Ithanalin’s Restoration loe-8

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  It might have gone wrong as it was. it felt as if it had simply dissipated harmlessly, but she couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  She looked down at herself, and saw two hands, two feet, her apprentice robe-everything seemed to be normal.

  She wasn’t the only one in the house, though. She turned.

  The parlor furniture was cowering in the corners; clearly all of it remembered, on some level, what could happen when a spell went wrong.

  It all seemed to be there, and undamaged, though. She closed the door, told the latch, “Stay closed,” then made her way back to the workshop.

  A look under the sheet reassured her that Ithanalin hadn’t changed; then she proceeded to the kitchen, where she found Yara and the children finishing their lunch.

  “What happened?” Telleth asked. “What’s all the smoke?”

  “A spell went bad,” Kilisha explained. “That spriggan interrupted me, and I lost control.”

  “Did it hurt anything?” Lirrin asked, eyes wide.

  “I don’t think so,” Kilisha replied. “I came back here to be sure it hadn’t done anything to any of you.”

  “We’re fine,” Yara snapped.

  Kilisha, startled by her tone, didn’t reply immediately, but after a moment of gathering her wits she said, “I’ll try again, then.”

  “Do you need to fast?” Yara asked.

  “No,” Kilisha said.

  “Then eat first, and let the place air out. Then try again.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” Kilisha said meekly. At Yara’s direction she found bread and cheese and salt pork, and sat at the table. She ate quickly, but even so, by the time she had finished the air in the workshop had cleared, the smoke vanished, leaving no lingering trace.

  No natural smoke would have faded away so completely so quickly. Kilisha had not expected even magical smoke to disappear so easily; perhaps having the spell interrupted had something to do with it.

  At least no one was waving any tentacles around; she wouldn’t have wanted to have to try to turn a squid back to a human.

  She took a deep breath of clean air, then began the spell anew.

  Distracted by Yara and lunch, she had forgotten to tell the spriggan not to interrupt. The creature made a few remarks and asked a few questions, but Kilisha simply ignored them, keeping her attention focused on the spell.

  At least this way she knew the spriggan wasn’t slipping out of the house and wandering away.

  Yara glanced in the door at one point and caught the spriggan climbing on a stool, apparently about to grab for something; she hurried in and snatched the little nuisance up, then carried it into the parlor. Kilisha saw it all from the corner of her eye and was grateful, but refused to let it distract her.

  The cloud of smoke and steam formed, ash drifting in the currents and magic thick in the air, and Kilisha shaped it as she knew it had to be shaped, twisting and carving it into a crooked helix that she guided down over the broken stick. Her eyes stung with smoke, and her hair was soaked with sweat and steam, but she could feel the magic all through her, warm and strong, strongest in her hands as she completed the ritual.

  The smoke covered the broken stick, hiding it from mortal sight, but Kilisha could sense it, could see it simultaneously broken and intact as if two images were glowing on the bench before her. And then the spell was over, the smoke dissipated with impossible suddenness, and the stick lay unbroken upon the bench. Kilisha pushed hair from her eyes with a smoke-stained, unsteady hand, and smiled down at the stick.

  She had done it! She had performed Javan’s Restorative. For the first time, she had learned a new spell without another wizard there to guide her.

  She sat down abruptly on the stool, grinning broadly. She loved being a wizard!

  As she rested, letting the outside world return to her awareness, Kilisha heard a voice from the parlor-Yara’s voice, talking quietly. Yara must have gone around the outside of the house-or perhaps slipped through the workshop when Kilisha was distracted by the spell. Her attention had been so focused on her magic that that was possible.

  For a moment Kilisha sat on the stool, staring happily at the restored stick and feeling pleased with herself, but then she could no longer contain the enthusiasm at her accomplishment that she felt bubbling up inside her. She jumped off the stool, snatched up the stick, and bounced into the parlor to find Yara standing at the front door, talking to someone outside.

