“And then all the stones turned into butterflies, and the lions were out of their pit and on top of the guards, and my ropes were gone, and the white-skinned demon who had winked at me was dragging me through the shrieking crowd.” She chuckled. “I did not realize at first that we were invisible.”
“It seemed prudent,” Aruendiel said.
“This time, though”—Hirizjahkinis almost spat out the words, and Nora understood she was no longer talking about the old memory—“there was no wink. You looked at me and you turned away.”
“Ah.” Aruendiel’s eyes were hard.
“You disappeared in the crowd, and then the stones hit me.” Hirizjahkinis shook her head, emitting a small hiss of vexation. “On and on. All parts of my body. The lions smelled the blood, they began to roar. It was just—just as I had feared. Raclin enjoyed it very much, I am sure.
“And all the time he whispered in my ear that I could free myself if I untied the ropes—they were magic ropes, do you remember, Aruendiel? Only a magician could untie them.
“Raclin’s voice never stopped. ‘Save yourself, lift the spell. You know how. Lift the spell.’” She mimicked Raclin’s caressing bass with eerie accuracy, and involuntarily Nora hunched her shoulders.
“And if you had lifted the spell—” Nora said hesitantly.
“You would have lifted the barriers around the Faitoren realm,” Aruendiel finished.
“I think so.” Hirizjahkinis nodded.
“But you didn’t,” Nora said.
“No. I decided, enough of the Faitoren and their silly games!” There was a golden note of triumph in Hirizjahkinis’s voice now. Deliberately she stroked the leopard skin where it covered her upper arm. “I called my servant the Kavareen from where I had left him, outside Ilissa’s realm. He came at once—he gave Raclin a great scare—” Hirizjahkinis clawed the air with her fingers, bared her teeth, laughed. “And there was no more silliness about untying magical ropes.
“Then,” she added cheerfully, “I went to find Hirgus, who was engaged in a very private discussion with Ilissa—”
“She was still negotiating for the removal of the magical barriers around her kingdom,” Hirgus said, blinking, his mouth pursed inside the tapestry of his beard. “Of course I could do nothing for her—”
“Of course,” said Aruendiel.
“And I am appalled to learn now how badly Madame Hirizjahkinis was treated in my absence. All of us may not always have the same interests,” Hirgus said, with a vague gesture, “but I like to think there is such a thing as professional courtesy among magic-workers. There is no question of dealing with the Faitoren in good faith after that.”
“Thank you, Hirgus. I am pleased that you and I feel the same way.” To Aruendiel, Hirizjahkinis said: “Well, we came away, and here we are.”
There was a pause. Aruendiel looked down at his bowl of oatmeal, almost untouched, but it seemed to Nora that he did not really see it. He raised his head again to address Hirizjahkinis. “And if you had not had the Kavareen, or if it had disobeyed you?”
“But I had the Kavareen,” Hirizjahkinis said, with the air of stating the obvious. “And it always obeys me.”
“All demons in the thrall of a human are ready to turn against their master,” Aruendiel said, looking at the Kavareen’s yellow eyes with dislike. “Even the ghost of a demon.”
“Then I would have to let my friend Aruendiel rescue me—again!—and I would hope you would not make me wait long,” Hirizjahkinis said with some severity. After a moment, she laughed and touched Aruendiel’s hand lightly. “Peace, I gave you some cause for fear, and I am sorry for it. But you see, I was not completely unprepared.
“And now—I saw Hirgus yawn just now, and I am fatigued myself. We must demand more of your hospitality, Aruendiel.”
Nora glanced at the window. The sun was up, finally.
Aruendiel obviously would have preferred to continue the discussion, but he could not ignore the reminder of his duties as a host. Hirizjahkinis was canny, Nora thought. He managed to assume a blander, more pacific demeanor and said something conventional about his roof, bread, and sword being at the service of his guests, then directed Nora to tell Mrs. Toristel to prepare their rooms.
Nora came back to catch the tail end of what Hirizjahkinis was saying.
