Od Magic

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  It seemed an impossible task. But so had taking her father’s place, wearing his mask, seemed when she had first begun. What can be conceived, he had told her often, can be achieved. So she sat in solitude for long hours, plying her needle and traveling the boundaries of her mind, trying to find a way to turn what she already knew into a spell that would enchant even the enchanter.

  She was relieved, after she had vanished out of his life, to see Arneth again, solid, visible, and recognizable on the streets of the quarter. She had slipped out of her wagon under cover of night to walk, gather gossip, find something to eat. The crowds in the quarter were far sparser without the night traffic from the rest of Kelior. But they were no less lively. The occupants, refusing to be intimidated by the guards across the gate, tried to entertain them. Some wore masks and proclaimed themselves Tyramin, pulled eggs out of their sleeves and buttons out of their ears. Some still found their way to the warehouse, hoping that the magician would pull himself out of a hat. Mistral saw them beginning to gather as she left; a few would linger there until dawn. Her hair bundled up under her scarf, her black tunic and skirt swirling with embroidered secrets, the myriad details of her life, she walked past the little crowd without attracting more than perfunctory attention. She found a shadow near them, stayed to listen for news.

  Princess Sulys was still missing, she learned. Rumor had it that she had run off with a gardener from the wizard’s school. Her betrothed, the king’s wizard Valoren, blamed everything on Tyramin. Moving invisibly through the quarter, Valoren was searching it house by house, every tavern and shop and stall, even the stables, to run to earth the elusive magician. Who, everyone knew, must have already escaped through chinks between the stones in the wall, for where else was he? What’s more, the princess Sulys had also run away with him to avoid marrying the milk-faced Valoren, who looked more curdled by the day, or would, if he allowed himself to be seen.

  Mistral turned away. Nothing new, then. She took a step, heard Arneth’s voice, and froze.

  When she could move again, she turned cautiously to look at him. He was in the company of a wizard, it seemed: she remembered the dark, hooded robes the pair of them had worn when they came to search the warehouse. She had not expected them to return. But here one was back again with Arneth. Valoren? She wondered desperately what thread of her spell she had left unknotted to snag the wizard’s attention.

  “It’s a place to begin searching,” Arneth had said, which made no sense; he had already brought the wizards there. Mistral filled her mind with river mist and shadows, eased deeper into the night. The hood within which the wizard’s face had burrowed like a small animal turned this way and that, scenting, revealing nothing.

  “You have no idea?” The unfamiliar voice surprised Mistral. It belonged to a woman, young by the sound of it, tense but unthreatening, and hushed, as though she, too, were in hiding.

  “How could I?” the quarter warden asked softly. “She couldn’t tell me; it’s too dangerous for me of all people to know. I can deceive my father, but not Valoren if I ever caught his attention.”

  “If he bothered to see,” the young woman said a trifle tartly. Mistral, startled at her temerity, wished she could see into the hood without being seen. “Well, we’re all safe from those eyes for the moment.”

  “Only until he finds the gardener.”

  “I think he’ll go all the way to Skrygard Mountain with or without the gardener,” the young woman said evenly. “Lady Thiel sent me upstairs to sleep this morning after you suggested we wait until dusk to come here. Valoren’s voice woke me. He was too distracted to sense that I was still there instead of in the palace. Of course Lady Thiel couldn’t hide from him where Yar had gone. But she didn’t tell him how. He thought Yar couldn’t be very far ahead of him, and he was completely mystified that Yar hadn’t waited to go with him as he asked.”

  “So am I,” Arneth admitted. “I wouldn’t want that wizard hunting me.”

  “It’s not easy to explain. I only know that Valoren left this morning, and I haven’t seen him since. There’s a mystery in the northlands that could, he said, threaten Numis. Now he thinks that Yar might have been trapped by its powers, drawn into its snares, perhaps by the gardener, who is also corrupted by it, since he grew up in the north country. Of course, Valoren must go and investigate. So we should be safe from him for a time.”

