“No, sir. I want to marry a scholar. I don’t want to be one.”
“But the prospect is not easy to dismiss, is it? You would be proud to be accepted. But your concerns are practical matters regarding the lives of ordinary people and the world they inhabit, not impressing other scholars with your erudition. In temperament you are closer to Arturos than to most scholars.”
I turned and looked at him smiling at me. “Arturos?”
“He, too, is an avid reader with a burning curiosity. One might not suspect from his sometimes unpolished manner that he took a first at Oxford.” His eyes twinkled. “Any more than one might guess an aproned girl with flour on her cheek would grasp the essentials of an obscure taxonomy.”
I stretched my legs out full length on the cushions and leaned back with a sigh. The afternoon sun warmed me. I’d have to move soon, or get too hot.
“You are in good company, my dear,” he said. “And you should go to the council meeting. I have been remiss in not sending you sooner.”
“Can you light a candle, Miss Guillierre?”
“No, sir.”
Four of the six warlocks glared at Master Sven. “Why did you bring her here, then?” Warlock Flint barked. “You’re wasting our time.”
Master Sven’s nostrils flared, but his voice held only a hint of irritation. “Please let me explain…”
I studied the members of the Fire Guild Council while he made my case with more eloquence than I wanted. He had described them to me on our way to the Guild Hall in Blazes, “Warlock Nostradamus is eighty, the oldest after His Wisdom, and getting senile. Warlock Venturos is next, with a sound mind but bad heart. Warlock Sunbeam is in his sixties, always cheerful but a bit flighty. Then there’s Warlock Flint in his late forties. They say he’s never forgiven His Wisdom for naming him that, but it fits.
“And finally there’s Warlock Arturos, the Practical Arts teacher, in his thirties. He’s the youngest on the Council, and so carries the least weight—ironic, no?—even though he is, by far, the most sensible. And he’s the last. Historically, they’ve always been able to rely on a steady stream of new candidates for the Office, as there would be at least one new warlock showing up every five to fifteen years or so. That means there ought to be someone in his twenties or late teens at the outside. The fact that there’s no one after Arturos is causing a good deal of concern.”
To my relief, only Arturos and the Fire Warlock voted for my admittance to the Fire Guild. The others scolded Master Sven, but if they were annoyed with me, they didn’t show it.
“You’re spending too much time with scholars, dear,” Warlock Sunbeam said. “I’ll introduce you to our unmarried wizards.” He began scribbling a list of names that the other warlocks called out.
I thanked him. Master Sven scowled.
They dismissed me, and I explored the Guild Hall while waiting for Master Sven, who had other business with the Council. A young woman was setting tables. I went up to her and introduced myself.
“I’d heard about you. I’m Jenny McNamara. What did you want with the Guild Council?”
Explain that I wasn’t a witch, even though the Fire Warlock said I was one? No. I said, “Master Sven said I should see if they would accept me in the guild since the Scholar’s Guild doesn’t accept women.”
Her smile disappeared. “Why would they? You’re not a witch.”
“I never said I was. I don’t want to be in the guild.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why are you here if you don’t want to be in the guild?”
“I’m only here because Master Sven insisted I should try.”
Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. “For somebody who’s not a witch, you seem to have cast quite a spell.”
Was this one of the witches with an eye on Master Sven? “Don’t be silly. I couldn’t steal Master Sven away from a real witch.”
Her face turned bright red and she shouted at me. “Who do you think you are, telling me I’m not a real witch? You better keep your claws away from him or I’ll give you more heat than you can handle.”
I stammered, “That wasn’t what I meant,” but she wouldn’t listen to my apology. When an older witch came over and added her voice to the din, I said, “You must not be much of a witch to be threatened by a nobody like me,” and stalked away.
I retreated to the Guild library, in the room adjoining the council chamber, closing the door behind me. I sat in a wing chair by a window, without looking at the books. I had hoped to make friends with some of the fire witches. I’d made an enemy instead.
The warlocks in the next room were shouting at each other. Typical fire guild behaviour, wizards and witches alike. I had been lucky that witch hadn’t flamed me.
Good God, I had insulted a fire witch. I should have been scared of her. What was wrong with me?
I pulled my feet up onto the chair and hunched over my knees, shaking. Was I that stupid? “I wish,” I said, “that the next angry member of the Fire Guild wouldn’t even notice me.”
Behind me, the door to the council chamber flew open and banged against the doorstop. Someone stomped into the room, shouting. “That boy should be down here at the school.” The voice belonged to Warlock Flint.
Master Sven, his voice also raised, followed him. “His Wisdom wants me to see to his education. He would be bored silly with the level of theory taught in the school, and the practical training needs are quite different.”
“The traditional education has served us well for the guild’s entire existence.”
“Have you forgotten the Scorching Times? Quicksilver has been saying for decades they were the result of inadequate and improper training.”
“Hogwash. The education is—”
“What do you know about education? Arturos and I are teachers, and we agree with him. If his time is running out, what is the Council doing to get a new one trained and ready?”
