He waited. The voice that one sought had to actually say something aloud before it could be detected. The spell was less useful in the middle of the night, when most people were likely to be asleep. Even now, in early evening, if Nora were in some way isolated—imprisoned or wandering alone—she might have no cause to say anything aloud. Or, if she had been shape-changed into an animal or another human form, her voice would be unrecognizable. An injury to the throat or even a bad cold could defeat the spell. And even with the right voice, there was always a delay—for reasons Aruendiel did not understand, sounds from a great distance could take an hour or more to arrive within hearing.
Despite all the grounds for discouragement, he would hear her, if she still had breath to speak. He felt quite confident of that. He waited, ears tuned to the silent air with the kind of patience that he had for few things in life, magic being one of them.
“Aruendiel?” Nansis Abora pushed open the kitchen door and frowned at what he saw. He came inside the house, fumbling at the knot of his cloak. “What are you doing out of bed?”
Aruendiel, leaning over the kitchen table, did not respond at once. Still in his nightshirt, his long, dark hair tangled across his shoulders, he was studying a piece of parchment unrolled across the well-scrubbed planks of the table.
With a sigh, Nansis Abora lowered himself into a chair. “Well, she lost the baby, poor dear. Stillborn, a little boy. Galns, my neighbor—it’s his wife—was beside himself. Six girls and no sons. Do you know, he wanted me to do an Eoluthian substitution with one of the daughters? I put out that candle right away. I told him if he wants a son, he’d better get back to bedding his wife instead of sacrificing one of his girls.
“I don’t believe that kind of resurrection spell would work, anyway, if the little boy never drew breath in the first place. Poor mite. A very sad business.” He shook his head.
“Mmm.” Aruendiel did not look up. “It would have been sadder if you’d tried to do the Eoluthian substitution. Do you have any better maps than this one, Nansis?”
“Maps?” Nansis Abora’s head swung around, like an old turtle’s, and for the first time he regarded the scroll that Aruendiel was studying. “What are you looking for?” he asked, raising his voice. “I told you to rest.”
Impatiently Aruendiel shook his head. The other man’s voice seemed unnaturally loud after so many hours of silence. “Do you have a map of the Poscan regions? Or Iskii?” Aruendiel asked. Even his own voice was disturbingly raucous. “Anything east of Dor.”
“Oh, dear, I gave most of my maps to my friend Polchix’s son when he started in the navy. I don’t travel much these days. Except for your war with the Faitoren, of course.”
“These are all inland regions that I am looking at,” Aruendiel observed. He refrained from noting that it was Ilissa, not himself, who had sparked hostilities the previous winter.
“So they are. Aruendiel, please sit down at least and put something over your shoulders. Is this so urgent that it could not wait for morning?” Nansis Abora disappeared into the bedroom and returned with a yellow wool blanket embroidered with spiky blue cornflowers. Aruendiel, still looking at the map, absently shrugged himself under the wrap. Nansis Abora regarded him critically for a moment and then went out of the kitchen again. He brought back a wooden box, which he placed on the table, and extracted a scroll in a leather case.
Aruendiel took the scroll from him and unrolled it. “This is a little better,” he said, after a moment’s examination. “At least it shows something of the nature of the country. Yes, that’s right, it’s all mountains from the Casken River to Lake Iskior.”
“Do you think you have found Mistress Nora?” Nansis Abora asked, sitting down at the table.
“Not yet,” Aruendiel said, but the lilt of excitement was in his voice. He added: “I have heard her, though. I have a better notion of where she is.”
“A listening spell—is that why you shooed me out of the room?” Nansis Abora tut-tutted resignedly. “They’re a bit imprecise at long distances, I always thought.”
“Very,” Aruendiel said, his eyes on the scroll. “If you want to understand what someone is saying. But for tracking quarry, they are quite useful.”
“Oh, yes, you found that fellow with the invisible army that way. I remember. Well, where do you think she might be?”
“She is to the east of here, and a little south. At least four hundred karistises away. Near a temple of some sort.”
“A temple?”
“She said something about leaving a temple. What are the temples in that country?” Aruendiel drummed his fingers on the table, then pointed to a spot on the map. “There is a shrine to some vulture god at Tior. The sun’s temple near Qu,” he added, moving his finger. “And some sort of complex near Ahnamata, is there not?”
“The necropolis,” said Nansis Abora. “Oh, I believe there are at least a dozen temples there.” He craned his neck to look at the map over Aruendiel’s elbow. “Then there is Farlex, Erchkaii, Horba, the monastery at Nuelstona. And you know, Aruendiel, she could have been talking of any little village shrine.”
“I have considered that,” Aruendiel said, with something like a snarl. “One must start somewhere. And she is certainly somewhere in this region.” He drew his hand across the map, indicating a diagonal swath of territory stretching southwest to northeast.
Nansis Abora frowned slightly, his pale blue eyes worried, but he said: “The sanctuary at Horba has been sealed for five hundred years, so I suppose you can eliminate that one. Did Mistress Nora say anything else that might be useful?”
Aruendiel gave an impatient exhalation. “Nothing to guide us to her directly.”
“Why, what did she say?” Nansis Abora asked.
