“Aye. You didn’t come to hear us, Cousin?”
“I regret not.” Listening to stories well told was among Alrathe’s greatest pleasures, but yesterday evening had been spent pondering the malady of the wizard who lay next door. “One boast of adventurers’ tales is their truth.”
“That mine are.” The adventurer grinned. “Well, mostly. Maybe a few decorations here and there. But good ones. The Senior Storycrafter herself admitted I earned my song of applause.”
Alrathe nodded. “Good! Now leave out any decorations, but otherwise tell me the tale of your orangestone pendant as you tell an audience your adventures.”
Valdart cleared his throat, drank a few swallows of herbwater, and cleared his throat again. “Well, Cousin. There’s that little conjurer, Mother Vathilda’s granddaughter, pretty Sharilys. When I came home to my old places this year and found her almost grown… Well, you’ve seen how things grow between chosen and chosen. So I had one fine orangestone and bluemetal neck pendant left from my last trip across the western ocean, one I’d been saving for special use, and night before last I offered it to little Sharilys for a marriage-bed token. She didn’t take it right then, but she promised me my answer in the morning. Well, next morning—yesterday morning—she told me she’d just talked to my old chosen brother Torin and promised him she’d wait until the last night of this fair before she took my token.” Valdart worked his jaw for a moment and turned the cup in his hands. “Old Vathilda and her family, they’re neighbors of his, and it seems Torin’s grown a liking for Sharys himself that way. Had his own marriage toy that he tried to give her, one of his own crafting. Might make even bluemetal and orangestone from beyond the ocean look like cheap craftwork. So. Well, I thought he’d come to me yesterday, talk it through face to face. He didn’t, Cousin. Next I saw him, he’d come to the Storytellers’ Pavilion that night while the Senior Crafter was telling, and when she was finished he dangled around outside with her awhile. Never came in to hear my tales, didn’t so much as wait long enough to share the news about Talmar with me, left it for the Senior Crafter to relay. All right. I went back to my own tent, tied up the charm across my door, laid my orangestone pendant down on my pillow to guide my dreams, and went to sleep. When I woke up today, my pendant was gone and that silly citron was lying on my traveling chest instead.” In this last sentence the adventurer’s voice rose and quickened. He drew a deep breath and went on, lower and slower, “I took the thing to my old friend the toycrafter, put it right in his palm. He denied the whole thing, wouldn’t change it back. I warned him I’d go to the judges. He still denied it. Well, Cousin Judge, so here I am.”
“Was your charm tied across your door this morning?”
Valdart nodded. “Aye. And it’s one of High Wizard Talmar’s charms, too.”
“You did not actually see Torin work this transformation, neither in your waking nor dreaming?”
“No. But who else? Who else anywhere near East’dek?”
“You sleep soundly for an adventurer,” Alrathe remarked.
“Aye, when I think I’m safe among friends. When I’m abroad where dangers have some right to spring on you, I nap like the birds.”
“And you found sleep last night with no difficulty?”
“Adventurers learn to sleep when they can.” Valdart drained his cup. “Cousin, I don’t come to you judges out of habit. Do you always question complainers as if they were the thieves and culprits?”
“Our ideal is to question everyone equally and deliver no judgment until we’ve digested all their answers.” The ideal was not easy, and not all judges attempted to follow it through every puzzle, but Alrathe tried to be conscientious. “I’ll keep your citron for now,” the judge added, pocketing it.
* * * *
Torin looked at Judge Alrathe’s tent again when he came out of his brother’s. He could not tell at this distance whether Alrathe and Valdart were still inside or not. They might be on their way to the toymaker’s booth. To keep his mind from chewing the picture of them waiting there for his return, he tried to work a pattern of what he would do if he had to wait.
He walked in preoccupation, but as he passed Merprinel’s booth Laderan asked, “Well? How is Brother Talmar?”
Torin paused. “Alive, but no healthier. Except that he’s sleeping. Sharys is with him.”
