Points of Departure

by Patricia C. Wrede

  “I was. I am the Ka’Riatha; I came to see what the new Serenity of this order was like.”

  “Have you come to a conclusion?” Verdialos said.

  Granny noted that, though his expression had shown recognition and comprehension when she gave her title, he had not altered his manner. “You’ll do, I think,” she replied.

  “I expect I’ll have to, mistress,” Verdialos said. “What else can I do for you?”

  “You can call me Granny; most people do,” Granny said. “And you can tell me which of your members is advising Nerissa Benedicti. There are some things he should know.”

  Verdialos laughed. “There are any number of things he should know, as I am all too well aware. Nerissa is one of my students.”

  “I should have guessed,” Granny said. “Those dratted Benedictis have a knack for complicating everything.”

  “Nerissa is a very promising young woman.”

  “If I hadn’t known that, I wouldn’t have given her a cat,” Granny snapped. “I suppose you’re the one the player has been talking to, as well. The one named Calla.”

  “I know her.” Verdialos looked at Granny. “Forgive me, but what is your interest in Nerissa? I understood that the Ka’Riatha concerned herself mainly with S’Rians.”

  “Quite true. The Benedictis are one of the exceptions, for a number of reasons. The chief one is that they’re family.”

  “Family? Nerissa is related to you?”

  “She’s my great-great-great-granddaughter on her mother’s side,” Granny informed him. “Which is one of the things you ought to know about her.”

  Verdialos stared. After a moment, he began to laugh. “Are you sure it’s the Benedictis who have a knack for complicating things?” he asked when he could control himself. “I seem to have done a remarkably good job of it myself.”

  “Oh, it’s the Benedictis, all right,” Granny said. “The Benedictis and their blithering maniac of a god, Acrilat. That’s the other thing I came to tell you. You’ve gotten Nerissa out from under Acrilat’s influence, which was better done than you may realize. See that she stays that way.”

  “I’d try in any case,” Verdialos said. “But there’s not much I can do about a god.”

  “Acrilat’s not much of a god, to my way of thinking. One more thing: whose idea was it to take Nerissa to her brother’s play?”

  “Is there anything you don’t know?” Verdialos said, looking considerably startled.

  “Quite a bit,” Granny said, “or I wouldn’t be standing here asking questions. Who thought of taking Nerissa to that play?”

  Verdialos studied her for a moment. “Calla suggested it,” he said finally. “But I’m the one who’s taking her. Is there a problem?”

  “In a way,” Granny said absently. Of course it had been Calla; Calla, the player who was so sure of herself, who disliked watching people do things she thought were foolish, who liked to meddle. Calla was the last and cleverest link in the chain Acrilat had formed to connect Deleon and the Desert Mouse with Nerissa Benedicti and the rest of that troublesome family. And it would all come together on the opening night of Deleon’s play. Granny contemplated the arrangement with horrified fascination. How had she missed seeing any of this six months ago, when she thought she had sent Acrilat packing for good?

  “What kind of problem?” Verdialos said with an exasperated patience that drew Granny’s attention back to him. Granny studied Verdialos for a moment, wondering whether to tell him that the rest of the Benedicti family would also be attending the play. She decided against it; she didn’t know how he would react to the news and the Benedictis were more her business than his anyway. And she certainly wasn’t going to warn him about Acrilat. She contented herself with saying, “The main problem’s mine. But I think you’ll want to keep a sharp eye on Nerissa; she may be in for something of a shock.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve seen the rehearsals.”

  Verdialos looked thoughtful. “I see. Have you any other inflammable information to give me?”

  Granny chuckled. “Not today. I’ll look forward to seeing you and Nerissa and Jehane at that play. Good day to you, Serenity.”

  She left Verdialos pondering, and threaded her way back through the building to the street. From the House of Responsible Life, she returned home to her cats, her weaving, and her preparations. She went first to her loom.

