The Magicians' Daughter, page 7
“I could bring my ladies-in-waiting with me,” she warned.
“You could. But then how angry with yourself would you be if you find I actually do have a guest in my room? And that my guest is a friend? With so many witnesses, it would be impossible to prevent the story from getting out.”
“You are impossible,” the queen replied, but her anger was gone.
“Goodnight, Your Majesty.”
“Goodnight, Avender. I only wish my duties were as pleasant as yours.”
Straightening, the queen disappeared. A last wisp of starlit robe waved goodbye. Avender pushed himself off the railing, the smell of roses lingering behind him, and returned to the bedroom. Baroness Tregillis came out of the darkness, her eyes wide.
“Was that really the queen?” she asked as he held her.
“Yes.”
The baroness pushed him away. “Did she see me? If she did, it will be terrible for both of us. My husband will feel compelled to fight you, which will only get him killed.”
Avender kissed his finger and pressed it lightly against her lips. “Hush. We’re safe. The queen is not a gossip.”
The baroness shook her head, her neck and shoulders straining. “I do not feel safe. It would be a great thing to love you, but not for this sort of risk. What was I thinking?” She raised a hand to her forehead, her smooth skin creasing in confusion.
Avender let his hands drop. He had been caught off guard by the queen’s appearance as well and, if her ladyship’s mood had vanished, well then so had his. “Perhaps it was the wine, baroness. By all means leave, if that’s what you want. I can well understand your change of heart.”
Some of the worry softened in her eyes. “You can? You really are a lovely man. But I do think it would be better if I go. I am sorry.”
“Don’t be. What we might have done is difficult enough without worrying about regrets. Let me see if the passage outside is clear.”
Crossing to the door, Avender stepped into the corridor as if his was the most innocent action in the world. Left and right, there was no one else in the hall. He beckoned the woman forward.
She kissed him impulsively. “I wish I had met you before I married the baron,” she said.
“No you don’t.”
She didn’t argue. From the doorway, he watched her pass down the hall. She was a charming woman, but there were many charming women in Malmoret, and a few in Rimwich, too. He tried to steer clear of the ones who were too much in earnest, but he didn’t mind when those who weren’t changed their minds. Sometimes they had been known to change them back again. And it would never do to enjoy the company of someone who didn’t really want to be there.
Uncorking the bottle on the desk, he poured himself a glass of wine. Occasionally he was troubled by what he did, but tonight was not one of those times. The world had not offered him an alternative. No tidy cottage with sons and daughters tussling in the yard; not even Valing Manor. Who was there to share such a prize with him? He hadn’t found her. Instead he accepted those who found him instead, the embrace of women who should have known better, or did and didn’t mind.
But sometimes, especially when he visited Ferris and Reiffen in Grangore and watched them roll their eyes in exasperation as their daughter ordered them around, he wished he had been lucky enough to find something else. It was draining, loving other men’s widows and wives.
Cup in hand, he went back out to the balcony. The night took him in again, leaves rustling and scent kissing his nose. On the other side of the river the lights of Nearside flickered at the edge of the water like beads on a child’s necklace. Sipping his wine, he looked at the balcony above and dreamed of Wellin being one of those women who someday changed her mind.
Chapter 5
The Manderstone
Despite the queen’s pleading, Hubley was not allowed to return to Malmoret. Nor could her mother persuade her father to change his mind when they argued about it the next morning.
“Don’t you think taking away magic till her birthday is punishment enough?”
Ignoring his wife’s irritation, Reiffen reached for the toast. “It is not about punishment. The child is safer here. I have important work at hand, and do not intend to spend a week wasting my time in Malmoret guarding her.”
“She’d be safe enough with me,” said Ferris.
“She would not. What if Fornoch showed up?”
