Ithanalin's Restoration. Lawrence Watt-Evans

fit obviously didn’t know what went into some of these spells, Kilisha thought.

      Then someone had knocked at the door.

      At first Ithanalin had ignored it—Kilisha or Yara or the children would have the sense to realize he was busy, and could wait—they weren’t due back yet, in any case—and he was not interested in talking to any customers or neighbors when he was in the middle of a spell. The door was closed and the curtains drawn, so it should have been plain that the wizard was not open for business; all the same, someone had rapped loudly.

      Ithanalin had assumed that the caller, upon being ignored, would conclude no one was home and go away.

      Whoever it was didn’t take the hint, though—he pounded harder and started shouting, and Ithanalin had picked up the bowl, still stirring, and had marched out into the front room with the bowl tucked in his left arm, stirring spoon in his right hand. He had intended to order whoever it was to go away, and threaten to lay a few choice curses, but then he had made out some of the words being shouted—it wasn’t a determined or angry customer at all, it was the overlord’s tax collector on his more-or-less-annual rounds, and wizards had to pay just like anyone else.

      Ithanalin couldn’t stop stirring without ruining the spell, but he thought he could call through the door and explain that he was busy, and ask the tax collector to come back later—the guardsmen assigned to the treasurer’s office were reputed to be stubborn but reasonable, and after all, Ithanalin had sold a miniature dragon to the treasurer herself just the day before, so surely the collector had not been instructed to be unusually difficult.

      The rug by the front door had been humped up again, as usual, and as he walked and stirred Ithanalin had kicked at it, to straighten it out—but this time, instead of flattening, the rug had jumped up at him. The spriggan Ithanalin had chased out of the workshop had been hiding under the hump, and sprang out when the wizard kicked at it.

      Ithanalin had been so startled that he had started to fall backward, and he had flung up his hands instinctively. The dish of magical glop intended for the customer’s bed had gone flying, the spoon had gone flying, and the goo had sprayed all over the parlor in a glowing purple spatter, smearing on the ceiling, dripping down on the furniture, drifting in a thick fog every which way—not like a natural spill at all, but then, the stuff wasn’t natural, it was magic, and an animation magic, at that, already more than half alive.

      Ithanalin had landed heavily on his backside, sitting spraddled on the floor, and had lost his temper enough to shout, “Kux aqa!”

      “What does that mean?” Kilisha asked.

      IT IS AN OBSCENITY IN AN ANCIENT, FORGOTTEN TONGUE, the mirror told her, the shadowy letters sliding across her reflected face.

      “Yes, but what does it mean?” Kilisha insisted.

      I DO NOT THINK THAT ITHANALIN, WERE HE COMPLETE, WOULD WISH TO TELL YOU.

      “But he isn’t complete, and it might be important!”

      VERY WELL.

      “So what does it mean?”

      YOU ARE AWARE THAT PROFANITY OFTEN DOES NOT MAKE SENSE WHEN TRANSLATED LITERALLY?

      “Of course!” Kilisha said, though she hadn’t known any such thing.

      THE PHRASE “KUX AQA” TRANSLATES ROUGHLY AS “A PERSON WHO EATS POULTRY IN A DISTASTEFUL MANNER,” the mirror informed her.

      Kilisha blinked.

      “Oh,” she said.

      SHALL I CONTINUE?

      “Yes, please!”

      The mirror continued, explaining that the phrase had served as a trigger for the incomplete spell, but as almost always happened when a spell was improperly performed, the results were not those intended. Usually, as Kilisha knew from her own failed attempts at any number of spells, an error simply drained the magic away and made the whole thing a lot of meaningless gestures; sometimes, though, it produced an entirely new spell—sometimes trivial, sometimes not. It was rumored that just such an accidental spell had created spriggans in the first place, a few years before.

      In this case, the botched spell had had a very definite effect—it had absorbed Ithanalin’s own life-force and distributed it throughout the room, settling it into the furnishings.

      That had left the wizard himself inanimate, of course—his energies and the various aspects of his personality had been drained away and scattered about, leaving an empty shell.

      “Oh, gods!” Kilisha said, hand to her mouth. She looked about at the empty room.

      I SEE YOU UNDERSTAND, the mirror said.

      It went on to explain that all the furniture had been animated, receiving different parts of Ithanalin’s life-force. Because almost the entirety of Ithanalin’s memory had been deposited in the mirror, however, the other pieces seemed unaware of who or what they were.

      The latch of the front door had been animated, as well, and had opened itself, allowing the tax collector to enter. He had then found himself confronted by animated furniture and an inanimate wizard, and had let out a yell, whereupon there had been a general panic, and the various furnishings, after bumping around the room a little, had fled—as had the tax collector, apparently; the mirror had not had a clear view, but at any rate the soldier had not stayed.

      The couch and endtable, the bench, the coat-rack, and the old chair had all had legs, legs they could now move; they had been able to walk, run, or scamper out the door. The rag rug had humped itself along like an inchworm and vanished into the street. And although the mirror hadn’t seen just how they propelled themselves, it was fairly sure that the implements Ithanalin had carried had come to life, as well.

      The dish had run away with the spoon.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Since he had been interrupted in the middle of a spell, Ithanalin’s book of magic was lying open on the workbench when Kilisha found it; that voided most of the protective spells that would ordinarily prevent anyone other than Ithanalin himself from using it, and of the other wards Kilisha was exempted from some, and the mirror was able to tell her how to counteract the last few.

      With a glance at the mysterious oil lamp and tripod, Kilisha picked up the book and carried it into the front room. There she paged through it, reading anything that looked even vaguely relevant and holding it up for the mirror to read when she had any questions.

      She had already gone through her own book of spells, which contained the instructions for the fifty-three assorted spells she had learned to date, before touching Ithanalin’s. None of those fifty-three were of any obvious use in restoring her master to normal, so she had resorted to Ithanalin’s own book, which held, by her hasty count, one hundred and twelve.

      Even distraught as she was over the accident, Kilisha was somewhat annoyed by the discovery of just how many of her master’s spells she had not yet learned; she had hoped and expected to complete her apprenticeship within the coming year and become a journeyman at the age of eighteen, but she doubted she could learn another fifty-nine spells properly in that time when it had taken her five years to get this far. She had known there were all the various animation spells, but glancing through it was plain that there were a good many others, as well.

      She was sure she could have learned faster if Ithanalin had taken the trouble to teach her. She wondered whether his one previous apprentice, Istram—now a journeyman and well on the way to becoming a master himself—had learned all these, or whether he had gone out into the World only partially educated. Perhaps some of these spells were deemed unfit for mere apprentices or journeymen, and Kilisha would have to wait years to learn them.

      Right now, though, Kilisha needed to find a spell to undo the botched animation, and once she found it she would probably need to teach it to herself from the book, so she certainly hoped she would be able to handle it, even if she was just an apprentice.

      She hoped she would be able to read the instructions properly,