Points of Departure

by Patricia C. Wrede

  “Perhaps in the Farlands you would,” he said. “Here you would merely sicken, and your luck would be lost.”

  “But I might die?”

  “You might. We cannot deal here with might.”

  He looked as if he had made a joke, but I did not know what it was. I was sure he was wrong. “Cook told me a story once,” I said. “About a magician who invested his luck in a magic ring, and because his luck was in it, it could not be hammered or melted or in any way destroyed. But his enemies labored long years and they made a potion from the most fiery parts of the venom of the most venomous of snakes and spiders and the little mouse no longer than your finger that lives at the borders of Ka Zhir. And they suborned his gardener—”

  Verdialos spilled his tea again. “Wait,” he said. “Wait. That was Tellin. His luck was not invested, Nerissa. It was bound. And that is why the ring was so hard to destroy. And why, when they did destroy it, he died. Not invested. Bound.”

  “Well, then?”

  Verdialos put his empty glass out of harm’s way and looked at me with his hopeful eyes. “Only master magicians can bind their luck. You had better begin soon.”

  I almost said, “Yes, Holy Sir,” and went away. But something in his face made me think first.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not certain. I might die investing my luck or in studying along the way, and then what would happen to the cat? How can I even think of doing something as dangerous as studying magic, until she is safe?”

  “How can she be safe,” said Verdialos, “unless your luck is bound to her?”

  “But, Holy Sir—”

  “My name is Verdialos.” When I did not answer, he added, “Or Dialo, if that’s easier. It’s what my wife calls me.”

  “Your wife!” I wished I had not talked to him so freely.

  “Well?”

  “How could anybody marry a confirmed suicide!”

  “She is one also,” said Verdialos. “Our deaths are tied to one another—in ways I am not allowed to speak of.”

  “Dialo. If I could bind my luck to my cat, so I would die when she did—would your order accept that?”

  “Our order would be honored.”

  “Perhaps we could consult some magician.”

  “I think we could,” said Verdialos, in his unemphatic voice. “The Magician, in fact.”

  I looked at him. “You knew all along!”

  “But you did not.”

  “You ought to have been a philosopher.”

  “I am one,” he said. “And being one, I think it better to visit The Magician after we have set matters in order here. I am required to see you five more times. When can you come again?”

  When I came out it was close to supper time. I was so far north that to use the Levar’s Highway would take me twice as far as I needed to go. I did not know the streets here. Deleon had known a shortcut from Drinker’s Gate to the Levar’s Park that would take me in the proper direction, but I was not sure I could remember it. Besides, someone might have built or taken down a wall or terrace since then, or the people with the fishpond might, since our last visit that way, have gotten a large dog.

  While I hesitated in the street, and the shadows grew longer, an enormous voice called, “Hey, ghostie!”

  This is what the Liavekans call us. It used to make me furious, but I do not think they mean much by it, except that we are lighter than they are. I used to think they were mocking our downfall in Acrivain, but they do not even know about it. Most of them are more stupid than cruel.

  Certainly this was true of the one who had yelled at me. He is called Stone and looks like a statue carved by an apprentice gifted with too much granite and too little sense of proportion. He is a corporal in the Levar’s Guard. I have never seen him without his lieutenant, who is called Rusty. Rusty is not stupid, and if he is cruel he has never shown it. They know me from my wandering days with Deleon, when they often shooed us out of dangerous places and occasionally took us home. Deleon hated them, even when I told him that they were only doing for us what most children would have liked.

  They stopped a decent distance away from me. Liavekans mostly stand too close to you, and Stone still sometimes did if Rusty didn’t prevent him, but Rusty seems to understand how things ought to be done.

  “What are you doing way up here?” Stone asked me.

  “Up where?” I said, before I thought.

  Stone looked confused, and Rusty gave me a perfect you-ought-to-know-better look. My mother would have envied it.

  “Is it very dangerous?” I asked Stone, to make up for confusing him.

  “No,” said Stone, “but the priests are crazy.”

  “They find us a lot of runaways,” said Rusty.

  “Who won’t go home,” said Stone, morosely.

  “Well, I’m not a runaway and I am going home.”

  “How’s that cat?” asked Rusty. He might stand where he belonged, but he would never let you leave when you wanted to. On the other hand, Floradazul liked him.

  “She’s well, thank you.” I looked at him with sudden hope. Perhaps he wanted a cat.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Rusty, and I almost took him by the hand, “that when I’ve lost an arm or a leg and retired, I’d like a cat.”

  If I could have chewed the arm or the leg off then and there, I would have done it. It did not help that he was looking at me as if I ought to have liked what he said.

  Stone snorted. “You’d have to lose your head.”

  We both stared at him.

  “Good evening,” I said, and hurried off in the wrong direction, towards the Street of Thwarted Desire. Stone’s laughter followed me around the corner.

  • • •

  Deleon and I had occasionally had a fancy to kill ourselves in Wizard’s Row, but had never found it by looking for it. We had found ourselves passing through it once or twice, and I promise by any god you care to name that the very pavement was soft to the feet. We might have contrived to smother ourselves in it, but that was the only form of death its cushiony appearance offered us. Usually it was not there at all.

