“Oh, yes, sir!” Tildi said.
“Good. Good night to you.”
Without another word he turned and strode away, robes flapping in his wake. Tildi frowned. In anyone else she would have found his departure to be inexcusably rude behavior, but she could not help recalling the look of deep concern in his eyes. Giving a grateful smile to the servants, she went up to bed.
“
C
huff!” Tildi smothered a sneeze in her dusting cloth.
“You’re not going to let a little dirt get in your way, are you?” Olen asked, a trifle gruffly. He sat on a wooden chest with his hands on his knees and his head bent to avoid the ceiling.
“No, master,” Tildi said.
The small, dim room, shaped rather like the inside of a gourd, was full of boxes. Seated on the floor, Tildi pushed aside the rosewood coffer through which she had been searching, and pulled another to her.
“You’re the only one in this house who can creep underneath that overhang without banging your head every other minute,” Olen explained. “I’m over twice your height. It’s best if I sit here out of the way. I’ll let you know when you have found what you’re looking for.”
“I understand.” Tildi opened the small, brassbound chest, and found it to hold a single scroll nested in crushed velvet. “Is this it, master?” she asked, holding up a scroll.
He peered through the dancing dust motes, lit up by the single, irregularly shaped window. “No. It ought to have a black ribbon around it.”
Tildi shook her head and put it back in its box. Before she closed the chest she dusted the edges and polished the lock plate.
“There is no need to do that,” Olen chided her.
The next box, rough-hewn out of timbers but still airtight enough not to let in any dust, contained a mix of bound books and scrolls. Tildi began to sort through them in search of the black ribbon.
“Only the scrolls, mind you,” Olen said, tapping his fingers on his knees. “The ancient form of the book. I’m not sure that it’s been bettered by these page-turn books. With a scroll you must read it in the direction that it is going, no hustling back and forth and getting things out of order. No. No. No,” he added, as Tildi held up one book after another for his inspection. “None of those.”
“Have you ever thought of labeling the boxes, master?” Tildi asked.
“Why? To shorten the search? I enjoy the challenge of the journey of discovery. In my hunt for a hidden resource I often come upon treasures that I have forgotten that I have. Such serendipity has frequently stirred me to make an intellectual leap that I would not otherwise have made. Don’t you think that is better than thinking like a clerk?”
Tildi didn’t remind him that she was the one engaged upon the journey of discovery, not he. She flipped up the lid of a small, time-darkened box.
A sour smell rose from the interior. She leaned back, coughing, with her nose wrinkled. Olen chuckled.
“Ah, yes. The smell of the ages, which means ‘here is mildew, and a history.’ Is there a book inside?”
“Yes,” Tildi said, dashing dust from the surface of the box with her cloth. Oddly, the book’s smell was not of mildew or dust, but reminded her of the clear scent that came after lightning. She conveyed the black-bound scroll to Olen, whose green eyes lit avidly.
“Come, sit by me.” He shifted to make room and helped her up to sit beside him on the sea chest. He unrolled the book so she could see the first pages. He patted the open scroll. “This is the first book that I ever came into possession of that explains the runes of power without going off into recriminations or storytelling. I have admiration for this unknown teacher, for teacher she must have been. And an artist as well.
“You know the basic runes we use for writing. Writing is an ancient art that describes the physical world around us in a few lines. But it is more
than that. You use the simplified runes to express what you see, but in its purest form, the rune is the object. The two are connected. If you have the true rune before you of a person or a thing, what you do to that rune, happens to that person or thing. That is the basis of magic, the manipulation of those names to affect the physical reality.”
Tildi was fascinated.
“See here. This is the origin of all creation. The first image is the simple circle, the most all-encompassing symbol that contains all matter, all energy, all thought. You can deduce from this image, as the artist who compiled this tome did, that they are all one. It is when they became differentiated that they began to lose contact with one another.” Beneath the circle were three more symbols. Each had characteristics of the ring, but were all very distinct. In fact, when Tildi peered more closely at them, she realized that they were very complex, showing, as her first drawing of
tree
had, what had changed from when each was part of the circle. The artist who had drawn them must have been a very good observer. “It was a student of what became magic who discovered the links. He did not so much reestablish them, as redescribe them. From that revelation came more study.”
The subsequent pages showed general runes. Tildi let out a pleased exclamation. She recognized all of these: tree, river, flower, sky, and, of course, fire.
“Yes,” Olen said. “This section does resemble a reading primer for very young children. This is the distilling down of every image to find the very basic elements that these things have in common. Therefore, these runes direct energy to and from an entire class of objects, such as all trees. The early mages found that one had to be very general in order to direct a change in all of anything. In fact, since one mind’s influence is so diluted by attempting such an alteration, a general spell has no effect whatsoever. It is when you wish to enchant a single object that your power is the greatest, for then your attention is focused upon it. You can work upon its name, its single designation, and get results.
“You can do magic without runes, but to understand what it is you do, you must study the image behind them. This is matter put into thought, or thought from which matter or energy arise. That is why you must truly know the name of something before you alter it, and once you know the name, you know much more than what it is called.”
Tildi stared at the runes. “So if I know the name of something, I can change it?”
“No. And yes. Once you know the name you have the key. Thereafter you must study to understand the nature of the object. Though you may see the rune, you will not necessarily know which strokes correspond to which characteristics. That comes over time, a lot of time. Some things are easy to change. Others are not. That is something apart from whether or not they ought to
be
changed. The balance of existence is maintained because there are reactions that come alongside every alteration, and the wise ones, such as we pretend to be, must take that into consideration. You can simply go ahead and alter or interfere with an object through its rune, if you are willing to take the consequences. Like the Shining Ones, or so they called themselves,” Olen said tersely. “They did not care, and see what trouble it’s caused?”
