Ethshar 08 - Ithanalin's Restoration

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  With the potions in there, the next time someone like Kelder asked her whether she had any magic with her she would have something better than the Yellow Cloud to use. Being able to levitate to see over the rooftops might yet be very useful in finding the couch— if she only had some hint where in the city to look for it.

  She was just closing the pouch when someone knocked on the front door.

  "Kelder," she said to herself. "Maybe be can check the gates." She hurried through the parlor, almost tripping over the bench's tether as it wandered toward the door, clearly curious about who had knocked. "I'll be right there!" she called.

  The latch apparently decided that meant the new arrival was welcome, and clicked itself open. The door swung inward slightly.

  "Kilisha?" a voice called—a female voice. Kilisha stopped, her hand just short of the latch.

  "Who's there?"

  "It's me, Nissitha. Nissitha the Seer."

  Kilisha swung the door wide. "What can I do for you?" she asked, looking out at her neighbor and trying to display polite interest, rather than mere puzzlement, at this unexpected visit.

  "Adagan told me you wanted help finding a runaway couch?" Nissitha said hesitantly.

  "Yes!" Kilisha smiled hopefully. "Have you seen it?"

  "Well, no," Nissitha admitted. "I was hoping you could tell me more about it—what it looks like, where it was last seen, that sort of thing."

  "Oh." Kilisha's smile faded. "Come in, and I'll tell you."

  Nissitha stepped in. The bench stepped aside to make room for her while the chair rocked a little closer. The coatrack cowered back into its corner, and the table moved to one side for a better view. Nissitha looked around, her eyes wide.

  "They won't hurt you," Kilisha assured her.

  "You said some furniture had been animated… " Nissitha said, her voice trailing off.

  "Yes, and we've found most of it, but we still need the couch. The one that used to stand over there." She pointed.

  "Oh," Nissitha said. "What did it look like?"

  Startled, Kilisha blinked. "Oh, you must have seen it. It's been there as long as I've been Ithanalin's apprentice!"

  "I've never been in here before," Nissitha said. "What did it look like?"

  Trying to hide her astonishment that someone who lived just next door had never before been in Ithanalin's parlor, Kilisha said, "It's modest in size, enough to seat two comfortably, but three adults would be crowded. The wood is stained dark, and the front legs are carved in reverse curves, with claws on the bottom. The upholstery is red velvet, and the arms are partially upholstered as well as the back and seat. It looks almost new—Ithanalin put a preservation spell on it when Telleth first started walking, so the children wouldn't damage it."

  Nissitha nodded. "And it's animated?"

  "Just like the others," Kilisha confirmed, a sweep of her arm indicating the chair, bench, and table.

  "Where was it last seen?"

  "The tax collector followed it, but he lost sight of it on the East Road heading west, where Low Street forks off."

  "So it could be anywhere?"

  "I'm afraid so." Kilisha hesitated, reluctant to say anything rude, but she was puzzled by Nissitha's presence and questions. If she was a true seer, why would she need to ask all these questions? And if she was a fraud, why would she bother to ask all these questions? She had never before shown any signs of going out of her way to be helpful in the five years Kilisha had lived there. "Arc you going to help search?"

  "I thought I might," Nissitha said, with a toss of her head that sent a ripple down her lush mane of black hair.

  It popped out before Kilisha could stop herself. "Why?"

  Nissitha grimaced. "I don't suppose you'd believe it's just neighborhness."

  "Not... uh ... well, you know," Kilisha said.

  "Well, it is neighborliness, partly," Nissitha said, "but I admit it's directed more at Adagan than at you or Ithanalin."

  Sudden enlightenment burst in Kilisha's mind as a dozen scattered incidents over the past year suddenly fell together. Nissitha wasn't married; neither was Adagan, and Adagan was a handsome, charming fellow perhaps a year or two younger than Nissitha—close enough in age that the difference didn't seem significant, in any case.

