Magic in Ithkar 3

by Andre Norton

  “Well?” she asked him at last.

  Black brows rose. “I always thought the correct greeting was, ‘How may I serve you?’” His voice was cultured, well educated.

  “I’m fat and I’m old,” Arra snapped, “but I’m not stupid. You’re no customer. What do you want?”

  “Perhaps we should discuss that privately.” His teeth were small and straight. A slight smell of rot tainted his breath.

  Arra’s eyes narrowed as she followed his gaze to where Elaina was directing an enthusiastic group of children in a taffy pull. The last time I saw that expression, she thought, it was looking up at me from underneath a rock. But all she said aloud was, “Maybe we should. Elaina!”

  The girl turned, saw who was with her grandmother, and began to twist her apron up into a sticky knot. Arra had not been the only one to notice the man in black.

  “That lot can manage on their own; only Josie has never pulled before. I need you to serve for me.”

  Elaina came forward slowly, her eyes smoldering, her gaze trying to roast the stranger where he stood. “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “Just across the way. I have business to discuss with this . . . person.” Arra patted her granddaughter on a stiff shoulder. “Try to remember the strawberry creams are for sale.”

  The shoulder relaxed a little. “Oh, Grandmother!”

  Arra grinned, chucked the girl under her chin—which brought a disdainful toss of the golden head—and maneuvered her bulk out of the booth. A black-clad arm waved her on ahead, and she moved across the road like a ship under full sail. Given the option of getting out of the way or being run down, the crowd parted in a bow wave before her.

  This early in the day, the tavern was nearly empty. A few serious drinkers, some of them obviously left over from the night before, were scattered about the tables, but Arra and her companion had their pick of the booths along one wall.

  Arra squeezed herself between the table and the bench and sat gingerly, relaxing only when she knew the furniture would bear her weight. Granted it always had before, but Arra knew that a person of her size couldn’t be too careful. The stranger slid in across the table and waved away the approaching proprietor.

  Harrat stopped, in surprise more than anything, and his huge mustache waggled and twisted under the force of his emotions. This was a tavern. If you sat down, you drank; if you had no intention of drinking, you sat somewhere else. Arra caught his eye before he could give voice, and her expression stopped him in his tracks. That was different. A friend in trouble was welcome to the space. Until the lunch crowd came in. He bowed and went back behind the bar.

  “Well?” Arra asked.

  “I want your granddaughter.”

  “You can’t have her.” Arra began to pull herself from the booth, but the stranger waved her back onto the bench.

  “You don’t understand.” He smiled unpleasantly. “I want the girl, and I always get what I want.”

  Arra returned a smile just as unpleasant. “Not this time.”

  He fingered the gold mask in his ear. “You still don’t understand.”

  Arra sighed. She understood only too well. She knew the type that Thotharn often attracted. Along with the truly evil—and only a fool would deny that the truly evil found a home with the dark god—came the petty and the bored. This young man obviously belonged to the latter group, with self-indulgence his driving force.

  “We’ve already determined I’m not stupid,” Arra said dryly. “I’m not blind, either. I saw your jewelry days ago, and I’m well aware of what it means. But you’re acting for yourself here, not for the god, and while the priests of Thotharn may approve of what you do—evil for its own sake is not discouraged among the acolytes—they will not help.” She folded her arms over her chest and glared across the table. “I can protect myself and my own from you.”

  “I don’t doubt that you can.” He conceded her the point. “But can you protect all the children of Ithkar Fair?”

  As one they turned and looked out the front of the tavern. Across the lane, two children were struggling to the candy-maker’s with a basket of peaches. They were met at the booth by a tiny girl, her mouth stretched wide over a sweet, and all three disappeared inside.

  “The children run your errands, do you deliveries. . . . They could begin to have fatal accidents.”

  “I could report you to the temple.”

  “The temple can do nothing until I do something, and I will very obviously do nothing. But the children will still die. And the children will continue to die until you give me your granddaughter.”