  “You’re not afraid of this mysterious power? That it might attack your father?”

  “They’re very old, Lady Thiel said. These creatures of power. Od first wrote about them centuries ago. I can’t think what my father might do to annoy them more than any other king has done in all that time.”

  Mistral’s eyes widened. That was the mystery within the hood: the missing princess, who, it seemed, had no high opinion of her betrothed either. But why, she wondered, was Arneth risking everything bringing her into the forbidden Twilight Quarter instead of taking her back to the palace?

  He was looking for her, that much Mistral guessed. And he trusted the princess, for whatever reason. Discovered with either of them there, princess or magician, Arneth could lose his position, his reputation, perhaps even his freedom. Yet he had chosen to face those dangers. She spent a moment weighing her own risks, to herself and her company, while Arneth spoke again.

  “She could be anywhere within these walls. It may be better if I take you home and search for her myself, let her know you’re looking for—”

  “No.”

  “Your father—”

  “How many chances to come here do you think I’ll get? The last time I tried it, you stopped me as soon as I got through the gate. I’m here, now. You know what I want. I won’t leave until I get it.”

  “I know what you want,” Arneth said slowly. “But I’m still not sure why you want it.”

  The princess’s voice grew very soft again. “Yar told me it’s magic that calls out to me.”

  “You, too?” Arneth said incredulously.

  The head within the hood nodded briefly, emphatically. “As you can imagine, I need help as well as the magician. Perhaps we can help each other.”

  Mistral moved. It took only a step or two to reach Arneth, a breath to look into his face, hold his eyes until she saw his expression change. Then she lowered her head, continued past the crowd and down the dark side street that ran to the back of the warehouse, where she waited for them. She led them through the back door of the warehouse, into the little room where Tyramin’s chipped and work-worn head watched them from the floor.

  Mistral lit a lamp in the windowless room. The princess pulled back her hood, revealing a thin, troubled young face and a mass of untidy dark hair. She gazed at the battered mask, then, uncertainly, at Mistral. She blinked, glanced at Arneth, and back at Mistral, a question in her eyes.

  Mistral said softly, “He knows.”

  “Your threads are showing,” the princess said faintly. “Not,” she added hastily, “so much that anyone would notice. I only see them because my great-grandmother taught me that trick. I have only hidden small things—a locket and a ring my mother gave me—but I could see the magic in the stitches.”

  “What threads?” Arneth asked bewilderedly. “What stitches?”

  Mistral looked at him. A mistake, she thought, for now she didn’t want to take her eyes away from the green eyes that had warmed so quickly to her, the smile that she felt her own face reflect. She answered with an effort, “Some magic I did. If you don’t know what it is, you won’t have to—”

  He shook his head. “It’s too late to try to protect me. All we can hope for now is luck. This is Princess Sulys.”

  “I know. I heard you talking. I listened until I felt safe enough to reveal myself. At first I thought the princess was a wizard.”

  “When I persuaded Arneth to take me into the quarter this morning, he suggested I disguise myself as one, and he would lead me through the gate when he came on duty again at twilight with the changing of the guard. I had already sto
len someone’s cloak from the school.” The princess’s eyes moved again to Mistral’s threads; she asked wonderingly, “What—how much can you hide within them?”

  “Everything.”

  Sulys’s eyes grew wide; so did Arneth’s. He breathed, “What exactly—”

  “Exactly what I want,” she told him. “For as long as I want, until someone recognizes the spell and breaks my stitches.”

  “The wizards wouldn’t pay any attention to threads,” Sulys assured her. “Thread is among the ordinary things the wizards no longer see.”

  “Along with magic where they don’t expect it, I would assume from your betrothal.”

  The princess nodded wordlessly; her eyes were caught by the black gaze from the massive head on the floor, flickering in the lamplight. “Is that Tyramin’s mask?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why—” The princess hesitated, her eyes still on the mask, as though it might, at any moment, utter solemn and powerful words of magic. “If I can help him escape, will he let me see him?”

