Sometimes the elemental gets ornate about destroying their summoner. There’s a pretty well documented just pre-Commonweal case where the summoner took precisely a lunar month to actually die.
Not like I’m sure even Halt could stop an angry fire elemental.
So, well, a ward just in case. Don’t know what this will look like from the outside, and we are right next to Parliament.
The ritual, I shouldn’t say easy, we haven’t done it ourselves, but we all know it, take out all the protection and compulsion parts and any summoning’s uncomplicated.
The Line companies are going to eat lunch first, Tweed’s clear about that, so we grab something to eat and go down to the Galdor-gesith’s hostel to wash. Zora’s brought, well, sorcerer clothes. Can’t think of them as festival clothes, they’re not, no matter how formal and embroidered. Our gean laundry insisted Halt write down care instructions for the fibres, no one had seen anything like them before. Pretty sure the howdah did the embroidery, we have all carefully not asked.
Formal apprentice hats. Which is right, but also nothing to think about at any length.
Don’t want to think about how strange standing on bare rock in hose and light shoes feels. Apprentice sorcerer clothes, the skirts are knee-length and the six-panel over-vest’s a handspan shorter. The wire embroidery down the over-vest lapels gives it weight, so it’s not going anywhere, which is good, because it’s not cut to fasten. The over-robes are about as thick as mist, full-sleeved, and just sort of float around you. It’s shot fabric, somehow, all of us surrounded by our button-colours.
We must look very silly waving our arms and making sure everything moves properly. We’d look sillier making a mistake, and I suppose we might.
Still, five’s a good number for a ritual.
Hyacinth’s very formal giving me the list of requirements and a complete, proper, archival copy of the location survey, the one voted on and approved by Parliament. I think it’s a response to the clothes.
You do realize Hyacinth has no idea what we’re doing? Dove’s amused.
Hyacinth wants a library. It’s important, it’s for everybody. Zora says, Chloris agrees, I agree, it’s not like we’re not trying to get the job done well. Constant is curious about the fire elemental.
Chanting, we’re all better at it than we were, don’t have to walk circles with five of us, we can pass the chant around.
The white heat doesn’t seem as great. It is, I can tell it is, it’s just not as much of a surprise. The curiosity might be greater.
Security of knowledge, exchange of knowledge, stability of records, those all turn out to be really easy things to explain to a fire elemental. The idea that knowledge has mass, slow mass, and that the keepers of knowledge aren’t, in comparison to the total mass, very strong at all, that’s difficult.
Get the notion of knowledge stored by material symbols, the size limits of aesthetics and photons and the scale of eyes, get that into the discussion and it all makes sense, the idea of a pen fascinates the fire elemental utterly, that the whole ritual of preservation begins in matter, different kinds and mixtures of matter, paper, ink, the kinds of ink, the whole scope of what book means, what we’re trying to care for, the avoidance of the Power in libraries, the desired purity of matter, the elemental starts to feel like a kid with one more festival present than they expected. Chloris’ list, Zora’s hopeful thoughts about decor, Dove’s pure delight in fire, intangible Constant’s fundamental sympathy for the constraints of matter, the resulting gloriously detailed structuring of fixed slow matter, all of that increases the fire elemental’s evident glee.
Eight floors, high ceilinged every one. Huge circular central lightwell. Ramps, broad ones, shallow ones, you do a circle and a half to go up a floor, there are two, double helix, level parts of the ramp to go off into the stacks, the switch to level’s a smooth transition on a curve, no book carts bumping flat, vast tall windows east and west, two hundred metres of north wall that’s a stained glass pattern in stylized quill pens, the bright light’s localized, you can keep the shelved books out of direct light, prisms, light pipes, any magical lights required can be kept on the outside of the building, there are spots for them to feed the light pipes, the whole building’s incredibly thorough about natural light. It’s got Zora’s regional plants by altitude across the whole Commonweal, all through the railings and door handles and wall paneling, there’s a huge periodic table mosaic with different values and more precision than the best the chemists had on the south wall over the third floor in the light well.
