Enlightenment

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Maude left for the kitchen and returned almost before she arrived there, telling them she had dinner almost prepared. She insisted on showing them to three adjoining rooms first, each as fresh and clean as if a crew of maids had departed moments earlier. Prin smelled the scent of soap and washed linen. Fresh cut flowers filled vases in each room.

The bedrooms were just off the main room with the massive fireplace, but a hallway extended so far away that the end was lost to view. Prin counted ten doors on each side before they blurred in the distance. She promised herself a trip to the end of the hall when she had time.

Inside each room was a bed, dresser, chest of drawers, and a pair of chairs with a small table between. Each room had a set of double doors leading outside into the garden. Stepping stones formed winding trails past pools with fish swimming, trees with fruit hanging, and the entire garden was walled so nothing inside it could be seen from the street or any nearby house.

Prin detected a now familiar shimmer of magic at the top of the wall that was short enough for a household ladder to reach the top. She asked Maude what the shimmer did.

“Oh, that’s just a wall of dislike, a simple spell most anyone can cast.”

“I don’t know what that is, or what it means,” Prin said.

Maude rubbed her hands together as if they were sharing a conspiracy, which they were. She said, “It’s too hard to make people stay away. I mean burglars and such. So, what the top of my wall does is to convince them that what is in here is harmful in some way. Some people see big angry dogs, others poison oak or ivy, and some see household guards with their swords drawn. Whatever they don’t want is what they see, so they go away without looking.”

Sara said, “So a man in a bad marriage might look in here and see twenty of his wives?”

“Well, that’s one I hadn’t considered,” Maude said, laughing, “But that sure would keep out a few.”

Prin said, “Are we free to roam around the garden? Is there anything to hurt us?”

“Oh, I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of. The mage might watch his step here and there, so he doesn’t trip a spell, but you two will see the magic before you reach it.”

“My father was a mage,” Prin said. “In his apartment at the king’s castle, he a workspace for his things, and his studies.”

“That explains a lot,” Maude said.

“That he has a workspace?” Prin asked.

“No, I was talking about explaining about you, dear. Sara here, is a sorceress, one I believe with superior abilities, if not yet honed. Brice is a fledgling mage, but you can never tell what they will become until they reach their mid-years, at least thirty. But you, you are a strange one. You have not learned how to wield your powers, but I would not wish to anger you.”

“I’m just a little girl.”

Maude furrowed her brow. “And a tiger-scorpion with a sting that kills a man in ten heartbeats is just a little insect—an arachnid if you want to be precise. Yes, you are just a little girl, you say. To answer your question about my workshop and teaching you, I’d like to ask one in return so I can prepare a curriculum, of sorts. What is your timeline? I mean, how long do you wish to live here?”

Prin said, “Would thirty or forty days be too long?”

“I was hoping for more,” Maude said. “Oh well, anyone else hungry?”

She escorted them to a small, informal dining room, the table for four laden with food. Two roasted chickens lay steaming on small platters, carrots filled a bowl, peas another. Three kinds of bread fresh from warming ovens sat beside bowls, butter and two different kinds of preserves. At each of the four places was a small knife and two-pronged fork.

How it was cooked, arrived on the table, and a hundred other questions leaped into Prin’s mind, but she caught the scent of the food, and how it got there became far less important. They sat down and devoured the food. For her part, Prin tried to use manners, as she’d seen other nobles do, but failed. It was the best food she’d eaten in her life, and when soft-cakes smothered in ripe strawberries, and sweet cream appeared on a side table, she believed there could be no place better than at that table.

After dinner, they adjourned to the main room, where candles now burned. Maude reached for her knitting and asked questions of each of them, and as Prin watched her hands leave the knitting needles to reach for something, the needles continued to knit without dropping a single stitch.

The woman who seemed a doddering old fool, asked penetrating questions about each of them, as she heard their stories. She often listened, then asked what had not been shared, as if she could see into the minds and what they wished to hide or leave unsaid. It would be no fun to be this woman’s child.

