Sword and Sorceress 30

by Waters, Elisabeth

  She nodded. There was a long silence before she blurted, “You are able to see the demons. Can you teach us?”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “The emperor will pay any price!”

  I set aside my cup and leaned forward. “My vision is an accident, Sister.” I told her my tale. Of my arrogant assumption that I could do what the healers couldn’t. Of my lack of reference concerning the sense of sight when I developed the spell. Of my belief I could escape servitude to the Temple of Balance if I was no longer blind.

  “A pity,” she whispered.

  “That I didn’t escape the temple?”

  “That your gift can’t be spread.”

  I reached for her cup and gently set it on the table before I took her chilled hands between mine. “Sister, I can’t see the shift of shades in a sunrise or sunset. All I know of flowers is the soft touch of their petals and their fragrance. I will never be able to see a rainbow except through someone else’s eyes.”

  “But—”

  “The best thing we can do is share information. All of it. Two demon appearances after a century of quiet?” I released her and leaned back. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Neither do I.”

  We both rose and clasped hands.

  I escorted her to the rear yard, Little Bear trailing behind us. She easily scaled the wall and disappeared over the stable roof of the inn across the alley. I wondered if she had sensed the same presence in the temple garden that I did.

  “I’ll be meditating by the fountain if you need me.”

  Little Bear reached out for me, but brought himself short. He still forgot I could see, even if my vision wasn’t normal. “But, Justice, what about your safety?”

  “I doubt we’ll have another visitor from Jing tonight.” I turned for the garden.

  Little Bear hesitated a moment for he called out to chastise the two wardens on midnight duty for not stopping the intruder. I smiled to myself. I suspected he hadn’t left the doors to the receiving room the entire time Shi Hua was there. He would be even more cross if he knew the wardens had missed the second visitor.

  I walked along the outer path when a strong arm pulled me behind a tree. Familiarity made me sink into Luc’s hold.

  What do you think? I asked when he ended his kiss. We didn’t dare speak aloud. The ramifications if my wardens caught us in a compromising position would be worse than a foreign priestess penetrating temple security.

  Do have any idea how unnerving it is seeing through your eyes?

  I’m more concerned about what you think about Shi Hua’s story.

  He glanced at the night sky. You’re not going to want to hear it.

  I drew back. If Issura is in danger—

  He looked down at me. Despite your determination to fail and your surly nature, you’re developing a knack for diplomacy.

  I made a fisted and punched his bicep. Get out of here before Little Bear finds you.

  After one last kiss, he scrambled up the tree and over the wall. Shi Hua’s stunt would call an end to our late-night trysts.

  But his parting words made me question my life as I settled near the fountain to meditate. My adolescent effort to avoid fate and responsibility had inadvertently saved thousands of lives in less than a year. Maybe temple life truly was where the Goddess meant for me to be.

  But I would still fight Her every step of the way.

  The same way I’d fight the demons.

  A Fairy Tale of Milk and Coffee

  L.S. Patton

  Magic can be a useful thing that makes life better. It can also drive you nuts. And that’s just the magic, not the magicians.

  L.S. Patton is a lifelong science fiction and fantasy reader, and has recently begun writing as well. This is her first professional story. She supports herself as a biochemist and lives in Peoria, Illinois with her husband, cat, dog, and horse.

  In the center of Far Gallaway, on a pedestal in the village square, sat an enchanted coffee pot. This pot was the final thesis of the queen’s newest magician, and a gift to his hometown upon his graduation. And, while the pot always appeared empty, you could pour perfect, hot coffee from it into your cup, to the sound of birds singing. The pot was the bane of my existence.

