Od Magic

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Nothing. I’m just good with plants.”

  “And so someone from the school heard about you and came to invite you here.” He ran his finger down a thorn, and then again, as though, Brenden thought, he were stroking it. “How strange this is. As though it grows thorns to protect itself against something. Or to catch something out of the wind. How do gardeners get found for this place? I never thought about it before. I remember the last gardener dealing with plants pertaining to magic. She was here for many years. Did she go searching for her replacement before she left?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, who came to find you, so far away in the north country?”

  “Od.”

  The wizard’s hand snagged on the thorn, jerked. He stared at Brenden, shaking a drop of blood from his finger. “Od found you?”

  “She came to me in my garden, asked me to work at her school in Kelior. You should take that cut to Sisal,” he added uneasily. “The plant may be poisonous.”

  “When?”

  “Last spring. I told her I would come down at summer’s end.”

  “Through which door?”

  “What?”

  “Which door did you enter?”

  “The door under the shoe. Why?” he asked, wary again under the impenetrable gaze. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” He made a visible effort, hid the power in his eyes away again, inside the windowless room. “It’s like that plant,” he said more easily. “An oddity. A riddle. Maybe useful, maybe not. We need to know more about it, to answer those questions. Much, much more.”

  “I was looking for the library to find out more when I bumped into you.”

  “The library is on another floor entirely.”

  “I got lost.”

  “Yet you found your way to the cobbler’s door,” the wizard murmured. “Strange.” He turned abruptly. “I must go. I was on my way to speak to the teachers at supper when you brought yourself to my attention.”

  “Wait.” The urgency in Brenden’s voice caught the wizard as the thorn had, checked his precipitous movement. Brenden searched among his vials, found a salve for simple cuts, and applied it to the wounded finger as Valoren watched speechlessly. “Best to be safe,” he said tersely. “I learned that the hard way. If it doesn’t heal, take it to Sisal.” He corked the vial, then picked up a pot half-hidden behind a mound of flowering vine. The flower that bloomed upon the single stalk was large, striped red and white, star-shaped. He offered it to Valoren. “The princess might like this lily. If it has magical properties, I can’t see them yet. Its magic might be only in its beauty.”

  “Thank you,” said the wizard, settling it absently under one arm. His eyes never left Brenden, who wondered, when he had gone, if he had even looked at the gift he was bringing to his betrothed.

  Brenden’s supper came searching for him then, through two greenhouses and the hothouse before the servant found him. He ate it outside on the roof, so that he could watch the stars find their way out of the dark, reflecting the glimmering of the city’s lights. They were all he had of home, those familiar patterns above his head. His eyes slipped away from them finally, into the streets, the torchlights and smoky lamps forming other patterns in the dark. Was Meryd down there among them? he wondered. When she had run away from him, had she run all the way to Kelior? He doubted it, but the idea comforted him: that among all those strangers might be one familiar face, eyes that recognized him, a voice that said his name before he spoke. And Jode. Was he behind one of those fire-washed windows, sitting silently over his ale, thinking of home?

  The thought made Brenden edgy, that all three might be Kelior, and none of them knowing the others were there. He would ask Wye or Yar if he might take some time to explore the city, during those golden autumn days before the winter bit at everyone’s heels and whined at the closed doors. He couldn’t get lost; the king’s high towers overshadowed everything in the city.

  He made another effort to find the library when he finished his supper. The halls were as quiet as before; the students all seemed to be shut away, studying or making magic, or whatever they did in the evenings. He tried to imagine making magic, got as far as a memory of Od with the lizard clinging to her ear, the one-legged raven perched on her shoulder. That had seemed more in the realm of kindness than magic. But there was Od’s door beneath the shoe that appeared and disappeared…How could anyone possibly learn to do that?

  He came across a young teacher, got precise directions, and found the library on the floor above his head. The thin, gray-haired man on a ladder putting books away on the endless shelves summoned the visitor with a crook of bony fingers. He leaned down, balancing adroitly on the rungs and listening carefully to the gardener’s question.

