When it came to explaining magic, Hirizjahkinis’s directions were not quite as clear or detailed as Aruendiel’s—he never talked of love—but after a few attempts Nora got the idea. Her candles flared vigorously, although compared with Hirizjahkinis’s neat row of squibs they had a slightly ragged appearance. Afterward, Hirizjahkinis tried to teach her how to make the candles burn in all the colors of the spectrum. Nora got from yellow to blue.
“Not bad for a first attempt,” Hirizjahkinis pronounced. “I will tell Aruendiel that you have done credit to him today.”
Feeling a little dizzy from her efforts, as though she would turn blue instead of the candle flame, Nora thanked Hirizjahkinis for the lesson. “I think Aruendiel is still working in the tower, if you would like to rejoin him,” she added.
“Oh, there is no hurry,” Hirizjahkinis said. “I made him a little angry this morning. It is better for him to have some time to cool his temper.”
“Is he still angry about your going to Ilissa’s?”
“Of course he is—but now the problem is that I gave him some good advice, too.”
“That is the worst kind to give,” Nora said drily. Whatever Hirizjahkinis’s counsel, Nora had no doubt that it had been eminently sensible, unsparingly delivered, and soundly rejected. She also had the faint, haunting, ridiculous fear that somehow it involved her, Nora. Why she felt this way, she could not say—something in Hirizjahkinis’s tone or gaze. At least this time Hirizjahkinis had not asked her whether she was Aruendiel’s mistress. Changing the subject, she said: “I found something in the storeroom this morning that he might want to see.” She went to the end of the table and brought back a small wooden box. Opening it, she began to leaf through the papers inside.
“There are notes here on various spells—maps—a few letters—but this is what caught my eye. It’s from my world.” She was trying to sound casual.
Hirizjahkinis took the yellowed square of paper from her and glanced politely at the image printed upon it. Then she looked more closely. “Ah, that is Aruendiel! As he used to be. I almost did not know him.”
“I thought it was him. I wasn’t sure.”
“Oh, yes, that is him. He was very handsome, was he not?”
It was hard to tell definitely from the small, pale oval behind the stiff collar, under the brim of the dark hat. But, as Nora looked at the picture, almost intuitively she agreed with Hirizjahkinis. The figure in the picture was smiling boldly and held itself straight as the Ionic column beside it, unthinkingly confident in the way that comes from an abundance of good health and good looks.
“What sort of image is this?” Hirizjahkinis asked. “It is not a painting. Very shadowy and gray.”
“It’s what we call a photograph,” Nora said, giving the English word. “We can make pictures with a box, a kind of mechanical eye, and print them on paper.”
“Oh, yes,” Hirizjahkinis said, nodding. “Like a scroll of Soiveron. Whatever the magician sees is recorded on the parchment. A very useful spell, although I sometimes have difficulty with the perspective.”
“Ours has to do with, um, light rays.” Nora went on quickly before Hirizjahkinis could ask her for a more precise explanation: “So this picture must have been made while Aruendiel visited my world, I guess.”
“Is that writing at the bottom?”
“Yes, the photographer’s name and address. Schroeder & Kubon, in Chicago. And there’s a date—more than ninety years ago.” It was 1915: the First World War—not the Second—raging in Europe. Horses in the streets along with motorcars. Telephones but no radio. Three of Nora’s grandparents not yet born—Grandpa Hank a round-eyed toddler in a wicker pram.
“Ninety?” Hirizjahkinis repeated carelessly.
“Hirizjahkinis, how old is Aruendiel?”
“How old?” The magician shook her head, smiling, the beads in her hair chattering. “It is likely that time flows differently in your world.”
“Yes, but still, ninety years over there must count for a lot of years here.”
“He is older than I am. How old would you say I am?”
“I believe you are older than you look—” Nora began cautiously.