When Prin went to use the outhouse, she decided to clean the kitchen for Maude when she returned, however, the table was already cleared, a new tablecloth in place, and even the chairs were carefully placed under the table, each lined in perfect order with the others. When she peeked into the kitchen, it was as clean as any she’d ever seen, no dirty tub of water, no dishes, and even the floor sparkled.

It didn’t surprise her.

Maude hadn’t left them to cook, so why would she do so to clean? She had told them as much when she said dust was not allowed in the house. While some sorceress might concentrate on solving the personal problems of others, Maude took care of herself.

Back in the main room, Sara said, “That was an incredible meal. I know you want to hear our stories, but I’d like to ask a couple of questions.”

Maude said, “Don’t make them too personal, and I’ll try to answer.”

“There are spells all over the house. I think some are old. But the spells I know fade with time. Can you explain?” Sara asked.

Maude chuckled and held her arms out wide. “Your question tells me the answer to a question I mentioned before dinner. I must develop a course of study for the three of you but needed a starting point. From your question, I assume you have never studied formally, and if informally, only for a short time.”

“Not even that much for me,” Prin said.

Brice said nothing but drew the steady gaze of Maude. “You?”

“Until a yesterday, I just knew I was different, and that I upset people.”

“Ah, that explains even more,” Maude said. “Interesting.”

Prin hadn’t expected that reaction. Brice was a mage, an entirely different set of rules applied to him. She said, “You can teach Brice, too?”

Maude said, “I believe that it’s time the three of you learned what is the most basic of concepts, and they apply to all magic.” She lifted her teacup, sipped and said, “It’s cooled.”

Then she waited.

Sara realized they should respond and with a smile, she said, “What did you expect? That it would remain hot?”

Maude turned to her. “The spells for attracting love you sold, how long did they last?”

“The good ones, a few days.”

“Why not a lifetime?”

Sara was seated on the end of a sofa. Perched on the edge would be more accurate. The woman had Sara’s total concentration, and Prin settled back to watch. She didn’t know what the two of them were trying to communicate but understood it to be important.

Sara finally answered, “Spells wear out.”

“All of them?”

“All that I know,” Sara said.

“As sorceresses and mages, we can neither create nor destroy the basics of the world around us. We alter or concentrate, no more. No less.” Maude held her teacup up higher. “My tea was hot, now it is warm. Soon it will be the same temperature as this room. If I pour it out and fetch cool water from a spring in my cup, it will be almost cold, but over time it will also return to its natural temperature of this room.”

“What about explosions?” Prin asked. “I saw my father make them.”

Maude turned her dark eyes to Prin. “This is really going to be exciting and fun. None of you accept what I tell you without questions. Now, to your question. Your father may have blown things up with his powers, but the powers that made the explosions were a concentration of power drawn from elsewhere. In some form, it returned to its origination, much as my tea has cooled.”

Prin said, “But it destroyed.”

“The use of his magic destroyed other things, but the power did not destroy itself. Let me try to explain better. If a mage wants an explosion, he draws power from another source and concentrates it. If he wants a lightning bolt, he draws energy from iron, or flint, or copper. Just a little from the source, or sources, then combines it into one flash of lightning that lasts an instant. Like my tea, the origin of the power will work its way back to equilibrium.” Maude sipped her warm tea, and with a slight smile, she refilled her cup.

Prin said, “I think I understand. If I put my finger in your hot tea, I’ll burn it. The tea remains tea, but my finger hurts.”

Maude said, “There, I knew such a complex subject would be understood by the three of you with one explanation.”

Prin and Maude looked at Sara and Brice, then laughed at the confused expressions.

Brice said, “Can I ask questions, too? I know I was supposed to be quiet, but I don’t understand. What puzzles me most is the difference in a mage and a sorceress. It seems they are the same.”

Maude drew in a breath to speak but was too slow. Prin leaped to her feet and almost shouted in excitement, “I know. Can I tell him?”

Maude motioned with a gentle wave of a hand, giving Prin the floor.

