“Then I don’t see what the problem might be, my husband,” she said in a tone that clearly meant more than what the words did. I just had no idea what that might be.
“The problem is that I’m trying to make this a period of delight and intimate romance, and the gods themselves seem to be determined to call me to work!” I exploded.
Alya laughed, quite unexpectedly. I looked at her sharply. I was being serious!
“Oh, Min,” she said, gaining control of herself. “Don’t you realize that we could be wading waist-deep through pig shit, and I’d still be having a good time?”
This . . . this was making my head spin more than mere magic. Women were supposed to get all shrieky when their plans went awry . . . weren’t they? My mother and sisters never seemed to tire of the practice. The sound of my mother’s voice when she used that tone still made every male in the house cringe and look for something that needed to be done elsewhere. My youngest sister’s tantrums were legendary.
And Pentandra? She once tried to have the cook at Inarion Academy flogged for preparing a traditional Remeran dish for her with inadequate seasoning. And she was only slightly miffed. If something really went wrong, she had a capacity for projecting emotional violence like a trebuchet. Now that she had a witchstone, it was only a matter of time before we discovered what an arcane hissy-fit might look like.
But Alya? I tried to think back to the time I saw her lose her composure. She had sometimes been rushed, sometimes poorly prepared, and sometimes confused, but even when . . . well, when I had to tell her that the only way to save us both (and the five thousand other people in the castle) was to have sex for an extended period of time with my ex-girlfriend, she had not reacted with what I would normally associate with “feminine hysterics”.
I realized it was one of the reasons I had been attracted to her, and why I loved her. She wasn’t like the other women I knew, in my mind. She was exceptional.
Palia tried very hard not to get between us as she brought the next course - stewed peaches and apples in honey and cream. She placed a small, steaming dish before each of us and then went to get the proper wine.
“Ugh!” she grunted in surprise and disgust.
“What is it?” I asked, alarmed, immediately thinking of the baby.
“Hot fruit,” Alya said, looking disgusted. “I’m not . . . not really fond of it,” she said, looking doubtfully at the bowl. “Min, what do I do? I don’t want her to think I don’t like it!”
It looked - and smelled -wonderful to me. I could detect hints of cinnamon, clove and nutmeg and some kind of exotic liquor in the aroma. I saw a dark dollop of treacle swimming in the middle of the milky dessert that beckoned to me through the steam. I would gladly eat hers, I knew, but I also knew she would regret it later.
“But you don’t like it!” I whispered back.
“I’m sure it’s wonderful, I just don’t like hot fruit!”
“Then . . . then . . .” I struggled to find a solution. “Can’t you wait for it to cool?” I offered, lamely.
She made a face. That was clearly not her preference. “Don’t worry,” she dismissed with a sigh. “I can choke it down. Your son certainly doesn’t seem to care how it tastes to me,” she said, a little resentfully.
“Why don’t you like hot fruit?” I asked, confused. I envisioned some horrible fruit-related secret from her past. Had her first husband been killed by a skillet of fried apples? Had she been badly burned by a fresh berry pie in her youth? I was starting to realize that there was a lot about Alya I didn’t yet know.
“I just don’t,” she said, sharply. “It’s mushy and disgusting, warm and . . . I just never have liked it. Is that . . . is that a problem, my husband?”
“Uh, no,” I said, laughing at myself and my willingness to panic so easily. “But maybe I can help,” I said, remembering what it is I do for a living. I summoned a tiny tendril of power and envisioned the proper rune, after mentally defining the proper area. By surmounting it with the sigil of my desire, I pointed at her bowl . . . and we both watched it freeze solid, so quickly there was still steam hovering over it as it solidified.
“There,” I said, triumphantly. “A little simple thermomantics, and you don’t have to suffer hot fruit.”
She stared at it even more doubtfully. “And . . . I can eat it?”
“It’s just frozen,” I agreed. “Like snow. Perfectly safe.”
She reached out and tapped the milky-white surface with her spoon. Then she dug up the smallest shaving of the icy confection and placed it gingerly between her pretty lips.
Her eyes lit up.
“Oh, Min,” she said, quickly scooping up a larger spoonful. “This is incredible now!” She took two more bites before offering me one. “It just melts in your mouth, like snow! But it’s sweet and creamy, too!”
“It is really good,” I agreed. She beamed at me in delight. “All right, if you keep producing wonders like this,” she decided, “you can drag me off to any old pile of rocks to be seen by any old enchantress you desire!”
I’d like to think she meant it, when she said it. Perhaps if she had known what was coming, she would have put up with the hot stewed peaches instead.
* * *
The Teelvar is a minor branch of the Burine, one of hundreds of deep tributary rivers that gave the Riverlands their name. It was smaller than its mother river by half, width-wise, so our journey immediately took on a more intimate character after we left Jistal. That just meant that the gorgeous late-autumn trees were closer, and the barge traffic more sparse. There really wasn’t much up the Teelvar to travel to.
