How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic

by Emily Croy Barker

  The Kavareen hissed, the fur on its neck rising. With a furious twist of its body, it lowered its head and raised a menacing paw. The heavy hooks slashed at Sisoaneer faster than Nora’s eyes could follow.

  Sisoaneer, just out of range, flinched only slightly. “Go, you evil thing!” she commanded, touching her hands together again. “Go!”

  The Kavareen bared its teeth and tried to lunge through a gap in the trees. There was just enough space for it to fit, Nora observed with disappointment as she dove under the table. Scrambling to her feet on the other side, she was just in time to see the Kavareen recoil, slammed against a tree trunk. Aruendiel’s shield spell had thrown it back, she guessed. The creature roared with outrage.

  “Leave here!” Sisoaneer said, ripping at her invisible thread.

  Another snarl, deep and penetrating, promising all manner of raw, violent vengeance, and then, unbelievably, the Kavareen began to move away. It backed down the mountain slope, its tail whipping the pines, and then it turned and bounded out of sight.

  “Well, it understands pain, if nothing else,” Sisoaneer said with satisfaction, pushing a strand of hair out of her eye.

  “You only maddened it,” Aruendiel said. “Where has it gone?”

  Sisaoneer seemed to be about to respond, but instead she looked away, frowning slightly in concentration.

  That shrill, distant call—Nora hoped it was a bird. She walked quickly across the clearing and looked down the mountainside. Far below, she could see the green thread of the stream and a few square roofs in the lower temple complex. A tiny figure crossed the space between two buildings, moving with surprising speed. Someone running full tilt. She heard the high-pitched scream again and knew that it wasn’t a bird.

  “It’s at the temple,” Aruendiel said.

  Sisoaneer pushed past Nora to peer down the mountain. “My children—it dares to attack them!”

  “It’s always hungry,” Nora said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say but unable to stop herself.

  Color rose in Sisoaneer’s thin cheeks. She put a hand on Nora’s shoulder. “My priestess, we must save these innocents.”

  Nora nodded, mostly out of principle, but not sure what Sisoaneer had in mind. What did she mean by we? “If you let Aruendiel take the magic he needs, he could—”

  “Dear one, you will defeat this monstrosity in my name,” Sisoaneer said. Her dark eyes widened with a kind of excited tenderness. “All my power is yours to wield, all of it.”

  “Ridiculous.” Aruendiel pressed forward, his body twisting slightly. “Lady, you can’t send this girl to fight the Kavareen. She’s too unproven, she cannot—”

  “If she fails, she’s not worthy to be my priestess,” Sisoaneer said. “But she won’t fail. She will do this great work for me.” She squeezed Nora’s shoulder, smiling at her.

  Nora staggered. The earth seemed to have shifted under her feet.

  Sisoaneer and Aruendiel were nowhere to be seen. The air was humid, full of river smells. All around her were the drab, tile-roofed structures of the temple complex, the long hospital building directly ahead. From all directions, she heard screaming. One of the ganoi men sprinted past, almost running her down. He shouted something she couldn’t understand, but she heard the panic in his voice.

  For a moment, Nora couldn’t breathe. Her thoughts stuttered: no. All by myself? You didn’t even ask. Even a goddess should know better. Her legs seemed to be making their own decisions as she wheeled to follow the ganoi.

  Instead she found herself looking up into the Kavareen’s stagnant yellow gaze.

  She backed away, slowly, just as the bear pamphlet had advised. The Kavareen watched her intently, unmoving. After a dozen paces, she felt the hospital wall at her back. As calmly as she could, she edged sideways until her hands discovered the doorframe of the entrance.

  Slipping inside, she slammed the tall doors behind her, then fumbled for a bolt. There wasn’t one. Nora vaguely remembered Oasme explaining that the omission was deliberate, because the hospital was supposed to be open to all pilgrims at all times. At the time, it had seemed like a nice idea.

  “Blessed Lady.” Nora looked up to see Lemoes, the acolyte, coming down the ward toward her. Behind him, she noticed with a sinking heart, almost every bed was still full. They hadn’t had time to evacuate.

  “No one moved the pilgrims?” she said.

