The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

by Emily Croy Barker

  “But you don’t appreciate that. You’re still angry at Hirizjahkinis for raising you from the dead. It seems like selfishness to me.”

  “You know nothing about it,” Aruendiel said, with a furious wrench of his mouth.

  “You can’t even remember being dead; how do you know it was so wonderful?”

  “That doesn’t matter. It was what had befallen me. It was my fate.”

  “They gave you a gift, bringing you back to life.”

  “Which I never asked for.”

  “If that’s your attitude, life was wasted on you.”

  Aruendiel leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. He smiled slightly, unpleasantly. “I fear that you are right.”

  Chapter 40

  On winter mornings, the barn was dark but milder than outside, full of the animals’ warm breath and the funk of their manure. Nora fed the chickens first, then the sow, finally the goats and the two cows. She hauled water for them, then took a pitchfork and spread a fresh layer of bedding.

  This morning she took extra pains, spreading the straw deeper and more evenly than usual. Some levitation magic would have made the work go faster, but today she found a certain comfort in having to exert herself. The physical effort made remembering the evening before slightly less painful.

  What had put her into such a foul humor? That small, tantalizing glimpse of home had started it. And then Aruendiel’s dark mood, his death wish—all laced with self-pity, but naturally he wouldn’t see that. She wished that he had not told her so much about murdering his wife. She wished he had not told her anything about his wife. And yet she wanted to know everything about his wife. How humiliating to feel this species of jealousy toward a dead woman. Perverse, too, considering how she had died. Nora stabbed the pitchfork into a pile of manure, then held out a handful of straw to one of the cows. Its big tongue brushed Nora’s hand. Running a hand down its warm, shaggy face, she still felt raw, exposed, regretful. Not so much because of what she had said but because of what she had made him say.

  As Nora came into the kitchen, stamping the snow from her boots, Mrs. Toristel looked up from her mixing bowl. “He’s got visitors already,” she announced, nodding toward the great hall.

  “So early?” Mingled frustration and relief that she would not encounter Aruendiel alone. “Who is it? I thought the roads were still bad.”

  “She didn’t need a road this time,” Mrs. Toristel said, the disdain in her voice unmistakable. “They flew here. Two of those flying mounts in the courtyard.”

  “She?” Nora asked with a tinge of alarm. Her first thought, after last night, was Ilissa. Then a more encouraging notion struck her. “Do you mean Hirizjahkinis? With Hirgus Ext?”

  Mrs. Toristel nodded. “No, the other one who was here. Dorneng, his name is. You didn’t see them? He looked serious.”

  “He always looks serious.”

  Mrs. Toristel clicked her tongue. “I’m sure it’s nothing to joke about, whatever it is that brought them.”

  As soon as Nora opened the door to the great hall, she could hear Aruendiel swearing, and she knew instantly that yes, this was something about Ilissa. Dorneng stood directly in front of him, a woeful look on his fleshy face. Hirizjahkinis, standing to one side, watched the other two magicians with a slightly fixed smile; she had the attitude of someone who is just barely containing herself from tapping her foot with impatience.

  Nora caught her eye, and instantly Hirizjahkinis’s smile became more natural. She came forward.

  “What’s going on?” Nora asked in a low voice. “Is it Ilissa?”

  Distractedly, Hirizjahkinis put her hands on Nora’s shoulders by way of greeting. “Of course it is Ilissa!” She laughed, but her laugh sounded tired. “Why else would I have to fly all night in a snowstorm? It is very inconsiderate of her to cause all this fuss in the middle of winter.”

  “What has she done now?”

  “She has broken out of her prison. So now we must go to the trouble of finding her.”

  No wonder Aruendiel was cursing. “How did she get out? Aruendiel put in all those new defenses—”

  “Dorneng let her out.”

  “What? That seems pretty stupid, even for him.”

  Hirizjahkinis rolled her eyes. “It was very stupid of him—but then he had no Kavareen to call on, when Ilissa enchanted him.

  “He was afraid to tell Aruendiel what he had done—he came to Mirne Klep to fetch me first. As though I did not want to bite him into tiny pieces myself when he told me.”

