“Even the women?”
“Especially the women. Now, here, I don’t mean to insult your friend Nalla, but her eyes make me uneasy, and those ears! Like a donkey’s.”
“Oh, they are not! How mean!”
“Very well, then, not as bad as a donkey’s.” He reached out and touched the side of her face. “But she’ll never be half as lovely as you are.”
“Come now! You’re just flattering me.”
“And why would I do that?”
Before she could answer, he bent his head and kissed her, just a quick brush of his mouth across hers, but she felt as if he’d touched her with fire. He grinned, took the white crystal from her, and left without another word. She stood by her doorway and watched him disappear around the corner before she went inside.
That night she dreamt about Rhodorix. When the dawn gongs sounding on the priests’ tower woke her, she lay abed for some while, smiling and remembering the dream.
After the morning meal Hwilli went to the herbroom. The day before, the apprentices had cleaned several bushels of plants and set them to dry on wooden racks. They would need turning so that they’d dry evenly. When she came in, she saw Paraberiel perching on a stool and reading from the unnamed brown book. When he looked up and saw Hwilli, he said nothing, just ostentatiously put the book into a cupboard and made sure that the door stayed shut. He caught her watching him and gave her a bland little smile.
You swine!
Hwilli thought. Master Jantalaber hurried in from the corridor.
“Ah, there you are, Hwilli, good,” Jantalaber said. “If you’d finish working with those herbs? I’m afraid the prince has summoned me for some reason. The servant didn’t know why, so I have no idea how long I’ll be gone.”
“Of course, Master.”
“Thank you. Par, come with me.”
Paraberiel hesitated, turning toward the cupboard.
“You can leave the book there,” Jantalaber said. “Hwilli can look at it if she wishes.”
Paraberiel opened his mouth as if he were about to protest, but Jantalaber was striding out of the room. Reluctantly, he followed the master. Hwilli waited until they were well and truly gone, then went to the cupboard and took out the little brown book. As soon as she opened it, she realized why the master had been so casual.
Although it was written in the usual syllabary, and the language seemed the usual language of the People, she had no idea what anything meant, simply because the scattered notes—mere jottings, really, in Jantalaber’s familiar script—contained a welter of unfamiliar words. Astral, convoluted, etheric, a long list of what seemed to be names, a variety of words marked with various verbal forms, another list of what seemed to be places—dweomer terms, she realized suddenly, referring to things that she’d never be judged fit to know. The master had drawn a few sketchy diagrams here and there of something he seemed to be planning on building, but she understood none of them. She shut the book with a snap and shoved it back into its cupboard.
Had the master been mocking her, when he’d told his other favored apprentice to let her see the book? While she carefully turned each leafy plant on the wooden drying racks, that question tormented her. Jantalaber returned alone just as she’d gotten about halfway through her task.
“My apologies for letting you do all that,” he said. “Par resents you, you know, because you’re smarter than he is, so I knew he’d hinder rather than help you.”
Hwilli nearly dropped the rack she was carrying. Jantalaber smiled, then picked a stalk of eyebright from the tray and sniffed it.
“Yes, you can put those back,” he said. “They’re not quite ready. Did you look at the book?”
“I did. I understood none of it. Of course.”
“Of course?” He quirked a pale eyebrow.
“Isn’t that why you let me look at it? Because you knew I couldn’t make sense of it?”
“That wasn’t it at all.”
Hwilli felt herself blush. She hurriedly turned away and carried the rack to the drying room, lined with shelves to hold the wooden racks. The scents of over fifty different herbs seemed to thicken the air, as if she’d walked into a foggy day. The master followed her.
“I’ve often gotten the impression,” Jantalaber said, “that you’re very much interested in dweomerworkings.”
“I know they’re forbidden to me.”
“By tradition, certainly. By common sense, not at all.”
Her hands started shaking. She slid the rack into its place on the shelves before she did drop it and disgrace herself.
