After his third attempt, as he lifted his hand away from his brother’s globe, it reflected a pair of hands holding it, faint light limning the spaces between spread fingers. They did not seem to be Torin’s hands. He was deciding they were Talmar’s, when a patch of fog appeared on one side of the globe. It seemed to remain steady inside a turning, like a bit of something floating on the surface of a cup of tea that remains in approximately the same position to a person turning the cup on the table, as if only the cup moves and not its contents. The area not fogged reflected a jumble of intermixed shapes and colors, impossible to distinguish or identify. Torin feared he had made the gestures wrong.
This confusion lasted perhaps sixty or seventy breaths, which Torin tried to inhale and exhale smoothly. Then the globe flashed white. He blinked. Talmar must have illuminated it, but only for a moment. After the brief brightness from within, muddled images returned, whirling around the befogged patch.
Then at last the fog faded, the reflection steadied except for a rough up-down movement, and Torin made out that the scene was Talmar lying supine in his tent, holding the globe near his chest.
So the jumble had been some result of Talmar’s sickness?
Torin seemed to have watched a long and a short time at once, and the judge would be coming. The toymaker rose with a sense of belated haste, went and relieved himself, returned and gestured over the globe again, this time starting its review easily. Feeling a little hunger, he shelled the cracked boiled egg and ate it in three bites to be rid of it and its egg odor. He closed his traveling chest, arranged the globe on it in a nest of wadded towel, set up basin, pitcher, soap, and unguent, creamed off his day-old beard, and washed, glancing continually at the globe. It showed the same confusion as the first time. He moved so quickly that he finished grooming before the flash. He put on clean tunic, wiped the globe of splashes it had sustained from his washbasin, changed trousers and tied his belt. The review reached the steadying moment.
He carried his brazier outside, kindled it, dropped the eggshell into the flames. He returned inside, lit a cake of incense to soak up the lingering smell of boiled egg, gestured the globe back once more to the start of what it had to show. After watching a few moments and seeing nothing different, he went outside again to check his brazier.
Raindrops started falling. The coals were not burned down enough to take the brazier inside; but, like most good brazier sets, Torin’s followed the pattern designed a few generations ago by Kaderian, one of the very few crafters ever to wear a four-syllable name. Torin lifted the coal pan by its insulated handles, set it on the ground, and turned the stand upside down over it to shelter it from rain while allowing the smoky vapors to escape.
As he stood, he saw the judge.
Like most people, Alrathe must be wearing a charm-disk to turn raindrops away within inches of the body. Rain stopped little of any fair’s back-and-forth traffic, but it drove business inside tents or, as with most of the animal trade, beneath wide awnings. In turning drops away from a body and its immediate clothing, the charm created a surrounding sheath of thicker spray to wet anything unprotected towards which the wearer reached out.
“Cousin Toymaker!” Alrathe’s greeting sounded friendly.
“Cousin Judge.” Torin held up the doorcurtain while Alrathe ducked inside.
Torin followed nervously. His life had included few experiences with judgments and none with Alrathe’s work style; but a judge’s interview could resemble a word-whipping, and judges occasionally told persons they suspected of lying, evading questions, or improperly searching their memories to hold their arms out unsupported, like naughty children. He half considered leaving his doorcords untied as if by oversight, for without the signal that those within did not wish to be disturbed, someone might interrupt the session. Dilys, perhaps, or Ulrad and Kara, who still owed for the toys they had taken yesterday. If he had truly forgotten…but courtesy required him to tie the cords, so he did.
As he dropped the curtain, light flashed behind him. He turned and saw Alrathe looking at the globe beside the washbasin.
“Yes,” said Torin, “it’s my brother’s. I don’t know how it reached my tent. I found it when I woke this morning.”
“Strange,” said Alrathe. “I visited Talmar’s tent on my way. He’s sleeping, which may be a good sign.”