  “It worked!” Kilisha burst out happily.

  Yara turned, startled. “Thani?” she asked.

  Much of Kilisha’s good cheer abruptly evaporated. “No, Mistress,” she said. “But I got the restoration spell to work. See?” She held up the stick.

  Yara looked at it.

  “It’s a stick,” she said.

  “Yes, but it was broken, and now it isn’t,” Kilisha explained.

  “And this will fix Thani?”

  “It should,” Kilisha said. “The mirror thinks it will.”

  “But you need the jewelweed and the couch, first?”

  “I have the jewelweed, Mistress. All I need is trie couch. And the other furniture, and the spriggan.” She gestured at her surroundings, where the chair and bench appeared to be watching her, the coatrack was pacing back and forth on its tether, and the spriggan was perched atop the end table, dancing from foot to foot as the table rocked back and forth.

  “You hear that?” Yara said, turning back to the door. “We just need the couch!”

  “We’re looking,” someone replied, and Kilisha recognized Nis-sitha’s voice.

  “Well, please keep looking,” Yara said. Then she closed the door and turned to Kilisha. “You can do the spell? You’re sure?”

  “Well, I did it once,” Kilisha said. “I think I can do it again.”

  “Won’t it be harder putting together so many parts of a living person than just unbreaking a stick?”

  “Um...” Kilisha hadn’t thought about that. She remembered how she had had to shape the magical smoke cloud to fit the shape of the pieces and force them back together, then tried to imagine wrapping a cloud around the mirror, the dish, the spoon, the rug, and all the rest....

  “Probably,” she admitted.

  “Then I think you should practice some more. Keep practicing until we find the couch! I don’t want it going wrong when you try it on my husband.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” Kilisha said. She looked down at the stick in her hand, a simple object that had been broken into two simple pieces, and considered how many complicated pieces Ithanalin was in. Then she looked back at Yara and said, “May I have an egg, please?”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Reassembling a smashed egg with Javan’s Restorative was different from repairing a stick-largely because of the liquid nature of its contents-but was not, Kilisha was pleasantly surprised to discover, significantly more difficult. A shattered earthenware mug was midway between the two.

  She ignored the occasional voices in the parlor and kitchen, and the frequent activities of the spriggan.

  Allowing for rest periods and preparation time those few iterations of the spell used up most of the afternoon, and after the last Kilisha decided that further attempts could wait until after supper. She undertook her usual chores, sweeping out the kitchen and picking up after the children, then did a quick inventory of the furniture and the spriggan before returning to the kitchen to assist Yara with dinner preparations.

  As she chopped carrots and onions for the soup Kilisha asked whether there was any news of the couch, and Yara responded with a detailed report that lasted well into the meal but, in the end, came down to “no.”

  Kelder had mobilized the city guard-that portion of it not committed to other, more urgent activities such as guarding the Fortress in case Empress Tabaea launched an attack, or running errands for the Wizards’ Guild in their attempts to analyze and neutralize the self-proclaimed empress, or preparing refuges for the fleeing nobility of Ethshar of the Sands. The guards at all ei
ght gates had denied seeing any ambulatory furniture leave the city, and at least a hundred other guards were patrolling the streets, looking for the couch and spreading the news that it was wanted.

  Of course, they would be patrolling the streets in any case, as part of their ordinary duties, but Kelder had assured Yara that they would also be searching for the missing couch.

  Opir had all of Kilisha’s friends and family from Eastgate and the surrounding neighborhoods making inquiries through the usual network of chatter and gossip. Yara thought it very unlikely that the couch could be in Eastgate, or would even have passed through-it would have been seen, and the news would have been reported by now. The search had now spread to Eastside, Lake-shore, and Farmgate, and should eventually take in the entire city- save perhaps the wealthy areas where neighbors gossiped at fancy balls and dinners, rather than in the streets and shared courtyards.

