“Please, Sisoaneer.”
At the library, Aruendiel’s place was still vacant, but Hirizjahkinis was at another desk, braids dangling over a scroll. Out of habit, Nora greeted her. Hirizjahkinis did not look up. There was no sound but a faint, occasional rustle of paper. Nora picked up a book and slammed it to the floor as hard as she could.
Hirizjahkinis gave a jump, then grinned. She got to her feet, stretching her arms. “Are you here, little one, or did that book fall by chance?”
“It’s me,” Nora said. Hirizjahkinis’s gaze stopped at a point about three feet to her left.
“Let us say that it is you! I am glad for the interruption. I am doing no good here. I am not much help in taking your spell off. I am sorry for that! It is a double rebuke for me to come into this library. All these books of magic—completely useless to me now!” She shook her head with a clicking of beads.
“Maybe just give it a rest for a while, and see what happens?” Nora asked, thinking of spilled wine and an unbroken wineglass. Magic could be more persistent and surprising than you dared to hope. She put the question gently, as though Hirizjahkinis could hear her.
“There is always the Kavareen! He might be able to take away your spell, if I let him—roam free. Aruendiel is dead set against the idea. Perhaps he is right.” She sighed, and the corners of her wide mouth tightened in a way that looked unnatural for her.
“I agree with him,” Nora said. “I would rather have you be you than the Kavareen, even for a minute.”
“Aruendiel thinks I should go back to Semrland with him, to be his student again. And he wants to try to rescue me from the Kavareen, I know.”
“Is that even poss—?”
“I told him no, I do not need rescuing. He has a better student than me now, one who is more gifted. And I have a reputation to guard in Semr! The king and his lords have been good clients. I do not wish them to hear that I cannot muddle through the simplest spell, because if I am a magician again someday, they will not want to hire me.
“So I will go back to my country instead. But I mean to say,” Hirizjahkinis added, “I will not leave until this absurd invisibility spell of yours is gone. It is very unlucky to say goodbye to someone if you cannot see her face, did you know that?” She gave a decisive nod and swept out of the library with a slap-slap of her slippers on the stone floor.
A half conversation like this one was better than nothing, but afterward Nora felt more desolate than ever.
Hirizjahkinis was just here, she wrote on the wax tablet on Aruendiel’s desk. I am glad that you have made peace with her. I’m still not sure I understand exactly what she is now, but she is still Hirizjahkinis.
She looked over the shelves again and pulled out a couple of case studies. Sometime later, the sound of a heavier footstep jolted her out of her reading, and she looked up to see Aruendiel. The library seemed smaller with him filling the doorway and then settling his long legs under the desk.
“I’m here,” Nora said.
Aruendiel reached for a book, opened it. Nora watched his gray gaze run up and down the lines of text, as quick as a wolf tracking prey. After a minute he turned a page. He picked up the stylus and began to write on the wax tablet. Then he saw that Nora had written there and drew in his breath. He touched the wax with his fingertips.
“Nora, are you here?” he asked, like Hirizjahkinis, and looked around the library so intently that Nora felt that somehow she had to make her presence known. She lifted the book she had dropped before—although it was really too fragile for this treatment, the front cover was already loose, she noticed guiltily—but before she could drop it, Aruendiel was speaking again.
“Nora, you are not mad,” he said seriously, his eyes still moving over the room. “The spell that afflicts you makes everyone around you a little mad, unable to see what should be obvious. You are not alone; remember, you are not alone. I am looking for you.” His brow creased further. “I hope—I pray to all the gods that, aside from this wretched spell, you are well. Do you have enough to eat? That snakebite—did it make you ill?”
Aruendiel paused, and she could tell from the way his eyes narrowed that he was concentrating on a spell. The tint of the air shifted subtly. Sunlight sliding through the tall windows changed to a pale violet, then turned ruddy when it touched the floor. A sudden movement near the locked shelves startled her. A human figure, an old man in a gray robe. Aruendiel also saw it, and his crooked shoulders hunched with disappointment.
