Ethshar 08 - Ithanalin's Restoration

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  "You did that with the Familiar Animation?" Kilisha asked, still staring after the departed customer.

  "That's right," Ithanalin agreed, his head bent over his wife's hands, counting the coins. "A variant, actually."

  "When are you going to teach me that spell?" Kilisha asked.

  "Soon," Ithanalin replied, still counting.

  "And when are you going to dust in here?" Yara asked. "Or let me dust it?"

  "Soon," he repeated. Then he paused and looked up. "We'll have to close the drapes, of course. We can't let anyone see you doing it." He kicked at the rag rug, which was humped again. "You know, I think I've accidentally animated this stupid thing, at least slightly. This wrinkling can't be natural."

  Yara sighed. She suspected Ithanalin was right about the rug, which was certainly a nuisance; she was convinced he was wrong about the drapes, though. She would have been glad to dust the place in broad daylight, with an audience, but Ithanalin wouldn't allow it. He insisted it would look bad if anyone saw an ordinary human being dusting his furniture, rather than a sylph or homunculus.

  Yara had argued often enough that not having anyone dust it looked even worse, but Ithanalin was adamant. He would only allow housework to be done in the front parlor, the only public part of the shop, when no customers were expected, and only behind tightly drawn drapes—and since he kept the shop open long hours, and Yara did like to eat and sleep on occasion, that meant the dusting wasn't done very often.

  Yara thought it was a foolish minor annoyance.

  Kilisha thought it was bad advertising, to let the place get so dusty, but she knew better than to argue with her master. She was just an apprentice; it wasn't her place to say anything, let alone to side against her master, even if it was only with her master's wife. She had acquired a bit of a reputation for rushing into things without thinking, but even she wasn't going to argue with the man who controlled almost every detail of her life.

  It had long since occurred to her that as the apprentice in the household she probably ought to do the dusting herself, but as yet Ithanalin hadn't told her to, and she had enough other obligations that she didn't care to volunteer.

  Ithanalin himself clearly thought that it was in keeping with a wizard's image to let the place get a little dusty. Wizards were supposed to be somewhat unworldly, after all.

  Even so, for the sake of peace, he kept promising to animate something that would do the job, but as yet he hadn't gotten around to it.

  Yara maintained that he never would get around to it, and every so often she would sneak into the room when Ithanalin was out and run a surreptitious rag over the most offensive surfaces, without worrying about whether the drapes were drawn.

  Kilisha did wonder why the wizard hadn't just animated something long ago and gotten it over with. She knew Ithanalin was capable of it; the little creature that Lady Nuvielle had just bought was not the only such she'd seen pass through the shop, so she knew that Ithanalin could make a very nice little homunculus indeed, if he chose to. Animations were his specialty. He claimed to know more animating spells than any other wizard in the city, and Kilisha believed him—though as yet he had not taught her any of them; she had been working her way up through more mundane magic.

  He knew all the spells, yet there wasn't a sylph or homunculus or even as much as an animated serving dish in the entire house. He had just created a familiar for a noblewoman, but had none himself. Everything he had ever animated had been given away or sold. He claimed that he didn't want the place cluttered up with creatures that might interfere with his work, but Kilisha thought he just couldn't be bothered.

  Maybe someday, Kilisha thought as she turned away from the door, she could make a homunculus for Yara on her own, if Ithanalin never did get around to it; it would be an expression of gratitude for the treatment she'd had.

  Ithanalin was a fine master—polite, informative, an excellent teacher, never beating her or working her too hard, rarely even yelling at her when she messed something up. A girl could hardly ask for better, really.

  But Ithanalin could be absentminded and careless, and often left Kilisha to fend for herself in the workshop for extended periods of time, or let her improvise complicated jury-rigged solutions to magical problems that Ithanalin himself could have solved with a single simple little incantation. He kept telling her to plan, to think things out for herself—but when she tried, it never seemed to work out, and often because there was some little detail that Ithanalin had failed to provide.