  Istram had brought word to the Wizards’ Guild, and the missing couch would be placed on the agenda for discussion as soon as Tabaea had been dealt with. In the meantime, several wizards and apprentices had promised to tell him if they saw such a couch.

  And in their own neighborhood, on Wizard Street between Lakeshore and Center City, Adagan and Nissitha and others were making inquiries. Nissitha was very proud of the effort she was putting in, but as yet had no positive results.

  Kilisha was impressed by the extent of the net being cast, but even so, after a moment she remarked, “Except for the soldiers, we haven’t heard anything from the south half of the city, or from the waterfront.”

  “Not yet,” Yara agreed. “If the couch isn’t found soon, we’ll have to start looking there.”

  “What if we never find it?” Lirrin asked, worried, and Pirra burst out crying. Yara quickly jumped from her chair and snatched up her youngest to comfort her, hugging her to one shoulder. Pirra’s weeping faded to a whimper.

  “We’ll find it,” Kilisha said. “You can’t hide something as big as a couch forever!”

  “You can if it’s invisible,” Telleth said.

  “Yes, but it’s not invisible,” Kilisha said.

  “How do you know?” the boy asked.

  “It wasn’t invisible when it left here. Kelder saw it go. And it doesn’t have any hands to work spells with, so it couldn’t turn itself invisible.”

  “Well, what if some evil magician, a demonologist or a sorcerer or someone, turned it invisible?”

  Kilisha glowered at him. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “I don’t know — but why else hasn’t anyone found it yet?”

  “There arc plenty of places to hide in this city,” Kilisha said. “Someone will find it eventually. You’ll see.”

  And with that she pushed away her half-finished meal and stalked back into the workshop, where she went through Ithan-alin’s book of spells once more, looking for some magic that might help find the couch.

  She found none, and in the end set about practicing Javan’s Restorative again, failing her first attempt to reassemble a shattered jar, then getting it right on the second try.

  She also repaired and cleaned a torn tunic, and fixed a toy juggler Telleth had broken a twelvenight before; she had decided that if she was going to work the spell, she might as well make it useful, rather than specifically breaking things so that she might restore them.

  The jar, the tunic, and the toy all came out as good as new, gleaming and flawless. By the time she finally went to bed she wondered why the spell wasn’t used more often.

  Of course, the ingredients weren’t free, and it took at least an hour, usually more, of a wizard’s time — hardly reasonable for repairing broken toys. It really wasn’t an especially difficult spell, though. She was confident that she would be able to use it to restore Ithanalin, once she had all the pieces.

  All she needed was the couch, and with so many friends out looking for it, it would surely turn up soon. She told herself, as she lay on her narrow bed, that it would probably be found within a day or so.

  It wasn’t. The nineteenth and twentieth of Harvest passed without any news. Kilisha grew very tired of working the same spell over and over, and eventually, despite Yara’s insistence that she practice the Restorative, she began reviewing some of her other spells instead. The possibility of making a few homunculi to join the search for the couch occurred to her, but a careful study of a few likely spells in Ithanalin’s book convinced her that she was not yet ready to attempt them on her own, with no master to guide her hand-or to interpret Ithanalin’s sometimes cryptic phrasing.

  She wished she could go out looking for the couch herself. When the searchers continued to report no success she had begun to wonder whether it might have somehow gotten up on a rooftop, or in a ditch somewhere; she wanted to levitate herself again and see if she could spot it from above. She almost managed to convince herself that she had missed it before because she had only looked at ground level, at streets and courtyards and gardens.

  Yara, however, forbade Kilisha to leave the house. “I don’t trust the furniture, let alone that spriggan,” she explained. “I want someone here who knows magic, and who can catch them if they get away. And I want someone here in case the couch comes back, or someone comes by with news.”

  Kilisha was tempted to argue, but resisted. “Yes, Mistress,” she said.