  “Some of them are too sick to move,” Lemoes said. “And the attendants ran away when the monster leopard came.”

  “But not you.”

  With angelic calm, he said, “The goddess told me not to worry, that we would be safe.”

  “Oh, that’s what she told you?” Nora said.

  Something pressed hard at the doors behind her. Very hard. For a misguided instant, she tried to hold them shut with her body. She scrambled out of the way just in time as the doors flew open and the Kavareen’s head pushed through. It looked to be a tight fit through the doorway, but Nora thought fleetingly of the tiny spaces where her now-departed Astrophel used to hide himself, under the bookcase, behind the dryer—

  “It’s coming in,” she said.

  The Kavareen thrust a paw through the doorway, its claws clattering on the hospital floor. Lemoes drew back. “She said we would be protected.” There was a new tinge of uncertainty in his voice.

  “I guess she meant me,” Nora said. Casting the first spell she could think of, Nora set the Kavareen’s tail on fire.

  At first the Kavareen showed no reaction, and then it seemed to Nora that the blank ferocity of its normal expression took on a slightly surprised cast. The leopard growled, twisted to try to look backward, and then withdrew from the doorway. Through the swinging doors, Nora glimpsed streaming flame that suggested a furiously thrashing tail. Before she could lose her nerve, she followed the Kavareen, closing the doors behind her.

  In front of the hospital, the big cat pretzeled itself to lick energetically at its tail with an invisible tongue, or whatever served it as a tongue. The flames smoked and dwindled.

  Trembling, Nora mentally leafed through the warfare spells she could recall. They tended to be fairly specialized, which was probably fine in a conventional battlefield situation, but was not necessarily helpful here. She readied her shield spell against arrows and hoped that it would work reasonably well against a dead demon’s claws. And she asked for the goddess’s aid.

  All my power is yours to wield. Sisoaneer hadn’t been kidding. As the euphoria of the goddess’s magic flooded through her, Nora felt weightless and free, as though her body were made of pure light. It seemed to her slightly insane that she had ever been afraid of the Kavareen; she almost laughed aloud at the thought. The shield spell, she saw grandly, would protect a dozen battalions against a solid rain of arrows for an entire day. The Kavareen had finished cleaning the fire from its fur, and its tail looked miraculously untouched, but she could not feel disturbed by her failure to inflict any permanent damage. There was nothing greater in the universe than the goddess’s strength and goodness. Hail Sisoaneer, kind and splendid, protector of those who love her.

  The Kavareen stared down at her, settling itself on its haunches. That feline air of wide-eyed wonder, mixed with scorn—as though marveling at some egregious faux pas you did not even realize you had committed—was familiar to Nora. Astrophel used to look at her the same way. The expression was definitely more threatening when you were looking up at it.

  Slowly Nora felt her sense of well-being ebb, and her body tensed again. She still had no idea how to defeat the creature, even if the shield spell was working. How long would it hold?

  She returned its yellow stare. Did the Kavareen recognize her? Once Hirizjahkinis had commanded the Kavareen to guard Nora for some hours, and it had spent most of that time dozing peacefully at her side. But that was when the monster was the size of a normal leopard instead of a house.
A small house, admittedly.

  Hirizjahkinis had been so kind to Nora and so confident in the Kavareen’s loyalty, so unsuspecting. And then, one day, the Kavareen had turned on her. The traitor gazed stonily at Nora.

  “Where is Hirizjahkinis?” Nora’s voice sounded hoarse.

  The Kavareen’s ears pricked forward. Only the tip of its tail moved.

  “Hirizjahkinis! What did you do with her?” Nora’s throat felt so tight that she had to struggle to shout, but it was good to be angry instead of just afraid. “She trusted you. That was really stupid—she’d probably agree now—but that’s who she was, she wasn’t afraid of a dead demon. So where is she now? Inside you? Is she alive or dead?”

  The Kavareen snarled. Its teeth were stained, and one of the great fangs was chipped. Nora made herself look hard into the churning, haunted darkness inside the creature’s jaws.

  “Hirizjahkinis!” she called. “Where are you?”