  I’d never been particularly fond of the Schools of Magecraft. Since Tom had foisted his disaster on the town, marked with the Queen’s own seal saying it was treason to mess with it, I had an even lower opinion of their teachings. It had been here nearly a month, and the betting on when I’d take it out in a fit of rage was getting heated. For not only was it fairly useless (a good pot of coffee sealed with a stasis spell would stay perfect and hot forever, and a touch of sympathetic magic would transmute any water added to the pot into coffee), but the thing was barely stable. It burbled to itself so loudly that even Karen, who hadn’t a drop of magical talent, could hear it, and it randomly sent out wild bursts that wreaked havoc on any charm in range. Which was why I was trudging all the way out to Farmer Dan’s today, instead of curled up in my chair writing up my permeable window spell for Enchanter. Dan had his spyglass in his pocket when he went through town last week, and the blasted coffee pot had imploded its far-seeing spell. Pre-coffee pot, I’d agreed to do the upkeep on the spell for free.

  I rang Dan’s doorbell, and his wife Lin answered the door. “Clara! How delightful to see you. Dan’s just over at the barn, he headed that way to feed the goats not five minutes ago. I believe he has his spyglass with him, we’ll just pop on over to the barn. Such a shame about that spell! I told Dan it was too good to be true, and here it’s fallen apart in less than a month. Now, dear, I know you’re always very careful with your spells, but you just never can tell with magic.”

  This lecture had gotten us to the barn, where we did indeed find both the spyglass and Dan. I raised a hand to Dan and headed toward the table with the spyglass on it, as Lin switched subjects and audience without a pause for breath.

  “Now, Dan, dear, weren’t we going to get that hayloft repaired this summer? I’m sure Steve said he could get the boys to help….”

  As Dan and Lin disappeared into the barn, I shook sand in a circle around the glass, and settled in to work. Spyglasses are just a modified form of magesight, which was my specialty. Magesight has never been very flashy magic, and these days, most magicians saw it as a brief skill to master on the way to casting more complicated charms they could use to impress their friends. Magesight was the first magical skill I mastered, and my affinity for it had led me to try to use it to solve other problems during my apprenticeship, which was surprisingly effective and drove my teacher to distraction trying to teach me the standard skill set of a magician. As a result, people considered me slightly odd, even for a magician. The sight gave me a deeper appreciation for the sort of subtle, effective magic that looked beautiful and complete when you examined the spell with your eyes. It also meant I was willing to work on small trinkets that most accomplished magicians scoffed at, which coincidentally was most of my livelihood.

  ~o0o~

  I was feeding my chickens just after dawn the next day, when Karen, the innkeeper, poked her head into my yard.

  “Heya, Clara, I hear you had to go fix Dan’s spyglass yesterday,” she called, letting herself in at the gate.

  “Well, if people are going to take delicate charms through the center of town, they’re going to have to expect trouble from that damn coffee pot,” I said defensively. Karen’s views on the effectiveness of charms were widely shared, and could be traced pretty directly back to Tom’s apprenticeship. He’d destroyed the last hedge-witch’s house before she shipped him off to the Schools of Magecraft where he couldn’t do as much damage.

  “Of course, of course,” soothed Karen. “I would never imply that you’d create some dim-witted, precarious spell that would make a dust devil cringe,” she said with a grin. She must have heard my complaints about the coffee pot as I crossed the square last night; it was especially noisy, and just walking
past it gave me a headache. I grinned weakly at her.

  “I’m assuming you haven’t heard the news.” As the innkeeper, Karen was nearly a professional gossip, and did her best to keep her close friends as up on current events as she was. “His Lordship is coming back to town for the summer. He apparently pledged his earnest desire to return to his roots right after Milord Deveril found out Tom’d sold a spy spell that targeted his wife. He showed up at the inn late last night.”

  “I guess it was too much to hope that idiot would stay safely away in the capital and not run around mucking up other people’s lives,” I mumbled. After the coffee pot presentation, Tom and I had not parted on the best of terms. He probably wouldn’t turn me into a toad when he saw me, but I couldn’t be sure. “If I hadn’t promised Alex I’d help him with his cow problems I’d seriously consider taking a vacation.”

  “Cow problem?” Alex rarely made it to the inn to keep Karen updated about the personal details of his life, something she took as both an affront and a challenge. I couldn’t decide if it was work that kept him away, if he didn’t like Karen, or if it was sheer contrariness because he knew that the town gossiped mercilessly about our eligible bachelors.

