The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

handed it to her. “What foolishness!”

“Well, I agree, but he told me not to leave the castle at all,” Nora said as she unfurled the scroll. A few curt lines in Aruendiel’s crabbed script directed her to accompany Hirizjahkinis.

What seized her attention, however, was the last sentence: “We have need of your talents here.” The acknowledgment of her magical abilities, however terse, made her feel a small surge of pride and hope.

“He said that Nora shouldn’t go anywhere,” Mrs. Toristel said firmly. “Not even outside.”

“Well, but he does ask me to come,” Nora said, showing her the note. “He says they need me.”

Mrs. Toristel glanced at the letter, then waved it away. “It takes me too long to make out his scratch,” she said. “It says for you to leave with her?”

“Yes, that’s what it says.”

“Well—” Mrs. Toristel looked hard at Hirizjahkinis. “How is she supposed to travel?”

“We can fly. I have a lovely mount, just outside. But we should leave as soon as we can, so that we don’t have to travel in the dark.” Hirizjahkinis’s voice was suddenly serious.

“All right, I’ll get my things.” Nora ran upstairs to put an extra shawl and some knitted undergarments into a small bundle. When she came down again, tying her cloak, Hirizjahkinis was sitting in Aruendiel’s chair at the long table in the great hall. Mrs. Toristel hovered nearby, broadcasting silent disapproval.

“How quick you are, Nora,” Hirizjahkinis said, rising gracefully. “That is very good. Are you sure you have everything? Yes? Then let us be off.”

Nora turned to Mrs. Toristel, who was frowning ferociously. “Please don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’ll ask Aruendiel to send a message when I get there.”

Before Mrs. Toristel could reply, Hirizjahkinis said: “I will make him do it!” She laughed and moved toward the door. “Come, we must hasten, so that he does not have to face that wicked Queen Ilissa all alone.”

“Right,” Nora said. She smiled at Mrs. Toristel. “Yes, it’s better if Hirizjahkinis gets back quickly.”

“He said for you not to leave the castle,” Mrs. Toristel said stubbornly. She trailed them outside.

“But this is Hirizjahkinis. I’ll be safer with her—and with Aruendiel—than I am here. And Aruendiel says that they need me.” Again, Nora savored his words: They had need of her talents.

Hirizjahkinis’s red boots were moving through the snow with swift determination.

“Why didn’t you land in the courtyard?” Nora asked her.

“Oh, Aruendiel’s protection spells are ridiculously strong!” Hirizjahkinis said. “It is almost a sign of timidity, don’t you think?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Nora said, although, as always, she could not help but relish the elan of Hirizjahkinis’s pronouncements on Aruendiel. At the gate she thought again of Aruendiel’s injunction not to leave the castle. Not one step, he had said. But now he had authorized her leaving, had ordered her to leave.

Sure enough, nothing terrible happened as she went through the gate. An Avaguri’s mount was tethered just outside the wall. Nora was reassured to see that Hirizjahkinis’s mount, unlike the one that Aruendiel had made, had a broad saddle with stirrup-like supports for the feet. Hirizjahkinis indicated that she should seat herself. Nora turned to Mrs. Toristel for a good-bye hug.

“He wouldn’t send for you, not this way,” Mrs. Toristel hissed in Nora’s ear. “He’d come to fetch you himself. He wouldn’t trust even her—not with you.”

Nora hugged Mrs. Toristel a little tighter and thought of black elves and how Mrs. Toristel had never liked Hirizjahkinis; what a shame she couldn’t be more tolerant of female magicians and people with darker skin. And yet what Mrs. Toristel had said about Aruendiel—that he would come himself—felt like the truth. She heard again the cold, angry seriousness in his voice when he had called Nora Ilissa’s prey and forbade her to leave the castle.

Was there some mistake? That was definitely Aruendiel’s handwriting in the note, Nora thought, as she turned away from Mrs. Toristel and toward Hirizjahkinis. But Mrs. Toristel must have seen the confusion in her face.

“I should send some supplies with you,” the housekeeper said loudly, catching Nora’s arm. “Some bacon, in case his lordship gets tired of the sausage.” She bobbed a slight curtsy toward Hirizjahkinis. “It won’t take but a few minutes, if you come back to the kitchen to help me, Nora.”

