The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

Chapter 27

What’s wrong?” Nora stood up. Her eyes went to the scroll Aruendiel held.

He took a deep breath. “I have just heard from Dorneng Hul. Concerning Hirizjahkinis.”

“Dorneng Hul?” It took Nora a half second to place the name: the magician from Semr who’d gone north with Aruendiel, trailing Ilissa back to her domain. She had the vague impression that he was up there still, working for one of Aruendiel’s friends, keeping a watchful eye on Ilissa. “What—”

Aruendiel brandished the scroll as though it were a weapon. “He writes that it has been three days and two nights since Hirizjahkinis and Hirgus Ext drove into Ilissa’s kingdom, and that he is growing concerned, since he understood that they meant to spend only one night there. Spend the night? Paying a call upon the Faitoren? Has Hirizjahkinis gone mad?”

“Jesus,” Nora said, and Aruendiel fixed her with a stare.

“Did she say anything about this in Semr?” he demanded. “Any hint that she was considering such a thing?”

“No, not at all. She said—she told me she didn’t even think about Ilissa that much—that Ilissa wasn’t worth bothering about.”

Aruendiel swore a few hot syllables. “She will know differently by now. Three days! And Dorneng only now thinks to inform me. What possessed her? Why did she say nothing to me?”

“Who is Hirgus Ext?” Nora asked.

“That’s another mystery. He is a wizard of no great skill from Mirne Klep. As tedious as his tongue is long. I have no idea why Hirizjahkinis would spend an hour in his company—let alone travel to Ilissa’s domain with him. Yet Dorneng says they arrived together at Luklren’s castle and went on together.” Aruendiel glanced suddenly at Nora as though he had just been reminded of something. “I do not think—”

“No, nothing like that. He doesn’t sound like her type,” Nora said at once. “Are you sure they’re actually in Ilissa’s kingdom? Dorneng isn’t mistaken?”

Aruendiel shook his head. “There is no reason to doubt him. I can find a few traces of Hirizjahkinis’s magic northeast of here, near the Faitoren. They are at least a day old, nothing more recent. She has my token. But she has not used it to call for help.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Nora saw, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, how stupid her question was. “Unless, of course, it means she can’t use it,” she finished lamely. “Because the Faitoren have enchanted her.”

“Or worse.” Aruendiel turned away, back to the tower. “I will leave shortly to find Hirizjahkinis. Tell Mrs. Toristel to pack a bag for me.”

Take me with you, Nora was about to say, but at the same time she remembered Ilissa smiling at her in Semr, the kind of silken smile that could bind your soul in an instant and never let you go. Nora flushed and stopped in her tracks as Aruendiel went through the wall.

* * *

“At nightfall, at this time of year? In this rain, he’s leaving?” Mrs. Toristel put down the onion she was holding and wiped her hands on her apron with a kind of studied vehemence. Nora had finally located her in one of the storerooms. “Dear gods, and where is he going?”

Nora began to explain again about Hirizjahkinis having fallen into the hands of the Faitoren.

“Well, she was fool enough to put herself in danger, wasn’t she?” Mrs. Toristel demanded. “And now he has to get her out of it?”

“Yes, of course!” The words came charging out louder than Nora had anticipated. She found that it was a relief to shout, although Mrs. Toristel only looked sour. “Of course he has to. Look what the Faitoren did to me. And they’ll treat her worse.”

Nora had had time, as she searched for Mrs. Toristel, to consider exactly how Ilissa might deal with a captive and defenseless Hirizjahkinis. “Hirizjahkinis is their enemy, she fought them before. They’ll torture her, humiliate her. Raclin will—” Nora spread her hands frantically, helplessly.

“Will do what?” Mrs. Toristel asked.

“If she’s lucky, he’ll just eat her,” Nora said. She went flying out of the room, headed for the tower, propelled by an incoherent conviction that somehow, with the right argument, with the right amount of insistence, she could persuade Aruendiel to take her with him.

Nora was disconcerted to find him sitting quietly at his usual table, a piece of paper in front of him. “Aruendiel, before you go—”

“I’m not going.” His voice was sharp with frost. “Not yet.”

She stared at him blankly. “Not going!”

“There is another letter,” he said venomously. “From Luklren. Ilissa holds them hostage. She is trying to tie my hands.”

“Oh.” Nora waited, but there was no other explanation forthcoming. “May I see it?”

The parchment was covered with large, rather childish brushstrokes. She skipped over the long greeting, studded with Lord Luklren’s various titles and Aruendiel’s, and read:

The Faitoren queen sent an emissary today to inform me that she has taken prisoner the two magic-workers who entered her kingdom three days ago. I said that had nothing to do with me. The emissary said that his queen understood that perfectly and then asked that I pass this message along to you.

For the lives and safe return of the wizard Hirgus Ext and the witch Herezjawkenus— judging from the smeared ink, Luklren had made several attempts at the name—the Faitoren queen wants you to dissolve the imprisonment spells around the Faitoren kingdom. She asks that you then swear to abandon the practice of magic and that you surrender to the Faitoren. She also wants ten thousand additional silmas of land and two thousand head of cattle.

As immediate proof of your good faith, she asks that you return her son’s wife, the princess Nora, by dawn tomorrow. If not, one of the captives will be killed. If you come near or attempt to enter the Faitoren domain before the dissolution of the imprisonment spell and your surrender, both of the captives will be killed.

Lord Luklren evidently felt himself ill-used by all sides. His handwriting grew still larger and more agitated as she read further. I told you the last time I saw you not to stir up trouble with the Faitoren. If that imprisonment spell goes, they’ll steal everything on my lands that they can carry away. What were those two magic-workers up to? I warned them not to go in. I’ve already told the Faitoren that I’m neutral in this dispute, and I do not intend to be a party to any hostilities. . . .

Her eyes raced through the remaining lines of the letter; then she handed it back to Aruendiel. “He thinks you should send me back,” she said.

“Yes. I must apologize for his language there. He has an imperfect grasp of the situation.” Aruendiel stood up abruptly, as though he were tensed for some great exertion, but he only turned and began to pace fitfully in front of the fire.

“Are you going to send me back?” Nora asked.

“No.” He made it sound like a reprimand.

With a sense that she was stepping over a precipice, Nora said: “But otherwise Hirizjahkinis might—”

“I said no,” Aruendiel sliced through her words. “I do not intend to present Ilissa with any proof of my good faith. She knows exactly whom she is dealing with.”

“It’s outrageous, what she demands.” Briefly Nora wondered how large a silma of land was, but filed the question away for later. “The only good thing—we know that Hirizjahkinis and Hirgus Ext are still alive.”

“No, I don’t think we do.” He spoke with more weariness than before. “Ilissa is not negotiating in earnest, I fear. Her demands are too outsized. And she offers no evidence that her prisoners still live.

“That makes my course more difficult to plot just now. If they are alive, I must proceed more cautiously. If they are dead—if Hirizjahkinis is dead—I will have a free hand to attack.” Arundiel gave a quick, hard smile, and Nora had the icy thought that perhaps he almost welcomed the idea of Hirizjahkinis’s death, if it meant that he had an unshakable reason to destroy Ilissa.

“You sent a wind for me,” Nora said. “It carried me away, right in front of Ilissa, and she couldn’t do