He stared down at her, marveling that this handsome, fresh woman could be more than four times his own age, then turned and found his way to the divan where he slept.
The next morning Iridith was far less pleasant; her curative spells prevented an actual hangover, but she obviously regretted her juvenile behavior. “We haven’t got them yet,” she pointed out over breakfast. “I still have to go to Sardiron and fetch them. Something could go wrong.”
Valder shrugged. “Certainly it might,” he agreed.
She looked at him rather sourly, as if annoyed that he was agreeing so calmly, then realized how absurd that was and broke into a crooked grin.
“You know, Valder the Innkeeper, I like you; you don’t let things upset you.”
He shrugged again. “I learned long ago to accept things the way they are; usually, they’re pretty good. I’ve had a good life, overall, better than I expected — I never thought I’d live to see the end of the Great War, and here it’s been over for two-thirds of my life. If things go wrong now, I still don’t have any cause for complaint.”
“A healthy attitude — and a very, very unusual one.” She pushed her chair back. “I had best be going.”
The journey to Sardiron took three days in all, even flying; Valder found himself wandering aimlessly about the house on the shore, unable to interest himself in reading anything, while Iridith was gone. Meals seemed particularly lonesome.
He tried to tell himself that he was simply homesick and wanted to return to the Thief’s Skull, but he didn’t entirely believe it.
On the third day, Iridith returned safely, with the heart in a sealed jar, a flask of tears — Valder was surprised to see they were a faint yellowish green, rather than clear as he had always supposed tears to be, regardless of their origin — and a large, loudly chirping box of crickets. “I’m not sure how much ichor I need,” she explained.
With all but one of the ingredients, the two of them settled down to wait for an opportunity to arise to obtain the hand of a murdered woman. “People are killed in Ethshar every day,” Iridith said. “Sooner or later, I’ll find one that will do. I don’t know why I haven’t already.”
“I don’t either,” Valder replied. “Surely, a woman’s been murdered somewhere in the world in the past few days!”
“Oh, certainly,” Iridith answered. “But I need one whose family is willing to sell her hand; I mustn’t steal it. That sort of thing gives wizardry a bad name. The Guild wouldn’t like it. That baby’s heart was sold by the woman’s husband — I suppose he was the child’s father.”
“Oh,” Valder said, startled; he had not realized she was being so scrupulous.
For the next several days, she spent each morning in her workshop, checking her divinations, and then spent the afternoon with Valder, sitting about the house and talking, or walking on the beach, or levitating to an altitude of a hundred feet or so and drifting with the wind. On one particularly warm day, as they were strolling along the shore, Iridith suddenly stopped and announced, “I’m going swimming.”
“Go ahead,” Valder said. “I never learned how, really, and I’m too old to learn now.”
Iridith smiled as she pulled her tunic up; her face vanished behind the cloth as she tugged the garment up over her head, but her muffled voice was still audible. “You won’t always be,” she said.
“Then maybe I’ll learn, someday.”
“You’ll have plenty of time, Valder, I promise you that.” She had her tunic off and reached down to remove her skirt.
Valder watched admiringly. “Lovely,” he said. “If I were twenty years younger I’d do something about it.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You will be — but whether I let you do anything about it is another matter entirely.” With that, she tossed him her clothing and ran splashing into the surf.
On an evening a few days later, as they were walking up to the house with feet wet from splashing in the tidal pools, Iridith asked, “What are you planning to do when I’ve completed the spell?”
“I’ll go home, of course,” Valder replied.
“To Kardoret?”
Startled, he almost shouted, “No!” Calming, he added, “I’m not even sure it’s still there; it wasn’t much of a place to begin with. No, I meant my inn, the Thief’s Skull — or the Inn at the Bridge, as it was originally called.”
“Sounds dull.”
“Oh, no! It isn’t, really. We get travelers from all over, from Sardiron and the Small Kingdoms and all of the Hegemony, and hear their stories. Every sort of person imaginable stops at an inn sooner or later, and after a day on the road most are eager to talk, so it’s never dull. I hear news that never reaches the city and get many of the great adventures described firsthand. It’s a fine life. This house you have here, it’s a splendid house, but it’s rather lonely, isn’t it? Your nearest neighbors are fishermen a league down the coast in either direction, or farmers half a league inland.”
“I got tired of people decades ago,” she answered. “After the war, I didn’t think I ever wanted to see ordinary people again. I’ve taken on apprentices, of course; I wasn’t really lonely here.”
“I see,” Valder said as they reached the steps to the veranda.
They crossed the plank flooring of the porch in silence, but, as Valder opened the door to the parlor, Iridith said, “You know, nobody will recognize you when you go back. They know you as an old man, not a young one.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Valder admitted.
“You had best claim to be a relative of some sort — you’ll have a strong family resemblance, after all.”
“Will anyone believe that?”
“Certainly! Why shouldn’t they?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Of course, I don’t think I really have any relatives still alive; I haven’t heard from any in thirty or forty years and I’ve told people that.”
“All the better; none will turn up to dispute your story. Surely you could be an illegitimate son, or long-lost nephew, or something!”
“I suppose I could; I’ll want to warn Tandellin, though. He had probably thought that he would inherit the place; he may not be overjoyed to have a new heir turn up.”
“He’ll have to live with it. Nothing’s perfect; giving you eternal youth can’t solve all your problems for you.”
Valder smiled. “It’s a good start, though.”
CHAPTER 33
The eighth day of the month of Longdays, a sixnight after Valder made a visit to the inn to reassure his friends that all was well, was rainy and gray, but the wizard and innkeeper paid no attention to such trivia; Agravan had sent a message that he had at last acquired the final ingredient. A young streetwalker had run afoul of a gang of drunken soldiers and died in consequence; her body had been sufficiently abused that her brother saw no reason to object to further mutilation, if the price was right. The circumstances were depressingly sordid, but the precious hand was finally in their possession.
Valder was pleased to hear that the soldiers responsible were to be hanged; the Lord Executioner would have a busy day, for once.
The hand was safely delivered that evening, and Iridith then locked herself in her workshop, telling Valder to eat well and rest; the spell would require twenty-four hours without food or sleep and would make great demands upon both mind and body.
At midday on the ninth, while rain splashed from the eaves, Iridith called for Valder to join her in the workshop, and the spell began.
Most of it was meaningless to him; following the wizard’s directions he sat, stood, knelt, swallowed things, handled things, closed his eyes, opened his eyes, spoke meaningless phrases, and in general performed ritual after ritual without any idea of the underlying pattern. Around sunset he began to feel strange, and the remainder of the enchantment passed in a dreamlike, unreal state, so that he could never recall much about it afterward. All he knew, from about midnight on, was that he was growing ever more tired.