The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (39 page)

Hirizjahkinis laughed. “You are a considerate host!”

“He would do the same to me,” Aruendiel said. He seemed to take a certain amount of pleasure in the observation.

“I hope he would not be so rude to a guest. There are a few books in Hirgus's collection that I am looking forward to reading myself when I am in Mirne Klep this winter.”

“Is that why you accepted his invitation to visit? I am still flabbergasted that you would willingly spend more than a few hours with that pompous fathead.”

“I have always liked Hirgus. It is not his fault that Ilissa's magic almost swallowed him up. I think he is a very good-natured man. He says nothing of great interest, that is true, but nothing that is very disagreeable, either. And then I am so fond of his wife.”

“Oh, he has a wife.” Aruendiel's tone indicated that no further explanation was needed.

“A lovely girl! Do not sound so disapproving. You also have enjoyed the company of pretty wives not your own. Hirgus is pleased that she will have a companion this winter. They have no children, and she is much younger than he—he fears that she suffers from boredom. Really, he is very lucky that I am available to distract her, so that she will not form a more perilous attachment.”

“Indeed.” Aruendiel picked up a green glass jar from the workbench, shook it gently, and guardedly uncorked it. A low moaning filled the room. Frowning, he recorked the bottle and returned it to its place, then turned to Hirizjahkinis. “You should be in that library, not Hirgus,” he said brusquely. “I want you to go through my notebooks on Faitoren magic while you're here, and you must get the unmasking spell right. You bungled it with the Chalice, obviously.”

“Yes, yes, but it is not so easy to practice when there are no Faitoren around! And frankly, I have had enough of them for now.”

“I, too,” he said, lifting an eyebrow. He pulled a scroll from the shelf. “But you should not have to rely on the Kavareen to protect you from Faitoren magic.”

They had already had this discussion twice since the morning of her arrival, and neither had derived any particular satisfaction from the exercise. With a grimace, Hirizjahkinis turned back to the window. In the courtyard below, two small, cloaked figures were visible, Nora and Mrs. Toristel. The two seemed to be discussing Hirgus's coach, which burned with a low flame near the castle wall.

Hirizjahkinis looked back at Aruendiel, bending over the scroll. “This little one Nora, she is very interested in magic,” she said casually.

Aruendiel grunted as he made a note on the parchment.

Hirizjahkinis pursued, in the same nonchalant tone: “So you have made her your pupil rather than your mistress?”

Aruendiel's head jerked up, the Faitoren and the Kavareen forgotten. “What? You are impertinent, Hiriz. Do not speak to me of absurdities.”

“The nights are growing long and cold, this time of year.” Hirizjahkinis laughed as though inviting Aruendiel to join in. “When I met Nora in Semr, she told me she was not your mistress, but by now, I thought—”

“What? Well, she spoke truly, although it was no concern of yours. Nor it is now.”

“You are my old, dear friend. I am always concerned with matters of your happiness. What is holding you back? Each time I see Nora, I think she is very engaging. And prettier than when I saw her last. Her scars are less obvious than they were. She is a good age, too, not too green—ripe to be a merry bedmate.”

“What, are you the girl's pander?” He spat out the words.

“Peace, I am teasing you,” she said, “but you puzzle me. I saw your face when you summoned Queen Tulivie's shadow. You looked at her with sadness and hunger, even though I do not think you were so much in love with her when she lived. And yet when you have the chance for a real, living, flesh-and-blood love affair, you scowl and do nothing.”

Aruendiel put his brush down and moved his hand above the scroll, making a faint breeze spiral over the wet ink. The parchment rustled on the table. “He who hunts the stag does not chase squirrels.”

“Hmmph. It depends on how hungry the hunter is. In
my
country we say a starving man needs no salt or oil for his termites.”

“Even with salt and oil, termites are no delicacy,” he said, with a harsh laugh. “I have traveled enough in your country—with a good appetite, too—to know that.”

“We are speaking of Nora.”

It was past time to curtail this discussion, Aruendiel felt. He chose his words carefully for greatest effect. “What of her? She is lowborn and no great beauty and the soiled former chattel of a lecherous Faitoren half-breed, but I would not have thought to compare her to a termite.” He added coolly: “It is unkind of you, Hiriz.”

Hirizjahkinis looked at him, her gaze the only live thing in a face that might have been carved from wood. “Ah, is that what you think of her?” she said finally. “I miscalculated. I was thinking of your welfare, but I must consider Nora's, too. Perhaps she is better off not being your mistress.”