“I am older than I was yesterday, and younger than I will be tomorrow, and that is all I will tell you.” Hirizjahkinis laughed. “But no, I do not show all my years. Magicians age slowly, more slowly than nonmagicians. Magic is very good for the health, you know. How do you feel after lighting those candles? Good, yes? It feels even better to raise a storm or find a necklace that was lost a hundred years ago or make a blind man see—or capture the Kavareen,” she said, touching the leopard pelt on her shoulder. “If you keep lighting candles, Mistress Nora—and doing other, more complicated spells—you may find yourself living longer than you expected.”
“That would be nice.”
“I think so, too! There is nothing wrong with a long life, nothing at all.” Hirizjahkinis spoke with a shade more vehemence than Nora would have anticipated.
“So Aruendiel could be more than ninety years old.”
“Oh, certainly. Why don’t you ask him? Or—I know! We could ask him when he was born,” Hirizjahkinis said, taking the photograph into her hand again.
“What? Oh, the spell that brings paintings to life—?”
“Yes.” Hirizjahkinis grinned wickedly. “Let us ask Aruendiel, this Aruendiel, right now. I have a wish to see my old friend as I first knew him. He was not as gloomy then as he is now. And he will be delighted to see me, I am sure, since as far as he knows he is in your world—Sheecaga, you say? So he will not be expecting me at all.”
Nora was tempted. A younger, unscarred, more genial Aruendiel. She was curious to see just how good-looking he’d been. The man who’d been Ilissa’s lover, Queen Tulivie’s. But then Nora remembered the bewildered fear on the painted figure’s face. “Will he mind?” she asked.
Hirizjahkinis assumed she meant the present-day Aruendiel. “He will not know,” she said confidently. “Not until the spell is already over. It will only take a minute.”
But after she worked the spell, the image on the paper was still mute and unmoving. Hirizjahkinis frowned. “Did Aruendiel put a counterspell on this picture, to prevent anyone from speaking to it? That would be extreme vigilance, even for him.”
“Maybe the spell doesn’t work on photos,” Nora said, slightly relieved.
“Bah!” Hirizjahkinis threw the photograph down. She began to turn over the other papers in the box. “What is all this? A spell to make iron float . . . a letter—no name, just an initial M, a woman’s writing . . . hmm, obviously on very good terms with Aruendiel . . . Holy Sister, I see why she did not sign it.”
“I read that, too,” Nora confessed. “Is she talking about an actual spell that he did, or does she have a very vivid erotic imagination?”
“Well, you could achieve the same results without magic, perhaps. It would take more time. . . . I think I know who M is. I treated her for gout, years later. She had burned three husbands by then. The only client I’ve ever had who said she liked a female magician better than a man.” Hirizjahkinis laughed a deep, rumbling chuckle. “Maybe Aruendiel could tell us why.”
“You can ask him that.”
“Wait, I may not need to. Here is another letter from M, even longer. . . . She is not very happy with him now . . . terrible, terrible, Aruendiel, if that’s true! But she is so vicious, I am sorry for him, too. . . . What else? . . . A spell for being in two places at once. I know this one, it gives me a headache. . . . Who is this? Another crazy mistress?”
Hirizjahkinis had fished out another portrait, this one a painting, a miniature the size of her hand. The head of a woman, not young, not yet into middle age. Her dark hair was coiled beneath a crimson headdress, and she wore a necklace of small silvery pearls. Straight, prominent, rather bony features: the sort of face that could have had an avian, exotic beauty if it had not looked so strained, even fearful. Her gray eyes looked out warily beyond the
borders of the painting, not meeting the eyes of the spectator, as though she hoped to escape notice.
“I thought at first it might be his wife—” Nora began.
“Oh, no! She was a blonde with a face like a bowl of milk.”
“—but then I realized that this woman looks a bit like a picture of Aruendiel’s sister that I saw once. It’s got to be someone in his family—the coloring, the eyes.”
“Yes, I think you are right. I never met his sister, so I cannot say if this is she. His mother? An aunt? One thing I can tell you, this is an old hairstyle—when I first came to Semr, there were only a few old ladies still wearing it.” Hirizjahkinis touched the painted headdress gently. “Or,” she added suddenly, “it is his daughter!”
“He has a daughter?”
