by Dave Duncan
For example-and Umpily could well imagine Shandie himself arguing this point at a council of war as he had done so often in the years of glory-Dwanish was rumored to be preparing an attack. Zinixo dealing with the war himself, employing sorcery, would produce a result very different from Emthoro striving to react as the real Shandie might react. Did the dwarf have any loyalty to his own kind, or—
“And yourself, my lord?” Ishipole was supposedly almost blind now. Her eyes were dull orbs of amber, and yet they still saw more than most. They seemed to be sizing Umpily up, conveying a sense of getting down to business.
“Me, your Eminence? A well-earned retirement!”
“You quarreled with his Majesty, or so it is said.” The withered senatorial hand offered the cake plate again. “You had a disagreement. “
“Not at all! One does not disagree with imperors, ma’am! One merely agrees less vehemently.”
“You have not been seen at court. “
Umpily swallowed a morsel of cake with difficulty, his mouth strangely dry. He had held this same discussion many times of late, but Ishipole would be much harder to deceive than most of his acquaintances.
He sighed. “I never held an official position, you know. I was Shandie’s advisor-and also friend, I hope-while he was a prince. When he ascended the throne he automatically inherited the whole Imperial bureaucracy. It seemed a good time for me to make way for the professionals, and younger men. We parted on excellent terms! Not parted, I trust-I was merely relieved of my unofficial duties, at my own request. That would be a better turn of phrase. Quite amicable. “
“You see him sometimes, then?”
“Certainly. Just private functions, of course, because of the mourning, but-“
“You’re lying,” she said. “He denies it. You vanished. At first the word was that you’d been dispatched to Guwush on some fairy-tale secret mission, and he denies starting that story. But you were soon observed skulking around Hub-“
For a mad moment Umpily considered taking Ishipole into the great secret and explaining that the imperor she had met was not the real imperor, the impress was not the real impress, that an invisible sorcerer, who might not be a sorcerer in his own right, had stolen the whole Impire, dethroned the wardens, and usurped the ancient rule of the Protocol-but that road led to shackles and straightjackets. He could never dare reveal the truth except to a sorcerer, who would know it already anyway. “Skulking, ma’am? Really!”
“Like today,” she snapped. “We haven’t spoken since before the old imperor died and yet today you just drop in. Just passing by, you say. No invitation, no note to warn me. Very unorthodox! So now we just have a nice little chat and you just drop out again, is that not so?”
Umpily took a sip of tea to give himself a moment to think. “It’s the pattern of your behavior ever since Emshandar died,” she insisted, amber eyes studying him glassily-apparently as lifeless as a statue’s, yet seeing much more than they revealed. “I have been finding the winter weather a little hard on the joints, I confess, and not getting around as much as I could wish. ” He did not think he could deceive the old witch, and he certainly could not trust her. “I’m told that bands of eel skin worn around the ankles will draw the poison …”
She dismissed that irrelevancy with a flick of the thin hairs along her brow. “You have been skulking around the fringes of the court, asking a great many curious questions, and yet never entering the palace itself. Shandie is quite worried about you. He.told me so. “
“Then I must call on him and reassure him!”
“Yes, you must. ” The ugly old harridan reached out her knotted fingers and lifted a silver bell from the tea table. “I think they will have arrived by now. “
Umpily’s ample innards seemed to drop a substantial distance. “Who should have arrived, ma’am?”
The bell tinkled.
“Mutual friends, my lord.” The waxy, sagging features contorted themselves into a smile. “Persons who will be happy to escort you to the palace to impart that reassurance you just mentioned.”
The door opened in perfect silence. The big man who stood in the entrance was coated in gleaming bronze. There were other large men at his back. Umpily laid down his tea cup with a clattering noise.
“Lord Umpily!” the expected harsh voice said. “We meet again! At last.”
Umpily must have done well. His prying must have alarmed somebody, or annoyed somebody. It was a very great honor to be arrested by Legate Ugoatho himself.
