Points of Departure

by Patricia C. Wrede

  The cacophony of brass and silver and wood falling dwindled and died; the paint pot fell straight down and cracked in two pieces; and Snake put her head over the edge of the roof.

  Her first sentence was violently spoken and incomprehensible to Jehane; Thyan appeared to understand it.

  “I know,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  All three of them looked at Silvertop. Silvertop looked at Jehane. “Does Acrilat speak to you?” he said.

  “No,” said Jehane. He was still holding her wrist, and it was an even contention between that and the throb of her burned hand, which was the more distracting.

  “If It did, It would have stopped,” said Silvertop.

  Jehane consulted her interior, and blinked. She was accustomed to feeling oppressed, and to overcoming it. There was nothing now to overcome.

  “Did you send Acrilat out of Liavek?”

  “No,” said Silvertop. “But It’s out of Liavek now.”

  “What is this all over my roof?” said Snake, in a deadly tone.

  Jehane felt reasonably certain that Snake had wished to begin, immediately, an extensive inquiry into just what had gone on here, and had decided against it. Being in no mood for either wrath or philosophical inquiry, she blessed Snake, insofar as that was possible without applying to any particular god.

  Silvertop let go of Jehane and looked at the sheet and the roof with their intricate sweeps of blue. “It’s a map of Acrivain,” he said. “It’s much larger than I intended. You should have let me keep those glass jars.”

  Snake struggled, visibly, with some furious remark, and won. “Are you finished up here?”

  Silvertop sighed. “Not nearly. All we found out is that the apparatus works. We’ll have to build it again. If you’ll just give me the jars and the shah pieces, next time—”

  “Snake, don’t,” said Thyan, although Snake was standing perfectly still and staring at Silvertop.

  “No, wait,” said Jehane, fighting a light-headed tendency to shriek with laughter and dance around the acacia. “If you sent Acrilat out of Liavek, maybe we don’t have to go home.”

  “I didn’t send It.”

  “But It’s gone?”

  “Yes.”

  Jehane suspected that he had sent It away without knowing what he was doing. “That’s all right, then. Never mind the revolution.”

  “Snake?” said Thyan. “Who’s minding the store?”

  “You and Jehane,” said Snake. “I am going to watch Silvertop clean up this roof.”

  • • •

  Jehane sat on her unmade bed and reviewed in her mind, contentedly enough, the moment when Silvertop had grabbed her wrist. There was only so much to review, however, and her subsequent thoughts were less pleasant. The touch of Acrilat on all their lives might indeed have been removed; but its mark remained. Marigand’s baby was still dead; Deleon had still been gone for eight years; Nissy still worked as a clerk for a most peculiar organization, and pretended that one cat was another; Livia was still silly and Isobel still malicious; their mother was preoccupied and their father depressed. Liavek was still alien and bewildering. There was still no one for any of them to marry. Silvertop was neither suitable nor possible. He was a bubblehead and he belonged to Thyan.

  She was not so engrossed that the opening of the door startled her. She prepared to deal with Livia’s remarks about her slovenly habits; but it was not Livia. Nerissa came in, wearing green, with the black cat in her wake.

  “Hello, Floradazul,” said Jehane.

  Nerissa held out to her a little blank-book about the size of a skirt pocket. “Here’s the story,” she said.

  “So you did write one.”

  “You always know,” said Nerissa, smiling. She sat down on Livia’s tidy bed, smooth as a field of snow.

  “And I always have to steal them.”

  “I’ve been feeling better,” said Nerissa. She fixed a judicious blue stare on her sister. “You look as if you’ve been feeling worse.”

  “How long have you been feeling better?”

  “Oh, six months or so.”

  “The House of Responsible Life must be good for you.”

  “Yes,” said Nerissa, with no particular expression.

  Jehane abandoned any thought of further discussing the House of Responsible Life. She got no reward for this kind restraint; Nerissa said, “Why do you feel worse?”

  Jehane looked at her for a moment and decided to risk it. “I’m in love,” said Jehane. “It will pass.”

  Nerissa looked at her for about the same length of time. “Verdialos is married,” she said.

  Jehane began to feel indignant, and then realized what she had been told. “He’s too old for you,” she said.

  “Silvertop,” said Nerissa, “is too young for you.”

  “He’s twenty-six.”

  “Going on sixteen.”

  “Going on sixty, I think.”

  “Too old and too young,” said Nerissa.

  Jehane grinned; it was perfectly true. She leaned forward and bounced the little book on her palm. “I can’t read this if you’re watching.”

  “I’ll go in a minute. I wanted to ask you something. Do you think Silvertop killed Acrilat?”

  “Silvertop says he didn’t do anything,” said Jehane. “He said that whoever did do something didn’t destroy Acrilat, just told It in no uncertain terms to stay away from Liavek and everybody in Liavek. Or at least, that’s what he thinks.”

  “On Moondays,” said Nerissa.

  “No, it’s not that,” said Jehane. “He says that the available evidence supports any of three separate theories of how it happened; but what happened’s quite certain.”

  “I don’t feel quite certain,” said Nerissa.

