The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (59 page)

What if, instead of trying to break into Aruendiel's cage, you just made it much, much bigger?

The charred stick was already in her hand, the same stick that had drawn the circles. She rolled it back and forth between her palms, then rubbed a space on the stone floor clean. She wrote EJ's formula down slowly, making each letter perfectly clear. She set the volume of the sphere equal to 1.

This was the bubble that imprisoned Aruendiel. She stared at the formula until she knew in her bones that the formula she had written and the sphere that Dorneng had conjured were essentially the same.

Just as carefully Nora began writing a series of zeroes after the 1: 1,000—1,000,000—1,000,000,000—bigger. Make the round walls of Aruendiel's prison grow larger than the world. If he was dying in isolation—if he could not find and draw on the elemental sympathy of a flame, a forest, a mountain—then bring them to him. Cram them all within the confines of Dorneng's spell. Maybe Dorneng's magic would hold, maybe not.

Mathematics commanded, and with slow, reluctant inevitability, magic obeyed. Nora was still writing zeroes, somewhere north of a trillion, when Dorneng's spell was forced explosively outward. It ballooned with supernova suddenness. The shock was a brick wall falling on her.

•   •   •

Someone was touching her shoulder. Someone was calling her name. The back of her head hurt.

Aruendiel—she'd been trying to free Aruendiel.

She opened her eyes eagerly. In the torchlight, it took her a moment to recognize Perin. He leaned over her, his face keen with concern.

“Lady Nora? Are you all right?”

“I think so.” She shifted her arms and legs experimentally. Cautiously she sat up, then winced as a wave of pain and dizziness washed through her skull. Perin steadied her and inspected the back of her head.

“There is some blood,” he said. “I have seen worse, but that must have been a hard knock, for a woman. What happened?”

“The spell knocked me down.”

“What spell?”

“The spell that was holding Aruendiel. I didn't realize it would expand so quickly.” She paused, collecting her shaken thoughts. “Aruendiel! Is he all right?”

Perin looked uncomprehending. She craned her neck to look past him, ignoring the pain from the sudden movement. Aruendiel lay much as she had last seen him, except that his limp body was now sprawled on the floor. He must have collapsed there once Dorneng's spell was gone. She should have thought of a way to cushion his fall. Old bones were so brittle.

“Aruendiel?” she said, moving to his side. She reached out to touch him—nothing in her way now. His arm was broomstick-thin. His bony shoulder felt as hard and delicate as porcelain.

His eyes opened, bright gleams in a mass of wrinkles. She couldn't tell where they focused, if he saw her. His dry lips trembled, and a bubble appeared at one corner of his mouth.

“You're free, Aruendiel,” Nora said, then repeated herself more loudly. He might have become deaf. “You can do magic again. Can't you feel it? Just reach out.” She turned to Perin. “He looks a little better, I think.”

“
That
is Lord Aruendiel?” Perin said with frank amazement. “He is much older than the man I saw in Semr.”

“It's what happens if he can't do magic,” Nora said in an undertone.

“But he is just—” Perin broke off, staring at Aruendiel as though looking for something he could not find. He hesitated for a moment, as though tempted to suggest an unpalatable course of action, and then said: “Can we carry him without injuring him?”

“Oh, I don't think we should move him. Why do we have to leave?”

“Well, I dealt with that Faitoren guard, but met another, who got away. I don't think there's more than a handful of soldiers in the castle, but all of them will be looking for me.”

“Aruendiel could take care of them—if he gets a little stronger,” Nora said.

“He can't take care of himself or much of anything right now,” Perin said.

“True.” How were they going to manage this? Nora stood up, wondering if they could improvise a litter for Aruendiel. She noticed something. “Where's the ice demon?”

“The ice demon?”

“Yes, he followed me here. I fed it and it sat down over there. Is
that
it?”

There was a pile of something white on the floor where the ice demon had been sitting. Perin prodded it with his toe. “Looks like broken ice.”

“Good lord,” Nora said. “What happened? Did it get pulverized by the same spell that knocked me out? I got off easy.”

“It must be quite a spell.”

