Beyond the Moon Sea, page 12
“I’d think they would keep the book from you,” Kores said, recalling the copies in the Blue Hall.
“It’s used by tutors,” Ualek said. “That’s how I learned to read.” He came from a high-ranking family with wealth enough to hire a master as a tutor. The master had either borrowed the book indefinitely or made a copy. Expressly forbidden as that was, grand oaths couldn’t hold a man for a lifetime. Eventually, such an oath would wear and fray his will. Knowledge was like water. It would find a way out if it could.
The room had grown still, and Cara made fewer rounds. The tavern was mostly empty.
“Lads, what do you know of Master Rorin Halstid?” Kores asked.
They shook their heads.
“He teaches history,” Kores added.
They laughed.
“No one takes history unless they have to,” Senby said. His eyes drooped as the pints finally claimed his energy. “Who wants to sit through hours of lecturing on the lineage of Ranthe Ulsic, the Marshals of Ulsic, and the Judges of Berrich? Your stories are better.”
They rapped the table with their knuckles.
“I wish they’d let you lecture, Master,” Ualek said softly. His brow furrowed thoughtfully. “You could speak about whether the Mornae caused the great wasting. Those are the things we wish to learn and discuss.”
Kores shook his head. “I don’t know whether they did or didn’t. It would be a brief lecture.”
They laughed, but Ualek looked down into his mug.
“I’ll be glad if they stay far away and we never hear of them again,” Jaren said firmly. “Leave the east to madmen and sorcerers. If any still exist.” He held up his mug, and the others joined in.
“Witches and demons,” Senby added, holding up his mug.
“Don’t forget the giants,” Maril said with a chuckle.
Ualek joined the toast reluctantly, and Kores not at all.
15
Kores studied a heavy, iron-bound door behind the headmaster’s oversized desk. What treasures hid behind it? His gaze blurred, avoiding Masters Powle and Arnet to the side of Headmaster Gadrey, arms crossed, brows stern. Master Talbin stood apart by the window, inscrutable.
An assistant finished pouring hot tea for all and left them.
“Where are my maps, Master Kores?” Gadrey said in a weary voice. He didn’t care about the map’s contents. He just needed to scratch out the line item in his ledger and close out the contract.
“I’ve left them with the quartermaster. As usual.”
Arnet gave Powle a look and took a step forward.
“And your notes?” she asked. Rail thin, hard, and sharp as an Ulsic axe, she descended through her mother from Ranthe himself. The family crest dominated the embroidery on her master’s mantle, obscuring the Artificery’s simple emblem. “We could at least get a sense of the land from them.”
“The notes would make no sense to you in their current state,” Kores said. “Most of the information is in my head.” A lie, but he wasn’t averse to lying in this case. They’d not value what he’d written there. Slop for pigs.
“You will turn the notes over,” Arnet said, jaw tense. A prominent vein splitting her forehead throbbed. “You must.”
Kores stiffened. Was she about to recite the oath to him? He’d never been comfortable handing over his notes. The finished product was one thing. The sweat, blood, and tears—the love—that went into his notes was another, especially when he handed over his notes to scholars who’d cringe and grimace at every page. He needed to shape the words, put it in a form they could appreciate. It pained him to think how little they’d value the Wedoni because of their rituals.
Powle and Arnet crowded around Gadrey.
“I’ll be upfront with you,” Gadrey said, “out of respect for your decades of service.”
That’s what they said before they retired you, or worse. Thirty years ago, he’d thought of the young Gadrey as a visionary headmaster, but Gadrey had aged in the wrong direction. A cruel trick of time to see him so unlike the way he’d been.
“We can’t afford you,” Arnet said flatly. The headmaster nodded, as if pulled by a hidden string. “Patrons are not lining up to pay your way any longer.”
