by Melanie Rawn
Collan chewed his lower lip and stared at his boots. Cailet. This child must go to Cailet. Nodding, he found his voice somewhere in the shocked hollowness of his chest and said, “I’ll take them to the Mage Captal. She might be able to help.”
Amilie Rosvenir sighed deeply, but didn’t thank him. “You’re wondering how I fit in.”
“Not really,” he said, surprising her. “I thought over what I know of the Rosvenirs last night. Your grandmother is First Daughter of the Name. Two of her brothers married sisters of a foresting family near the Wraithen Mountains. One had a grandson who was Savachel Maklyn’s roommate at St. Sesilla’s in Firrense. The other died when a tree fell on him. He fathered two daughters and a son, didn’t he?”
She nodded.
“You’re the cousin who asked Toman his name. You got word to the boy who knows Sava, and he sent me a message, and here we are.” When she blinked, he added, “I interview all Minstrelsy prospects. And after that, I have their lives turned inside out by those already working for me.” He didn’t tell her that Miram Ostin, who should’ve been at Census, regularly researched families for suspicious connections to the old government, especially to Anniyas and the Malerrisi. “I have a question, though. Why not send directly to the Captal?”
“Because I meant what I said about Viko Rosvenir,” she said bluntly. “He’s the only Mageborn we ever produced—and we’ve been trying to live it down ever since. You don’t understand how it is in South Lenfell. The less contact we have with Mages, the better.”
“Anniyas made you suffer, those years of the Purge?”
“Not entirely because of your involvement in the Rising,” she allowed grudgingly. “We’re a small Name, but with rich lands. There’s plenty who want them—Anniyas’s allies back then, the Domburs now, for all that their holdings are two Shirs away.”
Collan shrugged and got to his feet. Politics bored him, and he had enough troubles protecting his own Web to worry about the Rosvenirs’. “Let’s go see the child.”
“Will the Captal help?”
“She’ll try. No promises, except that she’ll try.” He smiled. “Her trying is usually more effective than anybody else’s doing.”
11
THANKS to Taguare Veliaz’s incisive report to the government, by 985 the school system run from Mage Hall had become a model for rural education. It began modestly enough in the summer of 971, when Cailet made the rounds of nearby Tillinshir villages to introduce herself and acquaint her new neighbors with her plans to build Mage Hall.
“Welcome, Captal, and more’n welcome!”
“Mages, y’say? For why?”
“No Mages hereabouts for twenty year’n more. We learnt to take care of our own.”
“Well, long as you bide quiet and don’t cause no trouble and pay your taxes—”
“Well, the Wardings back like in the old days would come in handy—up t’the backland, wolves and kyyos been at the herds somethin’ fierce.”
“Healers, too. Physicker comes by once a year ‘n’ never does much good when she does. Regular Healer’d come in handy, ‘specially for spring calving.”
If Cailet had thought that the proximity of a hundred Mageborns would be universally cheered, she was quickly educated otherwise. Oddly enough, the thing she’d thought would win them over proved to be the thing they were most wary of: a school.
In rural communities, girls learned reading from the local votaries (the texts were Lives of the Saints and other morally edifying works) and the family trade from their mothers and aunts. They needed nothing else. When Cailet proposed more—much more—the villagers smiled pityingly. When Cailet mentioned that the school would be for sons as well as daughters, they howled with laughter.
Sons worked. From birth until age six they were supervised by males of the family too old to work the fields. Then boys were assigned simple household chores or helped with the animals. As they grew older, their responsibilities increased. This was their training for marriage. As husbands, they were sought for specific skills needed by other families; the best workers married young. They worked until old age, and spent their last years tending grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What need had boys for reading and writing? Why spoil a boy’s mind and sully his natural simplicity of character with superfluous nonsense?
But in each gathering of villagers, Cailet saw a few women whose eyes gleamed with interest before they joined the general chorus of jeering disapproval. She remembered their faces and their Names, and on returning to the Mage Hall site conferred with her Senior Mages and the few among the survivors of Ambrai who came from Tillinshir.