“Now you are talking more sensibly.”

“So why are you teaching her?”

“She has an interest and some aptitude,” he said, twitching a crooked shoulder. “We will see where it leads.”

“Didn't Holo Nev come to you once, asking you to be his teacher? He had interest and aptitude, and gold, too. And you sent him away.”

“It would have taken a dozen years for him to unlearn all the bad habits he had already picked up.”

“And that young man from Reskorinia?”

Hirizjahkinis would not give up, Aruendiel thought. “A dilettante. He had no true understanding of magic.”

“At least some of them had the discernment to seek you out, Aruendiel, and you always turned them down. I do not know of anyone but myself who can truly call themselves your protégé.”

“There were a few others, years ago. Norsn, Micher, Nansis, Turl. They were wizards of middling ability before I taught them to be magicians.”

“I did not realize that Turl had studied with you!”

“Yes, although he will never admit it. Well, I do not care to own him, either. He taught me a lesson, to be careful about whom I choose to teach my craft.

“Well, it is a good choice to teach Mistress Nora, for whatever reason you are doing it. You are right. There is talent there.”

Hirizjahkinis was still probing; he was still on his guard. “Some talent, yes,” Aruendiel said with a tilt of his head, “but who knows what it will amount to? Novice magicians are notoriously lazy. They learn a few spells and then have no interest in learning more.”

“I do not think you need to worry on that score. Yesterday she lit candles for me with as much joy as if each flame were a new star. I had to beg her to stop, and to promise that I would help her again today.”

“It is all new to her. Her mind is eager. I confess, it is refreshing to observe so much enthusiasm, even for the most elementary forms of magic.” Aruendiel's voice warmed, and the hard knots in the corners of his mouth loosened. When Nora lit the candles, she was like a flame herself, he thought. “She is a hopeful presence,” he could not help adding.

Then, before Hirizjahkinis could try to make something of his admission, he went on quickly: “There is another thing, Hiriz. It is time that I think of my legacy, to pass on the knowledge that I've accumulated. Mistress Nora is not, perhaps, the heir I would have chosen, but when you, who studied with me longest, have learned so little as to venture unprepared into the Faitoren—”

“What is this talk of a legacy?” Hirizjahkinis demanded, showing no interest in further talk of the Faitoren. “Are you dying, that you are so morbid?”

“No, not dying. You forget,” he said, a dark smile carving deeper lines into his face, “I am already dead.”

“Now
you
are speaking of absurdities.” She waited for him to respond, but he said nothing. Hirizjahkinis pulled herself even straighter than she had been standing. Although she did not reach Aruendiel's shoulder, she gave a fair impression of looking him directly in the eye.

“I see. You are still sulking, just as you were in Semr,” she said severely. “And I am tired of being blamed for the kindness of giving you back your life. If I had known you would be so ungrateful, I would have left your corpse frozen on that mountaintop. What is so terrible? You have your health, your work—”

“My health! I have not had a day without pain for four dozen years.”

“I am sorry for that. But you are not crippled, you can walk, you can ride, you are not bedridden as you were. And you will not use magic to salve the pain, will you? No, you are too stubborn for that.”

Hirizjahkinis was relishing the chance to lecture him now, he thought sourly. “It is bad enough to know that it is only magic that keeps my heart beating and my lungs breathing and my body from turning into a withered husk.”

“But that is different, I had nothing to do with that. It is the same for me and everyone who practices true magic. I would be a dried-up old lady by now”—Hirizjahkinis's mouth suddenly curved into a broad smile—“or dead myself, if you had not taught me to be a magician.”

Aruendiel passed a hand over his face, avoiding the roughest places by habit. “I don't blame you, Hiriz, for what you did,” he said slowly. “On the road back from Semr, I brought a child back who had been dead three days. It is a tempting thing, to bring someone out of the dark into the light. And that sort of magic—you can feel the tendrils of power growing through your very soul.”

“Three days? That is not so hard.
You
had been dead for weeks.”

“She had been eaten down to the bones.”

“Ah, that is a little more difficult. You should do more spells like that, and you would feel better.”

He made a disgusted noise deep in his throat. “Gods forbid! I still do not know whether I did that child good or ill.”

“Good, of course. There can be nothing ill in giving someone so young another chance at life.”

“That is what Nora said.” Mistress Nora, he should have said, but fortunately Hirizjahkinis did not notice the slip. Carefully, he rolled up the parchment on which he had been taking notes and passed a thin black ribbon around it. The ends of the ribbon lifted lazily, like a pair of drowsy snakes, and tied themselves amorously into a complicated knot. “Well, perhaps it is better with a child. A child is resilient, she will not remember the darkness.”

