The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

Sunglasses, Nora thought, squinting painfully into the fierce white glare, what I wouldn’t do for a pair of sunglasses.

“Here, darling.” Ilissa held out a pair of Ray-Bans. “You always have such good ideas,” she said approvingly.

Nora took the glasses numbly and put them on. Ilissa slipped on a pair of her own, with big smoky lenses that emphasized the delicate planes of her face. She can read my mind, Nora thought. Did she do something to me while I was asleep? She found—

“That nasty little braid of hair you were clutching—was it Aruendiel’s?”

“Hirizjahkinis’s,” Nora said reluctantly. “Her token.”

“I should have known. Such coarse hair. You had it hidden in your clothes, didn’t you? All the time we were talking last night, you were calling her. I’m disappointed, Nora. It was not very trusting of you.”

“No, not really,” Nora agreed.

“And you really believe that woman will answer your summons.” Ilissa looked at her with mocking pity.

Nora shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“If she manages to rescue Aruendiel, perhaps she will spare some time for you.”

Nora felt her breath dwindle. “Where is he?”

“Don’t worry, my sweet! He was still alive, at least when Dorneng left him.”

“Where?”

Ilissa only laughed. “You must be hungry.” She indicated a small lacquered table that had just appeared in the snow. A pair of roasted partridges roosted in a silver dish, mantled in a thick brown sauce.

Until a minute ago, Nora had been famished. She had no interest in food now.

“Just a bite?” Ilissa coaxed. “Perhaps something sweet?” The partridges were replaced by a satiny disk of dark chocolate cake, studded with fresh raspberries.

Nora shook her head. “Where is Aruendiel?” she asked again.

“You should eat something, my dear,” Ilissa said as a shadow passed overhead. Nora cringed, thinking of Raclin, but it was just the Avaguri’s mount. Dorneng landed, then stomped through the snow toward the two women.

“We can leave now,” he said to Ilissa.

“Already? Good.” Cake and table disappeared. “Come, Nora.” Ilissa tugged gently on the silver chain, smiling.

Nora braced to resist, but once again she was dragged onto the Avaguri’s mount while her arms and legs were bound. Dorneng and Ilissa moved away to confer just out of earshot. Dorneng looked tense; Ilissa, assured and radiant, pressing some point that he seemed reluctant to accept. After a few minutes, they evidently reached some sort of resolution, and walked back to where Nora waited.

Ilissa smiled at her as Dorneng took his seat on the Avaguri’s mount. “You’re going back to your world now, darling! I’ll see you again soon.” She leaned close to remove the chain from Nora’s throat and to adjust Nora’s wool cap, pulling it securely over her ears. Her warm fingers brushed Nora’s cheek, smelling of roses and cinnamon.

For a moment, Nora wished fiercely that Ilissa was as good and kind as she made herself appear. She forced herself to look away. As the Avaguri’s mount rose, she watched Ilissa waving gracefully, and felt a crushing sense of loss and sorrow.

Nora reminded herself that she was in deadly peril, and the burden lightened.

Dorneng steered the Avaguri’s mount at a low altitude as though he were anxious to avoid scrutiny from afar. They were heading toward a thread of smoke in the bright western sky.

“How long have you been working with Ilissa?” Nora asked. When Dorneng did not reply, she prompted him: “I’m assuming since sometime before you came to visit and almost turned me into a marble statue.”

He shifted in his saddle. “That was a—she was giving me a proof of her good faith. She told me that I would be able to remove the ring that no one else could.”

“For that, I almost wound up a statue?”

“She didn’t say what would happen.”

“Oh, she didn’t even hint?”

Under his furs, Dorneng hunched his shoulders. “The transformation was supposed to be fast,” he said. “Painless. But Lord Aruendiel insisted on trying to slow it down, to stop it. Otherwise you wouldn’t even have known it was happening.”

“I doubt that very strongly,” Nora said.

Finally, they landed beside a small fire, burning sluggishly, surrounded by trampled snow—and then, a vastness of untrampled snow. Nora could see nothing else.

But Dorneng was alert. He scrambled off the Avaguri’s mount and paced a wide circle around the fire. Occasionally he stopped and seemed to paw the air with a gloved hand. When he returned to the Avaguri’s mount, he looked excited, anxious. “Everything’s ready,” he announced, as though Nora would know what he was talking about. “They should be here shortly.”

They were Ilissa and Raclin, presumably. “Ready for what?” she asked sharply, but Dorneng paid no attention. He scanned the empty sky, frowning, looking for Ilissa.

Nora hazarded a guess: “Is there a door here to my world?”

“Yes,” he said, with a suspicious look.

“How do you go through it?”

Another question that Dorneng refused to answer. He kept glancing at the sky as though willing Ilissa to appear. He made another circuit, now with the air of someone trying to distract himself.

“Maybe they ran into trouble,” Nora said when he drifted close to her again.

Dorneng bit his lip and eyed Nora speculatively. “She wants to kill you herself,” he said suddenly.

“Kill me?” Nora repeated.

“You married her son, right? She says she’s the only one entitled to kill a member of the Faitoren royal house. The problem is,” he added, with a harried expression, “we don’t have much time.”

“What do you mean, kill me?” Nora tried to rinse the panic from her voice. “What does that have to do with the door to my world?”

“I need you to hold it open. It could close at any time, unless I set a guard on it. So your blood needs to be spilled now.” He declared, as though to himself: “I don’t think I can wait.”

“Oh, but I think you’d better,” Nora said quickly. “Ilissa will be very angry if you go against her wishes. You know what she’s like.”

“She’ll be angrier if I let the door close,” he said. “It’s best to have a guardian.”

Something stirred in Nora’s memory. I must wait, condemned for centuries long to guard this gate. The words engraved on a tombstone in a mountain graveyard. A spell, Aruendiel had speculated. Emmeline Anne, that was the name on the stone.

“So this is one of those spells that’s powered by a dead person?” Nora asked incredulously. “You’re going to try to put me, my ghost, into a spell so that I can hold some stupid door open for you and Ilissa?” And the rest of the Faitoren, she realized. That was what Ilissa meant by a place where they could live undisturbed. Nora wondered if this meant her unsuspecting, unmagical world was in danger. Only if Ilissa didn’t get a TV show or a movie deal within a couple of weeks.

Dorneng sighed. “I can’t wait for her,” he said, as though he had come to a decision. “She won’t mind that much. It’s not as though you were born royal.”

Nora was dragged from her seat by invisible power. Inexorably she was hauled, pushed, rolled, pummeled through the snow. As she struggled in vain, Dorneng paced beside her, looking more relaxed now that he had made up his mind.

“It will be quick. Not like the petrifaction spell. And when your blood is spilled in this world, and then your corpse is returned to your world, your ghost will haunt what’s in between,” he explained helpfully. “So the gate stays open.”

“I won’t let you through!”

He chortled. “You’ll do exactly as the spell commands you.”

Oh, hell, Nora thought. Not how I’d planned to spend my afterlife. Aruendiel, where are you?