The centerpiece of the room was the soaking-pool, fed by a hot spring brought up from deep beneath Haven by Firesong's power—the heat source was partly natural, partly magical, and shielded as well as the Heartstone under the Palace. With all of the strange effects of the mage-storms about, the last thing Firesong wanted was to discover his spring gone either boiling-hot or cold as ice.
He stripped off his clothing as he walked, leaving a trail of discarded garments until he reached the side of the pool and dropped into it. It was too bad that there were no hertasi here; he would have to pick up after himself. But just at the moment, he didn't feel like being careful.
According to legend, it was Urtho, the Mage of Silence, who had first discovered the way to create these pools.
Hah. According to legend, Urtho is also responsible for first discovering the wheel, taming the horse, and cooking meat. Firesong sank up to his chin in the hot water, cynically reflecting on the many legends surrounding the last of the Great Mages. Obscure legends even claimed that Urtho had achieved much of his power by inventing ways to measure magic and to use it efficiently!
As if Urtho were some sort of Mage of Artifice! I don't think so. Urtho has become whatever the speaker wants him to be at the time.
That was the argument the gryphons had last used on him—that if Urtho had used ways to measure and ration magic, couldn't Firesong?
Of course, if anyone would know whether or not the claim was true, it would probably be the gryphons and the Kaled'a'in. They alone held actual records of the Mage-Wars and the time immediately preceding the Cataclysm. The people who had become the Shin'a'in and Tayledras had both escaped without any such things. Clan k'Leshya, the Clan that had welcomed outsiders, that had supported and cared for the gryphons, that had held both Urtho's trusted chief of wizardry and his chief kestra'chern, had been entrusted with the care of all of Urtho's records during the escape to safety.
Well, so what if he was a superior Artificer Adept? Why should I change my ways of working— ways that have served me very well until now!—just to emulate someone dead millennia ago? For that matter, didn't my way of working take down his ancient enemy when he failed to do so? He smiled into the steam, for the first time today feeling both smug and superior. So, there's a great deal to be said for intuition and creativity! I'll wager none of these artificers could have figured a way to safely shut down k'Sheyna's rogue Heartstone either!
Let Elspeth and Darkwind hare off after this 'new thinking.' Let even An'desha take to it with a speed that left Firesong gaping at him. Time would show which was the better way. The ways of a so-called 'golden' ancient time may not necessarily be better than the ways we have developed since. 'Golden Ages' are often nothing more than fool's gold, or merest gilding over dross.
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the sculpted stone of his seat. His shoulder and neck muscles were finally relaxing in the heat. and something else occurred to him. The one thing that did impress An'desha now was skill and competence. That was why Karal and the Master Artificers were currently high in his esteem. Karal had evidently proved his mettle at the border, and the Master Artificers had convinced the Shin'a'in that there was a cold beauty—and certainly there was logic—in their formulae and numbers.
But if Firesong could come up with an answer that superseeded the breakwater, wouldn't he get An'desha's attention back?
Of course I would! He knows the ways that Falconsbane and all the rest worked, but he has never had formal Tayledras training in magic, except for the little he's gotten from me so far! And if I can prove that my way is the better way, he'd be panting at my heels to learn from me again! I'll have his fullest attention and his admiration!
Now that was an answer!
He'd seen the new water-table anyway, and it was obvious even to an idiot that the reflections within it were going to be too complicated to analyze. The artificers were setting themselves up for failure.
Maybe I shouldn't even try to work with that; it might be setting myself up for the same failure, to deal with a situation so complicated. Maybe I should just let the breakwater fail, then put my own solution in place, between mage-storms. Certainly the original problem had been much simpler to deal with, and the difference would only be a matter of degree. More frequent, more powerful mage-storms, that's all. Did An'desha say something about Falconsbane-Ma'ar anticipating the original set of mage-storms and envisioning something to hold them back?
When An'desha came back tonight, could he somehow coax his lover into talking about that? That wouldn't make very good pillow talk, considering how he feels about Falconsbane....
In a strange way, Firesong actually admired Falconsbane—or rather, he admired the level of craftsmanship of which Falconsbane was capable in his rare moments of sanity.
Well, that wasn't precisely true; Firesong admired those abilities in Ma'ar, in which they had been the purest and the closest to sanity. Certainly Ma'ar had been able to create. He'd come up with his own forms of fighting-creatures, although he had sacrificed elegance for expediency and grace for brute power. The makaar hadn't been without intelligence, though; they couldn't have been stupid, or they wouldn't have survived a heartbeat in the air against the gryphons.
