The stuff looked thick and oily, a brown so dark it was almost black. It smelled spicy and very slightly bitter, but not at all unpleasant. She didn’t recognize it.
The obvious assumption was that something brewing in a wizard’s workshop was a spell of some sort, but this smelled more like food. Ithanalin didn’t cook-Yara didn’t allow it, due to an unfortunate incident a few years before Kilisha’s arrival-but perhaps this might still be something other than a spell. Kilisha drew her athame and held it out cautiously toward the bowl to check.
The point of the knife glowed faintly blue, and she could feel magic in the air. Whatever was in that bowl was definitely magical.
So it was a spell, and one she didn’t recognize.
“Oh, blast,” she said.
She sheathed her dagger and stared at the bowl for a moment, then glanced at the book of spells on the shelf above the workbench. She had no idea which of them might have produced this stuff, and simply going through and looking at the ingredients would not tell her-magic didn’t work that way; the dark goo might bear no resemblance at all to its ingredients.
It didn’t look dangerous, at least not yet, but she really needed to restore Ithanalin to health quickly, before that concoction set off some other weird spell, or blew up, or went bad.
It would probably be strongly advisable to restore him before that lamp ran out of oil, too. She peered into the reservoir; it looked fairly full.
She needed to find the missing furniture and get it back here as soon as she could. She took a final glance around, then hurried back out to the street, calling a quick farewell to the mirror.
She’d already spent the whole morning and half the afternoon tracking down cat’s blood, an hour or more consulting the mirror and the books of spells, and she was not looking forward to spending the rest of the day hunting furniture...
She had reached the middle of the street when she realized that the cat’s blood was still on her belt. She did not want to risk spilling it, after all the trouble she had gone to to obtain it. She sighed again, and trudged back into Ithanalin’s workshop, where she placed the vial of blood in a rack, then looked around again.
Was there anything else she was forgetting?
Of course there was. Yara and the children. What would they think, when they came home and found Ithanalin petrified and the furniture gone?
She found a piece of paper and wrote a note-Yara and Telleth could read, and Lirrin was learning.
“Master’s spell went wrong,” she wrote. “Am seeking ingredients for antidote. Mirror is enchanted, can answer questions. Back as soon as I can be.” She signed it, “Kilisha, app.”
Just as she finished something chimed-the brass bowl on the tripod had rung like a bell. She looked at it, startled.
It looked exactly the same-the lamp was burning, the brown goo was bubbling, and the spicy smell was stronger than ever.
Presumably the chime was some part of the enchantment; probably it was a signal that something was ready, or something needed to be done to continue the spell. Unfortunately, Kilisha had no idea what it meant or what should be done. She stood there for a moment, her note in one hand, staring at the bowl and trying to decide what to do.
Eventually she decided that the best thing she could do, in her present state of ignorance, was to leave the thing completely alone and hope for the best while she did everything she could to restore her master. If the brass bowl exploded or started spewing dragons she would deal with it then. For now, she wanted to leave her note and get on with the furniture hunting.
She considered adding a line or two advising Yara to leave the lamp, tripod, and bowl alone, but surely a wizard’s wife would have the sense to do that without being told by a mere apprentice. The note would be fine as it was.
She thought about where to post it, and for a moment she considered leaving it on Ithanalin’s lap, but she decided that would be disrespectful. Instead, she laid it carefully on the floor just inside the front door.
Then she stepped out into the street, closed the door cautiously behind her, and looked around. She wanted to recover the furniture-but where should she start?
She was on Wizard Street, in one of those ill-defined parts of the city that weren’t really part of any recognized district-the magistrates said this was part of Lakeshore, but no one else thought so. Ithanalin’s shop was on the north side of the street, in the middle of a long block. Two blocks to the north-a little over a hundred yards-was the East Road, which ran through the center of the city from just below the Fortress to the market at Eastgate; a couple of blocks beyond that was Wizard Street again, as it looped back on itself half a mile to the east, making a U around Eastgate Circle.
To the west Wizard Street ran through the valley between Center City and Highside and down to the shipyards, then wound its way southeast to Wargate.
A hundred feet to the east and across the street was the entrance to Not Quite Street-so named because it stopped two blocks short of the East Road at this end, and one block short of Cross Avenue at the other.
Kilisha could see a good two hundred yards in either direction-the street was surprisingly uncrowded for this time of day- and saw nothing out of the ordinary. No end tables or couches were anywhere to be seen, nor any crowds of curious bystanders that animated furniture might have attracted.
She trotted quickly over and peered down Not Quite Street, and saw nothing down that way.
She had come home, she remembered, along Wizard Street- Illure’s little temple was up to the east, toward Eastgate. She hadn’t seen any furniture along that route.
Walking furniture would attract attention, she thought; why weren’t there crowds around the missing pieces?
Frowning, she went back toward Ithanalin’s shop, but stopped at the shop next door and rang the bell.
