Od Magic

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Why not? The princess has vanished; the magician or the gardener must be to blame. That’s what my father would pounce on, anyway. Where else could they imagine a young woman might be at this hour of night?”

  Mistral remembered the ancient, creaking docks beyond the warehouse where the odd ship still moored itself, full of strange spices and plants and exotic fabrics of interest to the eccentric quarter. “What about the river? Is it under guard?”

  “Not that I know,” Arneth said. “Somebody will remember to do that soon enough. But maybe they’ll expect me to think of it.”

  “You are the quarter warden, after all.”

  “Yes. Let’s go and see.”

  She touched his arm, checked his impulsive step. “You’ll get into trouble if we escape now.”

  He shrugged slightly. “Only for being careless.” He stood a breath longer, looking at her; she saw his jaw tighten against something he might have said. He turned abruptly. “We should hurry. How fast can you pack, if you can get out that way?”

  “We can leave the wagons and heavy gear, pack what we can on the horses and go. Tyramin has been very successful here; we can afford to leave things behind.”

  His face turned away; he said something she didn’t hear.

  “What?”

  “Where will you go?”

  “South. It’s the quickest way out of Numis. And there are fewer towns to remember us; those we can pass through at night.”

  He looked at her again, his eyes catching some still-burning lamplight from an open shutter. “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded wordlessly, then turned her own face firmly toward the river, black now and nearly invisible since the moon had set. They walked swiftly, as quietly as possible. A few torches burned along the water for night fishers, sailors, and wanderers wringing the last measure of amusement out of the hour before dawn. The dock was quiet, a single small vessel tied along it, sails furled, seemingly empty.

  “No guard,” Arneth said tersely, as they neared. He sounded surprised. Mistral could see the huge old warehouse on the next street towering over the river houses. She wondered if the performers had picked up gossip of the night’s events and had already begun to pack. They crossed the sunken cobbles of the ancient street meandering along the bank of the river.

  She sensed it before she touched it: a wall of power that rose between the quarter and the river, indistinguishable from shadow and air, but as adamant as stone. She had a brief, incoherent impression of many minds weaving their wills together and stepped back hastily before her own power became tangled in it. Arneth walked blindly into it before she could warn him. The invisible structure flung him away from it like a bull flicking a bird off its horns. He struck the cobbles hard, rolled over groggily, looking astonished.

  “Wizards,” he muttered, and got to his feet, rubbing an elbow. “Valoren’s idea, most likely. He has a mind for detail.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  He shook his head, still trying to see what had attacked him. “Can you—I mean can Tyramin—”

  “Hush,” she breathed. “They may be listening.”

  He took her arm, walked a few paces up the street, and whispered, “Can you make an opening through that?”

  “Maybe, if I had nothing better to do and no one else to worry about. It would be like unraveling a weave by following threads and picking them loose. Only these threads are thoughts, and they would be aware of me the moment I touched them.”

  “Not a good way out then.”

  “No.”

  He stared at nothingness again, scratched a brow, then turned to stare as bewilderedly at her. “Then how? How can I—”

  “Let’s go to the warehouse,” she said softly, before he let loose something that made the wall grow an ear. “We can talk there.”

  In the warehouse, they found the company of performers waiting anxiously. They had removed their costumes and face paints and gaudy earrings. Simply dressed, they looked ready, at a word from Mistral, for any possibility. The dancer who had caught Arneth’s eye under the moonlight and told him to smile was not smiling herself, now.

  She asked Mistral worriedly, “Are we in trouble?”

  “Tyramin is,” Mistral said simply. “There’s no way out of the quarter.”

  “So what should we do?” the red-haired Ney asked, with a glance at Arneth.

  “The quarter warden tried to help us. Even he can’t get us out. The royal guards are at the Twilight Gate, and the wizards are blocking the river.”

  Someone whistled. “What is Tyramin supposed to have done besides putting out a fire?”