  Yara, though—Yara was always considerate. It was Yara who made sure that Kilisha had clean bedding, good food, safe water, and all the other basic necessities of life.

  Of course, she did the same for her husband, and the three children, and herself. It was she who kept the entire household running smoothly at all times. She was more than just a housekeeper, though—she loved her husband and her children and showed it, she provided the household with firm common sense when it was called for, and she was even sometimes a friend when Kilisha needed one. Ithanalin was fine, but he was her master, and sometimes she needed someone to talk to who wasn't her master. The three children—Telleth, Lirrin, and Pirra—were sweet enough, but too young to understand the concerns of a girl of seventeen. Telleth, the oldest, was only ten. Kilisha couldn't often talk to her parents or her brother Opir—they still lived in Eastgate, a mile away, and she was rarely free to visit there.

  Much of the time there was only Yara—but she was usually enough.

  Kilisha knew she would have to animate a few things herself in order to learn the relevant spells; perhaps, as part of her training, if Ithanalin didn't insist her creations be sold, she could provide Yara with the magical servants Ithanalin had never bothered to create.

  But she had less than a year of her apprenticeship remaining, and had not yet been taught a single one of the spells that were Ithanalin's specialty and primary source of income—a fact that distressed her.

  "Master," Kilisha said, "please—could I please learn an animation spell next?"

  Ithanalin looked up at her, startled by the intensity in her voice.

  "All right," he said. "We'll start on the seventeenth, the day after tomorrow—I have another important customer coming tomorrow, and it will take me most of the day to get his spell ready, so we can't do it then. But Kilisha, it may still be more than you can handle, even yet—animation spells are tricky." He thought for a moment, then added, "We'll start with the simplest I know. It's called the Spell of the Obedient Object—you've seen me use it. It's not the simplest there is, by any means, just the simplest I know. We'll need the blood of a gray cat, and one of these gold coins—I'll have to look the rest up. Day after tomorrow, right after breakfast, then. You'll have to find a gray cat tomorrow—I don't have any more cat's blood in stock. Besides, it'll keep you out of the way while I'm working."

  Kilisha grinned. "Thank you, Master!" she said. She almost bounced with joy.

  "That's tomorrow," Yara said, bringing her back to earth. "Right now, I'd like you to watch Pirra while I get our dinner."

  Kilisha sighed, and smoothed out a hump in the rag rug by the door. "Yes, Mistress," she said.

  Chapter Three

  Kilisha eyed the gray cat warily; the cat stared inscrutably back.

  Maybe, Kilisha thought, she was going about this wrong.

  It had seemed perfectly reasonable to chase this stray; after all, she needed a gray cat, and this one had walked right in front of her as she strolled down Wizard Street . If she had thought about it at all she would have taken it as a sign from the gods—but she should have remembered how fond the gods were of jokes.

  Now she stood precariously balanced on a broken crate, trying to reach the cat while it sat calmly watching her from a second-floor windowsill that was just a few inches beyond Kilisha's outstretched fingers.

  "Here, puss," Kilisha crooned. "Come on. I'm not going to kill you, I just need a little blood."

  The cat didn't move.
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  Kilisha stretched a little farther, on the very edge of overbalancing.

  The cat flicked its tail against the windowpane with an audible thump, then stood up and stretched. Kilisha waited, hoping it would jump down, back within reach.

  Something rattled, and the window casement swung inward.

  "Come on in, Smoky," a child's voice said.

  The cat gave Kilisha one last look, one the apprentice would have sworn was a supercilious sneer, and then climbed in through the open window, out of sight.

  "No, wait!" Kilisha called. "Wait!" She reached too far; the window closed with a thump, wood cracked under her foot, and she tumbled down into the alley.

