Lawrence Watt-Evans: The Misenchanted Sword

He mentioned this to Iridith, who replied, “I had a palace once; it seemed the thing to do at the time. This is more comfortable.”

Valder found that hard to believe at first, looking over the cobwebbed furnishings and feeling the cool, damp sea breeze blowing through the chinks, but he had to admit that after Iridith had cast a restorative spell or two and conjured up a blazing fire the house was quite cozy.

The main structure, not counting the sprawling verandahs and terraces, contained just four rooms—an immense workshop filled with the arcana of the wizardly trade occupied the entire western end, a fair-sized bedroom the southeast corner, a small kitchen the northeast, and a small parlor faced south toward the sea at the center. Each room was equipped with a vast stone hearth and cavernous fireplace, and when all four were lit the moist chill that had bothered Valder vanished in a matter of moments.

They had arrived shortly before midday; the flight from Ethshar of the Spices had been quite brief, just across the peninsula to the southern shore. It had been Valder’s first flight in more than forty years, and quite a refreshing experience; he had forgotten how exciting it was to soar above the landscape, and remembered wryly how he had taken it for granted during his time as an assassin.

“You’ll sleep in the parlor,” Iridith told him, “if you have no objection.”

“I’m scarcely in a position to object,” he replied. “But how long do you expect me to be staying here?”

“I can’t really say; until I’ve gotten the approval of the elders of the Guild, and gathered the ingredients I need for Enral’s Eternal Youth Spell.”

“Oh? What are the ingredients?”

“I don’t remember them all; I’ll need to look it up. I do know that I’ll want powdered spider, blue silk, cold iron, dried seaweed, candles colored with virgin’s blood, and the tears of a female dragon; I don’t recall the others offhand.”

“Virgin’s blood and dragon’s tears?”

“I think you’ll be staying for awhile; those are the easy ones.”

“Oh.” He looked around. “The parlor should do just fine.”

He had been at the wizard’s house for five days, days spent strolling along the beach enjoying the fine spring weather, or reading the many strange books that she loaned him from her workshop—in addition to assorted grimoires and magical texts, she had a wide variety of histories and books of philosophy. She, in turn, spent her time in the workroom, consulting with other wizards by various magical methods and trying to locate the needed ingredients for the spell. In addition to those she had remembered, she needed the ichor of a white cricket, the heart of an unborn male child, and the hand of a murdered woman.

“It could be worse,” she had told him at dinner that first night, a dinner she had prepared herself by perfectly natural methods, and which they ate in the kitchen. “Any woman killed by another person will do, I think. She needn’t have been a virgin, or a mother, or whatever. I should be able to find one eventually. And an aborted or miscarried child should work.”

He had agreed without comment.

“Don’t worry,” she said, sensing unease, “I’m not going to kill someone myself just to help you. I’m not that sort of wizard.”

That had relieved him somewhat; the remainder of the meal had passed in amiable silence, for the most part.

Since then he had seen only brief glimpses of her, other than at meals. At breakfast she would usually be planning the day’s investigations, and by supper she would be too tired to talk much, but at luncheon she chatted freely, exchanging reminiscences of the war and the changes that they had both seen in their lifetimes. She reacted to his admission that he had been an assassin with a sort of horrified fascination, even while admitting that it was certainly no more morally repugnant, logically, than her own wartime work of more straightforward wizardly slaughter. After that first dinner his own longstanding habits prevailed, and he played host, preparing and serving the meals.

Between meals she was always in her workshop, using various divinations to try and locate what she needed. Powdered spider, cold iron, and candles colored with virgin’s blood she had on hand; she explained that all three were useful in many spells. The iron was meteoric in origin, but, she assured him, that could only add to its efficacy. Blue silk was easily acquired in a short jaunt back to the city. The seaweed Valder provided himself after a walk on the beach, bringing back a mass of dripping weed to hang over the workshop hearth and dry.

That left the dragon’s tears, cricket’s ichor, baby’s heart, and severed hand. Iridith was cheerfully optimistic about all of them. “I found them once,” she said repeatedly.

That was how things stood on the fifth day, when she emerged unexpectedly from the workshop in the middle of the evening, holding a small pouch.

“What’s that?” Valder asked, looking up from a book that purported to describe the now-dead religion of the ruling class of the Northern Empire. “Find something?”

“No,” she answered. “But I now have explicit consent from enough of the Guild elders to go ahead with the spell, and besides, I thought I needed a break, so I made this as a sort of celebration and a token of my esteem.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a bottomless bag, made with Hallin’s spell.”

“What’s a bottomless bag?”

“Well, I’ll show you. I noticed that that sword seems to get in your way sometimes, but that you don’t like to leave it lying around—and as you probably noticed back in Ethshar, it’s not the fashion these days to wear a sword, in any case. So you can put it in this.” She held up the tiny pouch, smaller than the purse he wore when traveling.

“Oh, one of those!” he said, remembering. He had seen bottomless bags in use during the war, though he had never known what they were called; an entire army’s supply train could somehow be stuffed into one, and then pulled out again as needed. It made transport over rough country much easier. The major drawback was that the only item one could retrieve was the one most recently put in, so that if a great many items were stuffed into it, getting out the first one could take quite awhile. Careful planning was needed to use such a bag efficiently.

He accepted the bag, and managed to slip it onto the end of Wirikidor’s sheath. He watched with amused wonder as the full length of the sword slid down smoothly into the little pouch, vanishing as it went. When it had entirely disappeared, leaving only a small bulge, he tied the pouch to his belt.

“Much more convenient,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome,” Iridith answered.

He looked up at her; she was smiling warmly.

“I don’t really understand why you’re being so generous with me,” he said. “You’re doing far more than you need to.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, “but I like to be generous. I have everything I could ever want, you know; why shouldn’t I share it? I’ve spent too much time alone; wizards have a tendency to do that. So many spells require isolation, or such strict concentration that one dares not allow anyone else near! And it’s so depressing to be around other wizards, who all distrust one another and want only to learn new spells without revealing any of their own little secrets, or around ordinary people, who are frightened half to death of me, and who I know will grow old and die in just a few years.”

“I’m an ordinary person,” Valder said.

“No, you aren’t! You aren’t going to die, are you? That sword won’t let you. And you aren’t afraid of me.”

“Why should I be afraid of you?”