  “Well, Dorneng wanted to know more about Faitoren magic,” Nora said. “I guess he knows now.” Aruendiel brushed past them into the kitchen, giving no sign that he had noticed her. “Where is Ilissa now? Does anyone know?”

  “Dorneng thinks she is going east,” Hirizjahkinis said. “He thinks.”

  At the sound of his name, Dorneng lumbered dejectedly toward them. “Yes, east, toward the Ice,” he said. He sounded as though he had a cold.

  “Terrible, she has no consideration,” Hirizjahkinis said with a shudder. “I think we should simply let her freeze there, but of course that’s not enough for Aruendiel. We must hunt her down and lock her up again.”

  “Well, that doesn’t seem like a bad idea,” Nora said cautiously. She gave Dorneng a polite greeting, for which he seemed to be effusively grateful. He said it was wonderful to see her in good health—which Nora took to mean not a marble statue—and then he began to apologize to Hirizjahkinis for putting her to so much trouble. From the look on Hirizjahkinis’s face, Nora could tell that this was not the first apology she had heard from him. Something about Lord Luklren’s lost sheep—“I never even asked myself, why are they on the wrong side of the barrier? I just let them through, thinking Lord Luklren would be relieved to have them back—”

  “The thing about Faitoren magic is they can make you believe what you want to believe,” Nora said, meaning to offer a word of understanding, but Dorneng did not look any more at ease.

  “Ilissa made a great fool of Dorneng, right enough, but this is hardly the first time that she has tricked a clever magician,” Aruendiel said, coming toward them, a worried-looking Mrs. Toristel on his heels. “As you well know, Hirizjahkinis.” He frowned, but there was grim excitement in his face. Nora saw that, ironically, the current state of emergency, the opportunity to punish Ilissa, had improved his mood. “Now, Dorneng—”

  Mrs. Toristel was plucking at Nora’s sleeve. “I must pack his clothes,” she said in a lowered voice. “You go into the kitchen and get their provisions ready. Sausages, dried apples, whatever bread we have left—if only I’d known sooner, we could have made more. Hurry!” She gave Nora a small push toward the kitchen.

  “They’re leaving now?” Nora asked, but Mrs. Toristel was already heading for the stairs. Aruendiel was still giving directions to Dorneng while Hirizjahkinis listened. Nora went into the kitchen. Hastily she packed two bags with food, then carried them into the great hall. Hirizjahkinis and Dorneng were bent over a map on the table. There was no sign of Aruendiel. On an impulse, Nora tried the entrance to the tower. It was open. Half-running, she went up the stairs to Aruendiel’s study.

  He stood by the window, running a whetstone over the blade of his sword. The same sword that had killed his wife? Probably. When Nora mounted the last stairs, he looked up, surprised, as though he had forgotten all about her.

  “You’re leaving now?” Nora asked.

  “Yes, of course.” It was the familiar clipped tone, skeptical that anyone could be so dense. “I hope you have not come to beg clemency for the Faitoren,” he added.

  “I want to go, too,” she said.

  “No.”

  “I know enough magic now to be useful.”

  “No, you don’t.” He sighted along the blade, focusing on something outside the window. “And you will be safer here.”

  “I’d be safe enough with you and Hirizjahkinis.”

  “We will have more to keep us busy than pro
tecting you. This is war, not an excursion to Semr.”

  “I know that! I want to help.”

  “It will take more than mending pots to recapture Ilissa.”

  “You know I can do much more than that! You taught me. Besides,” she added hesitantly, “I’d have tactical value beyond my magic skills.”

  “Indeed?” He eased the sword into its sheath and then buckled it around his waist.

  “Yes, you saw how Ilissa went for me in Semr—and what happened with the ring,” Nora said, sounding almost as confident as she wanted to. “Ilissa hates me. You might need a decoy. I could distract her while you counterattacked.”

  Aruendiel’s chilly eyes widened slightly. “Absolutely not,” he said shortly. He regarded Nora for a moment, frowning. “You are not coming with us, and what’s more, you will not leave this castle while we are gone, do you understand?”

