The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (16 page)

“But you are not a peasant, either, I think. What is your father's livelihood?”

“My father is in IT,” Nora said, using the English abbreviation. “Don't ask me to explain what that is. As for me, I was in school, studying various books, preparing to become a teacher.”

There did not seem to be an Ors word for “literature,” and she had some trouble making the magician understand that it was a legitimate field of study in her world. At first he had the idea that her studies consisted of memorizing long epic poems, just as, early in his education, he had had to commit to memory great swathes of works such as the magical chronicles of the
Nagaron Voy
and the saga of the Six Kings' War. When he finally gathered that her work consisted merely of reading books and writing about them, he could not hide his incredulity that this was considered a fit occupation for adults.

“These are simply poems or fantastical tales that you studied?”

“Not always fantastical. The most highly regarded stories have fairly ordinary subjects—daily life, people trying to get married, and so forth.”

“But you did not read these things to extract magical spells or history and laws from them?”

“Not in my program. We study poems and stories for their own sake, to understand them better, to appreciate their craft.” At least, Nora thought, that is the theory.

Aruendiel shrugged his crooked shoulders. “You will not be able to earn your living in the same fashion here. The nearest equivalent would be the bards, who travel from castle to castle to sing the old poems and songs, but it takes years of training to learn the verses. And of course, it is not a job for a woman.”

“What does that mean?” Nora asked sharply. Aruendiel looked blank, so she went on: “Do you mean that women aren't smart enough to learn the poems? Or they're not allowed?”

“I'm only stating a fact. A lone woman traveling through the countryside is likely to be raped or assaulted, if not to suffer a worse fate.”

“I've never had any problems walking alone around here.”

“Few would dare interfere with anyone who is under my protection.”

“I don't need protection.” They were climbing into the orchard now, facing almost directly into the light of the lowering sun. Up ahead, in the direction of the castle, the dogs were barking. On an impulse, Nora stooped to pick up a fallen apple, and then let it fly with a snap of her wrist, the way she used to pitch to EJ in the backyard. It squelched dully against a nearby tree trunk.

“Everyone in my household and on my lands is under my protection,” Aruendiel said flatly.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, the castle in sight now, and then Nora spoke again. “I was a cook once. There's always a need for good cooks.”

“Yes, some lords in Semr keep an entire staff of cooks. It's very hard work, I believe.”

“I don't mind hard work,” she said, even while remembering how her feet used to ache at the end of a night at the restaurant. On a sudden impulse, she said: “Or—I could be a magician.” She wanted to see what he would say. “Whatever it takes, I could learn it.”

Aruendiel snorted, then appeared to be thinking. “We could always marry you off,” he said musingly. “There's young Peusienith, who holds one of my manor farms. He's a widower and a decent fellow.” The magician's eyes flicked over her face, and she knew that he was appraising her scars, trying to decide whether they might put off a potential bridegroom.

“You must be joking!” Nora said, afraid that he wasn't. “Marry me off! It's been tried before, let me remind you.” She gave the ring on her left hand an angry, futile pull.

“I meant no disrespect,” Aruendiel said mildly. “It would be an easier life for you than cooking in Semr.”

“No, thanks.”

After a moment, Aruendiel said: “Well, you may remain in my household, if you wish. Mrs. Toristel would be glad of your assistance.”

“Well, it does seem to be my only choice. I mean, thank you.” She tried to make her voice register more enthusiasm. “I don't mean to sound ungrateful. But this world is not what I'm used to. Where I come from, women can get educations and jobs and live where we like and travel where we like. It's not like that here, from what I can tell.”

“No, it's not,” he said levelly. “I have always thought it's much better to be a man.”

Nora was about to respond that there was nothing wrong with being a woman, that it was all about how society treated women—there was a lot she could say on this subject—when Aruendiel seized her arm and jerked her to the side. He pulled her into a run, jolting her with his clumsy gait.

“What?” she got out. Just as suddenly, he pulled up. Something large plummeted out of the sky, landing on the path a hundred feet ahead of them.

A gigantic black umbrella, bent, broken by the wind, Nora thought. A limp, whitish shape dangled under the dark folds: the forequarters of a dead sheep. Then she recognized the long, narrow head; the stocky, reptilian body; the flapping, leathery wings. She shrank back.

“Your husband has come to pay us a visit,” Aruendiel said.

