Taking Flight

either. “Were you around forty-three years ago?” he asked.

“Well, of course I was, but I wasn’t associating with dirty old men!”

There it was. She had been around back then; it wasn’t her mother or grandmother. Asha stared. Kelder swallowed, and said, “He was nineteen, maybe twenty.

“Oh,” Irith said, taken aback. “Oh, I guess he would have been, wouldn’t he?”

Kelder nodded.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said.

“Did you know him?”

She frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “What’s his name?”

“Ezdral.”

Irith stared. Her eyes grew wider than Kelder would have thought possible.

“Ezdral?” she said. “That’s Ezdral of Mezgalon? It really is?”

“That’s what he says,” Kelder told her.

“I was sort of afraid it might be somebody I knew once, you know,” Irith said, the words spilling out in a rush. “And I really hated to think about anyone I know getting old and icky like that, and drinking so much and lying around, so I didn’t like it when he said he knew me and I wanted to get away from him — but I never thought it might be Ezdral!” She blinked. “That’s awful!”

“He says you traveled with him when he was young, and then one day he woke up and you weren’t there.”

“Well, that’s sort of true,” Irith admitted. “I mean, I was there, at first, but he didn’t see me. And I’ll bet he didn’t mention that we’d had a fight the night before, did he? Or that he’d been being a real pest, talking about all this stupid stuff about settling down and raising kids.”

“What’s stupid about it?” Asha asked, before Kelder could react.

“I’m too young, that’s what!” Irith said quickly.

Asha and Kelder looked at each other. Kelder’s visions of a life of domestic bliss with Irith suddenly seemed much less attainable.

“Oh, it was all a long time ago, anyway,” Irith said.

“Irith,” Kelder said, “it was a long time ago, more than forty years ago, but you keep saying you’re only fifteen.”

“I am only fifteen!” she retorted angrily.

“How are you only fifteen?” Kelder asked. “Where were you between then and now? Were you under a spell or something?”

“A spell?” Irith stared at him.

“Turned to stone, maybe?”

“Silly,” she said, almost laughing, “of course not! I’ve been traveling, enjoying the World.”

“For forty years?”

“Longer, really.”

“How long?”

“Oh, well...”

“How long?” Kelder demanded.

“I don’t know,” she said defensively. “I haven’t kept track.”

Kelder found himself momentarily baffled by this response. How could anyone not know something like that?

Irith stared at him in mild irritation. “Why are you asking so many questions? What difference does it make?”

“When were you born?” Kelder asked. “What year?”

“Oh, well, if you put it like that,” Irith said, “I was born in 4978.”

“That’s more than two hundred years ago!” Kelder said, shocked.

“Yes, I guess it is,” Irith admitted.

“So you’re more than two hundred years old?” Asha asked, fascinated.

“No,” Irith insisted, “I’m fifteen! I’ve been fifteen for two hundred years, and I’ll always be fifteen!”

“Always?” Kelder asked.

Irith nodded. “It’s part of the spell,” she said.

Asha and Kelder exchanged glances. “So you are under a spell?” Asha asked.

“No, not like that,” Irith said.

Kelder asked, “Then like what? What spell are you talking about?”

“Well, the one that made me what I am, of course,” Irith said. “The one that made me a shapeshifter and everything.”

Just then the young man in the apron returned with their drinks; they accepted them, and waited until the young man had departed again.

Kelder sipped his ale, then turned back to Irith. “I think,” he said, “that you’re going to have to tell us all about it.”

Irith looked at him, at the unsmiling expression on his face, and then down at Asha, sitting beside him, her own little mouth set firmly.

Irith sighed.

“Oh, all right,” she said, “I’ll tell you the whole story.” She shifted on the bench, and then remarked by way of preamble, “You know, you two aren’t being any fun at all!”

The others just sat, and Irith began. “It’s called Javan’s Second Augmentation of Magical Memory,” she said. “The spell, I mean.”

“Tell us about it,” Kelder said.

“How did you learn it?” Asha asked. “Were you a magician?”

Irith frowned. “I guess I’d better start all the way back at the beginning,” she said.

She took a deep breath and began, “I was born in the Third Military District of Old Ethshar, which was already being called Dria — it was run by someone we called a Colonel, but he declared himself king when I was five. It was a lot bigger then than Dria is now — the Colonel ruled everything as far east as Thuth.”

She saw the rather blank expressions on both Kelder’s and Asha’s faces, and explained, “That’s all on the eastern plains, between the mountains and the desert — south of here.”

“But that’s not Ethshar,” Asha protested, “Ethshar’s way off to the west.”

“That’s the new Ethshar,” Irith said. “The Hegemony of Ethshar, it’s called. That was originally all conquered territory, and Old Ethshar was where the Small Kingdoms are now. It sort of fell apart, though.”

“Go on,” Kelder said.

“Well, anyway,” Irith said, “I grew up in Dria, and it was still part of Old Ethshar, sort of, but only because of the Great War. You know about that, right? How we were all fighting against the Northern Empire? And they had demons and sorcerers fighting for them?”

Kelder said, “We know about the War.”

“Well, because we were all scared of the Northerners, none of the Small Kingdoms fought each other much, and a lot of people just kept breaking off little pieces and setting up their own kingdoms, and nobody could do anything about it because we couldn’t afford to fight amongst ourselves, you see? But it made it harder and harder for the four generals to raise armies and protect us. So the war had been going on for hundreds of years, maybe a thousand years, but it was beginning to look like we might lose, or at least that’s what my parents thought. The news from the generals was good, mostly — General Gor was doing well in the west, and General Anaran was raiding the Empire’s borders, and everything — but Old Ethshar was coming apart.”

“What does this have to do with your spells?” Kelder asked.

“I’m getting to that!” Irith glared at him.