“He has never mentioned one, but it stands to reason!” Hirizjahkinis said with a laugh. “She would have been born on the wrong side of the blanket—so he hid her picture away with these old papers. Yes, look how she is dressed like a noblewoman, but with no emblem on her necklace, anywhere, to indicate who she is. I have looked at many, many pictures now, and I can tell you, when peers sit for their portrait, they do not wish to be anonymous. They always have a crest or a signet ring, or they pose with a falcon on their hand, because the symbol of their house is a falcon, or some such thing.”
“Whoever she is, she doesn’t look very happy, does she?” Nora said. “She looks as though she’s had a hard life.”
“Why don’t you ask her about it?” said Hirizjahkinis. Holding the portrait at arm’s length, she addressed it directly, her tone half-commanding, half-cajoling. “Madame? Madame? I beg a few minutes of your attention. Madame! I call you!
“It is better if you know the name of the person,” she added to Nora, in an undertone. “But the spell works without it, too. They cannot ignore you for very long.”
“This might be a shock for her,” Nora murmured. It occurred to her that Hirizjahkinis’s casual remark about the crazy mistress might have been at least partly on target: There was something about the woman’s face that made you wonder if she was wholly sane.
“No, no, I have done this spell a dozen dozen times now. I know how to handle her.” More loudly, Hirizjahkinis spoke to the picture again: “Madame, we wish to speak with you. Just for a few minutes, and then you will go back to having your picture made. We are standing right here, Madame, my friend and I.”
The face in the frame turned slightly, toward Hirizjahkinis’s voice. “Good afternoon,” she said, in a formal tone.
“Good afternoon, my name is Hirizjahkinis, and this is my friend Nora. And you, Madame, you are—”
She frowned slightly, as though the question discomfited her. “You would like to know my name?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“I am called Wurga.”
“We are pleased to make your acquaintance, Wurga. We have been admiring your portrait. For whom are you having it painted?”
“No one,” Wurga’s image said dully. “It was Lady Aruendian Fornesan’s idea. She is having her portrait painted, too, and her children’s.”
Nora looked questioningly at Hirizjahkinis, who nodded confidently. “His sister,” she mouthed. To the portrait she asked: “Lady Aruendian?”
“Yes, my kinswoman. I am visiting her here at Forel, from my home in Sar Lith.”
“Sar Lith! That is a long way to come to visit kin.”
“It was a long journey,” the portrait agreed, without any sign of interest.
“I am acquainted with one of Lady Aruendian’s brothers. I wonder whether you know him?”
Wurga’s face was suddenly alert. “Her brother? Which one?”
“It is Lord Ar—”
“What is this?” Aruendiel’s voice said, beside Nora. He looked over Hirizjahkinis’s head and saw the live portrait. A pained, startled expression came over his face.
“You!” The portrait of Wurga had seen Aruendiel, too. Its small features contorted and its voice rose to a shriek. “Is that you? Yes, you are changed, but I know you! What are you doing here? It’s you who—you have—” She broke off with a moan, panting, then tried again: “I—you—what you did to—?”
“Did what?” Hirizjahkinis said sharply.
“Oh, I cannot bear it, oh no. You destroyed—you stole—no, no, no—”
“Enough of this,” Aruendiel said, his fingers closing on the portrait. Wurga’s wailing stopped immediately. When he took his hand away, she was back in her original position, staring slightly to one side, her mouth tightly closed, the same as before, except that Nora thought she looked crazier than ever.
Aruendiel’s eyes were freezing, but Nora forced herself to meet them. “Who is she?” she asked in a small voice. “She recognized you.”
“What did you do to the poor woman, Aruendiel?” Hirizjahkinis asked.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” he said curtly.
“But you know who she is.”
“An old family connection. She mistook me for an enemy.”
“Why would she do that?”
He gave a crooked shrug. “She was a poor, distracted thing, who had had troubles in a distant land. My sister gave her refuge for a time.”
“What sort of troubles?”
“I do not remember.”
“What happened to her?”
