Salamander (6 page)

Ellen shook her head. "It matters for two reasons. The first is that the definition tells you what the name you are memorizing means. If you do a spell on horses, you only expect it to affect horses. But if you are using the true name for "horse"—and you will be if you want the spell to work—it will affect any other hornless quadruped with a mane that happens to be in the area. The true name for "horse" doesn't really mean "horse," it means …"

Jon cut in. "Hornless quadruped with mane.
Could
be a mule, even a donkey."

"Yes. And the same is true of every name you use in a spell. If you want to affect only the horses, you have to say something that amounts to 'horse but not mule.' It's really very much like mathematics, especially mathematical logic." Ellen stopped a moment to take a bite of bread.

Mari reached over for the wine bottle. "Which explains why I don't understand it. I'm with Alys this time. Word for word translation may not get it exactly right, but if the alternative is mathematical logic I will have to be content with almost." She half filled her glass, put the bottle back.

Ellen looked up at Mari. "I said there were two reasons. The other is that if you understand how true names are built you can build one. You don't have to say 'horse but not mule'—which expands into a lot more than that in the speech. You can say ‘fertile hornless quadruped with mane’ instead."

Jon grinned: "Not if you want your spell to work on geldings."

"I hadn't thought of that. But it shows why you have to understand how names are built. Someone might construct the name I just offered and teach it to you as an improved version of 'horse' and if you didn't understand the pieces of it you would never figure out why some of the horses were still coming down with worms after you had spelled all of them not to."

Alys wrinkled up her nose. "Do you think you could keep worms out of it until I’m finished eating? Jon's account of sausage last month was bad enough."

Ellen looked at her, puzzled. "I thought it was very interesting. If you don't like
worms, make it something else."

"Cracked hooves and splints. That is what our horses are always coming down with. If Alys doesn't like worms and sausages, she can always eat bread and cheese." Mari passed what was left of the small wheel of cheese across the desk.

"Haven't told you about making cheese?" Jon was grinning.

Mari gave him a stern look. "And you shan’t. Not today, at least, or poor Alys may starve to death. Anyway, I have another question for Ellen. About names."

She paused, turned to look at her friend. "Why do mages never change their names, even when pretending to be someone else? Why do they avoid giving their names, and use nicknames, and confuse people in other ways? Why not just take a different name? Is it only in the stories, or is it real?"

"It's real."

Edwin looked up from his plate. "Do people have names in the true speech? Do you have a name? 'Short dark haired lady who knows everything about magic?'"

Ellen shook her head. "That's not how it works. The Speech has a word for 'person,' and 'woman,' but not for particular people. Though I am sure you and Mari can have fun making them up. My name is 'Ellen'—'Elinor' in long form. It is what I’ve always been called. Spells cast on me are anchored to that name. If I didn’t want to be spelled I could change my name to weaken the connection.

"But a spell is anchored at both ends, and a mage cares more about casting spells than about stopping others from casting spells on him.
If I changed my name, my spells would stop working, or at least working as well. The more and the longer people called me by the new name, the weaker the old name would get, the less it would be me, and the weaker any spells I tried to anchor to it.

"I could have changed my name when I was two, I suppose. But if I changed my name now and tried to shift everything to it, I would never be as strong as I am now. That's why mages in the stories keep their own names, even if they are doing their best to hide who they are.

"The only words you can read in written spells and amulets are people's names. The rest are in glyphs, the written form of the true speech. Each word is a symbol, almost a little drawing, not
a drawing of the thing
but a graphic definition, made up of little bits each of which corresponds to an element in the definition. I expect Simon will get to that next semester."

"After he gives up on teaching us the spoken version?" Mari ate her last bit of cheese, pushed back the plate. "He will teach us to try to draw words?” She stood up, opened the window looking out over the College’s kitchen garden, looked out. It was still raining.

“Isn't it wonderful to have something to look forward to."

The others snickered; Ellen stared at them, head to one side, perplexed.

A room, scantily furnished. At the end by the door a desk, an untidy pile of codices, a few scrolls. Along one long side a work table, its wooden top scarred and scorched. Two mages, earth and air.

Coelus carefully arranged the small brazier on the table over the chalk mark for fire. Over the other mark, part way down the table, a glass goblet, clear as water, beside it the sealed flask. He motioned Maridon over to the fourth mark.

A knock on the door.

"Come in."

"Am I late? Magister Maridon said at the sixth bell." The student looked a little uncertain.

"No. Just in time. Sit over there, facing the wall. This should not take very long."

Joshua took his seat. Coelus went to the far end of the table, opened the clay fire box, used a small pair of silver tongs to remove one glowing coal. Into the brazier. He blew gently on it, was rewarded with a trickle of smoke, a pale flame.

Next the flask, unstoppered, a thin stream of water into the goblet.

"Galfred sent it; with luck there's enough …"

A wide silver spoon filled with grey powder; he sprinkled it onto the brazier. The charcoal burst into brilliant flame. Back to his own place, the fourth point of the star.

Coelus spoke a Word. For a moment nothing happened. He raised his hand, spoke again. From his hand to Maridon, a faint white line. Maridon raised his hand, spoke a Word; their two hands were linked by a double thread, white and black. Coelus lifted his left hand; as he let it fall the two spoke the third Word together.

From Coelus the double thread leaped to the brazier. Triple now, the black and white lines clear, the red line barely a thread. To the goblet.