  “The king’s daughter is missing,” Arneth explained. “Nobody is thinking very clearly.”

  “Does she have a lover?” Elide suggested practically.

  “If she does, she might want to stay hidden for a while since she is about to marry the wizard Valoren.”

  Ney scratched his curly head. “And all this has what to do with Tyramin?”

  “His power is suspect. That’s all I know,” Arneth said heavily. His eyes went to Mistral. “I don’t know what to do for you. There is a point at which even my father, the High Warden, will notice that I’m not just being obtuse and clumsy, that I am seriously evading my duty to produce Tyramin for him. I may have to go into hiding with you. Unless you—or Tyramin—can think of something.”

  They were all gazing at her by then, their eyes pleading for the master trick that would open the box without a lid, let the trapped birds scatter out of it to freedom. She said slowly, for among them there were those that knew, those close to guessing, those that would never know whose face they would find beneath the magician’s mask. “Arneth, come with me. We’ll explain all this to Tyramin together. Perhaps he’ll find something for us up his sleeve.”

  “Should we start packing?” Gamon asked.

  She gazed at him, already picking through odds and ends of glittering threads, half-formed visions, illusions at the bottom of the magician’s bag of tricks. “Pack what you need,” she told them. “The rest can stay here.”

  She took Arneth to the room overlooking the water where Tyramin dressed and rested and dreamed. One of his older masks hung on the wall, with chipped paint and mouse-chewed beard; his boots stood beneath it; his cloak of many pockets lay draped over a stool. An open trunk spilled satin shirts embroidered with stars, dark, voluminous trousers with even more pockets in them. The painted eyes seemed to come alive under the light of Mistral’s candle, to watch her as she entered.

  She lit other candles, sparking illusions of fire in glass jewels and metallic threads. She felt Arneth’s eyes on her as well as Tyramin’s painted eyes: both seemed to hold the same question.

  “What will you do?” Arneth asked softly.

  “I don’t know yet,” she told him. “You should go. Won’t they wonder where you are, the guards, the High Warden?”

  “They’ll think I’m searching for Tyramin.”

  “Yes,” she said, and let him hear the obvious in her silence: and you have found her. He shifted, shadow falling across his eyes.

  “I shouldn’t ask you,” he said huskily. “And you should not tell me.”

  She bowed her head. “I know.”

  “I want you to vanish. I don’t want to know how, I don’t want to know where you are, I don’t want to see you again until this—until—”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you do that?”

  She looked at him again, let him hear her silence. Yes, no, maybe, it is not for you to know…“No one,” she heard herself say then, “outside of my little traveling world has ever seen all of my faces before.”

  She saw his taut face loosen, the beginnings of his smile. “I’m enchanted by them all,” he confessed simply.

  “Even this one? My plainest face?”

  “Especially that one. All the mysteries are hidden behind it.” He didn’t move, nor did she. The air itself seemed to become a hand, reach out to touch her.

 
; Her cool voice shook suddenly, spilling stars out of it, tears, jewels. “If I could stay—” she whispered.

  “If I could go with you.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Find a way,” he breathed, so that nothing, not wizards power, not even the huge, watching face on the wall, could hear what passed between them. She did not answer, only added that thread in her mind of the spell she must work. She raised one hand, opened it. A star burned there on her palm, pulsing crimson fire between them.

  She looked at him and smiled. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Now go, before neither one of us remembers anymore how to lie, what mask to wear. I will find you again.”

  His head bowed; he walked out the door wordlessly, his fists and mouth tight. Staring at her star, she heard the door shut. She closed her hand around the fire, hid it somewhere among all the other magic and illusions in her head, where no one else would notice it, or believe it true.

