The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (20 page)

“Well, that does make things more convenient,” Abele said. “Bouragonr, will you—?”

“Let us send for her at once,” Bouragonr said, raising his finger. At once the door at the far end of the room opened, and his secretary appeared, tablet and stylus at the ready. “Once this side matter is settled,” he said severely to Aruendiel, “I trust that we can return to the main issue at hand.”

“I would be pleased to do so,” Aruendiel said, looking levelly at Bouragonr.

Bouragonr opened his mouth again, presumably to address the secretary, who was hurrying closer. “Pel—” he started to say. The word dissolved into a gasp. Bouragonr's hands flew to his face, groping at his cheeks.

Bouragonr's mottled skin had grown clear and taut; his hair was sleeker, the gray streaks gone; his mouth and jaw line were newly firm; his stooped shoulders filled out. Decades had dropped away in a matter of seconds: The aging courtier was a straight-backed young man. He looked terrified.

“Bouragonr?” said the king, a note of uncertainty in his voice.

Still clutching his face, the young man who had been the old Bouragonr shuddered violently. Then he seemed to fall forward, but that was an illusion; his body was sagging like a falling tent, until he was only three-quarters the height he had been. The fingers covering his face became longer and skinnier, and there were more of them, six fingers on one hand, seven on the other. When he lowered his hands, the others could see that his mouth now wrapped around the side of his head, like a frog's. His lips and nose had disappeared. He looked up at them from round black eyes that had no whites at all.

There was a clatter. The secretary had dropped his tablet on the floor. “Bouragonr?” the king asked again.

“That is not Bouragonr,” said Hirizjahkinis.

“That is a Faitoren, in its natural state,” Aruendiel said.

Abele's gaze slid to Aruendiel. “My chief magician is a Faitoren?”

“No, not originally. There has been a substitution—probably in the recent past. Sometime after the Lady Ilissa arrived in Semr,” Aruendiel said.

“That is an outrageous suggestion, Aruendiel!” Ilissa said. “Your Majesty, I must protest. I will not be insulted by one of your subjects!”

“Do you deny that this is one of your people, Ilissa?” Aruendiel asked. “Hirizjahkinis took off not just the spell that made the Faitoren look like Bouragonr, but the spell that made him look human in the first place.”

“Then where is my chief magician?” the king asked, looking at the Faitoren with distaste. “You, sir, what have you done with my chief magician?”

The Faitoren opened its wide mouth, giving the others a glimpse of a long gray tongue, but it said nothing.

“Lady Ilissa, is this indeed one of your Faitoren?” Abele asked. “I had always thought that your people were, well, more pleasing to the eye.”

Ilissa hesitated, but finally she nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty. That is one of my people.”

“And why was he disguised?”

“Oh, it's the custom among us Faitoren to wear faces of our own devising, Your Majesty,” Ilissa said with a wistful smile, “much the way you or any other human might choose an elegant garment to wear. It is a bit of a game with us. We take pleasure in the art of it, in seeing who can make themselves the most beautiful, and in the end we grow so used to our chosen faces that we forget that we are even wearing them. These magicians”—she threw a scornful look at Hirizjahkinis and Aruendiel—“have taken it upon themselves to tear away the face that poor Gaibon made for himself. It is an act of both rudeness and cruelty, like stripping someone naked in a public street.”

“Yes, I see,” said Abele. “But why would your subject want to make himself look like Bouragonr? Bouragonr is no beauty. An excellent chief magician, but not a handsome man.”

“A very distinguished man,” Ilissa insisted sweetly.

“Yes, perhaps, but even so, I can't permit one of your subjects to simply insert himself in the place of my chief magician. There are all sorts of security and confidentiality issues here. And what has become of Bouragonr?”

“Oh, I am sure that Gaibon has done nothing to harm Bouragonr. Isn't that right, Gaibon dear?”

Gaibon said something in muddy Ors that could have been an assent.

“You, Lady Ilissa, what have you done with Bouragonr?” Hirizjahkinis spoke up suddenly. “Gaibon is not lying—”

“He can't lie,” Aruendiel muttered.

