Six: Heart’s Ease
The morning was bright and sunny. Instead of dark and sinister, the Wild Wood was fresh and green. There was almost nothing among the trees and ferns to remind them of the night before.
Their path led out of the glade and back up the heavily wooded hill above the door. There was no hint or scent of danger, but still they moved along quickly.
They climbed a series of forested ridges, each looking down on the tops of the trees in the valley below. At the top of the third ridge, Moira scanned the valley while Wiz sat puffing on a rocky outcrop.
“There!” the hedge witch said, pointing. Below and off to one side a square stone tower stood rough and gray above the trees of the forest. About its base clustered outbuildings enclosed by a stockade of peeled logs. Heart’s Ease,” said Moira. “Our journey’s end.” She shifted her pack as Wiz struggled to his feet and they headed off down the path.
“Will we be safe here?” Wiz asked as the trail flattened out in the valley and he found he had breath for more than walking.
“In daylight nothing dare come close,” Moira told him. “Anything magic here would be immediately known to the Watchers. There are non-magic agents, of course, human and such, but . . .” she shrugged. “We are safe here as anywhere.”
“Thank God!” Wiz said fervently.
Moira frowned. “Do not be so free with names of power.”
“I’m sorry,” Wiz said contritely.
The forest enclosed them until they were almost on top of the castle. The trees were as huge and hoary as anywhere in the Wild Wood, but they didn’t seem as threatening here.
“It feels friendly,” Wiz said wonderingly, aware for the first time how oppressive the Wild Wood had been at its most benign.
“It is friendlier,” Moira agreed. “The forest folk hereabouts are kindly disposed toward the inhabitants of Heart’s Ease. They watch over the place and those who live there.” She shifted her pack with a swell and jiggle in her blouse that made Wiz’s heart catch. “Besides, this is a quiet zone. There is almost no magic here, for good or ill.”
###
Atros returned to his sleeping chamber fuming. It had been a long, frustrating evening. Damn those elves and their impudence! They had spirited his quarry out from his very grasp, humiliated him in front of the entire League and ruined his plans. His impromptu army disintegrated once they knew the elf duke guested the two they sought.
So they had been making for the elf hill after all, the wizard thought as he stripped off his bearskin cloak by the light of a single lamp glowing magically in one corner. He did not understand it and he was too tired to really think upon it. Perhaps the one who had been Summoned was some strange kind of elf and not a man at all? True, Toth-Set-Ra’s scrying demon had called the Summoned a man, but demons could be wrong.
Too many possibilities, he thought as he pulled his silken tunic over his head. For now sleep and in the morning . . . He moved toward the great canopied bed and then stopped. There was something, or someone, making an untidy lump under the sheets. He stepped back cautiously and possessed himself of his staff. He muttered a protective spell and then moved to the bed again. Reaching out with his staff, he flipped back the fine woolen coverlet and recoiled at what lay beneath.
There on the gore-clotted sheets was a thing which had once been a man. His back was broken, his ribs were smashed, his arms and legs dislocated and cruelly contorted, and his head lay at an impossible angle. But worse, he had no skin. He had been so expertly flayed that even his nose remained in place. His pallid eyeballs stared up at the ceiling and his ivory white teeth seemed to smile out of the mass of bloody tissue that had been a face.
Even in its present state, Atros had no difficulty identifying the body as Kar-Sher, Keeper of the Sea of Scrying.
“Do you like my little present, Atros?” hissed a familiar, hateful voice. The dark-haired giant started and looked around. In the shadows behind the feebly glowing lamp a face took shape. The face of Toth-Set-Ra.
“I told one I know what he was called,” the wizard’s voice went on, soft and full of menace. “Not his true name, Atros, just what he was called. And you see the result.” The old wizard cackled. “Oh, I did take his skin afterwards. I needed it, you see. It is amazing what you can do with the skin of a wizard, even a wizard who set himself so much above his station. A wizard who was such an inexpert plotter as this one.”
Atros looked around wildly, swinging his staff this way and that to try to ward off an attack.
“I tell you again Atros, the League is mine!” The skull-face image said. “You, all of you, exist to serve me. And serve me you shall—one way or the other. Meditate upon that, Atros. Meditate upon it while you sleep.”
