Chapter 24
A Lesson
“And do we have a volunteer to copy this passage?” Penelope asked her class. The room was along the edge of one of the many parapets and towers that formed the Scioni Academy of Magic. The large windows belied that the building also served as a fortification. They had magical defenses, and size didn't matter. Indirect sunlight streamed through them across the disinterested students. There wasn't much of a view to distract them other than the rooftops and walls of the edifice, and the distant smudge of the ironwood forest beyond. In the silence after her question sounds from the outpost below floated in along with the distant roar of the forge built around the massive shell of a gutted iron tree that gave the town its name.
Finally one boy stood, breaking the drawn out silence, and gestured simply. An exact copy of the chicken scratch on the chalkboard appeared in glowing figures, floating in the air before him.
“Thank you for the illustration Baladakhr”, said Penelope, “However I meant on the board. Something requiring you to use some actual interpretive skill, not just a simple pattern duplication spell.” The students were always trying to use magic to take short cuts. All they saw was the power, and not the wisdom to use it.
He swallowed, made a sour look, and approached the board. Hesitantly he attempted to duplicate the scribble on the board. Penelope watched him with a steely gaze, drawing out his awkwardness until he finished and sat down. She surveyed his attempt. “Atrocious”, she pronounced. She then proceeded to circle each mistake or gloss where he had missed some salient nuance that made the intent otherwise distinct. “What does this tell us about the Ramp-Builders?” she asked.
Silence, once more, stretched over the class. They varied in age from pre-pubescent to late adolescent. Most were human, with a smattering of other races and a number of troglodytes in the back row. All but one wore a precisely tailored uniform and terminally bored faces. “That they probably didn't have hands like us”, said the odd student out.
“Precisely”, said Penelope, approvingly. “The subtlety in differences between certain forms of glyphs of unrelated meaning implies that whatever they manipulated their writing utensils with had a finer control of certain motions than our hands.”
“Maybe they had flippers”, said one voice, to general amusement. Penelope gave him, and anyone she caught laughing, a stern look.
The boy at the back fidgeted. “Did you have some further insight to add, Winter?” asked Penelope.
He swallowed. “Maybe they didn't have hands at all?” She looked at him challengingly. “As Baladakhr demonstrated, producing an exact copy of something is trivial with magic. You said earlier we only know their writing from fragmentary inscriptions on stone. They wouldn't have written that with a stylus. If they used some form of magic, or power of the mind, the forms of the glyphs could be stylized far beyond what they may have used for casual communication.”
Penelope folded her arms and looked at him for a long moment. The boy had insight. Or perhaps it was just that he was paying attention. It had been a while since a student had made a suggestion she couldn't shoot down without thinking. She was getting lazy. “An interesting supposition”, she said eventually. “I can find no immediate flaw in it. I shall have to discuss it with my grandmother.” After she turned back to the board another classmate gave him a dirty look. “Now, what can we deduce of their grammar?” The lesson continued.
When the class was over all but one of the students filed out. Penelope looked up from collecting her books. “Thank you for joining us, today, Winter. You are a good example to the class. I wish you were here more of the year.” If he was a regular rival, not just an oddity he might inspire the hopeless suitors to try to impress her with something she really cared about: intelligent analysis of ancient artifacts.
He shrugged. “It's interesting to hear about something other than ocean currents and fish migration.”
“I shall recommend a few books to your mother for you to take back with you then.” Some of the more fanciful histories would make entertaining reading. And more interesting conversation to see if he could discern the difference between folklore and facts. He nodded, but did not leave. “Was there something else?”
“There are no gods in the Underground, are there?” he asked.
“No”, she said. “There are elemental powers that the ignorant seek to appease, ancestral forces the superstitious supplicate, and Ancient Ones of immense uncaring power that the wise know to avoid.”
“So what happens when you die?” he asked.
“You die”, she said simply.
“But what about your Soul? Does it reincarnate as on the surface for Elves, or do they go to serve a greater power as with the gods?”
Penelope shook her head. “By your metaphysics, most of the races of the Underground do not have Souls. They have spirits, like the animals of the surface. I believe it is much the same under the ocean, where you live. It is only the recent immigrants, Orcs, in my case, and divinely wrought beings in your case, that have Souls.”
“There goes my theory about Ramp-Builder writing”, said Winter with mock resignation. Penelope looked blankly at him. “Um, you know how magic is powered by mana energy and that derives from the interaction between a Soul and a Will.”
“Ah”, she said, understanding. “I had forgotten that little nuance.” She had been one of the founding students of the academy, but had opted out of the magical classes in favor of more time to study history. She shook her head. “Just because your magic would not work does not mean that no other form would. I am sure your theory is wrong. In 140,000 years of study no one has used that explanation. But why your theory is wrong could prove to be quite interesting. I will let you know when I have an answer.”
“I guess it will be a change to be interestingly wrong instead of just plain wrong”, he said cynically.
Penelope looked at him levelly. “I wasn't fostered, but I did spend many years here as a student amongst those who thought themselves my cultural and ethnic betters. I teach here now. You're the son of one of the principles of this Academy. I suspect, as was my experience, that you are less often wrong than inconveniently right.” The child had a good brain inside his head. But he had to learn to stand up to his environment. He should learn from history the difference between fashion and foundation.
“I do have a knack for inconvenience”, he said, looking out the window.
“If that was so”, she retorted, “your mother would be here asking her questions instead of sending you.” He looked back into her eyes, surprised. She maintained her blank face. “Her interests are well known.” And her panache for working through others. The Elfin cultural norms prized indirect actions far more convoluted than necessary. The more awkwardly you achieved something the more your peers respected you. It ceased to be bizarre the more you read about other, even weirder, idioms.
He slumped against the wall. “Is she just crazy then?”
“Elaborate”, said Penelope. “Crazy in her plans or crazy in the belief she can actualize her plans?”
“Either, both”, said Winter. “I just want to know if she's being set up to be a fool.”
“Your New Magic is not an interest of mine”, she said. “But for historical antecedents, I would note that the S'Markandian culture migrated from dimension to dimension by taking over suitable species and transferring their essences to them. So there is technical precedence of similar ventures.
“As for her chances, I can only say that I observe that she has her allies, she is very passionate about it, and more has been done with less in the histories I have studied.” It bordered on being a meaningless platitude. But it was true and she felt that it might prove a centering thought to give him better clarity of mind.
Winter thought on this a while. “Thank you”, he said. Penelope made to leave and he held up his hand. “There's a Triton called Charonia, in the court of Atlantica. He teaches me history. Undersea history, that is.” He
smiled at her. “I would have brought you a book about it, but they don't have any. If you should find occasion to visit, I can introduce you.”
She looked at him intrigued. The Undersea was not as vast or ancient as the Underground. It was only with Winter's fostership there that she had really even become aware of it. Its history and culture was completely unknown to her. “It is not a particular interest of mine, but it is also not a field I have seen much material on. Grandmother is so hard to buy for.” She smiled at him. “I shall certainly keep that in mind.”
Red Queen Page 24