  “Why do you want to see him badly enough to risk so much?”

  “Because I’m tired of hiding. Of having no one to talk to, to learn from, to tell me what is possible instead of what is not. A magician powerful enough to elude the entire school of wizards, including Valoren, and fearless enough to do it, would see no harm in my simple magic. And now that I’ve met you, I know it must be true: you don’t have to hide your magic from him. He must have taught you the things you do. He sees the magic in ordinary things, too. And he is not afraid. Maybe, together, we can figure out a way for us all to escape. Maybe—” She faltered suddenly under Mistral’s unblinking gaze; her eyes broke from it, went to the mask’s dark stare, then back to the magician’s daughter. “Maybe,” she whispered, “the reason no one can find Tyramin is that he is only a mask. No one sees the magic they don’t expect. No one would look for a woman behind his mask.”

  Mistral opened her mouth; for a moment, no words would come. She whispered, “How did you know?”

  The princess took a step toward her, eyes catching the lamp’s fire, as Tyramin’s did. “I asked Arneth to take me to Tyramin. He brought me to you. From what I’ve heard, nobody ever sees Tyramin. Everyone sees you. That’s the kind of magic I understand. The kind that nobody notices.”

  Mistral smiled shakily and removed her last mask. She shifted close to Arneth, shoulder touching his shoulder, fingers lightly clasping his wrist. “Can you help us?” she asked the princess. “My greatest wish is to live here with my company in the Twilight Quarter, at peace with the king and Kelior. But he distrusts us, sending Valoren to hound Tyramin, and for very good reason: I have brought forbidden ways of magic into Numis; I am breaking laws. But only to create a few lovely illusions and enchantments that vanish by morning. If there is some way you can think of to get us all out of Kelior, I’ll take my company and leave. But I would rather stay.”

  “If you leave,” Arneth told her firmly, “I’m coming with you. I don’t see why I should have to look at my father and Valoren every day instead of you.”

  “I don’t see why I should have to, either,” Sulys told them. “I’m coming, too.”

  Mistral, envisioning the rejected suitor breathing fire on her heels across Numis, pulled her thoughts together. “It would be better if we all could find a way to live peacefully together instead of running away.”

  “Then I could visit you here freely, and you could teach me things,” Sulys said, looking at them both as though they, not she, were their only hope. “Surely we can think of something? If we put all our spells together? Threads and candles, buttons and ribbons and bones…”

  “And wishes,” Arneth added.

  Mistral was silent. Rich threads stitched themselves through her thoughts, scarlet and gold, glittering like Tyramin’s fires…She might lose everything if she pursued these threads: her company, her freedom, even Arneth. But if she could show the king the truth about her magic, its innocence and ephemeral charms, then she might gain everything for all of them, even the extraordinary princess.

  “I think,” she told them slowly, watching the golden needle in her vision running through detail after detail, “Tyramin might have one last trick up his sleeve…”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Arneth escorted the princess back to Lady Thiel’s house sometime in the night and spent the next few hours roaming the streets of the Twilight Quarter, trying to think of a way out of it for Mistral that did not involve the brightly sealed message to the king in his pocket. He would have preferred to toss the entire risky business into the river instead and ride off into the night with the magician’s daughter. But as things were, he couldn’t even find a way out of the quarter, let alone out of Kelior, for Mistral and her company. So he rode back to the palace with the night guard at dawn, waited for his father to arrive in the High Warden’s office, and presented him with the message to the king.

  Murat Pyt regarded it with astonishment. “What is this? Where—How did it come to you?”

  “It was given to me by Tyramin’s daughter. She came to me late last night and told me it was to be given to the king.”

  Murat turned it over in his hand, studied the gold and teal ribbons caught in a scarlet splash of wax, then turned it over again, as though trying to see through the paper. “Did she tell you what it says?” he asked huskily.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well?” the High Warden demanded after a silence. “What?”

