Ethshar 08 - Ithanalin's Restoration

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The house was three stories tall and unremarkable, with heavy black timbers crisscrossing their way up to a steep slate roof. The plaster filling between the beams was yellow, and decorated with finely painted red flowers surrounded by twining green vines. The windows were tall and narrow, the leading between panes simple. Because of the street's slope the front door was at the top of a stoop, two steps at one side, three steps at the other. The stone doorframe was carved into the likeness of two doglike creatures sitting on their haunches, facing one another, their impossibly tall ears supporting the lintel.

  Kilisha mounted the steps, looked for a bell-pull or knocker, and seeing none she rapped on the door with her knuckles.

  The carved dog-things opened their stone eyes and looked at her.

  "What is your business here?" the left-hand creature asked, in a hissing, grating, and thoroughly inhuman voice.

  Kilisha was mildly impressed; most of Ithanalin's creations couldn't speak that clearly, if they spoke at all, and stone was said to be hard to work with. "I need to speak to Guildmaster Chorizel," she said. "There's been an accident."

  "Who are you?" the right-hand doorpost asked, in a deeper, grinding voice.

  "Kilisha of Eastgate," she said. "Apprentice to Ithanalin the Wise."

  "Enter, then," the left-hand creature said. The latch clicked, and the door swung open.

  That, she supposed, was the Spell of the Obedient Object at work—it was probably triggered by the doorpost's voice saying "Enter." These things were usually set up to make animated objects seem far more intelligent and independent than they really were.

  She stepped inside and looked around.

  The entry hall was fair-sized, with a lovely thick carpet on the wooden floor, a couch against one wall, stairs leading up, and closed doors on either side. It was dim, lit only by a window at the top of the stairs, and the dark wood wainscotting made it seem even darker.

  A black and brownish-red rune drawn on the wall at the foot of the stairs spoke in a pleasant tenor, saying, "Please wait here." Then the brownish-red part evaporated into thick, foul-smelling smoke.

  Kilisha studied the remaining portion of the rune with interest; she had never seen that particular spell before. Clearly it was a single-use spell; she could sense no lingering magic in it, even with her hand on the hilt of her athame. She did not actually touch the nine, with either her hand or her dagger, any more than she had touched that bowl on Ithanalin's workbench; she knew better than to handle unfamiliar magic so carelessly as that.

  It couldn't be a very high-order spell if Chorizel had thrown it away so casually on an unimportant visitor. She wondered whether Ithanalin knew it, whatever it was. The voice had sounded like Chorizel's own….

  She was still studying it when the door behind her opened and Chorizel stepped in. She turned at the sound, and bowed deeply.

  "Guildmaster," she said.

  "Apprentice," he replied, acknowledging the bow with a nod. "Did Kaligir send you to escort me?"

  "Uh..."

  "Then is there more news?"

  "More news? Guildmaster, I am here on behalf of my master, Ithanalin. ..."

  Chorizel frowned, and for the first time Kilisha noticed that there were two more people behind him, a man and a woman, looking over his broad shoulders.

  "Ithanalin?" he asked. "What does be have to do with any of this?"

  Kilisha blinked in confusion. "Any of what, Guildmaster?"

  "The rebellion, of course! The murders! The usurper!"

  For a few seconds Kilisha wondered whether this entire long day was actually some ghastly, confusing nightmare. "What rebellion, Guildmaster? What murders?"

  Chorizel put two ringers to his forehead and rubbed, staring at her. "You haven't heard?" he asked.

  "Heard what?"

  Chorizel glanced at the door, and the man behind him hurried over and pushed it shut.

  "Last night in Ethshar of the Sands," he said, "a mad magician named Tabaea led a mob from the Wall Street Field to the overlord's palace, chased Ederd and his lords out, and declared herself empress of Ethshar."

  "What kind of magician?" Kilisha asked, as she struggled to absorb this information.

  "We don't know," the woman at Chorizel's elbow said. "She has an enchanted dagger—it's probably wizardry, but it's possible it's sorcery or demonology or something new."

