The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (52 page)

“It sounds as though you were hiring her for a job,” Nora said tartly. “What did she think about your being a magician?”

He opened his hand in a dismissive gesture. “That was not her concern. She was pleased to be the wife of a famed magician, of course, but it mattered less to her than other things.”

“Well, it doesn't seem like a great marriage to me,” Nora said, “not that that was any excuse for killing her. You chose her because she was safe and predictable, she wasn't interested in what you're most interested in—and we haven't even touched on the age difference. She was eighteen, and you were what, a hundred and thirty?”

“It was a fine marriage,” Aruendiel said. “If not for Ilissa's meddling.” He brooded for a moment. “Yes, I was far older than Lusarniev, but it meant only that I knew what I needed in a wife. Lusarniev was all that, and I cherished her for it.”

Nora felt another uncomfortable twinge of irritation toward the deceased Lady Lusarniev. “Too bad you killed her, then.” Honorably, she added: “And maybe you shouldn't blame her so much for falling in love with another man. Ilissa probably put some extra glamour into that love spell to make Melinderic more attractive.”

“He was handsome enough already,” Aruendiel said, with distaste.

“Your wife was what, twenty-one? That's very young.”

Aruendiel glanced at her with a flicker of what might have been amusement, but it faded. “Yes, she was very young,” he said heavily. “You know, I cannot even recall exactly what she looked like, except for that last wild look before she died. I remember that she was beautiful, but I cannot picture her beauty.

“Then I went after Ilissa. She'd stirred up her own war by then. I did not especially care what the war was about. I only wanted to kill Ilissa.

“Instead, she killed me.

“In battle, those last weeks, I was strangely distracted, clumsy. I thought that anger would sharpen my powers, as it always had in the past, but not this time. I could not seem to judge the strength of my own magic—my spells were either far too strong or not strong enough. Did Hirizjahkinis tell you how I died?”

“She said you fell from one of those flying contraptions.”

“An Avaguri's mount,” Aruendiel said. “There had been other near misses in combat, but I was lucky the other times, or my allies covered for me. That day, in the Tamicr Mountains, I was chasing Ilissa, putting all my energies into the curse I was sending after her, and suddenly I felt myself falling. One of her illusions, I knew, and yet I reflexively leaned hard to the right, trying to correct my balance. And then I really did fall, right off my mount.”

“You could have saved yourself,” Nora said crossly, feeling a perverse satisfaction in pointing out the missed opportunity. “You could have raised a wind—transformed yourself into a bird—summoned the Avaguri's mount back to you.”

“For some reason, I did none of those things,” he said. “I remember the sunlight on the snow below me was so dazzling that I had to close my eyes. And then I remember hitting the mountainside and not being able to move. Then I fell again. This time the ground fell with me. That was the avalanche, from what they told me later. I don't remember anything else. Evidently I died very quickly.”

“And then what?” she demanded.

“Then they found my body and revived it, Euren, Hirizjahkinis, and the others, sometime later.”

“But what happened in the meantime?”

“In the meantime? I was dead.”

“What do you remember? You must remember something.” When Aruendiel said nothing, Nora pursued: “You—your soul must have been somewhere. Or they wouldn't have been able to bring you back.”

“Those who come back from death have nothing to tell. Were you paying no attention when I resurrected the child Irseln?”

Nora remembered the puzzled shadow on Irseln's face, the way she had ducked her father's greedy questioning. Was she fearful because of what she remembered, or fearful because she could not remember? “She was a little girl. You're a grown man and a magician,” Nora said. “You must have some recollection.”

Slowly Aruendiel's gaze pulled away from Nora's and roamed across the darkened hall. “I remember a sense of—engagement,” he said. “I was occupied with something that required my full attention. I can remember this only because I was conscious of being interrupted when they called me. I had no great interest in answering their call, but they persisted. So then I went to see what it was all about.”

“What do you mean, ‘went to see'? Was it an actual journey?”

He shook his head. “It was not a matter of physical distance. I found the four of them: Euren, Meko Listl, Hirizjahkinis, Lernsiep. I do not think I could have named them, then, but I knew who they were, and I knew they were there because of me. Their concern for me seemed absurd, misguided. I watched them, bemused that they were going to such trouble.