“—but can you deny responsibility for Bouragonr's disappearance?”

“I don't need to,” said Ilissa. “It is a preposterous accusation.”

“But it's not preposterous at all. You came here to persuade this king to lift the restrictions on the Faitoren. You knew that Bouragonr, his trusted adviser, would not favor such a plan—Bouragonr was one of the magicians, like Aruendiel, like myself, who defeated you half a century ago. But there was a way for you to turn Bouragonr's suspicion to your advantage. If he supported the alliance, despite his known distrust of the Faitoren, it would make your cause more credible. Bouragonr's support would not only help sway King Abele, it would make the alliance more palatable to many lords as well.”

“Lady Hirizjahkinis, I'm terribly flattered that you would think me capable of such clever scheming.”

“When I arrived here in Semr,” Hirizjahkinis continued, “I was surprised by how little opposition Bouragonr raised to the proposed alliance. Today, in fact, he seemed to advocate frankly for the Faitoren side. But I did not think that Bouragonr was not actually Bouragonr, until Aruendiel suggested it to me a little while ago.”

“Lord Aruendiel?” the king asked, his voice sharpening. “How did you discover this substitution? Some of your famous magic?”

“No,” said Aruendiel. “I simply found it odd that Bouragonr would know that the human woman who had escaped the Faitoren was living in my household. I had done nothing to advertise the fact. But the Faitoren knew. So I asked Hirizjahkinis to investigate while Your Majesty and I continued our conversation.”

“I heard no such request,” said the king.

“That is some of my famous magic, Sire,” Aruendiel said, unsmiling.

“Your Majesty,” said Ilissa to the king, with an air of appealing to the only sensible person in the room, “I'm afraid I'm losing patience with this absurdity. Your subjects, these magicians, have insulted and attacked me and the members of my legation. I demand an apology—and I demand that Aruendiel reverse the terrible magic that he has worked on my son.”

“I will do it,” said Aruendiel, his mouth curling, “I will even apologize—if you tell us where Bouragonr is.”

The king coughed and looked down at the table. “Lady Ilissa, if you can offer any help in locating my chief magician, it would be taken as, as—a gesture of great goodwill,” he said at last.

“Enough.” Ilissa rose from her chair. “I will hear no more of this. King Abele, you should know that those who slight me always regret it. The magician Aruendiel can tell you that.” Her lips curved in a fragile smile as sharp as a scythe. Her dress seemed to be made of white flames.

Turning on her heel, she walked swiftly down the length of the long council table to the double doors. They flew open for her without a touch. Gaibon scuttled after her.

“Regrettable,” said the king musingly after the doors had closed behind her. “Extremely regrettable.” He did not specify exactly what he was referring to, Ilissa's angry departure or the disappearance of his chief magician or the end of the alliance negotiations or the fact that he had opened negotiations in the first place. Quite likely he was not sure himself.

•   •   •

“When did you learn how to undo that Faitoren masking spell?” Hirizjahkinis demanded of Aruendiel, once they were in the corridor. They had left the king and his military advisers to plot out the invasion of the Meerchinland without Faitoren aid.

“I worked out a method and tried it for the first time last winter,” he said. “Interesting results, don't you think? Although you took your time getting it to work.”

“Your directions were a bit sketchy.”

“There's only so much one can say with a feather. You figured it out eventually.”

“Now, can we use the same method to find Bouragonr? Could she have used the same kind of masking spell to hide him away?”

“It's possible. Although it's more likely she killed him outright.”

“You always believe the worst of that woman, don't you?” Hirizjahkinis said, chuckling. “All right, we will try to find his body then. We'll start by following Ilissa's trail, visiting the places that she has visited.”

“How do you propose to do that?” he asked, shaking his head. “By asking the walls what they saw? By wood and water, that will take forever. Once walls start talking, they never shut up.”

“No, no. You will be annoyed to hear it, Aruendiel, but this is exactly the kind of situation where the Kavareen can be very useful.”

