by Doris Egan
I waited till she'd calmed down. "How's Grandmother?" I asked.
Her expression faded like a doused candle. "She never leaves her bed. And the only people she'll let into her room now are me and Tagra." She stared at the wall. "I wonder sometimes. It's frightening to think of Grandmother as powerless. Does getting old scare you, Theo? It does me."
"I don't know," I said honestly. "Death scares me. Getting old, the loss of beauty—I never had that much beauty to begin with. And getting older in an Ivoran family means gathering more power… anyway, up until near the end. Your people treat it with respect. Ivory is a good planet to get old on, Kylla, at least if you have a family like yours."
She went on staring at the wall. "Thank you," she said softly. "I'm glad to know that."
Lysander came back, and she put down her legs hastily.
Kylla had told me some things about that period of Eln's life no one at Cormallon wanted to talk about, the time when he declared ishin na' telleth on his family and went to live in the capital. Apparently he'd been here for two full years, longer than I'd somehow expected; how had he made a living? There were ways, I knew, and at least he could read and write—but without family connections it was damned hard. And he'd had no Tellys-imported floater then, something difficult to imagine, and which I didn't want to imagine. Kylla said he'd made do with a jerry-rigged board on wheels when he was in the city. It was an insult to Eln to think of him looking eye-level at people's knees.
I wanted to see the place where he'd lived. Kylla told me that he'd been retrieved from a room above a store on Marsh Street, on the other side of the business quarter. It was a store that sold secondhand jewelry, halfway a pawnbroker's, she said; there were two on Marsh Street. I chose the less prosperous looking one.
Inside there were bins of cheap trinkets, foreign-made necklaces of the sort tourists don't mind parting with, false gold and tarnished silver. The counters edging the walls held the better stuff. They were locked. There was one man behind the back counter, reading through some papers. No Net terminal was in evidence; it was a place that dealt in cash.
I walked up to the man. He was young, perhaps twenty-four or five; which made him a couple of years beyond me, but somehow I felt the elder. He was light-skinned, more gold than brown, with blond hair and gray eyes. He put down his papers when I approached.
"Can I help you?"
No "gracious lady" here, although the tone was quiet and polite. Perhaps I should try to dress better. "I don't know," I said, wondering what in the world I would say next. "I'm looking for something for a friend."
"Male or female?" he said.
"Male."
"We have a good selection," he said, gesturing to a nearby case. We moved over to it. "Rings, necklaces, earrings, belt-ends… did you have something particular in mind?"
"Not really." How unfortunately true that was. He wasn't a bad salesman, directing me at once to the more expensive material. But maybe he assumed I wouldn't have bothered him if I just wanted junk from the bins; I could have rooted through them by myself.
"Well, this belt-end is unique. A diving gryphon, you won't see many like it." He pulled it out and laid it on the counter for me to examine.
"Yes, it does appear unique." The gryphon looked as though it had eaten something that disagreed with it. "What about those gold things over there?"
"These?" He laid them beside the gryphon. "Spurs, shaped like salamanders. Ornamental, of course. You wouldn't have much use for them in the city."
"Oh, I don't know. They might strike my friend's fancy.''
"He rides?"
"In a manner of speaking. Perhaps you know him— Eln Cormallon."
The hands over the spurs froze, then a tremble went through it, convulsively, like a ground tremor. I stared. I had never seen anything like it. He seemed tightly controlled, distant, unaware of his own reaction. His face remained impersonal.
"Eln Cormallon?"
"Yes," I said carefully. "He might like the spurs. He has an unusual sense of humor."
"Did he send you?" His face raised from the jewelry, his eyes looked into mine. "Do you know where he is?"
"I don't know. I suppose he's at Cormallon." Now I was the one who looked down. I was wrong about the control; I didn't want to see eyes like that.
"He's not in the city, then."
"I don't really know."
"And he didn't send you."
"No. I'm sorry." I wasn't sure what I was apologizing for, but I was sure that I owed it to him somewhere down the line.
