Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ithanalin's Restoration

"Thank you," Kilisha called after her, but she did not feel very grateful. She closed the door, locked it, and ordered the latch, "Stay locked until I tell you-"

She had not finished the sentence when a knock sounded.

"Never mind," she told the latch, as she opened it again.

Kills ha stared when she saw who had knocked, but she quickly gathered at least a portion of her wits. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

The young man on the doorstep smiled. "It's good to see you, too, Kili."

Kilisha swung the door wide. "Come in!" she said. "I mean, I'm glad to see you, Opir, but what are you doing here? You know it's not permitted for family to interfere with an apprentice's train ing!"

"I'm not here to interfere in anything," her brother replied. "I'm here to see whether there's any truth to the rumors I've heard." He looked around, taking in the furniture as it moved about the room and the tangled ropes leading from the various pieces to the fireplace, and added, "I'd say there must be some truth in them, all right."

"What rumors?" Kilisha asked. "What have you heard?" "That some sort of magic has run wild and started bringing all your furniture to life, and nobody's seen Ithanalin in days. He's supposed to be holed up somewhere working on a counterspell.

Or maybe he got turned into a coatrack-is that him in the corner?" He pointed.

"No," Kilisha said, not wanting to be distracted by explanations just now. "Go on."

"Or that he's been spirited away by the Empress Tabaea, or that he's secretly working for her, or that he's been transformed into you, and the real Kilisha of Eastgate is imprisoned somewhere dreadful."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it? What did you call your toy pig when you were little?"

Kilisha stared at him. "You mean Gruntpuppy?"

Opir smiled broadly. "It's you, all right-I can't imagine you'd ever tell anyone you named that pig Gruntpuppy."

Kilisha shrugged. "I'd tell Ithanalin if he asked, because he's my master and I'm an apprentice-but he's never asked, and there's no reason he would." She closed the door behind Opir. "Where did you hear all these rumors?"

"From Mother, mostly. She collects them."

Kilisha blinked, then grabbed the chair and sat down. "Lock, please," she ordered the latch. The chair shifted beneath her, and she told it, "Hold still." She gestured to Opir. "You can catch the bench if you like."

Opir eyed it uneasily, then said, "I'll stand."

"Please yourself. Now, tell me more about where Mother's been getting all these stories. I mean, Ithanalin's only been… gone for about two days."

"So he is gone?"

"Not really." Kilisha sighed, "He's in the workshop. But he can't move-a spell went wrong and transferred his life force into all the furniture."

"So you're sitting on him?"

Kilisha closed her eyes and bit her lip as the chair shifted slightly. Her older brother had always had a knack for making everything she said or did sound stupid. "After a fashion," she admitted. "Mostly, though, I'm sitting on the straight chair we keep here in the parlor. It just happens to have a little bit of Ith-analin's spirit m it at the moment."

"And the bench, too? And the coatrack?"

"All of it," Kilisha said.

Opir looked around the parlor. "Where's the couch?" he asked.

"I don't know," Kilisha admitted. "That's why I haven't been able to restore him yet-I need all the pieces. I've got all the others, but the couch ran away and I haven't found it yet."

"Then why aren't you out looking for it, or working a spell to locate it?"

"Because I'm obeying my mistress's orders. I'll find it later. Now, tell me about these rumors. Where did Mother hear them?"

"Didn't you know she has spies all around here?"

Kilisha closed her eyes again and sighed deeply, then opened them. "No," she said. "I didn't know. What spies?"

"Lirrin, for one-Ithanalin's daughter. And Thetta, Heshka's wife. And Virinia's little sister Fara, and that fellow Genzer of Northmark who's been trying to court that cute apprentice of Tirin's, and the two kids who help out in Kara's Arcana, and that old woman across the court from your back door who calls herself Zinamdia, which isn't any sort of real name I ever heard of. And probably others I don't know about. You know Mother's always been fond of gossip."

"Yes, but she used to just talk to people in the courtyard at home, or m Eastgate Market. She didn't come all the way over here to gather news!"

"But that was before she had her youngest apprenticed to a genuine wizard. You're the first magician in our entire family, Kili-didn't you realize how special that makes you?"

"No, I didn't," she lied.

In fact, she knew perfectly well that it made her the object of family pride and envy. That had been much of the point, really, after a childhood of being utterly ordinary. She had gotten tired of being dull; she had even bored herself, and had begged to be apprenticed to a wizard largely so she could escape that tedium. It had worked, too.

But she wasn't about to admit that to her older brother.

"Well, you should have known," Opir said. "After Ithanalin took you on Mother boasted about it constantly for sixnights- but after a while she needed new things to say about her daughter the wizard, and you hardly ever came home anymore, or wrote letters…"

"I don't have time! I'm an apprentice!"

"I know that," Opir said, grinning. "So did Mother. She didn't want to do anything that might interfere or annoy Ithanalin, for fear he'd send you home in disgrace-"

"He can't," Kilisha interrupted. "Guild rules. I passed the point where he could send me home when I was thirteen." She caught herself before explaining further-that once she had made herself an athame she could only leave the Wizards' Guild by dying, and if she fouled up her apprenticeship badly enough that she couldn't continue Ithanalin wouldn't have sent her home, he'd have had her killed. Somehow she didn't think she wanted her parents to hear that. She didn't think she even wanted her brother to hear it.

"Really? We didn't know that."

"Really. And you weren't supposed to."

Opir hesitated, waiting to see if Kilisha would give any details, then turned up a palm and continued. "She didn't want to cause you any trouble, but she really wanted to know what you were doing, so she started visiting along Wizard Street and the East Road. She's been doing it for years. You didn't know?"

"I didn't know."

"Oh. Well, she's been doing it, and for the past two days the gossip and rumors have just been pouring in-mostly other things, but a few about Ithanalin and you." He glanced around at the furniture, then asked, "What really happened?"

"I told you-a spell went wrong. A spriggan tripped the master as he was stirring something, and it spilled, and the spell scattered his soul into all these different pieces."

"A spriggan? So it doesn't have anything to do with Empress Tabaea and her strange magic?"

"I don't even know for certain who Empress Tabaea is," Kil-isha said angrily. "You mean the usurper in Ethshar of the Sands?"

"That's the one. Haven't you been hearing about it? Word is that the whole Wizards' Guild is going mad trying to deal with her."

"I've been a bit distracted," Kilisha said. "And the Guild hasn't been helping me any-they're too busy with this madwoman to do anything about my master."

"Well, you can hardly blame them! She's taken over an entire city and killed a dozen magicians!"

Kilisha hesitated. "She has?"

"Yes, she has!"

"I've been busy. I hadn't heard the details." Actually, she realized that she had heard that much, but hadn't given it much thought, or remembered the specifics.