  Kilisha tried to go over everything Chorizel had said, to make sense of it. "If she's in Ethshar of the Sands, why are you concerned, Guildmaster? That's a hundred leagues away!"

  "Not quite sixty, really," Chorizel said. "And she's murdered wizards, including Guildmaster Screm. That makes it the Guild's business. Not to mention she's declared herself empress of the entire Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, not just the one city."

  "Oh," Kilisha said. No other response to this astonishing news really seemed appropriate. Murdered wizards? Empress of the Hegemony? The three-overlord system had been in place for over two hundred years, and the idea of someone trying to disrupt it simply made no sense. And who, other than the Guild itself, would dare to kill wizards?

  "Kaligir has been conferring with Telurinon, Serem's successor," Chorizel said. "We're all supposed to meet with Kaligir to discuss the situation. I thought he'd sent you to fetch us."

  "Oh," Kilisha said again—though she had no idea who Kaligir, Telurinon, or this murdered Guildmaster Serem might be. "No," she added, "he didn't send me."

  "Then why are you here?"

  That was the cue Kilisha had been waiting for; words spilled out of her mouth so quickly they almost tripped on one another.

  "My master Ithanalin has had an accident, he tripped over a spriggan in the middle of a spell and it spilled all over him and now his life force is in our furniture and it's escaped and I need help collecting it all and using Javan's Restorative to put him back together."

  Chorizel stared down at her for a moment. "Is he alive?" he demanded.

  "Well, technically, yes," Kilisha said.

  "Is he in any immediate danger? Will he die if we don't help you?"

  "I don't think so ..." Kilisha began, hesitantly.

  "Then it can wait. Weren't you listening, girl? Ederd IV has been overthrown, and Serem the Wise has been murdered!"

  "But—"

  "But nothing. You go on about your business, apprentice, and come back when we've settled matters with this usurper."

  "There's another spell involved...."

  "What spell?"

  "I don't know. It's cooking on the master's workbench."

  "Can it wait?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, it will have to. We can't spare the time."

  "But the furniture—"

  "Blast the furniture! Go away, child!" He thrust a pointing finger toward the door, and the man who had closed it a moment before swung it open.

  Kilisha stared at him.

  "Come on," Chorizel said, ignoring her. "Kaligir is waiting." He led the others toward the street.

  Kilisha stood at the foot of the stairs, staring helplessly, as the three marched out of the house.

  "You know better than to stay in a wizard's home unwanted, don't you, apprentice?" Chorizel called back over his shoulder.

  "Yes, Guildmaster," Kilisha said. Reluctantly, she followed them out, and pulled the door closed behind her.

  She stood on the stoop for a moment, watching Chorizel and his two companions striding westward down Wizard Street . Then, frustrated, she turned her own steps back toward Ithanalin's home.

  She was still on her own, it appeared. She would have to find the remaining furniture herself. She did not want to wait—this political disaster in Ethshar of the Sands might last for months, and a delay like that would ruin Ithanalin's business, prolong her apprenticeship, and leave the poor children without their father for much too long, not to mention that that brown mixture might explode or start spewing poison or something. And the furniture might wander off where she would never find it, or get
itself smashed somehow.

  She couldn't afford to wait. She had to find it somehow.

  She tried to think of some way to use one of the spells she already knew, but nothing came to mind. She didn't know any divinations; she didn't think Ithanalin knew any to teach her, though she resolved to take another look through his book of spells.

  She might be able to spot some of the furniture by levitating up to where she could see half the city at a time—but only if it was still out in the open, and not hiding under someone's porch roof.

  Or perhaps she could make the furniture come to her, or at least stay where she could find it. Just last month she had learned Javan's Geas, and that could be used on someone who wasn't present. If she put a geas on each piece of furniture she could, at least, prevent it from doing stupid or dangerous things—the geas could not compel anyone to do something, but only not to do something. Javan had been one of the finest research wizards in history, but his geas wasn't an especially powerful or versatile one.