Nissitha the Seer was not Kilisha’s idea of the perfect neighbor, but she could certainly be worse; she was a fortune-teller, and Ithanalin suspected her of being a fraud. She spent a good bit of her time, when no customers were expected, gossiping in the courtyard out back, but never offered to help out with anyone’s chores. She had refused to mind Pirra a few weeks back, when Yara had been out somewhere with Telleth and Lirrin, and Ithanalin had wanted Kilisha to help with a spell. She kept no chickens or other livestock-just a pampered long-haired black cat. And she made stupid jokes about the supposed similarities between her own talents and Ithanalin’s.
But she didn’t intrude, didn’t make noise other than her courtyard chatter, and kept her place clean.
The door opened, and Nissitha looked down her long nose at Kilisha. The Seer’s long black hair hung loose in curls and ringlets.
“Oh, hello, Kilisha,” she said. “Did you have a question? I’m afraid I don’t work for free for anyone, but I could give you a discount. Is it a boy?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Kilisha said. “I was wondering if you’d seen our furniture.”
Nissitha blinked at her. “Your furniture?”
“Yes.” Kilisha hesitated, then explained. “There’s been an accident, and some of our furniture was inadvertently brought to life, and it got loose. I was wondering whether you saw which way it went.”
“I’m afraid not,” Nissitha said, staring at the apprentice. “When did this happen?”
“I’m not sure exactly,” Kilisha said. “Sometime today. A tax collector interrupted a spell.”
“Oh!” Sudden comprehension dawned on Nissitha’s face. “Oh, I’m afraid I was hiding upstairs. I saw the tax collector coming, you see, and I just really didn’t want to be bothered.”
“You didn’t want to pay,” Kilisha said.
“I didn’t want to pay,” Nissitha admitted with a smile.
“He’ll come back until he catches you, you know,” Kilisha said.
Nissitha sighed. “I suppose so,” she said, “but I’m in no hurry to be caught.”
Kilisha nodded-then stopped.
What if the fu
rniture was in no hurry to be caught? She’d been assuming it had wandered off more or less at random, but what if it was deliberately hiding from her?
That might make the task of restoring Ithanalin to life considerably more difficult than she had anticipated.
“Listen,” she said, “if you see any animated furniture, let me know, please? It’s very important. I’ll owe you a favor if you help me-I know I’m only an apprentice, but I do know a few spells.”
Nissitha cocked her head to one side. “Oh?”
“Yes. It’s not worth anything to anyone else, really-I mean, no more than any animated furniture-but really, it’s very important to me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Thank you.” Kilisha bobbed in a polite half-bow, then turned away and looked up and down the street.
The furniture had been scared, the mirror said-or at least startled. And it didn’t remember it had been Ithanalin. Any given piece might not remember anything. It might not realize that Ithanalin’s shop was its home.
So where would it go?
A rag rug, a couch, an end table......
Behind her, Nissitha shrugged and closed her door.
Furniture, Kilisha said to herself. Where would furniture go to hide?
The rag rug surely couldn’t hump along very fast, so it would have tried to hide, it wouldn’t just run away. It would probably have tried to slide under something, and the spoon might have done that, too. None of the other items would fit under doors, or down ratholes, or anywhere awful, but the spoon could be anywhere.
The end table had fairly long, thin legs-it could probably move pretty quickly. The bench’s legs were shorter, but straight and strong, and it had a longer... body? Well, it was a body now. Those two might have run for it, in which case they would probably have headed east on Wizard Street.
If they’d taken the right turn when Wizard Street crossed the East Road, they could have run right out the city gate by now.
Except that if they had gone east, Kilisha should have seen some evidence of it, and she had not.
Well, then, perhaps they went west.
The couch and the coatrack had short, curving legs; Kilisha imagined them moving like short-legged dogs, dashing and dodg-uig rather than running flat-out. They might have taken any of the corners; they might be anywhere.
The chair had decent legs, but it would be hobbled by the cross braces; Kilisha couldn’t guess how it would move or what it would do.
And the dish-how could a bowl move at all?
It could roll, she supposed, but how far could it get that way?
If it were rolling, it would tend to go downhill-and that meant west, down Wizard Street toward the shipyards.
That would be the one to start with, she thought. The others might come home on their own, they might be almost anywhere, she might need to use magic to find them, but the bowl-that should be fairly easy to find.
And she had to find it before it was broken, or before someone decided to keep it.
She turned and headed west at a brisk trot.
Chapter Five
It was very hard to imagine a bowl rolling all the way across Cross Avenue without being stepped on, kicked, or otherwise battered, but Kilisha had found no trace of the missing dish anywhere in the first three blocks of her search, so she had to assume it had somehow managed it. Animated objects could be amazingly clever and persistent, as she well knew; they never tired, the way living creatures did, and they couldn’t be distracted by hunger or other discomforts. She hurried across the broad avenue, then stopped abruptly.
She had heard something-something that might have been the sound of a spoon hitting a bowl. That wasn’t a sound one ordinarily heard outside a kitchen. It was followed by a man’s voice, swearing.
The oaths meant trouble. Kilisha winced, then turned, trying to locate the source.
The swearing continued, and Kilisha determined that it was coming from a little way south on Cross Avenue. She hurried in that direction.
“...stop struggling, blast you!” she heard, followed by the sound of something whacking flesh.