“She left my sister’s house and disappeared. That was a very long time ago.” He said to Hirizjahkinis: “I am sorry now for teaching you that spell, if you can do nothing better with it than torment the shade of a long-dead madwoman.”
Hirizjahkinis’s mouth twitched with what appeared to be a mixture of abashment and impatience. “She was perfectly calm until you appeared!”
“Let the dead stay dead, Hirizjahkinis.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. They will never forgive you, otherwise,” she said, biting the words off. “They are very ungrateful, the dead.”
“Your impertinence grows tiresome.”
“So does your rudeness, Aruendiel. I am sorry now for ever thinking your life was worth saving.” Hirizjahkinis flung the miniature into the wooden box. Immediately the nest of papers exploded into flame.
The fire rose quickly, cheerfully from the box. No one moved. It devoured the parchment, then chewed through the portrait of Wurga. Her face charred and crumbled.
Not until the box itself began to burn did Aruendiel rouse himself to pick it up and deposit the remains in the fireplace. He gave it a series of blows with the poker, then turned stiffly, as though his back ached.
“I should start working on dinner,” Nora muttered, rising. Hirizjahkinis announced that she would rest before dinner. Aruendiel said something about not leaving Hirgus alone.
The kitchen was quiet and dim. The fire in the stove had burned low and drowsy. Adding a new log, Nora wondered which of the two magicians had set the papers on fire. They were Aruendiel’s; he might have felt entitled to burn them. But maybe Hirizjahkinis was angry enough to burn them simply because they belonged to Aruendiel. What would have happened, Nora thought, if the box hadn’t caught fire—and what were they fighting about?
She found a knife, sat down, and began to peel turnips in the half-darkness. The knife was a shadow in her hand, and she could barely distinguish the white skin of the turnips from their white flesh.
Without thinking, she turned her eyes to the candlestick on the table beside her and watched as it flared into light.
* * *
Dinner that evening was not as awkward as Nora had feared, at least at first. By some unspoken agreement, the Faitoren were not mentioned. Hirgus was bubbling with pleasure over the books and manuscripts he had encountered. Aruendiel, initially cantankerous, was gradually flattered into a reasonable simulacrum of cordiality.
“. . . and you have an unredacted edition of Piris’s Fruits of Hell! It makes all the difference to have the proper dosages, with poisons. And then, Torgin’s commentary on the Metamorphoses! I’ve heard about it all my li
fe, but I’d begun to think that it was just a hoax, like that Rgonnish manuscript you were telling us about.”
“My Torgin is quite genuine.”
“Of course, I could see that at once, but how did you manage to get hold of it?”
“A present from an old teacher—one of Torgin’s students,” Aruendiel said. Hirgus beamed at him insinuatingly until he added: “Lord Burs of Klevis.”
“Lord Burs! Chief wizard to Tern the Sixth! Well, that goes back a bit. They won the Battle of the Chalk Hills together, didn’t they?”
“Not just that battle,” Aruendiel said, in a tone that was familiar to Nora from her own lessons, “but the whole southern campaign.”
“Marvelous! You were there? There was a famous engagement—the Rout of the Dogs, they call it.”
“I was Lord Burs’s aide-de-camp.” Aruendiel’s black eyebrows knitted together. “Yes, the Rout of the Dogs is famous, but almost no one understands the real significance—” Apparently, Nora gathered, Lord Burs had turned an opposing battalion into a pack of dogs and then introduced a bitch in heat onto the battlefield. “—more important, the Orvetian battle order was completely disrupted, and their morale—”
Hirizjahkinis caught Nora’s eye across the table and smiled. “In the end they must rely on a female, even in war,” she whispered. She was eating with a good appetite; there was no obvious sign that any recent disagreements with Aruendiel had dampened her spirits.
“There’s one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, my dear sir,” said Hirgus, when Aruendiel had finished his analysis. “Your Lord Burs was a wizard, was he not? Like myself.”
“Everyone was, in those days.”
“So how did you train as a magician, eh? When did you acquire your expertise in simple magic?”
“Real magic,” Aruendiel said snappishly.
The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic Page 41