The Floating Islands

by Rachel Neumeier

  There was a pause, which lengthened. And lengthened. Master Tnegun first waited without expression, then cast a patient gaze upward, then tapped his foot and sighed again.

  At last Kanii burst into the library, panting. He wore green trousers and a shirt of paler green silk, but his sash was askew and ink stains ran down the shirt. A black feather was tucked in his hair above his ear. It was broken a third of the way from the tip. He clutched an immense armful of scrolls; one tumbled from the top of the stack as he skidded to a halt. He caught it with a practiced snatch, juggled the remaining scrolls for a second, succeeded somehow in steadying the pile, and nodded cheerfully to Araenè and more formally to Master Tnegun. “Yes, sir?”

  “Kanii …,” the Yngulin master began.

  “Sir?” Kanii said, the picture of alert helpfulness.

  Master Tnegun shook his head, sighed, and said, “Kanii, I believe you have met my new apprentice. You will do me the favor of settling him into the school. Without asking difficult questions, if you please. Arei, I hope you will permit this young fool to acquaint you with our school and its denizens. Yes?”

  Araenè nodded.

  “However, before you go … my sphere, if you please.”

  Araenè blinked. She had forgotten the sphere she’d tucked under her arm. Now she drew it out, holding it in both hands. Nearly transparent, the black sphere was now filled by light. Strangely, the light seemed to weigh it down, for it became much heavier as she held it. Araenè stared down into it; she was certain that it had never been so transparent before, yet now she could see the outlines of her fingers right through it. The piquant taste of ginger tingled across Araenè’s tongue and its fragrance filled the room. Moving light glittered within the sphere.

  “Interesting,” commented Master Tnegun’s deep voice above her.

  “Yes,” Araenè said distractedly. “The ginger just came out. The flavors change all the time, even though I never try to do anything.”

  “Flavors?” Master Tnegun regarded Araenè with interest. “Many mages perceive magic as brilliant colors or geometric shapes or musical notes, but I don’t believe I have ever encountered a mage who tastes magic. How interesting. Are the flavors pleasant ones?”

  Usually they were. Araenè nodded hesitantly. She could not think of anything to say. She had not actually meant to mention the tastes the sphere sent across her tongue and fingers; now she wondered whether there might be something actually wrong with the way she perceived magic.

  But the master merely asked, “What do you see in the sphere, Arei?”

  Araenè looked down at it. White shapes flickered in the sphere: the wings of birds, of gulls … drifting feathers … no, she saw at last: sails. White sails, filled with an urgent wind, rising in tiered ranks above great ships that drove up white foam as they rushed through the slate-dark sea. She thought she could feel their speed in her hands, half closed her eyes against the wind of their swift passage.

  Then the image in the sphere changed. A great crimson sun slid toward the horizon. Its red light fell across sails and ships and sea all alike, until the fierce wind seemed to fill sails of fire, and the ships raced across a sea of blood. Flames suddenly seemed to fill the sphere: white at the center, then yellow and orange and red. Where the flames washed against the cool glass, they were a color darker than mere red, so dark there should have been another name for it. At the heart of the fire there was something that was not fire.… Araenè bent her face low over the sphere, trying to make out what it might be.…

  Master Tnegun plucked the sphere neatly from Araenè’s hands. The smoky taste of cumin rose through the light, overwhelming the ginger. In his grip, the sphere darkened and became opaque.

  Araenè stared at him, blinking. She felt strangely charred around the edges, as though she’d stood too close to a powerful stove.

  “Hmm.” Regarding her with narrow concentration, Master Tnegun tossed the sphere into the air. At the apex of its rise, it vanished. The master said thoughtfully, “I think you may have an affinity for vision and fire, Arei. Those are useful affinities. We shall see if we can bring them out.”

  Araenè blinked again and nodded, not trying to find words. Her palms felt sensitive and tender, as though she had been holding fire.

  The master turned to Kanii. “Take this child away, Kanii, and if Master Kopapei is able to spare you, you might ensure that he finds his way back to me in the morning. Early, if you please.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kanii said earnestly. He tumbled half his load of scrolls into Araenè’s hands—startled, she barely caught them—and bumped her shoulder with his. “Come on, then.”