Under her sudden fear, Nora still found his dry, sarcastic tone irksome. Shut up, she wanted to tell him, that's not my husband.

The monster had settled on the ground to eat the sheep, its jaws tearing lovingly at the carcass. After only a few bites, the dead animal was gone, hooves, head, and all. The creature reared up on its hind legs, beat its wings in the air, and emitted a long cry as raucous as a gull's. Dropping to all fours, it paced back and forth, as though looking for a way through an invisible barrier. Then it settled on its haunches again and exhaled a shower of sparks and a puff of smoke. The weather had been dry lately. A bright flame sprang up in the grass.

“That's quite enough,” said Aruendiel. He unfolded his arms and held his hand up, fingers flexing with a quick, compressed energy that made the ordinary movement seem like an obscene gesture. Instantly—without moving its wings—the creature went straight up into the air, trailing smoke, until it was so high that someone might take it for a bat or a crow.

A faint screech filtered down, and then the black speck was swallowed up by a pile of sooty clouds that had suddenly appeared in an otherwise clear sky. Thunder sounded as the clouds moved rapidly off to the north.

A splattering of rain fell, extinguishing the fire in the grass. Aruendiel was saying something with great concentration, staring after the clouds that had engulfed the creature. At first Nora thought it was another spell. Then she realized that he was swearing, with considerable fluency and detail.

She looked down at the ring on her finger, twisting it with a sense of unease.

“That sheepfucker, that woodlicker, that pus-ridden son of a slack-bagged whore shouldn't have been here at all,” the magician said. “He shouldn't be able to leave Ilissa's domain, let alone come into the heart of mine.”

Nora made herself meet his pale eyes. She didn't want to say anything, but she felt obligated to. “I wonder if this has anything to do with it.” She held up the hand with the ring.

“What is it?” Aruendiel demanded.

“It's my wedding ring. I've been trying to get it off. But it seems to be stuck.”

He seized her hand and looked at the ring without saying anything. Then he touched the gold band with the tip of one finger.

Immediately Nora gulped in pain, jerking her hand away. “It's like fire,” she gasped.

Aruendiel did not seem sympathetic. He took her by the wrist and blew lightly on the ring. This time the ring squeezed her finger a little tighter and then relaxed, almost like a living thing. She felt a twinge of nausea. He stared at the ring for another long moment, then gave it a long, hard wrench, without success. “Ow,” Nora said.

“There is certainly a spell there,” he said. “As far as I can tell, it is what keeps the ring on your finger. But why is it there?”

“I don't know. You can't take it off?”

“Did your husband put it on your finger?”

She nodded yes. “He's not my husband.”

“Why do you think Raclin”—Aruendiel pronounced the name with emphasis, as though to test Nora's reaction—“came here today?”

“I don't know.”

“I don't know, either. But when I find you wandering at the edge of my private forest, where I do much of my work, where great power rests, without a satisfactory explanation, and then not an hour later, we encounter your husband, who makes himself so free as to devour one of my sheep and has the temerity to threaten me, the magician Aruendiel, a stone's throw from my own castle, I wonder exactly what is going on. Did you summon him?”

“Never! That thing almost killed me once.”

“True,” he said musingly. “But it would be a cunning trick, enticing an otherwise prudent and experienced magician to take a stranger into his household by making her appear Raclin's victim. A very clever way for Ilissa to introduce a spy into the stronghold of her most powerful enemy—don't you agree?”

“I'm not a spy,” Nora said, hearing the menace in his tone and fighting the temptation to take a step away from him. If she did, she feared, she would not be able to stop herself from taking another step, and another, until she was running away as fast as she could.

“You might not even realize that you're Ilissa's tool. The ring could direct your actions at some future time, or right now.” As though to himself, he said, “I can't believe I was such a fool as to leave you here in my castle, with my people, while I went away for weeks at a time. I should have turned you into a donkey or geranium for safekeeping or at least locked you up in the dungeon. Only the sun knows what kind of mischief you worked in my absence.

“And you even said just now you wanted to be a magician. What secrets of mine are you trying to steal?”

“Nothing,” Nora said, trying to surpress her panic. “Listen, I don't know what this ring is, but it's not controlling me. You would know it, the way you could tell Ilissa put those other spells on me.
I
would know it—I remember what it was like to be enchanted, and I'm not enchanted now.”

