“Or worse.” He nodded. “Now . . . what would happen if an imager attempted to image all three right on a stove or in a fire?”
I winced.
“Exactly.” He paused. “Now, that’s really not a good example, but it should give you an idea of what can happen. There are many substances that should not be combined in imaging, and that is why you need to study the books you received and follow instructions most carefully-especially as you become more experienced.”
I couldn’t help but frown in puzzlement at his last words.
“In imaging,” he explained, “the more you learn to do, the closer you are to great danger, from many sources. You may not understand this now, but for your own safety, please believe me until you understand why it is so.”
There was no mistaking the earnestness or the direct concern in his words, but I did wish that he had not used the paraffin example, because it suggested that he had at least a suspicion that my imaging had led to Master Caliostrus’s death. Yet . . . if he believed that, why would they accept me even as a beginning imager?
Abruptly, he stood. “That is all for now.” He extended a folded paper, the map, I presumed. “Before you explore, please write those notes and bring them back. Knock on my door, once, then wait.”
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded, then turned and left me holding the map.
I walked slowly back to my new quarters, and I managed it without looking at the map. There I settled down at the table desk.
Writing the letter to my parents was hard, but better than having to tell them in person what I planned before I knew whether the Collegium would accept me. If I’d been rejected, what could I have said? Besides, then Father would have come up with another of his sermons on what was foreordained and how it was clear I was not meant to be a painter or an imager and how I shouldn’t have tried to escape my calling as a wool factor. Still I spent so much time trying to get the words just right that there was less than a half glass left before noon by the time I handed the letter to Master Dichartyn.
“You spent some time on it. Good. I’ll have it delivered this afternoon. Oh . . . you also have a letter box in the rear corridor outside the dining hall, next to the boxes that hold the newsheets. You don’t have to pay for them, but you are expected to read them-regularly. By this evening, your letter box should have your initials on it- IP-RH. That’s your position followed by the first two initials of your name. If someone else has those initials, you might have three or four letters following your position.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Master Dichartyn just nodded. “Tomorrow morning. Here.” Then he turned and closed the door to his study.
With the map in hand, I began to navigate my way to the dining hall. I had gotten up early and eaten nothing except some bread I’d pilfered from the kitchen on the way out. The dining hall was within a larger building at the west side of the quadrangle behind the administration building where I’d first entered the Collegium. It was not nearly so large as I had imagined, and it held but three tables, a small table set crosswise across the hall, and two longer tables parallel to each other and perpendicular to the smaller table. There was no one at the short table when I entered the hall just before the bells struck noon, but a number of younger imagers stood around the table on the right.
I eased toward a redheaded young man. “Is this the table for the imagers primus?”
“For us lowly primes, it is. You’re new, aren’t you?”
“About as new as one can be,” I admitted. “I crossed the bridge this morning.”
“I’m Etyen.”
“Rhenn, or formally, Rhennthyl.” As I stood there, I realized that several of the figures were young women. I also saw two older women coming through the arched doorway, one of them gray-haired, and walking toward the adjoining table, and a third, also gray, moving toward the masters’ table with a white-haired man. I must have stared because Etyen spoke again.
“There aren’t that many women imagers, but Maitre Dyana is a Maitre D’Structure. She’s old, though.”
“How old?”
“She must be forty-some . . . or even older.”
Somehow, I didn’t think of someone my mother’s age as old, but Etyen couldn’t have been much more that fifteen, and he must have come to Imagisle right out of a grammaire.
“Where did you come from?” I asked.
“From Asseroiles.”
Asseroiles was more than three hundred milles to the northwest. “Are all the imagers in Solidar here at the Collegium?”
“Oh, no, but most of them are. There are three other Collegia. There’s Mont D’Image to the north . . . well, it’s actually northwest of Asseroiles, somewhere off the Nord Pass through the Glaces, and Westisle outside the harbor of Liantiago, and Estisle near Nacliano.”
That did not seem like many imagers, not for a land the size of Solidar, stretching close to three thousand milles from coast to coast. How had the Council kept it all together before the steam engines of the ironway had made land transportation faster than horse and wagons?
“Rhenn here is new,” Etyen announced.
Several of the primes looked at me. Most didn’t, and people sat down as they came in without any blessing. I thought that odd.
“What room are you in?” asked Etyen.
“Fourteen, second level, south wing.”
Someone nodded.
“. . . Corsarius’s room . . .”
Several primes looked hard at the fresh-faced youth who had murmured the words.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“Bridge of Stones,” replied Etyen in a low voice, adding even more quietly, “We don’t talk about it.”
Not talk about it? When someone died?
“You didn’t come here straight from the grammaire?” asked the prime across the table from me. “Oh, I’m Lieryns.”
“No. I’ve been an apprentice and a journeyman portraiturist. I didn’t realize I could image until a little while ago.”
“Sometimes, it’s like that.” Etyen nodded. “But I always knew.”
“You always know everything,” murmured someone.
There were low laughs from more than a few primes, and as I looked down the table, I was relieved to see that there were a few who looked as old as I was, if not older.
“You were a journeyman. You actually painted real portraits, then,” observed Lieryns.
“Some,” I replied, looking at the large bowl of rice being passed down the table. Behind it followed some sort of dish in sauce. “Mostly of girls and cats.”
“Cats?”
“My master said I had a talent for painting cats, and I don’t think he liked dealing with girls and cats. I did do one portrait of a factorius.”
At that point, the rice arrived, and I served myself a solid helping, as well as of the tomato-sauced fowl chunks that followed. If the lunch fare was any indication, I was going to be better fed than I had been by Madame Caliostrus.
Sometime later, after several mouthfuls of food, and some swallows of a fair red plonk, I took another look around the table before speaking. “I haven’t had a chance to read anything. What do we do, besides study?”
“Whatever we can,” replied Lieryns. “I’m helping Master Schorzat in the chemistry laboratory, but mostly I image little things out of glass for his experiments.”
“I thought there was a counselor-advocate to the Council named something like that.”
“That’s his brother,” someone said. “Scheorzyl. Master Schorzat said his father wanted everyone to know the two were brothers.”
My eyes went to Etyen. “And you?”