2
“Here she comes now,” Mist said. “About time! ” Thaile snapped.
Within the Meeting Place clearing, they sat side by side within an airy, open-sided cabana. The outside was smothered in flowers, the inside furnished with hard wooden benches. On a hot summer’s day she would have judged the building totally unnecessary except to hold up the vines-why not just lie on the grass in the shade of a tree? On a dank, gray morning with rain falling in ropes, the shelter was miserably inadequate. Water streamed from the eaves in torrents and danced in the puddles on the grass; a faint spray blew through all the time, soaking everything.
The three other novices were seated on the upwind side, which was wetter, but a safe distance from Mist. Their names were Woom, Maig, and Doob, although Mist still referred to them as Worm, Maggot, and Grub. While they were not as loathsome as he had described, Thaile had no great desire to make friends with any of them. That was fortunate, for Mist seemed to believe that she was his property-either because he had found her first or just because he was the oldest and biggest. If any of the three as much as smiled at her, he shed his normal affability, becoming harsh and aggressive. Normally such arrogance would have annoyed her greatly, but she had ignored it so far because she had worse things to worry about.
The woman coming striding along the Way in a floppy hat and ankle-length sea-green cloak was Mistress Mearn herself, who had summoned all five novices here to attend their first day of classes. There was no one else in sight in the Meeting Place on this foul morning.
About time!
For six days, Thaile had endured the College-angry, frightened, resentful, and bored. For six days she had endured Mist, too. He had shown her all the places she was supposed to know, and none had been particularly interesting. He had clung to her like lichen, impervious to hints, appeals, and the worst insults she had cared to throw at him. No matter how she tried to dissuade him, he just gazed at her with soulful, butter-yellow eyes full of hurt and disbelief. After that first calamitous night, he absolutely could not be convinced that she did not want him to make love to her every night. He wouldn’t mind mornings or afternoons, even. He promised to be gentler, rougher, faster, slower, more considerate, more insistent-any way she wanted, he would oblige.
Yet he was tolerable company when he was not explaining why they should be in bed together. He was easygoing and sometimes witty and usually bone lazy, although he was capable of astonishing bursts of exertion when he was in a canoe with a paddle in his hands. He was all she had. She had not seen Jain since the day she arrived, and no one else paid any attention to her at all. Novices were obviously just a necessary nuisance in the College, like small children underfoot. They might be even less than that, because everyone else seemed to have occult powers.
Thaile had no idea how many people abode within the College-probably more than she had ever met in her life. More than a dozen of dozens maybe! She had tried speaking with some of them, at the Commons or the Market. They had discouraged her, usually with a tolerant “Things will be explained to you soon.” Sometimes she’d met rudeness, and a couple of women had just vanished before her eyes rather than converse with a mere novice. To sorcerers, all mundanes must seem less than children, clumsy and foolish and ignorant.
When shed remarked to Mist that there seemed to be no old people around, he’d assumed the owlish gaze he used instead of a grin. “Who would trust a sorcerer who grew old?”
Who would trust a sorcerer at all?
Archivist Mearn was a sorceress. She was closer to young than old, more than twenty, less than forty. She stepped into the cabana and removed her hat, then swung it so that wetness flew off in a shower. She tossed it onto a bench and unclipped the neck of her cloak, pouting at the awful weather. Mearn had a small, prissy mouth like a perch’s, and she wore her hair in a very large bun on the top of her head, probably to display the pointedness of her ears. Her eyes were an ugly brown, her blouse and striped skirt smart and well chosen.
She threw her cloak down beside her hat and looked over her charges with disapproval: Thaile and Mist sitting at one side, Woom and Maig and Doob at the other. They stared back with fear or resentment or both.
