Vivian sighed, wishing she were elsewhere, but she displayed no outward sign of her boredom, laughing along with the other assembled members of the Thirteen Families. She tried to recall when it was that the magic had faded from her and Edward's relationship. There was a time when his every trick delighted her, simply because they were his. Now, when they made love, she murmured cantrips she pretended were moans of ecstasy to disguise his appearance with that of another man, any other man--she didn't care.

Somewhere along the way, things had come undone.

Her heart, which once had felt as buoyant as the Emperor's sailships, now felt as if it were a splintered wreckage of silken sails and ebony timber, as if the spells which had kept it aloft had malfunctioned, now that Edward's sorceries no longer amused her. He seemed to send the craft hurtling Earthward once again, into the mud. All of Constantinople looked muddied to her now, the bright and glittering splendour eclipsed by her mood, as if the sun had become blotted out by a cloud of dust, or had simply stopped shining altogether.