Ithanalin’s Restoration

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.

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.

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 had 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.