  They looked at one another. “We could go and ask The Magician,” said Jehane. “He told me that his field of privilege is Liavek, so perhaps he did it. And I owe him some money.”

  Nerissa nodded. “I sent him a letter,” she said, “but it came back.”

  “Why?”

  “It said, ‘Removed. Left No Address,’” said Nerissa.

  Jehane snorted; Nerissa giggled; they leaned their heads into their hands and laughed as they had not done since Deleon went away; and then they were no longer laughing.

  • • •

  They were still a little damp and red-eyed when they came along Healer’s Street in the kindly sunlight and saw the long line of square white dusty houses that was Wizard’s Row. They turned the corner cautiously and trudged through the dust.

  “It looked nothing like this when I was last here,” said Jehane, in hushed tones.

  “I think,” said Nerissa, “that this is its habitual aspect, and when it’s different you can tell something of the mood of the inhabitants.”

  “But what?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Nerissa, in a dry voice extremely reminiscent of their mother’s.

  Number 17 had a cracked green walk. The yew tree was still there. The ground around it was crowded with purple crocus and white and gold arianis.

  “He’s expecting me,” said Nerissa, staring at the yew tree; she sounded half pleased and half frightened. She pulled the tongue of the brass gargoyle.

  “Where’s your cat?” it said musically.

  “Didn’t she cause enough trouble the last time?” said Jehane.

  “What?” said Nerissa, in resigned tones.

  “You’d better come in,” said the gargoyle, and the door swung silently wide. They walked along the hall and went through the only open door, into a bare room with a fountain in the middle and long white benches. The Magician was sitting on one of them, dressed as he had been when Jehane last saw him. There were no cats.

  “I’m sorry your letter was returned,” said The Magician. “I prefer to commit very little to writing.”

  “It’s good of you to receive us,” said Jehane. She handed him the two half-levar coins. She supposed that Granny would not app
rove of her having stolen them, even from her own dowry, and she would have to replace them somehow.

  “I hope,” said The Magician, “that it is the last time I receive you, or any other member of the Benedicti family.”

  “Was it so much trouble to put Acrilat in Its place?” said Jehane.

  “I did not put Acrilat in Its place,” said The Magician. “Nobody having offered to pay me for doing so.”

  “Who did, then?”

  “Your Granny Carry.”

  Nerissa sat down abruptly on a bench. Jehane was somewhat less startled, but she was alarmed. “Because I asked her to?”

  The Magician shrugged slightly.

  Jehane stood quite still. She had asked Granny to find out if it was Acrilat that was making her family so odd; she had never, after that thundering scold, expected Granny to do it. But she had asked; and Granny had done it. Acrilat had been in Liavek, in whatever way mad gods did these things; and Granny had sent It about Its business, no doubt in precisely the way she always did these things; and it was Jehane’s fault. They could never go home now. Acrilat would be waiting for them.

  Jehane swallowed hard, and looked up into The Magician’s tired and knowing eyes.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” said The Magician. “You can all live in Liavek if you will make the attempt. And, if I may, don’t try to make every one of your family happy. You cannot always paint the meadows with delight.”

  “Don’t tell her that,” said Nerissa, in a voice Jehane had never heard from her. “It’s her best talent.”

  Jehane looked at her. “What were you doing at Number 17 Wizard’s Row?”

  “It’s a very long story,” said Nerissa.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Jehane, “if you’ll tell me.”

  The Magician saw them out. They walked to the end of Wizard’s Row, not talking, not yet, and turned into Healer’s Street. Some breath of wind, some wavering of the light, made them look around. Wizard’s Row had departed.

  In Acrivain, the snow lay nine inches deep until the middle of the month of Reaping. This happened one year in ten, and part of the craziness of the First King was the making of incessant preparations for things that seldom happened. So nobody starved, but there was a great deal of grumbling. The priests who could count shook their heads philosophically, and rolled the dice again.

  Shards

  By Patricia C. Wrede & Pamela Dean

  The mirror lay cradled in red velvet, in a box hidden in the topmost room of a smugly respectable house in the section of Liavek populated mainly by Farlanders. It was an odd shape for a hand mirror: a lopsided rectangle two hands wide and one hand high, with the handle set off-center. The twisted silver vines that formed the handle spread up the edges of the glass and fanned out randomly across the back, bearing fruit or flowers or seed pods in no particular pattern. A knowledgeable observer, had there been one, might have recognized crops native to Acrivain, and considered sacred to the insane and possessive god of that country.

  The glass of the mirror had never reflected a complete image, for it had been carefully shattered almost as soon as it was made, into ten sharp-edged pieces of glass that fit themselves around an even more irregular center. In the dark, under the velvet, they shimmered with a ghostly light.

  All but two. The smallest piece, in the top left corner, had flashed green and gone dark, two years before. Beside it was a blank space where a slightly larger shard had separated from the mirror entirely, though it still shimmered faintly in the bottom of the box, its light growing and fading like a candle flame in a drafty room.

  A single eye appeared in the central shard, its color changing constantly from blue to brown to green to gray to hazel. The light in the remaining shards grew stronger, and the eye narrowed as it took note of the missing pieces. Shortly, images formed in each bit of broken mirror, and the eye turned toward them, without regard to order.

