Ethshar 08 - Ithanalin's Restoration

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  She smiled, and quickly began feeding the line down the flue as she continued to walk in slowly sinking circles around the opening.

  Finally the entire rope was hanging down into the chimney, just inches below her; she reached down and dropped the axe into place across the opening.

  Now all she had to do was go back into the house and fish the bottom of the rope out of the fireplace. As long as the knots held, anything tied to that line was going to stay in the parlor. No bench or chair or couch could possibly pull that axe down the chimney!

  That done, she raised the lantern high as she marched out over the street and back down to earth.

  Chapter Nineteen

  By suppertime Yara had paid Kelder the household's tax and the guardsman had gone about his business, though he promised to stop in later to check on the situation—he said he still felt partially responsible for Ithanalin's condition. Kilisha had secured the table, chair, bench, and coatrack in the parlor with various cords and leashes tied to the rope in the chimney, had taken the rug from the pantry and packed it into a solid box, and had then moved the locked boxes containing the dish, spoon, and rug into the workshop, to have them all in one place. The latch was still firmly attached to the front door, and the mirror still hung in its accustomed place on the parlor wall. Ithanalin's body was in the workshop with a sheet draped over it, so that any visitors would not see what had happened—and so Kilisha wouldn't feel as if her master was watching her whenever she tried to do any magic.

  The spriggan was unsecured, and that worried the apprentice, but she saw nothing she could do about it while the athame's magic resided in the creature and its fingernails served as lockpicks. Any cords used to bind it would fall away uselessly, and any attempt to lock it into a box or closet would hold it only for the few seconds it needed to spring the lock. Asking the rug to hold it might work, but she didn't really feel as if she could trust the rug unless Yara kept an eye on it, and Yara had better things to do with her time.

  Perhaps if they found a box that relied on bolts and bars too heavy for the spriggan to work, or arranged so it couldn't reach them...

  But spriggans were much stronger than they looked, and inhumanly flexible, and she really couldn't be sure anything could hold it. Better, she thought, to avoid antagonizing it and to instead rely on the fragment of Ithanalin's personality it held. After all, she might well need its active cooperation during the restorative spell.

  The dark brown goo on the workbench was still simmering over the oil lamp, and Kilisha still had no idea what it was; she had asked the spriggan and received merely a turned-up palm and "Don't remember" as a reply. The mixture's savory smell had turned to a sort of burned odor, then that had faded away, leaving a faint sourness in the air. Kilisha was fairly sure that it was no longer fit for whatever it had been intended to do or be. Still, she could see nothing sensible to do but leave it where it was. Thinking it the safest course she had refilled the lamp when it burned low, her hands trembling in case that altered the spell and triggered some catastrophe, but nothing untoward had happened.

  She had not yet had a chance to practice Javan's Restorative; the pursuit of the chair and bench, and the levitation to look for the couch and put the line down the chimney, had eaten up most of the day, and besides, she still had no jewelweed. She could not attempt the spell until she had all the ingredients.

  Of course, she also did not yet have the red velvet couch. That was the only piece of furniture still missing.

  She had most of what she needed to restore her master, though, after less than two full days. She was reasonably pleased with herself as she sat at the kitchen table with the children, eating the boiled supper Yara had prepared—but still, every so often she glanced uncomfortably at the empty scat at the head of the table.

  "Is Dad going to stay petrified very long?" Lirrin asked, as she reached for the spiced green beans.

  "I hope not, sweetie," Yara said, glancing at Kilisha.

  "He's not really petrified," Kilisha said. "He isn't stone, he's just.. . well, deanimated."

  "Is he going to stay that way?" Telleth asked. Where Lirrin had sounded worried, Telleth sounded belligerent.

  "Not if I can help it," Kilisha said. "I still need two more things before I can bring him back to normal."

  "What are they?" Lirrin asked.

  "I still need something called jewelweed for the spell," Kilisha explained. "I don't know what it is—a plant of some kind, I suppose. There might even be some in the workshop, but I can't tell."

