The Floating Islands (14 page)

Trei stood still for a long time, gazing at her. Araenè, waiting to see what he would say, felt sick and hot and anxious. She said quickly, “It’s not that I don’t want to be—to be with you, Trei—”

“I know,” her cousin said. He held out his hands to her. “I know, Araenè. Arei. It’s all right. You write your aunts. And we can send the letter in a day or two, if you haven’t changed your mind. But”—and he sounded quite fierce on this last—“but you take some time and you think if you really want this, if you can really
do
this! Because we can think of something else if we have to, Gods weeping, we can go—I don’t know—to Cen Periven, if we have to. Clear away from both the Islands
and
Tolounn. Maybe you could be a chef there.”

But Trei couldn’t be kajurai there. But he didn’t say that. Araenè knew she had already decided.

Araenè let Trei persuade her to wait one extra day, until Sun’s Day should turn to Gods’ Day, for luck. But Araenè was determined she had waited long enough; she felt sick with the need to leave this house.

“So how do we
get
to the hidden school?” Trei asked. “I mean, isn’t it, you know, hidden?”

Araenè shook her head. “I don’t think it will be hard to find.” She weighed the Dannè sphere in her hand for a moment. The lemon was starting to spark through the smoky cumin. Araenè tucked the sphere under her arm, led the way to the front of the house, said, “Master Tnegun?” and opened the door on a wave of bitter fenugreek balanced by fragrant heat.

The door swung back, but it did not open on the Avenue of Flameberry Trees. It opened straight into a familiar shadowy hallway, where the sun gleamed dimly through dusty panes of glass in many high-set, narrow windows. Across from them, a tall door even narrower than the windows led—perhaps—to a room with ebony tables and white chairs and heavy books chained to their pedestals.

“Oh,” said Trei, staring along the hallway. “That was easy.” He gave Araenè a wary sidelong look.

Araenè knew he was thinking again that this was too dangerous for her, that one of the mages would recognize she was a girl and there would be trouble. She didn’t want to think about that, and anyway, she was sure it wouldn’t happen. She caught Trei’s hand in hers and stepped firmly forward into the dim light of the hallway. Behind them, the door swung quietly shut and disappeared into the paneled wall.

This time, the narrow door opened on a small, luxuriously furnished library. They were high up in a square Second City tower, each wall lined with shelves of books and racks of scrolls. A single chair occupied the center of the room, upholstered in dark cloth. A raven sidled back and forth along the back of this chair. Master Tnegun sat below the raven, a book propped on his knee and a tiny crimson lizard with golden eyes clinging to his wrist.

The master looked up as the door opened. His hooded eyes were fierce and vivid in his dark face, his black hand outlined clean as a flame against the white pages of his book. He regarded Araenè for a moment. Then his gaze shifted to Trei, standing at her right hand. One elegant eyebrow lifted.

Araenè felt herself blushing under that sardonic regard. She said, “This is my cousin—” trying to sound unemotional and finding she only sounded angry. She stopped.

“Ar—Arei’s parents died. Of the fever,” Trei said. He
did
sound flat and unemotional. Whatever he’d learned in order to manage after his own parents’ death, he was using it now. Araenè wondered how long it would take her to sound that indifferent. Never, she thought. She would never manage it. She blinked hard and fixed her gaze on the view out one of Master Tnegun’s windows.

Trei was continuing, “So Arei can stay here now. We think sh—he ought to, and he says he wants to. That you said you wanted him as your apprentice.” He looked straight at Master Tnegun. Fearlessly.

Araenè had liked her cousin, and pitied him, and been deeply glad of his presence when he’d come to pull her out of grief’s heavy undertow. That he’d suffered the same loss that now struck her, and survived it, was comforting. But she hadn’t
admired
Trei until he spoke so decisively to Master Tnegun, even though she knew he was filled with doubts about her coming here.

The master’s expression lost its edge of mockery. He shut his book, set it aside, and rose to his feet. The raven muttered, tucking its head down into its shoulders and fluffing its black feathers. The lizard clung to his sleeve, not in the least discommoded by his movement. Its tiny head turned as it inspected Araenè and Trei from first one golden eye and then the other. When the master took a step toward them, it ran up his arm to his shoulder and twirled around to watch them from beneath his ear.

