Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

“A likely story,” Vanai muttered. If magecraft were so easy, everybody would have been a mage. But using sorcery and performing it on your own were two very different things.

Despite her doubts, she kept reading. The author had a sprightly style, and seemed convinced he was telling the truth, regardless of how improbable Vanai found that. You can unleash the power within yourself, he insisted.

Back in Oyngestun, she’d tried magic-a cantrip lifted from a text belonging to her grandfather that dated back to the Kaunian Empire-to try to get Major Spinello to leave her alone. A little later, Spinello got posted to Unkerlant. Vanai still didn’t know whether the spell and his departure had anything to do with each other. She didn’t know… but she hoped.

She wondered what had happened to Spinello after he got to Unkerlant. Nothing good was her dearest wish. Many, many Algarvians had met their ends in battle against King Swemmel’s men. Was one more too much to ask?

She doubted she would ever learn Spinello’s fate. She hoped with all her soul she would never see him again. If she didn’t, who would bring word of him to her? No one, if she had any luck at all.

With a deliberate effort of will, she pushed Major Spinello out of her mind and went back to You Too Can Be a Mage. The author concentrated on spells that might bring in money and on those that might lure someone good-looking of the opposite sex, neither of which areas inclined Vanai to trust him very far. But, he insisted, using these same principles can get you anything - aye, anything! — your heart desires.

“What does my heart desire?” Vanai asked, rolling over and looking up toward the poorly plastered ceiling. She’d never had a lot of money, and had got very used to doing without it. She wasn’t looking for anyone but Ealstan. What did she want, then?

If only every Algarvian would vanish off the continent of Derlavai! Now there was a nice, round wish. Regretfully, Vanai laughed at herself. It was also a wish far beyond anything she could learn in You Too Can Be a Mage. It was a wish far beyond the powers of all the non-Algarvian mages in the world put together. She knew that all too well, too.

What could she wish for that she might actually be able to get? “The chance to go out on the streets of Eoforwic if I need to?” she suggested to herself. That wouldn’t be so bad. That, in fact, would be splendid. Ealstan had brought her a Forthwegian-style long tunic. If only she looked like a Forthwegian, now.

She flipped through the pages of the book. Sure enough, there was a section called Improving Your Appearance. Vanai didn’t think looking like a Forthwegian constituted an improvement, but she was willing to settle for a change.

She studied a couple of the suggested spells. One, by its phrasing, was pretty plainly a translation from the Kaunian. She didn’t recall ever running across the original. No doubt her grandfather could have cited exactly the text from which the Forthwegian had filched it, and no doubt Brivibas would have had some pungent things to say about Forthwegians meddling with their betters’ works.

But whatever Brivibas had to say these days, he was saying it to someone else-and, if he was trying to publish it, he was saying it in Forthwegian. He wasn’t Vanai’s worry any more. She hoped the Algarvians hadn’t thrown him into a ley-line caravan and sent him west. Past that, she refused to worry about him.

Still, she intended to try the translated spell, not the other one. Maybe that was because she was a Kaunian herself. And maybe, in some measure, it was because she was her grandfather’s granddaughter.

Whichever was true, she couldn’t even think about trying the spell before Ealstan got home. Even if she’d had all it would need, she wouldn’t be able to see the change if she did it before then, neither on herself nor in a mirror. And if she turned herself into a crone, she wouldn’t want to go out on the streets, either.

When Ealstan gave his coded knock, Vanai threw the door open and let him in. “Ethelhelm and his band are back in town,” he said after he’d hugged her and kissed her. “He’s got more stories to tell than you can shake a stick at.”

“That’s nice.” Normally, Vanai would have been bubbling with eagerness to hear news of the outside world. Now, hoping to see some of it for herself, she cared much less. “Listen, Ealstan, to what I want to do….”

Listen Ealstan did. He had patience. And, as she went on, his own enthusiasm built. “That would be wonderful, sweetheart,” he said. “Do you really think you can do it?”

“I don’t know,” Vanai admitted. “But, by the powers above, I hope so. I’m so sick of being stuck here, you can’t imagine.”

She waited to hear whether Ealstan would claim he could imagine it, even if he didn’t feel it himself. To her relief, he only nodded and asked, “What will you need for the spell?”

Vanai had been pondering that herself. You Too Can Be a Mage didn’t go into a lot of detail. “Yellow yarn,” she answered. “Black yarn-dark brown would be even better. Vinegar. Honey. A lot of luck.”

Ealstan laughed. “I can bring you back everything but the luck.”

“We’ve got honey and vinegar,” Vanai answered. “All you have to buy is the yarn. And you’ve already brought me luck.”

“Have I?” His tone went bleak. “Is this luck, being trapped in this little flat day after day?”

“For a Kaunian in Forthweg, this is luck,” Vanai said. “I came this close”- she snapped her fingers-”to getting sent west, remember. I’m lucky to be alive, and I know it.” Maybe you should be content with that, part of her said. Maybe you shouldn‘t want any more. But she did. She couldn’t help it.

And because she couldn’t, the next day seemed to crawl past. The walls of the flat felt as if they were closing in on her. When Ealstan came home after what seemed like forever, she threw the door open and snatched from his hand the little paper-wrapped parcels he was carrying. He laughed at her. “Nice to know you’re glad to see me.”

“Oh, I am,” she said, and he laughed again. She tore the parcels open. One held pale yellow yarn, a pretty good match for the color of her own hair. The skein of yarn in the other package was dark brown. She nodded to Ealstan. “These are perfect.”

“Hope so,” he said. “Will the spell wait till after supper? I’m starved.” He gave his belly a theatrical pat.

Even though Vanai didn’t want to wait any more, she did. And then, at last, there wasn’t anything left to wait for. She got the honey and the vinegar. She got lengths of each color yarn. And she got You Too Can Be a Mage. After studying the spell it gave as carefully as if she were a first-rank theoretical sorcerer essaying some conjuration that had never been tried before, she nodded. “I’m ready.”

“Good,” Ealstan said. “You don’t mind if I watch?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Just don’t jog my elbow.”

Ealstan didn’t say a word. He pulled up a chair and waited to see what would happen next. Vanai began to chant. She felt strange incanting in Forthwegian rather than classical Kaunian, though the tongue in which a spell was cast had nothing to do with how effective it was. A lot of history had proved that.

As she chanted, she dipped the yellow yarn first into the vinegar, then into the honey. She laid it on top of the length of dark brown yarn. She frowned a little while she was doing that. The phrasing for the spell there seemed particularly murky, as if the translator, whoever he was, had had trouble following the Kaunian original. She hurried on. A last word of command and the spell was done.