“Then—I do remember this quite clearly—I recognized my corpse, lying in the middle of their small circle. I could not see it exactly as the living see, but I could perceive that it was wrecked, empty. Whatever utility that body had once served was ended. And that should have been enough for me.

“The corpse was familiar, though. That was what drew me. I was curious”—he spoke the word with contempt—“the way one might have a whim to visit a place that one knew long ago.

“So, I lingered. I could see the corpse more clearly now, probably through the eyes of the others. I felt no particular emotion when I saw that half of my face was a smashed ruin. But my hands—” He lifted them from the table and turned them back and forth, inspecting them thoughtfully. “In some ways, we know our hands better than our faces. In life, I had never seen them so still and helpless. I felt pity that they would never move at my will again. And then—more curiosity,” Aruendiel said. “I wondered what it would be like to enter into the flesh again.

“That was all it took. I was caught.

“In an instant, I knew what it was to be alive again. Suddenly I needed air; I had no choice but to fill my lungs. I remembered cold, and then I remembered—well, I discovered what it is like to be broken in a dozen dozen places.

“As I said,” he added, with a sour rictus, “there was no good reason to resurrect me.”

He stopped speaking. Nora ran a fingertip over the table, tracing a figure eight. “You didn't encounter your wife while you were dead, by any chance?” she asked suddenly.

“I don't know.”

“You don't remember anything, except at the very end, when you came back.”

“This is correct.”

Aruendiel's calm assertion of seamless ignorance—so uncharacteristic—was profoundly unsatisfying. She wondered if he was lying. But if he was not lying, what then? To know that there was something after death but not to know what it was, the undiscovered country still undiscovered, whether it was torture, hellfire, bliss, boredom, nothingness—what was the comfort of that?

“How did they bring you back? What spell?” she demanded.

For once, Aruendiel seemed oddly reluctant to talk about the particulars of a piece of magic. “Some of Euren's wolf magic, to try to heal the corpse's wounds and make it fit for life again,” he said dismissively. “A binding spell, to help bring spirit and body together. And to summon the spirit, that was more wolf magic. They simply sat together, the four of them, and called for me for a long time.”

“What do you mean, called for you?”

“By name, by thought.” He shrugged irritably. “It's how the wolves call back their dead, according to Euren. Very loose, subjective, like all animal magic.”

Nora shook her head violently, as though she could dispel the sudden wave of fearful recognition that had washed over her. “I don't believe you,” she said.

Aruendiel glanced at her, surprised.

“You know, after my brother's accident, when he was in the hospital,” she said, finding her voice shifting, unsettled, “that's exactly what we did, my parents and I. We spent
days
in his room, talking to him, looking for any sign that he heard us. And there was nothing. He wasn't even dead yet.

“If he had been somewhere, if he could have heard us, he would have come. If it had been possible to bring him back, we would have done it. Even without magic, we would have done it.”

Aruendiel answered slowly: “I cannot say whether your brother heard your call or not, Nora, or whether he could have answered it. Perhaps it was better for him not to.”

“Better? Better?” Nora stood up. Finally her surging discontent had found a suitable outlet. “Is that what you meant when you said the dead owed nothing to the living? That we shouldn't disturb the dead with our grief? The way your friends disturbed you? Listen, you were lucky that they did that! You were lucky to have friends who loved you enough to sit around your dead body and grieve and call and try to drag you back into the world. Because I can tell you, it's painful to do that, it's horrible, to call and call and not know if anyone will answer.

“But you don't appreciate that. You're still angry at Hirizjahkinis for raising you from the dead. It seems like selfishness to me.”

“You know nothing about it,” Aruendiel said, with a furious wrench of his mouth.

“
You
can't even remember being dead; how do you know it was so wonderful?”

“That doesn't matter. It was what had befallen me. It was my fate.”

“They gave you a gift, bringing you back to life.”

“Which I never asked for.”

“If that's your attitude, life was wasted on you.”

Aruendiel leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. He smiled slightly, unpleasantly. “I fear that you are right.”

