“Well, that’s stupid magic!”
“Of course it is,” her father agreed. “It’s wartime magic, and wars make everything stupid.”
“Can’t someone fix it?”
Grondar shook his head, but Garander said, “I talked to that wizard from Varag, Azlia. She doesn’t want a war, and doesn’t think giving one side a shatra is going to be good for anyone, so she’s going to see what she can do.”
“How good a wizard is she, really?” Shella the Younger asked.
“How should I know?” Garander said, turning up a palm.
“Will the shatra come back at dusk, as he said, do you think?” Grondar asked.
“I think so,” Garander said. He glanced at the window; the sun was low in the west, its rays reaching the hearth in the east end of the room. “In fact, I think I’m going back out to wait for him.”
“I’ll come, too!” Ishta called.
“No, you won’t,” her mother said, looking up from her embroidery. “You’ll stay here and help me in the kitchen. When this big important meeting is over we’ll still need to eat.”
“But Mother! Tesk’s life is at stake!”
“And your presence isn’t going to change whatever happens,” Shella told her. She set down her stitchery. “Come on, let’s get this started; once everything’s cooking you can go watch.”
Ishta started to argue, but Garander did not wait around for the inevitable outcome. He slipped back outside, and ambled around the side of the house in the general direction of the flying carpet. As he rounded the back corner, though, he noticed two figures in the shadows. He turned to look.
The smaller figure was Azlia; the larger was a man he did not recognize. They had been talking quietly, but they looked up as he approached.
“Garander,” Azlia said. “Allow me to introduce Ellador of Morningside.”
The man wore a dark blue robe and a blue velvet cap with red piping; white hair spilled down over his shoulders, and a long white beard hid much of his face and chest. He looked very much like the traditional image of a wizard. “Hello,” Garander said, unsure what he should do or say when introduced to a magician.
“A pleasure to meet you,” Ellador said. “I understand you live here, and you are concerned about whether this dispute over the shatra might trigger a war.”
Garander smiled wryly. The man certainly got to the point. “Yes,” he said.
“You inquired about the Sanguinary Deception?”
“The…what?”
The old man smiled. “The Sanguinary Deception. The spell that makes a person look very, very dead.”
Garander straightened up, and felt his heart beat a little faster. “Yes,” he said. “Do you know it?”
“Oh, yes,” Ellador replied. “It’s quite simple, and once upon a time every wizard in the army was expected to know it. Since the war it’s fallen out of fashion, though; it really doesn’t have many legitimate uses in peacetime. I’m sure Azlia’s master didn’t see any reason she would want to learn it.”
Azlia made a wordless noise that Garander could not interpret, and he was more concerned with learning whether his plan was practical. The spell he wanted did exist, and this wizard claimed to know it, but was it practical? Remembering Azlia’s spell in the root cellar, Garander asked, “How long does it take?”
“Oh, just a few seconds.”
Garander’s breath came out in a sigh of relief; he had not realized he had been holding it. Then another thought struck him. “Do you have the…materials you need for it?”
“We usually say ‘ingredients,’” Ellador corrected him. “And all it takes is a knife, a wizard, and the blood of the person being enchanted.”
“That’s wonderful!” Garander said, smiling broadly.
“Who did you want it cast on?” Ellador asked. “I’m afraid Azlia had not yet told me that, or why an apparent death would keep these young fools from fighting one another.”
Garander had thought it was obvious, but he was tactful enough to stop himself before saying that aloud. “The shatra,” he said.
Ellador blinked, and sucked a wisp of mustache into his mouth. “Hmm,” he said. “You think that its death would mean there was nothing to fight over?”
Garander nodded.
“An interesting thought. It might work. But I’m not sure the Sanguinary Deception will work on a shatra-aren’t they supposed to be as much demon as man?”
“They’re part demon,” Garander conceded. “But Tesk says his blood is red, not black like a demon’s, so…well, does that mean it would work?”
“It might,” Ellador said, stroking his beard. “It might. I can’t say for sure.”
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
“I don’t see how it can make matters worse,” Ellador agreed. “What did you have in mind?”
Garander had refined his original plan somewhat. “Tesk-the shatra-is going to be back to talk to Lord Dakkar and Lady Shasha soon, to hear their final offers. Then he’ll tell them that he’ll give them a decision in the morning, but in the morning I’ll tell each group that he decided he would rather die than serve his ancient enemies, and I’ll lead them to his ‘body.’ Which you’ll have enchanted. The spell makes the body look really horrible, right? So they won’t want to inspect it and make sure he’s really dead by cutting off his head or something.”
“Well, I can’t be sure they won’t decide to be thorough, but he’ll look very dead indeed,” Ellador said. “If it works on a shatra in the first place.”
“And there’s no way to see through it, and tell it’s an illusion?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” the wizard replied. “But it would take magic. A witch could probably tell, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some talisman a sorcerer could use to test it. But no one could see through it without magic.”
That was not quite as impenetrable as Garander had hoped, but he thought it would probably be enough. “And it won’t wear off suddenly, or anything?”
“Well, yes, it does wear off. It starts to fade a day after the spell is cast. But it will last at least a full day.”
“Can he move during that day?” The idea of Tesk being trapped, motionless, for an entire day had some obvious drawbacks.
“Oh, he can move just fine. He’ll look dead, and won’t breathe, his heart won’t beat, and sometimes it makes the enchanted person smell dead, though that part doesn’t always work, but from his point of view he’ll be perfectly normal. No pain or discomfort. Oh, except that if he coughs, he’ll spew blood.” He grimaced. “It’s pretty ugly.”
“I don’t think that’s a problem,” Garander said.
Ellador turned up a palm. “Then I’m willing to give it a try.”
Garander grabbed the wizard’s hand. “Thank you!” he said, with sincere gratitude.
“I’m still not clear what you think you’ll accomplish, but then, I haven’t really followed everything that’s been going on.” He glanced at Azlia. “Your friend here probably thinks I’m a fool, but I agreed to come along in case Lady Shasha needed some sort of wizardry that Zendalir couldn’t manage, and didn’t really pay attention to any of the details. I just do what they pay me to do.” He smiled. “I thought I would mostly be working communication spells, to keep her in touch with Lord Edaran and his advisors back in Ethshar, not dredging up old-fashioned disguise spells from my army days!”
Garander’s heart dropped at the mention of payment. “I…can’t pay you much,” he said.
Ellador waved that away. “Don’t worry about it. I’m doing this as a courtesy to Azlia. It’s an easy spell. I haven’t used it for twenty years…no, not that long; I forgot, we used it as a prank once, about fifteen or sixteen years ago. But not since then.”
“Are you sure you remember it?” Azlia asked.
“Oh, yes. I did it dozens of times during the war.”