“Sir James explained it to me. He said, if you have a mule that refuses to pull your wagon, a mage will transform the straw clinging to the mule’s butt by lighting it on fire. The mule will feel the burn back there and snap awake, hopefully walking faster to get away from the source of the pain. But a sorceress would cast a spell telling the mule a good meal is waiting just over the crest of the next hill. The mule would walk faster to get the meal. Same end result, just different ways to reach it.”

“And that,” Maude said with a wide grin, “is the perfect explanation.”

Brice said, “Hey, I think I understand. Sort of.”

Maude still watched Prin from the corner of her eye, the teacup almost, but not quite, touching her lips. She said, “Would you like to explain why a person cannot be both?”

Prin said, “To be both a mage and sorceress? The answer is, no, it cannot happen. They are like fire and water. You can’t mix the two magics.”

“That is what I’ve always learned from those who taught me, so I guess it must be true.”

She still held Prin fixed with her green eyes. Prin pulled herself away and said, “I’m going to go look at the gardens.”

Once out the door, she tried to relax. Maude knew too much. Sara knew she was also a mage, but somehow Maude seemed to know everything. At least, she knew Prin was not an ordinary sorceress if there was such a thing.

She strode down the winding stone paths as if she had a destination, but eventually slowed at the beauty of the garden. Each plant was perfect. The grass was cut at an even height, and there was not a single weed in sight. She estimated the garden more than a hundred steps in any direction.

Near the far end of the garden, she found fruits she had never seen and wondered if the trees had been grown with particular climates because it felt hotter and wetter than nearer the house. Prin glanced at the house and stumbled to a stop.

From this angle, Maude’s house was no larger than the building where they had rented the apartment on the upper floor! She recalled the hallway that continued out of sight from the door to her room where she’d counted at least ten more doors on each side. Where was that hallway when looking at the outside of the house?

Magic. It had to be. The ordinary-looking house, as seen from the street, didn’t match what was inside. The main room alone would fill the house she looked at. It’s bigger inside than outside.

Prin placed that idea aside, but with the intention of asking about it when she went back inside. She made a small turn, searching for the magic Maude had indicated she would find in the garden. There were several places where the shimmer of spells drew her attention, but she didn’t know what any did so she stayed away.

Her mind drifted to the city of Indore, and to the dog she’d purchased to guard their home. It had a small yard, but the dog would love to have a yard like this one to run around in. She missed the dog, even though she’d never had one, and she looked forward to strolling the bazaar with it on a leash. She would feel safer with the dog to protect her.

But her mind wasn’t fully concentrating on the dog or the small yard. It was adding ideas, sifting through what she knew and what she didn’t. Calculating. Drawing information from there and inserting it here.

She snapped her fingers, understanding what her mind was trying to tell her. She had looked at Maude’s home from outside, including the wall and garden it contained. But it was a small house located in the vast city of Gallium, with a walled yard, no larger than others in the area, which meant the garden was no bigger than her yard at the house in Indore.

The yard was like the endless corridor inside. The entire garden was under a spell to make it seem larger when standing in it. When she left Maude’s home next time, she would stand in the street and take a full measure.

Instead of frightening her, Prin felt reassured. Maude lived in the center of a city much larger than Indore without detection and had done so her whole life. If she and Sara could learn only a portion of what she knew—they could use it to go home.

Shoulders back, chin up, she strode to the entry to the main room and pulled the door open. The furniture had shifted to a more intimate setting, with a sofa facing Maude’s chair so close their knees almost touched.

Brice was talking. Prin sat on the end of the couch and listened. The story was just an expanded version of his slip-ups as a mage. During a drought, rain once fell only on his father’s farm. At another time, two boys attacking him had been blown back several steps by a wind that didn’t push him, giving him the advantage. There were other small incidents. Word had spread in the village, and he had been sent away before harm came to him, and he had joined the crew of the ship, where other incidents occurred. He was put ashore in Gallium with the excuse of needing to reduce costs.

Maude said, “You had no idea you are a mage?”

“I knew people didn’t like me, and strange things happened, but no. I had never heard the word mage until another sailor accused me.”