Hirizjahkinis regarded him watchfully. “You told us that you remembered nothing of death.”

“Nothing. But I know, now, that it is always there.”

“Oh, enough of your mewling, Aruendiel! Every living creature is under sentence of death. All the more reason to savor the life you have—especially if it has been taken away once and then returned to you. So, the pain,” she added briskly. “It is still your back?”

“Only when it is not my head or half a dozen other parts of my body that never healed properly.”

“Let me take a look.”

“Never mind my back,” he snapped. “It is no better nor worse than ever.”

“Corverist of Vaev gave me a new spell for stiffness in the joints.”

Aruendiel hunched his shoulders. “I will not use magic as a drug. Not again. Well, is Corverist still going in for animal magic?”

“Oh, yes! Corverist told me that he learned it from a snake. A very old snake. It claimed to have known Nagaris the Fat.”

“I have never known snakes to be very truthful,” Aruendiel said.

T
he candle flames burned skittishly for a second, and then made a sudden leap upward. Nora blinked, even though she had been expecting it. She was standing in the great hall with Hirizjahkinis, who was showing her how to make a candle flare even when there was not the slightest current of air stirring.

“I cannot teach you anything more about lighting fires,” Hirizjahkinis had said firmly, when they started. “Aruendiel has done a good job of that already, and he will be irked if I teach you something that he disagrees with. So I will teach you something that he will not think is so important—but can be very useful, in the right circumstances. A few little tricks with a candle flame once persuaded a very suspicious prince in Haiah that the local lion god did not wish for me to have my head chopped off. Here, let me show you—it is only a matter of giving the flame a little love.”

When it came to explaining magic, Hirizjahkinis's directions were not quite as clear or detailed as Aruendiel's—he never talked of love—but after a few attempts Nora got the idea. Her candles flared vigorously, although compared with Hirizjahkinis's neat row of squibs they had a slightly ragged appearance. Afterward, Hirizjahkinis tried to teach her how to make the candles burn in all the colors of the spectrum. Nora got from yellow to blue.

“Not bad for a first attempt,” Hirizjahkinis pronounced. “I will tell Aruendiel that you have done credit to him today.”

Feeling a little dizzy from her efforts, as though she would turn blue instead of the candle flame, Nora thanked Hirizjahkinis for the lesson. “I think Aruendiel is still working in the tower, if you would like to rejoin him,” she added.

“Oh, there is no hurry,” Hirizjahkinis said. “I made him a little angry this morning. It is better for him to have some time to cool his temper.”

“Is he still angry about your going to Ilissa's?”

“Of course he is—but now the problem is that I gave him some good advice, too.”

“That is the worst kind to give,” Nora said drily. Whatever Hirizjahkinis's counsel, Nora had no doubt that it had been eminently sensible, unsparingly delivered, and soundly rejected. She also had the faint, haunting, ridiculous fear that somehow it involved her, Nora. Why she felt this way, she could not say—something in Hirizjahkinis's tone or gaze. At least this time Hirizjahkinis had not asked her whether she was Aruendiel's mistress. Changing the subject, she said: “I found something in the storeroom this morning that he might want to see.” She went to the end of the table and brought back a small wooden box. Opening it, she began to leaf through the papers inside.

“There are notes here on various spells—maps—a few letters—but this is what caught my eye. It's from my world.” She was trying to sound casual.

Hirizjahkinis took the yellowed square of paper from her and glanced politely at the image printed upon it. Then she looked more closely. “Ah, that is Aruendiel! As he used to be. I almost did not know him.”

“I thought it was him. I wasn't sure.”

“Oh, yes, that is him. He was very handsome, was he not?”

It was hard to tell definitely from the small, pale oval behind the stiff collar, under the brim of the dark hat. But, as Nora looked at the picture, almost intuitively she agreed with Hirizjahkinis. The figure in the picture was smiling boldly and held itself straight as the Ionic column beside it, unthinkingly confident in the way that comes from an abundance of good health and good looks.

“What sort of image is this?” Hirizjahkinis asked. “It is not a painting. Very shadowy and gray.”

“It's what we call a photograph,” Nora said, giving the English word. “We can make pictures with a box, a kind of mechanical eye, and print them on paper.”