It was the shade of a long-dead priest, Nora guessed. Silently she and Aruendiel watched the ghost shuffle across the room and disappear through the wall. The light in the room changed again as the visualization spell faded.
“Nora!” Aruendiel rose from the desk abruptly. From the way he roared the syllables of her name, she thought for an instant that he could see her. “Nora, where are you?”
She let the book fall. It struck the floor with a thud, and the loose cover flew off. She winced. He seemed to notice nothing, however. That was odd; Hirizjahkinis had actually jumped at the sound. Nora stared at the book—another treatise on eyesight, she noticed now—while Aruendiel stepped right over it, heading toward the other side of the library. The spell makes everyone around you a little mad, unable to see what should be obvious to them. After a minute, Nora puzzled it out: Hirizjahkinis had heard the book fall only because she wasn’t expecting the noise. Aruendiel missed it precisely because he was looking for some sign from Nora.
Quickly she went over to the desk, picked up the stylus, and wrote on the wax tablet again. I’m fine. I’m right here. I wish I could talk to you. But it is easier to signal to you when you are not expecting me. Otherwise the spell will distract you.
She moved away as Aruendiel came around the shelves, carrying a couple of scrolls and a codex. This time the book lying in the middle of the floor caught his attention. He stooped and picked it up, frowning, and moved back to the desk. To her disappointment, he did not look at the tablet at once, but paged through the book pensively.
After a few minutes, he picked up the tablet. The black eyebrows snapped upward; a look of relief flickered across his face.
“This particular verb, ‘signal,’ has a specific naval connotation that is not quite right in this sentence, and at some point we must review the potentive subjunctive.” He cleared his throat. “But I have never liked anything you have written so much as this, when I can see your words freshly written on the wax and know that you are here and well.”
Nora grinned invisibly at him. “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee?” she said. “Words seem to be the most substantial part of me these days.”
Aruendiel’s gaze moved around the room once again, reflexively searching its angled walls, and then he unrolled one of the scrolls that he had brought to the desk. “I propose to try something. It is a little crude, but let us see. A similitude spell, with some modifications.”
From inside his tunic he pulled a pocketknife. Slipping the blade out of its leather sheath, he pricked the tip of his finger. A drop of blood splotched the floor. Immediately a shape arose, a shadow that gained form and color. It grew taller, blurred details coming into finer and finer focus as Aruendiel watched with critical attention.
Nora, with an inkling of what he was up to, still felt her scalp prickle as she recognized what he had conjured.
“And that would be me,” she said, stepping closer. He hadn’t gotten the height quite right; she was an inch or so taller in real life. The faintly translucent image, she was interested to see, wore her red wool dress, which she hadn’t worn for quite some time. Where was it? Still back in Aruendiel’s castle, she guessed. And yes, those were her features, her squarish chin and brown brows, the white scars on her cheek—no flattery there, but the overall effect somehow pleasing. Aruendiel’s Nora smiled to herself with quiet luminosity
. The real Nora wondered what she was thinking.
“You have me with long hair again,” she said to Aruendiel, to cover up a rush of self-consciousness that for an instant felt more powerful than any invisibility spell.
He seemed to be inspecting the replica of herself even more carefully than she was. “It’s not exactly right. I am no artist. I cannot see what is lacking. Well, it is not you, Nora,” he added with a faint, irritated sigh, “only your copy. Put it on as you would a garment.”
“A garment?” Nora considered what to do. From behind the simulacrum, she stepped forward, boldly shouldering her way into the other Nora’s body, and thrust her arms into her twin’s arms as though they were sleeves. The shadow-self felt cool, insubstantial, yet oddly tight around her own body.
Aruendiel’s eyes focused directly on her. He sees me! Nora thought.
“Can you hear me, Aruendiel?” Almost as soon as she spoke, Nora knew that it was no good. His expression did not change; he did not answer. She raised her arm. The arm of her copy did not move.