He put the pieces back in the case, moving stiffly. "No. Of course he didn't send you." He looked up suddenly from what he was doing. "I'm sorry. Were you really interested in the spurs?"
"No. No. Put them away." I waved them back. "Pay no attention to me. I'm leaving anyway." I started edging down the main aisle. Interfering in people's lives—you'd think I would have learned my lesson from Pina. I felt as though I'd just broken into this store with two large men and had him beaten up.
"Uh, gracious lady?"
I paused, unwillingly, by the door. He stepped out from the dim light behind the counter, and I saw that his left arm, the one he hadn't used, was made of metal. I noted, for no reason, that there were rings of gold and gems on the metal fingers, and none on the biological arm. "Gracious lady, if you see Eln, would you tell him that… tell him that he's always welcome here?"
I nodded and went out the door. I wasn't two steps down the street when the door opened behind me and his voice said, "Gracious lady!" I turned.
"Never mind, gracious lady, please don't say anything. All right?"
"All right."
I turned back and started walking very quickly, before he could follow me and tell me he'd changed his mind again. I had the feeling he would have given me twenty different messages if I let him.
I went home that evening to find that we had a visitor. It was Karlas' brother Halet, a middle-aged, middle-class, slightly more respectable businessman in a striped cotton robe. He ran two stores back in Summring, the town nearest to Teshin, and had stayed behind to arrange their new management. Now he was here to throw in with our cause.
"Honored," he said, as Ran introduced us. "I have the best hopes for our success."
We traded a few flowery compliments, and I said to Ran, "How did you get him over the property line?" Saddling an ally with seven years of bad luck seemed not in our best interests.
Ran sighed. "I had to break down the whole spell, get him inside, and then redraw it."
I frowned. "Then how did I get in? I wasn't inside when you redrew it."
"Trust me, Theodora, I'm a professional."
I hoped so. Halet pulled on my robe at that point. "My lady, I have something of yours."
"What?"
He opened his wallet and took something out. He placed it in my palm; it was small and hard, wrapped in tissue paper. I opened it and stared.
He said, "The Old Man of Kado Island is dead."
It was the pendant, the piece of delicately lined riverbed stone on its thin silver chain. The lines were like blue veins on skin of alabaster.
Halet said, "It's a bluestone pendant, isn't it? I've never seen one."
"How did you get it?" I asked.
"It was brought to me by Vale the healer. The Old Man sends it to you."
I didn't know why he used the present tense, he seemed to have good grammar—it made me nervous. "Why didn't he give it to Vale?"
Halet shrugged. "I can't say. Perhaps he didn't want it to stay in Teshin."
I snorted at that. The Old Man waits until he's dead, to leave Teshin the only way he can. I kept the paper between my hand and the stone.
"He must have known someone else, somewhere, that he could have sent it to."
Halet said, "You're a tinaje artist, I understand. No doubt he wanted it in good hands, with someone of high moral character."
That was even sadder and funnier. And it was the first time someone ever entrust
ed me with a responsibility based simply on my profession. That was even more of an ethical burden to bear than the pendant.
I said, holding the stone carefully, "Can I send it back to Vale?'' Knowing the answer already.
Halet, and even Karlas, looked shocked at such a suggestion. Ran said, "Yes, you can. You can do anything you like, Theodora. Do you want me to send it back?"
"No," I said. "If he wanted Vale to have it, he would have given it to him."
Halet relaxed, and gave me an approving look. No doubt he was glad to share a house with an unregistered alien of high moral character.
It was a responsibility, but it was also a comfort. I took the pendant out that night (still wrapped in tissue paper) and placed it under my pillow when I went to sleep. I don't know why I did it. But for the first time in a long while I didn't have bad dreams.
I was afraid of losing it, so I made up a little bag of red silk (Tyl did the sewing) and tied it around the stone; and I wore the pendant that way, under my tunic and robes. After a few days I almost forgot it was there.