  “Plants, is it, you want? Magical? Medicinal? Edible? Poisonous?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Tree? Herb? Wild? Cultivated?”

  Brenden shook his head helplessly. The librarian held up his finger, finished shelving the last hefty tome, which exuded a puff of dry parchment and dust as it slid into place. Then he came all the way down to the last rung, stood there, angled as comfortably against the ladder as if he lived there.

  “Can you describe it to me?” he asked, looking with his sharp nose and flyaway hair like a curious and friendly bird.

  Brenden did the best he could. The librarian stepped onto the floor and vanished into the shadows of the great shelves looming all around them, some so high they obscured parts of the lovely colored panes inset along the back wall. Brenden waited; the librarian returned finally with an armload of books.

  “Try these.”

  He put them on a table. Brenden sat for a long time, looking at page after page of sketches and paintings of plants, most from parts of the world he had never heard of. Fascinated by all that he didn’t know, he scarcely noticed the students and teachers who came and left, the candles that melted into stubs and flickered out, the shadows that gathered around him. Finally, the librarian drew him out of distant forests, elaborate gardens, the bewildering jungles of beauty and knowledge that existed beyond his experience. He saw then how dim the library had grown: a brace of candles at his elbow, the taper in the librarian’s hand all that was left of light.

  “Did you find it?” the librarian asked.

  “No.”

  “Well. I have no more books to show you. But.” He leaned a bit closer, as though the shadows might be listening. “You’re neither student nor teacher, so I can suggest this to you. Ask in the Twilight Quarter. Strange things from the trade ships find their way there constantly. The last gardener often brought back peculiar plants from the quarter. Perhaps that is one of them.”

  “The Twilight Quarter.”

  “Not far, just keep going downhill to the gate in the wall where the road curves to follow the river. The quarter sleeps by day and begins to wake at twilight. It’s the place you go to see the things that don’t quite meet the eye.”

  “Magic?” Brenden guessed.

  The librarian shrugged. “Who knows?” he said, and handed Brenden a candle to find his way. “See for yourself.”

  SIX

  In the Twilight Quarter, the magician’s beautiful daughter threaded her needle with a filament the color of blood. She knotted it, picked up a length of silk so light it fluttered at a breath, and began to turn a hem in a dangling edge. Illumined by fire and enchantment when Tyramin amused the crowds with his tricks, her bones were long and delicate, her body without a graceless movement. Her hair, a cloud of rippling black, glittered with the star fire of jewels and its own sheen; her eyes hinted of visions, wonders trapped within the warm amber. Such beauty transformed easily into doves, colored fires, into air itself and never changed, not even in the curve of her smile, when she became herself again.

  In less deceptive light, such as the oil lamps she had lit for sewing, she became transformed again. Short and slight, with reddened knuckles and calloused feet, her
hair ruthlessly tied back and braided, shadows and faint lines under her eyes from nights turned into days, she could, and often did, go about her business unrecognized. Only the great, golden eyes, the lovely, oval face, hinted to the bleary-eyed patrons of her father’s Illusions and Enchantments where they might have seen her before. But no, their wondering eyes would tell her, we are deceived: you are not she. And they would pass on.

  She sat in a room in the back of an old warehouse near the river. She could hear sounds of hammering, heavy things being shoved along the worn, splintery floors, brooms plied vigorously against cobwebs and dust. Voices boomed in formless echoes in the cavern, sweepers sneezed, musicians tuned their strings. All around her on nails hung costumes of rich and airy fabric, colors rarely seen in the working day. Glass jewels, bright feathers, beads of onyx and mother-of-pearl gleamed on the sleeves, skirts, hems. Some costumes were very old; others she had made for herself and for Tyramin’s dancers and the assistants who brought him scarves, swords, shoes, boxes, and great chests in which he found or made his magic. Tyramin’s head lay beside her, staring at other masks across the room. He wore his massive, powerful, paper globe of a mask to make himself look larger than life: the broad face with its heavy brows and beard, the long dark hair that crackled fire during his magic, its painted cheeks and unchanging expression became the face of the sorcerer. Tyramin’s voice boomed and weltered from inside it. Padding on his shoulders and in his great boots supported the illusion of the giant from an enchanted realm, revealing its secrets as he played with magic.

