Valder had to agree with that sentiment, but asked, “What about some of the really important people, though? Why haven’t you restored Azrad’s youth, if it’s possible? He’s a great man and, as overlord of the world’s richest city, he could certainly afford to pay for the ingredients, however rare they are.”
“Oh, certainly, we could restore his youth, and he could afford to pay for it — but we don’t want to. He’s been a good enough overlord, and a good admiral before that, but, if he were to live forever, he might not stay one. What sympathy would he have for ordinary people once he, himself, were free of the fear of death? Besides, he would then have an unfair advantage in his competition with his fellow triumvirs, don’t you think? He would have all eternity to plot and plan and carry out his schemes; what mortal ruler could compete? In a century or two, he’d rule all the world — including the wizards, perhaps, and we don’t want that. Nor do we care to treat all rulers equally with our youth spells; we’d be preserving the bad along with the good and isolating them from their people. This is without even mentioning that we could scarcely keep the spells secret if we used them on Azrad or any other public figure. If old Azrad were to appear in the next parade looking like a man of thirty again, that would make it rather obvious that youth spells exist, wouldn’t it? Assuming, that is, that everyone actually believed him to be Azrad and not a brash young imposter.”
Valder had to admit the truth of these arguments.
“Well, then, you see that there is a way around your curse; all you need is a perpetual youth spell.”
“And just how am I to get one? Why would these immortal wizards you speak of allow me, a mere innkeeper, what they would not permit Azrad? And just who are these people, anyway? Plenty of wizards grow old and die; I’ve seen it happen. Who decides who will be made young?”
“Oh, that’s simple enough; anyone who can handle the spells is permitted to use them. After all, how could we stop them? The difficulty is that the spells involved are all of a very high order; the one that I used was an eleventh-order spell. From what you’ve said of your difficulties with Wirikidor, I’m sure you know that very few wizards ever become capable of handling such spells in the course of a normal lifetime. Among those who do, the spells are not secret; in fact, any member of the Wizards’ Guild who asks is given whichever recipe he might choose. In most cases, since failure usually results in a messy death, wizards wait until they are either capable of handling the magic involved or are old enough to be desperate.”
“You mean all the wizards know about these youth spells?”
“Most of them, anyway.”
“How can you keep secret what so many know?”
“Oh, well, that’s an advantage of being wizards; the Guild has ways of keeping secrets that don’t bear explaining.”
“Why don’t the wizards object to not being given immortality, then?”
“But they all have the opportunity to earn it, you see, if they’re good enough at their craft. Most aren’t — but that possibility is always there. If we were to cast the spell on every poor fool who manages to survive an apprenticeship, the world would fill up with wizards until there was no room for anyone else.”
“And how am I to earn it? Are you suggesting I become a wizards’ apprentice at the age of sixty-six and hope that by some miracle I live long enough to learn an eleventh-order spell?”
“It would hardly take a miracle, with Wirikidor involved; but no, that’s not at all what I propose. I intend to enchant you myself.”
“But you just finished explaining why the spell wasn’t given out!”
“It’s not given out to just anyone, Valder, but you’re a special case. You saved my life last night, and, after two hundred and eighty-eight years, I consider my life rather precious. Besides, for forty years you’ve lived quietly, despite owning a sword that could have put you on a throne in the Small Kingdoms or otherwise cut a swathe in the world’s affairs; I don’t think the Guild need worry too much that you’ll upset anything or take unfair advantage of extended youth. In fact, you already have immortality, and that’s the hard part; all I’ll be doing is restoring your youth, not extending your lifespan. I’ll be saving eighteen other lives, as well; you’ll have no need to draw Wirikidor again, no reason to want to be murdered. More than eighteen, since after your death the sword would take a new owner, who would have to kill his own quota before he could die. That’s a very nasty sword you have there, and I’m sure that taking it out of circulation indefinitely is a good enough reason to grant you your youth. I’m certain my Guild colleagues will agree.”
“Just because I haven’t done anything stupid? A life is a life, that’s all, and I never saw any reason to treat mine differently because of Wirikidor.”
“Ah, but that’s what makes you special! Most people would have shaped their lives around the sword.”
“You can’t just remove the spell somehow?” Valder was not sure whether he wanted to be young again; the idea was strange, unfamiliar, and he needed time before he could accept it fully.
“I could, actually, but we would both die as a result, and I am not in the least interested in dying.”
Valder was not interested in dying, either. Here, finally, was his way out, if he could only accept it. He would be young again — he would live forever, if he chose. He could not help but think that there was some trick to it, some hidden catch; it had been wizardry that had complicated his situation in the first place, when the hermit had wanted to get rid of him. Now another wizard was volunteering to interfere with his life, and he was sure there would be drawbacks — but he could not think of any. After several minutes of thought, he reached a decision. He would not be deterred by his previous experience. He would accept this incredible gift being offered him. Perhaps with new youth, his eyesight would return to what it had once been; he would like that.
