The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (41 page)

“You had no right to do so. This is an outrage. Your rudeness last night was inexcusable in itself—and now this. You did this as a deliberate insult.”

“If you take it so, Hirgus, I do not see how I can persuade you otherwise.”

“You were jealous of my work, you mad, old, vulture-faced cripple.” Hirgus took a deep breath and clutched the tresses of his beard with curled fingers, as though his hands itched to wring Aruendiel's neck instead. “You could never create such a thing of beauty in a hundred years with the crudities of simple magic, so you took your pathetic revenge on a practitioner of a nobler art. I am a fair-minded man, I have not listened to all the tittle-tattle about you—how you hide away in your rotting castle, nursing old grudges, crazy with fear of the demons from whom you stole the secrets of your wretched magic. I came here, ignoring those tales, thinking that I would be honorably received—instead, you treat me with the utmost disrespect!”

“Are they still telling that tale about the demons?” Aruendiel asked with interest. “I thought that old story would have been forgotten by now. Are you going to put it in your book?”

Hirgus gathered his cloak around himself with a furious shudder. He muttered something under his breath, while sketching a complicated, looping gesture in the air with one hand.

“Oh, Aruendiel,” Hirizjahkinis said, with a sigh. “Dear Sister Night, did you have to provoke him quite so much?”

“On the contrary, I have been more tolerant than he deserves, Hiriz. I have not called
him
insulting names like an angry schoolboy.”

“But I am the one who will have to listen to his complaints all the way to—”

The fire covering the carriage grew brighter, a brilliant jack-o'-lantern orange, and then suddenly exploded outward. Nora felt its heat rise like a shining wall around her. Blinded by the glare, she shut her eyes and cringed, not knowing where to turn, as her throat filled with smoke.

Then she could breathe again, cold air salving her skin. She opened her eyes to the gray courtyard, half-shadowed in the angled morning sunlight. Hirgus stood trembling beside his carriage, his velvet cap askew, his face flushed. His carriage itself was a blackened shell, a few flames feebly licking the charred roof. The horses whinnied and shifted uneasily in their traces.

Aruendiel looked up. Following his gaze, Nora saw that one of the house's eaves was ablaze. But as she watched, the flames disappeared and the smoke petered away.

“I am afraid your fire demon may be testy for the rest of the day, Hirgus.” Aruendiel turned back to his guest. “They never enjoy being quenched.”

Hirgus's reply was unintelligible. With a jerk of his head, he climbed into what remained of his carriage.

“Perhaps I should have informed you before letting your captive ghost go free,” Aruendiel allowed. “But it was rude of you to try to burn up my house. Shall we call it a draw?”

“I am leaving now,” Hirgus called to Hirizjahkinis. “If you wish to leave this lunatic's company, please come with me now. I will not wait any longer.”

“You can wait another minute, Hirgus,” Hirizjahkinis said crisply. She looked back at Aruendiel. “You are incorrigible! I do not understand what drives you to find quarrels with everyone around you, including your oldest friends. If that is what makes you happy, then you must be very content right now.”

“Content enough,” he said, a shadow passing over his face. “I wish you a good journey, Hiriz. And I thank you for your visit. We may not always agree, you and I, but your company is always one of my greatest pleasures.”

“Hmmph, you do not always make that obvious!” Hirizjahkinis said. “At least, it is never dull when I see you. Peace be your friend. And yours, too, Mistress Nora. You will need it, living under his roof,” she added, with a glance at Aruendiel.

She waved once as the carriage went through the gate, Hirgus a stiff and outraged profile beside her. “This is soot on your forehead,” Aruendiel said to Nora, who was waving back.

“I'm not surprised,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “I almost burned to death just now.”

He gave her a long look. “You must learn how to quench fire, now that you know how to light it. I will not have you setting any more of my private papers on fire.”

So her inchoate, guilty suspicion was right: Neither Aruendiel nor Hirizjahkinis had ignited the box of papers. “That was an accident,” she said.

“All the more reason for you to learn to put fires out. Between you and Hirgus, I am lucky the whole house has not gone up in flames. I would have thought him more subtle than to loose a fire demon on me, but I may have overestimated his capacities. And for him to say that I was jealous of him. The vanity of that imbecile!”