Nora was still thinking. “Yes, the spell broke the demon to pieces because the demon was full of magic. Me, I'm an apprentice magician with only a little magic in me, so it just threw me down.

“You know,” she added hopefully, “the Faitoren are magical beings. Maybe it destroyed them, too.”

Perin considered this, then shook his head. “We can't count on that.”

Nora felt like protesting, but she saw that Perin would not be easily persuaded by any line of reasoning involving magic. She turned back to Aruendiel and knelt beside him.

“Aruendiel, we need to leave—the Faitoren are coming. Perin and I will help you—and my levitation spellwork is getting pretty decent—so I think we can get you out of here. Do you think you could walk if we held you up?”

She was heartened to see that Aruendiel lifted his head a fraction. His lips moved again. He was mumbling something. She bent down to hear.

“I'm hungry.”

The words did not come from Aruendiel's mouth. Nora looked up. Perin whirled around. The ice demon was standing just behind them.

Of course the demon could put itself back together as neatly as one of the pots she'd mended. She knew that. Stupid to assume that Dorneng's spell had smashed it to pieces for good.

“I'm hungry,” it said. “That magic went right through me. It hurt very much. I'm hungry.”

“Um.” Nora stood up. Squaring her shoulders, she stepped forward to stand beside Perin. “What about that poem I just gave you?”

“It's gone. I'm hungry
now
.”

“All right, I'll give you another poem.” She looked down, stalling. Her mind seemed to be as clean and blank as the ice demon's gleaming white body. Performance anxiety. Maybe she had a concussion. Perin was looking at her expectantly.

“‘That time of year'—” She waited for the rest of the lines to come. “‘That time of year thou mayst'—” She stumbled. Another line came to mind, but it was from later in the poem; she could not find the path of words that led to it.
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
The single verse echoed solitary in her mind. Her head ached. It was hopeless. One of her favorite poems, silent, gone.

“I don't know,” she said awkwardly. “I can't think of any more poems right now.”

“Then I will eat all three of you,” the ice demon declared.

Perin reached for his sword, but the ice demon was faster, grabbing his wrist. Without missing a beat, Perin swung his other fist at the demon's head. The creature took the blow without seeming to notice it.

Its other hand caught Nora by the nape of the neck. She tried to twist away, but its iron fingers seemed to freeze to her neck. Her mind felt paralyzed, unable to summon either poetry or magic.”

“You first,” the demon said to her. “I have been waiting so long to eat you.”

Still struggling, Nora gazed up at the ice demon's looming, empty countenance. “No, please! Just give me time. I'll think of another poem.” Perin landed another useless blow. She shut her eyes and turned her head, trying to keep her face as far away from the monster as possible. She could already feel the chill flowing from its body like the promise of death.

The demon's hard mouth touched her cheek, seeking her lips. She had never been so cold in her life.

But the kiss of the ice demon was soft and scorching. She gasped. Unexpectedly, she found herself staggering backward because there was nothing to stop her. The demon's grip on the back of her neck was gone.

Opening her eyes, she felt even more disoriented. She could see nothing but white—a swirling cloud of hot mist.

“Lady Nora?” Perin's gloved hand materialized out of the fog and clasped her hand. “Are you all right?”

Nora's reply was drowned out by the wind—a sudden, howling gust that swirled up around them with a concentrated fury, dissolving the mist, ripping it to shreds, banishing it.

And then the wind was gone, the air quiet again. Nora and Perin stared at each other. Perin wore the slightly harried expression of a man who has been pressed to the limits of his patience by too many unnatural oddities for one day.

“Are you all right?” he said again. “What happened?”

Nora turned. “Aruendiel!”

Slowly, shakily, one hand on the wall, Aruendiel was getting to his feet. Nora slipped her hand out of Perin's and went over to help him, but he waved her off with thin peremptoriness. She waited beside him, ready to catch him if need be.

Aruendiel moved with even more than his usual stiffness, and there was an uncertainty in his efforts that tore at her heart. He must be afraid of falling, even if he would not admit it. But there were black streaks in the white mane now, and when she got a good look at his face, it was recognizably Aruendiel's, even if it was still harshly worn and wrinkled. His skin had lost that look of parchment transparency.