For the most part, Cailet had followed the old organization of the Mage Guardians. She had a First Sword in Imilial Gorrst, a Master Healer in Elomar Adennos, an Archivist in Imi’s cousin Lirenza, and a Master of Warders in Granon Bekke. Other positions—Novice Master, Prentice Master, and a full complement of Captal’s Warders—would be filled as Mage Hall became established. But before she could begin the education of young Mageborns from all over Lenfell, she had to persuade the local populace that having so many Mage Guardians around wasn’t such a bad idea.
That summer of 971, Mage Hall existed only in architectural drawings. Seated around an arrangement of planks atop four logs (called the “conference table” only through courtesy), lively breezes ruffling pages of notes, the Captal, First Sword, Master Healer, Archivist, and four Tillinshir-born Mage Guardians began the campaign to win back all Lenfell.
“We start small,” Cailet said. “We have to. First, regular rounds from the Healers.” She eyed Elomar. “And no turning up your noses at treating a dry cow or a colicky horse, either.”
Elo gave her one of his vastly tolerant looks and said nothing. But Trez Shelan returned her grin. He was forty-one, a Healer Mage who barely survived the destruction of Ambrai and had walked with a limp ever since. “If they think like my great-grandmother,” he remarked, “they’ll sooner let us work on them than their animals.”
“Fine,” Cailet said. “Humans, cows, horses, or pet cats, I don’t care. Treat whatever’s sick, and be sure to tell them how to prevent future occurrences of the ailment if that’s applicable. Only tell them tactfully. Now, as for the Warriors—” She turned her gaze to Imilial Gorrst. “I don’t want any of you setting foot outside the Hall. I saw several locals itching to try their strength against you, just for the fun of it. The last thing I need is a challenge over swordskill.”
“Truly told, Captal.” Another of the Tillinshir Mages, hardly older than Cailet and only last week entered into the new Mage Lists as a Warrior, grabbed for a page about to be blown off the planks. “Truly told,” Maidia Keviron repeated, plunking a rock on the errant papers, “considering the size of some of these farmgirls and boys, we’d be the ones needing Healers.”
“Anytime, Maisha,” said Trez, with a refined leer Cailet could have sworn he’d learned from Collan. “My examining room is over there someplace,” he added, waving vaguely to a bare patch of ground outlined by the surveyor in green ropes.
“Settle down, children,” growled Lirenza Gorrst. “Elomar, Imi, control your Mages.”
Her cousin pretended offense. “We know how to behave. We’ve had lessons.”
Maidia Keviron tried to smooth her dark hair as she said, “Trouble is, the locals will want to lesson us. Captal, the Warrior Mages will have to participate in St. Caitiri’s and St. Delilah’s. They celebrate the holidays a little differently around here.” She went on to describe all-day festivals that included blacksmithing contests, nail-driving competitions, swordfights, and wrestling matches. “And there’s a special hour of Delilah’s devoted to Steen Swordsworn, when only men can compete.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Cailet groaned. “I can hardly wait.”
“We’ll go easy on ’em,” Imilial assured her.
“A dozen strapping farmboys who practice with scythes? Better pray to S
t. Delilah that they go easy on you. Well, at least we don’t have to worry about it until later this summer. But that reminds me—Snow Sparrow and Candleweek should be celebrated here. Rilla and Miryenne are both our Saints, after all. Make a list of all the local traditions, introduce a few from elsewhere, and let’s make that whole week between full moons an open party—something fun or interesting happening every day, with feasts on the Saints’ days. I want everyone in the area to see what we’re building here, and that we’re just people like them. Next order of business is the Scholars. Either of you three born close by?”
Agava Maklyn said hesitantly, “My mother’s great-uncle married into the Wentrins up near Tillin Lake.”
“I can do better than that,” Kembial Adennos said. “My father was a Wytte from Wretched Wreck.”
Cailet stared. “I beg your pardon? From where?”
