Ethshar 08 - Ithanalin's Restoration

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Neither set of ingredients was at all onerous; the raindrop was the only remotely difficult item, and ever since Ithanalin had first taken her on as an apprentice one of her duties had been to collect a few drops from every storm. There was a rack of tightly stopped vials in a drawer in the workshop, and while some of the captured water had undoubtedly managed to evaporate by now, she was sure there were at least half a dozen still available for her use. She wouldn't be using up anything especially precious with either spell.

  Nor was either one particularly difficult. Varen's was definitely a higher-order spell than Tracel's, requiring a more agile set of fingers and some more esoteric vocabulary, but both were well within her own abilities. Tracel's ascent was faster and less tiring, since the user simply rose like a bubble instead of walking up the air, but the horizontal element of Varen's was very useful….

  And it was that horizontal component that decided her. She needed to place the axe and rope. It would have to be Varen's.

  Coin, feather, lantern, athame.... She ambled back to the workshop, the coil of rope on one arm and the axe clutched in both hands, as she reviewed the spell.

  "What are you doing with that?" Kelder demanded from the parlor door. "I thought you needed them intact! If you just wanted them smashed, we could have done that at the shipyard."

  Startled out of her reverie, Kilisha looked down at the axe, then up at Kelder. She could hear the bench thumping, and see the rope in Kelder's hand jerking with its movements.

  "No, no," she said. "It's not for that. We do need them intact. I would never hurt them!"

  The thumping stopped.

  "Then why do you have that axe?" Kelder demanded.

  "Not to smash anything," Kilisha said. "You'll see."

  "Do you—"

  "Could you hold this for a moment?" Kilisha interrupted, holding out the axe. "I need to work a spell."

  Kelder blinked at her. "I thought you… you said earlier you didn't have any magic."

  Kilisha stared at him in surprise. "I said I didn't have any with me!" she said. "This house is full of magic."

  "Oh," Kelder said. "Of course. I'm sorry. I mean, I know you're a wizard's apprentice, but you don't look like a wizard."

  "Why do people keep saying that?" Kilisha said. "What does a wizard look like?"

  "Like that," Kelder said, pointing at the covered shape of Ithanalin in the corner.

  "Like a middle-aged man? You know there are female wizards, and wizards of all ages."

  "Yes, but you look so ... so ..."

  "So ordinary?"

  "So sweet," Kelder said. "Wizards are supposed to have a little meanness to them."

  Kilisha was struck momentarily silent by this astonishing statement, then managed, "I think you're thinking of demonologists or warlocks, not wizards."

  "Wizards, too," Kelder said. "Not as much as the others, true, but a little. Witches can be sweet, sometimes."

  "So can wizards," Kilisha said. "Not that I am, myself. Ithanalin's sweet, but I have too much of a temper."

  Kelder started to reply, then thought better of it. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.

  Relieved to have the conversation back on its intended course, Kilisha thrust the axe at him. "Hold this while I work a spell," she said.

  "Right," he said, taking the axe.

  Once free of her burden, Kilisha turned to the workbench and tried to get her thoughts back to the business of magic. Com, feather, lantern ...

  It was only after she had the ingredients on the bench and had begun the ritual, placing the coin inside the lantern and magically impaling it with the seagull feather, that she remembered a drawback to Varen's Levitation, as compared to Tracel's. She would need to carry the lantern with her, which would be inconvenient; it would make it that much harder to position the axe and rope. Tracel's required no such burden.

  For that matter, if she had used a potion for Varen's, then it wouldn't need the lantern, cither—the potion in her belly would have been an adequate substitute. Unfortunately, the potion wouldn't be ready until late that night, and she did not want to put this off any longer.

  She continued, using her athame to weave magic into the air, and a moment later she turned from the workbench, the lantern in her hand and her athame back in its sheath on her belt.

  Kelder had watched this all from the doorway, of course; she knew no one could resist the temptation to watch a wizard at work. Most spells were actually quite boring for a nonparticipant to observe, but wizardry had such an air of secrets and mystery built up around it—built up deliberately by the Guild—that people would always watch for a few minutes.

  "Give me the axe and open the front door," she said, holding out her free hand.

  Kelder handed her the axe, puzzled. He tried to hand her the coil of rope, too, but she had no hands left to take it, and she let it drop to the floor.

  That didn't matter; it was tied to the axe at one end.

  "Open the door," she repeated, standing where she was.

  She had to stand where she was; from now on each step she took would carry her higher into the air.

  "The rope..."

  "Don't worry about the rope, so long as it's tied to the axe. Just open the door." She took her first step, keeping it as long and low as possible.

  Her foot came to rest perhaps two inches off the floor.

  Kelder didn't notice; he had turned to obey.

  "Hold the furniture," she said, as she began walking forward, still making her steps as long as possible.

  She crossed the parlor in half a dozen stretching steps, taking her almost three feet upward; she had to squat down on empty air to get through the door.

  Once past that obstacle, though, everything was easy. The air above the street was open and unlimited. She smiled, and began marching upward.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kilisha had not been able to get the coil of rope arranged properly while she held the axe and lantern, so now, as she walked up into the air, it trailed behind her as she rose. The line gradually unwound from Kelder's hand. The soldier stood in the doorway of Ithanalin's shop, watching her climb.

