'The swelling is much less,' she called out to Farnel, who sat atop a stool on the other side of the hut. 'The sweetbalm, despite its age, has done well.'
Jemidon reached for Delia's softness, but she gently pushed him away. 'There is little time. Even if master Farnel instructs me through the night, we may not be ready.' She smiled and slid away. 'But he says that I am an attentive pupil, and I think even his spirits rise as we progress.'
'Attentiveness is only a part of it,' Farnel said. 'She has a natural aptitude-an ability for recall as well as enunciation. I have heard of other instances, but never met such a talent before.'
'I am the tyro.' Jemidon struggled to his feet and tried to shake the iast bit of fuzziness out of his head. 'Just a few moments more and I will be able to assist.'
'No, it is to be Delia.' Farnel's voice was firm. 'With her, we just might have a chance after all. Oh, to be ten years younger, lass, with a tyro such as you.' He beamed as Delia positioned herself back in the middle of the room. 'Gerilac and his followers never would have a chance. Now quickly; the next phrase is but a copy of the previous one with the middle syllables borrowed from the very beginning. Can you feel how it goes?'
Jemidon frowned and tried to figure out what had happened during his sleep. While he pondered, Delia began to rattle off a long string of melody, her voice crisp and pure, like the notes of a harp. Jemidon listened only half attentively at first; then, as she continued, he sagged back to the ground, surprised by what he heard. Most of the charm fragment was familiar, but other parts were new, totally new, phrases that he had never learned in all the months he had studied. Wide-eyed, he looked with respect at the slender form in the center of the room.
'Perfect, perfect,' Farnel said. 'You know all of the parts. Now we can begin the practice of the complete glamour. Start with Dark Clouds and then slide into Clinton's Granite Spires.' He turned and looked at Jemidon.
'She even handles the transition without a flaw. It is a rare talent indeed.'
A hint of envy crept into Jemidon's amazement. Farnel had given him no such praise, even after the best of his training sessions. 'Why spend time now in instruction?' Jemidon asked. 'Should not the master be the one to rehearse for the final performance?'
'My head and stomach are not yet clear,' Farnel said. 'But it does not matter. With Delia's talent, I am sure she will be able to conduct a winning presentation. And enough of interruptions. Tend to your mending and we will pay attention to the sorcery. After all, I doubt you care to become chattel to either Gerilac or this trader Drandor. It is in your best interest as well that we succeed.'
Jemidon started to reply; but before he could, Delia began the charm. Almost involuntarily, he closed his eyes and concentrated on her voice, following the flow, hearing the firm command she gave to the words and phrases. His own chanting, the little vocalizing of fragments he had done, was technically correct, but it was the drone of a scribe compared with the beauty of her song. Even though his eyes were shut, Jemidon felt himself being drawn into the enticing web that she wove with her words. Farnel was right; she was the one who had the talent to achieve their goal. Even if he could perform all that he knew with confidence, his glamours would be pale shadows next to the richness that sprang from Delia's lips.
'How is the effect?' Delia asked when she finished. 'I felt none of the increasing resistance that you warned me of. It was no different the third time than it was the first.'
'You must have made some small error, as Jemidon did this morning.' Farnel frowned. 'I detected no fault, but I see no clouds and mountains.' He stopped and rubbed his chin. 'Perhaps we have proceeded a bit too rapidly. Let me cast the beginning. I think that the churning in my stomach can take on something as simple as that. Listen for a difference, and when I am done, you can continue with the rest.'
Farnel climbed down from the stool, Delia replaced him, and the glamour was begun again. Jemidon heard the same words rumble from Farad's throat, heavy with the assurance of a master. But the sorcerer took twice as long to complete the charm, slowing the tempo near the end rather than finishing with a burst of speed. As he said the concluding syllable, a look of puzzlement started to grow on the master's face.
'Strange, I would have expected more resistance,' he muttered, 'especially with the way I feel.' He waved his arm at the far wall. 'But at any rate, that is the way the scene opens, and you have heard how it is done. Now, with the setting in place, you can begin to bring in the characters and their emotions.'