  The hallway outside Master Tnegun’s library wasn’t the same hall Araenè remembered, though. This one was much wider and curved across the top, carved directly out of red stone: they were underground. The cool of this deep hall contrasted so sharply with the warmth of Master Tnegun’s library that Araenè shivered. Then she could not stop shivering.

  Kanii must have noticed this, but he only said, deliberately cheerful, “Let me show you my apartment. We can drop all this clutter there and go find yours. Here we go.” Kanii shoved his way through a curtained doorway.

  “We each … have our own apartment?” Araenè followed Kanii and found herself in a small underground room with three doorways and one window. Through one doorway, Araenè could see a tiny bedchamber; through another, a table covered with scrolls and loose sheets of paper. Books and cushions littered the floor of all three rooms.

  “Of course; we have to study, you know,” Kanii said over his shoulder, dumping his armful of scrolls on a table. “Meals are common, I’ll show you where, but you can go by the kitchens and get a tray if you’d rather. I expect the kitchens would load a tray for you with delicacies and deliver it straight to your apartment.” He turned to gesture Araenè forward. “Don’t worry, just pile them up,” he told her. “Here, come along, we’ll find your apartment and then go by the dining hall in time for supper and you can meet everyone.”

  Araenè swallowed.

  Kanii picked up on her nervousness and went on immediately in the same cheerful tone, “There are nine apprentices in the school just now, counting you, and six masters—at least, we think there are six. And twelve adjuvants. It’s good you’re here: nine balances well against six and twelve: all threes.”

  Araenè gave Kanii a skeptical look, finding her voice at last. “It matters how the numbers balance?”

  Kanii seemed surprised that she should question this. “Of course it does. I hope you’re good at mathematics! Here, come on.” He brushed a beaded curtain out of their way and led Araenè up a flight of three stairs. As they reached the top of this small stair, the school reordered itself around them and they found themselves walking along a narrow, high-arched gallery of shining white marble.

  “Not likely,” Kanii muttered, and led the way toward the nearest door, which was of carved wood, with polished brass hinges.

  “We … Are we actually looking for my apartment?” Araenè ventured. “I mean, you don’t know where it is?”

  “I know more or less where it ought to be,” Kanii assured her. “We’ll recognize it when we find it. Here, I think this might be it.” He shoved open the carved door. It opened upon a trim room with plaster walls and dark wooden furniture: a comfortable, familiar-seeming room. The plaster was painted a blue that matched the sky, visible from a wide window that looked out into a small but wildly overgrown garden surrounded by a high wall of straw-yellow brick. The room was placed so low that anyone even remotely agile could easily jump straight down to the garden below, and a broad white stone below the window provided a convenient step to get back in. An open door on the other side of the room showed a pleasant, roomy bedchamber.

  “Nice,” Kanii observed, sounding mildly envious. He went over to the window and peered out. “Not much view, though. And you won’t pick up a breeze down here. You might be able to get the school to put you up higher—”

 
“I like the room where it is,” Araenè said. She stepped up on the windowsill and jumped down into the garden. Green herbal scents surrounded her, heavy in the hot air: mint and lime, basil and cilantro. A gate in the far wall of the garden gave her a glimpse of a Third City alleyway, though oddly little noise seemed to come into the garden from the city. Araenè took a deep breath of the herb-scented air and found herself smiling easily for the first time since—for the first time in a long time.

  “I suppose it suits you after all,” allowed Kanii. “Do you want me to leave you here? You can rest if you like, but I really ought to show you how to get around in the school.”

  “Yes,” Araenè agreed reluctantly. She stepped up on the convenient rock and scrambled back through the window, not without a lingering glance over her shoulder.

  “All right,” Kanii said, rubbing his hands together and smiling at Araenè. “Shall we see how the school’s got you placed?” He opened her door with a flourish. It now opened onto what was obviously the dining hall: a wide room with heavy wooden beams across its vaulted ceiling and four long wooden tables set up in a square. There was far more room along those tables than would be needed by nine apprentices, even if all twelve adjuvants—whatever adjuvants might be—and six masters joined them, but two of the tables were cluttered with a great miscellany of books and scrolls and glass spheres and racks of feathers. Only the tables at either end of the hall were cleared for service.