  Arra weighed her granddaughter against all the children of Ithkar Fair. She studied the man, making an inventory of all the strengths and weaknesses of his face. “Drop dead,” she said at last.

  “I swear by the Three Lordly Ones I didn’t even see her. One minute the way was clear, the next she was under my wheels. I didn’t have time to stop. I swear it.”

  Arra pushed past the nearly hysterical wagoner and dropped awkwardly to her knees beside the bloody bundle in the middle of the lane. Someone had draped a cloak over the body. Arra lifted a corner, already damp with blood, and peered beneath. It was the tiny girl they had seen from the tavern.

  “Are you all right, Arra?” Cortaynous touched her gently on the shoulder. “Is it someone you knew?”

  “I know all the children of the fair. And no, I’m not all right.” With the old wizard’s help, she heaved herself to her feet. “I’ve made a terrible misjudgment. This is my fault.”

  “This?” Cortaynous waved a hand at the tragedy. The wagoner was still trying desperately to explain to the gathered crowd that he hadn’t seen the child. The tiny corpse was buried under the wailing body of its mother. Fair-wards stood awkwardly, staves in hand, unsure of what to do until the priest arrived. “How could this be your fault?”

  Ana’s voice was stone. “I forgot that for some tasks weakness can be strength.”

  “Someone did this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell the temple!”

  “No. I have no proof. They will watch him. He will watch me. More children will die.” She ground the words out. “I will take care of this myself.”

  Cortaynous stared at the candymaker. What he saw in her eyes made him step back and sketch a sign in the air between them. “What will you do?”

  Arra’s lips drew back in what was not quite a smile. “I’m going to give him what he wants.”

  “Elaina will stay with me until the last day of the fair.”

  “Agreed.” He could afford to be generous; he had won. “But I will continue to watch, and if I see anything that says you are trying to get out of our agreement--

  “I have a business to run,” Arra cut him off. “I won’t have you interfere with that.”

  He spread his hands. “By all means, business as usual.” Arra snorted and turned away.

  He watched the fat woman waddle back to her booth, and the corners of his mouth turned up.

  On the day the candymaker’s booth shut down and her wagon was loaded and ready to leave, the man in black came forward to claim his prize. He had watched and seen nothing that said the bargain had been broken. Children had streamed in and out as usual, but none went near the section of the fair given over to magicians and sorcerers. The old fool of a wizard who was the candymaker’s friend had not come near the booth. Deliveries had grown more numerous, but business had been brisk. Even the boy who tended the oxen had arrived bowed under the weight of a bag that dusted his clothing with white powder. Elaina had taken over the serving of customers. He assumed this was so he would know she had not been spirited away, and he applauded the candymaker’s good sense.

  The oxen regarded him blandly as he approached, but the look Arra gave him should have felled him on the spot. He didn’t even notice. All he saw was the slight figure half-hidden behind the bulk of the old woman, golden hair glimmering under a veil, violet eyes demurely lowered. He caught hi
s lower lip between his teeth and rode the wave of pleasure that rushed up from his loins. He reached out to take what was his, but Arra’s hand, a band of steel around his wrist, stopped him.

  “Gently,” she snarled, feeling contaminated by the touch. “I’ve given her something to calm her, but I can’t guarantee that a public mauling won’t overcome it and you’ll be treated to a hysterical scene like you’ve never imagined.”

  He freed his arm and stepped back, bowing slightly to acknowledge the advice. Once he had the girl alone, hysterics wouldn’t matter. And when he’d finished with her, hysterics wouldn’t be possible.

  Arra moved aside and drew Elaina forward. She bent and planted a kiss on the golden hair. “The children of the fair are safe? Now and always?”

  “You have my word on it.” And he led Elaina away, an arm about her shoulders, the fingers toying with a silken braid.