  A moment later she had untangled herself from the wreckage and gotten upright once more; as she brushed dirt and splinters from her tunic she concluded that yes, she was going about this wrong. Trying to find a stray gray cat in the streets of Ethshar was simply too haphazard an enterprise; for one thing, as this latest incident demonstrated, there was no way to tell a true stray from someone's pet. Not everyone put bows, bells, and collars on their cats.

  She had set out with no definite plan of action, and Smoky's appearance had convinced her she didn't need one.

  She should have known better. Ithanalin was always telling her to plan ahead, and she kept forgetting and charging ahead without thinking.

  She looked around thoughtfully. She couldn't ask Ithanalin for advice; by now he would be deep in his spell-casting, and an interruption might be disastrous. Yara and the children were out for the day—Yara at the market, the children playing with neighbors across the back courtyard—so as not to disturb Ithanalin. It was up to her.

  Finding a cat shouldn't be a problem, though. It wasn't as if she'd been sent after dragon's blood or the hair of an unborn babe. Ethshar of the Rocks might be short of dragons, and its unborn children might be inaccessible, but there were plenty of cats.

  Many of the aristocrats of Highside and Center City, westward toward the sea, kept cats—as well as any number of more exotic pets, such as Lady Nuvielle's miniature imitation dragon. Kilisha doubted that she'd find any aristocrats who cared to let a scruffy apprentice draw blood from their pampered darlings, though. At least, not without demanding more money than she could afford.

  To the east was the Lakeshore district, and to the north was Norcross—both solidly middle class, home to assorted tradesmen and bureaucrats. Kilisha had the impression that their taste in pets ran more to watchdogs than cats.

  The Arena district was a few blocks to the south, though, and that seemed promising.

  Or if she just strolled along Wizard Street ...

  She knew several cats, belonging to magicians of every sort. Unfortunately, none of them were really gray—most magicians seemed to prefer black, and while there were a few tigers and tabbies mixed in, she didn't remember a single gray.

  Maybe someone else would, though.

  And if all else failed, she could go to a professional wizards' supply house—there was Kara's Arcana, on Arena Street just around the corner from Wizard Street . That would be expensive, even for something as simple as cat's blood, she was sure.

  She sighed again and began walking.

  Five hours later, around the middle of the afternoon, she finally headed homeward, a tightly stoppered vial of dark blood tucked in the purse on her belt. She owed the priestess Illure a favor for this, and she hoped it wouldn't be too difficult to repay.

  At least a priestess wouldn't want anyone turned into a newt or otherwise seriously harmed; the gods didn't approve of that sort of thing.

  It seemed silly, spending all this time, half the day, just getting a little cat's blood. She knew Ithanalin had always said that the hardest part of any spell was getting the ingredients, but if it took this long for something simple like cat's blood…

  Well, that was how wizards' suppliers like Kara or the infamous Gresh stayed in business, and why they could charge so much.

  At least this way Ithanalin had probably had plenty of time for his spell and his mysterious customer, whoever it was—not many spells took more than a few hours. Yara and the little ones wouldn't be back yet, and the wizard had had the whole morning without an apprentice underfoot.

  She came within sight of the shop and noticed that the drapes were still drawn. She sighed. Yara would never have allowed that, had she been home. Usually Ithanalin agreed that the drapes should be open during business hours, but sometimes, when he was busy, he forgot.

  The door was open, though, so people would know that the wizard was home.

  And he must be done with his spell, if he had left the door wide open. Kilisha hurried the last few paces.

  "Hello, Master," she said, as she stepped into the dim room. "I'm sorry I—"

  She stopped dead in her tracks. Something was wrong here.

  Something was very wrong.

  Ithanalin was crouching on the floor just a few feet inside the door, as if in the process of rising from a sitting position, but he was not moving. He wore his grubby working tunic and a worn leather apron, and he was utterly, perfectly still, his face frozen in a beard-bristling expression of severe annoyance.

  Kilisha stared at him for a moment, then looked straight down at her own feet, not realizing why she did it until she saw that she was standing on bare planking.

