Aruendiel gave a clipped nod of acknowledgment. “You were occupied. I thought it better not to interrupt your ceremony, more than I already had.”
Nora began to say that it wouldn’t have mattered, but Sisoaneer was already speaking: “And then I took him for my own purposes! I am sorry for delaying your reunion. We have been talking, and the night passed quickly.” She grimaced happily at her own thoughtlessness. Now Nora realized why she looked different. She had abandoned her usual rough gray for a blue dress with a silvery sheen, the bodice dotted with pearls and heavy with complicated stitching.
“I see.” Nora looked from Sisoaneer to Aruendiel to the breakfast remains on the table. Something about the sensuous pink and yellow curves of the peaches plucked at her nerves. They weren’t even in season. What kind of magic did you use to get hold of ripe peaches in springtime? Were they conjured from some orchard to the south, or did you take a flowering tree and make time speed up? Either way, someone had gone to a lot of trouble for breakfast.
“Would you like some fruit, High Priestess?” Sisoaneer asked.
The peaches smelled delicious, but she wasn’t hungry. “No, thank you. What were you talking about?” she asked, knowing that the question was intrusive but unable to stop herself from asking it.
“Everything.” Sisoaneer’s smile was as lively as the breeze. “It has been a very long time since the magician Aruendiel came to do me honor. A mortal lifetime.”
Nora raised her eyebrows—composedly, she hoped. “Oh. That long? I didn’t know you two knew each other.”
Aruendiel’s gaze had slipped away from Nora’s. “It was longer ago than a mortal lifetime,” he said.
“Even so, I remember it very well,” Sisoaneer said. She put her hand on Aruendiel’s black sleeve and left it there for a long moment. “I have a confession, my priestess,” she said to Nora. “I never told you this, but Aruendiel was once my worshipper—and my pupil. I taught him the secrets of true magic when he was very, very young.”
Nora gave a politely incredulous smile and waited for Aruendiel to refute this statement.
“And I am grateful for those lessons, Lady,” Aruendiel said, turning back to Sisoaneer. “I learned much from you.”
“But I thought—you told Hirgus Ext you learned real magic from lost books, old manuscripts,” Nora said. The gold and silver threads in Hirgus’s beard gleamed in her memory. Hirgus was writing a book; he’d tried to coax a truculent Aruendiel to tell him the origins of true magic. “People had forgotten about all about real magic. There were no true magicians anymore, just wizards controlling demons.”
“That’s true,” Sisoaneer said before Aruendiel could speak. “They loved to order the spirits around. It made them feel so powerful. But—learning from old books? Come now, I’m not an old book.” She gave Aruendiel a slanting smile.
“Books have their uses, Lady. But it is true, nothing of what you taught me came from ink and paper.”
Nora tried to figure out if Aruendiel had actually returned Sisoaneer’s amused, private glance or if she had imagined that. She wanted very much to be wrong about what she thought she’d seen, but ultimately you had to face the truth, no matter how unpleasant.
“How did this all come about, exactly?” Nora asked. “How did you meet? Here at Erchkaii?”
This time she was sure about the swift, rather piercing glance that Aruendiel sent to Sisoaneer. And Sisoaneer’s long, delicate mouth flexed as though she wanted to laugh at a shared joke. But when Sisoaneer spoke, her voice was serious.
“I set him free when he was trapped and helpless. I suppose he never mentioned that?”
Nora shook her head. Sisoaneer looked meaningfully at Aruendiel. He pressed his lips together and then said quickly, “An enemy had placed me under an enchantment that deprived me of my powers.”
“You mean, like Dorneng—” Nora began, but once again Sisoaneer spoke first.
“He was in a sad state when I first saw him, singing hymns to me at midnight in the forest. You would not have known him—dressed in peasant’s rags, hungry, tired, fearful.”
She dealt out the last words slowly, one by one, like tossing pebbles into a brook. Aruendiel seemed to be listening intently, counting each splash.
“No more fearful than I had reason to be,” he said.