“Ah,” said Merprinel. “If Thyrna didn’t gather him last night, there’s a good chance he’ll live through today, and the light will help strengthen him again.”
Laderan glanced at the sky. “It’ll be raining any moment.” His tone hinted that Merprinel was no more healer than skyreader.
Merprinel shrugged. “I have a cracked mirror, Torian,” she said gently, giving his name an extra syllable. “Mend the frame in exchange for the shards? There’s no hurry, but I can give it to you now if you prefer.”
He had done such work for her before. Large frames were the business of furniture crafters, but mending or carving small ones fell within toymakers’ right, and the broken bits of Merprinel’s fine mirrors embellished some of his most expensive gameboards. By offering him the task now, she did what she could to lend him distraction during the wait. He took it at once—she had bagged it already—but gave no promise when he would have it finished.
* * * *
Laderan was still examining the mirrorcrafter’s wares when Alrathe passed by later, citron in pocket.
At discretion, judges could interview whomever they wished as often and privately as they wished, within reason, before bringing complainant and accused together for judgment. Wishing to speak with Torin alone, Alrathe had given Valdart the customary cautions and sent him about his pastime. The judge felt under no particular pressure of haste: although in kindness the toymaker should not be kept waiting too long, in kindness also he might relish some few extra moments. The most charitable course could be hard to feel out.
Merprinel wore the slightly bored and yet harried look of a crafter waiting for a difficult buyer to decide on a small purchase. So Alrathe paused to chat.
“The high wizard’s breath seems a little easier this morning,” the judge said after simple hellos. Seeing Talmar’s curtain supple, Alrathe had stepped in long enough to exchange a few murmurs with his nurse.
“So Torin told us not long ago,” said Merprinel.
“No,” Laderan corrected her. “He said his brother was no better, only sleeping.”
“Sleep’s a good sign in itself,” said the judge. “Now he’s lasted the first night, we may hope he recovers, however slowly.”
Laderan grunted. “Clear sunlight would help, and we aren’t likely to see it today.”
But Merprinel smiled at the judge as if in thanks for seconding her own opinion. “I hope,” she remarked, glancing at Laderan again, “the rain doesn’t begin in fast splatters. I’d like to get my showledge inside with my mirrors dry.”
Laderan seemed to understand her hint, but begrudgingly. “I’ve narrowed my choice to three,” he said, pointing.
They were a pinkish tinted mirror in rosewood frame, a purplish one in lightwood frame stained deeper purple, and an orange-brown tinted one in goldenwood frame. All three mirrors were small, all three frames wide. “You don’t want these for skyreading work?” Alrathe inquired with a surprise there seemed little use in hiding.
“A gift for my apprentice,” Laderan explained. “She’ll turn full skyreader soon enough.”
“Iris has always seemed interested in study,” the judge suggested. “She might prefer one untinted, with more mirror than wood.” Also, Merprinel had to buy her frames, so that larger mirrors in smaller frames gave her more profitable sales.
“Iris can go on using my tools as long as she stays in my tower,” said Laderan. “I’ve been trying to convince her that’s her best plan. Better than looking for her own tower somewhere else and probably ending up sharing one with some other senior skyreader whose ways she’d have to get used to all over again.”
“Not a mar
riage token, Father Laderan?” said Merprinel. He gave her a sharp glance, but she went on mischievously, “Here’s the best piece I have for the marriage bed.” She opened a drawer in the base of her showledge, and produced a double mirror. Both panes were square and joined where two points touched; the jointure was deep and so cut as to form an optical illusion as to which point penetrated the other. These mirrors had a pale golden cast and their frame was blackwood decorated with gold leaf and set with chips of ivory.
“Unh,” said the skyreader. “I might as well try to buy that orangestone pendant whoever brought back from beyond the ocean.”
“Valdart?” asked the judge.
“Aye. That young toymaker’s friend.”
Alrathe slipped hand in pocket to pinch the citron. “You’ve seen this orangestone pendant, Cousin?”