  She wrapped the cloak around her, sat down on the stool, and gazed for a long time at the mask on the wall. In the distorted, dirty panes behind her the last star faded; a silver thread in the distance marked the boundary between night and day. After a time, she rose again, went down the hall, hearing, as she walked, the sleepless murmur of voices, soft movements within the drafty, creaking warehouse. She opened the door to the room where she made and mended costumes and wore her most prosaic face.

  She sat down among the threads and fabrics, needles, beads, the glass jewels and fool’s gold, the tinsel stars and paper moons. From the floor now, Tyramin watched her, the great head she had left there earlier. She gazed back at it, drawing from the vast treasure of illusions stored in the busy, teeming mind beneath that mask.

  She picked up needle and thread, began to refashion the world.

  EIGHTEEN

  Yar, baffled by the sudden lack of a gardener, woke the sleeping Elver, brought him out of the brickwork, where he could see the blinking, dream-glazed eyes.

  “Did Brenden tell you where he is going?”

  The boy tried to shake his head and look around him at the same time. “Is he gone?”

  Yar sighed, loosed him. “Yes. And I won’t stop him this time.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Home, I would guess. I don’t know how far he’ll get, but it seems best to let him try. I’m going back to the school. Coming?” He paused, watching Elver wake a bit more as he remembered the dilemma he had gotten himself into. “You may have expelled yourself from the school, but I’m sure Wye will allow you a bed until someone can come for you. She’ll want to question you, of course. And, since you were with me, so might Valoren.”

  Elver’s voice wobbled slightly. “About what?”

  “About your reasons for breaking the school’s rules. About that powerful gift for magic you are taking home with you. You brought it here, made it subject to the king’s law and the king’s use; now you are withdrawing it. Valoren will explain very clearly what you will and will not be permitted to do with it.”

  Elver swallowed. Yar waited, wondering how far away home was. The boy said finally, reluctantly, “One of my uncles lives here in Kelior. I could go to him.”

  “Where in Kelior?”

  “On Crescent Street. My father told me to go there if I got into—if I needed someone.”

  Yar nodded. The street was not far from the Royal Quarter, in an old and tranquil section of the city that never saw much excitement. “Do you want to come back to the school with me and get some sleep before you face your uncle?”

  Elver shook his head. “I’d rather face him than Valoren.”

  “I don’t blame you. But Valoren will find you when he wants you. Do you know the way? Shall I take you?”

  “I can find it. I stayed with my uncle before I came to the school.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Bream. Bream Marsh.”

  Yar consigned it to memory: another water dweller. “He can send to the school for your possessions. Wye may want to talk to you when things are calmer. If you can’t find your uncle, or run into trouble, come back to the school.”

  “I will,” Elver said, beginning to shiver again. He took a few heedless steps to the corner and was brought up short by the motionless line of guards across the gate. He tiptoed back to Yar, asked softly, “Will they let us out?”

  “I’d walk through the wall if I were alone,” Yar said. “But I’ll have to explain you.”

  “You could teach me—” the boy began eagerly.

  “I wish I could,” Yar said with sudden intensity. “I wish every student in the school had such a bright and curious and fearless mind as yours. But as things stand I would only get us both into deeper trouble.”

  Elver smiled at him ruefully and slid back down next to the warm bricks of the fire pit. “I’ll wait here until the guards change, and sneak through with them when they ride out. I won’t make the horses as nervous then when they smell someone invisible passing by.”

  Yar hesitated. But the boy seemed in no hurry; his eyes were already drooping again. And it would be much quicker for Yar to melt through stones than to talk his way out of the gate, since he saw no sign of Arneth. He fished a coin out of his pocket and unclasped his cloak.

  “Here,” he said, consigning both to Elver. “You can bring my cloak back to the school when you come for your things. If you happen to remember it.”

  He startled another smile out of the boy, who promptly vanished into its voluminous folds. “Thank you, Master Yar.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.” His face popped out again. “I’ll come and talk to you again before I leave.”

  “I will be breathlessly waiting.”

  Yar, visible only to the wind, eased himself through the stones in the wall and took the shortest way back to the school.