  • • •

  “That’s a good week’s work, nearly done,” Granny said to her cats as she entered her front room. Ignoring the floor loom to her left, she crossed to the wide wooden table. On the table, a plain mirror smeared with purple ink lay face down on the table, covered by a linen cloth.

  Granny slid her fingers over the cloth, tracing the edges of the mirror beneath it. Carefully, she raised the glass just enough to slide the edges of the cloth beneath it, wrapping the mirror so that when she lifted and turned it, the glass remained covered.

  “You’d best stay out of the garden for a bit,” Granny warned the cats. Picking up her cane, she carried the mirror out the front door. The cats looked at each other, then flowed over the windowsills at the back of the house, even the young gray tabby who had watched Granny’s earlier spellwork on the mirror.

  • • •

  The tall, narrow, sandstone building resembled a residence more than a place of business, but a small bronze plaque beside the door read “Marithana Govan, Physician.”

  In the consulting room at the rear of the building, rings flashed on Marithana’s fingers as she worked on her latest patient. The room was large and airy, but minimally furnished; the small desk, chair, and padded examining bench provided no distractions for the physician and nothing for a patient’s bad humors or ill luck to cling to.

  “You should not have waited a year to consult someone,” Marithana told the thin, pale young woman before her. “You might well have done yourself permanent damage.”

  “Mother said it was only to be expected,” Marigand Benedicti Casalena replied.

  “Mistress Casalena, it is normal to mourn when one loses a child. It is not normal to have pains in the gut, weight loss, and shortness of breath.”

  “I did wonder if something was…was not right.” Marigand Casalena twisted her hands together so tightly that her fingers left red marks when she let go. “But there aren’t any Acrivannish physicians left in Liavek, and Mother—”

  “—thinks Farland physicians are the only ones who’re any good,” Marithana finished when her patient stopped short. “Your mother is Mistress Benedicti, isn’t she? Granny told me about her.”

  “Granny? Not Granny Carry?”

  “Yes, of course. She’s the one who told me to be sure I saw you. I don’t know why she has an interest in you—”

  “She’s a relative.”

  “Hmm. Should I offer congratulations or condolences?” Marithana stepped back and turned to the desk. “I’ve fixed the underlying problem, but repairing the damage completely will take time.” She scribbled something on a scrap of paper. “Give this to Thomorin Wiln, the apothecary—his shop is on the Vessel of Dreams, currently anchored by the lower bridge on the Cat River—and take a spoonful with every meal until it’s gone. No matter what your mother says.”

  “Yes, Mistress Govan.”

  Marithana looked up sharply. “I mean it. I’ll not have your Granny Carry coming to me to complain of my work.”

  “I—No, of course not.” Marigand said in quite another tone, and this time Marithana believed her.

  “And go see the priests at the Red Temple,” Marithana added. “A year’s mourning may not be enough, but whether it is or no, I think you need assistance in dealing with your grief. And that is a matter for priests, not physicians.” She waited until the Farland woman nodded her understanding, then waved her out of the examining room.

  • • •

  In Liavek, in the attic, in the box, another shard of the shattered mirror dimmed and went dark.

  • • •

  It was the beer festival in Acrivain, and Gillo Benedicti had persuaded his brother to take advantage of their parents’ absence to examine the family-mirror.

  “They forgot the baby,” said Gillo.

  “What, Isobel?” said Givanni. “No, she’s in the upper part. It’s not a big shard.”

  “No, the baby.”

  “It must be in Mama’s piece.”

  “Well, that’s all very well for now, but what about later?”

 
“Maybe the mirror will crack more when he’s born!”

  “We could watch.”

  “Since they wouldn’t let us watch the birth.”

  “Ignorant, barbaric Liavekans.”

  “I know. He’ll never be a proper part of us if we can’t witness him.”

  “Their families must be terrible.”

  “I don’t want to go to Liavek,” said Givanni, kicking the nearest piece of stone wall available to him.

  “Papa says we mayn’t need to.”

  “Mama thinks we will.”

  “Did she tell you?” demanded Gillo. Their mother was not forthcoming as a rule, except about the other rules.

  “What do you think? But I heard them.”

  “Maybe the baby—”

  “That’s what Papa said,” said Givanni. “It made her angry.”

  “She thought we’d have to leave before you were born, too, and we stayed.”

  “You can’t remember that.”

  “I do. That’s when they bought the mirror. But they didn’t bind and break it then.”

  “Why would you remember that?”

  “I liked the frame,” said Gillo, abashed. But his brother did not taunt him. Instead, he looked abashed in his turn, which was very unusual. “Did you ever think—” he said.

  “You’re always telling me I don’t.”

  “No, by our honorable madness, listen.”

  Givanni stopped kicking the wall and watched him. “What’s the matter?”

  “We say Liavekans are barbarians, but there aren’t only Liavekans in Liavek. People travel there from everywhere. And all of them have gods.”

  “We have a god.”

  “But It won’t be there. We could have a new god.” Gillo said his last sentence in a low voice, but otherwise as if he were suggesting that they ought to replace the garden bucket because it leaked.