Ethshar 08 - Ithanalin's Restoration

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  She couldn't be sure that was the case in this instance, since these had been animated by a botched spell rather than a standard one, but it seemed likely. She turned the page to the next spell.

  Fendel's Infatuous Love Spell wouldn't be any better than Cauthen's Remarkable—and in fact, it wouldn't be possible, since it had to be performed while the target was asleep.

  Lugwiler's Dismal Itch, the Prismatic Pyrotechnics, Tracel's Adaptable Potion, the Yellow Cloud, and on and on and on.

  Really, she thought as she passed the fiftieth spell, it was amazing just how useless most of her magic was in this situation. Cauthen's Remarkable Love Spell was looking better all the time.

  She turned a page and found Kandif's Spell of Warning; she frowned thoughtfully at that. That was quite possibly how Chorizel had known she was in his front room. It ensorcelled a specific place—usually a room of a house—so that the wizard casting the spell would know instantly if anyone entered it over the next three-days. If she put that on a place where the missing furniture might go...

  No, she would be told every time anyone entered the chosen place, and if it was a public place that might be every five minutes. She wasn't even sure animated furniture counted as "anyone" as far as the spell was concerned; an ambulatory table might not register.

  The Spell of Impeded Egress would be useful for holding the furniture once it was captured—anything that had been enchanted with it would be unable to find an exit from wherever she put it. It was really just a simple, highly specific confusion spell, and Ithanalin would have no trouble performing the countercharm once he was restored. She glanced at the door and debated whether she should bother to cast it on the coatrack, or the spoon and bowl— but they were already confined. She decided not to take the time.

  The Spell of Optimum Strength might be useful if she had to pick up the couch and carry it back home, as she had the coatrack. The catch there was that the spell took three hours to prepare and only lasted perhaps half an hour, but if she made it up in a batch of Tracel's Adaptable Potion, she would have the spell ready to use instantly, seven times over.

  Tracel... it might be useful to have Tracel's Levitation ready, too. And Varen's Levitation, as well.

  She wished she knew a really good levitation spell, so she could fly properly. Tracel's would let her rise to any altitude and descend safely, but once airborne she had no way to move forward except to let the wind blow her, or to catch onto nearby buildings; its main virtue was that it was a really easy spell to learn, and she had known it for years. Varen's was a little better, as it let her walk on air, or pick up other objects and leave them floating in midair, but the ascent and descent were slower and required more space, and while it was nearly as quick, the spell was much trickier to perform.

  Using a levitation spell to get a few hundred feet in the air for a good view of the streets, to see if she could spot any of the furniture, really might be a good idea. She would have to try that in the morning; the light wasn't good enough now. The furniture had probably all found shelter by now, but if any was still wandering about in the open, in the city's streets or courtyards, she might be able to spot it.

  She wished she had thought of all this much sooner. She really did need to learn to think these things through more quickly. If she had popped up to three or four times rooftop height as soon as she knew what had happened, instead of dashing off almost at random, she might have recaptured more than just the bowl, spoon, and coatrack.

  Of course, she couldn't have done it instantly. The problem with all of these spells—Tracel's Levitation, Varen's Levitation, and the Spell of Optimum Strength—was that they required preparation time and specialized ingredients. Putting them in Tracel's Adaptable Potion would make them all easily portable and instantly available, but the potion itself needed a full day to cool after preparation.

  She didn't remember just how long Varen's Levitation took; not long, but longer than drinking a potion. Tracel's Levitation only took about eight or ten minutes, but still, it wasn't exactly convenient to carry a rooster's toe, a raindrop caught in midair, and the rest of the ingredients around in her pouch.

  And the Spell of Optimum Strength took three hours to prepare.

  Out of all her fifty-three spells, though, those were the only ones she could see any possible use for in pursuing and capturing escaped furniture. Light spells and pyrotechnics and protective runes just weren't going to help.

