The breakfast was good, but Valder found himself carrying the conversation, explaining in detail Wirikidor’s nature and how he had come to have his sword enchanted in the first place and his attempts to remedy his situation.
When he had finished, Iridith asked, “Do you really want to die?”
“No,” Valder admitted. “But it does seem preferable to the alternative.”
“Is there only one alternative, though?”
“I told you that I consulted wizards on the matter and was told that the spell can’t be broken without killing me.”
“That’s probably true; certainly I wouldn’t know how to go about it,” Iridith said, spreading butter on a biscuit. “However, as Tagger the Younger told you, there must be a way around it. I’ve never met the lad, but he sounds like a sensible person.”
“How can there be a way around it? I’ll live as long as I own the sword and I’ll own the sword for as long as I live; there isn’t any way out of that. I’ll just grow older and older forever unless I kill another eighteen men and allow myself to be murdered. I don’t mind the idea of living forever, but not if I continue to age.”
“Ah, but then why should you continue to age?”
Valder wondered if the woman was being intentionally dense. “I don’t have a great deal of choice in the matter,” he retorted.
“That’s where you’re wrong, though. You do have a choice. Others might not, but you do; you just don’t know it.”
Valder was not sure if the wizard was speaking in riddles or just babbling outright nonsense. “What are you talking about?” he asked politely. He was tempted to be harsher, but the wizard had saved him from injury the night before, as much, as he had saved her, and besides, offending wizards was never a good idea.
“How old do you think I am?” she asked.
Playing along with the apparent nonsequitur, Valder answered, “Oh, twenty-one or so.” An honest reply would have been twenty-five.
She smiled, and Valder, who had not really had a chance to see her clearly the night before, was startled by how beautiful her face became when she smiled. “I’m two hundred and eighty-eight.”
Valder could think of nothing to say in reply to such an outrageous claim. He had heard tales of immortal wizards, of course — everybody had — but he had never paid much attention to them. He had seen wizards die and knew them for mere mortal humans; two of his childhood friends had taken up careers in magic, one as a theurgist and one as a wizard, yet both had remained ordinary people outside of their magical abilities.
“I don’t think you believe me,” Iridith said, reading his face. “But it’s true. I served as a combat wizard for a century under Admiral Sidor and Admiral Dathet; I was retired long before Azrad came to power, and before you were born. I grew up here before the city wall was built, before the Palace was built, before the New Canal was dug. There are spells to restore or preserve youth indefinitely.”
“Why haven’t I ever heard of them, then?” Valder asked skeptically.
“You’ve never heard of wizards centuries old?”
“Certainly I have, but just rumors — and most of those wizards were supposed to look old, not young and beautiful.”
She smiled again. “My thanks for the compliment; my face is my own, only my age is of thaumaturgical origin. Not all wizards who can restore youth choose to do so; many prefer to stay the outward age at which they learned the spells that prevent aging. Since that’s usually not until one is sixty or seventy years old, many of the ancients like myself still look old. I was vain enough — and weary enough of eating with false teeth — that I chose otherwise. I was... let me see... seventy-four when I learned the secrets.”
“That doesn’t explain why I never heard more about these spells, though.”
“They were secret, of course — the Wizards’ Guild saw to that. Even during the war, when we let the army know so many secrets, we kept that one for ourselves.”
“But why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“The spells are very difficult, the ingredients very expensive, and they consume an inordinate amount of magical energy. If everyone knew that such spells existed, everyone would want them; who wouldn’t want to be young forever? However, that’s not practical. First off, if no one were to die of old age, the world would become very crowded very quickly. And besides, we simply couldn’t enchant everyone; there isn’t enough to go around of some of the ingredients, and the spells would use up so much magical energy that it might affect the whole balance of reality. But do you think most people would believe that? Most people distrust wizards enough as it is. In the face of something like eternal youth being denied them, they’d surely accuse us of keeping it for ourselves out of evil motives.” She paused, then added, “Besides, there are plenty of people around I’d just as soon not see still alive a century hence.”
Valder had to agree with that sentiment, but asked, “What about some of the really important people, though? Why haven’t you restored Azrad’s youth, if it’s possible? He’s a great man and, as overlord of the world’s richest city, he could certainly afford to pay for the ingredients, however rare they are.”
“Oh, certainly, we could restore his youth, and he could afford to pay for it — but we don’t want to. He’s been a good enough overlord, and a good admiral before that, but, if he were to live forever, he might not stay one. What sympathy would he have for ordinary people once he, himself, were free of the fear of death? Besides, he would then have an unfair advantage in his competition with his fellow triumvirs, don’t you think? He would have all eternity to plot and plan and carry out his schemes; what mortal ruler could compete? In a century or two, he’d rule all the world — including the wizards, perhaps, and we don’t want that. Nor do we care to treat all rulers equally with our youth spells; we’d be preserving the bad along with the good and isolating them from their people. This is without even mentioning that we could scarcely keep the spells secret if we used them on Azrad or any other public figure. If old Azrad were to appear in the next parade looking like a man of thirty again, that would make it rather obvious that youth spells exist, wouldn’t it? Assuming, that is, that everyone actually believed him to be Azrad and not a brash young imposter.”
Valder had to admit the truth of these arguments.
“Well, then, you see that there is a way around your curse; all you need is a perpetual youth spell.”
“And just how am I to get one? Why would these immortal wizards you speak of allow me, a mere innkeeper, what they would not permit Azrad? And just who are these people, anyway? Plenty of wizards grow old and die; I’ve seen it happen. Who decides who will be made young?”
“Oh, that’s simple enough; anyone who can handle the spells is permitted to use them. After all, how could we stop them? The difficulty is that the spells involved are all of a very high order; the one that I used was an eleventh-order spell. From what you’ve said of your difficulties with Wirikidor, I’m sure you know that very few wizards ever become capable of handling such spells in the course of a normal lifetime. Among those who do, the spells are not secret; in fact, any member of the Wizards’ Guild who asks is given whichever recipe he might choose. In most cases, since failure usually results in a messy death, wizards wait until they are either capable of handling the magic involved or are old enough to be desperate.”
“You mean all the wizards know about these youth spells?”
“Most of them, anyway.”
“How can you keep secret what so many know?”
“Oh, well, that’s an advantage of being wizards; the Guild has ways of keeping secrets that don’t bear explaining.”
“Why don’t the wizards object to not being given immortality, then?”
“But they all have the opportunity to earn it, you see, if they’re good enough at their craft. Most aren’t — but that possibility is always there. If we were to cast the spell on every poor fool who manages to survive an apprenticeship, the world would fill up with wizards until there was no room for anyone else.”
“And how am I to earn it? Are you suggesting I become a wizards’ apprentice at the age of sixty-six and hope that by some miracle I live long enough to learn an eleventh-order spell?”
“It would hardly take a miracle, with Wirikidor involved; but no, that’s not at all what I propose. I intend to enchant you myself.”
“But you just finished explaining why the spell wasn’t given out!”