N
ora was scratching the Kavareen behind the ears when the two magicians came into the room. Aruendiel looked disquieted at the sight, but Hirizjahkinis only smiled. “I see you have become friends.”

“More or less,” Nora allowed. “After I realized it wasn't going to eat me.”

“You'd be too small a meal,” Aruendiel said. “The Kavareen prefers to consume cities, or whole armies.”

“Enough, Aruendiel! Now, we need the Kavareen for another task, Mistress Nora, so we must ask you to come with us.” Hirizjahkinis spoke quickly to the Kavareen in the singsong tongue. The animal jumped off the divan and stalked out of the room.

“Now, the Kavareen has a very keen nose,” Hirizjahkinis told Aruendiel as they followed. “Especially for magic.”

“Isn't that how it tracked you down and almost killed you, that time in the desert?”

“Luckily, I killed it first. He can tell us exactly where Ilissa has been in the palace and—what is even better—where she did magic.”

They came to an enormous hall, forested with octagonal pillars. A crowd was milling around the base of the pillars, the women in luxurious trailing gowns, the men in equally lavish long coats or tunics. The Kavareen growled and sat down. “Ilissa was certainly here, and worked some magic,” Hirizjahkinis said, glancing around.

“Not surprisingly—this is the main reception hall,” Aruendiel said. “She was probably in and out of here every day of her visit.”

They made a slow circuit of the hall. Several people hailed Aruendiel, but he gave only the most perfunctory of responses. Hirizjahkinis, by contrast, made a sort of dignified progress around the room, a small, erect figure who smiled warmly at those who greeted her, without showing the slightest inclination to halt her steps for anyone.

“I can't find anything,” Hirizjahkinis said when they had finished.

“Nor I,” he said.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Nora asked.

“Some evidence of recent magic,” Aruendiel said dismissively. “Nothing that you would know about.”

He had said harsher things to her before, but for some reason this offhand remark stung especially. Nora frowned and asked: “Is there any chance that we'll run into Ilissa herself?”

Aruendiel studied her for a moment. “Ilissa would like to see you,” he said. “She told us so today. She said she would welcome you back into her family.”

“I hope you told her I'd rather die! You're not going to send me back to her—are you?”

“Don't torment her, Aruendiel,” said Hirizjahkinis. “Mistress Nora, Ilissa is about to leave Semr, but not with you. We spent quite a long time talking about you this afternoon—I know, you are probably distressed to hear this—but in the end it helped us discover that Ilissa had been sly enough to put a Faitoren in place of the king's magician, and even King Abele was not blind enough to overlook her little trick.”

“Hmm,” Nora said. “I'd like to hear more about this.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Hirizjahkinis. “Now, where next? Ah, the Kavareen thinks we should go to the east wing.”

They went to the east wing, and then the old east wing. Then the queen's pavilion, the queen's gallery, and the queen's drawing rooms. The summer banquet hall, and the two winter banquet halls. It almost seemed to Nora that she was back in the endless splendor of Ilissa's castle.

“Is there any room in the entire palace that she didn't visit?” Aruendiel groaned as they left the long gallery where the king's armor was on display.

The north tower. The king's private reception hall. The buttery. The wine cellar.

“Is Ilissa much of a drinker?” Hirizjahkinis asked.

“She served oceans of wine at her parties,” Nora said before Aruendiel could answer.

“That wasn't real wine,” he said dismissively. “I wonder if she came down here to poison a bottle for Bouragonr?”

“Or to lock him up in one of these bottles.”

Nora moaned inwardly. There were thousands of dark and dusty bottles lying on racks in the cellar. She waited in the semidarkness while Aruendiel and Hirizjahkinis went slowly up and down the narrow aisles, occasionally running a finger along the curved side of a bottle. They found nothing.

The central courtyard. The library.

“The library?” Aruendiel stopped short. “The Kavareen is playing games with us. Ilissa has no interest in books. The Faitoren are magical beings; she's never had to read a spell in her life.”

The Kavareen twitched its tail and emitted a long, snarling whine.

“No, she was here,” Hirizjahkinis insisted. “The Kavareen says she did some very strong magic here, too.”