“You’re not on the Council, Sven. Mind your own business.” Flint stomped through the library and out the other door, slamming it behind him.
I scrambled to my feet and turned towards Master Sven. “I’m sorry, Master Sven. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
He wheeled, and gawked at me. “Where did you come from? There wasn’t anybody here.”
I said, “You couldn’t see me from the door.”
“I should have with my mind’s eye. I wouldn’t have said… Flint wouldn’t have said…” He waved a hand. “Never mind, I guess I was too angry to notice. Come on, let’s go home before I lose my temper with any of the rest of them.”
On the outskirts of the town, he asked what I had made out of what I overheard.
I said, “The guild school doesn’t do a good job of preparing warlocks for the Office of the Fire Warlock?”
“Does it or doesn’t it? What do you think?”
I thought about the Scorching Times, those horrible periods in our history when the Office had gone from one warlock to another in rapid succession, the countryside still showing the scars of the most recent period, ending a little more than a century ago.
“The Scorching Times are called that because each Warlock’s reign ended with him making some ghastly mistake in how much fire power was needed, and burning out himself and everything else for miles around. If they had better training, they ought to last longer and not hurt as many people. Only a level five fire wizard can get to be the Warlock, so it would make sense for their training to concentrate on things that the lower levels wouldn’t need, like estimating huge surges of power. I take it they all get the same training?”
The good-natured mage had cooled off. He grinned. “You have confirmed my hypothesis that a level one witch with a good intellect and some common sense is more useful than a level five warlock with a head like a stone. You are correct. That wasn’t the case in the early days. The Warlock was a lecturer a
t the university before the Office came to him, and he’s given more thought to the subject than most of them. He and Arturos have been trying to reform the school, but Warlock Flint will never budge.
“The Council is quite conservative—always has been—and most of the Council members disagree with him on every point out of spite and jealousy that he has hung on for so long and not given any of them a chance to be the Warlock. As if anyone should want the job. Idiots. Of course, the fact that a level five comes along only once a decade or so doesn’t help matters, but as there’s now a gap in the ranks it makes it that much more imperative that the training of the next one be better.”
I said, “So that’s why the Warlock is keeping René up at the castle instead of sending him to the school?”
“I didn’t say that. I didn’t hear you say that, either. I don’t know anything about René’s future. Whatever the Warlock knows or guesses he hasn’t seen fit to tell me.”
I didn’t point out that the Warlock had already confirmed my suspicions on that account at dinner the day he said I was a witch. Did René know he would be a warlock? From his reactions to the lectures Arturos had been giving him about control, I suspected he did not.
We reached the Fortress gate, and I stepped into the shadows with my heart in my mouth. I dogged Master Sven’s footsteps until we were safely inside the curtain wall.
The Warlock thought I didn’t frighten easily? And he was supposed to be hard to fool.
I said, “What did you mean about his time running out? Did you mean the Warlock?”
We stepped onto the moving staircases. Master Sven looked out over the railing, away from me. “I don’t want to see his reign end. I don’t think any of the warlocks besides Arturos can handle the Office, and the prospect of another Scorching Time terrifies me. But what we want doesn’t matter. There are rumours that seers have said he won’t be the Warlock much longer. I don’t know any more than that.”
We rode up the mountainside in silence. I clutched at the rails with both hands, fighting dizziness. The holders of the other three Offices could retire, but the Fire Warlock couldn’t. Nobody knew why, but the Office wouldn’t let him. If he didn’t make a fatal mistake and burn himself out, it chose when to replace him. When it wanted a new Warlock, it fried the old one to a cinder and moved on. That prediction, if true, was a death sentence.
The Christening
George said, “Did you hear the royal baby is a girl? The guards are saying the emperor wants the king to promise she’ll marry his son.”
I snorted. “Won’t happen. The Warlock will never let us be sucked into an alliance with the Empire.”
The guards had sent my old friend to the Fortress for more training, and he came up to the kitchen to see me as soon as he had a free morning. I fixed him some lemonade, and we swapped gossip while I worked.
He said, “The officers think the king is going to try anyway. So when His Wisdom overrules the king, the emperor will say we’ve insulted them, and declare war. The Empire gets what it wants either way.”
The rumours that the Empire was looking for an excuse to invade Frankland had been growing for months. George’s news coming hard on the heels of the prediction of the Warlock’s imminent demise made my blood run cold.
George leaned back with his arms crossed and frowned. “The guards say the king would sell the whole country out to the Empire if he thought it’d give him an edge over His Wisdom. But I don’t understand why.”
I said, “It’s the perennial power struggle. The partnership between king and Fire Warlock died with Charlemagne and Fortunatus, and they’ve been at odds ever since. Our kings see rulers in other countries doing things that the Warlock keeps them from doing, and they want that power.”
“I can see that. But the king wouldn’t be any better off under the emperor’s thumb, would he?”