“I’ve learned as much from you as you have from me, Hwilli,” the master continued. “All our traditions say that your folk cannot learn dweomer, simply cannot. I suspect that those traditions arose because none of the People ever bothered to get to know your folk.”
“I—” She spun around to find him smiling at her.
“Now, I’ve taught my apprentices to put any guesses and surmises about healing to the test, haven’t I? I’d like to put my suspicion to the test. Do you want to share Nalla’s lessons?”
“I’d like naught better in the world!”
“So I thought. If you hadn’t bothered to look at the brown book, I never would have offered, by the by. But I felt that you’d be curious enough, and you were.”
“Thank you, I don’t know how to thank you enough—”
“You’re very welcome. Now, about that book. Doubtless, you noticed that it only contained notes in my hand.”
“I did.”
“They’re notes toward an idea that lies near to my heart, a special place we could use for healing and naught but healing. This fortress exists to serve death. We healers exist to serve life, and we need a place free of death to study healing, somewhere that possesses healing in its very nature. You won’t understand all this at first.” Suddenly he laughed, and his eyes took on an excitement she’d never seen there before. “I don’t truly understand it all myself. For now, let me just say that other masters in the healing arts agree and are planning on helping me build such a place.”
“It sounds splendid.”
“It might well be splendid, when we’re done.” He let the smile fade. “Assuming, of course, that we can finish the work now, with the Meradan raiding and killing. Ah well, who knows what the gods have in store for any of us?”
“Or what our destiny will be.” Hwilli felt abruptly cold and shivered. “And perhaps that’s just as well.”
Jantalaber laughed again, but his normally silvery voice took on a hard edge. “Perhaps,” he said. “For now, though, I want you to look at the first three pages of that book again. I’ll wager there are words there you don’t know. Memorize them, then ask Nalla or me what they mean.”
“I already have. Memorized them, I mean. I never thought I’d be allowed to ask.”
“Well, you are.” He paused, turned toward the door, and listened to a noise outside. “Ah, yes. Nalla, come in. Hwilli’s agreed.”
Laughing, Nalla rushed into the herbroom. She caught Hwilli’s hands in both of hers and squeezed them. “I know it,” she announced, “I know you can do this!”
“Thank you.” Hwilli was thinking,
I know it, too.
“But the others? What will they say?”
“I’m going to teach you the first steps myself, just the two of us,” Nalla said. “Once you’ve caught up to the others, there’ll be naught for them to say.”
Which means they won’t like seeing me among them, doesn’t it?
Aloud, Hwilli said, “That will be splendid, then.”
While the two apprentices finished turning the drying herbs, Hwilli learned the meaning of the words that had so puzzled her. Nalla also gave her the first principle of magical studies. All things are made of a light that has shone since the beginning of the world, but light that has been convoluted, twisting around itself, bending around other rays of light, gaining substance and form with every twist and interaction, melding itself into matter in the way that a master blacksmith pattern-welds a sword from separate strips of iron.
“Meditate on that,” Nalla told her. “The teachers say that it’s the key to everything. I don’t know why, because I’m not advanced enough.”
“You mean you’ve not worked hard enough,” Jantalaber said, grinning. “Follow your own advice, Nalla.”
Nalla blushed, but she managed to smile.
For the rest of that day, Hwilli felt as if she were floating through her usual work and study. The door to the treasure chamber had swung open, a door that she’d been sure would always remain shut and locked. When she went to Gerontos and Rhodorix’s chamber to examine her patient, her splendid mood withstood Gerontos’ own foul temper. That evening he did little but complain into the black crystal. The leg ached, when could he walk on it, he hated lying still all day, the cast smelled bad and itched, on and on until she was tempted to drug him into silence.
“If you’re patient now,” she said instead, “you’ll heal properly. If you refuse to lie still for a few more days, the leg will be twisted and strange. Which do you want?”
Gerontos set the crystal down, then crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. Rhodorix got from his seat by the window and walked over to pick up the black pyramid.
“There’s a third choice,” he said, grinning. “Your older brother can tie you down to the bed so tightly that you can’t move until the cursed leg heals.”