Nora was looking around with interest. It was a long room, full of light from a row of high windows along one wall. The other walls were lined with bookshelves or wooden compartments designed for scrolls. There were a few reading stands, and a table strewn with oversize books, some of them open to show graceful lines of brushstrokes and bright touches of illustration. At the far end of the room, through an arched doorway, were more shelves, evidently the beginning of the stacks. Nora tried to spell out some of the Ors titles on the shelves nearest her.
History of the Victories of the Sun's Own Anointed Mirle IV
.
Of the Glorious Founding of the House of Semr
. This must be the history section, or maybe propaganda was more like it.
Record of the Pernish War
,
Including a True Account of the Southern Campaign, the Suvian Regency, and the Treachery of the Wizard Aruendiel
.

Nora reread the last title, puzzled, wondering if she had read it correctly, and then looked around quickly for Aruendiel himself. He and Hirizjahkinis were disappearing through the arched doorway. She pulled the book off the shelf and scanned the pages for Aruendiel's name, but she could make almost nothing out of the thicket of ink that filled the page. “I hate being illiterate,” she muttered.

She followed the others into a second room of bookshelves, half-lit by a single small window, where they were watching the Kavareen pace up and down the aisles. The creature kept looking up at the books and making a faint snicker-snicker sound that seemed to Nora to indicate some degree of frustration. But perhaps, she thought, she was only projecting her own feelings.

“He says it's here,” Hirizjahkinis said.

“This room is where the books of magic are kept,” Aruendiel objected. “You don't think he could be reacting to them? Some of the books themselves are enchanted, of course.”

Both of the magicians were speaking more softly than usual, Nora noticed. Library behavior must be the same in all worlds.

“Let's take a look. We will need more light.”

Hirizjahkinis's tangle of gold necklaces suddenly gleamed brighter, much brighter, to yield a flickering yellow light that illuminated the bookshelf in front of her. She began to examine the array of books, touching the spine of each. Aruendiel cupped his hand, and flames blazed up inside his palm, so close to the nearest shelf that Nora feared the books would catch fire. Then she saw how pale and thin, almost watery, the flames were. Like the ghost of a fire, she thought.

As the magicians worked their way through the stacks, Nora drifted along behind Aruendiel, trying to stay close enough to see by his light without being obtrusive. She felt some envy of Hirizjahkinis—Aruendiel treated her as an equal, someone whose opinion he obviously respected, even if he complained about the Kavareen. How long did it take Hirizjahkinis to become a magician? How long had it taken Aruendiel, for that matter? Or were magicians born, not made?

With some wistfulness, Nora ran her fingers over the gilt seal—a snake twined around a crescent moon—stamped on the frayed black spine of a volume as big as the unabridged dictionary.

“Stop that,” said Aruendiel, glancing back at her.

“Eh?” Hirizjahkinis called from another aisle.

“Not you.”

The magic books were a greater distraction for the magicians, though. Aruendiel kept stopping to yank books off the shelf and leaf through them, balancing them awkwardly in the crook of his elbow while cradling his handful of fire. Judging from the sounds coming from the other aisle, Hirizjahkinis was also browsing.

“Pogo Vernish's book on transformations. I didn't know they had a copy here.”

“Isn't it completely out of date? . . . You're right, Aruendiel, some of these books are enchanted. This spell is meant to drive the reader mad.”

“I know of that book. In my great-grandfather's time, the crown prince sent it to his father, Harnigon II. He hoped to force the old king to abdicate.”

“And did he?”

“The king went mad and had his son killed. Does it still work?”

“The spell? You'll have to tell me,” Hirizjahkinis said, chuckling. “I don't feel any different. . . . Ah, Aruendiel, here are some of your notebooks! Let's see, a collection of siegecraft spells, and an essay on magical landscape gardening.”

“Oh, yes. I laid out some of the palace gardens here in Semr, years ago.” He turned into the next aisle. “This is the end of the magic collection; the last two rows are the foreign books.”