Aruendiel's expression was stony. Nora added suddenly: “Besides, she's not clever enough to come up with a scheme like that. I mean, she wouldn't do anything that would make Raclin look bad, or ever admit that he's less than perfect.”

“You're underestimating her. She has carried out devious and complex schemes before.”

“I'm not her spy,” Nora said again, with some desperation. “I wasn't trying to steal your secrets. I had no idea that your forest was private, or that it was full of, um, great power. How would I? I don't know anything about magic.”

“No,” he said, no warmth in his voice. She could feel his eyes on her, probing, distrustful, all the way back to the castle.

A
ruendiel sat up that night reading everything he could find about the various kinds of enchantments that could be affixed to or expressed in jewelry. He considered it a rather old-fashioned branch of magic, but there was no shortage of spells and commentaries, including many accounts of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, or rings that had been endowed by wizards with specific charms, powers, or curses. Baubles to make the wearer invisible, stronger than a dozen oxen, more beautiful than any other woman alive, uglier than death, or richer than seven kings. Trinkets that conferred eternal youth or a lifetime of pain.

None of the wizards and magicians who had written on the subject mentioned a spell that served only to hold a ring on a person's finger. Aruendiel did not find this reassuring. Most likely, he thought, the girl Nora's ring would not leave her finger because it contained a spell that was still somehow hidden. And yet he was familiar enough with the traces of Faitoren magic—powerful stuff, but cloying, much like Ilissa herself—that he should have been able to detect such a spell. All the more galling that he could not remove the ring.

In the morning, while he was still eating breakfast in the great hall, there was a delegation from the village. In addition to the sheep, Raclin had helped himself to a goat and three chickens, and set three thatched roofs on fire. Aruendiel listened as patiently as he could. Without promising to replace the lost livestock, he pledged to repair the burnt roofs and assured everyone that he would increase the valley's magical defenses immediately.

After they had left, Aruendiel observed to Mrs. Toristel: “If a raiding party came through the village, burned buildings, and stole an equal quantity of livestock, no one would expect me to make them whole. But if an obviously magical creature wreaks havoc here, it automatically becomes my fault.”

“They're used to your protection, sir,” Mrs. Toristel said. “I'm not saying it isn't ungrateful of them.”

“Well, no doubt they assume that if not for my presence, we wouldn't have been blessed with this particular visitor. I suppose they're right,” he added, with a glance at Nora, who was gathering up the used dishes from the table. “He came only because I decided to harbor his runaway spouse. Come over here,” he called to her. “I want to take another look at that ring.”

But after half a dozen of the most potent spells Aruendiel knew for separating objects or undoing magic, the ring was still fast to her finger, which was now black and blue. The girl herself said little, only bit her lip and blinked hard when he tried the Tulushn fire. (Well, he stopped as soon as he saw it was doing no good, and conjured a bowl of water from the kitchen to soak her hand.) A shame that she hadn't listened to his advice about not marrying the Faitoren monster in the first place. “You should always be careful about whom you accept jewelry from,” Aruendiel said, as Mr. Toristel came in from the courtyard to say that there was a gentleman to see his lordship.

Nora, who remembered hearing similar advice from her grandmother, felt she was in no position to contend this point with the magician. She took the goblets into the kitchen; then, at Mrs. Toristel's bidding, she went out to the garden to dig some carrots. As she pulled them up, her eye kept coming back to the ring's smooth gleam on her now-grubby, still-smarting hand.

Ilissa's tool? She could not shake a nagging sense of doubt. Despite what she'd told Aruendiel yesterday, would she really know if someone was slipping thoughts into her mind like cuckoo's eggs? It had happened before, after all.

“But if Ilissa were controlling me,” Nora argued internally, “would I even be wondering about this?”

Back in the kitchen, Mrs. Toristel informed her, snappish and excited, that Aruendiel's visitor had come from Semr. “That's the king's livery. Put those carrots down and take him out some ale. He'll want it after talking to the master.”

Nora took the pitcher of ale and went out into the great hall, where Aruendiel was speaking with a man in a red-and-gold coat. Mrs. Toristel was more correct than she knew. “But His Serene Highness requires the Lord Aruendiel's counsel,” the messenger was saying, his voice frankly desperate.