  Kilisha had suspected for some time that Adagan preferred men to women, but perhaps she was wrong—or perhaps Nissitha either hadn't noticed or hoped to change that. Nissitha clearly wanted to impress Adagan with her enterprise and helpfulness by finding the runaway couch.

  "And it would be good advertising, don't you think," Nissitha added, "to find this couch that a wizard can't find?"

  "I suppose it would," Kilisha agreed. And it really didn't matter why Nissitha wanted to help; any help was welcome. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome. Now, is there anything else you can tell me about it?"

  Kilisha turned up an empty palm. "I can't think of anything."

  "Does it have any known likes or dislikes?"

  "No."

  "Is it dangerous?"

  "I don't know," Kilisha admitted. "It's big and heavy enough that I suppose it could do some damage if it wanted to. It shouldn't be particularly aggressive, but I don't really know which personality traits it got."

  "Can it do any magic?"

  Startled, Kilisha considered that for a moment. A couch had no voice for incantations, no hands to gesture with, and the spriggan had gotten at least part of the athame's magic….

  "I don't see how it could," she said.

  "Can it talk? Or fly?"

  "No."

  "Why haven't you found it? Did you try any divinations?"

  "I don't know any," Kilisha said. "And all the diviners Yara asked were too busy with some big crisis in Ethshar of the Sands."

  "I heard something about that," Nissitha said. "Someone's declared herself empress and led a bunch of beggars from the Wall Street Field in taking over the overlord's palace."

  "You mean Soldiers' Field?"

  "They call it Wall Street Field in the Sands," Nissitha said. "It's a better name, if you ask me, but the Soldiers' Field name is traditional here, so it'll probably never change."

  "But there are beggars in the Fortress there?"

  "Palace," Nissitha corrected. "No Fortress there. And yes, this empress invited a bunch of beggars and thieves to be her court."

  "How could she do that? Why didn't the guard stop her?"

  "Because she's a magician. Some one-of-a-kind freak who came out of nowhere, and no one knows what to do with her. It's a little like the Night of Madness, I guess."

  Kilisha didn't remember the Night of Madness, when warlockry first appeared; that had happened seven or eight years be fore she was born, Nissitha would have been a little girl at the time. Kilisha had heard about it, of course; it was supposed to have been much worse in the other two Ethshars, where there were more warlocks, but even here there had been trouble.

  The idea that this trouble in Ethshar of the Sands might be something similar hadn't occurred to her; she had been too caught up in Ithanalin's situation to give it much thought. "Is it really that bad?" she asked.

  It was Nissitha's turn to raise an empty palm. "Who knows?" she asked. "Do you think this thing with Ithanalin and your furniture might be connected?"

  "Oh, I don't think so," Kilisha said. "The master tripped on a spriggan and spilled a half-finished potion, there wasn't anything inexplicable about it."

  Nissitha blinked. "He tripped on a spriggan?"

  Kilisha immediately regretted her words, but it was too late to call them back. "Yes," she admitted.

  "The great Ithanalin the Wise tripped on a spriggan?"

  Kilisha sighed deeply. "Yes," she said. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't go around telling everyone that, though."

  "Oh, of course, of course, I'll keep it quiet." Nissitha's grin belied her words. "So you don't know anything more about where this couch is?"

  "Nothing," Kilisha confirmed.

  "
Then I suppose I had best go and start looking." The self-proclaimed seer tucked her skirt clear of the chair's inquisitive approach, then turned and stepped back out into the street. She called over her shoulder as she departed, "I'll let you know as soon as I find it."

  "Thank you," Kilisha called after her, but she did not feel very grateful. She closed the door, locked it, and ordered the latch, "Stay locked until I tell you—"

  She had not finished the sentence when a knock sounded.

  "Never mind," she told the latch, as she opened it again.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Kilisha stared when she saw who had knocked, but she quickly gathered at least a portion of her wits. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

  The young man on the doorstep smiled. "It's good to see you, too, Kili."

  Kilisha swung the door wide. "Come in!" she said. "I mean, I'm glad to see you, Opir, but what are you doing here? You know it's not permitted for family to interfere with an apprentice's training!"

