Varen’s Levitation called for a silver coin, a seagull’s feather, a lantern, and again, her athame and a few minutes of chanting and gestures. It would let her walk up an invisible staircase in the air, then walk on air, and then descend again-but only once each. She could not ascend, then go level, then ascend again.
Neither set of ingredients was at all onerous; the raindrop was the only remotely difficult item, and ever since Ithanalin had first taken her on as an apprentice one of her duties had been to collect a few drops from every storm. There was a rack of tightly stopped vials in a drawer in the workshop, and while some of the captured water had undoubtedly managed to evaporate by now, she was sure there were at least half a dozen still available for her use. She wouldn’t be using up anything especially precious with either spell.
Nor was either one particularly difficult. Varen’s was definitely a higher-order spell than Tracel’s, requiring a more agile set of fingers and some more esoteric vocabulary, but both were well within her own abilities. Tracel’s ascent was faster and less tiring, since the user simply rose like a bubble instead of walking up the air, but the horizontal element of Varen’s was very useful...
And it was that horizontal component that decided her. She needed to place the axe and rope. It would have to be Varen’s.
Coin, feather, lantern, athame... She ambled back to the workshop, the coil of rope on one arm and the axe clutched in both hands, as she reviewed the spell.
“What are you doing with that?” Kelder demanded from the parlor door. “I thought you needed them intact! If you just wanted them smashed, we could have done that at the shipyard.”
Startled out of her reverie, Kilisha looked down at the axe, then up at Kelder. She could hear the bench thumping, and see the rope in Kelder’s hand jerking with its movements.
“No, no,” she said. “It’s not for that. We do need them intact. I would never hurt them!”
The thumping stopped.
“Then why do you have that axe?” Kelder demanded.
“Not to smash anything,” Kilisha said. “You’ll see.”
“Do you-”
“Could you hold this for a moment?” Kilisha interrupted, holding out the axe. “I need to work a spell.”
Kelder blinked at her. “I thought you... you said earlier you didn’t have any magic.”
Kilisha stared at him in surprise. “I said I didn’t have any with me!” she said. “This house is full of magic.”
“Oh,” Kelder said. “Of course. I’m sorry. I mean, I know you’re a wizard’s apprentice, but you don’t look like a wizard.”
“Why do people keep saying that?” Kilisha said. “What does a wizard look like?”
“Like that,” Kelder said, pointing at the covered shape of Ith-analin in the corner.
“Like a middle-aged man? You know there are female wizards, and wizards of all ages.”
“Yes, but you look so... so...”
“So ordinary?”
“So sweet,” Kelder said. “Wizards are supposed to have a little meanness to them.”
Kilisha was struck momentarily silent by this astonishing statement, then managed, “I think you’re thinking of demonologists or warlocks, not wizards.”
“Wizards, too,” Kelder said. “Not as much as the others, true, but a little. Witches can be sweet, sometimes.”
“So can wizards,” Kilisha said. “Not that I am, myself. Ith-analin’s sweet, but I have too much of a temper.”
Kelder started to reply, then thought better of it. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Relieved to have the conversation back on its intended course, Kilisha thrust the axe at him. “Hold this while I work a spell,” she said.
“Right,” he said, taking the axe.
Once free of her burden, Kilisha turned to the workbench and tried to get her thoughts back to the business of magic. Com, feather, lantern...
It was only after she had the ingredients on the bench and had begun the ritual, placing the coin inside the lantern and magically impaling it with the seagull feather, that she remembered a drawback to Varen’s Levitation, as compared to Tracel’s. She would need to carry the lantern with her, which would be inconvenient; it would make it that much harder to position the axe and rope. Tracel’s required no such burden.
For that matter, if she had used a potion for Varen’s, then it wouldn’t need the lantern, cither-the potion in her belly would have been an adequate substitute. Unfortunately, the potion wouldn’t be ready until late that night, and she did not want to put this off any longer.
She continued, using her athame to weave magic into the air, and a moment later she turned from the workbench, the lantern in her hand and her athame back in its sheath on her belt.
Kelder had watched this all from the doorway, of course; she knew no one could resist the temptation to watch a wizard at work. Most spells were actually quite boring for a nonparticipant to observe, but wizardry had such an air of secrets and mystery built up around it-built up deliberately by the Guild-that people would always watch for a few minutes.
“Give me the axe and open the front door,” she said, holding out her free hand.
Kelder handed her the axe, puzzled. He tried to hand her the coil of rope, too, but she had no hands left to take it, and she let it drop to the floor.
That didn’t matter; it was tied to the axe at one end.
“Open the door,” she repeated, standing where she was.
She had to stand where she was; from now on each step she took would carry her higher into the air.
“The rope...”
“Don’t worry about the rope, so long as it’s tied to the axe. Just open the door.” She took her first step, keeping it as long and low as possible.
Her foot came to rest perhaps two inches off the floor.
Kelder didn’t notice; he had turned to obey.
“Hold the furniture,” she said, as she began walking forward, still making her steps as long as possible.
She crossed the parlor in half a dozen stretching steps, taking her almost three feet upward; she had to squat down on empty air to get through the door.
Once past that obstacle, though, everything was easy. The air above the street was open and unlimited. She smiled, and began marching upward.
Chapter Eighteen
Kilisha had not been able to get the coil of rope arranged properly while she held the axe and lantern, so now, as she walked up into the air, it trailed behind her as she rose. The line gradually unwound from Kelder’s hand. The soldier stood in the doorway of Ithanalin’s shop, watching her climb.
A few people on the street turned to stare or point at her, but no one said anything to her or made any move to interfere. A levitating magician was only a mildly unusual sight here on Wizard Street, after all.
She paid little attention to the observers, except to wish that she had thought to wear something under her skirt. After all, they weren’t really interested in looking at her-she was completely ordinary-looking, and knew it. They were just looking at her magic, at the ability to rise up into the air. That they might catch a glimpse under her skirt was merely a small bonus for the young men among them.
The first time she had tried this spell and gone walking about over people’s heads that aspect of the situation had occurred to her very suddenly, and she had been as utterly mortified as only a fourteen-year-old girl can be and had almost dropped the lantern in her desperation to rearrange her clothing; only Ithanalin, levitating beside her, had prevented a fall by grabbing her hand before she could release the lantern’s handle.