Taking Flight

be too useful for the army. After all, if you use it on something that’s already burning, it explodes, so that would be almost like a weapon, wouldn’t it? So I must have decided not to use it, and my memory’s been playing tricks on me...”

Kelder leaned across the table and grabbed her by both wrists.

“Irith,” he said, in what he hoped was a low and deadly tone, “what was the other spell?”

She stared at him for a moment, then surrendered.

“It was a love spell,” she said. “Fendel’s Infatuous Love Spell.”

Kelder sat back, puzzled; why had she been so reluctant to name it? What was so terrible about a love spell? The local farmers back home had told some stories about love potions, and they hadn’t sounded particularly horrible.

“There might have been another one, maybe,” Irith said, speaking quickly, “I don’t know. It’s really, really hard for me to think about magic sometimes, now, and everything I remember from when I was getting the spell ready is all sort of blurry. But if there were any others, they were one-time things, like the youth spell, not anything I can use over and over...”

She was trying to distract him again. A dreadful thought struck him.

“Irith,” he said, “did you try that love spell on me?”

She stopped in mid-breath and stared at him, shocked. Then she burst into giggles.

“No, silly!” she said. “Of course not! You don’t love me that much, or you wouldn’t be arguing with me all the time, and asking me all these questions! Don’t you know how love spells... well, no,” she said, calming. “No, I guess you don’t know.”

“No, I don’t,” he said coldly.

Even as he spoke, he was thinking. The possibility still remained that she might use the love spell on him in the future; maybe that was why he would marry her. No, he told himself, that was silly. He already wanted to marry her, without any spell — didn’t he?

“It isn’t all love spells work that way, anyway,” she explained, “but there’s a reason this one is called Fendel’s Infatuous Love Spell.”

“You’ve used it?” Kelder asked.

“Well,” she said, “I was worried about the Northerners, you see. So I picked the transformation so I could grow wings and fly away, or turn into a fish and swim away, and I picked the invisibility spell so I could hide from them, and the sustenance spell so I wouldn’t need any food while I was hiding — and the youth spell didn’t have anything to do with the Northerners, I just didn’t want to grow old and mean like Kalirin. But the love spell was so that if the Northerners did catch me, somehow, I could make them love me, so they wouldn’t want to hurt me, you see? That’s all.”

“But the Northerners never came,” Kelder pointed out.

“No, they didn’t,” Irith agreed. “After I made the spell, and it worked, mostly, I ran away and hid, and then when I didn’t see any fighting or anything I snuck into a tavern and listened, and I found out that General Terrek had just won a big battle, his retreat had just been a trick, and the Northerners weren’t coming. But I didn’t dare go back, then — I’d deserted in time of war, and that meant a death sentence. So I hid out in the mountains for three years, working my way north toward the Great Highway and sneaking down to get news sometimes, and in 4996 the Northerners turned a whole army of demons loose and blasted General Terrek and the eastern territories into the Great Eastern Desert, and I thought we were all going to die after all, except it would be demons instead of Northerners, and they could probably find me no matter how well I hid and the love spell probably wouldn’t work on them. But then the gods themselves came and fought the demons off, and wiped out the Northerners, and the war was over, and I stopped worrying, and after awhile I stopped hiding. And I ran into Kalirin one day, and I thought he was going to kill me, but he didn’t care any more, he said that with the war over it didn’t matter, and there wasn’t any point in punishing me anyway, because of the spell. So I stopped hiding, but I didn’t have anywhere to go back to, so I just started traveling around the Small Kingdoms, mostly along the Great Highway.” She took a deep breath and concluded, “And I’ve been here ever since.”

“And you used that love spell on someone anyway, even though there weren’t any more Northerners,” Kelder said, certain that Irith would have been unable to resist testing it out. He still didn’t see why she was so embarrassed and secretive about it, though.

“On Ezdral, I bet,” Asha said.

Kelder started. That idea, obvious as it now seemed, had not yet occurred to him; he threw Asha an astonished glance in response to her unexpected perspicacity, then looked back to Irith.

The shapeshifter nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “I enchanted Ezdral.”

“So that’s why he’s in love with you?” Kelder asked. “That’s why he’s been looking for you all these years?” The embarrassment and reticence suddenly made sense.

Irith nodded unhappily.

“Well, why didn’t you take the spell off when you left him, then?” Kelder asked.

Irith stared at him in surprise.

“Because I can’t, stupid!” she shouted. “I don’t know how! All I can do is put it on, not take it off!”

This revelation left Kelder speechless.

Irith filled the silence by babbling on, trying to explain.

“I didn’t know how it worked, don’t you see? I mean, I’m only fifteen, and I’d been cooped up in Kalirin’s stupid house in the hills near Degmor ever since menarche, and the only people I ever saw were wizards and army officers and a few servants with the brains of a turnip amongst them, so I didn’t know anything about love or sex or infatuation or any of that stuff, and there wasn’t anyone I could try the spell out on, to see how it worked, and there’s a counterspell, yes, but it isn’t part of the spell itself, and I didn’t include it, maybe I tried, I don’t remember, I can’t remember, and I can’t do any other magic! I couldn’t even touch Kalirin’s book of spells any more!”

“But that spell... From what Ezdral said, it ruined his whole life!” Kelder said.

“Well, I didn’t know it would do that!” Irith said defensively. “I didn’t know how it worked! I’d used it a couple of times, but those were different, and they’re all dead now, and Ezdral was so cute, when I saw him there — he was big and handsome and he was so good with those horses, they calmed right down when he petted them, I mean, I almost wanted to turn into a horse so he’d pet me that way, and he wouldn’t even look at me hardly, and before I knew it I’d done it. And he came and talked to me, and he was so sweet, and it was just wonderful, and we had a great time, we went all over the place together and did all sorts of stuff, and he was the best-looking man everywhere we went, and he was gentle and playful...”

“Then why did you leave him?” Kelder asked.

She shrugged. “Well, it got boring,” she said. “And he was talking about us staying together forever, and I knew we weren’t going to do that, because I’m only fifteen, I’m not ready to settle down, and he was getting older, and everything, and besides, I knew he didn’t really love me, he was enchanted, and I was young and pretty and everything, and even that was magic, so it wasn’t real, you know? So it didn’t count. So I didn’t want to stay with him forever, and I knew I’d have to leave sooner or later, and when we had that fight about my dancing I decided it might as well be sooner, and I thought it would wear off! I thought that if I wasn’t there, the spell would wear off and he’d forget all about me.”

“Really?” Asha asked.

Irith blushed again, and looked down at the table.

“I thought it might,” she muttered. “I didn’t know. I thought it might wear off. But I guess it didn’t, at least not right away.”

“Not ever,” Asha said. “He’s still in love with you.”

Irith shuddered. “Well, I’m certainly not in love with him,” she said. “Can’t we just forget about him and go on without him?”