Lawrence Watt-Evans: Ithanalin's Restoration

It didn't really look all that difficult when she read the instructions, but the mirror assured her that it was far harder than it appeared.

The spell had no specified counter, and was not inherently reversible. Kilisha sighed. She went paging onward through the book.

"Here," she said at last, holding the volume up to the mirror. "Will this work?"

She had found a spell called Javan's Restorative; according to the description Ithanalin had written, this spell would restore a person or thing to a "natural healthy State, regardless of previous Enchantments, Breakage, or Damage." It wasn't one she had ever attempted, or one she would have had any business attempting unaided for some time yet under ordinary circumstances, but she was fairly sure she had seen Ithanalin use it once, and she was willing to give it a try.

If she couldn't make it work, perhaps she could find a more experienced wizard who could handle it-if it was the right spell.

"Will it work?" she repeated.

IT SHOULD, read the reply.

"Good," Kilisha said. She lowered the book and looked at the ingredients the spell called for.

Two peacock plumes, one of them pure white-that was easy; Ithanalin kept a vase of them in the corner of his workshop, a vase Yara occasionally put out on display in the parlor, but which Ithanalin always took back as soon as he noticed its absence.

Boiling water was easy, too.

Jewelweed… Kilisha had never heard of jewelweed, but she assumed she could get it from any good herbalist. She would check on that.

A quarter-pound block of a special incense, prepared in fog or sea mist-Kilisha hurried to the drawers in the workshop.

Fortunately, though Ithanalin might be a careless housekeeper elsewhere, he kept some things tidy and neatly labeled; each block of incense was wrapped in tissue and tied with string, with a tag on the string that said, in Ithanalin's crooked runes, exactly when and how the incense had been made, and what ingredients had been used.

The right block was in the first drawer Kilisha checked, about halfway back and one layer down. She lifted it out and set it carefully on the workbench.

And that, once she had bought the jewelweed and fetched the feathers and boiled the water, was everything-except, of course, for a wizard's athame and the parts of whatever was broken.

She blinked.

Well, she had her own athame. She'd had it for years, she'd made it when she was not quite thirteen. And of course she had to have the pieces of whatever was broken; that was obvious. Something about it bothered her, though. She read through the instructions carefully, to sec if she had missed anything.

No, it all seemed fairly straightforward. It was a higher-order spell than anything she'd ever done, but she could at least attempt it. She just needed to either work the spell in the front room, or bring Ithanalin and the mirror into the workshop…

She blinked again.

And, she realized, all the furniture.

She needed to have all the pieces. The instructions were quite clear that if any significant portion was absent, the spell would not work.

And a part of Ithanalin-presumably each one significant- had animated each object now missing from the parlor.

In addition to the mirror and her master's body, she needed the rag rug, and the couch, and the end table, and the bench, and the chair, and the coatrack, and the dish, and the spoon.

She looked through the open doorway into the bare room. She would need the front door latch, too, but that was still where it belonged.

Almost nothing else was.

"Oh," she said, staring.

She would have to collect all the furniture. It had all run out the front door and vanished, and she would have to find it all and bring it back here. Her lips tightened into a frown.

Then she relaxed a little. Really, how hard could that be? After all, animated furniture wasn't exactly a common sight in the streets of Ethshar. It should be easy enough to find. The rag rug, the couch, the end table, the bench, the coatrack, the chair, the bowl, and the spoon-eight items.

She hoped she wasn't forgetting anything. She would want to consult the mirror carefully before actually attempting Javan's.spell.

She sighed, and put the block of incense back in the drawer. She didn't dare close the book of spells, in case Ithanalin's magic might keep her from opening it again, but she placed it carefully on a shelf and covered it with a soft cloth.

She looked at the oil lamp, and the brass bowl. Something was bubbling darkly in there-presumably some minor spell her master had had brewing on the side while he performed the Servile Animation. She hoped it wasn't dangerous.

Well, it shouldn't be hard to find out. She went back out to the parlor and asked the mirror, "What's in that brass bowl Ith-analin was heating?"

The mirror clouded, but no runes appeared at first. Kilisha frowned.

"Hello?"

WHAT BOWL?

"The brass bowl over the oil lamp," Kilisha said.

The mirror clouded again for a long moment, but finally admitted, I DON'T REMEMBER. PERHAPS SOMETHING ELSE RECEIVED THAT PARTICULAR MEMORY.

"Oh, that's just wonderful," Kilisha muttered. She returned to the workshop and looked at the bowl again.

The stuff looked thick and oily, a brown so dark it was almost black. It smelled spicy and very slightly bitter, but not at all unpleasant. She didn't recognize it.

The obvious assumption was that something brewing in a wizard's workshop was a spell of some sort, but this smelled more like food. Ithanalin didn't cook-Yara didn't allow it, due to an unfortunate incident a few years before Kilisha's arrival-but perhaps this might still be something other than a spell. Kilisha drew her athame and held it out cautiously toward the bowl to check.

The point of the knife glowed faintly blue, and she could feel magic in the air. Whatever was in that bowl was definitely magical.

So it was a spell, and one she didn't recognize.

"Oh, blast," she said.

She sheathed her dagger and stared at the bowl for a moment, then glanced at the book of spells on the shelf above the workbench. She had no idea which of them might have produced this stuff, and simply going through and looking at the ingredients would not tell her-magic didn't work that way; the dark goo might bear no resemblance at all to its ingredients.

It didn't look dangerous, at least not yet, but she really needed to restore Ithanalin to health quickly, before that concoction set off some other weird spell, or blew up, or went bad.

It would probably be strongly advisable to restore him before that lamp ran out of oil, too. She peered into the reservoir; it looked fairly full.

She needed to find the missing furniture and get it back here as soon as she could. She took a final glance around, then hurried back out to the street, calling a quick farewell to the mirror.

She'd already spent the whole morning and half the afternoon tracking down cat's blood, an hour or more consulting the mirror and the books of spells, and she was not looking forward to spending the rest of the day hunting furniture…

She had reached the middle of the street when she realized that the cat's blood was still on her belt. She did not want to risk spilling it, after all the trouble she had gone to to obtain it. She sighed again, and trudged back into Ithanalin's workshop, where she placed the vial of blood in a rack, then looked around again.

Was there anything else she was forgetting?

Of course there was. Yara and the children. What would they think, when they came home and found Ithanalin petrified and the furniture gone?

She found a piece of paper and wrote a note-Yara and Telleth could read, and Lirrin was learning.

"Master's spell went wrong," she "wrote. "Am seeking ingredients for antidote. Mirror is enchanted, can answer questions. Back as soon as I can be." She signed it, "Kilisha, app."