“I know. I went there this morning, too.” Torin wondered if the fact that he had broken his wait for judgment would impress the judge against him. “I guessed I’d have time before you came.” Worse! Depending on what Valdart had told Alrathe, the judge might not have known the toymaker was forewarned. Well, the judge knew now, so Torin went on, “But that citron is a citron, Cousin Judge. I have no idea what happened to Valdart’s pendant.”
Alrathe pulled out a citron and tossed it to the toymaker. Taken by surprise, Torin failed to catch it, recovered it from the floor rugs.
The judge sighed. “It’s the same citron. Would you be willing to eat it?”
Feeling a blush, Torin lifted the fruit to his mouth.
“Enough!” said the judge. “Toss it back. I’m not sure I could comfortably afford to repay Valdart even for a citron.”
Torin tossed it back with relief.
Alrathe caught it easily, pocketed it, and picked up Talmar’s globe. “For the moment, this interests me more. Sharys said nothing to me about its disappearance.”
“I’m not sure it’d be very important in her thoughts, unless Talmar woke and asked for it. His health seems to be her great concern right now.”
“A true healer, with true healers’ concentration,” said Alrathe before Torin had time to brood on what her new concern might mean in terms of her eventual marriage choice. “The image seems to have settled,” Alrathe went on.
“Yes. This is the second, no, third time I’ve made it review. It’s always the same. The misted patch, confused images, flash of light, more confusion, then it settles and shows my brother waiting for the Harvest Spirit.”
“Most poets agree that the past does not change.”
Torin blushed again. “I may have made the gestures wrong. Some mistake of mine could have muddled the images. Through accident.”
“Well, you’re more nearly magic-monger than I.” Alrathe brought the globe to Torin. “May I ask you to gesture again?”
Torin obliged. Carrying the globe, Alrathe sat on the bed. Torin hesitated briefly, then cleared the top of his traveling chest and used it for a chair.
“Had the fault been with your gestures,” said Alrathe, “would the image settle at last?”
“It might be some result of his sickness. Breathing his delirium into these reflections.”
Alrathe turned the globe. “What dreams might it give a dying person, the fear of achievement lost through lack of anyone to continue the work?”
“But not me!” Torin slumped, elbows on knees. “Surely another magic-monger.”
“I doubt Vathilda would want this task. Now that she’s scoffed at its value, she might feel that investigating Talmar’s technique would break faith with her own. Her daughter’s a self-professed workaday magician more in rhythm with the practical than the theoretical. And Sharys is still only a conjurer at nineteen.”
“There must be others. The study’s overcrowded. I’m willing to show the gestures to any magic-monger. Without charge. The Supreme Mage herself might be interested.”
“But Talmar seems to want you. Perhaps he believes his brother’s mind must work most like his own.”
“Or it’s only family pride—family selfishness!” cried Torin. Then he remembered that his brother might be near death, and hung his head. “Forgive my anger.”
“I’m not trying to transform you, Cousin Toymaker. Only to find the possible current of your brother’s thoughts. This globe hardly rolled into your tent of its own motive power.”
“Sharys thought he might have softened his door last night, wanting a nurse, and someone took advantage of it to steal…” But a th
ief would have kept the globe. “Unlikely, isn’t it?”
“Very.” Alrathe stared into the glassy ball. “A second person may be in the tent with the high wizard. Difficult to be sure. It may be mind dictating to eyes, saying that someone else must have been with him last night. But someone who was more probably chosen messenger than thief. Is it possible that Talmar summoned you yourself to him with a mind-message, and you obeyed it more than half asleep?”
Torin shook his head helplessly. “I don’t remember any dreams of being otherwhere than here in my own tent.”
“Well, sleep business is strange and may grow even stranger in memory, though that’s hard to demonstrate,” mused the judge. “You dream your dreams, I mine, and neither of us has any personal recollection of the other’s. No one can contradict another person’s dreams. But waking events shared by more than one witness… There each individual’s recollection usually differs in small details or large from everyone else’s.” Then, with a headshake as if emerging from general reverie to particular case, “But an impressive number of poets agree in their opinion that folk rarely do things asleep they would refuse to do awake.”
