Ethshar 08 - Ithanalin's Restoration

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Somewhere out there, in the silent darkness, were several pieces of her master's essence. Furniture could be scratched, broken, smashed, burned, stolen. The sooner she recovered it all, the better.

  She started on the second batch of Adaptable Potion.

  By the time she finished the third and final batch and extinguished the little lamp, she was sure midnight had come and gone, and she was exhausted. The possibility of making a fourth batch occurred to her, but was promptly dismissed—she couldn't think of a fourth spell that would be worth the trouble. She carefully set the three simmering pots at the back of the workbench, guarded by an ironwork fireplace screen, then lit a candle from the still-burning oil lamp beneath the brass bowl.

  Candle in hand, she glanced around the parlor, and said good night to the coatrack; it rattled in reply.

  She looked at Ithanalin on her way back through the workshop and said, "I'm doing my best, Master."

  And then she found her way up the kitchen stairs to her own little bed in the attic.

  Chapter Eleven

  The following morning Kilisha slept later than usual— which is to say, the sun was up before she was. The air was still cool and damp and the shadows were still long and dark when she came downstairs to the kitchen and found Yara feeding her offspring their breakfast.

  "There you are!" Yara said, looking up from chopping salt ham into bite-sized pieces for Pirra. "I was beginning to wonder whether you had been spirited away by demons, or gone off on some silly errand."

  "I was up late making potions," Kilisha said.

  "More potions?"

  "Yes." Only after a second's pause did Kilisha realize she had forgotten to add "Mistress."

  Yara didn't seem to notice. "This love potion—how did you say it works?"

  Kilisha sighed. "The instant the rug sees you or hears your voice, it will fall hopelessly in love with you. Then it should follow you home, and we can capture it."

  "And then you can restore my husband?" She gestured toward the door to the workshop.

  "No," Kilisha said, "we'll still need the bench and the table and the couch and the chair."

  "And how are you going to get those?"

  "I don't know yet."

  Yara frowned. "I don't like this, Kilisha."

  "I don't either!" Kilisha burst out. "I'm doing the best I can to restore the master, but it isn't easy!"

  "Well—" Yara began.

  "Wizardry is dangerous," Kilisha interrupted. "Everyone knows that. You knew it when you married Ithanalin, and I knew it when I signed up to be a wizard's apprentice. Spells can go wrong, and that's what happened, and it's not my fault! I wasn't even here, and that's because the master ordered me not to be here. We should be glad this is something that can be fixed, that he wasn't killed outright or turned into an ant and stepped on, or something. I'm doing what I can to fix it, but I'm just an apprentice, and I don't know very much magic yet, and Guildmaster Chorizel was no help at all!"

  Yara seemed to accept this outburst with equanimity; she did not shout back, but merely said calmly, "I know spells can go wrong. This certainly isn't the first time Thani's had something bad happen. I'm not blaming you."

  "I'm sorry, Mistress," Kilisha said.

  "It's just that this is the first time a spell's gone wrong and Thani hasn't been here to fix it himself," Yara explained. "It worries me."

  "I understand," Kilisha said, remembering what she had heard about a previous incident, one that had occurred when Ithanalin's first apprentice, Istram, had been nearing journeyman status, when Lirrin had been a baby and Pirra not yet born.

  That mishap was why Yara did not allow her husband to cook. Until then Ithanalin had been very fond of cookery, and had reportedly been quite good at it—but after he accidentally got something magical into the gravy and turned his children into tree squids and his apprentice into a platypus, Yara had forbidden him to ever prepare food again. Ithanalin had turned them back without undue difficulty—perhaps, Kilisha thought, by using Javan's Restorative, just as she intended to do, though no one had ever told her the specifics. Still, Yara had pointed out that Ithanalin had had a fork in his hand and a bite of gravy-soaked meat halfway to his mouth when the first transformation took place, and if he'd been a few seconds quicker in eating he would have been changed, as well. That would have made it all much worse. A squid or a platypus couldn't have reversed the spell.

