The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

by Emily Croy Barker

  Aruendiel had been exchanging a look with Hirizjahkinis, but now he turned back to the king with an air of new alertness. He said: “The Lady Ilissa fails to mention that she and her son kidnapped and enchanted the woman who became his wife; that Lord Raclin savagely attacked his wife, to the point that she lost the child that she was carrying; and that the woman left her husband’s household willingly. Since then, she has stayed in my household as a respected guest.”

  “I see,” said the king. “Well, there seems to be no shortage of personal animosity to go around.”

  Hirizjahkinis was the only one to laugh. Ilissa gave her a look of composed dislike, to which the other woman only smiled, straightening her pearl headdress and plucking a small, stray gray feather from her white linen robe. Absently, Hirizjahkinis twirled the feather between her thumb and forefinger, then rubbed it lightly against her earlobe.

  “Lord Aruendiel,” Abele continued, “you must know that abducting another man’s wife, whether she comes willingly or unwillingly, is a very serious crime.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “Men have been killed for this offense.”

  “Yes,” Aruendiel said, with a touch of annoyance.

  “This is not a court of law, and I am not sitting in judgment, but I must tell you that I cannot condone it, and that in my view it explains and to some extent justifies the attacks that you claim Lord Raclin has committed.”

  From the corner of his eye, Aruendiel glanced at Hirizjahkinis, who nodded slightly.

  “I would strongly advise you,” the king went on, “to return the lady to her husband, no matter how charming she may be.”

  “Sire, you misread the situation.” Now Aruendiel had fully unsheathed his impatience. “There is no liaison. I helped the lady leave her husband’s home because she was in danger, and because the Faitoren had—once again—kidnapped a human woman as a bride for Lord Raclin. They show no respect for the treaty that we struck with them almost fifty years ago. Do you think they will respect the treaty that you are negotiating now?”

  “My son’s wife married him willingly,” Ilissa interjected. “She was not coerced.”

  “She was enchanted,” Aruendiel shot back.

  “Furthermore, she is not even one of—” Bouragonr said, then caught himself. “I’m sorry, I interrupted the Lord Aruendiel.”

  “I believe the Lord Aruendiel had finished speaking,” said the king. “Please go on.”

  “I was just going to say, Your Majesty,” said Bouragonr, “that we have only the Lord Aruendiel’s word that the Faitoren took this lady against her will.”

  “There is the woman’s own word,” Aruendiel said quickly.

  Bouragonr snorted. “That has no legal weight.”

  “We are not in the law courts!”

  “Your Majesty!” Ilissa said, lifting one slim hand in a gesture that gracefully begged for quiet. “I would like to thank you for suggesting to Lord Aruendiel that he return my son’s wife to her lawful husband. We would welcome her back. No matter what tragic mistakes she has made, she is still a member of my family.”

  The king gave an approving nod. “A very enlightened view. Lord Aruendiel, what do you think now?”

  “Why not consult the woman herself?” Aruendiel said, although he did not meet Abele’s gaze. He glanced at Hirizjahkinis, who was toying with one of her bracelets with an air of slight distraction.

  “That is easily done,” said Ilissa smoothly. “She is here at court. I understand that she arrived with Lord Aruendiel last night.”

  “Well, that does make things more convenient,” Abele said. “Bouragonr, will you—?”

  “Let us send for her at once,” Bouragonr said, raising his finger. At once the door at the far end of the room opened, and his secretary appeared, tablet and stylus at the ready. “Once this side matter is settled,” he said severely to Aruendiel, “I trust that we can return to the main issue at hand.”

  “I would be pleased to do so,” Aruendiel said, looking levelly at Bouragonr.

  Bouragonr opened his mouth again, presumably to address the secretary, who was hurrying closer. “Pel—” he started to say. The word dissolved into a gasp. Bouragonr’s hands flew to his face, groping at his cheeks.

  Bouragonr’s mottled skin had grown clear and taut; his hair was sleeker, the gray streaks gone; his mouth and jaw line were newly firm; his stooped shoulders filled out. Decades had dropped away in a matter of seconds: The aging courtier was a straight-backed young man. He looked terrified.