  She turned another page in Ithanalin's book, past the last spell she knew, and found herself looking at the Spell of the Obedient Object.

  This was the one Ithanalin had promised to teach her. She read the description.

  It would enchant an object so that it would obey a single command when a specified condition was met—for example, a bell might be enchanted to ring whenever the wind blew from the east.

  Perhaps, she thought, she could enchant the furniture to come back home when she spoke Ithanalin's name….

  But then she saw that the wizard casting the spell had to touch the object with his or her athame to complete the enchantment. If she had the furniture where she could touch it, she wouldn't need to enchant it!

  This was all horribly frustrating. She read on.

  Fendel's Familiar, the Servile Animation, Ellran's Immortal Animation—she couldn't see how those would help, even if she could perform them, and glancing through the instructions she doubted she could. Ellran's took two days of exacting ritual, and about two dozen ingredients ranging from things as prosaic as salt to items as exotic as the mummified left wing of a carnivorous bat.

  (Actually, she was fairly certain Ithanalin had the mummified left wing of a bat in the drawer just to the right of where she sat, as she had used it in learning the Spell of Stupefaction, but she didn't know whether it was from a carnivorous bat.)

  The Creeping Darkness—she shuddered at the description of that one. Thrindle's Instantaneous Putrefaction sounded downright disgusting. Fendel's Soothing Euphony might help if she had to calm panicky furniture, but she looked at the list of ingredients and despaired of performing it successfully without considerable practice.

  It didn't seem, she concluded, as if Ithanalin himself knew any useful spells in this situation. Cauthen's looked better all the time.

  "Have you found anything?"

  Kilisha jumped, and turned to find Yara standing in the doorway.

  "I'm not sure," Kilisha said. "I did have an idea, but I'm not sure it will work." She hesitated, then added, "I'd need your help."

  "What is it?" Yara asked.

  "I could cast a love spell on some of the missing furniture, so that it would fall madly in love with you at the slightest glimpse, or the sound of your voice. I was thinking that if I did that, and you were to walk along Wizard Street calling out for it, it would follow you home."

  "What if it's not on Wizard Street ?"

  "Then you'd have to keep looking," Kilisha said. "But it's the best I can do with the magic I have."

  "Couldn't we hire someone else? Pay someone for a divination?"

  "Well, I suppose," Kilisha admitted. "But that would be expensive, and it would be rather embarrassing for the master, don't you think? I think we should try to fix things ourselves first. We can always hire someone later."

  Yara looked unhappy and uncertain.

  "It's pretty late to be hiring anyone tonight, in any ease," Kilisha said quickly. "Why don't we try it my way? And if it doesn't work, in the morning you can hire someone."

  "All right," Yara said, frowning. "But right now your supper's ready."

  Kilisha blinked at her, then realized that yes, she was hungry. She had been so distracted that she might as well have had an enchanted bloodstone in her pocket, but now that Yara mentioned it...

  "After we eat, then," Kilisha said, hopping off the stool.

  Chapter Ten

  Yara insisted on putting the children to bed before trying any magic. While Kilisha gathered the ingredients for Cauthen's Remarkable
Love Spell and began the preparations, Yara was upstairs, telling the three little ones the next installment in the ongoing and highly unlikely adventures of Valder of the Magic Sword, talking steadily while she brushed out their hair. As Kilisha worked she could sometimes hear Yara's voice, very faintly, through the ceiling.

  Ithanalin's bottle of mare's sweat was almost empty, its contents slightly congealed and amazingly malodorous, but Kilisha thought it would be sufficient. The stallion's tail hair came from a bundle of a dozen or so wrapped in blue tissue. The red wine came from Yara's pantry, rather than the wizard's workshop, and the water from the courtyard well out back.

  And the faded blue thread came from the floor of the front room, of course.