The image winked out, leaving Atros alone in the chamber cold and shaking. Did the old crow mean to spare his life? Or was this just some torture designed to shake his will before he too was killed?
Atros spent the rest of the night in sleepless suspense and confusion. Plots to replace Toth-Set-Ra were very far from his mind.
###
A woman waited to greet them at the stockade gate. She was beautiful, tall and stately as a ship under sail. She was not young, yet not as old as her long white hair proclaimed. As Wiz got closer he saw that the lines around her eyes and mouth were those of one who had lived hard, not long.
She wore a long gown of midnight blue velvet, caught with a silver cord at her waist. The dagged sleeves of her dress fitted her upper arms tightly and swept halfway to the ground at her wrists.
Her right hand rested on the shoulder of a bent, manlike creature with a long sharp nose and huge hairy ears. He was as ugly as she was beautiful, but the contrast was not incongruous.
“Merry met and well come,” she said in a voice like ringing silver. “I am Shiara, the mistress of this place, and Heart’s Ease is your home for as long as you care to stay.”
“Thank you, Lady,” said Moira, curtseying. Wiz hastened to bow.
“Not ‘Lady’,” the woman told her. “Just plain Shiara.”
“Not plain either,” said Wiz, moved by her beauty.
Shiara smiled but did not look in his direction. She’s blind! he realized.
“Your companion is gallant,” Shiara said to Moira.
“He has his moments,” Moira sniffed.
“You are called ‘Sparrow’, are you not?”
“Yes, Lady. Ah, yes Shiara.”
“Well, merry met at Heart’s Ease, Sparrow,” the lady said. “You must both be tired. Ugo will show you to your rooms.”
The ugly little creature sniffed and shuffled through the stockade gate without a backward glance.
The ground within covered perhaps two acres. There were six or eight small buildings, huts and storehouses and a large garden laid out behind. Attached to the base of the stone tower was a large building, also of peeled logs, roofed with shingles and chinked with moss.
“Is she a wizardess?” Wiz whispered to Moira as they came up the flagstone walkway.
“She was of the Mighty,” Moira said and motioned him to silence.
Ugo led them into the building and Wiz saw it was a single large room, a great hall with a huge smoke-blackened fireplace in one side and a table big enough to seat twenty people down the center. In spite of its rude exterior, the hall was richly furnished with heavy velvet drapes on the walls and massively carved furniture placed carefully about. The whole effect reminded Wiz of a picture he had seen once of J.P. Morgan’s hunting lodge.
Ugo took them down the hall without pausing and through a low stone door into the tower proper. There was a narrow stair twisting off to the right and climbing so steeply Wiz was afraid he would lose his balance. At the second floor landing Ugo opened a door for Moira and bowed her through. Wiz started to follow but Ugo blocked him with a rough hairy arm.
“Lady’s room,” he said gruffly. “Come.” He led Wiz on up the stairs to the very top of the tower.
“Your room,” Ugo grumbled as he opened the door.
The room was small and simply furnished with a narrow rope bed, a table and single chair. But there was a fire laid in the fireplace and a basin and pitcher of steaming water sat on the table. The bed was covered with a bright counterpane and a snow-white towel lay beside the basin. Against one wall, next to the fireplace, stood a full-length mirror.
“Dinner at sun’s setting,” the goblin told him. “Do not be late.”
Dinner was simple but savory. Most of the dishes were vegetables and tubers from the castle garden, with wild mushrooms from the forest and forest fruits for dessert. There was very little meat, which suited Wiz.
“Moira has been telling me of your travels,” Shiara said. She held a knife in one hand and extended the other hand, palm down and fingertips spread, over the table, finding her plate by the heat from the food.
“It was quite a trip,” Wiz said. “Lady,” he added hastily as Moira frowned.
“I understand you rescued Moira when you were beset by trolls.”
“Well, kinda. Mostly she rescued me.”
“Still, from what Moira tells me it was a bravely done deed.” She smiled slightly. “Though perhaps charging a troll with a stick is not the wisest move.”
“Thank you, Lady,” said Wiz, ignoring the second sentence. “Uh, Lady, do you know if they are still looking for us?”