  “Bouragonr?” said the king, a note of uncertainty in his voice.

  Still clutching his face, the young man who had been the old Bouragonr shuddered violently. Then he seemed to fall forward, but that was an illusion; his body was sagging like a falling tent, until he was only three-quarters the height he had been. The fingers covering his face became longer and skinnier, and there were more of them, six fingers on one hand, seven on the other. When he lowered his hands, the others could see that his mouth now wrapped around the side of his head, like a frog’s. His lips and nose had disappeared. He looked up at them from round black eyes that had no whites at all.

  There was a clatter. The secretary had dropped his tablet on the floor. “Bouragonr?” the king asked again.

  “That is not Bouragonr,” said Hirizjahkinis.

  “That is a Faitoren, in its natural state,” Aruendiel said.

  Abele’s gaze slid to Aruendiel. “My chief magician is a Faitoren?”

  “No, not originally. There has been a substitution—probably in the recent past. Sometime after the Lady Ilissa arrived in Semr,” Aruendiel said.

  “That is an outrageous suggestion, Aruendiel!” Ilissa said. “Your Majesty, I must protest. I will not be insulted by one of your subjects!”

  “Do you deny that this is one of your people, Ilissa?” Aruendiel asked. “Hirizjahkinis took off not just the spell that made the Faitoren look like Bouragonr, but the spell that made him look human in the first place.”

  “Then where is my chief magician?” the king asked, looking at the Faitoren with distaste. “You, sir, what have you done with my chief magician?”

  The Faitoren opened its wide mouth, giving the others a glimpse of a long gray tongue, but it said nothing.

  “Lady Ilissa, is this indeed one of your Faitoren?” Abele asked. “I had always thought that your people were, well, more pleasing to the eye.”

  Ilissa hesitated, but finally she nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty. That is one of my people.”

  “And why was he disguised?”

  “Oh, it’s the custom among us Faitoren to wear faces of our own devising, Your Majesty,” Ilissa said with a wistful smile, “much the way you or any other human might choose an elegant garment to wear. It is a bit of a game with us. We take pleasure in the art of it, in seeing who can make themselves the most beautiful, and in the end we grow so used to our chosen faces that we forget that we are even wearing them. These magicians”—she threw a scornful look at Hirizjahkinis and Aruendiel—“have taken it upon themselves to tear away the face that poor Gaibon made for himself. It is an act of both rudeness and cruelty, like stripping someone naked in a public street.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Abele. “But why would your subject want to make himself look like Bouragonr? Bouragonr is no beauty. An excellent chief magician, but not a handsome man.”

  “A very distinguished man,” Ilissa insisted sweetly.

  “Yes, perhaps, but even so, I can’t permit one of your subjects to simply insert himself in the place of my chief magician. There are all sorts of security and confidentiality issues here. And what has become of Bouragonr?”

  “Oh, I am sure that Gaibon has done nothing to harm Bouragonr. Isn’t that right, Gaibon dear?”

  Gaibon said something in muddy Ors that could have been an assent.

  “You, Lady Ilissa, what have you done with Bouragonr?” Hirizjahkinis spoke up suddenly. “Gaibon is not lying—”

  “H
e can’t lie,” Aruendiel muttered.

  “—but can you deny responsibility for Bouragonr’s disappearance?”

  “I don’t need to,” said Ilissa. “It is a preposterous accusation.”

  “But it’s not preposterous at all. You came here to persuade this king to lift the restrictions on the Faitoren. You knew that Bouragonr, his trusted adviser, would not favor such a plan—Bouragonr was one of the magicians, like Aruendiel, like myself, who defeated you half a century ago. But there was a way for you to turn Bouragonr’s suspicion to your advantage. If he supported the alliance, despite his known distrust of the Faitoren, it would make your cause more credible. Bouragonr’s support would not only help sway King Abele, it would make the alliance more palatable to many lords as well.”

  “Lady Hirizjahkinis, I’m terribly flattered that you would think me capable of such clever scheming.”

