The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (49 page)

Again, Aruendiel asked himself why he had just told Nora this. Well, she'd expressed some curiosity about Old Semr, the day they rode through it. Still, if he wasn't careful, he would lead her right back to the Pir River. Somehow, as he talked with her, the distant past seemed less distant; he almost forgot how much he had lost there.

Aruendiel stood up abruptly, flinching as his back straightened. He was suddenly aware that he would like very much to stay and keep talking—in fact, he realized with some alarm, he wanted nothing so much as to tell the whole long tale, to share it piece by piece with Nora and watch her turn it over in that lively, attentive, compassionate mind of hers. But that temptation was also why he could not tell her.

“What? It's not late.”

“Late enough. I am growing tired—it is no small thing for a man as old as I am to recall the details of his earliest youth.”

Nora looked up at him, her clean young face pleasant and watchful. “There's a lot you haven't told, though. How you discovered real magic . . . what was going on with your sister that wasn't quite right . . . what happened to your brother Aruendic . . . or the peasant boy?”

“The peasant boy?”

“The one who was at school with you. Odl Naxt's other star pupil.”

“Oh, him,” Aruendiel said, a splash of relief in his voice. “You've met him, as a matter of fact. That was my old friend Nansis Abora.”

“The magician we stayed with on the way back from Semr? The one doing time-travel work—who gave us those preserves!”

“After we left school, he went back to his village, but our paths crossed again, much later. Nansis was one of the first to practice real magic with me. He has a very disciplined, patient intellect, and a good head for numbers. There are not many magicians who could even attempt the kind of astronomical magic that he is pursuing. He worked in Semr for a while—he had a spell as the king's chief magician—but he retired to the country as soon as he could. It sometimes seems to me that Nansis gleans more satisfaction from digging in that garden of his than from practicing magic.

“Aside from that,” Aruendiel added, “he is not quite as great a clod as I first thought him.”

N
ora came downstairs the next morning to find that Aruendiel had ridden away at daybreak to pay a Null Days call. He was visiting someone named Lernsiep in the next valley—an old friend in ill health, Mrs. Toristel said.

He was away the next day, too. As afternoon turned into evening with no sign of him, Nora grew uneasy. It was the last of the Null Days. Tomorrow was New Year's Day. If he returned too late, would he pick up the thread of his story again? She had a half-superstitious fear that he was telling her as much as he had about his past only because it was the holidays, because he was bored, because officially this slow, dark stretch of time did not exist. If he did not finish the tale tonight, he would never finish it for her.

Well, she thought, at least I know most of the story. But what was that about being blamed for his brother's death? Nora ladled out some warm soup for herself, saving the rest for Aruendiel, then took up
Pride and Prejudice
and began translating. Elizabeth was reading a letter from her sister Jane, absent in London and now undeceived about the hypocritical Miss Bingley. Nora could not help thinking of her own sisters, never very dependable correspondents, but now completely out of reach. Would she ever see them again, she wondered, not for the first time.

The water clock in the kitchen had been stopped for the Null Days, but surely it was not so late yet. Nora laid another log on the fire, put on a second shawl, and went back to the book and her tablet. After a while, she put down her stylus and did the translation in her head, not bothering to write it down. Then she put her head down on the table for a moment's rest.

The touch on her shoulder was so light, almost shy, that it hardly roused her. Then she realized that she was very cold, with an evil crick in her neck, and she opened her eyes.

“Mistress Nora, is anything amiss?” Aruendiel asked sharply. “Why are you sitting here so late?”

“I was waiting for you,” Nora said. Her voice was slow with sleep. She tried to sound more alert: “I was just sitting up for a little while.”

Aruendiel's face was shadowed. “It will be dawn in a few hours. You should go to bed, or you will risk a chill.”

Nora nodded, feeling suddenly foolish. Aruendiel was still in his traveling cloak, a trace of snow caked to his shoulders. He might have been riding all night. She stood up, flexing her neck carefully, and turned to go upstairs. Aruendiel walked beside her, his gait more labored than usual. “How is your friend, the one you were visiting?” she asked, to be polite.

“He is dying,” Aruendiel said.

An awkward pause, which she tried to fill with some sympathetic words. Aruendiel did not respond. After a moment, she asked: “What is he dying of?”

“The wasting disease. There are unnatural growths throughout his body—they are draining his strength. He is as thin as a winter branch.”

“Oh,” she said, understanding. “That. It is common in my world.”

“How do your doctors treat it?” he asked with a gleam of interest.

“Surgery, or drugs to kill the growths. Can you treat it with magic?”

