The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

by Emily Croy Barker

  Nora reread the last title, puzzled, wondering if she had read it correctly, and then looked around quickly for Aruendiel himself. He and Hirizjahkinis were disappearing through the arched doorway. She pulled the book off the shelf and scanned the pages for Aruendiel’s name, but she could make almost nothing out of the thicket of ink that filled the page. “I hate being illiterate,” she muttered.

  She followed the others into a second room of bookshelves, half-lit by a single small window, where they were watching the Kavareen pace up and down the aisles. The creature kept looking up at the books and making a faint snicker-snicker sound that seemed to Nora to indicate some degree of frustration. But perhaps, she thought, she was only projecting her own feelings.

  “He says it’s here,” Hirizjahkinis said.

  “This room is where the books of magic are kept,” Aruendiel objected. “You don’t think he could be reacting to them? Some of the books themselves are enchanted, of course.”

  Both of the magicians were speaking more softly than usual, Nora noticed. Library behavior must be the same in all worlds.

  “Let’s take a look. We will need more light.”

  Hirizjahkinis’s tangle of gold necklaces suddenly gleamed brighter, much brighter, to yield a flickering yellow light that illuminated the bookshelf in front of her. She began to examine the array of books, touching the spine of each. Aruendiel cupped his hand, and flames blazed up inside his palm, so close to the nearest shelf that Nora feared the books would catch fire. Then she saw how pale and thin, almost watery, the flames were. Like the ghost of a fire, she thought.

  As the magicians worked their way through the stacks, Nora drifted along behind Aruendiel, trying to stay close enough to see by his light without being obtrusive. She felt some envy of Hirizjahkinis—Aruendiel treated her as an equal, someone whose opinion he obviously respected, even if he complained about the Kavareen. How long did it take Hirizjahkinis to become a magician? How long had it taken Aruendiel, for that matter? Or were magicians born, not made?

  With some wistfulness, Nora ran her fingers over the gilt seal—a snake twined around a crescent moon—stamped on the frayed black spine of a volume as big as the unabridged dictionary.

  “Stop that,” said Aruendiel, glancing back at her.

  “Eh?” Hirizjahkinis called from another aisle.

  “Not you.”

  The magic books were a greater distraction for the magicians, though. Aruendiel kept stopping to yank books off the shelf and leaf through them, balancing them awkwardly in the crook of his elbow while cradling his handful of fire. Judging from the sounds coming from the other aisle, Hirizjahkinis was also browsing.

  “Pogo Vernish’s book on transformations. I didn’t know they had a copy here.”

  “Isn’t it completely out of date? . . . You’re right, Aruendiel, some of these books are enchanted. This spell is meant to drive the reader mad.”

  “I know of that book. In my great-grandfather’s time, the crown prince sent it to his father, Harnigon II. He hoped to force the old king to abdicate.”

  “And did he?”

  “The king went mad and had his son killed. Does it still work?”

  “The spell? You’ll have to tell me,” Hirizjahkinis said, chuckling. “I don’t feel any different. . . . Ah, Aruendiel, here are some of your notebooks! Let’s see, a collection of siegecraft spells, and an essay on magical landscape gardening.”

  “Oh, yes. I laid out some of the palace gardens here in Semr, years ago.” He turned into the next aisle. “This is the end of the magic collection; the last two rows are the foreign books.”

  “Let me see,” Hirizjahkinis said, following him. “This library used to have a good collection from my country, the only copy of the Book of the Five Stones outside of Hajgog—”

  Nora wished sharply that she could join in. “I thought we were supposed to be looking for this person Bouragonr,” she said under her breath. Aruendiel must have heard, because he frowned. Nora went past them into the last aisle, next to the window. The books in this row were more eclectic in manufacture. On the lower shelves were clay tablets and engraved metal plates; the upper shelves held bound volumes and scrolls. Nora found a myriad of alphabets: one that was all concentric circles; pictograms of running animals and birds; signs that reminded her of Sanskrit or Arabic or Greek without looking exactly like any of those languages. Except that the lettering on the tag for one of the scrolls, lying by itself in a bin, did look very much like Greek. Nora picked up the brittle paper and unrolled it slowly. The first lines of a long poem. Yes, in Greek. She had translated these lines herself, the first year of graduate school, in Dr. Decker’s Homeric Greek seminar: μηνιν αειδε θεα.