  "We can get that from an herbalist, I'm sure," Yara said. "Or from Kara, if it's something only wizards use."

  "Who's Kara?" Lirrin asked.

  "Kara's Arcana, on Arena Street," Kilisha said.

  "That's where Dad gets lots of his stuff," Telleth explained to his sister.

  "I want Daddy back," Pirra said, clearly on the verge of tears.

  "We all do," Yara said quickly. Then she turned to Kilisha. "Jewelweed?" she said. "You know, I said I don't know what it is, but I think I remember it now. It has white flowers, and the leaves have healing properties, if I remember correctly. We can find that."

  "I'm sure we can," Kilisha agreed.

  "You said you need two more things. What's the other one?"

  "The red velvet couch from the parlor."

  "Do you know where it is?"

  "No." Kilisha shook her head- "It ran off to the west, with the other furniture, and Kelder chased it, but he lost track of it. I tried to spot it—I levitated up several hundred feet and looked at all the streets and courtyards I could, but I didn't see it anywhere. I think I'll need help finding it."

  "Who's Kelder?" Pirra demanded.

  "The soldier who was here today," Kilisha explained.

  "Oh," Lirrin said. "There's a boy across the back court called Kelder; I thought maybe you meant him."

  "There are a lot of people named Kelder," Yara remarked.

  "Is the soldier going to bring Daddy back?" Pirra asked.

  "No," Kilisha said. "We need a spell to do that, not a soldier. But maybe he can find the velvet couch."

  "Can I help look tor it?"

  Kilisha smiled. "Maybe," she said. "Anyone who can help find it is welcome, as far as I'm concerned. We'll all start looking in the morning, shall we? And we'll ask all our friends and neighbors to help."

  "Couldn't we look tonight?" Telleth asked. "The torches are bright, and a couch is too big to hide in holes or anything."

  "I want Daddy back," Pirra said.

  Kilisha looked at Yara, who said, "We might look a little. But it probably isn't anywhere on Wizard Street, and I don't want to go too far in the dark."

  "Kelder said he last saw it on the East Road," Kilisha said. "It's not on the street now, at least it wasn't when I was looking a couple of hours ago, but it might have ducked in somewhere."

  "The East Road ?" Yara said. Kilisha nodded.

  "Headed for the gates'!" Lirrin asked, horrified.

  "No, no," Kilisha said quickly. "Headed west on the East Road, toward the Fortress." The idea that it might have doubled back eastward, or turned north or south and headed for one of the gates, was not a pleasant one—but she couldn't rule it out. Maybe she hadn't spotted it from the air because she hadn't looked outside the walls.. . .

  She would want to check on that tomorrow, if the couch didn't turn up. She would ask the guards at the gates.

  At least nobody was likely to have not noticed an animated couch, or forgotten seeing it.

  "It's in the Fortress, then?" Telleth asked.

  "Oh, I don't think so," Kilisha said. "How would it get inside?"

  "Through a door!" Pirra said.

  "The doors were closed," Kilisha said. "We were over there today, and it's all closed up tight because of some trouble in Eth-shar of the Sands. The couch might be near there—it was headed in that direction—but how could it have gotten inside with the guards there and the doors locked?"

  "Oh."
r />   That ended the conversation for a time, and the five of them ate in silence. A few minutes later Kilisha took a final gulp of small beer, then pushed back her chair. "I need to finish that potion I was making," she said as she rose. "I thought it might help catch the escaped furniture."

  "I thought you said you just need the couch and the jewelweed," Yara said.

  "I do just need the couch and the jewelweed," Kilisha agreed. "But I didn't know that when I started the potion last night."

  "Then why are you finishing the potion?" Telleth asked.

  "Well, partly because it still might be useful in finding and catching the couch," Kilisha said, "but mostly because if I don't, who knows what could happen? Unfinished spells can go wrong, the way the master's did."

  "You mean you'd turn into a statue?" Pirra asked, her eyes widening.

