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 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’s 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 him, 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 up 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 favour 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,