Kembial—Mageborn like the majority of the Adennos Name, but completely uninterested in the medicine that so fascinated most of her cousins—grinned broadly. “You’d know it by its real name—Rikkard’s Rest. Mother rode in one afternoon for dinner and an overnight—and stayed for six weeks, trying to persuade First Daughter that she didn’t care about Fa’s pathetic dowry. Finally she got pregnant and demanded him as her husband so there’d be somebody to take care of the baby. That’s the way a lot of marriages happen around here. Families don’t want to part with the dower or a good strong farmhand until they absolutely have to, for one thing. And for another, the Wyttes were ashamed to marry off a son with so little to a real live Adennos.”
Agava stared at her. “But you were born during the Purge. Did your mother actually admit what she was? Adennos screams ‘Mage Guardian’ almost as loudly as Desse.”
“Ah, but our family is mostly Healers. Not Mother! Besides, why do you think she called me Kembial?”
Cailet silently thanked Lusath Adennos—also not a Healer in a line famous for them—for identifying the Saint: Kembial the Veiled, patron of fugitives.
“As for the dower,” the girl went on, “they finally settled on the best Clydie in the stables and two of her foals. Rent money used to come in every St. Jeymian’s, even when we were in hiding.” Suddenly Kembial looked surprised. “If they’re still alive, I own them now.”
Cailet nodded. “Then you’ve got a connection here. Good. You and Agava will be our first teachers. They’ll trust you with their daughters—and eventually with their sons.”
Agava Maklyn rubbed her forehead—deeply lined though she was only thirty-six; Anniyas’s Purge had been hard on her family. “Pardon my asking, Captal, but how do you plan to get around that? They’re not likely to want their boys educated.”
“We’ll see about that,” Imilial smiled.
The Scholars soon reestablished contact with their relations. In the process, they mentioned the advantages of educating daughters in more than the usual. A family of smiths, for instance, could do better if their girls knew the latest methods of assaying metal for impurities; farmers could keep up with the latest in soil replenishment techniques, pest control, and higher-yield crops if their daughters read the agricultural journals. There were dozens of reasons to educate a daughter beyond the bare basics, and in the course of their visits Kembial Adennos and Agava Maklyn casually mentioned them all. Change was looked on askance, of course—too many changes had happened since the Rising two years ago. But Cailet knew rural folk, and how tough life could be on them. If she offered music and dancing and poetry, she’d lose. So she offered improvements in their lives and incomes instead.
The villagers, advised by the Wyttes and Wentrins related to Mages, eventually agreed that schooling would be a good thing. Cailet, understanding the difficulties of distance, decided that one school would be impossible. She couldn’t ask young children to walk miles each way; wasting the family horse (assuming the family owned one) was out of the question. So Scholars would ride the circuit a day apart, and teach for one day in each village before moving on. This way, every girl would be in school two days a week. All Cailet asked from each village was a classroom. Barn, storeroom, shrine—anyplace out of the sun and wind and rain, with tables and chairs. She would supply books, paper, pencil, maps, and all else needed.
It worked.
Cailet longed to ride the circuit of nine villages herself to see how things progressed, but wisely kept out of the way. As Captal, she was intimidating at best. The reports Kembial and Agava brought back were enough to tell her the plan was a success. She added another two teachers; the girls were now in school four days of every ten.
After half a year, Cailet sent yet another Mage out on the circuit to establish a fifth teaching day—for boys. Women who seemed interested in having their sons learn were quietly contacted, and after a week or two of public outrage and empty classes, boys began to shuffle in—a few at first, then a few more, finally most of the area’s sons. Derision gave way to a demand: why only one day a week for boys, but four for girls? Cailet grinned and added a sixth teacher. On the afternoon he returned from his weekly circuit with the news that two villages were taking up a special collection to build a shared permanent schoolhouse, Cailet so far forgot her dignity as Captal to dance him around the room.
The curriculum expanded to geography, astronomy, history, literature, and music. The students learned botany by planting and caring for trees and flowers around local shrines. One boy, showing a hitherto unsuspected talent for drawing and architecture, designed the new schoolhouse in Heathering. On St. Alilen’s Day of 972, proud mothers from all nine villages saw their children line up for a choral performance in the Saint’s honor. Each class wrote letters to children their own ages in Roseguard, Neele, and Havenport, and the days when letters and drawings and samples of leaves and flowers came back were the best days of all.