  Nora sang a brief, wordless note of joy. Aruendiel appeared at the end of the aisle. “Look,” she said, “Greek. It’s Greek! From my world.”

  He took the scroll from her. “I don’t know this language,” he said. “You recognize it?”

  “Yes, of course! I can read it. A little,” she said, wishing violently that she had not dropped Greek after Dr. Decker’s seminar.

  Aruendiel did not seem to be terribly impressed. “Well, of course, there are books from other worlds in this library,” he said with a crooked shrug. “Micher Samle has donated some, I know. You might look around and see if any other books from your world have landed here.”

  He turned and went back to the end of the aisle. An instant later Nora heard Hirizjahkinis say, “You didn’t tell me she was from another world! The things you keep to yourself, Aruendiel.” She couldn’t make out Aruendiel’s reply.

  Nora began looking over the shelves more carefully. Ten minutes later, after searching most of the aisle, she had found a clay tablet inscribed with what might have been Sumerian cuneiform, and a fat book that was certainly written in Japanese. From the diagrams, it looked like some sort of electrical engineering manual.

  “Rats,” she said in English, putting the book back. And then, as her eyes traveled along the shelves, a jolt of recognition. Not so much the English words, the familiar title—although that registered quickly enough—but the worn spine, the bright colors: a cheap paperback, the kind you couldn’t give away at a yard sale. Not just any cheap paperback, either.

  Nora eased it out of the bookcase. It had been wedged in so tightly that the cover almost came off—the same cover that had caught her eye back in the rental cabin. A line drawing of a simpering young miss with a parasol. Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen. Classics Series. Fifty cents. The book was slightly bent down the middle, from where she had jammed it into the back pocket of her jeans.

  Nora turned it over and automatically read the blurb on the back, taking pleasure in how easy it was to understand the English sentences. But she was so agitated that she could hardly take in their meaning. The mere presence of the book seemed to be a validation of some sort. She felt like Schliemann unearthing the walls of heretofore mythical Troy. And then a clearer thought: How did this thing get here? It crossed her mind that the book could signal some kind of recovery, that she was about to wake from a long delirium and return to reality.

  Aruendiel turned and looked down at her, his gray eyes curious, cool. “What do you have there?” he asked.

  “This book, it’s from my world,” she said, giving him a challenging glance. He showed no signs of vanishing.

  “Oh? What kind of book?” Hirizjahkinis said.

  “It’s a—story,” Nora said, searching for an Ors word for “novel,” and failing to find one. “A very famous one. A comedy of manners that takes place in England—” The others looked blank; she amended the description quickly. “It deals with love and marriage.”

  “Really? The whole book? What an interesting idea!”

  “The odd thing is,” Nora said slowly, “this is my own copy. That is, I had it when I came into this world. But I lost it. I don’t know how it got into this library.”

  Aruendiel’s expression was honed with interest. “But
you only just now found it again?”

  “Yes. I’m sure it’s mine, though.” Absently she opened the paperback to flip through the pages.

  Her first thought was that the book was alive. That was impossible, but if it was not alive, how could it be looking up with that red-rimmed eye, wet and blinking? Just the one eye, roving wildly under wrinkled lids, where there should be nothing but neat lines of type.

  She wanted to slam the book shut, but at the same time she had a squeamish fear of crushing the eye and feeling its gelatinous squelch through the thin cardboard of the cover. Then she saw that the eye wasn’t resting on the page, it was under the surface of the page. She got a glimpse of a distorted face and foreshortened limbs, like the view through the fisheye peephole in an apartment door, except what exactly was she looking into? Lost in a book, lost in a book, she thought—I will never use that expression lightly again.

  “I think I found your Bouragonr,” she said.

  * * *

  Bent over the open paperback, Aruendiel and Hirizjahkinis experimented with a couple of different spells that had no apparent effect before trying one that made the book grow very large and then very small and finally left a gray-haired man in a brown velvet tunic tottering in front of them. He groaned and collapsed against the bookcase.