“She said, ‘I won’t do it.’ And there was much more that I could not make out. But I heard her say ‘almost killed’ and ‘too dangerous’ with perfect distinctness.”
“Oh, dear, that is not especially reassuring, is it? Still, there might be some innocuous explanation. Did she sound agitated or calm, could you tell?”
“She was not calm.” Aruendiel was suddenly and irritably conscious that he himself did not sound especially composed. He tried to regulate his voice better as he added: “As you say, it is a damnably imprecise spell. But she was speaking with some passion, that was clear.”
Nansis Abora sucked the corners of his mouth, considering this information. “What do you propose to do, Aruendiel?”
“I mean to find her.”
“Yes, of course, but how? Do you mean to search each of these temples we have named?”
“I will start with that, yes.”
“You’re still in no state to travel.”
Aruendiel thought briefly about disputing this point with Nansis Abora but had to admit to himself that he was unlikely to win the argument. On the way from the bed to the kitchen, he had not actually fallen, but he had been grateful for the walls’ blessed steadiness under his hands. “Traveling would take too long,” he said. “It would be faster to examine each temple with an observation spell.”
Nansis Abora nodded, looking relieved. “That’s a much better idea,” he said approvingly. “We can start looking in the morning.”
“There’s no reason not to begin now.”
“Except that everyone will be in bed! We’ll have a much better chance of finding her in the daytime, while people are up and about.”
“There is something to that,” Aruendiel said reluctantly, glancing at the kitchen window. No light came through the cracks in the shutters; there were still hours before daylight. He looked back at the other man suddenly, his pale eyes intent. “Do you not have a time spell that would take us to tomorrow morning?”
Nansis Abora was caught off guard. “I do—but heavens, Aruendiel, it wouldn’t do any good at all. It would not make time pass any more quickly for Mistre
ss Nora; it would not avert anything that might happen to her between now and then. Not that anything is likely to happen,” he added as Aruendiel’s face darkened. “We don’t know for sure that she is in any danger.”
“The odds are great that she is,” Aruendiel said. He clenched his jaw, then said suddenly: “She also spoke my name.” He had not intended to mention this to Nansis Abora, but now found that he could not help himself.
“Eh? Are you sure? What did she say?”
Aruendiel had to confess that he did not know. His ear had automatically picked out his own name from a series of otherwise indistinct syllables.
Nansis Abora looked at him more keenly than Aruendiel would have liked. “Well, it’s natural that you’re worried. Mistress Nora is a very delightful young lady.”
“She’s my pupil and has lived in my household,” Aruendiel said. He added, as though anxious to be clear on this point: “I am responsible for her protection.”
Nansis Abora nodded. “Yes, yes. Although—forgive me for being forward, Aruendiel—I think you are also rather fond of her?”
Why had Nansis Abora chosen this moment to pry, in his innocent, inoffensive way, into matters that were none of his business? “One always feels some attachment to a good pupil,” Aruendiel said.
“Oh, certainly,” Nansis Abora said. “Even to the doltish ones, I always found. Some of them try so hard.”
“Nora is an excellent student,” Aruendiel snapped. Then, carefully: “And certainly, I am—fond of her.”
“Oh, yes, I thought so,” Nansis said, pleased. “Well, I think that’s a very good thing. You’ve been a bachelor for a long time—getting on for three dozen years, is that right?”
Aruendiel felt some bafflement at the turn the conversation had taken, but he answered: “Four dozen and more.”
“That’s far too long. Dear me! One of these days, I must marry again, too. There is something very soothing about having a woman around, even if she loses her temper from time to time, as some of my wives did.”
Privately, Aruendiel had always had trouble distinguishing among Nansis Abora’s successive wives. Nansis had a predilection for generously sized widows in hearty middle age; beyond that, it was hard to recall anything specific about any of them.
“It’s not that simple,” Aruendiel said with some desperation.
“No?” Nansis had risen from his chair and was hunting among the jars and bottles on the kitchen shelf.
Impossible to tell Nansis how he had already bedded Nora, how she had turned on him. But he found it equally impossible to be silent. “I’m very fond of her,” Aruendiel said. “It is—unfortunate.”
“Why? She is a lovely girl,” Nansis said, examining the handwritten label on a medium-sized green bottle.
“Why? Do you even have to ask? Wood and water, I thought I was too old to be such a fool. And an old magician who even thinks of—of passion is a fool. Look at Merlin.”
“Merlin?” Nansis made a clucking sound. He poured some pinkish liquid into a cup and handed it to Aruendiel, then poured another cup for himself. “That’s only a legend. You’ve always said yourself that there never was a Merlin.”
“A tale can be entirely false and yet tell some truths,” Aruendiel said. The idea had occurred to him while Nora was translating that book of hers, the one about the girls seeking to be married. “The point is, Nansis, when a man as unnaturally old as I am falls in love with a girl like that, a duckling right out of the egg, the best outcome he can hope for is to look ridiculous. The best outcome.”
“Are you worried that Mistress Nora will shut you up in a cave, like the nymph in the story? I don’t know her very well, but I would think it unlikely. Or do you think she will treat you the way your first wife did?”