  “When I arrived here in Semr,” Hirizjahkinis continued, “I was surprised by how little opposition Bouragonr raised to the proposed alliance. Today, in fact, he seemed to advocate frankly for the Faitoren side. But I did not think that Bouragonr was not actually Bouragonr, until Aruendiel suggested it to me a little while ago.”

  “Lord Aruendiel?” the king asked, his voice sharpening. “How did you discover this substitution? Some of your famous magic?”

  “No,” said Aruendiel. “I simply found it odd that Bouragonr would know that the human woman who had escaped the Faitoren was living in my household. I had done nothing to advertise the fact. But the Faitoren knew. So I asked Hirizjahkinis to investigate while Your Majesty and I continued our conversation.”

  “I heard no such request,” said the king.

  “That is some of my famous magic, Sire,” Aruendiel said, unsmiling.

  “Your Majesty,” said Ilissa to the king, with an air of appealing to the only sensible person in the room, “I’m afraid I’m losing patience with this absurdity. Your subjects, these magicians, have insulted and attacked me and the members of my legation. I demand an apology—and I demand that Aruendiel reverse the terrible magic that he has worked on my son.”

  “I will do it,” said Aruendiel, his mouth curling, “I will even apologize—if you tell us where Bouragonr is.”

  The king coughed and looked down at the table. “Lady Ilissa, if you can offer any help in locating my chief magician, it would be taken as, as—a gesture of great goodwill,” he said at last.

  “Enough.” Ilissa rose from her chair. “I will hear no more of this. King Abele, you should know that those who slight me always regret it. The magician Aruendiel can tell you that.” Her lips curved in a fragile smile as sharp as a scythe. Her dress seemed to be made of white flames.

  Turning on her heel, she walked swiftly down the length of the long council table to the double doors. They flew open for her without a touch. Gaibon scuttled after her.

  “Regrettable,” said the king musingly after the doors had closed behind her. “Extremely regrettable.” He did not specify exactly what he was referring to, Ilissa’s angry departure or the disappearance of his chief magician or the end of the alliance negotiations or the fact that he had opened negotiations in the first place. Quite likely he was not sure himself.

  * * *

  “When did you learn how to undo that Faitoren masking spell?” Hirizjahkinis demanded of Aruendiel, once they were in the corridor. They had left the king and his military advisers to plot out the invasion of the Meerchinland without Faitoren aid.

  “I worked out a method and tried it for the first time last winter,” he said. “Interesting results, don’t you think? Although you took your time getting it to work.”

  “Your directions were a bit sketchy.”

  “There’s only so much one can say with a feather. You figured it out eventually.”

  “Now, can we use the same method to find Bouragonr? Could she have used the same kind of masking spell to hide him away?”

  “It’s possible. Although it’s more likely she killed him outright.”

  “You always believe the worst of that woman, don’t you?” Hirizjahkinis said, chuckling. “All right, we will try to find his body then. We’ll start by following Ilissa’s trail, visiting the places that she has visited.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” he asked, shaking his head. “By asking the walls what they saw? By wood and water, that will take forever. Once walls start talking, they never shut up.”

  “No, no. You will be annoyed to hear it, Aruendiel, but this is exactly the kind of situation where the Kavareen can be very useful.”

  Chapter 15

  Nora was scratching the Kavareen behind the ears when the two magicians came into the room. Aruendiel looked disquieted at the sight, but Hirizjahkinis only smiled. “I see you have become friends.”

  “More or less,” Nora allowed. “After I realized it wasn’t going to eat me.”

  “You’d be too small a meal,” Aruendiel said. “The Kavareen prefers to consume cities, or whole armies.”

  “Enough, Aruendiel! Now, we need the Kavareen for another task, Mistress Nora, so we must ask you to come with us.” Hirizjahkinis spoke quickly to the Kavareen in the singsong tongue. The animal jumped off the divan and stalked out of the room.

  “Now, the Kavareen has a very keen nose,” Hirizjahkinis told Aruendiel as they followed. “Especially for magic.”

  “Isn’t that how it tracked you down and almost killed you, that time in the desert?”