“And you did have reason to be afraid,” Sisoaneer said. “You were so weak!” She spoke with amused pity. Aruendiel’s face was still but not exactly composed, Nora thought. “I saw that you were hungry for the arts of power,” Sisoaneer continued, “even if you hardly knew what they were. I thought, well, let us see what this one can do.
“For seven years I taught him everything I could,” she said, turning back to Nora. “There are some things, of course, that even the best pupils are too stubborn to learn. But by and large he learned much, and quickly.
“You remind me so much of him, you know,” Sisoaneer added. “The talent, just starting to be honed. The same independence. And you are strong, stronger than women are meant to be.” She laughed suddenly, her eyes crinkling.
Nora glanced at Aruendiel, who was not laughing. Perhaps he did not appreciate the comparison. “I’m honored to be likened to Aruendiel,” she said. “Although I have to disagree on one point. Women are strong. They don’t always realize it.”
“I wish you were right,” Sisoaneer said, shaking her head. “But I’ve seen it so many times. Even when I give women power, they’re afraid to use it to the full. They practice magic in secret; they do timid, piddling spells. Even against enemies, they don’t strike to kill.
“But you did. You’re different, dear one. It’s why I chose you to be my priestess, to heal the sick. It takes strength to do good. And you will help me make more priestesses, you will show other women how to be strong so that they can wield my power as they should.”
I strike to kill, Nora thought. That’s my special talent, that’s why Sisoaneer chose me for this job. Her head throbbed.
“I can’t wield your power if you won’t let me,” she said, reminded of why she had come here in the first place. “I can’t heal anyone. You didn’t answer when I prayed today for your—power.
“Oasme thought I might have offended you. If I did, I am sorry,” she added stiffly. She found that she was not as eager to apologize as she had been previously.
Sisoaneer’s ink-stroke eyebrows lifted, and she drew in her breath sharply. “I am so very sorry. When you called on me, I was distracted. As I said, Aruendiel and I talked all night.” She offered another rueful smile, like a curling silk ribbon.
But the smile was really for Aruendiel, Nora thought. Was he returning it, ever so slightly? She couldn’t tell. His profile, as he watched Sisoaneer, seemed to be chipped out of stone.
“I will hear you next time, Nora, and every time after that, I promise,” Sisoaneer said. “You should be quite proud of your former pupil,” she added to Aruendiel. “She’s healed dozens of pilgrims already. She knows the arts of power like her own teeth.”
Aruendiel stirred. He regarded Nora with a chilly curiosity. “I am surprised to hear it,” he said, addressing Sisoaneer. “Your High Priestess is still green, a novice magician who is just beginning to understand her craft.”
Sisoaneer laughed quietly. “You were green, too, Aruendiel, until I taught you.”
“That’s true,” Aruendiel said. “But she has had nothing like those seven years.”
“Seven years! It passed so quickly. I’ll give her seven years or as much time as she needs.” Sisoaneer tilted her head to one side. “But I think she will be a better pupil than you.”
“In the few months I taught her,” Aruendiel said, “she mastered a handful of imperfectly controlled spells. She knows nothing of wood magic, air magic—”
“She doesn’t need to. She has more power to command than any other magician on earth. My power.
That reminds me,” Sisoaneer added, turning to Nora. “He has something to return to you. If you want it.”
My heart, Nora thought bitterly. Yes, I want it back. Unbroken, please. She had no idea what Sisoaneer actually meant. The only thing she could think of was her handbag; she’d left it behind when she had run away from Aruendiel. He scowled and reached into his tunic as she looked questioningly at him.
“This is yours.” He thrust forward a small bottle of bluish glass. Nora held it up to the light, turning the vessel to get a better look at the slender, light-colored object inside.
She drew in her breath.
“My finger!” It seemed smaller than she remembered, but perhaps that was a trick of the glass. Otherwise, her severed finger looked quite normal, except that it ended in a ragged flap of skin instead of her hand. And Aruendiel had been carrying this gruesome relic around for several weeks now. She wondered what to make of that.
