Tales of Ethshar

“Learn to listen, then,” he said.

Darranacy frowned slightly. “I don’t understand how you can hear so much in a place like this,” she said, waving her hand to take in all of Wall Street and the Wall Street Field, the run-down houses, the city wall, and the dozens of ragged figures huddled around campfires or under blankets in between. “It’s not as if we were out in the forest, where it’s quiet.”

“You haven’t learned to listen,” Korun said mildly.

“I do listen!” she protested.

“Do you? Then what was it I said that startled you so, just now?”

“You said I should learn to listen, of course!”

“No,” Korun corrected her, “That was the second thing I said, after I had startled you and you had told me not to sneak up on you.”

Darranacy opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again.

He was right, of course. It would hardly have made sense otherwise.

But then what had he said?

“Oh, I don’t know!” she snapped. “I was too startled to listen to the words!”

“I said,” Korun told her, “that someday you may wish that your magic spell was broken.”

“Oh, that was it.” She frowned. “But what a silly thing to say, Korun. Why would I ever wish that?” Before he could answer, she continued, “And if I did, the spell is very easy to break — the hard part is keeping it. If I let the enchanted bloodstone out of my possession, the spell will fade away, or if any food or water passes my lips, poof! The spell’s gone. I could break it right now with a single bite of Mama Kilina’s glop — if I wanted to, which I most certainly don’t.” She shuddered at the very idea. She missed the taste of food, sometimes, but that stuff didn’t really qualify.

“I have heard,” Korun said, “that it is unwise to maintain the spell for too long. Magic always has a cost, Darra. An old wizard once told me that the bloodstone spell can wear you down and damage your health.”

“Damage my health, ha!” Darranacy replied. “If I wanted to damage my health, all I would have to do is eat some of the stuff you people live on. The Spell of Sustenance can’t be any worse for me than that cabbage. I haven’t eaten a bite nor drunk a drop in four months now, and I’m just as fit as ever.”

Korun shrugged. “I say what I heard, that’s all.”

“You’re just jealous because you have to eat,” the girl said. “You spend your time scrounging for hand-outs, and any money you get goes for food and drink, and you’ll probably be here on Wall Street for the rest of your life, but I don’t need anything. I’m free!”

Mama Kilina looked up. “’Tain’t natural, living like that.”

“Of course it isn’t natural,” Darranacy answered promptly. “It’s magic!”

Mama Kilina just shook her head and went back to her cookery.

“You’re right, of course,” Korun said. “It is magic, and it gives you an advantage over the rest of us, since you don’t need to worry about your next meal. But have you done much with that advantage? It doesn’t appear to me that you have. You’re still here in the Field, and it’s been, as you say, four months since your parents died.”

“There’s no hurry,” Darranacy said defensively. “I’m still young.”

“Ah, but wouldn’t it be wise to use your advantage and get yourself out of here while you are still young?”

“I will get out of here!” Darranacy shouted. “And I’ll stay out!”

“When?”

“When I’m old enough for an apprenticeship! When I’m good and ready!”

Korun shook his head. “I don’t think,” he said, “that this is quite what old Naral had in mind when he put the spell on you.”

“Who cares what old Naral thinks?”

“You ought to, girl,” Mama Kilina snapped. “Without him, you’d be no better off than any of us. If your mother hadn’t been his apprentice once, and if he hadn’t felt guilty when one of the spells he had taught her went wrong, you’d be starving now.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Darranacy retorted, “because if Mother had never been his apprentice, she wouldn’t have had any spells to go wrong, and she’d still be alive!”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Kilina insisted, “because it wasn’t her spell that killed her, as you well know, it was the demon your father summoned. Bad luck, mixing two schools of magic in a marriage like that, that’s what I say.”

“But if she hadn’t been a wizard, she would have run, instead of trying to stop the demon from taking Daddy — if she’d ever have married a demonologist in the first place.”

Kilina shook her head. “Wizard or no, and whatever else, your mother probably wouldn’t have left your father if all the demons of Hell were after him.”

Darranacy opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She couldn’t think of any way to argue with that. Should she insist that her mother would have fled, she’d be denying her parents’ love for each other.

Why did they have to die, anyway? Why did magic have to be so dangerous?

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said at last. “They’re both dead, and Naral did give me the bloodstone.”

“Yes,” Korun said, “He gave you the stone and the spell, and he told you that that was all he could do, to let you get by until you could find a place for yourself.”

“Well, then?” Darranacy snapped.

“Darra,” Korun said quietly, “I think he had four days in mind, maybe as much as four sixnights, but not four months — or four years, the way you’ve been going.”

“Three years. I’ll be twelve in less than three years, and then I’ll find an apprenticeship.”

“You plan to stay that long? To keep the spell that long?”

“Why not?” Darranacy stared up at him.

“Do you think you’ll be in any shape to serve an apprenticeship after three years here?”

“Why not?” Darranacy asked again.

Korun didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to.

Naral hadn’t mentioned anything about the bloodstone’s spell being unhealthy; Darranacy was sure that Korun was just jealous when he said that.

But even so, what would she have to wear after three years in the Field? She’d have outgrown all her clothes, and would just have rags. Who would she know who could give her a reference? What sort of diseases might she have caught? The bloodstone didn’t keep away disease. Or fleas, or lice, or ringworm, or any number of other things that might deter a prospective master.

Magic always seemed to have these little tricks and loopholes built into it — but then, so did everything else in life. Nothing was ever as simple as she wanted it to be.

“All right, then, I’ll find a place sooner!” she said. “I’ll fix myself up and I’ll be in fine shape when I turn twelve!”

Korun smiled sadly.

“You think I won’t find a place for myself?” she demanded.

“I think you won’t unless you start looking,” Korun told her. “I’ve seen too many people start out with fine plans and high hopes only to rot here in the Wall Street Field. You think Mama Kilina, here, never set her sights any higher than this?”

Darranacy turned and started to say something rude, then stopped.

She had never thought of Mama Kilina ever being anywhere else. Just days after the demon had carried her parents off, leaving their tidy little apartment and shop a burnt-out ruin, and after Naral had enchanted her but refused to take her in, the tax collector had come around for the annual payment on the family’s property.

Darranacy hadn’t had the payment — she hadn’t had any money at all, had never found where her parents