The fight ended as it always did, with Ferris storming off to her workshop or surgery, and Reiffen acting as if nothing had happened. Hubley crept away to be by herself. She always did that when her parents fought, and lately they’d been fighting more and more. Fetching her father’s spyglass from the library, she retreated to the top of the Apprentices’ Tower and watched the children playing in the valley below. But she was able to watch their fun for only so long before she sighed, snapped the spyglass shut, and sat grumpily with her back against the parapet for a good long bout of feeling sorry for herself.
It could have been worse. Her parents could have taken her magic away for years. But even then she wouldn’t have been allowed to play with the other children, for fear that the Gray Wizard would carry her off the way he had her father. Then she might end up learning magic the way he had, from Fornoch, which would be almost as bad as not learning magic at all.
Not that Hubley thought there was any real danger from the Wizard. No one had seen him in years, not since he had helped her parents escape from Ussene. There had been rumors, of course. A trader had seen an old man teaching tricks to the Keeadini, and a Dremen merchant had brought news of a woman selling love potions in the bazaar to anyone who would pay (and the secret of how to make them to anyone willing to pay more). Reiffen and Redburr had investigated every report without ever finding the Wizard, though what they did find disturbed them almost as much. Plum had told her the Keeadini shamans could now cast real charms, and the Dremen woman had been taught what she knew by an old man in gray robes who came to her every night for an entire year.
Over the next few days, Hubley spent more than a little time with the spyglass. Without magic to keep her busy, it was either that, or practice needlework with her Grandmother Giserre. She loved her grandmother, but her Mims was a lot more fun, even when she was mad.
Her boredom finally broke when her father found her a week later.
“We’re going to Malmoret,” he said.
“You changed your mind?” Surprised, Hubley forgot to hide the spyglass behind her back as she scrambled to her feet.
“So that’s where that got to.” Taking the telescope from her hand, the magician tucked it away inside his cloak. “Trier’s been looking for it for three days. And no, I haven’t changed my mind. Dwvon has something to show us in Issinlough. We are only going to Malmoret long enough to pick up the king and queen, who have been summoned as well. Your mother and the apprentices will meet us underground.”
Without another word, he whisked them back to the New Palace, where they found Avender waiting for them in addition to Their Majesties.
“Do you know why Dwvon wants us to come to Issinlough?” Brizen asked Reiffen after Hubley had given him and Wellin much-desired hugs.
“No.” Reiffen shook his head. “Only that he does not think Ferris and I, or any of our apprentices, will want to miss what he wants to show us. Something about the Nolostone, and how a Bryddin named Faffin has found another just like it.”
Hubley’s imagination raced. The Nolostone was the strange rock that had dropped from Fornoch’s robe just before Ussene’s destruction. Her mother had seen it disappear with Nolo as he tumbled into one of the cracks in the fortress’s floor. Weeks later, when Dwvon and the other Bryddin had finally dug Nolo out from under the bottom of the mountain, they had found him clutching the stone. The only thing the Dwarves had been able to learn about it since was that it was a strange mixture of Inach and brittemin, and that it was growing. The latter fact had convinced everyone the Wizard had given up the stone deliberately, but they had been unable to agree why. Hubley couldn’t wait to see the new one, and maybe learn more about them both.
Taking only a little more time than he had traveling to Malmoret, Reiffen carried them off again. Hubley gasped as the floor disappeared beneath her feet, replaced by the empty darkness of the Abyss. Then she noticed the glittering silver dish of the Bryddsmett hanging in the air on her left and understood why she wasn’t falling. A sheet of thick glass held her up over the bottomless deep: her father had brought them to the Brydds B’wee at the foot of the Rupiniah. Mullioned windows surrounded them, a stone bench running below the sill. Overhead stretched a roof of smooth stone. Beyond the windows’ diamond facets, the lamps of Issinlough gleamed like a thousand colored stars.
The queen took a deep breath. “Reiffen, you nearly scared me to death.” A slippered foot appeared from under her long blue skirt to tap delicately at the glass.
“He was just showing off,” said Avender.
“And quite successfully, too,” agreed the king. “A thrilling arrival. Shall we find the others?”