Inolf Gadrey wasn’t a hard man, but he was in a hard position. Since its founding one hundred and fifty-two years ago, the Schools had been a place of learning and growth. Now, the pressures of maintaining villages, towns, and a growing population were affecting every academy. The powerful no longer wished to pay for maps of faraway places. They were too busy carving up their holdings to make room for the next generation or tearing down places like the Yollswood. They’d till every inch… like every person.
“I don’t need the pension,” Kores said.
Master Talbin’s brow furrowed. They all looked at him with pity. They knew the wealth he had. He’d depended on the Schools since his teens. Even before entering, he’d served as a messenger.
Master Powle stepped forward, a wry smirk on his lips. He was the ice to Arnet’s fire. “Master Kores, you take months and sometimes years longer than it would take others to produce the maps. You disappear. We hear disturbing rumors.”
“What rumors would those be?”
“We do not wish to retire you,” Gadrey said.
He looked earnest. And wearied. His fingers tightened on a parchment. He had finally said the word Kores had been waiting to hear for over twenty years. Kores had expected to hear it from the previous headmaster after the Juula mission, but Gadrey had been young then, impressionable, and Kores had been a man of fame. Now Gadrey was bald, graying, and pressured on all sides by those seeking his office. Two of them leaned over him now.
“Just last week,” the headmaster said, “I received this request for a master cartographer and surveyor. You are more than qualified. In a judge’s hall.” He held up the letter, his eyes pleading for Kores’s acceptance.
“A Dalmothi that shows the signs should have the dignity to retire early and find work elsewhere,” Powle said. “So as not to be a burden to the Schools.”
By signs, he meant slow aging. Kores was one of three Dalmothi who had made the oath. The other two had passed before they’d reached seventy, one swept away in a river flood and the other lost in a western wilderness beyond the Pikes. Accidental and convenient, their losses spared the Schools having this same discussion with them. Dalmothi preferred their own academy in Dalway, anyway—no oaths required and no concern over their unnatural longevity. But the knowledge shared there was poor compared to that of the Schools, or at least was of a different kind. Even Berrich’s academies couldn’t compare.
“And you are a burden,” Arnet said with a snort.
Talbin gave no sign of support. Kores had liked him as a student, but now at fifty years old, Talbin’s concerns had shifted. His brother was a marshal and his sister sat on the High Council.
Practical.
Kores flicked caked mud away from his pants. His hand settled on a stubborn blood stain.
“I’ll forgo the pension,” he said with a broad smile. “And the cottage. Even my collection of artifacts.”
It stung to say it. The headmaster was a witness to his will. Everything Kores owned would go to the Schools.
Arnet and Powle bristled. Master Arnet leaned down to the headmaster’s ear, tapping a volume on the desk.
Gadrey lifted the slim book. “This has become a problem.”
Kores leaned over to inspect the cover and grinned. He’d written it fifteen years ago. One of his best.
“The Unseen Forces of Nature: Thaumaturgy of the Northern Tribes.” Gadrey read each word slowly and sighed. “Why mention the power of divines in a book about northerners? No one would take offense otherwise.”
“What unseen forces are you speaking of?” Arnet asked.
“Did you read the book?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“And what can these tribes, so primitive, know of thaumaturgy?” Powle persisted. “It must be hysteria.”
The headmaster raised a hand to silence them all. “The problem is that you mention the Nerathi. The clans of southern Berrich have been trying to extend the New Dominion’s rule to them for some time.”
“Students are arguing against the annexation, based on this book,” Powle said, “because the Nerathi possess a supernatural command of the wind, or some such.”
“Are you suggesting these cliff-dwelling primitives can control weather?” Arnet asked.
“Didn’t Powle’s ancestors once communicate through silverbarks?” Kores quipped.
Powle raised his chin.
“And the Nerathi?” Arnet demanded.
“They claim they can protect their lands from the salt sprays.”
Masters Arnet and Powle dismissed the suggestion.
“You’re saying ordinary people can protect the lands more than the celestials with their shields of golden light?” Arnet’s voice had risen and echoed off the stone walls of the headmaster’s cramped chamber.