I cast a water elemental spell to help propel us. In moments we were gliding against the flow without using poles, which made the mate visibly happy. The elemental was a calm one, and seemed content to quietly churn the waters on our stern. It occurred to me after I cast the spell that the legends and stories about river deities could be the result of such elementals getting caught up in the dreams of the humans that lived around the river, and that led me into a haze of thaumaturgical and theurgical speculation that could have lasted all day, had Pilia not summoned me to lunch.
I had spent the morning after dawn writing down every bit of our conversation, as I recalled it, which only slightly annoyed Alya. We lounged on the deck under the canopy sipping mead and wine and snacking between meals. Pilia and the cook seemed determined to feed the baby as much as possible, so there seemed to be food around constantly.
“So how long have you been talking to this other woman?” Alya asked me unexpectedly that afternoon. I sat upright.
“Alya, it’s not like that!”
“I’m sure it isn’t,” she agreed, smoothly. “But since it isn’t, then I’m sure you will indulge me, my husband.”
“You’re jealous? Of an Alka Alon?”
“I’m jealous of another woman,” she corrected. “But here’s your opportunity to end that jealousy.”
I sighed, and sank back into the down cushions. “All right. Her name is Lady Ithalia. She’s one of the ones I saved from a gurvani attack on my way home from the war.”
She looked at me, annoyed. “So why didn’t you mention that?”
I made a sour face. “Well, between getting married, dodging the Censorate, and fleeing for our lives I may have skipped over a few uninteresting details.” I thought of a few other things that I skipped over that Alya would definitely be interested in and quickly moved on. “When the boys and I were returning from Timberwatch, we found a band of gurvani and trolls besieging an Alka Alon treehouse in eastern Alshar. Ithalia was the Alka who contacted me. We attacked the gurvani - funny story, that - and allowed the Alka Alon to escape. They were grateful enough to triple the size of my witchstone.”
“So that’s why your ball is so big now,” she said, giggling at the innuendo.
“They’ve always been that big,” I promised. “I just get to show one off in public, now. But Ithalia was easily the friendliest and most approachable of the A
lka Alon we met that day. I don’t know why, but she wants to help us.”
“And you trust her?” she asked skeptically.
“She has given me no reason not to. I did save her from trolls, so I’m imagining this counts as a boon for that. But . . . well, I don’t know why. exactly, but I get the feeling she’s doing something she’s not supposed to, in talking so frankly with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know very little of Alka Alon politics, but from what she says it sounds like Ithalia’s people are . . . well, like a bunch of Wilderlands peasants compared to most,” I said, teasing her. “I don’t know much more than that, but it sounds like a good idea to go see this sorceress. And there is a hot spring to soak your tired bones in.”
“A hot spring?” she asked, intrigued. The days were getting fairly cold, now, and she hadn’t had a proper bath since the night before our wedding.
“It is said that Ishi herself bathed in it, blessing the spring,” I told her solemnly.
“I don’t care whose arse has been there, I want mine to be next! There were hot springs in Winakur. I went to one, once. Heavenly!”
Well, that settled that.
Captain Turic steered us masterfully up the Teelvar, accepting the speed with which the tireless water elemental propelled us and adjusting accordingly. The mate was beaming, and kept going back to the stern to check and see that the magical construct was still churning along. When Twilight came, I waited for Ithalia to contact me . . . but there was nothing.
“Maybe tomorrow, at dawn,” I told Alya, who wanted to “meet” this unhuman woman who had invited herself along on our honeymoon. “She said the spell didn’t work well for her.”
“Just as well,” she decided. “That roast we had for dinner is sitting on my bladder like a brick, and your son doesn’t want to move off of it, either. I’m going belowdecks to get ready for bed,” she said, as I helped her rise from her nest of cushions. “I’m sure I’ll make a better impression in the morning, anyway.”
“Yes, you are a princess before dawn,” I said, sarcastically. Her reluctance to greet the dawn had become a kind of running joke for us. She made a face.
“Well, if someone wasn’t keeping me up to all hours of the night . . . “
“So your charming morning disposition is my fault?” I teased. “That’s hardly fair!”
“I’m the one who has to carry the baby and you want to discuss ‘fair’?” she snorted. “Let me pee before I stab you in a fit of vapors.” I smiled as she carefully waddled belowdecks, Palia assisting her down the last few stairs. I took a moment to stand out on the deck, examining the winter stars that were starting to rise in the lee of the twilight. Then I took a moment longer, digging out my pipe. Alya didn’t like for me to smoke in the cramped little cabin.
“My lady is resting, my lord,” Palia said quietly, a few moments later. “What time shall I have breakfast ready in the morning?”
“Before dawn, a morsel at least,” I decided. “Perhaps something more substantial afterwards. Uh, Palia, can I ask you a question? Do you believe in the gods?”
The question took the servant by surprise. “The gods, my lord? Aye. I pray to Faralasa.”
“Faralasa? I’ve not heard of her.”
“She is a folk god amongst the Remeran peasantry,” she supplied. “Lady Dawn, in your language. She is . . . well, she brings the joy of the new day,” she said, simply.
