Ithanalin's Restoration

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Kilisha pushed aside the chair that was trying to nuzzle up to her, rounded Kelder and the bench, stepped over a tangle of rope and dashed to the workshop, where she found Yara standing in the middle of the room, bent almost double, prying at the rug that had wrapped itself around her ankles. She must have come in the back way, as usual, Kilisha thought—but how did the rug get out of its box?

  She would worry about that later; for now she fell to her knees, caught one edge of the rug, and tried to pull it loose.

  It struggled ferociously. It was trying to climb up Yara’s legs and shake off Kilisha’s grip when Kelder arrived, reached down, and grabbed a handful of rag. He heaved.

  Yara went over backward; Kilisha snatched at her, and managed to break her fall but not prevent it. Yara sat down hard on the plank floor.

  That made it much easier to pull the rug off her legs, and a moment later Kelder and Kilisha held it by either end while it squirmed and wriggled.

  “Talk to it, Yara!” Kilisha called. “It loves you!”

  “Augh!”

  “Mama?” Pirra called from the kitchen doorway.

  “You just settle down right this minute!” Yara barked at the thrashing rug, wagging an angry finger.

  The rug’s movements stopped.

  “Now, you go back in the box until we get the couch back! No more escapes! No more trouble!”

  The rug sagged. It rippled its upper edge as if nodding, then went limp.

  Kelder looked at Kilisha, who said, “The box is behind you.” A moment later they had the rug secured once again. Kilisha fumbled with the lock.

  “Mama?” Pirra called.

  Yara had been sitting on the floor, her legs stretched out before her, and watching the rug’s incarceration; now she turned and asked, “What is it, darling?”

  “What’s that spoon doing?” She pointed.

  Yara turned and saw the spoon just as it reared up its handle and stretched out toward the waistband of her skirt; she let out a wordless shriek and smacked it away.

  Kilisha saw, and dove for the spoon as it spun and skittered across the floor. She caught it one-handed.

  “How did that get loose?” she demanded of no one in particular, as she got back to her feet, clutching her prize. She looked for the box that had held her first two captives.

  Sure enough, its lid was wide open, flung back to one side. She looked inside.

  The bowl was still there; apparently it had not been sufficiently agile to climb out the top. Kilisha dropped the spoon inside, then slammed the lid.

  “Who opened these?” she shouted. “Don’t tell me they both just managed to get them unlocked at the same time!”

  “Maybe the spriggan?” Pirra said, pointing.

  Kilisha turned her gaze to follow the girl’s finger. Kelder and Yara turned, as well, until four sets of eyes were fastened on the little green creature that cowered under a corner of the workbench.

  “You,” Kilisha said. She checked to make sure the bowl and spoon were securely confined, then took a step toward the spriggan. “You let them out, didn’t you?”

  The spriggan nodded. “Fun?” it said uncertainly.

  Kilisha growled and reached for it.

  The spriggan, moving far more suddenly than Kilisha would have thought possible, sprang over her outstretched hand, made a right-angle turn on one foot, then dashed out through the parlor door, weaving between the bench’s legs and bounding over a rope.

  Kilisha followed, calling, “Lock the door!”

  The latch clicked helplessly; Kelder had left the door standing open, and the latch could not reach the frame to obey. The spriggan dodged around the edge and vanished into the street.

  “Oh, blood and death!” Kilisha muttered, as she narrowly avoided tripping over the ropes and catapulted herself across the parlor. She snatched the door open and ran outside.

  The spriggan was heading west; she could just see it, scurrying past three startled pedestrians. She charged after it.

  The three passersby stared, and one called out a question, but Kilisha could spare no time for them; she ran on, chasing the spriggan. She had to squeeze around a wagon the spriggan ran under, then dodge around a puddle the spriggan ran through, but she was slowly gaining.

  “Apprentice!” someone called, and she looked up just in time to avoid running directly into a woman in green velvet. She skidded to a stop and belatedly recognized Lady Nuvielle.