Ran came to me one night and said, "I want you to run the cards."
I said, "You didn't like it the last time I ran them."
"It has to be done," he said. "Look, I'll be with you the whole time."
"Oh, it doesn't bother me. I was just wondering why you changed your mind."
He looked uncomfortable. "Everything's dangerous," he said. "You can walk down the street and get kicked by a cart-horse."
"Yeah, no doubt."
"All right, something's very wrong here. I put on a mirror-spell not long ago—"
"A mirror-spell?"
He gestured impatiently. "Back-reflex. So physical harm done to me would be reflected back, duplicated on the person doing the harm. Well, on Eln actually, he's the one I designated."
"And?"
"It didn't work." He started to pace. "It doesn't make sense. It was as if he were already in a mirror himself."
"So, maybe he is. He had someone cast a spell, got in ahead of you. Everybody keeps telling me how bright he is."
Ran looked at me, and I shrugged. He said, "He can't be in a mirror. That can only be self-cast, by its nature. Only a sorcerer can do it, and he's not a sorcerer."
"All right, explain it, then."
"There is no explanation. Are you carrying the cards on you?"
"Ah." I took out the deck. Ran settled himself on the floor and I did likewise.
The center card was the Charioteer with paired horses, one black and one white. Well, that was an identity card for Eln, if one existed. Then I thought again, and wondered who I was kidding—it could really stand for anyone in this schizophrenic family. I took another card without dwelling on it. This one was the Water-Drawer, a young man, bare-chested, with a bucket of water from a brick well. He was pouring the water into a jar, and there were more jars by his feet. I placed it beside the center card, keeping one finger on it, and let myself go.
I was in a room walled in ancient, jagged stone, with a flat stone floor. There were no windows. I felt somehow that it was underground, there was something dark and earthy-smelling about the place. It was damp and rooty, like wet flowers. In the center of the room were two couches, low and without sides or arms. A person lay on each couch. They lay like corpses, faces turned up, arms limp. I moved closer to the couches and looked down on them: One was Stepan, the other was Eln. Somehow I'd known that. There was a plastic tube running between them, one forearm to another, and as I watched the tube turned from transparent to red. Then there was a dripping sound that echoed off the stones. Suddenly I remembered my dreams, my recurrent nightmares of the last few weeks, and I knew that in the nightmare I was in this room.
I didn't want to be there any longer, and somewhere far away I took my finger off the card and gazed up at Ran. He said, "You looked upset for a minute."
"It wasn't important." I described the room,,the people on the couches.
He said, "It sounds like the cellar at Cormallon. But what was it? A blood transfusion? Why?"
I shook my head. "It's not like the regular pictures, remember. It may not be literal."
"When you drew the cards," he said slowly, "you were thinking about the problem I just gave you? The mirror-spell?''
I said, "Trust me, Ran, I'm a professional."
He gave a half-grin. "All right. Thank you, Theodora. I'll go away and think about it until it drives me crazy." Then he picked up my right hand, kissed it, and went upstairs.
Well, well. I got up off the floor, made my way to my own room, hit the bed like a felled oak and slept heavily till dawn. It had been a confusing night all around.
The next morning Ran walked into the kitchen happily. Tyl was serving me more fried bread; it was cheap and one of the few things he knew how to cook well. I hoped Kylla would send me another message soon, we could use more eggs. "IVe got it," said Ran.
"Oh?" In the morning my verbal ability is limited at best. Things would improve mentally after breakfast… if only Tyl would use butter instead of oil…
"Theodora, you're not paying attention. This is it, IVe figured it out."
"I'm glad, Ran. Tyl, can't you get butter at the Square? There must be a market for the tourists—"
Ran walked over to my place and lifted my plate. "Hey!" I said.
"Are you listening?"
I put down my fork. "All right, you have my full attention. But I'm telling you now that I'll make better sense if you let me take in some food."
