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.
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.