“Owls are messy birds. But I shall have to take more care in the future.”
“Do the Toristels know? The villagers? Am I the only one who didn’t know?”
“Mrs. Toristel no doubt drew her own conclusions long ago from the number of times she has found my bedroom window open. She is always careful not to close it. The villagers—they probably scare their children with some garbled tale.”
“Probably,” said Nora, remembering how Morinen had glanced around nervously in the twilight at the suggestion that the villagers might be angry at Aruendiel. “Why an owl, anyway? Is that the only thing that you can change yourself into?”
“Of course not,” he said quickly. “But I almost always change shape at night, so it is logical to take the form of an owl.”
“Why at night?” Nora asked doubtfully, reminded of Raclin.
“My back is often stiff and sore, it is hard to sleep.” He rubbed one crooked shoulder ruefully. “I find it a relief to slip into another body and use those muscles without pain.”
“Oh,” she said, slightly nonplussed. “I’m sorry. You never mention that.”
“It is also true that some shapes feel more natural than others. I have always had a fondness for birds of prey. When I was younger, I often chose the form of a hawk or perhaps a raven. Hirizjahkinis has a preference for songbirds. My friend Micher Samle usually turns himself into a mouse.”
Nora considered this information for a moment. “What if you forgot that you were really a man, or forgot the spell? Would you remain an owl forever?”
“Again, that depends on the spell, but that risk is one reason why transformation spells are a relatively advanced form of magic. Even some very good magicians have made serious mistakes in that area.”
“So when can I—”
“You are a long way from the point where you might attempt a simple transformation,” Aruendiel said, with a frown. “You had better work on your levitation spell first. You should be able to keep that feather in the air for longer than half a minute by now.”
Aruendiel seemed more at ease with her now, for some reason, Nora thought, watching the feather that lay before her. It moved upward in little jerks, then sidestepped her attention and floated gently down to the tabletop again. The change in his manner had something to do with their clash over the boots and how they had made peace. The understanding that they had reached then was more complicated than the one he had outlined to Mrs. Toristel, but she could not quite explain it even to herself. Some sort of treaty had been drawn up, establishing secure, well-defined borders and allowing safe commerce over them.
She picked up the feather and brushed it lightly against her nose, then set it carefully in the air. Two minutes, she estimated, when it finally drifted down, but Aruendiel had already left the room.
Chapter 34
His lordship’s got a visitor,” said Morinen’s brother Resk with a faint air of importance, ducking through the door and coming into the hut.
Nora looked up from the floor, where Morinen had been showing her how to grind acorns for a Null Days pudding. “He’s not expecting anyone. But Mrs. Toristel’s daughter is coming from Barsy for the holiday.”
Resk shook his head, evidently enjoying the chance to display superior knowledge. “I know Lolo—this wasn’t her,” he said. “Besides, Lolo can’t fly.” He jerked his head upward. “This one was flapping on something like a big bird.”
Intrigued, Nora thought for a moment, trying to decide which of the few magicians whom Aruendiel considered his friends might pay a visit with no notice. “Was it a woman? With black skin?”
“A man, for sure. Coming from the northeast.”
“The northeast?” The Faitoren were somewhere to the northeast. Instantly Nora was on her feet, brushing crumbs of acorn meal off her skirt. “It wasn’t a scaly kind of big bird, was it? Like the dragon that was here last summer?”
“Never saw the dragon—I was in Red Gate that day,” Resk said with some wistfulness. “No, this one looked like a big bird to me.”
“I think I’d better get back,” Nora said to Morinen. “Mrs. Toristel will be wondering where I am, anyway. I told her I’d be home right after market.”
Morinen rubbed her shoulder—she had been doing most of the grinding—and grinned at Nora. “Maybe it’s someone to see you,” she said.
“That would not necessarily be a good thing,” Nora said, thinking of the Faitoren.
She ran most of the way to the castle, the cold air raking her lungs, her mind busy with a convincing premonition of catastrophe. If the flying visitor was not an enemy—Resk might be wrong, the wings could belong to something like a dragon, to Raclin himself—then it was all too likely he was a friend with bad news. Had something happened to Hirizjahkinis again?
