Salamander

by David D. Friedman

  Mari's eyes widened. She looked back at Ellen.

  "May I join your table, noble lady?"

  Both girls looked up. The speaker, a tall student, well dressed, was looking at Mari inquisitively. She nodded assent.

  "Joshua son of Maas at your service. How have you been enjoying your first week in this temple of wisdom?"

  "Everyone is very kind, but I find the wisdom somewhat opaque,” Mari replied, cheerfully. “Ellen was just kindly explaining today's lecture to me."

  Joshua glanced at Ellen, then back to Mari. "I would be happy to provide any assistance you ladies may require. After a year and a few weeks I think I have most of it down and I’m looking forward to getting out, come spring. My father thinks a trained mage would be very useful in his business. What was it that was puzzling you?"

  Mari gave Ellen a rueful glance, turned back to Joshua. "I am still puzzled by Magister Coelus' explanation of how magic can be entirely elemental, entirely humeral, entirely natural and entirely combinatorial, all at the same time."

  "That I can explain. The elemental points are, of course, the elements: earth, air, fire and water. The natural points are the natures: hot, cold, dry, and wet. Hot is a mixture of fire and air, cold of earth and water, and so on."

  "But didn't he also say that fire was a mix of hot and dry? If hot is fire and air, and dry is ...," she looked at the others.

  "Fire and earth," Ellen responded. Joshua looked momentarily annoyed.

  "Fire and earth. That's right."

  Mari continued: "Then a mix of hot and dry ought to have fire and air and fire and earth. That's two fire and one each air and earth. So how can it be pure fire?"

  Joshua looked puzzled. "Say that again?"

  "A mix of hot and dry ought to have fire and air and fire and earth. That's two fire and one each air and earth. So how can it be pure fire?"

  He thought a moment before answering. "That does seem a little puzzling. I’m afraid the explanation is a little complicated for students in their first year, but by the time you finish Magister Coelus's theory course next spring it should be clear enough. That’s the bell for the fourth period; my tutor will be expecting me. I hope we can talk more later."

  He gave Mari a formal bow, nodded to Ellen, went out the door.

  Mari turned with an arched eyebrow back to Ellen. "Well, perhaps you understand it?"

  Ellen nodded. "But I don't think he does. Mixes are a loose way of putting it and misleading, for just the reason you saw. The superposition has phase as well as amplitude; the air and earth cancel when you put hot and dry together with the right phase to get back to fire. How much mathematics have you learned?"

  Mari looked at her helplessly. "When I add up numbers I can usually get the same answers twice running."

  "There is a class next semester that you could take to get the basics—the math, not the magic theory. Then the real math class next fall. And then Magister Coelus' advanced theory class in the spring. He is supposed to be very good. Mother says he has been responsible for more progress in basic theory than anyone else in the past twenty years."

  "Your mother is a witch? Or,” Mari corrected herself, “a mage, I suppose I should say?"

  "Mother is a weaving mage, which, outside the College, is a witch. She finds theory fascinating. She taught me as much as she could and then sent me here to learn more. When I'm done I expect she'll want me to come back and teach it to her."

  "No wonder you know so much already. It would be a great favor to me if you would keep on explaining things to me. You are so much easier to understand than the magisters."

  "Of course.” Ellen looked down, back up, and smiled. “Mother says teaching is the best way of learning things, so it isn't really a favor at all. Besides … I’m happy to be your friend. But, I must go now to prepare for my next class.”

  Mari watched her go. One problem solved. The next would be how to politely discourage Joshua. Not that there was anything wrong with rich merchants or their sons. But she did not think that was what her father was planning for her. And, in this case, hoped not. She wondered if the boy had forgotten that the schedule for all three years—with tutorials in the fifth and sixth periods, not the fourth—was posted on the corridor wall outside the refectory, or if he simply assumed she had not bothered to read it.

  Chapter 3

  Magister Bertram waited until the room was silent before beginning.

  “You are here to learn to make use of magery. To that lesson there are three parts.

