Tales of Ethshar

will shrink us down until we can easily walk between those bars, and then I can levitate us safely down to the ground.”

“Shrink us?”

He nodded. “We’ll be not much larger than mice. It takes about three hours to prepare.”

She hesitated. “Is it safe?”

“Oh, yes,” Deru assured her. “It won’t harm you, and the countercharm is very easy — just a drink of a special tea.” He slipped a battered leather pack off his shoulder, opened the top flap, and pulled out a brown glass flask. “This is the cure right here — a sip of this will break the spell and restore you instantly to your normal size. Once we’re well away from the tower we’ll drink it, and then it’s just a matter of walking you home.”

“Oh,” Kirna said.

This was exciting, in its way — the idea of being shrunk down to the size of a mouse was strange, certainly — but it wasn’t quite what she had hoped for. Walking home? Not flying, or vanishing in a puff of smoke from one place and appearing with a flash in another? Shrunk down, but not turned into birds?

Well, it would do, and perhaps it would be more interesting than it sounded.

“Now, I need you to stay close, and stay quiet, while I prepare the spell,” Deru said. “Oh, and you’ll need to open the shutter and casement, so we can get out once we’re small.”

“All right,” Kirna said. Rather than wait, she rose and opened the window immediately, while Deru removed and folded up his silken cloak and fished more items out of his pack.

Beneath the rather dramatic cloak he was wearing a disappointingly-ordinary brown-and-cream tunic and suede breeches. Kirna had hoped for something more wizardly.

A moment later, as she sat on the bed and watched, Deru began the ritual. He drew lines on the floor with something white and waxy, then positioned three candles on the resulting design before seating himself cross- legged at the center.

He lit the candles one by one while mumbling something Kirna could not make out, then set out a dagger, two scraps of fur, and two tiny, bright-red objects Kirna did not recognize. The mumbling turned into a rhythmic chanting, and his hands moved through the air in curious patterns.

Every so often he would lean over and move one of the objects, and sometimes he was holding a lump of the white stuff, sometimes he wasn’t.

It was all very mysterious and magical — and after the first few minutes, boring. Kirna watched, waiting for something to happen, but the chant droned on endlessly...

She awoke with a start to find Deru standing over her, shaking her gently. “Your Highness!” he said. “Wake up!”

“I’m awake!” she said irritably, sitting up and looking at the room.

The air was thick and hot, and she had trouble seeing clearly, whether from sleep or smoke she was not sure. All the candles had burned out but one, which was down to a smoking stub; the design on the floor had vanished, but an identical design of white smoke hung in the air a foot above where it had been drawn. The dagger was sheathed and on Deru’s belt, and the other things were gone.

Her head seemed to be buzzing, and she suddenly was unsure whether she was awake or dreaming or somewhere in between.

“Stick out your tongue,” Deru said.

“What?” The unexpected order halfway convinced her she was dreaming.

“Stick out your tongue! Quickly! We need to do this before the candle goes out!”

Confused, Kirna stuck out her tongue, and Deru quickly pressed something onto it, a tiny something that tickled and scratched, and stuck.

“Wha...” She tried to talk, but the object on her tongue made it difficult; she gagged.

Deru was holding out a piece of fur; he reached over her shoulders with it, then stretched it out. She could feel it on her back, and it seemed to be stretching out forever.

“What’s that?” she asked, and discovered that the thing on her tongue had dissolved away into nothingness. She looked up at Deru, who seemed to be taller suddenly. The ceiling was rising up away from her, as well.

“It’s the skin of a field mouse,” Deru said, as he wrapped it around her.

She tumbled from the bed, and it was a much longer fall than it should have been; she landed on her hands and knees, her palms stinging with the impact. Her vision blurred.

When it cleared again she clambered to her feet and looked up.

Deru stood before her, unspeakably huge, the pack on his shoulder the size of Quonmor Keep; between the gigantic pillars of his legs she could see the smoking stub of candle, taller than she was. The pattern of smoke hung over her, out of reach. She looked up, and up, and up.

Deru was putting a tiny red thing on his own tongue; that done, he took a scrap of gray fur and lifted his hands up over his head.

And then he began shrinking. The mouse-pelt didn’t stretch; Deru shrank.

And moment later he stood before her at his normal height, a few inches taller than herself, as the candle flared up and went out and the pattern of smoke dissipated. Darkness descended, broken only by the orange glow of the greater moon outside the open window.

The little bedchamber stretched out before them in the dimness, an immensity of space.

“There,” Deru said. “It worked.”

“Oh,” Kirna said, looking around.

The world was strange and different, with ordinary furniture become looming monstrosities, but she no longer suspected she was dreaming; everything was quite solid and real. She looked up at the window, impossibly far above them, and asked, “How do we get out?”

“We levitate. Or rather, I do. I’ll have to carry you, I’m afraid; I don’t have a levitation spell that will work on both of us.”

She frowned, but could hardly argue. She was no wizard.

At least, not yet.

Deru knelt and opened his pack. He pulled out a small lantern, a grey feather, and a silver bit; he lit the lantern, set the coin inside it, then drew his dagger again and did something Kirna could not see. Then he straightened up, the lantern in his hand and the dagger back in his belt; the feather seemed to have vanished.

“Come here,” he said.

Cautiously, Kirna approached — and then shrieked as Deru grabbed her and hoisted her over his shoulder, her head and arms dangling down his back, her legs pinned to his chest. She raised her head and turned to look around.

Deru was walking, one hand holding her legs and the other carrying the lantern — but he was not walking across the floor; instead he was walking up into the air, as if climbing an invisible staircase.

“Varen’s Levitation,” he said.

Kirna made a wordless strangled noise. She had wanted to learn magic and have adventures, but being shrunk to the size of a mouse, flung over someone’s shoulder, and carried up into the air, with nothing at all holding them up, all in quick succession, was a little more than she had been ready for.

But, she told herself, she was being silly. This was a magical adventure! She should appreciate it.

She thought she could appreciate it much more easily if she weren’t draped over Deru’s shoulder, though. She tried to twist around for a better view.

“You don’t want me to drop you,” Deru cautioned. “The spell only works on me.”

Kirna ignored that and watched. Deru was marching up higher and higher above the floor, and had now turned toward the window. Kirna could see the sky and the surrounding treetops, lit by the orange light of the greater moon — the feeble glow of the tiny lantern didn’t reach more than a few inches.

Fitting between the bars would be no problem at all at their present size — but how would they get down?

“Shouldn’t you have a rope?” she asked.

“We don’t need one,” Deru said, panting slightly. “Varen’s Levitation goes down just as well as up.”

“Oh,” Kirna said.