Ithanalin's Restoration. Lawrence Watt-Evans

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СКАЧАТЬ Ithanalin himself could have solved with a single simple little incantation. He kept telling her to plan, to think things out for herself—but when she tried, it never seemed to work out, and often because there was some little detail that Ithanalin had failed to provide.

      Yara, though—Yara was always considerate. It was Yara who made sure that Kilisha had clean bedding, good food, safe water, and all the other basic necessities of life.

      Of course, she did the same for her husband, and the three children, and herself. It was she who kept the entire household running smoothly at all times. She was more than just a housekeeper, though—she loved her husband and her children and showed it, she provided the household with firm common sense when it was called for, and she was even sometimes a friend when Kilisha needed one. Ithanalin was fine, but he was her master, and sometimes she needed someone to talk to who wasn’t her master. The three children—Telleth, Lirrin, and Pirra—were sweet enough, but too young to understand the concerns of a girl of seventeen. Telleth, the oldest, was only ten. Kilisha couldn’t often talk to her parents or her brother Opir—they still lived in Eastgate, a mile away, and she was only rarely free to visit there.

      Much of the time there was only Yara—but she was usually enough.

      Kilisha knew she would have to animate a few things herself in order to learn the relevant spells; perhaps, as part of her training, if Ithanalin didn’t insist her creations be sold, she could provide Yara with the magical servants Ithanalin had never bothered to create.

      But she had less than a year of her apprenticeship remaining, and had not yet been taught a single one of the spells that were Ithanalin’s specialty and primary source of income—a fact that distressed her.

      “Master,” Kilisha said, “please—could I please learn an animation spell next?”

      Ithanalin looked up at her, startled by the intensity in her voice.

      “All right,” he said. “We’ll start on the seventeenth, the day after tomorrow—I have another important customer coming tomorrow, and it will take me most of the day to get his spell ready, so we can’t do it then. But Kilisha, it may still be more than you can handle, even yet—animation spells are tricky.” He thought for a moment, then added, “We’ll start with the simplest I know. It’s called the Spell of the Obedient Object—you’ve seen me use it. It’s not the simplest there is, by any means, just the simplest I know. We’ll need the blood of a grey cat, and one of these gold coins—I’ll have to look the rest up. Day after tomorrow, right after breakfast, then. You’ll have to find a grey cat tomorrow—I don’t have any more cat’s blood in stock. Besides, it’ll keep you out of the way while I’m working.”

      Kilisha grinned. “Thank you, master!” she said. She almost bounced with joy.

      “That’s tomorrow,” Yara said, bringing her back to earth. “Right now, I’d like you to watch Pirra while I get our dinner.”

      Kilisha sighed, and smoothed out a hump in the rag rug by the door. “Yes, mistress,” she said.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Kilisha eyed the grey cat warily; the cat stared inscrutably back.

      Maybe, Kilisha thought, she was going about this wrong.

      It had seemed perfectly reasonable to chase this stray; after all, she needed a grey cat, and this one had walked right in front of her as she strolled down Wizard Street. If she had thought about it at all she would have taken it as a sign from the gods—but she should have remembered how fond the gods were of jokes.

      Now she stood precariously balanced on a broken crate, trying to reach the cat while it sat calmly watching her from a second-floor windowsill that was just a few inches beyond Kilisha’s outstretched fingers.

      “Here, puss,” Kilisha crooned. “Come on. I’m not going to kill you, I just need a little blood.”

      The cat didn’t move.

      Kilisha stretched a little farther, on the very edge of overbalancing.

      The cat flicked its tail against the window pane with an audible thump, then stood up and stretched. Kilisha waited, hoping it would jump down, back within reach.

      Something rattled, and the window casement swung inward.

      “Come on in, Smoky,” a child’s voice said.

      The cat gave Kilisha one last look, one the apprentice would have sworn was a supercilious sneer, and then climbed in through the open window, out of sight.

      “No, wait!” Kilisha called. “Wait!” She reached too far; the window closed with a thump, wood cracked under her foot, and she tumbled down into the alley.

      A moment later she had untangled herself from the wreckage and gotten upright once more; as she brushed dirt and splinters from her tunic she concluded that yes, she was going about this wrong. Trying to find a stray grey cat in the streets of Ethshar was simply too haphazard an enterprise; for one thing, as this latest incident demonstrated, there was no way to tell a true stray from someone’s pet. Not everyone put bows, bells, and collars on their cats.

      She had set out with no definite plan of action, and Smoky’s appearance had convinced her she didn’t need one.

      She should have known better. Ithanalin was always telling her to plan ahead, and she kept forgetting and charging ahead without thinking.

      She looked around thoughtfully. She couldn’t ask Ithanalin for advice; by now he would be deep in his spell-casting, and an interruption might be disastrous. Yara and the children were out for the day—Yara at the market, the children playing with neighbors across the back courtyard—so as not to disturb Ithanalin. It was up to her.

      Finding a cat shouldn’t be a problem, though. It wasn’t as if she’d been sent after dragon’s blood or the hair of an unborn babe. Ethshar of the Rocks might be short of dragons, and its unborn children might be inaccessible, but there were plenty of cats.

      Many of the aristocrats of Highside and Center City, westward toward the sea, kept cats—as well as any number of more exotic pets, such as Lady Nuvielle’s miniature imitation dragon. Kilisha doubted that she’d find any aristocrats who cared to let a scruffy apprentice draw blood from their pampered darlings, though. At least, not without demanding more money than she could afford.

      To the east was the Lakeshore district, and to the north was Norcross—both solidly middle class, home to assorted tradesmen and bureaucrats. Kilisha had the impression that they ran more to watchdogs than cats.

      The Arena district was a few blocks to the south, though, and that seemed promising.

      Or if she just strolled along Wizard Street…

      She knew several cats, belonging to magicians of every sort. Unfortunately, none of them were really grey—most magicians seemed to prefer black, and while there were a few tigers and tabbies mixed in, she didn’t remember a single grey.

      Maybe someone else would, though.

      And if all else failed, she could go to a professional wizards’ supply house—there was Kara’s Arcana, on Arena Street just around the corner from Wizard Street. That would be expensive, even for something as simple as cat’s blood, she was sure.

      She СКАЧАТЬ