“—No, I do not think it was wasted effort, not at all. I have passed an interesting night, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not—and now we know more about Ilissa’s plans.” Hirizjahkinis gave an emphatic nod.
“What do you mean, a night?” Aruendiel asked roughly. His newfound courtesy had evaporated again. “The letter I got from Lukl said you had been three days in Faitoren territory.”
“You are joking. Three days!” Hirizjahkinis drew back, and for a moment, panic looked out of her eyes. Then she recovered. “Ah, no wonder I was hungry! The Faitoren enchantments confounded my wits more than I knew.” She laughed.
“They do that,” said Nora, almost to herself, as she came up behind them. She doubted that anyone heard her. But Aruendiel glanced back, frowning, watchful behind the battered walls of his face.
* * *
As Aruendiel came up the stairs from his study, Hirizjahkinis looked up from the tarnished silver cup that she had been studying—Voen’s Chalice, in fact—and put it back on the shelf. “It is gracious of you to give Hirgus free rein with your library,” she said. “I do not recall your being so generous in the past. You have books that you never let me read—that second volume of Firginon Sior’s memoirs, for instance.”
Aruendiel gave a quick, determined shudder, like a cat shedding water from its fur. “It is better than having to converse with him myself. And you need not feel slighted. Hirgus can read as much as he likes of certain books. There are others that he will never be able to open, and if he should succeed, one glance at the page would blind him forever.”
Hirizjahkinis laughed. “You are a considerate host!”
“He would do the same to me,” Aruendiel said. He seemed to take a certain amount of pleasure in the observation.
“I hope he would not be so rude to a guest. There are a few books in Hirgus’s collection that I am looking forward to reading myself when I am in Mirne Klep this winter.”
“Is that why you accepted his invitation to visit? I am still flabbergasted that you would willingly spend more than a few hours with that pompous fathead.”
“I have always liked Hirgus. It is not his fault that Ilissa’s magic almost swallowed him up. I think he is a very good-natured man. He says nothing of great interest, that is true, but nothing that is very disagreeable, either. And then I am so fond of his wife.”
“Oh, he has a wife.” Aruendiel’s tone indicated that no further explanation was needed.
“A lovely girl! Do not sound so disapproving. You also have enjoyed the company of pretty wives not your own. Hirgus is pleased that she will have a companion this winter. They have no children, and she is much younger than he—he fears that she suffers from boredom. Really, he is very lucky that I am available to distract her, so that she will not form a more perilous attachment.”
“Indeed.” Aruendiel picked up a green glass jar from the workbench, shook it gently, and guardedly uncorked it. A low moaning filled the room. Frowning, he recorked the bottle and returned it to its place, then turned to Hirizjahkinis. “You should be in that library, not Hirgus,” he said brusquely. “I want you to go through my notebooks on Faitoren magic while you’re here, and you must get the unmasking spell right. You bungled it with the Chalice, obviously.”
“Yes, yes, but it is not so easy to practice when there are no Faitoren around! And frankly, I have had enough of them for now.”
“I, too,” he said, lifting an eyebrow. He pulled a scroll from the shelf. “But you should not have to rely on the Kavareen to protect you from Faitoren magic.”
They had already had this discussion twice since the morning of her arrival, and neither had derived any particular sa
tisfaction from the exercise. With a grimace, Hirizjahkinis turned back to the window. In the courtyard below, two small, cloaked figures were visible, Nora and Mrs. Toristel. The two seemed to be discussing Hirgus’s coach, which burned with a low flame near the castle wall.
Hirizjahkinis looked back at Aruendiel, bending over the scroll. “This little one Nora, she is very interested in magic,” she said casually.
Aruendiel grunted as he made a note on the parchment.
Hirizjahkinis pursued, in the same nonchalant tone: “So you have made her your pupil rather than your mistress?”
Aruendiel’s head jerked up, the Faitoren and the Kavareen forgotten. “What? You are impertinent, Hiriz. Do not speak to me of absurdities.”
“The nights are growing long and cold, this time of year.” Hirizjahkinis laughed as though inviting Aruendiel to join in. “When I met Nora in Semr, she told me she was not your mistress, but by now, I thought—”
“What? Well, she spoke truly, although it was no concern of yours. Nor it is now.”