Shiara turned serious. “Somewhat, I understand. Although your guesting the night in an elf hill seems to have thrown them off the scent and dampened the ardor of many of the Leagues allies. There are few who would willingly try conclusions with any of the elven kind, much less an elf duke.”
“Then are they likely to find us here?”
She considered. “Perchance. But in this quiet place it would be hard. We do not use magic at Heart’s Ease, so they cannot find you directly. There is little magic here to reflect off us and show us those with the Sight. No, Sparrow, if they find you at all it will be by accident.
“Besides,” she continued, “finding you and getting here are very different things. In a quiet zone such as this any attempt at magic would be seen instantly by the Watchers and countered. We are a hundred leagues or more from the shores of the Freshened Sea so they cannot come at us overland. The forest creatures are our friends, so they would find it difficult to sneak close. All things considered we are safe enough.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Just do not get careless,” Moira said sharply.
“True,” their blind hostess said. “Safety is at best relative and we are deep in the Wild Wood. Do not wander off, and leave things you do not understand strictly alone.”
There was silence for a bit while they ate.
“Lady, what do we do now?” Wiz asked at last.
“You remain here as my guests while the Mighty consider your situation.”
“And Moira?” Wiz asked, dreading the answer.
“I am to remain as well,” said the red-haired witch, in a tone that showed she didn’t like it. “In their wisdom, the Mighty have decreed that even here you need a keeper.” She grimaced. “And I am chosen for the task.”
“You don’t have to stay on my account,” Wiz protested.
“I stay because the Mighty would have it so.”
“Peace, peace,” said Shiara. “Lady, I think your quarrel is with those not present, not the Sparrow.”
“True, Lady,” Moira said contritely. She turned to Wiz. “I am sorry I spoke so.”
They contrived to get through the rest of dinner without snapping at each other.
###
At first Wiz simply luxuriated in life at Heart’s Ease. He had a bed to sleep in, a roof over his head, no one was chasing him and, best of all, he didn’t have to walk all day.
But that palled quickly. There was nothing for him to do. Moira made herself useful, cooking and helping to clean, but Wiz had no domestic skills.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked Ugo one day as the goblin was sweeping out the great hall.
“Do?” Ugo grunted.
“To help.”
Ugo bent to his sweeping. “Don’t need help. Take care of Lady by myself.”
It wasn’t that he was interested in doing housework, Wiz admitted to himself; he was bored and he felt completely useless.
He wandered out into the garden where Moira was on her hands and knees weeding an herb border.
“Can I help?”
Moira looked up and did not rise.
“How?” she asked suspiciously.
Wiz spread his arms. “I just want to make myself useful.”
Moira snorted skeptically, as if she felt his offer was a ruse to get close to her. Since that was partially true, Wiz reddened.
“Very well, weed that section over there.” She nodded her head toward a part of the border on the other side of the garden.
The border contained tall fennel plants, their feathery pale green foliage smelling strongly of licorice. Sprouting thickly around them were broad-leafed seedlings, each with two or three yellow-green leaves.
Even though the smell of licorice made Wiz slightly nauseous, he set to work with a will, pulling up the tiny plants without damaging the fennel. The summer sun beat strongly on his back and before he had weeded five feet he was sweating heavily. The border was wide and he had to reach to get the weeds at the far side. In ten feet his shoulders were twinging from the reaching and by the time he had done twenty feet his back was sore as well. He took to stopping frequently to rest his aching muscles and to watch Moira at work on the other side of the garden.
Moira worked steadily and mechanically, flicking the weeds out of the bed with a practiced twist of her wrist. Her long red hair hung down beside her face and every so often she would reach up and brush it out of the way, but she never broke the rhythm of her work. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek and her skirt and blouse were grimed and stained, but she still took Wiz’s breath away.
At last Wiz reached the end of the fennel and went to Moira for further instructions.
“It took you long enough,” she said as he approached.
There were a lot of weeds,” said Wiz, bending over backwards in an effort to get the kinks out of his back. “I don’t think that patch had been weeded in some time.”
Moira looked up at him sharply. “I weeded it myself not three days ago.”
“Well, weeds must come up quickly here. They were all over the place.”