  The door opened; a scent and a dancer wafted into the room. Mistral put her silk aside, shifted to a more comfortable lump on the heap of ancient quilts and rugs that protected the magician’s gear when he traveled. The dancer, one of half a dozen who collected crowds for Tyramin to lure away with his tricks, knelt beside Mistral and handed her hot, spiced meat and vegetables wrapped in pastry from a stall.

  “Thank you, Elide,” Mistral said in her deep, cool voice.

  “It’s very hot.”

  “I’m very hungry.” She blew, nibbled on a corner. The dancer, who worked her own magic in spinning skirts and a mask as mysterious as the moon, smiled, revealing tiny lines forming at the corners of her eyes.

  “The streets are full tonight,” she said. “So is the moon. Everyone is restless. Is that my skirt?”

  Mistral nodded. “One of them. You tore the hem. I’m almost finished.”

  Elide pulled a few others off their hooks, began layering them on herself as Mistral ate. She said, her smile fading, “Sumic said there is a quarter warden looking for Tyramin. Be careful.”

  “A quarter warden.” Mistral’s eyes glinted toward her, amused. “We’ve only been here for a few days. Maybe he wants to see the magic.”

  “I’m sure he does. He wasn’t dressed like a warden of any kind. But Sumic saw his eyes, watching for trouble. Someone told her he used to be a street warden here, and now he is quarter warden. His father is High Warden of Kelior. And you know how fiercely the king guards his magic.”

  “Like an old beggar woman guards her rags,” Mistral said with her mouth full. She swallowed. “Let the quarter wardens come; we’ve got nothing to hide. Is that a rip in your shoe?” she asked, as Elide pulled a red satin slipper onto one root. “What did you do to yourself last night?”

  “I danced.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Elide tossed it near the froth of red silk. Mistral put the pastry aside, wiped her fingers, picked up the skirt again. They both looked up as the door opened abruptly. A wiry young assistant stuck his curly red head in.

  “Ney,” Mistral said emphatically. “Knock.”

  “Sorry. There is a brace of peacocks out here. They want to see Tyramin.”

  “Tell them to come back later.”

  “They want to see him now. They will pay to see him now.”

  “What do they want?” Mistral asked, running the needle in and out of the silk.

  “They want a private showing for a handful of their friends. And real magic, if you please; none of the tricks he foists upon the slag-brained masses. What shall I tell them?”

  “How sober are they?”

  “Not very.”

  Mistral set a knot in the silk, snapped the thread with her teeth. “Tell them that the magician’s daughter will speak to them after his performance tonight. Tell them that even she wouldn’t dare disturb him when he is in seclusion beforehand.”

  “Don’t we want money?” Ney asked wistfully. “Can’t we pretend?” Mistral’s eyes focused once more on his face, caught a sudden, cold reflection of fire. Ney rocked a step, his hand tightening audibly on the rickety door latch. “That would be no, I see.”

  “Not like that. Not here in Kelior, under the king’s nose. Use your head.”

  He scratched it. “How do you do that? That thing with your eyes.”

  She tossed the skirt to Elide and picked up the slipper. “It’s a trick my father taught me.”

  Ney’s head disappeared. Elide pulled the flaming silk over frilly layers of voluminous skirts, which would spin a perfect circle around her as she danced. Over that, she settled a nearly invisible layer of what might have been cobweb strung with minute particles of something Tyramin had dreamed up. When ignited surreptitiously by someone in a crowd—Ney most often—the particles would dazzle briefly with their colored fires, then catch the air like cinders and swarm away, fading almost as soon as they were seen.