  "I'm not here to interfere in anything," her brother replied. "I'm here to see whether there's any truth to the rumors I've heard." He looked around, taking in the furniture as it moved about the room and the tangled ropes leading from the various pieces to the fireplace, and added, "I'd say there must be some truth in them, all right."

  "What rumors?" Kilisha asked. "What have you heard?" "That some sort of magic has run wild and started bringing all your furniture to life, and nobody's seen Ithanalin in days. He's supposed to be holed up somewhere working on a counterspell.

  Or maybe he got turned into a coatrack—is that him in the corner?" He pointed.

  "No," Kilisha said, not wanting to be distracted by explanations just now. "Go on."

  "Or that he's been spirited away by the Empress Tabaea, or that he's secretly working for her, or that he's been transformed into you, and the real Kilisha of Eastgate is imprisoned somewhere dreadful."

  "That's ridiculous."

  "Is it? What did you call your toy pig when you were little?"

  Kilisha stared at him. "You mean Gruntpuppy?"

  Opir smiled broadly. "It's you, all right—I can't imagine you'd ever tell anyone you named that pig Gruntpuppy."

  Kilisha shrugged. "I'd tell Ithanalin if he asked, because he's my master and I'm an apprentice—but he's never asked, and there's no reason he would." She closed the door behind Opir. "Where did you hear all these rumors?"

  "From Mother, mostly. She collects them."

  Kilisha blinked, then grabbed the chair and sat down. "Lock, please," she ordered the latch. The chair shifted beneath her, and she told it, "Hold still." She gestured to Opir. "You can catch the bench if you like."

  Opir eyed it uneasily, then said, "I'll stand."

  "Please yourself. Now, tell me more about where Mother's been getting all these stories. I mean, Ithanalin's only been… gone for about two days."

  "So he is gone?"

  "Not really." Kilisha sighed, "He's in the workshop. But he can't move—a spell went wrong and transferred his life force into all the furniture."

  "So you're sitting on him?"

  Kilisha closed her eyes and bit her lip as the chair shifted slightly. Her older brother had always had a knack for making everything she said or did sound stupid. "After a fashion," she admitted. "Mostly, though, I'm sitting on the straight chair we keep here in the parlor. It just happens to have a little bit of Ithanalin's spirit in it at the moment."

  "And the bench, too? And the coatrack?"

  "All of it," Kilisha said.

  Opir looked around the parlor. "Where's the couch?" he asked.

  "I don't know," Kilisha admitted. "That's why I haven't been able to restore him yet—I need all the pieces. I've got all the others, but the couch ran away and I haven't found it yet."

  "Then why aren't you out looking for it, or working a spell to locate it?"

  "Because I'm obeying my mistress's orders. I'll find it later. Now, tell me about these rumors. Where did Mother hear them?"

  "Didn't you know she has spies all around here?"

  Kilisha closed her eyes again and sighed deeply, then opened them. "No," she said. "I didn't know. What spies?"

  "Lirrin, for one—Ithanalin's daughter. And Thetta, Heshka's wife. And Virinia's little sister Fara, and that fellow Genzer of Northmark who's been trying to court that cute apprentice of Tirin's, and the two kids who help out in Kara's Arcana, and that old woman across the court from your back door who calls herself Zinamdia, which isn't any sort of real name I ever heard of. And probably others I don't know about. You know Mother's always been fond of gossip."

  "Yes, but she used to just talk to people in the courtyard at home, or in Eastgate Market. She didn't come all the way over here to gather news!"

  "But that was before she had her youngest apprenticed to a genuine wizard. You're the first magician in our entire family, Kili—didn't you realize how special that makes you?"

  "No, I didn't," she lied.

  In fact, she knew perfectly well that it made her the object of family pride and envy. That had been much of the point, really, after a childhood of being utterly ordinary. She had gotten tired of being dull; she had even bored herself, and had begged to be apprenticed to a wizard largely so she could escape that tedium. It had worked, too.

  But she wasn't about to admit that to her older brother.

