Ethshar 08 - Ithanalin's Restoration

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The shadows were still there; in fact, they were darker and sharper than before, and she realized that they couldn't be a reflection—they didn't move when she shifted angle. They were there in the mirror itself, somehow—not on the surface of the glass, but in the famously perfect silvering. That dark line wasn't across Ithanalin's face, and that one wasn't on the far wall….

  They grew and darkened as she watched, but it took another few seconds before she could adjust her vision and look at the thick black strokes properly. Finally, though, the runes fell into place.

  HELLO, KILISHA, they said.

  She blinked. "Hello," she said warily.

  The shadow runes broke apart and vanished. The image of the empty room, her motionless master, and her own worried face was clear once again.

  "Who are you?" she asked, after a moment of entirely ordinary reflections.

  Curls of darkness swirled for a moment; then new runes appeared reading part or ithanalin the wish.

  Her eyes widened as she realized that in fact the runes were in the familiar, slightly crooked handwriting she had seen so often—she had no doubt that the words were true. "Master!" she said. "You're trapped in there? Your spirit?"

  NOT exactly, the mirror replied.

  Before Kilisha could react, the runes shifted again.

  I AM PART of ITHANALIN, they said. The three runes of the word "part" were larger and more ornately curved than the rest.

  "Well, of course," Kilisha said. "Your body is right over there." She pointed.

  I AM ONLY PART OF ITHANALIN’S SPIRIT, OR GHOST. NOT ALL OF IT. The runes had to be somewhat smaller to convey this longer message, and squeezed together awkwardly.

  "Oh," Kilisha said, crestfallen. She had been thinking this would be simple—if she had Ithanalin's body, and his soul was trapped in the mirror, surely there would be some way to put them back together. "What part? How many ... I mean ..."

  I AM MOST OF THE WIZARD'S MEMORY, the mirror said.

  "Oh. Then… then do you remember what happened?"

  YES

  The single word hung there for a moment. "Then what was it?" Kilisha asked, almost wailing, when no further explanation materialized. "Why is your memory in the mirror, and your body petrified—or paralyzed, or whatever it is?"

  Then the mirror explained the whole thing, in line after line of shadowy runes, and Kilisha stared until her eyes hurt, reading silently.

  Ithanalin had been working on the animation spell for his important new customer—the man wanted a bed brought to life, for reasons that Ithanalin had not inquired very closely into, once the wizard had assurances that the customer's wife knew and approved, and that nothing murderous was planned.

  Kilisha wondered about that—a living bed? She was a normal adolescent girl, with a normal interest in sex, no experience at all, and an overheated imagination; what would a living bed be for? Wouldn't that be, well, strange?

  But people often were strange, especially those rich and eccentric enough to buy Ithanalin's spells. She tried not to think about the bed as the mirror continued.

  The spell had finally been going well, after a couple of false starts, and was nearing completion; a spriggan had gotten into the workshop somehow, despite the locked front door, but Ithanalin had managed to shoo it out of the workshop and into the front parlor while he continued the mixing. He was at a point in the six-hour ritual where he had to stir a large bowl of goo for an hour without stopping—those people who made jokes about how wizards didn't need to keep their bodies fit obviously didn't know what went into some of these spells, Kilisha thought.

  Then someone had knocked at the door.

  At first Ithanalin had ignored it—Kilisha or Yara or the children would have the sense to realize he was busy, and could wait— they weren't due back yet, in any case—and he was not interested in talking to any customers or neighbors when he was in the middle of a spell. The door was closed and the curtains drawn, so it should have been plain that the wizard was not open for business; all the same, someone had rapped loudly.

  Ithanalin had assumed that the caller, upon being ignored, would conclude no one was home and go away.

  Whoever it was didn't take the hint, though—he pounded harder and started shouting, and Ithanalin had picked up the bowl, still stirring, and had marched out into the front room with the bowl tucked in his left arm, stirring spoon in his right hand. He had intended to order whoever it was to go away, and threaten to lay a few choice curses, but then he had made out some of the words being shouted—it wasn't a determined or angry customer at all. It was the overlord's tax collector on his more-or-less-annual rounds, and wizards had to pay just like anyone else.

