The Floodgate - Elaine Cunningham [9]
Matteo sighed, envying the lad his certainty. Life had been simpler when the credo of jordaini service-truth, Halruaa, and the wizard-lords-were three seamless aspects of a sacred whole.
The headmaster's tower rose in a stately curve of white marble, resembling a slender stalk crowned by a budding lotus flower. The immense scale did not distort the sense of grace and serenity this blossom exuded. A lush garden surrounded the tower, and servants clad in simple green garments went about their tasks.
Despite the prohibitions on magic use, the wizard's tower did not look out of place. The jordaini were taught to know magic nearly as well as any wizard.
Matteo could recognize hundreds of spells just from the gesture of a wizard's hand or from the combined scent of the spell components.
Having wizards for masters had always seemed normal and natural to him.
"Normal and natural," Matteo muttered, with more bitterness than he'd realized he harbored. But there was nothing natural about the image that haunted him daily-an aging woman with a wan face and vacant eyes. He did not know her name. He knew nothing about her, except that she had given him life.
Oddly enough, if Tzigone's hints proved true, his father's name was well known to him. Most likely he had heard it his whole life without knowing its significance.
Since his return to the Jordaini College, Matteo often found himself searching his former masters' faces in search of his own reflection. Of all the masters, Ferris Grail was most like him in appearance. This added an unsettling edge to the coming interview.
A green-robed servant admitted Matteo and led him to a small antechamber to await the headmaster's summons. Here Matteo sat, and when he could no longer sit, he paced. He had ample time for both, for the sun rose to its zenith and sank a distance more than three times its diameter before the servant appeared again. By then Matteo was quietly seething. Why would Ferris Grail call him to the tower and then keep him waiting?
He schooled his face to calm and entered the headmaster's study. Two wizards awaited him. Ferris Grail was a tall man in late middle life, thickly muscled and clad in the simple white garments of a jordain. He might have been mistaken for one of the warrior-scholars but for his neatly trimmed black beard and the gold talisman bearing his wizard's sigil. Had he been jordaini he would have gone clean-shaven, and worn a medallion enameled with the jordaini emblem: semicircles of green and yellow, divided by a lightning bolt of cobalt blue. The second wizard was older, wizened by the passage of time and the casting of powerful magic. Vishna, Matteo's favorite master, had been a battle wizard before he'd retired to teach at the Jordaini College.
Ferns Grail waved Matteo in. "There is a message for you," he said without preamble, gesturing to a moonstone globe mounted on a pedestal.
Matteo glanced at it, and his brow furrowed in consternation. Reflected in the globe was a woman's face, pale as porcelain and preternaturally serene. Her dark eyes were expressionless, skillfully painted with kohl, and enormous in her unnaturally white face. It was a beautiful face, framed by an elaborate wig of white and silver curls, upon which rested a silver crown.
"Queen Beatrix is waiting," urged the headmaster.
The young jordain shot him an incredulous look. Ferris Grail cleared his throat. "The queen knows the restriction upon her jordaini counselors. She would not summon you through magic if the need were not great. Service to Halruaa's wizards is the first rule you must follow."
Matteo was not certain of that, but upon reflection he decided there was no real harm in the scrying globe. Just that morning, he and Andris had practiced with swords rather than matched daggers, the traditional jordaini weapons. Truth was not flexible. The length of weapons and the means of communicating with one's patron were.
His conscience accepted