along-'
'I invited you here because I thought you showed promise! You've exhibited a natural flair for magic-or call it shamanism if you please-and I thought you could think! Instead you rant like a crack-brained child about birds and flowers, and clouds shaped like oysters!'
'Oysters?'
'Can't you get this straight? Can't you see your opportunity? The Neth are the greatest, most enchanted race ever to inhabit this sphere! We've learned all there is to know about magic, mostly. We've sweated and slaved to learn the rules of dweomer, to bend magic to one's will! Based on that-'
'But at what price! To lose your souls? To be heartless fiends, insensitive to suffering, like vampires come up from the ice holes?'
'Damn your ice hole! Vampires come from dark caves, not underwater! How will you ever learn clinging to these foolish beliefs? Can nothing I say penetrate that stony barbarian skull? Open your mind and think!'
'I'll not bargain a bear for his teeth! I know what magic costs! I've seen the old ones with their bent backs, their very hearts and livers shrunk beyond endurance from practicing the ways of the shaman, from healing the sick and tasting the wind, warning of storms and tracking the seals under the ice. No one twists magic to his will. Magic twists the twister until it ties you in knots. No one takes up magic unless he's willing to sacrifice their all for the good of the tribe. Yet you would have me believe that a wizard can reach out a finger and turn magic on and off like a spit-gut!'
'Like a what?' Then the arcanist sighed. 'Never mind. We're getting nowhere. I had hoped this would be your first lesson, and we'd get through the elementary principles quickly. Instead I'm arguing the origins of magic!
'The question has been asked before, you know,' Candlemas continued. 'Wizards have sought the source of magic for centuries. Though the goddess Mystryl is certainly in control of a great deal of what comprises the weave, no one believes she controls it all. Certainly she didn't create the weave…'
'Why not just say so, then?' retorted Sunbright. 'I'd have accepted that answer!'
'What?' Candlemas was suddenly tired, as if he'd conjured an elephant from the far southern deserts. He wished he had. A mad mammoth might prove less truculent than this hammerheaded barbarian. 'What would you accept?'
'That no one knows the source of magic!'
'Oh, very well. Here, let me say, 'No one knows what the source of magic is.' How's that?'
Sunbright folded his arms again. 'Go on. I'm listening.'
'Good, good.' Candlemas dragged out a stool and sat down. But a leg was cracked, and he almost spilled onto the floor. 'Uh, that's all for today. I'm exhausted. Come back tomorrow morning.'
'Very well.' The barbarian padded out of the workshop, sure and silent as a panther.
Candlemas watched him go. 'Ye gods. What a bargain I've struck… what else can go wrong?'
A page, a young boy in a black-and-white tabard, scurried around a screen. 'Master Candlemas? Lady Polaris wants you.'
The pudgy mage stifled a groan. 'That's what can go wrong.'
Threading his tables and stacks, Candlemas came to a black palantir mounted on an eagle's claw stand. In the globe floated the shining head of Lady Polaris, his liege lord. Even Candlemas, who had lust for women but no love, felt a pang when he beheld her. Polaris had snow-white hair cascading around her face and shoulders. Her face was calm as a queen's, only far more lovely. She was the most beautiful woman in the empire, and grew more beautiful every year, a beauty that bespoke enchantment, though no one knew her secret. Her mysteries were manifold and unfathomable. Her stunning beauty made her master of any scene, and rendered men all but dumb, even filtered by the smoky glass of the palantir. Even the page boy was awestruck.
'Candlemas,' she said without preamble. 'How goes the solution to the blight?'
'Uh, well, milady.' Polaris disliked negative news. 'We're making progress-'
'Good.' She dismissed the problem. 'I need something.'
Always, thought Candlemas. How many hands did she think he possessed?
'You must fashion a device to move bones without my moving or blinking or having to chant. In the shape of a brooch, perhaps, but nothing that will attract attention. I need it by the new moon. Have you got that?'
'Yes, milady. I'll get-' But the palantir had gone blank.
'Bones!' Candlemas swore. 'What kind of fool does she take me for? The only bones she ever touches are dice! And while she's gambling and demanding my help, whole villages will wither and die! Where will she get money then, eh? Where?'
But Candlemas was ranting to himself while a wide-eyed page stared. 'Get busy, boy.' The boy scooted away. Candlemas chided himself, 'And me too.'
Sunbright didn't go far. There was something he had to do, and he'd been dreading it, putting it off. Now was the time to face it.
He stood in a stone-lined hallway cut by windows down one side. As with Candlemas's airy tower, nothing showed outside but the purple slopes of the Barren Mountains. Tightening his gut, Sunbright stepped to the window, braced both hands against the window frame, and leaned out to look.
The side of the castle dropped sheer for many stories, a dozen at least, all pierced by square or round windows. Far down showed the footings of solid granite. Below that…
The earth and dark forest far, far below.
Sunbright groaned involuntarily. His palms on the window frame were slick with sweat, trembling. He wanted to back away, but forced himself to stand firm. He'd known all along where he was, of course. He'd seen Castle Delia float over the southlands (for a tundra dweller, everything below the Barren Mountains was south), had known it was Candlemas's home. So when the arcanist offered to bring him 'to his workshop,' the truth had eventually dawned on him. Now he was here, and he'd have to adjust It was no good. His legs shook so violently his kneecaps drummed the stone wall. Stand here too long, and he'd pitch out the window like dice rattling out of a cup. Slowly, shuffling his broad boots, he crept away from the gaping space.
'Is something amiss, milord?'
Already spooked, Sunbright jumped at the girl's soft question. Backing against the inner wall, he willed his heart to stop pounding. Sweat trickled down his cheeks, dripped salt onto his lips. He must look a fool, he thought, the greenest of country bumpkins. Humility was not helping his pride this day. Earlier he'd had to have a water closet explained. He'd rather face a pack of starving wolves than live through that embarrassment again.
He didn't belong in this place. Room lights, water closets, running water, even drains that magically whisked away garbage were alien to him, as was the inhabitants' casual use of magic. Even the sweepers could nudge a dustpan along without touching it. Sunbright was here to learn magic from Candlemas, and he knew less than the slop boy who could spark a fire with a flick of his finger. Surrounded by magic-users, Sunbright felt like a trained raccoon at a market fair: it might wear clothes and do tricks, but it wasn't human.
The girl sensed the reason for his unease. Moving gracefully to the window, she peeked out, murmured softly, 'It is high. Being in the clouds takes getting used to. I couldn't even walk past a window for the first month I lived here.'
For something to say, Sunbright croaked, 'How long…?'
'Have I been here? A year and some months. I work for my dowry. My family had all girls and little money.' She smiled, not to mock, but to comfort. Like many maids, she was small, pixieish, with short-cropped hair and natural curls now emphasized by dampness. She was one of the bathmaidens, and still wore a bulky black robe.
'Where…?'
'… is my village? It's very small, at the headwaters of the Ger, but in sight of Patrician Peak. Frosttop, we call it, not that it needs a name. Not many come our way.'
Sunbright nodded. His breathing had slowed, and he mopped his brow with his sleeve. He hated being up in the clouds. His land was the tundra, table-flat, where a musk ox looked like a mouse standing on the horizon.
He'd been up high only once, and that accidently, on the back of a dragon, and he still screamed in his sleep when he recalled that trip.
Patiently, the girl waited while he gained his composure. 'You know, my lord-'
'I'm no man's lord. Or woman's. Call me Sunbright. Please.'