  And this time it was worse. Instead of two tree squids and a platypus all right there in their own kitchen there were half a dozen pieces of animated furniture scattered around the city, and instead of an experienced master wizard ready to undo the spell there was a mere apprentice.

  "You talked to Chorizel?" Yara asked.

  "Yesterday."

  Yara considered this for several seconds, then asked, "Did you talk to Kaligir?"

  "No," Kilisha said, startled that Yara knew the name Chorizel had mentioned. "Who is Kaligir?"

  "He's the senior Guildmaster for the entire city," Yara said. "Didn't Thani ever tell you that?"

  Kilisha hesitated, trying to remember whether Ithanalin had ever told her this. It was rather annoying that Yara, who was not a wizard, often knew Guild secrets that Kilisha did not—but then, Yara was a wizard's wife, and the Guild didn't expect wizards to marry fools. Naturally, Yara would have picked up a few things over the years, and would have the sense not to mention them to outsiders.

  It occurred to Kilisha to wonder whether wizards who did marry fools had to enchant their spouses to keep secrets. She hoped she would never have to do anything like that.

  And she glanced sideways at her mistress, wondering whether Ithanalin might have enchanted Yara. Perhaps Javan's Geas?

  Whether he had or not was irrelevant at the moment, though.

  "I don't think he said anything about Kaligir," Kilisha said. "He told me Chorizel was our Guildmaster."

  "He is. But Kaligir is the next level up, if Chorizel isn't helpful."

  "Chorizel was going to talk to Kaligir about something. And someone named Telurinon was involved."

  Yara stopped chopping, and carefully put the knife aside, out of Pirra's reach. Then she looked at Kilisha.

  "Do you know who Telurinon is?"

  "No," Kilisha admitted.

  "Do you know what they were talking about?"

  "About a usurper who's been killing wizards in Ethshar of the Sands."

  "No wonder they're busy," Yara said. She glanced at the workshop door. "Do you think this assassin might be responsible for what happened to Thani?"

  "No," Kilisha said. "He tripped over a spriggan while he was working a spell, that's all."

  "Then the Guild won't help us. At least, not until this person in Ethshar of the Sands has been dealt with."

  "I know," Kilisha said. "I asked yesterday."

  "Then how do I lure the rug, again? And what can I do about the other furniture?"

  "Just walk around the city and let your voice be heard," Kilisha said.

  "Do I need to call to it? I'd feel foolish calling, 'Here, Rug, come home now!' "

  "No, you don't need to say anything in particular; it just needs to hear your voice."

  "And the other furniture?"

  "Let's get the rug first."

  Yara nodded. Then she turned to Pirra.

  "After breakfast," she said, "we're going to take a walk down to Norcross Market, and I want you to do something special. I want you to run away from me, as if you were a bad little girl who didn't know any better. I'll shout at you, and then you come running back. Can you do that?"

  "Yes, Mama," Pirra said, puzzled.

  "It's part of the magic Kilisha's doing to help your father. I need to have something to shout at. I may sound like I'm mad when I do it, but FU just be pretending. All right?"

  "All right," Pirra said.

  "And we may go some other places, too," Yara said.

  "I found the spoon and bowl on Cross Avenue, and the coat-rack in an alley between Wizard
Street and the East Road," Kilisha offered helpfully.

  "We'll take Cross Avenue down to Norcross, then. Eat up, children."

  "Can I shout for the rug, too?" Telleth asked.

  "No," Yara said, "you didn't drink the potion last night. But you can keep an eye out for all the missing furniture."

  Telleth smiled, and Lirrin said, "Me, too!"

  "You, too," Yara agreed. Then she looked at Kilisha. "Will you be coming, or do you have more magic to work?"

  "Magic," Kilisha said hastily.

  Actually, she had no idea what she intended to do, but accompanying Yara and the children to the market did not appeal to her. Surely there was something more useful she could be doing!

  She had the feeling there was something she had intended to do, but she could not think what it was. The three Adaptable Potions needed to be completed, but she could not do that until evening, a full day after she began them. Hunting furniture through the streets at random didn't seem like a useful idea.

