“No, no,” Kilisha said quickly. “Headed west on the East Road, toward the Fortress.” The idea that it might have doubled back eastward, or turned north or south and headed for one of the gates, was not a pleasant one-but she couldn’t rule it out. Maybe she hadn’t spotted it from the air because she hadn’t looked outside the walls...
She would want to check on that tomorrow, if the couch didn’t turn up. She would ask the guards at the gates.
At least nobody was likely to have not noticed an animated couch, or forgotten seeing it.
“It’s in the Fortress, then?” Telleth asked.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Kilisha said. “How would it get inside?”
“Through a door!” Pirra said.
“The doors were closed,” Kilisha said. “We were over there today, and it’s all closed up tight because of some trouble in Eth-shar of the Sands. The couch might be near there-it was headed in that direction-but how could it have gotten inside with the guards there and the doors locked?”
“Oh.”
That ended the conversation for a time, and the five of them ate in silence. A few minutes later Kilisha took a final gulp of small beer, then pushed back her chair. “I need to finish that potion I was making,” she said as she rose. “I thought it might help catch the escaped furniture.”
“I thought you said you just need the couch and the jewel-weed,” Yara said.
“I do just need the couch and the jewelweed,” Kilisha agreed. “But I didn’t know that when I started the potion last night.”
“Then why are you finishing the potion?” Telleth asked.
“Well, partly because it still might be useful in finding and catching the couch,” Kilisha said, “but mostly because if I don’t, who knows what could happen? Unfinished spells can go wrong, the way the master’s did.”
“You mean you’d turn into a statue?” Pirra asked, her eyes widening.
“Maybe. Or something else entirely might happen. You never know what might happen when magic goes wrong. They say there’s a place in the Small Kingdoms where there’s a pillar of fire a hundred feet tall that’s been burning for a hundred years because somebody sneezed while doing a spell. And some people say that spriggans come from a magic mirror spell that someone did wrong, which is why they started turning up suddenly just a few years ago.”
“And Dad accidentally turned Lirrin and me into tree squids once,” Telleth said. “Right here in the kitchen.” He grimaced, and added, “It felt really weird.”
“Exactly. And he turned Istram into a platypus, as well. The master has always told me how very important it is to be careful with magic, and never leave a spell unfinished, so I’ll be finishing the potion tonight.”
“What about that stuff on the workbench, then?” Telleth asked. “The brown stuff in the bowl. Isn’t that an unfinished spell?”
“Yes, it is, but I don’t know what kind,” Kilisha said, frowning. “I don’t know how to finish it, and I want to bring the master back to life as quickly as possible so he can deal with it!”
“How did you know about that bowl?” Yara asked, glaring at Telleth. “Have you been snooping in your father’s workshop?”
“I just looked!” Telleth protested. “I didn’t touch anything! I didn’t even breathe on it!”
“Well, don’t even look unless Thani or Kilisha says it’s all right!” She looked up from her son to the apprentice. “Is there anything we can do while you’re finishing the potion?”
“I suppose it’s too late to get the jewelweed,” Kilisha said. “The herbalists will be closed by now. But if you can think of any way to find the couch, that would be good.”
“I could ask around,” Yara said thoughtfully. “Maybe buy a divination from one of the neighbors?”
“If you think it’s a good idea,” Kilisha said. “I don’t have the money for one.” Before any of the children could speak, she added, “And I don’t know any myself.”
“Thani never liked divinations,” Yara said. “He said that people always want to argue if they don’t like the answers they get.”
“He’s probably right,” Kilisha said.
“So he never learned any,” Yara said. “He said he could always buy one if he needed it.”
“Well, if he were animate right now, he could.”
“I’ll talk to some of the neighbors,” Yara said. “You finish your potion.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Kilisha said, bowing her head politely before she headed for the workshop.
A few minutes later, as she gathered the materials to complete her potions, she glanced uneasily at the bowl on the lamp; it was still simmering. She sighed.
It would certainly simplify matters if Yara did hire a magician who could find the couch by magic, but Kilisha had doubts about the idea. At least for wizards, divinations and other information spells tended to do strange things when enchanted objects were involved-which was another reason Ithanalin had never liked them. Some of them would answer the question asked, but in the most useless way possible-for example, if a wizard asked, “Where is the red velvet couch that stood in Ithanalin’s parlor?” the answer might be, “In the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars,” or “In a house,” or “Seven feet to the north of a purple drape.” Learning to phrase questions so as to obtain useful answers was as tricky as learning the actual spells, so that wizards who did divinations often had no time to learn much of anything else.
Kilisha suspected that they would do better to question neighbors, or to offer a reward, or even to interrogate spriggans, who seemed to roam everywhere in the city and who could clearly “smell” wizardry, than they would to buy a divination.
And when they did find the couch, however they managed it, she wanted to be better prepared than she had been that afternoon m pursuit of the bench. Catching the bench in the rope and then dragging the bench and chair home had been difficult and exhausting.
That was where these potions came in, and why she was so eager to finish them. She had misled the master’s family slightly; while it was certainly true that neglected spells could go spectacularly wrong, the Adaptable Potion was flexible and relatively harmless. She could have left it unfinished for at least another day or so without harm, and simply leaving it entirely uncharged would probably have been safe.
Probably. She had never actually done it, or spoken to anyone who had. When she was first learning to make the potion she had always charged it with something even if it was just the Iridescent Amusement.
This time, though, she wanted a levitation potion,. Tracel’s Levitation would work only on the person who cast the spell-or drank the potion, in this case. Whoever drank the potion could then rise to any height she desired, and stay there, drifting on the wind, until she spoke the word that broke the spell and lowered her gently to the ground. That might be useful for getting a good look around, seeing over obstructions, and that sort of thing, but she couldn’t see how it would help capture or transport a couch. She still intended to make it anyway, since it was easy and she had three batches of potion brewing, but she didn’t really expect to use it.
Varen’s Levitation, which she had used that afternoon, took two forms. The wizard who cast the spell could walk on air as if it were solid, ascending or descending by using the air as a staircase, as she had done-that was one form, the one she had usually practiced when learning the spell. Having that in a potion would mean having it instantly available, and not needing to carry the damned lantern.
The other form was to cast the spell on an object, and a wizard who did that could then place an object of any size in midair, and it would remain there. She would need to get her hands on the couch to use it, and she would be unable to lift it higher than she could reach, or move it once it was levitated, but it would certainly be a way to immobilize the couch. Then she could fetch a wagon, roll it underneath, release the spell, tie the couch down, and cart it home.
Of course, she would need to lift the couch to use Varen’s Levitation on it, and that was where the Spell of Optimum Strength came in. That spell gave the subject immense strength for perhaps half an hour-not infinite, by any means, but the most strength a person of that size and build might ever have had without magic. Kilisha knew that she could lift about four hundred pounds when enchanted with Optimum Strength-and she knew the couch didn’t weigh anywhere near that much.
So if she found the couch, and it did not want to cooperate, she would drink the strength potion, then Varen’s Levitation, and then she would pick up the couch and hang it in midair.
It would be simple.
She just needed to find the couch first.
