304 Founding of Tusaine
The nobles of eastern Maren broke off from their country to make their own realm and stole part of the land on our side of the Drell as well. We have been fighting over that land ever since. Mama was in the last war.
308 Kirikene the Clever of Maren
Sarain and Siraj signed peace treaties with Maren. King Qual shaved his head and took vows of silence as a priest of the Black God and became a preparer of the dead. His nobles chose his cousin Kirikene the Clever to be queen. They thought a woman would be easier to control, but she turned out to be a very strong and wise queen. Grandda said her nobles never knew what she might do next. Her consort loved her and would not allow anyone to try to make him rule in her place. She made peace throughout the realm, fixed the coins, and said to let Tusaine go, as they were all troublemakers anyway.
321 Wylles the Sickly
That was the end of that name for kings! (Wylles, not Sickly.)
Less levity, more information, Thom.
323 Jasson II (regency of Queen Margarry)
The queen ordered the end of the custom of keeping the nobles at court for half the year. She said it was too expensive.
326 The last person to have been a slave in Tortall dies
339 Jasson II, “Goddess-Blessed,” his majority, end of regency
He built a convent and suggested that his mother the regent take vows and become the Head Daughter of it.
346 Roald III, “the Horse-Tamer”
My mother’s horse Darkmoon was sired by His Majesty’s Darkness, who comes from one of the Horse-Tamer’s lines of mounts.
348 Rebellion of the scythes
This rebellion was against taxes on crops brought to market. Farmers burned grain in the fields rather than harvest for tax collectors. The Horse-Tamer was fatally wounded as he put down one of the many revolts.
351 Roger IV, “the Ill-Fated”
He died of a cold contracted when he was bear hunting in the mountains. He didn’t take a mage with him, and he refused to turn back for “a ridiculous fit of the sneezes.”
353 Roald IV, “the Quiet” (adopted House Legann nephew of Roger IV)
He wrote a law that requires all members of the royal family to be accompanied by a mage who is an acknowledged master of healing whenever they are not in any of the royal residences.
367 Baird IV, “the Roisterer”
368 Prince Jasson born
386 Prince Jasson marries Daneline of Jesslaw in Barzun
393 Prince Roald born
395 Prince Jasson retakes the western bank of the River Drell from Tusaine
396 Jasson III, “the Fierce,” the General
400 Barzun conquered by Jasson III
415 Battle of Joyous Forest on the borders with Tusaine and Galla
417 Prince Roald marries Liane of Naxen
422 Jasson III abdicates in favor of his son Roald
422 Roald V, “the Peacemaker”
439 Jonathan IV
440 Marriage to Thayet, co-regnant
Roald (born 440)
Kalasin (born 441)
Liam (born 442)
Jasson (born 443)
Lianne (born 445)
Vania (born 446)
443 Thom of Pirate’s Swoop born (me!)
445 Alan and Alianne of Pirate’s Swoop born (twin pains)
Ideally, you and your siblings do not belong here, Thom, on a list of royalty.
November 12, 456
Thom—
I dug out my notes on the Mages College—and added in some new ones, from what I remember—and put them into some sort of order, a rough outline of what would be expected over four years for both general magecraft and for healing students. Your mother didn’t mention where your interests lie, so you can pore over or ignore my various scribblings as you find them useful.
My best to the Baron and to Alan and Alianne,
Neal
To the student healers, from Duke Baird of Queenscove, Chief Healer of the Realm, greetings and most welcome.
In all places, throughout history, those with a healing Gift have learned to use it at the side of another, grinding herbs in a stillroom and following the older healer from house to house to visit patients.* With the idea that the traditional model was sound, I met with Their Majesties and Master Harailt in August of 441 H.E. to discuss a program for healers at the newly conceived Tortallan Mages College. Though our scope is expanded from the old apprenticeships, and owes much to the Carthaki University, at its heart there remains a deep regard for the connection that healers form with other healers: their mentors, their friends, their students. We are a strong community with a strong commitment to ease our fellow man and honor the gods who Gifted us. The work is not easy, but no matter how far it takes us—into battlefields and plague tents, toward floods, fires, and earthquakes—we do it together. Gods all bless.
Baird of Queenscove
*He got this bit from Mother, or I’ll eat my favorite boots.—Neal
Healers’ Course of Study
History and Ethics
Geoffrey Calvard
Everyone in the Mages College takes this. The subject is fascinating, but Calvard is a cantankerous old fusspot. Really, if you must seek out first-year students to inform them that you’re a tough instructor no matter whose father is the Chief Healer, you need a nap and a strong calming draught laxative. His book on mages in the Slave Wars is very good, though.
