Salamander (2 page)

“Let me have a look at the admission papers.”

The two fell silent for a few minutes while Coelus leafed through the stack. At last he looked back up. "That's very interesting.”

“What? I didn’t see anything special about any of them.”

“That’s what’s interesting. According to Hal we have three or four moderately strong students—one of them named Helmin, and one a find of Dag’s—plus a bunch with enough power to be worth training but not much more, and a few I’m not sure we should have taken. That’s what he saw. But I was watching the class before my first lecture and it isn’t what I saw.”

The other mage looked at him curiously, waited.

“I’ll leave you to see for yourself. Let me know when you’ve spotted him. Or not.”

Maridon noticed the suppressed smile—Coelus was not nearly as subtle as he thought he was—made his own deduction, said nothing.

The lecturer droned to a halt, put the chalk down, and turned to the class. "I hope that is clear. If not, make sure it is by tomorrow; some of this will be used in what we do then. If your own notes are not sufficient, the library has a list of written texts that cover the same material."

He looked them over a moment and then, satisfied, turned and left the room.

Mari looked down at her tablets, pale yellow wax in ebony, the outside panels inlaid with a pattern in gold wire. Other students were jotting final notes in theirs, so she used her stylus to add, in her untidy script, two more notes on wedding garb for a (hypothetical) future wedding.

Her notes were not likely to make the lecture any more understandable, nor, she suspected, would the texts in the library. The only one she had tried to read so far might have been written in archaic Dorayan for all the sense she could make of it. What she needed was a helpful human being to explain things for her.

One or two of the younger magisters might be possibilities, but probably not this year; that could wait until her first individual tutorial. With ten men to every woman, not to mention her natural advantages, getting one of the male students to help her would be easy enough. But on the whole she preferred to keep her alternatives open. Might as well keep them all hoping.

The answer was obvious and sitting two chairs away. The girl had no clothes sense and no particular looks, but she seemed pleasant enough if a little shy, and she obviously understood the lecture better than anyone else in the room. She had been transparently puzzled when the other students—including, once, Mari—were unable to answer the magister's questions. She answered those put to her immediately, clearly, and apparently correctly. By the second half of the class the lecturer had fallen into a pattern of putting a question to some other student and then, lacking a satisfactory response, asking Ellen.

There was a clatter and rumble of scraping as the students got up from their chairs. Mari decided to approach the girl directly. She made her way to the back of the room against the exiting flow of pupils where Ellen was still putting away her things. "You seemed to understand all of that much better than I did; would you be willing to join me at lunch and try to explain it?"

Ellen looked up at Mari, smiled. "Of course. At the noon bell?"

Mari decided not to suggest the cookshop to meet. The other girl was wearing no jewelry and her clothes gave no sign of rank or wealth. If she was too poor to want to buy lunch when it was free in the college refectory the suggestion would embarrass her; offering to buy it for her might make matters worse. In the setting of the College the girl was her equal—at least her equal—and it was up to Mari to remember that. "At the noon bell then," Mari said.

* * *

Mari
waited until the two were seated at one of the smaller tables and Ellen had cut a slice from her sausage before putting her first question. "Are we training to be witches or mages? I can't tell."

Ellen considered for a moment. "We are training to use magic. Women who use magic are commonly called witches. Several of the magisters here think they ought to be called mages, that what they do is no different from what men who use magic do."

"Women do different sorts of magic. Everyone knows that. Weaving magic and healing magic and things like that. Men are fire mages and earth mages and … ."

Ellen shook her head.
"Everyone knows it. But it isn't true. At least, not completely true."

"How can it be both true and not true? I don't understand."

"That was part of what Magister Bertram was trying to explain
,
” Ellen said.
“Most weaving mages are women and most fire mages are men, but that doesn't mean a man can’t have a talent for weaving or a woman for fire."

She looked around the refectory. It was getting crowded, but so far nobody had joined them at their table. "Which are taller, men or women?"

Mari gave her a puzzled look. "Men, of course. Jon over there is taller than I am, and even Edwin is taller than you are."

"But you are taller than Edwin. So men are not taller than women. Not always."

"And men are better at fire magic, but not always?"

Ellen nodded.

Mari responded: "Well, of course lots of women are taller than short men. But I have never heard of a woman who was a fire mage. Not one."

Ellen thought a moment before answering. "Mages have to be trained. At best, an untrained mage cannot do much with his power. At worst, an untrained fire mage either kills himself by accident—that's what usually happens—or burns down a house or barn and kills someone else, and then, very likely, someone kills him. A boy who starts showing the talent is likely to be recognized before he does any serious damage and, with luck, sent for training. A girl … . Everyone knows girls can't be fire mages."

"That's scary. But if women are hardly ever fire mages, and the ones that do get killed, how do Coelus and Bertram know witches can do fire magic? How do you know?"

"I think Coelus figured it out from basic magical theory, but I'm not sure.”
Ellen gave the other girl a long, considering look. "How good are you at keeping secrets?"

"Quite. My brother tells me … things. I never tell our parents." She stopped.

"Can you keep a secret for me too?"

Mari nodded.

Ellen turned in her seat, holding her hand, palm up, where her body blocked it from the rest of the room. For a moment her hand cupped a flame. "That's how I know."

Mari's eyes widened. She looked back at Ellen.

"May I join your table, noble lady?"

Both girls looked up. The speaker, a tall student, well dressed, was looking at Mari inquisitively. She nodded assent.