  “I was just on my way…” Nuvielle began.

  “I’m sorry, my lady,” Kilisha gasped. “No time right now!” Then she stepped to the right and dashed past the startled noblewoman.

  The encounter had cost her precious seconds, and the spriggan was almost out of sight. She lowered her head and ran all-out, her skirt and hair flapping behind her. She felt her hair ornament slip out of place, falling down behind her ear, but she ignored it as she ran.

  They were almost to Cross Avenue when she finally dove forward, landing flat on the dirt of the street, and grabbed for the spriggan with both hands.

  Her right hand missed, but her left closed on one scrawny leg. The creature squawked, waving its arms wildly, but she held on.

  “Let go! Let go!” it shrieked.

  “Never,” Kilisha said, closing her right hand around its plump throat. With her prize thus secured, she slid forward, tucking her elbows under her. Then she pulled in her knees, so that she was on all fours, then slowly and carefully got to her feet, keeping both hands and both eyes fixed solidly on the spriggan.

  She stood in the street, aware that the front of her apprentice’s robe and her hands and arms were all smeared with black dirt, aware that several people were staring at her, but with her attention focused entirely on the spriggan.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  The thought that the spriggan might have gotten away was terrifying; if that happened she would never be able to restore her master to life! Finding an enchanted couch or a runaway bench was one thing; those were unusual, and magical, and could be tracked down somehow. Finding one specific spriggan, though, in all the city, in all the World, a spriggan that not only had the normal stealth and idiot cunning of its kind, not only had a spriggan’s innate resistance to wizardry, not only could pick locks with its fingernails, but that could not be bound because it held the essence of Ithanalin’s athame…

  That would have been virtually impossible.

  “Do what?” it squeaked, in that voice so oddly reminiscent of Ithanalin’s.

  “Why did you run away?”

  “You scary!”

  Kilisha clamped her teeth tightly shut for a moment to keep from trembling, then said, “If you think I’m scary now, you should see what I’ll be like if you ever try that again! You are going to stay in my master’s house until my master is restored to life, do you hear me?”

  “Sprigganalin hear fine!”

  “Do you understand me?”

  The thing’s ears drooped, and its eyes widened.

  “No,” it said.

  “Augh!” Kilisha fought a temptation to fling the idiotic little beast against the nearest wall.

  Its eyes widened even further; its ears folded back.

  “Listen to me,” she growled.

  “Sprigganalin listen!” it said, nodding desperately.

  “You are going to stay in the house until I say you can go! If you don’t, you will never have any fun ever again, I’ll make sure of that! Your life will be the opposite of fun if you ever again set a single toe outside the door without my permission. Now do you understand?”

  “Spriggans not real good with understanding.”

  Kilisha’s grip on its neck tightened, and it quickly added, “But Sprigganalin stay in house! Promise, promise!”

  “Good.” Her hold relaxed. “You just remember that promise.”

  “Remember, yes!”

  “Then let’s go home,” she said. She raised her head to get her bearings.

  A good
two dozen people were standing in a circle around her, staring at her.

  She blinked at them, then said, “What’s the matter with all of you people? Haven’t you ever seen a wizard’s apprentice before?”

  Voices muttered, feet shuffled, and most of them turned away. One boy, a few years younger than Kilisha, pointed and said helpfully, “You’re losing your feather.”

  Kilisha turned her head and discovered that her hair ornament had slid down farther, and was now almost completely lose, one corner hanging from a tangle in her hair.

  “Thank you,” she said—but she didn’t do anything about it. Both her hands were still clutching the spriggan. She just turned and began marching home, trying not to bob her head enough to lose the ornament entirely.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Kelder was waiting on the doorstep. “I see you caught it,” he said.

  “Yes,” Kilisha said, relieved to see him still there. “Is my mistress all right? Is everything else still secure?”

