“Then it can wait. Weren’t you listening, girl? Ederd IV has been overthrown, and Serem the Wise has been murdered!”
“But-”
“But nothing. You go on about your business, apprentice, and come back when we’ve settled matters with this usurper.”
“There’s another spell involved...”
“What spell?”
“I don’t know. It’s cooking on the master’s workbench.”
“Can it wait?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it will have to. We can’t spare the time.”
“But the furniture-”
“Blast the furniture! Go away, child!” He thrust a pointing finger toward the door, and the man who had closed it a moment before swung it open.
Kilisha stared at him.
“Come on,” Chorizel said, ignoring her. “Kaligir is waiting.” He led the others toward the street.
Kilisha stood at the foot of the stairs, staring helplessly, as the three marched out of the house.
“You know better than to stay in a wizard’s home unwanted, don’t you, apprentice?” Chorizel called back over his shoulder.
“Yes, Guildmaster,” Kilisha said. Reluctantly, she followed them out, and pulled the door closed behind her.
She stood on the stoop for a moment, watching Chorizel and his two companions striding westward down Wizard Street. Then, frustrated, she turned her own steps back toward Ithanalin’s home.
She was still on her own, it appeared. She would have to find the remaining furniture herself. She did not want to wait-this political disaster m Ethshar of the Sands might last for months, and a delay like that would ruin Ithanalin’s business, prolong her apprenticeship, and leave the poor children without their father for much too long, not to mention that that brown mixture might explode or start spewing poison or something. And the furniture might wander off where she would never find it, or get itself smashed somehow.
She couldn’t afford to wait. She had to find it somehow.
She tried to think of some way to use one of the spells she already knew, but nothing came to mind. She didn’t know any divinations; she didn’t think Ithanalin knew any to teach her, though she resolved to take another look through his book of spells.
She might be able to spot some of the furniture by levitating up to where she could see half the city at a time-but only if it was still out in the open, and not hiding under someone’s porch roof.
Or perhaps she could make the furniture come to her, or at least stay where she could find it. Just last month she had learned Javan’s Geas, and that could be used on someone who wasn’t present. If she put a geas on each piece of furniture she could, at least, prevent it from doing stupid or dangerous things-the geas could not compel anyone to do something, but only not to do something. Javan had been one of the finest research wizards in history, but his geas wasn’t an especially powerful or versatile one.
And, she remembered, it required knowing the victim’s true name.
What was a couch’s true name-Ithanalin’s Couch? Or if it held a part of Ithanalin, would bis true name work?
She didn’t know Ithanalin’s true name. Only a fool of a wizard would trust his apprentice with such knowledge. A major reason many wizards used pompous, made-up names like Ithanalin or Chorizel was so their true names would not be known.
And of course, exotic names also helped the mysterious image that wizards cultivated to attract business.
She wondered whether even Yara knew Ithanalin’s true name. It seemed unlikely. Ithanalin wouldn’t have wanted to tell her, and Yara wouldn’t have cared.
And besides, if Kilisha put a geas on the furniture, the geas would still be there when Ithanalin was restored, and he would probably not be pleased at all to learn that he could no longer leave the city, or whatever.
Javan’s Geas was out.
Eshom’s Oenological Transformation, Fendel’s Accelerated Corruption, the Spell of Perpetual Sharpness, Gilad’s Blemish Removal, Cauthen’s Remarkable Love Spell-she knew plenty of spells, but she couldn’t see how any of them would help-
She stopped dead in her tracks, just in front of Adagan’s shop.
Cauthen’s Remarkable Love Spell.
“Oh, no,” she said.
The idea was ghastly-but she couldn’t get rid of it.
Cauthen’s spell created a potion containing some trace of one party-a hair, a drop of sweat or blood, almost anything. When someone drank the potion, the person who had provided that trace ingredient would fall in love with whoever drank it.
If she were to find a few loose threads or splinters from the rug or the couch or the bench, and make the potion, and drink it, then the furniture would fall in love with her, and seek her out- but the idea of making Ithanalin in any form fall in love with her...
“Oh,” she said, smiling as a sudden pleasant realization dawned.
She didn’t need to drink the stuff. Yara could drink it. Ithanalin already loved her-though apparently the furniture did not, or it would have returned by now.
But the spell could make the furniture love Yara, and want to please her. The furniture would seek her out, and if she told it to stay in the house, it would stay in the house.
Then all that would be needed was Javan’s Restorative.
Kilisha smiled broadly and hurried for home.
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.