  The hanging she had begun as part of her divination ritual was only half-finished. The crazed blue-and-white yarn, held in place by the pale linen, fanned out across a warp of alternating dark blue and shimmering gold, nearly hiding it from sight in some places. The thin green silk made attractive accents here and there, but if the pattern of the weaving kept on, it, too, would be buried under the blue-and-white wool. Granny studied the hanging with care, knowing that what she was contemplating was even riskier than facing Acrilat would be. Layering one spell over another was tricky enough when the first was complete; with the pattern only half-finished, the result could be disastrous. But she could not see a reasonable alternative.

  Granny shooed the cats out of the cottage and closed and locked the door behind them. She set her cane aside and, for the second time in two weeks, chalked a diagram on the floor around her loom. In its center, immediately under the half-finished weaving, she drew a curving symbol, extending and reshaping the lines of the partly finished design above. Then she rose and went to the shelves where she stored her threads.

  Weaving a pattern in her mind, she reached out for the spool she knew rested at the back of the top shelf, being careful not to touch any of the other threads. Her right hand groped for a moment, and a wave of heat swept over her; then her fingers closed around the one she wanted and drew it out into the light. It was a bicolored yarn, one strand of dark blue wool and one in an even darker crimson twining inextricably around each other. Granny had spun it herself, long ago when she was first made Ka’Riatha, mingling the crimson of S’Rian and the blue of Liavek the way the two peoples had mingled, to the benefit of both. She’d used the thread sparingly in the years since; she didn’t like taking chances with it unless she had to.

  As she lifted the spool, a strand of decorative purple fluff caught on the end of it. Granny frowned, then shrugged. She’d have to use it somewhere, now that she had it, but there wasn’t enough of it to affect the pattern much. She crossed to the loom and began winding the purple thread and the bicolor onto bobbins.

  The week that followed was a trying one. Granny spent much of her time at her loom, painstakingly coaxing the spell-driven shape of the hanging into the pattern she had chosen. In the brief intervals between work, she tried not to think about the possible consequences if her choice were wrong. But Acrilat had fooled her once already, and even now she had no way to be sure she had discovered all she needed to know.

  Slowly, the tapestry neared completion. The block of blue-and-white variegated wool broke apart in a swirl of dark blue and crimson. The decorative fluff had an unexpectedly strong core, and made a nice accent at the apex of the pattern. From there, the variegated wool vanished, leaving the other threads to interweave in a harmonious balance. On the afternoon of the day Deleon’s play opened, Granny finished the last of the weaving and cut it free of the loom.

  The overall effect of the woven pattern was startling, but not unpleasant. Grimly, Granny tied off all but the last few warp threads and rolled the hanging up. She had a map; now she would have to get Acrilat to follow it. And hope that she had not missed anything this time, that she had made her map complete… She shook her head to dismiss the doubts; they would only distract her, and she would need all her concentration tonight. Quickly but with care, she dressed in a caftan of deep crimson and gold she had made with her own hands. Then, with her cane in her hand and the rolled-up hanging under her arm, she set off for the Desert Mouse.

  She arrived well before the play was scheduled to begin. She allowed the greeter to show her to her seat, but as soon as his back was turne
d she rose and quietly slipped backstage. There, as she had expected, she found the stage magician Naril, deep in preparations for the spells he would use in the evening’s performance. He looked up at the rap of her cane.

  “Ka’Riatha!” Naril said. He palmed his forehead in greeting and scrambled to his feet. “How may I serve you?” he asked in a harried tone.

  “I want you to make some changes in the spells you’re using in this play,” Granny replied bluntly.

  “I can’t,” the stage magician said with a touch of desperation. “I have an agreement with Thrae…she’s very particular about how things should look.”

  “Don’t panic, child, I don’t want you to alter anything your director is likely to notice.”

  “What do you want, then?” Naril asked warily.

  “Look here.” Granny sketched a pattern in the air with the tip of her cane. Green light trailed behind the cane tip, leaving a brilliant after-image that burned the eyes. “I want you to add that to this diagram of yours. Here.” The cane stabbed down in the center of the smudged circle Naril had been occupied in drawing.