You could fit the Round House in that lightwell six times, three atop three.
Bottom floor facing north, it’s two floors underground if you look from the southern ground level, has a boat draw up from the little lake, large pond, rollers, big doors, full barge sized, you could pull one up from the water into the basement, winches and cables already there. If you look at the building from the south, outside at ground level, that wall’s a mosaic map of the Second Commonweal, done with some relief, the rivers are sapphire and the Creeks are blue garnet over gold.
“Mustn’t drop books in the water,” Dove says, smiling, looking at the barge ramp, holding, it’s dancing round her fingers, pure elemental fire, not an idea of fire, not actual burning, Dove’s asked it not to be, the impulse of making.
Don’t know why you’d put a barge in that lake, it’s not large and it doesn’t connect to anything. Someone or something dug it out of the rock, probably not a thousand years ago, but no Creeks were there to see and no one knows who did it.
The entryway has rows of coat hooks, drains, boot trays, mud-dessicating tile, washrooms, sinks, actual privies, there are four, the fourth floor in all four corners has obvious lunch and sitting rooms, the eighth floor is nothing but open study space around the lightwell, under a roof just as clear, spare and pretty but not an overwhelming exercise in art. Stairwells, the hale and hastening won’t have to take the slow ramp. Chloris is very pleased. Zora’s making an effort of social presence, there’s always one more fantastically detailed plant to notice. The labels are switchable Zora says, delighted. Botanists agree by generations, rarely longer.
Walking out the east door, the main exits are east and west and east is facing Parliament, a kilometre or so away along the ridge, there’s Blossom, and the Line companies, and what looks like most of Parliament.
The Line applauds. So do some of the members of Parliament.
Blossom’s patting Hyacinth on the shoulder. “Have to be careful what you ask the kids to do.”
Hyacinth’s formal clerk face is in place. I don’t know how.
Dove meets Blossom’s inquisitive look full on. “First thing we did, and Wake didn’t ward us. It just can’t be that dangerous.”
“Except for,” Blossom says, and Dove looks half a shade of exasperated and says “Ed did the talking.”
Who has worked once, keeps working, is the rule with fire elementals, so far as anyone knows.
This makes twice.
“It was a very happy elemental,” I say, as tactfully as I can manage, and Pelōŕios, human, standing behind Blossom and visibly having trouble not leaping to Zora, says something in Unicorn about butterflies that, from the facial expressions of Blossom and Hyacinth and four or five other people, really isn’t polite.
Zora has to work hard not to giggle.
“It’s solid, it’s safe,” Blossom says, and most of the group of clerks and librarians and five or six members of Parliament move past us, it’s a big entryway.
We head all the way outside, there aren’t any steps, there’s a really nice pavement, I suppose so it can be replaced, rather than wearing grooves in the rock, and stop where Blossom stopped, moving back a little. Zora flows up against Pelōŕios, who stops looking quietly distraught.
“Shouldn’t we do the plumbing?” Zora says, and Blossom’s head tips toward Hyacinth and says “See?”
Zora gets, we all get, a stern look with “No establishe
d sewage ponds. Other people will build the ponds.” Blossom’s firm voice.
“Quite soon,” Hyacinth says, looking up at the soaring subtle wall of windows.
“I really don’t have to worry about the floors taking the load?” Hyacinth’s personal voice.
Blossom’s head shakes. “You could stack that place to the roof with lead bricks, and it wouldn’t creak in an earthquake.”
I say “Books are composed of a variety of matter,” and Blossom grins at me.
“Even the Book of Halt doesn’t have lead covers.”
Lead would melt Zora says, and Hyacinth looks stern at our sudden snickering.
Blossom’s face smoothes back to formal. “I don’t know how to describe the construction of the library, the structure’s some sort of semi-metallic pseudoglass vaguely-ceramic, it’s all one piece, no cutting new doorways anywhere, and it’s about a quarter as strong as pure carbon chain.”