  “Luckily, I killed it first. He can tell us exactly where Ilissa has been in the palace and—what is even better—where she did magic.”

  They came to an enormous hall, forested with octagonal pillars. A crowd was milling around the base of the pillars, the women in luxurious trailing gowns, the men in equally lavish long coats or tunics. The Kavareen growled and sat down. “Ilissa was certainly here, and worked some magic,” Hirizjahkinis said, glancing around.

  “Not surprisingly—this is the main reception hall,” Aruendiel said. “She was probably in and out of here every day of her visit.”

  They made a slow circuit of the hall. Several people hailed Aruendiel, but he gave only the most perfunctory of responses. Hirizjahkinis, by contrast, made a sort of dignified progress around the room, a small, erect figure who smiled warmly at those who greeted her, without showing the slightest inclination to halt her steps for anyone.

  “I can’t find anything,” Hirizjahkinis said when they had finished.

  “Nor I,” he said.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Nora asked.

  “Some evidence of recent magic,” Aruendiel said dismissively. “Nothing that you would know about.”

  He had said harsher things to her before, but for some reason this offhand remark stung especially. Nora frowned and asked: “Is there any chance that we’ll run into Ilissa herself?”

  Aruendiel studied her for a moment. “Ilissa would like to see you,” he said. “She told us so today. She said she would welcome you back into her family.”

  “I hope you told her I’d rather die! You’re not going to send me back to her—are you?”

  “Don’t torment her, Aruendiel,” said Hirizjahkinis. “Mistress Nora, Ilissa is about to leave Semr, but not with you. We spent quite a long time talking about you this afternoon—I know, you are probably distressed to hear this—but in the end it helped us discover that Ilissa had been sly enough to put a Faitoren in place of the king’s magician, and even King Abele was not blind enough to overlook her little trick.”

  “Hmm,” Nora said. “I’d like to hear more about this.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Hirizjahkinis. “Now, where next? Ah, the Kavareen thinks we should go to the east wing.”

  They went to the east wing, and then the old east wing. Then the queen’s pavilion, the queen’s gallery, and the queen’s drawing rooms. The summer banquet hall, and the two winter banquet halls. It almost seemed to Nora that she was back in the endless splendor of Ilissa’s castle.


  “Is there any room in the entire palace that she didn’t visit?” Aruendiel groaned as they left the long gallery where the king’s armor was on display.

  The north tower. The king’s private reception hall. The buttery. The wine cellar.

  “Is Ilissa much of a drinker?” Hirizjahkinis asked.

  “She served oceans of wine at her parties,” Nora said before Aruendiel could answer.

  “That wasn’t real wine,” he said dismissively. “I wonder if she came down here to poison a bottle for Bouragonr?”

  “Or to lock him up in one of these bottles.”

  Nora moaned inwardly. There were thousands of dark and dusty bottles lying on racks in the cellar. She waited in the semidarkness while Aruendiel and Hirizjahkinis went slowly up and down the narrow aisles, occasionally running a finger along the curved side of a bottle. They found nothing.

  The central courtyard. The library.

  “The library?” Aruendiel stopped short. “The Kavareen is playing games with us. Ilissa has no interest in books. The Faitoren are magical beings; she’s never had to read a spell in her life.”

  The Kavareen twitched its tail and emitted a long, snarling whine.

  “No, she was here,” Hirizjahkinis insisted. “The Kavareen says she did some very strong magic here, too.”

  Nora was looking around with interest. It was a long room, full of light from a row of high windows along one wall. The other walls were lined with bookshelves or wooden compartments designed for scrolls. There were a few reading stands, and a table strewn with oversize books, some of them open to show graceful lines of brushstrokes and bright touches of illustration. At the far end of the room, through an arched doorway, were more shelves, evidently the beginning of the stacks. Nora tried to spell out some of the Ors titles on the shelves nearest her. History of the Victories of the Sun’s Own Anointed Mirle IV. Of the Glorious Founding of the House of Semr. This must be the history section, or maybe propaganda was more like it. Record of the Pernish War, Including a True Account of the Southern Campaign, the Suvian Regency, and the Treachery of the Wizard Aruendiel.