  When the story finally reached a good stopping point Yara tucked the children under the blankets, kissed them good night, and came downstairs and into the workshop, to find Kilisha well into the incantation. The liquid mixture had begun to glow faintly, and Kilisha could feel the magic shimmering in the air. It felt right, just the way she remembered it, and one of the things that made her a promising wizard was her instinctive feel for the flow and shape of wizardry. That was one of the Guild's secrets; most people believed that wizardry was an entirely mechanical process of assembling ingredients, reciting words, and making gestures, and that this somehow tapped into the chaos beneath the surface of the World and forced it into a specific action, but actually the process was a good deal more dynamic than that. A talented wizard could feel when the magic was working properly and when it wasn't, and could sense when a gesture needed to be altered, an incantation slowed or hurried, without any conscious understanding of why the change was necessary. A really good wizard could even sense whether other ingredients could be substituted, other words spoken, or the very nature of the spell somehow altered—that was how new spells were discovered.

  Such wizards, wizards who could safely change spells as they went, were very rare. The ones who were able to devise multiple useful spells were little short of miraculous. Someone like Cauthen or Thrindle, let alone a one-of-a-kind genius like Fendel the Great, would be remembered for generations through the spells he created. During the Great War the military rulers had tried to force wizards who did not have this incredibly precious natural ability to develop new spells through trial and error, and had wound up with dozens of dead wizards and a good deal of damage to the surrounding landscape—but legend said Fendel could casually invent a new curse or transformation on the spot, and have it work almost every time.

  Kilisha doubted she would ever reach anything near that level, but she could feel when a spell was going well, and she knew this potion was going to work exactly as intended.

  Yara knew better than to interrupt a wizard in the middle of a spell, so she settled onto one of the stools by the workbench and watched as Kilisha chanted and wove a pattern of magical energy in the air with her athame.

  That pattern wrapped itself around the vial that held the potion and gradually shrank inward, until at last it passed through the glass and into the liquid within. As Kilisha spoke the final word of the spell, a triumphant "Ahmwor!," she raised her dagger high, and the potion flashed pale blue.

  Before the flash the liquid had been murky and dull red; after the flash it was sparkling pink.

  The magic in the air was gone. Kilisha's athame felt like any other knife in her hand, and holding it over her head felt slightly ridiculous. She dropped her arm and sheathed the blade, then turned to Yara.

  "It's ready," she said.

  "Should I drink it now, or later?" Yara asked uncertainly.

  "It doesn't matter," Kilisha said, picking up the vial. "It won't spoil, and once you drink it, it will take effect whenever the rug next sees you or smells you or hears your voice, whether that's five minutes from now, or five years."

  "So this will make the rug fall in love with me, and want to come back home?"

  "That's the theory, yes." She held the vial out.

  Yara didn't take it. "What if the rug can't find its way home?"

  "Well, then the theory won't work," Kilisha said, lowering the potion.

  "But if it does work, then once the rug's back here, you'll break the spell?"

  "Um..." Kilisha frowned. "Well, actually, I can't. Not for a rug. The cure is to drink virgin's blood, and a rug can't drink anything. But I can break the spell once Ithanalin's restored." She hesitated, then admitted, "It takes four days, though, one drink of blood per day."

  "I don't want a rug in love with me, Kilisha. I had enough trouble with that spoon,"

  "It's not the same thing," Kilisha protested. "The spoon was lustful; this spell will make the rug devoted. It's a good love spell, it's not like the Spell of Aroused Lust or Fendel's Infatuous Love Spell."

  Yara still hesitated.

  "Mistress, I learned this spell by testing it on my own brother and his girlfriend!"

  "Your brother isn't a rug. And I doubt his girlfriend kept him out of her bed while the spell was in effect."

  "She probably didn't—but honestly, she could have if she wanted to, just by asking him to sleep elsewhere. Ithanalin already loves you, probably just as much as this spell would make him love you, it's just that it all wound up in the spoon or somewhere instead of spread through all the furniture!"

  "I don't know…. " Yara said.