  “Yeah, he just said something strange was going on with his new cow that he thought I could help out with. Said it was kind of a long story and he’d tell me when I came out.”

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with why he looked white as a sheet when he came back from the market yesterday, would it? I heard he’d lost a family heirloom. Cyril even said that it was his magic beans.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll find out.” It figured that Karen already knew most of the story, and the magic beans had figured into the aborted version I’d heard yesterday.

  ~o0o~

  I finished my chores and my breakfast, then set out for Alex’s. It was a good morning; sunny and slightly chilly, with that edge that says it’s heading toward fall. It looked like there might be some fog out near Alex’s farm, though ... or that Tom had heard the news. As I got closer, I could tell that what I had first assumed was fog was a cloud of enchantments rising up from Tom, who was in the road in front of Alex’s chanting something. No one else would wear such intricately embroidered robes while walking through the dusty streets. Fragments of previous spells hung about him like spider webs, catching on his new spell and drifting around the countryside. It would take months to clean up, if the farm wasn’t just reclaimed by the enchanted forest. Tom apparently reached the end of his chant and stood with his arms outstretched, looking around expectantly.

  “Tom. What brings you out so early?”

  I wasn’t Tom’s favorite audience, but audiences were scarce at the moment, so it looked like I would do. “I,” he paused dramatically, and looked down his rather large nose, “am now Lord Arneal. I have come to dispel the hex on Kevin’s cow, and restore his luck.”

  “What?”

  “Have you not heard? Some ruffian bewitched Alex into giving away his magic beans, and has instead saddled him with this cursed cow. Alex would never have given away those beans without coercion, and thus he must have been spelled, probably with the very cow the sorcerer gave him!”

  “You think the cow is cursed.”

  “Hmmm, perhaps you’re right, it didn’t seem to be responding to my un-hexes. He must have caught the attention of a malevolent god. Only I can turn its eye away and prevent it from ruining poor Alex’s life.” The chanting started up again, so I headed through the gate.

  “Alex isn’t allowing visitors.” Apparently correcting my transgressions was important enough to pause while calling a god.

  “Nonsense, I’m expected.” Alex came around the corner of the barn just then, and Tom’s face went from smug to outraged when it became apparent that I was not going to be thrown out. He even went so far as to put his hand on the gate, but Alex’s expression stopped him from following, and the chanting resumed, slightly angrier than before. Alex was a big man, with the muscles that came from running a farm by himself. Apparently, even Tom had more sense than to test him.

  Tom was right about one thing: I couldn’t imagine a circumstance in which Alex willingly gave up his magic beans; they’d been in the family since his great-grandmother’s time, and were credited with all sorts of good fortune in the family. They were also powered by one of the more elegant spells I’d ever seen; not that Tom would know or care. The idiot seemed to think that seeing enchantments was for hedge-witches, and he had graduated past it years ago.

  I followed Alex into his kitchen. He’d already collected the eggs this morning; they sat in a basket on the counter, and I walked past to join him at the old kitchen table, where he’d nearly collapsed into a chair. I took the other, and looked up into his bewildered green eyes.

  “What happened? I hear you traded your magic beans for a cow.”

  He shoved a lock of brown hair out of his eyes. “It doesn’t make any sense. I only had them with me ’cause I was hoping to make enough money selling those turnips to make some improvements to the place.” He looked almost furtive, probably because he knew that speculation would run rampant about who in particular “improvements” might be for if the news spread. I, however, don’t gossip about business. His secret was safe with me. Especially as I had no idea who he might have his eye on; Cindy Diccerson had been chasing after him recently, but he struck me as having more sense than to fall for her.

  “Anyway, they were in my pocket, and I was packing my things up, and this hungry-looking kid with an old cow comes by, asking if he can trade his cow for some medicine or food, and I up and offered him the magic beans.” His green eyes were back to bewildered. “I have no idea what came over me, and was hoping you could check and make sure nothing was fishy.”