  "Maybe. Or something else entirely might happen. You never know what might happen when magic goes wrong. They say there's a place in the Small Kingdoms where there's a pillar of fire a hundred feet tall that's been burning for a hundred years because somebody sneezed while doing a spell. And some people say that spriggans come from a magic mirror spell that someone did wrong, which is why they started turning up suddenly just a few years ago."

  "And Dad accidentally turned Lirrin and me into tree squids once," Telleth said. "Right here in the kitchen." He grimaced, and added, "It felt really weird."

  "Exactly. And he turned Istram into a platypus, as well. The master has always told me how very important it is to be careful with magic, and never leave a spell unfinished, so I'll be finishing the potion tonight."

  "What about that stuff on the workbench, then?" Telleth asked. "The brown stuff in the bowl. Isn't that an unfinished spell?"

  "Yes, it is, but I don't know what kind," Kilisha said, frowning. "I don't know how to finish it, and I want to bring the master back to life as quickly as possible so he can deal with it!"

  "How did you know about that bowl?" Yara asked, glaring at Telleth. "Have you been snooping in your father's workshop?"

  "I just looked!" Telleth protested. "I didn't touch anything! I didn't even breathe on it!"

  "Well, don't even look unless Thani or Kilisha says it's all right!" She looked up from her son to the apprentice. "Is there anything we can do while you're finishing the potion?"

  "I suppose it's too late to get the jewelweed," Kilisha said. "The herbalists will be closed by now. But if you can think of any way to find the couch, that would be good."

  "I could ask around," Yara said thoughtfully. "Maybe buy a divination from one of the neighbors?"

  "If you think it's a good idea," Kilisha said. "I don't have the money for one." Before any of the children could speak, she added, "And I don't know any myself."

  "Thani never liked divinations," Yara said. "He said that people always want to argue if they don't like the answers they get."

  "He's probably right," Kilisha said.

  "So he never learned any," Yara said. "He said he could always buy one if he needed it."

  "Well, if he were animate right now, he could."

  "I'll talk to some of the neighbors," Yara said. "You finish your potion."

  "Yes, Mistress," Kilisha said, bowing her head politely before she headed for the workshop.

  A few minutes later, as she gathered the materials to complete her potions, she glanced uneasily at the bowl on the lamp; it was still simmering. She sighed.

  It would certainly simplify matters if Yara did hire a magician who could find the couch by magic, but Kilisha had doubts about the idea. At least for wizards, divinations and other information spells tended to do strange things when enchanted objects were involved—which was another reason Ithanalin had never liked them. Some of them would answer the question asked, but in the most useless way possible—for example, if a wizard asked, "Where is the red velvet couch that stood in Ithanalin's parlor?" the answer might be, "In the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars," or "In a house," or "Seven feet to the north of a purple drape." Learning to phrase questions so as to obtain useful answers was as tricky as learning the actual spells, so that wizards who did divinations often had no time to learn much of anything else.

  Kilisha suspected that they would do better to question neighbors, or to offer a reward, or even to interrogate spriggans, who seemed to roam everywhere in the city and who could clearly "smell" wizardry, than they would to buy a divination.

  And when they did find the couch, however they managed it, she wanted to be better prepared than she had been that afternoon in pursuit of the bench. Catching the bench in the rope and then dragging the bench and chair home had been difficult and exhausting.

  That was where these potions came in, and why she was so eager to finish them. She had misled the master's family slightly; while it was certainly true that neglected spells could go spectacularly wrong, the Adaptable Potion was flexible and relatively harmless. She could have left it unfinished for at least another day or so without harm, and simply leaving it entirely uncharged would probably have been safe.

  Probably. She had never actually done it, or spoken to anyone who had. When she was first learning to make the potion she had always charged it with something even if it was just the Iridescent Amusement.