Torin did not feel comforted. If he had gone half asleep to his brother’s tent, his own will, even his own desire, might be more wavery than he himself suspected. Also, it raised the idea that he might have sleepwalked unremembering to Valdart’s tent. He wondered if he ought to mention his conversation with the animated statuette, which might contain some garbled dream memory of motive for either or both midnight sleepwalkings.
The judge went on, “Was your own charm corded across your door last night and this morning?”
“I tied it last night. This morning… I’m not sure. Valdart came in before I had gone near my doorcurtain.”
“Rude, if the cords were tied. Apparently impossible for a lay person, if the charm was knotted in.”
“No. I thought of that, but the charm was spellcast only against thievery and mischief, not rudeness. And Valdart thought he had cause to be angry.”
“Ah!” said Alrathe. “If you should decide to turn magic-monger again, perhaps you’ll work on a more all-inclusive charm.”
“It’s limited because otherwise friends might not be able to get in to help in case of accident.”
Alrathe nodded. “I’ll have to ask Valdart. We’ll hope he remembers such minor details as the charm in your doorcords.”
Raindrops pattered on the cloth roof. The protective magic against thievery and mischief did not perceive falling droplets as menace, and few people used drycharms against rain on their tents. Usually the sound was not uncomfortable.
“If I was last night’s culprit,” said Torin, “undoing charms to work mischief, I doubt the study would want me back.”
Alrathe shrugged. “We have two puzzles here. Talmar’s globe and Valdart’s pendant, and no surety that they are connected, nor that one culprit is responsible for both. If we can even theorize culprit, and not messenger, in the case of the globe.… Well, let’s hope you were not the one responsible, or we may have a true ache of a brain-tangle, the magickers and I. Would you rather be judged by judges or magickers, Cousin?”
“By judges, I think. As common crafter.”
“But not as pure layperson. If magic does enter into this… Yet how could they judge you without first receiving you back as fellow student, and could they accept you if you were guilty?” Alrathe shrugged again. “Cousin, you are unique. I remember no cases similar to yours, at least none recent enough to help guide us. But I’m far from sure that magic is involved.”
“If the charms didn’t work because no mischief was intended, only rudeness…” said Torin, trying to follow the judge’s thought.
“But mischief was perceived by the complainant, if not by the charm. Then the charm’s magic would appear more sensitive to intruder than to rightful owner.”
“It may be more sensitive to whoever is closest.” While saying this, Torin worried that he was reasoning more like magic-monger than toycrafter.
“Yes,” said Alrathe, “it seems to me, lay though I am in magic, that improving our protective charms would give magickers a more practical project than making globes show—”
Talmar’s globe flashed its light.
“Three puzzles,” said Alrathe, “if your brother’s malady counts as one. I confess I was never quite satisfied with Vathilda’s identification, but until now…” The judge tapped Talmar’s globe. “Cousin, you have your own magic globe, I believe?”
Torin sat upright and looked around. His globe was not on its stand. He thought he remembered getting it out last night, fingering it, but then he had decided to light a candle instead. He must have put the globe away. Though not as fragile as they looked, the glass balls could be broken. Magic-mongers guarded against this with a durability spell renewed daily as part of their morning meditation. The toymaker guarded against it by storing his globe in a cushion-lined box. Bending, he found the box (one of his own prenticework carvings) beside the chest, brought it up into his lap, opened it and lifted out his globe.
“Enclosed in cushions and wood all night.” He shook his head. “No, mine couldn’t have witnessed anything. Even if Talmar’s new technique doesn’t require any kind of preliminary spellcasting to make the globes remember.”
“Bothersome. Had yours been positioned to see, we might have had our answer to one puzzle, at least, in a few hours. But if you could find some way to pass back through years in a short time… You mentioned yesterday that your brother suffered a similar fit at his First Name-Lengthening feast. I assume your globe might have helped light that occasion.”
