***
Mari intercepted the others outside of the lecture hall. "That was the last lecture of the semester and I survived it entirely due to Ellen's help. I may even have understood a few bits and pieces. She won't let me buy her anything, so instead, I'm inviting all of you to dinner at the inn as my guests. We're meeting at the front gate in half an hour."
When the five students arrived at the inn, they were shown to a private upper room and seated at a big table with room for twice as many guests. A waiter brought a bottle of wine, bowls of soup, and a first course, a made dish of eels. Mari gave Jon a stern look across the table:
"And if you know anything unpleasant about eels, please leave it until after dinner."
He shook his head. "Don’t know a thing about eels. Never grew any."
Alys smothered a giggle and turned to Edwin. "I am going home for the break and have a place reserved in tomorrow morning's coach. Will you be keeping me company?"
"It will be my pleasure. What are the rest of you planning?"
Jon was the first to answer:
"Home’s a long trip. This time of year, don't much need an extra pair of hands on the farm. Plan to stay in the College, catch up on my sleep."
Alys gave him a sideways look. "Won't it be very dull here, all by yourself, with nobody but the magisters? Or do you know something I don't about who else is staying?" She looked around the table.
Mari shook her head. "Not I. The family is spending midwinter a few days north of here, and I will be joining them. Ellen?"
"I am going home, with my head full of things to tell Mother about. I've arranged to rent a horse from the Inn stable."
"Isn't it terribly dangerous, riding all that way by yourself?" Alys looked almost alarmed.
Ellen shook her head. "I’ve ridden the horse they are lending me before, and it seems safe enough."
"I didn't mean the horse. Who knows what could happen to a girl riding across the countryside with nobody to protect her?"
For a moment there was silence. Mari started to speak, but didn't. At last Ellen broke it. "I got here safely enough on a borrowed horse; I expect I can get home the same way. It isn't as if there were a war going on, or a plague of bandits. It will be royal road most of the way, and the last bit is country I know. "
She turned to Jon. "It will be quiet here by yourself, but there is always the library. I expect they keep it open for the magisters. I gather that some of them stay through the break."
Jon nodded. "Yes. Between library and bed, expect to fill the hours catching up—everything during term that I didn’t understand.
He paused a moment, continued. "Spent part of last Seventhday reading about history of the College. Did you know place was originally a monastery?"
Alys looked up from her plate. "I expect it's still haunted by the ghosts of the monks the mages murdered. I will have to stay awake tonight to listen."
Jon shook his head. "No monks murdered, least not by mages. Monastery belonged to a faction one of the Doray sects, back when they were losing out to the orthodox. Abandoned twenty or thirty years before the founders took it over. Durilil and Feremund showed up with a plan for a college, moved in with apprentices, magery, mops and brooms. Must've been a job to get it cleaned up and put back together. Started in front with only two magisters, eight or ten students."
Alys interrupted him. "Our wing is in the front; I wonder if it's where the Magisters lived at the beginning. I might have been sleeping in Durilil's bed, for all I know."
Mari put down her glass, took a moment to prepare a suitable response. "I’ve heard plenty of rumors about students in magisters' beds, but that’s a new one."
"Don't be silly; he's been dead for hundreds of years. Besides, most of the magisters are too old. The only one who might be interesting is Coelus, and the only student he is interested in …" She stopped, in response to Mari's glare.
Jon stepped into the conversational breach. "Hundreds of years takes you back to Breakup, when Theodrick tore Esland out of the Dorayan League, made himself king. Durilil and Feremund died maybe fifty years ago. Think Olver is still alive, though he must be very old. One of the magisters told me, back when he was a student, painting of Durilil used to hang in the lecture hall."
Alys would not be diverted: "According to the rumors, which magisters am I supposed to be sleeping with?"
Mari shook her head. "If I knew I wouldn't tell. The rumors were about second years using unconventional means to make sure they get to graduate. I doubt it's true though. When the magisters first decided to admit women to the College there was a lot of gossip from people who disapproved of the idea, didn’t think women could be trained as mages. They suspected that the magisters had something else in mind. I expect this is just a remnant of that."
The door opened to let the waiter back in. He carried a tray with a roasted capon and several small bowls, each with a different sauce. Conversation vanished while the students devoted themselves to the new course. After a bit, Mari put down her knife, turned to Edwin. "I know Alys lives in the capital. Is that where you are headed too, or do you go on farther? How long does the coach take?"
"Two days to the capital. We have relatives there. I'll spend at least the night with them, then go on; I expect they can lend me a horse. It's another twenty miles and a good road all the way, so it should be an easy day's ride. But of course," he turned to Alys, "it is much less interesting without a beautiful lady to keep me company."
Alys gave him a melting smile. "You could always stay a few more days with your relatives. There's lots to see in the capital. And do."
"It is a thought, but I expect my parents will want to see me, at least to make sure the college hasn't turned me into some sort of sorcerous monster. They were not all that sure they wanted me to go, but my uncle persuaded them. It might be easier on my way back. And then you can tell me all the latest court gossip."
