Tales of Ethshar

Ingredients

Irillon watched, fascinated and appalled, as Therindallo was dragged up onto the scaffold. He wasn’t struggling, but that was obviously because he had already been severely beaten; his hair was matted with blood.

She frowned at that — partly from her natural human sympathy, but also wondering whether that might cause her any difficulty. She needed both blood and hair, but they were supposed to be separate — and she was fairly sure she needed the blood to be liquid, not clotted.

Finding herself thinking so callously about human blood troubled her. There were times, ever since she began her apprenticeship, when she had serious reservations about this whole wizardry business, and this was one of those times. In fact, this was perhaps the most extreme yet. She had always known that wizards required a variety of odd ingredients for their spells, and even that some of them were not just odd but loathsome, but until now she had not really given much thought to just what that meant — not until her master, Ethtallion the Mage, had told her what she was to fetch this time.

In the past eighteen months since becoming Ethtallion’s apprentice she had gathered ash from the hearth, had helped catch spiders, had ground up those spiders once they were properly dried out, had bought roosters’ toes from the local farmers, had collected her own tears and drawn her own blood when asked, and none of that had been especially unpleasant — not that drawing blood had been fun, but it was not really dreadful.

Collecting the blood and hair of an executed criminal, and a piece of the scaffold he died on, was an entirely different matter — especially since the “criminal” in question was being beheaded for a crime Irillon herself was equally guilty of. Therindallo’s “treason” was swearing fealty to the King of the Isle, rather than the King of the Coast, and Irillon of the Isle, like all her family, also took the Islander side in Tintallion’s civil war.

She could hardly admit that here in the royal seat of Tintallion of the Coast, though — she would be arrested immediately, or perhaps simply killed on the spot. At the thought she glanced nervously at her neighbors in the small, sullen crowd gathered in the plaza below the walls of Coast Castle.

They didn’t look very enthusiastic about the proceedings — but they were making no move to protest, either; the only visible movements were stamping and huddling against the cold. Irillon pulled her own cloak tight, and suddenly found herself shivering uncontrollably. She turned her attention back to the scaffold, trying to distract herself.

The guardsmen threw Therindallo on the block and buckled a strap across his shoulders; the executioner stepped forward and raised his axe. Then he paused, waiting, for no reason Irillon could see.

An official in royal livery stepped forward, fumbling with his coat; he pulled out a paper and began to read aloud.

It was a short speech that basically said King Serulinor was the rightful ruler of Tintallion and that he was having Therindallo’s head chopped off for not agreeing. A good many words were wasted reciting Serulinor’s alleged titles and grievances, and rejecting his cousin’s claim to the throne; Irillon’s attention wandered, and she found herself glancing up at the overcast sky, wondering whether it was going to snow again.

She hoped not; she had walked almost ten leagues through the snow to get here, and the walk back would be quite bad enough without the weather gods adding any further depth to what was already on the ground.

Then the official finished reading, rolled up his message, and tucked it in his sleeve, and the executioner’s axe fell without any further ceremony, so suddenly that Irillon didn’t quite see it happen.

Blood splashed, a really amazing quantity of blood, and Therindallo’s head dropped into the waiting basket. The executioner knew his job, and had needed only a single stroke.

Gasps and a smothered squeal came from the audience. Irillon gagged at the sight of the headless body, then swallowed hard, trying to tell herself that at least it was quick, and Therindallo couldn’t have suffered much. It was over — and now she needed to get Therindallo’s blood and hair, and a piece of the scaffold.

Two of the guards were dragging the body away, though, and a third followed, carrying the basket. The executioner was climbing down one set of steps, the official down the other, and the little crowd was already dispersing.

Irillon blinked in surprise and almost called out; she had somehow assumed that the body would be left there, where she could reach it. She hesitated, trying to think what she should do, and a moment later she was standing alone in the plaza, her feet sinking in muddy slush.

The scaffold was still there, at any rate; she finally collected her wits sufficiently to walk up to it, draw her belt knife, and pry a few splinters from the edge of the platform.

She looked over at the bloodstains that spread out from the block, and hurried around to the side, fishing a vial from her belt-pouch. There she stooped and peered underneath.