“Twenty times as strong as steel” Dove says to Hyacinth’s effort to recall what carbon chain might be.
“The technique doesn’t extend well, it really needs to be something unique, art, before the elemental will appreciate being asked.” Blossom’s tone certainly remembers where quelling lives.
“A material artifacts building would have to be done differently.” Hyacinth says that carefully, speculatively, and we all nod.
Could probably do a whole town as a thing. A whole living system in matter. Even more fascinating.
Dove’s nodding, Zora’s nodding, Chloris is imagining the town, and Blossom turns back to Hyacinth as says “Can we get a general note that the kids don’t get asked to build public structures without a Keeper present?”
“Not once they’re Independents,” Hyacinth says.
Tomorrow, if we’re not dead.
Chapter 60
Zora
Pelōŕios is actively quivering, it’s nothing I have any answer for. There’s been a good deal of formal paperwork, attestations that this is everything that needs attesting, Doucelin looking remote and formal in a heavy robe and their fylstan’s collar, Clerks Lester and Francis just as formal, various subsidiary clerks, it’s actively ceremonial.
No kind of reassuring, because none of this is the important part.
Not going to nag Pelōŕios about accepting citizenship anyway, we’ve had that argument. “Not always a practical unicorn” shouldn’t sound so strange in my head.
A usual class draws lots for examination order. We aren’t, it’s me, then Chloris, then Dove and Edgar and Constant together because otherwise, it’s been decided, Constant won’t be an Independent whenever Constant becomes distinct. So the link’s as down as we can get it, the examination can manage consonance but not the active link and it hurts less for us to shut the link down than to have the Shape of Peace suppress us.
Pelōŕios had snorted at that, when they told us yesterday.
The wait, it’s not deliberate but people have to carry attested copies of everything back of the barrier, it’s not a ward, it’s whatever the Shape of Peace does when invoked to examine candidates for the status of Independent. I have no perception through it, none of us have any perception through it.
Grue and Blossom come up, very formal in the same sort of sorcerer’s clothes I’m wearing, except for the hats. They’ve got Independent hats, with brims and no buttons. Independent buttons go somewhere on your collar. Grue squeezes my shoulder, doesn’t say anything. I manage to nod at Grue, and then again when Clerk Francis motions me forward.
Grue’s shifted into a unicorn shape, so poor stricken Pelōŕios has someone to lean on. Blossom’s got a hand on Pelōŕios’ neck, and that might help too.
I get one step and something, I think it’s Clerk Francis’ face, makes me look sideways, to where the rest of us are standing.
Dove’s wings are feathered things, golden, long, and pointed, hunting-shape for a killer falling swift from the sky. The tip of the left wing gleams wetly red, sunlight dipped in blood.
Chloris’ wings are every bit as spectral as Chloris. So are Spook’s, soft shrouding owl-wings speckled faintly green on Spook and evening green where a barn-owl’s would be brown on Chloris, who has kept the black and russet, something I just know because the side I see is entirely pale and shining.
Constant’s wings are sharp-edged parabolas of light with interference patterns intimating feathers.
Ed’s got a poor grasp of wings. It looks more like the fins you never want to find on fish, rayed with an ideal of permanence and webbed with darkness pulled up from under reality.
“You are all a dreadful influence,” is the right strange thing to say when I’m almost laughing.
I can turn and step back and rest my forehead on Pelōŕios’, under the horn, and run my hand once down the gleaming length of neck, Blossom’s hand lifting quietly out of the way.
All may yet be very well is all I can find to tell Pelōŕios, and then I can smile, and walk forward, and if the examiners don’t like butterfly wings in purple, white, and crimson, then they’re admitting to poor taste.
Pelōŕios finds no words, but the horn-glow brightens and brightens until I’m following my shadow across the manifest edges of the Shape of Peace.
There’s a table, with four people I’ve never seen before sitting behind it, none of them Creeks or sorcerers. There’s twenty people with a focus, next to a big crucible with ten kilogrammes of cold tungsten in it. There’s another four people standing well back, dolefully dressed because they’re here to remove the body when there’s need.