  A massive paw slammed her in the shoulder. It was like being hit with a sofa, the blow slightly padded but not to be resisted. Nora fell backward. Her shield spell was gone. She struggled to rise, but the Kavareen’s paw forced her down again. Its black cavern of a mouth gaped wider.

  The darkness inside was heavy, suffocatingly close. Nora’s eyes found cloudy shapes in the obscurity that vanished as she strained to make them out more clearly. Her ears were full of half-heard noises— human voices; the clash of arms; the cries of animals; the rumble of falling stones.

  “No!” Jerking backward, Nora worked a levitation spell.

  An instant later, she was balanced on the hospital roof, only a few feet higher than the creature’s head. She swayed there, wondering what to do next.

  “Vlonicl designed that shield spell to protect against arrows, not demons.”

  Never had the bite of sarcasm been more reassuring. Nora looked over the edge of the roof.

  “Aruendiel! What are you doing? Get away from that thing!”

  He was standing not fifteen feet from the Kavareen. It had swung around to face him. Returning to a crouch, it hissed viciously, its ears flattened against its head. Aruendiel folded his arms and stared back at the Kavareen, looking not exactly relaxed but not like a man who feared being devoured on the spot.

  “My shield spell is holding, for now,” he informed Nora.

  Good for him. Good, period. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “I suppose your spell is meant especially for Kavareens?”

  “More or less. Most demons can escape any human spell eventually,” he said dourly. “It used to be a joke among wizards that the only sure way to defeat a demon is by employing another, larger demon.”

  Nora squatted on the peak of the roof to hear Aruendiel better. “Is that what Hirizjahkinis did, when she tamed it?” Not that another, more cooperative demon of any size was available right now.

  Aruendiel frowned. “Hirizjahkinis was close-mouthed about exactly what she did to enslave this creature. Killing the thing reduced its power, of course.”

  “I would hope so,” Nora said.

  “But it also meant that some spells that were used to control it in the past didn’t work anymore.” For a moment Aruendiel took his eyes off the Kavareen to give Nora a severe look. “Do you know what sort of demon it was?”

  “It eats things. Everything.”

  “True, but what made the Kavareen truly feared was its power to change shape, until death trapped it in the form it has now. Hirizjahkinis was lucky that it chose to attack her as a leopard and not, say, a drove of dragons.”

  Without warning, the Kavareen leaped. Nora shrieked as the creature rose up over Aruendiel, claws bared, and then she breathed again as Aruendiel’s shield spell deflected it. The Kavareen slid away to his left in an ungraceful sprawl of paws and tail.

  “Maybe you should move—” Nora began.

  “You need not be apprehensive. I can defend myself, unlike some.”

  Nora felt the sniping uncalled for, and then she saw what Aruendiel had seen and she had not: Yaioni, trying to squeeze into the shallow niche under the library steps, where the ganoi sometimes stowed the crutches discarded by pilgrims who no longer needed them.

  The Kavareen also saw her. Yaioni emitted a strangled yelp as the monster bounded toward her. Snatching up one of the crutches, she pointed it at the Kavareen like a lance, jabbing at its eyes. She landed a blow on its cheek instead.

  The Kavareen recoiled—more in surprise than fear, Nora thought. She remembered another spell of Vlonicl’s, To Strengthen a Warrior’s Arm, and worked it as quickly as she could to help Yaioni.

  At a tilting run, Aruendiel raced toward the library. The Kavareen clawed again at Yaioni, dodging the end of the crutch with a kind of horrible playfulness, and then swiped at Aruendiel.

  Nora stepped off the roof, barely finishing a levitation spell in time, and landed hard. She staggered, then looked up.

  Aruendiel must have done something to distract the Kavareen from Yaioni. Something unpleasant, judging from the creature’s growls, its whipping tail. The great jaws opened. The Kavareen pounced. Aruendiel pulled back, not quickly enough.

  His head and shoulders disappeared into its mouth. So much for that shield spell.

  Nora screamed. She ran toward the Kavareen, unsure of what to do, wishing she had something to hit it with.

  The young, rather scrawny willow growing next to the library twisted suddenly, violently. With a ferocious sucking sound, its roots heaved out of the ground, splattering waves of mud in all directions.

