Nature's Servant (44 page)

Then there was the complication of the air spirit. By choosing him, it had drawn him into a much bigger story, which didn’t fit well with his desire to return to Eagle’s Roost. He, Gaspi, Lydia and Emea seemed to be part of a grand plot that only the spirits truly understood. If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that the slaughtering of the shamans in Eagle’s Roost meant that he was already part of that bigger story. Since arriving at the college, he’d learned that the demon which killed the Dag-Mar had been sent by Shirukai Sestin, a renegade magician who was responsible for a similar attack on the city of Helioport less than a year previously. When he’d told his new friends about another kind of demon emerging from the bloated body of the one that had killed the Dag-Mar, they’d run straight to the chancellor, who in turn had run to his books in alarm. However badly it sat with him, it had become impossible to ignore the fact that his destiny was only a small part of a much bigger story. He sighed and pushed his books away. It looked like it was going to be much longer than he’d anticipated before he could return home.

He got up from his desk and left the room, deciding he’d be better off with some company. He went to Gaspi’s room first. Gaspi had gone out of his way to make him feel welcome, and of all the people he’d met since starting at the college, he was the one he felt most comfortable with. He wasn’t in his room, but he’d left a note pinned to his door saying he was in the Orangery, so he headed in that direction instead. He transported down to the Atrium and left the tower, walking through the winding streets of the campus until he reached the expansive structure - a magnificent, arching edifice of glass and stone.

Rimulth had only been in Helioport for a month, and he’d still not lost his awe of the enormous buildings the college contained. There was nothing like them in the mountains. His people lived in simple huts built from logs, stuffed with grasses and dried mud to keep the wind and rain out. During his first week in the city he’d walked around with a stupefied expression, stunned by what plainsdwellers could build. Over time he’d become more accustomed to it, but places like the Orangery still made his jaw drop. He pulled open a small wooden door set in the corner of the building’s base, and was greeted by a familiar rush of warm air as he stepped in.

He walked along the bordered gravel path that wound gently back through the impressive foliage, staring up at the expansive boughs stretching overhead. Colourful birds flashed through the branches, filling the air with raucous squawking utterly incongruous with their beautiful appearance. A small, brown bird hopped in the bushes at his feet, singing a song so melodious it made him break into a broad smile. It seemed like in the avian world, you either looked good or sang nicely, but you couldn’t do both.

He walked past the showy blooms of exotic bushes, pairs of delicate butterflies spinning through the air around him, and crossed the stream that ran from one end of the enclosure to the other. Finally, he came to the nursery - a section set apart for tending young plants, and that was where he found Gaspi. He was kneeling down with his face almost touching the ground, spraying a mist of water over some tiny plants. Their small green leaves sprang individually from delicate stems, interspersed with even more tiny yellow blossoms. He looked up at the sound of Rimulth approaching and smiled warmly.

“New type of tea plant,” he said, smudging soil across his face with the back of a gloved hand. “You can steep the flowers as well as the leaves. Hephistole thinks the blossoms will hold enchantment well while they grow.”

“Oh right, tea” Rimulth said, feigning enthusiasm. He hadn’t taken to tea, a strange hot drink made from the leaves of these plants. Rimulth found it a bit tasteless, and didn’t particularly appreciate the variation Gaspi seemed to perceive in the different brews. In the mountains they mainly just drank crystal clear water from the spring. In autumn the Durenberry bushes were heavy with fruit that could be pressed, making a sharp juice that all mothers insisted was the cure for colds and coughs, and throughout the year the men drank fern beer and whisky. It was a simple diet - water most of the time, supplemented by drinks with a proper kick. Tea hovered somewhere between the two and so didn’t appeal to him.

Gaspi laughed at his failed attempt at showing an interest. “Not your thing eh?” he said with good humour.

“Er…maybe I will grow to like it,” Rimulth said, flushing and avoiding Gaspi’s gaze. Gaspi and his friends had been so good to him, and he didn’t want to offend them or seem ungrateful in any way.