“You have a smudge on your cheek, too,” Nora informed him.

Running a hand over the rough terrain of his face, Aruendiel laughed unexpectedly. “What did Hirgus call me? A vulture-faced cripple?”

“Something like that.”

“At least the fool is observant,” he said as they went inside.

A
ruendiel went north for a few days to visit Lord Luklren and to discern whether the magician Dorneng Hul was maintaining the magical barriers against the Faitoren to the standard that Aruendiel expected. He was almost—but not entirely—satisfied in this, Nora gathered when he returned. She felt some sympathy for Dorneng, who had had to refortify the barriers under Aruendiel's supervision. It was decided that the flock of iron birds, currently roosting in trees and stony hills just outside the Faitoren realm, would remain as an additional safeguard. Back in his own castle, Aruendiel had the blacksmith in Red Gate send over two dozen horseshoes and a keg of nails, and spent an afternoon turning them into more birds, which took clattering flight and disappeared into the gray autumn sky.

She noticed a change in Aruendiel's manner. The lessons resumed, but at a more erratic pace. Some days Nora did not see him at all. He spent more time in his workroom at the top of the tower, where she had never gone, and he stopped taking his dinner when she did in front of the fire in the great hall. Her translation of chapter fifteen of
Pride and Prejudice
remained uncorrected. His instructions to her were more curt and perfunctory than before.

She was having trouble with the next stage of fire magic: extinguishing fire. No matter how hard she concentrated, willing them to go out, the candles burned serenely on. She wondered distractedly whether this failure was the result or the cause of Aruendiel's loss of interest in her magical studies.

Mrs. Toristel noticed a difference. “He's not giving you a lesson today?” she asked one day in the kitchen as Nora scoured a pot with sand. They had been making sausages. The air was still rich with the smells of herbs and meat, and the loops of fresh sausages hung above their heads like celebratory bunting.

Nora had been wondering if there was a spell to clean dishes, and then reflected that at this rate, she might never get a chance to learn it. “No, not today.”

“Nor yesterday, either.”

“No.”

Mrs. Toristel sniffed. “Well, he changes his mind about things, you know. He gets a notion into his head, and then he drops it, and no one can say why.”

If her words were meant to be consoling, she had miscalculated. “Is he all right?” Nora asked after a moment. “He seems more irritated than usual.”

“He's been in a foul mood since that black woman was here,” Mrs. Toristel said.

“I think he was more annoyed by the man, Hirgus.”

“That carriage! I wouldn't ride in something like that for anything. The man himself was pleasant enough. But you never know when
he
will
take a dislike to someone.”

“Yes,” Nora said, thinking that the someone might be herself. She cast about for a new subject. “Mrs. Toristel, I'm sorry to say this, but I don't think these boots are going to last me through the winter.” It was too cold for clogs now. Even the poorest peasant women wore boots in the winter—surprisingly elegant boots, some of them: thick-soled, no heels, but expertly cut to show off the curve of the legs and ankles. Nora fantasized sometimes about taking a few dozen pairs back to her own world and selling them through some Madison Avenue boutique to pay for a year or two of school. The old boots that Mrs. Toristel had given her, though, were too small and almost worn out, the leather uppers eroded, the soles slick and spongy.

Mrs. Toristel set her mouth and looked at Nora's feet. “I thought Toristel stitched them up for you.”

“He did, twice, but they're still leaking, and he says the leather's too rotten for him to put on another new sole.”

“Can't you make them do a little longer?”

“They're pretty hopeless.” Nora had finally given up on them the day before, as the pigs were being slaughtered. Averting her gaze from a struggling pig, she had stepped in a puddle in her leaky boots and had to go around the rest of the day with her feet soaked and stinking with blood. The clotted mess in her stockings—indescribable.

Mrs. Toristel sighed. “Well, ask
him
about having a new pair made. I can't afford it, out of the housekeeping money. And you should talk to him soon. He's off to Stone Top tomorrow for the assizes, and there are a couple of horse thieves to be hanged. He's likely to be away for most of a week.”

“Oh,” said Nora. Aruendiel had not mentioned the trip to her. But then he had said almost nothing to her for the past several days.