  Startled, Nora checked herself, watching as the tree’s branches begin to lash madly at the Kavareen. It was as though a small hurricane had seized the willow. Twigs snapped, green wood shrieked and splintered, as the tree bent low, flailing at the huge leopard.

  The Kavareen squirmed in a cloud of torn and swirling leaves. It clawed at the whipping boughs. And its mouth remained clamped shut around Aruendiel’s body.

  Just the day before, Nora had worked a spell, normally used for poisoning cases, to treat a boy with abdominal pain. He’d brought up a handful of pebbles, several buttons, and a rusty key, which his father seized with a look of greedy relief that Nora felt was not entirely related to his son’s health.

  The willow tree was fast becoming a mass of splinters. Broken branches twitched all over the ground. Nora cast the vomiting spell.

  The Kavareen settled back on its haunches. She thought it gave her a disparaging glance, although that was more or less its usual expression. Nora’s heart sank.

  Then the Kavareen shook its head emphatically. Its mouth opened. Aruendiel’s upper torso and head emerged. He slumped forward, eyes closed.

  The creature sank into a crouch that she recognized: Astrophel had been prone to hairballs. With an air of fastidious resignation, the Kavareen retched up in rapid succession Uliverat, several pilgrims, two ganoi women, a small boat, three horses, an ox, and a flock of sheep. They lay wilted on the ground. Some were trembling. One of the sheep made a croaking noise that did not sound as though it should come from a sheep.

  Nora waited; nothing more was forthcoming. She did the spell again, sending the Kavareen into a series of dry heaves.

  “It’s too late,” Aruendiel said, opening his eyes wearily. He sat up and gave his neck an experimental twist, wincing. “It’s been too long. You can’t get Hiriz back.”

  “Worth a try.” Nora sighed.

  Awkwardly, Aruendiel stood up, brushing willow leaves from his tunic. The tree had finally stopped moving. The green sap smell of torn wood filled the air. “That was smart, using the tree,” Nora said.

  Aruendiel gave her an odd look. “That was your doing.”

  “But I don’t know any wood magic,” Nora said.

  “She loaned you her power,” he said. “And everything here—almost everything—obeys her. So it obeys you.” />
  As he spoke, Nora discovered that he was putting into words something that she already understood to be true. Perhaps she had been afraid to think it herself.

  She raised a last objection: “I didn’t command that tree—”

  “You must improve your control,” Aruendiel said, his voice sharper than before.

  “My control?” Nora gave a shaky laugh. She looked at the Kavareen, which was sniffing at the croaking sheep. “My control. You mean, like this?”

  The Kavareen rose straight into the air. It was by far the largest thing that Nora had ever levitated, but lifting it up fifty, a hundred, two hundred feet took no effort at all. For a moment the Kavareen seemed not to understand what was happening; then it began to paw the air and curl its body as though it could wriggle out of Nora’s spell.

  She let it hang there, admiring her work. From this distance the creature looked soft, harmless. I’ll shake you into a kitten, I will, Nora thought, and swung it back and forth, back and forth. The Kavareen snarled down at her.

  She looked at Aruendiel. “Better?”

  “Better,” he said shortly. “How long do you propose to keep the wretched thing hanging above our heads?”

  “Not for long,” she said. At her urging, the Kavareen picked up speed, moving in longer, faster arcs, gathering momentum. It writhed more frantically than ever, as though it guessed what she intended. Its shadow floated against the green side of the mountain.

  She sent the Kavareen soaring far across the river, as though she were flying a kite. Then she snapped it back fast.

  She meant to smash the thing against the mountain’s stone flank. The impact might destroy the Kavareen, or only stun it. Both options were acceptable. But as the Kavareen skidded protesting through the air, she saw something else she could do.

  The mountain was waiting for her. Like the tree, like her own hands, it was ready to do her will. She could feel its massy strength, its ancient roots, its buried secret heart, as though the mountain were part of her own body. Its slow, vast patience filled her mind until, struggling under the weight of this wonderful, terrifying new intimacy, she had to remind herself to take a breath.