  Araenè started to step into the dining hall, but Kanii shook his head and shut the door. She looked at him in surprise.

  “You open it,” he told her. “Go ahead.”

  Araenè looked at him for a moment. Then she laid a wary hand on the knob and swung the door wide.

  It led now straight to the kitchens. The warm, yeasty smell of baking bread wafted invitingly into Araenè’s apartment, and when one of the chefs bellowed for a boy to hurry along with disjointing those geese and get them in the sugar lacquer, she smiled.

  “Well,” Kanii allowed after a moment, looking over her shoulder, “I suppose we might have expected that, mightn’t we?” He reached past her and pushed the door shut again. “Open it again.”

  Araenè obediently opened the door once more. This time it opened in the familiar dim hall, with its high, narrow windows and tall, narrow door.

  “You’d probably find Master Tnegun there,” Kanii said, which Araenè already knew. “You’ve got something of a knack for doors, I think. Once more.”

  This time, Araenè’s door opened to show a wide workroom, all cluttered tables and odd equipment and a swirl of complicated scents and flavors so intense that Araenè instantly shut the door again, coughing, leaving the surprised faces of two boys to gaze after her.

  “That was Jenekei and Taobai,” Kanii said reproachfully. “We could have gone straight in and met them.… Well, it doesn’t matter, I suppose. You can meet them later. Now, there are four rules for apprentices in this school. Ready?”

  Araenè nodded mutely.

  Kanii looked at her seriously. “The first rule is, trust your master, and remember he’ll hear you if you call him. If you get into trouble, or if you start something and find you can’t finish it, or if you discover something more than usually peculiar in some out-of-the-way corridor or attic—call Master Tnegun.” He added less formally, “You won’t do or start or find anything that can surprise the masters, all right?”

  Araenè nodded again, though she had her doubts about this last.

  “Master Tnegun can daunt the whole court if he tries, but if I had to have some master other than Master Kopapei, I’d want Master Tnegun. Now, the second rule is, don’t do any magic until your master says you may, and never touch anything in the school unless you know what it is and what it’s likely to do. You won’t be able to follow that rule at first, because a new apprentice just never does know what anything is or what it’s likely to do, so remember the first rule, all right?”

  “But—”

  “Hush. Third rule: always tell the truth to the masters, and if a master asks you to do something, at least try to do it.” Kanii grinned. “Even if you have no idea in the world what you’re doing, all right?”

  Araenè tried to persuade herself, not very successfully, that not mentioning things wasn’t the same as lying. This argument didn’t seem to have much heft, even to her. She hoped she didn’t look guilty.

  “And the fourth rule is, never approach a dragon, but if you do, don’t make it any promises. But don’t approach one in the first place!”

  “A dragon,” Araenè repeated.

  “I know. It doesn’t usually come up: dealing with dragons is for kajuraihi, not for us. But the hidden school really does find itself in odd places. I’ve looked out a window into the heights of Kotipa—twice—and seen wind dragons coiling right around Horera Tower. And there are tales about a fire dragon that dwells somewhere in the depths of the school.”

  “A fire dragon.” This didn’t seem plausible at all. Fire dragons swam through the molten depths of fiery mountains, and there could hardly be a volcano underneath a floating Island.

  “I know, I know!” Kanii agreed ruefully, shrugging. “But Master Kopapei says fire dragons and sky dragons are more closely allied than you’d expect; don’t ask me how. The magic of sky dragons is for kajuraihi; the fire dragon at the heart of the school is something else again. Master Kopapei says the mages built their school over it because they wanted to borrow its power—but he also says magery is distinct from dragon magic and no kajurai has ever been a mage, so don’t ask me about the borrowing-its-power part. Anyway, remember the rule. Now, quick, what are the four rules?”

  Araenè stared at him for a moment. Then she said, “Trust your master, don’t do magic and don’t touch things, tell the truth, don’t make promises to dragons.”