Non-healing students also study Old Thak, astronomy, and basic elemental magics in the first year. Some of the instructors cross over—Eliora of Fenrigh works in the Royal Hospital and teaches fire magic, the pair who teach herbs also teach forest and earth magic, and you’ll see my father at Mages talking about the role of magic in community health, or Numair Salmalín will come over to Healers and tell us about battle magic from his side of it. There are a lot of short lecture series like that, built around very busy or visiting mages’ schedules. Even the king teaches sometimes!
Healer’s Practical
Blayce of Carmine Tower and Eleni of Olau
Students meet in small, informal groups to learn and practice basic healing magics, non-magical care, and meditation. Blayce is a good sort, young, talks very fast, and I am positively green with envy that Mother Cooper is truly your grandmother—do you think she would adopt me? There is a similar class for other mage students, lots of meditation and learning to control whatever magics you discovered as a child.
Anatomy
Evaline of Tasride
Cornerstone of the healer’s program, obviously. There are books and charts and wax models and, so to speak, examples, but I recommend learning to draw or making friends with a good artist. Don’t eat right before class.
Herbal Cures
Odeen Estvell, Aniki Nissyen
Learning to identify herbs, dry and store them, make all types of preparations, how and when to magically enhance them. We go tromping around the Royal Forest without warning, so wear boots and bring a hat if it looks like rain.
In the second and third years, students begin working in the Royal Hospital, assisting with supplies, linens, bathing and feeding patients, and changing bandages. How different my life has become! I would rhapsodize further on the glories of knighthood, but I have some bandages to change….
Disease and Remedy
Nerina Greyson
More or less retraces the anatomy class, only this time you learn what can go wrong and how to heal it. Starts with healing the sniffles and works up to knife, axe, and sword wounds.
Third-year students may add a class in the Natural Sciences, Literature and Rhetoric, Mathematics, or Engineering. Private instruction in music and the noble arts is available outside the course of study, but there was no availing on my part—as Father likes to remind me, not even he can heal tone deafness. Duties at the Royal Hospital increase for healers, and the other mage students begin working for and with a single mentor, someone at the University or based at the pal
ace who shares your interests.
As I am duty-bound to obey the Lady Alanna, and especially as she is reading over my shoulder at the moment telling me what to write, I will add that you don’t have to choose between healing and other magics. Harailt of Aili will help you find whatever training you need and fit it together: Marketa of Lisafer is studying healing and weather magic, and my friend Asma bin Haytham divided her studies between Corus and the Bazhir school.
To Neal—
Thank you for the notes. They are helping me picture what University will be like. It sounds very busy and interesting, but not too exciting, which I think is good. Did you send these poems by accident? I thought you might want them back to keep with the rest of your poetry. I hope it gets to you safely and finds you and Ma in good health.
—Thom
P.S. Is “The Skeleton” about Evaline of Tasride? I think so because she is the anatomy teacher. My da agrees. He says I needn’t say so in my letter, only I want to know if I guessed it. Please write back soon!
The Skeleton
4th September, 451
Bones are living tissue, of three layers: dense bone, soft bone, and marrow. They are not dead or inert! If they were, we couldn’t heal them! She speaks with marvelous passion.
Every word has beauty from her lips
cured
heard
demurred 2 kinds of bone marrow
Imparting beauty to her every word,
She names the bones, her voice runs down my spine
And teaches, in the sweetest voice I’ve heard,
A double lesson: to name the bones, and pine
Anatomizing beauty is more hard is my task is utterly hopeless!
Anatomizing beauty gives no cure
Since that my sickness in her body lies
To make her better makes my sickness more
To ease my heart, I must needs lose mine eyes,
Stop up mine nose and ears and senses all
And memory, and thought. In short, to die
Will cure this love and end my aching thrall
(Still she’ll name bones while still my poor bones lie)
But to die for her would be to wrong her so,
That I who love her live to live in woe.
—N.
12 pairs of ribs
24 vertebrae that bend about
5 fused for hip bones to attach
then 4 more fused (“tailbone”)
33 in all
Upon Watching a Yamani Lady Playing Toss-the-Fan
Behold the war fan
Crimson-winged in the fresh breeze
Dipping among the fire lilies.
Meadow lilies? Irises? What is the most tall, slender, and dignified? I do not know enough about decorative plants. Is it rude to compare ladies to flowers? Must read more Sasukia Hama.
The shukusen speaks plainly:
You amuse me, sir.
Please stay. Please go.
Bleed.
A near thing. So many angry women in my life. And one fiery Yamani flower who inhabits my dreams, waking and sleeping. Would my parents welcome a Yamani daughter-in-law? Would her family welcome a gaijin son-in-law, if I even had the courage to ask her?
—N.
Lessons with the Lioness
Symbolic aid
For example, bleeding: you’re not actually tying the blood vessels into a knot, but you’re trying to get them to STOP and a knot means STOP or BIND. Like all magical aids, thread serves as a physical expression of your will—and the more focused your will, the more effective your spell—so if I ever call it hedge magic or child’s play again, the Lioness will tie me into a half hitch and leave me up a tree, and I can write that down, too, as long as I’m taking so many all-fired notes. Good gods, she says “Nealan” in exactly the same threatening tone as my mother!