  Aruendiel half dragged, half carried the newly freed prisoner into the reading room and went to summon help from the palace staff. Hirizjahkinis produced a silver flask from thin air and made Bouragonr drink it. In fits and starts, he told her his story: He had run across Ilissa in the library, and she had shown him a little book in a foreign language, which he had opened with mild curiosity. The next thing he knew, he was shut up in a dark place with no food or water.

  The library quickly filled with people: a crew of servants, the palace chamberlain, one of the royal doctors, and a growing cohort of gawkers. The doctor attended to Bouragonr for some minutes, and then the patient was taken away on a stretcher. Nora was relieved to see him go. Unfair as it was, she felt a certain resentment toward Bouragonr. The shock of seeing his agitated eye looking out of the book had slightly tainted her pleasure in finding it again.

  “He’ll be fine in a few days,” said Hirizjahkinis, fastening the leopard pelt around her neck again; she had retired the Kavareen after he snarled at one of the visitors.

  “Oh, Bouragonr’s health will be restored easily enough. It’s his position that will feel the hurt,” Aruendiel said sourly.

  “The king will dismiss him, you think?”

  “His chief magician taken prisoner by the Faitoren within the very palace walls? Abele can hardly keep Bouragonr on after such a blunder. It’s too bad,” he added. “Bouragonr isn’t a bad magician, or at least he wasn’t before he spent so much time at court.”

  Hirizjahkinis laughed. “You won’t be applying for his job, I believe?”

  “Never! Although I almost wish that you would, Hiriz. It would ease my mind to know that a magician with good sense had taken the post. I want no more talk of Faitoren alliances.”

  “I’m surprised you wish me so ill, Aruendiel. Never will I subject myself again to one of your terrible winters.”

  Aruendiel glanced around. The library was almost empty again. “Nothing else to do here. We can be on our way. Mistress Nora!”

  Nora was in the history section, looking for the book that had mentioned Aruendiel in the title. She turned with a twinge of guilt. “Yes? Are we leaving?”

  “Yes, make haste,” he said. “And I want to know more about this book of yours.”

  “Well, I have a theory about how it got here,” Nora said. “Ilissa brought it. It must have fallen out of my pocket at Ilissa’s castle, and then she found it. What I don’t understand, though, is why she brought the book to Semr. Could she have been planning to use it all along to trap Bouragonr?”

  Aruendiel gave a crooked shrug. “Perhaps. It was a shrewd place to hide him, a book in a foreign tongue that no one would likely open for years. Or she may have brought the book with some idea of doing you harm. Since it was your possession, it would give her some limited power over you. That’s a very primitive, imprecise form of magic, and not Ilissa’s usual style, but it’s a possibility.”

  “But how could she have known that I would even be here in Semr?” Nora objected. “We only decided to come yesterday.”

  “Perhaps she was reading your book,” said Hirizjahkinis. Aruendiel snorted. “No, I am only half-joking,” she added. “Mistress Nora says that it is a very famous story, and it is all about love and marriage, very much to Ilissa’s taste, I think.”

  “I don’t think Ilissa can read,” Aruendiel said stiffly.

  “It’s really not one of my favorites,” said Nora. “But I was going to have to teach it in summer school.”

  Even if Pride and Prejudice wasn’t one of her favorites, it left the library with her, tucked surreptitiously inside her sleeve. Finally, something to read.

  Leading the way from the library, Aruendiel chose a route through the palace that went through back staircases and side corridors. Nora could guess why. The news of Bouragonr’s kidnapping had already spread throughout the court. They got stares and whispers from the people they encountered on their way.

  “Ridiculous uproar,” Aruendiel muttered.

  “Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying it,” Hirizjahkinis said.

  The chamberlain waylaid them near one of the winter banquet halls. He expressed a hope that the two distinguished magicians who had just rendered such a great service to Lord Bouragonr and the king were not too fatigued to join the king’s other magicians and ministers in the council wing, in order to give a full account of the day’s remarkable events.