“Would you still believe in her, if she did not exist?” I asked, curious.
Palia smiled. “My lord, how could the dawn not exist? And if it did not, would we?”
I had no compelling answer for that. I didn’t know much about theurgy or theology, but I knew that divinities who were tied up with physical phenomenon were different, somehow, than those whose domains were mired in abstract thought.
“But has Faralasa manifested herself before you? Before your people? In person?”
“Every morn, without fail, my lord,” she said, serenely.
It was hard to argue with that kind of convenience. But it also offered an intriguing perspective about the different ways the Alka and the humani viewed divinity.
I had read about six or seven of the major Alka Alon epics, the best picture we had of their culture and civilization. Their gods were prominent players in them, but as I recalled they were treated much differently than we treated ours. Less awe, more respect, less worship, more reverence. They each had very distinct and individual personalities, but their associations were with the most abstract and conceptual of things: sorrow, amusement, foresight, regret, meetings and partings, laughter and about nine hundred different kinds of “song”.
Compared to the human gods, well . . . Briga was the fiery Goddess of Wisdom in the Narasi divine family . . . but she also made shit burn. When the Alka Alon god Vatragand, ostensibly the God of Lightning and Wit made war on his brother-in-law, Celaran, the God of Contemplative Poetry, Vatragand didn’t use lightning bolts or tempests. He hired an army and borrowed a shadowy duelist demi-god from his uncle to invest the Castle of Patient Singing. The destruction that ensued was, literally, epic, but apart from some fairly straightforward magic and a lot of intricate verse, nothing particularly divine.
Of course, something is undoubtedly lost in the translation, but if Duin the Destroyer wanted to level a fortress, he used his divine powers of war and storm and would get the job done. And had. The Alkan gods were, by comparison, no greater than Alkan lords.
While that gave me plenty of metaphysics, magic and history to contemplate in a pleasant haze of apple brandy that night, it all vanished with the chill of winter when I went below to our cabin and my very warm wife.
A man finds divinity where he seeks it.
“A bottle savored for purest lust, which brings the marriage fire!”
Palia awakened us both as instructed before dawn, and while Alya was not cheerful about it she was at least enthusiastic about meeting the apparition of Ithalia. By the time we had made our way up to the canopy, there was already a fire blazing in the little stove and a kettle of water boiling for our morning tea.
Good morn, Master Minalan, I heard, before I saw her. You make progress up the Teelvar, I see.
I just checked on the elementals, I agreed. Although my pilot was curious as to just where we might be landing.
Your people call the place Gilasfar, she said. It is a small settlement, but not undeveloped. From there you should be able to depart overland to the forest ruins.
“Palia, have the pilot land at Gilasfar,” I called out, waiting only for her acknowledgement before I returned to the conversation. Ithalia, I would like to present to you my wife, Lady Alya.
If you’ve never startled an Alka Alon, I highly recommend it. Alya had been bundled up in a thick wool mantle, and Palia had placed heated furs around her as she took her tea. Except for her pink nose and cheeks, she could have been a pile of laundry to a casual glance. Ithalia quickly recovered her composure and made a point of bowing to my wife, excusing her from returning the courtesy.
My lady, she said, shifting her perspective to engage her as well. Master Minalan has spoken of you often.
“You have only recently come into our discussions,” Alya said, a little self-consciously. “But then he has been busy.”
“There’s a lot to keep track of,” I agreed. “Ithalia, could your spell extend to speech as well? It might be easier for conversation.”
“My pleasure, Master Minalan,” she said, her voice erupting into the air like frozen bells of silver. “I wish to reassure you, my lady, that we have only your best interests at heart when we wish to examine you properly. I promise no harm will come to either you or your babe.”
“That is comforting,” Alya said, unconvincingly. “The Tree Folk have never been known as those who would cause harm. Yet . . . this is magic, we’re talking about,” she finished, quietly. “I’ve seen what magic can do . . . and I’m just the smallest bit concerned.”
“Alya!” I interjected, “I’ve done at least two scans a day--”
“That’s the thing,” she snorted, “I’ve got to take your word for it that our child is fine, yet here is this Tree Lady telling me there might be cause for concern. Both of you are magically wise. But should I be concerned? Or not?”
“I’ve been checking the baby to make sure there was no cause for concern,” I answered as gently as I could. “Lady Ithalia feels that there may be some effects worthy of study, especially at this early stage. It is not a specific worry or concern, merely a chance to take a very close and thoughtful look.”
“Hrmph,” she said, making a face. “I suppose I understand. And this enchanted hot spring that is supposed in this tower . . .”
“It’s a ruin, actually,” Lady Ithalia said. “One of the ancient homes of my kindred in this realm. It fell long ago, before our peoples met, but it is beautiful even in its destruction. The land is pleasant and warm, warded against trouble by my . . . my grandmother,” she said.
The Spellmonger's Honeymoon: A Spellmonger Novella (The Spellmonger Series) Page 6