“Not unusual,” she said. “In most rural communities, nobody has ever seen a real mage. What they hear are stories of drawing lightning down to slay their enemies in great storms and other nonsense like that.”

Sara said, “But people do know about sorceresses.”

“They do, and they don’t,” Maude said. “The real sorceress can create attractions, but any gypsy or faker can sell what looks to be the same, and often convince the buyer of the quality of their goods.”

“But, they are not real,” Sara protested.

Maude gave her a faint smile and said, “Perhaps, but they often work and reinforce the belief. Suppose a young woman purchases an imitation, but worthless ‘spell’ from a gypsy or charlatan, and she uses it on the young man she’s interested in. She eagerly confronts him while expecting him to react by being attracted to her. When the young man senses she is interested in him, he naturally becomes interested in her. They marry, and the girl tells everyone she knows of the wonderful spell that brought them together.”

“So, all the other young women flock to that seller and buy whatever it is she’s selling?” Sara asked. “It does not matter if it’s real or fake.”

Maude nodded and continued, “The failures are blamed on the girl not using the potent correctly, or a conflicting spell from another woman, or that the potent will not work on an ‘evil’ man, one who will someday beat his wife or some other lie. The gypsy protects those she sells her charms to, with that added protection at no additional charge.”

“But, she takes full credit for any successes—and for the failures.” Sara crossed her arms over her chest and her eyes glazed as she considered the information.

Prin decided to confront Maude directly on the size of the house and garden, as well as a few other items. She passed a look to Brice and Sara that she hoped would keep them quiet before saying, “Your home is much larger inside than out, and your garden is also much greater.”

“Finally noticed that, did you? Good for you, girl. It’s a complicated spell I learned when young that I call a stretch spell for lack of a better word.”

Prin considered the explanation and found it almost easy to understand. “Can I duplicate that spell?”

“With training, of course, you can. But, do not be deceived, your home and garden cannot really stretch. That would violate all the natural laws. We just believe it is larger, which serves the same purpose.”

Prin changed tact. “Earlier, you said all spells wear out. Hot tea becomes cold.”

“All true,” Maude agreed.

“What about the stretch spell?”

Maude giggled like a child, her hand covering her mouth. “I knew you were the one that would test and question all I say. You’re the girl who says, prove it.”

“But, what about the stretch spell?” Prin asked again, refusing to be pushed aside from her question.

“The spell is simple enough once learned and memorized, so casting it is almost as automatic as drawing a breath. As I enter a room, I stretch it, and the same with my garden. It shrinks back to normal after I leave, but I don’t care. While I am there, it is larger—unless I’m cleaning.” Maude cackled and looked right at Prin. “It is so easy to clean a tiny room.”

Prin found herself laughing because the same subject had been discussed earlier, but not explained. “So, you can cast the spell in reverse and make a room smaller.”

“Oddly enough, I didn’t know that for years and stumbled on it in the journals of a sorceress who passed on well before I was born.”

Sara turned to Prin and silently asked for permission to speak. When she had it, Sara said, “We also have the journals of a sorceress from Donella who recently died, along with much of her equipment. Her husband insisted we accept it.”

Maude leaped to her feet. “Really? Oh, dear. I must see it. There is so much to learn, and the journals of our sisters often contain information lost through the years.”

Sara said, “So, it’s valuable?”

“Much more than gold. Usually, a sorceress provides for who it will pass on to, but to find a new cache from another land is something I never expected to see. Where is it?”

“On our ship, safely in the cargo hold,” Sara told her.

“Then, we must make arrangements to retrieve it before the ship sails.”

Sara said, “We can do that. Send Brice to the ship with a note, I guess. But there is so much that we can’t possibly study even a small portion in one month.”

Maude was pacing, wringing her hands in anticipation when she pulled to a stop. “One month? Did I not make it clear that I have accepted the task of teaching the three of you?”

Prin said, “Yes, you said that?”

“Did I fail to make it clear that the minimum of what you require will take years? At least three and probably more?” Maude’s face held reserve and sorrow. “Oh dear, I thought you understood.”