“Have I seen some of that trouble yet, master?”
“They created the thraik.”
“Created!”
“Indeed, yes, among other things. It’s the eternal scope of their meddling that both astonishes and appalls me.” At her puzzled expression he chuckled. “It’s not something I expect you to comprehend in its entirety now, or for many years, but you will. You will. I merely wish to stress that magic is easy for those who have the talent, or the opportunity. Judging whether to do that magic is not.”
“I had heard,” Tildi said slowly, echoing something that Teldo had once told her, “that the ancient runes are what the world is made of.”
“That’s a very simplified expression of the process,” Olen said. “Who told you that?”
“My … my brother.”
“Well, he did not precisely mislead you, Tildi. Indeed, that was a very penetrating thought from a layman. I’m rather surprised that he didn’t apply for an apprenticeship, too.” Tildi didn’t reply, and Olen did not notice. “If you think about these runes as a representation of each facet of existence, then you could, in fact, say that they are what the world is made of. You certainly have access to those elements through the runes. Like in the Great Book.”
Tildi prepared to jump down again. “Shall I look for that one next, master? I’d like to see that.”
Olen arrested her with one long hand. “It is not here, Tildi. Please to creation that it will never be anywhere where one can see it. Though the rumors trouble me—”
He stopped himself. “Never mind. We are flipping ahead in the pages,
and that is just what I said we would not do. It is best to do, not just to describe. Let’s take this book down to my study and I’ll demonstrate some simple applications that you can work on. I am pleased with your aptitude, and your application. Indeed, your energy makes me feel tired. What are you doing?” he asked, as Tildi headed for the remaining three chests she had not had time to clean.
“It won’t take a moment, master,” she said, setting to industriously with her cloth. Along with the broom she must see if she could get hold of some brass polish, or a lemon and some salt.
“Stop dusting that,” Olen ordered, waving a hand at the box she was polishing. “It will only get dusty again, and your efforts will be wasted.”
Tildi had heard similar logic over the years from her brothers, and ignored it. She finished cleaning the tops of all the chests. “There! Much better. I could come up here and attach labels so that you know what is in each,” she offered.
Olen just shook his head. “Please don’t. Now, if you will let me reestablish authority, let us go down and work on the practical applications of rune manipulation.”
T
he lessons were always electrifyingly interesting, even basic studies like working on identifying the parts of runes that indicated specific sections of an object. By the end of the first day, Tildi could cause the leaves to fall off a plant. By the end of the week, she could pick out a specific leaf, but she despaired of ever reattaching one, let alone learning all the intricacies of every rune ever drawn.
When she was not studying, she explored Silvertree. The house was grand, with corridors that ran into one another, intersecting in odd corners. Many of the rooms were square or rectangular despite the round shape of the trunk they had been cut into, or perhaps grown into would be a closer truth.
“An ancient forest once stood all around Silvertree,” Olen explained one day, in answer to her questions. “If you could see into the earth—teach you to one day,” he added, patting her on the shoulder, “you’d see the remains of mighty roots wider than whole blocks of this city. This is the only one left here.” Olen patted the wall. “One day both of us shall pass into memory. Silvertree gives a seed now and again. None of the saplings are as grand, as of yet, but give it ten or twelve thousand years, and we’ll see, we’ll see.”
“Who are the other people who live here?”
“Only I and my servants live here, Tildi. Silvertree attracts visitors, and I enjoy having them. Musicians, artists, other mages, craftsmen, scholars, priests, philosophers, lords and ladies, and common folk of every race. They come here for the peace, and the intellectual exchange. Nothing so organized as a school. Properly speaking, you are my only student here. I often learn from my guests, and they from me, but it is a free exchange. We have many concerns, some of which I will discuss with you in time, as well. We keep an eye on the world, you see. We study it. I can’t think how long it has been going on, but many years. Centuries, perhaps.”
Tildi felt her eyebrows climb her forehead. “How old are you, master?”
Olen’s gaze drifted to the ceiling. “Not sure at the moment. I’ll have to consult my daybook. I can’t say I recall when Silvertree sprouted, of course.”
“Of course not.” Tildi laughed.
“And why ‘of course not’?” Olen asked, snorting.
“But you just said that it would take ten or twelve thousand years to grow this big!” Tildi replied, wide-eyed.
“You’ve got to stop thinking in terms of limits. How that will hold you back in years to come! Of course you must understand the function of limits. I know others who took the concept perhaps a little too far, and they
delimited
themselves. Yes, hmm.”
Tildi looked up at him hopefully. It sounded as if he was going to tell her another story, but he sucked in his lower lip with a hiss.
“Go on, Tildi. I want you to give the matter some consideration. We’ll discuss it later. I have much I must do.”
Tildi went away to her room to practice not thinking within limits. Everything that she did was defined in some way. Everything she thought was based upon what she knew from something else.
W
hen she was studying, her room seemed to become more cozy, and the light more intense, though not brighter so the notes danced on the page as if brought to life, but with a character that made them easier to see and absorb. It felt as though Silvertree herself was encouraging her to study. She began to see more than the similarities between runes, she saw their differences. Something struck her as she was looking at the sigil for tree, and fished out Teldo’s precious manuscript page, which
they had never been able to comprehend. Yes, she was sure of it. One of those symbols contained the base sigil for
tree.
She tried to find other symbols that matched the other lines and curliques, but she realized she just didn’t have the vocabulary yet to translate it. One day she would.