Tales of Ethshar Page 2

  And there didn’t seem to be all that many people who actually did live there. She saw a young couple on a bench in one garden, and a woman tending flowers in another, but for the most part the yards were empty, the streets almost deserted.

  Darranacy guessed that there weren’t enough rich people to fill all those big houses, and that encouraged her—they must be lonely, in there.

  But she couldn’t just walk in somewhere and ask to be adopted.

  She walked on, and saw three little children, all of them much younger than herself, playing ball on the terrace of a particularly fine mansion.

  A boy of seven or so was climbing a tree a few doors down, and she considered calling out to him, but decided not to.

  She was almost to Smallgate Street, and the houses were growing smaller and squeezing in four to the block, when she saw the girl.

  She wasn’t playing, or climbing, or gardening; she was just standing there, leaning on a fence, her face thrust between the iron bars, looking out at the world beyond her home. She was taller than Darranacy, and probably older, but she wore just a tunic, not a dress but a dark red tunic with no skirt, which meant she was still a child, not yet twelve—or if her parents were exceptionally old-fashioned, it meant she hadn’t had her first monthly flow yet.

  “Hi,” Darranacy said, from a few steps away.

  The girl blinked at her. “Hello,” she said back.

  “My name’s Darranacy.”

  “I’m Shala.”

  “You live here?”

  Shala nodded.

  “You look bored.”

  “I am.”

  “So am I,” Darranacy lied.

  “Want to do something together?”

  Darranacy almost gasped with relief.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Come on in,” Shala said, pointing to the gate.

  This was the perfect opportunity. Darranacy hurried into the yard.

  Now, how could she bring up the idea of adoption?

  She thought about that as Shala took her inside and found a pair of dolls, as Shala introduced her to her mother and the housekeeper, as they went back outside and played out game after game…but as time passed, she thought about it less and less. She was having too much fun.

  The two girls played princess-and-hero with the dolls, and romantic rivals (a stick served as the object of their competing affections), and various other games—but Shala balked when Darranacy suggested playing wizards.

  “My Dad doesn’t like magic,” she said. “He says it makes people lazy and careless—they figure if anything goes wrong, magic can fix it.”

  Darranacy blinked in surprise. “But magic’s hard,” she said. “And dangerous and expensive. You don’t use it for stuff where you don’t have to.”

  “Some people do, my Dad says,” Shala said darkly. “He talks about that a lot—he says the overlord depends on magic more than he ought to, and since he’s the overlord, it doesn’t matter how hard or dangerous or expensive it is.”

  “But…” Darranacy began.

  Then she stopped.

  If Shala’s father didn’t like magic, then she was in the wrong place. Both her parents had been magicians, after all, and she was proud of that—even if it had gotten them killed in the end.

  Magic was hard and dangerous, and shouldn’t be used if you didn’t need it, but there wasn’t anything wrong with it.

  If there were…well, right now her whole life depended on magic. Without her enchanted bloodstone she’d be a beggar starving in the Wall Street Field, instead of…

  Well, so she was a beggar living in the Wall Street Field, but she wasn’t starving, and she wasn’t going to stay there.

  “Come on,” Shala said, “we can have your doll be an evil magician, and my doll will be a hero who has to kill her without getting turned into a newt or something.”

  “Okay,” Darranacy said, a bit reluctantly. “What kind of magician? A sorcerer?”

  “What’s that?”

  Darranacy blinked, and struggled for an explanation. Her parents had taught her the differences among all the various schools of magic, but that didn’t mean she could explain them to Shala.

  “How about a magician who can call up demons for my doll to fight?” Shala asked.

  “A demonologist?” Darranacy said. “But they’re not really evil, they just have a bad reputation.” She saw Shala’s expression, and quickly amended that. “At least, my father always said some of them weren’t evil.”

  Before Shala could reply, the housekeeper’s voice called her name from the back door.

  “It must be dinner time,” Shala said. “Do you want to eat dinner with us? Would your parents mind?”

  This was her chance, Darranacy realized. If she were going to say anything, learn anything useful from Shala, this would be the time.

  “I don’t have any parents,” she said.

  Shala blinked.

  “They’re dead,” Darranacy continued.

  “Oh, Darra, I’m sorry! So do you live with your grandparents, or something?”

  Darranacy shook her head. “No,” she said. “I live by myself. In fact, I was here today looking for someone who might adopt me.”

  “Oh!” Shala stared at her.

  “Shala of Morningside, get in here!” Shala’s mother called from the door.

  “I have to go—Darra, come on in! I’d love it if you could stay here—maybe not permanently, but maybe you could stay for a little while? I bet my Dad could find a place for you!” Shala grabbed Darranacy’s hand and began tugging her toward the house.

  Darranacy came reluctantly. Now that she finally had the chance, she was losing her nerve. This wasn’t the right place, with a father who hated magic, and this big strange house—but it might be the only chance she would get.

  At the door Shala announced loudly, “This is my friend Darra—can she stay for dinner?”

  “No, I can’t,” Darranacy said quickly, even though the mouth-watering smells of roast beef and fresh-baked bread were incredibly, unbearably tempting.

