Herewiss cleared his mind and began to think of another incantation, on another page. He had long since ceased to need to draw diagrams or make passes while conjuring. Constant practice had taught him to build viable spell-structures in his head, without external aids. He built one now, a fairly simple one that he had used many times to entertain Halwerd, an illusion-spell that required minimal energy and provided surprisingly sophisticated results. It went up quickly, in large chunks, taking form and bulking huge and restless — it was one of those sorceries that has to be used quickly before it goes stale. He completed the structure, checking once to make sure that it was complete, and thought the word that set it free to work.
The girl, intent on her reading, did not notice the air behind her thickening and growing dark. Something darker and more tenacious than smoke curled and roiled within a huge man-shaped space in the air, until at last it stood complete behind her — a little tenuous at the edges, where its stuff wisped and drifted into the still air, but dark as starless midnight at its heart. The innkeeper's daughter finished reading the spell and raised one hand to feel at her face. In that moment the great dark shape put out a hand and brushed the back of her neck lightly.
She slapped absently at what she thought was an insect, and felt her hand go through something cold and damp. Her eyes went wide with startlement; she turned. She saw, and opened her mouth to scream. But Herewiss was ready. Since freeing the illusion, he had been readying another spell, and as she drew breath he said the word of control and struck her dumb and stiff. There she knelt, her mouth ridiculously open, head turned to look over her shoulder -probably a most uncomfortable position. Herewiss smiled, and got up out of the bed, praying that the backlash would hold off for a few minutes.
'Do you always go through your guests' bags at one in the morning?' he said, bending down to take the book away from her and toss it on to the bed. 'And do all the rooms come equipped with that charming little addition under the pillow?'
She could not even move her eyes to follow him as he went to open the window wide. 'Would you excuse us?' he said to the smoke- creature. There had always been controversy over whether illusion- creatures were alive and thinking in any sense of the words, but Herewiss, being both cautious and courteous by nature, treated his illusions as if they were both. 'And while you're out there, please take that man down there and bed him down in the stable or something. If I hear that part about the goats again, I may turn him into one.'
The dark shape waded slowly through the air, trailing streams of black smoke behind it, and climbed over the windowsill into the night. It drifted down silently into the courtyard.
'Would you like to be a goat?' Herewiss said, going back to look at the girl from behind, so that she could see him.
'Or an owl might be better — you seem to like being up in the middle of the night.'
He was bluffing outrageously, for no mere sorcery could do such things. She seemed not to know this, though. She stared at Herewiss wide-eyed, the terror frozen in her face. Outside, a voice broke off its singing. 'Boy, izh really dark out here,' it said, woozily surprised.
'Or maybe you'd like to bed down with my friend out there,' Herewiss said, 'since you do seem to be so eager, with that love- charm and all. I should tell you, though, he is a little cold, and you might have a baby afterwards, and I couldn't guarantee what it would look like.'
He made a small adjustment in his mind and snapped his fingers, freeing her upper half but keeping her legs bound tight. She sagged and turned her face away from him quickly. 'Tell me what you were after,' Herewiss said.
'I—' She shuddered. 'I don't want to share with that—' 'Then start talking.'
She stared sullenly at the floor. 'I smelled the Power,' she said. 'You have it. I want to know how. If a man can have it, then there has to be a way for me to bring mine out.' She looked up, glared at him. 'How did you do it?' she demanded bitterly. 'Who did you pact with?'
'My my,' Herewiss said. 'You are a dabbler. Everyone has the Power, dear, didn't you know that? Men and women both, everyone born has the spark. But few have enough to do anything with. And Goddess knows there's more to it than just having enough Flame. What was the bag for, by the way?'
She scowled at the floor again, and would not answer him.
'A little draining to amuse yourself? I should tell you, the Bride doesn't look kindly on such things. Draining away your lovers' potency is likely to make you less of a woman, not more. And anyway, who taught you your Nhaired? Two of the words on the bag were misspelled, and there was too much asafetida. If you had left that there much longer, it would have started to recoil, and half the place would probably have tried to rape you. Try draining that.'
Herewiss sighed. 'You're not being very open with me,' he said. 'I'm in a quandary as to what to do with you. Maybe you really do want to be a goat.' He went over to the bag on the floor and took out the other book, the one with the seals on it. Softly he said the word to undo the seals, and the second word that spoke the pages apart, and then went through the book slowly, looking for the right page.
The innkeeper's daughter was beginning to worry now. 'Please!' she said, 'please, no — I'll do anything—'
She squirmed her torso at him, and Herewiss looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head in mild amazement. 'I'm not interested in that kind of anything,' he said. 'I might consider information, though,' he said. 'Tonight at dinner some people were talking and someone mentioned a place called the "hold in the Waste", and everyone else hushed them up. What is that? Why won't they talk about it?'
Fresh fear went across the girl's face like a shadow. 'I don't know—'
His underhearing jabbed him hard under one rib, like the pain one gets from running too hard, and he knew she was lying. 'Then I guess I'll have to turn you into a goat,' he said, wondering how he was going to make the bluff good, and turned his attention to the page before him. 'Faslie anrastuw oi velien—'
'No, no, wait—' She looked around fearfully. 'It's unlucky even to talk about it—'
'Being a goat isn't unlucky?'
'Uh — well. Out in the Waste Unclaimed, about forty miles or so into the desert, there's an Old Place — the oldest of the Old Places in all the world.' She gulped. 'It's full of the Old wreaking, and ghosts and monsters walk around there. Sometimes the desert around it — changes somehow, and becomes other places. I don't know how—'
'I know what you mean.
'They say that the rocks roll uphill, and water flows sideways along the hills there, or up the sides of valleys -and it rains scorpions and stones instead of water. Even the Dragons won't go near it; they say it's too dangerous. There are doors into Otherwheres—'
'Doors?' Herewiss echoed.
'That's all there is,' the girl said. 'It's not lucky to talk about it. It's a cursed place.'
'No,' Herewiss said, 'just Old, I would imagine. We don't know enough about the Old people's wreaking to know their curses from their blessings. Forty miles into the desert. Near where?'
'North of the pass above Dra'Mincarrath,' she said, 'about sixty miles or so. But it's cursed—'
Herewiss stood there silently for a long few moments, holding the backlash away while reading the spell in the book, readying it. 'That'll do, I think,' he said. 'But one thing only.'
She looked at him in fear. 'I don't trust any promises you might make about your future behaviour,' he said. 'So I am going to give you a conscience of sorts.'