“Oh, yes,” Hirizjahkinis said, nodding. “Like a scroll of Soiveron. Whatever the magician sees is recorded on the parchment. A very useful spell, although I sometimes have difficulty with the perspective.”

“Ours has to do with, um, light rays.” Nora went on quickly before Hirizjahkinis could ask her for a more precise explanation: “So this picture must have been made while Aruendiel visited my world, I guess.”

“Is that writing at the bottom?”

“Yes, the photographer's name and address. Schroeder & Kubon, in Chicago. And there's a date—more than ninety years ago.” It was 1915: the First World War—not the Second—raging in Europe. Horses in the streets along with motorcars. Telephones but no radio. Three of Nora's grandparents not yet born—Grandpa Hank a round-eyed toddler in a wicker pram.

“Ninety?” Hirizjahkinis repeated carelessly.

“Hirizjahkinis, how old is Aruendiel?”

“How old?” The magician shook her head, smiling, the beads in her hair chattering. “It is likely that time flows differently in your world.”

“Yes, but still, ninety years over there must count for a lot of years here.”

“He is older than I am. How old would you say I am?”

“I believe you are older than you look—” Nora began cautiously.

“I am older than I was yesterday, and younger than I will be tomorrow, and that is all I will tell you.” Hirizjahkinis laughed. “But no, I do not show all my years. Magicians age slowly, more slowly than nonmagicians. Magic is very good for the health, you know. How do you feel after lighting those candles? Good, yes? It feels even better to raise a storm or find a necklace that was lost a hundred years ago or make a blind man see—or capture the Kavareen,” she said, touching the leopard pelt on her shoulder. “If you keep lighting candles, Mistress Nora—and doing other, more complicated spells—you may find yourself living longer than you expected.”

“That would be nice.”

“I think so, too! There is nothing wrong with a long life, nothing at all.” Hirizjahkinis spoke with a shade more vehemence than Nora would have anticipated.

“So Aruendiel could be more than ninety years old.”

“Oh, certainly. Why don't you ask him? Or—I know! We could ask
him
when he was born,” Hirizjahkinis said, taking the photograph into her hand again.

“What? Oh, the spell that brings paintings to life—?”

“Yes.” Hirizjahkinis grinned wickedly. “Let us ask Aruendiel,
this
Aruendiel, right now. I have a wish to see my old friend as I first knew him. He was not as gloomy then as he is now. And he will be delighted to see me, I am sure, since as far as he knows he is in your world—Sheecaga, you say? So he will not be expecting me at all.”

Nora was tempted. A younger, unscarred, more genial Aruendiel. She was curious to see just how good-looking he'd been. The man who'd been Ilissa's lover, Queen Tulivie's. But then Nora remembered the bewildered fear on the painted figure's face. “Will he mind?” she asked.

Hirizjahkinis assumed she meant the present-day Aruendiel. “He will not know,” she said confidently. “Not until the spell is already over. It will only take a minute.”

But after she worked the spell, the image on the paper was still mute and unmoving. Hirizjahkinis frowned. “Did Aruendiel put a counterspell on this picture, to prevent anyone from speaking to it? That would be extreme vigilance, even for him.”

“Maybe the spell doesn't work on photos,” Nora said, slightly relieved.

“Bah!” Hirizjahkinis threw the photograph down. She began to turn over the other papers in the box. “What is all this? A spell to make iron float . . . a letter—no name, just an initial M, a woman's writing . . . hmm, obviously on very good terms with Aruendiel . . . Holy Sister, I see why she did not sign it.”

“I read that, too,” Nora confessed. “Is she talking about an actual spell that he did, or does she have a very vivid erotic imagination?”

“Well, you could achieve the same results without magic, perhaps. It would take more time. . . . I think I know who M is. I treated her for gout, years later. She had burned three husbands by then. The only client I've ever had who said she liked a female magician better than a man.” Hirizjahkinis laughed a deep, rumbling chuckle. “Maybe Aruendiel could tell us why.”

“
You
can ask him that.”

“Wait, I may not need to. Here is another letter from M, even longer. . . . She is not very happy with him now . . . terrible, terrible, Aruendiel, if that's true! But she is so vicious, I am sorry for him, too. . . . What else? . . . A spell for being in two places at once. I know this one, it gives me a headache. . . . Who is this? Another crazy mistress?”

Hirizjahkinis had fished out another portrait, this one a painting, a miniature the size of her hand. The head of a woman, not young, not yet into middle age. Her dark hair was coiled beneath a crimson headdress, and she wore a necklace of small silvery pearls. Straight, prominent, rather bony features: the sort of face that could have had an avian, exotic
beauty if it had not looked so strained, even fearful. Her gray eyes looked out warily beyond the borders of the painting, not meeting the eyes of the spectator, as though she hoped to escape notice.