  This time, though, she wanted a levitation potion,. Tracel's Levitation would work only on the person who cast the spell—or drank the potion, in this case. Whoever drank the potion could then rise to any height she desired, and stay there, drifting on the wind, until she spoke the word that broke the spell and lowered her gently to the ground. That might be useful for getting a good look around, seeing over obstructions, and that sort of thing, but she couldn't see how it would help capture or transport a couch. She still intended to make it anyway, since it was easy and she had three batches of potion brewing, but she didn't really expect to use it.

  Varen's Levitation, which she had used that afternoon, took two forms. The wizard who cast the spell could walk on air as if it were solid, ascending or descending by using the air as a staircase, as she had done—that was one form, the one she had usually practiced when learning the spell. Having that in a potion would mean having it instantly available, and not needing to carry the damned lantern.

  The other form was to cast the spell on an object, and a wizard who did that could then place an object of any size in midair, and it would remain there. She would need to get her hands on the couch to use it, and she would be unable to lift it higher than she could reach, or move it once it was levitated, but it would certainly be a way to immobilize the couch. Then she could fetch a wagon, roll it underneath, release the spell, tie the couch down, and cart it home.

  Of course, she would need to lift the couch to use Varen's Levitation on it, and that was where the Spell of Optimum Strength came in. That spell gave the subject immense strength for perhaps half an hour—not infinite, by any means, but the most strength a person of that size and build might ever have had without magic. Kilisha knew that she could lift about four hundred pounds when enchanted with Optimum Strength—and she knew the couch didn't weigh anywhere near that much.

  So if she found the couch, and it did not want to cooperate, she would drink the strength potion, then Varen's Levitation, and then she would pick up the couch and hang it in midair.

  It would be simple.

  She just needed to find the couch first.

  She hummed quietly to herself as she set up the first batch of potion and began the final preparations.

  She had Tracel's Levitation finished and was beginning Varen's when Yara leaned through the doorway and called, "I'm going out. The children are upstairs; would you put them to bed if I'm not back in time?"

  "Of course, Mistress," Kilisha replied. Yara disappeared back into the kitchen, and the apprentice reached for the silver coin and a bundle of seagull feathers.

  The levitations were the quick, easy part, of course; the Spell of Optimum Strength took hours. That was the challenge in the evening's work. Al
l the same, all three potions were long since finished and the children secure in their beds when Yara finally returned; Kilisha had been waiting at the kitchen table and was half-asleep herself when the back door finally opened and her mistress stepped in.

  "Damn them all," Yara said.

  Kilisha blinked in confused surprise. "Damn who?" she asked.

  "The wizards," she said. "I talked to a dozen of them—Heshka the Diviner, Anansira the Sage, Virinia of the Crystal Orb, Istha, Onoli, Tirin—everyone i could think of and find at home. None of them knew anything about the missing couch, and none of them would try to find out. They wouldn't help at all"

  "They wouldn't?" Kilisha blinked again.

  "Some of them don't do divinations, some of them wouldn't do them for anything magical, and the good ones were all too busy on this blasted project of Kaligir's, trying to figure out what this beggar-queen Tabaea is doing in Ethshar of the Sands. They said maybe when they've done everything they can for the Guild. Damn the Guild!"

  Kilisha's eyes widened, and her sleepiness vanished. "Don't say that!" she gasped. "You're a wizard's wife; you know better than that!"

  Yara snorted. "I'm not sure of that right now," she said. "I told them we had a half-finished spell simmering here, and they didn't care, they still had to do their spells for Kaligir. I hope whatever that stuff is, it blows up and turns Kaligir into a toad!"

  "Don't say that," Kilisha repeated. "The divinations probably wouldn't have worked anyway. We'll find the couch ourselves tomorrow; don't worry about it. I couldn't do anything more tonight anyway—I'm exhausted, and we don't have the jewelweed."

  "I'll get you the jewelweed in the morning," Yara replied. "You had better find that couch!" Then she stormed past Kilisha and up the stairs.

  "I will," Kilisha said to her retreating back. "I promise."

  Then she got to her feet and began climbing the stairs herself, far more slowly than Yara had.