  "Well, you should have known," Opir said. "After Ithanalin took you on Mother boasted about it constantly for sixnights— but after a while she needed new things to say about her daughter the wizard, and you hardly ever came home anymore, or wrote letters. ..."

  "I don't have time! I'm an apprentice!"

  "I know that," Opir said, grinning. "So did Mother. She didn't want to do anything that might interfere or annoy Ithanalin, for fear he'd send you home in disgrace—"

  "He can't," Kilisha interrupted. "Guild rules. I passed the point where he could send me home when I was thirteen." She caught herself before explaining further—that once she had made herself an athame she could only leave the Wizards' Guild by dying, and if she fouled up her apprenticeship badly enough that she couldn't continue Ithanalin wouldn't have sent her home, he'd have had her killed. Somehow she didn't think she wanted her parents to hear that. She didn't think she even wanted her brother to hear it.

  "Really? We didn't know that."

  "Really. And you weren't supposed to."

  Opir hesitated, waiting to see if Kilisha would give any details, then turned up a palm and continued. "She didn't want to cause you any trouble, but she really wanted to know what you were doing, so she started visiting along Wizard Street and the East Road . She's been doing it for years. You didn't know?"

  "I didn't know."

  "Oh. Well, she's been doing it, and for the past two days the gossip and rumors have just been pouring in—mostly other things, but a few about Ithanalin and you." He glanced around at the furniture, then asked, "What really happened?"

  "I told you—a spell went wrong. A spriggan tripped the master as he was stirring something, and it spilled, and the spell scattered his soul into all these different pieces."

  "A spriggan? So it doesn't have anything to do with Empress Tabaea and her strange magic?"

  "I don't even know for certain who Empress Tabaea is," Kilisha said angrily. "You mean the usurper in Ethshar of the Sands?"

  "That's the one. Haven't you been hearing about it? Word is that the whole Wizards' Guild is going mad trying to deal with her."

  "I've been a bit distracted," Kilisha said. "And the Guild hasn't been helping me any—they're too busy with this madwoman to do anything about my master."

  "Well, you can hardly blame them! She's taken over an entire city and killed a dozen magicians!"

  Kilisha hesitated. "She has?"

  "Yes, she has!"

  "I've been busy. I hadn't heard the details." Actually, she realized that she had heard that much, but hadn't given it much thought, or remembered the specifics.


  A dozen magicians? A dozen? If she had heard that before, she should have remembered it.

  But she had been distracted by her own concerns.

  "I'm surprised," Opir said. "I thought all the wizards were involved in it."

  "I'll start paying attention again once Ithanalin is restored!" she snapped. "As an apprentice, my first duty is to my master, and only to my master. When he's back to normal I'll worry about the usurper, and do what the Guild asks, but right now I need to work on the restorative spell and get all the pieces together."

  "Oh." Opir looked around the room; the coatrack backed away, the table twirled on one leg and almost toppled over, and the bench flexed itself. "You know, Mother and Father didn't send me, I came on my own. But they did tell me, since I was coming anyway, to ask whether there's anything they can do to help out."

  "Is that why you came?"

  "Well, and to find out what had really happened. And to find out if you knew anything about the empress; some of the neighbors were wondering whether it might be wise to flee the city until matters settle down."

  "I don't know anything about her," Kilisha said. "But if you want to be helpful, there is one thing—maybe Mother can set her informers and spies on this. I need the couch. I don't know where it's gone—we last saw it heading west on the East Road, toward Hillside and the Fortress. If anyone knows where it is, I need to know, as soon as possible. There might even be a reward, though I can't promise that without talking to Yara."

  "I think we can ask around, certainly," Opir said.

  "Good. Now, get out of here before Yara gets back, or the children hear you—you shouldn't be here!" She got to her feet and gave her brother a shove toward the door.

  "I'm going," Opir said.

  Just then a crash sounded upstairs. Opir paused and asked, "What was that?"

  "Lirrin and Telleth are playing with a spriggan. I should go check on them, so will you please go?"