O
n winter mornings, the barn was dark but milder than outside, full of the animals' warm breath and the funk of their manure. Nora fed the chickens first, then the sow, finally the goats and the two cows. She hauled water for them, then took a pitchfork and spread a fresh layer of bedding.

This morning she took extra pains, spreading the straw deeper and more evenly than usual. Some levitation magic would have made the work go faster, but today she found a certain comfort in having to exert herself. The physical effort made remembering the evening before slightly less painful.

What had put her into such a foul humor? That small, tantalizing glimpse of home had started it. And then Aruendiel's dark mood, his death wish—all laced with self-pity, but naturally he wouldn't see that. She wished that he had not told her so much about murdering his wife. She wished he had not told her anything about his wife. And yet she wanted to know everything about his wife. How humiliating to feel this species of jealousy toward a dead woman. Perverse, too, considering how she had died. Nora stabbed the pitchfork into a pile of manure, then held out a handful of straw to one of the cows. Its big tongue brushed Nora's hand. Running a hand down its warm, shaggy face, she still felt raw, exposed, regretful. Not so much because of what she had said but because of what she had made him say.

As Nora came into the kitchen, stamping the snow from her boots, Mrs. Toristel looked up from her mixing bowl. “He's got visitors already,” she announced, nodding toward the great hall.

“So early?” Mingled frustration and relief that she would not encounter Aruendiel alone. “Who is it? I thought the roads were still bad.”

“She didn't need a road this time,” Mrs. Toristel said, the disdain in her voice unmistakable. “They flew here. Two of those flying mounts in the courtyard.”

“She?” Nora asked with a tinge of alarm. Her first thought, after last night, was
Ilissa
. Then a more encouraging notion struck her. “Do you mean Hirizjahkinis? With Hirgus Ext?”

Mrs. Toristel nodded. “No, the other one who was here. Dorneng, his name is. You didn't see them?
He
looked serious.”

“He always looks serious.”

Mrs. Toristel clicked her tongue. “I'm sure it's nothing to joke about, whatever it is that brought them.”

As soon as Nora opened the door to the great hall, she could hear Aruendiel swearing, and she knew instantly that yes, this was something about Ilissa. Dorneng stood directly in front of him, a woeful look on his fleshy face. Hirizjahkinis, standing to one side, watched the other two magicians with a slightly fixed smile; she had the attitude of someone who is just barely containing herself from tapping her foot with impatience.

Nora caught her eye, and instantly Hirizjahkinis's smile became more natural. She came forward.

“What's going on?” Nora asked in a low voice. “Is it Ilissa?”

Distractedly, Hirizjahkinis put her hands on Nora's shoulders by way of greeting. “Of course it is Ilissa!” She laughed, but her laugh sounded tired. “Why else would I have to fly all night in a snowstorm? It is very inconsiderate of her to cause all this fuss in the middle of winter.”

“What has she done now?”

“She has broken out of her prison. So now we must go to the trouble of finding her.”

No wonder Aruendiel was cursing. “How did she get out? Aruendiel put in all those new defenses—”

“Dorneng let her out.”

“What? That seems pretty stupid, even for him.”

Hirizjahkinis rolled her eyes. “It was very stupid of him—but then he had no Kavareen to call on, when Ilissa enchanted him.

“He was afraid to tell Aruendiel what he had done—he came to Mirne Klep to fetch me first. As though I did not want to bite him into tiny pieces myself when he told me.”

“Well, Dorneng wanted to know more about Faitoren magic,” Nora said. “I guess he knows now.” Aruendiel brushed past them into the kitchen, giving no sign that he had noticed her. “Where is Ilissa now? Does anyone know?”

“Dorneng thinks she is going east,” Hirizjahkinis said. “He thinks.”

At the sound of his name, Dorneng lumbered dejectedly toward them. “Yes, east, toward the Ice,” he said. He sounded as though he had a cold.

“Terrible, she has no consideration,” Hirizjahkinis said with a shudder. “I think we should simply let her freeze there, but of course that's not enough for Aruendiel. We must hunt her down and lock her up again.”