He handed me the plate. "Eat, and listen." He sat down next to me. "Logically, why would a mirror-spell not work? The answer is because the target is already protected. All right, logically, how could the target already be protected? Because he cast his own mirror-spell." He was spilling out the words quickly and cheerfully. "It's the only answer."
"You already explained to me last night why that can't be," I said. "Eln would have to do the spell himself, and he's no sorcerer."
"He's a theorist. He knows everything there is to know about sorcery on a theoretical basis. He's not a sorcerer because he has no talent."
I finished my last bread slice. "That's a major obstacle, isn't it?"
"All right, but listen. He's got a mirror-spell, and that can only be set by oneself. It's the very nature of the spell, it's part of the basic fabric of the way things work in magic, it's just… indisputable. It's easier to believe that Eln could get what we call 'talent' from someplace than that all the laws of magic no longer apply. That would be believing that stones fall into the sky and water runs uphill—" He stopped. "I'm starving," he said, as though he'd only just noticed. "Is there any more of that? Tyl-"
"In just a minute," said Tyl.
I said, "You can't just walk into the market and buy talent in ajar."
"Exactly, that's where your card-reading comes in. You know what Grandmother did when she cursed me? She shifted my ability in that one area from me to you—not you specifically, I mean, but someone who fit your parameters. Well, that's not so strange, in a way all she really did was link us up using a physical common point, the deck of cards. No different really from shifting good or bad luck from one person to another by seeing that an object that was in the first person's possession passes to the second person. You remember all this from the textbook, don't you?"
"Vaguely." Extremely vaguely. It was really Eln who used to explain all that sort of thing to me—Eln the theorist.
"It's been said for years that there must be a way to shift sorcery itself from one person to another. But until now no one's been able to do it."
"Eln? I don't see why you should think that he could—"
He shook his head impatiently. "If anybody could figure it out, it would be Eln. He's the best mind working in sorcery. Think what it could mean for the family! People interested in joining Cormallon could buy into the family and be trained, and we could guarantee them to be sorcerers when we finished. People born into the family and talent, but who want to be, I do
n't know, traders, could sell their talent to someone more interested in developing it. It would change the whole face of the business, and we would control it—it would still be the Cormallon specialty."
"Eln doesn't seem eager to make his knowledge public. If that's what he's really done."
All the animation seemed to drain out of Ran. "No." Tyl brought over a full plate to him, and he stared at it with uninterest. "No, he hasn't made it public. Why would I expect him to? I wonder when he worked it all out." He looked at me. "He hasn't bought his talent, he's stealing it."
"How do you figure that?"
"Well, stealing it in some sense anyway. I can't believe Stepan would agree willingly. No real sorcerer would."
"Ah. The transfusion tube. I begin to see where you're going."
He got up and started pacing, the way he always did when he was on the trail of something. When he was after an answer he was a walker, a hunter; all that energy had to come out somewhere. In similar circumstances I became a go-sit-in-the-corner-and-think-things-over person. And I don't talk about it till I've got it straight.
He said, "We have to know. We have to know how he's doing it. There's no way around the problem; we need to cut him off from his source, and to do that we have to know how he accesses it."
The word "access" brought it to mind. I said, "I understand he's been spending a lot of time on the Net lately."
Ran looked at me. "How would you have heard this?" he asked.
"How do you think?" I said.
He drummed his fingers on the table. "If only I had five minutes with his terminal! If I were at Cormallon—"
I said, "I think we can safely assume he put a con-finement on his work so that only his own terminal could access it, and a lock on the terminal so only he can get in."
"If I were there…" His voice trailed off. "Money," he said, in a new voice. "We need money."
Well, that was something I always agreed with. The connection with Eln's Net work escaped me, though. Ran picked up his cloak and started off immediately for the Square, apparently eager to accumulate tabals as swiftly as possible. I followed, more calmly, but in much the same spirit.
Given Ran's new state of mind, it was only a matter of time until I broke down and told him about my nonNet account. In fact it was that very evening.