Yes! Blood was still dripping through the cracks between planks. She collected several drops, then sealed the vial and tucked it away. For good measure she pried up a few more splinters, this time choosing damp, stained ones.

“Hai!” a man’s voice shouted. “Get away from there!” He spoke with a Coastal accent.

Irillon looked up, startled, and saw a guard coming toward her, one hand reaching to grab. She turned and ran, heedless of direction, out of the plaza and into the narrow ways of the surrounding town. She heard a few heavy footsteps behind her at first, but after a moment’s desperate flight through the winding streets she paused, back pressed against a cold stone wall, looking and listening, and could make out no signs of pursuit.

She was panting from fear and exertion, and she gasped and swallowed, trying to catch her breath. Then she looked down at her hands.

Her knife — her athame, her wizard’s dagger — was in one hand; the other clutched a little bundle of bloody splinters. A vial half-full of Therindallo’s blood was in her pouch.

That was two of the three ingredients she had come for; now she needed some of his hair.

But the guards had taken Therindallo’s head away with them, in that basket — how could she ever find it, to cut a lock of hair? She could scarcely walk openly into the castle looking for it; she was an Islander, and if the guards questioned her her accent would almost certainly give her away — she could try to disguise it, but she doubted her ability to convince anyone.

And if she were recognized as an Islander, she would get much too close a look at that scaffold.

It was such a shame that the king’s father had been a twin, and that the wetnurse had lost track of which boy was the older; if that hadn’t happened this stupid war would never have begun, and Irillon could have gone anywhere in Tintallion in relative safety. If only the Coastal King’s line would die out, so the rightful king could assert his authority...

But that wasn’t going to happen. Serulinor had a daughter. No son as yet, but a daughter would do to continue the feud. And Buramikin had a son, so the Islander line would also last at least another generation.

And people like Irillon would have to choose one side, and be in constant danger from the other any time they left their homes.

She had caught her breath now; she sheathed her knife, and wrapped the splinters in a handkerchief before tucking them away in her pouch.

That severed head was somewhere back in the castle. She had to go back. She couldn’t go back to Ethtallion without that hair! He had already complained bitterly about her ineptitude, cursing his decision to take her on as an apprentice; if she went home without what he had sent her for he might well cast her out completely.

And while she did already know seven spells, she couldn’t imagine making a living from those seven. The only one that had any obvious commercial value was the Dismal Itch, and an entire career of imposing and removing such a trivial curse had no appeal at all.

She adjusted her scarf, turning it over in hopes the guard who had chased her off wouldn’t recognize her, and slogged back toward the plaza.

At least Tintallion of the Coast wasn’t big enough to get really lost in, as she had on her one visit to Ethshar of the Rocks — she could catch a glimpse of the castle’s central tower from almost any intersection, and use that as a guide. She arrived safely back at the square without incident.

Four big men were tearing down the scaffold; if she had waited any longer than she had she would never have been able to get a piece of it. She let her breath out in a cloud at the sight.

Then she looked at the castle, trying to imagine how she might get in. The gates, twenty feet to the right of the vanishing scaffold, were closed, the portcullis down. The walls were cold, featureless stone, thirty feet high, topped with elaborate battlements...

And on those battlements two soldiers were setting a pike into place, with Therindallo’s head impaled upon the pike.

Irillon had heard of people putting heads on pikes as a warning to others, but she had never seen it done before; she blinked, and swallowed bile.

It was truly disgusting. Therindallo’s mouth hung hideously open, and something dark was oozing down the pikeshaft.

On the other hand, now she knew where she could get the hair she needed. She even knew how. The pike was set leaning out over the castle wall, for better display — all she needed to do was stand directly below it, then use Tracel’s Levitation to rise straight up until she could reach out and cut a lock of hair.

But she would, of course, have to wait until the guards left. She leaned back against the wooden corner of a nearby shop, rubbing her hands together to warm them, and watched.

The pike was in place and left unattended within a minute or two; the scaffold was cleared away in perhaps a quarter of an hour. The guards ambled away — except for one, who stood by the gate, looking bored.

Irillon frowned, shuffling her feet to warm them and clear away the slush; was he going to stay there?

Apparently he was. She watched, shivering, hoping he would doze off, or step away for a moment.