After a moment, Nora saw from his face that he knew it, too. She slid out of the other Nora with a subdued sense of disappointment and release. Aruendiel regarded the image for another long moment.
“No. It is very pleasant—it is restorative—to see your face again, but it will not do, I want to see the real thing.” He raised his hand, and the other Nora shimmered and dissolved. Only a fleck of dried blood remained on the floor.
“That’s probably best,” Nora said. “Although that was a nice version of me. Even the hair.”
“Nora, I regret—” He stopped, and was silent.
“Yes? I’m still here,” Nora said finally.
Aruendiel passed his hand over his face. After another long moment, he said: “That is, this enchantment of yours was meant to punish me—so Olenan said.”
“To be fair, I don’t think she minded having me suffer along with you.”
“What I mean to say is that Olenan is not entirely to blame. She wanted to punish me by separating you from me. But I had divided us already.”
Nora leaned forward to see exactly what was in his face. “Oh. You mean, when you slept with Olenan?”
“I was too quick to take offense when you spoke perfect truth to me,” Aruendiel said. “You quite rightly called me old—ugly—and so forth.”
“That! I am so sorry—I am still so sorry—”
“Faitoren magic, I thought. It compelled you to speak the truth that was in your heart, instead of comfortable lies.” He gave a crooked half smile. “But I have thought more about something else you said to me, when we were talking about Hirizjahkinis.
“You said that true affection sees through change—through even the blackest enchantment—to what is unchanged. I have not been that clear-sighted with you. I let myself be blinded by, well, old habits of mind. That is folly for a magician. Worse for a man.”
His mouth twisted. “Olenan chose a cruel and clever spell when she hid you from my sight. I know this now: if I had first seen you clearly, we would have been spared much wretchedness and ill-fortune, you and I both. I am well punished for my dullness.”
Nora made a move to grab the tablet from his hands, then thought of something better. So far, the invisibility spell had done nothing to impede her magic capabilities. She cupped her hands and summoned a flickering ball of light from a freshly kindled fire in the refectory kitchen. It squirmed excitedly in her hands.
Aruendiel half turned, his gray eyes reflecting fragments of the glow. Good, he could see the light she held—even if he could not see her. Then she asked the flames to do as she told them.
A plume of sparks rose into the air and traced letters there, twisting like glowing wires: You have seen me more clearly than anyone since the day we met.
The letters faded. She wrote again: You found my real self when the Faitoren had made me forget it. You saw that I was thirsty for magic. You found me in the darkest places underground.
Her words went dark again. The light in her hand dimmed; the fire was tiring. Once more she wrote: I’m invisible, and you are still here, looking for me.
He smiled at that, as lightly as a leaf falling. His broken face was sad and quizzical and curiously alert. “Nora, if I hadn’t seen your grace and wit and sweetness before this, I’d be a blinder fool than the eagle who hunted the sun. And I know what it is to be thirsty for magic. Yes, I saw that in you.” In a slightly different tone, he added, “As I suppose Olenan saw it in me. I owe her that much.”
Olenan. Nora felt her spirits cloud slightly at the mention of her name. It would be some while, she saw, before she could rid herself of the nettlesome fear that Olenan, with all her power, with all those years lived in the dim and glorious past, had in some sense known Aruendiel better than Nora ever would.
Nora hesitated, then summoned more firelight. In a way, it was easier to write this than to say it aloud: Did she still see you truly, this time? She said you would want to die.
“Ah.” Aruendiel tilted his head. “Well, I would not want to live the way Olenan did. She lost the habit of ordinary life long ago. Even before she decided to be a goddess. For myself, every time I’ve wished to die, I’ve been thwarted. And curiously”—he raised an eyebrow—“I find that I am content to have failed.”
“That is unlike you, Aruendiel,” Nora said. “But—that’s good.”