She broached the subject of new boots as he was eating breakfast the next day. For the assizes, he was dressed with unusual formality, a fur-trimmed tunic over a shirt of finely crimped linen. His riding boots were beautifully polished.

Aruendiel interrupted her before she had finished. “What about the boots you are wearing?”

“They won't last much longer,” she said, trying to be both firm and polite. “I wouldn't ask if it weren't important.”

“Don't you have some money of your own?” he said, turning back to his oatmeal. “I cannot afford to pay the wardrobe bills for a lady of fashion.”

“All I want,” Nora said, her jaw tight, “is to have dry feet while I'm helping to get your pigs slaughtered.”

He glanced down at her old boots, the toes still stiff and dark with blood. “You should be more careful where you step,” he said, rising from the table.

After he had gone, Nora went upstairs to her room, opened the drawer of the table beside her bed, and untwisted the square of cloth where she kept the silver beads she had brought back from Semr. Two beads left, out of the original dozen. Two for the river crossing, five beads to Massy's children, two for her lodging at the inn at Stone Top on the journey back from Semr. (Foolishly, she had insisted on paying her own way, after the fuss that Aruendiel had made at the ferry in Semr.) Another bead for reshoeing her horse, when it cast a shoe on the road. The animal had later been sold; “Aruendiel should pay me back,” she muttered, twisting up the two beads again. Surely two beads would be enough for a new pair of boots. It was ridiculously stingy of Aruendiel to insist that she buy her own boots, but the money had come from him in the first place, so she could not complain too much. Perhaps there would be some money left over.

She was disabused of this comforting thought at the cobbler's hut later that morning. “Four silver beads! That can't be right.”

“Well, you're from the castle, aren't you?” the cobbler said.

“Yes. What does that have to do with it?”

“That's what the gentry pays,” he said shortly. “And his lordship still owes me for his last pair of boots. I can't work for nothing, you know. I have to eat. So does my wife.” The cobbler screwed up his face and shook his head.

“What if you make me the boots for two silver beads, and I'll make sure his lordship pays you what he owes you?” Nora asked boldly, although she was not sure that she could persuade Aruendiel to settle his bill.

The cobbler evidently entertained the same doubts. “No'm. Four silver beads. I can't charge less than what the boots are worth, just to please a lady.”

“I didn't ask you to do that,” Nora said, “and besides, you as good as said you were overcharging me anyway.”

She went away fuming, stopping at Morinen's hut to report. Morinen and her mother, carding wool in front of their fire, were gratifyingly shocked, and gave her a mug of cider as a restorative. “Four silver beads!” Morinen said. “He must think you're rich.”

“Yes, he probably thinks I won't pay because I'm as tightfisted as Lord Aruendiel,” Nora said bitterly. (Morinen's mother laughed, showing all seven of her teeth.) “But all I have are two beads. Aruendiel wouldn't give me anything to buy my boots with.”

“Most people don't even pay Cobbler in cash. What did we trade him last time for my boots, Ma? Was it some goat hides?”

“Goat hides, yes.” Morinen's mother nodded. “And a cheese.”

“I don't have any goat hides,” Nora said. “Or cheese. He wants to be paid in advance, too. I don't know what I'm going to do. My boots are all right when it's dry, like today, but when it's wet, they're a disaster.”

“Snow tomorrow,” Morinen's mother said.

“I won't go outside this winter. That's all I can do.” She put down her mug after a last swig of cider. Standing up—a little unsteadily, the cider was stronger than she'd realized—she accidently kicked her empty mug into one of the hearthstones. It broke into several pieces. Nora began to apologize before she recollected herself. Stooping, she picked up the fragments and handed the mug to Morinen, whole again.

“What!” Morinen stared at the restored mug, then laughed. “That's some of the magic you've learned from his lordship, eh?”

“That, and lighting fires.”

Morinen's mother was interested. “Where's the candlestick you broke yesterday, Morinen?” Her shawled head nodded at Nora. “She can fix it.”

“It's on the rubbish heap, Ma. She doesn't want to bother with that.”

“No, I'd like to,” Nora said. “Lead me to it.”

She and Morinen pulled on their cloaks and went outside. Behind the hut, the rubbish heap was a pile of old barrel staves, worn-out harnesses, and broken glass and crockery. They assembled as many of the pieces of the broken earthware candlestick as they could find, and then Nora patched them together, adding a little extra to substitute for the missing fragments.