Moira got to her feet and went over to examine Wiz’s handiwork. At the sight of the clean bare earth under the fennel plants she sucked in her breath and clenched her teeth.
“What’s wrong?”
“Those,” she said pointing to Wiz’s piles of “weeds,” “were lettuces. They were planted there so the fennel could shade them.” She sighed and stooped to gather the wilted plants into her apron. “I hope you like salad, Sparrow, because there is going to be a lot of it tonight.”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“It is not your fault, Sparrow,” she said in a resigned voice. “I should have known better than to trust you with such a task.”
That made Wiz feel even worse.
“Go back inside. I will finish up here.”
“Lady, I’m really sorry.”
“I know you are, Sparrow. Now go.”
###
Finally, by appealing to Shiara, Wiz got a regular job. Under a shed roof against the palisade was a woodpile and next to the woodpile stood an old tree stump with an axe in it. Wiz’s job was to chop firewood for Heart’s Ease.
The axe was shaped like a giant tomahawk with no poll and a perfectly round straight haft. The design made it hard to handle and it took Wiz two or three hours a day to chop enough wood for the hearths and kitchen fires. He didn’t see how Ugo had been able to get the wood chopped with all his other work. Except, Wiz thought glumly, he’s probably a lot more efficient at it, than I am.
The goblin servant came by the wood pile several times to check Wiz’s progress and sniffed disapprovingly at what he saw. He also very ostentatiously examined the axe for damage each time and strictly forbade Wiz to sharpen it.
###
Worse than the boredom, Moira avoided him. She wasn’t obvious about it and she was always distantly polite when they met, but she contrived to spend as little time in his company as she could. Wiz took to standing on the battlements of the keep and watching her as she worked in the garden far below. From the occasional glance she threw his way he knew she saw him, but she never asked him to stop.
He had been closer to her when they were on the run, Wiz thought miserably. About the only time he could count on seeing her was when they sat down to dinner.
But the worst thing of all was that there were no computers. Because of the magical changes that let him speak the local language, Wiz couldn’t even write out programs. He took to running over algorithms mentally, or sitting and sorting piles of things algorithmically. At night his dreams of Moira alternated with dreams of working at a keyboard again and watching the glowing golden lines of ASCII characters march across the screen.
One morning Moira found him sitting at the table in the hall practicing with broom straws.
“What are you doing, Sparrow?” she asked, eyeing the row of different length straws on the table before him.
“I’m working a variation on the shell sort.”
“Those aren’t shells,” Moira pointed out.
“No, the algorithm—the method—was named for the man who invented it. His name was Shell.”
“Is this magic?” she demanded.
“No. It’s just a procedure for sorting things. You see, you set up two empty piles—”
“How can piles be empty?”
“Well, actually you establish storage space for two empty piles, then you—”
“Wait a minute. Why don’t you just put things in order?”
“This is a way of putting them in order.”
“You don’t need two piles to lay out straws in order.”
“No, look. Suppose you needed to tell someone to lay out straws in order.”
“Then I would just tell them to lay them out in order. I don’t need two piles for that either.”
“Yeah, but suppose the person didn’t know how to order something.”
“Sparrow, I don’t think anyone is that stupid.”
“Well, just suppose, okay?”
She sighed. “All right, I am working with someone who is very stupid. Now what?”
“Well, you want a method, a recipe that you can give this person that will let them sort things no matter how many there are to be sorted. It should be simple, fast and infallible. Now suppose the person who is going to be doing the sorting can compare straws and say that one is longer than another one, okay?”
“Hold on,” Moira cut in. “You want to do this as quickly as possible, correct?”
“Right.”
“And your very stupid person can tell when one straw is longer than another one, correct?”
“Right.”
“Then why not just lay the straws down on the table one by one and put them in the right order as you do so? Look at the straws and put each one in its proper place.”
“Because you can’t always do that,” Wiz said a little desperately. “You can only compare one pair of straws at a time.”
“That’s stupid! You can see all the straws on the table can’t you?”
“You just don’t understand,” Wiz said despairingly.
“You’re right,” the red-headed witch agreed. “I don’t understand why a grown man would waste his time on this foolishness. Or why you would want to sort straws at all.” With that she turned away and went about her business.