If I ever learn Father’s way of twisting and doubling a thread to reseal a collapsed lung onto the chest wall, try to teach it to her. Twenty-odd years and she hasn’t got the trick. I think it will be years before I even try!
Concentration aid
More advanced or delicate work, where you’re keeping track of several things at once. You could have one thread in which you invest your will to reroute blood around a damaged vessel so the arm or leg still has blood flowing, while you use another thread to heal the damage, and so forth, keeping your intentions separate and strong.
After practicing, cannot tie knots one-handed. Seems like something the Stump should have taught us, along with fishing with only our teeth and jousting with both feet tied behind our backs. But I wax nostalgic.…
Is there rope magic? Good question. How about fishing nets? Good question. What about thread made into a net? Isn’t there something about this in—I can’t recall the title—Nerina Greyson’s masterwork? I long for the University library. My mistress points out, quite rightly, that instead of a library we have a lot of thread and very little to do until the rain lets up.
What about ladies with long hair? Thread magic and essence spells combined? Good question. I am beginning to suspect that “good question” means “answer it yourself, O squire.”
After several hours of mending clothing and tack, I have ideas about difficult-to-stitch areas, scalp especially. My two lives, merging, as Orneyn the Wolf writes: “With every action we make our fate, a thousand thousand rivulets of melted snow, and where all tributaries meet all things are known.”
Knight-mistress only said “hmm” to the quote and poked our small fire, but today I used a bit of thread magic to erase our tracks, and she clapped me on the back and said, “Does not the sea begin as every little snowflake?” I suppose my face did something, because she grinned and added, “Yes, I read.” Perhaps my squiredom will not be all threats and foul weather?
April 3, 455
Letter intercepted by Sparrow Fetlock, direct to Nursemaid Sweetening
Direct by special pouch to the Whisper Man
Sir,
Fetlock and I thought you would want to see this right away. It came this afternoon by way of the regular mail on the Coast Road, not in your own pouch. From the way it was written we thought you might not know the contents.
Sweetening
April 2, 455
To Lord Imrah of Legann
From Alan of Pirate’s Swoop
My Lord.
My mother is Sir Alanna of Pirate’s Swoop and Olau. My father is the baron of Pirate’s Swoop. I am ten years old.
I am old enough to train as a page. I do not wish to do so at the palace. I have heard many people say that the training master hates my mother. They say that he has said openly that she is no true knight, even though she serves the king as his Champion. I do not wish to learn about chivalry from this man.
In our history lessons our tutor told my brother and me that before Gareth III made noble families spend half the year at court and began to train pages and squires there, a boy who wished to become a knight would be the page and squire of an older knight who would teach him how to do things. My tutor says there is no law against this, only that most people prefer to send their sons to the court school.
My mother says you are a good and brave man. My father says you are wise.
Please, my lord, would you train me to be a knight? I will do whatever you tell me, even if I have to eat bitter greens or muck out pigsties. I am very tidy and I have my own pony and saddle gear. I hunt with our family’s huntsman, who has seen me bag rabbits and pheasants. I can also fish.
I wait for the honor of your reply.
Alan of Pirate’s Swoop
April 4, 455
The Whisper Man to Nursemaid Sweetening
Let this go on to Lord Imrah at Port Legann without further interference.
April 10, 455
From Imrah, Lord of Port Legann
To George, Baron of Pirate’s Swoop
George,
Your son has written to ask me to train him as page and squire. Were you aware o
f this? Is your lady wife aware of this? Under the circumstances, and given the current training master, I am inclined to take the boy on. He has always seemed like a likely lad on my visits to you, and I could use someone lively around here.
April 10, 455
From Imrah, Lord of Port Legann
To Alan of Pirate’s Swoop
Alan,
Your letter has given me much cause for thought. You are aware that few nobles choose this manner of training. Usually they are those whose fiefdoms are not wealthy enough to supply them at court without causing their families hardship. Do not think this will be a way for you to avoid rude comments from people at court, that is what I am trying to tell you. I think the fact that I will be responsible for your education will protect you from all but the most ignorant remarks (which is one of the reasons, I must suppose, that you chose me as a possible knight-master), but it will not do so from those determined to insult you and your family. That is the nature of the world.
Before I agree to your proposal, you must speak to both of your parents and get their permission, in writing, for this arrangement. They are good friends of mine. I do not wish to put my friendship with them at risk. Since you did not mention them in your letter, I must assume that you did not discuss your plan with them.
Should I receive letters from them indicating to me that they approve of your plan, I will write to you so that we may settle upon when you should come to me and what belongings you should bring.
Mithros guide you,
April 15, 455
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