The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (31 page)

“Well, you're pretty, too, Morinen,” Nora said staunchly. “And you know—I'm not sure if this is what your mother meant, but honestly, if all this man wants in a wife is land, you're better off not marrying him.”

Morinen gave Nora a bemused look. “But who'll ever marry me, when I don't have any land? Ma says men always like to have a wife with a strong back, but they don't like it if she's bigger than they are. Gravin's like an ox, he didn't mind how tall I was. I wish I hadn't been so free with him now,” she said sadly.

“Free? Oh. Well, you really liked him, didn't you?”

“I did like him, and I thought he'd surely marry me,” Morinen said, her face suddenly crumpling.

“Oh, Morinen,” Nora said, wiping her hand on her apron and putting her arm on the girl's shoulders. A thought struck her. “Are you pregnant?”

“No,” said Morinen, with a shake of her head. “I wish I were! Then my brothers would make him marry me.”

Nora almost laughed, but Morinen was in earnest.

“Listen, Morinen,” she said. “You're better off without him. You have to realize that men—they really only care about themselves.” Nora jerked at a turnip so roughly that the green top tore off in her hand. “They don't think about whether they might be hurting someone else. They're just wrapped up in themselves and what they want. It's true in my world—and it's even truer here.

“You know, sometimes, very innocently, you can develop a sort of fascination with a man, and then you see all these little signs that actually don't mean anything, but it's too late because you're reading in them exactly what you want to read. Be careful, is all I'm saying. It's easy to get fooled.”

Nora stopped, hoping that Morinen would not wonder whom, exactly, Nora was really addressing. “Well,” she said, with an apologetic smile. “I didn't mean to get carried away.”

Morinen uttered a short, grudging laugh. “You sound just like my ma,” she said.

•   •   •

With only a little care, Nora found, it was possible to avoid almost all encounters with the magician. He had no real fixed routine, which made it hard to predict his comings and goings, but Nora contrived to spend more time in those places where he was less likely to go—avoiding in particular the great hall, where he might unexpectedly pop out of the wall.

It was absurd, she knew, to go to such lengths to keep from running into Aruendiel. It was also easier. She could still hear those contemptuous words on his lips: “the puny, trivial pleadings of a female voice.” They burned in her memory, dosed with some venom that she guessed had something to do with her own dashed hopes for—whatever it was she'd been hoping for. Better to keep a safe distance.

When Mrs. Toristel directed her to carry a message to Aruendiel one afternoon—the first afternoon in weeks when Nora had found some time to settle down with the Ors grammar—Nora could barely conceal her annoyance.

“He's not in the tower?”

“No, he went out a while ago, down the path to the river.”

“To the forest?” When Mrs. Toristel nodded, Nora said: “The last time I went down there, he almost bit my head off. Accused me of trespassing.”

“Oh, he won't mind,” Mrs. Toristel said, although she looked concerned. “Just go and come back quickly. He wanted to know how young Dandelion was doing, and I just got back from the village and they're saying the leg will have to come off.”

“Ugh,” said Nora, rousing herself.

She took the path through the orchard, where the gnarled trees were now stripped of both fruit and leaves. The grass was wet and slippery from rain earlier. Ahead, the hills on the other side of the river had tarnished to a dirty bronze, except where the black stands of fir trees held their ground. Autumn was subdued here, Nora thought, just rain and gathering chill, no wild scarlets or golds to cheer the heart.

There was no sign of Aruendiel near the river. Nora made her way across to where the path continued on the other side. “Hello?” she called. Her voice struck her own ears as being unnaturally loud, yet it could hardly press past the heavy branches of the firs.

Just go and come quickly, Mrs. Toristel had said. Nora walked as fast as she could up the sloping path, a narrow corridor between the trees. The sound of the rushing water faded behind her. After ten minutes or so, the track grew steeper and less gloomy, as the fir trees gave way to rusty-leafed oaks. The path forked just ahead, in front of an oblong boulder. A goat-hide sack with a drawstring top rested on top of the rock.

