“Cousin Sharys,” said the judge.
At that she started, looked around and up. “Cousin Alrathe?”
“I hope to leave you again quickly.” The judge stepped closer, held out the citron, and nodded at the wizard. “These, I believe, are among his favorite delicacies?”
The conjurer took it. “Yes. I made that whole platter of them yesterday. He must have eaten ten or twelve.” She blinked twice, and a tear rolled down her left cheek. “Is this a real one?”
“There’s some doubt.”
She frowned.
“I had thought,” the judge went on, “that you might sense it.”
She curled her fingers around the citron and closed her eyes, but opened them almost at once. “Cousin Alrathe, have you come here as friend or judge or…or… It isn’t any time for jokes.”
“Would you risk feeding that fruit to the high wizard?”
“No. I wouldn’t risk feeding him anything but broth and sops and cordials and water. But I’d risk eating it myself.”
Alrathe sighed. “I’ve come as judge. A complainant brought that to me this morning with the claim it was transformed orangestone.”
Her eyes widened as if in horror, then closed again and she sat in concentration for several minutes, her hand tight around the citron. She shook her head.
“You’d still risk eating it yourself?”
“No. I think it’s real fruit, but I’m only a conjurer. Grandmother was already a sorceress by this age.”
“And then she suffered her own case of Choking Glory?”
“When she was…twenty-three, I think. A few years after my mother was born. What can that have to do with this?”
“More things connect with one another than we sometimes guess.” Alrathe conceived judges’ work as searching out the interrelationships, never as trying to isolate one piece of mischief from its total setting. “Have you guessed who my complainant is?”
She thought for a moment and shrugged. “Valdart, I suppose.” Her tone surprised Alrathe—less than casual, almost annoyed.
“Valdart had planned to give you that piece of jewelry as a marriage token. He seemed confident you would accept it.”
“Oh, I’m tired of them both!” She brushed back some strands of golden hair that had strayed across her forehead. “Making a—what would you call it?—some sort of strange gameboard out of it. Why can’t they leave me untroubled to make my own choice? So they’ve told you all about it, too.”
“As judge, not as gossip. And as judge, I have found no reason so far to believe this particular gameboard is of Torin’s design.”
“I hope not. Not with his own brother so sick. But after yesterday morning…Talmar might not be so much to Valdartak.…” She paused and pinched the citron, frowning again.
“It may not be the adventurer’s design, either. It may be the handiwork of some unknown trickster.”
“Who? And why?” She shook her head and thrust the citron back into Alrathe’s hand. “Cousin, he’s trying to make you one more piece on this…very strange gameboard. Tell him I’m glad Torin—Torinel—warned me to wait.” She began retying her pale green hairband. Her fingers trembled slightly.
“Yesterday’s citrons,” said the judge. “What did you make them out of?”
“Potatoes. I thought you saw them untransform. My transformations were first to unknit. Not that it matters, only if I were a better magicker… I don’t care about transformations and performances, but to be able to heal more skillfully!”
Alrathe wondered how overcautious Vathilda’s Choking Glory might have made her daughter and granddaughter in their own study. “It could matter a great deal if this is simple food sensitivity.”
She snatched the significance at once. “Grandmother says it’s boasting sickess,” she repeated, but hope showed in her upward glance.
“And perhaps I have no right to question Grandmother Vathilda. But who should know better how glory-choking can stop one’s climb to honors?”
“Grandmother says there are more important peaks to climb. I’m sure he’s eaten all those delicacies before. But the base foods!” Sharys exclaimed softly. “Of course. Transformations almost always retain some quality of their originals, and my poor weak transformations…”
Alrathe was glad she had thought of it but disturbed that she blamed her lack of skill. “Need the fault have been clumsiness in transformation? By his brother’s memory, Talmar suffered one such fit in childhood. His own parents, high wizard and mage, would have prepared the meal then.”