“Master Luthar wrote about the Nerathi eighty years ago.” Luthar was Ranthe’s second son and Arnet’s great uncle. That quieted her for a moment.
“It’s only thirty square miles,” Gadrey added. “There is tin in the hills.”
There it was, finally.
“I don’t think the Alcar would approve of taking a people’s land for tin,” Kores said.
Powle blushed crimson. “The Alcar leave the governance of each member to its own oversight. If these people wish to join—”
Gadrey held up his hand once more. “We need not discuss politics now. The point is that your influence on the next generations of scholars presses against our need to find them positions and keep the support of wealthy clans and guilds. Things are changing.”
“We cannot carry so many non-teaching positions,” Arnet said.
“I could teach, then?” Kores asked. “Or survey the plots of land offered so generously? Or are those only for students?”
Powle stiffened. Arnet fumed. They must be in on it, whatever it was.
Gadrey looked down at his desk. A band of stringy gray hair fell across his face, revealing the shiny crown of his head. “Why not accept the position with Judge Alsnor? It will keep you well fed and cared for. He even suggested one of his daughters. Your Dalmothi heritage is now undeniable. What is it now? One hundred thirty years?”
“Forty-eight.”
“You look barely thirty,” Arnet said.
“Indeed,” Powle said, his jaw still tight. “Alsnor is well-disposed to the idea of your blood mixing with his.”
Rumor had it that Kores’s longevity was because of Alcar blood far back in his bloodline, but his grandfather had always said it was because their clan lived near the great globe of Dalway, and their pastures abutted the dust shield.
“It could be a fine life,” Gadrey said.
“We’ve had to remove this book from the student’s library,” Arnet said.
Kores remained calm. He knew the young would find a way to copy the book, even those hidden away.
“I have placed it in the headmaster’s vault,” Gadrey said, glancing over his shoulder at the iron door. “It will be safe there.”
“It has value, Master Kores,” Talbin said. “But there are so many things we do not yet comprehend. Is it so wrong to progress at a pace that promotes peace?”
This was the Alcar position. They never explained how the globes worked—small or large, health-giving, or shielding. The Schools never questioned how it all worked. What good would it do if they couldn’t summon power themselves? It would just upset the masses.
“Do you plan to write about the man-eaters?” Arnet asked. “What powers did you find among them?”
Powle chuckled.
Arnet had always been jealous of Kores. She was the type of master to let inaccurate maps adorn the lecture hall and hide away unwanted books in halls that no one would ever visit. All to maintain order and peace. He was beginning to think they all thought this way, even Talbin. He was the strange one, the one that didn’t belong.
“See, this is yet another thing we can’t allow. Not now… when…” Gadrey’s voice trailed off, but there was an urgency to his words.
Kores recalled the metallic taste in his mouth. “The Wedoni are an unusually strong and healthy people. Their elders live well into their hundred years. Their children do not die as ours do.”
“You suggest they find power in eating the flesh of other men?” Arnet sneered at him.
“I suggest they have a power like the Alcar’s,” Kores countered. “The Nerathi have a power. A shame that we may lose it in a generation of coupling with Berrichmen.”
Arnet held her tongue and looked away. The truth was hard. Ulsic children often failed to reach their tenth year. Berrich’s lived only a year or two more.
“Kores, you must decide,” Gadrey said. “Would an honorable retirement be so evil?”
Powle leaned back, imperious. “Retirement has its rules.”
“There is another option you fail to mention,” Kores said.
The masters all straightened, shocked. Gadrey shook his head slowly, lips tight.
“You wouldn’t leave the Schools,” Powle said. “Abandon your seat?”
Whatever Powle might think of him, there was a grudging respect and the honor of the Schools to think of. Kores was the only master remaining from the earliest generation of scholars. The council did not want him out of the Schools, they wanted to control him within the Schools—to make him a dancing puppet, even an infamous one, for their own purposes.