  Kilisha was sure that the longer Yara waited, the more reasons she would find to not drink the potion. "Mistress," she said, "I thought you'd want to be the one to drink this, but you don't need to. I could drink it-—"

  She didn't have a chance to finish the sentence, "Give me the vial," Yara said.

  Kilisha obeyed, and Yara drank it down in a single gulp, then blinked in surprise.

  "It's sweet," she said. "I thought it would taste foul."

  "Love is sweet," Kilisha said. "At least, that's what the master told Klurea," she added hastily. "I wouldn't know, myself."

  Yara swallowed again, licked her lips thoughtfully, then asked, "Now what?"

  "Now you need to roam about the streets calling out, so that the rug will hear your voice and fall in love with you and follow you home."

  "Tonight?"

  "Whenever you please—but the sooner the better, surely. We don't want the rug to wander further away."

  Yara considered that for a long moment, then said, "Not tonight. In the morning. It's been a very long day." She glanced over at Ithanalin, sitting motionless in the corner. "I'm sorry, dear," she said. "I'm too tired. I'm going to bed."

  With that, she turned away.

  Kilisha stood by the workbench and watched her go.

  It had been a long day, but Kilisha was still too wrought up to sleep. Performing the love spell had been satisfying, almost relaxing. She looked at the shelves of ingredients, the jars and boxes and bottles, and wondered whether there was some other useful magic she could perform before going to bed.

  Tracel's Adaptable Potion.

  The thought struck her so suddenly and strongly that she wondered whether it might be magical in origin. Perhaps some benign god was sending her a message, or some powerful magician somewhere had decided to advise her…

  Or perhaps it was just her own mind.

  Whatever the source, she thought it was a good idea. If she made up some potions, so as to have a few spells available instantly, they might be useful in the furniture hunt; she had thought about that earlier, but had then been distracted by Cauthen's Remarkable Love Spell.

  Varen's Levitation, Tracel's Levitation, the Spell of Optimum Strength ... which should she prepare? The potion spell would produce seven doses of any one spell.

  Well, she could do it three times, couldn't she? It would mean staying up very late, but right now she didn't see that as a problem. And if she got tired after one preparation, or two, she could stop then, and leave until later to decide which spell the potion would contain. She wouldn't need to perform the second part of the spell, when she actually put the chosen spell into the potion, until
tomorrow night, after the brew had cooled for twenty-four hours.

  She would need water and wine again, and her athame, and human blood—she could use her own, and in fact that might enhance the potion's effectiveness. She would need powdered goat's hoof—Ithanalin had a jar on the shelf to her right. A pot, and a fire—those were right at hand, as well, as the glow from that mysterious brass bowl reminded her. A raindrop caught in midair for Tracel's Levitation, a rooster's toe, a seagull's feather. .. .

  Humming quietly, she set about gathering the ingredients, thinking idly that it was good to have a fully equipped wizard's workshop here at hand, and that when she was a journeyman she would have a harder time getting what she needed for her spells.

  Blood and water and wine were easy enough, but some of the other things were not so readily found.

  There were suppliers, like Kara of Kara's Arcana, and Kensher Kinner's son, and the notoriously expensive Gresh, but the supplies would cost money, and she would need to earn that money by selling spells, and she would need supplies to perform the spells….

  Well, it must be possible, or there wouldn't be so many wealthy wizards in the World. She would have plenty of time to worry about It once she had completed her apprenticeship.

  By the time she finished the first batch the little oil lamp she had used was sputtering; she fetched oil from the pantry and refilled it, then topped off the one beneath the brass bowl for good measure, then paused.

  The house was dark and silent; Yara and the children were asleep upstairs, and Ithanalin, behind her, was still lifeless and inert. Every room but the workshop was dark and still; the coatrack was motionless, and the spoon and bowl were quiet in their cages.

  Kilisha peered through the door of the parlor at the draped front window; the light from the street outside that seeped in around the edges was faint, and no sound at all reached her.

  It was late. She was not sure just how late. She hesitated, wondering whether she should go to bed.