“Well, that doesn't seem like a bad idea,” Nora said cautiously. She gave Dorneng a polite greeting, for which he seemed to be effusively grateful. He said it was wonderful to see her in good health—which Nora took to mean not a marble statue—and then he began to apologize to Hirizjahkinis for putting her to so much trouble. From the look on Hirizjahkinis's face, Nora could tell that this was not the first apology she had heard from him. Something about Lord Luklren's lost sheep—“I never even asked myself, why are they on the wrong side of the barrier? I just let them through, thinking Lord Luklren would be relieved to have them back—”

“The thing about Faitoren magic is they can make you believe what you want to believe,” Nora said, meaning to offer a word of understanding, but Dorneng did not look any more at ease.

“Ilissa made a great fool of Dorneng, right enough, but this is hardly the first time that she has tricked a clever magician,” Aruendiel said, coming toward them, a worried-looking Mrs. Toristel on his heels. “As you well know, Hirizjahkinis.” He frowned, but there was grim excitement in his face. Nora saw that, ironically, the current state of emergency, the opportunity to punish Ilissa, had improved his mood. “Now, Dorneng—”

Mrs. Toristel was plucking at Nora's sleeve. “I must pack his clothes,” she said in a lowered voice. “You go into the kitchen and get their provisions ready. Sausages, dried apples, whatever bread we have left—if only I'd known sooner, we could have made more. Hurry!” She gave Nora a small push toward the kitchen.

“They're leaving now?” Nora asked, but Mrs. Toristel was already heading for the stairs. Aruendiel was still giving directions to Dorneng while Hirizjahkinis listened. Nora went into the kitchen. Hastily she packed two bags with food, then carried them into the great hall. Hirizjahkinis and Dorneng were bent over a map on the table. There was no sign of Aruendiel. On an impulse, Nora tried the entrance to the tower. It was open. Half-running, she went up the stairs to Aruendiel's study.

He stood by the window, running a whetstone over the blade of his sword. The same sword that had killed his wife? Probably. When Nora mounted the last stairs, he looked up, surprised, as though he had forgotten all about her.

“You're leaving now?” Nora asked.

“Yes, of course.” It was the familiar clipped tone, skeptical that anyone could be so dense. “I hope you have not come to beg clemency for the Faitoren,” he added.

“I want to go, too,” she said.

“No.”

“I know enough magic now to be useful.”

“No, you don't.” He sighted along the blade, focusing on something outside the window. “And you will be safer here.”

“I'd be safe enough with you and Hirizjahkinis.”

“We will have more to keep us busy than protecting you. This is war, not an excursion to Semr.”

“I know that! I want to help.”

“It will take more than mending pots to recapture Ilissa.”

“You know I can do much more than that! You taught me. Besides,” she added hesitantly, “I'd have tactical value beyond my magic skills.”

“Indeed?” He eased the sword into its sheath and then buckled it around his waist.

“Yes, you saw how Ilissa went for me in Semr—and what happened with the ring,” Nora said, sounding almost as confident as she wanted to. “Ilissa hates me. You might need a decoy. I could distract her while you counterattacked.”

Aruendiel's chilly eyes widened slightly. “Absolutely not,” he said shortly. He regarded Nora for a moment, frowning. “You are not coming with us, and what's more, you will not leave this castle while we are gone, do you understand?”

She stared back at him, feeling mutinous. He went on: “Your proposal is absurd, but you're right about one thing—to her, you're prey. I've deprived her of her prey thrice already, and she would like nothing better than another chance at you. You know that.”

Reluctantly, Nora nodded.

“So you are not to stir outside the castle gates,” he said. “Not one step. Is that clear?”

“Clear enough,” she said, her voice flinty.

“Good. Now”—he looked around the room—“I have what I need, so let us go down. I will seal up the tower until I return.”

That was something she had not considered. “Wait! May I take a book to study?”

“One book,” he said. “No, not Morkin,” he added irritably as she selected a volume. “Vlonicl.”

Hastily she put down the Morkin, picked up the other book, then started down the stairs. Aruendiel followed her more slowly. From what she could tell, he was setting various magical traps. She waited for him at the bottom of the stairs.

“I hope you'll be careful,” she said awkwardly.

In the dim light of the oil lamp that burned there, his scarred face looked faintly, sardonically amused, but otherwise, he went through the wall as though he had not heard her.