“All right,” he said, pushing his chair back from the breakfast table. “What do we do now?”
Iridith smiled. “Come with me.”
CHAPTER 31
The house by the seaside was pleasant enough, with its covered porches and wooden walkways down to the beach, but it was not at all what Valder had expected of a centuries-old wizard capable of eleventh-order magic. He had been expecting a glittering palace, not a ramshackle old house with walls of rough wood and fieldstone and a roof of thatch.
He mentioned this to Iridith, who replied, “I had a palace once; it seemed the thing to do at the time. This is more comfortable.”
Valder found that hard to believe at first, looking over the cobwebbed furnishings and feeling the cool, damp sea breeze blowing through the chinks, but he had to admit that, after Iridith had cast a restorative spell or two and conjured up a blazing fire, the house was quite cozy.
The main structure, not counting the sprawling verandas and terraces, contained just four rooms — an immense workshop filled with the arcana of the wizardly trade occupied the entire western end, a fair-sized bedroom the southeast corner, a small kitchen the northeast, and a small parlor faced south toward the sea at the center. Each room was equipped with a vast stone hearth and cavernous fireplace; when all four were lighted, the moist chill that had bothered Valder vanished in a matter of moments.
They had arrived shortly before midday; the flight from Ethshar of the Spices had been quite brief, just across the peninsula to the southern shore. It had been Valder’s first flight in more than forty years and quite a refreshing experience; he had forgotten how exciting it was to soar above the landscape and remembered wryly how he had taken it for granted during his time as an assassin.
“You’ll sleep in the parlor,” Iridith told him, “if you have no objection.”
“I’m scarcely in a position to object,” he replied. “But how long do you expect me to be staying here?”
“I can’t really say; until I’ve gotten the approval of the elders of the Guild and gathered the ingredients I need for Enral’s Eternal Youth Spell.”
/> “Oh? What are the ingredients?”
“I don’t remember them all; I’ll need to look it up. I do know that I’ll want powdered spider, blue silk, cold iron, dried seaweed, candles colored with virgin’s blood, and the tears of a female dragon; I don’t recall the others offhand.”
“Virgin’s blood and dragon’s tears?”
“I think you’ll be staying for a while; those are the easy ones.”
“Oh.” He looked around. “The parlor should do just fine.”
He had been at the wizard’s house for five days, days spent strolling along the beach enjoying the fine spring weather or reading the many strange books that she loaned him from her workshop — in addition to assorted grimoires and magical texts, she had a wide variety of histories and books of philosophy. She, in turn, spent her time in the workroom, consulting with other wizards by various magical methods and trying to locate the needed ingredients for the spell. In addition to those she had remembered, she needed the ichor of a white cricket, the heart of an unborn male child, and the hand of a murdered woman.
“It could be worse,” she had told him at dinner that first night, a dinner she had prepared herself by perfectly natural methods and which they ate in the kitchen. “Any woman killed by another person will do, I think. She needn’t have been a virgin, or a mother, or whatever. I should be able to find one eventually. And an aborted or miscarried child should work.”
He had agreed without comment.
“Don’t worry,” she said, sensing unease. “I’m not going to kill someone myself just to help you. I’m not that sort of wizard.” ’
That had relieved him somewhat; the remainder of the meal had passed in amiable silence for the most part.
Since then he had seen only brief glimpses of her, other than at meals. At breakfast she would usually be planning the day’s investigations, and by supper she would be too tired to talk much, but at luncheon she chatted freely, exchanging reminiscences of the war and the changes that they had both seen in their lifetimes. She reacted to his admission that he had been an assassin with a sort of horrified fascination, even while admitting that it was certainly no more morally repugnant, logically, than her own wartime work of more straightforward wizardly slaughter. After that first dinner, his own longstanding habits prevailed, and he played host, preparing and serving the meals.
Between meals she was always in her workshop, using various divinations to try and locate what she needed. Powdered spider, cold iron, and candles colored with virgin’s blood she had on hand; she explained that all three were useful in many spells. The iron was meteoric in origin, but, she assured him, that could only add to its efficacy. Blue silk was easily acquired in a short jaunt back to the city. The seaweed Valder provided himself after a walk on the beach, bringing back a mass of dripping weed to hang over the workshop hearth and dry.
That left the dragon’s tears, cricket’s ichor, baby’s heart, and severed hand. Iridith was cheerfully optimistic about all of them. “I found them once,” she said repeatedly.
That was how things stood on the fifth day, when she emerged unexpectedly from the workshop in the middle of the evening, holding a small pouch. “What’s that?” Valder asked, looking up from a book that purported to describe the now-dead religion of the ruling class of the Northern Empire. “Find something?”
“No,” she answered. “But I now have explicit consent from enough of the Guild elders to go ahead with the spell, and besides, I thought I needed a break, so I made this as a sort of celebration and a token of my esteem.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a bottomless bag, made with Hallin’s Spell.”
