The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [191]
Since Jill could barely control them even then, she went cold all over at the prospect. With a dramatic sigh Salamander sprawled onto the cushioned divan.
“Food,” he said abruptly. “Eating somewhat generally helps shut things down. It’s tediously difficult to work any dweomer on a full stomach. Drink dulls the mind right down, too. But I doubt me if that’s going to be enough. I’ve no right to do anything of the sort, but I’m going to have to teach you some apprentice tricks of the exalted trade.”
“And what makes you think I want to learn them?”
“Your basic desire to stay sane and alive, that’s what. Don’t be a dolt, Jill! You’re like a wounded man who’s afraid to have the chirurgeon stop his bleeding because pressing on the wound might hurt.” He paused, and he seemed to be studying the air all around her. “Well, you’re too worked up now to try a lesson. How about food, indeed? The Great Krysello is famished. If you wouldn’t mind assuming your guise of beauteous barbarian handmaiden, go down and ask the innkeep to send up a tray of meats and fruits. And a flagon of wine, too.”
“I’m hungry myself.” She managed to smile. “O mighty master of mysterious arts.”
“Do you know what the whole secret of the dweomer is?” Salamander asked abruptly. “Making pictures in your mind. Just that and little else—making the right sort of pictures and saying the right words to go with them. How does that strike you?”
Startled, Jill looked up from her breakfast.
“Are you sure you’re not having a jest on me?”
“I’m not, though I know it must sound like one. There’s this book we all study—eventually you’ve got to learn to read, my little turtledove—which is known as the Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid, though I’ve been told that it’s actually a lot of short bits and aphorisms jotted down by various dweomermasters over the years. Be that as it may, there’s one particular piece that springs to my mind at the moment. ‘You could go to the marketplace and, like a gerthddyn, preach aloud the secret of all dwoemer without one soul being a wit’s worth wiser.’ Do you know why? Because it’s so simple everyone would sneer. Or to be precise: simple to describe, cursed hard to do.”
“I’ll admit to fighting the urge to sneer if all you’re talking about is a lot of pictures.”
“Aha, I know a challenge when I hear one. Very well.” He held up his elaborately jeweled table dagger. “Look at this for a moment. Then shut your eyes. Try to see the dagger as clearly as you could with your eyes open—a memory picture, like.”
Although Jill stared at the dagger for a long moment, she did so blankly, as if she could soak it up the way a bit of rag soaks up spilled ale. As soon as she shut her eyes, its image was gone, and no amount of struggling with her memory would bring a clear picture back. With an oath she looked again, and this time she actively tried to memorize the details, but she could only retain the vaguest general impression, more of a daggerlike shape than a dagger.
“Harder than it sounds?” Salamander was grinning at her frustration.
“It is.”
“By the time you’re done with your ’prentice-work, you’ll be able to walk into a chamber you’ve never seen before, stay but a few minutes, yet be able to call up a picture of that chamber so clearly that you’d swear you were standing inside it. You’ll curse the work before you’re done, too, because learning how to manipulate images is the most boring thing in the world. Think of it as a test, my miniscule finch. The bard tales talk about suffering mysterious ordeals both harsh and lurid to gain the dweomer, but are you willing to be bored sick with it? That’s the true test of every apprentice.”
“When my father was teaching me how to use a sword, he drilled me until I wanted to weep. Have you ever lunged at a bale of hay over and over in the hot sun? Some days I’d do it a hundred times, while he stood there and criticized the way