Morinen turned the candlestick over in her hand admiringly. “Ma'll be pleased. She gave me a tongue-lashing that you never heard the like of. You should come around more often—I'm always breaking things. As a matter of fact—” she said hesitantly.

“Tell me.”

“Fori next door, she dropped a platter last week that belonged to her ma, that died last winter. She was all upset about it. I think she saved the pieces. Would you mind—?”

“Of course not!” It was gratifying to be able to exercise her new skill.

Fori was the woman whose pregnancy Nora had noticed the summer before. Now she was nursing the baby, her eyes vague with tiredness. Besides the baby, there were four other small children in the hut, wrestling with an excited puppy. In the tumult, it took some time for Morinen to explain why they had come. Fori looked doubtful, but she nodded toward the corner of the hut. “In the chest there. I couldn't bear to throw it out just yet,” she said, almost apologetically.

Opening the chest, Nora lifted out the pieces of the dish. This was easy, they wanted to become one again, she could feel it. She let them coalesce under her hands.

Fori took the restored platter wonderingly. “That's magic, isn't it?”

She seemed about to say something else, but one of the children jerked the puppy's tail, provoking a frenzy of yelping. Morinen and Nora turned to leave. They were a few paces outside the hut when Fori called after them. Nora's first thought was that the platter had already been broken again. But Fori was waving two pale strips of cloth in the air.

“Stockings,” she said, pressing them into Nora's hands. “Thank you.”

“You don't have to—”

Fori had already disappeared inside, drawn by a fresh wail from one of the children.

“That was nice of her,” Nora said, examining the stockings. “Lambs' wool.”

“Just good manners to pay you back for the favor.” Morinen paused, then said meaningfully: “You know, I believe everyone in the village has got some kind of broken dish they'd like to have fixed.”

Nora looked at Morinen. “You really think so?”

“I could ask around.”

“And they might express their gratitude with more stockings?” Nora laughed. “Or goatskins?”

“Goatskins.” Morinen nodded, smiling back at Nora. “Cheese.”

“Well, that's very interesting.” Nora considered for a moment. “I could come back tomorrow morning and see if anyone needs any pots mended.”

“Oh, they will,” Morinen said. “People always drop things. I wish I had a pair of stockings for every dish I've broken.”

The next morning, after finishing her chores as quickly as she could, Nora went back to the village, a little reluctantly. She was feeling a kind of stage fright—terror that she would forget how to do the spell. But that wouldn't really matter, she reasoned, because Morinen was probably wrong and no one would be interested in having her mend their broken dishes.

“People always want to see magic!” scoffed some brash interior carny that, until then, Nora had not known she carried with her. Strangely enough, it sounded a bit like Aruendiel.

When she entered Morinen's hut, pushing aside the sheepskin that hung inside the door, she saw that Morinen was not there. But Morinen's mother and two of her brothers—one sharpening a scythe, the other fitting a new wooden handle to a mallet—looked up as though they had been expecting her.

“Mori said for you to meet her at Caddo's,” said Resk, the one with the mallet.

“All right,” Nora said, trying to remember which house was Caddo's. “That's on the other side of the village, right? Next to the river?”

“I'll take you,” the other brother, Posin, said. “Mori said I wouldn't want to miss this.”

When they reached Caddo's hut, Morinen was waiting inside with Caddo—Big Faris's wife, Nora remembered now, who kept bees—and almost a dozen other women. There was a large basket of broken crockery by Morinen's feet.

“Morinen, did you tell everyone in the village about this?” Nora asked in an undertone.

“Oh, yes,” Morinen said. “It's not as though you could keep it secret, anyhow. Here's Caddo's pots—we dug them out of her rubbish heap this morning. I reckon there must be five years' worth of broken dishes here.”

“You're not kidding,” Nora said, nudging the basket with her toe. She felt the leather of her boot pulling away from the sole, and the sensation steeled her resolve. She knelt beside the basket and rummaged through the contents, looking for pieces that might have come from the same dish. Caddo came forward to help her. By the end of ten minutes, they had what appeared to be the pieces of four separate dishes and a pile of unidentified shards.