  Before Aruendiel could answer, Hirizjahkinis said they would be pleased to do so. The three followed the chamberlain to a part of the palace where the corridors were smaller and dingier. Through half-open doors, Nora saw clerks filling their scrolls with brushwork or dropping stones into a complicated wooden gadget that, she decided, must be some sort of abacus. This was evidently the palace’s back office.

  After a few minutes, they entered a long, columned gallery. A knot of men engaged in conversation turned to greet the two magicians; then an older man with a ballooning double chin claimed Aruendiel’s attention. Nora could not get close enough to hear much of what was being said. Aruendiel was speaking rapidly, matter-of-factly, the double-chinned man interrupting with what seemed to be a tinge of skepticism. Aruendiel paid no attention to the interruptions.

  Hirizjahkinis, closer at hand, was drawn into a technical discussion with a youngish, heavy-featured man about the spell that had imprisoned the royal magician. That was interesting, or might have been—Nora was hoping for some clue as to how this magic thing actually worked—but their talk of edges, stops, seals, and wicks soon lost her.

  With some frustration, Nora moved toward the other end of the gallery. Portraits hung between the columns that lined the walls—grave, elderly men, mostly, although there were some grave, young men represented, too. Nora amused herself by noting the change in men’s fashions, from layered, vaguely Chinese-looking robes to tunics and knee-length coats worn over close-fitting breeches. The coats seemed to be the more modern note; only a few men in the room now were wearing tunics, the older style. Aruendiel was one. Again, she wondered how old he was.

  A fireplace was set into the wall at one end of the gallery, with a pair of ceramic animals guarding each end of the mantelpiece: a wolf and a lion. Nora had seen variations of the two-headed wolf-lion carved, painted, and embroidered all over the palace that day. Some sort of dynastic symbol, obviously—representing the union of two kingdoms, or two ruling families? This was the first time she’d seen the two animals depicted separately. She ran an exploratory finger over the ceramic lion’s head. It was clear that the artist was familiar with exactly what a wolf looked like—especially a large, hungry wolf—but was not so sure about a lion. The lion he had shaped had a luxuriant, shawl-li
ke mane of carefully curled ringlets and a round, rather merry face.

  “You know, I was the one who found Bouragonr,” Nora told the lion quietly, slipping into English. She glanced back at the group at the other end of the room. “And it was my book, and hey, I’m from another world. Not that I’m a magician or anything, but you’d think they might want to talk to me, too.”

  The lion looked at her with wide, amused eyes. She touched the glazed mane again, gently tracing the curve of one clay lock. It really was a lovely piece, she thought, the kind of sculpture that belonged in a museum—if there were museums here. “I don’t know anything about art—art in this world, anyway,” she said, leaning close to the clay figure, “but I know what I like, and I like you very much. I can tell you’re a lion of character.”

  She raised a finger in a brief, ironic good-bye, and then turned slowly to retrace her steps.

  Midway down the gallery, an open archway on the right led into a spacious hall, lightly trafficked, with a grand bronze door at the far end. On the left, another archway opened into a very small, enclosed garden. Nora stepped outside and took a turn around the stone path. After a few minutes, she went inside.

  As she stepped into the gallery, Nora had a direct view through the opposite archway, into the other hall. A woman was passing—tall, wrapped in a dark green cloak. She turned and looked at Nora. It was Ilissa.

  Chapter 16

  Afterward Nora thought that if she had reacted more quickly, if she had called out or run away or done something, there might have been time to escape. Ilissa seemed as surprised to see Nora as Nora was to see her. For a moment neither of them moved. But then Ilissa smiled and looked heartbreakingly beautiful and kind, and it was too late.

  The truth—Nora felt it come scuttling out from the shadows of her heart—was that when she had told Aruendiel that day that she didn’t want to meet Ilissa, she had been lying. Or rather, she both dreaded seeing Ilissa and hoped that she would. It was a kind of bravado: This time, she wouldn’t be weak. She’d be strong, wise, adult enough not to fall victim to whatever sweet, suffocating magic Ilissa had worked on her before. Also, she was curious to see whether Ilissa was as perfect—as lovely, as loving—as Nora remembered. Surely there must be a flaw somewhere, a clue that it was all fake. The tip-off would be obvious once you saw it; the trick was to see it clearly for the first time.