He could pass for a well-preserved seventy now—eighty, tops.

Still holding the wall for support, Aruendiel peered down at her, his gray eyes sharp.

“What did that viper of an ice demon do to you, Nora?” His voice was brittle but full of its old authority.

“Nothing,” Nora said, unable to stop smiling. “Nothing at all. You vaporized him before he could eat me.”

Aruendiel was not satisfied. With his free hand, he took hold of her chin and tilted her head upward, looking up her nostrils, then to the side so that he could examine her ear.

“It's all right,” she protested. “I'm fine. My soul—my heart is as good as it ever was.”

Letting go of her chin, Aruendiel frowned, gray eyebrows knitting together. “You should have been able to stop the demon yourself,” he said. “It was a relatively simple application of fire magic—an intensified form of the Calanian heat protocol.”

“Well, yes,” Nora said, “but the ice demon can put out fires, so I wasn't sure where to get the fire for the heat spell.”

“Ice-demon magic has a limited—” Aruendiel broke off with a sharp intake of breath. He stared over Nora's shoulder. Under its rough white stubble, his face went still, then sagged as though he had rapidly aged again.

She glanced back, confused. There was only Perin, who stepped forward and bowed with formal courtesy, his hand on his sword hilt.

“My name is Perin Pirekenies,” he said. “Of course, I have heard much of the famous Lord Aruendiel. It is a great occasion to make your acquaintance.”

“Perin Pirekenies,” Aruendiel repeated slowly. The look of shock was replaced by a kind of resignation. He nodded as if to himself. “Pirekenies. Of course. You resemble your grandfather closely.”

“So I've been told,” Perin said, his eyes fixed on Aruendiel's face. “I never knew him, obviously.”

Aruendiel paused as though he were bracing himself. His cracked voice spoke with a mixture of resolution and irony: “Have you come to kill me, then?”

“What!” Nora exploded. She looked from Aruendiel to Perin. Neither was smiling.

“No, the opposite,” Perin said after a long moment, although it seemed to Nora that there was a shade of reluctance in his voice. “I'm here because, on my way to fight the Faitoren, I met Lady Nora, who told me that she was trying to rescue you.” He nodded toward Nora. “She was accompanied only by an ice demon and a dying man, the wizard Dorneng. I could not leave a lady alone in such danger. And I knew it would help our cause to deliver you from the enemy.

“My father swore an oath to kill you,” he added easily. “But he still lives, so it's not my obligation yet.”

“What are you talking about?” Nora demanded. “You never mentioned this.”

“He swore that oath a long time ago,” Aruendiel said acidly. “I have wondered whether he had forgotten about fulfilling it.”

“Not at all,” Perin said.

“I am happy to hear it. I look forward to crossing swords with him one day.” There was a new stoop in Aruendiel's crooked shoulders as he tried to straighten to his full height. He grimaced. “Let us leave this place,” he said suddenly. “I am very tired of looking at these walls, and I perceive there is a magical engagement of no mean size being fought nearby.” Letting go of the wall, he took an unsteady step forward.

“I've gotten to be pretty good at levitation,” Nora said hesitantly. “Perhaps I could support you—” She stopped at the flash of anger in his pale eyes.

“I don't need to be carried,” he snapped. After another faltering step, he appeared to reconsider somewhat. “But if you would be kind enough to let me steady myself—”

“Of course,” Nora said. Perin made a slight movement, as though to help Aruendiel himself, but she shook her head no. Aruendiel grasped her shoulder, and together they followed Perin across the room, Aruendiel's thin fingers digging into her flesh. As they approached the door, Aruendiel pointed with his free hand.

“My sword,” he said, breathless.

It was lying near the wall. Neither Nora nor Perin had noticed it before. She had the feeling that they were both thinking the same thing, that Aruendiel would be better served by a cane than a sword. Silently, Perin picked up the sword and handed it to Aruendiel, who staggered slightly as he took it, then with frayed deftness maneuvered it into its sheath.