That might not be any of the lost furnishings, but it sounded like something that needed investigation, in any case. Ordinarily she might have left it to older, wiser heads than her own, but it might involve one of her master’s pieces.
The voice was coming, she realized, from the covered entryway of a tavern on the west side of the avenue, half a block from the intersection with Wizard Street. A sort of small porch made by cutting doorways through the two sides of an immense barrel sheltered the tavern’s doorway while advertising the business, and that echoing barrel had served to amplify the sounds that had attracted her attention.
It was a remarkable piece of good fortune, if that was indeed where her quarry had gone, and as she hurried toward the tavern she murmured a quick prayer of gratitude to any gods who might have been involved.
She reached the outer doorway and peered into the barrel.
A man stood there, clutching a bowl under one arm and a wooden spoon in his other hand-but the spoon was writhing about wildly, twisting and bending, slapping at the man’s arm. He was holding that arm straight out, holding the spoon as far from his body as he could; presumably it had tried to strike at other portions of his anatomy, as well.
These were unquestionably the bowl and spoon Kilisha was looking for; although one wooden spoon looked much like any other, and the earthenware bowl was undistinguished, how many animated wooden spoons were on the streets of Ethshar on this particular afternoon?
And this man did not look at all like a wizard; he was dressed in a workingman’s brown woolen tunic and leather breeches, both filled out by an overlarge belly, and he had more hair in his close-trimmed beard than atop his head.
“Hold still! I’m not going to hurt you, confound it!”
“Excuse me,” Kilisha said, “but I believe that’s mine.”
The man started; he had plainly been too involved with his struggle to notice her arrival. Now he turned to stare at her.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“My name is Kilisha the Apprentice,” she said, her hand dropping to the hilt of her athame. “Apprentice wizard.”
The man stared at her a moment longer before speaking, and Kilisha was uncomfortably aware of her own rather drab and un-imposing appearance. Ithanalin had the physical presence to impress his customers, and Kilisha had long known that she did not- at least, not yet; she hoped it would come with age.
“Then why aren’t you in a wizard’s robe?” he asked.
“Because I wasn’t dealing with customers,” she snapped. “I was working, and those-” she drew her dagger and pointed it at the bowl and spoon “-escaped from my master’s house.”
The man looked down at the bowl. The spoon was no longer struggling; it seemed to be listening.
“How do I know they’re really yours?” he asked. “I found them on the street.”
“I told you, they escaped.”
“But how do I know they escaped from you? You don’t look like a wizard. That dagger doesn’t prove anything!”
Kilisha, who had already had far more trouble than she expected that day, and who knew much more still lay ahead, almost growled. She should have prepared...
No, she told herself, she shouldn’t need to prove anything- but in fact, she could demonstrate that she was a wizard. She had a few ingredients in the pouch on her belt. She could show this troublesome person a few things. Fendel’s Spectacular Illusion required dragon’s blood, which was too expensive to waste like that, but she had a chip of chrysolite she could use to conjure the Yellow Cloud...
But that would cover almost the entire width of the street, and hide everything for a minute or so, and he might turn and run, and she wouldn’t be able to see any better than he could. She tried to think what else she had available.
Thrindle’s Combustion, of course. Her free hand dropped to the pouch, and with the sk
ill born of long practice she used two fingers to pop the lid off her vial of brimstone. She made a gesture and spoke a word, and an inch or so of the hem of the man’s tunic suddenly burst into flame.
Startled, he slapped at it and quickly extinguished the flames- but to Kilisha’s surprise and annoyance, he did not drop the bowl or spoon.
As he beat out the embers, she said, “Do you really want to argue with a wizard, a member in good standing of the Guild?” she said. “You admit those things aren’t yours-why should you think they aren’t mine?”
“Because they’re valuable,” the man said, frowning as he tugged at the blackened, crumbling fabric. “You’re just an apprentice, you said so yourself. I found them, and I was planning to sell them. They were just lying in the street-”
“They were not,” Kilisha snapped. “They were moving. That’s how you knew they were worth stealing.”
“It wasn’t stealing!” the man protested, looking up as he brushed ash from his breeches. “You’re the one trying to steal them!”
“They’re mine,” Kilisha said. “Or my master’s, at any rate.”
“Prove it! Fine, you’re a wizard, but how do I know you aren’t trying to steal these from the wizard who really owns them?”
Kilisha frowned, amazed at the man’s stubbornness. How in the World was she supposed to prove it? There was no Spell of True Ownership on them, no names written on them, no distinctive marks she could point out-they were a completely ordinary bowl and spoon that happened to have parts of Ithanalin’s soul in them.
“Give them to me, and I’ll show you,” she said, sheathing her athame and holding out a hand.
She had no way of proving ownership. Her actual plan was to simply grab them and run, and hope that she could lose the man in the streets, or at least get back to the shop before he caught her. He was considerably larger than she was, but he didn’t look particularly fast or agile-and if he had any sense, he would not want to anger any wizard.
The man looked from her to the spoon, then back.
“Here,” he said, holding it out. “I’ll hold onto the bowl until you prove they’re yours.”
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