It would certainly simplify matters if Yara did hire a magician who could find the couch by magic, but Kilisha had doubts about the idea. At least for wizards, divinations and other information spells tended to do strange things when enchanted objects were involved-which was another reason Ithanalin had never liked them. Some of them would answer the question asked, but in the most useless way possible-for example, if a wizard asked, “Where is the red velvet couch that stood in Ithanalin’s parlor?” the answer might be, “In the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars,” or “In a house,” or “Seven feet to the north of a purple drape.” Learning to phrase questions so as to obtain useful answers was as tricky as learning the actual spells, so that wizards who did divinations often had no time to learn much of anything else.
Kilisha suspected that they would do better to question neighbors, or to offer a reward, or even to interrogate spriggans, who seemed to roam everywhere in the city and who could clearly “smell” wizardry, than they would to buy a divination.
And when they did find the couch, however they managed it, she wanted to be better prepared than she had been that afternoon m pursuit of the bench. Catching the bench in the rope and then dragging the bench and chair home had been difficult and exhausting.
That was where these potions came in, and why she was so eager to finish them. She had misled the master’s family slightly; while it was certainly true that neglected spells could go spectacularly wrong, the Adaptable Potion was flexible and relatively harmless. She could have left it unfinished for at least another day or so without harm, and simply leaving it entirely uncharged would probably have been safe.
Probably. She had never actually done it, or spoken to anyone who had. When she was first learning to make the potion she had always charged it with something even if it was just the Iridescent Amusement.
This time, though, she wanted a levitation potion,. Tracel’s Levitation would work only on the person who cast the spell-or drank the potion, in this case. Whoever drank the potion could then rise to any height she desired, and stay there, drifting on the wind, until she spoke the word that broke the spell and lowered her gently to the ground. That might be useful for getting a good look around, seeing over obstructions, and that sort of thing, but she couldn’t see how it would help capture or transport a couch. She still intended to make it anyway, since it was easy and she had three batches of potion brewing, but she didn’t really expect to use it.
Varen’s Levitation, which she had used that afternoon, took two forms. The wizard who cast the spell could walk on air as if it were solid, ascending or descending by using the air as a staircase, as she had done-that was one form, the one she had usually practiced when learning the spell. Having that in a potion would mean having it instantly available, and not needing to carry the damned lantern.
The other form was to cast the spell on an object, and a wizard who did that could then place an object of any size in midair, and it would remain there. She would need to get her hands on the couch to use it, and she would be unable to lift it higher than she could reach, or move it once it was levitated, but it would certainly be a way to immobilize the couch. Then she could fetch a wagon, roll it underneath, release the spell, tie the couch down, and cart it home.
Of course, she would need to lift the couch to use Varen’s Levitation on it, and that was where the Spell of Optimum Strength came in. That spell gave the subject immense strength for perhaps half an hour-not infinite, by any means, but the most strength a person of that size and build might ever have had without magic. Kilisha knew that she could lift about four hundred pounds when enchanted with Optimum Strength-and she knew the couch didn’t weigh anywhere near that much.
So if she found the couch, and it did not want to cooperate, she would drink the strength potion, then Varen’s Levitation, and then she would pick up the couch and hang it in midair.
It would be simple.
She just needed to find the couch first.
She hummed quietly to herself as she set up the first batch of potion and began the final preparations.
She had Tracel’s Levitation finished and was beginning Varen’s when Yara leaned through the doorway and called, “I’m going out. The children are upstairs; would you put them to bed if I’m not back in time?”
“Of course, Mistress,” Kilisha replied. Yara disappeared back into the kitchen, and the apprentice reached for the silver coin and a bundle of seagull feathers.
The levitations were the quick, easy part, of course; the Spell of Optimum Strength took hours. That was the challenge in the evening’s work. All the same, all three potions were long since finished and the children secure in their beds when Yara finally returned; Kilisha had been waiting at the kitchen table and was half-asleep herself when the back door finally opened and her mistress stepped in.
“Damn them all,” Yara said.
Kilisha blinked in confused surprise. “Damn who?” she asked.
“The wizards,” she said. “I talked to a dozen of them-Heshka the Diviner, Anansira the Sage, Virinia of the Crystal Orb, Istha, Onoli, Tirin-everyone i could think of and find at home. None of them knew anything about the missing couch, and none of them would try to find out. They wouldn’t help at all”
“They wouldn’t?” Kilisha blinked again.
“Some of them don’t do divinations, some of them wouldn’t do them for anything magical, and the good ones were all too busy on this blasted project of Kaligir’s, trying to figure out what this beggar-queen Tabaea is doing in Ethshar of the Sands. They said maybe when they’ve done everything they can for the Guild. Damn the Guild!”
Kilisha’s eyes widened, and her sleepiness vanished. “Don’t say that!” she gasped. “You’re a wizard’s wife; you know better than that!”
Yara snorted. “I’m not sure of that right now,” she said. “I told them we had a half-finished spell simmering here, and they didn’t care, they still had to do their spells for Kaligir. I hope whatever that stuff is, it blows up and turns Kaligir into a toad!”
“Don’t say that,” Kilisha repeated. “The divinations probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. We’ll find the couch ourselves tomorrow; don’t worry about it. I couldn’t do anything more tonight anyway-I’m exhausted, and we don’t have the jewelweed.”
“I’ll get you the jewelweed in the morning,” Yara replied. “You had better find that couch!” Then she stormed past Kilisha and up the stairs.
“I will,” Kilisha said to her retreating back. “I promise.”
Then she got to her feet and began climbing the stairs herself, far more slowly than Yara had.
No matter how it turned out, tomorrow was going to be a very long day, she was sure.
Chapter Twenty
Kilisha had forgotten to draw the curtains or close the shutters on her garret window, and the morning light awoke her earlier than she might have liked. She had been up far too late waiting for Yara.
But she had duties, so the idea of closing the drapes and going back to sleep was discarded immediately. Instead she sighed, sat up on her pallet, and reached for her apprentice robes.
A few minutes later, dressed and brushed and with her favorite feathered hair ornament in its accustomed place, she carried the chamber pots and wastewater out to the sewers behind the house, then headed for the pump at the other end of the court to fetch the morning’s supply of water, idly wishing as she went that she had managed to apprentice herself to a wizard who knew how to create water magically. She had heard of a spell called Eshom’s Freshwater Spring, for example....