  She stared back at him, feeling mutinous. He went on: “Your proposal is absurd, but you’re right about one thing—to her, you’re prey. I’ve deprived her of her prey thrice already, and she would like nothing better than another chance at you. You know that.”

  Reluctantly, Nora nodded.

  “So you are not to stir outside the castle gates,” he said. “Not one step. Is that clear?”

  “Clear enough,” she said, her voice flinty.

  “Good. Now”—he looked around the room—“I have what I need, so let us go down. I will seal up the tower until I return.”

  That was something she had not considered. “Wait! May I take a book to study?”

  “One book,” he said. “No, not Morkin,” he added irritably as she selected a volume. “Vlonicl.”

  Hastily she put down the Morkin, picked up the other book, then started down the stairs. Aruendiel followed her more slowly. From what she could tell, he was setting various magical traps. She waited for him at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I hope you’ll be careful,” she said awkwardly.

  In the dim light of the oil lamp that burned there, his scarred face looked faintly, sardonically amused, but otherwise, he went through the wall as though he had not heard her.

  * * *

  “Honey’s getting low. This woman, Ilissa, she’s the one you escaped from, isn’t she?” Mrs. Toristel asked out of the gloom.

  It was the afternoon of the second endless day since the magicians had left. She and Nora were in the store cellars, taking an inventory of the household’s food stocks. Before his departure, Aruendiel had repeated to Mrs. Toristel the injunction that Nora was not to leave the castle. To Nora’s frustration, the housekeeper had interpreted this instruction more strictly than even Aruendiel, surely, would have thought necessary, and had forbidden Nora to go out of doors at all.

  After two days of virtual confinement in the house, even visiting the cellar was a welcome expedition.

  “That’s right,” Nora said in answer to Mrs. Toristel, holding her candle close to one of the bins where the root vegetables were stacked, layered under soil and straw. But something had been after the carrots; they were strewn half-gnawed around the dirt.

  “And now this. She never gave him so much trouble until you came along.”

  “No, that’s not true,” Nora said. A dubious silence from Mrs. Toristel, so Nora added the thing that she could not stop thinking about: “Ilissa’s the one who made him fall, all those years ago.”

  Mrs. Toristel sniffed. “I knew he’d had a fall. I never liked to ask how. Not my place.” Nor Nora’s place, either, her tone suggested. She added briskly, “Well, he has a lot to pay her back for, then. You don’t know how bad it was for him at first, after that accident. He was like a bundle of cracked sticks. He was lucky to be alive.”

  “Yes,” said Nora. Her hands worked mechanically, picking out the lengths of carrot that had been chewed by small teeth. “Mrs. Toristel,” she said, “what if he doesn’t come back?”

  “What?” Mrs. Toristel half-turned in indignation, her candle sending long shadows scuttling across the cellar walls. “Of course he’ll be back. You don’t think this Ilissa, whoever she thinks she is, could defeat a magician like his lordship?”

  Only if he let her. Only if Aruendiel wanted Ilissa to finish the job that she had tried to do fifty years ago. Nora held the thought up for quick scrutiny, and then thrust it back into the darkness from which it had come.

  “You know what a great magician he is,” Mrs. Toristel went on. “Or you should know, anyway, all the time you spend studying with him.”

  “I know. It’s just—” Nora hesitated. “This all happened so suddenly, it’s unnerving.”

  She was thinking that Hirizjahkinis had the Kavareen to protect her. Why could she not press the battle while Aruendiel directed the campaign behind the lines, preferably from the safety of his own castle? It had occurred to Nora, too late, that she could have given him the New Year’s kiss before he left. She would have unburdened herself, and the kiss would have been only a little worse for wear. But perhaps he no longer wanted it.

  “I wish we knew what was going on,” she said in frustration. “Whether they’ve caught up with Ilissa—if anything has happened yet.”

  “Don’t expect to hear anything until it’s all over,” Mrs. Toristel advised. “Whenever he goes away, it’s as though he vanished from the earth. Unless, of course, there’s something he wants done,” she added broodingly. “Then he’s quick enough to send word.”

  “How?” Nora asked, wanting to be prepared for even an unlikely communication from Aruendiel, and also curious about the spell he used.