Gerontos said something that made Rhodorix laugh. “Just try,” he answered. “Not that you could right now, anyway.”
Gerontos said something else in a less angry tone of voice.
“That’s better,” Rhodorix said. “He tells me that he’s sorry if he offended you. Offending me is somewhat else again, but I can’t begrudge it to him.”
“Just so. Please tell him that he really will get better if he lets the leg heal in its own time.”
Rhodorix repeated what she’d told him. With a sigh Gerontos nodded his agreement. Hwilli gave him his carefully measured dose of the opium tincture, then packed up her supplies.
“I’ll carry those back for you,” Rhodorix said, “if I may.”
She hesitated, but the night had turned late enough that Master Jantalaber would have left the herbroom.
“My thanks,” she said, “I’d like that.”
Rhodorix carried her sack of medicaments, then waited, glancing around the herbroom, watching her put things away by candlelight. Without asking, he escorted her back to her chamber. Neither of them spoke on the short walk, but Hwilli could feel her heart pounding so hard that she wondered if he could hear it. At the door she hesitated, clutching the white crystal in one hand while he held up the black.
“You look particularly beautiful tonight,” he said. “Your hair’s like the winter sun, it gleams so.”
“Oh, listen to you! You should be a bard.”
“You inspire me, that’s all.”
He caught her chin in his free hand and kissed her, a long lingering kiss that made her gasp for breath. She leaned back against the corridor wall, and he stepped closer to kiss her again.
“Could you favor me?” he murmured.
“Can’t you see I already do?” She regretted her bluntness the instant she’d spoken.
He laughed. “I had hopes that way, but I’d not get you in trouble with your master. What will he do if he finds out you’ve got a man?”
The question puzzled her. The women here in the fortress had always taken lovers when they wanted them, whether anyone else had approved or not.
“Naught,” she said. “Why would he do anything? I’m only his apprentice, not his daughter or suchlike.”
“Well, then.” He smiled, his eyes eager, as if he were waiting for something.
“Then what?”
“Then will you invite me in?”
“Oh!” She realized that despite everything he’d said and done, she’d still been doubting herself. “Of course.”
As they went inside, he shut the door firmly behind them. He put his crystal down on the stool by her lectern, then slipped his arms around her before she could do the same. He drew her close and kissed her with the white pyramid caught between them. When his hands slid down to her buttocks, she felt so aroused that she nearly dropped the precious crystal. He laughed, caught it in one broad hand, and turned away to put it down next to the black.
Hwilli pulled her dress over her head and let it fall to the floor. She lay down on her bed, so narrow that he barely fit next to her, but once his arms were around her, it became all the comfort they needed.
After their lovemaking, she drowsed in his arms, only to wake when a pale gray light filtered through the window. He woke as well, to turn onto his side and contemplate her face. He was smiling, and with a gentle finger he traced the shape of her lips.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. “I’m honored that you’d favor a man like me.”
“Oh, don’t say daft things.” She kissed his fingertips. “I’m the one who’s honored.”
“Indeed? You’re a healer, you can read and write, and what am I? Just a fighting man who happens to know horsecraft.”
“I’d say you know women just as well. I—” Hwilli stopped, abruptly surprised. “Wait! I’m understanding every word you say. The crystals are still over there.”
Rhodorix sat up, twisting to look at the lectern and the stool, where indeed the two crystals sat some five feet distant.
“Ye gods!” He lay back down. “Well, that’s a handy thing, then.” He started to say more, but the priestly gongs began announcing the dawn in a racket of struck bronze. Rhodorix swore and winced, then waited till the sound died away. “Why in the name of every god do they keep making that wretched noise?”
“In the name of every god, just like you said.” Hwilli grinned at him. “It’s the priests’ duty to mark the points of the passing days, and the days themselves, the cycles of the moon and the sun, the rising of some of the stars, all of the heavenly things. That’s why the prince built this fortress up so high, so the priests would be closer to the stars.”
“I think me that the sun would rise without them making all that cursed clamor.”