“The goldfruits were potatoes, too,” said Sharys. “Larger potatoes. I sorted carefully so I wouldn’t need to work with size. The dates and olives were carrots cut small, the powderflour wafers were cabbage leaves, the dewmelons were small whole cabbages, the whitenuts were parched corn, the jewelberries were dried peas… But if he were sensitive to any of the delicacies, he wouldn’t have eaten them. But some combination? That no one’s noticed until now because it doesn’t happen very often?”
Alrathe nodded eagerly. “Cousin, if you could make a list, mark what foods he favored most. I can perhaps help there, having watched it over again yesterday in his globe…citrons, dewmelon, dates, goldcobs.”
“The goldcobs were natural,” said Sharys.
Talmar choked and she whirled back to him, not looking up again until she was satisfied he still slept and breathed relatively safely. “Can’t you check his globe again today?”
“When it reviews its way back to the correct hour. But the images are tiny and such things as which wine is poured are not always clear. His own memory might be the most reliable of all.”
She nodded. “I’ll explain. When he wakes, if he’s strong enough. Oh, Talmariak, if it is only food sensitivity!”
Alrathe felt considerable satisfaction on leaving the high wizard’s tent. Talmar might both survive and be able to climb the peak of honors, after all. And, thought the judge, I believe that the problem of his globe is no very great puzzle. We may hope Talmar himself will not object to enlightening us when he recovers sufficient strength, at least as to his own method and motive. He might not wish to reveal his messenger, or why cloud and confuse the scene (assuming it was done on purpose)? But perhaps no one really need seek that particular answer.
The marriage toy puzzle, however: that was more ticklish.
* * * *
Vathilda’s tent faced Talmar’s. Its doorcurtain hung supple. Alrathe crossed the footway and entered.
Hilshar sat alone, sorting little things that Alrathe recognized as belonging to the periphery of magic, the feats meant to please lay audiences and scorned by many more advanced or pretentious students: tiny globes, scarves, nets, phials of colored liquid.
“Cousin Judge,” said Hilshar, looking up. She was a placid woman, a shock-cushion between her sharp mother and her intense daughter. The judge wondered if Hilshar’s calm had been purchased with hard climbing or if the family temper had mercifully skipped one generation.
“Cousin Magician.” Alrathe put the citron down before her in the middle of a small, empty ringwood frame. “What do you think of this?”
She picked it up. “If it’s one of my daughter’s transformations, I’m proud of it. All the rest unknit themselves by yesterday evening.”
“Are you sure it’s a transformation?”
As Torin and Sharys had done, Hilshar curled her fingers round the fruit and closed her eyes. “No,” she said at last, “it’s real. Are you testing me, Cousin Judge, or is it a gift for poor Talmar?”
“A test, but of the citron.” Alrathe sat and told her of the adventurer’s complaint. Although she listened with her customary calm, she appeared to have known nothing about the transformation or trade of that pendant. She did not interrupt with so much as a wordless exclamation, but her eyes opened a little wider.
At the end of Alrathe’s brief account, Hilshar sighed and shook her head. “I would not like that adventurer for a daughter’s husband.”
/>
“Then it sounds to you like a trick of Valdart’s to discredit his friend?”
“The citron’s real, as far as my skill can test it. I’ll say no more. I couldn’t say as much as that to Sharys, but I hope her choice goes elsewhere.”
“To the toymaker?”
“So Mother hopes. My own hopes… But I think my daughter is one of those who must choose her own guides or climb her trail alone.”
“I wouldn’t presume to advise her. But whatever the truth of this trick, who played it upon whom, Sharys should know before making her decision.”
“Aye. Although how it may swing her choice… Cousin Judge, my own husband was a clothcrafter. Mother thought crafters would make the best mates for a family like ours, in danger of boasting sickness. It was not a comfortable marriage. He turned adventurer, hired his work to a merchant traveling west. He left promising to visit us every second or third year. He never returned. It’s a poor, tiny gauge to measure them by, so I say nothing to my daughter. But, well, Torin’s a steady young man, and I’d rather see her choose him than the adventurer. Still, his being half crafter and half magicker, I’m not sure if that would make their climb together easier or harder.”