  A few people on the street turned to stare or point at her, but no one said anything to her or made any move to interfere. A levitating magician was only a mildly unusual sight here on Wizard Street, after all.

  She paid little attention to the observers, except to wish that she had thought to wear something under her skirt. After all, they weren't really interested in looking at her—she was completely ordinary-looking, and knew it. They were just looking at her magic, at the ability to rise up into the air. That they might catch a glimpse under her skirt was merely a small bonus for the young men among them.

  The first time she had tried this spell and gone walking about over people's heads that aspect of the situation had occurred to her very suddenly, and she had been as utterly mortified as only a fourteen-year-old girl can be and had almost dropped the lantern in her desperation to rearrange her clothing; only Ithanalin, levitating beside her, had prevented a fall by grabbing her hand before she could release the lantern's handle.

  Now, a little older and wiser, she felt only a mild regret that she had not remembered that people might be looking up at her from beneath. She ignored it, and concentrated on the task at hand—or tasks, rather, as she had two purposes in her ascent.

  Given the nature of the spell, she decided to start with the one that required greater altitude—searching for the couch. That meant hauling the heavy axe and dangling rope that much farther into the sky, but it really seemed the safer, more sensible approach. She heightened and shortened her stride, climbing upward.

  It was really remarkable how very solid the air felt beneath her feet. She needed merely to place a foot as if on a stair, and the stair would somehow be there, invisible but quite firm.

  Magic, she thought, was wonderful stuff; at times like this she loved being a wizard.

  Of course, she thought as she glanc
ed down along the trailing rope, it was also very dangerous stuff; if she released her hold on the lantern for even an instant those sturdy steps beneath her feet would suddenly once again be nothing but empty air, and she would plummet to the hard-packed earth thirty feet below. From this height the fall probably wouldn't kill her, but it would not be pleasant—and she intended to go much higher than this. She was level with most of the rooftops now, higher than some, and could see perhaps half a mile along Wizard Street, but most of the city was still hidden.

  Magic was dangerous, yes—she was up here in the first place because Ithanalin had discovered that.

  She tightened her grip on the lantern and marched onward and upward, passing gables and chimneys; the sharp sea breeze whipped her hair and skirt about her as she cleared the obstructing buildings. Below her the end of the rope finally rose out of Kelder's reach and began wiggling back and forth, squirming like a snake, as the winds caught it and played with it.

  The axe really was heavy, and the climb was long; she wondered whether she should have used the Spell of Optimum Strength, or some other endurance spell, before beginning her ascent.

  That would have taken too long, though. She sighed, and continued climbing.

  She could see across the shops and houses and courtyards to the north and south now, to the East Road to the north and the tangle of smaller streets to the south. In the slanting light of late-afternoon the gray slate of the steeply angled roofs looked black on the eastern slopes and pale on the west, so that each block of housing looked like a gigantic loop of herringbone. She carefully noted the distinguishing features of Ithanalin's shop, so that she could find it again on the way down—the shape of the chimney pots, the slightly asymmetrical gable that she knew was the niche where her own bed lay, and so on; four houses from the west end of the block and seven from the east.

  The buildings were not what she was up here to look at, though; once she was sure she would recognize her home she forced herself to focus on the spaces between the houses, the streets and courtyards.

  A red velvet couch ought to stand out even in the shadows, she thought. Most of the people in the streets wore brown or gray or black or white or blue or green; very few were dressed in red. And a couch would be horizontal, where pedestrians were vertical.

  The couch was nowhere to be seen in the long visible expanse of Wizard Street, or in the courtyards on either side.

  She climbed higher, turning her steps to the right and spiraling upward, until she could see the blue of the reservoir to the northeast and the red-and-gold banners of the Arena to the south, flickering in the wind. She rose still higher, until the looming gray mass of the Fortress and the twin towers of Eastgate were visible. The people below her looked like little more than dots now; she slowed her ascent but did not stop, because she knew that once she stopped she could not rise any farther.

  Beyond the Arena, far to the southeast, she could glimpse the parade ground in Wargate; to the west lay the shipyards, just as she had seen them earlier that day. Market lay beyond the reservoir, and Farmgate beyond that.

  And at last she stopped; if she went any higher she thought she might well miss something as small as a couch. She stood in midair and looked down past her bare feet; the wind tore at her hair and tunic, and her skirt flapped like a ship's pennant. The dangling rope was writhing and coiling madly below her.

  She frowned. She had probably, she decided, come too high after all. She could move horizontally, as long as she didn't change altitude or release the lantern, and hadn't needed to come up this far.

  She shuddered at the thought of dropping the lantern; a fall from this height would kill her, beyond question. At least the chill of the wind kept her hands from getting too sweaty and weakening her hold!

  She shifted her grip on the axe and began walking westward; that was the direction Kelder said the couch had gone before he lost sight of it. It had fled up the East Road, toward the Fortress.