  “Your mistress is fine,” he said. “And I didn’t see anything else get out.”

  “Good.” She looked down at the spriggan clutched in her hand and wished she had some way of confining it—but she didn’t. She stepped inside, set it on the floor, and released it.

  Kelder watched as the spriggan promptly ran in circles, frightening the bench and chair. “There was another customer while you were out, but I told her the wizard was indisposed, and she went away,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Kilisha said, as she disentangled the leather-and-feather device from her hair.

  “I really need to go now—but I’ll pass the word about your couch.”

  “Thank you,” Kilisha repeated.

  For a moment they both hesitated, as if something more was expected but neither of them quite knew what, and then Kelder said, “Well, I’ll come back if I have any news.” He bowed, then backed out the door, turned, and was gone.

  Kilisha watched him go, then looked down at the ornament in her hand and decided against restoring it to its customary place. Instead she thrust it into the pouch on her belt, closed the door, ordered the latch to stay closed, then wagged a finger at the spriggan and admonished it, “You stay in this house!”

  The spriggan stopped running and stared up at her. “Stay! Stay!” it said, nodding vigorously.

  “Good,” she said, as she straightened and marched to the workshop.

  Yara was there, peering into the brass bowl. “This looks like overcooked beef gravy,” she said, straightening up. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Kilisha admitted. “It’s something Ithanalin had cooking when he was interrupted.”

  “Cooking? Don’t you mean brewing?”

  Confused, Kilisha said, “Well, something. Heating.”

  “You’re sure it’s magic? That Thani wasn’t secretly cooking behind my back?”

  Kilisha realized that she wasn’t sure of anything of the sort; Ithanalin might have been cooking, and the magic her athame had detected might have just been a minor protective spell or the like. That would explain why the stuff in the bowl hadn’t done anything magical for two days. Telling Yara that just now, however, did not seem like a good idea. “There was definitely wizardry there, and it chimed once,” she said.

  Yara frowned. “Chimed?”

  “The bowl rang like a bell without anyone touching it.”

  “Ah. Yes, that’s magic.” She nodded, then changed the subject. “You caught the spriggan? That soldier said that that was why you disobeyed my order to stay here.”

  “I caught it,” Kilisha said. She was chagrined to realize that in the urgency of pursuit she had completely forgotten Yara’s orders.

  “I got your jewelweed,” Yara said. “You didn’t say how much.” She lifted a sack as large as Lirrin.

  Kilisha suppressed the urge to say anything about the absurdity of such an amount, or to mention that in fact Ithanalin had had jewelweed on hand all along. Instead she merely said, “Thank you.”

  “I told everyone I spoke to that we were looking for the couch,” she said. “Just in case anyone sees it.”

  “That’s good,” Kilisha said.

  “I told them, too!” Pirra called from the kitchen.

  “Good for you!” Kilisha called back.

  “Now what?” Yara asked.

  “Now I practice Javan’s Restoration, and we hope the couch is found soon.”

  “Oh.” Yara hesitated, then asked, “Is it dangerous?”

  “Any magic can be dangerous if it’s not done well,” Kilisha said, automatically quoting a statement Ithanalin had made to her countless times in the five years of her apprenticeship.

  Yara recognized the words and grimaced.

  “I’m sorry,” Kilisha said. “I mean, he’s right when he says that. I don’t think this spell is going to be especially difficult; Istram thought I could do it easily enough.”

  “Istram?”

  “Yes, he stopped by while you were out.”

  “And he didn’t stay for lunch?”

  “He’s on Guild business, and couldn’t spare the time.”

  Yara frowned. “What sort of Guild business?”

  Kilisha hesitated; Yara, despite being Ithanalin’s wife, was no wizard, not a member of the Guild nor, at least in theory, privy to its secrets. All the same, this particular affair was hardly secret. “Something about the usurper in Ethshar of the Sands,” she said.