“Yesterday evening. Merchant Kara was trying to buy it from him. A teasing rascal, that sprout.” Laderan shook his head and glanced at Merprinel as if insinuating she was another. “He let the merchant hold it, handle it, offer for it, but wouldn’t sell. Sun was on the horizon by then, made the thing look that much prettier.”
Alrathe nodded. To press for further details here would verge on ill-mannered public discussion of comparative prices and crafting, or on the appearance of gossip; when judges indulged in gossip, rumors could grow into undesirable suspicions. But private meetings with Laderan, Merprinel, and Kara might prove useful. How much business between adventurer and merchant had Laderan seen while strolling around the fairground yesterday after leaving the Scholars’ Pavilion? How widely had Valdart shown the pendant? How valuable was the thing in itself? Among Alrathe’s most troublesome handicaps was a hasty conception of how rarity balanced craftwork in establishing just prices from area to area.
Living simply, preferring transient to stealable luxuries, the judge made an exception today and used the moneygems that had been set aside and then not spent for last night’s storytelling to purchase a small mirror, quickly selected, simply framed but of exquisite clarity. Then Alrathe bade them good day and went on, stirring a number of thoughts round and round one another.
It was hard to believe the possibility of Torin’s guilt. Still, no person could ever fully understand another, not even those who practiced sharing their thoughts. Understanding one’s self was difficult enough; few managed it fully before their time to put on harvest colors.
In an effort to make up for other deficiencies in knowledge and understanding, Alrathe had studied the oldest writings in the libraries of Horodek, Bavardek, Mirodek and Karian, Lyn Forest and Trelder Between-towns. The oldest writings were copies of copies, much translated, often unidentifiable as history, poetry, or extravagant and sometimes ugly tall tales. The race seemed to have traveled some distance along the gradual climb toward tranquility since those times when the original records were written, but this business of choosing life mates could still twist people down unexpected sidetrails. Could Laderan, who would be wearing harvest colors in ten years, really hope to marry his young apprentice? This season with its cooling weather and prospect of winter nights seemed to inspire marriage-bed plans.
Like most individuals similarly circumstanced, Alrathe had decided early against trying for life mate and children. Never tempted to change that decision, the judge felt even less acquainted with emotions among chooser and would-be chosen than with the values of luxuries. And yet, mused Alrathe, I dare judge in these matters between persons who know what it is to climb over and around such boulders.
But they came and paid for judgments, and perhaps the race climbed higher and faster by gazing at ideals of pure justice, hard as these ideals might be to apply when the culprit seemed in other traits more gentle than the complainant or when motivations were clear as Merprinel’s mirrors to understand. Happily, while always compelled by conscience to give judgment as they determined the abstract right, judges remained free to fit corrective measures to the circumstances of each case. Alrathe would not have cared to be a magic-monger called to judge a fellow student in that discipline, with its code of fixed penalties.
In this present case, the judge knew both Torin and Sharys far more closely than the complainant Valdart. That in itself demanded wariness against giving the adventurer’s charge insufficient consideration.
But was this citron really his pendant transformed? Valdart had only the argument that he had gone to sleep with the one on his pillow and wakened with the other on his traveling chest. A magic-monger effecting a transformation would have run less risk of awakening Valdart by leaving the object where it lay near his head. A lay person making a simple exchange would have risked less, after successfully removing pendant from pillow, by leaving the citron elsewhere, as it had indeed been left.
A citron for an orangestone pendant? In some places, Alrathe guessed, it might be a fair trade. In some places, indeed, the citron might be more expensive: in the neighborhood where these pendants were made, for instance, if it lay too far north for growing citrons. Here, however, while citrons were among the most expensive fruit, Alrathe assumed a piece of bluemetal and orangestone would be priced much higher. Citrons were available at most fairs hereabouts; orangestones set in crafted bluemetal were seen perhaps once every three to five years. If trade, this one appeared negligible, almost insulting.