  If the love spell succeeded in luring the rug home, then perhaps she could use it again on the others, if she could find splinters or threads or flakes of varnish from the other pieces—but she wasn't going to waste time working on that until she saw whether or not it worked on the rug.

  Perhaps she could practice Javan's Restorative. After all, it was a fairly difficult spell that she had never before attempted; trying it for the first time with her master's life in the balance was not exactly prudent.

  That, she decided, was an excellent idea.

  "I'm going to practice the spell that "will restore the master, once we have all the furniture back," she said. "I want to be sure I know it."

  "Oh," Yara said. "That's very sensible. Pirra, don't put the ham in your nose, put it in your mouth."

  "In fact, I think I'll start now," Kilisha said hastily.

  "You haven't eaten."

  "I'll eat later."

  "Pirra!"

  Kilisha escaped to the workshop.

  At first she was pleased to be back in the familiar room, but then she noticed the crouching shape of Ithanalin. He seemed to be glaring at her.

  "I'm working on it," she said, though she knew he couldn't hear her. "Really I am."

  He said nothing, of course. She turned away from him, and looked at the still-bubbling goo in the brass bowl.

  It was thicker, and didn't smell as savory anymore; she hoped it wasn't going to do anything disastrous. It had shown no signs of supernatural activity since that one clear chime, but it had to be some sort of magic—her athame had reacted, and there had been the chime, and what else could it be? Ithanalin hadn't done any non-magical cooking since the squid gravy incident.

  She needed to restore Ithanalin before this stuff, whatever it was, did something dreadful. She looked up Javan's Restorative in her master's book once more, and began gathering the ingredients for the spell.

  She had already found most of them—peacock plumes, incense, athame. . ..

  She turned back to the kitchen. "Mistress Yara?" she called.

  "Lirrin, put that down! Yes, Kilisha?"

  "Could you stop by the herbalist and get jewelweed? I need ... oh, I don't know. A bag or a jar or a bundle or whatever it comes in."

  "Jewelweed?" Yara stuck her head through the door. "What's jewelweed?"

  "I have no idea," Kilisha admitted, "but the spell calls for it."

  "Is it expensive?"

  "I don't know."

  "Hmph. Well, I'll see."

  "Thank you."

  Yara withdrew, and Kilisha looked around at the drawers and shelves and cabinets, Ithanalin might already have jewelweed tucked away somewhere. It wasn't an ingredient in any of the spells Kilisha had learned as yet, but presumably he might have kept a supply on hand in case he ever wanted to perform Javan's Restorative.

  Where would it be, then?

  Kilisha began exploring the workshop, with special attention to the less-familiar areas—though she was not foolish enough to open anything with a visible rune or seal on it. Unless jewelweed had some very special properties, she couldn't see why Ithanalin would have put magical protections on it.

  She had gone through perhaps half a dozen drawers, and was sneezing uncontrollably at some fine gray powder she had stirred up when a sticky drawer finally popped open, when Yara and the children trooped past her and out the front door.

  Wiping her nose on the back of her hand, Kilisha blinked her watering eyes and stepped into the parlor to make sure they were safely on their way, and that the door had been closed behind them.

  The coatrack rattled enthusiastically at the sight of her, and the door latch popped open.

  "Stop that," she said. She had forgotten that the latch, too, was animated; she would need to be careful to include it in the spell when she attempted Javan's Restorative on her master. She crossed to the door and was about to close it when someone knocked on the frame.

  Startled, she said, "Mistress?"

  "Open, in the name of the overlord!" a deep male voice said.

  Astonished, Kilisha opened the door a crack and peered out.

  A guardsman in full uniform—red kilt, yellow tunic, gleaming helmet and breastplate—was standing there, one fist resting on the doorframe as he looked her in the eye. Her own gaze dropped, and that was when she saw the big leather pouch on his belt, the overlord's seal prominently displayed on the flap.

  A tax collector.

  Well, that was no surprise, really; the one who had come yesterday had not managed to collect what Ithanalin owed.