She pushed open the castle gate cautiously. In the muddy snow of the courtyard was an apparatus that she recognized: gigantic wings growing from a wooden stem. An Avaguri’s mount. So it wasn’t Raclin who had come, some comfort there. She raced into the house. The great hall was empty, but there were a few traces of snow on the floor, slowly melting. Without taking off her cloak, she ran into the tower. There were voices above, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying as she clattered up the steps.
When she reached the top of the stairs—breathing hard now—both Aruendiel and his visitor turned to stare at her. They were sitting near the fire, each with a goblet of ale. Aruendiel was leaning on his elbow on the table beside him; the other man had crossed his legs and was comfortably clasping one knee with his arms. Neither of their attitudes indicated great tension, but Nora took in the visitor’s fleshy features and knew she had seen him before.
“What’s wrong?” she blurted out.
“There is nothing wrong, Mistress Nora,” Aruendiel said sharply. The initial look of inquiry on his face was replaced with impatience. “For once, we have a visitor who brings us no ill news. This is the magician Dorneng Hul, whom you may remember from Semr.”
“I do.” Nora said something polite about meeting Dorneng again, too rattled to remember the correct Ors form, but it was close enough. “But you’ve been guarding the Faitoren, right? What are you doing here?”
A slightly anxious smile twitched Dorneng Hul’s thick lips. “Oh, I wouldn’t presume to ‘guard the Faitoren.’ That’s beyond the power of most magicians, present company excepted.” He gave a quick nod in Aruendiel’s direction. “But I do keep an eye on them in case they try to cause any trouble.”
“That’s what I meant,” Nora said. “So why are you here?”
“I’m traveling to visit my mother. For the Null Days. She’s almost seventy, and I haven’t seen her for a year. Lord Luklren has given me leave to be away for a fortnight.” He seemed, belatedly, to understand what Nora was really asking. “I have been giving Lord Aruendiel a report on the Faitoren. They have been very quiet. No problems to report. Not even a sheep missing.”
“Oh. Well, that’s a relief.” Nora looked down at the cloak she had not paused to remove, the snowy boots that were beginning to leave wet spots on the floor of Aruendiel’s study. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she added, speaking mostly to Aruendiel. “I thought there might be some trouble with the Faitoren.”
“A pretty lady like yourself should not distress herself about such things,” Dorneng said gallantly.
Nora blinked at him, making a point of not smiling. Aruendiel looked as though he found Dorneng’s comment almost as annoying as she did. “Mistress Nora has more reason than most to be concerned about Faitoren malfeasance,” he said.
“Oh, yes, I know about that,” Dorneng said. “So unfortunate.” He frowned a little.
Nora waited for the inevitable: Dorneng would now stare discreetly at the ring on her left hand. He had no doubt heard about the ring from Aruendiel or Hirizjahkinis, and everyone did stare at it, eventually, when the subject of the Faitoren arose—herself included, although in her case it was more of a lingering case of denial, t
he mad hope that someday she would look and find the ring gone. She had noticed Aruendiel looking at it askance just the other day, after she’d asked a question about Faitoren candles during a lesson on fire illusions.
Dorneng’s large light-brown eyes remained innocently fixed on Nora’s. “What a blessing your ordeal is over,” he said.
* * *
Dorneng paid no particular attention to the ring that evening, either, even though the Faitoren provided the main topic of conversation. He was curious about what exactly had transpired during Hirgus Ext and Hirizjahkinis’s time in the Faitoren kingdom; the letter he’d received from Hirgus afterward was lengthy but not particularly informative.
Briefly, in a clinical tone, Aruendiel recounted the enchantments to which Ilissa had subjected her visitors. Perhaps out of loyalty to Hirizjahkinis, he restrained himself to calling the mission a foolhardy venture and a breathtaking example of how even an experienced magician could fall prey to Faitoren beguilement.