Aruendiel was taken aback. He had never thought of Lusarniev as his first wife, only as his wife. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something. She might find my attentions displeasing.”
“You never worried about that before with any woman, it seems to me. And Mistress Nora is so plainly enamored of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve seen her! When we were at Lord Luklren’s castle. Like the sun coming out, whenever she spied you. I’m not surprised at all that she decided to come back from her world. I don’t think she wanted to leave in the first place.”
Aruendiel considered this, frowning. “She has a lovely smile,” he said after a moment. Then, with the air of one correcting himself, he added: “She’s very young, and therefore changeable.”
“Women do change their minds, my goodness! I won’t presume to tell you how to manage your affairs. But I wouldn’t mind having a young thing smile at me the way I saw Mistress Nora smile at you.” A wistful look drifted across Nansis’s wrinkled face.
He and Nansis were almost exactly the same age, Aruendiel reflected, and yet to look at Nansis, one would take him for a far older man. Well, Nansis had not been young when Aruendiel introduced him to the study of true magic, and perhaps he had spent more time on his calculations than was good for him. Had Nora noted the disparity in their appearance, Aruendiel asked himself, or did she see them as two old codgers together?
He took a sip from the cup that Nansis had given him. One of those herb cordials that Nansis was fond of. It felt satisfyingly bitter on his tongue.
“We are wasting time on trivialities,” Aruendiel told Nansis with a glare. “My obligation is to make sure that Mistress Nora is safe. That is all.”
He bent over the map again.
Chapter 17
Gingerly, Nora touched the place where her little finger used to be. No, there was no mistake. The stump was slightly longer. An odd wrinkle had appeared near the top, but there was no tenderness, no sign of inflammation.
She forced down a sudden hopeful impulse. Wait and see, she thought.
There was a different maran hanging behind the door this morning, dark blue with a wide purple border dense with embroidery. They had taken away the other, plainer one while Nora slept. She dressed distractedly, still less than certain about how to arrange the various folds of the maran, and went outside. A fine lace of spring snow covered the shadowed rocks of the ravine. The mountains basked in pale morning light like great cats.
The sun god is Sisoaneer’s father, Nora thought suddenly, recalling what the older priest had said last night. How could the sun be anyone’s father? And if it’s true, why is she not blond? Or is that just a stereotype?
The lower complex was still quiet. Nora found her way to the refectory kitchen and liberated some flatbread and a couple of discs of fresh white cheese that been left to soak in brine, and then she hurried through the complex until she found the path downstream. She passed through a pillared limestone gate, then an avenue of seated statues. Each showed the same female figure, whose staring eyes and red mouth were crudely painted on weathered stone. Guess who. Nora avoided looking at them too closely, as though one wrong glance might wake them to life.
As she went along, cliffs on either side gave way to grassy slopes. To her left, through a screen of trees, was a scanty settlement of stone huts, their roofs covered with hides. Was that where the ganoi lived? Smoke rose; children were crying. Nora walked faster. The snow had already disappeared, and with it, her footprints. Good.
The path curved uphill. Nora followed the edge of the stream instead. The watercourse was shielded by young trees, and she felt as invisible as anyone in a blue-and-purple maran on a bright spring morning could hope to be. The day grew warmer. The stream glittered in the dappled light, and in the sunny spots, a haze of gnats swarmed over the water. There were shy pink wildflowers tucked in among the rocks at the edge of the stream.
She began to think that she might get away with it. She did not have any real plan except to walk and keep walking. That might be enough. The stream would lead her out of the mountains even
tually, and it would give her water along the way. The priest, Oasme, had mentioned a good-sized city within a few days’ journey; the stream might lead her there. She tried an experiment, improvising a spell to trace the movement of the water as it flowed downstream. She could sense that the water heard her, but it would tell her nothing.
There is no magic here but mine, Sisoaneer had said.
All the more reason to leave. And then what? Somehow she would find Aruendiel. Ilissa might find her first, that was always a risk, but Faitoren magic seemed almost benign now. At least Ilissa wasn’t a goddess.
She suddenly wondered what Ramona was doing right now. She imagined telling her sister about meeting a goddess, about the job offer to be High Priestess of Erchkaii, and as she pictured Ramona’s brown gaze, rapt but appraising, her situation began to seem less unhappy, almost funny. “Really, she wanted you to be her priestess?” she could hear her sister saying. “That’s crazy.”
She couldn’t figure out how she’d tell Ramona about what had happened to Yaioni, though, or to Raclin. Ramona would probably say that they both deserved it. But then, Ramona hadn’t seen Yaioni’s burns. Or heard the wet crack of the ax going through Raclin’s neck.
Nora kept walking. She waded in the chilly shallows of the stream when her feet grew sore. She halted only once, for a quick midday meal of bread and cheese in the bright shade of a willow. It was late afternoon when she reached the end of the stream.
A breeze sprang up, and Nora came through a stand of birches to find open water stretching before her. Shaggy blue waves chased each other toward a line of mountains on the horizon. On the shore to her left was a large stone quay that looked as though it could handle a lot of boat traffic, but it was empty of boats.
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Page 21