“I thought at first it might be his wife—” Nora began.

“Oh, no! She was a blonde with a face like a bowl of milk.”

“—but then I realized that this woman looks a bit like a picture of Aruendiel's sister that I saw once. It's got to be someone in his family—the coloring, the eyes.”

“Yes, I think you are right. I never met his sister, so I cannot say if this is she. His mother? An aunt? One thing I can tell you, this is an old hairstyle—when I first came to Semr, there were only a few old ladies still wearing it.” Hirizjahkinis touched the painted headdress gently. “Or,” she added suddenly, “it is his daughter!”

“He has a daughter?”

“He has never mentioned one, but it stands to reason!” Hirizjahkinis said with a laugh. “She would have been born on the wrong side of the blanket—so he hid her picture away with these old papers. Yes, look how she is dressed like a noblewoman, but with no emblem on her necklace, anywhere, to indicate who she is. I have looked at many, many pictures now, and I can tell you, when peers sit for their portrait, they do not wish to be anonymous. They always have a crest or a signet ring, or they pose with a falcon on their hand, because the symbol of their house is a falcon, or some such thing.”

“Whoever she is, she doesn't look very happy, does she?” Nora said. “She looks as though she's had a hard life.”

“Why don't you ask her about it?” said Hirizjahkinis. Holding the portrait at arm's length, she addressed it directly, her tone half-commanding, half-cajoling. “Madame? Madame? I beg a few minutes of your attention. Madame! I call you!

“It is better if you know the name of the person,” she added to Nora, in an undertone. “But the spell works without it, too. They cannot ignore you for very long.”

“This might be a shock for her,” Nora murmured. It occurred to her that Hirizjahkinis's casual remark about the crazy mistress might have been at least partly on target: There was something about the woman's face that made you wonder if she was wholly sane.

“No, no, I have done this spell a dozen dozen times now. I know how to handle her.” More loudly, Hirizjahkinis spoke to the picture again: “Madame, we wish to speak with you. Just for a few minutes, and then you will go back to having your picture made. We are standing right here, Madame, my friend and I.”

The face in the frame turned slightly, toward Hirizjahkinis's voice. “Good afternoon,” she said, in a formal tone.

“Good afternoon, my name is Hirizjahkinis, and this is my friend Nora. And you, Madame, you are—”

She frowned slightly, as though the question discomfited her. “You would like to know my name?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“I am called Wurga.”

“We are pleased to make your acquaintance, Wurga. We have been admiring your portrait. For whom are you having it painted?”

“No one,” Wurga's image said dully. “It was Lady Aruendian Fornesan's idea. She is having her portrait painted, too, and her children's.”

Nora looked questioningly at Hirizjahkinis, who nodded confidently. “His sister,” she mouthed. To the portrait she asked: “Lady Aruendian?”

“Yes, my kinswoman. I am visiting her here at Forel, from my home in Sar Lith.”

“Sar Lith! That is a long way to come to visit kin.”

“It was a long journey,” the portrait agreed, without any sign of interest.

“I am acquainted with one of Lady Aruendian's brothers. I wonder whether you know him?”

Wurga's face was suddenly alert. “Her brother? Which one?”

“It is Lord Ar—”

“What is this?” Aruendiel's voice said, beside Nora. He looked over Hirizjahkinis's head and saw the live portrait. A pained, startled expression came over his face.

“You!” The portrait of Wurga had seen Aruendiel, too. Its small features contorted and its voice rose to a shriek. “Is that you? Yes, you are changed, but I know you! What are you doing here? It's you who—you have—” She broke off with a moan, panting, then tried again: “I—you—what you did to—?”

“Did what?” Hirizjahkinis said sharply.

“Oh, I cannot bear it, oh no. You destroyed—you stole—no, no, no—”

“Enough of this,” Aruendiel said, his fingers closing on the portrait. Wurga's wailing stopped immediately. When he took his hand away, she was back in her original position, staring slightly to one side, her mouth tightly closed, the same as before, except that Nora thought she looked crazier than ever.

Aruendiel's eyes were freezing, but Nora forced herself to meet them. “Who is she?” she asked in a small voice. “She recognized you.”

“What did you do to the poor woman, Aruendiel?” Hirizjahkinis asked.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” he said curtly.

“But you know who she is.”