Salamander (26 page)

Mari looked up. "How many Great Lords make up the Council?" By her tone, she might have been asking about the weather.

"Forty, I think."

"Yes. And how many were present at the meeting at which King Thoma named Josep as his heir?"

"I don't know, but it doesn't matter; they approved it."

"It doesn't matter? If Thoma invited three of the Great Lords to consult with him and two approved his choice, would that be election according to the ancient customs?"

"Of course not, but it wasn't just three."

"No. Six of the northern lords came to Council at the King's command; five supported his choice. Three came from the court itself, two of whom had had their offices from Thoma's hand. Eight votes out of forty. Learned as you are in custom, does that suffice?" Mari's voice was still calm.

"If it's true that only nine lords came to Council, that's the fault of all t
he other lords who stayed away.
"

Jon interrupted.

"Gerrit's book discusses that, actually.
O
ld custom was election by a majority of the Great Lords, not of whatever lords came to council. Without that, King could control the succession by when and where he called council."

Anders turned back towards Mari. "How do you know how many came, or how they voted? Did you read that in a history book too, or were you there counting?"

Mari shrugged. "The count is my father's. He was one of those not present, being at the other end of the kingdom when His Majesty sent out a summons for a council three days later."

It occurred to Ellen that Anders looked a bit like a bull doing his best to ignore the flies that were biting him.

"Perhaps there wasn’t a majority, but it doesn't really matter, because everyone knew that Petrus wasn't really King Thoma's son; that's why the King didn't want him as heir."

Mari's voice was still calm, but with an edge to it:

"Do you know why they say the hyena is the most prudent of beasts?"

"No. Why?" Anders replied.

"Because it waits to attack its prey until it is safely dead. The Queen Dowager Elinor was a formidable lady; it is surely prudent to wait to slander her honor until she is four years in her grave."

For a moment everyone was silent, Mari's face expressionless, Anders' flushing with anger. Jon's voice broke it. "Did you know the library is older than the college?"

For a moment nobody responded, then Ellen picked up on the line. "No. Was it the oldest part of the old monastery?"

Jon shook his head. "I don't mean the building, I mean the collection. When Durilil and Feremund started here, wasn't really a college. Just two mages, their apprentices, and a library."

The distraction having succeeded—at least, neither Mari nor Anders had tried to interrupt—Jon continued with growing enthusiasm. "Old days, mages didn't share their spells except with their apprentices.
Reason
to be an apprentice, so the mage would pass his spells down to you.
It was the library here, our library, changed that.

"Durilil and Feremund wrote all the spells they knew down, made an open offer to every other mage in the kingdom. Any who could tell them a spell they didn't already know got to pick
one
from their collection and learn it. Mage could share a spell
he
didn't think worth much,
get
a good one
from the collection. Library could use the same spell in trade over and
over again; it
wasn't losing spells,
it
was gaining them.

Edwin cut in. "But wouldn't that mean that the library got mostly minor spells, for banishing horseflies and the like?"

Jon shook his head. "
Spell that banishe
s
horseflies
isn’t
minor on a farm. And
a
mage wanted ten spells, only had eight he didn't mind sharing, might end up offering a couple of his better ones.
I
dea wasn't to get powerful spells anyway, was to get lots
of
different spells in hope of figuring out more about how spells were put
together."

Ellen nodded. "Then Olver showed up, and what he had been looking for was sitting in the library waiting for him. Olver didn't need powerful spells. What he needed were multiple spells doing the same thing in different ways, using different talents. If you could banish horseflies with a spell of fire and air and get exactly the same result with a spell built only on heat, that meant that in some fashion heat was fire plus air. How the spell was constructed let you figure out just how the air and fire were put together. Olver started with more than forty multiples—two or more spells that did the same thing in different ways. When he was finished he had the science of magic as we now know it—the different basis stars, the central paradox that any one star spans all of magery, and the rest. That was the first big breakthrough in three hundred years, since the Dorayans worked out the basic principles by trial and error.

"If he had a spell that used warmth he could make one using air and fire, so mages were no longer limited to using only spells that fit their particular talents. Jon is right; the library came first. The theory of magic was built on the library; the College was built on the theory of magic. The talented came here because it was the only place in the world where they could learn not only what worked but why."

Edwin looked over at Anders, listening intently. "Welcome to Ellen's noontime seminar. But one thing is still missing; we do, after all, have our traditions. Mari?"

Mari reached into her wallet, removed a small wheel of cheese covered in wax, cut a slice and held it out to Jon. He took it. She cut more pieces for each of the others, finally a last piece that she offered to Anders.

He looked at her uncertainly.

"Take it. I should not have spoken so harshly; you were only repeating what you have been told. I don't suppose you ever met Elinor, so how could you know how impossible that old slander was to anyone who knew her?"

Anders hesitated a moment, then reached out, took the slice.

* * *

"Will Lady Mari be coming to visit again?"

Prince Kieron looked up from his book, struck by the tone more than the words; it was not an idle question.

"Not soon. She has resumed her studies at the College. It is a long day by horseback, even the way Mari rides, and two days by coach. I doubt we will see her until midwinter break."

"But she will be back?"