  Yara herself, though, felt free to go out searching, or recruiting more searchers. By the afternoon of the twenty-first it seemed as if half the city was looking for that red velvet fugitive. Yara and the children had gone to Arena and Bath to post more announcements on the message boards and see whether anyone had responded to yesterday’s crop, and Kilisha had the house to herself- except for the furniture, milling about the parlor and tangling the ropes, and the smaller pieces thumping in their boxes, and the spriggan swinging by its fingertips from the edge of the workbench.

  She was staring at the heap of jewelweed, trying to decide whether to attempt yet another iteration of Javan’s Restorative and wondering what she could try it on this time, when someone knocked on the front door.

  The distraction was welcome, and the possibility that someone might have found the couch gave her steps speed as she leapt from the stool and hurried to the parlor. She dodged the bench as she ran to the door.

  The latch had already unlocked itself; Kilisha had to give it only the slightest tug to open the door and find herself staring at the tall, dark-haired beauty who stood on the stoop.

  Kilisha had expected Kelder or Opir or Adagan, or perhaps Istram. It took her a moment to adjust to the reality and recognize this visitor.

  “Lady Nuvielle!!” she said. She bowed hastily. “A pleasure to see you, my lady; but alas, my master is indisposed.”

  “Is he still? I’m sorry to hear that,” Nuvielle replied. “But perhaps you can answer my question, apprentice-Kinsha, is it?”

  “Kilisha, my lady. And I fear I have not yet studied animations, and can tell you very little about your pet dragon.”

  “It’s not about the dragon.”

  Kilisha blinked, trying to imagine what else the noblewoman might want. “Did you wish to order another creation, then? Or some other spell?”

  “No. I came here to ask a question. I came here three days ago to ask the same question and was turned away, and this time I am resolute-I will have an answer.”

  Kilisha remembered almost bumping into Nuvielle while chasing the spriggan; it had not occurred to her that the Lady Treasurer might have been headed to Ithanalin’s door. Kelder had told her he had turned away a customer, and she had not bothered to ask who the customer might have been, but presumably that had been Nuvielle.

  If it wasn’t about the dragon, though, then what could she want? Was there a problem with the taxes, perhaps?

  Whatever the aristocrat wanted, she was clearly determined, and the simplest thing to do was to cooperate. “Of course, my lady,”Kilisha said. “I apologize for the inconvenience.” She hesitated, then said, “I would invite you in,
but I fear the shop is disordered at the moment.”

  “Is it?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Is your couch missing, then? The rather good one, dark wood with crimson velvet upholstery?”

  Kilisha’s jaw dropped-something that until that moment she had thought merely a figure of speech. She quickly snapped it shut again, and said, “How did you know? I mean... have you seen it?”

  “I believe I have, yes. That was the basis for my question.”

  “Then by all means, my lady, please tell me more! The couch’s absence has been a matter of great concern to us!”

  “It’s quite an unusual couch, isn’t it? I’ve never seen another quite like it, have you?”

  “No, my lady.” Kilisha fought down the urge to say more, to demand an immediate explanation; Nuvielle would come to the point eventually, and there was no need to antagonize her.

  “Do you know where it’s from?”

  “No, my lady. My master had it when I first came here, and I never thought to ask.”

  “I rather admired it when I came here before, and I did not recall ever seeing another quite like it, which seemed entirely fitting for a wizard’s parlor couch-and then a few days ago I did see another like it, under surprising circumstances, in a room I had visited a hundred times, and it seemed a very curious coincidence-so curious that I wondered whether it was merely a coincidence, or whether that same couch had somehow been transported.”

  “Where is it, my lady?”

  “Well, that’s what’s so strange about it-how is it you don’t know?”

  Kilisha began to suspect that Nuvielle was deliberately teasing her. “It escaped, my lady,” she said. “The accident that left my master indisposed animated that couch, and it fled. We are very eager for its return, but we don’t know where it went.”

  “Ah.”

  She was teasing. “My lady, please,” Kilisha said. “Where is it?”

  “I wonder how it got past the guards? It must be quite clever. For a couch.”

  “Guards?”