  The bench had been headed for the Fortress, too—was there something there that had attracted the furniture, perhaps? Before she had thought that perhaps the attraction was Ithanalin's customer on Steep Street, but the bench had definitely aimed for the Fortress, instead.

  That was the original heart of the city, of course. Ethshar of the Rocks had begun as a military outpost during the Great War, at the extreme western limit of Old Ethshar's power, and a watch-tower had been built atop the cliffs on the headland. The watch-tower had been expanded gradually over the long years of conflict, and then finally torn down and replaced with the Fortress—a massive stone complex dominating the coastline and serving as the headquarters for the entire Western Command. It had been surrounded only by camps at first, but gradually a few other buildings had appeared, and the city walls had been built to protect the camps.

  And then, after hundreds of years of fighting, the war ended. General Gor declared himself overlord, and the tents and huts were replaced by houses and shops, the Arena and Baths were built, the shipyards converted from building warships to freighters... but in the subsequent two hundred and thirty years Lord Gor and his heirs had never seen any reason to move themselves or their government out of the Fortress.

  The Fortress was the largest and oldest building for fifty leagues in every direction; perhaps it had somehow accumulated some sort of magical attraction that had affected the furniture.

  Kilisha didn't find it very attractive, though, as she walked over the East Road toward it. It was a huge, ugly gray mass. In most of the city, homes and businesses were decorated with carvings and paint, but the Fortress walls were flat slabs of blank stone, the windows—and only the upper floors had any windows—simple unadorned rectangles.

  The top, largely invisible to anyone but a magician, was a little more interesting than the sides; the battlements were mere elevated walkways surrounding a stone courtyard where Kilisha could see guardsmen marching in formation. There were guards posted along the ramparts, as well, which seemed foolish in a city that had been at peace for more than two centuries.

  But then she remembered that a usurper had just driven out the overlord of Ethshar of the Sands. Perhaps the walls had not always been manned, but were now guarded against this Tabaea and her followers.

  In any case, the Fortress guards were not her concern. She was trying to find the couch.

  She could see nothing the right shade of red anywhere along the East Road, nor in the Fortress rooftop courtyard, nor on Wizard Street . The streets and alleys of Hillside, the district surrounding the Fortress, were so steep and tangled that she could see very little of what might be on them.

  The other high hill in the city was Highside, to the northeast of Hillside, and that was dominated by the mansions of the city's wealthiest families; there she could see into not just streets and courtyards, but gardens and plazas. Instead of being crowded together, as the homes were throughout most of the city, the mansions of Highside were elegantly placed amid lawns and fountains and flowers, all behind high fences and walls—but from her present height the fences and walls were meaningless. She glanced in that direction—and froze.

  Red! The deep, rich red she remembered....

  She leaned forward, peering down, and then snorted at her own foolishness. That was a rose garden. And over there was a flower bed of something else nearly the right color.

  The couch might be there somewhere, of course, perhaps under the willows, or in one of the pergolas or gazebos, or simply behind a mansion, where she couldn't see it from her present position.

  And that was in the open terrain of Highside. Beyond it, to the west, to the north of Hillside, lay the mazes of alleys and passages of Bywater. That had been a fishing village supplying food to the troops during the Great War, and the city had absorbed it but had never straightened out its tangled streets. Upper stones of the older structures there were often cantilevered out, shading the street beneath; it was said that in some neighborhoods lovers could hold hands by leaning out the upstairs wind
ows on either side of the street. If the couch was beneath one of those overhangs…

  And beyond Bywater was Northshore, and then Cliffgate, and then eastward along the city wall Northgate and Northmark, to Farmgate in the northeast corner. Then Eastgate and Eastside and Wargate and Newgate, and the New Quarter in its own little walled-in area outside the original wall, and in the south end Grandgate and Southgate, and closer in Southport and Southside and Bath and Arena and Crafton and Seagate and Norcross and Lakeshore and Center City and Northside and the Merchant Quarter, each district a tangle of streets and buildings and courts.

  The city was just too large for one person to search, even from the air, without some sort of guidance.

  For one person.

  She would need to find help. All those districts, all those streets and houses, were full of people, and surely someone must have seen where the couch went. If she really wanted to find the couch she would need to enlist the aid of as many of those people as she possibly could, and keep on asking until she found someone who knew where it had gone.

  Either that, or she would need to find some magic that would locate the fugitive furniture.

  She sighed. It would have been so much simpler if she had spotted it from up here—but she could see no sign of it.

  She took another step, but this time let her forward foot sink below the other, beginning her descent.

  Her other task remained to be done, of course, so the spell hadn't been a total waste of time, and she would also keep looking on the way down, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the couch, but her earlier high hopes had vanished. Her steps were heavy as she marched down the air.

  A flicker of movement in an alley caught her eye at one point, but appeared to be merely a dog; other than that she descended without incident until she was walking just a dozen feet above Ithanalin's own roof, the rope trailing across the slates.

  And here she slowed, spiraling in carefully toward the chimney that vented the parlor hearth. While still holding the lantern she caught up the dangling rope across her forearm, working it across until the free end hung down just a few feet. She twisted and maneuvered it, working intently until that loose end slid down into the open chimney.