Morgain's Revenge - Laura Anne Gilman [39]
There was an oaken table in the center, hip-high, so that Morgain might work at it standing or seated on one of the stools pulled up to its side. The surface was battered and scarred from years of heavy use, but the quality of the table still shone through. Its inner sheen reminded Ailis of tales of the Round Table, although otherwise the two had nothing whatsoever in common.
Drawing her gaze away from the table, Ailis looked around the rest of the room. Like so much in the keep, the room was larger than it seemed it should be from the outside. Shelves lined the walls, and there were racks and cabinets holding strange objects, some of which seemed to shimmer when you looked at them indirectly. There was a cozy sort of clutter to it all, and it felt more like a blacksmith’s workshop than a magician’s study.
Whatever it reminded her of, it fascinated her. The memory of all the things she knew about Morgain’s magic being bad and unnatural and purely wrong faded. Ailis let herself be seated on a small wooden stool next to Morgain, who started lifting powders and vials from a rack on the wall and placing them in a very definite order on the battered surface of the wooden table.
Ailis watched in silence for a few moments as a purple liquid was mixed with a powder of tiny golden flecks. The result was poured into a glass vial closed with a wax stopper, then shaken firmly and turned upside down to rest. Morgain studied the vial carefully, so Ailis did as well. Then curiosity overcame her.
“What are we looking for?”
“The goldstone extract should react to the enathras to form a solid,” Morgain said, gesturing at the purple liquid, distilled from flowers that grew on a vine on the outside walls.
“Out of liquid?”
Morgain gave Ailis a look. “Have you never made stew?”
Ailis had, of course, but the thought of Morgain the Sorceress, user of Old Magics, mistress of this fortress, in this very room making something as homely as stew, was hard to imagine.
“So the flecks act like heat, to draw the liquid away?”
“Very good. Not quite accurate, but it shows a basic grasp. The characteristics of goldstone are that of extraction and transformation. An alchemist would no doubt spin you some complicated theory on how it all works.
“Alchemy, you should know, is the province of fools and madmen who think to cheat the Universe. Magic—proper magic—knows that we are all part of the Universe, and must dance to her tune. And if we dance well enough, and please her with our skill, she returns gifts in equal measure.”
Morgain returned her attention to the vial, then gave a pleased little exclamation. “Ah, there it is!”
Ailis squinted, and in the middle of the murky purple liquid, she thought that she could see a slightly more solid shape.
“What is it used for?” She wasn’t sure what she would be told: a poison, perhaps? Or a curse—something to choke a rival, or blight a crop?
“It is to ease stiffness in the fingers, from the sea-cold,” Morgain said instead.
Ailis must have let her astonishment show, because the sorceress laughed. “The folk who live off the ocean are a hardy sort, but even they suffer from her moods. We barter, they and I: A share of their catch feeds me and mine, and a small portion of my work sustains them.”
“So it’s an ointment?” That was all Ailis had ever heard of that helped such pains, a messy salve that smelled bad enough to empty the area around the stillroom for the rest of the day after they bottled it.
“No, a charm. You wear it around your wrist on a string of ox hide, like a trinket, and it sends ease into the bones. It’s a little thing, hardly worth my energy or talents. But it is what they need, and are willing to trade for.”
Underneath Morgain’s dismissal of this “trinket,” Ailis could hear a subtle pride. Not the sort that the sorceress had shown in their earlier meetings, but the kind Newt showed occasionally, when he talked about the horses he helped to train. Or of work