Ithanalin's Restoration

Chapter One The room was quietly comfortable, and not at all like the popular image of a wizard's workshop. There were no cluttered shelves, no steaming cauldrons, no mysterious books, just a few pieces of fairly ordinary furniture, most of it in need of a little dusting. It did not smell of strange herbs or exotic incense, but only of wood and cloth and sunlight. But then, Lady Nuvielle told herself, this probablywasn'ta workshop. This was the parlor where the wizard dealt with his customers; undoubtedly he had a workshop elsewhere in the house, and it might well be jammed with dusty books and mummified animals. The parlor furnishings were more mundane. Still, some of the pieces appeared as if they might be rather valuable, she thought as she looked around with interest. The mirror above the mantel, for example, had no visible flaws at all, in either the glass or the silvering. Glass that fine must have come from Ethshar of the Sands, more than fifty leagues away, or perhaps from somewhere even more distantpossibly even Shan on the Desert, halfway across the World. Or perhaps it had been created by magic; after all, Ithanalin was a wizard. Wherever it came from, Nuvielle was sure it must have cost a goodly sum. And beneath the mirror there was the smallish velvet-upholstered couch, with its ornately carved wooden arms curling elegantly at either end. This wasnotordinary furniture, but a unique itemNuvielle had never seen anything quite like it. The velvet was an unusual and striking color, a vivid crimson, and was perfectly smooth, perfectly fitted. Whoever had decorated the arms and legs had been exceptionally talented with a woodworker's knife, and perhaps slightly insane. The very dark wood made it hard to see details, but she could make out some rather disturbing designs. If anything here had been made by magic, the couch was a likely candidate. The little table beside the couch was of the same wood, and had apparently been meant to match, but the craftsman who made it had not had the same eccentric flair as the artistor magicthat had carved the couch frame. The mirror was very nice, in any case. Lady Nuvielle knew that many people wouldn't dare leave the front door unlocked if they had such things on display, but wizards did not need to worry about ordinary thieves; only the worst sort of fool would steal from a wizard. Other items, like the oval braided-rag rug just inside the front door, were nothing special at allat least, not to her relatively untrained eye. She smoothed out a large hump in the rug with the toe of her velvet slipper and wondered idly if any of the furnishings might have unseen magical attributes. It didn't seem very likelythough she wouldn't rule out the possibility in the case of the couch or mirror. The wizard's front room was a pleasant little parlor that could have belonged to anyone. When she had spoken with Ithanalin before, she had summoned him to the Fortress rather than trouble herself to venture a mile across the city, but today she had been bored, and had come out to the shop on Wizard Street in person in hopes of seeing some entertaining magic while she was here. So far she had been disappointed. She hadn't seen much of anything, in fact. She hadn't yet seen the wizard, or the apprentice her messenger had reported lived here. All she had seen was this uninhabited room. She had knocked, found the door open, and walked inand now she had resorted to studying the furniture, for lack of anything better to do. The room was small, with a single door and a single broad window opening on the street, and a single door at the rear; there were no books, no paintings, no statues to keep her attention. She waited for a few moments, expecting some resWatt-Evans, Lawrence is the author of 'Ithanalin's Restoration' with ISBN 9780765340559 and ISBN 0765340550.