“What’s a bottomless bag?”
“Well, I’ll show you. I noticed that that sword seems to get in your way sometimes, but that you don’t like to leave it lying around — and as you probably noticed back in Ethshar, it’s not the fashion these days to wear a sword, in any case. So you can put it in this.” She held up the tiny pouch, smaller than the purse he wore when traveling.
“Oh, one of those!” he said, remembering. He had seen bottomless bags in use during the war, though he had never known what they were called; an entire army’s supply train could somehow be stuffed into one and then pulled out again as needed. It made transport over rough country much easier. The major drawback was that the only item one could retrieve was the one most recently put in, so that, if a great many items were stuffed into it, getting out the first one could take quite awhile. Careful planning was needed to use such a bag efficiently.
He accepted the bag and managed to slip it onto the end of Wirikidor’s sheath. He watched with amused wonder as the full length of the sword slid smoothly into the little pouch, vanishing as it went. When it had entirely disappeared, leaving only a small bulge, he tied the pouch to his belt.
“Much more convenient,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Iridith answered.
He looked up at her; she was smiling warmly.
“I don’t really understand why you’re being so generous with me,” he said. “You’re doing far more than you need to.”
“Oh, I know,” she said. “But I like to be generous. I have everything I could ever want, you know; why shouldn’t I share it? I’ve spent too much time alone; wizards have a tendency to do that. So many spells require isolation or such strict concentration that one dares not allow anyone else near! And it’s so depressing to be around other wizards, who all distrust one another and want only to learn new spells without revealing any of their own little secrets, or around ordinary people, who are frightened half to death of me, and who I know will grow old and die in just a few years.”
“I’m an ordinary person,” Valder said.
“No, you aren’t! You aren’t going to die, are you? That sword won’t let you. And you aren’t afraid of me.”
“Why should I be afraid of you?”
“That’s just it, you shouldn’t! I could roast you in an instant with a fireball, just as I did that thief, but I’m not going to, any more than you would turn that unbeatable sword on a friend — but so many people don’t understand that. They only see my power; they don’t see that I’m still a person. The power isn’t important; you’d be just as dead stabbed with an ordinary pocketknife as with a wizard’s dagger, or killed in a brawl instead of mangled by some high-order spell. Anyone is dangerous — so why should people be scared of wizards more than of each other?”
“I don’t know,” Valder said, thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s just that it’s unfamiliar power, unfamiliar danger. Everyone understands a sword cut, but most people have no idea how wizardry works. I don’t have any idea how wizardry works.”
Iridith grinned. “Do you want to know one of the great secrets of the Wizards’ Guild? Most of us don’t, either.”
Valder grinned back.
CHAPTER 32
Iridith located the dragon’s tears the day after giving Valder the bottomless bag; a wizard in Sardiron had a bottleful and was willing to trade. The same wizard was able to direct her to a cave where white crickets could be found and had a friend with a bottled fetus on hand, taken from a woman dead of a fever.
That left only the hand of a murdered woman.
The two celebrated the evening of this discovery by drinking a bottle apiece of an ancient golden wine Iridith had stored away a century or so earlier. The stuff was past its prime, but still potable, and the wizard got quite tipsy, giggling like a young girl at Valder’s every word. Valder himself had long ago developed one of the necessities of the innkeeper’s trade, the ability to consume vast quantities of alcohol without suffering noticeably from its effects, and watched with great amusement as the usually calm and mature magician deteriorated into kittenish silliness. Around midnight she dozed off; Valder warily picked her up and carried her to her bed, his aged muscles straining. He had half feared that some protective charm would strike him for daring to touch her, but nothing of the kind happe
ned.
He stared down at her, marveling that this handsome, fresh woman could be more than four times his own age, then turned and found his way to the divan where he slept.
The next morning Iridith was far less pleasant; her curative spells prevented an actual hangover, but she obviously regretted her juvenile behavior. “We haven’t got them yet,” she pointed out over breakfast. “I still have to go to Sardiron and fetch them. Something could go wrong.”
Valder shrugged. “Certainly it might,” he agreed.
She looked at him rather sourly, as if annoyed that he was agreeing so calmly, then realized how absurd that was and broke into a crooked grin.
“You know, Valder the Innkeeper, I like you; you don’t let things upset you.”
He shrugged again. “I learned long ago to accept things the way they are; usually, they’re pretty good. I’ve had a good life, overall, better than I expected — I never thought I’d live to see the end of the Great War, and here it’s been over for two-thirds of my life. If things go wrong now, I still don’t have any cause for complaint.”
“A healthy attitude — and a very, very unusual one.” She pushed her chair back. “I had best be going.”
The journey to Sardiron took three days in all, even flying; Valder found himself wandering aimlessly about the house on the shore, unable to interest himself in reading anything, while Iridith was gone. Meals seemed particularly lonesome.
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