Woom was about Thaile’s age, and nasty. He picked his nose and ate with his mouth open, and she knew he was deliberately being annoying because she could Feel his emotions. He seemed to have chosen her as a special victim. He became very excited and pleased with himself when he managed to provoke her to any show of anger. She had concluded that Woom’s talent was to make people dislike him, and he was so good at it that his Faculty must be very strong.
Doob was much younger, a short, skinny child. Thaile had rarely heard him speak, and he emitted black terror most of the time. She was sorry for Doob, who should be sent home to grow up for a couple of years. If he had a talent for something, it had so far escaped her notice.
She ought to feel sorry for Maig, too, but he wore the vacant smirk of the half-witted, and his surging, confused emotions made her queasy. His talent was juggling, and juggling seemed to be his only interest. He could keep eight plates in the air, or five knives. At the Commons that morning he had been trying for six knives, until a sorcerer had ordered him to go outside before he maimed someone.
And there was Thaile herself, who had tried to run away from the recorders, Thaile who had fallen in love when she was not supposed to. Who was Leeb? Where was Leeb? Was he tall and heavy-shouldered like Mist? Somehow she did not think Leeb could resemble Mist in any way. If she had fallen in love with another Mist, she ought to be ashamed of herself.
Last there was Mist, oldest and largest of the novices, leaning back with his legs stretched out in tight-fitting scarlet pants and royal blue boots. In spite of the chill weather, his ruffled lemon shirt was wide open, hanging loose. He, at least, gave Mistress Mearn a winning smile. He put an arm around Thaile and looked pleased with himself.
“Is there a war on?” the mistress of novices inquired snidely, looking to and fro. “As it happens, I can see out of the back of my head. However, I think the atmosphere would be improved if you all sat together. “
The obnoxious Woom lurched to his feet at once, and shambled over to Thaile. He spared Mist a triumphant sneer in passing. He seated himself on her other side, moving in close and whistling happily, staring at the roof. Doob and Maig joined him, neither comprehending the foolery.
Mearn had noticed, though. “One of the first things you will learn at the College,” she proclaimed sharply, “is how to behave in a civilized manner. Close up your shirt, Novice. You are no longer a peasant, wandering around in seminudity.”
Mist colored. He straightened up and began buttoning. Woom sighed, shaking his head sadly.
Mistress Mearn settled primly on a bench facing them. “Later I shall outline the standards of behavior expected of you. Promiscuity is strongly discouraged.” She glanced at Thaile with undisguised contempt.
The mealymouthed sorceress was about as likeable as a squashed toad. The Keeper herself had said that there was no harm in a girl romping with a boy if she wanted to … but of course the cryptic specter Thaile had met might not have been the Keeper. It could have been a wraith of Evil sent to tempt her. She had not discussed that encounter with anyone.
“You all have a great deal to learn, ” the mistress continued, “-the ways of power itself, the history and purpose of the College, its workings and organization, the whole edifice of law and duty that the blessed Keef decreed for us a thousand years ago. You must start by learning to read and write.”
“Today we begin your education. Normally we prefer to wait until we have six or eight in a class, but for reasons that I may not disclose, we have decided to proceed immediately, with just the five of you. ” Her muddy dark eyes flickered momentarily to Thaile, without expression.
“You were selected because you all come from Gifted families-“
Doob spoke for the first time, in his boyish treble. “My uncle Kulth’s a sorcerer! He’s an analyst. “
“But you are only a novice!” Mearn snapped. “In class you speak only when spoken to!”
Doob turned white, and Thaile winced at the intensity of his fright.
“If you have a question, raise your hand,” Mearn said, and then continued, paying him no more attention. “All of you have learned one word of power, and all of you have displayed Faculty. In case any of you still do not understand the distinction, I shall explain. Listen carefully, because I do not intend to tell you anything more than once. Everyone has some sort of native ability. A good ear for music, for example. When a person learns a word of power, that ability is increased, sometimes very greatly. How much it increases depends on two things. One is Faculty. Faculty is a talent for magic itself, and it tends to run in families. We know of many such Gifted families, like yours. Any questions so far?”