  “His word, hah!” Arra spat and hoisted herself up onto the wagon seat. There were deep shadows under her eyes, and her face, for all its roundness, looked peaked and tired. She slapped the reins against the oxen’s backs and headed out of Ithkar Fair.

  Just past the gate a familiar voice called out, and she reined in.

  “Arra! Arra!” Cortaynous ran up, black robes flapping about skinny legs. “Did you truly do it?”

  “A number of times, and I’ve grandchildren for proof,” Arra answered, dimples digging wells of amusement in her face. “Did I truly do what?”

  Cortaynous leaned against the painted wood of the wagon, sucking air into ancient lungs. “A rumor says you traded Elaina for the lives of the children of the fair,” he gasped.

  “A man your age should know better than to listen to rumors,” Arra rebuked, and parted the curtains that separated the wagon seat from the storage area. “Come here, child.”

  Elaina poked her head through the space and smiled down at the old wizard.

  “But I saw . . . and others saw . . .” Cortaynous sputtered. “If you didn’t give him . . .” Understanding dawned. “You didn’t give him . . . ?”

  “I gave him exactly what he asked for,” Arra said calmly. “Something sweet for his bed.”

  Cortaynous shook his head. “He won’t be pleased when he finds out, and even your skill won’t stand a . . . uh . . .” He looked up at Elaina and blushed. “Uh, physical activity. You’ve only postponed the problem.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. You see, that much sugar would have been extraordinarily expensive, so I made a small substitution.”

  “Substitution?”

  “Sugar and lime look very much alike from a distance.”

  “Lime?” Cortaynous repeated weakly. He winced.

  “I have a certain skill with duplication,” Arra added, not at all modestly. “He’ll find the sugar coating covers a somewhat caustic interior.” She rubbed her hand over Elaina’s shorn head. “Much like the original.”

  “Oh, Grandmother!”

  Eyes of the Seer

  Caralyn Inks and Georgia Miller

  Dark clouds towered in the sky, and the sound of distant thunder came to Tamm’s ears. By the feel of the wind on his face, he knew the storm would reach him before day’s end. He eased the heavy pack off his back and massaged the stiffness from his muscles. No choice; he must stop. He took the packs off Haddis and, with the ease of long practice, set up camp.

  To the best of his reckoning he was still two days out from Ithkar Fair. He’d been born there. His parents belonged to the merchant class who lived permanently near the temple from fair to fair. Tamm learned the family trade, making household utensils, and was a skilled worker even before his voice deepened. Though he loved his family and working with his hands, there was a hunger deep within him nothing had yet satisfied. In his bones Tamm knew he was a magician.

  His parents made a modest living, but it did not stretch far enough to adequately grease the grasping palms of the cleric priests who guarded access to the true priests of the Three Lordly Ones. Kept from receiving the teachings he yearned for, Tamm refused to be swayed from his dream. He left. And he hadn’t been back in years.

  The life of a tinker was not for him, but it would serve, for now, to mask his real purpose, to search for a master who would agree to teach him the magecraft.

  But in the meantime, a man had to eat.

  Since the Northern War and the coming of the priests of Thotharn, there were a few households that welcomed a tinker at their back doors. Fancy ribbons or mended pots might bear the touch of alien sorcery. His customers often turned him away, all but the desperate. And even they had few copper bits or hearthcraft they’d willingly part with for mending a pot or sharpening kitchen knives.

  But Tamm was industrious and persistent. His pack was bulging with wares, many of his own making. In his need to create and fill the hours around a night’s fire, he took to making fanciful creatures out of tin. Carving drinking cups from wood, he combined the two, metal and wood, into a pleasing whole. But he grew lonely, hungry for conversation and food not of his own making. And, he admitted to himself, the hope that the master he searched for all these years might be at the fair.

  Tent raised and stores covered, he slipped a nosebag over the mule’s head.

  “Supper, Haddis,” he said. Tamm patted her on the flank, then set about seeing to his own meal.