  The rag rug was gone.

  She stared, then quickly looked around to see whether it might have slid off to one side.

  It hadn't. It was gone.

  And the red velvet couch was gone.

  And the square black end table was gone.

  And the humpback bench was gone.

  And the coatrack was gone.

  And the straight chair was gone.

  Everything was gone—the room was totally empty except for herself, Ithanalin, and the mirror above the mantel.

  "Master?" Kilisha said.

  Ithanalin didn't respond.

  She stepped closer, and, very carefully, reached out and touched the immobile wizard.

  He was still warm—that was something, anyway—but he didn't react, didn't move; his skin felt lifeless and inert, like sun-warmed leather rather than living flesh.

  "Master, what happened?" she wailed. She stared wildly around the empty room. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn't let herself cry; she wasn't a baby, she was seventeen years old, almost a journeyman.

  This was magic, obviously. Ithanalin was clearly alive, but somehow frozen, and surely nothing but magic could freeze a person like that.

  But was it hostile magic, or had something gone wrong?

  She couldn't imagine who would have done this to her master deliberately. Ithanalin might not be the best-loved man in Ethshar, or even close to it, but he wasn't bad. She knew people who didn't like him, but she couldn't name anyone she would really call an enemy.

  And if anyone attacked him—well, it would have to be another wizard, because if anyone else were to use magic on him that person would be risking the wrath of the Wizards' Guild. Nobody who was stupid enough to do that could be powerful enough to do something like this.

  And why would a fellow wizard do it?

  She wished she knew some decent divinations, but Ithanalin had never been much interested in such things. She had to rely on common sense to figure out what had happened here.

  It might have been a wizard with some old grudge she didn't know about—but it might also be that something had gone wrong. After all, why would a wizard have stolen all the furniture?

  She blinked, and looked around.

  Why would anyone take the furniture? Most of it wasn't anything very special; the couch was unique, but so far as she knew it wasn't especially valuable. Probably the most valuable piece was the mirror, with its Shan glass and perfect silvering, and that was the only thing still here!

  She reached back and closed the door; then she tiptoed carefully past the frozen wizard and peered through the doorway at the back of the parlor.

  The
workshop appeared to be undisturbed; the shelves and benches and stools were all still there, still cluttered with the detritus of wizardry. The chests of drawers where Ithanalin kept his ingredients were all in place, their drawers tidily closed. An oil lamp was burning in one corner of the workbench, warming a small brass bowl on a tripod—Kilisha had no idea what that might be for. Several spells required heating things, but none of the ones she knew seemed likely to have been in progress.

  Cautiously, she ventured through the workroom to the kitchen at the rear of the shop, and then on up the stairs, checking for intruders, damage, or simply some sign of what had happened.

  The ground-floor kitchen was untouched, just as she had left it that morning. The day nursery and drawing room on the next level were intact. A quick look in the bedrooms farther upstairs found nothing out of place.

  Only the front parlor was affected.

  She hurried back.

  Ithanalin was still there, still motionless, still warm to the touch; everything else was still gone, save the mantel, hearth, and mirror.

  What was so special about the mirror, then? Why was it still here? It wasn't bolted to the wall, or impossibly heavy; she had seen Yara take it down for cleaning once, a couple of years ago, and she hadn't had to strain to move it. If all the other furniture had been stolen, then why had the thieves left the most precious piece? Kilisha crossed the room and peered up into the smooth glass.

  She saw her own image, and Ithanalin's, and the empty room. As she watched, though, shadows appeared; she spun around, expecting to see whatever made them.

  Nothing was there. The room was empty and still.

  She blinked, then slowly turned back to the mirror.

  She knew the glass came from Shan on the Desert, far to the east, and there were rumors that Shan had been full of strange magic during the Great War, centuries ago—could there be some lingering spell that had been triggered by today's events, whatever they were? She stared intently at the reflected scene.