  With Verdialos, I saw it as we came along Healer’s Street. It sat between Bregas Street and the Street of Scales, just as it ought, looking solid and a little dusty. I supposed that, when it was not there, the spring rains could not wash the dust off.

  “It’s not very impressive,” I said, more to my anxious heart than to the priest.

  “Be flattered,” he said dryly. “They do not think us impressionable.”

  We trudged along. I left the looking to Verdialos, since he had not seen fit to tell me to which house we were going.

  “Or perhaps they do,” he said.

  He stopped, so I did too, and we looked at the house on our left. It glowed a brilliant and pulsing green. Its window frames were warped; I looked more closely, and saw that they were made of bones. Skulls sat on the gateposts. Little skeletons of gargoyles grinned from the roof. The gutters held themselves to the walls with bony hands. The house number squirmed and writhed, but remained 17. I did not look too closely; I was afraid that it was made of worms. I knew only a few of the plants growing in the front garden, but these persuaded me that every one of them was poisonous. The hedge was of yew, which startled me. In Acrivain, we plant this tree in the graveyards and make much of it. In Liavek, it is just a tree.

  “Trav, it isn’t funny!” said Verdialos.

  The house made no reply. Verdialos put his hand on my shoulder and we went up the cracked walk to the door. All the flagstones were carved with names, dates, bad poetry, and an occasional startlement: “All things considered, I’d rather be in Ka Zhir,” or “I told you I was sick!” I decided that I would ask the Green priests to cremate my body. The two urns on either side of the green door were not half as disturbing as the gravestones.

  There was a brass gargoyle head in the middle of the brass door. Both were badly tarnished; that is, they were green. Verdialos jerked the gargoyle’s tongue, and I
jumped backwards off the porch, because it opened its eyes and made a face worthy of Isobel at her most malicious.

  “He doesn’t like girls,” it said melodiously.

  “That’s not true,” said Verdialos, “nor is it relevant. I am not bringing him one.”

  “What’s that, then?”

  I had never seen Verdialos flustered. Perhaps he, too, had disliked the worms.

  “Can’t we go to the back door?” I whispered.

  “On no account,” said Verdialos. “The one there is worse.” He thumped the gargoyle atop the head and said, “I’m bringing her to talk to him, Gogo. Now let us in.”

  “He doesn’t like talking.”

  “Does he like money?”

  The gargoyle was silent.

  “I’m bringing him a great deal of money, and he knows it, or he wouldn’t have gotten himself up like this.”

  “He hates women who walk backward,” said the gargoyle, but it flattened itself back into the door, which opened.

  I had expected the inside of the house to be worse than the outside, but it was spacious, light, and airy. There was a great deal of marble and polished wood, but not much ornament.

  A man came down the long central hall. He wore a green robe and tarnished brass bracelets. He looked remarkably like one of my brothers. He was darker than they, but much lighter than most Liavekans. He had pale brown hair like theirs, and was much the same height as Givanni. He seemed about Gillo’s age, except for something in his eyes. He looked like a clerk for the Green priests, which would have explained what was in his eyes, and he looked nothing whatsoever like a wizard.

  “Nerissa,” said Verdialos, “this is Trav, The Magician, whose fame meets itself on the other side of the world. Master, this is Nerissa Benedicti. Together, I think we bring you a challenge.”

  I spread my dusty skirts and bent my knee to him, as I had been taught when I was little. He bowed to me, in the manner of Acrivain. I thought of the yew hedge, and wondered how he knew. Anyone can guess where my family come from, but very few care to know which kingdom thereof, or its customs. The Magician looked at Verdialos.

  “I thought your order forbade magical suicides.”

  This was the first I had heard of that, and I felt as if someone had hit me over the heart.

  “This one,” said Verdialos, “has such a high degree of originality that we have made an exception.”

  I stared at him in outrage, of which he took no notice. I had told him everything, and he had allowed me to believe that, except for the death-tie with his wife, he had done the same for me.

  “You will also make a precedent,” said The Magician.

  “It will be worth it.”

  The Magician smiled. “Tell me about it, then.”

  Verdialos explained the matter.

  “Have you invested your luck?” The Magician asked me.

  “No, my lord.” We have few magicians overseas, and this is what we call them. My father says it is to make up for causing them so much discomfort in other ways.

  “Have you practiced magic at all?”

  “Well, I used to play jokes on my sisters, or try to cover up my scrapes—you know how children do on their birthdays, my lord.” He did not look as if he did, so I went on, “But I’ve never practiced it seriously, thinking to become a magician; I haven’t done even a joke for years. It’s a great indignity to go to bed without your own birthday dinner.”

  He looked less than understanding; it occurred to me that Liavekans might have some other method of celebrating their birthdays. They are peculiar folk. I wished I had not said so much. Verdialos was making me forget how to hold my tongue—and holding his all the while!

  “How long is your luck period?”

  “Four and half hours,” I said, bitterly. This is what comes of being the youngest. Marigand, with twenty-eight hours, might have made a splendid magician, but she preferred giggling and marriage.

  “When is your birthday?”

