family,’ my mother said. One of her great-uncles had been a wizard, although rather an indifferent one.
“My father was not convinced, at first. Wizardry was not altogether respectable. Anyone could be a wizard, if he was clever enough. I myself thought it was a terrible idea. My own thought was that I could go to sea as a cabin boy on a warship.
“My mother prevailed, however. The only thing that made it palatable in the smallest way was knowing that I was to be prepared to do something my brothers could not do. So I went away to wizardry school at Norus-on- the-Lok, three days’ ride from here. It was run by a wizard named Odl Naxt out of his house—not a large house, either. Only one of the boys came from any kind of noble family—the youngest son of Lord Evarnou. The other pupils were the sons of merchants or manor-farm tenants, and one was just a peasant boy whose father brought over some vegetables every week for his tuition. I was pained to think that I would be trained for the same calling as these clods.
“The first weeks of school we did nothing but memorize and recite. Odl Naxt used to mumble, and coming from his mouth, even the geography of hell sounded as dull as the cow pasture outside. I had just about decided that I had had enough of this experiment when our teacher finally felt that that we might work one small spell.
“It was an elementary levitation spell—”
“Which one?” Nora asked.
Aruendiel gave a quick half nod, as though the question pleased him. “One of Morkin’s. The invocation was to a spirit called Blood-Streaked Appalling Vermiform Putrescence. An apt description, according to my friend Abuka Lier, who once saw it materialize.
“At any rate, I tried the spell four times and failed, and then, the fifth time, a stone that I would have had trouble shifting with my own hands rose into the air and rested there as solidly as though it were still lying on the ground. I felt a sort of joy at this new power, and I thought then that perhaps the study of magic might be worth my time and attention after all.”
“
“In the practice of wizardry—which you are spared,” Aruendiel said, with a lift of his eyebrows, “it is not just the words that matter, it is how you say them. The tone, the pronunciation, the rhythm. There is a whole series of spells that must be sung to be effective—I had a terrible time with them at school, until my boy’s voice had finished turning into a man’s.”
“Was this one of those spells?”
“It was not. Have you heard enough of this story, then?”
“No! Go on. You decided to stay at the school—” she prompted.
“Yes, I stayed. As it turned out, Naxt was not as great a hack as some of the wizards who go into teaching. He had worked for Baron Brodre, so he knew something of how magic is practiced at a great lord’s court. We learned our share of the kind of simple, utilitarian spells that even a village wizard would know—how to keep milk from souring and the like—but also we also learned more complex magic as well. Some military spells, illusions, basic transformations, spells of influence and dissimulation. Naxt had a library of a dozen books or so, which was not bad for a school like that, and he corresponded with one or two wizards around the kingdom, so he had some knowledge of the latest developments in the practice of magic.
“Naxt was the sort of wizard who, without being very successful himself, had known many wizards who were, and he had some little story to tell about each of the prominent wizards of the time—how Firga Bearsnout had a charm against poisoning tattooed over his liver or how he, Naxt, had watched Jhonin the Drunk turn back a flooding river with his handkerchief. So we green boys learning spells to cure gout could think ourselves connected to that community of great wizards who shaped the destiny of kingdoms or did magic that no one had ever done before.
“I stayed there for almost four years. At that point, I could have set myself up as a fairly competent general wizard in some town like Stone Top, as most of Naxt’s other pupils planned to do. That prospect chilled me. My brother Dies was by now a seasoned warrior who had helped capture Quouth the year before and won a commendation from the king. Even more galling, Aruendic had been in battle twice and acquitted himself well. I had no interest in living in ignoble obscurity while my brothers went on to win honor and renown.
“But something had happened that changed my family’s situation dramatically. My father’s last living brother died of a fever, leaving only a daughter, my cousin Yirnosila, a child of ten, who was quickly betrothed to my brother Dies.”
“That’s worse than what they did to your sister,” Nora said.
“Dies and Yirnosila were not married until some years later,” Aruendiel said, a little stiffly. “But what I am getting at is that my family’s fortunes were suddenly much improved. My brother Dies would now have the estate in Sar Lith, which would leave my mother’s estate, the Uland, for my brother Aruendic. My own expectations were not changed, but now there was more money to pay for my education.
“I was wild to become a knight. My father could now afford to send me to Lord Boena’s court—and I was no longer the undersized boy that I had been at thirteen. I was as tall as my father. But he was skeptical. ‘Do you mean to abandon your magical training?’ he asked. I think he was aggrieved to think that the gold he had spent at Naxt’s school might have been wasted.
“Then Odl Naxt came to my father with a proposition. He told my father that he had taken the liberty of writing to another wizard on my behalf. From time to time, Naxt said, his correspondent would take on a young wizard for a sort of advanced apprenticeship—choosing only candidates of exceptional magical talent and excellent birth. I was certainly Naxt’s star pupil, except perhaps for the peasant boy, who was obviously unfitted for a position close to a high-ranking nobleman. Naxt had described my rank and my abilities and the fact that I had trained under him, Odl Naxt, and the other wizard was willing to grant me an audience.
“My father was not entirely pleased to hear that Naxt had taken it upon himself to tout my capabilities to an unknown wizard. ‘Who is this man?’ he asked.
“Naxt was clearly very proud of himself. ‘It is my old colleague Lord Burs,’ he said. Of all the wizards that Naxt could have mentioned, Lord Burs was perhaps the only one whose name would carry weight with my father. He came from an old family—not quite as old as ours, but old enough—and was one of the king’s best-trusted advisers. Yet he was also independent-minded enough so that when King Tern launched an idiotic feud with the duke of Cliem, Burs refused to enter the hostilities. After the king’s defeat, Burs brokered the peace and returned to royal favor. My father respected him, even if Burs was a wizard, because he was neither a lackey nor a bearer of grudges. Burs was also considered one of the three most powerful men in the kingdom, including the king—and some put Burs ahead of
“So my father consented for me to travel to Blesn, Burs’s seat, for an audience. When I arrived at his castle, Lord Burs quizzed me for a few minutes—how would I counter the Deesk silencing curse; how would I compose a spell to appeal to a spirit of the Scabrous house; how would I move an army across a river in the shortest possible time? And then when I had answered his questions, which were simple enough, he said, ‘Let us see how you sit on a horse.’ He ordered me a fresh mount, and we set off and did not stop until we pulled up in front of the king’s tent the next morning, just before the battle of Raitornikan.”
“How do you counter the Deesk silencing curse?” Nora asked.
“You write the counterspell on a piece of paper and burn it,” Aruendiel said. “And there are a hundred ways of moving an army across a river—I think I told him I would raise the river out of its bed and let the army march under it. In practice,” he added, “I found later that the mud on the river bottom can slow the men down considerably.”
“What about the Scabrous spirit?”
“Fornication,” Aruendiel said detachedly. “Scabrous demons are attracted by the sight and sounds of fornication. I was still very young. I told Lord Burs I would use a couple of cats.”
He took a sip of wine and cleared his throat. “I was extremely fortunate to become Lord Burs’s assistant. There was no better education in wizardry. During campaigning season we traveled with the king’s army, so I had a matchless opportunity to see Lord Burs in action. He was a master at tactical magic. I learned from him the overlooked value of subtlety in war.”
Seeing that Nora looked blank, he went on, “Commanders often assume that a magic-worker can win the battle for them. They tell their magician or wizard, ‘Turn the enemy into frogs,’ or some such thing, and then they are disappointed and angry when the spell does not work—because the wizard or magician on the other side has