“It’s not foolishness,” Wiz said to her back. “It’s . . .” Oh, hell, maybe it is foolishness here. He slumped back in the chair. After all, what good is an algorithm without a computer on which to execute it? But dammit, these people were so damn literal-minded! It wasn’t that Moira didn’t understand the algorithm—although that was a big part of it, he admitted. To Moira the method was just a way to sort straws. She didn’t seem to generalize, to see the universality of the technique.
Come to that, most of the people here didn’t generalize the way he did. They didn’t think mathematically and they almost never went looking for underlying common factors or processes. This is what it must have been like back in the Middle Ages, before the rise of mathematics revolutionized Western thought.
Well, he thought, looking around the great hall with its fireplace and tapestries, this isn’t exactly Cupertino. This is the Middle Ages, pretty much. So here I am, a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Full of all kinds of modern knowledge. And that and a quarter—or whatever they use here for quarters—will get me a cup of coffee—or whatever they drink here for coffee.
If he had been a civil engineer or something he could have put his knowledge to use. He might at least have shown people how to build better bridges or catapults or whatever. But he wasn’t even a hardware type. Strictly software. And the only thing his knowledge was good for was sorting straws.
With a disgusted motion, Wiz swept the half-sorted straws onto the floor. He dragged the heavy carved chair from the table to a place by the window and sat with his feet propped on the window ledge staring out.
Back home he could look out over the freeway and housetops to rolling golden hills marked with dark slashes where clumps of oaks and eucalyptus grew. Here all he could see was trees and off, in the distance, mountains covered with more trees. He missed that combination of open vistas and people close by. He even missed the rivers of automobiles that poured down the freeway.
He did a quick calculation and realized they were coming down to the wire on the project at work. Probably cursing him for disappearing at a critical point. I wonder who they got to replace me? The thought of a stranger working at his terminal, rearranging his carefully piled stacks of printouts made him ache. He got up and started to pace the length of the hall.
He had left half a box of fried chicken in his desk drawer, he remembered. Will they find that before it starts to stink up the office? And what about my apartment? The rent should be due by now. The bills will be piling up in the mailbox. How do they handle stuff like that when someone disappears? Wiz didn’t have a cat because the apartment didn’t allow pets. For the first time he was glad of it. At least there was no one who was really dependent on me.
Ugo came in with a load of wood for the evening’s fire. As he dropped it by the fireplace, he saw the chair against the window.
“You move?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
He scowled and pointed at the chair. “Do not move things. It would confuse the Lady.” He shifted it back to its place by the table.
“I’m sorry,” Wiz said contritely.
“Do not move things,” the goblin said sternly and continued on his way.
“Damn!” Wiz said to the empty air.
“Do not curse, Sparrow.”
Wiz turned and saw Moira had come back into the hall.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, just a little homesick.”
“I am sorry, Sparrow. I, too, wish to go home.”
“At least you can get there from here,” he said sullenly.
Moira compressed her lips. “Not while the Mighty bid me here to watch over you.”
“You don’t do much watching. The only time I see you is at meals.”
“Oh? Do you feel the need for a nursemaid, Sparrow?”
“I’m in love with you. I want to be close to you. Is that so hard to understand?”
Moira dropped her eyes. “That was none of my doing.”
“All right, you don’t love me,” Wiz said bitterly. “Then take this damn spell off me!”
“Do not use language like that,” Moira said sharply.
“Sorry,” Wiz snapped, “but that’s what it is.”
The red-headed witch sighed. “Sparrow, if I had my way you never would have been bound to me in the first place. If it were in my power to remove the spell I would do so in an instant. But I cannot.
“I did not put the spell on you; Patrius did. It is not an infatuation spell I know and I do not have the faintest idea how to release you. Bal-Simba or one of the other Mighty could perhaps remove it. When Bal-Simba comes here I will ask him to take the spell off. More, I will beg him to take it off.”
She softened. “I am sorry, Sparrow, but that is the best that I can do.”
“Great,” Wiz said. “In the meantime I’ve got a case of terminal puppy love combined with the moby hots for you. I’ve got to live under the same roof with you and have nothing to do with you. Da . . . darn it, before this happened you weren’t even my type! I like willowy brunettes.”