“Then he should have asked for it more civilly,” Aruendiel said. He rolled up the scroll he was holding and placed it on the table. “I will look forward to seeing His Majesty next year, at the Assembly of Lords.”

The messenger licked his lips. “His Majesty will be sadly displeased.”

“Then I am sorry for His Majesty's ill humor. He is not the first king that I have sadly displeased, however, and perhaps he will not be the last. Will you have some refreshment before you leave? There are some hard-boiled eggs here, and”—Aruendiel turned and caught sight of Nora, holding the pitcher—“yes, my housekeeper has sent out some ale.”

Nora did not move forward with the pitcher. She was staring at the dish of eggs. She had boiled them herself earlier that morning. So why was one of the eggs rocking madly back and forth? She could hear the tap-tap-tap as it knocked against the others.

Aruendiel followed her gaze to the egg. His eyebrows lifted.

As they watched, the shell cracked, then broke in two. Something bright emerged, a tangle of tinsel. A bird the size of a sparrow, fluffing out silver feathers. It took flight over Aruendiel's head, a glittering streak in the bars of morning sunlight, and then perched on a rafter, throwing a faint radiance onto the smoke-blackened roof beams.

“You brought another message for me,” Aruendiel said to the man in the red-and-gold coat.

“Me? No. I'm no wizard!” said the messenger, blinking.

“That's very obvious,” said Aruendiel. “But it doesn't mean you didn't bring some magic with you.” He pursed his lips and whistled; the bird chirped back.

“What is it saying?” Nora ventured to ask.

“I have no idea. I'm trying to lure it down. Then we'll find out what this is about.”

The bird spent several minutes preening itself, burnishing its silver feathers. Finally, it flew down to alight on the table in front of Aruendiel. Now Nora noticed a small roll of paper tied to one of the bird's legs with blue ribbon. Aruendiel's long fingers pulled on the trailing end of the ribbon to free the paper. He picked it up and read it.

“Well, well,” he said reflectively. “Why didn't you tell me that the magician Hirizjahkinis is in Semr?” he asked the messenger.

The messenger seemed flustered. “Yes, I believe the Lady Hirizjahkinis is currently a guest of His Majesty.”

“If he has Hirizjahkinis, why does he need me?” Aruendiel inquired, apparently of himself. “But she says I should be there, too. She says that I would want to be there. Merlin's folly, she could have squeezed another line of explanation onto that paper.” He gave an exasperated sigh and crumpled the paper into a ball. For a moment, he stared into space, considering, and then he turned to the messenger. “All right, your master the king gets his wish. I'm going to Semr—at the invitation of the Lady Hirizjahkinis, not because he ordered me to come.”

“His Majesty will be very pleased.”

With a snort, Aruendiel turned to Nora. “You there, find Mrs. Toristel and tell her that I'm leaving. I'll start today.” He gave her a hard, rather appraising look that she found unnerving. “And shoo this bird out of here, will you?” The silver bird had found a new perch on the railing of the gallery at the far end of the hall. “Otherwise it's going to make a disgusting mess. Even magical birds leave their droppings everywhere.”

It was true, Nora saw, glancing at the floor.

•   •   •

In the end, it took both Nora and the castle tabby to get the silver bird out of the house, although that was precisely not the cat's intention. It meowed angrily at Nora as the bird flew out the door and disappeared, bright as thought, into the sky.

Carefully Nora uncrumpled the tiny ball of paper that she had retrieved from the floor. A few lines in the undulating, enigmatic Ors script went up and down the page. The first word was easy—Aruendiel. Decoding the words one letter at a time, she laboriously found her way to the end of the note. “I know you're going to say no to the king, so I'm telling you that you shouldn't. Trust me, you don't want to miss the excitement. I will see you in Semr. Soon, please.”

When she went back into the great hall, she found the magician talking to Mrs. Toristel near the kitchen door. There was a leather bag at Aruendiel's feet, and he had changed his clothes: The rough linen shirt he had worn earlier had been replaced by a fine black wool tunic embroidered with gold thread; his cuffs and collar were freshly crisped into a myriad of minute pleats; and his boots looked almost new. Even his ragged black hair had been trimmed, and now fell in a neat curtain just above his shoulders. Perhaps because of the unusual finery, Nora thought his tall figure looked more angular and crooked than usual.