Aruendiel must have left it there. But it was impossible to tell which way he had gone. Fallen leaves covered both trails, holding no trace of a passing boot.

Seizing the chance to catch her breath, Nora sat down on a dry patch on the rock. She decided to wait for a few minutes, and then if—when—Aruendiel failed to appear, she would go back and tell Mrs. Toristel that she couldn't find him.

One of the paths continued straight up the hillside; the other angled west along an old stone wall. Hadn't Aruendiel said that once sheep had been grazed here? Hard to imagine now. The tree trunks were burly with age; they must be more than a hundred years old. Some sunlight made its way between clouds and thinning leaves to warm Nora's face. It was pleasant to have a chance to sit at leisure, alone, away from the castle—although the castle was not so far. She could see one of the towers through the trees, perhaps a half mile away.

Nora closed her eyes and listened to the breeze stirring the dying leaves and the occasional drops of water falling from the trees around her.

There was another noise, too, one that she could not quite make out. She found she could follow the tenuous thread of sound best by letting her mind wander slightly. It had a shape, like music, like a long, meandering conversation, overheard from some distance away, between people who know each other so well that they do not always need to finish their sentences to be understood. At the same time, it was so delicate, so weightless in her ears, that she began to wonder whether it came from within her own body, the way the roar of the ocean in a seashell was supposed to be the sound of blood in the arteries. This was even more fragile, though. It was like the noise that a school of fish makes as it swims; it was the rustle of air in a bird's wing as it flies; it was the silence in the center of the thunderstorm.

Someone coughed impatiently.

“Bestir yourself, Mistress Nora.” Aruendiel was standing in front of her, a tall shadow against the sunlight. “What are you doing here?”

She blinked. It took her a moment to remember. “Mrs. Toristel sent me to find you.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“Someone in the village—Dandelion—is worse. She said you'd want to know.” Nora got to her feet slowly, feeling queasy, her body agitated, trembling. She took a deep breath, hoping that she was not about to faint.

Aruendiel was surveying her with narrowed eyes. “Are you ill?”

“I was dozing.”

“This is not the proper place in which to—”

“I know,” Nora said. “I can tell. There's something going on here, something to do with your magic. You told me that before, but now I've seen—heard—for myself. Some background noise that isn't really there. And I've got that weird feeling I get when you do magic.”

Aruendiel raised his eyebrows. “You did not tell me that. An uneasiness in the gut, is that it?” He tilted his head to one side, still studying her. “There is nothing here that would hurt you seriously.” He sounded almost apologetic. “But, well, I am surprised that you could discern anything out of the ordinary.”

“I'm not as slow as you think I am, even if I am a woman.” She turned and started down the path. After a moment, she heard him follow.

“What of the boy's leg?” he asked, as they neared the river.

“Mrs. Toristel said it might have to come off,” Nora said, not looking back.

“Good,” Aruendiel said. “There is a new spell I mean to try for regrowing severed limbs.”

“And what if the spell doesn't work?” Nora shot an irate glance over her shoulder. “Why not just try to save the boy's leg in the first place? If you can raise the dead, I'm sure healing a gangrenous limb would be no trouble at all.”

She stepped carefully from stone to stone across the water, remembering how she had fallen the last time. Behind her, she had the vague impression of sudden movement, a flurry in the air. Looking back from the other side of the river, she was not entirely surprised to see that Aruendiel had vanished.

Back at the castle, the cow and goats had to be milked, the milk strained, firewood and water lugged into the kitchen, the bread dough set to rise. The copper pots could have used a good scrubbing, too, but by the time she had finished kneading the dough, Nora had had enough.

It was dark outside. Her shoulders ached. Mrs. Toristel had gone back to her quarters some time ago. The magician might not return for hours. The castle was quiet, aside from the faint rustling of mice in the wall.