Dorneng listened closely, his round shoulders slightly hunched. When Aruendiel finally paused, he fiddled with his goblet for a moment. “I did think, when they set out from Lord Luklren’s castle on the way to the Faitoren lands, that they were taking a great risk. But Lady Hirizjahkinis seemed very confident—”
“She is always confident,” Aruendiel said. “Sometimes with good reason.”
“I am sorry that I didn’t go with them,” Dorneng said.
“It would have done them no good. Ilissa would have enchanted you as well.”
For a fraction of a second, Dorneng looked inclined to disagree. Then he seemed to recollect himself, and his heavy-lipped mouth tied itself into a rather shy smile. “But it would have been an opportunity to observe Faitoren magic at close hand. That’s what I regret missing. To be honest,” he added, “I was hoping to see more of the Faitoren when I took this position with Lord Luklren. To learn more about their magic, which is unique, as you know, and not well understood. But I’ve only encountered them on a handful of occasions.”
“You would not have learned much about Faitoren magic while you were enslaved by it,” Aruendiel told him.
Dorneng reached into the collar slit of his large, rather baggy tunic. He had brought out his Semr court finery for this dinner with Aruendiel, Nora thought, watching him fumble under the port-colored brocade, embroidered with black beads that winked in the candlelight. He brought forth a small glass bottle, half-filled with what looked to Nora like crumpled plastic wrap. When he shook it, a few rainbow flecks glittered in the dry folds inside.
“This is the only piece of Faitoren magic I’ve been able to study closely,” Dorneng said, with the same hesitant smile.
Aruendiel took the bottle from him, holding it with the tips of his fingers. “Where did this come from?”
Unexpectedly, Dorneng nodded at Nora. “From her. It was the Faitoren queen’s silencing spell. Lady Hirizjahkinis gave it to me, after she embodied the spell and removed it.”
Interested, Nora leaned forward to scrutinize the bottle’s contents. “It was alive then. Something like an insect.”
“It lived three weeks and five days,” Dorneng said with a touch of pride. “That was with no sustenance. I did try to reintroduce it to another subject, but it would not attach itself. One of Lord Luklren’s servants—it was in lieu of a flogging.” Nora frowned, and Dorneng looked slightly flustered. He went on, addressing Aruendiel: “I’ve been trying to re-create the spell—the effects of the spell—with the creature’s remains. So far I’ve had no success—”
“Nor will you,” Aruendiel said, putting the bottle down disdainfully. “You might as well expect a dead horse to carry you. A Faitoren spell has a kind of life because it is part of the Faitoren who created it. Eventually, the link grows weak and the spell dies. But that can take a very long time. If that silencing spell had remained in place, attached to its intended victim, Mistress Nora would have been mute far longer than three weeks and five days.”
Dorneng nodded, his brow furrowed. “Who are the Faitoren?” he asked suddenly. “Their ultimate origins, I mean. Where do they come from?”
“They came from my world,” Nora said, although the question had clearly been intended for Aruendiel. “Through the same gateway that I used. But after they came here, they couldn’t go back, because in my world an iron fence had been built around the gateway. They were trapped.”
Dorneng looked to Aruendiel as though for confirmation. “That is true,” Aruendiel said. “Although I don’t believe the Faitoren originated in Mistress Nora’s world. They are a mongrel race, as anyone who has seen a Faitoren in its natural condition can attest. They show traces of parentage from half a dozen different worlds.
“I have heard them talk—in the days when we still had dealings with them—” Aruendiel seemed to be measuring his words carefully; Nora had the clear sense that he was recalling, reluctantly, some long-ago pillow talk with Ilissa. “They used to talk sometimes of a homeland that they had left, or were driven from. You could never get a clear story out of them, exactly what happened.
“And what the Faitoren looked like then, I don’t know. But they were magical creatures from the beginning. Then, in the course of their travels, they intermarried with other races to increase their numbers—as they have tried to do here, so many times, with human women.” Aruendiel’s gaze veered toward Nora but went past her, fixing itself on the chimney instead.
“Can the Faitoren breed among themselves?” Dorneng asked.
“I doubt it. Not now. Otherwise, they would not go to such lengths to acquire brides for their princeling.” Aruendiel’s eyes narrowed as he contemplated the chimney stones.