  And, she remembered, it required knowing the victim's true name.

  What was a couch's true name—Ithanalin's Couch? Or if it held a part of Ithanalin, would bis true name work?

  She didn't know Ithanalin's true name. Only a fool of a wizard would trust his apprentice with such knowledge. A major reason many wizards used pompous, made-up names like Ithanalin or Chorizel was so their true names would not be known.

  And of course, exotic names also helped the mysterious image that wizards cultivated to attract business.

  She wondered whether even Yara knew Ithanalin's true name. It seemed unlikely. Ithanalin wouldn't have wanted to tell her, and Yara wouldn't have cared.

  And besides, if Kilisha put a geas on the furniture, the geas would still be there when Ithanalin was restored, and he would probably not be pleased at all to learn that he could no longer leave the city, or whatever.

  Javan's Geas was out.

  Eshom's Oenological Transformation, Fendel's Accelerated Corruption, the Spell of Perpetual Sharpness, Gilad's Blemish Removal, Cauthen's Remarkable Love Spell—she knew plenty of spells, but she couldn't see how any of them would help—

  She stopped dead in her tracks, just in front of Adagan's shop.

  Cauthen's Remarkable Love Spell.

  "Oh, no," she said.

  The idea was ghastly—but she couldn't get rid of it.

  Cauthen's spell created a potion containing some trace of one party—a hair, a drop of sweat or blood, almost anything. When someone drank the potion, the person who had provided that trace ingredient would fall in love with whoever drank it.

  If she were to find a few loose threads or splinters from the rug or the couch or the bench, and make the potion, and drink it, then the furniture would fall in love with her, and seek her out— but the idea of making Ithanalin in any form fall in love with her . ..

  "Oh," she said, smiling as a sudden pleasant realization dawned.

  She didn't need to drink the stuff. Yara could drink it. Ithanalin already loved her—though apparently the furniture did not, or it would have returned by now.

  But the spell could make the furniture love Yara, and want to please her. The furniture would seek her out, and if she told it to stay in the house, it would stay in the house.

  Then all that would be needed was Javan's Restorative.

  Kilisha smiled broadly and hurried for home.

  Chapter Nine

  Mare's sweat, hair from a stallion's tail, water, red wine—the other ingredients of Cauthen's Remarkable Love Spell, assuming she had remembered them all correctly, were not difficult. It was finding bits from the furniture that would be tricky. Kilisha bent down and peered at the bare floor of the front room.

  The coatrack was tethered in the corner; Yara and the children were nowhere in sight, but Kilisha could hear faint thumpings and rattlings from somewhere in the back as the family went about its everyday business.

  Kilisha's business, right now, was getting Ithanalin back together. As his apprentice, it was her responsibility. Cauthen's Remarkable Love Spell might be what she needed, and to perform the spell she needed to find some tiny fragment of the missing pieces.

  The daylight was fading rapidly, and Kilisha did not want to bother finding a lamp or candle; she pricked her right index finger with her athame and quickly spoke the incantation for the Finger of Flame.

  A flame leapt up from her fingertip, and she stretched her hand until the flame burned at its maximum height of almost a foot. It was brighter than a candle, not quite as good as a well-trimmed lamp.

  It also wouldn't last very long—after four or five minutes she would need to put it out if she didn't want blisters and burns— but it gave the light she needed to look around, and it reassured her that yes, she was a wizard, someone who knew real magic.

  It occurred to her that she could have used this, instead of Thrindle's Combustion, to demonstrate her abilities to the man with the bowl and spoon, and avoided damaging his clothing—but she hadn't thought of it at the time, and he had been so annoying that she was just as happy to have ruined his tunic.

  She held up the flame and looked around.

  Ithanalin hadn't let Yara dust or sweep in here, and since the accident Yara had been far too busy with other concerns to worry about it, so the floor was dusty—but which dust came from the furniture? She held her hand down low, then knelt to see better.