Nora helped herself to a bowl of soup from the pot on the back of the stove—some of the white calf's bones had gone to make it—and took her dinner into the great hall. She lit an oil lamp, fetched the Ors primer, and began to read laboriously about the vengeance that the wrathful Lord Devris Bearcrusher took on his ungrateful comrades. It reminded her of the first book of the
Iliad
, except that Devris was in a funk because he had been deprived not of a girl, but of three dozen horses, a golden necklace, and a shield made of magical cowhide.

Turning the pages of a book at the long table in the dim hall was oddly comforting. After a while, she recognized why. It was like being back at school, studying under the vaulted ceiling of the reference library or in the cafeteria during the quiet hours between meals.

Devris had just decapitated his chief rival, Udidin the Fair; reclaimed his magical shield; and was in the middle of an unpleasant ritual involving the dead man's liver and testicles—was this book really for children?—when the door to the courtyard opened and Nora heard Aruendiel's limping footsteps. She nodded briefly as he appeared in the feeble circle of light cast by the oil lamp.

“Is there more of that?” Aruendiel asked, indicating her soup.

“In the kitchen.” After a fractional pause, she added, “Shall I get some for you?”

With a shake of his head, he sat down at the table, not in the high-backed chair at the end but on the bench opposite Nora, near the lamp.

“The boy Dandelion is improving,” he announced. “The report was wrong. The leg will not have to come off.”

“Too bad. You'll have to wait to try your new spell.”

“There will be other opportunities,” he said as a bowl of soup appeared before him, followed by a mug of water.

She could not resist commenting on the soup he had conjured: “Isn't that a fairly trivial use of magic?”

“Yes,” he agreed, more readily than she expected, “but I am weary tonight, and I did not come to rouse you from your dinner—”

“Thanks, I'm almost done.”

“—or your book.”

Then why did you sit down? Nora thought, but he seemed to be in no particular hurry to begin a conversation. After a moment, she bent over the book and began to read again. It was harder to concentrate now, with Aruendiel drinking broth from his bowl, not silently—they did have spoons here, so why did no one think of using them for eating soup?—but she did her best to lose herself in the cascade of Ors brushstrokes.

The action picked up again, which helped. Just as Devris was enjoying his victory meal, Udidin's younger brother, Udesdiel the Hasty, launched a surprise attack seeking revenge. Devris, protected by his magical shield and fortified by all the fresh liver and mountain oysters he had just consumed, slew half a dozen of Udesdiel's men and was closing in on Udesdiel, but Udesdiel had a spear that would always find its target—

Nora turned the page to find out how this would play out—her money was still on Devris, despite Udesdiel's nifty spear—but the next page was almost completely unreadable. She gave a low, frustrated sigh. Long ago, someone had spilled a thick puddle of ink in the middle of the paper, and then, evidently reluctant to let so much fine, wet ink go to waste, had dipped a brush into it and sketched a series of energetic caricatures across the page.

She made as if to close the book, but her sigh had attracted Aruendiel's attention. He reached across the table and took the book from her, then flipped through a few pages.

“Why are you not reading the book that you took from the palace library?” he asked suddenly, putting the book down. “That one is written in your own language, is it not?”

“I didn't—” Automatically Nora began to deny her theft, and then thought better of it. The evidence was upstairs in her room. “How did you know? Is there some sort of magical antitheft device attached to the book? Or have you been using magic to spy on me?”

“Neither. I saw you hide the book in your bag once during the ride home.”

“It was my book originally, you know.” Although she was trying not to sound defensive, she felt a certain shiftiness creep into her tone.

“So you said.”

“The king has no use for a book written in English.”

“He has no use for books written in his native tongue, from what I can tell,” Aruendiel said. “But you have not answered my question. Why are you reading this child's primer? It is an account of the Thelbron War. An important passage in history, but not very relevant to your concerns.”

“How would you even know what my concerns are?” Nora said—civilly enough, she thought. “I told you before. I've been teaching myself to read Ors. Mrs. Toristel said that she had learned out of this book, and I've been trying to do the same.”

“Why do you wish to read Ors?” Aruendiel speared a chunk of meat from his bowl. “What use will it be to you?”