If he did step away, she realized, he might not be gone for long. She would need to act quickly when the opportunity arose. Tracel’s Levitation took four or five minutes to prepare — she couldn’t afford to waste a second.

She opened her pouch and rummaged through it. She had brought the ingredients for all the spells she knew — tannis root for the Dismal Itch, dust for Felshen’s First Hypnotic Spell, a whistle and tiny tray for the Spell of Prismatic Pyrotechnics, and so on. For the Levitation she needed a rooster’s toe, an empty vial, a raindrop caught in mid-air, and her athame. She found them all, then stuffed everything else back.

Someone brushed past her, bundled up against the cold, and hurried across the plaza. That reminded her that it wasn’t just the guard she needed to avoid; it was anyone in this hostile town. Fortunately, the gloomy cold and damp seemed to be keeping almost everyone inside.

With the ingredients in her hand she watched the guard; he didn’t seem to have noticed her presence at all. He was staring dully straight ahead, at the next street over from the corner where she stood.

All the same, she decided she had stood in one place long enough; it might be suspicious, and besides, the cold wasn’t as bad when she was moving. She began strolling along, looking in the shop windows, as if she were simply bored.

She was actually watching the reflections in the windows more than looking at the goods displayed, but she hoped no one would notice.

She had been wandering aimlessly back and forth, staying always in sight of the gate and its guard, for what seemed like hours, when at last the guard shifted uneasily, turned, and trotted out of sight down an alley, one hand tugging at his kilt.

Irillon dashed across the square, her hands already busy with the spell’s preparatory gestures. She mumbled the incantation quickly as she ran.

She came to a stop with her nose to the castle wall, beside the gate and below the pike, still chanting. She dipped the raindrop up with the cock’s toe, performed the necessary ritual gestures, transferred the drop to the empty vial, then closed the vial and tapped it with her athame.

At that tap she felt suddenly light; she tucked everything but her knife away and spoke the final word, and rose from the muddy ground.

A moment later she stopped herself, hanging unsupported thirty feet in the air, just a foot or two from poor Therindallo’s ruined face. He looked much worse close up, but she refused to let herself think about that as she grabbed a hank of his hair and began sawing it free.

Seconds later, with her knife sheathed and the hair safely stuffed into yet another vial, she spoke the word that would trigger her descent.

Only then did she remember to look down.

The guard was back at his post, but now he had his sword drawn and was staring up at her.

There was nothing she could do, though; she was sinking slowly downward, like a pebble in oil, and there was no way to restore the spell before she touched ground.

Desperately, she drew her knife again and tried to think what she could do.

She was a girl of fourteen, not large for her age, armed with a belt-knife; he was a burly guardsman with a sword. She couldn’t fight him fairly.

She was a wizard’s apprentice, and knew just seven spells. She couldn’t use Tracel’s Levitation again in time to be any help; the Dismal Itch would just annoy him; and Fendel’s Elementary Protection wouldn’t stop cold iron, such as a sword. The Spell of Prismatic Pyrotechnics or the Sanguinary Deception or the Spell of the Spinning Coin wouldn’t do any good here at all.

That left Felshen’s First Hypnotic as her only chance; if she could daze the guard with it she might be able to escape before he recovered. She reached for her pouch...

But not in time; the guardsman stepped forward and grabbed her ankle before she could get the flap open. She yelped, startled, and tried to wrench free, but could not escape, and as the Levitation continued to fade she tumbled backward until she was lying on her back in the snow, one leg raised, the guardsman gripping the ankle tightly with one hand, and pointing his sword at her chest with the other.

“I think you need to speak to the Captain,” the guard said, not unkindly.

Irillon, flustered but not so distraught as to forget her Islander accent, didn’t reply at all.

A few moments later she was inside the castle, being escorted into a small, wonderfully warm room; guardsmen gripped both her arms, and her knife had been carefully taken away. A fire burned cheerily on the hearth at one end of the room, while armor and weapons adorned the other walls. Much of the floorspace was taken up by a heavy wooden table, its surface strewn with rolls of paper; on the far side of that table sat another guardsman, but this one was older and more elegantly attired, with rings on his fingers and a golden band about his right arm.

He looked up. “What’s this?” he asked.

The right-hand guard explained, “She was stealing hair from the piked head over the gate. She flew up there and back.”