  “There’ll be a letter appearing somewhere, and then I’ll have a job puzzling it out. Well, I suppose you could read it to me now, that’s a blessing. If he writes.”

  Wind magic and demi-transformations, Nora thought, remembering the letter from Nansis Abora that had flown to Aruendiel’s study on its own paper wings. Or perhaps he simply caused the letter to be written at his own desk and then moved it to where Mrs. Toristel could find it. Either way, she felt slightly cheered, knowing that a message from Aruendiel could materialize at any time, even if it was only a directive to Mrs. Toristel to sell the yearling heifer.

  * * *

  Instead, the next day there was Hirizjahkinis, alone, knocking imperiously on the castle gates.

  Nora was ready to run outside to greet her, but Mrs. Toristel grabbed her arm. “Remember what the master said.”

  “But it’s Hirizjahkinis.” Mrs. Toristel did not let go. Impatiently, Nora watched from the window as Mr. Toristel led Hirizjahkinis across the courtyard. Once inside, Hirizjahkinis shook the snow from a pair of brilliant red boots, gave Nora a lavish smile, and let herself be embraced.

  “Why did you come back? Where is Aruendiel? Did you find Ilissa?”

  “Aruendiel is still searching for Ilissa,” Hirizjahkinis said. She cast a speculative eye around the room, then nodded graciously at Mrs. Toristel, emerging from the kitchen. “He has tracked her quite a long way, but he has not caught up with her yet.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Nora demanded.

  “I am here for you,” Hirizjahkinis said, with another wide smile. “I am to take you back with me.”

  “Me?” Nora glanced at Mrs. Toristel. “Aruendiel told me specifically that I could not go. That I’d be in the way. That it was too dangerous.”

  “Of course you won’t be in the way.” Hirizjahkinis pulled a small scroll from under the Kavareen’s hide and handed it to her. “What foolishness!”

  “Well, I agree, but he told me not to leave the castle at all,” Nora said as she unfurled the scroll. A few curt lines in Aruendiel’s crabbed script directed her to accompany Hirizjahkinis.

  What seized her attention, however, was the last sentence: “We have need of your talents here.” The acknowledgment of her magical abilities, however terse, made her feel a small surge of pride and hope.

  “He said that Nora shouldn’t go anywhere,” Mrs. Toristel said firmly. “Not even outsi
de.”

  “Well, but he does ask me to come,” Nora said, showing her the note. “He says they need me.”

  Mrs. Toristel glanced at the letter, then waved it away. “It takes me too long to make out his scratch,” she said. “It says for you to leave with her?”

  “Yes, that’s what it says.”

  “Well—” Mrs. Toristel looked hard at Hirizjahkinis. “How is she supposed to travel?”

  “We can fly. I have a lovely mount, just outside. But we should leave as soon as we can, so that we don’t have to travel in the dark.” Hirizjahkinis’s voice was suddenly serious.

  “All right, I’ll get my things.” Nora ran upstairs to put an extra shawl and some knitted undergarments into a small bundle. When she came down again, tying her cloak, Hirizjahkinis was sitting in Aruendiel’s chair at the long table in the great hall. Mrs. Toristel hovered nearby, broadcasting silent disapproval.

  “How quick you are, Nora,” Hirizjahkinis said, rising gracefully. “That is very good. Are you sure you have everything? Yes? Then let us be off.”

  Nora turned to Mrs. Toristel, who was frowning ferociously. “Please don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’ll ask Aruendiel to send a message when I get there.”

  Before Mrs. Toristel could reply, Hirizjahkinis said: “I will make him do it!” She laughed and moved toward the door. “Come, we must hasten, so that he does not have to face that wicked Queen Ilissa all alone.”

  “Right,” Nora said. She smiled at Mrs. Toristel. “Yes, it’s better if Hirizjahkinis gets back quickly.”

  “He said for you not to leave the castle,” Mrs. Toristel said stubbornly. She trailed them outside.

  “But this is Hirizjahkinis. I’ll be safer with her—and with Aruendiel—than I am here. And Aruendiel says that they need me.” Again, Nora savored his words: They had need of her talents.