  "My master isn't in," Kilisha said.

  "You're an apprentice? A wizard?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then I'll speak with you, if you'll let me in."

  Kilisha blinked in surprise. "I-I don't think I'm allowed to pay the taxes. ..."

  "That's not why I'm here." The soldier hesitated, then said, "Well, it's not the only reason I'm here, anyway. Could you let me in, please?"

  Puzzled, Kilisha opened the door and moved aside. The guardsman smiled and stepped into the parlor. He looked around at the almost-empty room, and at the coatrack leashed in the corner.

  "I see the furniture isn't back," he said.

  "No," Kilisha said. "You're the tax collector who was here yesterday?"

  "Yes. My name's Kelder."

  "I'm Kilisha."

  "You said your master isn't in? But he's all right?"

  "Well—not exactly."

  "He looked sort of frozen yesterday."

  "He was. A spell went wrong."

  "I thought so, when all that furniture came charging out. Will he be all right?"

  Kilisha hesitated, then admitted the truth. "He will be if I can get all the furniture back."

  "Ah. Well, that's why I'm here. When I left here yesterday, I followed the furniture—I thought maybe it wasn't supposed to be running loose like that. It split up, though, and I lost track of some of it, but I did catch a chair and a bench."

  "You did?" Kilisha's face lit up. "Where are they? Do you have them with you?"

  He shook his head. "No, I couldn't manage both of them— they squirm." After dealing with the coatrack, Kilisha could sympathize. "I had some of the other guards help, and I cornered them, and they're locked in a storeroom."

  "Where?"

  "In the shipyards, near Wargate High Street ."

  Kilisha blinked. "The shipyards? How did they get there'?'"

  "They ran," Kelder said dryly.

  Chapter Twelve

  After explaining that she couldn't leave the house until her mistress returned from shopping, Kilisha escorted Kelder to the kitchen, where she questioned him for the better part of an hour—and answered a few of his questions, as well, though she didn't go into detail about exactly what spell had gone wrong, or how, or why she needed the furniture back before she could restore Ithanalin to full mobility.

  Kelder told her that when the door had opened and he had stepped inside, it had seemed as if the entire
roomful of furniture was charging at him. He had stepped back and lifted his truncheon—guards did not ordinarily carry swords or spears when on tax-collection duty—and had shouted for the furniture to stop, but it had ignored him.

  A few pieces had run out the door, and he had run after them, and the rest had all come rushing after him, and he had been afraid he would be trampled. He had retreated a few yards cast on Wizard Street .

  The furniture had all headed west, in a pack; he wasn't sure whether it was all trying to get away from him, or what. He had followed, a bit warily.

  The faster pieces had galloped down the three blocks to Cross Avenue, leaving the slower—the rug, the coatrack, and what he called "the little stuff "—behind. The coatrack had been the first to change course, when it turned up an alley to the north; Kelder had hesitated, and almost lost sight of the main group, whereupon he decided to let the small slow ones go and concentrate on the bigger pieces, which were presumably the more valuable and more potentially dangerous or disruptive.

  The street had been almost deserted—after all, a tax collector had been at work—and most of the people who saw the furniture also saw him in hot pursuit, and stayed out of the way. The furniture had therefore made its way unimpeded around the corner onto Cross Avenue northbound, then left again onto East Road .

  "They stayed together?" Kilisha asked.

  "Mostly," Kelder said. "For a while."

  In fact, they had split up at the fork where the East Road bore right and Low Street bore left. There the couch had taken the East Road, and the chair and bench headed southward down Low Street, toward the shipyard.

  "What about the table?" Kilisha asked. "Or the rug?"

  Kelder had lost sight of those well before reaching the fork, he explained. There were only the three left by then, and he had followed the pair of smaller pieces. They had dodged westward again on Wargate High Street, but he had finally caught up at the corner of Shipyard Street, and with the help of some other guards had cornered and apprehended both. He had then locked them in a materials shed and gone to report to his superiors.

  "Why didn't you come back here yesterday?" Kilisha asked.