“Your brother isn’t a rug. And I doubt his girlfriend kept him out of her bed while the spell was in effect.”
“She probably didn’t-but honestly, she could have if she wanted to, just by asking him to sleep elsewhere. Ithanalin already loves you, probably just as much as this spell would make him love you, it’s just that it all wound up in the spoon or somewhere instead of spread through all the furniture!”
“I don’t know... ” Yara said.
Kilisha was sure that the longer Yara waited, the more reasons she would find to not drink the potion. “Mistress,” she said, “I thought you’d want to be the one to drink this, but you don’t need to. I could drink it-”
She didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence, “Give me the vial,” Yara said.
Kilisha obeyed, and Yara drank it down in a single gulp, then blinked in surprise.
“It’s sweet,” she said. “I thought it would taste foul.”
“Love is sweet,” Kilisha said. “At least, that’s what the master told Klurea,” she added hastily. “I wouldn’t know, myself.”
Yara swallowed again, licked her lips thoughtfully, then asked, “Now what?”
“Now you need to roam about the streets calling out, so that the rug will hear your voice and fall in love with you and follow you home.”
“Tonight?”
“Whenever you please-but the sooner the better, surely. We don’t want the rug to wander further away.”
Yara considered that for a long moment, then said, “Not tonight. In the morning. It’s been a very long day.” She glanced over at Ithanalin, sitting motionless in the corner. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “I’m too tired. I’m going to bed.”
With that, she turned away.
Kilisha stood by the workbench and watched her go.
It had been a long day, but Kilisha was still too wrought up to sleep. Performing the love spell had been satisfying, almost relaxing. She looked at the shelves of ingredients, the jars and boxes and bottles, and wondered whether there was some other useful magic she could perform before going to bed.
Tracel’s Adaptable Potion.
The thought struck her so suddenly and strongly that she wondered whether it might be magical in origin. Perhaps some benign god was sending her a message, or some powerful magician somewhere had decided to advise her...
Or perhaps it was just her own mind.
Whatever the source, she thought it was a good idea. If she made up some potions, so as to have a few spells available instantly, they might be useful in the furniture hunt; she had thought about that earlier, but had then been distracted by Cauthen’s Remarkable Love Spell.
Varen’s Levitation, Tracel’s Levitation, the Spell of Optimum Strength... which should she prepare? The potion spell would produce seven doses of any one spell.
Well, she could do it three times, couldn’t she? It would mean staying up very late, but right now she didn’t see that as a problem. And if she got tired after one preparation, or two, she could stop then, and leave until later to decide which spell the potion would contain. She wouldn’t need to perform the second part of the spell, when she actually put the chosen spell into the potion, until tomorrow night, after the brew had cooled for twenty-four hours.
She would need water and wine again, and her athame, and human blood-she could use her own, and in fact that might enhance the potion’s effectiveness. She would need powdered goat’s hoof-Ithanalin had a jar on the shelf to her right. A pot, and a fire-those were right at hand, as well, as the glow from that mysterious brass bowl reminded her. A raindrop caught in midair for Tracel’s Levitation, a rooster’s toe, a seagull’s feather...
Humming quietly, she set about gathering the ingredients, thinking idly that it was good to have a fully equipped wizard’s workshop here at hand, and that when she was a journeyman she would have a harder time getting what she needed for her spells.
Blood and water and wine were easy enough, but some of the other things were not so readily found.
There were suppliers, like Kara of Kara’s Arcana, and Kensher Kinner’s son, and the notoriously expensive Gresh, but the supplies would cost money, and she would need to earn that money by selling spells, and she would need supplies to perform the spells...
Well, it must be possible, or there wouldn’t be so many wealthy wizards in the World. She would have plenty of time to worry about It once she had completed her apprenticeship.
By the time she finished the first batch the little oil lamp she had used was sputtering; she fetched oil from the pantry and refilled it, then topped off the one beneath the brass bowl for good measure, then paused.
The house was dark and silent; Yara and the children were asleep upstairs, and Ithanalin, behind her, was still lifeless and inert. Every room but the workshop was dark and still; the coatrack was motionless, and the spoon and bowl were quiet in their cages.
Kilisha peered through the door of the parlor at the draped front window; the light from the street outside that seeped in around the edges was faint, and no sound at all reached her.
It was late. She was not sure just how late. She hesitated, wondering whether she should go to bed.
Somewhere out there, in the silent darkness, were several pieces of her master’s essence. Furniture could be scratched, broken, smashed, burned, stolen. The sooner she recovered it all, the better.
She started on the second batch of Adaptable Potion.
By the time she finished the third and final batch and extinguished the little lamp, she was sure midnight had come and gone, and she was exhausted. The possibility of making a fourth batch occurred to her, but was promptly dismissed-she couldn’t think of a fourth spell that would be worth the trouble. She carefully set the three simmering pots at the back of the workbench, guarded by an ironwork fireplace screen, then lit a candle from the still-burning oil lamp beneath the brass bowl.
Candle in hand, she glanced around the parlor, and said good night to the coatrack; it rattled in reply.
She looked at Ithanalin on her way back through the workshop and said, “I’m doing my best, Master.”
And then she found her way up the kitchen stairs to her own little bed in the attic.
Chapter Eleven
The following morning Kilisha slept later than usual- which is to say, the sun was up before she was. The air was still cool and damp and the shadows were still long and dark when she came downstairs to the kitchen and found Yara feeding her offspring their breakfast.
“There you are!” Yara said, looking up from chopping salt ham into bite-sized pieces for Pirra. “I was beginning to wonder whether you had been spirited away by demons, or gone off on some silly errand.”
“I was up late making potions,” Kilisha said.
“More potions?”
“Yes.” Only after a second’s pause did Kilisha realize she had forgotten to add “Mistress.”
Yara didn’t seem to notice. “This love potion-how did you say it works?”
Kilisha sighed. “The instant the rug sees you or hears your voice, it will fall hopelessly in love with you. Then it should follow you home, and we can capture it.”
“And then you can restore my husband?” She gestured toward the door to the workshop.
“No,” Kilisha said, “we’ll still need the bench and the table and the couch and the chair.”
“And how are you going to get those?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Yara frowned. “I don’t like this, Kilisha.”
“I don’t either!” Kilisha burst out. “I’m doing the best I can to restore the master, but it isn’t easy!”
“Well-” Yara began.
“Wizardry is dangerous,” Kilisha interrupted. “Everyone knows that. You knew it when you married Ithanalin, and I knew it when I signed up to be a wizard’s apprentice. Spells can go wrong, and that’s what