Moira reddened. “I suppose you think this is easy for me! To have you trailing after me like a puppy dog, or a bull and me a cow in season? To have to stay here when there are people elsewhere who need me? To have to tiptoe around avoiding you for both our sakes? Do you think I enjoy any of it?” she shouted, her freckles vivid against her flushed skin, her bosom heaving and her green eyes flashing like emeralds in candlelight. Wiz could only stare, but Moira didn’t notice.
“Sparrow, believe me when I tell you I want nothing so much as to be rid of you and gone from this place.” She turned on her heel and slammed out the door.
“Damn that old wizard anyway!” Wiz said viciously in his teeth. Then he went off to the woodpile to turn logs into kindling.
###
Moira didn’t exactly apologize and neither did Wiz. But the outburst seemed to clear the air slightly and for a while things at Heart’s Ease were a little less strained.
Other than that, life went on as before. Wiz chopped wood and moped about, Moira stayed out of his way, Shiara was as beautiful and gracious as ever and Ugo grumbled.
In addition to cutting firewood and sighing after Moira, Wiz did try to learn more about his new world and his new home.
“Ugo, why is Heart’s Ease so special?” Wiz asked one morning when the little wood goblin came out to the wood pile to collect his work.
“Because the Lady live here,” said Ugo in a tone that indicated only an idiot would ask such a question.
Wiz put the axe down and wiped his brow. “I mean besides that. Moira said there was something about the way it was built.”
“No magic,” Ugo told him. “Every stone raised by hand. Every board and beam felled by axe and shaped by adze. All joined with pegs and nails. No magic anywhere in the building.”
“Why not?”
“The Lady does not like magic,” the goblin servant said, gathering in an armload of wood. “It hurts her now.” With that he turned away to his duties.
Pumping Ugo for information was never very satisfactory, Wiz thought as he washed and changed for dinner. But then damn little around here is.
Wiz pulled a clean shirt out of his chest and paused in front of the mirror before putting it on. The days at the woodpile had put muscle on his frame and the sun had darkened his normally pasty torso. He still wasn’t going to win any body-building contests, but he had to admit he looked a lot better than he normally did.
“Pretty good for someone who’s totally useless,” he told himself.
“Are you sure?” the mirror asked soundlessly.
Wiz jumped and gasped. Then he stared. The mirror was angled so it did not catch the full brightness of the sun. It’s surface was dark and cloudy as always.
“Are you sure you’re so useless?” the mirror repeated. The words formed in Wiz’s mind.
“Well, yeah I’m sure,” Wiz said aloud.
“You shouldn’t be,” the mirror said. “You were brought from a long way at the cost of a man’s life. There are a lot of people who are looking very hard for you. I’d say that makes you pretty important.”
Great! Wiz thought. Now I’m getting a pep talk from a goddamn mirror.
“You need it from someone, bub. You’ve been sulking like a twelve-year-old ever since you got to Heart’s Ease. You need to pull out of it.”
“What’s the use? I don’t fit in here and I never will.”
“With that attitude you’re damn straight you never will,” the mirror told him. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been a fish out of water. You’re the guy who spent two years doing software maintenance in a COBOL shop and managed to fit in pretty well.”
“Well yeah, but that was different.”
“Not that different. Wiz, old son, you’ve never exactly been a fount of social graces, but you’ve always gotten by. And you have never, never, given up before.”
“So I should beat my head against a stone wall?”
“How do you know it’s a stone wall? Face it, you haven’t tried all that hard. There’s got to be something here for you. All you have to do is find it.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Patrius was. He must have had a reason to bring you here.”
“Moira says Patrius made a mistake.”
“Moira may be beautiful, but she’s not always right.”
“Well . . .”
“Moira is a consideration, though. If you were someone here, it might change her attitude.”
“If you’re going to offer to play me a game, I refuse,” Wiz told the mirror.
“No offer,” the mirror told him. “Only the observation.”
“Okay, but what could make me special here?”
The mirror was silent.
“Well?” Wiz demanded.
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“Great. Then why the hell bring it up?”
“Because you have two choices,” the mirror bored on inexorably. “You can believe you will never amount to anything here, never fit in, and dissolve in your own bile. Or you can believe you have a place here and try to find it. Which do you prefer?”