“I found it near the dead Faitoren. Rejoining it to your hand would be easy enough—”
“But then I would have six fingers on my left hand,” Nora said, lifting her chin. She held her hand toward him and waggled her little finger. “Sisoaneer healed it for me.” The goddess gave her a sleepy-eyed smile.
With a short, skeptical utterance, Aruendiel seized Nora’s wrist. He ran an index finger along her new pinkie, pressing the nail and the bone, then lifted the finger and bent it, testing the joints. Nora wondered if he could tell how her pulse thudded faster when he touched her skin, and she turned her face away. “I would hope that, in the future, you would have the wit and the magic to tend to your own wounds,” he said.
“I could stop the bleeding now. We have a good spell for that.” She wanted to show him that she had not wasted her time here. “And I could get rid of the pain, at least for a while. I haven’t regrown a finger yet,” she added, “but there are spells in the library. A treatise by Tethenisus—”
“Tethenisus? Hmm.” Aruendiel pursed his lips disapprovingly. “It’s complicated magic, regrowing a severed limb, and it takes a great deal of power. I’d advise you not to try it unless you know exactly what you are doing.” He rubbed the finger again, slowly, with a speculative air, and then released her hand. Nora pulled it back quickly, with a muddled, secret sense of loss.
Sisoaneer shook her head, smiling. “She has plenty of power. She only has to ask for it.”
“Even if you gave her enough power to blind the sun, she will never learn the full breadth of true magic unless she can draw on her own sources of power.”
“You’re too stringent, Aruendiel. She will learn faster if she can do more interesting, more important mag—” Sisoaneer broke off, her smile draining away. “Do you hear that?”
“But she is not ready for those spells, or for that much power. She will do harm, to others or to herself, and—”
“Quiet!” Sisoaneer lifted her head and frowned in concentration. “What is that?”
Aruendiel raised an eyebrow. Listening hard, Nora caught only the bright, distant chatter of unseen birds and the lazy whoosh of the wind in the trees. Half a minute passed. “What did you hear?” Nora asked.
Very far away, a crow began to scold. And there was another sound, a faint, distorted straining, so vague that Nora wasn’t sure she was hearing with her ears.
Aruendiel remained unmoving, his gaze drifting over Nora and the clearing and the pines. “That?” he asked.
“Yes, that.”
It was a whole furious chorus of crows now.
“Whatever it is, it is breaking right through your protection spells,” Aruendiel said.
“I know that.” Sisoaneer rose from her seat and strode across the slab in the center of the clearing. Through a gap in the pines she stared down the side of the mountain. “It is some monstrosity. A demon. What is it doing here?”
No one answered. Two crows flapped up from the valley below, still shrieking. The other birds were quiet.
Aruendiel lifted a hand into the breeze and rubbed something delicately between his fingers that wasn’t there. The lines in his scarred cheek grew harsher. “I recognize it.”
“Do you?” Sisoaneer wheeled, her eyes slitted. “How do you know it?”
“I’ve met it before.”
“How strange that you would meet it again here.”
“Not so strange.” Aruendiel stood up, shifting his crooked shoulders. “I expect it has come for me.”
“What is it?” Nora asked, but Sisoaneer’s voice was louder: “What do you mean, ‘come for you’? Is it yours?”
“I crossed its trail on the way here,” Aruendiel said. “I hunted it for a while, but it seems to be hunting me.”
“That was careless of you, or worse.” Sisoaneer curled her lip. “You know how much I hate those things—slippery, unnatural. Evil.”
Now Nora could hear trees crashing and thrashing, far down the mountainside. She remembered how Raclin had sounded almost the same way, lumbering after her. This thing was bigger.
“Horrible. And you brought it here!” Sisoaneer almost spat the words at Aruendiel, then turned her back. She braced herself between two of the pines, facing outward.
A long, still moment. Then the thwack and groan of splintering wood moved closer.
“Not that spell, you can’t attack it that way,” Aruendiel said to Sisoaneer’s back. “It’s too strong.” He came around the table, moving quickly despite his uneven stride, to take up a position at the edge of the clearing. With a jerk of his head, he motioned to Nora to move toward the center of the terrace.
