Ithanalin’s Restoration loe-8

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “You did?” Kilisha’s face lit up. “Where are they? Do you have them with you?”

  He shook his head. “No, I couldn’t manage both of them- they squirm.” After dealing with the coatrack, Kilisha could sympathize. “I had some of the other guards help, and I cornered them, and they’re locked in a storeroom.”

  “Where?”

  “In the shipyards, near Wargate High Street.”

  Kilisha blinked. “The shipyards? How did they get there’?’”

  “They ran,” Kelder said dryly.

  Chapter Twelve

  After explaining that she couldn’t leave the house until her mistress returned from shopping, Kilisha escorted Kelder to the kitchen, where she questioned him for the better part of an hour-and answered a few of his questions, as well, though she didn’t go into detail about exactly what spell had gone wrong, or how, or why she needed the furniture back before she could restore Ithanalin to full mobility.

  Kelder told her that when the door had opened and he had stepped inside, it had seemed as if the entire roomful of furniture was charging at him. He had stepped back and lifted his truncheon-guards did not ordinarily carry swords or spears when on tax-collection duty-and had shouted for the furniture to stop, but it had ignored him.

  A few pieces had run out the door, and he had run after them, and the rest had all come rushing after him, and he had been afraid he would be trampled. He had retreated a few yards cast on Wizard Street.

  The furniture had all headed west, in a pack; he wasn’t sure whether it was all trying to get away from him, or what. He had followed, a bit warily.

  The faster pieces had galloped down the three blocks to Cross Avenue, leaving the slower-the rug, the coatrack, and what he called “the little stuff ”-behind. The coatrack had been the first to change course, when it turned up an alley to the north; Kelder had hesitated, and almost lost sight of the main group, whereupon he decided to let the small slow ones go and concentrate on the bigger pieces, which were presumably the more valuable and more potentially dangerous or disruptive.

  The street had been almost deserted-after all, a tax collector had been at work-and most of the people who saw the furniture also saw him in hot pursuit, and stayed out of the way. The furniture had therefore made its way unimpeded around the corner onto Cross Avenue northbound, then left again onto East Road.

  “They stayed together?” Kilisha asked.

  “Mostly,” Kelder said. “For a while.”

  In fact, they had split up at the fork where the East Road bore right and Low Street bore left. There the couch had taken the East Road, and the chair and bench headed southward down Low Street, toward the shipyard.

  “What about the table?” Kilisha asked. “Or the rug?”

  Kelder had lost sight of those well before reaching the fork, he explained. There were only the three left by then, and he had followed the pair of smaller pieces. They had dodged westward again on Wargate High Street, but he had finally caught up at the corner of Shipyard Street, and with the help of some other guards had cornered and apprehended both. He had then locked them in a materials shed and gone to report to his superiors.

  “Why didn’t you come back here yesterday?” Kilisha asked.

  “Because I wanted orders first. I went to my captain, and he sent me to the tax commissioner, who sent me back to the captain because this didn’t have anything to do with taxes, and then he sent me to see a wizard named Zorita, and she sent to to see someone named Kaligir, only I couldn’t get in to talk to him because of some sort of emergency meeting, and then I got orders to go back to Wargate because there was talk about calling out the entire guard to march off to Ethshar of the Sands because someone’s thrown the overlord there out of his palace... ” Kelder sighed. “I only got here this morning because the captain was too distracted to object when I said I was coming.”

  “I couldn’t get to see Kaligir either,” Kilisha said.

  “Who is Kaligir?” Kelder asked.

  “Oh, he’s an official in the Wizards’ Guild,” Kilisha said, realizing she might have been on the verge of saying too much. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can show me where some of my master’s furniture is, and help me get it back here where it belongs!”

  “Then you do want it back?”

  “Of course we do! The spell was a mistake; we’ll put everything back the way it should be as soon as we collect all the pieces.”

  “I don’t know where all of them are. I see you’ve caught the coatrack...”