“All right. But how? What do I have to do?”
“You’ll think of something,” the mirror told him.
“You’ll think of something,” Wiz mimicked. “Thanks a lot!”
“Sparrow?” Wiz turned and there was Shiara standing in the open door.
“Who are you talking to?” she asked. Wiz flushed and opened his mouth to deny it. Then he changed his mind. After all, magic worked here.
“I was talking to the mirror, Lady.”
Shiara frowned. “The mirror?”
“Well, it talked to me first,” he said defensively.
Frowning, the mistress of Heart’s Ease swept into the room, her long black gown swishing on the uneven floor. “This mirror?” she asked, putting out a hand to brush her fingertips across its silvery surface.
“Yes, Lady. That mirror.”
Shiara smiled and shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Lady, I know you don’t allow magic in the castle, but . . .”
“Sparrow, I think you have been brooding overmuch,” Shiara told him gently.
“Lady?”
“There is no magic here. This is an ordinary mirror.”
“No magic?” Wiz repeated dumbly.
“No magic at all. Just a mirror.”
Wiz felt himself turning crimson to his hair roots. “But it talked to me! I heard it.”
“It talked to you or you talked to you?” she asked gently. “Sometimes it is easier to hear things about ourselves if they appear to come from outside us.”
Wiz looked back at the mirror, but the mirror remained mute.
###
Late one afternoon, Wiz happened to pass Moira in the great hall.
“Moira,” he asked, as she went by with a nod, “what happened to Shiara?”
The hedge witch stopped. “Eh?”
“She was a wizardess, wasn’t she? But Ugo told me magic hurts her.”
“It does. To be in the presence of even tiny magics causes her pain. That is why she lives here in the quietest of the Quiet Zones in a keep built without the least magic.”
“How? What happened?”
“By carpenters, masons and other workers who built without mage. Isn’t that the way you build things in your world?”
“No, I mean how did it happen to her?”
Moira hesitated. “She lost her sight, her magic and her love all in one day. It is a famous tale, but of course you would never have heard it.” She sighed. “Shiara the Silver they called her. With her warrior lover, Cormac the Gold, she ranged the World recovering dangerous magical objects that they might be held safely in the Council’s vaults.
“Not only was she of the Mighty, but she was a picklock of unusual skill. No matter what wards and traps protected a thing, she could penetrate them. No matter how fierce the guards set over a thing, Cormac could defeat them. With him to guard her back, she removed magic from the grasp of the League itself.”
“What happened?”
“We went to the well once too often,” Shiara said drily from the doorway.
They both whirled and blushed. “Your pardon, Lady,” Moira stammered. “I did not know . . .”
“Granted willingly.” Shiara swept into the hall, moving unerringly to them. “So you have not heard my story, Sparrow?”
“No, Lady. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk about you behind your back.”
“There is no need to be sorry.” Her mouth quirked up at the corner. “The bards sing the tale in every tavern in the North, I understand. The price of fame is having your story told over and over by strangers.”
“I’m sorry,” Wiz said again.
“Perhaps you would like to hear the story as it happened?”
“We do not wish to pain you, Lady,” Moira said.
Shiara chuckled, a harsh, brittle sound. “My child, the pain is in the loss. There is little enough pain in the telling.” She seated herself in her chair by the fireplace. “Sometimes it even helps to repeat it.”
Moira sat down on the bench. “Then yes, Lady, we would like to hear the story, if you do not mind.”
“I’ve never heard it, Lady,” Wiz said, sitting down as close to Moira as he could without being too obvious about it. Moira shifted slightly but did not get up.
“Well then,” Shiara smoothed out the folds in her skirt and settled back. “We were powerful in those days,” she said reminiscently. “My hair was white even then and Cormac, ah, Cormac’s hair was as yellow as fine gold.”
“And he was strong,” Moira put in breathlessly. “The strongest man who ever lived and the best, bravest swordsman in all the North.”
“Not as strong as the storytellers say,” Shiara said. “But yes, he was strong.”
“And handsome? As handsome as they say?”
Shiara smiled. “No one could be that handsome. But he was handsome. I called him my sun, you know.”
Ugo entered unnoticed with a bundle of wood and set about kindling a fire.