The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [35]
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 minuscule 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 I was standing or holding my wrist or suchlike.”
“Gods, I doubt if you’ll find me as harsh a master as Cullyn of Cerrmor must have been. Now, let’s see. It’s easier to start with a picture than it is with a solid thing, somehow. We can search the marketplace for a painted scroll.”
“Oh come now, you don’t expect to find some rare dweomer book right out in the Myleton market, do you?”
“Of course not, but we don’t want one. What we need is the sort of thing a merchant’s wife would have in her reception chamber to amuse a guest, a little scroll with four or five colored drawings on it, maybe pictures of famous temples, maybe seacoast views—that sort of mundane thing. Trained slaves copy them out by the hundreds, so we should be able to find one with little trouble. You need a complicated thing to keep your mind alive while you do the wretched exercises.”
“Whatever you say. What comes after learning to hold pictures in your mind?”
“Oh, extensions of the basic work. You start by maybe changing some details of the picture you’re seeing mentally—adding clouds in the sky, say, or putting in a tree. Then, let’s see … uh well … eventually you have to pretend you’re in the picture yourself and looking around at all its various parts … I know we did that …” His voice trailed away.
“You don’t really remember it all, do you?”
“You may berate me for a wretched and most frivolous elf, if you wish, because, alas, alack, well-a-day, and so on and so forth, you speak the truth. I do remember the beginning banishing ritual, though, and that’s truly important for someone in your state of mind.”
“Well and good then. What is it?”
“There’s no time to go into it right now. If we’re going to buy horses, we have to get to the market before it closes for the midday heat, so let’s wait till we’re out on the road. But don’t let me forget to show it to you.”
It occurred to Jill that, as harsh ordeals went, learning dweomer from Salamander was going to have its moments.
Before they went to the market, Salamander did his usual morning’s scrying. His face all narrow-eyed concentration, the gerthddyn bent over the glowing embers in the charcoal brazier and watched as strange images moved among them. All at once he smiled and began to speak in a whisper.
“Finally! He’s riding up to a city, my turtledove, so we can—now wait, what’s this? Hell-ice and foul humors! Rhodry’s been sold again! Curse it all! I can see him riding behind some new master.” He paused for a long moment. “Ah, finally! They’re going into