  Naril bent forward, concentrating, and Granny noted with pleasure that his diffidence was gone. “A wave breaking?” he muttered to himself. “In that position…” He looked up in puzzlement. “I’ll do it, if you like, but it doesn’t do anything!”

  “You let me worry about that,” Granny said. “And mind you don’t use it until the last act.”

  Naril nodded, bewildered but obedient, and Granny left. The theater was filling up now, and as she walked toward her seat in the front row, she scanned the audience. She recognized a number of them, but the only other wizard she spotted was Aritoli ola Silba. The self-styled Advisor to Patrons of the Arts was seated at one end of the first row and chatting comfortably with a thin, fluffy-haired man beside him; he’d apparently found a way around the little problem he’d had with his eyesight a few weeks previously. Granny snorted. She did not have a particularly high opinion of the foppish ola Silba.

  Verdialos, Nerissa, and Jehane were already seated in the second row. The rest of the Benedictis were in the third row, their pale skin and yellow hair a startling contrast to the dark Liavekans around them. Verdialos had seen them; he gave Granny a reproachful look as she made her way to her seat in the center of the front row. She nodded to him and settled into her seat as the curtain opened.

  The first two acts had little to do with the summoning of Acrilat that Granny anticipated, but as the scenes flowed by, her lips tightened. Deleon had drawn heavily on his experiences with his own family in writing the play, and the results were disturbing. Granny recognized the personalities of most of the characters at once, and she strongly suspected that many of the incidents were straightforward examples of the way Marigand Benedicti had been raising her children. Granny was appalled by the sheer misery the play implied had been the normal state of affairs in the Benedicti household. No wonder Deleon had run away; no wonder Nerissa had joined a church of suicides; no wonder Jehane’s face had worry-lines. And no wonder Acrilat had had so little difficulty in using the rest of the Benedictis for his own purposes.

  The third act arrived at last. As Deleon began his invocation, Granny let the hanging she had woven unroll halfway across her lap. She drew on her birth luck and waited. Then Deleon’s speech ended. The fire and light of the sorcerous duel leaped into life around him. And with the eerie blue fire and the thundering snowstorm came the ominous, crackling power of Acrilat.

  The flames on the stage rose and fell hypnotically, calling all who saw them to the strange and terrible delights that Acrilat offered. Suddenly the light emanating from the stage changed. Granny’s eyes widened; some wizard in the audience must have spotted Acrilat’s trick and was trying to alter the hypnotic patterns enough to eliminate their effect. The idea was a good one, but alone the wizard did not have enough power to defeat a spell backed by a god.

  Granny reached out with a corner of her mind and poured her own luck into the other wizard’s spell. She reinforced and strengthened his efforts, then added her knowledge of Acrilat to the subtle spell-web. The compulsion in the flickering light withered, and Granny felt an instant of relief. At least she would not have to worry about untangling an audience of madmen when the play ended.

  The illusionary flames became bluer as the blizzard reached its peak; Acrilat did not seem to have noticed that they had lost their power to command. Granny tensed. Then, as Acrilat attempted to manifest itself, Granny reached out with her birth luck, the source of all her wizardry. She caught the thread she had had Naril insert into the stage spells, the image of the design she had so painstakingly woven, and pulled. At the same time, she snapped the hanging with one hand. The thread of magic unrolled invisibly across the stage as the hanging unrolled across her lap, blocking Acrilat’s materialization.

  The stage exploded in light as Acrilat howled Its anger and frustration, but Granny’s spell did not weaken. Acrilat could not come through, and It would not go back. All It could do was to increase the sound and fury of the illusionary blizzard on stage. Fortunately, the sorcerous duel was still going on, so the audience would think Acrilat’s extravagances part of the play. Most of the audience, anyway; from the corner of her eye Granny saw Aritoli ola Silba frown and lean forward. Then she was distracted by an insidious whisper in the back of her mind.

  “You don’t need to keep me out,” the mental voice murmured. “I am Acrilat; let me in. I can give you wonderful things, things beyond your strangest dreaming.”

  “I don’t want strange things,” Granny thought at the murmuring voice. “Therefore your offer is no use to me.”

  “I am Acrilat; I can give you whatever you want.”

