Ithanalin’s Restoration

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 Ithan-alin’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 the 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.

She couldn’t be sure that was the case in this instance, since these had been animated by a botched spell rather than a standard one, but it seemed likely. She turned the page to the next spell.

Fendel’s Infatuous Love Spell wouldn’t be any better than Cauthen’s Remarkable-and in fact, it wouldn’t be possible, since it had to be performed while the target was asleep.

Lugwiler’s Dismal Itch, the Prismatic Pyrotechnics, Tracel’s Adaptable Potion, the Yellow Cloud, and on and on and on.

Really, she thought as she passed the fiftieth spell, it was amazing just how useless most of her magic was in this situation. Cauthen’s Remarkable Love Spell was looking better all the time.

She turned a page and found Kandif’s Spell of Warning; she frowned thoughtfully at that. That was quite possibly how Chor-izel had known she was in his front room. It ensorcelled a specific place-usually a room of a house-so that the wizard casting the spell would know instantly if anyone entered it over the next three-days. If she put that on a place where the missing furniture might go...

No, she would be told every time anyone entered the chosen place, and if it was a public place that might be every five minutes. She wasn’t even sure animated furniture counted as “anyone” as far as the spell was concerned; an ambulatory table might not register.

The Spell of Impeded Egress would be useful for holding the furniture once it was captured-anything that had been enchanted with it would be unable to find an exit from wherever she put it. It was really just a simple, highly specific confusion spell, and Ithanalin would have no trouble performing the countercharm once he was restored. She glanced at the door and debated whether she should bother to cast it on the coatrack, or the spoon and bowl- but they were already confined. She decided not to take the time.

The Spell of Optimum Strength might be useful if she had to pick up the couch and carry it back home, as she had the coatrack. The catch there was that the spell took three hours to prepare and only lasted perhaps half an hour, but if she made it up in a batch of Tracel’s Adaptable Potion, she would have the spell ready to use instantly, seven times over.

Tracel... it might be useful to have Tracel’s Levitation ready, too. And Varen’s Levitation, as well.

She wished she knew a really good levitation spell, so she could fly properly. Tracel’s would let her rise to any altitude and descend safely, but once airborne she had no way to move forward except to let the wind blow her, or to catch onto nearby buildings; its main virtue was that it was a really easy spell to learn, and she had known it for years. Varen’s was a little better, as it let her walk on air, or pick up other objects and leave them floating in midair, but the ascent and descent were slower and required more space, and while it was nearly as quick, the spell was much trickier to perform.

Using a levitation spell to get a few hundred feet in the air for a good view of the streets, to see if she could spot any of the furniture, really might be a good idea. She would have to try that in the morning; the light wasn’t good enough now. The furniture had probably all found shelter by now, but if any was still wandering about in the open, in the city’s streets or courtyards, she might be able to spot it.

She wished she had thought of all this much sooner. She really did need to learn to think these things through more quickly. If she had popped up to three or four times rooftop height as soon as she knew what had happened, instead of dashing off almost at random, she might have recaptured more than just the bowl, spoon, and coatrack.

Of course, she couldn’t have done it instantly. The problem with all of these spells-Tracel’s Levitation, Varen’s Levitation, and the Spell of Optimum Strength-was that they required preparation time and specialized ingredients. Putting them in Tracel’s Adaptable Potion would make them all easily portable and instantly available, but the potion itself needed a full day to cool after preparation.

She didn’t remember just how long Varen’s Levitation took; not long, but longer than drinking a potion. Tracel’s Levitation only took about eight or ten minutes, but still, it wasn’t exactly convenient to carry a rooster’s toe, a raindrop caught in midair, and the rest of the ingredients around in her pouch.

And the Spell of Optimum Strength took three hours to prepare.

Out of all her fifty-three spells, though, those were the only ones she could see any possible use for in pursuing and capturing escaped furniture. Light spells and pyrotechnics and protective runes just weren’t going to help.

She turned another page in Ithanalin’s book, past the last spell she knew, and found herself looking at the Spell of the Obedient Object.

This was the one Ithanalin had promised to teach her. She read the description.

It would enchant an object so that it would obey a single command when a specified condition was met-for example, a bell might be enchanted to ring whenever the wind blew from the east.

Perhaps, she thought, she could enchant the furniture to come back home when she spoke Ithanalin’s name...

But then she saw that the wizard casting the spell had to touch the object with his or her athame to complete the enchantment. If she had the furniture where she could touch it, she wouldn’t need to enchant it!

This was all horribly frustrating. She read on.

Fendel’s Familiar, the Servile Animation, Ellran’s Immortal Animation-she couldn’t sec how those would help, even if she could perform them, and glancing through the instructions she doubted she could. Ellran’s took two days of exacting ritual, and about two dozen ingredients ranging from things as prosaic as salt to items as exotic as the mummified left wing of a carnivorous bat.

(Actually, she was fairly certain Ithanalin had the mummified left wing of a bat in the drawer just to the right of where she sat, as she had used it in learning the Spell of Stupefaction, but she didn’t know whether it was from a carnivorous bat.)

The Creeping Darkness-she shuddered at the description of that one. Thrindle’s Instantaneous Putrefaction sounded downright disgusting. Fendel’s Soothing Euphony might help if she had to calm panicky furniture, but she looked at the list of ingredients and despaired of performing it successfully without considerable practice.

It didn’t seem, she concluded, as if Ithanalin himself knew any useful spells in this situation. Cauthen’s looked better all the time.

“Have you found anything?”

Kilisha jumped, and turned to find Yara standing in the doorway.

“I’m not sure,” Kilisha said. “I did have an idea, but I’m not sure it will work.” She hesitated, then added, “I’d need your help.”

“What is it?” Yara asked.

“I could cast a love spell on some of the missing furniture, so that it would fall madly in love with you at the slightest glimpse, or the sound of your voice. I was thinking that if I did that, and you were to walk along Wizard Street calling out for it, it would follow you home.”

“What if it’s not on Wizard Street?”

“Then you’d have to keep looking,” Kilisha said. “But it’s the best I can do with the magic I have.”

“Couldn’t we hire someone else? Pay someone for a divination?”

“Well, I suppose,” Kilisha admitted. “But that would be expensive, and it would be rather embarrassing for the master, don’t you think? I think we should try to fix things ourselves first. We can always hire someone later.”

Yara looked unhappy and uncertain.

“It’s pretty late to be hiring anyone tonight, in any ease,” Kilisha said quickly. “Why don’t we try it my way? And if it doesn’t work, in the morning you can hire someone.”

“All right,” Yara said, frowning. “But right now your supper’s ready.”

Kilisha blinked at her, then realized that yes, she was hungry. She had been so distracted that she might as well have had an enchanted bloodstone in her pocket, but now that Yara mentioned it...

“After we eat, then,” Kilisha said, hopping off the stool.