He shook his head. “I have tried, but the growths returned. Lernsiep helped save my life once, years ago. And now I cannot save his. He says he does not mind so much. He has lived long enough, he says.” Aruendiel gave a sour chuckle.

“Well—” Nora looked down. You couldn't force someone to stay alive, if the person was already dead, or as good as dead. She had surrendered to that unyielding logic after watching the vacant face in the hospital bed, the blinks and twitches that had no meaning. “But you'll miss him,” she said.

“Certainly.” They were upstairs now, in front of Nora's door. “I suppose that is why Lernsiep went to the trouble of saving
my
life.”

“I would think so. You don't sound very grateful.”

“No?” Aruendiel limped down the corridor without saying good night.

•   •   •

In the morning, the sky was so thickly bandaged with clouds that it was hard to tell the exact moment the sun rose. Standing in the courtyard, Nora watched the gray air brighten slowly, the other figures around her accumulating color and detail. Mrs. Toristel whispering to her daughter; her grandson yawning; the young black ram twisting suspiciously at the end of the rope held by Mr. Toristel; Aruendiel standing silent, holding a knife with a short, triangular blade.

At some point Aruendiel decided that it was dawn—either through some magical means or simply because he was tired of waiting. He nodded to Mr. Toristel, and the other man yanked the ram toward the magician so quickly the animal's hooves skidded on the icy cobbles. Aruendiel bent over the animal; it struggled as he tilted its head back. Nora looked away. When she looked back, the basin that Mrs. Toristel held under the sheep's throat was already half-full of blood, and Aruendiel was walking rapidly back toward the house as though he wished to speak to no one.

For most of the day, Nora worked in the kitchen, as the dead ram became roast mutton. She wondered if Aruendiel would summon her for a lesson, now that the Null Days were over, but she heard nothing from him. He spent some hours in the tower—Mrs. Toristel carried up a plate of mutton to him—and then he went out on horseback.

In the afternoon there was a bonfire in the courtyard, all the evergreen branches that visitors had brought during the Null Days. Nora watched as they burned with a slow angry crackle. People from the village came and went, laughing, drinking the hot ale that Mr. Toristel ladled out for them. There was a sheen of satiety and contentment on their faces. It was the one day in the year when everyone ate meat, everyone was alike, whether you could afford to sacrifice a black calf for the New Year or only a scrawny black rabbit.

As the bonfire died down, Nora turned to go inside, only to find Aruendiel behind her, a long shadow in his dark cloak. With a moment's confusion, she wondered how long he had been there.

“I was about to walk in the woods,” he said. “Would you care to accompany me?”

They took the usual route down to the river, but once there, Aruendiel chose not to take the path into the wooded hills. Instead, he turned to follow the frozen gray track of the river, partly covered with snow. Watching him scramble down the bank, moving more nimbly than he had the night before, Nora deduced that he must have taken prompt advantage of the end of the Null Days to work some magic. He had shaved, too.

Uncharacteristically, he waited for Nora to catch up before moving forward.

“The ice is thick enough to hold us?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. It is frozen to the length of a man's forearm now, and it will not melt until spring.” After a moment he added, “When I was a boy, this river often froze solid. Winters are milder than they used to be.”

Aruendiel generally eschewed conversation on their walks; this was unusually loquacious for him. Nora took advantage of the opening.

“Aruendiel,” she said, “I still want to hear the rest of your story—how you became not just a wizard, but a magician.”

He glanced at her. “That is why you were waiting for me last night?” She nodded. Aruendiel's mouth curled, whether with amusement or annoyance she could not tell. “It is not as interesting a tale as you imagine,” he said.

“I
need
to know more about real magic if I'm going to be a magician,” Nora said. “You told Hirgus Ext that you rediscovered it. How?”

“As I told him—from the works of the earliest magicians.”

“Well, but how did you find their works?”

“The same way that one comes across any book from an earlier time.” Aruendiel stared down at the ice, stepping carefully. “Some of the old writings came from the libraries of wizards who did not understand their importance. Some had been cached and forgotten, or had decayed to fragments. Some had been buried in the tombs of the dead. It was the work of years to discover them and then to understand their significance.”

His voice sounded duller than usual, Nora thought. “Will you show those books to me?” she asked.

“You are too inexperienced. You would not understand them.”

“But you could explain them. And after all, I know something about real magic already, more than you did when you first read the works of the old magicians.”

“No.” He shook his head. “It's impossible.”

“I'm not like Hirgus Ext—I'm not planning to write a book,” she pointed out.

Aruendiel laughed aloud. The face he turned to her was brighter, oddly quizzical. “No, you are not like Hirgus.”