“Rimulth you don’t have to like the things I like,” Gaspi said, seeing straight to the heart of his feelings.

Rimulth looked up, smiling shyly. “I don’t want to seem rude.”

“That’s not how it works around here,” Gaspi explained. “No-one will be offended if you don’t like something. Just relax and be yourself mate.”

“Okay,” Rimulth said. Plainsdweller ways were hard to get used to. “So what else are you growing here?” he asked.

“You really want to know?” Gaspi asked.

“Yes, honestly.”

“Lots of things,” Gaspi said with a smile, his eyes flitting over the growing plants in front of him. He reached out and cupped a tightly furled bud that sat in the middle of long, spiky leaves. “This is a desert plant from Kaza. It’s pretty rare even there, growing wild in the hot sands, and its flowers are said to have curative properties for combating even the most deadly poisons. The chief healer wants to know if it’s true or just a myth, so Hephistole is growing a few to test out.”

“That sounds more useful than tea,” Rimulth said, earning a grunt from Gaspi.

“It’ll be dangerous to test though, as magic can only tell us so much without understanding its physical properties. To really find out what it can do we need to make an extract from the petals and then use it to treat someone who’s been poisoned.”

“So you have to wait for someone to get poisoned to test it out?” Rimulth asked.

“We could do that,” Gaspi answered. “But how often does someone get poisoned, even in a city the size of Helioport? Someone might volunteer to be poisoned, if the poison is minor and the reward is big enough.”

“You mean the college would pay someone to get poisoned?” Rimulth asked incredulously.

“Yeah I suppose,” Gaspi answered.

“Plainsdwellers!” Rimulth muttered in disbelief. 

Gaspi laughed. “That’s better. Okay I’m just about done here. Wanna go find the others?”

“Yes,” Rimulth answered. “I think Talmo and Taurnil are on duty though.”

“I know where Emmy and Lydia are,” Gaspi responded, pulling off his gloves.

“You’ve got mud on your face,” Rimulth said.

“Oh thanks,” Gaspi responded, wiping the wrong cheek with the back of his hand.

“Other side,” Rimulth said.

“Oh,” Gaspi said, cleaning the other side instead, but leaving about half the soil still there. “Did I get it?”

“Yes,” Rimulth answered, keeping a straight face. Gaspi said to relax and be himself, after all.

“Let’s get going then,” Gaspi said, and they walked out along the path. When they reached the door, he held it open, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled noisily. Loreill came soaring out of the treetops in a vivid flash of green light. He zipped along just above the ground and turned into a ferret as he crossed the threshold.

The cold winter air was a shock after the cultivated warmth of the Orangery, and Rimulth pulled his furs tight around him. “Where are we going?” he asked when it became clear they weren’t going back to the tower.

“Library,” Gaspi answered. The library was another of the campus’s impressive buildings. Shaped like a giant rose in bloom, it was constructed from pale pink stone, each petal holding alcoves that looked out over the city. It stood proud above most of the other buildings on campus, and it was the only place other than the tower that used transporters. Rimulth had never been inside it before and was pleased to get a chance to look around.

“Lydia’s on a mad one about the sight,” Gaspi continued. “Professor Worrick foresaw that the air spirit would bond with you, and ever since she found that out, she’s been desperate to work out why she didn’t have the same premonition.”

“Why does it matter so much?” Rimulth asked.

“It’s something to do with being a gypsy,” Gaspi answered. “Apparently her mother has the gift, and her grandmother before her. It’s something gypsies take pretty seriously. Kind of like how every village in the mountains I grew up in has a healer, every family of gypsies has someone with the sight. I guess she is proud of it and doesn’t want to lose her gift.”

Rimulth found that easy to understand. He was happy to learn some magic while he was here in Helioport but in essence he was still a shaman and always would be.

“
Could
she lose her gift?” he asked.

“I dunno,” Gaspi answered. “She’s not had the sight very often since learning magic. Apparently Professor Worrick said that the gift might come out less frequently if her powers were being used in other ways.”

