The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

mistress?”

Aruendiel’s head jerked up, the Faitoren and the Kavareen forgotten. “What? You are impertinent, Hiriz. Do not speak to me of absurdities.”

“The nights are growing long and cold, this time of year.” Hirizjahkinis laughed as though inviting Aruendiel to join in. “When I met Nora in Semr, she told me she was not your mistress, but by now, I thought—”

“What? Well, she spoke truly, although it was no concern of yours. Nor it is now.”

“You are my old, dear friend. I am always concerned with matters of your happiness. What is holding you back? Each time I see Nora, I think she is very engaging. And prettier than when I saw her last. Her scars are less obvious than they were. She is a good age, too, not too green—ripe to be a merry bedmate.”

“What, are you the girl’s pander?” He spat out the words.

“Peace, I am teasing you,” she said, “but you puzzle me. I saw your face when you summoned Queen Tulivie’s shadow. You looked at her with sadness and hunger, even though I do not think you were so much in love with her when she lived. And yet when you have the chance for a real, living, flesh-and-blood love affair, you scowl and do nothing.”

Aruendiel put his brush down and moved his hand above the scroll, making a faint breeze spiral over the wet ink. The parchment rustled on the table. “He who hunts the stag does not chase squirrels.”

“Hmmph. It depends on how hungry the hunter is. In my country we say a starving man needs no salt or oil for his termites.”

“Even with salt and oil, termites are no delicacy,” he said, with a harsh laugh. “I have traveled enough in your country—with a good appetite, too—to know that.”

“We are speaking of Nora.”

It was past time to curtail this discussion, Aruendiel felt. He chose his words carefully for greatest effect. “What of her? She is lowborn and no great beauty and the soiled former chattel of a lecherous Faitoren half- breed, but I would not have thought to compare her to a termite.” He added coolly: “It is unkind of you, Hiriz.”

Hirizjahkinis looked at him, her gaze the only live thing in a face that might have been carved from wood. “Ah, is that what you think of her?” she said finally. “I miscalculated. I was thinking of your welfare, but I must consider Nora’s, too. Perhaps she is better off not being your mistress.”

“Now you are talking more sensibly.”

“So why are you teaching her?”

“She has an interest and some aptitude,” he said, twitching a crooked shoulder. “We will see where it leads.”

“Didn’t Holo Nev come to you once, asking you to be his teacher? He had interest and aptitude, and gold, too. And you sent him away.”

“It would have taken a dozen years for him to unlearn all the bad habits he had already picked up.”

“And that young man from Reskorinia?”

Hirizjahkinis would not give up, Aruendiel thought. “A dilettante. He had no true understanding of magic.”

“At least some of them had the discernment to seek you out, Aruendiel, and you always turned them down. I do not know of anyone but myself who can truly call themselves your protege.”

“There were a few others, years ago. Norsn, Micher, Nansis, Turl. They were wizards of middling ability before I taught them to be magicians.”

“I did not realize that Turl had studied with you!”

“Yes, although he will never admit it. Well, I do not care to own him, either. He taught me a lesson, to be careful about whom I choose to teach my craft.

“Well, it is a good choice to teach Mistress Nora, for whatever reason you are doing it. You are right. There is talent there.”

Hirizjahkinis was still probing; he was still on his guard. “Some talent, yes,” Aruendiel said with a tilt of his head, “but who knows what it will amount to? Novice magicians are notoriously lazy. They learn a few spells and then have no interest in learning more.”

“I do not think you need to worry on that score. Yesterday she lit candles for me with as much joy as if each flame were a new star. I had to beg her to stop, and to promise that I would help her again today.”

“It is all new to her. Her mind is eager. I confess, it is refreshing to observe so much enthusiasm, even for the most elementary forms of magic.” Aruendiel’s voice warmed, and the hard knots in the corners of his mouth loosened. When Nora lit the candles, she was like a flame herself, he thought. “She is a hopeful presence,” he could not help adding.

Then, before Hirizjahkinis could try to make something of his admission, he went on quickly: “There is another thing, Hiriz. It is time that I think of my legacy, to pass on the knowledge that I’ve accumulated. Mistress Nora is not, perhaps, the heir I would have chosen, but when you, who studied with me longest, have learned so little as to venture unprepared into the Faitoren—”

“What is this talk of a legacy?” Hirizjahkinis demanded, showing no interest in further talk of the Faitoren. “Are you dying, that you are so morbid?”

“No, not dying. You forget,” he said, a dark smile carving deeper lines into his face, “I am already dead.”

“Now you are speaking of absurdities.” She waited for him to respond, but he said nothing. Hirizjahkinis pulled herself even straighter than she had been standing. Although she did not reach Aruendiel’s shoulder, she gave a fair impression of looking him directly in the eye.

“I see. You are still sulking, just as you were in Semr,” she said severely. “And I am tired of being blamed for the kindness of giving you back your life. If I had known you would be so ungrateful, I would have left your corpse frozen on that mountaintop. What is so terrible? You have your health, your work—”

“My health! I have not had a day without pain for four dozen years.”

“I am sorry for that. But you are not crippled, you can walk, you can ride, you are not bedridden as you were. And you will not use magic to salve the pain, will you? No, you are too stubborn for that.”

Hirizjahkinis was relishing the chance to lecture him now, he thought sourly. “It is bad enough to know that it is only magic that keeps my heart beating and my lungs breathing and my body from turning into a withered husk.”

“But that is different, I had nothing to do with that. It is the same for me and everyone who practices true magic. I would be a dried-up old lady by now”—Hirizjahkinis’s mouth suddenly curved into a broad smile—“or dead myself, if you had not taught me to be a magician.”

Aruendiel passed a hand over his face, avoiding the roughest places by habit. “I don’t blame you, Hiriz, for what you did,” he said slowly. “On the road back from Semr, I brought a child back who had been dead three days. It is a tempting thing, to bring someone out of the dark into the light. And that sort of magic—you can feel the tendrils of power growing through your very soul.”

“Three days? That is not so hard. You had been dead for weeks.”

“She had been eaten down to the bones.”

“Ah, that is a little more difficult. You should do more spells like that, and you would feel better.”

He made a disgusted noise deep in his throat. “Gods forbid! I still do not know whether I did that child good or ill.”

“Good, of course. There can be nothing ill in giving someone so young another chance at life.”

“That is what Nora said.” Mistress Nora, he should have said, but fortunately Hirizjahkinis did not notice the slip. Carefully, he rolled up the parchment on which he had been taking notes and passed a thin black ribbon around it. The ends of the ribbon lifted lazily, like a pair of drowsy snakes, and tied themselves amorously into a complicated knot. “Well, perhaps it is better with a child. A child is resilient, she will not remember the darkness.”

Hirizjahkinis regarded him watchfully. “You told us that you remembered nothing of death.”

“Nothing. But I know, now, that it is always there.”

“Oh, enough of your mewling, Aruendiel! Every living creature is under sentence of death. All the more reason to savor the life you have—especially if it has been taken away once and then returned to you. So, the pain,” she added briskly. “It is still your back?”

“Only when it is not my head or half a dozen other parts of my body that never healed properly.”