It makes me want to go unicorn, so they and everyone like them will always have to bring a winch hereafter. Not the frame of mind I ought to be in.
I attest I’m me. I attest that I will act solely out of my own present Power, skill, and resources, and take thirty careful seconds to melt the tungsten.
One of the people at the table nods, and makes a tick mark.
I can’t attest that I’ve made the metaphysical transition, it’s possible to be honestly mistaken about that. How they test that, without being sorcerers, and then I realize it has to be the Shape.
I go as much distribution of mist as I can in the available volume, and realize that’s the whole way because it’s not an especially three-dimensional barrier.
Greetings.
The Shape of Peace can talk.
Greetings. Only I sound flustered. They’d have to tell me the Shape talked for me to know what else I ought to say back, or where to say it to, this is all amorphous and I’m guessing.
Talk, and this feels somewhat odd.
A knowledge consequent of names.
This feels more than odd.
Why ought you to live?
I do live, there isn’t any ought. If you mean survive, survive this test, that ought to be a question of conduct, not of arguments.
Some strange pause.
It’s not my judgement of my conduct that answers for the Peace.
I emerge, bipedal, on my feet, and none of the others are there. Pelōŕios is, Grue and Blossom and Wake and Halt, but the rest of us aren’t.
“All in before any out,” Halt says in a still voice empty of feeling.
Five hundred years for Halt, to maybe get this far.
The test’s supposed to take half an hour, and that would put us at probably two hours all together, and it’s been three. I didn’t experience three.
Perceptual time’s a bit funny while the Shape’s looking through your head Grue says.
No one says anything while I go unicorn and go lean on Pelōŕios. Blossom pats my neck, moving out of the way.
Forty minutes later, Chloris emerges, condenses, looking cross.
The Shape of Peace sounded exactly like my mother. None of the teachers seem even a little surprised. There are commiserative expressions, and Pelōŕios goes bipedal just after I do and hugs me hugging Chloris.
Thanks.
Dove and Edgar and Constant don’t emerge after forty minutes, or an
hour, or an hour and a half. Blossom’s head shakes, narrowly, when Grue’s snakes over Pelōŕios’ neck with an inquisitive look. Halt slowly looks less and less like something alive.
Wake doesn’t move, or breathe. Wake seems empty with waiting.
Dove and Edgar and Constant emerge, I watch Clerk Lester write this down, two hours and twenty three minutes after I do.
I’m sorry, Constant says. We got philosophical about tangibility.
There’s a lot of hugging. Blossom thumps Dove on the shoulders and cries, tears flashing into steam.
Don’t ever let anybody tell you a statistical expectation is the same thing as an observed fact.
“I may retire,” Clerk Francis says, in one of the pauses while the ink-barely-dry procedure for when to treat Dove-Edgar-and-Constant as a singular and when plural gets consulted. We’re all standing around in a clump doing our best to be coherent and patient at the same time.
Halt does something inquisitive.
“A forlorn unicorn,” Clerk Francis says. “When a forlorn unicorn is the least unsettling thing about examining a sorcery class, it’s time.”
Halt twinkles at Francis, purely pleased.
The last of the forms are simple, names adopted as Independents, nobody dithers, there’s the rendered ostrich lard again but this time it doesn’t hurt, it’s a recognition of a thing established, necessary to complete the long ritual of apprenticeship.
Pelōŕios takes three firm steps away from me when called, and gets through becoming a citizen with no more harm than an oily nose.
Grue, it’s almost reluctantly, goes not-a-unicorn after I’ve let go of Pelōŕios and he’s gone back to unicorn-shape. Not a time anyone’s going to complain of some kissing.
There’s a gathering glance, and the working link comes up, in the careful subtle scarcely-perceptible grownup version with seven independents. I can feel it tax Grue’s capacity for hope; Grue won’t want to stay connected all the time.
Safely You Deliver Page 43