Mrs. Toristel was shaking her head, her arms folded. “No, sir,” she was saying, most uncharacteristically. “You cannot do that. Not after yesterday.”

“I don't like to go, but something is up in Semr,” he said with an impatient exhalation. “I've put on a new spell of deep protection; the other safeguards are in place.”

“That's not enough, sir.”

“I'm only going away for a few days at most. Perhaps I should make the valley invisi—”

“That's all well and good, but that's not what I mean. What I mean is her.”

Nora realized two things: That Mrs. Toristel was talking about her, Nora, and that her entry into the hall had gone unnoticed. Aruendiel had his back half-turned, and he was blocking Mrs. Toristel's view. In such a situation, Nora thought, one can be honorable or one can be practical. She stepped discreetly into the shadow of the great door.

“You won't have to worry about her,” Aruendiel said. “She'll be safely restrained while I'm away.”

Restrained? What did that mean—transformed into a donkey? Or a geranium? Nora debated whether to make a run for it right now, before Aruendiel or Mrs. Toristel noticed her.

But the housekeeper was shaking her head again. “No, sir, however well she's hidden, and I know you'd hide her well, she'd still be here. She's what drew that thing here last night, and she'll draw it again. That might not be her fault, but there it is. And how are we supposed to fight off that creature with you gone? The villagers won't stand for it.”

“I don't care what the villagers think,” he said restively.

“You can't just go off and leave her here. It's only chance that we weren't attacked while you were away before.”

Aruendiel swore, a long, muscular sequence of profanity. “You mean, take her with me? What on earth would I do with her at court? And it's impossible. I must travel fast and light. I can fly to Semr under my own power, but she can't.”

“I'm sure you can find some other way to get there, sir.”

Silence. Did that mean Mrs. Toristel was winning the argument? Nora made a swift calculation and decided to take no chances. “I'll go,” she said loudly, stepping out of the door's shadow. “I don't want to put anyone at risk.”

She walked forward composedly, meeting both Aruendiel's chilly stare and Mrs. Toristel's worried one. Aruendiel was clenching his right hand, as though to grasp and crush thick hunks of air—a gesture of frustration, or was he about to transform her into a geranium?

“If I really am Ilissa's tool,” Nora said, “wouldn't it be better to keep an eye on me?”

Aruendiel emitted a sound of disgusted assent. “If it will relieve your mind, Mrs. Toristel, then very well,” he said. “We leave in a quarter hour.”

“She needs time to get ready,” Mrs. Toristel said.

“A quarter hour.”

It took less time than that for Nora to throw her only other dress and a change of linen undergarments into a cloth sack. As always before leaving on a trip, she had the nagging feeling that she was forgetting something, but there seemed to be nothing else to forget.

When she came downstairs, she found Aruendiel standing over several large tree branches in the center of the courtyard. Mr. Toristel was nearby, holding a saw. The magician bent to pull the branches into the form of a rough cross, one short piece flanked perpendicularly by two long ones. He put something on the end of each of the longer branches. Nora edged closer to see. Chicken feathers. After surveying the arrangement critically, Aruendiel pulled a penknife from inside his tunic and jabbed it into the tip of one finger. Grimacing, he quickly touched all three pieces of wood, leaving a red print on each, then wrapped a handkerchief around his finger.

“How did it go?” he muttered. “No, that's not it.” His lips moved silently as he rehearsed something to himself. Finally he nodded curtly, apparently satisfied. But as he moved his hand over the wooden cross, it seemed to Nora that there was something uneasy in his demeanor.

She had little time to reflect on this observation, though. The wooden branches were stretching, growing into one another; each of the cross's two side arms curved and lengthened; and then suddenly both arms of the cross were covered with a thick coat of feathers, lining up as neatly as shingles. The central piece of the cross was still recognizable as a tree branch, but attached to it now were two stubby-looking wings, fifty feet across. They gave a single, stately flap, stirring up a curtain of dust, and then lowered again, quivering slightly.

“No!” said Nora, horrified. “We're not going to fly on that thing, are we?”

Mrs. Toristel had come out of the house, carrying Aruendiel's cloak. “Ah,” she said quietly to Nora. “It's not as bad as it looks. He had one at Lusul, with a saddle on it, specially made.”

“I wish this one had a saddle. It looks dangerous.”

“Not as dangerous for you as staying here.”