So Hilshar’s tranquility had been purchased. Alrathe nodded. Further reassurance was unnecessary. Judges often became the recipients of spontaneous unburdenings, which could happen only when the tellers already trusted their listeners’ discretion.
“Mother Vathilda is taking advantage of this rain to arrange a magic performance in the Scholars’ Tent,” Hilshar went on. “To earn money for buying Talmar natural comforts. If any magic-monger here can tell you with certitude whether this is a real citron or a transformation, it’s she.”
Alrathe thanked Hilshar, took back the citron, and set out for the Scholars’ Tent.
Chapter Seven
The sound of rain on her tent woke Dilys the storycrafter.
She had needed a long time to fall asleep last night, which would have made lying under her blankets dozing while the morning rained on her tent very pleasant. But the same thoughts that had kept her awake were waiting, ready to surface again even as she woke.
She got up, washed and dressed in haste. The morning still felt early, but clouds and rain could warp human time-sense. Pulling back her curtain, she looked out and nodded. Hard to guess where above the clouds the sun might be, but no one stood in front of the Storytellers’ Pavilion waiting for its cords to be untied, and the number of fairgoers who walked from tent to tent was too small for midmorning bustle but too large for midday when folk would shelter to eat their meal.
Dilys had scheduled herself for today’s first storytelling. The early afternoon hour was not enviable. The audience wandered in whenever they finished eathing. The entry price remained a single large stone throughout this one session—in fair weather some stragglers objected to paying even that, preferring to wait and come in when the next teller began. Wise storycrafters filled such first sessions with short snippet-tales, saving long ones for later. This made good sense, but Dilys found it tedious work. Nevertheless, when as senior crafter she naturally received the best evening hour, balancing it with the worst afternoon hour was only justice. Also, it made sense to draw as many listeners as possible as soon as possible to the Storytellers’ Pavilion. Any senior who refused the first session almost invariably took the second for that reason.
The rain should help make this a profitable afternoon, but meanwhile Dilys had other concerns. Postponing breakfast, she merely swallowed a few mouthfuls of cold water and wine. To guard against throat phlegm she slipped her protective disk around her neck, but did not take her drycharm. The rain seemed warm for late autumn, and her cloak was still new enough that the wool resisted drops awhile. Dilys liked to recreate, when possible and not too inconvenient, what folk must have experienced in those days before life was protected with so many charms. It helped her storycrafting. Besides, this fairground was not large. She should be at the toymaker’s tent before the rain had much chance to soak through. She pinned her cloak with the carved brookstone brooch she had bought from Torin several years ago, pulled up her hood, stepped out into the rain, tied her doorcords around the tentcharm in the special knot that signaled fellow storycrafters she would be available in another few hours, and set off.
Torin’s doorcords hung untied, so Dilys went right in. She found him standing with his back to the door, holding out his arms unsupported at his sides.
She started to back out again, but she must have let in a draft, and one of her unfastened cloak toggles clicked on his dangling tentcharm. He shivered, dropped his arms, and turned.
She tried a smile. “You haven’t been naughty again?”
“I hope not.”
She saw he was blushing and regretted her attempt to banter. It was the kind of teasing she herself would not have liked. “I’m sorry. It isn’t because of… How is your brother?”
“Alive. He was sleeping this morning. Not too easily, but it’s something. No drycharm?”
She took off her cloak and shook it carefully so as to limit splattering to one small area near his door. “I’ve been told that when people in my tales about old times walk through rain, my listeners can almost feel it on their own bodies.”
“Well, your stories are popular anyway.” He grinned.
“Like your toys.”
He sighed.
“Torinel, do you want to go back to magic?”
“I don’t know.” He turned to his brazier, where a small kettle was heating. “The water’s near the boil. What will you drink?”