  She supposed she could use all of it, and see what happened. After all, what harm could it do? The walls and ceiling weren't animated; if they fell in love with Yara, they wouldn't do anything.

  But then she noticed a long black hair curling across the planking. That probably came from Lady Nuvielle, she realized. And the flake of black paint might be from the toy dragon Ithanalin had made her. Allowing the Lady Treasurer or her pet to fall in love with Yara did not seem like a good idea.

  So she would indeed need to be careful, picking and choosing.

  A bit of faded blue thread was surely from the rag rug; she recognized the color. She picked that up with her left hand and clutched it carefully as she thought.

  Could she use the spell on more than one target at a time? She didn't remember whether Ithanalin had said anything about that when he taught it to her, back in Rains. She had been far more interested in observing its effects on her brother Opir, who had volunteered as her test subject, and his girlfriend Klurea, who had drunk the potion.

  Klurea was Opir's former girlfriend, now—she had been offended by the results of the experiment, and by some of Opir's comments after he drank the last of the four required doses of the antidote.

  Kilisha frowned. She hoped that this wouldn't cause any sort of strife between Yara and Ithanalin—but why should it? They were an old married couple with three children, not a pair of teenagers.

  Well, not an old married couple, really, but they had been together perhaps a dozen years, maybe a little more. Surely that was long enough that their marriage could survive a love potion or two.

  Still, she decided that she should read over the spell carefully and see whether there were any complications she might have forgotten. Clutching the blue thread carefully, she hurried into the workshop.

  Her own book of spells was up in her attic room, but Ithanalin's was still here on the shelf above the bench where she had left it. She was beginning to feel the heat of the flame burning on her finger, and she didn't want to rely on the oil lamp under the brass bowl, so she lit a candle and snuffed the spell before climbing onto a stool and hauling down her master's book.

  She uncovered it and began looking through the pages. Cauthen's Remarkable Love Spell was near the front of the volume; she read over the description and notes carefully.

  It was very much as she remembered—mare's sweat and stallion's hair, water and wine. The notes said that it worked on a single individual, and that the wizard must be careful that none of his own hair or sweat fell into the mixture; if Ithanalin had mentioned that when he taught Kilisha t
he spell, she had forgotten it.

  She didn't think he had mentioned it.

  A single individual—well, the rug probably counted, but she wouldn't be able to get everything at once, even if she found more threads or splinters. Ithanalin was a single individual before the accident, but somehow she doubted that would make the spell work on all the furniture simultaneously.

  She might be able to do each piece sequentially, starting with the rug. She read on.

  Then she frowned.

  There was a catch, one she hadn't remembered, if she had ever known it. The spell took effect when the subject saw, heard, or smelled the intended love-object. For the rug to be lured home, it would need to see, hear, or smell Yara.

  That might be manageable, but it did make the whole idea seem less promising. Kilisha decided to put it aside for the moment and consider other possibilities. She carefully tucked the blue thread into one of Ithanalin's countless glass vials for safekeeping, then turned back to the book.

  She hesitated. Should she be using her own book of spells?

  But all her spells would be in here, and there might be others she could use, as well. She would need Javan's Restorative eventually.

  Unless she hired someone else to do it—but she wanted to do it, to show Ithanalin that she was a better wizard than he thought, ready to learn those animation spells and become a journeyman.

  And there might be something else in here she could use to find the missing furniture, something simple. Ithanalin had always said that he didn't know any divinations, but there might be something that would serve.

  She flipped to the front of the book, then began turning pages.

  Here were all the familiar spells she had studied over the past five years: Eknerwal's Lesser Invisibility, Fendel's Elementary Protection, the Spell of the Spinning Coin, the Iridescent Amusement, Thrindle's Combustion, the Lesser Spell of Invaded Dreams...

  She paused at that, considering the possibility of sending dreams to the escaped furniture, coaxing it to return home, but then she remembered that most magically animated objects didn't really sleep, and didn't dream. Those that rested at all merely went dormant, rather than truly sleeping.