  “Right, good.” Kanii grinned at her again. “Time for supper! Let’s go meet the others. Can you get the dining hall back again?”

  Araenè couldn’t. But she could get the kitchens and did, on her second try.

  “That’ll do,” Kanii decided. “A knack, see?” He led the way through the door.

  The school’s chefs were happy to see Araenè, especially the fat one, who roared, “A discriminating palate in this school at last! How do you like your chicken, young sir: in a stew with apricots and olives as they do in southern Tolounn, or gently braised in a sauce of spiced yogurt and ground almonds in the style of Candera?”

  “Both ways,” Araenè said truthfully, heading across the kitchens to peek into the simmering pots. “Have you tried adding blanched almonds along with the apricots and olives? What kinds of olives do you use? May I stir this sauce?”

  The supper was abundant and very good. The kitchen boys served the apprentices at one table and a small group of silent gray-robed adjuvants at the other, but Araenè was the only one who got generous servings of both chicken dishes—far more than she could eat. “Arei’s made friends in strategic places,” Kanii told the other apprentices when they stared. “Smile, if you please! If he asks for more pastries, we might get them.”

  “Ha!” The oldest of the other apprentices thumped his hand down on the table, making Araenè jump. “Well done, new boy! Arei, is it? My name is Tichorei; I’m Master Camatii’s student.” He was much older than Araenè: a young man rather than a boy—at least eighteen, Araenè thought. He had a thin, bony face, deep-set eyes, and a sharp accent; she guessed he’d come to Milendri from Bodonè or Tisei. He looked like he was usually serious, but he was smiling now. Araenè felt her face heating and hoped the dim light hid her blush.

  Two of the apprentices were apparently still busy with whatever they’d been about earlier in the workroom and weren’t present. Araenè was grateful for their absence. There were four other apprentices at the table besides Kanii and Tichorei, which seemed crowd enough to her. There was a husky, broad-shouldered boy of fifteen or sixteen, Sayai, who claimed Master Akhai. Two dark-haired, dark-eyed twins of fourteen, exact
ly alike except that Kebei had a thin scar over his right eye and Kepai did not, both claimed Master Yamatei. The last of the four was a red-haired boy named Cesei, eight or so, much the baby of the group.

  Like Kanii, Cesei was Master Kopapei’s apprentice. He had entered the school only days earlier, but he seemed startlingly at home already. “Don’t you love it here?” he asked Araenè, with sunny confidence that of course she would agree. “There’s so much to learn and know and do! It’s much better than the library: I’m never bored here.” He added with the unconscious arrogance of the very young, “Yet, anyway.”

  The older apprentices traded indulgent grins above the boy’s head.

  “Do you … like living here?” Araenè asked cautiously. It seemed a boy so young ought to be desperately homesick—surely he could not actually like living alone in an apartment? “Don’t you miss your … family?” She should not have tried to put this question into words; tears pressed at her eyes and she blinked quickly and looked down at the table.

  Tichorei and Kanii might have noticed, but the little boy didn’t. “Oh,” he declared, waving both hands in dramatic dismissal. “No, I don’t even remember my mother anyway, so this is much easier, because my father had to accept my coming here, and now I will be a scholar—only not exactly the kind I thought, or not only the kind I thought—but it’s fine. Master Kopapei knows a lot,” he added, with clear admiration.

  “So does this brat,” Kanii told Araenè, with deliberate lightness. “He’s already helping me with my geometry, you know.”

  Araenè blinked hard and looked up, her heart sinking for a different reason. “We have to know geometry?”

  “Well, the angles at which crystals fracture matter—” Kanii began. Cesei said at the same time, just diffidently enough that Araenè guessed not every older boy appreciated such an offer, “I could help you, if you like—”

  “Thank you; I’d like that,” Araenè said sincerely, and the little redheaded boy grinned, instantly insouciant again.

  “Master Tnegun!” Kepai exclaimed when Araenè named her own particular master. The dark boy cocked his head to one side, studying Araenè with undisguised interest. “I thought he didn’t take apprentices! Tichorei?”