  “The first is to gain understanding of how magery works. This training you will receive from Magister Coelus, whose first lecture you had yesterday morning. I hope you are all continuing to ponder the wisdom it contained.

  “The second part is how to do magery, how, with the power within you and through the knowledge of the names of things, using spells constructed by wise men of old, to cause effects in the world. Before you learn that, you must first learn from Magister Simon an understanding of names in the true speech, which is the language in which the world is told, the language in which spells are spoken. Or written. Or thought. Not in our common tongue.

  “The third part is how to use your power. That is our subject today.

  “A spell has a direct effect and an indirect effect. The direct effect is commonly called magic. It is what the spell does. The indirect effect is what you do with the spell. The direct effect is to set one stalk of straw alight. The indirect effect, of which the direct is the cause, is that stalk setting a field ablaze.

  “As you grow wiser you will see further, to effects of which the burning field is itself a cause, and beyond. To do magic is only the beginning. Beyond that you will be using wisdom, knowledge, in order, by the use of magic, to alter the world.

  “Magery is a tool. The first step to wisdom is to learn what sort of a tool it is.”

  He stopped a moment, looked up at the faces, then down at his notes, and continued. “Magery is not a battering ram or a stroke of lightning; nobody ever smashed a castle wall with a spell, or split an oak tree.”

  Magister Bertram lifted up his hand, turned it, and flexed its gnarled fingers. “Consider a hand. It cannot knock down a gate like a battering ram. It cannot split an oak in an instant like a stroke of lightning. But it is more useful than a battering ram or a lightning bolt, because it can do more and more useful things. If you exchanged your right hand for a battering ram and your left for a lightning bolt you would, no doubt, be a very impressive figure. But you would regret the change the first time you needed to eat dinner.”

  He stopped, looked into the silence, and recalled hearing the same words, in the same lecture hall, when he was a student. He had thought it a striking figure of speech at the time.

  “Nobody can knock down a castle wall with his hand. But when walls come down, it is hands that do it. Hands build siege engines, dig mines, bribe traitors. The greatest hero cannot split an oak tree with a blow of his hand. But human hands split the oak to make the benches you sit on.

  “You have had hands your whole life long, so they no longer seem wonderful to you. But try to imagine what it would be like if you had to figure out for the first time how five fingers could bring down a tree, or dig a hole, or start a fire, or draw water from a well.

  “A mage must learn to use magic as a child might learn to use his hand.”

  He again looked down at his notes, let silence build before continuing. “We start with a simple problem. The Forstings have seized Northpass castle and the king is sieging it to get it back. The Forsting defenders have sent a messenger off. He is several miles down the road, too far for pursuit to catch him. If he and his message get safe to the enemy army on the far side of the pass, they will come to the rescue of the defenders and the siege will fail. Perhaps the war will be lost.

  “You are a fire mage. You do not have a great deal of power—no mage does—and the greater the distance over which you must work the less the power you can apply. How might you stop t
he messenger? How use fire to keep the message from reaching its destination? ”

  The lecture hall was silent as he looked out over the room. Eventually one of the students raised his hand. “Burn the messenger up?”

  The magister shook his head. One student who had not been listening. “That requires a great deal of fire, more than any mage has.”

  “Burn just his head or his heart—that would be enough to kill him.”

  “Better; if he were standing next to you and you were strong enough it might do. But if he were standing next to you there would be no need of magery. At a distance of some miles, no. You are trying to knock a castle wall down with your hand.”

  Another student raised his hand. Magister Bertram recognized him, by his dress and rawboned height, as the farm boy Magister Dag had discovered and recommended to the college—one of the stronger mages among the new students, whatever his other limits.

  “Follow after the messenger, quick as you can. First night on the road, set fire to the hay in the stable where his horse is. Hay’s dry, won’t take much to kindle it.”

  “Much better. But the messenger might buy another horse.”