  “Certainly, we can scry your memory and see if there’s any magic lingering. If your will was controlled by a spell, there would still be a magical signature on the memory I could see. The spell would have locked your brain into one particular pathway, corresponding to the outcome it wanted, and that would show up in your memory as less flexible than your other memories, where several options were open to you.”

  “So you’ll read my mind? See everything I was thinking?” He looked a little nervous at the idea.

  “No! Of course not. I would first block all unrelated thoughts, so I would only see or hear things related to the cow or the beans. I wouldn’t just go rampaging through your mind.”

  He still looked skeptical, though slightly reassured. “Okay then. Go on with it.”

  I slipped my scrying bowl out of my bag, and filled it with clear spring water from a bottle. I placed the full bowl in the center of the table. “I’m going to need a drop of your blood in the water, then you’ll have to wrap your hands around the bowl.” I pricked my finger with my needle so a drop of my blood fell in the bowl, wiped it off, then held out my hand for his. I pricked his index finger, and squeezed a drop of blood into the bowl. Alex’s hands dwarfed the bowl as he wrapped them around it, and my hands scarcely covered half of his as I placed them around the outside. He tensed, started, and looked up, so I smiled reassuringly at him. He really was quite worked up about this.

  I lifted his hands and mine, and swirled the water in the scrying bowl as I reached out for my blood with my magic. I made the connection, then connected to Alex through our mingled blood. I wove together a wall to block his thoughts, then loosened them only to thoughts connected to the new cow or the magic beans in the past day. I focused on the bowl, and images started to appear to match the thoughts I was now hearing.

  ~o0o~

  I saw the market in Elmhearst as the sun hung low in the sky. I began packing up my remaining bins. I felt the magic beans in my pocket, and wondered how much they had helped with my sales today. It was a good haul, almost good enough to ... static ... a figure was walking over, a hungry-looking boy of about ten leading a skinny cow.

  “Please, sir, my grandfather is sick, and we have nothing. This is a good
cow, she will give good milk again. I can trade her for food, or medicine…” he stared beseechingly up at me.

  I looked at the cow, reached into my pocket, and pulled out my magic beans. “I can trade you these magic beans.”

  ~o0o~

  I paused the memory. The remains of the enchantment hung about it: strong, subtle, elegant, familiar. I watched the rest of the trade, then cut the connection.

  I blinked slowly as I came back into the present, still feeling the disorientation of the vision. Alex’s hand flexed slightly under mine, and I fought back a blush as I removed my hands from around his.

  “Well? Was there magic?”

  “Yes, something was influencing your actions that day. A familiar signature, so I can even identify it. Your magic beans influenced you to trade them for that cow.”

  Alex’s face fell, and he sagged on his seat. “I guess I thought they’d always want to stay in the family…” he trailed off, then looked up with horror in his eyes. “Do you think I did something to offend them? To drive them away?”

  “No, of course not!” I responded more to the horror than the question. Who knows what the enchantment might have been thinking? Something with that sort of subtlety could certainly be doing all sorts of things unbeknowst to me. “Perhaps... perhaps there was a reason the beans left. Is there anything special about the cow?”

  Alex looked less appalled, but more as if he were internalizing his pain rather than releasing it. “She seems to be an ordinary cow. Nothing special.”

  “Well, since I’m already out here, do you want me to take a look? No extra charge.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find anything, but we might as well be thorough.” He pushed himself up and led me through the kitchen door toward the barn.

  The wind had picked up since I walked over, full of the bite of the impending autumn. I followed Alex out into the grey midmorning, hoping the barn was sturdy enough to cut the wind. Alex slid back the door and beckoned me in. The barn was warmer, and smelled of hay and animal, though only the cow was in residence. She was standing calmly in a box stall to our left, chewing her cud and checking us out. I don’t know much about cows, but she looked like quite a nice cow to me, with a lopsided black spot covering her right eye.