  “And we have the bowl, and the spoon, and the latch, and the mirror. And my mistress is out looking for the rug right now. As soon as she gets back, we can go get the chair and the bench.”

  Kelder looked uneasy. “I can’t stay very long,” he said. “I need to report back to the captain.”

  Kilisha started to reply, then stopped at a rattling sound from the front. “Could you wait here a moment?” she asked. “It’s probably just the coatrack, or a customer-I’ll tell him we’re closed, if it’s a customer.”

  “I can’t stay much longer,” Kelder reiterated, but he remained seated.

  Kilisha smiled and rose and hurried through the workshop to the parlor, where she found someone pounding on the front door and calling, “Open this door this instant!”

  It was Yara’s voice.

  The coatrack was pacing back and forth nervously at the end of its leash, but Kilisha barely glanced at it as she dashed to the door and tried to open the latch.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  “Just a moment!” she shouted through the door.

  “Hurry!” Yara called.

  Kilisha was puzzled by her urgency-and by the latch’s reluctance. Previously it had seemed all too eager to open when nobody wanted it to, but now it was stubbornly refusing to let Yara in. She slapped at it, hard. “Open up!” she demanded.

  She could see the mechanism hesitate.

  “Kelder!” she called over her shoulder. “Do you have something that can break a latch? Just snap it right apart, so the little metal pieces spill out on the floor?”

  The latch opened, the door swung in, and Yara stumbled across the threshold, her three children clustered about her legs, and a burlap-wrapped bundle in her arms.

  “There!” she said, pointing back out at the street.

  Kilisha leaned to one side and looked around the door, past her mistress.

  Ithanalin’s parlor table was standing in the street, pawing the hard-packed dirt with one wooden leg.

  “The table!” Kilisha exclaimed. “How did you find the table’?” Then she noticed the large, squirming bundle that lay atop the table-a multi-colored bundle of braided rags. “And the rug!” she said happily.

  The rug, the table, the coatrack, the latch, the bowl, the spoon, the mirror, and Kelder had the bench and the chair. Unless she had forgotten something, that only left the couch!

  “Bring it in!” she said, gesturing.

  Yara was already halfway to the workshop door, and ignored her, but Telleth heard and started back toward the door.

  He didn’t get very far, though, because at the sound of Kil-isha’s voice the table trotted up to the door; Kilisha and Telleth had to step aside to avoid being bumped as it marched into the house.

  The tangle of rug was squirming more than ever as it went by, and Kilisha realized it was squeaking, as well. There was something in there, she realized-it wasn’t just the rug, but something wrapped in the rug. “What have you got there?” she asked.

  The rug hesitated.

  Telleth slammed the door, trapping the table in the house, and Kilisha called to the latch, “Lock up tight, please! I think our friend the rug has something he doesn’t want to escape.”

  She wondered what it could be; had there been some other object in the room that got a part of Ithanalin’s essence? One of the children’s toys, perhaps?

  The latch clicked solidly into place, and the rug unfolded, draping itself across the tabletop
and revealing its prize.

  The captive straightened up and stood there blinking at Kilisha, and she realized at once what it was.

  It stood perhaps nine inches in height, naked and sexless, with sagging, dull green skin. It was roughly man-shaped, but with spindly, twiglike limbs, a bulging potbelly, and an oversized head, with immense pointed ears, bulging pop-eyes, and a gaping, lipless, froglike mouth.

  A spriggan.

  And she thought she knew which spriggan, and why the rug had caught it.

  “You’re the spriggan that tripped my master, aren’t you?” she asked.

  It blinked woefully at her, and nodded.

  “The rug must have my master’s urge for revenge,” she said.

  The spriggan blinked again, then spread its spindly arms. “Don’t think so,” it said, in a voice that sounded oddly familiar. Kilisha wondered whether she’d spoken to this particular spriggan before. It might have been hanging around the place for days or months.

  “Well, why else would it capture you?” Kilisha demanded.

  The spriggan turned up an empty palm. “Don’t know,” it said. “Not have rug’s thoughts.”