  But she couldn’t eat anything, or the spell would be broken and she would starve.

  “Hello, Darra,” Shala’s mother said. “I saw you two playing so nicely out there—we’d be pleased if you stayed.” She gestured at the dining table.

  “No,” Darranacy said weakly. “Thank you.”

  She stared at the lavish meal that was set out—sliced roast beef and several different vegetables and hot buttered bread, steaming on the table.

  It had been so long since she had eaten anything, and there was so much here, and it looked so good! This wasn’t the mess in Mama Kilina’s stewpot, this was real food.

  Korun was almost right after all, she thought—right now she almost wished she didn’t have the spell on her.

  But she needed the spell. She couldn’t trust these people, they wouldn’t want to keep the daughter of two magicians, and when they threw her out with her magic gone she’d have nothing left at all, she’d starve in the Wall Street Field.

  This might be her chance to find a home—but it was too much to risk.

  “Thank you for inviting me,” she said politely, “but I really can’t stay.”

  “But Darra, you said you didn’t have any family!” Shala protested. “Why can’t you stay?”

  Darranacy looked at Shala, and at her mother, and her father, and the housekeeper, all of them standing around the table and staring at their ungrateful guest. She patted the purse on her belt and felt the reassuring shape of the bloodstone.

  “I just can’t,” she said. Her eyes felt hot and her throat thick, as if she were about to start crying.

  “Well, all right,” Shala’s mother said. “If you can’t stay, you can’t, but we won’t let you go away empty-handed.” She picked up something from the table, and stepped over closer to Darranacy.

  “Here,” she said, “just a little something.”

  And as Darranacy started to refuse, Shala’s
mother popped a candy into Darranacy’s mouth.

  Darranacy froze, then started to spit the candy out, then stopped.

  It was too late; she could feel it. The spell was broken, and her empty stomach growled, for the first time in four months.

  And then she did start weeping, sobbing hysterically as she collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  Shala’s entire family rushed to comfort her. It took twenty minutes before she had calmed down enough to make a clear explanation, and the food was cold when the five of them finally ate, but it was still the best dinner Darranacy had ever had.

  She stayed three years.

  And when the time came she was not apprenticed to a wizard, nor a demonologist, nor any other magician, but instead, at her own request, to a cook. The bloodstone, no longer enchanted, paid for her apprenticeship fee.

  Cookery was a magic she could trust.

  About “Ingredients”

  Given the workings of wizardry as I described it in all the stories, it was clear that finding the ingredients for one’s spells might be the hardest part of the entire spell-working process. That was an obvious source of stories. I also wanted to give readers a glimpse of the political situation in the Kingdoms of Tintallion. This tale was the result.

  Ingredients

  Irillon watched, fascinated and appalled, as Therindallo was dragged up onto the scaffold. He wasn’t struggling, but that was obviously because he had already been severely beaten; his hair was matted with blood.

  She frowned at that—partly from her natural human sympathy, but also wondering whether that might cause her any difficulty. She needed both blood and hair, but they were supposed to be separate—and she was fairly sure she needed the blood to be liquid, not clotted.

  Finding herself thinking so callously about human blood troubled her. There were times, ever since she began her apprenticeship, when she had serious reservations about this whole wizardry business, and this was one of those times. In fact, this was perhaps the most extreme yet. She had always known that wizards required a variety of odd ingredients for their spells, and even that some of them were not just odd but loathsome, but until now she had not really given much thought to just what that meant—not until her master, Ethtallion the Mage, had told her what she was to fetch this time.

  In the past eighteen months since becoming Ethtallion’s apprentice she had gathered ash from the hearth, had helped catch spiders, had ground up those spiders once they were properly dried out, had bought roosters’ toes from the local farmers, had collected her own tears and drawn her own blood when asked, and none of that had been especially unpleasant—not that drawing blood had been fun, but it was not really dreadful.

  Collecting the blood and hair of an executed criminal, and a piece of the scaffold he died on, was an entirely different matter—especially since the “criminal” in question was being beheaded for a crime Irillon herself was equally guilty of. Therindallo’s “treason” was swearing fealty to the King of the Isle, rather than the King of the Coast, and Irillon of the Isle, like all her family, also took the Islander side in Tintallion’s civil war.

  She could hardly admit that here in the royal seat of Tintallion of the Coast, though—she would be arrested immediately, or perhaps simply killed on the spot. At the thought she glanced nervously at her neighbors in the small, sullen crowd gathered in the plaza below the walls of Coast Castle.

  They didn’t look very enthusiastic about the proceedings—but they were making no move to protest, either; the only visible movements were stamping and huddling against the cold. Irillon pulled her own cloak tight, and suddenly found herself shivering uncontrollably. She turned her attention back to the scaffold, trying to distract herself.

  The guardsmen threw Therindallo on the block and buckled a strap across his shoulders; the executioner stepped forward and raised his axe. Then he paused, waiting, for no reason Irillon could see.

