The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

anyone with black skin before. And, tell me,” she added, “are you Aruendiel’s mistress?”

Startled, Nora shook her head as vigorously she could.

“I am sorry, I do not mean to offend you. Well, too bad for him!” Hirizjahkinis chuckled.

Nora shook her head again, smiling very deliberately in such a way as to say never in a million years.

“I only ask because in times past, he would have expected, as a matter of course—well, I must tell you, Aruendiel saved my life, too. Oh, yes. This was long ago, back in my home country, when I was very young. I was a nun, a priestess of the Holy Sister Night, but I broke my vows of purity. So they were going to stone me to death, until Aruendiel happened by, saw me tied up in front of the temple, and decided to spirit me away. It was not easy—the witch priestesses are powerful—but he managed it. We escaped into the mountains, we found a cave to spend the night in, and then!” She went into a brief gale of laughter.

“Well, I was very grateful for my rescue, but not that grateful. It took me some time to make him understand the situation. Aruendiel had assumed that I’d broken my vows with a man. Lady moon, he was furious!”

With slight consternation, Nora telegraphed another question with her eyebrows.

“Oh, no, Aruendiel did not force me, nothing like that. But he was very disappointed! He was used to a different reception from women he wished to bed.” Hirizjahkinis laughed again, then looked suddenly troubled. “I would be happier if you were his mistress. It would be a sign that he takes some joy in living. Do you think he does?”

Nora looked blank, then made an equivocating gesture with her hand: I guess so. I don’t really know.

“I do not think he does, myself. He takes pleasure in magic, of course—how can one not? But to hole up in that backwoods castle of his for so many years, and this obsession with Ilissa! She is a bad one, but she is not worth so much attention. She is the sort of creature who, if she cannot be loved, is very pleased to be hated. It would be much worse for her to simply be forgotten.”

Hirizjahkinis sighed. “Well, I am rambling on. Let us see about taking off this spell.” She studied Nora from several different angles, peered down her throat, rubbed a finger along her neck, touched her own neck, muttered to herself, and then sat back to regard Nora once again.

“These Faitoren spells, there’s no logic to them,” she said, more to herself than to Nora. “I can’t even find where this one begins. Well, we must try something.”

Her first attempt only made Nora’s ears ring. The second did nothing. The third produced a violent coughing fit. After the fourth try, Nora found that she could sing but not speak, and in fact could only sing snatches of an aria that she thought might be Puccini. “Very pretty,” said the magician. “But I suppose you want to be able to talk, too.” Slightly to Nora’s regret, she undid the singing spell and made a few more tries until Nora’s throat began to feel as though she were in the first stages of a cold.

“By the sweet night, Aruendiel! What sort of task have you set me? Now we must really hope Ilissa does not kill him again, because I am running out of ideas.”

Nora wondered if she had heard Hirizjahkinis correctly. “Did you say kill him again?” she tried to ask, forgetting that she had lost her voice.

Hirizjahkinis had no difficulty understanding. “Oh, yes, Ilissa killed him,” she said composedly. “That is another reason for him to hate her.”

“Killed? Dead?” Nora mouthed, but Hirizjahkinis only laughed a deep, rumbling chuckle, as though she enjoyed keeping Nora in suspense.

“I can see you are very impatient to retrieve your voice,” she said. “I have one more idea. I confess that I cannot neatly unpeel this spell and take it off in one piece, as Aruendiel might be able to do, but I know another way. A little cruder and not as pleasant for you, but you will have your voice back. Would you like me to try it?”

Apprehensively, Nora nodded.

Hirizjahkinis pulled off one of her golden bracelets. In her hands it reshaped itself into a pair of long tweezers. “Open your mouth,” she said, leaning closer. “Wide, wider. Take a deep breath. Now—”

Nora choked, her throat clogged with something solid that had not been there a moment before. Worse, the thing was alive. She could feel it moving just below her larynx. She would have shrieked if she could, but all she could do was gag.

“Careful, careful!” Standing up, Hirizjahkinis forced Nora’s head back and reached carefully into her mouth with the tweezers. Another sickening throb in her throat, and then the blockage loosened. Hirizjahkinis pulled out a pale, wet, writhing ribbon and dropped it on the table. Nora went into a prolonged coughing fit.

“What is it?” she asked hoarsely, when she could get her breath.

Hirizjahkinis poked disdainfully at the white thing with the tweezers. It was fat, segmented, and many- legged, much like a large millipede. Its armored body had a silvery, mother-of-pearl opalescence.

“It is Ilissa’s spell. Lovely, isn’t it? I simply gave it a physical form, something I could get a grip on.”

“Ugh!” Nora cleared her throat passionately again, and then again.

There was a knock on the door, and a young man in a long blue coat came in. His brown hair was scraped back in a braid from a doughy face; Nora recognized him as the magician who had been talking to Hirizjahkinis earlier. “Lady Hirizjahkinis,” he said, ducking his head slightly, “I wondered whether you might need some assistance with the silencing spell.”

“If you had come sooner, I might have used your help, Dorneng. The spell was very stubborn. But I have prevailed, as you can see.” She indicated the pale curling thing on the table.

“Oh, how interesting,” he said, coming closer. “I have never seen a Faitoren spell—it’s still very much alive, isn’t it?”

“Yes, although it will probably die soon. If it doesn’t, I will kill it, the horrid thing.”

“Oh!” He seemed mildly shocked. “Would you mind if I took it away with me? There is so much to learn about the Faitoren magic, and so few opportunities.”

“Please,” said Hirizjahkinis with a wave of her hand. Dorneng produced a blue glass jar from a pocket of his coat, and, using a napkin, he carefully nudged the insectile form into the jar and inserted a plug. He thanked Hirizjahkinis with more warmth than Nora felt the disgusting thing in the jar justified, then left the room.

Nora thanked Hirizjahkinis, too, and was about to ask whether all Ilissa’s spells were similarly repulsive, when she remembered the questions she’d wanted to ask: “What you said before—that Ilissa killed Aruendiel— what did you mean by that?”

“I meant that she killed him.”

Chilled, Nora objected: “But he’s not dead.”

“Not anymore.” Hirizjahkinis gave a knowing smile.

“Do you mean magicians don’t die?”

“Magicians die, as any human does. But sometimes they have friends who are other magicians.”

After a moment, Nora said: “You raised him from the dead.”

“I helped. There were several of us.”

“You can do that?”

“Sometimes.”

It was easier to believe that magicians could control the weather or turn people into stone. But if you could bring back the dead—Nora felt a kind of greedy, astonished hope, then reflected that Hirizjahkinis might simply mean something like the kind of miracle that paramedics accomplished every day in her own world for victims of heart attacks or drownings. “How did he die?” she asked.

“He fell,” Hirizjahkinis said, still smiling, but with a trace of sadness. “It was in the war, during a skirmish in the mountains. He was riding an Avaguri’s mount—it’s a flying device—and Ilissa managed to unseat him. He fell a long way down onto a mountain. And then an avalanche took him away. We didn’t find his body for weeks.”

“Oh. How awful.” It felt odd to be expressing condolences for someone who was no longer dead. Another thought struck her. “An Avaguri’s mount, is it made out of wood and feathers?”

“It can be. Why do you ask?”

“We flew here to Semr on one.”

“He flew here on an Avaguri’s mount?” Hirizjahkinis said. “That is surprising. He does not like to fly now—at least not when it’s not his own wings.”

“When he fell, is that how he broke all of his b—” Nora began to say, when the door opened and Aruendiel