Moreover, Valdart’s tent had been protected by one of High Wizard Talmar’s charms. Only a magic-monger—or Torin—could have untied it with harmful intent. Alrathe knew of no one else near East’dek who had the necessary magical skill. torin was exceptional. Within living memory, only two others between Mirodek and Varodek had started and then failed to continue along the trail of magic, and both were incompetent conjurers finally rejected as unsuitable. One had died a few years ago of old age, the other had turned adventurer and not been seen for several seasons. Of the three studies, magic was the one most reluctant to lose its adherents.
By Valdart’s statement, Torin had already refused or failed to untransform the citron. If one of Vathilda’s family had done it, all three women might share the secret and refuse the change the fruit back. Talmar’s illness eliminated him from being asked to make the test, as surely as it appeared to eliminate him from suspicion. There was a chance that Torin, if guilty, would do for a judge what he had refused to do for an adventurer, old friend or not, whom he had injured. Alrathe thought this possibility slight. The toymaker had been raised magic-monger, and if conscience did not move him to confession, neither probably would awe for the student classes. Vathilda, Hilshar, and Sharys, still and ever students, were even less likely to bend in awe before a fellow scholar. Indeed, the judge could not be sure that the old sorceress might not in pure mischief transform a genuine citron into an orangestone pendant, if she thought the matter silly enough. Sharys, whom both men wished for a chosen, might have younger and deeper reasons for a similar prank; and Sharys had seen the real pendant, so that Valdart might not succeed in recognizing her mischievous transformation as counterfeit. Vathilda and Hilshar might have seen the original also.
The only sure quick test appeared to be eating the citron. Alrathe smiled wryly. If this fruit were in fact transformed orangestone and bluemetal, the sure test would result in its permanent loss as well as grief to the tester’s organs. Allowing the puzzle to remain unsolved would be preferable.
That aspect made the affair even more unsettling. A magic-monger bent only on depriving Valdart of a valuable marriage token, or on playing him a joke, should have transformed his pendant into something equally inedible. Alrathe did not want to suspect that desire for a chosen mate could twist the toymaker into causing an old friend bodily pain, maybe illness as grave as Talmar’s.
If the citron were a transformation, it should eventually change back of itself. Or, if it were Vathilda’s work, it could be a spell too tight for the toymaker to so much as sense. Or Valdart might have hidden the pendant and crafted a lie to discredit Torin in this effort for Sharys. That was an easier suspicion than Torin’
s guilt, but no less ugly.
Alrathe sighed and pinched the citron again, wishing, as always when beginning with a puzzle or ending with a judgment, for deeper and clearer knowledge of all things.
Chapter Five
Finding the judge already at his tent might have relieved Torin’s tension. Since Alrathe was not there yet, he had to use the wait to best advantage; and since Alrathe might come at any moment, he had to work fast.
Uncomfortably aware that the best immediate task might be his daily grooming, he stored Merprinel’s cracked mirror safely away and retrieved Talmar’s globe from beneath the blanket. It had continued its review all the time it lay there, and still showed much the same scene: High Wizard Talmar alone in his tent, gesturing over the curved surface, causing the sequence to skip and stutter. The imaged light seemed less insistent, as if the day were nearer twilight. Dawn twilight, it must be, and this scene was almost certainly Talmar making one last rehearsal yesterday morning before the scholars’ banquet.
The globe did not record present events while showing past. They had proved this yesterday afternoon, when Judge Alrathe watched three successive reviews of the banquet, calling Torin every few hours from beside Talmar’s bed and asking him to repeat the gestures. Vathilda refused to learn them, and Hilshar followed the hint. Sharys might have been willing to learn, but she was only a conjurer and if the grandmother judged scorn of Talmar’s new technique the best treatment for his boasting sickness, the granddaughter must obey. Alrathe relinquished the globe only when they took Talmar at last to his own tent, a few hours before midnight, and left him waiting for the Harvest Spirit.
Between his sense of need for haste, his doubt whether he should not groom first, and the confusion of Talmar’s rehearsal, which seemed to include many experimental variations, Torin needed three attempts before he could repeat the sequence learned yesterday.
At Amberleaf Fair Page 5