“What is it?” she asked again.
The crows had stopped calling. The wind blew through the trees with heightened energy. Nora licked dry lips. There seemed to be too much silence and too much noise, little dry rustles coming from all directions.
“Where has it got to?” Sisoaneer asked. “I’ll—”
She spun around, her upturned face white. Nora sat down abruptly without meaning to, because something big and snarling had just leaped over her head, landing on a rock outside the circle of pines.
Its lithe golden bulk loomed over the clearing. Nora stared up into the glassy eyes with sick recognition. It was much bigger than she remembered, the wickedly curved claws as huge as garden scythes. The tawny, black-spotted fur looked improbably soft. Its tail twitched, the same impatient rhythm that a house cat would use to command: feed me.
Chapter 21
It snarled again. Nora drew back, shaking, as the great mouth opened. Beyond it, she knew, there was an infinity of night, enough dark to drown the villages and cities and perhaps entire peoples that the Kavareen had consumed in its centuries of existence. Just as it had swallowed Hirizjahkinis, who’d been bold enough and, in retrospect, deluded enough to call herself its master.
Nora tried to get to her feet. If you met a bear—she remembered the brochure from a long-ago visit to a state park—you were supposed to stand there and back away slowly and calmly, as though you met bears every day and it was no big deal. This had always struck her as risky advice. She reflected numbly that the Kavareen was even less likely to be impressed by a show of nonchalance than the average bear. Especially right now, when her legs were trembling so much that she couldn’t get up.
Aruendiel clamped onto her elbow and hauled her upright. “You remember the Kavareen, Nora,” he said.
She gave a vehement nod. “Oh, yes.”
“You know this thing?” Sisoaneer demanded.
“It belonged to a—a friend of ours,” Nora said. “Before it ate her.”
Crouching just outside the grove, the Kavareen growled, so loudly that the air seemed to vibrate. A huge paw snaked between two tree trunks; Nora jumped back.
“Disgusting creature,” Sisoaneer said, flinging up an arm. The green boughs, the reddish pine loam, the Kavareen’s bright, spotted coat abruptly faded to
shades of gray. Nora felt invisible pinpricks all over her face and the exposed skin of her arms. With a wild groan, one of the trees split in half, sending splinters and needles flying. The Kavareen yowled.
“Are you mad, to use a rending spell at such close range? You could have torn us all to shreds.” Aruendiel’s voice sounded raw. Through the settling sawdust, color slowly returned to the world. “Besides, this is a demon—the ghost of a demon,” he added. “You can’t kill it by ordinary means.”
“Do you know how to fight it? Then, pray, show us all,” Sisoaneer said. She had sidled to the far side of the clearing. Backed up against the table, Nora could not decide whether to climb over or just hide underneath.
The creature slashed again. The naked claws just missed Aruendiel. The Kavareen rose, tail lashing. It paced left, then right on the other side of the ring of pines.
“Why doesn’t it just jump over?” Nora breathed.
“I am holding it at bay,” Aruendiel said. “Otherwise it would be upon us.”
“Can you do no more?” Sisoaneer asked sharply.
“Not in this place, Lady,” he said tightly. “I can pull magic only from afar. There is none to spare for me here; it is all yours.”
Nora found his admission disheartening, but Sisoaneer gave a throaty little chuckle. “That’s right. All power is mine here. This is my realm, my sacred place. I am Queen of Holy Power, and this vermin cannot stand against me.”
It seemed to Nora that the Kavareen was holding its own with little effort, but she decided not to point that out. Sisoaneer moved around the table to face the Kavareen. Pinching her index fingers against her thumbs, she brought her hands together, then jerked them apart as though pulling on an invisible thread. The Kavareen growled and put its ears back.
“You will only irritate it,” Aruendiel said. “Remember, it is not alive.”
“It can still suffer,” Sisoaneer said. She repeated the gesture, yanking her hands apart with greater vehemence.
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Page 27