The queen and all three men stooped as they ascended the narrow stair at the back of the room, but the ceiling was tall enough for Hubley. They followed a winding path up into Dwvon’s unneret, past galleries and balconies that looked out upon the city. Around them, Issinlough hung upside down from the bottom of the world like roots from the roof of a cave. Gleaming bridges and catwalks connected the unnerets like dew-daubed cobwebs. The gnarled trunk of the Halvanankh dangled in the center, a great black parsnip jutting from the stone, the Bryddsmett just below its tip. And in the distance, circling the entire city the way the windows of the Brydds B’wee had circled the travelers on their arrival, shimmered the thin streams of the Seven Veils.
They smelled their next stop before they saw it. Even Reiffen sniffed delightedly as they turned in to the narrow hallway that led to Mother Norra’s kitchen.
“Hello, dearies,” the old woman called.
They entered a room with ceilings high enough for humans, a long table and benches wedged against one wall. Seated on a low stool beside the fire, Mother Norra stirred her stewpot with a wooden spoon.
“Give us a kiss, Hubley. And is that Avender?” The old woman peered closely at her visitors. “Pippins and pie, but you haven’t been to see me in ages. And who all is that with you? My eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I’ll tell you, when I was a girl, I could spot morels and tenpuffs at fifty paces!”
Avender waded into the full flood of the old woman’s welcome. “I’m here with Reiffen. And the king and queen.”
“The king and queen!” Mother Norra flapped her arms like a pair of fish on a dock. “Help me up, Avender, help me up. I have to make my curtsy.”
With Avender catching her arms, the old woman creaked to her feet. Her skirts swept perilously close to the fire, but Avender saw what was happening and flipped them out of the way with the toe of his boot. Holding onto his shoulder, Mother Norra was able to bend far more deeply than Hubley thought possible. The queen answered with a curtsy of her own, while the king bowed and kissed the old cook’s smoky hand.
“It is our privilege,” he said, “to meet someone so renowned for her art.”
“Peas and parsley, I’m just a cook.”
“Redburr tells me you make the best redbrick and flinny stew he’s ever tasted,” said Wellin. “Not to mention your milkberry scones.”
The old woman waved her hand dismissively, but there was no hiding her smile. “That Redburr. He’ll say anything if he thinks it’ll get him an extra bite. But if it’s scones you’re after, I’ve got some plain ones in the breadbox. That’s it there, Avender, under the second shelf. And there’s fresh clover honey in the pipkin too.”
“We are here to see Dwvon,” said Reiffen. “Do you know where he is?”
The old woman shook her white-haired head. “Not a clue. But he’ll show up soon enough. Till then, why don’t you all bide your time with a bite of stew. And I do hope you’ll favor an old woman with more than a how-de-do when you finish your business...”
With Avender and Hubley fetching bowls, Mother Norra ladled out portions of her most famous dish. Hubley thought it delicious, almost as good as the mussel stew Mims made whenever her granddaughter visited Valing. Reiffen and Avender put theirs away with hungry familiarity, but Hubley wasn’t so sure about the king and queen. Brizen at least finished his, while Wellin smiled through the occasional spoonful.
“It is delicious,” she said. “If you are willing to share the recipe, I do hope you will allow me to take it back to Malmoret. My chef’s accomplishments will be incomplete should he never prepare this dish.”
Mother Norra covered her mouth with her apron. “Mash and mush, Your Majesty. Why, I’ll bet your housemaids eat better’n this every day. Besides, I don’t hold much with recipes. Mostly I put in whatever comes to hand. Redburr’s told me more than once he likes my cookin’ so much ‘cause I always surprise him. A little of this, a little of that. That way it comes out different every time.”
“Well this version is splendid. No wonder Redburr always wants thirds.” Dipping the tip of her spoon into her bowl, the queen savored another small portion.
The old woman squinted at the empty hallway behind her guests. “Where is Redburr, anyhow? I don’t see you usually, Avender, ‘less he comes along too.”
“Redburr is hunting the Wizard,” said Brizen.