  The third hand raised was a tall girl, very well dressed. Also strikingly good looking. “Eight miles past Northpass Keep the road forks at Fire Mountain. The main road goes on to Berio, which is where the enemy army probably is, or at least its commander. The other branch ends at the village of Efkic, fifteen miles away, where the old road to the pass was blocked by lava flows a century or so back. There are wooden sign posts at the fork with the names of the towns burned into them.

  “It should take the messenger at least an hour to reach the fork; that gives you plenty of time to burn a few extra lines, changing EFKIC into BERIO, and BERIO into BERTOL. Send a squad of cavalry to the fork to intercept the messenger when he finally discovers he has gone the wrong way and turns back.”

  There was silence, half the class looking at the girl, half watching the magister for his response. He had to think a moment; it was not an answer he had heard before. “An adequate solution, provided that the wood of the sign is dry and the messenger does not know the road.”

  The magister turned to the class. “Consider the lesson. There is no one problem you will face, and no one answer to be learned. It is up to the mage to find the best way of using his talent to achieve his goal. It does not take much to startle a horse. There might be a bend at some place in the road where a rider who loses control for a few seconds goes over the edge of a cliff. To a mage, knowledge is power. All knowledge.”

  He hesitated a moment, then realized that the girl’s answer fitted neatly into his prepared closing. “Even knowledge of how the road signs read in a fork in the road eight miles north of Northpass Keep.”

  He gestured to the slate; spoke a Word under his breath. “Knowledge. Always knowledge,” appeared on it.

  As the students drifted out of the lecture hall into the corridor, Ellen and Mari were joined by a third girl, named Alys.

  “Did you make it up? Is there really a signpost eight miles north of the castle?” Alys asked.

  Mari smiled and said nothing, then relented. “As a matter of fact there is. My horse went lame there last year, when we were guesting with the Castellan. I had to walk him back. Eight miles.”

  “I was hoping you had made it up. Magister Bertram would never have caught you; he’s an old stick. Coelus and Simon are much cuter.”

  The boy who had suggested burning down the stable joined the three girls, introducing himself as Jon. “Very clever of you, my lady–changing the sign. Would never have thought of it.”

  “I would never have thought of setting fire to the stable. Mine only worked because I happened to know that place, by accident.”

  Ellen shook her head. “Nothing works everywhere. Jon’s solution works more places than yours does. But yours was very clever, because you had to see that one word could be changed to another. It wouldn’t work, because no fire mage could burn lines into the sign from miles away, but it was very clever. Which makes it a good example of Magister Bertram’s point.”

  Alys looked puzzled. “What do you mean? What point?”

  “That the successful use of magic depends not only on arcane knowledge but on knowledge of everything. Mari happened to know something about the road north of Northpass keep. Jon knew about the risks of fire in a stable. A great mage will figure out how to use what he happens to know.”

  Alys interrupted: “I know that messages are usually written on paper, and paper can burn. But that seemed like too easy an answer.”

  Mari nodded. “I expect that it is harder to light a bundle of folded paper in the wallet at the messenger’s side than a wisp of straw. And it only works if the messenger doesn’t know what is in the message he is carrying. But if there are guard posts the messenger may need a letter of passage to get through them, and that burns too.”

  * * *

  Three days later, Mari and Ellen were seated in the small orchard at the south end of the College, sharing a luncheon platter of bread, apples, a sausage, and a chunk of cheese. Edwin passed by, but seemed hesitant to join them. Mari whispered to Ellen, who turned and waved him over. "Come share with us; Mari brought more than we can eat, and this cheese of hers is really good."

  Edwin smiled a little shyly, hesitating. "Yes, do come,” Mari chimed in, “it's much nicer here than back in the refectory and we do have plenty." Doubly invited he gave in, walked over, and sat down. The southern boundary of the orchard was a low brick wall, just beyond it the inner surface of the containment dome. Ellen, turning back to Mari, pointed to it, as Edwin cut himself a slice of apple. "What do you see when you look at it?"