Every other week Elomar Adennos came by to talk about medicine and conduct a clinic, and as the years wore on the number of cases of everything from malnutrition to colds declined as his lessons sank in. He discovered three girls and a boy with the talent and dedication to become Healers, though not Healer Mages, and eventually persuaded their mothers to send them to Ambrai, where Elin Alvassy had established a new Healers Ward, with scholarships for needy students.
Kembial Adennos found several teenagers who demonstrated a gift for teaching the littler ones. By 976 each village had its own schoolhouse and locals were teaching two days a week. A year later, delegations from outlying areas visited the nearly completed Mage Hall and asked how they could set up a school system.
“And not just the girls, and not just a few days a week either,” Kembial reported excitedly to Cailet. “They want six days out often!”
Classes at Mage Hall were conducted every day of the week except the Saints’ Days. From five buildings scattered on the south shore of the little lake—one each for Scholars, Healers, and Warriors, a central refectory, and a small house for Cailet—the complex expanded to include infirmary, classrooms, workshops, lodgings for Prentices and teachers and visiting Mage Guardians, a fine suite of rooms for Cailet and her staff, a gatehouse, stables, barns, and various outbuildings that supported the home farm.
But the very first thing Cailet had had built—and by the Prentices, not the construction crews—was a wall.
It wasn’t a very high wall—only about four feet tall, more of a boundary marker than an obstacle. It started at the gatehouse a quarter of a mile from the main site, and the first tiling each Prentice did on arrival was pile bricks and mortar into yet another section.
It wasn’t a very consistent wall, either—parts of it leaned off-kilter, and in some places the mortar was thicker than in others, and the top surface dipped and rose eccentrically, and in no ten places was it the same number of bricks high.
And it wasn’t a very pretty wall—the bricks were of all different colors: rusty red, sandy gold, dusty green, smoky blue, coffee-brown, eggshell white, depending on what could be bought cheap
and shipped from Cantrashir or Sheve and sometimes even The Waste.
It was, in fact, a ridiculous wall—not high enough to keep out a lame galazhi, listing this way and that, uneven, wildly colored. But every Prentice Mage who came to Tillinshir could point to her or his section of that wall and proclaim, “I built that as my first lesson in magic.”
Just as, years ago, building a wall at Rinnel’s shack had been Cailet’s first lesson in magic.
One late-summer day in 987 the wall changed forever when a new Prentice came to Mage Hall with more luggage than could be explained by the few clothes and personal items he stashed away in his closet.
Cailet always watched the new students arrive—a small personal ritual in anticipation of Taigan and Mikel. Her original quarters, built on a rise above a hollow where a gigantic oak grew, had been expanded and subsumed into a larger building. The tree was now the center of a sunken courtyard, with a wooden-railed stone balcony running three-quarters of the way around, crossing over breezeways that led to the other buildings. At the top of brick steps opposite Cailet’s suite, an arched gate led down into the enclosure, and more steps ascended to the broad and lofty room that was Mage Hall itself. Cailet lived in four rooms overlooking the courtyard on one side and the lake on the other, and from the balcony she observed without words or magic each new arrival.
But that day in 987, the tenth of Drygrass, she was expecting no new Prentices, and went walking in the hills. She lazed with a book on the moss beside a forest pool most of the day, smiling whenever she recalled the unsubtle urgings of Aidan Maurgen and Marra Gorrst to take some time for herself. Fresh air, cool stillness, away from all the work and worries of being Captal—oh, they’d wanted her out of the way, all right. It had been a tricky thing, to resist just enough so they’d think she knew nothing about the surprise celebrations planned for the day after tomorrow—St. Caitiri’s, her thirty-sixth Birthingday.
Thirty-six. She’d now spent half her life as Mage Captal. And, all things considered, she hadn’t done too badly at it.