  Ithanalin couldn't stop stirring without ruining the spell, but he thought he could call through the door and explain that he was busy, and ask the tax collector to come back later—the guardsmen assigned to the treasurer's office were reputed to be stubborn but reasonable, and after all, Ithanalin had sold a miniature dragon to the treasurer herself just the day before, so surely the collector had not been instructed to be unusually difficult.

  The rug by the front door had been humped up again, as usual, and as he walked and stirred Ithanalin had kicked at it, to straighten it out—but this time, instead of flattening, the rug had jumped up at him. The spriggan Ithanalin had chased out of the workshop had been hiding under the hump, and sprang out when the wizard kicked at it.

  Ithanalin had been so startled that he had started to fall backward, and he had flung up his hands instinctively. The dish of magical glop intended for the customer's bed had gone flying, the spoon had gone flying, and the goo had sprayed all over the parlor in a glowing purple spatter, smearing on the ceiling, dripping down on the furniture, drifting in a thick fog every which way—not like a natural spill at all, but then, the stuff wasn't natural, it was magic. An animation magic, at that, already more than half alive.

  Ithanalin had landed heavily on his backside, sitting spraddled on the floor, and had lost his temper enough to shout, "Kux aqa!"

  "What docs that mean?" Kilisha asked.

  IT IS AN OBSCENITY IN AN ANCIENT, FORGOTTEN TONGUE, the mirror told her, the shadowy letters sliding across her reflected face.

  "Yes, but what does it mean?" Kilisha insisted.

  I DO NOT THINK THAT ITHANALIN, WERE, HE COMPLETE, WOULD WISH TO TELL YOU.

  "But he isn't complete, and it might be important!"

  VERY WELL.

  "So what does it mean?"

  YOU ARE AWARE THAT PROFANITY OFTEN DOES NOT MAKE SENSE WHEN TRANSLATED LITERALLY?

  "Of course!" Kilisha said, though she hadn't known any such thing.

  THE PHRASE "KUX AQA" TRANSLATES ROUGHLY AS "A PERSON WHO EATS POULTRY IN A DISTASTEFUL MANNER," the mirror informed her.

  Kilisha blinked.

  "Oh," she said.

  SHALL I CONTINUE?

  "Yes, please!"

  The mirror continued, explaining that the phrase had served as a trigger for the incomplete spell, but as almost always happened when a spell was improperly performed, the results were not those intended. Usually, as Kilisha knew from her own failed attempts at any number of spells, an error simply drained the magic away and made the whole thing a lot of meaningless gestures; sometimes, though, it produced an entirely new spell—sometimes trivial, sometimes not. It was rumored that just such an accidental spell had created spriggans in the first place, a few years before.

  In this case, the botched spell had had a very definite effect—it had absorbed Ithanalin's own life force and distributed it throughout the room, settling it into the furnishings.

  That had left the wizard himself inanimate, of course—his energies and the various aspects of his personality had been drained away and scattered about, leaving an empty shell.

  "Oh, gods!" Kilisha said, hand to her mouth. She looked about at the empty room.

  I SEE YOU UNDERSTAND, the mirror said.

  It went on to explain that all the furniture h
ad been animated, receiving different parts of Ithanalin's life force. Because almost the entirety of Ithanalin's memory had been deposited in the mirror, however, the other pieces seemed unaware of who or what they were.

  The latch of the front door had been animated, as well, and had opened itself, allowing the tax collector to enter. He had then found himself confronted by animated furniture and an inanimate wizard, and had let out a yell, whereupon there had been a general panic, and the various furnishings, after bumping around the room a little, had fled—as had the tax collector, apparently; the mirror had not had a clear view, but at any rate the soldier had not stayed.