  An official in royal livery stepped forward, fumbling with his coat; he pulled out a paper and began to read aloud.

  It was a short speech that basically said King Serulinor was the rightful ruler of Tintallion and that he was having Therindallo’s head chopped off for not agreeing. A good many words were wasted reciting Serulinor’s alleged titles and grievances, and rejecting his cousin’s claim to the throne; Irillon’s attention wandered, and she found herself glancing up at the overcast sky, wondering whether it was going to snow again.

  She hoped not; she had walked almost ten leagues through the snow to get here, and the walk back would be quite bad enough without the weather gods adding any further depth to what was already on the ground.

  Then the official finished reading, rolled up his message, and tucked it in his sleeve, and the executioner’s axe fell without any further ceremony, so suddenly that Irillon didn’t quite see it happen.

  Blood splashed, a really amazing quantity of blood, and Therindallo’s head dropped into the waiting basket. The executioner knew his job, and had needed only a single stroke.

  Gasps and a smothered squeal came from the audience. Irillon gagged at the sight of the headless body, then swallowed hard, trying to tell herself that at least it was quick, and Therindallo couldn’t have suffered much. It was over—and now she needed to get Therindallo’s blood and hair, and a piece of the scaffold.

  Two of the guards were dragging the body away, though, and a third followed, carrying the basket. The executioner was climbing down one set of steps, the official down the other, and the little crowd was already dispersing.

  Irillon blinked in surprise and almost called out; she had somehow assumed that the body would be left there, where she could reach it. She hesitated, trying to think what she should do, and a moment later she was standing alone in the plaza, her feet sinking in muddy slush.

  The scaffold was still there, at any rate; she finally collected her wits sufficiently to walk up to it, draw her belt knife, and pry a few splinters from the edge of the platform.

  She looked over at the bloodstains that spread out from the block, and hurried around to the side, fishing a vial from her belt-pouch. There she stooped and peered underneath.

  Yes! Blood was still dripping through the cracks between planks. She collected several drops, then sealed the vial and tucked it away. For good measure she pried up a few more splinters, this time choosing damp, stained ones.

  “Hai!” a man’s voice shouted. “Get away from there!” He spoke with a Coastal accent.

  Irillon looked up, startled, and saw a guard coming toward her, one hand reaching to grab. She turned and ran, heedless of direction, out of the plaza and into the narrow ways of the surrounding town. She heard a few heavy footsteps behind her at first, but after a moment’s desperate flight through the winding streets she paused, back pressed against a cold stone wall, looking and listening, and could make out no signs of pursuit.

  She was panting from fear and exertion, and she gasped and swallowed, trying to catch her breath. Then she looked down at her hands.

  Her knife—her athame, her wizard’s dagger—was in one hand; the other clutched a little bundle of bloody splinters. A vial half-full of Therindallo’s blood was in her pouch.

  That was two of the three ingredients she had come for; now she needed some of his hair.

  But the guards had taken Therindallo’s head away with them, in that basket—how could she ever find it, to cut a lock of hair? She could scarcely walk openly into the castle looking for it; she was an Islander, and if the guards questioned her her accent would almost certainly give her away—she could try to disguise it, but she doubted her ability to convince anyone.

  And if she were recognized as an Islander, she would get much too close a look at that scaffold.

  It was such a shame that the king’s father had been a twin, and that the wetnurse had lost track of which boy was the older; if that hadn’t happened this stupid war would never have begun, and Irillon could have gone anywhere in Tintallion in relative safety. If only the
Coastal King’s line would die out, so the rightful king could assert his authority…

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Serulinor had a daughter. No son as yet, but a daughter would do to continue the feud. And Buramikin had a son, so the Islander line would also last at least another generation.

  And people like Irillon would have to choose one side, and be in constant danger from the other any time they left their homes.

  She had caught her breath now; she sheathed her knife, and wrapped the splinters in a handkerchief before tucking them away in her pouch.

  That severed head was somewhere back in the castle. She had to go back. She couldn’t go back to Ethtallion without that hair! He had already complained bitterly about her ineptitude, cursing his decision to take her on as an apprentice; if she went home without what he had sent her for he might well cast her out completely.

  And while she did already know seven spells, she couldn’t imagine making a living from those seven. The only one that had any obvious commercial value was the Dismal Itch, and an entire career of imposing and removing such a trivial curse had no appeal at all.

  She adjusted her scarf, turning it over in hopes the guard who had chased her off wouldn’t recognize her, and slogged back toward the plaza.

  At least Tintallion of the Coast wasn’t big enough to get really lost in, as she had on her one visit to Ethshar of the Rocks—she could catch a glimpse of the castle’s central tower from almost any intersection, and use that as a guide. She arrived safely back at the square without incident.

  Four big men were tearing down the scaffold; if she had waited any longer than she had she would never have been able to get a piece of it. She let her breath out in a cloud at the sight.

  Then she looked at the castle, trying to imagine how she might get in. The gates, twenty feet to the right of the vanishing scaffold, were closed, the portcullis down. The walls were cold, featureless stone, thirty feet high, topped with elaborate battlements…