armies.”
“Enough, Aruendiel! Now, we need the Kavareen for another task, Mistress Nora, so we must ask you to come with us.” Hirizjahkinis spoke quickly to the Kavareen in the singsong tongue. The animal jumped off the divan and stalked out of the room.
“Now, the Kavareen has a very keen nose,” Hirizjahkinis told Aruendiel as they followed. “Especially for magic.”
“Isn’t that how it tracked you down and almost killed you, that time in the desert?”
“Luckily, I killed it first. He can tell us exactly where Ilissa has been in the palace and—what is even better —where she did magic.”
They came to an enormous hall, forested with octagonal pillars. A crowd was milling around the base of the pillars, the women in luxurious trailing gowns, the men in equally lavish long coats or tunics. The Kavareen growled and sat down. “Ilissa was certainly here, and worked some magic,” Hirizjahkinis said, glancing around.
“Not surprisingly—this is the main reception hall,” Aruendiel said. “She was probably in and out of here every day of her visit.”
They made a slow circuit of the hall. Several people hailed Aruendiel, but he gave only the most perfunctory of responses. Hirizjahkinis, by contrast, made a sort of dignified progress around the room, a small, erect figure who smiled warmly at those who greeted her, without showing the slightest inclination to halt her steps for anyone.
“I can’t find anything,” Hirizjahkinis said when they had finished.
“Nor I,” he said.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Nora asked.
“Some evidence of recent magic,” Aruendiel said dismissively. “Nothing that you would know about.”
He had said harsher things to her before, but for some reason this offhand remark stung especially. Nora frowned and asked: “Is there any chance that we’ll run into Ilissa herself?”
Aruendiel studied her for a moment. “Ilissa would like to see you,” he said. “She told us so today. She said she would welcome you back into her family.”
“I hope you told her I’d rather die! You’re not going to send me back to her—are you?”
“Don’t torment her, Aruendiel,” said Hirizjahkinis. “Mistress Nora, Ilissa is about to leave Semr, but not with you. We spent quite a long time talking about you this afternoon—I know, you are probably distressed to hear this—but in the end it helped us discover that Ilissa had been sly enough to put a Faitoren in place of the king’s magician, and even King Abele was not blind enough to overlook her little trick.”
“Hmm,” Nora said. “I’d like to hear more about this.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Hirizjahkinis. “Now, where next? Ah, the Kavareen thinks we should go to the east wing.”
They went to the east wing, and then the old east wing. Then the queen’s pavilion, the queen’s gallery, and the queen’s drawing rooms. The summer banquet hall, and the two winter banquet halls. It almost seemed to Nora that she was back in the endless splendor of Ilissa’s castle.
“Is there any room in the entire palace that she didn’t visit?” Aruendiel groaned as they left the long gallery where the king’s armor was on display.
The north tower. The king’s private reception hall. The buttery. The wine cellar.
“Is Ilissa much of a drinker?” Hirizjahkinis asked.
“She served oceans of wine at her parties,” Nora said before Aruendiel could answer.
“That wasn’t real wine,” he said dismissively. “I wonder if she came down here to poison a bottle for Bouragonr?”
“Or to lock him up in one of these bottles.”
Nora moaned inwardly. There were thousands of dark and dusty bottles lying on racks in the cellar. She waited in the semidarkness while Aruendiel and Hirizjahkinis went slowly up and down the narrow aisles, occasionally running a finger along the curved side of a bottle. They found nothing.
The central courtyard. The library.
“The library?” Aruendiel stopped short. “The Kavareen is playing games with us. Ilissa has no interest in books. The Faitoren are magical beings; she’s never had to read a spell in her life.”
The Kavareen twitched its tail and emitted a long, snarling whine.
“No, she was here,” Hirizjahkinis insisted. “The Kavareen says she did some very strong magic here, too.”
Nora was looking around with interest. It was a long room, full of light from a row of high windows along one wall. The other walls were lined with bookshelves or wooden compartments designed for scrolls. There were a few reading stands, and a table strewn with oversize books, some of them open to show graceful lines of brushstrokes and bright touches of illustration. At the far end of the room, through an arched doorway, were more shelves, evidently the beginning of the stacks. Nora tried to spell out some of the Ors titles on the shelves nearest her.
Nora reread the last title, puzzled, wondering if she had read it correctly, and then looked around quickly for Aruendiel himself. He and Hirizjahkinis were disappearing through the arched doorway. She pulled the book off the shelf and scanned the pages for Aruendiel’s name, but she could make almost nothing out of the thicket of ink that filled the page. “I hate being illiterate,” she muttered.
She followed the others into a second room of bookshelves, half-lit by a single small window, where they were watching the Kavareen pace up and down the aisles. The creature kept looking up at the books and making a faint snicker-snicker sound that seemed to Nora to indicate some degree of frustration. But perhaps, she thought, she was only projecting her own feelings.
“He says it’s here,” Hirizjahkinis said.
“This room is where the books of magic are kept,” Aruendiel objected. “You don’t think he could be reacting to them? Some of the books themselves are enchanted, of course.”
Both of the magicians were speaking more softly than usual, Nora noticed. Library behavior must be the same in all worlds.
“Let’s take a look. We will need more light.”
Hirizjahkinis’s tangle of gold necklaces suddenly gleamed brighter, much brighter, to yield a flickering yellow light that illuminated the bookshelf in front of her. She began to examine the array of books, touching the spine of each. Aruendiel cupped his hand, and flames blazed up inside his palm, so close to the nearest shelf that Nora feared the books would catch fire. Then she saw how pale and thin, almost watery, the flames were. Like the ghost of a fire, she thought.
As the magicians worked their way through the stacks, Nora drifted along behind Aruendiel, trying to stay close enough to see by his light without being obtrusive. She felt some envy of Hirizjahkinis—Aruendiel treated her as an equal, someone whose opinion he obviously respected, even if he complained about the Kavareen. How long did it take Hirizjahkinis to become a magician? How long had it taken Aruendiel, for that matter? Or were magicians born, not made?
With some wistfulness, Nora ran her fingers over the gilt seal—a snake twined around a crescent moon— stamped on the frayed black spine of a volume as big as the unabridged dictionary.
“Stop that,” said Aruendiel, glancing back at her.
“Eh?” Hirizjahkinis called from another aisle.
“Not you.”
The magic books were a greater distraction for the magicians, though. Aruendiel kept stopping to yank books off the shelf and leaf through them, balancing them awkwardly in the crook of his elbow while cradling his handful of fire. Judging from the sounds coming from the other aisle, Hirizjahkinis was also browsing.
“Pogo Vernish’s book on transformations. I didn’t know they had a copy here.”
“Isn’t it completely out of date? . . . You’re right, Aruendiel, some of these books are enchanted. This spell is meant to drive the reader mad.”