“You are my old, dear friend. I am always concerned with matters of your happiness. What is holding you back? Each time I see Nora, I think she is very engaging. And prettier than when I saw her last. Her scars are less obvious than they were. She is a good age, too, not too green—ripe to be a merry bedmate.”
“What, are you the girl’s pander?” He spat out the words.
“Peace, I am teasing you,” she said, “but you puzzle me. I saw your face when you summoned Queen Tulivie’s shadow. You looked at her with sadness and hunger, even though I do not think you were so much in love with her when she lived. And yet when you have the chance for a real, living, flesh-and-blood love affair, you scowl and do nothing.”
Aruendiel put his brush down and moved his hand above the scroll, making a faint breeze spiral over the wet ink. The parchment rustled on the table. “He who hunts the stag does not chase squirrels.”
“Hmmph. It depends on how hungry the hunter is. In my country we say a starving man needs no salt or oil for his termites.”
“Even with salt and oil, termites are no delicacy,” he said, with a harsh laugh. “I have traveled enough in your country—with a good appetite, too—to know that.”
“We are speaking of Nora.”
It was past time to curtail this discussion, Aruendiel felt. He chose his words carefully for greatest effect. “What of her? She is lowborn and no great beauty and the soiled former chattel of a lecherous Faitoren half-breed, but I would not have thought to compare her to a termite.” He added coolly: “It is unkind of you, Hiriz.”
Hirizjahkinis looked at him, her gaze the only live thing in a face that might have been carved from wood. “Ah, is that what you think of her?” she said finally. “I miscalculated. I was thinking of your welfare, but I must consider Nora’s, too. Perhaps she is better off not being your mistress.”
“Now you are talking more sensibly.”
“So why are you teaching her?”
“She has an interest and some aptitude,” he said, twitching a crooked shoulder. “We will see where it leads.”
“Didn’t Holo Nev come to you once, asking you to be his teacher? He had interest and aptitude, and gold, too. And you sent him away.”
“It would have taken a dozen years for him to unlearn all the bad habits he had already picked up.”
“And that young man from Reskorinia?”
Hirizjahkinis would not give up, Aruendiel thought. “A dilettante. He had no true understanding of magic.”
“At least some of them had the discernment to seek you out, Aruendiel, and you always turned them down. I do not know of anyone but myself who can truly call themselves your protégé.”
“There were a few others, years ago. Norsn, Micher, Nansis, Turl. They were wizards of middling ability before I taught them to be magicians.”
“I did not realize that Turl had studied with you!”
“Yes, although he will never admit it. Well, I do not care to own him, either. He taught me a lesson, to be careful about whom I choose to teach my craft.
“Well, it is a good choice to teach Mistress Nora, for whatever reason you are doing it. You are right. There is talent there.”
Hirizjahkinis was still probing; he was still on his guard. “Some talent, yes,” Aruendiel said with a tilt of his head, “but who knows what it will amount to? Novice magicians are notoriously lazy. They learn a few spells and then have no interest in learning more.”
“I do not think you need to worry on that score. Yesterday she lit candles for me with as much joy as if each flame were a new star. I had to beg her to stop, and to promise that I would help her again today.”
“It is all new to her. Her mind is eager. I confess, it is refreshing to observe so much enthusiasm, even for the most elementary forms of magic.” Aruendiel’s voice warmed, and the hard knots in the corners of his mouth loosened. When Nora lit the candles, she was like a flame herself, he thought. “She is a hopeful presence,” he could not help adding.
Then, before Hirizjahkinis could try to make something of his admission, he went on quickly: “There is another thing, Hiriz. It is time that I think of my legacy, to pass on the knowledge that I’ve accumulated. Mistress Nora is not, perhaps, the heir I would have chosen, but when you, who studied with me longest, have learned so little as to venture unprepared into the Faitoren—”
“What is this talk of a legacy?” Hirizjahkinis demanded, showing no interest in further talk of the Faitoren. “Are you dying, that you are so morbid?”