“Let me see,” Hirizjahkinis said, following him. “This library used to have a good collection from my country, the only copy of the Book of the Five Stones outside of Hajgog—”

Nora wished sharply that she could join in. “I thought we were supposed to be looking for this person Bouragonr,” she said under her breath. Aruendiel must have heard, because he frowned. Nora went past them into the last aisle, next to the window. The books in this row were more eclectic in manufacture. On the lower shelves were clay tablets and engraved metal plates; the upper shelves held bound volumes and scrolls. Nora found a myriad of alphabets: one that was all concentric circles; pictograms of running animals and birds; signs that reminded her of Sanskrit or Arabic or Greek without looking exactly like any of those languages. Except that the lettering on the tag for one of the scrolls, lying by itself in a bin, did look very much like Greek. Nora picked up the brittle paper and unrolled it slowly. The first lines of a long poem. Yes, in Greek. She had translated these lines herself, the first year of graduate school, in Dr. Decker's Homeric Greek seminar: μηνιν αειδε θεα.

Nora sang a brief, wordless note of joy. Aruendiel appeared at the end of the aisle. “Look,” she said, “Greek. It's Greek! From my world.”

He took the scroll from her. “I don't know this language,” he said. “You recognize it?”

“Yes, of course! I can read it. A little,” she said, wishing violently that she had not dropped Greek after Dr. Decker's seminar.

Aruendiel did not seem to be terribly impressed. “Well, of course, there are books from other worlds in this library,” he said with a crooked shrug. “Micher Samle has donated some, I know. You might look around and see if any other books from your world have landed here.”

He turned and went back to the end of the aisle. An instant later Nora heard Hirizjahkinis say, “You didn't tell me she was from another world! The things you keep to yourself, Aruendiel.” She couldn't make out Aruendiel's reply.

Nora began looking over the shelves more carefully. Ten minutes later, after searching most of the aisle, she had found a clay tablet inscribed with what
might
have been Sumerian cuneiform, and a fat book that was certainly written in Japanese. From the diagrams, it looked like some sort of electrical engineering manual.

“Rats,” she said in English, putting the book back. And then, as her eyes traveled along the shelves, a jolt of recognition. Not so much the English words, the familiar title—although that registered quickly enough—but the worn spine, the bright colors: a cheap paperback, the kind you couldn't give away at a yard sale. Not just any cheap paperback, either.

Nora eased it out of the bookcase. It had been wedged in so tightly that the cover almost came off—the same cover that had caught her eye back in the rental cabin. A line drawing of a simpering young miss with a parasol.
Pride and Prejudice
. Jane Austen. Classics Series. Fifty cents. The book was slightly bent down the middle, from where she had jammed it into the back pocket of her jeans.

Nora turned it over and automatically read the blurb on the back, taking pleasure in how easy it was to understand the English sentences. But she was so agitated that she could hardly take in their meaning. The mere presence of the book seemed to be a validation of some sort. She felt like Schliemann unearthing the walls of heretofore mythical Troy. And then a clearer thought: How did this thing get here? It crossed her mind that the book could signal some kind of recovery, that she was about to wake from a long delirium and return to reality.

Aruendiel turned and looked down at her, his gray eyes curious, cool. “What do you have there?” he asked.

“This book, it's from my world,” she said, giving him a challenging glance. He showed no signs of vanishing.

“Oh? What kind of book?” Hirizjahkinis said.

“It's a—story,” Nora said, searching for an Ors word for “novel,” and failing to find one. “A very famous one. A comedy of manners that takes place in England—” The others looked blank; she amended the description quickly. “It deals with love and marriage.”

“Really? The whole book? What an interesting idea!”

“The odd thing is,” Nora said slowly, “this is my own copy. That is, I had it when I came into this world. But I lost it. I don't know how it got into this library.”

Aruendiel's expression was honed with interest. “But you only just now found it again?”

“Yes. I'm sure it's mine, though.” Absently she opened the paperback to flip through the pages.

Her first thought was that the book was alive. That was impossible, but if it was not alive, how could it be looking up with that red-rimmed eye, wet and blinking? Just the one eye, roving wildly under wrinkled lids, where there should be nothing but neat lines of type.