  Two days later he could smell the aroma that always surrounded Ithkar Fair even before he could see the campgrounds. His mouth watered as he thought about the cookstalls and the spice merchants. Even the sour-sweet smell of penned animals, lying beneath the other odors, smelled like home. But that was an illusion, he thought as he approached the fair gate. There was no home here for Tamm the tinker. He had put all that behind him when he gave his heir-rights to his sister—for to remain heir, he couldn’t leave Mikan His dream would not allow him to be hearthbound.

  “Weapons must be turned in at the gate, master tinker,” said the fair-ward at the entrance.

  “I’ve no weapons but a staff. A craftsman I am, and no fighter.”

  The fair-ward sighed and smiled tiredly. “You’d be surprised at how many ‘humble craftsmen’ find it convenient to carry a bow, or even a sword.”

  “Well, I’ve neither. You can look if you want.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I shall. And don’t think we won’t keep an eye on you. You could make a blade as easily as you can mend a kettle.”

  “Could, maybe. But won’t.”

  “See to it.” Looking to the wizard standing beside him, the fair-ward asked, “Is he magic clean?” At the woman’s nod, he waved them through.

  Presently, after leaving the requisite “thank offering” at the temple, Tamm went in search of the spot he’d been assigned to set up his tent. He found the small strip between two more pretentious traders’ pavilions. To his left was the potter, Valdorf, and to the right of him was Drisko, dealing in leather and furs. They agreed among themselves to watch each other’s stalls, so each could sample the entertainment the fair offered.

  Grateful that his neighbors appeared to be congenial, Tamm set up his tent and took Haddis to the boarding pens. On his way back, he gathered stones to line a firepit. Soon, he had a small charcoal fire going and his wares displayed.

  A woman came, holding a dented cookpot with a hole in it. Giving thanks to the Three Lordly Ones, Tamm began working on it. Soon he handed the mended pot back to her and said, “No charge.”

  “Truly?” she asked with a suspicious glare. Her dark good looks proclaimed her eastern heritage.

  “It’s a superstition of mine,” he said, smiling. “No charge to the first customer of the day. Or the last,” he added, seeing the lift of her eyebrow and the calculating gleam in her eye.

  There was a steady stream of customers throughout the day, not just for the pot mending, but to purchase his other wares as well. And there were several more waiting to be served as the shadows began to lengthen in the street.

  “Three jobs, and that’s the end for the day,�
�� he announced loudly. “I’ve got to rest.”

  There was an immediate hubbub as women began to argue among themselves as to who was next in line. Tamm left them to work out who would receive the free mending job as he applied himself to the task of putting a loose handle back on a skillet.

  Satisfied with the results of his first day at Ithkar Fair, he banked his fire and asked Solette, the potter’s daughter, to keep an eye out for his belongings. Then he went in search of something to eat.

  A copper bit bought him a savory meat pie, and another bought him a mug of ale to go with it. He sat down on a bench beside the Blue Lily cookstail to enjoy his supper. Sipping ale, he watched the passing crowds of fairgoers. An old man seated on the other end of the bench caught his attention. He’d seen him before, sitting in front of the door to the temple with an alms bowl in his lap. Tatum recognized him by the bandage he had wrapped over his eyes. Now the old one sat comfortably, enjoying his supper. He emptied his bowl of whatever coins he had gathered during the day and now drank soup from it, alternately taking bits from a large slab of bread.

  With a prickling at the back of his neck, he saw that a scorpion had crawled up on the blind man’s ragged garments and was perched on his shoulder.

  Tamm got up, moving cautiously. He drew back his hand—“Don’t do it,” the old man said.

  “W-what?” Tam asked, so startled he nearly lost his balance and fell.

  “Thank you for your kind thoughts, but I am in no danger. The scorpion is my friend, at least for now.” As he spoke, he turned his head toward Tamm.