•   •   •

“Honey's getting low. This woman, Ilissa, she's the one you escaped from, isn't she?” Mrs. Toristel asked out of the gloom.

It was the afternoon of the second endless day since the magicians had left. She and Nora were in the store cellars, taking an inventory of the household's food stocks. Before his departure, Aruendiel had repeated to Mrs. Toristel the injunction that Nora was not to leave the castle. To Nora's frustration, the housekeeper had interpreted this instruction more strictly than even Aruendiel, surely, would have thought necessary, and had forbidden Nora to go out of doors at all.

After two days of virtual confinement in the house, even visiting the cellar was a welcome expedition.

“That's right,” Nora said in answer to Mrs. Toristel, holding her candle close to one of the bins where the root vegetables were stacked, layered under soil and straw. But something had been after the carrots; they were strewn half-gnawed around the dirt.

“And now this. She never gave him so much trouble until you came along.”

“No, that's not true,” Nora said. A dubious silence from Mrs. Toristel, so Nora added the thing that she could not stop thinking about: “Ilissa's the one who made him fall, all those years ago.”

Mrs. Toristel sniffed. “I knew he'd had a fall. I never liked to ask how. Not my place.” Nor Nora's place, either, her tone suggested. She added briskly, “Well, he has a lot to pay her back for, then. You don't know how bad it was for him at first, after that accident. He was like a bundle of cracked sticks. He was lucky to be alive.”

“Yes,” said Nora. Her hands worked mechanically, picking out the lengths of carrot that had been chewed by small teeth. “Mrs. Toristel,” she said, “what if he doesn't come back?”

“What?” Mrs. Toristel half-turned in indignation, her candle sending long shadows scuttling across the cellar walls. “Of course he'll be back. You don't think this Ilissa, whoever she thinks she is, could defeat a magician like his lordship?”

Only if he let her. Only if Aruendiel wanted Ilissa to finish the job that she had tried to do fifty years ago. Nora held the thought up for quick scrutiny, and then thrust it back into the darkness from which it had come.

“You know what a great magician he is,” Mrs. Toristel went on. “Or you should know, anyway, all the time you spend studying with him.”

“I know. It's just—” Nora hesitated. “This all happened so suddenly, it's unnerving.”

She was thinking that Hirizjahkinis had the Kavareen to protect her. Why could she not press the battle while Aruendiel directed the campaign behind the lines, preferably from the safety of his own castle? It had occurred to Nora, too late, that she could have given him the New Year's kiss before he left. She would have unburdened herself, and the kiss would have been only a little worse for wear. But perhaps he no longer wanted it.

“I wish we knew what was going on,” she said in frustration. “Whether they've caught up with Ilissa—if anything has happened yet.”

“Don't expect to hear anything until it's all over,” Mrs. Toristel advised. “Whenever he goes away, it's as though he vanished from the earth. Unless, of course, there's something he wants done,” she added broodingly. “Then he's quick enough to send word.”

“How?” Nora asked, wanting to be prepared for even an unlikely communication from Aruendiel, and also curious about the spell he used.

“There'll be a letter appearing somewhere, and then I'll have a job puzzling it out. Well, I suppose you could read it to me now, that's a blessing.
If
he writes.”

Wind magic and demi-transformations, Nora thought, remembering the letter from Nansis Abora that had flown to Aruendiel's study on its own paper wings. Or perhaps he simply caused the letter to be written at his own desk and then moved it to where Mrs. Toristel could find it. Either way, she felt slightly cheered, knowing that a message from Aruendiel could materialize at any time, even if it was only a directive to Mrs. Toristel to sell the yearling heifer.

•   •   •

Instead, the next day there was Hirizjahkinis, alone, knocking imperiously on the castle gates.

Nora was ready to run outside to greet her, but Mrs. Toristel grabbed her arm. “Remember what the master said.”

“But it's Hirizjahkinis.” Mrs. Toristel did not let go. Impatiently, Nora watched from the window as Mr. Toristel led Hirizjahkinis across the courtyard. Once inside, Hirizjahkinis shook the snow from a pair of brilliant red boots, gave Nora a lavish smile, and let herself be embraced.