“So they’re actually dying off, as a people?” Nora asked uncertainly. She had not considered the Faitoren in this light. “Or can they die?”
“They are very long-lived, but not immortal.”
“So that’s why they want to escape so badly,” Nora said. “They want children.” Like the child Raclin tried to have with me, she thought, and for the first time, she considered the lost baby with neither regret nor anger. They used me, but not because Raclin and Ilissa either liked or hated me. It was just a survival strategy for them.
With a twist of his torso, Dorneng shifted in his chair. “I wonder—would it be so dangerous to allow some freedom to the Faitoren? To allow them some intercourse with the outside world—if only so that they could be studied more thoroughly?”
“The best reason to study Faitoren magic,” Aruendiel said, and here he glared briefly at Dorneng, “is to defend against it.”
* * *
The subject of the ring did not arise until the following morning, and then it was Nora who brought it up.
Breakfast was over, but a gusty north wind had delayed Dorneng’s departure. Aruendiel went up to his workroom to moderate the weather. He invited Dorneng to accompany him, but Dorneng said—with a wide smile showing crooked teeth, another reminder that this world contained no orthodontists—that it would be inexcusable to leave a lady alone and that he would be pleased to remain downstairs to keep Mistress Nora company.
The half hour that followed was painful. They soon exhausted the weather as a topic of conversation. Nora tried to segue into a discussion of weather magic, but Dorneng answered her questions with the blandest of generalities. Either he had no interest in the subject or he did not take hers seriously, or both. What he really wanted to discuss, it gradually became clear, was Nora’s experiences with the Faitoren.
That wouldn’t be so bad, Nora thought, except that Dorneng wouldn’t come out and ask his questions directly. He kept circling around the subject with ponderous tact, which Nora first found funny and then annoying. When he said, “I have heard that the Faitoren lure young women with jewelry,” and looked at her in a searching way, Nora finally sighed with exasperation.
“Look,” she said, spreading the fingers of her left hand, “if you’re so interested in Faitoren jewelry—this is a Faitoren rin
g.”
Dorneng stared at her hand as though he had never seen a ring before. “Why are you still wearing it?”
“Because I can’t get it off! Aruendiel can’t get it off, Hirizjahkinis can’t—no one can.” Even Hirgus Ext had had a try. “It’s enchanted to my finger. You want some Faitoren magic to study—go right ahead.”
Dorneng looked sincerely happy. “Thank you,” he said warmly, and grabbing Nora’s hand, he bent over it until his eyes were only inches from the ring.
Several minutes passed. Nora stared down at the meandering white part in Dorneng’s rather sticky-looking brown hair. Was it really necessary to hold her hand that tightly? His palm felt so damp she thought the ring might just slide off her finger when he released her.
Dorneng looked up, biting his lip. “Would you like me to try to remove it?”
“Please,” Nora said, with a shrug that she hoped did not convey too eloquently her total lack of any expectation of success.
Dorneng reached into his tunic and pulled out a small, oblong silver object, looking much like the pen that a man in Nora’s world might take from inside his jacket. He rolled the cylinder between his palms with some care, then held it in front of his face. The top portion slowly lengthened, thinning in the process, and bent itself into a hook.
“What is that?” Nora asked.
“It’s called an Eafroinios key,” Dorneng said with some pride. “It’s for removing spells.”
Dorneng got some points for originality: This would be a new way of failing to remove the ring. “Well, no one has tried one of those before.”
“They’re very rare.”
Dorneng leaned forward and tried to hook the ring with the key, with the evident aim of pulling it off Nora’s finger. Immediately it was clear that the hooked end was too narrow. With a little scowl, Dorneng drew the key back and squinted at the bent tip for half a minute, until the metal widened into a shallower curve. Then he went back to the ring. This time, the mouth of the hook slid loosely around the gold band. Dorneng looked up at Nora and smiled hopefully. She gave him a mechanical smile in return, as the tip of the Eafroinios key dug painfully into her skin.
The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic Page 47