  “Oh, I heard everyone talking about that!” Yara said. “Rumors are everywhere.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t know any details, but the Guild is studying the situation, and Istram’s helping.”

  “Good for him. Well, I hope that when this is all over he’ll come by again and stay a little longer!”

  “As you please, mistress,” Kilisha said, bowing slightly, and wondering whether Yara would be glad to see her come back to visit, when she was a wizard in her own right, rather than an apprentice.

  That assumed, of course, that she ever did become a wizard—and if she didn’t learn Javan’s Restorative and use it on Ithanalin, that might well never happen.

  “I should practice the spell,” she said.

  “Of course,” Yara said. “I’ll see to the children, and bring you something to eat in a bit.”

  “Thank you.”

  With that Yara withdrew into the kitchen and closed the door.

  Kilisha hesitated, glancing at the parlor door. Ordinarily that, too, would be closed while serious magic was being practiced, but she did not want to miss any callers—especially not with the enchanted latch apparently eager to let in anyone who knocked.

  And she wanted to keep an eye on the spriggan and the furniture, as well.

  The door stayed open, and she turned her attention to the ingredients she would need for the spell. Peacock plumes, incense, water…

  First she went through the motions slowly and carefully without drawing her athame or invoking any actual magic, just to get the feel of them. She recited the words until she was comfortable with their rhythms. She handled the ingredients, sensing their magical natures. She lit a candle and set her pan of warm water on a tripod above a charcoal burner, then opened a vent into the chimney so that the charcoal fumes would not poison her. She lit the charcoal and waited until the water began to steam gently.

  And when it did she found a stick and snapped it in two, then placed the two pieces on the workbench.

  Then, finally, she drew her athame, recited the initial incantation, and lit the block of incense.

  She could feel the magic begin to gather almost immediately.

  She proceeded slowly and carefully, crushing the jewelweed leaves in her hand and flinging some in the water, others onto the incense, where they flared up briefly before being reduced to flying ash. Smoke and steam and ash rose and thickened, gathering in an increasingly unnatural fashion.

  After some forty minutes of this the entire room was thick with smog, and a great opaque cloud
of it hung swirling over the workbench. She made the transitional gestures, completed the first chant and began the second, and with her athame clutched in both hands began to cut the cloud into the shape she wanted.

  How she knew what shape to make she could not have explained; by this time the magic was as thick as the smoke. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that she could not possibly be breathing the air in the workshop without coughing, probably could not breathe it at all, had the magic not been flowing through her, protecting her and giving her power and guiding her hands.

  She trimmed and shaped and shaved the thick grey mist, transforming it from an amorphous blob into something roughly resembling a corkscrew, and the magic was strong and easy…

  And the spriggan shrieked happily from somewhere near her right foot, “Oooooh, cloud!”

  The athame hesitated, slipped, and suddenly it was just a knife and the vapors were just smoke and steam and she began coughing desperately, waving a hand in front of her face to try to clear the air. She staggered from the workshop into the parlor, gasping. She flung open the front door and sucked in the cleaner air of Wizard Street.

  “Awww, cloud gone!” the spriggan said somewhere behind her.

  Kilisha, able to breathe once again, bit her lip to keep from screaming.

  The spell was ruined and would have to be started over from the beginning—and it could easily have gone wildly wrong, interrupted like that!

  It might have gone wrong as it was. It felt as if it had simply dissipated harmlessly, but she couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  She looked down at herself, and saw two hands, two feet, her apprentice robe—everything seemed to be normal.

  She wasn’t the only one in the house, though. She turned.

  The parlor furniture was cowering in the corners; clearly all of it remembered, on some level, what could happen when a spell went wrong.

  It all seemed to be there, and undamaged, though. She closed the door, told the latch, “Stay closed,” then made her way back to the workshop.

  A look under the sheet reassured her that Ithanalin hadn’t changed; then she proceeded to the kitchen, where she found Yara and the children finishing their lunch.