Five heads shook in denial. Woom added, “I knew all that. “
Mistress Mearn eyed him coldly, but made no comment. Thaile decided that she disliked the sorceress almost as much as she disliked Woom. The timorous little Doob might be the best of the entire odious company. At least she could feel sorry for a frightened kid.
“The other factor,” Mearn continued, “is the strength of the word itself. The words you learned are all known very widely. Each one is shared by scores of people. We call those ‘Background Words.’ Do you understand so far?”
The four youths nodded. Thaile did not. She disliked being treated as a halfwit.
Mearn shot her a calculating glance and went on with her lecture. “When several people know a word, its power is not divided equally between them. People who have Faculty get more of the power than others. Or else they manage to use their share more effectively. Most people show no results at all when they learn one of the background words, or very little. You all showed an increase in talent, and so we know that you all have Faculty. “
Jain had told Thaile all this a year ago.
Woom raised a hand as high as he could, as if reaching for the rafters.
“Yes, Novice?”
“Which is it?”
“Which is what?”
“Do they get more of the power, or do they just use it better?” The sorceress pursed her lips, making her little mouth even tinier. Then she said, “No one knows. Even the Keeper does not know. It doesn’t matter.”
“Thought it didn’t,” Woom said with satisfaction.
Thaile decided he might have some good points she had previously overlooked-he was obviously annoying the mistress of novices. She sighed. She was not usually so crabby about people.
“Here in the College,” Mearn continued grimly, “we keep careful track of the Gifted Families, and which persons know which words. That is the task of the recorders, and also the archivists. I will explain the rankings to you another day. We also know many other words of power, much stronger words. We keep track of those words also, of course. Normally each is known by only two people-no more, and no less. Can any of you explain why we take that precaution?”
Thaile sighed again and looked out at the streaming rain. Even on a day like this, there must be better ways of passing the time.
“Well? Why two? Why not one, or three?” Mearn pouted at the lack of response, then picked on the dim-witted Maig, who of course could not answer the question. She ought to let him go off and practice juggling sharp axes, Thaile thought-he might put himself out of his own misery. Even after the obvious reasons had been explained f
or him several times and he was nodding and mumbling that he understood, she could Feel his incomprehension. A sorceress must be able to Feel it, also, but eventually Mearn pretended to be satisfied.
“Very shortly, all of you will be told another word of power!” she announced, and peered around for reaction. “Yes, Woom?”
“Does that mean I have to watch some other old bag die?” The sorceress’s guard slipped for a moment, and Thaile Felt her irritation, like lightning on a dark night. “Not usually. If not, at least one of the two people who know that word will be elderly. Under those circumstances, of course, there will be three people who know that word.” Her ugly brown eyes narrowed dangerously. “Go ahead and ask it!”
For once the brash Woom seemed taken aback. In an unusually meek tone he said, “Do you kill them off, then?”
“Of course not! If you prove to have real Faculty, you will probably be promoted to sorcerer one day, but not for many years. By that time, the third person will have died naturally. “
“And if I don’t have real Faculty?”
“You remain an adept. Two words make an adept. Now, who can tell me the powers of an adept?”
The rain roared on the roof and the grass. Mearn pouted her little mouth again.
“Novice Mist?”
“A superman?” Mist said hopefully. “An adept can do anything?”
“More or less,” she agreed reluctantly. “Anything mundane. Sometimes, if an adept had very strong Faculty, he may also display some occult power. A second word allows us to confirm the strength of your Faculty. It also lets you become useful.” Her manner implied that she had rarely seen a less useful collection of candidates. “Reading and writing, for example. Teaching those skills to you now would be a long, painful business. As adepts, you will learn very easily-most of you.”
Thaile did not want to know how to read and write. She did not want to be a sorcerer, or even an adept. She wanted Leeb, and the life that had been stolen from her.