  “Buds tenth, my lord.”

  “And this but the fifteenth of Wine. Well.” He looked vaguely around the hall and beckoned to us. “Come and sit down. This is not a standing matter.”

  We followed him into a room a little less bare than the hall, with a fountain in the middle. We sat on ivory benches. Each seemed to be all of a piece, and I wondered what beast they were the bones of.

  The Magician looked at me. “I have never bound luck to a living thing,” he told me. “There is no intrinsic reason that it cannot be done, barring the fundamental and idiotic danger, which is just what you want. Now. Four and a half hours is sufficient time for me to bind my luck, supposing I should wish to do so. The question is whether, in four and a half hours, I can bind yours.”

  “I was not certain a method existed,” said Verdialos.

  “A method exists for doing most things,” sand The Magician, dryly. “Most of the methods, however, have as their incidental results occurrences rendering the original object useless. A method does exist whereby a master magician may bind another’s luck for him. It is seldom attempted. Its nature is to destroy both parties. In fact, it usually destroys the younger, because the elder’s instincts provide a protection the younger cannot yet command. If the elder were exceedingly strong and insanely unselfish, he might protect the younger and be destroyed himself. I am strong, but far from unselfish. However, you wish to be destroyed, so all will be well regardless.”

  “Trav,” said Verdialos, “she must not be destroyed except in the manner of her choice. How great is the risk?”

  “Considerable,” said The Magician, “but why should not that, as well as the other, be the manner of her choice?”

  “It lacks elegance,” said Verdialos. “I’m afraid, Nerissa, that you must take the long road—learn magic and do the binding yourself.”

  “I can’t wait that long!”

  “We have ways to make it easier.”

  I was still outraged at his having kept things from me. “Dialo, I’ll be perfectly happy to go back to the old way and throw myself off a bridge.”

  “And what would happen to your cat then?”

  We glared at one another; for the first time, I hated him.

  “I’ll take the cat,” said The Magician, “if I fail to protect you.”

  “You!” said Verdialos. I wasn’t sure whether he was surprised, or just calling The Magician the worst thing he could think of.

  “I have two of my own,” The Magician told me. “Come, see if they have been beaten and starved.”

  He whistled. Two cats darted into the room, skidding a little on the polished floor.

  “This is Chaos,” he told me, “and this is Disorder.”

  Chaos was black; Disorder was every color a cat can be, in wild combination.

  They sniffed my outstretched hand politely and jumped into The Magician’s lap. I saw that he understood the scratching of ears and chin, and how to disengage an inadvertent claw from one’s garment.

  He scooped up Chaos and put him into my lap. I stroked him, and he looked uncomfortable.

  “Thump him lightly with the flat of your hand,” advised The Magician.

  “That’s for dogs, isn’t it?”

  “He’s not a smart cat,” said The Magician.

  I beat lightly on the cat’s flank, as if he were an extremely sensitive drum. He began to purr.

  Verdialos, who must be excused from not liking cats, because they make him wheeze, stood up and said to The Magician, “Well?”

  “Jingle your coins, then,” said The Magician.

  “Ten levars.”

  The Magician’s eyebrows went up, but he said, “Fifteen.”

  “Thirteen.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Thirteen and a half.”

  “You’re madder. Done.”

  “Why mad?”

  “What do you hope to accomplish?”

  “Intellectual beauty,” said Verdialos, quite soberly.

  “That may be ha
d for less.”

  “Not in material accomplishment,” said Verdialos.

  I was rapidly failing to understand what they were talking about. I had begun by thinking that they liked one another, but I was no longer sure.

  The Magician put Disorder on the floor and stood up. “When is your natal period?” he asked me.

  “From just before midday.”

  “And your birth-moment?”

  “Half past the fourth hour after midday.”

  “If you and your mentor would oblige me by being here an hour before midday on the tenth of Buds, I think we shall do very well. Now. At what are you talented?”

  “Nothing,” I said, glaring at him, “or I would not be here.”

  “Can you dance or sing?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Sew? Weave? Paint? Sculpt?”

  “No!”

  “Invent stories?”

  “Well —”

  “Do so, then. Invent one about a cat, if you please.” He gave me a piercing look. “Have you younger sisters?”

  “I am one.”

  He gave me another look. I felt turned inside out. “Invent a story about a cat that you would like to have had one of your sisters invent for you.”

  “What must happen, my lord?”

  “Nothing. But as you invent, consider in your mind what you wish this ritual to accomplish. There must be a cat in it.” He thought for a moment. I was grateful that he looked at his hands while he did it.

  “There must be mice in it also,” he told me. “Also a ball, a camel, a gun, and someone who cuts his hair.”

  “What!”

  “And what do you wish to be the purpose of the magical artifact?”

  “My lord?”

  “What do you wish the purpose of the cat to be? You are creating a magical artifact; it must be able to do something for you that neither you nor it—nor she—could do alone.”

  “It hardly matters.” I wondered how he knew Floradazul was she.

  “Certainly it matters. We must provide for all contingencies. Suppose you were to die before the cat does. She is, after all, a very young cat.”

  And how did he think he knew that? “She’s four years old, my lord.”