“Roseblend.” She spread her cloak over part of the floormat, somewhat away from the entrance, and sat cross-legged near the bed, fingering her brookstone brooch. “If your brother gets well, there’ll be no need at all for you to go back—not that there was anyway. Not unless you want to.”
“If this is boasting sickness, his climb stops here. Mine, maybe, would not.”
“You don’t think someone like Talmar would appreciate seeing his brother climb on past him to higher glories?”
“He might appreciate it. If it meant general honor to his family.”
“He isn’t too young to marry,” said the storyteller.
“No. But once a strain of glory-choking appears… Look at Mother Vathilda and her line.”
Dilys flicked the brooch down into her lap, interlinked her fingers, and squeezed them tight. “But your line would be untainted?” she said. Even if you married Vathilda’s granddaughter? she thought. Aloud, she added, “And your children might want to pick the study up again—especially if their mother’s a magicker. So you could very well let it skip one generation with your conscience comfortable and keep on making toys. What kind of sense is the conjurer showing in her choice today?”
“I don’t believe she’s thinking very much about either of us. It’s Talmar who concerns her right now.” He confided it without hesitation or embarrassment toward his visitor. In a way, she was proud he felt free to speak with her of such things.
He poured boiling water and mixed in herbs, two cups of roseblend. They both enjoyed its sweet-sour bite; their taste preferences were very similar. He brought her one cup, then sat on his bed, put his cup down in front of him, and stared at it. “But would my line be untainted? I’ve been proud, Dilysin. Very proud of my craftwork, very proud of turning aside to follow my own trail.”
“Proud enough to choke on it?”
He shook his head.
“And your parents? Did they ever glory-choke?”
“No. But maybe our mother feared it in herself. Maybe that’s part of the reason she turned wanderer when she might have been named Elder Mage.”
“Did she ever say that was why she left?”
Again he shook his head. “She might have feared to worry us.”
The storyteller tapped her fingers impatiently on her cup. “Or she might not even have been tempted by the Elder Mageship. Mage-Mother Talysidore might be wanderi
ng because she really prefers it—because she doesn’t have any of that kind of pride, not because she has too much. I don’t think she’d keep silent if she thought it was a danger in her line, I think she’d have warned her children specifically. As for being proud of your toys, why shouldn’t you be? They’re worth it. And as for putting your mark on each of them, every good crafter who wants to earn an independent livelihood had better do that. It’s no more than my bright tunics and picture-belts to make people remember me and come back to buy my stories again.”
Torin looked around at the showledge of toys on the floor beside his traveling chest. “They say almost everyone wants to change occupations sometime in life.”
“Well.” She sipped her hot roseblend. “And most of those who try it seem to muddle it and go back to their old callings. But you may be lucky. I imagine you could change back and be as good a magicker as you are a toycrafter. If that’s what you want.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it is. But I’m not sure. I haven’t tired of toycrafter, not for longer than a day or two at a time. But I’ve tried some experiments that were, well, unwise. Like the toy lyre.”
“That music-crafter never needed to call in a judge on you,” said Dilys.
“But he had sound arguments. Toy musical instruments could have spoiled children’s ears for real music and cut into the true music-craft. I should have thought of that myself.”
“Exactly. All he needed was to come to you and point it out, and you’d have stopped.”
“Especially as my experiment wasn’t finding any buyers.” Torin smiled wryly. “But maybe these experiments are an indication. Maybe I’m more restless than I know. If someday I run out of rightful new things to try, variations in technique…”
“I grow restless at least once or twice every year,” she told him. “At one time or another, I’ve tried peeking into everyone’s workshop. I’ve spent whole days and nights playing at gardencraft, skyreading, weaving—I unraveled that effort and used the thread for mending. You’ve seen that lopsided pot from my claycrafting efforts, and maybe sometime I’ll show you two very strange-looking shoes that were a true waste of old leather. But whenever I try to go longer than three days without making or telling a story, I start losing touch with my lungs.”
At Amberleaf Fair Page 7