  Mari thought a moment. "A wall of bright mist. How can the apple trees grow so well? Doesn't it keep them from getting enough sunlight?"

  Ellen shook her head. "It doesn't stop the light, just the seeing. The dome is a barrier against magic. Some theorists think seeing is magical, for how else can we know what is happening far away just from the light that reaches our eyes? That's one of the arguments for the theory that even animals have a tiny bit of magic, since they can see too. If the light gets through and the magic doesn't, the trees are fine."

  "So if something sucked all of the magic out of you, you would be blind?" That was Edwin, talking through a mouthful of bread and apple. Ellen hesitated a moment before responding:

  "Maybe. There isn't any easy way of sucking magic out of a person, or any way of getting all of it. If seeing is magical, it must be a very deep kind. I'm not sure it is magic, anyway. Mother says the dome just scrambles the light and magic has nothing to do with why we see it that way."

  "How do you see it?" That was Mari.

  Ellen hesitated a moment, closed her eyes, opened them, squinted. "Mostly, as a wall of woven fire, but if I try hard to block my perception and just use my eyes, it's a wall of mist, just as you said."

  Edwin finished chewing his current mouthful, spoke. "I like your explanations, Ellen. They’re very clear. Tell me, do you think Magister Coelus believes in elementals, or not. From what he says, I can't tell."

  Ellen considered the matter briefly. "The first question is what you mean by elementals. There are three answers. One of them Magister Coelus doesn't believe in, one he isn't sure, and one he believes in absolutely."

  "You are talking in riddles, just as he does." Mari lifted a reproachful finger at Ellen. "Explain."

  "The first kind of elementals are the ones in stories, magical beings associated with the four elements, sometimes friendly, sometimes not. Little creatures the clever mage tricks into helping him, and the stupid or evil mage gets tricked by, or angers. Salamanders are supposed to live in fires, and every hearth has a little one that the clever child learns to talk to. Sylphs in the air, gnomes in the earth, undines in the water. Coelus would regard these as stories. So do I. Anyway, no mage has ever provided a reliable report of one, even though the stories say they are everywhere." />
  "What of the elementals that do exist?" That was Mari.

  "The third category exists, but only on paper. For the sort of material covered in Coelus’s advanced theory course, it is useful to have a symbol for pure fire, pure earth, or whatever. It’s cleaner and makes the calculations easier, and all modern theorists do it."

  "So there aren't really any salamanders, any more than there is really a minus three, they’re just useful in doing accounts?" Edwin sounded disappointed.

  Ellen shook her head. "There is a theorist, Olver—not at the college, but supposed to be very good—who has been working for decades on an overarching theory of magic, the sort of theory that would explain why there are four elements and four natures and why the whole pattern of magic works the way it does, and maybe the pattern of other things as well, all other things. His idea is to start with very simple basics and build everything else up from that. He hasn't quite managed to do it, but some smart people think he may have something. I expect if you asked Coelus, he would say so. A lot of what Coelus teaches comes from Olver's early work.

  "Olver believes the elementals are real, and part of the structure of the world. But his are of the mathematical kind rather than the storybook kind. There is only one of each, of unlimited, if narrow, power. All the air magic in the world is based on the sylph; all the earth on the gnome. They may be beings, or perhaps more like forces of nature. And whatever they are, they are probably very dangerous."

  Edwin motioned to speak, and Ellen paused to let him. "When the Founder, Durilil, went looking for a salamander, what kind did he seek?"

  "Durilil and Feremund were followers of Olver. Durilil went in search of the Salamander, Feremund in search of the Undine. They found Feremund's body—drowned, on high, dry ground, or so they say. Durilil they never found at all, not even a pile of ashes, and after that, no one else went looking."

  They were all three quiet for a while after that, Mari and Edwin looking thoughtful, all three absorbed in finishing their lunch. When they had, Edwin thanked the two girls and excused himself to prepare for the fifth period lecture. After he had gone, Ellen turned to Mari. "He seems nice."