“Probably less so. A small group of warlocks holds all the power in the Empire. Everything I’ve heard or read says the emperor has less respect for mundanes than our king has for commoners. If we were absorbed into the Empire the royal family could only hope to become puppets, managed by a cabal of wizards. Maybe not even that.”
“That’s what I thought, too, and I’m a dumb country boy. The king’s supposed to be educated—why can’t he see it? The whole lot of them don’t seem to have any more sense than a flock of sheep.”
“I don’t know. They weren’t always like that. In the early days most of our great thinkers were nobles.”
“So what happened to them?”
I shrugged. I’d wondered that, too. And why wouldn’t the Warlock allow any alliances, not just ones with the Europan Empire?
I was taking a tray of meringues out of the oven when the Warlock walked in, dressed in the uniform of a captain of the guards. I came to attention and snapped off a salute. George twisted around and saluted in turn.
The Warlock returned our salutes with a smile. “Good morning, Lucinda. Good morning, George.”
He reached around me for the meringues. He had said treat him as he was dressed, hadn’t he? I flicked a tea towel at him. “Behave yourself. Those are for the scholars’ dinner.”
His head snapped around, brows drawn together, fire in his eyes. I froze. For three heartbeats we stared at each other, then his face relaxed. He said quietly, “I will not flame you for doing as I bid you. Breathe, girl.”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you for pointing out I still have a few things to learn about playing a role.”
He picked up several of the meringues. I blurted, “Be careful, they’re hot.”
Once again, his head snapped around, but this time his eyebrows shot skyward. He walked out of the kitchen laughing to himself. I sat down at the table fanning my hot face and waiting for my racing pulse to slow down. Too bad I missed the chance to ask him about alliance marriages.
George didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss. He watched the Warlock walking down the corridor. “I thought I’d seen all the officers by now.” He picked up his glass. “Who was that?”
“The Fire Warlock.”
I handed him the tea towel and told him to mop up the lemonade he’d sprayed halfway across the table.
“Inbreeding.”
I had encountered Arturos at the stairs, and asked him George’s question, “Why aren’t the nobles any smarter than a flock of sheep?”
“It’s the same problem a shepherd has if he doesn’t manage his flock properly. The noble class is dying from lack of new blood. The royals can’t make alliance marriages, none of our neighbours will marry any of them without the properties and treaties that make an alliance, and they’re too proud to marry commoners. So, they’re all cousins several times over. They’ve been on a steady decline for centuries—in magic talent as well as intelligence—but it seems like it’s gotten worse lately. It’s not healthy for them. It’s not healthy for the country, either.”
I said, “How bad is it? We get along without them doing much, most of the time.”
He shook his head. “It’s bad. You just haven’t seen it yet. The magic guilds have been picking up more and more of the governing that the nobles are supposed to do, because somebody’s got to do it. The Water and Air guilds are suffering from the strain.
“Your village has gotten off easy because your baron and his buddies spend their time hunting and don’t pay any attention to you. The fisher folk in the north where I come from have never had an easy life, and a rapacious earl has been making it hell for them lately.
“I’m afraid that within a few years some parts of the country will rise up in open rebellion. I dread what will happen then.”
Neither of us said anything for a while. He scowled off into the distance as if he’d forgotten I was there.
I asked, “Will the guilds and the Offices side with the nobility or the
commoners? There are witches and wizards from the nobility in all four guilds, aren’t there?”
“There are, but there haven’t been any level five talents from the nobility in any guild—Earth, Air, Fire, or Water—in nearly three hundred years, and there haven’t been any new level fours in three generations. At the rate they’re going, in another century there won’t be any level threes, either.”
“So then the guilds will side with the commoners? If the nobles are so inept then they won’t stand a chance, will they?”
“By themselves, no. But the Offices protect and serve the nobles, and we can’t change them, even if most of the guild membership sides with the commoners. If there’s a civil war, with the guild members opposing the Offices, there’ll be the devil to pay. There may not be anything left of Frankland when it’s done.”
He jammed his hat on his head and stepped onto the moving stairs. “And I’m afraid it’s going to happen on my watch.”
I stood by the stairs gazing after him, long after he was out of sight. When had the happiness I had experienced on coming to the Fortress begun to fade? When the Warlock said I was a witch? Or earlier, when Master Sven avoided me outside of the classroom?
He had shown real interest while he thought I might become a member of the Fire Guild. Since then, he confused me, warm one day, cool the next. If I pursued him, he would run at the sight of me. I didn’t want to anyway—why did I have to be a witch to hold his interest? I still thought him the most handsome man I had ever met; if I hadn’t, I might not have cared.
I’d met the most promising of the Fire Guild’s other unmarried wizards—an uncouth lot, while the scholars were merely feckless. I wanted a man with a sense of humour and the ability to carry on a spirited conversation, and who knew the answers to my questions, or didn’t mind admitting that he didn’t know.
Master Sven needed a little more of a sense of humour.
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