“It is a terrible thing, to lose one’s family,” Master Tnegun said to Araenè, his tone dark and somber. “My people say the high mountains will wear to level ground before grief wears to nothing. That was a wicked fever that little showed what it would do until far too late. I am most grieved to hear of your loss.”

Araenè couldn’t answer his sympathy. Instead she said stiffly, not looking away from the lizard, “I want … I mean, my cousin …”

“I want to be able to see Arei,” Trei said firmly. “I don’t want him to be hidden away here, even if this is the hidden school.”

“One should be ashamed to separate kin,” Master Tnegun answered gravely. He held out his hand. A crystal lay on his palm, so pure it was almost invisible. Cinnamon and fennel sparkled from it. It was attached to a fine silver chain. The chain, dangling between the master’s dark fingers, tasted crisply of lime and ginger.

“Crystal for the young kajurai,” Master Tnegun said. “Wear it, if you will. Speak the name of your cousin and open any door, and that door will bring you to him. Or if not, speak my name, and it will assuredly bring you to me. You know my name? It comes smoothly from your tongue?”

Trei nodded. “Yes, Master Tnegun. What about Arei?”

“Our apprentices are not prisoners. Arei may go about the city as he chooses.”

Trei nodded again, cautiously reassured.

“You may safely leave your cousin to my care,” said Master Tnegun. He stepped to the door and opened it wide. It looked out upon a flickering, opalescent mist.

“Step through,” the master told Trei, “and the door will carry you wherever you choose within the limits of the city. Merely keep clearly in mind which destination you favor.”

Trei nodded, came to Araenè, hesitated, and put his hands on her shoulders—more appropriate than an embrace, since she was a boy. He gave her a steady look out of his strange kajurai eyes. “Arei?”

“I’ll be fine,” Araenè promised him. “I’ll be fine. Truly.”

But even so, she felt amazingly bereft after her cousin was gone. And frightened. She told herself sharply that she hadn’t any reason to be
frightened
—Master Tnegun had
told
her to come—he couldn’t be wrong; she must be suited to this school. Even though she was a girl. But doubts crowded into her mind: maybe magecraft was just too hard for girls … maybe the reason girls didn’t become mages was because they truly, truly couldn’t. For a moment Araenè longed to run through the mist-filled doorway after her cousin and back to her own home. Only, the home she wanted to run to was the home with Mother humming popular street tunes over her needlework, with Father working on ministry documents and occasionally adding a whistled phrase to whatever tune Mother was humming.

But that home was gone. Dead. Araenè closed her eyes for a moment, found a strange, dizzy confusion of longed-for past and bitter present assailing her, and opened them quickly.

Master Tnegun shut the door and turned to stand quietly in the middle of the room, his hands clasped before him, regarding Araenè from his hooded, unreadable eyes. Dangerous eyes, Araenè thought; she was afraid of what he might see, looking at her with such intensity. She could imagine just the tone of sardonic disapproval with which he might say,
We do not permit girls in this school.
She held her breath.

But all the master said was, “I am glad you have come, for we have too few mages here. But I am sorry to have you driven to us by such tragedy. I am tolerably acquainted with loss. If you will accept my prescription, it is for an entire change of scene and a course of demanding study of compelling and unfamiliar subjects. One may thus forget for a moment and then a day, and in the end make a peace with grief. Does this seem well to you, young Arei?”

Not trusting her voice, Araenè simply nodded.

“It is poor solace to speak of the passing of time and grief,” the master said. His quiet voice had gone somehow bleak, though Araenè could not decide where in his unchanging tone the difference lay. “We do not wish our grief to fade, for it marks the love and honor in which we held our lost kinsmen. Nevertheless, permit me to assure you that while you may find peace a barren desert, yet eventually it may bloom.”

Araenè wasn’t certain she understood what Master Tnegun meant, but she nodded again.

“Well,” the Yngulin master said, and sighed. Then he called, “Kanii!”

There was a pause, which lengthened. And lengthened. Master Tnegun first waited without expression, then cast a patient gaze upward, then tapped his foot and sighed again.