"I expect so. She knows she is welcome here. Do you like her?"

Kir nodded. "Yes. She is the only one of the ladies who doesn't bring me sweets."

"You like Mari because she doesn't bring you sweets?"

"They want me to persuade you to marry them. Mari is the only one who treats me like a person, not a pet. I've been teaching her chess and she has been telling me about magic. She is very nice."

Kieron waited a moment, was about to return to his book, when Kir spoke again. "Are you going to marry her?"

Kieron's first thought was his usual noncommittal answer. But there was no one, with the possible exception of his brother the King, with a better right to the truth. "Do you want me to?"

Kir nodded. "Then she would be here all the time. And she's much nicer than … . I think Mother would have liked her."

Kieron reached out, pulled his son into his lap—at ten Kir still fit comfortably—hugged him, the boy's head against his father's shoulder. "I intend to ask Mari to marry me when she is home for midwinter. I think she will say yes, but that is her decision and her father's, not mine."

"I have found a solution to the second half of our problem. Or, more precisely, you have," Coelus announced. His face was aglow. Ellen closed the door of his office and took a chair.

"The first half of the problem,” he continued, “is how to shield someone against the Cascade. We’ve solved it, and I have an idea for an improvement, a way of diverting the magery tapped for the Cascade to strengthen the barrier around the individual mage. When it gets strong enough to cut off the flow, he drops out of the pool. Once I write it out in full, I'll show it to you and you can poke holes in it.

"The other half is how to get enough power to protect everyone. It occurred to me last night that you gave me the answer to that almost a year ago."

Ellen looked puzzled. "That was before we started working on the problem."

"You were solving a different problem at the time. One of those I set you."

He stopped, waited; enlightenment took
her
only a few seconds.

"The elementals."

Coelus nodded. "The elementals. You pointed out some of the things one could do if only one had use of one or more elementals. Now we do."

"Only one."

"One is enough. We need a pool that spans all of magery, which means all four elements. We can get that with four mages plus a fifth at focus—just like the Cascade. We can also get it …"

"With four mages and an elemental; of course. Unlimited power, even if only in one element. If we design the spell to … I don't see why it wouldn't work, but I'll have to consult with Father; he knows more about the practical end of that problem than we do. And he probably has to be the focus. Who do we get for the other mages?"

Coelus thought a moment. "We need earth and water. The problem is finding ones we can trust who will be willing to help. You might think about whether any of the second or third year students are possibles; you probably know them better than I do. And we will have to be careful; if the Prince hears about it …"

"How will he know what we are doing?"

"He won't. But if he knows we are trying to put together an elemental star of mages, he will conclude that we plan to do the Cascade and use it somehow to stop him."

* * *

"If it comes to a vote, you will lose."

Coelus responded to Hal—the two were alone in the senior common room—in a puzzled tone. "How can I? It's obviously the right thing to do."

"Obvious to you."

"Obvious to anyone. It's always been our policy to provide tutors for all the kinds of magery, up to the bounds of what is permitted. That's why Reymer comes for spring semester, because none of us is a competent truth teller. Healing is magery. Important magery. We have students who want to learn it, so we need a tutor who can teach it. All of the really competent healers are women, so … ."

Hal considered, not for the first time, the problem of making the facts of life and their application to academic politics
clear to his friend. "You assume that all that anybody cares about is what is true, what arguments are right or wrong. Truth isn't the only thing that matters to people."

Coelus shook his head. "Not the only thing. But truth is a means to all other ends. Staying alive might be more important to someone than the truth about how magic works, but how can you know how to stay alive without knowing the truth as to whether the food put before you is poisoned or the horse you plan to ride likely to throw you?"

"What if admitting that truth prevented you from achieving some other end you desired
,” Hal asked, “
getting a royal pension on retirement, persuading more parents to send their children here, or being respected by colleagues you value? Olver's view that witchery is merely another application of the laws that govern all magery has only started to spread beyond this College in recent years. Most of the senior mages in the Kingdom and practically all of the people whom we hope will send their talented children here grew up with the view that witchery was only a useful craft, magery the noblest of sciences. It makes no more sense to them for us to teach witchery than for a master painter to give lessons to his apprentices in painting barns."

"But the evidence is perfectly clear. Olver made the case nearly forty years ago, and Henneck proved it experimentally twenty years later, and I ... "

Hal interrupted him. "And most of the people I am talking about not to mention a fair number of our colleagues, have never read Olver and wouldn't understand him if they did. Or Henneck. Or you. And besides, once people learn something most of them never unlearn it. If you did manage to persuade our colleagues that, having decided to admit women as students, we now have to hire one as a tutor, they would conclude that the first decision was a mistake. I don't think that's the result you want."

For a moment Coelus was too shocked to answer. "They couldn't. Ellen proves that decision was right; she's the best student we've had since I came here. Easily the best theorist and one of the best applied mages as well. If you don't believe me, ask His Highness."

"I believe you; I'm not the one you have to convince. I would be perfectly happy to have a healer here as a tutor, although I'm not sure that with only six girls in the second year class there will be enough students to keep her busy."

The puzzled expression had returned to the younger mage's face.