Chapter 10
Magister Simon looked around the room, cleared his throat. The students fell silent.
“Last semester I taught you a little of the spoken version of the true speech; I expect you to learn more on your own. As you know, there are several word lists in the library, as well as two copies of the canonical version of the syllabary. You will want to give some thought to what words, and what syllables for building words, will be most useful, considering your individual talents and your future plans.
“This semester you will be introduced to the glyphs that make up the written form of the true speech, used for scrolls and other written spells. Just as a word is made up of syllables, so a glyph is made up of elements.”
Simon waved his hand at the board; writing appeared:
Word(syllables)↔Glyph(elements)
“Just as the syllables represent a definition of the word, so the elements that make up a glyph define its meaning. Just as a word can be reduced to a single syllable and used in constructing another word, so a glyph can be converted into a simplified form and in that form function as an element in another glyph.”
As Simon spoke, the outline of what he was saying continued to appear on the board. He gave the students a minute to get it into their tablets before again waving his hand; the board went blank. He picked up a piece of chalk, walked up to the board, wrote a symbol: three vertical wavy lines. “Can anyone tell me what this is?”
Jon, who had been watching closely, raised his hand; Magister Simon nodded to him. “Fire, sir. The element for fire.”
“Correct. The element for fire, but also the glyph for fire. As an element it can be used in constructing other glyphs, as a glyph it can be used in constructing spells. It also has one other use, although I do not know if any of you would have encountered it yet.”
He looked around the room. At last Ellen raised her hand. “In theoretical magic, it stands for the Salamander.”
She was rewarded with a nod from the magister. “Correct. Most of you will not encounter the symbolic use of the elementals until later
this semester, or perhaps next year, but when you do there will at least be a few symbols you can recognize.”
He turned back to the board, sketched a simple circle, turned back to the class. “And what is this?”
Jon again raised his hand, but this time Simon ignored him, gestured to another student.
“Earth. The element and the glyph, just like for fire.”
“Correct.” Magister Simon added to the board the symbols for air and water, writing the name of each underneath twice, the second time as a syllable in the true speech. “We start with these four elements, as mages have started for hundred of years. Suppose we combine them. What, for instance, is this?” He wrote two symbols: Fire and earth.
Again Jon raised his hand. Simon looked around, saw nobody else, nodded to Jon.
“Lava, sir. Burning rock. Or a volcano.”
“Very good. Did you work that out yourself?”
Jon shook his head. “In something I was reading in the library, sir.”
The magister gave him an approving look. “I am happy to see that at least one of you takes some interest in your studies.”
He erased the symbols on the board, replaced them with the symbols for air and water. “And this?”
To his surprise, it was Mari who raised her hand.
“You have an answer, Lady Mariel?”
“Mist. Clouds. Something like that?”
“Correct. Both. Have you too been spending your spare time browsing the library?
She shook her head. “No. But it seemed to make sense, after Jon gave his answer.”
“Very good. It does indeed make sense. It is the nature of the true speech, whether spoken or written, to make sense.”
***
Ellen looked up at the sky. Almost dark; the gate would be closing in half an hour or so. Finding Mari again might take longer than that; Mari could find her way home alone.
She was just passing Master Dur's shop when she heard someone calling.
“Ellen. Come in. Quickly.”
Nobody was in sight, but the shop door was ajar. She stepped to it, looked through.
At the back of the shop a figure slumped in a chair; a second was lying on the floor barely a foot away. She thought she smelled a faint odor of burnt meat.
“Ellen.” It was the figure in the chair.
“I’ve been stabbed. Pull out the knife and weave together the wound.”
She hesitated.
“You are a weaver. Weaving can heal. You must be quick.”
The voice was faint, but she thought she recognized it: Dur, the master jeweler who owned the shop and crafted its contents. He had spoken to her once or twice. But so far as she could remember, he had never heard her name.
“Be quick.”
Coming closer, light from the open door showed her the handle of the knife protruding from Dur’s side, the dark stain spreading below it. She put her hand hesitantly on the cloth.
“The skin. Working through woven cloth makes it harder.”
That made sense, however he knew it. She slid her left hand in through the open front of the wool robe, up under the shirt, against the skin over the wound, fingers either side of the blade. She closed her eyes, felt her way into the wound. The pattern of the flesh either side was clear, and the abrupt break, iron where there should be flesh. Iron.
“You can’t work with the blade in. When you are ready pull it out, and be quick.”
She took a deep breath. With her right hand she groped for the hilt of the dagger, found it, pulled it out. One fair sized vessel had been cut; she knotted both ends. Crude but fast; knots were the first thing you learned. Then she worked her way along the cut, starting where it was deepest, weaving the flesh back together, matching the ends of the tiny vessels that the knife had severed. She reached the skin, felt it moving, knitting together under her hand. She let her perception sink back into the wound, undid the knots and wove the final vessel together. Stood up. For a moment the world spun around her, then came steady. She stepped back, almost tripped over the body on the floor. She bent down to look at it.