  Such things Tyramin conjured in his solitary hours before a performance, when ideas shirred from his busy mind like sparks, and he turned them into magic. Mistral felt her own mind turning over such strange, brilliant evanescence as she pulled the rip in the satin slipper tight with her thread. How this might seem to change to that, and then change back so that nothing really became transformed except the expressions on the watching faces. There the magic lies, Tyramin said again and again. Not in me, but in the smiling eyes and enchanted hearts. It’s they who do the work, not I.

  She cast a glance at the great head, with the little holes concealed in the corners of the eyes where human eyes could see out. Lamplight washed over the dark, painted pupils; they seemed to flicker at her in recognition. Mistral felt her own heart smile at the illusion.

  Finished with the slipper, she gave it to Elide, who was tying ribbons in her fair, rippling hair. Elide put the slipper on, picked up her mask, and went away to paint her face, and to find the other circle-dancer, who was late.

  Time seemed a live thing in the Twilight Quarter. It was not measured in strict and predictable proportions. It could be told by the color of the sky, by smells in the air, by swirls and deepening pools of excitement in the gathering crowds, by their fading noise as they dispersed, by sunlit silence in the streets. Now Mistral felt the charged gatherings around her as all through the quarter people tracked rumors of a name to its source. The pounding and massive shiftings as the makeshift stage was set in the warehouse had ceased; now she heard doors open and close, rushings through the back halls, boots turning into slippers, hammers into swords and goblets for juggling. Outside the dancers and tricksters would be bringing their followings to the open doors of the warehouse, which would be festooned with transparent veils that glittered, in the dancing weave of fire and shadow, with the suggestion of treasure. Excited by random magic in the streets, drunk on music, love, wine, or just the mysteries of the night, they would toss coins at the doorkeepers, jostle inside to see how Tyramin’s magic might change their lives.

  Mistral rose. Time, the noise and laughter said, for her to dress and for Tyramin to appear.

  There was a knock at the door as she picked her own filmy skirt off a peg. She put it back again.

  “Who?”

  “A visitor.” She recognized the smooth rumble of the dark-haired dancer Gamon. The little edge of amusement in his voice warned her to expect the unexpected. The peacocks probably, who would not take no for an answer. She sank back on the mound o
f coverings, cast about for her needle, pulled the nearest costume down, and drew the thread through cloth without knotting it.

  “Come in.”

  The door opened and she blinked. This was no gaudy drunken peacock demanding a glimpse of Tyramin. The man was far too sober and dressed to elude sight and memory: he could disguise himself as a shadow if he chose. Tall and fair-haired, in black silks and leather, he could easily be taken for a fop with taste, out for an evening’s entertainment. But his eyes betrayed him. Mistral remembered Elide’s warning: street warden’s eyes, chilly and watchful above the affable smile on his lips. Behind him, Gamon raised his painted brows, which ascended giddily halfway to his hair, and opened an upturned palm. No stopping him, the palm said.

  “Who are you?” Mistral asked curtly.

  “I am curious,” the visitor said, and stared a moment at the gigantic head on the floor.

  “I found him wandering around back here,” Gamon explained. “Peering into things. Doors and trunks and curtains.”

  “Is that Tyramin?” the man asked with awe.

  “The magician spends his hours before his performances in absolute seclusion. Not even his daughter dares disturb him. Ever. For any reason. Is there something you want?”

  “Just to see what magic looks like.”

  “Back here, it looks like nothing at all. An empty trunk, a boot, a gilded paper sword. All the magic begins with Tyramin’s entrance. As you will see if you go out front and wait like everyone else.”

  “If I go out front, I will see only what everyone else sees.”

  Mistral took a stitch or two, weighing patience and anger. Both hung equally on her scale of possibilities. Summoning assistants to toss him out seemed imprudent if he were truly a street warden; on the other hand, he was taking up her time, and by the sound of it, the warehouse was filling.

  She temporized. “If you wait where Gamon shows you, I’ll ask the magician’s daughter to take you herself to the front of the hall, where, even if you see what everyone sees you will at least see better than everyone else.”