“Good for him.” Mother Norra banged her ladle vigorously on the edge of her pot. “I always knew he was good for something besides stuffing himself. Cheese and chocolate, you tell him there’ll be a place for him in my kitchen if he catches the last of those villains. When I think of what they did to poor Reiffen there, it makes my blood boil hard as alder tea.”
Her outburst ended as a boy not much older than Hubley entered, his mouth and nose twitching at the flavors in the air.
“Nolo says you’re supposed to meet him in Dwvon’s workshop,” he said, his eyes on the bowls of stew.
Reiffen started for the door.
“Sorry we can’t help with the dishes,” said Hubley as she and the others followed.
“That’s all right, dearie. You come back as soon as you can.” The old woman turned her attention to the boy. “What about you, lad? Like a taste of stew? Then help yourself to one of those bowls on the table. No sense in having to wash a dish more than once....”
They met Ferris on the way up, the apprentices schooling behind her. Nolo joined them at the top of the unneret soon after. “Come on,” he said, hurrying them along. “It might happen any minute. You don’t want to come all this way for nothing, do you?”
Hubley tagged close behind the Dwarf. “Are there really two Nolostones?” she asked.
“That’s right. Only it looks like we shouldn’t have been calling mine the Nolostone at all.”
“What should we be calling it?”
“A manderstone.”
“Manderstone?” asked Ferris.
“I’ll let Faffin explain. He understands it better than I do.”
“Who’s Faffin?” asked Hubley.
“You’ll meet him in a minute.”
Refusing to answer any more questions, the Dwarf led them into Dwvon’s workshop. Huge blocks of stone lay scattered around the vast chamber like cottages and small barns. Ferris and Trier fitted Dwarven lamps to the fronts of the thin silver bands they wore around their heads to hold back their hair, but with only three lights in the entire party, the enormous cave remained mostly hidden. In the distance hammers tapped on stone.
Stopping in front of a large block of Olath, Nolo laced his fingers into a set of gouges in the rock. With Dwarven strength, he lifted what turned out to be a heavy slab set flush against the wall. A low passage ran straight into the rock on the other side.
“You’ve hidden the Nolostone more thoroughly than before,” observed Reiffen as he stooped to follow the Dwarf through the low door.
“We still get a lot of pilfering,” Nolo explained, “despite the punishments you humans give one another. I didn’t notice it so much when I was living on the surface, but I do now. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to have to follow Angun’s example and move away. If only for the peace and quiet.”
Beyond the passage, the travelers emerged into a narrow room. Pale lamplight flickered across tables set in rows down the middle of the hall. Most were empty, but some were strewn with tools—chisels and hammers, compasses and plumbs, the sort of gear Dwarves used when working with stone.
“Wait.” Reiffen pointed toward something large and egg-shaped nestled in a niche in the wall as Nolo led them toward the far end. The Nolostone. It was larger than Hubley remembered, thick as Nolo and almost as tall. “Isn’t that what we came to see?”
“No.” The Dwarf stopped at the far door. “We’ve come to see Faffin’s. That’s why we’re in such a hurry. He thinks it’s about to hatch.”
“Hatch?”
For the first time in her life Hubley saw her father look confused.
“That’s what he says,” said Nolo. “And if we don’t hurry, we’ll miss it.”
Beyond the long hall, the passage opened into another, larger cave. Here the floor sloped down to a small lake, a dozen Dwarves standing in clusters around the edge. One of the nearest started up the stony beach to welcome the new arrivals; the rest kept their lamps on a small island three or four fathoms offshore.
As usual, Dwvon was covered in rock dust from head to toe as he greeted Reiffen and the rest of his guests. Leading them down to the shore, the eldest introduced them to the other Dwarves. Hubley recognized no one’s name except Faffin’s. He was smaller than most of the other Dwarves she’d met, and even thinner than Findle. But unlike Findle, Faffin almost looked frail. Perhaps it was the nervous way he pushed his spectacles up his nose, or the fact that Hubley thought he might jump if she shouted “Boo!”