“Probably. But he showed me nothing of skipping back to some chosen moment.”
“And we can’t wait twenty years for that scene. So unless you can refine your brother’s technique this afternoon, we must depend on your memory.”
“My memory?” said Torin. “It’s not a pleasant memory for me, Cousin Judge. I’ve let it molder unstudied.”
“One might also say, relatively unembellished by later mindcasts. All I want from your memory is what foods you and your family ate and, if possible, what foods you transformed them out of.”
Hope cut sharply into the toymaker’s lungs. “You suspect food sensitivity?”
“I have all along. It was not my right to question Mother Vathilda’s ideas, not until I could find some reason to make the high wizard’s sickness an affair for judgework. This puzzle of Talmar’s globe may give me that right.”
“Food sensitivity. That should pass of itself!”
“So should boasting sickness, I think, now the worst appears to be over. But we can guess what boulders a reputation for glory-choking will roll into Cousin Talmar’s climb for honor.”
“We can guess.” Torin slipped his globe back into its cushions and gently closed the box. “I’ll try to search my memory, Cousin Judge.”
“Write out a list, if you can.” Alrathe stood. “It’s all I ask for now.”
Torin also rose, setting down the box. “My brazier should be ready to heat water soon. Or I have pear cordial.”
“Thank you, not this time. I hope we’ll drink together more cheerfully when our puzzles are solved.” Alrathe handed Torin the high wizard’s globe. The image had settled to Talmar alone on his bed. “Let it continue showing its review. As I understand the technique, that will save whatever it saw last night for whenever I may want to look at it again. Or it may reach yesterday afternoon while one more study of the feast might still be useful.”
Torin nodded. Cradling the globe in one arm, he drew back his doorcurtain and untied its cords.
At the doorway, the judge paused and put one hand on the toymaker’s shoulders. Torin was rather short, and stooping a little just now as he held the curtain. The judge was slightly taller.
“Cousin,” said Alrathe, “I also suggest that you reexamine whatever dreams you may have experienced last night.”
Torin nodded again. “Cousin
Judge, I’ll try.”
He watched Alrathe move away, crimson robe unspattered, between other charm-protected fairgoers and wettening tents. Standard magical theory postulated that the wearer’s own bodily heat helped activate personal drycharms. Torin looked at his brazier, decided it was not yet ready to bring inside, dropped the doorcurtain, and returned to sit on his bed. He was not quite sure whether Alrathe had taken him into confidence as an assistant, or already reached some judgment on him. Sighing, he lifted Talmar’s globe. When displaying the past it showed no hint of superimposed present reflection. He laid it carefully on his pillow, got his own smaller globe out of the box once more, sat and looked at it for a few moments, then made Talmar’s gestures over it.
He lifted his hand away and watched its reflection go back through the series in reverse. So this technique did not require preliminary treatment of the globe.
If Talmar’s delirium had caused the period of confused images, a globe might respond to the thoughts of whoever was practicing this technique upon it. In that case, there might be some mental way to guide it back and pick out an hour it had witnessed years ago.
Torin shivered. His mind seemed to be working at this with the interest of a magicker. He felt caught in paradox. But he repeated the gestures over his globe and held it in the path of his exhaled breath as he tried thinking back to his brother’s First Name-Lengthening.
Chapter Six
Mentally re-enumerating whom to interview, and deciding that soonest would be best with Vathilda and her family, Alrathe walked briskly back to the scholars’ area, observing on the way that Merprinel, like other boothkeepers, already had her business snug inside.
Approaching Sharys in the sick wizard’s tent on an errand of judgecraft seemed rude, even though the curtain was still pliable. But judges had the right to employ surprise as a tool.
Talmar was still laboriously sleeping. Sharys bent over him, her cloth-padded fingers near his face. She did not seem to notice that someone else had just come into the tent.
At Amberleaf Fair Page 6