“But he’s a practicing magician, and
he
still predicted the air spirit’s choice,” Rimulth said, confused.

“I think that’s exactly what’s got her worrying,” Gaspi said, just as they arrived at the entrance to the library.

They stepped in through the large double doors, carved like two halves of a giant rose, and found themselves in a circular entrance hall, warm light beaming from a single, large globe-light that swirled perpetually in the centre of the room. Unlike the Atrium in the tower, there was no receptionist and little room for anything except the plinths. Magicians kept appearing on the five transporters and heading out the doorway, variously burdened by piles of scrolls and books. An old magician popped into view on the plinth closest to them. He was scruffily attired in faded green robes, with tufts of white hair sticking out at random from his balding pate. He was struggling with a particularly large armful of scrolls, muttering to himself as he stepped off the plinth. Catching his foot on the hem of his robes, he fell forward, scrolls spilling everywhere as he threw his arms out to catch himself.

Rimulth reached out a hand to try and stop him falling over but Gaspi was way ahead of him, throwing out an air shield that caught the old man mid-fall and slowly lifted to land him back to his feet. The old magician patted himself down in surprise, making sure he was alright. Straightening himself, he fixed Gaspi with a hard stare, one bushy brow raised fiercely over a slate grey eye.

“It’s polite to ask before casting a spell on someone,” he said in clipped tones.

Gaspi looked shocked. “Well, er, did you want me
to let you fall?” he asked, nonplussed.

“Nevermind!” the old man snapped, summoning his scattered scrolls to his side with a whip-like motion of his arm. “I suppose I should say thank you. Good day!” he added, and with that he stalked out of the room. Gaspi took a deep breath and let it go.

“You were only trying to help him,” Rimulth said, indignant on his friend’s behalf.

“I know, but there’s no point getting annoyed about it,” Gaspi said.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Rimulth asked. In the mountains, you’d never speak rudely to an elder, but here in the city things were done differently most of the time. From what he’d seen so far, he would have expected Gaspi to say something if anyone was rude to him like that.

“I would have done last year,” Gaspi said. “But I learned a lot this summer about how to handle myself, and besides, I have a short temper and Emmy gets disappointed if I get too wound up about stuff like this. She’d say he was probably just having a bad day or something.”

Rimulth digested this in silence. He still had a lot to learn about plainsdwellers. On the one hand, they spoke to their elders in a way he found shocking, but on the other hand, they stopped to consider things he wouldn’t even begin to contemplate.

“Come on, it’s this plinth.” Gaspi said, leading him and Loreill to the fourth glowing stone platform from the left. Each plinth had an ornate brass plaque above it, and amidst the words Rimulth couldn’t decipher, the word “tribal” leapt out at him.

“Gaspi what does this sign say?” he asked excitedly.

“Traditional Practices: Herbs and Healing, Foresight, Tribal Magic,” he answered. Rimulth’s heart almost skipped a beat with excitement. Some of his hard work was starting to pay off!

“I
knew
it said tribal,” he said excitedly. “I mean, I could read it!”

“Good going,” Gaspi said, clapping him on the back. “When you can read more fluently, this will be the section of the library you’ll be studying in.”

Greatly cheered by his small victory, Rimulth stepped onto the plinth. “Come on then,” he said and Gaspi stepped up beside him.

“Traditional Practices,” Gaspi said, and moments later they were there, in an expansive, open floor that contained dozens of shelving units and what must have been thousands of books. There were five “petals” around the circumference of the floor, each of which formed a large alcove with tables and chairs for people to study at. Large windows made of the same clear glass as the one in the Observatory revealed dramatic vistas of the city. Rimulth tagged along behind Gaspi, staring in amazement at the rows and rows of bookshelves, stuffed to overflowing with the varicoloured bindings of tomes he wasn’t able to read. He was so distracted that he walked straight into one of the bookshelves. Volumes tumbling noisily to the floor, earning him the annoyed glances of people studying quietly in the alcoves.