  That seemed very peculiar phrasing for a spriggan-the little idiots usually didn’t consider anyone else’s thoughts. And that voice sounded more familiar than ever; it was exceptionally deep for a spriggan, almost human in tone...

  “Oh, no,” Kilisha said.

  “Not have rug’s thoughts,” the spriggan said dolefully, shaking its head. “Not have table’s thoughts. Only have little bit of thoughts.”

  “Of Ithanalin’s thoughts, you mean?”

  “Yes, yes. Sprigganalin, me. Rest is scattered.”

  Kilisha clapped her hand over her mouth. Telleth looked up at her. “Did Dad turn himself into a spriggan?” he asked.

  “Not entirely,” Kilisha said, her words muffled by her fingers.

  “That looks like the same one that was here yesterday,” Kelder said from behind her.

  “Yes, yes!” the spriggan said, nodding. “Saw you at door.”

  “It’s the same one,” Kilisha agreed, turning to see the soldier had come up behind her, far more quietly than she would have thought possible.

  “Who’s that?” Telleth asked, looking at Kelder. No one answered; everyone else’s attention was still focused on the spriggan.

  “Should I kill it?” Kelder asked, raising his truncheon.

  “No!” Kilisha and the spriggan shouted in unison. “I need it alive for a spell, to restore my master,” Kilisha explained quickly.

  “The spriggan?” Yara said, emerging from the workshop behind Kelder. At the sound of her voice the rug humped itself up and slithered off the table, falling to the floor in a heap and knocking the spriggan off its feet.

  Kilisha sprang forward and caught the spriggan before it, too, could tumble off the table. She called to the children, “Find me a cage or a rope or something! We can’t let this escape.”

  Telleth hurried to obey and tripped over the rug, which was straightening itself out and starting toward Yara; Kelder caught the boy before he could fall.

  Yara let out a yelp at the sight of the rug climbing over her son’s legs and coming toward her; she backed into the workshop. The table was dancing back and forth nervously, obviously confused by all the excitement, and the coatrack had squeezed itself trembling back into its corner, its hooks extended in every direction.

  Kilisha clapped her hands to her head at the sound and confusion and sudden motion, forgetting that she held the spriggan in one of them; the feel of its leathery little body against her ear was supremely disconcerting, and it was all she could do to stop herself from flinging the little creature away headfirst.

  “Lirrin, help your brother get that rug off his feet, would you?” Kilisha said.

  Lirrin and Pirra both hurried to Telleth, who was now kicking wildly as Kelder held him off the ground and the rug struggled to untangle itself. Before either girl could touch it, though, Telleth gave one final kick that sent the rug flying; it soared free and landed on the floor several feet to the side, where it skidded across the planking for another foot or two before it managed to stop.

  Telleth stopped kicking, but not until he had thumped one bare foot into Pirra’s chest and knocked her to the floor, where she sat and wailed. Lirrin hurried to her sister’s aid as Kelder carefully lowered the chastened boy to the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Pirra!” Telleth called. “I’m sorry!”

  Kilisha was too busy watching the rug to pay much attention to the children. The floor covering had recovered quickly from its fall, and was now humping itself up, inchworm fashion, and crawling toward the workshop door. Kilisha turned to see Yara staring in horror at the approaching object.

  “Stay back!” Yara shouted, holding out a hand to fend the rug off.

  The rug stopped dead.

  “Sec?” Kilisha called. “It loves you, and will do what you tell it!”

  “Love you, yes!” the spriggan squeaked in a high-pitched parody of Ithanalin’s voice.

  The table danced over and bumped against Lirrin from behind, and the coatrack thumped against the wall.

  “What is going on here?” Kelder bellowed. That made the three children cower, the table dance, the coatrack rock wildly from side to side, and the rug skitter sideways, while the spriggan squirmed wildly in Kilisha’s grasp.

  A sudden inspiration struck her. “Kelder,” she asked, “do you have something you use to tie people up if you arrest them? Restraints of some kind?”