“We are aware of your financial situation, Master Kores,” Talbin said. “You need the master’s chair. Separation shouldn’t even be an option.”
No matter where he went in the world or for how long, the chair was always there, waiting for him. Even if it offered only a pittance in payment and a stone cottage, it was more than an Ulsinga or Berrichman could expect out of life. An enviable position he could no longer tolerate.
Kores waited a moment to let the implications of his renunciation sink in, and then he stood to leave. “Can I have a few days to think about the position?”
Gadrey grimaced. He’d wanted it all resolved that day. “Only a few. Three at most.”
The headmaster looked small, patting Alsnor’s letter helplessly. His eyes repeated the sentiment. Take this position. Please.
Kores smiled warmly. His mind had drifted in a different direction. Let them think he was speaking of separation and not the strange letter beckoning him to Oreno.
“I will let you know, Headmaster. I thank you all. Good day, Masters.”
He left them there; Arnet and Powle, fumed and hissed at poor Gadrey. Talbin returned to looking out the window.
As on his journeys, Kores had read the terrain carefully, assessing the wind, following the pattern of the rivers, establishing his position beneath the stars. His own heart would find the right way home.
16
Kores’s mind and body rebelled against sleep, twitching as if expecting a journey. He let out an exhausted sigh and folded his arms behind his head, trying not to think of the headmaster’s well-meaning threats to his freedom.
“He wants to talk to me in person?” he asked a row of Badak wooden idols, arranged on top of a Sadti wicker box used for storing spirits.
It was a question, but also a statement. An Alcar wanted to speak with him. Was this Mahl as infamous as Kores? The Alcar lived in a light-filled world, enchanted beyond imagining, behind masks and foreboding woods. Did they suffer the machinations of politics, the struggles of society, like all peoples? He chuckled at the thought of tall, stiff figures gossiping about each other through golden masks.
But why would they want him? The questions scratched at his mind like a dog digging for vermin.
This strange request could save him from an ignominious or dull end. This could be a chance to do more than he’d ever been able to do before. He knew he’d become complacent. Rumors and gossip had inflated what he’d accomplished. He’d not countered them with the ugly, dirty, dreadful truths of what he’d seen and experienced on his travels. Derro wisely cut himself off from it all.
He stared at the ceiling. Lengths of Selanathi fishing net drooped across the rafters. Shell lures trapped in the tangles twinkled with the power still alive in the line woven from sela vines. He’d never learned how these fisher people did it. Did the Selanathi even know how their magic worked?
There had to be more to Mahl’s letter. Something he’d missed.
He leapt from bed and stood by his desk. He placed his hand near the Alcar light globe on the table. It was his master’s globe, awarded to him upon the completion of his apprenticeship under Master Santhor. A faint tugging sensation in his hand indicated the globe had a sliver of power in it, just enough to ignite. Most masters could not light one so depleted, but he was Dalmothi, and little tricks like this were their specialty. Orange, then yellow, and finally brilliant white light gathered in the glass globe until it illuminated the table. He poured day-old, cold coffee in a clay Nulathi cup and sat down.
First, he examined the letter with a magnifying lens. Such devices were wildly expensive, but its creator, Hain Paulik, had given it to him because of a defect. Hain had been trying to make Alcar glass for globes. Instead, he’d discovered how to make a magnifying glass. Since his early failures, Hain had learned to grind the glass to make lenses for those with poor vision. But after the initial excitement of his discovery, they hid their lenses for fear of appearing hopeless. It was a strange superstition. They expected the Alcar globes would heal every defect, even poor sight.
Hain retired from the Schools and became mysteriously wealthy. People must have been buying his creations in secret. The masters did no further work on the lenses, though, and headmasters encouraged them to work on other projects. Making globes and enchanted devices was proper work for the Alcar.
Kores held the glass at an angle, avoiding the defect, and the text on the page expanded. Each letter, one after another, filled the glass. He examined the empty spaces but found nothing unusual.