“We are leaving now,” Hirizjahkinis said. She stepped toward them and took hold of Nora’s free wrist. All playfulness was gone from her voice. “We can’t waste any more time.”

“What?” Instinctively, Nora tried to pull her wrist out of Hirizjahkinis’s grasp.

Mrs. Toristel screamed. Loosing Nora’s arm, she sank down on her knees, her face like crumpled paper. Nora bent down to help her, but Hirizjahkinis jerked her away.

“Hirizjahkinis? What the hell? Let me go!”

“Please don’t struggle,” Hirizjahkinis said, grabbing Nora’s other wrist. “You’ll just tire yourself out, with nothing to show for it.” Her hands were like iron clamps. Nora kicked at her, hard, but the red boots feinted neatly. “Don’t be tiresome, Nora.”

“This is Faitoren enchantment,” Nora said, kicking again—this time she connected with one of the red boots, and Hirizjahkinis grimaced. “Hirizjahkinis, listen to me. Ilissa has gotten to you—she’s tricked you. You don’t want to do this—not really.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” Hirizjahkinis said, pulling Nora by the wrists toward the Avaguri’s mount. Nora scanned her dark face for signs of enchantment, submission to a foreign will, but she looked as wise, kind, and tough as ever. “Come on, sweet,” Hirizjahkinis added. “I don’t want to make things any harder for your friend than I have to.”

“Mrs. Toristel? What have you done to her?” From the corner of her eye, Nora could see the housekeeper thrashing about in the snow. The sight energized her; with a mad twist, Nora pulled one wrist free.

“Darling, I think I need a little help here,” Hirizjahkinis called.

The Avaguri’s mount moved. It was not an Avaguri’s mount any longer. Its wings lifted—webbed and leathery, not feathered. It raised a long, toothy grin as friendly as a chain saw. Nora forgot to breathe, although her mouth was open.

“Raclin, why don’t you take her now?” Hirizjahkinis said. “And—oh, what is this?”

Blue fire had suddenly erupted underfoot, clutching at the red boots and the fur trim of Hirizjahkinis’s cloak. She clucked in annoyance, stamping her foot. The flames skirted Nora, but swarmed around Raclin’s clawed feet. He growled, raising one forelimb and shaking it. A spray of blue fire flew through the air and landed hissing in the snow, but it was not quenched; the flames streamed determinedly back toward Raclin.

Aruendiel had not left his domain undefended. There was a new tension in the atmosphere, the throb of deep magic. From the direction of the forest came a savage howling.

“Take her, I said,” Hirizjahkinis shouted, except that—it was all too clear now—she was not Hirizjahkinis. For a moment Nora wondered crazily if there had ever been a Hirizjahkinis. Then there was a blur of dark wings and blue fire, and she felt Raclin’s claws seize her from behind, digging into her arm and rib cage. He’s going to try to claw me to death again, she thought, and then her feet left the ground.

“No!” Nora swung her legs, trying to wrench herself out of Raclin’s grasp, and for a glorious instant she felt his claws slip on her heavy cloak, but almost immediately he found a better grip under her armpit. She looked down. Mrs. Toristel was sitting up in the snow, her hand pressed to her chest—already too far away for Nora to make out her expression clearly. Nora leveled her gaze and found herself rising past the window of Aruendiel’s tower workshop, some four stories above the ground, and after that she could not bring herself to struggle anymore. With horrified fascination, she watched the castle roof and the snow-covered fields spin and dwindle beneath her dangling feet.

She became aware that some sort of conversation was going on behind her—Raclin shrieking like broken machinery; a cool, sweet voice saying something musical and interminable in what Nora recognized, with heaviness in her heart, as the Faitoren tongue. She-who-had-pretended-to-be-Hirizjahkinis must be riding on Raclin’s back. She was trying to soothe Raclin, Nora decided after listening for a little while—perhaps something to do with the blue flames that were still licking around the edges of his wings, although unfortunately they seemed to be causing little real damage.

“Ilissa!” Nora called over her shoulder.

A delighted laugh. “Nora, dearest! You did know it was me, after all.”