Kilisha eyed the gray cat warily; the cat stared inscrutably back.
Maybe, Kilisha thought, she was going about this wrong.
It had seemed perfectly reasonable to chase this stray; after all, she needed a gray cat, and this one had walked right in front of her as she strolled down Wizard Street. If she had thought about it at all she would have taken it as a sign from the gods-but she should have remembered how fond the gods were of jokes.
Now she stood precariously balanced on a broken crate, trying to reach the cat while it sat calmly watching her from a second-floor windowsill that was just a few inches beyond Kilisha’s outstretched fingers.
“Here, puss,” Kilisha crooned. “Come on. I’m not going to kill you, I just need a little blood.”
The cat didn’t move.
Kilisha stretched a little farther, on the very edge of overbalancing.
The cat flicked its tail against the windowpane with an audible thump, then stood up and stretched. Kilisha waited, hoping it would jump down, back within reach.
Something rattled, and the window casement swung inward.
“Come on in, Smoky,” a child’s voice said.
The cat gave Kilisha one last look, one the apprentice would have sworn was a supercilious sneer, and then climbed in through the open window, out of sight.
“No, wait!” Kilisha called. “Wait!” She reached too far; the window closed with a thump, wood cracked under her foot, and she tumbled down into the alley.
A moment later she had untangled herself from the wreckage and gotten upright once more; as she brushed dirt and splinters from her tunic she concluded that yes, she was going about this wrong. Trying to find a stray gray cat in the streets of Ethshar was simply too haphazard an enterprise; for one thing, as this latest incident demonstrated, there was no way to tell a true stray from someone’s pet. Not everyone put bows, bells, and collars on their cats.
She had set out with no definite plan of action, and Smoky’s appearance had convinced her she didn’t need one.
She should have known better. Ithanalin was always telling her to plan ahead, and she kept forgetting and charging ahead without thinking.
She looked around thoughtfully. She couldn’t ask Ithanalin for advice; by now he would be deep in his spell-casting, and an interruption might be disastrous. Yara and the children were out for the day-Yara at the market, the children playing with neighbors across the back courtyard-so as not to disturb Ithanalin. It was up to her.
Finding a cat shouldn’t be a problem, though. It wasn’t as if she’d been sent after dragon’s blood or the hair of an unborn babe. Ethshar of the Rocks might be short of dragons, and its unborn children might be inaccessible, but there were plenty of cats.
Many of the aristocrats of Highside and Center City, westward toward the sea, kept cats-as well as any number of more exotic pets, such as Lady Nuvielle’s miniature imitation dragon. Kilisha doubted that she’d find any aristocrats who cared to let a scruffy apprentice draw blood from their pampered darlings, though. At least, not without demanding more money than she could afford.
To the east was the Lakeshore district, and to the north was Norcross-both solidly middle class, home to assorted tradesmen and bureaucrats. Kilisha had the impression that their taste in pets ran more to watchdogs than cats.
The Arena district was a few blocks to the south, though, and that seemed promising.
Or if she just strolled along Wizard Street...
She knew several cats, belonging to magicians of every sort. Unfortunately, none of them were really gray-most magicians seemed to prefer black, and while there were a few tigers and tabbies mixed in, she didn’t remember a single gray.
Maybe someone else would, though.
And if all else failed, she could go to a professional wizards’ supply house-there was Kara’s Arcana, on Arena Street just around the corner from Wizard Street. That would be expensive, even for something as simple as cat’s blood, she was sure.
She sighed again and began walking.
Five hours later, around the middle of the afternoon, she finally headed homeward, a tightly stoppered vial of dark blood tucked in the purse on her belt. She owed the priestess Illure a favor for this, and she hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult to repay.
At least a priestess wouldn’t want anyone turned into a newt or otherwise seriously harmed; the gods didn’t approve of that sort of thing.
It seemed silly, spending all this time, half the day, just getting a little cat’s blood. She knew Ithanalin had always said that the hardest part of any spell was getting the ingredients, but if it took this long for something simple like cat’s blood...
Well, that was how wizards’ suppliers like Kara or the infamous Gresh stayed in business, and why they could charge so much.
At least this way Ithanalin had probably had plenty of time for his spell and his mysterious customer, whoever it was-not many spells took more than a few hours. Yara and the little ones wouldn’t be back yet, and the wizard had had the whole morning without an apprentice underfoot.
She came within sight of the shop and noticed that the drapes were still drawn. She sighed. Yara would never have allowed that, had she been home. Usually Ithanalin agreed that the drapes should be open during business hours, but sometimes, when he was busy, he forgot.
The door was open, though, so people would know that the wizard was home.
And he must be done with his spell, if he had left the door wide open. Kilisha hurried the last few paces.
“Hello, Master,” she said, as she stepped into the dim room. “I’m sorry I-”
She stopped dead in her tracks. Something was wrong here.
Something was very wrong.
Ithanalin was crouching on the floor just a few feet inside the door, as if in the process of rising from a sitting position, but he was not moving. He wore his grubby working tunic and a worn leather apron, and he was utterly, perfectly still, his face frozen in a beard-bristling expression of severe annoyance.
Kilisha stared at him for a moment, then looked straight down at her own feet, not realizing why she did it until she saw that she was standing on bare planking.
The rag rug was gone.
She stared, then quickly looked around to see whether it might have slid off to one side.
It hadn’t. It was gone.
And the red velvet couch was gone.
And the square black end table was gone.
And the humpback bench was gone.
And the coatrack was gone.
And the straight chair was gone.
Everything was gone-the room was totally empty except for herself, Ithanalin, and the mirror above the mantel.
“Master?” Kilisha said.
Ithanalin didn’t respond.
She stepped closer, and, very carefully, reached out and touched the immobile wizard.
He was still warm-that was something, anyway-but he didn’t react, didn’t move; his skin felt lifeless and inert, like sun-warmed leather rather than living flesh.
“Master, what happened?” she wailed. She stared wildly around the empty room. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself cry; she wasn’t a baby, she was seventeen years old, almost a journeyman.
This was magic, obviously. Ithanalin was clearly alive, but somehow frozen, and surely nothing but magic could freeze a person like that.
But was it hostile magic, or had something gone wrong?
