The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [54]
Although the work took them most of the evening, Jantalaber never returned. She could imagine that the two dweomermasters talked deep into the night about arcane matters indeed, far beyond her understanding.
From that night on, Maraladario took to coming to the herbroom in the evenings. She would sit on the high stool and idly watch the two apprentices work while she chatted with Jantalaber about their proposed place of healing. Hwilli understood very little of what they were saying, and while Paraberiel pretended he understood, he never could explain it to her when she asked. Now and then she did recognize phrases, but others, such as forced convolution of the astral light, ensouling the egregore, and sigils of evocation, slipped through her mind like fingerlings through a wide-meshed fishnet.
Gradually, however, she began to build up an understanding of the general scheme. The two dweomermasters planned to build up an illusion of a place with so much dweomer energy behind it that in ordinary times it would look and feel and behave exactly like a real place. Yet it would have some extraordinary properties, since it would be only an illusion. As a nod to the troubled times, Maral wanted to give the site the power to move itself away from threatening danger. That mysterious egregore, it turned out, meant a body of knowledge about healing that would exist in a sort of bubble out on the astral plane. Any dweomerworker with the necessary skills would be able to learn the knowledge without the intermediary of a teacher.
“Someone extraordinarily talented,” Maral remarked one evening, “could even get to it from the Gatelands of Sleep.”
“Mistress?” Paraberiel asked. “Does that mean in dreams?”
“Dreams of a sort, a very special sort.” Maral frowned at the far wall. “I wish Nalla hadn’t been sent away. She showed promise in that area of the work.”
“Could she perhaps come back, Mistress?” Hwilli said. “In the spring, if it’s safe.”
“Perhaps so. I’ll speak to the prince about it.”
“I’d like to have her join us, too,” Jantalaber said. “Well, we’ll see. Now, I think your idea of placing our site on an island is a good one. The ocean’s too violent, but a lake, a good-sized lake like the Lake of the Leaping Trout, that would be ideal.” He turned and looked at Hwilli. “Why a lake?”
Hwilli gulped and forced her scattered thoughts calm. “The vibrations of the water veil?” she said at last. “They’d be like sticks and stones to build with.”
“Very good!” Maral raised a surprised eyebrow. “You have an affinity for this working, Hwilli. Excellent!”
Hwilli ducked her head and forced out a modest smile, but she felt like shouting in glee, that Maraladario had praised her.
One evening, Jantalaber took his two apprentices to visit Maral in her chambers. He made a silver dweomer light to float ahead of them as they crossed a courtyard glittering with hard frost. Dark clouds hung low in the sky, and the very air itself breathed out cold. The stairway in the Tower of the Sages seemed almost warm by contrast, as did Maral’s chambers when they reached them.
As the head of the dweomermasters, Maral had a brazier in her reception room and the charcoal to fuel it. Spirits of the air hovered round to whisk any fumes away through a tiny vent in a nearby window. Maral, however, had draped herself in two cloaks. As the servant ushered them in, through an open doorway they could see her pacing back and forth in an inner chamber.
“She feels the cold badly,” her servant murmured. “Master Jantalaber, do you think she’s ill?”
“No,” Jantalaber said. “At her age, we all feel the cold.”
At the sound of his voice Maral came hurrying to greet them. Once they’d all sat down, and wine had been offered and refused, the servant bowed and took his leave.
“My thanks for coming here,” Maral said to Jantalaber. “The frost bothers me, and I didn’t care to go outside.”
“Of course,” Jantalaber said. “It’s never a burden to visit you.”
She smiled briefly then leaned back in her chair. “I’ve heard from the southern mages,” she said. “Now, you children