"Joshua son of Maas at your service. How have you been enjoying your first week in this temple of wisdom?"

"Everyone is very kind, but I find the wisdom somewhat opaque,” Mari replied, cheerfully. “Ellen was just kindly explaining today's lecture to me."

Joshua glanced at Ellen, then back to Mari. "I would be happy to provide any assistance you ladies may require. After a year and a few weeks I think I have most of it down and I’m looking forward to getting out, come spring. My father thinks a trained mage would be very useful in his business. What was it that was puzzling you?"

Mari gave Ellen a rueful glance, turned back to Joshua. "I am still puzzled by Magister Coelus' explanation of how magic can be entirely elemental, entirely humeral, entirely natural and entirely combinatorial, all at the same time."

"That I can explain. The elemental points are, of course, the elements: earth, air, fire and water. The natural points are the natures: hot, cold, dry, and wet. Hot is a mixture of fire and air, cold of earth and water, and so on."

"But didn't he also say that fire was a mix of hot and dry? If hot is fire and air, and dry is ...," she looked at the others.

"Fire and earth," Ellen responded. Joshua looked momentarily annoyed.

"Fire and earth. That's right."

Mari continued: "Then a mix of hot and dry ought to have fire and air and fire and earth. That's two fire and one each air and earth. So how can it be pure fire?"

Joshua looked puzzled. "Say that again?"

"A mix of hot and dry ought to have fire and air and fire and earth. That's two fire and one each air and earth. So how can it be pure fire?"

He thought a moment before answering.
"That does seem
a little
puzzling.
I
’
m afraid the explanation is a little complicated for students in their first year, but by the time you finish Magister Coelus's theory course next spring it should be clear enough. That’s the bell for the fourth period; my tutor will be expecting me. I hope we can talk more later."

He gave Mari a formal bow, nodded to Ellen, went out the door.

Mari turned with an arched eyebrow back to Ellen. "Well, perhaps you understand it?"

Ellen nodded. "But I don't think he does. Mixes are a loose way of putting it and misleading, for just the reason you saw. The superposition has phase as well as amplitude; the air and earth cancel when you put hot and dry together with the right phase to get back to fire. How much mathematics have you learned?"

Mari looked at her helplessly. "When I add up numbers I can usually get the same answers twice running."

"There is a class next semester that you could take to get the basics—the math, not the magic theory. Then the real math class next fall.
And then Magister Coelus' advanced theory class in the spring. He is supposed to be very good. Mother says he has been responsible for more progress in basic theory than anyone else in the past twenty years."

"Your mother is a witch? Or,” Mari corrected herself, “a mage, I suppose I should say?"

"Mother is a weaving mage, which, outside the College, is a witch. She finds theory fascinating. She taught me as much as she could and then sent me here to learn more. When I'm done I expect she'll want me to come back and teach it to her."

"No wonder you know so much already. It would be a great favor to me if you would keep on explaining things to me. You are so much easier to understand than the magisters."

"Of course.” Ellen looked down, back up, and smiled. “Mother says teaching is the best way of learning things, so it isn't really a favor at all. Besides … I’m happy to be your friend.
But, I must go now to prepare for my next class.”

Mari watched her go. One problem solved. The next would be how to politely discourage Joshua. Not that there was anything wrong with rich merchants or their sons. But she did not think that was what her father was planning for her. And, in this case, hoped not. She wondered if the boy had forgotten that the schedule for all three years—with tutorials in the fifth and sixth periods, not the fourth—was posted on the corridor wall outside the refectory, or if he simply assumed she had not bothered to read it.

Magister Bertram waited until the room was silent before beginning.

“
You
are here to learn to make use of magery. To that lesson there are three parts.

“The first is to gain understanding of how magery works. This training you will receive from Magister Coelus, whose first lecture you had yesterday morning. I hope you are all continuing to ponder the wisdom it contained.

“The second part is how to do magery, how, with the power within you and through the knowledge of the names of things, using spells constructed by wise men of old, to cause effects in the world. Before
you learn
that, you must first learn from Magister Simon an understanding of names in the true speech, which is the language in which the world is told, the language in which spells are spoken. Or written. Or thought. Not in our common tongue.

“The third part is how to use your power. That is our subject today.

“A spell has a direct effect and an indirect effect. The direct effect is commonly called magic. It is what the spell does. The indirect effect is what you do with the spell. The direct effect is to set one stalk of straw alight. The indirect effect, of which the direct is the cause, is that stalk setting a field ablaze.

“As you grow wiser you will see further, to effects of which the burning field is itself a cause, and beyond. To do magic is only the beginning. Beyond that you will be using wisdom, knowledge, in order, by the use of magic, to alter the world.

“Magery is a tool. The first step to wisdom is to learn what sort of a tool it is.”

He stopped a moment, looked up at the faces, then down at his notes, and continued. “Magery is not a battering ram or a stroke of lightning; nobody ever smashed a castle wall with a spell, or split an oak tree.”

Magister Bertram lifted up his hand, turned it, and flexed its gnarled fingers. “Consider a hand. It cannot knock down a gate like a battering ram. It cannot split an oak in an instant like a stroke of lightning. But it is more useful than a battering ram or a lightning bolt, because it can do more and more useful things. If you exchanged your right hand for a battering ram and your left for a lightning bolt you would, no doubt, be a very impressive figure. But you would regret the change the first time you needed to eat dinner.”