The four—two mages, the brazier, the goblet—were the corners of a square, its edges traced in four-fold lines, the mage's colors bright, the other two, blue and red, spiderweb thin. Coelus spoke a final Word.

From Joshua to Coelus' hand another thread of light; to Coelus it seemed a turning twist of white and blue. For a moment everything froze, the square outlined in fourfold light, the fifth line.

With a sharp crack the flask broke, spilling steaming water and fragments of glass
onto the table. The threads of light vanished, the blue an instant before the others. Joshua cried out, stood, tried to turn, and fell face forward onto the floor.

"Did it work?" That was Maridon. Coelus, bent over the fallen student, took a moment to answer.

"I think so. The elemental water must have run out. The boy is still breathing; I think he'll be all right. If it hadn't worked, how could he have reacted as he did; that's the clearest evidence. I can hardly perceive any magery at all in him now. Besides, I saw the fifth line, even if only for a second.

"But I have the geometry wrong; it's unbalanced, with me as both starpoint and focus. It needs five mages, four for the basis star, one for the focus. I suppose four mages might work, but not as well, and it might be dangerous. I think the other part of what unbalanced it was using substitutes, elemental reagents to stand in for their mages. But five would be better."

Maridon gave him a skeptical look. "So it works in theory, but not yet in practice."

"It worked in practice, just not for very long. I could feel power coming in from the boy. Just a trickle, but more than we were getting from the workbench alone and it felt different from ours. With five mages, maybe even with four, we could do it."

Maridon had another question. "The boy we pulled from is a mage, even if he is not trained. What about the rest of the Cascade?"

"I don't think we can pull from plain people yet, not with half the star filled with tokens instead of mages. Even with four or five mages it would be hard. If my calculations are right, the best way is to cascade over a dozen mages or more, then use the pool to start pulling in plain folk."

Maridon walked over to the unconscious student, nudged him with a toe. "What about him?"

Coelus bent over Joshua, examined him carefully. "His breathing is fine, his heart is beating, I can even see a faint glow of magery, so that is coming back all right. We drained him too much; I need to find a way of keeping the flow down to what the source can keep giving. I expect he'll wake up in a bit. With luck he will be willing to help again; we need an outsider with at least a little power to test the Cascade. But we ought to send for a healer for him now, just to be safe."

Maridon shook his head.

"The fewer know about this the better; we do not want to start rumors, whether among our colleagues or the students. I will trust your judgment that he is all right. I talked to him this morning; I do not think there will be a problem getting him to help again. You do the calculations, work out the next test. I will see about getting us two or three more mages for when you are ready to do a real Cascade. Not from the College; the fewer rumors the better until we are ready to show our colleagues what real magery looks like."

Maridon gave the unconscious student a final glance, turned, left the room. Coelus took the student's folded cloak off the back of his chair, spread it over him, folded up his own cloak to make a pillow, sat down in the other chair to wait.

A mage's workroom. A body on the floor, a mage sitting watching it. Slowly the image faded.

***

"Have you done the work I assigned?"

Ellen nodded. "Yes. But before I hand it in, I have a question."

Coelus looked at her quizzically. She was holding a thin stack of neatly written sheets.

"Do you know the answers to all those problems for ways of building a pool to span all of magery?"

He thought a moment. "Almost all. The last one, the combinatorial star, I have not actually calculated, since we have none of the mages it requires, but it is straightforward enough. I don't expect to have any difficulty judging your answer."

"Any right answer will do? It does not have to be the best?"

That got his attention. "Is finding a better solution too much work for you, once you have one?"

She shook her head. "I told you; I wish to learn, but I am not willing to help with your project. If you tell me you have solutions, I will be happy to show you mine. But I will not work to make it easier for you to drain mages, or others, without their consent."

"So you want me to help you learn, but you will not help me?"

"I have done my best to offer you the one thing I have to give that matters. So far I have not succeeded. If one of the other magisters asked you to help him devise a better love philtre, would you do it?"

"Of course not. Compulsions are … ."

"Compulsions are beyond the bounds of proper magery. So Magister Henryk told us the first day of class, and I believe it. To pool the power of," she hesitated a moment, "of four mages with their assent, and in so doing span all forms of magery, is indeed a fine thing. To calculate out how one mage can use the pooled power to do, in the limit, everything that a mage of any sort could do, is a puzzle worthy of your ability. Further than that is compulsion."

He looked up, struck by something she had said. "If you were doing it, how many mages would you use?"

She said nothing.

"I see. Let me look through those papers, and I will think about whether I can accept your terms and still teach you."

Ellen handed him the stack, turned and left. He looked after her for a long minute before looking down at her work.

The next day when she returned, he was the one with a question: "What you handed me. Was that all of your work, or only the final result?"

She looked puzzled. "All of the written work. Paper is expensive, and it is hard to work clearly on a tablet. Things are tidier inside my head."

He smiled. "For me too. I am not sure I have met anyone else who feels the same way until now. You worked out the answers in your head, then wrote them down on what you gave me?"

"Yes. It's easiest at night, in bed with my eyes closed."

"And you wrote down only the first answer you found?"

She hesitated. "Sometimes. Sometimes the second answer was simpler, so I wrote that down instead."

"I am sorry I cannot persuade you of the good I hope to do. I have here," he handed her a single sheet, "six more problems. None are part of the Cascade project, I promise you. Five, I know the answers to. I will let you decide which five, if you can."