The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

“Let me take a look.”

“Never mind my back,” he snapped. “It is no better nor worse than ever.”

“Corverist of Vaev gave me a new spell for stiffness in the joints.”

Aruendiel hunched his shoulders. “I will not use magic as a drug. Not again. Well, is Corverist still going in for animal magic?”

“Oh, yes! Corverist told me that he learned it from a snake. A very old snake. It claimed to have known Nagaris the Fat.”

“I have never known snakes to be very truthful,” Aruendiel said.

Chapter 29

The candle flames burned skittishly for a second, and then made a sudden leap upward. Nora blinked, even though she had been expecting it. She was standing in the great hall with Hirizjahkinis, who was showing her how to make a candle flare even when there was not the slightest current of air stirring.

“I cannot teach you anything more about lighting fires,” Hirizjahkinis had said firmly, when they started. “Aruendiel has done a good job of that already, and he will be irked if I teach you something that he disagrees with. So I will teach you something that he will not think is so important—but can be very useful, in the right circumstances. A few little tricks with a candle flame once persuaded a very suspicious prince in Haiah that the local lion god did not wish for me to have my head chopped off. Here, let me show you—it is only a matter of giving the flame a little love.”

When it came to explaining magic, Hirizjahkinis’s directions were not quite as clear or detailed as Aruendiel’s—he never talked of love—but after a few attempts Nora got the idea. Her candles flared vigorously, although compared with Hirizjahkinis’s neat row of squibs they had a slightly ragged appearance. Afterward, Hirizjahkinis tried to teach her how to make the candles burn in all the colors of the spectrum. Nora got from yellow to blue.

“Not bad for a first attempt,” Hirizjahkinis pronounced. “I will tell Aruendiel that you have done credit to him today.”

Feeling a little dizzy from her efforts, as though she would turn blue instead of the candle flame, Nora thanked Hirizjahkinis for the lesson. “I think Aruendiel is still working in the tower, if you would like to rejoin him,” she added.

“Oh, there is no hurry,” Hirizjahkinis said. “I made him a little angry this morning. It is better for him to have some time to cool his temper.”

“Is he still angry about your going to Ilissa’s?”

“Of course he is—but now the problem is that I gave him some good advice, too.”

“That is the worst kind to give,” Nora said drily. Whatever Hirizjahkinis’s counsel, Nora had no doubt that it had been eminently sensible, unsparingly delivered, and soundly rejected. She also had the faint, haunting, ridiculous fear that somehow it involved her, Nora. Why she felt this way, she could not say—something in Hirizjahkinis’s tone or gaze. At least this time Hirizjahkinis had not asked her whether she was Aruendiel’s mistress. Changing the subject, she said: “I found something in the storeroom this morning that he might want to see.” She went to the end of the table and brought back a small wooden box. Opening it, she began to leaf through the papers inside.

“There are notes here on various spells—maps—a few letters—but this is what caught my eye. It’s from my world.” She was trying to sound casual.

Hirizjahkinis took the yellowed square of paper from her and glanced politely at the image printed upon it. Then she looked more closely. “Ah, that is Aruendiel! As he used to be. I almost did not know him.”

“I thought it was him. I wasn’t sure.”

“Oh, yes, that is him. He was very handsome, was he not?”

It was hard to tell definitely from the small, pale oval behind the stiff collar, under the brim of the dark hat. But, as Nora looked at the picture, almost intuitively she agreed with Hirizjahkinis. The figure in the picture was smiling boldly and held itself straight as the Ionic column beside it, unthinkingly confident in the way that comes from an abundance of good health and good looks.

“What sort of image is this?” Hirizjahkinis asked. “It is not a painting. Very shadowy and gray.”

“It’s what we call a photograph,” Nora said, giving the English word. “We can make pictures with a box, a kind of mechanical eye, and print them on paper.”

“Oh, yes,” Hirizjahkinis said, nodding. “Like a scroll of Soiveron. Whatever the magician sees is recorded on the parchment. A very useful spell, although I sometimes have difficulty with the perspective.”

“Ours has to do with, um, light rays.” Nora went on quickly before Hirizjahkinis could ask her for a more precise explanation: “So this picture must have been made while Aruendiel visited my world, I guess.”

“Is that writing at the bottom?”

“Yes, the photographer’s name and address. Schroeder & Kubon, in Chicago. And there’s a date— more than ninety years ago.” It was 1915: the First World War—not the Second—raging in Europe. Horses in the streets along with motorcars. Telephones but no radio. Three of Nora’s grandparents not yet born—Grandpa Hank a round-eyed toddler in a wicker pram.

“Ninety?” Hirizjahkinis repeated carelessly.

“Hirizjahkinis, how old is Aruendiel?”

“How old?” The magician shook her head, smiling, the beads in her hair chattering. “It is likely that time flows differently in your world.”

“Yes, but still, ninety years over there must count for a lot of years here.”

“He is older than I am. How old would you say I am?”

“I believe you are older than you look—” Nora began cautiously.

“I am older than I was yesterday, and younger than I will be tomorrow, and that is all I will tell you.” Hirizjahkinis laughed. “But no, I do not show all my years. Magicians age slowly, more slowly than nonmagicians. Magic is very good for the health, you know. How do you feel after lighting those candles? Good, yes? It feels even better to raise a storm or find a necklace that was lost a hundred years ago or make a blind man see—or capture the Kavareen,” she said, touching the leopard pelt on her shoulder. “If you keep lighting candles, Mistress Nora— and doing other, more complicated spells—you may find yourself living longer than you expected.”

“That would be nice.”

“I think so, too! There is nothing wrong with a long life, nothing at all.” Hirizjahkinis spoke with a shade more vehemence than Nora would have anticipated.

“So Aruendiel could be more than ninety years old.”

“Oh, certainly. Why don’t you ask him? Or—I know! We could ask him when he was born,” Hirizjahkinis said, taking the photograph into her hand again.

“What? Oh, the spell that brings paintings to life—?”

“Yes.” Hirizjahkinis grinned wickedly. “Let us ask Aruendiel, this Aruendiel, right now. I have a wish to see my old friend as I first knew him. He was not as gloomy then as he is now. And he will be delighted to see me, I am sure, since as far as he knows he is in your world—Sheecaga, you say? So he will not be expecting me at all.”

Nora was tempted. A younger, unscarred, more genial Aruendiel. She was curious to see just how good- looking he’d been. The man who’d been Ilissa’s lover, Queen Tulivie’s. But then Nora remembered the bewildered fear on the painted figure’s face. “Will he mind?” she asked.

Hirizjahkinis assumed she meant the present-day Aruendiel. “He will not know,” she said confidently. “Not until the spell is already over. It will only take a minute.”

But after she worked the spell, the image on the paper was still mute and unmoving. Hirizjahkinis frowned. “Did Aruendiel put a counterspell on this picture, to prevent anyone from speaking to it? That would be extreme vigilance, even for him.”

“Maybe the spell doesn’t work on photos,” Nora said, slightly relieved.

“Bah!” Hirizjahkinis threw the photograph down. She began to turn over the other papers in the box. “What