“No, not dying. You forget,” he said, a dark smile carving deeper lines into his face, “I am already dead.”
“Now you are speaking of absurdities.” She waited for him to respond, but he said nothing. Hirizjahkinis pulled herself even straighter than she had been standing. Although she did not reach Aruendiel’s shoulder, she gave a fair impression of looking him directly in the eye.
“I see. You are still sulking, just as you were in Semr,” she said severely. “And I am tired of being blamed for the kindness of giving you back your life. If I had known you would be so ungrateful, I would have left your corpse frozen on that mountaintop. What is so terrible? You have your health, your work—”
“My health! I have not had a day without pain for four dozen years.”
“I am sorry for that. But you are not crippled, you can walk, you can ride, you are not bedridden as you were. And you will not use magic to salve the pain, will you? No, you are too stubborn for that.”
Hirizjahkinis was relishing the chance to lecture him now, he thought sourly. “It is bad enough to know that it is only magic that keeps my heart beating and my lungs breathing and my body from turning into a withered husk.”
“But that is different, I had nothing to do with that. It is the same for me and everyone who practices true magic. I would be a dried-up old lady by now”—Hirizjahkinis’s mouth suddenly curved into a broad smile—“or dead myself, if you had not taught me to be a magician.”
Aruendiel passed a hand over his face, avoiding the roughest places by habit. “I don’t blame you, Hiriz, for what you did,” he said slowly. “On the road back from Semr, I brought a child back who had been dead three days. It is a tempting thing, to bring someone out of the dark into the light. And that sort of magic—you can feel the tendrils of power growing through your very soul.”
“Three days? That is not so hard. You had been dead for weeks.”
“She had been eaten down to the bones.”
“Ah, that is a little more difficult. You should do more spells like that, and you would feel better.”
He made a disgusted noise deep in his throat. “Gods forbid! I still do not know whether I did that child good or ill.”
“Good, of course. There can be nothing ill in giving someone so young another chance at life.”
“That is what Nora said.” Mistress Nora, he should have said, but fortunately Hirizjahkinis did not notice the slip. Carefull
y, he rolled up the parchment on which he had been taking notes and passed a thin black ribbon around it. The ends of the ribbon lifted lazily, like a pair of drowsy snakes, and tied themselves amorously into a complicated knot. “Well, perhaps it is better with a child. A child is resilient, she will not remember the darkness.”
Hirizjahkinis regarded him watchfully. “You told us that you remembered nothing of death.”
“Nothing. But I know, now, that it is always there.”
“Oh, enough of your mewling, Aruendiel! Every living creature is under sentence of death. All the more reason to savor the life you have—especially if it has been taken away once and then returned to you. So, the pain,” she added briskly. “It is still your back?”
“Only when it is not my head or half a dozen other parts of my body that never healed properly.”
“Let me take a look.”
“Never mind my back,” he snapped. “It is no better nor worse than ever.”
“Corverist of Vaev gave me a new spell for stiffness in the joints.”
Aruendiel hunched his shoulders. “I will not use magic as a drug. Not again. Well, is Corverist still going in for animal magic?”
“Oh, yes! Corverist told me that he learned it from a snake. A very old snake. It claimed to have known Nagaris the Fat.”
“I have never known snakes to be very truthful,” Aruendiel said.
Chapter 29
The candle flames burned skittishly for a second, and then made a sudden leap upward. Nora blinked, even though she had been expecting it. She was standing in the great hall with Hirizjahkinis, who was showing her how to make a candle flare even when there was not the slightest current of air stirring.
“I cannot teach you anything more about lighting fires,” Hirizjahkinis had said firmly, when they started. “Aruendiel has done a good job of that already, and he will be irked if I teach you something that he disagrees with. So I will teach you something that he will not think is so important—but can be very useful, in the right circumstances. A few little tricks with a candle flame once persuaded a very suspicious prince in Haiah that the local lion god did not wish for me to have my head chopped off. Here, let me show you—it is only a matter of giving the flame a little love.”
The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic Page 40