“Don’t bother; no healer on earth could help him now. The idiot thief didn’t see me sitting here with my eyes closed and the door open. The idiot me didn't see him either. Until he stepped on my toes, panicked, and knifed me before I could kill him.”
There was a long silence. Ellen looked at the man she had just healed.
“You’re a mage.”
She hesitated a moment, sniffed the air again.
“A fire mage.”
He nodded.
“Useful for killing people. Not so useful for healing them. Give me the knife.”
She handed it to him. He slid down from the chair to a kneeling position by the corpse, drove the knife between two ribs deep into the body.
“I don’t want people to wonder what killed him. You had best get back to the College before they close the gates. Come again when you are free and we can talk.”
“And until then, you would rather I not …”
“Until then, I would rather you not.”
He did not seem greatly concerned that she might go back to the college and inform the magisters that Dur the jeweler, unknown to them, was a secret fire mage. It would be easy enough for him to kill her and blame it on the dead thief; fortunately the idea did not seem to have occurred to him. She walked out the door, down the street in the direction of the path leading to the college entrance, and started to breathe again.
Dur pulled himself back into his chair, closed his eyes. For a moment Ellen was invisible to him. He found her, with a thought thinned the barrier she had built around herself. She showed to his sight as a pale tower of woven flame. His side throbbed but, looking back at himself, he could see no more bleeding inside or out. Her mother would have done it faster and better, but it was, so far as he knew, the first time the girl had used her talent to heal a serious wound. After a time, he saw her reach the woven flame of the dome, pass into it through the gate.
Opening his eyes, he pulled a strip of cloth from the top of the display counter, spilling several rings onto the floor. He dipped the middle of the cloth into the pool of blood by his feet, bound it tightly around his body with the stain over the wound. A minute to catch his breath and drop onto his knees on the floor, moving towards the hammer. Three sharp blows on the alarm gong. He considered trying to make it back up to the chair, decided against.
It took only a few minutes for the street watchman—Dur, as the most likely target of theft, paid the largest share of his salary—to arrive.
* * *
On her way to her room Ellen suddenly remembered Mari's account of Alys at the jeweler’s shop. Not an accident after all.
A pity that she couldn't share the joke.
***
"You wanted to speak to me, Magister Coelus? One of the porters brought me a note."
"Yes."
Ellen looked at him in surprise. His face was white, drawn, angry; she had never seen it like that before.
"Did you do this?"
"Do what?"
He held out the wax tablets, open. They were blank. "My notes, observations from the past weeks of experiment, ideas for other approaches to take. I've been working on trying to figure out what happened to Maridon, how to keep it from happening to me next time I try the experiment. All gone, erased."
She shook her head. "I didn’t even know you used a tablet for your lab notes. We've been doing theory; I knew you did experiments but I don't think you ever showed me one."
"Someone blotted them out last night. You are the only strong fire mage in the college. I doubt any of the others have enough fire, or enough control over it, to melt the wax without scorching the tablet. And you have told me enough times that you disapprove of my project."
"I do. Perhaps if I had known what was in your tablets I would have erased them; I don't know. But I wouldn't have done it secretly then, and I wouldn't lie about it now."
For a mo
ment Coelus seemed to relax, then something else occurred to him. "Where were you last night?"
"Asleep in bed, of course. Where else would I be?"
"I don't know, but you weren't in your bed a little after midnight. I went to your door and looked through it—not with my eyes—after I found the tablets. There was no-one there. You weren't in your bed. Whose bed were you in?"
There was a sudden silence; Ellen's face turned as white as paper, whiter than the mage's. "I do not think it is for you to put that question to me. As it happens, I was in my own bed."
"I looked, I tell you. I know you well enough by now, veil and all. You were not there. Nobody was."
Ellen reached out to the lamp burning on his desk, pulled out a thread of flame, drew it in a quick gesture down her body.
"Close your eyes, Coelus, and tell me where I am."
He looked puzzled, but after a moment his eyes closed. His voice was more puzzled still.
"You aren't there."
He opened his eyes.
"That's impossible. How do you do it?"
"With your eyes closed, how many people in the village—mages or not—can you see from here?"
"None, of course; they are outside the dome. I'm inside it. The dome is … ."
He looked at her again, closed his eyes, opened them.
"You have a way of blocking magic, like the dome?"
"Very like. I've slept behind a barrier for three months now, ever since Maridon tried to kill me."
His mouth fell open; it occurred to her that, for an air mage, he looked strikingly like a fish.
"Since Maridon what?"
"Since Maridon tried to kill me. I was not sure at first who it was or why, but he was the only decent earth mage here and the attempt was obviously earth mage work. After he tried to seize the Cascade and use it for his own power, it was obvious why. You must have told him that you told me about the effect; he wanted to be sure nobody knew about it who might persuade you not to give him control of the pool."
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