  He expected, after being thoroughly questioned by Valoren and the king, to be sent back out to search for the princess, whose disappearance, Yar suspected, had more to do with her impending marriage than with Tyramin. He hoped that he would not have to persuade her out of some unfortunate lover’s bed. He emptied his mind of such thoughts when he entered the school, and resigned himself to whatever fate he encountered in Wye’s chambers when he reappeared under Valoren’s bleak eye.

  But something intruded into the stillness where his thoughts had been, just before he made his way upstairs. He stood in the silent hallway, listening with both his mind and his ears. The students were still sleeping; shadows clung stubbornly to the walls, while the high windows in the vast upper regions grew filmy with encroaching dawn. Images teased him, tugged at him, as though someone called soundlessly to him without knowing his name. A student, he thought, awake and playing with power. But he lingered, struck by some elusive quality in the magic, something not quite familiar. Or was it, he wondered, the mind behind it that was unfamiliar?

  And the n a narrow, darkened stairway that went down instead of up caught his attention. Someone, he realized, had ventured into the labyrinth to work magic in the night. It wouldn’t be the first time. He debated ignoring it. But again the hint of strangeness, of familiar music played on an unfamiliar instrument, drew at him. He turned to it finally, followed the beckoning power down into the labyrinth.

  It didn’t riddle with him long. He took a step or two into it, and a name flowed into his mind. Smiling, he followed the thought of Ceta and found her at the heart of the maze. And there with her, he found the heart of the magic. Dark, disheveled heads together, they watched a candle flame, one of many stuck and burning on the center stone. Their faces were pale with sleeplessness; they must have been there all night, he realized. An odd assortment of buttons were strewn among the candles, along with tangled string, strips of cloth, rings, a jeweled shoe, an intricately ornamented goblet, half a loaf of bread, and a little pile of carefully arranged bones.

  Ceta turned her head and saw him. He saw the relief in her eyes, and then her smile. Still entranced within her own spell, th
e princess said a soundless word to the flame. It grew, fluttered, then detached itself from the wick and floated a moment in the air before Yar’s astonished laugh made it fall again, missing the candle wick to dance among the bones.

  Startled, Sulys turned. She said uncertainly, “Yar?”

  “Yes.”

  Unaccountably she loosed an exasperated huff of air. “I give up.”

  Illumined, he guessed, “You were summoning Valoren.”

  “She has been trying to get his attention,” Ceta explained.

  “For days.” The princess sighed and sat down on the stone among bread crumbs, buttons, and wax drippings. Ceta blew out the little flame before it caught at her skirt.

  “What were you doing with those bones?” Yar asked curiously. “And whose were they?”

  “They belonged to a roast chicken, which I begged from the kitchen,” Ceta answered.

  “Is there more of it?”

  “We ate it all,” Sulys told him apologetically. “But we can offer you bread and cheese.” She passed him the bread; Ceta rummaged in a basket for cheese, added half a browning pear to her offerings.

  “The bones?” he prompted, and took a ravenous bite, still standing to remind himself that he should be elsewhere.

  “It was an experiment,” the princess explained, gazing perplexedly down at them. “Of course, my great-grandmother didn’t encourage me to play with my food, even for magical purposes. But she said that she knew someone, long ago in Hestria, who could tell fortunes with bird bones.”

  “Perhaps not chicken bones,” Yar suggested. “They rarely leave the ground.”

  The princess regarded him thoughtfully. “They don’t soar,” she agreed, “beyond the present.”

  “So it was your great-grandmother Dittany who taught you this secret magic?”

  She nodded, her mouth tightening a moment. “I hoped it would attract Valoren’s attention. We badly need to talk.”

  “Yes, I see you do,” Yar murmured. He reined in his own thoughts, which were roaming curiously among the oddments the princess used like flint to spark her spells. “It was your absence that caught his attention first.”