walked into the room. She couldn’t help uttering a small gasp when she saw him. It was almost like seeing a ghost.
Aruendiel looked severe as he caught Nora’s strangled exclamation. “Have you not been able to remove the spell, Hiriz?”
“No, Mistress Nora can speak quite well again—or she could if I were not talking so much myself,” said Hirizjahkinis.
“I’m fine now,” Nora said. She stared at Aruendiel, looking hard for some sign that he had once been dead. His face and voice seemed tired, his body hunched beneath his long traveling cloak, but he was apparently quite alive.
“Are you sure? I can barely hear her,” he said crossly to Hirizjahkinis. “So how did you undo the spell? There are always at least two or three major, undefended flaws in every piece of Faitoren magic, no matter how strong it is.”
“If there were any in this spell, I did not find them!” Hirizjahkinis said. “I used an embodiment spell and then pulled it out of her throat. I have made quite a study of embodiment magic in recent years, you know. It’s very useful for exorcisms.”
Aruendiel gave her a look that registered both disbelief and disapproval. He pulled open Nora’s mouth, and surveyed her throat critically. She felt an irresistible tickle, so that when he let go of her jaw, she went into another coughing fit. At last she hacked up a translucent filament, recognizable as one of the legs from the millipede creature.
“Not up to your usual standard, Hirizjahkinis,” Aruendiel said.
“Who knew the thing would have so many legs!” Hirizjahkinis said.
He turned back to Nora. “The palace chamberlain, when I encountered him just now, went to some pains to tell me what a treasure you broke today. One of the few artifacts to escape the destruction of Old Semr.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Nora said. “I wasn’t even close to it when it broke. I’m not sure, but—well, it looked almost as though it jumped.”
“Unusual behavior for a clay figure,” Aruendiel said. He dropped his gaze downward. “Your fingernails are dirty.”
She noticed, to her chagrin, that he was right. “So what? I was working in your garden,” she said, curling her fingers to hide the dark crescents under her nails. “I didn’t have time to clean my hands before we left your castle.”
“Or any time since we arrived, apparently. You’re hardly in a state to be presented to the king. He has specifically commanded that you attend him tonight.”
“Do I have to?”
“Unfortunately, not only are you required to go, but Hirizjahkinis and I must go, too. But you are the main object of the king’s interest. He is eager to meet the woman who has been the center of so much controversy today, especially since he has learned that you come from another world. Let us make haste.”
“Don’t be absurd, Aruendiel,” Hirizjahkinis said sharply. “We certainly have time to make ourselves more presentable. I for one am feeling quite dingy after such a long day.” To Nora’s eye, she looked as fresh as she had that morning, every pleat of her linen robe still crisp. “And what of Ilissa? Where is she now?”
“I followed her to the place where I left Raclin turned to stone. When I left, she was engaged in the task of transporting him home so that she can undo my spell there.”
“Oh?” asked Hirizjahkinis with interest. “He must be very heavy.”
Aruendiel laughed aloud. “She is nothing if not resourceful. She is also determined to punish that unfortunate Faitoren who was posing as Bouragonr. Gaibon, his name is. I could overhear her abusing him savagely for being stupid enough to be unmasked.”
“So—”
“So she is forcing him to
Gaibon was the Faitoren who threw Moscelle over, Nora remembered. Odd that Ilissa hadn’t taken Vulpin along for such an important assignment; perhaps he was still out of favor for letting Nora escape.
She pictured Gaibon’s richly dressed figure staggering through the dark woods under the weight of a multi- ton gargoyle while Ilissa scolded him from behind. It was hard not to feel sorry for him—but equally hard not to laugh.
Nora coughed a little instead. Her throat still felt scratchy.
Whatever the king had anticipated, Nora evidently did not live up to his expectations. His broad face wore a faint, dull frown of puzzlement as she answered his questions.
He showed a stirring of interest when she mentioned that her world had no magicians in it. “But how can that be?” he asked.
“Machinery,” said Nora in a clear, confident tone that, she hoped, implied that the exact functioning of such devices was self-evident. She was still mindful of having once tried and failed to explain electricity to Mrs. Toristel. “We have complex mechanisms that do the work that magicians do in this world. Machines that can fly or travel at great speeds—all kinds of things.”
The king seemed struck by this idea. “These mechanisms, can they make war?”
“No,” Nora lied firmly. It had taken him no time to make that particular connection. Rulers must be much the same in all worlds, she thought. She lost his attention for good when she mentioned that there were also very few kings in her world. He dismissed her with a nod.
Nora curtsied and backed away, glancing behind just in time to avoid falling off the dais. She descended to the main level of the banquet hall, into the throng of courtiers. In the press of silk, velvet, and brocade, she was uncomfortably aware of the plainness of her dress; Hirizjahkinis had pressed a palace maid into finding Nora something more suitable for court than Mrs. Toristel’s hand-me-down, but even Nora could tell that the severe blue-and-black gown she’d borrowed was unquestionably out of style. At least her fingernails were clean now.
This was different from Ilissa’s court, she thought, struggling through the crowd. The candles were smokier, dimmer, hotter, making the room unpleasantly warm. The people in it were lavishly dressed but not all of them were young, slender, and lovely. They moved less gracefully than the Faitoren did, with more vigor. They were at work, she thought as she watched one man waylay two more richly dressed courtiers, ignoring their attempt to ignore him. A young man addressed a middle-aged woman, his eyes sliding to the teenage girl behind her. There was more at stake here than at a Faitoren ball, Nora guessed: matches to be made, patrons to be flattered, alliances to be forged, enemies to be humiliated. Not that all those things didn’t happen among the Faitoren, too, but it was more of a game for them, to keep from dying of boredom in their tiny prison kingdom. Or maybe, she thought, the energy in this room had something to do with the fact that the people before her were human beings, not Faitoren, with only a human lifetime to accomplish all of the things that they wanted to do.
Of course, some people in the room had already had more than a human lifetime. Her eyes sought out Aruendiel, his dark head visible above the crowd. What was it like to die and return to life? No wonder there was something spooky about him. But he had saved her life today, she reminded herself. Again. Even if only to get back at Ilissa.
The music coming from the gallery suddenly grew louder. A bard was singing, and the crowd moved toward the walls, opening a space in the center of the room. Nora found a perch on steps leading to a side door. A pair of dwarfs cartwheeled through the crowd and began juggling glass balls. Then a third dwarf, a woman, joined them for an acrobatics exhibition that was bawdy, borderline sadistic, and extremely funny if you liked fart jokes. Most of the court apparently did. The dwarfs were followed by another bard, who sang for a long time in what sounded like a very old-fashioned form of Ors about a battle, a river, and a boat with black sails. As he sang, the room filled with the cheerful buzz of conversation again. The queen yawned.