  “It’s a message,” Arneth answered fastidiously, his eyes on the far wall, “for the king.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” his father said testily. “It’s your duty to tell me what you know, which has been little enough lately, I might add. It’s about time you’ve produced some proof that Tyramin is still in the Twilight Quarter. What is the message?”

  Arneth told him. The High Warden had risen before he finished. He rounded his desk, snagged Arneth’s elbow, and propelled him out the door. “Come with me to the palace. The invitation was given to you; you will deliver it with your own hand to King Galin.”

  They had to wait in an antechamber while Arneth gave his news to a household guard, who sent several pages running. One of the king’s older counselors appeared finally, looking gaunt and owlish with the added strain of Valoren’s absence. He listened to Arneth’s news and reached for the message, which the High Warden shifted adroitly out of his grasp.

  “My son was told to give it himself to the king.”

  The counselor cast a yellow, bloodshot eye at him, but said nothing. He vanished; they sat down and waited again. Arneth’s eyes closed. He opened them again, quickly, at a jab from his father’s elbow, and got to his feet as the king entered, his heir beside him and the aged counselor on their heels.

  He took the proffered letter, looked at it, then at Arneth. “Who gave you this?”

  “The magician’s daughter, my lord, very late last night; she told me it was to be given to—”

  “Where is she?”

  “My lord?”

  “Surely you arrested her,” Galin said impatiently “Where did you put her?”

  Arneth, floundering, pulled his thoughts together swiftly “My lord, she told me the contents of the message. It seemed wiser not to arrest her then, or threaten her in any way since Tyramin himself was offering to walk onto the palm of your hand.”

  The king grunted, tearing open the message. The prince offered his opinion brusquely. “We could have taken her as a hostage. We would have had Tyramin by now if you had thought.”

  Arneth bowed his head. “My mistake.”

  “Not the first,” Lord Pyt said testily. “Sometimes I wonder if—”

  Arneth was rescued from his father’s suspicions by the king, who slapped the paper in his hand and barked, “Ha!”

  The prince and the counselor peered over Galin’s shoulder. The High Warden crowded closely behind him, asked disingenuously, “What is it, my lords?”

  “Tyramin
offers a private performance to the king at his court,” the counselor murmured, reading. “To make amends for whatever trouble he has so unintentionally caused to the Twilight Quarter, and as a gesture of goodwill toward the King of Numis.” He paused, looking, Arneth thought, as though he had caught of whiff of something unsavory. “I don’t like it.”

  “If he’s powerful enough to attack me in the company of my wizards under my own roof, then he can easily attack me from wherever he is now,” Galin said briskly. “So far he has done nothing but hide. I like it.”

  “When does he offer to come?” the High Warden asked.

  “He and his performers will gather at the Twilight Gate tomorrow at dusk, during the changing of the guard. If the king desires, the quarter warden will meet the company there to lead them, escorted by the royal guard, to the palace.”

  Even the suspicious counselor seemed taken aback by that.

  “We could simply arrest him then,” Murat Pyt suggested. Arneth gritted his teeth to keep himself quiet.

  “We could,” the counselor said slowly. “But the wizards would learn far more about him by watching him work.”

  The king nodded. “Arneth, be at the gate and bring them to the great hall, tomorrow, as they offer.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “I would like to see what the entire quarter has been talking about. I would also,” Galin added a trifle explosively, “like to see my daughter. Has she given anyone a message for me? Valoren told me before he left that he had seen her with Lady Thiel. I thought he had instructed you, Arneth, to escort her home.”

  Arneth cleared his throat. “My lord, she refused to come with me. She is still with Lady Thiel.”

  “What is she doing there?” the king demanded. “She has a wedding to prepare. Fanerl is becoming unbearable on the subject.”

  Arneth swallowed a snort of laughter and stared raptly at the floor. The prince thumbed an eyebrow, his stiff face easing, becoming vaguely bemused. “I think,” he said slowly, making an effort to remember something, “she needed to talk.”