The seated guardsman leaned back in his chair. “Flew?”

“Yes, sir,” the guard replied.

“Just the hair? Not the whole head?”

“Just hair.”

“Then she’s not a relative trying to give it a proper pyre.”

The guard shrugged.

The seated man looked Irillon in the eye. “I’m Captain Alderamon,” he said. “Who are you?”

Irillon swallowed and said nothing.

Alderamon waited a moment, giving her time to change her mind, then sighed.

“You’re a thief,” he said. “Thieves we punish. If you flew, though, you might be a magician, and magicians we treat more respectfully. Now, thieves might be mute, I suppose, or deaf, but a wizard or a theurgist or a demonologist can’t be, because then he couldn’t recite incantations. I don’t know for certain about witches or warlocks, or all the other sorts of magician, but I never met one who couldn’t speak. Let me ask again — who are you?”

She looked at him, at his unyielding face, and realized that if she remained silent she would be treated as a common thief. While that would probably mean flogging or imprisonment rather than beheading, it still wasn’t anything she cared to experience. Islander accent or not, she had to speak.

“I’m Irillon of... Irillon the Apprentice,” she said, trying to imitate the captain’s accent.

“Apprentice what? Who’s your master?”

“Apprentice to Ethtallion the Mage. I’m a wizard.”

“I thought so. Only a wizard would have any immediate use for a dead man’s hair.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Well, Irillon, we don’t want any trouble with the Wizards’ Guild, but you were caught stealing. Can you prove you’re a wizard’s apprentice?”

“Yes,” Irillon said. “If you give me back my knife I can show you a spell. And there’s a spell on me that will tell my master if I’m harmed...”

“The Spell of the Spinning Coin, I suppose?” Alderamon interrupted.

“Yes,” Irillon admitted, startled that a non-wizard had ever heard of it. She had certainly never heard of it before her apprenticeship.

“So if your heart stops, the coin will stop spinning. I’ve had it explained to me before. We certainly don’t want that. Now, what spell can you demonstrate? Something harmless, please!”

“Ah... the Spell of Prismatic Pyrotechnics?”

Alderamon nodded, and a moment later Irillon had the spell ready. She blew on the silver whistle, and a shower of sparks in a hundred different hues sprang up from the little silver tray, exploding in tiny bursts of color.

“Very pretty,” Alderamon acknowledged. “It would seem you are indeed a wizard’s apprentice. Now, in that case, why were you stealing that hair, rather than buying it?”

Irillon blinked in surprise.

“Buying it?” she said.

“Of course.”

“Ethtallion... my master just said to fetch the ingredients...”

“And he didn’t mention that we sell them?” Alderamon sighed. “Well, we do. I told you, we don’t want any trouble with the Wizards’ Guild. That means we don’t try to withhold ingredients wizards need for their spells — but that doesn’t mean we’ll just give them away! You don’t give away your spells, do you?”

Irillon stared at him in amazed silence.

“Wizardry has been around for centuries, Irillon,” the captain said. “In all that time, naturally we’ve found arrangements that are comfortable for everyone. What sort of fools would we be if we didn’t know wizards use hair and blood and bone, and pieces of scaffold, and fireplace ash, and dragon’s scales, and a thousand other things? And what would be gained by either denying wizards those ingredients, or giving them away for free?”

Irillon still couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Now, do you have coins, or will we need to work out an exchange?”

“Uh... how much... I have some...”

And the dickering began.

In the end, Irillon paid seven bits in silver — all she had with her — and placed the Dismal Itch on two guardsmen who had been involved in a drunken brawl, promising to remove it again in three days. In exchange, she kept the blood, hair, and splinters she had already collected, and was allowed to depart freely.

Captain Alderamon escorted her to the castle gate. There he patted her on the shoulder and said quietly, “Here you go, girl, safe and sound — but take my advice and don’t come back here. I told you we didn’t want any trouble with the Wizards’ Guild, and we don’t, but next time might be different. Don’t come here again.”

Irillon, greatly relieved that her mission appeared to be a success and made bold thereby, looked up at him. “Why not?” she asked.

Alderamon grimaced. “Do you really need to ask? Your imitation of a Coastal accent is terrible.”

Then he pushed her out the gate and turned away.