  The couch and end table, the bench, the coatrack, and the old chair had all had legs, legs they could now move; they had been able to walk, run, or scamper out the door. The rag rug had humped itself along like an inchworm and vanished into the street. And although the mirror hadn't seen just how they propelled themselves, it was fairly sure that the implements Ithanalin had carried had come to life, as well.

  The dish had run away with the spoon.

  Chapter Four

  Since he had been interrupted in the middle of a spell, Ithanalin's book of magic was lying open on the workbench when Kilisha found it; that voided most of the protective spells that would ordinarily prevent anyone other than Ithanalin himself from using it. Of the other wards Kilisha was exempted from some, and the mirror was able to tell her how to counteract the last few.

  With a glance at the mysterious oil lamp and tripod, Kilisha picked up the book and carried it into the front room. There she paged through it, reading anything that looked even vaguely relevant and holding it up for the mirror to read when she had any questions.

  She had already gone through her own book of spells, which contained the instructions for the fifty-three assorted spells she had learned to date, before touching Ithanalin's. None of those fifty-three were of any obvious use in restoring her master to normal, so she had resorted to Ithanalin's own book, which held, by her hasty count, one hundred and twelve.

  Even distraught as she was over the accident, Kilisha was somewhat annoyed by the discovery of just how many of her master's spells she had not yet learned; she had hoped and expected to complete her apprenticeship within the coming year and become a journeyman at the age of eighteen, but she doubted she could learn another fifty-nine spells properly in that time when it had taken her five years to get this far. She had known there were all the various animation spells, but glancing through it was plain that there were a good many others, as well.

  She was sure she could have learned faster if Ithanalin had taken the trouble to teach her. She wondered whether his one previous apprentice, Istram—now a journeyman and well on the way to becoming a master himself—had learned all these, or whether he had gone out into the World only partially educated. Perhaps some of these spells were deemed unfit for mere apprentices or journeymen, and Kilisha would have to wait years to learn them.

  Right now, though, Kilisha needed to find a spell to undo the botched animation, and once she found it she would probably need to teach it to herself from the book, so she certainly hoped she would be able to handle it, even if she was just an apprentice.

  She hoped she would be able to read the instructions properly, that Ithanalin hadn't used any secret codes in writing up his book. She had never before been permitted to work directly from Ithanalin's written instruction; spells were taught orally, and by demonstration, never in writing, so that the master could watch the apprentice every step of the way. And the apprentice was required to write down the spell in her own words, rather than copying the master's, to make sure that she would always be able to understand it.

  The spell that had gone wrong, the mirror told her, was the Servile Animation, a sixth-order spell requiring, among other things, dragon's blood, seeds of an opium poppy, virgin's tears— Kilisha had provided those tears herself, she realized, unsure whether to be offended that Ithanalin had correctly assumed she was qualified for the purpose, and had not bothered to ask her whether she was still a suitable donor—and red hair from a woman married more than a year.

  Yara's hair was dark brown; Kilisha wondered where Ithanalin had found a red-haired woman.

  It didn't really look all that difficult when she read the instructions, but the mirror assured her that it was far harder than it appeared.

  The spell had no specified counter, and was not inherently reversible. Kilisha sighed. She went paging onward through the book.

  "Here," she said at last, holding the volume up to the mirror. "Will this work?"

  She had found a spell called Javan's Restorative; according to the description Ithanalin had written, this spell would restore a person or thing to a "natural healthy State, regardless of previous Enchantments, Breakage, or Damage." It wasn't one she had ever attempted, or one she would have had any business attempting unaided for some time yet under ordinary circumstances, but she was fairly sure she had seen Ithanalin use it once, and she was willing to give it a try.

  If she couldn't make it work, perhaps she could find a more experienced wizard who could handle it—if it was the right spell.

  "Will it work?" she repeated.

  IT SHOULD, read the reply.

  "Good," Kilisha said. She lowered the book and looked at the ingredients the spell called for.

  Two peacock plumes, one of them pure white—that was easy; Ithanalin kept a vase of them in the corner of his workshop, a vase Yara occasionally put out on display in the parlor, but which Ithanalin always took back as soon as he noticed its absence.