They came to a place where a dead tree had fallen across the river, blocking their path. “Have you done any magic today?” Aruendiel asked.

“Mended a broken cup, is all.”

He jutted his chin at the tree. “Try lifting that.”

Concentrating hard, Nora got the tree to shift a little. It swayed from side to side like a large, clumsy animal. Aruendiel watched critically. “You have very poor control,” he said. “There is no need to fling it about the way you are doing.”

“I've never tried to levitate anything so large,” Nora said, feeling light-headed. “It's an entire tree, it's enormous.”

“All the more reason to make sure it does exactly what you wish it to, and no more.”

They climbed over the tree, ducking through its limbs. Aruendiel remarked that she would have to remove it by spring or navigation would be impeded.

He was trying to change the subject, Nora saw. “So you won't tell me any more about the discovery of true magic,” she said, aware that she sounded like a disappointed child. He did not trust her, for some reason. The thought was painful.

They walked in silence for what seemed like a long time. Finally Aruendiel said: “No, I cannot tell you. Not now.” He shook his head, but it seemed to Nora that the movement was more like a shudder. That, and the unease in his voice, reminded her suddenly of how he had looked—when was it? Not so long ago. Something that had happened when Hirizjahkinis was visiting.

“Will you tell me more someday?” Nora asked, suddenly oppressed with a sense of apprehension.

Aruendiel moved his shoulders stiffly under his cloak. “Perhaps.”

They were coming to the place where the river curved to the north, leading deeper into the forest, away from the cultivated lands. Aruendiel turned and climbed the riverbank with a long step and a grunt. Nora scrambled up after him. Together they emerged from the trees that fringed the river, and began to walk across the snowy pastureland toward the red-and-purple sunset. For some reason Nora thought of a woman's painted face disappearing into flame.

“Your discovery of true magic—does it have anything to do with that woman Wurga?” she asked.

“Wurga?” Aruendiel said, too quickly. An extra jolt in his uneven stride.

So she had her answer, but she said: “The woman in the portrait I burned. The one who was afraid of you.”

Aruendiel uttered a rough-edged syllable that took her a moment to recognize as laughter; it was not entirely mirthful. “Mistress Nora, you are as keen on the scent as a blind hound. Will I have no secrets from you?”

“Was she your lover?” Nora hazarded, remembering her other lucky guess, the one about Ilissa.

“Certainly not,” Aruendiel said, frowning. He hesitated, then said: “She was a magician, of sorts.”

“A magician!” It was more than Nora had expected to get out of him. “And what became of her?”

“As I told you before: She disappeared, after leaving my sister's house.”

“How did you know her? Did you teach her?”

“Enough,” Aruendiel said in a tone of finality. “It is a pitiful subject.”

A suicide, Nora speculated, remembering the woman's crazed expression. She felt chastened. But she made one last venture: “Hirizjahkinis thought she was your daughter.”

Aruendiel seemed surprised. “No, she was not my daughter.”

They walked for a while in silence. The sun had set, but the snow on the ground cast a cold radiance in the air.

“You did have a daughter, though,” Nora said, picking up on something in his tone.

Aruendiel acknowledged this with a nod. “From an old liaison, far from here. Her mother was a whore,” he added matter-of-factly. “I saw that the child was provided for, although naturally I could not publicly recognize her as my own.”

The “naturally” irked Nora, but she decided not to call his attention to it. “You told me that your granddaughter's granddaughter is an old woman now.”

“Did I say that?” He brooded for a moment. “Well, it is true.”

“Who is she?”

Aruendiel gave Nora a long, appraising look. “It is Mrs. Toristel.”

“Mrs. Toristel!”

“You must never tell her this,” he said with some sternness. “She does not know of her relation to me. Not precisely.”

“Why not?” Nora was indignant. “She has worked for you all her life, and you never told her that you're her however-many-greats-grandfather? She deserves to know!”

“She knows there is an old family connection. Mrs. Toristel was a poor peasant girl when she came to work for me. It would not have been appropriate to make the relationship known.”

Nora shook her head. “This is one of those times, Aruendiel, when we are not going to agree on appropriate behavior.”

“But you will not tell her?”

“No, I won't,” Nora said reluctantly. “She should hear it from you. And you
should
tell her. She would be so happy to hear it, you know.”

“It is difficult,” he said with some heaviness. “I brought her and Toristel here because they had lost their livelihood through no fault of their own—because of their loyalty to me, in fact. Because of that and the ties of blood, I felt some responsibility. There were complexities I should have foreseen, perhaps—but it does not matter, they have served me well.”