'I am supposed to see a background on the wall?' Delia asked. 'It is the same clutter as before.'
'What? Impossible!' Farnel exclaimed. 'I have not miscast since I was a tyro. One does not become a master with sloppy technique.'
'I see nothing,' Delia repeated. 'If I squint, then some of Jemidon's scrawls resemble a small ship, but that is all.'
'It is the joining.' Farnel turned to Jemidon. 'Your little theory of patching together the charmlets has a flaw. We must go back to Alaraic's Foreboding and Magneton's Walls of Closure, as I first suggested.'
'There is no flaw,' Jemidon said. 'My analogy with the curves was only a means to see which charmlets to couple together. Once that is determined, the transition proceeds in a standard fashion.'
'Then the casting, after all,' Farnel said. 'The ale has addled my senses more than I thought. I have misremembered some syllable and taught it incorrectly to Delia as well.'
'But the charm I tried in the morning was a different one,' Jemidon said slowly. 'Yet it did not complete either.' He frowned and rose to standing, clutching at the coin around his neck and reaching for tendrils of thought that danced just beyond his grasp. There was a puzzle here. He could sense it. And as with Delia's trinket in Drandor's tent, he felt a tantalizing tug, a lure to explore all the facts, to turn them this way and that, and to find the common thread that explained them all.
'No, something else is wrong,' he said after a moment. 'I can feel it. Somehow, someway, something more basic is at fault. The failures, all of them, are deeply connected. It is not just from lack of precision alone.'
He closed his eyes and strained, trying to piece things together, but only incomplete images would form. Miscast spells, whispered commands on a rainy beach, competitions for a thousand tokens, an imp in a bottle, and lattices with shiny beads.
'There is not time for another abstract theory,' Farnel said after Jemidon did not speak again. 'I must recompose the beginning of the presentation and then teach the lass yet another glamour to replace the one that failed.'
'No, wait,' Jemidon said as a bizarre thought popped into his head. He licked his lips and moved to the center of the room, not quite believing where his logic was leading him. 'There is something important here, and it is easy enough to test its limits. Try the first charmlet without the connection. See if it works by itself.'
Farnel scowled, then shrugged his shoulders. He turned to face Delia and quickly ran through Dark Clouds. 'Well,' he said when he was done. 'Surely there was no mistake in such a short glamour. Even a beginning tyro can do it.'
'Nothing still,' Delia said.
'Then the error is in the first,' Farnel declared. 'Clinton's Granite Spires is the one I remember correctly.'
'Cast it as well,' Jemidon said. He felt no surprise at the failure. Instead, a cement of conviction began to connect the framework of his ideas.
Farnel twisted his frown even tighter, but carefully recited the glamour. He paused at the finish, as Delia slowly shook her head.
'By the laws, two misremembered!' Farnel pounded his fist against the wall. 'Somehow it is Gerifac's doing. He has contrived the whole competition just to get another chance to display his craft against mine.'
'Gerilac did not know of Delia and Drandor until this morning.' Jemidon shook his head. 'No, the explanation lies somewhere else.'
'In any case, I must recompose the beginning with some substitutions,' Farnel growled. 'Do not waste what time remains with irrelevant suggestions.'
'And what of the rest?' Jemidon asked with slow de-liberateness, emphasizing every word, his doubts tossed aside. 'What of the rest? If the first two have failed, what can you say of the chances of the others?'
'Would you that we fail again? Another prize for Gerilac and more whispers that I can no longer cast a charm?' Farnel snarled in frustration and scooped a dagger from the floor. With a savage fling, he hurled it above Jemidon's head and sent it crashing into the wall. 'The hour grows late,' he growled, 'and it is your glib tongue that has placed us here. By the laws, it is your burden as well to avert the result that surely encloses us in its snares. Stop throwing barriers in the way. If not by charms, then by whatever else shall we enchant the masters?'
'We have a compact,' Jemidon said. 'I stand by my part of the agreement still. I will help to win the