At last Kanii burst into the library, panting. He wore green trousers and a shirt of paler green silk, but his sash was askew and ink stains ran down the shirt. A black feather was tucked in his hair above his ear. It was broken a third of the way from the tip. He clutched an immense armful of scrolls; one tumbled from the top of the stack as he skidded to a halt. He caught it with a practiced snatch, juggled the remaining scrolls for a second, succeeded somehow in steadying the pile, and nodded cheerfully to Araenè and more formally to Master Tnegun. “Yes, sir?”

“Kanii …,” the Yngulin master began.

“Sir?” Kanii said, the picture of alert helpfulness.

Master Tnegun shook his head, sighed, and said, “Kanii, I believe you have met my new apprentice. You will do me the favor of settling him into the school. Without asking difficult questions, if you please. Arei, I hope you will permit this young fool to acquaint you with our school and its denizens. Yes?”

Araenè nodded.

“However, before you go … my sphere, if you please.”

Araenè blinked. She had forgotten the sphere she’d tucked under her arm. Now she drew it out, holding it in both hands. Nearly transparent, the black sphere was now filled by light. Strangely, the light seemed to weigh it down, for it became much heavier as she held it. Araenè stared down into it; she was certain that it had never been so transparent before, yet now she could see the outlines of her fingers right through it. The piquant taste of ginger tingled across Araenè’s tongue and its fragrance filled the room. Moving light glittered within the sphere.

“Interesting,” commented Master Tnegun’s deep voice above her.

“Yes,” Araenè said distractedly. “The ginger just came out. The flavors change all the time, even though I never
try
to do anything.”

“Flavors?” Master Tnegun regarded Araenè with interest. “Many mages perceive magic as brilliant colors or geometric shapes or musical notes, but I don’t believe I have ever encountered a mage who
tastes
magic. How interesting. Are the flavors pleasant ones?”

Usually they were. Araenè nodded hesitantly. She could not think of anything to say. She had not actually meant to mention the tastes the sphere sent across her tongue and fingers; now she wondered whether there might be something actually
wrong
with the way she perceived magic.

But the master merely asked, “What do you see in the sphere, Arei?”

Araenè looked down at it. White shapes flickered in the sphere: the wings of birds, of gulls … drifting feathers … no, she saw at last: sails. White sails, filled with an urgent wind, rising in tiered ranks above great ships that drove up white foam as they rushed through the slate-dark sea. She thought she could feel their speed in her hands, half closed her eyes against the wind of their swift passage.

Then the image in the sphere changed. A great crimson sun slid toward the horizon. Its red light fell across sails and ships and sea all alike, until the fierce wind seemed to fill sails of fire, and the ships raced across a sea of blood. Flames suddenly seemed to fill the sphere: white at the center, then yellow and orange and red. Where the flames washed against the cool glass, they were a color darker than mere red, so dark there should have been another name for it. At the heart of the fire there was something that was not fire.… Araenè bent her face low over the sphere, trying to make out what it might be.…

Master Tnegun plucked the sphere neatly from Araenè’s hands. The smoky taste of cumin rose through the light, overwhelming the ginger. In his grip, the sphere darkened and became opaque.

Araenè stared at him, blinking. She felt strangely charred around the edges, as though she’d stood too close to a powerful stove.

“Hmm.” Regarding her with narrow concentration, Master Tnegun tossed the sphere into the air. At the apex of its rise, it vanished. The master said thoughtfully, “I think you may have an affinity for vision and fire, Arei. Those are useful affinities. We shall see if we can bring them out.”

Araenè blinked again and nodded, not trying to find words. Her palms felt sensitive and tender, as though she had been holding fire.

The master turned to Kanii. “Take this child away, Kanii, and if Master Kopapei is able to spare you, you might ensure that he finds his way back to me in the morning. Early, if you please.”

“Yes, sir,” Kanii said earnestly. He tumbled half his load of scrolls into Araenè’s hands—startled, she barely caught them—and bumped her shoulder with his. “Come on, then.”

The hallway outside Master Tnegun’s library wasn’t the same hall Araenè remembered, though. This one was much wider and curved across the top, carved directly out of red stone: they were underground. The cool of this deep hall contrasted so sharply with the warmth of Master Tnegun’s library that Araenè shivered. Then she could not stop shivering.