resentment under the unjust critique. And he began to wonder if it was not he who was at fault, somehow failing, but his father.
The sons of the other Council Mages whispered fantastic gossip of unrest on the High Council, of great plans afoot.
Cilarnen did not know what they were, of course. Volpiril did not speak of them, and the days when Cilarnen might bring the rumors to his father and ask for more information were long gone now. If Cilarnen had taken second place in his father’s concerns before, he now felt as if he had descended to last in priorities. He felt oddly lost, and somehow cheated.
If not for his tutors, he would have been utterly alone.
Like most young Mageborn, Cilarnen’s lessons included practice in dance and swordplay as well as in the Art Magickal. He had little practical use for either, but both were good exercise, and the practice of the Art Magickal was an arduous business, requiring great stamina, both mental and physical.
Three times a sennight he went to Master Kalos’s salon at the edge of the Mage Quarter for his lessons in reed-blade.
The sword he studied there was nothing like the ponderous steel weapons the Militia carried, and certainly nothing like the wide heavy blades used in High Magick. The reed-blade was an elegant thing, smaller than his little finger at its base and tapering to a blunt, squared-off point. It was used to touch one’s opponent, elegantly, and in the proper style. Special Talismans worn by each of the combatants ensured that the blades could not go awry and accidentally strike outside the permitted target zones.
It was incredibly hard to score according to Master Kalos’s exacting specifications, and at the end of each bell-and-a-half lesson, Cilarnen was as exhausted as if he’d spent the entire time running around the inside of the enormous hall, instead of standing nearly still attempting to hit a man with a length of metal he could balance on two fingers. But Master Kalos praised lavishly for each improvement, and told Cilarnen he could have made a fine swordsman, if he had not had the misfortune to be born a Mage.
A joke, of course, and Cilarnen had smiled dutifully. Master Kalos’s odd sense of humor was well known.
For one of the sennightly lessons he saw Master Kalos alone, for the other two, he was part of a class of about twenty other young Mageborn. Since the classes were grouped by skill, not age, Cilarnen soon found himself among not only some of his fellow students, but grouped with some older Mageborn as well. They treated Cilarnen with casual good-fellowship, as if he were one of them. He found it an odd and interesting experience to be in a place where rank very nearly didn’t matter.
It did, of course. Lord Volpiril’s only son would be a fool to believe otherwise. Bur the illusion was comforting, and for a little while, he could pretend that he actually had people around him he could call “friend.”
—«♦»—
HIS dancing teacher was Lord Nendimos, a Mage who specialized not only in teaching dance, but in the history of dance, and the magic of dance, a series of lectures that one must be a Journeyman-Apprentice to sit for.
Lord Nendimos was a Journeyman-Undermage. He had been a Journeyman‘ Undermage since long before Cilarnen had been born, and would never rise higher in the ranks, though his power and his knowledge outstripped many of his betters, and if he could only have gained the sponsorship to do so, he could have passed a dozen of the qualifying tests with no difficulty whatever. Gaining such sponsorship might even have been possible, though difficult, for the same reason that Lord Nendimos was still a Journeyman after four decades.
Lord Nendimos liked women. He liked them as people. He enjoyed their company, their fellowship, and even claimed that some of them were his friends. He made no secret of it. When he was not putting the students of the Mage-College through their paces, he was dancing master to half the Mage Houses of Armethalieh, and there he was welcomed by the Mageborn women with—if he was to be believed—as much warmth as if he were a family member.
His fellow Mages regarded his eccentricity with dismay, and with resignation. But once they were satisfied that he would not pass on his bizarre tastes to their sons, they decided to tolerate his peculiarities. His family was old and well connected. His brothers were perfectly normal—and highly-placed. His sisters were married into some of the best families.
And his talents were too valuable to lose.
The dances of Armethalieh were slow, stately… and very complicated. It took time to learn them well—even more so since it was not to be considered that Mageborn sons and Mageborn daughters should learn them together. That sort of foolishness could be left to the Tradesmen, the Nobles, the Laborers, and all the rest who lived lives of foolish self-indulgence.
Dancing practice was held in the auditorium at the northern end of the quadrangle. Students were grouped by age, not academic rank, and drilled, endlessly, in the set figures of Armethaliehan dance, taking the roles of the “sun” or the “moon” in turn.
Once a Student reached his fifteenth year, attendance was no longer mandatory, but Cilarnen had chosen to continue because he found the class interesting and even pleasurable. At this point, his class was made up of the older students and Apprentices and even a few Tutors. He enjoyed the stately movement, like a slower form of
