“Hmm. Aruendiel would say that a good magician—or wizard—can turn a battle, but not just with magic—it takes brains and strategy.” She added: “And of course he’d say that you need good soldiers, too.”
After a moment, Perin said: “For all the ill things I’ve heard of Lord Aruendiel, I never heard that he was a stupid man or a bad wizard. How was he taken captive?”
“I don’t know,” she said unhappily. What had Ilissa found, rummaging through Nora’s mind? Nora remembered again that awful last night at the castle, how she and Aruendiel had quarreled over his poisonous regret at being alive. Ilissa traps you with what you want. And if what you want is to die—
She wrenched her attention back to Perin. “I don’t know. He’s been in worse fixes than this.”
Without hesitation, Perin said: “Then he will certainly get out of this one, too.”
The route that Perin had chosen took them along the northern side of a chain of narrow islands that rose from the icy marsh. The high ground provided some shelter from the wind, and also helped screen them from observation from the south and west. There was a deepening smudge of smoke on the southwest horizon—army campfires, Perin said. Twice, late in the afternoon, the wind blew the faint sound of a military horn to them.
The problem was that they could not tell which army was closest. Perin climbed a hill on one island for a better look, but could not make out any standards.
He looked thoughtful, though, as he came down the slope. “It’s a sizable force,” he said. “In this climate, an army—at least, a human army—has no reason to put off fighting any longer than it has to. Our forces will attack as soon as they have sufficient strength.”
Nora heard some regret in his voice. “Do you want to join them?” she asked.
“I’ll try to make up for my absence by delivering Lord Aruendiel.”
He was always careful to use Aruendiel’s title, although Nora never did. It seemed uncharacteristic of Perin to be such a stickler for correctness, like Lady Pusieuv, but perhaps if you were in line to have Lord in front of your name someday—as Perin evidently was—you paid more attention to things like titles.
It might also be, Nora thought, that Perin was the sort of person who found formality more useful in dealing with those he did not consider friends. His pleasant face always looked slightly harder whenever the magician’s name came up. She remembered the warning he’d given her in Semr.
His antipathy to the magician was odd, though, since he could be affable even to the ice demon. Gradually, he managed to coax the demon to tell them what it could about its former hunting ground of Maarikok. The castle, they learned, occupied a rocky promontory on one side of the island, and its gates opened to a narrow track, easily defended, carved into the side of a ridge. There was no other entrance.
Nora groaned inwardly at this. If the Faitoren mounted any kind of defense at all, she did not see how she and Perin could get into the castle. She wished that she had learned even one invisibility spell, or a transformation spell advanced enough to work on a human being.
“How did you get into the castle?” Perin asked the ice demon.
It preened slightly. “I went around to the back. They thought they were safe, but when they saw me—oh, they were so afraid, it was a feast.”
“But exactly how did you get in?” he pursued.
“I went up the cliffs. And through the wall.”
“How? Is there another entrance?”
“I made one. I made my hand into water and slipped it into the crack.” The ice demon’s single hand swerved back and forth to illustrate. “And then I made my hand hard, and the stones broke apart.”
Perin looked puzzled, but Nora nodded, thinking of how a glass filled with water will crack in the freezer. The ice demon had used some basic kitchen science combined with its own brand of magic. “You can melt yourself at will?” she asked.
“If I wish to. But why should I wish to? People will only lock you up in little glass bottles.” The demon’s pink mouth worked savagely.
“I haven’t forgotten our bargain,” Nora said soothingly, although she was dreading the moment when she would have to fulfill her promise. It seemed suicidal to give the demon its body back, and she kept wondering if she should renege and refuse to open the glass bottles she carried. And yet the ice demon, so far, had lived up to its side of the agreement—and more, since it had left Perin untouched.
Later, she thought, I’ll sort this out later. Let me get into Maarikok first.
They camped that evening on an islet, Maarikok no more than two hours away. Perin at first opposed lighting a campfire so close to the enemy, until Nora showed him that she could build a fire with jet-black flames and smoke that trickled away inconspicuously along the ground. The smoke spell came from Vlonicl; the black flames were her own idea, a variation on one of the spells that Hirizjahkinis had taught her. She was pleased to see that Perin was impressed.
“I was not sure what to think when you told me that you had been learning magic,” he said, watching a tendril of smoke flow across his foot.
“You thought that a woman could not be a magician,” Nora said.
“That’s right. But I was more surprised that a person like you—honest and good-hearted—would want to practice magic.”
“I enjoy it,” she said, smiling. “Why don’t you like magicians?”
“We don’t have much use for wizards in my family. There’s more glory to be gained with a good brain and a good sword.”
“But you see magic can be useful,” she said, indicating the fire.
“I don’t dispute that. Why do you enjoy practicing magic?”
“Oh.” Nora stared into the fire’s shadowy flicker, only a shade lighter than the gathering twilight. Because magic was interesting and because she seemed to be good at it. But that was not the whole answer. She glanced at Perin, and the steady current of his interest emboldened her to try to explain. “Practicing magic takes a kind of awareness that you don’t feel ordinarily,” she said haltingly. “You have to really
More drily she added: “That’s when everything goes well, of course. There are a lot of details that you have to get right. That’s what I spend most of my time working on.”
“And Lord Aruendiel is your tutor.” It was not a question, but there was a faint note of incredulity in Perin’s voice.
“Yes, a very good one.” She told him about working in Aruendiel’s study in the afternoons, how he assigned her spells to learn, then watched and critiqued the way she performed them.
“And the rest of the time, what do you do?” Perin asked. She told him. Now he was openly shocked. “You cook and clean and take care of the livestock? Doesn’t Lord Aruendiel keep enough servants to spare you such work?”
Nora smiled: Had Perin forgotten how he had taken her for a servant once? “Just the housekeeper and her husband.”
“You surprise me. The great Lord Aruendiel, with only two servants?” With a knowing grin, he added: “I suppose the peasants are afraid to work for him.”
“Possibly,” Nora said. There was truth in Perin’s observation, but she was unwilling to say anything that would turn him more strongly against Aruendiel.
“And how large is his garrison?”
“He doesn’t have one. I don’t think he needs one, being a magician.”
“Perhaps not.” He questioned Nora more about the size of Aruendiel’s holdings. Nora regretted that she had brought up Aruendiel’s finances—guiltily she remembered the near fiasco of her new boots—but it was difficult to be guarded with Perin. Finally he said, sounding faintly amused: “I didn’t know that Lord Aruendiel had such a modest estate. It sounds much smaller than my own father’s estate, which—I will be honest with you—is not grand at all. But the rumor in Semr is,” he added, with a shrewd look, “that Lord Aruendiel will soon be much