“Olenan was wrong about a good number of things,” he said. “And I would never have come near her again, except that she had already ensnared you. And still afflicts you. But I won’t let her win this last contest. All curses can be lifted, and we shall lift this one, I promise you. I will have you back in my sight and touch and hearing, and I will not lose you again.”
Nora gave a half smile that she suspected looked somewhat troubled, if anyone had been able to see it. How to lift the spell? she wrote. You said it might grow stronger if you tried to break it.
“It might. But I want you to have a look at this.” Aruendiel opened the book that he had brought over from the shelves. “This spell here.”
She peered down at the big, dog-eared pages, brown with age, as he leafed through them. Experimentally, she leaned against him, but could sense his body only as a kind of mass next to hers. She sighed, then read down the page where he had stopped.
“That’s to protect a woman in childbirth,” Nora objected. “And I’m not pregnant.”
“It’s a very old spell,” Aruendiel said. “It’s like your invisibility spell in that it’s made up of a lot of different spells linked together. The old magicians liked to do that, to concentrate their power. But it means that if one link breaks, the whole spell fails. You see, how this part, for the baby’s breathing, connects back to the strengthening spell? And the spell against hemorrhage and the spell for milk are inverses of each other? Clever, not entirely practical.”
Nora squinted at the faded script. “Complicated. I see, it’s all connected. If this part goes, the next one goes. And so forth. So what is the weak link in my spell?”
Aruendiel turned the page. His long finger traveled down the lines of brushstrokes. “If you wanted to break this obstetrical spell, you could start with undoing the anodyne portion, which is fairly simple. But any part would do, if you have the right counterhex.”
“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Nora said.
“That is the difficulty, of course.” Aruendiel read a little further, then suddenly closed the book. “For an enchantment like this—” He looked searchingly from side to side, his gaze still trying to find Nora. “You may be the one who is most likely to break it. You now know this spell better than anyone else living. There are weaknesses in it—”
“Like what?”
“—that only you will discover.”
Great, Nora thought, rubbing her aching eyes as she bent over yet another spellbook. I still do
n’t know how to cast an invisibility spell—or a confusion spell, or a misdirection curse—let alone work out the counterhexes to them.
A slim scroll titled How to Make Clear What Has Been Obscured raised her hopes, but it turned out to be an essay on magic to determine whether a person is lying and what the actual truth might be. She tried a couple of the spells, on the theory that her invisibility was a kind of lie. They seemed to have no effect.
It was dark now. Aruendiel was gone, summoned to the hospital to see to a pilgrim with seizures. So far he had not returned. She was growing hungry. No doubt as soon as she left, he would be back—that would be the unluckiness spell kicking in.
Eventually Nora stood, stretched her cramped muscles, and went outside. It was past dinnertime, but in the deserted kitchen she made a supper of some leftover porridge and goat’s milk. Afterward, she walked slowly through the temple complex. No one bothered to light the torches these days, but now she knew her way even in the dark. A light breeze was blowing, and she could hear the gurgle of the river nearby.
Overhead the sky was flooded with stars, more numerous and brilliant than Nora ever remembered seeing in her world. Were they the same stars? Even at home, her knowledge of the constellations was uncertain; the notion that a certain group of stars was supposed to look like a winged horse, she had found, was more distracting than helpful. She’d heard Aruendiel mention the Spinning Wheel, the Goose, and the Dragon. Probably every world had a constellation called the Dragon.
Then she spied what she recognized immediately as the Big Dipper. The sight of its angled handle and bowl gave her an unexpected comfort. She wondered what they called the constellation here and raised her hand in a private greeting.
She turned back at the Stairs of Healing, having no wish to visit the ruined temple in the dark. There might be other ghosts prowling around here besides me, Nora thought half seriously. She followed the riverbank downstream, listening to the wind whispering to the trees, watching starlight lace the water with silver shadows. The river’s dim mirror would not show her own form, of course. She was almost getting used to it now.
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Page 47