  “I have a cord,” he admitted. He reached into the big pouch on his belt and pulled out a length of rope.

  “Here,” Kilisha said, holding out the spriggan. “Start with this.”

  “Why?” Kelder asked suspiciously.

  “I need it to restore my master,” Kilisha said.

  Kelder did not look convinced, but he looped the cord around the spriggan’s wrists and tied a quick knot. Kilisha smiled.

  “The ankles, too,” she said. “They’re tricky.”

  Kelder grumbled, but tied the spriggan’s legs, tugging the knot tight.

  When he was done, Kilisha carefully set the little creature on the floor. “There,” she said.

  The spriggan promptly pulled both hands out of the loops, then bent down and pulled at the cord around its ankles. The knots fell apart, and the rope dropped away. It stood up.

  “Not like rope!” it said.

  “How did you do that?” Kelder demanded, reaching for the spriggan with one hand and the discarded ropes with the other. The little creature danced aside, out of his grasp.

  Kilisha didn’t say a thing, but her eyes widened as she realized what had happened. She had seen such a demonstration before, years ago, when she had scarcely begun her apprenticeship.

  One of the little-known aspects of wizardry was that a true wizard could not be held by physical bonds if he could touch the hilt of his athame. He didn’t need to hold it, or cut anything, or use any sort of spell-simply touching it would cause his bonds to fall away.

  Just as the spriggan’s had.

  Which, she theorized, meant that the spriggan now held the piece of Ithanalin’s soul that had been in his athame. Or perhaps it had received his magical talents, including whatever it was that gave an athame that particular ability.

  Kelder had recovered his ropes, but the spriggan had eluded him and he was kneeling on the parlor floor, grabbing for it.

  “Spriggan!” Kilisha called. “Hold still!” She remembered whose fragmentary self she was speaking to, and added, “Please.”

  “Not like rope!” it squeaked.

  “I know,” Kilisha said. “We won’t tie you up, I promise.”

  “We won’t?” Telleth asked, looking at her in surprise.

  “No, we won’t,” Kilisha said.

  Kelder looked up and growled, “Speak for yourself.”

  “Kelder, we can’t tie it up. It’s impossible.”

  Kelder st
opped grabbing at the spriggan and looked at her. “Why is it impossible?” he demanded.

  Kilisha hesitated, unsure what to say-she couldn’t explain about the spriggan being like an athame; the true nature of a wizard’s athame was a Guild secret, and she could be killed for revealing it.

  Finally, as Kelder and the children stared at her expectantly, she simply said, “Magic.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It took some time to sort everything out, but in the end Kil-isha was satisfied.

  The dish and spoon had been moved the previous night from their cages to solid, securely locked boxes in Ithanalin’s bedroom- Yara had said it made her nervous having them watching her from the cages-and they were still there. The coatrack was leashed in the corner of the parlor. The end table was securely tied to the kitchen table. The rug was rolled up and tied-it hadn’t absorbed any athame magic-and tucked away in the pantry.

  Yara and the children had retreated to the rear portion of the house, where Lirrin and Pirra were playing a sort of tag with the animated table.

  Kelder had seated himself on the floor, blocking the front door, and Kilisha sat facing him, blocking the door to the workshop.

  And the spriggan was sitting cross-legged between them, unbound.

  “Tell us what happened,” Kilisha said.

  “Don’t want to,” the spriggan said.

  Kilisha sighed in exasperation. “I know we can’t tie you up,” she said, “but there’s no reason we can’t hurt you!”

  The creature squealed and covered its head with its hands.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Kilisha quickly added, “but it’s very important you tell me what happened yesterday.”

  Trie spriggan sniffed, slid its hands down to its face, and peeked out between spread fingers.

  “Not hurt?”

  “If you answer all my questions, I won’t hurt you.”

  “Soldier hurt?”

  “He won’t hurt you, either-if you answer my questions.”

  “Will answer, yes.”