  “True,” Granny said. Her forefinger traced one of the swirls in the weaving, following it inexorably to the apex of the pattern. “I want you to stay out of Liavek; you are perfectly capable of doing so. Give me that.”

  Acrilat paused. “You are trying to confuse us.”

  “Nonsense!” Granny replied. “You’re in Liavek. Liavek is more logical than Acrivain; I’m simply being logical.”

  “Liavek is mine,” the mad god said emphatically.

  Granny winced, but her fingers continued moving along the ridges of the hanging in her lap, following one after another to the unavoidable peak where the variegated wool vanished from the pattern. “Acrivain is yours,” she said steadily. “Liavek is nothing like Acrivain. You have no temple in Liavek, no servants here. Liavek is not yours.”

  “Liavek is Ours!” Acrilat cried. “As Acrivain is Ours!”

  “You can’t make Liavek yours by shouting that it belongs to you. You don’t belong here, and you might as well face it and go home.”

  Acrilat’s mental voice turned suddenly smooth and reasonable. “You say that you do not want what I have to offer. What of others? You cannot keep Me out if they want Me.”

  “They don’t,” Granny contradicted. “But it makes more sense to show you than to sit here arguing all night.” Drawing on her birth luck, she threw her mind like a shuttle down the row of spectators, dragging Acrilat’s attention with her like a strand of warp. She stopped at Aritoli ola Silba, Advisor to Patrons of the Arts. Sarcastic dandy though he was, Granny was reasonably sure that ola Silba would not allow even a god to dictate his opinions. “Look here,” she thought to Acrilat, and pointed the mad god’s attention at Aritoli ola Silba’s mind.

  She saw at once that she had chosen better than she realized; it was ola Silba who had tried to disrupt Acrilat’s hypnotic compulsion earlier. The critic was methodically considering the strange attack with part of his mind; the rest was systematically analyzing the play. Acrilat recoiled from the neat chains of reasoning, and ola Silba started. “Who’s there?” he thought at the two observers. “What do you want?”

  “I want to give, and take, and mold to my liking all things that are mine,” Acrilat said. “I will be and change and be changed, and you will metamorphose, and be metamo
rphosed.”

  “I beg your pardon?” ola Silba replied uneasily. “I’m afraid that didn’t make much sense to me.”

  “Of course it didn’t make sense,” Granny put in. “It’s the mad god of Acrivain. I told It that It wasn’t wanted, but It required convincing.”

  “I’ve had a bit much of gods and madness lately,” ola Silba replied with a touch of acid. “I don’t suppose you could have picked someone else for the honor?”

  “Honor it is, and honor it will be,” Acrilat said wildly. “Honest honor, bent but not broken, winding to new heights of glory!”

  “Frankly, I’d prefer a good philosophical discussion,” ola Silba said carefully.

  “Babble not of philosophy, but worship me!” Acrilat thundered, and a spectacular display of lightning and blue fire flared across the stage.

  Ola Silba remained prudently silent, but his distaste for Acrilat’s whole insane performance was evident. Granny gave a mental sniff. “You can see that you don’t belong here,” she informed Acrilat. “You don’t like us any better than we like you. Go back to Acrivain where you belong.”

  The thunder and fire on stage rose to new heights; otherwise Acrilat did not respond.

  “If you’re going to sulk, do it in your own country,” Granny added. “And this time, stay there. You’re not wanted, and I’ve better things to do with my time than to keep chasing you out of the city.”

  With a shriek and an explosion of blue light, Acrilat lunged madly against its restraints. Granny released the binding spell an instant before Acrilat broke it. The effect was that of someone running to break down a door that is opened just before he reaches it. Acrilat overshot Its goal; It was out of Liavek and halfway across the sea to Acrivain before It realized what had happened. In the moment of Acrilat’s distraction, Granny reached out once more for the thread that had blocked Acrilat’s appearance, the thread that Naril had unknowingly woven through the very heart of Acrilat’s own spells. She bound the insubstantial thread of magic into the material of her weaving, and with it she bound the mad god of Acrivain.