not come to beg clemency for the Faitoren,” he added.
“I want to go, too,” she said.
“No.”
“I know enough magic now to be useful.”
“No, you don’t.” He sighted along the blade, focusing on something outside the window. “And you will be safer here.”
“I’d be safe enough with you and Hirizjahkinis.”
“We will have more to keep us busy than protecting you. This is war, not an excursion to Semr.”
“I know that! I want to help.”
“It will take more than mending pots to recapture Ilissa.”
“You know I can do much more than that! You taught me. Besides,” she added hesitantly, “I’d have tactical value beyond my magic skills.”
“Indeed?” He eased the sword into its sheath and then buckled it around his waist.
“Yes, you saw how Ilissa went for me in Semr—and what happened with the ring,” Nora said, sounding almost as confident as she wanted to. “Ilissa hates me. You might need a decoy. I could distract her while you counterattacked.”
Aruendiel’s chilly eyes widened slightly. “Absolutely not,” he said shortly. He regarded Nora for a moment, frowning. “You are not coming with us, and what’s more, you will not leave this castle while we are gone, do you understand?”
She stared back at him, feeling mutinous. He went on: “Your proposal is absurd, but you’re right about one thing—to her, you’re prey. I’ve deprived her of her prey thrice already, and she would like nothing better than another chance at you. You know that.”
Reluctantly, Nora nodded.
“So you are not to stir outside the castle gates,” he said. “Not one step. Is that clear?”
“Clear enough,” she said, her voice flinty.
“Good. Now”—he looked around the room—“I have what I need, so let us go down. I will seal up the tower until I return.”
That was something she had not considered. “Wait! May I take a book to study?”
“One book,” he said. “No, not Morkin,” he added irritably as she selected a volume. “Vlonicl.”
Hastily she put down the Morkin, picked up the other book, then started down the stairs. Aruendiel followed her more slowly. From what she could tell, he was setting various magical traps. She waited for him at the bottom of the stairs.
“I hope you’ll be careful,” she said awkwardly.
In the dim light of the oil lamp that burned there, his scarred face looked faintly, sardonically amused, but otherwise, he went through the wall as though he had not heard her.
“Honey’s getting low. This woman, Ilissa, she’s the one you escaped from, isn’t she?” Mrs. Toristel asked out of the gloom.
It was the afternoon of the second endless day since the magicians had left. She and Nora were in the store cellars, taking an inventory of the household’s food stocks. Before his departure, Aruendiel had repeated to Mrs. Toristel the injunction that Nora was not to leave the castle. To Nora’s frustration, the housekeeper had interpreted this instruction more strictly than even Aruendiel, surely, would have thought necessary, and had forbidden Nora to go out of doors at all.
After two days of virtual confinement in the house, even visiting the cellar was a welcome expedition.
“That’s right,” Nora said in answer to Mrs. Toristel, holding her candle close to one of the bins where the root vegetables were stacked, layered under soil and straw. But something had been after the carrots; they were strewn half-gnawed around the dirt.
“And now this. She never gave him so much trouble until you came along.”
“No, that’s not true,” Nora said. A dubious silence from Mrs. Toristel, so Nora added the thing that she could not stop thinking about: “Ilissa’s the one who made him fall, all those years ago.”
Mrs. Toristel sniffed. “I knew he’d had a fall. I never liked to ask how. Not my place.” Nor Nora’s place, either, her tone suggested. She added briskly, “Well, he has a lot to pay her back for, then. You don’t know how bad it was for him at first, after that accident. He was like a bundle of cracked sticks. He was lucky to be alive.”
“Yes,” said Nora. Her hands worked mechanically, picking out the lengths of carrot that had been chewed by small teeth. “Mrs. Toristel,” she said, “what if he doesn’t come back?”
“What?” Mrs. Toristel half-turned in indignation, her candle sending long shadows scuttling across the cellar walls. “Of course he’ll be back. You don’t think this Ilissa, whoever she thinks she is, could defeat a magician like his lordship?”
Only if he let her. Only if Aruendiel wanted Ilissa to finish the job that she had tried to do fifty years ago. Nora held the thought up for quick scrutiny, and then thrust it back into the darkness from which it had come.
“You know what a great magician he is,” Mrs. Toristel went on. “Or you should know, anyway, all the time you spend studying with him.”
“I know. It’s just—” Nora hesitated. “This all happened so suddenly, it’s unnerving.”
She was thinking that Hirizjahkinis had the Kavareen to protect her. Why could she not press the battle while Aruendiel directed the campaign behind the lines, preferably from the safety of his own castle? It had occurred to Nora, too late, that she could have given him the New Year’s kiss before he left. She would have unburdened herself, and the kiss would have been only a little worse for wear. But perhaps he no longer wanted it.
“I wish we knew what was going on,” she said in frustration. “Whether they’ve caught up with Ilissa—if anything has happened yet.”
“Don’t expect to hear anything until it’s all over,” Mrs. Toristel advised. “Whenever he goes away, it’s as though he vanished from the earth. Unless, of course, there’s something he wants done,” she added broodingly. “Then he’s quick enough to send word.”
“How?” Nora asked, wanting to be prepared for even an unlikely communication from Aruendiel, and also curious about the spell he used.
“There’ll be a letter appearing somewhere, and then I’ll have a job puzzling it out. Well, I suppose you could read it to me now, that’s a blessing.
Wind magic and demi-transformations, Nora thought, remembering the letter from Nansis Abora that had flown to Aruendiel’s study on its own paper wings. Or perhaps he simply caused the letter to be written at his own desk and then moved it to where Mrs. Toristel could find it. Either way, she felt slightly cheered, knowing that a message from Aruendiel could materialize at any time, even if it was only a directive to Mrs. Toristel to sell the yearling heifer.
Instead, the next day there was Hirizjahkinis, alone, knocking imperiously on the castle gates.
Nora was ready to run outside to greet her, but Mrs. Toristel grabbed her arm. “Remember what the master said.”
“But it’s Hirizjahkinis.” Mrs. Toristel did not let go. Impatiently, Nora watched from the window as Mr. Toristel led Hirizjahkinis across the courtyard. Once inside, Hirizjahkinis shook the snow from a pair of brilliant red boots, gave Nora a lavish smile, and let herself be embraced.
“Why did you come back? Where is Aruendiel? Did you find Ilissa?”
“Aruendiel is still searching for Ilissa,” Hirizjahkinis said. She cast a speculative eye around the room, then nodded graciously at Mrs. Toristel, emerging from the kitchen. “He has tracked her quite a long way, but he has not caught up with her yet.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Nora demanded.
“I am here for you,” Hirizjahkinis said, with another wide smile. “I am to take you back with me.”
“Me?” Nora glanced at Mrs. Toristel. “Aruendiel told me specifically that I could not go. That I’d be in the way. That it was too dangerous.”
“Of course you won’t be in the way.” Hirizjahkinis pulled a small scroll from under the Kavareen’s hide and