  Boiling water was easy, too.

  Jewelweed ... Kilisha had never heard of jewelweed, but she assumed she could get it from any good herbalist. She would check on that.

  A quarter-pound block of a special incense, prepared in fog or sea mist—Kilisha hurried to the drawers in the workshop.

  Fortunately, though Ithanalin might be a careless housekeeper elsewhere, he kept some things tidy and neatly labeled; each block of incense was wrapped in tissue and tied with string, with a tag on the string that said, in Ithanalin's crooked runes, exactly when and how the incense had been made, and what ingredients had been used.

  The right block was in the first drawer Kilisha checked, about halfway back and one layer down. She lifted it out and set it carefully on the workbench.

  And that, once she had bought the jewelweed and fetched the feathers and boiled the water, was everything—except, of course, for a wizard's athame and the parts of whatever was broken.

  She blinked.

  Well, she had her own athame. She'd had it for years, she'd made it when she was not quite thirteen. And of course she had to have the pieces of whatever was broken; that was obvious. Something about it bothered her, though. She read through the instructions carefully, to see if she had missed anything.

  No, it all seemed fairly straightforward. It was a higher-order spell than anything she'd ever done, but she could at least attempt it. She just needed to either work the spell in the front room, or bring Ithanalin and the mirror into the workshop....

  She blinked again.

  And, she realized, all the furniture.

  She needed to have all the pieces. The instructions were quite clear that if any significant portion was absent, the spell would not work.

  And a part of Ithanalin—presumably each one significant— had animated each object now missing from the parlor.

  In addition to the mirror and her master's body, she needed the rag rug, and the couch, and the end table, and the bench, and the chair, and the coatrack, and the dish, and the spoon.

  She looked through the open doorway into the bare room. She would need the front door latch, too, but that was still where it belonged.

  Almost nothing else was.

  "Oh," she said, staring.

  She would have to collect all the furniture. It had all run out the front door and vanished, and she would have to find it all and bring it back here. Her lips tightened in
to a frown.

  Then she relaxed a little. Really, how hard could that be? After all, animated furniture wasn't exactly a common sight in the streets of Ethshar. It should be easy enough to find. The rag rug, the couch, the end table, the bench, the coatrack, the chair, the bowl, and the spoon—eight items.

  She hoped she wasn't forgetting anything. She would want to consult the mirror carefully before actually attempting Javan's .spell.

  She sighed, and put the block of incense back in the drawer. She didn't dare close the book of spells, in case Ithanalin's magic might keep her from opening it again, but she placed it carefully on a shelf and covered it with a soft cloth.

  She looked at the oil lamp, and the brass bowl. Something was bubbling darkly in there—presumably some minor spell her master had had brewing on the side while he performed the Servile Animation. She hoped it wasn't dangerous.

  Well, it shouldn't be hard to find out. She went back out to the parlor and asked the mirror, "What's in that brass bowl Ithanalin was heating?"

  The mirror clouded, but no runes appeared at first. Kilisha frowned.

  "Hello?"

  WHAT BOWL?

  "The brass bowl over the oil lamp," Kilisha said.

  The mirror clouded again for a long moment, but finally admitted, I DON'T REMEMBER. PERHAPS SOMETHING ELSE RECEIVED THAT PARTICULAR MEMORY.

  "Oh, that's just wonderful," Kilisha muttered. She returned to the workshop and looked at the bowl again.

  The stuff looked thick and oily, a brown so dark it was almost black. It smelled spicy and very slightly bitter, but not at all unpleasant. She didn't recognize it.

  The obvious assumption was that something brewing in a wizard's workshop was a spell of some sort, but this smelled more like food. Ithanalin didn't cook—Yara didn't allow it, due to an unfortunate incident a few years before Kilisha's arrival—but perhaps this might still be something other than a spell. Kilisha drew her athame and held it out cautiously toward the bowl to check.

  The point of the knife glowed faintly blue, and she could feel magic in the air. Whatever was in that bowl was definitely magical.